Alan Weir
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199541492
- eISBN:
- 9780191594915
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541492.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
This book defends an anti-platonist philosophy of mathematics derived from game formalism. Classic formalists claimed implausibly that mathematical utterances are truth-valueless moves in a game. ...
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This book defends an anti-platonist philosophy of mathematics derived from game formalism. Classic formalists claimed implausibly that mathematical utterances are truth-valueless moves in a game. This study aims to develop a more satisfactory successor to game formalism utilizing a widely accepted, broadly neo-Fregean framework, in which the proposition expressed by an utterance is a function of both sense and background circumstance. This framework allows for sentences whose truth-conditions are not representational, which are made true or false by conditions residing in the circumstances of utterances but not transparently in the sense. Applications to projectivism and fiction pave the way for the claim that mathematical utterances are made true or false by the existence of concrete proofs or refutations, though these truth-making conditions form no part of their sense or informational content. The position is compared with rivals, an account of the applicability of mathematics developed, and a new account of the nature of idealization proffered in which it is argued that the finitistic limitations Gödel placed on proofs are without rational justification. Finally a non-classical logical system is provided in which excluded middle fails, yet enough logical power remains to recapture the results of standard mathematics.Less
This book defends an anti-platonist philosophy of mathematics derived from game formalism. Classic formalists claimed implausibly that mathematical utterances are truth-valueless moves in a game. This study aims to develop a more satisfactory successor to game formalism utilizing a widely accepted, broadly neo-Fregean framework, in which the proposition expressed by an utterance is a function of both sense and background circumstance. This framework allows for sentences whose truth-conditions are not representational, which are made true or false by conditions residing in the circumstances of utterances but not transparently in the sense. Applications to projectivism and fiction pave the way for the claim that mathematical utterances are made true or false by the existence of concrete proofs or refutations, though these truth-making conditions form no part of their sense or informational content. The position is compared with rivals, an account of the applicability of mathematics developed, and a new account of the nature of idealization proffered in which it is argued that the finitistic limitations Gödel placed on proofs are without rational justification. Finally a non-classical logical system is provided in which excluded middle fails, yet enough logical power remains to recapture the results of standard mathematics.
Rob Merkin and Jenny Steele
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199645749
- eISBN:
- 9780191747823
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199645749.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Law of Obligations
Aims to fill a significant gap in the general understanding of the law of obligations, by focusing on the place of insurance within it. Argues that the majority of academic obligations lawyers have ...
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Aims to fill a significant gap in the general understanding of the law of obligations, by focusing on the place of insurance within it. Argues that the majority of academic obligations lawyers have little knowledge of insurance law in its own right, and that the amount of discussion directed to insurance is disproportionately tiny in relation to the impact of insurance and insurance law on the law of obligations and more broadly. Seeks to address this lack of coverage by exploring the multiple influences of insurance in the law of obligations, and the nature and impact of insurance law as an inherent and significant aspect of private law. Combines conceptual and doctrinal analysis in order to inform and engage, while also making a distinctive contribution to broader discussion about the nature of private law, including the role of judicial and public purpose; and the place of formalism and of contextualism. Argues for wider recognition of the multiple impacts of insurance, and suggests that such recognition will have a number of important implications for obligations lawyers. In particular, suggests that recognition of the presence of insurance necessarily marks a departure from the two-party framework sometimes described as definitive of private law. Provides a structured exploration and interpretation of the contemporary role of insurance in the law of obligations, and of its implications, equipping its readers for further enquiry and debate.Less
Aims to fill a significant gap in the general understanding of the law of obligations, by focusing on the place of insurance within it. Argues that the majority of academic obligations lawyers have little knowledge of insurance law in its own right, and that the amount of discussion directed to insurance is disproportionately tiny in relation to the impact of insurance and insurance law on the law of obligations and more broadly. Seeks to address this lack of coverage by exploring the multiple influences of insurance in the law of obligations, and the nature and impact of insurance law as an inherent and significant aspect of private law. Combines conceptual and doctrinal analysis in order to inform and engage, while also making a distinctive contribution to broader discussion about the nature of private law, including the role of judicial and public purpose; and the place of formalism and of contextualism. Argues for wider recognition of the multiple impacts of insurance, and suggests that such recognition will have a number of important implications for obligations lawyers. In particular, suggests that recognition of the presence of insurance necessarily marks a departure from the two-party framework sometimes described as definitive of private law. Provides a structured exploration and interpretation of the contemporary role of insurance in the law of obligations, and of its implications, equipping its readers for further enquiry and debate.
James Noggle
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199642434
- eISBN:
- 9780191738579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199642434.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This brief conclusion describes the difference between polemical claims made for taste’s critical power throughout the book and those made for aesthetics by the politically radical wing of New ...
