Genre Theory, Literary History, and Historical Change

2017 ◽  
pp. 145-169
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Historical Change

Blake, Foucault, and the Classical Episteme

PMLA ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stempel
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Classical Structure ◽  
Archaeological Method

The accepted periodization of English literary history, a linear alternation of convention and revolt, has made Blake the ancestral and archetypal romantic. But an examination of the language of his texts, using Michel Foucault's archaeological method, demonstrates the classical structure of his oeuvre, which is a variant of classical discourse as defined and described by Foucault. The deep structure of Blake's discourse is logical, but the logic is not that of general grammar; it is the logic of identity, not the logic of difference. The assimilation of Blake's oeuvre into Foucault's classical episteme enriches and expands Foucault's model of the period; it also offers a model of the transformation from classical to modern that may clarify some of the difficulties of Foucault's scheme of historical change.

scholarly journals Procesos da historiografía literaria galega Para un debate crítico

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Casas
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
History Of ◽  
Galician Literature ◽  
The 19Th Century

Galician literary historiography shows links and ruptures that refer to the cultural history of Galicia itself and to the sequence of historical events that have delineated the social, economic and political development of the country since the 19th century. These coordinates comprise a series of processes, including the elaboration and propagation of ideologies aimed at achieving a way out of political subalternity and oriented towards the horizon of national emancipation. Those events and these processes also marked the connection of Galicia with modernity and the dynamics of historical change. As a result of the above, this book analyses critically the institutionalization processes of the history of Galician literature – with special emphasis on historiographic models such as that of Said Armesto, Carvalho Calero, Méndez Ferrín and others – and indicates the need to undertake a productive methodological innovation of the discipline in heuristic, organic and discursive terms. It further argues that this update should pay attention to substantive theoretical debates, not exclusively of specific cultural coordinates, such as Galician ones or any others that could be considered. Among these, the cooperation between history and sociology, the intellection of literary facts as historical facts, the review of the link between literary history and nation, the public uses of literary history, and the inquiry of discursive choices that promote a less self-indulgent and predictable historiography. This essentially involved a challenge, that of permanent dialogue with some of the most powerful critical reinterpretations of the Galician historiographic tradition and with alternative models constituted from feminist thought, postcolonial theories, the sociology of the literary field or the systemic theories of culture, as well as with the contributions made from a post-national understanding of the literary phenomenon.

Notes sur les assises méthodologiques d’une « histoire littéraire structurale »

Revue Romane ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-124
Author(s):  
Sarah Alharbi
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Potential Significance ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Structural Variety ◽  
Extensive Search ◽  
12Th Century

This article examines the conditions in which H. R. Jauss, in his conference entitled Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (1967), elaborated a new theoretical approach of “structural literary history”. The central position this essay holds in literary theory has accounted for its enabling a turning point in the practice and the pedagogy of literary studies : it provides a model for the problematic articulation between structural analysis and historical interpretation of texts. In an attempt to put his theory into perspective, the German historian conducted two research projects in medieval genre theory. He bases his argument on the example of animal tales from the satirical Roman de Renart of the late 12th century, and asserts that philologists, in their extensive search for evidence based on manuscript sources, have discarded both the hermeneutical interest and the structural variety developed by storytellers in their texts. This study wishes to measure the scope and the results of this instructive methodology in the context of its didactic application. It discusses the roots of the problem, as well as the potential significance of “structural literary history” for our contemporary understanding of the theory and the practice of reading.

The Genres of the Pentateuch and Their Social Settings

2021 ◽  
pp. 361-378
Author(s):  
Angela Roskop Erisman
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classic Form ◽  
Stable Forms ◽  
Generic Complexity

The ability to recognize genres has been central to modern critical study of the Pentateuch since the work of Hermann Gunkel at the turn of the twentieth century. This essay surveys the legal, administrative, and literary genres used in the Pentateuch, offering a sense of its generic complexity. Genres are defined not as the fixed and stable forms used to classify texts, as understood by classic form-critical method, but as idealized cognitive models employed as tools for writing and interpreting texts, an understanding drawn from modern genre theory. Because genres are situated in social contexts, Gunkel saw genre as central to writing a history of Israel’s literature. This essay surveys the limitations of Gunkel’s vision yet identifies a way to reconnect with it and write a more organic literary history, one that may intersect with but also at times challenge the results of source- and redaction-critical methods.

