Literary Supplement Research Articles

Ali Smith's and Olivia Laing's Fictions of Immediacy

Ali Smith's and Olivia Laing's Fictions of Immediacy

Increase Mather: The Foremost American Puritan

The classic biography of preeminent colonial Massachusetts minister and President of Harvard College, Increase Mather (1639-1723). This is the work that re-started Puritan studies in America. “A book which will be indispensable to students of early American history.” —Times Literary Supplement “It is a book to welcome and appreciate.” —American Historical Review “The available sources have been used carefully, and the story is told with great literary skill.” —The Sewanee Review “[Murdock’s book] opened the sluice gates to powerful streams of scholarship that in the next two decades revised our understanding of American Puritanism.” —Philip F. Gura, in A Concise Companion to American Studies

Escritura, política y masividad: Contra y la Revista Multicolor de los Sábados

This article analyzes the relationships between political avant-garde and cultural industry focusing in the circulation of writers, genres and writing modalities among the Argentine newspaper Critica, the review Contra and Critica’s literary supplement, Revista Multicolor de los Sabados, in order to identify both the differences among massive newspaper, Gonzalez Tunon's review, and supplement, as well as the permeability among them. On the one hand, the social function of art about which writers debated in leftist publications created tensions against journalistic commercial aspirations. On the other hand, literary productions worked with topics, images and themes from both cultural industry and left-wing culture.

Reading for lyric in the African digital litmag

ABSTRACT This article asks what we are reading for when we read poems in African-run literary magazines that are increasingly online. How can we begin to theorise the significance of publication and experience of reading in digital formats? In the wake of a debate in literary studies about lyric reading, the author suggests that reading African poetry in digital litmags gives us an opportunity to rethink how exactly poems are entangled with history – and that reading for lyric involves attending to how a poem might aspire to outlive its initial historical context. Drawing on unpublished sources as well as online and print materials, the article discusses such African-run litmags as Sentinel Poetry (Online), Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Jalada, Saraba and Agbowó. For poets including Ogaga Ifowodo, Tsitsi Jaji, Jumoke Verissimo and Logan February who have chosen to publish in these litmags, political liberation entails reimagining sociality, subjectivity and sexuality. Ultimately, the article argues, their poems should not only be located in the recent past but also recognised as opening up temporalities of recurrence and futurity that show up the limitations of the present.

За ранните преводи на разказите на Йордан Йовков и тяхната рецепция в полския културен контекст

This article is devoted to the first translations of Yordan Yovkov's stories in Poland and some problems related to the reception of translated literature in a foreign cultural environment. The works of the Bulgarian writer in the mentioned period were published in Polish magazines with an orientation towards the so-called women's topics. Their literary supplements published novels and short stories by the world's most famous authors at the time and were intended for adherents of women's emancipation, with broad intellectual horizons and good literary taste. The choice of specific works by Yordan Yovkov makes it possible to assess the literary reception and the dominant aesthetic norms in the host culture and literature. The article also analyzes the issues of language and poetics of the text, as well as the attempts of several generations of Polish translators to "overcome" the difficulties of the style and poetics of Yovkov's work.

Baron E.F. Rozen and “The Literary Supplement to the Russky Invalid” (1831–1832)

Baron E.F. Rozen and “The Literary Supplement to the Russky Invalid” (1831–1832)

A Small Room with Large Windows

Abstract: Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) has fed almost a century of work on the material conditions of early modern women's lives and their modes of expression. But as Diane Purkiss's essay in the Times Literary Supplement in February 2019 makes all too clear, there are collateral dangers in the tenacity of Woolf's essay as the enduring narrative for early modern women's writing, with its implications of isolation and quietude, and separate spheres, interests, and influences. This essay offers an alternative metaphor, one of "a small room with large windows," for the global scholarly field that is early modern women's writing. It questions narratives of critical backwardness and belatedness, and looks instead to the positive achievements and influences of feminist scholarship in the last several decades. It argues that the metaphors we use to describe our scholarship matter: they contest and construct "which world we want: the one that already exists, or the one that might," to borrow the words of Amia Srinivasan. It suggests the need to keep building on what has already been achieved and to keep shifting our standpoints and our perspectives, seeking "to recognize / The whole three hundred and sixty degrees" of early modern experience and expression.

