Record Nr.

UNINA9910451891503321

Autore

Boyers Robert

Titolo

The dictator's dictation : the politics of novels and novelists / / Robert Boyers ; designed by Lisa Hamm

Pubbl/distr/stampa


New York, [New York] : , : Columbia University Press, , 2005
©2005

ISBN

0-231-51007-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (218 p. )

Disciplina

809/.39358/0904

Soggetti

Fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Politics and literature - History - 20th century

Politics in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION: THINKING ABOUT POLITICS AND THE NOVEL -- 1. THE INDIGENOUS BERSERK: PHILIP ROTH -- 2. IDENTITY AND DIFFIDENCE: SEAMUS DEANE -- 3. A GENEROUS MIND: NATALIA GINZBURG -- 4. CLEAR LIGHT AND SHADOW: ANITA DESAI -- 5. BULLETS OF MILK: JOHN UPDIKE -- 7. IN EXILE FROM EXILE: NORMAN MANEA -- 8. THE NORMALITY BLUES: PETER SCHNEIDER -- 9. DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: FLEUR JAEGGY -- 10. PRIMACIES AND POLITICS: NADINE GORDIMER -- 11. THINKING ABOUT EVIL: KAFKA, NAIPAUL, COETZEE -- 12. PATHOS AND RESIGNATION: PAT BARKER -- 13. STIFLINGS: LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI -- 14. THE DICTATOR'S DICTATION: AUGUSTO ROA BASTOS -- 15. MANY TYPES OF AMBIGUITY: INGEBORG BACHMANN -- 16. RUBBLE AND ICE: W. G. SEBALD -- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sommario/riassunto

In these elegant essays, many of them originally written for The New Republic and Harper's, Robert Boyers examines the role of the political imagination in shaping the works of such important contemporary writers as W. G. Sebald and Philip Roth, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa, Natalia Ginzburg and Pat Barker, J. M. Coetzee and John Updike, V. S. Naipaul and Anita Desai. Occasionally he finds that

politics actually figures very little in works that only pretend to be interested in politics. Elsewhere he discovers that certain writers are not equal to the political issues they take on or that their work is fatally compromised by complacency or wishful thinking.In the main, though, Boyers writes as a lover of great literature who wishes to understand how the best writers do justice to their own political obsessions without suggesting that everything is reducible to politics. Resisting the notion that novels can be effectively translated into ideas or positions, he resists as well the notion that art and politics must be held apart, lest works of fiction somehow be contaminated by their association with "real life" or public issues. The essays offer a combination of close reading, argument, and assessment.What, Boyers asks, is the relationship between form and substance in a work whose formal properties are particularly striking? Is it reasonable to think of a particular writer as "reactionary" merely because he presents an unflattering portrait of revolutionary activists or because he is less than optimistic about the future of newly independent societies? What is the status of private life in works set in politically tumultuous times? Can the novelist be "responsible" if he consistently refuses to engage the conditions that affect even the intimate lives of his characters?Such questions inform these essays, which strive to be true to the essential spirit of the works they discuss and to interrogate, as sympathetically as possible, the imagination of writers who negotiate the unstable relationships between society and the individual, art and ideas.

Record Nr.

UNISA996396227403316

Autore

Gatford Lionel <d. 1665.>

Titolo

A petition for the vindication of the publique use of the Book of Common-Prayer, from some foul, but undeserved aspersions lately cast upon it [[electronic resource] ] : And for the asserting of the publique use of set-forms of prayer, and dispensing the holy Sacraments. Occasioned by the late ordinance for the ejecting of scandalous, ignorant, and insufficient ministers and school-masters. As also thirty seven quæres concerning the said ordinance, and the particulars thereof. Humbly presented to the most Honourable and highest court of Parliament, now convened at Westminster, anno 1654. With a true account rendred in an epistle prefixed, and an appendix subjoyned, both of the printing and presenting the same. By Lionel Gatford, batchelour in Divinity

Pubbl/distr/stampa


London, : printed for John Williams, at the Crown in Saint Pauls Church-yard, 1655. [i.e. 1654]

Descrizione fisica

[16], 31-62 p

Soggetti

Prayer

Sacraments - Church of England