Download or read book Melville s Art of Democracy written by Nancy Fredricks and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This challenging and timely study demonstrates that the problems Melville faced as a writer - the relationship between politics and aesthetics and the representation of the marginalized without appropriation - are similar to issues faced in the academy today.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Herman Melville written by Jason Frank and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herman Melville is widely considered to be one of America's greatest authors, and countless literary theorists and critics have studied his life and work. However, political theorists have tended to avoid Melville, turning rather to such contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to understand the political thought of the American Renaissance. While Melville was not an activist in the traditional sense and his philosophy is notoriously difficult to categorize, his work is nevertheless deeply political in its own right. As editor Jason Frank notes in his introduction to A Political Companion to Herman Melville, Melville's writing "strikes a note of dissonance in the pre-established harmonies of the American political tradition." This unique volume explores Melville's politics by surveying the full range of his work -- from Typee (1846) to the posthumously published Billy Budd (1924). The contributors give historical context to Melville's writings and place him in conversation with political and theoretical debates, examining his relationship to transcendentalism and contemporary continental philosophy and addressing his work's relevance to topics such as nineteenth-century imperialism, twentieth-century legal theory, the anti-rent wars of the 1840s, and the civil rights movement. From these analyses emerges a new and challenging portrait of Melville as a political thinker of the first order, one that will establish his importance not only for nineteenth-century American political thought but also for political theory more broadly.
Download or read book Melville s Democracy written by Jennifer Greiman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Herman Melville, the instability of democracy held tremendous creative potential. Examining the centrality of political thought to Melville's oeuvre, Jennifer Greiman argues that Melville's densely figurative aesthetics give form to a radical reimagining of democratic foundations, relations, and ways of being—modeling how we can think democracy in political theory today. Across Melville's five decades of writing, from his early Pacific novels to his late poetry, Greiman identifies a literary formalism that is radically political and carries the project of democratic theory in new directions. Recovering Melville's readings in political philosophy and aesthetics, Greiman shows how he engaged with key problems in political theory—the paradox of foundations, the vicious circles of sovereign power, the fragility of the people—to produce a body of radical democratic art and thought. Scenes of green and growing life, circular structures, and images of a groundless world emerge as forms for understanding democracy as a collective project in flux. In Melville's experimental aesthetics, Greiman finds a significant precursor to the tradition of radical democratic theory in the US and France that emphasizes transience and creativity over the foundations and forms prized by liberalism. Such politics, she argues, are necessarily aesthetic: attuned to material and sensible distinctions, open to new forces of creativity.
Download or read book Democracy Matters written by Cornel West and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-08-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Uncompromising and unconventional . . . Cornel West is an eloquent prophet with attitude.” — Newsweek“ "A timely analysis about the current state of democratic systems in America." — The Boston Globe In Democracy Matters, Cornel West argues that if America is to become a better steward of democratization around the world, we must first wake up to the long history of corruption that has plagued our own democracy: racism, free market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism. This impassioned and empowering call for the revitalization of America's democracy, by one of our most distinctive and compelling social critics, will reshape the raging national debate about America's role in today's troubled world.
Download or read book Monumental Melville written by Edgar A. Dryden and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monumental Melville emphasizes the significance of the literary to Melville and the need for close reading in understanding his work. By revealing and celebrating the form that makes Melville's poetry unique—and a logical development from the fiction—Monumental Melville makes a vital contribution to the new scholarly recognition of its value and importance.
Download or read book Young America written by Edward L. Widmer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating study examines the meteoric career of a vigorous intellectual movement rising out of the Age of Jackson. As Americans argued over their destiny in the decades preceding the Civil War, an outspoken new generation of "ultra-democratic" writers entered the fray, staking out positions on politics, literature, art, and any other territory they could annex. They called themselves Young America--and they proclaimed a "Manifest Destiny" to push back frontiers in every category of achievement. Their swagger found a natural home in New York City, already bursting at the seams and ready to take on the world. Young America's mouthpiece was the Democratic Review, a highly influential magazine funded by the Democratic Party and edited by the brash and charismatic John O'Sullivan. The Review offered a fresh voice in political journalism, and sponsored young writers like Hawthorne and Whitman early in their careers. Melville, too, was influenced by Young America, and provided a running commentary on its many excesses. Despite brilliant promise, the movement fell apart in the 1850s, leaving its original leaders troubled over the darker destiny they had ushered in. Their ambitious generation had failed to rewrite history as promised. Instead, their perpetual agitation helped set the stage for the Civil War. Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City is without question the most complete examination of this captivating and original movement. It also provides the first published biography of its leader, John O'Sullivan, one of America's great rhetoricians. Edward L. Widmer enriches his unique volume by offering a new theory of Manifest Destiny as part of a broader movement of intellectual expansion in nineteenth-century America.
