Alison Sinclair
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151906
- eISBN:
- 9780191672880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151906.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In Western literature, love and death appear regularly in conjunction with one another: death posited as the extreme, or perhaps the only possible expression, of true love; love, the only human ...
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In Western literature, love and death appear regularly in conjunction with one another: death posited as the extreme, or perhaps the only possible expression, of true love; love, the only human experience one has that appears sufficient to stand in counterpoise to our inevitable and ever approaching mortality. This book argues that the representation of cuckoldry in literature provides an artistic containment for anxieties about physical waning, which will lead inexorably towards death. Here, comedy sweetens the pill, as does distance, relieving the reader of the pain of identification with a male character whose fate he would presumably rather not share. Honour literature moves to a different point on the scale, dealing with human emotional vulnerability by defence, by the splitting-off and projecting-out of unwanted weakness, including the susceptibility to love and passion.Less
In Western literature, love and death appear regularly in conjunction with one another: death posited as the extreme, or perhaps the only possible expression, of true love; love, the only human experience one has that appears sufficient to stand in counterpoise to our inevitable and ever approaching mortality. This book argues that the representation of cuckoldry in literature provides an artistic containment for anxieties about physical waning, which will lead inexorably towards death. Here, comedy sweetens the pill, as does distance, relieving the reader of the pain of identification with a male character whose fate he would presumably rather not share. Honour literature moves to a different point on the scale, dealing with human emotional vulnerability by defence, by the splitting-off and projecting-out of unwanted weakness, including the susceptibility to love and passion.
Justin A. Joyce
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526126160
- eISBN:
- 9781526138743
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526126160.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter traces the changing iconography of guns within an array of literary texts from the nineteenth century and cinematic texts of the twentieth century. This chapter outlines the shifting ...
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This chapter traces the changing iconography of guns within an array of literary texts from the nineteenth century and cinematic texts of the twentieth century. This chapter outlines the shifting emphases within the Western; for though the gun has always been important to the Western, the genre’s representations of gun violence have varied through its history. This chapter argues that the Western's changing iconographic emphases, from aim to speed, codes violence morally upright and justifiable at different moments within the genre’s long history.Less
This chapter traces the changing iconography of guns within an array of literary texts from the nineteenth century and cinematic texts of the twentieth century. This chapter outlines the shifting emphases within the Western; for though the gun has always been important to the Western, the genre’s representations of gun violence have varied through its history. This chapter argues that the Western's changing iconographic emphases, from aim to speed, codes violence morally upright and justifiable at different moments within the genre’s long history.
James A. W. Heffernan
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780300195583
- eISBN:
- 9780300206845
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300195583.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This epilogue summarizes the reasons why treacherous hospitality is everywhere in Western literature. It explains what happens to the rituals of hospitality, including the worst that hosts and guests ...
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This epilogue summarizes the reasons why treacherous hospitality is everywhere in Western literature. It explains what happens to the rituals of hospitality, including the worst that hosts and guests can do to each other, and also presents examples in Western literature which show that even the best of hospitable intentions may go awry.Less
This epilogue summarizes the reasons why treacherous hospitality is everywhere in Western literature. It explains what happens to the rituals of hospitality, including the worst that hosts and guests can do to each other, and also presents examples in Western literature which show that even the best of hospitable intentions may go awry.
Carol Harrison
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198752202
- eISBN:
- 9780191695070
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198752202.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies, Religion and Society
The Confessions are one of Western literature's classics and one of Augustine's best known works. Here, Augustine provides a description about how he was converted to Christianity in AD 386. Even ...
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The Confessions are one of Western literature's classics and one of Augustine's best known works. Here, Augustine provides a description about how he was converted to Christianity in AD 386. Even though these may have been written ten years after his conversion, the first nine Books describe some of the spectacles that were utilized when viewing various dramatic events. As such, several general books about Augustine usually refer to the Confessions when tracing his biography and to determine his way of thinking. This book, however, veers away from using these as a determining source as these can be misleading. In the Confessions, we see Augustine's version of his life after his conversion, a commentary on Genesis, and the six ways of creation. This book attempts to examine the cultural context that determined Augustine's thought and life. In this chapter, the focus is more on looking into the philosophical context of his life and works.Less
The Confessions are one of Western literature's classics and one of Augustine's best known works. Here, Augustine provides a description about how he was converted to Christianity in AD 386. Even though these may have been written ten years after his conversion, the first nine Books describe some of the spectacles that were utilized when viewing various dramatic events. As such, several general books about Augustine usually refer to the Confessions when tracing his biography and to determine his way of thinking. This book, however, veers away from using these as a determining source as these can be misleading. In the Confessions, we see Augustine's version of his life after his conversion, a commentary on Genesis, and the six ways of creation. This book attempts to examine the cultural context that determined Augustine's thought and life. In this chapter, the focus is more on looking into the philosophical context of his life and works.
