Literary Era Research Articles

THE SENSE-GENERATING ROLE OF BIBLICAL TEXT IN LYDIA NELIDOVA’S STORY POLOSA

The article analyzes the semantic functions of the Old Testament and New Testament texts in the story Polosa (Stripe), a landmark for the literature of the final stage of Russian classical realism, written by Lydia Nelidova, whose work has not yet been the subject of special study. The relevance of the research is defined by the rather high role of Nelidova’s creative activity in the literary process of the last decades of the 19th century. Biblical references, quotations, reminiscences, allusions and paraphrases, which determine the sequence of the text that creates the semantic field of the work, perform the dominant ideological and aesthetic function in creating the story as a “non-trivial new text.” Nelidova’s innovation is based on the active use of Dostoevsky’s literary traditions (orientation toward the idea of “finding a person in a person” and the “living life” constant). As a “semantic whole,” Nelidova’s story is organized by the internal dialogue of three concepts of “life.” One of them is based on the Christian teaching, the other on an appeal to science, and the third – on the idea of life as an all-dominating objective force. The author's moral and aesthetic position, which confirms the biblical concept of life, is objectified in the logic of semantic actualization of the gospel truths associated with the interpretations of the eternal theme of the struggle between good and evil, ways of human salvation, overcoming the sin of thoughts, pride and selfishness. The artistic historicism of the story, manifested in the coverage of the social contradictions of the post-reform Russia, sanctions the author’s intentionality associated with the assertion of universal human spiritual, moral and humanistic ideals. Formation of meaning at the level of the author’s intentionality and at the level of meaning generation is carried out by activating the intertextual, hypertextual and contextual functionality of biblical pretexts and traditions of Orthodox Christian culture. It is implemented in the process of illuminating conflicts of time and characters' psychological disclosure. Intertextual reminiscences and quotes from biblical texts, the works of Christian ascetic writers and patristic sources aim to form the semantic core of the main character’s narrative and implement the principle of intersemantization of meanings enshrined in sacred texts. Thanks to these texts, they manifest in the thoughts of a character seeking a way out of spiritual and moral impasse. The author's artistic experience stimulated the formation of the Dostoevsky school in the literature of the last decades of the 19th century. The author's quote-based thinking anticipates the narrative strategies that will become characteristic of the artistic discourse of subsequent historical and literary eras.

براہوئی حروف تہجی و املا نا وئیل آک


 
 
 
 Man created language for his necessities and God gifted him with the ability of listening, speaking and perceiving with the help of speech and auditory organs. Resultantly, he created the language (a noble act) because of which God rewarded him with the honor of being 'supreme creature. but when we study the structure of language, two things are significant: the first and foremost is the natural thing with which he shares his intense feelings to his fellow beings, and second is the literature which enlightens the next generations and helps the language reach its destinations. The cause is same with the Brahui Language .it is an ancient language. Its literary era starts from 709 AC. it evolves from Heroghalefi manuscript to Roman, Khat- e-Nask, Sindhi, Afghani and Persian. Since the alphabets of Brahui language are unacceptable, its literature faces a great deal of difficulties in its text. for example, there is a huge difficulty of dictation, for Brahui literary figures failed to structure, specify, or get its alphabet accepted. so different literary figures use different 'Brahui Phonetic Alphabets' which is deteriorating the question of dictation. So it is not easy to solve the conundrum of dictation here. 
 
 
 

ЭПИСТЕМОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ ПОТЕНЦИАЛ ЛИТЕРАТУРОВЕДЧЕСКОЙ КАТЕГОРИИ «ИДЕЯ ЧЕЛОВЕКА»

