Creative Genius Research Articles

Mea Culpa: Scientific Misconduct

Mea Culpa: Scientific Misconduct

Le coq gaulois à l’heure anglaise: analyse de la traduction anglaise d’Astérix by Catherine Delesse, Bertrand Richet

Fourastié, would have been called for. However, Fourastié is briefly mentioned only once (168). Western Washington University Edward Ousselin DELESSE, CATHERINE, et BERTRAND RICHET. Le coq gaulois à l’heure anglaise: analyse de la traduction anglaise d’Astérix. Arras: Artois PU, 2009. ISBN 978-2-84832-077-9. Pp. 447. 24 a. This book deserves a belated review because it presents a major research project on Astérix that deals with the difficult art of translating cultural humor. The authors compare thirty-three episodes of the series by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo (the last eight by Uderzo alone after Goscinny’s death in 1977) with their corresponding English translations, all of which were done by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge between 1969 and 2005. In their introduction, Delesse and Richet discuss the challenges translators face in their efforts to remain close to the original work while creating similar cultural humor that is essentially an adaptation. In order to organize and present such a vast amount of material, the authors divided their comparisons into four chapters: “Les noms propres,” “Les jeux de mots,” “Accents, dialectes et langues étrangères,” and “Les allusions culturelles.” The chapter on proper names is divided into numerous categories, such as historical references and adaptations of the original French names to fit the context. For example, in Astérix et le chaudron the character Juleraimus (Jules Raimu, a wellknown French actor from the 1930s) becomes Alecguinus (Alec Guinness, a famous British actor who admired Raimu). There are many clever names invented by the English translators that often have a connection with the French or with the original meaning of a certain word, such as the dog’s name Idéfix which becomes Dogmatix in the English translation. A great challenge for translators is rendering into English plays on words, which are based on colloquial meanings, sounds, and cultural references. In Astérix et les Goths the chief Téléféric is deposed by his enemy who says “Ta vie ne tient qu’à un fil, Téléféric.” Since cable car and “hang by a thread” do not have the same close connection in English, the translators totally transformed the word play by changing the chief’s name to Metric with his opponent saying “It’s time you were going, Metric” (95). The phrase alludes to the debate in England about “going metric,” meaning an official change to using the metric system for money and measurement. The English phrase here can be understood in two ways: It’s time to get rid of you (when using a comma and meaning get rid of the metric system) and it’s time to go metric (without the comma, meaning it’s time for a change), thus representing both sides of the debate. Much of the humor in Astérix is based on stereotypes and details of cultural identity. In their chapter on accents, dialects, and foreign languages, the authors compare the clever ways in which the translators transformed these elements into a context that is humorous for Anglophones. The final chapter, which deals with cultural allusions, is divided into sections on songs, famous sayings, historical references, and popular culture, just to name a few. The creative genius of Goscinny and Uderzo and the ingenious renditions of their humor by the translators are impressive and amusing. From a pedagogical perspective, this book could Reviews 967 be used as a reference work in a French culture class, a translation course, and a course on bandes dessinées. Le coq gaulois is a must-read for Astérix aficionados as well as for those who are yet unfamiliar with the French cultural icon whose adventures have been translated into 107 languages and dialects with worldwide sales of over 325 million albums. Ohio University, Athens Lois Vines DIETLER, MICHAEL. Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley: UP of California, 2010. ISBN 978-0-52026551 -6. Pp. 464. $60. During the sixth century BCE, Phocaeans from a Greek colony in contemporary Turkey arrived in Marseille, naming it Massalia. This event becomes more than a mere historical fact in Dietler’s complex analysis of Mediterranean society during the...

The New Genre Higher Education Framework

Institutions of higher education exist to contribute to the collective growth of the society by nurturing the creative genius of individuals. This may be achieved by striking a fine balance between gifting intellectual freedom and monitoring the fulfilment of social obligations. An environment of this kind can only be built through a policy of non-interference and institutional autonomy. A governance structure like this does not necessarily suggest lack of accountability or decentralization of power. Rather, this implies great commitment towards academic, administrative and financial accountability through the process of self-regulation. Given that higher education is transcending international borders in the digital world, we are in greater need of establishing governance structures and international quality standards which foster competence and excellence in our higher education system without curtailing academic freedom.

