Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199230204
- eISBN:
- 9780191710681
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230204.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
The works of Ambrosiaster, a Christian writing in Rome in the late 4th century, were influential on at the time and throughout the Middle Ages. This book starts by addressing the problem of the ...
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The works of Ambrosiaster, a Christian writing in Rome in the late 4th century, were influential on at the time and throughout the Middle Ages. This book starts by addressing the problem of the author's mysterious identity (which scholars have puzzled over for centuries) and places him in a broad historical and intellectual context. Later, it addresses Ambrosiaster's political theology, an idea which has been explored in other late Roman Christian writers but which has never been addressed in his works. The book also looks at how Ambrosiaster's attitudes to social and political order were formed on the basis of theological concepts and the interpretation of scripture, and shows that he espoused a rigid hierarchical and monarchical organization in the church, society, and the Roman empire. He also traced close connections between the Devil, characterized as a rebel against God, and the earthly tyrants and usurpers who followed his example.Less
The works of Ambrosiaster, a Christian writing in Rome in the late 4th century, were influential on at the time and throughout the Middle Ages. This book starts by addressing the problem of the author's mysterious identity (which scholars have puzzled over for centuries) and places him in a broad historical and intellectual context. Later, it addresses Ambrosiaster's political theology, an idea which has been explored in other late Roman Christian writers but which has never been addressed in his works. The book also looks at how Ambrosiaster's attitudes to social and political order were formed on the basis of theological concepts and the interpretation of scripture, and shows that he espoused a rigid hierarchical and monarchical organization in the church, society, and the Roman empire. He also traced close connections between the Devil, characterized as a rebel against God, and the earthly tyrants and usurpers who followed his example.
Bernard Green
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199534951
- eISBN:
- 9780191715990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199534951.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This final chapter looks back at the book's intentions and makes some conclusions. The book has attempted to explore Leo the Great's formation and achievement as a theologian. Examining his ...
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This final chapter looks back at the book's intentions and makes some conclusions. The book has attempted to explore Leo the Great's formation and achievement as a theologian. Examining his background it has tried to illuminate his motives as a preacher and writer and the resources available to him. By looking at the society and Church he addressed, it has attempted to shed light on the effect he hoped to achieve which in turn has allowed for the assessment of what he did in fact achieve. By reading his work, the development of his ideas, his growing skill and confidence as a theologian, and the characteristic preoccupations of his thought can be traced.Less
This final chapter looks back at the book's intentions and makes some conclusions. The book has attempted to explore Leo the Great's formation and achievement as a theologian. Examining his background it has tried to illuminate his motives as a preacher and writer and the resources available to him. By looking at the society and Church he addressed, it has attempted to shed light on the effect he hoped to achieve which in turn has allowed for the assessment of what he did in fact achieve. By reading his work, the development of his ideas, his growing skill and confidence as a theologian, and the characteristic preoccupations of his thought can be traced.
E. W. Heaton
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- April 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780198263623
- eISBN:
- 9780191601156
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198263627.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The books of the Old Testament are often thought of as being remote and ‘primitive’. In fact, they were written by thoroughly learned men, educated in the traditional schools of ancient Israel. This ...
