Writer Thinks Research Articles

NON-LINEAR ERA IN THE PRESENT LITERARY DISCOURSE

The article defines the need for research and analysis of non-linear epochs. This problem is currently relevant, since the dynamics of modern life require a theoretical understanding of the spontaneous processes taking place, as well as forecasting the ways of their further development. In contrast to stable eras, the analysis of which can be carried out using traditional methods, unstable periods that take place in conditions of crisis and chaos require a fundamentally different psycho-emotional, energy-emotional, spiritual and mental understanding. They arise on the border of colossal cultural epochs (antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, modern times, the transition to romanticism, the transformation of realism, etc.) and are characterized by spontaneous phenomena that grow as a result of contradictions and numerous fluctuations. In order to explain the logic of these phenomena in the development of literature, we consider it necessary to look from a new angle at the process of changing genre systems, mythopoetic and artistic thinking of writers, the psychology of creativity, the character level of works, etc. The role of such periods cannot be underestimated, since this is the time of creation of new directions, which later become the basis for the formation of a new worldview, methods of cognition, scientific picture of the world. On the one hand, this is a period of crises that give rise to a tragic worldview and a premonition of catastrophe, on the other hand, it is a kind of prologue to the next age, because it is a time of reorientation and change of consciousness, renewal of all types of art, creation of new artistic and aesthetic currents, philosophical theories that become the basis of the authors’ creativity. Taking into consideration everything mentioned above, it is necessary to say that a new model of the characteristics of an unstable era is proposed, which includes the systematization of its main indicators; the use of synergistic studies in the characteristics of the literature of this time is substantiated; on the example of the analysis of frontier epochs of the XVIII–XIX centuries., XIX–XX centuries a phase model of reorientation is used, the main elements of which are a violation of equilibrium (non-linearity, imbalance of processes), chaos, self-organization of new artistic forms, design of a new narrative system.

Journey along the edge of the night: the image of the 20th century writer in contemporary foreign cinematography

BACKGROUND: The interdependence of a person's creative abilities and the features of his life order, behavior, state of health, building social communications is widely discussed in literature, art, sociology, psychology, narrative medicine and the history of medicine (in particular, the question of the impact of health and disease on the possibilities of creative work and the reflection in the images and characters of the diseases suffered by the writer, the experience of overcoming the disease is discussed). At the same time, in public discourse, creative abilities are often present (and connected) in the contour of psychological and mental health disorders.
 AIM: To study the image of a writer of the 20th century, expressed in modern cinema, as the equivalent of the perception by public consciousness of the characteristics of the behavior and thinking of the writer.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was carried out by the method of quantitative content analysis of popular movies and biographies of foreign writers of the 20th century (n=10). The facts and features of deviant behavior and thinking of writers recorded in biographical works and the representation of the writer's image in cinema were compared.
 RESULTS: The content analysis of the biographies and image of the writer presented in films for the 10 most frequently encountered psychopathological symptoms reflects a much more pronounced frequency of demonstrating the symptoms of the writer's mental health disorder in films (with the exception of the subcategory “depressive thoughts”) than in the actual data of his biography, and the severity of psychopathological symptoms is higher in film images of writers who have never received psychiatric care. Manifestations of maladaptation are shown in films in 9 out of 10 main characters, while the fact of maladaptation of 6 out of 10 writers is actually confirmed. At the same time, the deviant psychological features confirmed in the biography are much less often presented in films, and the greatest discrepancy is observed in the subcategories “feeling depressed” and “excessive impulsiveness”. However, a comparison of the ratio of the frequency of cases of positive, indifferent and negative perception/attitude towards the writer reflected in his biography and presented in films shows that society actually has a more positive attitude towards the writer than is shown in cinema.
 CONCLUSION: The peculiarities of the behavior and creative thinking of writers in the public consciousness are still perceived in many cases as manifestations of mental pathology, while creative people are assigned a special social status that “justifies” the deviation of their lifestyle and behavior from accepted standards. The robustness of the stereotype about the correlation between creative abilities and the presence of psychopathology is largely formed by the heuristics of accessibility.

