Jody Azzouni
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199738946
- eISBN:
- 9780199866175
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738946.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Ordinary language and scientific language enable us to speak about, in a singular way (with demonstratives and names), what we recognize not to exist: fictions, the contents of our hallucinations, ...
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Ordinary language and scientific language enable us to speak about, in a singular way (with demonstratives and names), what we recognize not to exist: fictions, the contents of our hallucinations, abstract objects, and various idealized nonexistent objects to which our scientific theories more conveniently apply. Indeed, references to such nonexistent items—especially in the case of the application of mathematics to the sciences—are indispensable. Scientific and ordinary languages allow us to say things about Pegasus or about hallucinated objects that are true (or false) such as “Pegasus was believed by the ancient Greeks to be a flying horse,” or “That elf I’m now hallucinating over there is wearing blue shoes.” Standard contemporary metaphysical views and standard contemporary philosophical semantic analyses of singular idioms have not successfully accommodated these routine practices of saying true and false things about the nonexistent while simultaneously honoring the insight that such things do not exist in any way at all (and have no properties). This book reconfigures metaphysics and semantics in a radical way to allow the accommodation of our ordinary ways of speaking of what does not exist while retaining the absolutely crucial assumption that such objects exist in no way at all, have no properties, and so are not the truth-makers for the truths and falsities that are about them.Less
Ordinary language and scientific language enable us to speak about, in a singular way (with demonstratives and names), what we recognize not to exist: fictions, the contents of our hallucinations, abstract objects, and various idealized nonexistent objects to which our scientific theories more conveniently apply. Indeed, references to such nonexistent items—especially in the case of the application of mathematics to the sciences—are indispensable. Scientific and ordinary languages allow us to say things about Pegasus or about hallucinated objects that are true (or false) such as “Pegasus was believed by the ancient Greeks to be a flying horse,” or “That elf I’m now hallucinating over there is wearing blue shoes.” Standard contemporary metaphysical views and standard contemporary philosophical semantic analyses of singular idioms have not successfully accommodated these routine practices of saying true and false things about the nonexistent while simultaneously honoring the insight that such things do not exist in any way at all (and have no properties). This book reconfigures metaphysics and semantics in a radical way to allow the accommodation of our ordinary ways of speaking of what does not exist while retaining the absolutely crucial assumption that such objects exist in no way at all, have no properties, and so are not the truth-makers for the truths and falsities that are about them.
Christopher Pincock
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199757107
- eISBN:
- 9780199932313
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199757107.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Fictionalism about mathematics is the view that we can use mathematics in science and yet not believe that our mathematical claims are true. This chapter critically evaluates some of the most ...
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Fictionalism about mathematics is the view that we can use mathematics in science and yet not believe that our mathematical claims are true. This chapter critically evaluates some of the most important versions of fictionalism. It begins by considering the leading options for making sense of literary fictions and argues that engaging with a literary fiction does not present any evidence for how things are in the real world. This point is then used to criticize fictionalism about mathematics and a related fictionalist position about scientific models. Another objection is that the fictionalist has yet to clarify the rules for exporting well-supported claims from the fiction in the scientific case. This suggests that fictionalists are not able to make sense of the contributions delineated in part one of the book.Less
Fictionalism about mathematics is the view that we can use mathematics in science and yet not believe that our mathematical claims are true. This chapter critically evaluates some of the most important versions of fictionalism. It begins by considering the leading options for making sense of literary fictions and argues that engaging with a literary fiction does not present any evidence for how things are in the real world. This point is then used to criticize fictionalism about mathematics and a related fictionalist position about scientific models. Another objection is that the fictionalist has yet to clarify the rules for exporting well-supported claims from the fiction in the scientific case. This suggests that fictionalists are not able to make sense of the contributions delineated in part one of the book.
Tim Lanzendörfer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496819062
- eISBN:
- 9781496819109
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496819062.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The coda explores what the book takes to be the most expansive question about contemporary zombie fiction, its meaning for literature at large. It departs from the question of whether we will be able ...
