Modern Epic

Modern Epic PDF Author: Franco Moretti
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859849347
Category : Epic literature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Having coined a new term modern epic, the author analyses the phenomenon, & attempts to situate the works of e.g. Joyce, Proust & Musil within our literary tradition.

Modern Epic

Modern Epic PDF Author: Franco Moretti
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859849347
Category : Epic literature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Having coined a new term modern epic, the author analyses the phenomenon, & attempts to situate the works of e.g. Joyce, Proust & Musil within our literary tradition.

The Lyrical in Epic Time

The Lyrical in Epic Time PDF Author: David Der-wei Wang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023153857X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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Book Description
In this book, David Der-wei Wang uses the lyrical to rethink the dynamics of Chinese modernity. Although the form may seem unusual for representing China's social and political crises in the mid-twentieth century, Wang contends that national cataclysm and mass movements intensified Chinese lyricism in extraordinary ways. Wang calls attention to the form's vigor and variety at an unlikely juncture in Chinese history and the precarious consequences it brought about: betrayal, self-abjuration, suicide, and silence. Despite their divergent backgrounds and commitments, the writers, artists, and intellectuals discussed in this book all took lyricism as a way to explore selfhood in relation to solidarity, the role of the artist in history, and the potential for poetry to illuminate crisis. They experimented with poetry, fiction, film, intellectual treatise, political manifesto, painting, calligraphy, and music. Western critics, Wang shows, also used lyricism to critique their perilous, epic time. He reads Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Cleanth Brooks, and Paul de Man, among others, to complete his portrait. The Chinese case only further intensifies the permeable nature of lyrical discourse, forcing us to reengage with the dominant role of revolution and enlightenment in shaping Chinese—and global—modernity. Wang's remarkable survey reestablishes Chinese lyricism's deep roots in its own native traditions, along with Western influences, and realizes the relevance of such a lyrical calling of the past century to our time.

Gilgamesh among Us

Gilgamesh among Us PDF Author: Theodore Ziolkowski
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801463424
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The world's oldest work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the adventures of the semimythical Sumerian king of Uruk and his ultimately futile quest for immortality after the death of his friend and companion, Enkidu, a wildman sent by the gods. Gilgamesh was deified by the Sumerians around 2500 BCE, and his tale as we know it today was codified in cuneiform tablets around 1750 BCE and continued to influence ancient cultures—whether in specific incidents like a world-consuming flood or in its quest structure—into Roman times. The epic was, however, largely forgotten, until the cuneiform tablets were rediscovered in 1872 in the British Museum's collection of recently unearthed Mesopotamian artifacts. In the decades that followed its translation into modern languages, the Epic of Gilgamesh has become a point of reference throughout Western culture. In Gilgamesh among Us, Theodore Ziolkowski explores the surprising legacy of the poem and its hero, as well as the epic’s continuing influence in modern letters and arts. This influence extends from Carl Gustav Jung and Rainer Maria Rilke's early embrace of the epic's significance—"Gilgamesh is tremendous!" Rilke wrote to his publisher's wife after reading it—to its appropriation since World War II in contexts as disparate as operas and paintings, the poetry of Charles Olson and Louis Zukofsky, novels by John Gardner and Philip Roth, and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Xena: Warrior Princess. Ziolkowski sees fascination with Gilgamesh as a reflection of eternal spiritual values—love, friendship, courage, and the fear and acceptance of death. Noted writers, musicians, and artists from Sweden to Spain, from the United States to Australia, have adapted the story in ways that meet the social and artistic trends of the times. The spirit of this capacious hero has absorbed the losses felt in the immediate postwar period and been infused with the excitement and optimism of movements for gay rights, feminism, and environmental consciousness. Gilgamesh is at once a seismograph of shifts in Western history and culture and a testament to the verities and values of the ancient epic.

Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World

Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World PDF Author: Margaret Beissinger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520210387
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Fourteen essays on epic, oral and literary, from ancient to modern, from the Americas to India.

