Robert T. Tally Jr.'s Books

Poe and the Subversion of American Literature

Satire, Fantasy, Critique

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

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Poe and the Subversion of American Literature

Satire, Fantasy, Critique

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2014 In Poe and the Subversion of American Literature, Robert T. Tally Jr. argues that Edgar Allan Poe is best understood, not merely as a talented artist or canny magazinist, but primarily as a practical joker who employs satire and fantasy to poke fun at an emergent nationalist discourse circulating in the United States. Poe's satirical and fantastic mode, on display even in his apparently serious short stories and literary criticism, undermines the earnest attempts to establish a distinctively national literature in the nineteenth century. In retrospect, Poe's work also subtly subverts the tenets of an institutionalized American Studies in the twentieth century. Tally interprets Poe's life and works in light of his own social milieu and in relation to the disciplinary field of American literary studies, finding Poe to be neither the poète maudit of popular mythology nor the representative American writer revealed by recent scholarship. Rather, Poe is an untimely figure whose work ultimately makes a mockery of those who would seek to contain it. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze's distinction between nomad thought and state philosophy, Tally argues that Poe's varied literary and critical writings represent an alternative to American literature. Through his satirical critique of U.S. national culture and his otherworldly projection of a postnational space of the imagination, Poe establishes a subterranean, nomadic, and altogether worldly literary practice.

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244

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1623569702

ISBN 13

9781623569709

Topophrenia

Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination

By: Robert T. Tally, Jr.

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Topophrenia

Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination

By: Robert T. Tally, Jr.

What is our place in the world, and how do we inhabit, understand, and represent this place to others? Topophrenia gathers essays by Robert Tally that explore the relationship between space, place, and mapping, on the one hand, and literary criticism, history, and theory on the other. The book provides an introduction to spatial literary studies, exploring in detail the theory and practice of geocriticism, literary cartography, and the spatial humanities more generally. The spatial anxiety of disorientation and the need to know one's location, even if only subconsciously, is a deeply felt and shared human experience. Building on Yi Fu Tuan's "topophilia" (or love of place), Tally instead considers the notion of "topophrenia" as a simultaneous sense of place-consciousness coupled with a feeling of disorder, anxiety, and "dis-ease." He argues that no effective geography could be complete without also incorporating an awareness of the lonely, loathsome, or frightening spaces that condition our understanding of that space. Tally considers the tension between the objective ordering of a space and the subjective ways in which narrative worlds are constructed. Narrative maps present a way of understanding that seems realistic but is completely figurative. So how can these maps be used to not only understand the real world but also to put up an alternative vision of what that world might otherwise be? From Tolkien to Cervantes, Borges to More, Topophrenia provides a clear and compelling explanation of how geocriticism, the spatial humanities, and literary cartography help us to narrate, represent, and understand our place in a constantly changing world.

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210

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0253037697

ISBN 13

9780253037695

J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit"

Realizing History Through Fantasy: A Critical Companion

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

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J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit"

Realizing History Through Fantasy: A Critical Companion

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

This book is a critical introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but it also advances an argument about the novel in the context of Tolkien’s larger literary and philosophical project. Notwithstanding its canonical place in the fantasy genre, The Hobbit is ultimately a historical novel. It does not refer directly to any “real” historical events, but it both enacts and conceptualizes history in a way that makes it real. Drawing on Marxist literary criticism and narrative theory, this book examines the form and content of Tolkien’s work, demonstrating how the heroic romance is simultaneously employed and subverted by Tolkien in his tale of an unlikely hero, “quite a little fellow in a wide world,” who nonetheless makes history. First-time readers of Tolkien, as well as established scholars and fans, will enjoy this engaging and accessible study of The Hobbit.

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116

Publisher

Springer Nature

Published Date

ISBN 10

3031112660

ISBN 13

9783031112669

Representing Middle-earth

Tolkien, Form, and Ideology

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

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Representing Middle-earth

Tolkien, Form, and Ideology

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

In such classic works as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien depicts a vast, complex world-system. Tolkien's Middle-earth comes to life with intensely detailed historical, geographical, and multicultural content, which is presented through different poetic forms that combine elements of epic, romance, myth, history, and the modern novel. This book analyzes Tolkien's project, paying attention to narrative form and its relation to social contexts, while also exploring his broader philosophical conception of history and the role of individual and collective subjects within it. Tolkien's published and posthumous writings, the film adaptations, and recent scholarship are all examined to provide an enlarged and refined critical perspective of these major works. Drawing upon Marxist literary theory and criticism, Robert T. Tally Jr. calls into question traditional views of race, class, morality, escapism, and fantasy more generally. Through close readings mixed with theoretical speculation, Representing Middle-earth allows readers see Tolkien's world, as well as our own, in a new light.

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199

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

0786470372

ISBN 13

9780786470372

Melville, Mapping and Globalization

Literary Cartography in the American Baroque Writer

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

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Melville, Mapping and Globalization

Literary Cartography in the American Baroque Writer

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

In Melville, Mapping and Globalization, Robert Tally argues that Melville does not belong in the tradition of the American Renaissance, but rather creates a baroque literary cartography, artistically engaging with spaces beyond the national model. At a time of intense national consolidation and cultural centralization, Melville discovered the postnational forces of an emerging world system, a system that has become our own in the era of globalization. Drawing on the work of a range of literary and social critics (including Deleuze, Foucault, Jameson, and Moretti), Tally argues that Melville's distinct literary form enabled his critique of the dominant national narrative of his own time and proleptically undermined the national literary tradition of American Studies a century later. Melville's hypercanonical status in the United States makes his work all the more crucial for understanding the role of literature in a post-American epoch. Offering bold new interpretations and theoretical juxtapositions, Tally presents a postnational Melville, well suited to establishing new approaches to American and world literature in the twenty-first century.

