Essential readings in the philosophy of literature are brought together for the first time in this anthology. Contains forty-five substantial and carefully chosen essays and extracts Provides a balanced and coherent overview of developments in the field during the past thirty years, including influential work on fiction, interpretation, metaphor, literary value, and the definition and ontology of literature Includes an additional historical section featuring generous selections of the writings of early pioneers such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Hume (...) Serves as an ideal introduction to the philosophy of literature or the philosophy of art, as well as a handy compilation of contributions to the field by its leading figures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.3 (2006) 92-114 [Access article in PDF] A Global Art System: An Exploration of Current Literature on Visual Culture, and a Glimpse at the Universal Promethean Principle—with Unintended Oedipal Consequences Art Education 11-18: Meaning, Purpose And Direction, edited by Richard Hickman; New York, Continuum; 2nd edition, 2004; 176 pp. Global Visual Culture within a Global Art System I have harbored misgivings about the (...) term "visual culture" for several years. Having read Hickman's book with its collection of notable scholars in art and design education, those misgivings turned into qualified acceptance of "visual culture"—so long as it is understood as a global visual culture within a global art system. The ten chapters presented in Hickman's book clearly explore the notion of visual culture in the context of generating an expansive and appropriate canon of art distinctly relevant to our postmodern, multicultural, multidimensional classroom of multiple intelligences.1 And so, art and design education for the twenty-first century must perform three essential functions: one, it must color the classroom with signs of global human pictorial and textual expressions; two, it must attempt to comprehend an immeasurable universe through creative, scaled-down explorations of the phenomenal world all of humanity is subject to; and three, it must open up the Blakeian doors of perception,2 while remaining free of emotional, educational, social, political, or religious ideological bonds. In this light, Hickman's Art Education 11-18 (2004), is a must read for art and design educators currently bogged down in old curriculum, and a must read for educators who incorporate new pedagogical literature easily into their new curriculum. And I say must read because we are on the verge of a revolution in visual art history and education—immersed in it, struggling to make sense of our beloved classical canon of art, and struggling to come to grips with a strangely foreign, beautifully alien, semeiotic reality we call (vaguely) "visual culture." It is a visual culture and history from the north, east, and south. Not just from the west.Key innovative educational issues addressed in these chapters are (respectively) using the dynamic nature of art to expand the curricula (Richard Hickman); the collapse of cultural borders (Lesley Burgess and Nicholas [End Page 92] Addison); a balanced cultural history of the world (Colin Grigg); recognizing art and recognizing visual culture (Howard Hollands); a range of visual cultures and literacy (Darren Newbury); using computer technology as a pathway to a new art and visual culture (Andy Ash); critical study and analysis (Michele Tallack); hand-making as a universal link to nature and art (Rachel Mason); spirituality in the process of art creation (James Hall); and cross-cultural heritage toward a new canon of art (Hickman).I will review each chapter as it pertains to current literature exploring popular pedagogical terms like "visual culture," "postmodernism," "pluralism," and "radicalism" and (more importantly) as it fits into a global system of art and culture. In addition, I suggest another term ("cosmopolitanism"—to identify the viable gay and lesbian aesthetic and culture) not that they are necessarily different, but they are indeed relevant and operate from a fresh literary and historical perspective. Then, I will illustrate how a new, postmodern canon of art must be linked to global visual culture and art in order to expand the concept of visual culture. Thus, I see two tasks before me: the first task is to inventory the philosophy, pedagogy, and meanings within each of the ten chapters in Hickman's Art Education 11-18; and the second task is to integrate key pedagogical ideas highlighted in each chapter as a method of generating a meaningful, holistic, integrated direction for art and design education in the twenty-first century. Integrating Art and Design Education Art is a design process. All subject regimes, D. N. Perkins suggests, are a design process.3 This may seem too obvious now after all these years since the publication of Knowledge... (shrink)

To write a history “from antiquity to the present” of classical art or literature (or, worst of all, classicism) is the ultimate nightmare aspiration for a scholar whose colleagues are attentive methodologists. The product, when there is one (which I add because the aspiration can yield paralysis), is always in part an apologetic treatise on historical method. Professor Vout—of Christ's College, Cambridge—apologizes with the first word of her subtitle, A, which stresses that many differing histories may be as valid (...) as her own. The next two words, Life History, imply that her study is unauthorized, conjectural, a bit personal or informal, and reliant to an extent on unconfirmable stories. Her book, she tells readers, is of necessity an arrangement of “fragments” and “a mapping not of facts, but of ways in which Greek and Roman artifacts experience history.” She sets down, moreover, as a rule that “classical” is not “a self-standing category: it is always relational” (which historians of the novel have been telling us for many decades about “realism”).We might expect the result of Vout's axioms to be evenhanded diffidence when treating definitions of the classical, and indeed she entertains even the idea of Jeff Koons—maker of Balloon Venus (Orange) and Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun)—as a classical sculptor. There is, however, one approach that she dismisses out of hand: the obsession of classical humanism with authenticity and its renascence. She objects especially to research into the original conditions of objects and to the application of increasingly intrusive methods of restoring them. As she writes, “ ‘Real knowledge’ comes not from antiquities that have been ripped from their original context, cleaned and reconstituted for display in galleries and glass cabinets. ‘Real knowledge’ comes from antiquities that carry their dirt with them.”What Vout, as a critic of humanism, means by dirt is patina—the residue, interesting and sometimes beautiful in itself, of the use and misuse of objects. Dirt is a word that would occur to a humanist art historian when examining the patina of a Greek or Roman object. Vout's use of the word is a parodic expression of reverse snobbery. When studying changes, whether mistakes or enhancements, in a Greek or Roman document, a humanist literary historian would speak of corruption and edit the corrupt text by means of processes that humanist editors invented and perfected. Despite the humanists’ devotion to the recovery of classical learning, however, once a Renaissance edition of a manuscript was in print, the original, however rare, was often destroyed or lost. In effect, the work was reborn, better than new. Rebirth is not the same as preservation: though both are perhaps conservative (or better, in Ulysses's words, “rere regardant”), a renascence or a resurrection is cataclysmic.The humanist approach to the past can appear unlovable and is certainly arrogant, but it can also inspire awe and gratitude. The work of Michelangelo depended on it, and so (more to the point) did Martin Luther's. Vout's attitude toward dirt (patina, corruption, misprision, insertions, recontextualizations, bowdlerizations, misappropriations, translocations) resembles that of Catholic theologians to the depositum fidei. Restoring the original conditions of the Christian church involved methods of research learned from Renaissance humanists and the removal, often destructive, of the “deposit” or residue or patina that adhered to, distorted, discolored, and obscured the conditions of the “primitive church.” A Roman Catholic may well dislike the processes that Luther set in motion, but imagine a scholarly history of Christianity that mentioned Protestantism only to regret its existence.Still, Vout's reasoning, it seems to me, is more sophisticated in its defense of dirt and in its criticism of restoration than any offered against the Protestants’ reasoning during the Counter-Reformation. Consider, for instance, this inspiring passage: “When the curators at the Munich Glyptothek removed Thorwaldsen's restorations from the Aegina pediments, they did not so much take them back to a pristine state as out of the feedback loop, rendering them damaged goods. It was not a restriction of avenues or a change of direction that was being enacted here, but a refusal to speak the language, or rather an insistence that the only language worth speaking was an academic [humanist, restorationist] one.... In 2011, the Glyptothek marked the two hundredth year of the pediments’ discovery by putting new versions of Thorvaldsen's restored figures on display. They had relearned the lingo. For art to be ‘classical,’ it has to know its place in the discourse.” May lingo and feedback loop have successful careers in the lexicon of classical scholarship. “Far from producing a nostalgic narrative,” as Vout informs us, “the lessons learned from looking back ensure that we keep traveling.”. (shrink)

