Authors In Literature Research Articles

The blind singers of Vladan Nedic and Vasko Popa

According to Vuk Karadzic, sung epic poetry accompanied by the gusle was spread by outlaws, travellers and the blind. Such blind men used to perform in homes, monasteries, and church fairs (in Banat, Backa, Slavonia and Srem, such a fair is known as the slava - patron saint?s day - of a church, village, town or monastery). After World War II, some literary authors and historians started to refer to the gusle players and singers who were blind as ?the blind singers?. These writers and literary historians started appreciating their singing as high art, so the view of their singing as a form of craft accompanied by begging they did for a living had to be changed. They believed that the artists were supposed to be remembered simply as ?blind singers?, rather than ?blind men?. Their lyrical achievement was valued more than their craft (singing) and social status (begging). Among the most adamant advocates of the new designation were university professor Vladan Nedic and the poet Vasko Popa.

“Accursed Time”: Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition and John McGahern’s That They May Face the Rising Sun

Abstract: This article analyses the connecting threads between the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze – as they appear in his 1968 text Difference and Repetition, which is one of Deleuze’s major solo works (along with The Logic of Sense) prior to his famous, anti-Oedipal collaborations with Félix Guattari – and the final novel written by John McGahern, That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002). It shall be argued that Deleuze’s conceptualisations of temporality and humanity’s relationship with its physical surroundings find their perfect literary realisations in the pages of McGahern’s That They May Face as he attempts to provide a vision of contemporary Ireland’s transcending of James Joyce’s nightmare of history and the deadening habit of what Samuel Beckett’s character Pozzo calls “accursed time”. Shakespeare, Proust, Joyce, and Beckett are the four literary authors who most unite Deleuze and McGahern in shared enthusiasm and they shall be considered as mediating presences between McGahern and Deleuze throughout the course of the article. It shall be argued that a Deleuzian vision lies at the heart of contemporary Irish literature and that That They May Face the Rising Sun represents a primary textual example of this literary strand.

Mazen Naous, Poetics of Visibility in the Contemporary Arab American Novel

Mazen Naous’ Poetics of Visibility in the Contemporary Arab American Novel is a brilliant literary investigation into a selected corpus of today’s Arab American fiction writers. What sets Naous’ analyses apart from many other attempts at reading the writings of contemporary Arab American literary authors is his effort to avoid focusing solely on the political agendas of the novels carried out through the content of the works in question. Instead, he attempts to unravel the poetics of the work...

Writers and Radio: How Literary Authors Have Made Use of the Medium over a Century

Literary authors have made use of the radio as a political, technological, cultural, and social medium from its infancy. A wide range of complex relationships can be recognised when looking at their ways of dealing with the medium, of writing for the radio, and of working with radio stations. While a huge body of studies provide rich material of this utilisation, a systematic framework for the analysis of these practices has been glaringly absent. Deduced by a methodological framework we propose a systematisation and typify five clusters of literary practices. Such a systematic overview provides insights into the nature of the alliances and helps to understand the role of literary authors in radio cultures and their contribution to the culture of radio in the so-called ‘radio century’.

Visualising Female Authorship. Author Portraits and the Representation of Female Literary Authority in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

Abstract This article discusses printed author portraits of women writers as vehicles of public image in the male-dominated eighteenth-century book market. It shows how Dutch women writers responded to the growing demand for author portraits and used their portrait engravings to shape their public image. It proved to be a fine line between showcasing literary aspirations and maintaining female modesty.

