Peter Swirski (ed.): The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem (2006)
Filed under book | Tags: · artificial intelligence, film, literary criticism, literature, robots, science fiction, technology, technoscience
“The Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, whose works include Return from the Stars, The Cyberiad, A Perfect Vacuum, and Solaris, has been hailed as a “literary Einstein” and a science-fiction Bach. The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem provides an inter-disciplinary analysis of his influence on Western culture and the creative partnering of art and science in his fiction and futorology by American and European scholars who have defined Lem scholarship.
Rather than analyzing Lem solely as a science fiction writer, the contributors examine the larger themes in his work, such as social engineering and human violence, agency and consciousness, Freudianism and the creative process, evolution and the philosophy of the future, virtual reality and epistemological illusion, and science fiction and socio-cultural policy.
This unique collection also includes “Smart Robots,” a previously unpublished essay by Lem.”
Contributors include Peter Butko, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr, Katherine Hayles, Jerzy Jarzebski, Michael Kandel, Stanislaw Lem, Paisley Livingston, Krzysztof Loska, and Peter Swirski.
Publisher McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006
ISBN 0773575073, 9780773575073
208 pages
PDF (updated on 2014-12-29)
Comment (0)Northrop Frye: Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957–) [EN, PT, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · genre, literary criticism, literary theory, literature, myth
Striking out at the conception of criticism as restricted to mere opinion or ritual gesture, Northrop Frye wrote this magisterial work proceeding on the assumption that criticism is a structure of thought and knowledge in its own right. In four brilliant essays on historical, ethical, archetypical, and rhetorical criticism, employing examples of world literature from ancient times to the present, Frye reconceived literary criticism as a total history rather than a linear progression through time.
Literature, Frye wrote, is “the place where our imaginations find the ideal that they try to pass on to belief and action, where they find the vision which is the source of both the dignity and the joy of life.” And the critical study of literature provides a basic way “to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.”
Harold Bloom contributes a fascinating and highly personal preface that examines Frye’s mode of criticism and thought (as opposed to Frye’s criticism itself) as being indispensable in the modern literary world.
Publisher Princeton University Press, 1957
383 pages
Selected reviews (1956-59)
Review (Graham Nicol Forst, Canadian Literature, 2003)
Review (Frank Kermode, The Review of English Studies, 1959)
Anatomy of Criticism (English, Third printing, 1973, 19 MB), View online (HTML)
Anatomia da crítica (Portuguese, trans. Péricles Eugênio and Silva Ramos, 1973, 21 MB)
El camino critico (Spanish, trans. Miguel Mac-Veigh, 1986, essays 1-3 only, 21 MB)
Anatomy of Criticism (English, Fifteenth printing, with a new Foreword by Harold Bloom, 2000)
Shamil Jeppie, Souleymane Bachir Diagne (eds.): The Meanings of Timbuktu (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · africa, book, calligraphy, education, history of literature, islam, library, literature, paper
In a joint project between South Africa and Mali, a library to preserve more than 200 000 Arabic and West African manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 19th centuries is currently under construction. It is the first official cultural project of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), the socio-economic development plan of the African Union, and when the library is built, the cultural role of Timbuktu will be revived, as it becomes the safehaven for the treasured manuscripts. The manuscripts prove that Africa had a rich legacy of written history, long before western colonisers set foot on the continent.
This volume, authored by leading international scholars, begins to sketch the ‘meaning’ of Timbuktu within the context of the intellectual history of West Africa, in particular, and of the African continent, in general. The book covers four broad areas: Part I provides an introduction to the region; outlines what archaeology can tell us of its history, examines the paper and various calligraphic styles used in the manuscripts; and explains how ancient institutions of scholarship functioned. Part II begins to analyse what the manuscripts can tell us of African history. Part III offers insight into the lives and works of just a few of the many scholars who achieved renown in the region and beyond. Part IV provides a glimpse into Timbuktu’s libraries and private collections. Part V looks at the written legacy of the eastern half of Africa, which like that of the western region, is often ignored.
A fascinating read for anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of the aura of mystique and legend that surrounds Timbuktu. The Meanings of Timbuktu strives to contextualize and clarify the importance of efforts to preserve Timbuktu’s manuscripts for Mali, for Africa and for the intellectual world.
Publisher HSRC, Cape Town, in association with CODESRIA, Dakar, 2008
Open Access
ISBN 0796922047, 139780796922045
416 pages
Review (David Robinson, H-SAfrica, 2009)
Publisher (HSRC)
Publisher (CODESRIA)
PDF (single PDF)
PDF (PDF chapters)