The essays in this collection all treat in some way the conservative’s vision of society as it is variously manifested in literary art, its scholarship, and its transmission through classical modes of liberal learning. Responding in part to the postmodernist turn in literary study, Literature and the Conservative Ideal examines the ways in which conservatism has been depicted in literature, as well as how its tendencies might restore literature’s potential as an artistic reflection of the universal human (...) condition. (shrink)

The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales: great literature can be read by anyone, with a little help. The eminent British philosopher Anthony O’Hear leads the way with this captivating journey through two-and-a-half millennia of books as powerful, thrilling, erotic, politically astute, and awe-inspiring as any modern bestseller. O’Hear begins with Homer, whose poems of epic struggle have made him the father of Western literature. After Greek tragedy, Plato, and Virgil’s Aeneid comes Ovid, whose encyclopedic Metamorphoses is an (...) inexhaustible source for European art and literature. Via Saint Augustine, O’Hear reaches Dante and his terrifying and sublime Divine Comedy. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Pascal, Racine, and finally Goethe complete the cast list. In each case, O’Hear patiently draws out themes, focuses on key passages, and explains why they are important. Not simply a grand work of reference, The Great Books is also a narrative history shot through with a love of literature and the author’s deeply held belief in its power to enrich and enliven everyone’s world. (shrink)

How empty and barren would life be if all our art and literature were taken away. What a calamity!Beyond the circle of the reading room are the world's greatest collection of books and the finest works of art from all places and times—sculpture from the Parthenon, Ming vases, Viking jewelry, great stone bulls and lions from Assyria, Egyptian mummies, medieval tapestries—brought together and taken out of context and time, like Keats's Grecian urn, because in themselves and in conjunction they (...) create—they are—art. In the courtyard before the huge pillars of the classical front of a Greek temple, thousands of people waited in long lines, like pilgrims at a shrine, to be admitted to look for a few moments at the rare .. (shrink)

Literature plays a relevant role in Hegel’s philosophical discourse. On the one hand, literary references are often interwoven with his speculative argumentation, on the other hand, the Aesthetics regards poetry as the highest form of artistic expression, for it is able to represent the different ways of human action and to bring up their hidden ideal presuppositions. The aim of this paper is to show how the concept of action is crucial to the interpretation of literary phenomena in the (...) Aesthetics, but assumes different configurations in relation to the historical transformation of the concept of subjectivity. To verify the specifically aesthetic import of concepts such as action and recognition, which originally belong to the ethical-political sphere, I will examine Hegel’s interpretation of the chivalric literature, which is present in various areas and with different functions in the structure of the Aesthetics, as a component of his theory of subjectivity. This topic has been little studied but offers an interesting perspective on some problematic points of Hegel’s theory: the controversial relation between the structural dimension of the concept of art and historical development of artistic forms, the apparently univocal paradigm of classic beauty, and the definition of artistic modernity. (shrink)

What can literary education contribute to moral education? In this article the inherent practical, moral or political, relevance of literature and literary education is defended, which is opposed to a moralist approach to (children's) literature. A much debated danger in literature and the arts, viz. that it gives rise to a flight into a "promised land" instead of having relevance for real life and the real world, can be overcome by bringing to the fore the active part (...) the reader plays in realizing the "world of the work." The classical idea of mimesis (i.e. of art mirroring reality) then makes room for a historicity of reading with an ongoing interplay of the (real) worlds of readers and the (fictive) world of the text. This idea is elaborated on from the point of view of Ricoeur's hermeneutics and from that of Iser's reception aesthetics, respectively. In realizing the world of the work the world of the reader is transcended and opened up towards the possible. In this reconfiguration lies the practical relevance of literature. Books, therefore, do not have to mirror the actual world in order to be morally or politically relevant. It is in the act of reading that the lasting significance of so-called classics is renewed time and time again. (shrink)

As two different art categories, literature and painting use temporal words and spatial images respectively to convey information and narrative. In addition to the pursuit of visual decoration, the paintings in books and periodicals in the period of the Republic of China were widely and profoundly influenced by the literature of the same period from the aspects of the style of expression, the theme of content and the creative techniques, thus breaking through the limitations of their own media (...) and achieving narrative effects like literary. The reflection of literary thoughts and trends in theme, the translation of classical novels in content and the use of literary techniques such as metaphor, synaesthesia and “Bixing” in the expression techniques that further highlighted the functional value, aesthetic value, and historical value of the images. In the visual information age, only by maintaining the characteristics of their own media and absorbing the narrative advantages of other artistic media, can images break through the limitation of plane static space and achieve a narrative effect with more artistic appeal and ideological and cultural depth. (shrink)

Cottingham : Western philosophy : an anthology (second edition) -- Cahoone : from modernism to postmodernism : an anthology (expanded -- Second edition) -- Lafollette : ethics in practice : an anthology (third edition) -- Goodin and Pettit: contemporary political philosophy: an anthology (second -- Edition) -- Eze: african philosophy : an anthology -- McNeill and Feldman : continental philosophy : an anthology -- Kim and Sosa : metaphysics : an anthology -- Lycan and Prinz : mind and cognition : (...) an anthology (third edition) -- Kuhse and Singer : bioethics : an anthology (second edition) -- Cummins and Cummins : minds, brains, and computers : the foundations of -- Cognitive science : an anthology -- Sosa, Kim, Fantl, and McGrath epistemology : an anthology (second edition) -- Kearney and Rasmussen : continental aesthetics, romanticism to -- Postmodernism : an anthology -- Martinich and Sosa : analytic philosophy : an anthology -- Jacquette : philosophy of logic : an anthology -- Jacquette : philosophy of mathematics : an anthology -- Harris, Pratt, and Waters : American philosophies : an anthology -- Emmanuel and Goold: modern philosophy from Descartes to Nietzsche : an anthology -- Scharff and Dusek : philosophy of technology ; the technological condition : an anthology -- Light and Rolston : environmental ethics : an anthology -- Taliaferro and Griffiths : philosophy of religion : an anthology -- Lamarque and Olsen : aesthetics and the philosophy of art; the analytic -- Tradition : an anthology -- John and Lopes : philosophy of literature ; contemporary and classic -- Readings : an anthology -- Cudd and Andreasen : feminist theory : a philosophical anthology -- Carroll and Choi : philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology -- Lange : philosophy of science : an anthology -- Shafer-Landau and Cuneo : foundations of ethics : an anthology -- Curren : philosophy of education : an anthology -- Shafer-Landau : ethical theory : an anthology -- Cahn and Meskin : aesthetics : a comprehensive anthology -- McGrew, Alspector-Kelly and Allhoff : the philosophy of science : an historical -- Anthology -- May and Brown : the philosophy of law : classic and contemporary readings -- Forthcoming -- Rosenberg and ARP : philosophy of biology : an anthology. (shrink)

