Introduction

Plato's Caves ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-55
Author(s):  
Rebecca LeMoine
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Scholarly Literature

This chapter discusses existing interpretations of the treatment of foreigners in Plato’s dialogues. The view that Platonic political thought is xenophobic remains prominent in both popular accounts and the scholarly literature, but there is reason to question the traditional narrative. First, recent historical work shows that Athenian attitudes toward foreigners were more mixed than was previously believed. Plato, then, may well have held a positive conception of foreigners. Second, the analysis shows why quoting lines out of the dramatic contexts of the dialogues is problematic. If one of Plato’s characters speaks disparagingly of foreigners, that does not make Plato xenophobic. The chapter proposes instead a close reading of Plato’s dialogues using the techniques of literary analysis. It presents original data on the use of terminology related to foreigners throughout the Platonic corpus, and explains the process of selecting which dialogues to analyze.

Politics Versus Aesthetics: Arendt's Critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger

1995 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Biskoivski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Political Condition

Several recent commentaries on Hannah Arendt's political thought have suggested strong connections and affinities between Arendt and Nietzsche or between Arendt and various later Nietzschean, aestheticist, or postmodernist thinkers. But a close reading of Arendt's critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger suggests that an overemphasis on the more Nietzschean or aesthetic aspects of Arendt's work risks obscuring some vital distinctions Arendt makes or preserves concerning politics and aesthetics. More significantly, the Nietzschean or aestheticist interpretation of Arendt tends to conceal or distort Arendt's actual, highly original, and more promising response to various facets of the modern political condition.

scholarly journals IDENTITAS DIASPORIS TIGA GENERASI PEREMPUAN CINA DALAM ONLY A GIRL KARYA LIAN GOUW (Diasporic Identity of Three Generations of Chinese Females in Only A Girl Written by Lian Gouw)

ATAVISME ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Ratna Asmarani
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family House

Identity is crucial in a person’s life. Diasporic identity is much more complicated because it involves at least two cultures. The focus of this paper is to analyze the diasporic identity of three generations of diasporic Chinese females as represented in Lian Gouw’s novel entitled Only a Girl. The data and supporting concepts are compiled using library research and close reading. The qualitative analysis is used to support the contextual literary analysis combining the intrinsic aspect focusing on the female characters and the extrinsic aspects concerning diaspora and identity. The results shows that each Chinese female character has tried to construct her own diasporic identity. However, the social, cultural, political, educational, and economic contexts play a great role in the struggles to construct the diasporic identity. It can be concluded that the younger the generation, the braver their effort to construct their diasporic identity and the braver their decision to take a distance with the big family house eventhough they have to face stronger and more complicated conflicts to realize and actualize their personal construction of diasporic identity.

scholarly journals Fan fiction comments and their relationship to classroom learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Rouse
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Classroom Learning ◽  
Pleasure Reading ◽  
Web Scraping ◽  
Reader Comments

Reader comments appended to online fan fiction stories provide benefits as close reading and critical analysis tools. Fan fiction provides a space where fans can develop literary analysis skills and literacy through their interactions in comments. This multimethod study combined the interview of a fan author with various digital humanities methods to closely study the value of comments. A web scraping tool was used to collect comments, and documentary, textual, and terminological analyses were performed alongside topic modeling to assess the frequency of words associated with learning. The co-occurrence of certain words was studied to understand the assessments and analyses that readers were performing in their comments. The study found that fan fiction readers apply strategies of literary analysis to their pleasure reading.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Smuts
Keyword(s):  
Historical Research ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries

After a brief survey of the evolution of interdisciplinary historical work on the English Renaissance since the 1980s, this introduction comments upon the material covered by the collection and how individual chapters reflect recent and current historiographical trends. The decline of older master narratives of Elizabethan and early Stuart history is examined, along with the emergence of increasingly complex views of politics, religion, society and culture during the period. Particular attention is paid to issues and methodologies that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is argued that rather than providing scholars of literature with a stable framework of established facts and interpretations, historical research is best appreciated as an ongoing enterprise that can stimulate and inform literary analysis by suggesting fresh questions and furnishing insights and information that complement the work of close reading.

scholarly journals The gendered embodiment of shame: Intersections of acquaintance rape, trauma and self-blame in Pompidou posse by Sarah Lotz

Literator ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Murray
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Acquaintance Rape ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Self Blame ◽  
Sexually Assaulted ◽  
Social Messages

