Contemporary Literary Criticism Research Articles

Indonesian Female Writers’ Perspective Toward Acehnese Women: A Gynocritic Study

This article is a study of the thoughts of Indonesian female writers towards Acehnese women as reflected in the literary works they produce. The objects used are the novel Perempuan Keumala by Endang Moerdopo (2008) and the novel Seulusoh by D. Kemalawati (2006). These two manuscripts were chosen because the background story used is about Aceh, the characters in the novel are Acehnese women. So far, it is difficult to find female Indonesian writers who highlight the social life of the female Acehnese in their stories. Thus, this study can be used as the basis for literary criticism in the field of Acehnese gynocritic feminism. This study uses a qualitative approach with descriptive text analysis. The theory that is used as the rationale for this study is Showalter's gynocritic literary criticism (1981 and 2000), which is now as a theory of contemporary literary criticism. The results of the analysis reflect the thoughts of Acehnese women writers on the figures of Acehnese women and Acehnese women in the view of women authors outside Aceh. The focus of the analysis includes (1) female biological elements; (2) female psychological elements; (3) female language; and (4) female culture. The results of the study show that Acehnese women in Acehnese women's literary works tend to appear as feminine figures, but are also brave, responsible, and have high social sensitivity. As for Acehnese women, in the eyes of women outside Aceh, they are described as brave, hard, responsible, and have a heroic spirit.

Özyaşamöyküsünden Özkurmacaya

Kökleri çok eskilere dayanan özyaşamöyküsünün yazınsal bir kavram olarak değerlendirip kuramsal çerçevesinin belirlenmesi, XX. yüzyılın son çeyreğine denk gelmektedir. Yüzyıllardır varlığını sürdüren özyaşamöyküsü türü, bu uzun süreçte roman anlayışının değişiminden de payını alır ve 1977 yılında Serge Doubrovsky, ruhçözümcü söylemin ön planda olduğu çağdaş, süreksiz, kopuk, çokkatmanlı ve parçalı özellikteki benli anlatıları, kökleşik özyaşamöyküsünden ayırmak için “özkurmaca” kavramını ortaya atar. 1980-1990 yılları arasında “postmodern” olarak tanımlanan ekonomik, tarihsel, toplumsal ve kültürel olarak yaşanan çok sayıda değişim dönüşümle birlikte bu yeni kavram oldukça ilgi görür. Söz konusu kavram, öznenin metne dönüşünü ve dolayısıyla yazarın dönüşünü somutlaştırır. Bir bakıma bireyciliğin, özseverliliğin ve hazcılığın yükselişinin bir sonucu olarak ortaya çıkan özkurmaca kavramı, bir söylem olarak yalnızca yazınsal yapıtlarda değil çağdaş Fransız kültürünün neredeyse her alanında karşımıza çıkar. Bu çalışmada özyaşamöyküsünün yazınsal bir söylem olarak nasıl tanımlandığını, özkurmaca kavramının nasıl ortaya çıktığını, bu kavramı kuramcıların nasıl tanımladığını ve günümüz yazın eleştirisi alanında nasıl algılandığını ortaya koymayı deneyeceğiz.

Intertextuality between French Literature Creation and Literature Translation Based on Feature Extraction and Gram Matrix

In the 1980s, there was a cultural turn in translation studies. Since then, translation studies are no longer confined to the study of specific texts, but examine the texts in the context of culture and history, and study the production process of texts and the relationship between texts and related factors such as culture and history. When literary works are transplanted from one language to another, it is like moving plants and animals from one place to another. They must “adapt” and grow like individuals or nations, and they can only survive if they adapt to the new environment and change. Intertextuality is one of the important terms in contemporary literary criticism. Intertextuality is one of the seven textual features of a text (formal adaptation, semantic adaptation, intentionality, receptivity, informality, situational, and intertextuality). Gram incidence matrix is designed to count and merge feature words using feature extraction algorithm for text processing and feature extraction, so that feature words of different lengths can be extracted using fixed-length algorithm. A poststructuralist, Roland Barthes, deconstructs the traditional concept of text and extends it to the social and cultural context. The so-called intertextuality of literary creation and literary translation also incorporates cultural connotation and knowledge structure into the relationship between texts. Literary system is a system, social culture is a larger system, and literary system is a constituent factor of the social cultural system, according to the theory of multiple systems; literary creation and literary translation are factors in the literary system. The main focus of intertextuality theory is text comprehension. Bloom’s intertextuality theory, on the other hand, expounds on text creation. On the basis of a feature extraction algorithm, this paper investigates the types and techniques of intertextuality between creative text and translated text using a combination of objective description and theoretical analysis.