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The coda explores what the book takes to be the most expansive question about contemporary zombie fiction, its meaning for literature at large. It departs from the question of whether we will be able to read literature again without the zombie, and takes zombie fiction, in its many manifestations but especially in its appearance in ostensibly “literary” fiction, as a crucial part of the contemporary generic turn, and as a harbinger of the future of fiction. More than that, however, it suggests that the processes at work in zombie fiction prefigure a larger shift in the literary field, one which ultimately depends on the zombie’s capacity to broadly signal possibility, rather than symbolic meaning.Less
The coda explores what the book takes to be the most expansive question about contemporary zombie fiction, its meaning for literature at large. It departs from the question of whether we will be able to read literature again without the zombie, and takes zombie fiction, in its many manifestations but especially in its appearance in ostensibly “literary” fiction, as a crucial part of the contemporary generic turn, and as a harbinger of the future of fiction. More than that, however, it suggests that the processes at work in zombie fiction prefigure a larger shift in the literary field, one which ultimately depends on the zombie’s capacity to broadly signal possibility, rather than symbolic meaning.
Mark R. E. Meulenbeld
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824838447
- eISBN:
- 9780824869458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824838447.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter examines the invention of the academic discipline of Chinese literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It challenges some of the predominant notions in the field ...
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This chapter examines the invention of the academic discipline of Chinese literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It challenges some of the predominant notions in the field of literary studies, arguing that it was during these decades that the traditional term xiaoshuo came to be equated with a modern, secular understanding of literary fiction in general and of the novel in particular. It considers how this usage of xiaoshuo has divorced vernacular narratives of the late Ming dynasty from the environment where they have always been most tangibly present: temples, rituals, theater acts, and the gods they embodied. It also explains how the academic shift away from the sphere of religion has resulted in a narrow understanding of these narratives exclusively as (literary) texts instead of as the cultural nexus of legend, divinity, ritual, and community. The chapter concludes by discussing the attempt by Chinese reformist intellectuals to make the novel the battleground for modernity.Less
This chapter examines the invention of the academic discipline of Chinese literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It challenges some of the predominant notions in the field of literary studies, arguing that it was during these decades that the traditional term xiaoshuo came to be equated with a modern, secular understanding of literary fiction in general and of the novel in particular. It considers how this usage of xiaoshuo has divorced vernacular narratives of the late Ming dynasty from the environment where they have always been most tangibly present: temples, rituals, theater acts, and the gods they embodied. It also explains how the academic shift away from the sphere of religion has resulted in a narrow understanding of these narratives exclusively as (literary) texts instead of as the cultural nexus of legend, divinity, ritual, and community. The chapter concludes by discussing the attempt by Chinese reformist intellectuals to make the novel the battleground for modernity.
Jesper Gulddal, Alistair Rolls, and Stewart King (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620580
- eISBN:
- 9781789629590
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620580.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book offers a major intervention into contemporary theoretical debates about crime fiction. Academic studies in the genre have historically been encumbered by a set of restrictive ...
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This book offers a major intervention into contemporary theoretical debates about crime fiction. Academic studies in the genre have historically been encumbered by a set of restrictive preconceptions, largely drawn from attitudes to popular fiction: that the genre does not warrant detailed critical analysis; that genre norms and conventions matter more than textual individuality; and that comparative or transnational perspectives are secondary to the study of the core British-American canon. This study challenges the distinction between literary and popular fiction and proposes that crime fiction, far from being static and staid, must be seen as a genre constantly violating its own boundaries. Centred on three axes of mobility, the essays present new, mobile reading practices that realize the genre’s full textual complexity, without being limited by the authoritative self-interpretations that crime narratives tend to provide. The book demonstrates how we can venture beyond the restrictive notions of ‘genre’, ‘formula’, ‘popular’ or ‘lowbrow’ to develop instead a concept of genre that acknowledges its mobility. Finally, it establishes a global and transnational perspective that challenges the centrality of the British-American tradition and recognizes that the global history of crime fiction is characterized, not by the existence of parallel, national traditions, but rather by processes of appropriation and transculturation.Less
This book offers a major intervention into contemporary theoretical debates about crime fiction. Academic studies in the genre have historically been encumbered by a set of restrictive preconceptions, largely drawn from attitudes to popular fiction: that the genre does not warrant detailed critical analysis; that genre norms and conventions matter more than textual individuality; and that comparative or transnational perspectives are secondary to the study of the core British-American canon. This study challenges the distinction between literary and popular fiction and proposes that crime fiction, far from being static and staid, must be seen as a genre constantly violating its own boundaries. Centred on three axes of mobility, the essays present new, mobile reading practices that realize the genre’s full textual complexity, without being limited by the authoritative self-interpretations that crime narratives tend to provide. The book demonstrates how we can venture beyond the restrictive notions of ‘genre’, ‘formula’, ‘popular’ or ‘lowbrow’ to develop instead a concept of genre that acknowledges its mobility. Finally, it establishes a global and transnational perspective that challenges the centrality of the British-American tradition and recognizes that the global history of crime fiction is characterized, not by the existence of parallel, national traditions, but rather by processes of appropriation and transculturation.
