Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/pan.2023.a899746
N. Pagan
Abstract:This article is grounded in ideas about defining commitment and the development of self that stem from the writings by Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s view that the self develops in relation to three existential stages or “realms” — the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious sheds light on Nicole Krauss’s novels The History of Love (2005) and Forest Dark (2017). Leo Gursky in the former shares the commitment to romantic love of the young swain in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling; but for Krauss’s character this commitment is displaced in favor of a commitment to writing itself. In Forest Dark the notion of writing as defining commitment reemerges through the character Nicole. A transition from the esthetic to the ethical dimension occurs in Jules Epstein’s newfound commitment to the dead. Ultimately, however, Krauss’s characters in these two novels are characterized as lacking the “inwardness” that in Kierkegaard’s writings is necessary for becoming a self that is able to access the religious realm.
{"title":"Defining Commitments and Self-Becoming in Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love and Forest Dark","authors":"N. Pagan","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.a899746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.a899746","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article is grounded in ideas about defining commitment and the development of self that stem from the writings by Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s view that the self develops in relation to three existential stages or “realms” — the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious sheds light on Nicole Krauss’s novels The History of Love (2005) and Forest Dark (2017). Leo Gursky in the former shares the commitment to romantic love of the young swain in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling; but for Krauss’s character this commitment is displaced in favor of a commitment to writing itself. In Forest Dark the notion of writing as defining commitment reemerges through the character Nicole. A transition from the esthetic to the ethical dimension occurs in Jules Epstein’s newfound commitment to the dead. Ultimately, however, Krauss’s characters in these two novels are characterized as lacking the “inwardness” that in Kierkegaard’s writings is necessary for becoming a self that is able to access the religious realm.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"50 1","pages":"321 - 341"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84432337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/pan.2023.a899748
J. Hawthorn
{"title":"The Blossom Which We Are: The Novel and the Transience of Cultural Worlds by Nir Evron (review)","authors":"J. Hawthorn","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.a899748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.a899748","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"58 4 1","pages":"367 - 370"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89742667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contemporary French and Francophone Narratology ed. by John Pier (review)","authors":"M. Mäkelä","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"36 1","pages":"182 - 186"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76774224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Re-envisioning Jewish Identities: Reflections on Contemporary Culture in Israel and the Diaspora by Efraim Sicher (review)","authors":"Eli Lederhendler","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"8 1","pages":"176 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88288154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Examining the alternative tropic imaginaries—demonic and Edenic, respectively— governing the oeuvres of playwright Tennessee Williams and director John Huston this article argues for the convergence of these visions in the context of the latter’s film, The Night of the Iguana (1964). As a means of grounding the distinction between these divergent philosophical, ideological and aesthetic traditions, I turn to the writer whose depictions of exotic, Pacific locales might be considered seminal for American literature, and foundational for both the playwright’s and the film-maker’s tropic sensibilities. Herman Melville’s depictions of the Pacific islands, whether or not they originate the American literary imagination’s readings of the exotic, at least definitively articulate and encode those readings—from the degenerate to the sublime—within literary discourse. Williams’ allusions to Los Encantadas (1854), in Suddenly Last Summer, reveal Melville’s influence upon the playwright’s treatment of the tropics' pathology. Huston, meanwhile, had first stumbled upon the Mismaloya peninsula, where he shot The Night of the Iguana, while searching (albeit abortively) for a suitable location in which to film Melville’s first novel, Typee (1846). The salvific vision of Mexico, refined throughout Huston’s oeuvre and imbued with the spirit of Typee’s tropical fantasy, complements the new optimism detectable in Williams’ Iguana, where renewal and revitalization fall within the realm of tropic possibility.
