Contemporary Literary Theory Research Articles

До питання розмежування фантастики і фентезі

The article under studies deals with the issue of differentiating between the genres of science fiction and fantasy within contemporary literary theory. Particular emphasis has been laid on historical, theoretical, and receptive approaches to the evolution of these two genres. The article regards the concept of the genre matrix, which reflects the key invariants and dynamic changes in the genre nature of literary texts and focuses on the views of G. Genette, T. Todorov, J.-M. Schaeffer, as well as contemporary Ukrainian researchers who offer innovative approaches to the study of genre evolution. The article also traces up how fiction, which historically emerged at the intersection of mythology, folklore, and epic, evolved into meta-genre forms such as science fiction and fantasy. It considers the specifics of the simulative chronotope, which combines the real and the imaginary, intertextuality as a key element of genre construction, as well as the receptive orientation of the genre. The concepts of genre transformation and modification, which affect the transformation of genres into new forms, are analyzed separately. The study also emphasizes the differences and common features between science fiction and fantasy, in particular, through the criteria of chronotope, motivation of events, and receptive specificity of texts. It suggests regarding fantasy as a meta-genre with a wide range of varieties, from epic to philosophical. The differentiation of the fantastic deepens the understanding of genre boundaries and mechanisms of literary dynamics.

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview by Jeffrey Di Leo (review)

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview by Jeffrey Di Leo (review)

Literary theory between contingency and contiguity: Yakov Druskin’s “Law of Heterogeneity”

The notion of chance epitomizes the limits and challenges of any theory’s struggle for control over itself as well as over its objects. Although contemporary literary theory has adapted its terminology and conceptual framework in line with the emergence of dynamic, “open forms” (Wölfflin in Principles of art history: The problem of the development of style in later art, Dover Publications Inc, New York, 1986), chance has nevertheless remained a highly problematic category to come to terms with. How can literary theory embrace chance? The paper approaches this question in three steps. First, it reconstructs three basic poetological propositions against whose backdrop contingency gains profile: the proposition of causal connections as a means to transform literature into a realm of necessity, the proposition of form as means to reduce arbitrariness, and the proposition of control as a means to protect the aesthetic object against the risks of external intrusions. The second part of the paper discusses a largely forgotten but highly relevant approach to the problem of contingency by Yakov Druskin. Druskin links the function of contingency in theoretical investigation with concepts of contiguity and proximity, first of all touch. His fragmentary sketch of a “law of heterogeneity” represents a paradoxical attempt to theorize contingent obstruction as a privileged systematic device to establish physical contact. The third part of this paper unpacks the implicit urge to rethink the traditions of theory formation itself through the “law of heterogeneity.” It argues that Druskin’s law introduces a different type of theory, one which is deeply indebted to the tactile, thus challenging the ocularcentrism of theoría.

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview, by Jeffrey Di Leo

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview, by Jeffrey Di Leo

Literary attachment and the American spoken-word song: An interarts-based reading pedagogy

Have we been teaching reading well? Close reading has been the signature practice in literary studies. More recently, however, postcritique has polemically revised this traditional mode of teaching reading. This essay proposes the initial framework for a novel arts-based pedagogy based on Spoken-Word Song, bridging critical literary interpretation and teacher-student co-created artistic performance. Spoken-Word Song is here cast as a privileged means for allowing university students to become intellectually and emotionally invested in poetry, following precepts of the affective turn in the humanities. Moving from theory to practice, this paper will contextualize Spoken-Word Song within three domains before describing the practical steps of my pedagogy: (1) its relevance to contemporary literary theory, (2) a brief overview of the American Spoken-Word Song and (3) Spoken Word pedagogies currently practiced in the American educational system.

Facing the Colonizer That Remains: Jonah as a Symbolic Trauma Narrative

Scholars have widely recognized the colonial setting of the Book of Jonah, which includes the ambiguity of speaking of an Assyrian Empire that is long gone. The imperial setting of this book, moreover, has led interpreters to speak from their own place. For instance, in his postcolonial reading of Jonah, Chesung Justin Ryu reads Jonah in terms of his South Korean context, which continues to harbor deep wounds from being colonized by Japan. The harm done by colonizers long gone can thus be said to extend over many generations, as future generations inevitably have to deal with the effects of colonialism. In conversation with contemporary literary trauma theory, I consider this intersection of trauma and colonialism associated with the Book of Jonah and, furthermore, explore the way in which literature, and specifically narratives, may offer a safe space for working through trauma—one could say to face the colonizer, both real and imagined. Read in this way, the Book of Jonah may be viewed as a symbolic trauma narrative that is shaped by its imperial context but also in distinctive ways seeks to come to terms with the trauma wrought by a succession of empires.

