03816nam 2200553 450 991079314030332120200520144314.01-5017-2947-010.7591/9781501729478(CKB)4100000006673752(OCoLC)1036764623(MdBmJHUP)muse71306(DE-B1597)515562(OCoLC)1129161939(DE-B1597)9781501729478(Au-PeEL)EBL5774193(OCoLC)1104087766(MiAaPQ)EBC5774193(EXLCZ)99410000000667375220190529d1997 uy 0engurcnu||||||||txtrdacontentcrdamediacrrdacarrierPassage through hell modernist descents, medieval underworlds /David L. PikeIthaca ;London :Cornell University Press,1997.1 online resource (xiii, 292 pages) illustrations0-8014-3163-8 Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-279) and index.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 --IndexTaking 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.Hell in literatureLiteratureHistory and criticismCivilization, Medieval, in literatureModernism (Literature)Hell in literature.LiteratureHistory and criticism.Civilization, Medieval, in literature.Modernism (Literature)809/.93382Pike David L(David Lawrence),1963-1564431MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910793140303321Passage through hell3833460UNINA