Title: Montaigne's unruly brood: textual engendering and the challenge to paternal authority 
Author: Regosin, Richard L 1937-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | French Studies
Publisher's Description: Perhaps as old as writing itself, the metaphor of the book as child has depicted textuality as an only son conceived to represent its father uniformly and to assure the integrity of his name. Richard L. Regosin demonstrates how Montaigne's Essais both departs from and challenges this conventional figure of textuality. He argues that Montaigne's writing is best described as a corpus of siblings with multiple faces and competing voices, a hybrid textuality inclined both to truth and dissimulation, to faithfulness and betrayal, to form and deformation. And he analyzes how this unruly, mixed brood also discloses a sexuality and gender dynamic in the Essais that is more conflicted than the traditional metaphor of literary paternity allows.Regosin challenges traditional critics by showing how the "logic" of a faithful filial text is disrupted and how the writing self displaces the author's desire for mastery and totalization. He approaches the Essais from diverse critical and theoretical perspectives that provide new ground for understanding both Montaigne's complex textuality and the obtrusive reading that it simultaneously invites and resists. His analysis is informed by poststructuralist criticism, by reception theory, and by gender and feminist studies, yet at the same time he treats the Essais as a child of sixteenth-century Humanism and late Renaissance France. Regosin also examines Montaigne's self-proclaimed taste for Ovid and the role played by the seminal texts of self-representation and aesthetic conception (Narcissus and Pygmalion) and the myth of sexual metamorphosis (Iphis).   [brief]
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Title: Chaucerian play: comedy and control in the Canterbury tales 
Author: Kendrick, Laura
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Literature | English Literature
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Title: Orphans of Petrarch: poetry and theory in the Spanish Renaissance 
Author: Navarrete, Ignacio Enrique 1954-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | Poetry | Renaissance Literature
Publisher's Description: In Spain as elsewhere, Renaissance poets transformed the lyric tradition by using Petrarch as a source of poetic renewal. But political unity and military hegemony, coupled with a sense of cultural inferiority and an obsession with ethnic purity, made Spain different. Drawing on modern critical theory, Ignacio Navarrete offers a new exposition of the development of Spanish Renaissance poetics. Grounded in both philology and cultural theory, Orphans of Petrarch is the first book to integrate the "Spanish difference" into an understanding of Renaissance lyric as a European phenomenon.   [brief]
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Title: In a cold crater: cultural and intellectual life in Berlin, 1945-1948 
Author: Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | German Studies | European History | Literature | Film | Music
Publisher's Description: Although the three conspicuous cultures of Berlin in the twentieth century - Weimar, Nazi, and Cold War - are well documented, little is known about the years between the fall of the Third Reich and the beginning of the Cold War. In a Cold Crater is the history of this volatile postwar moment, when the capital of the world's recently defeated public enemy assumed great emotional and symbolic meaning.This is a story, not of major intellectual and cultural achievements (for there were none in those years), but of enormous hopes and plans that failed. It is the story of members of the once famous volcano-dancing Berlin intelligentsia, torn apart by Nazism and exile, now re-encountering one another. Those who had stayed in Berlin in 1933 crawled out of the rubble, while many of the exiles returned with the Allied armies as members of the various cultural and re-educational units. All of them were eager to rebuild a neo-Weimar republic of letters, arts, and thought. Some were highly qualified and serious. Many were classic opportunists. A few came close to being clowns. After three years of "carnival," recreated by Schivelbusch in all its sound and fury, they were driven from the stage by the Cold War.As Berlin once again becomes the German capital, Schivelbusch's masterful cultural history is certain to captivate historians and general readers alike.   [brief]
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Title: The Irish Ulysses 
Author: Tymoczko, Maria
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | English Literature
Publisher's Description: In a radical new reading of Ulysses , Maria Tymoczko argues that previous scholarship has distorted our understanding of Joyce's epic novel by focusing on its English and continental literary sources alone. Challenging conventional views that Joyce rejected Irish literature, Tymoczko demonstrates how he used Irish imagery, myth, genres, and literary modes. For the first time, Joyce emerges as an author caught between the English and Irish literary traditions, one who, like later postcolonial writers, remakes English language literature with his own country's rich literary heritage.The author's exacting scholarship makes this book required reading for Joyce scholars, while its theoretical implications - for such issues as canon formation, the role of criticism in literary reception, and the interface of literary cultures - make it an important work for literary theorists.   [brief]
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Title: The rhetoric of confession: shishōsetsu in early twentieth-century Japanese fiction 
Author: Fowler, Edward
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Literature | Japan | Literary Theory and Criticism | Asian Literature
