Chris Jones
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199278329
- eISBN:
- 9780191707889
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278329.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book provides the first full account of how major 20th-century poets studied, appropriated, and redeployed Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) poetry in their own work. The book concentrates on the ...
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This book provides the first full account of how major 20th-century poets studied, appropriated, and redeployed Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) poetry in their own work. The book concentrates on the stylistic debts that Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney owe to the language and prosody of Old English poetry — and to the prevailing scholarly attitudes towards Old English, which they encountered at university. Both Edwin Morgan, Scotland's First Makar, and Nobel-laureate Seamus Heaney continue to write under the influence of Old English forms, as their latest books bear witness. This book provides the first full account of how Heaney's translation of Beowulf relates to the rest of his oeuvre, and embeds Morgan's work within a wider tradition of Scots who translate and appropriate Old English. The book pays particular attention to ideas of linguistic primitivism, notions of ‘purity’ of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of ‘Englishness’ across a millennium of literary history. The book argues that for 20th-century poets, Old English simultaneously represents a possible origin for the English poetic tradition, and also a site of estrangement. It is this double nature of the material, of Old English as both ‘native’ and ‘other’, that makes it so attractive to a variety of important poets. The book argues that the 20th-century encounter with Old English constitutes ‘an enormous transfer of poetic energy’, one that has a marked and lasting effect on the evolution of poetry in English.Less
This book provides the first full account of how major 20th-century poets studied, appropriated, and redeployed Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) poetry in their own work. The book concentrates on the stylistic debts that Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney owe to the language and prosody of Old English poetry — and to the prevailing scholarly attitudes towards Old English, which they encountered at university. Both Edwin Morgan, Scotland's First Makar, and Nobel-laureate Seamus Heaney continue to write under the influence of Old English forms, as their latest books bear witness. This book provides the first full account of how Heaney's translation of Beowulf relates to the rest of his oeuvre, and embeds Morgan's work within a wider tradition of Scots who translate and appropriate Old English. The book pays particular attention to ideas of linguistic primitivism, notions of ‘purity’ of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of ‘Englishness’ across a millennium of literary history. The book argues that for 20th-century poets, Old English simultaneously represents a possible origin for the English poetic tradition, and also a site of estrangement. It is this double nature of the material, of Old English as both ‘native’ and ‘other’, that makes it so attractive to a variety of important poets. The book argues that the 20th-century encounter with Old English constitutes ‘an enormous transfer of poetic energy’, one that has a marked and lasting effect on the evolution of poetry in English.
Robyn Creswell
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691182186
- eISBN:
- 9780691185149
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691182186.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during the 1950s and became the most influential and controversial Arabic literary development of the ...
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This book is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during the 1950s and became the most influential and controversial Arabic literary development of the twentieth century. The book introduces English-language readers to a poetic movement that will be uncannily familiar—and unsettlingly strange. It provides an intellectual history of Lebanon during the early Cold War, when Beirut became both a battleground for rival ideologies and the most vital artistic site in the Middle East. Arabic modernism was centered on the legendary magazine Shi'r (“Poetry”), which sought to put Arabic verse on “the map of world literature.” The Beiruti poets—Adonis, Yusuf al-Khal, and Unsi al-Hajj chief among them—translated modernism into Arabic, redefining the very idea of poetry in that literary tradition. This book includes analyses of the Arab modernists' creative encounters with Ezra Pound, Saint-John Perse, and Antonin Artaud, as well as their adaptations of classical literary forms. The book also reveals how the modernists translated concepts of liberal individualism, autonomy, and political freedom into a radical poetics that has shaped Arabic literary and intellectual debate to this day.Less
This book is an exploration of modernism in Arabic poetry, a movement that emerged in Beirut during the 1950s and became the most influential and controversial Arabic literary development of the twentieth century. The book introduces English-language readers to a poetic movement that will be uncannily familiar—and unsettlingly strange. It provides an intellectual history of Lebanon during the early Cold War, when Beirut became both a battleground for rival ideologies and the most vital artistic site in the Middle East. Arabic modernism was centered on the legendary magazine Shi'r (“Poetry”), which sought to put Arabic verse on “the map of world literature.” The Beiruti poets—Adonis, Yusuf al-Khal, and Unsi al-Hajj chief among them—translated modernism into Arabic, redefining the very idea of poetry in that literary tradition. This book includes analyses of the Arab modernists' creative encounters with Ezra Pound, Saint-John Perse, and Antonin Artaud, as well as their adaptations of classical literary forms. The book also reveals how the modernists translated concepts of liberal individualism, autonomy, and political freedom into a radical poetics that has shaped Arabic literary and intellectual debate to this day.
