Literary Production Research Articles

Marginal imprints: Provincial print culture and the politics of Thai literary history during the Cold War

This article considers the significance of provincial print culture in challenging and expanding Thai literary history. Focusing on Siritham Publishing House in Northeast Thailand or Isan as a case study, the article examines how provincial print culture shaped the contested landscape of literary production and reception during the Cold War, when the category of regional literature emerged under the pretext of national integration. Drawing on the framework of publishing studies as well as existing scholarship on print culture in Thailand, it is argued that the literary corpus of Siritham’s publisher, Preecha Phinthong, helps shift scholarly attention away from a conventional literary history that tends to focus on the Bangkok-centric notion of Thainess. Instead, it encourages a more nuanced exploration of the processes of literary standardization and canon formation. Together with a historical examination of Siritham’s establishment, a close analysis of paratextual components of Preecha Phinthong’s publications and unpublished manuscripts challenges the rigid understanding of Isan regional identity in academic discourse and state policy during the Cold War. Specifically, the articulation of regional literary identity in Preecha Phinthong’s archive often involves a transnational relationship between Thailand and Laos that extends beyond the confines of Thai nationalism. Moreover, these paratexts constitute a space through which provincial publishers create their own interpretive frameworks for assessing the historical, linguistic, and aesthetic significance of regional literature, complicating the academic discourse of literary standardization. In addition to this counter-hegemonic vision, provincial print culture offers a more dynamic understanding of regional literature. The emergence of Siritham Publishing House coincided with the rise of Lao nationalism, during which the popularization of Lao literature via print technology traversed the Mekong River. In this context, Isan literary history can be viewed as the result of the interplay between Thai and Lao nationalism, characterized by contestation, negotiation, and mutual construction.

Shattering the Crown of the God

Among the extensive repertoire of Pāṇḍya dynastic themes, the motif of clash between a Pāṇḍya sovereign and Indra is ubiquitous. This topos which supposedly originated around middle of the 5th century CE, can be traced to Cilapattikāram XI, 17–30, which celebrates a Pāṇḍya monarch wearing Indra’s garland, capturing the clouds, and breaking the god’s crown. The narrative was later employed in the Tiruviḷaiyāṭaṟpurāṇam (late 13th century) and its Sanskrit rendering, the Hālāsyamāhātmya (14th–15th centuries), where the actions of the Pāṇḍya kings were inserted in the narratives about the divine līlās of Śiva in Madurai. Since the early phase of the dynasty, this mytheme was employed as a tool of political display in the South. After a survey of the motif in the first phase of the imperial documents, the paper will focus on the reemployment of the category of royal violence in the Teṅkāśi dynastic period (14th–18th centuries CE), using the lens of the official copper plates of the late Pāṇḍya chancery and the previous Sanskrit literary production.

Kurdish Women’s Experience in Iraq: History, Politics and Literature

AbstractThe aim of this article is to study the conspicuous impact of the changing historical and political situation in Iraq on the Kurdish intellectual and literary production with particular attention to Kurdish women’s position and perspective on these changes. Focusing on the hectic periods of the Kurdish history and national movement in Iraq, the article answers such intriguing questions as how do the social and political discourses in Iraq shape Kurdish women’s roles and contributions and how has the interplay between Kurdish nationalism and women’s participation developed within the different literary, intellectual and political circles. Chronicling the various socio‐political dimensions of Kurdish national movement and investigating the ways in which Kurdish women’s participation has been relegated both by the Iraqi regimes and within the Kurdish national movements, the article presents a content analysis of different intentions, oversights, and insights of Kurdish and non‐Kurdish political, literary and intellectual actors regarding Kurdish women’s changing roles and desires in Iraq and of the images by which Kurdish women have been presented, thereby positioning itself within a socio‐political studies.

