Michael Golston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231164306
- eISBN:
- 9780231538633
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231164306.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Through a survey of American poetry and poetics from the end of World War II to the present, Michael Golston traces the proliferation of these experiments to a growing fascination with allegory in ...
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Through a survey of American poetry and poetics from the end of World War II to the present, Michael Golston traces the proliferation of these experiments to a growing fascination with allegory in philosophy, linguistics, critical theory, and aesthetics, introducing new strategies for reading American poetry while embedding its formal innovations within the history of intellectual thought. Beginning with Walter Benjamin’s explicit understanding of Surrealism as an allegorical art, Golston defines a distinct engagement with allegory among philosophers, theorists, and critics from 1950 to today. Reading Fredric Jameson, Angus Fletcher, Roland Barthes, and Craig Owens, and working with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Pierce, Golston develops a theory of allegory he then applies to the poems of Louis Zukofsky and Lorine Niedecker, who, he argues, wrote in response to the Surrealists; the poems of John Ashbery and Clark Coolidge, who incorporated formal aspects of filmmaking and photography into their work; the groundbreaking configurations of P. Inman, Lyn Hejinian, Myung Mi Kim, and the Language poets; Susan Howe’s “Pierce-Arrow,” which he submits to semiotic analysis; and the innovations of Craig Dworkin and the conceptualists. Revitalizing what many consider to be a staid rhetorical trope, Golston positions allegory as a creative catalyst behind American poetry’s postwar avant-garde achievements.Less
Through a survey of American poetry and poetics from the end of World War II to the present, Michael Golston traces the proliferation of these experiments to a growing fascination with allegory in philosophy, linguistics, critical theory, and aesthetics, introducing new strategies for reading American poetry while embedding its formal innovations within the history of intellectual thought. Beginning with Walter Benjamin’s explicit understanding of Surrealism as an allegorical art, Golston defines a distinct engagement with allegory among philosophers, theorists, and critics from 1950 to today. Reading Fredric Jameson, Angus Fletcher, Roland Barthes, and Craig Owens, and working with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Pierce, Golston develops a theory of allegory he then applies to the poems of Louis Zukofsky and Lorine Niedecker, who, he argues, wrote in response to the Surrealists; the poems of John Ashbery and Clark Coolidge, who incorporated formal aspects of filmmaking and photography into their work; the groundbreaking configurations of P. Inman, Lyn Hejinian, Myung Mi Kim, and the Language poets; Susan Howe’s “Pierce-Arrow,” which he submits to semiotic analysis; and the innovations of Craig Dworkin and the conceptualists. Revitalizing what many consider to be a staid rhetorical trope, Golston positions allegory as a creative catalyst behind American poetry’s postwar avant-garde achievements.
Michael Golston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231164306
- eISBN:
- 9780231538633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231164306.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter 2 is a study of formal allegory in the poetry of Clark Coolidge. It describes Coolidge’s and John Ashbery’s interests in surrealism, then argues that the former’s works from the 1970’s should ...
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Chapter 2 is a study of formal allegory in the poetry of Clark Coolidge. It describes Coolidge’s and John Ashbery’s interests in surrealism, then argues that the former’s works from the 1970’s should be read as an on-going allegory for film and photography. It also shows how Coolidge derived constructivist principles from writers like William Carlos Williams and painters like Yves Tanguy. The chapter goes on to argue that Coolidge allegorically transcodes the discourses of poetry and film in a series of seven books written over a ten year period, discussing how he appropriates texts from Robert Smithson and bases his early poetry on Smithson’s discussions of minimalist sculpture and art.Less
Chapter 2 is a study of formal allegory in the poetry of Clark Coolidge. It describes Coolidge’s and John Ashbery’s interests in surrealism, then argues that the former’s works from the 1970’s should be read as an on-going allegory for film and photography. It also shows how Coolidge derived constructivist principles from writers like William Carlos Williams and painters like Yves Tanguy. The chapter goes on to argue that Coolidge allegorically transcodes the discourses of poetry and film in a series of seven books written over a ten year period, discussing how he appropriates texts from Robert Smithson and bases his early poetry on Smithson’s discussions of minimalist sculpture and art.
Michael Golston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231164306
- eISBN:
- 9780231538633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231164306.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter 5 is a ficto-critical piece on Conceptualism dedicated to the anthropologist Michael Taussig. It provides an overview of the critical literature on allegory after 1950. It is part collage, ...
