Ned Schantz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195335910
- eISBN:
- 9780199868902
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335910.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Women's Literature
For over two hundred years of narrative culture, when female characters try to get together, crazy things happen. Indeed, the greater the means at women’s disposal, the more severe and twisted is the ...
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For over two hundred years of narrative culture, when female characters try to get together, crazy things happen. Indeed, the greater the means at women’s disposal, the more severe and twisted is the anxious reaction. But behind this broad anxiety lurks a powerful ideal of sympathetic and strategic female networks, an ideal that takes its intimate shape from the expectations of communications media, and that underwrites the very culture that would deny it. The book examines novelistic culture from the British novel to Hollywood film as a series of responses to the threat and promise of female networks. In texts from Clarissa, Emma, and The Portrait of a Lady to Sorry, Wrong Number, Vertigo, and You’ve Got Mail, it argues that a recurring gothic nightmare haunts plots of courtship and marriage, and that the concept of female networks illuminates the exits, for culture and criticism alike. And while this study must of necessity visit an uncanny realm of lost messages and false suitors, telepathy and artificial intelligence, locked rooms and time-traveling stalkers, these occult concerns only confirm the power at stake in the most basic modes of female communication, in gossip, letters, and phones.Less
For over two hundred years of narrative culture, when female characters try to get together, crazy things happen. Indeed, the greater the means at women’s disposal, the more severe and twisted is the anxious reaction. But behind this broad anxiety lurks a powerful ideal of sympathetic and strategic female networks, an ideal that takes its intimate shape from the expectations of communications media, and that underwrites the very culture that would deny it. The book examines novelistic culture from the British novel to Hollywood film as a series of responses to the threat and promise of female networks. In texts from Clarissa, Emma, and The Portrait of a Lady to Sorry, Wrong Number, Vertigo, and You’ve Got Mail, it argues that a recurring gothic nightmare haunts plots of courtship and marriage, and that the concept of female networks illuminates the exits, for culture and criticism alike. And while this study must of necessity visit an uncanny realm of lost messages and false suitors, telepathy and artificial intelligence, locked rooms and time-traveling stalkers, these occult concerns only confirm the power at stake in the most basic modes of female communication, in gossip, letters, and phones.
MARION TURNER
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199207893
- eISBN:
- 9780191709142
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199207893.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book has tried to explore some of the ways in which social antagonism was articulated and addressed in Geoffrey Chaucer's textual environment. It appears that producers of texts in late ...
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This book has tried to explore some of the ways in which social antagonism was articulated and addressed in Geoffrey Chaucer's textual environment. It appears that producers of texts in late 14th-century London were profoundly concerned with problems of civic dissent and social division. The explosiveness of the climate in which Chaucer lived and wrote is dramatically exemplified in the example of John Constantyn, a cordwainer in the city of London whose hard fate bears witness to the heightened atmosphere of anxiety about rebellion, gossip, and faction in the 1380s. Chaucer's writings suggest that discursive turbulence cannot be tamed, that voices of aggression and dissent will make themselves heard, that societies will repeat the self-destructive behaviour of their predecessors, that people will betray each other, and that social groups will always fragment.Less
This book has tried to explore some of the ways in which social antagonism was articulated and addressed in Geoffrey Chaucer's textual environment. It appears that producers of texts in late 14th-century London were profoundly concerned with problems of civic dissent and social division. The explosiveness of the climate in which Chaucer lived and wrote is dramatically exemplified in the example of John Constantyn, a cordwainer in the city of London whose hard fate bears witness to the heightened atmosphere of anxiety about rebellion, gossip, and faction in the 1380s. Chaucer's writings suggest that discursive turbulence cannot be tamed, that voices of aggression and dissent will make themselves heard, that societies will repeat the self-destructive behaviour of their predecessors, that people will betray each other, and that social groups will always fragment.
Kenneth H. Craik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195330922
- eISBN:
- 9780199868292
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195330922.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
The network interpretation of reputation advanced in this book depicts the everyday flow and storage of information about a person throughout the extensive lifelong network of all of those other ...
