Robinson Estrangement and the Somatics of Literature

Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Brecht
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8018-9631-6
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society

Drawing together the estrangement theories of Viktor Shklovsky and Bertolt Brecht with Leo Tolstoy's theory of infection, Douglas Robinson studies the ways in which shared evaluative affect regulates both literary familiarity—convention and tradition—and modern strategies of alienation, depersonalization, and malaise.

This book begins with two assumptions, both taken from Tolstoy's late aesthetic treatise What Is Art? (1898): that there is a malaise in culture, and that literature's power to "infect" readers with the moral values of the author is a possible cure for this malaise. Exploring these ideas of estrangement within the contexts of earlier, contemporary, and later critical theory, Robinson argues that Shklovsky and Brecht follow Tolstoy in their efforts to fight depersonalization by imbuing readers with the transformative guidance of collectivized feeling. Robinson's somatic approach to literature offers a powerful alternative to depersonalizing structuralist and poststructuralist theorization without simply retreating into conservative rejection and reaction.

Both a comparative study of Russian and German literary-theoretical history and an insightful examination of the somatics of literature, this groundbreaking work provides a deeper understanding of how literature affects the reader and offers a new perspective on present-day problems in poststructuralist approaches to the human condition.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Robinson, Douglas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Semiotik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Zarazhenie: Tolstoy's Infection Theory
1. Tolstoy's Infection
The Disease
The Cure
Damasio's Somatic Theory
2. Tolstoy's Estrangement
Estrangement Of/From
Tolstoy's Depersonalization
Disinfecting the Infection Theory
Part II: Ostranenie: Shklovsky's Estrangement Theory
3. Shklovsky's Modernist Poetics
The Capacity to Flow
The Four Things
Restoring Sensation to Life
Deautomatization
4. Shklovsky's Hegelianism
Alienation
Work
Romantic Form
Alienated Labor
Part III: Verfremdung: Brecht's Estrangement Theory
5. Brecht's Modernist Marxism
Shklovskyan Ostranenie and the Politicization of Formalism
The German Tradition and the Alienation of Alienation
Chinese Acting and the Spatiotemporal Dialectic of Estrangement
Practical Work in the Theater: Empathy and Estrangement
Brecht's Infection Theory
Gestic Transformation
Conclusion: The Somatics of Literature
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Robinson, Douglas
Douglas Robinson is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi.