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Author: Deborah Baker Wyrick
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807817803
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
In Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word, Deborah Wyrick argues that modern Continental and American literary theory is "tantalizingly applicable to Swiftian texts." Its applicability, she writes, "stems from Swift's interest in and exploration of what are now though of as phenomenological, structuralist, poststructuralist, and new historicist concerns: how a life in language comes into being, how semiotic systems determine meaning, how texts open up their own systems to other texts and to multiple interpretations." Wyrick investigates Swift's confrontations with three theories of language current in his day, theories that locate meaning in the thing named, in the idea behind the word, or in the response of the audience. She concludes that Swift fashioned a fourth theory of meaning, one that locates meaning in and among words themselves. Because of his fear of the anarchic potential of language, Swift attempted to invest his words with extratextual authority; yet a powerful counterforce was his desire to exploit the possibilities of language divested of stable significance. These divestitures, particularly the word-play and language games, ultimately served serious personal and social purposes. A crucial personal purpose was Swift's ability to create a textual self, which he did, Wyrick maintains, by constructing defensive transvestitures centered on clothes and money. These parallel sign systems produced Swift's greatest achievement in using the resources of language and history to effect political action. By using the entire Swift canon -- poems and prose narratives, letters and essays, sermons and satires -- Wyrick presents Swift's struggle with the inadequacies of language and its inability to answer the tremendous demands he made upon it. Originally published 1988. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: Deborah Baker Wyrick
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807817803
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Get Book Here
Book Description
In Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word, Deborah Wyrick argues that modern Continental and American literary theory is "tantalizingly applicable to Swiftian texts." Its applicability, she writes, "stems from Swift's interest in and exploration of what are now though of as phenomenological, structuralist, poststructuralist, and new historicist concerns: how a life in language comes into being, how semiotic systems determine meaning, how texts open up their own systems to other texts and to multiple interpretations." Wyrick investigates Swift's confrontations with three theories of language current in his day, theories that locate meaning in the thing named, in the idea behind the word, or in the response of the audience. She concludes that Swift fashioned a fourth theory of meaning, one that locates meaning in and among words themselves. Because of his fear of the anarchic potential of language, Swift attempted to invest his words with extratextual authority; yet a powerful counterforce was his desire to exploit the possibilities of language divested of stable significance. These divestitures, particularly the word-play and language games, ultimately served serious personal and social purposes. A crucial personal purpose was Swift's ability to create a textual self, which he did, Wyrick maintains, by constructing defensive transvestitures centered on clothes and money. These parallel sign systems produced Swift's greatest achievement in using the resources of language and history to effect political action. By using the entire Swift canon -- poems and prose narratives, letters and essays, sermons and satires -- Wyrick presents Swift's struggle with the inadequacies of language and its inability to answer the tremendous demands he made upon it. Originally published 1988. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: Louise Barnett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195188667
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Building upon recent research on the history of women, this book examines Swift, both as a man and writer, in terms of women: woman as intimates, acquaintances, subjects of satire, and those who have written about him. It also explores the subject of misogyny in Swift's writings.
Author: Paul Hyland
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349217557
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
This is a collection of original essays by international scholars which focuses on Irish writing in English from the eighteenth century to the present. The essays explore the recurrent motif of exile and the subversive potential of Irish writing in political, cultural and literary terms. Case-studies of major writers such as Swift, Joyce, and Heaney are set alongside discussions of relatively unexplored writing such as radical pamphleteering in the age of the French Revolution and the contribution of women writers to Nationalistic journalism.
Author: John Condon Murray
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595157564
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 114
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Book Description
Gulliver's Travels explores the human need to create order out of chaos through an internal system of knowledge that affirms the subjective self. In this study, I examine how Gulliver integrates elements of knowledge from the native and the host-societies into an operative system of self-knowledge. Gulliver's self-knowledge threatens the status quo within these societies by placing him at the solipsistic center of the narrative, orchestrating his observations to maintain the subjective self. If Gulliver was successfully indoctrinated in England, then why does he exhibit such an imperfect understanding of the complexities that define the principles which shaped Western society? Furthermore, if Gulliver is brainwashed by his hosts, then by what authority does he continually transgress the rules of law that govern their societies? Specifically, why does he knowingly commit acts of disobedience and heresy if he has been successfully indoctrinated into their social systems? My study concludes Gulliver's empirical search for an answer to the question Who am I? fails because he is unable to harmonize subjective truths within the objective world.
Author: Anthony W. Lee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317097246
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
In the first collection devoted to mentoring relationships in British literature and culture, the editor and contributors offer a fresh lens through which to observe familiar and lesser known authors and texts. Employing a variety of critical and methodological approaches, which reflect the diversity of the mentoring experiences under consideration, the collection highlights in particular the importance of mentoring in expanding print culture. Topics include John Wilmot the Earl of Rochester's relationships to a range of role models, John Dryden's mentoring of women writers, Alexander Pope's problematic attempts at mentoring, the vexed nature of Jonathan Swift's cross-gender and cross-class mentoring relationships, Samuel Richardson's largely unsuccessful efforts to influence Urania Hill Johnson, and an examination of Elizabeth Carter and Samuel Johnson's as co-mentors of one another's work. Taken together, the essays further the case for mentoring as a globally operative critical concept, not only in the eighteenth century, but in other literary periods as well.
Author: Jonathan Swift
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141931752
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 514
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Book Description
The political dilemma of Ireland; the state of faith in England; the charms of the Beggar's Opera; the importance of puns . . . This selection gathers together some of Swift's most brilliant prose, from high politics to social gossip, from savage tirades to lighthearted social satire. In addition to his classic essays, the collection includes several of Swift's letters to Alexander Pope and other great thinkers of the age.
Author: Miles MacLeod
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317327497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and science studies scholars have investigated scientific language for this reason, but only few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientific discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refine and engineer language for various epistemological, communicative and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientific discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places, and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understudied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science.
Author: G. Atkins
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137399821
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 114
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Book Description
In a fresh reading of Gulliver's Travels and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Atkins draws parallels between the protagonists: both Lemuel Gulliver and Stephen Dedalus flee from the burdens of life, seeking a transcendent existence. The study sheds important new light on both novels as essential critiques of modern misunderstandings.
Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393322682
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 772
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Book Description
This engagingly written new work highlights Britain's long-underestimated and pivotal role in disseminating the ideas and culture of the Enlightenment. Moving beyond the numerous histories centered on France and Germany, the acclaimed social historian Roy Porter explains how monumental changes in thinking in Britain influenced worldwide developments. Here is a "splendidly imaginative" work that "propels the debate forward ... and makes a valuable point" (New York Times Book Review).
Author: Jonathan Swift
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107651557
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1062
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Book Description
Swift's parodies are among his most fascinating works, but perhaps require most explication for the modern reader. Valerie Rumbold brings a new depth and detail to the editing of Swift's Bickerstaff papers, 'Polite Conversation', 'Directions to Servants' and other works on language and conduct. Highlights include a fresh investigation of the political and print contexts of the Bickerstaff papers, full commentaries on such smaller works as 'A Modest Defence of Punning' and 'On Barbarous Denominations in Ireland', identification and explanation of many additional sayings in 'Polite Conversation', and a detailed contextualisation of 'Directions to Servants' in contemporary domestic theory and practice. A substantial thematic Introduction is supplemented by an individual headnote and full annotation to each work. The Textual Introduction explores the publishing strategies adopted by Swift and his booksellers, and a separate Textual Account of each work presents and discusses changes in the texts over time.
