Comparative Criticism Volume 4 The Language Of The Arts

Addresses literary theory and criticism, comparative studies in terms of theme, genre movement and influence, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

This volume explores a theme that has become central in our time, as 'the death of God' is widely seen to be succeeded by 'the death of Man'. Our contributors set forth its urgency in a variety of contexts. Among these, Peter Stern gives the paradigmatic history of the bereft, damaged, and repudiated self in German philosophy and literature from Kleist to Ernst Jilnger. In 'Not I' Michael Edwards pursues the theological and psychological consequences of a self without substance. Peter France supplies a witty account of the marriage of self and commerce more at home in the eighteenth-century tradition of British empiricism, and the challenge of Rousseau's refusal of the terms of commerce. Raman Selden explores views of the self from the Romantics to the poststructuralists. Roger Cardinal probes the secret diary: is the genre a contradiction in terms? Stephen Bann explores the representations of Narcissus in recent psychoanalytic theory. Other contributors include Pierre Dupuy, David James, Julie Scott Meisami, Gregory Blue,Mark Ogden and A. D. Nuttall.

Volume 10, dedicated to 'Comedy, Irony, Parody', celebrates the first decade of Comparative Criticism in a light-hearted vein. Michael Silk opens with a wide-ranging essay asserting the primacy of comedy and declaring its independence of tragedy. T. L. S. Sprigge explores philosophers who dared to write on laughter: Schopenhauer and Bergson. Bernard Harrison looks at the twentieth century's favourite comic novel, Tristram Shandy, in the light of Locke's views on 'the particular'. Peter Brand pursues the theatrical arts of disguises, masking, and gender-swapping through Renaissance Europe, from Ariosto to Shakespeare. Jane H. M. Taylor traces the danse macabre in modern 'black humour'. Christine Brooke-Rose, distinguished novelist and critic, reads from and comments on her own witty fictions. Michael Wood describes how Lolita outwitted her seducer.

This 1981 volume addresses literary theory and criticism, comparative studies in terms of theme, genre movement and influence, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Comparative Criticism is an annual journal of comparative literature and cultural studies that has gained an international reputation since its inception in 1979. It contains major articles on literary theory and criticism; on a wide range of comparative topics; and on interdisciplinary debates. It includes translations of literary, scholarly and critical works; substantial reviews of important books in the field; and bibliographies on specialist themes for the year, on individual writers, and on comparative literary studies in Britain and Ireland.

Topics covered in this volume include literary Chinese as a language for science, the history and principles of scientific translation in Europe, the theatrical panorama in the 19th century and its roots in optical theory and experiment, and an alternative perspective on Gerard Manley Hopkins.

This comprehensive 1997 account of eighteenth-century literary criticism is now available in paperback.

This is a comprehensive 1997 account of the history of literary criticism in Britain and Europe between 1660 and 1800. Unlike previous histories, it is not just a chronological survey of critical writing, but a multidisciplinary investigation of how the understanding of literature and its various genres was transformed, at the start of the modern era, by developments in philosophy, psychology, the natural sciences, linguistics, and other disciplines, as well as in society at large. In the process, modern literary theory - at first often implicit in literary texts themselves - emancipated itself from classical poetics and rhetoric, and literary criticism emerged as a full-time professional activity catering for an expanding literate public. The volume is international both in coverage and in authorship. Extensive bibliographies provide guidance for further specialised study.