Alan Liu
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226451817
- eISBN:
- 9780226452005
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226452005.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This concluding chapter defines the sense of history of any era or culture as a set of parameters—ontological, epistemological, socio-historical, and others—that can be studied through a combination ...
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This concluding chapter defines the sense of history of any era or culture as a set of parameters—ontological, epistemological, socio-historical, and others—that can be studied through a combination of close reading and digital humanities distant reading. Splitting the difference between close and distant reading, the chapter studies visualized "timelines" as a traditional mode of distant reading history (analyzing and visualizing long vistas of historical event). Then, to define the sense of history specific to the internet age, it "close reads" at the code level an influential contemporary form of history: digital timelines. Focusing on the genre of JavaScript digital timelines, which dynamically draw data from backend sources to populate the "document object model" (DOM) of web-based timelines in frontend interfaces, the chapter postulates that the digital era is characterized by its own sense of history—one attuned to the contingency of networks. Setting this contingent sense of history in relief against that of an earlier era, the chapter ends by comparing the TimelineJS Javascript timeline, in particular to the time sense, and implicit timelines, in William Wordsworth's poetry and romanticism. Code meets poetry at a junction between the internet era and the humanities.Less
This concluding chapter defines the sense of history of any era or culture as a set of parameters—ontological, epistemological, socio-historical, and others—that can be studied through a combination of close reading and digital humanities distant reading. Splitting the difference between close and distant reading, the chapter studies visualized "timelines" as a traditional mode of distant reading history (analyzing and visualizing long vistas of historical event). Then, to define the sense of history specific to the internet age, it "close reads" at the code level an influential contemporary form of history: digital timelines. Focusing on the genre of JavaScript digital timelines, which dynamically draw data from backend sources to populate the "document object model" (DOM) of web-based timelines in frontend interfaces, the chapter postulates that the digital era is characterized by its own sense of history—one attuned to the contingency of networks. Setting this contingent sense of history in relief against that of an earlier era, the chapter ends by comparing the TimelineJS Javascript timeline, in particular to the time sense, and implicit timelines, in William Wordsworth's poetry and romanticism. Code meets poetry at a junction between the internet era and the humanities.
Lieve Van Hoof
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199583263
- eISBN:
- 9780191723131
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199583263.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
This chapter starts with a survey of the preceding scholarly literature on Plutarch's practical ethics, a group of twenty-odd texts within the Moralia. Although Ziegler's discussion of what he ...
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This chapter starts with a survey of the preceding scholarly literature on Plutarch's practical ethics, a group of twenty-odd texts within the Moralia. Although Ziegler's discussion of what he labelled Plutarch's ‘popular-philosophical’ writings, following upon a century of Quellenforschung, brought about an increased interest in several of the texts involved, it also contributed to them being regarded as second-rank philosophy. This book is the first monograph that studies this group of texts as literary compositions in dynamic interaction with their socio-historical context. Methodologically, it combines close reading with perspectives opened up by new cultural history, new historicism, and speech-act theory in order to show that Plutarch's practical ethics were designed not only to contribute to the ethical and social well-being of the Graeco-Roman elite, but also to establish and consolidate Plutarch's own social identity as a philosopher-citizen. The Introduction ends with a survey of the contents of the book.Less
This chapter starts with a survey of the preceding scholarly literature on Plutarch's practical ethics, a group of twenty-odd texts within the Moralia. Although Ziegler's discussion of what he labelled Plutarch's ‘popular-philosophical’ writings, following upon a century of Quellenforschung, brought about an increased interest in several of the texts involved, it also contributed to them being regarded as second-rank philosophy. This book is the first monograph that studies this group of texts as literary compositions in dynamic interaction with their socio-historical context. Methodologically, it combines close reading with perspectives opened up by new cultural history, new historicism, and speech-act theory in order to show that Plutarch's practical ethics were designed not only to contribute to the ethical and social well-being of the Graeco-Roman elite, but also to establish and consolidate Plutarch's own social identity as a philosopher-citizen. The Introduction ends with a survey of the contents of the book.
