J. Rixey Ruffin
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195326512
- eISBN:
- 9780199870417
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326512.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
William Bentley was a Congregationalist pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, during the first few decades of independence. He was also a figure quite unlike anyone else in all of America. In talent, ...
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William Bentley was a Congregationalist pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, during the first few decades of independence. He was also a figure quite unlike anyone else in all of America. In talent, vision, and most importantly ideas, he was a unique and heretofore underappreciated member of the founding generation. To study his life is to study the intellectual world in which he moved and through which he cut a unique and illustrative path. In theological terms, he was both an Arminian and what this book calls a “Christian naturalist,” a combination that was both unique and volatile. For if his belief in the Arminian view of salvation put him at odds with his Calvinist contemporaries (including his senior colleague at the East Church), his unique denial of post‐biblical supernaturalism and his unique embrace of Socinianism (a denial of the divinity of Jesus more radical than what others would call “Unitarianism”) put him also at odds with other Arminians. But it was the only way that Bentley could keep both what he thought essential to Christianity and what he thought true about the natural world. In the realm of social ideology, he was both a classical liberal and a republican at the same time, but if he was able in the 1780s to be both, the 1790s would pull apart these dualities and see him move along the path to Jeffersonian Republicanism. But even here he was, among the New England clergy, alone, drawn to the party not by its support for disestablishment so much as by his unique approbation of Rousseau's state of nature theorizing. William Bentley's life, ministry, and thought allow a singular exploration of theology and philosophy as well as of ideology: of the social politics of race and class and gender, the ecclesiastical politics of establishment and dissent, and between minister and laity, the ideological politics of republicanism and classical liberalism, and the party politics of Federalism and Democratic‐Republicanism.Less
William Bentley was a Congregationalist pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, during the first few decades of independence. He was also a figure quite unlike anyone else in all of America. In talent, vision, and most importantly ideas, he was a unique and heretofore underappreciated member of the founding generation. To study his life is to study the intellectual world in which he moved and through which he cut a unique and illustrative path. In theological terms, he was both an Arminian and what this book calls a “Christian naturalist,” a combination that was both unique and volatile. For if his belief in the Arminian view of salvation put him at odds with his Calvinist contemporaries (including his senior colleague at the East Church), his unique denial of post‐biblical supernaturalism and his unique embrace of Socinianism (a denial of the divinity of Jesus more radical than what others would call “Unitarianism”) put him also at odds with other Arminians. But it was the only way that Bentley could keep both what he thought essential to Christianity and what he thought true about the natural world. In the realm of social ideology, he was both a classical liberal and a republican at the same time, but if he was able in the 1780s to be both, the 1790s would pull apart these dualities and see him move along the path to Jeffersonian Republicanism. But even here he was, among the New England clergy, alone, drawn to the party not by its support for disestablishment so much as by his unique approbation of Rousseau's state of nature theorizing. William Bentley's life, ministry, and thought allow a singular exploration of theology and philosophy as well as of ideology: of the social politics of race and class and gender, the ecclesiastical politics of establishment and dissent, and between minister and laity, the ideological politics of republicanism and classical liberalism, and the party politics of Federalism and Democratic‐Republicanism.
Peter France and William St Clair (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263181
- eISBN:
- 9780191734595
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263181.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Why biography? This collection of chapters on the problems and functions of biography, and particularly the biography of writers, thinkers, and artists, investigates a subject of enduring importance ...