Kristevan intertextuality between Waiting for Godot and The Pillowman

This study is focused on intertextual interpretation over the common elements in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. Both plays are excellent examples of how reality and imagination interact with one another. Waiting for Godot and The Pillowman are psychological plays that explore the relationship around existentialism, death, and future hope. Beckett and McDonagh are two well-known Irish playwrights who will probably always hold a special place in world literature. In this context, Beckett is widely regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century, both in Europe and across the globe. Besides, despite the fact that McDonagh began writing plays at the end of the twentieth century, he should be regarded as a playwright of the twenty-first. On the other hand, intertextuality is a text analysis strategy based on postmodernism, introduced by literary theorist Julia Kristeva in the late 1960s. According to the intertextual theory, all texts interact with one another inside the writer’s and reader's social and cultural background. Kristeva's intertextual theory later began to be used as one of the contemporary literary criticism methods. During the intertextual criticism, a bond is formed between the reader and the work they are reading. In this framework, the reader becomes the critic who delivers a unique process by detecting parallels between works. Actually, The Pillowman was written half a century after Waiting for Godot, and the plots of the two plays are quite different. However, the character pairs, character names, told stories, themes, phrases, setting, and feeling of hope in The Pillowman are similar to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. All these support Kristeva's theory of intertextuality that writers create a new text under the influence of several works they read in the past.

ПОЕТИКА ЗБІРКИ ПОЛЯ ЕЛЮАРА ТА МАНА РЕЯ «LES MAINS LIBRES»

This article is part of a more detailed study of “pictopoetry” as a phenomenon, where we define its place in the genre system of surrealism on the example of Paul Eluard and Man Ray collection “Les Mains libres” (“Free Hands”). The activities of the surrealists expanded the artistic vision of the world to previously unknown boundaries. In particular, we observe these innovative achievements in the field of poetry, where A. Breton, W. Browner, P. Eluard and other representatives of this trend continued to search for new poetic intermediate forms, genre paradigms. The genre repertoire of surrealists is characterized by unusual diversity, exploratory nature and freedom from restrictions, and the short existence of new genres that did not mature in time, complicates the study of the genre system of this art direction, so it remains an unexplored field in literature. Forms and genres of poetry created within the framework of surrealism did not acquire a broad enough scientific understanding that would allow them to be systematized. Among contemporary French literary critics, more and more scientists turn to P. Eluard`s creative heritage, but some of them focus on the specifics of his collection “Free Hands”. In particular, in the few works of French scientists (S. Caron, J.-L. Benoit, M.F. Leudet, C. Leconte) considered only some aspects of the nature of the synthesis of graphic and textual components of the collection “Free Hands”, and the problem of P. Eluard and Man Ray pictopoetry’s poetics as a phenomenon significant for genre researches of surrealists is not staged at all. As for the specifics of the poetics of P. Eluard`s “pictopoetry”, it remains almost unexplored today. In the works of I. Ehrenburg and S. Velykovsky, the main attention is focused on the general analysis of P. Eluard`s poetry, his experience in the use of free verse and automatic writing. P. Eluard’s contribution to the development of visual poetry and the intermediate nature of his works are only partially considered by T. Balashova, Y. Dovga, I. Medvedeva, and the experience of poet’s work in tandem with illustrators became the subject of E. Miroshnikova special analysis. In Ukrainian Eluard`s studies, the attention of scinetists is focused on the study of biography, some techniques of the poet, for example, the use of free verse and automatic writing (O. Benina, V. Soloveychik), but not on the pictpoetry’s poetics as important sign of poetry of surrealism and it’s genre innovations. This fact necessitates the filling of the gaps that currently exist in the study of surrealist poetry in its innovative, revolutionary forms, including the “pictopoetry” of the master of surrealism – the French poet Paul Eluard. “Pictopoetry” as a concept developed theoretically by W. Brauner and revealed by P. Eluard in the collection “Free Hands” (created in collaboration with the artist Man Ray), embodies the intermedia research for surrealists of the twentieth century in general, as well as the unique experience of co-creation of two surrealist artists on a fundamentally new level, which goes far beyond the traditional collaboration of poet and illustrator. Therefore, P. Eluard`s “pictopoetry” is understood as an innovative form of surrealist poetry, built on the principle of synthesis of arts, on the intermediality. It seems relevant both in terms of understanding the work of surrealist poets, and in the context of Eluard’s studies, where the figure of the poet as an innovator, the practice of intermedia art, still remains insufficiently revealed. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify the originality of the poetics of Paul Eluard’s “pictopoetry” in the collection “Free Hands”. The article analyzes both literary and psycholinguistic means of expressing the double code in the collection on the example of duopoems. It is determined that the intermedia research method of the boundary state image, in which surreal images are intertwined at the level of poetic word and image, creating new meanings, defines the poetics of “Free Hands” as a collection created “in four hands”. This fact will allow us to analyze more thoroughly both the phenomenon of “pictopoetry” in particular and the contribution of the poet and artist in its development.