Download or read book Literary Democracy written by Larzer Ziff and published by New York : Viking Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Also includes material on George Lippard, Margaret Fuller, and George Washington Harris.
Download or read book The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America written by John R. MacArthur and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking closely at congress, elections, and money in politics, and sparing neither side of the political spectrum, MacArthur delivers a devastating expose of the entrenched interests and elites that make change in America so impossible. Surveying local activists fighting again moneyed interests, he finds much the same as what's going on in Washington. First released in 2008, this was the first book to criticise Obama from the Left. It is presented here in a new package; it's also fully revised and contains a new introduction discussing Obama's first term.
Download or read book Spiritual Democracy written by Steven B. Herrmann and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring what the author calls the "shaman-poets"—Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson—this book demonstrates how far ahead of their times these writers were in forecasting developments of our current time. It was Whitman who first wrote of "Spiritual Democracy" as a vision of transformation and global equality. Steven Herrmann delves deep into the visionary expressions of this idea of Spiritual Democracy—"the realization of the oneness of humanity with the universe and all its forces"—in these early American writers, showing the influence the groundbreaking work of the geologist and thinker Alexander Von Humboldt had on Whitman and others. Writing that every member of the global community regardless of color, gender, or sexual orientation can realize these freedoms, the author explores how one can tap into the vitalizing source of equalizing, vocational energy to bring a sense of purpose and peace. Although the book shines as a work of literary criticism, the author's insights as a Jungian psychotherapist take the reader ever deeper into the creative impulses of Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, and other poets in their crafting of the seminal notion of Spiritual Democracy. In addition, Herrmann offers practical methodologies for personal and global transformation in the section, "Ten Ways to Practice Spiritual Democracy." Table of Contents Visions of Spiritual Democracy - Introduction 1. Cosmos 2. Spiritual Democracy as a Science of God 3. From Humboldt to Jung 4. Jung on Spiritual Democracy 5. Healing the National Complex 6. Whitman's "New Bible": The Foundation of a Religious Vision 7. Walt Whitman's Global Vision 8. The Bi-Erotic as Transcendent Sexuality 9. Shamanism and Spiritual Democracy: A Post-Humboldtian Notion of the Cosmos 10. Whitman as a Preserver of the Psychic Integrity of the Community 11. Moby Dick: The Evolution of a New Myth for our Times 12. Herman Melville: The Quest for Yillah 13. Towards a Hypothesis of the Bi-erotic 14. Moby Dick and the Trickster 15. The Marriage of Sames: "A Bosom Friend" 16. Moby Dick: The Characters Behind the Names 17. The Fall of the Dictatorships as Portrayed in Moby Dick 18. Metamorphosis of the Gods 19. The Re-emergence of the Feminine 20. Afterward: A Bi-Erotic Model for The Way Forward a) Ten Ways to Practice Spiritual Democracy
Download or read book Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville written by Robert S. Levine and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and Herman Melville (1819-1891) addressed in their writings a range of issues that continue to resonate in American culture: the reach and limits of democracy; the nature of freedom; the roles of race, gender, and sexuality; and the place of the United States in the world. Yet they are rarely discussed together, perhaps because of their differences in race and social position. Douglass escaped from slavery and tied his well-received nonfiction writing to political activism, becoming a figure of international prominence. Melville was the grandson of Revolutionary War heroes and addressed urgent issues through fiction and poetry, laboring in increasing obscurity. In eighteen original essays, the contributors to this collection explore the convergences and divergences of these two extraordinary literary lives. Developing new perspectives on literature, biography, race, gender, and politics, this volume ultimately raises questions that help rewrite the color line in nineteenth-century studies. Contributors: Elizabeth Barnes, College of William and Mary Hester Blum, The Pennsylvania State University Russ Castronovo, University of Wisconsin-Madison John Ernest, West Virginia University William Gleason, Princeton University Gregory Jay, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Carolyn L. Karcher, Washington, D.C. Rodrigo Lazo, University of California, Irvine Maurice S. Lee, Boston University Robert S. Levine, University of Maryland, College Park Steven Mailloux, University of California, Irvine Dana D. Nelson, Vanderbilt University Samuel Otter, University of California, Berkeley John Stauffer, Harvard University Sterling Stuckey, University of California, Riverside Eric J. Sundquist, University of California, Los Angeles Elisa Tamarkin, University of California, Irvine Susan M. Ryan, University of Louisville David Van Leer, University of California, Davis Maurice Wallace, Duke University Robert K. Wallace, Northern Kentucky University Kenneth W. Warren, University of Chicago
