The wreath of wild olive : play, liminality, and the study of literature
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The wreath of wild olive : play, liminality, and the study of literature
State University of New York Press, c1997
- : hard
- : pbk
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-337) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Mihai Spariosu's book strikingly intervenes in the debate raging among the various oppositional and hegemonic discourses by advancing a new philosophy that transcends the currently prevailing agonistic mentality. He develops a ludic-irenic view intended to exceed both a voluntaristic and rationalist mode of thought, thereby convincingly opposing the all-pervading mentality of power in a world marked by difference, scapegoating, and strife between various social, ethnic, racial, and sexual factions. The ludic-irenic stance, basically derived from the playfulness of literature, produces alternative mentalities and alternative worlds which promote a responsive understanding of what there is, thus bringing to bear a healing influence within the human community, in which power and difference will cease to be ultimates. What Spariosu puts forward and demonstrates by means of a stupendous erudition is no less than a total reorientation of cultural criticism that is bound to have its impact on the course cultural studies will take.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One: Toward a Ludic-Irenic Theory of Literature And Culture: Intellectual Historical Background, Basic Principles
1. Nietzsche or Schopenhauer: Can One Construct an Alternative Mentality?
2. Liminality, Literary Discourse, and Alternative Worlds
3. Difference, Identity, and Otherness: A Ludic-Irenic Perspective
Part Two: Literary Thematics And Ludic-Irenic Hermeneutics
4. Homicide as Play: Dostoevsky, Gide, Aiken
5. Race, Ethnicity, and Irenic Mentality: Rebreanu, Eliade, Devi
6. Allegory, Power, and the Postmodern Game of Interpretation: Nabokov, Lowry, Orwell
Part Three: Ludic-Irenic Approaches to Cultural Criticism
7. Criticism as Irenic Play: The Case of the Victorian Sages
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
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