Daniel T. O'Hara – författare

Winner of the 2006 Truman Capote Prize for Literary AchievementGeoffrey Hartman’s interests range over almost the entire field of contemporary literature and culture. In this, the first Reader of his work, significant essays reflect his abiding interest in English and American poetry, focusing not only on Romanticism but also on the transition from early modern to modern and including reflections on the radical elements in artistic representation.Hartman, whose book on Wordsworth changed our understanding of that poet, brings theory and close reading together. A major consideration of Freud is accompanied by intensive analyses of Lacan and Derrida, and a psychoesthetic theory of literary genesis is proposed. Popular literature is examined through the American detective novel; Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Bernard Malamud are brought together in an examination of realism; the premodern mode of midrashic interpretation is reintroduced to literary study; and major trends in criticism, including trauma studies, receive attention.Hartman’s assessment of the media revolution and cultural studies is represented by shorter pieces of film criticism as well as his classic essays on ‘Public Memory and its Discontents’ and ‘Tele-Suffering and Testimony’ - the latter also describes a pioneering effort to collect on video the experiences of Holocaust survivors.This anthology is both highly readable and, because of its range and intellectual vigour, essential for all those concerned with the fate of the humanities and the future of literary criticism.Features*Leading US critic of contemporary literature and culture, particularly in the areas of poetry, Romanticism, trauma studies, public culture, pedagogy, and literary theory and criticism*Selection ranges across Geoffrey Hartman's illustrious career with the readings organised into six thematic parts*Publication coincides with the 50th anniversary of Geoffrey Hartman's first published book

Winner of the 2006 Truman Capote Prize for Literary AchievementGeoffrey Hartman’s interests range over almost the entire field of contemporary literature and culture. In this, the first Reader of his work, significant essays reflect his abiding interest in English and American poetry, focusing not only on Romanticism but also on the transition from early modern to modern and including reflections on the radical elements in artistic representation.Hartman, whose book on Wordsworth changed our understanding of that poet, brings theory and close reading together. A major consideration of Freud is accompanied by intensive analyses of Lacan and Derrida, and a psychoesthetic theory of literary genesis is proposed. Popular literature is examined through the American detective novel; Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Bernard Malamud are brought together in an examination of realism; the premodern mode of midrashic interpretation is reintroduced to literary study; and major trends in criticism, including trauma studies, receive attention.Hartman’s assessment of the media revolution and cultural studies is represented by shorter pieces of film criticism as well as his classic essays on ‘Public Memory and its Discontents’ and ‘Tele-Suffering and Testimony’ - the latter also describes a pioneering effort to collect on video the experiences of Holocaust survivors.This anthology is both highly readable and, because of its range and intellectual vigour, essential for all those concerned with the fate of the humanities and the future of literary criticism.Features*Leading US critic of contemporary literature and culture, particularly in the areas of poetry, Romanticism, trauma studies, public culture, pedagogy, and literary theory and criticism*Selection ranges across Geoffrey Hartman's illustrious career with the readings organised into six thematic parts*Publication coincides with the 50th anniversary of Geoffrey Hartman's first published book

Writer Henry James (1843-1916) was born in America but preferred to live in Europe; he finally become a British subject near the end of his life. His status as a permanent outsider is responsible for the recurring themes in his writing dealing with European sophistication (decadence) compared to American lack of sophistication (or innocence). He is respected in modern times for his psychological insight, for being able to reveal his characters' deepest motivations.These 11 essays, along with an introduction and an afterword, examine James's work through the prism of the author's latest style. Topics the contributing authors address include the Henry James revival of the 1930s, three of James's male aesthetics, women in his works, literary forgery, and parallels with the career and views of Margaret Oliphant. Three essays delve into issues of representation in art and fiction, then three more explore decadence, identity and homosexuality.

Empire Burlesque traces the emergence of the contemporary global context within which American critical identity is formed. Daniel T. O’Hara argues that globalization has had a markedly negative impact on American cultural criticism, circumscribing both its material and imaginative potential, reducing much of it to absurdity. By highlighting the spectacle of its own self-parody, O’Hara aims to shock U.S. cultural criticism back into a sense of ethical responsibility. Empire Burlesque presents several interrelated analyses through readings of a range of writers and cultural figures including Henry James, Freud, Said, De Man, Derrida, and Cordwainer Smith (an academic, spy, and classic 1950s and 1960s science fiction writer). It describes the debilitating effects of globalization on the university in general and the field of literary studies in particular, it critiques literary studies’ embrace of globalization theory in the name of a blind and vacant modernization, and it meditates on the ways critical reading and writing can facilitate an imaginative alternative to institutionalized practices of modernization. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, it diagnoses contemporary American Studies as typically driven by the mindless abjection and transference of professional identities.A provocative commentary on contemporary cultural criticism, Empire Burlesque will inform debates on the American university across the humanities, particularly among those in literary criticism, cultural studies, and American studies.

Sublime Woolf was written in a burst of enthusiasm after the author, Daniel T. O'Hara was finally able to teach Virginia Woolf's modernist classics again. This book focuses on those uncanny visionary passages when in elaborating 'a moment of being,' as Woolf terms it, supplements creatively the imaginative resonance of the scene.