The literary field

Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn ◽  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Irina Reyfman ◽  
Stephanie Sandler

With the transition from amateur societies to professional literary institutions nearing its end, the chapter turns to the so-called thick journals and their role in promoting professionalization of literature, supporting the development of literary movements such as the Natural School, and fostering the rise of mass readership in metropolitan Russia and in the provinces. The chapter also examines how institutions such as censorship, economic factors such as the growing book market, and literary factors such as mature literary criticism informed authorial choices and shaped their identity. A case study of the career and reputation of Nikolai Gogol illustrates many of these points.

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke Winkler

Abstract The interrelation of public and academic literary criticism often leads to controversy within the literary field, especially when writers obtain an academic position. As Jo Tollebeek showed in Mannen van karakter (2011) and Nico Laan in Het belang van smaak (1996), the competition between the academic and public discourse on literature is inherent to the history of literary studies. What are the criteria for distinguishing public and academic criticism?This question is examined for the period 1925-1935 by taking the professorship of the poet and critic Albert Verwey (1865-1937) as a case study. Verwey legitimated his academic position by referring to Shelley and the concept of ‘imagination’ as a special source of knowledge. By doing so he presented an artistic and philosophical argument for appointing a poet as a professor of literature. Additionally, ten years later, Verwey revealed that he accepted the position in order to change the way literature was represented by traditional historiography. How did the activities of the poet, critic and academic relate to each other? How did Verwey position himself within, or in between, the academic and the public discourse on literature? And why does Verweys positioning problematize the relation between academic and non-academic literary criticism?


Author(s):  
Amanda Anderson

Although it is widely observed that a consequential “turn to ethics” took place in the field of literary criticism beginning in the late 1980s, this book argues that a broader cultural privileging of psychological and therapeutic frameworks has led to a displacement of the importance of moral reflection and moral judgment in the literary field. Between the pervasive influence of psychology on intellectual paradigms and cultural life, and the critique of morality within ideological criticism, key elements of the moral life, and of moral experience within the time of a life, have been lost to view. This introduction maps out the recent work on ethics in literary studies, introduces the moral significance of British object relations theory (an outlier among the psychological frameworks under analysis), and concludes by discussing Kant and Nietzsche’s divergent understandings of the psychological dimensions of moral life.


Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn ◽  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Irina Reyfman ◽  
Stephanie Sandler

The chapter discusses the development of literature within its institutional and historical context, considering how patronage, a fledgling book market, and publishing conditions delineated the spaces of a literary field. The chapter looks at court literature and the ode as the definitive genre, examining its techniques and scope for variation. Literature began to flourish outside court, and the chapter traces the evolution of poetry into an amateur pastime. The discovery of poetic genius added to the delight afforded by poetry as a form of sociability. This innovation coincided with pre-Romantic trends and the nascent idea of national literature. The pleasure of literature extended into satirical journals and comedies that served as vehicles for social and political critique, at times even engaging the monarch in direct participation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-197
Author(s):  
Claudia Jacobi

Abstract Literary criticism has mentioned some affinities between Guy de Maupassant’s literary work and Freud’s psychoanalysis, without ever reflecting on Maupassant’s literary anticipation of the Oedipus complex. The latter is particularly evident in the short novel Hautot père et fils (1889), which has not received much attention to date. The article aims to illustrate some evident parallels between Maupassant’s literary representation of a father-son conflict and Freud’s scientific approach. In doing so, it does not intend to deliver a demonstration of the emergence of Freudian concepts from naturalistic fiction. It shall rather be considered as a literary case study, which illustrates the discourse-historical process of transformation from the physiological paradigm of naturalism to the psychological paradigm of the arising psychoanalysis.


Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Izabela Kozłowska ◽  
Eryk Krasucki

Central and Eastern European countries were subjugated to the Soviet Union in the second half of the 20th century. In this new political environment, defined as the period of dependency, the concept of space gained a new denotation as a space of dependence, in both social and physical terms. The political changes that took place after 1989 enabled these spaces to be emancipated. In this work, we aim to delineate the complex relationship between architecture and politics from the perspective of spaces of dependence and their emancipation. Through a case study of two squares, plac Żołnierza Polskiego (the Square of the Polish Soldier) and plac Solidarności (Solidarity Square) in Szczecin, we gained insights into the processes and strategies that promoted their evolution into spaces of emancipation within architectural and urban narratives. Szczecin’s space of dependence was created by an authoritarian state that had a monopoly on defining architecture and urban planning in the country and the state as a whole. In a process orchestrated by economic factors, as well as the scale of architectural and urban degradation, the squares under discussion have transitioned from spaces of dependency to spaces of emancipation. As a result, an architectural-urban structure characterized by new cultural and identity values has been created.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
Lisbeth Worsøe-Schmidt

The aim is to investigate how digitisation and in particular e-books have changed relations between private players and public institutions within the Danish book world through a case study of eReolen, a private-public partnership functioning as common platform for public libraries’ lending of e-books in Denmark. Traditional and new models of the book world are discussed as the basis of understanding relations between the players. A new way of analysing the field outlined by literary sociologist, Professor Johan Svedjedal, is adopted. The main conclusions are that the lending of e-books has disrupted the traditional understanding and interaction between the public library system and the commercial book market. In addition, the Danish library system through the partnership has taken on a new function in relation to the commercial market, namely acting as the engine in building a market for Danish e-books.


Literator ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laude Ngadi M

Manifestos and literary programs in French-Speaking sub-Saharian of Africa: About ‘invisibility’ of the corpus in literary criticism. Despite an abundant production, the corpus of literary manifestos and programmes from sub-Saharan Francophone Africa is relatively invisible in literary criticism. With the exception of a few studies, critical works devoted to the programmatic works of writers are rare. This article proposes some hypotheses that can explain why the body of literature of authors’ ideas in this space is generally ‘invisible’. The approach of the literary field, applied to the sociology of scientific production, makes it possible to highlight three main causes for this invisibility: the importance of identity and cultural discourse, which makes it impossible to delimit the geographical space of writers from sub-Saharan Francophone Africa, whose production and reception are dominated by that of their colleagues from the West Indies and the Caribbean; the omnipresence of political and social discourse which takes precedence over poetic reflection; the metalanguage of the manifesto due to the fact that writers are also generally literary critics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-133
Author(s):  
Mariam Anana

This study investigates the dichotomy of specialization in Literature and English language. In many primary and secondary schools in Nigeria, many teachers who teach Literature are the same teachers who teach English Language. This is responsible for lack of ultimate successes in academic performance, foundational establishment and progressive developments in Literature and English language. Set against the backdrop of the inseparability and non-specialization in individual subjects in question, the study examines the need for a dichotomy of specialization in English Language and Literature with a view to reducing the rate of errors and students’ failures in both subjects. Adopting the simple randomisation, the researcher uses selected primary and secondary schools in Lagos State as the case study; the paper raises four questions and these are: Can English Language teachers effectively teach poetic devices? Are segmental phonemes easily taught by Literature teachers? Can English Language teachers proficiently teach oral literature, literary criticism and non-African literature? Can Literature teachers competently teach stress and intonation? This research uses a qualitative approach and adopts The Speech Act Theory as its theoretical framework. Questionnaire of fifteen (15) items was used for data collection and the simple percentage was applied for data analysis. The researcher discovered that: It is not possible for English Languageteachers to effectively teach poetic devices. Segmental phonemes cannot be easily taught by Literature teachers. Students would lag behind in areas where teachers are not proficient in the subjects they teach. Also, it is not possible for a teacher to place equal emphasis on both English Language and Literature in classrooms. The study therefore recommends the need for a dichotomy of specialization in the two subjects so as to ensure effective teaching and learning of these subjects.


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