Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Worldly Realism

Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Worldly Realism PDF Author: Pam Morris
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474423531
Category : Realism in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Austen and Woolf are materialists, this book argues. 'Things' in their novels give us entry into some of the most contentious issues of the day. This wholly materialist understanding produces worldly realism, an experimental writing practice which asserts egalitarian continuity between people, things and the physical world. This radical redistribution of the importance of material objects and biological existence, challenges the traditional idealist hierarchy of mind over matter that has justified gender, class and race subordination. Entering their writing careers at the critical moments of the French Revolution and the First World War respectively, and sharing a political inheritance of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism, Austen's and Woolf's rigorous critiques of the dangers of mental vision unchecked by facts is more timely than ever in the current world dominated by fundamentalist neo-liberal, religious and nationalist belief systems.

Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Worldly Realism

Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Worldly Realism PDF Author: Pam Morris
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474423531
Category : Realism in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
Austen and Woolf are materialists, this book argues. 'Things' in their novels give us entry into some of the most contentious issues of the day. This wholly materialist understanding produces worldly realism, an experimental writing practice which asserts egalitarian continuity between people, things and the physical world. This radical redistribution of the importance of material objects and biological existence, challenges the traditional idealist hierarchy of mind over matter that has justified gender, class and race subordination. Entering their writing careers at the critical moments of the French Revolution and the First World War respectively, and sharing a political inheritance of Scottish Enlightenment scepticism, Austen's and Woolf's rigorous critiques of the dangers of mental vision unchecked by facts is more timely than ever in the current world dominated by fundamentalist neo-liberal, religious and nationalist belief systems.

Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics

Realism: Aesthetics, Experiments, Politics PDF Author: Jens Elze
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501385496
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Realism seems to be everywhere, both as a trending critical term and as a revitalized aesthetic practice. This volume brings together for the first time three aspects that are pertinent for a proper understanding of realism: its 19th-century aesthetics committed to making reality into an object of serious art; the experiments with and against realism by 20th-century modernist, postmodernist, or magical realist writing; and the politics of realism, especially its ambitions to map the complex realities produced by global capitalism and climate catastrophe. This juxtaposition of aesthetics, experiments, and politics unsettles the entrenched opposition between realism and experimental literature that tends to ignore the fact that realism, by virtue of its commitment to a changing material and social world, cannot be but continuously experimenting. The innovative chapters of this book address some of the pressing questions of literary and cultural studies today, like the complex relation between historical materialism and new materialisms, between science and art, or the different aesthetic and political affordances of making systemic analyses against depicting the specificity of the local. Some of the chapters deal with classically realist authors, such as George Eliot, Émile Zola, and Joseph Conrad, to gauge the aesthetic radicalism of their diverse realist projects. Others investigate the experimental engagements with realism by authors such as B.S. Johnson, J.M. Coetzee, or Rachel Cusk. Yet others, analyze the politics of realism found in contemporary anglophone novels by writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Mitchell, or Rohinton Mistry. The readings assembled here are a testament to the diversity of literary realism(s) from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and to the ongoing controversies surrounding definitions and deployments of “realism.”

Fictions of Home

Fictions of Home PDF Author: Martin Mühlheim
Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
ISBN: 3772000398
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1222

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Book Description
This study aims to counter right-wing discourses of belonging. It discusses key theoretical concepts for the study of home, focusing in particular on Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, and psychoanalytic contributions. The book also maintains that postmodern celebrations of nomadism and exile tend to be incapable of providing an alternative to conservative, xenophobic appropriations of home. In detailed readings of one film and six novels, a view is developed according to which home, as a spatio-temporal imaginary, is rooted in our species being, and as such constitutes the inevitable starting point for any progressive politics.

The Persistence of Realism in Modernist Fiction

The Persistence of Realism in Modernist Fiction PDF Author: Paul Stasi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009223143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Demonstrates the persistence of realism's characteristic concerns - sympathy, melodrama, gender and class - in the most aesthetically innovative works of modernist fiction.