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The network interpretation of reputation advanced in this book depicts the everyday flow and storage of information about a person throughout the extensive lifelong network of all of those other individuals who have come to know that person. This demonstration of the underlying components and development of a person’s reputation affords examination of such issues as truth in reputation, how persons are both the agent and resultant of their reputations, the mutual relevance of reputation and personality, the psychological structure of libel law, and three distinct stages in the evolution of a person’s posthumous reputation network. The explicit network approach provides guidance for addressing such questions as How can we estimate the total membership size of a person’s lifelong reputational community? What adaptive social functions does gossip serve? What does the libel court of London teach us about the risks of communicating information about specific other persons and of defaming and being defamed? What changes occur in the flow of information about persons upon their death? This integrative network conception of reputation brings together a wide range of subfields in the social sciences and humanities into a coherent framework. They include biographical studies, cultural history, evolutionary psychology, gossip research, libel law, organizational psychology, personality assessment, publicity and public relations, social cognition, social network analysis, and social representation theory. The comprehensiveness of the network interpretation of reputation spotlights new forms of interdisciplinary analysis and shows how scholars and scientists in a broad array of disciplines have something important to contribute.Less
The network interpretation of reputation advanced in this book depicts the everyday flow and storage of information about a person throughout the extensive lifelong network of all of those other individuals who have come to know that person. This demonstration of the underlying components and development of a person’s reputation affords examination of such issues as truth in reputation, how persons are both the agent and resultant of their reputations, the mutual relevance of reputation and personality, the psychological structure of libel law, and three distinct stages in the evolution of a person’s posthumous reputation network. The explicit network approach provides guidance for addressing such questions as How can we estimate the total membership size of a person’s lifelong reputational community? What adaptive social functions does gossip serve? What does the libel court of London teach us about the risks of communicating information about specific other persons and of defaming and being defamed? What changes occur in the flow of information about persons upon their death? This integrative network conception of reputation brings together a wide range of subfields in the social sciences and humanities into a coherent framework. They include biographical studies, cultural history, evolutionary psychology, gossip research, libel law, organizational psychology, personality assessment, publicity and public relations, social cognition, social network analysis, and social representation theory. The comprehensiveness of the network interpretation of reputation spotlights new forms of interdisciplinary analysis and shows how scholars and scientists in a broad array of disciplines have something important to contribute.
Kenneth H. Craik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195330922
- eISBN:
- 9780199868292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195330922.003.0002
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter analyzes the ongoing social communication process through which news, observations, and impressions about an individual circulate along that person’s reputational network via chat, ...
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This chapter analyzes the ongoing social communication process through which news, observations, and impressions about an individual circulate along that person’s reputational network via chat, gossip sessions, occasions of qualified privilege, and more formal means. In the network interpretation of reputation, the daily ebb and flow of information through the media of various forms of communication and discourse will be deemed the “discursive reputation,” referring to what is said about the person. Reputational networks are activated by social communication. In everyday life, we are surrounded by and awash in chat and gossip, and much of it is about specific persons. Much of what we know about most individuals we claim to know is indirect in this sense, derived from everyday, informal surveillance.Less
This chapter analyzes the ongoing social communication process through which news, observations, and impressions about an individual circulate along that person’s reputational network via chat, gossip sessions, occasions of qualified privilege, and more formal means. In the network interpretation of reputation, the daily ebb and flow of information through the media of various forms of communication and discourse will be deemed the “discursive reputation,” referring to what is said about the person. Reputational networks are activated by social communication. In everyday life, we are surrounded by and awash in chat and gossip, and much of it is about specific persons. Much of what we know about most individuals we claim to know is indirect in this sense, derived from everyday, informal surveillance.
Ned Schantz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195335910
- eISBN:
- 9780199868902
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335910.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Women's Literature
With attention to major incarnations of the British novel, this chapter positions gossip as the central, disavowed source of interest in novelistic discourse. Reading Emma and The Portrait of a Lady ...
