Research Catalog

Title

Entangled voices : genre and the religious construction of the self / Frederick J. Ruf.

Author

Ruf, Frederick J., 1950-

Publication

New York : Oxford University Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 125 pages; 22 cm

Summary

• In this book, Ruf tries to understand how the concepts of "voice" and "genre" function in texts. To this end, he joins literary theorists in the discussion about "narrative." Ruf rejects the idea of genre as a fixed historical form that serves as a template for readers and writers; instead, he suggests that we imagine different genres, whether narrative, lyric, or dramatic, as the expression of different voices.
• Each voice, he asserts, possesses different key qualities: embodiment, sociality, contextuality, and opacity in the dramatic voice; intimacy, limitation, urgency in lyric; and a "magisterial" quality of comprehensiveness and cohesiveness in narrative. These voices are models for our selves, composing an unruly and unstable multiplicity of selves. Ruf applies his theory of "voice" and "genre" to five texts: Dineson's Out of Africa, Donne's Holy Sonnets, Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach, and Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. Through these literary works, he discerns the detailed ways in which a text constructs a voice and, in the process, a self.
• More importantly, Ruf demonstrates that this process is a religious one, fulfilling the function that religions traditionally assume: that of defining the self and its world.

Subjects

• Literary form
• Levi, Primo > Sistema periodico
• Self in literature
• Religious literature, English > History and criticism > Theory, etc
• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 > Biographia literaria
• Donne, John, 1572-1631 > Holy sonnets
• Wilson, Robert, 1928-1983 > Einstein on the beach

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Hearing Voices -- Ch. 1. The Voices of Narrative, Lyric, and Drama -- Ch. 2. "Jogona's Great Treasure": Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic Intelligibility -- Ch. 3. "Intoxicated with Intimacy": The Lyric Voice in John Donne's Holy Sonnets -- Ch. 4. "The Circle of Chalk": Narrative Voice in Primo Levi's The Periodic Table -- Ch. 5. "Survival and Distance": The Dramatic Voice in Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach -- Ch. 6. "Harmonized Chaos": The Mixed Voice of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria -- Ch. 7. Conclusion: Genre and Instability.

ISBN

0195102630 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

96041281

OCLC

• 35620299
• ocm35620299

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries