Jonathan Strauss
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251322
- eISBN:
- 9780823252954
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251322.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Mythology and Folklore
In Private Lives/Public Deaths, Jonathan Strauss shows how Sophocles's tragedy Antigone crystalized the political, intellectual, and aesthetic forces of an entire historical moment – fifth-century ...
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In Private Lives/Public Deaths, Jonathan Strauss shows how Sophocles's tragedy Antigone crystalized the political, intellectual, and aesthetic forces of an entire historical moment – fifth-century Athens – into one idea: the value of a single, living person. That idea existed, however, only as a powerful but unconcious desire. Drawing on classical studies, Hegel, and contemporary philosophical interpretations of this pivotal drama, Strauss argues that Antigone's tragedy, and perhaps all classical tragedy, represents the failure to satisfy this desire. To the extent that the value of a living individual remains an open question, what Sophocles attempted to imagine still escapes our understanding. Antigone is, in this sense, a text not from the past, but from our future.Less
In Private Lives/Public Deaths, Jonathan Strauss shows how Sophocles's tragedy Antigone crystalized the political, intellectual, and aesthetic forces of an entire historical moment – fifth-century Athens – into one idea: the value of a single, living person. That idea existed, however, only as a powerful but unconcious desire. Drawing on classical studies, Hegel, and contemporary philosophical interpretations of this pivotal drama, Strauss argues that Antigone's tragedy, and perhaps all classical tragedy, represents the failure to satisfy this desire. To the extent that the value of a living individual remains an open question, what Sophocles attempted to imagine still escapes our understanding. Antigone is, in this sense, a text not from the past, but from our future.
Stephen Greer
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526113696
- eISBN:
- 9781526141941
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526113696.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This short chapter provides an overview of Queer exceptions: solo performance in neoliberal times, and locates the study in relation to debates concerning solo performance, individuality, ...
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This short chapter provides an overview of Queer exceptions: solo performance in neoliberal times, and locates the study in relation to debates concerning solo performance, individuality, neoliberalism and the politics of exceptionality.Less
This short chapter provides an overview of Queer exceptions: solo performance in neoliberal times, and locates the study in relation to debates concerning solo performance, individuality, neoliberalism and the politics of exceptionality.
W. J. Mander
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199559299
- eISBN:
- 9780191725531
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559299.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter examines subsequent developments in idealist metaphysics. It begins with a discussion of Personal Idealism, paying particular attention to Pringle-Pattison's objections to Absolute ...
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This chapter examines subsequent developments in idealist metaphysics. It begins with a discussion of Personal Idealism, paying particular attention to Pringle-Pattison's objections to Absolute Idealism, and to McTaggart's timeless world of individual and loving spirits. Noting that Absolute Idealism too continued to develop, close attention is given to the metaphysical system of Bosanquet. These two accounts are brought together in a detailed examination of the Aristotelian Society debate that took place between Bosanquet and Pringle-Pattison. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the various ways in which Idealism responded to the ‘new realism’ of such figures as Russell, Moore, and Samuel Alexander which have often but erroneously been thought of as ‘refuting’ it.Less
This chapter examines subsequent developments in idealist metaphysics. It begins with a discussion of Personal Idealism, paying particular attention to Pringle-Pattison's objections to Absolute Idealism, and to McTaggart's timeless world of individual and loving spirits. Noting that Absolute Idealism too continued to develop, close attention is given to the metaphysical system of Bosanquet. These two accounts are brought together in a detailed examination of the Aristotelian Society debate that took place between Bosanquet and Pringle-Pattison. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the various ways in which Idealism responded to the ‘new realism’ of such figures as Russell, Moore, and Samuel Alexander which have often but erroneously been thought of as ‘refuting’ it.
Jeffrey Knapp
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190634063
- eISBN:
- 9780190634094
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190634063.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Shakespeare’s plays were immensely popular in their own day—so why do we refuse to think of them as mass entertainment? In Pleasing Everyone, Jeffrey Knapp opens our eyes to the uncanny resemblance ...