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Why biography? This collection of chapters on the problems and functions of biography, and particularly the biography of writers, thinkers, and artists, investigates a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture and society. In the last century, it has been a controversial subject, as old models of biographical writing were attacked and superseded, while critics and theorists questioned the once self-evident value of the biography of writers. Yet the genre continues to attract notable authors and is unfailingly popular with readers. The present volume, while containing chapters by practising biographers, is intended primarily as a stimulus to critical thinking. It focuses on the diverse functions assumed by life-writing in different European countries at different periods, challenging both the notion of a genre with constant characteristics and aims and the view of modern biography as the happy culmination of centuries of progress.Less
Why biography? This collection of chapters on the problems and functions of biography, and particularly the biography of writers, thinkers, and artists, investigates a subject of enduring importance for those interested in culture and society. In the last century, it has been a controversial subject, as old models of biographical writing were attacked and superseded, while critics and theorists questioned the once self-evident value of the biography of writers. Yet the genre continues to attract notable authors and is unfailingly popular with readers. The present volume, while containing chapters by practising biographers, is intended primarily as a stimulus to critical thinking. It focuses on the diverse functions assumed by life-writing in different European countries at different periods, challenging both the notion of a genre with constant characteristics and aims and the view of modern biography as the happy culmination of centuries of progress.
Mark Kinkead-Weekes
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263181
- eISBN:
- 9780191734595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263181.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
There could be different ways of writing biographies, just as there are different kinds of novels. Modern biographers who are sensitive to the trends in fiction and criticism may avoid the ...
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There could be different ways of writing biographies, just as there are different kinds of novels. Modern biographers who are sensitive to the trends in fiction and criticism may avoid the chronological approach, as it is often seen as old-fashioned. They may prefer a more subtle kind of structuring; for instance, Hermione Lee, who wrote Virginia Woolf's life, argued that there are several ways in which a ‘Life’ may begin apart from the start of the subject's birth. Likewise, Jean Sartre asserted the need to use an inverted chronology wherein regression should come first before progress can be properly grounded. This chapter discusses the chronological biography and, in particular, strict chronological biography. First, it examines D.H. Lawrence's biography, which is arranged and structured chronologically, and considers two biographies that are arranged in innovatory ways: Sartre's biography of Flaubert and Lee's narrative of Virginia Woolf. While Sartre and Lee's methods were interesting, the chronological approach, however old-fashioned, has positive aspects: it allows miming of the reader of how a life may have felt to live; throws emphasis on the experience of the biographee rather than commentary of the biographer; allows the reader to watch the life as it unfolds rather than having its significance anticipated; and delays verdicts until there has been sufficient exploration of the process and development.Less
There could be different ways of writing biographies, just as there are different kinds of novels. Modern biographers who are sensitive to the trends in fiction and criticism may avoid the chronological approach, as it is often seen as old-fashioned. They may prefer a more subtle kind of structuring; for instance, Hermione Lee, who wrote Virginia Woolf's life, argued that there are several ways in which a ‘Life’ may begin apart from the start of the subject's birth. Likewise, Jean Sartre asserted the need to use an inverted chronology wherein regression should come first before progress can be properly grounded. This chapter discusses the chronological biography and, in particular, strict chronological biography. First, it examines D.H. Lawrence's biography, which is arranged and structured chronologically, and considers two biographies that are arranged in innovatory ways: Sartre's biography of Flaubert and Lee's narrative of Virginia Woolf. While Sartre and Lee's methods were interesting, the chronological approach, however old-fashioned, has positive aspects: it allows miming of the reader of how a life may have felt to live; throws emphasis on the experience of the biographee rather than commentary of the biographer; allows the reader to watch the life as it unfolds rather than having its significance anticipated; and delays verdicts until there has been sufficient exploration of the process and development.
John Batchelor (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182894
- eISBN:
- 9780191673917
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182894.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Is literary biography so widely read for popular, ‘prurient’ reasons, or for ‘reputable’ intellectual reasons? Is it of interest only in so far as it illuminates a writer's work? How much can we know ...