This excellent and accessible work includes many major texts in translation: Aristotle's Poetics, Longinus' On Sublimity, Horace's Art of Poetry, Tacitus' Dialogues, and extracts from Plato and Plutarch. Based on the highly praised Ancient Literary Criticism, it contains a new introduction and explanatory notes, and will be of enormous value to students both of Latin and Greek and of literary criticism and theory. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of (...) class='Hi'>literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Greek art and literature follow parallel courses through the long period from Homer to Euripides. Homer and Euripides, Dipylon vases and the latest white lekythoi are as far apart from each other as it is possible for works in the same medium to be. The distance can only be explained by a similar change in the views of artists, writers, and their public.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the function of the aesthetic paradigm of German idealism within Adorno’s thought. In order to do so, I have chosen to focus on the issue of the social significance of the work of art and the role played by the concept of literary material. Adorno’s aesthetics, in fact, can be read as a reinterpretation of the idealist aesthetic model based precisely on a non-idealist notion such as that of aesthetic material.If one is (...) to allow a seemingly brutal simplification, there are two ways to think about the social meaning of literature. One identifies somehow the subject of the text, assesses whether or not this challenges the society from which the literary work stems, and on this ground establishes its social character. According to this perspective, Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl can be seen as socially engaged literature, while Proust’s Recherche cannot, or can only to a lesser extent. The other approach argues instead that any literary work, and in any of its instances, says something about the society in which it takes shape. In this contribution I would like to focus on this latter approach. In particular, I am interested in understanding how literature is connected to society, that is, through which identifiable elements literary works express certain aspects of society. The Hegelian idealistic idea according to which Greek tragedy expresses the constitutive features of Athenian society, and which is found again and again in the authors who in various ways have taken up Hegel’s legacy, is generally accepted as such and valued for the explanatory opportunities it offers. It is my opinion, however, that one notion in particular can be retrieved within the whole inherited baggage of that aesthetic tradition, which may be able to further clarify the relationship between literature and society. This concept is that of material and the author who has most thoroughly investigated it is Adorno. In this paper I will try to outline the main features of a counterintuitive notion such as that of “literary material” and thereby explain why it plays such an important role in Adorno’s rework of the aesthetic paradigm of German idealism. The concept of material, in fact, is key to the definition of another aesthetic category around which, according to Adorno, most of the problems connected to works of art gravitate, that is to say, the notion of form. From Adorno’s aesthetics, in fact, one of his most insightful readers, Peter Szondi, draws the main principle for his study of the historical form of modern drama, namely the idea that form is essentially a precipitation, a sedimentation of contents. The work of art, then, at least according to this definition, is essentially identified by its form. Or, better said, the artwork must be interpreted as the way in which a certain (historical) content sediments in a certain external form. That the form of the work of art is precipitated content means, in simple terms, that no effective disjunction can be assumed between form and content. This is how Adorno reinterprets the concept of “identity of form and content” stressed by classical aesthetics. The content is such only insofar as it is precipitated into a certain form. This amounts to saying that no objective distinction can be established between one and the other. Now, if one were to ask how the form is made, Adorno’s answer is quite straightforward: the form is made by means of organization and, precisely, by means of the organization of the material. As one reads in Aesthetic Theory, in fact, “the substantial element of genres and forms has its locus in the historical needs of their materials,” and the particular form of an artwork is defined as the “organization” of its “materials” (Adorno 1970, transl. 1997: 201). The concept of material, therefore, is key to the definition of the very notion of work of art in its constituent components, namely the relationship between form and content. In this paper I will first of all clarify the notion of artistic material in general and subsequently I will turn to strictly literary material. Finally, and this is the main goal of this essay, I will show to what extent this definition of the material possibly contributes to a better understanding of a widely and variedly debated literary phenomenon of our time, namely the form of the so-called postmodern novel. (shrink)

In "On Variations of Classical Chinese Literary Theory for a Framework of Global Literary History" Peina Zhuang discusses texts of classical Chinese literary theory as a reservoir for philosophical reflections on literary art. The aesthetics of Chinese literature originate in Confucianism and Taoism and hence represent an important background for any discussion of ancient, modern, or contemporary Chinese literature and literary history. Zhuang analyzes texts of classical Chinese literary theory within such a framework of a literary history and (...) aims at furthering Chinese literature to become an integral part of world literatures. Further, Zhuang argues that "history" and "literary history" present a different picture of works on classical Chinese literary theory owing to the variation caused in representing their literary and aesthetic features. Zhuang also posits that the translation of Chinese literary texts to Western languages, while relevant and important, is not enough to advance Chinese literature from a peripheral status to a status of recognition hence the importance of scholarship with regard to literary history specifically. (shrink)

From the early years of the Common Era to 1700, Indian intellectuals explored with unparalleled subtlety the place of emotion in art. Their investigations led to the deconstruction of art's formal structures and broader inquiries into the pleasure of tragic tales. _Rasa_, or taste, was the word they chose to describe art's aesthetics, and their passionate effort to pin down these phenomena became its own remarkable act of creation. This book is the first in any language to follow the evolution (...) of rasa from its origins in dramaturgical thought--a concept for the stage--to its flourishing in literary thought--a concept for the page. _Reader on Rasa_ incorporates primary texts by every significant thinker of classical Indian aesthetics, many never translated before. The arrangement of the selections captures the intellectual dynamism that has powered this debate for centuries. Headnotes explain the meaning and significance of each text, a comprehensive introduction summarizes major threads in intellectual-historical terms, and critical endnotes and an extensive bibliography add further depth to the selections. The Sanskrit theory of emotion in art is one of the most sophisticated in the ancient world, a precursor of the work being done today by critics and philosophers of aesthetics. This volume's conceptual detail, historical precision, and clarity will appeal to any scholar interested in a full portrait of global intellectual development. __Reader on Rasa___ is the inaugural book in the Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought series, edited by Sheldon Pollock. These text-based books guide readers through the most important forms of classical Indian thought, from epistemology, rhetoric, and hermeneutics to astral science, yoga, and medicine. Each volume provides fresh translations of key works, headnotes to contextualize selections, a comprehensive analysis of major lines of development within the discipline, and exegetical and text-critical endnotes, as well as a bibliography. Designed for comparativists and interested general readers, Historical Sourcebooks is also a great resource for advanced scholars seeking authoritative commentary on challenging works._. (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary (...) events unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