Neil Corcoran
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198186908
- eISBN:
- 9780191719011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186908.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines Bowen's novel, The Death of the Heart, proposing that its analysis of class relations in 1930s England has affinities with the work of Waugh, Green, and Lawrence. This analysis ...
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This chapter examines Bowen's novel, The Death of the Heart, proposing that its analysis of class relations in 1930s England has affinities with the work of Waugh, Green, and Lawrence. This analysis is focused on the fate of the orphan and ingénue Portia, and emphasizes her various states of mind partly by concentrated close readings of particular passages. Portia's developing sexuality and her awareness of it impels the plot, and is extensively treated in the context of the history of the child and sexuality in the English novel. The chapter also considers a number of related themes, in particular those of survival, money, doubling, servitude, and writing itself (since Portia is presented as a putative writer), suggesting that Bowen's work may be profitably related to later writing by Harold Pinter and Kazuo Ishiguro.Less
This chapter examines Bowen's novel, The Death of the Heart, proposing that its analysis of class relations in 1930s England has affinities with the work of Waugh, Green, and Lawrence. This analysis is focused on the fate of the orphan and ingénue Portia, and emphasizes her various states of mind partly by concentrated close readings of particular passages. Portia's developing sexuality and her awareness of it impels the plot, and is extensively treated in the context of the history of the child and sexuality in the English novel. The chapter also considers a number of related themes, in particular those of survival, money, doubling, servitude, and writing itself (since Portia is presented as a putative writer), suggesting that Bowen's work may be profitably related to later writing by Harold Pinter and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Ryan Cordell, Benjamin J. Doyle, and Elizabeth Hopwood
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042232
- eISBN:
- 9780252050978
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042232.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Ryan Cordell, Benjamin Doyle, and Elizabeth Hopwood’s essay seizes a nineteenth-century invention, the kaleidoscope, as a model and metaphor for pedagogical practices and learning spaces that ...
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Ryan Cordell, Benjamin Doyle, and Elizabeth Hopwood’s essay seizes a nineteenth-century invention, the kaleidoscope, as a model and metaphor for pedagogical practices and learning spaces that encourage play and experimentation. Through examples that involve setting letterpress type, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) encoding of nineteenth-century texts as an interpretive process, and the collaborative creation of Wikipedia pages, the authors describe how experiments with contemporary technologies help students claim scholarly agency over the texts and tools central to their study of the nineteenth century. Kaleidoscopic pedagogy encourages students to discover how C19 competencies like close reading and contemporary methods of coding and data analysis have the potential to be mutually constitutive, inspiring a more nuanced understanding of both periods.Less
Ryan Cordell, Benjamin Doyle, and Elizabeth Hopwood’s essay seizes a nineteenth-century invention, the kaleidoscope, as a model and metaphor for pedagogical practices and learning spaces that encourage play and experimentation. Through examples that involve setting letterpress type, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) encoding of nineteenth-century texts as an interpretive process, and the collaborative creation of Wikipedia pages, the authors describe how experiments with contemporary technologies help students claim scholarly agency over the texts and tools central to their study of the nineteenth century. Kaleidoscopic pedagogy encourages students to discover how C19 competencies like close reading and contemporary methods of coding and data analysis have the potential to be mutually constitutive, inspiring a more nuanced understanding of both periods.
Eleni Kechagia
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199597239
- eISBN:
- 9780191731495
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199597239.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
This chapter discusses the reasons and circumstances which led Plutarch to compose a detailed and systematic response to an otherwise unknown polemical book by Colotes, a relatively obscure Epicurean ...