American Modern(ist) Epic

American Modern(ist) Epic PDF Author: Adam Nemmers
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1949979679
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
American Modern(ist) Epic argues that during the 1920s and ‘30s a cadre of minority novelists revitalized the classic epic form in an effort to recast the United States according to modern, diverse, and pluralistic grounds. Rather than adhere to the reification of static culture (as did ancient verse epic), in their prose epics Gertrude Stein and John Dos Passos utilized recursion, bricolage, and polyphony to represent the multifarious immediacy and movement of the modern world. Meanwhile, H. T. Tsiang and Richard Wright created absurd and insipid anti-heroes for their epics, contesting the hegemony of Anglo and capitalist dominance in the United States. In all, I posit, these modern(ist) epic novels undermined and revised the foundational ideology of the United States, contesting notions of individualism, progress, and racial hegemony while modernizing the epic form in an effort to refound the nation. The marriage of this classical form to modernist principles produced transcendent literature and offered a strenuous challenge to the interwar status quo, yet ultimately proved a failure: longstanding American ideology was simply too fixed and widespread to be entirely dislodged.

The Lyrical and the Epic

The Lyrical and the Epic PDF Author: Jaroslav Průšek
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Examines 20th century (especially post-revolutionary) Chinese literature in reference to the traditions and continuity of classical Chinese literature. The method is of interest to both Sinologists and those interested in methods for critical study of comparative literature.

The Bad Guys in Attack of the Zittens (The Bad Guys #4)

The Bad Guys in Attack of the Zittens (The Bad Guys #4) PDF Author: Aaron Blabey
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 1338087541
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! "I wish I'd had these books as a kid. Hilarious!" -- Dav Pilkey, creator of Captain Underpants and Dog ManThey may look like Bad Guys, but these wannabe heroes are doing good deeds...whether you like it or not! This New York Times bestselling illustrated series is perfect for fans of Dog Man and Captain Underpants.It's a zombie kitten apocalypse!Can the Bad Guys save the world from evil Dr. Marmalade's meowing monsters?!? They'll need help from foxy Agent Fox, a swampy secret zombie antidote, and the feistiest, toothiest, hungriest granny around. Get ready to watch the fur fly!

The German Epic in the Cold War

The German Epic in the Cold War PDF Author: Matthew D. Miller
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810137348
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Matthew Miller’s The German Epic in the Cold War explores the literary evolution of the modern epic in postwar German literature. Examining works by Peter Weiss, Uwe Johnson, and Alexander Kluge, it illustrates imaginative artistic responses in German fiction to the physical and ideological division of post–World War II Germany. Miller analyzes three ambitious German-language epics from the second half of the twentieth century: Weiss’s Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (The Aesthetics of Resistance), Johnson’s Jahrestage (Anniversaries), and Kluge’s Chronik der Gefühle (Chronicle of Feelings). In them, he traces the epic’s unlikely reemergence after the catastrophes of World War II and the Shoah and its continuity across the historical watershed of 1989–91, defined by German unification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Building on Franco Moretti’s codification of the literary form of the modern epic, Miller demonstrates the epic’s ability to understand the past; to come to terms with ethical, social, and political challenges in the second half of the twentieth century in German-speaking Europe and beyond; and to debate and envision possible futures.

Wall Street Wars

Wall Street Wars PDF Author: Richard Farley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1941393845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration set out to radically remake America’s financial system—but Wall Street was determined to stop them. In 1933, the American economy was in shambles, battered by the 1929 stock market crash and limping from the effects of the Great Depression. But the incoming administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected on a wave of anxiety and hope, stormed Washington on a promise to save the American economy—and remake the entire American financial system. It was the opening salvo in a long war between Wall Street and Washington. Author Richard Farley takes a unique and detailed look at the pitched battles that followed—the fist fights, the circus-like stunts, the conmen and crooks, and the unlikely heroes—and shaped American capitalism. With a disparate cast of characters including Joseph P. Kennedy, J.P. Morgan, Huey Long, Babe Ruth, and Henry Ford (who refused to bail out his son’s bank, thus precipitating the meltdown of the entire banking system), Farley vividly traces the history of modern American finance and the establishment of a financial system still bitterly debated on Capitol Hill.

Spenser, Milton, and the Redemption of the Epic Hero

Spenser, Milton, and the Redemption of the Epic Hero PDF Author: Christopher Bond
Publisher: University of Delaware
ISBN: 1611490677
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book studies the interplay of theology and poetics in the three great epics of early modern England, the Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained. Bond examines how Spenser and Milton adapted the pattern of dual heroism developed in classical and Medieval works. Challenging the opposition between 'Calvinist,' 'allegorical' Spenser and 'Arminian,' 'dramatic' Milton, this book offers a new understanding of their doctrinal and literary affinities within the European epic tradition.