In attempting to conceptualize feminine subjectivity beyond the familiar paradigm of dualism and within the parameters of ethics, this study examines the political and intellectual identity of contemporary poststructuralist feminism and its profound resonance with the nineteenth-century British female Bildungsroman. Rooted in fundamental questions about the nexus between feminist theory and feminist literature, genre and gender, subjectivity and ethics, sexuality and textuality, and mimesis and politics, this book aims specifically to configure feminine subjectivity in the horizon of becoming...
In attempting to conceptualize feminine subjectivity beyond the familiar paradigm of dualism and within the parameters of ethics, this study examines ...
This book examines and explains the obsession with history in the contemporary British novel. It frames these "historical" novels as expressions of narrative desire, highlighting the reciprocal relationship between a desire to disclose and to rid ourselves of anxieties elicited by the past. Scrutinizing representative novels from Byatt, McEwan and Rushdie, contemporary fiction is revealed as capable of advocating a viable ethical stance and as a form of authentic commentary. Our anxieties often exist in response to what might be perceived as the oppression or eradication of values,...
This book examines and explains the obsession with history in the contemporary British novel. It frames these "historical" novels as expressions of...
The book analyzes Ishmael Reed [Mumbo Jumbo], Kathy Acker [The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec], and Don Delillo [White Noise], three authors whom critics cite as quintessentially postmodern. For these critics such works possess formal narrative and/or content qualities at odds with modernism. In particular, according to influential thinkers like Fredric Jameson, postmodern works possess narrative form and/or content which eschews reality, and embody a fundamental paradigm shift from the politically...
The book analyzes Ishmael Reed [Mumbo Jumbo], Kathy Acker [The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec], and Don Del...
This study follows the aesthetic of the sublime from Burke and Kant, through Wordsworth and the Shelleys, into Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot and Hardy. Exploring the continuities between the romantic and Victorian "periods" that have so often been rather read as differences, the book demonstrate that the sublime mode enables the transition from a paradigm of overwhelming power exemplified by the body of the king to the pervasive power of surveillance utilized by the rising middle classes. While the domestic woman connected with the rise of the middle class is normally seen as beautiful, the book...
This study follows the aesthetic of the sublime from Burke and Kant, through Wordsworth and the Shelleys, into Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot and Hardy. Ex...
The purpose of this book is to explore how English masculinity, that was so contingent on the relative health of the British imperial project, negotiated the decline and ultimate dissolution of the empire by the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly, this book will argue that by defining itself in relation to indigenous masculinity, English masculinity began to share a common idiom with its colonial other. The rhetoric of indigenous masculinity, therefore, both mimicked and departed from its metropolitan counterpart. The study combines an interdisciplinary approach with a focus that is...
The purpose of this book is to explore how English masculinity, that was so contingent on the relative health of the British imperial project, negotia...
The books seeks to examine changes in the U.S.--literary, aesthetic, and social--as represented in novels set in an environment where the gamut of ethnicities and their often differing views of literature and culture that make up the U.S. are more generally found, using the theories and concepts of Mikhail Bakhtin, particularly his concept of the "chronotope," or "spacetime."
The books seeks to examine changes in the U.S.--literary, aesthetic, and social--as represented in novels set in an environment where the gamut of eth...
The Imperial Quest and Modern Memory explores relationships between narrative and imperium in the context of Western Modernism by examining the Quest as a vexed trope in Heart of Darkness, Passage to India, The Sheltering Sky, and The Quiet American. The book takes stock of twentieth century theory regarding the Quest--as archetype, trope, and construct, considers the dominant expression and the imperial organization of this trope in Western culture and iconography from the Dark Ages to the...
The Imperial Quest and Modern Memory explores relationships between narrative and imperium in the context of Western Modernism by examining ...
The book investigates the problem of how narrative, normally conceived of temporally, encodes its relation to space, especially the territorial space that is the subject of colonial possession and dispossession. The book approaches this problem by, first, providing a theoretical framework derived from the work of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas on the ethical and political implications of human dwelling, and, second, by using this framework to examine cultural forms in two historical periods, colonial America and postcolonial South Africa--the primary interest being the works of Charles...
The book investigates the problem of how narrative, normally conceived of temporally, encodes its relation to space, especially the territorial space ...
The book analyzes American literature about middle or upper class characters who voluntarily descend the class ranks to experience "vital contact" by living or associating, temporarily, with the poor. The motivations of these characters--and historical figures such as John Reed and Walter Wyckoff--range from straightforward bohemian slumming among the "exotics" to more complex and psychologically wrought investigations of cross-class empathy. The study begins by charting downclasing processes in works of canonical nineteenth-century authors, including Melville, Hawthorne, James, Howells and...
The book analyzes American literature about middle or upper class characters who voluntarily descend the class ranks to experience "vital contact" by ...
Martin Buinicki examines how debates over copyright law in the United States, particularly over the lack of an international copyright law, during the nineteenth century intersected with the business practices and political and artistic beliefs of American authors. He argues that the act of taking out a copyright was more than a mere legal mechanism marking a transition from amateur to professional or artist to businessperson. Taking out a copyright had a profound impact on how audiences viewed authors, how authors perceived their profession, and how they represented individual rights and...
Martin Buinicki examines how debates over copyright law in the United States, particularly over the lack of an international copyright law, during the...
