Critical Writings Research Articles

Blooming Spaces: The Collected Poetry, Prose, Critical Writing, and Letters of Debora Vogel

Blooming Spaces: The Collected Poetry, Prose, Critical Writing, and Letters of Debora Vogel

Eusebius and Florestan, Pierrot and Harlequin

This video and article are inspired by Robert Schumann’s use of characterization in his music and writings, and the affinities of these sometimes kaleidoscopic and multiple musical and critical perspectives with theatre, fragmentary scenographies, and costume. Drawing on the traits of Schumann’s own characters Florestan, Euesbius, Master Raro, as well as other personas such as Harlequin and Pierrot, I have aimed, in my audiovisual collage and performance of a hypothetical 4th movement to Schumann’s 1851 Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in A minor (Op. 105), to create a mediation between disparate aspects of the music, envisioned as personality fragments scattered in the landscape of the piece. The video itself is a meditation on, and an outcome of the realities of the pandemic, and the isolation that intruded in such a sustained manner on my personal and professional life. The video is an impromptu assemblage of pre-pandemic footage and photography combined to create a collective virtual chamber music experience representing an internal world haunted by dissonant multiple characters. In some ways, I echo in performance certain suggestive strains of Schumann’s own creative imagination and his personifications, both musically and in his critical writings, of the characters Florestan and Eusebius whom he sought to amalgamate in the figure of Master Raro.

Housing Satisfaction: A Comparison between Post-Second World War Large Housing Estates and Post-Socialist Multifamily Residential Neighbourhoods in Slovenia

As a reaction to the critical writings of urban sociologists regarding the quality of post-Second World War large housing estates (monotonous architectural design, cheap/poor quality building materials, high building density, minimum dwelling sizes, overcrowding, etc.), fewer problematic types of mass housing neighbourhoods started to emerge, first in Western European countries in the 1970s, and later in Eastern European countries after they abandoned the planned economy system of the communist era and adopted the market economy system. One of the major concerns often raised in this regard is that, due to a variety of negative aspects associated with post-WWII housing estates, these neighbourhoods may eventually end up as concentrations of low-income households, after the more affluent residents relocate to the more attractive, less problematic residential neighbourhoods. Such developments are, understandably, undesirable. This concern inherently assumes that the inhabitants of post-WWII housing estates are not satisfied with their housing and are, as a result, expected to move away, as soon as they can. This hypothesis presents the focus of discussion in this paper. We examine its validity with the help of the findings of a comparative study between post-WII large housing estates and post-socialist multifamily residential neighbourhoods that was conducted in Slovenia in 2021. Contrary to the hypothetical assumptions, our analyses of the research results reveal that the inhabitants of post-WWII large housing estates are (a) generally quite satisfied with their dwellings and residential neighbourhood and that (b) a large majority of them have no intention to move. Understanding people’s satisfaction with their housing circumstances requires a complex analysis of their attitudes that goes beyond surface-level observations and encompasses a broader range of psychological and social influences on housing choices, suggesting the need to incorporate these aspects into future research. The consideration of these aspects is essential in order to ensure the longer-term sustainability of post-WWII large housing estates.

'C’est comme ça qu’on fabrique des automobiles': Race, work, and colonial afterlives in Robert Linhart's L’Établi

Robert Linhart's L’Établi recounts the author's experience of ‘établissement’ as a young Maoist militant in the months immediately following May ‘68. Ten years after leaving the École normale supérieure to work and politically organize at the Citroën automobile factory in Choisy, Linhart reflects on his experiences on the assembly line, and his attempts to organize an ultimately unsuccessful wildcat strike from within the factory. This article revisits L'Établi alongside Linhart's littlestudied critical writings on racism, imperialism, and capitalist production in order to foreground two interwoven, yet under-appreciated facets of the work, and Linhart's corpus more broadly: first, Linhart's critique of a dense racial and colonial logic which undergirded the division of labor and maintenance of orderly production in the factory despite the purported demise of the French Empire. And second, the his innovation as not just a political memoirist, but as an inventive literary strategist. To this end, this article focuses on the surprising movements of poetic effervescence which appear throughout L'Établi, which reveal themselves to be thoroughly interwoven with Linhart's anti-imperial, anti-capitalist project.

