{ Introduction }

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Mark Storey
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
Key Questions

The introduction sets out the theoretical and historical stakes of the book. Opening with a cluster of Roman analogies stretching from the Iraq War to the American War of Independence, this chapter develops and explains the key questions that underpin the rest of the book. It offers extended rationales for its three keywords—empire, antiquity, and time—and makes claims for the methodological innovations it offers through its theorization of historical analogy. It situates the argument within the wider debates around temporality in American literary studies, postcolonial studies, and classical reception, as well as mobilizing its primary conceptual thinkers (namely, Reinhart Koselleck and Walter Benjamin). It closes by returning to the opening examples and putting the book’s main arguments into action.

The Culture of Criticism

PMLA ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey H. Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Social World ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
A Value ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Right

For those who approach literary studies with literary sensitivity, an immediate problem arises. They cannot overlook style, their own or that of others. Through their concern with literature they have become aware that understanding is a mediated activity and that style is an index of how the writer deals with the consciousness of mediation. Style is not cognitive only; it is also recognitive, a signal betraying the writer's relation, or sometimes the relation of a type of discourse, to a historical and social world. To say that of course words are a form of life is not enough: words at this level of style intend a statement about life itself in relation to words, and in particular to literature as a value-laden act. Thus, even without fully understanding it, one is alerted by a similarity in the opening of these two essays: The Right Reverend Father in God, Lancelot Bishop of Winchester, died on September 26th, 1626. During his lifetime he enjoyed a distinguished reputation for the excellence of his sermons, for the conduct of his diocese, for his ability in controversy displayed against Cardinal Bellarmine, and for the decorum and devotion of his private life. (Eliot, Lancelot 13) One afternoon, Walter Benjamin was sitting inside the Café des Deux Magots in Saint Germain des Prés when he was struck with compelling force by the idea of drawing a diagram of his life, and knew at the same moment exactly how it was to be done. He drew the diagram, and with utterly typical ill-luck lost it again a year or two later. The diagram, not surprisingly, was a labyrinth. (Eagleton, Pref.)

The Islamization of English Literary Studies

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Islamic Perspective

In today’s world where the former colonized are reshaping their relation with the colonizer, the concept of decolonizing or indigenizing education is widely discussed in postcolonial studies. Decolonizing/indigenizing education counters the western systems of knowledge’s hegemony over those of non-western systems of thought and requires the development of a new approach to education that keeps in view the indigenous societies’ socio-cultural and religious values and traditions. The Islamization of Knowledge undertaking maintains a similar approach, but additionally requires an Islamic perspective on knowledge. Among all western disciplines, English literature is arguably the most culturally charged and carries western value-laden ideas. This reality points to the need to look at it from Islamic perspectives. Based on this theoretical concept, this study seeks to establish the urgency and feasibility of Islamizing English (British) literary studies.

Religion and Representation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Rzepa
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Book History ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This review is divided into three sections: 1. Jeffrey T. Zalar, Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770–1914; 2. Edward Baring, Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy; 3. ‘Translation and Religion: Crafting Regimes of Identity’, a thematic issue of Religion edited by Hephzibah Israel and Matthias Frenz. Taken together, these works provide an overview of approaches that demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary research into religion and representation. Drawing on the disciplines of social, political, and cultural history, literary studies, book history, theology, religious studies, translation studies, and postcolonial studies, they highlight the importance of research that contextualizes the relationship between religion and representation, bringing attention to its historically overlooked aspects.

