Showing papers in "World Literature Today in 1979"

Tropics of discourse : essays in cultural criticism

Abstract: "Tropics of Discourse" develops White's ideas on interpretation in history, on the relationship between history and the novel, and on history and historicism. Vico, Croce, Derrida, and Foucault are among the figures he assesses in this work, which also offers original interpretations of a number of literary themes, including the Wild Man and the Noble Savage. White's commentary ranges from a reappraisal of Enlightenment history to a reflective summary of the current state of literary criticism.

Finding the center : narrative poetry of the Zuni Indians

Abstract: "A brilliant gathering of Zuni narrative poetry collected by anthropologist Dennis Tedlock in New MexicoTedlock's Zuni narrators seem like singers of some pueblo Beowulf, orchestrating oral traditions with voices they use like instruments, and whose inflections Tedlock captures in differing type faces" - "Newsweek" "Dennis Tedlock's splendid translations of ten tales from the Zuni represent the first fresh gathering of Zuni narrative material (he recorded 100) since the work of the 1930s Boasians, Ruth Benedict and Ruth Bunzel But Tedlock's versions represent a great deal more, and mark nothing less than an epoch in translation by anthropologistsTedlock has represented pauses in the Zuni with line and strophe breaks, and degrees of pitch and intensity with a handful of standard typographic devices The text that results is one that we recognize, of course, as poetry scored for voicing; but we also recognize - and this is the kingpin - that an oral tradition has emerged in its own proper character" - "The Nation" "Tedlock's poetic gifts combine with his perceptions as an anthropologist to bring us narratives which reenact in their own way what is at once a form of social life and a way of understanding society and nature in dramatic terms" - "New York Times", "Book Review" "Tedlock, using devices taken over from Concrete Poetry , has managed to recapture for us not only the communal spirit of the stories but also, because the stories are alive and poetry, at least some feeling of what it's like to be a Zuni, something anthropological monographs can't seem to tell us" - "Harper's Magazine" An Associate University Professor of Anthropology and Religion at Boston Universitv, where he edits Alcheringa, a magazine of oral poetry, Dennis Tedlock is the coauthor, with Barbara Tedlock, of "Teachings from the Indian Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy"

Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction

Abstract: This book investigates the entire spectrum of techniques for portraying the mental lives of fictional characters in both the stream-of-consciousness novel and other fiction. Each chapter deals with one main technique, illustrated from a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction by writers including Stendhal, Dostoevsky, James, Mann, Kafka, Joyce, Proust, Woolf, and Sarraute.

Pierrot: A Critical History of a Mask

Abstract: Robert Storey's lively and gracefully written study of Pierrot is the first scholarly history of this fascinating popular figure. Unlike previous studies of commedia dell'arte characters; this book focuses as much on Pierrot as a literary metaphor and mask as on the roles and dimensions of his stage character.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 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.

On the Translation of Form in Poetry

Abstract: By YVES BONNEFOY Five years ago, on 7 February 1974, Joseph Brodsky published in the New Yor\ Review of Boo\s an essay about some problems in the translation of poetry. The occasion of this article was the recent rendering into English of poems by Mandelstam done by two American writers, Clarence Brown first, then the noted poet W. S. Merwin; and the problem which had particularly retained Brodsky's attention was the fact, certainly significant, that both the authors had chosen to make their translations in free

World within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era 1600-1867

Abstract: The Tokugawa family held the shogunate from 1603 to 1867, ruling Japan and keeping the island nation isolated from the rest of the world for more than 250 years. Donald Keene looks within the \"walls\" of isolation and meticulously chronicles the period's vast literary output, providing both lay readers and scholars with the definitive history of premodern Japanese literature. World Within Walls spans the age in which Japanese literature began to reach a popular audience-as opposed to the elite aristocratic readers to whom it had previously been confined. Keene comprehensively treats each of the new, popular genres that arose, including haiku, Kabuki, and the witty, urbane prose of the newly ascendant merchant class.