PERSONALITY MOVEMENT OF MAIN CHARACTER IN LADY BIRD MOVIE DIRECTED BY GRETA GERWIG

Movie has been developing since the 18th century, from just a moving picture until a very big production that includes many things such as camera, microphone, even a computer for adding the effects or additional sounds to the movie. Lady Bird (2017) is one of the greatest movies according to the writer, it has a unique aspect from the main character, Christine McPherson, a teenager who lives in Sacramento, U.S. Christine does not want people to call her by her name, but Lady Bird instead. The fact that Christine eventually gives up on making her life up and trying to live her life normally as she should, interests the writer to discuss Christine’s character development. The writer thinks about what Christine McPherson did in the movie is extraordinarily amazing. She changed from a girl that likes to make something up into a girl that accept everything that happens in her life.

Image-symbols of Alazani from the point of view of Levan Gotua

Rivers have a symbolic meaning in the work of Levan Gotua. As a writer thinking about the fate of the nation, he looks at the river with this eye, the river is an integral part of history, a witness to the fate of the country. The writer presents Alazani not only figuratively, but also is a kind of conceptual line that adds a new color to the work of Levan Gotua. Alazani is the mother river of the „Gmirta Varami“, on the other hand, Alazani and the Alazani floodplains are the main places in Levan Gotua's series of essays – „Mgzavruli Krialosani“, where the writer traveled by boat in October 1940 to the confluence of the Mtkvari. Levan Gotua, like his heroes, is the son of the "sweet country of Alazani", which has many enemies. It is on its shore that the pain of unity and the future of the nation is expressed. According to Levan Gotua's point of view, Alazani has different images - symbols, which are discussed in detail in the work. From the point of view of the writer, Alazani is a sacred river, like Jordan. In addition to the fact that water is a symbol of purity and renewal, it also has a special memory, a new age of the soul, renewal should be done with the "talisman opened in water" of Alazani

The Perfect Performance of Tariqat Al-Mutakallimin According Fakhrudin Al-Razi Perspective

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi is a great scholar who controls various branches of science, especially Islamic sciences. In almost every branch of science studied, he wrote one or more works which some of them became the main references, such as the book al-Mahsul fi 'Ilm al-Ushul and Tafsir al-Kabir Mafatih al-Ghaib. Although he was a follower and defender of the Shafi'i school in the field of fiqh and the Ash'ari school in the field of kalam, but his mastery of knowledge was so broad and deep and his critical thinking about various sciences actually demonstrated his capabilities as a mujtahid. His main work in the field of ushul fiqh, namely al-Mahsul, is the best work that brings together four master books in the field of ushul al-fiqh tariqat al-mutakallimin from its predecessors. He succeeded in presenting ushul al-fiqh comprehensively more than his predecessor, including Imam Shafi'i himself. The analytical-critical description provides a depth of understanding of the various things discussed in the book. Although his work is seen as a result of the merger of the four previous books of ushul al-fiqh, but his analyzes and some opinions show the independence and originality of the writer's thinking.

Creativity and Authorship in Historical Novels: A Comparative Analysis of Affifudin Omar's Tun Perak Paduka Raja and Langit Kresna Hariadi's Gajah Mada Makar Dharmaputra

Generally, the production of historical novels demands the author to adhere to accuracy of facts in the effort to convey his story. However, as a literary work, elements related to creativity and authorship are inevitable to ensure that the work produced is able to attract the attention of readers. Indeed, every author possesses their own creativity and authorship in producing historical novels. Therefore, this study is a comparative analysis of creativity and authorship in the historical novels of Affifudin Omar from Malaysia and Langit Kresna Hariadi from Indonesia. The historical novels selected for this study are Tun Perak Paduka Raja (2017) and Gajah Mada Makar Dharmaputra (2012). This study employs Kristeva’s (1980) principles of intertextuality to assess the writers’ creativity and authorship in transmuting traditional literary texts into historical novels. This will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the two authors. This study is significant in that it reveals the dynamics of thinking of writers of historical novels from the Malay Archipelago.

