- Table View
- List View
George Eliot and the Politics of National Inheritance
by Bernard SemmelIn this stimulating history of the ideas behind George Eliot's novels, Bernard Semmel explores Eliot's imaginative use of the theme of inheritance, as a metaphor for her political thinking. Through detailed analyses of Eliot's novels and other writings, and a study of the intellectual currents of the time, Semmel demonstrates how and why Eliot's views on inheritance provided central ideas for her fiction. Semmel uncovers Eliot's intent when she wrote of the obligations of inheritance both in the common meaning of the term, as in the transfer of goods and property from parents to children, and in the more metaphoric sense of the inheritance of both the benefits and burdens of the historical past, particularly those of the nation's culture and traditions. He believes Eliot's novels dwelt so insistently on the idea of inheritance in good part because she viewed herself as intellectually "disinherited," writing as she did at a time when much of England was being transformed from a traditional community to an alienating modern society, and when, moreover, she suffered from a painful estrangement from her family. In this thought-provoking study, Semmel dissects the politics of Eliot's novels, including Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Romola Felix Holt, and Adam Bede, and convincingly displays the relationship between Eliot's variations on the theme of inheritance and her acceptance of Britain's traditional policies of compromise and reform. All those interested in Victorian literature, history, and political thought will appreciate Semmel's George Eliot and the Politics of National Inheritance.
Therapeutic Ways with Words (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)
by Kathleen W. FerraraTherapeutic Ways with Words provides a unique glimpse into language use in psychotherapy, an important speech event which has previously been shrouded in mystery. This important book shows how both clients and therapists accomplish their aims through language, which, paradoxically, is both the method of diagnosis and the medium of treatment in this cultural practice. With a discourse analysis of tape recordings and transcripts of actual psychotherapy sessions enhanced by a variety of ethnographic observations, Kathleen Warden Ferrara explores the skillful and creative uses of language in the complicated speech event of psychotherapy. Shedding light on discourse practices such as retellings of personal experience narrative, jointly constructed sentences and metaphorical extensions, and strategic uses of repetition, the study emphasizes the interactive nature of all discourse and shows how language is mutually constructed as people interweave pieces of their own and others' sentences, metaphors, and narratives.
The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse
by Carol NackenoffInvestigating the persistence and place of the formulas of Horatio Alger in American politics, The Fictional Republic reassesses the Alger story in its Gilded Age context. Carol Nackenoff argues that Alger was a keen observer of the dislocations and economic pitfalls of the rapidly industrializing nation, and devised a set of symbols that addressed anxieties about power and identity. As classes were increasingly divided by wealth, life chances, residence space, and culture, Alger maintained that Americans could still belong to one estate. The story of the youth who faces threats to his virtue, power, independence, and identity stands as an allegory of the American Republic. Nackenoff examines how the Alger formula continued to shape political discourse in Reagan's America and beyond.
Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts of Andrew
by Dennis R. MacDonaldThis study focuses on the apocryphal Acts of Andrew (c. 200 CE), which purports to tell the story of the travels, miracles, and martyrdom of the apostle Andrew. Traditional scholarship has looked for the background of such writings in Jewish and Christian scriptures. MacDonald, however, breaks with that model and looks to classic literature for the sources of this story. Specifically, he argues that the Acts represent an attempt to transform Greco-Roman myth into Christian narrative categories by telling the story of Andrew in terms of Homeric epic, in particular the Odyssey. MacDonald presents a point-by-point comparison of the two works, finding the resemblances so strong, numerous, and tendentious that they virtually compel the reader to consider the Acts a transformative "rewriting" of the epic. This discovery not only sheds valuable light on the uses of Homer in the early church but also significantly contributes to our understanding of the reception of Homer in the empire as a whole.
Coleridge and Textual Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems
by Jack StillingerJack Stillinger establishes and documents the existence of numerous different authoritative versions of Coleridge's best-known poems: sixteen or more of The Eolian Harp, for example, eighteen of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and comparable numbers for This Lime-Tree Bower, Frost at Midnight, Kubla Khan, Christabel, and Dejection: An Ode. Such multiplicity of versions raises interesting theoretical and practical questions about the constitution of the Coleridge canon, the ontological identity of any specific work in the canon, the editorial treatment of Coleridge's works, and the ways in which multiple versions complicate interpretation of the poems as a unified (or, as the case may be, disunified) body of work. Providing much new information about the texts and production of Coleridge's major poems, Stillinger's study offers intriguing new theories about the nature of authorship and the constitution of literary works.
Dialogue and Literature: Apostrophe, Auditors, and the Collapse of Romantic Discourse
by Michael MacovskiExtending and reframing the works of Bakhtin, Gadamer, Ong, and Foucault--with particular emphasis on Bakhtin's late essays --Macovski constructs a theoretical model of literary dialogue and applies it to a range of Romantic texts. In reconsidering specific works within the context of cultural heuristics, rhetorical theory, and literary history, Macovski redefines Romantic discourse as both extratextual and agonistic. He thereby re-evaluates such Romantic topics as the history of the autotelic self, the proliferation of lyric orality, and the nineteenth-century critique of rhetoric. He examines poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge, as well as such nineteenth-century prose works as Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and Heart of Darkness.
The Drama in the Text: Beckett's Late Fiction
by Enoch BraterThe Drama in the Text argues that Beckett's late fiction, like his radio plays, demands to be read aloud, since much of the emotional meaning lodges in its tonality. In Beckett's haunting prose work the reader turns listener, collaborating with the sound of words to elucidate meaning from the silence of the universe. Enoch Brater ranges across all of Beckett's work, quoting from it liberally, and makes connections mainly with other writers, but also with details drawn from the entire Western cultural heritage. Brater serves as an authoritative and persuasive guide to the rich texture of such a difficult but compelling vocabulary, providing recognition, insight, and accessibility.
Coherence in Psychotic Discourse (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)
by Branca Telles RibeiroThis fascinating study explores the ways of establishing coherence in the discourse of a thought-disordered patient. Ribeiro analyzes the discourse between a doctor and a patient who is under an acute psychotic crisis, and then later, when the patient is deemed recovered. Ribeiro looks at how the participants jointly establish referential meaning, and how topic coherence is achieved or breaks down. She then considers how the participants convey superordinate messages, metamessages, and how the patient signals and assesses the frame of talk. Ribeiro concludes that psychotic discourse, while incoherent on the level of topic, may be coherent on another level--that of frame. Using sociolinguistic discourse analysis, conversational analysis, and frame analysis, with a dose of theory from contemporary cognitive psychology, Ribeiro's book demonstrates the importance of contextualization in interaction.
Gender and Discourse
by Deborah TannenDeborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand spent nearly four years (in cloth and paper) on The New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over a million and a half copies. Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years a highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely known for her work on how conversational style differences associated with gender affect relationships. Her life work has demonstrated how close and intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships--including relationships between men and women. Now, in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together six of her scholarly essays, including her newest and previously unpublished work in which language and gender are examined through the lens of "sex-class-linked" patterns, rather than "sex-linked" patterns. These essays provide a theoretical backdrop to her best-selling books--and an informative introduction which discusses her field of linguistics, describes the research methods she typically uses, and addresses the controversies surrounding her field as well as some misunderstandings of her work. (She argues, for instance, that her cultural approach to gender differences does not deny that men dominate women in society, nor does it ascribe gender differences to women's "essential nature.") The essays themselves cover a wide range of topics. In one, she analyzes a number of conversational strategies--such as interruption, topic raising, indirection, and silence--and shows that, contrary to much work on language and gender, no strategy exclusively expresses dominance or submissiveness in conversation--interruption (or overlap) can be supportive, silence and indirection can be used to control. It is the interactional context, the participants' individual styles, and the interaction of their styles, Tannen shows, that result in the balance of power. She also provides a fascinating analysis of four groups of males and females (second-, sixth-, and tenth-grade students, and twenty-five year olds) conversing with their best friends, and she includes an early article co-authored with Robin Lakoff that presents a theory of conversational strategy, illustrated by analysis of dialogue in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. Readers interested in the theoretical framework behind Tannen's work will find this volume fascinating. It will be sure to interest anyone curious about the crucial yet often unnoticed role that language and gender play in our daily lives.
Writing after War: American War Fiction from Realism to Postmodernism
by John LimonIn Writing After War, John Limon develops a theory of the relationship of war in general to literature in general, in order to make sense of American literary history in particular. Applying the work of war theorists Carl von Clausewitz and Elaine Scarry, John Limon argues that The Iliad inaugurates Western literature on the failure of war to be duel-like, to have a beautiful form. War's failure is literature's justification. American literary history is demarcated by wars, as if literary epochs, like the history of literature itself, required bloodshed to commence. But in chapters on periods of literary history from realism, generally taken to be a product of the Civil War, through modernism, usually assumed to be a prediction or result of the Great War, up to postmodernism which followed World War II and spanned Vietnam, Limon argues that, despite the looming presence of war in American history, the techniques that define these periods are essentially ways of not writing war. From James and Twain, through Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and even Hemingway, to Pynchon, our national literary history is not hopelessly masculinist, Limon argues. Instead, it arrives naturally at Bobbie Ann Mason and Maxine Hong Kingston. Kingston brings the discussion full circle: The Woman Warrior, like The Iliad, appears to condemn the fall from duel to war that is literature's endless opening.
Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece
by Kevin RobbThis book examines the progress of literacy in ancient Greece from its origins in the eighth century to the fourth century B.C.E., when the major cultural institutions of Athens became totally dependent on alphabetic literacy. By introducing new evidence and re-evaluating the older evidence, Robb demonstrates that early Greek literacy can be understood only in terms of the rich oral culture that immediately preceded it, one that was dominated by the oral performance of epical verse, or "Homer." Only gradually did literate practices supersede oral habits and the oral way of life, forging alliances which now seem both bizarre and fascinating, but which were eminently successful, contributing to the "miracle" of Greece. In this book new light is brought to early Greek ethics, the rise of written law, the emergence of philosophy, and the final dominance of the Athenian philosophical schools in higher education.
The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and Twentieth-Century Literature (Race and American Culture)
by Michael NorthThe Dialect of Modernism uncovers the crucial role of racial masquerade and linguistic imitation in the emergence of literary modernism. Rebelling against the standard language, and literature written in it, modernists, such as Joseph Conrad, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams reimagined themselves as racial aliens and mimicked the strategies of dialect speakers in their work. In doing so, they made possible the most radical representational strategies of modern literature, which emerged from their attack on the privilege of standard language. At the same time, however, another movement, identified with Harlem, was struggling to free itself from the very dialect the modernists appropriated, at least as it had been rendered by two generations of white dialect writers. For writers such as Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston, this dialect became a barrier as rigid as the standard language itself. Thus, the two modern movements, which arrived simultaneously in 1922, were linked and divided by their different stakes in the same language. In The Dialect of Modernism, Michael North shows, through biographical and historical investigation, and through careful readings of major literary works, that however different they were, the two movements are inextricably connected, and thus, cannot be considered in isolation. Each was marked, for good and bad, by the other.
James Joyce and the Language of History: Dedalus's Nightmare
by Robert Spoo"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Stephen Dedalus's famous complaint articulates a characteristic modern attitude toward the perceived burden of the past. As Robert Spoo shows in this study, Joyce's creative achievement, from the time of his sojourn in Rome in 1906-07 to the completion of Ulysses in 1922, cannot be understood apart from the ferment of historical thought that dominated the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tracing James Joyce's historiographic art to its formative contexts, Spoo reveals a modernist author passionately engaged with the problem of history, forging a new language that both dramatizes and redefines that problem.
Resisting Representation
by Elaine ScarryRenowned scholar Elaine Scarry's book, The Body in Pain, has been called by Susan Sontag "extraordinary...large-spirited, heroically truthful." The Los Angeles Times called it "brilliant, ambitious, and controversial." Now Oxford has collected some of Scarry's most provocative writing. This collection of essays deals with the complicated problems of representation in diverse literary and cultural genres--from her beloved sixth-century philosopher Boethius, through the nineteenth-century novel, to twentieth-century advertising. qWe often assume that all areas of experience are equally available for representation. On the contrary, these essays present discussions of experiences and concepts that challenge, defeat, or block representation. Physical pain, physical labor, the hidden reflexes of cognition and its judgments about the coherence or incoherence of the world are all phenomena that test the resources of language. Using primarily literary sources (works by Hardy, Beckett, Boethius, Thackeray, and others), Scarry also draws on painting, medical advertising, and philosophic dialogue to probe the limitations of expression and representation. Resisting Representation celebrates language. It looks at the problematic areas of expression not at the moment when representation is resisted, but at the moment when that resistance is at last overcome, thus suggesting a domain of plenitude and inclusion.
History and Memory in African-American Culture
by Genevieve Fabre Robert O'MeallyAs Nathan Huggins once stated, altering American history to account fully for the nation's black voices would change the tone and meaning--the frame and the substance--of the entire story. Rather than a sort of Pilgrim's Progress tale of bold ascent and triumph, American history with the black parts told in full would be transmuted into an existential tragedy, closer, Huggins said, to Sartre's No Exit than to the vision of life in Bunyan. The relation between memory and history has received increasing attention both from historians and from literary critics. In this volume, a group of leading scholars has come together to examine the role of historical consciousness and imagination in African-American culture. The result is a complex picture of the dynamic ways in which African-American historical identity constantly invents and transmits itself in literature, art, oral documents, and performances. Each of the scholars represented has chosen a different "site of memory"--from a variety of historical and geographical points, and from different ideological, theoretical, and artistic perspectives. Yet the book is unified by a common concern with the construction of an emerging African-American cultural memory. The renowned group of contributors, including Hazel Carby, Werner Sollors, Vèvè Clark, Catherine Clinton, and Nellie McKay, among others, consists of participants of the five-year series of conferences at the DuBois Institute at Harvard University, from which this collection originated. Conducted under the leadership of Geneviève Fabre, Melvin Dixon, and the late Nathan Huggins, the conferences--and as a result, this book--represent something of a cultural moment themselves, and scholars and students of American and African-American literature and history will be richer as a result.
There's No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too
by Stanley FishIn an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing--traditional family values versus the cultural elite, free speech versus censorship--or reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct," are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary" and "fascist" are by the left--Stanley Fish would seem an unlikely lightning rod for controversy. A renowned scholar of Milton, head of the English Department of Duke University, Fish has emerged as a brilliantly original critic of the culture at large, praised and pilloried as a vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and right. His mission is not to win the cultural wars that preoccupy the nation's attention, but rather to redefine the terms of battle. In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Fish takes aim at the ideological gridlock paralyzing academic and political exchange in the nineties. In his witty, accessible dissections of the swirling controversies over multiculturalism, affirmative action, canon revision, hate speech, and legal reform, he neatly eviscerates both the conservatives' claim to possession of timeless, transcendent values (the timeless transcendence of which they themselves have conveniently identified), and the intellectual left's icons of equality, tolerance, and non-discrimination. He argues that while conservative ideologues and liberal stalwarts might disagree vehemently on what is essential to a culture, or to a curriculum, both mistakenly believe that what is essential can be identified apart from the accidental circumstances (of time and history) to which the essential is ritually opposed. In the book's first section, which includes the five essays written for Fish's celebrated debates with Dinesh D'Souza (the author and former Reagan White House policy analyst), Fish turns his attention to the neoconservative backlash. In