Situated Utterances: Texts, Bodies, and Cultural Representations

Harry Berger

Published by Fordham University Press 2005

Situated Utterances

Texts, Bodies, and Cultural Representations

Harry Berger

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823292592

Overview
Contents

About this book

Berger describes himself as “a reconstructed old New Critic,” and his publications over the past fifty years have centered on investigations of the ways in which texts represent both themselves and their situations of utterance. The thirteen chapters of the present book illustrate the range of his inquiry across several cultures and disciplines. They also demonstrate the interpretive richness, the theoretical acumen, and the energetic prose that characterize the work of one of America’s premier “close readers.” Situated Utterances is divided into four parts. In Part One Berger designs an analytical model of New Criticism and shows how it was dismantled during the decades after the Second World War. He then proposes a reconstructed model in which the practice of ironic and suspicious “close reading” may be directed toward interactions among bodies, texts, and countertexts in different cultural settings. Part Two demonstrates this practice in studies of specific works in three genres: the pastoral Idylls of Theocritus, Edmund Spenser’s epic, The Faerie Queene, and the Diaries of Samuel Pepys. The scope of the practice is broadened in Part Three to the connection between cultural representations and institutional change, a connection explored in four chapters that successively examine precapitalist forms of representation, the Old Testament, Beowulf, and the conflict between nakedness and nudity in Christian conceptions of the body. Part Four consists in three chapters on Plato’s dialogues, which Berger interprets as critical of the general situation of utterance in a predominantly oral culture. He argues that Plato uses the resources of writing to depict the heroic pathos of a Socrates whose method and message are defeated by the politics of the oral medium. Situated Utterances concludes with “A Conspectus of Critical Moves: The Eleven-Step Program.” This is a summary account of the interpretive strategies put into play by the author throughout his long career.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Judith H. Anderson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part one. Situating Utterance
One. The Interpretive Shuttle: The Structure of Critical Practice after World War II Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Two. Bodies and Texts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
Part two. Situating Agency: Texts against Countertexts
Three. The Origins of Bucolic Representation: Disenchantment and Revision in Theocritus’s Seventh Idyll Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
Four. Narrative as Rhetoric in The Faerie Queene Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Five. The Pepys Show: Ghostwriting and Documentary Desire in The Diary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
Part three. Situating History: Contexts as Countertexts
Six. From Body to Cosmos: The Dynamics of Representation in Precapitalist Society Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Seven. The Lie of the Land: The Text beyond Canaan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Eight. Social Structure as Doom: The Limits of Heroism in Beowulf Harry Berger Jr. and H. Marshall Leicester Jr. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321
Nine. Fiction and Facticity: Reflections on Christian Nudity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	363
Part four. Situating Socrates: The Sublation of Socratic Utterance in Plato’s Dialogues
Ten. Facing Sophists: Socrates’ Charismatic Bondage in Protagoras Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
Eleven. Phaedrus and the Politics of Inscription Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415
Twelve. The Athenian Terrorist: Plato’s Portrait of Critias Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	455
Part five. Conclusion: Situating Interpretation
Thirteen. Making Interpretation Manageable: An Eight-Step Program Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	491
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	517
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	569

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 396

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9780823292592