Susan Zuccotti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195134681
- eISBN:
- 9780199848652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195134681.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
A review of the book, The Neppi Modona Diaries: Reading Jewish Survival through My Italian Family by Kate Cohen is presented. Despite its title, the book is much more than just a memoir. In addition ...
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A review of the book, The Neppi Modona Diaries: Reading Jewish Survival through My Italian Family by Kate Cohen is presented. Despite its title, the book is much more than just a memoir. In addition to presenting two separate accounts written by an Italian Jewish father and son (distant relatives of the author), Kate Cohen has interviewed the mother and daughter, added excerpts from other survivor testimonies, provided some historical background and analyzed the psychological effects of identity-changing and hiding. She concludes with her own personal meditations on what it means to be a Jew. While sometimes uneven, the result is enlightening and provocative. Cohen does not shy away from the negative or the controversial.Less
A review of the book, The Neppi Modona Diaries: Reading Jewish Survival through My Italian Family by Kate Cohen is presented. Despite its title, the book is much more than just a memoir. In addition to presenting two separate accounts written by an Italian Jewish father and son (distant relatives of the author), Kate Cohen has interviewed the mother and daughter, added excerpts from other survivor testimonies, provided some historical background and analyzed the psychological effects of identity-changing and hiding. She concludes with her own personal meditations on what it means to be a Jew. While sometimes uneven, the result is enlightening and provocative. Cohen does not shy away from the negative or the controversial.
Ilaria Serra
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226788
- eISBN:
- 9780823235032
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226788.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not “words”, making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and ...
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The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not “words”, making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian–American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. The book offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy—the autobiographies written by immigrants. It looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, the book recovers the voices of the first generation—bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstresses—compelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often heavily accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities of work, survival, identity, and change. Moving between history and literature, the book presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.Less
The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not “words”, making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian–American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. The book offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy—the autobiographies written by immigrants. It looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, the book recovers the voices of the first generation—bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstresses—compelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often heavily accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities of work, survival, identity, and change. Moving between history and literature, the book presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.
Rivkah Zim
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691161808
- eISBN:
- 9781400852093
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691161808.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Boethius wrote Of the Consolation of Philosophy as a prisoner condemned to death for treason, circumstances that are reflected in the themes and concerns of its evocative poetry and dialogue between ...
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Boethius wrote Of the Consolation of Philosophy as a prisoner condemned to death for treason, circumstances that are reflected in the themes and concerns of its evocative poetry and dialogue between the prisoner and his mentor, Lady Philosophy. This classic philosophical statement of late antiquity has had an enduring influence on Western thought. It is also the earliest example of what this book identifies as a distinctive and vitally important medium of literary resistance: writing in captivity by prisoners of conscience and persecuted minorities. This book reveals why the great contributors to this tradition of prison writing are among the most crucial figures in Western literature. The book pairs writers from different periods and cultural settings, carefully examining the rhetorical strategies they used in captivity, often under the threat of death. It looks at Boethius and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as philosophers and theologians writing in defense of their ideas, and Thomas More and Antonio Gramsci as politicians in dialogue with established concepts of church and state. Different ideas of grace and disgrace occupied John Bunyan and Oscar Wilde in prison; Madame Roland and Anne Frank wrote themselves into history in various forms of memoir; and Jean Cassou and Irina Ratushinskaya voiced their resistance to totalitarianism through lyric poetry that saved their lives and inspired others. Finally, Primo Levi's writing after his release from Auschwitz recalls and decodes the obscenity of systematic genocide and its aftermath. This book speaks to some of the most profound questions about life, enriching our understanding of what it is to be human.Less
Boethius wrote Of the Consolation of Philosophy as a prisoner condemned to death for treason, circumstances that are reflected in the themes and concerns of its evocative poetry and dialogue between the prisoner and his mentor, Lady Philosophy. This classic philosophical statement of late antiquity has had an enduring influence on Western thought. It is also the earliest example of what this book identifies as a distinctive and vitally important medium of literary resistance: writing in captivity by prisoners of conscience and persecuted minorities. This book reveals why the great contributors to this tradition of prison writing are among the most crucial figures in Western literature. The book pairs writers from different periods and cultural settings, carefully examining the rhetorical strategies they used in captivity, often under the threat of death. It looks at Boethius and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as philosophers and theologians writing in defense of their ideas, and Thomas More and Antonio Gramsci as politicians in dialogue with established concepts of church and state. Different ideas of grace and disgrace occupied John Bunyan and Oscar Wilde in prison; Madame Roland and Anne Frank wrote themselves into history in various forms of memoir; and Jean Cassou and Irina Ratushinskaya voiced their resistance to totalitarianism through lyric poetry that saved their lives and inspired others. Finally, Primo Levi's writing after his release from Auschwitz recalls and decodes the obscenity of systematic genocide and its aftermath. This book speaks to some of the most profound questions about life, enriching our understanding of what it is to be human.
