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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Jessica Pressman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199937080
- eISBN:
- 9780199352623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937080.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter introduces the father of media studies, Marshall McLuhan, as a modernist New Critic and argues for the understanding of how close reading serves his foundational writing. McLuhan studied ...
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This chapter introduces the father of media studies, Marshall McLuhan, as a modernist New Critic and argues for the understanding of how close reading serves his foundational writing. McLuhan studied at Cambridge under such eminent New Critics as I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis. McLuhan adapted the New Critical practice of close reading and applied it to objects not traditionally considered literary. He built media studies from literary studies. Taking seriously McLuhan’s training in literature as well as his writerly prose, this chapter claims that close reading is crucial to understanding not only McLuhan’s theories of media but also the larger field of media studies that grew out of them.Less
This chapter introduces the father of media studies, Marshall McLuhan, as a modernist New Critic and argues for the understanding of how close reading serves his foundational writing. McLuhan studied at Cambridge under such eminent New Critics as I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis. McLuhan adapted the New Critical practice of close reading and applied it to objects not traditionally considered literary. He built media studies from literary studies. Taking seriously McLuhan’s training in literature as well as his writerly prose, this chapter claims that close reading is crucial to understanding not only McLuhan’s theories of media but also the larger field of media studies that grew out of them.
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.
Jessica Pressman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199937080
- eISBN:
- 9780199352623
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937080.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book presents an alternate genealogy for born-digital, avant-garde literature by connecting it to high literary modernism. “Digital modernism” refers to the strategy of adapting the poetics of ...
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This book presents an alternate genealogy for born-digital, avant-garde literature by connecting it to high literary modernism. “Digital modernism” refers to the strategy of adapting the poetics of literary modernism into new media literature, and this pursuit is shared among a diverse group of digital works. Examining digital modernism provides an opportunity to consider the modernist roots of digital literature and to recognize how modernism is centrally about media. Reading between these historical periods and their medial formats also demands the renovation of close reading in order to approach born-digital literature and illuminates how close reading remains vital to digital culture. By showing how media studies has its origins in literary studies, this book suggests that media studies should be considered part of literary studies and literary criticism.Less
This book presents an alternate genealogy for born-digital, avant-garde literature by connecting it to high literary modernism. “Digital modernism” refers to the strategy of adapting the poetics of literary modernism into new media literature, and this pursuit is shared among a diverse group of digital works. Examining digital modernism provides an opportunity to consider the modernist roots of digital literature and to recognize how modernism is centrally about media. Reading between these historical periods and their medial formats also demands the renovation of close reading in order to approach born-digital literature and illuminates how close reading remains vital to digital culture. By showing how media studies has its origins in literary studies, this book suggests that media studies should be considered part of literary studies and literary criticism.
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/9780823265572.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The introduction gives an overview of the book and its argument. It describes the simultaneous emergence in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries of romanticism as a poetics of life and ...
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The introduction gives an overview of the book and its argument. It describes the simultaneous emergence in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries of romanticism as a poetics of life and biopolitics, the politics of life and the living (as defined initially by Michel Foucault). The chapter shows that this convergence in the political and aesthetic spheres, which has gone unremarked until now, is essential to developing a new account of the political stakes of romanticism. The chapter also explains why the poet John Clare is central to the argument and how close reading is an important methodology for this work.Less
The introduction gives an overview of the book and its argument. It describes the simultaneous emergence in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries of romanticism as a poetics of life and biopolitics, the politics of life and the living (as defined initially by Michel Foucault). The chapter shows that this convergence in the political and aesthetic spheres, which has gone unremarked until now, is essential to developing a new account of the political stakes of romanticism. The chapter also explains why the poet John Clare is central to the argument and how close reading is an important methodology for this work.
Jessica Pressman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199937080
- eISBN:
- 9780199352623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937080.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Digital writers Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries claim that their work of Flash-based digital literature, Dakota, is “based on a close reading of Ezra Pound’s Cantos part I and part II.” The chapter ...
