Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Fantasy
Kinds of Fantasy Selected AbstractsFANTASY, FICTION, AND FEELINGSMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 5 2006NORMAN KREITMAN Abstract: The nature of fantasy has been little discussed, despite its importance in the arts. Its significance is brought out here in relation to the long-standing debate on the alleged paradox of fiction,that we respond emotionally to characters and events known to be unreal. Examination of the paradox shows it to be ill founded once the nature of fantasy is appreciated. Moreover, a detailed consideration of fantasy shows that it can itself provide a plausible account of our emotional reactions to creative literature, an account that, after a review of some possible objections, is then contrasted with the leading contemporary theories. [source] FANTASY AND IMAGINATION IN WINNICOTT'S WORKBRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, Issue 1 2002Richard Frankel First page of article [source] Constructing Queer Communities: Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other FantasiesCONSTELLATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CRITICAL AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY, Issue 1 2001Morris Kaplan [source] Fantasies of Friendship in The Faerie Queene, Book IVENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 2 2007Melissa E. Sanchez For such members of the Sidney-Essex circle as Spenser, who supported monarchy as such but were uneasy about a number of specific policies, what historians have described as a move in the 1590s away from mid-century conciliar theories generated anxiety about the status of the nobility and the future of Protestantism. The erotic relations of the 1596 edition of The Faerie Queene register such concerns about the absolutist rhetoric of the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign, most noticeably in the revised ending of Book III. Whereas the 1590 Book of Chastity concludes with Scudamour and Amoret merging into a hermaphroditic figure of mutual devotion, the 1596 version replaces this scene of conjugal bliss with a protracted narrative of Scudamour's despairing suspicion and Amoret's continued affliction. The nature of Amoret's loyalty, moreover, is itself complicated by the concluding cantos of Book IV, which reveal that the husband for whom she has willingly suffered was in fact the first of her assailants. The disproportion between Amoret's fidelity and Scudamour's desert in the 1596 versions of Books III and IV suggests that idealized equations of love, virtue, and suffering may have lulled Amoret into complicity in her own abuse. This revision is thus crucial to Spenser's project of fashioning a virtuous subject, for in apprehending the discrepancy between idealized narratives of mutual devotion and actual structures of unilateral sacrifice, the reader of The Faerie Queene may likewise come to recognize and resist the contradictions and inequities of late sixteenth-century political practice. [source] Cannabis and Fantasies of Development: Revaluing Relations through Land in Rural Papua New GuineaTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2007Jamon Alex Halvaksz Over the past decade, marijuana has become a significant element within Papua New Guinea's communities, revealing an important connection to the broader political economy. For young men, fluctuating commodity prices, the intermittent exploitation of mineral wealth and a reluctant tourist economy only gives them a taste for development. Marijuana seems to offer its permanence. Somewhere between the harsh reality of local economic and ecological futures young men near the town of Wau (Morobe Province) imagine themselves as successful entrepreneurs in the emerging drug trade. In particular, I consider how young men imagine the planting of this illicit crop as mediating tensions between acting individually and acting communally. While most have yet to take action on these fantasies, they provide insight into the development aspirations of rural Papua New Guineans. In this paper, I examine these development fantasies as they speak to a broader political economy and transformations of local landscapes throughout rural Pacific communities. [source] Thug Realism: Inhabiting Fantasy in Urban TanzaniaCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2002Brad Weiss First page of article [source] Fantasy and Reality: The Dialectic of Work and Play in Kwara'ae Children's LivesETHOS, Issue 2 2001Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo In Kwara'cae, as in many Third World and workingclass contexts, young children spend as much, or more, of their time in work as in play. This article examines how fantasy and reality are framed by Kwara'ae children in play and work and children's self-positionings through child-mode and adult-mode styles of embodiment. In adult-mode performances, children's double description,"This is play" and "This is not play (because it's work)",sustains them in long periods of work. The epistemological significance of adult and child modes is also considered. [source] Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany Edited by Lyndal RoperGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2006SARAH FERBER No abstract is available for this article. [source] Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England By Arthur F. MarottiHISTORY, Issue 303 2006ANNE DILLON No abstract is available for this article. [source] Missing the Breast: Gender, Fantasy and the Body in the German Enlightenment , By Simon RichterJOURNAL FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES, Issue 3 2010Nicholas Saul No abstract is available for this article. [source] Ischemic Preconditioning: Fact or Fantasy?JOURNAL OF CARDIAC SURGERY, Issue 6 2002Christopher D. Raeburn M.D. In the ensuing years, surgeons have learned to discriminate a biochemical/metabolic/functional spectrum of cardiac states ranging from healthy myocardium to "stunned" or "hibernating" heart to the modes of "apoptotic" or "necrotic" cardiomyocyte death. It is now clear that "protective cardiac preconditioning" influences all of these cardiac states. The cellular mechanisms of preconditioning (PC) are now sufficiently understood to permit clinical application. Ligation of adrenergic, adenosine, bradykinin or opioid receptors involves signaling via both tyrosine and calcium-dependent protein kinases (PKC), which activate mitochondrial ATP-dependent potassium channels. Subsequently, the release of oxygen radicals induces nuclear translocation of transcriptional regulators, which transform the cardiomyocyte into a more resilient cell. Although preconditioning was initially recognized as protecting only against infarction, PC also limits postischemic dysrhythmias and enhances contractile function. Phase I (safety) and phase II (efficacy) clinical trials now persuasively support pharmacological preconditioning as a safe mode of preventing postcardiac surgical complications. Indeed, preconditioning is currently being proposed as adjunctive to hypothermic perfusates in protecting against the obligate organ ischemia during transplantation. [source] Final Fantasy: The Third TCER/CIRJE Macro Conference, Osaka, September 2001JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 2 2002Colin McKenzie First page of article [source] Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barbershops: Global Fantasy in Urban Tanzania by Brad WeissAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2010ANNE S. LEWINSON No abstract is available for this article. [source] Wittgenstein, Augustine and the Fantasy of AscentPHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, Issue 2 2002Caleb Thompson First page of article [source] From Fantasy to Faith: Morality, Religion and Twentieth-Century Literature , D. Z. PhillipsRELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 4 2006Steven Schroeder No abstract is available for this article. [source] Revisiting Narnia: Fantasy, Myth and Religion in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles , Edited by Shanna CaugheyRELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2006Kristen L. Abbey No abstract is available for this article. [source] The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works and WondersTHE JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE, Issue 2 2007Steven J. Corvi No abstract is available for this article. [source] Between Fantasy and Angst: Assessing the Subject and Meaning of Henry Fuseli's Late Pornographic Drawings, 1800,25ART HISTORY, Issue 3 2010Camilla Smith First page of article [source] Distinguishing the effects of beliefs and preconditions: the folk psychology of goals and actionsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2005Ann Boonzaier Two studies examined lay people's understanding of goals and intentional actions, which are key concepts in folk psychology. The studies show how predictions of goals and actions are affected by actors' beliefs about their abilities and their actual possession of the preconditions required for the actions. In some conditions, the beliefs and the preconditions were contradictory. Actors' beliefs about their abilities shaped observers' goal ascriptions, whereas actual preconditions dominated predictions about action accomplishment. Participants judged the relationship between goals and actions to be stronger when preconditions were present. Participants judged that neither beliefs nor preconditions were necessary for the actor to have action fantasies. These studies clarify how folk psychological concepts of desires, beliefs, and preconditions relate to each other and how they relate to attributions of goals and actions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Facts, fantasies and fun in epithelial physiologyEXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY, Issue 3 2008C. A. R. Boyd The hallmark of epithelial cells is their functional polarization. It is those membrane proteins that are distributed differentially, either to the apical or to the basal surface, that determine epithelial physiology. Such proteins will include ,pumps', ,channels' and ,carriers', and it is the functional interplay between the actions of these molecules that allows the specific properties of the epithelium to emerge. Epithelial properties will additionally depend on: (a) the extent to which there may be a route between adjacent cells (the ,paracellular' route); and (b) the folding of the epithelium (as, for example, in the loop of Henle). As for other transporters, there is polarized distribution of amino-acid carriers; the molecular basis of these is of considerable current interest with regard to function, including ,inborn errors' (amino-acidurias); some of these transporters have additional functions, such as in the regulation of cell fusion, in modulating cell adherence and in activating intracellular signalling pathways. Collaboration of physiologists with fly geneticists has generated new insights into epithelial function. One example is the finding that certain amino-acid transporters may act as ,transceptors' and play a role as sensors of the extracellular environment that then regulate intracellular pathways controlling cell growth. [source] Comparative study of odour and GC-olfactometric profiles of selected essential oilsFLAVOUR AND FRAGRANCE JOURNAL, Issue 6 2001Anupama Kamath Abstract The market demand for novel foods and beverages is increasing. The blending of flavour notes to create an exotic one, to satisfy the tastes and fantasies of the modern generation, may soon become a major task for researchers. In order to achieve this, it is essential to study the single flavourant thoroughly, and the dominant and subtle notes in them, prior to blending. In the present study, profiling of four essential oils, viz. lemongrass, rosemary, geranium and davana, were carried out by two methods, GC-olfactometry (GC,O) and per se odour profile by trained panelists. The attributes of odour analysis and GC,O were compared using spider-web plots. The study showed that although some odour notes perceived by sniffing the oils directly and those perceived by sniffing the effluent of GC at different retention times (RTs) varied, the dominant notes were similar. The odour profiling per se depicts the overall odour perceived, while the GC,O aromagrams represent the picture of odour notes of fractionated volatiles at the respective retention times. The results of the study gives an in-depth description of odour notes in the essential oil and helps the technologist to blend them to achieve the required flavour notes. Thus, the study finds its application in the development of designer beverages containing essential oils or blends of oils with the desired odour characteristics. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Spaces of Utopia and Dystopia: Landscaping the Contemporary CityGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3-4 2002Gordon MacLeod Some of the most recent literature within urban studies gives the distinct impression that the contemporary city now constitutes an intensely uneven patchwork of utopian and dystopian spaces that are, to all intents and purposes, physically proximate but institutionally estranged. For instance, so,called edge cities (Garreau, 1991) have been heralded as a new Eden for the information age. Meanwhile tenderly manicured urban villages, gated estates and fashionably gentrified inner,city enclaves are all being furiously marketed as idyllic landscapes to ensure a variety of lifestyle fantasies. Such lifestyles are offered additional expression beyond the home, as renaissance sites in many downtowns afford city stakeholders the pleasurable freedoms one might ordinarily associate with urban civic life. None,the,less, strict assurances are given about how these privatized domiciliary and commercialized ,public' spaces are suitably excluded from the real and imagined threats of another fiercely hostile, dystopian environment ,out there'. This is captured in a number of (largely US) perspectives which warn of a ,fortified' or ,revanchist' urban landscape, characterized by mounting social and political unrest and pockmarked with marginal interstices: derelict industrial sites, concentrated hyperghettos, and peripheral shanty towns where the poor and the homeless are increasingly shunted. Our paper offers a review of some key debates in urban geography, planning and urban politics in order to examine this patchwork,quilt urbanism, In doing so, it seeks to uncover some of the key processes through which contemporary urban landscapes of utopia and dystopia come to exist in the way they do. [source] The impotent couple: low desireINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANDROLOGY, Issue 2005G. CORONA Summary Hypoactive sexual desire (HSD) is the deficiency of sexual fantasies and desire that should be considered as a disorder if it causes distress to the couple. In the general population, it is the most widespread sexuality-related problem. It is generally accepted that testosterone and prolactin regulate sexual desire. We recently reported that other psychobiological factors associate with HSD in a sample of almost 500 male patients attending our Outpatient Clinic for sexual dysfunction, by using SIEDY structured interview. We now originally extend investigation to a threefold broader patient sample. Considering marital parameters, perceived partner's libido and climax, patient's partner diseases, conflictual or even prolonged couple relationship were all significantly associated with an impairment of patients' sexual desire. Moreover, other lifestyle factors as satisfaction at work and/or domestic inhabitant relationship