Irina Paperno
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453342
- eISBN:
- 9780801454967
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453342.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
“God only knows how many diverse, captivating impressions and thoughts evoked by these impressions … pass in a single day. If it were only possible to render them in such a way that I could easily ...
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“God only knows how many diverse, captivating impressions and thoughts evoked by these impressions … pass in a single day. If it were only possible to render them in such a way that I could easily read myself and that others could read me as I do.” Such was the desire of the young Tolstoy. Although he knew that this narrative utopia—turning the totality of his life into a book—would remain unfulfilled, Tolstoy would spend the rest of his life attempting to achieve it. This book is an account of Tolstoy's lifelong attempt to find adequate ways to represent the self, to probe its limits and, ultimately, to arrive at an identity not based on the bodily self and its accumulated life experience. The reader is guided through the voluminous, highly personal nonfiction writings that Tolstoy produced from the 1850s until his death in 1910. For Tolstoy, inherent in the structure of the narrative form was a conception of life that accorded linear temporal order a predominant role, and this implied finitude. Tolstoy refused to accept that human life stopped with death and that the self was limited to what could be remembered and told. In short, Tolstoy's was a philosophical and religious quest, and he followed in the footsteps of many, from Plato and Augustine to Rousseau and Schopenhauer. In reconstructing Tolstoy's struggles, this book reflects on the problems of self and narrative as well as provides an intellectual and psychological biography of the writer.Less
“God only knows how many diverse, captivating impressions and thoughts evoked by these impressions … pass in a single day. If it were only possible to render them in such a way that I could easily read myself and that others could read me as I do.” Such was the desire of the young Tolstoy. Although he knew that this narrative utopia—turning the totality of his life into a book—would remain unfulfilled, Tolstoy would spend the rest of his life attempting to achieve it. This book is an account of Tolstoy's lifelong attempt to find adequate ways to represent the self, to probe its limits and, ultimately, to arrive at an identity not based on the bodily self and its accumulated life experience. The reader is guided through the voluminous, highly personal nonfiction writings that Tolstoy produced from the 1850s until his death in 1910. For Tolstoy, inherent in the structure of the narrative form was a conception of life that accorded linear temporal order a predominant role, and this implied finitude. Tolstoy refused to accept that human life stopped with death and that the self was limited to what could be remembered and told. In short, Tolstoy's was a philosophical and religious quest, and he followed in the footsteps of many, from Plato and Augustine to Rousseau and Schopenhauer. In reconstructing Tolstoy's struggles, this book reflects on the problems of self and narrative as well as provides an intellectual and psychological biography of the writer.
The Staff of the Columbia Journalism Review and James Marcus (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231159319
- eISBN:
- 9780231500586
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231159319.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The Columbia Journalism Review's Second Read series features distinguished journalists revisiting key works of reportage. Launched in 2004, the series also allows authors to address such ongoing ...
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The Columbia Journalism Review's Second Read series features distinguished journalists revisiting key works of reportage. Launched in 2004, the series also allows authors to address such ongoing concerns as the conflict between narrative flair and accurate reporting, the legacy of New Journalism, the need for reporters to question their political assumptions, the limitations of participatory journalism, and the temptation to substitute “truthiness” for hard, challenging fact. Representing a wide range of views, this book embodies the diversity and dynamism of contemporary nonfiction while offering fresh perspectives on works by Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Rachel Carson, and Gabriel García Márquez, among others. It also highlights pivotal moments and movements in journalism as well as the innovations of award-winning writers.Less
The Columbia Journalism Review's Second Read series features distinguished journalists revisiting key works of reportage. Launched in 2004, the series also allows authors to address such ongoing concerns as the conflict between narrative flair and accurate reporting, the legacy of New Journalism, the need for reporters to question their political assumptions, the limitations of participatory journalism, and the temptation to substitute “truthiness” for hard, challenging fact. Representing a wide range of views, this book embodies the diversity and dynamism of contemporary nonfiction while offering fresh perspectives on works by Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Rachel Carson, and Gabriel García Márquez, among others. It also highlights pivotal moments and movements in journalism as well as the innovations of award-winning writers.