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This brief conclusion describes the difference between polemical claims made for taste’s critical power throughout the book and those made for aesthetics by the politically radical wing of New Formalism. My defence of taste does not require me to locate it in a realm of ideally disinterested discourse, any supposedly natural demands of the body, or any other region of thought or language uncontaminated by ideology—all places where New Formalist writers have sought to situate the aesthetic. Rather, taste’s critical power emerges from nowhere but its intimate role in the construction of ideological discourse. Its double emphasis on immediate feeling and historically constructed cultural identity shows us both where ideology comes from and exactly where it can come undone. This divide redeems the discourse of taste not because it leads someplace outside ideology but because it lies fatally within it.Less
This brief conclusion describes the difference between polemical claims made for taste’s critical power throughout the book and those made for aesthetics by the politically radical wing of New Formalism. My defence of taste does not require me to locate it in a realm of ideally disinterested discourse, any supposedly natural demands of the body, or any other region of thought or language uncontaminated by ideology—all places where New Formalist writers have sought to situate the aesthetic. Rather, taste’s critical power emerges from nowhere but its intimate role in the construction of ideological discourse. Its double emphasis on immediate feeling and historically constructed cultural identity shows us both where ideology comes from and exactly where it can come undone. This divide redeems the discourse of taste not because it leads someplace outside ideology but because it lies fatally within it.
Srikanth Reddy
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199791026
- eISBN:
- 9780199950287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199791026.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, American, 20th Century Literature
In The Fatalist, Lyn Hejinian declares herself the heir apparent to Diderot’s unruly Jacques, employing digression as a literary method for dismantling Enlightenment narratologies of rational order ...
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In The Fatalist, Lyn Hejinian declares herself the heir apparent to Diderot’s unruly Jacques, employing digression as a literary method for dismantling Enlightenment narratologies of rational order and linear progression. The digressive sequences in Hejinian’s work unsettle the fundamental narratological coordinates of beginnings, middles, and ends upon which literary form itself is predicated. Drawing on the theories of the Russian Formalists during her multiple expeditions to the Soviet Union, Hejinian mobilizes narratological practice as a method for deconstructing the fatalistic master-narratives of the Cold War era. This poet’s literary engagement with the Russian novel provides a forum for examining the ways in which plot—or sjuzet, in Shklovsky’s formulation—constructs a digressive account of events which may in turn be fractured and defamiliarized within the medium of the lyric. Ultimately abandoning the novelistic paradigm in favor of the inconclusive narration of the chronicle form, moreover, Hejinian discovers in the rejection of closure a method for opening up multiple logics within a unified literary text.Less
In The Fatalist, Lyn Hejinian declares herself the heir apparent to Diderot’s unruly Jacques, employing digression as a literary method for dismantling Enlightenment narratologies of rational order and linear progression. The digressive sequences in Hejinian’s work unsettle the fundamental narratological coordinates of beginnings, middles, and ends upon which literary form itself is predicated. Drawing on the theories of the Russian Formalists during her multiple expeditions to the Soviet Union, Hejinian mobilizes narratological practice as a method for deconstructing the fatalistic master-narratives of the Cold War era. This poet’s literary engagement with the Russian novel provides a forum for examining the ways in which plot—or sjuzet, in Shklovsky’s formulation—constructs a digressive account of events which may in turn be fractured and defamiliarized within the medium of the lyric. Ultimately abandoning the novelistic paradigm in favor of the inconclusive narration of the chronicle form, moreover, Hejinian discovers in the rejection of closure a method for opening up multiple logics within a unified literary text.
Aarthi Vadde
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231180245
- eISBN:
- 9780231542562
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231180245.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
In Chimeras of Form, Aarthi Vadde vividly illustrates how modernist and contemporary writers reimagine the nation and internationalism in a period defined by globalization. She explains how ...