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The books of the Old Testament are often thought of as being remote and ‘primitive’. In fact, they were written by thoroughly learned men, educated in the traditional schools of ancient Israel. This book presents a fresh and enlivening case for the strong influence that this schooling must have had on the writers of the stories, poetry and proverbs of the Bible. The eight Bampton Lectures that form the first eight chapters of this book were delivered in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, UK. The topics covered are: the evidence for schools in ancient Israel; comparisons between Egyptian and Israeli school-books and literature; ‘wisdom’ and school traditions in the Old Testament books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; the school tradition in the literary style of the teachings of the prophets and teachers; the narrative skills of the Jerusalem school tradition in the stories of the Old Testament; doubt and pessimism as expressed in Job and Ecclesiastes; and various aspects of belief and behaviour in the Old Testament, as reflected in the school tradition. The last chapter is a summing-up. The book is of interest to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or religious studies, both in Judaism and Christianity.Less
The books of the Old Testament are often thought of as being remote and ‘primitive’. In fact, they were written by thoroughly learned men, educated in the traditional schools of ancient Israel. This book presents a fresh and enlivening case for the strong influence that this schooling must have had on the writers of the stories, poetry and proverbs of the Bible. The eight Bampton Lectures that form the first eight chapters of this book were delivered in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, UK. The topics covered are: the evidence for schools in ancient Israel; comparisons between Egyptian and Israeli school-books and literature; ‘wisdom’ and school traditions in the Old Testament books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; the school tradition in the literary style of the teachings of the prophets and teachers; the narrative skills of the Jerusalem school tradition in the stories of the Old Testament; doubt and pessimism as expressed in Job and Ecclesiastes; and various aspects of belief and behaviour in the Old Testament, as reflected in the school tradition. The last chapter is a summing-up. The book is of interest to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or religious studies, both in Judaism and Christianity.
Jack Hayward
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199216314
- eISBN:
- 9780191712265
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199216314.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, European Union
The contrast between an urbanizing and industrializing society and an enduring peasant and artisan population is emphasized, while the business-political elite networks achieved maximum power by the ...
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The contrast between an urbanizing and industrializing society and an enduring peasant and artisan population is emphasized, while the business-political elite networks achieved maximum power by the late 19th century. The clerical-anti-clerical struggle for control of education results in the victory of secularism. Committed historians shaped the dominant political culture, although writers (Chateaubriand, Balzac, Stendhal, Lamartine, Baudelaire, Hugo) and artists (Delacroix, Daumier, Courbet) were influential.Less
The contrast between an urbanizing and industrializing society and an enduring peasant and artisan population is emphasized, while the business-political elite networks achieved maximum power by the late 19th century. The clerical-anti-clerical struggle for control of education results in the victory of secularism. Committed historians shaped the dominant political culture, although writers (Chateaubriand, Balzac, Stendhal, Lamartine, Baudelaire, Hugo) and artists (Delacroix, Daumier, Courbet) were influential.
Isobel Hurst
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199283514
- eISBN:
- 9780191712715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283514.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Virginia Woolf's ironic attitude to the classics in On Not Knowing Greek is examined not as the bitterness of a woman who has been excluded from patriarchal culture, but as a fascinating and ...
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Virginia Woolf's ironic attitude to the classics in On Not Knowing Greek is examined not as the bitterness of a woman who has been excluded from patriarchal culture, but as a fascinating and idiosyncratic response to Greek, which owes much to her female predecessors. Not knowing the Greeks is not seen as a gendered deprivation, but a limitation which can only be overcome by using the imagination: finding pleasure in the strangeness of a new language and creating contemporary forms of literature in response to ancient myth are crucial to the development of the woman writer.Less
Virginia Woolf's ironic attitude to the classics in On Not Knowing Greek is examined not as the bitterness of a woman who has been excluded from patriarchal culture, but as a fascinating and idiosyncratic response to Greek, which owes much to her female predecessors. Not knowing the Greeks is not seen as a gendered deprivation, but a limitation which can only be overcome by using the imagination: finding pleasure in the strangeness of a new language and creating contemporary forms of literature in response to ancient myth are crucial to the development of the woman writer.
Adrienne Lehrer
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195307931
- eISBN:
- 9780199867493
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195307931.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
The vocabulary of wine is large and exceptionally vibrant—from straight-forward descriptive words like “sweet” and “fragrant”, colorful metaphors like “ostentatious” and “brash”, to the more ...
