Jason A. Springs
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195395044
- eISBN:
- 9780199866243
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Discontinued
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395044.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Toward a Generous Orthodoxy provides a refined exposition of Hans Frei's christologically motivated engagement with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Clifford Geertz, Erich Auerbach, his use of ...
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Toward a Generous Orthodoxy provides a refined exposition of Hans Frei's christologically motivated engagement with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Clifford Geertz, Erich Auerbach, his use of ordinary language philosophy and nonfoundational philosophical insights, while illuminating and expanding his orientational indebtedness to Karl Barth's theology. By placing Frei's work into critical conversation with developments in pragmatist thought and cultural theory since his death, the rereading of Frei offered here aims to correct and resolve many of the complaints and misunderstandings that vex his theological legacy. The result is a clarification of the unity and coherence of Frei's work over the course of his career; a reframing of the complex relationship of his work to that of his Yale colleague George Lindbeck and successive "postliberal" theological trends; demonstration that Frei's uses of Barth, Wittgenstein, Auerbach, and Geertz do not relegate his theological approach to critical quietism, methodological separatism, epistemic fideism, or a so-called "theological ghetto"; explication and development of Frei's account of the "plain sense" of Scripture that evades charges of narrative foundationalism and essentialism on one hand and, on the other, avoids criticisms that any account so emphasizing culture, language, and practice will reduce scriptural meaning to the ways the text is used in Christian practice and community. What emerges from Toward a Generous Orthodoxy is a sharpened account of the christologically anchored, interdisciplinary, and conversational character of Frei's theology, which he came to describe as a "generous orthodoxy," modeling a way for academic theological voices to take seriously both their vocation to the Christian church and their roles as interlocutors in the academic discourse.Less
Toward a Generous Orthodoxy provides a refined exposition of Hans Frei's christologically motivated engagement with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Clifford Geertz, Erich Auerbach, his use of ordinary language philosophy and nonfoundational philosophical insights, while illuminating and expanding his orientational indebtedness to Karl Barth's theology. By placing Frei's work into critical conversation with developments in pragmatist thought and cultural theory since his death, the rereading of Frei offered here aims to correct and resolve many of the complaints and misunderstandings that vex his theological legacy. The result is a clarification of the unity and coherence of Frei's work over the course of his career; a reframing of the complex relationship of his work to that of his Yale colleague George Lindbeck and successive "postliberal" theological trends; demonstration that Frei's uses of Barth, Wittgenstein, Auerbach, and Geertz do not relegate his theological approach to critical quietism, methodological separatism, epistemic fideism, or a so-called "theological ghetto"; explication and development of Frei's account of the "plain sense" of Scripture that evades charges of narrative foundationalism and essentialism on one hand and, on the other, avoids criticisms that any account so emphasizing culture, language, and practice will reduce scriptural meaning to the ways the text is used in Christian practice and community. What emerges from Toward a Generous Orthodoxy is a sharpened account of the christologically anchored, interdisciplinary, and conversational character of Frei's theology, which he came to describe as a "generous orthodoxy," modeling a way for academic theological voices to take seriously both their vocation to the Christian church and their roles as interlocutors in the academic discourse.
George Cheney, Daniel J. Lair, Dean Ritz, and Brenden E. Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195182774
- eISBN:
- 9780199871001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182774.003.0003
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This chapter explores deeply how our common ways of speaking about ethics distract us from a more integrative vision of ethics in our lives. The chapter introduces three problems with how we ...