A. J. A. Symons: A Bibliomane, his Books, and his Clubs . By Simon C. W. Hewett

A. J. A. Symons was, as Simon C. W. Hewett puts it, ‘bibliophile, bibliographer, bookdealer, calligrapher, serial club founder, gourmet, author, biographer, and expert on Baron Corvo, Oscar Wilde, and Victorian musical boxes’. The range of his interests has made a full bibliographical record a particular challenge. This well produced catalogue of a Grolier Club exhibition goes some way to repairing this deficiency. Mr Hewett begins with ‘A Summary Biography’ that sets out succinctly most of what can be established about Symons's life. This is followed by what is potentially the most important section: ‘Symons's Published Works: A Preliminary List.’ Even allowing for the cautionary ‘Preliminary’, this list has various problems. The range of omissions is considerable. None of Symons's published letters is mentioned, including his first periodical publication, ‘The Bibliography of Meredith’, a letter in the Times Literary Supplement, 21 June 1923, p. 422. A number of other periodical publications are omitted, as are a number of reviews. For example, members of the Grolier Club might well have some interest in his article on the ‘Pleasures of Collecting’, in The Listener, 9 October 1935, p. 606. Since Hewett specifically mentions Symons's interest in Victorian musical boxes, it is a pity that his article on the subject in the same journal (10 August 1939, p.289) is not included. Among his omitted reviews are those of The Origins of Pickwick by Walter Dexter and J. W. T. Ley in the Fortnightly Review, 139 (1936), 625‐26; Desmond Flower and A. N. L. Munby's English Poetical Autographs in Twentieth Century Verse, 14 (December 1938), 139‐40; and of Nicolete Gray, Nineteenth‐ Century Ornamented Types and Title Pages in the Times Literary Supplement, i October 1938, p.632 (this last unsigned). Throughout page numbers, and in some instances dates, are not given for periodical publications or contributions to books.

Estudos literários brasileiros nos anos 1970 e o lugar da teoria no trabalho de Luiz Costa Lima

Neste artigo, busco analisar e discutir a presença das teorias estruturalistas no trabalho de Luiz Costa Lima, na década de 1970, apontando, também, como elas se conectam às questões institucionais e políticas do período. Tento demonstrar que, a partir do seu livro de 1973, Estruturalismo e teoria da literatura, e de uma série de artigos publicados em suplementos literários, o autor articula as discussões propriamente teóricas àquelas vinculadas tanto ao subcampo da crítica literária quanto a uma interpretação do contexto político brasileiro.

Literature and Memory: The Correspondence between Marc Chagall and David Lazer

Abstract The present article explores the decades-long correspondence between Marc Chagall and David Lazer. Born in Kraków, Lazer was the son of a Hebraist who edited a respected Jewish journal. Following in his father’s footsteps, David was the editor-in-chief of the Nowy Dziennik, a Polish-language Zionist weekly. After immigrating to Palestine, he co-founded the Israeli newspaper Maariv and served as the editor of its literary supplement. The journalist had a true passion for literary journeys, which were the backdrop for many of the works he penned. Some of these pieces were devoted to the cultural heritage of European Jewry, including the life and enterprise of Marc Chagall. In the pages ahead, we will take stock of the relationship between these two figures. The paper also unfurls the story behind Jerzy Ficowski’s “A Letter to Marc Chagall” as well as the painter’s illustrations for this harrowing poem. In addition, we unveil the original manuscript of a speech that Chagall gave at the dedication of his stained-glass windows for the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem.

Magazines of science fiction and adventure “Ural Pathfinderˮ and “Seekerˮ as sources on the history of the Soviet intelligentsia

The article examines the source value of the Soviet popular magazines “Ural Pathfinder” and “Seeker”. First of all, the author considers the social and moral-political conditions in which these magazines were created. It is emphasized that both publications appeared at about the same time, at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, at the beginning of the so-called “Golden age” of Soviet science fiction, when a galaxy of young and active science fiction writers entered the arena of literary life. The appearance of magazines was a response to the request of Soviet readers, first of all, the intelligentsia, who needed new publications of science fiction and adventure themes. The content of these publications was also analyzed. There were differences between the magazines. The “Ural Pathfinder” was not only a literary and artistic publication, but also a popular scientific, historical, geographical, and local history publication. “Seeker” was a literary supplement to “Around the world”. Also, over time, by the 1980s, magazines acquired different ideological colors in the eyes of the Soviet intelligentsia, which, however, did not affect their popularity. At the end, the research results are summarized. In relation to the history of the intelligentsia, the source potential of magazines is limited by a number of factors. Among them, censorship restrictions and ideological divisions among the Soviet intelligentsia occupy an important place. However, the analyzed publications can serve as sources on the following aspects: the history of the Soviet press, primarily popular publications; the development of regional journalism; coverage of local history and environmental issues, issues of youth education (based on the materials of the “Ural Pathfinder”); the composition of the authors of fantasy and adventure works, their plot component.