The Development of Contemporary Literary Theory and the New Development of Comparative Literature Theory

The Development of Contemporary Literary Theory and the New Development of Comparative Literature Theory

ГАСТРОНОМИЧЕСКИЕ ОБРАЗЫ В ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЯХ О ДЕВОЧКАХ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ТВОРЧЕСТВА АМЕРИКАНСКИХ ПИСАТЕЛЬНИЦ Ф.Х. БЕРНЕТТ, Л.М. ОЛКОТТ И Л. ИНГЛЗ-УАЙЛДЕР)

Children’s literature expectedly seeks to describe the daily life of a child, in which gastronomic images often have a certain set of symbolic and social meanings. Consideration of images of food in works for children and adolescents through the prism of contemporary literary theories makes it possible to fit the motif of food, which includes, among other things, rituals of eating and cooking, into a broader cultural context. The article analyzes the works of American writers L.M. Alcott, F.H. Burnett and L. Ingalls Wilder, written in the second half of the XIX – early XX century and constituting classics of English-language children’s literature. The study of images of food in semiautobiographical works of American writers about girls and for girls, which include the novels of Alcott, Burnett and Ingles-Wilder, is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, in works for teenagers, food acts as a social marker, and the ability to cook it indicates the entry into adulthood. Secondly, each of the works presents various ways of interacting with other cultures, including via gastronomic issues, which, in accordance with the tasks of adolescent literature, questions the role of significant adults who support the child in getting acquainted with a new culture or insist on preserving their own.

A Study of Feminist issues based on Gender

Feminist ideas have evolved into contemporary literary traditions and critical theories. During this period, collections of ideas about feminism emerged within all frameworks of sociology, politics, economics, and literature. It is necessary to record the problems faced by women based on their gender. The texts that have been chosen for this article are Sundara Pandian's Aththi, Solai Sundaraperumal's Nanjai Manidhargal, Prapanchan's Kagidha Manidhargal, Rajam Krishna's Lines and Circles, and Imayan’s Arumugam. This study aims to examine the oppression of women.

Unity and Closure through Performatism: A Possible Replacement of Postmodernism?

Through the use of aesthetically mediated devices, the contemporary literary theory is argued, by Raoul Eshelman, to have ushered into a new epoch making era of performatism by assigning unity and closure to the current art works in the world. Eshelman attempts to apply his newly formed concept in different art works ranging from literary writings to architecture, movies and paintings in his book, Performatism or End of Postmodernism in 2008. This paper is an attempt to overview and analyse the concept of Performatism by applying it, as an example, on a recent Pakistani narrative The Party Worker by Mohsin Hamid Shahid. The rationale for the selection of this work is owing to the claim by Eshelman that Performatism has seeped into art works globally. The textual analysis of the selected novel signifies that Eshelman’s view of contemporary state of literary theory cannot be neglected as there are attempts at unification and closure of the narratives, a departure from postmodern disintegration and fragmentation. However, the imposition of unity and closure owing a great deal to the use of aesthetic devices and authoriality through the strategic maneuvering by the writer poses a threat to the smooth shifting from postmodernism to performatism.

(De-)Linking Arabic-Islamic Poetics in Contemporary Literary Theory: Reclaiming Enunciation

(De-)Linking Arabic-Islamic Poetics in Contemporary Literary Theory: Reclaiming Enunciation

EPOCHAL CHANGES IN CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVES? A PERFORMATIST ANALYSIS OF TRUST EXERCISE BY SUSAN CHOI

Among various post-postmodern theoretical propositions to signal the end of postmodernism, performatism by Eshleman (2008) is also considered to be a significant development in the literary theory. It is not just a theoretical perspective but also a do-it-yourself manual that invites researchers to further explore and analyse literary works from performatism perspective. The current research paper is an attempt to analyse one of the current popular novel Trust exercise by Susan Choi (2019) from performatist perspective with the overarching research questions if various features of performatism are present in the literary work. The aim is to ascertain if performatism could stand out to be a suitable label to define the current crisis of literary theory in which researchers and scholars are trying to fill the gap that has arisen after the pronouncement of the death of postmodernism. The researcher has found that although there is monism, double framing and theism in the novel but complexity of subjects, ambiguity, and open-ended closures are still among the salient features of the novel. The deviation from postmodernism is there yet more features and works need to be explored in order to develop a comprehensive contemporary literary theory.

