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While his memory languished under Nazi censorship, Franz Kafka
covertly circulated through occupied France and soon emerged as a
cultural icon, read by the most influential intellectuals of the
time as a prophet of the rampant bureaucracy, totalitarian
oppression, and absurdity that branded the twentieth century. In
tracing the history of Kafka's reception in postwar France, John T.
Hamilton explores how the work of a German-Jewish writer from
Prague became a modern classic capable of addressing universal
themes of the human condition. Hamilton also considers how Kafka's
unique literary corpus came to stimulate reflection in diverse
movements, critical approaches, and philosophical schools, from
surrealism and existentialism through psychoanalysis,
phenomenology, and structuralism to Marxism, deconstruction, and
feminism. The story of Kafka's afterlife in Paris thus furnishes a
key chapter in the unfolding of French theory, which continues to
guide how we read literature and understand its relationship to the
world.
Volume of new essays investigating Kleist's influences and sources
both literary and philosophical, their role as paradigms, and the
ways in which he responded to and often shattered them. Heinrich
von Kleist (1777-1811) was a rebel who upset canonization by
employing his predecessors and contemporaries as what Steven Howe
calls "inspirational foils." It was precisely a keen awareness of
literary and philosophical traditions that allowed Kleist to
shatter prevailing paradigms. Though little is known about what
specifically Kleist read, the frequent allusions in his enduringly
modern oeuvre indicate fruitful dialogues with both canonical and
marginal works of European literature, spanning antiquity (The Old
Testament, Sophocles), the Early Modern Period (Shakespeare, De
Zayas), the late Enlightenment (Wieland, Goethe, Schiller), and the
first eleven years of the nineteenth century (Mereau, Brentano,
Collin). Kleist's works also evidence encounters with his
philosophical precursors and contemporaries, including the ancient
Greeks (Aristotle) and representatives of all phases of
Enlightenment thought (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Ferguson, Spalding,
Fichte, Kant, Hegel), economic theories (Smith, Kraus), and
developments in anthropology, sociology, and law. This volume of
new essays sheds light on Kleist's relationship to his literary and
philosophical influences and on their function as paradigms to
which his writings respond.
From national security and social security to homeland and
cyber-security, "security" has become one of the most overused
words in culture and politics today. Yet it also remains one of the
most undefined. What exactly are we talking about when we talk
about security? In this original and timely book, John Hamilton
examines the discursive versatility and semantic vagueness of
security both in current and historical usage. Adopting a
philological approach, he explores the fundamental ambiguity of
this word, which denotes the removal of "concern" or "care" and
therefore implies a condition that is either carefree or careless.
Spanning texts from ancient Greek poetry to Roman Stoicism, from
Augustine and Luther to Machiavelli and Hobbes, from Kant and
Nietzsche to Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, Hamilton analyzes
formulations of security that involve both safety and negligence,
confidence and complacency, certitude and ignorance. Does security
instill more fear than it assuages? Is a security purchased with
freedom or human rights morally viable? How do security projects
inform our expectations, desires, and anxieties? And how does the
will to security relate to human finitude? Although the book makes
clear that security has always been a major preoccupation of
humanity, it also suggests that contemporary panics about security
and the related desire to achieve perfect safety carry their own
very significant risks.
A critical reflection on complacency and its role in the decline of
classics in the academy. In response to philosopher Simon
Blackburn's portrayal of complacency as a vice that impairs
university study at its core, John T. Hamilton examines the history
of complacency in classics and its implications for our
contemporary moment. The subjects, philosophies, and literatures of
ancient Greece and Rome were once treated as the foundation of
learning, with everything else devolving from them. Hamilton
investigates what this model of superiority, derived from the
golden age of the classical tradition, shares with the current
hegemony of mathematics and the natural sciences. He considers how
the qualitative methods of classics relate to the quantitative
positivism of big data, statistical reasoning, and presumably
neutral abstraction, which often dismiss humanist subjectivity,
legitimize self-sufficiency, and promote a fresh brand of academic
complacency. In acknowledging the reduced status of classics in
higher education today, he questions how scholarly striation and
stagnation continue to bolster personal, ethical, and political
complacency in our present era.
A critical reflection on complacency and its role in the decline of
classics in the academy. In response to philosopher Simon
Blackburn's portrayal of complacency as a vice that impairs
university study at its core, John T. Hamilton examines the history
of complacency in classics and its implications for our
contemporary moment. The subjects, philosophies, and literatures of
ancient Greece and Rome were once treated as the foundation of
learning, with everything else devolving from them. Hamilton
investigates what this model of superiority, derived from the
golden age of the classical tradition, shares with the current
hegemony of mathematics and the natural sciences. He considers how
the qualitative methods of classics relate to the quantitative
positivism of big data, statistical reasoning, and presumably
neutral abstraction, which often dismiss humanist subjectivity,
legitimize self-sufficiency, and promote a fresh brand of academic
complacency. In acknowledging the reduced status of classics in
higher education today, he questions how scholarly striation and
stagnation continue to bolster personal, ethical, and political
complacency in our present era.
When Oedipus met the Sphinx on the road to Thebes, he did more than
answer a riddle - he spawned a myth that, told and retold, would
become one of Western culture's central narratives about
self-understanding. Identifying the story as a threshold myth - in
which the hero crosses over into an unknown and dangerous realm
where rules and limits are not known - Oedipus and the Sphinx
offers a fresh account of this mythic encounter and how it deals
with the concepts of liminality and otherness. Almut-Barbara Renger
assesses the story's meanings and functions in classical antiquity
- from its presence in ancient vase painting to its absence in
Sophocles' tragedy - before arriving at two of its major reworkings
in European modernity: the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud
and the poetics of Jean Cocteau. Through her readings, she
highlights the ambiguous status of the Sphinx and reveals Oedipus
himself to be a liminal creature, providing key insights into
Sophocles' portrayal and establishing a theoretical framework that
organizes evaluations of the myth's reception in the twentieth
century. Revealing the narrative of Oedipus and the Sphinx to be
the very paradigm of a key transition experienced by all of
humankind, Renger situates myth between the competing claims of
science and art in an engagement that has important implications
for current debates in literary studies, psychoanalytic theory,
cultural history, and aesthetics.
Hailed by Horace and Quintilian as the greatest of Greek lyric
poets, Pindar has always enjoyed a privileged position in the
so-called classical tradition of the West. Given the intense
difficulty of the poetry, however, Pindaric interpretation has
forever grappled with the perplexing dilemma that one of the most
influential poets of antiquity should prove to be so dark. In
discussing both poets and scholars from a broad historical span,
with special emphasis on the German legacy of genius, "Soliciting
Darkness" investigates how Pindar's obscurity has been perceived
and confronted, extorted and exploited. As such, this study
addresses a variety of pressing issues, including the recovery and
appropriation of classical texts, problems of translation,
representations of lyric authenticity, and the possibility or
impossibility of a continuous literary tradition. The poetics of
obscurity that emerges here suggests that taking Pindar to be an
incomprehensible poet may not simply be the result of an
insufficient or false reading, but rather may serve as a wholly
adequate judgment.
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