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Is literary biography so widely read for popular, ‘prurient’ reasons, or for ‘reputable’ intellectual reasons? Is it of interest only in so far as it illuminates a writer's work? How much can we know about a life, such as Shakespeare's, where the documentation is so scanty? In this revealing new work seventeen leading critics and professional biographers discuss a broad range of issues, including the relationships between biography and autobiography, the problems genre poses, and the literary biographer at work, together with authors, such as Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Huxley, Conrad, and Rochester.Less
Is literary biography so widely read for popular, ‘prurient’ reasons, or for ‘reputable’ intellectual reasons? Is it of interest only in so far as it illuminates a writer's work? How much can we know about a life, such as Shakespeare's, where the documentation is so scanty? In this revealing new work seventeen leading critics and professional biographers discuss a broad range of issues, including the relationships between biography and autobiography, the problems genre poses, and the literary biographer at work, together with authors, such as Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Huxley, Conrad, and Rochester.
Margreta De Grazia
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117780
- eISBN:
- 9780191671067
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117780.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This book challenges traditional Shakespeare scholarship through a study of its textual primacy in the late eighteenth century. The book's examination of earlier treatments demonstrates that concepts ...
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This book challenges traditional Shakespeare scholarship through a study of its textual primacy in the late eighteenth century. The book's examination of earlier treatments demonstrates that concepts now basic to Shakespeare studies were once largely irrelevant. Only with Edmond Malone's 1790 Shakespeare edition do such criteria as authenticity, historical periodisation, factual biography, chronological development, and in-depth readings become dominant. However, their emergence then must not be seen as the overdue installation of proper scholarly and literary procedures, but rather as a specific historical response to the problem the Shakespeare corpus has posed since its definition by the 1623 Folio. The remarkable efficacy of Malone's apparatus over the past two hundred years testifies not to its ‘truth’, but rather to its endorsement of a continuing Enlightenment epistemology irreconcilable with the past linguistic and mechanical practices it purports accurately to reproduce. This challenging book has both practical and theoretical implications for Shakespeare studies in the 1990s and beyond.Less
This book challenges traditional Shakespeare scholarship through a study of its textual primacy in the late eighteenth century. The book's examination of earlier treatments demonstrates that concepts now basic to Shakespeare studies were once largely irrelevant. Only with Edmond Malone's 1790 Shakespeare edition do such criteria as authenticity, historical periodisation, factual biography, chronological development, and in-depth readings become dominant. However, their emergence then must not be seen as the overdue installation of proper scholarly and literary procedures, but rather as a specific historical response to the problem the Shakespeare corpus has posed since its definition by the 1623 Folio. The remarkable efficacy of Malone's apparatus over the past two hundred years testifies not to its ‘truth’, but rather to its endorsement of a continuing Enlightenment epistemology irreconcilable with the past linguistic and mechanical practices it purports accurately to reproduce. This challenging book has both practical and theoretical implications for Shakespeare studies in the 1990s and beyond.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter focuses on the British modernist whose work represents the most sustained fictionalising engagement with biography. It recounts changes in biographical theory in Woolf's lifetime; ...