Indigenous education and (re)existence through self-writing - for a pedagogy of sensibilities: dialogue between Paulo Freire and Maria Amélia Pinho Pereira

Based on decolonial thinking that originated in the late 20th century, we will discuss the importance of indigenous resistance practices promoted through “ taking the floor ,” a term coined by philosopher Michel de Certeau and appropriated in this research to refer to the development of research and literary productions carried out by indigenous researchers and writers in order to confront and resignify colonizing narratives about these peoples, indicating how these productions contribute to thinking about decolonial education, such as the school model proposed by pedagogue Maria AP Pereira and her Education of Sensitivity. Based on Catherine Walsh, Paulo Freire, Márcia Kambeba, Daniel Munduruku, and Albert Memmi, we understand that the colonizer finds in scientific-intellectual knowledge devices of knowledge-power that underpin oppressive Eurocentric structures to justify exploitation, violence, inequality, inferiority, and discrimination, bases that still exert a strong influence on the various sectors of contemporary society. It is identified in the contributions of the aforementioned researchers that an educational model critical of scientism and the hierarchy of knowledge is possible based on an educational praxis and that dialogues with the diversity of knowledge and cultures, where education is liberating, promoting the overcoming of the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy as proposed by Freire, and is applied in the Education of Sensitivity promoted by the pedagogue Maria AP Pereira.

African Literary Future/isms: Collective and Speculative Approaches

This article assesses how the ‘collective’ and the ‘speculative’ emerge as intertwined conceptual models for imagining and concretising notions of the ‘future’ in contemporary African literatures. We argue that contemporary literary production from the continent is engaged in acts of conceptual and linguistic-decentring, or what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has developed as a theory of ‘globalectics’ (2012). Beginning with Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s channelling of a Pan-African collective consciousness in her keynote address to the European Conference on African Studies (2023), we move on to explore three aspects of African literary futures/isms: first, the idea of historical repair and the notion that the speculative mode often hinges on multidirectional community-making by reconfiguring the past; second, the way speculative ventures establish new material networks and readerships through South–South translation projects that themselves project speculative cartographies of connection and the revival of historical ties; third, how continental African speculative fiction disrupts the binaries between the local and the global by creating new spatial imaginaries invested in cosmological and philosophical materialities. We conclude that such a diverse focus allows us to open out the terms of our discussion to the wider implications of decolonial future-making from the perspective of a de-hierarchical, globalectically oriented view of contemporary African writing. As such, we imagine this article as an act of collaborative co-creation which is in conversation with two contemporary African writers – Novuyo Rosa Tshuma and Wole Talabi – whose works are among those discussed in the piece. Their interviews form the ‘Appendix’ to this article, and offer new directions for creative and critical re-negotiations of African literary futures.

Cinematic structures in Italo Calvino’s fictions

The article explores the influence of cinema on Italo Calvino’s writing. Critics and even Calvino himself have tended to construe visibility in his works as purely abstract, pictorial and geometric. However, the article shows that the writer’s style includes references to film form and culture. Precise transmediations of cinematic temporality, techniques and characterization are found in his literary production from Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Spiders’ Nests) (1947) to Palomar (Mr Palomar) (1983). Drawing on narratology and semiotics, the analysis retraces various para-cinematic techniques in Calvino’s literary corpus, pointing to the 1958 short story La signora Paulatim (Mrs Paulatim) as a prime example of full cinematization. Moreover, it points out that the characterization in Marcovaldo (1963) draws on classical slapstick comedies and anticipates some of the features found in the Fantozzi series. Finally, the article frames the contribution of film culture through the concept of ‘cinematic mode in fiction’.

‘Unhinged Women’: Violence and Gender in Rachilde’s La Marquise de Sade (1887) and Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020)

In the last decade, representations of ‘female rage’ has taken over our social media, cinema, and literature. The fictional depiction of women’s use of violence is not as radically new as it seems, as the 1887 French novel La Marquise de Sade, by Rachilde, reflects. This paper will compare it to a more recent text, Boy Parts (2020) by Eliza Clark, to uncover how our current literary production shares similar concerns with nineteenth-century society, particularly our ambivalent responses to violence enacted by women. Both authors portray sadistic female protagonists who take pleasure in dominating and torturing men in a society that dismisses the possibility of women acting violently and attempting to reverse gender power dynamics. However, both authors challenge any fictional idealisation of ‘female rage’ by showing how their protagonists act out because of their traumatic past and are ultimately unable to bring about systemic change.