Rachel Falconer
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748617630
- eISBN:
- 9780748651733
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748617630.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter introduces the concept of Hell and the ‘katabatic imagination’, which is a worldview that conceives of selfhood as the narrative construct of an infernal journey and return. It ...
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This chapter introduces the concept of Hell and the ‘katabatic imagination’, which is a worldview that conceives of selfhood as the narrative construct of an infernal journey and return. It identifies Dante Alighieri as the most influential katabatic writer on contemporary Western literature, and looks at the development of the katabatic narrative from the classical period to modern times. Several descent narratives are presented in the final section of the chapter.Less
This chapter introduces the concept of Hell and the ‘katabatic imagination’, which is a worldview that conceives of selfhood as the narrative construct of an infernal journey and return. It identifies Dante Alighieri as the most influential katabatic writer on contemporary Western literature, and looks at the development of the katabatic narrative from the classical period to modern times. Several descent narratives are presented in the final section of the chapter.
Francesco Orlando
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300108088
- eISBN:
- 9780300138214
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300108088.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Translated here into English is a work of literary history and criticism comparable in scope and achievement to Eric Auerbach's Mimesis. The author explores Western literature's obsession with ...
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Translated here into English is a work of literary history and criticism comparable in scope and achievement to Eric Auerbach's Mimesis. The author explores Western literature's obsession with outmoded and nonfunctional objects (ruins, obsolete machinery, broken things, trash, etc.). Combining the insights of psychoanalysis and literary-political history, he traces this obsession to a turning point in history, at the end of eighteenth-century industrialization, when the functional became the dominant value of Western culture. Roaming through every genre and much of the history of Western literature, the author identifies distinct categories into which obsolete images can be classified and provides myriad examples. The function of literature, he concludes, is to remind us of what we have lost and what we are losing as we rush toward the future.Less
Translated here into English is a work of literary history and criticism comparable in scope and achievement to Eric Auerbach's Mimesis. The author explores Western literature's obsession with outmoded and nonfunctional objects (ruins, obsolete machinery, broken things, trash, etc.). Combining the insights of psychoanalysis and literary-political history, he traces this obsession to a turning point in history, at the end of eighteenth-century industrialization, when the functional became the dominant value of Western culture. Roaming through every genre and much of the history of Western literature, the author identifies distinct categories into which obsolete images can be classified and provides myriad examples. The function of literature, he concludes, is to remind us of what we have lost and what we are losing as we rush toward the future.
Cecile Sun
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226780207
- eISBN:
- 9780226780221
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226780221.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
For more than half a century, Chinese-Western comparative literature has been recognized as a formal academic discipline, but critics and scholars in the field have done little to develop a viable, ...
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For more than half a century, Chinese-Western comparative literature has been recognized as a formal academic discipline, but critics and scholars in the field have done little to develop a viable, common basis for comparison between these disparate literatures. This book establishes repetition as the ideal perspective from which to compare the poetry and poetics from these two traditions. The book contends that repetition is at the heart of all that defines the lyric as a unique art form and, by closely examining its use in Chinese and Western poetry, it demonstrates how one can identify important points of convergence and divergence. Through a representative sampling of poems from both traditions, the book illustrates how the irreducible generic nature of the lyric transcends linguistic and cultural barriers, but also reveals the fundamental distinctions between the traditions. Most crucially, it dissects the two radically different conceptualizations of reality–mimesis and xing–that serve as underlying principles for the poetic practices of each tradition.Less
For more than half a century, Chinese-Western comparative literature has been recognized as a formal academic discipline, but critics and scholars in the field have done little to develop a viable, common basis for comparison between these disparate literatures. This book establishes repetition as the ideal perspective from which to compare the poetry and poetics from these two traditions. The book contends that repetition is at the heart of all that defines the lyric as a unique art form and, by closely examining its use in Chinese and Western poetry, it demonstrates how one can identify important points of convergence and divergence. Through a representative sampling of poems from both traditions, the book illustrates how the irreducible generic nature of the lyric transcends linguistic and cultural barriers, but also reveals the fundamental distinctions between the traditions. Most crucially, it dissects the two radically different conceptualizations of reality–mimesis and xing–that serve as underlying principles for the poetic practices of each tradition.
James A. W. Heffernan
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780300195583
- eISBN:
- 9780300206845
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300195583.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In works of Western literature ranging from Homer's Odyssey to Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the giving and taking of hospitality is sometimes pleasurable, but more often perilous. This ...
