Armstrong argues that conflicting readings occur because readers with opposing suppositions about language, literature, and life can generate irreconcilable hypotheses about a text. Without endorsing a particular critical methodology, the author offers a theory designed to help readers better understand the causes and consequences of interpretive disagreement so that they may make more informed choices about the various interpretive strategies available to them. Originally published in 1990. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

A concise, affordable, cutting-edge collection of articles that take a critical constructionist approach to social problems. Featuring 26 in-depth and engaging articles, this reader is an ideal supplement to editor Robert Heiner's textbook, Social Problems: An Introduction to Critical Constructionism, Third Edition. This unique anthology is the only social problems reader in which the majority of the selections reflect the conflict perspective; this approach views social problems as the consequence of social and economic inequalities and therefore encourages students to critically analyze American public policy responses to social problems. Conflicting Interests is organized into five sections: Thinking about Social Problems, The Economics of Inequality, Social Inequalities, Problems of the Family, Crime and Drugs, and Problems of the Environment. Several articles address the contemporary economic crisis and the role that the media plays in constructing social problems.In addition, many of the essays describe public policies in countries outside of the United States, providing students with alternative, cross-cultural perspectives and solutions to social problems. Each section begins with an introduction that briefly summarizes the articles and shows how they are interrelated. Each essay concludes with critical thinking questions that are designed to stimulate class discussion and to help students carefully evaluate the issues.

How should we understand Victorian conflict? The Victorians were divided between multiple views of the political, religious and social issues that motivated their changing aspirations. Such debates are a fundamental aspect of the literature of the period and these essays propose new ways of understanding their significance.

This collection examines ways in which modern literature responds to the body-at-war, examining the effects of violent conflict on the body in its literal and representative forms. Spanning literature from World War I to the present day, it includes essays on pacifist theatre, torture, fascist fantasies, and uniforms and masculinity.

In this new study, James Brenneman confronts the issue of conflicting canons with full force, incorporating insights gained from both literary and biblical disciplines on the question of canon. He begins with an illuminating tour through contemporary literary theory from Hans Robert Jauss to Stanley Fish, and current discussions in theology about the canon. He goes on to a consideration of true and false prophesy, with a detailed examination of the three apparently conflicting versions of the Old Testament "swords into plowshares" prophesy, as found in Isaiah 2:2-4,5; Joel 4:9-12 (Eng. 3:9-12); and Micah 4:1-5. Suggesting that the dynamics controlling the process for negotiating between contradictory readings of prophetic texts are the same as those at work in adjudicating between canons in conflict, Brenneman concludes by pointing the way towards an integrative approach appropriate to the question of canon and authority in a "post-modern" pluralistic context.

From the Preface: "Contemporary theory has usefully analyzed how alternative modes of interpretation produce different meanings, how reading itself is constituted by the variable perspectives of readers, and how these perspectives are in turn defined by prejudices, ideologies, interests, and so forth. Some theorists gave argued persuasively that textual meaning, in literature and in literary interpretation, is structured by repression and forgetting, by what the literary or critical text does not say as much as by what it does. All these claims are directly relevant to legal hermeneutics, and thus it is no surprise that legal theorists have recently been turning to literary theory for potential insight into the interpretation of law. This collection of essays is designed to represent the especially rich interactive that has taken place between legal and literary hermeneutics during the past ten years."