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Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up?

Steven Heine

This book provides analyses of the many ways Japanese Zen Buddhism can be interpreted as either a cure‐all for the world's problems as stated by the Traditional Zen Narrative (TZN) view or whether ... More

This book provides analyses of the many ways Japanese Zen Buddhism can be interpreted as either a cure‐all for the world's problems as stated by the Traditional Zen Narrative (TZN) view or whether Zen is a contradictory, self‐serving entity as offered by the Historical and Cultural Criticism (HCC) view. Through the concepts of Zen “writes, rites, and rights,” the book examines the character of Zen. “Zen writes” describes the contradiction that although Zen is traditionally considered to be an esoteric religion based on personal transmissions between monks, it has created an extraordinary amount of written literature. The chapter considers whether the voluminous literature is a strength or a weak point for Zen. In the debate of “Zen rites,” the critical view (HCC) points out the history of religious syncretism in Japan as a compromise by Zen to appeal to the general public by incorporating folk gods and rituals into monastic rites, while the traditional view maintains that there is a separation between the syncretic and the monastic sides of Zen. And finally, “Zen rights” deals with both the ethical benefits that Zen can provide in addition to the moral atrocities that Zen has committed in the past. Zen can be a powerful tool in environmental preservation and world peace, but has also been used to justify discrimination and extreme nationalism in Japan through the 20th century. The final chapter seeks to rectify the two views of TZN and HCC through an acknowledgment of both sides and a balanced recommendation for the future of Zen.Less

Narrative Inquiry

Kathleen Wells

Drawing on theoretical and methodological papers written over the past thirty years, this volume provides an introduction to narrative inquiry. It provides an overview of the development of narrative ... More

Drawing on theoretical and methodological papers written over the past thirty years, this volume provides an introduction to narrative inquiry. It provides an overview of the development of narrative inquiry within the social sciences and the humanities, and establishes its relevance for social work and related professions. It presents one research design, the case study design, in which narrative inquiry may be placed. It provides a broad framework in which narrative and other relevant data may be collected and specifies ways in which audio-recordings of interviews may be transcribed. It presents major approaches to the analysis of transcribed interviews. These approaches include ones that focus on the analysis of narrative content, narrative structure, and narrative in context. The volume also examines two emerging approaches to narrative analysis, critical narrative analysis and contextual discursive analysis. Each narrative analytic approach covered is considered in relation to the same set of dimensions including definition of narrative, theoretical orientation, central question, and method. Exemplary investigations that rely on each approach are included. Issues pertaining to reflexivity, ethics, and validity of narrative inquiry are explored. The appendices contain an outline for a narrative research proposal.Less

Bad Form: Social Mistakes and the Nineteenth-Century Novel

Kent Puckett

While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the ... More

While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.Less

The Re-enchantment of the World: Art versus Religion

Gordon Graham

This book takes as its starting point Max Weber's contention that contemporary Western culture is marked by a ‘disenchantment of the world’ — the loss of spiritual value in the wake of religion's ... More

This book takes as its starting point Max Weber's contention that contemporary Western culture is marked by a ‘disenchantment of the world’ — the loss of spiritual value in the wake of religion's decline and the triumph of the physical and biological sciences. Relating themes in Hegel, Nietzsche, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, and Gadamer to topics in contemporary philosophy of the arts, it explores the idea that Art, now freed from its previous service to religion, has the potential to re-enchant the world. The book develops an argument that draws on the strengths of both ‘analytical’ and ‘continental’ traditions of philosophical reflection. The opening chapter examines ways in which human lives can be made meaningful, and the second chapter critically assesses debates about secularization and secularism. Subsequent chapters are devoted to painting, literature, music, architecture, and festivals. The book concludes that only religion properly so called can ‘enchant the world’, and that modern art's ambition to do so fails.Less

Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei's Postliberal Theology

Jason A. Springs

Toward a Generous Orthodoxy provides a refined exposition of Hans Frei's christologically motivated engagement with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Clifford Geertz, Erich Auerbach, his use of ... More

