Literary Occasions

Literary Occasions PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 033052934X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
A remarkable companion piece to The Writer and the World, Naipaul’s previous volume of highly acclaimed essays, Literary Occasions is a stirring contribution to the fading art of the critic, and a revelation of a life in letters. In these eleven extended pieces V. S. Naipaul charts more than half a century of personal enquiry into the mysteries of the written word and of fiction in particular. Here are his boyhood experiences of reading books and his first youthful efforts at writing them; the evolution of his ideas about the extent to which individual cultures shape identities and influence literary forms; observations on Conrad, his literary forebear; the moving preface he wrote to the only book his father ever published; and his reflections on his career, ending with his celebrated Nobel lecture, ‘Two Worlds’. ‘He is an exceptionally good and perceptive critic – a few passages on Dickens are worth whole books by others – and when he addresses the art of fiction he not only writes beautifully (as always) but with complete humility’ New Statesman

Literary Occasions

Literary Occasions PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 033052934X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
A remarkable companion piece to The Writer and the World, Naipaul’s previous volume of highly acclaimed essays, Literary Occasions is a stirring contribution to the fading art of the critic, and a revelation of a life in letters. In these eleven extended pieces V. S. Naipaul charts more than half a century of personal enquiry into the mysteries of the written word and of fiction in particular. Here are his boyhood experiences of reading books and his first youthful efforts at writing them; the evolution of his ideas about the extent to which individual cultures shape identities and influence literary forms; observations on Conrad, his literary forebear; the moving preface he wrote to the only book his father ever published; and his reflections on his career, ending with his celebrated Nobel lecture, ‘Two Worlds’. ‘He is an exceptionally good and perceptive critic – a few passages on Dickens are worth whole books by others – and when he addresses the art of fiction he not only writes beautifully (as always) but with complete humility’ New Statesman

Occasions for Poetry

Occasions for Poetry PDF Author: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512827312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
How Turkish poetry became the preferred mode for communicating, debating, and shaping political and social experience in the early Ottoman Empire Occasions for Poetry is a history of how Turkish poetry became the preferred mode for communicating, debating, and shaping political and social experience in the early Ottoman Empire. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman elites at the imperial court turned to poetry to craft distinctive modes of expression in order to articulate their own place within the Ottoman sultanate. Placing Ottoman court poetry in its social and historical context, Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano argues that poetry functioned as a political act. Aguirre-Mandujano examines the occasions that compelled the Ottomans to compose poetry, to present it to their superiors, to share it with their peers, and to spend considerable efforts and time to make poetry often and to make it well. He explores how scholars and bureaucrats interacted with each other through poetic imagery, revealing how literary language affected bureaucratic practice. Poetry was not only an artistic activity, but also a means to advance or save one’s own political or bureaucratic career. For the Ottoman elite, poetry was more than a creative activity or a flattering description of Ottoman power and expansion; it was a vehicle to shape and mold their social reality. The language and genres created and used by these early modern Ottomans would define both a literary tradition and the shape of imperial politics and power for almost six centuries, until the end of the empire in the twentieth century.

Irony on Occasion

Irony on Occasion PDF Author: Kevin Newmark
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823240126
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
What is it about irony - as an object of serious philosophical reflection and a literary technique of considerable elasticity - that makes it an occasion for endless critical debate? This book responds to that question by focusing on several key moments in German romanticism and its afterlife in twentieth-century French thought and writing. Rather than provide a history of irony, it examines particular occasions of ironic disruption, thus offering an alternative model for conceiving of historical occurrences and their potential for acquiring meaning.

What Is a Classic?

What Is a Classic? PDF Author: Ankhi Mukherjee
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804788383
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
What Is a Classic? revisits the famous question posed by critics from Sainte-Beuve and T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee to ask how classics emanate from postcolonial histories and societies. Exploring definitive trends in twentieth- and twenty-first century English and Anglophone literature, Ankhi Mukherjee demonstrates the relevance of the question of the classic for the global politics of identifying and perpetuating so-called core texts. Emergent canons are scrutinized in the context of the wider cultural phenomena of book prizes, the translation and distribution of world literatures, and multimedia adaptations of world classics. Throughout, Mukherjee attunes traditional literary critical concerns to the value contestations mobilizing postcolonial and world literature. The breadth of debates and topics she addresses, as well as the book's ambitious historical schema, which includes South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and North America, set this study apart from related titles on the bookshelf today.

Theory and Praxis

Theory and Praxis PDF Author: M.S. Pandey
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443876828
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
The present anthology is a collection of fifteen research papers which critically explore the multiple dimensions of contemporary literary theory. It provides a wide spectrum of theories and shows their application to different texts across the globe. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries were witness to three major movements, namely Marxism, Feminism and Postcolonialism, which have led to a serious reconsidering of the so-called metanarratives of literature, science, history, economics, philosophy and anthropology. These movements have brought together a wide variety of human discourses, and have made literary theory an interdisciplinary body of cultural theory which has now become an important model of inquiry into the intricacies and complexities of human existence. The anthology includes articles on poststructuralism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, postfeminism, orientalism, nationalist and hegemonic discourses, subalternity, gender identity, eco-criticism and global aesthetics by eminent scholars and critics.

