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Ravishing tradition : cultural forces and literary history

Author: Daniel Cottom
Publisher: Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1996.
Edition/Format:   Book : State or province government publication : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
Though central to contemporary debates over identity, politics, and culture, the concept of tradition often remains unexamined. In a series of readings that transgress cultural and disciplinary boundaries, Daniel Cottom subjects this concept to close scrutiny. He calls into question conventional accounts of tradition, with their reliance on standard oppositions between dogma and reason, animality and humanity,  Read more...
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Details

Named Person: Jorge Luis Borges
Material Type: Government publication, State or province government publication
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Daniel Cottom
ISBN: 0801432456 9780801432453 0801483247 9780801483240
OCLC Number: 34079136
Description: xi, 220 p. ; 24 cm.
Responsibility: Daniel Cottom.

Abstract:

Though central to contemporary debates over identity, politics, and culture, the concept of tradition often remains unexamined. In a series of readings that transgress cultural and disciplinary boundaries, Daniel Cottom subjects this concept to close scrutiny. He calls into question conventional accounts of tradition, with their reliance on standard oppositions between dogma and reason, animality and humanity, community and society, religion and science, and modernity and its predecessors. Tradition, as Cottom envisions it, is a complex of cultural forces that moves, divides, and undoes those it touches; it ravishes, is ravished, and is centrally etched with acts of ravishment. Engaging writers from William Shakespeare to John Ashbery and from Phillis Wheatley to Antonin Artaud, Cottom examines literary history within the contexts of war, rape, and slavery; education, technology, and sexuality; repetition, imitation, stereotypy, and travesty; censorship, grief, and ecstacy. He also evaluates the work of various theorists who address questions of tradition, such as Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Adrienne Rich. Cottom draws on works in social and cultural history as well as on literary texts from different eras, nations, and genres. At once using and critiquing contemporary literary and cultural theory, this eloquent book shows why tradition continues to be of compelling interest and importance.

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