Literary Elements Research Articles

Exploring the metanarrative of the traditional literary critical essay

A professor of English and an assistant professor of Education bring together humanistic textual analysis and descriptive empirical research to explore faculty perceptions and uses of the assignment they name the traditional literary critical essay and define as a critical essay that describes, analyzes or interprets a literary text(s) through close reading of the text(s)’s literary elements, such as theme, character, imagery, language, and metaphor. Through humanistic textual analysis, the authors demonstrate a consistent story of the prevalence of the traditional literary critical essay assignment in college literature classrooms in conjunction with negative assumptions about the purposes of the assignment, its political associations, and what influences faculty to use it. These historically situated issues were used to construct survey questions to explore faculty members’ perceptions of these assumptions. Carnegie institution ratings were used to sample faculty from colleges and universities across the United States. The survey was completed by 735 full-time faculty who teach literature courses. Survey findings support assumptions about the assignment’s prevalence but call into question several other assumptions in the historical narrative and point to the need for scientific study of pedagogical beliefs related to student writing in literature classes.

DECAL: A Strategy for Collaborative Literature Discussions

This article addresses a small group literature discussion technique that was implemented during one pre-service teacher’s field experience in a seventh grade Language Arts classroom. Based on the principles of social constructivism and transactional theory of reader response, the DECAL model is structured to allow students to better understand the complexity of literary elements and to stimulate lively discussions. DECAL stands for Design, Extensions, Connections, Author’s Structure, and Language. It is a variation of collaborative literacy in which group processes are a part of the individual learning activity. DECAL provides teachers with the steps to promote active engagement and empower students to build their own knowledge within the constructed democracy of learning. The small group literature discussion technique presented in this article is applicable to teacher educators who wish to address the important role of collaborative book discussion for young adolescent readers in middle grade pre-serviceteacher education.

Making Land Sacred: Inscriptional Evidence for Buddhist Kings and Brahman Priests in Medieval Bengal

AbstractIn research on premodern South Asia, land-grant inscriptions have typically been mined for historical and geographical data. This article suggests that copperplate land-grant inscriptions may also provide an overlooked source of evidence for ideas about sacred space within and between South Asian religions. It focuses on inscriptions recording the granting of land by Buddhist kings to Brahman priests in medieval Bengal, and it hones in on the literary, oral, ritual, and performative elements of the inscriptions in relation to the spaces delineated by acts of granting. Drawing upon broader theoretical discussions concerning gift-giving in relation to economies and exchanges of religious prestige and royal power, it attempts to offer new perspectives towards gift-giving and the economy of the sacred in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. In the process, it attempts to draw out some of the broader ritual and “religious” implications of what is typically treated as an “economic” transaction – namely, the transfer of land from royal to priestly control, which forms the heart of the copperplate’s function and formation.

Solving an Intertextual Manuscript Mystery for Women's History: The Case of Hannah Mather Crocker's <em>Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston</em>