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The vocabulary of wine is large and exceptionally vibrant—from straight-forward descriptive words like “sweet” and “fragrant”, colorful metaphors like “ostentatious” and “brash”, to the more technical lexicon of biochemistry. The world of wine vocabulary is growing alongside the current popularity of wine itself, particularly as new words are employed by professional wine writers, who not only want to write interesting prose, but avoid repetition and cliché. The question is: what do these words mean? Can they actually reflect the objective characteristics of wine, and can two drinkers really use and understand these words in the same way? This book explores whether or not wine drinkers (both novices and experts) can in fact understand wine words in the same way. The conclusion, based on experimental results, is no. Even though experts do somewhat better than novices in some experiments, they tend to do well only on wines on which they are carefully trained and/or with which they are very familiar. Does this mean that the elaborate language we use to describe wine is essentially a charade? This book shows that although scientific wine writing requires a precise and shared use of language, drinking wine and talking about it in casual, informal setting with friends is different, and the conversational goals include social bonding as well as communicating information about the wine. The book also shows how language innovation and language play, clearly seen in the names of new wines and wineries, as well as wine descriptors, is yet another influence on the burgeoning and sometimes whimsical world of wine vocabulary.Less
The vocabulary of wine is large and exceptionally vibrant—from straight-forward descriptive words like “sweet” and “fragrant”, colorful metaphors like “ostentatious” and “brash”, to the more technical lexicon of biochemistry. The world of wine vocabulary is growing alongside the current popularity of wine itself, particularly as new words are employed by professional wine writers, who not only want to write interesting prose, but avoid repetition and cliché. The question is: what do these words mean? Can they actually reflect the objective characteristics of wine, and can two drinkers really use and understand these words in the same way? This book explores whether or not wine drinkers (both novices and experts) can in fact understand wine words in the same way. The conclusion, based on experimental results, is no. Even though experts do somewhat better than novices in some experiments, they tend to do well only on wines on which they are carefully trained and/or with which they are very familiar. Does this mean that the elaborate language we use to describe wine is essentially a charade? This book shows that although scientific wine writing requires a precise and shared use of language, drinking wine and talking about it in casual, informal setting with friends is different, and the conversational goals include social bonding as well as communicating information about the wine. The book also shows how language innovation and language play, clearly seen in the names of new wines and wineries, as well as wine descriptors, is yet another influence on the burgeoning and sometimes whimsical world of wine vocabulary.
Neil Corcoran
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198186908
- eISBN:
- 9780191719011
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186908.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book offers a critical account of Elizabeth Bowen, a significant 20th-century Irish writer still too little known and appreciated. It considers her novels, short stories, essays, and family ...
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This book offers a critical account of Elizabeth Bowen, a significant 20th-century Irish writer still too little known and appreciated. It considers her novels, short stories, essays, and family history, showing how her work both inherits from the Modernist movement and transforms its experimental traditions. The book explores Bowen's adaptation of Irish Protestant Gothic in relation to the Troubles of the 1920s and the Second World War, especially the London Blitz. It reads her explorations of childhood as a response both to Henry James and to the European novel of adultery. Focusing on the ideas of return and reflex, it reads the presence of the supernatural, and of other kinds of haunting, in her work in relation to concepts drawn from both Freud and T. S. Eliot. The book also makes use of non-fictional materials in its interpretations, notably, Bowen's wartime reports from neutral Ireland and the diaries of her wartime lover Charles Ritchie. The intention is to demonstrate the ways in which Bowen's writing merges personal story with public history. The book's radical readings, which depend on a wealth of original research, propose that Bowen is as important to 20th-century literary studies as her much better-known Irish Protestant fellow writer, Samuel Beckett.Less
This book offers a critical account of Elizabeth Bowen, a significant 20th-century Irish writer still too little known and appreciated. It considers her novels, short stories, essays, and family history, showing how her work both inherits from the Modernist movement and transforms its experimental traditions. The book explores Bowen's adaptation of Irish Protestant Gothic in relation to the Troubles of the 1920s and the Second World War, especially the London Blitz. It reads her explorations of childhood as a response both to Henry James and to the European novel of adultery. Focusing on the ideas of return and reflex, it reads the presence of the supernatural, and of other kinds of haunting, in her work in relation to concepts drawn from both Freud and T. S. Eliot. The book also makes use of non-fictional materials in its interpretations, notably, Bowen's wartime reports from neutral Ireland and the diaries of her wartime lover Charles Ritchie. The intention is to demonstrate the ways in which Bowen's writing merges personal story with public history. The book's radical readings, which depend on a wealth of original research, propose that Bowen is as important to 20th-century literary studies as her much better-known Irish Protestant fellow writer, Samuel Beckett.
