Alan Gillis
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199277094
- eISBN:
- 9780191707483
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199277094.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
The 1930s have never really been considered an epoch within Irish literature, even though this period forms one of the most dominant and fascinating contexts in modern British literature. This book ...
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The 1930s have never really been considered an epoch within Irish literature, even though this period forms one of the most dominant and fascinating contexts in modern British literature. This book shows that during this time Irish poets confronted political pressures and aesthetic dilemmas which frequently overlapped with those associated with ‘The Auden Generation’. In doing so, it offers a provocative rereading of Irish literary history, but also offers powerful arguments about the way poetry in general is interpreted and understood. In this way, the book redefines our understanding of a frequently neglected period and challenges received notions of both Irish literature and poetic modernism. Moreover, the book offers detailed and vital readings of the major Irish poets of the decade, including original and exciting analyses of Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, and Louis MacNeice; with a major re-evaluation of W. B. Yeats.Less
The 1930s have never really been considered an epoch within Irish literature, even though this period forms one of the most dominant and fascinating contexts in modern British literature. This book shows that during this time Irish poets confronted political pressures and aesthetic dilemmas which frequently overlapped with those associated with ‘The Auden Generation’. In doing so, it offers a provocative rereading of Irish literary history, but also offers powerful arguments about the way poetry in general is interpreted and understood. In this way, the book redefines our understanding of a frequently neglected period and challenges received notions of both Irish literature and poetic modernism. Moreover, the book offers detailed and vital readings of the major Irish poets of the decade, including original and exciting analyses of Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, and Louis MacNeice; with a major re-evaluation of W. B. Yeats.
Alan Gillis
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199277094
- eISBN:
- 9780191707483
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199277094.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter discusses the English bias in current conceptions of the literature of the 1930s. It recasts the historical context of the 1930s in terms of global events and proceeds to locate Irish ...
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This chapter discusses the English bias in current conceptions of the literature of the 1930s. It recasts the historical context of the 1930s in terms of global events and proceeds to locate Irish literary history within this broader context. A revisionary overview of Irish history during the decade is offered, followed by a critique of prevailing literary approaches, which are seen to simplify Irish poetry of the time by creating a sharp split between Irish modernist poets and overtly ‘Celtic’ poets. This simplified dichotomy censors the kind of complications found in Louis MacNeice and W. B. Yeats, among others, and an argument for their central importance is made. The chapter then proposes a new method of literary historiography based on aesthetic form, seeking to fuse the tenets of New Criticism and Marxist aesthetics, and adapting ideas from Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious and Hayden White’s Metahistory to explore how poetry represents history.Less
This chapter discusses the English bias in current conceptions of the literature of the 1930s. It recasts the historical context of the 1930s in terms of global events and proceeds to locate Irish literary history within this broader context. A revisionary overview of Irish history during the decade is offered, followed by a critique of prevailing literary approaches, which are seen to simplify Irish poetry of the time by creating a sharp split between Irish modernist poets and overtly ‘Celtic’ poets. This simplified dichotomy censors the kind of complications found in Louis MacNeice and W. B. Yeats, among others, and an argument for their central importance is made. The chapter then proposes a new method of literary historiography based on aesthetic form, seeking to fuse the tenets of New Criticism and Marxist aesthetics, and adapting ideas from Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious and Hayden White’s Metahistory to explore how poetry represents history.
Robert Eaglestone
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199265930
- eISBN:
- 9780191708596
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265930.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter offers a new way to understand the relationship between history and truth, drawing on Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that debates about history and representation, ...
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This chapter offers a new way to understand the relationship between history and truth, drawing on Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that debates about history and representation, about history and memory, about whether history is an art or a science, are really debates about the sort of truth to which history aspires. Drawing on Bernard Williams and Donald Davidson, it argues that there are two rival conceptions of truth: truth as correspondence, and following Heidegger, that this relies upon the second sense of truth, truth as uncovering. The chapter then reinterprets Heidegger's understanding of truth in the light of Levinas's ethical philosophy, and argues for a new, ethical understanding of the role of history (history without historicism). It offers two examples of thinkers who implicitly draw on these distinctions, Isaiah Berlin and Hayden White.Less
This chapter offers a new way to understand the relationship between history and truth, drawing on Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that debates about history and representation, about history and memory, about whether history is an art or a science, are really debates about the sort of truth to which history aspires. Drawing on Bernard Williams and Donald Davidson, it argues that there are two rival conceptions of truth: truth as correspondence, and following Heidegger, that this relies upon the second sense of truth, truth as uncovering. The chapter then reinterprets Heidegger's understanding of truth in the light of Levinas's ethical philosophy, and argues for a new, ethical understanding of the role of history (history without historicism). It offers two examples of thinkers who implicitly draw on these distinctions, Isaiah Berlin and Hayden White.