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In Chimeras of Form, Aarthi Vadde vividly illustrates how modernist and contemporary writers reimagine the nation and internationalism in a period defined by globalization. She explains how Rabindranath Tagore, James Joyce, Claude McKay, George Lamming, Michael Ondaatje, and Zadie Smith use modernist literary forms to develop ideas of international belonging sensitive to the afterlife of empire. In doing so, she shows how this wide-ranging group of authors challenged traditional expectations of aesthetic form, shaping how their readers understand the cohesion and interrelation of political communities. Drawing on her close readings of individual texts and on literary, postcolonial, and cosmopolitical theory, Vadde examines how modernist formal experiments take part in debates about transnational interdependence and social obligation. She reads Joyce's use of asymmetrical narratives as a way to ask questions about international camaraderie, and demonstrates how the "plotless" works of Claude McKay upturn ideas of citizenship and diasporic alienation. Her analysis of the contemporary writers Zadie Smith and Shailja Patel shows how present-day issues relating to migration, displacement, and economic inequality link modernist and postcolonial traditions of literature. Vadde brings these traditions together to reveal the dual nature of internationalism as an aspiration, possibly a chimeric one, and an actual political discourse vital to understanding our present moment.Less
In Chimeras of Form, Aarthi Vadde vividly illustrates how modernist and contemporary writers reimagine the nation and internationalism in a period defined by globalization. She explains how Rabindranath Tagore, James Joyce, Claude McKay, George Lamming, Michael Ondaatje, and Zadie Smith use modernist literary forms to develop ideas of international belonging sensitive to the afterlife of empire. In doing so, she shows how this wide-ranging group of authors challenged traditional expectations of aesthetic form, shaping how their readers understand the cohesion and interrelation of political communities. Drawing on her close readings of individual texts and on literary, postcolonial, and cosmopolitical theory, Vadde examines how modernist formal experiments take part in debates about transnational interdependence and social obligation. She reads Joyce's use of asymmetrical narratives as a way to ask questions about international camaraderie, and demonstrates how the "plotless" works of Claude McKay upturn ideas of citizenship and diasporic alienation. Her analysis of the contemporary writers Zadie Smith and Shailja Patel shows how present-day issues relating to migration, displacement, and economic inequality link modernist and postcolonial traditions of literature. Vadde brings these traditions together to reveal the dual nature of internationalism as an aspiration, possibly a chimeric one, and an actual political discourse vital to understanding our present moment.
Ilya Kliger and Boris Maslov (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823264858
- eISBN:
- 9780823266852
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823264858.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This volume draws together an array of distinguished scholars of ancient and modern literatures to consider the ways in which historicism in literary studies can and should be construed and pursued ...
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This volume draws together an array of distinguished scholars of ancient and modern literatures to consider the ways in which historicism in literary studies can and should be construed and pursued today. In particular, the contributors to the volume seek to challenge and complement the historicism that stresses proximate socio-political contexts as well as the more recent and salutary concern with understanding literary production and reception on a global scale with the perspective of the longue durée of literary forms and institutions. Thus, the approach advanced in these essays would complement the world-geographical with the world-historical perspective on the literary process, and where a more traditional historicism would see unified or, at best, “polyphonic” responses to concrete historical dilemmas, the contributors to this volume uncover deep-historical stratifications and non-synchronicities, in which certain formal solutions may display “elective affinities” with other, chronologically distant solutions to analogous problems. In their quest for a revitalized and more expansive historicism in literary study, the contributors to the volume build on the tradition of Historical Poetics, pioneered by Alexander Veselovsky (1838-1906) and developed in various fruitful directions by the Russian Formalists, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Olga Freidenberg (among others). The volume also seeks to place this critical tradition in dialogue with such thinkers as Walter Benjamin, Ernst Curtius, Hans-Robert Jauss, and Fredric Jameson, who all have approached literature in a globally-comparativist and evolutionary-historical spirit.Less
This volume draws together an array of distinguished scholars of ancient and modern literatures to consider the ways in which historicism in literary studies can and should be construed and pursued today. In particular, the contributors to the volume seek to challenge and complement the historicism that stresses proximate socio-political contexts as well as the more recent and salutary concern with understanding literary production and reception on a global scale with the perspective of the longue durée of literary forms and institutions. Thus, the approach advanced in these essays would complement the world-geographical with the world-historical perspective on the literary process, and where a more traditional historicism would see unified or, at best, “polyphonic” responses to concrete historical dilemmas, the contributors to this volume uncover deep-historical stratifications and non-synchronicities, in which certain formal solutions may display “elective affinities” with other, chronologically distant solutions to analogous problems. In their quest for a revitalized and more expansive historicism in literary study, the contributors to the volume build on the tradition of Historical Poetics, pioneered by Alexander Veselovsky (1838-1906) and developed in various fruitful directions by the Russian Formalists, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Olga Freidenberg (among others). The volume also seeks to place this critical tradition in dialogue with such thinkers as Walter Benjamin, Ernst Curtius, Hans-Robert Jauss, and Fredric Jameson, who all have approached literature in a globally-comparativist and evolutionary-historical spirit.
Imani Perry
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469638607
- eISBN:
- 9781469638614
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469638607.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, tells an essential yet understudied part of that ...
