Arthur Krystal
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300092165
- eISBN:
- 9780300145601
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300092165.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
From small questions of taste to large questions concerning the nature of existence, intellectual debate takes up much of our time. This book examines what most commentators ignore: the role of ...
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From small questions of taste to large questions concerning the nature of existence, intellectual debate takes up much of our time. This book examines what most commentators ignore: the role of temperament and taste in the forming of aesthetic and ideological opinions. In provocative chapters about reading and writing, about the relation between life and literature, about knowledge and certainty, about God and death, and about a gradual disaffection with the literary scene, the book demonstrates that opposing points of view are based more on innate predilections than on disinterested thought or analysis. Not beholden to any fashionable theory or political agenda, the book interrogates the usual suspects in the cultural wars from an independent, though not impartial, vantage point. Clearly personal and unabashedly belletrist, the chapters ask important questions. What makes culture one thing and not another? What inspires aesthetic values? What drives us to make comparisons? And how does a bias for one kind of evidence as opposed to another contribute to the form and content of intellectual argument?Less
From small questions of taste to large questions concerning the nature of existence, intellectual debate takes up much of our time. This book examines what most commentators ignore: the role of temperament and taste in the forming of aesthetic and ideological opinions. In provocative chapters about reading and writing, about the relation between life and literature, about knowledge and certainty, about God and death, and about a gradual disaffection with the literary scene, the book demonstrates that opposing points of view are based more on innate predilections than on disinterested thought or analysis. Not beholden to any fashionable theory or political agenda, the book interrogates the usual suspects in the cultural wars from an independent, though not impartial, vantage point. Clearly personal and unabashedly belletrist, the chapters ask important questions. What makes culture one thing and not another? What inspires aesthetic values? What drives us to make comparisons? And how does a bias for one kind of evidence as opposed to another contribute to the form and content of intellectual argument?
Denis Donoghue
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300107814
- eISBN:
- 9780300133783
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300107814.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? This book ...
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How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? This book presents a short list of “relative” classics—works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time—neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise and hyperbole. The book bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville's Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examining each separately, each chapter discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and offers contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post-9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. The book extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.Less
How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? This book presents a short list of “relative” classics—works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time—neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise and hyperbole. The book bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville's Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examining each separately, each chapter discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and offers contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post-9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. The book extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.
Caleb Crain
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300083323
- eISBN:
- 9780300133677
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300083323.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This book weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative to describe the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America's greatest writing—the Gothic novels ...
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This book weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative to describe the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America's greatest writing—the Gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the novels of Herman Melville. The book traces the genealogy of these friendships through a series of stories. A dapper English spy inspires a Quaker boy to run away from home. Three Philadelphia gentlemen conduct a romance through diaries and letters in the 1780s. Flighty teenager Charles Brockden Brown metamorphoses into a horror novelist by treating his friends as his literary guinea pigs. Emerson exchanges glances with a Harvard classmate but sacrifices his crush on the altar of literature—a decision Margaret Fuller invites him to reconsider two decades later. Throughout, this book demonstrates the many ways in which the struggle to commit feelings to paper informed the shape and texture of American literature.Less
This book weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative to describe the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America's greatest writing—the Gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the novels of Herman Melville. The book traces the genealogy of these friendships through a series of stories. A dapper English spy inspires a Quaker boy to run away from home. Three Philadelphia gentlemen conduct a romance through diaries and letters in the 1780s. Flighty teenager Charles Brockden Brown metamorphoses into a horror novelist by treating his friends as his literary guinea pigs. Emerson exchanges glances with a Harvard classmate but sacrifices his crush on the altar of literature—a decision Margaret Fuller invites him to reconsider two decades later. Throughout, this book demonstrates the many ways in which the struggle to commit feelings to paper informed the shape and texture of American literature.
Nigel Smith
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300112214
- eISBN:
- 9780300168396
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300112214.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
The seventeenth-century poet Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) is one of the most intriguing figures in English literature. A noted civil servant under Cromwell's Protectorate, he has been variously ...
