Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940

Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940 PDF Author: Lois A. Cuddy
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838755556
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Charles Darwin's theory of descent suggested that man is trapped by biological determinism and environment, which requires the fittest specimens to struggle and adapt without benefit of God in order to survive. Tthis volume focusses on how American literature appropriated and aesthetically transformed this, and related, theories.

Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940

Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940 PDF Author: Lois A. Cuddy
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838755556
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Charles Darwin's theory of descent suggested that man is trapped by biological determinism and environment, which requires the fittest specimens to struggle and adapt without benefit of God in order to survive. Tthis volume focusses on how American literature appropriated and aesthetically transformed this, and related, theories.

Interpreting Child Sacrifice Narratives

Interpreting Child Sacrifice Narratives PDF Author: Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135023673X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Examining the theme of child sacrifice as a psychological challenge, this book applies a unique approach to religious ideas by looking at beliefs and practices that are considered deviant, but also make up part of mainstream religious discourse in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Ancient religious mythology, which survives through living traditions and transmitted narratives, rituals, and writings, is filled with violent stories, often involving the targeting of children as ritual victims. Christianity offers Abraham's sacrifice and assures us that the “only begotten son” has died, and then been resurrected. This version of the sacrifice myth has dominated the West. It is celebrated in an act of fantasy cannibalism, in which the believers share the divine son's flesh and blood. This book makes the connection between Satanism stories in the 1980s, the Blood Libel in Europe, The Eucharist, and Eastern Mediterranean narratives of child sacrifice.

The Evolutions of Modernist Epic

The Evolutions of Modernist Epic PDF Author: Václav Paris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192638645
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Modernist epic is more interesting and more diverse than we have supposed. As a radical form of national fiction it appeared in many parts of the world in the early twentieth century. Reading a selection of works from the United States, England, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, and Brazil, The Evolutions of Modernist Epic develops a comparative theory of this genre and its global development. That development was, it argues, bound up with new ideas about biological evolution. During the first decades of the twentieth century—a period known, in the history of evolutionary science, as 'the eclipse of Darwinism'—evolution's significance was questioned, rethought, and ultimately confined to the Neo-Darwinist discourse with which we are familiar today. Epic fiction participated in, and was shaped by, this shift. Drawing on queer forms of sexuality to cultivate anti-heroic and non-progressive modes of telling national stories, the genre contested reductive and reactionary forms of social Darwinism. The book describes how, in doing so, the genre asks us to revisit our assumptions about ethnolinguistics and organic nationalism. It also models how the history of evolutionary thought can provide a new basis for comparing diverse modernisms and their peculiar nativisms.

Comparative Criticism: Volume 16, Revolutions and Censorship

Comparative Criticism: Volume 16, Revolutions and Censorship PDF Author: E. S. Shaffer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521471992
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This 1994 book addresses literary theory and criticism, comparative studies in terms of theme, genre movement and influence, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Literature and Science

Literature and Science PDF Author: Charlotte Sleigh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137268115
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The growing field of literature and science is for the first time given a fully theorized overview. Using case studies from a three hundred year history, Sleigh focuses on literary form and argues that novels did not just reflect or inform areas of science, but were part of a broader, ongoing cultural negotiation about how to read things.

The Evolution of the West

The Evolution of the West PDF Author: Nick Spencer
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611648564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
What has Christianity ever done for us? A lot more than you might think, as Nick Spencer reveals in this fresh exploration of our cultural origins. Looking at the big ideas that characterize the West, such as human dignity, the rule of law, human rights, science, and even, paradoxically, atheism and secularism,he traces the varied ways in which many of our present values grew up and flourished in distinctively Christian soil. Always alert to the tensions and mess of history, and careful not to overstate or misstate the Christian role in shaping our present values, Spencer shows us how a better awareness of what we owe to Christianity can help us as we face new cultural challenges.

King of Sacrifice

King of Sacrifice PDF Author: Sarah Hitch
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Descriptions of animal sacrifice in Homer offer detailed accounts of this attempt at communication between man and gods. Hitch explores the structural and thematic importance of animal sacrifice as an expression of the quarrel between Akhilleus and Agamemnon through the differing perspectives of the primary narrative and character speech.

On Suffering: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Narrative and Suffering

On Suffering: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Narrative and Suffering PDF Author: Nate Hinerman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004399178
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description


A Tale of Two Capitalisms

A Tale of Two Capitalisms PDF Author: Supritha Rajan
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472904329
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
No questions are more pressing today than the ethical dimensions of global capitalism in relation to an unevenly secularized modernity. A Tale of Two Capitalisms offers a timely response to these questions by reexamining the intellectual history of capitalist economics during the nineteenth century. Rajan’s ambitious book traces the neglected relationships between nineteenth-century political economy, anthropology, and literature in order to demonstrate how these discourses buttress a dominant narrative of self-interested capitalism that obscures a submerged narrative within political economy. This submerged narrative discloses political economy’s role in burgeoning theories of religion, as well as its underlying ethos of reciprocity, communality, and just distribution. Drawing on an impressive range of literary, anthropological, and economic writings from the eighteenth through the twenty-first century, Rajan offers an inventive, interdisciplinary account of why this second narrative of capitalism has so long escaped our notice. The book presents an unprecedented genealogy of key anthropological and economic concepts, demonstrating how notions of sacrifice, the sacred, ritual, totemism, and magic remained conceptually intertwined with capitalist theories of value and exchange in both sociological and literary discourses. Rajan supplies an original framework for discussing the ethical ideals that continue to inform contemporary global capitalism and its fraught relationship to the secular. Its revisionary argument brings new insight into the history of capitalist thought and modernity that will engage scholars across a variety of disciplines.

A Companion to Herman Melville

A Companion to Herman Melville PDF Author: Wyn Kelley
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119045274
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 631

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Book Description
In a series of 35 original essays, this companion demonstrates the relevance of Melville’s works in the twenty-first century. Presents 35 original essays by scholars from around the world, representing a range of different approaches to Melville Considers Melville in a global context, and looks at the impact of global economies and technologies on the way people read Melville Takes account of the latest and most sophisticated scholarship, including postcolonial and feminist perspectives Locates Melville in his cultural milieu, revising our views of his politics on race, gender and democracy Reveals Melville as a more contemporary writer than his critics have sometimes assumed