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This chapter focuses on the British modernist whose work represents the most sustained fictionalising engagement with biography. It recounts changes in biographical theory in Woolf's lifetime; especially her father's Dictionary of National Biography; the influence of Freud on Bloomsbury; Woolf's own critical discussions of biography; and New Criticism's antagonism to biographical interpretation; though it also draws on recent biographical criticism of Woolf. It discusses Jacob's Room and Flush, but concentrates on Orlando, arguing that it draws on the notions of imaginary and composite portraits discussed earlier. Whereas Orlando is often read as a ‘debunking’ of an obtuse biographer‐narrator, it shows how Woolf's aims are much more complex. First, the book's historical range is alert to the historical development of biography; and that the narrator is no more fixed than Orlando, but transforms with each epoch. Second, towards the ending the narrator begins to sound curiously like Lytton Strachey, himself the arch‐debunker of Victorian biographical piety. Thus Orlando is read as both example and parody of what Woolf called ‘The New Biography’. The chapter reads Woolf in parallel with Harold Nicolson's The Development of English Biography, and also his book Some People—a text whose imaginary (self)portraiture provoked her discussion of ‘The New Biography’ as well as contributing to the conception of Orlando.Less
This chapter focuses on the British modernist whose work represents the most sustained fictionalising engagement with biography. It recounts changes in biographical theory in Woolf's lifetime; especially her father's Dictionary of National Biography; the influence of Freud on Bloomsbury; Woolf's own critical discussions of biography; and New Criticism's antagonism to biographical interpretation; though it also draws on recent biographical criticism of Woolf. It discusses Jacob's Room and Flush, but concentrates on Orlando, arguing that it draws on the notions of imaginary and composite portraits discussed earlier. Whereas Orlando is often read as a ‘debunking’ of an obtuse biographer‐narrator, it shows how Woolf's aims are much more complex. First, the book's historical range is alert to the historical development of biography; and that the narrator is no more fixed than Orlando, but transforms with each epoch. Second, towards the ending the narrator begins to sound curiously like Lytton Strachey, himself the arch‐debunker of Victorian biographical piety. Thus Orlando is read as both example and parody of what Woolf called ‘The New Biography’. The chapter reads Woolf in parallel with Harold Nicolson's The Development of English Biography, and also his book Some People—a text whose imaginary (self)portraiture provoked her discussion of ‘The New Biography’ as well as contributing to the conception of Orlando.
Philip Lutgendorf
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195309225
- eISBN:
- 9780199785391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309225.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
After highlighting the growing role of literacy and the mass-dissemination of standardized texts in popular Hindu practice, this chapter turns to the importance of Hanuman in the Hindi devotional ...
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After highlighting the growing role of literacy and the mass-dissemination of standardized texts in popular Hindu practice, this chapter turns to the importance of Hanuman in the Hindi devotional poetry attributed to the influential 16th-17th century saint-poet Tulsidas, author of the epic Ramcaritmanas and one of the great figures of bhakti literature. It then surveys a body of allegedly esoteric tantra literature that promotes Hanuman's ritual worship as an efficacious, boon-granting deity. Finally, it introduces and discusses the implications of a collection of exuberant late-20th century narratives that construct an elaborate “biography” (or in two cases, an autobiography) of Hanuman, making him the central hero in his own epic-like cycle.Less
After highlighting the growing role of literacy and the mass-dissemination of standardized texts in popular Hindu practice, this chapter turns to the importance of Hanuman in the Hindi devotional poetry attributed to the influential 16th-17th century saint-poet Tulsidas, author of the epic Ramcaritmanas and one of the great figures of bhakti literature. It then surveys a body of allegedly esoteric tantra literature that promotes Hanuman's ritual worship as an efficacious, boon-granting deity. Finally, it introduces and discusses the implications of a collection of exuberant late-20th century narratives that construct an elaborate “biography” (or in two cases, an autobiography) of Hanuman, making him the central hero in his own epic-like cycle.
Peter Adamson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195181425
- eISBN:
- 9780199785087
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181425.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter provides an overview of the evidence regarding al-Kindī’s biography, and surveys what is known of his writings based on the account in Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist. While most of his works are ...
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This chapter provides an overview of the evidence regarding al-Kindī’s biography, and surveys what is known of his writings based on the account in Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist. While most of his works are lost, there is a significant extant corpus which is also summarized here. The chapter discusses how al-Kindī’s writings relate to the translation movement under the ’Abbāsids, which produced Arabic versions of Greek philosophical and scientific works. It concludes by considering al-Kindī’s legacy, among Neoplatonic philosophers who followed his broad approach (such as al-’Āmirī and Miskawayh), contrasting this “Kindian tradition” to the more Aristotelian school in Baghdad, whose most famous representative was al-Fārābī.Less
This chapter provides an overview of the evidence regarding al-Kindī’s biography, and surveys what is known of his writings based on the account in Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist. While most of his works are lost, there is a significant extant corpus which is also summarized here. The chapter discusses how al-Kindī’s writings relate to the translation movement under the ’Abbāsids, which produced Arabic versions of Greek philosophical and scientific works. It concludes by considering al-Kindī’s legacy, among Neoplatonic philosophers who followed his broad approach (such as al-’Āmirī and Miskawayh), contrasting this “Kindian tradition” to the more Aristotelian school in Baghdad, whose most famous representative was al-Fārābī.