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This chapter discusses the reasons and circumstances which led Plutarch to compose a detailed and systematic response to an otherwise unknown polemical book by Colotes, a relatively obscure Epicurean of the 3rd century bc. It offers a close reading of the prooemium of the Adversus Colotem in which Plutarch masterfully gives his own justification of his enterprise, both explicitly and through allusion to his Platonic pedigree. Prima facie the Adversus Colotem is presented as the written version of the oral refutation of Colotes which Plutarch was asked by his companions to give during one of the sessions in his school. At the same time, it transpires that responding to Colotes' polemic gave Plutarch the opportunity to engage in an exercise in the history of philosophy from the perspective of a Platonist teacher.Less
This chapter discusses the reasons and circumstances which led Plutarch to compose a detailed and systematic response to an otherwise unknown polemical book by Colotes, a relatively obscure Epicurean of the 3rd century bc. It offers a close reading of the prooemium of the Adversus Colotem in which Plutarch masterfully gives his own justification of his enterprise, both explicitly and through allusion to his Platonic pedigree. Prima facie the Adversus Colotem is presented as the written version of the oral refutation of Colotes which Plutarch was asked by his companions to give during one of the sessions in his school. At the same time, it transpires that responding to Colotes' polemic gave Plutarch the opportunity to engage in an exercise in the history of philosophy from the perspective of a Platonist teacher.
John Richardson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195367362
- eISBN:
- 9780199918249
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367362.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
The first section poses general question about the aims and context of the study. The category of surrealism is held in this study to be more a productive analogy than implying a direct line of ...
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The first section poses general question about the aims and context of the study. The category of surrealism is held in this study to be more a productive analogy than implying a direct line of influence from historical practices to the present day. For this reason the term neosurrealism is preferred: to underline historical difference. The second section addresses the study's methodological orientation, which revolves around two main axes: academic criticism and phenomenological description. The latter concept requires attention in close analytical readings to the specific audiovisual performances. When considered in the light of recent critical theory, performances are always performative insofar as they invoke lingering cultural memories. The final section discusses Sedgwick's idea of performativity in which the affectivity of performances is accorded a prominent position.Less
The first section poses general question about the aims and context of the study. The category of surrealism is held in this study to be more a productive analogy than implying a direct line of influence from historical practices to the present day. For this reason the term neosurrealism is preferred: to underline historical difference. The second section addresses the study's methodological orientation, which revolves around two main axes: academic criticism and phenomenological description. The latter concept requires attention in close analytical readings to the specific audiovisual performances. When considered in the light of recent critical theory, performances are always performative insofar as they invoke lingering cultural memories. The final section discusses Sedgwick's idea of performativity in which the affectivity of performances is accorded a prominent position.
Wyn Kelley
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042232
- eISBN:
- 9780252050978
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042232.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Wyn Kelley describes how students in her seminar Mapping Melville use tools developed in MIT’s HyperStudio to make new and surprising discoveries of deeply canonical texts. As students experimented ...
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Wyn Kelley describes how students in her seminar Mapping Melville use tools developed in MIT’s HyperStudio to make new and surprising discoveries of deeply canonical texts. As students experimented with digital tools for reading, mapping, editing, and comparing texts, they expanded their power to track verbal patterns, share comments, and develop reports and essays. Kelley thinks of her pedagogical methods as a platform for design thinking in the humanities classroom, and she demonstrates how nineteenth-century American literature is especially hospitable to such an approach.Less
Wyn Kelley describes how students in her seminar Mapping Melville use tools developed in MIT’s HyperStudio to make new and surprising discoveries of deeply canonical texts. As students experimented with digital tools for reading, mapping, editing, and comparing texts, they expanded their power to track verbal patterns, share comments, and develop reports and essays. Kelley thinks of her pedagogical methods as a platform for design thinking in the humanities classroom, and she demonstrates how nineteenth-century American literature is especially hospitable to such an approach.
Laura Sloan Patterson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496814531
- eISBN:
- 9781496814579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496814531.003.0025
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter focuses on teaching Eudora Welty’s short stories in the undergraduate writing classroom, including writing intensive or writing in the disciplines courses. Although some students may ...
