Patrick Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199587957
- eISBN:
- 9780191723292
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587957.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long ...
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‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long tradition of the novel, from Beckett, Kafka, and Dostoevsky to Richardson, Defoe, and Cervantes, this book argues that Coetzee's significance lies in the acuity with which he has explored the resources of that tradition as part of a sustained attempt to rethink the relationship between writing and politics. For Coetzee questions about the future of the novel are closely related to what it means to write after Beckett, and this book describes and evaluates the ways in which his fiction draws upon aspects of modernist writing to address the major questions posed by late twentieth‐century politics. The unsettling comic energy of Beckett's prose, especially its insistent complication of tone and register, was, as Coetzee put it, nothing less than ‘a secret…that I wanted to make my own’, and Patrick Hayes brings to the fore the little‐discussed comedic dimension of Coetzee's writing. Opening up a range of new approaches to this major contemporary author, J. M. Coetzee and the Novel argues that it is only by paying especially close attention to the experience of reading Coetzee's complex and nuanced fiction that its important impact on longstanding questions about identity, community, and the nature of political modernity can be appreciated.Less
‘Anti‐illusionism is, I suspect, only a marking of time, a phase of recuperation, in the history of the novel. The question is, what next?’ (J. M. Coetzee). Placing Coetzee in relation to the long tradition of the novel, from Beckett, Kafka, and Dostoevsky to Richardson, Defoe, and Cervantes, this book argues that Coetzee's significance lies in the acuity with which he has explored the resources of that tradition as part of a sustained attempt to rethink the relationship between writing and politics. For Coetzee questions about the future of the novel are closely related to what it means to write after Beckett, and this book describes and evaluates the ways in which his fiction draws upon aspects of modernist writing to address the major questions posed by late twentieth‐century politics. The unsettling comic energy of Beckett's prose, especially its insistent complication of tone and register, was, as Coetzee put it, nothing less than ‘a secret…that I wanted to make my own’, and Patrick Hayes brings to the fore the little‐discussed comedic dimension of Coetzee's writing. Opening up a range of new approaches to this major contemporary author, J. M. Coetzee and the Novel argues that it is only by paying especially close attention to the experience of reading Coetzee's complex and nuanced fiction that its important impact on longstanding questions about identity, community, and the nature of political modernity can be appreciated.
Garry L. Hagberg
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199234226
- eISBN:
- 9780191715440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199234226.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Language
This chapter talks about philosophical pictures of thinking. It details dualistic presuppositions and the metaphysically-motivated search for inner processes. Augustine's Confessions and their ...
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This chapter talks about philosophical pictures of thinking. It details dualistic presuppositions and the metaphysically-motivated search for inner processes. Augustine's Confessions and their philosophical significance are discussed. The distinction between Augustine actually reflecting on his past versus the philosophical picture of Augustine introspecting/reflecting on his past is examined. Augustine in practice, being neither a proto-behaviourist nor a dualist, is talked about and the philosophical significance of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and on knowing one is e.g., in pain from one's own case, is discussed. It is argued that with regard to the constitution of the self, language is anything but an afterthought.Less
This chapter talks about philosophical pictures of thinking. It details dualistic presuppositions and the metaphysically-motivated search for inner processes. Augustine's Confessions and their philosophical significance are discussed. The distinction between Augustine actually reflecting on his past versus the philosophical picture of Augustine introspecting/reflecting on his past is examined. Augustine in practice, being neither a proto-behaviourist nor a dualist, is talked about and the philosophical significance of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and on knowing one is e.g., in pain from one's own case, is discussed. It is argued that with regard to the constitution of the self, language is anything but an afterthought.
Patrick Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199587957
- eISBN:
- 9780191723292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587957.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In the context of a late twentieth‐century politics of race and gender—a politics often suspicious of the liberal ideal of equal dignity—what is the value of the realist novel? What kinds of moral ...
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In the context of a late twentieth‐century politics of race and gender—a politics often suspicious of the liberal ideal of equal dignity—what is the value of the realist novel? What kinds of moral and political thinking are bound up in the very form of this distinctively modern literary genre, and what claim should they have upon us today? This chapter shows that while Coetzee's Foe reflects on the origins of the form of the novel by way of its allusions to Defoe, its exploration of these more complex questions is indebted to Dostoevsky's seminal exploration of novelistic form in Crime and Punishment.Less
In the context of a late twentieth‐century politics of race and gender—a politics often suspicious of the liberal ideal of equal dignity—what is the value of the realist novel? What kinds of moral and political thinking are bound up in the very form of this distinctively modern literary genre, and what claim should they have upon us today? This chapter shows that while Coetzee's Foe reflects on the origins of the form of the novel by way of its allusions to Defoe, its exploration of these more complex questions is indebted to Dostoevsky's seminal exploration of novelistic form in Crime and Punishment.
Patrick Hayes
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199587957
- eISBN:
- 9780191723292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587957.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
What, if anything, guarantees that literature is serious? How, for instance, can we be sure that the representation of the erotic in a work of literature offers us more than the kinds of ...
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What, if anything, guarantees that literature is serious? How, for instance, can we be sure that the representation of the erotic in a work of literature offers us more than the kinds of objectification that characterize pornography? Or that the representation of politics offers us more than a work of propaganda? This chapter argues that in his portrait of the artist Coetzee refuses to accept any account of literary seriousness grounded in notions of aesthetic distance, privileged relation to the truth, or access to higher values, and that his interest lies instead in portraying the literary as an equivocal and even marginal kind of discourse that emerges only in an unsettling way from a deeply compromised position of weakness. It shows that Coetzee's thinking on this subject is informed by a profound exploration of Dostoevsky's late fiction—in particular The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov.Less
What, if anything, guarantees that literature is serious? How, for instance, can we be sure that the representation of the erotic in a work of literature offers us more than the kinds of objectification that characterize pornography? Or that the representation of politics offers us more than a work of propaganda? This chapter argues that in his portrait of the artist Coetzee refuses to accept any account of literary seriousness grounded in notions of aesthetic distance, privileged relation to the truth, or access to higher values, and that his interest lies instead in portraying the literary as an equivocal and even marginal kind of discourse that emerges only in an unsettling way from a deeply compromised position of weakness. It shows that Coetzee's thinking on this subject is informed by a profound exploration of Dostoevsky's late fiction—in particular The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov.
Tim Parks
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300215366
- eISBN:
- 9780300216738
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300215366.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The author of this book has long been fascinated by the complicated relationship between an author's life and work, and began exploring the underlying values and patterns that guide authors in both ...
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The author of this book has long been fascinated by the complicated relationship between an author's life and work, and began exploring the underlying values and patterns that guide authors in both their writing and their lives. In a series of provocative, incisive, and unflinching essays written over the past decade and collected for the first time here, this book reveals how style and content in a novel reflect a whole pattern of communication and positioning in the author's ordinary and daily behavior. We see how life and work are deeply enmeshed in the work of writers as diverse as Charles Dickens, Feodor Dostoevsky, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Philip Roth, Julian Barnes, Peter Stamm, and Geoff Dyer, among others. The book further shows us how readers' reactions to these writers and their works are inevitably connected to these communicative patterns, establishing a relationship that goes far beyond aesthetic appreciation. The book takes us into the psychology of some of our greatest writers and challenges us to see with more clarity how our lives become entangled with theirs through our reading of their novels.Less
The author of this book has long been fascinated by the complicated relationship between an author's life and work, and began exploring the underlying values and patterns that guide authors in both their writing and their lives. In a series of provocative, incisive, and unflinching essays written over the past decade and collected for the first time here, this book reveals how style and content in a novel reflect a whole pattern of communication and positioning in the author's ordinary and daily behavior. We see how life and work are deeply enmeshed in the work of writers as diverse as Charles Dickens, Feodor Dostoevsky, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Philip Roth, Julian Barnes, Peter Stamm, and Geoff Dyer, among others. The book further shows us how readers' reactions to these writers and their works are inevitably connected to these communicative patterns, establishing a relationship that goes far beyond aesthetic appreciation. The book takes us into the psychology of some of our greatest writers and challenges us to see with more clarity how our lives become entangled with theirs through our reading of their novels.
George Pattison
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199698677
- eISBN:
- 9780191745553
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698677.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Theology
This book looks at Kierkegaard with a fresh perspective shaped by the history of ideas, framed by the terms romanticism and modernism. ‘Modernism’ here refers to the kind of intellectual and literary ...
