Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as ...
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This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, the book examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. The book traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. The book considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. It then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. The book shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. The book brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.Less
This book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, the book examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. The book traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others. The book considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. It then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. The book shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept. The book brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter describes the gradual discrediting of the notion of genius. In France in the 1950s, contemporaneously with the Minou Drouet affair, it became the object of a powerful cultural critique ...
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This chapter describes the gradual discrediting of the notion of genius. In France in the 1950s, contemporaneously with the Minou Drouet affair, it became the object of a powerful cultural critique under the aegis of literary theory, when Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes—more or less simultaneously—portrayed it as an anachronistic legacy from the previous century, and denounced it as a one of the myths that lay at the heart of bourgeois ideology. Two of Barthes's texts in Mythologies (1957) specifically target genius—one devoted to Einstein's brain, and the other to Minou Drouet. Much the same goes for Sartre, whose autobiography, Les Mots, begun in 1953 (and finally published in 1964), targets genius and the child prodigy as central components of his farewell to literature.Less
This chapter describes the gradual discrediting of the notion of genius. In France in the 1950s, contemporaneously with the Minou Drouet affair, it became the object of a powerful cultural critique under the aegis of literary theory, when Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes—more or less simultaneously—portrayed it as an anachronistic legacy from the previous century, and denounced it as a one of the myths that lay at the heart of bourgeois ideology. Two of Barthes's texts in Mythologies (1957) specifically target genius—one devoted to Einstein's brain, and the other to Minou Drouet. Much the same goes for Sartre, whose autobiography, Les Mots, begun in 1953 (and finally published in 1964), targets genius and the child prodigy as central components of his farewell to literature.
Ron Rodman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195340242
- eISBN:
- 9780199863778
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340242.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
This chapter investigates the role of music as a narrative agent, or actant, through a diachronic analysis of narrative cue music in an episode of the television western The Rifleman (1957–1963; ...
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This chapter investigates the role of music as a narrative agent, or actant, through a diachronic analysis of narrative cue music in an episode of the television western The Rifleman (1957–1963; score by Herschel Burke Gilbert). The chapter presents a brief survey of the narrative theories of Todorov, Bremond, Propp, and Barthes. Using these ideas as analytical templates, the analysis is devoted to the deployment of music from pitch, temporal, and timbral perspectives within the TV episode. The analysis reveals that music serves as an agent for narrative closure through the recurrence of leitmotifs and the use of tonal design in the episode. Music also encapsulates the story within a narrative “frame” through these same designs when interacting with sound, dialogue, and image.Less
This chapter investigates the role of music as a narrative agent, or actant, through a diachronic analysis of narrative cue music in an episode of the television western The Rifleman (1957–1963; score by Herschel Burke Gilbert). The chapter presents a brief survey of the narrative theories of Todorov, Bremond, Propp, and Barthes. Using these ideas as analytical templates, the analysis is devoted to the deployment of music from pitch, temporal, and timbral perspectives within the TV episode. The analysis reveals that music serves as an agent for narrative closure through the recurrence of leitmotifs and the use of tonal design in the episode. Music also encapsulates the story within a narrative “frame” through these same designs when interacting with sound, dialogue, and image.
Ron Rodman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195340242
- eISBN:
- 9780199863778
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340242.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
Besides its role as a narrative agent, music has been featured in television to pleasure its audience, creating what Carolyn Abbate would call a “drastic” experience. However, the pleasures of ...