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This chapter focuses on teaching Eudora Welty’s short stories in the undergraduate writing classroom, including writing intensive or writing in the disciplines courses. Although some students may resist the complexity of Welty’s works on the first reading, the texts provide rich opportunities for learning literary close reading skills. The techniques outlined in this chapter work particularly well with “Petrified Man,” “The Purple Hat,” “No Place for You, My Love,” “A Visit of Charity,” and “A Worn Path.” Students receive a framework of “something beautiful” and “something frightening,” with those terms defined for the activity; through guided discussion they find examples of each category within the text. Next, students find examples of passages that might qualify as both beautiful and frightening, and a discussion of rationales for those choices ensues. More advanced students can close read assigned passages and visually chart their results to find emerging pattern in Welty’s work.Less
This chapter focuses on teaching Eudora Welty’s short stories in the undergraduate writing classroom, including writing intensive or writing in the disciplines courses. Although some students may resist the complexity of Welty’s works on the first reading, the texts provide rich opportunities for learning literary close reading skills. The techniques outlined in this chapter work particularly well with “Petrified Man,” “The Purple Hat,” “No Place for You, My Love,” “A Visit of Charity,” and “A Worn Path.” Students receive a framework of “something beautiful” and “something frightening,” with those terms defined for the activity; through guided discussion they find examples of each category within the text. Next, students find examples of passages that might qualify as both beautiful and frightening, and a discussion of rationales for those choices ensues. More advanced students can close read assigned passages and visually chart their results to find emerging pattern in Welty’s work.
Barbara Czarniawska
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198296140
- eISBN:
- 9780191716584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198296140.003.0003
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Organization Studies
A close readings of four organization theory texts reveal that, contrary to the assumption that science contains only facts and logic, these texts are full of metaphors and stories. It turns out that ...
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A close readings of four organization theory texts reveal that, contrary to the assumption that science contains only facts and logic, these texts are full of metaphors and stories. It turns out that social scientists seldom use formal logic — in the sense of the particular mode of reasoning, because all of them use logic in the sense of syntactic rules.Less
A close readings of four organization theory texts reveal that, contrary to the assumption that science contains only facts and logic, these texts are full of metaphors and stories. It turns out that social scientists seldom use formal logic — in the sense of the particular mode of reasoning, because all of them use logic in the sense of syntactic rules.
Yael Segalovitz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823280025
- eISBN:
- 9780823281626
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280025.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter argues that Moses and Monotheism invites its readers to approach it in a state of “evenly-suspended attention,” the mindset that Freud recommends his colleagues practice in the ...
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This chapter argues that Moses and Monotheism invites its readers to approach it in a state of “evenly-suspended attention,” the mindset that Freud recommends his colleagues practice in the therapeutic scene. This method of reading is contrasted with the prominent one in the discipline of literature, namely, close reading. Developed by the Anglo-American New Critics around the time of Moses’ publication, close reading depends on what Freud terms “deliberate attention.” This chapter further demonstrates that reading Moses in a state of evenly-suspended attention is understood by Freud to require an act of faith in one’s unconscious or internal alterity. It concludes with a call for a reevaluation of what a Freudian or psychoanalytic reading is typically understood to mean in the humanities. That is, while Freud is conventionally thought of as the optimal close reader, Moses suggests otherwise.Less
This chapter argues that Moses and Monotheism invites its readers to approach it in a state of “evenly-suspended attention,” the mindset that Freud recommends his colleagues practice in the therapeutic scene. This method of reading is contrasted with the prominent one in the discipline of literature, namely, close reading. Developed by the Anglo-American New Critics around the time of Moses’ publication, close reading depends on what Freud terms “deliberate attention.” This chapter further demonstrates that reading Moses in a state of evenly-suspended attention is understood by Freud to require an act of faith in one’s unconscious or internal alterity. It concludes with a call for a reevaluation of what a Freudian or psychoanalytic reading is typically understood to mean in the humanities. That is, while Freud is conventionally thought of as the optimal close reader, Moses suggests otherwise.
David James
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- June 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198749967
- eISBN:
- 9780191890871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198749967.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Literary and cultural studies continue to navigate phases of intense methodological flux and disciplinary self-examination. The Introduction takes stock of the condition of close reading in modernist ...