Evolution, Transformation, and Representation in Buddhist Architecture - The Square Shrines of Buddhist Monasteries in Central Asia after the Fourth Century

This study notices that all religions in Central Asia from the fourth century through seventh century C.E. provided considerable hands in keeping a uniform unity through a process of assimilation, although art and architecture were greatly stimulated by the creative genius of the many people. The study thus intends to argue that the common ideas of rituals and primitive forms of religious shrines lead the square-based layout of Buddhist shrines the unity and universality in the architectural products of particular regions or epochs: i.e. the "square-based plan" in Buddhist temples of Central Asia was a significant prototype in the synthesis with pre-Buddhist architectural models and Buddhist universal ideas. Thus, this thesis notes that they did not lose the universal principles of the Buddhist shrine plans due to ritual functions, and even there have been never differences from pre-Buddhist building models remarked by the periods and the venues in which they were produced, although there had been continuous evolutions and adaptive transformations in the local tastes of religious architecture. Accordingly, this study discusses how such plans in Buddhist architecture had been consistently produced within that regional style also representative of the local idioms of architecture, and how they were adopted in the sites, founded on the composition of ritual functions. The foreign architectural cultures were selectively chosen getting along with local building types of each site according to each taste for architecture as a result.

Fluid insight moderates the relationship between psychoticism and crystallized intelligence

To elucidate potential relationships between personality and intelligence it is necessary to move beyond the ad hoc reporting of correlation coefficients and focus instead on testing deductions from well-established theories. To this end the present paper references Eysenck’s (1995) theoretical work linking the dimension of psychoticism to both psychosis and creative genius. Drawing on this theory it was argued that the relationship between psychoticism and crystallized ability will be conditional on the level of fluid intelligence. Participants ( N = 100) completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R) and the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT). Moderated multiple regression revealed a significant interaction effect. Crystallized ability (K-BIT vocabulary) was negatively related to psychoticism at low levels of fluid ability (K-BIT matrices) and positively related to psychoticism at high levels of fluid ability. These findings highlight the potential importance of psychoticism within GfGc investment theory.

The Creativity Mystique and the Rhetoric of Mood Disorders

Many contemporary scientific researchers are interested in drawing associations between mental illness and creativity. These studies have contributed to the popular image of the "mad genius," an image whose history stretches back as far as Plato and Aristotle. Recently, a new rhetorical manifestation of the mad genius image has emerged, what I call the creativity mystique of mood disorders. The creativity mystique, a product of the era of modern psychiatry, suggests not only that mood disorders are sources of creative genius, but also that medical treatment should take patient creativity into account. The texts I study here demonstrate a rhetorical shift from arguments for correlation between mood disorders and creativity (in the most conservative of the studies, published for traditional scientific audiences), to arguments for a causal link from mood disorders to creativity (most prevalent in fringe literature texts and pop-science texts), to arguments for inverse-causation, that is, a causal link from creativity to mood disorders (only found in fringe literature and pop-science texts). These arguments shift from more conservative to more controversial as the intended audience of the writing shifts from the scientific to the lay. As I demonstrate below, this rhetorical shift reveals how the creativity mystique has influenced research, diagnoses, and treatment of mood disorders.

Charlotte Brontë

This paper traces the attempt of Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) to achieve recognition as a woman author in nineteenth century England. Drawing extensively on Bronte’s own works, which are read as a form of self/life writing, it advocates a theory of situated authorship and posits permeable boundaries between the genres of autobiography and fiction. It claims that in her writings from childhood onwards, Charlotte Bronte displayed a fragmented and conflicted subjectivity, constructing herself in the role of Romantic creative genius, regardless of gender, and struggling against contemporary social and religious constraints on women’s role in society. The paper analyses Bronte’s view of genius, noting her fierce ambition, her religious scruples, her dutiful attempts to construct herself as a teacher and the reasons for her eventual success as an author from a feminist perspective, it affirms that writing offers a means of self-creation for a woman marginalized in a patriarchal society. It contends that Charlotte Bronte finally gained recognition as an author through exploiting the creative potential of her own lived experience and speaking in the voice of a female protagonist in Jane Eyre.