The theology of nonviolence in the writings of Petr Chelčický during the late Middle Ages

The article explores the emergence of the Hussite movement and the establishment of egalitarian communities that embraced a lifestyle without taxes or private property. The concern of the authorities and the resulting internal conflicts highlighted significant changes and internal struggles. Leaders such as Jan Žižka adopted more aggressive and violent stances, considering Prague and other cities as enemies. In this context, Petr Chelčický, influenced by the Taborites, emerges as a prominent figure. His critical writings towards the clergy and the Church defend pacifism, egalitarianism, and communism, advocating for the autonomy of the Czech church and opposing German domination. Chelčický distances himself from the Hussites due to his rejection of violence and in his hometown, he develops an extensive body of work proposing a life free from materialism and power conflicts. His local influence is significant, leaving a legacy in the religious and social reforms of the era and beyond.

The aesthetics of impasse and the affective rhythms of survival: Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank as cinema of precarity

ABSTRACT This article reads Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009) through Lauren Berlant’s conceptualisation of impasse and the affective rhythms of survival, which Berlant develops in their reflections on the cinema of precarity. This framework, I contend, has the potential to open up new avenues of inquiry within the study of Arnold’s work, usually discussed in relation to either British (social) realist cinema or the phenomenological representations of female experience. Situating Fish Tank within the broader framework of the cinema of precarity helps articulate a position from which to problematise the overemphasis on movement in critical writings on the film – which, as I will discuss, is also predominant in both affect theory and film phenomenology. I argue that with its simultaneous focus on movement and impasse, realised through framing and composition of the shot, camera movement, and repetition of visual tropes that convey confinement, Fish Tank is able to capture and aesthetically re-enact the impact of neoliberalism, while simultaneously paying attention to class and gendered styles of bodily adjustment to crisis ordinariness. I conclude that Berlant’s critical apparatus illuminates the formal and affective complexity of Fish Tank in new ways, and creates space to address larger questions of affect, aesthetics, and the profilmic body.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Reception of the Ideas of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The article regards peculiarities of Edgar Allan Poe’s perception of the philosophical ideas and artistic creativity of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Poe considered Coleridge the greatest poet and philosopher; however, he often engaged into controversy with him. There are some reasons to believe that some of Poe’s texts were written under the non-obvious influence of his English predecessor. Several lyrical works of two poets, as well as their critical writings, were chosen to prove this.

BOOK REVIEW The Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education is the first comprehensive collection of scholarly work that spans the spectrum of Montessori education, including historical, political, geographic, pedagogical, scientific, and cultural perspectives. It offers different entry points for those interested in various aspects of Montessori education—advocates, researchers, academics, parents, and teacher educators—to expand their current knowledge about the Montessori pedagogy and movement. The handbook approaches known ideas with an interdisciplinary lens. Maria Montessori’s critical writings and radical approaches cemented her legacy. Now, nearly 115 years after her first publication, essential dialogues and critical reflections are emerging about complex social issues in the context of Montessori education. These dialogues recognize the strengths and limitations of the Method as well as the harmful and disrespectful ways Montessori education has entered different communities, countries, and Indigenous lands.

The Use of Google Translate in EFL Essay Writing: Is It a Cheating?

During the process of writing an essay, many students are utilizing online translation tools like Google Translate due to the widespread availability of computing technology and the internet. Online translation programming is strong, yet it is inclined to over-exacting interpretation, and cannot represent the setting similar to a human interpreter. As a result, students are left to rely on a tool that promises to "do the hard work" for them by allowing them to only think and write in their native language. This study is aimed to determine the extent to which students at the University of Bengkulu, Indonesia, rely on technology in writing essays and whether they consider its use to be cheating or not. The data was obtained by conducting mixed-method research through survey with a closed-ended questionnaire and interview to the English Department students of Universitas Bengkulu who are currently taking a Critical Writing course. The results discovered that all of the participants have utilized GT as a translation tool for writing essays particularly to translate word from their first language into English. Moreover, they considered using GT for essay writing as cheating depending on how it is used; for graded assignments or writing test.

