Haunted (by the) Gospel: Theology, Trauma, and Literary Theory in the Twenty-First Century

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 936-941 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Rambo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Good News ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Therapeutic Concept ◽  
Religious Zeal ◽  
Religious Term

At the end of the twentieth century, the expansion of trauma from a therapeutic concept to a way of theorizing about the ruptures of history and memory had, in Geoffrey Hartman's words, added a “displaced evangelical intensity” to literary studies (293). The literary turn to trauma highlighted an ethical dimension to practices of writing, reading, and interpretation; texts were then freighted by violence, called to witness the horrors of history, challenging claims to the clarity and accessibility of words and narrative. Hartman conveys his hesitations about this turn by invoking a religious term—“evangelical”—which is etymologically related to gospel, or “good news.” His concern about an infusion of religious zeal into the study of literature may enact a critical refutation of the historical erasure of Jewish origins by Christian claims to “good news.”

Narratology in the Twenty-First Century: The Cognitive Approach to Narrative

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 924-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Fludernik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
The Waves

Literary theory in the twentieth century was heavily influenced by linguistics. The structuralist model that set the waves of literary theories in motion originated in Saussurean linguistics and its Jakobsonian elaborations. One could argue that until the 1980s all literary theory, and all linguistics for that matter, was based on an analysis of langue, or the system of language or literature or text, to the detriment of parole, the practices, contexts, and negotiations of speakers, writers, and readers. The structuralist model, with its theoretical expansion of close-reading practices, already entrenched in the wake of the New Criticism, generalized the frame of mind that was soon to become the bogeyman of poststructuralist and cultural studies attacks. The formula could be summarized as No history, no ethics, no themes, no aesthetics, and no context—period.

scholarly journals Memory and history in twenty-first century Australia: A survey of the field

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 370-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Darian-Smith ◽  
Paula Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Australian Society ◽  
Twenty First Century

This essay surveys the fields of oral history and memory studies in Australia since the publication of the landmark volume Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia in 1994. It argues that the practice of oral history has been central to memory studies in Australia, and explores key texts relating to the memory and commemoration of war, colonialism, Indigenous histories, trauma and witnessing in Australian society.

scholarly journals Introduction

Poetics Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Blevins ◽  
Daniel Williams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Formal Logic ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
Reciprocal Influences ◽  
Literary Theory And Criticism

Although literature and logic share a number of surprising symmetries and historical contacts, they have typically been seen to occupy separate disciplinary spheres. Declaring a subfield in literary studies — logic and literature — this introduction outlines various connections between literary formalism and formal logic. It surveys historical interactions and reciprocal influences between literary and logical writers from antiquity through the twentieth century, and it examines how literary theory and criticism have been institutionally shadowed by a logical unconscious, from the New Criticism and (post)structuralism to recent debates about historicism and formalism. It further considers how the subfield of logic and literature, in its constitutive attention to form, is neatly positioned to cut across these debates, and it sketches ways of reading at the interface of aesthetics, philosophy of literature, and literary studies that might be energized by an appeal to logical contexts, ideas, and methods.

Past

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Kellerman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Business Schools ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Lao Tzu ◽  
Leadership And Management ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
The Many

The chapter focuses on how leadership was taught in the distant and recent past. The first section is on five of the greatest leadership teachers ever—Lao-tzu, Confucius, Plato, Plutarch, and Machiavelli—who shared a deep belief in the idea that leadership could be taught and left legacies that included timeless and transcendent literary masterworks. The second section explores how leadership went from being conceived of as a practice reserved only for a select few to one that could be exercised by the many. The ideas of the Enlightenment changed our conception of leadership. Since then, the leadership literature has urged people without power and authority, that is, followers, to understand that they too could be agents of change. The third section turns to leadership and management in business. It was precisely the twentieth-century failure of business schools to make management a profession that gave rise to the twenty-first-century leadership industry.

The Twenty-first Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
First Century ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Good News ◽  
Species Loss ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Terms ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Open Question ◽  
New Generation

The cumulative environmental challenge of sustainable development in the twenty-first century is larger than anything humanity has ever had to deal with in the past. The good news is that solid progress is being reached in the understanding of issues in scientific terms and understanding what needs to be done. The bad news is twofold. First, although many of the environmental problems of earlier centuries are now being confronted, a new generation of difficulties is eclipsing what were the older difficulties. Secondly, much of the progress is being achieved by the wealthier parts of the planet, rather than the developing world. From population growth to climate change to unprecedented habitat and species loss, whether environmental sustainability can be achieved in the twenty-first century is an open question.