Lucy Noakes
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197266663
- eISBN:
- 9780191905384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266663.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The Second World War saw the conscription and mobilisation of around 5.8 million British men for military service. Very few had any prior military experience or training. This chapter looks at some ...
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The Second World War saw the conscription and mobilisation of around 5.8 million British men for military service. Very few had any prior military experience or training. This chapter looks at some of the letters, diaries, and memoirs written by men serving in the Army to consider how they tried to construct a new, militarised sense of identity, and the emotional styles that they used to communicate this. Letters, diaries, and memoirs provided a resource for both the expression of emotions that could not be articulated in the military community, and for the process of fashioning a new militarised selfhood. Drawing on work undertaken by historians working on the construction of selfhood, the chapter examines a range of these documents to consider the ways that men constructed and articulated this new militarised identity, and the emotional styles that they utilised to do so. However, war provided multiple challenges to these new, hybrid, identities, none more so than the threat of death, or the death of friends and comrades. The chapter concludes by considering the emotional styles that some men used to record their encounters with death, and the ways that these encounters could destabilise their new, militarised, selfhoods.Less
The Second World War saw the conscription and mobilisation of around 5.8 million British men for military service. Very few had any prior military experience or training. This chapter looks at some of the letters, diaries, and memoirs written by men serving in the Army to consider how they tried to construct a new, militarised sense of identity, and the emotional styles that they used to communicate this. Letters, diaries, and memoirs provided a resource for both the expression of emotions that could not be articulated in the military community, and for the process of fashioning a new militarised selfhood. Drawing on work undertaken by historians working on the construction of selfhood, the chapter examines a range of these documents to consider the ways that men constructed and articulated this new militarised identity, and the emotional styles that they utilised to do so. However, war provided multiple challenges to these new, hybrid, identities, none more so than the threat of death, or the death of friends and comrades. The chapter concludes by considering the emotional styles that some men used to record their encounters with death, and the ways that these encounters could destabilise their new, militarised, selfhoods.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety ...
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This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety of fake diaries, journals, biographies, and autobiographies. It takes a different approach to most of the other chapters, consisting of brief accounts of many works rather than sustained readings of a few. A taxonomy of modern engagements with life‐writing is proposed. The chapter moves on to discuss Galton's notion of ‘composite portraiture’ as a way of thinking about the surprisingly pervasive form of the portrait‐collection. The main examples are from Ford, Stefan Zweig, George Eliot, Hesketh Pearson, Gertrude Stein, Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons; Isherwood and Joyce's Dubliners also figure. Where Chapters 3 and Chapter 4 focused on books with a single central subjectivity, this chapter looks at texts of multiple subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the argument that multiple works — an entire oeuvre — should be read as autobiography.Less
This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety of fake diaries, journals, biographies, and autobiographies. It takes a different approach to most of the other chapters, consisting of brief accounts of many works rather than sustained readings of a few. A taxonomy of modern engagements with life‐writing is proposed. The chapter moves on to discuss Galton's notion of ‘composite portraiture’ as a way of thinking about the surprisingly pervasive form of the portrait‐collection. The main examples are from Ford, Stefan Zweig, George Eliot, Hesketh Pearson, Gertrude Stein, Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons; Isherwood and Joyce's Dubliners also figure. Where Chapters 3 and Chapter 4 focused on books with a single central subjectivity, this chapter looks at texts of multiple subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the argument that multiple works — an entire oeuvre — should be read as autobiography.
Peter Knight
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624102
- eISBN:
- 9780748671199
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624102.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
As a seminal event in late twentieth-century American history, the Kennedy assassination has permeated the American and world consciousness in a wide variety of ways. It has long fascinated American ...