Stuart Weeks
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199291540
- eISBN:
- 9780191710537
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199291540.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
‘Foreign woman’ would have been a familiar term in the post-exilic Jewish context, evoking ideas of corruption and apostasy central both to a recent controversy (described in Ezra and Nehemiah), and ...
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‘Foreign woman’ would have been a familiar term in the post-exilic Jewish context, evoking ideas of corruption and apostasy central both to a recent controversy (described in Ezra and Nehemiah), and to the longstanding Deuteronomic/ Deuteronomistic theme that probably provoked the controversy. The presentation of this character in Proverbs 1-9 is consistent with an origin in such earlier ideas, and the motif of corruption is also linked with path imagery in other literature. There, we find associations between deviation from a path and apostasy, along with other detailed correspondences to the figure in Proverbs 1-9. It is difficult to ignore such materials when considering the origins of the characterizations and images in our work.Less
‘Foreign woman’ would have been a familiar term in the post-exilic Jewish context, evoking ideas of corruption and apostasy central both to a recent controversy (described in Ezra and Nehemiah), and to the longstanding Deuteronomic/ Deuteronomistic theme that probably provoked the controversy. The presentation of this character in Proverbs 1-9 is consistent with an origin in such earlier ideas, and the motif of corruption is also linked with path imagery in other literature. There, we find associations between deviation from a path and apostasy, along with other detailed correspondences to the figure in Proverbs 1-9. It is difficult to ignore such materials when considering the origins of the characterizations and images in our work.
Deborah W. Rooke
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198269984
- eISBN:
- 9780191600722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198269986.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Examines the books of Ezra and Nehemiah for evidence of how the high priesthood might have developed between the late sixth century and the mid‐fifth century. In both books the high priest appears ...
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Examines the books of Ezra and Nehemiah for evidence of how the high priesthood might have developed between the late sixth century and the mid‐fifth century. In both books the high priest appears only in contexts connected with the Temple, and, as Persian envoys to Judah, both Ezra and Nehemiah are able to undertake their missions without reference to the high priest as an indigenous authority figure. The implication is therefore that the high priest's power remained limited to the sphere of the Temple, and that all other matters of provincial administration were dealt with by a Persian‐appointed governor.Less
Examines the books of Ezra and Nehemiah for evidence of how the high priesthood might have developed between the late sixth century and the mid‐fifth century. In both books the high priest appears only in contexts connected with the Temple, and, as Persian envoys to Judah, both Ezra and Nehemiah are able to undertake their missions without reference to the high priest as an indigenous authority figure. The implication is therefore that the high priest's power remained limited to the sphere of the Temple, and that all other matters of provincial administration were dealt with by a Persian‐appointed governor.
Jason Stacy
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780252043833
- eISBN:
- 9780252052736
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043833.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Edgar Lee Masters’s best-selling Spoon River Anthology (1915) captured a regional conception of Midwestern rural life, packaged it in verse by fictional dead people, and disseminated it so widely ...
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Edgar Lee Masters’s best-selling Spoon River Anthology (1915) captured a regional conception of Midwestern rural life, packaged it in verse by fictional dead people, and disseminated it so widely that the book helped shift the popular conception of the representative American municipality from the New England village to the Midwestern small town. Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town explores the atmosphere into which Masters’s book was born and the environments in which it thrived, even beyond the life and legacy of its author. Masters’s book aroused interest among modernists like Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and Carl Van Doren and popular writers like William Allen White. Its legacy resonated in popular culture through films like It’s a Wonderful Life and Rebel without a Cause, amusement parks like Disneyland, and The Rolling Stones’ album Exile on Main Street. One hundred years after its publication, signs of Spoon River could still be found in films like Fargo; Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri; television series like Twin Peaks, Stranger Things, and Ozark; and the radio program A Prairie Home Companion. While this book uncovers the milieu in which Spoon River Anthology was created, it also traces the ways in which Americans embraced, debated, and transformed Masters’s portrayal of Spoon River and made it part of the mythology of small-town life in the United States.Less
Edgar Lee Masters’s best-selling Spoon River Anthology (1915) captured a regional conception of Midwestern rural life, packaged it in verse by fictional dead people, and disseminated it so widely that the book helped shift the popular conception of the representative American municipality from the New England village to the Midwestern small town. Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town explores the atmosphere into which Masters’s book was born and the environments in which it thrived, even beyond the life and legacy of its author. Masters’s book aroused interest among modernists like Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, and Carl Van Doren and popular writers like William Allen White. Its legacy resonated in popular culture through films like It’s a Wonderful Life and Rebel without a Cause, amusement parks like Disneyland, and The Rolling Stones’ album Exile on Main Street. One hundred years after its publication, signs of Spoon River could still be found in films like Fargo; Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri; television series like Twin Peaks, Stranger Things, and Ozark; and the radio program A Prairie Home Companion. While this book uncovers the milieu in which Spoon River Anthology was created, it also traces the ways in which Americans embraced, debated, and transformed Masters’s portrayal of Spoon River and made it part of the mythology of small-town life in the United States.