Genre Practice in Literary Historiography: A Romanian Case

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 45-51
Author(s):  
Ana Țăranu
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
Genre Criticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Romanian Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

Premised on the pervasiveness of generic categories within literary historiography, the present analysis attempts to delineate the generic idioms present within three histories of Romanian literature (authored by G. Călinescu, Nicolae Manolescu and Mihai Iovănel, respectively). Engaging a descriptively historical, rather than theoretical, approach to genre and its metadiscourses, the paper begins with an abridged version of the cardinal disputes of genre criticism. Subsequently, it comparatively addresses the presence of genre within the three volumes, aiming to locate them within recognizable frameworks of genericity and to establish the overlapping territories of their generic landscapes. Thus, it distinguishes G. Călinescu as a practitioner of post-Romantic genre theory, further showcasing how some of his central aestheticist positions survive in Nicolae Manolescu’s moderately formalist account of the issue. Against the backdrop of their more conservative, teleological historiographical projects, Mihai Iovănel’s 2021 Istoria Literaturii Române Contemporane 1990-2020 [The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature 1990-2020] displays a distinct methodological apparatus, predicated on the author’s rejection of the paradigmatic autonomy of the aesthetic. His employment of materialist theories of art is corelative to a conception of genre as a contingent, empirically determined instrument of analysis, which, far from being a rhetorically stable, abstract category, actively mediates the relationship between social and aesthetic history. This shift engenders substantial amendments to the physiognomy of literary history as genre, enabling it to encompass extra-literary (and noncanonical) phenomena. Keywords: literary genres, literary history, Romanian literature, Mihai Iovănel.

Benjamin's Literary History of Attention: Between Reception and Production

Paragraph ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-291
Author(s):  
Carolin Duttlinger
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Mass

This article argues that attention and distraction form a central concern of Benjamin's writings on literature. Individually and in conjunction, they underpin processes of textual production and reception, yet their relationship is fluid and subject to historical change. In this respect, Benjamin's exploration of the interplay of attention and distraction in writers such as Leskov, Baudelaire and Brecht also leads to more general reflections about the social, cultural and psychological shifts brought about by industrialization and modern mass culture. Benjamin's writings on literature trace developments which he also explores in relation to film. And echoes of his ‘literary history of attention’ can also be found in both his own critical approach and his self-reflexive comments on the process of writing.

Literature, Society, and Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Mackenbach
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Literature History ◽  
The 1960S

The historiography of Central American literature from the early nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century, focusing on the relationships between literature, (literary) history, and the political field, especially within the context of projects centered on national construction, is essential. The approach here analyzes the different periods—or moments of change or transition—regarding the relations between politics, society, and culture from the perspective of historical change, concentrating on “microperiods” characterized by a paradigm shift with respect to the relationships between literature, history, politics and society: the nineteenth century (the post-independence moment); the late nineteenth/early twentieth century; the 1930s–1960s; the 1960s–1990s; and the end of the twentieth century/beginning of the twenty-first. A set of proposals aims at filling the gaps, developing the desiderata, and coping with the challenges in literary historiography in and about Central America at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Significant Change

The Introduction defines the character and scope of the book. It surveys the ways in which ‘general history’ and ‘literary history’ were related in the nineteenth century and how both were bound up with Whiggish interpretations of the national past. It identifies the significant change that was brought about by the more strenuous forms of ‘criticism’ that developed in the wake of the early work of T. S. Eliot and was carried on by such leading critics as William Empson and F. R. Leavis. It argues that a whole variety of forms of historical interpretation and historical assumption was present in the work of these critics, often carrying a strongly declinist message, and that such work filled a vacuum in wider public debate left by the withdrawal of History as an academic discipline into austere, archive-based research that eschewed larger interpretations about the direction of historical change.

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