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This chapter explores deeply how our common ways of speaking about ethics distract us from a more integrative vision of ethics in our lives. The chapter introduces three problems with how we typically approach ethics, as revealed in our language: compartmentalization, or putting ethics in a box; “essentialization,” or trying to reduce or crystallize ethics in terms of one thing or simple answers; and abstraction, or creating distance (or alienation) between ethical concerns and everyday practices. The chapter then explains seven common dimensions cutting across various understandings of ethics, in order to illustrate just what we mean by “ethics” when we speak about it in a particular way. These dimensions include agency and autonomy, discrimination and choice, motive and purpose, responsibility and relationship, rationality and emotionality, role and identity, and scene and situation. The discussion invokes traditional ethical theories to show how they tend to emphasize certain features over others. This chapter concludes by arguing how Aristotle's idea of eudaimonia, or flourishing, helps bring together reframed notions of virtue with our most cherished life goals.Less
This chapter explores deeply how our common ways of speaking about ethics distract us from a more integrative vision of ethics in our lives. The chapter introduces three problems with how we typically approach ethics, as revealed in our language: compartmentalization, or putting ethics in a box; “essentialization,” or trying to reduce or crystallize ethics in terms of one thing or simple answers; and abstraction, or creating distance (or alienation) between ethical concerns and everyday practices. The chapter then explains seven common dimensions cutting across various understandings of ethics, in order to illustrate just what we mean by “ethics” when we speak about it in a particular way. These dimensions include agency and autonomy, discrimination and choice, motive and purpose, responsibility and relationship, rationality and emotionality, role and identity, and scene and situation. The discussion invokes traditional ethical theories to show how they tend to emphasize certain features over others. This chapter concludes by arguing how Aristotle's idea of eudaimonia, or flourishing, helps bring together reframed notions of virtue with our most cherished life goals.
Paul Baines and Pat Rogers
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199278985
- eISBN:
- 9780191700002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278985.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter describes how the delicate sequence of cloak-and-dagger events by which Pope maneuvered Curll into publishing an edition of his letters was perhaps the poet's most consummate and ...
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This chapter describes how the delicate sequence of cloak-and-dagger events by which Pope maneuvered Curll into publishing an edition of his letters was perhaps the poet's most consummate and intricate piece of plotting, and not all the details are clear even now. Pope published his own Narrative of the Method while Curll published the letters, and Curll responded with a True Narrative, reprinting Pope's story with his own notes and rebuttals, and a further collection of ‘Initial Correspondence’ relating to the affair. The chapter discusses five volumes published by Curll.Less
This chapter describes how the delicate sequence of cloak-and-dagger events by which Pope maneuvered Curll into publishing an edition of his letters was perhaps the poet's most consummate and intricate piece of plotting, and not all the details are clear even now. Pope published his own Narrative of the Method while Curll published the letters, and Curll responded with a True Narrative, reprinting Pope's story with his own notes and rebuttals, and a further collection of ‘Initial Correspondence’ relating to the affair. The chapter discusses five volumes published by Curll.
Marvin A. Sweeney
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195133240
- eISBN:
- 9780199834693
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195133242.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
Biblical scholarship has struggled with the two‐fold portrayal of Solomon in 1 Kings 1–11, viz., on the one hand, he is lauded for his wisdom and role as builder of the Jerusalem Temple, but on the ...
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Biblical scholarship has struggled with the two‐fold portrayal of Solomon in 1 Kings 1–11, viz., on the one hand, he is lauded for his wisdom and role as builder of the Jerusalem Temple, but on the other hand, he is condemned for his love of foreign women, who led him to idolatry. Scholars are also perplexed by the so‐called Succession Narrative or Court History in 2 Samuel 9/11–24, which portrays David's adulterous affair with Solomon's mother, Bath Sheba, and the deaths of his older sons. An analysis of this material contends that an earlier Hezekian portrayal of Solomon lauded him as a righteous Davidic monarch, but that the Josianic edition of the DtrH emphasized his marriage to foreign women as the cause of his idolatry, which Josiah had to correct. The portrayal of David's adulterous affair with Bath Sheba and the murder of her husband Uriah indicates that Solomon follows in the footsteps of his father in his love for women and his penchant for spilling the blood of his enemies. Altogether, this critical portrayal of both David and Solomon serves the interests of the Josianic edition of the DtrH by portraying Josiah as the true righteous monarch of the house of David.Less
Biblical scholarship has struggled with the two‐fold portrayal of Solomon in 1 Kings 1–11, viz., on the one hand, he is lauded for his wisdom and role as builder of the Jerusalem Temple, but on the other hand, he is condemned for his love of foreign women, who led him to idolatry. Scholars are also perplexed by the so‐called Succession Narrative or Court History in 2 Samuel 9/11–24, which portrays David's adulterous affair with Solomon's mother, Bath Sheba, and the deaths of his older sons. An analysis of this material contends that an earlier Hezekian portrayal of Solomon lauded him as a righteous Davidic monarch, but that the Josianic edition of the DtrH emphasized his marriage to foreign women as the cause of his idolatry, which Josiah had to correct. The portrayal of David's adulterous affair with Bath Sheba and the murder of her husband Uriah indicates that Solomon follows in the footsteps of his father in his love for women and his penchant for spilling the blood of his enemies. Altogether, this critical portrayal of both David and Solomon serves the interests of the Josianic edition of the DtrH by portraying Josiah as the true righteous monarch of the house of David.
