Introduction

Narratology ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Genevieve Liveley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Roman Rhetoric

This chapter argues that a more joined-up appreciation of the genealogical relationships so widely argued to exist between ancient and modern theories of narrative helps us to better understand both. It explores the ways in which literary theory both shapes and is shaped by its canon. Aristotle’s decision to take tragedy as his touchstone and to extend its poetics to explain all other kinds of (mimetic) poetry will have produced a very different model than if he had chosen Aristophanes’ absurdist comedy or Sappho’s lyric poetry instead. Twentieth-century narratology would have produced a very different set of theories if it had chosen Roman rhetoric or Hellenistic poetics as its starting point. In choosing Plato and Aristotle as its foundational touchstones, modern narratology is similarly moulded by these parts of its canon, its own structures patterned by those exhibited in its objects of study.

Revaluations through Dance: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought in Isadora Duncan's Speech The Dance of the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Meindert E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Mind

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Isadora Duncan's work, in particular his idea of the Dionysian, has been widely discussed, especially in regard to her later work. What has been left underdeveloped in critical examinations of her work, however, is his influence on her earlier choreographic work, which she defended in a famous speech held in 1903 called The Dance of the Future. While commentators often describe this speech as ‘Nietzschean’, Duncan's autobiography suggests that she only studied Nietzsche's work after this speech. I take this incongruity as a starting point to explore the connections between her speech and Nietzsche's work, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue that in subject and language Duncan's speech resembles Nietzsche's in important ways. This article will draw attention to the ways in which Duncan takes her cues from Nietzsche in bringing together seemingly conflicting ideas of religion and an overturning of morality; Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and the teleology present in his idea of the Übermensch; and a renegotiation of the body's relation to the mind. In doing so, this article contributes not only to scholarship on Duncan's early work but also to discussions of Nietzsche's reception in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the importance Duncan ascribes to the body in dance and expression also asks for a new understanding of Nietzsche's own way of expressing his philosophy.

V. M. ZHIRMUNSKY AS A FOLKLORIST. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL TYPOLOGY METHODS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-128
Author(s):  
Anna I. Kovalevskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Successful Search ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Further Development

The article considers the main stages in formation of the method for the comparative historical typology the first steps of which were made by A.N. Veselovsky in the second half of the 19 th century. For example, the point elaborated upon in “Historical Poetics” concerning consequential evolution of genres and poetic forms that reflect social reality became the starting point for the further development of that method. Work in this direction was continued later on by V.M. Zhirmunsky. At the beginning of his career in academia he dwelled upon the issues of literary theory and – while keeping “Historical Poetics” in high regard – continued Veselovsky’s work in the field of literary studies. However, turning to folklore material, he managed to develop the basic principles of the comparative historical method: first of all, he had analysed and systematised the extensive epic material, what allowed him to reveal in the folklore work the national and the general, for the successful search and analysis of which the method was necessary. The author analysis of the works of Zhirmunsky, that contain his main ideas, and considers not only his suggestions on how to work with folk material, and also the features of the comparative typological method, as well as the development of Zhirmunsky’s ideas in the works of his students, followers and scientists who came to a similar result on their own (for example, V.Ya. Propp) and influenced further refinement of the methods of comparative typology.

To Become What One Is

boundary 2 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 251-263
Author(s):  
Lindsay Waters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
English Language ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
De Man ◽  
Power Central

In the twentieth century, criticism flourished in the academy in the English language from the 1930s to the 1960s, but gradually a hyperprofessionalized discourse purporting to be criticism took its place. The problem was exacerbated because people misunderstand literary theory thinking it superior to criticism. Big mistake. Theory proper begins its life as criticism, criticism that has staying power. Central to criticism as Kant argued is judgment. Judgment is based on feeling provoked by the artwork in our encounters with artworks. This essay talks about the author’s encounter with Mary Gaitskill’s novel Veronica. The critical judgment puts the artwork into a milieu. This essay argues the case for the holism of critical judgments versus what the author calls Bitsiness as Usual, the fragmentation of our understanding of our encounters with artworks. The author subjects both Paul de Man and the New Historicists to severe attacks.

Afterword

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wild
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Development ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Lasting Influence

This concluding chapter first turns to Virginia Woolf's famous remark that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’. It examines the problems inherent in taking too seriously Virginia Woolf's tongue-in-cheek claim for December 1910 as a starting point for artistic development in Britain in the twentieth century. The lasting influence of these inflexible interpretations of Woolf's thesis has hampered our understanding of what lies on the other side of this putative watershed. The chapter then re-examines the designation of this period's literature as ‘Edwardian’, and lays out the potentially problematic and misleading nature of this label before conceding that, despite the label's shortcomings, the term ‘Edwardian’ still has its uses.

