Henry James’s (1843 – 1916) distinctive contributions to the art of the novel were developed over a long career of some fifty years. Leon Edel, possibly the most renowned and respected James scholar, has indicated that James’s mature writing can… Read More ›
The Chicago School of critics or the Neo-Aristotelians included professors of the departments of Humanities, University of Chicago, who were engaged in bringing about a radical transformation in an attempt to revive Humanities and make them institutionally more competitive with… Read More ›
Roland Barthes was born at Cherbourg in 1915. Barely a year later, his father died in naval combat in the North Sea, so that the son was brought up by the mother and, periodically, by his grandparents. Before completing his… Read More ›
The term “African,” when applied in this essay to the novel and other literary genres, does not include the Arab states of the north or the peoples of European descent who may have settled in Africa. It refers to the… Read More ›
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was the leading analytical philosopher of the twentieth century. His two philosophical masterpieces, the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921) and the posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953), changed the course of the subject. The first was the primary origin of the… Read More ›
A term coined by Raymond Williams and popularised by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (in their collection of essays Political Shakespeare), Cultural Materialism refers to a Marxist orientation of New Historicism, characterised by the analysis of any historical material within… Read More ›
Although George Washington Cable’s (1844 – 1925) reputation rests primarily on one collection of short stories and two pieces of longer fiction, his total output includes twenty-two books. For an understanding of Cable as a writer of fiction, one should… Read More ›
Cleanth Brooks’ Concept of Language of Paradox
Language of Paradox
An understanding of James T. Farrell (February 27, 1904 – August 22, 1979) and his work on the basis of one novel, or even as many as three individual novels, is impossible. Farrell’s vision was panoramic, however limited his subject… Read More ›
Of his numerous achievements, Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) is perhaps best remembered for his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1755. Of almost equal renown are his Lives of the English Poets (1783) and his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare… Read More ›
When white light hits glass one of two things can happen. Either you have an image, which is faithful if somewhat unexciting, or you have a glorious spectrum which though beautiful is rather a distortion. Light from the past passes… Read More ›
Although Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) became arguably the best-known American science- fiction writer, the majority of his work, which ranges from gothic horror to social criticism, centers on humanistic themes. His best works are powerful… Read More ›
Whilst fascist dictatorship in Italy came to an abrupt end near the close of the Second World War, a fascist regime continued to rule in Spain up till the death of General Franco, in 1975. After that, a gradual process… Read More ›
Between 1922 and 1943 Italy was ruled by a fascist dictatorship which used mainstream cinema as a means of disseminating officially sanctioned conceptions of national identity. A national regulatory body, the Direzione Generale della Cinematografica, was established in 1934 in… Read More ›
Walter Pater (1839–1894) is best known for his phrase “art for art’s sake.” In his insistence on artistic autonomy, on aesthetic experience as opposed to aesthetic object, and on experience in general as an ever vanishing flux, he is a… Read More ›
The German philosopher and Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) is generally credited with having laid the foundations of modern hermeneutics, or the art of systematic textual interpretation. His most important text in this regard was his Hermeneutics and Criticism, published… Read More ›
Realism was by no means a uniform or coherent movement; a tendency toward realism arose in many parts of Europe and in America, beginning in the 1840s. The major figures included Flaubert and Balzac in France, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy… Read More ›
A long and influential treatise entitled The Arte of English Poesie, published anonymously in 1589, is attributed to George Puttenham (1529–1590, though the evidence for this is not conclusive and continues to be argued by scholars. Puttenham was educated at… Read More ›
In his book on Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (Derrida 19871) Jacques Derrida relates how James Joyce (1882–1941) was present in his very first book, the Introduction to Husserl’s Origin of Geometry (1962), and present again in a key essay, Plato’s Pharmacy,… Read More ›
The great twentieth century poet T. S. Eliot remarked that a poet’s criticism of other writers often reveals as much or more about that poet’s own work as about that of the writers being discussed. This observation certainly holds true… Read More ›
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