摘要:本文考察了支配剧作家田纳西·威廉姆斯和导演约翰·休斯顿作品的另类热带想象——分别是恶魔和伊甸园——并在后者的电影《鬣蜥之夜》(1964)中论证了这些想象的融合。为了区分这些不同的哲学、意识形态和美学传统，我转向了这位作家，他对异国情调、太平洋地区的描写可能被认为是美国文学的开创性作品，也是剧作家和电影制作人对热带的敏感性的基础。赫尔曼·梅尔维尔对太平洋岛屿的描写，无论它们是否开创了美国文学想象中对异国情调的解读，至少在文学话语中明确地表达和编码了这些解读——从堕落到崇高。威廉姆斯在《突然的去年夏天》(1854)中对洛斯·恩坎塔达斯(Los Encantadas)的暗示，揭示了梅尔维尔对这位剧作家治疗热带疾病的影响。与此同时，休斯顿第一次偶然发现了米斯马洛亚半岛，在那里他拍摄了《鬣蜥之夜》(the Night of the Iguana)，当时他正在为梅尔维尔的第一部小说《Typee》(1846)寻找一个合适的拍摄地(尽管没有成功)。在休斯顿的全部作品中，墨西哥的救赎愿景得到了升华，并融入了泰皮的热带幻想精神，与威廉姆斯的《鬣蜥》中可以察觉到的新乐观主义相辅相成，在那里，复兴和振兴属于热带可能性的范畴。
{"title":"“The world’s wildest and loveliest populated places”: Visions of the Tropic Imaginary in Tennessee Williams, John Huston, and Herman Melville","authors":"A. Feldman","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Examining the alternative tropic imaginaries—demonic and Edenic, respectively— governing the oeuvres of playwright Tennessee Williams and director John Huston this article argues for the convergence of these visions in the context of the latter’s film, The Night of the Iguana (1964). As a means of grounding the distinction between these divergent philosophical, ideological and aesthetic traditions, I turn to the writer whose depictions of exotic, Pacific locales might be considered seminal for American literature, and foundational for both the playwright’s and the film-maker’s tropic sensibilities. Herman Melville’s depictions of the Pacific islands, whether or not they originate the American literary imagination’s readings of the exotic, at least definitively articulate and encode those readings—from the degenerate to the sublime—within literary discourse. Williams’ allusions to Los Encantadas (1854), in Suddenly Last Summer, reveal Melville’s influence upon the playwright’s treatment of the tropics' pathology. Huston, meanwhile, had first stumbled upon the Mismaloya peninsula, where he shot The Night of the Iguana, while searching (albeit abortively) for a suitable location in which to film Melville’s first novel, Typee (1846). The salvific vision of Mexico, refined throughout Huston’s oeuvre and imbued with the spirit of Typee’s tropical fantasy, complements the new optimism detectable in Williams’ Iguana, where renewal and revitalization fall within the realm of tropic possibility.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"63 1","pages":"25 - 51"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76747746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay reconsiders the view of George Eliot as the vanguard secular novelist through the tension between her early, yet sustained, commitment to the evangelical belief that joy is a providential reward for suffering and the later complications as she depicted a world appearing to lack divine justice or mercy, without promise of an afterlife. I argue that the novel Adam Bede is not a humanist translation of Christian doctrine but a revision of theodicy both from within and from without Christian tradition, representing the mystery of “human sorrow” and suffering as embodied in Jesus Christ. The novel works through to a belief that such suffering awaits all, rather than some, created beings and to the conviction that joy will never banish suffering — that it co-exists with it, taking the form of love. This revision preserved the Christian primacy of suffering while seeking to equalize it and face its demands.
{"title":"Seed-Time and Harvest: Problems of Joy and Suffering in the Early George Eliot","authors":"Ilana M. Blumberg","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay reconsiders the view of George Eliot as the vanguard secular novelist through the tension between her early, yet sustained, commitment to the evangelical belief that joy is a providential reward for suffering and the later complications as she depicted a world appearing to lack divine justice or mercy, without promise of an afterlife. I argue that the novel Adam Bede is not a humanist translation of Christian doctrine but a revision of theodicy both from within and from without Christian tradition, representing the mystery of “human sorrow” and suffering as embodied in Jesus Christ. The novel works through to a belief that such suffering awaits all, rather than some, created beings and to the conviction that joy will never banish suffering — that it co-exists with it, taking the form of love. This revision preserved the Christian primacy of suffering while seeking to equalize it and face its demands.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"1 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83767973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Against the methodological context of play theory, this article revisits the theme of determinism and free will in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: Or, The Evening Redness in the West. Highlighting the paradoxical coexistence of determinism and indeterminism in the book, it shows how Judge Holden abuses the appeal of play to lure the Glanton gang into his evil enterprise of a false game of war, which by necessity embraces deterministic rules and the freedom of play. The rules of this false game, however, are violated and neglected by the kid, who thus becomes a spoil-sport, endangering the continuity of the game. To protect his game the judge outlaws the kid, yet the threat will not dissolve: as long as the judge relies on the witnessing of other agents to validate his victory and his game, his self-determination is at risk.
{"title":"“A false dance”: Rules and Freedom in the Ludic World of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian","authors":"Wei Feng","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Against the methodological context of play theory, this article revisits the theme of determinism and free will in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian: Or, The Evening Redness in the West. Highlighting the paradoxical coexistence of determinism and indeterminism in the book, it shows how Judge Holden abuses the appeal of play to lure the Glanton gang into his evil enterprise of a false game of war, which by necessity embraces deterministic rules and the freedom of play. The rules of this false game, however, are violated and neglected by the kid, who thus becomes a spoil-sport, endangering the continuity of the game. To protect his game the judge outlaws the kid, yet the threat will not dissolve: as long as the judge relies on the witnessing of other agents to validate his victory and his game, his self-determination is at risk.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"13 1","pages":"153 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87048413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Drawing on Scheler and Merleau-Ponty among others, I develop a framework for interpreting certain themes in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. This philosophical novel explores the way love shapes our comportment towards the world of others, and raises the question of whether love is blind or potentially truth-disclosing. Using this literary example, I argue that without the dispositional affects of love, care, or concern — the emotional a priori — nothing in the world around us would be more conspicuous than anything else. In this case we would be faced with a flat, neutral mass of information, without a sense that any of it matters. Thus, for a comprehensively unloving human being, everything would seem empty of meaning. It does not follow, however, that the affective constitution of the world is best viewed as a kind of distortion.
