The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy

The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy
Author: Sean Carney
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2013-02-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442663510

The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy is a detailed study of the idea of the tragic in the political plays of David Hare, Howard Barker, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, and Jez Butterworth. Through an in-depth analysis of over sixty of their works, Sean Carney argues that their dramatic exploration of tragic experience is an integral part of their ongoing politics. This approach allows for a comprehensive rather than selective study of both the politics and poetics of their work. Carney’s attention to the tragic enables him to find a common discourse among the canonical English playwrights of an older generation and representatives of the nineties generation, challenging the idea that there is a sharp generational break between these groups. Finally, Carney demonstrates that tragic experience is often denied by the social discourse of Englishness, and that these playwrights make a crucial critical intervention by dramatizing the tragic.

Textual Events

Textual Events
Author: Felix Budelmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2018
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0198805829

In exploring the idea of lyric performances as 'textual events', this volume marks a departure from interpretations of Greek lyric as socio-political discourse. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic, it studies poetic effects that cannot be captured in terms of function alone and re-examines the relationship between form and context.

The Sky of Our Manufacture

The Sky of Our Manufacture
Author: Jesse Oak Taylor
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2016-03-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813937949

The smoke-laden fog of London is one of the most vivid elements in English literature, richly suggestive and blurring boundaries between nature and society in compelling ways. In The Sky of Our Manufacture, Jesse Oak Taylor uses the many depictions of the London fog in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novel to explore the emergence of anthropogenic climate change. In the process, Taylor argues for the importance of fiction in understanding climatic shifts, environmental pollution, and ecological collapse. The London fog earned the portmanteau "smog" in 1905, a significant recognition of what was arguably the first instance of a climatic phenomenon manufactured by modern industry. Tracing the path to this awareness opens a critical vantage point on the Anthropocene, a new geologic age in which the transformation of humanity into a climate-changing force has not only altered our physical atmosphere but imbued it with new meanings. The book examines enduringly popular works--from the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries to works by Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf--alongside newspaper cartoons, scientific writings, and meteorological technologies to reveal a fascinating relationship between our cultural climate and the sky overhead. Under the Sign of Nature: Studies in Ecocriticism

Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora

Stefan Wolpe and the Avant-Garde Diaspora
Author: Brigid Maureen Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2012-09-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1107003008

Cohen traces a history of modernism in migration through the composer Stefan Wolpe, from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College.

Garden Plots

Garden Plots
Author: Shelley Saguaro
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2006
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780754637530

Focusing on a range of twentieth-century texts and including relevant twenty-first century writing, Garden Plots explores the ways in which gardens in fiction represent more than just a familiar theme. Bound up with wider aesthetic and ideological issues, gardens, like literary forms, are subject to transformations. The term 'plots' is a keyword in this approach. It refers to garden plots, literary plots, and more generally, the plotting that is political, polemical, and subversive. Each of the six chapters includes four texts that are familiar and representative. Authors include Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Carol Shields, J. M. Coetzee, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, Jamaica Kincaid, and Philip K. Dick.

Introducing Cultural Studies

Introducing Cultural Studies
Author: Elaine Baldwin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 634
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317864581

A rapidly changing world – in part driven by huge transformations in technology and mobility - means we all encounter shifting cultures, and new cultural and social interactions daily. Powerful forces such as consumption and globalization exert an enormous influence on all walks and levels of life across both space and time. Cultural Studies remains at the vanguard of consideration of these issues. This completely revised second edition of Introducing Cultural Studies gives a systematic overview of the concepts, theories, debates and latest research in the field. Reinforcing the interdisciplinary nature of Cultural Studies, it first considers cultural theory before branching out to examine different dimensions of culture in detail. Key features: Collaboratively authored by an interdisciplinary team Closely cross-referenced between chapters and sections to ensure an integrated presentation of ideas Figures, diagrams, cartoons and photographs help convey ideas and stimulate Key Influence, Defining Concepts, and Extract boxes focus in on major thinkers, ideas and works Examines culture along the dividing lines of class, race and gender Weblinks and Further Reading sections encourage and support further investigation Changes for this edition: Brand new chapter addresses how culture is researched and knowledge in cultural studies is produced Brand new chapter on the Postmodernisation of Everyday Life Includes hot topics such as globalization, youth subcultures, ‘virtual’ cultures, body modification, new media, technologically-assisted social networking and many more This text will be core reading for undergraduates and postgraduates in a variety of disciplines - including Cultural Studies, Communication and Media Studies, English, Geography, Sociology, and Social Studies – looking for a clear and comprehensible introduction to the field.

A Companion to Benjamin Franklin

A Companion to Benjamin Franklin
Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2011-06-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1444342134

This companion provides a comprehensive survey of the life, work and legacy of Benjamin Franklin - the oldest, most distinctive, and multifaceted of the founders. Includes contributions from across a range of academic disciplines Combines traditional and cutting-edge scholarship, from accomplished and emerging experts in the field Pays special attention to the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, journalism, colonial American society, and themes of race, class, and gender Places Franklin in the context of recent work in political theory, American Studies, American literature, material culture studies, popular culture, and international relations