Literature, Literary Criticism and National Development

Literature, Literary Criticism and National Development

Author: Nnolim, Charles E.

Publisher: Malthouse Press

Published: 2016-03-07

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 9785325083

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The lectures in this book were delivered at significant points in Professor Nnolim’s career. ‘Literature and the Common Welfare’ (1988) was his inaugural lecture, his declaration that he had come of age as an academic, as a young Professor of literature. In August 2000, he delivered ‘Literature, the Arts and Cultural Development’ to announce his induction as a member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters in which he was finally admitted as a Fellow in 2005. In this lecture, Nnolim makes strong claims about the validity of literature in Nigeria’s national life. In August, 2007, Professor Nnolim delivered ‘The Writer’s Responsibility and Literature in National Development’. Here he re-emphasizes the importance of literary studies in Nigeria’s national life and goes on to lament the total neglect of Nigeria’s artists, writers, and world class intellectuals in national life. The fourth lecture, ‘Morning Yet on Criticism Day: the Criticism of African Literature in the Twentieth Century’, was given as a laureate of the Nigerian National Merit Award, 2009. It unifies Professor Nnolim’s various pleas for the role of literature in national development but particularly re-emphasizing the problem of language in Nigeria’s creative writing and urging governmental intervention in the matter.


Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation

Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation

Author: Sarah Beth Hunt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-08-07

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1317559517

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This study explores how Dalits in north India have used literature as a means of protest against caste oppression. Including fresh ethnographic research and interviews, it traces the trajectory of modern Dalit writing in Hindi and its pivotal role in the creation, rise and reinforcement of a distinctive Dalit identity. The book challenges the existing impression of Hindi Dalit literature as stemming from the Dalit political assertion of the 1980s and as being chiefly imitative of the Marathi Dalit literature model. Arguing that Hindi Dalit literature has a much longer history in north India, it examines two differing strands that have taken root in Dalit expression — the early ‘popular’ production of smaller literary pamphlets and journals at the beginning of the 20th century and more contemporary modes such as autobiographies, short stories and literary criticism. The author highlights the ways in which such various forms of literary works have supported the proliferation of an all-encompassing identity for the so-called ‘untouchable’ castes. She also underscores how these have contributed to their evolving political consciousness and consolidation of newer heterogeneous identities, making a departure from their long-perceived image. The work will be important for those in Dalit studies, subaltern history, Hindi literature, postcolonial studies, political science and sociology as well as the informed general reader.


Literature as National Institution

Literature as National Institution

Author: Vassilis Lambropoulos

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1400859352

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This book examines how the practices of criticism establish a particular domain of knowledge, the truth of literature. As a discussion of the ideology and politics of literary knowledge, it concentrates on constitutive elements of its production: the intertextuality of writing, the mediatedness of understanding, the formative role of reading expectations, the enabling presence of relevant literacy, the conditioning horizon of expectations, and the economic character of axiology. The main argument advanced is that criticism, by constructing literature as an ethnic heritage and communal treasure, participated in the invention of a national identity necessary for the legitimization of the modern state. Case studies have been selected from the highly relevant area of contemporary Greek criticism. Microscopic investigations of its dominant sites, mechanisms, and discourses reveal that the field emerged in response to concrete political needs and provided the state with a literary tradition as proof of its national composition, purity, continuity, and autonomy. The construction and canonization of texts as art works invariably employed, as a measure of aesthetic (and ultimately moral) merit, the Greekness of the literary sign. The book, as a genealogical approach to the neglected national role of literature, should be of interest to specialists in literary theory, comparative literature, Greek studies, and cultural studies. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Understanding Korean Literature

Understanding Korean Literature

Author: Hung-Gyu Kim

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-09-16

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1315285320

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This study examines the development and characteristics of various historical and contemporary genres of Korean literature. It presents explanations on the development of Korean literacy and offers a history of literary criticism, traditional and modern, giving the discussion an historical context.


The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 6, The Nineteenth Century, c.1830–1914

The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 6, The Nineteenth Century, c.1830–1914

Author: M. A. R. Habib

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-02-07

Total Pages: 796

ISBN-13: 1316175170

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In the nineteenth century, literary criticism first developed into an autonomous, professional discipline in the universities. This volume provides a comprehensive and authoritative study of the vast field of literary criticism between 1830 and 1914. In over thirty essays written from a broad range of perspectives, international scholars examine the growth of literary criticism as an institution, and the major critical developments in diverse national traditions and in different genres, as well as the major movements of Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism and Decadence. The History offers a detailed focus on some of the era's great critical figures, such as Sainte-Beuve, Hippolyte Taine and Matthew Arnold, and includes essays devoted to the connections of literary criticism with other disciplines in science, the arts and Biblical studies. The publication of this volume marks the completion of the monumental Cambridge History of Literary Criticism from antiquity to the present day.


The Genesis of Modern Chinese Literary Criticism (1917–1930)

The Genesis of Modern Chinese Literary Criticism (1917–1930)

Author: Marián Gálik

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-05-18

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1000583171

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This book, first published in 1980, is a history of modern Chinese literary criticism between the years 1917 and 1930. It examines its development within the overall frame of reference of Chinese national literature from the beginnings of the Chinese literary revolution in 1917 until the end of the first efforts at a revolutionary proletarian literature in 1930. Chinese literary criticism is also analysed within the framework of world literature, of world literary thought, especially of the impact of the progressive literary criticism.


The Contemporary Construction of the Chinese Form of Marxist Literary Criticism

The Contemporary Construction of the Chinese Form of Marxist Literary Criticism

Author: Yamin Hu

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-08-05

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 9819929474

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This is an open access book. This book is the first comprehensive and systematic study on the Chinese Marxist literary criticism as an independent theoretical form. It discusses and describes the theoretical features of the Chinese form of Marxist literary criticism by refining and re-interpreting the iconic key concepts of “people,” “nation,” “politics,” “praxis,” and the relationships between literature and high-tech, literature and capital. The value judgment of literary criticism has also been discussed at length, and insightful and valuable views have been provided. This book is a brilliant introduction and the ideal academic material for global readers to grasp the essence of Chinese Marxist literary thoughts.


Literature and Literary Criticism in Contemporary China

Literature and Literary Criticism in Contemporary China

Author: Zhang Jiong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-16

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1317482689

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Each age has its value system of literary criticism whose construction is inseparable from the mainstream ideology of the society. In contemporary China, the mainstream ideology is inevitably Marxism. This book is composed of two parts. The first part studies literary criticism in contemporary China whose development is closely related to the popularization of Marxism and the unavoidable collisions between Marxism and other theories. It also introduces some relevant critical debates, such as the debate on the criticism of Yu Pingbo, a representative and one of the authoritative scholars studying The Dream of the Red Chamber. In the second part, the author expounds the history of Chinese literature from a macro-level perspective, involving works, genres, ideologies, schools, etc. He also discusses the challenges facing Chinese literature under the background of economic globalization. Will politics, cultures, including literature and arts, be globalized? In addition, the author puts forward that a dynamic concept is needed for a better understanding of Chinese culture and gives his suggestions about the "adjustments" Chinese people should make for the present. This book will attract scholars and students of literary criticism studies and Chinese literary studies. People who are interested in Chinese literature and thought will also benefit from this book.