The classic questions of philosophical aesthetics—how and why human beings find certain works of art beautiful or sublime—suffered from something of a hiatus in the twentieth century, but the study of beauty has seen a return in recent years, often calling on rapidly evolving research in cognitive science and neuroscience for assistance. Patrick Colm Hogan's Beauty and Sublimity: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts is an important contribution to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of cognitive aesthetics. The book (...) makes a brave attempt to bring together insights from neuroscience, cognitive science, and literature to explain aesthetic response and justification.Hogan's focus is on the minutiae of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 157-172 [Access article in PDF] Symposium: On Ken Burns's "Jazz" Jazz: America's Classical Music? 1 Lee B. Brown I VIEWERS OF KEN BURNS'S third cultural epic "Jazz" probably fell into one of three categories. 2 Some found it gripping. Some found it grating. Some found it both at once.The series has unforgettable moments: spectacular jitterbug sequences; Jimmy Lunceford's horn men fanning their trumpet (...) bells with hat mutes in sync; the close-up of the whirring cross-hand drumming of Art Blakey; the bitter-sweet glance Billie Holiday and Lester Young exchange in their last filmed appearance together; the occasional marriage of visuals to music. One riveting three minutes comes when the talking heads tune out, a 78-rpm disk of Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" is set spinning, and the thrilling notes pour out on a carousel of visual imagery—finally freeze-framing on the face of the young genius himself.On the downside, the series is massively repetitious. As a result of Burns's decision to track two major figures—Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington—from cradle to grave, the same cuts of Armstrong appear again and again, no matter what the time frame. Some of the series' commentators are particularly annoying—the fiddler of Burns's Civil War series, Matt Glaser, for instance, with his fatuous theories [End Page 157] about Louis Armstrong and Albert Einstein. And the documentary's heavy load of social freight—by Wynton Marsalis, and his mentors Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch 3 —threatens to flatten the music.The series is designed as informative entertainment, not Jazz 101. But Burns pays a price here, as he did in his documentary about baseball, in which not even the basics of the game, let alone any of the subtleties, were explained. In "Jazz" we get no explanation of what Jelly Roll Morton did to transform ragtime into jazz. (The series could easily have pressed Morton himself into service. With no sacrifice of his considerable charm, Morton did explain it, beautifully, in his recorded Library of Congress interviews. 4) Although the swing era gets big billing, no attempt is made to explain how swing rhythm actually works, as contrasted with earlier practices. (I have watched swing drummer Panama Francis entertain a packed hall with a brief but riveting illustration of how it works.)As jazz history, the film also has problems. Some legendary figures are resurrected unconvincingly. When Marsalis tells us what the legendary trumpet player Buddy Bolden sounded like, the illustrative off-camera trumpet is Marsalis's, not Bolden's, who embedded not one note in a record groove. Further, we face the tiresomely obvious problem of omissions. We hear nothing of Albert Ayler, Keith Jarrett, Sun Ra, Mildred Bailey, Benny Carter, Lennie Tristano, Erroll Garner, Eric Dolphy, Art Pepper, or Woody Herman. All we learn about Bill Evans—whose influence on jazz piano was huge—is that Miles Davis hired him even though he was white. Omissions are inevitable, of course. But there is a muted pattern to the exclusions. It was impossible for the series to avoid Benny Goodman, given his central role in the swing era. But white figures are too often either ignored or treated as alienated outsiders. We hear New York Times columnist Margo Jefferson opine that Bix Beiderbecke drank himself to death because he wasn't allowed to play with black musicians. In fact, many of the greatest players—white and black—never played with musicians of their own caliber.Most figures covered in the film are treated either with respect or with reverence. But things get nasty when matters turn to avant-gardists. Thus, Branford Marsalis—Wynton's talented brother—singles out the volcanic pianist Cecil Taylor for a particularly hostile attack. 5 Instead of explaining what Ornette Coleman meant by "free jazz," Albert Murray tells us that jazz is, by definition, free music—and by implication, that Coleman's concept must be fatuous. And Wynton has complained [End Page 158] elsewhere about a jazz avant-garde retreat into what he calls "a... (shrink)

_On the Lyricism of the Mind: Psychoanalysis and Literature_ explores the lyrical dimension of the psychic space. It is not presented as an artistic disposition, but rather as a universal psychic quality which enables the recovery and recuperation of the self. The specific nature of human lyricism is defined as the interaction as well as the integration of two psychic modes of experience originally defined by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion: The emergent and the continuous principles of the self. Dana Amir (...) elaborates Bion's general notion of an interaction between the emergent and the continuous principles of the self, offering a discussion of the specific function of each principle and of the significance of the various types of interaction between them as the basis for mental health or pathology. The author applies these theoretical notions in her analytic work by means of literary illustrations showing how the lyrical dimension may be used to teach psychoanalytic readings of literature and explore the connection between psychoanalytic and literary languages._ _ On the Lyricism of the Mind presents a new psychoanalytic understanding of the capacity to heal, to grieve, to love and to know, using literary illustrations but also literary language in order to extract a new formulation out of the classic psychoanalytic language of Winnicott and Bion. This book will appear to a wide audience to include psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and art therapists. It is also extremely relevant to literary scholars, including students of literary criticism, philosophers of language and philosophers of mind, novelists, poets, and to the wide educated readership in general._ _. (shrink)

Pack includes 2 titles from the popular Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies Series: Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings - An Anthology Edited by Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes ISBN: 9781405112086 Essential readings in the philosophy of literature are brought together for the first time in this anthology. Contains forty-five substantial and carefully chosen essays and extracts Provides a balanced and coherent overview of developments in the field during the past thirty years, including influential work on fiction, interpretation, (...) metaphor, literary value, and the definition and ontology of literature Includes an additional historical section featuring generous selections of the writings of early pioneers such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Hume Serves as an ideal introduction to the philosophy of literature or the philosophy of art, as well as a handy compilation of contributions to the field by its leading figures Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology Edited by Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi ISBN: 9781405120272 Designed for classroom use, this authoritative anthology presents key selections from the best contemporary work in philosophy of film. The featured essays have been specially chosen for their clarity, philosophical depth, and consonance with the current move towards cognitive film theory Eight sections with introductions cover topics such as the nature of film, film as art, documentary cinema, narration and emotion in film, film criticism, and film's relation to knowledge and morality Issues addressed include the objectivity of documentary films, fear of movie monsters, and moral questions surrounding the viewing of pornography Replete with examples and discussion of moving pictures throughout. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 535 eluded. Have Straussians proved that there is no higher human knowledge than philosophy? One hopes that they will meet their critics, because Stmussians are deeply serious men and women, and we can all learn from their mentor. Hillsdale, College Hillsdale, Michigan D. T. ASSELIN Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory. By NOEL CARROLL. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. Pp. 268. This book is a provocative, (...) clearly written, and carefully argued presentation of a philosophical critique of traditional film criticism. If film is taken as a serious art form, one which can stand alongside of music, painting, theatre, and literature, then Carroll's book is a good example of the type of philosophical study that is needed. Assistant professor of philosophy at Wesleyan University, Carroll knows the world of film well and attacks with vigor what he takes to be erroneous in traditional film criticism. His three targets are the film theories of Rudolf Arnheim, Andre Bazin, and V. F. Perkins. It would be difficult to overemphasize the influence of Arnheim and Bazin on the history of the aesthetics of film: each man is a giant in the history of theorizing about film. Though much less influential, Perkins does present an mteresting view of film. Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory consists of an introduction, three central chapters, and a conclusion. Each of the three chapters is devoted to one of the film theorists, and each chapter begins with an explanation of the theory being discussed. In trying to present the theory in its strongest form, Carroll includes a detailed discussion of its historical setting, and this makes its contextual importance clear. But most of each chapter is devoted to criticism of the theory iii question. Thinking of film theories as a series of answers to abstract questions, Carroll suggests that Arnheim, Bazin, and Perkins address the same central questions and expect the answers to these questions to be related logically in the same way. Carroll lists three questions that he thinks suggest a similar structure in the three theories he is studying: " What is the determinant or special feature of film? What is the value or role of cinema? What are the processes of articulation in film in relation to the previous two answers? " Concerning the answers to these questions Carroll writes 586 BOOK REVIEWS Most classical film theories-including those of Amheim, Bazin, and Perkins-relate answers to the three basic questions in the following way: the determinant characteristic stands to the role of cinema as a means to an end, while the articulatory processes are assessed as instances of the determinant characteristic of cinema (pp. 14-15). Arnheim represents an early type of film theorizing which Carroll names the silent-film paradigm. Those who embrace this approach, and Carroll would include the Soviet montagists of the twenties such as Sergei Eisenstein, insist that film is not merely a record of reality but rather manipulates reality expressively. Though Arnheim wrote after sound had entered film, he disdained talkies and looked back to silent film to discover the paradigm of film. Carroll's treatment of Arnheim relies on the latter's 1957 Film As Art, which is a condensed version of his 1933 book Film. The 1957 condensation can he considered the authoritative articulation of Arnheim's position. The prejudice against cinema in its early days derived from the fact that a major constituent of film was photography. Many felt that photography could not be an art form because it was merely a copying process. Arnheim's theory can be called creationist because he successfully showed how cinema could be creative in capturing and re-presenting reality. Arnheim showed that film transcends the simple viewpoint that simple recording implies. Carroll summarizes Arnheim's view: In summary, Arnheim holds that one role of filmmaking-the one that concerns him-is art. He also contends that the determinant characteristics of the medium-those relevant to the purpose of art makingare the various ways that the medium diverges from the mechanical duplication of reality, and finally, Arnheim spends the bulk of Film As Art on lengthy examinations of the various modes of cinematic articulalation, in order to demonstrate... (shrink)