Raymond P. Scheindlin
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195315424
- eISBN:
- 9780199872039
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195315424.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Geniza letters and Halevi’s panegyric poems describe his arrival, together with Isaac Ibn Ezra and another companion, in Alexandria; his activities there; the many people who wanted to host him; and ...
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Geniza letters and Halevi’s panegyric poems describe his arrival, together with Isaac Ibn Ezra and another companion, in Alexandria; his activities there; the many people who wanted to host him; and his desire for ascetic solitude. Outstanding characters are Aaron ibn al-’Ammānī, a judge of the Jewish court, Halevi’s main Alexandrian host; and Ḥalfon Halevi, a businessman in Fustat/Cairo with whom Halevi had been in contact while still in al-Andalus. Samuel ben Ḥanania, the head of the Jewish community of the Fatimid Empire, invites Halevi to Cairo; Halevi’s formal epistle to him displays the royal deference accorded to Samuel’s rank. Geniza letters tell of Ḥalfon’s trip to Alexandria in late 1140 in order to bring Halevi home with him to Fustat.Less
Geniza letters and Halevi’s panegyric poems describe his arrival, together with Isaac Ibn Ezra and another companion, in Alexandria; his activities there; the many people who wanted to host him; and his desire for ascetic solitude. Outstanding characters are Aaron ibn al-’Ammānī, a judge of the Jewish court, Halevi’s main Alexandrian host; and Ḥalfon Halevi, a businessman in Fustat/Cairo with whom Halevi had been in contact while still in al-Andalus. Samuel ben Ḥanania, the head of the Jewish community of the Fatimid Empire, invites Halevi to Cairo; Halevi’s formal epistle to him displays the royal deference accorded to Samuel’s rank. Geniza letters tell of Ḥalfon’s trip to Alexandria in late 1140 in order to bring Halevi home with him to Fustat.
Raymond P. Scheindlin
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195315424
- eISBN:
- 9780199872039
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195315424.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Back in Alexandria, Halevi was accused before the Islamic court of withholding money entrusted to him on behalf of a Jewish apostate in order to coerce the apostate to return to Judaism; Halevi ...
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Back in Alexandria, Halevi was accused before the Islamic court of withholding money entrusted to him on behalf of a Jewish apostate in order to coerce the apostate to return to Judaism; Halevi escaped punishment thanks to legal maneuvering and powerful friends. Soon thereafter he embarked, but had to wait on board six days before the winds permitted him to sail. A letter from al-Andalus arrived, notifying Halevi that another member of the Ibn Ezra family had decided to travel east; Halevi deposited a valuable piece of cloth with a friend to be held for this relative’s arrival. Halevi’s ship sailed on May 14, 1141; letters written later that year permit the inference that he reached Palestine and died shortly thereafter.Less
Back in Alexandria, Halevi was accused before the Islamic court of withholding money entrusted to him on behalf of a Jewish apostate in order to coerce the apostate to return to Judaism; Halevi escaped punishment thanks to legal maneuvering and powerful friends. Soon thereafter he embarked, but had to wait on board six days before the winds permitted him to sail. A letter from al-Andalus arrived, notifying Halevi that another member of the Ibn Ezra family had decided to travel east; Halevi deposited a valuable piece of cloth with a friend to be held for this relative’s arrival. Halevi’s ship sailed on May 14, 1141; letters written later that year permit the inference that he reached Palestine and died shortly thereafter.
Mary Douglas
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780199265237
- eISBN:
- 9780191602054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199265232.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The central argument of this chapter is that is that the priestly editors of Leviticus and Numbers (writing primarily for the guidance of fellow priests) were compiling the law of Moses to confound ...