The “idea of human” (“type of attitude to the world”) is considered as a relevant category of the conceptual apparatus of the modern science of literature. The aim of the work is to analyze the theoretical and methodological potential of this category on the basis of large typological units of the literary process, marked with the concepts of “historical and literary era”, “artistic and cognitive cycle”, “literary direction”, “big style”, “artistic method”. The research used the methods of a typological and complex study of literary works, which in the synthesis of literary criticism and philosophy determine the strategy of searches in the field of theoretical and methodological content of the “idea of human” category as the foundation of the literary and philosophical anthropology of cultural and historical eras. The historical and genetic links between the worldview aesthetic principles and the artistic practice of literary trends are problematized. The logic of the research reveals the concept “object – knowledge”, fundamental for epistemology, in the aspects of the structuring of the knowledge of the methodological semantics of the “idea of human” category and of the functioning of the definitions “generalized idea of human”, “type of attitude to the world”, “concept of human and reality”, “whole of human”, “human as a value”. The article shows that the “idea of human” as a philosophical and aesthetic interpretation of the nature and essence of human at a certain stage in the development of artistic consciousness, worked out by the whole culture (R.R. Moskvina, G.V. Mokronosov) and defining integrity and logical consistency of the artistic system, is a synergistically functional semantic core of the historical and cultural era, and this core contains the dialectical potential of “negation of the negation”. As a variable, the historical “idea of human”, in the perspective of the stage development of artistic consciousness, undergoes dramatic changes and is realized in the logic of the successive change of historical and cultural epochs and their philosophical paradigms, in the constant alternation of “realistic” and “mystical”, materialistic and idealistic methods of cognition and images of human and the world (D.I. Chizhevsky, A.M. Panchenko, and others). The conclusions are substantiated that the successive development of literary trends, creative methods and their axiological systems is conditioned by the dynamics of “types of attitude to the world”; that the functioning of the “idea of human” category in literary discourse is focused on argumentation of the ontological nature of fiction, on the identification of philosophical and aesthetic principles that determine the systematic nature and the successive change of artistic and cognitive cycles; that the evolution of the “idea of human” within the framework of one artistic and cognitive cycle is fixed by the dynamics of genre systems since, in the correlations of method, genre and style, “the idea of human” acts as a factor in genre formation.

LITERARY FELINOPHILIA AND ANIMALISTIC PERSPECTIVES OF MODERNITY (T. GAUTIER, J. JOYCE, T. S. ELIOT)

Each literary era is characterized by certain models of literary animalism with their own semantic accents and symbolism, types of communication “man — animal”, genre preferences. The article examines the features of literary felinistics of the Art Nouveau era, identifies the cultural and social causes of artistic felinophilia. As a material for the study there were three texts written in the period from 1869 to 1939, considered both in the wide cultural context of the modern era, and within the boundaries of their time (modern): “Ménagerie intime”, 1869 by Gaultier T., “The Cats of Copenhagen’’ (1936) by Joyce J. and “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” (1939) by Eliot T. S. In the course of our research, we relied on both historical and literary works devoted to the analysis of specific animalistic images, works of a culturological nature, and also turned to the experience of structuralist studies and the ideas of new posthumanistic knowledge (Human-Animal Studies). The animalistic texts of Gauthier — Joyce — Eliot unite not only the acting cat characters, but also certain artistic perspectives, similar types of human-animal relationships, social and cultural contexts in which their heroes are represented. The feline characters of Gauthier-Joyce-Eliot have much in common: they are anthropomorphic inhabitants of the urban space of the industrial era, leading an appropriate lifestyle and possessing qualities inherent in the middle class. Gautier, Joyce, Eliot’s cats have a bright personality, extraordinary abilities, a lively mind, a rich emotional world, they live according to the laws of human society. They are attractive, intelligent, vital, civilized individuals with unique, eccentric characters (humors).

Надежда Тэффи в рецепции Ирины Одоевцевой

The article emphasizes that memoirs contribute to understanding the context of the literary era, allow a deeper understanding of the features of interpersonal relations and the character of writers. The author of the article emphasizes that a special place among the numerous memoirs is occupied by the book of memoirs of the writer of the Silver Age and the Russian diaspora of the first wave of emigration I. Odoevtseva „On the Banks of the Seine”. In these memoirs, I. Odoevtseva's reception of the personality of the Russian writer, author of humorous works N. Teffi is presented. The article emphasizes that the poetics of the memoirs is characterized by the peculiarity of the author's position. I. Odoevtseva is always in the shadows, does not show herself, it is important for her to represent the personality of the writer, she speaks about herself only in connection with the need to recreate this or that context of memoirs. This position of a witness, a person who is in the shadows, makes memories valuable, gives them credibility and testifies to the professionalism of I. Odoevtseva. The memoirs about N. Teffi emphasize the self-irony of the writer, who devoted her work to satirical and humorous literature. The article emphasizes that N. Teffi's self-irony is evidenced by her ability to see her own shortcomings and laugh at herself. The article proves that the Russian writer was deeply immersed in her writing skills and embodied her own life situations in her works. The memoirs of I. Odoevtseva contain N. Teffi's admission that she writes off many of her characters, making the features of her character, episodes of her own life the subject of creative reflection. In various episodes of I. Odoevtseva's memoirs, the inner convictions of the Russian writer are revealed, which help to comprehend the psychological portrait of N. Teffi, the peculiarities of her personality, and worldview. The book „On the Banks of the Seine” presents N. Teffi's self-characterization, which allows you to see her attitude to her work. The writer did not take her humorous talent seriously and this is a manifestation of the author's talent. The memoirist emphasizes the importance of the writer in émigré circles, and focuses on the responses of other, no less significant, authors about her.

A new hero in Russian prose of the 70s of the 18th century and his world

The work is devoted to identifying the features of the Russian literary hero of the 70s of the 18th century, which in modern scientific discourse remain an unresolved and hotly discussed problem. A research approach to this issue is proposed through understanding the new principles of artistic world modeling, discovered in the literature of the period under study. At the center of attention is the question of the social world order in the views of Russian writers. During the period under study, in a number of prose works, the social world was first depicted in two of its manifestations: as normal and marginal. This model of the world order, new for the Russian literary era, also determined the appearance of a fundamentally new hero in Russian literature - the marginal. The research is based onthe analysis of prose works by M. Komarov and M.D. Chulkov.

“It is lonely being a young man sent abroad to fight” she said.

[Short story] Introduction: Readers of Kirsty Gunn’s fiction, whether the novels or short stories, are well accustomed to encountering overt and playful acknowledgement of the horizon or scene of writing in the story, to feeling like a co-creator or accomplice in the making of the story. The reader is let in on the story. And this new story, “It is lonely being a young man sent abroad to fight” she said, which begins with a dream reported to the narrator by her sister, very soon primes the reader: “Everything that happens must be followed by a conversation – it’s always event plus discussion, event plus discussion – even if the ‘everything’ is just some rag bag of images hauled up from her unconscious and set before her while she is asleep”. This story, rather like a dream, compresses so much into its swerving narrative. Fasten your seatbelts as “event plus discussion” becomes event as discussion; language is both event itself and event-making, and vice versa. Language produces events, this story makes clear, sometimes death-dealing events, perhaps the fate of that “young man sent abroad to fight” reported in the sentence that folds in and back on the story from its final line to its title. Gunn takes the epithet of “contemporary modernist” as a compliment, recognising that her own unique form of self-conscious, self-referential and dialogical making arises from a space cleared by great “modernist” writers, not least Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, along with Muriel Spark and later technicians of what we might term “the modernist sentence”1. Modernism for Gunn is a living mutating mode, not a historical literary era, nor is it a form of realism. In our foreword to this issue of MATRAGA, we ask what “modernist” experimental prose might look like in the 21st century. We hope that the question reverberates as the reader encounters the precision-engineered sentences, the lyrically-cut paragraphs, and the significant gaps that structure Gunn’s short story, which we are proud to publish for the first time as a final piece in this issue on “Modernist Prose in Contemporaneity”. --- Original in English.

Woman as a Stereotypical Image of National and Cultural Identity in the Context of Literary Comparativistics

People live in a world of stereotypes that exist everywhere, in all spheres of human life and activity. A stereotype is a cultural phenomenon, that can be found in any society in the form of centuries-old experience of a given society, transmitted from generation to genera-tion by images transformed in accordance with the era and the level of society develop-ment.The culture and literature of any nation contain a rich gallery of stereotypes. The existence of a stereotype without culture is inconceivable. And culture itself is a certain set of stereotypes that defines and, therefore, limits human actions.One of the priority areas of modern anthropocentric and human sciences is the study of the formation and functioning of gender stereotypes, the identification and analy-sis of their intercultural specificity. Contrary to the objectives of the aforementioned study, our multilateral research is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of a woman, as repre-sentations of the stereotypical image of national-cultural identity in different literary eras. The present article deals with the study of the stereotypical image of a woman in medieval Western and Georgian literature.For this purpose we have identified and analyzed the rich material that exists in the culture and literature of different people. Our study is based on the depiction of a stereo-typical image of a woman from a different perspective, for example: woman - king, woman - diplomat, woman – public figure, woman - creator, woman - mother, woman - wife/lover, woman - strong/weak creature, woman - symbol of fidelity, etc.

