Literary Scene Research Articles

Call and Response: The Narrative Politics of Precedent and Structure in Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates

Author(s): Magee, Liam | Abstract: As the oldest surviving film by an African American director, Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates (1920) has been the object of considerable curiosity as both a historical artifact and a formative work of Black art. Of particular interest is the densely intertextual nature of the film’s narrative, which takes substantial cues from many tropes common to race fiction of the early twentieth century. This is perhaps most clearly evidenced by the film’s opening hour, which plays out as a nearly exact specimen of the racial uplift stories that dominated the era’s Black literary scene, and by its final five minutes, which clearly replicate the marriage plots that defined contemporary women’s literature. Crucially, these allusions—and, more importantly, the optimistic racial and socioeconomic philosophies they entail—are complicated by the presence of a late flashback sequence whose traumatic contents, rife with brutal racial and sexual violence, seem diametrically at odds with the idealism that defines the rest of the film. This paper investigates this seemingly problematic tonal disjunction by seeking to examine the flashback in its proper narratological context, exploring its aesthetic roots in mediums as diverse as newsprint, novels, and lynch photography, in order to better understand the ways in which the flashback’s inclusion modifies—or even challenges—the film’s dramatic thesis. The argument is finally made that the flashback’s disruptive nature is in fact its greatest strength, generating a complex interrogation of the platitudinous narrative archetypes that define both the remainder of the film and the race literature of Micheaux’s time.

When the Subaltern Speaks: Race and Gender in Selected Works by ZadieSmith and LeilaAboulela

When the Subaltern Speaks: Race and Gender in Selected Works by ZadieSmith and LeilaAboulela

Serpouhi Dussap’s Mayda; or, The Birth of Armenian Women’s Literature through the Palimpsestic Narrative of Feminism

Abstract Mayda (1883), Serpouhi Dussap’s first eponymous novel, quickly met the patriarchal reaction among the Armenian male intelligentsia of Constantinople over the issue of female emancipation. Today the significance of Dussap’s best-known novel and feminist ideology is both welcome and appreciated yet not with much gratifying analysis of the literary and intellectual ventures invested in this first-time production. This article seeks to place this literary event among the feminist literature scholarship of the nineteenth century. For this initial venture to bring recognition to Armenian feminist literature, the present study introduces the general literary scene in the Ottoman Armenian community in the late nineteenth century, then outlines the critical detraction leveled against the novel, only to produce a new reading that reflects the feminist literary strategy of the time, namely, the palimpsestic mode of writing. Finally, the reading suggested in this article is linked to another underrated work, the mythical tale of Arachne. Reworking Nancy K. Miller’s theory of “Arachnologies” into the context of Armenian women’s literature, the analysis of Arachne’s tale is the “mytheme,” the foundational unit, so to speak, that encapsulates the feminist literary ideology of nineteenth-century Armenian women’s literature.

Freedom as the Antithesis of Commitment in Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Flies (Les Mouches)

In the mid of the twentieth century, French Existentialism was a predominant doctrine that significantly enriched and influenced the literary scene in Europe during the Post-War area. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the founder of Existentialism, is both a professional philosopher and a talented man of letters whose literary achievements represent a declarative embodiment of his Existentialist philosophy. In his 1943 drama, The Flies (Les Mouches), Sartre puts the Greek myth into a drastically innovative structure, where contemporary issues and values are presented through classical outlines. The current study aims to present a critical analysis of Sartre's depiction of the Electra/Orestes myth in The Flies through demonstrating how Greek mythology becomes an essential substructure of the play's Existentialistic framework, on the one hand, and questioning the credibility of the Sartrean concept of freedom and commitment, as illustrated in the play, on the other hand. The study utilizes the Existentialist philosophy as a theoretical framework in order to elucidate that the Sartrean conception of freedom and commitment is paradoxically antithetical. The research investigates how Orestes has been theoretically free and the extent to which he strives, throughout the drama, to transform this abstract freedom into a concrete experience by committing himself to a specific action: murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, as the study proves, this Existentialist freedom becomes an illusion in the sense that Orestes' commitment to the Argives makes him a captive of society; by choosing commitment, he dismisses his freedom. The researcher has chosen "Freedom" and "Commitment" as the main topic of the present study in order to expose Sartre's existentialistic awareness of modern human beings' dilemma under the influence of all forms of aggression and highlight the discrepancy between theoretical philosophy and real-life experiences. The study adopts an interdisciplinary analytical approach where myth, philosophy, and drama are dovetailed and fused in order to expand the scope of the analysis.

