Princeton Essays in Literature – serie

Fredric Jameson's survey of Structuralism and Russian Formalism is, at the same time, a critique of their basic methodology. He lays bare the presuppositions of the two movements, clarifying the relationship between the synchronic methods of Saussurean linguistics and the realities of time and history.

In this book Robert Pinsky writes about contemporary poetry as it reflects its modernist and Romantic past. He isolates certain persistent ideas about poetry's situation relative to life and focuses on the conflict the poet faces between the nature of words and poetic forms on one side, and the nature of experience on the other. The author ranges for his often surprising examples from Keats to the great modernists such as Stevens and Williams, to the contents of recent magazines. He considers work by Ammons, Ashbery, Bogan, Ginsberg, Lowell, Merwin, O'Hara, and younger writers, offering judgments and enthusiasms from a viewpoint that is consistent but unstereotyped. Like his poetry, Robert Pinsky's criticism joins the traditional and the innovative in ways that are thoughtful and unmistakably his own. His book is a bold essay on the contemporary situation in poetry, on the dazzling achievements of modernism, and on the nature or "situation" of poetry itself.

A groundbreaking critical introduction to Structuralism and Russian Formalism by the acclaimed literary theoristIn The Prison-House of Language, Fredric Jameson, one of the most important literary and cultural critics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, provides a thorough historical and philosophical introduction to Structuralism and Russian Formalism. Combining a survey of these influential critical movements and a critique of their methodology, Jameson lays bare their presuppositions, questioning whether the methods of Saussurean linguistics can adequately capture the concrete realities of time and history. The result is a unique and thought-provoking confrontation of two major strands of modern thought and a central work in the development of Jameson’s monumental critical project.

Although Rene Char's distinctive voice has brought him to the forefront of contemporary French writers; his complex poetry has remained virtually inaccessible to the general reader. In this book an eminent authority on French literature describes Char's evolution and, through close readings, offers a clear and rewarding introduction to the poet's /uvre. James Lawler first traces Char's growth by delineating the myth that has guided his poetry for forty years. While the Surrealists exerted an early influence on the writer, his work diverged from theirs as he gave voice to a more personal attitude toward nature and art, to a refashioned poetics and thought. The author shows how Char's development culminates in the visionary symbolism of La Paroi et la Prairie, in which wall and prairie epitomize the unresolved tension of his mature writings. Throughout his readings, Professor Lawler supplements close textual analysis with consideration of thematic, mythological, and moral elements of the poetry, discussing each aspect as it illuminates the nature of Char's sensibility."The ten short poems [of La Paroi et la Prairie] are typical of their author," he writes, "and paradigmatic of a work that is a summit of French poetry since Valery and Apollinaire." Originally published in 1978. 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.

Of the three texts of King Lear--the Quarto version printed in 1608, the Folio edition of 1623, and the modern composite of these two early texts--it has been assumed that both the Quarto and Folio versions arc distortions of an unblemished original" now lost and that only the modern text accurately approaches Shakespeare's lost original manuscript. Steven Urkowitz argues to the contrary that the Quarto and Folio are simply different stages of Shakespear's writing--an early draft and a final revision--and that they reveal much about his process of composition. 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.

By making his argument about In Memoriam a continuous argument for it, Timothy Peltason brings to light a wider appreciation of its greatness and of its central place in the history of modern poetry. Originally published in 1986. 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.

During the last sixty to seventy years avant-garde poetry in France has evolved in two directions: one toward poetry conceived as a means to an end, the other toward poetry as an end in itself. Focusing on Pierre Reverdy, Francis Ponge, Rene Char, Andre du Bouchet, Jacques Dupin, and Marcelin Pleynet as the modern French poets who most faithfully reflect these directions, Robert Greene's chronological study allows us to follow the two-pronged evolution of French poetry since 1910. Situating his argument in a detailed historical context and basing it on comparisons with artistic movements and the poets' own writings on art, and on extended analyses of selected representative poems, the author is able to establish a new intellectual-historical perspective on contemporary poetry. Professor Greene finds that whereas Reverdy, Char, du Bouchet, and Dupin all embrace a conception of poetry as quest, as a search for the absolute, as the Way of beauty or truth, Ponge and Pleynet hold to a view of poetry as jete, as a celebration of the relative, as the play and display of language in action.What knits them together, he concludes, is the way in which each poet sums up his era as a stage in the development of twentieth-century French poetry. Originally published in 1979. 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 this speculative treatment of literature as a social institution, Alvin B. Kernan explores the inability of contemporary writers and critics to maintain a literary vision in a society that denies their values and methods. Originally published in 1982. 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.

We are often told that Shakespeare is our contemporary, yet we insist just as often on the Elizabethan quality of his work as it reflects a culture remote from our own. Beginning with this paradox, Howard Felperin explores the question of modernity in literature. He directs his attention toward several older poets and examines Shakespeare in particular to show how literary modernity depends, not on chronological considerations, but on the process of mimesis, or imitation, that art has traditionally claimed for itself. In analyzing Shakespeare's major tragedies, Professor Felperin notes that each carries within it a model of its dramatic prototypes, and therefore requires a conservative response from its interpreters. In the interest of being truer to life than its model, however, each play departs from that model and so requires a Romantic or modernist response as well. The author contends that Shakespeare's meaning arises from this ambivalent relation to the forms of the past. Originally published in 1978.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.

Jerome Mazzaro examines Dante's Vita Nuova as an artistic correlative to what Dante conceived as an image of himself. Specifically, he explores the structure of the work in relation to medieval views of memory, self, music, form, and interpretation, and against the facts of Dante's life and culture as we have come to know them. 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.

Drawing on the entire corpus of Coleridge's prose, Emerson Marks shows how the poet's rationale was grounded in the mimetic theory that informed his distinction between a copy and an imitation which Coleridge himself labeled the universal principle of the fine arts." 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.

Barton Freidman demonstrates that, as a cycle, the Cuchulain plays form a paradigm of Yeats's dramatic career. They trace his progress, the author contends, toward finding a genuine dramatic mode, and examination of this process reveals much about a playwright whose work is simultaneously great literature and extaordinarily effective theater. In his interpretation of the Cuchulain cycle the author concentrates upon dramatic method. He examines first the evolution of Yeats's dramatic aesthetic and his attempts to translate it into practice. He then treats each play of the cycle in order of composition, moving from On Baile's Strand, of which the first version was begun in 1901, to The Death of Cuchulain completed in 1939. Deirdre is included, since it demonstrably belongs to the cycle.Professor Freidman discusses not only the plays in their final form but, in crucial instances, Yeats's revisions of them, which frequently illuminate his dramatic designs. In the cases of The Green Helmet and The Only Jealous of Emer, he considers as well as their alternative versions, The Golden Helmet and Fighting the Waves. The analysis draws on Yeats's poetry and his theories of history, mythology, and art, and it shows that Yeats succeeds where his Romantic precursors had failed, in finding ways of staging "the deeps of the mind."Barton R. Friedman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.Originally published in 1977.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.

This book interprets Mon Faust and explores the differences between Valery's and Goethe's treatments of the Faust figure. The author shows by close analysis how Valery opposes a Cartesian, anti-Pascalian Faust to Goethe's romantically flawed hero. The title of the project conceived by Valery's Faust, The Mind's Body-part autobiography, part metaphysical treatise-embodies the Cartesian dilemma ironically illustrated by the Mon Faust fragments: the misfortunes of the thinking essence, the cogito, in its subjugation to the body. The first three chapters examine the Cartesian character of a Faust engaged in superhuman but vain attempts to reconcile the intellect and the libido. A fourth chapter discusses the differences between Goethe's and Valery's protagonists and as well between Goethe and his Faust. Throughout the book the author explores Valery's linguistic experimentation, which, through charades, paranomasia, onomastics, and etymological puns, brings into full play the mystifying and mythologizing aspects of language. To resolve the stylistic problems associated with this fragmentary work the author adapts the tone of his exegesis to the diverse stylistic levels of Mon Faust.His analysis illuminates the Cartesian potential inherent in Valery's protagonist. Originally published in 1976. 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.

