Literary theory Books

Book SynopsisIl existe des récits qui ne nous ouvrent aucun monde, des récits étranges qui semblent écrits pour bloquer nos capacités d'imagination ou de rêverie, des récits qui nous rabattent sans arrêt sur la lettre de ce qui est écrit. Tout le travail narratif consiste alors à éreinter chaque mot de peur qu'il n'introduise quelque profondeur symbolique, quelque référence à une expérience partagée. Dans cet ouvrage, les profondeurs mystiques de Nerval, de Hawthorne ou d'Edgar Poe, les profondeurs autobiographiques de Céline, Leiris ou de Marechera, sont mises à l'épreuve d'une lecture critique qui traque le travail de la surface sous tous les effets de profondeur. À travers neuf études critiques d'écrivains modernes, l'enjeu de cet essai est de proposer un nouveau point de vue théorique sur les trois instances profondes du récit que sont la référence, l'auteur et le style.

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Book SynopsisPas de collectivités sans Histoire. Reste que certaines la subissent plus que d'autres ou en sont dépossédées. C'est pourquoi les écrivains francophones n'en finissent pas d'interroger les conflits et les violences qui se déplacent souvent du champ de bataille réel vers celui, plus symbolique, de la langue et de ses usages culturels, politiques et esthétiques. À la différence, apparente, de la France métropolitaine, toutes les francophonies ne peuvent éluder les phénomènes du plurilinguisme et de pluriculturalisme. Toutes ont à faire avec des historicités qu'elles ne peuvent pas mythifier en Histoire monumentale. Toutes se trouvent enfin dans une position d'autonomie très relative à l'égard du champ littéraire français. Cela contraint à repenser certaines approches de la littérature, et notamment les simplifications culturelles induites par le schéma dominant des littératures dites nationales. C'est de ce tissage plus subtil que rend compte le sous-titre de ce volume Entre filiation et dissidence . Cette situation connaît trois grandes variations structurelles : filiation, écart et dissidence. Les perspectives transversales de ce livre vont des Antilles à la Belgique, du Canada à la Suisse, de l'Algérie à la Guinée, de la Côte-d'Ivoire au Congo ou à Madagascar. Elles concernent aussi bien Bauchau que Poulin ou Djebar, Métellus, Glissant ou Rabearivelo. Elles préservent les historicités propres et les imaginaires de chacun, affirment la nécessité d'une Histoire substitutive dans laquelle auteur et lecteur sont condamnés à devenir des intellectuels responsables, et débouchent sur un autre rapport à la temporalité et à la langue.

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Book SynopsisAccompagnying the release of the book Book A/MEGACOLON/For and Against Language, a collaboration with museum De Hallen, Nathaniel Mellors also exhibited an episode of his new film at Onomatopee; Ourhouse. In Ourhouse, Nathaniel Mellors combines sculptural elements with narrative video. In the video series a wealthy European family are unexpectedly confronted with a mysterious manifestation, 'the Object', which suddenly appears in the living room of their country home. In Ourhouse the artist handles subjects such as religion, ideology and power in an absurdist and theatrical manner. In the Onomatopee project space, Mellors shows the first 30-minute episode of Ourhouse. The series will eventually consist of 6 episodes. Book A/MEGACOLON/For and Against Language is an experimental monograph exploring linguistic manipulation, absurdist comedy and other aspects of the work of Nathaniel Mellors, with contributions by artist Mick Peter and critic John C. Welchman. Book A/MEGACOLON/For and Against Language contains a selection of Mellors' original scripts from 2006 onwards, that have since been turned into video and installation works - from the demise of an ageing Polish supercomputer in Brain One Mózg Jeden (2006) to the language games and ideological clashes within the Maddox-Wilson family in Ourhouse (2010-). Art historian John C. Welchman has contributed an experimental Abecedarium, both academic and playful, in which he responds to and elaborates on ideas present in Mellors' scatological intrahuman journey Giantbum (2009). Artist and writer Mick Peter's Wall Eyed Stranger: An Introduction to Mellorfilm and the British Grotesque Explosion' sheds new light on some of the key characters in Mellors' absurdist universe, in a deeply annotated text that increasingly expands and dissolves itself. Editend and Curated by:Xander Karskens Texts:John C. Welchman and Mick PeterGraphic design:Remco van BladelPartners:Museum De Hallen, Galerie Diana Stigter, Lombard-Fried Projects, Monitor, Fund BKVB, Mondriaan Fund and Municipality of Eindhoven.