Introduction: Commentaries and Author's Response to “The Rise and Fall of the Autochthonous Self: From Italian Renaissance Art and Shakespeare to Heidegger, Lacan, and Intersubjectivism” by Richard D. Chessick

This article addresses the unresolved question of the existence of a private core autochthonous self, as it has been described by Winnicott, Modell, and others. The postmodern version of the self has eliminated this concept entirely, relegating the self to a changing and unstable display, or regarding it as totally chaotic, or even an illusion. The question is raised whether by returning to the origins of this notion of a private self and then tracing its apparent dissolution it might be possible to discover some evidence that it still exists. The methodology used is that of obtaining knowledge directly through the arts and the claim is made that because empirical science has clamored to be the only source of knowledge, we have lost what could be obtained by direct intuitive seeing and experiencing the works of creative geniuses. To explore the rise of the autochthonous self this article provides an examination of the shift from Gothic art to Italian Renaissance art, a time which engendered the origin of "man" with his or her elusive private individual self that then became expressed in changing works of art. As this spread north, Shakespeare appeared and similarly invented and illustrated in his characters the private individual self, a concept not appreciated or recognized before the Renaissance. But as science arose and Western civilization began to decline, a corresponding disillusionment with "man" took place. The self began to be viewed as solely a social construction with no core except perhaps a genetic endowment. This was accompanied by a reduction in the concept of the human as a valuable and precious living being and was replaced by regarding the human as an object of control and exploitation. After the Second World War a movement in contemporary United States psychoanalysis gradually replaced the ideas of Freud and his emphasis on the "I" in the psychoanalytic process, with forms of relational therapy, assuming that the self was ab initio intersubjectively formed and could be altered fundamentally by focus on intersubjective processes. The author contends that this attitude makes it less likely for the psychoanalyst to focus on the regressive transferences from which derivatives of the private self arise and to grasp the phenomenological whole of the patient (p. 625).

Organizing Individual and Collective Creativity: Flying in the Face of Creativity Clichés

The growing complexity of problems requires collective solutions to produce creative outcomes. Organizational theory on creativity has been extensively developed in recent decades, but two problematic issues remain. First, no current comprehensive model explains the development of collective creativity. Second, no empirical research has been conducted on the process of theory dissemination and its relevance within the managerial community. This paper provides evidence which can inform the design of collective creative projects within organizations, flying in the face of some managerial clichés. We design a research project which enables managerial sensemaking to emerge and which proposes a comprehensive approach to the design of team creativity. From a research design involving 24 managers and 98 eleven-person groups, results confirm that creativity is not only about creative genius, and design for creativity is not a matter of linear correlation but implies a more sophisticated and integrative approach according to which individual creative skills, team dynamics and organizational solutions interact with each other to produce a collective creative performance.

READING AND RESPONDING TO ENGLISH WOMEN WRITERS: ANNETTE VON DROSTE-HÜLSHOFF, MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH AND HELENE DRUSKOWITZ

This essay investigates what Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797–1848) and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), the two pre-eminent women writers in German in the nineteenth century, knew of English women's writing, and how they knew it. This includes the role of cultural mediators: Anna Jameson in the case of Droste and in the case of Ebner, more importantly, Helene Druskowitz (1856–1918). The Viennese scholar, critic and philosopher is a unique figure, and her role in Anglo-German literary relations is little known. Her book Drei englische Dichterinnen (Three English Poetesses, 1885), on Joanna Baillie, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot, is arguably the most substantial critical study of female creative genius to be published in German in the late nineteenth century, and it is a singular, feminist contribution to Anglo-German literary relations at a time when the focus was firmly on Shakespeare, Scott, Byron and Dickens. It is clear that for these women writers in German, the existence of a female tradition of writing in English was a source of encouragement and provided points of reference for their own literary and critical work.

