In Praise Of Nonsense

Author : Winfried Menninghaus
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 1999-10-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780804783064

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In Praise of Nonsense by Winfried Menninghaus Pdf

Shells, leafwork, picture frames, hummingbirds, wallpaper decorations, hems of clothing—such are the examples Kant's Critique of Judgment offers for a "free" and purely aesthetic beauty. Menninghaus's book demonstrates that all these examples refer to a widely unknown debate on the arabesque and that Kant, in displacing it, addresses genuinely "modern" phenomena. The early Romantic poetics and literature of the arabesque follow and radicalize Kant's move. Menninghaus shows parergonality and "nonsense" to be two key features in the spread of the arabesque from architecture and the fine arts to philosophy and finally to literature. On the one hand, comparative readings of the parergon in Enlightenment aesthetics, Kant, and Schlegel reveal the importance of this term for establishing the very notion of a self-reflective work of art. On the other hand, drawing on Kant's posthumous anthropological notebooks, Menninghaus extrapolates an entire Kantian theory of what it means to produce nonsense and why the Critique of Judgment defines genius precisely through the power (as well as the dangers) of doing so. Ludwig Tieck's 1797 rewriting of Charles Perrault's famous Bluebeard tale (1697) explicitly claims to be an "arabesque" book "without any sense and coherence." Menninghaus's close reading of this capricious narrative reveals a specifically Romantic—as opposed, say, to a Victorian or dadaistic—type of nonsense. Benjamin's as well as Propp's, Lévi-Strauss's, and Meletinskij's oppositions of myth and fairy tale lend additional credit to a Romantic poetics that inaugurates "universal poetry" while performing a bizarre trajectory through arabesque ornament, nonsense, parergonality, and the fairy tale.

Author : Ted Hiebert
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2012-06-28
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780773587335

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In Praise of Nonsense by Ted Hiebert Pdf

What is truth in the postmodern age? The artistic generation of the twentieth century has grown up immersed in the delirious imagination of postmodern thought, which insists upon the ultimate uncertainty of meaning and that there is no self-evident truth. In Praise of Nonsense explores the possibilities and parameters of a postmodern imagination freed from the philosophical responsibilities of fiction, fact, and replication of lived experience. Mobilizing an array of scholars and contemporary artists, this study examines postmodern thinking through the lenses of identity and visual culture. Speculative, critical, and always creative in its approach, In Praise of Nonsense focuses on theories of disappearance, irony, and nonsense, where the pleasures of the imaginary give rise to artistic inspiration. When truth is unhinged, so is falsity, and all artistic thinking is called into question. Ted Hiebert takes on the ambitious project of holding postmodernism accountable for its own conclusions while also considering how those conclusions might still be given philosophical and artistic form.

Author : Jamie Holmes
Publisher : Crown
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2016-10-11
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780385348393

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Nonsense by Jamie Holmes Pdf

An illuminating look at the surprising upside of ambiguity—and how, properly harnessed, it can inspire learning, creativity, even empathy Life today feels more overwhelming and chaotic than ever. Whether it’s a confounding work problem or a faltering relationship or an unclear medical diagnosis, we face constant uncertainty. And we’re continually bombarded with information, much of it contradictory. Managing ambiguity—in our jobs, our relationships, and daily lives—is quickly becoming an essential skill. Yet most of us don’t know where to begin. As Jamie Holmes shows in Nonsense, being confused is unpleasant, so we tend to shutter our minds as we grasp for meaning and stability, especially in stressful circumstances. We’re hard-wired to resolve contradictions quickly and extinguish anomalies. This can be useful, of course. When a tiger is chasing you, you can’t be indecisive. But as Nonsense reveals, our need for closure has its own dangers. It makes us stick to our first answer, which is not always the best, and it makes us search for meaning in the wrong places. When we latch onto fast and easy truths, we lose a vital opportunity to learn something new, solve a hard problem, or see the world from another perspective. In other words, confusion—that uncomfortable mental place—has a hidden upside. We just need to know how to use it. This lively and original book points the way. Over the last few years, new insights from social psychology and cognitive science have deepened our understanding of the role of ambiguity in our lives and Holmes brings this research together for the first time, showing how we can use uncertainty to our advantage. Filled with illuminating stories—from spy games and doomsday cults to Absolut Vodka’s ad campaign and the creation of Mad Libs—Nonsense promises to transform the way we conduct business, educate our children, and make decisions. In an increasingly unpredictable, complex world, it turns out that what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.