El lenguaje de los otros, escenario de alteridades: Aportes a la aproximación teórica entre antropología y literatura

El lenguaje, en su multiplicidad de acción como mecanismo de reconfiguración simbólica, se presenta como un elemento constante en las relaciones sociales. En este sentido la antropología se ha preguntado no sólo por la utilidad del lenguaje en estas relaciones, sino por la forma en la cual este se utiliza dentro de los análisis antropológicos y sus implicaciones metodológicas. La literatura, por su parte, se muestra como un espacio en el que el uso del lenguaje responde principalmente a un ejercicio descriptivo, que trasmuta en la articulación de distintos conceptos simbólicos para la creación de una realidad en la que el autor es el artífice, lo cual crea relaciones entre la realidad simbólica del autor literario y los conceptos abstraídos que representan la organización simbólica de sociedades específicas. Este artículo de revisión busca explorar, a través del uso de las crónicas antropológicas y de textos literarios de ficción, las relaciones entre la antropología y la literatura desde la perspectiva del lenguaje como elemento de creación de alteridad, para proponer aproximaciones teóricas que cuestionen la relación entre el autor y el sujeto observado que, en consecuencia, se presenten como posibilidades de posturas metodológicas en las cuales se haga uso del lenguaje como herramienta analítica.

IDEOLOGI GENDER KEBAHASAAN PADA NOVEL KARYA SASTRA PENGARANG PEREMPUAN

The novel by female authors often tell about the position of women who appear as symbols of subtlety, and place them in a lower position than men. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the form of linguistic gender ideology in literary novels by female authors and what context triggers gender ideology in novels by literary authors. In this study, researchers focused on this research on the Mills Kritsis Discourse Analysis. This research is a type of qualitative research. The data in this study is sentences that contain linguistic by female authors. Data collection techniques in this study use document recording techniques. Based on the results of data analysis it is known that the form of linguistic gender ideology in literary novels of female authors is dominated by the form of subordination that is 20 data or about (60.53%), while 18 (14.37%) other data leads to stereotypes for readers of literary novels, especially literary works of female authors, to foster interest in preserving literary novels, especially literary novels, especially authors

Sérialité vs singularité dans les monographies illustrées « Qui êtes-vous? » et « Les Contemporains »

À travers la notion de sérialité, cet article vise à étudier la tension inhérente qui existe entre le principe de sérialisation et la particularité des écrivains d'avant-garde qui au contraire n'obéissent pas à un esprit de groupe. À partir de l’échantillon modeste étudié ici (les collections « Qui êtes-vous? » et « Les Contemporains »), j'ai montré que la question se situait moins dans la différenciation des séries que dans la tension entre la singularité de l’écrivain étudié et le rôle qu'il joue dans la « série ». Ainsi, la question du choix stylistique et poétique joue un rôle considérable dans les deux séries et se manifeste dans les deux systèmes sémiotiques – dans le texte, aussi bien que dans les choix d'images et de leurs commentaires. Ainsi, le biographique est conduit à la poétique, et ce jusqu’à l'exploitation des photos du groupe pour insinuer le positionnement singulier de chaque écrivain du groupe étudié au sein des collections. Une série (les auteurs d'avant-garde littéraire) dans la série (la collection), dont le succès dépend de la singularisation de chaque écrivain qu'elle présente.

How alliteration enhances conceptual–attentional interactions in reading

In linguistics, the relationship between phonological word form and meaning is mostly considered arbitrary. Why, then, do literary authors traditionally craft sound relationships between words? We set out to characterise how dynamic interactions between word form and meaning may account for this literary practice. Here, we show that alliteration influences both meaning integration and attentional engagement during reading. We presented participants with adjective-noun phrases, having manipulated semantic relatedness (congruent, incongruent) and form repetition (alliterating, non-alliterating) orthogonally, as in “dazzling-diamond”; “sparkling-diamond”; “dangerous-diamond”; and “creepy-diamond”. Using simultaneous recording of event-related brain potentials and pupil dilation (PD), we establish that, whilst semantic incongruency increased N400 amplitude as expected, it reduced PD, an index of attentional engagement. Second, alliteration affected semantic evaluation of word pairs, since it reduced N400 amplitude even in the case of unrelated items (e.g., “dangerous-diamond”). Third, alliteration specifically boosted attentional engagement for related words (e.g., “dazzling-diamond”), as shown by a sustained negative correlation between N400 amplitudes and PD change after the window of lexical integration. Thus, alliteration strategically arouses attention during reading and when comprehension is challenged, phonological information helps readers link concepts beyond the level of literal semantics. Overall, our findings provide a tentative mechanism for the empowering effect of sound repetition in literary constructs.