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As a seminal event in late twentieth-century American history, the Kennedy assassination has permeated the American and world consciousness in a wide variety of ways. It has long fascinated American writers, filmmakers, and artists, and this book offers a critical introduction to the way the event has been constructed in a range of discourses. It looks at a variety of historical, political, and cultural attempts to understand Kennedy's death. Representations include: journalism from the time; historical accounts and memoirs; official investigations, government reports and sociological inquiries; the huge number of conspiracy-minded interpretations; novels, plays and other works of literature; and the Zapruder footage, photography, avant-garde art and Hollywood films. Considering the continuities and contradictions in how the event has been represented, the author focuses on how it has been seen through the lens of ideas about conspiracy, celebrity and violence. He also explores how the arguments about exactly what happened on 22 November 1963 have come to serve as a substitute way of debating the significance of Kennedy's legacy and the meaning of the 1960s more generally.Less
As a seminal event in late twentieth-century American history, the Kennedy assassination has permeated the American and world consciousness in a wide variety of ways. It has long fascinated American writers, filmmakers, and artists, and this book offers a critical introduction to the way the event has been constructed in a range of discourses. It looks at a variety of historical, political, and cultural attempts to understand Kennedy's death. Representations include: journalism from the time; historical accounts and memoirs; official investigations, government reports and sociological inquiries; the huge number of conspiracy-minded interpretations; novels, plays and other works of literature; and the Zapruder footage, photography, avant-garde art and Hollywood films. Considering the continuities and contradictions in how the event has been represented, the author focuses on how it has been seen through the lens of ideas about conspiracy, celebrity and violence. He also explores how the arguments about exactly what happened on 22 November 1963 have come to serve as a substitute way of debating the significance of Kennedy's legacy and the meaning of the 1960s more generally.
Heather Sharkey
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520235588
- eISBN:
- 9780520929364
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520235588.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
Histories written in the aftermath of empire have often featured conquerors and peasant rebels but have said little about the vast staffs of locally recruited clerks, technicians, teachers, and ...
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Histories written in the aftermath of empire have often featured conquerors and peasant rebels but have said little about the vast staffs of locally recruited clerks, technicians, teachers, and medics who made colonialism work day to day. Even as these workers maintained the colonial state, they dreamed of displacing imperial power. This book examines the history of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898–1956) and the Republic of Sudan that followed in order to understand how colonialism worked on the ground, affected local cultures, influenced the rise of nationalism, and shaped the postcolonial nation-state. Relying on a rich cache of Sudanese Arabic literary sources—including poetry, essays, and memoirs, as well as colonial documents and photographs—it examines colonialism from the viewpoint of those who lived and worked in its midst. By integrating the case of Sudan with material on other countries, particularly India, the book has broad comparative appeal. The author shows that colonial legacies—such as inflexible borders, atomized multi-ethnic populations, and autocratic governing structures—have persisted, hobbling postcolonial nation-states. Thus countries like Sudan are still living with colonialism, struggling to achieve consensus and stability within borders that a fallen empire has left behind.Less
Histories written in the aftermath of empire have often featured conquerors and peasant rebels but have said little about the vast staffs of locally recruited clerks, technicians, teachers, and medics who made colonialism work day to day. Even as these workers maintained the colonial state, they dreamed of displacing imperial power. This book examines the history of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898–1956) and the Republic of Sudan that followed in order to understand how colonialism worked on the ground, affected local cultures, influenced the rise of nationalism, and shaped the postcolonial nation-state. Relying on a rich cache of Sudanese Arabic literary sources—including poetry, essays, and memoirs, as well as colonial documents and photographs—it examines colonialism from the viewpoint of those who lived and worked in its midst. By integrating the case of Sudan with material on other countries, particularly India, the book has broad comparative appeal. The author shows that colonial legacies—such as inflexible borders, atomized multi-ethnic populations, and autocratic governing structures—have persisted, hobbling postcolonial nation-states. Thus countries like Sudan are still living with colonialism, struggling to achieve consensus and stability within borders that a fallen empire has left behind.
Ian Donaldson
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263181
- eISBN:
- 9780191734595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263181.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The arts of memory and of biography have always been closely related. For instance, the memoir, which is an act of remembrance, has a double sense: it looks at the past and to the future, selecting ...
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The arts of memory and of biography have always been closely related. For instance, the memoir, which is an act of remembrance, has a double sense: it looks at the past and to the future, selecting from the stream of memories to form an enduring record called memorial by which events and people can be remembered in the years to come. In Restoration England, memoirs and memorials were popular forms when the word ‘biography’ first appeared. During this period there was an intense interest in the chronicling of the lives of those who contributed much to political and religious events. This commemoration of lives, which gained momentum in Restoration England, was an ancient enterprise. Biographies were regarded as durable monuments wherein the idea of remembrance took an important place. This attributed significance made those endowed with powerful memories venerated people. This chapter discusses the remarkable memorialists of the period. It looks at the career of Reverend Dr. Thomas Fuller as a biographer and as an author of many historical works. Fuller exhibited a photographic memory and an inclination to the memorization of long passages. In addition to this technique, he also adopted a rule that assisted memory; he employed the methodical distribution of facts into discrete locations. As for his biographical methods, Fuller considered two factors: the sense of pragmatism, and the sense of piety.Less
The arts of memory and of biography have always been closely related. For instance, the memoir, which is an act of remembrance, has a double sense: it looks at the past and to the future, selecting from the stream of memories to form an enduring record called memorial by which events and people can be remembered in the years to come. In Restoration England, memoirs and memorials were popular forms when the word ‘biography’ first appeared. During this period there was an intense interest in the chronicling of the lives of those who contributed much to political and religious events. This commemoration of lives, which gained momentum in Restoration England, was an ancient enterprise. Biographies were regarded as durable monuments wherein the idea of remembrance took an important place. This attributed significance made those endowed with powerful memories venerated people. This chapter discusses the remarkable memorialists of the period. It looks at the career of Reverend Dr. Thomas Fuller as a biographer and as an author of many historical works. Fuller exhibited a photographic memory and an inclination to the memorization of long passages. In addition to this technique, he also adopted a rule that assisted memory; he employed the methodical distribution of facts into discrete locations. As for his biographical methods, Fuller considered two factors: the sense of pragmatism, and the sense of piety.