The Ballad and Its Pasts: Literary Histories and the Play of Memory. David Atkinson. Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2018. Pp. xvi+226.

<i>The Ballad and Its Pasts: Literary Histories and the Play of Memory</i>. David Atkinson. Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2018. Pp. xvi+226.

The First Third of the 20th Century as a Literary Era: Common Cultural and National Features in Russian and Ukrainian Literatures

The article outlines the cultural and national features of the development of Ukrainian and Russian literatures in the first third of the 20th century. The study clearly demonstrates that the development of Ukrainian and Russian literatures have followed typologically similar patterns. Common and distinguishing features in the literatures were the result of the specific historical conditions of their origin and existence, as well as cultural orientation. The national differences between Ukrainian and Russian literatures of the first third of the 20th century were due primarily to the search for the ways to assert the identity. Ukrainian literature was expressly focused on Western European, trying to perceive it without mediation of the Russian one. Western European artistic innovations coexisted with the local cultural specificity. Russian literature was less concerned with issues of national identity because it had a counter-effect on Western European literature. The interaction with the national cultural tradition was also different. Common features of the literary process of the first third of the 20th century include the development of literatures in the metropolitan environment and in the context of emigration. The literature developed in the context of emigration was created in a foreign-language environment, but positioned itself as a national literature, the existence of which was a priori impossible in the metropolitan environment. The leading feature of the literature of the metropolis followed the October revolution was the ideological and political oppression caused by the new relations between the authorities and the artistic culture. Identification of general characteristics and features of the evolution of Russian and Ukrainian literatures in the first third of the 20th century in terms of typological comparisons makes it possible to suggest that the literary and artistic realities of the era caused the affinity of issues in the formation of new ideological and artistic quality of both literatures and, consequently, their national forms, features.

Book in the literary discourse of the German Enlightenment

The books’ role in the German Enlightenment discourse explores the intersection of different but complementary disciplines: bibliology, philosophy of culture and «text linguistics», as well as the history of literature that expands the possibilities of studying cultural and public communication. A text (magazine, book) is interpreted as a mechanism that controls the process of learning and understanding. To illustrate the study theoretical foundations, the author considers the historical practice of the literary era in Germany in 1770-1790. The struggle of «cilturtregers» to renew German culture moved from the political sphere to journalism and literature. The author concludes that the book (both scientific and artistic) and reading became a factor of social communication. The struggle for the renewal of German culture, its national identity preservation due to a number of historical reasons hindering the development of the country moved from the political sphere to the journalism and literature field. It was closely connected with the whole complex of the European Enlightenment ideas. The book - both scientific (philosophical work, art treatise) and artistic one (literary and journalistic composition, dramatic creation, etc.) became an indispensable tool of the nation aesthetic education. In such circumstances, a book obtains the significance of not only the «source of knowledge» but a kind of «catechism» to struggle for national culture. Thus, considering a book text as a phenomenon of the German culture of the Enlightenment century with ideological and aesthetic significance, it should be especially notes that such a «text» (a book of scientific, philosophical, moralistic or artistic content) is addressed both to a specific reader, a representative of some class, and to a «collective reader». The German novel (it is the genre of «trivial» literature that is considered directly) is a product of the era. The dialogue «author - reader» (or a complicated triad «author - publisher - reader») was the basis of the nation estetic education. Reading became a fact (and a factor) of social communication. The German book has been transformed from an expensive and exclusive «source of knowledge» targeted for scientists, connoisseurs of «beauty» to a catechism (available for the ordinary reader) of the national struggle to preserve the German culture self-existence and to acquaint the nation to the treasures of the world classical «ancient» and modern literature.

