Boris Gasparov
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300106503
- eISBN:
- 9780300133165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300106503.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter examines Pyotr Ilyich's opera Eugene Onegin, which is based on Alexander Pushkin's novel. It suggests that though there were criticisms on the opera's occasional mishandling of Pushkin's ...
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This chapter examines Pyotr Ilyich's opera Eugene Onegin, which is based on Alexander Pushkin's novel. It suggests that though there were criticisms on the opera's occasional mishandling of Pushkin's text, its musical narrative struck a profound resonance with a public brought up on psychological novels and socially charged literary criticism. The chapter also highlights the importance of the emotional landscape created by the opera's music in sealing the fate of Eugene Onegin.Less
This chapter examines Pyotr Ilyich's opera Eugene Onegin, which is based on Alexander Pushkin's novel. It suggests that though there were criticisms on the opera's occasional mishandling of Pushkin's text, its musical narrative struck a profound resonance with a public brought up on psychological novels and socially charged literary criticism. The chapter also highlights the importance of the emotional landscape created by the opera's music in sealing the fate of Eugene Onegin.
Omri Moses
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780804789141
- eISBN:
- 9780804791236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804789141.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introduction calls attention to situational and relational understandings of character that modernist writers developed in order to free their representations of people from the moralistic ...
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This introduction calls attention to situational and relational understandings of character that modernist writers developed in order to free their representations of people from the moralistic ideals of consistency. It emphasizes the central part played by the vitalist psychologies of Bergson, William James, and Nietzsche, and the scientific theories of Darwin, in literary efforts to reimagine character. Vitalism was interested in conceptualizing the emergence of change within living processes. It made available a sophisticated conceptual language for grappling with the open-ended, adaptable, and responsive elements of psychic life. The chapter treats ethics as concerned with what is good or bad for life. It suggests that this was a topic of special concern to James, Stein, and Eliot, who thus form a vitalist literary genealogy. To understand previous literary treatments of character, it contrasts their approaches to those of important nineteenth-century precursors, George Eliot, Herman Melville, and Joseph Conrad.Less
This introduction calls attention to situational and relational understandings of character that modernist writers developed in order to free their representations of people from the moralistic ideals of consistency. It emphasizes the central part played by the vitalist psychologies of Bergson, William James, and Nietzsche, and the scientific theories of Darwin, in literary efforts to reimagine character. Vitalism was interested in conceptualizing the emergence of change within living processes. It made available a sophisticated conceptual language for grappling with the open-ended, adaptable, and responsive elements of psychic life. The chapter treats ethics as concerned with what is good or bad for life. It suggests that this was a topic of special concern to James, Stein, and Eliot, who thus form a vitalist literary genealogy. To understand previous literary treatments of character, it contrasts their approaches to those of important nineteenth-century precursors, George Eliot, Herman Melville, and Joseph Conrad.
Marie-Madeleine Lafayette
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226468518
- eISBN:
- 9780226468440
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226468440.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Standing at the critical juncture between traditional romance and early novelistic realism, Zayde is both the swan song of a literary tradition nearly two thousand years old and a harbinger of the ...
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Standing at the critical juncture between traditional romance and early novelistic realism, Zayde is both the swan song of a literary tradition nearly two thousand years old and a harbinger of the modern psychological novel. It unfolds during the long medieval struggle between Christians and Muslims for control of the Iberian Peninsula; Madame de Lafayette (1634–93) takes the reader on a Mediterranean tour typical of classical and seventeenth-century romances—from Catalonia to Cyprus and back again—with battles, prophecies, and shipwrecks dotting the crisscrossed paths of the book's noble lovers. But where romance was long and episodic, Zayde possesses a magisterial architecture of suspense. Chaste and faithful heroines and heroes are replaced here by characters who are consumed by jealousy and unable to love happily. And, unlike in traditional romance, the reader is no longer simply expected to admire deeds of bravery and virtue, but instead is caught up in intense first-person testimony on the psychology of desire. Unavailable in English for more than two centuries, Zayde reemerges here in translation as a worthy representative of a once popular genre.Less
Standing at the critical juncture between traditional romance and early novelistic realism, Zayde is both the swan song of a literary tradition nearly two thousand years old and a harbinger of the modern psychological novel. It unfolds during the long medieval struggle between Christians and Muslims for control of the Iberian Peninsula; Madame de Lafayette (1634–93) takes the reader on a Mediterranean tour typical of classical and seventeenth-century romances—from Catalonia to Cyprus and back again—with battles, prophecies, and shipwrecks dotting the crisscrossed paths of the book's noble lovers. But where romance was long and episodic, Zayde possesses a magisterial architecture of suspense. Chaste and faithful heroines and heroes are replaced here by characters who are consumed by jealousy and unable to love happily. And, unlike in traditional romance, the reader is no longer simply expected to admire deeds of bravery and virtue, but instead is caught up in intense first-person testimony on the psychology of desire. Unavailable in English for more than two centuries, Zayde reemerges here in translation as a worthy representative of a once popular genre.
Barbara Lounsberry
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813062952
- eISBN:
- 9780813051833
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813062952.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Woolf appears in consummate command in her 1924 diary. She curbs her number of diary entries and brakes her previous need for praise. London supplies the motion she craves. As she finishes Mrs. ...
