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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mark C. Jerng
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823277759
- eISBN:
- 9780823280544
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823277759.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter discusses the origins and development of sword and sorcery in the pulps and fanzines of the 1930s. It starts with Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories and reads these stories in ...
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This chapter discusses the origins and development of sword and sorcery in the pulps and fanzines of the 1930s. It starts with Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories and reads these stories in relation to contemporaneous fanzine commentary. show an intricate process of worldbuilding whereby race is located at higher and higher levels of meaning even though its correspondence with actual “races” is deeply questioned. This interpretive strategy mirrors the work of cultural anthropologists who were critiquing biological racism, thus demonstrating that race was not so much being critiqued as it was being elevated to a different order of meaning. It details these interpretive strategies in order to show the simultaneous reproduction of race in the building of sword and sorcery as a genre with the embedding of race in anthropological thought.Less
This chapter discusses the origins and development of sword and sorcery in the pulps and fanzines of the 1930s. It starts with Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories and reads these stories in relation to contemporaneous fanzine commentary. show an intricate process of worldbuilding whereby race is located at higher and higher levels of meaning even though its correspondence with actual “races” is deeply questioned. This interpretive strategy mirrors the work of cultural anthropologists who were critiquing biological racism, thus demonstrating that race was not so much being critiqued as it was being elevated to a different order of meaning. It details these interpretive strategies in order to show the simultaneous reproduction of race in the building of sword and sorcery as a genre with the embedding of race in anthropological thought.
Robert S. Lehman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804799041
- eISBN:
- 9781503600140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804799041.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter concerns the role of allegory in Walter Benjamin’s writings, and specifically on the challenge that allegory presents to time as the latter manifests itself by ordering human history. ...
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This chapter concerns the role of allegory in Walter Benjamin’s writings, and specifically on the challenge that allegory presents to time as the latter manifests itself by ordering human history. Benjamin develops his allegorical challenge to time in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, his studies of Baudelaire and, most profoundly, the ninth thesis “On the Concept of History.” In the last of these texts, Benjamin’s allegorical presentation of the “new angel” depicts a vision of history without time, a vision in which events occur absent any temporal continuity. In this impossible vision, the critical force of what Benjamin calls the “allegorical intention” emerges.Less
This chapter concerns the role of allegory in Walter Benjamin’s writings, and specifically on the challenge that allegory presents to time as the latter manifests itself by ordering human history. Benjamin develops his allegorical challenge to time in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, his studies of Baudelaire and, most profoundly, the ninth thesis “On the Concept of History.” In the last of these texts, Benjamin’s allegorical presentation of the “new angel” depicts a vision of history without time, a vision in which events occur absent any temporal continuity. In this impossible vision, the critical force of what Benjamin calls the “allegorical intention” emerges.
Calum Maciver
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474403795
- eISBN:
- 9781474435130
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403795.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
Laughter and the elicitation of laughter in Lucian are dependent principally upon the paideia which his readers require in order to unravel fully the complexity of his literary allusion and satire. ...
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Laughter and the elicitation of laughter in Lucian are dependent principally upon the paideia which his readers require in order to unravel fully the complexity of his literary allusion and satire. Through analysis of key satirical passages in the True Histories, the Charon, the Icaromenippus and the Nigrinus, this chapter demonstrates that Lucian, and his readers, laugh at the history of interpretation, both philosophical and literary. It delves into the literariness of Lucian’s satire, and in particular his representation of the literary past as a lens for laughing at the less educated. Lucian parodies historiographical and philosophical accounts of the moon in the lunar voyages in the True Histories and Icaromenippus, undercuts allegorical accounts of the cosmos in the Charon, and proves the absurdity and shallowness of contemporary Roman pretentions of Greek paideia in the Nigrinus by parodying the pseudo-learning so much on display.Less
Laughter and the elicitation of laughter in Lucian are dependent principally upon the paideia which his readers require in order to unravel fully the complexity of his literary allusion and satire. Through analysis of key satirical passages in the True Histories, the Charon, the Icaromenippus and the Nigrinus, this chapter demonstrates that Lucian, and his readers, laugh at the history of interpretation, both philosophical and literary. It delves into the literariness of Lucian’s satire, and in particular his representation of the literary past as a lens for laughing at the less educated. Lucian parodies historiographical and philosophical accounts of the moon in the lunar voyages in the True Histories and Icaromenippus, undercuts allegorical accounts of the cosmos in the Charon, and proves the absurdity and shallowness of contemporary Roman pretentions of Greek paideia in the Nigrinus by parodying the pseudo-learning so much on display.
Jeff Rosen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784993177
- eISBN:
- 9781526109811
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784993177.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The introduction outlines Cameron’s intellectual framework for assigning literary, mythological, and historical titles to her photographs, explains her working methods as an artist, and discusses the ...
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The introduction outlines Cameron’s intellectual framework for assigning literary, mythological, and historical titles to her photographs, explains her working methods as an artist, and discusses the influence of her intellectual and cultural peers. The introduction also examines the role of allegory in Victorian art and explains how painters, graphic artists, and literary figures in Cameron’s circle represented questions of national identity.Less
The introduction outlines Cameron’s intellectual framework for assigning literary, mythological, and historical titles to her photographs, explains her working methods as an artist, and discusses the influence of her intellectual and cultural peers. The introduction also examines the role of allegory in Victorian art and explains how painters, graphic artists, and literary figures in Cameron’s circle represented questions of national identity.