Carol Bonomo Albright and Joanna Clapps Herman (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823229109
- eISBN:
- 9780823241057
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823229109.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
For more than thirty years, the journal Italian Americana has been home to the writers who have sparked an extraordinary literary explosion in Italian-American culture. Across twenty-five volumes, ...
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For more than thirty years, the journal Italian Americana has been home to the writers who have sparked an extraordinary literary explosion in Italian-American culture. Across twenty-five volumes, its poets, memoirists, story-tellers, and other voices bridged generations to forge a body of expressive works that helped define an Italian-American imagination. This book offers the best from those pages: sixty-three pieces — fiction, memoir, poetry, story, and interview — that range widely in style and sentiment, tracing the arc of an immigrant culture's coming of age in America. What stories do Italian Americans tell about themselves? How do some of America's best writers deal with complicated questions of identity in their art? Organized by provocative themes — Ancestors, The Sacred and the Profane, Love and Anger, Birth and Death, Art and Self — the selections document the evolution of Italian-American literature, from John Fante's My Father's God, his classic story of religious subversion and memoirs by Dennis Barone and Jerre Mangione to a brace of poets, selected by Dana Gioia and Michael Palma, ranging from John Ciardi, Jay Parini, and Mary Jo Salter to George Guida and Rachel Guido de Vries. There are also stories alive with the Italian folk tradition (Tony Ardizzone and Louisa Ermelino), and others sleekly experimental (Mary Caponegro, Rosalind Palermo Stevenson), in addition to an interview with Camille Paglia — where the Italian-American takes on the culture at large.Less
For more than thirty years, the journal Italian Americana has been home to the writers who have sparked an extraordinary literary explosion in Italian-American culture. Across twenty-five volumes, its poets, memoirists, story-tellers, and other voices bridged generations to forge a body of expressive works that helped define an Italian-American imagination. This book offers the best from those pages: sixty-three pieces — fiction, memoir, poetry, story, and interview — that range widely in style and sentiment, tracing the arc of an immigrant culture's coming of age in America. What stories do Italian Americans tell about themselves? How do some of America's best writers deal with complicated questions of identity in their art? Organized by provocative themes — Ancestors, The Sacred and the Profane, Love and Anger, Birth and Death, Art and Self — the selections document the evolution of Italian-American literature, from John Fante's My Father's God, his classic story of religious subversion and memoirs by Dennis Barone and Jerre Mangione to a brace of poets, selected by Dana Gioia and Michael Palma, ranging from John Ciardi, Jay Parini, and Mary Jo Salter to George Guida and Rachel Guido de Vries. There are also stories alive with the Italian folk tradition (Tony Ardizzone and Louisa Ermelino), and others sleekly experimental (Mary Caponegro, Rosalind Palermo Stevenson), in addition to an interview with Camille Paglia — where the Italian-American takes on the culture at large.