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The seventeenth-century poet Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) is one of the most intriguing figures in English literature. A noted civil servant under Cromwell's Protectorate, he has been variously identified as a patriot, spy, conspirator, concealed homosexual, father to the liberal tradition, and incendiary satirical pamphleteer and freethinker. But while Marvell's poetry and prose have attracted a wide modern following, his prose is known only to specialists, and much of his personal life remains shrouded in mystery. This biography provides a look into Marvell's life, from his early employment as a tutor and gentleman's companion to his suspicious death, reputedly a politically fueled poisoning. Drawing on exhaustive archival research, the voluminous corpus of Marvell's previously little-known writing, and recent scholarship across several disciplines, the author's portrait becomes the definitive account of this elusive life.Less
The seventeenth-century poet Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) is one of the most intriguing figures in English literature. A noted civil servant under Cromwell's Protectorate, he has been variously identified as a patriot, spy, conspirator, concealed homosexual, father to the liberal tradition, and incendiary satirical pamphleteer and freethinker. But while Marvell's poetry and prose have attracted a wide modern following, his prose is known only to specialists, and much of his personal life remains shrouded in mystery. This biography provides a look into Marvell's life, from his early employment as a tutor and gentleman's companion to his suspicious death, reputedly a politically fueled poisoning. Drawing on exhaustive archival research, the voluminous corpus of Marvell's previously little-known writing, and recent scholarship across several disciplines, the author's portrait becomes the definitive account of this elusive life.
Libby Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300217513
- eISBN:
- 9780300225006
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300217513.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The Art of Survival: France and the Great War Picaresque is a new literary and cultural history of the First World War in France. It offers readers a fresh perspective on wartime popular culture, ...
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The Art of Survival: France and the Great War Picaresque is a new literary and cultural history of the First World War in France. It offers readers a fresh perspective on wartime popular culture, uncovering the attitudes and outlooks of the people who lived through the war one hundred years ago. The book develops a counternarrative to postwar interpretations of the infantryman as passive victim or active resister, focusing instead on the mechanisms through which soldiers and civilians resigned themselves to the war but imagined themselves as survivors. They were able to do so by reactivating a form of storytelling-the picaresque-whose central concern had always been the survival of a nonheroic protagonist in a hostile and chaotic world. During the Great War, French novelists, journalists, graphic artists, and cultural critics drew both consciously and unconsciously upon the long and rich European picaresque tradition. With its spirit of self-preservation as opposed to self-sacrifice and its affirmation of the value of life over death, the picaresque was a literary and cultural mode uniquely appropriate for expressing and attenuating the anxieties provoked by modern, industrialized warfare. The French reinvented the picaro as an apt hero for the modern age and positioned the picaresque as the dominant ethos of the modern cultural imagination.Less
The Art of Survival: France and the Great War Picaresque is a new literary and cultural history of the First World War in France. It offers readers a fresh perspective on wartime popular culture, uncovering the attitudes and outlooks of the people who lived through the war one hundred years ago. The book develops a counternarrative to postwar interpretations of the infantryman as passive victim or active resister, focusing instead on the mechanisms through which soldiers and civilians resigned themselves to the war but imagined themselves as survivors. They were able to do so by reactivating a form of storytelling-the picaresque-whose central concern had always been the survival of a nonheroic protagonist in a hostile and chaotic world. During the Great War, French novelists, journalists, graphic artists, and cultural critics drew both consciously and unconsciously upon the long and rich European picaresque tradition. With its spirit of self-preservation as opposed to self-sacrifice and its affirmation of the value of life over death, the picaresque was a literary and cultural mode uniquely appropriate for expressing and attenuating the anxieties provoked by modern, industrialized warfare. The French reinvented the picaro as an apt hero for the modern age and positioned the picaresque as the dominant ethos of the modern cultural imagination.
Jaroslaw Anders
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300111675
- eISBN:
- 9780300155310
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300111675.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Twentieth-century Polish literature is often said to be a “witness to history,” a narrative of the historical and political disasters that visited the nation. This book examines Poland's modern ...
