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.

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.

scholarly journals The Critic and the Mime

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (95) ◽  
pp. 93-119
Author(s):  
Nidesh Lawtoo
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
De Man ◽  
Rhetorical Reading

In this interview, J. Hillis Miller and Nidesh Lawtoo take one of the most influential concepts in Western aesthetics, mimēsis, as an Ariadne’s thread to retrace the major turns in Miller’s career and, by extension, to promote a re-turn of mimesis in literary theory and criticism. Complicating standard accounts of deconstruction and rhetorical reading as simply antimimetic, Miller acknowledges the centrality of this ancient concept to his intellectual development and to major turns in literary theory as well: his early engagement with New Criticism and phenomenology in the 1950s, his encounter with Jacques Derrida and deconstruction in the 1960s, his development of rhetorical reading in the company of Paul de Man in the 1970s and 1980s, and his engagement with ethics and community in 1990s and 2000s, stretching to include his most recent critical reflections on contemporary US politics and the new media that disseminate it. In the process, this interview reveals how mimēsis functions as a protean concept, or mime, that under different conceptual masks is constantly at play in Miller’s dialogic relation with criticism and theory, old and new. Staging a dialogue, Miller and Lawtoo join forces to show that this often marginalized literary-philosophical concept takes center stage in the political, ethical, scientific, and technological transformations that cast a shadow on present and future generations.

scholarly journals New Historicism: Text and Context

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Violeta M. Vesić
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Social ◽  
De Man

During most of the twentieth century history was seen as a phenomenon outside of literature that guaranteed the veracity of literary interpretation. History was unique and it functioned as a basis for reading literary works. During the seventies of the twentieth century there occurred a change of attitude towards history in American literary theory, and there appeared a new theoretical approach which soon became known as New Historicism. Since its inception, New Historicism has been identified with the study of Renaissance and Romanticism, but nowadays it has been increasingly involved in other literary trends. Although there are great differences in the arguments and practices at various representatives of this school, New Historicism has clearly recognizable features and many new historicists will agree with the statement of Walter Cohen that New Historicism, when it appeared in the eighties, represented something quite new in reference to the studies of theory, criticism and history (Cohen 1987, 33). Theoretical connection with Bakhtin, Foucault and Marx is clear, as well as a kind of uneasy tie with deconstruction and the work of Paul de Man. At the center of this approach is a renewed interest in the study of literary works in the light of historical and political circumstances in which they were created. Foucault encouraged readers to begin to move literary texts and to link them with discourses and representations that are not literary, as well as to examine the sociological aspects of the texts in order to take part in the social struggles of today.The study of literary works using New Historicism is the study of politics, history, culture and circumstances in which these works were created. With regard to one of the main fact which is located in the center of the criticism, that history cannot be viewed objectively and that reality can only be understood through a cultural context that reveals the work, re-reading and interpretation of literature is not just re-reading of texts that are already well known, but reading in a completely new way.

Katherine Mansfield and Translation

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Katherine Mansfield ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Specific Interest ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Critical Interest

Our understanding of Anglophone modernism has been transformed by recent critical interest in translation. The central place of translation in the circulation of aesthetic and political ideas in the early twentieth century has been underlined, for example, as well as translation’s place in the creative and poetic dynamics of key modernist texts. This volume of Katherine Mansfield Studies offers a timely assessment of Mansfield’s place in such exchanges. As a reviewer, she developed a specific interest in literatures in translation, as well as showing a keen awareness of the translator’s presence in the text. Throughout her life, Mansfield engaged with new literary texts through translation, either translating proficiently herself, or working alongside a co-translator to explore the semantic and stylistic challenges of partially known languages. The metaphorical resonances of translating, transition and marginality also remain key features of her writing throughout her life. Meanwhile, her enduring popularity abroad is ensured by translations of her works, all of which reveal sociological and even ideological agendas of their own, an inevitable reflection of individual translators’ readings of her works, and the literary traditions of the new country and language of reception. The contributions to this volume refine and extend our appreciation of her specifically trans-linguistic and trans-literary lives. They illuminate the specific and more general influences of translation on Mansfield’s evolving technique and, jointly, they reveal the importance of translation on her literary language, as well as for her own particular brand of modernism.

Phenomenolological review v. cierer of reading proceedings in the context of its «litery anthropology»

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (100) ◽  
pp. 64-70
Author(s):  
O.D. Lauta ◽  
◽  
S.M. Geiko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Reading Process ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Semantic Definition ◽  
Reception Aesthetics

The phenomenological review of V. Izer's reading process in the context of «literary anthropology» is analyzed. The philosopher makes a distinction between interpretation and reception. The first, in his opinion, gives the imagination a «semantic definition», and the second – a sense of aesthetic, object. The first passes within the limits of the «semantic orientations» of the literary theory, and the second – within the limits of the cultural and anthropological context. The article deals with the philosophical analysis of the reception aesthetics. For the supporters of this theoretical direction, there is an inherent shift of attention from the problems of creativity and literary work to the problem of its reception or, in other words, from the level of psychological, sociological or anthropological interpretation of the creative biography, to the level of perceived consciousness. Receptive aesthetics gives the reader privilege in the «text/reader» paradigm and gives him the cognitive and affective ability to create his own text from this text.