This article offers a feminist literary analysis of the gendered embodiment of shame in Pompidou posse by Sarah Lotz. In this novel, Lotz depicts female characters who are sexually assaulted by acquaintances and the resultant shame and trauma reside in their bodies. I will demonstrate that the embodied shame of these characters is distinctly gendered and that this shapes their attempts to cope with the aftermath of the sexual assaults. A close reading of the text reveals that the characters are exposed to overwhelming social messages of female culpability in a larger context that is rife with misogyny. As a result, they anticipate blame to such an extent that they blame themselves and internalise this blame as shame. By focusing on the bodies of the survivors, Lotz demonstrates the embodiment of shame, but she also suggests a corporeal challenge to silencing. The bodies of these characters speak loudly, albeit sometimes in the halting language of trauma, and they function to alert them to danger, to help them excavate memories that are made inaccessible and to testify to traumatic sexual assault.

scholarly journals Christopher Isherwood's "Right" and "Wrong" Anti-Semitism: A Political Reading

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesc Gámez Toro
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Main Target

There are numerous references to Christopher Isherwood’s prejudices against Jews in scholarly literature; however, this subject has not yet been approached in depth. This study aims to fill that void by dissecting the author’s bias against Jews: its origin and nature. The article discusses the references to Jews in the writer’s novels, memoirs and diaries within the frame of reference of Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory which holds that humans innately derogate those who are perceived as being opposed. A close reading reveals that Isherwood, in a specific social and political context, considered Jews alien to him and —in accordance with social identity theory predictions— he instinctually derogated them. Before his stay in Berlin, Judaism did not interest him and he disliked Jews because he regarded them as ‘exotic’. During the rise and rule of Nazism, the writer felt compelled to support Jews —although reticently— because they had become the main target of persecution of national socialism. Later, once in America, Isherwood distinguished between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ anti-Semitism and stated that Jewish politics were whining and belligerent. Even though he had Jewish friends, his diaries show a persistent instinctual dislike of Jews. Ironically, the anti-prejudice fighter could not help having his own prejudices.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Lee
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The Real ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Natural Connection ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The Ideal

Although the humanists greeted the revival of imperial aspirations in Northern Italy with unvarnished enthusiasm, their conception of Empire has been treated rather dismissively in scholarly literature. In most surveys of political thought, it has simply been ignored. But even where it has been acknowledged, it has been portrayed either as a digression from a dominant discourse of communal liberty, or as a flight of nostalgic whimsy divorced from the ‘real’ spirit of humanism. Challenging the assumptions on which such attitudes have been based, this chapter demonstrates that the political life of the regnum Italicum cannot be described solely in terms of the conflict between communes and signori; that the ideal of liberty was not tied to any one form of government; and that there was no ‘natural’ connection between humanism and republicanism. In doing so, it provides the rationale for, and the methodology employed in, this study.

Lessons in Legal Literacy: Democratizing Legal Critique as a Means of Resisting Racial Injustice

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-378
Author(s):  
Faith Barter
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Grand Jury ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Literacy ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Humanities Curriculum

This commentary addresses the problem of racial injustice in the United States through the lens of the legal humanities. Using examples from the grand jury materials in the Michael Brown shooting as a case study, I argue for close reading, literary analysis, and other humanist methodologies as tools to empower undergraduates and laypeople as legal critics. The second half of the commentary describes a recent pedagogical exercise as an example of the possibilities for legal literacy instruction within an undergraduate humanities curriculum. Ultimately, I argue that the work of building legal literacy has the potential to resist or address racial injustice by making legal texts and institutions more amenable to critique from the legal humanities and the public humanities.

Between “the lights and shadows”: Reading the new edition of Olive Schreiner’sFrom Man to Man or Perhaps Only —

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Sanja Nivesjö ◽  
Heidi Barends
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gender And Race

The introduction to this written symposium considers Olive Schreiner’s novel From Man to Man or Perhaps Only — (1926) in light of the release of a new edition by Dorothy Driver and UCT Press (2015). The symposium’s first article, by Liz Stanley, reflects on Schreiner’s writing process by studying two early manuscript fragments of the novel from 1886–1887. Joyce Berkman and Dorothy Driver then both perform a close reading of the novel. Berkman achieves an extended reading of the issue of possession, in relation to gender and race. Driver investigates Schreiner’s “poetics of plants” in relation to indigeneity and Schreiner’s social and political thought on race. Finally, an interview article provides multiple current academic voices on the relevance of reading From Man to Man today. Taken together, the symposium illustrates the complexity of Schreiner’s thinking in From Man to Man, the opportunities provided by the new edition for scholarship, and the value of reading this novel at the present moment.

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