Literary Subgenre Research Articles

Kamila Shamsie’nin Kül Olmuş Gölgeler romanında bellek ve uzamın sembolleştirilmesi

The relationship between memory and literature has occupied the agenda of literary environment for centuries. This bond seems to be so strong that new literary subgenres uplifting memory to a major and dominant position in literature have emerged. On the other hand, space and identity have also been regarded as the components of this relationship in the process of writing; or in other words, in the process of (re)invention or (re)production. Kamila Shamsie is among the authors examining the relation among memory, space, identity and literature in their works. In her novel, Burnt Shadows, she fictionalises the story of a Japanese lady, Hiroko Tanaka, injured in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki during the Second World War. The bombing has left both mental and physical damages on her. The author has externalised those damages through images and symbols. This article aims to discuss the relationship between memory and space through those externalised images and symbols. In this study, the reason why the author prefers the crane as the image symbolising the memory and why she chooses the back of Hiroko as the space of memory is tried to be examined within the frame of the relationship between memory and space in literature. In addition, the role and contribution of space and memory in the search of identity and the importance of life experience with regards to the construction of identity is also one of the goals of the study that is tried to be revealed.

Yo el Supremo como crítica al discurso del poder

Given the scarcity of contextual analyzes that point to the understanding of power in the Latin American environment from the region’s own literary subgenres, the present research studies this conception in the work Yo el Supremo, an outstanding piece of Latin American narrative and cusp of Dictator Novel. For this purpose, the literary and historical records that contextualize the narrative are analyzed. After the hermeneutical analysis of both records, power is determined as the ability to generate historical-discursive realities in the construction of historical characters, in this case the dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia. The reading of I the Supreme warns us about the complexity involved in the study of power in Latin American dictatorial figures within the social tissue and political life of its nations.

Prirodoslovno-umjetnička proza u hrvatskoj (dječjoj) književnosti

Natural-scientific prose is characterized by a specific description of the natural world in which scientific information is fitted in the experience of nature and animal characters only partially or minimally anthropomorphized. The goal of this research is firstly to explore the presence and influence of foreign literary authors in the history of Croatian (childrenʼs) literature, who dedicated their literary work to this unique literary subgenre, such as a Danish journalist and writer Carl Ewald and an American-Canadian zoologist and literary author Ernest Thompson Seton. Furthermore, the aim of the paper was also to study the contribution of Croatian authors – Miroslav Hirtz, Zlatko Špoljar, Antica Juras-Ljubić and Vlatko Šarić – in this narrative form by methodologically relying on the insights of literary science and animal studies.

Phraseological motifs for Distinguishing Between Literary Genres. A Case Study on the Motifs of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication

The present paper is based on the assumption that the language of the novel is characterized by a statistically relevant overrepresentation of certain linguistic units (e.g. lexemes, key words, collocations and colligations, Siepmann 2015). First steps towards checking the validity of this hypothesis had been undertaken in pioneering works in the 1990s/2000s (e.g. Stubbs & Barth 2003). These studies were however limited by the small size of their (exclusively English) corpora. The present study explores the role of some patterns (phraseological motifs) in distinguishing French literary subgenres. It also proposes a case study of some motifs related to the verbal (dire avec sourire ‘to say with a smile’) and non-verbal communication (adresser un sourire ‘to send a smile’). Unlike traditional corpus-stylistic analyses, which frequently focus on the style of a single author, our corpus-driven approach identifies lexico-syntactic constructions in literary genres which are automatically extracted from the corpora.The main purpose is to show the relevance of the notion of phraseological motif (Legallois 2012; Longrée & Mellet 2013; Novakova & Siepmann 2020) for the distinction of literary subgenres. Linking form and meaning, these ‘multidimensional units’ fulfil pragmatic as well as discursive functions.The data has been extracted from large French corpora of the PhraseoRom research project https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr. They are accessible on http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/phraseobase/index.html and contain 1000 novels (published from the 1950s to the present), partitioned into six sub-corpora: general literature (GEN), crime fiction (CRIM), romances (ROM), historical novels (HIST), science fiction (SF) and fantasy (FY).The results of our study reveal some unexpected differences between the literary subgenres: e.g. the motif dire d’une voix ‘to say in a voice’ in HIST compared to GEN. In FY, expressions of verbal communication are related to shouting and screaming. Expressions related to the non-verbal communication (prendre dans ses bras ‘to take in one’s arms’) are specific to ROM, where body language is overrepresented. In SF, there is a very limited number of these types of expressions. More generally, the motifs provide the link between the micro level (phraseological recurrences) and the macro level (the fictional script).