Marx’s Argument for the Labor Theory of Value

In a Times Literary Supplement review of some recent literature on Marx and Marxism for a general readership, Jonathan Wolff claimed that Marx’s solution to the so-called “transformation problem” is “half-baked.” The aim of this paper is to challenge this complacent dismissal of some of Marx’s central economic ideas. In the process, I want to show that although the issues here are subtle and complex, Marx’s ideas retain a great deal of intuitive appeal, and his “solution” to the so-called “transformation problem” is neither conceptually implausible nor mathematically dubious. Crucial to this aim is to show that Marx viewed the categories of (what he called bourgeois) economics through a social lens, which is given in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital.

Reflections of the Lithuanian World in the Literature Textbooks from the DP Camps: Analyzing the Concept of Folklore

The article deals with the literature textbook published in Augsburg, Germany, in 1946 and entitled “Synopsis of the Lithuanian Literature”. It was edited by a Lithuanian writer and teacher Petronėlė Orintaitė-Janutienė, and its sources included a textbook “The Lithuanian Literature: Part 1”, published in the interwar Lithuania (in 1939) and edited by Motiejus Miškinis. However, Orintaitė-Janutienė emphasized having used the publication by Miškinis only “a little”, while writing all the rest “from the memory”. Therefore, the article aims to elucidate what image of the Lithuanian world this memory-based textbook rendition impressed upon the young person studying at a war refugees’ camp, what support it proposed, and what kind of experience it prepared the young one for. The more detailed analysis focuses on the part from the textbook that briefly outlined the concept of folklore. This choice is grounded in the idea nationalism theory that oral culture bears special significance to the formation of the nationality and development of the national consciousness. The analysis also includes some folklore texts from the literary supplement (also edited by Orintaitė-Janutienė) to the Lithuanian weakly Žiburiai (‘Lights’), published in Augsburg in 1945–1949. The author notes that the outline of the Lithuanian folklore in the textbook and the selection of the folklore samples stemmed from the interwar Lithuanian schooling tradition, but they also reflected reaction to the complicated historical situation, in view of which the national community had to rally and act together, discovering new alternatives for survival. The analyzed material allows the author to conclude that the national consciousness of the Lithuanian student at the DP camp was strengthened by presenting certain past experiences inherited from the ancestors, by fostering the idea of historical continuity, by reviving and cherishing the topographic memory, emphasizing the most important existential attitudes, and listing the culture texts testifying to the Lithuanian national distinction.

Research on the Beginnings of Cambodian Sinophone Literature

Abstract Based on research done in the National Archives of Cambodia on the Sino-Cambodian newspaper Mekong Yat Pao and its literary supplements, this report has two main objectives: firstly, since the field of Sinophone literature in the Cambodian Kingdom has seldom been researched, to write a general introduction to the history of the newspaper and its historical context; and then to describe in detail the contents of the literary supplements, trying to understand their development according to a periodization through which one can follow the evolution of the dominant literary genres and the parallel political events of the 1950–60s in Cambodia and mainland China.

Los hijos de instagram. Marketing editorial. Poesía y construcción de nuevos lectores en la era digital

Con la incorporación de las nuevas tecnologías en la sociedad 2.0 venimos asistiendo a la construcción de un nuevo modelo de escritor que responde a las características de la era digital que se desarrolla en torno a las redes sociales y que confronta con el modelo tradicional de escritor/lector. En el presente artículo se analiza de qué forma ha afectado al discurso la eclosión de esas redes sociales (fundamentalmente Twitter e Instagram) como medio de promoción y divulgación de esta nueva literatura, construida por jóvenes prioritariamente para jóvenes; también de qué manera el marketing editorial ha auspiciado, al margen de la crítica literaria y de la previsible evolución del canon establecido, la ampliación del mercado de lo hasta ahora considerado poético para nuevos lectores, integrantes todos ellos de la llamada Generación Millennial (es decir: la conformada por los nacidos a partir de 1982), que siguen con fervor a un perfil de autor cuyas obras se priorizan en la sección de poesía de librerías y suplementos literarios, pero que no responden en absoluto a las previsiones de los estudiosos del género ni a las normas de la tradición, creando una polémica sobre qué es/qué no es poesía en el siglo XXI.