Eva von Contzen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719095962
- eISBN:
- 9781526109675
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719095962.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The first book-length study of the Scottish Legendary (late 14th c.), the only extant collection of saints’ lives in the vernacular from medieval Scotland, scrutinises the dynamics of hagiographic ...
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The first book-length study of the Scottish Legendary (late 14th c.), the only extant collection of saints’ lives in the vernacular from medieval Scotland, scrutinises the dynamics of hagiographic narration, its implicit assumptions about literariness, and the functions of telling the lives of the saints. The fifty saints’ legends are remarkable for their narrative art: the enjoyment of reading the legends is heightened, while didactic and edifying content is toned down. Focusing on the role of the narrator, the depiction of the saintly characters, their interiority, as well as temporal and spatial parameters, it is demonstrated that the Scottish poet has adapted the traditional material to the needs of an audience versed in reading romance and other secular genres. The implications of the Scottish poet’s narrative strategies are analysed also with respect to the Scottishness of the legendary and its overall place in the hagiographic landscape of late medieval Britain.Less
The first book-length study of the Scottish Legendary (late 14th c.), the only extant collection of saints’ lives in the vernacular from medieval Scotland, scrutinises the dynamics of hagiographic narration, its implicit assumptions about literariness, and the functions of telling the lives of the saints. The fifty saints’ legends are remarkable for their narrative art: the enjoyment of reading the legends is heightened, while didactic and edifying content is toned down. Focusing on the role of the narrator, the depiction of the saintly characters, their interiority, as well as temporal and spatial parameters, it is demonstrated that the Scottish poet has adapted the traditional material to the needs of an audience versed in reading romance and other secular genres. The implications of the Scottish poet’s narrative strategies are analysed also with respect to the Scottishness of the legendary and its overall place in the hagiographic landscape of late medieval Britain.
Fariha Shaikh
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474433693
- eISBN:
- 9781474449663
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474433693.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration in British Literature and Art takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining literary criticism, art history, and cultural geography, to argue that the ...
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Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration in British Literature and Art takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining literary criticism, art history, and cultural geography, to argue that the demographic shift in the nineteenth century to settler colonies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand was also a textual one: a vast literature supported and underpinned this movement of people. Through its five chapters, Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration brings printed emigrants’ letters, manuscript shipboard newspapers, and settler fiction into conversation with narrative painting and novels to explore the generic features of emigration literature: textual mobility, a sense of place and colonial home-making. Authors and artists discussed in this book include, among others, Ford Madox Brown, James Collinson, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Susannah Moodie, Catherine Helen Spence, Catharine Parr Traill and Thomas Webster. The book’s careful analysis of the aesthetics of emigration literature demonstrates the close relationships between textual and demographic mobilities, textual materiality and realism, and the spatial imagination.Less
Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration in British Literature and Art takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining literary criticism, art history, and cultural geography, to argue that the demographic shift in the nineteenth century to settler colonies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand was also a textual one: a vast literature supported and underpinned this movement of people. Through its five chapters, Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration brings printed emigrants’ letters, manuscript shipboard newspapers, and settler fiction into conversation with narrative painting and novels to explore the generic features of emigration literature: textual mobility, a sense of place and colonial home-making. Authors and artists discussed in this book include, among others, Ford Madox Brown, James Collinson, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Susannah Moodie, Catherine Helen Spence, Catharine Parr Traill and Thomas Webster. The book’s careful analysis of the aesthetics of emigration literature demonstrates the close relationships between textual and demographic mobilities, textual materiality and realism, and the spatial imagination.