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Book SynopsisLiterary scholars have traditionally understood landscapes, whether natural or manmade, as metaphors for humanity instead of concrete settings for people's actions. This book accepts the natural world as such by investigating how Anglo-Saxons interacted with and conceived of their lived environments. Examining Old English poems, such as Beowulf and Judith, as well as descriptions of natural events from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other documentary texts, Heide Estes shows that Anglo-Saxon ideologies which view nature as diametrically opposed to humans, and the natural world as designed for human use, have become deeply embedded in our cultural heritage, language, and more.Trade Review"Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes makes a compelling case for the medieval world as a profitable site for further exploration by ecocritical and ecofeminist theorists." - Renée R. Trilling, Medieval Feminist Forum Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, Volume 54, Number 2, 2019 "This book is one of the most important to come out this year, as it is not only one which articulates interesting and important nuances about Old English literature, but it is also an activist-minded piece which raises significant questions about our present anthropocentric lives and the state of the medieval field. Thus, in her analysis of the sea in Beowulf, saints’ lives, and biblical epics, Estes draws parallels between Anglo-Saxon notions of the sea as a limitless resource with presentday hyperconsumerist treatment of the environment, and her discussion of Guthlac’s appropriation of the fenland wilderness compares it with colonialist ideologies which justified invasion and enslavement as processes civilizing wilderness regions." - Eric Lacey and Simon Thomson, The Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 98, Issue 1, 2019Table of Contents1: Introduction 2: Imagining the Sea in Secular and Religious Poetry 3: Ruined Landscapes 4: Rewriting Guthlac's Wilderness 5: Animal Natures 6: Objects and Hyperobjects 7: Conclusion: Ecologies of the Past and the Future

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Book SynopsisThough these days, our celebrity culture tends to revolve around movie stars and pop musicians, there have been plenty of celebrity authors over the years and around the world. This volume brings together a number of contributors to look at how and why certain writers have attained celebrity throughout history. How were their images as celebrities constructed by themselves and in complicity with their fans? And how did that process and its effects differ from country to country and era to era?Table of ContentsIdolizing Authorship: An Introduction Gaston Franssen and Rick Honings Part 1: The Rise of Literary Celebrity 1. The Olympian Writer: Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) Silke Hoffmann 2. The Dutch Byron: Nicolaas Beets (1814-1903) Rick Honings 3. Enemy of Society, Hero of the Nation: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) Suze van der Poll Part 2: The Golden Age of Literary Celebrity 4. From Bard to Brand: Holger Drachmann (1846-1908) Henk van der Liet 5. In the Future, When I Will Be More of a Celebrity: Louis Couperus (1863-1923) Mary Kemperink 6. À la Recherche de la Gloire: Marcel Proust (1871-1922) Sjef Houppermans 7. The National Skeleton: Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Peter Liebregts Part 3: The Popularization of Literary Celebrity 8. Playing God: Harry Mulisch (1927-2010) Sander Bax 9. Literary Stardom and Heavenly Gifts: Haruki Murakami (1949) Gaston Franssen 10. Sincere e-Self-Fashioning: Dmitrii Vodennikov (1968) Ellen Rutten 11. The Fame and Blame of an Intellectual Goth: Sofi Oksanen (1977) Sanna Lehtonen

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Book Synopsis'Political anthropology' as the major contemporary importance in Deleuze’s work This work explores the significance of two recurring themes in the thought of Gilles Deleuze: his critique of psychoanalysis and praise for Anglo-American literature. Tracing the overlooked influence of English writer D.H. Lawrence on Deleuze, Rockwell Clancy shows how these themes ultimately bear on two competing 'political anthropologies', conceptions of the political and the respective accounts of philosophical anthropology on which they are based. Contrary to the mainstream of both Deleuze studies and contemporary political thought, Clancy argues that the major contemporary importance of Deleuze’s thought consists in the way he grounds his analyses of the political on accounts of philosophical anthropology, helping to make sense of the contemporary backlash against inclusive liberal values evident in forms of political conservatism and religious fundamentalism. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).Trade ReviewThis is an ambitious book that makes significant contributions to Deleuze studies. Clancy’s advocacy of a Deleuzian political anthropology offers a provocative alternative to previous accounts of Deleuze’s political philosophy, especially in its valorization of the arts as primary forces in the creation of a viable collectivity. Clancy’s exposition of Lawrence’s critical works, especially his books on psychoanalysis, brings to the fore texts that have been ignored by Deleuze scholars, and the parallels he draws between Lawrence and Deleuze/Guattari are striking. Readers will have to decide for themselves to what extent the parallels are signs of Lawrence’s influence on his successors or a mere confluence of interests. There is no doubt that Lawrence is the primary source of Deleuze’s understanding of Anglo-American literature in general and Whitman in particular. But one might well argue that Deleuze and Guattari developed their critique of psychoanalysis independently of Lawrence and simply saw in him a welcome ally in their struggle against the pieties of the Oedipus complex. Whether the Lawrence-Deleuze/Guattari connection constitutes influence or a confluence of interest, however, is of little moment. What counts is the connection itself, which in Clancy’s treatment gives rise to an original and compelling reading of Deleuze and Guattari, one that deserves the serious attention of everyone in the field.Ronald Bogue, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, Vol XXVI, No 1 (2018) pp 134-137 * Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française *Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsAbbreviationsPrefaceFrom Psychoanalysis and Literature to Political Anthropology IntroductionDeleuze, Politics, and the Problem of Human Nature1. Politics and the Problem of Human Nature: Political Anthropology 2. Deleuze and the Problem of Human Nature: Philosophical AnthropologyChapter OneThe Metaphysics of PsychoanalysisIntroduction: Psychoanalysis as Idealism and D.H. Lawrence1. Philosophy and Literature in Lawrence2. Psychoanalytic Reading in Freud, Bonaparte, and Lacan 3. A Note on “Pollyanalytics” and Problem of Critique 4. Praxis and Philosophical Anthropology in Marx and Engels 5. A Substance Theory of Mind and Theological Motivations in Descartes 6. Experiential Unity and Transcendental Subjectivity in Kant 7. Spirit as Ground and the Dialectical Method in Hegel 8. Marx versus Descartes, Kant, and Hegel 9. Lawrence’s Conception of the Unconscious 10. Lawrence and the Psychoanalytic Tradition: Drive Theories and Individuation 11. Familial Relations, according to Lawrence12. The Individual and Society, according to Lawrence Conclusion Chapter TwoThe Metaphysics of Classic American LiteratureIntroduction: Language, Literature, and Lawrence 1. Classic American Literature and American Identity 2. Changing Identity by Changing the Blood 3. New Criticism and Reader Response: The Same Old Problem 4. Classic American Literature: Conditions Material and Ideal, Body and Mind 5. Spinoza and Lawrence: Parallelism and Classic American Literature 6. Individuals, Community, and Sympathy: Lawrence and Spinoza 7. Sympathy and Multitude: Anti-Democracy and Fascism Conclusion Chapter ThreeReading Anti-Oedipus from behind with LawrenceIntroduction: From a Critique of Psychoanalysis… 1. A Note on Metaphysics: The Organic Model 2. The Specificity of Schizophrenic Experience 3. A Materialist Conception of the Unconscious 4. Syntheses of the Unconscious 5. Connective Synthesis 6. Disjunctive Synthesis 7. Conjunctive Synthesis 8. Social Machines 9. Primitive Territorial Machine 10. Barbarian Despotic Machine 11. Civilized Capitalist Machine ConclusionChapter FourAnglo-American Literature as a Philosophical Concept Introduction: …to the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature1. The Line of Flight: Exiting versus Leaving2. Anglo-American Literature: Individuals and Community 3. Tricksters versus Traitors: Imitation versus Becoming 4. Hume and the Exteriority of Relations 5. Spinoza, Parallelism, and Affects 6. Bodies, Events, and the Stoics 7. Assemblages and the Political Conclusion Chapter FiveThe Political Significance of Opinion, Philosophy, and ArtIntroduction: Opinion as a Problem 1. Elements of Opinion 2. Development of Opinion in Relation to Chaos: Denial 3. Political Significance of Opinion: Creating Consensus 4. Elements of Philosophy and Art 5. Relation of Philosophy and Art to Chaos: Uneasy Alliance 6. Political Significance of Philosophy and Art: Inventing a People, Making BrainsConclusion Chapter SixCreating a People to Come Introduction: Liberalism and its Failures 1. Inclusive Particularism: THe Political Significance of Philosophy and Art 2. D.H. Lawrence, Christianity, and Fundamentalism 3. The Meaning(s) of Revelation 4. Christianity: Aristocratic and Popular 5. Selves: Individual and Collective 6. People and Power 7. T.E. Lawrence, Arabs, and Exclusivism 8. The Creation of Shame as an Affect 9. The Political Significance of Literature 10. Becoming (with but not like) Arab 11. Walt Whitman, America, and Nationalism 12. The Specificity of American Experience 13. An Alliance with Nature as Fragmented Reality 14. The Creation of Relations as Camaraderie Conclusion ConclusionPolitical Anthropology, Liberalism, and DeleuzeBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisHungarian urban culture in the 20th and the 21st centuries.When consulting key works on urban studies, the absence of Central and Eastern European towns is striking. Cities such as Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Trieste, where such notable figures as Freud, Ferenczi, Kafka, and Joyce lived and worked, are rarely studied in a translocal framework, as if Central and Eastern Europe were still a blind spot of European modernity. This volume expands the scope of literary urban studies by focusing on Budapest and Hungarian small towns, offering in-depth analyses of the intriguing link between literature, the arts, and material culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. The case studies situate Hungarian urban culture within the global flow of ideas as they explore the period of modernism, the mid-century, and the post-1989 era in a context that moves well beyond the borders of the country.Contributors: Árpád Bak (University of Leeds), Éva Federmayer (Eötvös Loránd University), Magdolna Gucsa (Eötvös Loránd University / ÉHESS), Ágnes Györke (Károli Gáspár University), Ferenc Hörcher (Eötvös József Research Centre), Tamás Juhász (Károli Gáspár University), György Kalmár (University of Debrecen), László Munteán (Radboud University), Ágnes Klára Papp (Károli Gáspár University), Márta Pellérdi (Pázmány Péter Catholic University), Eszter Ureczky (University of Debrecen).This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).This book will be made open access within three years of publication thanks to Path to Open, a program developed in partnership between JSTOR, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community, including authors, researchers, libraries, and university presses around the world. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/Trade ReviewTaken together, the chapters in this book provide a coherent overview of representations of the Hungarian city in literature, theater, and cinema. This book will act as an important future reference work for scholars working on the 20th and 21st century Hungarian city. And it reminds scholars unfamiliar with Hungarian urban culture of the vast range of urban phenomena that remain underrepresented in academic literature in English.Lieven Ameel, Tampere University