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Singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, tells an essential yet understudied part of that story. Lift Every Voice and Sing, penned by James Weldon Johnson and composed by his brother Rosamond in 1900, was embraced as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of Black Americans almost immediately. This book shares the story of that song, as it traveled from South to North, from churches to schools, and from civil rights to Black power, and beyond. Because it is an anthem, the story of this song is also a social and cultural history. Readers will learn of the institutions and organizations, as well as the lessons and the emotions shared by those who sang together. Drawing on a wide array of materials including: letters, newspaper articles, essays, poems, novels, school curricula, speeches and the programs of hundreds of organizations, readers have a window into the robust social, cultural and political world that African Americans organized in the face of an unequal society, and how that world produced people who were capable of transforming the nation and world.Less
Singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, tells an essential yet understudied part of that story. Lift Every Voice and Sing, penned by James Weldon Johnson and composed by his brother Rosamond in 1900, was embraced as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of Black Americans almost immediately. This book shares the story of that song, as it traveled from South to North, from churches to schools, and from civil rights to Black power, and beyond. Because it is an anthem, the story of this song is also a social and cultural history. Readers will learn of the institutions and organizations, as well as the lessons and the emotions shared by those who sang together. Drawing on a wide array of materials including: letters, newspaper articles, essays, poems, novels, school curricula, speeches and the programs of hundreds of organizations, readers have a window into the robust social, cultural and political world that African Americans organized in the face of an unequal society, and how that world produced people who were capable of transforming the nation and world.
Kam Louie (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083794
- eISBN:
- 9789882209060
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083794.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter describes how Eileen Chang and Ang Lee interpret fiction-film adaptation stylistically and philosophically in their versions of the controversial wartime romance Lust, Caution. Both ...
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This chapter describes how Eileen Chang and Ang Lee interpret fiction-film adaptation stylistically and philosophically in their versions of the controversial wartime romance Lust, Caution. Both artists innovate with mixed media to present complex psychological portraits of traitor-patriot in generically hybrid mixtures of spy thriller, historical romance, and melodrama. While each uses prominent spatial tropes, flashbacks, and self-conscious monologues to interweave personal emotion and political ideology, ultimately Chang magnifies the imprisonment of individual materialistic desires in a mundane world while Lee emphasizes the power of historical forces to entrap human subjectivity.Less
This chapter describes how Eileen Chang and Ang Lee interpret fiction-film adaptation stylistically and philosophically in their versions of the controversial wartime romance Lust, Caution. Both artists innovate with mixed media to present complex psychological portraits of traitor-patriot in generically hybrid mixtures of spy thriller, historical romance, and melodrama. While each uses prominent spatial tropes, flashbacks, and self-conscious monologues to interweave personal emotion and political ideology, ultimately Chang magnifies the imprisonment of individual materialistic desires in a mundane world while Lee emphasizes the power of historical forces to entrap human subjectivity.
Annette Trefzer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496814531
- eISBN:
- 9781496814579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496814531.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This essay suggests how literary theory can help students confront the textual complexity and subtlety of Welty’s short stories, and how the stories, in turn, can offer a range of questions and ...
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This essay suggests how literary theory can help students confront the textual complexity and subtlety of Welty’s short stories, and how the stories, in turn, can offer a range of questions and problems for reexamination as they highlight the blind spots of various theoretical “lenses.” Students begin with the formalist method of “close reading” and Welty’s “A Piece of News,” followed by theories of gender and sexuality paired with “A Curtain of Green,” and “Petrified Man” and end up with disability studies as illustrated in Welty’s first short story collection. The essay shows with examples from Welty’s work the intersections where theory meets practical criticism and where fiction articulates positions that help students understand theory in turn.Less
This essay suggests how literary theory can help students confront the textual complexity and subtlety of Welty’s short stories, and how the stories, in turn, can offer a range of questions and problems for reexamination as they highlight the blind spots of various theoretical “lenses.” Students begin with the formalist method of “close reading” and Welty’s “A Piece of News,” followed by theories of gender and sexuality paired with “A Curtain of Green,” and “Petrified Man” and end up with disability studies as illustrated in Welty’s first short story collection. The essay shows with examples from Welty’s work the intersections where theory meets practical criticism and where fiction articulates positions that help students understand theory in turn.
Ruth Evans
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526129154
- eISBN:
- 9781526141996
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526129154.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Ruth Evans explores the under-recognised but striking use of rhyme-breaking in Chaucer’s poetry, present in the Canterbury Tales, the Book of the Duchess, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and ...
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Ruth Evans explores the under-recognised but striking use of rhyme-breaking in Chaucer’s poetry, present in the Canterbury Tales, the Book of the Duchess, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. Evans draws upon a recent resurgence of critical interest in the politics of form to argue that Chaucerian rhyme-breaking warrants closer attention not only for its ironic effect, but also for its potential to illuminate Chaucer’s position within the multilingual context of late-medieval England.Less
Ruth Evans explores the under-recognised but striking use of rhyme-breaking in Chaucer’s poetry, present in the Canterbury Tales, the Book of the Duchess, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. Evans draws upon a recent resurgence of critical interest in the politics of form to argue that Chaucerian rhyme-breaking warrants closer attention not only for its ironic effect, but also for its potential to illuminate Chaucer’s position within the multilingual context of late-medieval England.