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This book looks at Kierkegaard with a fresh perspective shaped by the history of ideas, framed by the terms romanticism and modernism. ‘Modernism’ here refers to the kind of intellectual and literary modernism associated with Georg Brandes, and such later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures as J. P. Jacobsen, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Ibsen (all often associated with Kierkegaard in early secondary literature), and the young Georg Lukacs. This movement, currently attracting increasing scholarly attention, fed into such varied currents of twentieth-century thought as Bolshevism (as in Lukacs himself), fascism, and the early existentialism of, e.g., Shestov and the radical culture journal The Brenner (in which Kierkegaard featured regularly, and whose readers included Martin Heidegger). Each of these movements has, arguably, its own ‘Romantic’ aspect and Kierkegaard thus emerges as a figure who holds together or in whom are reflected both the aspirations and contradictions of early romanticism and its later nineteenth- and twentieth-century inheritors. Kierkegaard's specific ‘staging’ of his authorship in the contemporary life of Copenhagen, then undergoing a rapid transformation from being the backward capital of an absolutist monarchy to a modern, cosmopolitan city, provides a further focus for the volume. In this situation the early Romantic experience of nature as providing a source of healing and an experience of unambiguous life is transposed into a more complex and, ultimately, catastrophic register. In articulating these tensions, Kierkegaard's authorship provided a mirror to his age but also anticipated and influenced later generations who wrestled with their own versions of this situation.Less
This book looks at Kierkegaard with a fresh perspective shaped by the history of ideas, framed by the terms romanticism and modernism. ‘Modernism’ here refers to the kind of intellectual and literary modernism associated with Georg Brandes, and such later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures as J. P. Jacobsen, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Ibsen (all often associated with Kierkegaard in early secondary literature), and the young Georg Lukacs. This movement, currently attracting increasing scholarly attention, fed into such varied currents of twentieth-century thought as Bolshevism (as in Lukacs himself), fascism, and the early existentialism of, e.g., Shestov and the radical culture journal The Brenner (in which Kierkegaard featured regularly, and whose readers included Martin Heidegger). Each of these movements has, arguably, its own ‘Romantic’ aspect and Kierkegaard thus emerges as a figure who holds together or in whom are reflected both the aspirations and contradictions of early romanticism and its later nineteenth- and twentieth-century inheritors. Kierkegaard's specific ‘staging’ of his authorship in the contemporary life of Copenhagen, then undergoing a rapid transformation from being the backward capital of an absolutist monarchy to a modern, cosmopolitan city, provides a further focus for the volume. In this situation the early Romantic experience of nature as providing a source of healing and an experience of unambiguous life is transposed into a more complex and, ultimately, catastrophic register. In articulating these tensions, Kierkegaard's authorship provided a mirror to his age but also anticipated and influenced later generations who wrestled with their own versions of this situation.
Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184997
- eISBN:
- 9780191674426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184997.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
The first swerve offered by the term ‘heterobiography’ is a Derridean conception of ‘a text without edges’, a probing of the jurisdiction of frames and borderlines, where ‘the supposed end and ...
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The first swerve offered by the term ‘heterobiography’ is a Derridean conception of ‘a text without edges’, a probing of the jurisdiction of frames and borderlines, where ‘the supposed end and beginning of a work, the unity of a corpus, the title, the margins, the signatures, the referential realm outside the frame’ are no longer hermetically sealed off from each other. This chapter follows the isomorphic relationship spiralling across the edges of both text and subject: between Conrad's Under Western Eyes and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; between Razumov and Haldin; between the narrator of Under Western Eyes and Razumov; between Conrad the Modernist and Dostoevsky, his designated ‘other’ in the writing of the novel, who, according to Bakhtin, had made the first step towards that authorial abdication here.Less
The first swerve offered by the term ‘heterobiography’ is a Derridean conception of ‘a text without edges’, a probing of the jurisdiction of frames and borderlines, where ‘the supposed end and beginning of a work, the unity of a corpus, the title, the margins, the signatures, the referential realm outside the frame’ are no longer hermetically sealed off from each other. This chapter follows the isomorphic relationship spiralling across the edges of both text and subject: between Conrad's Under Western Eyes and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; between Razumov and Haldin; between the narrator of Under Western Eyes and Razumov; between Conrad the Modernist and Dostoevsky, his designated ‘other’ in the writing of the novel, who, according to Bakhtin, had made the first step towards that authorial abdication here.