Reading buildings: The textual turn of architecture as a parallel to the spatial turn in literary studiesi

Abstract This article seeks to explore the parallels between the spatial turn embraced by contemporary literary theory and the so-called textual turn in architecture. More specifically, links between the contemporary developments of architectural theory and practice and literary criticism are established. In order to highlight the nature and origin of the connection between these two contemporary tendencies, this paper draws on a number of authoritative texts of both literary criticism as well as architectural theory, predominantly within the Anglo-American context. Architecture is presented from the viewpoint of the 20th and 21st centuries, which accentuates its liberation from a purely formal understanding by emphasizing the human involvement in its interpretation. The conception and structuring of physical spaces are therefore regarded as conditioned by processes similar to those involved in the construction of meaning in language and literature. Thus, while literary studies benefits from the extension of its field of study through the inclusion (and contemporary primacy) of the spatial point of view, architectural criticism invites active participation in the construction of its meaning, in other words, its reading. The processes of the mutual influencing and enrichment of both the textual turn in architecture and the spatial turn in literary studies is exemplified by means of contemporary architectural works that embody the synergic relationship of the two traditionally separate fields – (literary) text and architecture.

Čitalac i narativna metalepsa u romanu "Mansarda" Danila Kiša

As a writer who read and followed the contemporary literature and literary theory in several different languages and who intensively contemplated the act of reading and thematised it in his belletristic prose, Kiš had already problematised in his novel The Attic the most important aspects of reading, brought to light and actualised by the classical literature and placed at the centre of research by the post-classical theory of narration: the first person narration and the problem of identity of the author's I, the use of the trompe-l'œil technique, transgression of the narrative levels/narrative worlds and narrative metalepsis, the boundary between life and literature etc. The author of this paper focuses its research on the reader and the narrative metalepsis in Danilo Kiš's first romanesque novel. The first part is dedicated to the definitions of narrative metalepsis in the contemporary theoretical studies (from Gérard Genette to John Pier), the second one to the types of metalepsis in The Attic, and the third one to the Kiš's implicit concept of the good (informed, educated, empathic, immersed ) reader: the reader of The Attic and the reader in The Attic, the problem of duality, that is, the multiplication of identity of the author's I and the relation between life and literature, which is an obsessive question of Kiš's poetics. The article "The Reader with a Lamp at the Crossroads" (Kiš's concepts of the reader and Kiš as a reader), which the author of the paper published in the previous edition of the journal Baština, deals with the status and types of readers in the poetics of Danilo Kiš, therefore, this paper represents a continuation and intensification of the research in that direction.

The overview of Bourdieu's literary field theory

The 1960s - 1970s were marked by the dynamism of the Western intellectual milieu, especially with the flourishing of new theoretical trends in the social sciences and humanities. Pierre Bourdieu's field theory appeared as an intellectual response to pre-existing theoretical trends, including Structuralism, Marxism, or Émile Durkheim's concept of collective consciousness, etc. Starting from the theoretical principle of social cognition, considered as an authentic form of non-consciousness, Bourdieu dealt with the social relationships established between social conditions and positions. Accordingly, the social relationships are more realistic than the subjects participating in those ones. Thereby, he proposed structural mechanisms of dominance and competition to prove the existence of the social game. The space of the social game is what Bourdieu calls "field". There are different fields corresponding to different social sectors. This article outlines in general the process of forming the literary field theory. It aims to show the relationships between the literary field and others in Bourdieu’s sociological system as well as his contributions to the landscape of the contemporary literary theory.