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The central argument of this chapter is that is that the priestly editors of Leviticus and Numbers (writing primarily for the guidance of fellow priests) were compiling the law of Moses to confound government opponents – specifically, the exclusionary and separatist policies of Ezra, who, supported by the returnees from exile, defined ‘All Israel’ as Judah. However, since their opinions were dangerous both for themselves and for the faithful, they wrapped their offerings in elegant literary conventions. They also had only a limited objective: they were not trying to cover all aspects of religious law, but to offer simple and direct teaching about confession and reconciliation, being obliged to omit sensitive matters such as marriage, or matters that did not relate specifically to the agenda concerned. In addition, they aimed to emasculate the concept of impurity as support for exclusionary policies. The different sections of the chapter address: the exclusionist debate; the tensions resulting from the homecoming of exiles; Ezra's myth of Israel, concept of foreigners, and use of the law of Moses as justification for his separatist claims; the variance of the laws of purity expounded in Leviticus and Numbers to those in other antique religions, where impurity has an important social function; the social context of marriage to ‘foreign’ wives by returning the exiles, and Ezra's edict forbidding such marriages; and the subversive position of the priestly editors and their consequent responses, including an insistence of protected status for the foreigner.Less
The central argument of this chapter is that is that the priestly editors of Leviticus and Numbers (writing primarily for the guidance of fellow priests) were compiling the law of Moses to confound government opponents – specifically, the exclusionary and separatist policies of Ezra, who, supported by the returnees from exile, defined ‘All Israel’ as Judah. However, since their opinions were dangerous both for themselves and for the faithful, they wrapped their offerings in elegant literary conventions. They also had only a limited objective: they were not trying to cover all aspects of religious law, but to offer simple and direct teaching about confession and reconciliation, being obliged to omit sensitive matters such as marriage, or matters that did not relate specifically to the agenda concerned. In addition, they aimed to emasculate the concept of impurity as support for exclusionary policies. The different sections of the chapter address: the exclusionist debate; the tensions resulting from the homecoming of exiles; Ezra's myth of Israel, concept of foreigners, and use of the law of Moses as justification for his separatist claims; the variance of the laws of purity expounded in Leviticus and Numbers to those in other antique religions, where impurity has an important social function; the social context of marriage to ‘foreign’ wives by returning the exiles, and Ezra's edict forbidding such marriages; and the subversive position of the priestly editors and their consequent responses, including an insistence of protected status for the foreigner.
Josephine Nock-Hee Park
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195332735
- eISBN:
- 9780199868148
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332735.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, American, 20th Century Literature
This book traces an American literary history of transpacific alliances which spans the 20th century. Increasing material and economic ties between the U.S. and East Asia at the end of the 19th ...
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This book traces an American literary history of transpacific alliances which spans the 20th century. Increasing material and economic ties between the U.S. and East Asia at the end of the 19th century facilitated an imagined spiritual and aesthetic accord that bridged the Pacific, and this study reads the expression and repercussions of these links in American Orientalist and Asian American poetry. After considering both the transcendence and constraints of a structure of alliance between East and West in the introductory chapter, the first half of the study examines two key American instigators of Orientalist poetics, Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder, who imagined an identity between Eastern philosophy and idealized notions of America. Their literary alliances imposed a singular burden on Asian American poets, and the second half of the study considers a range of formal negotiations with this legacy in the poetry of Lawson Fusao Inada, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Myung Mi Kim. In examining avant‐garde Asian American poetry against an American Orientalist past, this book reads the intersection of modernist and minority poetics.Less
This book traces an American literary history of transpacific alliances which spans the 20th century. Increasing material and economic ties between the U.S. and East Asia at the end of the 19th century facilitated an imagined spiritual and aesthetic accord that bridged the Pacific, and this study reads the expression and repercussions of these links in American Orientalist and Asian American poetry. After considering both the transcendence and constraints of a structure of alliance between East and West in the introductory chapter, the first half of the study examines two key American instigators of Orientalist poetics, Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder, who imagined an identity between Eastern philosophy and idealized notions of America. Their literary alliances imposed a singular burden on Asian American poets, and the second half of the study considers a range of formal negotiations with this legacy in the poetry of Lawson Fusao Inada, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Myung Mi Kim. In examining avant‐garde Asian American poetry against an American Orientalist past, this book reads the intersection of modernist and minority poetics.
Naomi Koltun-Fromm
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199736485
- eISBN:
- 9780199866427
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199736485.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies, Religion and Society
This chapter focuses on those Second Temple authors who continue to develop notions of community holiness that are tied to sexual behavior. These trajectories continue along the lines of ascribed, ...