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Page Count

311

Publisher

A&C Black

Published Date

ISBN 10

1441116281

ISBN 13

9781441116284

Spatiality

By: Robert T. Tally

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Spatiality

By: Robert T. Tally

Divided into six chapters, each dealing with different aspects of the spatial in literary studies, the book provides: An overview of the spatial turn in literary theory - from modern philosophy and historicism to cartography and literary theory Introductions to the major theorists such as Michel Foucault, David Harvey, Edward Soja, Erich Auerbach, Georg Lukács, and Mikhail Bakhtin An analysis of spatiality from a variety of perspectives - the writer as map-maker, different literary and critical 'spaces', the concept of literary geography, cartographics and geocriticism. As the first guide to the literature and criticism of 'space', this clear and engaging book is essential reading.

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194

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

041566439X

ISBN 13

9780415664394

Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel

A Postmodern Iconography

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

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Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel

A Postmodern Iconography

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

The novels of Kurt Vonnegut depict a profoundly absurd and distinctly postmodern world. But in this critical study, Robert Tally argues that Vonnegut himself is actually a modernist, who is less interested in indulging in the free play of signifiers than in attempting to construct a model that could encompass the American experience at the end of the twentieth century. As a modernist wrestling with a postmodern condition, Vonnegut makes use of diverse and sometimes eccentric narrative techniques (such as metafiction, collage, and temporal slippages) to project a comprehensive vision of life in the United States. Vonnegut's novels thus become experiments in making sense of the radical transformations of self and society during that curious, unstable period called, perhaps ironically, the 'American Century.' An untimely figure, Vonnegut develops a postmodern iconography of American civilization while simultaneously acknowledging the impossibility of a truly comprehensive representation.

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302

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1441124853

ISBN 13

9781441124852

Utopia in the Age of Globalization

Space, Representation, and the World-System

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

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Utopia in the Age of Globalization

Space, Representation, and the World-System

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

The idea of "Utopia" has made a comeback in the age of globalization, and the bewildering technological shifts and economic uncertainties of the present era call for novel forms of utopia. Tally argues that a new form of utopian discourse is needed for understanding, and moving beyond, the current world system.

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193

Publisher

Springer

Published Date

ISBN 10

0230391907

ISBN 13

9780230391901

The Fiction of Dread

Dystopia, Monstrosity, and Apocalypse

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

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The Fiction of Dread

Dystopia, Monstrosity, and Apocalypse

By: Robert T. Tally Jr.

A history and examination of dystopia and angst in popular culture that speaks to our current climate of dread. At the dawn of the 20th century, a wide-ranging utopianism dominated popular and intellectual cultures throughout Europe and America. However, in the aftermathof the World Wars, with such canonical examples as Brave New World and Nineteen-Eighty-Four, dystopia emerged as a dominant genre, in literature and in social thought. The continuing presence and eventual dominance of dystopian themes in popular culture-e.g., dismal authoritarian future states, sinister global conspiracies, post-apocalyptic landscapes, a proliferation of horrific monsters, and end-of-the-world fantasies-have confirmed the degree to which the 21st is also a dystopian century. Drawing on literature as varied as H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and on TV and film such as The Walking Dead, Black Mirror, and The Last of Us, Robert T. Tally Jr. explores the landscape of angst created by the monstrous accumulation of dystopian material. The Fiction of Dread provides an innovative reading of contemporary culture and offers an alternative vision for critical theory and practice at a moment when, as has been famously observed, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

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185

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501375873

ISBN 13

9781501375873

For a Ruthless Critique of All that Exists

Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism

By: Robert T. Tally

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For a Ruthless Critique of All that Exists

Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism

By: Robert T. Tally

For a Ruthless Critique of All that Exists takes as its point of departure two profound and interrelated phenomena. The first is the pervasive sense of what Mark Fisher had called “capitalist realism", in which (to cite the famous expression variously attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek) it is easier to imagine the end of the world than then end of capitalism. As Jameson in particular has noted, “perhaps this is due to some weakness in our imaginations,” and the attenuation of the imaginative function in cultural criticism has far-reaching implications for the organization and reformation of institutions more generally. This manifests itself as a waning of speculative or theoretical energy, which in turn leads to a general capitulation to the tyranny of “what is,” the actually existing state of affairs, and the preemptive disavowal of alternative possibilities. Connected to this is the second phenomenon: the prevalent tendency in literary and cultural criticism over the past 30 or more years to eschew critical theory and even critique itself, while championing approaches to cultural study that emphasize surface reading, thin description, ordinary language philosophy, object-oriented ontology, and post-critique. Together these forms of anticritical and antitheoretical criticism have constituted a tendency that has in its various incarnations come to dominate the humanities and other areas of higher education in recent years. The latter has served to reinforce the former, and the result has been to align literary and cultural criticism with the broad-based forces of neoliberalism whose influence has so deleteriously transformed not only higher education but the whole of society at large. Robert T. Tally Jr. argues that, in order to counter these trends and empower the imagination, the time is ripe for “a ruthless critique of all that exists,” to borrow a phrase from the young Marx. This book is intended as a provocation, at once a polemic and a call to action for cultural critics.

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