In Praise of Refusing the Questions

In Praise of Refusing the Questions

ОБРАЗ ЖІНКИ В УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ НОВЕЛІ КІНЦЯ ХІХ – ПОЧАТКУ ХХ СТОЛІТЬ: ПОЕТИКА, ХУДОЖНЯ АНТРОПОЛОГІЯ

Purpose: The purpose of the study: to trace the poetics and artistic anthropology of the image of women in the Ukrainian short story at the end of 19th – the beginning of 20th centuries, especially in the works of Marko Cheremshina, Olga Kobylyanska, Mykhailo Kotsyubynsky. Materials & Methods: aesthetic, comparative, typological, psychoanalytic, hermeneutic approach. The image of a woman in the Ukrainian short story is researched both at the level of poetics and in the philosophical-aesthetic, metaphysical discourse. These images actualize the ontological markers of the human being, the relationship of the human with the world and thus reveal the ontological discourse of the Ukrainian short story. The characteristic features of the Ukrainian literary process at the end of 19th – the beginning of 20th centuries develop in connection with Modernism. Ukrainian writers reflected the realities of human life and psychological states, feelings of the characters. Writer’s worldview was formed in the cultural context and philosophy of that time. Their works are closely connected to Modernism tendencies especially to the “philosophy of life”. Therefore, the article deals with the transformation of the image of a woman in Ukrainian short stories of the end of 19th – the beginning of 20th centuries. The investigation focuses on the vitality origin of Marko Cheremshyna’s image of a woman regarding the content and form. Solving this problem is connected with questions about nature, love, essence and sense of human life. The author comes to the conclusion that Marko Cheremshyna’s understanding of the image of a woman is close to pantheism; a human for him is a part of the Universe. Woman in the short story “Parasochka” embodies vitalism of human existence, Eros. Tsiia in the short story “Parubotska sprava” (“Bachelor occasion”) brings death and reflect Thanatos. The image of Parasochka is typologically related to the image of the heroine of the short story “Uncultured” by O. Kobylianska. Both female images are neoromantic, which is manifested in the searching harmony with the world, striving for the ideal. In autobiographical short stories “Son” (“Dream”), “Na ostrovi” (“On an island”) by M. Kotsiubynsky the image of the woman was created through the author’s subjective perception of the world. The author’s Self becomes the core in the kaleidoscope of events and images on the island. Sound, visual, olfactory images create a colorful impressionist picture of life, which sometimes resembles a report in which the author focuses the reader’s attention on the inner experiences of the lyrical subject and his vision of the woman. In the short story “Son” (“Dream”) the images of Martha and Stranger woman on the island embody prosy and spiritual aspects of human beings. The study of the image of women in the Ukrainian short story at the end of 19th – the beginning of 20th centuries in the context of poetics and artistic anthropology helps to understand the phenomenon of writers of the “new generation” (I. Franko), complements the idea of a special philosophical thinking of writers and impulses to study the short stories according to the interdisciplinary research.

أدوار المعلم المتجددة فى القرن الحادى والعشرين

This paper expresses the writer's vision and point of view of some contemporary developments and the challenges that emerge from them, and in light of which he proposes some of the most important roles of the teacher that the writer thinks should be available in his work. Accordingly, this paper is not a traditional research paper in the conventional sense, but rather a vision of the writer who welcomes other opposing views.