Meredith Goldsmith and Emily J. Orlando (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813062815
- eISBN:
- 9780813051772
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813062815.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores Edith Wharton’s relation to the concept of cosmopolitanism, as it extended toward her politics, her aesthetics, and her vision of cultural differences. ...
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Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores Edith Wharton’s relation to the concept of cosmopolitanism, as it extended toward her politics, her aesthetics, and her vision of cultural differences. Essays explore Wharton’s cosmopolitan ideas and ideals, influences such as American art historian Charles Eliot Norton; her attitudes toward transatlanticism and globalization; and her art-historical discoveries in Europe. This book also calls significant attention to Wharton’s lesser-known works, including her travel writing on Europe, war writing, and other nonfiction, as well as her first novel, The Valley of Decision. It demonstrates how Wharton struggled to balance her ideas about national and local identity with cosmopolitan values throughout her career.Less
Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores Edith Wharton’s relation to the concept of cosmopolitanism, as it extended toward her politics, her aesthetics, and her vision of cultural differences. Essays explore Wharton’s cosmopolitan ideas and ideals, influences such as American art historian Charles Eliot Norton; her attitudes toward transatlanticism and globalization; and her art-historical discoveries in Europe. This book also calls significant attention to Wharton’s lesser-known works, including her travel writing on Europe, war writing, and other nonfiction, as well as her first novel, The Valley of Decision. It demonstrates how Wharton struggled to balance her ideas about national and local identity with cosmopolitan values throughout her career.
George Slusser
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038228
- eISBN:
- 9780252096037
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038228.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Gregory Benford is perhaps best known as the author of Benford's law of controversy: “Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.” That maxim is a quotation from ...
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Gregory Benford is perhaps best known as the author of Benford's law of controversy: “Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.” That maxim is a quotation from Timescape, Benford's Nebula and Campbell Award-winning 1980 novel, which established his work as an exemplar of “hard science fiction,” dedicated to working out the consequences of modern science rather than substituting pseudoscience for fantasy. An astrophysicist by training and profession, Benford has published more than twenty novels, over 100 short stories, some fifty essays, and myriad articles that display both his scientific rigor as well as a recognition of literary traditions. This book explores the extraordinary, seemingly inexhaustible display of creative energy in Gregory Benford's life and work. By identifying direct sources and making parallels with other works and writers, the book reveals the vast scope of Benford's knowledge, both of literature and of the major scientific and philosophical issues of our time. The book also discusses Benford's numerous scientific articles and nonfiction books and includes a new interview with him.Less
Gregory Benford is perhaps best known as the author of Benford's law of controversy: “Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.” That maxim is a quotation from Timescape, Benford's Nebula and Campbell Award-winning 1980 novel, which established his work as an exemplar of “hard science fiction,” dedicated to working out the consequences of modern science rather than substituting pseudoscience for fantasy. An astrophysicist by training and profession, Benford has published more than twenty novels, over 100 short stories, some fifty essays, and myriad articles that display both his scientific rigor as well as a recognition of literary traditions. This book explores the extraordinary, seemingly inexhaustible display of creative energy in Gregory Benford's life and work. By identifying direct sources and making parallels with other works and writers, the book reveals the vast scope of Benford's knowledge, both of literature and of the major scientific and philosophical issues of our time. The book also discusses Benford's numerous scientific articles and nonfiction books and includes a new interview with him.
Kelley Conway
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039720
- eISBN:
- 9780252097829
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039720.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Both a precursor to and a critical member of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda weaves documentary and fiction into tapestries that portray distinctive places and complex human beings. Critics and ...