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With attention to major incarnations of the British novel, this chapter positions gossip as the central, disavowed source of interest in novelistic discourse. Reading Emma and The Portrait of a Lady closely, it tracks the seduction of the reader into gendered habits of scapegoating and sadism that characterize gossip at its worst. To counteract these dynamics, the chapter mobilizes untapped textual resources toward a more generous feminist mode of gossip, and thereby challenges conventional assumptions about character and plot from the status of Mrs. Elton to the fate of Isabel Archer.Less
With attention to major incarnations of the British novel, this chapter positions gossip as the central, disavowed source of interest in novelistic discourse. Reading Emma and The Portrait of a Lady closely, it tracks the seduction of the reader into gendered habits of scapegoating and sadism that characterize gossip at its worst. To counteract these dynamics, the chapter mobilizes untapped textual resources toward a more generous feminist mode of gossip, and thereby challenges conventional assumptions about character and plot from the status of Mrs. Elton to the fate of Isabel Archer.
Ned Schantz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195335910
- eISBN:
- 9780199868902
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335910.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Women's Literature
This thought experiment attempts to liberate Middlemarch from a predictable place in the novelistic culture of gossip, mobilizing the question of anachronism to locate the novel on the threshold of ...
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This thought experiment attempts to liberate Middlemarch from a predictable place in the novelistic culture of gossip, mobilizing the question of anachronism to locate the novel on the threshold of modern sound technology. Indeed, listening to Middlemarch with an ear for this coming future reveals an astonishing discourse of necrophilia, black magic, and resilient, time-traveling female networks. Installing the figure of radio as a bridge to our own moment, the epilogue thereby moves to reclaim the lost futures of the Victorian past as a resource for feminism.Less
This thought experiment attempts to liberate Middlemarch from a predictable place in the novelistic culture of gossip, mobilizing the question of anachronism to locate the novel on the threshold of modern sound technology. Indeed, listening to Middlemarch with an ear for this coming future reveals an astonishing discourse of necrophilia, black magic, and resilient, time-traveling female networks. Installing the figure of radio as a bridge to our own moment, the epilogue thereby moves to reclaim the lost futures of the Victorian past as a resource for feminism.
Rebecca Krawiec
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195129434
- eISBN:
- 9780199834396
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195129431.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
Lays out the narratives and explores the issues of various periods of crisis that prompted Shenoute's letters to the female monks. The issue themselves are wide ranging: Shenoute's exercise of power ...
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Lays out the narratives and explores the issues of various periods of crisis that prompted Shenoute's letters to the female monks. The issue themselves are wide ranging: Shenoute's exercise of power over the female community; his insistence on the gender separation of the male and female monks, including forbidding visits among relatives even as Shenoute himself visited the female community; incidents of female homoeroticism; a debate over what constituted proper monastic duties and proper corporal punishment; gossip; disputes over the quality of clothing the women were producing for male monks, including Shenoute's; and complaints about the excessive nature of Shenoute's leadership. All these topics, even in their diversity and their focus on conflict, provided Shenoute with the opportunity to teach all the monks, male and female, how to lead a salvific life in the monastery.Less
Lays out the narratives and explores the issues of various periods of crisis that prompted Shenoute's letters to the female monks. The issue themselves are wide ranging: Shenoute's exercise of power over the female community; his insistence on the gender separation of the male and female monks, including forbidding visits among relatives even as Shenoute himself visited the female community; incidents of female homoeroticism; a debate over what constituted proper monastic duties and proper corporal punishment; gossip; disputes over the quality of clothing the women were producing for male monks, including Shenoute's; and complaints about the excessive nature of Shenoute's leadership. All these topics, even in their diversity and their focus on conflict, provided Shenoute with the opportunity to teach all the monks, male and female, how to lead a salvific life in the monastery.