The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century by Charles LaPorte

Reviewed by: The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century by Charles LaPorte Marija Reiff (bio) The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century by Charles LaPorte; pp. 213. Cambridge UP, 2021. Charles laporte begins his engaging examination of Victorian "bardology" (a term he invents as a counter to George Bernard Shaw's pejorative "bardolatry") with a simple request to the reader: to view the [End Page 131] Victorians' literary and religious investments in Shakespeare with "readerly sympathy" (24). This modest admonishment belies the capacious sweep of LaPorte's thesis, which details not just the Victorians' penchant to read Shakespeare through a religious lens but also the indebtedness of contemporary literature departments to reading literature, and Shakespeare in particular, with competing pieties that mirror those of nineteenth-century scholars. Although the bulk of The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare focuses on archival work, with each of its five chapters exploring little-known documents that reveal the creative ways Victorians imbued Shakespearean texts with religious meaning, LaPorte aims to do more than just recuperate the ostensibly naive Victorians who worshipped Shakespeare with a cult-like reverence and produced dubious, frequently humorous scholarship. Rather, he seeks to re-enchant literary studies as a whole by reclaiming the Biblical-studies roots of its hermeneutic past. LaPorte traces the origins of cultic Shakespeare and contemporary literary criticism to the appearance of Higher Criticism, which treated the Bible not as the direct word of God but as an ancient, possibly mythical text worthy of critical examination. In LaPorte's account, as Higher Criticism transformed the Bible from the factual word of God into the "inspired poetic expression" of God, "the most sublime secular poetry" showed promise "to become its own Bible, as well" (33). In light of the Higher Criticism, Shakespeare came to be seen as a Biblical supplement, a type of modern-day prophet. This move to make Shakespeare into something of a fifth Evangelist is evidenced through a trove of artifacts found from the mid-1800s on, most notably the proliferation of "Shakespeare sermons" and the appearance of Shakespearean devotional books, which mined Shakespeare's plays and sonnets for their possible theological and religious meanings. LaPorte's book is at its best and most illuminating in the first three chapters, wherein he explores these archival materials. Chapter 1 examines the "occasionally ridiculous, invariably quaint" Shakespeare sermons of the nineteenth century (24). These sermons treated Shakespeare's wisdom much like the Bible's: that is, as "timeless, universal, and divinely inspired" (29). These sermons had their heyday in the celebrations of Shakespeare's tercentenary, in 1864, and they proliferated both in the pulpit and in published pamphlets. They looked to Shakespeare's plots and his characters' words to reveal truths about sin, temptation, and corruption, topics that could be placed within the framework of a larger Christian discourse. If the Shakespeare sermons connected Shakespearean wisdom to Biblical wisdom, then the appearance of devotional Shakespeare volumes, the subject of chapters 2 and 3, flat-out conflated them. These volumes placed Shakespeare's work in dialogue with the Bible, often comparing individual phrases with analogous phrases from the holy book. While the Shakespeare sermons often pulled religious meaning out of Shakespeare's themes, these [End Page 132] printed devotional works moved beyond thematic meaning and instead focused on exact words or phrases and their supposed Biblical counterparts. This direct comparison was indicated not simply by their content, but also by their mise-en-page, wherein Shakespeare's words were placed on facing pages to the Bible's, often in matching fonts. LaPorte argues that these devotional texts became a sort of "secondary Bible, showing divine wisdom refracted through English genius" (64). These cuttings and juxtapositions were often absurd in the context of the plays themselves and could only be examined for wisdom when removed from the intricacies of Shakespeare's plots. LaPorte argues that these compilers frequently exhibited a "sublime indifference to literary contexts" (84), with Victorian scholars drawing ostensibly meaningful moral lessons from Shakespearean villains and clowns. Such creative interpretations oftentimes went far beyond the confines of the text, and LaPorte draws our attention to other such instances of "hermeneutic extravagance...