Rivkah Zim
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691161808
- eISBN:
- 9781400852093
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691161808.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter presents a reading of Marie-Jeanne Roland's Memoirs (1793) and Anne Frank's The Diary and Tales from the Secret Annexe (1942–44). Both writers wrote memorial narratives to preserve ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Marie-Jeanne Roland's Memoirs (1793) and Anne Frank's The Diary and Tales from the Secret Annexe (1942–44). Both writers wrote memorial narratives to preserve details of their lives because they believed that writing about their ideas, experiences, and feelings would help to sustain them in the exceptional circumstances of confinement. Both writers also became popular heroines: their prison writings have been continuously in print since shortly after their deaths. Yet their personal memoirs of different kinds have been read and valued as historic witness accounts of wider, catastrophic events: the French Revolution and the Holocaust. Both writers were conscious of their roles as historic witnesses, but the chapter seeks to refocus attention on their ideas of themselves as writers and the primary functions of their texts as literary testimony to unique personal identities rather than the historic victims of terror they came to represent for later readers.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Marie-Jeanne Roland's Memoirs (1793) and Anne Frank's The Diary and Tales from the Secret Annexe (1942–44). Both writers wrote memorial narratives to preserve details of their lives because they believed that writing about their ideas, experiences, and feelings would help to sustain them in the exceptional circumstances of confinement. Both writers also became popular heroines: their prison writings have been continuously in print since shortly after their deaths. Yet their personal memoirs of different kinds have been read and valued as historic witness accounts of wider, catastrophic events: the French Revolution and the Holocaust. Both writers were conscious of their roles as historic witnesses, but the chapter seeks to refocus attention on their ideas of themselves as writers and the primary functions of their texts as literary testimony to unique personal identities rather than the historic victims of terror they came to represent for later readers.
Rivkah Zim
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691161808
- eISBN:
- 9781400852093
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691161808.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyzes the work of Primo Levi. Levi's revisions of his experiences in Auschwitz stand alone. He wrote with hindsight because during his thirteen months in Auschwitz he was unable to ...
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This chapter analyzes the work of Primo Levi. Levi's revisions of his experiences in Auschwitz stand alone. He wrote with hindsight because during his thirteen months in Auschwitz he was unable to write: normal life was brutally suspended, and he poured all his physical energies and intellect into the struggle to survive. Traumatic memories are especially persistent and his various forms of memoir, and reaction to his experiences have come to represent the most developed and searing Holocaust testimony that since the later 1940s has evolved in many different forms. Levi's writing epitomizes the ethical incentives of prison writing as testimony for mankind that not only engages new readers but also challenges them, going well beyond testimony as an end in itself.Less
This chapter analyzes the work of Primo Levi. Levi's revisions of his experiences in Auschwitz stand alone. He wrote with hindsight because during his thirteen months in Auschwitz he was unable to write: normal life was brutally suspended, and he poured all his physical energies and intellect into the struggle to survive. Traumatic memories are especially persistent and his various forms of memoir, and reaction to his experiences have come to represent the most developed and searing Holocaust testimony that since the later 1940s has evolved in many different forms. Levi's writing epitomizes the ethical incentives of prison writing as testimony for mankind that not only engages new readers but also challenges them, going well beyond testimony as an end in itself.
Suzanne Bost
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042799
- eISBN:
- 9780252051654
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042799.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Writing about marginalized lives has the power to shift norms. In telling their own stories, John Rechy, Aurora Levins Morales, Gloria Anzaldúa, and other Latinx writers make visible experiences and ...
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Writing about marginalized lives has the power to shift norms. In telling their own stories, John Rechy, Aurora Levins Morales, Gloria Anzaldúa, and other Latinx writers make visible experiences and bodies that are rarely at the center of the stories we read, and they dramatize the complexity of human agencies and responsibilities. Yet the memoirs this book analyzes move beyond focus on the human as their subjects’ personal histories intertwine with communities, animals, spirits, and the surrounding environment. This interconnectedness resonates with critical developments in posthumanist theory as well as recalling indigenous worldviews that are “other-than-Humanist,” outside of Western intellectual genealogies. Bringing these two frameworks into dialogue with feminist theory, queer theory, disability studies, and ecocriticism enables an expansive way of viewing life itself. Rejecting the structures of Humanism, Shared Selves decenters the individualism of memoir and highlights the webs of relation that mediate experience, agency, and identity.Less
Writing about marginalized lives has the power to shift norms. In telling their own stories, John Rechy, Aurora Levins Morales, Gloria Anzaldúa, and other Latinx writers make visible experiences and bodies that are rarely at the center of the stories we read, and they dramatize the complexity of human agencies and responsibilities. Yet the memoirs this book analyzes move beyond focus on the human as their subjects’ personal histories intertwine with communities, animals, spirits, and the surrounding environment. This interconnectedness resonates with critical developments in posthumanist theory as well as recalling indigenous worldviews that are “other-than-Humanist,” outside of Western intellectual genealogies. Bringing these two frameworks into dialogue with feminist theory, queer theory, disability studies, and ecocriticism enables an expansive way of viewing life itself. Rejecting the structures of Humanism, Shared Selves decenters the individualism of memoir and highlights the webs of relation that mediate experience, agency, and identity.
Susan R. Holman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195383621
- eISBN:
- 9780199870479
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195383621.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Church History
This book discusses issues of need, poverty, social welfare, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition, and their modern relevance for ethical responses today. The book weaves ...