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Shakespeare’s plays were immensely popular in their own day—so why do we refuse to think of them as mass entertainment? In Pleasing Everyone, Jeffrey Knapp opens our eyes to the uncanny resemblance between Renaissance drama and the incontrovertibly mass medium of Golden Age Hollywood cinema. Through fascinating explorations of such famous plays as Hamlet, The Roaring Girl, and The Alchemist, and such celebrated films as Citizen Kane, The Jazz Singer, and City Lights, Knapp challenges some of our most basic assumptions about the relationship between art and mass audiences. Above all, Knapp encourages us to resist the prejudice that mass entertainment necessarily simplifies and cheapens whatever it touches. As Knapp demonstrates, it was instead the ceaseless pressure to please everyone that helped generate the astonishing richness and complexity of Renaissance drama as well as of Hollywood film.Less
Shakespeare’s plays were immensely popular in their own day—so why do we refuse to think of them as mass entertainment? In Pleasing Everyone, Jeffrey Knapp opens our eyes to the uncanny resemblance between Renaissance drama and the incontrovertibly mass medium of Golden Age Hollywood cinema. Through fascinating explorations of such famous plays as Hamlet, The Roaring Girl, and The Alchemist, and such celebrated films as Citizen Kane, The Jazz Singer, and City Lights, Knapp challenges some of our most basic assumptions about the relationship between art and mass audiences. Above all, Knapp encourages us to resist the prejudice that mass entertainment necessarily simplifies and cheapens whatever it touches. As Knapp demonstrates, it was instead the ceaseless pressure to please everyone that helped generate the astonishing richness and complexity of Renaissance drama as well as of Hollywood film.
Jonathan Strauss
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251322
- eISBN:
- 9780823252954
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251322.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Mythology and Folklore
The introduction traces the relations between burial practices and the rise of the polis in ancient Greece to show that the creation of the city-state was accompanied by an exclusion of dead bodies ...
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The introduction traces the relations between burial practices and the rise of the polis in ancient Greece to show that the creation of the city-state was accompanied by an exclusion of dead bodies from urban zones. The city, it seems, was grounded in the difference between life and death. The chapter also describes the importance of tragedies to the civic life of fifth-century Athens, since they were spectacles that staged the state's origins and pondered the legitimacy of its legal structures. In a dissimulated way, the status of the individual and the value of his or her private life played a crucial role in these deliberations. Sophocles's Antigone exemplifies these issues, and to better understand the relations between tragedy, the city, death, and individual life, we should consider not only the play and its historical context, but also the long and rich history of its exegesis, especially in the wake of Hegel's pivotal analysis.Less
The introduction traces the relations between burial practices and the rise of the polis in ancient Greece to show that the creation of the city-state was accompanied by an exclusion of dead bodies from urban zones. The city, it seems, was grounded in the difference between life and death. The chapter also describes the importance of tragedies to the civic life of fifth-century Athens, since they were spectacles that staged the state's origins and pondered the legitimacy of its legal structures. In a dissimulated way, the status of the individual and the value of his or her private life played a crucial role in these deliberations. Sophocles's Antigone exemplifies these issues, and to better understand the relations between tragedy, the city, death, and individual life, we should consider not only the play and its historical context, but also the long and rich history of its exegesis, especially in the wake of Hegel's pivotal analysis.
Jonathan Strauss
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251322
- eISBN:
- 9780823252954
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251322.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Mythology and Folklore
As has been remarked by Hegel, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and others, Antigone stages a tension between two different formulations of individuality, one more archaic and mythical, the other more modern and ...
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As has been remarked by Hegel, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and others, Antigone stages a tension between two different formulations of individuality, one more archaic and mythical, the other more modern and political. Chapter One shows how that basic antinomy simplifies tensions in the play, which themselves expressed a cultural moment in which the notion of individuality – and the means for conceiving it – were elusive and often contradictory. Beginning with a description of the civic importance of tragedies that includes a reading of Aeschylus's Eumenides, the chapter situates Hegel's readings of Antigone within that historical context and then focuses on Sophocles's play itself.Less
As has been remarked by Hegel, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and others, Antigone stages a tension between two different formulations of individuality, one more archaic and mythical, the other more modern and political. Chapter One shows how that basic antinomy simplifies tensions in the play, which themselves expressed a cultural moment in which the notion of individuality – and the means for conceiving it – were elusive and often contradictory. Beginning with a description of the civic importance of tragedies that includes a reading of Aeschylus's Eumenides, the chapter situates Hegel's readings of Antigone within that historical context and then focuses on Sophocles's play itself.