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Woolf appears in consummate command in her 1924 diary. She curbs her number of diary entries and brakes her previous need for praise. London supplies the motion she craves. As she finishes Mrs. Dalloway and her Common Reader essays, she sends out shoots of other works. The diaries she reads assist her. The Letters and Journals of Anne Chalmers, which Woolf reviews in February 1924, were edited by Chalmers’ daughter. They recall and preserve a dead mother, describe summer holidays at the Scottish seaside with “a large and clever family,” and even offer the name Mrs. Ramsay. Woolf then reads The Diary of the Lady Anne Clifford with an introduction by Vita Sackville-West, another case of a daughter thinking back through, and immortalizing, a dead foremother. Lady Clifford's Renaissance diary also offers women’s history and grist for Woolf’s essays “The Elizabethan Lumber Room” and “Donne after Three Centuries.” Even more important, its tale of a ferocious fight over a daughter’s inheritance inspires the plot of Orlando. In July, Woolf reviews the early journals of Stendhal, the father of the psychological novel. They direct her mind (yet again) to the soul and to the many nuances and contradictions of character.Less
Woolf appears in consummate command in her 1924 diary. She curbs her number of diary entries and brakes her previous need for praise. London supplies the motion she craves. As she finishes Mrs. Dalloway and her Common Reader essays, she sends out shoots of other works. The diaries she reads assist her. The Letters and Journals of Anne Chalmers, which Woolf reviews in February 1924, were edited by Chalmers’ daughter. They recall and preserve a dead mother, describe summer holidays at the Scottish seaside with “a large and clever family,” and even offer the name Mrs. Ramsay. Woolf then reads The Diary of the Lady Anne Clifford with an introduction by Vita Sackville-West, another case of a daughter thinking back through, and immortalizing, a dead foremother. Lady Clifford's Renaissance diary also offers women’s history and grist for Woolf’s essays “The Elizabethan Lumber Room” and “Donne after Three Centuries.” Even more important, its tale of a ferocious fight over a daughter’s inheritance inspires the plot of Orlando. In July, Woolf reviews the early journals of Stendhal, the father of the psychological novel. They direct her mind (yet again) to the soul and to the many nuances and contradictions of character.
Haruo Shirane
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231153973
- eISBN:
- 9780231527194
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231153973.003.0017
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter examines The Tale of Genji or the Genji monogatari, written in the early eleventh century by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu. The title The Tale of Genji comes from the surname of the ...
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This chapter examines The Tale of Genji or the Genji monogatari, written in the early eleventh century by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu. The title The Tale of Genji comes from the surname of the hero, who is the son of the emperor regnant at the beginning of the narrative and whose life, marriage, and relationships with various women are described over the course of the first forty-one chapters. The remaining thirteen chapters are primarily concerned with the affairs of Kaoru, Genji's putative son. Shikibu's creation of highly individualized characters in a realistic social setting and her subtle presentation of inner thought and emotion have encouraged critics to call the Genji the world's first psychological novel.Less
This chapter examines The Tale of Genji or the Genji monogatari, written in the early eleventh century by a woman named Murasaki Shikibu. The title The Tale of Genji comes from the surname of the hero, who is the son of the emperor regnant at the beginning of the narrative and whose life, marriage, and relationships with various women are described over the course of the first forty-one chapters. The remaining thirteen chapters are primarily concerned with the affairs of Kaoru, Genji's putative son. Shikibu's creation of highly individualized characters in a realistic social setting and her subtle presentation of inner thought and emotion have encouraged critics to call the Genji the world's first psychological novel.
Marie le Jars de Gournay
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226305554
- eISBN:
- 9780226305264
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226305264.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
During her lifetime, the gifted writer Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565–1645) was celebrated as one of the “seventy most famous women of all time” in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women (1663). ...
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During her lifetime, the gifted writer Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565–1645) was celebrated as one of the “seventy most famous women of all time” in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women (1663). The adopted daughter of Michel de Montaigne, as well as his editor, she was a major literary force and a pioneering feminist voice during a tumultuous period in France. This volume presents translations of four of Gournay's works that address feminist issues. Two of these appear here in English for the first time: The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne and The Apology for the Woman Writing. One of the first modern psychological novels, the best-selling Promenade was also the first to explore female sexual feeling. With the autobiographical Apology, Gournay defended every aspect of her life, from her moral conduct to her household management. The book also includes her last revisions (1641) of her two best-known feminist treatises: The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Complaint. The editors provide a general overview of Gournay's career, as well as individual introductions and extensive annotations for each work.Less
During her lifetime, the gifted writer Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565–1645) was celebrated as one of the “seventy most famous women of all time” in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women (1663). The adopted daughter of Michel de Montaigne, as well as his editor, she was a major literary force and a pioneering feminist voice during a tumultuous period in France. This volume presents translations of four of Gournay's works that address feminist issues. Two of these appear here in English for the first time: The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne and The Apology for the Woman Writing. One of the first modern psychological novels, the best-selling Promenade was also the first to explore female sexual feeling. With the autobiographical Apology, Gournay defended every aspect of her life, from her moral conduct to her household management. The book also includes her last revisions (1641) of her two best-known feminist treatises: The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Complaint. The editors provide a general overview of Gournay's career, as well as individual introductions and extensive annotations for each work.