Sharon Cameron
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226413907
- eISBN:
- 9780226414232
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226414232.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In Robert Bresson’s cinematography the linkage of fragmented, heterogeneous images challenges our assumption that we know what things are, or the infinite ways persons, animals, and material objects ...
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In Robert Bresson’s cinematography the linkage of fragmented, heterogeneous images challenges our assumption that we know what things are, or the infinite ways persons, animals, and material objects can be attuned or entangled. In Bresson’s films, an aesthetic principle thus becomes an ethical instrument to carve out an ontology in which the truth of categorical fixities is menaced. The Bond of the Furthest Apart argues that Bresson’s visionary rethinkings run parallel to suppositions about individuality, ontology, and the demystification of human privilege in the philosophical fiction of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Kafka. The bond of the book’s title refers to the counterpoint and antinomy within particular works and beneath the strains of these literary and cinematic works which are kindred in their revelation of things that lure us toward them in the absence of an orienting perspective that would make what is seen precisely recognizable.Less
In Robert Bresson’s cinematography the linkage of fragmented, heterogeneous images challenges our assumption that we know what things are, or the infinite ways persons, animals, and material objects can be attuned or entangled. In Bresson’s films, an aesthetic principle thus becomes an ethical instrument to carve out an ontology in which the truth of categorical fixities is menaced. The Bond of the Furthest Apart argues that Bresson’s visionary rethinkings run parallel to suppositions about individuality, ontology, and the demystification of human privilege in the philosophical fiction of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Kafka. The bond of the book’s title refers to the counterpoint and antinomy within particular works and beneath the strains of these literary and cinematic works which are kindred in their revelation of things that lure us toward them in the absence of an orienting perspective that would make what is seen precisely recognizable.
Galya Diment, Gerri Kimber, and W. Todd Martin (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474426138
- eISBN:
- 9781474438681
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474426138.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
It is hard to overestimate how huge the “Russian influence” was on both Mansfield’s craft as a short story writer and her life choices, including, even, whom she most trusted to treat her ...
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It is hard to overestimate how huge the “Russian influence” was on both Mansfield’s craft as a short story writer and her life choices, including, even, whom she most trusted to treat her tuberculosis. Growing up in New Zealand, young Mansfield began devouring Russian books in translation. The authors she read included Marie Bashkirtseff, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. After she moved to England, which at the time was undergoing its own passionate affair with all things Russian, Mansfield also discovered Russian art and Russian ballet. Later she became, with S. S. Koteliansky, a co-translator of Chekhov’s and Leonid Andreyev’s letters and autobiographical writings. And yet, other than Joanna Woods’ Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield (2001), there have not been any significant publications dealing with this extraordinary aspect of Mansfield’s evolution as an artist and a human being. This volume goes a long way to remedy that. It includes contributions by both English and Russian scholars and explores many aspects of Mansfield’s personal and artistic response to Russian literature, culture, philosophy, and art, as well as to the actual Russians she met in England and — towards the end of her life — in France.Less
It is hard to overestimate how huge the “Russian influence” was on both Mansfield’s craft as a short story writer and her life choices, including, even, whom she most trusted to treat her tuberculosis. Growing up in New Zealand, young Mansfield began devouring Russian books in translation. The authors she read included Marie Bashkirtseff, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. After she moved to England, which at the time was undergoing its own passionate affair with all things Russian, Mansfield also discovered Russian art and Russian ballet. Later she became, with S. S. Koteliansky, a co-translator of Chekhov’s and Leonid Andreyev’s letters and autobiographical writings. And yet, other than Joanna Woods’ Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield (2001), there have not been any significant publications dealing with this extraordinary aspect of Mansfield’s evolution as an artist and a human being. This volume goes a long way to remedy that. It includes contributions by both English and Russian scholars and explores many aspects of Mansfield’s personal and artistic response to Russian literature, culture, philosophy, and art, as well as to the actual Russians she met in England and — towards the end of her life — in France.