Publisher's Description: The shishosetsu is a Japanese form of autobiographical fiction that flourished during the first two decades of this century. Focusing on the works of Chikamatsu Shuko, Shiga Naoya, and Kasai Zenzo, Edward Fowler explores the complex and paradoxical nature of shishosetsu , and discusses its linguisti . . . [more]
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Title: Flight from Eden: the origins of modern literary criticism and theory 
Author: Cassedy, Steven
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Literature | European Literature
Publisher's Description: Steven Cassedy takes aim at two of the most enduring myths of modern criticism: that it is secular, and that it is new and autonomous. He argues that though modern criticism is often forbiddingly scientific and technical, the modern critic remains something of a mystic. Every school of modern criticism - from structuralism to postmodern criticism - rests on a faith in an "Eden," an irreducible essence, a myth, like the common myth that there is an intrinsic distinction between "poetic" language and "ordinary" language. The modern critic attempts to abandon all mystical faith; this is the "flight from Eden." But it is always in vain.It is traditionally assumed that modern literary criticism and theory came from France, and relatively recently. In fact, according to Cassedy, the entire modern critical consciousness was already formed by the early twentieth century in the minds of writers who were primarily neither professional critics nor philosophers, but poets. Some were French (Mallarmé, and Valéry); others were not (Rilke, Bely, and the Russian avant-garde poet Velimir Khlebnikov). In them we find the same Edenic faith, the same effort to abandon it, and the same failure of that effort.   [brief]
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Title: Time and the crystal: studies in Dante's Rime petrose 
Author: Durling, Robert M
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Literature | European Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: The Rime petrose , Dante's powerful lyrics about a woman as beautiful and as hard as a precious stone, are generally acknowledged to be an important moment in his stylistic development. In this first full-length investigation of the poetics of the petrose and of their relation to the Divine Comedy , Durling and Martinez uncover much new material, especially from medieval science (astrology and mineralogy), philosophy, and theology. The authors argue that the Rime petrose represent a major turning point in Dante's conception of a "microcosmic poetics" that became the fundamental mode of the Commedia . They demonstrate how Dante here attempts his first full account of his relation to the universe as a whole.This work offers many new insights into the intrinsic significance of these remarkable poems and their place in Dante's development - especially far-reaching are the implications for the interpretation of the Divine Comedy . The book will be of interest not only to students of Dante but also to intellectual historians, historians of science, students of poetics and poetic theory, and to all those interested in medieval literature.   [brief]
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Title: Writing signs: the Fatimid public text 
Author: Bierman, Irene A
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Art | Middle Eastern Studies | Middle Eastern History | Literature
Publisher's Description: Irene Bierman explores the complex relationship between alphabet and language as well as the ways the two elements are socially defined by time and place. She focuses her exploration on the Eastern Mediterranean in the sixth through twelfth centuries, notably Cairo's Fatimid dynasty of 969-1171. Examining the inscriptions on Fatimid architecture and textiles, Bierman offers insight into all elements of that society, from religion to the economy, and the enormous changes the dynasty underwent during that period. Bierman addresses fundamental issues of what buildings mean, how inscriptions affect that meaning, and the role of written messages and the ceremonies into which they are incorporated in service of propagandist goals. Her method and conclusions provide a pioneering model for studying public writing in other societies and offer powerful evidence to show that writing is a highly charged and deeply embedded social practice.   [brief]
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Title: Epic traditions in the contemporary world: the poetics of community 
Author: Beissinger, Margaret H
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Literature | Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Comparative Literature
Publisher's Description: The epic tradition has been part of many different cultures throughout human history. This noteworthy collection of essays provides a comparative reassessment of epic and its role in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, as it explores the variety of contemporary approaches to the epic genre. Employing theoretical perspectives drawn from anthropology, literary studies, and gender studies, the authors examine familiar and less well known oral and literary traditions - ancient Greek and Latin, Arabic, South Slavic, Indian, Native American, Italian, English, and Caribbean - demonstrating the continuing vitality of the epic tradition.Juxtaposing work on the traditional canon of western epics with scholarship on contemporary epics from various parts of the world, these essays cross the divide between oral and literary forms that has long marked the approach to the genre. With its focus on the links among narrative, politics, and performance, the collection creates a new dialogue illustrating the sociopolitical significance of the epic tradition. Taken together, the essays raise compelling new issues for the study of epic, as they examine concerns such as national identity, gender, pedagogy, and the creation of the canon.   [brief]
