Böcker utgivna av Verlag Peter Lang

Liminality, if interpreted as a concern with borders and states of in-betweenness, is a widespread theme in Irish literature and culture, which is perhaps not surprising considering the colonial and postcolonial background of Ireland. The liminal, from the Latin word limen, meaning «a threshold», can be broadly defined as a transitional place of becoming. It is a borderland state of ambiguity and indeterminacy, leading those who participate in the process to new perspectives and possibilities. This collection of essays examines the theme of liminality in Irish literature and culture against the philosophical discourse of modernity and focuses on representations of liminality in contemporary Irish literature, art and film in a variety of contexts. The book is divided into four sections. The first part deals with theoretical aspects of liminal states. Other sections focus on liminal narratives and explore drama as liminal rites of passage, while the last part examines transformative spaces in contemporary Irish women¿s poetry.

Federico De Robertös work fascinated later Sicilian writers, from Luigi Pirandello to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Leonardo Sciascia and Vincenzo Consolo, but among critics the picture is different. Only now is his work enjoying a critical revival, after being underestimated for more than a century. This collection of essays offers new critical approaches to his work, traces its reception, analyses his enduring reputation among creative writers and proposes readings of his major novels. The volume concludes with an analysis of Roberto Faenzäs recent (2007) screenplay of De Robertös novel The Viceroys, and an interview with Faenza along with press reviews of his film. Il fascino esercitato da Federico De Roberto su scrittori siciliani quali Luigi Pirandello, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Leonardo Sciascia, Vincenzo Consolo è incontestabile. Ciononostante, la ricezione critica della sua opera è stata ingiustamente tiepida. Solo oggi la sua opera registra un revival critico, dopo essere stata sottovalutata per più di un secolo. I contributi qui raccolti perlustrano nuovi approcci interpretativi, con attenzione anche alla storia della ricezione tra altri autori, e propongono letture inedite dei romanzi principali. Il volume si chiude con un¿analisi della sceneggiatura del recente I Vicerè (2007) di Roberto Faenza, un¿intervista al regista e una ricognizione del dibattito italiano sul film.

This book explores the different ways in which psychoanalysis has been connected to various fields of Italian culture, such as literary criticism, philosophy and art history, as well as discussing scholars who have used psychoanalytical methods in their work. The areas discussed include: the city of Trieste, in chapters devoted to the author Italo Svevo and the artist Arturo Nathan; psychoanalytic interpretations of women terrorists during the anni di piombo; the relationships between the Freudian concept of the subconscious and language in philosophical research in Italy; and a personal reflection by a practising analyst who passes from literary texts to her own clinical experience. The volume closes with a chapter by Giorgio Pressburger, a writer who uses Freud as his Virgil in a narrative of his descent into a modern hell. The volume contains contributions in both English and Italian.

Against All Odds

This book focuses on the mother-daughter relationship as it features in a number of films from the 1990s onwards. Bringing the insights of psychoanalysis and feminism to bear on a diverse and compelling range of representations of the mother-daughter dynamic, the author addresses a range of questions relating to the social, historical and cultural conditions which go to inform the female experience. These include, in relation to Dolores Claiborne, Heavenly Creatures and The Others, an exploration of different forms of familial violence and resistance to it and in One True Thing, Stepmom and Pieces of April, questions about the construction of the ideal mother and her loss. From The Pianös engagement with French feminism and Losing Chase¿s reworking of the life and work of Virginia Woolf to the depiction of cross-racial relationships during apartheid in Friends, the films that go to make up this study all share a central concern with both the literal and symbolic forms that the mother-daughter relationship encompasses.

Giorgio Manganelli (1922-1990), one of Italy's most radical and original writers, went further than most in exploring the creative possibilities of hybrid genres and open forms. This study examines the wealth of Manganelli's imagination - his grotesque animals, speaking corpses, and melancholy specters.

Shows how translations appeared to challenge official claims about the birth of a Fascist culture and cast Italy in a receptive role that did not tally with Fascist notions of a dominant culture extending its influence abroad. This book examines the aggressive campaign that was conducted against the Italian Publishers Federation.

This collection of new essays addresses a key debate in Irish studies. While it is important that new research endeavours to accommodate the new and powerful manifestations of Irishness that are evident today in our globalised economy, these considerations are often overlooked. The writers in this book seek to reconcile the established critical perspectives of Irish studies with a forward-looking critical momentum that incorporates the realities of globalisation and economic migration. The book initiates this vital discussion by bringing together a series of provocative and thoughtful essays, from both renowned and rising international scholars, on the vicissitudes of cultural identity in a post-modern, post-colonial and post-national Ireland. By including work by leading scholars in the fields of film studies, migration and Diaspora studies, travel literature and gender studies, this collection offers a thorough twenty-first-century interrogation of Irishness and provides a timely fusion of international perspectives on Irish cultural identity.

Beyond the Back Room

This book addresses the influence of the imperial cult in first-century AD Asia Minor and its subsequent relevance to the reading of the New Testament. In particular, this work argues, through a contrapuntal reading of 1 Timothy 2:1-7, that the early Christian community strongly resisted the Emperor¿s claim to be the «mediator» between the gods and humanity. In contrast to this claim, the author shows that 1 Timothy 2:1-7 can be read as a polemic from a minority community, the Christian church in Ephesus, against the powerful voice of the Roman Empire in regard to divine mediation.

Raymond Williams was an enormously influential figure in late twentieth-century intellectual life as a novelist, playwright and critic, British Sartre, as "The Times" put it. This volume brings together a complete collection of Williams' critical essays on science fiction and futurology, utopia, and dystopia, in literature, film, and politics.

This book examines the role of Samuel Beckett in contemporary philosophical aesthetics, primarily through analysis of both his own essays and the various interpretations that philosophers (especially Adorno, Blanchot, Deleuze, and Badiou) have given to his works. The study centres around the fundamental question of the relationship between art and truth, where art, as a negative truth, comes to its complete exhaustion (as Deleuze terms it) by means of a series of ¿endgames¿ that progressively involve philosophy, writing, language and every individual and minimal form of expression. The major thesis of the book is that, at the heart of Beckett¿s philosophical project, this ¿aesthetics of truth¿ turns out to be nothing other than the real subject itself, within a contradictory and tragic relationship that ties the Self/Voice to the Object/Body. Yet a number of questions remain open. ¿What¿ or ¿whö lies behind this process? What is left of the endgame of art and subjectivity? Finally, what sustains and renders possible Beckett¿s paradoxical axiom of the ¿impossibility to express¿ alongside the ¿obligation to express¿? By means of a thorough overview of the most recent criticism of Beckett, this book will try to answer these questions.