We a good story
Quick delivery in the UK

The Practices of Hope

- Literary Criticism in Disenchanted Times

About The Practices of Hope

Offers a positive approach to literary criticism At a moment when the “hermeneutics of suspicion” is under fire in literary studies, The Practices of Hope encourages an alternative approach that, rather than abandoning critique altogether, relinquishes its commitment to disenchantment. As an alternative, Castiglia offers hopeful reading, a combination of idealism and imagination that retains its analytic edge yet moves beyond nay-saying to articulate the values that shape our scholarship and creates the possible worlds that animate genuine social critique. Drawing on a variety of critics from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, from Granville Hicks and Constance Rourke to Lewis Mumford, C.L.R. James, Charles Feidelson, and Richard Poirier, Castiglia demonstrates that their criticism simultaneously denounced the social conditions of the Cold War United States and proposed ideal worlds as more democratic alternatives. Organized around a series of terms that have become anathema to critics—nation, liberalism, humanism, symbolism—The Practices of Hope shows how they were employed in criticism’s “usable past” to generate an alternative critique, a practice of hope.

Show more
  • Language:
  • English
  • ISBN:
  • 9781479818273
  • Binding:
  • Hardback
  • Pages:
  • 240
  • Published:
  • September 25, 2017
  • Dimensions:
  • 152x229x0 mm.
  • Weight:
  • 499 g.
Delivery: 2-4 weeks
Expected delivery: December 26, 2024
Extended return policy to January 30, 2025

Description of The Practices of Hope

Offers a positive approach to literary criticism

At a moment when the “hermeneutics of suspicion” is under fire in literary studies, The Practices of Hope encourages an alternative approach that, rather than abandoning critique altogether, relinquishes its commitment to disenchantment. As an alternative, Castiglia offers hopeful reading, a combination of idealism and imagination that retains its analytic edge yet moves beyond nay-saying to articulate the values that shape our scholarship and creates the possible worlds that animate genuine social critique. Drawing on a variety of critics from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, from Granville Hicks and Constance Rourke to Lewis Mumford, C.L.R. James, Charles Feidelson, and Richard Poirier, Castiglia demonstrates that their criticism simultaneously denounced the social conditions of the Cold War United States and proposed ideal worlds as more democratic alternatives.

Organized around a series of terms that have become anathema to critics—nation, liberalism, humanism, symbolism—The Practices of Hope shows how they were employed in criticism’s “usable past” to generate an alternative critique, a practice of hope.

User ratings of The Practices of Hope



Find similar books
The book The Practices of Hope can be found in the following categories:

Join thousands of book lovers

Sign up to our newsletter and receive discounts and inspiration for your next reading experience.