Literary studies: poetry and poets Books

Book SynopsisThe Endless Theory of Days: The Art and Poetry of Gérard Titus-Carmel seeks to set forth the case for the special, multiple genius of a man who, despite the experience of a biting melancholy resulting from loss, despite an ‘indefectible feeling of estrangement from the world’, despite, too, the corrosive sense of art’s, of languages’s, deceptiveness, has never lost sight of a curious duty to the shadows that haunt and that, with now a strangeness that smiles, yet beckon toward ‘the very place, finally clarified and recognised, of pure evidence. [The place,] that is, where beauty is named’. This place, Gérard Titus-Carmel may feel, lies no doubt impossibly beyond the strict locus of his art and his writing, but it is a place he has struggled with dignity and unceasingly deployed energy to bring to a semblance of incarnation in a vast plastic and poetical oeuvre that has stirred, and will continue to stir, the minds and hearts of all those – from Derrida and Bonnefoy, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Pascal Quignard to Jacques Dupin and Marie-Claire Bancquart, and countless others – who have witnessed its exquisitely solemn unfolding over, today, more than forty years.Table of ContentsForeword Chapter 1: From Hot Dogs and Bananas to Deterioration and Alteration: Form, Idea, Being Chapter 2: Joaquin’s Love Affair Chapter 3: The Cryptic and the Necessary, Deambulation and Sticks Chapter 4: From Coffins to Italiana and Riggings, Shop Curtains and Narwa Chapter 5: Accompanying the Other: From Chardin, Goya and Caillebotte to Bonnard, Crane and Roud Chapter 6: Falling and Flowing Chapter 7: The Self Accompanied: From Robbe-Grillet, Rossi and Roche to Commère, Bancquart and Bonnefoy Chapter 8: Excavation and Forgetting, Embankment and Abyss Chapter 9: From Shadows, Interiors and Seasons to Cairns, Forests and Nielli Chapter 10: Questions of Presence and Manners of Darkness Chapter 11: Leafings, Jungles and Herbarium Chapter 12: Today Selected Bibliography

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Book SynopsisLeaving Parnassus: The Lyric Subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud considers how the crisis of the lyric subject in the middle of the nineteenth century in France is a direct response to the aesthetic principles of Parnassian poetry, which dominated the second half of the century much more than critics often think. The poets considered here rebel against the strict confines of traditional and contemporary poetry and attempt to create radically new discursive practices. Specifically, the close readings of poems apply recent studies of subjectivity in poetry and focus on the works of Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud to see how each subverts the dominant tradition of French poetry in a unique way. Whereas previous studies considered isolated aspects of each poet’s lyric subject, Leaving Parnassus shows that the situation of the lyric is a source of subversion throughout the poets’ entire work, and as such it is crucial to our full understanding of their respective innovations.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: The Dominance of Parnassian Poetry Chapter Two: Verlaine’s Identities Chapter Three: Rimbaud, Beyond Time and Space Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFor poets throughout the world Rome was the world. This is particularly true for Russian poets, owing to the anagrammatical relation of the words Rome and mir (Rome and world). The legacy of ancient Rome has always constituted an important component of the Russian cultural consciousness. The revitalization of classical scholarship in nineteenth-century Russia and new approaches to antiquity prompted many of the Russian Symbolists to seek their inspiration in ancient Rome. Vladimir Solovyov, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Valery Bryusov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maksimilian Voloshin, Vasily Komarovsky, and Mikhail Kuzmin all made significant contributions to what is often referred to as the “Roman text.” The Legacy of Ancient Rome in the Russian Silver Age analyzes the forms involved in creating the Roman image and explores its functionality within the given poetic system. In addition to the formal analysis, the background and the stimulus leading up to the composition of a particular poem are explored, as well as allusions to legends, myths and Rome’s geography and architecture. Moreover, this study considers the function of the Roman text in Russian Symbolist poetics and the works of the individual poets. Finally, the relation between the Roman and Petersburg texts of Russian literature is explored, since many of the Russian Symbolist poets found in Rome a perfect metaphor for their studies of the city and “urban” poetry.Trade Review”This thoughtful and well-researched manuscript is an important contribution to several fields: 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature and philosophy, Classics and literary history. Many 20th-century Russian writers employ comparisons between 20th-century Russia and the Roman Empire, but this study is the first in-depth look at the basis for this all pervasive theme … Since the end of the Soviet Union the Symbolist period has become one of primary interest for Russians as they attempt to investigate elements of their pre-Soviet identity. The writers whose works are included here represent some of the most sophisticated and erudite in the whole of Russian literature, but many of them were, until recently […] little studied or looked at through a distorting political prism.” – Carol Ueland, Professor of Russian Literature, Drew UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transliteration Introduction: Off to Rome… I. Departing from Stylization Apollon Maikov II. The Forum of Forgotten Thoughts Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov III. And a Fourth Shall Never Be… Vladimir Solovyov IV. The Contradictions of the Northern Pilgrim Dmitry Merezhkovsky V. Julius Caesar, Antony and Sulla Valery Bryusov VI. The God-Loving Roman Vyacheslav Ivanov VII. From Prophecy to Transubstantiation Maksimilian Voloshin VIII. The Quest for Pax Romana as a Quest for Peace of Mind Vasily Komarovsky IX. The Distant Eternal City Mikhail Kuzmin X. Conclusion: «Как сделан Рим»? (How Is Rome Made?) Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisOffering essays from some of the leading academic writers and younger scholars in the field of American studies from both the United States and Europe, this volume constitutes a rich and varied reconsideration of Modernist American poetry. Its contributions fall into two general categories: new and original discussions of many of the principal figures of the movement (Frost, Pound, Eliot, Williams, Cummings and Stevens) and reflections on the phenomenon of Modernism within a broader cultural context (the influence of Haiku, parallels and connections with Surrealism, responses to the Modernist accomplishment by later American poets). Because of its mixture of European and American perspectives, Modernism Revisited will be of vital interest to students and scholars of American literature and Modernism in general and of twentieth-century comparative literature and art.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Paul Scott DERRICK: Introduction I. Reflections on Modernity: The Aura of Modernism Marjorie PERLOFF: The Aura of Modernism II. Transgressing Boundaries: Some Modernists Revisited Barry AHEARN: Frost’s Sonnets, In and Out of Bounds Hélène AJI: Pound and Williams: The Letters as Modernist Manifesto Zhaoming QIAN: Pao-hsien Fang and the Naxi Rites in Ezra Pound’s Cantos Viorica PATEA: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and the Poetics of the Mythical Method Isabelle ALFANDARY: Poetry as Ungrammar in E. E. Cummings’ Poems Bart EECKHOUT: Wallace Stevens’ Poetry of Resistance III. Strategies of Renewal: Modernism in a Broader Context Gudrun M. GRABHER: In Search of Words for “Moon-Viewing”: The Japanese Haiku and the Skepticism towards Language in Modernist American Poetry Ernesto SUÁREZ-TOSTE: Spontaneous, not Automatic: William Carlos Williams versus Surrealist Poetics Manuel BRITO: Instances of the Journey Motif through Language and Selfhood in some Modernist American Poets Heinz ICKSTADT: For Love and Language: The Poetry of Robert Creeley Charles ALTIERI: Modernist Realism and Lowell’s Confessional Style Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThis closely focused study of the inner movements, dynamic tensions and tactile richness of an intensely sensual but deeply searching poetry, is the first full-length monograph devoted to one of France’s foremost contemporary woman poets. Marie-Claire Bancquart’s work explores, primarily through the vulnerabilities and sensitivities of the body (hence this book’s ‘carnal’ title), the possibility of releasing a cry: a salvation of language and spirit from indifference, abstraction and dehumanisation, a celebration of a moment’s reunion with the recreative vitality of the physical universe, an act of love in its most private yet cosmic expression. Bancquart has described her language as a ‘braille of the living’: minimal, interrupted and riddled with obscurities and gaps of the unsayable, but apprehending the world and composing its significance in a singularly tactile translation. This study will appeal to those keen to discover one of the most original voices of present-day European poetry, the distinctive poetic resonances of one of its most self-aware and vibrant female sensibilities, and the provocative orientations of ‘new writing’ traversed by the dilemmas and paradoxes of our own era.Table of ContentsIntroduction Mémoire d’abolie Définition Opportunité des oiseaux Trains Opéra des limites Suite au dieu-lune Sans lieu sinon l’attente Cariatides Énigmatiques Carnet La vie, lieu-dit Habitée par une tendresse La paix saignée À la morte Bio-Bibliography Index of proper names

