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Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism (Continuum Literary Studies)
by Stephen J. BurnJonathan Franzen is one of the most influential, critically-significant and popular contemporary American novelists. This book is the first full-length study of his work and attempts to articulate where American fiction is headed after postmodernism. Stephen Burn provides a comprehensive analysis of each of Franzen's novels - from his early work to the major success of The Corrections - identifying key sources, delineating important narrative strategies, and revealing how Franzen's themes are reinforced by each novel's structure. Supplementing this analysis with comparisons to key contemporaries, David Foster Wallace and Richard Powers, Burn suggests how Franzen's work is indicative of the direction of experimental American fiction in the wake of the so-called end of postmodernism.
Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism (Continuum Literary Studies)
by Stephen J. BurnJonathan Franzen is one of the most influential, critically-significant and popular contemporary American novelists. This book is the first full-length study of his work and attempts to articulate where American fiction is headed after postmodernism. Stephen Burn provides a comprehensive analysis of each of Franzen's novels - from his early work to the major success of The Corrections - identifying key sources, delineating important narrative strategies, and revealing how Franzen's themes are reinforced by each novel's structure. Supplementing this analysis with comparisons to key contemporaries, David Foster Wallace and Richard Powers, Burn suggests how Franzen's work is indicative of the direction of experimental American fiction in the wake of the so-called end of postmodernism.
Jonathan Lethem and the Galaxy of Writing (New Horizons in Contemporary Writing)
by Joseph BrookerAuthor of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem is one of the most celebrated and significant American writers working today. This new scholarly study draws on a deep knowledge of all Lethem's work to explore the range of his writing, from his award-winning fiction to his work in comics and criticism. Reading Lethem in relation to five themes crucial to his work, Joseph Brooker considers influence and intertextuality; the role of genres such as crime, science fiction and the Western; the imaginative production of worlds; superheroes and comic book traditions; and the representation of New York City. Close readings of Lethem's fiction are contextualized by reference to broader conceptual and comparative frames, as well as to Lethem's own voluminous non-fictional writing and his adaptation of precursors from Franz Kafka to Raymond Chandler. Rich in critical insight, Jonathan Lethem and the Galaxy of Writing demonstrates how an understanding of this author illuminates contemporary literature and culture at large.
Jonathan Lethem and the Galaxy of Writing (New Horizons in Contemporary Writing)
by Joseph BrookerAuthor of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem is one of the most celebrated and significant American writers working today. This new scholarly study draws on a deep knowledge of all Lethem's work to explore the range of his writing, from his award-winning fiction to his work in comics and criticism. Reading Lethem in relation to five themes crucial to his work, Joseph Brooker considers influence and intertextuality; the role of genres such as crime, science fiction and the Western; the imaginative production of worlds; superheroes and comic book traditions; and the representation of New York City. Close readings of Lethem's fiction are contextualized by reference to broader conceptual and comparative frames, as well as to Lethem's own voluminous non-fictional writing and his adaptation of precursors from Franz Kafka to Raymond Chandler. Rich in critical insight, Jonathan Lethem and the Galaxy of Writing demonstrates how an understanding of this author illuminates contemporary literature and culture at large.
Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
by Leo DamroschJonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions? In this deeply researched biography, Leo Damrosch draws on discoveries made over the past thirty years to tell the story of Swift’s life anew. Probing holes in the existing evidence, he takes seriously some daring speculations about Swift’s parentage, love life, and various personal relationships and shows how Swift’s public version of his life—the one accepted until recently—was deliberately misleading. Swift concealed aspects of himself and his relationships, and other people in his life helped to keep his secrets.. Assembling suggestive clues, Damrosch re-narrates the events of Swift’s life while making vivid the sights, sounds, and smells of his English and Irish surroundings.Through his own words and those of a wide circle of friends, a complex Swift emerges: a restless, combative, empathetic figure, a man of biting wit and powerful mind, and a major figure in the history of world letters.