were significantly correlated to hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). Among hormonal parameters, severe hyperprolactinaemia (>700 mU/L), although rarely diagnosed (<2.0%), seems to play a greater role than the more common (23%) endocrine disease hypogonadism (testosterone < 12 nm) to the pathogenesis of HSD (RR = 7.5 [2.5,22.4] vs. 1.5 [1.1,1.9], respectively). Both mental disorders and use of medication interfering with sexual function were also significantly associated with HSDD, as well as depressive and anxiety symptoms. Finally, HSD was inversely correlated to sexual and masturbation frequency attempts. In conclusion, HSD is associated with several biological, psychological, and relational factors that can be simultaneously identified and quantified using the SIEDY structured interview. [source] The psychology and ideology of an islamic terrorist leader: Usama bin LadenINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 2 2004Maria T. Miliora Abstract This essay presents what the author proposes are the motivational bases for Usama bin Laden's avowed "holy war" against the United States. Bin Laden's biography is presented against the backdrop of the recent political history of the Middle Eastern Islamic world including the emergence of radical Islam. In assessing bin Laden's personality from the data that are available, three features are prominent: archaic narcissistic states (expressed as conscious and unconscious fantasies), paranoia and a Manichean sense of reality. It is shown that his ideology derives from his personality and his perception of and reaction to political events involving the United States and nations in the Middle East. The findings suggest that bin Laden imagines that he is walking in the shoes of the prophet Muhammad as he engages in an apocalyptic war to restore Islam as a potent force in the world. Usama bin Laden is compared to Hitler as a charismatic, messianic leader. Copyright © 2004 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source] Douglas Darden's Sex Shop: An Immodest ProposalJOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 2 2004PETER SCHNEIDER When once we resort to the arena of representation, we remove the weightiest and most obvious restrictions on imaginative flight. We are free at least to depict those things which architecture might do in certain circumstances,circumstances bounded only by the remotest confines of probability. Here is the sphere of the maker of architectural fantasies. He can explore a great margin of territory,nearly virgin territory,capable of yielding architectural treasure, unique and enthralling. [source] The Height of (Architectural) Seduction: Reading the "Changes" through Stalin's Palace in Warsaw, PolandJOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 4 2001Magdalena J. Zaborowska Joseph Stalin's Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland, is a representative architectural structure, whose diverse and divergent readings and interpretations elicit larger historic and cultural contexts of pre- and post-1989 developments in Eastern Europe and the West. The Palace's unique ability to encode and compel changing constructions of individual and collective narratives of Polish identity provides a valuable lesson on the relationships between architecture, literature, history, and politics. Structures like the Palace carry ideological and political messages inscribed onto them by their designers and builders and serve as repositories of the changing desires and fantasies of their individual spectators or readers. [source] A psychodynamic perspective on resistance in psychotherapy: Vive la résistanceJOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2002Stanley B. Messer The term resistance has an overly negative connotation, indicating a recalcitrant, oppositional tendency on the part of psychotherapy clients. This article emphasizes the inevitability and ubiquity of resistance and argues that it should be greeted as a therapist's friend, not as an enemy. It is the way in which clients present themselves to the world in general and to the therapist in particular. Five forms of resistance are presented, including: resistance to the recognition of feelings, fantasies, and motives; resistance to revealing feelings toward the therapist; resistance as a way of demonstrating self-sufficiency; resistance as clients' reluctance to change their behavior outside the therapy room; and resistance as a function of failure of empathy on the part of the therapist. Vignettes from the author's practice and from the cases presented in this issue are discussed in terms of these five modes of resistance and their treatment. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol/In Session 58: 157,163, 2002. [source] Making Sense of Inquiry SensemakingJOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 1 2000Andrew D. Brown This paper presents a discourse analysis of a report of a tribunal of inquiry in order to further our understanding of inquiry team sensemaking. The subject of the paper is the report of the Allitt Inquiry into attacks on children on Ward 4 at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in the UK. Premised on an understanding of the report as an exercise in sensemaking, and sensemaking as a narrative process, the paper illustrates how authorial strategies centred on issues of normalization, observation and absolution are employed to create a rhetorical and verisimilitudinous artefact. This, it is argued, is accomplished as part of a more general strategy of depoliticizing the disaster event, legitimating social institutions (especially those connected with the medical profession), ameliorating anxieties by elaborating fantasies of omnipotence and control, and thenceforth acting as a sensitizing narrative archetype. [source] Information Processing in the Hypothalamus: Peptides and Analogue ComputationJOURNAL OF NEUROENDOCRINOLOGY, Issue 6 2006G. Leng Abstract ,Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,/Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend/More than cool reason ever comprehends'(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V Scene I) Peptides in the hypothalamus are not like conventional neurotransmitters; their release is not particularly associated with synapses, and their long half-lives mean that they can diffuse to distant targets. Peptides can act on their cells of origin to facilitate the development of patterned electrical activity, they can act on their neighbours to bind the collective activity of a neural population into a coherent signalling entity, and the co-ordinated population output can transmit waves of peptide secretion that act as a patterned hormonal analogue signal within the brain. At their distant targets, peptides can re-programme neural networks, by effects on gene expression, synaptogenesis, and by functionally rewiring connections by priming activity-dependent release. [source] Teaching & Learning Guide for: Victorian Life WritingLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2007Valerie Sanders Author's Introduction The Victorian period was one of the great ages for life-writing. Though traditionally renowned for its monumental ,lives and letters', mainly of great men, this was also a time of self-conscious anxiety about the genre. Critics and practitioners alike were unsure who should be writing autobiography, and whether its inherent assertiveness ruled out all but public men as appropriate subjects. It was also a period of experimentation in the different genres of life-writing , whether autobiography, journals, letters, autobiographical novels, and narratives of lives combined with extracts from correspondence and diaries. Victorian life-writing therefore provides rich and complex insights into the relationship between narrative, identity, and the definition of the self. Recent advances in criticism have highlighted the more radical and non-canonical aspects of life-writing. Already a latecomer to the literary-critical tradition (life-writing was for a long time the ,poor relation' of critical theory), auto/biography stresses the hidden and silent as much as the mainstream and vocal. For that reason, study of Victorian life-writing appeals to those with an interest in gender issues, postcolonialism, ethnicity, working-class culture, the history of religion, and family and childhood studies , to name but a few of the fields with which the genre has a natural connection. Author Recommends A good place to start is the two canonical texts for Victorian life-writing: George P. Landow's edited collection, Approaches to Victorian Autobiography (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979) and Avrom Fleishman's Figures of Autobiography: The Language of Self-Writing in Victorian and Modern England (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1983). These two re-ignited interest in Victorian life-writing and in effect opened the debate about extending the canon, though both focus on the firmly canonical Ruskin and Newman, among others. By contrast, David Amigoni's recently edited collection of essays, Life-Writing and Victorian Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006) shows how far the canon has exploded and expanded: it begins with a useful overview of the relationship between lives, life-writing, and literary genres, while subsequent chapters by different authors focus on a particular individual or family and their cultural interaction with the tensions of life-writing. As this volume is fairly male-dominated, readers with an interest in women's life-writing might prefer to start with Linda Peterson's chapter, ,Women Writers and Self-Writing' in Women and Literature in Britain 1800,1900, ed. Joanne Shattock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 209,230. This examines the shift from the eighteenth-century tradition of the chroniques scandaleuses to the professional artist's life, domestic memoir, and spiritual autobiography. Mary Jean Corbett's Representing Femininity: Middle-Class Subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian Women's Autobiographies (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992) begins with material on Wordsworth and Carlyle, but ,aims to contest the boundaries of genre, gender, and the autobiographical tradition by piecing together a partial history of middle-class women's subjectivities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries' (3). Corbett is particularly