Notes on Voice and Tempo in Anglophone Caribbean Literatures

This article outlines a historic panorama of the dynamic relationship between written and oral forms of expression in the Anglophone Caribbean, focusing on key literary works of poetry, the novel, and theater, as well as musical genres like calypso and reggae. The aim is to identify trends, and the relationships between them, that expand beyond territorial and temporal limits, in order to better understand how the scribal and oral spheres have interacted under the pressures of colonialism and its residual effects. The article begins with a contextualization of the vernacular’s place in literary works in the Anglophone Caribbean during the colonial period and discusses several concepts that have been key in debates on language as a form of cultural resistance. The second section focuses on the growing anticolonial sentiment that began to sweep through the region in the 1930s and the literary, intellectual, and musical developments that sought to articulate these political inclinations. The third and final section examines reggae aesthetics as a driving force of cultural expression since the 1970s, considering the influence of Rastafarianism and reggae’s impact on various forms of literary production.

SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURE STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The field of cultural studies has significantly influenced English literature, offering a multifaceted lens through which literary texts are examined and understood in their cultural, historical, and social contexts. This study explores the significance of cultural studies in English literature, focusing on its contributions to understanding identity, power structures, representation, race, gender, and the intersections of various socio-political influences on literary production. By analyzing literature through the frameworks of cultural studies, this research aims to highlight how texts both shape and are shaped by the cultures from which they emerge. The study discusses the evolution of cultural studies, its current trends, and the implications for future research in literary studies.

LAS CONFIGURACIONES DE LA MEMORIA EN LA NOVELA INDIGENISTA LA SERPIENTE DE ORO

The present work has the purpose of planting the configurations of memory in the novel La Serpiente de Oro, by the Peruvian author Ciro Alegría, considering the Latin American indigenist movement, its context and importance, especially in Peru, seeking to highlight primarily the changes in the political scenario and social development of Latinoamérica, and the more active participation of indigenous peoples in Latin American society during the 19th century. In this way, with the aim of understanding the field of the literary production of the indigenist movement, Indigenism, the investigation is based on conjectures of anthropologists and historians such as Menezes (2015), who in the light of Baud (2003) support the conjecture of that Indigenism was a political and literary movement. In addition, this investigation analyzes the memorialistic questions in the previously mentioned narrative, considering, for example, the assumptions of Maurice Halbwachs in “A Memoria Coletiva” (2006). The literary critic manifests the idea that memory, when at a certain moment it is lost in new societies, the only way to keep them safe is through a narrative. In this sense, the indigenist soap operas, as well as the (authentic) indigenist movement, had the function of keeping indigenous memories safe, because it considers the reality of the indigenous person, as a man of the land.