Not form, not genre, but style: on literary categories

ABSTRACT This metacritical essay compares three concepts in literary criticism – form, genre, and style – each of which lumps together disparate objects in a common category. Lumping is an essential component of what we as humanists ought to be in the business of doing, and this essay defends the taxonomic impulse. But I argue that different categories produce different kinds of knowledge; and that for contemporary literary criticism, we need stylistic knowledge more than formal or generic. I theorise genres as affective institutions, which provides more leverage than formalism does in tracking the ongoing modulation of social structure in the historical present. And yet genre can still only get us so far, which is why we need a rejuvenated theory of style. Drawing but departing from recent critical accounts of style including Mark McGurl and D. A. Miller, I theorise style as action, not an expression of affect, and as a coordination of form and content. If form attends more to structure, and genre attends more to affect, then style attends to their entanglement, highlighting strategies developed to adapt to the affective pressures of social structure.

Eugeniusz Chlebcewicz oraz jego zainteresowania literaturą białoruską

Eugeniusz Chlebcewicz is undoubtedly one of the outstanding representatives of the period in which he lived. The biographical sketches of Jan Barszczewski (1790–1851), Franciszak Bahuszewicz (1840–1900), Janka Kupala (1882–1942) and Ciotka (1876–1916) have a documentary value. Chlebcewicz’s works are often referred to by contemporary literary critics who carry out research on new Belarusian literature. His relations with representatives of the literary period named “Парнасу Нашанiўскай праы” are testimony to the enormous role of Chlebcewicz himself in the revival of the Belarusian movement at the beginning of the 20th century.

Лейтмотивная организация расссказа Дж.Рис «До встрече в сентябре, Петронелла»

The article examines the leitmotives found in the central story of Jean Rhys's collection "Tigers are Beautiful". Jean Rhys' short stories researcher and reader inevitably encounters a series of key images that largely predetermine and constitute a number of references to the subtext, elements of the author's artistic world. The problem-thematic complex of the story "Till September Petronella" consists of gender confrontation, existential crisis and war. It is revealed through elements of external psychologism (leitmotivs of the garden (tree, flowers, stone), mirrors and dresses), iconic loci of the cell (rooms) and recurring themes of loneliness and suicide, the search for identity. The leitmotif organization of Jean Rhys's narrative, underestimated by contemporary literary critics and readers, is of particular interest to researchers of modernist prose. A close reading of the story "Till September Petronella" allows us not only to get acquainted with Jean Rhys's literary work, but also to consider the principle of poetics elements in the process of revealing a complex of topics.