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Book SynopsisThe Paradox of Photography analyzes the discourse on photography by four of the most important modern French poets and theorists (Baudelaire, Breton, Barthes and Valéry). It stresses in particular the importance of this visual language for the development of both new forms of narrative and original critical studies on issues of representation in art. It also reflects upon the integration of photography within the domain of technical modernity while emphasizing its aesthetic identity stemming from the Western tradition of figurative painting.Table of ContentsIntroduction No Art’s Land Reasonable Madness The Image, One Image, Images The Fascinated Eye Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAux limites de l’imitation pose une question audacieuse que les innombrables études existantes sur l’ut pictura poesis à l’âge classique ont eu tendance à laisser dans l’ombre : celle de la matière comme limite de l’imitation, suivant l’hypothèse selon laquelle le surgissement du matériel est à l’origine du délitement de l’ut pictura poesis au cours de l’âge classique. Les études réunies ici abordent cette question pour l’ensemble de l’âge classique (allant du XVIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle) ainsi que pour les principaux domaines artistiques que l’on peut distinguer (littérature, peinture, sculpture, musique, danse).Table of ContentsIntroduction Herman Parret: La matière dans les esthétiques du XVIIIe siècle Martial Guédron: Physiologie du bon goût. La hiérarchie des sens dans les discours sur l’art en France au XVIIIe siècle Emmanuelle Hénin: À la surface de l’image : l’inscription comme indice de la matérialité de la peinture Dalia Judovitz: Le visible et le lisible dans l’œuvre de Georges de La Tour Kris Peeters: La matière et la matérialité du tableau dans les premières conférences académiques du comte de Caylus Julie Boch: L’art et la matière : Diderot et La Font de Saint-Yenne Stéphane Lojkine: Le technique contre l’idéal : la crise de l’ut pictura poesis dans les Salons de Diderot Élise Pavy: Silence et éloquence. Matière picturale et matière littéraire dans les Salons de Diderot Nathalie Ferrand: La matière de la littérature : les narrations polychromes de Louis-Antoine Caraccioli Aurélia Gaillard: « Comme un rêve de pierre » : la sculpture des Lumières et le rêve de matière Anaël Lejeune: N’être pas seulement chair : la surface sculpturale comme lieu du travail de l’artiste à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et au début du XIXe siècle Edward Nye: L’Esthétique du corps dans le ballet d’action Jan Herman: Ut pictura poesis, ut poesis musica. La page noire de la musique Index des noms Table des illustrations

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Book SynopsisSavage Songs & Wild Romances considers the various types of poetry – from short songs and laments to lengthy ethnographic epics – which nineteenth-century settlers wrote about indigenous peoples as they moved into new territories in North America, South Africa, and Australasia. Drawing on a variety of texts (some virtually unknown), the author demonstrates the range and depth of this verse, suggesting that it exhibited far more interest in, and sympathy for, indigenous peoples than has generally been acknowledged. In so doing, he challenges both the traditional view of this poetry as derivative and eccentric, and more recent postcolonial condemnations of it as racist and imperialist. Instead, he offers a new, more positive reading of this verse, whose openness towards the presence of the indigenous Other he sees as an early expression of the tolerance and cultural relativity characteristic of modern Western society. Writers treated include George Copway, Alfred Domett, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George McCrae, Thomas Pringle, George Rusden, Lydia Sigourney, and Alfred Street.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Illustrations Introduction Texts in Context: Nineteenth-Century Settler Culture “Bold, unfettered rhapsodies”: Nineteenth-Century Versifications of Indigenous Orature “We owe them all that we possess”: ‘Savage’ Songs and Laments “Unlocking the fountains of the heart”: Settler Verse and the Politics of Sympathy Indigenous Romeos & Juliets: Romantic Verse Melodramas “In their strange customs versed”: Ethnographic Verse Epics Conclusion Appendix Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisHere is presented an existential view of Graves’ poetic, historical, and critical work, whose coherence is being emphasized. Graves’ poetic outlook is first of all ethical and his aesthetics are subservient to his aim of transforming the emotion into existential thought in order to live on, to probe the experience, and to give it its ontological resonance. The divine capacity is to be found within the individual soul. It is immanent but transcends the phenomenological world. Like Kierkegaard, the poet experiences a feeling of certainty when faith animates him. In the present moment, he gets glimpses of paradise – the plenitude of being. No clipped wings, no well polished discipline or well-behaved guidance. In Kierkegaard’s words, the poet’s sphere is not the universal, or general, but the religious, or individual, sphere – faith, not the concept; self-confidence, not conformity to any over-simplified logic. Graves’ stance is paradoxical throughout: he was not politically involved (except immediately after the war when he said he was a Socialist), but evinced some political ideas in his essays. He was not religious, but poetry took the place of religion for him. He evinced a very original poetic