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Literary History (literary + history)
Selected AbstractsThe Travels of Naturalism and the Challenges of a World Literary HistoryLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2009Christopher L. Hill The history of the naturalist novel reveals shortcomings of recent proposals for the study of world literature, such as those of Franco Moretti and Pascale Casanova. After a naturalist esthetic coalesced in France in the 1860s naturalist schools appeared around the world. Contrary to what models of diffusion predict, naturalism flourished in distant parts of the world at the same time as its triumph in Europe, while writers nearer France rejected it. The examples of naturalism in Argentina, Brazil, Japan, China, and Korea, reveal multiple, overlapping histories that make up the heterogeneous planetary history of the form. Naturalism's movement was aided by its association with non-fictional genres such as criminology, and flourished where other forms of realistic fiction were not well established. Even when naturalism bore the standard for realism, however, it formed unexpected alliances with other esthetics and shifted its associations with non-fictional genres. Rather than focusing on the origination and reception of forms such as the naturalist novel, studies of world literature should focus on the conditions of travel through which such unexpected transformations occur. [source] Writing Eighteenth-Century Women's Literary History, 1986 to 2006LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2007Betty A. Schellenberg Under the influence of feminist theory and criticism, the late 1980s saw a flowering of literary histories of eighteenth-century women writers. This work was very influential in assuming the existence of a distinct women's literary history conditioned by an increasingly rigid gender ideology of the time, in focusing on the novel genre, and in creating appreciation for the more recognizably feminist writers of the early and latter portions of the ,long eighteenth century'. Subsequent work questioned the dependence of these histories on the ,separate spheres' model of gender, on a limited group of genres associated with women and with the literary, and on notions of feminism congenial to the late-twentieth-century critic. More broadly, feminist generalizations of women's experience were challenged by the rise of class, race and sexuality studies, while the very enterprise of historiography was placed under suspicion by postmodernist criticism of master narratives and of claims to objective interpretation of evidence. In response, studies of eighteenth-century women's writing began to attend to a broader range of genres and spheres of action within the larger field of print culture, as well as to produce more nuanced studies of individual writers and the conditions within which they wrote. However, general literary studies remained dependent on the models of the 1980s, while writers seemed reluctant to write new literary histories. Only recently are there indications of a return to large-scale women's literary histories. This return revises the pioneering work of the 1980s by attending to new, detailed studies of numerous individual writers, expanding generic coverage, incorporating electronic resources, experimenting with inclusive studies of male and female writers, and reconsidering questions of literary value. [source] Globalisation and Literary History,BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 4 2006JEAN FRANCO First page of article [source] History and Story: Unconventional History in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient and James A. Michener's Tales of the South PacificHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2002Madhumalati Adhikari "Literary history" is a cross between conventional (scientific) history and pure fiction. The resulting hybrid provides access to history that the more conventional sort does not (in particular, a sense of the experiences of the historical actors, and the human meaning of historical events). This claim is demonstrated by an analysis of two novels about World War II, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, and Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener. These two very different novels in English are by writers themselves very different from each other, writers from different times, different social and political backgrounds, and different points of view. Their novels examine the effects of the Second World War and the events of 1942 on the human psyche, and suggest how human beings have always searched for the silver lining despite the devastation and devaluation of values. Both novels resist any kind of preaching, and yet the search for peace, balance, and kindness is constantly highlighted. The facts of scientific history are woven into the loom of their unconventional histories. The sense of infirmity created by the formal barriers of traditional history is eased, and new possibilities for historical understanding are unveiled. [source] John Skelton and the New Fifteenth CenturyLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2008Kathleen Tonry John Skelton's writing career took place roughly between 1488 and 1528, years that straddle two centuries and, most awkwardly, two epochs. Perhaps because of that awkwardness he has been a poet marginalized in our literary histories and critical discourse until quite recently. This overview essay suggests that to re-engage Skelton is to test alternative literary histories that think beyond the fifteenth century as a merely transitional moment and that put into play methodologies flexible enough to accommodate inter-related notions of aesthetics and context. This essay traces Skelton's critical tradition as a series of perspectives on the poet's own nimble engagements with form and history. The first section follows the story of formalist and historicist approaches to Skelton working in tension up until the last part of the twentieth century. The second section explores the interventions of the new Skelton scholars. The third and final sections speculate briefly