Author: Ted Underwood File Type: pdf In the mid-nineteenth century, the study of English literature began to be divided into courses that surveyed discrete periods. Since that time, scholars definitions of literature and their rationales for teaching it have changed radically. But the periodized structure of the curriculum has remained oddly unshaken, as if the exercise of contrasting one literary period with another has an importance that transcends the content of any individual course. Why Literary Periods Mattered explains how historical contrast became central to literary study, and why it remained institutionally central in spite of critical controversy about literature itself. Organizing literary history around contrast rather than causal continuity helped literature departments separate themselves from departments of history. But critics long reliance on a rhetoric of contrasted movements and fateful turns has produced important blind spots in the discipline. In the twenty-first century, Underwood argues, literary study may need digital technology in particular to develop new methods of reasoning about gradual, continuous change.**

Author: Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge File Type: pdf Written in three weeks of creative inspiration, Rainer Maria Rilkes Sonnets to Orpheus (1923) is well known for its enigmatic power and lyrical intensity. The essays in this volume forge a new path in illuminating the philosophical significance of this late masterpiece. Contributions illustrate the unique character and importance of the Sonnets , their philosophical import, as well as their significant connections to the Duino Elegies (completed in the same period). The volume features eight essays by philosophers, literary critics, and Rilke scholars, which approach a number of the central themes and motifs of the Sonnets as well as the significance of their formal and technical qualities. An introductory essay (co-authored by the editors) situates the book in the context of philosophical poetics, the reception of Rilke as a philosophical poet, and the place of the Sonnets in Rilkes oeuvre. Above all, this volumes premise is that an interdisciplinary approach to poetry and, more specifically, to Rilkes Sonnets , can facilitate crucial insights with the potential to expand the horizons of philosophy and criticism. Essays elucidate the relevance of the Sonnets to such wide-ranging topics as phenomenology and existentialism, hermeneutics and philosophy of language, philosophy of mythology, metaphysics, Modernist aesthetics, feminism, ecocriticism, animal ethics, and the philosophy of technology.About the Author Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge is Associate Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her research focus is literature of the 18th to 20th century, with particular interest in lyric poetry, metrical theory, literature and philosophy, and the relationship between sound and text. Her first monograph, Lyric Orientations Holderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community appeared with Cornell University Press in 2015 she has also published on Wittgenstein, Klopstock, Nietzsche, and the contemporary poet Durs Grunbein. Luke Fischer is a philosopher, poet, and scholar of poetry. His books include The Poet as Phenomenologist Rilke and the New Poems (Bloomsbury, 2015) and the poetry collections A Personal History of Vision (UWAP, 2017) and Paths of Flight (Black Pepper, 2013). He has authored and co-edited works on poetry, philosophy, art, and the environment, including the special section Goethe and Environmentalism in the Goethe Yearbook (2015). He is an honorary associate of the University of Sydney. More information can be found at his website www.lukefischerauthor.com

Author: Chad Kautzer File Type: pdf Pragmatism has been called the chief glory of our countrys intellectual tradition by its supporters and a dogs dinner by its detractors. While acknowledging pragmatisms direct ties to American imperialism and expansionism, Chad Kautzer, Eduardo Mendieta, and the contributors to this volume consider the role pragmatism plays, for better or worse, in current discussions of nationalism, war, race, and community. What can pragmatism contribute to understandings of a diverse nation? How can we reconcile pragmatisms history with recent changes in the countrys racial and ethnic makeup? How does pragmatism help to explain American values and institutions and fit them into new national and multinational settings? The answers to these questions reveal pragmatisms role in helping to nourish the fundamental ideas, politics, and culture of contemporary America.

Author: George Ribemont-Dessaignes (Ed.) File Type: pdf Numbers 5-8 July 1930 - June 1931