outlook, but kept within the limits of well-accepted prosody. He liked to provoke his audience, but his poetry is never provocative. In other words, it is not easy to situate Graves according to time-honoured categories. He is too much of an individual poet to stand general classification. Yet his poems have a direct appeal to the reading public. He is a poet of unrest. This volume is of interest for scholars and poetry readers who wish to renew their appreciation of poetry and go beyond nowadays critical standards through a careful reading of the very powerful thought of a major poet.Trade Review"Very valuable for understanding and linking all of Robert Graves’s work." – John W. Presley, Illinois State UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Claude Vigée: Foreword Introduction: The Poem as the Rhythmical Pattern of the Real Individual The Poem as Metamorphosis within the Dialectics of Becoming: Graves’ Symbolic Consistency The White Goddess, or The Poetry of Poetry Robert Graves: Death and Poetry, History and Myth Graves’ Poetry, or The Magic of Unrest “You May Not Believe It, for Hardly Could I”: Robert Graves and the Bible One Story, One Theme, Two Poets: David Jones and Robert Graves The Fullness of Time, the Fullness of Language: Modernity and Modernism, Graves and T.S. Eliot The Poetic Voice in Translation: A Subjective Viewpoint Conclusion: “He, She; We, They; They, Each and It – Of Finite Omnipresence”: Robert Graves’ Poetry of Love and Hope Appendix: Des “Blés Moissonnés” au “Temps Vécu”: French Literature and the Great War Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis book illustrates and debates the well-grounded and confident tradition of Indian Poetry in English. It contains individual essays on poets before and since the Indian Independence focus on the poetry of Derozio, Tagore, Aurobindo and Naidu right down to the modern and contemporary poets like Ezekiel, Mahapatra, Ramanujan, Kolatkar, Das, Moraes, Daruwalla, de Souza, Jussawalla and Patel who ushered in a change both in terms of subject matter and style.Trade Review”… such daring points made by the contributors of this anthology make this book stand out in its genre. Unlike a great many books of Indian scholarship this book is not merely a work of scissors and paste; the anthology turns out to be a book of real substance. […] Like most other pieces of this anthology this one becomes one of the best introductions to the poet under focus […] One of the reasons for the great success of this anthology is that it has some very experienced and creative contributors. The anthology picks up the class that these classy contributors possess. One of the reasons why the anthology will remain a favourite with researchers in this field is that they will need the exhaustive bibliography that is provided at the end of the book.” - Lakshmi Raj Sharma, Online Review, March 31, 2014Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Smita Agarwal: Introduction: Subaltern Discourse? Sheshalatha Reddy: Henry Derozio and the Romance of Rebellion Sonjoy Dutta-Roy: The English Tagore: Restoring a Legacy Goutam Ghosal: Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry: A Critical Study Neela Bhattacharya Saxena: Prodigy, Poet and Freedom Fighter: Sarojini Naidu – Nightingale of India Nilufer E. Bharucha: Recalling Nissim Ezekiel: A Poet of the Mind and Heart Sachidananda Mohanty: The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra Anjali Nerlekar: Converting Past Time into Present Space: A.K. Ramanujan’s Poetry Vinay Dharwadker: Arun Kolatkar’s Historical Imagination Anisur Rahman: Contextualizing Kamala Das A.J. Thomas: Indian Poetry in English: Dom Moraes, Keki Daruwalla, Eunice de Souza, Adil Jussawalla, Gieve Patel Tabish Khair: Language in Indian Poetry in English Select Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisPoetic Revolutionaries is an exploration of the relationship between radical textual practice, social critique and subversion. From an introduction considering recent debates regarding the cultural politics of intertextuality allied to avant-garde practice, the study proceeds to an exploration of texts by a range of writers for whom formal and poetic experimentation is allied to a subversive politics: Jean Genet, Monique Wittig, Angela Carter, Kathy Acker, Kathleen Mary Fallon, Kim Scott and Brian Castro. Drawing on theories of avant-garde practice, intertextuality, parody, representation, and performance such as those of Mikhaïl Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Gérard Genette, Margaret A. Rose, Linda Hutcheon, Fredric Jameson, Ross Chambers and Judith Butler, these readings explore how a confluence of writing strategies – covering the structural, narratological, stylistic and scenographic – can work to boost a text’s subversive power.Trade Review“Poetic Revolutionaries is an exemplary textbook study on leading Australian and international experimental fiction writers. It is a scholarly work of broad, encompassing literary theory and criticism. […] Amid early twenty-first century crises – climate change and global warming, peak oil, widespread poverty and injustice, mass migration and species extinction – I think of Campbell’s texts, creative and