scholarly journals “If You Can Read, You Can Write, or Can You, Really?”

2020 ◽  
pp. 367-388
Author(s):  
Jim Collins
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
University Education ◽  
Professional Writing ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Novels ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe popular literary culture that emerged in the late 1990 s depended on a number of interdependent factors that formed a unique media ecology—book clubs (actual, online, televisual) literary bestsellers, Amazon.com, high-concept adaptation films, “superstore” bookstore chains, etc. The reading cultures generated by that media ecology were unified by certain overarching values, none more significant than the empowerment of amateur readers who were driven by the conviction that passionate reading was equal, if not superior to the bloodless close reading of professionalized readers. While the latter required a long apprenticeship, the former was guided by a self-imaging process that was fueled by a reading advice industry that provided confidence-building measures to validate that reading. The empowerment of readers depended on knowing where to look for both expertise and validation. Or, to put it another way, quality reading depended less on native intelligence, or a university education, and more on the ability to search and filter. Many of the factors that led to a fundamental recalibration of the relationship between amateur and professionalized reading have also changed the relationship between amateur and professional writing. I want to focus on the deeply conflicted perspectives concerning how the craft of writing is taught, or even can be taught, that have emerged over the past year in North American Literary cultures, in three contemporary novels, Tommy Orange’s There There (2018), Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend (2018) and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous (2019).

scholarly journals ‘A Kind of Sensory, Strange Thing to Experience’: Speaking Environmental Disaster in the Sea Empress Project Archive

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Environmental Disaster ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
Sensory Event ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores embodied encounters with the Sea Empress oil spill of 1996 and their representation in oral narratives. Through a close reading of the personal testimonies collected in the Sea Empress Project archive, I examine the relationship between intense sensory experiences of environmental change and everyday interpretations of the disaster and its legacy. The art­icle first outlines the ways in which this collection of voices reveals sensory memories, embodied affects and narrative choices to be deeply entwined in oral representations of the spill, disclosing a ‘sensory event’ that created a powerful awareness of both environmental surroundings and their relationship to everyday social processes. Then, reading these narratives against-the-grain, I argue that narrators’ accounts tell a paradoxical story of a disaster that most now wish to forget, and reveal an ambivalent legacy of environmental change that is similarly consigned to the past. Finally, I relate this social forgetting of the Sea Empress to the wider history of environmental consciousness in modern Britain.

‘Till the whisper…You know…When you can't hear the words’: Narrated Memory and the ‘Fragmented’ Body in Samuel Beckett's Late Drama

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Michelle Charalambous
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
The Body ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Works

Samuel Beckett's interest in the experience of memory and the central role the body plays in the re-experience of the past has been most evident since the time he composed Krapp's Last Tape (1958), one of his most famous memory plays where the body can actually ‘touch’ its voice of memory. In this context, the present article provides a close reading of two of Beckett's late works for the theatre, namely That Time (1976) and Ohio Impromptu (1981), where the author once again addresses the relationship between the body and memory. Unlike his earlier drama, however, in That Time and Ohio Impromptu Beckett creates a ‘distance’, as it were, between memory and the body on stage by presenting the former as a narrative and by reducing the latter to an isolated part or by restricting it to limited movements. Looking closely at this ‘distance’ in these late plays, the article underlines that the body does not lose its authority or remains passive in its re-experience of the past. Rather – the article argues – the body essentially plays a determining role in these stripped-down forms as is shown in its ability to ‘interrupt’ and somatically punctuate the fixity of the narrative form memory takes in these works.

China–India Myths in Xu Dishan’s ‘Goddess of Supreme Essence’

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
Gal Gvili
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
China And India ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyses the scholarship of prominent May Fourth writer Xu Dishan as gateway for understanding his fiction. A close examination of his engagement with Indian religions and mythology in his fiction constitutes a vision of a China–India literary horizon through a literary device termed as ‘transregional metonymy’: tropes that travelled between China and India through the cultural exchange of myths. The chapter elaborates on this literary device through a close reading of Xu Dishan’s ‘Goddess of Supreme Essence’ (1923). The reading shows how a shared China–India figurative domain emerges in the story to offer a new understanding of myths and how they function in modern life. It also suggests that instead of rewriting the past, myths can rewrite the present; instead of using myths to establish a national culture, literature can use myths to imagine a transregional horizon. Focusing on India to think about the nature of storytelling and the relationship between myth and reality, Xu Dishan undid the binary distinction between ancient India as a soul brother and colonial India as a cautionary tale.