Hopes for Reading in the Era of Globalization

AbstractThis article identifies in contemporary literary theory a new optimism about the power of literary texts. The medium of this power is not language, ideology, or form but readers open to being changed. Drawing on phenomenology, the article discusses methods for making literary theory students open to and aware of such change, suggesting that hope is the grounding condition for any effective teaching act as well as an effective ground for reading in an era of globalization.

The Concept of Text from the Perspective of Heritage and Modernity: Its Impact on Formulating the Theory of a Literary Text

This research aims to discuss the problem of the textual concept in the Arab critical heritage and the Western critical thought and to show its impact on formulating the contemporary literary textual theory. It is the problem that stems from the assumption that Arab critical thought has originated in the components of this theory, which we find have roots and references in our critical, literary, rhetorical and philosophical heritage. Hence, the textual theory in the contemporary critical thought is an extension of this legacy, benefiting from the achievements of philosophers, linguists and critics, and the achievements of contemporary critical approaches. The research attempts answer some important questions such as: was the critical study concerned with theorizing the text? Does the critical heritage have the mechanisms for dealing with the text? What is the role of this critical heritage in the formulation of contemporary literary textual theory? To answer these questions, we follow a procedural plan that falls into three axes. The first one is dedicated to the analysis of the components of textual theory and its references in our critical and rhetorical heritage. The second one is devoted to the components of the textual theory in the Western critical thought. The last one is dedicated to the effect of the concept of the text in formulating the features and dimensions of the literary textual theory. Keywords: Problematics of Concept, Critical Heritage, Referential, Components, Textual Theory.

The Problem of Literary Truth in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics

In contemporary literary theory, Plato is often cited as the original repudiator of literary truth, and Aristotle as he who set down that literature is “imitation,” thus himself involuntarily banning literature from truth. This essay argues that these interpretations adulterate the original arguments of Plato and Aristotle, who both believed in literary truth. We—literary theorists and philosophers of literature—should recognize this and rethink our interpretation of these ancient texts. This will, in turn, lead us to ask better questions about the nature of literary truth and value.

HEALING INVISIBLE WOUNDS: DON DELILLO’S FALLING MAN AND THE RECOVERY OF TRAUMA

9/11 has not only caused dramatic, social, and political changes in the US history but also created a literature in which many authors seek to understand the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Literature about 9/11 focuses particularly on how white or immigrant male masculinity is shaken due to trauma as it fails to present the intricate relationship between traumatized woman and recovery. Furthermore, literary criticism on 9/11 narratives centered on the analysis of the traumatic experiences of individuals does not take the discussion further by examining the recovery process of trauma. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and the literary representation of the traumatized woman’s recovery, a topic mostly neglected within the scholarship of 9/11 novels. Confronting trauma creates a psychological and emotional catharsis which is a vital process leading to healing and rejuvenation as well as coming into terms with the self, memory, past, and society. Through the lenses of contemporary literary trauma theory and contemporary trauma stress studies, this paper examines traumatized woman’s recovery and healing to restructure, reorient, and rebuild self and life aftermath of 9/11 and its traumatic effects.

Archetypes and Creative Imagination in ‘Ode to Psyche’: A Jungian Analysis

John Keats’ ‘Ode to Psyche’ is steeped in mythology and dream symbolism, which encourages us to understand it from the perspective of depth psychology/archetypal criticism. The odes of John Keats have been studied from historicist, feminist, and biographical perspectives. This paper aims to complement these perspectives by elaborating the mythical dream imagery of the poem as referring symbolically to the process of psychic integration and poetic creativity. The paper also views the poem as exemplifying the need for a complementary ongoing communication between the conscious and the unconscious aspects of the mind to maintain a holistic psyche. Archetypal theory is used to frame the figurative structure of the poem as a symbolic mythical variant of the process of poetic creativity. The paper employs three theoretical constructs, namely syzygy or complementation of opposites; active imagination; and individuation, as a framework to analyze the poem from an archetypal perspective. Employing a depth psychological perspective to understand poetry enhances the aesthetic pleasure derived from reading poetry and enhances the 'healing effect' of poetry by illuminating the psychological connotations of the poem. The paper concludes by attempting to answer two research questions explored in the analysis. First, does archetypal perspective contribute to enhancing readers' aesthetic pleasure derived from reading poetry? Second, what are the theoretical contributions of the current analysis towards contemporary Jungian literary theory?