Christopher Hutton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633500
- eISBN:
- 9780748671489
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633500.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and Pedagogy
This chapter offers a brief introduction to topics and approaches in legal theory and language. It offers a critical summary of the differences between natural law and legal positivism, describes in ...
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This chapter offers a brief introduction to topics and approaches in legal theory and language. It offers a critical summary of the differences between natural law and legal positivism, describes in outline the formalist position as opposed to the realist, summarizes the idea of the rule of law in liberal ideology, and shows how this idea of the relative autonomy of the legal system and legal language comes under attack in radical approaches to law. It then looks at how the law and economics framework might deal with linguistic questions, and contrasts the different understanding of law and language in Luhmann and Habermas. The fundamental issue at stake is the notion of law's autonomy.Less
This chapter offers a brief introduction to topics and approaches in legal theory and language. It offers a critical summary of the differences between natural law and legal positivism, describes in outline the formalist position as opposed to the realist, summarizes the idea of the rule of law in liberal ideology, and shows how this idea of the relative autonomy of the legal system and legal language comes under attack in radical approaches to law. It then looks at how the law and economics framework might deal with linguistic questions, and contrasts the different understanding of law and language in Luhmann and Habermas. The fundamental issue at stake is the notion of law's autonomy.
Andrea Henderson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198809982
- eISBN:
- 9780191860140
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198809982.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Algebraic Art explores the invention of a peculiarly Victorian account of the nature and value of aesthetic form, and it traces that account to a surprising source: mathematics. The nineteenth ...
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Algebraic Art explores the invention of a peculiarly Victorian account of the nature and value of aesthetic form, and it traces that account to a surprising source: mathematics. The nineteenth century was a moment of extraordinary mathematical innovation, witnessing the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the revaluation of symbolic algebra, and the importation of mathematical language into philosophy. All these innovations sprang from a reconception of mathematics as a formal rather than a referential practice—as a means for describing relationships rather than quantities. For Victorian mathematicians, the value of a claim lay not in its capacity to describe the world but its internal coherence. This concern with formal structure produced a striking convergence between mathematics and aesthetics: geometers wrote fables, logicians reconceived symbolism, and physicists described reality as consisting of beautiful patterns. Artists, meanwhile, drawing upon the cultural prestige of mathematics, conceived their work as a “science” of form, whether as lines in a painting, twinned characters in a novel, or wave-like stress patterns in a poem. Avant-garde photographs and paintings, fantastical novels like Flatland and Lewis Carroll’s children’s books, and experimental poetry by Swinburne, Rossetti, and Patmore created worlds governed by a rigorous internal logic even as they were pointedly unconcerned with reference or realist protocols. Algebraic Art shows that works we tend to regard as outliers to mainstream Victorian culture were expressions of a mathematical formalism that was central to Victorian knowledge production and that continues to shape our understanding of the significance of form.Less
Algebraic Art explores the invention of a peculiarly Victorian account of the nature and value of aesthetic form, and it traces that account to a surprising source: mathematics. The nineteenth century was a moment of extraordinary mathematical innovation, witnessing the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the revaluation of symbolic algebra, and the importation of mathematical language into philosophy. All these innovations sprang from a reconception of mathematics as a formal rather than a referential practice—as a means for describing relationships rather than quantities. For Victorian mathematicians, the value of a claim lay not in its capacity to describe the world but its internal coherence. This concern with formal structure produced a striking convergence between mathematics and aesthetics: geometers wrote fables, logicians reconceived symbolism, and physicists described reality as consisting of beautiful patterns. Artists, meanwhile, drawing upon the cultural prestige of mathematics, conceived their work as a “science” of form, whether as lines in a painting, twinned characters in a novel, or wave-like stress patterns in a poem. Avant-garde photographs and paintings, fantastical novels like Flatland and Lewis Carroll’s children’s books, and experimental poetry by Swinburne, Rossetti, and Patmore created worlds governed by a rigorous internal logic even as they were pointedly unconcerned with reference or realist protocols. Algebraic Art shows that works we tend to regard as outliers to mainstream Victorian culture were expressions of a mathematical formalism that was central to Victorian knowledge production and that continues to shape our understanding of the significance of form.
Michaela Hailbronner
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198735427
- eISBN:
- 9780191799587
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735427.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
German constitutionalism has gained a central place in the global comparative debate, but what underpins it remains imperfectly understood. Its distinctive conception of the rule of law and the ...