Kaleme sarılan bir kadın: Anna Weamys ve A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia

A popular romance by a popular courtier, Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia was the best-selling prose fiction of the 1590s England. Sidney wrote the Old Arcadia, which consisted of five books, earlier than the New Arcadia. In the New Arcadia, a revision of the Old Arcadia, which was composed of three books, he followed the original plotline while he also added new episodes and reshaped some narratives. The product of an arduous work, it broke off mid-sentence due to Sidney’s untimely death in 1586. This incomplete text was published in 1590. In the posthumously published 1593 Arcadia, a merger of the Old Arcadia and the New Arcadia, Sidney invited the reader to continue his text (the original ending of the older version). Even though he used the male personal pronoun to address his successors, Anna Weamys was the only woman to take up the challenge. Writing at a time when female romance reading and writing were frowned upon by the patriarchal culture and authorship was predominantly considered to be a male activity, Weamys not only interpreted the narrative threads Sidney left unfinished from a female point of view but she also produced her own independent work. Within this framework, taking into consideration the question “Is a pen a metaphorical penis?” Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar pose, and the cultural understanding of romance and women’s preoccupation with the genre in the seventeenth century, this paper examines how Weamys shatters the hegemony of Sidney in A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1651) in order to establish her literary authority as a female author.  

Doubting the Divine in Early Modern Europe: The Revival of Momus, the Agnostic God

In this book, George McClure examines the intellectual tradition of challenges to religious and literary authority in the early modern era. He explores the hidden history of unbelief through the lens of Momus, the Greek god of criticism and mockery. Surveying his revival in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and England, McClure shows how Momus became a code for religious doubt in an age when such writings remained dangerous for authors. Momus ('Blame') emerged as a persistent and subversive critic of divine governance and, at times, divinity itself. As an emblem or as an epithet for agnosticism or atheism, he was invoked by writers such as Leon Battista Alberti, Anton Francesco Doni, Giordano Bruno, Luther, and possibly, in veiled form, by Milton in his depiction of Lucifer. The critic of gods also acted, in sometimes related fashion, as a critic of texts, leading the army of Moderns in Swift's Battle of the Books, and offering a heretical archetype for the literary critic.

Anxieties of obsolescence and transformation: digital technology in contemporary Australian literary fiction

When addressing the rise of mass media, literary authors of the late twentieth century often expressed an ‘anxiety of obsolescence’ (Fitzpatrick 2006) in their work: an acute awareness of being potentially displaced. This often led them to adopt an attitude of defiance in the face of technological change. Many contemporary literary authors adopt a similar oppositional attitude towards the rise and encroachment of networked technology, but retreating to the increasingly peripheral territory of ‘pure’ print-based literature is no longer easy. Digital technology presents not only the possibility of displacement but also that of transformation, with its spread threatening to fundamentally alter the practice of reading and writing. Possibly in response to the radical upheavals faced by Australian literary culture due to the rise of electronic publishing since 2012, recent works by three established Australian authors – Amnesia by Peter Carey (2014), the Wisdom Tree novella sequence by Nick Earls (2016), and The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser (2017) – examine the ways in which networked technologies challenge or complicate the role, identity and practice of the contemporary print-oriented writer. The telling connection is that they present the relationship between print-based writers and networked technology as being transformative rather than simply oppositional, demonstrating the emergence of complex and nuanced responses to the rise of networked technology in Australian literature.

Donde se dice el humor: La mesa de los galanes como espacio paratópico en los cuentos de Fontanarrosa

ABSTRACTThis article approaches Roberto Fontanarrosa’s short stories through the notions of exotopic or paratopic spaces. Such notions attempt to understand the ways in which the literary author is situated with respect to his own work. The point of departure is the series of short stories known as La mesa de los galanes, spread over several books, in which the author sets up a paratopic space. The bar El Cairo replaces the writing scene with the conversation scene, but much more importantly, it points to the origin of Fontanarrosa’s literary adventure. Furthermore, La mesa de los galanes works divides his more narrative stories and the theatrical ones, separating the more parodic from the mostly costumbrist—in short, separating Humor from Literature.

Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture by Wendy Larson (review)

Reviewed by: Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture by Wendy Larson Naji R Obaid Wendy Larson. Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture. Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria, 2017. 420 p. Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture comprehensively depicts both Chinese and English methodological supremacy, culture, and history in a well-documented piece. The name Zhang Yimou has been dominant in post-Mao Zedong philosophy and in Asian cinema. Highlighting the post-Maoist Chinese political era, it is therefore recommended for politically inclined individuals to get acquainted with that political mythology. It gives practical insight on how things used to work in ancient medieval Medellin politics, with particular comparison to modern stereotypes. Larson teaches very important lessons about the Chinese and their culture as it relates to globalization. Different [End Page 215] sources from English and Chinese perspectives are used to delve into Zhang's films, posing a strong argument on the potential, limitations, and the significance of the Chinese post-socialist cultural era. Author Wendy Larson's research, including From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th-century China; Literary Authority and the Chinese writer: Ambivalence and Autobiography; and Women and Writing in Modern China, is always substantiated by well-crafted textual descriptions and is made even stronger by comprehensive theories. Her present study significantly contributes to the global field of academic and cultural studies through its essential analysis of film director Zhang Yimou, who has, over the years, been controversial due to previous works that have raised debate among professionals. She also lays a foundation for gender, post-socialist, visual, and globalization studies. Larson has a whole new approach to studying modern China, one of the topics that receives major attention. This most beautiful work has the propensity to attract more academic readership to culture studies and geography, probably due to its versatile theoretical knowledge and what most people consider a "Slippery Idea" of global culture; other anticipated potential readers are students in Chinese studies, film studies, and history. This 420-page volume can be considered her magnum opus. She writes with unbiased rationale, creativity, attention to detail, and persuasiveness. It can simply be described as a seminal text since it treats a large number of Zhang's most influential works in depth, reminding everyone who has interest in cinema that the Chinese film industry has actually diversified; this book truly has the potential to guide readers down the road to understanding the Asian continent. Larson's sophisticated assessment of Zhang's methods clearly analyzes eight out of the nine films that he directed from 1987 to 2005, including Red Sorghum, a "cross-cultural threnody," which caused a bit of controversy during its time, and Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. Using these scenarios, Larson sets the stage for debate on the treatment of culture in the Red Trilogy by opening up questions about postcolonial China and Eurocentrism and by prompting readers to study further. Her analysis views Hero, a movie that has been described as a fascist documentary in its representation of the Chinese state, from an informed angle that counters that notion, and persuasively argues that it is a perfect fit in the development of Zhang's career as a director. In conclusion, Wendy Larson's book intensely observes Zhang's [End Page 216] films, placing them in a larger realm and re-defining the idea of global culture. In this skillful study, Larson boldly challenges pre-existing and incorrect perceptions about the films, which have been tagged either as anti-government or anarchic. It is not surprising that this is one of the world's finest works about Zhang Yimou, since, through careful close study, it evaluates the detailed politics and culture during postsocialist China as well as its current position in the present-day world of capitalism. It is a perfect tool for individuals who are inquisitive about the politics associated with modern Asian culture. Naji R Obaid Arizona State University Copyright © 2019 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association

“Whate’er These Words Cannot Express”: In Memory of Michael O’Neill

“Whate’er These Words Cannot Express”: In Memory of Michael O’Neill

Economic advancement and reputation strategies: Seventeenth‐century Dutch women writing for profit

AbstractThis essay examines how economic circumstances and imperatives influenced strategies of self‐representation employed by women writing in the Dutch Republic. At the core of the analysis is the poetry of Maria Margaretha van Akerlaecken (1605–after 1662) and Katharina Lescailje (1649–1711). Economic advancement for literary authors in the Dutch Republic was defined by the marginality of literary patronage in court culture and few possibilities to profit through the market. Van Akerlaecken, however, succeeded in finding patrons abroad, and Lescailje, who ran a publishing house, could print her own works and thus profited directly from their sales. The respective modes of self‐representation of these women in their published works moved in opposite directions because of these differing modes of earning, but each can be traced back to the same issue: they were women and writers striving for economic advancement and this combination turned out to be a problematic one, asking for strategic reputation management.