about fresh directions in Skelton scholarship, noticing that many of the themes and questions raised around Skelton over the past century remain open for more extensive development. [source] Writing Eighteenth-Century Women's Literary History, 1986 to 2006LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2007Betty A. Schellenberg Under the influence of feminist theory and criticism, the late 1980s saw a flowering of literary histories of eighteenth-century women writers. This work was very influential in assuming the existence of a distinct women's literary history conditioned by an increasingly rigid gender ideology of the time, in focusing on the novel genre, and in creating appreciation for the more recognizably feminist writers of the early and latter portions of the ,long eighteenth century'. Subsequent work questioned the dependence of these histories on the ,separate spheres' model of gender, on a limited group of genres associated with women and with the literary, and on notions of feminism congenial to the late-twentieth-century critic. More broadly, feminist generalizations of women's experience were challenged by the rise of class, race and sexuality studies, while the very enterprise of historiography was placed under suspicion by postmodernist criticism of master narratives and of claims to objective interpretation of evidence. In response, studies of eighteenth-century women's writing began to attend to a broader range of genres and spheres of action within the larger field of print culture, as well as to produce more nuanced studies of individual writers and the conditions within which they wrote. However, general literary studies remained dependent on the models of the 1980s, while writers seemed reluctant to write new literary histories. Only recently are there indications of a return to large-scale women's literary histories. This return revises the pioneering work of the 1980s by attending to new, detailed studies of numerous individual writers, expanding generic coverage, incorporating electronic resources, experimenting with inclusive studies of male and female writers, and reconsidering questions of literary value. [source] Early modern stereotypes and the rise of English: Jonson, Dryden, Arnold, EliotCRITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2006NICHOLAS McDOWELL Stereotyping is a mode of stigmatisation and polarisation, and so we tend to think of the stereotype as a deadening force which closes down conversation. But we need to appreciate further the extent to which the transmission of stereotypes can facilitate and shape creative cultural response, even if that response is designed to simplify and satirise in the service of an ideological imperative. The stereotype of the Puritan as ignoramus in Ben Jonson's seventeenth-century comedies reappears in, and helps to structure, aesthetic discussions over three centuries, beginning with Dryden's post-Restoration literary criticism. These discussions were central to the generation of a dominant narrative of English literary history, to the development of notions of literary refinement and politeness and to the construction of a literary canon. Incorporated by Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot into their versions of literary history - versions which were themselves a response to what Arnold and Eliot perceived as the cultural crises of their own time - early modern dramatic stereotypes became naturalised in university courses and school textbooks. Ultimately, this essay suggests, the transmission of the early modern stereotype of the Puritan was bound up with the rise of English as an academic discipline. [source] Pro-War and Prothalamion: Queen, Colony, and Somatic Metaphor Among Spenser's "Knights of the Maidenhead"ENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 2 2007Benjamin P. Myers This essay charts the points of contact - or more precisely the "overlay" - between Spenser's gender ethics, his experience of the Irish landscape, and his singular reception of the Petrarchan literary heritage. Spenser portrays the Queen as Petrarchan lover against the background of a male-driven conquest of the feminized landscape, a juxtaposition in which the love-frowardness of the Petrarchan lady is translated into the frowardness of a queen hesitant to take the expensive and potentially devastating steps necessary for the expansion of her empire. Spenser uses the traditional metaphor of the land as female body to link colonial approaches to land with staunchly Protestant conceptions of marriage, working a double sense of "husbandry" to criticize the Queen for her restraint in supporting the Irish project. In an act of colonial poetic production unmatched in its era, the Faerie Queene presents a system of similitudes centering on the female body, the land, and literary history in which each term is a means of morally interpreting the remaining two. To grasp the full weight behind the colonial politics and the gender politics of the Faerie Queene one must attempt to read these three terms, often interpreted independently, as a carefully constructed nexus of meaning. To do so is to read the poem reading itself. [source] The Making of American Working-Class LiteratureLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2008Janet Zandy This essay traces a line of American literary history that emerges from the lives of workers. Starting with early ballads and songs from indentured servants and enslaved blacks and concluding with contemporary multicultural writing, it documents a process of cultural formation that is embedded in class relationships and struggles. Events in labor history and conditions of unsafe work become the subjects for cultural expression as poems, songs, stories, and novels at the time of the event and as reclaimed cultural/labor antecedents by future generations. The writing shows a reciprocal worker visibility across time and across race, gender, and ethnic differences. The continuous thread is struggle , for physical and material sustainability , and for the right of human expression. Drawing on the chronology of working-class writing from the anthology, American