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This book discusses issues of need, poverty, social welfare, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition, and their modern relevance for ethical responses today. The book weaves together stories from late antiquity with three conceptual paradigms that may bridge the gap between historical story and modern action: sensing need, sharing the world, and embodying sacred kingdom. The first four chapters explore how personal need influences the way that we look at the world and at the needs of others. Beginning with a personal memoir of encounters with need and a discovery of the world of early Christian texts on poverty and religious response, this book retells these many historical narratives in new ways and traces their influence on charity in post-Reformation history. The second half of the book uses a complex dance of images and stories to consider several recurrent themes in any religious responses to poverty and need, including poverty and gender, the dilemma of justice in material distribution, ascetic models of social activism and contemplation, the language of human rights and “common good,” challenges of hospitality, and the role of liturgy in constructing a vision for restorative righteousness. Through their sensitive exploration of nuances and tensions, these chapters invite reflection, conversation, and response.Less
This book discusses issues of need, poverty, social welfare, and social justice in the history of the Christian tradition, and their modern relevance for ethical responses today. The book weaves together stories from late antiquity with three conceptual paradigms that may bridge the gap between historical story and modern action: sensing need, sharing the world, and embodying sacred kingdom. The first four chapters explore how personal need influences the way that we look at the world and at the needs of others. Beginning with a personal memoir of encounters with need and a discovery of the world of early Christian texts on poverty and religious response, this book retells these many historical narratives in new ways and traces their influence on charity in post-Reformation history. The second half of the book uses a complex dance of images and stories to consider several recurrent themes in any religious responses to poverty and need, including poverty and gender, the dilemma of justice in material distribution, ascetic models of social activism and contemplation, the language of human rights and “common good,” challenges of hospitality, and the role of liturgy in constructing a vision for restorative righteousness. Through their sensitive exploration of nuances and tensions, these chapters invite reflection, conversation, and response.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in ...
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This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in Seven Men. The critical tradition has been excessively preoccupied with trying to identify the speakers and ‘originals’ of each section of Mauberley. It argues that, seen in relation to the growing interest in portrait collections, composite portraiture, the disturbances in auto/biography, and imaginary art‐works, this poem sequence can be read as a parody of the forms of literary memoir, through which Pound also explores autobiography.Less
This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in Seven Men. The critical tradition has been excessively preoccupied with trying to identify the speakers and ‘originals’ of each section of Mauberley. It argues that, seen in relation to the growing interest in portrait collections, composite portraiture, the disturbances in auto/biography, and imaginary art‐works, this poem sequence can be read as a parody of the forms of literary memoir, through which Pound also explores autobiography.
Zoe Vania Waxman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199541546
- eISBN:
- 9780191709739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541546.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter highlights how the conditions of the concentration camps largely militated against the writing of testimony. It looks at the few important exceptions, including the writings of the ...
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This chapter highlights how the conditions of the concentration camps largely militated against the writing of testimony. It looks at the few important exceptions, including the writings of the Sonderkommando (special detachment) prisoners forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz–Birkenau. They consciously resisted the Nazis not only by leaving documentation of their existence, but also by bearing witness to the destruction of the European Jews. The testimonies of survivors reveal how the concentration camps disconnected prisoners from their previous identities. They also show that it was essential to regain a part of the past in order to find some meaning which would allow prisoners to carry on the struggle to survive. For many, it was the desire to bear witness that gave this meaning to their lives, and hence the post-war memoir became a vehicle for the resurrection of identity.Less
This chapter highlights how the conditions of the concentration camps largely militated against the writing of testimony. It looks at the few important exceptions, including the writings of the Sonderkommando (special detachment) prisoners forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz–Birkenau. They consciously resisted the Nazis not only by leaving documentation of their existence, but also by bearing witness to the destruction of the European Jews. The testimonies of survivors reveal how the concentration camps disconnected prisoners from their previous identities. They also show that it was essential to regain a part of the past in order to find some meaning which would allow prisoners to carry on the struggle to survive. For many, it was the desire to bear witness that gave this meaning to their lives, and hence the post-war memoir became a vehicle for the resurrection of identity.
Susan Tiefenbrun
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195385779
- eISBN:
- 9780199776061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195385779.003.011
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law
Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha captures the duality of the geisha who is both revered as an artist and reviled as a sex slave. At its worst, the geisha tradition involves force, fraud, ...