Iconic Character of Bestiary Images in the Novels of F. Werfel and E. Canetti

The anthropomorphic depiction of animals bearing allegorical meanings is the well-represented and actively demanded bestiary of world literature. It reflects the mythological thinking of writers and is an integral part of the worldview basis on which literary works are based. Bestiary images in the artistic text acquire the status of universal representative symbols. This study discusses bestiary images in novelistic works of Austrian writers, Franz Werfel (1890-1945) and Elias Canetti (1905-1994). Using the semiotic approach, the researchers define a range of images and meanings that are related to these two writers as representatives of the era of historical upheavals and individual authorial purposes that reflect the basis of the worldview of each of them. A bestiary image in a literary text can function as an iconic sign, which, on the one hand, reflects the material object in its materiality, and on the other hand, contributes to the emerging of "new", constructed by analogy, aesthetic reality. The similarity to the referent, in this case, is included in the overall system of ontological values. An iconic sign, after Ch.S. Pierce, refers to a simple sign based on the similarity to a thing and participating in the creation of symptoms of a higher order – symbols. Bestiary images in a literary text acquire the status of universal representative characters. The functioning of animal images in the text, their nomination, combinatorics, communication with the elements, time periods, and behavioural patterns are the way of the study of the philosophical foundations of the author's world picture. Canetti’s bestiary is represented by metaphorical images of a monkey, a cat, a pig, and a tortoise, which are used as a tool for analysing various psychic and psychological states of the characters of the novel "Blinding" (Die Blendung, 1931-1932). Multiple forms of anthropopathy and zoomorphism are based on the writer's attitude towards the initial "equality" of man and animal. The study of zoopoetics (the term of J. Lacan) of Werfel’s novel "Barbara, or Piety" (Barbara oder die Frömigkeit, 1929) helps to reveal the axiological foundation upon which the writer constructs his novels. The functioning of images of animals, a horse, for example, is related to the semantics of sacrifice that is rethought and acquiring new meanings in a new historical context. Composite images connecting different characteristics and associated with various natural elements are important. It is apparent that the study of the works by Werfel and Canetti, given the iconic nature of bestiary images, seems relevant to detect common patterns of development of European literature and culture of the first third of the 20th Century.

Really

The contemporary French novel is striking in its diversity, its complexity, and its resistance to easy classification. This is not an utterly new phenomenon (one recalls both Gide and Queneau, in the 1920s and 1930s respectively, describing the novel as a fundamentally lawless genre), but it is legitimate to say that the novel's horizon of possibility has broadened during our time, allowing for new kinds of expression. Those latter may be based in formalist experimentation (I'm thinking of writers like Jacques Roubaud, or Paul Fournel, or Stéphane Vanderhaeghe), or personal confession (Édouard Louis, Camille Laurens, Philippe Forest, for instance), or an insistence upon narrativity (Jean Rouaud, Christian Gailly, Christian Oster), or autofiction (Christine Angot, Annie Ernaux, Chloé Delaume), or social and political concerns (Gérard Gavarry, François Bon, Laurent Mauvignier), or hyperfiction (Manuela Draeger, Lutz Bassmann, Elli Kronauer), or indeed in a conscious hybridization of any of the foregoing directions.

Музыкальный дискурс прозы И.С. Тургенева

The article analyzes the musical motives, as well as the mentions of musical instruments in Turgenev's prose. The purpose of this work is a cultural analysis of the context of «musical fragments» of I.S. Tur-genev's prose. Musical preferences are the subject of lively disputes of Turgenev's characters. Musical instruments are used as metaphorical figures in Turgenev’s work which indicates the «musicality» of the writer's thinking.

