Reviews: History and Memory, Historiography: An Introduction, Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania, Biography, a Brief History, Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor., Brave Community. The Digger Movement in the English Revolution, Bloody Romanticism: Spectacular Violence and the Politics of Representation, 1776–1832, the Feminization of Fame 1750–1850, the Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau, Master and Servant. Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age, William Faulkner: An Economy of Complex Words, Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State, Literary Modernity between the Middle East and Europe, Textual Transactions in Nineteenth-Century Arabic, English, and Persian Literatures., African Pasts: Memory and History in African Literatures, the Little MagazineCubittGeoffrey, History and memory, Manchester University Press, 2007, pp. viii + 272, pb. £12.99.RogerSpalding and ParkerChristopher, Historiography: An Introduction , Manchester University Press, 2007, pp. 156, pb. £9.99.KarinLittau, Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania , Polity Press, 2006, pp. xi + 194, £55, pb. £17.99.NigelHamilton, Biography, A Brief History , Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 345, pb. £14.95.SoniaMassai, Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor. Cambridge University Press, 2007. pp. xii + 254, £63.JohnGurney, Brave Community. The Digger Movement in the English Revolution , Manchester University Press, 2007, pp. xiii + 236, £55.IanHaywood, Bloody Romanticism: Spectacular Violence and the Politics of Representation, 1776–1832 , Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. xi + 270, £50ClaireBrock, The Feminization of Fame 1750–1850 , Palgrave/Macmillan2006, pp. ix + 242, £45.DeborahLogan (ed.), The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau , Pickering and Chatto, 2007, 5 vols: pp. xxxii + 356, viii + 345, viii + 392, viii + 376, viii + 501. $750.00CarolynSteedman, Master and Servant. Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age , Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. xi + 263, £45, £17.99;LightAlison, Mrs Woolf and the Servants. The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service , Penguin/Fig Tree, 2007, pp. xxiii + 376, £20.RichardGodden, William Faulkner: An Economy of Complex Words , Princeton University Press, 2007. pp. x + 251, $39.50.BruceRobbins, Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State , Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. xviii + 328, $35KamranRastegar, Literary Modernity between the Middle East and Europe, Textual transactions in nineteenth-century Arabic, English, and Persian literatures. Routledge, 2007. pp. xv+176. £70.00.TimWoods, African Pasts: Memory and History in African Literatures , Manchester University Press, 2007, pp. xii + 291, £55.SuzanneW. Churchill, The Little Magazine Others and the Renovation of Modern American Poetry , Ashgate, 2006, pp. xii + 290, £55.

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-101
Author(s):  
Matthew Neufeld ◽  
Sean Greenwood ◽  
Gary Farnell ◽  
Peter Clark ◽  
Mark Bayer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Common Good ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theories Of Reading ◽  
Complex Words

Prosody

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Martin
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
National Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theories Of Reading ◽  
Verse Form

Prosody refers, most broadly, to versification and pronunciation. Historically, prosody referred to the branch of grammar that contained versification as a subsection, but since the late 19th century literary scholars and poets have interchanged versification and prosody, while linguists use prosody to refer to pronunciation. Since the beginning of the 20th century scholars have also referred to prosody as a “poetics,” or a system of meaning-making, and do not directly engage in analysis of meter but rather use the term prosody to signify any aspect of literary style or figurative language that might contribute to the affective register of verse-form. The philological register of prosody may use versification in order to make a claim about how a verse-form reflects a national, historical, or even ethnic character, a practice that began in earnest during the mid-18th century and persists into the 21st century, though with some critical distance. Because the measure of verse is subjective and historically contingent, debates and discussions about prosody are a constant and tend to repeat. There is no one progress narrative of prosody, writ large, but the progress narrative of poetry within prosodic discourse is one of its main tropes. That is, while there are theories of prosody that posit progression, there is little agreement about the evolution or even naming of prosodic systems. Each history of prosody therefore posits a new theory. Thus, the theory of prosody might always be seen as the proliferation of conflicting theories about prosody, in no way limited to one national language; in fact, theories of prosody from other languages applied to English are much older and more robust than theories of prosody that derive from only English—for instance, measuring English by Latin prosody, or French, or German, and so on. Despite the proliferation of conflicting theories, scholars who work on prosody nevertheless agree broadly that, like the subject of grammar under which prosody was historically a subset, prosody is a set of interrelated features in language that, according to how you measure these features, either appear to adhere to a particular system or do not. Also, scholars agree that, like grammar, prosody as an interpretive system often hovers between the prescriptive and the descriptive. In the conflicts over theories of prosody, adherents to one system attempt to convince adherents to another that theirs is superior, and these debates and conflicts continue unabated in linguistic prosodic criticism. Those who practice literary prosodic criticism in the 21st century tend to adopt a system of verse-measure with little interest in its history, or even with what linguistic prosodic critics might call a sharp disregard for its inaccuracy. Linguistic prosodists—who have made significant advances in the field—are sidelined by the momentum of a literary history that has rendered their ongoing work too specialized for general use. There are also those who believe that prosody—or, rather, specific paralinguistic features of prosody—exists, like grammar, in particular bodies, to be awakened or cultivated by a particular kind of reading or hearing ear or a particular kind of feeling body. Trends in cognitive science have influenced one strain of theorizing about prosody as a form of subconscious knowledge in no way dependent on the cultural formations that may have organized sonic features into recognizable systems. Historical prosodists, those who study the history of thinking about prosodic form but also practice prosodic reading, posit that prosody is culturally contingent and, along with phenomenology, might be better considered as a part of cultural criticism rather than a privileged key to poetic meaning. Finally, where prosodic theory happens is a live question. Whether discourse about prosody (or meta-metrical discourse, as in Gascoigne or the various grammars discussed here) is prosodic theory or whether poets writing in a variety of prosodic forms (whether interpreted by critics or not) posit prosodic theories in their practice is at the heart of what many mischaracterize as a divide between historical prosody and other theories of reading. This divide is artificial, but the fact is that disagreements about what and how prosody means have led to a variety of approaches to the study of prosody in poetry, and despite this disagreement prosody is nevertheless taught in most academic settings as if it has an agreed upon past, present, and future.

Migration and Modernities

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Geographic Boundaries ◽  
The Us ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Migration and Modernities recovers a comparative literary history of migration by bringing together scholars from the US and Europe to explore the connections between migrant experiences and the uneven emergence of modernity. The collection initiates transnational, transcultural and interdisciplinary conversations about migration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, demonstrating how mobility unsettles the geographic boundaries, temporal periodization, and racial categories we often use to organize literary and historical study. Migrants are by definition liminal, and many have existed historically in the spaces between nations, regions or ethnicities. In exploring these spaces, Migration and Modernities also investigates the origins of current debates about belonging, rights, and citizenship. Its chapters traverse the globe, revealing the experiences — real or imagined — of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century migrants, from dispossessed Native Americans to soldiers in South America, Turkish refugees to Scottish settlers. They explore the aesthetic and rhetorical frameworks used to represent migrant experiences during a time when imperial expansion and technological developments made the fortunes of some migrants and made exiles out of others. These frameworks continue to influence the narratives we tell ourselves about migration today and were crucial in producing a distinctively modern subjectivity in which mobility and rootlessness have become normative.

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