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Minor Prophecies - The Literary Essay in the Culture Wars (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R2,581
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Minor Prophecies - The Literary Essay in the Culture Wars (Hardcover, New)
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For most people literary criticism is a mystery that often seems
inaccessible, written for an in-group. Even worse, a Battle of the
Books has broken out between neoconservatives and neoradicals-all
the more reason to steer clear of the fray. Geoffrey Hartman argues
that ignoring the culture wars would be unwise, for what is at
stake is the nature of the arts we prize and our obligation to
remain civil and avoid the apocalyptic tone of most political
prophecy. Hartman's book is both a survey of the history of modern
literary criticism and a strategic intervention. First he presents
an account of the culture of criticism in the last one hundred
years. He then widens the focus to provide a picture of the
critical essay from 1700 to the present in order to show that a
major change in style took place after 1950. Two chapters focus on
F. R. Leavis and Paul de Man, central-and controversial-figures in
academic criticism. Hartman attends to major developments on the
continent and in Anglo-American circles that have disrupted the
calm of what he calls the friendship or conversational style. On
the one hand, critics and thinkers have pursued strange gods in
order to enrich and sharpen their critical style. This change
Hartman welcomes. On the other hand, along with a renewed interest
in politics and historical speculation, a didactic and moralistic
tone has again entered the scene. Hartman rejects this new
moralism. The author is an eloquent defender of reading the text of
criticism as carefully as the text of literature. He argues for a
broader conception of critical style, one that would support the
open and conversational voice of the public critic as well as the
inventive and innovative practice of the technical critic. Hartman
sets before us an ideal of literary criticism that can acknowledge
theory yet does not shrink from a sustained, text-centered
response. Minor Prophecies is a major book by one of our finest
critics.
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