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224 books match the query 'Theory, etc' and 5 start with b

cover of Bakhtin and the Classics

Bakhtin and the Classics

R. Bracht Branham

Northwestern University Press, 2001

Mikhail Bakhtin's critical and theoretical experiments have inspired original work in the humanities and social sciences, but Bakhtin and the Classics is the first book to focus on the relationship between Bakhtin and classical studies, the discipline in which Bakhtin himself was trained. Clearly demonstrating the fundamental importance of classical literature in his work, Bakhtin and the Classics expands our understanding of both Bakhtin's thought and the literary and cultural history of antiquity. 

The authors, eminent classicists and distinguished critics of Bakhtin, put Bakhtin into dialogue with the classics--and classicists into dialogue with Bakhtin. Each essay offers a critical account of an important aspect of Bakhtin's thought and examines the value of his approach in the context of literary or cultural history. Beginning with an overview of Bakhtin's notion of carnival laughter, perhaps his central critical concept, the volume explores Bakhtin's thought and writing in relation to Homer's epic verse. Catullus's lyric poetry, ancient Roman novels, and Greek philosophy from Aristotle's theory of narrative to the work of Antiphon the Sophist. The results are of interest and importance to Bakhtinians, theorists, and classicists. 
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cover of Being a Minor Writer

Being a Minor Writer

Gail Gilliland

University of Iowa Press, 1994

There are countless theoretical arguments that attempt to define “major” and “minor” literatures, but this lively and deeply felt work is one of the first to speak from the authority of the experience of being minor—of being the “minor writer” who, according to the definition of “author” given by Michel Foucault, does not possess a “name.” This book, then, is an impassioned critical and ethical defense of the act of writing for purposes other than critical acclaim.

In the tradition of Horace's

Ars Poetica,

Gilliland uses comments by a broad range of writers, as well as her own experience as a minor woman writer, to consider the basic Horatian questions of purpose, choice of subject matter and genre, diction, characterization, setting, and style. She points out that in the absence of major recognition, the minor writer is continually confronted by the existential question, why do I (still) write? This book offers not only a challenge to existing critical theories but an argument in favor of being—for

still

being, for continuing

anyway

with one's life and art

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cover of Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture: Inventing National Literature

Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture

Inventing National Literature

Gregory Jusdanis

University of Minnesota Press, 1991

How does literature function in the formation of a nation-state? What are its pivotal contributions to national discourse and the production of ideological collective will? And, ultimately, how is literature institutionalized and aestheticized?

Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture: Inventing National Literature addresses these questions and considers the role literature plays in the construction of a national cultural. Gregory Jusdanis examines the emergence of art and literature in Western Europe in the eighteenth century and traces their introduction to Greece, a stratified, noncapitalist society that was hostile to Enlightenment and secularism. This groundbreaking work explores the importation of national literatures into a largely non-Western society and the inherent resistance they faced.Arguing for the literary status of national culture at its inception, Jusdanis brilliantly demonstrates that in literature, the specific meanings in narratives and fiction form the process of nation building. Culture, history, and literature, he says, merge in those narratives, which in turn provide the imaginary mirror in which a nation reflects itself.
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cover of Black Women, Identity, and Cultural Theory: (Un)Becoming the Subject

Black Women, Identity, and Cultural Theory

(Un)Becoming the Subject

Kevin Everod Quashie

Rutgers University Press, 2004

 In Black Women, Identity, and Cultural Theory, Kevin Everod Quashie explores the metaphor of the “girlfriend” as a new way of understanding three central concepts of cultural studies: self, memory, and language. He considers how the work of writers such as Toni Morrison, Ama Ata Aidoo, Dionne Brand, photographer Lorna Simpson, and many others, inform debates over the concept of identity. Quashie argues that these authors and artists replace the notion of a stable, singular identity with the concept of the self developing in a process both communal and perpetually fluid, a relationship that functions in much the same way that an adult woman negotiates with her girlfriend(s). He suggests that memory itself is corporeal, a literal body that is crucial to the process of becoming. Quashie also explores the problem language poses for the black woman artist and her commitment to a mastery that neither colonizes nor excludes.

The analysis throughout interacts with schools of thought such as psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and post-colonialism, but ultimately moves beyond these to propose a new cultural aesthetic, one that ultimately aims to center black women and their philosophies.

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cover of Brave New Words: How Literature Will Save the Planet

Brave New Words

How Literature Will Save the Planet

Ammons, Elizabeth

University of Iowa Press, 2010

The activist tradition in American literature has long testified to the power of words to change people and the power of people to change the world, yet in recent years many professional humanists have chosen to distract themselves with a postmodern fundamentalism of indeterminacy and instability rather than engage with social and political issues. Throughout her bold and provocative call to action, Elizabeth Ammons argues that the responsibility now facing humanists is urgent: inside and outside academic settings, they need to revive the liberal arts as a progressive cultural force that offers workable ideas and inspiration in the real-world struggle to achieve social and environmental justice.
      Brave New Words challenges present and future literary scholars and teachers to look beyond mere literary critique toward the concrete issue of social change and how to achieve it. Calling for a profound realignment of thought and spirit in the service of positive social change, Ammons argues for the continued importance of multiculturalism in the twenty-first century despite attacks on the concept from both right and left. Concentrating on activist U.S. writers—from ecocritics to feminists to those dedicated to exposing race and class biases, from Jim Wallis and Cornel West to Winona LaDuke and Paula Moya and many others—she calls for all humanists to link their work to the progressive literature of the last half century, to insist on activism in the service of positive change as part of their mission, and to teach the power of hope and action to their students.
      As Ammons clearly demonstrates, much of American literature was written to expose injustice and motivate readers to work for social transformation. She challenges today’s academic humanists to address the issues of hope and purpose by creating a practical activist pedagogy that gives students the knowledge to connect their theoretical learning to the outside world. By relying on the transformative power of literature and replacing nihilism and powerlessness with conviction and faith, the liberal arts can offer practical, useful inspiration to everyone seeking to create a better world.

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