Nicolae BOTNARIUC - Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti ...

Autoarea judecă trecutul literar în lumina standardelor prezentului, deschizând
noi perspective printre vechile receptări. Privirea istorico-literară este dublată de cea
critică şi teoretică: fiecare diviziune cronologică se centrează asupra a patru aspecte –
cadrul istoric (raportul literatură/ societate), paradigma epistemologică (literatura în
contextul altor discursuri ale epocii), scriitori reprezentativi şi texte de referinţă. Ambele
volume cuprind câte un indice de autori, cu valoroase informaţii.
Maria-Ana TUPAN
–147–
Adresabilitate: studenţi, profesori, specialişti
BRITISH LITERATURE – AN OVERVIEW. PART I-II (EDIŢIA A III-A REVIZUITĂ ŞI
ADĂUGITĂ)
Format 14/20, vol. I – 372 pag., vol. II – 336 pag., ISBN 973-737-086-4, vol. I – 973-737-087-2, vol. II –
973-737-088-0
The new literary history realigns history and aesthetics, exploring the way style
develops as an indicator of historical change in the manifold of culture, history and
aesthetics. Each main division in the history of English literature from the origins to the
present will focus four aspects: 1) historical mapping revealing negotiations between
literary texts, and non-literary discourses (social, scientific, political, philosophical,
etc.) as contexts of culture; 2) epistemological frames and tropes supporting the idea of
cultural dialogue in a comparative discussion of writings from different periods or
"schools"; 3) structural and functional aspects: generic conventions, authority
structures, architecturality; 4) genealogy of representations (gendered, classed, and
raced) and the historically shifting conditions of their dissemination and reception
(including the politics of canon formation).
The Ariadne thread in our hands is not a single but an entwined thread, for each
historical age is some sort of Janus with one conspicuous and one hidden face. Affined
strains of representations concur to create the dominant paradigm, while the counter
movements effect transformations which lead to the onset of a new one.
The wild paganism of the heroic age was disciplined and filtered through the
orderly patterns of early European Christian models.
The Renaissance, obsessing with Prince Reason in command of subdued passions,
also knew the dark searches of esoteric thought. The revolutionary spirit of Romanticism
was born out of the Enlightenment project, like Minerva out of Jove's head. The Kantian
critique of pure reason fostered the Victorian age of phenomenology (with the added
value of Comtian positivism), yet Arnold himself, the champion of the disinterested
exercise of “criticism” and of the power of judgement, was aware of the “buried life” of
currents flowing underneath (gothic, sensationalism, decadent aestheticism) which
gushed to the surface during the closing decades. In the earlier half of the last century
we can see the modernists' ivory tower of the canonical twenties leaning towards the
more socially-oriented concerns of their Edwardian and Georgian peers.
What postmodernist mainstream culture seems to have driven underground keeps
coming up. If deconstruction is the gate entry to canonization, successful constructivist
attempts are not missing either. In fact, they have been multiplying over the past two
decades, working as the strong attractors of a new paradigm.
Adresabilitate: studenţi, profesori, specialişti