Alexandra Green
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9789888390885
- eISBN:
- 9789882204850
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888390885.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This volume draws upon art historical, anthropological, and religious studies methodologies to delineate the structures and details of late Burmese wall paintings and elucidate the religious, ...
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This volume draws upon art historical, anthropological, and religious studies methodologies to delineate the structures and details of late Burmese wall paintings and elucidate the religious, political, and social concepts driving the creation of this art form. The combination of architecture, paintings, sculpture, and literary traditions created a complete space in which devotees could interact with the Buddha through his biography. Through the standardization of a repertoire of specific forms, codes, and themes, the murals were themselves activating agents, spurring devotees to merit-making, worship, and other ritual practices, partially by establishing normative religious behavior and partly through visual incentives. Much of this was accomplished through the manipulation of space, and the volume contributes to the analysis of visual narratives by examining how the relationships between word and image, layouts, story and scene selection, and narrative themes both demonstrate and confirm social structures and changes, economic activities, and religious practices of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century Burma. The visual material of the wall painting sites worked together with the sculpture and the architecture to create unified spaces in which devotees could interact with the Buddha. This analysis takes the narrative field beyond the concept that pictures are to be “read” and shows the multifarious and holistic ways in which they can be viewed. To enter temples of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries was to enter a coherent space created by a visually articulated Burmese Buddhist world to which the devotee belonged by performing ritual activities within it.Less
This volume draws upon art historical, anthropological, and religious studies methodologies to delineate the structures and details of late Burmese wall paintings and elucidate the religious, political, and social concepts driving the creation of this art form. The combination of architecture, paintings, sculpture, and literary traditions created a complete space in which devotees could interact with the Buddha through his biography. Through the standardization of a repertoire of specific forms, codes, and themes, the murals were themselves activating agents, spurring devotees to merit-making, worship, and other ritual practices, partially by establishing normative religious behavior and partly through visual incentives. Much of this was accomplished through the manipulation of space, and the volume contributes to the analysis of visual narratives by examining how the relationships between word and image, layouts, story and scene selection, and narrative themes both demonstrate and confirm social structures and changes, economic activities, and religious practices of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century Burma. The visual material of the wall painting sites worked together with the sculpture and the architecture to create unified spaces in which devotees could interact with the Buddha. This analysis takes the narrative field beyond the concept that pictures are to be “read” and shows the multifarious and holistic ways in which they can be viewed. To enter temples of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries was to enter a coherent space created by a visually articulated Burmese Buddhist world to which the devotee belonged by performing ritual activities within it.
Philip F. Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474413725
- eISBN:
- 9781474427081
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413725.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
The recognition scene is a feature of narrative that has shown extraordinary resilience in literary history and transformative power in works of literature. The evidence lies in its robust survival ...
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The recognition scene is a feature of narrative that has shown extraordinary resilience in literary history and transformative power in works of literature. The evidence lies in its robust survival and reinventions from antiquity to the present time. It thrives in most traditions of storytelling, and across all narrative media, from primitive oral folklore to the most sophisticated contemporary novels and films. In quality it ranges from the artistically sublime to rude cliche. The recognition scene has several key features: in its commonest form, it gives resolving shape to the plot of a story, very often providing ‘the sense of an ending’, and stands for narrative knowledge and enlightenment. It can carry – within a relatively circumscribed moment – the signature of an entire narrative. It is the part of a story that is emblematic of the whole and can thus act as the very token and sterling stamp of fiction, even though it exists in tales that are both imagined and real. In its most classic form, the recognition scene is clearly both a theme and a structuring device – what we learn from and through it – can bring closure to a narrative.Less
The recognition scene is a feature of narrative that has shown extraordinary resilience in literary history and transformative power in works of literature. The evidence lies in its robust survival and reinventions from antiquity to the present time. It thrives in most traditions of storytelling, and across all narrative media, from primitive oral folklore to the most sophisticated contemporary novels and films. In quality it ranges from the artistically sublime to rude cliche. The recognition scene has several key features: in its commonest form, it gives resolving shape to the plot of a story, very often providing ‘the sense of an ending’, and stands for narrative knowledge and enlightenment. It can carry – within a relatively circumscribed moment – the signature of an entire narrative. It is the part of a story that is emblematic of the whole and can thus act as the very token and sterling stamp of fiction, even though it exists in tales that are both imagined and real. In its most classic form, the recognition scene is clearly both a theme and a structuring device – what we learn from and through it – can bring closure to a narrative.