Stefan Andriopoulos
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226020549
- eISBN:
- 9780226020570
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226020570.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter analyzes competing late nineteenth-century medical theories of “suggestion” to establish the constitutive role of literary fiction for the lively scientific debate about hypnotic crimes. ...
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This chapter analyzes competing late nineteenth-century medical theories of “suggestion” to establish the constitutive role of literary fiction for the lively scientific debate about hypnotic crimes. Whereas Jean-Martin Charcot and his disciples denied the possibility of so-called criminal suggestions, the physicians of the Nancy school substituted literary stories for actual cases within their treatises about hypnotism and crime. At the same time, narratives and novels such as Guy de Maupassant's Le Horla or Gregor Samarow's Under a Foreign Will cited the forensic debate about the irresistible power of suggestion, thereby imbuing the literary description of possessed bodies with scientific legitimacy. The enormously popular tales of hypnotic crime accordingly emerged from a mutual exchange of rhetorical tropes, scientific concepts, and narrative patterns among law, literature, and medicine. Juridical, literary, and medical representations of criminal suggestion mutually presupposed and engendered each other.Less
This chapter analyzes competing late nineteenth-century medical theories of “suggestion” to establish the constitutive role of literary fiction for the lively scientific debate about hypnotic crimes. Whereas Jean-Martin Charcot and his disciples denied the possibility of so-called criminal suggestions, the physicians of the Nancy school substituted literary stories for actual cases within their treatises about hypnotism and crime. At the same time, narratives and novels such as Guy de Maupassant's Le Horla or Gregor Samarow's Under a Foreign Will cited the forensic debate about the irresistible power of suggestion, thereby imbuing the literary description of possessed bodies with scientific legitimacy. The enormously popular tales of hypnotic crime accordingly emerged from a mutual exchange of rhetorical tropes, scientific concepts, and narrative patterns among law, literature, and medicine. Juridical, literary, and medical representations of criminal suggestion mutually presupposed and engendered each other.
Frank Palmer
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198242321
- eISBN:
- 9780191680441
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198242321.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Moral Philosophy
In responding to literary fiction, it is essential that people have moral responses to fictional characters. It is unintelligible to suppose that access could be gained to understanding ...
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In responding to literary fiction, it is essential that people have moral responses to fictional characters. It is unintelligible to suppose that access could be gained to understanding representations of human action by thinking of such action in a way which is radically different from the way one perceives and understands the actions of human beings. Of course, this is assuming that they are indeed understood as actions for them to have any textual or literary function. This chapter focuses on a philosophical digression into a discussion of the moral attitudes and their involvement in interpersonal understanding. Confusion normally occurs in this regard primarily because of the tendency to think that moral evaluation is one way or another distinct from perception and understanding of human conduct.Less
In responding to literary fiction, it is essential that people have moral responses to fictional characters. It is unintelligible to suppose that access could be gained to understanding representations of human action by thinking of such action in a way which is radically different from the way one perceives and understands the actions of human beings. Of course, this is assuming that they are indeed understood as actions for them to have any textual or literary function. This chapter focuses on a philosophical digression into a discussion of the moral attitudes and their involvement in interpersonal understanding. Confusion normally occurs in this regard primarily because of the tendency to think that moral evaluation is one way or another distinct from perception and understanding of human conduct.
