K. P. Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199607778
- eISBN:
- 9780191729546
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199607778.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
This book is concerned with the contexts of Chaucer's Italian sources and how those sources were produced throughout the fourteenth century in ways that offered rich modes of reading material ...
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This book is concerned with the contexts of Chaucer's Italian sources and how those sources were produced throughout the fourteenth century in ways that offered rich modes of reading material textuality. While dealing with sources in the tradition sense, it has sought to extend the parameters of what constitutes a source to the whole page: margin, gloss, script, support, size and the many other features of a book that exert hermeneutic force on the reader.Less
This book is concerned with the contexts of Chaucer's Italian sources and how those sources were produced throughout the fourteenth century in ways that offered rich modes of reading material textuality. While dealing with sources in the tradition sense, it has sought to extend the parameters of what constitutes a source to the whole page: margin, gloss, script, support, size and the many other features of a book that exert hermeneutic force on the reader.
Peter Childs
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748620432
- eISBN:
- 9780748671700
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748620432.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Texts takes a wide range of visual, virtual, performative and written texts as a means of exploring both the ‘the literary’ and ‘the textual’ in contemporary culture. Each chapter includes an ...
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Texts takes a wide range of visual, virtual, performative and written texts as a means of exploring both the ‘the literary’ and ‘the textual’ in contemporary culture. Each chapter includes an introduction to the text and aspects of its critical reception as well as an extended analysis using one of sixteen important critical/theoretical approaches from established critical angles like feminism, postcolonial studies, and deconstruction to newer areas such as ecocriticism, trauma theory, and ethical criticism. Each chapter also discusses the features of the type of text under analysis and indicates alternative ways in which the text might be read by drawing on other critical approaches. Illustrating the variety of critical and theoretical tools that can be used for analysis, Texts examines a broad spectrum of contemporary culture from short stories, autobiographies and lyrics, through The Matrix, Harry Potter, and Big Brother, to shopping malls, celebrities, and rock videos. An excellent guide to ways of reading the contemporary world, this is essential reading for anyone who ever wanted to know how to analyse a text, whether it be a poster or a building complex, a political speech or a photograph, an event like the Millennium or a website like Amazon.Less
Texts takes a wide range of visual, virtual, performative and written texts as a means of exploring both the ‘the literary’ and ‘the textual’ in contemporary culture. Each chapter includes an introduction to the text and aspects of its critical reception as well as an extended analysis using one of sixteen important critical/theoretical approaches from established critical angles like feminism, postcolonial studies, and deconstruction to newer areas such as ecocriticism, trauma theory, and ethical criticism. Each chapter also discusses the features of the type of text under analysis and indicates alternative ways in which the text might be read by drawing on other critical approaches. Illustrating the variety of critical and theoretical tools that can be used for analysis, Texts examines a broad spectrum of contemporary culture from short stories, autobiographies and lyrics, through The Matrix, Harry Potter, and Big Brother, to shopping malls, celebrities, and rock videos. An excellent guide to ways of reading the contemporary world, this is essential reading for anyone who ever wanted to know how to analyse a text, whether it be a poster or a building complex, a political speech or a photograph, an event like the Millennium or a website like Amazon.
Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199557219
- eISBN:
- 9780191720932
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557219.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
The introduction gives an overview of the corpus included in this study, Chrétien's Conte du Graal and the four verse continuations: the anonymous First or Gauvain Continuation, the Second or ...
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The introduction gives an overview of the corpus included in this study, Chrétien's Conte du Graal and the four verse continuations: the anonymous First or Gauvain Continuation, the Second or Perceval Continuation by Wauchier de Denain, Manessier's Third Continuation, and Gerbert's Fourth Continuation. The Perceval Continuations are then situated in relation to the larger group of Grail stories that proliferate across England and the Continent from the end of the 12th to the 15th and 16th centuries. A comparison between prose and verse rewritings highlights their differences in the contrast between centripetal and centrifugal textuality, as distinct responses to the key traits of the Conte: its enigmas, contradictions, and incongruities, its ‘and/both’ logic, its desire and deferral of ending. The introduction ends with a brief discussion of the book's organization into five chapters.Less
The introduction gives an overview of the corpus included in this study, Chrétien's Conte du Graal and the four verse continuations: the anonymous First or Gauvain Continuation, the Second or Perceval Continuation by Wauchier de Denain, Manessier's Third Continuation, and Gerbert's Fourth Continuation. The Perceval Continuations are then situated in relation to the larger group of Grail stories that proliferate across England and the Continent from the end of the 12th to the 15th and 16th centuries. A comparison between prose and verse rewritings highlights their differences in the contrast between centripetal and centrifugal textuality, as distinct responses to the key traits of the Conte: its enigmas, contradictions, and incongruities, its ‘and/both’ logic, its desire and deferral of ending. The introduction ends with a brief discussion of the book's organization into five chapters.
Catherine Belsey
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633012
- eISBN:
- 9780748652235
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633012.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The chapters in this book put theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction, together with his moment in history. Teasing out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as ...
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The chapters in this book put theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction, together with his moment in history. Teasing out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as some of the more familiar plays, the book demonstrates the possibilities of an attention to textuality that also draws on the archive. A reading of the Sonnets, written specially for the book, analyses their intricate and ambivalent inscription of desire. Between them, these chapters trace the progress of theory in the course of three decades, while a new introduction offers a narrative and analytical overview, from a participant's perspective, of some of its key implications. The book shows how texts can offer access to the dissonances of the past when theory finds an outcome in practice. It provides a demonstration of poststructuralist theory at work.Less
The chapters in this book put theory to work in order to register Shakespeare's powers of seduction, together with his moment in history. Teasing out the meanings of the narrative poems, as well as some of the more familiar plays, the book demonstrates the possibilities of an attention to textuality that also draws on the archive. A reading of the Sonnets, written specially for the book, analyses their intricate and ambivalent inscription of desire. Between them, these chapters trace the progress of theory in the course of three decades, while a new introduction offers a narrative and analytical overview, from a participant's perspective, of some of its key implications. The book shows how texts can offer access to the dissonances of the past when theory finds an outcome in practice. It provides a demonstration of poststructuralist theory at work.
Sinead Moynihan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719082290
- eISBN:
- 9781781702727
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082290.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book is a full-length study of contemporary American fiction of ‘passing’. It takes as its point of departure the return of racial and gender passing in the 1990s in order to make claims about ...
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This book is a full-length study of contemporary American fiction of ‘passing’. It takes as its point of departure the return of racial and gender passing in the 1990s in order to make claims about wider trends in contemporary American fiction. The book accounts for the return of tropes of passing in fiction by Phillip Roth, Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich, Danzy Senna, Jeffrey Eugenides and Paul Beatty. These writers are attracted to the trope because passing narratives have always foregrounded the notion of textuality in relation to the legibility of black subjects passing as white. The central argument of the book, then, is that contemporary narratives of passing are concerned with articulating and unpacking an analogy between passing and authorship. The book promises to inaugurate dialogue on the relationships between identity, postmodernism and authorship in contemporary American fiction.Less
This book is a full-length study of contemporary American fiction of ‘passing’. It takes as its point of departure the return of racial and gender passing in the 1990s in order to make claims about wider trends in contemporary American fiction. The book accounts for the return of tropes of passing in fiction by Phillip Roth, Percival Everett, Louise Erdrich, Danzy Senna, Jeffrey Eugenides and Paul Beatty. These writers are attracted to the trope because passing narratives have always foregrounded the notion of textuality in relation to the legibility of black subjects passing as white. The central argument of the book, then, is that contemporary narratives of passing are concerned with articulating and unpacking an analogy between passing and authorship. The book promises to inaugurate dialogue on the relationships between identity, postmodernism and authorship in contemporary American fiction.
Howard Felperin
- Published in print:
- 1986
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128960
- eISBN:
- 9780191671746
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128960.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In the unlikely event that some Nobel Prize committee of the future decides to honour the discoverers of so anti-humanistic a concept as deconstruction, it will be faced with more than the usual ...
