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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary theory

Deleuze's Literary Theory - The Laboratory of His Philosophy (Paperback): Catarina Pombo Nabais Deleuze's Literary Theory - The Laboratory of His Philosophy (Paperback)
Catarina Pombo Nabais; Translated by Ronald Bogue; Preface by Jacques Ranciere
R1,126 Discovery Miles 11 260 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Literature holds a privileged place in Deleuze's works. Not only is it the art that most clearly reveals his aesthetics, but it also serves as the laboratory of his thought, the space where he experiments with concepts that become part of his ongoing philosophical project. In this brilliant analyses of Deleuze's texts on Proust, Sacher-Masoch, Kafka, Carmelo Bene, Melville and Beckett, Pombo Nabais traces the development of Deleuze's aesthetics across three distinct periods of his thought: the transcendental empiricism of Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense; the philosophy of Nature of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus; and the philosophy of Spirit of The Fold, What Is Philosophy? and Essays Critical and Clinical. More than a simple account of Deleuze's literary theory and aesthetics, this book offers a provocative and original reading of Deleuze's entire philosophy, highlighting the question of modality (the actual, the virtual, the possible, the impossible and the incompossible), the problematic relationship between the event and the assemblage, and the unifying theme of the vitalism of nonorganic life.

Karl Marx (Paperback): Andrew Rowcroft Karl Marx (Paperback)
Andrew Rowcroft
R730 Discovery Miles 7 300 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Karl Marx is the most important modern philosopher. His work has radically changed the course of world history, continental philosophy, political theory, literary criticism, and cultural studies. The sheer range of his achievements, and the depth of his critical insights, continue to speak to our present moment. This book places Marx's writings in their historical context, providing a clear guide to his key ideas and intellectual legacy. Written for both students and scholars, it illustrates Marx's ideas with examples drawn from William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Bertolt Brecht, Theodor Dreiser, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, Sally Rooney, Claude McKay, Tennessee Williams, Mad Men, and Margin Call. Key ideas discussed in this guide include: Tracing historical contexts and developments in Marx's work over his lifetime Focusing on Marxism as an interpretative strategy, paying special attention to its impact on literary criticism and cultural studies Examining recent developments in Marxist theory, such as a stronger focus on the environment, climate crisis, and world ecology Exploring the continued relevance of Marx and Marxism today. This Routledge Critical Thinkers guide will enable readers to critically assess and interpret Marx's major works, while also introducing his methods of critical analysis. Preparing readers to approach his original texts, this guide ensures that readers of all levels will find Marx accessible, challenging, and of continued relevance. Andrew Rowcroft offers a comprehensive introduction to Marx's revolutionary ideas, examining the influence Marx had on literary studies, cultural studies, modernism, and philosophy.

Acta Germanica - German Studies in Africa (English, German, Paperback, New edition): Cilliers Van Den Berg Acta Germanica - German Studies in Africa (English, German, Paperback, New edition)
Cilliers Van Den Berg
R1,397 Discovery Miles 13 970 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Die Schwerpunkte des 50. Bandes sind vielfaltig und reichen von der Analyse einer Reihe literarischer Texte aus unterschiedlichen theoretischen Perspektiven uber die Bewertung des Sprachgebrauchs in verschiedenen soziopolitischen Kontexten bis hin zu Untersuchungen des DaF-Unterrichts und der DaF-Theorie in Sudafrika und anderswo. Literarische Werke von Uwe Timm, Joseph Roth, Dirk Fleck, Daniel Kehlmann, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Grete von Urbanitzky, Natascha Wodin und Mithu Sanyal werden aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven betrachtet. Die jeweiligen Beitrage berucksichtigen unter anderem, wie kulturelles und autobiografisches Gedachtnis zum Ausdruck kommt. Postkoloniale Perspektiven und OEko-Kritik bilden weitere Ansatze, wie auch das Werk von Bruno Latour. Schliesslich werden Genretypologien und auch die Herausforderungen der UEbersetzung analysiert. Der Sprachgebrauch in der Medienberichterstattung und in der Politik sowie eine vergleichende Untersuchung sprachlicher Weltanschauungen bilden die Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft. The focus of the 50th volume is diverse, covering a spectrum from the analysis of a number of literary texts from a variety of theoretical perspectives, to the evaluation of language use in different socio-political contexts and examinations of DaF-teaching and theory both in South Africa and elsewhere. Literary works by Uwe Timm, Joseph Roth, Dirk Fleck, Daniel Kehlmann, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Grete von Urbanitzky, Natascha Wodin and Mithu Sanyal are examined from different perspectives. The respective contributions consider, among other things, how cultural and autobiographical memory is expressed. Postcolonial perspectives and ecocriticism represent further approaches, as does the work of Bruno Latour. Finally, genre typologies and the challenges of translation are analysed. Language use in media reporting and politics, as well as a comparative study of linguistic worldviews represent the contributions to language studies.

