Other Solitudes: Multicultural Fiction and Interviews

Politics & Social Sciences

Hutcheon, Linda

Sociology

Oxford Univ. Pr.

The first detailed examination of postmodernism in the Canadian visual arts, this study focuses on memory as an essential and recurring issue in the work of some forty Canadian artists, individual and collective. In her afterword, Hutcheon presents a broad overview situating Cheetham's detailed discussions within the ongoing debates about postmodernism in Canada and internationally. The artists discussed include General Idea, Andy Fabo, Claude Tousignant, Joe Fafard, Joanne Tod, Allyson Clay, Janice Gurney, and Robert Wiens.

Remembering Postmodernism: Trends in Recent Canadian Art

Arts & Photography

Cheetham, Mark A.

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Starting from the premise that Canadian culture offers "particularly fertile ground for the cultivation of doubleness," this book explores the numerous forms of irony observable in Canadian literature and visual arts. Individual chapters focus on the ironies of ethnicity and race, irony as a strategy for addressing Canada's colonial past, feminists' uses of irony, and a specific case of photography and the amplification of ironies in the work of artistic collectives such as Fastwurns and General Idea. The book concludes with an examination of the political power of irony.

Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies (Studies in Canadian Literature)

Literature & Fiction

Aging and creativity can seem a particularly fraught relationship for artists, who often face age-related difficulties as their audience’s expectations are at a peak. In Four Last Songs, Linda and Michael Hutcheon explore this issue via the late works of some of the world’s greatest composers. Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908–92), and Benjamin Britten (1913–76) all wrote operas late in life, pieces that reveal unique responses to the challenges of growing older. Verdi’s Falstaff, his only comedic success, combated Richard Wagner’s influence by introducing young Italian composers to a new model of national music. Strauss, on the other hand, struggling with personal and political problems in Nazi Germany, composed the self-reflexive Capriccio, a “life review” of opera and his own legacy. Though it exhausted him physically and emotionally, Messiaen at the age of seventy-five finished his only opera, Saint François d’Assise, which marked the pinnacle of his career. Britten, meanwhile, suffering from heart problems, refused surgery until he had completed his masterpiece, Death in Venice. For all four composers, age, far from sapping their creative power, provided impetus for some of their best accomplishments. With its deft treatment of these composers’ final years and works, Four Last Songs provides a valuable look at the challenges—and opportunities—that present themselves as artists grow older.

Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten

Hutcheon, Michael

Music

University of Chicago Press

Aging and creativity can seem a particularly fraught relationship for artists, who often face age-related difficulties as their audience’s expectations are at a peak. In Four Last Songs, Linda and Michael Hutcheon explore this issue via the late works of some of the world’s greatest composers.  Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908–92), and Benjamin Britten (1913–76) all wrote operas late in life, pieces that reveal unique responses to the challenges of growing older. Verdi’s Falstaff, his only comedic success, combated Richard Wagner’s influence by introducing young Italian composers to a new model of national music. Strauss, on the other hand, struggling with personal and political problems in Nazi Germany, composed the self-reflexive Capriccio, a “life review” of opera and his own legacy. Though it exhausted him physically and emotionally, Messiaen at the age of seventy-five finished his only opera, Saint François d’Assise, which marked the pinnacle of his career. Britten, meanwhile, suffering from heart problems, refused surgery until he had completed his masterpiece, Death in Venice. For all four composers, age, far from sapping their creative power, provided impetus for some of their best accomplishments.  With its deft treatment of these composers’ final years and works, Four Last Songs provides a valuable look at the challenges—and opportunities—that present themselves as artists grow older.

In this major study of a flexible and multifaceted mode of expression, Linda Hutcheon looks at works of modern literature, visual art, music, film, theater, and architecture to arrive at a comprehensive assessment of what parody is and what it does. Hutcheon identifies parody as one of the major forms of modern self-reflexivity, one that marks the intersection of invention and critique and offers an important mode of coming to terms with the texts and discourses of the past. Looking at works as diverse as Tom Stoppard's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill, Woody Allen's Zelig, Karlheinz Stockhausen's Hymnen, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Magritte's This Is Not a Pipe, Hutcheon discusses the remarkable range of intent in modern parody while distinguishing it from pastiche, burlesque, travesty, and satire. She shows how parody, through ironic playing with multiple conventions, combines creative expression with critical commentary. Its productive-creative approach to tradition results in a modern recoding that establishes difference at the heart of similarity. In a new introduction, Hutcheon discusses why parody continues to fascinate her and why it is commonly viewed as suspect-–for being either too ideologically shifty or too much of a threat to the ownership of intellectual and creative property.

A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms

Humor & Entertainment

University of Illinois Press

A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Routledge

Neither a defense nor a denunciation of the postmodern, it continues Hutcheon's previous projects in studying formal self-consciousness in art, but adds to this both a historical and ideological dimension.

Continuing the project begun in The Poetics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon focuses on the politics of representation. Looking at both mass media and high art forms, she challenges the seeming transparency and apparent apolitical innocence of our visual images and verbal stories, asserting that these construct rather than reflect or express our experience of the world.

The Politics of Postmodernism (New Accents)

The edge of irony, says Linda Hutcheon, is always a social and political edge. Irony depends upon interpretation; it happens in the tricky, unpredictable space between expression and understanding. Irony's Edge is a fascinating, compulsively readable study of the myriad forms and the effects of irony. It sets out, for the first time, a sustained, clear analysis of the theory and the political contexts of irony, using a wide range of references from contemporary culture. Examples extend from Madonna to Wagner, from a clever quip in conversation to a contentious exhibition in a museum. Irony's Edge outlines and then challenges all the major existing theories of irony, providing the most comprehensive and critically challengin theory of irony to date.

Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hutcheon, Linda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hutcheon, Linda

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hutcheon, Linda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Other Solitudes: Multicultural Fiction and Interviews

Remembering Postmodernism: Trends in Recent Canadian Art

Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies (Studies in Canadian Literature)

Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten

Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten

A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms

A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction

A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction

The Politics of Postmodernism (New Accents)

Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony