Works on Paper, 1980-1986

Works on Paper, 1980-1986
Author: Eliot Weinberger
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 198
Release: 1986
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780811210010

During the past several years, Eliot Weinberger's inventive prose has earned him a reputation as a candid social observer and penetrating essayist. Works on Paper is the first collection of his writings, twenty-one pieces that juxtapose the world as it is and the world as it is imagined-by artists, poets, historical figures, and ordinary people. "Inventions of Asia," the first section, deals primarily with how the West reinvents the East (and how the East invents itself): images of India circa 1492 (where Columbus thought he was going); Christian missionaries in sixteenth-century China; Bombay prostitutes as seen by a New York photojournalist; Tibetan theocracy transplanted to the Rockies; a Confucian bureaucrat's address to crocodiles; the shifting iconography of the "tyger"; looking for an answer to an ancient Chinese poem of questions; how the children of Mao have reinvented Imagism; Kampuchea Under Pol Pot. "Extensions of Poetry" explores the ways in which the world affects the imaginations of individual poets (George Oppen, Langston Hughes, Charles Reznikoff, Octavio Paz, Clayton Eshleman) and indeed entire movements, leading at times to unexpected incarnations and transformations. Weinberger ponders such strange conjunctions as Whittaker Chambers and Objectivism, anti-Semitism among American Modernists, bourgeois poets--present-day wards of the academy and the state--confronting the issues of peace, American foreign policy, and The Bomb.

American Literature in Transition, 1970–1980

American Literature in Transition, 1970–1980
Author: Kirk Curnutt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2018-03-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108551599

American Literature in Transition, 1970–1980 examines the literary developments of the twentieth-century's gaudiest decade. For a quarter century, filmmakers, musicians, and historians have returned to the era to explore the legacy of Watergate, stagflation, and Saturday Night Fever, uncovering the unique confluence of political and economic phenomena that make the period such a baffling time. Literary historians have never shown much interest in the era, however - a remarkable omission considering writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Marilyn French, Adrienne Rich, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Alice Walker, and Octavia E. Butler were active. Over the course of twenty-one essays, contributors explore a range of controversial themes these writers tackled, from 1960s' nostalgia to feminism and the redefinition of masculinity to sexual liberation and rock 'n' roll. Other essays address New Journalism, the rise of blockbuster culture, memoir and self-help, and crime fiction - all demonstrating that the Me Decade was nothing short of mesmerizing.

Paul Auster and the Influence of Maurice Blanchot

Paul Auster and the Influence of Maurice Blanchot
Author: María Laura Arce
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476624909

Poet, writer and filmmaker Paul Auster is one of the great contributors to American postmodern literature. Influenced by authors like Poe and the hardboiled detective stories of the 1950s, Auster's novels represented a new genre of "anti-detective fiction," in which the case itself loses direction and is overshadowed by existential questions. Analyzing three of his novels--Ghosts (1986), The Music of Chance (1990) and Mr. Vertigo (1994)--this critical study explores the intertextual relationship between Auster's work and the oeuvre of French writer and critic Maurice Blanchot. The author explores Auster's work as a fictionalization of Blanchot's concept of inspiration and the construction of imaginary space.

Austerity and Irish Women’s Writing and Culture, 1980–2020

Austerity and Irish Women’s Writing and Culture, 1980–2020
Author: Deirdre Flynn
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2022-07-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000588351

Austerity and Irish Women’s Writing and Culture, 1980–2020 focuses on the under-represented relationship between austerity and Irish women’s writing across the last four decades. Taking a wide focus across cultural mediums, this collection of essays from leading scholars in Irish studies considers how economic policies impacted on and are represented in Irish women’s writing during critical junctures in recent Irish history. Through an investigation of cultural production north and south of the border, this collection analyses women’s writing using a multimedium approach through four distinct lenses: austerity, feminism, and conflict; arts and austerity; race and austerity; and spaces of austerity. This collection asks two questions: what sort of cultural output does austerity produce? And if the effects of austerity are gendered, then what are the gender-specific responses to financial insecurity, both national and domestic? By investigating how austerity is treated in women’s writing and culture from 1980 to 2020, this collection provides a much-needed analysis of the gendered experience of economic crisis and specifically of Ireland’s consistent relationship with cycles of boom and bust. Thirteen chapters, which focus on fiction, drama, poetry, women’s life writing, ​and women's cultural contributions, examine these questions. This volume takes the reader on a journey across decades and forms as a means of interrogating the growth of the economic divide between the rich and the poor since the 1980s through the voices of Irish women.

International Who's Who in Poetry 2004

International Who's Who in Poetry 2004
Author: Europa Publications
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781857431780

Provides up-to-date profiles on the careers of leading and emerging poets.

An Introduction to the Literature of eSwatini

An Introduction to the Literature of eSwatini
Author: Kerry Vincent
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-10-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498577962

This book is the first comprehensive introduction to the literature of eSwatini. It details a literary trajectory that begins with renditions of the country by early travelers and settlers and follows with the emergence of a national literature that is marked by early oral influences and molded by unique sociopolitical interests. Along the way, the author considers how contemporary writing by visitors, expatriates, and journalists have salvaged and recycled earlier images and attitudes through a series of representational and rhetorical practices. In particular, the lingering influence of colonial discourse is explored in the context of the nation’s pivotal incwala ritual. A chapter on Hilda Kuper that situates her fiction and drama between outsider and insider accounts is followed by the final two chapters that trace the development of anglophone and siSwati writing and identify themes arising from the major literary genres produced by local authors. The concluding section features a comprehensive registry of writers, with brief summaries of their works.