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Literary and cultural studies continue to navigate phases of intense methodological flux and disciplinary self-examination. The Introduction takes stock of the condition of close reading in modernist studies against the backdrop of this broader climate of change. It suggests that the rapport between close reading and the proliferating objects, elastic timeframes, and global contexts of modernist studies today no longer feels guaranteed. And it outlines some of the ways in which the volume will examine close reading’s history as an avenue to acquiring some sense of its futurity at a moment of unprecedented expansion and reconstitution for modernist scholarship.Less
Literary and cultural studies continue to navigate phases of intense methodological flux and disciplinary self-examination. The Introduction takes stock of the condition of close reading in modernist studies against the backdrop of this broader climate of change. It suggests that the rapport between close reading and the proliferating objects, elastic timeframes, and global contexts of modernist studies today no longer feels guaranteed. And it outlines some of the ways in which the volume will examine close reading’s history as an avenue to acquiring some sense of its futurity at a moment of unprecedented expansion and reconstitution for modernist scholarship.
Alec Valentine
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496814531
- eISBN:
- 9781496814579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496814531.003.0024
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This essay describes how the author teaches “Livvie” to students a lot like Livvie: poor readers with a less than stellar education. By focusing on character, and closely reading some paragraphs in ...
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This essay describes how the author teaches “Livvie” to students a lot like Livvie: poor readers with a less than stellar education. By focusing on character, and closely reading some paragraphs in class, teacher and students discover images and, through them, symbolic and metaphorical language. The author uses guided writing (journals and paragraphs) as first steps into analyzing literature and producing an essay about it.Examining mythology and even point of view yields deeper understanding of how Welty structures “Livvie.”Less
This essay describes how the author teaches “Livvie” to students a lot like Livvie: poor readers with a less than stellar education. By focusing on character, and closely reading some paragraphs in class, teacher and students discover images and, through them, symbolic and metaphorical language. The author uses guided writing (journals and paragraphs) as first steps into analyzing literature and producing an essay about it.Examining mythology and even point of view yields deeper understanding of how Welty structures “Livvie.”
Sara Guyer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265572
- eISBN:
- 9780823266920
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265572.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This brief chapter relates the preceding discussions of Clare, romanticism, and biopoetics to the contemporary example of the city of Detroit and argues that the methods uses in this book, close ...
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This brief chapter relates the preceding discussions of Clare, romanticism, and biopoetics to the contemporary example of the city of Detroit and argues that the methods uses in this book, close reading in particular, can help us to see connections between the past and the present, between literature and life.Less
This brief chapter relates the preceding discussions of Clare, romanticism, and biopoetics to the contemporary example of the city of Detroit and argues that the methods uses in this book, close reading in particular, can help us to see connections between the past and the present, between literature and life.
Hrileena Ghosh
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620610
- eISBN:
- 9781789629798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620610.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter focuses on Endymion, the only long poem Keats ever completed, which was written immediately after he left Guy’s Hospital when his medical experience was fresh in his mind. Reading ...
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This chapter focuses on Endymion, the only long poem Keats ever completed, which was written immediately after he left Guy’s Hospital when his medical experience was fresh in his mind. Reading Endymion through the contents of Keats’ medical Notebook allows a fresh perspective on the physiology that underlies and informs the poem’s depictions of passion. Close reading of the poem, and of the biographical circumstances in which it was composed, reveal the extent to which Keats’ medical experience affected his poetic creativity, and the way contemporary criticismrecognised and responded to this aspect of the poem. The chapter concludes with an exploration of Keats’ knowledge of Romantic medical ethics, and how this informed his delineation of the figures of healers. Endymion showcases Keats’ ability to convey extreme emotion through anatomical descriptions and medical vocabulary.Less
This chapter focuses on Endymion, the only long poem Keats ever completed, which was written immediately after he left Guy’s Hospital when his medical experience was fresh in his mind. Reading Endymion through the contents of Keats’ medical Notebook allows a fresh perspective on the physiology that underlies and informs the poem’s depictions of passion. Close reading of the poem, and of the biographical circumstances in which it was composed, reveal the extent to which Keats’ medical experience affected his poetic creativity, and the way contemporary criticismrecognised and responded to this aspect of the poem. The chapter concludes with an exploration of Keats’ knowledge of Romantic medical ethics, and how this informed his delineation of the figures of healers. Endymion showcases Keats’ ability to convey extreme emotion through anatomical descriptions and medical vocabulary.
