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The Search for a New Alphabet
Literary Studies is currently going through a deep transformation, preparing itself for the launch into the twenty-first century. The present volume, which is dedicated to Douwe Fokkema on the occasion of his retirement from Utrecht University, captures this transformation in a number of squibs by a select international group of scholars. Topics dealt with are: canon formation, conventions, cultural relativism, hermeneutics vs. empirical studies, and the problem of values, all themes very much central to current discussions in comparative literature and literary theory. Taken together they form a variegated picture of a discipline in a changing world, continually involved, so to speak, in 'The Search for a New Alphabet.'
Knowledge and Commitment
The authors present a new perspective on a wide range of issues in the study of literature and culture. Some of the topics discussed, such as interpretation, canon formation, and literary historiography, belong to the traditional domain of literary studies. Others — cultural identity, convention, systems theory, and empirical methods — originate in the social sciences and are now being integrated into the humanities. By referring to the work of authors as widely apart as Hayden White, Edward Said, Fredric Jameson, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Reinhart Koselleck, Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Siegfried Schmidt, Norbert Groeben, and many others, the full complexity of the field of literary studies becomes apparent.The authors argue for a distinction between analysis of literary systems on the one hand and critical intervention on the other. By distinguishing between research and criticism, between knowledge and commitment, they offer new ways for literary studies as well as for cultural critique.
Perfect Worlds
"Perfect Worlds offers an extensive historical analysis of utopian narratives in the Chinese and Euro-American traditions. This comparative study discusses, among other things, More's criticism of Plato, the European orientalist search for utopia in China, Wells's Modern Utopia and his talk with Stalin, Chinese writers constructing their Confucianist utopia, traces of Daoism in Mao Zedong's utopianism and politics and finally the rise of dystopian writing - a negative expression of the utopian impulse - in Europe and America as well as in China"--P. 4 of cover.
The Moral Laboratory
The idea that reading literature changes the reader seems as old as literature itself. Through the ages philosophers, writers, and literary scholars have suggested it affects norms, empathic ability, self-concept, beliefs, etc. This book examines what we actually know about these effects. And it finds strong evidence for the old claims. However, it remains unclear what aspects of the reading experience are responsible for these effects. Applying methods of the social sciences to this particular problem of literary theory, this book presents a psychological explanation based upon the conception of literature as a moral laboratory. A series of experiments examines whether imagining oneself in the shoes of characters affects beliefs about what it must be like to be someone else, and whether it affects beliefs about consequences of behavior. The results have implications for the role literature could play in society, for instance, in an alternative for traditional moral education.
The Muzzled Muse
“The long history of censorship is a parallel and equally powerful history of literature. Censors bear witness to the power of the word even more forcefully than the writers and the readers they consider dangerous.” (Index on Censorship 6/1996) A critical assessment of literature produced under censorship needs to take into account that the stategies of the censors are answered by strategies of the writers and the readers. To recognize self-censoring strategies in writing, it is necessary to know the specific restrictions of the censorship regime in question. In South Africa under apartheid all writers were confronted with the question of how to respond to the pressure of censorship. Thi...
The Search for a New Alphabet
Literary Studies is currently going through a deep transformation, preparing itself for the launch into the twenty-first century. The present volume, which is dedicated to Douwe Fokkema on the occasion of his retirement from Utrecht University, captures this transformation in a number of squibs by a select international group of scholars. Topics dealt with are: canon formation, conventions, cultural relativism, hermeneutics vs. empirical studies, and the problem of values, all themes very much central to current discussions in comparative literature and literary theory. Taken together they form a variegated picture of a discipline in a changing world, continually involved, so to speak, in ‘The Search for a New Alphabet.’
Circulation, Translation and Reception Across Borders
This volume offers a detailed analysis of selected cases in the reception, translation and artistic reinterpretation of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities (1972) around the world. The book traces the many different ways in which Calvino's modern classic has been read, translated and adapted in Brazil, France, the Netherlands and Flanders, Mexico, Romania, Scandinavia, the USSR, China, Poland, Japan and Australia. It also offers analyses of the relation between Calvino's book and, respectively, the East and Africa, as well as reflections on the book's inspiration for, and resonance in, dance, architecture and art. The volume thus traces the diversity in the reception and circulation of Invisible Cities in different countries and continents, offering a much wider framework for the discussion of Calvino’s masterpiece than before, and a more detailed picture of its cultural and linguistic ramifications. This book will be of interest to scholars in Comparative Literature, World Literature, Translation Studies, Italian Studies, Romance Languages, European Studies, Dance, Architecture and Media Studies, as well as to scholars specialised in paratext and reception.
Cybertext Poetics
Equally interested in what is and what could be, Cybertext Poetics combines ludology and cybertext theory to solve persistent problems and introduce paradigm changes in the fields of literary theory, narratology, game studies, and digital media. The book first integrates theories of print and digital literature within a more comprehensive theory capable of coming to terms with the ever-widening media varieties of literary expression, and then expands narratology far beyond its current confines resulting in multiple new possibilities for both interactive and non-interactive narratives. By focusing on a cultural mode of expression that is formally, cognitively, affectively, socially, aesthetically, ethically and rhetorically different from narratives and stories, Cybertext Poetics constructs a ludological basis for comparative game studies, shows the importance of game studies to the understanding of digital media, and argues for a plurality of transmedial ecologies.
