Background
Adams, Hazard Simeon was born on February 15, 1926 in Cleveland. Son of Robert Simeon and Mary (Thurness) Adams.
(When Nixon orders the bombing of Cambodia, the resulting ...)
When Nixon orders the bombing of Cambodia, the resulting protests push a West Coast university to the brink of anarchy, altering irrevocably the lives of students and faculty and disrupting the process of storytelling itself. Through the words of two professors and a communal voice known only as "We" Hazard Adams interweaves the political, literary, and philosophical developments of the time into a story in which generations and their histories meet, as well as literary styles and methods, showing how political and intellectual events play on the consciousness of a range of characters. The spirit here is serious and generous, but not without a satirical element as a communal group attempts to establish an elusive identity. With a remarkable breadth of method, Adams deliberately evades the usual literary classifications.
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(There is something offensive and scandalous about poetry,...)
There is something offensive and scandalous about poetry, judging by the number of attacks on it and defenses of it written over the centuries. Poetry, Hazard Adams argues, exists to offend - not through its subject matter but through the challenges it presents to the prevailing view of what language is for. Poetry's main cultural value is its offensiveness; it should be defended as offensive. Adams specifies four poetic offenses - gesture, drama, fiction, and trope - and devotes a chapter to each, ranging across the landscape of traditional literary criticism and exploring the various attitudes toward poetry, including both attacks and defenses, offered by writers from Plato and Aristotle to Sidney, Vico, Blake, Yeats, and Seamus Heaney, among others. "Criticism," Adams writes, "needs renewal in every age to free poetry from the prejudices of that age and the unintended prejudices of even the best critics of the past, to free poetry to perform its provocative, antithetical cultural role." Poetry achieves its cultural value by opposing the binary oppositions - form and content, fact and fiction, reason and emotion - that structure and polarize most understandings of literature and of life. Adams takes a position antithetical to the extremes of both abstract formalism and the politicization of literary content. He concludes with an appreciation of what he calls the double offense of "great bad poetry," poetry so exceptionally bad that it transcends its shortcomings and leads to gaiety. He reminds us that Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, identified angels with the settled and coercive and assigned the qualities of energy and creativity to his devils. According to Adams, poetry, in its broad and traditional sense of all imaginative writing, may be identified with Blake's devils.
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(CRITICAL THEORY SINCE PLATO is a chronologically-arranged...)
CRITICAL THEORY SINCE PLATO is a chronologically-arranged anthology that presents a broad survey of the history and development of literary criticism and theory in Western culture. Written by two well-known scholars in the field of literary study, this well-respected text puts an emphasis on the individual contributors to the development of literary criticism, from Plato and Aristotle to the present.
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(In his Afterword to this finely honed and memorable colle...)
In his Afterword to this finely honed and memorable collection, written over some 40 years’ time, Hazard Adams characterizes these poems as “those I am willing to stand by.” He has chosen well. This is a radiant volume, rich with imagery and enlivened with a wry and witty sensibility, its five parts charged with the sweep of a small drama. These are poems that wear well and welcome repeated reading. They are a pleasure to read aloud. Adams opens with a series of strong, spare, bittersweet elegies to his parents and grandparents and to his own rural beginnings as he wrestles with the shifting roles of child and man, actor and observer. He ranges over many subjects and themes, through the bemused “Nine Academic Pieces” of the late 1960s and the marvelously absurdist “Rhinoceros Who Became Dean,” through the insightful perspective of times abroad and at home, through such deeply moving and contemplative pieces as his elegy on the death of a small child. He is a persuasive and versatile master of the poetic line, moving with skill between deftly rhythmical free verse and trenchantly epigrammatic observations, to the lyrical sonnet whose grace notes conclude the book.
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(A leading scholar of English romanticism and literary the...)
A leading scholar of English romanticism and literary theory and criticism, Hazard Adams writes of a lifetime as a student, a teacher and an academic administrator. The child of academically-minded parents, both teachers at Cleveland's Hawken School, Adams tells of his family's experiences at Hawken and later Seattle's Lakeside School, then his Marine Corps service and education at Princeton and the University of Washington. In addition to an illuminating account of his academic career-his experiences researching and teaching in Ireland, his administrative work in the founding faculty at the University of California's Irvine campus, and finally his experiences under the first endowed professorship in the humanities at the University of Washington-the memoir also voyages into memories of family, friends and colleagues and offers singularly well-informed comments on the current state of higher education and the academic experience.
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(This outstanding anthology traces major critical statemen...)
This outstanding anthology traces major critical statements from classic theorists like Plato to the contemporary. This standard historical textbook in the field focuses on important individual thinkers, and not particular schools of thought or isms. Current selections bring the anthology into contemporary times and show students how critical theory has evolved and progressed over time.
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("In this large ... book Prof. Adams has undertaken a full...)
