Practicing New Historicism
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • "Scrupulous But Unprincipled Orgasmic Essays With Emissions"
  • Waiting for a Theory of Practice
Practicing New Historicism
Catherine Gallagher , and Stephen Greenblatt
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0226279359

Book Description

For almost twenty years, new historicism has been a highly controversial and influential force in literary and cultural studies. In Practicing the New Historicism, two of its most distinguished practitioners reflect on its surprisingly disparate sources and far-reaching effects.

In lucid and jargon-free prose, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt focus on five central aspects of new historicism: recurrent use of anecdotes, preoccupation with the nature of representations, fascination with the history of the body, sharp focus on neglected details, and skeptical analysis of ideology. Arguing that new historicism has always been more a passionately engaged practice of questioning and analysis than an abstract theory, Gallagher and Greenblatt demonstrate this practice in a series of characteristically dazzling readings of works ranging from paintings by Joos van Gent and Paolo Uccello to Hamlet and Great Expectations.

By juxtaposing analyses of Renaissance and nineteenth-century topics, the authors uncover a number of unexpected contrasts and connections between the two periods. Are aspects of the dispute over the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist detectable in British political economists' hostility to the potato? How does Pip's isolation in Great Expectations shed light on Hamlet's doubt?

Offering not only an insider's view of new historicism, but also a lively dialogue between a Renaissance scholar and a Victorianist, Practicing the New Historicism is an illuminating and unpredictable performance by two of America's most respected literary scholars.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars "Scrupulous But Unprincipled Orgasmic Essays With Emissions".......2007-09-21

"Practicing New Historicism", Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt - Univ. Chicago Press, ISBN: 0-226-27935-9 (PB) - 234 pages plus Index (15 pags), 8 1/2" x 5 3/8"

A prime exemplar expounding construct of "Representations" (plural) to articulate equitable confines to encapsulate, embody and validate archetypal literary receptacles for a presumptiously new discipline, a "field" of rumination, coerced by heralding exigency of a job register (yes!) for the MLA (see book explanation of abbreviation). B.E. Seedy in 1883 had already warned us of this coming calamity.

Vigilantly, the authors dissected their MS into six organic parts or entrails, two "about", and four "of" new historicism, allowing spurious ectasy, relish and anabolism of punctilious emissions, some of who/which conjure blemishes of/with disbelief, biliousness, and even "high-brow" prefunctories, albeit allowing binary synapses to "fine tune", in ephemeral sequentiality, liberating unspecified primeval "bit of fire" and fracture of DNA that possibly (but exclusively admitting a 'peewee' likelihood), of its repression (17.3 n)to aggrandized antidiluviuan RNA, primeval matter most (almost?) disgusting to the disingenuous, partly due to lack of learning, laziness and autisms.
'Litterateurs' faithful but protracted disquisitions with reference to theology (...Religioso...), agreeably wrangled with Corpus Christi, dead bodies, undead bodies, Resurrection, resucitation, "almost-dead", the Host or "altar bread", "money changers" (Jews), and also relatively antiquated pious paintings, caves with missing walls (for illuminatio...)askew 'parterre', tiles and varmint breaches to exude bodily fluids including 'reyd' blood. Undoubtedly, authors sanctioned or "put in tune" their sage moils, fluidly, but not invariably sensitively enough(?) though, to evoke deep-seated Freudian repulsions of earthy matters or "materiel", as the boorish potato(oes) question, Irish (as people of Earth or muck), pigs, but coupled with embodiments of cherished participants in immigrant 'novellae' as Hamlet, Great Expectations, and even the Holy writ. The Holy writ being published under many names and divers language.

All in all, those particular disciples with penchants to harvest prodigal sagacious perspicacity fancy spoils from abstruse contemplation of this adamantine (sic) proportion of line and mass, a "near" depraved profliagacy but also a cunning artform best shielded from juveniles who lack understanding of perverse perspectives of historicists, both old and new! Guard these with your life! J.B. Wharton in 1932 had cautioned: "Be chary in these trouble times where worldwide more than one language is "lost" weekly, the 'hot' area being Australia what with its Aborigine(s)". Yes, (T)roubled times as who now still reminisces his Morse code and pidgin? Amelia Earhart having untutored in the former and unskilled in the latter. Even the idiot savant must ponder these grave issues. The authors are to be applauded, comest as thy haf, onto hallowed Earth of Berkeley and Harvard.

5 out of 5 stars Waiting for a Theory of Practice.......2000-07-11

Written by the two leading practitioners of New Historicism, this book is the most valuable reference up to date demonstrating the power, as well as the weaknesses, of this peculiar "method" of reading. The first three chapters on methodology advocate the immanence of (counter)historical particulars and anecdotes, which explains the authors' reluctance to endorse any transcendental abstraction of theory. Paradoxically, the historical sense as well as literary "taste" (the valuation of difference, details, ruptures) that Greenblatt and Gallagher embrace is recognisably shaped by contemporary theoretical interventions, but this debt to theory is obscured as a result of their disavowal of any "methodological directives." This obstinate disavowal, worse still, seems to join force with the conservative current of "Against Theory" in the name of history (the very motto put forward by some critics who are also related to New Historicism). The next four chapters are the "practice" part, where the authors obviously feel more at home. Their close reading and deft montage of a wide variety of discourses or artifices (drama, fiction, paintings, theological and economic debates, medical treatises...) is marvelous and dazzling, testifying how much New Historicism has widened the horizon of literary criticism. The juxtaposition of topics (the Host and the potato, the wicked sons in Hamlet and Great Expectations) also throws unexpected light on the materials. Yet the question remains: how to theorise further such montage or juxtaposition, if it is not entirely governed by whim?
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (The New Historicism : Studies in Cultural Poetics, 1)
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • Get over it!
  • May I have ashes on that cheesecake, please?
  • an excellent study of female hagiography
  • Very good read but rather long-winded
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (The New Historicism : Studies in Cultural Poetics, 1)
Caroline Walker Bynum
Manufacturer: University of California Press
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Binding: Paperback

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  5. Holy Anorexia Holy Anorexia

ASIN: 0520063295

Customer Reviews:

1 out of 5 stars Get over it!.......2006-05-01

There is a lot of hype surrounding this book. My professors seem to love it, though I do not know why. This book is based on totally fallacious reasoning and was written by a mediocre intellect. Let me explain. Bynum argues that medieval women like Catherine of Siena were not anorexic because anorexics today supposedly starve themselves for the sake of appearance. She does not seem to understand that anorexia is a disease; it is not about appearance not matter what sufferers of the disease my say is their inspiration. Ask any psychiatrist. Historians should realize that diseases exist whether or not people of the past put names to them or understood them. As tuberculosis remains tuberculosis over the years (not counting mutations and such), so do mental illness like anorexia. So, it is entirely possible that medieval women suffered from anorexia as easily as women of the present. I, personally, suffer from eating disorders and spent a good part of my life self-mutilating through cutting and burning, etc. I have been put in front of many therapists, so I think I know what I'm talking about when I say that, no matter the trigger, such things are diseases. This means that medieval women had religious piety as the concentration point of their eating problems, not that their affliction was that different from the anorexic of today.

Then, Bynum goes on and on to illustrate how women like Catherine of Siena associated food and Christ's body with the female body. But, we're not supposed to think of causing bodily suffering and the refusal to eat are a rejection of the female body! Why not?! Let's see... If the female body is food, the rejecting food does not symbolize a rejection of the female body. Women were suffering like Christ, right? Well, it was the female side of Christ that suffered. Why was it Christ's female side that had to be mutilated for the world to be saved? Instead of putzing around trying to make a name for yourself, why not answer the question of why the female body must be mutilated and made to suffer in order to gain holiness. She bases this part of her argument on the fact that many priests and religious officials had begun to support women more during the time of Catherine of Siena and others. Whatever. Today, there are all sorts of anti-anorexia influences, and have they stopped the disease? No! At best, they may have made some women and men to seek help for their problems. Besides, the Church still taught that the body of woman was the vehicle through which sin entered the world, no matter what else they may have been saying. And, there are ALWAYS people who resist change and prefer the "old ways" for many reasons, especially because the "old way" is comfortable to them. Also, women's spirtuality is not necessarily the same as Church teaching. While the Church definitely influenced spirituality, there is more than enough evidence that individual communities and persons formed their own traditions according to their needs. So, if a woman wants to become holy, what's going to influence her the most? Years of tradition and cultural mores as well as her own conscience, or priests who may or may not have preached some new material (mainly aimed at women who were wives and mothers, not women seeking a religious life).

The reason why Bynum wrote this book was to waste all of our time trying to become a big wig in the world of history. Unfortunately, historians, being mediocre intellects most of the time (and I can say that as a professional historian myself) cannot seem to see straight through it. I've noticed that whatever seems to be the new, happening thing in history tends to get this kind of hype no matter what uninspired trash is produced. Bynum wrote this when women's history was a big field, which explains history professors' fascination with the book. The only other reason why I can see that historians might actually buy the arguments in this book is because they are so hung up on historical context that they fail to see that, though context is important, a) people do have some modicum of free will, and b) some things transcend time.

I'll probably get in trouble for writing this, but I really do not care. People will flame any books I will write anyway because I'm trying to take the field in another direction. But I digress.

Don't read this book unless you must. If you have to read this book, be sure to take it with a grain of salt.

5 out of 5 stars May I have ashes on that cheesecake, please?.......2001-03-29

This is a great read. I don't care if you're interested in history in general, history of the catholic church, history of western mysticism or just looking for something offbeat and interesting: This is a fascinating book! The history of mysticism and western intellectual tradition as it is intertwined with food is certainly there but for the reader seeking just plain bizarre to our modern eyes goings-on, that is in this text as well. In fact, for someone looking for a jump start to their imagination for their own writing, this book is a real bucket of volts. Go read it. Have fun. But, don't try it at home.

5 out of 5 stars an excellent study of female hagiography.......1999-01-21

This book is truly an exciting text in the field of hagiography studies. It looks at the stories of female vitae and reads the themes behind them with regard to the issues of denial and spirituality. While in the end, Bynum might lean a bit too far towards a feminist self-image reading, nonetheless, for the most part the book is valuable, well-reasoned and shows the potentialities for scholars of ways to approach the large and somewhat heterogeneous corpus of vitae.

4 out of 5 stars Very good read but rather long-winded.......1998-10-23

Caroline Bynum's book, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, examines the importance of food for religious women in the Middle Ages. Although there has been other recent research into the lives of women saints and the way they dealt with food and fasting, for instance by scholars like Weinstein and Bell, as she mentions in the introduction, Bynum promises that in her book she will treat evidence in a different way, most importantly by focusing on the women's point of view. The first two chapters are an introduction to religious women in the Middle Ages and religious food practices of both women and men. Then Bynum turns specifically to women's religious food practices and in the next four chapters she gives a multitude of examples of different women and their different habits or even rituals concerning food. As she says in the introduction, Bynum uses examples from the lives of well known saints, like Elizabeth of Hungary, Lidwina of Schiedam, Columba of Rieti and Catherine of Siena, not because these stories reflect what were normal fasting habits in the Middle Ages, but because their lives are well documented and they would serve as role models for Medieval women. She gives detailed examples of (extreme) food asceticism, cases of inedia, women's devotion of the eucharist and not being able to eat anything but the consecrated host, eucharistic visions, food miracles and some very graphic examples of women eating and drinking the filth of the sick: Several of [Catherine of Siena's] hagiographers report that she twice forced herself to overcome nausea by thrusting her mouth into the putrifying breast of a dying woman or by drinking pus... She told Raymond: "Never in my life have I tasted any food and drink sweeter or more exquisite than this pus." (171-2). Bynum identifies the reasons for this fasting as being, among other things, ways to get closer to God by imitating the lifestyle and suffering of Christ. They would do penance for their sins and suffer to save themselves and other people from Purgatory. The reason why especially women fasted was because food and their own bodies were the only things women had control over and through that control they could manipulate their surroundings. Despite the promising title of the last part of the book: "The Explanation", the first chapter and a good part of the second and third chapters of this section are rather disappointing and cause some confusion. Chapter 6 deals with the parallels between modern eating disorders, like anorexia nervosa, and fasting or inedia in medieval women, even though Bynum states her reluctance to make this connection in the introduction. This reluctance is clearly present throughout the chapter, resulting in a narrative that skips from one subject to another. The second and third chapters of "The Explanation" consist mainly of a repetition of things that were said earlier in the book. However, in the two remaining chapters, Bynum raises some interesting issues of the meaning of the body, women as food and Symbolic Reversal. On the whole, the presentation of the book is excellent and the impressive amount of footnotes that take up more than one hundred pages shows it to be a carefully researched book. Apart from the mentioned 'problem areas' the book makes enjoyable reading and provides the reader with plenty of food for thought and further research.
The New Historicism
Average customer rating: Not rated
    The New Historicism
    Harold Veeser
    Manufacturer: Routledge
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    5. The Greenblatt Reader The Greenblatt Reader