Novel as a Cultural Narrative

Literature is a mosaic of multicultural actions and events reflected by it in a particular era of the history. It is the best vehicle to promote and preserve the cultural heritage from generation to generation. Novel is one of the best components through which the human thoughts and feelings have been transferred from ancestors to the offspring's. As behind every book that is written lies the personality of the man who wrote it, and as behind every national literature lies the cultural characters of the race which produced it, so behind the literature of any period lie the combined forces-personal and impersonal which made the life of that period. As a whole, cultural narration is only one of the channels of literature in which the energy of an age discharges itself in its political movements, religious thoughts, philosophical speculation, art; we have the same energy overflowing into other forms of expression. The study of cultural narration of a particular period of literary era will thus take us out into the wide field of history, by which we mean the history of politics and society, manners and customs, culture and learning, philosophy and religion.

A transcultural experiment

The project of creating a graphic and cartoons archive (portraits of the great Romanian writers from various literary eras), accomplished with the support of dedicated artists around the world, has gained a new historical-literary dimension, as a result of the huge interest it has stirred up. After a certain geographical and qualitative selection, two editions have been published on paper: one in Romanian and one in English, each of them comprising 3600 images by artists from all continents (112 countries). This unprecedented book, called A History of the Romanian Literature drawn by the Great Illustrators of the World (Romanian Literature Museum Press, 2011) presents transcultural aspects that are well worthy of attention from literature historians, biographers, word and image artists (writers, graphic designers, cartoonists), but also from cultural studies specialists (anthropology, semiotics, mentalities), due to the unusual form of open dialogue.

Wiener Moderne: Diskurse und Rezeption in Russland by Gennady Vasilyev

Reviewed by: Wiener Moderne: Diskurse und Rezeption in Russland by Gennady Vasilyev Katherine Arens Gennady Vasilyev, Wiener Moderne: Diskurse und Rezeption in Russland. Literaturwissenschaft 47. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2015. 444pp. Russian Germanist Gennady Vasilyev, who teaches in Nizhny Novgorod after researching and teaching at many locations in Western Europe, is representative of the new generation of German and Austrian studies in the ever-expanding concept of Europe, bringing a cosmopolitan view to cultural studies of literary eras and aesthetics. Wiener Moderne is the fruit of such an interesting mind, a study of the reception of fin-de-siècle Austrian cultural icons in Russia. Even more important is the fact that this “reception” study starts with a detailed comparison of scholarly habits of representing the era, then moves on to specific defining assumptions about the era’s philosophy, to figures who played roles in both cultural and intellectual traditions, and [End Page 121] then to certain discourses and genres shared by both countries, before concluding with a set of reception studies defined more narrowly. The sensibility that Vasilyev brings to the project about the importance of method guiding research is a model for projects linking newer cultural studies analyses with traditional definitions of cultural movements. The project’s introduction works through what scholars in Austria and in Russia actually mean when they refer to the “Viennese Modern” and then states its own agenda clearly. The first section is an extraordinarily useful review of the literature that ties literary-cultural history not only to secondary works that have set the scholarly agenda but also to available corpora of material, describing what types of texts and philosophical assumptions lie at the basis of these classifications. The second section works through what comparison means in an era of New Historicism and cultural studies; its value beyond the immediate context lies in its juxtapositions between theoretical work from multiple scholarly traditions, presented with careful attention to the kind of work facilitated. Neither section is comprehensive, but they offer critical insights into a set of tropes from cultural history scholarship that still pervade much of the scholarship. It is noteworthy that each chapter also carries its own bibliography forward. Chapter 1 turns toward the forms of representation in Austria at the time, using as a reference point the Russian artist’s colony associated with the Modern and the themes they share with the Austrians. In subsequent sections, he takes up each of the discourse tropes in more detail in order to reconstruct the strategies of representation in the era. Most essential is the way that each trope is also contextualized in the secondary literature that has set up the terminology. His repertoire includes: perception, Decadence, Mach’s discussion of “spirit,” Impressionism and Jugendstil as applied forms of representation, discourses about “the Jews,” Judaism, psychoanalysis as representing an inner world, and language criticism and theater as presentation of the outer world. The period’s reference points are always reconstructed, and Otto Weininger, Georg Simmel, Fritz Mauthner, and Wagner are given special discussions to make the case of how they figure in period discussions and in the scholarship that presents them to us. The second chapter is dedicated to making an inventory of the discourses of modernity, defining central concepts, and locating them in iconic texts of the era. Creativity, Jewishness, love/death (eros/thanatos), narcissism, and dandyism are examined and exemplified in literature from both Austria and [End Page 122] Russia, offering careful comparisons about how the representations work in the two countries, using representative authors for examples (notably, Vasily Rozanov, Fyodor Sologub, Mikhail Artsybashev, and Richard von Schaukal). Genres of the modern era are the focus of the study’s third chapter, starting with lyric poetry, one-act plays, pantomime, poems in prose, novellas, essays, and diaries. In each case, significant secondary literature about the prime examples of each genre is placed next to discussions of the text. Vasilyev’s goal is to provide a “poetics of culture” (251) that will help to construct the cultural landscape of his modern era. The fourth chapter takes up the detailed reception of Austrian moderns in Russia, with a focus on how they are perceived and received there...

Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body by Peter J. Capuano

Reviewed by: Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body by Peter J. Capuano John Hay (bio) Peter J. Capuano, Changing Hands: Industry, Evolution, and the Reconfiguration of the Victorian Body. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015, 340 pp. $80.00 cloth, $39.95 paper or ebook. Peter Capuano begins Changing Hands with a simple question: “Why are hands the most described body part in the nineteenth-century novel?” (p. 12). The question stems from an empirical investigation conducted using databases of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction. By employing newly available digital humanities techniques, Capuano traces a perceptible shift in textual preoccupation: while eighteenth-century novels are filled with descriptions of facial features (especially eyes, but also hair, noses, mouths, etc.), their Victorian successors display a decided preference for hands. This macro-textual observation in turn allows him to see that Mary Shelley devoted more attention to the clutches than to the glares of Frankenstein’s creature and that William Thackeray focused more on Becky Sharp’s flirtatious fingers than on her coquettish glances. But why? Capuano argues that the chief factors contributing to this authorial move “from gaze to grasp” were industrial mechanization and the development of evolutionary theory (p. 19). These twin forces, he maintains, created a host of anxieties about the relevance of the human body—and in particular of the human hand. Manual labor was increasingly displaced by machine technology, and the exceptional nature of a divinely modeled human form was challenged by a shared history with the anatomy of other apes. Whereas faces, and especially eyes, were important gateways to the soul for earlier writers, Victorians tended to view the proof of divine inspiration in wrists, palms, and fingers. The hand thus became “the most generative but also the most heavily contested site in the British cultural imaginary” (p. 42). Capuano examines this widespread concern through the popular fiction of the time and contends that novelists were better able to convey such cultural anxieties than were other writers. One of the strengths of Changing Hands is its careful articulation of its position relative to a host of extant criticism on Victorian literature. Capuano enters the fray via a broad scholarly conversation regarding the new materialism and the corporeal turn. For too long, he insists, modern literary critics have been reading allusions to hands as metaphors or metonyms—as mere indicators for labor or socioeconomic status—and [End Page 558] have thus overlooked the significance of actual hands.2 He corrects this tendency by embracing new practices of “surface reading” in order to appreciate Victorian hands as material appendages.3 By doing so, he both reveals the “manual crisis” of the nineteenth century and returns to a model of what he calls “our embodied handedness” (p. 3). The Victorian period is a crucial literary era in which so many common related terms (maneuver, manners, manuscripts) and phrases (gaining the upper hand) were transitioning from literal references to metaphorical expressions; from our own twenty-first-century perspective, it can be difficult to perceive the explicit gestures to physical hands. In fact, one could characterize Capuano’s primary move as an exploration of the process by which handmade and manufactured transform from etymological equivalences to obvious opposites. Changing Hands begins with a data-driven observation culled from digital humanities methodologies, but its eight chapters are structured by close readings of canonical novels, spanning from Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). The examinations of these novels are often accompanied by excerpts from contemporary guidebooks and pamphlets on topics such as handshake etiquette and handwriting analysis. Capuano’s recovered trove of manuals on all things manual includes texts such as Richard Beamish’s Psychonomy of the Hand (1843), which explained how the qualities of a subject’s hands could reveal personality traits. While his individual chapters each focus on hand-related themes, Capuano also addresses a wide variety of critical topics regarding race, class, and gender. He is generally interested in both “embodied handedness” and “manual discourse” (p. 107); he primarily attends to the materiality of hands, but he does not ignore the metaphorical and metonymical implications...