Серийность как принцип наррации в современной прозе (С. Носов, А. Сальников, В. Пелевин)

This paper examines the narrative aspects of the category of seriality based on the novels of contemporary Russian writers. It is stated that, in contemporary literary criticism, the concept of seriality is used to characterize two different trends. The first is a designation of the desire for a repetition of intrigue and characters in works of popular literature. The second is a fundamental feature of the poetics of the avant-garde and postmodernist texts manifested in several ways (fragmentation, stringing of the same type of episodes, or deconstruction of a linear sequence of events). The analysis has proved that this serial structure of narration actualizes the neocumulative intrigue, aiming not to depict a static “imaginary” world or a catastrophic resolution of the initial situation (which is typical for the traditional cumulative plot model) but to multiply a paradigmatic event. This type of repetition indicates a provocation strategy that activates the consciousness of the addressee. Nosov’s novel “The Curly Brackets” uses the potential of the cumulative stringing of episodes corresponding to the occasionalistic artistic worldview and the occupation of the characters (who are magicians). Salnikov’s novels feature the interaction of series of diegetic events with events conditioned by the imagination of the focalizers (“Petrovs’ Flu”) or by the poetic intention of inserted texts (“Indirectly”). In Pelevin’s serial universe, the “self-closure” of the narrated events is never complete: their depiction involves a polyphonic system of interpretations with which to discover the semantic lacunae.

Ассоциативная поэтика неоавангардного текста: «Себастиан во сне» В. Iванiва

This paper examines the narrative aspects of the category of seriality based on the novels of contemporary Russian writers. It is stated that, in contemporary literary criticism, the concept of seriality is used to characterize two different trends. The first is a designation of the desire for a repetition of intrigue and characters in works of popular literature. The second is a fundamental feature of the poetics of the avant-garde and postmodernist texts manifested in several ways (fragmentation, stringing of the same type of episodes, or deconstruction of a linear sequence of events). The analysis has proved that this serial structure of narration actualizes the neocumulative intrigue, aiming not to depict a static “imaginary” world or a catastrophic resolution of the initial situation (which is typical for the traditional cumulative plot model) but to multiply a paradigmatic event. This type of repetition indicates a provocation strategy that activates the consciousness of the addressee. Nosov’s novel “The Curly Brackets” uses the potential of the cumulative stringing of episodes corresponding to the occasionalistic artistic worldview and the occupation of the characters (who are magicians). Salnikov’s novels feature the interaction of series of diegetic events with events conditioned by the imagination of the focalizers (“Petrovs’ Flu”) or by the poetic intention of inserted texts (“Indirectly”). In Pelevin’s serial universe, the “self-closure” of the narrated events is never complete: their depiction involves a polyphonic system of interpretations with which to discover the semantic lacunae.

Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces by Cecily Raynor

Reviewed by: Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces by Cecily Raynor Anne Fountain Raynor, Cecily. Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces. Bucknell UP, 2021. Pp. 178. ISBN 978-1-684-48256-6. Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces situates local narratives of recent works of Latin American literature within a global framework with a focus on the decades from 1990 to 2011. It emphasizes the economic, social, and political upheavals and changes that characterize the forces of globalization in the region, and examines the transformational responses of literary constructions to an era of intensive global integration affecting the Americas. The study references literary critics and scholars along with their theories and views on globalization, but challenges “the tropes of unilaterally accelerated mobility and unification that dominate the popular imaginary of globalization in Latin America” (8). The author interprets local as being beyond a specific area and encompassing both time and space, in essence belonging to a moment. The works studied include four Brazilian novels, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño and its theatrical adaptation by Àlex Rigola, and a Mexican novel, Los ingrávidos. The Brazilian texts are Estive em Lisboa e lembrei de você by Luiz Ruffato, Mar paraguayo by Wilson Bueno, Teatro by Bernardo Carvalho, and Harmada by Gilberto Noll. The Appendix includes an interview with Luiz Ruffato. Chapters are organized thematically as a way of showing the variety of techniques that writers utilized to connect the local setting with a larger global context. Chapter one, “Migration Chronotopes: Imagining Time and Space in Two Brazilian novels,” covers Ruffato’s account about a young man who migrates from Minas Gerais to Lisbon, and Bueno’s story about a protagonist who crosses geographical terrain and linguistic borders that encompass Portuguese, Spanish and Guaraní. Chapter two, “Speed Control: The Politics of Mobility in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Its Theatrical Adaption by Àlex Rigola,” examines how the contrast between speed and stillness in the novel translates into a performance piece that employs music and film plus texts and images projected on a screen or backdrop to convey the characteristics of 2666. Chapter three, “Ambivalent Spaces: Allegories of Ruin in Bernardo Carvalho’s Teatro and Gilberto Noll’s Harmada,” looks at how the two works use ambiguous space and “ruin,” with ruin understood as sites where decay and collapse are evident. Chapter four, “Another City and Another Life: Writing Multitudes in Valeria Luiselli’s Los ingrávidos,” focuses on a novel with multiple narrators and city settings. In chapter two, eight color photographs of the play enhance the text and chapter three has a color photo of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City to illustrate the concept of ruin in several distinct dimensions. A brief conclusion ties up the theoretical and thematic threads. Interspersed in the descriptions of the works analyzed are treatments of translation, female protagonists, and multilingual borderlands. Throughout the book, theorists on a wide range of literary approaches and interventions inform the analysis, and each chapter begins with an epigraph. The extensive text notes for each chapter, and thorough documentation reflect meticulous preparation by the author. A repetitive reliance on the vocabulary of selected contemporary literary criticism makes this text [End Page 148] less attractive for the general reader. Specialists on the Latin American novel and those with an interest in Brazilian literature constitute the primary audience for this book. Anne Fountain San José State University Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Inc

‘What you thought you have forgotten’: The Mersey Sound Revisited

The Mersey Sound (1967) was the best-selling poetry anthology of the sixties in the UK. Apart from its commercial success, it is also an important document in terms of the study of working-class literary output in this decade. Despite this, its position within the British literary canon has often been neglected in academic realms. It is for this reason that the present article aims to offer an insight into the scholarly importance of thisanthology through offering arguments for its reevaluation. Moreover, in this research its current status will be explored, looking in particular at contemporary literary criticism of working-class mass culture and art. To this end, I will first discuss the main justifications for a reconsideration of the significance of the collection and describe its context and origins. This will be followed by an analysis of the content of the volume and its current relevance. Conclusions drawn from this will include possible reasons for its absence in many academic poetry guides and will also stress the need torecover and reappraise the anthology in future research on working-class British poetry.

National being and character in Abai's poetry

Abai's work has been repeatedly studied until now. In different periods, fundamental works were published and new investigations were made in order to recognize the poet's heritage. Especially after our country gained independence, it became possible to consider the legacy of Abai from the standpoint of national knowledge. Many relevant topics were taken into the subject of research and comprehensively studied from various aspects. Also, conditions have been created for a deeper interpretation and disclosure of the essence of widely promoted concepts in Abai's work. In modern Abay studies, special attention is paid to the study of the concept of "complete man". It is known that in the 21st century the Kazakh people are once again confronted with the issue of spiritual modernization. In this regard, the heritage of Abai makes it possible to reflect on the concept of spiritual improvement of the nation. The article touches upon the issues of the relationship between religion and mentality, society and personality through the study of national identity in the teachings of Abai. Since the character traits of a nation make it possible to recognize the image of society, whereas at the level of periodical problems the heritage of a poet considered changes in the existence of a nation. Using examples from the poet's poems, the features of the image of the people of that period and the historical situation that influenced its change were considered. In addition, the opinions of Abaeologist scholars were given, relevant issues were studied and the topic was widely discussed. Thus, the spiritual and psychological image of the nation was cognized and analyzed. The results of the analysis make it possible to determine promising directions for the interdisciplinary study of Abai's works. In this context, significant interrelationship with history (ethnology), ethnopsychology, ethnocultural studies. The article was prepared within the framework of the project AP09259694 "Contemporary literary criticism and the cognitive paradigm".