    ASIN: 0415900700

    Book Description

    Following Clifford Geertz and other cultural anthropologists, the New Historicist critics have evolved a method for describing culture in action. Their "thick descriptions" seize upon an event or anecdote--colonist John Rolfe's conversation with Pocohontas's father, a note found among Nietzsche's papers to the effect that "I have lost my umbrella"--and re-read it to reveal through the analysis of tiny particulars the motive forces controlling a whole society. Contributors: Stephen J. Greenblatt, Louis A. Montrose, Catherine Gallagher, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Gerald Graff, Jean Franco, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Frank Lentricchia, Vincent Pecora, Jane Marcus, Jon Klancher, Jonathan Arac, Hayden White, Stanley Fish, Judith Newton, Joel Fineman, John Schaffer, Richard Terdiman, Donald Pease, Brooks Thomas.

    The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics
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      The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics
      Brook Thomas
      Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

      HistoriographyHistoriography | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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      ASIN: 0691015074

      Book Description

      In this book, Brook Thomas explores the new historicism and the challenges posed to it by a postmodern world that questions the very possibility of legitimate newness. Attempting to replace both the new critical formalism and the old historicism, the historicism distinguishes itself by its engagement with poststructuralism. Thomas expands upon this description by locating it within a tradition of pragmatic historiography within the United States.
      The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (The New Historicism : Studies in Cultural Poetics, 5)
      Average customer rating: 2 out of 5 stars
      • Mirror of Herodotus
      The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (The New Historicism : Studies in Cultural Poetics, 5)
      François Hartog
      Manufacturer: University of California Press
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Hardcover

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      Herodotus's great work is not only an account of the momentous historical conflict between the Greeks and the Persians but also the earliest sustained exploration in the West of the problem of cultural difference. François Hartog asks fundamental questions about how Herodotus represented this difference. How did he and his readers understand the customs and beliefs of those who were not Greek? How did the historian convince his readers that his account of other peoples was reliable? How is it possible to comprehend a way of life radically different from one's own? What are the linguistic, rhetorical, and philosophical means by which Herodotus fashions his text into a mirror of the marginal and unknown? In answering these questions, Hartog transforms our understanding of the "father of history." His Herodotus is less the chronicler of a victorious Greece than a brilliant writer in pursuit of otherness.

      Customer Reviews:

      2 out of 5 stars Mirror of Herodotus.......2002-11-12

      I read this book because I was interested in Herodotus' representation of the Scythians. The book had its interesting points, but it was a little intellectual, in the negative sense of that word. I often had the feeling that the writer was saying something important, but I missed his point. Over my head? Maybe. The representation of the other, of course, is the point, and the subject matter - Herodotus - is very appropriate too. But I actually feel Herodotus himself is a better commentator and feel that all Hartog accomplished was to make it sound pompous and obscure. Oh well, I guess I'd never cut it as a French intellectual!

      All the same, I would have ordered the book but for the hefty price tag, primarily because I am interested enough in the subject matter to give it a second, more careful read.
      The New Historicism Reader
      Average customer rating: Not rated
        The New Historicism Reader
        Harold Veeser
        Manufacturer: Routledge
        ProductGroup: Book
        Binding: Paperback

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        ASIN: 0415907829

        Book Description

        Can a movement that denies its existence have its canonical instances? Readers may judge for themselves whether New Historicism is a phrase without a referent. The New Historicism Reader documents the New Historicists' multiplex achievement, spanning Renaissance and Reagan studies, American realism, English romanticism, gender studies, feminism, and communications and rhetoric.

        The essays encompass astounding variety: a wolfish High Constable dresses as a sheep to greet Queen Elizabeth; Jewish nationalism corrects Daniel Deronda's sinister world of art, money, and reckless women; Justices Warren and Brandeis team up with Henry James to construct American privacy; the story of a two-penny nail drives Egyptian foreign policy; a forgotten Dirty Harry motif wins George Bush an election. But as different as these essays may be, each one reads an instant when selves crossed through various zones and hybridized in a fractured field. Each essay possesses the New Historicism's signal virtue, what one critic called its "drop-dead elegant prose."

