Anthony J. Cascardi - Böcker

Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in the throes of modernization arising from trade with the New World and the rise of an urban society. During this period, Spanish culture came to be dominated by the tension between an old regime of traditional values—honor, lineage, purity of blood—and these modernizing influences.Anthony J. Cascardi examines the literature of the Golden Age as the point at which tensions between the old and the new converged and proposes that this historical drama provided the context for subject-formation in early modern Spain. He examines how Spanish writers envisioned history and studies how these visions revealed or concealed contradictions between social values of their time, particularly between the value systems of caste and class.Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age draws on recent theoretical paradigms in contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, political and social theory, and literary history to place Spain's major literary figures in challenging new contexts. By accounting for both modernizing desires and resistances to modernization, Cascardi provides readers interested in theories of ideology and history with a new way of looking at the literature of the Spanish Golden Age.

This is the first thorough study of Calderón in comparison with other important dramatists of the period: Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina in Spain, Racine and Corneille in France, and Shakespeare and Marlowe in England. Cascardi studies Calderón's paradoxical engagement with illusion in its philosophical guise as scepticism. He shows on the one hand Calderón's moral will to reject illusion and on the other his theatrical need to embrace it. Cascardi discusses plays from every period to show how in Calderón's best work illusion is not rejected; instead, scepticism is absorbed. Calderón is placed in and defined against the philosophical line of Vives, Descartes, and Spinoza. Of central importance to this argument is Calderón's idea of theatre and the various transformations of that idea. This emphasis will give the book an additional interest to students, readers in philosophy and comparative literature.

This is the first thorough study of Calderón in comparison with other important dramatists of the period: Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina in Spain, Racine and Corneille in France, and Shakespeare and Marlowe in England. Cascardi studies Calderón's paradoxical engagement with illusion in its philosophical guise as scepticism. He shows on the one hand Calderón's moral will to reject illusion and on the other his theatrical need to embrace it. Cascardi discusses plays from every period to show how in Calderón's best work illusion is not rejected; instead, scepticism is absorbed. Calderón is placed in and defined against the philosophical line of Vives, Descartes, and Spinoza. Of central importance to this argument is Calderón's idea of theatre and the various transformations of that idea. This emphasis will give the book an additional interest to students, readers in philosophy and comparative literature.

Literature and philosophy have long shared an interest in questions of truth, value, and form. And yet, from ancient times to the present, they have often sharply diverged, both in their approach to these questions and in their relationship to one another. Moreover, the vast differences among individual writers, historical periods, and languages pose challenges for anyone wishing to understand the relationship between them. This Introduction provides a synthetic and original guide to this vast terrain. It uncovers the deep interests that literature and philosophy share while offering a lucid account of their differences. It sheds new light on many standing debates and offers students and scholars of literary criticism, literary theory, and philosophy a chance to think freshly about questions that have preoccupied the Western tradition from its very beginnings up until the present.

The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Our own self-styled postmodern age has seen no end to this debate, which now receives a major and wide-ranging intervention from the theorist and critic Anthony J. Cascardi. Offering an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject or self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth, he carries his argument across the fields of epistemology, literature, political science, religion and psychology. The modern subject proves to be positioned within conflicting discourses, in a culture characterised by its 'detotalised totality'. Max Weber's concept of 'world disenchantment' enables Cascardi to make a searching critique of modernity's sense of its absoluteness, divorced from an archaic, 'enchanted' world. He advocates in its place a more fruitful relationship between historical analysis and theoretical speculation, offering constructive new alternatives to current orthodoxy regarding subjectivity and modernity.

What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment it claims to reject? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues against the view that postmodern culture has rejected Enlightenment beliefs and explores instead the continuities contemporary theory shares with Kant's failed ambition to bring the project of Enlightenment to completion. He explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Wittgenstein in order to reverse the tendency to see works of art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which they are situated.

What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment it claims to reject? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues against the view that postmodern culture has rejected Enlightenment beliefs and explores instead the continuities contemporary theory shares with Kant's failed ambition to bring the project of Enlightenment to completion. He explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Wittgenstein in order to reverse the tendency to see works of art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which they are situated.

Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) is one of the classic texts of Western literature and the foundation of European fiction. Yet Cervantes himself remains an enigmatic figure. The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, first published in 2002, offers a comprehensive treatment of Cervantes' life and work, including his lesser known writing. The essays, by some of the most outstanding scholars in the field, cover the historical and political context of Cervantes' writing, his place in Renaissance culture, and the role of his masterpiece, Don Quixote, in the formation of the modern novel. They draw on contemporary critical perspectives to shed new light on Cervantes' work, including the 'Exemplary Novels', the plays and dramatic interludes, and the long romances, Galatea and Persiles. The volume provides useful supporting material for students; suggestions for further reading, a detailed chronology, a complete list of his published writings, an overview of translations and editions, and a guide to electronic resources.

Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) is one of the classic texts of Western literature and the foundation of European fiction. Yet Cervantes himself remains an enigmatic figure. The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, first published in 2002, offers a comprehensive treatment of Cervantes' life and work, including his lesser known writing. The essays, by some of the most outstanding scholars in the field, cover the historical and political context of Cervantes' writing, his place in Renaissance culture, and the role of his masterpiece, Don Quixote, in the formation of the modern novel. They draw on contemporary critical perspectives to shed new light on Cervantes' work, including the 'Exemplary Novels', the plays and dramatic interludes, and the long romances, Galatea and Persiles. The volume provides useful supporting material for students; suggestions for further reading, a detailed chronology, a complete list of his published writings, an overview of translations and editions, and a guide to electronic resources.

A distinguished group of authors reflects on problems currently enlivening the space shared by philosophy and literary theory. Contributors include Alexander Nehamas, Dennis Dutton, Charles Altieri, Martha Craven Nussbaum, and others. (Philosophy)

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (1970) offers one of the most powerful and comprehensive critiques of art and of the discipline of aesthetics ever written. The work offers a deeply critical engagement with the history and philosophy of aesthetics and with the traditions of European art through the middle of the 20th century. It is coupled with ambitious claims about what aesthetic theory ought to be. But the cultural horizon of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory was the world of high modernism, and much has happened since then both in theory and in practice. Adorno's powerful vision of aesthetics calls for reconsideration in this light. Must his work be defended, updated, resisted, or simply left behind? This volume gathers new essays by leading philosophers, critics, and theorists writing in the wake of Adorno in order to address these questions. They hold in common a deep respect for the power of Adorno's aesthetic critique and a concern for the future of aesthetic theory in response to recent developments in aesthetics and its contexts.

Malcolm Bull offers a detailed analysis of nihilism in Nietzsche's works. Along with accompanying commentaries by Cascardi and Clark, he explores the significance of Nietzscheís views given the fact that a wide range of readers have come to embrace his ideas as new orthodoxy. There seem to be no anti-Nietzscheans today, but Bull demonstrates that this wide embrace of Nietzsche runs counter to the very meaning of nihilism as Nietzsche understood it.

This broad-ranging exploration argues that there was a special preoccupation with the nature and limits of poetry in early modern Spain and Europe, as well as especially vigourous poetic activity in this period. Contrary to what one might read in Hegel, the ""prosification"" of the world has remained an unfinished affair.

This broad-ranging exploration argues that there was a special preoccupation with the nature and limits of poetry in early modern Spain and Europe, as well as especially vigourous poetic activity in this period. Contrary to what one might read in Hegel, the ""prosification"" of the world has remained an unfinished affair.

Literature and philosophy have long shared an interest in questions of truth, value, and form. And yet, from ancient times to the present, they have often sharply diverged, both in their approach to these questions and in their relationship to one another. Moreover, the vast differences among individual writers, historical periods, and languages pose challenges for anyone wishing to understand the relationship between them. This Introduction provides a synthetic and original guide to this vast terrain. It uncovers the deep interests that literature and philosophy share while offering a lucid account of their differences. It sheds new light on many standing debates and offers students and scholars of literary criticism, literary theory, and philosophy a chance to think freshly about questions that have preoccupied the Western tradition from its very beginnings up until the present.

What is the role of literature in the formation of the state? Anthony J. Cascardi takes up this fundamental question in Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics, a comprehensive analysis of the presence of politics in Don Quixote. Cascardi argues that when public speech is constrained, as it was in seventeenth-century Spain, politics must be addressed through indirect forms including comedy, myth, and travellers' tales.Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics convincingly re-engages the ancient roots of political theory in modern literature by situating Cervantes within a long line of political thinkers. Cascardi notably connects Cervantes's political theory to Plato's, much as the writer's literary criticism has been firmly linked to Aristotle's. He also shows how Cervantes's view of literature provided a compelling alternative to the modern, scientific politics of Machiavelli and Hobbes, highlighting the potential interplay of literature and politics in an ideal state.