Jonathan Swift: A Literary Life (Literary Lives)
by Joseph McMinnThis biography emphasises the extraordinary versatility and resourcefulness of a lifetime spent serving the public interest with the pen. At the same time, it shows Swift's distinctive love of writing for personal entertainment and diversion, with little or no interest in publication. While remaining a fiercely committed writer, he always tried to preserve, especially in his poetry and letters, a literature dedicated to friendship. Swift's literary career comprises much more than the well-known satires.
Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel
by John StubbsBorn in Ireland in 1667, Jonathan Swift defiantly clung to his Englishness. He refused to relinquish this attachment even as corruption and injustice gradually led him to turn against the English government. In a long life, Swift proved a reluctant rebel, though one with a relish for the fight, and implacable when provoked - a voice of withering disenchantment unrivalled in English. But he was also an inspired humorist, a beloved companion, a conscientious Anglican minister, as well as a hoaxer and a teller of tales. His anger against abuses of power would produce the most famous satire of the English language - Gulliver's Travels as well as the Drapier Papers and the unparallelled Modest Proposal, in which he imagined the poor of Ireland farming their infants for the tables of wealthy colonists.John Stubbs' biography sets out to capture the dirt and beauty of a world that Swift both scorned and sought to amend. It follows Swift through his many battles, for and against authority, and in his many contradictions, as a priest who sought to uphold the dogma of his church; as a man who was quite prepared to defy convention, not least in his unshakeable attachment to an unmarried woman, his 'Stella'; and as a writer whose vision showed that no single creed holds all of the answers.
Jonathan Swift (Longman Critical Readers)
by Nigel WoodThis collection of critical thinking situates the satire of Jonathan Swift within both its eighteenth-century contexts and our modern anxieties about personal identity and communication. Augustan satire at its most provocative is not simply concerned with the public matters of politics or religion, but also offers a precise medium in which to express the paradox of ironic detachment amidst deep conviction. The critics chosen for this volume demonstrate the complexity of Swift's work. Its four sections explore matters of authorial identity, the relation between Swift's writing and its historical context, the full range of his comments on gender, and his deployment of metaphor and irony to engage the reader. Swift has often been regarded as a writer who anticipated many twentieth-century cultural preoccupations, and this volume provides an opportunity to test just how modern he actually was. It also provides an answer to those who would wish to simplify his writing as that of Tory and misogynist. The theoretical perspectives of the contributors are lucidly explained and their critical terms located in the wider contexts of contemporary theory in the introduction and headnotes. The volume places Swift historically within the philosophical and religious traditions of eighteenth-century thought.
Jonathan Swift (Longman Critical Readers)
by Nigel WoodThis collection of critical thinking situates the satire of Jonathan Swift within both its eighteenth-century contexts and our modern anxieties about personal identity and communication. Augustan satire at its most provocative is not simply concerned with the public matters of politics or religion, but also offers a precise medium in which to express the paradox of ironic detachment amidst deep conviction. The critics chosen for this volume demonstrate the complexity of Swift's work. Its four sections explore matters of authorial identity, the relation between Swift's writing and its historical context, the full range of his comments on gender, and his deployment of metaphor and irony to engage the reader. Swift has often been regarded as a writer who anticipated many twentieth-century cultural preoccupations, and this volume provides an opportunity to test just how modern he actually was. It also provides an answer to those who would wish to simplify his writing as that of Tory and misogynist. The theoretical perspectives of the contributors are lucidly explained and their critical terms located in the wider contexts of contemporary theory in the introduction and headnotes. The volume places Swift historically within the philosophical and religious traditions of eighteenth-century thought.
Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture Myth, Media and the Man: Myth, Media, and the Man
by A. KellyAnn Kelly's provocative book breaks the mold of Swift studies. Twentieth century Swift scholars have tended to assess Jonathan Swift as a pillar of the eighteenth-century 'republic of letter', a conservative, even reactionary voice upholding classical values against the welling tide of popularization in literature. Kelly looks at Swift instead as a practical exponent of the popular and impressario of the literary image. She argues that Swift turned his back on the elite to write for a popular audience, and that he annexed scandals to his fictionalized print alter ego, creating a continual demand for works by or about this self-mythologized figure. A fascinating look at print culture, the commodification of the author, and the history of popular culture, this book should provoke lots of discussion.
Jonathan Swift in Context (Literature in Context)
by Joseph Hone Pat RogersJonathan Swift remains the most important and influential satirist in the English language. The author of Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Tale of a Tub, in addition to vast numbers of political pamphlets, satirical verses, sermons, and other kinds of text, Swift is one of the most versatile writers in the literary canon. His writings were always closely intertwined with the English and Irish worlds in which he lived. The forty-four essays collected in Jonathan Swift in Context advance the latest research on Swift in a way that will engage undergraduate students while also remaining useful for scholars. Reflecting the best of current and ongoing scholarship, the contextual approach advanced by this volume will help to make Swift's works even more powerful and resonant to modern audiences.
Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women
by Louise BarnettJonathan Swift was the subject of gossip and criticism in his own time concerning his relations with women and his representations of them in his writings. For over twenty years he regarded Esther Johnson, "Stella," as "his most valuable friend," yet he is reputed never to have seen her alone. From his time to our own there has been speculation that the two were secretly married--since their relationship seemed so inexplicable then and now. For thirteen of the years that Swift seemed committed to Stella as the acknowledged woman in his life, he maintained a clandestine--but apparently also nonsexual--relationship with another woman, Esther Van Homrigh, or "Vanessa." Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women looks again at these much-examined relationships and at others that reveal Swift as a man who enjoyed the company of a number of women as pupils and as ministrants to his various needs. Swift, a man with a complex private life, was also a writer whose satiric portraits of women could be unsparing. While Swift often criticized women for frivolous pastimes and idle chatter, his most notorious texts on women image their bodies as loathsome: as he once wrote in a serious political tract, a woman is a "nauseous, unwholesome carcass." Such representations cross a line by showing a repugnance for women as a sex, the biological other. They have led, not surprisingly, to repeated charges of misogyny, an issue that Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women addresses at some length. This first book-length treatment of Swift and women comprehensively examines Swift's attitude toward women in all their manifestations in his work and life: as intimates, acquaintances, protégés, wives, mothers, nurses, disobedient daughters, young women who marry older men, and--finally--as poets and critics.
Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women
by Louise BarnettJonathan Swift was the subject of gossip and criticism in his own time concerning his relations with women and his representations of them in his writings. For over twenty years he regarded Esther Johnson, "Stella," as "his most valuable friend," yet he is reputed never to have seen her alone. From his time to our own there has been speculation that the two were secretly married--since their relationship seemed so inexplicable then and now. For thirteen of the years that Swift seemed committed to Stella as the acknowledged woman in his life, he maintained a clandestine--but apparently also nonsexual--relationship with another woman, Esther Van Homrigh, or "Vanessa." Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women looks again at these much-examined relationships and at others that reveal Swift as a man who enjoyed the company of a number of women as pupils and as ministrants to his various needs. Swift, a man with a complex private life, was also a writer whose satiric portraits of women could be unsparing. While Swift often criticized women for frivolous pastimes and idle chatter, his most notorious texts on women image their bodies as loathsome: as he once wrote in a serious political tract, a woman is a "nauseous, unwholesome carcass." Such representations cross a line by showing a repugnance for women as a sex, the biological other. They have led, not surprisingly, to repeated charges of misogyny, an issue that Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women addresses at some length. This first book-length treatment of Swift and women comprehensively examines Swift's attitude toward women in all their manifestations in his work and life: as intimates, acquaintances, prot?g?s, wives, mothers, nurses, disobedient daughters, young women who marry older men, and--finally--as poets and critics.