Michael North
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195173567
- eISBN:
- 9780199787906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195173567.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Modern writers value modern recording media because of the novelty these have incorporated into the sensory experience of modern times. Yet, it is interesting to note that for many American writers, ...
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Modern writers value modern recording media because of the novelty these have incorporated into the sensory experience of modern times. Yet, it is interesting to note that for many American writers, race seems to set a limit to the innovation such media can bring. There is a reminder, even in the most experimental of these writers, of the deadliness of recording, and the retrograde force it exerts even as recording media accelerate the pace of change in the modern world.Less
Modern writers value modern recording media because of the novelty these have incorporated into the sensory experience of modern times. Yet, it is interesting to note that for many American writers, race seems to set a limit to the innovation such media can bring. There is a reminder, even in the most experimental of these writers, of the deadliness of recording, and the retrograde force it exerts even as recording media accelerate the pace of change in the modern world.
Elaine Showalter
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198123835
- eISBN:
- 9780191671616
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198123835.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Are American women writers from different eras and different backgrounds connected by common threads in a coherent tradition? How have the relationships between women's rights, women's rites, and ...
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Are American women writers from different eras and different backgrounds connected by common threads in a coherent tradition? How have the relationships between women's rights, women's rites, and women's writing figured in the history of literature by women in the United States? Drawing on a wide range of writers from Margaret Fuller to Alice Walker, the author argues that post-colonial as well as feminist literary theory can help in understanding the hybrid, intertextual, and changing forms of American women's writing, and the way that ‘women's culture’ intersects with other cultural forms. She looks closely at three American classics – Little Women, The Awakening, and The House of Mirth – and traces the transformations in such major themes, images, and genres of American women's writing as the American Miranda, the Female Gothic, and the patchwork quilt. Ending with a moving description of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, she shows how the women's tradition is a literary quilt that offers a new map of a changing America.Less
Are American women writers from different eras and different backgrounds connected by common threads in a coherent tradition? How have the relationships between women's rights, women's rites, and women's writing figured in the history of literature by women in the United States? Drawing on a wide range of writers from Margaret Fuller to Alice Walker, the author argues that post-colonial as well as feminist literary theory can help in understanding the hybrid, intertextual, and changing forms of American women's writing, and the way that ‘women's culture’ intersects with other cultural forms. She looks closely at three American classics – Little Women, The Awakening, and The House of Mirth – and traces the transformations in such major themes, images, and genres of American women's writing as the American Miranda, the Female Gothic, and the patchwork quilt. Ending with a moving description of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, she shows how the women's tradition is a literary quilt that offers a new map of a changing America.
Richard S. Lowry
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195102123
- eISBN:
- 9780199855087
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195102123.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
As Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens became one of America's first modern celebrities, successfully straddling the conflicts between culture and commerce. Twain manipulated the cultural outlets of his day, ...
