Overview

Originally published in 1986. The ghastly fate of a drowned man brought to a lake's surface in Wordsworth's ""Prelude"" typifies a fundamental pattern in Romantic writing, argues Cynthia Chase. Disfiguration involves not only a departure from representation but a disruption of the logic of figure or form, a decomposition of the figures composing the text. Ultimately it manifests the conflict between a work's meaning and its mode of performance. By means of an intense engagement with texts in the romantic tradition, Decomposing Figures rearticulates and recasts crucial concepts in recent literary theory, including the notion of the self-referential or self-reflexive nature of the literary work. Chase's readings show that, far from implying a privileged status, the work's self-reflexive structure entails its opacity, its inability to read itself, and the necessity of its decomposition.

Full Product Details

Author:   Cynthia Chase
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9781421434094

ISBN 10:   1421434091
Pages:   250
Publication Date:   26 January 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Mutable Images: Voice and Figure Chapter 1. The Accidents of Disfiguration Limits to Literal and Figurative Reading of Wordsworth's ""Books"" Chapter 2. The Ring of Gyges and the Coat of Darkness Reading Rousseau with Wordsworth Chapter 3. Viewless Wings Keats's Ode to a Nightingale Chapter 4. Giving a Face to a Name De Man's Figures Chapter 5. Getting Versed Reading Hegel with Baudelaire Part II: Past Effects: The Double Reading of Narrative Chapter 6. Mechanical Doll, Exploding Machine Kleist's Models of Narrative Chapter 7. The Decomposition of the Elephants Double-Reading Daniel Deronda Chapter 8. Oedipal Textuality Reading Freud's Reading of Oedipus Chapter 9. Paragon, Parergon Baudelaire Translates Rousseau Notes Index"

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Author Information

Cynthia Chase teaches in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. Her focuses are on literature of the Romantic period and on nineteenth and twentieth century writing about the survival of poetry and the concept of human rights.

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