Angela Frattarola
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813056074
- eISBN:
- 9780813053868
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056074.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Modernist Soundscapes encourages the reader to become receptive to the arousal of the inner ear that the modernist novel so often elicits. The novels discussed are aligned with the modernist ...
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Modernist Soundscapes encourages the reader to become receptive to the arousal of the inner ear that the modernist novel so often elicits. The novels discussed are aligned with the modernist movement, where there is a sincere drive to record the seemingly insignificant details of life, the psychological oscillations of the mind, and heightened moments—epiphanies—in the ordinary. Modernist Soundscapes shows how these gradual and small changes in auditory perception may have prompted modernist writers to take up the challenge of making their narratives auditory. Celebrating the breaking of literary conventions, as well as of the dominant ideologies of patriotism, sexism, and classism, modernists made music from the noises crashing around them.Less
Modernist Soundscapes encourages the reader to become receptive to the arousal of the inner ear that the modernist novel so often elicits. The novels discussed are aligned with the modernist movement, where there is a sincere drive to record the seemingly insignificant details of life, the psychological oscillations of the mind, and heightened moments—epiphanies—in the ordinary. Modernist Soundscapes shows how these gradual and small changes in auditory perception may have prompted modernist writers to take up the challenge of making their narratives auditory. Celebrating the breaking of literary conventions, as well as of the dominant ideologies of patriotism, sexism, and classism, modernists made music from the noises crashing around them.
Mauro Palumbo, Sebastiano Benasso, and Marcelo Parreira do Amaral
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447350361
- eISBN:
- 9781447350699
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447350361.003.0011
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Policy and Politics
The chapter presents and discusses insights from comparative case study research. The multi-method and multi-level analysis of the case studies focused on the intersections between institutional, ...
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The chapter presents and discusses insights from comparative case study research. The multi-method and multi-level analysis of the case studies focused on the intersections between institutional, individual and structural aspects of the policy-making process and allowed exploration of the interactions between structural and biographical dimensions, the different stakeholders’ points of view as well as consideration of the relations between the different levels of LLL policy design and implementation — from local/regional to transnational. The comparative case studies adopted a storytelling approach that aims at grasping the complex interrelations among the different actors in the field of LLL policy-making. The chapter starts by briefly presenting and discussing the operationalisation of case study analysis in YOUNG_ADULLLT with particular attention to the narrative strategy adopted for the case presentations. Next, the chapter discusses distinct narrative strategies to telling the story while attending to various perspectives of the policy-making process, the varying entry points as well as relational aspects. The chapter deliberates on how policy analysis as storytelling can help us advance from case to knowledge, for instance, by overcoming a one-sided perspective of policy-making to include addressees’ standpoints in understanding policy-making while accounting for the complexity that characterises policy-making on the ground.Less
The chapter presents and discusses insights from comparative case study research. The multi-method and multi-level analysis of the case studies focused on the intersections between institutional, individual and structural aspects of the policy-making process and allowed exploration of the interactions between structural and biographical dimensions, the different stakeholders’ points of view as well as consideration of the relations between the different levels of LLL policy design and implementation — from local/regional to transnational. The comparative case studies adopted a storytelling approach that aims at grasping the complex interrelations among the different actors in the field of LLL policy-making. The chapter starts by briefly presenting and discussing the operationalisation of case study analysis in YOUNG_ADULLLT with particular attention to the narrative strategy adopted for the case presentations. Next, the chapter discusses distinct narrative strategies to telling the story while attending to various perspectives of the policy-making process, the varying entry points as well as relational aspects. The chapter deliberates on how policy analysis as storytelling can help us advance from case to knowledge, for instance, by overcoming a one-sided perspective of policy-making to include addressees’ standpoints in understanding policy-making while accounting for the complexity that characterises policy-making on the ground.
Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and ...