Jonson, Shakespeare, and Aristotle on Comedy (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
by Jonathan GoossenJonson, Shakespeare, and Aristotle on Comedy relates new understandings of Aristotle’s dramatic theory to the comedy of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. Typically, scholars of Renaissance drama have treated Aristotle’s theory only as a possible historical influence on Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s drama, focusing primarily on their tragedies. Yet recent classical scholarship has undone important misconceptions about Aristotle’s Poetics held by early modern commentators and fleshed out the theory of comedy latent within it. By first synthesizing these developments and then treating them as an interpretive theory, rather than simply an historical influence, this book demonstrates a remarkable consonance between Aristotelian principles of plot and its emotional effect, on the one hand, and the comedy of Shakespeare and Jonson, on the other. In doing so, it also reveals surprising similarities between these seemingly divergent dramatists.
Jonson, Shakespeare, and Aristotle on Comedy (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
by Jonathan GoossenJonson, Shakespeare, and Aristotle on Comedy relates new understandings of Aristotle’s dramatic theory to the comedy of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. Typically, scholars of Renaissance drama have treated Aristotle’s theory only as a possible historical influence on Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s drama, focusing primarily on their tragedies. Yet recent classical scholarship has undone important misconceptions about Aristotle’s Poetics held by early modern commentators and fleshed out the theory of comedy latent within it. By first synthesizing these developments and then treating them as an interpretive theory, rather than simply an historical influence, this book demonstrates a remarkable consonance between Aristotelian principles of plot and its emotional effect, on the one hand, and the comedy of Shakespeare and Jonson, on the other. In doing so, it also reveals surprising similarities between these seemingly divergent dramatists.
Jonson, the Poetomachia, and the Reformation of Renaissance Satire: Purging Satire (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)
by Jay SimonsDoes satire have the ability to effect social reform? If so, what satiric style is most effective in bringing about reform? This book explores how Renaissance poet and playwright Ben Jonson negotiated contemporary pressures to forge a satiric persona and style uniquely his own. These pressures were especially intense while Jonson was engaged in the Poetomachia, or Poets’ War (1598-1601), which pitted him against rival writers John Marston and Thomas Dekker. As a struggle between satiric styles, this conflict poses compelling questions about the nature and potential of satire during the Renaissance. In particular, this book explores how Jonson forged a moderate Horatian satiric style he championed as capable of effective social reform. As part of his distinctive model, Jonson turned to the metaphor of purging, in opposition to the metaphors of stinging, barking, biting, and whipping employed by his Juvenalian rivals. By integrating this conception of satire into his Horatian poetics, Jonson sought to avoid the pitfalls of the aggressive, violent style of his rivals while still effectively critiquing vice, upholding his model as a means for the reformation not only of society, but of satire itself.
Jonson, the Poetomachia, and the Reformation of Renaissance Satire: Purging Satire (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)
by Jay SimonsDoes satire have the ability to effect social reform? If so, what satiric style is most effective in bringing about reform? This book explores how Renaissance poet and playwright Ben Jonson negotiated contemporary pressures to forge a satiric persona and style uniquely his own. These pressures were especially intense while Jonson was engaged in the Poetomachia, or Poets’ War (1598-1601), which pitted him against rival writers John Marston and Thomas Dekker. As a struggle between satiric styles, this conflict poses compelling questions about the nature and potential of satire during the Renaissance. In particular, this book explores how Jonson forged a moderate Horatian satiric style he championed as capable of effective social reform. As part of his distinctive model, Jonson turned to the metaphor of purging, in opposition to the metaphors of stinging, barking, biting, and whipping employed by his Juvenalian rivals. By integrating this conception of satire into his Horatian poetics, Jonson sought to avoid the pitfalls of the aggressive, violent style of his rivals while still effectively critiquing vice, upholding his model as a means for the reformation not only of society, but of satire itself.