Narratology

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Genevieve Liveley
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Reception History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Unreliable Narrator ◽  
Affect And Cognition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ars Poetica

This book explores the extraordinary contribution that classical poetics has made to twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories of narrative. Its aim is not to argue that modern narratologies simply present ‘old wine in new wineskins’, but to identify the diachronic affinities shared between ancient and modern stories about storytelling, recognizing that modern narratologists bring particular expertise to bear upon ancient literary theory and offer valuable insights into the interpretation of some notoriously difficult texts. By interrogating ancient and modern narratologies through the mutually imbricating dynamics of their reception it aims to arrive at a better understanding of both. Each chapter selects a key moment in the history of narratology on which to focus, zooming in from an overview of significant phases to look at core theories and texts—from the Russian formalists, Chicago school neo-Aristotelians, through the prestructuralists, structuralists, and poststructuralists, to the latest unnatural and antimimetic narratologists. The reception history that thus unfolds offers some remarkable plot twists. It unmasks Plato as an unreliable narrator and theorist, and offers a rare glimpse of Aristotle putting narrative theory into practice in the role of storyteller in his work On Poets. In Horace’s Ars Poetica and in the works of ancient scholia critics and commentators it locates a rhetorically conceived poetics and a sophisticated reader-response-based narratology evincing a keen interest in audience affect and cognition—and anticipating the cognitive turn in narratology’s mot recent postclassical phase.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. xviii-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Gerald Kennedy ◽  
Scott Peeples
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global Literature ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Critical Approaches

Edgar Allan Poe has long occupied a problematic place in discussions of American literature. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, an intensive reexamination of his relationship to nineteenth-century print culture and the controversies of Jacksonian America reframed our understanding of his work. Whereas scholars once regarded his dark fantasies as extraneous to American experience, we now recognize the complex and nuanced ways in which Poe’s work responded to and questioned core assumptions of American culture. The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe offers a wide-ranging exploration of Poe, rereading his works through a variety of critical approaches and illuminating his ultimate impact on global literature, art, and culture. The introduction to the volume traces the development of scholarship on Poe from the time of his death in 1849 to the beginning of the twenty-first century, exploring the future possibilities for the study of Poe in the digital era.

Text denken

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 274-291
Author(s):  
Andrea Polaschegg
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Language Theory ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Space ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Tracing the transformations phenomenological thought underwent in the sphere of literary studies after the 1930s, the paper outlines the epistemological potential of this tradition in regards to a proper understanding of the phenomenon ›text‹. Proceeding from reflections on the agonal relation between structuralistic and phenomenological traditions within contemporary literary theory, the article focuses on Husserl’s apprehension of texts as being »objects in procedure« by exploring the impact of this idea on the literary theories of Ingarden, Wellek, and Iser. In light of the - largely forgotten - fact that Karl Bühler’s pioneering Language Theory (1934) is mainly based on phenomenological thinking, the paper finally discusses to what extend Bühler’s idea of verbal expressions figuring as effective events could open a new space for the development of a literary theory of texts within recent debates on the »media of literature«.

scholarly journals Corporate headquarters in the twenty-first century: an organization design perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Kunisch ◽  
Markus Menz ◽  
David Collis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Organization Design ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
First Century ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Corporate Headquarters ◽  
Special Collection ◽  
Design Perspective ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract The corporate headquarters (CHQ) of the multi-business enterprise, which emerged as the dominant organizational form for the conduct of business in the twentieth century, has attracted considerable scholarly attention. As the business environment undergoes a fundamental transition in the twenty-first century, we believe that understanding the evolving role of the CHQ from an organization design perspective will offer unique insights into the nature of business activity in the future. The purpose of this article, in keeping with the theme of the Journal of Organization Design Special Collection, is thus to invigorate research into the CHQ. We begin by explicating four canonical questions related to the design of the CHQ. We then survey fundamental changes in the business environment occurring in the twenty-first century, and discuss their potential implications for CHQ design. When suitable here we also refer to the contributions published in our Special Collection. Finally, we put forward recommendations for advancements and new directions for future research to foster a deeper and broader understanding of the topic. We believe that we are on the cusp of a change in the CHQ as radical as that which saw its initial emergence in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Exactly what form that change will take remains for practitioners and researchers to inform.

scholarly journals The Discarded Image and the Debunked Tao: Objective Value in C.S. Lewis’ Medieval Model and His Critique of Modernity †

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 597
Author(s):  
Yuxiao Su
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Parallel Study ◽  
The Status ◽  
Implicit Belief ◽  
Objective Value ◽  
Medieval Model ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Spiritual Resource

This paper considers C.S. Lewis’ “doctrine of objective value” in two of his major works, The Abolition of Man and The Discarded Image. Lewis uses the Chinese name Tao, albeit with an incomplete understanding of its origins, for the objective worldview. The paper argues that Tao, as an explicit theme of The Abolition of Man, is also a determining undercurrent in The Discarded Image. In the former work, Tao is what Lewis wants to defend and restore against twentieth-century secular ideologies, which Lewis condemns as infected with “the poison of subjectivism”. In the latter work, where Lewis presents one of the best accounts of the European medieval model of the Universe, objective value (the Tao in Lewis’ argument) underlies both how the model has been shaped, and how Lewis, as a medievalist, accounts for and draws upon it as an intellectual and spiritual resource. The purpose of this parallel study is to show that Lewis’ explication of the Tao in The Abolition of Man, which is a “built-in”, implicit belief in The Discarded Image, provides a critique of tendencies towards the subjectivism prevalent in Lewis’ lifetime. These tendencies can be traced into the moral relativism, pluralism and reductionism of the twenty-first century, giving Lewis’ work the status of twentieth-century prophecy.

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