Toward a Generous Orthodoxy provides a refined exposition of Hans Frei's christologically motivated engagement with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Clifford Geertz, Erich Auerbach, his use of ordinary language philosophy and nonfoundational philosophical insights, while illuminating and expanding his orientational indebtedness to Karl Barth's theology. By placing Frei's work into critical conversation with developments in pragmatist thought and cultural theory since his death, the rereading of Frei offered here aims to correct and resolve many of the complaints and misunderstandings that vex his theological legacy. The result is a clarification of the unity and coherence of Frei's work over the course of his career; a reframing of the complex relationship of his work to that of his Yale colleague George Lindbeck and successive "postliberal" theological trends; demonstration that Frei's uses of Barth, Wittgenstein, Auerbach, and Geertz do not relegate his theological approach to critical quietism, methodological separatism, epistemic fideism, or a so-called "theological ghetto"; explication and development of Frei's account of the "plain sense" of Scripture that evades charges of narrative foundationalism and essentialism on one hand and, on the other, avoids criticisms that any account so emphasizing culture, language, and practice will reduce scriptural meaning to the ways the text is used in Christian practice and community. What emerges from Toward a Generous Orthodoxy is a sharpened account of the christologically anchored, interdisciplinary, and conversational character of Frei's theology, which he came to describe as a "generous orthodoxy," modeling a way for academic theological voices to take seriously both their vocation to the Christian church and their roles as interlocutors in the academic discourse.Less

Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories

Gregory Currie

Narratives are artefacts of a special kind: they are devices which function to tell stories, and do so by conveying the storytelling intentions of their makers. But, narrative itself is too inclusive ... More

Narratives are artefacts of a special kind: they are devices which function to tell stories, and do so by conveying the storytelling intentions of their makers. But, narrative itself is too inclusive a category for much more to be said about it than this; we should focus attention instead on the vaguely defined but interesting category of things rich in narrative structure. Such devices offer significant possibilities, not merely for the representation of stories, but for the expression of point of view; they have also played an important role in the evolution of reliable channels of information, an issue pursued in three chapter appendices. This book argues that much of the pleasure of narrative depends on early developing tendencies in human beings to imitation and to joint attention, and imitation turns out to be the key to understanding such important literary techniques as free indirect discourse and character‐focused narration. The book also examines irony in narrative, with an emphasis on the idea of the expression of ironic points of view; a case study of this phenomenon is offered. Finally, the book examines the idea of Character, as evidenced in robust, situation‐independent ways of acting and thinking, and its important role in many narratives. It is asked whether scepticism about the notion of Character should have us reassess the dramatic and literary tradition which places such emphasis on Character.Less

The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria

Daniel A. Keating

Presents a comprehensive account of sanctification and divinization in Cyril as set forth in his New Testament biblical commentaries. By establishing the importance of pneumatology in Cyril’s ... More

Presents a comprehensive account of sanctification and divinization in Cyril as set forth in his New Testament biblical commentaries. By establishing the importance of pneumatology in Cyril’s narrative of divine life and by showing the requirement for an ethical aspect of divinization grounded in the example of Christ himself, this study brings a corrective to certain readings of Cyril that tend to exaggerate the ‘somatic’ or ‘physicalistic’ character of his understanding of divinization, by arguing that Cyril correlates the somatic and pneumatic means of our union with Christ, and impressively integrates the ontological and ethical aspects of our sanctification and divinization. The final chapter offers brief sketches of Cyril in comparison with Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine, and Leo the Great, with the aim of gaining further clarity to the Christological debates of the fifth century, and a better grasp of the theological similarities and differences between the East and West.Less

Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India

Antoinette Burton

This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial ... More

This book uses the writing of three 20th century Indian women to interrogate the status of the traditional archive, reading their memoirs, fictions, and histories as counter-narratives of colonial modernity. Janaki Majumdar was the daughter of the first president of the Indian National Congress. Her unpublished “Family History” (1935) stages the story of her parents' transnational marriage as a series of homes the family inhabited in Britain and India — thereby providing a heretofore unavailable narrative of the domestic face of 19th century Indian nationalism. Cornelia Sorabji was one of the first Indian women to qualify for the bar. Her memoirs (1934 and 1936) demonstrate her determination to rescue the zenana (women's quarters) and purdahnashin (secluded women) from the recesses of the orthodox home in order to counter the emancipationist claims of Gandhian nationalism. Last but not least, Attia Hosain's 1961 novel, Sunlight on Broken Column, represents the violence and trauma of partition through the biography of a young heroine called Laila and her family home. Taken together, their writings raise questions about what counts as an archive, offering insights into the relationship of women to memory and history, gender to fact and fiction, and feminism to nationalism and postcolonialism.Less