Metrics

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin J. Duffell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
British Culture ◽  
British Study

This chapter examines the history and developments in British study of medieval metrics during the twentieth century. It explains that the contribution of British scholars to medieval metrics has been minor partly because British culture prefers empirical observation to abstract systems. In the second half of the century several British scholars made substantial contributions to historical metrics. They include Geoffrey Leech in his linguistic guide to poetics, W. Sidney Allen in his reconstruction of Classical Latin phonology and Nigel Fabb in his study of form and literary theory.

From A Man for All Seasons to Wolf Hall (c. 1960–present)

2019 ◽  
pp. 157-190
Author(s):  
J. Patrick Hornbeck
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Early English ◽  
Historical Play ◽  
Past Half

Chapter 5 takes as its starting point the premiere of Robert Bolt’s historical play about the life of Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons. It goes on to consider Wolsey’s representation in academic writings and influential historical fictions in the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first. The chapter explores the five biographies of the cardinal that appeared during this period, discussing at the same time how Wolsey has been represented in the broader historiography of the early reign of Henry VIII. While revisionists of the 1980s and 1990s demonstrated little interest in Wolsey, their discoveries about the early English Reformation have shaped the most recent academic representations of the cardinal. At the same time, however, some of the most influential representations of Wolsey in the past half-century have been fictional. Therefore, the chapter also analyzes Bolt’s play, the controversial television drama The Tudors, and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall novels.

The Developmental State

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-100
Author(s):  
Luis Eslava
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
The State ◽  
The South ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Institutional Formation ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Impact

The battle for international law during the era of decolonization in the mid-twentieth century was to a large extent a battle fought over the nature, function and objectives of the state—above all, over their relationship to the idea of ‘development’. A particular normative and institutional formation resulted from this battle: the ‘developmental state’, the impact of which on (in)dependence in the South was and continues to be profound. However, the ‘developmental state’ did not spring ready-made out of nowhere. On the contrary, using Latin America’s much earlier experience of colonialism, decolonization and independent statehood as a starting-point, this chapter draws attention to the long and complex process through which the developmental state’s most important elements emerged, defining what was thinkable and doable there and elsewhere in the post-colonial world.

Ivanov, Viacheslav Ivanovich (1866–1949)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bird
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Classical Scholar ◽  
Literary Movement ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Aleksandr Blok

Viacheslav Ivanov was a leading theoretician of the symbolist literary movement and a prominent figure in the renaissance of religious thought in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. A classical scholar by training, and erudite poet by vocation, Ivanov became known as an acolyte of Nietzsche. Later, along with the other ‘younger’ symbolists Aleksandr Blok and Andrei Belyi, Ivanov presented himself as a disciple of Vladimir Solov’ëv’s idealistic metaphysics and theurgic aesthetics. In the 1910s Ivanov achieved a proto-hermeneutic conception of art, which was the basis of his groundbreaking writings on Dostoevskii. After emigrating from the Soviet Union in 1924 Ivanov became a Roman Catholic and achieved some notoriety in Catholic intellectual circles between the wars. His powerful influence is evident in many contemporary and later thinkers in fields ranging from aesthetics and literary theory to philosophy and theology.

De Man, Paul (1919–83

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Bahti
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
Philosophic Texts ◽  
De Man ◽  
Rhetorical Reading

De Man’s work is among the most renowned and influential in American literary theory of the latter twentieth century, especially regarding literary theory’s emergence as an interdisciplinary and philosophically ambitious discourse. Always emphasizing the linguistic aspects of a literary work over thematic, semantic or evaluative ones, de Man specifically focuses on the figurative features of literary language and their consequences for the undecidability of meaning. His extension of his mode of ‘rhetorical reading’ to philosophic texts also participates in the blurring of generic and institutional distinctions between literature and philosophy, a tendency pronounced in French philosophy of the latter twentieth century.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 292-304
Author(s):  
Jennifer Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Theatre ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Catholic Church

Taking the 1903 death of Pope Leo XIII as its starting point, the conclusion extends beyond the legal separation of Church and State (1905) in order to trace the ways in which the processes of transformation that were set in motion during the late nineteenth century continued well into the twentieth century. Pierre Nora’s concept of the lieu de memoire illuminates the numerous ways that the sites of Catholic and French memory that the book explores—whether as opera, popular theatre, or concert—found an extraordinary ally in the Republic as it collectively harnessed the power of memory. From its “origin” in the French medieval era, to its transformations throughout the fin-de-siècle, to the response to the devastating fire at Notre-Dame in 2019, the Catholic Church provided (and continues to provide) a new mode of expression for the French Republic. In effect, the success of the twentieth-century renouveau catholique was set in motion by its nineteenth-century forbear: the path was paved by the Republic’s musical Ralliement and the memorialization of its Catholic past as a fundamental cornerstone of its modern existence.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document