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Both a precursor to and a critical member of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda weaves documentary and fiction into tapestries that portray distinctive places and complex human beings. Critics and aficionados have celebrated Varda's independence and originality since the New Wave touchstone Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) brought her a level of international acclaim she has yet to relinquish. The book traces Varda's works from her 1954 debut La Pointe Courte through a varied career that includes nonfiction and fiction shorts and features, installation art, and the triumphant 2008 documentary The Beaches of Agnès. Drawing on Varda's archives and conversations with the filmmaker, the book focuses on the concrete details of how Varda makes films: a project's emergence, its development and the shifting forms of its screenplay, the search for financing, and the execution from casting through editing and exhibition. In the process, it explores the artistic consistencies and bold changes in Varda's career and reveals how one woman charted a nontraditional trajectory through independent filmmaking. The result is a book that reveals the artistic consistencies and bold changes in the career of one of the world's most exuberant and intriguing directors.Less
Both a precursor to and a critical member of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda weaves documentary and fiction into tapestries that portray distinctive places and complex human beings. Critics and aficionados have celebrated Varda's independence and originality since the New Wave touchstone Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) brought her a level of international acclaim she has yet to relinquish. The book traces Varda's works from her 1954 debut La Pointe Courte through a varied career that includes nonfiction and fiction shorts and features, installation art, and the triumphant 2008 documentary The Beaches of Agnès. Drawing on Varda's archives and conversations with the filmmaker, the book focuses on the concrete details of how Varda makes films: a project's emergence, its development and the shifting forms of its screenplay, the search for financing, and the execution from casting through editing and exhibition. In the process, it explores the artistic consistencies and bold changes in Varda's career and reveals how one woman charted a nontraditional trajectory through independent filmmaking. The result is a book that reveals the artistic consistencies and bold changes in the career of one of the world's most exuberant and intriguing directors.
Karen Babine
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781784992781
- eISBN:
- 9781526104427
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992781.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Karen Babine argues that the genre of ‘creative nonfiction’, or the Montaignaian essay, is largely missing in the Irish context. Babine maintains that Robinson and Arthur represent two exceptions of ...
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Karen Babine argues that the genre of ‘creative nonfiction’, or the Montaignaian essay, is largely missing in the Irish context. Babine maintains that Robinson and Arthur represent two exceptions of creative nonfiction writers who are still thriving, and who both operate almost exclusively in the nonfiction genre (though each has published small exceptions in fiction and poetry).Less
Karen Babine argues that the genre of ‘creative nonfiction’, or the Montaignaian essay, is largely missing in the Irish context. Babine maintains that Robinson and Arthur represent two exceptions of creative nonfiction writers who are still thriving, and who both operate almost exclusively in the nonfiction genre (though each has published small exceptions in fiction and poetry).
Barbara Lounsberry
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813056937
- eISBN:
- 9780813053790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056937.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The introduction presents the book’s main argument: the new view that Woolf enters a third stage as a diarist (after her first experimental stage and her second, lean modernist diary stage). In ...
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The introduction presents the book’s main argument: the new view that Woolf enters a third stage as a diarist (after her first experimental stage and her second, lean modernist diary stage). In Woolf's last dozen years, we see the final flowering of her diary, when she not only turns more often to her own diary than she did in the 1920s but also turns more to others' diaries as well. I suggest that Woolf seems to need diaries more in her final years as a counter to the hysteric drumbeat of war. I argue that Woolf's final diaries should be read as part of her inter-related and multiform battle against tyranny and war across the 1930s. I also call for Woolf's final diaries to be recognized as key texts in the current reassessment of the literary merits of the 1930s. This Introduction previews the book’s second major insight: the heretofore-unexplored role of other diaries in Woolf’s final writing, both fiction and nonfiction.Less
The introduction presents the book’s main argument: the new view that Woolf enters a third stage as a diarist (after her first experimental stage and her second, lean modernist diary stage). In Woolf's last dozen years, we see the final flowering of her diary, when she not only turns more often to her own diary than she did in the 1920s but also turns more to others' diaries as well. I suggest that Woolf seems to need diaries more in her final years as a counter to the hysteric drumbeat of war. I argue that Woolf's final diaries should be read as part of her inter-related and multiform battle against tyranny and war across the 1930s. I also call for Woolf's final diaries to be recognized as key texts in the current reassessment of the literary merits of the 1930s. This Introduction previews the book’s second major insight: the heretofore-unexplored role of other diaries in Woolf’s final writing, both fiction and nonfiction.
