Karin L. Hooks
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813056043
- eISBN:
- 9780813053813
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056043.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Arguing that the changing and more consolidated literary politics of the century’s turn helped make possible the canon wars of the twentieth century, this paper investigates the history of literary ...
More
Arguing that the changing and more consolidated literary politics of the century’s turn helped make possible the canon wars of the twentieth century, this paper investigates the history of literary histories. Twentieth-century constructs of the field overlook an awareness that late-nineteenth century female literary historians envisioned in terms of a more inclusive and democratic American literary canon. Recovering a literary history largely erased by the turn into the twentieth century through a case study of Sarah Piatt’s career, this chapter focuses on two female literary historians of the 1890s: Ellen Mackay Hutchinson and Jeanette Gilder, whose literary anthologies include Piatt’s writing, unlike those of the following century. Hutchinson, who (with Edmund Clarence Stedman) edited a sizeable collection of American texts, the eleven-volume Library of American Literature, and Jeanette Gilder, co-editor of The Critic, who hosted a popular election to identify the top 125 American women writers of 1890, made arguments for the inclusion of Piatt in the canon that are worth revisiting in light of turn-of-the-century mechanisms for erasing the literary history of which Piatt was a part.Less
Arguing that the changing and more consolidated literary politics of the century’s turn helped make possible the canon wars of the twentieth century, this paper investigates the history of literary histories. Twentieth-century constructs of the field overlook an awareness that late-nineteenth century female literary historians envisioned in terms of a more inclusive and democratic American literary canon. Recovering a literary history largely erased by the turn into the twentieth century through a case study of Sarah Piatt’s career, this chapter focuses on two female literary historians of the 1890s: Ellen Mackay Hutchinson and Jeanette Gilder, whose literary anthologies include Piatt’s writing, unlike those of the following century. Hutchinson, who (with Edmund Clarence Stedman) edited a sizeable collection of American texts, the eleven-volume Library of American Literature, and Jeanette Gilder, co-editor of The Critic, who hosted a popular election to identify the top 125 American women writers of 1890, made arguments for the inclusion of Piatt in the canon that are worth revisiting in light of turn-of-the-century mechanisms for erasing the literary history of which Piatt was a part.
Melanie V. Dawson and Meredith L. Goldsmith
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813056043
- eISBN:
- 9780813053813
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056043.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Across the period from 1880 to 1930, the processes of rethinking the past can be read as a historical gesture as significant as the consideration of wholly new works of art, resulting in a period of ...
More
Across the period from 1880 to 1930, the processes of rethinking the past can be read as a historical gesture as significant as the consideration of wholly new works of art, resulting in a period of experimentation, negotiation, hybridity, and historical dualities. Despite pressures to valorize the modern and thus separate literary eras at the century’s dividing mark, authors from the turn of the century, or the T-20 period, explore their historical legacies as well as anticipatory inscriptions of the new. Calling for a reading practice that encourages both forward and backward glancing, essays collected in this volume attest to the irreducibility of the century’s turn, which can be read as an era of historical complexity rather than as a period shaped by a decisive teleological march into new intellectual territory. Exploring the permeable boundaries and elastic categories of a literary history rich in multiple investments, essays here stress American literature’s navigation of moving boundaries that encompass not only temporal markers but intersecting literary and cultural traditions.Less
Across the period from 1880 to 1930, the processes of rethinking the past can be read as a historical gesture as significant as the consideration of wholly new works of art, resulting in a period of experimentation, negotiation, hybridity, and historical dualities. Despite pressures to valorize the modern and thus separate literary eras at the century’s dividing mark, authors from the turn of the century, or the T-20 period, explore their historical legacies as well as anticipatory inscriptions of the new. Calling for a reading practice that encourages both forward and backward glancing, essays collected in this volume attest to the irreducibility of the century’s turn, which can be read as an era of historical complexity rather than as a period shaped by a decisive teleological march into new intellectual territory. Exploring the permeable boundaries and elastic categories of a literary history rich in multiple investments, essays here stress American literature’s navigation of moving boundaries that encompass not only temporal markers but intersecting literary and cultural traditions.
Rodolphe Gasché
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234349
- eISBN:
- 9780823241279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234349.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Beginnings and Endings dates from 1980. Parts of it were presented at a conference on Writing Literary History organized by Wlad, and again in 1981 at a conference on The Institutions of Criticism. ...