Sexuality and the Gothic Magic Lantern - Desire, Eroticism and Literary Visibilities from Byron to Bram Stoker (Hardcover): D.... Sexuality and the Gothic Magic Lantern - Desire, Eroticism and Literary Visibilities from Byron to Bram Stoker (Hardcover)
D. Jones
R3,365 Discovery Miles 33 650 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

This fascinating study explores the multifarious erotic themes associated with the magic lantern shows, which proved the dominant visual medium of the West for 350 years, and analyses how the shows influenced the portrayals of sexuality in major works of Gothic fiction.

Contemporary French Poetry - Towards a Minor Poetics (Hardcover): Daisy Sainsbury Contemporary French Poetry - Towards a Minor Poetics (Hardcover)
Daisy Sainsbury
R2,191 Discovery Miles 21 910 Ships in 9 - 17 working days
Stand in the Trench, Achilles - Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War (Paperback): Elizabeth Vandiver Stand in the Trench, Achilles - Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War (Paperback)
Elizabeth Vandiver
R1,687 Discovery Miles 16 870 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Elizabeth Vandiver examines the ways in which British poets of the First World War used classical literature, culture, and history as a source of images, ideas, and even phrases for their own poetry. Vandiver argues that classics was a crucial source for writers from a wide variety of backgrounds, from working-class poets to those educated in public schools, and for a wide variety of political positions and viewpoints. Poets used references to classics both to support and to oppose the war from its beginning all the way to the Armistice and after. By exploring the importance of classics in the poetry of the First World War, Vandiver offers a new perspective on that poetry and on the history of classics in British culture.

Ethics and Desire in the Wake of Postmodernism - Contemporary Satire (Hardcover, New): Graham Matthews Ethics and Desire in the Wake of Postmodernism - Contemporary Satire (Hardcover, New)
Graham Matthews
R4,234 Discovery Miles 42 340 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

"What is the significance of writing in the wake of postmodernism? The previous decade has seen a growing interest in criticism of postmodern ethics and aesthetics from theorists and writers. This book begins to answer what art form or critical methodology might take its place. Exploring the work of six contemporary novelists Bret Easton Ellis, J.G. Ballard, Will Self, Michel Houellebecq, Tama Janowitz and Chuck Palahniuk Ethics and Desire in the Wake of Postmodernism delivers a series of interventions into six key areas of contemporary debate: fear, nihilism, revolution, ethics, enjoyment and feminism. The book goes on to develop an innovative critical methodology which reinvigorates the ability of art and literature to engage in ideological critique. Rather than valorising separatism, plurality or indeterminacy, this approach delivers a critical framework which enacts a radical de-centering of the fundamental coordinates of contemporary society. "

The End of Literature, Hegel, and the Contemporary Novel (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2019): Francesco Campana The End of Literature, Hegel, and the Contemporary Novel (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2019)
Francesco Campana
R2,390 Discovery Miles 23 900 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book explores the concept of the end of literature through the lens of Hegel's philosophy of art. In his version of Hegel's 'end of art' thesis, Arthur Danto claimed that contemporary art has abandoned its distinctive sensitive and emotive features to become increasingly reflective. Contemporary art has become a question of philosophical reflection on itself and on the world, thus producing an epochal change in art history. The core idea of this book is that this thesis applies quite well to all forms of art except one, namely literature: literature resists its 'end'. Unlike other arts, which have experienced significant fractures in the contemporary world, Campana proposes that literature has always known how to renew itself in order to retain its distinguishing features, so much so that in a way it has always come to terms with its own end. Analysing the distinct character of literature, this book proposes a new and original interpretation of the 'end of art' thesis, showing how it can be used as a key conceptual framework to understand the contemporary novel.

Acta Germanica - German Studies in Africa (English, German, Paperback, New edition): Cilliers Van Den Berg Acta Germanica - German Studies in Africa (English, German, Paperback, New edition)
Cilliers Van Den Berg
R1,283 Discovery Miles 12 830 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Die Schwerpunkte des 49. Bandes sind vielfaltig und decken Literaturanalysen, Aspekte des Sprachunterrichts und linguistische Themen (unter Bezugnahme auf Diskursanalyse, Lexikografie, Transferenz und Interferenz) ab. Die Darstellung des Genozids an den Herero in deutschen Diskursgemeinschaften und eine Analyse der Corona-Ansprachen von Cyril Ramaphosa und Angela Merkel werden abgeloest von Beitragen zu einsprachigen DaF-Woerterbuchern, lexikalischer Transferenz in Oberschlesien und der graphemisch-phonetischen Interferenz in ausgewahlten Eidesformeln. Die berufliche Weiterbildung von Lehrkraften des Faches DaF, die Foerderung von kritischem Denken beim Unterrichten von DaF-Landeskunde und die Vorstellung von einem "Complex Adaptive Blended Language Learning System of German Studies" vervollstandigen die Beitrage zum Sprachunterricht im sudlichen Afrika. Beitrage zur Literatur schliessen eine diskurslinguistische Analyse von Arnold Zweigs essayistischem Werk, eine Analyse von Peter Handkes "Versuch uber die Mudigkeit" und eine Untersuchung nach der Relevanz von Umweltethik und -asthetik in ausgewahlter Kinder- und Jugendliteratur ein. The focus of the 49th volume is diverse, covering literary analysis, aspects of language teaching, and linguistic topics (with reference to discourse analysis, lexico-graphy, transference, and interference). An account of the genocide of the Herero in German discourse communities and an analysis of the Corona speeches of Cyril Ramaphosa and Angela Merkel are followed by contributions on monolingual DaF dictionaries, lexical transference in Upper Silesia, and grapheme phonetic interference in set phrases found in selected oaths. The professional development of teachers of DaF, the promotion of critical thinking in teaching DaF "Landeskunde," and the presentation of a "Complex Adaptive Blended Language Learning System of German Studies" complete the contributions on language teaching in Southern Africa. Contributions on literature include a discourse-linguistic analysis of Arnold Zweig's essayistic work, an analysis of Peter Handke's "Versuch uber die Mudigkeit," and an inquiry into the relevance of environmental ethics and aesthetics in selected children's and youth literature.

The Invention of Monolingualism (Hardcover): David Gramling The Invention of Monolingualism (Hardcover)
David Gramling
R4,920 Discovery Miles 49 200 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Winner of the 2018 Book Award awarded by the American Association for Applied Linguistics The Invention of Monolingualism harnesses literary studies, applied linguisitics, translation studies, and cultural studies to offer a groundbreaking investigation of monolingualism. After briefly describing what "monolingual" means in scholarship and public discourse, and the pejorative effects this common use may have on non-elite and cosmopolitan populations alike, David Gramling sets out to discover a new conception of monolingualism. Along the way, he explores how writers-Turkish, Latin-American, German, and English-language-have in recent decades confronted monolingualism in their texts, and how they have critiqued the World Literature industry's increasing hunger for "translatable" novels.

Exploring Animal Encounters - Philosophical, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2018): Dominik Ohrem,... Exploring Animal Encounters - Philosophical, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2018)
Dominik Ohrem, Matthew Calarco
R4,147 Discovery Miles 41 470 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This collection of essays offers multifaceted explorations of animal encounters in a range of philosophical, cultural, literary, and historical contexts. Exploring Animal Encounters encourages us to think about the richness and complexity of animal lives and human-animal relations, foregrounding the intricate roles nonhuman creatures play in the always already more-than-human sphere of ethics and politics. In this way, the essays in this volume can be understood as a contribution to alternative imaginings of interspecies coexistence in a time in which the issue of human relations with earth and earth others has come to the fore with unprecedented force and severity.

