Clayton Koelb's Books

Inventions of Reading

Rhetoric and the Literary Imagination

By: Clayton Koelb

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Inventions of Reading

Rhetoric and the Literary Imagination

By: Clayton Koelb

Where do writers of fiction get their ideas? Clayton Koelb here takes issue with those who regard inspiration or imitation as primary forces influencing literary invention. He finds that another mechanism, which he calls "rhetorical construction," underlies much fiction and some nonfiction as well. Rhetorical construction, Koelb says, is a way of producing writing out of reading. The rhetorical writer begins by discovering an interpretive crux in a familiar text-a passage from the Bible, for example, or a commonplace expression—and then proceeds to imagine a fictional situation in which all the meanings of the passage, contradictory though they may seem, may be realized. According to Koelb, "inventions of reading" do not stop with the discovery of the eternal and inevitable deconstructibility of language; they somehow generate an urge to put language back together through the invention of a fictional world. Among the texts he discusses are writings by Boccaccio, Rabelais, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Hawthorne, Hans Christian Andersen Nietzsche, Kafka, Calvino, and Flannery O'Connor.

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Page Count

296

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

150174397X

ISBN 13

9781501743979

The Incredulous Reader

Literature and the Function of Disbelief

By: Clayton Koelb

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The Incredulous Reader

Literature and the Function of Disbelief

By: Clayton Koelb

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248

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501743996

ISBN 13

9781501743993

The Comparative Perspective on Literature

Approaches to Theory and Practice

By: Clayton Koelb

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The Comparative Perspective on Literature

Approaches to Theory and Practice

By: Clayton Koelb

Few would deny that comparative literature is rapidly moving from the periphery toward the center of literary studies in North America, but many are still unsure just what it is. The Comparative Perspective on Literature shows by means of twenty-two exemplary essays by many of the most distinguished scholars in the field how comparative literature as a discipline is conceived of and practiced in the 1980s. Nearly all of them published here for the first time, the essays discuss and themselves reflect significant changes at the core of the field as well as evolving notions as to what comparative literature is and should be. The volume editors, Clayton Koelb and Susan Noakes, have included essays that address the scope and concerns of comparative literature today, historical and international contexts of the field, and the relationship of literary criticism to other disciplines, as well as affording comparative perspectives on current critical issues.

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Page Count

396

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501743988

ISBN 13

9781501743986

Kafka's Rhetoric

The Passion of Reading

By: Clayton Koelb

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Kafka's Rhetoric

The Passion of Reading

By: Clayton Koelb

In the first book to study Franz Kafka from the perspective of modern rhetorical theory, Clayton Koelb explores such questions as how Kafka understood the reading process, how he thematized the problematic of reading, and how his highly distinctive style relates to what Koelb describes as the "passion of reading.

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Page Count

283

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501745964

ISBN 13

9781501745966

Legendary Figures

Ancient History in Modern Novels

By: Clayton Koelb

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Legendary Figures

Ancient History in Modern Novels

By: Clayton Koelb

Legendary Figures examines revolutionary views of the past that have played a crucial role in European and American literature of the last 150 years. Clayton Koelb traces these new approaches to history through an impressive range of novels,øfrom Flaubert?s Salammb– to Christa Wolf?s Cassandra. Koelb argues that this new ?historical sense,? which arose in the mid?nineteenth century, gained eloquent expression in Flaubert?s writings. What is crucial about the new historical sense is that it views the past as essentially ?alien? and ?other.? The connection between past and present may be powerful, but it is always indirect and difficult to negotiate. As a result, the past seems exotic and unattainable, the object of nostalgia and desire. Koelb distinguishes this sense of history, with its persistent discontinuities between past and present, from the more continuous and progressive views of history of novelists like Sir Walter Scott and such philosophers as Hegel, Marx, and Luk¾cs. In their writings, history ?proceeds according to the laws of cause and effect, and each epoch can be understood as both the result of the previous one and the cause of the next.? In contrast, the modernist writers that Koelb examines?Flaubert, Pater, Mann, Broch, Wilder, Yourcenar, and Wolf?imagine a past that is ?mythic? and ?legendary? and thus a metaphor for everything distant, complicated, unattainable, and unknowable.

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Page Count

228

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803227396

ISBN 13

9780803227392

Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

By: Clayton Koelb

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Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

By: Clayton Koelb

Franz Kafka is one of the most widely taught, and read, writers in world literature. Readers encountering texts like 'The Metamorphosis' and The Trial for the first time are frequently perplexed by his often intentionally weird writing. Some might say that Kafka's enduring achievement has been to make his readers love being perplexed. As much of Kafka's writing is designed to perplex the reader, this guide helps the reader understand why and how perplexity has been deliberately created by Kafka's text and to realize what the uses of such perplexity might be. The book guides readers through their first encounters with Kafka and introduces the problems involved in reading his texts, the nature of his texts from the key novels and novellas to letters and professional writings, his life as a writer and different approaches to reading Kafka.

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Page Count

193

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1441171576

ISBN 13

9781441171573

Legendary Figures

Ancient History in Modern Novels

By: Clayton Koelb

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Legendary Figures

Ancient History in Modern Novels

By: Clayton Koelb

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228

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U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803227396

ISBN 13

9780803227392

A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia

By: Richard T. Gray,Ruth V. Gross,Rolf J. Goebel,Clayton Koelb

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A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia

By: Richard T. Gray,Ruth V. Gross,Rolf J. Goebel,Clayton Koelb

Known for depicting alienation, frustration, and the victimization of the individual by impenetrable bureaucracies, Kafka's works have given rise to the term Kafkaesque. This encyclopedia details Kafka's life and writings. Included are more than 800 alphabetically arranged entries on his works, characters, family members and acquaintances, themes, and other topics. Most of the entries cite works for further reading, and the Encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography.