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Chapter 5 is a ficto-critical piece on Conceptualism dedicated to the anthropologist Michael Taussig. It provides an overview of the critical literature on allegory after 1950. It is part collage, part fantasy, part critique, part appropriated and overwritten text, and itself includes several short allegories of the Conceptual poetry scene. It focuses critically on pieces from Craig Dworkin’s Strand, which it reads as classic postmodern allegorical transcodings between poetry and other discourses.Less
Chapter 5 is a ficto-critical piece on Conceptualism dedicated to the anthropologist Michael Taussig. It provides an overview of the critical literature on allegory after 1950. It is part collage, part fantasy, part critique, part appropriated and overwritten text, and itself includes several short allegories of the Conceptual poetry scene. It focuses critically on pieces from Craig Dworkin’s Strand, which it reads as classic postmodern allegorical transcodings between poetry and other discourses.
Michael Golston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231164306
- eISBN:
- 9780231538633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231164306.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The introduction is an overview of theories of allegory and develops a model of allegory based on the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, Walter Benjamin, and sundry postmodern critics. The chapter ...
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The introduction is an overview of theories of allegory and develops a model of allegory based on the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, Walter Benjamin, and sundry postmodern critics. The chapter argues that no critical study of allegory operating at the level of form in postmodern poetry currently exists, and that formal allegory is a distinguishing feature of innovative poetry written after World War II. It devises a means for using Peirce’s tripartite division of the sign into index, icon, and symbol as a template for understanding historical shifts in prosody. It ends by examining surrealist, structuralist, and post-structuralist discussions of collage, montage, and allegory.Less
The introduction is an overview of theories of allegory and develops a model of allegory based on the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, Walter Benjamin, and sundry postmodern critics. The chapter argues that no critical study of allegory operating at the level of form in postmodern poetry currently exists, and that formal allegory is a distinguishing feature of innovative poetry written after World War II. It devises a means for using Peirce’s tripartite division of the sign into index, icon, and symbol as a template for understanding historical shifts in prosody. It ends by examining surrealist, structuralist, and post-structuralist discussions of collage, montage, and allegory.
Jeff Rosen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784993177
- eISBN:
- 9781526109811
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784993177.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The Victorians admired Julia Margaret Cameron for her evocative photographic portraits of eminent men like Tennyson, Carlyle, and Darwin. But Cameron also made numerous photographs called ‘fancy ...
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The Victorians admired Julia Margaret Cameron for her evocative photographic portraits of eminent men like Tennyson, Carlyle, and Darwin. But Cameron also made numerous photographs called ‘fancy subjects’ that depicted scenes from literature, personifications from classical mythology, and biblical parables from the Old and New Testament. Julia Margaret Cameron’s ‘fancy subjects’ is the first comprehensive study of these works, examining Cameron’s use of historical allegories and popular iconography to embed moral, intellectual, and political narratives in her photographs. A work of cultural history as much as art history, this book examines cartoons from Punch and line drawings from the Illustrated London News; cabinet photographs and Autotype prints; textiles and wall paper; book illustrations and engravings from period folios, all as a way to contextualize the allegorical subjects that Cameron represented, revealing connections between her ‘fancy subjects’ and popular debates about such topics as biblical interpretation, democratic government, national identity, and colonial expansion.Less
The Victorians admired Julia Margaret Cameron for her evocative photographic portraits of eminent men like Tennyson, Carlyle, and Darwin. But Cameron also made numerous photographs called ‘fancy subjects’ that depicted scenes from literature, personifications from classical mythology, and biblical parables from the Old and New Testament. Julia Margaret Cameron’s ‘fancy subjects’ is the first comprehensive study of these works, examining Cameron’s use of historical allegories and popular iconography to embed moral, intellectual, and political narratives in her photographs. A work of cultural history as much as art history, this book examines cartoons from Punch and line drawings from the Illustrated London News; cabinet photographs and Autotype prints; textiles and wall paper; book illustrations and engravings from period folios, all as a way to contextualize the allegorical subjects that Cameron represented, revealing connections between her ‘fancy subjects’ and popular debates about such topics as biblical interpretation, democratic government, national identity, and colonial expansion.
Margaret Christian
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719083846
- eISBN:
- 9781526121042
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719083846.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Edmund Spenser and the first readers of The Faerie Queene routinely heard their national concerns—epidemics, political plotting, recent Tudor history—discussed in biblical terms. This book samples ...