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Digital writers Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries claim that their work of Flash-based digital literature, Dakota, is “based on a close reading of Ezra Pound’s Cantos part I and part II.” The chapter close reads the digital work in relation to its proclaimed source material despite the fact that the speed at which Dakota flashes challenges efforts to do so. YHCHI brilliantly adapt Pound’s poetry at the level of content and form. For not only do YHCHI remix the language of the first cantos but they also use Flash to renovate Pound’s poetic technique of “super-position” or textual montage. This chapter examines the transformation of Pound’s formal technique into Flash to show how the poetic result illuminates connections between the modernist and digital modernist texts as well as the literary periods they represent.Less
Digital writers Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries claim that their work of Flash-based digital literature, Dakota, is “based on a close reading of Ezra Pound’s Cantos part I and part II.” The chapter close reads the digital work in relation to its proclaimed source material despite the fact that the speed at which Dakota flashes challenges efforts to do so. YHCHI brilliantly adapt Pound’s poetry at the level of content and form. For not only do YHCHI remix the language of the first cantos but they also use Flash to renovate Pound’s poetic technique of “super-position” or textual montage. This chapter examines the transformation of Pound’s formal technique into Flash to show how the poetic result illuminates connections between the modernist and digital modernist texts as well as the literary periods they represent.
Dene Grigar
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262035972
- eISBN:
- 9780262339018
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035972.003.0003
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
This chapters challenges the accepted view that Judy Malloy produced four versions of her pioneering work of electronic literature, Uncle Roger, showing through material uncovered from archival ...
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This chapters challenges the accepted view that Judy Malloy produced four versions of her pioneering work of electronic literature, Uncle Roger, showing through material uncovered from archival research, interviews, and Traversals, that there are instead six. Through a close reading of each version, the chapter also reveals subtle as well as significant changes the author made to the work during its 30-year history.Less
This chapters challenges the accepted view that Judy Malloy produced four versions of her pioneering work of electronic literature, Uncle Roger, showing through material uncovered from archival research, interviews, and Traversals, that there are instead six. Through a close reading of each version, the chapter also reveals subtle as well as significant changes the author made to the work during its 30-year history.
David Nowell Smith
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251537
- eISBN:
- 9780823252947
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251537.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
The chapter argues that Heidegger's Erläuterungen of poems should not be read as ‘exegeses’ but, following the German more literally, as ‘soundings-out’ of the poems, continuing the project of ...
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The chapter argues that Heidegger's Erläuterungen of poems should not be read as ‘exegeses’ but, following the German more literally, as ‘soundings-out’ of the poems, continuing the project of ‘preservation’ that he had outlined in ‘Origin of the Work of Art’: a mode of reading, listening, or beholding that, submitting itself to the openness of beings the work brings about, is thereby brought outside of itself. Poetry allows thinking, as it were, to think beyond its own limits. This raises two questions: firstly, do Heidegger's readings think beyond their own limits? and secondly, does Heidegger's depiction of the relation between Dichten and Denken account for the way he reads± The chapter finishes by offering close readings of Heidegger readings poems by Hölderlin, Trakl and George, paying particular attention to the points of transition between analysis of the poem and the claims Heidegger wishes to make, seeing how reading and poem intersect and diverge, and how the poems inflect, and infect, Heidegger's readings, and lead him to confront the limits of his own thought.Less
The chapter argues that Heidegger's Erläuterungen of poems should not be read as ‘exegeses’ but, following the German more literally, as ‘soundings-out’ of the poems, continuing the project of ‘preservation’ that he had outlined in ‘Origin of the Work of Art’: a mode of reading, listening, or beholding that, submitting itself to the openness of beings the work brings about, is thereby brought outside of itself. Poetry allows thinking, as it were, to think beyond its own limits. This raises two questions: firstly, do Heidegger's readings think beyond their own limits? and secondly, does Heidegger's depiction of the relation between Dichten and Denken account for the way he reads± The chapter finishes by offering close readings of Heidegger readings poems by Hölderlin, Trakl and George, paying particular attention to the points of transition between analysis of the poem and the claims Heidegger wishes to make, seeing how reading and poem intersect and diverge, and how the poems inflect, and infect, Heidegger's readings, and lead him to confront the limits of his own thought.