"In this large ... book Prof. Adams has undertaken a full-length study of a number of the important lyrics and poems, mostly from the Pickering MS. Part I ... makes use of The Tyger to illustrate a ... discussion of Blake's archetypes; Part II is concerned with the later Pickering poems; Part III with the Songs of Innocence and Experience; Part IV, the Conclusion, is called 'A Judgement of Blake's Styles' ... This laborious, worhy, and painstaking book ... invites our attention to Blake's ironies and tensions. It provides some interesting interpretations, among them that of William Bond. It will certainly be of help to some students of Blake." -- Excerpted from the Editorial Review by T.R. Henn, as published in 1965 in the Modern Language Review
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(This outstanding anthology traces major critical statemen...)
This outstanding anthology traces major critical statements from classic theorists like Plato to the contemporary. This standard historical textbook in the field focuses on important individual thinkers, and not particular schools of thought or isms. Current selections bring the anthology into contemporary times and show students how critical theory has evolved and progressed over time.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0155161431/?tag=2022091-20
(What's a dragon doing in the hills above Santa Barbara in...)
What's a dragon doing in the hills above Santa Barbara in the 1970's? In the prime of life at 606 years old, Firedrake is keeping the dragon faith, even as the modern world encroaches upon his lair. He's following dragon traditions of many millennia: gathering and guarding a treasure trove, having a troublesome relationship with a very pretty young woman, and of course encountering a dragon slayer or two. Firedrake's a traditionalist, sure, but not a hidebound one. When he happens on a working cassette tape recorder he's delighted, as he loves telling a tale, almost as much as he loves collecting everything from magical balms to old bottles. Thanks to modern technology (well, modern by dragon standards) a dragon has finally gotten the chance to tell the world the dragon side of things. So forget the myths and lies propounded by misguided humans You have in your hands a transcript of actual dragon diaries, full of wonderful dragon lore, that puts you front row center to a modern dragon saga, complete with heroes and damsels, treachery and honor, and of course, a little bit of enchantment. The real story only a dragon could tell....
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( “An overwhelmingly rich display of critical theory.” –R...)
“An overwhelmingly rich display of critical theory.” –Rocky Mountain Review Critical Theory Since 1965 (originally published in 1986 and now in paperback) is a collection of theoretical writing by thirty-eight contemporary theorists and, as background, eighteen important intellectual precursors. It is by far the most complete representation of critical theory available, including phenomenologists, structuralists, deconstructionists, Marxists, feminists, reader-response critics, dissenters, and eccentrics, and supplying the background texts necessary of a working understanding of contemporary critical vocabulary and thought. The volume includes selections from Chomsky, Searle, Derrida, Foucault, Frye, Bloom, Kristeva, Fish, Baktin, Berlin, Lacan, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Lukács, Lévi-Strauss, and Blanchot, among many others.
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Adams, Hazard Simeon was born on February 15, 1926 in Cleveland. Son of Robert Simeon and Mary (Thurness) Adams.
Bachelor of Arts, Princeton, 1948; Master of Arts, University Washington, 1949; Doctor of Philosophy, University Washington, 1953.
Instructor to assistant professor Cornell University, 1952-1956. Assistant professor University Texas, 1956-1959. Visiting associate professor Washington University, St. Louis, 1959.
From associate professor to professor Michigan State University, 1959-1964. Fulbright lecturer University Dublin, 1962-1963. Professor University California-Irvine, 1964-1977, founding chairman English department, 1964-1969.
Dean School Humanities, 1970-1972, vice chancellor academy affairs, 1972-1974. Co-founder, co-director School Criticism and Theory, 1975—1977. Senior fellow, 1975-1988.
Honorary senior fellow, since 1988. Professor English and comparative literature University Washington, Seattle, 1977-1997, Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood professor humanities, 1988-1997, professor emeritus, since 1997. Professor English University California, Irvine, 1990-1994.
(When Nixon orders the bombing of Cambodia, the resulting ...)
(What's a dragon doing in the hills above Santa Barbara in...)
(CRITICAL THEORY SINCE PLATO is a chronologically-arranged...)
(In his Afterword to this finely honed and memorable colle...)
(A leading scholar of English romanticism and literary the...)
(There is something offensive and scandalous about poetry,...)
(This outstanding anthology traces major critical statemen...)
(This outstanding anthology traces major critical statemen...)
(Blake was not only a poet, but also a prolific commentato...)
( “An overwhelmingly rich display of critical theory.” –R...)
(Poetry, an Introductory Anthology .)
(Book by Adams, Hazard)
(Book by Adams, Hazard)
("In this large ... book Prof. Adams has undertaken a full...)
Served to First lieutenant United States Marine Corps Reserve, 1943-1945, 51. Member International Association University professors English, American Conference for Irish Studies, Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Diana White, September 17, 1949. Children: Charles Simeon, Perry White.