James Walter
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263181
- eISBN:
- 9780191734595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263181.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses some of the trends in the twentieth century that have emerged in publications on how to write biographies, and emphasizes the trends of the past twenty years. Its focus is on ...
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This chapter discusses some of the trends in the twentieth century that have emerged in publications on how to write biographies, and emphasizes the trends of the past twenty years. Its focus is on English-language biography. It is suggested that one can understand the present debates as a rethinking of the suppositions of twentieth-century modernist biography.Less
This chapter discusses some of the trends in the twentieth century that have emerged in publications on how to write biographies, and emphasizes the trends of the past twenty years. Its focus is on English-language biography. It is suggested that one can understand the present debates as a rethinking of the suppositions of twentieth-century modernist biography.
Edward Brech, Andrew Thomson, and John F. Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199541966
- eISBN:
- 9780191715433
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541966.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History, Strategy
The book reviews the career of Lyndall Urwick, the dominant figure in British management between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, both in terms of his writings and his passion in pursuit of ...
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The book reviews the career of Lyndall Urwick, the dominant figure in British management between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, both in terms of his writings and his passion in pursuit of management as a scientific and systematic activity rather than the rule‐of‐thumb approach to decision‐making all too prevalent in Britain. He was greatly influenced by his experiences in the First World War and at Rowntree's, before becoming Director of the International Management Institute (IMI) between 1928–33 and then forming a very influential management consultancy, Urwick Orr and Partners (UOP), which he chaired for the rest of his career. He was also deeply involved with almost all the institutional developments in British management up to the 1960s, including the Management Research Groups (MRGs), the Institute of Industrial Administration (IIA), the British Institute of Management (BIM), the Administrative Staff College (ASC), and the management education side of the Anglo‐American Council on Productivity (AACP). In pursuit of what he called his ‘mission at large’, he gave hundreds of talks in his lucid and charismatic style, many of which were published as articles or booklets. These talks were not only in Britain but in Australia as well after his emigration there in 1961, in America, where he became the best‐recognized foreign exponent of management, and in a range of countries around the world. But he will probably be best remembered for his writings, not only on organization theory, where he is recognized as a great synthesizer and leader in the classical school, but also on a wide range of other topics, including the history of management, leadership, marketing, and management education and development. Truly he was a man of many parts.Less
The book reviews the career of Lyndall Urwick, the dominant figure in British management between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, both in terms of his writings and his passion in pursuit of management as a scientific and systematic activity rather than the rule‐of‐thumb approach to decision‐making all too prevalent in Britain. He was greatly influenced by his experiences in the First World War and at Rowntree's, before becoming Director of the International Management Institute (IMI) between 1928–33 and then forming a very influential management consultancy, Urwick Orr and Partners (UOP), which he chaired for the rest of his career. He was also deeply involved with almost all the institutional developments in British management up to the 1960s, including the Management Research Groups (MRGs), the Institute of Industrial Administration (IIA), the British Institute of Management (BIM), the Administrative Staff College (ASC), and the management education side of the Anglo‐American Council on Productivity (AACP). In pursuit of what he called his ‘mission at large’, he gave hundreds of talks in his lucid and charismatic style, many of which were published as articles or booklets. These talks were not only in Britain but in Australia as well after his emigration there in 1961, in America, where he became the best‐recognized foreign exponent of management, and in a range of countries around the world. But he will probably be best remembered for his writings, not only on organization theory, where he is recognized as a great synthesizer and leader in the classical school, but also on a wide range of other topics, including the history of management, leadership, marketing, and management education and development. Truly he was a man of many parts.
