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Bernhard Varenius’ books influenced the history of science in such a way that Isaac Newton, Alexander von Humboldt and Tsar Peter the Great all referred to him. Varenius wrote the first comprehensive description of Japan (Descriptio regni Japoniae, 1649) from a European perspective, exclusively based on a diversity of sources. But the impact of his Geographia generalis (1650) explains his ranking among the founding fathers of geography as a science. He called ‘general’ geography a branch of (applied) mathematics which does not deal with regional specifics. The contributions in this book focus on his multi-faceted work, the influence of his books and the tragically short life of this young polymath from Germany who benefited from the intellectually stimulating milieu of Leiden and Amsterdam. Contributors include: Horst Walter Blanke, Reinhard Düchting, Klaus Lehmann, Robert Mayhew, Sandra Rebok, Folker Reichert, Frank Richter, Margret Schuchard, Denis J.B. Shaw, Ulrich Staffhorst, Johann Anselm Steiger, Rienk H. Vermij, and Ernst-Christian Volkmann.
This book investigates the concept of the heroic, questions what it is that makes the national hero an indispensable appendage to any possible interpretation of national identity, and asks why scholars stop short before coming to terms with this elusive phenomenon. It finds answers by following heroic traditions in Scotland, Norway and Lithuania from the early modern period to the twentieth century. The book argues that heroic traditions - prevailing trends in situating heroes in national history - owe much to the early modern state. Both national heroes and the nation state had been conceived with a similar moral political mindset that looked for new ways to identify sources for commonality...
Risking Who One Is shows how the process of self-recognition, even self-construction, in the reading of contemporary work can lead to larger considerations about culture and society - to the dimensions of historical awareness and collective action. The book gives us a new way of looking at issues that are as personal as they are prevalent in the writing, the criticism, and the life of our times.
Can fictions of desire determine real pleasures? Do texts regulate the performance of our sexual identities? In Sexuality and the Reading Encounter Emma Wilson offers a new account of the intimate relations between reading, identity, and identification. Interweaving theoretical debate with analysis of texts by Proust, Duras, Tournier, and Cixous, her study reveals the formative potential and transferential pleasures of the reading encounter. Drawing on an understanding of identity as performative, alienated and fictitious, this study argues that the fictions we read act as mirrors and decoys displaying seductive images of intelligible sexual identities. The texts chosen for discussion here draw attention to the strategies by which identity is constructed textually. They work thus to frame the reading encounter and to highlight its formative power. In analysis of these texts, this study works to cut across the axes of homosexuality and heterosexuality, offering an alternative focus on the interdependence of identity and fantasy.
" . . . both an excellent introduction and a thoroughgoing analysis of Kristeva's writing." —Signs "The book is a brilliant combination of a recuperative and a critical reading of Kristeva's work." —Changes: An International Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy " . . . a thorough, detailed, and critical analysis of the writings of Julia Kristeva." —Elizabeth Grosz ". . . the most involved and engaging study of Julia Kristeva's work to date . . ." —The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory This first full-scale feminist interpretation of Kristeva's work situates her within the context of French feminism. Oliver guides her readers through Kristeva's intellectual formation in linguistics, Freud, Lacan, and poetics. This comprehensive introduction to Kristeva makes accessible her important contributions to philosophy, linguistics, and psychoanalytic feminism.
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: The School of the Dead--the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; The School of Dreams--the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and The School of Roots--the importance of depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka.
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Dialogism means many things to many people, sometimes without reference to Bakhtin. Recognizing the broad use of the term, Lynne Pearce provides a comprehensive introduction to dialogism that combines an overview of Mikhail Bakhtin's major texts with an analysis of the way in which the term has been taken up, defined, and redefined by subsequent critics of widely varying theoretical and political hues. There is a particular focus on the way in which dialogics has proved especially attractive to theorists attempting to formulate new models of subjectivity and to feminists looking for ways to define the specificity of women's writing. The manner in which dialogism and its attendant concepts ar...
Includes twenty-two interviews--many appearing here for the first time in English and one conducted expressly for this volume. These provocative discussions with key figures in contemporary arts and letters touch upon topics as diverse as the American literary academy, Proust, neuroscience, and the American Left. The interviews elucidate such difficult ideas as abjection, intertextuality, the semiotic and the symbolic, and the effect of aesthetic revolution on social change.