Arthur Versluis
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195306378
- eISBN:
- 9780199850914
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306378.003.0014
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter examines the thoughts of essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky and political philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev on the relation between communism and Roman Catholicism. In one of his major works, ...
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This chapter examines the thoughts of essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky and political philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev on the relation between communism and Roman Catholicism. In one of his major works, Dostoevsky have suggested that communism had its origin in some aspects of Roman Catholicism. Berdyaev acknowledged that Dostoevsky foresaw the demonic aspect of the Russian Revolution and the demonic metaphysics of revolution. However, Berdyaev believed that it is not so important whether communism has part of its origin in Catholicism and that what matters is the underlying dynamic of heretic-hunting itself. He asserted that the root of the Inquisition was fanaticism and suggested a parallelism with the emergence and growth of communism.Less
This chapter examines the thoughts of essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky and political philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev on the relation between communism and Roman Catholicism. In one of his major works, Dostoevsky have suggested that communism had its origin in some aspects of Roman Catholicism. Berdyaev acknowledged that Dostoevsky foresaw the demonic aspect of the Russian Revolution and the demonic metaphysics of revolution. However, Berdyaev believed that it is not so important whether communism has part of its origin in Catholicism and that what matters is the underlying dynamic of heretic-hunting itself. He asserted that the root of the Inquisition was fanaticism and suggested a parallelism with the emergence and growth of communism.
Nina L. Khrushcheva
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300108866
- eISBN:
- 9780300148244
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300108866.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter considers the reasons for our unwillingness to forgive Nabokov for his vanity and airs, when the opposite is true for the failings of Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. It argues ...
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This chapter considers the reasons for our unwillingness to forgive Nabokov for his vanity and airs, when the opposite is true for the failings of Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. It argues that it is unfair to deny Nabokov his true rank among the great simply because he was a truly modern writer, taking credit for his artistic miracles and mirages, putting no stock in heavenly blessings.Less
This chapter considers the reasons for our unwillingness to forgive Nabokov for his vanity and airs, when the opposite is true for the failings of Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. It argues that it is unfair to deny Nabokov his true rank among the great simply because he was a truly modern writer, taking credit for his artistic miracles and mirages, putting no stock in heavenly blessings.
Jason M. Wirth
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823268207
- eISBN:
- 9780823272471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823268207.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The final two chapters belong together and explore in genealogical detail the nature of a novelist’s authorial voice in relationship to the problem of History (the grand march of reason). These two ...
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The final two chapters belong together and explore in genealogical detail the nature of a novelist’s authorial voice in relationship to the problem of History (the grand march of reason). These two chapters do so by broadly taking up the question of imitation (μίμησις) or repetition in relationship to the universe of the novel. How does the novel take itself up again when it does not claim the power to represent itself to itself and when its compositional forms are subject to ongoing negotiation? The novel does not recognize itself because it both eschews representation (of its universe and of itself) and continues to experiment with its forms. Nonetheless it is possible to speak of a history of the novel, albeit a history that is a revenge on the grand march of self-representation that we call History. What is this elusive temporality that allows the novel to develop discernible lineages without ceasing to be a question to itself? How do we grasp the history of the novel, “which is not a mere succession of events but an intentional pursuit of values” (Art of the Novel, 154)? Given that this present study locates itself in the mobile border between the universe of philosophy and the universe of the novel, these two chapters address the problem at hand by examining the borderline persona of the idiot. This chapter begins with a consideration of Nietzsche and then traces this figure from Saint Paul via Cusanus, Descartes, and Ignatius of Loyola.Less
The final two chapters belong together and explore in genealogical detail the nature of a novelist’s authorial voice in relationship to the problem of History (the grand march of reason). These two chapters do so by broadly taking up the question of imitation (μίμησις) or repetition in relationship to the universe of the novel. How does the novel take itself up again when it does not claim the power to represent itself to itself and when its compositional forms are subject to ongoing negotiation? The novel does not recognize itself because it both eschews representation (of its universe and of itself) and continues to experiment with its forms. Nonetheless it is possible to speak of a history of the novel, albeit a history that is a revenge on the grand march of self-representation that we call History. What is this elusive temporality that allows the novel to develop discernible lineages without ceasing to be a question to itself? How do we grasp the history of the novel, “which is not a mere succession of events but an intentional pursuit of values” (Art of the Novel, 154)? Given that this present study locates itself in the mobile border between the universe of philosophy and the universe of the novel, these two chapters address the problem at hand by examining the borderline persona of the idiot. This chapter begins with a consideration of Nietzsche and then traces this figure from Saint Paul via Cusanus, Descartes, and Ignatius of Loyola.