More
Beginnings and Endings dates from 1980. Parts of it were presented at a conference on Writing Literary History organized by Wlad, and again in 1981 at a conference on The Institutions of Criticism. As indicated by the titles of these events, both of which were attended by many leading literary critics firmly entrenched in the opposing camps of either historical or text-oriented criticism, the taxing challenge was twofold. The proponents of historical literary criticism were asked to account for the practice of writing in the constitution of literary history, and the text-oriented critics to confront the fact that writing not only gives rise to self-referential texts, but also to discourses on literature such as literary history. Furthermore, both camps of professional critics were subtly invited to respond to what kind of institutional pressures shape the critical traditions to which they subscribe.Less
Beginnings and Endings dates from 1980. Parts of it were presented at a conference on Writing Literary History organized by Wlad, and again in 1981 at a conference on The Institutions of Criticism. As indicated by the titles of these events, both of which were attended by many leading literary critics firmly entrenched in the opposing camps of either historical or text-oriented criticism, the taxing challenge was twofold. The proponents of historical literary criticism were asked to account for the practice of writing in the constitution of literary history, and the text-oriented critics to confront the fact that writing not only gives rise to self-referential texts, but also to discourses on literature such as literary history. Furthermore, both camps of professional critics were subtly invited to respond to what kind of institutional pressures shape the critical traditions to which they subscribe.
Ruth Bush
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381953
- eISBN:
- 9781786945181
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381953.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Publishing Africa in French provides a critical analysis of the global dynamics and cultural and publishing history of French and African literature. It focuses on French readership and the French ...
More
Publishing Africa in French provides a critical analysis of the global dynamics and cultural and publishing history of French and African literature. It focuses on French readership and the French literary-political sphere, and engages with issues of authorial authenticity, literary value, and author autonomy. The study is built on careful documentations of the pre- and post-publication process, and explores the relentless interweaving of ideas expressed in literary form, their institutional contexts and underlying human relationships, and asks: Who writes about Africa and who is Africa written for? The book is split into two sections, ‘Institutions’ and ‘Mediations’. The first part of the book, ‘Institutions’, situates three institutions of particular significance, the publishing houses of Le Seuil and Présence Africaine, and the Association nationale des écrivains de la mer et de l’outre-mer. ‘Mediations’, the second section of the book, concludes with a consideration on how institutional structures work into or against the literary texture of selected publications, and examines readers’ reports and editorial revision; the use of pseudonyms; the development of named collections and the process of literary translation from English. Publishing Africa in French aims to bring book-historical principles to bear on a decisive period in French literary history and foregrounds the influencing factors on literary expression and its material impressions in the period of decolonization.Less
Publishing Africa in French provides a critical analysis of the global dynamics and cultural and publishing history of French and African literature. It focuses on French readership and the French literary-political sphere, and engages with issues of authorial authenticity, literary value, and author autonomy. The study is built on careful documentations of the pre- and post-publication process, and explores the relentless interweaving of ideas expressed in literary form, their institutional contexts and underlying human relationships, and asks: Who writes about Africa and who is Africa written for? The book is split into two sections, ‘Institutions’ and ‘Mediations’. The first part of the book, ‘Institutions’, situates three institutions of particular significance, the publishing houses of Le Seuil and Présence Africaine, and the Association nationale des écrivains de la mer et de l’outre-mer. ‘Mediations’, the second section of the book, concludes with a consideration on how institutional structures work into or against the literary texture of selected publications, and examines readers’ reports and editorial revision; the use of pseudonyms; the development of named collections and the process of literary translation from English. Publishing Africa in French aims to bring book-historical principles to bear on a decisive period in French literary history and foregrounds the influencing factors on literary expression and its material impressions in the period of decolonization.
Christopher D'Addario and Matthew Augustine (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526113894
- eISBN:
- 9781526138897
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526113894.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Texts and Readers in the Age of Marvell offers fresh perspectives from leading and emerging scholars of seventeenth-century British literature, focusing on the surprising ways that texts interacted ...