Download or read book Making Things Public written by Bruno Latour and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 2005 with total page 1080 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This collection itself presents a significant public assembly, joining such prominent thinkers as Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, and Peter Sloterdijk with the likes of Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. Ranging from the distant past to the troubled present, this collective effort examines the atmospheric conditions in which things are made public, and reinvests political representation with the materiality it has been lacking. This book, and the ZKM show that it accompanies, aims to trigger new political passions and interests in a time when people need, more than ever, new ways to have their voices heard."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Ruthless Democracy written by Timothy B. Powell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-28 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ruthless Democracy, Timothy Powell reimagines the canonical origins of "American" identity by juxtaposing authors such as Hawthorne, Melville, and Thoreau with Native American, African American, and women authors. Taking his title from Melville, Powell identifies an unresolvable conflict between America's multicultural history and its violent will to monoculturalism. Powell challenges existing perceptions of the American Renaissance--the period at the heart of the American canon and its evolutions--by expanding the parameters of American identity. Drawing on the critical traditions of cultural studies and new historicism, Powell invents a new critical paradigm called "historical multiculturalism." Moving beyond the polarizing rhetoric of the culture wars, Powell grounds his multicultural conception of American identity in careful historical analysis. Ruthless Democracy extends the cultural and geographical boundaries of the American Renaissance beyond the northeast to Indian Territory, Alta California, and the transnational sphere that Powell calls the American Diaspora. Arguing for the inclusion of new works, Powell envisions the canon of the American Renaissance as a fluid dialogue of disparate cultural voices.
Download or read book Unruly Voices written by Mark Kingwell and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection by the author of The World We Want, with essays on civility, public space, Obama, procrastination, suicide.
Download or read book Through a Glass Darkly written by Thomas R. Melville and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2005-01-14 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a Glass Darkly tells the story of Ron Hennessey, an Iowa farmer who returned from the Korean War to discover that farming no longer held much allure. Hennessey joined a Catholic missionary society and after nine years of study was ordained a priest and sent to Guatemala. The book describes Hennessey's conversion from being an unapologetic patriot from America's heartland to a staunch opponent of Ronald Reagan's policies in Central America - policies that occasionally threatened Hennessey's life. Hennessey's story has a subtext: America's ideals of freedom, democracy, and progress-with-justice have been violated abroad by one U.S. president after another.
Download or read book Feeding on Dreams written by Ariel Dorfman and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dorfman portrays, through visceral scenes and powerful intellect, the personal and political maelstroms underlying his migrations from Buenos Aires, on the run from Pinochet's death squads, to safe houses in Paris and Amsterdam, and eventually to America, his childhood home. The toll on Dorfman's wife and two sons, the 'earthquake of language' that is bilingualism, and his eventual questioning of his allegiance to past and party - all these crucibles of a life in exile are revealed with wry and startling honesty. Feeding on Dreams is a passionate reminder that 'we are all exiles', that we are all 'threatened with annihilation if we do not find and celebrate the refuge of common humanity', as Dorfman did during his 'decades of loss and resurrection'.
Download or read book Handsomely Done written by Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handsomely Done: Aesthetics, Politics, and Media after Melville brings together leading and emerging scholars from comparative literature, critical theory, and media studies to examine Melville’s works in light of their ongoing afterlife and seemingly permanent contemporaneity. The volume explores the curious fact that the works of this most linguistically complex and seemingly most “untranslatable” of authors have yielded such compelling translations and adaptations as well as the related tendency of Melville’s writing to flash into relevance at every new historical-political conjuncture. The volume thus engages not only Melville reception across media (Jorge Luis Borges, John Huston, Jean-Luc Godard, Led Zeppelin, Claire Denis) but also the Melvillean resonances and echoes of various political events and movements, such as the Attica uprising, the Red Army Faction, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. This consideration of Melville’s afterlife opens onto theorizations of intermediality, un/translatability, and material intensity even as it also continually faces the most concrete and pressing questions of history and politics.
Download or read book The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville written by Robert S. Levine and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection offers timely, critical essays specially commissioned to provide a comprehensive overview of Melville's career.
