Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, Philosophy & Literature, Miscellaneous Genres & Literary Forms - Literary Criticism
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Overview
Aristotle identifies "the transformation from ignorance to knowledge," or anagnorisis, as crucial to dramatic tension. Using the Biblical "garden" as the locus classicus of anagnorisis in Western narrative fiction, this study establishes the connection between knowledge and mortality in Genesis, and analyzes anagnorisis and mortality in three nineteenth-century British novels, Middlemarch, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Pride and Prejudice, and in the "post-modern" novel Possession. Ultimately, it is a proof that the suffusing literary motif of "knowledge and mortality" is inescapable: it transcends fictional genre and period because the "knowledge of mortality" is humanity's most ontologically disturbing burden.Editorials
Booknews
Mleynek (English and women's studies, U. of Hawaii-Hilo) takes the Biblical garden as the locus for , by which Aristotle means the transformation from ignorance to knowledge, to establish the connection between knowledge and mortality. Then she finds the same motif in three 19th-century British novels and in the postmodern novel . She concludes that the motif transcends genre and period because the knowledge of mortality is humanity's most ontologically disturbing burden. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
March 1, 1999
Publisher
New York : P. Lang, c1999.
Pages
140
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780820427720