The political manipulation and the translation of “Thawed Literature” in China in the 1950s: a case study of Yi Wen

ABSTRACT In the 1950s and 1960s, Yi Wen (譯文 , Translated Literature) was the only official journal in China dedicated to the publication of translated foreign literature, helping the Chinese gain exposure to and develop a deeper understanding of foreign literature and literary trends. Therefore, the study of this national literary journal can facilitate an in-depth analysis of how socio-political conditions influenced the Chinese literary landscape during the period and reveal how literary translations respond to and push back against political ideologies and control. In the early 1950s, when Thawed Literature emerged in the Soviet Union following the liberalization of the Soviet’s literary scene, Yi Wen began publishing translations of Thawed Literature for the Chinese audience. However, due to Zhdanovism and the Double Hundred Policy, there were varied translation strategies employed at different stages of the publication of Yi Wen. This paper explores the capricious fate of Thawed Literature in Yi Wen’s translation choices and strategies by situating the translation of foreign literature against the socio-political background of the 1950s in China to tease apart how political ideologies manipulate literary translation.

Sevim Burak’s Protest Theatre: Understanding Sevim Burak Through Adorno

The purpose of this article is to explore Sevim Burak’s theatre through Adorno’s “negative dialectics” and “culture industry” theories. The article claims that Burak’s theatre is revolutionary in the sense that it challenges the traditional norms of theatre based on representation of real life. Burak, in contrast to traditional theatrical forms, creates a form negating real life and resisting against any form of mimetic representation. However, this does not turn her theatre into an apolitical, anti-social, or extremely individualistic one as Burak’s form is rooted in the social and parental background of the playwright. However, her unique form was expelled from the literary circles and has long been neglected by scholars, which the article claims is the result of the reflections of Adorno’s “culture industry” on the literary scene in Turkey. Thus, the final claim of the article is that Burak’s theatre is revolutionary and a protest not due to its subject matter but to its form. 

RADOMIR KONSTANTINOVIĆ AND RADIO DRAMA

This paper begins with an overview of literary work of Radomir Konstantinović. The experimental character of his novels demonstrates the specificity of his literary modus operandi, as a unique phenomenon in Serbian literary scene during the fifth decade of the 20th century. His work will mark a turning point in the transition from modernism to postmodernism. His radio dramas, as well, represent a very specific part of his work mostly due to historical position of this genre. Since his radio dramas are first fully published in 2019. this paper traces a path for further research in this area.

The Image of New Woman as Portrayed in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel The Lowland

The last decade of the Victorian era witnessed a major shift in the social attitude of the woman. It was a break away from the patriarchal system, and women emerging as independent being and moving towards achieving gender equality. The ‘New Woman’ is considered as a precursor to the feminist movement and thus the legacy of New Woman lives on to this day. Jhumpa Lahiri, the significant writer of the Indian diaspora has emerged on the global literary scene with her remarkable writings. The novel has a compelling plot of family relations. It delineates the tender fraternal bond between Subhash and Udayan and how it gets affected by the various paths they chose in their lives. This intensely emotional tale unfolds diverse dimensions of the woman caught in the predicament of conservative cultural practices at home, political unrest in society and the life of an exile in the immigrant land. It also explores Gauri’s expression of identity, her struggle with love, Bela’s choice for individuality and pragmatism in life has turned the novel into a unique narrative. In her second novel, ‘The Lowland’ Jhumpa portrays her women characters devaluing the patriarchal setup. They break the myths of womanhood and motherhood. Prominence is given to assert their position in society by restoring self-identity than nurturing deeper family relations. They fight with courage and confront various challenges in their marital relationship.

ВОСПРИЯТИЕ СОВРЕМЕННОЙ НЕМЕЦКОЯЗЫЧНОЙ ПРОЗЫ МИГРАНТОВ ИЗ БЫВШЕГО СССР В ГЕРМАНИИ

The literature of migrant authors from the former USSR became popular in the German literary market not only within the framework of the well-known international phenomenon of “new immigrant chic”, but also due to the specific character of German literary market, which is characterized by the demand for “narrative lightness” of modern literature. The main aspects of the promotion of writers on the literary scene in Germany are the role of the literary publisher in choosing marketing strategies for authors, the self-positioning of writers, and the interest of the readers in a biography that is exotic for German-speaking society. The interaction between different generations of migrant writers, the lack of success of migrant prose from the former Soviet Union in the Russian literary market as well as the current trend towards publishers’ creating a feigned image of the migrant writer with Russian roots are particularly relevant topics in this discussion.