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In the unlikely event that some Nobel Prize committee of the future decides to honour the discoverers of so anti-humanistic a concept as deconstruction, it will be faced with more than the usual difficulties in determining where to bestow the award. The search for the founder or originator of the discourse of deconstruction, flagrantly post-modernist and avant-garde as it is, would discover, upon examination of its major texts, a number of earlier candidates already nominated as worthy of the honour. The short-list of nominees might well have to stretch back behind the deconstructors of the present to include those relatively recent inquisitors of language who underwrite their work. While Nobel Prizes are often awarded belatedly or retrospectively, such an infinite regress of likely candidates for the dubious title of ‘founding father of deconstruction’ would make something of a mockery or a nonsense of the committee's august deliberations. This chapter discusses literary theory and literary criticism, structuralism, Marxism, and the nature of language and textuality in relation to the Nobel Prize.Less
In the unlikely event that some Nobel Prize committee of the future decides to honour the discoverers of so anti-humanistic a concept as deconstruction, it will be faced with more than the usual difficulties in determining where to bestow the award. The search for the founder or originator of the discourse of deconstruction, flagrantly post-modernist and avant-garde as it is, would discover, upon examination of its major texts, a number of earlier candidates already nominated as worthy of the honour. The short-list of nominees might well have to stretch back behind the deconstructors of the present to include those relatively recent inquisitors of language who underwrite their work. While Nobel Prizes are often awarded belatedly or retrospectively, such an infinite regress of likely candidates for the dubious title of ‘founding father of deconstruction’ would make something of a mockery or a nonsense of the committee's august deliberations. This chapter discusses literary theory and literary criticism, structuralism, Marxism, and the nature of language and textuality in relation to the Nobel Prize.
ALEXANDER SAMELY
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264744
- eISBN:
- 9780191734663
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264744.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This chapter examines historical reconstruction and literary structures of rabbinic texts using the Leviticus Rabbah as an example. It explains that Leviticus Rabbah is a commentary on the Book of ...
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This chapter examines historical reconstruction and literary structures of rabbinic texts using the Leviticus Rabbah as an example. It explains that Leviticus Rabbah is a commentary on the Book of Leviticus which now forms part of Midrash Rabbah. It proposes ten theses about the special problems which the literary structures of rabbinic texts pose for the historian and analyses a section of the amoraic work of Leviticus Rabbah to describe some of those literary structures. The findings suggest that it is impossible to explain how the textuality of rabbinic sources worked and that many rabbinic works fill the same functional position in a text more than once.Less
This chapter examines historical reconstruction and literary structures of rabbinic texts using the Leviticus Rabbah as an example. It explains that Leviticus Rabbah is a commentary on the Book of Leviticus which now forms part of Midrash Rabbah. It proposes ten theses about the special problems which the literary structures of rabbinic texts pose for the historian and analyses a section of the amoraic work of Leviticus Rabbah to describe some of those literary structures. The findings suggest that it is impossible to explain how the textuality of rabbinic sources worked and that many rabbinic works fill the same functional position in a text more than once.
Chris Stamatakis
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199644407
- eISBN:
- 9780191738821
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644407.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
This study reappraises Sir Thomas Wyatt (c.1504-1542) as a poetic innovator from the literary avant-garde of early Tudor England. It discusses Wyatt’s self-conscious reflections on the writing ...
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This study reappraises Sir Thomas Wyatt (c.1504-1542) as a poetic innovator from the literary avant-garde of early Tudor England. It discusses Wyatt’s self-conscious reflections on the writing process, and his awareness of how words are turned in new directions over the course of a text’s production, transmission and reception. Where previous studies have aligned Wyatt’s poetry with his courtly biography, this book examines the reading practices of his Tudor audiences and editors, and considers the types of textuality shown by the manuscript collections of his verse. By setting Wyatt’s writings in the context of sixteenth-century theories of language and literary practice, and by drawing on early Tudor educational treatises, rhetorical handbooks, and manuals of courtly behaviour, this monograph examines the rhetoric of rewriting that colours Wyatt’s texts. Repeatedly, his writings invite readers to ‘turn’ or perform the word—to draw out something that lies inert within it. These rescriptive habits often serve to sustain an intimate dialogue between writers and readers. Special attention is paid to the materiality of Wyatt’s texts: the margins around and the interlinear spaces within his poems are regularly filled with new text, supplied by Wyatt himself or by his copyists, editors and readers. Chapters are devoted to the types of rewriting found in each of Wyatt’s main genres: Plutarchian essays; forensic apologias; psalm paraphrases; letters and verse epistles, and lyrics or ‘balets’. Two appendices offer further detail about patterns of manuscript transmission. Throughout, this study argues that reading often shaded into writing (and rewriting) in the early sixteenth century, and that acts of apparent copying often transformed texts inventively.Less
