A kinder, gentler America; melancholia and the mythical 1950s.081664408X A kinder, gentler America; melancholia MELANCHOLIA, med. jur. A name given by the ancients to a species of partial intellectual mania, now more generally known by the name of monomania. (q.v.) It bore this name because it was supposed to be always attended by dejection of mind and gloomy ideas. Vide Mania., and the mythical myth·i·cal also myth·ic adj. 1. Of or existing in myth: the mythical unicorn. 2. Imaginary; fictitious. 3. 1950s. Caputi, Mary. U. of Minnesota Press 2005 200 pages $19.50 Paperback E169 The theoretical foundations of this book by Caputi (political science, California State U. at Long Beach) are rooted in the shared observations of Julia Kristeva Julia Kristeva (Bulgarian: Юлия Кръстева) (born 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who and Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (July 15, 1892 – September 27, 1940) was a German Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and was also greatly inspired by the Marxism of Bertolt on how nostalgic longing for the past can be seen as a form of melancholic mel·an·chol·ic adj. 1. Affected with or being subject to melancholy. 2. Of or relating to melancholia. dissatisfaction with the present. This theoretical framework is used to analyze competing political narratives of 1950s America: that of the neoconservatives, who long for greater control over destabilized political meaning, and that of the cultural left, who criticize the mythologizing of the 1950s as ignoring the fractiousness, diversity, and dissonance that are in fact more genuinely American than the meaning the neoconservatives wish to reclaim. ([c]20062005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) |
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