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As Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens became one of America's first modern celebrities, successfully straddling the conflicts between culture and commerce. Twain manipulated the cultural outlets of his day, not only through publication of his diverse novels, but through newspapers, magazines, book reviews, advertising, and his popular performances and readings. This book examines a range of Twain's major works to show how the writer strove to establish his authority over the course of his career. For the author, Samuel Clemens's supreme fiction and most explicitly artful performance was Mark Twain, the fiction that authorized his fiction. The author reconstructs that performance as the moment at which the American Writer emerged as a profession. He gives attention to the historical and cultural context of the Gilded age, from Twain's influential contemporary William Dean Howells to the various genre books that Twain consistently mastered, e.g. travel guidebooks, manuals for boys, and autobiographies. The result is that this book will appeal to both Twain scholars and to scholars and students of nineteenth-century American literature and culture.Less
As Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens became one of America's first modern celebrities, successfully straddling the conflicts between culture and commerce. Twain manipulated the cultural outlets of his day, not only through publication of his diverse novels, but through newspapers, magazines, book reviews, advertising, and his popular performances and readings. This book examines a range of Twain's major works to show how the writer strove to establish his authority over the course of his career. For the author, Samuel Clemens's supreme fiction and most explicitly artful performance was Mark Twain, the fiction that authorized his fiction. The author reconstructs that performance as the moment at which the American Writer emerged as a profession. He gives attention to the historical and cultural context of the Gilded age, from Twain's influential contemporary William Dean Howells to the various genre books that Twain consistently mastered, e.g. travel guidebooks, manuals for boys, and autobiographies. The result is that this book will appeal to both Twain scholars and to scholars and students of nineteenth-century American literature and culture.
Jane Wood
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187608
- eISBN:
- 9780191674723
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187608.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In what was once described as ‘the century of nerves’, a fascination with the mysterious processes governing physical and psychological states was shared by medical and fiction writers alike. This ...
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In what was once described as ‘the century of nerves’, a fascination with the mysterious processes governing physical and psychological states was shared by medical and fiction writers alike. This elegant study offers an integrated analysis of how medicine and literature figured the connection between the body and the mind. The book looks at some of the century's most influential neurological and physiological theories, and gives readings of both major and relatively neglected fictions — a range which includes work by Charlotte Brontë and George MacDonald, George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing. Stepping into an already lively area of interdisciplinary debate, this book is distinguished by its recognition of the intellectual and imaginative force of both discourses: it extends our understanding of the interaction between science and literature in the wider culture of the period.Less
In what was once described as ‘the century of nerves’, a fascination with the mysterious processes governing physical and psychological states was shared by medical and fiction writers alike. This elegant study offers an integrated analysis of how medicine and literature figured the connection between the body and the mind. The book looks at some of the century's most influential neurological and physiological theories, and gives readings of both major and relatively neglected fictions — a range which includes work by Charlotte Brontë and George MacDonald, George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing. Stepping into an already lively area of interdisciplinary debate, this book is distinguished by its recognition of the intellectual and imaginative force of both discourses: it extends our understanding of the interaction between science and literature in the wider culture of the period.
Peter Hulme
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112150
- eISBN:
- 9780191670688
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112150.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This book aims to take travel writing seriously as an object of scholarly attention. To that end, it has attempted to bring techniques of literary analysis to travel writing, has researched travel ...
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This book aims to take travel writing seriously as an object of scholarly attention. To that end, it has attempted to bring techniques of literary analysis to travel writing, has researched travel writers whose work has previously been given little attention, and has tried to understand the body of modern travel writing about the Caribs in Dominica. It has given particular weight to the late 19th-century contexts that produced the work of Frederick Ober in the United States and Hesketh Bell in Britain because of their key significance as founders of the modern discourse about the Caribs. However, the book has also chosen to emphasize the local context of the Carib Reserve itself, judging that special place, which cannot be understood in isolation from Dominica as a whole.Less
This book aims to take travel writing seriously as an object of scholarly attention. To that end, it has attempted to bring techniques of literary analysis to travel writing, has researched travel writers whose work has previously been given little attention, and has tried to understand the body of modern travel writing about the Caribs in Dominica. It has given particular weight to the late 19th-century contexts that produced the work of Frederick Ober in the United States and Hesketh Bell in Britain because of their key significance as founders of the modern discourse about the Caribs. However, the book has also chosen to emphasize the local context of the Carib Reserve itself, judging that special place, which cannot be understood in isolation from Dominica as a whole.