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Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha captures the duality of the geisha who is both revered as an artist and reviled as a sex slave. At its worst, the geisha tradition involves force, fraud, deception, and the horrifying practice of selling one's own children into slavery for purposes of sexual exploitation. In striving for historical accuracy and narrative verisimilitude, Golden obtains an intimate interview with a real geisha named Mineko Iwasaki. The fairy-tale quality of the novel, its unusual narrative style, and its poetic prose, created an instant literary success for Arthur Golden. However, four years after its publication in 1997, Iwasaki shocked the literary world by filing a lawsuit against Arthur Golden and his publishers claiming breach of a confidentiality agreement, quantum meruit, unjust enrichment, copyright infringement, defamation of character, misappropriation of property, and violation of her rights to privacy and publicity. This chapter tries to answer the following two questions about the cultural tradition of the geisha: first, is the geisha tradition (as described by Golden in his fictional biography) a variant of sex trafficking and sexual slavery, which despite possible cultural justifications should be abolished by law? Second, did Iwasaki's lawsuit have any legal merit? To answer these questions, this study will proceed in accordance with structuralist and post-structuralist literary critical methods by looking first at the text itself and then its context, subtext, and post-text to explain the plaintiff's pre-text for suing. It analyzes the narrative structures and style of the text; the legal and historic context of the novel; the legal issues hidden in the subtext (which include sex trafficking, feminist legal theory, and the role of cultural relativism as a justification for the geisha tradition); the post-text (which are the merits, if any, of Iwasaki's legal claims in the Complaint she filed four years after the publication of the fictional biography); and finally, the big issue, the pre-text, or why the real geisha sued Arthur Golden and his publishers.Less
Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha captures the duality of the geisha who is both revered as an artist and reviled as a sex slave. At its worst, the geisha tradition involves force, fraud, deception, and the horrifying practice of selling one's own children into slavery for purposes of sexual exploitation. In striving for historical accuracy and narrative verisimilitude, Golden obtains an intimate interview with a real geisha named Mineko Iwasaki. The fairy-tale quality of the novel, its unusual narrative style, and its poetic prose, created an instant literary success for Arthur Golden. However, four years after its publication in 1997, Iwasaki shocked the literary world by filing a lawsuit against Arthur Golden and his publishers claiming breach of a confidentiality agreement, quantum meruit, unjust enrichment, copyright infringement, defamation of character, misappropriation of property, and violation of her rights to privacy and publicity. This chapter tries to answer the following two questions about the cultural tradition of the geisha: first, is the geisha tradition (as described by Golden in his fictional biography) a variant of sex trafficking and sexual slavery, which despite possible cultural justifications should be abolished by law? Second, did Iwasaki's lawsuit have any legal merit? To answer these questions, this study will proceed in accordance with structuralist and post-structuralist literary critical methods by looking first at the text itself and then its context, subtext, and post-text to explain the plaintiff's pre-text for suing. It analyzes the narrative structures and style of the text; the legal and historic context of the novel; the legal issues hidden in the subtext (which include sex trafficking, feminist legal theory, and the role of cultural relativism as a justification for the geisha tradition); the post-text (which are the merits, if any, of Iwasaki's legal claims in the Complaint she filed four years after the publication of the fictional biography); and finally, the big issue, the pre-text, or why the real geisha sued Arthur Golden and his publishers.
Siân Reynolds
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199560424
- eISBN:
- 9780191741814
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560424.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Cultural History
This is a double biography of Jean-Marie Roland (1734–1793) and Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, later Madame Roland (1754–1793), leading figures in the French Revolution. J.‐M. Roland was minister of the ...
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This is a double biography of Jean-Marie Roland (1734–1793) and Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, later Madame Roland (1754–1793), leading figures in the French Revolution. J.‐M. Roland was minister of the Interior for a total of eight months during 1792. The couple were close to Brissot and the Girondins, and both died during the Terror. Mme Roland became famous for her posthumous prison memoirs, and is the subject of many biographies, but her husband, despite being a key figure in administration of France, seldom out of the limelight during his time in office, is often marginalized in histories of the Revolution, This book examines the Roland marriage from its beginnings in an ancien regime mésalliance, opposed by both families, through its close cooperation in the 1780s, to its final phase as a political partnership during the Revolution. Both Roland’s actions as minister and Mme Roland’s role as a woman close to power were praised and blamed at the time, and the controversies have persisted. Based on manuscript sources including unpublished letters, this study sets out to examine an unusual companionate marriage over the long term: its intimacy, parenthood, everyday life in the provinces, friendships, academic cooperation, political enthusiasms and quarrels, and finally its dramatic ending during the Revolution.Less
This is a double biography of Jean-Marie Roland (1734–1793) and Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, later Madame Roland (1754–1793), leading figures in the French Revolution. J.‐M. Roland was minister of the Interior for a total of eight months during 1792. The couple were close to Brissot and the Girondins, and both died during the Terror. Mme Roland became famous for her posthumous prison memoirs, and is the subject of many biographies, but her husband, despite being a key figure in administration of France, seldom out of the limelight during his time in office, is often marginalized in histories of the Revolution, This book examines the Roland marriage from its beginnings in an ancien regime mésalliance, opposed by both families, through its close cooperation in the 1780s, to its final phase as a political partnership during the Revolution. Both Roland’s actions as minister and Mme Roland’s role as a woman close to power were praised and blamed at the time, and the controversies have persisted. Based on manuscript sources including unpublished letters, this study sets out to examine an unusual companionate marriage over the long term: its intimacy, parenthood, everyday life in the provinces, friendships, academic cooperation, political enthusiasms and quarrels, and finally its dramatic ending during the Revolution.
