William D. Melaney - Böcker

Offers a reconsideration of modernism in both philosophy and literature.After Ontology identifies the uniquely postmodern elements in hermeneutics and deconstruction in order to re-read many of the central texts in modernist literature. In a comparative study that illuminates points of contact between the philosophical positions of Gadamer and Derrida, William D. Melaney discusses Heidegger's influence on both Gadamer's ontological approach to the work of art and Derrida's transformative approach to the cultural text as implicitly postmodern. The difference between these two approaches is presented through a mutual critique of modern aesthetics that demonstrates how deconstruction can contribute to postmodern criticism.The poetry of Eliot, Pound, and Yeats is examined within this framework, while the crucial example of Joyce is taken up in terms of the production and reception of Ulysses as a seminal influence. The study concludes by emphasizing how Derrida provides an ethical version of hermeneutics that departs from Gadamerian models but can be reconciled with both postmodern insights and historical research.

This book is concerned with the continuing viability of both Freud and Hegel to the reading of modern literature. The book begins with Julia Kristeva’s attempts to relate Hegelian thought to a psychoanalytically informed conception of semiotics that was first explored in her influential study, The Revolution of Poetic Language, and then modified in later books that develop semiotics in new directions. Kristeva’s agreements and disagreement with Hegel are important to the book’s argument, which ultimately defends Hegel against familiar, poststructuralist detractions. However, the book’s conceptual argument requires a historical exposition, with chapters devoted to literary figures ranging from Spenser to Ishiguro. One of the purposes of the book is to demonstrate that Hegel’s contribution to modern thought is at least partially exhibited in the history of literature, which also corroborates some of the deeper insights of psychoanalysis.

This book is concerned with the continuing viability of both Freud and Hegel to the reading of modern literature. The book begins with Julia Kristeva’s attempts to relate Hegelian thought to a psychoanalytically informed conception of semiotics that was first explored in her influential study, The Revolution of Poetic Language, and then modified in later books that develop semiotics in new directions. Kristeva’s agreements and disagreement with Hegel are important to the book’s argument, which ultimately defends Hegel against familiar, poststructuralist detractions. However, the book’s conceptual argument requires a historical exposition, with chapters devoted to literary figures ranging from Spenser to Ishiguro. One of the purposes of the book is to demonstrate that Hegel’s contribution to modern thought is at least partially exhibited in the history of literature, which also corroborates some of the deeper insights of psychoanalysis.

How does the theme of the other–-as person, experience or alternative conceptual scheme—allow us to reassess the role of the self in literary texts? This book employs phenomenology and semiotics to argue that modern literature is strongly concerned with the role of time in the construction of the self. Alterity and Criticism: Retracing Time in Modern Literature argues that the role of time in canonical literature underlies the experience of alterity and requires a new hermeneutic to clarify how the self emerges in literary texts. Romantic poetry from Goethe to Shelley and the modern prose tradition from Flaubert to Butor constitute different traditions but also indicate, on a textual basis, how alterity performs a crucial role in reading, thus encouraging us to interpret literary texts in terms of the related concerns of self, other and time. The author examines the phenomenology of Emmanuel Lévinas and Wolfgang Iser, as well as the cultural semiotics of Julia Kristeva, to argue that modern literature provides the occasion for a new understanding of the self in time and, in this way, addresses some of the pressing literary problems of our own period.

How does the theme of the other–-as person, experience or alternative conceptual scheme—allow us to reassess the role of the self in literary texts? This book employs phenomenology and semiotics to argue that modern literature is strongly concerned with the role of time in the construction of the self. Alterity and Criticism: Retracing Time in Modern Literature argues that the role of time in canonical literature underlies the experience of alterity and requires a new hermeneutic to clarify how the self emerges in literary texts. Romantic poetry from Goethe to Shelley and the modern prose tradition from Flaubert to Butor constitute different traditions but also indicate, on a textual basis, how alterity performs a crucial role in reading, thus encouraging us to interpret literary texts in terms of the related concerns of self, other and time. The author examines the phenomenology of Emmanuel Lévinas and Wolfgang Iser, as well as the cultural semiotics of Julia Kristeva, to argue that modern literature provides the occasion for a new understanding of the self in time and, in this way, addresses some of the pressing literary problems of our own period.

How does modern poetry from Donne to Ashbery provide occasions for rethinking the scope and limits of the literary canon? This question is not simply concerned with literature in English but addresses the problem of how texts transform the reader’s experience of literature in the wake of modernity. This study shows how an experience of absence is the starting point for a reversal that occurs whenever reading transforms an engagement with the world. The eight chapters that comprise this study offer revisionary readings of key poetic works and a new way of understanding the modern canon.