Church and State in Argentina

1945 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-417
Author(s):  
Peter Masten ◽  
S. J. Dunne
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
North American ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The South ◽  
North Americans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Clear Thinking ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Relationship

So many books and articles have been written during the past several years about Argentina that there would seem to be little reason, at the present time, for adding another weight to the already over-burdened press. There is a phase, however, of Argentine development both of the past and of the present which has not received a great deal of consideration, and that is the relationship between Church and State in the republic of the South. Circumstances of the past help to explain conditions of the present. North Americans are inclined to judge of ecclesiastical conditions in Latin America according to a North American background. Such judgments cannot be correct because the background has been different. Perhaps then it will be an aid to clear thinking and just appraisal to try to throw a bit of light upon Argentina's ecclesiastical past that we may better understand Argentina's ecclesiastical present.

Mimicry and Shame in Naipaul's The Mimic Men and Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Zlatan Filipovic
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Novels ◽  
Diasporic Identity

Reflecting on the affective nature of diasporic experience, the essay begins by developing Arendt's understanding of displacement as a temporal disjunction of being caught between the claims of the past and the exigencies of the present. The impossibility of salvaging the past against the often stifling imperatives of the present that she accounts for in her essay ‘We Refugees’ is, however, also what produces affective economies in the diasporic subject that I argue are crucial to diasporic identity formation. In this respect, I focus on shame, which I see as an affective residue of the unsalvageable past in the experience of displacement. In order to determine and further develop the significance of shame for diasporic subject formation, this essay will consider its impact on subjectivity in a comparative close reading of two contemporary novels, V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, both of which manifest the elision of the past in diasporized subjects and the movement towards strategies of identification articulated in mimicry. Mimicry, seen in Fanon's rather than Bhabha's terms, as a disavowal of the past, fails, however, to provide a viable strategy of identification for a diasporic subject in the novels that testify rather to the affective cost of our incumbent efforts to start anew.

scholarly journals Changing Spaces: Canonization of Anglophone World Literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Mads Rosendahl Thomsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractCanonization, understood broadly as the complex processes in which some works and authors obtain a privileged position in literary culture, while others become less and less visible, takes place continually in the interplay between preferences among readers, critics and institutions. These can now be studied better thanks to new digital resources and social media. The canonization of world literatures is particularly complex as it traverses notions of national canons and sits uneasily between integration with Western literature and a counter-canonical stance. This article considers the uses of a differentiated view on canonization and how data resources that have been made available on the circulation and readership of authors can be used to qualify canonization. The relationship between the locally and globally oriented Anglophone writers and the growing importance of migrant writers is investigated, as well as the influence of world literature in English which is included for its influence not only on Anglophone canons but also canons of non-English literary cultures.

The Ghostly Prelude to Deutero-Isaiah

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 332-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Landy
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe article is a close reading of Isa. 40:1-11, which focuses on its function as a prologue to Deutero-Isaiah, and hence distinguished by its promise of a new beginning, and on its dependence on, and reversal of, the past, the spectral voices it seeks to repatriate. It is concerned with the secondariness of Deutero-Isaiah, and the consequent ambiguity of its messages. The voice of the poet/prophet is refracted through disembodied voices, which themselves cite other voices, before finally adopting that of the female herald, through whom the advent of God becomes manifest, only to be indefinitely deferred through metaphor and simile. In the background there is the frequently asserted relationship with Isaiah 6 as a metapoetic key to the book. Does its purview extend to Isaiah 40, and is the message of comfort conveyed by Deutero-Isaiah subverted by the incomprehensibility mandated by it? The complexities of the passage, and hence of the book as a whole, require attention to the detail of each its parts, but also to its fragmentariness, as it seeks to reconstruct a fractured reality. This is achieved in part through the emphasis on the materiality of the voice, as flesh (basar) and sonority, and as the matrix (mebasseret) of the future. The analysis proceeds from the voice of maternal comfort in vv. 1-2, to the announcement of the way and the universal theophany in vv. 3-5, to the pathos of transience in vv. 6-8, and finally to the deferred resolution in vv. 9-11. In the conclusion I discuss the relation of the text to the Freudian uncanny, the correspondence and non-correspondence with chapter 6, and the question of the relationship between historical and literary approaches.