The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind

Peter Goldie

The notion of narrative is topical and contentious in a wide range of fields, including philosophy, psychology and psychoanalysis, historical studies, literature. The book engages with all these ... More

The notion of narrative is topical and contentious in a wide range of fields, including philosophy, psychology and psychoanalysis, historical studies, literature. The book engages with all these areas of discourse and focuses on the ways in which we think about our lives in narrative terms. The notion of narrative is introduced, and then the way we engage with the past in narrative terms is discussed. This involves an exploration of the essentially perspectival nature of narrative thinking, which gains support from much recent empirical work on memory. A ‘case study’ of grief, extending to a discussion of the crucial notion of ‘closure’, draws on literary examples and work in psychoanalysis. The book then turns to narrative thinking about our future. The many structural parallels between our imaginings of the future and our memories of the past and the role of our emotions in response to what we imagine in thinking about our future in the light of our past are discussed. This is followed by a second ‘case study’, of self-forgiveness. Agreeing with those who are sceptical about the idea that there is such a thing as a narrative self, the book nevertheless argues that having a narrative sense of self, quite distinct from any metaphysical notion of selfhood, is at the heart of what it is to think of ourselves, and others, as having a narratable past, present, and future.Less

Methods in Medical Ethics: Critical Perspectives

Over the last several decades, advocates have championed a bewildering variety of methods for understanding and resolving difficult ethical problems in medicine, including principlism, wide ... More

Over the last several decades, advocates have championed a bewildering variety of methods for understanding and resolving difficult ethical problems in medicine, including principlism, wide reflective equilibrium, casuistry, feminism, virtue theory, narrative, and others. Much of this advocacy overlooks the limits of the favored method, and neglects the strengths found in the alternatives. In systematically uncovering and evaluating both the strengths and limits of a variety of ethical tools, Methods in Medical Ethics: Critical Perspectives develops a comprehensive appreciation of the roles that various methods can each play in deepening our understanding of ethical problems in medicine, and in supporting well-grounded judgments about what to do. Each method discussed is critically evaluated to identify both limits and advantages, which are then illustrated through discussion of specific cases or controversies. This review not only demonstrates that there is no single method adequate to the task. More importantly, it develops an informed eclecticism that knows how to pick the right tool for the right job.Less

The Art and Rhetoric of the Homeric Catalogue

Benjamin Sammons

This study takes a fresh look at a familiar element of the Homeric epics—the poetic catalogue. It aims to uncover the great variety of functions fulfilled by catalogue as a manner of speech within ... More

This study takes a fresh look at a familiar element of the Homeric epics—the poetic catalogue. It aims to uncover the great variety of functions fulfilled by catalogue as a manner of speech within very different contexts, ranging from celebrated examples such as the poet’s famous “Catalogue of Ships,” to others less commonly treated under this rubric, such as catalogues within the speech and rhetoric of Homer’s characters or seemingly unassuming catalogues of objects. It shows that catalogue poetry is no ossified or primitive relic of the old tradition, but a living subgenre of poetry that is deployed by Homer in a creative and original way. The catalogue form may be exploited by the poet or his characters to reflect or distort the themes of the poem as a whole, to impose an interpretation on events of the narrative as they unfold, and possibly to allude to competing poetic traditions or even contemporaneous poems. Throughout, the study focuses on how Homer uses the catalogue form to talk about the epic genre itself: As a compendious and venerable poetic form, it allows the poet to explore the boundaries of the heroic world, the limits of heroic glory, and the ideals and realities of his own traditional role as an epic bard.Less

Ethics at the Cinema

Ward E. Jones and Samantha Vice (eds)