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Edmund Spenser and the first readers of The Faerie Queene routinely heard their national concerns—epidemics, political plotting, recent Tudor history—discussed in biblical terms. This book samples contemporary sermons, homilies, and liturgies to demonstrate that religious rhetoric, with its routine use of biblical types (for Elizabeth, the Spanish threat, and Mary Stuart, among many others) trained Spenser’s original readers to understand The Faerie Queene’s allegorical method. Accordingly, the first three chapters orient the reader to allegorical and typological reading in biblical commentary, occasional liturgies, and sermons. This pulpit literature illuminates many episodes and characters within the poem, and subsequent chapters discuss some of these. For instance, the genealogies Guyon and Arthur discover in Book Two parallel sermon lists of Elizabeth’s kingly forebears as well as biblical commentary on the genealogies provided for Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Florimell’s adventures in Books Three and Four, like contemporary marriage sermons, develop an allegory of the superiority of marriage over the single state. Likewise, the preachers’ treatment of the Northern Rebellion and the threat posed by Mary Stuart show biblical typology in the service of nationalism, much as the allegory of Book Six finds a way to celebrate Elizabeth’s execution of her cousin. In these cases, as in the Souldan episode, Book Six’s analysis of courtesy, and the Mutability Cantos, Elizabethan religious rhetoric lends support to traditional readings of the poem, indicating that Spenser’s original readers probably found The Faerie Queene less conflicted and subversive than many do today.Less
Edmund Spenser and the first readers of The Faerie Queene routinely heard their national concerns—epidemics, political plotting, recent Tudor history—discussed in biblical terms. This book samples contemporary sermons, homilies, and liturgies to demonstrate that religious rhetoric, with its routine use of biblical types (for Elizabeth, the Spanish threat, and Mary Stuart, among many others) trained Spenser’s original readers to understand The Faerie Queene’s allegorical method. Accordingly, the first three chapters orient the reader to allegorical and typological reading in biblical commentary, occasional liturgies, and sermons. This pulpit literature illuminates many episodes and characters within the poem, and subsequent chapters discuss some of these. For instance, the genealogies Guyon and Arthur discover in Book Two parallel sermon lists of Elizabeth’s kingly forebears as well as biblical commentary on the genealogies provided for Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Florimell’s adventures in Books Three and Four, like contemporary marriage sermons, develop an allegory of the superiority of marriage over the single state. Likewise, the preachers’ treatment of the Northern Rebellion and the threat posed by Mary Stuart show biblical typology in the service of nationalism, much as the allegory of Book Six finds a way to celebrate Elizabeth’s execution of her cousin. In these cases, as in the Souldan episode, Book Six’s analysis of courtesy, and the Mutability Cantos, Elizabethan religious rhetoric lends support to traditional readings of the poem, indicating that Spenser’s original readers probably found The Faerie Queene less conflicted and subversive than many do today.
Ita Mac Carthy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691175485
- eISBN:
- 9780691189796
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691175485.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Medieval History
This introductory chapter analyses the April fresco depicting the three Graces of classical tradition in the Salone dei mesi (Room of the months) of Ferrara's Palazzo Schifanoia. The Allegory of ...
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This introductory chapter analyses the April fresco depicting the three Graces of classical tradition in the Salone dei mesi (Room of the months) of Ferrara's Palazzo Schifanoia. The Allegory of April transforms the abstract qualities of grace into an eloquent verbal language that is read from top to bottom by following the line of their spiritual passage from the heavens to deserving mortals below. Close allies of beauty and faithful escorts to Love, these qualities inspire the arts of love, poetry, and music. Through the sign of Taurus, they infuse the powers of liberality into the hearts of the elect. An ideal rather than a realistic portrait of universal grace and sociability, though, the fresco also conveys the real-world dearth of its qualities. For although the fresco's painter, Francesco del Cossa, paints grace with grace, he fails to receive grace in return. He shares in a problem that fifteenth-century poets, artists, male courtiers, and court ladies knew well: the problem of what happens when the grace personified and idealized in the figure of the three Graces meets with nothing but ingratitude.Less
This introductory chapter analyses the April fresco depicting the three Graces of classical tradition in the Salone dei mesi (Room of the months) of Ferrara's Palazzo Schifanoia. The Allegory of April transforms the abstract qualities of grace into an eloquent verbal language that is read from top to bottom by following the line of their spiritual passage from the heavens to deserving mortals below. Close allies of beauty and faithful escorts to Love, these qualities inspire the arts of love, poetry, and music. Through the sign of Taurus, they infuse the powers of liberality into the hearts of the elect. An ideal rather than a realistic portrait of universal grace and sociability, though, the fresco also conveys the real-world dearth of its qualities. For although the fresco's painter, Francesco del Cossa, paints grace with grace, he fails to receive grace in return. He shares in a problem that fifteenth-century poets, artists, male courtiers, and court ladies knew well: the problem of what happens when the grace personified and idealized in the figure of the three Graces meets with nothing but ingratitude.