Joanna Gavins
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748622993
- eISBN:
- 9780748671540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.003.0008
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and Pedagogy
This chapter focuses on prototypical narrative discourse: literary fiction. It examines two extracts from two examples of contemporary prose fiction. The discussion then extends into an exploration ...
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This chapter focuses on prototypical narrative discourse: literary fiction. It examines two extracts from two examples of contemporary prose fiction. The discussion then extends into an exploration of the manipulation of certain narrative structures for particular effects in both literary and non-literary contexts.Less
This chapter focuses on prototypical narrative discourse: literary fiction. It examines two extracts from two examples of contemporary prose fiction. The discussion then extends into an exploration of the manipulation of certain narrative structures for particular effects in both literary and non-literary contexts.
Catherine Z. Elgin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036535
- eISBN:
- 9780262341370
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036535.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Laboratory experiments, thought experiments, and literary fictions are felicitous falsehoods. They distance themselves from the facts they bear on to screen out irrelevant, potentially confounding ...
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Laboratory experiments, thought experiments, and literary fictions are felicitous falsehoods. They distance themselves from the facts they bear on to screen out irrelevant, potentially confounding factors. This enables them to exemplify, and provide epistemic access to features that would otherwise be obscured.Less
Laboratory experiments, thought experiments, and literary fictions are felicitous falsehoods. They distance themselves from the facts they bear on to screen out irrelevant, potentially confounding factors. This enables them to exemplify, and provide epistemic access to features that would otherwise be obscured.
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853238430
- eISBN:
- 9781846313561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238430.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses metaphor in literary fiction in the context of French author Michael Tournier's works. It offers an argument rooted in the presupposition that the study of metaphor helps ...
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This chapter discusses metaphor in literary fiction in the context of French author Michael Tournier's works. It offers an argument rooted in the presupposition that the study of metaphor helps considerably in the evolution of a theory of the imagination and considers an interpretation of Tournier's child-centred narrative policy as a logical refinement of the reasoning behind his original choice to deal in myths. The chapter also provides three relevant case studies, which include Paul Ricoeur's theory of metaphor as imagination, Jean Ricardou's writing on the all-pervasiveness of metaphor in both literary and non-literary discourse, and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's universalist theory of metaphor as the primary organizer.Less
This chapter discusses metaphor in literary fiction in the context of French author Michael Tournier's works. It offers an argument rooted in the presupposition that the study of metaphor helps considerably in the evolution of a theory of the imagination and considers an interpretation of Tournier's child-centred narrative policy as a logical refinement of the reasoning behind his original choice to deal in myths. The chapter also provides three relevant case studies, which include Paul Ricoeur's theory of metaphor as imagination, Jean Ricardou's writing on the all-pervasiveness of metaphor in both literary and non-literary discourse, and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's universalist theory of metaphor as the primary organizer.
Asha Rogers
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- April 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198857761
- eISBN:
- 9780191890383
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198857761.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This short concluding essay revisits the main ideas explored in this book, including the material and symbolic entanglements of state support and literature’s special capacity to represent the full ...
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This short concluding essay revisits the main ideas explored in this book, including the material and symbolic entanglements of state support and literature’s special capacity to represent the full range of voices and experiences now comprising modern Britain. Mindful of the intersecting political, social, and economic pressures shaping literary value and the vacillation between recognition and disavowal characteristic of the state’s engagements with literature, it turns to two recent reports of the state and fate of contemporary literary writing: Literature in the 21st Century (2017) and Writing the Future:Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Marketplace (2015).Less
This short concluding essay revisits the main ideas explored in this book, including the material and symbolic entanglements of state support and literature’s special capacity to represent the full range of voices and experiences now comprising modern Britain. Mindful of the intersecting political, social, and economic pressures shaping literary value and the vacillation between recognition and disavowal characteristic of the state’s engagements with literature, it turns to two recent reports of the state and fate of contemporary literary writing: Literature in the 21st Century (2017) and Writing the Future:Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Marketplace (2015).
