American Writers Research Articles

ДОВОЕННЫЙ СССР И НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ ВОПРОС: АДЫГЕЯ В ОЧЕРКЕ АМЕРИКАНСКОГО ЖУРНАЛИСТА ДЖ. КЬЮНИТЦА (1931)

This article analyzes an essay by the American writer J. Kunitz, who traveled across the Republic of Adygea in the early 1930s as part of a group of foreign writers to the southern parts of the USSR. The main theme of the essay of the foreign journalist was the consideration of the methods and ways of solving the national question in the Soviet Union using the example of the Adyghe population. At the same time, the essay examines the process of a radical restructuring of the na-tional republic, both in terms of production and economics, and as part of a change in the very so-cial structure of traditional Caucasian society. Kjunitz documents the transformation of funda-mental social institutions in Adygea, such as the role of the family and women, religion, and edu-cation, in comparison to pre-revolutionary eras. The American author expresses his feelings open-ly, passionately praising the changes he sees before his eyes as modernization and a true “cultural revolution” in the life of the Adyghe people.

The Entanglement of Disability, Animality and Humanness in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People in the Light of Sunaura Taylor’s Ethical Theories

One recent development in the field of disability studies is its intersection with animal studies, as represented in the work of American artist, writer, disability and animal rights activist Sunaura Taylor. In her art and scholarly works, primarily in her book Beasts of Burden (2017), Taylor examines the porousness of human/nonhuman categories in the context of disability studies. Although Taylor is aware of how various discourses animalized certain populations in the past (the colonized, ethnic minorities, or people with disabilities), she insists on showing resemblance and kinship between disabled people and animals. Taylor’s ideas seem to be reflected in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007), which deals with the problem of environmental catastrophe, consequent health issues of the local population, and animalization of people with disabilities. The paper investigates Sinha’s portrayal of entanglements of the human with the nonhuman in the material sphere, and the emergence of a new type of consciousness, based on a redefinition of one’s connection to the world, which involves reclaiming one’s animality.

Karin Slaughter’s Crime Novel "Blindsighted" as a Southern Forensic Thriller

The forensic thriller has emerged as a significant subgenre of crime fiction that depicts the work of medical examiners, coroners, forensic pathologists, and anthropologists who analyze scientific evidence. Forensic investigators do not engage directly in pursuing the criminal; instead, they interpret the physical evidence collected from the victim's body and the crime scene. The popularity of forensic fiction, film, and TV series has created the general assumption that criminalistics has become a routine police procedure. This article presents Karin Slaughter's novel Blindsighted as an example of the Southern forensic thriller. The American writer Karin Slaughter is the author of crime stories and thrillers set in the American South. Her Grant County series consists of six crime novels, beginning with Blindsighted and followed by Kisscut, A Faint Cold Fear, Indelible, Faithless, and Beyond Reach. The essay introduces the main qualities of a forensic thriller and highlights the novel's generic characteristics. Then, Blindsighted is analyzed within the paradigm of Southern regional literature, with its distinctive qualities and religious imagery.

REPRODUCING THE ATMOSPHERE OF SUSPENSE IN LITERARY TRANSLATION (A STUDY OF D. BROWN’S NOVEL “ANGELS AND DEMONS” AND ITS UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION)

This paper focuses on the ways of reproducing the phenomenon of suspense in Ukrainian translation. Suspense is a multifaceted literary category, which can be defined via multiple approaches: genre, motivic, component, semantic-cognitive, stylistic-textual, and translational. Suspense can be interpreted as a category that is actualised in text to create the atmosphere of tension and anxious anticipation to maintain the readers’ constant interest in the events described. The analysis proved that the key role in creating the atmosphere of suspense in literary text belongs to figurative and narrative means. Figurative means of suspense creation embrace descriptions of tense situations, associative lexical units, metaphors, personifications, wordplay, and stylistic graphemics. Among the narrative tools of suspense, the following ones are distinguished: the violation of literary text structure, aposiopesis, the technique of thought interruption, narrativized cinematographic techniques, playing with time, and increasing the pace of the story unfolding. As a literary category, suspense has its ways of reproduction in translation, which envisage the usage of a wide spectrum of translation transformations. The paper, taking as a case study the novel "Angels and Demons" by the American writer Dan Brown and its Ukrainian translation, singles out key imagistic and narrative means of creating suspense in the original novel as well as the specificity of their translation into Ukrainian. The analysis proved that such stylistic means as metaphors, descriptions fraught with tension, and wordplay are the most difficult for literary translation aimed to reproduce suspense. Therefore, multifarious translation transformations are applied to them against the background of searching for analogies in the target language. Translating narrative means of creating suspense heavily relies upon the author’s individual style and genre specificity of the original text.

“Canning the Kaiser” in Words and Images: Case Studies of Patriotic American Propaganda from WWI

The article examines how the US government used poetry and posters as instruments of propaganda during World War I to mobilize the nation and resources for their war effort and to denigrate the enemy, especially the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Two case studies are presented: the poem “Canning the Kaiser” by the American writer Upton Sinclair and the poster “Can Vegetables, Fruit and the Kaiser Too” by the Belgian-American artist Jozef Paul Verrees. The article explores the historical context of Sinclair’s poem as well as the use of humour, irony, and visual metaphors in both pieces of art to persuade the American public to conserve food, support the troops, and thus help defeat the Kaiser. A particular interest of this study lies in the idiomatic meaning of the phrase “Canning the Kaiser”, which is not only an intriguing linguistic issue but had a considerable impact on the development of the campaign.

ROMANUL RUS DIN SECOLUL AL XIX-LEA ȘI DINAMICA LITERATURII ARGENTINIENE. STUDIU DE CAZ: TUNELUL DE ERNESTO SÁBATO

With the publishing of the novel The Tunnel (1948), Sábato became the first Latin American writer to gain popularity in Europe and the most important representative of Existentialism in Latin America. In this paper we investigate the intertextual ties between Sábato’s text and important Russian novels of the XIX century as a means to highlight their original and innovative assimilation into the Argentinian literary tradition and the role they played in the creation of this geographical and cultural area’s literary canon. This investigation intends to systemize the variety of Russian literary models in the novel The Tunnel.

Bridging Cultures, Intersecting Paths of Recognition: Larabi’s Ox: Stories of Morocco (1992) by Tony Ardizzone

As well as being an academic, Chicago-born Tony Ardizzone is one of the most prominent American writers of Sicilian origin. In 1985 he travelled to Morocco and settled in Rabat, where he taught at Mohammed V University. As he has elucidated in more than one interview, he had no intention of writing about Morocco, even though, during his stay, he kept a diary. He travelled to Morocco a second time, in 1988, and, when he came back, he decided to weave some of the stories he had already started to draft into one collection of fourteen interlaced pieces, entitled Larabi’s Ox: Stories of Morocco, re-issued in 2018 as The Arab’s Ox to mark the 25th anniversary of the book publication. As this essay sets out to demonstrate, by setting the collection in a foreign territory at the crossroads (between Europe, Africa, and the Arab world), by choosing American characters (not just Italian Americans) who are struggling to balance their identity in a country whose mores they do not fully understand, Ardizzone aims at casting light on the difficulties and the negotiations each person of ethnic origin has to grapple with, in his/her path of recognition in America.

RUSSIANS IN FRANCE, AMERICANS IN RUSSIA. NEW BOOKS OF THE SCHOLARLY SERIES ROSSICA. RUSSIA AND THE WEST. LITERARY CONTACTS & CONNECTIONS ALEXANDRE STROEV. DESTINS LITTÉRAIRES DES ÉCRIVAINS RUSSES EN FRANCE. MOSCOW, LITFAKT PUBL., 2023. 320 P.GALINA LAPINA. AMERICANS IN MOSCOW, 1930-1940. МOSCOW, LITFAKT, 2022. 206 P.