More
Texts and Readers in the Age of Marvell offers fresh perspectives from leading and emerging scholars of seventeenth-century British literature, focusing on the surprising ways that texts interacted with writers and readers at precise cultural moments. With particular interest in how texts entered the seventeenth-century public world, some of these essays emphasise the variety of motivations – from generic distaste to personal frustration – that explain how ideology and form fuse together in various works. Others offer fine-grained and multi-sided contextualisations of familiar texts and cruxes. With an eye to the elusive and complicated Andrew Marvell as tutelary figure of the age, the contributors provide novel readings of a range of seventeenth-century authors, often foregrounding the complexities these writers faced as the remarkable events of the century moved swiftly around them. The essays make important contributions, both methodological and critical, to the field of early modern studies and include examinations of prominent seventeenth-century figures such as John Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, and Edmund Waller. New work appears here by Nigel Smith and Michael McKeon on Marvell, Michael Schoenfeldt on new formalism, Derek Hirst on child abuse in the seventeenth century, and Joad Raymond on print politics. Because of their relevance to contemporary critical debates, the studies here will be of interest to postgraduate students and scholars working on seventeenth-century British literature, culture, and history.Less
Texts and Readers in the Age of Marvell offers fresh perspectives from leading and emerging scholars of seventeenth-century British literature, focusing on the surprising ways that texts interacted with writers and readers at precise cultural moments. With particular interest in how texts entered the seventeenth-century public world, some of these essays emphasise the variety of motivations – from generic distaste to personal frustration – that explain how ideology and form fuse together in various works. Others offer fine-grained and multi-sided contextualisations of familiar texts and cruxes. With an eye to the elusive and complicated Andrew Marvell as tutelary figure of the age, the contributors provide novel readings of a range of seventeenth-century authors, often foregrounding the complexities these writers faced as the remarkable events of the century moved swiftly around them. The essays make important contributions, both methodological and critical, to the field of early modern studies and include examinations of prominent seventeenth-century figures such as John Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, and Edmund Waller. New work appears here by Nigel Smith and Michael McKeon on Marvell, Michael Schoenfeldt on new formalism, Derek Hirst on child abuse in the seventeenth century, and Joad Raymond on print politics. Because of their relevance to contemporary critical debates, the studies here will be of interest to postgraduate students and scholars working on seventeenth-century British literature, culture, and history.
Clifford Siskin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035316
- eISBN:
- 9780262336345
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035316.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This book illuminates the role that “system” has played in the shaping and reshaping of modern knowledge. System can describe what we see, as with Galileo’s sighting of Jupiter’s moons, operate a ...
More
This book illuminates the role that “system” has played in the shaping and reshaping of modern knowledge. System can describe what we see, as with Galileo’s sighting of Jupiter’s moons, operate a computer, or be made on a page or screen like a sonnet or a letter. Starting in the seventeenth century, more and more people wrote and published works that they named and titled “system”—turning system into one of the forms, along with competitors such as treatises and histories, that filled the Enlightenment with the work of writing. I identify features of the genre of system, such as its scalability, that explain why it has been so essential to efforts to know the world for so long. Beginning with Galileo’s “message” from the stars and Bacon’s turn from scholasticism, my argument tracks system in its many intellectual and social incarnations, from Newton’s “system of the world” and the proliferating systems that generated Enlightenment and the modern disciplines and institutions that emerged from it to Darwin’s algorithmic system of survival and our own plethora of new uses for, and kinds of, system—including network, nervous, computing, and communication systems, as well as systems theory, self-organizing systems, and system professionals. It concludes by tracking system to its new position in what is being called the “computational universe”—one in which system generates the world it helps us to know. We may then we be entering a new chapter in the shape of knowledge from the Enlightenment with system in a newly performative role.Less
This book illuminates the role that “system” has played in the shaping and reshaping of modern knowledge. System can describe what we see, as with Galileo’s sighting of Jupiter’s moons, operate a computer, or be made on a page or screen like a sonnet or a letter. Starting in the seventeenth century, more and more people wrote and published works that they named and titled “system”—turning system into one of the forms, along with competitors such as treatises and histories, that filled the Enlightenment with the work of writing. I identify features of the genre of system, such as its scalability, that explain why it has been so essential to efforts to know the world for so long. Beginning with Galileo’s “message” from the stars and Bacon’s turn from scholasticism, my argument tracks system in its many intellectual and social incarnations, from Newton’s “system of the world” and the proliferating systems that generated Enlightenment and the modern disciplines and institutions that emerged from it to Darwin’s algorithmic system of survival and our own plethora of new uses for, and kinds of, system—including network, nervous, computing, and communication systems, as well as systems theory, self-organizing systems, and system professionals. It concludes by tracking system to its new position in what is being called the “computational universe”—one in which system generates the world it helps us to know. We may then we be entering a new chapter in the shape of knowledge from the Enlightenment with system in a newly performative role.
Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526125316
- eISBN:
- 9781526136213
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125316.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This collection explores how concepts of intellectual or learning disability evolved from a range of influences, gradually developing from earlier and decidedly distinct concepts, including ‘idiocy’ ...
More
This collection explores how concepts of intellectual or learning disability evolved from a range of influences, gradually developing from earlier and decidedly distinct concepts, including ‘idiocy’ and ‘folly’, which were themselves generated by very specific social and intellectual environments. With essays extending across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical, and psychiatric histories, this collection maintains a rigorous distinction between historical and contemporary concepts in demonstrating how intellectual disability and related notions were products of the prevailing social, cultural, and intellectual environments in which they took form, and themselves performed important functions within these environments. Focusing on British and European material from the middle ages to the late nineteenth century, this collection asks ‘How and why did these concepts form?’ ‘How did they connect with one another?’ and ‘What historical circumstances contributed to building these connections?’ While the emphasis is on conceptual history or a history of ideas, these essays also address the consequences of these defining forces for the people who found themselves enclosed by the shifting definitional field.Less
This collection explores how concepts of intellectual or learning disability evolved from a range of influences, gradually developing from earlier and decidedly distinct concepts, including ‘idiocy’ and ‘folly’, which were themselves generated by very specific social and intellectual environments. With essays extending across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical, and psychiatric histories, this collection maintains a rigorous distinction between historical and contemporary concepts in demonstrating how intellectual disability and related notions were products of the prevailing social, cultural, and intellectual environments in which they took form, and themselves performed important functions within these environments. Focusing on British and European material from the middle ages to the late nineteenth century, this collection asks ‘How and why did these concepts form?’ ‘How did they connect with one another?’ and ‘What historical circumstances contributed to building these connections?’ While the emphasis is on conceptual history or a history of ideas, these essays also address the consequences of these defining forces for the people who found themselves enclosed by the shifting definitional field.
Ignacio Infante
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823251780
- eISBN:
- 9780823252831
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251780.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This afterword stresses the importance of the concept of translation within the field of contemporary transatlantic literary and cultural studies. It also offers an alternative to the theoretical ...
More
This afterword stresses the importance of the concept of translation within the field of contemporary transatlantic literary and cultural studies. It also offers an alternative to the theoretical framework offered by traditional national literary history and literary historiography as the main paradigm for the study of literature. Finally, based on the work of Erich Auerbach and Brent Hayes Edwards, it suggests the articulation of a model of transcultural literary history based on the notion of relationally at the core of édouard Glissant’s notion of a “poetics of relation.”Less
This afterword stresses the importance of the concept of translation within the field of contemporary transatlantic literary and cultural studies. It also offers an alternative to the theoretical framework offered by traditional national literary history and literary historiography as the main paradigm for the study of literature. Finally, based on the work of Erich Auerbach and Brent Hayes Edwards, it suggests the articulation of a model of transcultural literary history based on the notion of relationally at the core of édouard Glissant’s notion of a “poetics of relation.”
Philip V. Bohlman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520234949
- eISBN:
- 9780520966444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234949.003.0014
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
In a broadly historical essay Herder examines the ways in which poetry and song reflect national character. Important distinctions between the objects and subjects of poetry, especially the relation ...
More
In a broadly historical essay Herder examines the ways in which poetry and song reflect national character. Important distinctions between the objects and subjects of poetry, especially the relation between song as object and singing as subject, provide a comparative framework throughout and become the foundations for a critical language to represent modern culture and politics (e.g., the relation between Volk and Nation). Herder carefully traces the historical development of national literary traditions, but he draws the reader to considerations of poetry and song in the contemporary world of the Enlightenment. He concludes by drawing attention to the ways in which certain genres of poetry and song extend beyond the traditions of single peoples, acquiring a greater impact as transnational.Less
In a broadly historical essay Herder examines the ways in which poetry and song reflect national character. Important distinctions between the objects and subjects of poetry, especially the relation between song as object and singing as subject, provide a comparative framework throughout and become the foundations for a critical language to represent modern culture and politics (e.g., the relation between Volk and Nation). Herder carefully traces the historical development of national literary traditions, but he draws the reader to considerations of poetry and song in the contemporary world of the Enlightenment. He concludes by drawing attention to the ways in which certain genres of poetry and song extend beyond the traditions of single peoples, acquiring a greater impact as transnational.
