Echohistoricism: Aristotle, Dryden, Montgomery, Conrad

Romanticism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-293
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Lecture Series ◽  
Narrative Frame ◽  
Definition Of

The contingencies of military decisions and their outcomes have always shaped the course of literary history, determining even the languages in which it has been conducted. But modern literature takes a new bearing on its determinant military contingencies. This paper describes a modern literary scene that self-reflexively attributes to literature the potential to suspend these determining military events, and so to communicate the unactualised possibilities contained in past contingencies, even those that have been violently foreclosed. It is a scene of interested observers, adrift in a boat, who listen for the sounds of a distant naval battle. Having first located this scene's classical antecedents in Aristotle, I then track it through three pivotal and distinctively modern moments of literary self-periodization. In each instance, the scene is differently configured, articulating a specific conjuncture of war, textuality and literary self-definition. It appears in John Dryden as the setting of a modern critical dialogue on theatre, with James Montgomery as a Romantic definition of the poetry of sound in a lecture series on literature, and with Joseph Conrad as the narrative frame of a modernist tale within a tale. But the same scene re-echoes in all three – the scene of literary inscription as one in which, contingently, a war neither did nor did not take place, a battle was and was not fought.

Digital Curation, AustLit, and Australian Children's Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Amy Cross ◽  
Cherie Allan ◽  
Kerry Kilner
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Critical Spaces ◽  
Reading Methods ◽  
Digital Curation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Significant Attention

This paper examines the effects of curatorial processes used to develop children's literature digital research projects in the bibliographic database AustLit. Through AustLit's emphasis on contextualising individual works within cultural, biographical, and critical spaces, Australia's literary history is comprehensively represented in a unique digital humanities space. Within AustLit is BlackWords, a project dedicated to recording Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytelling, publishing, and literary cultural history, including children's and young adult texts. Children's literature has received significant attention in AustLit (and BlackWords) over the last decade through three projects that are documented in this paper. The curation of this data highlights the challenges in presenting ‘national’ literatures in countries where minority voices were (and perhaps continue to be) repressed and unseen. This paper employs a ‘resourceful reading’ approach – both close and distant reading methods – to trace the complex and ever-evolving definition of ‘Australian children's literature’.

The Late-Victorian ‘New Man’ and the Neo-Victorian ‘Neo-Man’

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Stetz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
New Man ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Victorian Age

The New Man was a crucial topic of discussion and a continual preoccupation in late-Victorian feminist writing, precisely because he was more often a wished-for presence than an actual one. Nevertheless, creators of neo-Victorian fiction and film repeatedly project him backwards onto the screen of literary history, representing him as having in fact existed in the Victorian age as a complement to the New Woman. What is at stake in retrospectively situating the New Man – or, as I will call him, the ‘Neo-Man’ – in the nineteenth century, through historical fiction? If one impulse behind fictional returns to the Victorian period is nostalgia, then what explains this nostalgia for The Man Who Never Was? This essay will suggest that neo-Victorian works have a didactic interest in transforming present-day readers, especially men, through depictions of the Neo-Man, which broaden the audience's feminist sympathies, queer its notions of gender relations, and alter its definition of masculinity.

A Literary Chestnut: Dryden's “Cousin Swift”

PMLA ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 67 (7) ◽  
pp. 1024-1034
Author(s):  
Maurice Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Family Relationship ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
Single Sentence ◽  
The Family ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
The One ◽  
Fictional Truth

It is hard to think of another brief quotation in English literary history so felicitous as the one attributed to John Dryden: “Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.” Here in a single sentence the family relationship between two great writers is established; Dryden is placed as an incisive and prophetic judge of literary worth; Swift is dramatically provided with cause for turning away from his disappointing “Pindarics” to the remarkable prose connected with his name; his somewhat over-stressed “life-long” hatred for Dryden is given its impetus. And if Dryden may be considered representative of the end of the seventeenth century and Swift of the beginning of the eighteenth century in English letters, a whole new age of prose is conveniently suggested in the eight words Dryden is supposed to have uttered. Whether or not he really did utter exactly those words—and I am quite certain that he did not—makes no great difference now: it is too late to add qualifying phrases to all the biographies, critical essays, monographs, and literary histories in which Dryden's pronouncement may be read. It has assumed a quality of fictional truth that renders it more convincing and more “true” than demonstrably authentic pronouncements could be. It is like some of the equally quotable adjudications of Samuel Johnson, chestnuts from the same tree, which also seem too suspiciously apropos to have been casually voiced, though they may have been recorded verbatim. Indeed, the eight words under consideration sound much less like Dryden than like Dr. Johnson himself; but that is a matter I will refer to later on in this paper.

The Greatest Living Man of Letters

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-76
Author(s):  
Tobias Boes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Literary History ◽  
New World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Cultural Formation

This chapter argues that the process by which Thomas Mann was canonized as the “greatest living man of letters” in the New World certainly had many similarities to his staging as a representative writer in the Old. But there were enormous differences as well, and these would turn out to be consequential for literary history, including literary history back in Germany. The chapter explains how Mann's rise to literary prominence in the United States took place within the larger context of a newly emerging and distinctively American cultural formation, the “middlebrow.” At first, this seems antithetical to Mann's associations with “serious” modern literature. However, the chapter reveals that modernism and the middlebrow have never truly stood in opposition to one another.

