How to Misunderstand Tolkien

How to Misunderstand Tolkien PDF Author: Bruno Bacelli
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476686947
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
J.R.R. Tolkien is an author beloved by many, but people forget the hostile reception of his work from several literary critics, who despised (and some who continue to despise) him and his readers. Other intellectuals and critics have a more positive opinion of his work, but some read aspects of his books or his beliefs to fit their own agendas. Over the decades, scholars have claimed that Tolkien represents a myriad of (sometimes contradictory) political positions. Whether these scholars act out of disdain for Tolkien or from a simple misread of his works, the outcome is a muddled distortion of who Tolkien really was. This book peels back the discourse in an attempt to reveal the true nature of an author who so often defies categorization. Using all possible nuance, chapters explore the villains of Lord of the Rings, its female heroines and its moral compass, as well as its definitions of heroism and failure. This book hopes to provide a uniquely accurate and objective assessment of one of the most misunderstood writers of our time.

How to Misunderstand Tolkien

How to Misunderstand Tolkien PDF Author: Bruno Bacelli
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476686947
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
J.R.R. Tolkien is an author beloved by many, but people forget the hostile reception of his work from several literary critics, who despised (and some who continue to despise) him and his readers. Other intellectuals and critics have a more positive opinion of his work, but some read aspects of his books or his beliefs to fit their own agendas. Over the decades, scholars have claimed that Tolkien represents a myriad of (sometimes contradictory) political positions. Whether these scholars act out of disdain for Tolkien or from a simple misread of his works, the outcome is a muddled distortion of who Tolkien really was. This book peels back the discourse in an attempt to reveal the true nature of an author who so often defies categorization. Using all possible nuance, chapters explore the villains of Lord of the Rings, its female heroines and its moral compass, as well as its definitions of heroism and failure. This book hopes to provide a uniquely accurate and objective assessment of one of the most misunderstood writers of our time.

Eugenio Montale

Eugenio Montale PDF Author: Eanna O Ceallachain
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351198254
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
"Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) is best known for the intense lyrical vision of his first three collections of poetry, written between the 1920s and early 1950s. With the publication of ""Satura"" in 1971, the profile of his work changes irrevocably as a new disillusioned voice emerged, commenting ironically on post-war Italian society and debunking his own previous poetic myths. O'Ceallachin, while placing this body of work firmly in its historical and ideological context, explores the poetic texts in detail, approaching the work from a variety of interpretative and thematic angles, and constructing a comprehensive reading of Montale's later work."

Stillness in Motion

Stillness in Motion PDF Author: Sarah Patricia HIll
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442619988
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Stillness in Motion brings together the writing of scholars, theorists, and artists on the uneasy relationship between Italian culture and photography. Highlighting the depth and complexity of the Italian contribution to the technology and practice of photography, this collection offers essays, interviews, and theoretical reflections at the intersection of comparative, visual, and cultural studies. Its chapters, illustrated with more than 130 black and white images and an eight-page colour section, explore how Italian literature, cinema, popular culture, and politics have engaged with the medium of photography over the course of time. The collection includes topics such as Futurism’s ambivalent relationship to photography, the influence of American photography on Italian neorealist cinema, and the connection between the photograph and Duchamp’s concept of the Readymade. With contributions from writer and theorist Umberto Eco, photographer Franco Vaccari, art historian Robert Valtorta, and cultural historian Robert Lumley, Stillness in Motion engages with crucial historical and cultural moments in Italian history, examining each one through particular photographic practices.

Middle-earth and Beyond

Middle-earth and Beyond PDF Author: Janka Kaščáková
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443826111
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
One wonders whether there really is a need for another volume of essays on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Clearly there is. Especially when the volume takes new directions, employs new approaches, focuses on different texts, or reviews and then challenges received wisdom. This volume intends to do all that. The entries on sources and analogues in The Lord of the Rings, a favorite topic, are still able to take new directions. The analyses of Tolkien’s literary art, less common in Tolkien criticism, focus on character—especially that of Tom Bombadil—in which two different conclusions are reached. But characterization is also seen in the light of different literary techniques, motifs, and symbols. A unique contribution examines the place of linguistics in Tolkien’s literary art, employing Gricean concepts in an analysis of The Lay of the Children of Húrin. And a quite timely essay presents a new interpretation of Tolkien’s attitude toward the environment, especially in the character of Tom Bombadil. In sum, this volume covers new ground, and treads some well-worn paths; but here the well-worn path takes a new turn, taking not only scholars but general readers further into the complex and provocative world of Middle-earth, and beyond.

Dacia Maraini’s Narratives of Survival

Dacia Maraini’s Narratives of Survival PDF Author: Tommasina Gabriele
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611478820
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Dacia Maraini’s Narratives of Survival: (Re)Constructed focuses on Dacia Maraini’s narrative from about 1984 to 2004 and makes substantive use of her interviews and essays. While acknowledging the importance and ongoing validity of feminist scholarship of Maraini’s work, this book seeks to take scholarship on Maraini beyond feminist readings by identifying a critical framework that cuts across gender and genre and thereby invites alternative readings. Using a method of close textual analysis, the author includes studies of men, children, animals, and imaginary characters in Maraini’s narrative, analyzes language, character, motifs, and symbols, and considers some of Maraini’s work in light of declining postmodern and emerging posthuman critical social theory. This critical framework identifies the paradigm of reconstruction as narrative center, both strategy and theme, of many of Maraini’s works from this twenty-year-period and beyond. Reconstruction here signifies the strategies by which Maraini’s deep investment in survival, which has its roots in the life threatening conditions she experienced as a small child in a WWII Japanese concentration camp, is enacted in a narrative re-building and re-constructing of personal memory, of various personal, social and political histories, of motherhood and maternal discourses, of crime stories, of postmodern fragmentation, and even of the process of erasure itself. Maraini’s narrative is deeply attentive to the mechanisms that threaten survival of the body (and not just the woman’s body); psychological and aesthetic survival; the survival in the Italian canon of a woman author’s work, memory and legacy after her death; the survival of a drug-addicted and self-destructive younger generation; and by extension, collective and ecological survival. Never marked by nihilism or despair, Maraini’s narratives offer the ethos of reconstruction as a variation on the “begin again” that marks the end of many of her novels and, as we can see in Colomba, her own aesthetic process of renewal and regeneration. This book focuses primarily on Il treno per Helsinki (1984), Isolina (1985), some of her short stories for children, La nave per Kobe: Diari giapponesi di mia madre (2001), Buio (Strega Literary Prize, 1999), and Colomba (2004).

