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This surprising study draws together the disparate fields of
postcolonial theory and book history in a challenging and
illuminating way. Robert Fraser proposes that we now look beyond
the traditional methods of the Anglo-European bibliographic
paradigm, and learn to appreciate instead the diversity of shapes
that verbal expression has assumed across different societies. This
change of attitude will encourage students and researchers to
question developmentally conceived models of communication, and
move instead to a re-formulation of just what is meant by a book,
an author, a text. Fraser illustrates his combined approach with
comparative case studies of print, script and speech cultures in
South Asia and Africa, before panning out to examine conflicts and
paradoxes arising in parallel contexts. The re-orientation of
approach and the freshness of view offered by this volume will
foster understanding and creative collaboration between scholars of
different outlooks, while offering a radical critique to those
identified in its concluding section as purveyors of global
literary power.
This second edition of Ian Gordon's A Preface to Pope places the
poet within the social, cultural and intellectual context of his
time. It throws new light on the theoretical and imaginative
structures of Pope's poetry focusing on the linguistic complexity
at its centre. It offers a critical survey of his work and also
contains introductory essays. The book concludes with a reference
section which includes indispensible information on places and
people in Pope's poetry, together with a glossary of technical
terms and a guide to further reading.
This second edition of Ian Gordon's A Preface to Pope places the
poet within the social, cultural and intellectual context of his
time. It throws new light on the theoretical and imaginative
structures of Pope's poetry focusing on the linguistic complexity
at its centre. It offers a critical survey of his work and also
contains introductory essays. The book concludes with a reference
section which includes indispensible information on places and
people in Pope's poetry, together with a glossary of technical
terms and a guide to further reading.
Robert Fraser stresses the conciliating force of Ben Okri's writing
and his vision of an ideal community beyond the strife-ridden
present. This is the first ever full-length study of Ben Okri's
life and work based on twenty years of friendship and close
attention to his texts. It argues that his writing is best
appreciated against the background of his early exposure to the
Nigerian Civil War (1967-70) and his attempts since then to forge a
medium of conciliation through literature. We live by stories, Okri
once wrote, We also live in them. Following him from Lagos to
London and from obscurity to recognition, Fraser interprets Okri's
successive books as refashionings of this inner and outer narrative
space by strenuous imagining and generous exhortation. Okri's
fiction, essays and poems beckon us through the shabby but vibrant
streets of our strife-ridden metropolis towards a potential city of
justice, sincerity and peace.
Examines West African poetry in English and French against the background of oral poetry in the vernacular. Surveys the transformation of the oral tradition to written form and the subsequent development of new movements negritude, nationalism and dissent.
Late Victorian quest romance has recently attracted renewed
attention from critics. Much of this interest has centred on its
politics of gender, and its vision of Empire. This book prefers to
view the genre in the light of debates within the then nascent
sciences of Anthropology and Archaeology. Starting with a
discussion of the nature of romance, it goes on to interpret the
encounters with lost or buried pasts. By describing encounters with
remote places and times, so it argues, these authors were asking
their readers disconcerting questions about humankind, and about
their own culture's institutions and beliefs. The book ends by
considering the implications of such a view for the whole colonial
enterprise.
This surprising study draws together the disparate fields of
postcolonial theory and book history in a challenging and
illuminating way. Robert Fraser proposes that we now look beyond
the traditional methods of the Anglo-European bibliographic
paradigm, and learn to appreciate instead the diversity of shapes
that verbal expression has assumed across different societies. This
change of attitude will encourage students and researchers to
question developmentally conceived models of communication, and
move instead to a re-formulation of just what is meant by a book,
an author, a text. Fraser illustrates his combined approach with
comparative case studies of print, script and speech cultures in
South Asia and Africa, before panning out to examine conflicts and
paradoxes arising in parallel contexts. The re-orientation of
approach and the freshness of view offered by this volume will
foster understanding and creative collaboration between scholars of
different outlooks, while offering a radical critique to those
identified in its concluding section as purveyors of global
literary power.
A classic study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, and the
progress through magic and religion to scientific thought, The
Golden Bough has a unique status in modern anthropology and
literature. First published in 1890, The Golden Bough was
eventually issued in a twelve-volume edition (1906-15) which was
abridged in 1922 by the author and his wife. That abridgement has
never been reconsidered for a modern audience. In it some of the
more controversial passages were dropped, including Frazer's daring
speculations on the Crucifixion of Christ. For the first time this
one-volume edition restores Frazer's bolder theories and sets them
within the framework of a valuable introduction and notes. A
seminal work of modern anthropolgy, The Golden Bough also
influenced many twentieth-century writers, including D H Lawrence,
T S Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis. Its discussion of magical types, the
sacrificial killing of kings, the dying god, and the scapegoat is
given fresh pertinence in this new edition. ABOUT THE SERIES: For
over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the
widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable
volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the
most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features,
including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful
notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further
study, and much more.
Marrying life-writing with classical reception, this book examines
ancient biography and its impact on subsequent ages. Close readings
of ancient texts are framed by an assessment of their influence on
the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon, and on the
nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, of responses to
ancient biography of modern critics, and of its visible legacy in
art and film. Crucially it asks what modern biographers can learn
from their ancient predecessors. Are the challenges involved in
life-writing still the same? Have working methods changed, and in
what ways? What in the context of biographical writing is truth,
and how are its interests best served? How is it possible, now as
then, honestly to convey a life?
This book focuses on the twin arts of literature and music,
supporting the notion that cosmopolitanism is the natural condition
of all the arts, and that all culture - without exception - is
migrant culture. It draws on examples ranging from the first to the
twenty-first centuries AD, on locations as remote as Alexandria and
Australia, on writers as different as Virgil and V.S.Naipaul,
Arnold and Achebe, and on musicians as diverse as Bach and Bartok,
Purcell and Steve Reich. Across thirteen chapters, the study
explores the interpenetration of all forms of human expression, the
fallacy of 'national' traditions and limiting conceptions of
regional character. The result is an exploration of artistic and
intellectual endeavour that is particularly welcome in the current
political climate, encouraging us to view history in ways informed
by our contemporary demographic and cultural concerns. Taken either
as a series of interrelated case studies, or else as an evolving
and sequential argument, this book is vital reading for scholars of
music, literature, and cultural and social history.
This is a new release of the original 1936 edition.
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