In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts, and History - Couverture souple

Cunningham, Valentine

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0631151982 ISBN 13 : 9780631151982

Editeur : Blackwell Publishers, 1993

Synopsis

In this critical tour de force, Valentine Cunningham offers a sequence of controversial arguments in favor of the worldly stuff of texts. Animated by the massive ironies he detects within modern critical assumptions, Cunningham begins with a long and searching look at Saussure and his misappropriation by critics to create an a-historical linguistics. He extends his forensic skepticism to expose Derrida and de Man, and almost every form of "critical bandwagonism" known to either gender, from New Historicism to Post-Histoireism, to Cultural Materialism. He concludes by arguing that the deconstructive critical imagination finds its vital (and historical) apotheosis, "its big real meaning", in the parasitical dependence of (post) modernity upon Judaeo-Christian Biblicism and theology, the very kind of historical and ideological relationship it sets itself up to deny. It is this denial, Cunningham claims, that lies at the root of all our recent and current uneasiness with history. In the course of its critique this book inspects, with startling originality, texts from the Bible to Jane Eyre, Hamlet to Batman, Tristram Shandy to Finnegans Wake, concentrating particularly on classic nineteenth-century realist novels such as Emma, Hard Times, Bleak House, Middlemarch, The Trumpet Major and Heart of Darkness, as well as classic twentieth-century novels, including Beckett's Watt and Golding's Rites of Passage.

A propos du livre

Product Description

1

Revue de presse

"[A] spirited, funny and heartfelt response to academic criticism′s loss of history... Cunningham analyses with learning and awesome energy and persistence many of the great deconstructive truisms ... acrobatic, allusive, anecdotal, rigorous and playful by turns – a virtuoso performance of the role of the reader, in fact, which goes a very long way to establish the very freedom theory likes to claim for readers." Observer

"The close and detailed reading is often brilliantly perceptive and original. Let me end by commending and recommending this book. It gives an impressively clear and comprehensive account of the various theoretical issues raised during the past twenty years; it is full of intelligence and insight; and there is some exemplary close reading." Professor Tony Tanner, University of Cambridge

"An impressively clear and comprehensive account of the various theoretical issues raised during the past twenty years; it is full of intelligence and insight; and there is some exemplary close reading." Times Literary Supplement

"Cunningham provides a welcome antidote to what theorists have perpetrated on Saussure and goes on to expose much of Derrida, de Man and the new historicists and cultural materialists... Among the beauties of this well documented work (more than 400 notes and critical references) are the insights provided by the practical application of theory ... This well–written (even manifesting a graceful, ludic spirit) and incisive study of ′postmodern′ literary theory and practice will be a welcome read for graduate students, faculty, and professionals faced with our current maze of literary theory." Choice

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Blackwell Publishers
• Date d'édition: 1993
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0631151982
• ISBN 13: 9780631151982
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 424
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible