James Olney – författare

Presenting an account of how the weave of life-writing has altered over time to arrive at its present form, this text tells the story of an evolving literary form that took its origins in the autobiographical writings of St. Augustine, underwent profound and disruptive changes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life-writing trilogy, and finds its momentary conclusion in the whole body of Samuel Beckett's work. In works such as the "Confessions" and the "Trinity" Augustine laid down a theory of life-writing that has survived to the present day. Rousseau's great innovation was to turn the focus of life-writing away from the Augustinian model of the course of a life onto the isolate Romantic self, and though Rousseau's autobiographical volumes failed to show readers what was "within and under the skin," they succeeded (perhaps too well) in setting an agenda of self-confessed failure for later writers. James Olney investigates the consequences of the Rousseauvian refiguration of Augustinian life-writing for a range of writers, focusing on Beckett as paradigmatic.Among other issues, Olney considers the rejection of the pronoun "I" by many post-Rousseau writers; the uses of narrative in the works of Beckett, Franz Kafka, and the sculptor Alberto Giacometti; and the role of literary memory in light of recent "memory work" from a variety of scientific disciplines. Giambattista Vico, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, and Christa Wolf are some of the other writers examined in this study.

The Rhizome and the Flower: The Perennial Philosophy—Yeats and Jung offers an ambitious exploration of what its author terms “Yeats-and-Jung,” a conceptual pairing examined not through conventional literary criticism or psychological analysis but through the broader framework of intellectual history and the “perennial philosophy.” Rather than isolating Yeats’s poetics, Jung’s psychology, or the metaphysical traditions of the Pre-Socratics and Platonism, the study investigates the ways these traditions interpenetrate, revealing a shared set of ideas about imagination, archetype, and spiritual order that defy disciplinary boundaries. The book resists straightforward categorization, instead advancing an integrative reading of Yeats and Jung as participants in—and exemplars of—a much older philosophical and symbolic lineage.The work proceeds through an extended intellectual genealogy, situating Yeats’s symbolic system and Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious in the long tradition of Western esotericism and metaphysical thought. In doing so, it makes the case that both figures embody aspects of the perennial philosophy, a vision of reality that recurs across cultural and historical contexts. Later chapters (7 and 8) focus directly on Yeats’s poetics and Jung’s psychology, yet the study insists that these cannot be fully understood apart from their shared philosophical heritage. For specialists in modernist studies, Jungian thought, or the history of ideas, *The Rhizome and the Flower* provides not a comparative exercise but a synthetic meditation on the cultural and intellectual currents that shaped—and were reshaped by—two of the twentieth century’s most influential minds.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 1980.

The Rhizome and the Flower: The Perennial Philosophy—Yeats and Jung offers an ambitious exploration of what its author terms “Yeats-and-Jung,” a conceptual pairing examined not through conventional literary criticism or psychological analysis but through the broader framework of intellectual history and the “perennial philosophy.” Rather than isolating Yeats’s poetics, Jung’s psychology, or the metaphysical traditions of the Pre-Socratics and Platonism, the study investigates the ways these traditions interpenetrate, revealing a shared set of ideas about imagination, archetype, and spiritual order that defy disciplinary boundaries. The book resists straightforward categorization, instead advancing an integrative reading of Yeats and Jung as participants in—and exemplars of—a much older philosophical and symbolic lineage.The work proceeds through an extended intellectual genealogy, situating Yeats’s symbolic system and Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious in the long tradition of Western esotericism and metaphysical thought. In doing so, it makes the case that both figures embody aspects of the perennial philosophy, a vision of reality that recurs across cultural and historical contexts. Later chapters (7 and 8) focus directly on Yeats’s poetics and Jung’s psychology, yet the study insists that these cannot be fully understood apart from their shared philosophical heritage. For specialists in modernist studies, Jungian thought, or the history of ideas, *The Rhizome and the Flower* provides not a comparative exercise but a synthetic meditation on the cultural and intellectual currents that shaped—and were reshaped by—two of the twentieth century’s most influential minds.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 1980.

James Olney examines the writings of seven men--Montaigne, Jung, George Fox, Darwin, Newman, Mills, and Eliot--and traces the essential and unique autobiographical impulse, and in a real sense makes it live. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Professor Olney gathers together in this book some of the best and most important writings on autobiography produced in the past two decades. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

James Olney demonstrates that autobiography, because it provides the most direct narrative enactments of the ways, motives, and beliefs of a culture, is an excellent way to approach African literature. After a general discussion of the African ethos, each chapter takes up the "autobiographical" literature of a specific group in African society and treats it as both an expression of a personal vision and as a revelation of a permeating social reality. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

James Olney examines the writings of seven men--Montaigne, Jung, George Fox, Darwin, Newman, Mills, and Eliot--and traces the essential and unique autobiographical impulse, and in a real sense makes it live. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Professor Olney gathers together in this book some of the best and most important writings on autobiography produced in the past two decades. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

James Olney demonstrates that autobiography, because it provides the most direct narrative enactments of the ways, motives, and beliefs of a culture, is an excellent way to approach African literature. After a general discussion of the African ethos, each chapter takes up the "autobiographical" literature of a specific group in African society and treats it as both an expression of a personal vision and as a revelation of a permeating social reality. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In the twenty years of its existence, the second series of the Southern Review continued the editorial orientation of the first series by presenting a range of regional and cosmopolitan works of fiction. This anthology is a collection of twenty-five short stories from the nearly three hundred published in the journal between 1965 and 1985. The editors have sought to illustrate the diversity of subject matter and the tremendous range of tone, voice, and technique that have characterized short fiction in the Southern Review.Although many of the contributors to Selected Stories from the ""Southern Review"" are southern, the collection also includes national and international, new and established writers. The focus of the anthology is on literary merit rather than regional considerations. ""Abroad"" by Nadine Gordimer, which depicts the experiences of a white South African visiting his son in Zimbabwe, is in the collection, along with John William Corrington's ""Pleadings,"" the powerful account of an incident in the life of a south Louisiana attorney. Mary Lavin's ""The Face of Hate"" addresses life amidst the conflict in Northern Ireland, and Elizabeth Spencer's ""The Cousins"" explores the entanglements and coming of age of five young adults on a European vacation. Joyce Carol Oates's ""Détente"" interweaves the personal and political aspects of a Soviet-American literary conference, and Robb Forman Dew follows the adventures of two naive Natchez girls in New Orleans in ""Two Girls Wearing Perfume in the Summer.""From Louis D. Rubin's tentative young newspaperman in ""The St. Anthony Chorale"" to William Mills's sure-footed X-ray technician in ""Sweet Tickfaw Run Softly, Till I End My Song,"" from Rita Dove's compelling ""Secondhand Man"" to John E. Wildeman's Satirical ""Surfiction"", these are characters and stories from the new series of the Southern Review which offer resounding proof that the brilliant publishing tradition originating with Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren has been preserved by a magazine that still maintains its national literary reputation.