Homoverse

The editors’ introduction to this special issue of differences titled Syntax of Thought: Reading Leo Bersani describes the issue’s focus on the speculative importance of aesthetics in Leo Bersani’s scholarship, especially his attention to a “syntax of thought,” or the structural innovations of thinking, reading, and perception explored throughout his critical writings. The introduction also emphasizes Bersani’s ongoing attention to relationality through the aesthetic and how it contributed to his decades-long rethinking of sexuality, sociality, politics, and art.

Katherine Mansfield – tłumaczka Stanisława Wyspiańskiego – Sędziowie

Katherine Mansfield – the Translator of Stanisław Wyspiański’s The Judges In 2014 Edinburgh University Press published the third volume of Katherine Mansfield’s “Collected Works” – The Poetry and Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield – which included all her translations, not only those of the works by A. Kuprin, A. Chekhov and F. Dostoyevsky, but for the first time also fragments of The Judges (Sędziowie) by Stanisław Wyspiański. The article explains a possible genesis of this translation, connected with the person of Florian Sobieniowski, who acquainted Mansfield with the work of the Polish playwright. The influence of Wyspiański on Mansfield was considerable at the time and might have been instrumental in her decision to undertake the translation already in 1909, or perhaps later, around 1912, when John Middleton Murry, the editor of Rhythm, decided to devote a whole issue of the magazine to the work of the Polish author. The translation may have also been done in 1917, the year entered on the manuscript by Murry, Mansfield’s husband and the editor of her work after the writer’s death. Mansfield did not know Polish, so she used the German translation of Sędziowie (Gericht) by Kasimir Różycki as a reference. Her translation, however, more faithful to the original, goes beyond the German text, which is a prose summary of the play. To show the quality of Mansfield’s translation, the article compares the solutions adopted by each translator to render the meaning of the same fragments of the play. Mansfield’s version suggests a close collaboration with Sobieniowski to find the rhythm, sound and meaning of the original, a pattern of work which she fully developed in her later translating collaboration with Samuel Koteliansky.

Rire et comédie: émergence d’un nouveau discours sur les effets du théâtre au xviie siècle. Par Coline Piot

Coline Piot’s nuanced study of the evolution of French seventeenth-century discussions on the role of laughter, and the perceived aims and the effects of comedy, offers a wide-ranging and robust contribution to scholarship. Piot begins by noting that the modern reader immediately links audience laughter with the genre of comedy, but reminds us that this link was long absent in theoretical discussion on comedy. In this way, she seeks to ‘déessentialiser le lien entre comédie et rire du spectateur pour mieux restaurer le processus historique de sa construction’ (p. 10). She does this by examining how the link was made in non-theoretical discussions on the theatre, the principal reasons that led theoretical writers to wrestle with such ideas, and the resulting change in attitudes towards the comedic genre in the seventeenth century. From the 1660s onwards, there was a new focus by critics on audience response to performances, and Piot thus extends the scholarship undertaken as part of the research ­project ‘Naissance de la critique dramatique’, led by Lise Michel and Claude Bourqui, along with other burgeoning research in the last decade on reception studies in the period. The corpus of texts examined (dating from 1660 to 1670) can be divided into three categories. The first involves accounts by real spectators of the time, with an impressive range including ‘écrits de constance, de témoignages de réception, de pamphlets et d’éloges, de descriptions de spectacle, de galanteries, de recueils mondains, de gazettes’ (p. 18). The second incorporates the perspective of playwrights of the time, ‘dans les paratextes de comédie ou les discours de défense ou de promotion’ (p. 18). The last category features discussions on performances in novels, fictional narratives, and comedies with a metatheatrical dimension. The first part of the book provides an overview of discourses on comedy in theoretical and non-theoretical texts from the sixteenth century until the middle of the seventeenth century (Chapter 1) and examines the influence that burlesque literature and Italian comedies had on discussions of audience laughter, which were gaining traction in France (Chapter 2). The second part of the book adopts a more analytical approach and investigates the aesthetic, social, and moral elements at the heart of such discussions. Chapter 3 of this section provides an excellent examination on the traditional discourse of l’honnêteté du rire in comedy, in the wake of discussions on Molière’s L’École des femmes. In the final part of the book, Piot focuses on the emergence in critical writings of certain commonplace ideas around laughter, principally the idea of comedy’s corrective role. She traces how this crystallized into a standard critical topos, with the expectation that classical comedy had a moral objective of correcting vice. However, the study also underlines the privileging of pleasure through a new form of galanterie in which ‘maîtriser “art de la raillerie” en société et savoir “entendre raillerie”’ became ‘des marques de distinction sociale’ (p. 13). Overall, this book presents a persuasive and detailed account of the way in which a new theory of comedy emerged and took centre stage.