Kathryn Walls
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719090370
- eISBN:
- 9781781706510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090370.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
C. S. Lewis has, influentially, characterized the lion of FQ I.III as “a type of the natural, the ingenuous, the untaught.” But Lewis’s was an almost literal reading. The lion allegorizes, in ...
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C. S. Lewis has, influentially, characterized the lion of FQ I.III as “a type of the natural, the ingenuous, the untaught.” But Lewis’s was an almost literal reading. The lion allegorizes, in accordance with tradition, for Christ Incarnate. Spenser here and elsewhere implies that it is the confusion of the allegorical with the Incarnational that characterizes, and even defines, idolatry.Less
C. S. Lewis has, influentially, characterized the lion of FQ I.III as “a type of the natural, the ingenuous, the untaught.” But Lewis’s was an almost literal reading. The lion allegorizes, in accordance with tradition, for Christ Incarnate. Spenser here and elsewhere implies that it is the confusion of the allegorical with the Incarnational that characterizes, and even defines, idolatry.
Allan Pero
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813054421
- eISBN:
- 9780813053165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813054421.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter explores the place of clowns in the cultural production of Edith and Sacheverell Sitwell, and how clowns embody and generate “spaces of melancholy.” The psychology that characterizes ...
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This chapter explores the place of clowns in the cultural production of Edith and Sacheverell Sitwell, and how clowns embody and generate “spaces of melancholy.” The psychology that characterizes their work is ultimately a spatial, even allegorical one, in which Pierrots and Harlequins produce nightmarish dreamscapes, theatricalized temporalities, and extended sojourns among ruins—which Pero describes as melancholic camp.In considering camp from a psychoanalytic perspective, Pero argues that spaces like the sublime and the façade work to offer forms of encounter that are governed not by the superego, but by the ego. An ego-driven experience of the sublime makes it possible to transform sublimity, turning its terrifying disinterestedness in the human subject into a form of enjoyment. The “campian sublime” engages the sublime by making it a subject, by treating it as a riddle as “an enigma to be dissolved” rather than solved. The Sitwells’ melancholic camp is both historical and theatrical; the texts consider historical trauma as a form of theatricality and that a fidelity to decaying, neglected forms, such as the clowns of commedia dell’arte, open up what Sacheverell Sitwell, in a Benjaminian move, sees as the possibility of redemption in modernity.Less
This chapter explores the place of clowns in the cultural production of Edith and Sacheverell Sitwell, and how clowns embody and generate “spaces of melancholy.” The psychology that characterizes their work is ultimately a spatial, even allegorical one, in which Pierrots and Harlequins produce nightmarish dreamscapes, theatricalized temporalities, and extended sojourns among ruins—which Pero describes as melancholic camp.In considering camp from a psychoanalytic perspective, Pero argues that spaces like the sublime and the façade work to offer forms of encounter that are governed not by the superego, but by the ego. An ego-driven experience of the sublime makes it possible to transform sublimity, turning its terrifying disinterestedness in the human subject into a form of enjoyment. The “campian sublime” engages the sublime by making it a subject, by treating it as a riddle as “an enigma to be dissolved” rather than solved. The Sitwells’ melancholic camp is both historical and theatrical; the texts consider historical trauma as a form of theatricality and that a fidelity to decaying, neglected forms, such as the clowns of commedia dell’arte, open up what Sacheverell Sitwell, in a Benjaminian move, sees as the possibility of redemption in modernity.
Brenda Deen Schildgen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263868
- eISBN:
- 9780823266302
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263868.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
This essay argues that in Paradiso 4, Dante offers a retrospective consideration of Inferno 4 in which he re-examines the learned traditions and poetic practices of ancient Greek and medieval Arab ...
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This essay argues that in Paradiso 4, Dante offers a retrospective consideration of Inferno 4 in which he re-examines the learned traditions and poetic practices of ancient Greek and medieval Arab philosophy. Whereas in the Convivio Dante had attempted to accommodate the differences about the relative influence of heavenly bodies on the human soul as outlined by ancient Greek and medieval Arabic philosophers, in the Commedia he clearly rejects this position. Following Thomas Aquinas, in which Christ is the means to unite nature and the transcendent, he endorses orthodox Christian views on the nature of the soul and the freedom of the will against the legacy of the Greeks and the Arabs.Less
This essay argues that in Paradiso 4, Dante offers a retrospective consideration of Inferno 4 in which he re-examines the learned traditions and poetic practices of ancient Greek and medieval Arab philosophy. Whereas in the Convivio Dante had attempted to accommodate the differences about the relative influence of heavenly bodies on the human soul as outlined by ancient Greek and medieval Arabic philosophers, in the Commedia he clearly rejects this position. Following Thomas Aquinas, in which Christ is the means to unite nature and the transcendent, he endorses orthodox Christian views on the nature of the soul and the freedom of the will against the legacy of the Greeks and the Arabs.