Author : Eric Carle
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 23 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2022-06-07
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9780593659618

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The Nonsense Show by Eric Carle Pdf

A TIME Magazine Top 10 Children's Book of 2015! Ducks growing out of bananas? A mouse catching a cat? What’s wrong with this book from the creator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Yes, there’s something strange, something funny and even downright preposterous on every page of this book. But it’s not a mistake – it’s nonsense! And it’s also surrealism. Nonsense lies at the heart of many beloved nursery rhymes. Children readily accept odd statements like “the cow jumped over the moon” and “the dish ran away with the spoon.” This fanciful bending of reality is also basic to surrealism. In this book, nonsense and surrealism combine to spark creativity and imagination. What’s true? What’s impossible? What’s absolutely absurd? From Eric Carle, creator of the classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, comes a book to make children laugh and think, preparing them for a lifetime of loving both words and art. Following on the heels of The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse (an homage to the artist Franz Marc and expressionism) and Friends, with its semi-abstract artwork, The Nonsense Show forms a trilogy of sorts, dedicated to introducing young readers to different styles of artwork without ever overlooking the need to, first and foremost, appeal to children and their love of play. One of the true legends and pioneers of picture book making continues to expand and challenge the genre. Praise for The Nonsense Show * "Carle creates fun and laughter in this homage to the surrealist artist René Magritte. [P]erfect for storytimes and silly times all round. Carle hits it out of the nonsense park!"–Booklist, starred review * "A sure hit as a read-aloud and a definite purchase for picture book collections."–School Library Journal, starred review * "A picture book made to incite pleasure and joy."–Kirkus Reviews, starred review * "[The Nonsense Show], with its cleanly designed white pages, makes the unexpected elements of the imagery stand out and prompts questions and wonder."–Horn Book, starred review

Author : Fred Moten
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2018-07-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780822372028

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Stolen Life by Fred Moten Pdf

"Taken as a trilogy, consent not to be a single being is a monumental accomplishment: a brilliant theoretical intervention that might be best described as a powerful case for blackness as a category of analysis."—Brent Hayes Edwards, author of Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination In Stolen Life—the second volume in his landmark trilogy consent not to be a single being—Fred Moten undertakes an expansive exploration of blackness as it relates to black life and the collective refusal of social death. The essays resist categorization, moving from Moten's opening meditation on Kant, Olaudah Equiano, and the conditions of black thought through discussions of academic freedom, writing and pedagogy, non-neurotypicality, and uncritical notions of freedom. Moten also models black study as a form of social life through an engagement with Fanon, Hartman, and Spillers and plumbs the distinction between blackness and black people in readings of Du Bois and Nahum Chandler. The force and creativity of Moten's criticism resonate throughout, reminding us not only of his importance as a thinker, but of the continued necessity of interrogating blackness as a form of sociality.

Author : Michael LeMahieu
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2013-10
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199890408

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Fictions of Fact and Value by Michael LeMahieu Pdf

Fictions of Fact and Value looks at logical positivism's major influence on the development of postwar American fiction, charting a literary and philosophical genealogy that has been absent from criticism on the American novel since 1945.

Author : Ewa Borkowska,Tomasz Burzyński
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2011-07-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781443832533

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The Surplus of Culture by Ewa Borkowska,Tomasz Burzyński Pdf

This multifaceted volume presents the elusive surplus of culture in the spotlight of theory and academic practice. Despite its overtly economic implications, the concept alludes to the added value of sense, common sense and nonsense which is represented as languages of irony, irrationality and absurdity potentially subverting traditional and mainstream “regimes” of culture. Consequently, the “moment of surplus” is inherent in critical interpretation in which supposedly well-entrenched notions suddenly reveal their implicitly shattering and subversive nature. The surplus of culture dwells at the risky intersection of untamed interpretation and tradition. It is the space of the “third” in which literary canons are re-visited, language reveals its hidden political agendas, the Orient reclaims its own cognitive perspective and established structures of cognition are questioned in the tragic-comic gesture of insight. The volume is a must for scholars and researchers in the fields of cultural studies, literature and arts as well as literary theory.

