Book•
The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture
01 Jan 1987-
TL;DR: Moretti as discussed by the authors interprets the Bildungsroman as the great cultural mediator of nineteenth-century Europe: a form which explores the many strange compromises between revolution and restoration, economic take-off and aesthetic pleasure, individual autonomy and social normality.
Abstract: Willhelm Meister, Elizabeth Bennet, Julian Sorel, Rastignac, Jane Eyre, Bazaroz, Dorothea Brooke...the Golden Age of the European novel discovers a new collective protagonist: youth. It is problematic and restless youth - 'strange' characters, as their own creators often say - arising from the downfall of traditional societies. But even more than that, youth is the symbolic figure for European modernity: that sudden mix of great expectations and lost illusions that the bourgeois world learns to 'read', and to accept, as if it were a novel. The Way of the World, with its unique combination of narrative theory and social history, interprets the Bildungsroman as the great cultural mediator of nineteenth-century Europe: a form which explores the many strange compromises between revolution and restoration, economic take-off and aesthetic pleasure, individual autonomy and social normality. This new edition includes an additional final chapter on the collapse of the Bildungsroman in the years around the First World War (a crisis which opened the way for Modernist experimentation), and a rew preface in which the Moretti looks back at The Way of the World in light of his more recent work.
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TL;DR: The history of the world is the slaughterhouse of literature, reads a famous Hegelian aphorism; and literature is the world's slaughterhouse as discussed by the authors, and the majority of books disappear forever.
Abstract: Let me begin with a few titles: Arabian Tales, Aylmers, Annaline, Alicia de Lacey, Albigenses, Augustus and Adelina, Albert, Adventures of a Guinea, Abbess of Valiera, Ariel, Almacks, Adventures of Seven Shillings, Abbess, Arlington, Adelaide, Aretas, Abdallah the Moor, Anne Grey, Andrew the Savoyard, Agatha, Agnes de Monsfoldt, Anastasius, Anzoletto Ladoski, Arabian Nights, Adventures of a French Sarjeant, Adventures of Bamfylde Moore Carew, A Commissioner, Avondale Priory, Abduction, Accusing Spirit, Arward the Red Chieftain, Agnes de Courcy, An Old Friend, Annals of the Parish, Alice Grey, Astrologer, An Old Family Legend, Anna, Banditt’s Bride, Bridal of Donnamore, Borderers, Beggar Girl . . . It was the first page of an 1845 catalog: Columbell’s circulating library, in Derby: a small collection, of the kind that wanted only successful books. But today, only a couple of titles still ring familiar. The others, nothing. Gone. The history of the world is the slaughterhouse of the world, reads a famous Hegelian aphorism; and of literature. The majority of books disappear forever—and “majority” actually misses the point: if we set today’s canon of nineteenth-century British novels at two hundred titles (which is a very high figure), they would still be only about 0.5 percent of all published novels. And the other 99.5 percent? This is the question behind this article, and behind the larger idea of literary history that is now taking shape in the work of several critics—most recently Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau, Katie Trumpener, and Margaret Cohen. The difference is that, for me, the aim is not so much a change in the canon—the discovery of precursors to the canon or alternatives to it, to be restored to a
209 citations
TL;DR: For almost 50 years specially trained dogs have been used in clinical and family settings to facilitate how children with autism engage in social interaction and participate in everyday activities as mentioned in this paper, but little theoretical grounding and empirical study of this socioclinical phenomenon has been offered by social science.
Abstract: For almost 50 years specially trained dogs have been used in clinical and family settings to facilitate how children with autism engage in social interaction and participate in everyday activities. Yet little theoretical grounding and empirical study of this socioclinical phenomenon has been offered by social science. This article draws on interdisciplinary scholarship to situate the study of the therapeutic use of dogs for children and teens with autism. Two case studies of service and therapy dogs' mediating social engagement of children with autism in relationships, interactions, and activities illustrate how dogs support children's communication, their experience of emotional connection with others, and their participation in everyday life. Theorizing this process enriches approaches to sociality in psychological anthropology. [animal-assisted therapy, autism, engagement, sociality, intersubjectivity]
141 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the liminal affective states in the texts are sites of insurgent potential in their own right whose politics are inscrutable when the Revolution is conceived as an oppositional conflict of sides whose descriptive vocabulary reduces to a binary formula (American/British, Loyalist/Patriot).