Adhaar Noor Desai
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474455589
- eISBN:
- 9781474477130
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474455589.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
One way to make the Shakespeare classroom a site for social engagement and action, rather than one overly invested in historicizing or aestheticizing Renaissance literature, is letting students ...
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One way to make the Shakespeare classroom a site for social engagement and action, rather than one overly invested in historicizing or aestheticizing Renaissance literature, is letting students themselves decide what Shakespeare’s plays can offer them. Taking his inspiration from James Baldwin, Adhaar Desai describes enlisting Shakespeare as a “witness” to the full scope of human experience through exercises that reframe close reading a “risky, collaborative, and urgent exercise.” Through a process of experimental free association he calls “riffing,” he entices students to trust their instincts and the text’s volatile ambiguities. Experimental, collaborative, and empowering, its goal is to give students, not Shakespeare, authority in the classroom.Less
One way to make the Shakespeare classroom a site for social engagement and action, rather than one overly invested in historicizing or aestheticizing Renaissance literature, is letting students themselves decide what Shakespeare’s plays can offer them. Taking his inspiration from James Baldwin, Adhaar Desai describes enlisting Shakespeare as a “witness” to the full scope of human experience through exercises that reframe close reading a “risky, collaborative, and urgent exercise.” Through a process of experimental free association he calls “riffing,” he entices students to trust their instincts and the text’s volatile ambiguities. Experimental, collaborative, and empowering, its goal is to give students, not Shakespeare, authority in the classroom.
Yung-Hsing Wu
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039805
- eISBN:
- 9780252097904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039805.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter considers the fate of close reading in second-wave reading and writing communities, through an analysis of memoirs, literary criticism, and a novel, Marilyn French's The Women's Room. It ...
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This chapter considers the fate of close reading in second-wave reading and writing communities, through an analysis of memoirs, literary criticism, and a novel, Marilyn French's The Women's Room. It argues that just as feminist consciousness-raising believed that reading could generate closeness among women, and just as feminist fiction of the 1970s was regularly cited (and decried) for an intimacy of identification it was said to create for women readers, early feminist literary criticism was marked by an investment in the political promise of closeness. For feminist literary critics of that first academic generation, this sensibility marked a shift from closeness described as a familiar stance toward textuality to one with distinctive affective and political valences. In other words, this sensibility yoked the question of women reading to consciousness: to its nascence, whether sudden or gradual, and to its qualities of strangeness, pain, even joy. While their assumptions led them to find reading in very different places, their critical desires stemmed from the shared view that reading, wherever it is found, can be a place for politics.Less
This chapter considers the fate of close reading in second-wave reading and writing communities, through an analysis of memoirs, literary criticism, and a novel, Marilyn French's The Women's Room. It argues that just as feminist consciousness-raising believed that reading could generate closeness among women, and just as feminist fiction of the 1970s was regularly cited (and decried) for an intimacy of identification it was said to create for women readers, early feminist literary criticism was marked by an investment in the political promise of closeness. For feminist literary critics of that first academic generation, this sensibility marked a shift from closeness described as a familiar stance toward textuality to one with distinctive affective and political valences. In other words, this sensibility yoked the question of women reading to consciousness: to its nascence, whether sudden or gradual, and to its qualities of strangeness, pain, even joy. While their assumptions led them to find reading in very different places, their critical desires stemmed from the shared view that reading, wherever it is found, can be a place for politics.
William Cloonan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941329
- eISBN:
- 9781789629101
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941329.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Frères Ennemis focuses on Franco-American tensions as portrayed in works of literature. An Introduction is followed by nine chapters, each centred on a French or American literary text which shows ...
