Guardians of the Humanist Legacy: The Classicism of T.S. Eliot's Criterion Network and its Relevance to our Postmodern World

Guardians of the Humanist Legacy: The Classicism of T.S. Eliot's Criterion Network and its Relevance to our Postmodern World

Author: Jeroen Vanheste

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007-07-30

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 904742008X

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In recent scholarly work, T.S. Eliot has usually been associated with cultural elitism and political conservatism, or even with proto-fascism and anti-Semitism. This book proposes a different view. During the Interbellum, Eliot and his review The Criterion were part of an international network of intellectuals that shared an open-minded Europeanness. Authors like T. Mann, Benda, Ortega y Gasset, Curtius and Hofmannsthal emphasized their common European roots and shared cultural legacy. Their 'classicism' stands in the European tradition of humanism and has remained highly relevant. Classicist ideas about literature, education and human culture in general continue to inspire contemporary humanist thinkers, as the second part of this book demonstrates by discussing the work of Ferry, Todorov, Steiner, Scruton, Toulmin and others.


The Plays of T.S. Eliot

The Plays of T.S. Eliot

Author: Shubha Tiwari

Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 9788126906499

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An Established Literary Giant Of All Times, T.S. Eliot Has Attracted Immense Amount Of Critical Attention. This Book Discusses The Plays Of T.S. Eliot In General And The Role Of Chorus In Them In Particular. The Plays Discussed Herein Include Sweeney Agonistes, The Rock, Murder In The Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk And The Elder Statesman. Each Play Has Been Taken Separately And Its Salient Features And The Role Of Chorus In It Have Been Methodically Studied. Written In Lucid Language And With A Straightforward Approach, The Book Is Expected To Be Of Special Value To Students And Researchers Of English Literature And To Particularly Those Interested In T.S. Eliot.


A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory

A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory

Author: Raman Selden

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13:

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Unsurpassed as a text for upper-division and beginning graduate students, Raman Selden's classic text is the liveliest, most readable and most reliable guide to contemporary literary theory. Includes applications of theory, cross-referenced to Selden's companion volume, Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.


EBOOK: Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now

EBOOK: Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now

Author: Paul Taylor

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)

Published: 2007-12-16

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 033523528X

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"This is a welcome critical corrective to complacent mainstream accounts of the media's cultural impact". Prof. Slavoj Zizek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London "A powerful and highly engaging re-assessment of past critical thinkers (including those not normally thought of as critical) in the light of today's mediascape". Jorge Reina Schement, Distinguished Professor of Communications, Penn State University With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture. This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They: Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today's mass culture The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past - Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek, and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television. Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology.


Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures

Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures

Author: James A. Berlin

Publisher: Parlor Press LLC

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780972477284

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Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures is James Berlin's most comprehensive effort to refigure the field of English Studies. Here, in his last book, Berlin both historically situates and recovers for today the tools and insights of rhetoric-displaced and marginalized, he argues, by the allegedly disinterested study of aesthetic texts in the college English department. Berlin sees rhetoric as offering a unique perspective on the current disciplinary crisis, complementing the challenging perspectives offered by postmodern literary theory and cultural studies. Taking into account the political and intellectual issues at stake and the relation of these issues to economic and social transformations, Berlin argues for a pedagogy that makes the English studies classroom the center of disciplinary activities, the point at which theory, practice, and democratic politics intersect. This new educational approach, organized around text interpretation and production-not one or the other exclusively, as before-prepares students for work, democratic politics, and consumer culture today by providing a revised conception of both reading and writing as acts of textual interpretation; it also gives students tools to critique the socially constructed, politically charged reality of classroom, college, and culture. This new edition of Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures includes JAC response essays by Linda Brodkey, Patricia Harkin, Susan Miller, John Trimbur, and Victor J. Vitanza, as well as an afterword by Janice M. Lauer. These essays situate Berlin's work in personal, pedagogical, and political contexts that highlight the continuing importance of his work for understanding contemporary disciplinary practice.


The Speculative Turn

The Speculative Turn

Author: Levi Bryant

Publisher: re.press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 0980668344

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Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the current giants of this generation, this new focus takes numerous different and opposed forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Zizek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the center of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come.


The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism

The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism

Author: Geoffrey Galt Harpham

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-01-15

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0226316904

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In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, and aesthetics. He suggests that we consider the ascetic as "the 'cultural' element in culture," and presents a close analysis of works by Athanasius, Augustine, Matthias, Grünewald, Nietzsche, Foucault, and other thinkers as proof of the extent of asceticism's resources. Harpham demonstrates the usefulness of his findings by deriving from asceticism a "discourse of resistance," a code of interpretation ultimately more generous and humane than those currently available to us.