Lucia Marcucci, maestra verbovisiva

This article considers the work of visual-poetry artist and poet Lucia Marcucci. It aims to exemplify the complexity and aesthetic importance of her works. Mischievous irony, political awareness and the unending need for experimentation are but a few of the main qualities of Marcucci’s work identified here. Combined, they entitle this Tuscan artist to be considered one of the masters of her artistic and literary era.

Gatsby: The Cultural History of the Great American Novel Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures

Gatsby: <i>The Cultural History of the Great American Novel</i> <i>Beyond</i> Gatsby: <i>How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture</i> <i>So We Read On: How</i> The Great Gatsby <i>Came to Be and Why It Endures</i>

Gatsby:The Cultural History of the Great American NovelBeyondGatsby:How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American CultureSo We Read On: HowThe Great GatsbyCame to Be and Why It Endures

Gatsby:<i>The Cultural History of the Great American Novel</i><i>Beyond</i>Gatsby:<i>How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture</i><i>So We Read On: How</i>The Great Gatsby<i>Came to Be and Why It Endures</i>

Terror and the Notification of Anxiety in Postmodern Gothic

There was a virtual explosion in the last two decades in academic and scholarly works of Gothic. In this way, there have been various critics to codify the features and history of Gothic and its correlated genres in literature. The architecture of Gothic literature has been evolving on the production of culture and symbolic formations dealing with conflicting beliefs and cultural anxiety. This issue focuses on the cross-generic dynamism in the Gothic in different literary eras that has made it so transformable to suit changing times. An expansion in studies of the Gothic in all its various forms that greatly extended what the Gothic was seen to encompass and opened up a wide range of critical approaches that collectively made the Gothic come alive. Gothic literature has tried to juxtapose itself among other interdisciplinary studies in postmodernism. There is an analogous articulation of the psychological and philosophical implications of terror in postmodernist literature, to the terror of the Gothic novel, uncovering the significance of postmodern recurrences of the Gothic, and identifying new historical and philosophical aspects of the genre. This article concentrating on the rich history of Gothic in different eras focuses on the issue of terror in postmodern Gothic.

The Janus-face of Romantic Modernity: Thomas De Quincey's Metropolitan Imagination

Writing to the author of the Lyrical Ballads, the young Thomas De Quincey declared solemnly that his life had been ‘passed chiefly in the contemplation and altogether in the worship of nature’. This asseveration was incongruous to say the least. De Quincey’s upbringing in Manchester lay in proximity to the mills and commercial houses that would be variously satirised and critiqued by the likes of Dickens and Engels in the decades that would follow. His father, Thomas Quincey, was a prosperous merchant in the linen trade who commenced his business in London before moving to Manchester in the late 1770s, importing cotton and linen goods from the West Indies and from Ireland. Manchester at this time was a growing centre of cotton manufacture, well connected to Liverpool with its harbour which brought in the cargoes connected with the Quinceys’ business. The odd mismatch between De Quincey’s mercantile and semi-urban upbringing and the poetic rural community he wished to align himself with is perhaps revealing of his eccentric career, lived for the most part in the urban literary centres of London and Edinburgh in which he relentlessly plied his pen for the literary industry of journalism while dreaming of the literary and spiritual freedom of the Lake community evoked in his autobiographical reminiscences. De Quincey’s paradox, as a periodical writer, is his constant affirmation of meditative and poetic strains in literature; his own metier, that of the journalist, is associated with the excessive agitation of the public mind characteristic of political speech. To be sure, De Quincey’s hankering after nature is much in keeping with Romantic-era poetics, especially of the Wordsworthian kind that came to dominate the twentieth-century canon, partly due to the efforts of intellectual disciples such as Coleridge and himself. Yet, as a growing body of criticism is attempting to process, the Romantic period, despite its privileging of nature, was in fact one of remarkable urban growth in Britain – resulting in the emergence of London as ‘the grandest city in the West, and probably in the world’. James Chandler and Kevin Gilmartin have recently drawn attention in their collection of essays Romantic Metropolis to ‘the “world city” as both condition and object for British Romanticism’, laying emphasis on ‘the scenes and means of representation, on how the metropolis figures – and how it is figured – in one of the most productive literary eras in the history of British culture’ towards a recovery of Romantic metropolitanism in literature. In the wake of the pioneering work by Butler, Chandler, Gilmartin, and allied voices calling attention to Romantic metropolitanism,