Jonathan Strauss
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251322
- eISBN:
- 9780823252954
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251322.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Mythology and Folklore
By examining the notion of philia in fifth-century Greece and Antigone's fascination with her own death, Chapter Five refines our understanding of the ways in which Sophocles's play struggles to ...
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By examining the notion of philia in fifth-century Greece and Antigone's fascination with her own death, Chapter Five refines our understanding of the ways in which Sophocles's play struggles to identify the value of a living individual. The key to this value, hinted at but never entirely expressed in Antigone, would lie in the affection felt for a person in his or her uniqueness. Desire – and especially feminine desire – would thus express that value, but within the play the importance of interpersonal desire can be validated only through the death of the heroine herself. Once again, the significance of an individual life can be asserted only through its extinction. The reading in this chapter contextualizes Sophocles's play through reference to Aeschylus's Seven against Thebes and Euripides's Suppliant Women. It also includes an extended analysis of Hegel's notion of war in relation to tragic representations of the city.Less
By examining the notion of philia in fifth-century Greece and Antigone's fascination with her own death, Chapter Five refines our understanding of the ways in which Sophocles's play struggles to identify the value of a living individual. The key to this value, hinted at but never entirely expressed in Antigone, would lie in the affection felt for a person in his or her uniqueness. Desire – and especially feminine desire – would thus express that value, but within the play the importance of interpersonal desire can be validated only through the death of the heroine herself. Once again, the significance of an individual life can be asserted only through its extinction. The reading in this chapter contextualizes Sophocles's play through reference to Aeschylus's Seven against Thebes and Euripides's Suppliant Women. It also includes an extended analysis of Hegel's notion of war in relation to tragic representations of the city.
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/9781474415668.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Chapter 8 is the first of three chapters that make up ‘Part III’ of the book. This part focuses on issues of lyric subjectivity. As the first chapter in this part, Chapter 8 builds a conceptual and ...
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Chapter 8 is the first of three chapters that make up ‘Part III’ of the book. This part focuses on issues of lyric subjectivity. As the first chapter in this part, Chapter 8 builds a conceptual and theoretical basis that will underpin the poetic case studies offered in the subsequent two chapters. This chapter sets up a frame that positions aestheticist lyric between the legacy of an introspective Hegelian lyric subjectivity that surfaced in British Romantic poetics, and the growing anxiety that prompted the discovery of more communal poetic forms within lyric. Complicating scholarly narratives that see mid-century dramatic monologues as the quintessential nineteenth-century response to such anxieties, this chapter proposes the model of ‘desire lines’ (taken from urban geography) to recognise the capacity of lyric poems of the period to invoke models of lyric chorus, rather than lyric solipsism.Less
Chapter 8 is the first of three chapters that make up ‘Part III’ of the book. This part focuses on issues of lyric subjectivity. As the first chapter in this part, Chapter 8 builds a conceptual and theoretical basis that will underpin the poetic case studies offered in the subsequent two chapters. This chapter sets up a frame that positions aestheticist lyric between the legacy of an introspective Hegelian lyric subjectivity that surfaced in British Romantic poetics, and the growing anxiety that prompted the discovery of more communal poetic forms within lyric. Complicating scholarly narratives that see mid-century dramatic monologues as the quintessential nineteenth-century response to such anxieties, this chapter proposes the model of ‘desire lines’ (taken from urban geography) to recognise the capacity of lyric poems of the period to invoke models of lyric chorus, rather than lyric solipsism.
Leslie Elizabeth Eckel
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748669370
- eISBN:
- 9780748684427
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748669370.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Ralph Waldo Emerson preferred to think in general and cosmic terms – a scale that he called ‘the old largeness’ – rather than restricting his thought to corruptible national forms. This chapter ...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson preferred to think in general and cosmic terms – a scale that he called ‘the old largeness’ – rather than restricting his thought to corruptible national forms. This chapter argues that Emerson’s fundamental concern was the development of individual consciousness, not the separation of American literature from ‘the courtly muses of Europe.’ His most nationally oriented book, English Traits (1856), actually rejects the pursuit of national identity in England as ‘narrow,’ reactionary, and deadly to individual personality. Emerson’s aversion to nationality grew out of his horrified response to the national institution of the Fugitive Slave Law, against which he lectured on several significant occasions during the 1850s. His admiration for the ‘poetic’ imagination that Abraham Lincoln displayed in his work of emancipation in the 1860s renewed his faith in the United States.Less
Ralph Waldo Emerson preferred to think in general and cosmic terms – a scale that he called ‘the old largeness’ – rather than restricting his thought to corruptible national forms. This chapter argues that Emerson’s fundamental concern was the development of individual consciousness, not the separation of American literature from ‘the courtly muses of Europe.’ His most nationally oriented book, English Traits (1856), actually rejects the pursuit of national identity in England as ‘narrow,’ reactionary, and deadly to individual personality. Emerson’s aversion to nationality grew out of his horrified response to the national institution of the Fugitive Slave Law, against which he lectured on several significant occasions during the 1850s. His admiration for the ‘poetic’ imagination that Abraham Lincoln displayed in his work of emancipation in the 1860s renewed his faith in the United States.