critical, as lifeboats, hovercraft with air-borne capacity, passenger-full and powering-up for a new creative departure.” - Moya Costello, Southern Cross University, Australia, in: textjournal, Vol. 20.1 [Full text available: http://www.textjournal.com.au/april16/costello_rev.htm] "Marion May Campbell has long been one of Australia’s leading experimental writers, and one of the most innovative feminist writers to have emerged in the 1980s when Australian women’s writing became a significant presence in Australian publishing. Having studied in France, the influence of French critical theory on her development of an écriture féministe is marked by rigour and critique only gained by being part of the context of production. Indeed, if one were to trace the configurations of poststructuralism in Australia, Campbell’s work would be a good place to start. So it is an important event when she publishes a major work of literary criticism such as Poetic Revolutionaries: Intertextuality and Subversion […] Regardless of this structural issue, the readings are excellent and the scholarschip is exhaustive, with Campbell able to access many sources in French–you definitely don’t want to skim the footnotes. Cambell’s close reading analyses one or two techniques used in combination with intertextuality by each writer, but she is also careful to contextualize each work and their transgressive shock when first published/performed." – Margaret Henderson, University of Queensland, in: JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 12.5 "Campbell’s work is rooted in the relativist revolution […] and her intense, erudite study addresses a state of disunion that has loosely bound the dwindling body of progressives ever since. [It] is rich and compelling, and deeply intelligent. Ultimately, its rhythms and precision present a kind of musical clarity. […] It is not only Campbell’s analysis that is trenchant and compelling. In many places she employs some exquisite turns of expression that light up the page." - John Kendall Hawkins (writer), in: Cordite Poetry Review 1 August 2014. A short video-interview with Marion May Campbell, who refuses to be pessimistic about the power of literature to modify perception. She focuses on 3 Australian authors who continue in the avant-garde tradition and all have an interest in the metamorphic body; in becoming an animal. []Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: The fetishised coupling: poetics and revolution Chapter One: Jean Genet’s transgressive scenography Chapter Two: Monique Wittig’s Le corps lesbien/The Lesbian Body Chapter Three: Re-materialising the disappearing body in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber Chapter Four: Kathy Acker or Catheter the Hack Chapter Five: Textual intercourse: Kathleen Mary Fallon’s Working Hot Chapter Six: Kim Scott’s Benang: From the Heart Chapter Seven: Radical disorientation in Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing In guise of conclusion Appendix: ironic trans-contextualisation in a work of postmodern parody Works cited Index

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Book SynopsisThis work attempts a psychoanalytic listening to the ‘oral’ Homeric epics in an effort to extract, as it were, from the ancient text certain elements of psychoanalytic understanding that are of relevance to contemporary psychoanalysis. There is, in addition, a consideration of related philosophical and linguistic issues that are linked to the basic psychoanalytic concepts that emerge from such a listening.Table of ContentsPrologue One. From Wrath to Truth Two. Homer’s Theory of Poetry: Psychoanalytic Notes on the Primal Metaphor Three. The Return of Odysseus: Questions of Time, Space, and Creative Discovery Four. The Other Journey: Nekyia Five. The Tragic in the Iliad Epilogue: ον φωνήεν Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWilliam Blake's literary works are characterized by a ceaseless dynamics constituted in the fierce interactions of the language, thought, and narrative of his myth. Highlighting the critical problems facing the linear approach that the study of Blake has adopted from the traditional methodology of Newtonian science, Jules van Lieshout argues that nonlinearity is the key to understanding Blake's prophecies. Throughout his discussions, Van Lieshout focuses on the relation of Blake's Generation and Eternity, which he identifies as Bakhtinian 'world views'. In Generation, existence is finalized as a hierarchy of geometric 'dark globes', each assuming the character of universal whole to the exclusion of all others. Eternity, on the other hand, is Blake's fractal 'human form' of existence that is continuously organized and reorganized in the dynamic interaction of whole and parts. Blake represents these world views as interinvolved. Their dynamic interaction reflects and refracts his conceptual thought, mythological narrative, and poetic language. Hence, his visionary epic self-organizes into a self-similar complex system whose patterns of behaviour are not merely remarkably like those that modern applications of nonlinear dynamics are revealing in the physical world, but are indeed inherent in the processes of writing and reading his individual works.