금수현의 문필활동과 비평적 글쓰기 고찰

Gum Su-hyun(1919-1992) who composed the song <swing>, was born during the colonial era and worked as a musician, education administrator, and music media publisher during the liberation period and the formation of the national system. These activities served as a source of writing. His literary activities can be confirmed through music related books, newspapers and magazines. Literary activities started from media publication. After that, he published a series of columns in the newspaper media to criticize the social situation. and He expanded his position by leading public opinion in Monthly Music published by him. He continued his own writing by publishing everyday essays, professional commentaries, and current affairs criticism in various magazines. As a result of analyzing Gum Su-hyun’s literary activities, it is that the writings containing his critical thoughts reflecting the reality of the time were dominant. In this respect, Gum Su-hyun’s writings can be collectively referred to as ‘critical writing’. His critical writing embodies a kind of sense of duty, which he must do as an educator and musician who has gone through turbulent era.
 In this study, Gum Su-hyun’s literary activities were reviewed and his critical writing was examined. Gum Su-hyun actively intervened in the reality of the times through critical writing and revealed her own musical, social, and historical perspectives. Critical writing contains Gum Su-hyun’s philosophy and attitude, which critically views the exploration of national identity, the love of Hangeul, the realization and spread of the value of our style’s music, and the reality of popular music. These consciousness and attitudes were expressed in own critical writings, starting from sincere consideration for our style’s thing. His critical writing bring up a topic into the world and makes it recognized to the problem consciousness.

Oil & Light, Figure & Shadow: Democratic Aesthetics from Melville to Ellison

This essay proposes a relationship between the work of Ralph Ellison and Herman Melville that cannot be captured by terms such as reference, allusion, or influence. Instead both writers are engaged in a common endeavor to reimagine what it might mean for literature to be about democracy beyond modes of representational realism. Ranging across both authors’ fictional and critical writings, I trace a series of material figures that connect Ellison and Melville and reveal a shared experimentation with non-referential modes of figuration and forms of incompletion through which both sought to produce a radically democratic aesthetics.

엘리엇의 객관성 시학과 감정의 자리

My paper aims to find the locus of emotion in T. S. Eliot’s objective poetics. Eliot is best known as the promulgator of modern poetics of objectivity in contrast to the Romantic conception of poetry emphasizing subjective feelings. Specifically, along with “an objective correlative,” “impersonality,” defined as “escape from emotion” or “escape from personality,” becomes the watchword identifying the objectivity of his poetic theory. The problem is that the subsequent Modernist reception of Eliot’s poetics contains misunderstanding it as if it disregarded the emotional aspect of poetry. But, actually, Eliot affirms emotion and personality as the essential poetic experiences over and over again throughout his essays on poetry. And even in those scholars who have recognized that affirmation, the problem lies, too: they are at a loss, looking on Eliot’s acknowledgment of both personality and impersonality as a contradiction. In an attempt to solve these problems, my thesis has raised and justified the argument that Eliot, in his basic premise, allocates “impersonality” in the sphere of the poetic technique of creation and “personality” or “emotion” in the locus of the poetic content. By finding the locus of emotion in another poetic sphere than the objective technique, my argument has concomitantly clarified that Eliot’s conceptions of personality and impersonality are not contradictory at all but consistent over the critical writings published throughout his career.