Peter Boxall and Bryan Cheyette (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198749394
- eISBN:
- 9780191869754
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198749394.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This book offers an account on the last eight decades of British and Irish prose fiction. It begins during the Second World War, when novel production fell by more than a third, and ends at a time ...
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This book offers an account on the last eight decades of British and Irish prose fiction. It begins during the Second World War, when novel production fell by more than a third, and ends at a time when new technologies have made possible the publication of an unprecedented number of fiction titles and have changed completely the relationship between authors, publishers, the novel, and the reader. The chapters look at the impact of global warfare on the novel from the Second World War to the Cold War to the twenty-first century; the reflexive continuities of late modernism; the influence of film and television on the novel form; mobile and fluid connections between sexuality, gender, and different periods of women’s writing; a broad range of migrant and ethnic fictions; and the continuities and discontinuities of prose fiction in different regional, national, class, and global contexts. Across the volume there is a blurring of the boundary between genre fiction and literary fiction, as the literary thinking of the period is traced in the spy novel, the children’s novel, the historical novel, the serial novel, shorter fiction, the science fiction novel, and the comic novel. The final chapters of the volume explore the relationship of twenty-first century fiction to post-war culture, and show how this new fiction both emerges from the history of the novel, and prefigures the novel to come.Less
This book offers an account on the last eight decades of British and Irish prose fiction. It begins during the Second World War, when novel production fell by more than a third, and ends at a time when new technologies have made possible the publication of an unprecedented number of fiction titles and have changed completely the relationship between authors, publishers, the novel, and the reader. The chapters look at the impact of global warfare on the novel from the Second World War to the Cold War to the twenty-first century; the reflexive continuities of late modernism; the influence of film and television on the novel form; mobile and fluid connections between sexuality, gender, and different periods of women’s writing; a broad range of migrant and ethnic fictions; and the continuities and discontinuities of prose fiction in different regional, national, class, and global contexts. Across the volume there is a blurring of the boundary between genre fiction and literary fiction, as the literary thinking of the period is traced in the spy novel, the children’s novel, the historical novel, the serial novel, shorter fiction, the science fiction novel, and the comic novel. The final chapters of the volume explore the relationship of twenty-first century fiction to post-war culture, and show how this new fiction both emerges from the history of the novel, and prefigures the novel to come.
Sara Upstone
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719078323
- eISBN:
- 9781781703229
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719078323.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In his three novels, Season of the Rainbirds (1993), Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) and The Wasted Vigil (2008), Nadeem Aslam fuses conventional postcolonial themes and literary techniques with a ...
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In his three novels, Season of the Rainbirds (1993), Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) and The Wasted Vigil (2008), Nadeem Aslam fuses conventional postcolonial themes and literary techniques with a distinctly British sensibility. Born in Pakistan in 1966, he came with his parents to Britain at the age of fourteen, where the family settled in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and has described himself as ‘a Pakistani man living in Britain’. Yet, elsewhere, Aslam is described as ‘Pakistani-British’. This personal history embodies his dual positioning as both British Asian and postcolonial migrant author. In many senses, Aslam, rather than embodying the qualities of British Asian literature, is part of the publishing storm surrounding postcolonial writers that developed in the 1990s. He is evidence of how, to consider British Asian authors simply in relation to an ethnic literature (whether defined as British Asian, Black British or postcolonial) is to neglect wider paradigms in contemporary literary fiction: not just British, but also international.Less
In his three novels, Season of the Rainbirds (1993), Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) and The Wasted Vigil (2008), Nadeem Aslam fuses conventional postcolonial themes and literary techniques with a distinctly British sensibility. Born in Pakistan in 1966, he came with his parents to Britain at the age of fourteen, where the family settled in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and has described himself as ‘a Pakistani man living in Britain’. Yet, elsewhere, Aslam is described as ‘Pakistani-British’. This personal history embodies his dual positioning as both British Asian and postcolonial migrant author. In many senses, Aslam, rather than embodying the qualities of British Asian literature, is part of the publishing storm surrounding postcolonial writers that developed in the 1990s. He is evidence of how, to consider British Asian authors simply in relation to an ethnic literature (whether defined as British Asian, Black British or postcolonial) is to neglect wider paradigms in contemporary literary fiction: not just British, but also international.
