Academic literature on the topic 'Stephen Criticism and interpretation'

The 1980’s saw the emergence of New Historicist criticism, particularly through Stephen Greenblatt’s work. Its legacy remains influential, particularly on Shakespearean Studies. I wish to outline New Historicist methodological insights, comment on some of its criticisms and provide analytical comments on the changing approach to historical plays, asking “What has New Historicism brought into our understanding of historical plays and the way(s) of designing kingly power?” Examining Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, I will review Greenblatt’s contention that these plays largely focus on kingly power and its relationship to “subversion” and “containment”. I intend to focus on aspects of the plays that I believe have not received enough attention through New Historicism; particularly the design of the kingly figures.

Penelitian ini membuktikan bahwa kajian kesusastraan dengan menggunakan new historicism mampu mengungkap pelbagai kekuatan budaya, sosial, ekonomi, dan politik yang menyetubuh dan menyelinap dalam setiap sela teks sastra yang merupakan ranah estetik (aesthetic richness). Penelitian ini mengungkapkan bahwa karya sastra tidak dapat dipisahkan dengan pelbagai konteks zaman dan praksis budaya, sosial, ekonomi, serta politik yang melingkupinya. Penelitian ini tidak sependapat dengan konsep new criticism John Crowe Ransom (The New Criticism, 1941 dan Criticism as Pure Speculation, 1971) dan William K. Wimsatt dan Monroe Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy, 1946 dan The verbal Icon, 1954) yang mengatakan bahwa karya sastra merupakan autotelic artefact. Sehingga menjadi tidak tepat ketika pemahaman terhadap sastra dikaitkan dengan pengarang, pembaca, maupun konteks di luar karya sastra. Penelitian ini mendukung konsep new historicism Stephen Greenblatt (Practicing New Historicism, 2000) yang menyatakan bahwa dunia imajinatif-estetis tidak pernah terlepas dari relasi kekuasaan dunia realitas yang termanifestasi dalam karya sastra sebagai apresiasi estetis individu dan praksis budaya, sosial, ekonomi, dan politik. Berdasarkan interpretasi kritis new historicism Greenblatt terhadap novel Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal’un diperoleh hasil penelitian berupa pemahaman karya imajinatif yang penuh dengan simbol yang lebih lengkap dan dalam (deeper understanding of value) dengan melibatkan konteks ekstrinsikalitas karya sastra di dalamnya dan novel Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal’un hadir sebagai tanggapan reflektif-imajinatif Saddam Hussein sebagai pengarangnya.[This research proves that literary studies using new historicism can reveal the various cultural, social, economic, and political forces that intercourse and sneak in every literary text: aesthetic richness. This research reveals that literary works cannot be separated from the various contexts of the era and the cultural, social, economic, and political praxis that surround them. This study disagrees with the concept of new criticism John Crowe Ransom (The New Criticism, 1941 and Criticism as Pure Speculation, 1971) and William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy, 1946 and The verbal Icon, 1954) literature is an autotelic artifact. So it is not appropriate when the understanding of literature is associated with authors, readers, and contexts outside of literary works. This research supports Stephen Greenblatt's new historicism concept (Practicing New Historicism, 2000), which states that the imaginative-aesthetic world is never separated from the power relations of the world of reality which are manifested in literature as an individual aesthetic appreciation and cultural, social, economic, and political praxis. Based on the critical interpretation of Greenblatt's new historicism of the Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal'un novel, the research results are in the form of a deeper understanding of imaginative works of symbols (deeper understanding of value) involving the context of the extrinsicality of literary works in it and the novel Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal. 'un appears as the reflective-imaginative response of Saddam Hussein as the author.]