Solving an Intertextual Manuscript Mystery for Women's History:The Case of Hannah Mather Crocker's Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston Eileen Hunt Botting With her collaborator Sarah L. Houser, Eileen Hunt Botting was awarded the 2012 SSAWW Edition Award for the new edition of Hannah Mather Crocker's Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston. The award was established to honor excellence in the recovery of American women writers. And in libraries it can happen that several ancient manuscripts are bound together, collecting in one volume various and curious texts. (366) William of Baskerville in Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, 1980 Hannah Mather Crocker penned her Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston in the last decade of her life, during the 1820s, in an attempt to share her knowledge of her home city's history from its Puritan founding to the present "rising generation" (Crocker 2). The 459-page bound manuscript contains two versions of her history of Boston (written circa 1822 and 1826) and an appendix of related literary and historical documents (mainly composed in the 1820s). The three parts of the manuscript were bound in one leather volume at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) in the late nineteenth century after the manuscript was acquired in 1879 from the estate of John Wingate Thornton.1 The volume is in Crocker's hand except for a few items pasted onto the pages, probably by a later, unidentified editor and largely in the last pages of the appendix. As a coeditor with Sarah L. Houser of the first comprehensive published version (also the first scholarly edition) of Crocker's manuscript, I found the appendix particularly fascinating for the puzzle it poses. Could this stash of documents tacked to the back of the book be related to the two versions of the Reminiscences, as well as to the author's broader oeuvre? [End Page 361] Or is it merely what it seems to be—a personal scrapbook intelligible only to the woman who wrought it? Because the appendix appears at first glance to be a disparate collection of papers written by Crocker and others, it has contributed to scholarly misunderstanding of the Reminiscences as a whole. The Reminiscences has been called "a bulky compendium," a "commonplace book," and a "sprawling miscellany" because its appendix looks like a random assortment of poems, letters, drafts, clippings, and family papers (James 407; Post xviii, xlvi). Upon closer scrutiny, however, the appendix reveals itself to be connected on multiple levels to the narratives of her history of Boston. For my work as the primary annotator of the volume, the appendix became a kind of encoded coda. By tracing the authorship, sources, and context for each item in the appendix, I was able to piece together a narrative about Crocker's work as a feminist political poet and about the place of women's public speech in the early political history of Boston (Botting, "Theorizing").2 In the study of the 168-page appendix and its relation to the first two sections of the Reminiscences, I found a bounty of material for contemplation of some of the seemingly disparate yet interconnected fields of contemporary literary, political, and feminist theory: the postmodern idea of intertextuality, the post-Enlightenment ideas of publicity and the public sphere, and the feminist critique of women's partial citizenship in modern democracies (Bennett 1-39; Eastman 52-82; Gustafson 41-70). First, Crocker's Reminiscences is a self-consciously intertextual work. By intertextual, I follow Umberto Eco and other postmodern literary theorists who use the term to describe texts that refer to other texts in the development of their own narratives and arguments (Name 522). According to Eco, all books refer to other books, not only as historic sources but also as literary elements of the story presently being told (Name 286, 522). Crocker's Reminiscences is intertextual in both senses—the historical and the literary. These two aspects of intertextuality are best illustrated by looking at the poetry in the volume. Of the 194 poems in the volume, 115 are collected in the appendix. Eighty-six of the poems in the volume were written by Crocker, and of these, eighty...

An Anti-Christian Polemical Piyyut by Yosef Ibn Avitur Employing Elements from Toledot Yeshu

Abstract This article presents a critical edition of the piyyut האומרים אב ובן ורוח שלישי for Yom Kippur by Yosef ibn Avitur (tenth-eleventh centuries). This piyyut, which contains an explicit anti-Christian polemic, is examined in light of two antecedents belonging to the same type. Furthermore, Avitur’s piyyut displays literary elements that are attested in the complex known as Toledot Yeshu—especially the epithet ממזר ובן נידה referring to Jesus himself as well as a reference to him having been crucified “on a cabbage stalk.” These elements are analyzed and conclusions are drawn with regard to their implication for the study of the evolution of the Toledot Yeshu literature.

Coetzee’s Posthumanist Ethics

This article argues that J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace instantiates a posthumanist form of ethical thinking—an ethics that takes us beyond a humanist framework, making it possible to imagine the ethical subject as no longer exclusively human. It posits that Coetzee’s ethics, which is grounded in a Levinasian ethics of the Other that is extended to animals, depends on the text’s literary elements—specifically, on the intertextual relationship between Disgrace and Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony.” The latter, this article argues, provides the model of “the disgrace” that Coetzee takes up and reimagines within his work.

