Novelistic Prose Research Articles

Interpunktion und Textsegmentierung im frühen deutschsprachigen Prosaroman

Abstract On the threshold of the sixteenth century, publishers met the demands of a ready market: They provided a selection of German prose novels and adapted their publications to a broader, less homogeneous readership. Against this backdrop, the article discusses the still evolving system of segmentation (primarily punctuation). When punctuation was inserted into a text, it might have been the typesetter’s task to work out a system of usage. The typesetters reacted to this new challenge by using several, even contradicting principles in a bottom-up-process of bricolage: They separated prosodic, semantic, syntactic or memory units while simultaneously considering aesthetic demands (justification).

Style in the Novel

This article outlines a systematic theory of style that aims to combine “social formalism” with narratology. Beginning with a reading of a little-known essay by Raymond Williams on the history of English novelistic prose, the article argues that Williams’s insights into the social preconditions of modern style can be suggestively combined with Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s theory of the inherent multiplicity of novelistic discourse and Richard Walsh’s pragmatic theory of narrative “voice” to produce a core definition of style. Style is (1) a linguistic mode of social relation; (2) one of several subordinated, relatively autonomous linguistic operations or “substyles” (Walsh’s instance, idiom, interpellation); or more properly, (3) the total mode of configuration of these substyles. The article then proceeds to embed this definition within a broader critical poetics. It argues that stylistic production in the novel is literally “in-formed” by several factors, for example, the “linguistic situation” (the state of language as a writer would have experienced it, including its inner tensions and social stratifications), “stylistic ideology” (the self-conscious stylistic projects that writers develop), and the linguistic proprieties of inherited novelistic genres, types, and forms (which are themselves mediations of sociality). These categories are exemplified through an analysis of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927).

Романная проза Захара Прилепина как «самоучитель психологических ситуаций»

Романная проза Захара Прилепина как «самоучитель психологических ситуаций»

Збирач образів: Антон Заньковський та його міфологія

This article is both a culturological and literary-critical work. It is devoted to the world and mythology of Anton Zan’kovskiy’s works. Anton Zan’kovskiy is a writer from St. Petersburg. But he was born in Voronezh in 1988. Thus, his work is the world of these two cities and walks into his memory places. It is a solo of a trot, hiking through the forest. He is the author of the novels "Deucalion" (2015) and "Ragwoman" (2016), which were published in the literary magazine "Neva". Anton Zan’kovskiy often mentions Ukrainian culture in his novels, he also uses sometimes Ukrainian language. When a reader is immersed in the world of Anton Zan’kovskiy's novels, he feels the way of Andrei Bely, Osip Mandelshtam, Vladimir Nabokov, Alexander Blok, Anatoly Mariengof vision. These novels destroy the habitual space-time, bringing our perception closer to the primordial singularity, to the irreducibility of the birth moment of the Universe. It can be said, that these works are nostalgic and melancholic, this is an appeal to the golden age of youth and childhood. Anton Zan’kovskiy writes novels – prose works, but his novels are “werewolves”. In fact, prose novels turn out to be poems. The world in these novel-poems is depicted as unevenness, gluing. Life is represented as rhythm, hesitation, confusion. The imagery of Anton Zan’kovskiy’s works appears to be an ontology on-the-scene, thanks to the special sensuality and almost physical sensibility of the text. The author is a collector of sensations and images, after which, however, emptiness and timelessness appear, and memory is replaced by oblivion and silence. However, Anton Zan’kovskiy's works arise from a fall, from "diving for pearls" into pensive – a deep of the past, from the melancholy, from a desire to return to the past. The author wants to return to the past and to go through a phase – to feel the same emotions. It is believed that the world of these werewolf novels is born from the feelings of decadence, from the emotions of decline. That’s why the reader can see despair, disappointment, and lack of surprise: the author has lost his spontaneity, and the world has ceased to be magical. This is the mythology of perpetual motion, "topographic amnesia", flanking, labyrinth, streets, ornaments, arabesques, lines, allusions, past, childhood, nostalgia, regret, anxiety and dream.