interested in the life-writing of actresses and suffragettes as well as Martineau and Oliphant, the first two women autobiographers to be welcomed into the canon in the 1980s and 90s. Laura Marcus's Auto/biographical Discourses, Theory, Criticism, Practice (Manchester and New York, NY: Manchester University Press, 1994) revises and updates the theoretical approaches to the study of life-writing, stressing both the genre's hybrid qualities, and its inherent instability: in her view, it ,comes into being as a category to be questioned' (37). Another of her fruitful suggestions is that autobiography functions as a ,site of struggle' (9), an idea that can be applied to aesthetic or ideological issues. Her book is divided between specific textual examples (such as the debate about autobiography in Victorian periodicals), and an overview of developments in critical approaches to life-writing. Her second chapter includes material on Leslie Stephen, who is also the first subject of Trev Lynn Broughton's Men of Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/biography in the Late Victorian Period (London: Routledge, 1999) , her other being Froude's controversial Life of Carlyle. With the advent of gender studies and masculinities, there is now a return to male forms of life-writing, of which Martin A. Danahay's A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993) is a good example. Danahay argues that nineteenth-century male autobiographers present themselves as ,autonomous individuals' free of the constraints of social and familial contexts, thus emphasizing the autonomy of the self at the expense of family and community. Online Materials My impression is that Victorian life-writing is currently better served by books than by online resources. There seem to be few general Web sites other than University module outlines and reading lists; for specific authors, on the other hand, there are too many to list here. So the only site I'd recommend is The Victorian Web: http://.victorianweb.org/genre/autobioov.html This Web site has a section called ,Autobiography Overview', which begins with an essay, ,Autobiography, Autobiographicality and Self-Representation', by George P. Landow. There are sections on other aspects of Victorian autobiography, including ,Childhood as a Personal Myth', autobiography in Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and a list of ,Suggested Readings'. Each section is quite short, but summarizes the core issues succinctly. Sample Syllabus This sample syllabus takes students through the landmarks of Victorian life-writing, and demonstrates the development of a counter-culture away from the mainstream ,classic male life' (if there ever was such a thing) , culminating in the paired diaries of Arthur Munby (civil servant) and Hannah Cullwick (servant). Numerous other examples could have been chosen, but for those new to the genre, this is a fairly classic syllabus. One week only could be spent on the ,classic male texts' if students are more interested in pursuing other areas. Opening Session Open debate about the definition of Victorian ,life-writing' and its many varieties; differences between autobiography, autobiographical fiction, diary, letters, biography, collective biography, and memoir; the class could discuss samples of selected types, such as David Copperfield, Father and Son, Ruskin's Praeterita, and Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontė. Alternatively, why not just begin with Stave Two of Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843), in which the First Spirit takes Scrooge back through his childhood and youth? This is a pretty unique type of life-writing, with Scrooge ,laughing and crying' as his childhood and youth are revealed to him in a series of flashbacks (a Victorian version of ,This is Your Life?'). The dual emotions are important to note at this stage and will prompt subsequent discussions of sentimentality and writing for comic effect later in the course. Week 2 Critical landmarks: discussion of important stages in the evolution of critical approaches to life-writing, including classics such as Georges Gusdorf's ,Conditions and Limits of Autobiography', in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James Olney (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 28,47; Philippe Lejeune's ,The Autobiographical Pact', in On Autobiography, ed. Paul John Eakin, trans. Katherine Leary (original essay 1973; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 3,30; and Paul De Man's ,Autobiography as De-Facement', Modern Language Notes 94 (1979): 919,30. This will provide a critical framework for the rest of the course. Weeks 3,4 Extracts from the ,male classics' of Victorian life-writing: J. S. Mill's Autobiography (1873), Ruskin's Praeterita (1885,89), and Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864). What do they think is important and what do they miss out? How open or otherwise are they about their family and personal lives? Are these essentially ,lives of the mind'? How self-aware are they of autobiographical structures? Are there already signs that the ,classic male life' is fissured and unconventional? An option here would be to spend the first week focusing on male childhoods, and