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This chapter focuses on those Second Temple authors who continue to develop notions of community holiness that are tied to sexual behavior. These trajectories continue along the lines of ascribed, achieved, and supererogatory holiness (or in this case purity) discussed in the first chapter. Those who assume Israel’s ascribed, God-given holiness (Ezra, Jubilees, Tobit, 4QMMT), focus on endogamy as the only means to protect their community holiness, which would be profaned through intermarriage. Some of the sectarian authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls focus their attention on holiness achieved (Community Rule, Damascus Document, Messianic Rule)—that is, how they redefine the boundaries of Holy Israel—through their idiosyncratic biblical interpretive traditions. Other Dead Sea Scrolls (War Scroll, Temple Scroll) assume neither an ascribed nor an achieved holiness for Israel, but rather focus on those activities that protect God’s holy presence in their midst.Less
This chapter focuses on those Second Temple authors who continue to develop notions of community holiness that are tied to sexual behavior. These trajectories continue along the lines of ascribed, achieved, and supererogatory holiness (or in this case purity) discussed in the first chapter. Those who assume Israel’s ascribed, God-given holiness (Ezra, Jubilees, Tobit, 4QMMT), focus on endogamy as the only means to protect their community holiness, which would be profaned through intermarriage. Some of the sectarian authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls focus their attention on holiness achieved (Community Rule, Damascus Document, Messianic Rule)—that is, how they redefine the boundaries of Holy Israel—through their idiosyncratic biblical interpretive traditions. Other Dead Sea Scrolls (War Scroll, Temple Scroll) assume neither an ascribed nor an achieved holiness for Israel, but rather focus on those activities that protect God’s holy presence in their midst.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in ...
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This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in Seven Men. The critical tradition has been excessively preoccupied with trying to identify the speakers and ‘originals’ of each section of Mauberley. It argues that, seen in relation to the growing interest in portrait collections, composite portraiture, the disturbances in auto/biography, and imaginary art‐works, this poem sequence can be read as a parody of the forms of literary memoir, through which Pound also explores autobiography.Less
This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in Seven Men. The critical tradition has been excessively preoccupied with trying to identify the speakers and ‘originals’ of each section of Mauberley. It argues that, seen in relation to the growing interest in portrait collections, composite portraiture, the disturbances in auto/biography, and imaginary art‐works, this poem sequence can be read as a parody of the forms of literary memoir, through which Pound also explores autobiography.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter asks whether the kind of reading offered in the previous chapter disarms the possibility of modernist satire, deflecting our attention from criticism to autobiography. It discusses two ...
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This chapter asks whether the kind of reading offered in the previous chapter disarms the possibility of modernist satire, deflecting our attention from criticism to autobiography. It discusses two less equivocally satirical modernists by way of counter‐arguments to this objection. Wyndham Lewis's Time and Western Man contains some of the most forceful modernist attacks on the auto/biographic; yet Lewis offers the book as itself a kind of intellectual self‐portrait. Conversely, Richard Aldington's Soft Answers is read as a portrait‐collection, adopting modernist parodies of auto/biography in order to satirize modernists such as Eliot and Pound. It argues that (as in the case of Pound, and according to the argument introduced in the Preface) not only can satire be auto/biography, but auto/biography can also be satire. Indeed, Pound was shown in Chapter 9 to be writing both in verse; and in the Chapter 11 Woolf is shown to do both in prose. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the First World War transformed the crisis in life ‐ writing.Less
This chapter asks whether the kind of reading offered in the previous chapter disarms the possibility of modernist satire, deflecting our attention from criticism to autobiography. It discusses two less equivocally satirical modernists by way of counter‐arguments to this objection. Wyndham Lewis's Time and Western Man contains some of the most forceful modernist attacks on the auto/biographic; yet Lewis offers the book as itself a kind of intellectual self‐portrait. Conversely, Richard Aldington's Soft Answers is read as a portrait‐collection, adopting modernist parodies of auto/biography in order to satirize modernists such as Eliot and Pound. It argues that (as in the case of Pound, and according to the argument introduced in the Preface) not only can satire be auto/biography, but auto/biography can also be satire. Indeed, Pound was shown in Chapter 9 to be writing both in verse; and in the Chapter 11 Woolf is shown to do both in prose. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the First World War transformed the crisis in life ‐ writing.
Daniel Katz
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625260
- eISBN:
- 9780748652006
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625260.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This study takes as its point of departure an essential premise: that the widespread phenomenon of expatriation in American modernism is less a flight from the homeland than a dialectical return to ...