Jonson: Volpone (Shakespeare Handbooks)
by Marshall BotvinickOne of the blackest comedies ever written, Ben Jonson's Volpone is the masterpiece of a playwright all too frequently dismissed for being unnecessarily dark and academic. Merciless in its depiction of avarice, this rich and masterful play provokes both laughter and indignation in its audiences.This Handbook:• Provides in-depth analysis of the play, scene by scene and line by line • Examines the multitude of interpretations of Volpone throughout history, including both on stage and screen• Explores the critical discourse surrounding the play and summarises the social and literary forces that shaped Jonson's work
Jonson: Volpone (Shakespeare Handbooks)
by Marshall BotvinickOne of the blackest comedies ever written, Ben Jonson's Volpone is the masterpiece of a playwright all too frequently dismissed for being unnecessarily dark and academic. Merciless in its depiction of avarice, this rich and masterful play provokes both laughter and indignation in its audiences.This Handbook:- Provides in-depth analysis of the play, scene by scene and line by line - Examines the multitude of interpretations of Volpone throughout history, including both on stage and screen- Explores the critical discourse surrounding the play and summarises the social and literary forces that shaped Jonson's work
Jorge Amado: New Critical Essays
by Keith H. Brower Earl E. Fitz Enrique Martínez-VidalFirst published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Jorge Amado: New Critical Essays
by Earl Fitz Keith Brower Enrique Martinez-VidalFirst published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Analytic Philosophy, and Representation (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)
by Silvia G. DapíaMaking an important contribution to studies in Literature and Philosophy, this book reads Jorge Luis Borges philosophically, particularly in reference to his use of representation and reality. Rather than attempting to subordinate Borges to a set of philosophical constructs, to reduce Borges’ texts to mere exemplifications or illustrations of philosophical theories, the book uses Borges’s short stories to demonstrate how philosophical questions related to representation develop out of literature and actually serve as precursors to the various strains of post-analytic philosophy that later developed in the United States. The volume discusses American post-analytic philosophers Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, Nelson Goodman, and Arthur Danto, as well as a wide-ranging set of philosophical ideas including reflections on Keynes, Hayek, Schopenhauer and many others . Chapters offer detailed readings of Borges’ texts extending from 1939 to 1983, locating where he thematizes issues of representation, and pursuing the logic of Borges’s text toward its philosophical implications without neglecting their literary value. The book argues that Borges’ exploration of the relationship between representation and reality places him unmistakably in the position of a precursor to the post-analytic philosophers. Illuminating the role that language plays in the creation of reality and representation, this volume makes significant contributions not only to Borges scholarship but also post-structuralism, post-analytic studies of language, semiotics, comparative literature, and Latin American literature.
Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Analytic Philosophy, and Representation (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature)
by Silvia G. DapíaMaking an important contribution to studies in Literature and Philosophy, this book reads Jorge Luis Borges philosophically, particularly in reference to his use of representation and reality. Rather than attempting to subordinate Borges to a set of philosophical constructs, to reduce Borges’ texts to mere exemplifications or illustrations of philosophical theories, the book uses Borges’s short stories to demonstrate how philosophical questions related to representation develop out of literature and actually serve as precursors to the various strains of post-analytic philosophy that later developed in the United States. The volume discusses American post-analytic philosophers Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, Nelson Goodman, and Arthur Danto, as well as a wide-ranging set of philosophical ideas including reflections on Keynes, Hayek, Schopenhauer and many others . Chapters offer detailed readings of Borges’ texts extending from 1939 to 1983, locating where he thematizes issues of representation, and pursuing the logic of Borges’s text toward its philosophical implications without neglecting their literary value. The book argues that Borges’ exploration of the relationship between representation and reality places him unmistakably in the position of a precursor to the post-analytic philosophers. Illuminating the role that language plays in the creation of reality and representation, this volume makes significant contributions not only to Borges scholarship but also post-structuralism, post-analytic studies of language, semiotics, comparative literature, and Latin American literature.