1,720,980 research outputs found
Ethos and answerability in the novelized epic: passional readings of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, David Jones's In Parenthesis, and Chenjerai Hove's Bones
Get PDFThis study proposes an approach to a solution for the problem of the perceived ���separatedness��� of language from reality which employs the rhetorical concept of ethos, the doctrinal concept of the Chalcedonian definition of the nature of the incarnated Christ, and Mikhail Bakhtin���s notion of ���answerability.��� As an alternative to theories of reading and interpretation based on the arbitrariness of linguistic meaning, radical skepticism, and the death of the author, the approach defined in this study emphasizes affirmation of the centrality of the human person and the necessity of close, loving attention as the grounds of both aesthetic vision and ethical action. Developing three exemplary readings of novelized epics including Elizabeth Barrett Browning���s Aurora Leigh, David Jones���s In Parenthesis, and Chenjerai Hove���s Bones, the study demonstrates how loving, careful attention to ethos���the definition of which is expanded to include relationships between language and character in literary works, genres, characters, authors, and teachers���is the prerequisite for answerability in literary relationships. Whether one is primarily interested in authors, characters, genres, canon, readers, or critical reception, attention to ethos illuminates the ways in which responses to literary works are conditioned by and analogous to responses to persons. The complex and irreducible relationships between the ���word��� and the ���person��� require an individual answerability for which there is no alibi. Ultimately, the ���word��� and the ���world��� are united in the answerable person, whether that person is an author, a character, a reader, a critic or a teacher
Secret agonies, hidden wolves, leper-sins: the personal pains and prostitutes of Dickens, Trollope, and Gaskell
Get PDFThis dissertation explores the ways in which Charles Dickens writes Nancy in Oliver Twist, Anthony Trollope writes Carry Brattle in The Vicar of Bullhampton, and Elizabeth Gaskell writes Esther in Mary Barton to represent and examine some very personal and painful anxiety. About Dickens and Trollope, I contend that they turn their experiences of shame into their prostitute's shame. For Gaskell, I assert that the experience she projects onto her prostitute is that of her own maternal grief in isolation. Further, I argue that these authors self-consciously create biographical parallels between themselves and their prostitutes with an eye to drawing conclusions about the results of their anxieties, both for their prostitutes and, by proxy, for themselves. In Chapter II, I assert that in Nancy, Dickens writes himself and his sense of shame at his degradation and exploitation in Warren's Blacking Factory. This shame resulted in a Dickens divided, split between his successful, public persona and his secret, mortifying shame. Both shame and its divisiveness he represents in a number of ways in Nancy. In Chapter III, I contend that Trollope laces Carry Brattle with some of his own biographical details from his early adult years in London. These parallels signify Carry's personal importance to her author, and reveal her silences and her subordinate role in the text as representative of Trollope's own understanding and fear of shame and its consequences: its silencing and paralyzing nature, and its inescapability. In Chapter IV, I posit that Gaskell identifies herself with Esther, and that through her, Gaskell explores three personal things: her sorrow over the loss of not one but three of her seven children, her possible guilt over these deaths, and her emotional isolation in her marriage as she grieved alone. In her creation of Esther, Gaskell creates a way both to isolate her grief and to forge a close companion to share it, thus enabling her to examine and work through grief. In Chapter V, I examine the preface of each novel and find that these, too, reflect each author's identification with and investment of anxiety in his or her particular prostitute
Byron���s Don Juan: Forms of Publication, Meanings, and Money
Get PDFThis dissertation examines Byron's Don Juan and his attitude towards profits from the copyright money for publishing his poems. Recent studies on Don Juan and Byron have paid great attention to the poem especially in terms of the author's status as an unprecedented noble literary celebrity. Thus the hermeneutics of the poem has very often had a tendency to bind itself within the biographical understanding of the poet's socio-political practices. It is true that these studies are meaningful in that they highlighted and reconsidered the significance of the author's unique life so as to
illustrate biographical and historical contexts of this Romantic text. Admitting the significance of the biographical approach, however, the current dissertation also argues that an interpretation of a literary work should consider a number of outside influences that affect the meaning of a text, which is in and of itself a creation of historical, political, economic, and material aspects of a specific time and place, not merely of an individual author.