Working-Class Literature (co-edited with Nicholas Coles, Oxford University Press), the author shows how American working-class literature is at once a literary line, a body of work, and a labor line, the work of bodies. [source] Writing Eighteenth-Century Women's Literary History, 1986 to 2006LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2007Betty A. Schellenberg Under the influence of feminist theory and criticism, the late 1980s saw a flowering of literary histories of eighteenth-century women writers. This work was very influential in assuming the existence of a distinct women's literary history conditioned by an increasingly rigid gender ideology of the time, in focusing on the novel genre, and in creating appreciation for the more recognizably feminist writers of the early and latter portions of the ,long eighteenth century'. Subsequent work questioned the dependence of these histories on the ,separate spheres' model of gender, on a limited group of genres associated with women and with the literary, and on notions of feminism congenial to the late-twentieth-century critic. More broadly, feminist generalizations of women's experience were challenged by the rise of class, race and sexuality studies, while the very enterprise of historiography was placed under suspicion by postmodernist criticism of master narratives and of claims to objective interpretation of evidence. In response, studies of eighteenth-century women's writing began to attend to a broader range of genres and spheres of action within the larger field of print culture, as well as to produce more nuanced studies of individual writers and the conditions within which they wrote. However, general literary studies remained dependent on the models of the 1980s, while writers seemed reluctant to write new literary histories. Only recently are there indications of a return to large-scale women's literary histories. This return revises the pioneering work of the 1980s by attending to new, detailed studies of numerous individual writers, expanding generic coverage, incorporating electronic resources, experimenting with inclusive studies of male and female writers, and reconsidering questions of literary value. [source] Materializing the Eighteenth Century: Dress History, Literature, and Interdisciplinary StudyLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2006Chloe Wigston Smith Drawing on an interview with Linda Baumgarten, curator of clothing and textiles at Colonial Williamsburg, and recent interdisciplinary studies, this article considers how eighteenth-century scholars use the history of dress in literary history and cultural studies. It explores how the study of material culture can illuminate and complicate literary history, but also how dress history comprises its own language and ideas. [source] Books and Bodies, Bound and UnboundORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2009Thomas Pettitt A recent trend in literary history, cultural studies and folkloristics has been a ,corporeal turn', which focuses on how bodies are constructed and understood in texts and other cultural productions. A significant contribution from Guillemette Bolens identifies two distinct corporal constructions in medieval narrative: the contained body (an envelope vulnerable to penetration) and the articulated body (limbs and joints designed for motion). This perception is here extended to include narrative constructions of the environment (enclosures versus avenues and junctions). Furthermore Bolens's suggestion that articulated and contained bodies are mainly to be found, respectively, in oral tradition and textual culture, is elaborated to the thesis that the contained constructions will be particularly at home in the printed book, whose dominance is associated with cultural containment from a variety of perspectives. And a shift from predominantly articulated constructions to predominantly contained is indeed discernible in the wonder tale ,Red Riding Hood', as it modulates from oral tradition to printed fairy tale. Concluding speculations suggest that if the cultural dominance of the printed book has been a (,Gutenberg') parenthesis, the tale should now be reverting to articulated constructions as it escapes from books into the digital media and Internet technology. [source] Repositioning Narrative: The Late-Twentieth-Century Verse Novels of Vikram Seth, Derek Walcott, Craig Raine, Anthony Burgess, and Bernadine EvaristoORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 6 2004Lars Ole Sauerberg Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (1986), Derek Walcott's Omeros (1990), Craig Raine's History: The Home Movie (1994), Anthony Burgess's Byrne: A Novel (1995), and Bernadine Evaristo's Lara (1997) are fictional works resembling the realist mainstream novel in all respects except for their mode of discourse, which is verse, not prose. This essay first considers the five verse novels in the perspective of literary history generally and then goes on to consider their verse features. Although similar in mode of discourse, the works differ widely in their intra-, inter- and para-textual invitations to contextual literary-historical readings, a difference enhanced, arguably, by actual-reader appreciation in interfacing with literary history and dynamics of present-day mass-media forms of artistic expression. [source] Thomas Carlyle and the "Characteristics" of Nineteenth-Century English LiteratureORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 3 2001C. Schatz-Jakobsen The place of Thomas Carlyle (1795,1881) in nineteenth-century English literary history is as uncertain as the nature and genre-affiliation of early writings like "Characteristics" (1831) and Sartor Resartus (1833,34). The question of whether Carlyle war ,really' a Romantic or a Victorian runs parallel to the question of the kind of ground, rhetorical or conceptual, on which his texts rest. While a sufficiently close (rhetorical) reading of "Characteristics" may provide an answer to the second question, it may be the same token render the first question, and the period-terms resorted in its formulation, irrelevant. [source] | ||||||||||