Frank Lentricchia - Böcker

"Criticism and Social Change speaks with special timeliness to the role of the political intellectual (here embodied in Kenneth Burke). Lentricchia's provocative analysis demands serious reflection by American radicals."—Frederic Jameson "A profound meditation on relations obtaining among writing, political consciousness, and criticism—this last taken in its most general sense. It is written with passion and grace; it is shot through with learning, intimate knowledge of the critical tradition, and a deep (though by no means uncritical) understanding of the work (as well as social significance) of Kenneth Burke."—Hayden White

This expanded new edition features six new chapters that confront, in different ways, the growing understanding of literary works as cultural practices. These six new chapters are: "Popular Culture"; "Diversity"; "Imperialism/Nationalism"; "Desire"; "Ethics"; and "Class" by John Fiske, Louis Menand, Seamus Deane, Judith Butler, Geoffrey Galt Harpham and Daniel T. O'Hara, respectively. Each new essay provides a concise history of a literary term, critically explores the issues and questions that the term raises, and then puts theory into practice by showing the reading strategies that the term permits. By exploring the concepts that shape the way we read, the essays combine to provide an introduction to the work of literature and literary study.

In Ariel and the Police, Frank Lentricchia searches through the totalizing desires for power that have built and help to maintain tangible and intangible structures of confinement and purification within, and sometimes as, the house of modernism. And what he finds, in his lyrical effort to redeem the subject for history, is that someone lives there, slyly, sometimes even playfully defiant.

This study explores the radical poetics of William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens, focusing on their contributions to modern literary theory and the unique role of imagination in their works. By tracing their poetic theories within the broader context of post-Romantic criticism, the essay critiques both the romantic idealism of the 19th century and the contextual theories of modern criticism. Yeats and Stevens challenge the notion of poetry as a direct avenue to transcendental truth, redefining the role of the imagination as an artistic force that operates within its own linguistic medium, unburdened by metaphysical or empirical agendas. Their poetics, often interpreted through contrasting lenses such as romantic organicism or the "visionary" archetypes championed by scholars like Northrop Frye, instead offer a framework where poems are self-contained entities. These works articulate the tension between the impoverished modern imagination and its capacity to find freedom and meaning within the act of creation itself.Through close readings of Yeats's and Stevens's prose and poetry, this essay argues that their works embody a "poetics of will," wherein the imagination, though constrained by the limitations of a disenchanted modern world, still achieves a vital cultural role. Unlike their predecessors, who viewed poetry as a conduit to metaphysical revelation, Yeats and Stevens position the poem as an autonomous artifact that captures fleeting moments of freedom and beauty. For the poet, the creative act becomes an assertion of control over the chaos of inner and outer realities, while for the reader, the well-wrought poem offers a brief but profound engagement with the artist’s vision. In this way, Yeats and Stevens redefine the purpose of poetry, suggesting its essential contribution to human happiness and cultural resilience in an age marked by existential and aesthetic challenges.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

This study explores the radical poetics of William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens, focusing on their contributions to modern literary theory and the unique role of imagination in their works. By tracing their poetic theories within the broader context of post-Romantic criticism, the essay critiques both the romantic idealism of the 19th century and the contextual theories of modern criticism. Yeats and Stevens challenge the notion of poetry as a direct avenue to transcendental truth, redefining the role of the imagination as an artistic force that operates within its own linguistic medium, unburdened by metaphysical or empirical agendas. Their poetics, often interpreted through contrasting lenses such as romantic organicism or the "visionary" archetypes championed by scholars like Northrop Frye, instead offer a framework where poems are self-contained entities. These works articulate the tension between the impoverished modern imagination and its capacity to find freedom and meaning within the act of creation itself.Through close readings of Yeats's and Stevens's prose and poetry, this essay argues that their works embody a "poetics of will," wherein the imagination, though constrained by the limitations of a disenchanted modern world, still achieves a vital cultural role. Unlike their predecessors, who viewed poetry as a conduit to metaphysical revelation, Yeats and Stevens position the poem as an autonomous artifact that captures fleeting moments of freedom and beauty. For the poet, the creative act becomes an assertion of control over the chaos of inner and outer realities, while for the reader, the well-wrought poem offers a brief but profound engagement with the artist’s vision. In this way, Yeats and Stevens redefine the purpose of poetry, suggesting its essential contribution to human happiness and cultural resilience in an age marked by existential and aesthetic challenges.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

White Noise, the story of a professor of Hitler Studies and his family was DeLillo's breakthrough book and has received much attention and critical acclaim. In the introduction to this volume, Frank Lentricchia provides an overview of the critical reception of the novel and examines it in the context of other works by Don DeLillo. The other essays in the volume discuss DeLillo's view of family and divorce, Hitler's role in the twentieth century, technology as a mortal threat, and postmodern America. This collection offers suggestive means by which to approach DeLillo's important contemporary work.