Martin McQuillan (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748665617
- eISBN:
- 9780748676637
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748665617.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Taking de Man's recently published manuscript Textual Allegories as a point of departure, thirteen chapters here revisit de Man's account of Rousseau and what he calls a ‘Theotropic Allegory’ (the ...
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Taking de Man's recently published manuscript Textual Allegories as a point of departure, thirteen chapters here revisit de Man's account of Rousseau and what he calls a ‘Theotropic Allegory’ (the second-to-last step before ‘Political Allegory’, on the road towards a general theory of Textual Allegory). They frame de Man's readings of Rousseau in a ‘post-theoretical’ landscape concerned with political theology, occupied with the transformation of the western model of sovereignty, and faced with the apparent collapse of the capitalist global contract.Less
Taking de Man's recently published manuscript Textual Allegories as a point of departure, thirteen chapters here revisit de Man's account of Rousseau and what he calls a ‘Theotropic Allegory’ (the second-to-last step before ‘Political Allegory’, on the road towards a general theory of Textual Allegory). They frame de Man's readings of Rousseau in a ‘post-theoretical’ landscape concerned with political theology, occupied with the transformation of the western model of sovereignty, and faced with the apparent collapse of the capitalist global contract.
James D. Lilley
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823255153
- eISBN:
- 9780823261062
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823255153.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
What are the relationships between the books we read and the communities we share?Common Things explores how transatlantic romance revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century influenced and ...
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What are the relationships between the books we read and the communities we share?Common Things explores how transatlantic romance revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century influenced and were influenced by emerging modern systems of community. Drawing on the work of Washington Irving, Henry Mackenzie, Thomas Jefferson, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Charles Brockden Brown, the book shows how romance promotes a distinctive aesthetics of belonging-a mode of being in common tied to new qualities of the singular. Each chapter focuses on one of these common things-the stain of race, the “property” of personhood, ruined feelings, the genre of a text, and the event of history-and examines how these peculiar qualities work to sustain the coherence of our modern common places. In the work of Horace Walpole and Edgar Allan Poe, the book further uncovers an important and never more timely alternative aesthetic practice that reimagines community as an open and fugitive process rather than as a collection of common things.Less
What are the relationships between the books we read and the communities we share?Common Things explores how transatlantic romance revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century influenced and were influenced by emerging modern systems of community. Drawing on the work of Washington Irving, Henry Mackenzie, Thomas Jefferson, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Charles Brockden Brown, the book shows how romance promotes a distinctive aesthetics of belonging-a mode of being in common tied to new qualities of the singular. Each chapter focuses on one of these common things-the stain of race, the “property” of personhood, ruined feelings, the genre of a text, and the event of history-and examines how these peculiar qualities work to sustain the coherence of our modern common places. In the work of Horace Walpole and Edgar Allan Poe, the book further uncovers an important and never more timely alternative aesthetic practice that reimagines community as an open and fugitive process rather than as a collection of common things.
Nicolette Zeeman
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198860242
- eISBN:
- 9780191892431
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198860242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The Arts of Disruption offers a series of new readings of the allegorical poem Piers Plowman: but it is also a book about allegory. It argues not just that there are distinctively disruptive ‘arts’ ...
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The Arts of Disruption offers a series of new readings of the allegorical poem Piers Plowman: but it is also a book about allegory. It argues not just that there are distinctively disruptive ‘arts’ that occur in allegory, but that allegory, because it is interested in the difficulty of making meaning, is itself a disruptive art. The book approaches this topic via the study of five medieval allegorical narrative structures that exploit diegetic conflict and disruption. Although very different, they all bring together contrasting descriptions of spiritual process, in order to develop new understanding and excite moral or devotional change. These five structures are: the paradiastolic ‘hypocritical figure’ (such as vices masked by being made to look like ‘adjacent’ virtues), personification debate, violent language and gestures of apophasis, narratives of bodily decline, and grail romance. Each appears in a range of texts, which the book explores, along with other connected materials in medieval rhetoric, logic, grammar, spiritual thought, ethics, medicine, and romance iconography. These allegorical narrative structures appear radically transformed in Piers Plowman, where the poem makes further meaning out of the friction between them. Much of the allegorical work of the poem occurs at the points of their intersection, and within the conceptual gaps that open up between them. Ranging across a wide variety of medieval allegorical texts, the book shows from many perspectives allegory’s juxtaposition of the heterogeneous and its questioning of supposed continuities.Less
The Arts of Disruption offers a series of new readings of the allegorical poem Piers Plowman: but it is also a book about allegory. It argues not just that there are distinctively disruptive ‘arts’ that occur in allegory, but that allegory, because it is interested in the difficulty of making meaning, is itself a disruptive art. The book approaches this topic via the study of five medieval allegorical narrative structures that exploit diegetic conflict and disruption. Although very different, they all bring together contrasting descriptions of spiritual process, in order to develop new understanding and excite moral or devotional change. These five structures are: the paradiastolic ‘hypocritical figure’ (such as vices masked by being made to look like ‘adjacent’ virtues), personification debate, violent language and gestures of apophasis, narratives of bodily decline, and grail romance. Each appears in a range of texts, which the book explores, along with other connected materials in medieval rhetoric, logic, grammar, spiritual thought, ethics, medicine, and romance iconography. These allegorical narrative structures appear radically transformed in Piers Plowman, where the poem makes further meaning out of the friction between them. Much of the allegorical work of the poem occurs at the points of their intersection, and within the conceptual gaps that open up between them. Ranging across a wide variety of medieval allegorical texts, the book shows from many perspectives allegory’s juxtaposition of the heterogeneous and its questioning of supposed continuities.
Robert J. Fogelin
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195071627
- eISBN:
- 9780199833221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019507162X.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Attempts to provide a coherent understanding of three analogies that appear at the center of Plato's Republic: The Sun and the Good, The Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave. The main ...
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Attempts to provide a coherent understanding of three analogies that appear at the center of Plato's Republic: The Sun and the Good, The Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave. The main innovation is to treat The Divided Line as an image‐object metaphor illustrating the nature of mathematical reasoning. On this reading, the middle two portions of the four‐part Divided Line both contain diagrams. In the lower middle portion, the diagram is treated as a physical object that can have reflected images. In the upper middle portion, the diagram is treated as a physical object, which is itself an image of a form.Less
Attempts to provide a coherent understanding of three analogies that appear at the center of Plato's Republic: The Sun and the Good, The Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave. The main innovation is to treat The Divided Line as an image‐object metaphor illustrating the nature of mathematical reasoning. On this reading, the middle two portions of the four‐part Divided Line both contain diagrams. In the lower middle portion, the diagram is treated as a physical object that can have reflected images. In the upper middle portion, the diagram is treated as a physical object, which is itself an image of a form.
Ned O'Gorman
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226665023
- eISBN:
- 9780226683294
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226683294.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter addresses another vexing issue in politics, one closely related to the problem of lying: rhetoric. One of the most famous critiques of politics ever written, Plato’s “Allegory of the ...
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This chapter addresses another vexing issue in politics, one closely related to the problem of lying: rhetoric. One of the most famous critiques of politics ever written, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” describes citizens as prisoners stuck in a dark cave subject to a daily barrage of shadow-casting. For Plato, the shadow casters were rhetoricians, men who were magicians with words, capable to making the imaginary seem real and the real seem illusory. This chapter addresses Plato’s critique of rhetoric, and by extension politics, head on, arguing that rhetoric is not an art of shadow casting at all, but rather, as Aristotle argued, an art of talking to fellow citizens as equals. Rhetoric is therefore the antidote to tyranny, technocracy, and deviousness alike, for the power of rhetoric depends above all on trust, good will, and the power of persuasion rather than forcing your way through. Without rhetoric, this chapter argues, we risk a tyranny of “experts."Less
This chapter addresses another vexing issue in politics, one closely related to the problem of lying: rhetoric. One of the most famous critiques of politics ever written, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” describes citizens as prisoners stuck in a dark cave subject to a daily barrage of shadow-casting. For Plato, the shadow casters were rhetoricians, men who were magicians with words, capable to making the imaginary seem real and the real seem illusory. This chapter addresses Plato’s critique of rhetoric, and by extension politics, head on, arguing that rhetoric is not an art of shadow casting at all, but rather, as Aristotle argued, an art of talking to fellow citizens as equals. Rhetoric is therefore the antidote to tyranny, technocracy, and deviousness alike, for the power of rhetoric depends above all on trust, good will, and the power of persuasion rather than forcing your way through. Without rhetoric, this chapter argues, we risk a tyranny of “experts."