Humanist Spirituality and Poetry: Rabindranath Tagore & George Herbert

<p class="GBbody">This paper concentrates on how the growth of Rabindranath’s spiritual awareness is gradually revealed in his poetry from 1882 onwards, and in his prose lectures and novels, especially <em>Gora </em>and<em> Chaturanga. </em>Comparison of his devotional outlook with George Herbert’s (already present in the review of the English <em>Gitanjali, Times Literary Supplement, </em>7 November, 1912) is further explored for the present. His sense of divine presence in the natural world and in the heart (<em>jivan devata</em>) is related to his social consciousness and his moderation, and transcended the ordinary thinking of his conflict-ridden times in both East and West, to present a continuing challenge to both religions and secularity in the post-colonial world.</p>

Artes populares: Serial Amusement between the Effects of Genre and Medium in early Modernity (Artes Populares: Serielles Vergnügen in der Frühen Neuzeit zwischen Gattungs- und Medieneffekten).

This article examines the status of ‘Unterhaltung’ in early modern prose (novels, short novellas etc.) while focussing on the intersections of an evolving literary market and the production of new medial artefacts in 16th and 17th centuries. Following the traces of the emerging poetological discourse in the poetics as well as in the prefaces it offers a perspective on popular ‘arts’ in the literal sense of artes populares (Bodmer and Breitinger) which is to be characterized by an emphasis on seriality in terms of novelty and reiteration, a distinctive autoreflexive gesture and the promotion of an effective idea of fiction.

Talking comics with Minimum Wage creator Bob Fingerman

Artist and writer Bob Fingerman is the creator of the comic book series Minimum Wage and the critically acclaimed graphic novels White Like She, Beg the Question and From the Ashes. He is also the author of two prose novels, Bottomfeeder (2006) and Pariah (2010). In this interview he discusses the evolution and publication history of Minimum Wage within the context of his work and career to date. Additional topics explored within the interview include his art and writing process; how European comics have historically differed from North American comics in terms of approach and aesthetic principles; comic strip art; the art and influence of Heavy Metal magazine, Moebius (Jean Giraud), Richard Corben, and Gahan Wilson; and prioritising creator-owned work over work-for-hire.

Marital and Ethical Problems at Court: Pontus und Sidonia by Eleonore of Austria:

This article investigates how a late medieval female author, Duchess Eleonore of Austria, dealt with fundamental questions of love and marriage in her German-language novel Pontus und Sidonia. In essence, the work is a translation of the French version, and yet it is a significant and innovative contribution to German literature. Arguably, this work contributes to the body of Austrian literature. Since Eleonore addressed her husband explicitly, while also making a strong appeal to her audience, this novel may be studied as a literary work characteristic of the culture at the Austrian court of Tyrol. Moreover, it is a model case for ideal lovers who are destined to become partners in marriage. While Pontus und Sidonia has attracted only limited interest within modern scholarship, this piece argues that the novel deserves considerable recognition both in comparison with other prose novels of its time and as a literary work that signals a major paradigm shift in late medieval discourse on marriage, political leadership, and courtly ethics.

Para-Literary Ethnography and Colonial Self-Writing: The Student Notebooks of the William Ponty School

Beginning in 1933, West African students at the Ecole Normale William Ponty—the elite French colonial teacher-training college—completed their studies by writing ethnographic monographs on some aspect of their community of origin during their summer vacation. This corpus of nearly eight hundred monographs is collectively known as the “Cahiers Ponty” (Ponty notebooks). Ponty students were encouraged to “avoid false literary descriptions” but in practice many drew heavily on the tropes of novelistic prose—especially those of the bildungsroman. This essay examines the rhetorical and narrative strategies Ponty students employ to produce legible accounts of their own socialization as modern subjects, as well as the feedback from teachers that constrained their performances. I argue that the Ponty notebooks exemplify a distinct discipline—para-literary ethnography—that had a role in shaping the contours of colonial modernity and early francophone literature in West Africa.

Kazimierz Bartoszyński w Poznaniu

The author of this article discusses Kazimierz Bartoszynski’s didactic activity and writings, i.e. his doctoral thesis titled O powieściach Fryderyka Skarbka [On Fryderyk Skarbek’s Novels] (which was published in 1963) and his later articles on the gaweda (i.e. a story stylized as an oral tale) and historical novel (which are collected in the volume titled O polskich prozach powieściowych – slynnych i nieco zapomnianych [On Polish Prose Novels – Those Famous and Slightly Forgotten Ones] (2011)). These writings were a continuation of the studies of the 19th-century novel thathad been conducted in Poznan.