Ilya Kliger
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823264858
- eISBN:
- 9780823266852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823264858.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter attempts a hermeneutics of the concept of “genre memory” in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. It argues that it may be fruitful to read Bakhtin’s early philosophical work, Author and Hero in ...
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This chapter attempts a hermeneutics of the concept of “genre memory” in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. It argues that it may be fruitful to read Bakhtin’s early philosophical work, Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity, as already in a sense a work in Historical Poetics. By tracing the evolution of Bakhtin’s thought from the early philosophical manuscript to the second edition of his book on Dostoevsky’s poetics and beyond, Kliger tries to show that the notions of “genre memory” and “great time” are a product of a decades-long quest for a viable redefinition of “tradition”—usually associated with the stable order of the premodern societies—for the modern age. The task of the chapter is to understand what it might mean to speak of the persistence of forms in modern literatures.Less
This chapter attempts a hermeneutics of the concept of “genre memory” in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. It argues that it may be fruitful to read Bakhtin’s early philosophical work, Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity, as already in a sense a work in Historical Poetics. By tracing the evolution of Bakhtin’s thought from the early philosophical manuscript to the second edition of his book on Dostoevsky’s poetics and beyond, Kliger tries to show that the notions of “genre memory” and “great time” are a product of a decades-long quest for a viable redefinition of “tradition”—usually associated with the stable order of the premodern societies—for the modern age. The task of the chapter is to understand what it might mean to speak of the persistence of forms in modern literatures.
Kate Holland
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823264858
- eISBN:
- 9780823266852
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823264858.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter locates Veselovsky’s and Dostoevsky’s contemporary work in the context of Alexander II’s “Great Reforms,” when the rupture dealt to Russian society by a series of radical government ...
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This chapter locates Veselovsky’s and Dostoevsky’s contemporary work in the context of Alexander II’s “Great Reforms,” when the rupture dealt to Russian society by a series of radical government initiatives became perceived as a threat. As Holland shows, both Veselovsky and Dostoevsky turned to the origins of the novel in the popular genres of storytelling, most of them linked to Christian (apocryphal) legendary lore. While both figures favored Byzantium as a center of propagation of popular lore, Veselovsky sought to foreground the cultural-historical ties that unite Eastern and Western traditions, whereas Dostoevsky, while making ample use of the publications of contemporary medievalists, pursued an exceptionalist, Slavophile agenda. The chapter illuminates a formative phase in the evolution of Veselovsky’s proto-dialogic theory of cultural and literary interaction and serves to historicize his Historical Poetics—and perhaps more broadly, the modern preoccupation with artistic traditions—as a response to the experience of cultural rupture.Less
This chapter locates Veselovsky’s and Dostoevsky’s contemporary work in the context of Alexander II’s “Great Reforms,” when the rupture dealt to Russian society by a series of radical government initiatives became perceived as a threat. As Holland shows, both Veselovsky and Dostoevsky turned to the origins of the novel in the popular genres of storytelling, most of them linked to Christian (apocryphal) legendary lore. While both figures favored Byzantium as a center of propagation of popular lore, Veselovsky sought to foreground the cultural-historical ties that unite Eastern and Western traditions, whereas Dostoevsky, while making ample use of the publications of contemporary medievalists, pursued an exceptionalist, Slavophile agenda. The chapter illuminates a formative phase in the evolution of Veselovsky’s proto-dialogic theory of cultural and literary interaction and serves to historicize his Historical Poetics—and perhaps more broadly, the modern preoccupation with artistic traditions—as a response to the experience of cultural rupture.
Paul Weithman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195393033
- eISBN:
- 9780199894901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195393033.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter begins an overview of the interpretation of Rawls that is defended throughout the book. It argues that Rawls must be taken at his word when he says that he recast his view as a political ...