Susan R. Holman
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195383621
- eISBN:
- 9780199870479
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195383621.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Church History
This chapter starts with the story of Salvian of Lérins (fifth century), his comment on Christ's neediness, and the relationship between his personal biography and his advocacy for more ...
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This chapter starts with the story of Salvian of Lérins (fifth century), his comment on Christ's neediness, and the relationship between his personal biography and his advocacy for more attention to social justice for the poor. The chapter then moves to the present to explore the personal nature of need as it intersects with Christian social action. Personal need is complex and influences even the most “selfless” acts. “Sensing” need must begin with “remembering” personal needs and encounters with neediness. This chapter uses memoir extensively to relate to the author' personal journey to the study of early Christian texts on poverty and to reflect on the paradox of monastic models of solitude, boundaries, and charity, leading the reader toward a new perspective for engaging with need in other people.Less
This chapter starts with the story of Salvian of Lérins (fifth century), his comment on Christ's neediness, and the relationship between his personal biography and his advocacy for more attention to social justice for the poor. The chapter then moves to the present to explore the personal nature of need as it intersects with Christian social action. Personal need is complex and influences even the most “selfless” acts. “Sensing” need must begin with “remembering” personal needs and encounters with neediness. This chapter uses memoir extensively to relate to the author' personal journey to the study of early Christian texts on poverty and to reflect on the paradox of monastic models of solitude, boundaries, and charity, leading the reader toward a new perspective for engaging with need in other people.
Karin E. Gedge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195130201
- eISBN:
- 9780199835157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195130200.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the ...
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Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the contemporary pastoral relationship. Sensational novelists such as George Lippard exposed the monstrous incongruity of the “reverend rake.” Sentimental novelist Susan Warner constructed a romantic clerical hero who was both benevolent and despotic in his relationship with the female protagonist, while Harriet Beecher Stowe’s minister was impotent, dependent on the women who supported him. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s enduring Scarlet Letter portrayed the pastor as an unworthy saint and Hester Prynne as the worthy sinner. Even pious memoirs and parsonage novels acknowledged the intrusion of sexuality, “something peculiar and insidious” in Stowe’s words, which inevitably corrupted the spiritual relationship between pastors and women. Only transforming it into a marital relationship could, to some degree, resolve the inherent sexual tension.Less
Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the contemporary pastoral relationship. Sensational novelists such as George Lippard exposed the monstrous incongruity of the “reverend rake.” Sentimental novelist Susan Warner constructed a romantic clerical hero who was both benevolent and despotic in his relationship with the female protagonist, while Harriet Beecher Stowe’s minister was impotent, dependent on the women who supported him. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s enduring Scarlet Letter portrayed the pastor as an unworthy saint and Hester Prynne as the worthy sinner. Even pious memoirs and parsonage novels acknowledged the intrusion of sexuality, “something peculiar and insidious” in Stowe’s words, which inevitably corrupted the spiritual relationship between pastors and women. Only transforming it into a marital relationship could, to some degree, resolve the inherent sexual tension.
NOëL O’SULLIVAN
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264355
- eISBN:
- 9780191734052
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264355.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This lecture presents the text of the speech about visions of European unity since 1945 delivered by the author at the 2007 Elie Kedourie Memorial Lecture held at the British Academy. It discusses ...
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This lecture presents the text of the speech about visions of European unity since 1945 delivered by the author at the 2007 Elie Kedourie Memorial Lecture held at the British Academy. It discusses Jean Monnet's Memoirs, wherein he expressed the hope for a United States of Europe, and comments on the French and Dutch rejection of the draft Constitutional Treaty of the European Constitution in 2005.Less
This lecture presents the text of the speech about visions of European unity since 1945 delivered by the author at the 2007 Elie Kedourie Memorial Lecture held at the British Academy. It discusses Jean Monnet's Memoirs, wherein he expressed the hope for a United States of Europe, and comments on the French and Dutch rejection of the draft Constitutional Treaty of the European Constitution in 2005.