New monographs of the scholarly series ROSSICA. Russia and the West. Literary Connections and Contacts of the Litfact publishing house examine Russian-French and Soviet-American literary and cultural connections of the first half of the 20th century. Book by Alexandre Stroev is dedicated to the Russian writers (I. Bunin, Dm. Merezhkovsky, A. Bely, E. Zamyatin, M. Voloshin) in France, their literary and public reputation and the reception of their works. Galina Lapina considers American-Soviet contacts and joint projects (theatrical, cinematic, educational) of the 1930s and early 1940s. The heroes of her book are American writers, journalists, diplomats, artists, and students. Both monographs are based on archival documents, letters, memoirs, fictional texts, materials from the Soviet/Russian and foreign (French or American) press. The study of an impressive source array made it possible to reveal unexplored episodes in the life of Russian writers in France and unknown part of their legacy, to reconstruct the history of Soviet-American joint ventures in the fields of culture, education, literature, theater and cinema.

Exploring the Diasporic Consciousness in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an acclaimed Indian American writer known for her dazzling investigation of South Asian immigrant experiences. Divakaruni is a famous diasporic writer with a refined and modern sensibility whose contribution to the diasporic fiction is great and unique. Divakaruni beautifully presents the matrix of diasporic consciousness like nostalgia, loneliness, rootlessness, alienation, cultural conflict, questioning, etc., in her novels. Her writing affirms that diaspora is not merely scattering or dispersion but a matrix of consciousness that encompasses various conflicting characteristics. Being an immigrant in USA, Divakaruni seems to capture the experiences of the Indian immigrants with all its colours. This article attempts to explore the diasporic consciousness in the work of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart.

Analyzing the Role of Caddy's Absence in The Sound and the Fury Based on Textual Close Reading and Corpus Analysis

The Sound and the Fury is a masterpiece of American writer Faulkner's novels, and it is also an outstanding achievement of the writer's exploration of stream-of-consciousness narrative. The novel set in the post-Civil War American South, depicts the decline of a big family and old society orders. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the symbolic meaning of Caddy's "absence" in the narrative through close reading of the text, psychoanalysis and corpus searching methods, so as to look into the deeper meaning of the text. By analyzing Caddy's image from various angles, the paper finally concludes that Caddy's absence is not only a symbol of the era of decline, rupture and uncertainty, but also a means to strengthen the interactivity and extensibility of the text, as well as implying the author's understanding and awareness of women. By excluding Caddy from the text, the novel itself becomes an interpretation of Caddy.

Cyborgism And Social Enhancement: Shaping A New Rhetoric for Woman’s Participation in Contemporary Society as Represented in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)

In A manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s (2015), Australian scholar Donna Haraway develops a new feminist philosophy based on the possibilities offered by the cyborg, a cybernetic hybrid organism representing the coupling of organism and the machine, which is turned into an instrument for achieving all human aspirations. Drawing from this vision, we show through the study of Neuromancer (1984) by American writer William Gibson, that the trajectory of Molly Million, Gibson’s female protagonist is consistent to the cybor figure, and as such it is instrumental to the emancipation of contemporary woman’s life.

Counterfactual Histories: Philip Roth and Nicole Krauss

The canon of verisimilitude is a widely discussed concept, aiming at establishing the fictional pact ever since Aristotle’s Poetics. Multiple experiences of time seem to unsettle the logic of this fictional pact. To highlight the disjunctive chrono-methodology and its implications in reformulating a well-established canon, I choose the concept of uchronia –developed and discussed theoretically and literarily by two American writers of Jewish origin, Philip Roth and Nicole Krauss. The two developed alternative legacies and counterfactual histories of Franz Kafka: He either escapes to Palestine or gets immersed into an accomplished love relationship with Dora Dymant during the last year of his life. Thus, the “u-chronic” writers unsettle Kafka’s canonical legacy left to Max Brod, the official detainer of his post-mortem history.