This study reappraises Sir Thomas Wyatt (c.1504-1542) as a poetic innovator from the literary avant-garde of early Tudor England. It discusses Wyatt’s self-conscious reflections on the writing process, and his awareness of how words are turned in new directions over the course of a text’s production, transmission and reception. Where previous studies have aligned Wyatt’s poetry with his courtly biography, this book examines the reading practices of his Tudor audiences and editors, and considers the types of textuality shown by the manuscript collections of his verse. By setting Wyatt’s writings in the context of sixteenth-century theories of language and literary practice, and by drawing on early Tudor educational treatises, rhetorical handbooks, and manuals of courtly behaviour, this monograph examines the rhetoric of rewriting that colours Wyatt’s texts. Repeatedly, his writings invite readers to ‘turn’ or perform the word—to draw out something that lies inert within it. These rescriptive habits often serve to sustain an intimate dialogue between writers and readers. Special attention is paid to the materiality of Wyatt’s texts: the margins around and the interlinear spaces within his poems are regularly filled with new text, supplied by Wyatt himself or by his copyists, editors and readers. Chapters are devoted to the types of rewriting found in each of Wyatt’s main genres: Plutarchian essays; forensic apologias; psalm paraphrases; letters and verse epistles, and lyrics or ‘balets’. Two appendices offer further detail about patterns of manuscript transmission. Throughout, this study argues that reading often shaded into writing (and rewriting) in the early sixteenth century, and that acts of apparent copying often transformed texts inventively.
David M. Carr
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199742608
- eISBN:
- 9780199918737
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199742608.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This book rethinks both the methods and historical orientation points for research into the growth of the Hebrew Bible. Building on his prior work, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart (Oxford, 2005), ...
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This book rethinks both the methods and historical orientation points for research into the growth of the Hebrew Bible. Building on his prior work, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart (Oxford, 2005), the author explores the possibilities and limits of reconstruction of pre-stages of the Bible. The method advocated is a “methodologically modest” investigation of those pre-stages, utilizing criteria and models derived from the author’s survey of documented examples of textual revision in the Ancient Near East. The result is a new picture of the Bible’s formation, with insights on the emergence of Hebrew literary textuality, the development of the first Hexateuch, and the final formation of the Hebrew Bible. Where some have advocated dating the bulk of the Hebrew Bible in a single period, whether relatively early (Neo-Assyrian) or late (Persian or Hellenistic), the author uncovers evidence that the Hebrew Bible contains texts dating across Israelite history, even the early pre-exilic period (10th-9th centuries) where many recent studies have been hesitant to date substantial portions of the Bible. He traces the impact of Neo-Assyrian imperialism on eighth and seventh century Israelite textuality, uses studies of collective trauma to identify marks of the reshaping and collection of traditions in response to the destruction of Jerusalem and Babylonian exile, develops a picture of varied Priestly reshaping of narrative and prophetic traditions in the Second Temple period, and uses manuscript evidence from Qumran and the Septuagint to reveal the final literary reshaping that produced the proto-Masoretic text.Less
This book rethinks both the methods and historical orientation points for research into the growth of the Hebrew Bible. Building on his prior work, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart (Oxford, 2005), the author explores the possibilities and limits of reconstruction of pre-stages of the Bible. The method advocated is a “methodologically modest” investigation of those pre-stages, utilizing criteria and models derived from the author’s survey of documented examples of textual revision in the Ancient Near East. The result is a new picture of the Bible’s formation, with insights on the emergence of Hebrew literary textuality, the development of the first Hexateuch, and the final formation of the Hebrew Bible. Where some have advocated dating the bulk of the Hebrew Bible in a single period, whether relatively early (Neo-Assyrian) or late (Persian or Hellenistic), the author uncovers evidence that the Hebrew Bible contains texts dating across Israelite history, even the early pre-exilic period (10th-9th centuries) where many recent studies have been hesitant to date substantial portions of the Bible. He traces the impact of Neo-Assyrian imperialism on eighth and seventh century Israelite textuality, uses studies of collective trauma to identify marks of the reshaping and collection of traditions in response to the destruction of Jerusalem and Babylonian exile, develops a picture of varied Priestly reshaping of narrative and prophetic traditions in the Second Temple period, and uses manuscript evidence from Qumran and the Septuagint to reveal the final literary reshaping that produced the proto-Masoretic text.