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Title: Haiti, history, and the gods
Author: Dayan, Joan 1949-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Literature | History | Folklore and Mythology | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: In Haiti, History, and the Gods Joan Dayan charts the cultural imagination of Haiti not only by reconstructing the island's history but by highlighting ambiguities and complexities that have been ignored. She investigates the confrontational space in which Haiti is created and recreated in fiction and fact, text and ritual, discourse and practice. Dayan's ambitious project is a research tour de force that gives human dimensions to this eighteenth-century French colony and provides a template for understanding the Haiti of today.In examining the complex social fabric of French Saint-Domingue, which in 1804 became Haiti, Dayan uncovers a silenced, submerged past. Instead of relying on familiar sources to reconstruct Haitian history, she uses a startling diversity of voices that have previously been unheard. Many of the materials recovered here - overlooked or repressed historical texts, legal documents, religious works, secret memoirs, letters, and literary fictions - have never been translated into English. Others, such as Marie Vieux Chauvet's radical novel of vodou, Fonds des Nègres , are seldom used as historical sources.Dayan also argues provocatively for the consideration of both vodou rituals and narrative fiction as repositories of history. Her scholarship is enriched by the insights she has gleaned from conversations and experiences during her many trips to Haiti over the past twenty years. Taken together, the material presented in Haiti, History, and the Gods not only restores a lost chapter of Haitian history but suggests necessary revisions to the accepted histories of the New World.   [brief]
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Title: Luminous debris: reflecting on vestige in Provence and Languedoc 
Author: Sobin, Gustaf
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Literature | Cultural Anthropology | European Studies | Ancient History | Philosophy | French Studies
Publisher's Description: Interpreting vestige with the eloquence of a poet and the knowledge of a field archaeologist, Gustaf Sobin explores his elected terrain: the landscapes of Provence and Languedoc. Drawing on prehistory, protohistory, and Gallo-Roman antiquity, the twenty-six essays in this book focus on a particular place or artifact for the relevance inherent in each. A Bronze Age earring or the rippling wave pattern in Massiolite ceramic are more than archival curiosities for Sobin. Instead they invite inquiry and speculation on existence itself: Artifacts are read as realia, and history as an uninterrupted sequence of object lessons.As much travel writing as meditative discourse, Luminous Debris is enhanced by a prose that tracks, questions, and reflects on the materials invoked. Sobin engages the reader with precise descriptions of those very materials and the messages to be gleaned from their examination, be they existential, ethical, or political.An American expatriate living in Provence for the past thirty-five years, Gustaf Sobin shares his enthusiasm for his adopted landscape and for a vertical interpretation of its strata. In Luminous Debris he creates meaning out of matter and celebrates instances of reality, past and present.   [brief]
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Title: Golden days
Author: See, Carolyn
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Literature | Fiction | California and the West
Publisher's Description: Available again in paperback, Golden Days is a major novel from one of the most provocative voices on the American literary scene. Linking the recent past with an imagined future, Carolyn See captures life in Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. This marvelously imaginative, hilarious, and original work . . . [more]
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Title: Renard the Fox
Author: Terry, Patricia Ann 1929-
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Literature | Poetry | Literature in Translation | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: Renard the Fox is the first modern translation into English of one of the most important and influential medieval books. Valued for its comic spirit, its high literary quality, and its clever satire of feudal society, the tale uses animals to represent the members of various classes. This lively and . . . [more]
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Title: Spectacle and society in Livy's history 
Author: Feldherr, Andrew 1963-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Classical History | Comparative Literature | Literature
Publisher's Description: Public spectacle - from the morning rituals of the Roman noble to triumphs and the shows of the Arena - formed a crucial component of the language of power in ancient Rome. The historian Livy (c. 60 B.C.E.-17 C.E.), who provides our fullest description of Rome's early history, presents his account of the growth of the Roman state itself as something to be seen - a visual monument and public spectacle. Through analysis of several episodes in Livy's History , Andrew Feldherr demonstrates the ways in which Livy uses specific visual imagery to make the reader not only an observer of certain key events in Roman history but also a participant in those events. This innovative study incorporates recent literary and cultural theory with detailed historical analysis to put an ancient text into dialogue with contemporary discussions of visual culture.In Spectacle and Society in Livy's History , Feldherr shows how Livy uses the literary representation of spectacles from the Roman past to construct a new sense of civic identity among his readers. He offers a new way of understanding how Livy's technique addressed the political and cultural needs of Roman citizens in Livy's day. In addition to renewing our understanding of Livy through modern scholarship, Feldherr provides a new assessment of the historian's aims and methods by asking what it means for the historian to make readers spectators of history.   [brief]