Ian Ker
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199569106
- eISBN:
- 9780191702044
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569106.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This full-length life of John Henry Newman is a comprehensive biography of both the man and the thinker and writer. It draws extensively on material from Newman's letters and papers. Newman's ...
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This full-length life of John Henry Newman is a comprehensive biography of both the man and the thinker and writer. It draws extensively on material from Newman's letters and papers. Newman's character is revealed in its complexity and contrasts: the legendary sadness and sensitivity are placed in their proper perspective by being set against his no less striking qualities of exuberance, humour, and toughness. The book attempts to do justice to the fullness of Newman's achievement and genius: the Victorian “prophet” or “sage”, who ranks among the major English prose writers; the dominating religious figure of the nineteenth century, who can now be recognised as the forerunner of the Second Vatican Council and the modern ecumenical movement; and finally, the universal Christian thinker, whose significance transcends his culture and time.Less
This full-length life of John Henry Newman is a comprehensive biography of both the man and the thinker and writer. It draws extensively on material from Newman's letters and papers. Newman's character is revealed in its complexity and contrasts: the legendary sadness and sensitivity are placed in their proper perspective by being set against his no less striking qualities of exuberance, humour, and toughness. The book attempts to do justice to the fullness of Newman's achievement and genius: the Victorian “prophet” or “sage”, who ranks among the major English prose writers; the dominating religious figure of the nineteenth century, who can now be recognised as the forerunner of the Second Vatican Council and the modern ecumenical movement; and finally, the universal Christian thinker, whose significance transcends his culture and time.
Ngũgĩ Wa Thiongʼo
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198183907
- eISBN:
- 9780191674136
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198183907.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This concluding chapter describes the artist's response to the power of the state and to the challenges of interpretation. Writers have no real choices other than to align themselves with the people ...
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This concluding chapter describes the artist's response to the power of the state and to the challenges of interpretation. Writers have no real choices other than to align themselves with the people and articulate their deepest yearnings and struggles for real change. Where the state silences, art should give voice to silence. Where, for instance, there is no democracy for the rest of the population, there cannot be democracy for the writer. Hence, it is obligatory for writers in Africa and the world over to keep on fighting with the rest of the population to strengthen civil society, expressed in the capacity for self-organization, against encroachments by the state.Less
This concluding chapter describes the artist's response to the power of the state and to the challenges of interpretation. Writers have no real choices other than to align themselves with the people and articulate their deepest yearnings and struggles for real change. Where the state silences, art should give voice to silence. Where, for instance, there is no democracy for the rest of the population, there cannot be democracy for the writer. Hence, it is obligatory for writers in Africa and the world over to keep on fighting with the rest of the population to strengthen civil society, expressed in the capacity for self-organization, against encroachments by the state.
Ezra Mendelsohn (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195112030
- eISBN:
- 9780199854608
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112030.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This volume collects chapters on Jewish literature which deal with “the manifold ways that literary texts reveal their authors' attitudes toward their own Jewish identity and toward diverse aspects ...
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This volume collects chapters on Jewish literature which deal with “the manifold ways that literary texts reveal their authors' attitudes toward their own Jewish identity and toward diverse aspects of the “Jewish question.”” Chapters in this volume explore the tension between Israeli and Diaspora identities, and between those who write in Hebrew or Yiddish and those who write in other “non-Jewish” languages. The chapters also explore the question of how Jewish writers remember history in their “search for a useable past.” From chapters on Jabotinsky's virtually unknown plays to Philip Roth's novels, this book provides a strong overview of contemporary themes in Jewish literary studies.Less
This volume collects chapters on Jewish literature which deal with “the manifold ways that literary texts reveal their authors' attitudes toward their own Jewish identity and toward diverse aspects of the “Jewish question.”” Chapters in this volume explore the tension between Israeli and Diaspora identities, and between those who write in Hebrew or Yiddish and those who write in other “non-Jewish” languages. The chapters also explore the question of how Jewish writers remember history in their “search for a useable past.” From chapters on Jabotinsky's virtually unknown plays to Philip Roth's novels, this book provides a strong overview of contemporary themes in Jewish literary studies.