Chris Stamatakis
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199644407
- eISBN:
- 9780191738821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644407.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Poetry
This introductory chapter studies the idea of verbal turning in Wyatt’s writing—both as a theme within his texts, and as rescriptive traces that colour the material condition of those texts. Wyatt ...
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This introductory chapter studies the idea of verbal turning in Wyatt’s writing—both as a theme within his texts, and as rescriptive traces that colour the material condition of those texts. Wyatt theorises two key principles of verbal transformation: ‘misreporting’ and ‘difference’. Even slight or innocuous acts of rescription—whether by Wyatt’s own hand or by his scribes, compilers and readers—can markedly transform meaning. This textual mutability not only frustrates biographical identifications, but also forces us to understand Wyatt’s authorship through the scriptive interventions of copyists and editors, as his verse is multifariously handled during its transmission and reception. Consideration is made of the different material textualities that characterise Wyatt’s manuscript volumes, and of the fascination with answer poetry in these collections. The chapter also examines the interplay of copying and copia (verbal abundance) and the importance of collational reading practices in the early sixteenth century.Less
This introductory chapter studies the idea of verbal turning in Wyatt’s writing—both as a theme within his texts, and as rescriptive traces that colour the material condition of those texts. Wyatt theorises two key principles of verbal transformation: ‘misreporting’ and ‘difference’. Even slight or innocuous acts of rescription—whether by Wyatt’s own hand or by his scribes, compilers and readers—can markedly transform meaning. This textual mutability not only frustrates biographical identifications, but also forces us to understand Wyatt’s authorship through the scriptive interventions of copyists and editors, as his verse is multifariously handled during its transmission and reception. Consideration is made of the different material textualities that characterise Wyatt’s manuscript volumes, and of the fascination with answer poetry in these collections. The chapter also examines the interplay of copying and copia (verbal abundance) and the importance of collational reading practices in the early sixteenth century.
Howard Felperin
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122654
- eISBN:
- 9780191671517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122654.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
In one of the strongest new-historicist re-readings of The Tempest to date, Francis Barker and Peter Hulme express misgivings about an alternate ...
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In one of the strongest new-historicist re-readings of The Tempest to date, Francis Barker and Peter Hulme express misgivings about an alternate version of their own enterprise: the political re-interpretation of early modern texts. One problem, experienced by Barker and Hulme as pressure from opposite directions, is to establish a working relation, not just between ‘history’ and ‘texts’, but, more dangerously, between the ‘historicity of the text’ and the ‘textuality of history’. Fortunately, there is also a solution, or at the very least a means of negotiating this antagonism between the ‘historicity of the text’ and the ‘textuality of history’: namely, the Foucauldian notion of the ‘discursive con-text’. Another discourse articulated with and within The Tempest, ‘linked’ perhaps to the discourse of colonialism, is the ‘discourse of utopia’. While Thomas More is at pains in his Utopia to re-define the authority of governors well short of absolutism, his re-definitions themselves fall short of anything like a systematic redistribution of power.Less
In one of the strongest new-historicist re-readings of The Tempest to date, Francis Barker and Peter Hulme express misgivings about an alternate version of their own enterprise: the political re-interpretation of early modern texts. One problem, experienced by Barker and Hulme as pressure from opposite directions, is to establish a working relation, not just between ‘history’ and ‘texts’, but, more dangerously, between the ‘historicity of the text’ and the ‘textuality of history’. Fortunately, there is also a solution, or at the very least a means of negotiating this antagonism between the ‘historicity of the text’ and the ‘textuality of history’: namely, the Foucauldian notion of the ‘discursive con-text’. Another discourse articulated with and within The Tempest, ‘linked’ perhaps to the discourse of colonialism, is the ‘discourse of utopia’. While Thomas More is at pains in his Utopia to re-define the authority of governors well short of absolutism, his re-definitions themselves fall short of anything like a systematic redistribution of power.
Howard Felperin
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122654
- eISBN:
- 9780191671517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122654.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines some of the weaknesses of the new historicism, including certain methodological and epistemological problems raised but not ...
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This chapter examines some of the weaknesses of the new historicism, including certain methodological and epistemological problems raised but not resolved by its practices. These problems arise out of the difficulty or impossibility of producing a ‘textualist’ or ‘post-structuralist’ history, and are themselves contradictions of the new historicism's moment of emergence, indications of its underlying continuity with older habits of thought to which it is overtly opposed. Two distinct historicisms are explored: cultural poetics and cultural materialism. What they have in common is a post-structuralist understanding of literature and history as constructed textuality or, to the extent that traditional oppositions between the ‘literary’ and the ‘historical’ have been shown by this school to be deconstructible, as constructed intertextuality. This way of proceeding is sometimes termed ‘contextualism’; but more usefully for our purposes, it is also ‘conventionalism’.Less
This chapter examines some of the weaknesses of the new historicism, including certain methodological and epistemological problems raised but not resolved by its practices. These problems arise out of the difficulty or impossibility of producing a ‘textualist’ or ‘post-structuralist’ history, and are themselves contradictions of the new historicism's moment of emergence, indications of its underlying continuity with older habits of thought to which it is overtly opposed. Two distinct historicisms are explored: cultural poetics and cultural materialism. What they have in common is a post-structuralist understanding of literature and history as constructed textuality or, to the extent that traditional oppositions between the ‘literary’ and the ‘historical’ have been shown by this school to be deconstructible, as constructed intertextuality. This way of proceeding is sometimes termed ‘contextualism’; but more usefully for our purposes, it is also ‘conventionalism’.
A. C. Spearing
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198187240
- eISBN:
- 9780191719035
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187240.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter defines the book’s theme as the linguistic encoding of subjectivity in medieval narratives and lyrics, as opposed to their representation of subjectivity or its disputed history. It ...
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This chapter defines the book’s theme as the linguistic encoding of subjectivity in medieval narratives and lyrics, as opposed to their representation of subjectivity or its disputed history. It argues the need for narrative theorists and medievalists to bring together studies usually conducted in isolation. It emphasizes the textual nature of medieval culture and its survival as texts, not voices. Derrida’s critique of the assumption that writing represents speech is used to question the common-sense view that consciousness must precede narrative. Theories of narratorless narrative (Hamburger, Kuroda, Banfield) are examined, while Hamburger’s fiction/reality distinction is questioned in the light of the medieval expectation of retelling and of the shifting deixis of pre-Chaucerian prologues. Modernist deconstruction of selves as the basis of texts is seen as reversing the process that led Chaucer to begin suggesting the priority of consciousness to narrative.Less
This chapter defines the book’s theme as the linguistic encoding of subjectivity in medieval narratives and lyrics, as opposed to their representation of subjectivity or its disputed history. It argues the need for narrative theorists and medievalists to bring together studies usually conducted in isolation. It emphasizes the textual nature of medieval culture and its survival as texts, not voices. Derrida’s critique of the assumption that writing represents speech is used to question the common-sense view that consciousness must precede narrative. Theories of narratorless narrative (Hamburger, Kuroda, Banfield) are examined, while Hamburger’s fiction/reality distinction is questioned in the light of the medieval expectation of retelling and of the shifting deixis of pre-Chaucerian prologues. Modernist deconstruction of selves as the basis of texts is seen as reversing the process that led Chaucer to begin suggesting the priority of consciousness to narrative.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199299287
- eISBN:
- 9780191715099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299287.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses Paul Muldoon's dealings with Byron and other Romantics in ‘Madoc: A Mystery’, and looks at the degree to which Muldoon interweaves a post-modern absorption in textuality with a ...
