John Barth and Postmodernism

John Barth and Postmodernism
Author: Berndt Clavier
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2007
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780820463858

John Barth's eminence as a postmodernist is indisputable. However, much of the criticism dealing with his work is prompted by his own theories of «exhaustion» and subsequent «replenishment, » leaving his writing relatively untouched by theories of postmodernism in general. This book changes that by focusing on the relationship between Barth's aesthetic and the ideology critique of the historical avant-gardes, which were the first to mobilize art against itself and its institutional practices and demands. Examining Barth's metafictional parodies in the light of theories of space and subjectivity, Clavier engages the question of ideology critique in postmodernism by offering the montage as a possible model for understanding Barth's fiction. In such a light, postmodernism may well be perceived as a mimesis of reality, particularly a recognition of the collective nature of self and the world.

Remembering and Repeating

Remembering and Repeating
Author: Regina M. Schwartz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 1993-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780226742014

In this graceful and compelling book, Regina Schwartz presents a powerful reading of Paradise Lost by tracing the structure of the poem to the pattern of "repeated beginnings" found in the Bible. In both works, the world order is constantly threatened by chaos. By drawing on both the Bible and the more contemporary works of, among others, Freud, Lacan, Ricoeur, Said, and Derrida, Schwartz argues that chaos does not simply threaten order, but rather, chaos inheres in order. "A brilliant study that quietly but powerfully recharacterizes many of the contexts of discussion in Milton criticism. Particularly noteworthy is Schwartz's ability to introduce advanced theoretical perspectives without ever taking the focus of attention away from the dynamics and problematics of Milton's poem."—Stanley Fish

The Drama of the Double

The Drama of the Double
Author: Katherine H. Burkman
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2016-04-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137573880

This book explores the way in which doubling takes place in several novels, films, and dramas, primarily focusing on modern drama and exploring how five Greek myths – Oedipus, Narcissus, Dionysus, Orestes, and Demeter – inform the literature. Taking a psychological/mythical approach, this book explores the inner divisions that lead to boundary loss and the search for the self that may lead to boundaries found. The contention of the book is that the oedipal search for self has been replaced in modern literature by individuals caught up in a narcissistic culture. Katherine H. Burkman explores plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Marsha Norman, and Will Eno.

Faulkner in the Twenty-First Century

Faulkner in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Robert W. Hamblin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2009-09-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781604730425

A turn-of-the-century map of where Faulkner studies have traveled and where they are headed

Vicious Circuits

Vicious Circuits
Author: Joseph Jonghyun Jeon
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-03-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1503608468

In December of 1997, the International Monetary Fund announced the largest bailout package in its history, aimed at stabilizing the South Korean economy in response to a credit and currency crisis of the same year. Vicious Circuits examines what it terms "Korea's IMF Cinema," the decade of cinema following that crisis, in order to think through the transformations of global political economy at the end of the American century. It argues that one of the most dominant traits of the cinema that emerged after the worst economic crisis in the history of South Korea was its preoccupation with economic phenomena. As the quintessentially corporate art form—made as much in the boardroom as in the studio—film in this context became an ideal site for thinking through the global political economy in the transitional moment of American decline and Chinese ascension. With an explicit focus of state economic policy, IMF cinema did not just depict the economy; it also was this economy's material embodiment. That is, it both represented economic developments and was itself an important sector in which the same pressures and changes affecting the economy at large were at work. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon's window on Korea provides a peripheral but crucial perspective on the operations of late US hegemony and the contradictions that ultimately corrode it.

Faulkner and Whiteness

Faulkner and Whiteness
Author: Jay Watson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2011-05-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1628468610

William Faulkner wrote during a tumultuous period in southern racial consciousness, between the years of the enactment of Jim Crow and the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the South. Throughout the writer's career, racial paradigms were in flux, and these shifting notions are reflected in Faulkner's prose. Faulkner's fiction contains frequent questions about the ways in which white Americans view themselves with regard to race along with challenges to the racial codes and standards of the region, and complex portrayals of the interactions between blacks and whites. Throughout his work, Faulkner contests white identity—its performance by whites and those passing for white, its role in shaping the South, and its assumption of normative identity in opposition to non-white “Others.” This is true even in novels without a strong visible African American presence, such as As I Lay Dying, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion. Faulkner and Whiteness explores the ways in which Faulkner's fiction addresses and destabilizes the concept of whiteness in American culture. Collectively, the essays argue that whiteness, as part of the Nobel Laureate's consistent querying of racial dynamics, is a central element. This anthology places Faulkner's oeuvre—and scholarly views of it—in the contexts of its contemporary literature and academic trends exploring race and texts.

House of Psychotic Women

House of Psychotic Women
Author: Kier-La Janisse
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 1357
Release: 2015-01-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1903254825

Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - ‘the eccentric’ - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play. HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a celebration of female madness, both onscreen and off. This critically-acclaimed publication is packed with rare images that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, Paranormal Activity, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more. Prior to this ebook edition, Kier-La's highly acclaimed book has already been issued twice in hardcover and twice in paperback, garnering extensive press coverage. Endorsement including the following: “God, this woman can write, with a voice and intellect that’s so new. The truth in the most deadly unique way I’ve ever read.” – Ralph Bakshi, director of ‘Fritz the Cat’, ‘Heavy Traffic’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, etc. “Fascinating, engaging and lucidly written: an extraordinary blend of deeply researched academic analysis and revealing memoir.” – Iain Banks, author of ‘The Wasp Factory’

Culture/Contexture

Culture/Contexture
Author: E. Valentine Daniel
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0520323696

The rapprochement of anthropology and literary studies, begun nearly fifteen years ago by such pioneering scholars as Clifford Geertz, Edward Said, and James Clifford, has led not only to the creation of the new scholarly domain of cultural studies but to the deepening and widening of both original fields. Literary critics have learned to "anthropologize" their studies—to ask questions about the construction of meanings under historical conditions and reflect on cultural "situatedness." Anthropologists have discovered narratives other than the master narratives of disciplinary social science that need to be drawn on to compose ethnographies. Culture/Contexture brings together for the first time literature and anthropology scholars to reflect on the antidisciplinary urge that has made the creative borrowing between their two fields both possible and necessary. Critically expanding on such pathbreaking works as James Clifford and George Marcus's Writing Culture and Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer's Anthropology as Cultural Critique, contributors explore the fascination that draws the disciplines together and the fears that keep them apart. Their topics demonstrate the rich intersection of anthropology and literary studies, ranging from reading and race to writing and representation, incest and violence, and travel and time. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.