Testimonies to the History of Crime: The Italian Police Memoir, 1861-2014

The article analyses, for the first time, published memoirs by police officers following the unification of Italy. It argues that these memoirs are best considered as cultural artefacts, forming part of the popular literature of the period. That said, they developed into a distinct literary sub-genre. It is in fact a literary genre which developed as an editorial product in the wake of the nascent literature of investigation. Periodically, the memoir succeeded in arousing public interest, while never establishing itself as a stable genre in Italian publishing — something due to a lack of robust professional pride within the Italian police, which in turn provoked a lack of interest in the representation of their function and therefore an inability to enthuse the public. However, these memoirs contain stimulating pointers to the history of the social motivations, professional culture and ethics of police officers and officials, especially with reference to the history of the perception of crime and deviance in popular literature.

Extended phraseological units and literary genres

The present paper is based on the assumption that the language of the novel as well as that of its various subgenres is characterized by a statistically relevant overrepresentation of certain linguistic phenomena (e.g., lexemes, key words, collocations and colligations, Siepmann, 2015, 2016). Applying state-of-the-art lexicometric methods to extract recurring polylexical units in two large corpora of contemporary French and English novels, we explore the role of phraseological motifs in distinguishing literary subgenres. Unlike traditional corpus-stylistic analyses, which frequently focus on the style of a single author, our corpus-driven approach identifies features of literary (prose) genres on the basis of automatically extracted lexico-syntactic constructions (LSCs) that are statistically specific to a certain subgenre.

El elogio como expresión de agudeza en la universidad novohispana en el siglo XVIII

This paper aims to describe the horizon of expectations concerning praise or eulogy as a literary subgenre in New Spain’s 18th century. I tackle its background in European Renaissance, its affiliation with the rhetorical tradition of acumen or acuity, its inclusion in the university practices of New Spain and the controversy that arose because of that. Although not all intellectuals from New Spain decided to add acumen to university eulogies, the tradition of doing so prevailed.

El elogio como expresión de agudeza en la universidad novohispana en el siglo XVIII

This paper aims to describe the horizon of expectations concerning praise or eulogy as a literary subgenre in New Spain’s 18th century. I tackle its background in European Renaissance, its affiliation with the rhetorical tradition of acumen or acuity, its inclusion in the university practices of New Spain and the controversy that arose because of that. Although not all intellectuals from New Spain decided to add acumen to university eulogies, the tradition of doing so prevailed.

Simone Poggi’s Neo-Latin Fables: a Jesuit in the Footsteps of Phaedrus

The Italian Jesuit Simone Maria Poggi (1685-1749) was an outstanding member of the “Academy of Arcadia”, where he was known as Nimesius Ergaticus. He wrote ten books of Latin fables under the inspiration of Phaedrus. These apologues were published posthumously by Giuseppe Boero in 1883. In their composition, the Jesuit from Bologna used iambic senarii, the metre employed by Phaedrus, and tried to adapt the Roman fables to his time and circumstances. In this article, I will offer an overview of Poggi’s Latin fables paying special attention to his prologues, epilogues and programmatic fables, in which, following Phaedrus’ example, our poet gives many clues about his sources and literary interests along with autobiographical issues. I will focus my research on Poggi’s relationship with his predecessors and on his conception of the fable not only as a literary subgenre but also as a very useful educational tool. Summing up, my aim will be to show that Poggi’s fable collection constitutes a remarkable and curious product of Phaedrus’ influence on Neo-Latin literature in the eighteenth century.

Fraternelle mélancolie: Melville et Hawthorne, une passion

Fraternelle mélancolie: Melville et Hawthorne, une passion

Professors, Charlatans, and Spiritists: The Stage Hypnotist in Late Nineteenth-Century English Literature

In this paper I will explore the stereotype of the stage hypnotist in fiction literature through the analysis of the novellas Professor Fargo (1874) by Henry James (1843-1916) and Drink: A Love Story on a Great Question (1890) by Hall Caine (1853-1931). Both Professor Fargo and Drink form part of a literary subgenre referred to variously as “Hypnotic Fiction”, “Trance Gothic” or “mesmeric texts”. The objective of my research, which examines both the literary text itself and its historical and social context, is to offer new and interesting data that may contribute to the development of a poetics or theory of the literary subgenre of hypnotic fiction. In this sense, this article is an essential contribution to a broader analysis that I have been working on, focusing on highlighting the generic features of this type of literature by analysing the stereotypes of hypnotists in fiction.