the second on career trajectories. Perhaps use Martin Danahay's theory of the ,autonomous individual' (see above) to provide a critical framework here: how is the ,Other' (parents, Harriet Taylor) treated in these texts? Weeks 5,6 Victorian women's autobiography: Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (1877) and Margaret Oliphant's Autobiography (1899): in many ways these are completely unalike, Martineau's being ordered around the idea of steady mental growth and public recognition, while Oliphant's is deeply emotional and disordered. Can we therefore generalize about ,women's autobiography'? What impact did they have on Victorian theories of life-writing? Students might like to reconsider Jane Eyre as an ,autobiography' alongside these and compare scenes of outright rebellion. The way each text handles time and chronology is also fascinating: Martineau's arranged to highlight stages of philosophical development, while Oliphant's switches back and forth in a series of ,flashbacks' to her happier youth as her surviving two sons die ,in the text', interrupting her story. Week 7 Black women's autobiography: how does Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857) differ from the Martineau and Oliphant autobiographies? What new issues and genre influences are introduced by a Caribbean/travelogue perspective? Another key text would be Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl (1861). How representative and how individual are these texts? Do these authors see themselves as representing their race as well as their class and sex? Week 8 Working-class autobiography: Possible texts here could be John Burnett's Useful Toil (Allen Lane, 1974, Penguin reprint); Carolyn Steedman's edition of John Pearman's The Radical Soldier's Tale (Routledge, 1988) and the mini oral biographies in Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861,62) (e.g., the Water-Cress Seller). There is also a new Broadview edition of Factory Lives (2007) edited by James R. Simmons, with an introduction by Janice Carlisle. This contains four substantial autobiographical texts (three male, one female) from the mid-nineteenth century, with supportive materials. Samuel Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical (1839,42; 1844) and Early Days (1847,48) are further options. Students should also read Regenia Gagnier's Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832,1910 (Oxford University Press, 1991). Week 9 Biography: Victorian Scandal: focus on two scandals emerging from Victorian life-writing: Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontė (1857) (the Branwell Brontė/Lady Scott adultery scandal), and Froude's allegations of impotence in his Life of Carlyle (1884). See Trev Broughton's ,Impotence, Biography, and the Froude-Carlyle Controversy: ,Revelations on Ticklish Topics', Journal of the History of Sexuality, 7.4 (Apr. 1997): 502,36 (in addition to her Men of Letters cited above). The biographies of the Benson family written about and by each other, especially E. F. Benson's Our Family Affairs 1867,1896 (London: Cassell, 1920) reveal the domestic unhappiness of the family of Gladstone's Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, whose children and wife were all to some extent homosexual or lesbian. Another option would be Edmund Gosse's Father and Son (1907) in which the son's critical stance towards his father is uneasy and complex in its mixture of comedy, pity, shame, and resentment. Week 10 Diaries: Arthur Munby's and Hannah Cullwick's relationship (they were secretly married, but lived as master and servant) and diaries, Munby: Man of Two Worlds: The Life and Diaries of Arthur Munby, ed. Derek Hudson (John Murray, 1972), and The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick: Victorian Maidservant, ed. Liz Stanley (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984): issues of gender and class identity; the idealization of the working woman; the two diaries compared. Half the class could read one diary and half the other and engage in a debate about the social and sexual fantasies adopted by each diarist. It would also be sensible to leave time for an overview debate about the key issues of Victorian life-writing which have emerged from this module, future directions for research, and current critical developments. Focus Questions 1To what extent does Victorian autobiography tell an individual success story? Discuss with reference to two or three contrasting examples. 2,All life writing is time writing' (Jens Brockmeier). Examine the way in which Victorian life-writers handle the interplay of narrative, memory, and time. 3To what extent do you agree with the view that Victorian life-writing was ,a form of communication that appeared intimate and confessional, but which was in fact distant and controlled' (Donna Loftus)? 4,Bamford was an autobiographer who did not write an autobiography' (Martin Hewitt). If autobiography is unshaped and uninterpreted, what alternative purposes does it have in narrating a life to the reader? 5,Victorian life-writing is essentially experimental, unstable, and unpredictable.' How helpful is this comment in helping you to understand the genre? [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||