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Book SynopsisBy showing that the meaning of the word politics can be interpreted in various ways, the scope of the articles in Tumult of Images: Essays on W.B. Yeats and Politics is extensive. Rather than explicitly analysing W.B. Yeats's political views and opinions about social order, several of the authors demonstrate how these ideas have determined the textual strategy behind Yeats's works. Thus we find, for instance, how Yeats's politics of myth subsume the myth of politics, or how his play The Player Queen is an expression of sexual and textual politics. Other essays revaluate Yeats's role in Ireland's Literary Renaissance or argue that his recruitment of Homer throughout his work was politically motivated. The volume also offers an ero-political reading of Yeats's ballads next to an analysis of the strategy behind that apocalyptic idea of gyring history. Tumult of Images also deals with the politics of reception of Yeats's works by showing how the Irish poet has influenced South African poetry of the period of Apartheid, or by presenting the various ways in which the Japanese and the Dutch have become acquainted with the work of Yeats. The title of this volume thus reflects not only the many-sidedness of the discussions offered here but also their common contribution to an analysis of a fascinating aspect of Yeats's life and work.Table of ContentsBibliographical Note. Peter van de KAMP and Peter LIEBREGTS: Introduction. Augustine MARTIN: Politics and the Yeatsian Apocalypse. Andrew PARKIN: The Death of Cuchulain and the Politics of Myth. C.C. BARFOOT: Distinguished, Indirect and Symbolic: Yeats and Noh. Maureen MURPHY: Some Western Productions of At the Hawk's Well, with a Mythological Footnote. Hedwig SCHWALL: Sexual and Textual Politics in Yeat's The Player Queen. Elizabeth BUTLER CULLINGFORD: The Erotics of the Ballad: A Man Young and Old. Peter Liebregts: The Bang that Was Greece, the Whimper that Was Rome: A Grand Tour through Yeatsian Politics. Peter van de KAMP: Whose Revival? Yeats and the Southwark Irish Literary Club. Roselinde SUPHEERT: Irish Patriot Aliens: The Irish Cause and the Early Reception of Yeat's Work in the Netherlands. Toshi FUROMOTO: A Search for a National Identity: Three Phases of Yeats Studies in Japan. Nicholas MEIHUIZEN: Easter 1916 in the 1990s: A South African Perspective. Robert MOHR: Politics Wrought to Its Uttermost. Notes on Contributors.

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Book SynopsisThis study explores Heinrich Böll's 'aesthetic thinking', as it is expressed in the author's disparate and voluminous writings on literature. Böll's work in this field is situated in the multi-faceted context of social, political, and cultural developments in post-war Germany, and is shown to be an important adjunct to the novels and stories which were honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature. An understanding of Heinrich Böll's 'aesthetic thinking' can illuminate the writer's fiction in an intriguing way. In particular, Böll's defence of the 'rationality of poetry' raises issues which reverberate in continuing debates on the social validity of literature.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments. 0. INTRODUCTION. 0.0 The Aims of the Present Study. 0.1 The Böll Scholarship. 0.2 Critical Premises. 0.3 Outline of the Present Study. 1. THE CENTRAL CONCERNS OF BÖLL'S AESTHETIC THINKING. 1.0 Summary. 1.1 The West German 'Restoration' 1945-1955. 1.2 Literary Trends. 1.3 Böll's Early Theoretical Statements. 2. THE MORALITY OF LANGUAGE. 2.0 Summary. 2.1 Language as a Bastian of Freedom. 2.2 Böll's Critical Analysis of Language. 2.3 The Question of Tradition: The Influence of Theodor Haecker. 3. THE QUEST FOR A 'HOMELAND'. 3.0 Summary. 3.1 Enlightened Humanism. 3.2 Commitment and 'Heimat'. 3.3 'Eine Ästhetik des Humanen'. 3.4 Böll's Programme in Miniature. 3.5 Humour and Satire. 4. HUMANE REALISM. 4.0 Summary. 4.1 'Geschaffene Wirklichkeit'. 4.2 Other Theories of Realism. 4.3 'Engagierte Literatur'? 5. THE RATIONALITY OF POETRY. 5.0 Summary. 5.1 The Social and Political Climate in the 1960s. 5.2 The 'Death' of Literature. 5.3 Böll's Defence of Literature. 6. CONCLUSIONS. 6.1 The Legacy for the Imaginative Works. 6.2 The Legacy for Contemporary Literature. 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 7.1 Primary Sources: Heinrich Böll. 7.2 Secondary Sources.

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