        Harold Veeser's introduction locates allies and opponents, surveys related fields, and identifies now-emerging New Historicist themes: the go-between, hybridization, embarrassment, autobiographical moves, and personal writing. His selected bibliography gives access to an opulent literature devoted to theorizing and attacking New Historicism, a phrase that--if it lacks a referent--has no want of references. In short, The Reader offers everything required to know, teach, and practice the New Historicism.

        Contributors: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Joel Fineman, Catherine Gallagher, Jane Gallop, Marjorie Garber, Stephen Greenblatt, Barbara Harlow, Louis Montrose, Walter Benn Michaels, Stephen Orgel, Donald Pease, Michael Rogin, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

        Political Philosophy 1: Rights--The New Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns (Ferry, Luc//Political Philosophy)
        Average customer rating: Not rated
          Political Philosophy 1: Rights--The New Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns (Ferry, Luc//Political Philosophy)
          Luc Ferry
          Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
          ProductGroup: Book
          Binding: Hardcover

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          ASIN: 0226244717

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          In recent years, an increasing number of thinkers have grown suspicious of the Enlightenment ideals of progress, reason, and freedom. These critics, many inspired by Martin Heidegger, have attacked modern philosophy's attempt to ground a vision of the world upon the liberty of the human subject. Pointing to the rise of totalitarian regimes in this century, they argue that the Enlightenment has promoted the enslavement of human beings rather than their freedom.

          In this first of four volumes that aim to revitalize the fundamental values of modern political thought, one of the leading figures in the contemporary revival of liberalism in France responds to these critics and offers a philosophically cogent defense of a humanistic modernity. Luc Ferry reexamines the philosopical basis of the contemporary retreat from the Enlightenment and then suggests his own alternative, which defends the ideals of modernity while giving due consideration to the objections of the critics.
          Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1920 (New Historicism-Studies in Cultural Poetics , No 31)
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            Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1920 (New Historicism-Studies in Cultural Poetics , No 31)
            Catherine Gallagher
            Manufacturer: University of California Press
            ProductGroup: Book
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            Exploring the careers of five influential women writers of the Restoration and eighteenth century, Catherine Gallagher reveals the connections between the increasing prestige of female authorship, the economy of credit and debt, and the rise of the novel. The "nobodies" of her title are not ignored, silenced, or anonymous women. Instead, they are literal nobodies: the abstractions of authorial personae, printed books, intellectual property rights, literary reputations, debts and obligations, and fictional characters. These are the exchangeable tokens of modern authorship that lent new cultural power to the increasing number of women writers through the eighteenth century. Women writers, Gallagher discovers, invented and popularized numerous ingenious similarities between their gender and their occupation. The terms "woman," "author," "marketplace," and "fiction" come to define each other reciprocally.
            Gallagher analyzes the provocative plays of Aphra Behn, the scandalous court chronicles of Delarivier Manley, the properly fictional nobodies of Charlotte Lennox and Frances Burney, and finally Maria Edgeworth's attempts in the late eighteenth century to reform the unruly genre of the novel.
            Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (New Historicism-Studies in Cultural Poetics , No 25)
            Average customer rating: 3 out of 5 stars
            • Post-modern rhetoric with pre-modern methodology
            • the Talmud through a feminist, po-mo lens
            • brilliant speculation
            • A taboo subject approached openly
            Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (New Historicism-Studies in Cultural Poetics , No 25)
            Daniel Boyarin
            Manufacturer: University of California Press
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            1. Women and Jewish Law: The Essential Texts, Their History, and Their Relevance for Today Women and Jewish Law: The Essential Texts, Their History, and Their Relevance for Today
            2. Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Contraversions - Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture and Society , No 8) Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Contraversions - Critical Studies in Jewish Literature, Culture and Society , No 8)
            3. Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View
            4. Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America
            5. Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition

            ASIN: 0520203364

            Book Description

            Beginning with a startling endorsement of the patristic view of Judaism--that it was a "carnal" religion, in contrast to the spiritual vision of the Church--Daniel Boyarin argues that rabbinic Judaism was based on a set of assumptions about the human body that were profoundly different from those of Christianity. The body--specifically, the sexualized body--could not be renounced, for the Rabbis believed as a religious principle in the generation of offspring and hence in intercourse sanctioned by marriage.
            This belief bound men and women together and made impossible the various modes of gender separation practiced by early Christians. The commitment to coupling did not imply a resolution of the unequal distribution of power that characterized relations between the sexes in all late-antique societies. But Boyarin argues strenuously that the male construction and treatment of women in rabbinic Judaism did not rest on a loathing of the female body. Thus, without ignoring the currents of sexual domination that course through the Talmudic texts, Boyarin insists that the rabbinic account of human sexuality, different from that of the Hellenistic Judaisms and Pauline Christianity, has something important and empowering to teach us today.