Abstract: Insurgent Remains disturbs the identification of the American Revolution with U.S. national beginnings by tracing it through its literary aftereffects in the period with which it is identified, 1770-1820. While the American Revolution is thought to have concluded with the Treaty of Paris (1783) and the “birth of the United States, Insurgent Remains reads texts produced in the decades following the peace for delineations of ongoing Revolutionary experiences characterized by loss and constraint that demand creative, collective responses without guarantee. In chapters organized around the re-use and re-circulation of “old” forms and formats—allegory, anthology, tragedy, and petition—I propose that the liminal affective states in the texts I examine are sites of insurgent potential in their own right whose politics are inscrutable when the Revolution is conceived as an oppositional conflict of sides whose descriptive vocabulary reduces to a binary formula (American/British, Loyalist/Patriot). Instead, they become legible as “remains”: pending works of grief, yearning, need, and love that offer vibrant possibilities for collective action and ethical commitment obscured by teleologies of national consolidation. Eschewing preconceived identitarian and partisan markers through which Revolutionary history has conventionally been organized, my approach stresses the roles of literary forms in mediating traumatic experiences of Revolutionary history that may otherwise elude representation. I argue that the itineraries along which these forms travel open up new ways of thinking about the cultural politics of the period and the politics of revolution itself. This project thus seeks to enrich our understanding of the Revolutionary period by expanding the narrow field in which politics seem to operate, attending to modes of historical experience debarred from political consideration by traditional Revolutionary histories bound to binary narratives of conflict and progress. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor Amy B. Kaplan
85 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the relationship of memory to history and historical practice is discussed, and the professional experience of historians is connected to wider social and psychological uses of the past, and of history in Euro pean societies, over the 200 years since official archives were inaugurated.
Abstract: By considering the experience of historians in national and regional archives, the relationship of memory to history and historical practice is discussed. The professional experience of historians is connected to wider social and psychological uses of the past, and of history in Euro pean societies, over the 200 years since official archives were inaugur ated.
79 citations
Book•
16 May 2017
TL;DR: In this article, a comparative reading of selected contemporary fictions from Australia and South Africa is presented, focusing on three genres: the Bildungsroman, the historical novel, and the pastoral to consider how these have been reproduced, adapted and transformed in these literatures in the recent past.
Abstract: This thesis is a comparative reading of selected contemporary fictions from Australia and South Africa. By drawing on postcolonial theory and trauma theory, this thesis argues that specific genres are transformed in distinctive ways in these two settler literatures to address the continuing presence of the colonial past. It focuses in particular on three genres: the Bildungsroman, the historical novel, and the pastoral to consider how these have been reproduced, adapted and transformed in these literatures in the recent past.This thesis argues that these transformations testify to the ways that recent Australian and South African literary imaginaries respond to the legacies of traumatic histories of colonization and dispossession. In both Australia and South Africa processes of reconciliation and social justice in recent decades have produced intense debates about history, fiction and the ways these disciplines can generate new ways of understanding the traumatic legacies of settler colonialism. By focusing on a selection of close and comparative readings, this thesis identifies a series of common tropes, techniques and preoccupations that draw together these two literatures which are so often read apart in terms of distinctive national histories.The first chapter, “Representation of Trauma in Two Selected Bildungsromane”, investigates how the genre of the Bildungsroman is rehabilitated and how its traditional boundaries are transgressed to explore the psychic landscapes of childhood trauma. Gail Jones’ Sorry (2008) and Rachel Zadok’s Gem Squash Tokoloshe (2005) are examined as case studies to suggest their departures from European traditions to include the legacies of colonisation. These challenge the traditional passage from adolescence to maturity in the Bildungroman, resulting in narratives where this journey remains incomplete.In the second chapter of the thesis, “Postcolonial Pastoral”, an analysis of how the pastoral engages in distinctively postcolonial forms suggests the flexibility and mutability of generic themes, such as landscape, borders, and memory, and reveals points of contact within the frame of trauma theory. The chapter focuses on David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon (1993) and Lisa Fugard’s Skinner’s Drift (2005). Both postcolonial novels attack the traditional tropes of nostalgic myths and belonging to expose the settlers’ feelings of unsettledness in anti-pastoral scenes marked by traumatic memories and Indigenous dispossession.Recent contemporary Australian and South African historical novels challenge officially sanctioned national histories by engaging with the legacies of the colonial past. The third chapter, “Making Use of History”, focuses on alternative imaginings of histories of settlement in Australia and South Africa that center on the trauma of the past. In this final chapter, Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2005) and Zoe Wicomb’s David’s Story (2001) are examined to investigate how they engage in revising their nations’ histories to recuperate a violent and silenced past. Both writers inscribe a traumatic memory within their historical texts to seek justice for a dispossessed people.This thesis argues that these fictions contribute to debates about colonialism, trauma and social justice, and that together they make a distinctive intervention into ways of thinking about contemporary postcolonial fiction.
67 citations