The Writer Writing: Philosophic Acts in Literature (Princeton Legacy Library) - Brossura

Thomas, Francis-Noël

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0691609195 ISBN 13: 9780691609195

Casa editrice: Princeton University Press, 2014

Riassunto

In an age of authorless, contextless, deconstructed texts, Francis-Noël Thomas argues that it is time to re-examine a fundamental but neglected concept of literature: writing is an action whose agent is an individual. Addressing both general readers and scholars, Thomas offers two cases, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan and Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, read against the background of the authors' large, eccentric, and surprisingly similar claims about their texts as acts. He examines what happens when we take these claims seriously enough to find out why the authors made them in the first place and what bearing they have on the texts themselves.

Originally published in 1993.

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 editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover 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.

Su questo libro

Contenuti:

	List of Illustrations
	Foreword
	Preface
	Acknowledgments
Ch. 1	The Writer Writing	3
Ch. 2	'Intentions' and 'Purposes'	19
	Interpretation and Actions	19
	Intention and Historical Interpretation	27
	Purpose and Literary Art	36
Ch. 3	'Parody' or the Imitation of Disciplines	46
Ch. 4	Explanations	57
	"Scientific" Explanation	59
	"Processive" Explanation	63
Ch. 5	Bernard Shaw: Historical Explanation	72
	"A Frankly Doctrinal Theatre"	72
	G.B.S.	75
	G.B.S. in the Theater	79
	G.B.S. as Historian	83
	Saint Joan: The Argument and Function of the Preface	86
	The Scope of the Play	91
	The Play of Saint Joan: Structure and Mechanism	93
	The Epilogue	102
Ch. 6	Marcel Proust: Psychological Explanation	104
	The Book and the Man	104
	"Psychology in Space and Time"	110
	The Syllabus of Errors	113
	The Triumph of the Will	121
	The Historical Author, the Narrator, and Their Books	126
Ch. 7	Historical Interpretation: The Face of the Muse and the Baker's Daughter	133
	Notes	155
	Index	175

Dalla quarta di copertina:

"This lucid, vigorously written book is a refreshing demonstration of the sophistication of common sense. The Writer Writing makes a persuasive case for the reinstatement of the writer's intention, the living author, and the stubborn individuality of the particular literary text, at the heart of interpretation. Francis-Noël Thomas is an important new voice in the rising chorus of objections to the critical orthodoxies that have dominated academic literary studies over the past quarter-century."--Robert Alter, University of California, Berkeley

"In this deeply original book, Francis-Noël Thomas engages the actions of writers writing. He has allowed the artists themselves, not a theory that supersedes them, to yield access to diverse experiences that could not have been predicted by even the shrewdest of theorists. In his hands, the `old-fashioned' notion that art works are individual projects of individual artists inviting us into diverse worlds feels refreshingly new."--adapted from the foreword

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0691609195
• ISBN 13: 9780691609195
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 212