Engendering Tionghoa nationalism: Female purity in male-authored Sino-Malay novels of colonial Java

The recurring trope of female purity holds an important place in the Sino-Malay literature of colonial Java from the late 1910s to the 1930s, a turbulent and transformative sociopolitical period that also saw the rise of Tionghoa (Chinese) nationalism in the Dutch Indies. Used mainly by male writers who dominated the Sino-Malay literary scene, the gendered trope features polarised femininities — the archetypal virtuous Tionghoa girl, and the Westernised modern girl who defies Confucian traditions — and reflects the male perspectives and sexism of the time. I contend, however, that the trope reveals ideological motivations that go beyond patriarchal concerns, as it is also employed to articulate and perpetuate nationalist and anti-colonial ideas and views. Using theories of gender and nation as well as anthropological concepts of purity and pollution, I examine how the female body's inscribed purity draws on embedded epistemologies of race and gender to represent Tionghoa identity and nationalism in two male-authored Sino-Malay novels, Liem Hian Bing'sValentine Chan atawa rahasia Semarang(1926) and Tan Chieng Lian'sOh…..Papa!(1929). As my readings show, female purity as a nationalist ideology validates Tionghoa masculinity as the defender and guardian of not just woman's virtue, but also of an imagined morally and culturally superior Tionghoa nation.

On Not Being an Author: De Quincey's ‘Confessions’ and the Performance of Romantic Translatorship

Through his ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’, Thomas De Quincey effects a meticulously crafted entrance onto the literary scene: less a series of confidential notes than a stage-managed performance, the ‘Confessions’ serve as a stage on which he announces his literary ambitions. One such set of performative acts has received little attention: it pertains less to establishing a ground from which to authoritatively create, than it does to laying down a structure through which to mediate. Acting on recent developments within literary criticism and translation studies, this article examines the ways in which the ‘Confessions’ launch their writer on a career in interlingual and intercultural transfer, and how this performance of minority is designed to operate alongside other Romantic writers. The article ponders the successes and failures of mediation on display in emblematic scenes, and attends to how these chart the uneasy relationship between authorship and translatorship.

Sigrid Nunez on the Writer’s Life

Abstract The Friend (2018), the seventh novel of Sigrid Nunez, won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. It not only tells a touching story about the human-canine bond between the narrator and a huge Great Dane but also involves much meditation on writing as a profession and the universal concerns of humanity. Looking back at her writing career, Nunez talks about her beliefs as a writer, her observation of the contemporary literary scene, her evaluation of the status of fiction in the current era, her teaching experiences in writing programs, and her personal story as a child of immigrants and a former assistant to Susan Sontag. According to Nunez, a life of solitude is conducive to writing books, and experiences of frustration are normal for a writer. However, she maintains that writing should be seen as a vocation instead of a means of self-advancement. With respect to new trends in literary culture, Nunez believes the house of fiction does have many rooms, and the definition of a novel has become much broader.

The Detective Fiction of Oguri Mushitarō. Beyond the Orthodox and the Weird

Oguri Mushitarō (1901-1946) was a popular fiction writer whose main period of activity were the 1930s. Renowned for his idiosyncratic and often impenetrable style, labyrinthine plots and otherworldly logic, he never achieved the popularity of his contemporaries Edogawa Rampo or Yokomizo Seishi. In fact the eminent detective literature historian Itō Hideo dismisses one of Oguri's novels as “unfathomable” and “not for the casual reader”. In spite of this, in the last few decades Oguri's works have been reappraised, with his most famous novel Kokushikan satsujin jiken [the plague house murder case] (1934) placing 14th in the Shūkan Bunshun magazine’s recent poll of 100 best Japanese mystery novels.In this paper I look at the novels that feature the detective Norimizu Rintarō, compare the works of Oguri to those of other mystery writers in Japan and abroad and try to argue that Oguri’s originality lies in his unwillingness to adapt either to the honkaku (the detective novel ‘proper’) or the henkaku (the ‘unorthodox’ mystery) schools that formed the early Showa era mystery fiction literary scene.

A representação do sujeito diaspórico em O livro dos negros, de Lawrence Hill

As neonarrativas de escravidão surgiram no cenário literário norte-americano com a publicação de Jubilee, de Margaret Walker (1966), porém só tiveram efetivo reconhecimento nos anos oitenta, com o lançamento de Beloved, de Toni Morrison (1987). Concebidas como “romances contemporâneos que assumem a forma, as convenções e a voz narrativa em primeira pessoa das narrativas de escravos produzidas antes da Guerra Civil” (RUSHDY, 1997), foram, aos poucos, se distanciando desse modelo e hoje podem ser consideradas transnacionais e globais, bem como dialógicas, polifônicas e transgenéricas, segundo Judith Misrahi-Barak (2014). Nessa perspectiva e com o suporte teórico dos Estudos Culturais e do conceito pós-moderno de metaficção historiográfica, este trabalho propõe a análise da representação do sujeito diaspórico em O livro dos negros, do canadense Lawrence Hill (2014), que tem por temática a trajetória de escravos durante a vigência do sistema escravagista. Ao deslocar a voz narrativa para o oprimido, Hill desafia o discurso da História, escovando-a a contrapelo.

Paisajes interiores en "Galería de rara antigüedad" de Jaime Siles. La obra “desde dentro”

Este escrito ejecuta una revisión de los aspectos poéticos de la obra del escritor valenciano Jaime Siles a partir de su poemario Galería de rara antigüedad, que fue merecedor del XXVIII Premio de poesía Jaime Gil de Biedma en 2018. En el curso del texto, asimismo, se comentará la cuestión relativa a la la práctica del monólogo interior con su concepción autorial de la poesía íntima, en particular, así como de sus imbricaciones en la literatura griega antigua o la tradición europea moderna, en general, de la que Jaime Gil de Biedma fue un epígono esencial en el panorama de la creación literaria española en el siglo XX. This writing carries out a review of the poetic aspects of the work of the Valencian writer Jaime Siles from his collection of poems Galería de rara antigüedad, which deserved the XXVIII Jaime Gil de Biedma Poetry Prize in 2018. Over the course of this work the discussed issue will also consider the the inner monologues practice in its relation to Sile's authorial conception of intimate poetry, in particular, and its entanglements in Ancient Greek literature or European modernism tradition, in general, of which Jaime Gil de Biedma was an essential epigone in the Spanish literary scene in the 20th Century.

A ânsia eterna, a violência, o silenciamento e o grotesco em Os Porcos, de Julia Lopes de Almeida

Julia Lopes de Almeida foi uma abolicionista do século XIX e uma das idealizadoras da Academia Brasileira de Letras. O objetivo da discussão é resgatar essa escritora, tomando como base o processo de silenciamento e violência que atinge as mulheres dentro e fora do âmbito literário e personificado por Umbelina, em Os porcos, escrito em 1903. A referida obra não faz parte do cânone, dos renomados manuais de literatura, dos livros didáticos, nem tampouco do conhecimento do grande público. Contudo ela reflete as mazelas sociais resultantes de anos de submissão e ausência de reconhecimento, sobretudo da crítica que fomenta, grotescamente, pontos cegos na escrita feminina na historiografia da literatura. O diálogo entre a violência ficcional sofrida pela protagonista do conto e a violência simbólica e empírica vivida pela referida escritora andam ombro a ombro com as inúmeras violações de direitos vivenciadas pelas mulheres até os dias atuais. O referencial teórico compõe-se, principalmente, por Woolf (1928), Telles (1988), Perrot (2005) e Colling (2004). Discutiu-se a representação dessa mulher que anseia sair do silenciamento, que, por sua vez, também é uma forma de violência.

Translating Taboo: Blasphemy in an Afrikaans Translation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Summary The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the translator of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales into Afrikaans in the dual contexts of the ideological milieu that dominated the Afrikaans literary scene and of the literary theory that prevailed at the time. The bulk of the translation fell in the period 1960 to 1980, the heyday of Afrikaner nationalism. The prevalent translation theory in the 1970s and 1980s was Descriptive Translation Studies, with Gideon Toury as its leading exponent. This theory emphasised the need for compliance with the cultural norms of the receiving community, which, in this case, would have included observing a blasphemy taboo. The problem examined here arises from the fact that compliance with this taboo was in conflict with the cultural context of the source text. The translator’s alternation between compliance with and resistance to the taboo is indicative of a translator’s central role in the translation, which became the focus of attention in the 1990s with the rise of the “cultural turn”, espoused by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere. For these theorists the emphasis fell on the translation process, as opposed to the translation product, the central concern of the Descriptive Translation Studies of the 1970s and 1980s. Rather than viewing norms as determinative, binary options, it is their diachronic variability that merits priority, all the more so in contemporary South Africa.

О ВОСПРИЯТИИ И.С. ТУРГЕНЕВА В БРИТАНИИ

The subject of the article is I.S. Turgenev’s reputation in Great Britain. He gained international fame in 1860s-1870s, was the first to present the great Russian novel in Britain, where for some time he was perceived as a «strong energetic writer», but later, as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky appeared on the literary scene as «sages» and «prophets», he was relegated to the status of esthete, «pure artist». Victorians had the «Hall of fame» for the «first row» writers and a chapel for lesser deities - «pure artists», where paradoxically they gave a place to a «large, strong hunter» Turgenev.

"You Just Never Can Know What's Up the Road": An Interview with Cecil Brown

"You Just Never Can Know What's Up the Road":An Interview with Cecil Brown Zachary Manditch-Prottas (bio) and Cecil Brown In 1969, Cecil Brown's provocatively titled debut novel The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger made quite a splash on the literary scene. From legend of hardboiled letters Chester Himes, to liberal outlet The New Leader, reviewers noted that Brown's prose was as knowing as his subject matter was titillating; the mixture of the erotic and uproarious made for a novel of uniquely sophisticated parody. Jiveass relates the satiric odyssey of a classic trickster figure named George Washington (one of several aliases) who, fed up with American bigotry, lands in Denmark on a quest of self-discovery. Washington, in the midst of the many entangled social revolutions of the 1960s, traverses the streets and sheets of Copenhagen finding his shrewd sexual allure to be his greatest asset—but also his greatest impediment—during his curious journey. Insofar as the many women he beds are permissive blondes among the well-to-do, the story negotiates the underbelly of white America's greatest anxiety: interracial sex. Indeed, the novel can be read as a sardonic rejoinder to the phallocentrism of a certain strand of Black Power and to a much longer legacy of white phallic anxiety.1 Thus, the thematic imperatives that pushed the novel's evocative wit were both timely and timeless, making it all the funnier, all the more biting, and its author all the more difficult to peg. Undoubtedly, a new voice had arrived in African American literature, but reviewers were unsure if that voice was jocular or scathing. Fellow satirist of Black life Charles Wright christened Brown the "literary superman of the year." The New York Times dubbed him a "born pornographer gone straight."2 As we settle into our chairs to begin our interview, I mention this particular Times review; Brown knowingly grins. He later explains that he did actually begin with the provocative title and then, his grin widening into his eyes, "went about filling in the rest from there." Brown has a skill for leading with allure, drawing readers close with a story so compelling that it may be some time before they realize they have wandered into something more serious. Brown tells me that while living in Copenhagen himself, he wrote the novel so that he "could laugh at himself." On the other hand, his story's hero, Washington, says toward the conclusion of his riotous adventure that he would like to write a "serious book." Jiveass is, in the blues tradition, both. Indeed, for Brown, laughter and seriousness are longtime traveling companions of African American expression. Across Brown's forty-year writing career, in novels like the hilarious, although often tragic story of Black comedians in Hollywood, Days Without Weather (1983), his moving autobiography of his rural coming-of-age, Coming Up Down Home (1995), and his thorough folk history Stagolee Shot Billy (2003), he has always maintained a particular interest in "the trickster." He tells me that he "revels" in those who have the ability to "get out of situations using their wit." He has known more than his fair share of (in)famous tricksters. He is a folklorist whose life, by his own account, is somewhat folkloric. Behind his writing is a tapestry of tales featuring a Who's Who of mid-twentieth-century African American cultural history. Brown may refer nostalgically to Eldridge Cleaver as his Berkeley "running buddy" in one breath and taking "Jimmy's" [James Baldwin's] car out for late-night joyrides in the South of [End Page 275] France in the next. He relates his encyclopedic knowledge of the legend of Stagolee to a passing gesture Miles Davis made backstage that had him, Paul Mooney, and Richard Pryor in stitches. The stories keep coming, each full of that liveliness that only legends contain, and, as you wait for the next punchline, storyteller Cecil Brown knows that he's got you, right there where amusement and seriousness meet. Zachary Manditch-Prottas: How did you get started writing? Cecil Brown: Well, I grew up in North Carolina, by Cape Fear River. In the...

Serpent’s Tongue: The Byronism of Lamia

John Keats’s Lamia was shaped by interrelated anxieties that troubled the poet throughout 1819. These anxieties centered on the cultural power of women readers but ramified to include Lord Byron as well. Borrowing the story of Lamia from Robert Burton but also presenting his serpent-heroine as a metonymy for the western canon, Keats uses his poem to lament the parodic feminization of canonical norms on the Regency literary scene. Yet this cultural debasement, he suggests further, must also be blamed on Lord Byron, who has made himself Regency England’s star poet in part by theatrically catering to the ladies. My essay invokes Regency criticism of Byron as an audience-manipulating poseur to argue that Lamia’s amatory career restages Keats’s ambivalence about Byron, allowing Keats to seek a broader readership through an experiment in Byronic role-playing while also indicting Byron for his insincerity and cynicism.