Rilkes Korrespondenzen ed. by Alexander Honold und Irmgard M. Wirtz

Reviewed by: Rilkes Korrespondenzen ed. by Alexander Honold und Irmgard M. Wirtz Robert Weldon Whalen Alexander Honold und Irmgard M. Wirtz, eds., Rilkes Korrespondenzen. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019. 285 pp. After all these years, nearly a century since his death, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) still fascinates. An impressionist, a symbolist, a kind of Central European Oscar Wilde, Rilke was the very archetype of the fin-de-siècle early [End Page 102] modern aesthete. He was also astonishingly industrious. Famous as a poet, he was also a playwright. He wrote prose fiction, criticism, reviews, and reportage. He devoted great care to his diaries. And he wrote heaps of letters. As Alexander Honold and Irmgard M. Wirtz note in the text reviewed here, one can rightly speak of Rilkes immense collection of letters as itself a kind of literary work, a "Werk neben dem Werk" or a "Werk im Werk" (7). The Literaturarchiv of the Swiss National Library in Bern holds a fine collection of Rilkes letters, and in 2017, it hosted a colloquium devoted to Rilkes correspondence. The fourteen essays in Rilkes Korrespondenzen, edited by Alexander Honold und Irmgard M. Wirtz, were contributions to that colloquium. The essays explore not only Rilkes life and work but also the wider category of letters-as-literature. Yes, letters can provide more or less accurate information about a letter writer's thoughts, mood, and whereabouts, and historians have long relied on them as primary sources. Letters, though, are funny things, as Honold and Wirtz point out in their article, "Rilkes Korrespondenzen: Das Briefwerk als Medium kommunikativer Selbstentwürfe und literarischer Interaktion." There is, of course, the odd time lag in letter writing; the recipient receives the letter sometime after the writer has written it, such that the meanings the recipient reads are, like starlight finally reaching earth, asynchronous, and in the interval, all sorts of things can intrude. By the time the recipient receives the letter and learns what the writer thinks, the writer may well be thinking something else. Lessing encouraged people to write the way they spoke, and letters might well reflect the writer's voice, but the language of letters is sometimes as fictive as fiction. Writers craft their letters to suit the recipients; a letter, especially in Rilkes case, might well reflect one of the several different Rilkes flowing within Rilke. Moreover, letters, whatever the writer's intent, might also reflect both the cultural assumptions of the day and the specific literary conventions of the time. It is no easy thing reading another's mail. The essays in Rilfces Korrespondenzen examine all these complexities. All are acutely sensitive to the letters' language. Jörg Schuster, in his "Brief-Bewegungen: Rainer Maria Rilkes Epistolographie," for instance, notes how often metaphors of movement appear in some of Rilkes letters and the ways these metaphors reflect Rilkes wider concerns. Several essays examine Rilkes correspondence with specific people—Alexander Honold, in "Ein Durchgang, kein Haus: Rilkes Briefwechsel mit Lou Andreas-Salomé als Reflexionsmedium einer transitorischen Alltäglichkeit," and Torsten [End Page 103] Hoffmann, in "'Aber ich bin ein Ungeschickter des Lebens': Figuren des Scheiterns in Rilkes Briefwechsel mit Lou Andreas-Salomé," discuss Rilkes complicated relationship with the remarkable Lou Andreas-Salomé. Women played a key role in Rilkes life, and Manfred Koch, in "Vom Werk des Gesichts zum Herzwerk," looks at Rilke's correspondence with Magda von Hattingberg; Gesine Bey in "'Dort, in der Buchhandlung, traf ich. . . eine seltsame Frau,'" discusses Rilke and Angela Guttmann; Ilma Rakusa, in "Marina Zwetajewas Beziehung zu Rainer Maria Rilke," considers Rilkes relationship with Marina Zwetajewa; and Brigitte Duvillard, in "Die Korrespondenz zwischen Rainer Maria Rilke und Marietta de Courten: Inventar der Briefe," writes about Rilke and Marietta de Courten. Christoph König, in « 'Faites la récolte, la première récolte d'amour,' » provides an overview of Rilkes rich correspondence with women and the role that correspondence played in Rilkes poetry. Letters not only illuminate relations with real people. Rilke was fond of using letters in fiction, as Stephan Kammer shows in "Schlechte Einheit: Zur Epistolarität des Erzählens in Rilkes Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurias Brigge" One of Rilkes most popular texts, Brief...

How Ideas Come Into Being: Tracing Intertextual Moments in Grades of Objectification and Publicness.

