Search Results

Introduction

Vivienne J. Gray

in Xenophon's Mirror of Princes: Reading the Reflections

This Introduction briefly outlines the book. This book is about Xenophon's literary presentation of the leadership of individuals in their communities, from those of private households up to those of ... More

This Introduction briefly outlines the book. This book is about Xenophon's literary presentation of the leadership of individuals in their communities, from those of private households up to those of great empires. Leadership is his main interest throughout his works and the examination of the methods he uses to portray leadership allows us to look into his general literary techniques. The main aim is to show that these techniques produce images of leaders that are rich in literary and conceptual interest and contribute to the literary theory of writing in prose. As part of this analysis, the book addresses readings that have found concealed criticism behind his apparently positive images of leadership in a majority of his works. These represent a dominant trend of literary criticism of Xenophon in our time and we can profit from engaging with them.Less

Robert Graves and The White Goddess: Chatterton Lecture On Poetry

Fran Brearton

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 131, 2004 Lectures

This lecture discusses The White Goddess, a novel written by Robert Graves that was first published in May 1948. It is an intellectual and difficult book that has a toehold in many academic ... More

This lecture discusses The White Goddess, a novel written by Robert Graves that was first published in May 1948. It is an intellectual and difficult book that has a toehold in many academic disciplines, including anthropology, literary studies, and Celtic studies. As an author, Graves has been described as the ‘bard’ of ‘an alternative society’ and as a ‘a unique figure in British literary life’. The lecture determines that The White Goddess can be both a help and a hindrance when it comes to looking at Graves' life and work. It also presents the literary techniques Graves used in the novel.Less

Introduction: History, Culture, and Text

Lynn Hunt

in The New Cultural History

This book presents the agenda for the “new cultural history”. It specifically explores the models that have already been proposed for the history of culture. Concrete examples of the new kinds of ... More

This book presents the agenda for the “new cultural history”. It specifically explores the models that have already been proposed for the history of culture. Concrete examples of the new kinds of work that are currently under way are also provided. Additionally, it tries to illustrate how a new generation of historians of culture uses literary techniques and approaches to develop new materials and methods of analysis. The linguistic analogy establishes representation as a problem which historians can no longer avoid. It is shown that the accent in cultural history is on close examination—of texts, of pictures, and of actions—and on open-mindedness to what those examinations will reveal, rather than on elaboration of new master narratives or social theories to replace the materialist reductionism of Marxism and the Annales school. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.Less

Barnardine’s Straw: The Devil in Shakespeare’s Detail: Shakespeare Lecture

Michael Pennington

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 131, 2004 Lectures

This lecture discusses memories of appreciating William Shakespeare's work. It reveals the various theatre adaptations of Shakespeare's works, including Hamlet, Macbeth, and As You Like It, and some ... More

This lecture discusses memories of appreciating William Shakespeare's work. It reveals the various theatre adaptations of Shakespeare's works, including Hamlet, Macbeth, and As You Like It, and some notable theatre actors who contributed to the portrayal of Shakespeare's characters. It examines Shakespeare's use of language in his works, including several other literary techniques he used.Less

The Bible and Its Worldview as a Cultural Document

John D. Early

in Maya and Catholic Cultures in Crisis

Taking an anthropological point of view, this chapter examines the Bible as a cultural document that employed theological categories of Hebrew culture to give moral instruction. The Bible as it ... More

Taking an anthropological point of view, this chapter examines the Bible as a cultural document that employed theological categories of Hebrew culture to give moral instruction. The Bible as it currently exists is the result of theological interpreters editing ancient Jewish traditions to express the moral pattern of human communities: election, sin, judgment, redemption, liberation. This same pattern was used by early Jewish Christians to express the meaning of the life of Jesus. The biblical editors used a literary technique of parallel “historical” phases to form the pattern that symbolizes and teaches moral action and its metaphysical import, not to prove it nor to narrate history in a contemporary sense.Less