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This study takes as its point of departure an essential premise: that the widespread phenomenon of expatriation in American modernism is less a flight from the homeland than a dialectical return to it, but one which renders uncanny all tropes of familiarity and immediacy that ‘fatherlands’ and ‘mother tongues’ are traditionally seen as providing. In this framework, similarly totalising notions of cultural authenticity are seen to govern both exoticist mystification and ‘nativist’ obsessions with the purity of the ‘mother tongue.’ At the same time, cosmopolitanism, translation and multilingualism become often eroticised tropes of violation of this model, and in consequence, simultaneously courted and abhorred, in a movement which, if crystallised in expatriate modernism, continued to make its presence felt beyond. Beginning with the late work of Henry James, this book goes on to examine at length Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, to conclude with the uncanny regionalism of mid-century San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer, and the deterritorialised aesthetic of his peer, John Ashbery. Through an emphasis on modernism as a space of generalized interference, the practice and trope of translation emerges as central to all of the writers concerned, while the book remains in constant dialogue with key recent works on transnationalism, transatlanticism and modernism.Less
This study takes as its point of departure an essential premise: that the widespread phenomenon of expatriation in American modernism is less a flight from the homeland than a dialectical return to it, but one which renders uncanny all tropes of familiarity and immediacy that ‘fatherlands’ and ‘mother tongues’ are traditionally seen as providing. In this framework, similarly totalising notions of cultural authenticity are seen to govern both exoticist mystification and ‘nativist’ obsessions with the purity of the ‘mother tongue.’ At the same time, cosmopolitanism, translation and multilingualism become often eroticised tropes of violation of this model, and in consequence, simultaneously courted and abhorred, in a movement which, if crystallised in expatriate modernism, continued to make its presence felt beyond. Beginning with the late work of Henry James, this book goes on to examine at length Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, to conclude with the uncanny regionalism of mid-century San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer, and the deterritorialised aesthetic of his peer, John Ashbery. Through an emphasis on modernism as a space of generalized interference, the practice and trope of translation emerges as central to all of the writers concerned, while the book remains in constant dialogue with key recent works on transnationalism, transatlanticism and modernism.
Meredith Martin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691152738
- eISBN:
- 9781400842193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691152738.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter turns once more to Robert Bridges, whose death in 1930 marks the end of the book. He did not believe that English meter could be adequately represented by only one system, nor did he ...
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This chapter turns once more to Robert Bridges, whose death in 1930 marks the end of the book. He did not believe that English meter could be adequately represented by only one system, nor did he believe that the four systems he mastered exhausted its possibilities. He struggled with the pedagogic necessities of his time, founding the Society for Pure English, participating as poet laureate in the national metrical project during the First World War by writing for the war office, and editing the popular anthology of verse, The Spirit of Man. His late career poem “Poor Poll” engages with the modernist polyglossia and the rise of free verse by presenting an English prosody accessible to both high and popular audiences. It was Pound's eventual dismissal of Bridges that guaranteed his obsolescence. Pound's changing reactions to Bridges over the course of Pound's career betray an anxiety about meter's role in poetic mastery, as well as an attempt to control the narrative of English meter.Less
This chapter turns once more to Robert Bridges, whose death in 1930 marks the end of the book. He did not believe that English meter could be adequately represented by only one system, nor did he believe that the four systems he mastered exhausted its possibilities. He struggled with the pedagogic necessities of his time, founding the Society for Pure English, participating as poet laureate in the national metrical project during the First World War by writing for the war office, and editing the popular anthology of verse, The Spirit of Man. His late career poem “Poor Poll” engages with the modernist polyglossia and the rise of free verse by presenting an English prosody accessible to both high and popular audiences. It was Pound's eventual dismissal of Bridges that guaranteed his obsolescence. Pound's changing reactions to Bridges over the course of Pound's career betray an anxiety about meter's role in poetic mastery, as well as an attempt to control the narrative of English meter.
Sara Haslam
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719060557
- eISBN:
- 9781781700099
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719060557.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book is about Ford Madox Ford, a hero of the modernist literary revolution. Ford is a fascinating and fundamental figure of the time; not only because, as a friend and critic of Ezra Pound and ...
