The Intimate Life of the Nation

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-50
Author(s):  
Judith G. Coffin
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
The Public ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Female Condition ◽  
Intimate Life

This chapter reconstructs how the public was introduced to The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir's most famous work, and considers its critical reception. It mentions reviewers and critics who saw themselves as custodians of literary standards and public taste, and held very firm and contrasting views on the broader reading public. It elaborates how the reviewers and critics' views provide new ways to understand Beauvoir's arguments and the expectations that took shape around her. The chapter describes The Second Sex as an eight-hundred-page manuscript that challenges philosophical argument, literary criticism, history, and social science, as well as provide a detailed description of sexual and bodily experience. It points out how The Second Sex was considered ahead-of-its time with its narrative of the philosophical reconsideration of the female condition or situation.

scholarly journals ‘De vraag is deze: waarom is een akademisch neerlandicus zulk een heel ander mens dan een nederlands letterkundige?’

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
The Public ◽  
Academic Position ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Abstract The interrelation of public and academic literary criticism often leads to controversy within the literary field, especially when writers obtain an academic position. As Jo Tollebeek showed in Mannen van karakter (2011) and Nico Laan in Het belang van smaak (1996), the competition between the academic and public discourse on literature is inherent to the history of literary studies. What are the criteria for distinguishing public and academic criticism?This question is examined for the period 1925-1935 by taking the professorship of the poet and critic Albert Verwey (1865-1937) as a case study. Verwey legitimated his academic position by referring to Shelley and the concept of ‘imagination’ as a special source of knowledge. By doing so he presented an artistic and philosophical argument for appointing a poet as a professor of literature. Additionally, ten years later, Verwey revealed that he accepted the position in order to change the way literature was represented by traditional historiography. How did the activities of the poet, critic and academic relate to each other? How did Verwey position himself within, or in between, the academic and the public discourse on literature? And why does Verweys positioning problematize the relation between academic and non-academic literary criticism?

The Intended Public of Demetrius's On Style: The Place of the Treatise in the Hellenistic Educational System

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk M. Schenkeveld
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Educational System ◽  
First Century ◽  
Rhetorical Education ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third

Abstract: On Style, written by a certain Demetrius probably in the first century B.C., is an important witness to the rhetorical education of the third/second centuries B.C. It is a matter of long scholarly debate whether Demetrius intended his treatise to be a handbook of rhetoric or a work of literary criticism. Here it is argued that the public Demetrius writes his book for are pupils who have done the preliminary courses in rhetoric and have leamt to write progymnasmata. They now enter the final course on rhetoric and will compose the more difficult exercises, commonly termed declamationes.

Sex in the City that Peter Built: The Demimonde and Sociability in Mid-Eighteenth Century St. Petersburg

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-930
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The City

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of “indecency” in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine “sexual underworld.” Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged “parties” at the focus of this article that arguably served as a “training ground” for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these “parties” provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of “westernization.”

scholarly journals Positioning Myself Between West and East

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-42
Author(s):  
Xinnan Shi
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Single Case Study ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Public ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Holding Back

Why would communications scholars want to present their positionality to the public? This was the first question I asked myself when I came across the term "positionality". Throughout my studies, I have approached communication as social science, and I have thought about communications researchers as scientists. I certainly understand that the objects of research in social science are social phenomena such as social relations and institutions, and that these are difficult to explain with quantitative data most of the time. But for me, being a scientist means holding back personal emotions and being objective in the production of knowledge about society. I believe that even a single case study should offer explanations not just of its immediate context, but also of broader social problems or phenomena.

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