Ruth Bush
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381953
- eISBN:
- 9781786945181
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381953.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers the colonial heritage of the main literary prizes specific to African writing in French in the post-war period, awarded by the Association nationale desécrivains de la mer et ...
More
This chapter considers the colonial heritage of the main literary prizes specific to African writing in French in the post-war period, awarded by the Association nationale desécrivains de la mer et de l’outre-mer (ANEMOM). It demonstrates how the ANEMOM gradually adapted to the changing political and cultural context of decolonization during the vingt glorieuses and examines how it sought to preserve certain aspects of France’s colonial imaginary by consecrating the ‘Empire de la langue française’.Less
This chapter considers the colonial heritage of the main literary prizes specific to African writing in French in the post-war period, awarded by the Association nationale desécrivains de la mer et de l’outre-mer (ANEMOM). It demonstrates how the ANEMOM gradually adapted to the changing political and cultural context of decolonization during the vingt glorieuses and examines how it sought to preserve certain aspects of France’s colonial imaginary by consecrating the ‘Empire de la langue française’.
Jeffrey J. Williams
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263806
- eISBN:
- 9780823266432
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263806.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter profiles Gordon Hutner, founding and long-time editor of the major journal, American Literary History, and critic of American literature. It tells how he founded the journal and the ...
More
This chapter profiles Gordon Hutner, founding and long-time editor of the major journal, American Literary History, and critic of American literature. It tells how he founded the journal and the ins-and-outs of editing it. It also discusses his recent work inventorying modern American fiction. It draws on an in-depth interview that gives many revealing details about his work and career.Less
This chapter profiles Gordon Hutner, founding and long-time editor of the major journal, American Literary History, and critic of American literature. It tells how he founded the journal and the ins-and-outs of editing it. It also discusses his recent work inventorying modern American fiction. It draws on an in-depth interview that gives many revealing details about his work and career.
Gregory S. Jay
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190687229
- eISBN:
- 9780190687250
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190687229.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
White liberal race fiction has been an enduringly popular genre in American literary history. It includes widely read and taught works such as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird along with ...
More
White liberal race fiction has been an enduringly popular genre in American literary history. It includes widely read and taught works such as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird along with period bestsellers now sometimes forgotten. Hollywood regularly adapted them into blockbusters, reinforcing their cultural influence. These novels and films protest slavery, confront stereotypes, dramatize social and legal injustices, engage the political controversies of their time, and try to move readers emotionally toward taking action. The literary forms and arguments of these books derive from the cultural work they intend to do in educating the minds and hearts, and propelling the actions, of those who think they are white—indeed, in making the social construction of that whiteness readable and thus more susceptible of reform. The white writers of these fictions struggle with their own place in systems of oppression and privilege while asking their readers to do the same. The predominance of women among this tradition’s authors leads to exploring how their critiques of gender and race norms often reinforced each other. Each chapter provides a case study combining biography, historical analysis, close reading, and literary theory to map the significance of this genre and its ongoing relevance. This tradition remains vital because every generation must relearn the lessons of antiracism and formulate effective cultural narratives for passing on the intellectual and emotional tools useful in fighting injustice.Less
White liberal race fiction has been an enduringly popular genre in American literary history. It includes widely read and taught works such as Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird along with period bestsellers now sometimes forgotten. Hollywood regularly adapted them into blockbusters, reinforcing their cultural influence. These novels and films protest slavery, confront stereotypes, dramatize social and legal injustices, engage the political controversies of their time, and try to move readers emotionally toward taking action. The literary forms and arguments of these books derive from the cultural work they intend to do in educating the minds and hearts, and propelling the actions, of those who think they are white—indeed, in making the social construction of that whiteness readable and thus more susceptible of reform. The white writers of these fictions struggle with their own place in systems of oppression and privilege while asking their readers to do the same. The predominance of women among this tradition’s authors leads to exploring how their critiques of gender and race norms often reinforced each other. Each chapter provides a case study combining biography, historical analysis, close reading, and literary theory to map the significance of this genre and its ongoing relevance. This tradition remains vital because every generation must relearn the lessons of antiracism and formulate effective cultural narratives for passing on the intellectual and emotional tools useful in fighting injustice.