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German constitutionalism has gained a central place in the global comparative debate, but what underpins it remains imperfectly understood. Its distinctive conception of the rule of law and the widespread support for its powerful Constitutional Court are typically explained in two ways: as a story of change in a reaction to National-Socialism or as the continuation of an older nineteenth-century line of constitutional thought. But while both narratives account for some important features, their explanatory value is ultimately overrated. This book adopts a broader comparative perspective to understand the rise of the German Constitutional Court. It interprets the particular features of German constitutional jurisprudence and the Court’s strength as a reconciliation of two different legal paradigms: first, a hierarchical legal culture as described by Mirjan Damaška as opposed to a more coordinate understanding of legal authority such as prevails in the United States; and second, the turn towards a transformative model of constitutionalism, as it is today most often associated with countries such as South Africa and India. Using post-war legal history, sociological and empirical research, as well as case-law, the book demonstrates how German constitutionalism has harmonized the frequently conflicting demands of these two legal paradigms—resulting in a distinctive type of constitutional reasoning, at once pragmatic, open, formalist, and technical, which this book labels Value Formalism. Value Formalism, however, also comes with serious drawbacks, such as a lack of institutional self-reflection in the Court’s jurisprudence and a closure of constitutional discourse towards laymen.Less
German constitutionalism has gained a central place in the global comparative debate, but what underpins it remains imperfectly understood. Its distinctive conception of the rule of law and the widespread support for its powerful Constitutional Court are typically explained in two ways: as a story of change in a reaction to National-Socialism or as the continuation of an older nineteenth-century line of constitutional thought. But while both narratives account for some important features, their explanatory value is ultimately overrated. This book adopts a broader comparative perspective to understand the rise of the German Constitutional Court. It interprets the particular features of German constitutional jurisprudence and the Court’s strength as a reconciliation of two different legal paradigms: first, a hierarchical legal culture as described by Mirjan Damaška as opposed to a more coordinate understanding of legal authority such as prevails in the United States; and second, the turn towards a transformative model of constitutionalism, as it is today most often associated with countries such as South Africa and India. Using post-war legal history, sociological and empirical research, as well as case-law, the book demonstrates how German constitutionalism has harmonized the frequently conflicting demands of these two legal paradigms—resulting in a distinctive type of constitutional reasoning, at once pragmatic, open, formalist, and technical, which this book labels Value Formalism. Value Formalism, however, also comes with serious drawbacks, such as a lack of institutional self-reflection in the Court’s jurisprudence and a closure of constitutional discourse towards laymen.
Rob Merkin and Jenny Steele
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199645749
- eISBN:
- 9780191747823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199645749.003.0008
- Subject:
- Law, Law of Obligations
Turns from contract to tort, exploring the significance of insurance in determining the existence and ambit of tort duties. Explains the perceived differences between contract and tort duties and ...
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Turns from contract to tort, exploring the significance of insurance in determining the existence and ambit of tort duties. Explains the perceived differences between contract and tort duties and explores the significance of party risk allocation arrangements, including insurance arrangements, in relation to tort. Explains that attention to insurance arrangements is not inconsistent with the idea of ‘duty’. Explores the role of insurance arrangements in relation to tort duties in a variety of cases, beginning with ‘contractual matrix’ cases including construction cases; then turning to cases of ‘advice’ between parties and other cases beyond the contractual matrix; to public authority liability; and to employers’ duties to employees. Explains how insurance issues, and particularly risk allocation issues, have influenced the most significant developments in the law relating to negligence duties in particular.Less
Turns from contract to tort, exploring the significance of insurance in determining the existence and ambit of tort duties. Explains the perceived differences between contract and tort duties and explores the significance of party risk allocation arrangements, including insurance arrangements, in relation to tort. Explains that attention to insurance arrangements is not inconsistent with the idea of ‘duty’. Explores the role of insurance arrangements in relation to tort duties in a variety of cases, beginning with ‘contractual matrix’ cases including construction cases; then turning to cases of ‘advice’ between parties and other cases beyond the contractual matrix; to public authority liability; and to employers’ duties to employees. Explains how insurance issues, and particularly risk allocation issues, have influenced the most significant developments in the law relating to negligence duties in particular.
Marion Thain
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474415668
- eISBN:
- 9781474426855
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415668.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Starting with the idea of the late nineteenth century as a locus of ‘lyric crisis’, the introduction outlines established scholarly narratives of the relationship between poetry and modernity in the ...