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Besides its role as a narrative agent, music has been featured in television to pleasure its audience, creating what Carolyn Abbate would call a “drastic” experience. However, the pleasures of television music are often highly mediated and restrained, permitting the audience to derive culturally based pleasure (what Barthes would call plaisir) from the music but not a more visceral, primordial pleasure (jouissance). This chapter surveys the musical variety show and situation comedies that employ music. While musical variety shows have served as promotional vehicles for artists whom TV audiences find amenable (Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Andy Williams), throughout television's history many situation comedies have been presented as mini‐musicals in which the narrative action of the program is interrupted by a musical presentation on‐screen. Programs produced by Desilu Studios in the 1950s and 1960s, such as I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Andy Griffith Show, often imitated the Hollywood film musical by featuring musical presentations of a show‐within‐a‐show to showcase musical talent. Such scenes would interrupt the narrative flow of the episode, and so some narrative pretense would be made to accommodate the musical interruption.Less
Besides its role as a narrative agent, music has been featured in television to pleasure its audience, creating what Carolyn Abbate would call a “drastic” experience. However, the pleasures of television music are often highly mediated and restrained, permitting the audience to derive culturally based pleasure (what Barthes would call plaisir) from the music but not a more visceral, primordial pleasure (jouissance). This chapter surveys the musical variety show and situation comedies that employ music. While musical variety shows have served as promotional vehicles for artists whom TV audiences find amenable (Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Andy Williams), throughout television's history many situation comedies have been presented as mini‐musicals in which the narrative action of the program is interrupted by a musical presentation on‐screen. Programs produced by Desilu Studios in the 1950s and 1960s, such as I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Andy Griffith Show, often imitated the Hollywood film musical by featuring musical presentations of a show‐within‐a‐show to showcase musical talent. Such scenes would interrupt the narrative flow of the episode, and so some narrative pretense would be made to accommodate the musical interruption.
Rebecca Braun
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199542703
- eISBN:
- 9780191715372
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542703.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter provides an in-depth introduction to the different kinds of authorship that can be found in Grass's writing through a close reading of the 1979 text, Das Treffen in Telgte. Explaining ...
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This chapter provides an in-depth introduction to the different kinds of authorship that can be found in Grass's writing through a close reading of the 1979 text, Das Treffen in Telgte. Explaining how this short text and its greater context offer three different models of authorship — the author as a political figure, the author as a textual figure, and the author as an ironic construct — it both integrates Das Treffen in Telgte into the main corpus of Grass's work (the text has generally been seen as an anomaly) and sets out the various different models of authorship which have informed the rest of Grass's output. Important background information about the Gruppe 47 and writers and politics is provided where necessary, and ideas of authorship and its wider social and cultural relevance are explored with reference to Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.Less
This chapter provides an in-depth introduction to the different kinds of authorship that can be found in Grass's writing through a close reading of the 1979 text, Das Treffen in Telgte. Explaining how this short text and its greater context offer three different models of authorship — the author as a political figure, the author as a textual figure, and the author as an ironic construct — it both integrates Das Treffen in Telgte into the main corpus of Grass's work (the text has generally been seen as an anomaly) and sets out the various different models of authorship which have informed the rest of Grass's output. Important background information about the Gruppe 47 and writers and politics is provided where necessary, and ideas of authorship and its wider social and cultural relevance are explored with reference to Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.
Roy Harris
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748613083
- eISBN:
- 9780748652334
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748613083.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book provides a reassessment of the reception of Saussure's ideas. That Saussure's work profoundly influenced developments in such diverse fields as linguistics, anthropology, psychology and ...
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This book provides a reassessment of the reception of Saussure's ideas. That Saussure's work profoundly influenced developments in such diverse fields as linguistics, anthropology, psychology and literary studies is denied by no one. But what exactly Saussure's views were taken to be by his interpreters has not hitherto been subject to any comprehensive critical survey. How well were Saussure's ideas understood by those who took them up? Or how badly misunderstood? And why? The answers to these questions address central issues in the history of Western culture. Each chapter in this book focuses on one particular interpreter of Saussure's work, but many others are mentioned in context for purposes of comparison, and attention is drawn to connections and disparities between their interpretations. Those whose interpretations are examined in detail include Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, Chomsky, Barthes and Derrida.Less
This book provides a reassessment of the reception of Saussure's ideas. That Saussure's work profoundly influenced developments in such diverse fields as linguistics, anthropology, psychology and literary studies is denied by no one. But what exactly Saussure's views were taken to be by his interpreters has not hitherto been subject to any comprehensive critical survey. How well were Saussure's ideas understood by those who took them up? Or how badly misunderstood? And why? The answers to these questions address central issues in the history of Western culture. Each chapter in this book focuses on one particular interpreter of Saussure's work, but many others are mentioned in context for purposes of comparison, and attention is drawn to connections and disparities between their interpretations. Those whose interpretations are examined in detail include Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, Chomsky, Barthes and Derrida.
Derek Attridge
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640089
- eISBN:
- 9780748652112
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640089.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
What is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? This book argues that the challenge of Derrida's work for our understanding ...
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What is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? This book argues that the challenge of Derrida's work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met; traces a close engagement with Derrida's writing over two decades; and reflects an interest in that work going back a further two decades, showing how it can illuminate a variety of topics. Chapters include an overview of deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes and J. Hillis Miller. Also included is a discussion of the recent reading of Derrida's philosophy as ‘radical atheism’, and the book ends with a conversation on deconstruction and place with the theorist and critic Jean-Michel Rabaté. Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida's own readings of literary and philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument and responsibility to the reader.Less
What is the importance of deconstruction, and the writing of Jacques Derrida in particular, for literary criticism today? This book argues that the challenge of Derrida's work for our understanding of literature and its value has still not been fully met; traces a close engagement with Derrida's writing over two decades; and reflects an interest in that work going back a further two decades, showing how it can illuminate a variety of topics. Chapters include an overview of deconstruction as a critical practice today, discussions of the secret, postcolonialism, ethics, literary criticism, jargon, fiction and photography, and responses to the theoretical writing of Emmanuel Levinas, Roland Barthes and J. Hillis Miller. Also included is a discussion of the recent reading of Derrida's philosophy as ‘radical atheism’, and the book ends with a conversation on deconstruction and place with the theorist and critic Jean-Michel Rabaté. Running throughout is a concern with the question of responsibility, as exemplified in Derrida's own readings of literary and philosophical texts: responsibility to the work being read, responsibility to the protocols of rational argument and responsibility to the reader.
Jurgen Pieters
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748615889
- eISBN:
- 9780748652020
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748615889.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book deals with the special power of literary texts to put us in contact with the past. A large number of authors, coming from different ages, have described this power in terms of ‘the ...
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This book deals with the special power of literary texts to put us in contact with the past. A large number of authors, coming from different ages, have described this power in terms of ‘the conversation with the dead’: when these texts are read, we somehow find ourselves conducting a special kind of dialogue with dead authors. The book covers a number of texts and authors that make use of this metaphor: Petrarch, Machiavelli, Sidney, Flaubert, Michelet, Barthes. In connecting these texts and authors in novel ways, it tackles the all-important question of why we remain fascinated with literature in general and with the specific texts that to us are still its backbone. Situated in the aftermath of New Historicism, the book challenges the idea that literary history as a reading practice stems from a desire to ‘speak with the dead’, and offers a broad survey of classical literature, Renaissance literature, and modern theory and history. The author issues a plea for the importance of reading literary texts and the power of literature, and discusses key figures from the Western canon, such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Machiavelli. The book combines theoretical discussions of the relationship between literature and history with close reading of works by major literary authors and historians.Less
This book deals with the special power of literary texts to put us in contact with the past. A large number of authors, coming from different ages, have described this power in terms of ‘the conversation with the dead’: when these texts are read, we somehow find ourselves conducting a special kind of dialogue with dead authors. The book covers a number of texts and authors that make use of this metaphor: Petrarch, Machiavelli, Sidney, Flaubert, Michelet, Barthes. In connecting these texts and authors in novel ways, it tackles the all-important question of why we remain fascinated with literature in general and with the specific texts that to us are still its backbone. Situated in the aftermath of New Historicism, the book challenges the idea that literary history as a reading practice stems from a desire to ‘speak with the dead’, and offers a broad survey of classical literature, Renaissance literature, and modern theory and history. The author issues a plea for the importance of reading literary texts and the power of literature, and discusses key figures from the Western canon, such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Machiavelli. The book combines theoretical discussions of the relationship between literature and history with close reading of works by major literary authors and historians.
