|
Showing 1 - 11 of
11 matches in All Departments
100 years after Proust's death, In Search of Lost Time remains one
of the greatest works in World Literature. At 3,000 pages, it can
be intimidating to some. This short volume invites first-time
readers and veterans alike to view the novel in a new way. Marcel
Proust (1871-1922) was arguably France's best-known literary
writer. He was the author of stories, essays, translations, and a
3,000-page novel, In Search of Lost Time (1913-27). This book is a
brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites
the reader to view the novel as a single quest-a quest for purpose,
enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging- through the
novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex
desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the
unconscious mind. Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises
are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home
in the world; how we can find genuine connection with other human
beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; how art
can transform our lives; whether an artist's life can shed light on
their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and
ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual
orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we
are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it
might be good to think of our life as a story; how we can feel like
a single, unified person when we are torn apart by change and
competing desires. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to
read the novel itself-how the long, difficult, but joyous
experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be
transformative for our minds and souls.
This book aims at refocusing critical reflection on thematics in
the arts, a topic that has been neglected recently. The volume is
divided into four section: theoretical essays, applications to
literature, reflections on thematics in music and the visual arts,
and a conclusion.
The Future of Religious Minorities in the Middle East addresses the
domestic and international politics that have created conditions
for contemporary religious cleansing in the Middle East. It
provides a platform for a host of distinguished scholars,
journalists, human rights activists, and political practitioners.
The contributors come from diverse political, cultural, and
religious backgrounds; each one drawing on a deep wellspring of
scholarship, experience, sobriety, and passion. Collectively, they
make a major contribution to understanding the dynamics of the
mortal threat to the social pluralism upon which the survival of
religious minorities depends.
The Re-Enchantment of the World is an interdisciplinary volume that
challenges the long-prevailing view of modernity as "disenchanted."
There is of course something to the widespread idea, so memorably
put into words by Max Weber, that modernity is characterized by the
"progressive disenchantment of the world." Yet what is less often
recognized is the fact that a powerful counter-tendency runs
alongside this one, an overwhelming urge to fill the vacuum left by
departed convictions, and to do so without invoking superseded
belief systems. In fact, modernity produces an array of strategies
for re-enchantment, each fully compatible with secular rationality.
It has to, because God has many "aspects"—or to put it in more
secular terms, because traditional religion offers so much in so
many domains. From one thinker to the next, the question of just
what, in religious enchantment, needs to be replaced in a secular
world receives an entirely different answer. Now, for the first
time, many of these strategies are laid out in a single volume,
with contributions by specialists in literature, history, and
philosophy.
"The Re-Enchantment of the World" is an interdisciplinary volume
that challenges the long-prevailing view of modernity as
"disenchanted." There is of course something to the widespread
idea, so memorably put into words by Max Weber, that modernity is
characterized by the "progressive disenchantment of the world." Yet
what is less often recognized is the fact that a powerful
counter-tendency runs alongside this one, an overwhelming urge to
fill the vacuum left by departed convictions, and to do so without
invoking superseded belief systems. In fact, modernity produces an
"array" of strategies for re-enchantment, each fully compatible
with secular rationality. It has to, because God has many
"aspects"--or to put it in more secular terms, because traditional
religion offers so much in so many domains. From one thinker to the
next, the question of just what, in religious enchantment, needs to
be replaced in a secular world receives an entirely different
answer. Now, for the first time, many of these strategies are laid
out in a single volume, with contributions by specialists in
literature, history, and philosophy.
This volume addresses the domestic and international politics that
have created conditions for contemporary religious cleansing in the
Middle East. It provides a platform for a host of distinguished
scholars, journalists, human rights activists, and political
practitioners. The contributors come from diverse political,
cultural, and religious backgrounds; each one drawing on a deep
wellspring of scholarship, experience, sobriety, and passion.
Collectively, they make a major contribution to understanding the
dynamics of the mortal threat to social pluralism upon which the
survival of religious minorities depend.
Why did Jesus speak in parables? Why does Plato's Socrates make bad
arguments? Why do we root for criminal heroes? In mummy movies, why
is the skeptic always the first to go? Why don't stage magicians
even pretend to summon spirits any more? Why is Samuel Beckett so
confusing? And why is it worth trying to answer questions like
these? Witty and approachable, How to Do Things with Fictions
challenges the widespread assumption that literary texts must be
informative or morally improving to be of any real benefit. It
reveals that authors are often best thought of not as entertainers
or as educators but as personal trainers of the brain, putting
their willing readers through exercises that fortify their mental
capacities. This book is both deeply insightful and rigorously
argued, and the journey delivers plenty of surprises along the
way-that moral readings of literature can be positively dangerous;
that the parables were deliberately designed to be misunderstood;
that Plato knowingly sets his main character up for a fall; that we
can sustain our beliefs even when we suspect them to be illusions;
and more. Perhaps best of all, though, the book is written with
uncommon verve and a light touch that will satisfy the generally
educated public and the specialist reader alike. In How to Do
things with Fictions, Joshua Landy convincingly shows how the
imaginative writings sitting on our shelves may well be our best
allies in the struggle for more rigorous thinking, deeper faith,
greater peace of mind, and richer experience.