AbstractThis essay examines King Lear's belief that the dead Cordelia revives or resuscitates near the very end of the play. This quasi-resurrection, which occurs only in the First Folio (1623), has divided critics into those who regard the moment as mere delusion and others who see it as adumbrating a moment of blessed release. Following a survey of these "redemptionist" versus the predominant nihilist-oriented readings of the play, I examine the influential materialist interpretations offered by Stephen Greenblatt and Jonathan Dollimore. Both insist that Cordelia's quasi-resurrection, since it never reaches fruition, frustrates a religious understanding of the play. (Materialist criticism only counts tangible rewards as meaningful.) The play, however, is more consistent with Hans-Georg Gadamer's view that tragedy overwhelms us with its suffering rather than promotes this-worldly justice. Cordelia's quasi-resurrection gestures towards a possible otherworldly redemption even as it reminds audiences of the Resurrection that, in Lear's pagan world, cannot be replicated. Shakespeare's anachronisms thus superimpose the Christian resurrectionary tradition on the pagan setting of the play; his doing so places the hope and despair of the final scene—the contrast between their transcendent aspirations and the mundane reality of their unresurrected corpses—in the delicate equipoise of his art.

It is considered that the Puritans that populated New England in the 17th century left a distinctive mark on the American culture. The article explores some projections of Puritan legacy in two American novels of different periods – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Stephen King’s Carrie (1974). After establishing a connection between the Puritan writings and gothic literature, the two novels are analyzed in terms of some Puritan projections, among which are the problem of guilt and the acceptance of an individual in the society. Some references regarding the idea of the witch and the interpretations it bears, especially in terms of the female identity, are also identified. Despite the different approach of the authors in terms of building their characters, those references are mostly used in a negative way, as an instrument of criticism and exposing inconvenient truths.

This article gives an overview of francophone African diasporic websites such as Africultures.com, africavivre.com and other digital magazines, networks and blogs that are present on different platforms. Taking recent novels, texts of literary criticism, reviews and comments as examples, I analyse in what way they share in discourse about diasporic and migratory identity positions of Afropéens (‘Afropeans’) (and differ therein from other readings of the same novels). Methodologically, I draw on Stephen Greenblatt’s concepts of self-fashioning and circulation of social energy as well as on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the production of social capital. With respect to socially preformed discursive formation of Black people as an ostensibly homogeneous minority in the twenty-first century France, I refer to Pap Ndiaye’s ground-breaking study La condition noire from 2009 which closely analyses the complex situation of the Black migrant and post-migrant population. I focus on two narrative texts which are widely perceived both in France and on an international level: First, the autobiographically inspired novel Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic) by Fatou Diome and second, Marie Ndiaye’s narrative triptych Trois femmes puissantes (Three Strong Women). Studying remarks and comments of literary criticism concerning these texts on francophone African diasporic websites, I raise the following questions: What relevance do these narrated characters (still) have today? To what extent do they shape the discourse of Black migrants in France? What kind of interpretation of the colonial history and context do they offer? And which emancipatory moments and decolonial strategies create a new, proper symbolic capital and, thus, add to the Imagined Community of ‘Noirs en France’ (‘Black people in France’)?

Will Ladislaw's words, which so disillusion the young Dorothea, might also depress the modern interpreter of Newton's theology. Encountering the bulk of Newton's manuscript theology, it is tempting to sympathize with Dorothea's eventual response to The Key to all Mythologies, and to want nothing of it. The assessment of John Conduitt, Newton's son-in-law and executor, that his ‘relief and amusement was going to some other study, as history, chronology, divinity, and chemistry’ has in the past provided an ample excuse for those who have wished to take such a course, and to ignore Newton's biblical criticism. In the last three decades, however, Newton scholarship has come to terms with its hero's twilight activities, and reclassified them as being at least as important to him as the natural philosophy of the Principia, and intimately bound up with the thinking behind that philosophy. But although many modern scholars are now reluctant to see Newton as Stephen Hawking in breeches, historians of science have tended to concentrate on the implications for Newton's philosophy of his religious and alchemical writings, and in the process often have distorted their religious context. Historians of ideas have been beguiled by Newton's disciples, and by the esoteric texts from Newton's library, to ride hobbyhorses of their own which do not always illuminate Newton's reasons for writing theology. There is a danger of ‘knowing what is being done by the rest of the world’ before troubling with what Newton was up to when he worried about religion and theology, channelling his energies into treatise after treatise on the interpretation of prophecy. I want to suggest what some of Newton's concerns may have been, by looking at his ideas of religious duty and of the Church, and to liberate Newton from his disciples for long enough to consider some of his ideas about the relationships of prophetic and natural philosophical explorations of divinity.

AbstractThis research is a historical research with the theme of religion which examines religion from an empirical point of view rather than from a normative point of view. As for what is being researched is about the growth and development of Catholicism in the city of Jambi. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explain historically the dynamics of Catholicism in Jambi City from the initial process of its spread to its development since the Dutch colonial period, the Japanese occupation, to independence, and to describe the existence of missionary groups who were important figures in the process of its spread. The method used is the historical method starting from the heuristic, criticism, interpretation, and historiographic stages. Some of the theories used refer to the theory from E.B. Taylor on the "theory of the soul" or "anima", Stephen K, Anderson on the "theory of stages of religious development", and the theory of R.N. Bellah on the evolution of religion. In the end, the findings obtained after conducting field research were that the Catholic religion that developed in Jambi City has gone through a long process in its history, was carried and spread by missionary groups (priests, brothers, nuns), and contributed a lot to the lives of the population starting from field work. religious, social, and economic.Keywords: Religion, Catholicism, Missionary, Jambi City AbstrakPenelitian ini merupakan penelitian sejarah yang bertemakan bertemakan agama yang mengkaji agama dari sudut empiris bukan dari segi normatifnya. Adapun yang diteliti adalah tentang pertumbuhan dan perkembangan agama Katolik di Kota Jambi. Oleh karenanya tujuan penelitian ini adalah menjelaskan secara historis dinamika agama katolik di Kota Jambi mulai dari proses awal penyebaran hingga perkembangannya sejak periode Kolonial Belanda, Pendudukan Jepang, hingga kemerdekaan, serta mendeskripsikan keberadaan kelompok misionaris yang menjadi tokoh penting dalam proses penyebarannya. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode sejarah mulai dari tahapan heuristik, kritik, interpretasi, dan historiografi. Beberapa teori yang dipakai mengacu pada Teori dari E.B. Taylor tentang “teori jiwa” atau “anima”, Stephen K, Anderson tentang “teori tahapan perkembangan agama”, dan teori dari R.N. Bellah tentang evolusi agama. Pada akhirnya hasil temuan yang didapat setelah melakukan penelitian lapangan adalah bahwa agama Katolik yang berkembang di Kota Jambi telah melewati proses panjang dalam sejarahnya, dibawa dan disebarkan oleh kelompok misionaris (pastor, bruder, suster), dan banyak berkontribusi bagi kehidupan penduduk mulai dari karya bidang keagamaan, sosial, dan ekonomi.Kata Kunci : Agama, Katolik, Misionaris, Kota Jambi

In 2004 Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich published what has become one of the most widely discussed papers in experimental philosophy, in which they reported that East Asian and Western participants had different intuitions about the semantic reference of proper names. A flurry of criticisms of their work has emerged, and although various replications have been performed, many critics remain unconvinced. We review the current debate over Machery et al.’s (2004) results and take note of which objections to their work have been satisfactorily answered and which ones still need to be addressed. We then report the results of studies that reveal significant cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions when we control for variables that critics allege have had a potentially distorting effect on Machery et al.’s findings. These variables include the epistemic perspective from which participants are supposed to understand the research materials, unintended anchoring effects of those materials, and pragmatic factors involved in the interpretation of speech acts within them. Our results confirm the robustness of the cross-cultural differences observed by Machery et al. and thereby strengthen the philosophical challenge they pose.