Kas Saghafi
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231621
- eISBN:
- 9780823235094
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823231621.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
The chapters of this book revolve around the notion of the other in Jacques Derrida's work. How does Derrida write of and on the other? Arguing that Derrida offers the most attentive ...
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The chapters of this book revolve around the notion of the other in Jacques Derrida's work. How does Derrida write of and on the other? Arguing that Derrida offers the most attentive and responsible thinking about “the undeniable experience of the alterity of the other”, this book examines exemplary instances of the relation to the other, e.g. the relation of Moses to God, Derrida's friendship with Jean-Luc Nancy, and Derrida's relation to a recently departed actress caught on video, to demonstrate how Derrida forces us to reconceive who or what the other may be. For Derrida, the singularity of the other, always written in the lower case, includes not only the formal or logical sense of alterity, the otherness of the human other, but also the otherness of the nonliving, the no longer living, or the not yet alive. The book explores welcoming and hospitality, salutation and greeting, “approaching”, and mourning as constitutive facets of the relation to these others. Addressing Derrida's readings of Husserl, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, and Nancy, among other thinkers, and ranging across a number of disciplines, including art, literature, philosophy, and religion, this book explores the apparitions of the other by attending to the mode of appearing or coming on the scene, the phenomenality and visibility of the other. Analyzing some of Derrida's essays on the visual arts, the book also demonstrates that video and photography display an intimate relation to “spectrality”, as well as a structural relation to the absolute singularity of the other.Less
The chapters of this book revolve around the notion of the other in Jacques Derrida's work. How does Derrida write of and on the other? Arguing that Derrida offers the most attentive and responsible thinking about “the undeniable experience of the alterity of the other”, this book examines exemplary instances of the relation to the other, e.g. the relation of Moses to God, Derrida's friendship with Jean-Luc Nancy, and Derrida's relation to a recently departed actress caught on video, to demonstrate how Derrida forces us to reconceive who or what the other may be. For Derrida, the singularity of the other, always written in the lower case, includes not only the formal or logical sense of alterity, the otherness of the human other, but also the otherness of the nonliving, the no longer living, or the not yet alive. The book explores welcoming and hospitality, salutation and greeting, “approaching”, and mourning as constitutive facets of the relation to these others. Addressing Derrida's readings of Husserl, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, and Nancy, among other thinkers, and ranging across a number of disciplines, including art, literature, philosophy, and religion, this book explores the apparitions of the other by attending to the mode of appearing or coming on the scene, the phenomenality and visibility of the other. Analyzing some of Derrida's essays on the visual arts, the book also demonstrates that video and photography display an intimate relation to “spectrality”, as well as a structural relation to the absolute singularity of the other.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199270842
- eISBN:
- 9780191710292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199270842.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines the history of the idea of the literary vocation first as the overwhelming compulsion to write as described by Rilke and, second in terms of the practical organization of ...
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This chapter examines the history of the idea of the literary vocation first as the overwhelming compulsion to write as described by Rilke and, second in terms of the practical organization of day-to-day life required by writing, as described by Max Jacob or Roland Barthes. Biography, according to Sollers, is a way of highlighting the real consequences that writing has on lived existence, while Barthes explores the prospect of a writing regime independently of any tangible creative outcome.Less
This chapter examines the history of the idea of the literary vocation first as the overwhelming compulsion to write as described by Rilke and, second in terms of the practical organization of day-to-day life required by writing, as described by Max Jacob or Roland Barthes. Biography, according to Sollers, is a way of highlighting the real consequences that writing has on lived existence, while Barthes explores the prospect of a writing regime independently of any tangible creative outcome.