How do ideas come into being? Our contribution takes its starting point in an observation we made in empirical data from a prior study. The data center around an instant of an academic writer’s thinking during the revision of a scientific paper. Through a detailed discourse-oriented micro-analysis, we zoom in on the writer’s thinking activity and uncover the genesis of a complex idea through a sequence of interrelated moments. These moments feature different degrees of “crystallization” of the idea; from gestures, a sketch, a short written note, oral explanations to a final spelled-out written argument. For this contribution, we re-analyze the material, asking how the idea gets formed during the thinking process and how it reaches a tangible form, which is understandable both for the thinker and for other persons. We root our analysis in a notion of language as social, embodied, and dialogical activity, drawing on concepts from Humboldt, Jakubinskij, and Vygotsky. We focus our analysis on three conceptual nodes. The first node is the ebbing and advancing of language in idea formation – observable as a trajectory through linguistically more condensed or more expanded utterance forms. The second node is the degree of objectification that the idea reaches when it is performed differently in a variety of addressivity constellations, i.e., whether and how it becomes understandable to the thinker and to others in the social sphere. Finally, the third node is the saturation of the idea through what we call intrapersonal intertextuality, i.e., its complex and dialogically related re-articulations in a sequence of formative moments. With these considerations, we articulate a clear consequence for theorizing thinking. We hold that thinking is social, embodied, and dialogically organized because it is entangled with language. Ideas come into being and become understandable and communicable to other persons only by and within their different, yet, intertextually related formations.

A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts by Claire Loffman Harriet Phillips

MLR, .,   differing approaches and cover a wide range of languages, but also stresses the importance of the variable ‘genre’ for (historical) corpus research. E-U F J N H A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts. Ed. by C L and H P. (Material Readings in Early Modern Culture) London: Routledge. . xv+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. Reading this book is like sitting in on an immensely lively, informed, and provocative seminar; more than fiy highly experienced voices, cogently expressing their struggles with the material—early modern printed and manuscript texts of all kinds, literary, scientific, epistolary—and oen taking issue with each other’s positions. e book is divided into three how-to sections—‘Before Editing’; ‘Editing: Principles and Practice’; ‘Digital Editing’—each of which is subdivided into broad topics or problems, addressed in short position statements of perhaps two thousand words each by between two and seven contributors. e final section—‘Case Studies’—provides a selection of editors with slightly more space to explore how each of them worked through the issues described earlier in order to come to their own particular solutions. e volume makes it abundantly clear that editing was never a straightforward process, and that our digital age offers new solutions, perspectives, and opportunities that can in themselves present new problems. Running through these contributions is the question of whether or not to modernize spelling and punctuation, and (particularly important in manuscripts) whether to record the use of white space or ‘mise en page’, marginalia, underlinings, insertions, doodles, and crossings out, as well as the presence within one text of different scribal hands. e contributors agree that the editor should produce a text that is readable and ‘makes sense’, and should not be ‘seduced by the possibilities of hypertext into producing editions which are not only unreadable but unusable’ (Neil Rhodes, p. ). But sometimes, as Kate Bennett demonstrates in her case study of editing John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, the ‘mess’ is the message. Layout of manuscripts (as we must all know if we reflect on our own notes) is partly exigency—the amount and nature of available paper—but partly a reflection of the way the writer thinks. Sometimes in the case of letters, where that thinking is meant to be imparted to someone else, it can be a rhetorical act, as Joe Moshenska demonstrates from his edition of the correspondence of Kenelm Digby. Digby ‘presents himself as one who writes spontaneously and in a hurry, modestly reducing his learning to a “superficial besprinkling”’ (p. ). As a facsimile illustration shows better than any neat transcript—modernized or not—having reached the end of the page, Digby turns the paper; his words first fill the margin and then ‘charge onto the verso and down towards [his] cramped signature’ (pp. –), flouting the conventions that demanded the use of deferential space when writing to superiors. Describing, of course, is one thing and interpreting is another; can  Reviews one really describe adequately without interpreting? Perhaps the most important thing is to be aware that any editing (including editing that purports to edit lightly) is an intervention; readers as well as editors need to be aware of the effects. A short review cannot hope to do justice to the insights offered by each contributor to this volume. Anyone dealing with early material, whether a student approaching these problems for the first time or an experienced editor or reader of early texts, will benefit from reading it. e book’s own editors suggest that the experienced might want to skip the introductory essays on approaching archives, but it is as well to be reminded by Michael Riordan not only about the need to understand an archive’s ‘hierarchy’, since the reason it was assembled can tell one something about the individual items it includes, but also that archivists are human too, and you want them to ‘be your friend’: ‘though I’m not suggesting any sort of special treatment (though gis of wine and chocolate rarely go amiss!) a courteous and friendly attitude is essential’ (p. ). We have been (genially) warned! U  S R K e Music of Dada: A Lesson...