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This book is about Ford Madox Ford, a hero of the modernist literary revolution. Ford is a fascinating and fundamental figure of the time; not only because, as a friend and critic of Ezra Pound and Joseph Conrad, editor of the English Review and author of The Good Soldier, he shaped the development of literary modernism. But, as the grandson of Ford Madox Brown and son of a German music critic, he also manifested formative links with mainland European culture and the visual arts. In Ford there is the chance to explore continuity in artistic life at the turn of the last century, as well as the more commonly identified pattern of crisis in the time. The argument throughout the book is that modernism possesses more than one face. Setting Ford in his cultural and historical context, the opening chapter debates the concept of fragmentation in modernism; later chapters discuss the notion of the personal narrative, and war writing. Ford's literary technique is studied comparatively and plot summaries of his major books (The Good Soldier and Parade's End) are provided, as is a brief biography.Less
This book is about Ford Madox Ford, a hero of the modernist literary revolution. Ford is a fascinating and fundamental figure of the time; not only because, as a friend and critic of Ezra Pound and Joseph Conrad, editor of the English Review and author of The Good Soldier, he shaped the development of literary modernism. But, as the grandson of Ford Madox Brown and son of a German music critic, he also manifested formative links with mainland European culture and the visual arts. In Ford there is the chance to explore continuity in artistic life at the turn of the last century, as well as the more commonly identified pattern of crisis in the time. The argument throughout the book is that modernism possesses more than one face. Setting Ford in his cultural and historical context, the opening chapter debates the concept of fragmentation in modernism; later chapters discuss the notion of the personal narrative, and war writing. Ford's literary technique is studied comparatively and plot summaries of his major books (The Good Soldier and Parade's End) are provided, as is a brief biography.
Zvi Ben‐Dor Benite
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195307337
- eISBN:
- 9780199867868
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195307337.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter describes the development of the myth during the time of the Persian and Roman empires after the “sealing” of the Bible and, later, the destruction of temple in 70 CE. The return of the ...
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This chapter describes the development of the myth during the time of the Persian and Roman empires after the “sealing” of the Bible and, later, the destruction of temple in 70 CE. The return of the Judahite exiles from Babylonia under the leadership of Ezra presented the Jews of the Second Temple period with a serious theological problem: if, as promised, God allowed the return of Two tribes of Judah from exile, why didn't He bring back the remaining Ten Tribes. The problem was also geographical: if they did not return, where are they “now”? These two questions gave rise to two paralleling sets of discussions among Jewish and Christian authors and thinkers. The theological one explained that Ten Tribes were exiled to a special place “beyond” the boundaries of this world as part of their special punishment. The geographical discussion delineated the location of that special place. Both Christian and Jewish thinkers promised the return of the tribes, but framed the ultimate return from exile as part of the “end of the days.” In both discussions geographical knowledge produced in the wake of Roman and Persian imperial expansion played a key role.Less
This chapter describes the development of the myth during the time of the Persian and Roman empires after the “sealing” of the Bible and, later, the destruction of temple in 70 CE. The return of the Judahite exiles from Babylonia under the leadership of Ezra presented the Jews of the Second Temple period with a serious theological problem: if, as promised, God allowed the return of Two tribes of Judah from exile, why didn't He bring back the remaining Ten Tribes. The problem was also geographical: if they did not return, where are they “now”? These two questions gave rise to two paralleling sets of discussions among Jewish and Christian authors and thinkers. The theological one explained that Ten Tribes were exiled to a special place “beyond” the boundaries of this world as part of their special punishment. The geographical discussion delineated the location of that special place. Both Christian and Jewish thinkers promised the return of the tribes, but framed the ultimate return from exile as part of the “end of the days.” In both discussions geographical knowledge produced in the wake of Roman and Persian imperial expansion played a key role.
Maurice Peress
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195098228
- eISBN:
- 9780199869817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195098228.003.0014
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter describes the researching and reconstructing of what was perhaps the most infamous modern music event of the 20th century after Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, George Antheil's “Ballet ...
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This chapter describes the researching and reconstructing of what was perhaps the most infamous modern music event of the 20th century after Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, George Antheil's “Ballet Mecanique” for player piano, eight concert grands, xylophones, drums, a fire siren, doorbells, and aeroplane propellers. It was designed to shock, but beneath its wild surface lies a story that includes the poet, Ezra Pound; artists and film makers Leger, Man Ray, and Picabia; composers W. C. handy (and his all-negro Orchestra) Colin McFee, Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson; and the violinist, Olga Rudge. It was the first work to encompass silences, some as long as twenty-four seconds, and in many minds, minimalism.Less
This chapter describes the researching and reconstructing of what was perhaps the most infamous modern music event of the 20th century after Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, George Antheil's “Ballet Mecanique” for player piano, eight concert grands, xylophones, drums, a fire siren, doorbells, and aeroplane propellers. It was designed to shock, but beneath its wild surface lies a story that includes the poet, Ezra Pound; artists and film makers Leger, Man Ray, and Picabia; composers W. C. handy (and his all-negro Orchestra) Colin McFee, Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson; and the violinist, Olga Rudge. It was the first work to encompass silences, some as long as twenty-four seconds, and in many minds, minimalism.