Adiós a la lengua materna: la escritura en lengua extranjera como acto de disidencia. El caso de José María Blanco White.

Este artículo analiza la relación que José María Blanco White sostenía con el idioma inglés y su propia lengua materna, el español. Exiliado por voluntad propia en Inglaterra a partir de 1810, el autor de origen sevillano expresa en un inicio su voluntad de convertirse en un hombre de letras británico, y de abandonar para siempre la escritura literaria en castellano. Esta renuncia lingüística implica una disidencia tanto política como religiosa, así como un paso en su evolución intelectual. Aunque Blanco White alcanza un alto prestigio como autor en Inglaterra en su lengua adoptiva, nunca abandonará del todo su compleja relación con España ni su expresión en idioma español. Se discute también cómo su supuesta identidad inglesa es una construcción imaginaria del autor que, si bien busca despojarse de sus raíces, carga constantemente a cuestas con ellas.

El lenguaje de los otros, escenario de alteridades

El lenguaje, en su multiplicidad de acción como mecanismo de reconfiguración simbólica, se presenta como un elemento constante en las relaciones sociales. En este sentido la antropología se ha preguntado no sólo por la utilidad del lenguaje en estas relaciones, sino por la forma en la cual este se utiliza dentro de los análisis antropológicos y sus implicaciones metodológicas. La literatura, por su parte, se muestra como un espacio en el que el uso del lenguaje responde principalmente a un ejercicio descriptivo, que trasmuta en la articulación de distintos conceptos simbólicos para la creación de una realidad en la que el autor es el artífice, lo cual crea relaciones entre la realidad simbólica del autor literario y los conceptos abstraídos que representan la organización simbólica de sociedades específicas. Este artículo de revisión busca explorar, a través del uso de las crónicas antropológicas y de textos literarios de ficción, las relaciones entre la antropología y la literatura desde la perspectiva del lenguaje como elemento de creación de alteridad, para proponer aproximaciones teóricas que cuestionen la relación entre el autor y el sujeto observado que, en consecuencia, se presenten como posibilidades de posturas metodológicas en las cuales se haga uso del lenguaje como herramienta analítica.

Metatextual Conversations: The Exclusion/Inclusion of Genre Fiction in Public Libraries and Social Media Book Groups

ABSTRACTPublic libraries are institutions with a social inclusion mandate that promote reading and literacies through their collections and programs. Public libraries encourage social inclusion and literary engagement through the provision of book kits for book groups, and apportion cultural legitimacy upon the selections made for these groups of social readers. Using Gerard Genette’s schema of transtextualities and through a thematic analysis of NSW public libraries book club kits, reading of literary and ‘literary lite’ fiction is given a higher status than genre fiction which is predominately excluded from these collections created by librarians who act as gatekeepers and literary authorities. Conversely, book based social media sites such as Goodreads are inclusive of book groups of all genres, from literary to science fiction to romance and many more. The book club selections in these spaces are created by social readers whose engaged digitally captured discussion imparts literary capital through its metatextuality. As the main purpose of book groups is to make commentary upon a selected book, these discussions constitute metatextual conversations. Evidence from the research shows that the physical book group conversations are ephemeral and remain constrained to the physical group, in contrast to the online book group conversation which leaves a perpetual digital document.

Revisiting the Dickensian echo of the HBO TV series The Wire:

This article analyzes the alleged Dickensian echo of the highly-acclaimed HBO TV series The Wire. Charles Dickens is probably the literary author to whom the series has most frequently been likened. This correspondence is scrutinized here, as it seems to have been built upon impressionistic references, rather than on methodical intertextual analyses of both the series and the Victorian author. The analysis is intended to throw new light on the Dickensian ambience of The Wire, which seems to be different than previous critical appreciations of the series have suggested.