Representasi Tokoh Cakraningrat dalam Sajarah Proza Begin Brawijaya

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Novarina Novarina ◽  
Mamlahatun Buduroh
Keyword(s):  
Structural Study ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Content Structure ◽  
Philosophy Of Life ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Figure ◽  
Theory Framework

This paper is the result of a study of the Nusantara manuscripts using the historical text sources of Madura. The object of this research is the transliteration of a manuscript from the collection of the Central Library of Indonesia entitled Sajarah Proza Begin Brawijaya (SPBB) code SJ.230 Novarina edition (2020). In examining the manuscript, the philological method and literary theory framework were used. From the field of literature, Jan van Luxemburg's structural theory, Julia Kristeva's intertextuality, and Teeuw's concept of literary representation are used. From the structural study, it can be seen that the SPBB text framework is composed of literary structures and content structures (history), which as a whole serve to legitimize the power of the 17-18 century Madurese king. Meanwhile, the results of the intertextual analysis showed that the elements built into the content structure (history) of the SPBB text were connected with M.C. Ricklefs and H.J. De Graaf in representing Cakraningrat as the main figure in the history of Java, Madura, and VOC based on the author's life view to raise one of the values of the Javanese philosophy of life in this text. This linkage results in the conclusion that as a traditional Javanese historical literary work, the SPBB text is representative of its creator's culture, one of which is as a representation of the philosophy of mikul dhuwur mendhem jero in the Javanese view of life.

Double Thoughts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dean
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
De Man ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.

The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison James
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Twentieth Century French Literature ◽  
A Site ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This book studies the documentary impulse that plays a central role in twentieth-century French literature. Focusing on nonfiction narratives, it analyzes the use of documents—pieces of textual or visual evidence incorporated into the literary work to relay and interrogate reality. It traces the emergence of an enduring concern with factual reference in texts that engage with current events or the historical archive. Writers idealize the document as a fragment of raw reality, but also reveal its constructed and mediated nature and integrate it as a voice within a larger composition. This ambivalent documentary imagination, present in works by Gide, Breton, Aragon, Yourcenar, Duras, and Modiano (among others), shapes the relationship of literature to visual media, testimonial discourses, and self-representation. Far from turning away from realism in the twentieth century, French literature often turns to the document as a site of both modernist experiment and engagement with the world.

scholarly journals The Concept in Life and the Life of the Concept: Canguilhem’s Final Reckoning with Bergson

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
History Of Biology ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Special Place ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Living Being

Foucault famously divided the history of twentieth-century French philosophy between a “philosophy of experience” and a “philosophy of the concept,” placing Bergson in the former camp and his teacher Canguilhem in the latter. This division has shaped the Anglophone reception of Canguilhem as primarily a historian and philosopher of biology. Canguilhem, however, was also a philosopher of life and a careful reader of Bergson. The recently-begun publication of Canguilhem’s Œuvres complètes has revealed the depth of this engagement, and a re-reading of Canguilhem’s final major statement on Bergson, the 1966 essay “The Concept and Life,” has thus become necessary. The basic problem of that essay is the relationship between knowledge and life in the history of biology and philosophy, with a special place for Bergson. Canguilhem’s strong criticism of him turns, however, on a misquotation. In claiming that Bergson fails to account for the struggle of the living being to maintain a species form, Canguilhem misconstrues the crucial Bergsonian distinction between vital order and geometrical identity; he thus misses the importance that Bergson accords to general biological tendencies, rather than to the generality of the species. Despite the differences on display in the 1966 essay, it will be argued that Canguilhem’s earlier remarks on Bergson show a surprising convergence in the underlying aim of each thinker’s biological philosophy: the call for a new ontology that grasps the ordered and intelligible character of life without relying on a principle of identity.

The Critical-Linguistic Critique of the Aesthetic Ideology in the Late Writing of Paul de Man

Labyrinth ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Jeremy Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
Aesthetic Ideology ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
De Man ◽  
The Relationship

The focus of this essay is Paul de Man's provocative antipathy towards the category of the aesthetic in his late writings on philosophical aesthetics. I introduce de Man's critique of what he terms aesthetic ideology – a form of ideological communication – which he considers manifest in the aesthetics of Schiller in particular but also in more scrupulously critical philosophers. I begin the essay with Benjamin's well known observation that twentieth century fascisms aestheticized political practice as part of a defence of existing property relations. I introduce de Man's critique of aesthetic ideology as a way of developing or elaborating on what are relatively sketchy comments on the relationship aesthetics and politics in Benjamin's earlier essay.

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