Kathleen M. German
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496812353
- eISBN:
- 9781496812391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496812353.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter introduces the primary question of the book – why would African Americans fight for freedom of others overseas when they did not have it at home? It also observes the lack of scholarship ...
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This chapter introduces the primary question of the book – why would African Americans fight for freedom of others overseas when they did not have it at home? It also observes the lack of scholarship on government nonfiction films, especially those released during World War II.Less
This chapter introduces the primary question of the book – why would African Americans fight for freedom of others overseas when they did not have it at home? It also observes the lack of scholarship on government nonfiction films, especially those released during World War II.
James Tasato Mellone (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823233588
- eISBN:
- 9780823241811
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823233588.003.0020
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The heuristic value of Primo Levi's approach to living and writing is evident by the different ways scholars in various disciplines are using his writings. This bibliography on the scholarly writings ...
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The heuristic value of Primo Levi's approach to living and writing is evident by the different ways scholars in various disciplines are using his writings. This bibliography on the scholarly writings about Primo Levi analyzes him in a substantial way within a comparative framework. Some studies have not been included because they only touch upon Levi, deriving inspiration from his work but placing the main focus elsewhere. The bibliography includes listings of material published through the summer of 2010. It is organized into five thematic sections. The last three are closely related because the interconnectedness of Levi's life and work, fiction and nonfiction, makes the placing of a citation in one section as opposed to another, at times, an arbitrary exercise.Less
The heuristic value of Primo Levi's approach to living and writing is evident by the different ways scholars in various disciplines are using his writings. This bibliography on the scholarly writings about Primo Levi analyzes him in a substantial way within a comparative framework. Some studies have not been included because they only touch upon Levi, deriving inspiration from his work but placing the main focus elsewhere. The bibliography includes listings of material published through the summer of 2010. It is organized into five thematic sections. The last three are closely related because the interconnectedness of Levi's life and work, fiction and nonfiction, makes the placing of a citation in one section as opposed to another, at times, an arbitrary exercise.
Laura Rascaroli
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190238247
- eISBN:
- 9780190238278
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190238247.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Less than a decade ago the expression "essay film" was still encountered only sporadically; today, the term has been widely integrated into film criticism, and is increasingly adopted by filmmakers ...
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Less than a decade ago the expression "essay film" was still encountered only sporadically; today, the term has been widely integrated into film criticism, and is increasingly adopted by filmmakers and artists worldwide to characterize their work-while continuing to offer a precious margin of resistance to closed definitions. Eschewing essentialist notions of genre and form, and bringing issues of practice and praxis to the fore, this book offers a novel understanding of the epistemological strategies that are mobilized by the essay film, and of where such strategies operate. On the backdrop of Theodor W. Adorno’s discussion of the essay form’s anachronistic, anti-systematic and disjunctive mode of resistance, and capitalizing on the centrality of the interstice in Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of the cinema as image of thought, the book discusses the essay film as future philosophy-as a contrarian, political cinema whose argumentation engages with us in a space beyond the verbal. A diverse range of case studies discloses how the essay can be a medium of thought on the basis of its dialectic use of audiovisual interstitiality. The book shows how the essay film’s disjunctive method comes to be realized at the level of medium, montage, genre, temporality, sound, narration, and framing-all of these emerging as interstitial spaces of intelligence that illustrate how essayistic meaning can be sustained, often in contexts of political, historical or cultural extremity. The essayistic urge is not to be identified with a fixed generic form, but is rather situated within processes of filmic thinking that thrive in gaps.Less
Less than a decade ago the expression "essay film" was still encountered only sporadically; today, the term has been widely integrated into film criticism, and is increasingly adopted by filmmakers and artists worldwide to characterize their work-while continuing to offer a precious margin of resistance to closed definitions. Eschewing essentialist notions of genre and form, and bringing issues of practice and praxis to the fore, this book offers a novel understanding of the epistemological strategies that are mobilized by the essay film, and of where such strategies operate. On the backdrop of Theodor W. Adorno’s discussion of the essay form’s anachronistic, anti-systematic and disjunctive mode of resistance, and capitalizing on the centrality of the interstice in Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of the cinema as image of thought, the book discusses the essay film as future philosophy-as a contrarian, political cinema whose argumentation engages with us in a space beyond the verbal. A diverse range of case studies discloses how the essay can be a medium of thought on the basis of its dialectic use of audiovisual interstitiality. The book shows how the essay film’s disjunctive method comes to be realized at the level of medium, montage, genre, temporality, sound, narration, and framing-all of these emerging as interstitial spaces of intelligence that illustrate how essayistic meaning can be sustained, often in contexts of political, historical or cultural extremity. The essayistic urge is not to be identified with a fixed generic form, but is rather situated within processes of filmic thinking that thrive in gaps.
Alison James
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- October 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198859680
- eISBN:
- 9780191892059
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198859680.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book studies the documentary impulse that plays a central role in twentieth-century French literature. Focusing on nonfiction narratives, it analyzes the use of documents—pieces of textual or ...
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This book studies the documentary impulse that plays a central role in twentieth-century French literature. Focusing on nonfiction narratives, it analyzes the use of documents—pieces of textual or visual evidence incorporated into the literary work to relay and interrogate reality. It traces the emergence of an enduring concern with factual reference in texts that engage with current events or the historical archive. Writers idealize the document as a fragment of raw reality, but also reveal its constructed and mediated nature and integrate it as a voice within a larger composition. This ambivalent documentary imagination, present in works by Gide, Breton, Aragon, Yourcenar, Duras, and Modiano (among others), shapes the relationship of literature to visual media, testimonial discourses, and self-representation. Far from turning away from realism in the twentieth century, French literature often turns to the document as a site of both modernist experiment and engagement with the world.Less
This book studies the documentary impulse that plays a central role in twentieth-century French literature. Focusing on nonfiction narratives, it analyzes the use of documents—pieces of textual or visual evidence incorporated into the literary work to relay and interrogate reality. It traces the emergence of an enduring concern with factual reference in texts that engage with current events or the historical archive. Writers idealize the document as a fragment of raw reality, but also reveal its constructed and mediated nature and integrate it as a voice within a larger composition. This ambivalent documentary imagination, present in works by Gide, Breton, Aragon, Yourcenar, Duras, and Modiano (among others), shapes the relationship of literature to visual media, testimonial discourses, and self-representation. Far from turning away from realism in the twentieth century, French literature often turns to the document as a site of both modernist experiment and engagement with the world.
Regina Galasso
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941121
- eISBN:
- 9781789629354
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941121.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This part focuses on the travel texts of Julio Camba and Josep Pla, writers from opposite sides of the Iberian Peninsula, who wrote the city for professional reasons. The works of Camba and Pla ...