            Customer Reviews:

            1 out of 5 stars Post-modern rhetoric with pre-modern methodology.......2005-05-13

            Boyarin fails miserably in this tome to make use of the critical scholarship that has been written in the past 30 years on the rabbis and on rabbinic literature. He speaks of Hellenistic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism rather than of the individual authors and editors of texts who lived distinct lives and thought distinct thoughts. To make the error clear: what Boyarin does is equivalent to someone writing a book in the future about "Jewish" views of sex in 21st century America and citing Boyarin and Boteach (Kosher Sex) without distinguishing who they were.

            1 out of 5 stars the Talmud through a feminist, po-mo lens.......2004-04-20

            you don't have to be a radical traditionalist to understand how Boyarin deliberately misinterprets the Talmud and projects onto it his own feminist, post-modernist ideas.

            5 out of 5 stars brilliant speculation.......2002-01-14

            Boyarin manages to cover some very interesting Talmudic material on gender and sexuality in an intelligent and informed manner. He also has a deep understanding of cultural theory, and argues for a number of exceptionally striking theses regarding Talmuds' (deliberate plural: he contrasts the Babylonian Talmud with the Jerusalem or Land of Israel Talmud) relationships to sexuality, gender, and embodiment. HOWEVER, Boyarin's claims are so wide-ranging and fundamental that it would require the study of a great deal of additional primary textual material to really confirm them in a responsible fashion.

            5 out of 5 stars A taboo subject approached openly.......2000-12-31

            This books approaches in a very open way the issue of sex in the Talmud. Not an easy thing to do... Yet it manages to do so well, without excessively offending one view or another. Through its approach, it probably expores one of the earliest expressions of feminism in Judaism.
            Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America (The New Historicism, No 14)
            Average customer rating: Not rated
              Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America (The New Historicism, No 14)
              Gillian Brown
              Manufacturer: University of California Press
              ProductGroup: Book
              Binding: Paperback

              GeneralGeneral | Classics | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
              GeneralGeneral | History & Criticism | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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              GeneralGeneral | Criticism & Theory | History & Criticism | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
              PersonalityPersonality | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
              GeneralGeneral | Gender Studies | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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              All TitlesAll Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
              Literature & FictionLiterature & Fiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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              Similar Items:
              1. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860
              2. The Feminization of American Culture The Feminization of American Culture
              3. Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America
              4. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America
              5. Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America

              ASIN: 0520080998

              Book Description

              Gillian Brown's book probes the key relationship between domestic ideology and formulations of the self in nineteenth-century America. Arguing that domesticity institutes gender, class, and racial distinctions that govern masculine as well as feminine identity, Brown brilliantly alters, for literary critics, feminists, and cultural historians, the critical perspective from which nineteenth-century American literature and culture have been viewed.
              In this study of the domestic constitution of individualism, Brown traces how the values of interiority, order, privacy, and enclosure associated with the American home come to define selfhood in general. By analyzing writings by Stowe, Hawthorne, Melville, Fern, and Gilman, and by examining other contemporary cultural modes--abolitionism, consumerism, architecture, interior decorating, motherhood, mesmerism, hysteria, and agoraphobia--she reconfigures the parameters of both domesticity and the patterns of self it fashions. Unfolding a representational history of the domestic, Brown's work offers striking new readings of the literary texts as well as of the cultural contexts that they embody.

              Books:

              1. Protecting Your Home From Spiritual Darkness
              2. Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd: The inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes prepared in July 1600, edited from Stowe MS 557 in the British Library, MS LR 2/121 in the Public Record Office, London, and MS V.b.72 in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC
              3. Residential and Light Commercial Construction Standards: The All-In-One, Authoritative Reference Compiled from Major Building Codes, Recognized Trade Custom, Industry Standards
              4. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
              5. Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America
              6. South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias
              7. Sugar Shock!: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life-- and How YouCan Get Back on Track
              8. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties
              9. The Absorbent Mind
              10. The Annotated Pride and Prejudice

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