Stephen Benson – författare

Including pieces by creative critics as varied as Anne Carson, Jacques Derrida, Geoff Dyer, Hélène Cixous, Ali Smith, and John Cage, this anthology and guide celebrates the formal and intellectual inventiveness of works which also demonstrate a deep fidelity to the writing or art they address. The Anthology is of interest to all students, teachers and critics of literature and creative writing, and especially those students who are required to write critical essays. All 14 texts included respond innovatively to the question: How do we write criticism? As examples of academic critical writing they are all sympathetic to works whose aim is to change the ways in which we see and describe our world.Key Features• Unique as an anthology of and guide to creative critical writing• Demonstrates a range of ways to write critically and creatively • Extensive introduction & explanatory headnotes to each textContents Roland Barthes, from A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments; John Cage, from ‘Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?’; Anne Carson, ‘Every Exit is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)’; Hélène Cixous, ‘Without end, no, State of drawingness, no, rather: The Executioner’s taking off’; Jacques Derrida ‘Aphorism Countertime’; Geoff Dyer, from Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence; Benjamin Friedlander, ‘Gertrude Stein: A Retrospective Criticism’; Peter Gizzi, ‘Correspondences of the Book’; Kevin Kopelson, ‘Music Lessons’; Denise Riley, ‘Lyric Selves’; Eve Sedgwick, ‘Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl’; Ali Smith, ‘Green’; John Wilkinson, ‘Imperfect Pitch’; Sarah Wood, ‘Anew Again’.Stephen Benson and Clare Connors teach in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Stephen Benson is the author of Cycles of Influence: Fiction, Folktale, Theory (2002) and Literary Music: Writing Music in Contemporary Fiction (2006), and the editor of Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale (2008). Clare Connors is the author of Force from Nietzsche to Derrida and Literary Theory: A Beginner’s Guide (2010).

In this wide ranging and insightful analysis, Stephen Benson proposes a poetic of narrative for postmodernism by placing new emphasis on the folktale. Postmodernist fictions have evidenced a return to narrative - to storytelling centred on a sequence of events, rather than a ""spiralling"" of events as found in modernism - and recent theorists have described narrative as a ""central insistence of the human mind"". By characterizing the folktale as a prime embodiment of narrative, Benson relates folktales to many of the theoretical concerns of postmodernism and provides new insights into the works of major writers who have used this genre, which includes the subgenre of the fairy tale, in opening narrative up to new possibilities. Benson examines the key features of folktales: their emphasis on a chain of events rather than description or consciousness, their emphasis on a self-contained fictional environment rather than realism, the presence of a storyteller as a self-confessed fabricator, their oral and communal status, and their ever-changing state, which defies authoritative versions. The arguments presented should not only interest folklorists and scholars of narrative but also readers in fields ranging from comparative literature to feminist theory.

This book considers the profound influence of fairy tales on contemporary fiction, including the work of Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Salman Rushdie, and Jeanette Winterson.Recent decades have witnessed a renaissance of interest in the fairy tale, not least among writers of fiction. In ""Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale"", editor Stephen Benson argues that fairy tales are one of the key influences on fiction of the past thirty years and also continue to shape literary trends in the present. Contributors detail the use of fairy tales both as inspiration and blueprint and explore the results of juxtaposing fairy tales and contemporary fiction.At the heart of this collection, seven leading scholars focus on authors whose work is heavily informed and transformed by fairy tales: Robert Coover, A. S. Byatt, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, and Salman Rushdie. In addition to investigating the work of this so-called fairy-tale generation, ""Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale"" provides a survey of the body of theoretical writing surrounding these authors, both from within literary studies and from fairy-tale studies itself. Contributors present an overview of critical positions, considered here in relation to the work of Jeanette Winterson and of Nalo Hopkinson, suggesting further avenues for research.""Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale"" offers the first detailed and comprehensive account of the key authors working in this emerging genre. Students and teachers of fiction, folklore, and fairy-tale studies will appreciate this insightful volume.

Music is commonly felt to offer a valued experience, yet to put that experience into words is no easy task. Rather than view verbal representations of music as somehow secondary to the music itself, Literary Music argues that it is in such representations that our understanding of music and its meanings is constituted and explored. Focusing on recent fictional and theoretical texts, Stephen Benson proposes literature, narrative fiction in particular, as a singular form of musical performance. Literary Music concentrates not only on song and opera, those forms in which words and music overtly confront one another, but also on a small number of recurring ideas around which the literary and the musical interact, including voice, narrative, performance, and silence. The book considers a wide range of literary and theoretical texts, including those of Blanchot and Bakhtin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Vikram Seth, David Malouf and J.M. Coetzee. The musical forms discussed range from opera to the string quartet, together with individual works by Elgar, Strauss and Michael Berkeley. As such, Literary Music offers an informed interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature and music that participates in the lively theoretical debate on the status of meaning in music.

