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A survey of Asian American literature.
One of the twentieth century's most preeminent novelists, Vonnegut satirically explored the wrongs of humanity, most notably in;Slaughterhouse-Five;and;Cat's Cradle.
Shamanism in the Contemporary Novel examines how shamanism is used as a significant trope in a selection of novels. Özlem Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu contends that the shamanic figures and societies featured in these works have been subjected to marginalization, dislocation, and dispossession through imperialist, colonialist, and capitalist encroachments in different historical contexts.
Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.
This book conducts a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of Franz Kafka’s relation to China. Commencing with an examination of the myriad Chinese cultural influences to which Kafka was exposed, it goes on to explore the ways in which they manifest themselves in canonical stories, such as Description of A Struggle, The Great Wall of China, and An Old Manuscript. This leads the way to thought-provoking comparative studies of Kafka and major Chinese writers and philosophers, such as Zhuang Tzu, Pu Songling, Qian Zhongshu, and Lu Xun. Highlighting kindred philosophical concepts, shared aesthetic tastes, and parallel narrative strategies, these comparisons transcend mere textual analysis, to explore the profound cultural, historical, and philosophical implications of Kafka’s works. Finally, the book turns to an examination Kafka’s impact on modern life in China, including its translation studies, literature, and even its mass culture.
Patrick O'Neill approaches five of Kafka's novels and short stories by considering the many translations of each work as a single, multilingual “macrotext.”
This revised and expanded volume examines the intersections of aesthetics and morality and asks what Decadence means to art and society at various moments in British literature. As time passes, the definition of what it takes to be D/decadent changes. The decline from a higher standard, social malaise, aesthetic ennui – all these ideas presume certain facts about the past, the present, and the linear nature of time itself. To reject the past as a given, and to relish the subtleties of present nuance, is the beginning of Decadence. The conflict underlying the contributions to this collection is that of society's moral contempt vis-a-vis the focus on the fleeting present on part of the purportedly decadent artists; who in turn thought the truly decadent to be the stranglehold society maintained on individual interpretation and the interpretation of oneself.
The first study to deal extensively and comparatively with capture, imprisonment and punishment in colonial and postcolonial cultures. Offering textual as well as historical analysis, each chapter focuses on a specific national or regional arena. Each also provides foundational insight into the social, economic and cultural conditions prevalent in colonial societies. Chapters, written by a wide range of international specialists, include coverage of the early modern to the contemporary period as well as coverage of cultural arenas from Europe to Asia, Australia, northern and southern Africa and North America.
As questions of citizenship generate new debates for this generation of Americans, Brook Thomas argues for revitalizing the role of literature in civic education. Thomas defines civic myths as compelling stories about national origin, membership, and values that are generated by conflicts within the concept of citizenship itself. Selected works of literature, he claims, work on these myths by challenging their terms at the same time that they work with them by relying on the power of narrative to produce compelling new stories. Civic Myths consists of four case studies: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and "the good citizen"; Edward Everett Hale's "The Man without a Country" and "the patriotic citizen"; Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and "the independent citizen"; and Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men and "the immigrant citizen." Thomas also provides analysis of the civic mythology surrounding Abraham Lincoln and the case of Ex parte Milligan. Engaging current debates about civil society, civil liberties, civil rights, and immigration, Thomas draws on the complexities of law and literature to probe the complexities of U.S. citizenship.
This book serves several purposes, all very much needed in today's embattled situation of the humanities and the study of literature. First, in Chapter One, the author proposes that the discipline of Comparative Literature is a most advantageous approach for the study of literature and culture as it is a priori a discipline of cross-disciplinarity and of international dimensions. After a "Manifesto" for a New Comparative Literature, he proceeds to offer several related theoretical frameworks as a composite method for the study of literature and culture he designates and explicates as the "systemic and empirical approach." Following the introduction of the proposed New Comparative Literature,...