White Noise, the story of a professor of Hitler Studies and his family was DeLillo's breakthrough book and has received much attention and critical acclaim. In the introduction to this volume, Frank Lentricchia provides an overview of the critical reception of the novel and examines it in the context of other works by Don DeLillo. The other essays in the volume discuss DeLillo's view of family and divorce, Hitler's role in the twentieth century, technology as a mortal threat, and postmodern America. This collection offers suggestive means by which to approach DeLillo's important contemporary work.

Modernist Quartet is a study of the four major American modernist poets (Frost, Stevens, Pound, Eliot) in various historical environments (literary, philosophical, gender relations, the business of capitalist economics) with special attention given to their central poetic texts as they both reflect and shape our understanding of those environments. Frank Lentricchia presents the poems as stories, sometimes only implicit, of the poets seeking to sustain a life in non-commercial writing, in a culture that is hospitable only (for the most part) to commercial art. Central chapters give a synoptic vision of the lives and literary careers of the four poets in question.

Modernist Quartet is a study of the four major American modernist poets (Frost, Stevens, Pound, Eliot) in various historical environments (literary, philosophical, gender relations, the business of capitalist economics) with special attention given to their central poetic texts as they both reflect and shape our understanding of those environments. Frank Lentricchia presents the poems as stories, sometimes only implicit, of the poets seeking to sustain a life in non-commercial writing, in a culture that is hospitable only (for the most part) to commercial art. Central chapters give a synoptic vision of the lives and literary careers of the four poets in question.

An unusual, deft, often piercing meditation on storytelling, ethnicity, and the Italian/American experience.At eighteen Robert Tagliaferro, an orphan of ambiguous racial and ethnic identity, disappears from his hometown of Utica, New York. At sixty he returns, forgotten by nearly everyone and searching the bin of memory for something to salvage. Having lived for decades inside a bookstore, his search for identity has taken him into the world of great literature and the history of Utica itself, and so his quest must be to create a memory, a history, and an identity from his reading. He becomes a man made of words, a patchwork of styles and rhetoric, an artifice.In the cellar of a restaurant, Robert tells his stories of the past to six other men: stories of Utica, of New York State, and ultimately of America itself, as well as of the intimate involvement of Italian immigrants with these histories. The other characters respond in a kind of collective storytelling, a play of voices probing the various themes of history, genealogy, fatherhood, race, lost children, the presentness of the past, community, and, finally, storytelling itself as the power guiding all, informing their sense of everything, as they grope imaginatively toward a sense of life and their place in it.Rich in literary heritage and allusion, The Music of the Inferno is an unusual, deft, often piercing meditation on storytelling, ethnicity, and the Italian American experience.

An unusual, deft, often piercing meditation on storytelling, ethnicity, and the Italian/American experience.At eighteen Robert Tagliaferro, an orphan of ambiguous racial and ethnic identity, disappears from his hometown of Utica, New York. At sixty he returns, forgotten by nearly everyone and searching the bin of memory for something to salvage. Having lived for decades inside a bookstore, his search for identity has taken him into the world of great literature and the history of Utica itself, and so his quest must be to create a memory, a history, and an identity from his reading. He becomes a man made of words, a patchwork of styles and rhetoric, an artifice.In the cellar of a restaurant, Robert tells his stories of the past to six other men: stories of Utica, of New York State, and ultimately of America itself, as well as of the intimate involvement of Italian immigrants with these histories. The other characters respond in a kind of collective storytelling, a play of voices probing the various themes of history, genealogy, fatherhood, race, lost children, the presentness of the past, community, and, finally, storytelling itself as the power guiding all, informing their sense of everything, as they grope imaginatively toward a sense of life and their place in it.Rich in literary heritage and allusion, The Music of the Inferno is an unusual, deft, often piercing meditation on storytelling, ethnicity, and the Italian American experience.

If you want to find out what a rock critic, a syndicated columnist, and scholars of American literature have to say about one of America’s most important contemporary novelists, turn to Introducing Don DeLillo. Placing the author’s work in a cultural context, this is the first book-length collection on DeLillo, adding considerably to the emerging critical discourse on his work.Diversity is the key to this striking assemblage of cultural criticism edited by Frank Lentricchia. Special features include an expanded version of the Rolling Stone interview with the author (“An Outsider in this Society”) and the extraordinary tenth chapter of DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star. Accessibly written and entertaining, the collection will be of great interest to both students and scholars of contemporary American literature as well as to general readers interested in DeLillo’s work.Contributors. Frank Lentricchia, Anthony Decurtis, Daniel Aaron, Hal Crowther, John A. McClure, Eugene Goodheart, Charles Molesworth, Dennis A. Foster, and John Frow