The Found Voice

The Found Voice PDF Author: Denis Sampson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191067288
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
The Found Voice: Writers' Beginnings uses the means of literary biography and criticism to do something rarely attempted--to understand how a key creative period establishes the authoritative voice of a unique artist. The essays which explore this hidden process of the writer writing focus on some of the major writers of recent times, V.S. Naipaul, J.M. Coetzee, Alice Munro, William Trevor, and Mavis Gallant. The focus of investigation is a single work by each author, and many of them identify the book in which this turning point was reached. The writers have a somewhat different sense of what the voice is, 'a true voice', 'the voice in the mind', 'the writing voice', etc., yet all of them accept the phrase 'finding a voice' as a decisive and necessary process towards a unique style and vision, their raison d'être as artists. These essays allow each one to define his or her sense of the process of writing, and their style is exploratory. Nevertheless, certain patterns emerge, of migration and cultural displacement, of linguistic self-consciousness, of memory and a reimagining of the first home, of absorbing and rejecting mentors and models. Crucially, the essays rely not just on what led up to the moment of creation but on a sense of the career that emerged from it. Most of the writers have written retrospectively in memoirs, interviews or essays about the pivotal work and its foundational significance. They are the best witnesses to the process, although their silence or their commentary is understood in terms of the many strands of the narrative that each essay presents.

Seeds in the Heart

Seeds in the Heart PDF Author:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231114417
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1284

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Book Description
Donald Keene, a noted authority in the field, offers a guide through the first 900 years of Japanese literature. This period not only defined the unique properties of Japanese prose and prosody, but also produced some of its greatest works.

The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies PDF Author: Michael J. MacDonald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190689897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
One of the most remarkable trends in the humanities and social sciences in recent decades has been the resurgence of interest in the history, theory, and practice of rhetoric: in an age of global media networks and viral communication, rhetoric is once again "contagious" and "communicable" (Friedrich Nietzsche). Featuring sixty commissioned chapters by eminent scholars of rhetoric from twelve countries, The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies offers students and teachers an engaging and sophisticated introduction to the multidisciplinary field of rhetorical studies. The Handbook traces the history of Western rhetoric from ancient Greece and Rome to the present and surveys the role of rhetoric in more than thirty academic disciplines and fields of social practice. This combination of historical and topical approaches allows readers to chart the metamorphoses of rhetoric over the centuries while mapping the connections between rhetoric and law, politics, science, education, literature, feminism, poetry, composition, philosophy, drama, criticism, digital media, art, semiotics, architecture, and other fields. Chapters provide the information expected of a handbook-discussion of key concepts, texts, authors, problems, and critical debates-while also posing challenging questions and advancing new arguments. In addition to offering an accessible and comprehensive introduction to rhetoric in the European and North American context, the Handbook includes a timeline of major works of rhetorical theory, translations of all Greek and Latin passages, extensive cross-referencing between chapters, and a glossary of more than three hundred rhetorical terms. These features will make this volume a valuable scholarly resource for students and teachers in rhetoric, English, classics, comparative literature, media studies, communication, and adjacent fields. As a whole, the Handbook demonstrates that rhetoric is not merely a form of stylish communication but a pragmatic, inventive, and critical art that operates in myriad social contexts and academic disciplines.

Imagination in Place

Imagination in Place PDF Author: Wendell Berry
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582436843
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
“Berry's latest collection of essays is the reminiscence of a literary life. It is a book that acknowledges a lifetime of intellectual influences, and in doing so, positions Berry more squarely as a cornerstone of American literature . . . A necessary book. Here, Berry's place as the 'grandfather of slow food' or the 'prophet of rural living' is not questioned. This book ensures we understand the depth and breadth of Berry's art.” —San Francisco Chronicle “[A] stellar collection . . . Foodies, architects, transportation engineers, and other writers are adopting and adapting [Berry’s] concepts, perhaps leading to what he envisions will one day be 'an authentic settlement of our country.'“ —The Oregonian A writer who can imagine the “community belonging to its place” is one who has applied his knowledge and citizenship to achieve the goal to which Wendell Berry has always aspired—to be a native to his own local culture. And for Berry, what is “local, fully imagined, becomes universal,” and the “local” is to know one's place and allow the imagination to inspire and instill “a practical respect for what is there besides ourselves." In Imagination in Place, we travel to the local cultures of several writers important to Berry's life and work, from Wallace Stegner's great West and Ernest Gaines' Louisiana plantation life to Donald Hall's New England, and on to the Western frontier as seen through the Far East lens of Gary Snyder. Berry laments today's dispossessed and displaced, those writers and people with no home and no citizenship, but he argues that there is hope for the establishment of new local cultures in both the practical and literary sense. Rich with Berry's personal experience of life as a Kentucky agrarian, the collection includes portraits of a few of America's most imaginative writers, including James Still, Hayden Carruth, Jane Kenyon, John Haines, and several others.

The Witness and the Other World

The Witness and the Other World PDF Author: Mary Baine Campbell
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721097
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Surveying exotic travel writing in Europe from late antiquity to the age of discover, The Witness and the Other World illustrates the fundamental human desire to change places, if only in the imagination.Mary B. Campbell looks at works by pilgrims, crusaders, merchants, discoverers, even armchair fantasists such as Mandeville, as well as the writings of Marco Polo, Columbus, and Walter Raleigh. According to Campbell, these travel accounts are exotic because they bear witness to alienated experiences; European travelers, while claiming to relate fact, were often passing on monstrous projections. She contends that their writing not only documented but also made possible the conquest of the peoples whom she travelers described, and she shows how travel literature contributed to the genesis of the modern novel and the modern life sciences.