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Lucky Per, written at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century (1898-1904), has never before been translated into English, although its author, Henrik Pontoppidan, won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1917 together with his Danish countryman Karl Adolph Gjellerup. Indeed, Pontoppidan's novel was singled out by writers like Thomas Mann and Georg Luc�cs as seminal in modern world literature. Lucky Per sweeps through every social, religious, literary, and philosophical circle of the 1890s, through the politics of city power brokers, the engineering of new technology, the alien correctives of provincial complacency by the ecumenical culture and complex of Copenhagen's Jewish set, ...
Lucky Per, written at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century (1898-1904), has never before been translated into English, although its author, Henrik Pontoppidan, won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1917 together with his Danish countryman Karl Adolph Gjellerup. Indeed, Pontoppidan's novel was singled out by writers like Thomas Mann and Georg Lucács as seminal in modern world literature. Lucky Per sweeps through every social, religious, literary, and philosophical circle of the 1890s, through the politics of city power brokers, the engineering of new technology, the alien correctives of provincial complacency by the ecumenical culture and complex of Copenhagen's Jewish set, t...
In this coherent, intense study, Naomi Lebowitz defines and explores what she calls "the philosophy of literary amateurism." With expert readings of the works of major international writers of the Western tradition, Lebowitz passionately argues that all great writing is guided by a moral complexity and richness. Lebowitz defines literary amateurism as an attitude of anti-professionalism that allows a writer to explore and represent experience with complexity and moral fluidity. Citing Montaigne as the father of this philosophy, Lebowitz explores the work of such followers of Montaigne as Emerson, Balzac, Dickens, Henry James, Conrad, William James, Santayana, Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, and Italo Svevo, comparing their work to that of more self-consciously professional writers like Flaubert, Taine, Rousseau, and Proust. In a hyper-professional age of criticism marked by formulaic and political dictition and syntax, Lebowitz tries to recover the amateur perspective naturally carried by great literature's form and play. The Philosophy of Literary Amateurism makes a lasting contribution to the recovery of more generous relations between life and literature.
For the first time, novelist Iris Murdoch's life in her own words, from girlhood to her last years Iris Murdoch was an acclaimed novelist and groundbreaking philosopher whose life reflected her unconventional beliefs and values. But what has been missing from biographical accounts has been Murdoch's own voice—her life in her own words. Living on Paper—the first major collection of Murdoch's most compelling and interesting personal letters—gives, for the first time, a rounded self-portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers. With more than 760 letters, fewer than forty of which have been published before, the book provides a unique chronicle of Murdoch's lif...
Widely considered to be among his best works, ‘War Stories’ is a collection of poems detailing Nemerov’s observations and personal experiences of the Second World War. From the grand, sweeping reflections of ‘The War in the Heavens’ to the haunting verses of ‘The War in the Streets,’ this anthology is as pertinent now as it was when it was first published. A superb book for those with an interest in World War II, or those who want to see a different side to this usually-satirical poet. Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991) was an American novelist and poet, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978. His novels are characterised by the use of self-deprecating wit and an ongoing sense of irony. While his books tended to satirise 20th Century American life, his poems often focussed on the beauty and innocence of nature. In addition, Nemerov also worked as a scriptwriter, most notably on the film, ‘Tall Story,’ starring Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda.
Shouting Down the Silence presents the first complete biography of Stanley Elkin, a preeminent novelist who consistently won high marks from critics but whose complexities of style seemed destined to elude the popular acclaim he hoped to attain. From the publication of his second novel, A Bad Man, in 1967 to his death in 1995, Elkin was tormented by the desire for both material and artistic success. Elkin's novels were taught in colleges and universities, his fiction received high praise from critics and reviewers (two of his novels won National Book Critics Circle Awards), and his short stories were widely anthologized--and yet he was unable to achieve renown beyond the avant-garde, or to e...
The eminent cultural historian H. Stuart Hughes examines the works of Italo Svevo, Alberto Moravia, Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg, and Giorgio Bassani--six Italian prose writers of Jewish or part-Jewish origin--and gracefully shows how these writers combine in various measures their ancestral Jewish heritage with recent experiences of antisemitic persecution.
The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination examines and illuminates the role which the ironic temper plays in the creation of complex literary comedy. The book focuses on ironic comedy, though not of the kind that is characterized by the surprises and shocks, the incongruities and reversals, of circumstantial irony. Circumstantial—or situational—irony cannot stand alone; it serves, for example, the aggressive functions of satire, or the irrational impulses of farce, or the benevolent, whimsical, or pain-defeating energies of humor.
Iris Murdoch is a celebrated philosopher and novelist. Was she a political theorist? Many say that she focused upon the personal and the moral at the expense of the social and the political. However, this book argues the contrary. Murdoch had lifelong interests in politics, just as she did in literature and philosophy. She saw historical experience as the foundation upon which the inter-linked activities of literature, philosophy and politics are based. In reading Murdoch we get a clear insight into the nature of the modern political world. From an early political radicalism to a later anti-utopianism, Murdoch reacted to the great political events of the twentieth century, notably the Holoca...
Examines two distinct types of American literary heroines that are seen to develop from the romantic innocence of child brides. Either the child turns vacuous and becomes an insatiable monster; or else a strong personality takes over, which can only be thought of as an external intruder. Considers works from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Gail Godwin. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR