The Dark Landscape of Modern Fiction

The Dark Landscape of Modern Fiction PDF Author: Patrick Reilly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351770551
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2003. This text explores the "dark, pessimistic truth that pervades the pages of modern texts", setting a theme of Dante's "Inferno" against the work of modern authors including Dostoyevsky, Hardy, Conrad, Wharton, Kafka, Camus, Waugh and Flannery O'Connor. The author's thesis is that these writers exhibit a hostility towards the reader, an anger that the reader should continue to be so deludedly happy when the writer has become so mortifyingly enlightened. At its most characteristic, Reilly demonstrates, modern fiction seems to achieve a savage satisfaction in inflicting this pain, to an extent that could be described as sadistic. Reilly traces what he calls this "punitive spirit" to a character in the "Inferno", Vanni Fucci, who suffering himself does his best to make Dante suffer too. Through the study he uses the "Inferno" as a guide to the prevailing attitudes in modern fiction, revealing a parallel between the prohibition of pity within the medieval poem and in the pages of modern texts.

The Dark Landscape of Modern Fiction

The Dark Landscape of Modern Fiction PDF Author: Patrick Reilly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135177056X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2003. This text explores the "dark, pessimistic truth that pervades the pages of modern texts", setting a theme of Dante's "Inferno" against the work of modern authors including Dostoyevsky, Hardy, Conrad, Wharton, Kafka, Camus, Waugh and Flannery O'Connor. The author's thesis is that these writers exhibit a hostility towards the reader, an anger that the reader should continue to be so deludedly happy when the writer has become so mortifyingly enlightened. At its most characteristic, Reilly demonstrates, modern fiction seems to achieve a savage satisfaction in inflicting this pain, to an extent that could be described as sadistic. Reilly traces what he calls this "punitive spirit" to a character in the "Inferno", Vanni Fucci, who suffering himself does his best to make Dante suffer too. Through the study he uses the "Inferno" as a guide to the prevailing attitudes in modern fiction, revealing a parallel between the prohibition of pity within the medieval poem and in the pages of modern texts.

Kantian Antitheodicy

Kantian Antitheodicy PDF Author: Sami Pihlström
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319408836
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant’s 1791 “Theodicy Essay” and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including “Jewish” post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The authors argue that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka’s The Trial, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism.

Modernist Fiction

Modernist Fiction PDF Author: R.W. Stevenson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317903382
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In the revised edition of this popular text, Randall Stevenson has expanded, re-emphasised and amended his work to make it even more relevant to today's student studying the Modernist period in literature. The book covers a wide range of modernist novelists and novels, and also provides an invaluable guide to key developments in the genre. Stevenson has developed his text by adding a discussion of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which is now taught more regularly than Lord Jim. In addition he takes a fresh look at the politics of the Modernists, in conjunction with the politics of their texts, pointing out the drawbacks of politically-progressive readings of many modernist novels. Finally, in the section on gender, Stevenson includes discussions of such significant figures as Djuna Barnes, HD, Katherine Mansfield and Rebecca West, as well as expanding the reference to Gertrude Stein throughout. The revisions in this updated text serve to make the authors' arguments sharper and allow the text to remain central to the discussion of modernism, modernity and the novel.

French XX Bibliography

French XX Bibliography PDF Author: William H. Thompson
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
ISBN: 9781575910970
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Provides the most complete listing available of books, articles, and book reviews concerned with French literature since 1885. The bibliography is divided into three major divisions: general studies, author subjects (arranged alphabetically), and cinema. This book is for the study of French literature and culture.

Bibliographic Index

Bibliographic Index PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliographical literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1138

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Book Description


Resisting Dialogue

Resisting Dialogue PDF Author: Juan Meneses
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452959811
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
A bold new critique of dialogue as a method of eliminating dissent Is dialogue always the productive political and communicative tool it is widely conceived to be? Resisting Dialogue reassesses our assumptions about dialogue and, in so doing, about what a politically healthy society should look like. Juan Meneses argues that, far from an unalloyed good, dialogue often serves as a subtle tool of domination, perpetuating the underlying inequalities it is intended to address. Meneses investigates how “illusory dialogue” (a particular dialogic encounter designed to secure consensus) is employed as an instrument that forestalls—instead of fostering—articulations of dissent that lead to political change. He does so through close readings of novels from the English-speaking world written in the past hundred years—from E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion to Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and more. Resisting Dialogue demonstrates how these novels are rhetorical exercises with real political clout capable of restoring the radical potential of dialogue in today’s globalized world. Expanding the boundaries of postpolitical theory, Meneses reveals how these works offer ways to practice disagreement against this regulatory use of dialogue and expose the pitfalls of certain other dialogic interventions in relation to some of the most prominent questions of modern history: cosmopolitanism at the end of empire, the dangers of rewriting the historical record, the affective dimension of neoliberalism, the racial and nationalist underpinnings of the “war on terror,” and the visibility of environmental violence in the Anthropocene. Ultimately, Resisting Dialogue is a complex, provocative critique that, melding political and literary theory, reveals how fiction can help confront the deployment of dialogue to preempt the emergence of dissent and, thus, revitalize the practice of emancipatory politics.

The Wounded Hero in Contemporary Fiction

The Wounded Hero in Contemporary Fiction PDF Author: Susana Onega
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429000057
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
The Wounded Hero in Contemporary Fiction tracks the emergence of a new type of physically and/or spiritually wounded hero(ine) in contemporary fiction. Editors, Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteu bring together some of the top minds in the field to explore the paradoxical lives of these heroes that have embraced, rather than overcome, their suffering, alienation and marginalisation as a form of self-definition.

Contemporary Fiction

Contemporary Fiction PDF Author: Jago Morrison
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415194556
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
A much-needed introduction to the field of contemporary fiction studies. Introduces key areas of debate and offers in-depth discussions of the most significant texts. An ideal guide for those studying contemporary fiction for the first time.

Multimodal Poetics in Contemporary Fiction

Multimodal Poetics in Contemporary Fiction PDF Author: Thomas Mantzaris
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031688732
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description