Robert Eaglestone
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199265930
- eISBN:
- 9780191708596
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265930.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyses the work of the Holocaust historian and thinker, Saul Friedländer. It argues that his early work is characterized by an adherence to the Rankean, empiricist traditions. However, ...
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This chapter analyses the work of the Holocaust historian and thinker, Saul Friedländer. It argues that his early work is characterized by an adherence to the Rankean, empiricist traditions. However, with his memoir, When Memory Comes, his work takes on a new relation to the philosophical issues raised by the Holocaust. Friedländer writes against the ‘normalization’ of the Holocaust by the empiricist historical tradition, and for a wider ‘historical consciousness’ in relation to trauma and ‘working through’. Friedländer argues that the ‘voice of the commentator’ should clearly be heard. The chapter then looks at three works in which this happens including Friedländer's own Nazi Germany and the Jews and Mark Roseman's The Past in Hiding. The chapter ends by stressing the strong affinities between Friedländer's thought and Derrida's deconstruction.Less
This chapter analyses the work of the Holocaust historian and thinker, Saul Friedländer. It argues that his early work is characterized by an adherence to the Rankean, empiricist traditions. However, with his memoir, When Memory Comes, his work takes on a new relation to the philosophical issues raised by the Holocaust. Friedländer writes against the ‘normalization’ of the Holocaust by the empiricist historical tradition, and for a wider ‘historical consciousness’ in relation to trauma and ‘working through’. Friedländer argues that the ‘voice of the commentator’ should clearly be heard. The chapter then looks at three works in which this happens including Friedländer's own Nazi Germany and the Jews and Mark Roseman's The Past in Hiding. The chapter ends by stressing the strong affinities between Friedländer's thought and Derrida's deconstruction.
Robert Eaglestone
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199265930
- eISBN:
- 9780191708596
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265930.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores the limits of historical explanation by offering an analysis of the controversy between Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Christopher Browning. It argues that it is their ...
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This chapter explores the limits of historical explanation by offering an analysis of the controversy between Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Christopher Browning. It argues that it is their metahistorical commitments, not the ‘facts of the matter’ that mean they are in dispute. Goldhagen takes an anthropological approach, influenced by Clifford Geertz, and writes an explicitly moral ethnographic history. On the other hand, Browning offers a more traditional historical approach. However, Browning's reference to and reliance on the flawed Milgram authority experiments reveal an ahistorical view of humanity and history. This chapter argues that these two approaches cannot be unified, and this reveals the central importance of philosophical questions for history. It turns to Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas to suggest theoretical avenues for further Holocaust historical research.Less
This chapter explores the limits of historical explanation by offering an analysis of the controversy between Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Christopher Browning. It argues that it is their metahistorical commitments, not the ‘facts of the matter’ that mean they are in dispute. Goldhagen takes an anthropological approach, influenced by Clifford Geertz, and writes an explicitly moral ethnographic history. On the other hand, Browning offers a more traditional historical approach. However, Browning's reference to and reliance on the flawed Milgram authority experiments reveal an ahistorical view of humanity and history. This chapter argues that these two approaches cannot be unified, and this reveals the central importance of philosophical questions for history. It turns to Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas to suggest theoretical avenues for further Holocaust historical research.
Robert Eaglestone
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199265930
- eISBN:
- 9780191708596
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265930.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter looks at the significance of metahistory in combating Holocaust Denial, and takes as its case study the Irving/Lipstadt Libel Case from 2000. After describing the metahistorical ...
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This chapter looks at the significance of metahistory in combating Holocaust Denial, and takes as its case study the Irving/Lipstadt Libel Case from 2000. After describing the metahistorical commitments of denial, the chapter outlines a postmodern understanding of historical writing as a genre, developing the ideas of Jean-François Lyotard in The Differend, with generic rules, including conventions about evidence, context, and reasonable argument. It then argues that the trial showed that David Irving did not follow these conventions, and that, as the Judge made clear — it was this that showed Irving to be no historian. This analysis of the trial is then used to illuminate problems in empiricist defences of history, and to defend postmodern thought against the charge that it allows Holocaust denial.Less
This chapter looks at the significance of metahistory in combating Holocaust Denial, and takes as its case study the Irving/Lipstadt Libel Case from 2000. After describing the metahistorical commitments of denial, the chapter outlines a postmodern understanding of historical writing as a genre, developing the ideas of Jean-François Lyotard in The Differend, with generic rules, including conventions about evidence, context, and reasonable argument. It then argues that the trial showed that David Irving did not follow these conventions, and that, as the Judge made clear — it was this that showed Irving to be no historian. This analysis of the trial is then used to illuminate problems in empiricist defences of history, and to defend postmodern thought against the charge that it allows Holocaust denial.