The Moral of the Stories; Or, Fraught Politics in Contemporary Literary Criticism

The Moral of the Stories; Or, Fraught Politics in Contemporary Literary Criticism

A Note on the Meaning of the ‘Post’ in Post-Yugoslav Literature

Slavonic and East European Review, 99, 4, 2021 A Note on the Meaning of the ‘Post’ in Post-Yugoslav Literature ZORAN MILUTINOVIĆ My aim is to try to clarify the possible meanings of ‘post-Yugoslav literature’, a designation which has become relatively frequent in contemporary literary criticism, but which still requires some attention if it is to be used as a scholarly term. It implies a geography, as it directs our attention to Yugoslavia, and a temporality, as it refers to something that comes after Yugoslav literature. The easiest would be to use ‘post-Yugoslav literature’ to refer to all literature written in the region formerly known as Yugoslavia, but it would be very difficult to find a single instance of such usage: as a rule, the term ‘post-Yugoslav’ is never applied to novels and poems written in Slovene, Macedonian or Albanian, but only to those written in the standard Štokavian. It is even sometimes explicitly underlined that all writers from this ‘post-Yugoslav’ regional space ‘all share the language’ — which certainly comes as a big surprise to those who write in Slovene or Macedonian. However, using the term ‘post-Yugoslav’ to refer to the literature written in the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian does not seem justified in any sense. If we want to refer to some shared commonalities in literature written by Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs, and to close connections between them at all levels — so close that in some periods they leave the impression of writing a single national literature — then both ‘post’ and ‘Yugoslav’ are misplaced. These commonalities and connections are older than the state of Yugoslavia, and can in no way be thought of as something that comes after it. At the same time, excluding all non-Štokavian speakers from whatever ‘post-Yugoslav’ we may want to talk about, and appropriating this term only for Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs certainly cannot be justified in any way. However, it reveals something very important about the possible meaning of this term, to which I will return after examining its other possible meanings. Zoran Milutinović is Professor of South Slav Literature and Modern Literary Theory at UCL SSEES. ON THE ‘POST’ IN POST-YUGOSLAV LITERATURE 735 A very widespread use of the term post-Yugoslav literature is based on its perceived ideological leanings. Post-Yugoslav literature is said to be whatever opposes the nationalist and neoliberal policies of the successor states: non-nationalist, leftist literature written in the Yugoslav successor states. The ideological criterium for admittance to post-Yugoslav literature is derived neither from the history of Yugoslav literature — which was not ideologically uniform, contained both nationalist and non-nationalist currents, and could hardly be characterized as predominantly leftist in any sense — nor from the actual political practices of the Communist Alliance of Yugoslavia, but from the Alliance’s official anti-nationalist and socialist ideology: not from what it historically was, but from how it wanted to be perceived. This understanding of post-Yugoslav literature is not based on generalizations about a specific literary corpus as a list of works meeting these criteria would be rather brief, but on our aspiration to appear as people who, in their conference papers and articles in refereed journals with quite a limited readership, ‘subvert’ something or other, or ‘disrupt’ it, ‘transgress’ or ‘re-draw the boundaries’, or make the world a better place in some other way. This aspirational activist dimension, taken from larger socio-political movements such as feminism and postcolonialism, leads some of us to identify, support and advocate non-nationalist, leftist literature either in a sincere hope that this advocacy could eventually change the political realities of the Yugoslav successor states, or simply as a way of self-positioning in the cultural field. The former is rather naive, and the latter simply vain and self-serving. This notion of post-Yugoslav literature cannot be used in any meaningful way and should be abandoned. The second, apparently more theoretically sophisticated description of post-Yugoslav literature is based on the notion of post-national literature: it argues that the historical period in which literature was nationally produced is over, that we now live...

