Literary Thinking Research Articles

Caucus-Racing

This essay asks why Alice's Adventures in Wonderland would feature something as practically political as a caucus. After nearly drowning in Alice's tears, the Dodo suggests to her and other animals “that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.” In order to figure out what a “caucus-race” is doing in Wonderland, this essay looks at the history of the caucus, recent political theories of democracy, Lewis Carroll's mathematical work on the theory and practice of elections, and, finally, his literary thinking about what it might really mean to live democratically.

From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking

“They been full (w)roth(e) al day, as men may see”; or, Contiguous Roth

“They been full (w)roth(e) al day, as men may see”; or, <i>Contiguous Roth</i>

“Might be going to have lived”: The West in the Subjunctive Mood

This essay works by a series of productive juxtapositions of historical, literary, and critical texts (rather than a straight linear argument) to evoke the elusive terrain of the literary West. He argues that literary thinking about the West operates in the “subjunctive mood” and attempts to figure the West as a space of perpetual incompleteness. It is as grammatical a place as it is physical. Working from Thoreau, who stands in, in a limited sense, for a nineteenth-century imagination of the West as the potent space on which America could “write” its civic history, toward Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1985 experimental utopia Always Coming Home , the essay gestures toward several nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers and critics, both within and without western studies, including Adrienne Rich, Susan Howe, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams, and earthworks artist Robert Smithson. I suggest that some of the most interesting texts of the western tradition—both literary texts of the West and critical works of western studies—are informed by writers’ radical self-consciousness of their own implication within the histories and power structures they simultaneously critique. Western writers must recognize their position as both products and mediators of western history.

The Age Of Utopia: Alfonso Reyes, Deep Time And The Critique Of Colonial Modernity

The Age Of Utopia:Alfonso Reyes, Deep Time And The Critique Of Colonial Modernity Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado Utopias, those ideals both revered and disdained, inhabit crucial corners of the literary canon. One can certainly remember the elaborate utopias that filled the advent of cultural modernity, from the delusional dreams of El Dorado and the New Jerusalem, passing through Thomas More's excessively normative world, all the way to Jonathan Swift's brilliant but ultimately obnoxious archipelago. Still, those comprehensive utopias are only a part of the complex history of the idea, particularly when one considers that, at least in many cases, it carried nothing less than colonialism in its underbelly. Still, more promising utopias remain in the forgotten corners of textual traditions, buried in the marginal writings of major figures, ignored by the critical whirlwind that monumentalizes their authors. I want to start this note by one such moment, a striking assertion that promises a utopia without describing it, and an engagement with centuries of political and literary thinking that leads to a crucial statement: El estado normal puede ser el de pasividad; pero el estado frecuente, constante, el que da su sello a la humanidad, y que, por lo mismo, merece llamarse - siquiera prácticamente - el estado humano, es el de protesta. Si el hombre no hubiera protestado, no habría historia - historia en el sentido común de la palabra. El albor de la historia es un desequilibrio entre el medio y la voluntad humana, así como el albor de la conciencia fue un desequilibrio entre el espectáculo del mundo y el espectador humano. El hombre sonríe: brota la conciencia. Y el hombre se nutre de los elementos que le da el miedo. ¿Sonríe por segunda vez? Protesta, no le basta ya la naturaleza. ¿Emigra, o siembra, o conquista, o forma las carretas en círculo como una trinchera de la tribu contra los ataques de las fieras? [End Page 93] Pues entonces funda la civilización y empieza con ella la historia. Mientras no se duda del amo no sucede nada. Cuando el esclavo ha sonreído comienza el duelo de la historia. (Reyes III, 242). The master and the slave in this passage come from a familiar source, Hegel's Phenomenology (111-19), except that in here the consciousness of the slave does not emerge at the end of the dialectic, but at its outset, a smile that marks the consciousness of the slave as the foundational act not only of civilization, but of history itself. In this assertion we do not see utopia defined, but the necessary gesture at the beginning of every utopian intervention. The source of this paragraph is a little-known essay entitled "La sonrisa," originally published in a 1917 book called El suicida. Its author is Alfonso Reyes, a foundational figure of the tradition of thinking known as Latin Americanism, which may be defined as the constant assertion of Latin America as a site of critical thinking and as an articulation of projects of emancipation vis-á-vis modernity and colonialism. The historical background of Reyes's essay is not trivial either: "La sonrisa" was written in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, from a self-imposed exile in Spain and France, as one of the first attempts to theorize the emergence of a large array of social sectors into a form of historical agency and subjectivity previously denied by the national elites. The historical implications go even further: it is important to note that Reyes, the son of a prominent Porfirian general who died in the revolt that overthrew the first Revolutionary regime in 1913, was nonetheless ideologically sympathetic to the Revolution. Being a man of letters, Reyes was part of a group of intellectuals, the "Ateneo de la Juventud," strongly committed to translate the social force of the Revolution into a spiritual transformation of Mexico at large. In these terms, "La sonrisa" is an almost unique effort to understand the Mexican Revolution as a philosophical event of ontological emancipation, thus departing from the work of many of his contemporaries, like José Vasconcelos, who understood it in racial terms, as the triumph of the mestizo. "La...

From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (review)

From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (review)

Literary Learning: Teaching the English Major, by Sherry Lee Linkon

Sherry Lee Linkon. Literary Learning: Teaching the English Major. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. xvi, 163p. ISBN 9780253223562. $24.95.As the lone instructor of our department’s Introduction to Literary Studies and Capstone courses (the only two courses we teach exclusively for English majors), I was comforted and excited to find a practical study devoted to seeing literature pedagogy through a literary lens, not an assessment rubric! Sherry Lee Linkon, a professor of English and American Studies at Youngstown State University, exposes the very ways English “experts” (literature professors) employ “literary knowledge” in their own scholarly and pleasurable interactions with texts. She goes on to suggest that professors can advance student learning and an appreciation for the complexity of literary analysis by appropriately employing this knowledge in assignment and course design. The value of Linkon’s book resides in its confident application of “literary thinking” to the literature classroom and even to the professional exigencies of faculty scholarship and assessment

“Master Yan's Family Admonition Article”: The Alternative Narrative of Literary Thought in Admonition Texts

“Master Yan's Family Admonition Article”: The Alternative Narrative of Literary Thought in Admonition Texts

How the Analyst Thinks as Clinician and as Literary Reader*

In the first chapter of The Analyst's Ear and the Critic's Eye, we described and made use of a form of psychoanalytic literary thinking and writing that reflects the psychoanalyst's lived experienc...

Henry David Thoreau: Literary Transcendentalism

During the mid-19th century, New England was experiencing Transcendentalism as a religious, philosophical and literary movement. Despite being inspired by German and British Romanticism, due to its nature which incorporated true notions of American individualism, Transcendentalism was a distinct American movement. Individuals like Thoreau constructed the political dimension of Transcendentalism by putting their transcendentalist beliefs into action by disobeying the government. The true transcendentalist movement was rooted in various influential factors including but not limited to slavery and the civil war, women’s rights, growing industrialism and social gap.Thoreau’s writings are a fit expression of a life based on high ideals and aspirations which integrates integrity and morality. He tends to spent words in pursuit of spiritual development, and it is due to the universal truth behind the particular and the personal that he conveys transcendent meaning. The present article triesto have a closer look at Thoreau’s transcendental literary theory and the way it was presented in his works of art. The article started with proposing a research question regarding the basis of Thoreau’s Transcendental literary thinking and how he presented it in his writings which he regarded as interconnectionamong physical, intellectual, and spiritual worlds.

The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures (review)

