Herbert Grabes Book order

Exploring the theme of mirror-imagery, this book offers an in-depth analysis of its evolution in English literature from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth century. It examines how authors utilized reflections, both literal and metaphorical, to convey complex ideas about identity, perception, and reality. Through a detailed survey, readers will discover the significance of mirrors as a literary device and their impact on cultural and philosophical thought during this transformative period.

This 1982 book was the first major and comprehensive survey of mirror-imagery to be found in medieval book-titles and English literature from the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Working within the tradition of the historical study of metaphor as developed by E. R. Curtius, Professor Grabes not only traces the shifting historical usages of the mirror (as the metaphor's 'vehicle') but also studies the metaphor's structural function in individual works. At the same time, the author addresses himself to the aesthetic problem of originality in literature, and, by investigating the function of a metaphor central to literature over a long period of time, he reveals the interplay between cultural history, the changing attitude towards life and the world, and literary imagination. It represents a substantial contribution to the history of ideas and to the study of iconography, which, by providing a systematic and historical contextualisation of the many varied metaphorical senses of the mirror, will be of particular value to art and literary historians, and cultural philosophers.

Metaphors play an important role in the various discourses of our worldmaking, serving as a means of structuring, narrativizing and naturalizing cultural phenomena and transformations. Focussing on the reciprocal relationship between metaphor and theory, the essays in this volume explore the cultural implications and ideological functions of metaphors and examine their constitutive role in determining the perception of cultures and theories. As well as providing an introduction to the theory of metaphor, this volume contains numerous theoretical and historical case studies, covering examples from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment to medernity, postmodernity, and the contemporary media society, which illustrate how on the one hand metaphors shape cultures and theories and on the other hand cultures and theories shape metaphors.

What the contributors to this volume commemorating the 50th anniversary of IAUPE demonstrate is above all the remarkable broadening of the field of English studies over the past few decades. New domains of enquiry have been added, while the traditional ones are not only still there but have been reinvigorated by new research paradigms. The result has been a marked increase in intra-disciplinary competition that reflects broader shifts in cultural understanding. Although quite a few of the contributions are concerned with precisely this latter dynamic, others demonstrate that the detailed working-out of more narrowly framed problem areas is crucial if English studies is to meet the challenges of the future.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Wisdom and „Ri? te Cunde“: An Examination of the Satiric Subtlety of The Owl and the Nightingale -- Popular Poetry and Courtly Lyric: The Middle English Pastourelle -- The Dance in Elizabethan and Stuart Drama -- Discourse, ideology and the crisis of authority in post-Reformation England -- „When the Sword came back from sea“ - Aspects of Medievalism in Pre-Raphaelite Literature -- The Other Hero of Martin Chuzzlewit: The Function of Tom Pinch in the Narrative and Thematic Structure of the Novel -- The ABC of Historical Criticism -- William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! Five Decades of Critical Reception -- Contemporary Metafiction: The Phenomenon and the Efforts to Explain It -- Backmatter

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Artistry and Christianity in Pearl -- The Calumny Pattern in Shakespeare -- The English Pastoral in the Nineteenth Century -- Pointing Theory and Some Victorian Practices -- The Topicality of Beauchamp's Career -- Emerson's Nature and Whitman's „Song of Myself“ -- John Crowe Ransom's Moments: A Reconstruction in the Post-Scientific Mode -- Benjy's Sound and Fury: A Critical Study of Four Interpretations -- The Drama of Fictionalized Author and Reader: A Formalist Obstacle to Literary Pragmatics -- Towards a Cultural History of Literary Translation: An Exploration of Issues and Problems in Researching the Translational Exchange between the USA and Germany -- Backmatter