SYMBIOSIS OF ARTISTIC TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES OF THE PERSIAN GULF

The article deals with the accelerated development of fiction in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. It discusses questions fit into the “theory of accelerated development” of national literatures, received recognition in the contemporary literary criticism. The article notes that the fiction of these countries in their abrupt development has evolved from the medieval literary traditions to meet the taste of works of the modern reader for the short time. The development of modern prose in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf is seen on the background of tremendous changes that took place in the socio-economic and cultural life of these countries in the second half of the twentieth century. It is also noted that the presence of common features of formation of modern prose in these countries, there are differences in the level of artistic works maturity and volume of the created writings.

Islamic Literature: And it’s study of Terms and Concepts

The research offers description and analysis of the term “Islamic literature” and its concept. It also sheds light on the whole terminological and conceptual dimensions of this main concept in contemporary literary criticism and literary history as a new old concept. It defines characteristics of the Islamic perception that backs up the concept under study, forming its ideological framework and ideological background, which are presented by Rabbaniyah or God's attributes of lordship, stability, realism, monotheism, positivity, balance and inclusiveness .Based on these characteristics and features, the research displays attributes and features of Islamic literature as a purposeful guided renewable open literature that is connected and committed to belief. The research is also touches on most prominent arts of Islamic literature such as: poetry and prose. The research also delves into the most important continuing experiences in poem, novel story writing, in addition to its manifestation through theatre. ...The study, depending on previous points, paves the way towards - building a theory of Islamic literature that works on promoting an alternative universal literature that could replace all troubled human literature.

“Imam, don’t go to Groznaya”: on the fundamental idea of the historical novel “The Wild Terek“ by Hadji-Murat Muguev

Hadji-Murat Muguev (1893-1968) was a prominent representative of Soviet literature, an Ossetian by origin who wrote in Russian. As a veteran of three wars (WWI, the Civil War, and WWII), Hadji-Murat Muguev devoted most of his works to military topics. The Wild Terek (1937-1968), a historical novel about the Caucasian War of the 19th century, is considered his magnum opus. The topic proposed herein is of interest due to, first, the desirability of a new reading of the text of Soviet literature, especially as regards its historical concept; secondly, a vivid ethno-cultural character of the material; thirdly, a peculiar poetic manner of translingual (written in Russian) literature of peoples of the Russian Caucasus. It is noteworthy that the novel has not received due consideration by contemporary literary criticism; as for the Soviet period, the then critics were carried away with the major ideological issues provoked by its contents and thus disregarded its imaginary characters, internal framework and particular motifs that worked for the fundamental idea. In this article, by relying on a number of key factors, we intend to highlight some ideologic discourses of Muguevs text referring to the authors humanistic system and signs of forthcoming peace between the peoples of the Caucasus and Russia.

Global Poetry and Provincial Poetics

AbstractThis review of three books—two works of contemporary literary criticism and one anthology—considers how ideals of multiculturalism and linguistic hybridity have informed recent thinking about poetry and its political ends. Jahan Ramazani’s Poetry in a Global Age is praised for its formal attentiveness and Jen Hedler Phillis’s Poems of the American Empire for its inventive incorporation of Virgil’s Aeneid into its understanding of modern poetry’s vacillation between lyric and epic registers. Meanwhile, the anthology American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, edited by Michael Dowdy and Claudia Rankine, is described as a book well-suited for students interested in various strains of and controversies within contemporary poetics. Several contemporary poets (Cathy Park Hong, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Raquel Salas Rivera, Bhanu Kapil) are discussed as well as some modernist poets, particularly those who, like Ezra Pound, offer examples of a multilingual poetics from earlier in the twentieth century.