Film Talk: C. A. Lejeune and the Female Film Critic

Lisa Stead

in Off to the Pictures: Cinemagoing, Women's Writing and Movie Culture in Interwar Britain

This chapter examines how early film criticism evolved as a distinct branch of women’s interwar ‘film talk’ through writers such as Iris Barry and Dilys Powell, taking C. A. Lejeune as a central case ... More

This chapter examines how early film criticism evolved as a distinct branch of women’s interwar ‘film talk’ through writers such as Iris Barry and Dilys Powell, taking C. A. Lejeune as a central case study. It explores Lejeune’s early writing in her The Manchester Guardian column from 1922 to 1928 and early work for the Observer. The chapter looks at developments and trends in her writing, considering how her columns produced a journalistic mode of film talk coloured specifically by debates and concerns about gender. This is read through Lejeune’s specific discussions about notions of women’s cinema, women and stardom, and female spectatorship. Gender shaped and shadowed much of her critical discourse, not only through the gendered associations of the topics she discussed – especially stardom – but through her approach to negotiating her own gender identity as a professional film critic, and the experimentation she enacted with crafting and refining her journalistic voice as a distinctly film-based writer. The chapter explores the stylistic strategies of Lejeune’s column writing, examining her use of literary techniques and fictional frameworks as a way to turn her attention far more explicitly to the topic of women and cinema.Less

Skepticism and Irony: La Celestina (1499)

Susanne Zepp

in An Early Self: Jewish Belonging in Romance Literature, 1499-1627

The first chapter focuses on the Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea, which has become known under the title La Celestina. This closet drama is almost invariably described as a “threshold” or as a ... More

The first chapter focuses on the Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea, which has become known under the title La Celestina. This closet drama is almost invariably described as a “threshold” or as a “work of crisis” (Manfred Tietz) at the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Hitherto existing research understands the text as an example of converso skepticism, and suggests that the constraints of persecution and the adaptive measures conversos were subjected to have shaped the path of Spanish literature into the Renaissance in a specific way. This chapter suggests a different reading, understanding the literary techniques in La Celestina as a decontextualization of biblical texts followed by “oblique” recontextualization. These oblique recontextualizations create surprising perspectives for the original context and make other perspectives not articulated in the text conceivable. A direct path leads from this technique, further perfected mainly by Cervantes in Don Quijote, to modern literature.Less

Boccaccio’s Fabliaux: Transmission and Transformation of the Fabliaux to the Decameron

Katherine A. Brown

in Boccaccio's Fabliaux: Medieval Short Stories and the Function of Reversal

Chapter 4 consists of close readings of fabliaux and novellas in the Decameron. These show how Boccaccio's manipulation of fabliaux and other narratives result in the creation of a new genre. The ... More

Chapter 4 consists of close readings of fabliaux and novellas in the Decameron. These show how Boccaccio's manipulation of fabliaux and other narratives result in the creation of a new genre. The first texts, La Nonete and novella IX:2, show that Boccaccio used reversal both within individual narratives as well as among different narratives--novella IV:1 is a gendered reversal of novella IX:2--in order to underscore the openness of interpretation. The second example shows that novella III:10, through reversals, combines opposites genres: fabliaux and hagiographic texts. This combination of diverse genres reveals their inherent analogies. The final example shows that Boccaccio used one fabliau, Le Vilain de Bailleul, in two different novellas, III:8 and IX:3, revealing that stories can be endlessly adapted as well as interpreted.Less

Framing the Folk: Fignolé

in Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon

This chapter focuses on Fignolé's engagement with the Caribbean oral tradition. It examines the author's weaving together of multiple narratives and voices into frenetically oral literary works — a ... More

This chapter focuses on Fignolé's engagement with the Caribbean oral tradition. It examines the author's weaving together of multiple narratives and voices into frenetically oral literary works — a process that involves the melding of folklore with Joycean literary techniques to create profoundly hybrid texts.Less