Reviewed by: The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures Neal Joseph Loevinger (bio) The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures, by Daniel Hillel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. The story that Daniel Hillel tells about the Israelites and their far-flung descendants goes something like this: There is a land between the river and the sea that is unlike any other land in the surrounding regions. Those other lands, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, have rivers and irrigation, while the land of Canaan has only rain for its crops—plentiful in some years, and scarce in others. Thus, over time, the small tribe of wandering herders that began to settle there developed a religion uniquely expressive of [End Page 111] the contingency of divine favor. In Hillel’s words, the Israelites were always on “probation.” They thus became morally introspective and persistently hopeful that spiritual improvement would bring about a better future—useful qualities for a people destined to wander in exile far from the land of their original settlement. In Hillel’s telling, dependence on rain wasn’t the only environmental influence on the Israelites: the very fact that their land encompassed several distinct ecological zones, including mountains, desert, semi-arid plains, and access to the sea, was itself a key factor in the development of monotheism. Other peoples had local gods, but the Israelites were one people in a varying landscape, which led them to the realization that nature itself was unified at a higher level of creation. Thus, Hillel’s “natural history” turns deuteronomistic theology on its head: it’s not that covenantal monotheism leads to the reward of the Land, but rather that inhabiting an ecologically varied land brings a people to monotheism—understood here to mean worship of a God who is not limited to only one sort of natural realm. This is a wonderfully interesting theory, laid out clearly in a book that provides equal measures of reward and frustration. First, however, let us be clear on what this book is and what it is not. Although it is called a “Natural History of the Bible,” it is not a systematic guide to the flora, fauna, and landscapes mentioned in the Tanakh. Those books exist, but Hillel is up to something more ambitious: an explication of the environmental and ecological influences on ancient Israelite society, in order to explain how such a society would produce the texts we call Scripture. As he puts it, “not all is determined by the environment, but much is influenced by it” (p. 25). The Natural History of the Bible is an overarching introduction to biblical history, seen through the lens of ecological influences, much as other books about the Bible adopt a historical, literary, or feminist perspective. Dr. Hillel, an environmental scientist born in Israel who grew up connecting land to text, clearly loves the Bible. He wants us to understand it better, and he often succeeds, helping this reader see new insights in familiar stories such as Jacob’s descent into Egypt and Moses’s return after exile in Midian. Hillel offers fascinating insight into both poetry and prose. Yet it’s never quite clear which texts he takes at face value and which he believes are legends or exaggerations of some less dramatic historical truth. For example, he considers it plausible that the Israelites could have feasted on quail in the wilderness, but the story of manna is deemed “completely mythical” (p. 129). Furthermore, despite great care in explaining the ecological settings of various narratives, many plausible naturalistic explanations for supernatural phenomena in the Bible often seem to miss the point. Yes, it’s conceivable that all of the plagues in Egypt could have been natural occurrences that became embellished memories over time. Yet such a discussion tends to obscure the larger moral point about the arrogance of Pharaoh and the enduring covenant bestowed upon the Israelites. Sometimes [End Page 112] I wonder if Hillel is so firmly rooted (so to speak) in the natural world that he forgets that our ancestors were capable of literary thinking. For example, consider his discussion of...

Fatemeh Chehregosha Azinfar, Atheism in the Medieval Islamic and European World: The Influence of Persian and Arabic Ideas of Doubt and Skepticism on Medieval European Literary Thought (Bethesda, Md.: Ibex Publishers, 2008). Pp. 272. $80.00 cloth.

Fatemeh Chehregosha Azinfar, Atheism in the Medieval Islamic and European World: The Influence of Persian and Arabic Ideas of Doubt and Skepticism on Medieval European Literary Thought (Bethesda, Md.: Ibex Publishers, 2008). Pp. 272. $80.00 cloth. - Volume 43 Issue 4

Ignoble Fate and Noble Sentiment: On Yan Geling’s Feminine Mentality and Her Immortal Fusang

It is Yan Geling’s invariable literary thoughts and feelings that express the real deep affections and experiences of women. As a Chinese American writer, she has invented one Chinese story after another. All her stories are unique, intricate and imbued with deep affectations. In Fusang, Yan Geling revealed the hard, bloody and tragic history of the Chinese immigrants. Her narration is a new annotation of the ancient Chinese femininity, gender relationship and cross-cultural communication. In the novel, the author, basing on cross-cultural communication and combining her personal life experiences with the story, showed deep concern for the survival conditions of the traditional oriental females so as to arouse readers’ rational thought and emotional resonance. Through the vivid feminine imagery living at the bottom of the social ladder, Yan opened the window for readers to spy on feminine primitive potency and explore into the secret buried deep in human nature.

Somewhere Between What Is and What If: Fictionalisation and Ethnographic Inquiry

Fictionalisation seems to render ethnographic inquiry suspect as research appropriate to the social sciences because it subverts a claim of realism or objectivity. This leads some ethnographers to propose alternative criteria for validation, such as participation and evocation, which offer alignment with realism; others suggest that scientific values of veridical observation should be replaced by the literary values of stylistic representation. This article argues that fictionalisation plays an essential and constructive role in both scientific and literary thinking and discourse to which philosophers have paid attention for centuries. In prioritising mediation between writer and reader rather than sociological description, ethnography may be considered from a cultural‐historical perspective. How we make worlds out of our words becomes an important methodological question.

Talking About Books With Young Children: Analyzing the Discursive Nature of One-to-One Booktalks

Research Findings: Reading aloud to children is recognized as a pedagogically valuable practice. The literature suggests that the conversations that surround read-alouds are pivotal to their effectiveness. Yet teachers often find it difficult to foster lively booktalks characterized by abstract, complex thinking, especially with young children. This article presents a two-phase qualitative study of one-to-one booktalks between young students and prospective teachers. The study sought to examine the discursive nature of such interactions and scrutinize the implementation of responsive booktalk practices. Three booktalk categories were identified: (a) recitation booktalks, or conversations fitting the Initiation–Response–Evaluation pattern; (b) true booktalks, or lively, reciprocal conversations involving high student engagement and fairly sophisticated literary thinking; and (c) awkward booktalks, or conversations with a distinct 1-sided pull from the preservice teacher. Further examination of the 3 categories yielded 4 conceptually significant subcategories: skill-focused and moralistic within the recitation category and analytical and experiential in the true category. Practice or Policy: The study findings suggest that literacy courses should provide opportunities for reexamining established beliefs regarding literary analysis, for studying authentic discussion strategies and reflecting upon the discursive nature of booktalks, and for reconsidering the objectives of booktalks.

From continuity to contiguity: toward a new Jewish literary thinking

Dan Miron-widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on modern Jewish literatures-begins this study by surveying and critiquing previous attempts to define a common denominator unifying the various modern Jewish literatures. He argues that these prior efforts have all been trapped by the need to see these literatures as a continuum. Miron seeks to break through this impasse by acknowledging discontinuity as the staple characteristic of modern Jewish writing. These literatures instead form a complex of independent, yet touching, components related through contiguity. From Continuity to Contiguity offers original insights into modern Hebrew, Yiddish, and other Jewish literatures, including a new interpretation of Franz Kafka's place within them and discussions of Sholem Aleichem, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Akhad ha'am, M. Y. Berditshevsky, Kh. N. Bialik, and Y. L. Peretz.

A Study of the Trend of the Anti-Orthodox Literary Thought toward Modernity in the Late Ming &amp; Early Qing Period

A Study of the Trend of the Anti-Orthodox Literary Thought toward Modernity in the Late Ming &amp; Early Qing Period

Limited Knowledge and the Tractarian Doctrine of Reserve in Christina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep

Limited Knowledge and the Tractarian Doctrine of Reserve in Christina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep Andrew D. Armond (bio) For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. — I Corinthians 13.9–12 Much recent criticism that deals in any depth with specific Tractarian tendencies in Rossetti’s devotional prose tends to note the ways in which Rossetti’s position as a female interpreter of Scripture seems to contradict the “party line” of the Tractarians that would forbid women from such interpretive activity. For example, while Robert Kachur’s “Repositioning the Female Christian Reader: Christina Rossetti as Tractarian Hermeneut in The Face of the Deep” seeks ostensibly to examine the ways in which Rossetti’s exegetical method can properly be called “Tractarian,” he focuses mainly on Rossetti’s use of Tractarianism as a kind of subversive pattern of reading that shuns the authoritative voice of patriarchal biblical interpretation. When Kachur does focus on specific Tractarian tenets, he examines Rossetti’s reliance on Keble’s notion of the interdependence of poetry and religion; but ultimately, he concludes that Rossetti “question[s] the patriarchal interpretations of the Bible handed down to her.”1 Kevin Mills’s “Pearl Divers of the Apocalypse” begins by resisting strictly biographical and/or psychological readings of The Face of the Deep. Mills observes that Rossetti’s protestations about the limits of her own knowledge and authority are couched in the rhetoric of “surfaces” and “depths.”2 Obviously, [End Page 219] this rhetoric is reflected primarily in the title of the work, as Rossetti herself avers: “what I write professes to be a surface study of an unfathomable depth.”3 Following the typical line of criticism, Mills writes that “certain aspects of the commentary suggest that this perceived lack of interpretive authority and the intertextual reflection to which it gives rise are, at least in part, a matter of gender ideology”; however, he also comes to the more obvious and salient conclusion that Rossetti’s hesitation is “also a matter of what knowledge is legitimate within the bounds of faith and obedience” (p. 27). Mills comes close to finding that Rossetti’s theological hesitancy concerning the secret mysteries of God derives from the Tractarian teaching known as Reserve. However, disappointingly, he ends his piece with conjecture about the relation of Rossetti’s hesitancies in The Face of the Deep to personal psychological tendencies that she might have been afraid to explore.4 He believes that this psychological reading of The Face of the Deep, first set forth by Jan Marsh in her biography of Rossetti, “would help to explain why the encounters with Christ are couched in a double rhetoric of confrontation with eyes that see into the heart of hearts, and of the face-to-face meeting: a split desire to be made whole and yet to preserve the secret” (Mills, p. 36). Though not as overtly psychological, Lynda Palazzo, in her 2002 monograph Christina Rossetti’s Feminist Theology, seems to recognize, as does Mills, the “tension between [Rossetti’s] need for a meaningful response [to Scripture] and her fear of overstepping the limit.”5 However, while Palazzo rightly brings attention to this creative tension between exploration and hesitation, and while her explanation that Rossetti offers in The Face of the Deep an “alternative, feminist, hermeneutic” (p. 122) is certainly plausible, Palazzo, like Mills, Marsh, and other Rossetti critics, ultimately fails to link Rossetti’s fears of “overstepping the limit” to what most certainly would have been a strong influence on her theological and literary thinking: the Tractarian doctrine of Reserve. It is my understanding, in contradistinction to the above critics, that Rossetti’s tension between exploration and hesitation can be understood most clearly through this...

On Liang Shiqiu’s Translation of The Complete Works of Shakespeare in China

Liang Shiqiu, who spent 38 years independently in translating the complete works of Shakespeare into Chinese and who had figured prominently in promoting the communication between mainland China and Taiwan, between China and the West, and between the past and the present, may be regarded as one of the greatest translators in China. Liang’s translation choice was rational under the specified historical backgrounds and was also the interpretation of his own literary thoughts. Liang abided by such translation principles as “clear distinction”, “careful inquiry”, “learned knowledge”, “careful thinking” and “sincere behaviors”. The main purpose of his translation was to introduce foreign culture and literature to Chinese readers. Liang’s translation strategies can be summarized as “the doctrine of the mean”, which means taking foreignizing as the main focus and domestication as the supplement. The importance of Liang’s translation can be measured in quantitative terms as well as in qualitative terms. Of course there are some flaws in his translation. In general, Liang Shiqiu’s translation gives us great enlightenment in comprehension of translation criticism.

The Changes of Literary Thoughts after Jingtai Era in Ming Dynasty

With politics as its driving force, the cabinet-style literature came into full bloom in the early Ming dynasty. After Emperor Jingtai’s reign, the literary thoughts started to change, which was also related to the political situation. After Tumu Crisis, the cabinet-style literature lost its political foundation, the cabinet-style practitioners gradually gave up their literary views and the core people of the cabinet-style literature were deprived of their influence as the political leaders. The scholars lost their confidence in the imperial government and the subjects of their literary creation were changed from the celebrating the prosperity of the country to the description of their personal life and interests. More importantly, the emergence of Baisha philosophy of mind broke the dominance of Cheng and Zhu’s idealist philosophy over the country. The focus was shifted from the ideal to the heart and the literary creation aimed at expressing the sincere feelings and representing the true human nature. In terms of the aesthetic interest, the classical and the standard gradually gave way to the natural and the pristine. The emergence of Baisha philosophy of mind and its related literary concepts to some extent led to the emotion-oriented literary thoughts in the late Ming dynasty.