Danielle Sands
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474439039
- eISBN:
- 9781474476881
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439039.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter focuses on Yann Martel’s allegorical novels Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil in order to assess the possibility of articulating cross-species vulnerability and its connection to ...
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This chapter focuses on Yann Martel’s allegorical novels Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil in order to assess the possibility of articulating cross-species vulnerability and its connection to cross-species empathy, where empathy is understood as imaginative perspective-taking. Engaging with theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Carey Wolfe and Anat Pick, it argues that Martel resists the temptation to reinstate the human as master-storyteller. Instead, it identifies an ironic or deconstructive approach to storytelling in Martel’s fiction, which shuttles between critique (stories tend towards the reactionary reiteration of the familiar) and affirmation (stories promise imaginative innovation which enables ‘reworlding’). Taking seriously the possibility of nonhuman storytelling, the chapter closes by proposing ways in which alternative modes of storytelling might ground an inhuman ethics.Less
This chapter focuses on Yann Martel’s allegorical novels Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil in order to assess the possibility of articulating cross-species vulnerability and its connection to cross-species empathy, where empathy is understood as imaginative perspective-taking. Engaging with theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Carey Wolfe and Anat Pick, it argues that Martel resists the temptation to reinstate the human as master-storyteller. Instead, it identifies an ironic or deconstructive approach to storytelling in Martel’s fiction, which shuttles between critique (stories tend towards the reactionary reiteration of the familiar) and affirmation (stories promise imaginative innovation which enables ‘reworlding’). Taking seriously the possibility of nonhuman storytelling, the chapter closes by proposing ways in which alternative modes of storytelling might ground an inhuman ethics.
Rachel E. Hile
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719088087
- eISBN:
- 9781526121073
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088087.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The first chapter begins with an analysis of indirect meaning-making in satire, discussing how allusion, symbol, and analogy can work to create allegorical satirical meanings that invite the reader ...
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The first chapter begins with an analysis of indirect meaning-making in satire, discussing how allusion, symbol, and analogy can work to create allegorical satirical meanings that invite the reader to project insights from the text to the real world. Chapter 1 explores the literary, natural-historical, symbolic, and allegorical meanings that Spenser’s culture attached to foxes in order to give a sense of the complexity of Spenser’s use of animal imagery to create indirect satire in his most famous satirical character, the Fox of Mother Hubberds Tale. The chapter closes with a sketch of Spenser’s career as a satirist, aiming to create a sense of story and to connect the story of Spenser-as-satirist with better-known discussions of Spenser’s career trajectory from such scholars as Richard Helgerson and Patrick Cheney.Less
The first chapter begins with an analysis of indirect meaning-making in satire, discussing how allusion, symbol, and analogy can work to create allegorical satirical meanings that invite the reader to project insights from the text to the real world. Chapter 1 explores the literary, natural-historical, symbolic, and allegorical meanings that Spenser’s culture attached to foxes in order to give a sense of the complexity of Spenser’s use of animal imagery to create indirect satire in his most famous satirical character, the Fox of Mother Hubberds Tale. The chapter closes with a sketch of Spenser’s career as a satirist, aiming to create a sense of story and to connect the story of Spenser-as-satirist with better-known discussions of Spenser’s career trajectory from such scholars as Richard Helgerson and Patrick Cheney.
Ellen T. Harris
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190271664
- eISBN:
- 9780190271695
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190271664.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, History, Western
Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet the work remains cloaked in mystery. The date and place of its first performance cannot ...