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Book SynopsisSecond volume in the Homo Mimeticus mini-series, which advances the emerging transdisciplinary field of mimetic studiesAfter the linguistic and the affective turns, the new materialist and the performative turns, the cognitive and the posthuman turns, it is now time to re-turn to the ancient, yet also modern and still contemporary realization that humans are mimetic creatures. In this second installment of the Homo Mimeticus series, international scholars working in philosophy, literary theory, classics, cultural studies, sociology, political theory, and the neurosciences engage creatively with Nidesh Lawtoo's Homo Mimeticus: A New Theory of Imitation to further the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies. Agonistic critical engagements with precursors like Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Bataille, Irigaray and Girard, involving contributions by leading international thinkers such as Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, William E. Connolly, Henry Staten and Vittorio Gallese among many others, reveal the urgency to rethink mimesis beyond realism. From imitation to identification, mimicry to affective contagion, techne to simulation, mirror neurons to biomimicry, homo mimeticus casts a shadowbut also a lighton the present and future, from social media to the Anthropocene. Watch the recordings of the 'Homo Mimeticus II' book launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNKlTex1SaY

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Book SynopsisThe Eco-Self in Early Modern English Literature tracks an important shift in early modern conceptions of selfhood, arguing that the period hosted the birth of a new subset of the human, the eco-self, which melds a deeply introspective turn with an abiding sense of humans’ embedment in the world. A confluence of cultural factors produced the relevant changes. Of paramount significance was the rapid spread of literacy in England and across Europe: reading transformed the relationship between self and world, retooled moral reasoning, and even altered human anatomy. This book pursues the salutary possibilities, including the ecological benefits, of this redesigned self by advancing fresh readings of texts by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, and Margaret Cavendish. The eco-self offers certain refinements to ecological theory by renewing appreciation for the rational, deliberative functions that distinguish humans from other species.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Ourselves Our Renaissance. The Verdancy of Critical Practice Chapter 1: The Verdant Imagination in Shakespeare’s Sonnets Chapter 2: The Intermediating Self in Doctor Faustus Chapter 3: Resisting Self-Erasure in Antony and Cleopatra Chapter 4: Wrestling with the Eco-Self in The Duchess of Malfi Chapter 5: Ecology and Selfhood in The Blazing World Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Department of Speculative Facts connects two seemingly contradictory approaches: Speculation which attempts to think and act beyond existing knowledge and structures, and fact-checkers in search for a solid consensus on which our reality can be built. When stretching knowledge and speculating with fiction, what sense of responsibility is needed in times of democratized opinions and fake news? Learning from the other SFScience Fictionwe think of speculation through facts, and facts through speculation, to situate truth culturally. The backbone of this book is an e-mail exchange between two fact-checkers from the New York Times Magazine, which we handed over to artists to re-write, re-perform, and re-design. The publication includes the original letters, workshop scripts, as well as additional texts by philosophers, journalists, writers, and artists looking at new social contracts, with which we can anchor ourselves in the present. Editor: Department of Speculative Facts (Lietje Bauwens, Quenton Miller, Karoline ?wie?y?ski)Author: Sepake Angiama, Lietje Bauwens (DoSF), Kate Briggs, Federico Campagna, Alex Carp & Jamie Fisher (NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE), Mette Edvardsen, Tristan Garcia, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Nicoline van Harskamp, Quenton Miller DoSF, Ingo Niermann, Michael Portnoy, Achal Prabhala with WIKIAFRICA, FACT FACTORIES, AFRICA CHECK, CHIMURENGA, Wolfgang Tillmans, Bob Trafford (FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE). Graphic: Karoline ?wie?y?ski

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Book SynopsisAna Paula Arnaut is Professor of Portuguese Contemporary Literature at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is a member of the Centre of Portuguese Literature, and her main fields of research are postmodernism and hypercontemporary in Portuguese Literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, and women's studies. She has published several books and articles both in national and international journals.Paulo de Medeiros is Professor of Modern and Contemporary World Literatures and Head of the English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Previously he held the Chair of Portuguese Studies at Utrecht, the Netherlands, and was President of the American Portuguese Studies Association. He is co-editor of a volume of essays on Luso-African film (2021) and author of two books on Fernando Pessoa, besides work on comparative literature.

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Book SynopsisUlf Schulenberg is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany, and author of Zwischen Realismus und Avantgarde: Drei Paradigmen für die Aporien des Entweder-Oder (2000), Lovers and Knowers: Moments of the American Cultural Left (2007), Romanticism and Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Idea of a Poeticized Culture (2015), Marxism, Pragmatism, and Postmetaphysics: From Finding to Making (2019), and Pragmatism and Poetic Agency: The Persistence of Humanism (2021).

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