Why, during the last two hundred years, when critical achievement in the field of tragedy has been outstanding, has there been little creative practice? David Lenson examines the work of various writers not ordinarily placed in the tragic tradition--among them, Kleist, Goethe, Melville, Yeats, and Faulkner--and suggests that the tradition of tragedy does continue in genres other than drama, that is, in the novel and even in lyric poetry. The notion of tragedy's migration from one genre to others indicates, however, rather sweeping modifications in the theory of tragedy. Achilles' Choice proposes a structural model for tragic criticism that synthesizes the almost scientific theories predominant since World War II with the irrationalist theories they replaced. Originally published in 1975. 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.

The dramatic political struggle of Boris Pasternak and the continued success of his novel. Dr. Zhivago, have often taken center stage in discussions of this writer. Olga Raevsky Hughes chooses instead to focus on the aesthetics underlying Pasternak's snuggles and successes to explore the ways in which his views of art and the artist were applied in his writings. Professor Hughes examines those aspects of Pasternak's views on art that he himself considered crucial: the beginnings of poetry in his life, the relation of his art to life, his relationship to his time, and his responsibility to lite and to society. Pasternak's views on art are analyzed as he himself saw them in his autobiographies, critical essays, and letters; and also as they were reflected in his work. Pasternak is allowed to speak for himself: accordingly, all of his published works are used, including letters, little-known works, and available variants of his early poems. Originally published in 1975. 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.

The world of the troubadours of medieval Provence--of Bertran de Born, Arnaut de Mareuil, and Peire Bremon lo Tort--always fascinated Ezra Pound and, as Stuart McDougal shows, provided both themes and techniques for his early poetry. Pound's first translations of Provencal poetry were a way of penetrating an alien sensibility and culture and making it his own; they were also important technical exercises. Confronted with the problem of finding a suitable form and language for the Provencal experience, he condensed, deleted, expanded--the results were highly original works. Among Pound's early experiments were the studies of individual Provencal poets, each representing one of the qualities of Provencal culture that attracted him--Bertran is the man of action and Vidal is an example of the close connection between man and the "vital universe." Implicit in Pound's treatment of the past is his belief in the contemporaneity of these medieval values. This belief remains constant in The Cantos, although as the work developed it became clear that no single cultural framework could encompass it.Nevertheless, the medieval world remained the cornerstone of Pound's paradise--a brilliantly unified, vibrant world against which he could contrast the chaos and sterility of contemporary civilization. Originally published in 1973. 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.

Through a careful rendering of the text, deciphering its hidden ironies, Mr. Weinberg sees Promethee as a modern allegory, a parable wrought of allusions, symbols, and images drawn from classical antiquity and calvinist theology, and a multi-leveled sotie a miroirs. Originally published in 1972. 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.

Michel Benamou's essays have established his reputation as a critical interpreter of Stevens' relation to the French poetic tradition. Mr. Benamou has now collected these essays in one volume, revising and expanding them, and has added a general introduction. He discusses, in turn, Stevens' affinities with and differences from Baudelaire, Laforgue, Mallarme, Apollinaire, the Impressionists, and the Cubists. Originally published in 1972. 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.