“Repensar Portugal”: Almeida Garrett, Alexandre Herculano e Eduardo Lourenço

Almeida Garrett (1799-1854) and Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877) are the two main authors representing Romanticism in Portugal or, at least of the first generation, which is inevitably confused with the struggles for the implementation of Liberalism in the country. Contemporaries, they corresponded with each other and wrote fictional works, which aimed to consider the role of Portugal, as a national and also cultural body. In short, they reflected, through literary production, on the homeland situation after the French invasions (1807), the trauma of the flight from the Court to Brazil (1807), the Liberal Revolution (1820) and the Civil War (1828-1834) between absolutists and liberals, both of whom took sides with the constitutionalists and, finally, ended up in exile. Upon returning, Garrett and Herculano formed a group of intellectuals who aimed to reflect on the country's destiny, immersed in so many crises. Regarding his works, Eduardo Lourenço (1923-2020), honored in this year of his centenary of birth, wrote important texts, also in order to “rethink Portugal”, as he invented in the writings of the two 19th century writers ways of pondering the Portuguese political, religious and cultural situations. We therefore analyzed excerpts from four narratives by nineteenth-century authors: O Arco de Sant’Ana: crónica portuense (1845/1851) and Viagens na minha terra (1846), by Almeida Garrett; O Monge de Cister ou a época de D. João I (1848) and “O pároco da aldeia (1825)” (1851), by Alexandre Herculano. These are texts written in the Shandian narrative style, in which the narrators' digressions are what interest us most in this study. In addition to O labirinto da saudade (1978) and Mitologia da saudade seguido de Portugal como destino (1999), by Lourenço, we will dialogue, in our investigations, with the productions of Maria de Fátima Marinho (1999) and Sergio Paulo Rouanet (2007), among other authors.

Controversy as Currency: An Investigation into the Economy and Politics of Literary Prizes

Literary prizes, while providing legitimacy of artistic excellence to authors, are delicately poised in modern prize culture. They must maintain a balance between the artistic merit of literature and the health of the economic capital of the publishing industry and sponsors. This paper meticulously examines the myriad proliferation of literary prizes and the convergence of its intricacies— the process of nomination and selection, sponsorships, promotion, media coverage of the award ceremony, celebratory nature of the occasion, the climactic drama of acceptance speech, and controversy— to characterize the centrality of economic force at play. It reflects the dependency of art form’s flourishing and sustenance on the logic of the economic marketplace. Through a close analysis of the controversial selection of certain authors and particular books, the paper looks at the epiphenomena of prestigious literary prizes to demonstrate a classic working of the neoliberal market outcome of controversy as publicity/currency, which not only brings about manufacturing of aura for controversial writers as celebrities but simultaneously radiates its effect on the demand value of their literary products and investing participants. It concludes that centrifugal dissemination and consumption of mediatised controversy events across national and international borders generates a centripetal concentration of socio-economic capital for writers, publishers and sponsors.

Китайская национальная литература в годы Японо-китайской и Второй мировой войн (1937–1945 гг.)

The Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the World War II (1939–1945) constituted tumultuous periods in Chinese history, marked by significant socio-political upheavals and military conflicts. Amidst these turbulent times, Chinese literature underwent notable transformations, influenced by the prevailing ideological currents and the exigencies of wartime conditions. This article endeavors to elucidate the trajectory of Chinese national literature during these pivotal years, examining its evolution, thematic variations, and socio-cultural impacts. The ideological rivalry between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) profoundly influenced literary production during the wartime era. Literary works aligned with each ideological faction served as vehicles for propagating their respective narratives and agendas. A comparative analysis of these works offers insights into the divergent literary expressions arising from ideological polarization. The exigencies of wartime conditions and the socio-political milieu precipitated a transformation in traditional literary forms. Prose and poetry, in particular, underwent significant evolution to cater to the changing needs and sensibilities of a mass readership. New genres emerged, reflecting the shifting thematic concerns and the imperative of engaging with modern realities. The role of literary organizations during this period cannot be overstated. These associations served as platforms for intellectual exchange, fostering collaboration among writers and artists. By providing avenues for creative expression and critique, they played a pivotal role in shaping the trajectory of wartime literature. The artistic output of various regions in China during the war years contributed to the dissemination of anti-militaristic sentiments and the fostering of patriotic fervor. Through nuanced portrayals of the human cost of conflict and the resilience of the Chinese people, literature emerged as a potent tool for galvanizing national unity and resistance against external aggression. In conclusion, the examination of Chinese literature during wartime underscores its role as a reflection of ideological contestation and societal transformation. Through diverse literary expressions, ranging from propaganda to introspective reflection, literature served as a potent medium for both anti-militaristic sentiments and the consolidation of patriotic fervor in China.