M.N. Srinivas
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198077459
- eISBN:
- 9780199081165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077459.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
This chapter describes the quality of social relations in Rampura. The principle of reciprocity was basic to rural social life. Muyyi was the term used for exchange of labour, and it was resorted to ...
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This chapter describes the quality of social relations in Rampura. The principle of reciprocity was basic to rural social life. Muyyi was the term used for exchange of labour, and it was resorted to when the need for agricultural labour was at its peak. The omnipresence of hierarchical ideas had led to the proliferation and refinement of the symbols of superordination and subordination. The word moka or face was heard frequently in conversation. It stood for a person's image before others and for his self-respect. Friendship and enmity were both widely recognized relationships between individuals, families, and lineages. Gossip was an important activity in the village, and certain features of rural life provided an ideal soil for it. Envy was also a familiar phenomenon. Meanwhile, a sense of humour was an integral part of Indian village life, even though anthropological studies show no evidence of it.Less
This chapter describes the quality of social relations in Rampura. The principle of reciprocity was basic to rural social life. Muyyi was the term used for exchange of labour, and it was resorted to when the need for agricultural labour was at its peak. The omnipresence of hierarchical ideas had led to the proliferation and refinement of the symbols of superordination and subordination. The word moka or face was heard frequently in conversation. It stood for a person's image before others and for his self-respect. Friendship and enmity were both widely recognized relationships between individuals, families, and lineages. Gossip was an important activity in the village, and certain features of rural life provided an ideal soil for it. Envy was also a familiar phenomenon. Meanwhile, a sense of humour was an integral part of Indian village life, even though anthropological studies show no evidence of it.
Bernard Capp
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199255986
- eISBN:
- 9780191719592
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199255986.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Social History
This chapter explores some of the loose ends and contradictions within patriarchy, and the opportunities they offered for women to exercise some agency over their lives and the lives of others. ...
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This chapter explores some of the loose ends and contradictions within patriarchy, and the opportunities they offered for women to exercise some agency over their lives and the lives of others. Topics discussed include patriarchal theory, the lives of women without men (e.g., widows, women whose husbands worked elsewhere, women abandoned by their husbands), women in trade, and female social interaction, in particular, gossiping.Less
This chapter explores some of the loose ends and contradictions within patriarchy, and the opportunities they offered for women to exercise some agency over their lives and the lives of others. Topics discussed include patriarchal theory, the lives of women without men (e.g., widows, women whose husbands worked elsewhere, women abandoned by their husbands), women in trade, and female social interaction, in particular, gossiping.
Bernard Capp
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199255986
- eISBN:
- 9780191719592
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199255986.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Social History
This chapter examines women's experiences within marriage, and in particular the plight of those trapped in unhappy relationships. It addresses questions such as: How did they respond to their ...
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This chapter examines women's experiences within marriage, and in particular the plight of those trapped in unhappy relationships. It addresses questions such as: How did they respond to their predicament? How might they relieve or escape it? And how far were kin or friends, especially their ‘gossip networks’ able to provide effective help? None of the strategies available to women trapped in bad marriages could guarantee success, and some carried heavy risks. However, many women were nonetheless determined to play some part in shaping their own lives; they were agents as well as victims, and aware of several courses of action which offered at least some prospect of relief. A woman's best prospects generally lay in triggering the active support of her gossips by working the grain of community opinion, appealing simultaneously to their compassion, solidarity, and self-interest.Less
This chapter examines women's experiences within marriage, and in particular the plight of those trapped in unhappy relationships. It addresses questions such as: How did they respond to their predicament? How might they relieve or escape it? And how far were kin or friends, especially their ‘gossip networks’ able to provide effective help? None of the strategies available to women trapped in bad marriages could guarantee success, and some carried heavy risks. However, many women were nonetheless determined to play some part in shaping their own lives; they were agents as well as victims, and aware of several courses of action which offered at least some prospect of relief. A woman's best prospects generally lay in triggering the active support of her gossips by working the grain of community opinion, appealing simultaneously to their compassion, solidarity, and self-interest.