The poets and prose-writers of Greece and Rome were acutely conscious of their literary heritage. They expressed this consciousness in the regularity with which, in their writings, they imitated and alluded to the great authors who had preceded them. Such imitation was generally not regarded as plagiarism but as essential to the creation of a new literary work: imitating one's predecessors was in no way incompatible with originality or progress. These views were not peculiar to the writers of Greece and (...) Rome but were adopted by many others who have written in the 'classical tradition' right up to modern times. Creative Imitation and Latin Literature is an exploration of this concept of imitation. The contributors analyse selected passages from various authors - Greek, Latin and English - in order to demonstrate how Latin authors created new works of art by imitating earlier passages of literature. (shrink)

The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of these capacities is distinctive of literature. What is the singularity of literature? Do the (...) terms "literature" and "the literary" refer to actual entities found in cultures at certain times, or are they merely expressions characteristic of such cultures? Attridge argues that this resistance to definition and reduction is not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. Derek Attridge provides a rich new vocabulary for literature, rethinking such terms as "invention," "singularity," "otherness," "alterity," "performance" and "form." He returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues for the ethical importance of literature, demonstrating how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a "responsible," creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author. (shrink)

Regarding philosophical importance, Edmund Husserl is arguably "the" German export of the early twentieth century. In the wake of the linguistic turn of the humanities, however, his claim to return to the "Sachen selbst" became metonymic for the neglect of language in Western philosophy. This view has been particularly influential in post-structural literary theory, which has never ceased to attack the supposed "logophobie" of phenomenology. "Phenomenology to the Letter. Husserl and Literature" challenges this verdict regarding the poetological and logical (...) implications of Husserl’s work through a thorough re-examination of his writing in the context of literary theory, classical rhetoric, and modern art. At issue is an approach to phenomenology and literature that does not merely coordinate the two discourses but explores their mutual implication. Contributions to the volume attend to the interplay between phenomenology and literature, experience and language, as well as images and embodiment. The volume is the first of its kind to chart a phenomenological approach to literature and literary approach to phenomenology. As such it stands poised to make a novel contribution to literary studies and philosophy. (shrink)

National identities are to a great extent based on common mythical stories (re)produced by literature and arts; in the long run, the core texts of literature themselves start to function as cultural myths. Performing classical works theatre relates them to the changing social context and thus actualises their meaning. Theatrical representations of national characters and mythical stories participate in reinforcing or redefining national identity. In independent Estonia of the 1990s–2000s the need for reconsidering national values and myths that (...) served to consolidate society in the Soviet period, has become evident. The article focuses on theatrical productions in the turn of the century, which are based on active rewriting of well-known Estonian classics (August Kitzberg, Oskar Luts, and the national epic Kalevipoeg). The article tries to answer two questions: how ingredients of national identity (for instance, the relation to the Other) are displayed and (de)constructed by adapting or rewriting of above-mentioned classics; how textual strategies aimed at semantic transformations are motivated and shaped by the principle of self-reflexive theatrical play. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Literature as Sheltering the HumanJohn Durham PetersLiterature as Sheltering the Human, by Frederic Will; 203 pp. Lewiston, Maine: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993, $69.95.This volume contains thirteen essays by Frederic Will, poet, critic, ex-professor of literature, autobiographer, translator, man of letters. All concern the peculiar powers of literature to offer spiritual comfort and protection against the storms of life.A cluster of four theoretical essays begins the (...) collection. The first surveys Husserl’s intellectual offspring, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger, and seeks in their philosophies of language a grounding for literature’s uniqueness. The second essay argues that everyday language is always on the verge of entropy, but at its best, can be sublimated into literature. The third essay is a fiction of a crazed lit professor trying to master “the whole of literature” (p. 41). The eternally elusive object of “literature” turns out to evoke erotic-aggressive energies. The fourth essay on “Influencing the Past” rehearses some Benjaminian and Borgesian themes about literary influence being not causality, but intertextual resonance.The next set of five essays—which Will calls a “testimony” (p. 133) or “hit and run theology” (p. 138)—forms the core of the book. They treat “sheltering the human” in Homer, the Bible, Sappho, the Bhagavad Gita, and the epistles of St. Paul. Each ponders an enclosure—a retreat from battle, a womb, an act of translation, an inward wrestle of conscience, the blood of Christ—made of words. To my mind, this is the best part of the book: a steady meditation, graced with poetic lines and steeped in wide learning, on the proposition that “poetically man dwells.” Here Will performs the humane survey of world-literature he elsewhere extolls.The concluding section explores the relation of literature to the other arts. There is an essay on the gradual discovery of the oral core of Greek literature, largely through German scholarship, and one on literature’s relation to the other arts, which argues for its unique centrality among human expressive forms, thanks to its alleged continuity with the essential human possession, language. The penultimate essay meditates on Adorno’s aesthetics of music (concluding on an affirmative note not quite in tune with Adorno’s gloomy musings on capitalism), and the grand finale muses on the relation of art to life, via the dubious conceit of “art” as a great resort hotel.The book is remarkable for an intense and bald aestheticism that is exceedingly rare today. Will calls literature “the ripest offspring of language” (p. 1) and is happy to speak of masterpieces, genius, revelation, the autonomy of art, classics, humanism, values lodged in the structure of the universe (p. 125), universal validity (p. 131), “texts high in redemptive claim” (p. 147), the continuing necessity of the classical tradition (p. 190), and the artist as all but a different species (p. 200). The faith in a totality called “literature” is, to put it lightly, out of season in the academy today. As Will, a confirmed foe of [End Page 387] academic politics and pedantry, might well suggest, this may speak in its favor. Though Will’s aestheticism may refresh, I cannot help but wonder with Adorno whether some forms of expression and faith are objectively impossible in certain eras. Can “literature” sustain credulity today as anything more than one among many remarkable human practices?There is something, if I may say it, sheltered about these essays. If, as J. S. Mill said, eloquence is heard but poetry is overheard, this work is more poetry than eloquence. It features repeated and unannounced autobiographical intrusions. The self-reflexive quality supplies ready phrases to the reviewer: Will calls himself a “fallen contemporary classicist,” praises “high-minded eclecticism” and favors those thinkers who “sensualize knowing.” These traits make for a rare voice singing in the cornfields of Iowa.John Durham PetersUniversity of IowaCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature explores the growth, makeup, and transformation of Chan (Zen) Buddhist literature in late medieval China. The volume analyzes the earliest extant records about the life, teachings, and legacy of Mazu Daoyi (709-788), the famous leader of the Hongzhou School and one of the principal figures in Chan history. While some of the texts covered are well-known and form a central part of classical Chan (or more broadly Buddhist) (...) literature in China, others have been largely ignored, forgotten, or glossed over until recently. Poceski presents a range of primary materials important for the historical study of Chan Buddhism, some translated for the first time into English or other Western language. He surveys the distinctive features and contents of particular types of texts, and analyzes the forces, milieus, and concerns that shaped key processes of textual production during this period. Although his main focus is on written sources associated with a celebrated Chan tradition that developed and rose to prominence during the Tang era (618-907), Poceski also explores the Five Dynasties (907-960) and Song (960-1279) periods, when many of the best-known Chan collections were compiled. Exploring the Chan School's creative adaptation of classical literary forms and experimentation with novel narrative styles, The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature traces the creation of several distinctive Chan genres that exerted notable influence on the subsequent development of Buddhism in China and the rest of East Asia. (shrink)

