Background
Joseph Frank was born Joseph Nathaniel Glassman on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1918. His father died when he was young, his mother remarried William Frank, and the family moved to Brooklyn.
( Joseph Frank's continuing biography of Dostoevsky is by...)
Joseph Frank's continuing biography of Dostoevsky is by now recognized as one of the major achievements of this century in this form, and perhaps the best work on the author in any language. During the course of this long-range effort, Frank has also produced articles, introductions, and occasional pieces that arise from his acute awareness of how Western ideas are changed, transformed, and given new meanings and implications when they are reflected through the Russian prism. It is this interaction between Russia and the West that has fascinated Frank for many years and that provides the focus for these essays. Assembled here are twenty contributions dealing with the culture that generated the great novels of Dostoevsky and the criticism of the Russian formalists of the early twentieth century, whose perceptions still shape our views of Russian and much of world literature. Included are evaluations of books by Jakobson and Bakhtin, as well as of books about the development of Russian formalist criticism and thought. At the center are pieces on Dostoevsky and his milieu, as well as on his influence on world literature. Among them are Frank's New Criterion piece on Ralph Ellison's debt to Dostoevsky and a critical examination of the world-famous article by Freud on the Russian master. Gathered together, these essays reveal one of the powerful critical intelligences of our time, considering issues that arise from his study of Dostoevsky but which extend well beyond the time and place of that novelist alone.
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( The Idea of Spatial Form contains the classic essay tha...)
The Idea of Spatial Form contains the classic essay that introduced the concept of "spatial form" into literary discussion in 1945, and has since been accepted as one of the foundations for a theory of modern literature. It is here reprinted along with two later reconsiderations, one of which answers its major critics, while the second places the theory in relation to Russian Formalism and French Structuralism. Originally conceived to clarify the formal experiments of avant-garde literature, the idea of spatial form, when placed in this wider context, also contributes importantly to the foundations of a general poetics of the literary text. Also included are related discussions of André Malraux, Heinrich Wölfflin, Herbert Read, and E. H. Gombrich. New material has been added to the essays in the form of footnotes and postscripts to two of them. These either illustrate the continuing relevance of the questions raised, or offer Frank's more recent opinions on the topic.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813516439/?tag=2022091-20
(University of Michigan Press, 1968, Midland Books, Very g...)
University of Michigan Press, 1968, Midland Books, Very good., 274 pages. Very good. Light wear. Text clean. Midland Books paperback edition. Literary Criticism, Modern Literature Out-of-print and antiquarian booksellers since 1933. We pack and ship with care.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0253201209/?tag=2022091-20
( This volume, the fourth of five planned in Joseph Frank...)
This volume, the fourth of five planned in Joseph Frank's widely acclaimed biography of Dostoevsky, covers the six most remarkably productive years in the novelist's entire career. It was in this short span of time that Dostoevsky produced three of his greatest novels--Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Devils--and two of his best novellas, The Gambler and The Eternal Husband. All these masterpieces were written in the midst of harrowing practical and economic circumstances, as Dostoevsky moved from place to place, frequently giving way to his passion for roulette. Having remarried and fled from Russia to escape importuning creditors and grasping dependents, he could not return for fear of being thrown into debtor's prison. He and his young bride, who twice made him a father, lived obscurely and penuriously in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, as he toiled away at his writing, their only source of income. All the while, he worried that his recurrent epileptic attacks were impairing his literary capacities. His enforced exile intensified not only his love for his native land but also his abhorrence of the doctrines of Russian Nihilism--which he saw as an alien European importation infecting the Russian psyche. Two novels of this period were thus an attempt to conjure this looming spectre of moral-social disintegration, while The Idiot offered an image of Dostoevsky's conception of the Russian Christian ideal that he hoped would take its place.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691015872/?tag=2022091-20
comparative literature educator
Joseph Frank was born Joseph Nathaniel Glassman on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1918. His father died when he was young, his mother remarried William Frank, and the family moved to Brooklyn.
Student, New York University, 1937-1938; student, University Wisconsin-Madison, 1941-1942; student, University Paris, 1950-1951; Doctor of Philosophy, University Chicago, 1960.
Editor, Bureau National Affairs, Washington, 1942-1950; special researcher, American Embassy, Paris, 1951-1952; lecturer department English, Princeton University, 1955-1956; professor department comparative literature, Princeton University, 1966-1983; director Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism, Princeton University, 1966-1983; professor emeritus comparative literature, Princeton University, 1983-1985; assistant professor, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1958-1961; associate professor, Rutgers University, 1961-1966; visiting member, Institute Advanced Study, 1984-1987; professor comparative literature and Slavic languages and literature, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, 1986. Visiting professor Harvard University, 1965.
( The Idea of Spatial Form contains the classic essay tha...)
( Joseph Frank's continuing biography of Dostoevsky is by...)
( Joseph Frank's continuing biography of Dostoevsky is by...)
( This volume, the fourth of five planned in Joseph Frank...)
( The description for this book, Dostoevsky: The Stir of ...)
(University of Michigan Press, 1968, Midland Books, Very g...)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(Brand New. In Stock. Will be shipped from US. Excellent C...)
Elected fellow American Academy Arts Sciences. Member Modern Language Association (James Russell Lowell prize 1977, 87), American Association Advancement of Slavic Studies, National Academy Arts and Sciences.
Married Marguerite J. Straus, May 11, 1953. Children: Claudine, Isabelle.