Advancing Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship

In this Inaugural Year of Entrepreneurship Research Journal (ERJ), and with this new Issue 4 titled, „Advancing Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship“, editors Chandra S. Mishra, Office Depot Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida Atlantic University, and Ramona K. Zachary, Academic Director of the Lawrence N. Field Programs and the Peter S. Jonas Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baruch College, offer a dedication to Steve Jobs who was an innovator and entrepreneur extraordinaire. He transformed a sleepy Silicon Valley into the leading innovation center in the world. His technological creations, during his shortened but dynamic life, have not only revolutionized how consumers interact with technology but how we experience human interactions throughout the world. Researchers from all disciplines have been intrigued and inspired by his entrepreneurial vision and creative genius. The lead article, by William J. Baumol, urges researchers to further investigate the innovation process, the incentives for innovators given their low returns and low odds of success, and the role of the public sector in encouraging innovation given the enormous social gains. The three competitive research articles contribute to our understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship literature by: 1) examining the types of entrepreneurial knowledge and their impact on innovation; 2) examining the linkage between a country‘s investment on R&D and number of startups; and 3) explaining the inability of an entrepreneur to move away from a struggling venture. As ERJ‘s first Commentary, Stuart A. Schulman and Edward G. Rogoff ask us to rethink the technology enabled entrepreneur and begin to build a bridge between economic theory about innovation and the funding and production challenges facing entrepreneurs as they bring their technologies to the market.

E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Serapiontic Principle: Critique and Creativity (review)

Brown, Hilda Meldrum, E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Principle: Critique and Creativity. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006. 206 pp. + index. Despite the copious attention E. T A. Hoffmann has attracted as one of the great storytellers of the nineteenth century, he has far less often received acclaim as a romantic theoretician until the past two decades - rather, critics usually regarded him as flighty, superficial, and inconsistent in comparison to his earlier colleagues. Hilda Meldrum Brown's study of the Serapiontic principle, treating what she considers Hoffmann's attempt to unify some of his aesthetic principles under a single perspective, reflects a new critical direction that appreciates Hoffmann as a serious and profound thinker. Her work reveals how the principle serves as theoretical underpinning for, and as observable performance of, the creative process she traces in Hoffmann's writing. Brown clearly does not intend an interpretation of the works as the main thrust of her analysis, but rather investigates the operation of the principle in them. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this study is its scope: instead of restricting herself to the four-volume collection of tales Hoffmann published under the title Die Serapionsbruder (1819-21), as earlier studies have done, Brown seizes the opportunity to follow the red thread of this concept through much of Hoffmann's overall production of novellas, stories, and Marchen, from the earlier collections of Fantasie- and Nachtstucke through the later Prinzessin Brambilla and the posthumously published Des Vetters Eckfenster. She demonstrates a vast and deep knowledge of Hoffmann's works, as well as of the critical traditions informing the most recent analyses of the tales. Even more significant is her nuanced grasp of Hoffmann's creative genius, which repudiates the unfortunate myths that have plagued Hoffmann's reputation and appreciation as a first-rate theoretician, ever since early critics dismissed him as merely an overly imaginative inebriate. Brown divides her book into two main sections: in the first, she discusses Hoffmann's formulation of the principle and its significant evolution over the fourteen years of the artist's literary career. As Brown's investigation makes clear, long before the four volumes oi Die Serapionsbruder appeared, Hoffmann had already accomplished significant work and had laid a strong theoretical foundation, especially in his famous preface to the Fantasiestucke (1814-16) in praise of Jacques Callot's fanciful, early seventeenth-century woodcuts of commedia dell'arte characters. In the Overture to the first part of this study, she maintains that the Callot essay is the earliest developed formulation, emphasizing the activity of inneres Schauen while focusing the center of the creative process in the artist's utilization of the fantastic and the grotesque. Important elements include irony, the combination of both the serious and the comic throughout life as well as in art, and finally the importance of the reception process, especially the interactive aspect of narrative technique (29). Reception is crucial in virtually all of Hoffmann's works: the author or editor draws the reader time and again into the creative process as an active participant, and the act of reading becomes a parallel to authorship itself. …