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Title: Cervantes and the burlesque sonnet 
Author: Martín, Adrienne Laskier
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Literature | Poetry | Renaissance Literature
Publisher's Description: Until now the great renown of Cervantes as a prose humorist has eclipsed his skill as a humorous poet. Cervantes and the Burlesque Sonnet amply illustrates the comic genius of Cervantes the poet, and at the same time establishes criteria by which comic poetry can be analyzed and evaluated.Adrienne Martín identifies Cervantes's pivotal role within the history of the European burlesque sonnet, whose unique aesthetic conventions lead her to a new definition of Renaissance literary humor as the self-conscious expression of human folly. In Don Quixote , and in the Don Quixote sonnets, Cervantes not only adopts and refines this notion of madness but also transforms the burlesque sonnet tradition inherited from Italy and from his predecessors in Spain by intermingling several different comic currents.Cervantes uses humor to point out our complex, paradoxical, quintessentially human nature and brings renewed vigor, critical and intellectual depth, different concerns, and an original tone to the burlesque. He frees comic poetry from its traditional marginal status and facilitates the subsequent explosion of burlesque and satire seen in Spain's baroque poets. Excellent translations of more than sixty Italian and Spanish sonnets enhance Martín's fine analysis.   [brief]
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Title: Selected letters
Author: Olson, Charles 1910-1970
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Literature | Poetry | Autobiographies and Biographies | American Literature | American Studies | Letters
Publisher's Description: For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges.   [brief]
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Title: Dryden and the tradition of panegyric 
Author: Garrison, James D
Published: University of California Press,  1975
Subjects: Literature | English Literature
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Title: Russian opera and the symbolist movement
Author: Morrison, Simon Alexander 1964-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Music | Opera | Musicology | Composers | Russian and Eastern European Studies | Literature
Publisher's Description: An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement is a groundbreaking and imaginative treatment of the important yet neglected topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the nineteenth century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, this exceptionally insightful and well-researched book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. Simon Morrison shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment. Morrison treats these largely unstudied pieces by canonical composers: Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium, and Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. The chapters, revisionist studies of these composers and scores, address separate aspects of Symbolist poetics, discussing such topics as literary and musical decadence, pagan-Christian syncretism, theurgy, and life creation, or the portrayal of art in life. The appendix offers the first complete English-language translation of Scriabin's libretto for the Preparatory Act. Providing valuable insight into both the Symbolist enterprise and Russian musicology, this book casts new light on opera's evolving, ambiguous place in fin de siècle culture.   [brief]
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Title: Residues of justice: literature, law, philosophy 
Author: Dimock, Wai-chee 1953-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | American Studies | Law | Philosophy
Publisher's Description: In this arresting book, Wai Chee Dimock takes on the philosophical tradition from Kant to Rawls, challenging its conception of justice as foundational, self-evident, and all-encompassing. The idea of justice is based on the premise that the world can be resolved into commensurate terms: punishment equal to the crime, redress equal to the injury, benefit equal to the desert. Dimock focuses, however, on what remains unexhausted, unrecovered, and noncorresponding in the exercise of justice. To honor these "residues," she turns to literature, which, in its linguistic density, transposes the clean abstractions of law and philosophy into persistent shadows, the abiding presence of the incommensurate. Justice can only be a partial answer to the phenomenon of human conflict.In arguing for justice as an incomplete virtue, Dimock draws upon legal history, political philosophy, linguistics, theology, and feminist theory; she discusses Aristotle and Augustine, Locke and Luther, Marx and Durkheim, Michael Sandel and Carol Gilligan, Noam Chomsky and Mary Ann Glendon. She also examines an unusual configuration of nineteenth-century American authors, pairing figures such as Herman Melville and Rebecca Harding Davis, Walt Whitman and Susan Warner.The result is a book both passionate and scholarly. It invites us to rethink the meanings of literature, law, and philosophy, and to imagine a language of community more supple and more nuanced than the language of justice.   [brief]
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