Excerpt from Allgemeines Handwörterbuch der Philosophischen Wissenschaften Nebst Ihrer Literatur und Geschichte Nfcfl'oc bet %ilofopln'e an bet univafitdt an 269n mb sum: bet Ginil= 88(tbientloxcns. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in (...) the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Excerpt from Doxographi Graeci: Collegit Recensuit Prolegomenis Indicibusque Instruxit Ceterum in superioribus suis verbis dicebat: 'cuius para sub corruptione iacet, necesse id est totum quoque obnoxium esse corruptioni.' nec enim sine toto partes constare poseunt neque totum sine partibus. Nam mundus univeraua unum corpus est e multis partibus a deo compositum. Nec tamen ut alii qui dam sapientum animal esse mundus censeudus est sed arti ficinsa harmonia concretionem nactus. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and (...) classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

One fall evening in 1880, Russian painter Ilya Repin welcomed an unexpected visitor to his home: Lev Tolstoy. The renowned realists talked for hours, and Tolstoy turned his critical eye to the sketches in Repin's studio. Tolstoy's criticisms would later prompt Repin to reflect on the question of creative expression and conclude that the path to artistic truth is relative, dependent on the mode and medium of representation. In this original study, Molly Brunson traces many such paths that converged to (...) form the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian realism, a tradition that spanned almost half a century--from the youthful projects of the Natural School and the critical realism of the age of reform to the mature masterpieces of Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the paintings of the Wanderers, Repin chief among them. By examining the classics of the tradition, Brunson explores the emergence of multiple realisms from the gaps, disruptions, and doubts that accompany the self-conscious project of representing reality. These manifestations of realism are united not by how they look or what they describe, but by their shared awareness of the fraught yet critical task of representation. By tracing the engagement of literature and painting with aesthetic debates on the sister arts, Brunson argues for a conceptualization of realism that transcends artistic media. Russian Realisms integrates the lesser-known tradition of Russian painting with the familiar masterpieces of Russia's great novelists, highlighting both the common ground in their struggles for artistic realism and their cultural autonomy and legitimacy. This erudite study will appeal to scholars interested in Russian literature and art, comparative literature, art history, and nineteenth-century realist movements. (shrink)

This study describes Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts as a humanist, poet and religious scholar who thinks that the concepts of Javanese Sufism and Islamic Sufism are two contradictory ideas. Raden Panji Natarata describes his ideas through the medium of têmbang macapat (Javanese song) in a classic Javanese literature entitled Sêrat Bayanullah. Sêrat Bayanullah, which is used as a source of data for this research, is a collection of the Pura Mangkunegaran library, Surakarta, with catalogue number A-393. The scope of (...) this study focuses on Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts on the nature of life, which include the concepts of human creation, human death, and the after-death union of the servant with God. To obtain objective and comprehensive research results, the researchers used a qualitative descriptive research paradigm by applying hermeneutic theory. The results showed that Raden Panji Natarata's thoughts about the nature of life did not go beyond the limits of monotheism, while other poets tended to acculturate Javanese Sufism thoughts, which sometimes were not in line with the teachings of monotheism. CONTRIBUTION: As an academic contribution, this research is expected to enrich and preserve the repertoire of local research literature with Sufism nuances and their relationship with the thoughts of Sufi experts. Differences in perspective is natural, and the most important thing is mutual respect for differing opinions for the sake of creating harmony in life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, see the following excerpt: -/- Though his work has until now gone untranslated and been largely ignored in English scholarship, the historian of philosophy François Châtelet played a major role in the development of French thought that is on par with that of his more well-known contemporaries. Born in 1925, Châtelet was founding member of the University of Vincennes, Paris VIII’s experimental department of philosophy alongside Michel Foucault in the aftermath of the 1968 student protests. (...) In 1983, he would establish the Collège Internationale de Philosophie in Paris along with other prominent philosophers, an institution that in Alessandra Campana’s words, is at “the forefront of militant and engaged critical thinking,” in which it has sought to “relocate philosophy at the intersection of science, politics, psychoanalysis, art and literature, jurisprudence, and economy.” Châtelet’s association with radical educational institutions and the interdisciplinarity of research undertaken at the latter both point to what can be understood to be the essence of his philosophical project: that the history of philosophy is also a politics of philosophy. La Grèce Classique, La Raison, L’État, which was first published in 1978 and appears here in translation for the first time under the title Classical Greece, Reason, and the State, is exemplary in this regard, providing a powerful critique of the history of philosophy and its purported Greek origins. As Deleuze argues, Châtelet reveals that “Athens was not the advent of an eternal reason, but the singular event of a provisional rationalisation. In this view, the essence of classical philosophy cannot be extended to the contemporary era—neither in its original form, or in a revised form that has been modified and updated across the passage of time. Therefore, by politicising philosophy and its history, Châtelet’s work also shows philosophy to be indicative of a particular cultural moment, rather than as an the state, philosophy, and the tyranny of the logos · isolated discipline cut off from the influences of material life. He establishes a form of ‘rational empiricism’ for conducting a history of political philosophy that rejects universality for potentiality. Said otherwise, his work is indicative of what might be called the poststructuralist critique of historical narrative surrounding the canon of western thought, a critique that Michael Hardt rightfully argues “has problematised the foundations of philosophical and political thought.” However, Châtelet has made important contributions to the poststructuralist approach to theorising the western tradition that remain novel and insightful to a contemporary audience, rather than simply being one of many to problematise philosophy’s purported foundations. (shrink)

From an intensive academic study based primarily on Machiavelli's works, critical arguments arise in this text that undermine not only the current-day political mind-set, framework, and practices, but also the views established academically, up to the point where the "body politic" formed by the Western classical tradition is dissipated and dispersed. Comprised in a contrary unconventional manner similar to Machiavelli, the basic essential factors of history, religion, power, and authority were formulated as the four main chapters in this work by (...) Nevio Cristante. From it, one can readily see the flaws today in the false praise in nostalgic historical hubris, the forgetting of a brand of religion that is essential for healthy politics, the overlooking of coercive forces that reduce politics to power, and the loss of true authority. In this book, Cristante comprises Machiavelli as a virtuous, unprecedented, "extreme humanist," in stark contrast to the common incessant interpretations of him being a "teacher of evil," a "diabolical," "soulless" political advisor. A subversive satirical interpretation of The Prince has been formed herein, extending from the generated knowledge of history and the history of Machiavelli's own experience. From the vivacious and unraveling Italian Renaissance, a cogent force prompted Machiavelli to create his literary works in order to form an educational cure for the deteriorating human condition, of his time, and any time. There is in Machiavelli, a differing sense of newness from that which is commonly known today, which circumvents its worth in this distinct educative interpretation. Machiavelli goes back in time in order to produce lessons applicable to correct the shortages in his, and every, present-day. With a divergent view of the works of art and literature outlined in this analysis, Machiavelli's education becomes revived today in creating a virtuous political, spiritual, and cultural dynamism as a battle-cry to repel the ignorance and great misfortunes in our human condition. (shrink)

Classic rock of the 1960s and early 1970s broke away from the harmless bubblegum and surfing music of the 1950s to become a vehicle for profound commentary upon the human condition. Theories and motifs from major figures in the history of philosophy, theology and literature were refracted and transfigured in this intelligent new popular art form.