Începuturile aviaţiei române / The Beginnings of Romanian Aviation

Due to the great Romanian inventors, such as Vuia Traian, Aurel Vlaicu and Henri Coanda, Romania was one ofthe first countries possessing military aircraft capable of military operations during the First World War.Providing military aviation was a continuing concern during the period between late 1912 and the end of1913. While planning during this period did lead to an increased number of planes, it failed to provide significantcombat potential.The contribution of Romanian pilots in World War I was substantial and they acted in the field with greattactical agility, providing ground troops with important, often vital, information. During the First World War theRomanian pilots demonstrated their high soldierly virtues. In total they logged 8160 flight hours. These included703 adjustments for the Romanian and Russian artillery, 6981 aerial photographs, 560 combat air missions,and dozens of bombing missions, from which 61, 8 tons of bombs were dropped on enemy targets. They alsoconducted over 80 link missions and 6 special air missions (launching the manifestos). In the two years of war, theenemy lost 41 aircraft, 31 being shot down by Romanian, French and British pilots, and 10 by the anti-aircraftartillery guns.At the time of entry into the war, the aircraft owned by the Romanian state were old model planes which werenot armed. However, the aircraft were still used in combat missions, which led to heavy losses during the earlydays of the war.The lack of an aviation industry was acutely felt, and the equipping of the squadrons with planes was onlypossible after the arrival of the aircraft ordered in France or delivered by the Allies, according to the militaryagreement signed in August 1916.The Romanian Air Force had a particularly important role in the campaign during the summer of 1917, whenthe Moldavian front managed to stop the German offensive which aimed at removing Romania from the war andto strengthen the economy of the Central Powers.Reconnaissance aviation – centered on the discovery of enemy artillery positions and other depth targets,and military flight schools – which provided the optimum conditions for teaching aviation personnel – played animportant role during the campaigns of 1916 and 1917.The successful use of aviation during the 1916–1918 campaign had direct consequences for the developmentof this weapon in the near future, and for its recognition as an elite weapon, able to respond rapidly to threats thatwere looming on the eastern and western borders of unified Romania.The changing world political, social and geographical situation, led to a development boom in science andculture in post-war Romania, and created a framework in which the further development of aviation was also a part.Aviation appeared in the first decade of the twentieth century. During this period of world aviation birth,which coincides with the beginnings of Romanian aviation, the creative genius of our people was manifestedboldly in the domain of mechanical flight, emerging internationally, primarily through its representatives TraianVuia, Aurel Vlaicu and Henri Coanda. Their achievements have contributed to the conception and developmentof global aviation. As a result, they occupy a well deserved place among the pioneers of aviation. The originalityof their ideas, which they applied to building aircraft, along with the efforts and achievements of other Romanianmanufacturers in the same period or later – give us the right to say that Romania is a country with a great traditionin the field of aircraft construction.It should be noted that the rise of aviation and its entry into the industrial age took place along with thepreparation and the conduct of World War I. The plane was transformed from a curiosity into a powerful warmachine; first used to observe the enemy and to conduct artillery spotting, and then for air combat missions forthe destruction of living forces and military equipment, including the elimination of enemy aircraft.

Neil Gross's Deweyan Account of Rorty's Intellectual Development

Neil Gross’s Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher provides a case study by which readers can judge whether Gross’s “intellectual self concepts” rescue the “new sociology of ideas” from the social determinism of the “old sociology of knowledge” associated with the work of Karl Mannheim, Emile Durkheim, C. Wright Mills, Talcott Parsons, and Herbert Marcuse. According to Gross, Rorty balanced his intellectual self concept of a leftist American patriot with socially imposed “strategic career concerns.” This article argues that Gross’s methodology succeeds in a way that Dewey scholars should welcome because it is consistent with Dewey’s socialization of the self. This strategy allows Gross to avoid reducing Rorty to a mere social product or to a socially transcendent creative genius. By arguing that his theoretical approach will improve biographical scholarship, Gross has penned a book that is also truer to Deweyan fallibalism than Rortyian ironism.

De la predicación en tres comedias de Cervantes: <i>El trato de Argel, Los baños de Argel</i> y <i>El rufián dichoso</i>

El genio creador de Cervantes no fue ajeno a la influencia que los predicadores ejercieron en la España de la Contrarreforma. En este sentido, el género oratorio es el que supone una mayor influencia social, superior incluso al que pudiera ejercer la comedia, en cuanto que contribuye poderosamente a modelar las ideas de aquella sociedad. En este estudio se analizan los elementos caracterizadores de lo que, en algunos momentos de algunas comedias cervantinas, podríamos calificar como ‘comedia sermón’, junto con la función adoctrinadora que lleva aparejada tal tipo de obra. En algunos pasajes de El trato de Argel, El Rufián dichoso y Los baños de Argel podremos observar también la configuración del discurso al modo de lo que un retórico de la predicación sagrada, como el jesuita Juan Bautista Escardó ([1581]-1652), definía como ‘tono’ o sermón breve en su Retórica cristiana (1647), de amplia práctica entre los estudiantes de la Compañía de Jesús, además de otros temas y motivos de los sermones que pudo conocer Cervantes para escribir determinados fragmentos de sus comedias, inspirados en la defensa de la doctrina católica que consagrará el concilio de Trento.

