A Theory of Parody
A Theory of Parody

Author: Linda Hutcheon

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2023-11-21

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 0252054377

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this major study of a flexible and multifaceted mode of expression, Linda Hutcheon looks at works of modern literature, visual art, music, film, theater, and architecture to arrive at a comprehensive assessment of what parody is and what it does. Hutcheon identifies parody as one of the major forms of modern self-reflexivity, one that marks the intersection of invention and critique and offers an important mode of coming to terms with the texts and discourses of the past. Looking at works as diverse as Tom Stoppard's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill, Woody Allen's Zelig, Karlheinz Stockhausen's Hymnen, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Magritte's This Is Not a Pipe, Hutcheon discusses the remarkable range of intent in modern parody while distinguishing it from pastiche, burlesque, travesty, and satire. She shows how parody, through ironic playing with multiple conventions, combines creative expression with critical commentary. Its productive-creative approach to tradition results in a modern recoding that establishes difference at the heart of similarity. In a new introduction, Hutcheon discusses why parody continues to fascinate her and why it is commonly viewed as suspect-–for being either too ideologically shifty or too much of a threat to the ownership of intellectual and creative property.

Vision, the Gaze, and the Function of the Senses in “Celestina”
Vision, the Gaze, and the Function of the Senses in “Celestina”

Author: James F. Burke

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-08-10

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 0271072385

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The plot of the late-medieval Spanish work Celestina (1499) centers on the ill-fated love of Calisto and Melibea and the fascinating character of their intermediary, Celestina. In this ground-breaking rereading of the play, James F. Burke offers a new interpretation of the characters' actions by analyzing medieval theories of perception that would have influenced the composition of Celestina. Drawing upon a variety of texts and thinkers—including the medieval theories of Thomas Aquinas, the Renaissance treatises of Marsilio Ficino, the classical philosophy of Aristotle, and the modern psychology of Jacques Lacan—Burke relates ancient and medieval theories of sensory functions to modern understandings. He demonstrates that modern concepts of "the gaze" have their premodern analogy in the idea of an all-encompassing sensory field, both visual and auditory, that surrounded and enveloped each individual. Touching on medieval theories of the "evil eye," the sonic sphere, and "the banquet of the senses," Burke offers a new perspective on the use and manipulation of sensory input by the characters of Celestina. This book will be welcomed not only by students of Spanish literature but also by those interested in new ways of approaching medieval and Renaissance texts.

Celestina and the Ends of Desire
Celestina and the Ends of Desire

Author: E. Michael Gerli

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2011-06-18

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1442694297

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the most widely-read and translated Spanish works in sixteenth-century Europe was Fernando de Rojas' Celestina, a 1499 novel in dialogue about a couple that faces heartbreak and tragedy after being united by the titular brothel madam. In 'Celestina' and the Ends of Desire, E. Michael Gerli illustrates how this work straddles the medieval and the modern in its exploration of changing categories of human desire - from the European courtly love tradition to the interpretation of want as an insatiable, destructive force. Gerli's analysis draws on a wide range of Celestina scholarship but is unique in its use of modern literary and psychoanalytic theory to confront the problematic links between literature and life. Explorations of influence of desire on knowledge, action, and lived experience connect the work to seismic shifts in the culture of early modern Europe. Engaging and original, 'Celestina' and the Ends of Desire takes a fresh look at the timeless work's widespread appeal and enduring popularity.

Playwrights and Literary Games in Seventeenth-Century China
Playwrights and Literary Games in Seventeenth-Century China

Author: Jing Shen

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2010-08-04

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 073913857X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Playwrights and Literary Games in Seventeenth-Century China: Plays by Tang Xianzu, Mei Dingzuo, Wu Bing, Li Yu, and Kong Shangren is a full-length study of chuanqi (romance) drama, a sophisticated form with substantial literary and meta-theatrical value that reigned in Chinese theater from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and nourished later theatrical traditions including jingju (Beijing Opera). Highly educated dramatists used chuanqi to present in artistic form personal, social, and political concerns of their time. There were six outstanding examples of these trends, considered masterpieces in their time and ever since. This study presents them in their social and cultural context during the long seventeenth century (1580D1700), the period of great experimentation and political transition. The romantic spirit and independent thinking of the late Ming elite stimulated the efflorescence of the chuanqi, and that legacy was inherited and investigated during the second half of the seventeenth-century in early Qing. Jing Shen examinees the texts to demonstrate that the playwrights appropriate, convert, or misinterpret other genres or literary works of enduring influence into their plays to convey subtle and subversive expressions in the fine margins between tradition and innovation, history and theatrical re-presentation. By exploring the components of romance in texts from late Ming to early Qing, Shen reveals creative readings of earlier themes, stories, plays and the changing idea of romanticism for chuanqi drama. This study also shows the engagement of literati playwrights in closed literary circles in which chuanqi plays became a tool by which literati playwrights negotiated their agency and social stature. The five playwrights whose works are analyzed in this book had different experiences pursuing government service as scholar-officials; some failed to achieve high office. But their common concerns and self-conscious literary choices reveal important insights into the culture of the seventeenth century, and into the sociopolitical implications of the chuanqi genre. In addition to classical Chinese commentaries on chuanqi drama, this book uses modern critical theories and terminology on Western drama to enhance the analysis of chuanqi plays.

Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature
Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature

Author: David A. Wacks

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-05-11

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0253015766

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.

The Decameron Third Day in Perspective
The Decameron Third Day in Perspective

Author: Francesco Ciabattoni

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2014-03-21

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 144261644X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Divided into ten days of ten novellas each, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is one of the literary gems of the fourteenth century. The ‘Decameron’ Third Day in Perspective is an interpretive guide to the stories of the text’s Third Day. For each novella, a distinguished Boccaccio scholar offers an essay that both reviews the current scholarly literature and advances new and intriguing interpretations of the work. The whole collection reflects the series’s guiding principle of examining the text “in perspective,” revealing the connections among the novellas, the Days, and the framing narrative that holds the whole Decameron together. The second of the University of Toronto Press’s interpretive guides to Boccaccio’s Decameron, this collection forms part of an ambitious project to examine the entire Decameron, Day by Day.

Jewish Literary Eros
Jewish Literary Eros

Author: Isabelle Levy

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0253060176

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Jewish Literary Eros, Isabelle Levy explores the originality and complexity of medieval Jewish writings. Examining medieval prosimetra (texts composed of alternating prose and verse), Levy demonstrates that secular love is the common theme across Arabic, Hebrew, French, and Italian texts. At the crossroads of these spheres of intellectual activity, Jews of the medieval Mediterranean composed texts that combined dominant cultures' literary stylings with biblical Hebrew and other elements from Jewish cultures. Levy explores Jewish authors' treatments of love in prosimetra and finds them creative, complex, and innovative. Jewish Literary Eros compares the mixed-form compositions by Jewish authors of the medieval Mediterranean with their Arabic and European counterparts to find the particular moments of innovation among textual practices by Jewish authors. When viewed in the comparative context of the medieval Mediterranean, the evolving relationship between the mixed form and the theme of love in secular Jewish compositions refines our understanding of the ways in which the Jewish literature of the period negotiates the hermeneutic and theological underpinnings of Islamicate and Christian literary traditions.