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This part focuses on the travel texts of Julio Camba and Josep Pla, writers from opposite sides of the Iberian Peninsula, who wrote the city for professional reasons. The works of Camba and Pla present curious cases regarding translation and the city given the fact that they both are from regions in which Spanish is not the sole language, they both traveled extensively, and both have at least one entire book dedicated to New York City. In drawing associations between the two writers, as well as between the travel writer and the translator, this part outlines what they were they able to give their readers beyond another description of the cityscape. As Camba's and Pla's New York experience and their resulting texts strikingly marked the timeline of their work, this part argues for travel as an event that sharpens and broadens the creative imagination of writers as well as for a more robust reading of travel narratives as complex texts that carry within them aspects of the city that exceed the visual.Less
This part focuses on the travel texts of Julio Camba and Josep Pla, writers from opposite sides of the Iberian Peninsula, who wrote the city for professional reasons. The works of Camba and Pla present curious cases regarding translation and the city given the fact that they both are from regions in which Spanish is not the sole language, they both traveled extensively, and both have at least one entire book dedicated to New York City. In drawing associations between the two writers, as well as between the travel writer and the translator, this part outlines what they were they able to give their readers beyond another description of the cityscape. As Camba's and Pla's New York experience and their resulting texts strikingly marked the timeline of their work, this part argues for travel as an event that sharpens and broadens the creative imagination of writers as well as for a more robust reading of travel narratives as complex texts that carry within them aspects of the city that exceed the visual.
Gail D. Sinclair
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813033556
- eISBN:
- 9780813038353
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813033556.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
In contrast with the previous chapter, this chapter examines the toll of relationships lost or severed during this period. Starting with his father's death shortly after Hemingway's arrival and ...
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In contrast with the previous chapter, this chapter examines the toll of relationships lost or severed during this period. Starting with his father's death shortly after Hemingway's arrival and continuing through the 1930s, his mercurial propensities made maintaining older alliances increasingly difficult. The 1930s began for Ernest Hemingway with a new hometown, a new wife, Pauline, a growing family, and a rising career. In his writing, he experimented with book-length nonfiction, drama, and magazine serialization as well as continuing his work with the short story and novel genres of his first professional phase. Hemingway's stature as a literary and popular figure was assured, but the downward spiral from personal and professional happiness to greater uncertainty in both arenas gained momentum.Less
In contrast with the previous chapter, this chapter examines the toll of relationships lost or severed during this period. Starting with his father's death shortly after Hemingway's arrival and continuing through the 1930s, his mercurial propensities made maintaining older alliances increasingly difficult. The 1930s began for Ernest Hemingway with a new hometown, a new wife, Pauline, a growing family, and a rising career. In his writing, he experimented with book-length nonfiction, drama, and magazine serialization as well as continuing his work with the short story and novel genres of his first professional phase. Hemingway's stature as a literary and popular figure was assured, but the downward spiral from personal and professional happiness to greater uncertainty in both arenas gained momentum.
Fritz Oehlschlaeger
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813130071
- eISBN:
- 9780813135731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813130071.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Wendell Berry has become a major voice in the argument for a new agrarianism. It is argued that he passes the moral test he sets for himself: nothing that he has written “countenances” the misuse, ...
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Wendell Berry has become a major voice in the argument for a new agrarianism. It is argued that he passes the moral test he sets for himself: nothing that he has written “countenances” the misuse, the reduction to mere means, of the people or places he treats. This book is organized by genre and topic. The first three chapters focus primarily on Berry's nonfiction. Chapters 4 through 6 consider Berry's fiction, each focusing on an individual genre. The last chapter investigates Berry's thoughts on the unspecializing of poetry.Less
Wendell Berry has become a major voice in the argument for a new agrarianism. It is argued that he passes the moral test he sets for himself: nothing that he has written “countenances” the misuse, the reduction to mere means, of the people or places he treats. This book is organized by genre and topic. The first three chapters focus primarily on Berry's nonfiction. Chapters 4 through 6 consider Berry's fiction, each focusing on an individual genre. The last chapter investigates Berry's thoughts on the unspecializing of poetry.
Fritz Oehlschlaeger
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813130071
- eISBN:
- 9780813135731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813130071.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter shows how the roots of Wendell Berry's ideas may lie in his learning the discipline of the teamster. It highlights the centrality of practices, particulars, and virtues to Berry's ...