Helen Barr
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719091490
- eISBN:
- 9781781707319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091490.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Beginning with Antony Gormley’s Transport sculpture in Canterbury cathedral, the Introduction introduces key conceptual premises of the book. It shows how Transport re-presents bodies in time in a ...
More
Beginning with Antony Gormley’s Transport sculpture in Canterbury cathedral, the Introduction introduces key conceptual premises of the book. It shows how Transport re-presents bodies in time in a fashion that recalls characteristics of medieval cultural practices: ecclesiastical space, written texts such as Piers Plowman, The Book of Margery Kempe, Mystery plays and devotional texts. Discussion of religious iconography between The Book of the Duchess and The Miller’s Tale shows how Chaucer’s writing occupies a distinctive place in this blurring of boundaries between historical materiality, scriptural history, and contemporary fictions. Bodily transport between Chaucer’s own works anticipates the transport that is yet to be made of them in works that he did not compose.Less
Beginning with Antony Gormley’s Transport sculpture in Canterbury cathedral, the Introduction introduces key conceptual premises of the book. It shows how Transport re-presents bodies in time in a fashion that recalls characteristics of medieval cultural practices: ecclesiastical space, written texts such as Piers Plowman, The Book of Margery Kempe, Mystery plays and devotional texts. Discussion of religious iconography between The Book of the Duchess and The Miller’s Tale shows how Chaucer’s writing occupies a distinctive place in this blurring of boundaries between historical materiality, scriptural history, and contemporary fictions. Bodily transport between Chaucer’s own works anticipates the transport that is yet to be made of them in works that he did not compose.
Andrew Frayn
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719089220
- eISBN:
- 9781781707333
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089220.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book argues that disenchantment is not only a response to wartime experience, but a condition of modernity with a language that finds extreme expression in First World War literature. The ...
More
This book argues that disenchantment is not only a response to wartime experience, but a condition of modernity with a language that finds extreme expression in First World War literature. The objects of disenchantment are often the very same as the enchantments of scientific progress: bureaucracy, homogenisation and capitalism. Older beliefs such as religion, courage and honour are kept in view, and endure longer than often is realised. Social critics, theorists and commentators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide a rich and previously unexplored context for wartime and post-war literature. The rise of the disenchanted narrative to its predominance in the War Books Boom of 1928 – 1930 is charted from the turn of the century in texts, archival material, sales and review data. Rarely-studied popular and middlebrow novels are analysed alongside well-known highbrow texts: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and Rebecca West rub shoulders with forgotten figures such as Gilbert Frankau and Ernest Raymond. These sometimes jarring juxtapositions show the strained relationship between enchantment and disenchantment in the war and the post-war decade.Less
This book argues that disenchantment is not only a response to wartime experience, but a condition of modernity with a language that finds extreme expression in First World War literature. The objects of disenchantment are often the very same as the enchantments of scientific progress: bureaucracy, homogenisation and capitalism. Older beliefs such as religion, courage and honour are kept in view, and endure longer than often is realised. Social critics, theorists and commentators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide a rich and previously unexplored context for wartime and post-war literature. The rise of the disenchanted narrative to its predominance in the War Books Boom of 1928 – 1930 is charted from the turn of the century in texts, archival material, sales and review data. Rarely-studied popular and middlebrow novels are analysed alongside well-known highbrow texts: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and Rebecca West rub shoulders with forgotten figures such as Gilbert Frankau and Ernest Raymond. These sometimes jarring juxtapositions show the strained relationship between enchantment and disenchantment in the war and the post-war decade.
Cheryl A. Wall
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646909
- eISBN:
- 9781469646923
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646909.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Although they have written in various genres, African American writers as notable and diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker have done their most influential work in the essay ...
More
Although they have written in various genres, African American writers as notable and diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker have done their most influential work in the essay form. The Souls of Black Folk, The Fire Next Time, and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens are landmarks in African American literary history. Many other writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and Richard Wright, are acclaimed essayists but achieved greater fame for their work in other genres; their essay work is often overlooked or studied only in the contexts of their better-known works. Here Cheryl A. Wall offers the first sustained study of the African American essay as a distinct literary genre.
Beginning with the sermons, orations, and writing of nineteenth-century men and women like Frederick Douglass who laid the foundation for the African American essay, Wall examines the genre's evolution through the Harlem Renaissance. She then turns her attention to four writers she regards as among the most influential essayists of the twentieth century: Baldwin, Ellison, June Jordan, and Alice Walker. She closes the book with a discussion of the status of the essay in the twenty-first century as it shifts its medium from print to digital in the hands of writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brittney Cooper. Wall's beautifully written and insightful book is nothing less than a redefinition of how we understand the genres of African American literature.Less
Although they have written in various genres, African American writers as notable and diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker have done their most influential work in the essay form. The Souls of Black Folk, The Fire Next Time, and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens are landmarks in African American literary history. Many other writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and Richard Wright, are acclaimed essayists but achieved greater fame for their work in other genres; their essay work is often overlooked or studied only in the contexts of their better-known works. Here Cheryl A. Wall offers the first sustained study of the African American essay as a distinct literary genre.
Beginning with the sermons, orations, and writing of nineteenth-century men and women like Frederick Douglass who laid the foundation for the African American essay, Wall examines the genre's evolution through the Harlem Renaissance. She then turns her attention to four writers she regards as among the most influential essayists of the twentieth century: Baldwin, Ellison, June Jordan, and Alice Walker. She closes the book with a discussion of the status of the essay in the twenty-first century as it shifts its medium from print to digital in the hands of writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brittney Cooper. Wall's beautifully written and insightful book is nothing less than a redefinition of how we understand the genres of African American literature.
Simon Cooke
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748675463
- eISBN:
- 9780748684373
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748675463.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The Afterword offers a brief summative conclusion and outlook, addressing the question of what ‘follows’ the works considered. It draws together the strands and literary historical patterns that have ...
More
The Afterword offers a brief summative conclusion and outlook, addressing the question of what ‘follows’ the works considered. It draws together the strands and literary historical patterns that have emerged through the readings, but suggests that the most enduring legacy of the works in terms of aesthetics and ethics, more important even than their specific formal features, is their liberating openness and lasting sense of wonder.Less
The Afterword offers a brief summative conclusion and outlook, addressing the question of what ‘follows’ the works considered. It draws together the strands and literary historical patterns that have emerged through the readings, but suggests that the most enduring legacy of the works in terms of aesthetics and ethics, more important even than their specific formal features, is their liberating openness and lasting sense of wonder.
Gaura Narayan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781942954422
- eISBN:
- 9781786944368
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954422.003.0018
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
My paper examines Virginia Woolf's review of British history and literary heritage in Orlando (1828) which was published in the context of the scandal created by Radclyffe Hall's The Well of ...
More
My paper examines Virginia Woolf's review of British history and literary heritage in Orlando (1828) which was published in the context of the scandal created by Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. I ask if Woolf's lightness of touch is a response to the maelstrom generated by Hall's novel which had powerful figures like Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill, and Sir William Joynson-Hicks work to supress it so as to prevent the injurious spread of lesbianism. A few years later, in 1931, Freud published his essay on "Female Sexuality" which theorized lesbianism as the inability of the woman to move to sexual maturation. In this context it is significant that Woolf's novel plays with notions of gender fluidity and queer sexuality only to seemingly abandon them at narrative's end. Her narrative choices recall Coleridge's "Christabel" (1816) which is entirely fitting given Woolf's remark about Coleridge and the androgynous mind in A Room of One's Own. Coleridge's poem places non-normative female sexuality in a Gothic narrative and deploys notions of demonicity to occult it. The poem forces its reader to ask two key questions: Is Geraldine a demon? Do women have sex with each other? Affirmative answers to these questions dovetail into a single anxiety that the narrative end of the poem resolves by triagulating the erotic relationship and setting aside queer sexuality. My paper considers the ideologies that control both narratives as both texts allow space for so-called deviance and both texts also contain these radical spaces forcing a return to so-called normalcy.Less
My paper examines Virginia Woolf's review of British history and literary heritage in Orlando (1828) which was published in the context of the scandal created by Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. I ask if Woolf's lightness of touch is a response to the maelstrom generated by Hall's novel which had powerful figures like Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill, and Sir William Joynson-Hicks work to supress it so as to prevent the injurious spread of lesbianism. A few years later, in 1931, Freud published his essay on "Female Sexuality" which theorized lesbianism as the inability of the woman to move to sexual maturation. In this context it is significant that Woolf's novel plays with notions of gender fluidity and queer sexuality only to seemingly abandon them at narrative's end. Her narrative choices recall Coleridge's "Christabel" (1816) which is entirely fitting given Woolf's remark about Coleridge and the androgynous mind in A Room of One's Own. Coleridge's poem places non-normative female sexuality in a Gothic narrative and deploys notions of demonicity to occult it. The poem forces its reader to ask two key questions: Is Geraldine a demon? Do women have sex with each other? Affirmative answers to these questions dovetail into a single anxiety that the narrative end of the poem resolves by triagulating the erotic relationship and setting aside queer sexuality. My paper considers the ideologies that control both narratives as both texts allow space for so-called deviance and both texts also contain these radical spaces forcing a return to so-called normalcy.