Rebekah Hyneman’s Leaves of the Upas Tree: A Tale of (In)temperance and (Im)morality

Abstract The intent of this paper is to examine the use, by nineteenth-century American authors, of the temperance novel, a popular literary sub-genre in antebellum America, as a literary means for presenting the widespread controversy in the nation as regards the achievements of temperance societies. Moreover, my goal is to show that the popularity of temperance novels, in spite of their didactic and moralistic nature, displays the public’s readiness to consume temperance literature, thus reciprocating the attempt of writers to promote social ideals and heal social ills. Finally, since Rebekah Hyneman, a convert to Judaism, is the only Jewish-American writer who wrote a temperance novel, and is one among a small number of female writers who used this genre, it is interesting to examine if and how her double “Otherness” (being a Jew and a female novelist) distinguishes her from her literary Christian male and/or female counterparts. Hyneman’s novel Leaves of the Upas Tree: A Story for Every Household (1854–55) serves as a case in point of a temperance novel that demonstrates how a dysfunctional American family operates as a microcosm and how temperance and other charitable societies fail to cope with individuals’ tribulations. More importantly, the novel aims to attest that a familial defective unit, affected by excessive drinking, breeds a ruthless societal macrocosm, lacking compassion, empathy, and social and communal support. The merciless, xenophobic and anti-Semitic community depicted in the novel serves as a prism through which the author presents much more acute plagues afflicting America.

Belén Gopegui’s literature in crisis: Anticipating the literatura de la crisis?

In recent years, and in response to the global financial crisis of 2008, Spain has seen the surge of a new literary sub-genre, that of literatura de la crisis: novels, essays and short stories attempting to reflect and make sense of the crisis and its effects in the country. In this article, I propose that there is an alternative literature in crisis that, while at times overlapping with the aforementioned literatura de la crisis, also antedates it. Such literature shows a concern with socio-economic phenomena such as unemployment and job insecurity, precarity, the effects of globalization or the rise in inequality long before these issues became fashionable. In this article, I analyse four novels by Belén Gopegui that predate the crisis in order to trace the key features of her literature in crisis – chief among them is her meta-literary exploration of her own assimilation of (or possible complicity with) the hegemonic discourses she seeks to critique. Finally, I contend that the vindication of this literature in crisis is timely and relevant not only because of its connection to the booming sub-genre of literatura de la crisis but also because it is only through the radical interrogation of the status quo carried out by this author that the full emancipatory potential of literature and culture may be realized.

J.M HARRIS'IN LOKI'NIN MÜJDESI ADLI ESERINDE YENIDEN YAZIMIN MERKEZSIZLEŞTIRME OLARAK ANALIZI

Although rewriting master narratives like the Bible and mythology is a well-established literary sub-genre which goes back to Ovid and Virgil, it has obtained a new dimension as a challenging literary technique with Postmodernism. In the contemporary literary canon, there is a tendency to revisit canonical old texts and this literary practice is called “rewriting”. Many authors rewrite these old stories from new perspectives and sometimes even in more modern contexts. This literary method is full of promise of freshness and novelty for the author, the reader, and the critic. Rewriting an older text is to rediscover, redefine, and re-interpret it from a perspective challenging enough to force the reader and the critic to question everything they previously knew about the text. It is in this sceptical mood that postmodernist fiction employs the technique of rewriting. By means of rewriting the old texts, authors open up, for mini-narratives, new space previously invaded by grand narratives. With the newly freed mini-narratives come alternative realities that deconstruct the universal reality of grand narratives. This article aims to analyze the concept of rewriting in the novel genre as a postmodern critic of and challenge to grand narratives. How grand narratives work and how they are deconstructed through rewriting are analyzed in the example of the comparative analysis of the trickster figure Loki from Norse mythology and the rewriting of these myths from Loki’s perspective in Joanne M. Harris’ The Gospel of Loki. Rewriting in the context of this study is defined as a conscious, critical, and politically motivated postmodern technique.

Algunas propuestas para rehabilitar el uso de la biografía en la didáctica de la Lengua y la Literatura

En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la utilidad de la biografía para la clase de lengua y literatura propias desde la consideración de sus fundamentos psicológicos, a fin de promover su introducción habitual en las aulas y no sólo como subgénero literario. Asimismo, teniendo en cuenta el currículo en la enseñanza formal básica en España, se plantean algunas actividades con biografías y se dan unas pautas que ayuden a una adecuada selección de este tipo de textos.

La Guerra civil española como tema en la novela gráfica actual

The Spanish civil war and its postwar period remain two of the most important historical references of present-day Spain. Along with themes of strictly political nature addressing that period of time and with the negative aspects of the transition to democracy, themes of memory and postmemory (Hirsch 1992 / Liikanen 2015) appear. Both are closely related to – although not only to – the silencing of the victims of the mentioned historical periods. By this, I am referring to the ones defeated and to the next of kin of the disappeared.
 