Transcultural Experiences in the Late Middle Ages: The German Literary Discourse on the Mediterranean World—Mirrors, Reflections, and Responses

As recent scholarship has demonstrated, the world of the Mediterranean exerted a tremendous influence not only on the societies and cultures bordering the Mediterranean Sea during the late Middle Ages, but had a huge influence on the mentality and culture of the world north of the Alps as well because it was here where East and West met, exchanged ideas and products, and struggled to find, despite many military conflicts, some kind of transcultural. The highly complex conditions in the Mediterranean realm represented significant challenges and promises at the same time, and no traveler from Germany or England, for instance, whether a merchant or a pilgrim, a diplomat or an artist, could resist responding to the allure of the Mediterranean cultures. The corpus of travelogues and pilgrimage accounts is legion, as scholars have noted already for quite some time. But we can also observe literary reflections on the Mediterranean especially during the fifteenth century. The emergence of the late medieval and early modern prose novel is often predicated on transcultural experiences, whether they entailed military conflicts or peaceful encounters between Christians and Muslims. These literary texts did not necessarily respond to the historical events, such as the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but they document an intriguing opening up of German, English, French, and Flemish, etc., society to the Mediterranean world. The prose novels discussed in this paper demonstrate that Germany, in particular, was a significant hinterland of the Mediterranean; somewhat farther apart, but still closely connected. The literary evidence will allow us to identify how those transcultural encounters were recognized and then dealt with.

Family and Kinship in Early Modern German Prose Novels

The debate about the relevance of the marriage theme in the late Middle Ages has been ongoing for a long time. We are still collecting data to establish a solid paradigm for future discussions about this topic. The current article examines two highly popular prose novels, Thüring von Ringoltingen's Melusine (1456) and the anonymous Fortunatus (1509) where the married life of the protagonist gains much more traction in the narrative development than in previous courtly romances. Most importantly, both authors place significant emphasis on the role of the family and portray their characters as situated in the network of smaller social units consisting of parents and children only. We can thus recognize the meaningfulness of the new genre of the prose novel (Volksbuch) in the public discourse about family and kinship during the late Middle Ages.

Appunti sulla circolazione delle prose arturiane in Italia settentrionale tra Due е Trecento: tradizioni illustrative e livelli di lettura

А close look at the manuscripts of Arthurian prose novels as they circulated in northern Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries enables an analysis of how these books were decorated and how this relates to their geographic movement. The elements of continuity and fracture imbedded in tradition show that the illustration cycles had a double function closely related to the reception of the material. The iconographic formulas common to all the manuscripts considered here can bе explained by distinct reading modes, which, in turn, depended on the specificity and ideological values of the narrative structures of the Arthurian prose novel. At the same time, the variations these formulas underwent in each manuscript were the result of reading skills, which differed according to the category of readers and which were founded on distinct idealizations of the Arthurian imaginary.

Wahrnehmung – Experiment – Erinnerung. Erfahrung und Topik in Prosaromanen der Frühen Neuzeit

Abstract This essay inquires into the semantics of the term “experience” in a selection of prose novels from the early modern period. Against the background of a complex history of discourses about experience, ultimately leading to a fully articulated concept of “empiricism” and “experiment”, the author traces the term’s usages in Hartlieb’s ‘Alexander’, in the novel ‘Fortunatus’ as well as in Wickram’s ‘Of Good and Bad Neighbours’. Furthermore, he elaborates those cultural topoi of experience that are based principally on an understanding of “memory” and “adaptation”. As a result, the author is able to show, that all three texts place varying emphases on the topics of experience.

Lionel Lincoln de James Fenimore Cooper: apropriações literárias na prosa romanesca norte-americana da primeira metade do século XIX

Em 1824, o romancista nova-iorquino James Fenimore Cooper empreendeu uma viagem de pesquisa até a cidade de Boston, Massachusetts, para escrever o romance histórico Lionel Lincoln. A intensão inicial do autor era publicar uma série de treze romances, cada um ambientado nas treze colônias que deram origem aos Estados Unidos da América durante os eventos da Guerra de Independência (1775-1783) intitulada Legends of the thirteen republics. No entanto, o fracasso desta obra sepultou a ideia e Lionel Lincoln ficou sendo o único de seus trabalhos que Cooper considera uma “obra histórica”. Apesar de não ter feito sucesso de crítica ou público, Lionel Lincoln não deixa de ser um exercício em gênero que ainda não tinha muitos adeptos no continente americano e que mostra a apropriação de diversos tipos de narrativa por parte de seu autor, sobretudo o romance gótico e relatos de campanhas militares. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar essas apropriações tendo em vista o estabelecimento de uma forma de prosa romanesca que ainda estava em desenvolvimento no início do século XIX.