Anti-Mimesis from Plato to Hitchcock (Hardcover, New): Tom Cohen Anti-Mimesis from Plato to Hitchcock (Hardcover, New)
Tom Cohen
R2,706 Discovery Miles 27 060 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The material elements of writing have long been undervalued, and have been dismissed by recent historicising trends of criticism; but analysis of these elements - sound, signature, letters - can transform our understanding of literary texts. In this 1994 book Tom Cohen shows how, in an era of representational criticism and cultural studies, the role of close reading has been overlooked. Arguing that much recent criticism has been caught in potentially regressive models of representation, Professor Cohen undertakes to counter this by rethinking the 'materiality' of the text itself. Through a series of revealing new readings of the work of writers including Plato, Bakhtin, Poe, Whitman and Conrad, Professor Cohen exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and demonstrates how 'the materiality of language' operates to undo the representational models of meaning imposed by the literary canon.

French Ecocriticism - From the Early Modern Period to the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover, New edition): Daniel A Finch-Race,... French Ecocriticism - From the Early Modern Period to the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover, New edition)
Daniel A Finch-Race, Stephanie Posthumus
R1,829 Discovery Miles 18 290 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

This book expounds fruitful ways of analysing matters of ecology, environments, nature, and the non-human world in a broad spectrum of material in French. Scholars from Canada, France, Great Britain, Spain, and the United States examine the work of writers and thinkers including Michel de Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Arthur Rimbaud, Marguerite Yourcenar, Gilbert Simondon, Michel Serres, Michel Houellebecq, and Eric Chevillard. The diverse approaches in the volume signal a common desire to bring together form and content, politics and aesthetics, theory and practice, under the aegis of the environmental humanities.

The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2022): Peter Marks, Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor,... The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures (Hardcover, 1st ed. 2022)
Peter Marks, Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor, Fatima Vieira
R6,357 Discovery Miles 63 570 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures celebrates a literary genre already over 500 years old. Specially commissioned essays from established and emerging international scholars reflect the vibrancy of utopian vision, and its resiliency as idea, genre, and critical mode. Covering politics, environment, geography, body and mind, and social organization, the volume surveys current research and maps new areas of study. The chapters include investigations of anarchism, biopolitics, and postcolonialism and study film, art, and literature. Each essay considers central questions and key primary works, evaluates the most recent research, and outlines contemporary debates. Literatures of Africa, Australia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East are discussed in this global, cross-disciplinary, and comprehensive volume.

Surprised by Sin - The Reader in Paradise Lost (Hardcover, 2nd ed. 1997): Stanley Fish, Nausheen Anwar Surprised by Sin - The Reader in Paradise Lost (Hardcover, 2nd ed. 1997)
Stanley Fish, Nausheen Anwar
R4,397 Discovery Miles 43 970 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In 1967 the world of Milton studies was divided into two armed camps, one proclaiming that Milton was of the devil's party, the other proclaiming that the poet's sympathies are obviously with God and the angels loyal to him. The achievement of Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin was to reconcile the two camps by subsuming their claims in a single overarching thesis: Paradise Lost is a poem about how its readers came to be the way they are and therefore the fact of their divided responses makes perfect sense. Thirty years later the issues raised in Surprised by Sin continue to set the agenda and drive debate.

Lectures on Literature (Paperback): Vladimir Nabokov Lectures on Literature (Paperback)
Vladimir Nabokov
R624 R568 Discovery Miles 5 680 Save R56 (9%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

For two decades, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.

Literature and Skepticism (Hardcover): Pablo Oyarzun Literature and Skepticism (Hardcover)
Pablo Oyarzun
R1,967 Discovery Miles 19 670 Ships in 12 - 19 working days
Culture and Medicine - Critical Readings in the Health and Medical Humanities (Hardcover): Rishi Goyal, Arden Hegele Culture and Medicine - Critical Readings in the Health and Medical Humanities (Hardcover)
Rishi Goyal, Arden Hegele
R3,212 Discovery Miles 32 120 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Charting shared advances across the emerging fields of medical humanities and health humanities, this book engages with the question of how biomedical knowledge is constructed, negotiated, and circulated as a cultural practice. The volume is composed of a series of pathbreaking inter-disciplinary essays that bring sociocultural habits of mind and modes of thought to the study of medicine, health and patients. These juxtapositions create new forms of knowledge, while emphasizing the vulnerability of human bodies, anti-essentialist approaches to biology, a sensitivity to language and rhetoric, and an attention to social justice. These essays dissect the ways that cultural practices define the limits of health and the body: from the body's place and trajectory in the world to how bodies relate to one another, from questions about ageing and sex to what counts as health and illness. Considering how these and other concepts are shaped by a negotiation between medico-scientific knowledge and ways of knowing derived from other domains, this book provides important new insights into how biomedical frameworks become settled forms for broader cultural understanding.

Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory (Hardcover): Sujata Iyengar Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory (Hardcover)
Sujata Iyengar; Series edited by Evelyn Gajowski
R2,684 Discovery Miles 26 840 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory reconsiders, after 20 years of intense critical and creative activity, the theory and practice of adapting Shakespeare to different genres and media. Organized around clusters of key metaphors, the book explicates the principal theories informing the field of Shakespearean adaptation and surveys the growing field of case studies by Shakespeare scholars. Each chapter also looks anew at a specific Shakespeare play from the perspective of a prevailing set of theories and metaphors. Having identified the key critics responsible for developing these metaphors and for framing the discussion in this way, Iyengar moves on to analyze afresh the implications of these critical frames for adaptation studies as a whole and for particular Shakespeare plays. Focusing each chapter around a different play, the book contrasts comic, tragic, and tragicomic modes in Shakespeare's oeuvre and within the major genres of adaptation (e.g., film, stage-production, novel and digital media). Each chapter seasons its theoretical discussions with a lively sprinkling of allusions to Shakespeare - ranging from TikTok to tissue-boxes, from folios and fine arts to fan work. To conclude each chapter, the author provides a case-study of three or four significant and interesting adaptations from different genres or media. A glossary of terms compiled by Philip Gilreath and the author completes the book.

Rewriting the Self - History, Memory, Narrative (Paperback): Mark Freeman Rewriting the Self - History, Memory, Narrative (Paperback)
Mark Freeman
R1,354 Discovery Miles 13 540 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Originally published in 1993. This book explores the process by which individuals reconstruct the meaning and significance of past experience. Drawing on the lives of such notable figures as St Augustine, Helen Keller and Philip Roth as well as on the combined insights of psychology, philosophy and literary theory, the book sheds light on the intricacies and dilemmas of self-interpretation in particular and interpretive psychological enquiry more generally. The author draws upon selected, mainly autobiographical, literary texts in order to examine concretely the process of rewriting the self. Among the issues addressed are the relationship of rewriting the self to the concept of development, the place of language in the construction of selfhood, the difference between living and telling about it, the problem of facts in life history narrative, the significance of the unconscious in interpreting the personal past, and the freedom of the narrative imagination. Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award winner in 1994

Bloomsbury Semiotics (Hardcover): Jamin Pelkey Bloomsbury Semiotics (Hardcover)
Jamin Pelkey
R17,810 Discovery Miles 178 100 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Bloomsbury Semiotics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the entire field of semiotics from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. With four volumes spanning theory, method and practice across the disciplines, this definitive reference work comprises: Volume 1: History and Semiosis Volume 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences Volume 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences Volume 4: Semiotic Movements Uniting fragmented disciplines under the framework of semiotic theory, this set emphasizes and strengthens common bonds shared across intellectual cultures, and facilitates the discovery and recovery of meaning across fields. Providing comprehensive overviews of the history and status of semiotic inquiry across a diverse range of traditions and disciplines, chapters are written by leading international experts. Together, they highlight key contemporary developments and debates before casting a vision for future research priorities, identifying unanswered questions and fresh openings for participation. Providing the most comprehensive and united overview of the entire field for semioticians, Bloomsbury Semiotics enables anyone, from students to seasoned practitioners, to better understand and benefit from semiotic insight and how it relates to their own area of study or research.

Throwing the Moral Dice - Ethics and the Problem of Contingency (Paperback): Thomas Claviez, Viola Marchi Throwing the Moral Dice - Ethics and the Problem of Contingency (Paperback)
Thomas Claviez, Viola Marchi; Foreword by Alain Badiou; Contributions by Etienne Balibar, Rosi Braidotti, …
R823 Discovery Miles 8 230 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

More than a purely philosophical problem, straddling the ambivalent terrain between necessity and impossibility, contingency has become the very horizon of everyday life. Often used as a synonym for the precariousness of working conditions under neoliberalism, for the unknown threats posed by terrorism, or for the uncertain future of the planet itself, contingency needs to be calculated and controlled in the name of the protection of life. The overcoming of contingency is not only called upon to justify questionable mechanisms of political control; it serves as a central legitimating factor for Enlightenment itself. In this volume, nine major philosophers and theorists address a range of questions around contingency and moral philosophy. How can we rethink contingency in its creative aspects, outside the dominant rhetoric of risk and dangerous exposure? What is the status of contingency-as the unnecessary and law-defying-in or for ethics? What would an alternative "ethics of contingency"-one that does not simply attempt to sublate it out of existence-look like? The volume tackles the problem contingency has always posed to both ethical theory and dialectics: that of difference itself, in the difficult mediation between the particular and the universal, same and other, the contingent singularity of the event and the necessary generality of the norms and laws. From deconstruction to feminism to ecological thought, some of today's most influential thinkers reshape many of the most debated concepts in moral philosophy: difference, agency, community, and life itself. Contributors: Etienne Balibar, Rosi Braidotti, Thomas Claviez, Drucilla Cornell, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Viola Marchi, Michael Naas, Cary Wolfe, Slavoj Zizek

Teaching Creative Writing (Hardcover): H. Beck Teaching Creative Writing (Hardcover)
H. Beck
R1,511 Discovery Miles 15 110 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

"Teaching Creative Writing" includes lively contributions from over two dozen leading practitioners in the field. Topics addressed include history of Creative Writing, workshops, undergraduate, postgraduate, reflective activities, assessment, critical theory, and information technology.

The Singularity of Literature - The Singularity of Literature (Paperback): Derek Attridge The Singularity of Literature - The Singularity of Literature (Paperback)
Derek Attridge
R596 Discovery Miles 5 960 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of these capacities is distinctive of literature. What is the singularity of literature? Do the terms "literature" and "the literary" refer to actual entities found in cultures at certain times, or are they merely expressions characteristic of such cultures? Attridge argues that this resistance to definition and reduction is not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. Derek Attridge provides a rich new vocabulary for literature, rethinking such terms as "invention," "singularity," "otherness," "alterity," "performance" and "form." He returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues for the ethical importance of literature, demonstrating how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a "responsible," creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author.

Material Ambitions - Self-Help and Victorian Literature (Paperback): Rebecca Richardson Material Ambitions - Self-Help and Victorian Literature (Paperback)
Rebecca Richardson
R990 R892 Discovery Miles 8 920 Save R98 (10%) Ships in 12 - 19 working days

What the Victorian history of self-help reveals about the myth of individualism. Stories of hardworking characters who lift themselves from rags to riches abound in the Victorian era. From the popularity of such stories, it is clear that the Victorians valorized personal ambition in ways that previous generations had not. In Material Ambitions, Rebecca Richardson explores this phenomenon in light of the under-studied reception history of Samuel Smiles's 1859 publication, Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance. A compilation of vignettes about captains of industry, artists, and inventors who persevered through failure and worked tirelessly to achieve success in their respective fields, Self-Help links individual ambition to the growth of the nation. Contextualizing Smiles's work in a tradition of Renaissance self-fashioning, eighteenth-century advice books, and inspirational biography, Richardson argues that the burgeoning self-help genre of the Victorian era offered a narrative structure that linked individual success with collective success in a one-to-one relationship. Advocating for a broader cultural account of the ambitious hero narrative, Richardson argues that reading these biographies and self-help texts alongside fictional accounts of driven people complicates the morality tale that writers like Smiles took pains to invoke. In chapters featuring the works of Harriet Martineau, Dinah Craik, Thackeray, Trollope, and Miles Franklin, Richardson demonstrates that Victorian fiction dramatized ambition by suggesting where it runs up against the limits of an individual's energy and ability, where it turns into competition, or where it risks upsetting a socio-ecological system of finite resources. The upward mobility plots of John Halifax, Gentleman or Vanity Fair suggest the dangers of zero-sum thinking, particularly evidenced by contemporary preoccupations with Malthusian and Darwinian discourses. Intertwining the methodologies of disability studies and ecocriticism, Material Ambitions persuasively unmasks the longstanding myth that ambitious individualism can overcome disadvantageous systematic and structural conditions.

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