The Grotesque In Art And Literature

The Grotesque in Art and Literature PDF
Author: James Luther Adams
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802842671
Size: 37.59 MB
Format: PDF, ePub
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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While there has been a growing interest in the use of grotesque imagery in art and literature, very little attention has been given to the religious and theological significance of such imagery. This fascinating book redresses that neglect by exploring the religious meaning of the grotesque and its importance as a subject for theological inquiry.

On The Grotesque

On the Grotesque PDF
Author: Geoffrey Galt Harpham
Publisher:
ISBN: 1888570857
Size: 56.81 MB
Format: PDF
Category : English fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273
View: 6644

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The Grotesque In Western Art And Culture

The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture PDF
Author: Frances S. Connelly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107629967
Size: 26.66 MB
Format: PDF, Docs
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 202
View: 5561

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This book establishes a fresh and expansive view of the grotesque in Western art and culture, from 1500 to the present day. Following the non-linear evolution of the grotesque, Frances S. Connelly analyzes key works, situating them within their immediate social and cultural contexts, as well as their place in the historical tradition. By taking a long historical view, the book reveals the grotesque to be a complex and continuous tradition comprised of several distinct strands: the ornamental, the carnivalesque and caricatural, the traumatic, and the profound. The book articulates a model for understanding the grotesque as a rupture of cultural boundaries that compromises and contradicts accepted realities. Connelly demonstrates that the grotesque is more than a style, genre, or subject; it is a cultural phenomenon engaging the central concerns of the humanistic debate today. Hybrid, ambivalent, and changeful, the grotesque is a shaping force in the modern era.

Aggressive Fictions

Aggressive Fictions PDF
Author: Kathryn Hume
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801462878
Size: 60.90 MB
Format: PDF, ePub
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216
View: 3718

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A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. Kathryn Hume calls such works "aggressive fiction." Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, Hume offers a commonsense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. In her reliable and sympathetic guide, Hume considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. Hume gathers "attacks" on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.

Notes And Queries

Notes and Queries PDF
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Size: 36.97 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Mobi
Category : Electronic journals
Languages : en
Pages :
View: 1885

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The Grotesque In The Fiction Of Charles Dickens And Other 19th Century European Novelists

The Grotesque in the Fiction of Charles Dickens and Other 19th century European Novelists PDF
Author: Isabelle Hervouet-Farrar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443874051
Size: 79.30 MB
Format: PDF, ePub, Mobi
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250
View: 2330

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This book provides an overview of the literary grotesque in 19th-century Europe, with special emphasis on Charles Dickens, whose use of this complex aesthetic category is thus addressed in relation with other 19th-century European writers. The crossing of geographical boundaries allows an in-depth study of the different modes of the grotesque found in 19th-century fiction. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the reasons behind the extensive use of such a favoured mode of expression. Intertextuality and comparative or cultural analysis are thus used here to shed new light on Dickens’s influences (both given and received), as well as to compare and contrast his use of the grotesque with that of key 19th-century writers like Hugo, Gogol, Thackeray, Hardy and a few others. The essays of this volume examine the various forms taken by the grotesque in 19th-century European fiction, such as, for example, the fusion of the familiar and the uncanny, or of the terrifying and the comic; as well as the figures and narrative techniques best suited for the expression of a novelist’s grotesque vision of the world. These essays contribute to an assessment of the links between the grotesque, the gothic and the fantastic, and, more generally, the genres and aesthetic categories which the 19th-century grotesque fed on, like caricature, the macabre and tragicomedy. They also examine the novelists’ grotesque as contributing to the questioning of society in Victorian Britain and 19th-century Europe, echoing its raging conflicts and the shocks of scientific progress. This study naturally adopts as its theoretical basis the works of key theorists and critics of the grotesque: namely, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire and John Ruskin in the 19th century, and Mikhail Bakhtin, Wolfgang Kayser, Geoffrey Harpham and Elisheva Rosen in the 20th century.