Picture This: Visual Literacy as a Pathway to Character Understanding

AbstractThe literary element of character is critical to literary meaning‐making, and in picturebooks images provide information important to understanding characters. This manuscript shares results of an investigation that explored the kinds of pictorial information young children use to gain insights into the characters and provide practical ways teachers can extend their own as well as children's engagement with visual text. Following read alouds of three picturebooks, second graders were shown pre‐selected illustrations from the books and interviewed. Insights gained suggest children are aware of important visual information and use certain types of visual information to understand character. Yet, many children were not attuned to several intentional visual devices used by illustrators. Therefore, teachers have important work to do in fostering children's visual literacy. Teachers must value, draw attention to, and explore illustrations and artistic devices illustrators utilize to facilitate visual literacy and character development.

A Brief Analysis on The Mannerism of Strange Stories of A Chinese Studio by Pu Songling

Strange Stories of a Chinese Studio, commonly known as 聊斋 (Liaozhai) is a short novel written in classical Chinese from Qing dynasty. This novel was written in 1680, year 19 of Emperor Kangxi’s reign. The novel has 491 chapters. Article explored Pu Songling’s mannerism, such as the contents, material collection, innovation of artistic literary elements and images of women. It can be concluded that the novel reflects the broadness of humanistic world and thoroughly describes images of women. It broke through the restriction of thoughts in feudalism society.

Picture/Text Relationships: An Investigation of Literary Elements in Picturebooks

The major research question was: How do pictures and texts function in developing literary elements in picturebooks for younger readers and picturebooks for older readers? We examined 30 picturebooks for younger readers and 30 picturebooks for older readers to determine how pictures and text work to develop plot, character, setting, and mood. Findings reveal that in books for younger readers, illustrations played a major role in developing each element; yet the illustrations and text worked together in diverse ways. In books for older readers, findings indicated that illustrations played a dominant role primarily in setting, mood, and character relationships. These findings suggest that comprehension may be enhanced by instruction that focuses on the interplay between pictures and texts to develop literary elements in picturebooks.

‘Strange Disclosures’: The Story of the Criminal Forger and Absconder, Elias Rosenwax and his Capture in Levuka by ‘Evarama, the Native Fijian Policeman’, 1871

It was as much the story of the criminal Elias Rosenwax as it was the tale of heroism featuring the Fijian policeman, ‘Evarama’, in 1871. The real-life event included all the literary elements necessary for a narrative of high adventure: a criminal, a chase, an exotic location, subterfuge, and the criminal’s eventual capture with the assistance of an unlikely hero in a thrilling climax. While the textual trace of this event remains all but forgotten, the extant nineteenthcentury ephemera detailing the encounter endures as a cogent genre of literature. This paper explores the incident with a view to detailing Evarama’s major significance in the performance of Fijian identity during a period dominated by grand colonial narratives featuring highly stylized ethnographic displays of the ‘native’ Other. His cultural impact as a Fijian, his reification in popular culture as a celebrity, and his active engagement in the construction of his public persona counterpointed the static fashioning of Fijian identity so common in the era’s ethnographic exhibitions, public performances, photographic displays and anthropological presentations. Evarama’s popular presence in colonial culture makes it possible to identify the operation of a particular kind of fashioning of culture: individual expressions of racial identity as social performance — a practice of the public self.

“The Physiology of Love” and Other Writings

Physician, anthropologist, travel writer, novelist, politician, Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910) was probably the most eclectic figure in late-nineteenth century Italian culture. A prolific writer, Mantegazza can be seen as a forerunner of what has come to be known as cultural studies on account of his interdisciplinary approach, his passionate blend of scientific and literary elements in his writings, and his ability to transcend the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture. Though extremely popular during his lifetime both in Italy and abroad, Mantegazza's works have not been made available in a significant English language compilation. This volume is a representative overview of Mantegazza's key works, many of them translated into English for the first time. In addition to the unabridged Physiology of Love (1873), a veritable best-seller at the time of its initial publication, this compilation features selections from Mantegazza's writings on medicine, his travelogues, his epistolary novel One Day in Madeira (1868), and his treatise on materialistic aesthetics. Replete with an extensive and informative introduction by the editor, The Physiology of Love and Other Writings also excerpts Mantegazza's works of science fiction, memoir, and social and cultural criticism. As an anthology of the works of Paolo Mantegazza, a writer of diverse topical orientations, this volume is also an account of the circulation of ideas and cross-fertilization of disciplines that defined a crucial period of Italian and European cultural life.