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Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet the work remains cloaked in mystery. The date and place of its first performance cannot be fixed with precision, and the accuracy of the surviving scores cannot be assumed. In this thirtieth-anniversary new edition of her book, Ellen Harris provides a detailed consideration of the many theories that have been proposed for the opera’s origin and chronology. She re-evaluates the surviving sources for the various readings they offer and examines the work’s historical position in Restoration theater. She also offers a detailed discussion of Purcell’s musical declamation and use of ground bass. The final section of the book is devoted to the performance history of Dido and Aeneas from the eighteenth century to the present.Less
Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet the work remains cloaked in mystery. The date and place of its first performance cannot be fixed with precision, and the accuracy of the surviving scores cannot be assumed. In this thirtieth-anniversary new edition of her book, Ellen Harris provides a detailed consideration of the many theories that have been proposed for the opera’s origin and chronology. She re-evaluates the surviving sources for the various readings they offer and examines the work’s historical position in Restoration theater. She also offers a detailed discussion of Purcell’s musical declamation and use of ground bass. The final section of the book is devoted to the performance history of Dido and Aeneas from the eighteenth century to the present.
Angharad Eyre
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526123503
- eISBN:
- 9781526141972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526123503.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In 1880s London, Margaret Harkness and Olive Schreiner were both engaged in the socialist movement. An admirer of Schreiner, Harkness dedicated a socialist allegory to her in the late 1880s. However, ...
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In 1880s London, Margaret Harkness and Olive Schreiner were both engaged in the socialist movement. An admirer of Schreiner, Harkness dedicated a socialist allegory to her in the late 1880s. However, in In Darkest London, Harkness uses allegorical forms less as propaganda tools and more, as Schreiner did, to evoke a sense of religious mystery. Mysterious, allegorical elements create a liminal space within Harkness’s otherwise realist novel, in which can exist the hope of a better future. This chapter sheds light on Harkness’s work through tracing her participation in the religious socialist aesthetic developed by Olive Schreiner. In situating Harkness in the context of 1880s and 1890s socialism and theology, the chapter argues that Harkness’s work was part of a literary discourse that contributed to the development of early twentieth- century Christianity and social work.Less
In 1880s London, Margaret Harkness and Olive Schreiner were both engaged in the socialist movement. An admirer of Schreiner, Harkness dedicated a socialist allegory to her in the late 1880s. However, in In Darkest London, Harkness uses allegorical forms less as propaganda tools and more, as Schreiner did, to evoke a sense of religious mystery. Mysterious, allegorical elements create a liminal space within Harkness’s otherwise realist novel, in which can exist the hope of a better future. This chapter sheds light on Harkness’s work through tracing her participation in the religious socialist aesthetic developed by Olive Schreiner. In situating Harkness in the context of 1880s and 1890s socialism and theology, the chapter argues that Harkness’s work was part of a literary discourse that contributed to the development of early twentieth- century Christianity and social work.
Anna Bernard
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319433
- eISBN:
- 9781781381045
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319433.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter challenges the sense of fatigue that has accompanied discussions of national narration in postcolonial literary studies, which stems in part from a lack of attention to contexts like ...
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This chapter challenges the sense of fatigue that has accompanied discussions of national narration in postcolonial literary studies, which stems in part from a lack of attention to contexts like Israel/Palestine. It offers a defence and reclamation of Fredric Jameson’s national allegory, making a case for its dual function as a reading and writing practice with particular resonance for Palestinian and Israeli texts in international circulation. The chapter questions the tendency in contemporary criticism to dismiss ideas that we think we ‘already know,’ particularly the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a confrontation between ‘two narratives’. It concludes by introducing the idea of the demographic imaginary as a central component of Palestinian and Israeli national narration, arguing that the texts considered in this study offer a sustained and deliberate response to the conflict’s most fundamental question: who is a citizen, and of what kind of polity?Less
This chapter challenges the sense of fatigue that has accompanied discussions of national narration in postcolonial literary studies, which stems in part from a lack of attention to contexts like Israel/Palestine. It offers a defence and reclamation of Fredric Jameson’s national allegory, making a case for its dual function as a reading and writing practice with particular resonance for Palestinian and Israeli texts in international circulation. The chapter questions the tendency in contemporary criticism to dismiss ideas that we think we ‘already know,’ particularly the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a confrontation between ‘two narratives’. It concludes by introducing the idea of the demographic imaginary as a central component of Palestinian and Israeli national narration, arguing that the texts considered in this study offer a sustained and deliberate response to the conflict’s most fundamental question: who is a citizen, and of what kind of polity?
David Holloway
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633807
- eISBN:
- 9780748670772
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633807.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Chapter 4, on cinema, includes detailed discussion of The Manchurian Candidate, The Village, The Alamo, War of the Worlds, and Fahrenheit 9/11. It offers supporting discussion of a broad range of ...