his introduction, Fish writes, "Terms that come to us wearing the label 'apolitical'--'common values', 'fairness', 'merit', 'color blind', 'free speech', 'reason'--are in fact the ideologically charged constructions of a decidedly political agenda. I make the point not in order to level an accusation, but to remove the sting of accusation from the world 'politics' and redefine it as a synonym for what everyone inevitably does." Fish maintains that the debate over political correctness is an artificial one, because it is simply not possible for any party or individual to occupy a position above or beyond politics. Regarding the controversy over the revision of the college curriculum, Fish argues that the point is not to try to insist that inclusion of ethnic and gender studies is not a political decision, but "to point out that any alternative curriculum--say a diet of exclusively Western or European texts--would be no less politically invested." In Part Two, Fish follows the implications of his arguments to a surprising rejection of the optimistic claims of the intellectual left that awareness of the historical roots of our beliefs and biases can allow us, as individuals or as a society, to escape or transcend them. Specifically, he turns to the movement for reform of legal studies, and insists that a dream of a legal culture in which no one's values are slighted or declared peripheral can no more be realized than the dream of a concept of fairness that answers to everyone's notions of equality and jsutice, or a yardstick of merit that is true to everyone's notions of worth and substance. Similarly, he argues that attempts to politicize the study of literature are ultimately misguided, because recharacterizations of literary works have absolutely no impact on the mainstream of political life. He concludes his critique of the academy with "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," an extraordinary look at some of the more puzzing, if not out-and-out masochistic, characteristics of a life in academia. Penetrating, fearless, and brilliantly argued, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech captures the essential Fish. It is must reading for anyone who cares about the outcome
Bordering on the Body: The Racial Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture (Race and American Culture)
by Laura DoyleThe figure of the mother in literature and the arts has been the subject of much recent critical attention. Whereas many studies have focused on women writers and the maternal, Laura Doyle significantly broadens the field by tracing the racial logic internal to Western representations of maternality at least since Romanticism. She formulates a theory of "racial patriarchy" in which the circumscription of reproduction within racial borders engenders what she calls the "race mother" in literary and cultural narratives. Pairing literary movements not often considered together--Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance--Doyle reveals that this figure haunts the openings of diverse modern novels and initiates their experimental narrative trajectories. Figures such as the slave mother in Invisible Man, Lena Grove in Light in August, Mrs. Dedalus in Ulysses, and Sethe in Beloved, Doyle shows, embody racial, sexual, and metaphysical anxieties which modern authors expose reconfigure, and attempt to surpass. Making use of heterogeneous materials, including kinship studies, phenomenology, and histories of slavery, Bordering on the Body traces the symbolic operations of the "race mother" from Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology to eugenics and twentieth-century fiction. A breakthrough in race and gender theory, a racial reconfiguration of modernism, and a reinterpretation of discourses of nature since Romanticism, the book will engage a wide spectrum of readers in literary and cultural studies.
A.E. Housman: Collected Poems (Penguin Poetry Library)
by A. E. HousmanA. E. Housman, being one of the most famous and widely read poets of the early twentieth century, is certainly worthy of praise. His 'Collected Poems' are therefore a valuable read because they allow readers to gain an impression of the author's mind, opinions and lifestyle. Furthermore, they simultaneously depict a man who was deeply pessimistic and obsessed with death, and, on the other hand, illustrate a man who was also very much concerned with love, youth, life and the fleetingness of the these concepts.It is easy to understand why Housman's sensitive and sympathetic depictions of heroic English soldiers influenced and affected his readers, as his poetry is often written in an uncomplicated, yet sensitive style, which allows readers to feel as if they are witnessing events almost as the poet writes them down. These poems are also intriguing to read if you are a Shakespeare fan, as it is possible to spot many Shakespeare references in Housman's writing. A glossary or footnotes at the back of this book would be appreciated in any further editions, in order to allow readers to gain more understanding of the other poets and authors that Housman was influenced by. In brief, this collection presents the literary highlights of Housman's career, and this will be most appreciated by readers new to Housman's poetry.