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Page Count

392

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0313061424

ISBN 13

9780313061424

Inventions of Reading

Rhetoric and the Literary Imagination

By: Clayton Koelb

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Inventions of Reading

Rhetoric and the Literary Imagination

By: Clayton Koelb

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296

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Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

150174397X

ISBN 13

9781501743979

Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

By: Clayton Koelb

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Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

By: Clayton Koelb

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193

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Bloomsbury Publishing

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ISBN 10

1441171576

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9781441171573

The Revivifying Word

Literature, Philosophy, and the Theory of Life in Europe's Romantic Age

By: Clayton Koelb

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The Revivifying Word

Literature, Philosophy, and the Theory of Life in Europe's Romantic Age

By: Clayton Koelb

Reading as key to the mysterious relation between lifeless material bodies and living, animate beings in Romantic fiction and thought.What is not Life that really is? asked Coleridge, struggling, like many poets, philosophers, and scientists of Europe''s Romantic age, to formulate a theory of life that explained the mysterious relation between dead material bodies and living, animate beings. Romantic intellectuals found a key to this mystery surprisingly close at hand: the process by which dead matter could come to life must be something like the process of reading. The Revivifying Word examines the reanimating acts of reading that became a central focus of attention for Romantic writers. German theorists, building on the Apostle Paul''s assertion that the dead letter can be revivified by the livingspirit, proposed a permeable, legible boundary between the living and the dead. This inaugurated a revolution in European aesthetics, implanting the germ of an extraordinarily productive narrative idea that enriched Romantic literature for decades. Poets and novelists created a large cast of characters who crossed the boundary between death and life with the help of some form of reading: figures like Keats''s Glaucus, Kleist''s Elizabeth Kohlhaas, Shelley''sFrankenstein (and the monster he creates), Maturin''s Melmoth, Poe''s Madeline Usher, and Gautier''s Spirite. Clayton Koelb demonstrates that such fictions offer a nuanced consideration of the most urgent question facing any theoryof life: how do material bodies come to acquire, to lose, and then perhaps to regain the immaterial intellectual/spiritual quality that defines animate beings? Clayton Koelb is Guy B. Johnson Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Romantic literature for decades. Poets and novelists created a large cast of characters who crossed the boundary between death and life with the help of some form of reading: figures like Keats''s Glaucus, Kleist''s Elizabeth Kohlhaas, Shelley''sFrankenstein (and the monster he creates), Maturin''s Melmoth, Poe''s Madeline Usher, and Gautier''s Spirite. Clayton Koelb demonstrates that such fictions offer a nuanced consideration of the most urgent question facing any theoryof life: how do material bodies come to acquire, to lose, and then perhaps to regain the immaterial intellectual/spiritual quality that defines animate beings? Clayton Koelb is Guy B. Johnson Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Romantic literature for decades. Poets and novelists created a large cast of characters who crossed the boundary between death and life with the help of some form of reading: figures like Keats''s Glaucus, Kleist''s Elizabeth Kohlhaas, Shelley''sFrankenstein (and the monster he creates), Maturin''s Melmoth, Poe''s Madeline Usher, and Gautier''s Spirite. Clayton Koelb demonstrates that such fictions offer a nuanced consideration of the most urgent question facing any theoryof life: how do material bodies come to acquire, to lose, and then perhaps to regain the immaterial intellectual/spiritual quality that defines animate beings? Clayton Koelb is Guy B. Johnson Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Romantic literature for decades. Poets and novelists created a large cast of characters who crossed the boundary between death and life with the help of some form of reading: figures like Keats''s Glaucus, Kleist''s Elizabeth Kohlhaas, Shelley''sFrankenstein (and the monster he creates), Maturin''s Melmoth, Poe''s Madeline Usher, and Gautier''s Spirite. Clayton Koelb demonstrates that such fictions offer a nuanced consideration of the most urgent question facing any theoryof life: how do material bodies come to acquire, to lose, and then perhaps to regain the immaterial intellectual/spiritual quality that defines animate beings? Clayton Koelb is Guy B. Johnson Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Keats''s Glaucus, Kleist''s Elizabeth Kohlhaas, Shelley''sFrankenstein (and the monster he creates), Maturin''s Melmoth, Poe''s Madeline Usher, and Gautier''s Spirite. Clayton Koelb demonstrates that such fictions offer a nuanced consideration of the most urgent question facing any theoryof life: how do material bodies come to acquire, to lose, and then perhaps to regain the immaterial intellectual/spiritual quality that defines animate beings? Clayton Koelb is Guy B. Johnson Professor of German, English, and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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Age

Page Count

224

Publisher

Camden House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1571133887

ISBN 13

9781571133885

Book's by Clayton Koelb

Inventions of Reading

Inventions of Reading

The Incredulous Reader

The Incredulous Reader

The Comparative Perspective on Literature

The Comparative Perspective on Literature

Kafka's Rhetoric

Kafka's Rhetoric

Legendary Figures

Legendary Figures

Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

Legendary Figures

Legendary Figures

A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia

A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia

Inventions of Reading

Inventions of Reading

Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

Kafka: A Guide for the Perplexed

The Revivifying Word

The Revivifying Word

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