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Frères Ennemis focuses on Franco-American tensions as portrayed in works of literature. An Introduction is followed by nine chapters, each centred on a French or American literary text which shows the evolution/devolution of the relations between the two nations at a particular point in time. While the heart of the analysis consists of close textual readings, social, cultural and political contexts are introduced to provide a better understanding of the historical reality influencing the individual novels, a reality to which these novels are also responding. Chapters One through Five, covering a period from the mid-1870s to the end of the Cold War, discuss significant aspects of the often fraught relationship in part from the theoretical perspective of Roland Barthes’ theory of modern myth, described in his Mythologies. Barthes’ theory helps situate Franco-American tensions in a paradigmatic structure, which remains supple enough to allow for shifts and reversals within the paradigm. Subsequent chapters explore new French attitudes toward the powerful, potentially dominant influence of American culture on French life. In these sections I argue that recent French fiction displays more openness to the American experience than has existed in the past, and contrast this overture to the new with the relatively static, even indifferent attitude of American writers toward French literature.Less
Frères Ennemis focuses on Franco-American tensions as portrayed in works of literature. An Introduction is followed by nine chapters, each centred on a French or American literary text which shows the evolution/devolution of the relations between the two nations at a particular point in time. While the heart of the analysis consists of close textual readings, social, cultural and political contexts are introduced to provide a better understanding of the historical reality influencing the individual novels, a reality to which these novels are also responding. Chapters One through Five, covering a period from the mid-1870s to the end of the Cold War, discuss significant aspects of the often fraught relationship in part from the theoretical perspective of Roland Barthes’ theory of modern myth, described in his Mythologies. Barthes’ theory helps situate Franco-American tensions in a paradigmatic structure, which remains supple enough to allow for shifts and reversals within the paradigm. Subsequent chapters explore new French attitudes toward the powerful, potentially dominant influence of American culture on French life. In these sections I argue that recent French fiction displays more openness to the American experience than has existed in the past, and contrast this overture to the new with the relatively static, even indifferent attitude of American writers toward French literature.
James E. Dobson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042270
- eISBN:
- 9780252051111
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042270.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter serves as an introduction to the problems raised by the use of computational methods in cultural and literary criticism. It does so by placing the desire for a science of reading ...
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This chapter serves as an introduction to the problems raised by the use of computational methods in cultural and literary criticism. It does so by placing the desire for a science of reading expressed by many digital humanists within a larger genealogy of interpretive hermeneutics by turning to a series of crucial historical inflection points in which scholars and other intellectuals have raised the question of whether literary and cultural criticism could be a science or should depend upon the procedures of the sciences. While some critics (Matthew Jockers, Ted Underwood, and Andrew Goldstone, among others) have proposed that research in the digital humanities should look more like the quantitative social sciences, this chapter’s reconstruction of pivotal debates in the literary studies demonstrates the existence of surplus questions related to the ongoing meaning of cultural objects, textual sources, and archives that remain unaddressable and unanswerable by empirical methods. The chapter argues that what sustains the possibility of this notion of the “unaddressable” is a regular disciplinary injunction to apply a critical gaze backward through scholarly methods, to the ways in which evidence is found, collected, or produced, to the ways in which scholars frame this evidence, the protocols by which they interpret it, and the arguments they present to their readers.Less
This chapter serves as an introduction to the problems raised by the use of computational methods in cultural and literary criticism. It does so by placing the desire for a science of reading expressed by many digital humanists within a larger genealogy of interpretive hermeneutics by turning to a series of crucial historical inflection points in which scholars and other intellectuals have raised the question of whether literary and cultural criticism could be a science or should depend upon the procedures of the sciences. While some critics (Matthew Jockers, Ted Underwood, and Andrew Goldstone, among others) have proposed that research in the digital humanities should look more like the quantitative social sciences, this chapter’s reconstruction of pivotal debates in the literary studies demonstrates the existence of surplus questions related to the ongoing meaning of cultural objects, textual sources, and archives that remain unaddressable and unanswerable by empirical methods. The chapter argues that what sustains the possibility of this notion of the “unaddressable” is a regular disciplinary injunction to apply a critical gaze backward through scholarly methods, to the ways in which evidence is found, collected, or produced, to the ways in which scholars frame this evidence, the protocols by which they interpret it, and the arguments they present to their readers.