Why does Mark's Jesus speak in parables? Why does Plato's Socrates
make bad arguments? Why are Beckett's novels so inscrutable? And
why don't stage magicians even pretend to summon spirits anymore?
In a series of captivating chapters on Mark, Plato, Beckett,
Mallarme, and Chaucer, Joshua Landy not only answers these
questions but explains why they are worth asking in the first
place. Witty and approachable, How to Do Things with Fictions
challenges the widespread assumption that literary texts must be
informative or morally improving in order to be of any real
benefit. It reveals that authors are sometimes best thought of not
as entertainers or as educators but as personal trainers of the
brain, putting their willing readers through exercises designed to
fortify specific mental capacities, from form-giving to equanimity,
from reason to faith. Delivering plenty of surprises along the
way-that moral readings of literature can be positively dangerous;
that the parables were deliberately designed to be misunderstood;
that Plato knowingly sets his main character up for a fall; that
metaphor is powerfully connected to religious faith; that we can
sustain our beliefs even when we suspect them to be illusions-How
to Do Things with Fictions convincingly shows that our best allies
in the struggle for more rigorous thinking, deeper faith, richer
experience, and greater peace of mind may well be the imaginative
writings sitting on our shelves.
Philosophy as Fiction seeks to account for the peculiar power of
philosophical literature by taking as its case study the
paradigmatic generic hybrid of the twentieth century, Marcel
Proust's In Search of Lost Time. At once philosophical--in that it
presents claims, and even deploys arguments concerning such
traditionally philosophical issues as knowledge, self-deception,
selfhood, love, friendship, and art--and literary, in that its
situations are imaginary and its stylization inescapably prominent,
Proust's novel presents us with a conundrum. How should it be read?
Can the two discursive structures co-exist, or must philosophy
inevitably undermine literature (by sapping the narrative of its
vitality) and literature undermine philosophy (by placing its
claims in the mouth of an often unreliable narrator)?
In the case of Proust at least, the result is greater than the sum
of its parts. Not only can a coherent, distinctive philosophical
system be extracted from the Recherche, once the narrator's
periodic waywardness is taken into account; not only does a
powerfully original style pervade its every nook, overtly
reinforcing some theories and covertly exemplifying others; but
aspects of the philosophy also serve literary ends, contributing
more to character than to conceptual framework. What is more,
aspects of the aesthetics serve philosophical ends, enabling a
reader to engage in an active manner with an alternative art of
living. Unlike the "essay" Proust might have written, his novel
grants us the opportunity to use it as a practice ground for
cooperation among our faculties, for the careful sifting of
memories, for the complex procedures involved in self-fashioning,
and for the related art of self-deception. It is only because the
narrator's insights do not always add up--a weakness, so long as
one treats the novel as a straightforward treatise--that it can
produce its training effect, a feature that turns out to be its
ultimate strength.
Philosophy as Fiction seeks to account for the peculiar power of
philosophical literature by taking as its case study the
paradigmatic generic hybrid of the twentieth century, Marcel
Proust's In Search of Lost Time. At once philosophical--in that it
presents claims, and even deploys arguments concerning such
traditionally philosophical issues as knowledge, self-deception,
selfhood, love, friendship, and art--and literary, in that its
situations are imaginary and its stylization inescapably prominent,
Proust's novel presents us with a conundrum. How should it be read?
Can the two discursive structures co-exist, or must philosophy
inevitably undermine literature (by sapping the narrative of its
vitality) and literature undermine philosophy (by placing its
claims in the mouth of an often unreliable narrator)?
In the case of Proust at least, the result is greater than the sum
of its parts. Not only can a coherent, distinctive philosophical
system be extracted from the Recherche, once the narrator's
periodic waywardness is taken into account; not only does a
powerfully original style pervade its every nook, overtly
reinforcing some theories and covertly exemplifying others; but
aspects of the philosophy also serve literary ends, contributing
more to character than to conceptual framework. What is more,
aspects of the aesthetics serve philosophical ends, enabling a
reader to engage in an active manner with an alternative art of
living. Unlike the "essay" Proust might have written, his novel
grants us the opportunity to use it as a practice ground for
cooperation among our faculties, for the careful sifting of
memories, for the complex procedures involved in self-fashioning,
and for the related art of self-deception. It is only because the
narrator's insights do not always add up--a weakness, so long as
one treats the novel as a straightforward treatise--that it can
produce its training effect, a feature that turns out to be its
ultimate strength.
|
|