Russian Book Publishing in the New Geopolitical Realities

The article examines the impact of the new geopolitical and economic realities, in which Russia exists after 2020–2022, on the country’s publishing system. The comparative dynamics of book publishing indicators for the market as a whole and for its main segments in recent years is provided. The ratio of new editions and reprints, as well as books by domestic authors and translated literature is analyzed. The imbalance in the repertoire policy of Russian publishing houses in favor of foreign literary products is shown, and ways to overcome it are proposed.

Resistance, Transformation, and Empowerment: The Development of Feminine Identities in Mokámbo, aromas de Libertad and Kanga, la tierra de los sueños by Victoria Evita Ika

Abstract: Equatoguinean female authors have experienced a sort of Boom in literary production in the 21st century. Although there is still a relatively small number of women authors, they have made a significant impact on the Equatoguinean literary scene. Victoria Evita Ika explores the complexity of the formation of the multifaceted identity of a contemporary African woman in her novels Mokámbo, aromas de libertad (2010) and Kanga, la tierra de los sueños (2016). This analysis aims to explore how these two novels transform the development of identities of the modern Equatoguinean woman through surviving horizontal violence into a call for resistance and change. Her ability to learn from her experiences leads to finding a voice of resistance which is analyzed through the lens of the postmodern concept of "radical Black subjectivity." The struggle to negotiate between victimization and activism in order to realize her dreams, challenges the protagonist to make difficult choices. Both novels champion the resilience of women in their ability to adapt to the constant challenges they face in modern day Equatorial Guinea. This flexibility in the spirit of women is the true success and what ultimately keeps hope alive for the future of Equatorial Guinea.

Offence, Shakespeare, and Performance

Abstract Offence is a highly topical and much debated issue in contemporary Western societies. Fierce arguments rage between those who advocate mechanisms such as safe spaces, no platforming, and sensitivity readers to protect people from encountering offence, and those who maintain that curtailing the expression of offensive ideas stifles dialogue and impoverishes intellectual exchanges. This article sheds new light on the phenomenon of offence by examining it in the context of literary production, dissemination, and consumption. It focuses on drama as a performative genre, uniquely suited to embodying and interrogating emotions underpinning offensive exchanges. Through analysing representations of offence in several Shakespeare plays and discussing three actual or planned Shakespearean productions which caused offence to twenty-first-century audiences, it illuminates the ambiguities and contradictions inherent in defining offence. In particular, it demonstrates how difficult it is to determine agency in offensive exchanges: to establish who ‘owns’ offence, whether it originates with the offender or the offended party, and who has the right to decide what its consequences should be. Simultaneously, it argues that offence includes an element of social performance, as we do not only feel but also act offended. Because of the performative nature of offence, theatre and drama theory offer us a perfect laboratory and vocabulary for engaging with this vital issue.

Flipped Classroom in the English Literature Lesson

This paper presents a flipped classroom experience for the “English Narrative” subject. The teaching of literature usually involves a traditional approach through which the teacher delivers some theoretical content about authors, their work, and the cultural context in which they developed their literary production. As a result of this method, the class time devoted to the critical analysis of those texts may be considerably reduced due to an excess of theory. In contrast, the flipped classroom methodology allows students to prepare part of the content at home after watching an educational video or presentation provided by their teacher, and the class time is used to assess the selected texts in a more effective way. This proposal describes the procedure employed for a flipped lesson based on The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. A group of 25 Spanish students were involved. They currently take the third year of the Degree of Modern Languages at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The participants have learned about Wilde’s novel and his ideas about art and beauty outside the classroom. Thus the time spent in class has been mainly dedicated to the analysis and critical discussion of said novel. The evaluation was conducted through 9 open questions. The answers have shown the preference for applying the flipped methodology rather than focusing on a more conventional approach to teaching literature.