Arne Höcker
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501749353
- eISBN:
- 9781501749384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501749353.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter assesses Sigmund Freud's case histories in his 1895 Studies on Hysteria. Far from removing literature from the psychological context, Freud shifts the focus regarding the function of ...
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This chapter assesses Sigmund Freud's case histories in his 1895 Studies on Hysteria. Far from removing literature from the psychological context, Freud shifts the focus regarding the function of literary fiction for psychological cognition from authorship to form. The question of literary form initially appears in Freud in connection with his case histories on hysteria and with the problem of casuistic representation. Freud, however, reverses the prevalent criminological perspective when he notes a certain proximity of his own scientific case histories to literature. This comparison concerns less the scientific value of Freud's case histories than it does literary fiction and its reality value, and, thus, his contribution to new conceptions of literary realism.Less
This chapter assesses Sigmund Freud's case histories in his 1895 Studies on Hysteria. Far from removing literature from the psychological context, Freud shifts the focus regarding the function of literary fiction for psychological cognition from authorship to form. The question of literary form initially appears in Freud in connection with his case histories on hysteria and with the problem of casuistic representation. Freud, however, reverses the prevalent criminological perspective when he notes a certain proximity of his own scientific case histories to literature. This comparison concerns less the scientific value of Freud's case histories than it does literary fiction and its reality value, and, thus, his contribution to new conceptions of literary realism.
Arne Höcker
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501749353
- eISBN:
- 9781501749384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501749353.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter explains that, without any doubt, Goethe's and Moritz's novels as well as Schiller's and Kleist's novellas are part of today's German literary canon. But just as certainly, this literary ...
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This chapter explains that, without any doubt, Goethe's and Moritz's novels as well as Schiller's and Kleist's novellas are part of today's German literary canon. But just as certainly, this literary canon did not yet exist around 1800. It cannot even be assumed that the writers of these texts considered themselves literary authors. Werther and Anton Reiser conceal Goethe's and Moritz's authorship, and instead frame their novels by means of a fictitious editorship. In Schiller's and Kleist's novellas, the reference to the truthfulness of the story and the historically documented origin of the material have a similar function. What might have been the premises of and motivations for writing about cases for Goethe, Moritz, Schiller, and Kleist when we assume that they did not write as literary authors? The reading of their cases as literary fiction obscures the fact that these novels and novellas might just as well be understood as vehicles for lawyers, medical doctors, pedagogues, and philanthropists to inform each other about the legal and mental status of the individual and, thus, to continue the medical and legal traditions of thinking, arguing, and writing in cases. And yet the close reading of these texts shows that in them the representation of cases began to change.Less
This chapter explains that, without any doubt, Goethe's and Moritz's novels as well as Schiller's and Kleist's novellas are part of today's German literary canon. But just as certainly, this literary canon did not yet exist around 1800. It cannot even be assumed that the writers of these texts considered themselves literary authors. Werther and Anton Reiser conceal Goethe's and Moritz's authorship, and instead frame their novels by means of a fictitious editorship. In Schiller's and Kleist's novellas, the reference to the truthfulness of the story and the historically documented origin of the material have a similar function. What might have been the premises of and motivations for writing about cases for Goethe, Moritz, Schiller, and Kleist when we assume that they did not write as literary authors? The reading of their cases as literary fiction obscures the fact that these novels and novellas might just as well be understood as vehicles for lawyers, medical doctors, pedagogues, and philanthropists to inform each other about the legal and mental status of the individual and, thus, to continue the medical and legal traditions of thinking, arguing, and writing in cases. And yet the close reading of these texts shows that in them the representation of cases began to change.
Anne Whitehead
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748618576
- eISBN:
- 9780748651726
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748618576.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter views the conceptualisation of literature as a way of ‘working-through’, which consequently involves its own potential risks, and stresses that writing must not forget the challenge that ...