Introduction: Re-writing and Translating Shakespeare’s Originality in a Global Culture

Shakespeare continues to feature in construction and refashioning of national cultures and identities in variety of forms. Recent discussions about have forced us to re-assess what we mean by Shakespeare, for is not only something pertaining to past, going backwards in time to an origin, but also refers to original interpretations of Shakespeare in modern culture, which break away from tradition, and provide modern reformulations. In light of these views that demand revaluation of Shakespeare as an author, we need to rethink idea of Shakespeare's today in variety of places and forms. But first we should clarify what we understand by originality, or being as term can be confusing since it is often related to authenticity, innovation, creativity and imitation. Besides, how many ways of being are there? Is it only due to genius of artist, to appreciation of critic or to culture of reader/spectator, if we take culture as a mental construct which fuses together elements of myth and history, desire and projection, imagination, and accomplishment.1 We should also take into account contested legacy of of post-colonial Shakespeares in former British possessions as well as post-national Shakespeares which have become focus of debates concerning national mythologizing and multiculturalism. Originality is, therefore, complex topic that needs further consideration. Some have attempted to define what makes Shakespeare by referring to his uniqueness in order to explain his genius in some way. As Jonathan Bate claims, 'Genius' was category to account for what was peculiar about Shakespeare.2 If he had not been and had been deemed to be just same as every other writer, then he would not be held in such high regard four hundred years on. It might also be argued, as Edwards Said observed, that since the writer thinks of writing originally, and more of rewriting, image of writing changes from inscription to parallel script, from tumbled-out our confidence to deliberate fathering-forth.3 Thus re-writing transcends imitation and origins.The volume, therefore, explores new ways of appropriating, interpreting and re-producing Shakespeare today in different cultures and contexts in accordance with particular interests and anxieties, showing ideological tension inherent in local versus global, in versus other forms and reproductions. Within theoretical framework, Marcela Kostihova's paper is concerned with question of authentically original, proposing re-definition of what we mean by originality and authenticity today, and their ideological and social implications, since our readings and interpretations of texts are firmly anchored in pressures of present. She shows how tension between two concepts causes further trouble when we come to deal with original/authentic Shakespeare in global economy, where these two concepts have become central in market. If meaning is ideologically produced at point of consumption, erasing meaning-making mechanism of source-culture, what do we mean, then, by within consumer culture? In this way, she calls into question possibility of making Shakespeare today, as her reading of Twelfth Night illustrates. Since our interpretations are always changing, depending on commodification of individualized subjectivity and selective consumption, Shakespeare's remains perpetually elusive in world that constantly re-creates values.The articles by Martin Prochazka and Paul Innes deal with process by which Shakespeare has been transformed into national icon, which, in some ways, has become normatively constitutive of national identity as seen in re-writings of his plays in particular historical context, where mythologizing takes place. …