After the theoretical background suggested in Chapter I, Chapter II emphasizes the history of the publication of the first two cantos and investigates John Murray's publishing practices. Chapter III addresses some of the external influences on the reading of Don Juan to show that non-political content of the early five cantos came to be treated as politically radical by the voluntary and involuntary association of Byron and his work with radical publishers such as Leigh Hunt and William Hone. Chapter IV is a study of the new cantos of Don Juan (from the sixth canto). Focusing on Byron's political stance which gradually developed from his early liberalism into a more radical activism, this chapter explores Percy Shelley's influence on Byron's political ideas, the new cantos of Don Juan, and Byron's use of radical satire to instigate the fight against tyranny. Chapter V investigates Byron's attitude towards the profits he earned from the copyright of his poems to argue that Byron?s attitude towards his brain-money gradually changed from an ambiguous position to a strong insistence on obtaining what he perceived to be fair payments for his poems
Imitative sequel writing: divine breathings, second part of the Pilgrim's Progress, and the case of T. S. (aka Thomas Sherman)
Get PDFDuring the period between 1640 and 1700, over forty works were produced by authors identifying themselves as ���T. S.��� In the field of early modern literary studies, one T. S. has been particularly important to scholars because of this author���s imitative version of John Bunyan���s popular allegory titled The Second Part of the Pilgrim���s Progress (1682). This work by T. S., who has become known as Thomas Sherman, achieves minor success and prompts Bunyan to write his own authentic sequel. My research has uncovered an attribution history that identifies four additional texts���Divine Breathings (circa 1671); Youth���s Tragedy (1671); Youth���s Comedy (1680); Divine Breathings, the Second Part (1680)���and credits all of them to a Thomas Sherman. Of the five works attributed to this author, the most impressive printing history belongs to the earliest offering, Divine Breathings, or a Pious Soul Thirsting after Christ in a Hundred Pathetical Meditations, which appears in over 60 printings from 1671 to 1883 in England, Scotland, and North America. My research scrutinizes this attribution history and raises questions about identifying this T. S. as Thomas Sherman. Based on internal and external evidence, I argue that T. S. is not the author of Divine Breathings but establishes his authorial identity as an imitative writer who actively participates in the genre of Protestant meditational literature by providing sequels (i.e., Divine Breathings ���the Second Part and Second Part of the Pilgrim���s Progress)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The ambiente of five Latin American novels by Graham Greene
No full textTypescript (photocopy).Graham Greene has written five novels with distinctly Latin American setting: The Power and the Glory, set mainly in the rural Mexico of the 1930's; Our Man in Havana, focusing chiefly on Havana just prior to the Castro rebellion; The Comedians, depicting Haiti during early Duvalier days; Travels with My Aunt, concluding in Stroessner's Paraguay; and The Honorary Consul, between Peron's two administrations in Argentina. In this Latin American canon, Greene employs both natural and man-made ambiente (the Spanish equivalent of "ambiance") to support his theme, characters, and/or plot. Beyond indicating duration, Greene uses time to indicate both distance and a suspenseful sense of countdown, the shortness of life, and governmental control. His use of climate accurately indicates two basic Latin American seasons: hot, dry summers and rainy, warm winters. His accurate description of geographical location and topography levels how place can function to show demarcation, a pathway, or either positive or negative stasis. Greene's inclusion of vegetation reveals both the occasional barrenness and the typical lush density of much of Latin America. Greene's emphasis on huts in contrast with his brief descriptions of middle and upper-class housing attests to a society dominated by poverty while his description of commercial buildings indicates a society where commerce is still somewhat scarce and industry, almost nonexistent. Both the architecture of some of these buildings as well as of the statuaries indicate an historical past for the region. The conveyances he describes show modest European vehicles contrasting to the showy, old Cadillacs representing misdirected American aid. All of this ambiente is a natural outgrowth of the rich British and European tradition to which Greene has been exposed as well as of his extensive travel in Latin America. He creates his ambiente more often through cataloging than detailed description. Making conscious choices of details, including what he thinks his audience either needs or wants to know, Greene demonstrates an acute audience awareness as well as a desire to provide realistic, credible scenery
- …