Hugo’s “Notre Dame De Paris” and Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere”: A Phenomenology of Confluence

The study subjected to scrutiny the context of Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere and Hugo’s novel, Notre Dame de Paris in the search for confluence through the two novels’ use of rhetorical devices and imagery. It utilized Kolb’s Experiential Method, Phenomenology, and Interdisciplinary Approach. Primarily, a connection between Hugo and Rizal is established since no studies relating the two writers existed. Gathered evidences proved the historical and biographical connections: the phenomenology of both writers’ existence in the same Romantic milieu, and of Rizal’s diary and bibliographic entries on Hugo. Thereafter, a focus on the two novels’ literary elements by character, setting, point of view, and conflict, as well as theme, confirmed textual confluence. Moreover, Hugolian symbols and rhetorical devices in Noli Me Tangere are conclusive in the establishment of confluence. Furthermore, evaluation of the Notre Dame de Paris as a historical novel, a poetic novel, a novel of ideas, and a dramatic novel are evident in Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere. Finally, a sharp phenomenology of confluence between Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris and Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere is concluded. Further studies on the novel Noli Me Tangere are recommended to take into account the influence of Victor Hugo. Keywords - Hugo, Rizal, France, Philippines, novel, phenomenology, imagery, criticism

Science and the Atlantic World in Early American Literary Studies

Although scientific literatures by British American colonists have not traditionally been included in studies of early American literature, recent work has begun to pay closer attention to the literary elements of natural, medical, and cartographic texts produced in the long 18th century. New approaches have expanded Eurocentric and nation-based paradigms by positioning colonial science in an imperial and Atlantic World context that focuses upon transatlantic exchanges between the British Americas and England. These studies have investigated colonists’ efforts to obtain credit for their scientific contributions in England and the strategies with which colonists resisted metropolitan biases regarding their knowledge. Studies of the literature of place show how natural histories, cartographies, and nature writing rendered the New World familiar, even while establishing colonists’ relationship to and possession of the land. Meanwhile, an emerging focus on anxieties regarding mental and physical degeneration, spurred by theories of America’s degrading influences, offers new directions for investigating colonial subjectivity and racial theories of difference. Finally, examining the various roles that Native Americans and New World Africans played in colonial encounters may facilitate new approaches to non-European contributions to colonial science.

"My Own Special Corner, Sacred, Beloved": The Hebrew Diary of Hava Shapiro (1878-1943)

This article deals with the diary of Hava Shapiro (1878-1943), the first known Hebrew diary by a woman, situating the diary within the broader fields of life writing or autobiographical studies. Using the author's original translations from the diary, the article highlights those unifying or literary elements in the diary that make it a readable, coherent text, including retrospective entries and repeated images of place and displacement, homecoming and homelessness. At the same time, it calls attention to the provisional, work-in-progress aspects of this diary that accord with the observations of feminist scholars of diary writing.

The <em>Scroll of Love</em> by Immanuel of Rome: A Hebrew Parody of Dante's <em>Vita Nuova</em>

The affinity between the Scroll of Love in the Mahbarot by Immanuel of Rome (1265–1335?) and the Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) has long been discussed by Hebrew scholars in terms of influence and imitation. What the present study suggests is that the Scroll of Love is, in fact, a parody of Dante’s sublime youthful work, and that the elements traditionally read as pseudo-autobiography are instead literary elements contributing to the parody. To strengthen her thesis the author draws attention to the Rota Veneris , a thirteenth-century work parodying the literary traditions of amor carnalis and amor spiritualis , and also notes a curious parallel with Boccaccio’s Filostrato and the changing ways scholars have read that work over the centuries.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch as a Peshat Commentator: Literary Aspects of His Commentary on the Pentateuch