Although Hofmannsthal never completed his only novel Andreas, its theme--the quest for self through memory--haunted the Viennese writer and recurs again and again in his poems, libretti, and essays. Analyzing the fragment, David Miles discusses Hofmannsthal's understanding of memory and myth, Andreas' pivotal role in his work, and its place within the tradition of such novels as Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Rilke's Malte. Originally published in 1972. 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 nineteenth century, the French lyric poets imposed their diction on the theatrical genre and thus illuminated the essence of both poetry and theatre. Ten plays by Victor Hugo, the standard-bearer of the French romantic theatre, and Alfred de Musset, the romantic playwright most frequently performed in France today, are analyzed by Charles Affron to answer the question, "Can the dialetic form of the theatre accommodate the solitary elan of the lyric poet?" As a functional point of departure, he considers those characteristics of lyric poetry--time, voice, and metaphor--which bring us closest to the singular attitudes of Hugo and Musset. Then, examining the texts of Hernani, Les Burgraves, Torquemada, Fantasio, and Lorenzaccio as well as several lesser known plays, Mr. Affron discusses such topics as poetic time, the scope of analogy, theatrical and poetic rhetoric, the guises of the poet-hero, and the manner of sounding the poet's voice upon the stage. Originally published in 1971. 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.

Seeing Flannery O'Connor in the company of poets, rather than realistic prose writers, this work shows how she uses recurring figures of speech to transform or re-create the external world. Originally published in 1986. 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.

Drawing on the entire corpus of Coleridge's prose, Emerson Marks shows how the poet's rationale was grounded in the mimetic theory that informed his distinction between a copy and an imitation which Coleridge himself labeled the universal principle of the fine arts." 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.

Thomas Hart examines Erich Auerbach's contention that Don Quixote is not a tragedy but a comedy and suggests that Auerbach's view was shaped by his reading of Ariosto's chivalric romance Orlando furioso. At the same time Hart argues that neither Don Quixote nor Orlando furioso is so free from political intention as Auerbach believed they were. He demonstrates that Cervantes shared not only Ariosto's attachment to the moral code of chivalry but also his doubts that it could be practiced effectively in the contemporary world. Originally published in 1989. 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.

Of the three texts of King Lear--the Quarto version printed in 1608, the Folio edition of 1623, and the modern composite of these two early texts--it has been assumed that both the Quarto and Folio versions arc distortions of an unblemished original" now lost and that only the modern text accurately approaches Shakespeare's lost original manuscript. Steven Urkowitz argues to the contrary that the Quarto and Folio are simply different stages of Shakespear's writing--an early draft and a final revision--and that they reveal much about his process of composition. 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.

By making his argument about In Memoriam a continuous argument for it, Timothy Peltason brings to light a wider appreciation of its greatness and of its central place in the history of modern poetry. Originally published in 1986. 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.

Although some of the most distinguished German novels written since about 1770 are generally considered to be Bildungsromane, the term Bildungsroman is all too frequently used in English without an awareness of the tradition from which it arose. Professor Swales concentrates on the roles of plot, characterization, and narrative commentary in novels by Wieland, Goethe, Stifter, Keller, Mann, and Hesse. By pointing out that the goal in each work is both elusive and problematic, he suggests a previously unsuspected ironic intent. His analysis adds to our awareness of the potentialities inherent in the novel. Originally published in 1978. 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 this speculative treatment of literature as a social institution, Alvin B. Kernan explores the inability of contemporary writers and critics to maintain a literary vision in a society that denies their values and methods. Originally published in 1982. 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.

We are often told that Shakespeare is our contemporary, yet we insist just as often on the Elizabethan quality of his work as it reflects a culture remote from our own. Beginning with this paradox, Howard Felperin explores the question of modernity in literature. He directs his attention toward several older poets and examines Shakespeare in particular to show how literary modernity depends, not on chronological considerations, but on the process of mimesis, or imitation, that art has traditionally claimed for itself. In analyzing Shakespeare's major tragedies, Professor Felperin notes that each carries within it a model of its dramatic prototypes, and therefore requires a conservative response from its interpreters. In the interest of being truer to life than its model, however, each play departs from that model and so requires a Romantic or modernist response as well. The author contends that Shakespeare's meaning arises from this ambivalent relation to the forms of the past. Originally published in 1978.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.

Jerome Mazzaro examines Dante's Vita Nuova as an artistic correlative to what Dante conceived as an image of himself. Specifically, he explores the structure of the work in relation to medieval views of memory, self, music, form, and interpretation, and against the facts of Dante's life and culture as we have come to know them. 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.