LEADER 03816nam 2200553 450 001 9910793140303321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-5017-2947-0 024 7 $a10.7591/9781501729478 035 $a(CKB)4100000006673752 035 $a(OCoLC)1036764623 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse71306 035 $a(DE-B1597)515562 035 $a(OCoLC)1129161939 035 $a(DE-B1597)9781501729478 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL5774193 035 $a(OCoLC)1104087766 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC5774193 035 $a(EXLCZ)994100000006673752 100 $a20190529d1997 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aPassage through hell $emodernist descents, medieval underworlds /$fDavid L. Pike 210 1$aIthaca ;$aLondon :$cCornell University Press,$d1997. 215 $a1 online resource (xiii, 292 pages) $cillustrations 311 $a0-8014-3163-8 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 261-279) and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tPreface /$rPike, David L. --$tAbbreviations --$t1. The Persistence of the Universal: Critical Descents into Antiquity --$t2. "La Bataille du Styx": Céline's Allegory of Conversion --$t3. The Conversion of Dante --$t4. The Gender of Descent --$t5. The Representation of Hell: Benjamin's Descent into the City of Light --$t6. The Descent into History, or Beyond a Modernism of Reading: Heaney and Walcott --$tBibliography --$tIndex 330 $aTaking 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. 606 $aHell in literature 606 $aLiterature$xHistory and criticism 606 $aCivilization, Medieval, in literature 606 $aModernism (Literature) 615 0$aHell in literature. 615 0$aLiterature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aCivilization, Medieval, in literature. 615 0$aModernism (Literature) 676 $a809/.93382 700 $aPike$b David L$g(David Lawrence),$f1963-$01564431 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910793140303321 996 $aPassage through hell$93833460 997 $aUNINA