TRANSGRESSIVE LANGUAGE OF POSTMODERNIST AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING: INTERTEXT AND METALEPSIS

Background. Intertext and metalepsis in the proposed study are considered as the phenomena of transgressive poetics, means of creating the ontological dimension of an artistic text and tools for textualization of life. Transgressive language contributes to the correction of preconceived notions about postmodernism, facilitate the disclosure of changing nature of autobiography by revealing and analyzing internal contradictions − the amphibology of meaning. Self-generated paradoxes are revealed in the pluralized text due to metalepsis that registered dissolving borders between the levels of narration − author (reality), narrator (extra-diegetic), narratee (intra-diegetic) and intertextuality that creates an ambivalent space for co-existing multilayered experiences . The pronouns «I», «he», «they», constantly alternating, refer to each other, preventing the re-creation of an unambiguous original signified, i.e. a real biographical author who created an autobiographical text − the basis of the genre of autobiography. 
 The purpose of the article is to analyze the role of intertext and metalepsis in creating an autobiographically transgressive text on the example of a novel by the postmodernist writer Stephen Dixon.
 Methods. The poststructuralist approach in the context of literary theory along with elements of intertextual, narrative, stylistic analysis was used. 
 Results. The study of the peculiarities of transgressive language in the autobiographical postmodernist writing shows that Dixon's I-texts are sustained in the parameters of a classic novel: there is neither hypertextuality nor open polemical intertextuality. However, the transformation of the artistic matter of literature and the nature of autobiography is multifaceted and noted at all levels of the text. 
 Discussion. Dixon’s innovations lie in the further transformation of the modus of the author's presence, begun by Modernists. The artistic strategy of transgression of the experience of classical autobiography, applied by Dixon, is embodied in using the reconceptualized stylistic devices. One of them is ontological metalepsis that reveals transgressive dynamics on all levels of artistic conventions and, above all, the boundaries of fiction and reality in the act of creativity. The representative texts of the American writer reveal the growing sense of the thinning line between language and reality in the autobiographical prose of recent decades. This is accompanied by the development of innovative breakthroughs to reflect one's life experience, dictated by the existential need to restore ties with the material, which runs into the ambivalence of language structures.

Development of Detective Fiction

Detection is not uncommon for human beings. Since the very beginning, it has been connected to their origin. All the discoveries are the result of human beings’ detection. The field of literature is also not untouched by it. Though the elements of detection have been evident in the literary pieces since the origin of literature, but the concrete structure is provided by the nineteenthcentury American writer, Edgar Allan Poe. Poe produced The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 which is considered as the very first detective story. The total number of Poe’s detective story is three: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marié Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter. C. Auguste Dupin is portrayed as the hero in all these stories in the form of the detective. These stories are narrated by an unnamed narrator who happens to be Dupin’s friend. Dupin is not a professional detective. He decided to solve his first case in order to help one of his known persons who helped him once, and obviously his love for detection. The aim of this research paper is to present the development of detective fiction in the field of literature.

Mother Wound, Creative Collaboration and Relational Healing: Examining Graphic Vignettes from Are You My Mother?

This article will examine the American cartoonist and writer Alison Bechdel's memoir Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012) through the lens of graphic medicine. I will approach her experience of not receiving emotional support, validation, and appreciation from her mother as a "wounding" ("mother wound") to engage more comprehensively with the process and difficulty of the incomplete/ongoing nature of healing. Conceptual frameworks such as Bethany Webster's  "Mother Wound," Sigmund Freud and Dominick LaCapra’s idea of  "working through," and Ian William et al.’s "Graphic Medicine" have been engaged with to argue that Bechdel’s experience of seeking and engaging in years of therapy and creative collaboration with her mother is an attempt to understand her self in relation to the m(other). In self-picturing her suffering, Bechdel portrays the inter-subjective experiences of surviving a wound and the arduous task of seeking and receiving formal and informal care. The graphic format of the memoir, with panels, speech bubbles, illustrations of handwritten diaries, and hand-drawn photographs, allows Bechdel to visualize the complicated mother-daughter relationship. The memoir is a testament to the entangled and non-linear nature of trauma, memory, and the possibilities that creative collaboration offers for relational healing.  

