Search results for ""author william kerrigan""

"Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard" illuminates the meaning of Johnny "Appleseed" Chapman's life and the environmental and cultural significance of the plant he propagated. Creating a startling new portrait of the eccentric apple tree planter, William Kerrigan carefully dissects the oral tradition of the "Appleseed" myth and draws upon material from archives and local historical societies across New England and the Midwest. The character of Johnny Appleseed stands apart from other frontier heroes like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, who employed violence against Native Americans and nature to remake the West. His apple trees, nonetheless, were a central part of the agro-ecological revolution at the heart of that transformation. Yet men like Chapman, who planted trees from seed rather than grafting, ultimately came under assault from agricultural reformers who promoted commercial fruit stock and were determined to extend national markets into the West. Over the course of his life John Chapman was transformed from a colporteur of a new ecological world to a curious relic of a pre-market one. Weaving together the stories of the Old World apple in America and the life and myth of John Chapman, "Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard" casts new light on both.

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In this lively study, Kerrigan celebrates both Hamlet's perfection, the character's creation of new ideals out of an inheritance of disillusionment, and Hamlet's perfection, the play's brilliance as Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. Kerrigan's approach reflects his interests in literary formalism, historical scholarship, intellectual history, and psychoanalysis. In an overview of the history of Hamlet criticism, Kerrigan argues that recent critics have done little or nothing to elucidate the play, and he suggests ways in which the abandoned tradition of Hamlet commentary might still inspire fruitful approaches to the play.

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"It is impossible to imagine any kind of moral life without obligations, and impossible to imagine obligations without types of promises. We are always up against them. Before we ever reflect on what a promise is, we have made them and are expected to make more of them. We are born into nations that enter into treaties and agreements. Promises are with us like gravity. Man is a promising animal."-from Shakespeare's Promises Oaths, vows, contracts, and promises are among the most momentous actions human beings can perform, in art as well as life. Although virtually ignored by literary theorists, these obligations motivate plots, test characters, provide rhetorical occasions, structure ironies, and open thematic horizons. According to William Kerrigan, they had particular importance for Shakespeare, who wrote at a decisive moment in the history of promising, toward the end of its High Christian phase and near the beginning of its metaphysically lessened, though still central, role in the "contractual" state. Motivating his plots and supplying his characters with lofty rhetorical occasions, Shakespeare gave promising great dramatic life. More than that, promises made and kept "in good faith" reside at the heart of his idealism. Yet he also explores the ways in which promising and morality, for a variety of reasons, part company. Kerrigan's is the first book to treat this subject with the amplitude it deserves. After a discussion of promises in philosophy, law, psychology, politics, language, and ordinary life, the author presents detailed studies of Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello, and concludes with a brief visit to the swearing scene in Hamlet. Shakespeare's Promises is a unique and valuable resource, providing a fresh perspective that will benefit all readers of Shakespeare.

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A challenging and multisided meditation on the importance of Derrida to current developments in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical interpretations of literature.

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