Ros Ballaster
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184775
- eISBN:
- 9780191674341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184775.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to give an account of the conditions that enabled some women writers in the late 17th and early 18th century to ‘profit’, both ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to give an account of the conditions that enabled some women writers in the late 17th and early 18th century to ‘profit’, both materially and ideologically, from the narcissistic strategies that Aphra Behn's heroine learns through the course of the novel. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to give an account of the conditions that enabled some women writers in the late 17th and early 18th century to ‘profit’, both materially and ideologically, from the narcissistic strategies that Aphra Behn's heroine learns through the course of the novel. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.
William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). But behind the scenes, the FBI's hostility to black protest was ...
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Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). But behind the scenes, the FBI's hostility to black protest was energized by fear of and respect for black writing. Drawing on nearly 14,000 pages of newly released FBI files, this book exposes the Bureau's intimate policing of five decades of African American poems, plays, essays, and novels. Starting in 1919, year one of Harlem's renaissance and Hoover's career at the Bureau, secretive FBI “ghostreaders” monitored the latest developments in African American letters. By the time of Hoover's death in 1972, these ghostreaders knew enough to simulate a sinister black literature of their own. The official aim behind the Bureau 's close reading was to anticipate political unrest. Yet, as this book reveals, FBI surveillance came to influence the creation and public reception of African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century. This book details how the FBI threatened the international travels of African American writers and prepared to jail dozens of them in times of national emergency. All the same, it shows that the Bureau's paranoid style could prompt insightful criticism from Hoover's ghostreaders and creative replies from their literary targets. For authors such as Claude McKay, James Baldwin, and Sonia Sanchez, the suspicion that government spy-critics tracked their every word inspired rewarding stylistic experiments as well as disabling self-censorship. Illuminating both the serious harms of state surveillance and the ways in which imaginative writing can withstand and exploit it, this book is a groundbreaking account of a long-hidden dimension of African American literature.Less
Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). But behind the scenes, the FBI's hostility to black protest was energized by fear of and respect for black writing. Drawing on nearly 14,000 pages of newly released FBI files, this book exposes the Bureau's intimate policing of five decades of African American poems, plays, essays, and novels. Starting in 1919, year one of Harlem's renaissance and Hoover's career at the Bureau, secretive FBI “ghostreaders” monitored the latest developments in African American letters. By the time of Hoover's death in 1972, these ghostreaders knew enough to simulate a sinister black literature of their own. The official aim behind the Bureau 's close reading was to anticipate political unrest. Yet, as this book reveals, FBI surveillance came to influence the creation and public reception of African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century. This book details how the FBI threatened the international travels of African American writers and prepared to jail dozens of them in times of national emergency. All the same, it shows that the Bureau's paranoid style could prompt insightful criticism from Hoover's ghostreaders and creative replies from their literary targets. For authors such as Claude McKay, James Baldwin, and Sonia Sanchez, the suspicion that government spy-critics tracked their every word inspired rewarding stylistic experiments as well as disabling self-censorship. Illuminating both the serious harms of state surveillance and the ways in which imaginative writing can withstand and exploit it, this book is a groundbreaking account of a long-hidden dimension of African American literature.
Kevin Madigan
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195322743
- eISBN:
- 9780199785407
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195322743.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
The Arian writers made much of the blunt admission by Jesus that he was ignorant of the Day of Judgment. This chapter examines orthodox responses to the charge that this was proof of the inferiority ...
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The Arian writers made much of the blunt admission by Jesus that he was ignorant of the Day of Judgment. This chapter examines orthodox responses to the charge that this was proof of the inferiority of the Incarnate Word's nature.Less
The Arian writers made much of the blunt admission by Jesus that he was ignorant of the Day of Judgment. This chapter examines orthodox responses to the charge that this was proof of the inferiority of the Incarnate Word's nature.
Karl Giberson and Mariano Artigas
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195310726
- eISBN:
- 9780199785179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195310726.003.intro
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Weinberg, and Edward. O. Wilson are scientists and science writers with gifts for communication that have allowed them to speak ...
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Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Weinberg, and Edward. O. Wilson are scientists and science writers with gifts for communication that have allowed them to speak to millions outside the scientific community. We are a culture that looks to science because that is where we expect to find our answers, but we need specialists or guides — oracles — to show us the way. In their scientific personas, the oracles make many negative comments about religion and belief in God, and deliver a message to the broader culture about humankind’s place in the grand scheme of things.Less
Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Weinberg, and Edward. O. Wilson are scientists and science writers with gifts for communication that have allowed them to speak to millions outside the scientific community. We are a culture that looks to science because that is where we expect to find our answers, but we need specialists or guides — oracles — to show us the way. In their scientific personas, the oracles make many negative comments about religion and belief in God, and deliver a message to the broader culture about humankind’s place in the grand scheme of things.
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
The Russian writer Lydia Ginzburg (1902–90) is best known for her Notes from the Leningrad Blockade and for influential critical studies, such as On Psychological Prose, investigating the problem of ...
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The Russian writer Lydia Ginzburg (1902–90) is best known for her Notes from the Leningrad Blockade and for influential critical studies, such as On Psychological Prose, investigating the problem of literary character in French and Russian novels and memoirs. Yet she viewed her most vital work to be the extensive prose fragments, composed for the desk drawer, in which she analyzed herself and other members of the Russian intelligentsia through seven traumatic decades of Soviet history. This book, the first full-length English-language study of the writer, presents Ginzburg as a figure of previously unrecognized innovation and importance in the literary landscape of the twentieth century. Based on a decade's work in Ginzburg's archives, the book discusses previously unknown manuscripts and uncovers a wealth of new information about the author's life, focusing on Ginzburg's quest for a new kind of writing adequate to her times. The book provides examples of universal experiences—frustrated love, professional failures, remorse, aging—and explores the modern fragmentation of identity in the context of war, terror, and an oppressive state. Searching for a new concept of the self, and deeming the psychological novel (a beloved academic specialty) inadequate to express this concept, Ginzburg turned to fragmentary narratives that blur the lines between history, autobiography, and fiction. This full account of Ginzburg's writing career in many genres and emotional registers enables us not only to rethink the experience of Soviet intellectuals, but to arrive at a new understanding of writing and witnessing during a horrific century.Less
The Russian writer Lydia Ginzburg (1902–90) is best known for her Notes from the Leningrad Blockade and for influential critical studies, such as On Psychological Prose, investigating the problem of literary character in French and Russian novels and memoirs. Yet she viewed her most vital work to be the extensive prose fragments, composed for the desk drawer, in which she analyzed herself and other members of the Russian intelligentsia through seven traumatic decades of Soviet history. This book, the first full-length English-language study of the writer, presents Ginzburg as a figure of previously unrecognized innovation and importance in the literary landscape of the twentieth century. Based on a decade's work in Ginzburg's archives, the book discusses previously unknown manuscripts and uncovers a wealth of new information about the author's life, focusing on Ginzburg's quest for a new kind of writing adequate to her times. The book provides examples of universal experiences—frustrated love, professional failures, remorse, aging—and explores the modern fragmentation of identity in the context of war, terror, and an oppressive state. Searching for a new concept of the self, and deeming the psychological novel (a beloved academic specialty) inadequate to express this concept, Ginzburg turned to fragmentary narratives that blur the lines between history, autobiography, and fiction. This full account of Ginzburg's writing career in many genres and emotional registers enables us not only to rethink the experience of Soviet intellectuals, but to arrive at a new understanding of writing and witnessing during a horrific century.