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This chapter begins an overview of the interpretation of Rawls that is defended throughout the book. It argues that Rawls must be taken at his word when he says that he recast his view as a political liberalism to remedy an inconsistency he found in the account of stability presented in Theory of Justice. The chapter distinguishes several kinds of stability and identifies the one with which Rawls was most concerned. It also identifies the threat to stability that was of greatest concern to him – the generalized prisoner's dilemma – and gives a preliminary indication of how he hoped to avert that threat in Theory of Justice.Less
This chapter begins an overview of the interpretation of Rawls that is defended throughout the book. It argues that Rawls must be taken at his word when he says that he recast his view as a political liberalism to remedy an inconsistency he found in the account of stability presented in Theory of Justice. The chapter distinguishes several kinds of stability and identifies the one with which Rawls was most concerned. It also identifies the threat to stability that was of greatest concern to him – the generalized prisoner's dilemma – and gives a preliminary indication of how he hoped to avert that threat in Theory of Justice.
Paul Weithman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195393033
- eISBN:
- 9780199894901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195393033.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter says what would have to be shown about other versions of political liberalism to establish that their superiority to Rawls's version. It defends political liberalism against the most ...
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This chapter says what would have to be shown about other versions of political liberalism to establish that their superiority to Rawls's version. It defends political liberalism against the most common objections raised against it. It considers and argues against attempts to locate the foundation of political liberalism in political legitimacy or in a right to equal concern and respect. Finally, it vindicates the suggestion—made in the Introduction—that Rawls's work can be read as an exercise in naturalistic theodicy.Less
This chapter says what would have to be shown about other versions of political liberalism to establish that their superiority to Rawls's version. It defends political liberalism against the most common objections raised against it. It considers and argues against attempts to locate the foundation of political liberalism in political legitimacy or in a right to equal concern and respect. Finally, it vindicates the suggestion—made in the Introduction—that Rawls's work can be read as an exercise in naturalistic theodicy.
Joseph Frank
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823239252
- eISBN:
- 9780823239290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823239252.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Yves Bonnefoy knew the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky perfectly and called him, in a lecture of 1979, the greatest of novelists, but there are also good historical grounds for asserting that, besides ...
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Yves Bonnefoy knew the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky perfectly and called him, in a lecture of 1979, the greatest of novelists, but there are also good historical grounds for asserting that, besides Dostoevsky, other aspects of early twentieth-century Russian culture provided an essential element his formation. One was Boris de Schloezer, who played a significant role in France's cultural and particularly musical life as critic en titre for the Nouvelle revue française until his death in 1969. Among Bonnefoy's translations were several works of the émigré Russian philosopher Lev Chestov, including Le Pouvoir des clefs, which played an important role in his own literary and spiritual development. Bonnefoy's own elucidation of the essential creative intuition from which his poetry springs bears an uncanny resemblance to William Wordsworth's description of those “spots of time” that furnished him, Wordsworth, with poetic inspiration.Less
Yves Bonnefoy knew the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky perfectly and called him, in a lecture of 1979, the greatest of novelists, but there are also good historical grounds for asserting that, besides Dostoevsky, other aspects of early twentieth-century Russian culture provided an essential element his formation. One was Boris de Schloezer, who played a significant role in France's cultural and particularly musical life as critic en titre for the Nouvelle revue française until his death in 1969. Among Bonnefoy's translations were several works of the émigré Russian philosopher Lev Chestov, including Le Pouvoir des clefs, which played an important role in his own literary and spiritual development. Bonnefoy's own elucidation of the essential creative intuition from which his poetry springs bears an uncanny resemblance to William Wordsworth's description of those “spots of time” that furnished him, Wordsworth, with poetic inspiration.
Joseph Frank
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823239252
- eISBN:
- 9780823239290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823239252.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Gary Saul Morson is best known as the co-author, with Caryl Emerson, of Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, which is unquestionably the most complete, well-rounded, and judicious analysis in ...