The term Kathakali has by far become a word that is known widely among theatre lovers all over the world. It is no longer an art intended to perform within the four walls of a temple in Kerala, with only a limited educated upper class to appreciate. In its evolution, it has become a symbol that represents a society, culture and tradition. This paper explores Kathakali art form, tracing its origin and evolution and analyzing how it hasbecome a socio-cultural icon. (...) The paper also intends a comparative analysis of Kathakali with its counterparts – Krishnanaattam, Koodiyattam and Yakshagana – in order to substantiate its pre-eminence. (shrink)

According to Didier Eribon, melancholy is where it all starts and where it also ends: the lifelong process of mourning that each homosexual experiences, and through which they construct their own identity. In this beguiling book, an introverted, anxious, ambitious, artistically gifted queer Filipino-Canadian boy finds solace, inspiration, and a "syllabus for living" in art--works of literature and music, from the children's literary classic Anne of Green Gables to the music of Maria Callas. But their contribution to his intellectual, (...) emotional, and spiritual edification belies the fact that they were largely heteronormative and white, which had the effect of invisibilizing him as a queer person of colour. Part memoir, part cultural commentary, and a hybrid of besotted aesthetic appreciation and unsparing critique, Double Melancholy is by turns a passionate love letter to art and an embattled examination of its oppressive complicity with the society that produces it, and the depths to which art both enriches and colonizes us. (shrink)

Excerpt from Frammenti di Estetica e Letteratura Venne, dopo un paio d' anni, una memoria di Bene detto Croce dal titolo: La storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale dell' arte' memoria ardita nella tesi enunciata fin dal titolo, stringata ne' ragionamenti, breve, ta gliente, piena d' osservazioni acute; che, come avviene delle scritture di singolar merito, mise il campo a ru more. Piovvero le critiche, e il Croce rispose in una se conda memoria di Discussioni; che poi riun alla prima (...) e ripubblic con due nuovi scritterelli, i quali miravano a lumeggiare ancor meglio il tema contrastato, in un libro, sul quale anch' io ebbi a scrivere e contro il quale tornarono ad aguzzare le armi i critici, special mente studiosi di storia, scandalezzati, del concetto, cui si voleva ridurre la loro scienza. Uno storico tedesco giunse ad affermare nella Historz'sche Zeitschrift del Sybel, concludendo una sua recensione molto severa, che l'n nico merito delle memorie del Croce era quello di aver dato occasione a un certo libro, che io ho dovuto giudi care, a malincuore, assai duramente per voler essere giusto; dove io afi'ermerei, che l'unico merito di questo libro ' di esser nato in occasione di quegli scritti suggestivi del Croce. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This classic anthology offers ancient and modern perspectives on Job's question: 'If a man die, shall he live again?' Spanning over 5,000 years of world thought, the selections invite consideration of an idea that has found hospitality in the greatest minds of history.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.3 (2002) 513-516 [Access article in PDF] Deborah Tarn Steiner. Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. xviii + 360 pp. 28 black-and-white figures. Cloth, $39.50. The production of sculpture in metal, stone, and other materials was a craft that virtually disappeared from the Greek world for several centuries after the end of the (...) Bronze Age. Small, solid cast bronze figurines reappeared in the ninth century B.C.E., but it was not until the middle seventh century that the first large-scale stone statues of women and men were created. From that point on, freestanding and architectural sculpture played a central role in Greek society and its artistic expression. While the stylistic evolution of Greek sculpture has been traced many times, in this provocative and ambitious book, Deborah Steiner sets out to examine, from a literary standpoint, "how archaic and classical Greek poets, philosophers, dramatists, and historians introduce statues as cognitive and hermeneutic devices in their texts" (xi). The investigation leads her to analyze what the statues "looked like, how they functioned," and "what they were credited with doing." The resulting book "aims to tell two stories, one about objects, the other about texts, and to show how each proves crucial to the other." The examination is somewhat lopsided, since the intellectual use of the visual material is given far greater emphasis than the statues themselves.The book is divided into five lengthy chapters and an epilogue. The first chapter, "Replacement and Replication," focuses on the physical resemblance of statues to people but not their inner natures. Chapter 2, "Inside and Out," examines, instead, the ways that a statue's exterior can relate more or less exactly to its inner truth. Chapter 3, "The Quick and the Dead," suggests that statues, by their very inertia, closely resemble the dead and therefore mediate in our imagination between the two states. Statues as erotic (or anti-erotic) art objects form the subject of chapter 4, "For Love of a Statue." The fifth and final chapter, "The Image in the Text," returns to the literary relation of sculpture to the production of memory: the similarity between victory odes and victors' statues, funerary epigrams and monuments, and the creation and regulation (on both the social and political levels) of honorary statuary and decrees. The retrospective epilogue is followed by twenty-eight black-and-white illustrations: Most of them depict well-known pieces of sculpture, but there are also several photographs of vase paintings and one of a drachma.In all the chapters, Steiner continually draws attention to the multivalent aspects of statues. The Greeks developed and applied a large and nuanced vocabulary to describe different types of image that embody differences only [End Page 513] poorly translated by our term, "statue": agalma, eidolon, eikon, kolossos, xoanon, and sema. Most of these have provoked extended discussion among modern scholars. The functions that statues played are even more diverse: they could serve as replacements for the absent or deceased individual, as votive offerings, as cult images, as commemorative monuments, as apotropaic devices, as protective symbols, as minatory agents, and occasionally as deadly entities (some statues could madden their viewer and even kill those who abused them or their creators by toppling over). They were also focusing devices that could evoke a wide range of emotional responses, from pity to lust. As exempla they served to instruct, and some could speak with their own voices, sometimes comically (e.g., the herms in Attic comedy) or poignantly through the words inscribed on their bases (e.g., the famous lines of Phrasikleia, the dead maiden who will never be a bride). The repeated use of the first person by funerary figures is particularly evocative. The inscriptions on other figures (like the very early Mantiklos Apollo statuette) make it clear that images could serve as bargaining chips with the gods for past services rendered or debts owed for the future.Other statues defy simple categorization—the Athena Parthenos, for example... (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary (...) events unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