The Rise and Fall of the Autochthonous Self: From Italian Renaissance Art and Shakespeare to Heidegger, Lacan, and Intersubjectivism

This article addresses the unresolved question of the existence of a private core autochthonous self, as it has been described by Winnicott, Modell, and others. The postmodern version of the self has eliminated this concept entirely, relegating the self to a changing and unstable display, or regarding it as totally chaotic, or even an illusion. The question is raised whether by returning to the origins of this notion of a private self and then tracing its apparent dissolution it might be possible to discover some evidence that it still exists. The methodology used is that of obtaining knowledge directly through the arts and the claim is made that because empirical science has clamored to be the only source of knowledge, we have lost what could be obtained by direct intuitive seeing and experiencing the works of creative geniuses. To explore the rise of the autochthonous self this article provides an examination of the shift from Gothic art to Italian Renaissance art, a time which engendered the origin of "man" with his or her elusive private individual self that then became expressed in changing works of art. As this spread north, Shakespeare appeared and similarly invented and illustrated in his characters the private individual self, a concept not appreciated or recognized before the renaissance. But as science arose and Western civilization began to decline, a corresponding disillusionment with "man" took place. The self began to be viewed as solely a social construction with no core except perhaps a genetic endowment. This was accompanied by a reduction in the concept of the human as a valuable and precious living being and was replaced by regarding the human as an object of control and exploitation. After the Second World War a movement in contemporary United States psychoanalysis gradually replaced the ideas of Freud and his emphasis on the "I" in the psychoanalytic process, with forms of relational therapy, assuming that the self was ab initio intersubjectively formed and could be altered fundamentally by focus on intersubjective processes. The author contends that this attitude makes it less likely for the psychoanalyst to focus on the regressive transferences from which derivatives of the private self arise and to grasp the phenomenological whole of the patient.

Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation: Textures of a Text and its Reception

The meaning of a text does not reside alone in the creative genius of its author; there is a complex correlation between a text and the contexts in which a text has been read and reread, including various dynamic interrelations between creator and contemplators, past and present. Vernon Robbins’s socio-rhetorical interpretation provides a powerful interpretive analytic to explore these dialogic interrelations among authors, texts and readers/interpreters. Correspondingly, studies of reception history, through their investigations of significant additional voices that join the heteroglossic chorus of interpreters, provide critical insights for more comprehensive socio-rhetorical analyses of texts. This article chronicles the birth and development of socio-rhetorical interpretation, introduces major components of a socio-rhetorical approach, and provides examples of how socio-rhetorical interpretation and reception history can mutually inform each other.

Born entrepreneurs, born leaders: how your genes affect your work life

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Genes at Work: Your Genes and Organizational Behavior 2. Why That Job? The Genetic Foundations of Your Work Interests 3. Happy at Work? How Your Genes Affect Your Job Satisfaction 4. Instinctive Choices: Genetic Influences on Decision Making 5. Instinct at the Office: How Your Genes Affect Your Management Style 6. Born Leaders? How Your Genes Affect Your Leadership Style 7. Creative Genius? Your Genetic Predisposition for Creativity and Innovation 8. Born Entrepreneurs? How Your Genes Affect Your Tendency to Start Companies 9. Good Workers, Bad Workers: How Your Genes Affect Your Job Performance and Your Income 10. Your Genes Matter! So What? INDEX

Two Takes on Faulkner's "Postage Stamp of Native Soil"