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Gary Saul Morson is best known as the co-author, with Caryl Emerson, of Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, which is unquestionably the most complete, well-rounded, and judicious analysis in English of the works of Mikhail Bakhtin. His first book, devoted to Fyodor Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer, treats much less the contents of that unique work than the dialectic Morson discerns in it between Utopia and irony. In Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (1994), he raises the question—and answers it in strikingly innovative ways—of how a world of human beings exercising freedom and ignorant of the future can be depicted in a work of literature whose structure is necessarily limited and closed by the sovereign will of its author. Morson begins with some reflections on the nature of time, and outlines various types of predetermination: eternal recurrence; the presumed foreshadowing of the New Testament by the Old; and the assumptions of Marxists that history's laws have been writ plain for them to read in their own sacred texts.Less
Gary Saul Morson is best known as the co-author, with Caryl Emerson, of Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, which is unquestionably the most complete, well-rounded, and judicious analysis in English of the works of Mikhail Bakhtin. His first book, devoted to Fyodor Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer, treats much less the contents of that unique work than the dialectic Morson discerns in it between Utopia and irony. In Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (1994), he raises the question—and answers it in strikingly innovative ways—of how a world of human beings exercising freedom and ignorant of the future can be depicted in a work of literature whose structure is necessarily limited and closed by the sovereign will of its author. Morson begins with some reflections on the nature of time, and outlines various types of predetermination: eternal recurrence; the presumed foreshadowing of the New Testament by the Old; and the assumptions of Marxists that history's laws have been writ plain for them to read in their own sacred texts.
Frederick Nolan
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195102895
- eISBN:
- 9780199853212
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195102895.003.0023
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Early in 1932, Samuel Goldwyn, with ten years of independent production now behind him, decided to produce a movie of The Brothers Karamazov based on the book by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He came to this ...
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Early in 1932, Samuel Goldwyn, with ten years of independent production now behind him, decided to produce a movie of The Brothers Karamazov based on the book by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He came to this decision after seeing the photograph of an actress named Anna Sten in an advertisement for a German film based on the book, Der Morder Dimitri Karamazov, then playing in New York. She was reported to be twenty-four years of age, a former student of Stanislavsky, briefly married to Soviet cinernatographer Anatoli Golovnia, and a protegee of director Fyodor Ozep, who had shortened her name and directed her in the film. Goldwyn had a copy of the film rushed out to him in Hollywood and watched it over and over, totally smitten. He immediately dispatched his (and much later Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's) publicity chief Lynn Farnol to Europe to sign her, determined she would now star in a Goldwyn version of the Dostoevsky novel.Less
Early in 1932, Samuel Goldwyn, with ten years of independent production now behind him, decided to produce a movie of The Brothers Karamazov based on the book by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He came to this decision after seeing the photograph of an actress named Anna Sten in an advertisement for a German film based on the book, Der Morder Dimitri Karamazov, then playing in New York. She was reported to be twenty-four years of age, a former student of Stanislavsky, briefly married to Soviet cinernatographer Anatoli Golovnia, and a protegee of director Fyodor Ozep, who had shortened her name and directed her in the film. Goldwyn had a copy of the film rushed out to him in Hollywood and watched it over and over, totally smitten. He immediately dispatched his (and much later Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's) publicity chief Lynn Farnol to Europe to sign her, determined she would now star in a Goldwyn version of the Dostoevsky novel.
George M. Young
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199892945
- eISBN:
- 9780199950577
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892945.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The chapter begins with a brief summary of Fedorov’s thought, then focuses on Fedorov’s biography, including information not previously presented in English. Topics include the significance of his ...
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The chapter begins with a brief summary of Fedorov’s thought, then focuses on Fedorov’s biography, including information not previously presented in English. Topics include the significance of his illegitimate birth and childhood in the Gagarin household, his education and role as a teacher in rural Russia, his work as a Moscow librarian at the Rumiantsev Museum, his eccentric, ascetic manner of life, his previously unsuspected love for a young woman, his influence on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and the presentation and reception of his work in Askhabad.Less
The chapter begins with a brief summary of Fedorov’s thought, then focuses on Fedorov’s biography, including information not previously presented in English. Topics include the significance of his illegitimate birth and childhood in the Gagarin household, his education and role as a teacher in rural Russia, his work as a Moscow librarian at the Rumiantsev Museum, his eccentric, ascetic manner of life, his previously unsuspected love for a young woman, his influence on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and the presentation and reception of his work in Askhabad.
