Literary Imagination Research Articles

Econscience. Op bezoek bij Hendrik Conscience in de wildernis van Eenige bladzijden uit het Boek der Natuur

In this article, I create a place-centered and relational context for reading Eenige bladzijden uit het Boek der Natuur (Some pages from the Book of Nature), a didactical dialogue on natural history from 1846, written by Flanders’ national novelist from the nineteenth century, Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883). This context does not focus on his biography or his contributions to a pedagogical Flemish national identity, but relates the work to our present (urban) environment. By doing so, often overlooked aspects in Conscience’s Romantic thought come to the fore: the limitations he put to nationalist frameworks for understanding nature and his attempt at opening up the capacities of literary imagination. For Conscience, literary imagination – rather than religious tradition or empirical precision from physics –, even in a wild and chaotic text, appeared most suitable to convey the Humboldtian idea of the interconnectedness and unity of nature.

The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Thought, ed. Frans De Bruyn

<i>The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Thought</i>, ed. Frans De Bruyn

Forms of Life

AbstractThis essay discusses “Forms of Life” in two senses: first, infrastructure as a social process that fosters particular forms of collective life and second, the agency/vitality imputed to infrastructure. The essay considers an unremarked ambivalence in energy humanities about infrastructure: the extant infrastructure of fossil fuels poses an obstacle to energy transition, while the act of making infrastructure visible and “following the pipeline” is regarded by incisive petrocritics as necessary but insufficient. What do cooling towers, electric pylons, or railways make happen (or keep from happening), socially and narratively, when they “work” or when they're hacked? In other words, is there a narrative grammar of infrastructure? How much has to happen for nothing to happen? And how do cultural texts differ from built environments in thinking infrastructure as a form of life? China Miéville's story “Covehithe” mobilizes the literary imagination to depict sunken oil platforms as revenant and reproductive organisms that pose new questions about relationships among humans, nature, and technology, and about the care, responsibility, and politics such forms of life demand. This weird tale doubles as documentation of dead infrastructure: its platform characters are actual rigs that litter sea beds around the world. What imaginative or conceptual forms, then, can help us grasp infrastructure's forms of life? This question is particularly urgent with regard to fossil infrastructure, which here names not only infrastructure that processes, circulates, or depends on fossil fuels but also infrastructure that is archaic, obsolete, and otherwise tethered to the past, standing as an obstacle to transition.

Books Briefly

Books Briefly

Ross, Trevor. Writing in Public: Literature and the Liberty of the Press in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Ross, Trevor. <i>Writing in Public: Literature and the Liberty of the Press in Eighteenth-Century Britain</i>

Rewriting History Through Creative Writing

Rewriting history in creative writing involves reinterpreting, reimagining, or changing historical events, people, or periods in one's works of fiction. Authors may take a variety of approaches, from small alterations providing new insights to extensive changes deviating from history considerably. This critical rethinking of the past and its narrative representations can explore alternative histories, contest established views, and highlight the voices of people historically ignored. Several types of creative writing can be grouped under the definition of rewriting history, with each having its conventions and goals. Historical fiction, based on real historical artefacts or events, allows writers to imagine filling gaps left by historical records, making history relatable. Alternate history explores what might have been if critical moments in the past unravelled differently, challenging the inevitability of historical events. Speculative fiction, a popular style, blends real historical settings with fantastical ones, offering a perspective on historical possibilities informed by imagination. Historical revisionism in imaginative literature significantly influences collective memory and cultural identity, questioning existing narratives and exposing submerged histories. The paper is a modest attempt to unravel the fact of rewriting the history through creative writing.