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This chapter views the conceptualisation of literature as a way of ‘working-through’, which consequently involves its own potential risks, and stresses that writing must not forget the challenge that trauma causes to representation. It argues that literary fiction provides the freedom and flexibility to be able to express the resistance and impact of trauma. The chapter also analyses two important works of fiction that draw on the forms of jazz to suggest the transition from trauma to recovery.Less
This chapter views the conceptualisation of literature as a way of ‘working-through’, which consequently involves its own potential risks, and stresses that writing must not forget the challenge that trauma causes to representation. It argues that literary fiction provides the freedom and flexibility to be able to express the resistance and impact of trauma. The chapter also analyses two important works of fiction that draw on the forms of jazz to suggest the transition from trauma to recovery.
Scott Hames
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198749394
- eISBN:
- 9780191869754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198749394.003.0031
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter examines the boom in Scottish literary fiction during the 1980s and 1990s, and the rhetoric of its presentation as a ‘new renaissance’. With this label came remarkably strong claims for ...
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This chapter examines the boom in Scottish literary fiction during the 1980s and 1990s, and the rhetoric of its presentation as a ‘new renaissance’. With this label came remarkably strong claims for the political efficacy of the contemporary literary novel — a phenomenon that has not attracted the interest it deserves from literary historians outside Scotland. In the two decades prior to devolution, the emergence of formally ambitious Scottish novelists sponsored a conflation of fiction and democracy which figured the novel as the locus of national self-representation and reinvention. While there is clear evidence of these writers’ influence on the self-image of post-devolution Scotland, a closer examination of their fiction and its staging of ‘Scottishness’ complicates any straightforward affiliation with cultural nationalism. The ‘new renaissance’ discourse, this chapter suggests, both inflates the social impact of these novelists and delimits the politics of their writing to the display of suppressed ‘identity’.Less
This chapter examines the boom in Scottish literary fiction during the 1980s and 1990s, and the rhetoric of its presentation as a ‘new renaissance’. With this label came remarkably strong claims for the political efficacy of the contemporary literary novel — a phenomenon that has not attracted the interest it deserves from literary historians outside Scotland. In the two decades prior to devolution, the emergence of formally ambitious Scottish novelists sponsored a conflation of fiction and democracy which figured the novel as the locus of national self-representation and reinvention. While there is clear evidence of these writers’ influence on the self-image of post-devolution Scotland, a closer examination of their fiction and its staging of ‘Scottishness’ complicates any straightforward affiliation with cultural nationalism. The ‘new renaissance’ discourse, this chapter suggests, both inflates the social impact of these novelists and delimits the politics of their writing to the display of suppressed ‘identity’.
Arne Höcker
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501749353
- eISBN:
- 9781501749384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501749353.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This introductory chapter provides an overview of how representing cases in fictional narrative became an important touchstone for the development of German literature. The concept case refers to a ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of how representing cases in fictional narrative became an important touchstone for the development of German literature. The concept case refers to a particular way of thinking, administrating, and classifying that has gained epistemic relevance in various disciplinary and institutional settings. In the most general terms, a case allows the making of connections between a specific, discrete incident that it reports and a general form of knowledge to which it contributes. The particular way a case fulfills its function depends on the disciplinary context in which it appears; criminal cases are used for purposes different from medical or psychological cases. The chapter then looks at the constitutive contribution of case narratives to the establishment of new scientific disciplines, in particular empirical psychology and, more important, the formation of an autonomous discourse of and about literary fiction from the late eighteenth century onward.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of how representing cases in fictional narrative became an important touchstone for the development of German literature. The concept case refers to a particular way of thinking, administrating, and classifying that has gained epistemic relevance in various disciplinary and institutional settings. In the most general terms, a case allows the making of connections between a specific, discrete incident that it reports and a general form of knowledge to which it contributes. The particular way a case fulfills its function depends on the disciplinary context in which it appears; criminal cases are used for purposes different from medical or psychological cases. The chapter then looks at the constitutive contribution of case narratives to the establishment of new scientific disciplines, in particular empirical psychology and, more important, the formation of an autonomous discourse of and about literary fiction from the late eighteenth century onward.