Languages of Theories – the Languages of Poetics. On a Paradigm Shift Still Awaiting its Fulfillment

Tekstualia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (35) ◽  
pp. 93-104
Author(s):  
Adam Kola
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Complex Character ◽  
Main Obstacle ◽  
The Real ◽  
The One

Theoretical movements, interpretative paradigms and intellectual fashions have been widely introduced to Poland (feminism, postcolonial studies etc.), rarely (g)localized, but without a good understanding of the real consequences of embracing those cultural models. In literary studies, the main obstacle preventing the fulfi llment of the paradigm shift is the exclusion of poetics from those new trends, while its development should follow the adoption of a given theory. The article shows a complex character of the absence of poetics (in plural, refl ecting a variety of theories), on the one hand, and the persistence and appeal of the structural poetic (singular; even in the situation when the structuralistic theory is not used). The present situation can be seen as an infl ation of pure theorizations and a defl ation of the development of possible tools in text analysis.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Greg Forter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Frederic Jameson ◽  
The Indian Ocean

The Introduction lays the theoretical groundwork and historical frame for the main chapters. It engages debates on materialist vs. poststructuralist approaches to postcolonial studies; on the utopian imagination; on expanding the black Atlantic frame of reference to include the Indian Ocean; on the Anglophone biases of postcolonial studies and how these implicate the discipline in contemporary capitalism; on the genesis of the historical novel in the nineteenth century; and on the cycles of finance capital to which the postcolonial inflection of historical fiction is a response. Theorists discussed include Giovanni Arrighi, Ian Baucom, Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Frederic Jameson, and Georg Lukács.

The World after Empire; or, Whither Postcoloniality?

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-155
Author(s):  
Kavita Daiya
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Annual Convention ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Postcolonial Literatures

At the MLA'S annual convention in 2015, a roundtable i had organized, remembering The Location of Culture: circulations, Interventions, and Futurity, gathered scholars from across literary periods and fields to reflect on the legacies of Homi Bhabha's seminal work. As new disciplinary shifts in literary studies witness the reinvention of postcolonial literatures as global anglophone literatures, one of the questions that roundtable asked was, Whither postcoloniality? Returning to The Location of Culture—one of the most influential texts in the fields of postcolonial studies and critical theory—can perhaps illuminate how postcolonial critique resonates anew for the literature of our world after empire.

Postcolonial Worlds and Translation

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Bassnett
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Global Circulation

AbstractThis essay looks at the vital role played by translation in the global circulation of texts. It traces the uneasiness about both interlingual and intralingual translation that has prevailed in English literary studies and in Anglophone postcolonial studies, arguing that critiques of a Eurocentric canon have merely resulted in the inclusion of more writers who use only varieties of English. The essay goes on to suggest that as translations are increasingly seen as creative rewritings rather than as copies of a superior original, the notion of translation can be broadened to encompass a wide variety of textual interpretations and the significance of translation as an enabling force in world literature is beginning to be recognised.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Chelsea Stieber
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Black Radicalism ◽  
Historical Overview

This introduction lays the conceptual and theoretical groundwork for the book by engaging Haitian studies, Francophone literary studies, postcolonial studies, and studies of Black radicalism. It also provides a historical overview of the post-independence period in Haiti.

The Islamization of English Literary Studies

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Islamic Perspective

In today’s world where the former colonized are reshaping their relation with the colonizer, the concept of decolonizing or indigenizing education is widely discussed in postcolonial studies. Decolonizing/indigenizing education counters the western systems of knowledge’s hegemony over those of non-western systems of thought and requires the development of a new approach to education that keeps in view the indigenous societies’ socio-cultural and religious values and traditions. The Islamization of Knowledge undertaking maintains a similar approach, but additionally requires an Islamic perspective on knowledge. Among all western disciplines, English literature is arguably the most culturally charged and carries western value-laden ideas. This reality points to the need to look at it from Islamic perspectives. Based on this theoretical concept, this study seeks to establish the urgency and feasibility of Islamizing English (British) literary studies.

scholarly journals “Plain Broad Narratives of Substantial Facts”: Credibility, Narrative, and Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations*

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 768-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Schleck
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Epistemological Status

This article compares voyage narratives printed in Richard Hakluyt’s 1589 Principall Navigations to contemporaneous travel histories in an effort to contextualize the epistemological status of each group of texts and debunk the former’s reputation for greater factuality. It critiques the use commonly made of Hakluyt’s narratives in literary studies, arguing that the privileging of these texts over other sources results in postcolonial studies that ironically valorize a type of writing which promoted the colonial mindset these studies seek to expose.

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