Music is commonly felt to offer a valued experience, yet to put that experience into words is no easy task. Rather than view verbal representations of music as somehow secondary to the music itself, Literary Music argues that it is in such representations that our understanding of music and its meanings is constituted and explored. Focusing on recent fictional and theoretical texts, Stephen Benson proposes literature, narrative fiction in particular, as a singular form of musical performance. Literary Music concentrates not only on song and opera, those forms in which words and music overtly confront one another, but also on a small number of recurring ideas around which the literary and the musical interact, including voice, narrative, performance, and silence. The book considers a wide range of literary and theoretical texts, including those of Blanchot and Bakhtin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Vikram Seth, David Malouf and J.M. Coetzee. The musical forms discussed range from opera to the string quartet, together with individual works by Elgar, Strauss and Michael Berkeley. As such, Literary Music offers an informed interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature and music that participates in the lively theoretical debate on the status of meaning in music.

Music is commonly felt to offer a valued experience, yet to put that experience into words is no easy task. Rather than view verbal representations of music as somehow secondary to the music itself, Literary Music argues that it is in such representations that our understanding of music and its meanings is constituted and explored. Focusing on recent fictional and theoretical texts, Stephen Benson proposes literature, narrative fiction in particular, as a singular form of musical performance. Literary Music concentrates not only on song and opera, those forms in which words and music overtly confront one another, but also on a small number of recurring ideas around which the literary and the musical interact, including voice, narrative, performance, and silence. The book considers a wide range of literary and theoretical texts, including those of Blanchot and Bakhtin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Vikram Seth, David Malouf and J.M. Coetzee. The musical forms discussed range from opera to the string quartet, together with individual works by Elgar, Strauss and Michael Berkeley. As such, Literary Music offers an informed interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature and music that participates in the lively theoretical debate on the status of meaning in music.

Intervenes in contemporary debates about the relationship between literature and field recordingA field recording is any audio recording made outside of the studio. Such recordings have lately become important to contemporary musicians, sound artists and environmentalists. However, less attention has been given to the relation of sound, as manifested in the theory and practice of the field recording, to writing. The 11 essays collected here take the recent explosion of interest in field recording as the point of departure for an investigation of the sounded field in music and its relationship to literature and writing. Including seminal pieces on field thinking by John Berger and Lisa Robertson, 'Writing the Field Recording' analyses contemporary text scores, histories, composer statements, critical literature, poetry and nature writing in the context of sound studies. Drawing on expertise from a range of backgrounds, including composers, musicians, poets and critics, the collection presents an inter-disciplinary exploration of the various registers in which the field recording is written, such as the essayistic, the creatively exploratory, the experimental and the philosophical alongside critical reflections on artistic practice.Key FeaturesFocuses on sound in relation to poetry, poetics and nature / landscape writingIncludes contributions from published poets Lisa Robertson, Carol Watts and Jonathan SkinnerIncludes the classic essay, 'Field', by John BergerAccompanying sound recordings made accessible via the Resources tab on the Edinburgh University Press website

Intervenes in contemporary debates about the relationship between literature and field recordingA field recording is any audio recording made outside of the studio. Such recordings have lately become important to contemporary musicians, sound artists and environmentalists. However, less attention has been given to the relation of sound, as manifested in the theory and practice of the field recording, to writing. The 11 essays collected here take the recent explosion of interest in field recording as the point of departure for an investigation of the sounded field in music and its relationship to literature and writing. Including seminal pieces on field thinking by John Berger and Lisa Robertson, Writing the Field Recording analyses contemporary text scores, histories, composer statements, critical literature, poetry and nature writing in the context of sound studies. Drawing on expertise from a range of backgrounds, including composers, musicians, poets and critics, the collection presents an inter-disciplinary exploration of the various registers in which the field recording is written, such as the essayistic, the creatively exploratory, the experimental and the philosophical alongside critical reflections on artistic practice.Key FeaturesFocuses on sound in relation to poetry, poetics and nature / landscape writingIncludes contributions from published poets Lisa Robertson, Carol Watts and Jonathan SkinnerIncludes the classic essay, ‘Field’, by John BergerAccompanying sound recordings made accessible via the Resources tab on the Edinburgh University Press website