{"title":"Love, Subjectivity, and Truth in Proust","authors":"R. A. Furtak","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Drawing on Scheler and Merleau-Ponty among others, I develop a framework for interpreting certain themes in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. This philosophical novel explores the way love shapes our comportment towards the world of others, and raises the question of whether love is blind or potentially truth-disclosing. Using this literary example, I argue that without the dispositional affects of love, care, or concern — the emotional a priori — nothing in the world around us would be more conspicuous than anything else. In this case we would be faced with a flat, neutral mass of information, without a sense that any of it matters. Thus, for a comprehensively unloving human being, everything would seem empty of meaning. It does not follow, however, that the affective constitution of the world is best viewed as a kind of distortion.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"146 1","pages":"53 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88642259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade” tackles the subject of mortality with technical facility and unsparing candour. It has a reputation for profoundly affecting its readers. Yet poets Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz think “Aubade” is bad for us and for poetry: it lures us into the underworld and traps us there, and betrays poetry’s purpose by transcribing rather than transforming the depressing facts of reality. Philosophers, however, quite like it. “Aubade” crops up repeatedly in contemporary philosophy of death. I examine the various appeals that philosophers have made to Larkin’s poem with a view to drawing out subtleties in the poem and the philosophical texts, before turning my attention to broader questions of its merit. At first glance, philosophy’s affinity for “Aubade” may seem to confirm Heaney and Milosz’s contention that the poem is somehow against poetry and on the side of “reason, science, and science-inspired philosophy” (Milosz). I argue that the philosophical uses of the poem help to undercut if not entirely dissolve Heaney’s and Milosz’s polarising efforts; they are mistaken in their views about the different purposes of poetry and philosophy, but there is some philosophical support for their commitment to averting mortal despair.
{"title":"Depressing Goings-on in the House of Actuality: The Philosophical Legacy of Larkin’s “Aubade”","authors":"Kathy Behrendt","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade” tackles the subject of mortality with technical facility and unsparing candour. It has a reputation for profoundly affecting its readers. Yet poets Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz think “Aubade” is bad for us and for poetry: it lures us into the underworld and traps us there, and betrays poetry’s purpose by transcribing rather than transforming the depressing facts of reality. Philosophers, however, quite like it. “Aubade” crops up repeatedly in contemporary philosophy of death. I examine the various appeals that philosophers have made to Larkin’s poem with a view to drawing out subtleties in the poem and the philosophical texts, before turning my attention to broader questions of its merit. At first glance, philosophy’s affinity for “Aubade” may seem to confirm Heaney and Milosz’s contention that the poem is somehow against poetry and on the side of “reason, science, and science-inspired philosophy” (Milosz). I argue that the philosophical uses of the poem help to undercut if not entirely dissolve Heaney’s and Milosz’s polarising efforts; they are mistaken in their views about the different purposes of poetry and philosophy, but there is some philosophical support for their commitment to averting mortal despair.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"11 1","pages":"133 - 151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79518930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Since its publication and first performance, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) has often been interpreted with regard to the theme of truth and illusion. A less studied but nonetheless important aspect of the play concerns its relation to C. P. Snow’s concept of the “two cultures.” This article argues for the convergence of these two discussions, resulting in an epistemological understanding of Albee. The play not only rejects of the mutual alienation of the “two cultures” but also constitutes a dramatic move toward a synthesizing “third culture.” Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is read as an epistemological drama of ideas.
{"title":"Dialectic of Two Cultures: Edward Albee, C. P. Snow, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as Dramatized Epistemology","authors":"Andreas Tranvik","doi":"10.1353/pan.2023.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2023.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Since its publication and first performance, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) has often been interpreted with regard to the theme of truth and illusion. A less studied but nonetheless important aspect of the play concerns its relation to C. P. Snow’s concept of the “two cultures.” This article argues for the convergence of these two discussions, resulting in an epistemological understanding of Albee. The play not only rejects of the mutual alienation of the “two cultures” but also constitutes a dramatic move toward a synthesizing “third culture.” Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is read as an epistemological drama of ideas.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"31 1","pages":"111 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82887097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：