Ethics at the Cinema is a collection of original philosophical papers on film. Contributors were invited to engage with ethical issues raised within, or within the process of viewing, a ... More

Ethics at the Cinema is a collection of original philosophical papers on film. Contributors were invited to engage with ethical issues raised within, or within the process of viewing, a single film; they were given the freedom to write on a topic and film of their choice. All contributors have previously written in ethics and/or the philosophy of film, but they come from a wide range of traditions and backgrounds within both. The collection is divided into two parts: ‘Part 1: Critique, Character, and the Power of Film’, and ‘Part 2: Philosophical Readings’. The papers in Part 1 engage explicitly with meta-issues surrounding film, film narratives, and film viewing. The papers comprising Part 2 are engaged less with issues about film than with the details of their chosen film: its characters, its plot, and its particular uses of images.Less

Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music

Peter Kivy

This book constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary ... More

This book constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism are laid out. In Part II, specific attempts to put literary interpretations on various works of the absolute music canon are examined and criticized. Finally, in Part III, the question is raised as to what the human significance of absolute music is, if it does not lie in its representational or narrative content. The answer is that, as yet, philosophy has no answer, and that the question should be considered an important one for philosophers of art to consider, and to try to answer without appeal to representational or narrative content.Less

The Kaiserchronik: A Medieval Narrative

Alastair Matthews

This book presents a narratological analysis of the Kaiserchronik, or chronicle of the emperors, an account of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors from the foundation of Rome to the run-up to the ... More

This book presents a narratological analysis of the Kaiserchronik, or chronicle of the emperors, an account of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors from the foundation of Rome to the run-up to the Second Crusade that was remarkably popular in medieval Germany. Previous research has concentrated on the structure and sources of the work and emphasized its role as a Christian narrative of history, but this study shows that the Kaiserchronik does not simply illustrate a didactic religious message: it also provides an example of how techniques of story-telling in the vernacular were developed and explored in twelfth-century Germany. Four aspects of narrative are described (time and space, motivation, perspective, and narrative strands), each of which is examined with reference to the story of a particular emperor (Constantine the Great, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and Henry IV). Rather than dogmatically imposing a single analytical framework on the Kaiserchronik, the book takes account of the fact that modern theory cannot always be applied directly to works from premodern periods: it draws critically on, and where necessary refines, a variety of approaches, including those of Gérard Genette, Boris Uspensky, and Eberhard Lämmert. Throughout the book, the narrative techniques described are contextualized by means of comparisons with other texts in both Middle High German and Latin, so that the place of the Kaiserchronik as a literary narrative in the twelfth century becomes clear.Less

Who Set You Flowin?: The African-American Migration Narrative

Farah Jasmine Griffin

This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African ... More

This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African American cultural tradition. Covering a period from 1923 to 1992, the book provides close readings of novels, autobiographies, songs, poetry, and painting; in so doing it carves out a framework that allows for a more inclusive reading of African American cultural forms.Less

Myths of the Nation: National Identity and Literary Representation

Rumina Sethi

This book focuses on the construction of forms of historical consciousness in narratives, or schools of narrative. The study seeks to underscore what goes behind the writing of ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ ... More

This book focuses on the construction of forms of historical consciousness in narratives, or schools of narrative. The study seeks to underscore what goes behind the writing of ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ histories by treating historical fiction as the literary dimension of nationalist ideology. It traces nationalism from its abstract underpinnings to its concrete manifestation in historical fiction which underwrites the Indian freedom struggle. The construction of identity through mythicized conceptions of India is examined in detail through Raja Rao's first novel, Kanthapura. The key concept governing the subject is that of representation. Since the ‘fictional reality’ of the nation is a much-debated issue, the study examines how history slides into fiction. The book shows how orientalists, nationalists, Marxists, subalternists, and poststructuralists, have all, in their own celebratory ways, used the disenfranchised sub-proletariat in their works. What is found useful in poststructuralist practices, however, is that subaltern identities are imbued with heterogeneity, thus splitting open an authoritarian and reactionary nationalism, and a continuing neo-colonialism.Less