Pynchon’s Bequest

Although Thomas Pynchon has famously avoided the spotlight, he and his work—especially <em>Gravity’s Rainbow</em>—nevertheless cast a large shadow over contemporary American fiction. In a Bloomian anxiety of influence, a subsequent generation of fiction writers—I’m thinking of writers like the late David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann, Rick Moody, Bradford Morrow, Mary Caponegro, Michael Chabon, A. M. Homes, Colson Whitehead, and the subject of the collection of essays under review, Richard Powers—has been inspired to write by Pynchon’s great novels but has also sought to find a way out from under their shadow. This anxiety is made more acute by the concomitant sense that the postmodernism exemplified by Pynchon and his fellow experimental writers of the sixties and seventies (Barth, Coover, Sorrentino, Gaddis, Barthelme, Reed, and so on) has reached something of a dead end. That is, postmodernism’s consciousness of language, its iconoclasm, and its questioning of all master narratives, which in the 1960s played an important role in exposing and debunking many long-held social conceits and hypocrisies, by the late 1980s and 1990s had devolved into an all-purpose irony, the rolling of the eye and the nudging in the ribs that mocks any assertion that eschews irony’s game and aspires to sincerity. As Wallace explained in a 1993 interview with Larry McCaffery, “Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. . . . All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. . . . Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving” (147).

‘Not In Our Name’: Blanchot, Politics, the Neuter

Readers of Blanchot have long been aware of the importance of politics in the writer's intellectual itinerary. But though the history of Blanchot's political involvements is now quite well documented (albeit frequently misrepresented to polemical ends), much remains to be understood about Blanchot's conception of the political. Prompted in part by his support for the ‘Not In Our Name’ appeal, which was to be one of Blanchot's last political gestures, this essay fragment, which is part of a longer inquiry, reconstructs the writer's thinking on the question of the subject of politics and the closely related issue of the relationship between law and violence. It examines Blanchot's response to Hölderlin's translation of a famous fragment from Pindar entitled ‘Das Höchste’ (‘The Most High’) and places Blanchot's writing within the wider context of the political thought of Benjamin, Schmitt, Agamben, and Derrida.

Myths of a New World in Édouard Glissant's novels &lt;i&gt;La Lézarde&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Le Quatrième siècle&lt;/i&gt;

(Post-)Modern human experience as represented in contemporary literature seems to be, in many respects, a traumatizing affair, marked by many losses linked to identity. These include: foundation narratives, ancestral religion, bonds of kinship and lineage, and a progressive loss of the sense of anchorage and belonging. Seen from the Caribbean and from the vision of its writers, these are some of the characteristics of a complex “New World” whose multiple-layered identities and lived experiences official historical narratives fail to render or even deliberately silence and erase. This is where, from a literary perspective, “words with power”, such as Edouard Glissant's, are called into the work-play (Frye 1990) of resistance and opposition, reconstructing history in “another way” (Benitez-Rojo 1996), articulating meaningful cross-road connections between history, memory, identity, myth and writing. This exploration of Glissant's novels La Lezarde (Seuil, 1958; Prix Renaudot, 1958) and Le Quatrieme siecle (Seuil, 1964; Prix Veillon, 1964) serves as a point of entry into a preliminary attempt at reconsidering the concept of “New World” identity from a slightly different angle, first in the Americas, then beyond. In fact, no pretext is needed to link the creative thinking of writers like Glissant, Alejo Carpentier or Wilson Harris, for example, to Caribbean perspectives on the “New World” of the other Americas, and beyond. This essay ultimately raises questions and suggests perspectives of scholarly approaches to broader positive conceptualizations of the New World, out of the Caribbean. Keywords : Edouard Glissant, globalization, myth/symbolism, New World identity. > Tydskriff vir Letterkunde Vol. 44 (2) 2007: pp. 163-187

'Not In Our Name': Blanchot, Politics, the Neuter

Readers of Blanchot have long been aware of the importance of politics in the writer's intellectual itinerary. But though the history of Blanchot's political involvements is now quite well documented (albeit frequently misrepresented to polemical ends), much remains to be understood about Blanchot's conception of the political. Prompted in part by his support for the 'Not In Our Name' appeal, which was to be one of Blanchot's last political gestures, this essay fragment, which is part of a longer inquiry, reconstructs the writer's thinking on the question of the subject of politics and the closely related issue of the relationship between law and violence. It examines Blanchot's response to Hölderlin's translation of a famous fragment from Pindar entitled 'Das Höchste' ('The Most High') and places Blanchot's writing within the wider context of the political thought of Benjamin, Schmitt, Agamben, and Derrida.