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Twentieth-century Polish literature is often said to be a “witness to history,” a narrative of the historical and political disasters that visited the nation. This book examines Poland's modern poetry and fiction and explains that the best Polish writing of the period 1918–89 was much more than testimony. Rather, it constantly transformed historical experience into metaphysical reflection, a philosophical or religious exploration of human existence. The book analyzes and contextualizes the work of nine modern Polish writers. These include the “three madmen” of the interwar period—Schulz, Gombrowicz, and Witkiewicz, whom he calls the fathers of Polish modernist prose; the great poets of the war generation—Milosz, Herbert, and Szymborska; Herling-Grudzinski and Konwicki, with their dark philosophical subtexts; and the mystical-ecstatic poet Zagajewski.Less
Twentieth-century Polish literature is often said to be a “witness to history,” a narrative of the historical and political disasters that visited the nation. This book examines Poland's modern poetry and fiction and explains that the best Polish writing of the period 1918–89 was much more than testimony. Rather, it constantly transformed historical experience into metaphysical reflection, a philosophical or religious exploration of human existence. The book analyzes and contextualizes the work of nine modern Polish writers. These include the “three madmen” of the interwar period—Schulz, Gombrowicz, and Witkiewicz, whom he calls the fathers of Polish modernist prose; the great poets of the war generation—Milosz, Herbert, and Szymborska; Herling-Grudzinski and Konwicki, with their dark philosophical subtexts; and the mystical-ecstatic poet Zagajewski.
Joel Porte
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300104462
- eISBN:
- 9780300130577
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300104462.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Ralp Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are the most celebrated odd couple of nineteenth-century American literature. Appearing to play the roles of benign mentor and eager disciple, they can also ...
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Ralp Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are the most celebrated odd couple of nineteenth-century American literature. Appearing to play the roles of benign mentor and eager disciple, they can also be seen as bitter rivals: America's foremost literary statesman, protective of his reputation, and an ambitious and sometimes refractory protege. The truth, this book maintains, is that Emerson and Thoreau were complementary literary geniuses, mutually inspiring and inspired. This book focuses on Emerson and Thoreau as writers. It traces their individual achievements and their points of intersection, arguing that both men, starting from a shared belief in the importance of “self-culture”, produced a body of writing that helped move a decidedly provincial New England readership into the broader arena of international culture.Less
Ralp Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are the most celebrated odd couple of nineteenth-century American literature. Appearing to play the roles of benign mentor and eager disciple, they can also be seen as bitter rivals: America's foremost literary statesman, protective of his reputation, and an ambitious and sometimes refractory protege. The truth, this book maintains, is that Emerson and Thoreau were complementary literary geniuses, mutually inspiring and inspired. This book focuses on Emerson and Thoreau as writers. It traces their individual achievements and their points of intersection, arguing that both men, starting from a shared belief in the importance of “self-culture”, produced a body of writing that helped move a decidedly provincial New England readership into the broader arena of international culture.
Lamed Shapiro
Leah Garrett (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300110692
- eISBN:
- 9780300134698
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300110692.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Lamed Shapiro (1878–1948) was the author of groundbreaking and controversial short stories, novellas, and essays. Himself a tragic figure, Shapiro led a life marked by frequent ocean crossing, ...
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Lamed Shapiro (1878–1948) was the author of groundbreaking and controversial short stories, novellas, and essays. Himself a tragic figure, Shapiro led a life marked by frequent ocean crossing, alcoholism, and failed ventures, yet his writings are models of precision, psychological insight, and daring. Shapiro focuses intently on the nature of violence: the mob violence of pogroms committed against Jews; the traumatic after-effects of rape, murder, and powerlessness; and, the murderous event that transforms the innocent child into witness and the rabbi's son into agitator. Within a society on the move, Shapiro's refugees from the shtetl and the traditional way of life are in desperate search of food, shelter, love, and things of beauty. Remarkably, and against all odds, they sometimes find what they are looking for. More often than not, the climax of their lives is an experience of ineffable terror. This book also reveals Lamed Shapiro as an American master. His writings depict the Old World struggling with the New, extremes of human behaviour combined with the pursuit of normal happiness. Through the perceptions of a remarkable gallery of men, women, children—even of animals and plants—Shapiro successfully reclaimed the lost world of the shtetl as he negotiated East Broadway and the Bronx, Union Square, and vaudeville.Less
Lamed Shapiro (1878–1948) was the author of groundbreaking and controversial short stories, novellas, and essays. Himself a tragic figure, Shapiro led a life marked by frequent ocean crossing, alcoholism, and failed ventures, yet his writings are models of precision, psychological insight, and daring. Shapiro focuses intently on the nature of violence: the mob violence of pogroms committed against Jews; the traumatic after-effects of rape, murder, and powerlessness; and, the murderous event that transforms the innocent child into witness and the rabbi's son into agitator. Within a society on the move, Shapiro's refugees from the shtetl and the traditional way of life are in desperate search of food, shelter, love, and things of beauty. Remarkably, and against all odds, they sometimes find what they are looking for. More often than not, the climax of their lives is an experience of ineffable terror. This book also reveals Lamed Shapiro as an American master. His writings depict the Old World struggling with the New, extremes of human behaviour combined with the pursuit of normal happiness. Through the perceptions of a remarkable gallery of men, women, children—even of animals and plants—Shapiro successfully reclaimed the lost world of the shtetl as he negotiated East Broadway and the Bronx, Union Square, and vaudeville.