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This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others—contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. This contention often worked by claiming that the Soviet system perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction made visible by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the refrain from which the title is taken: “It was no accident, Comrade,” which encapsulates a popular American understanding of Marxism). No Accident, Comrade explains how the association of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War culture, and then uses this opposition as a starting point for a discussion of the period’s literature. I show how writers innovated strategies for dealing with and incorporating chance, which allowed them to theorize the ever-changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict. Indeed, by emphasizing the Cold War’s narrative quality—that is, by viewing it as a rhetorical field—this book likewise argues that pressure was put on fictional narratives in general, and that if we attune ourselves to the uses of chance in such material, we can understand how the Cold War encouraged new relationships between aesthetics and politics.Less
This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others—contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. This contention often worked by claiming that the Soviet system perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction made visible by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the refrain from which the title is taken: “It was no accident, Comrade,” which encapsulates a popular American understanding of Marxism). No Accident, Comrade explains how the association of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War culture, and then uses this opposition as a starting point for a discussion of the period’s literature. I show how writers innovated strategies for dealing with and incorporating chance, which allowed them to theorize the ever-changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict. Indeed, by emphasizing the Cold War’s narrative quality—that is, by viewing it as a rhetorical field—this book likewise argues that pressure was put on fictional narratives in general, and that if we attune ourselves to the uses of chance in such material, we can understand how the Cold War encouraged new relationships between aesthetics and politics.
Ann Burack-Weiss
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231151849
- eISBN:
- 9780231525336
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231151849.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
The introduction tells of the author's development as a gerontological social worker and educator.
The introduction tells of the author's development as a gerontological social worker and educator.
Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462388
- eISBN:
- 9781626746831
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462388.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
Along with Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman, the Joker is one of the most recognizable sequential art characters in popular culture. While there has been a great deal of scholarly attention on ...
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Along with Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman, the Joker is one of the most recognizable sequential art characters in popular culture. While there has been a great deal of scholarly attention on superheroes, very little has been done looking at the role of supervillains; The Joker: A Critical Study of the Clown Prince of Crime attempts to fill this gap. It is the first academic work to provide a comprehensive study of this character, asking the question, why, particularly today, is the Joker so relevant to audiences? Scholars from a wide array of disciplines look at the Joker through the lens of feature films, video games, comics, politics, magic and mysticism, psychology, animation, television, performance studies, and philosophy. This collection adds to our understanding of the role comic book and cinematic villains play in the world and the ways various media affect their interpretation. The Joker: A Critical Study of the Clown Prince of Crime will be useful for those scholars in Game Studies, Comic Studies, Graphic Narrative, Television and Film Studies.Less
Along with Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman, the Joker is one of the most recognizable sequential art characters in popular culture. While there has been a great deal of scholarly attention on superheroes, very little has been done looking at the role of supervillains; The Joker: A Critical Study of the Clown Prince of Crime attempts to fill this gap. It is the first academic work to provide a comprehensive study of this character, asking the question, why, particularly today, is the Joker so relevant to audiences? Scholars from a wide array of disciplines look at the Joker through the lens of feature films, video games, comics, politics, magic and mysticism, psychology, animation, television, performance studies, and philosophy. This collection adds to our understanding of the role comic book and cinematic villains play in the world and the ways various media affect their interpretation. The Joker: A Critical Study of the Clown Prince of Crime will be useful for those scholars in Game Studies, Comic Studies, Graphic Narrative, Television and Film Studies.
Inna Naroditskaya
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195340587
- eISBN:
- 9780199918218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340587.003.0046
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
In The Beginning of the Reign of Oleg, Catherine wove politics and theater into a coherent narrative. Her Majesty mastered a narrative of conquest by drawing on a native mythological past (which she ...
