Trials of Desire. Renaissance Defenses of Poetry.

Gutes Ex.; Umschlag etwas berieben u. m. kl. L�ren. - Englisch. - Margaret W. Ferguson (* 1948), US-amerikanische Literaturwissenschaftlerin (wiki-Eintrag) // Why has literature in Western culture so often been called on to defend itself? How do defenses of fiction-making by poets and critics compete with the texts in which philosophers, theologians, historians, or scientists justify the truth-claims of their own disciplines? Margaret Ferguson addresses these questions in a wide-ranging study that defines and illuminates the defense as a rhetorical genre in its own right-a hybrid that blurs the boundary between fiction and theoretical explanation. Although versions of the defense appear in many historical periods, as Ferguson notes in her introductory survey, Renaissance authors experimented with the genre in particularly significant ways, exploiting its affinities with the classical forensic oration and the tradition of Christian confession. The defense became a textual arena in which complex ideological battles were symbolically waged. Ferguson analyzes exemplary defenses by three sixteenth-century poets: Du Bellay, Tasso, and Sidney. She examines not only the desires for power and recognition that motivate these authors' defenses, but also the nature of the prosecution to which they reply - a prosecution that is both a social and a psychological phenomenon, arising from individuals and cultural institutions as well as from the Freudian "super-ego." In a final chapter she considers the parallels between Freud's own rhetorical strategies of defense and those employed by Boccaccio, Shelley, and other defenders of literature. (Verlagstext) / INHALT : Acknowledgments ---- Note on Texts and Translations ---- I. An Apology for Defenses ---- II. Joachim du Bellay: The Exile's Defense of His Native Language ---- The Offensive Defense ---- Imitation, Invention, and the Voyage between Past and Future ---- Transplantation and Translation: The Organic and Historical Defenses ---- The Linguistic Defense: Reverent Iconoclasm The Endless Journey of Exile ---- III. Torquato Tasso: The Trial of Conscience ---- Defenses and Detours: The Apologia, First Part ---- The Journey to the Past: Bernardo Tasso and the Neapolitan ---- Rebellion The Transformation of Memory: The Del piacere onesto Dialogue ---- The Ordeal of Rebirth: The Apologia Yet Once More The Court of Christian Conscience: Apology versus Defense The Economy of Judgment: Revision, Repression, and the ---- Gerusalemme Conquistata ---- IV. Sir Philip Sidney: Pleas for Power ---- The Egoistic Project ---- The Defense against Philosophy and History ---- The Defense against "Abuse" of Power ---- The Dialogic Defense: Irony ---- The Dialogic Defense: Allegory ---- (u.a.) ISBN 0300027877