From Third Space to Transnational: A Study of Alter Identities in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

The burgeoning presence of the Indian Diaspora across the world has triggered a new consideration of the cultural theories of nation, identity and international affairs. Depicting the process of negotiating the borders, both physical borders of states and countries and the metaphorical borders, between genders generations and cultures, Bharati Mukherjee, an American writer of Indian origin, raises the question of space and identity of the Indian immigrants in the US. An attempt is made to map the journey of the Indian Diaspora from the status of the immigrants to that of the transnational citizens of the world. The scope of this study lies in its treatment of transnational space which is going to redefine the idea of Diaspora as a process of gain, contrary to conventional perspectives that construe immigration and displacement as a condition of terminal loss and dispossession, involving the erasure of history and the dissolution of an “original” culture. Rejecting the binaries of the Western Centre and the Eastern Periphery, the paper invites a post-structural approach to the cultural identity construction of the Indian Diaspora.

The theme of the freedom in “The adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was written in 1894, is still useful and important for today’s children in spite of being old. It is also often read by adults with pleasure as well. Relationships, families, the natural world, and daily life are all themes in the stories. Children and people in general must deal with these significant issues throughout their lives. They learn how to act toward others in particular situations, who to trust, and what friendship entails—basic principles of our way of life. Therefore, in my research, I attempted to reveal the issue of “freedom” in American writer Mark Twain’s masterpiece “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”

The Thematic Characteristics of First and Second Generation Chinese American Writers: Based on the Analysis of The Bonesetters Daughter, Crazy Rich Asians, Everything You Never Told Me, and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Novels created by Chinese American writers are expected to reveal certain situations in Chinese American immigrant families. Family conflicts can be combined with more social problems, such as racial discrimination, gender discrimination, political suppression, and the discussion of ancestry and familyhood. First and second-generation Chinese American writers have different perspectives and techniques to blend family conflict with social problems, but their works also have features in common. The paper compares Crazy Rich Asians, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Bonesetters Daughter, and Everything You Never Told Me to analyze their plots, characters, and the backgrounds of their authors, respectively, to conclude these Chinese American writers techniques similar, or variable, and the causes to such differences. In general, the writing methods of Chinese American writers and their techniques are closely related to their educational experience and cultural background. Different degrees of relation with Oriental culture and moral values lead to various points of view expressed in stories. A lack of knowledge of Asian traditions may lead to misinterpretation of certain behaviors, but this might also prompt writers to introduce the better part of Asian traditions. As writers often get inspiration from surrounding people and events, settings, plots, and characters can also be seen to reflect the writers cultural and educational backgrounds.

Lefebvre'nin Mekân Teorisi ile Allen Ginsberg'ün "Howl" Şiirini Okuma

Allen Ginsberg, a prominent American poet and writer, is widely recognized for his significant contribution to American literature by creating his authentic style and as a critical figure in the Beat Generation. This literary movement emerged in the 1950s as a response to the time's oppressive and conservative societal norms, including the fear of nuclear war, the rise of consumerism, and the stifling conformity of the Cold War era. Ginsberg's literary voice captured the essence of this movement, expressing its countercultural values through his descriptions and language, which were often explicit and straightforward. This study examines "Howl" through the lens of Lefebvre's Spatial Theory, which provides a critical framework for analyzing the spatial dimensions of social life. By applying Lefebvre's theory, this analysis reveals the spatial dimensions of the poem, including the relationship between space and time, space and ideology, and the relationship between poetry and language. The use of spatial theory in literary analysis offers a unique perspective on the social and cultural context of the time, providing insights into how spatial and ideological power relations are reflected in literature. This study will contribute to a sociological commentary on American literature as it explores the role of space and place in the production and reception of literary works. It also provides an analytical framework for understanding the spatial dimensions of social life in 1950s America.

Semiotic interpretation of photos in Leslie Silko’s Storyteller

Abstract Leslie Marmon Silko, a Native American female writer, includes many photos about family and land in her autobiography Storyteller. The relations of images and words in her book are analyzed from the perspective of semiotics, particularly from Roland Barthes’s image rhetoric. The linguistic message and the coded and non-coded iconic message of the photos help in understanding the Laguna Pueblo concept of time and place. Photos about family show the cyclical time expanse of the family history and the change of traditions in Laguna. Photos about land and the stories behind pass on their ancestral culture to the next and the next generation. Photos, as a sign to be against linear time and against humans’ violence to nature, help the indigenous reshape their history and re-envision their subjectivity.