Gadda and Beckett: Storytelling, Subjectivity and Fracture

Gadda and Beckett: Storytelling, Subjectivity and Fracture PDF Author: Katrin Wehling-Giorgi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351191454
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
"While the writing of Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) is renowned for its linguistic and narrative proliferation, the best-known works of Samuel Beckett (1906-89) are minimalist, with a clear fondness for subtraction and abstraction. Despite these face-value differences, a close reading of the two authors' early prose writings reveals some surprisingly affinitive concerns, rooted in their profoundly troubled relationship with the literary medium and an unceasing struggle for expression of an incoherent reality and a similarly unfathomable self. Situating Gadda and Beckett at the heart of the debate of late European modernism, this study not only contests the position of'insularity' frequently ascribed to both authors by critical consensus, but it also rethinks some of Gadda's plurilingual and macaronic features by situating them in the context of the turn-of-the-century Sprachkrise, or crisis of language. In a close analysis of the primary texts which engages with the latest findings in empirical research, Wehling-Giorgi casts fresh light on the central notions of textual and linguistic fragmentation and provides a new post-Lacanian analysis of the fractured self in Gadda's and Beckett's narrative."

Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions

Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions PDF Author: Ryan Calabretta-Sajder
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1683930193
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Noted as a ‘civil poet’ by Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini was a creative and philosophical genius whose works challenged generations of Western Europeans and Americans to reconsider not only issues regarding the self, but also various social concerns. Pasolini’s works touched and continues to inspire students, scholars, and intellectuals alike to question the status quo. This collection of thirteen articles and two interviews evidences the on-going discourse around Pasolini’s lasting impressions on the new generation. Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions: Death, Eros and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini thus explores the civic poet’s oeuvre in four parts: poetry, theatre, film, and culture. Although the collection does not include every genre in which Pasolini wrote, it addresses many, some which often receive little or no attention, particularly in Italian Studies of North America. The underlining theme of the book, ‘death, eros and literary enterprise’ intertwines these genres in a rather unique way, allowing for inter-disciplinary interpretations to Pasolini’s rich opus. The edited volume concludes with two artists, Dacia Maraini and Ominio71’s reflections on Pasolini in the 21st century. In fact, the cover represents a recent work on Ominio71 underscoring Pasolini’s visual presence still within the Roman walls. In conclusion, this collection demonstrates how his works still influence contemporary Italian society and motivate intellectual dialogue through new theoretical outlooks on Pasolini’s oeuvre.

The Art of Objects

The Art of Objects PDF Author: Luca Cottini
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487502834
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The Art of Objects explores the experimental encounter of arts and industry in Italy at the turn of the 20th century, tracing the origins of the Italian culture of design in the social and aesthetic construction of the age's most iconic industrial objects.

Representing Italy Through Food

Representing Italy Through Food PDF Author: Peter Naccarato
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474280439
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Italy has long been romanticized as an idyllic place. Italian food and foodways play an important part in this romanticization – from bountiful bowls of fresh pasta to bottles of Tuscan wine. While such images oversimplify the complex reality of modern Italy, they are central to how Italy is imagined by Italians and non-Italians alike. Representing Italy through Food is the first book to examine how these perceptions are constructed, sustained, promoted, and challenged. Recognizing the power of representations to construct reality, the book explores how Italian food and foodways are represented across the media – from literature to film and television, from cookbooks to social media, and from marketing campaigns to advertisements. Bringing together established scholars such as Massimo Montanari and Ken Albala with emerging scholars in the field, the thirteen chapters offer new perspectives on Italian food and culture. Featuring both local and global perspectives – which examine Italian food in the United States, Australia and Israel – the book reveals the power of representations across historical, geographic, socio-economic, and cultural boundaries and asks if there is anything that makes Italy unique. An important contribution to our understanding of the enduring power of Italy, Italian culture and Italian food – both in Italy and beyond. Essential reading for students and scholars in food studies, Italian studies, media studies, and cultural studies.

Deconstructing the Model in 20th and 21st-Century Italian Experimental Writings

Deconstructing the Model in 20th and 21st-Century Italian Experimental Writings PDF Author: Beppe Cavatorta
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527538699
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Through a series of original analyses of experimental works that exist well outside of the established territory inhabited by the Italian literary canon, or which purposely position themselves at its margins, this volume proposes a new way to understand the goals of literary experimentation as a means to break the canon and give literature the same freedom that is easily granted to other arts. This serves to allow literature itself to intersect with those other art forms, while enhancing the powerful and positive outcomes of literary experimentation. Specifically, the volume explores a series of 20th- and 21st-century Italian works that are characterized by a non-normative approach to language or the act of writing itself. The contributors, while addressing diverse writers, and often even adopting different theoretical interpretations of experimentalism itself, all analyze the intersection between experimental literatures and other art forms, as well as cross-disciplinary and non-traditional approaches to the theme of experimentation.