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Starting with the idea of the late nineteenth century as a locus of ‘lyric crisis’, the introduction outlines established scholarly narratives of the relationship between poetry and modernity in the nineteenth century, and describes how the book will challenge these through its attention to aestheticist poetry. It goes on to explain the remit and choices made in the structure of the book (which is organized around three parts, each of which contains three chapters), and ends by situating the book’s methodology in relation to the fields of lyric studies and lyric theory. The overall aim of the book is stated as the analysis of the relationship between lyric and modernity prior to the better known story of poetic modernisation that occurs within high modernism in the first half of the twentieth century.Less
Starting with the idea of the late nineteenth century as a locus of ‘lyric crisis’, the introduction outlines established scholarly narratives of the relationship between poetry and modernity in the nineteenth century, and describes how the book will challenge these through its attention to aestheticist poetry. It goes on to explain the remit and choices made in the structure of the book (which is organized around three parts, each of which contains three chapters), and ends by situating the book’s methodology in relation to the fields of lyric studies and lyric theory. The overall aim of the book is stated as the analysis of the relationship between lyric and modernity prior to the better known story of poetic modernisation that occurs within high modernism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Dorothea E. Olkowski
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190275594
- eISBN:
- 9780190275624
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190275594.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Luce Irigaray’s view of her relationship to Beauvoir’s work is that “there are important differences between our positions.” This should not be surprising given that these two philosophers belong to ...
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Luce Irigaray’s view of her relationship to Beauvoir’s work is that “there are important differences between our positions.” This should not be surprising given that these two philosophers belong to different even if overlapping philosophical eras. Beauvoir is identified primarily with phenomenological–existentialism and Irigaray with psychoanalysis and linguistics. This essay takes up those differences from an ontological and epistemological point of view suggested by a number of feminist philosophers but not fully examined in the work of Beauvoir and Irigaray. This includes Beauvoir’s rejection of dualist thinking produced by the binary logic of the Law of Excluded Middle, and Irigaray’s critique of formal logic based on her psychoanalytic perspective. Beginning with Beauvoir and moving from there to Irigaray, the essay takes up the question of the ontological and epistemological structures utilized by each of these two feminist philosophers with an eye to their subsequent ethical implications.Less
Luce Irigaray’s view of her relationship to Beauvoir’s work is that “there are important differences between our positions.” This should not be surprising given that these two philosophers belong to different even if overlapping philosophical eras. Beauvoir is identified primarily with phenomenological–existentialism and Irigaray with psychoanalysis and linguistics. This essay takes up those differences from an ontological and epistemological point of view suggested by a number of feminist philosophers but not fully examined in the work of Beauvoir and Irigaray. This includes Beauvoir’s rejection of dualist thinking produced by the binary logic of the Law of Excluded Middle, and Irigaray’s critique of formal logic based on her psychoanalytic perspective. Beginning with Beauvoir and moving from there to Irigaray, the essay takes up the question of the ontological and epistemological structures utilized by each of these two feminist philosophers with an eye to their subsequent ethical implications.
Tan See Kam
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789888208852
- eISBN:
- 9789888313518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208852.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyses Peking Opera Blues through the lens of formalism and its structuralist narratology which produce cinematic codes that give the film its form, including Tsui’s auterist ...
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This chapter analyses Peking Opera Blues through the lens of formalism and its structuralist narratology which produce cinematic codes that give the film its form, including Tsui’s auterist signatures such as cluttered mise-en-scène and rapid editing style. It focuses on the film’s story, style, structure, tone, and imagery, deploying the methodologies of singular shot, shot-by-shot, and mise-en-scène analyses with respect to compositional and editing matter. Accordingly it develops analytical templates for close readings of film structure and narrative. This yields a descriptive detailing of film form, drawing attention to specific cinematic effects and affects by outlining in tabular form the“grammar” of filmmaking and consequently highlighting the formal logic of shot compositions and shot assemblages, the integration of imagery and sound, and various narrative and performative elements.Less
This chapter analyses Peking Opera Blues through the lens of formalism and its structuralist narratology which produce cinematic codes that give the film its form, including Tsui’s auterist signatures such as cluttered mise-en-scène and rapid editing style. It focuses on the film’s story, style, structure, tone, and imagery, deploying the methodologies of singular shot, shot-by-shot, and mise-en-scène analyses with respect to compositional and editing matter. Accordingly it develops analytical templates for close readings of film structure and narrative. This yields a descriptive detailing of film form, drawing attention to specific cinematic effects and affects by outlining in tabular form the“grammar” of filmmaking and consequently highlighting the formal logic of shot compositions and shot assemblages, the integration of imagery and sound, and various narrative and performative elements.
Aarthi Vadde
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231180245
- eISBN:
- 9780231542562
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231180245.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The introduction establishes the framework of the book by explaining the conceptual foundations and function of modernist internationalism as it is developed over the course of Chimeras of Form. I ...
