1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910466829303321

Autore

Pike David L (David Lawrence), <1963->

Titolo

Passage through hell : modernist descents, medieval underworlds / / David L. Pike

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca ; ; London : , : Cornell University Press, , 1997

ISBN

1-5017-2947-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xiii, 292 pages) : illustrations

Disciplina

809/.93382

Soggetti

Hell in literature

Literature - History and criticism

Civilization, Medieval, in literature

Modernism (Literature)

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-279) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface / Pike, David L. -- Abbreviations -- 1. The Persistence of the Universal: Critical Descents into Antiquity -- 2. "La Bataille du Styx": Céline's Allegory of Conversion -- 3. The Conversion of Dante -- 4. The Gender of Descent -- 5. The Representation of Hell: Benjamin's Descent into the City of Light -- 6. The Descent into History, or Beyond a Modernism of Reading: Heaney and Walcott -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Taking the culturally resonant motif of the descent to the underworld as his guiding thread, David L. Pike traces the interplay between myth and history in medieval and modernist literature. Passage through Hell suggests new approaches to the practice of comparative literature, and a possible escape from the current morass of competing critical schools and ideologies. Pike's readings of Louis Ferdinand Céline and Walter Benjamin reveal the tensions at work in the modern appropriation of structures derived from ancient and medieval descents. His book shows how these structures were redefined in modernism and persist in contemporary critical practice. In order to recover the historical corpus of modernism, he asserts, it is necessary to acknowledge the attraction that medieval forms and motifs held for



modernist literature and theory. By pairing the writings of the postwar German dramatist and novelist Peter Weiss with Dante's Commedia, and Christine de Pizan with Virginia Woolf, Pike argues for a new level of complexity in the relation between medieval and modern poetics. Pike's supple and persuasive reading of the Commedia resituates that text within the contradictions of medieval tradition. He contends that the Dantean allegory of conversion, altered to suit the exigencies of modernism, maintains its hold over current literature and theory. The postwar writers Pike treats-Weiss, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott-exemplify alternate strategies for negotiating the legacy of modernism. The passage through hell emerges as a way of disentangling images of the past from their interpretation in the present.

2.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910792449203321

Titolo

Liberal thought in the Eastern Mediterranean [[electronic resource] ] : late 19th century until the 1960s / / edited by Christoph Schumann

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Leiden ; ; Boston, : Brill, 2008

ISBN

1-282-60242-X

9786612602429

90-474-4224-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (349 p.)

Collana

Social, economic, and political studies of the Middle East and Asia, , 1385-3376 ; ; v. 104

Altri autori (Persone)

SchumannChristoph

Disciplina

320.510956/09041

Soggetti

Liberalism - Arab countries

Arab nationalism

Civilization, Arab - Western influences

Mandates - Arab countries

Secularism - Turkey

Arab countries Intellectual life

Arab countries Politics and government

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.



Nota di contenuto

Introduction / Christoph Schumann -- Part one : the impact of the west : mission, mandate, and education -- Part two : constitutionalism, revolution, and liberal thought -- Part three : liberal thought and its ambivalences.

Sommario/riassunto

This volume analyzes liberal thought in the Eastern Mediterranean since the late nineteenth century, highlighting its long-term and ongoing influence, and challenging the conventional wisdom that liberalism has no legitimate place in the region’s intellectual discourse. By investigating the activities of diverse institutions, media, and personalities, the authors in this volume examine the liberal ideas and values that emerged during eras of both peace and political turmoil, while recognizing the factors contributing to their decline. Seen from these many perspectives, liberal thought developed not merely from “Westernization,” but from the interaction between indigenous intellectual critique and political ideology, political experiences and literary imagination, and a mixture of admiration for and resistance to European ideas and political domination.