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In The Beginning of the Reign of Oleg, Catherine wove politics and theater into a coherent narrative. Her Majesty mastered a narrative of conquest by drawing on a native mythological past (which she herself recreated in her historical notes) and on literary authority from different times and places – Euripides, Shakespeare, Lomonosov. Completing the play as she drew a map of the victorious voyage of her predecessor, Prince Oleg, Catherine set out on a monumental journey that followed this very map. Subsequently her political and literary infatuation with the “Greek project” ignited a war with the Ottomans. Thus the imperial lore of a war ten centuries earlier converged with Catherine’s appetites for the same area (Byzantium /Constantinople/Istanbul). The choruses in the triumphant finale venerate Oleg while referring to “her” beauty and generosity; She-Oleg aligned herself not only with abstract distant Roman and Greek gods and monarchs, but also with the first rulers, the very origin of ancient Rus’.Less
In The Beginning of the Reign of Oleg, Catherine wove politics and theater into a coherent narrative. Her Majesty mastered a narrative of conquest by drawing on a native mythological past (which she herself recreated in her historical notes) and on literary authority from different times and places – Euripides, Shakespeare, Lomonosov. Completing the play as she drew a map of the victorious voyage of her predecessor, Prince Oleg, Catherine set out on a monumental journey that followed this very map. Subsequently her political and literary infatuation with the “Greek project” ignited a war with the Ottomans. Thus the imperial lore of a war ten centuries earlier converged with Catherine’s appetites for the same area (Byzantium /Constantinople/Istanbul). The choruses in the triumphant finale venerate Oleg while referring to “her” beauty and generosity; She-Oleg aligned herself not only with abstract distant Roman and Greek gods and monarchs, but also with the first rulers, the very origin of ancient Rus’.
W. H. Shearin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199794959
- eISBN:
- 9780199949694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794959.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy, European History: BCE to 500CE
In “Haunting Nepos: Atticus and the Performance of Roman Epicurean Death,” W. H. Shearin examines the death of a famous Epicurean, T. Pomponius Atticus, during the later Roman Republic. This death, ...
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In “Haunting Nepos: Atticus and the Performance of Roman Epicurean Death,” W. H. Shearin examines the death of a famous Epicurean, T. Pomponius Atticus, during the later Roman Republic. This death, when read in the company of various Epicurean and Stoic deaths, exemplifies the central role that disease (particularly sudden disease) plays in the demise of famous Epicureans. By contrast with Stoics, for whom death is largely about the exercise of the will (and for whom suicide – in Latin mors voluntaria, “voluntary death” – is the ideal), the death of Atticus – although in some sense a suicide – is accomplished through the frustration of any direct intention. Atticus starves himself in the face of a disease that is apparently no longer there, an act that dramatizes the very “swerviness” of Epicurean nature.Less
In “Haunting Nepos: Atticus and the Performance of Roman Epicurean Death,” W. H. Shearin examines the death of a famous Epicurean, T. Pomponius Atticus, during the later Roman Republic. This death, when read in the company of various Epicurean and Stoic deaths, exemplifies the central role that disease (particularly sudden disease) plays in the demise of famous Epicureans. By contrast with Stoics, for whom death is largely about the exercise of the will (and for whom suicide – in Latin mors voluntaria, “voluntary death” – is the ideal), the death of Atticus – although in some sense a suicide – is accomplished through the frustration of any direct intention. Atticus starves himself in the face of a disease that is apparently no longer there, an act that dramatizes the very “swerviness” of Epicurean nature.
Robert L. McLaughlin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496808554
- eISBN:
- 9781496808592
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496808554.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of the American musical theater and expanded the ...
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From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of the American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim’s musicals in two contexts: the exhaustion of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical play that flourished after World War II; and the postmodernism that by the 1960s influenced all the U.S. arts. Sondheim’s musicals are central to the transition from the musical play that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical, one that reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge, the fragmentation of identity, and the problematization of representation. Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, bridges the span between the musical play and the postmodern musical and, in his most recent work, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim’s musicals; examines their dialogue, lyrics, musical themes, and structures; and finds in them their critiques of the operations of power, their questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and their explorations of contemporary identity.Less
From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of the American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim’s musicals in two contexts: the exhaustion of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical play that flourished after World War II; and the postmodernism that by the 1960s influenced all the U.S. arts. Sondheim’s musicals are central to the transition from the musical play that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical, one that reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge, the fragmentation of identity, and the problematization of representation. Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, bridges the span between the musical play and the postmodern musical and, in his most recent work, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim’s musicals; examines their dialogue, lyrics, musical themes, and structures; and finds in them their critiques of the operations of power, their questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and their explorations of contemporary identity.