Two Takes on Faulkner's "Postage Stamp of Native Soil" Christine McCulloch (bio) William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape. By Charles S. Aiken. Athens: UP of Georgia, 2009. xi + 283 pp. $34.95 cloth. Global Faulkner: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 2006. Ed. Annette Trefzer and Ann J. Abadie. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2009. ix + 189 pp. $55.00 cloth. That Yoknapatawpha County is an amalgamation of real and imagined topographies is known, concedes Charles S. Aiken in his recent book, William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape. What is not known are the "particular techniques" by which Faulkner "convert[ed] the local geography into a fictional one." To the extent that Aiken remains focused on this question, his study proves an engaging and original contribution to the ever-widening scope of Faulkner scholarship. A geography professor whose family was among the first to settle in Lafayette County, Aiken is deeply familiar with Faulkner's actual—and apocryphal—southern landscapes. Because his "approach, methodology and sources are primarily those of historical geography," Aiken's book will be of more interest to scholars engaged in the interdisciplinary work of southern studies than to literary scholars, although it does offer some in-sightful readings of Faulkner's fiction. Aiken begins his foray into the world of William Faulkner by acknowledging that much of that world has now vanished, thus positioning his work as an act of preservation not unlike Oxford's recent "movement to preserve buildings [in] recognition of their relationship to the fictional Jefferson." Through numerous maps and photographs, Aiken [End Page 151] details the evolution of Faulkner's real and imagined topographies, dating from the Choctaw and Chickasaw land cessions of the 1830s to the present day. He demonstrates the many parallels that exist between Oxford and Jefferson, and between Lafayette County and Yoknapatawpha County, as well as the ways in which they differ. One of the most compelling aspects of Aiken's study is his seamless movement between real locales—many of which he photographed himself—and descriptive excerpts from Faulkner's novels and short stories. Nevertheless, despite these striking parallels, Aiken is careful not to subsume fiction to fact. He acknowledges that much of Faulkner's work is a conscious departure from direct observation and experience. Yoknapatawpha and its peculiar cast of characters are products of Faulkner's creative genius. Aiken also recognizes that "precise conformity of his fiction with actual geography and history was never a major concern of Faulkner." This, in turn, leads him to contend that Yoknapatawpha County is not a microcosm of the American South, as many critics have argued. Rather, it is a "distinctive geographical entity related to, and contrasted with, other areas of the Lowland South." Aiken effectively demonstrates the difficulty of presenting any picture of "the South in miniature" given the region's geographical, economical, racial, and cultural diversity. To do this is also to ignore Faulkner's principle objective—namely, "to write universally about mankind." Aiken astutely observes that "no boundaries are shown on the two maps that [Faulkner] drew" for the 1936 Absalom, Absalom! insert, nor for Malcolm Cowley's 1946 The Portable Faulkner. "Symbolically, Yoknapatawpha is a place with a core," writes Aiken, "but the county has no isolating walls." This observation concludes roughly the first half of the book. The latter half of Aiken's study is difficult to reconcile with his initial claims and questions. Ensuing chapters devoted to the Civil War, Reconstruction, the New and Modern South, and the Civil Rights Movement read as condensed regional histories rather than geographical or literary analyses. Aiken's references to Faulkner become increasingly biographical and increasingly indebted to Joseph Blotner. Although the chapter entitled "Geographical Interpretation of 'The Bear'" provides an exception, the second half of Aiken's study has a derivative, documentarian (as opposed to hermeneutic) quality that belies the quickly exhausted nature of its very subject. Thus, while Yoknapatawpha County has no isolating walls, William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape seems to circumscribe itself in a somewhat limiting way. These limitations are thrown into greater relief upon reading Annette [End Page 152] Trefzer and Ann J. Abadie's rich collection of essays, Global Faulkner. Here, eleven scholars explore the...

B.W. Vilakazi and the birth of the Zulu novel

B.W. Vilakazi is rightly famous for his Zulu poems that integrate the Zulu creative genius with established European poetic trends. He was also the creator of the Zulu romantic novel, having written the first three examples of the genre dealing with both personal and national romantic ideals. These are, however, seldom analysed. This article reflects on the emerging literatures in African languages, their aims, contents and forms. After a general introduction on Vilakazi’s life and innovative approach to creative writing within the context of the African mini-renaissance period of the 1930s, there is a brief exposition of Vilakazi’s vision of an African literature, rooted in the need for self-identification, and recognition of perceived historical greatness. Then each novel is contextualised and analysed, through a description of the characters that exert the greatest influence on the events, since plot and character are also the highest achievement of the folktale, when told by expert performers. An attempt is also made to identify Afro-centric narrative elements and to justify perceived shortcomings in plot construction.