An anthology of exemplary readings by some of the twentieth century’s foremost literary critics, Close Reading presents a wide range of responses to the question at the heart of literary criticism: how best to read a text to understand its meaning. The lively introduction and the selected essays provide an overview of close reading from New Criticism through poststructuralism, including works of feminist criticism, postcolonial theory, queer theory, new historicism, and more. From a 1938 essay by John Crowe Ransom through the work of contemporary scholars, Close Reading highlights the interplay between critics-the ways they respond to and are influenced by others’ works. To facilitate comparisons of methodology, the collection includes discussions of the same primary texts by scholars using different critical approaches. The essays focus on Hamlet, “Lycidas,” “The Rape of the Lock,” Ulysses, Invisible Man, Beloved, Jane Austen, John Keats, and Wallace Stevens and reveal not only what the contributors are reading, but also how they are reading.Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois’s collection is an essential tool for teaching the history and practice of close reading.Contributors. Houston A. Baker Jr., Roland Barthes, Homi Bhabha, R. P. Blackmur, Cleanth Brooks, Kenneth Burke, Paul de Man, Andrew DuBois, Stanley Fish, Catherine Gallagher, Sandra Gilbert, Stephen Greenblatt, Susan Gubar, Fredric Jameson, Murray Krieger, Frank Lentricchia, Franco Moretti, John Crowe Ransom, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Helen Vendler

Lucchesi and The Whale is an unusual work of fiction by noted author and critic Frank Lentricchia. Its central character, Thomas Lucchesi Jr., is a college professor in the American heartland whose obsessions and compulsions include traveling to visit friends in their last moments of life-because grief alone inspires him to write-and searching for secret meaning in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Himself a writer of “stories full of violence in a poetic style,” Lucchesi tells his students that he teaches “only because [his] fiction is commercially untouchable” and to “never forget that.” Austerely isolated, anxiety-ridden, and relentlessly self-involved, Lucchesi nonetheless cannot completely squelch his eagerness for love.Having become “a mad Ahab of reading,” who is driven to dissect the “artificial body of Melville’s behemothian book” to grasp its truth, Lucchesi allows his thoughts to wander and loop from theory to dream to reality to questionable memory. But his black humor-tinged musings are often as profoundly moving as they are intellectual, such as the section in which he ponders the life and philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in relation to the significance of a name-and then attempts to share these thoughts with a sexy, middle-aged flight attendant-or another in which he describes a chance meeting with a similarly-named mafia don.Despite apparent spiritual emptiness, Lucchesi in the end does find “a secret meaning” to Moby-Dick. And Lentricchia’s creations-both Lucchesi and The Whale and its main character-reveal this meaning through a series of ingeniously self-reflective metaphors, in much the way that Melville himself did in and through Moby-Dick. Vivid, humorous, and of unparalleled originality, this new work from Frank Lentricchia will inspire and console all who love and ponder both great literature and those who would write it.

A has-been American filmmaker encounters love, cruelty, and death in Italy.Set in Italy, Frank Lentricchia's sixth novel features a has-been Italian American filmmaker, once internationally acclaimed for the beauty of his images and his experiments in pornography but now stuck in prolonged creative drought. At an obscure film festival in Volterra he meets the aging but still stunning Claudia Cardinale, star of Fellini's 8½. She falls in love with him, but he resists, yet all the while wanting not to resist. Instead of remaining with Cardinale, he casts his lot with a perverse but compelling couple who convince him that he can regain his renown and achieve artistic immortality if he will only make a new film starring the two of them-an explicitly sexual film of shocking violence.The Italian Actress is a meditation, by turns lyrical and bluntly brutal, on our obsession with celebrity, ambition, the cult of youthful beauty, romantic desire, the aging body, mortality, the power of the visual image, and underneath it all, the nature of visuality itself.

An American adventure in the Antonioni vein—visually rich and emotionally mysterious.Part Mafia murder mystery, part novel of ideas, but most of all a love story, The Sadness of Antonioni follows Hank Morelli, a young assistant professor of film who is obsessed with Antonioni's L'Avventura. As he embarks on an unlikely romance with a Wendy's cashier, he is also drawn into the mystery of his grandfather's underworld connections and tempted by his department chair and his department chair's mysterious girlfriend, Nadia, to take part in a monstrous film project they are planning. Haunted throughout by the terror of time's raw present without exit, The Sadness of Antonioni is an American adventure in the Antonioni vein-visually rich and emotionally mysterious-in which an unlikely young couple navigates the difficult waters of their relationship, each suffering the remnants of a violent past that must be resolved if they hope to stay together. Heartrending and unsparing, yet with a persistent comic vein, this is Frank Lentricchia's seventh and most ambitious and disturbing novel to date.