"... aber von Ihnen dependier ich unüberwindlich..." Friedrich Hölderlins ferne Leidenschaft: M&P Schriftenreihe
by Götz-Lothar Darsow
Age Differences in Word and Language Processing (ISSN #Volume 110)
by P. A. Allen T. R. BashoreComponent cognitive processes have played a critical role in the development of experimental aging research and theory in psychology as attested by articles published on this theme. However, in the last five to ten years, there has been a substantial increase in the number of articles attempting to isolate a single factor (or small subset of factors) responsible for age differences in information processing. This view of aging is frequently termed the complexity model of the generalized slowing model, the primary assumption being that age differences in cognition are due simply to a relatively larger performance decrement on the part of older adults (compared to younger adults) as task complexity increases. Because generalized complexity theorists have questioned the utility of using component cognitive processes as theoretical constructs, the editors feel it is time to restate why component cognitive processes are critical to any thorough understanding of age differences in cognition. Thus the present edited volume represents an attempt to demonstrate the utility of the process-specific approach to cognitive aging. Central to this effort are illustrations of how regression analyses may provide evidence for general slowing by maximizing explained variance while at the same time obscuring local sources of variance.The book concentrates on age differences in word and language processing, because these factors relate to reading which is a critical cognitive process used in everyday life. Furthermore, age differences in word and language processing illustrate the importance of taking component cognitive processes into consideration. The breadth of coverage of the book attests to the wide range of cognitive processes involved in word and language processing.
Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy (Philosophical Studies Series #63)
by Debra NailsAgora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy offers extremely careful and detailed criticisms of some of the most important assumptions scholars have brought to bear in beginning the process of (Platonic) interpretation. It goes on to offer a new way to group the dialogues, based on important facts in the lives and philosophical practices of Socrates - the main speaker in most of Plato's dialogues - and of Plato himself. Both sides of Debra Nails's arguments deserve close attention: the negative side, which exposes a great deal of diversity in a field that often claims to have achieved a consensus; and the positive side, which insists that we must attend to what we know of these philosophers' lives and practices, if we are to make a serious attempt to understand why Plato wrote the way he did, and why his writings seem to depict different philosophies and even different approaches to philosophizing. From the Preface by Nicholas D. Smith.
Allyn Young: The Peripatetic Economist (Studies in the History of Economics)
by Charles P. Blitch`This careful and long-overdue biography fills us in on the life and work of an American economist who was important during the first three decades of the century. The book is especially timely because Young's seminal article (1928) on increasing returns is now widely acknowledged to foreshadow much of the modern analysis of edogenous growth and related inquiry.' - James M. Buchanan, George Mason University Allyn Young was one of the most prominent and influential economists in the interwar period. His influence came largely through the work of his students: Frank Knight, Holbrook Working, Edward Chamberlin, Seymour Harris and others. He held professorships at Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard Universities among others. His public service included chief economic advisor to the American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. This book provides the first full study of Allyn Young's life and work. It presents detailed expositions of his papers on demographics, value theory, depreciation, taxation, index number theory, and increasing returns. It is a straightforward analysis of the life and work of one of the most fascinating economists of this century.
American Drama (Insights)
by Clive Bloom Brian DochertyAn introduction to American drama, aimed at students, academics and serious readers, which is also concerned that the unfamiliar names and forgotten voices of those who made a major contribution to its history, have been unfairly neglected.
American Poetry: The Modernist Ideal (Insights)
by Clive Bloom Brian DochertyTracing its origins back to Walt Whitman, the Modernist tradition in American poetry is driven by the same concern to engage with the world in revolutionary terms, inspired by the concept of democracy vital to the American dream. But this tradition is not confined to a few writers at the beginning of the century: instead it has been an enduring force, extending from coast to coast and of varying hues: Imagist, Objectivist, Beat. International in flavour but shaped by the language and conditions of America, this poetry continues to speak to us today. This collection of specially commissioned essays brings together leading scholars and critics to define the American Modernist canon, providing a range of perspectives helpful to all those interested in this fascinating poetry.