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For the last three decades or so, literary studies, especially those dealing with premodern texts, have been dominated by the New Historicist paradigm. This book is a collection of essays explores medieval and early modern Troilus-texts from Chaucer to Shakespeare. The contributions show how medieval and early modern fictions of Troy use love and other emotions as a means of approaching the problem of tradition. The book argues that by emphasizing Troilus's and Cressida's hopes and fears, Shakespeare sets in motion a triangle of narrative, emotion and temporality. It is a spectacle of which tells something about the play but also about the relation between anticipatory emotion and temporality. The sense of multiple literary futures is shaped by Shakespeare's Chaucer, and in particular by Troilus and Criseyde. The book argues that the play's attempted violence upon a prototypical form of historical time is in part an attack on the literary narratives. Criseyde's beauty is described many times. The characters' predilection for sententiousness unfolds gradually. Through Criseyde, Chaucer's Poet displaces authorial humility as arrogance. The Troilus and Criseyde/Cressida saga begins with Boccaccio, who isolates and expands the love affair between Troiolo and Criseida to vent his sexual frustration. The poem appears to be linking an awareness of history and its continuing influence and impact on the present to hermeneutical acts conspicuously gendered female. The main late medieval Troy tradition does two things: it represents ferocious military combat, and also practises ferocious literary combat against other, competing traditions of Troy.
, and finally the differing codes of honour in the Mediterranean, particularly in Cyprus. 60 Sexual crimes Sexual crimes were quite uncommon. 61 Life in the military was obviously isolating, leading to sexual frustration, yet in the case of homosexuality there was greater opportunity. In the absence of any studies on homosexuality in
Film has been around now for over a hundred years, so it is surprising that the nature of its relationship to literature is still an open question. The transfer of an 'original' (literary) text from one context of production to an (audio-visual) other has begun to attract academic attention. The ideological investments at stake in this process reveal themselves in the central critical category of adaptation studies: the notion of 'fidelity', or 'faithfulness to the text'. This book takes the question of fidelity as their primary critical point of reference. As a critical term, fidelity behaves anomalously. Brian Mcfarlane has shown that there is no reliable equation between fidelity and critical approval, infidelity and disapproval. It is fascinating to see that Alison Platt and Ian MacKillop are interested in what it is about the experience of reading a classic novel that its adaptation restores to us. The book presents a group of essays loosely clustered around the English literary canon and ordered according to its chronology, not that of the films in question. The inference we might draw from the essays is not merely that 'English literature' remains a productive frame of reference for the study of film. It is also, perhaps, that the study of film might now derive more benefit from a treaty of union than a war of independence.
themes and preoccupations that occur in A Passage to India and would ostensibly make him the ideal director for the subject: for example, the metaphor of hallucination and mirage for confused states, that one finds in Lawrence of Arabia (1962); the spirit of place that intoxicates and eroticises the foreigner, as in Summer Madness (1955); British repression, sexual frustration and consequent delirium, that Lean explored in Brief Encounter (1945), Great Expectations (1946) and Ryan's Daughter. 'What visions! What consummate craftsmanship!' exclaimed fellow filmmaker
girlfriend in the baths, who attempts to seduce him. Fixated on Susan, though, he is forever detached from what might appear to be a safe, familiar option. Rebuffing her, he remarks ‘the old scene seems so strange.’ Mike, then, is stranded, caught between a lost childhood and a corrupt older generation in an arrested youth marked by destructive sexual frustration and insecurity. Unlike the more radical elements of the counterculture, which elided amour fou with social revolution, or the humanistic dialogue established in Cat Stevens's ‘Father and Son
stomach (often exaggerated through low camera angles and profile shots) overshadows the rest of his body, especially his genitals. Thus, fatness is visually associated with his sexual frustration, not only because the fat body makes the penis shrivel in comparison, but because it also creates an uncomfortably obvious physical contrast between Torrente and the sultry women who surround him in his dreams. This is also clear in the famous opening credit segments. The credits are elaborate parodies of Hollywood sagas led by global icons of masculinity, such as James Bond
only. Through the omission of the G-major chord, the ‘a1’ music thwarts the harmonic resolution of the final chord of the ‘c’ music, which always occurs immediately prior to the ‘a1’ music. This action creates a very real sense of frustration, musically perceptible by the listener and in accordance with the song’s lyrical theme of sexual frustration. Clearly, ‘I Want The One I Can’t Have’ is among The Smiths’ most sophisticated songs formally and textually. What is particularly fascinating is how the song engages multiple levels of musical cognition (i.e. musical
ancestors.” Accordingly, “Conventional notions of monogamous, till-death-do-us-part marriage strain under the dead weight of a false narrative that insists we’re something else.” The campaign to obscure the “true nature of our species’ sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame.” If Ryan and Jethá are right, the prevailing social script that valorizes sexual monogamy probably should be revised. But not everyone is on board with their
Werewolf (Terence Fisher, 1961) – with this functioning as a counterpoint to, and in some ways a precondition of, the powerful male authority figures who were capable of successfully taking on the monsters. Weakness of this kind was usually associated with a surrender to sexual drives and desires, and although The Night Creatures removes I Am Legend ’s numerous references to Neville’s sexual frustration, its conception of Neville fits into this category. Neville is presented as largely reactive, prone to
The Troilus and Criseyde/Cressida saga is a perfect vehicle for tracing the history of the emotions, in that it offers an unparalleled darkening of mood over time. This saga begins with Boccaccio, who isolates and expands the love affair between Troiolo and Criseida to vent his sexual frustration. The conceit of the work, as laid out in its prose prologue, is that