Tom Shippey
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382615
- eISBN:
- 9781786945167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382615.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Semiotic ghosts, it has been suggested, are the relics of old beliefs, or – in science fiction – past images of the future, now discredited or disproved, but still present as memories, ...
More
Semiotic ghosts, it has been suggested, are the relics of old beliefs, or – in science fiction – past images of the future, now discredited or disproved, but still present as memories, hallucinations. If science fiction describes the could-bes imagined by authors, semiotic ghosts have become the might-have-beens of literary history. This article discusses the many variations on this overall theme as imagined in the work of Bruce Sterling, leading to the concept of Qualified Reality. Sterling is seen also as a practitioner of literary bricolage, insistently taking motifs and images from many sources, and setting them to work in entirely different contexts, with effects so complex as not to be readily described.Less
Semiotic ghosts, it has been suggested, are the relics of old beliefs, or – in science fiction – past images of the future, now discredited or disproved, but still present as memories, hallucinations. If science fiction describes the could-bes imagined by authors, semiotic ghosts have become the might-have-beens of literary history. This article discusses the many variations on this overall theme as imagined in the work of Bruce Sterling, leading to the concept of Qualified Reality. Sterling is seen also as a practitioner of literary bricolage, insistently taking motifs and images from many sources, and setting them to work in entirely different contexts, with effects so complex as not to be readily described.
Ruth Bush
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781381953
- eISBN:
- 9781786945181
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381953.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
‘Book-publishing at Présence Africaine’ explores the extent of which the idealized notion of autonomy was transformed by the effects of decolonization on the Parisian publishing landscape. The ...
More
‘Book-publishing at Présence Africaine’ explores the extent of which the idealized notion of autonomy was transformed by the effects of decolonization on the Parisian publishing landscape. The chapter also reconsiders the radical nature of Présence Africaine’s early publishing work and its role in shaping notions of literary value in the period leading up to and directly following the independences.Less
‘Book-publishing at Présence Africaine’ explores the extent of which the idealized notion of autonomy was transformed by the effects of decolonization on the Parisian publishing landscape. The chapter also reconsiders the radical nature of Présence Africaine’s early publishing work and its role in shaping notions of literary value in the period leading up to and directly following the independences.
Josephine M. Guy
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474408912
- eISBN:
- 9781474445030
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408912.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter provides an overview of critical histories of the fin de siècle outlining some of the key concepts associated with defining this period in literary history. It explores the relationship ...
More
This chapter provides an overview of critical histories of the fin de siècle outlining some of the key concepts associated with defining this period in literary history. It explores the relationship between global, national and regional understandings of the fin de siècle, and poses questions about the utility of the term ‘fin de siècle’ as marking out a distinct period in literary history. The Introduction also provides brief summaries of each of the following chapters in the volume.Less
This chapter provides an overview of critical histories of the fin de siècle outlining some of the key concepts associated with defining this period in literary history. It explores the relationship between global, national and regional understandings of the fin de siècle, and poses questions about the utility of the term ‘fin de siècle’ as marking out a distinct period in literary history. The Introduction also provides brief summaries of each of the following chapters in the volume.