Bryan Cheyette
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780300093186
- eISBN:
- 9780300199376
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300093186.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book throws new light on a wide range of modern and contemporary writers—some at the heart of the canon, others more marginal—to explore the power and limitations of the diasporic imagination ...
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This book throws new light on a wide range of modern and contemporary writers—some at the heart of the canon, others more marginal—to explore the power and limitations of the diasporic imagination after the Second World War. Moving from early responses to the death camps and decolonization, through internationally prominent literature after the Second World War, it culminates in fresh engagements with contemporary Jewish, post-ethnic, and postcolonial writers. The author regards many of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century luminaries he examines—among them Hannah Arendt, Anita Desai, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Primo Levi, Caryl Phillips, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said, Zadie Smith, and Muriel Spark—as critical exemplars of the diasporic imagination. Against the discrete disciplinary thinking of the academy, he elaborates and argues for a new comparative approach across Jewish and postcolonial histories and literatures. And in so doing, the author illuminates the ways in which histories and cultures can be imagined across national and communal boundaries.Less
This book throws new light on a wide range of modern and contemporary writers—some at the heart of the canon, others more marginal—to explore the power and limitations of the diasporic imagination after the Second World War. Moving from early responses to the death camps and decolonization, through internationally prominent literature after the Second World War, it culminates in fresh engagements with contemporary Jewish, post-ethnic, and postcolonial writers. The author regards many of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century luminaries he examines—among them Hannah Arendt, Anita Desai, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Primo Levi, Caryl Phillips, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said, Zadie Smith, and Muriel Spark—as critical exemplars of the diasporic imagination. Against the discrete disciplinary thinking of the academy, he elaborates and argues for a new comparative approach across Jewish and postcolonial histories and literatures. And in so doing, the author illuminates the ways in which histories and cultures can be imagined across national and communal boundaries.
Richard Gilman
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300100464
- eISBN:
- 9780300133035
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300100464.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book presents a collection of one of America's finest drama critics. The book chronicles a major period in American theatre history, one that witnessed the birth or spread of Off-Broadway, ...
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This book presents a collection of one of America's finest drama critics. The book chronicles a major period in American theatre history, one that witnessed the birth or spread of Off-Broadway, regional theatre, nonprofit companies, and avant-garde performance, as well as growing interest in plays by women and minorities and in world drama. This book is a criticism for the ages. There are essays, profiles, and book reviews dealing with such topics as the “new naturalism” in theatre, Brecht's collected plays, and the legacy of Stanislavski. There is also a generous sampling of other comments on plays by O'Neill, Miller, Chekhov, Albee, Ibsen, Anouilh, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Fugard, and many others.Less
This book presents a collection of one of America's finest drama critics. The book chronicles a major period in American theatre history, one that witnessed the birth or spread of Off-Broadway, regional theatre, nonprofit companies, and avant-garde performance, as well as growing interest in plays by women and minorities and in world drama. This book is a criticism for the ages. There are essays, profiles, and book reviews dealing with such topics as the “new naturalism” in theatre, Brecht's collected plays, and the legacy of Stanislavski. There is also a generous sampling of other comments on plays by O'Neill, Miller, Chekhov, Albee, Ibsen, Anouilh, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Fugard, and many others.
John Milton
Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana
Gossip, Letters, Phones
On Sympathy
Coleridge and Scepticism
The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan
Bad Form
Strange Likeness
Playing the Races