Charlie Louth
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198813231
- eISBN:
- 9780191893377
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198813231.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The life of Rilke’s work is in its words, and this book attends closely to the development of that life as it unfolds over Rilke’s career. What is a poem, and how does it act upon us when we read? ...
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The life of Rilke’s work is in its words, and this book attends closely to the development of that life as it unfolds over Rilke’s career. What is a poem, and how does it act upon us when we read? This is a question of the greatest interest to Rilke, who addresses it in several poems and for whom the experience of reading affords an interaction with the world, a recalibration of our ways of attending to it, which set it apart from other kinds of experience. Rilke’s work is often approached in periods – he is the author of the Neue Gedichte, or of Malte, or of the Duino Elegies, or of the Sonette an Orpheus – as if the different phases of his work had little to do with one another, but in fact it is a concentrated and evolving exploration of the possibilities of poetic language, a working of the life of words into precise and exacting forms in dialogue with the texture of the world. This book traces that trajectory in a series of close readings that do not neglect the lesser-known, uncollected poems and the poems in French, as well as Rilke’s activity as a translator of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Barrett Browning, Mallarmé and Valéry among many others. These encounters were part of Rilke’s engagement with the world, his way of extending the reach of his language to get it ever closer to the ungraspable movements, the risk and promise, of life itself.Less
The life of Rilke’s work is in its words, and this book attends closely to the development of that life as it unfolds over Rilke’s career. What is a poem, and how does it act upon us when we read? This is a question of the greatest interest to Rilke, who addresses it in several poems and for whom the experience of reading affords an interaction with the world, a recalibration of our ways of attending to it, which set it apart from other kinds of experience. Rilke’s work is often approached in periods – he is the author of the Neue Gedichte, or of Malte, or of the Duino Elegies, or of the Sonette an Orpheus – as if the different phases of his work had little to do with one another, but in fact it is a concentrated and evolving exploration of the possibilities of poetic language, a working of the life of words into precise and exacting forms in dialogue with the texture of the world. This book traces that trajectory in a series of close readings that do not neglect the lesser-known, uncollected poems and the poems in French, as well as Rilke’s activity as a translator of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Barrett Browning, Mallarmé and Valéry among many others. These encounters were part of Rilke’s engagement with the world, his way of extending the reach of his language to get it ever closer to the ungraspable movements, the risk and promise, of life itself.
Hrileena Ghosh
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620610
- eISBN:
- 9781789629798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620610.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The fourth chapter opens with a detailed textual comparison, including statistical analysis of lexicography, between Keats’ medical notes and those kept by his fellow-student Joshua Waddington. These ...
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The fourth chapter opens with a detailed textual comparison, including statistical analysis of lexicography, between Keats’ medical notes and those kept by his fellow-student Joshua Waddington. These prove that the two sets of notes derived from the same source and reveal that although Keats has essentially the same information as Waddington, his habits of concision, reorganization and cross-referencing mean that they are presented in a different – indeed, distinctive – form. The chapter finds that some characteristic features of Keats’ mature poetry are prefigured in his medical notes: striking imagery, verbal rhythms and verbal compression are all typical of Keats’ medical thought. Close readings of some of Keats’ most accomplished poems, including ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and Hyperion, reveal the medical underpinning for much of his greatest poetry, in content, vocabulary, and style.Less
The fourth chapter opens with a detailed textual comparison, including statistical analysis of lexicography, between Keats’ medical notes and those kept by his fellow-student Joshua Waddington. These prove that the two sets of notes derived from the same source and reveal that although Keats has essentially the same information as Waddington, his habits of concision, reorganization and cross-referencing mean that they are presented in a different – indeed, distinctive – form. The chapter finds that some characteristic features of Keats’ mature poetry are prefigured in his medical notes: striking imagery, verbal rhythms and verbal compression are all typical of Keats’ medical thought. Close readings of some of Keats’ most accomplished poems, including ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and Hyperion, reveal the medical underpinning for much of his greatest poetry, in content, vocabulary, and style.