Jeffrey Knapp
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190634063
- eISBN:
- 9780190634094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190634063.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter—the first in a two-chapter section, “The Individual and the Mass”—views the 1611 city comedy The Roaring Girl through the lens of the two most influential modern commentaries on mass ...
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This chapter—the first in a two-chapter section, “The Individual and the Mass”—views the 1611 city comedy The Roaring Girl through the lens of the two most influential modern commentaries on mass entertainment: Walter Benjamin’s essay “Work of Art” and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s essay “Culture Industry.” These Frankfurt School theorists help us recognize The Roaring Girl’s stake in exploring the crisis for individuality that its own mass audiences provoke. But The Roaring Girl also anticipates and critiques the Frankfurt School’s bias toward a totalizing vision of the mass audience.Less
This chapter—the first in a two-chapter section, “The Individual and the Mass”—views the 1611 city comedy The Roaring Girl through the lens of the two most influential modern commentaries on mass entertainment: Walter Benjamin’s essay “Work of Art” and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s essay “Culture Industry.” These Frankfurt School theorists help us recognize The Roaring Girl’s stake in exploring the crisis for individuality that its own mass audiences provoke. But The Roaring Girl also anticipates and critiques the Frankfurt School’s bias toward a totalizing vision of the mass audience.
Teresa Pepe
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474433990
- eISBN:
- 9781474460231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474433990.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This chapter focuses on the main contents and themes developed in the blog. Here, the body is identified as the recurring theme in blogger’s identity construction. Indeed, the blog is conceived as an ...
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This chapter focuses on the main contents and themes developed in the blog. Here, the body is identified as the recurring theme in blogger’s identity construction. Indeed, the blog is conceived as an attempt at recollecting the scattered pieces of the body, as it allows the description of feelings and emotions, which are considered the true attributes of one’s individuality. At the same time, the body is re-imagined in the forms of animals, objects, Egyptian goddesses and small children, as a means of taking refuge from the constraints of daily reality. While autofictional authors worldwide are often accused of exhibitionism and narcissism, the study argues that for these Egyptian bloggers, writing the body is political because it displays in public how power is imposed on their bodies. The chapter also elaborates on the fact that writing the body on the blog was conducive to the exposure of the body in the 25th January uprising, as evidenced by the mobilisation for Khaled Said’s (Khālid Saʿīd) murder at the hands of the police, the public discussions on sexual harassment, and Aliaa al-Mahdi’s (ʿAlyāʿal-Mahdī) nude pictures on her blog Mudhakkirat Thaʾira (A Rebel’s Diary, 2011–).Less
This chapter focuses on the main contents and themes developed in the blog. Here, the body is identified as the recurring theme in blogger’s identity construction. Indeed, the blog is conceived as an attempt at recollecting the scattered pieces of the body, as it allows the description of feelings and emotions, which are considered the true attributes of one’s individuality. At the same time, the body is re-imagined in the forms of animals, objects, Egyptian goddesses and small children, as a means of taking refuge from the constraints of daily reality. While autofictional authors worldwide are often accused of exhibitionism and narcissism, the study argues that for these Egyptian bloggers, writing the body is political because it displays in public how power is imposed on their bodies. The chapter also elaborates on the fact that writing the body on the blog was conducive to the exposure of the body in the 25th January uprising, as evidenced by the mobilisation for Khaled Said’s (Khālid Saʿīd) murder at the hands of the police, the public discussions on sexual harassment, and Aliaa al-Mahdi’s (ʿAlyāʿal-Mahdī) nude pictures on her blog Mudhakkirat Thaʾira (A Rebel’s Diary, 2011–).