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This chapter shows how the roots of Wendell Berry's ideas may lie in his learning the discipline of the teamster. It highlights the centrality of practices, particulars, and virtues to Berry's thinking, connecting these terms to a host of matters in his essays. It begins by investigating a way of entering Berry's world through a language of practices, particulars, and virtues. It uses Alasdair MacIntyre's analysis of practices as a way to clarify the concept and focus particularly on Berry's understanding of farming as a practice. It then covers the virtues Berry espouses in both his nonfiction and his fiction. It includes prudence, courage, justice, equity, friendship, and the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love or charity, along with humility and patience. It examines three additional matters related to his decisions to return to Kentucky from New York in 1964. It also looks at his decision to use draft animals—horses, not mules—in the early 1970s. Finally, it develops the idea that even Berry's religious understanding may have its roots in his earliest experiences with Grandfather Berry's mules.Less
This chapter shows how the roots of Wendell Berry's ideas may lie in his learning the discipline of the teamster. It highlights the centrality of practices, particulars, and virtues to Berry's thinking, connecting these terms to a host of matters in his essays. It begins by investigating a way of entering Berry's world through a language of practices, particulars, and virtues. It uses Alasdair MacIntyre's analysis of practices as a way to clarify the concept and focus particularly on Berry's understanding of farming as a practice. It then covers the virtues Berry espouses in both his nonfiction and his fiction. It includes prudence, courage, justice, equity, friendship, and the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love or charity, along with humility and patience. It examines three additional matters related to his decisions to return to Kentucky from New York in 1964. It also looks at his decision to use draft animals—horses, not mules—in the early 1970s. Finally, it develops the idea that even Berry's religious understanding may have its roots in his earliest experiences with Grandfather Berry's mules.
Philip N Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199272235
- eISBN:
- 9780191699603
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272235.003.0036
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
This chapter examines the narrative persuasion lessons that can be learned by post-conviction relief practitioners in death penalty cases from popular storytellers. It suggests that recent creative ...
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This chapter examines the narrative persuasion lessons that can be learned by post-conviction relief practitioners in death penalty cases from popular storytellers. It suggests that recent creative popular nonfiction provides a rich terrain for exploration by post-conviction relief practitioners attempting to retell successfully and truthfully a once-told story. It explains that practitioners can reconcile nonfiction narrative practices with traditional legal and analytical practice to retell difficult, complex, and compelling stories.Less
This chapter examines the narrative persuasion lessons that can be learned by post-conviction relief practitioners in death penalty cases from popular storytellers. It suggests that recent creative popular nonfiction provides a rich terrain for exploration by post-conviction relief practitioners attempting to retell successfully and truthfully a once-told story. It explains that practitioners can reconcile nonfiction narrative practices with traditional legal and analytical practice to retell difficult, complex, and compelling stories.
Helena Grice
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719064029
- eISBN:
- 9781781701003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719064029.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Much of the critical debate surrounding The Woman Warrior has centred upon the book's troubling generic status. Ostensibly a memoir—the subtitle is ‘Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts’—the book won ...
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Much of the critical debate surrounding The Woman Warrior has centred upon the book's troubling generic status. Ostensibly a memoir—the subtitle is ‘Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts’—the book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, but it blends together elements of several genres, including fiction, myth, auto/biography and memoir, in a manner that is not easily categorised. Ultimately, for Maxine Hong Kingston, the talk-story form becomes a new kind of genre, one malleable to her own purposes.Less
Much of the critical debate surrounding The Woman Warrior has centred upon the book's troubling generic status. Ostensibly a memoir—the subtitle is ‘Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts’—the book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, but it blends together elements of several genres, including fiction, myth, auto/biography and memoir, in a manner that is not easily categorised. Ultimately, for Maxine Hong Kingston, the talk-story form becomes a new kind of genre, one malleable to her own purposes.
Timothy C. Baker
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638123
- eISBN:
- 9780748651788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638123.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter discusses Brown's nonfiction prose. It tries to explain how Brown's own analyses of his life and fiction both differ from and confirm previous findings. It looks at the sense of ...