At Home in the World

At Home in the World PDF Author: Maria DiBattista
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191433
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In a bold and sweeping reevaluation of the past two centuries of women's writing, At Home in the World argues that this body of work has been defined less by domestic concerns than by an active engagement with the most pressing issues of public life: from class and religious divisions, slavery, warfare, and labor unrest to democracy, tyranny, globalism, and the clash of cultures. In this new literary history, Maria DiBattista and Deborah Epstein Nord contend that even the most seemingly traditional works by British, American, and other English-language women writers redefine the domestic sphere in ways that incorporate the concerns of public life, allowing characters and authors alike to forge new, emancipatory narratives. The book explores works by a wide range of writers, including canonical figures such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Harriet Jacobs, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Toni Morrison; neglected or marginalized writers like Mary Antin, Tess Slesinger, and Martha Gellhorn; and recent and contemporary figures, including Nadine Gordimer, Anita Desai, Edwidge Danticat, and Jhumpa Lahiri. DiBattista and Nord show how these writers dramatize tensions between home and the wider world through recurrent themes of sailing forth, escape, exploration, dissent, and emigration. Throughout, the book uncovers the undervalued public concerns of women writers who ventured into ever-wider geographical, cultural, and political territories, forging new definitions of what it means to create a home in the world. The result is an enlightening reinterpretation of women's writing from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

Realism

Realism PDF Author: Pam Morris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113458377X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
A clear, reader-friendly guide to debates around realism, this guide is vital reading for students of literature, in particular those working on the realist novel.

Wives and Daughters

Wives and Daughters PDF Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description


A Truth Universally Acknowledged

A Truth Universally Acknowledged PDF Author: C. S. Lewis
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0812980018
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Why are we so fascinated with Jane Austen’s novels? Why is Austen so universally beloved? The essayists in this volume offer their thoughts on the delightful puzzle of Austen’s popularity. Classic and contemporary writers—novelists, essayists, journalists, scholars, and a filmmaker—discuss the tricks and treasures of Austen’s novels, from her witty dialogue, to the arc and sweep of her story lines, to her prescriptions for life and love. Virginia Woolf examines Austen’s maturation as an artist and speculates on how her writing would have changed had she lived another twenty years, while Anna Quindlen examines the enduring issues of social pressure and gender politics that make Pride and Prejudice as vital today as ever. From Harold Bloom to Martin Amis, Somerset Maugham to Jay McInerney, Eudora Welty to Amy Bloom, each writer reflects on Austen’s place in both the literary canon and our cultural imagination.

The English Novel

The English Novel PDF Author: Terry Eagleton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118724925
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Written by one of the world’s leading literary theorists, this book provides a wide-ranging, accessible and humorous introduction to the English novel from Daniel Defoe to the present day. Covers the works of major authors, including Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce. Distils the essentials of the theory of the novel. Follows the model of Eagleton’s hugely popular Literary Theory: An Introduction (Second Edition, 1996).

The Political Poetess

The Political Poetess PDF Author: Tricia Lootens
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691170312
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction: Slaves, Spheres, Poetess Poetics -- Section 1 Racializing the Poetess: Haunting "Separate Spheres"--CHAPTER ONE Antislavery Afterlives: Changing the Subject / Haunting the Poetess -- CHAPTER TWO "Not Another 'Poetess' ": Feminist Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Poetry, and the Racialization of Suicide -- Section 2 Suspending Spheres: The Violent Structures of Patriotic Pacifism -- CHAPTER THREE Suspending Spheres, Suspending Disbelief: Hegel's Antigone, Craik's Crimea, Woolf's Three Guineas -- CHAPTER FOUR Turning and Burning: Sentimental Criticism, Casabiancas, and the Click of the Cliché -- Section 3 Transatlantic Occasions: Nineteenth-Century Antislavery Poetics at the Limits -- CHAPTER FIVE Teaching Curses, Teaching Nations: Abolition Time and the Recoils of Antislavery Poetics -- CHAPTER SIX Harper's Hearts: "Home Is Never Natural or Safe"--Notes -- Works Cited -- Acknowledgments -- Index