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Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books is a comprehensive
resource that builds bridges between the traditional focus and
methodologies of literary studies and the actualities of modern and
contemporary literature, including the realities of professional
writing, the conventions and practicalities of the publishing
world, and its connections between literary publishing and other
media. Focusing on the relationship between modern literature and
the publishing industry, the volume enables students and academics
to extend the text-based framework of modules on contemporary
writing into detailed expositions of the culture and industry which
bring these texts into existence; it brings economic considerations
into line alongside creative issues, and examines how employing
marketing strategies are utilized to promote and sell books.
Sections cover: The standard university-course specifications of
contemporary writing, offering an extensive picture of the social,
economic, and cultural contexts of these literary genres The impact
and status of non-literary writing, and how this compares with
certain literary genres as an index to contemporary culture and a
reflection of the state of the publishing industry The
practicalities and conventions of the publishing industry
Contextual aspects of literary culture and the book industry,
visiting the broader spheres of publishing, promotion, bookselling,
and literary culture Carefully linked chapters allow readers to tie
key elements of the publishing industry to the particular demands
and features of contemporary literary genres and writing, offering
a detailed guide to the ways in which the three core areas of
culture, economics, and pragmatics intersect in the world of
publishing. Further to being a valuable resource for those studying
English or Creative Writing, the volume is a key text for degrees
in which Publishing is a component, and is relevant to those
aspects of Media Studies that look at interactions between the
media and literature/publishing.
Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books is a comprehensive
resource that builds bridges between the traditional focus and
methodologies of literary studies and the actualities of modern and
contemporary literature, including the realities of professional
writing, the conventions and practicalities of the publishing
world, and its connections between literary publishing and other
media. Focusing on the relationship between modern literature and
the publishing industry, the volume enables students and academics
to extend the text-based framework of modules on contemporary
writing into detailed expositions of the culture and industry which
bring these texts into existence; it brings economic considerations
into line alongside creative issues, and examines how employing
marketing strategies are utilized to promote and sell books.
Sections cover: The standard university-course specifications of
contemporary writing, offering an extensive picture of the social,
economic, and cultural contexts of these literary genres The impact
and status of non-literary writing, and how this compares with
certain literary genres as an index to contemporary culture and a
reflection of the state of the publishing industry The
practicalities and conventions of the publishing industry
Contextual aspects of literary culture and the book industry,
visiting the broader spheres of publishing, promotion, bookselling,
and literary culture Carefully linked chapters allow readers to tie
key elements of the publishing industry to the particular demands
and features of contemporary literary genres and writing, offering
a detailed guide to the ways in which the three core areas of
culture, economics, and pragmatics intersect in the world of
publishing. Further to being a valuable resource for those studying
English or Creative Writing, the volume is a key text for degrees
in which Publishing is a component, and is relevant to those
aspects of Media Studies that look at interactions between the
media and literature/publishing.
Contemporary aesthetics is characterized by generic mixing on the
level of both form and content. The barriers between different
media and different genres have been broken down in all literary
art forms, whether it be theatre, poetry, or the novel. While the
publishing industry is increasingly keen to label novels according
to genre or sub-genre ("Chick Lit", "Lad Lit", "Gay fiction",
"Scottish fiction", "New Historical Fiction", "Crime fiction",
"Post-9/11 Fiction"), the novel itself (and novelists) persist in
resisting generic categorizations as well as inviting them. Is this
a move towards a new artistic liberty or does it simply testify to
a confusion of identity? The "aesthetic supermarket" evoked by
Lodge in 1992 does indeed seem to sum up the variety of choices
open to writers of fiction today and a literary landscape
characterized by crossover and hybridization. The familiar
dialectic of realism versus experimentation has segued into a
middle ground of consensus which is neither radical nor populist,
but both at the same time. The techniques of postmodernism have
become selling points for novels, and the Postmodern Condition
itself seems little more than a narrative posture marketed for an
increasingly wide audience. Whether they have recourse to a
"repertoire of imposture" (Amis, Self, Winterson), as Richard
Bradford would have it (The Novel Now, 2007), in other words "the
abandonment of any obligation to explain or justify their
excursions from credulity and mimesis", or, like the New Puritans,
make use of narrative minimalism in order to foreground their own
peculiarities, contemporary novelists consistently draw attention
to the fundamental instability of narrative process and genre.The
much-feared apocalypse of the novel has failed to take place with
the arrival of the new millennium, but generic game-playing and
flickering, narrative hesitation and uncertainty continue to pose
the question of what constitutes a novel today and to challenge its
identity in a world where all culture is increasingly public,
increasingly contested and increasingly multifarious. Thanks to
theoretical approaches as well as analyses of specific works, this
collection of essays aims to examine the concepts of generic
instability and cross-fertilization, of narrative postures and
impostures, and their constant redefinition of identity, which
contaminates the very concept of genre. It demonstrates the
diversity of generic practices in the novel today and furnishes us
with undeniable evidence of how generic instability is
fundamentally constitutive of the contemporary novel's identity.
The conviction that the development and promotion of the arts,
humanities and culture through the study of literature and the
aesthetic are the fundamental constituents of any progress in
society is at the heart of this volume. The essays gathered here
explore the role of the imagination and aesthetic awareness in an
age when the corporatization of knowledge is in the process of
transforming literary studies, and political commitment is in
danger of disappearing behind a supposedly post-ideological
late-capitalist consensus.The main focus of the volume is the
mutual implication of aesthetics and ideology and the status and
value of different types of art within the political arena.
Challenging issues in contemporary aesthetics are examined within
the wider framework of current debates on the disappearance of the
real, the crisis in representation, and the use of new media.The
wide range of examples collected here, stretching from experimental
poetry in post-war Germany, political commitment in
twentieth-century French theatre, and countercultural Rumanian
theatre under Ceausescu, to Neo-Victorian fiction, Verbatim theatre
in the UK, and political theatre for the masses in Estonia,
vouchsafe unique insights into the intersection of aesthetics and
ideology and the practical consequences thereof. As such, the
volume opens up a space for a meaningful engagement with authentic
forms of art from inside and outside the Anglosphere, and,
ultimately, uses these examples as a platform from which to imagine
some form of "aesthethics", representing an ideal union of
aesthetics and ideology. This concept, first coined by the French
philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, will prove to be relevant
both within the parameters of the examples discussed here, but also
beyond, for the contributors to this volume are unanimous in
refusing to believe that aesthetics and ideology can exist one
without the other, and in recognizing the centrality of ethics in
any discussion of these notions.
All over the world, in the most varied contexts, contemporary
theatre is a rich source for increasing the visibility of
communities generally perceived by others as minorities, or those
who see themselves as such. Whether of a linguistic, ethnic,
political, social, cultural or sexual nature, the claims of
minorities enjoy a privileged medium in theatre. Perhaps it is
because theatre itself is linked to the notions of centre and
periphery, conformism and marginality, domination and subjugation -
notions that minority theatre constantly examines by staging them -
that it is so sensitive to the issues of troubled and conflicted
identity and able to give them a universal resonance.Among the
questions raised by this volume, is that of the relationship
between the particular and the more general aims of this type of
theatre. How is it possible to speak to everyone, or at least to
the majority, when one is representing the voice of the few? Beyond
such considerations, urgent critical examination of the function
and aims of minority theatre is needed. To what kind of public is
such drama addressed? Does it have an exemplary nature? How is it
possible to avoid the pitfalls and the dead end of ghettoization?
Certain types of audience-specific theatre are examined in this
context, as, for example, theatre as therapy, theatre as an
educational tool, and gay theatre. Particular attention is paid to
the claims of minorities within culturally and economically
dominant western countries.These are some of the avenues explored
by this volume which aims to answer fundamental questions such as:
What is minority theatre and why does theatre, a supposedly
bourgeois, if not to say elitist, art form, have such affinity with
the margins? What if, particularly in contemporary society, the
theatre as a form, were merely playing out its fundamentally
marginal status? The authors of these essays show how different
forms of minority theatre can challenge cultural consensus and
homogenization, while also aspiring to universality. They also
address the central question of the place and status of apparently
marginal forms of theatre in the context of globalization and in
doing so re-examine theatre itself as a genre. Not only do they
illustrate how minority theatre can challenge the dominant
paradigms that govern society, but they also suggest their own more
flexible and challenging frameworks for theatrical activity.
The aim of this volume is to use the problematic of translation in
both its metaphorical and literal acceptations in order to explore
the concept of identity and its manifestations in cultural,
artistic and literary production, particularly, but not
exclusively, in postcolonial societies which have recently
undergone profound upheaval. The changing nature of identity in its
local and global manifestations is examined as well as the manner
in which an identity may be "translated" for the consumption of a
specific market. To what extent can translation and the adaptation
that it implies furnish access to a foreign culture? Is it possible
or even desirable to attempt to transcend cultural barriers through
translation and/or adaptation, whether the translator's agenda be
literary, political, ethical or even metaphysical? When we attempt
to transfer meaning from one medium or language to another what are
the challenges and pitfalls facing the cultural interpreter or
"translator". In an era of late-capitalist globalisation of culture
has homogenisation replaced local specificity or is the latter
merely recuperated as a facet of marketing strategy? These are some
of the questions which will be addressed by the authors of the
pieces collected here as they seek to negotiate a philosophy of
translation for the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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