Vulcano, de Hilarión Frías y Soto: tres lecturas desde su materialidad

This article proposes an approach to the short novel Vulcano (1861, 1862, 1882), by the Mexican writer Hilarión Frías y Soto, based on the analysis of the publications in which the three testimonies of said work were disclosed. The hypothesis that arises, supported by the reflections of Roger Chartier and D. F. McKenzie, argues that the reception of the Friasian story was mediated by the material peculiarities of the support (literary supplement, newspaper and feuilleton, respectively), the nature of the contents of each one of the forms (in line with its editorial and ideological tendency) and the profile of the audience to which they were directed. The aim of this work is to speculate on the probable readings that were made of the narration in the different stages of its tradition, in order to contribute a critical view of Vulcano to the recent labor of rescue and edition of the aforementioned author’s prose.

Gender and Pain in Nineteenth-Century Cancer Care.

Gender and Pain in Nineteenth-Century Cancer Care.

O clássico e o moderno

Trata-se de analisar dois ensaios produzidos pelo crítico e historiador Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes sobre os cineastas Serguei Eisenstein e Orson Welles. Publicados na segunda metade de 1950 no Suplemento Literário do jornal O Estado de S. Paulo, os ensaios analisam aspectos da linguagem, do estilo e da expressão social dos filmes de Eisenstein e Welles a partir de um recorte histórico-biogr´áfico delineado a partir dos estudos históricos desenvolvidos pelo cineasta em sua estada em Paris e na pesquisa sobre o cineasta francês Jean Vigo. Veremos como revisitar a fortuna artística de Eisenstein será fundamental para compreender aspectos da linguagem cinematográfica clássica, fundamentada significativamente na montagem paralela e no close-up. No caso de Welles, o foco repousa nas descobertas da profundidade de campo e do plano sequência como recursos narrativos carácterísticos do cinema moderno. Em conjunto, o comentário às obras de Eisenstein e Welles abrem caminho para reflexões histórico-biográficas bastante refinadas, que ainda hoje podem inspirar aqueles que tem o cinema como tema de suas pesquisas históricas, embasadas em uma metodologia apta a pautar questões de linguagem, estilo e expressão social que afluem do fenômeno cinematográfico.

The Departed: Broken and unbroken symbols

The DepartedBroken and unbroken symbols Dinda L. Gorlée (bio) George Steiner (1929-2020) was a polyglot and polymath; indeed, he was the eminent scholar of almost everything to transform the modern world of humanities into the universe of learning from history. Born in a Viennese-Jewish family living in exile in Paris, the Steiner family had to emigrate again to the United States just before the Nazi-occupation of France in 1940. Studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, George Steiner was a student of literature to become the intellectually off-scale scholar of translation studies. He returned to Europe to do his doctoral work at Balliol College of the University of Oxford. In the article "Humane literacy" published by The Times Literary Supplement (1963) and reprinted in The Critical Moment: Essays on the Nature of Literature (1964), Steiner struck, as a young French-American critic, a polemical blow to all post-war literature, since for him the insufficiency of evidence cannot reach the stage of intellectual and emotional conclusions. The negative position had secret roots, with his critiques of modern literature Steiner, as a Jewish survivor, attacked the extreme "silence" of post-war language, where the cultural mood was basically oriented towards the technological future. Steiner wanted to re-educate the cultural decay of humanity into real historical research. Steiner's work started as literary journalist to review modern literature. Then, with the professorship of English language and comparative literature at the University of Geneva, Steiner progressed to the full voice of academic criticism. In his academic career, Steiner sought to find a remedy for his cultural skepsis. As an eminent scholar, he travelled around the world, working as Distinguished Fellow at the Universities of Princeton University, New York University, Yale University, and other teaching institutions. After his retirement, he became an Extraordinary Fellow at Churchill College of the University of Cambridge, where he died in 2020. Steiner was an emigré thinker inspiring with exciting ideas and passionate thoughts by shifting intellectual readers between literary, historical, scientific, and cultural areas. He hunted after literary (that is, fictional) facts to explore the deeply felt irreality of cultural history and civilization, arts and science, language and politics, but the dignity of his torment was based on his Jewish faith against the secular world. The problematic but self-conscious character of Steiner's indefatigable writing-and-reading supersedes the scientific frontiers of academic departments to create one major universe for all students, taking part in art and sciences. Steiner's ultimate goal was to make from the fragmented culture divided in separate sciences—what he predicted as the future "postculture," which was learning the episodes of recent history of Europe's literature—to transform the critical thoughts into a new world. Steiner's first memory was inextricably bound up with the horror stories of cultural unhousedness and hospitability, racial inflation, and political history together with his family's struggles to survive the Nazi Holocaust. His research as a "second-hand" critic of literature was enriched by his infinite information to resolve the ignorance of the audience into his encouraging message to "the knowledge and governance of human possibility" for all readers. His skeptical concept crisscrossed the troublesome years of the Holocaust to reconstruct the art of future criticism. Steiner's self-referentiality was affected by the subliminal traumas of his malformed right hand. He suffered this disability as a tentative sign of warning or perhaps alarm. Steiner's secret disability seemed to allow him to function without difficulties and uncertainties, but still seemed to make him spiritually unable to function as an equal in a social group. Instead, his mood radiated his aloof and arrogant superiority in scholarly talent. I recollect that, in early 1970, Steiner was invited to speak at a small gathering of translation theorists at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Translation studies had just emerged from the marginal footnotes of the experiences of the literary translator to operate as "free" translation of images, similes, and metaphors. Translation had built a "fresh" language, but the mixed branch of translation studies was still an illusion for the academic community. As I recall, Steiner's performance...