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Chapter 4, on cinema, includes detailed discussion of The Manchurian Candidate, The Village, The Alamo, War of the Worlds, and Fahrenheit 9/11. It offers supporting discussion of a broad range of contemporary films, both Hollywood movies and independent productions, including Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana, World Trade Center, Control Room, The Fog of War, and Kingdom of Heaven. The chapter argues that early Hollywood representation of 9/11 and the war on terror was characterised by forms of allegory—“allegory lite”—which allowed film-makers to produce risk-averse engagements with contemporary events which generally steered clear of the alarming questions raised by September 11 and the neoconservative response to the attacks. Particular attention is paid to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which is used as a case study to demonstrate the political limits beyond which Hollywood film refused to go.Less
Chapter 4, on cinema, includes detailed discussion of The Manchurian Candidate, The Village, The Alamo, War of the Worlds, and Fahrenheit 9/11. It offers supporting discussion of a broad range of contemporary films, both Hollywood movies and independent productions, including Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana, World Trade Center, Control Room, The Fog of War, and Kingdom of Heaven. The chapter argues that early Hollywood representation of 9/11 and the war on terror was characterised by forms of allegory—“allegory lite”—which allowed film-makers to produce risk-averse engagements with contemporary events which generally steered clear of the alarming questions raised by September 11 and the neoconservative response to the attacks. Particular attention is paid to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which is used as a case study to demonstrate the political limits beyond which Hollywood film refused to go.
Thomas J. Cobb
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496831095
- eISBN:
- 9781496831149
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496831095.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The chapter claims that it is uncertain whether Hollywood will address the Trump era’s ideological unorthodoxies. The Shape of Water’s magical realist narrative avoids critique of the Realpolitik ...
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The chapter claims that it is uncertain whether Hollywood will address the Trump era’s ideological unorthodoxies. The Shape of Water’s magical realist narrative avoids critique of the Realpolitik central to Trump’s statecraft. It instead adopts a stance of anti-McCarthy liberalism by embracing the Russian other, averting the liberal antipathy towards modern Russia lampooned by the pro-Trump “Alt Right.” Red Sparrow also declines to interrogate the recent changes wrought to East-West relations. The film avoids invoking the current state of U.S.-Russia relations and even refuses to reference Vladimir Putin. Evaluating these two disparately received films, the chapter argues that the ideal cinematic representation of Cold War II has yet to arrive, and is precluded from doing so because of bewildering new ideological reconfigurations. Concluding with a reflection on the impact of Black Panther (2018), the chapter posits that allegory might be the most probable method of addressing new International Relations dynamics.Less
The chapter claims that it is uncertain whether Hollywood will address the Trump era’s ideological unorthodoxies. The Shape of Water’s magical realist narrative avoids critique of the Realpolitik central to Trump’s statecraft. It instead adopts a stance of anti-McCarthy liberalism by embracing the Russian other, averting the liberal antipathy towards modern Russia lampooned by the pro-Trump “Alt Right.” Red Sparrow also declines to interrogate the recent changes wrought to East-West relations. The film avoids invoking the current state of U.S.-Russia relations and even refuses to reference Vladimir Putin. Evaluating these two disparately received films, the chapter argues that the ideal cinematic representation of Cold War II has yet to arrive, and is precluded from doing so because of bewildering new ideological reconfigurations. Concluding with a reflection on the impact of Black Panther (2018), the chapter posits that allegory might be the most probable method of addressing new International Relations dynamics.
Adam Gearey
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496828996
- eISBN:
- 9781496829047
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496828996.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter sees the comic as an allegorical form that is useful in re-thinking terms such as alienation and reification that are relevant to both critical legal studies and critical legal thinking. ...
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This chapter sees the comic as an allegorical form that is useful in re-thinking terms such as alienation and reification that are relevant to both critical legal studies and critical legal thinking. Its focus is a comic called To Teach, a collaboration between Ryan Alexander-Tanner and the progressive activist/theorist Bill Ayers.Less
This chapter sees the comic as an allegorical form that is useful in re-thinking terms such as alienation and reification that are relevant to both critical legal studies and critical legal thinking. Its focus is a comic called To Teach, a collaboration between Ryan Alexander-Tanner and the progressive activist/theorist Bill Ayers.