Historicizing Hindutva Ideology

Historicizing Hindutva Ideology

Literary and Linguistic Symbols of the Fatal Signs of Death in the Literature of Dino Buzzati

In this paper we will try to identify the literary and linguistic symbols of the fatal signs of death, focusing on the concept of "happy death" as a key concept in the literature of Dino Buzzati. The literature of this author passes from the traditional writing to the narrative forms of magical realism, and unfolds an imagination which shows how the reality of this world cannot be separated from the mystery of our daily existence. Also, we will analyse if there is a connection between Buzzati’s literary vision and the metaphysical debate on the existence of God. These research questions, aim to highlight the fact that the most obvious novelty of Dino Buzzati's literature should be summarized in the assessment that all the echoes of Death in his works are described with humor and self-irony, ranging from jokes to punitive and apocalyptic sarcasm. Death is shrouded in the allegory of the "receiving the call"; sooner or later it knocks on the door of every human being. Buzzati's literature is precisely the attainment of such a dimension, where art becomes sublime, and it is very hard to define clear lines, between the human existence and what happens after it.

Nonhuman Subject and the Spatiotemporal Reimagination of the Borderlands in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange

In Tropic of Orange (1997), Karen Tei Yamashita uses literary imagination to challenge the settler-colonial discourse on space and time in the Americas. The influence of Latin American magical realism on Yamashita is most pronounced in the orange, a nonhuman object imbued with human agency. The orange magically initiates cross-border movements of people that disrupt the binaries of local/global, East/West, and North/South, challenging the unequal distribution of freedom of movement across the globe. In this paper, I engage with Wai-Chee Dimock’s concept of “deep time” to discuss the temporality of such border crossings. I propose that the cyclicality symbolized by the orange provides an alternative to linear settler-colonial management of spacetime.

Rethinking utopian and dystopian imagination in island literature and culture

The trope of the utopian island occurs in a variety of cultural traditions. For example, in the West, the literary imagination of ideal islandness made manifest an imperialist rhetoric and contributed to European exploration and colonization. The tension between utopia and dystopia is an intrinsic feature of Western utopian island imaginations, which were complicit in colonial exploitation and oppression. Western models of island utopias and dystopias have been imposed on non-Western cultures, whose scholars have engaged in decolonial practices by adapting, reshaping, and transforming these conceptualizations. This special section, demonstrating the inherent intercultural qualities of utopian and dystopian island visions from diverse cultural traditions, contributes to decolonization efforts in island studies.

‘Poison Rainbows’: The Speculative Jurisdiction of Okorafor's Lagoon

Oil spills in the Niger Delta have been at the centre of both legal and literary imaginings as among the most acute examples of modern environmental degradation. In her novel Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor responds to what Rob Nixon describes as the ‘slow violence’ inflicted by the oil industry on non-human persons. This article will cast the study of law and literature into the future and show how the speculative jurisdiction of Okorafor's africanfuturist writing provides an ‘alternative discourse’ to legal scholarship and identifies the accordance of legal personhood as a tool with which to build back towards Lagoon's ‘radical futurity’ of posthuman rights and protection.

The Curious Eye: Optics and Imaginative Literature in Seventeenth‐Century England ErinWebster. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. xi + 212pp. ISBN 13:9780198850199. $94.00 (cloth).

Milton QuarterlyVolume 56, Issue 3-4 p. 157-159 REVIEW The Curious Eye: Optics and Imaginative Literature in Seventeenth-Century England Erin Webster. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. xi + 212pp. ISBN 13:9780198850199. $94.00 (cloth). J. Antonio Templanza, Corresponding Author J. Antonio Templanza [email protected] Massachusetts College of Liberal ArtsSearch for more papers by this author J. Antonio Templanza, Corresponding Author J. Antonio Templanza [email protected] Massachusetts College of Liberal ArtsSearch for more papers by this author First published: 04 May 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/milt.12423Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume56, Issue3-4October-December 2022Pages 157-159 RelatedInformation

Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions

Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions

Myth, Tradition and Indian Beliefs in Shashi Deshpande's "The Dark Holds No Terrors"