The Graphic Novel and the Age of Transition: A Survey and Analysis

The Graphic Novel and the Age of TransitionA Survey and Analysis Stephen E. Tabachnick Owing to a large Number of excellent adaptations, it is now possible to read and to teach a good deal of the Transition period literature with the aid of graphic, or comic book, novels. The graphic novel is an extended comic book, written by adults for adults, which treats important content in a serious artistic way and makes use of high-quality paper and production techniques not available to the creators of the Sunday comics and traditional comic books. This flourishing new genre can be traced to Belgian artist Frans Masereel's wordless woodcut novel, Passionate Journey (1919), but the form really took off in the 1960s and 1970s when creators in a number of countries began to employ both words and pictures. Despite the fictional implication of graphic "novel," the genre does not limit itself to fiction and includes numerous works of autobiography, biography, travel, history, reportage and even poetry, including a brilliant parody of T. S. Eliot's Waste Land by Martin Rowson (New York: Harper and Row, 1990) which perfectly captures the spirit of the original. However, most of the adaptations of 1880–1920 British literature that have been published to date (and of which I am aware) have been limited to fiction, and because of space considerations, only some of them can be examined here. In addition to works now in print, I will include a few out-of-print graphic novel adaptations of 1880–1920 literature because they are particularly interesting and hopefully may return to print one day, since graphic novels, like traditional comics, go in and out of print with alarming frequency. Outside of these adaptations, there are completely original graphic novels that utilize literary and historical characters and events from the period. Again, I do not have the space to treat them here. Two of the most famous are Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999), in which Sherlock Holmes, Allan Quatermain and Captain Nemo, among [End Page 3] other Victorian heroes, appear together, and From Hell (1991), a heavily footnoted but still fictional treatment of the Jack the Ripper case. Those who may be interested should read Christine Ferguson's “Steam Punk and the Visualization of the Victorian: Teaching Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell” in my edited collection, Teaching the Graphic Novel (New York: MLA, 2009). One basic difference between graphic novels and films, another visual medium into which literary works are often adapted, is that graphic novels offer a reading experience in which, as in traditional reading, the reader controls the speed of perception and can linger or look backward at will. And a basic difference between graphic novels and drama, another visual experience, is that the graphic novel can accommodate reasonably long passages of narration, while drama usually includes only dialogue. Another basic difference between graphic novels and film and drama adaptations is that the graphic novel illustrator can draw characters as he or she desires them to look, while film and drama directors are limited to the appearances of living actors available for the necessary roles. Moreover, unlike film or drama, the graphic novel can be seen as the attempt of the physical book to survive in an electronic age by combining the advantages of the traditional reading experience with those of the computer screen, which often provides visual objects alongside text. This opens up the possibility of discussions (in the scholarship and in the classroom) about the different visual media and the history of the physical book, including William Morris's emphasis on “the book beautiful” as a physical object, as well as about the very nature of reading. And improved text readers have moved the conversation about book history and the nature of reading to yet another dimension, since graphic novels no less than prose novels can be read on electronic readers, such as Amazon's Kindle 2. Regardless of the format in which it is read, what makes a good adaptation from pure text to graphic novel format? I think that two qualities are essential: first, a good adaptation should be faithful to...

Text, Kontext, Bild in illustrierten Handschriften des späten Mittelalters

Late medieval manuscripts often present very differentiating relations between text and illustration. In the case of the prose novels of Elizabeth, translated from French chansons de geste, the pictural strategy does not concentrate on the plot of the scenario, but embeds the main motif in a fuller context often not described explicitly in the textual narration. As principles of the pictural narration we can find out: contextualization of the scenario, establishing a sequential order of similar illustrations, repetition and variation of pictural formulas. This strategy of illustration refl ects a culture with focus on ambience and details producing narrative sense by refering back to collective social semantics.

A View of Life: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and the Novel

