How Long to Read When the Lamp is Shattered

How Long Does it Take to Read When the Lamp is Shattered?

It takes the average reader 3 hours and 53 minutes to read When the Lamp is Shattered by Micaela Wakil Janan

Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more

Description

The poetry of the Late Roman Republican poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, a rich document of the human heart, is the earliest-known reasonably complete body of erotic verse in the West. Though approximately 116 poems survive, uncertainties about the condition of the fragmented manuscript and the narrative order of the poems make the Catullan text unusually problematic for the modern critic. Indeed, the poems can be arranged in a number of ways, making a multitude of different plots possible and frustrating the reader's desire for narrative closure. Micaela Janan contends that since unsatisfied desire structures both the experience of reading Catullus as well as its subject matter, critical interpretation of the text demands a "poetics of desire". She proposes an original and provocative feminist reading of Catullus, a reading informed by theories of consciousness as ancient as Plato and as contemporary as Freud and Lacan. Janan holds that traditional text theory achieves interpretive closure by idealizing a self-aware, autonomous, and concrete textual "persona". In such a view, even the most unexpected or bizarre conduct ought to be explainable in terms of this presumably stable core of consciousness. Thus the extraordinary variations in Catullus' sexuality - including apparent shifts of gender identity - have led critics who seek a personality type that would account for the poet's behavior to speculate about his "bisexuality" or "effeminacy". Postmodern critical theory, narratology, and psychoanalysis, however, suggest a more flexible concept of the "subject" as a site through which a multitude of social, cultural, and unconscious forces move. Human consciousness, Janan contends, isinherently incomplete and in a continuous process of transformation. She argues that Catullus' gender transitions should be understood less as evidence of a conflicted sexuality than as a radical, poetic interrogation of the social construction of gender itself. The Late Roman Republic in which Catullus lived, Janan reminds us, was a time of profound social upheaval when political and cultural institutions that had persisted for centuries were rapidly breaking down a time not unlike our own. Catullus' poetry provides an unusually honest look at his culture and its contradictory representations of class, gender, and power. By bringing to the study of this major work of classical literature the themes of consciousness and desire dealt with in postmodern scholarship, Janan's book invites a new conversation among literary disciplines.

How long is When the Lamp is Shattered?

When the Lamp is Shattered by Micaela Wakil Janan is 232 pages long, and a total of 58,464 words.

This makes it 78% the length of the average book. It also has 71% more words than the average book.

How Long Does it Take to Read When the Lamp is Shattered Aloud?

The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 5 hours and 19 minutes to read When the Lamp is Shattered aloud.

What Reading Level is When the Lamp is Shattered?

When the Lamp is Shattered is suitable for students ages 12 and up.

Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.

When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.

Where Can I Buy When the Lamp is Shattered?

When the Lamp is Shattered by Micaela Wakil Janan is sold by several retailers and bookshops. However, Read Time works with Amazon to provide an easier way to purchase books.

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