Michael T. Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195157765
- eISBN:
- 9780199787784
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195157765.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter focuses on the American dilemma of race, exploring the rise of a literary countertradition that privileges silence and dissimulation over candor and accessibility. Examples are Frederick ...
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This chapter focuses on the American dilemma of race, exploring the rise of a literary countertradition that privileges silence and dissimulation over candor and accessibility. Examples are Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. It is shown how racial others become associated with illegibility in these texts, the corollary to a culture that relegates Black people to the margins.Less
This chapter focuses on the American dilemma of race, exploring the rise of a literary countertradition that privileges silence and dissimulation over candor and accessibility. Examples are Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. It is shown how racial others become associated with illegibility in these texts, the corollary to a culture that relegates Black people to the margins.
Kevin D. Cordi
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496821249
- eISBN:
- 9781496821294
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496821249.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
A professional storyteller journeys to discover what it means to be a teacher and a teller of tales. Just like Jack, he traces his path from being raised on the stories of Appalachia and explores if ...
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A professional storyteller journeys to discover what it means to be a teacher and a teller of tales. Just like Jack, he traces his path from being raised on the stories of Appalachia and explores if they have a place in the classroom. However, he does not climb a beanstalk to understand this journey, but instead challenges what it means to be a teller and educator and even the definition of storytelling. As he reflects on not only his stories but his students, he changes as a storyteller, as an educator, and better understands his students in the process. Drawing from storymaking, storytelling, and dramatic methods, he revisits and finds new stories to tell.Less
A professional storyteller journeys to discover what it means to be a teacher and a teller of tales. Just like Jack, he traces his path from being raised on the stories of Appalachia and explores if they have a place in the classroom. However, he does not climb a beanstalk to understand this journey, but instead challenges what it means to be a teller and educator and even the definition of storytelling. As he reflects on not only his stories but his students, he changes as a storyteller, as an educator, and better understands his students in the process. Drawing from storymaking, storytelling, and dramatic methods, he revisits and finds new stories to tell.
Paul W. Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300212082
- eISBN:
- 9780300220841
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300212082.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This book introduces law students to the art of reading judicial opinions. At the same time, it offers an innovative theory of the nature of legal argument, emphasizing the roles of rhetoric, ...
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This book introduces law students to the art of reading judicial opinions. At the same time, it offers an innovative theory of the nature of legal argument, emphasizing the roles of rhetoric, narrative, voice, persuasion, and context. Separate chapters deal with the development of legal doctrine and the way in which facts operate as the context or horizon against which legal claims are understood. The book defends a humanist approach to law, which is a necessary complement to the dominant social science approach.Less
This book introduces law students to the art of reading judicial opinions. At the same time, it offers an innovative theory of the nature of legal argument, emphasizing the roles of rhetoric, narrative, voice, persuasion, and context. Separate chapters deal with the development of legal doctrine and the way in which facts operate as the context or horizon against which legal claims are understood. The book defends a humanist approach to law, which is a necessary complement to the dominant social science approach.
Liam Burke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462036
- eISBN:
- 9781626745193
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462036.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
The comic book film adaptation trend ushered in by X-Men in 2000 soon developed into a full-fledged genre. Chapter Two charted the development of this genre and probed its boundaries. Identifying the ...
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The comic book film adaptation trend ushered in by X-Men in 2000 soon developed into a full-fledged genre. Chapter Two charted the development of this genre and probed its boundaries. Identifying the conventions of these films, the chapter defined the comic-book movie as a genre that follows a vigilante or outsider character engaged in a form of revenge narrative, and is pitched at a heightened reality with a visual style marked by distinctly comic book imagery. Refining earlier genre models with a bacterial growth analogy, the development of this genre was plotted and its next phase was predicted.Less
The comic book film adaptation trend ushered in by X-Men in 2000 soon developed into a full-fledged genre. Chapter Two charted the development of this genre and probed its boundaries. Identifying the conventions of these films, the chapter defined the comic-book movie as a genre that follows a vigilante or outsider character engaged in a form of revenge narrative, and is pitched at a heightened reality with a visual style marked by distinctly comic book imagery. Refining earlier genre models with a bacterial growth analogy, the development of this genre was plotted and its next phase was predicted.