The Effect of a Reading Instructional Program on Tenth Grade Students' Critical Writing skills in Jordan

The present study aims at investigating the effect of a reading instructional program on Jordanian EFL students' critical writing. The participants of the study were divided randomly into four groups from one of Irbid private schools (2020-2019): The groups were, two experimental groups: one for male students of (16) students and one for female students of (16) students. These groups were taught according to the training program in critical reading. There were also two control groups; one for male students of (18) students and one for female students of (18) students. The students in the control group were taught according to the methods of the teacher’s book in English language curriculum for tenth-grade students. To determine the effective level of the instructional program, a pre-posttest was used. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences in the students' mean scores on the critical writing post-test in favor of the two experimental groups which used the reading instructional program. In light of these results, the researchers recommend that the EFL curriculum designers should include critical writing strategies in the textbooks and to train EFL teachers on how to use them in their classrooms.

The Role of Art Criticism in the Study of Art History: A General Research

This paper briefly discusses the writing of art criticism, art history, the relationship between art criticism and art history, and the qualities that critics should have. Art criticism is the evaluation and value judgment of art works or art phenomena based on certain standards. The emergence of art criticism is to better appreciate and understand art, and its emergence is mainly in the transition period between classical art and modern art. In the section of "Art Criticism Writing", it focuses on "What is Criticism" and several links of art criticism writing; In the section of "writing of art history", the author focuses on the logical relationship between Greenberg's thought of "dialectical transformation" and art history.

A Multimodal Appraisal of Zaha Hadid’s Glasgow Riverside Museum—Criticism, Performance Evaluation, and Habitability

High-profile projects promoted by governments, local municipalities, and the media do not always meet program requirements or user expectations. The Riverside Museum in Glasgow by Zaha Hadid Architects, which has generated significant discussion in the media, is used to test this claim. A multimodal inquiry adopts three factors: criticism, performance evaluation, and habitability. Results from this method are then correlated with visual attention scans using software from 3M Corporation to map unconscious user engagement. A wide spectrum of tools is employed, including a walking tour assessment procedure, contemplation of selected settings, navigational mapping, and assessing user emotional experiences. Key aspects of the design and spatial qualities of this museum are compared with an analysis of critical writings on how the project was portrayed in the media. Further, we examine socio-spatial practices, selected behavioral phenomena, and the emotional experiences that ensue from users’ interaction with the building and its immediate context. The findings suggest design shortcomings and, more worrisome, that spatial qualities relevant to users’ experiences do not seem to have been met. In going beyond the usual method of analysis, we apply new techniques of eye-tracking simulations, which verify results obtained by more traditional means. An in-depth analysis suggests the need for better compatibility between the imagined design ideas and the actual spatial environments in use.

Constitutionalism and the sacred cow: the secular mythology of the Indian Supreme Court

ABSTRACT This article examines the judicial discourse around cow protection laws in India, tracing the trajectory of the Indian Supreme Court’s reasoning in cases where the constitutional validity of anti-cow-slaughter laws was challenged in post-independence India. The mainstream scholarship on Article 48 of the Indian Constitution has emphasised the existence of a religious motive behind this constitutional provision and its apparent justification through utility-based economic reasoning. However, most critical writings utilise a simplistic, binary formulation: religious versus secular. Through a close analysis of the judicial decisions in which anti-cow-slaughter laws were constitutionally challenged, the article proposes a move beyond the religious/secular divide and attends to the implications of the uneasy coexistence of the secular and the mythical. It further demonstrates that the invocation of the common law doctrine of presumption of constitutionality has acquired the status of what I term ‘secular mythology’ in the context of anti-slaughter laws.

Camilo Pessanha’s Missing City: Race, Poetry, and Urban Writing in Portuguese Macau

The Portuguese poet Camilo Pessanha’s long stint in Macau has been the subject of much scholarly debate and biographical intrigue. Critics have tended either to deny the city’s poetic import altogether, erroneously claiming that Pessanha wrote virtually no poetry in Macau, or else present a highly romanticized portrait of the poet’s time there, focusing on his opium addiction and emphasizing the city’s exoticism. In this article I seek to problematise both portrayals, examining Pessanha’s poetry in light of his critical writings on Macau. My analysis shows that Macau’s heady cultural life interacted powerfully with Pessanha’s individualized notions of pastoral poetics and theory of race.