Shashi Deshpande is one of India's most well-known novelists today. Women's writing in India has a shorter history than male writing, but we are seeing a rise in the number of women authors whose fiction is being recognized internationally. They have won a slew of national and international awards and grants, and it now appears that women's writing will rise to prominence shortly as they catch up to their male counterparts. While many other women authors, such as Kamla Markandaya, Nayantara Sehgal, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Santha Rama Rao, Attia Hussain, Padmini Sen Gupta, Nargis Dala, Mrinalini Sarabhai, Gita Mehta, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, enrich Indian English Literature, Deshpande occupies a special place She is one of the few authors working today who incorporates literary allusions, myth, and mythology into her work, effortlessly blending it with earlier results. &#x0D; Deshpande has used Indian myths, legends, and people in many novels as metaphors for events, incidents, happenings, and characters. In many of her books, she incorporates Western folktales. Shashi Deshpande's writings, especially her novel "The Dark Holds No Terrors" (1980), paint a startlingly vivid picture of Indian womanhood's inner world. For too long, it has been made to stay quiet. Deshpande's use of myth and folklore in her novels exemplifies the decolonization of the Indian literary imagination. These devices are handy to the author for illuminating the inner world of women's minds since many of her novels contain female protagonists.

Habit, Romanticism, and the Literary Imagination

We talk of bad – and good – habits, and may also worry about whether habit as such is bad or good. Hume thought habit ‘the great guide to life’, but Hazlitt, in an essay ‘On the Past and Future’, complained that ‘The chain of habit coils itself round the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.’1 Few doubt the degree to which our hearts are grounded in – and shaped by – habitual thoughts, feelings, and assumptions, but for many, particularly in the post-Enlightenment period, this is not always a good thing. We don’t habitually talk of ‘romantic habit’ or indeed ‘habits’, but, as this collection of essays hopes to show, ideas of habit are everywhere in play in the writing of the Romantic period, themselves shaping and reshaping contemporary reflections on perception, politics, and identity. Rather than offering a general overview of ideas of habit, however, the aim is to offer a series of case studies, foregrounding the way particular intellectual figures wrestle with the force of habit and the habitual in a period of seismic political and cultural change.

Bolesław Prus’s Pharaoh(s) – Two Literary Visions of the Human Condition and Our Fascination with Ancient Egypt

Abstract This paper discusses two publications and two “pharaohs” (fictitious protagonists) in the historical and Egyptological context of a short story and a novel by Polish writer Aleksander Głowacki (a.k.a. Bolesław Prus). It looks at the observations of a writer fascinated by the dramas of powerful, extraordinary people and visions of a civilization that were firmly embedded in Poland and the whole of Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. The first discussed publication is a short story, A Legend of Old Egypt, on Ramzes (all names given in original spelling provided, either by the author in the case of the short story or the translator in the case of the novel) and his grandson, Horus – the first work in which Prus used “historical costume” to comment on the present and on the human condition. The plot of the masterpiece, Pharaoh, takes place in ancient Egypt and is a story of Ramses XIII’s life. The authors of this paper intend to explore the complexity of Prus’s protagonists against a historical and Egyptological background.

Nigerian Literary Imagination and the Nationhood Project, written by Toyin Falola

Nigerian Literary Imagination and the Nationhood Project, written by Toyin Falola

Evangelizing the Church: Soteriology, Liberation, and Transformative Action in Graham Greene’s The Honorary Consul

ABSTRACT Scholarship on Graham Greene has extensively examined the expression of his religious concerns in his work, labelling him a “Catholic writer” but also a schismatic author, due to his paradoxical departures from the catholic orthodoxy. Not until recently, scholars such as Mark Bosco (2005) and Michael G. Brennan (2016) have challenged these cliches and drawn attention to the importance of Vatican II and liberation theology discourses in shaping Greene's literary imagination. Given the diverse developments fostered by liberation theologians, further studies are needed to widen the scope of critical dialogue on sociological, epistemological and ontological dimensions in Greene's work. This article places Greene's The Honorary Consul in dialogue with Ignacio Ellacuría's theological articulation, focusing on the concepts of liberation, freedom and soteriology. In addition, it examines kerygmatic forms of announcement and denunciation and the conflictive relationship between the word and ways of transformative action involving violence in Greene's novel.

Ovid and the Liberty of Speech in Shakespeare’s England

Ovid and the Liberty of Speech in Shakespeare’s England

Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled by Nicholas Allen

<i>Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled</i> by Nicholas Allen