Beat King for Sale

Beat King for Sale James Janko (bio) Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century Gerald Nicosia Noodlebrain Press 192 Pages; Print, $24.95 When poet Gary Snyder first met Jack Kerouac in San Francisco in 1955, he noticed "a palpable aura of fame and death." Kerouac was largely unknown at the time, but Snyder sensed in him a cauldron of creative energy, a volcano about to erupt. Perhaps no one knows more about the life and work of Jack Kerouac than biographer Gerald Nicosia, the author of Memory Babe (1983). Allen Ginsberg hailed this book as "a monument of Kerouac." Unfortunately, Memory Babe has been out of print for more than eighteen years, not because it lacks an audience but because it has been systematically removed from the Kerouac canon. I read Nicosia's newest book, Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century, with a mixture of fascination and horror. In the hands of a lesser writer, the fate of Jack Kerouac's archive would read like a legal brief. Instead, Nicosia's prose sparks with insight and drama at every turn. At center stage is the multi-million-dollar heist of a literary estate. When Jack Kerouac died in October of 1969, his mother, Gabrielle Kerouac, was the sole beneficiary. Gabrielle died four years later. Her will specified that the entire estate and all assets go to Stella Sampas Kerouac, Jack's widow. In 2009, almost thirty-eight years after Gabrielle's death, her will was proven to be a forgery in a Florida courtroom. In the meantime, the siblings of Stella, led by the late John Sampas, had sold off much of the estate, including the famous rolled manuscript of On the Road (1957), which netted 2.43 million dollars in 2001. Troves of Jack Kerouac's papers ended up in the hands of private collectors and dealers. An arcane statute protects the Sampas family from having to return the stolen property and the profits thereby generated. To this day, the family retains control of Jack Kerouac's literary estate. What is at stake besides money? According to Nicosia, Jack Kerouac carefully organized his archive in filing cabinets in the hope that his papers would be available to scholars and biographers. His daughter Jan, despite being disowned by her father, helped to lead an effort to preserve her father's writings in one public institution. Instead, Jack Kerouac's estate is a literary diaspora. The examples are too numerous to cite, so I will offer just one. As a boy, Jack wrote more than one hundred letters to his friend, J. G. Apostolos. Since these letters are now the property of private collectors and dealers, they are largely inaccessible to biographers, scholars, and the general public. The author who helped to shape a generation of Americans, who died with ninetyone dollars in his bank account, has been divided and dispersed by money and power and greed. Nicosia acknowledges that there is no shortage of information about Jack Kerouac. Many of his books have been reissued, and articles and biographies continue to be written. According to Nicosia, however, there is a problem of censorship. The Sampas family was not only able to choose the editors for reissued books, but to determine—to some extent—what would be revealed about Jack Kerouac and what was best kept in the shadows. The intention was to create the best possible product for consumption. Nicosia's Memory Babe has long been confined to the shadows. The critical biography of Jack Kerouac was first published by Grove Press in 1983, and the paperback edition, under Viking Penguin, appeared two years later. William S. Burroughs called it "the best of many books published about Jack Kerouac's life and work, accurately and clearly written, with a sure feeling for Jack's own prose." Praise came from all corners. Jean-Francois Duval, France's most authoritative Kerouac scholar, called it a "masterful book." The London Times Literary Supplement called it "the best biography of Jack Kerouac." Why, then, has Memory Babe been out of print for more than eighteen years? Nicosia supported Jan Kerouac and Jack Kerouac's nephew, Paul Blake, Jr., in their attempts...