Critical Interfaces

Gordon Collier, Klaus Schwank, Franz Wieselhuber (Eds.)

Critical Interfaces. Contributions on Philosophy, Literature and Culture in Honour of Herbert Grabes

ISBN 978-3-88476-460-2, ISBN 3-88476-460-8, 464 S., kt., € 40,50 (2001)

These contributions, dedicated to Herbert Grabes, suggest the broad range of a scholar’s lifetime interests. Several essays consider the philosophical vectors that help shape our involvement in fictions and in theorizing about the process of that involvement. Others cover such topics as the implications of philosophical pragmatism (on Hilary Putnam); the cultural underpinnings of literary history (including the ‘invention’ of a British national tradition, and Hippolyte Taine’s nineteenth-century French view of the English); the post-Miltonic sublime and its epistemological affinities with notions of secrecy; and shifts in the perception of self and reflexivity (both in the visual arts and in Enlightenment literature and thought). The characteristics of ‘poietic’ expression in the nineteenth century (William Godwin and others) are related to the philosophical tradition, and ‘comic’ modalities from the eighteenth-century novel to postmodernism are instructively classified and exemplified. A perceptive analysis of central linguistic aspects of Chaucer is followed by essays devoted to the psycho-philosophical and gender ramifications of Shakespeare’s plays, and there are spirited studies of patterning in the English sonnet and of ethical and aesthetic values in Marinist poetry, along with two sets of congenial translations from Philip Larkin and Douglas Dunn). In both its modernist and its postmodernist guises, the American connection enjoys a central focus (Djuna Barnes and her relation to T.S. Eliot; William Faulkner as a litmus test for experiential authenticity vis-à-vis the postmodern; a crucial Russian connection in Vladimir Nabokov; and historical awareness in recent American fiction). The function of culture at large is reflected in essays on Graham Swift, on postcolonial fiction (Michael Ondaatje and Jasmine Gooneratne), and on narratives of European translocation (Gregor von Rezzori and Eriek Verpaele). The theatre arts as markers of shifts in cultural awareness find responses in reflections on ‘performance’ in American sport and on the contemporary stage, in a searching analysis of the complex aesthetics of the musical, and in ironical recollections on the theatre in Poland and the ‘old’ two Germanies. The challenging perspectives of this collection, both philosophical, aesthetic and literary, will yield rich rewards for the discerning reader.

I - Theoria, or The Sense of Method

Realism, Scepticism, and Naturalism: Stages on the Putnam Road (Christopher Norris)

The 'Reality' of Fiction: Life, the Text, and a Dream (Murray Krieger)

The Possibility of Literary History: Subject, Object and the Relation of Knowledge (Catherine Belsey)

Reflections on the Englishness of English Literary Histories: Where Literature, Philosophy and Nationalism Meet Cultural History (Ansgar Nünning)

The Three Graces, or, The Future of Theory (Jean-Jacques Lecercle)

II - Energeia, or Sensing the World

Subliming the Secret: A Genealogical Approach (Martina Mittag)

From the Window of the Eye to the Reflected I: From Typology to Individualism in Painterly Self-Representation (Gordon Collier)

A Self-Less Elightenment? The Eighteenth-Century of Multiple Identity (Ronald B. Hatch)

Modern Culture and the Poiesis of Literature: William Godwin and Others (Philipp Wolf)

Fixities and Fluidities: Transformations of the Comic Mode in the Novel (Gerhard Hoffmann)

The Privations of Postmodernism: Faulkner as Exemplar (Ihab Hassan)

III - Praxis, or Earthing the Text

Chaucer's Reeve's Tale: Dialect, Register, and Point of View (Hans-Jürgen Diller)

Herrschende Väter und rebellische Töchter: Ein Thema in Shakespeares Komödien (Therese Fischer-Seidel)

König Richard III: Zwei Monologe (I.i.1-41 und V.iii.178-207) (Peter Probst)

The Concept of Decadence and Decline in Literary History and Criticism: A Sonnet by the Marinista Marcello Giovanetti as Test Instance (Hermann Fischer)

Changeable Sonnetwear: Limits of Poetical Patterning (Franz Wieselhuber)

Race and Culture in Hippolyte Taine: English Renaissance Theatre as Teutonic Art (Margit Sichert)

Friendship under Stress: Djuna Barnes and T. S. Eliot (Phillip Herring)

The Marvell Larkin Marvel, oder Die Geburt der Poesie aus dem Sprachfehler (Ulrich Horstmann)

Statt Blumen: Gedichte von Douglas Dunn ins Deutsche geschmuggelt für Herbert Grabes (Manfred Pfister)

A Brief History of Ekwilism: Russian Echoes in Nabokov's American Fiction (Leona Toker)

Un-Scripting the Nation: The Representational Logic of Post-Americanist Narratives (Theo D'Haen)

"Don't snivel, get on with it": Graham Swift als Booker-Preisträger (Raimund Borgmeier)

Interpreting Cultures: Yasmine Gooneratne's Novel A Change of Skies (Lothar Bredella)

"No record was kept": Resistance of the Inoffcial in Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion (Marc Colavincenzo)

Gregor von Rezzori and Eriek Verpaele: Negotiating Identity in Flanders and the Bukovina (Hans Bertens)

IV - Tekhne, or Performing Culture

Ground Zero and Below: Extremities of Performance (Herbert Blau)

Hyperillustration: Anfängliche Überlegungen zur Ästhetik des Filmmusicals (am Beispiel von Evita)

(Armin Geraths)

Theaterkultur in Deutschland und in Polen: Konvergenzen und Unterschiede (Andrzej Wirth)

V - Herbert Grabes - An Enquiring Life

Vita Brevis

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