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The introduction establishes the framework of the book by explaining the conceptual foundations and function of modernist internationalism as it is developed over the course of Chimeras of Form. I guide my inquiry through two quotations - one from Salman Rushdie who coined the phrase “chimeras of form” in The Satanic Verses (1988) and one from political philosopher Thomas Nagel who argues that “the idea of global justice without a world government is a chimera” in “The Problem of Global Justice” (2005). I argue that chimeras of literary form, by pushing the boundaries of legibility and comprehensibility in language, extend the range of possibility in philosophical thought and consequently make it difficult to separate a chimera, defined in Nagel’s sense as an unfounded fantasy, from a chimera, defined in my sense as a site in which the line between the possible and the impossible is in dispute and capable of being redrawn. The tradition of modernist internationalism which the book develops attends to how writers from Rabindranath Tagore to Zadie Smith have pushed the epistemological limits of imagining community and international obligation within the context of an uneven and rapidly globalizing modernity. The introduction situates this large argument of the book within a necessarily selective review of internationalism’s more influential articulations, beginning with the publication of E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939) during the interwar years and leading into more recent approaches to cosmopolitanism. I argue that these recent cosmopolitan approaches have tried to rid internationalism of the chimeric taint that my study makes a case for restoring.Less
The introduction establishes the framework of the book by explaining the conceptual foundations and function of modernist internationalism as it is developed over the course of Chimeras of Form. I guide my inquiry through two quotations - one from Salman Rushdie who coined the phrase “chimeras of form” in The Satanic Verses (1988) and one from political philosopher Thomas Nagel who argues that “the idea of global justice without a world government is a chimera” in “The Problem of Global Justice” (2005). I argue that chimeras of literary form, by pushing the boundaries of legibility and comprehensibility in language, extend the range of possibility in philosophical thought and consequently make it difficult to separate a chimera, defined in Nagel’s sense as an unfounded fantasy, from a chimera, defined in my sense as a site in which the line between the possible and the impossible is in dispute and capable of being redrawn. The tradition of modernist internationalism which the book develops attends to how writers from Rabindranath Tagore to Zadie Smith have pushed the epistemological limits of imagining community and international obligation within the context of an uneven and rapidly globalizing modernity. The introduction situates this large argument of the book within a necessarily selective review of internationalism’s more influential articulations, beginning with the publication of E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939) during the interwar years and leading into more recent approaches to cosmopolitanism. I argue that these recent cosmopolitan approaches have tried to rid internationalism of the chimeric taint that my study makes a case for restoring.
Jeremy Rosen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231177443
- eISBN:
- 9780231542401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231177443.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Traces the recent surge in minor-character elaboration to the late 1960s and a set of active reading practices and textual acquisitiveness shared by feminist, anticolonial, poststructuralist, and ...
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Traces the recent surge in minor-character elaboration to the late 1960s and a set of active reading practices and textual acquisitiveness shared by feminist, anticolonial, poststructuralist, and postmodernist writers. It argues that early forays into the genre by writers like Jean Rhys, John Gardner, and Tom Stoppard reveal a variety of formal permutations and agendas that later writers might inherit.Less
Traces the recent surge in minor-character elaboration to the late 1960s and a set of active reading practices and textual acquisitiveness shared by feminist, anticolonial, poststructuralist, and postmodernist writers. It argues that early forays into the genre by writers like Jean Rhys, John Gardner, and Tom Stoppard reveal a variety of formal permutations and agendas that later writers might inherit.
Eva von Contzen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719095962
- eISBN:
- 9781526109675
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719095962.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter provides an introduction to narrative theory as a formal approach to the lives of the saints in the Scottish Legendary. Narratology as a key theoretical field, its main strands as well ...
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This chapter provides an introduction to narrative theory as a formal approach to the lives of the saints in the Scottish Legendary. Narratology as a key theoretical field, its main strands as well as its chances and challenges for the analysis of medieval narrative are discussed and problematised. The formal approach is placed within more general discussions of surface vs. symptomatic reading. Both a close and a deep reading are proposed as an expedient method to scrutinise the narrative art in the compilation. The chapter is rounded off with a section on the various ‘communicative’ instances that come into play when reading and interpreting the legends of the saints.Less
This chapter provides an introduction to narrative theory as a formal approach to the lives of the saints in the Scottish Legendary. Narratology as a key theoretical field, its main strands as well as its chances and challenges for the analysis of medieval narrative are discussed and problematised. The formal approach is placed within more general discussions of surface vs. symptomatic reading. Both a close and a deep reading are proposed as an expedient method to scrutinise the narrative art in the compilation. The chapter is rounded off with a section on the various ‘communicative’ instances that come into play when reading and interpreting the legends of the saints.