Arne Höcker
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781501749353
- eISBN:
- 9781501749384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501749353.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter explains that while literary texts in the nineteenth century continued the convention of referencing historical cases, they did so in order to question institutional authority and to ...
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This chapter explains that while literary texts in the nineteenth century continued the convention of referencing historical cases, they did so in order to question institutional authority and to criticize the epistemological foundations and the legitimacy of legal judgments informed by psychological narrative. A scene from Hoffmann's “The Story of Serapion” in The Serapion Brethren may exemplify this new status of literary fiction in the nineteenth century. Hoffmann's rigorous rejection of medical authority in the analysis of states of mind for the purpose of legal decision making shows his deep concern about the predictability of the law and the dangers of compromising legal authority with knowledge based on philosophical speculation. Literary fiction, according to Hoffmann's rendering of romantic authorship, develops in opposition to psychological rationality and its claim to objectivity: poetical talent is based on methodological madness. This model of authorship, on the one hand, assigns to literary authors a special ability to depict questionable states of mind, and on the other hand locates this ability in authors' own special psychological intuition.Less
This chapter explains that while literary texts in the nineteenth century continued the convention of referencing historical cases, they did so in order to question institutional authority and to criticize the epistemological foundations and the legitimacy of legal judgments informed by psychological narrative. A scene from Hoffmann's “The Story of Serapion” in The Serapion Brethren may exemplify this new status of literary fiction in the nineteenth century. Hoffmann's rigorous rejection of medical authority in the analysis of states of mind for the purpose of legal decision making shows his deep concern about the predictability of the law and the dangers of compromising legal authority with knowledge based on philosophical speculation. Literary fiction, according to Hoffmann's rendering of romantic authorship, develops in opposition to psychological rationality and its claim to objectivity: poetical talent is based on methodological madness. This model of authorship, on the one hand, assigns to literary authors a special ability to depict questionable states of mind, and on the other hand locates this ability in authors' own special psychological intuition.
Chris Andrews
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231168069
- eISBN:
- 9780231537537
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231168069.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Since the publication of The Savage Detectives in 2007, the work of Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) has achieved an acclaim rarely enjoyed by literature in translation. This book explores the singular ...
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Since the publication of The Savage Detectives in 2007, the work of Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) has achieved an acclaim rarely enjoyed by literature in translation. This book explores the singular achievements of Bolaño’s oeuvre, engaging with its distinct style and key thematic concerns, incorporating his novels and stories into the larger history of Latin American and global literary fiction. The book provides new readings and interpretations of Bolaño’s novels, including 2666, The Savage Detectives, and By Night in Chile, while at the same time examining the ideas and narrative strategies that unify his work. It begins with a consideration of the reception of Bolaño’s fiction in English translation, examining the reasons behind its popularity. Subsequent chapters explore aspects of Bolaño’s fictional universe and the political, ethical, and aesthetic values that shape it. Bolaño emerges as the inventor of a prodigiously effective “fiction-making system,” a subtle handler of suspense, a chronicler of aimlessness, a celebrator of courage, an anatomist of evil, and a proponent of youthful openness.Less
Since the publication of The Savage Detectives in 2007, the work of Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) has achieved an acclaim rarely enjoyed by literature in translation. This book explores the singular achievements of Bolaño’s oeuvre, engaging with its distinct style and key thematic concerns, incorporating his novels and stories into the larger history of Latin American and global literary fiction. The book provides new readings and interpretations of Bolaño’s novels, including 2666, The Savage Detectives, and By Night in Chile, while at the same time examining the ideas and narrative strategies that unify his work. It begins with a consideration of the reception of Bolaño’s fiction in English translation, examining the reasons behind its popularity. Subsequent chapters explore aspects of Bolaño’s fictional universe and the political, ethical, and aesthetic values that shape it. Bolaño emerges as the inventor of a prodigiously effective “fiction-making system,” a subtle handler of suspense, a chronicler of aimlessness, a celebrator of courage, an anatomist of evil, and a proponent of youthful openness.