Multiple dichotomies of the Anthropocene

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 218-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitney J Autin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Formal Definition ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
System Benefit

Anthropocene has developed a varied set of connotations among scientific and non-scientific advocates. As a result, multiple dichotomies of the Anthropocene exist within various scholarly disciplines. The Anthropocene allows people to reinforce and perpetuate preferred views about the implications of human interaction with the Earth System as our management of the environment is called into question. Scientific dichotomies arise from opinions about the need for formal or informal definition and the recognition of a modern versus historical onset of the Anthropocene. Philosophical dichotomies center around good versus dystopian outcomes of Anthropocene and whether or not humanity is part of what historically has been called nature. Political dichotomies insert Anthropocene into classic conservative versus liberal arguments. Artistic dichotomies tend to evaluate the effects of technology on modernism by embracing a nostalgia for the past or projecting an apocalyptic future. Multiple dichotomies drive conversation towards confusion as individuals argue preferred versions of an Anthropocene concept. Philosophical and political perspectives are affecting scientific views of proposed geological time markers for the start of the Anthropocene as conceptual ideologies appear to compete with tangible stratigraphic attributes. Formal definition of the Anthropocene has potential to inhibit popular usage and further confuse an already confused media. Informal stratigraphic usage by scientists and an open-ended view among non-scientific proponents may be the best approach to formulate a robust Anthropocene message. Both humanity and the Earth System benefit from a dynamic tag line that enhances environmental awareness and provides opportunity to modify our habits of resource overuse and ecosystem neglect. Concepts and imagery offered in the form of modern literature and art have the greatest prospect of affecting popular culture perspectives of the Anthropocene’s role in environmental debate.

Images of Anti-Temporality: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience

1982 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Turner
Keyword(s):  
Oxford English Dictionary ◽  
Lecture Series ◽  
Definition Of

Let me explain the jagged, cacophonous title of this talk, which must jar on ears expectant of a disquisition on immortality, the leitmotiv of the Ingersoll lecture series. By “anti-temporality” I denote that which is opposite in kind to being temporal, that is, pertaining to, concerned with, or limited by time. By “time” I provisionally accept the first definition offered by the Oxford English Dictionary: “A limited stretch or space of continued existence, as the interval between two successive events or acts or the period through which an action, condition or state continues: a finite portion of ‘time’.” Here, however, I would detect a certain ambiguity in the phrase, “interval between two successive events or acts,” for such intervals may, in many societies, be culturally detached from natural or logical sequentiality and formed into a domain governed by anti-temporality. Here the very definition of time implies its opposite.

François-René de Chateaubriand

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marie Roulin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
The Future ◽  
Benjamin Constant ◽  
New Literature ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Chateaubriand’s seminal debate with de Staël at the dawn of the nineteenth century around perceptions of literary history and the orientations of modern literature was largely focused on what aspects of this Enlightenment legacy should be retained or rejected. A contemporary of Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant, Chateaubriand was marked, like them, by the experience of the French Revolution. This sets him apart from the Romantics of the ‘battle ofHernani’ (1830), for whom the Revolution was a pre-existing narrative. For Chateaubriand’s generation the Revolution was crucial, posing ontological, political, and metaphysical questions—how could that ‘river of blood’ be crossed, to borrow one of his recurrent metaphors? What should the new literature be like, and for what type of society in revolutionized France? Chateaubriand’s Romanticism was first of all an answer to these questions, an elegiac adieu to a past forever lost and an uneasy questioning of the future.

The Japanese Early-Modern Publishing Market Unveiled: A Survey of Edo-Period Booksellers’ Catalogues

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Moretti
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Editorial Process ◽  
Edo Period ◽  
Publishing History ◽  
Early Modern Japan ◽  
Publication History ◽  
Modern Japan ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract This article explores an under-researched area of the Japanese early-modern (1603-1867) publishing history, by examining the catalogues called shojaku mokuroku. First, it analyses the publication history, the editorial process and the contents of these catalogues. By doing so, it offers a new definition of shojaku mokuroku, it reflects upon the growth and the variety which characterize the production of Kyoto publishers/booksellers and proves to what extent these publishers constituted a self-conscious, self-promoting, business-driven unified body. Second, by considering the order that was given to books in shojaku mokuroku, it explores what this order reveals about the publishing market in early-modern Japan and shows revealing differences with widely-held views on Japanese early-modern literature. Third, it investigates how these catalogues were used in the Edo period across the country and reflects upon what the circulation of these catalogues tell us about the circulation of books outside urban centres.

Zwischen Literaturgeschichte und Zeitgenossenschaft

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Henrike Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
German Research Foundation ◽  
German Research ◽  
Humboldt University ◽  
History Of

Summary The article serves as an introduction to the thematic cluster of papers devoted to the work of Bulgarian poet and literary theoretician Pencho Slaveykov (1866–1912), which present the outcomes of a workshop dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the poet at the Department of Slavic and Hungarian Studies, Humboldt University (Berlin 2016; supported by the German Research Foundation DFG). As Slaveykov, while a leading representative of Bulgarian modern literature, is not an established figure in comparative literary studies, the paper sketches briefly the biography of the author, or rather the “biographemes” out of which he constructs his self-representation. In summarizing the main findings of the cluster contributions, it outlines the ways in which Slaveykov and his work—as a phenomenon ‘untimely’ to his era—have been embedded into the narratives of Bulgarian literary history of the 20th and early 21st century, which reach from postmodernism and postcolonialism to new engagement, or to entangled histories.

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