Beyond romantic ecocriticism

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Helen S. Lang

In this book Helen S. Lang enters into the point of view of the ancient world to explain how they saw the world and to show what arguments were used by Aristotle to support this view. Lang demonstrates a new method for reading the texts of Aristotle by revealing a continuous line of argument running from the Physics to De Caelo. The author analyzes a group of arguments that are almost always treated in isolation from one another and reveals their elegance and coherence. She concludes by asking why these arguments remain interesting even though we now believe they are absolutely wrong and have been replaced by better ones. The author establishes that we must rethink our approach to Aristotle's physical science and Aristotelian texts. In so doing, her book will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking among philosophers, classicists, and historians of science.

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Nancy Armstrong

Nancy Armstrong explores how Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson created unforgettable protagonists who could overcome the limits of their social positions and how later, Victorian authors like Mary Shelley repackaged individuality in monstrous forms that threaten British society with collapse.

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Robert B. Pippin

"In Henry James and Modern Moral Life, Professor Robert Pippin argues that James's fiction reveals a sophisticated theory of moral understanding and moral motivation. Pippin claims that James is engaged in a distinctive kind of original thinking and reflecting on modern moral life in his novels and short stories.". "Pippin further contends that James, in his sensitivity to the precarious and confusing situation of moral understanding in modern societies, both avoids skepticism and powerfully presents the nature of moral claims and dependence.". "Professor Pippin offers new interpretations of Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, and several of James's short stories, including The Beast in the Jungle and The Turn of the Screw, to support his case for James's moral philosophy."--BOOK JACKET.

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Sandra McColl

Music Criticism in Vienna 1896-1897 records a culture in which music criticism had achieved the status of a minor art-form. The period covered - October 1896 to December 1897 - was an eventful time in Vienna. Bruckner died, then Brahms; Mahler arrived; premieres of works by Czech composers coincided with increasing tension in the Empire between Czechs and Germans; Puccini's La Boheme reached Vienna on its sensational progress around the world; and the great programme music debate continued. These events and issues were recorded and debated by some two dozen critics ranging from Eduard Hanslick, widely credited with (and blamed for) raising music criticism to an art, to Heinrich Schenker. The focus of Sandra McColl's book is unashamedly on the critics themselves, and her reconstruction of the climate of debate about whatever music or musicians came to their notice. She illuminates the intellectual climate in which the music was created, performed, and received, and provides a foundation for the study of music criticism in the post-Hanslick generation.