 Despite the famous affair of the so-called “gentleman’s agreement”, the “amnesia”, the “forgetfulness” or the “silence” of the democratic transition, a variety of narrative works have emerged in recent history; literary works that in various manners have the Civil War and Franco’s posterior dictatorship as topics or common threads in their narrations[1]. 
 The consolidation of a new literary subgenre of hybrid characteristics combining the mode of narration found in novels and the specificities of the comic strip is a novelty in the context of Spanish literature. Although already canonized in the 1970’s in the United States (Eisner, 1978), the subgenre emerged in Spain during the end of the 1990’s. With the turn of the century, a new vision of the Spanish cartoon arrived: it was no longer fundamentally limited to the sphere of children, of satire, or of short comic strips in newspapers. With an expanded format, it began addressing the adult public.
 In the selection of graphic novels that I am presenting, there are various narrative strategies and aesthetics elaborated from accounts from the Civil War, and its prolongation in the Second World War, by authors who were not protagonists in the real-life events themselves and whom I include within the wide concept of postmemory. The prevailing ideas in all the texts are as follows: the necessary recuperation of the memory of the Civil War, the presentation of the present as a result of the past and the importance of knowing the points of view of the defeated in order to update the cultural identities of the territorial sphere of the Spanish state
 
 
 [1] I have already presented one such work during the «Romanist XV» « Escribir de Oídas: Final literature of the memory of the Spanish Civil War and its postwar period” (2012).
 

Hipnosis, magnetismo animal y monstruosidad en la literatura inglesa de finales del siglo XIX

En el presente trabajo exploraremos la imagen literaria del magnetismo animal y de la hipnosis a través del análisis de dos obras de ficción: las novelas El escarabajo (1897) de Richard Marsh y Drácula (1897) de Bram Stoker. Durante todo el siglo XIX, aunque principalmente a finales de este, fueron muchos los autores que recurrieron al magnetismo animal y la hipnosis, de forma ambiental o argumental, en sus creaciones de ficción, tanto fue así que Arthur Quiller-Couch, un importante crítico literario del siglo XIX, llegó a hablar del surgimiento de un nuevo subgénero literario que acuñó como “hypnotic fiction”. Partiendo de la idea de que en esta literatura de ficción mesmérica e hipnótica se pueden rastrear claramente unos estereotipos diferenciados de magnetizadores e hipnotizadores (unos más clásicos que otros) quienes hacen un uso diverso e incluso antagónico del magnetismo animal y de la hipnosis, mostraremos la relación de estos conocimientos con la figura del monstruo en las creaciones de Richard Marsh y Bram Stoker y como estos no pueden reducirse al estereotipo de magnetizador/hipnotizador villano, ya que los poderes mesméricos e hipnóticos funcionan aquí como agregados para conformar la monstruosidad del personaje.

Centones gongorinos en Nueva España

The poetic form known as cento, composed of sections or verses of other poems, represents a curious literary subgenre practiced since Classical times. In New Spain, we have examples of Virgilian centos, centos about Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Gongorian centos on the Immaculate Conception. This article contains both a brief introduction on this poetic form and the textual edition of the six Gongorian centos that were composed in New Spain.

Autoficción en la novela El orden del mundo

Este artículo analiza El orden del mundo de Ramiro Sanchiz desde la perspectiva de la autoficción. Analizamos dos elementos de la novela: la idea del libro total y la complejidad del narrador. Este análisis, aliado al concepto de bio/grafía de Maingueneau, nos permite reflexionar sobre la deconstrucción de novela y autobiografía al no aceptarlas como polos antitéticos en lo que concierne a la representación del yo autoral. También dialogamos con autores que discuten desde una perspectiva teórica el concepto de autoficción en El yo fabulado (Casas, 2014). Ese diálogo nos conduce a sugerir el abandono de la perspectiva que considera la autoficción como género o subgénero literario. Proponemos un desplazamiento semiótico del término autoficción hacia auto/ficción en el cual la barra expresa la opacidad, inestabilidad y reciprocidad constitutivas en la relación que se establece entre el yo autoral y el texto al redactar un manuscrito que recaerá

As Mulheres do Meu Pai: From Luanda to the Island of Mozambique, a road novel on board candongueiro

The universality of the ideal of freedom offered by the road leads authors of different countries and cultures to adopt the road novel as a medium of expression, regardless its historical indissociability to the United States of America. In this regard, the aim of this work is to verify if the characteristics of As Mulheres do Meu Pai (2007), by José Eduardo Agualusa, allow it to be classified as a road novel in the context of African literature. It was concluded that the work fulfils the majority of this literary subgenre basis requirements, specially the inevitable link between the physical and spiritual journeys, the confluence of several narrative genres, the space cartography as a reflection of the characters’ contemplative attitude, and the use of motorized transport. The predominance of masculine -another condition required in the literary subgenre road novel- fails to be achieved, because in As Mulheres do Meu Pai the single feminine traveller claims the leading role, establishing herself as the main figure of the work