The conviction that the development and promotion of the arts, humanities and culture through the study of literature and the aesthetic are the fundamental constituents of any progress in society is at the heart of this volume. The essays gathered here explore the role of the imagination and aesthetic awareness in an age when the corporatization of knowledge is in the process of transforming literary studies, and political commitment is in danger of disappearing behind a supposedly post-ideological late-capitalist consensus. The main focus of the volume is the mutual implication of aesthetics and ideology and the status and value of different types of art within the political arena. Challenging issues in contemporary aesthetics are examined within the wider framework of current debates on the disappearance of the real, the crisis in representation, and the use of new media. The wide range of examples collected here, stretching from experimental poetry in post-war Germany, political commitment in twentieth-century French theatre, and countercultural Rumanian theatre under Ceaușescu, to Neo-Victorian fiction, Verbatim theatre in the UK, and political theatre for the masses in Estonia, vouchsafe unique insights into the intersection of aesthetics and ideology and the practical consequences thereof. As such, the volume opens up a space for a meaningful engagement with authentic forms of art from inside and outside the Anglosphere, and, ultimately, uses these examples as a platform from which to imagine some form of “aesthethics”, representing an ideal union of aesthetics and ideology. This concept, first coined by the French philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, will prove to be relevant both within the parameters of the examples discussed here, but also beyond, for the contributors to this volume are unanimous in refusing to believe that aesthetics and ideology can exist one without the other, and in recognizing the centrality of ethics in any discussion of these notions.

This book includes contributions by African, East and West European, Asian and North American scholars which deal with and compare ideological and non-ideological approaches to the analysis of literary, artistic as well as popular works (popular music) mostly by American authors. Most of the essays deal with a way various aspects of American identity are depicted, represented, treated, ideologized and aestheticized in different literary genres, forms of art and media. The contributions offer multidisciplinary, cross-cultural and comparative perspectives and represent a diversity of scholarly voices ranging from the general discussion on the relationship between ideology and art (Anton Pokrivčák), ideology and multiculturalism (Cristina Garrigós). They also give the analysis of poetry (Pokrivčák, Obododima Oha), postmodern fiction (Pi-Hua Ni, Cristina Garrigós), drama (Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, Csaba Csapó) as well as the comparative analysis of the depiction of the identity of North American Indians in such different media as literature and film (Michal Peprník). In addition to this, the book includes the analysis of Black rap music (Wojciech Kallas).

Over the last decade a radical transformation of literary study has taken place, a transformation most distinctly connected to a fundamental change in the conception of what constitutes the "literary." A shift in emphasis from interpretation to theory and from questions about what texts might "mean" to questions about the systems that contain them, along with the movement to replace literary study with cultural studies, have all contributed to this change. In response to this transformation, George Levine has assembled essays by a wide variety of leading scholars in the field of literary study. The contributors to this book rethink the aesthetic, rewrite its history, and reestablish the formal as a necessary element in criticism of literature and of its ideological implications. An early step in the recuperation of the aesthetic, Aesthetics and Ideology works through the discourses of race, gender, class, and politics, using many of the strategies of contemporary theory, to show how the aesthetic vitally and richly opens itself to new politics, and new possibilities of human value. This is an important contribution to the current academic culture wars.

THE WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH LITERATURE An insightful guide to the exploration of modern British and Irish literature The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to navigate the world of new British and Irish writing. Including modern authors and poets from the 1960s through to the 21st century, the Companion provides a thorough overview of contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama by some of the most prominent and noteworthy writers. Seventy-three comprehensive chapters focus on individual authors as well as such topics as Englishness and identity, contemporary Science Fiction, Black writing in Britain, crime fiction, and the influence of globalization on British and Irish Literature. Written in four parts, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature includes comprehensive examinations of individual authors, as well as a variety of themes that have come to define the contemporary period: ethnicity, gender, nationality, and more. A thorough guide to the main figures and concepts in contemporary literature from Britain and Ireland, this two-volume set: Includes studies of notable figures such as Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter, as well as more recently influential writers such as Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. Covers topics such as LGBT fiction, androgyny in contemporary British Literature, and post-Troubles Northern Irish Fiction Features a broad range of writers and topics covered by distinguished academics Includes an analysis of the interplay between individual authors and the major themes of the day, and whether an examination of the latter enables us to appreciate the former. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature provides essential reading for students as well as academics seeking to learn more about the history and future direction of contemporary British and Irish Literature.

The perception of Nabokov as an apolitical writer is one which the author encouraged in the latter part of his career, despite having lived through the traumatic historical ruptures of the past century. This book argues that ideology and politics actually had an indelible effect on his literary aesthetics and explores his work through this lens.

Verbatim theatre, a type of performance based on actual words spoken by ''real people'', has been at the heart of a remarkable and unexpected renaissance of the genre in Great Britain since the mid-nineties. The central aim of the book is to critically explore and account for the relationship between contemporary British verbatim theatre and realism whilst questioning the much-debated mediation of the real in theses theatre practices.

A culmination of de Man's thoughts on philosophy, politics and history. The book presents an inquiry into the relation of rhetoric, epistemology and aesthetics, that offers radical notions of materiality. De Man reads Kant and Hegel with a combination of philosophical vigour and interpretive pressure. The texts collected here were written or delivered as lectures during the last years of Man's life, between 1977 and 1983. Many of them have never been available previously in any form; these include essays from Kant's materialism, his relation to Schiller, and the concept of irony.