Author: Francesca D'Alessandro Behr Feeling History is a study of apostrophe (i.e., the rhetorical device in which the narrator talks directly to his characters) in Lucans Bellum Civile. Through the narrators direct addresses, irony, and grotesque imagery, Lucan appears not as a nihilist, but as a character deeply concerned about ethics. The purpose of this book is to demonstrate how Lucans style represents a criticism of the Roman approach to history, epic, ethics, and aesthetics. The books chief interest lies in the ethical and moral stance that the poet-narrator takes toward his characters and his audience. To this end, Francesca DAlessandro Behr studies the ways in which the narrator communicates ethical and moral judgments. Lucans retelling of this central historical epic triggers in the mind of the reader questions about the validity of the Roman imperial project as a whole. An analysis of selected apostrophes from the Bellum Civile allows us to confront issues that are behind Lucans disquieting imagery: how can we square the poets Stoic perspectives with his poetically conveyed emotional urgency? Lucans approach seems inspired by Aristotle, especially his Poetics, as much as by Stoic philosophy. In Lucans aesthetic project, participation and alienation work as phases through which the narrator leads the reader to a desired understanding of his work of art. At the same time, the reader is confronted with the ends and limits of the aesthetic enterprise in general. Lucans long-acknowledged political engagement must therefore be connected to his philosophical and aesthetic stance. In the same way that Lucan is unable to break free from the Virgilian model, neither can he develop a defense of morality outside of the Stoic mold. His philosophy is not a crystal ball to read the future or a numbing drug imposing acceptance. The philosophical vision that Lucan finds intellectually and aesthetically compelling does not insulate his characters (and readers) from suffering, nor does it excuse them from wrongdoing. Rather, it obligates them to confront the responsibilities and limits of acting morally in a chaotic world.

Author: Theresa Braunschneider Before 1660, English readers and theatergoers had never heard of a coquette; by the early 1700s, they could hardly watch a play, read a poem, or peruse a newspaper without encountering one. Why does British literature of this period pay so much attention to vain and flirtatious young women? Our Coquettes examines the ubiquity of the coquette in the eighteenth century to show how this figure enables authors to comment upon a series of significant social and economic developmentsincluding the growth of consumer culture, widespread new wealth, increased travel and global trade, and changes in the perception and practice of marriage. The book surveys stage comedies, periodical essays, satirical poems, popular songs, and didactic novels to show that the early coquette is a figure of capacious desire: she finds pleasure in a wide range of choices, refusing to narrow any field of possibilities (admirers, luxury goods, friends, pets, public gatherings) down to a single option. Whereas scholars of the period have generally read the coquette as a simple and self-evident type, Our Coquettes emphasizes what is strange and surprising about this figure, revealing the coquette to be a touchstone in developing discourses about sexuality, consumerism, empire, and modernity itself.

Author: David Halliburton By attempting to suspend moral, ideological, or psychological assumptions, a phenomenological interpretation of literature hopes to reach the things themselves, the essential phenomena of being, space, and time, as they are constituted, by consciousness, in words. Although there has been a tradition of phenomenological criticism in Europe for the last twenty years, David Halliburton is the first to write a general study of an American author from this particular point of view.The book begins with a methodological chapter that sets out the assumptions and procedures of the approach. This is followed by analyses of Poe's major works, exploring such special problems as Poe's treatment of the material world, including technology; the interrelation of body and consciousness; poetic voice; attitudes toward women; and the will to affirmation, plenitude, and unity. The center of interest is neither Poe's biography nor environment but always the meaning of Poe's words. Because these works are shaped by a single imagination and because they are experienced in time, as a process, each work has its own way of going. The aim of the interpretation is to find this way and go along with it; to live each work dynamically, as it happens, while tracing its interaction with other works.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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

Author: By Ronald R. Atkinson In The Roots of Ethnicity, Ronald R. Atkinson argues that although colonial rule and its aftermath have played a major role in shaping the particular manifestations of ethnicity in Africa, many sociohistorical developments crucial to current expressions of ethnicity can be traced to a past long before the colonial period. Atkinson develops his argument through an exhaustive examination of the origins of the collective identity of the Acholi of present-day northern Uganda. His study makes clear that by the time of European conquest the essential foundations and the crucial parameters for the evolution of Acholi society and ethnic consciousness had long been established. In presenting his argument for the need to extend the existing scholarship on ethnicity in Africa beyond its twentieth-century focus, Atkinson provides what is perhaps the most detailed reconstruction and analysis yet available of the pre-1800 evolution of an African sociopolitical order.Beyond these contributions to the study of African history, The Roots of Ethnicity provides an extended case study in and a convincing argument for the use of oral sources in the reconstruction and interpretation of the African past. It will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, history, and African studies, as well as to all those interested in ethnicity and the politics of identity.