J. B. BULLEN
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128885
- eISBN:
- 9780191671722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128885.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
George Eliot’s Romola occupies a unique place in the nineteenth-century historiography of the Renaissance. Written in the early 1860s, the novel comes approximately midway between the negative ...
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George Eliot’s Romola occupies a unique place in the nineteenth-century historiography of the Renaissance. Written in the early 1860s, the novel comes approximately midway between the negative account of Renaissance culture in John Ruskin and the quite different version offered by Walter Pater in the early 1870s. Whereas both Ruskin and Pater identify the Renaissance as a coherent period and can be considered Organicist historians, Eliot, at the narrative level, more closely resembles the so-called Formist historian. The metahistory of Romola is not one which subscribes to the theory of a coherent period called the Renaissance. On the contrary, the image of the fifteenth century, as it appears in this novel, is divergent; it is one of difference, and contradiction. The stresses between conflicting moral ideas, the collision of political positions, the clash of antithetical human temperaments, and the struggle between religious belief and humanism are precisely the forces which bring about the fictional ‘awakening’ of Romola. In Romola, Eliot offers a picture of fifteenth-century Italy which is substantially divergent.Less
George Eliot’s Romola occupies a unique place in the nineteenth-century historiography of the Renaissance. Written in the early 1860s, the novel comes approximately midway between the negative account of Renaissance culture in John Ruskin and the quite different version offered by Walter Pater in the early 1870s. Whereas both Ruskin and Pater identify the Renaissance as a coherent period and can be considered Organicist historians, Eliot, at the narrative level, more closely resembles the so-called Formist historian. The metahistory of Romola is not one which subscribes to the theory of a coherent period called the Renaissance. On the contrary, the image of the fifteenth century, as it appears in this novel, is divergent; it is one of difference, and contradiction. The stresses between conflicting moral ideas, the collision of political positions, the clash of antithetical human temperaments, and the struggle between religious belief and humanism are precisely the forces which bring about the fictional ‘awakening’ of Romola. In Romola, Eliot offers a picture of fifteenth-century Italy which is substantially divergent.
Moshe Rosman
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781904113348
- eISBN:
- 9781800340817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781904113348.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter considers five a priori issues: what Jews are, the status of the Exile (galut), how Jews fit into history, which metahistory to choose, and metahistory as destiny. Anyone who sets out to ...
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This chapter considers five a priori issues: what Jews are, the status of the Exile (galut), how Jews fit into history, which metahistory to choose, and metahistory as destiny. Anyone who sets out to write about Jewish history — no matter what period or place — confronts these basic questions about the enterprise before actually undertaking the task. One's position on these fundamental problems creates a framework within which the research will be presented and by which the narrative will be significantly affected. Before the development of postmodern consciousness, the engagement of Jewish historians with these issues was usually oblique and tacit, their positions typically presented as part of the conclusions of their research. However, it is now apparent that these positions represented prior assumptions that, in part, guided that research, and influenced its interpretation and presentation.Less
This chapter considers five a priori issues: what Jews are, the status of the Exile (galut), how Jews fit into history, which metahistory to choose, and metahistory as destiny. Anyone who sets out to write about Jewish history — no matter what period or place — confronts these basic questions about the enterprise before actually undertaking the task. One's position on these fundamental problems creates a framework within which the research will be presented and by which the narrative will be significantly affected. Before the development of postmodern consciousness, the engagement of Jewish historians with these issues was usually oblique and tacit, their positions typically presented as part of the conclusions of their research. However, it is now apparent that these positions represented prior assumptions that, in part, guided that research, and influenced its interpretation and presentation.
Moshe Rosman
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781904113348
- eISBN:
- 9781800340817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781904113348.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter uses the term ‘postmodern’ to code a new set of circumstances and processes interacting to mark the period in which they became operative as substantially different from the preceding ...
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This chapter uses the term ‘postmodern’ to code a new set of circumstances and processes interacting to mark the period in which they became operative as substantially different from the preceding time. It argues that, at least in terms of Jewish history, the ‘postmodernity’ — in the literal sense of succeeding modernity — of the current era is demonstrable. By proposing this periodization, the chapter reveals its own metahistory. Nevertheless, it offers this construction in the hope that it will be part of a process of reconsideration of how we configure, organize, and present the Jewish past, as well as how we understand the Jewish present. After all, if Jews are no longer modern, then it begs the question of what that might mean for modernity, if not of the Jews themselves.Less
This chapter uses the term ‘postmodern’ to code a new set of circumstances and processes interacting to mark the period in which they became operative as substantially different from the preceding time. It argues that, at least in terms of Jewish history, the ‘postmodernity’ — in the literal sense of succeeding modernity — of the current era is demonstrable. By proposing this periodization, the chapter reveals its own metahistory. Nevertheless, it offers this construction in the hope that it will be part of a process of reconsideration of how we configure, organize, and present the Jewish past, as well as how we understand the Jewish present. After all, if Jews are no longer modern, then it begs the question of what that might mean for modernity, if not of the Jews themselves.
Neelam Sidhar Wright and Neelam Sidhar Wright
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748696345
- eISBN:
- 9781474412155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696345.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines how the postmodern, as an aesthetic style and fluid cultural practice, manifests in contemporary Bollywood film texts. Drawing upon the various concepts and traits identified by ...
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This chapter examines how the postmodern, as an aesthetic style and fluid cultural practice, manifests in contemporary Bollywood film texts. Drawing upon the various concepts and traits identified by postmodern theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard and Hayden White, as well as postmodern film theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, Peter and Will Brooker, and M. Keith Brooker, the chapter reveals a variety of postmodern strategies and conventions operating within contemporary Bollywood cinema. It also analyses the films Om Shanti Om, Koi...Mil Gaya and Abhay, as well as several features of postmodernism that are present in them, including depthlessness, blank parody, intertextuality, hyperrealism, metahistory, and the sublime. The chapter concludes by explaining how films such as Abhay may help resolve the conflict between art cinema and mainstream popular Indian cinema.Less
This chapter examines how the postmodern, as an aesthetic style and fluid cultural practice, manifests in contemporary Bollywood film texts. Drawing upon the various concepts and traits identified by postmodern theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard and Hayden White, as well as postmodern film theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, Peter and Will Brooker, and M. Keith Brooker, the chapter reveals a variety of postmodern strategies and conventions operating within contemporary Bollywood cinema. It also analyses the films Om Shanti Om, Koi...Mil Gaya and Abhay, as well as several features of postmodernism that are present in them, including depthlessness, blank parody, intertextuality, hyperrealism, metahistory, and the sublime. The chapter concludes by explaining how films such as Abhay may help resolve the conflict between art cinema and mainstream popular Indian cinema.
Philippe Carrard
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226427966
- eISBN:
- 9780226428017
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226428017.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter examines how French historians “dispose” their texts, that is, how they organize them as coherent wholes. Contrary to prevailing opinions, these texts do not always take the form of a ...
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This chapter examines how French historians “dispose” their texts, that is, how they organize them as coherent wholes. Contrary to prevailing opinions, these texts do not always take the form of a narrative. Some are mapped out as synchronic cross-sections (“tableaux”), as dissections of problems (“analyses”), or as polemical discussions of existing studies (“metahistories”). Accounts of single events, in particular, rarely have a narrative structure. After briefly recounting the facts, the historian devotes most of the study to explaining their significance—what they reveal about the conflicts and attitudes that characterized the period. This chapter also surveys the debates historians have conducted about issues of “disposition,” assaying the meaning that well-established historians like Veyne, Chartier, and Hartog may confer to “narrative” when they claim that histories necessarily fall under this mode, while they themselves do not resort to storytelling in their works.Less
This chapter examines how French historians “dispose” their texts, that is, how they organize them as coherent wholes. Contrary to prevailing opinions, these texts do not always take the form of a narrative. Some are mapped out as synchronic cross-sections (“tableaux”), as dissections of problems (“analyses”), or as polemical discussions of existing studies (“metahistories”). Accounts of single events, in particular, rarely have a narrative structure. After briefly recounting the facts, the historian devotes most of the study to explaining their significance—what they reveal about the conflicts and attitudes that characterized the period. This chapter also surveys the debates historians have conducted about issues of “disposition,” assaying the meaning that well-established historians like Veyne, Chartier, and Hartog may confer to “narrative” when they claim that histories necessarily fall under this mode, while they themselves do not resort to storytelling in their works.