Matthew Hart
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195390339
- eISBN:
- 9780199776191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390339.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. ...
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The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. Identifying this as a “major” discourse of the vernacular, the chapter uses the work of Jean Bodin and Giorgio Agamben to explore the importance of “major” vernacular discourse to the hegemonic function of nation‐states. The chapter then identifies “synthetic vernacular” poetry as verse that reworks “minor” vernacular discourses, thereby opening a gap within the homology among languages, peoples, and states. The chapter finally illustrates the limits of the synthetic vernacular concept via Ezra Pound's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis (1957).Less
The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. Identifying this as a “major” discourse of the vernacular, the chapter uses the work of Jean Bodin and Giorgio Agamben to explore the importance of “major” vernacular discourse to the hegemonic function of nation‐states. The chapter then identifies “synthetic vernacular” poetry as verse that reworks “minor” vernacular discourses, thereby opening a gap within the homology among languages, peoples, and states. The chapter finally illustrates the limits of the synthetic vernacular concept via Ezra Pound's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis (1957).
E. W. Heaton
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- April 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780198263623
- eISBN:
- 9780191601156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198263627.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The first part of this chapter examines the school tradition in the literary style of the teachings of the prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve (the minor prophets) – which ...
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The first part of this chapter examines the school tradition in the literary style of the teachings of the prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve (the minor prophets) – which were compiled by editors in Jerusalem at various stages during the centuries following return from the Babylonian exile. Examples are also given from other Old Testament books (Judith, Proverbs, Samuel, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes) where the same subject matter is being covered. The second part of the chapter examines books of the teachers, the schoolmen who rallied to the cause of Jeremiah, and are called here the Deuteronomists; their works include Deuteronomy itself, the prose narratives in Jeremiah, and the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The school setting of these teachers is clearly reflected in their style. Once again examples are given from other Old Testament books (Isaiah, Proverbs, Psalms, Ezra, Exodus, Samuel, Kings, Micah) where the same subject matter is being covered.Less
The first part of this chapter examines the school tradition in the literary style of the teachings of the prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve (the minor prophets) – which were compiled by editors in Jerusalem at various stages during the centuries following return from the Babylonian exile. Examples are also given from other Old Testament books (Judith, Proverbs, Samuel, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes) where the same subject matter is being covered. The second part of the chapter examines books of the teachers, the schoolmen who rallied to the cause of Jeremiah, and are called here the Deuteronomists; their works include Deuteronomy itself, the prose narratives in Jeremiah, and the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The school setting of these teachers is clearly reflected in their style. Once again examples are given from other Old Testament books (Isaiah, Proverbs, Psalms, Ezra, Exodus, Samuel, Kings, Micah) where the same subject matter is being covered.
Martin S. Jaffee
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195140675
- eISBN:
- 9780199834334
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195140672.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Explores the role of orality and oral‐performative tradition in the written literary activities of various scribal communities in Second Temple Judaism. It points out that true literacy was rare ...
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Explores the role of orality and oral‐performative tradition in the written literary activities of various scribal communities in Second Temple Judaism. It points out that true literacy was rare among Jews in this period, and was confined to various professional scribal groups associated with the Temple and its governing agencies. Even among scribal groups who created literary works, writing and literary transmission was highly oral in character. Nevertheless, these groups did not radically distinguish oral tradition from the written tradition of books claimed to stem from prophetic revelations. Rather, books were seen to stem from a kind of oral dictation from God to the prophet, as in the Testament of Levi and 4 Ezra, who functioned as a kind of scribe in transmitting the words of a divine or angelic author.Less
Explores the role of orality and oral‐performative tradition in the written literary activities of various scribal communities in Second Temple Judaism. It points out that true literacy was rare among Jews in this period, and was confined to various professional scribal groups associated with the Temple and its governing agencies. Even among scribal groups who created literary works, writing and literary transmission was highly oral in character. Nevertheless, these groups did not radically distinguish oral tradition from the written tradition of books claimed to stem from prophetic revelations. Rather, books were seen to stem from a kind of oral dictation from God to the prophet, as in the Testament of Levi and 4 Ezra, who functioned as a kind of scribe in transmitting the words of a divine or angelic author.