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In works of Western literature ranging from Homer's Odyssey to Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the giving and taking of hospitality is sometimes pleasurable, but more often perilous. This book traces this leitmotiv through the history of our greatest writings, including Christ's Last Supper, Macbeth's murder of his royal guest, and Camus' short story on French colonialism in Arab Algeria. By means of such examples and many more, it considers what literary hosts, hostesses, and guests do to as well as for each other. In doing so, it shows how often treachery rends the fabric of trust that hospitality weaves.Less
In works of Western literature ranging from Homer's Odyssey to Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the giving and taking of hospitality is sometimes pleasurable, but more often perilous. This book traces this leitmotiv through the history of our greatest writings, including Christ's Last Supper, Macbeth's murder of his royal guest, and Camus' short story on French colonialism in Arab Algeria. By means of such examples and many more, it considers what literary hosts, hostesses, and guests do to as well as for each other. In doing so, it shows how often treachery rends the fabric of trust that hospitality weaves.
John Paul Hampstead
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031564
- eISBN:
- 9781617031571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031564.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Gangsta rap is a subgenre known for its subversive lyrics. Since emerging from hip-hop in southern California in the late 1980s with the work of Ice-T and N.W.A, it has found a foothold in New York ...
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Gangsta rap is a subgenre known for its subversive lyrics. Since emerging from hip-hop in southern California in the late 1980s with the work of Ice-T and N.W.A, it has found a foothold in New York City with hard-hitting rappers Run-DMC and Kool G Rap. Gangsta rap enjoyed commercial success but also created moral panic with its depiction of the noirish intrigue of the inner-city criminal underworld. This chapter examines gangsta rap and places some of its most visible features alongside ancient and medieval heroic poetry, particularly Homer, Virgil, and Anglo-Saxon material. It demonstrates gangsta rap’s excesses as part of a larger sociocultural pattern with a long history by focusing on five themes that run through both gangsta rap and heroic poetry: feasting, raiding, treasure, misogyny, and fatalism. More specifically, the chapter illustrates gangsta rap’s significant continuities with the traditional canon of Western literature.Less
Gangsta rap is a subgenre known for its subversive lyrics. Since emerging from hip-hop in southern California in the late 1980s with the work of Ice-T and N.W.A, it has found a foothold in New York City with hard-hitting rappers Run-DMC and Kool G Rap. Gangsta rap enjoyed commercial success but also created moral panic with its depiction of the noirish intrigue of the inner-city criminal underworld. This chapter examines gangsta rap and places some of its most visible features alongside ancient and medieval heroic poetry, particularly Homer, Virgil, and Anglo-Saxon material. It demonstrates gangsta rap’s excesses as part of a larger sociocultural pattern with a long history by focusing on five themes that run through both gangsta rap and heroic poetry: feasting, raiding, treasure, misogyny, and fatalism. More specifically, the chapter illustrates gangsta rap’s significant continuities with the traditional canon of Western literature.
Angela Calcaterra
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646947
- eISBN:
- 9781469646961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646947.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American Colonial Literature
Chapter 4 argues that Indigenous story traditions are a crucial, overlooked context for understanding nineteenth-century American literature about “the West.” This chapter analyzes Pawnee and Osage ...
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Chapter 4 argues that Indigenous story traditions are a crucial, overlooked context for understanding nineteenth-century American literature about “the West.” This chapter analyzes Pawnee and Osage narratives alongside Washington Irving’s Tour on the Prairies (1835) to demonstrate white authorial disorientation in the face of Indigenous storied space. Pawnee and Osage representations of journeys, crossings, and encounters along the network of trails that crossed the great plains guided these communities throughout the trying periods of US invasion and removal during the nineteenth century. The bodily discomfort and aesthetic disorientation depicted in Irving’s Tour on the Prairies is a result of his inability to connect with long-standing Indigenous movements and temporalities in this space. Similarly, scholarly misreading and neglect of this text is a product of a limited critical approach restricted to a singular authorial aesthetic. James Fenimore Cooper’s and Edwin James’s accounts of unsettling proximity to Native aesthetics close this chapter to suggest broader patterns of authorial disorientation.Less
Chapter 4 argues that Indigenous story traditions are a crucial, overlooked context for understanding nineteenth-century American literature about “the West.” This chapter analyzes Pawnee and Osage narratives alongside Washington Irving’s Tour on the Prairies (1835) to demonstrate white authorial disorientation in the face of Indigenous storied space. Pawnee and Osage representations of journeys, crossings, and encounters along the network of trails that crossed the great plains guided these communities throughout the trying periods of US invasion and removal during the nineteenth century. The bodily discomfort and aesthetic disorientation depicted in Irving’s Tour on the Prairies is a result of his inability to connect with long-standing Indigenous movements and temporalities in this space. Similarly, scholarly misreading and neglect of this text is a product of a limited critical approach restricted to a singular authorial aesthetic. James Fenimore Cooper’s and Edwin James’s accounts of unsettling proximity to Native aesthetics close this chapter to suggest broader patterns of authorial disorientation.