This book offers an ideal first reader in ancient Greek. It presents a selection of extracts from a comprehensive range of Greek authors, from Homer to Plutarch, together with generous help with vocabulary and grammar. The passages have been chosen for their intrinsic interest and variety, and brief introductions set them in context. All but the commonest Greek words are glossed as they occur and a general vocabulary is included at the back. Although the book is designed to be used (...) by students who have only completed a beginner's course in Greek, students of all ages will find that it helps them to improve their ability and confidence in reading a wide range of prose and verse texts, while at the same time providing a fascinating and copiously illustrated introduction to the riches and variety of ancient Greek literature over a period of almost a thousand years. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.4 (2004) 113-120 [Access article in PDF] Wonders, Witches, Wolves, and Wisdom Ellen Handler Spitz Honors College Professor of Visual Arts University of Maryland The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, ed. Maria Tatar, New York: W.W. Norton, 2002, Paperback: 394 pp., $16.95. We persist in hearkening to fairy tales. Along with ancient myths, the parables of scripture, the secular legends and sacred texts of many (...) lands, a stable canon of these magical tales still provides, even in the twenty-first century, an ongoing source of inspiration to artists, composers, choreographers, filmmakers, poets, and, above all, to the writers and illustrators and readers of children's books. They are of abiding interest as well to all of us who, in our various ways, concern ourselves with the aesthetic education of children. Why is this so? One preeminent authority in the field is Maria Tatar, John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, an author who, with wisdom, tenderness, and erudition, has traced and researched these tales. Having devoted two decades to the phenomenon, Tatar's works include The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Off with their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, and The Classic Fairy Tales: A Norton Critical Edition.1 She has recently come out with a new book, an edited collection of twenty-six tales all illustrated, marginally annotated, and a number of them retranslated for the occasion, the result being The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, a painstakingly produced, lavishly decorated volume that would grace any library.In addition to commenting, in the volume's elegantly wide margins, on each of the included tales, Tatar has arranged to have this new compilation ornamented with small colored reproductions of both rare and famous images associated with the tales by distinguished illustrators of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — artists such as Gustave Doré, Edmund Dulac, Walter Crane, Maxfield Parrish, and Arthur Rackham. While small in size and often not quite as clear as one might ideally wish (I found myself longing for some sorcery that would blow them up to full size so as to be able to feast my eyes on their wealth of detail and imaginative splendor), these images grace the text and greatly enhance its pleasures. Their presence, in fact, is one of the factors that makes this book unique. I know of no other extant work where a comparable effort has been made to join the fairy tales with a multiplicity of their most celebrated illustrations. The effect is astonishing. Readers are either transported directly back into their own early childhoods or newly acquainted with a brilliant visual canon parallel to that of the fairy [End Page 113] tales themselves. I predict it will be a rare reader who, after seeing this book, will not be desirous of learning more about the artists whose works are reproduced here. To further that end and to begin to satisfy the desire she must have known she would create, Tatar has supplied her readers with a section of mini-biographies and bibliographies not only of the authors and collectors of the fairy tales themselves (most notably, Charles Perrault, the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen) but of the illustrators. For this felicitous marriage — of word and image, of story and picture — her endeavor deserves our gratitude.Rather than take this tasteful treasure trove as a culmination of Tatar's pre-existing work, which, in a certain sense, it is, I prefer to see it as a lure that entices readers to revisit her earlier volumes which, while of recognized scholarly import and interpretive richness, all tackle questions pertinent not only to folklorists and to historians of literature but to all of us who, in the wake of recent history, have come to wonder ever more anxiously what sort of tales we ought to be telling children and ourselves and how and why. This question, incidentally, returns us to Book II of Plato's Republic, where Socrates poses this question directly to... (shrink)

The article re-visits the different scholarly approaches to Hegel's end-of-art scenario, and then proposes a new reading whereby ending and finitude are presented as essential features of beautiful art. The first and most determinant of art's endings is the death of the Christly art object, not representations of Christ, but the actual death of (the son of) God himself as the last classical artwork. The death of God represents the last word in Greco-Roman art, the accomplishment of the beautiful individuality (...) and its failure to present the Absolute in a singular, naturally infected, lively, human (made) form. The ending of art brings about a new form of the sacred: the representational language of revelatory religion. The ongoing production of modern artistic forms is a feature of actuality ("Wirklichkeit") and as such is condemned to an infinite approximation of what has been. Such actuality nonetheless "ends" in the ironic discourse of contemporary artistic expression, which Hegel qualifies as a "Vereitelung". The final realization of the beautiful art form, as a human-informed singularity embodying absolute content, may well be the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, whose performative iteration takes place in the form of "worship" practiced in the modern, state university. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Classical Literature provides a comprehensive, critical survey of the literature of Greece and Rome from Homer till the Fall of Rome. This is the only modern work of this scope; it embodies the very considerable advances made by recent classical scholarship, and reflects too the increasing sophistication and vigour of critical work on ancient literature. The literature is presented throughout in the context of the culture and the social and hisotircal processes of (...) which it is an integral part. The overall aim is to offer an authoritative work of reference and appraisal for one of the world's greatest continuous literary traditions. The work is divided into two volumes, each with a similar and broadly chronological structure. Among the special features are important introductory chapters by the General Editors on 'Books and Readers', discussing the conditions under which literature was written and read in antiquity. There are also extensive Appendices or Authors and Works giving detailed factual information in a convenient form. Technical annotation is otherwise kept to a minimum, and all quotations in foreign languages are translated. (shrink)

The Periegesis of Pausanias has finally entered the world of serious literature. Long after the way was first shown, the Magnesian has arrived and duly taken his place in the intellectual world of the second century: a pilgrim to the past. Yet he was no bookish, library-bound bore. Recent studies have transformed our opinion of him as a recorder of the sites and treasures of what was, even to him, antiquity, ‘His faithfulness in reporting what he saw has, time (...) and time again, been proven at a large number of sites and could easily be demonstrated at a good many others.’ ‘The very fact that the second-century A.D. traveller Pausanias wrote at such length about the sites and monuments of Greece is itself indicative of his most important attitude towards antiquities. That is, he thought them of sufficient value to be worth recording and thought it worth travelling extensively in mainland Greece over a period of many years to see them for himself.’ And so inevitably, as respect for the author has grown, the desire to lay bare his soul has followed. Critics are unanimous in their view of a man sensitive to the resonance of the ancient and power of the past. On occasion a Herodotean fascination with the mutability of man's lot bubbles to the surface, indeed we may surmise Herodotus to have been an important influence on the Periegesis in several fundamental respects. Above all he was a man of deep learning and keen interest in the past and a faithful recorder of its remains. Archaeologists and art-historians concur. (shrink)

Welcome to the third issue of Humanist Studies & the Digital Age. It continues the discourse started with publication of the papers presented at the symposium “The Mobile Text: Studying Literature in the Digital Age” held in Rome in 2012. The current issue includes a few essays from another symposium on “Textualities in the Digital Age” held at the University of Oregon in April 2012; Art Farley summarizes the issues and papers presented in this latter symposium in the introduction (...) that follows this editorial. (shrink)

Considers the question of the authorship of the works in the title from a /philosophical/, as opposed to legal, standpoint, using the sense-reference dichotomy, intension-extension dichotomy, and procedural knowledge-declarative knowledge dichotomy. Reaches no conclusion.

“Any writer worth his salt knows that what cannot be spoken is ultimately the thing worth speaking about; yet most often this humbling awareness is unsaid or covered up. There are some who have made it their business, however, to court failure and acknowledge defeat, to explore the impasse of words before silence. William Franke has created an anthology of such explorations, undertaken in poetry and prose, that stretches from Plato to the present. Whether the subject of discourse is All (...) or Nothing does not matter: the struggle of speech to name the unnameable is the same. This ambitious two-volume undertaking demonstrates a preoccupation as old as Western civilization itself: the limits of language and the virtue of being at a loss for words. How long we have been raiding the Inarticulate!” —Peter S. Hawkins, Boston University “Developments in critical theory during the past two decades have led to renewed interest in negative theology. Books like _Languages of the Unsayable_, _Negation and Theology_, _Derrida and Negative Theology _, and _The Otherness of God _ have signaled the resurgence of this ancient tradition. William Franke’s distinctive contribution is to provide the background and texts from which these recent developments have emerged.” —Mark Taylor, Williams College Apophasis has become a major topic in the humanities, particularly in philosophy, religion, and literature. This monumental two-volume anthology gathers together most of the important historical works on apophaticism and illustrates the diverse trajectories of apophatic discourse in ancient, modern, and postmodern times. William Franke provides a major introductory essay on apophaticism at the beginning of each volume, and shorter introductions to each anthology selection. The first volume, _Classic Formulations_, offers excerpts from Plato, Plotinus, Damascius, the Bible, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, Rumi, Thomas Aquinas, Marguerite Porete, Dante, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and more. (shrink)

This anthology is heavy on poetry and letters, light in the other categories. There are some anomolies: Seneca's philosophy is represented by a piece of little historical interest, Cicero is alloted only five letters, Ovid is correspondingly slighted in poetry. Here also, as in the volume above, the editor's contribution is slight. No translations are acknowledged.—W. G. E.