Author : Alan Sokal,Jean Bricmont
Publisher : Picador
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2014-01-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781466862401

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Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal,Jean Bricmont Pdf

In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy. Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.

Author : Charlton Payne,Lucas Thorpe
Publisher : University Rochester Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : History
ISBN : 9781580463874

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Kant and the Concept of Community by Charlton Payne,Lucas Thorpe Pdf

An interdisciplanary collection of essays focused on Kant's work on the concept of community. The concept of community plays a central role in Kant's theoretical philosophy, his practical philosophy, his aesthetics, and his religious thought. Kant uses community in many philosophical contexts: the category of community introduced in his table of categories in the Critique of Pure Reason; the community of substances in the third analogy; the realm of ends as an ethical community; the state and the public sphere as political communities; the sensus communis of the Critique of Judgment; and the idea of the church as a religious community in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Given Kant's status as a systematic philosopher, volume editorsPayne and Thorpe maintain that any examination of the concept of community in one area of his work can be understood only in relation to the others. In this volume, then, scholars from different disciplines -- specializing in various aspects of and approaches to Kant's work -- offer their interpretations of Kant on the concept of community. The various essays further illustrate the central relevance and importance of Kant's conception of community to contemporary debates in various fields. Charlton Payne is postdoctoral fellow at Plattform Weltregionen und Interaktionen, Universität Erfurt, Germany. Lucas Thorpe is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy atBogaziçi University, Turkey. Contributors: Ronald Beiner, Jeffrey Edwards, Michael Feola, Paul Guyer, Jane Kneller, Béatrice Longuenesse, Jan Mieszkowski, Onora O'Neill, Charlton Payne, Susan M. Shell, Lucas Thorpe, Eric Watkins, Allen W. Wood

Author : Tilde Bak Halvgaard
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2016-05-02
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004309494

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Linguistic Manifestations in the Trimorphic Protennoia and the Thunder: Perfect Mind by Tilde Bak Halvgaard Pdf

In Linguistic Manifestations in the Trimorphic Protennoia and the Thunder: Perfect Mind, Tilde Bak Halvgaard offers an analysis of these two Nag Hammadi texts against the background of ancient philosophy of language.

Author : Edward Lear
Publisher : Read Books Ltd
Page : 120 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2013-01-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781447481447

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Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear Pdf

Edward Lear's much celebrated book of nonsense is here reproduced with all the original pictures and verse and two autobiographical letters by the author. Children and adults alike will delight in the Limerick's that here abound. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Author : Cornelius WEBBE
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 1848
Category : Electronic
ISBN : BL:A0019507873

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Glances at Life in city and suburb ... Second series by Cornelius WEBBE Pdf

Author : Jan Mieszkowski
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780823225873

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Labors of Imagination by Jan Mieszkowski Pdf

Challenging prevailing assumptions about the relationship between language and politics, this book offers a compelling new account of aesthetic and economic thought since the eighteenth century. Mieszkowski explores the doctrines of productivity and interest in Romanticism and classical political economy, arguing that the critical force of any historical model of literature depends on its understanding of the distinction between intellectual and material labor. This provocative contribution to contemporary debates about culture and ideology will be important for scholars of literature, history, and political theory.

Author : Shai Secunda,Steven Fine
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 568 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2012-09-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789004235441

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Shoshannat Yaakov by Shai Secunda,Steven Fine Pdf

This work includes studies by leading scholars on Ancient Jewish and Iranian studies and essays that combine both fields in the new discipline of Irano-Talmudica.

Author : John G. Gager
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1999-10-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199881185

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Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World by John G. Gager Pdf

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, it was common practice to curse or bind an enemy or rival by writing an incantation on a tablet and dedicating it to a god or spirit. These curses or binding spells, commonly called defixiones were intended to bring other people under the power and control of those who commissioned them. More than a thousand such texts, written between the 5th Century B.C.E. and the 5th Century C.E., have been discovered from North Africa to England, and from Syria to Spain. Extending into every aspect of ancient life--athletic and theatrical competitions, judicial proceedings, love affairs, business rivalries, and the recovery of stolen property--they shed light on a new dimension of classical study previously inaccessible. Here, for the first time, these texts have been translated into English with a substantial translator's introduction revealing the cultural, social, and historical context for the texts. This book will interest historians, classicists, scholars of religion, and those concerned with ancient magic.