Abstract The heart of Samson Raphael Hirsch’s literary corpus is his great commentary on the Pentateuch. In the commentary’s heyday, the German Jewish communities treated it with the reverence traditionally accorded Rashi on the Torah, and it was always to be found on the desks of both scholars and laypersons. Although the vast literature on Hirsch focuses on his life and his doctrine of Torah im Derech Eretz, much has been written about various aspects of the commentary on the Pentateuch, including Hirsch’s approach to the reasons for the precepts, his etymological method, his attitude toward the modern world, his treatment of the patriarchs’ transgressions, and his method as a translator. In addition to these interests, Hirsch’s commentary on the Pentateuch is marked by a fine and well-developed literary sensitivity that comes to the fore in many places. Not only has this not been studied in detail; it is never even mentioned in the various introductions to and studies of Hirsch. It must be acknowledged that the literary elements of Hirsch’s commentary are heavily outnumbered by what can be defined as derash. Still, the extensive attention to other facets of his personality and exegesis has led to the total neglect of the literary aspects of Hirsch’s commentaries and has overshadowed his aesthetic and literary sensitivity. Thus there is good reason for examining this aspect of his work—and that is the goal of the present article. I focus on four literary phenomena that Hirsch addresses systematically: multiple points of view; the designations applied to biblical characters; the phenomenon of consecutive statements; and word order.

Law, Literature and the Media

In this article we consider the relation between Law and Literature. The possibility of investigating literary elements of Law implicit in popular culture leads us to inquire whether the media can also be an object of studies of juridical literature.

Grade 7 students reading graphic novels: ‘You need to do a lot of thinking’

A multifaceted, classroom‐based research project explored how developing Grade 7 students’ knowledge of literary and illustrative elements affects their understanding, interpretation and analysis of picturebooks and graphic novels, and their subsequent creation of their own print texts. Analysis of two sources of data, the students’ written responses to Amulet (Kibuishi 2008), one of the graphic novels read and discussed during the study, and the students’ opinions about the knowledge that is required to read and understand a graphic novel, indicated how the instruction about various graphic novel conventions had impacted the students’ awareness of and knowledge about the structural design of these multimodal texts.

Warning

This article features a case study of the written and illustrative text produced by one Grade 7 student, Stefinia, and discusses the metaleptic transgressions evident in the book she created as the culminating activity of a research project. Stefinia was a participant in a classroom-based study that explored how developing students’ knowledge of literary and illustrative elements affects their understanding, interpretation, and analysis of picturebooks and graphic novels, and the subsequent creation of their own print, multimodal texts. As well as being informed by narrative theory and metafiction, the research was framed by an ecological perspective on teaching and learning in classrooms. During a 10-week period, Stefinia participated in interdependent activities that offered her opportunities to learn about metafictive devices, some art elements, and a few compositional principles of graphic novels. Stefinia read and wrote responses to several picturebooks and four graphic novels; engaged in small group, peer-led discussions about the literature; and received explicit instruction about particular literary, illustrative, and compositional devices and techniques. She had the opportunity to apply and represent her learning by creating her own multimodal print text as the culminating activity of the study. The content analysis of Stefinia’s written and illustrative text focuses on her use of various metafictive devices that disrupted narrative structures or ontological boundaries in her multimodal book. The findings reveal how Stefinia’s participation and engagement in a particular classroom community of practice affected her learning of the content and concepts under study.

Consciousness, Memory, and History in Tolstoy's War and Peace

Contrary to the critics of Tolstoy's War and Peace who have interpreted the Second Epilogue as an aberration in the novel that distracts from the merits of the work, I argue that Tolstoy spells out the crucial principles that organize the entire novel in the Second Epilogue. In the Second Epilogue, Tolstoy presents his philosophy of consciousness and memory that, in turn, informs his philosophy of history that is similar to Augustine's conceptions of the city of God and the city of man. Tolstoy's comments, therefore, about God, freedom, and history in the Second Epilogue make War and Peace a philosophical work that has literary elements within it rather than a literary work with philosophical aspects.