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This chapter discusses Paul Muldoon's dealings with Byron and other Romantics in ‘Madoc: A Mystery’, and looks at the degree to which Muldoon interweaves a post-modern absorption in textuality with a post-colonial critique and emerges with a post-Romantic recommitment to imaginative power, here reconceived as fictive linguistic play. Muldoon is found to be more insinuating and indirect than Byron, for all the Irish poet's admiration for the Byron who relishes ‘the rhyme on ‘Aristotle’ and ‘bottle’’. The chapter explores the ways in which Muldoon delights in the ludic and autonomous life of his words, a delight that militates against the expression of unambiguous convictions. It explores how the portrayal of Coleridge, Southey, Thomas Moore, and Byron in ‘Madoc’ involves Muldoon in playful, darkly comic critiques of the Romantic. The chapter argues that Muldoon does not simply retreat into textuality, and contends that the poet breathes new, if post-modernist, life into the Romantic quest poem.Less
This chapter discusses Paul Muldoon's dealings with Byron and other Romantics in ‘Madoc: A Mystery’, and looks at the degree to which Muldoon interweaves a post-modern absorption in textuality with a post-colonial critique and emerges with a post-Romantic recommitment to imaginative power, here reconceived as fictive linguistic play. Muldoon is found to be more insinuating and indirect than Byron, for all the Irish poet's admiration for the Byron who relishes ‘the rhyme on ‘Aristotle’ and ‘bottle’’. The chapter explores the ways in which Muldoon delights in the ludic and autonomous life of his words, a delight that militates against the expression of unambiguous convictions. It explores how the portrayal of Coleridge, Southey, Thomas Moore, and Byron in ‘Madoc’ involves Muldoon in playful, darkly comic critiques of the Romantic. The chapter argues that Muldoon does not simply retreat into textuality, and contends that the poet breathes new, if post-modernist, life into the Romantic quest poem.
Hugh Grady
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198130048
- eISBN:
- 9780191671906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198130048.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
The influence of Postmodernism in Shakespeare studies has been multidimensional. In textualist deconstruction, to take one of the first of the newer ...
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The influence of Postmodernism in Shakespeare studies has been multidimensional. In textualist deconstruction, to take one of the first of the newer critical paradigms, Postmodernist assumptions have operated as part of the anti-hierarchical, relativizing textuality at the heart of the method. In various forms of feminism, its influence can be felt in terms of the desacralization inherent in posing uncomfortable political questions and anti-hierarchical analyses to so revered a figure as William Shakespeare. This book deals with reification — the property of social systems to act through their own objective logic, as if they possessed an autonomous intentionality — in Shakespeare's most celebrated works. The concepts of new historicism, cultural materialism, humanism, and subjectivity are also discussed.Less
The influence of Postmodernism in Shakespeare studies has been multidimensional. In textualist deconstruction, to take one of the first of the newer critical paradigms, Postmodernist assumptions have operated as part of the anti-hierarchical, relativizing textuality at the heart of the method. In various forms of feminism, its influence can be felt in terms of the desacralization inherent in posing uncomfortable political questions and anti-hierarchical analyses to so revered a figure as William Shakespeare. This book deals with reification — the property of social systems to act through their own objective logic, as if they possessed an autonomous intentionality — in Shakespeare's most celebrated works. The concepts of new historicism, cultural materialism, humanism, and subjectivity are also discussed.
Allen Renear
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198236634
- eISBN:
- 9780191679315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198236634.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter focuses on computer text processing, and, more specifically, computer text encoding. It shows two things. First, that the particular community which has been designing and configuring ...
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This chapter focuses on computer text processing, and, more specifically, computer text encoding. It shows two things. First, that the particular community which has been designing and configuring computer text-processing and encoding systems has evolved a rich body of illuminating theory about the nature of text — theory that is useful to anyone who would create, manage, or use electronic text. Second, the chapter suggests that the significance of this body of theory and analysis extends well beyond the specific concerns of text processing and text encoding and contributes directly to the understanding of the deepest issues of textuality and textual communication in general. In addition, the chapter describes the domain of text processing and text encoding and discusses several representational strategies involved in text processing, and content-based encoding.Less
This chapter focuses on computer text processing, and, more specifically, computer text encoding. It shows two things. First, that the particular community which has been designing and configuring computer text-processing and encoding systems has evolved a rich body of illuminating theory about the nature of text — theory that is useful to anyone who would create, manage, or use electronic text. Second, the chapter suggests that the significance of this body of theory and analysis extends well beyond the specific concerns of text processing and text encoding and contributes directly to the understanding of the deepest issues of textuality and textual communication in general. In addition, the chapter describes the domain of text processing and text encoding and discusses several representational strategies involved in text processing, and content-based encoding.
Julia Flanders
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198236634
- eISBN:
- 9780191679315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198236634.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Electronic texts are implicated with peculiar force in this notion of the virtual, because the understanding of textuality originates in the same philosophical crux as the ideas of physicality and ...
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Electronic texts are implicated with peculiar force in this notion of the virtual, because the understanding of textuality originates in the same philosophical crux as the ideas of physicality and representation. The electronic text's lack of, or freedom from, a body is a crucial focus for the anxieties and hopes which attach to the new medium. Elegists and enthusiasts alike focus on their assessment of the political and cultural influence of the electronic text on its virtuality. The politics of the traditional text and its production have always had a great deal to do with gender, though not always in an obvious manner. In order to understand the deep-rooted implication of gender in textual beliefs and practices, this chapter takes a brief excursus into the history which has produced the notion of the ‘traditional text’.Less
Electronic texts are implicated with peculiar force in this notion of the virtual, because the understanding of textuality originates in the same philosophical crux as the ideas of physicality and representation. The electronic text's lack of, or freedom from, a body is a crucial focus for the anxieties and hopes which attach to the new medium. Elegists and enthusiasts alike focus on their assessment of the political and cultural influence of the electronic text on its virtuality. The politics of the traditional text and its production have always had a great deal to do with gender, though not always in an obvious manner. In order to understand the deep-rooted implication of gender in textual beliefs and practices, this chapter takes a brief excursus into the history which has produced the notion of the ‘traditional text’.
Hester Lees-Jeffries
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199230785
- eISBN:
- 9780191696473
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230785.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
A brief conclusion considers the case for the ways of reading texts, images, objects, and landscapes that the this book has explored, advocating a modus legendi that is active, participatory, and ...
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A brief conclusion considers the case for the ways of reading texts, images, objects, and landscapes that the this book has explored, advocating a modus legendi that is active, participatory, and concertedly interdisciplinary. It suggests that early modern texts should be treated not merely as being complemented by, but as coextensive with, other cultural productions, arguing for a labour of imagination that seeks less to recreate ‘authentic’ historical experiences than to reanimate the lively and interconnected intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic principles in which they were grounded. This book has at several points employed the metaphor of the palimpsest to describe the textuality of landscape, an image used by Thomas Greene to describe the way in which Francis Petrarch apprehended the ruins of Rome.Less
A brief conclusion considers the case for the ways of reading texts, images, objects, and landscapes that the this book has explored, advocating a modus legendi that is active, participatory, and concertedly interdisciplinary. It suggests that early modern texts should be treated not merely as being complemented by, but as coextensive with, other cultural productions, arguing for a labour of imagination that seeks less to recreate ‘authentic’ historical experiences than to reanimate the lively and interconnected intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic principles in which they were grounded. This book has at several points employed the metaphor of the palimpsest to describe the textuality of landscape, an image used by Thomas Greene to describe the way in which Francis Petrarch apprehended the ruins of Rome.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. ...
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This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.Less
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.
David M. Carr
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199742608
- eISBN:
- 9780199918737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199742608.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter introduces the focus of the book on methodological and historical orientation points for study of the formation of the Hebrew Bible. Starting with an overview of the breakdown of ...
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This chapter introduces the focus of the book on methodological and historical orientation points for study of the formation of the Hebrew Bible. Starting with an overview of the breakdown of consensus on many key points of past biblical scholarship (e.g. formation of the Pentateuch, dating of the prophets), the chapter then moves to a brief summary of dynamics of memory, textuality and performance involved in the writing and revision of ancient literary-theological texts like the Hebrew Bible (synthesizing research from the author’s Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature [Oxford, 2005]). The balance of the chapter outlines the goals and central themes of the three major sections of the book.Less
This chapter introduces the focus of the book on methodological and historical orientation points for study of the formation of the Hebrew Bible. Starting with an overview of the breakdown of consensus on many key points of past biblical scholarship (e.g. formation of the Pentateuch, dating of the prophets), the chapter then moves to a brief summary of dynamics of memory, textuality and performance involved in the writing and revision of ancient literary-theological texts like the Hebrew Bible (synthesizing research from the author’s Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature [Oxford, 2005]). The balance of the chapter outlines the goals and central themes of the three major sections of the book.
