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Michal P. Ginsburg

Bio: Michal P. Ginsburg is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Plot (narrative) & Narrative. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 29 publications receiving 86 citations.

Papers
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Book
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: The Awkward Age: modern consciousness and the sense of the past Notes Bibliography Index as discussed by the authors is a collection of essays and reviews about the Awkward age and its connections with literature.
Abstract: A note to the reader Introduction 1. Reading temporality in La Peau de chagrin 2. Escaping death: the gendered economy of Le Lys dans la vallee 3. Beyond oppositions, the limit: Stenhal's Abbesse de Castro 4. The prison house of Parma 5. Mansfield Park: representing proper distinctions 6. Staying at home with Emma Woodhouse 7. The case against plot in Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend 8. Mortgaging freedom: the aesthetic and its limit in The Princess Casamassima 9. The Awkward Age: modern consciousness and the sense of the past Notes Bibliography Index.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that the representation of speech is not only influenced by mimetic considerations but is also determined by compositional constraints, i.e., the author has some compositional purpose for which the rendering of speech in a particular fashion is but a tool.
Abstract: The representation of speech in a novel can be seen as the point in which realism reaches perfection: since the represented object and the representing medium are one and the same-language-the very distinction between medium and object which is at the basis of representation but which representation also seeks to camouflage, if not to obliterate, is no more. From a duality, which is always also a duplicity and a lie, we move to simplicity and truth. We know, however, that an author does not "transcribe" (faithfully or not, fully or in an abbreviated form) the speech of characters since characters are fictive, made up by the author, and their speech does not exist anywhere else except on the page of the novel. Instead of speaking of "realism" we have hence to speak of "realistic effect," that is to say, the manipulation of language to create a certain impression. But there is more still: When in reading, for example, War and Peace-a novel in which large portions of the text are in French-we notice that Napoleon speaks to his soldiers in Russian,2 we have to conclude that the representation of speech is not only-and maybe not even primarily-controlled by mimetic considerations but is also determined by compositional constraints. We can say that the reason for the Russian aristocracy speaking French is mimetic-it reaches towards a closing of the gap of representation, it aims at accurate imitation, at truth; when Napoleon speaks Russian, on the other hand, we are no more in the realm of realism and truth but rather in the realm of persuasion and rhetoric, which is another way of saying that the author has some compositional purpose for which the rendering of speech in a particular fashion is but a tool. I will call this latter way of rendering speech figurative, or rhetorical, while the first one will be called, by contrast, literal or mimetic. Oliver Twist is in some respects similar to War and Peace. We can say that the representation of the slang (or cant) of the criminals obeys a mimetic logic or, as Dickens himself said in the Preface, is designed to "show [the dregs of life] as they really were" (though note the moral qualification "so long as their speech did not offend the ear" and the complementary, this time positive, moral aspect, that this "would be a service to society").3 But the representation of Oliver's speech, as critics noticed a long time ago, cannot be understood in the same way. When Oliver speaks

8 citations

Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: The MLA series (ISSN 1059-1133) as discussed by the authors addresses a broad range of literary texts, and each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text.
Abstract: Now at seventy-three volumes, this popular MLA series (ISSN 1059-1133) addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers, education specialists, and teachers in all humanities disciplines will find these volumes particularly helpful.

8 citations

Book
01 Jan 1986
TL;DR: This paper found that Flaubert's difficulty in sustaining a narrative, so evident in his early works, was not entirely overcome even in the works of his maturity, and that the strategies used to overcome it shape the narrative.
Abstract: The author's starting point for this study was the conviction that Flaubert's difficulty in sustaining a narrative, so evident in his early works, was not entirely overcome even in the works of his maturity.Flaubert seems to have a problem in generating his text and keeping it going. What is the difficulty in generating a text? How is it circumvented? And, most important, how does this problem and the strategies used to overcome it shape the narrative?

6 citations


Cited by
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Journal Article
TL;DR: The annual bibliography of the Keats-Shelley Journal as discussed by the authors provides a broad overview of recent scholarship related to British Romanticism, with emphasis on second-generation writers, particularly John Keats, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt.
Abstract: T he annual bibliography of the Keats-Shelley Journal catalogues recent scholarship related to British Romanticism, with emphasis on secondgeneration writers—particularly John Keats, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and William Hazlitt. The bibliography includes books, chapters in books, book reviews, articles in journals, other bibliographies, dissertations, and editions of Romantic-era literature and historical documents. The listings are compiled primarily from the catalogues of major British and American publishers and from the tables of contents of books and major journals in the field. The first section of the bibliography lists a wide range of scholarly work on Romanticism that might be of interest to the Journal’s readers, while the subsequent sections list items that deal more specifically with the six aforementioned authors. Because the length of the bibliography precludes my annotating every item, only some entries have annotations—primarily books dealing with the second-generation Romantics. The following bibliography catalogues scholarship for the year 2014, along with the occasional item that inadvertently may have been excluded from the annual bibliography in previous years or that may have arrived too late for inclusion. While I have made every attempt to keep the bibliography accurate and comprehensive, the occasional error or omission is inevitable. Please send corrections, additions, and citations for upcoming bibliographies to Ben P. Robertson at Troy University (ksjbiblio@troy.edu).

78 citations

Book
16 Nov 2012
TL;DR: The authors argue that sympathy does more than foster emotional identification with others; it is a way of thinking along with them, by abstracting emotions, feelings turn into detached figures of speech that may be shared.
Abstract: Rae Greiner proposes that sympathy is integral to the form of the classic nineteenth-century realist novel. Following the philosophy of Adam Smith, Greiner argues that sympathy does more than foster emotional identification with others; it is a way of thinking along with them. By abstracting emotions, feelings turn into detached figures of speech that may be shared. Sympathy in this way produces realism; it is the imaginative process through which the real is substantiated. In "Sympathetic Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction" Greiner shows how this imaginative process of sympathy is written into three novelistic techniques regularly associated with nineteenth-century fiction: metonymy, free indirect discourse, and realist characterization. She explores the work of sentimentalist philosophers David Hume, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham and realist novelists Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, and Henry James.

75 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the literary representation of health in a selection of mid nineteenth-century novels, alongside medical and non-medical contemporaneous sources, in order to uncover the range of textual meanings that health is required to convey.
Abstract: While illness in literature has become a rich subfield of critical enquiry, especially in relation to nineteenth-century fiction, the subject of health is mostly overlooked. This thesis seeks to redress the balance, by examining the literary representation of health in a selection of mid nineteenth-century novels, alongside medical and non-medical contemporaneous sources, in order to uncover the range of textual meanings that health is required to convey. The principal aim is to demonstrate that fictional representations of health reflect on and respond to the pervasive culture of health present in the mid-nineteenth century. Each of the six chapters explores one dimension of the meaning of health in literary works by George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte. The first two chapters explore the instability of health and the ever-present risk of illness: chapter one considers the vulnerability of health related to social and medical developments, while chapter two examines the relationship between health, morality, and power. The third and fourth chapters consider the tensions and oppositions between health and illness: chapter three examines the relationship between health, vitality, and morbidity, and chapter four explores the performance of health. The final two chapters examine recoveries and returns to health: chapter five considers the relationship between health, action, and occupation, while chapter six identifies a pattern of recovery across individual episodes in five novels by Dickens. These exploratory analyses of fictional representations of health situate the novels in a wider context of Victorian health discourse while demonstrating that health has a surprisingly subtle range of textual meanings and significances, rather than being an invisible or self-evident category of experience. The fictional representation of health and the healthy body reflects the vital significance of the cultural practice of health in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

39 citations