A View of Life:Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and the Novel Yi-Ping Ong I "My general task," Nietzsche scrawled, in the margins of his own copy of Cervantes's Don Quixote: "to show how life philosophy and art can have a deeper and affinitive relationship with each other."1 This enigmatic inscription commands a second reading not only because it seems to articulate the thread that links many of Nietzsche's philosophical projects together, but also because of the very book in which it appears. The book is not a lofty tome of Schopenhauer's philosophy, as might be expected, but a mere novel: a fact which suggests that the novel itself was the art form that precipitated reflection on the relation of art to what Nietzsche calls here "life philosophy." In this essay, my aim is to deepen critical understanding of the novel's influence on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, the two philosophers who are widely considered the fathers of existentialism. By means of a comprehensive overview of the novelistic reading and writing of these thinkers, I will show that both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were profoundly influenced by the literary form of the novel and by its techniques for representing consciousness, subjectivity, and worldview. My focus in the analysis that follows is on the question of why Nietzsche and Kierkegaard read novels, and not on the more specific question of what they gained from particular novels. Isolating form from theme has three main advantages. First, it elucidates an important aspect of the intellectual context for these philosophers that has received little scholarly attention, namely the issue of why Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were drawn to fictional novelistic prose and how this literary form [End Page 167] affected their philosophy. Second, it allows the "deeper . . . affinitive" relationship between existentialist philosophy and the novel form to emerge, revealing the way in which existentialism and realism in the novel share a distinctive stylistic approach to the understanding of lived experience. Finally, it illuminates an intellectual precedent for the work of later existentialist thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus, who drew increasingly on novelistic forms as both vehicle and inspiration for their philosophy. There are no previous studies devoted entirely to the novels read by Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, despite the fact that Nietzsche lists Stendhal and Dostoevsky as two of the greatest influences upon his thinking and that Kierkegaard's first published work is the review of a novel. Why did Nietzsche read the works not only of "philosophical" novelists like Stendhal, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, but also of Eliot, Twain, Sterne, and Flaubert? Why did Kierkegaard's interest in the "life-view" of the individual crystallize through his reflections on Hans Christian Andersen's novel Only a Fiddler? How did both of these existentialist thinkers link the task of connecting life and philosophy with their reading of novels, and how is their reading of novels related to their attempt to write philosophy in novel and increasingly novelistic ways? These questions lead us to address anew the issue of how philosophy and literature are related in a way that is not simply thematic or allegorical. Furthermore, they ask us to take into account the importance of the novel to thinkers whose work has primarily been studied in the context of other "serious" philosophical texts, despite the stylistic and formal affinity of their work to the novels they read. As Thomas Brobjer points out in his recently published work on Nietzsche's reading habits and intellectual sources, Nietzsche's Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography (2008), none of the standard works on Nietzsche comment on his reading or library despite the fact that his private library has been more or less preserved in its entirety.2 Brobjer's work is the only large-scale study of Nietzsche's reading to date; however, it limits itself to "the philosophical influences on Nietzsche," even as it acknowledges that he "often was influenced by some who cannot conventionally be regarded as philosophers: by authors and literary critics" (NPC, p. 3). Although Brobjer mentions several of these authors and critics, even noting some of the marginalia found in these texts, he places them largely in the context of influences upon Nietzsche...

Marvel Graphic Novels and Related Publications: An Annotated Guide to Comics, Prose Novels, Children's Books, Articles, Criticism, and Reference Works, 1965–2005

Marvel Graphic Novels and Related Publications: An Annotated Guide to Comics, Prose Novels, Children's Books, Articles, Criticism, and Reference Works, 1965–2005

When the Text Becomes the Teller: Apuleius and the Metamorphoses

In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, the text speaks, introducing itself to its audience in its own voice. When the text tells the audience to ask the question “Who is this?” it responds by giving a “family” history and linguistic genealogy. While the text highlights storytelling through its plot and situations, it also participates in storytelling, making itself the primary agent of transmission. During a time when ancient Rome highlighted the performances of literary works in order to offer authorized interpretations (that is, the performance of the text would indicate to the audience how to understand it), Apuleius’ text makes itself the performer and subordinates the audience to itself. This new relationship of audience to text that was created by a new use of storytelling allowed for the exhibition of and creation of a counter-culture that permitted imperial critique during the Age of the Antonines. The Metamorphoses, or Asineus Aureus, continually plays with the concepts of making a written text “speak,” with storytelling in literary form, and with the creation of an alternative hermeneutic of a mediating genre. The plot-line, a continuous wandering through the frontiers of the Roman Empire with a brief, glossed-over interlude in Rome, and the surprise ending of a conversion to the cult of Isis (the credibility of which is questionable), is full of detours and deceptions. The form continually slips from allusions to literary epic, to oral storytelling, to novelistic prose, all of which are attached to an introductory prologue that sets itself up as formally and narratologically distinct from the whole. The reader must be involved in the process of making meaning for this text and is explicitly called upon to speak at certain points. The historical situation of this work is the Age of the Antonines in the second century CE, a time period that Edward Gibbon called the “happiest period the world had ever known” (1963:14). Yet when read against Apuleius’ disruptive techniques of questioning discourses of power, the perception of the calm and serene historical period creates a conflict that needs to be addressed.