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This chapter discusses Brown's nonfiction prose. It tries to explain how Brown's own analyses of his life and fiction both differ from and confirm previous findings. It looks at the sense of community as a geographico-historical rootedness, and then considers the idea of the community, which has become a dominant strand of modern philosophical thought. It notes that the parallels between Nancy, Blanchot and Georges Bataille's complex views of community and that of Brown explain Brown's focus on individual death.Less
This chapter discusses Brown's nonfiction prose. It tries to explain how Brown's own analyses of his life and fiction both differ from and confirm previous findings. It looks at the sense of community as a geographico-historical rootedness, and then considers the idea of the community, which has become a dominant strand of modern philosophical thought. It notes that the parallels between Nancy, Blanchot and Georges Bataille's complex views of community and that of Brown explain Brown's focus on individual death.
Irina Paperno
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453342
- eISBN:
- 9780801454967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453342.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This introductory chapter provides an overview of Leo Tolstoy's attempts to describe and define his own self through his nonfiction first-person writings. In his early diaries, the young Tolstoy ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of Leo Tolstoy's attempts to describe and define his own self through his nonfiction first-person writings. In his early diaries, the young Tolstoy worked on developing a method for capturing, in their entirety, his past, present, and future. In the course of the 1850s, Tolstoy made a transition from diary-writing to professional authorship and fiction. In all of Tolstoy's self-narratives, from his first diaries to his religious treatises, there is an essential moral and social dimension to the question of the self. He knew that to know and to say who you are is to be oriented in moral space, deciding, “What ought I to do?”—a question which he addressed in a number of writings, from early pedagogical essays to the intensely personal treatise that deals with his later attempts to help the urban poor, What Should We Do Then? (1882–89).Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of Leo Tolstoy's attempts to describe and define his own self through his nonfiction first-person writings. In his early diaries, the young Tolstoy worked on developing a method for capturing, in their entirety, his past, present, and future. In the course of the 1850s, Tolstoy made a transition from diary-writing to professional authorship and fiction. In all of Tolstoy's self-narratives, from his first diaries to his religious treatises, there is an essential moral and social dimension to the question of the self. He knew that to know and to say who you are is to be oriented in moral space, deciding, “What ought I to do?”—a question which he addressed in a number of writings, from early pedagogical essays to the intensely personal treatise that deals with his later attempts to help the urban poor, What Should We Do Then? (1882–89).
Irina Paperno
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801453342
- eISBN:
- 9780801454967
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801453342.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter looks at Tolstoy's correspondence with Nikolai Strakhov, describing Tolstoy's dialogic elaborations of his personal faith in the years of the decisive transition to nonfiction. The ...
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This chapter looks at Tolstoy's correspondence with Nikolai Strakhov, describing Tolstoy's dialogic elaborations of his personal faith in the years of the decisive transition to nonfiction. The correspondence between Tolstoy and Strakhov started at a time when Tolstoy, painfully unable to finish Anna Karenina (1877), was eager to abandon literature and the profession of the writer for another sphere and for another personal role. Indeed, the intimate conversation between two friends took the place of confession and profession of faith. Throughout the correspondence, Tolstoy was unclear and imprecise—perhaps not only because he found it difficult to express himself but also because he believed that truth and faith eluded verbal expression.Less
This chapter looks at Tolstoy's correspondence with Nikolai Strakhov, describing Tolstoy's dialogic elaborations of his personal faith in the years of the decisive transition to nonfiction. The correspondence between Tolstoy and Strakhov started at a time when Tolstoy, painfully unable to finish Anna Karenina (1877), was eager to abandon literature and the profession of the writer for another sphere and for another personal role. Indeed, the intimate conversation between two friends took the place of confession and profession of faith. Throughout the correspondence, Tolstoy was unclear and imprecise—perhaps not only because he found it difficult to express himself but also because he believed that truth and faith eluded verbal expression.