‘But for Such Institution, / What Would Become of Me?’: Poets, Poems and Poetic Practices in the Workhouse (1850–1900)

The vast majority of documentary evidence relating to workhouses comes from official sources. This article draws on inmates’ own writings and literary productions to offer a fresh perspective on workhouse life and re-consider the capacity of this institution to effectively silence workhouse paupers. It is indeed necessary to consider how this institution could, willingly or unwillingly, create opportunities for inmates to start writing. This article explores the specificities of inmates’ poems; how their relationship with the institution was both internalized and exploited by its residents; and how the institution could be conducive to the construction of the ‘workhouse poet’ and to the production of ‘workhouse poetry’. The aim of this study is to complexify our vision of the inhumanity of the workhouse system, without which paupers’ poems may never have been produced.

Maniculan

The Manicule. Literature’s Guiding HandThe ☛ manicule ☚ or typographical pointer has a unique place in literary history. Originally a reader’s annotation, it became a printer’s mark and an advertiser’s tool-in-trade before making the leap into narrative as a fictional object in its own right. In this essay I trace the manicule’s evolution from the medieval scriptorium to electronic publishing in the late age of print before examining its narrative and aesthetic functions in V. F. Palmblad’s Törnrosens Bok (1840), August Strindberg’s Röda rummet (1879), and Hjalmar Söderberg’s Doktor Glas (1905). In this trio of novels, I argue, the manicule is not just another element of narrative realism but a way to thematize historic changes in the material conditions of literary production. More than visual gimmicks, these pointing hands invite us to reassess the wider significance of these landmark works of Swedish literature.

Cărtărescu vs. Cărtărescu: el imaginario literario de Melancolia, cambio y pervivencia

The aim of this paper is to analyze the differences and similarities between the latest volume of stories published by the Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu (Melancolia, 2019, Bucharest, Humanitas) and his previous literary production. Although Melancolia has been associated with Nostalgia and indeed exhibits many parallels with the first volume of short novels published by Cartarescu, the truth is that the 2019 volume refers to the literary universe created from other texts as well. By comparing and contrasting Melancolia with some of his main works, from novels such as the three volumes of the Orbitor trilogy (Aripa stângă, Corpul, Aripa dreaptă), Travesti or Solenoid to his poetry, through the stories of Nostalgia, the essay aims to demonstrate how this volume dialogues, more or less explicitly, with all the previous ones while distancing itself from them in some narrative and stylistic aspects. After examining elements such as characters, motifs, symbols, metaphors, subjects, intertextuality, and metafiction, the work focuses on space and time as the two main categories in which the most significant changes take place as they move away from their usual context, communist Bucharest (more precisely, from the late 1950s to the end of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime in the late 1980s). This temporal and spatial framework is one of the fundamental axes of all Cărtărescu’s literary texts, which gives them unity, stability, and continuity. However, as the article tries to demonstrate, the change is not total, but Mircea Cărtărescu, through his usual intertextual play, refers indirectly to this space well known by his readers and, consequently, perhaps also to that historical period. To argue this issue, this article outlines the direct allusion to a specific space mentioned in some of the author’s earlier texts. This is the factory where one of the most important episodes of the first story (Punțile) takes place. The spatial descriptions of the first and third stories are also analyzed to check the parallels between them and some settings of Nostalgia, Orbitor or Solenoid. The work also investigates the possible objectives of these changes and similarities. On the one hand, it is possible to identify some of Cărtărescu’s characteristic elements in Melancholy due to its thematic and stylistic permanence (child and adolescent characters, the games as creation and as a gateway to a magical universe, the mother, rites of passage, onirism, the use of polysemic symbols such as the butterfly, duality, symmetry and twins, fractal images, anti-mimetic references, etc.), as well as the allusions (explicit or implicit) to his previous works. On the other hand, by neglecting (at least unequivocally) the preferred space-time frame of his previous works, Melancolia can be universalized, and the fictitious components can prevail over any possible reference to extra-literary reality. In this way, the Romanian writer achieves a work that is both very similar to and very different from his broader literary corpus, from everything he had written until the moment of the publication of Melancolia.