Publicité, traduction et reproduction de la culture

Babel ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geneviève Quillard
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
French Canadian ◽  
French Canadians ◽  
Dietary Practices ◽  
Fashion Magazines ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

Résumé Longtemps négligée, la culture fait désormais partie intégrante des travaux en traductolo-gie, si l'on en juge par les ouvrages et par les articles publiés ces dernières années. Or, s'il est un domaine où elle joue un rôle fondamental, c'est celui de la publicité. En effet, ce qui motive les consommateurs dépend dans une large mesure des normes, des valeurs, d'un ensemble d'habitudes, d'attitudes et d'expériences qu'ils partagent avec les membres de leur communauté. Cette étude ce propose de mettre à jour certaines pratiques culturelles des anglophones nord-américains, des Canadiens français et des Français, telles quelles sont véhiculées par les publicités. Elle est basée sur un corpus de plus de cinq cents annonces publicitaires publiées au cours des dix dernières années dans des revues de mode et d'actualité nord-américaines, de leurs traductions pour le public canadien français, et de plus de cinq cents annonces publicitaires, publiées dans des revues de mode et d'actualité françaises, qui présentent soit le même produit ou service, soit un produit ou un service équivalent. Elle étudiera les différences que présentent ces annonces et leurs traductions sur les questions suivantes: rapports établis entre le destinateur et le destinataire, présentation du produit, sensualité/sexualité, émulation/compétitivité, pratiques alimentaires. Abstract Long neglected, culture is now seen as an integral part of research in translation studies, if one is to judge by the number of books and articles published in recent years. Further, if there is one area in which it plays a fundamental role, it is in the field of advertising. In fact, that which motivates consumers depends to a large extent on the standards, value and sets of habits, attitudes and experiences that they share with members of their community. The aim of this study is to bring to light some cultural practices of North American anglophones, French Canadians and the French as they are conveyed through advertising. This research is based upon a body of more than 500 advertisements published in English over the course of the past ten years in various North American news and fashion magazines, upon their translations for the French Canadian community and upon more than 500 advertisements published in various French news and fashion magazines, which present either the same product or service, or an equivalent product or service. Finally, this study will analyse the differences between these advertisements and their translated versions by concentrating on the following areas : the relationship established between the sender and the receiver of the ad, the presentation of the product, sensuality/sexuality, emulation/competitiveness, dietary practices.

Poor Acceptance of the Past is Related to Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults

GeroPsych ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-251
Author(s):  
Gozde Cetinkol ◽  
Gulbahar Bastug ◽  
E. Tugba Ozel Kizil
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Death Anxiety ◽  
Geriatric Depression ◽  
Ego Integrity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Depressed Group ◽  
Total Death ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract. Depression in older adults can be explained by Erikson’s theory on the conflict of ego integrity versus hopelessness. The study investigated the relationship between past acceptance, hopelessness, death anxiety, and depressive symptoms in 100 older (≥50 years) adults. The total Beck Hopelessness (BHS), Geriatric Depression (GDS), and Accepting the Past (ACPAST) subscale scores of the depressed group were higher, while the total Death Anxiety (DAS) and Reminiscing the Past (REM) subscale scores of both groups were similar. A regression analysis revealed that the BHS, DAS, and ACPAST predicted the GDS. Past acceptance seems to be important for ego integrity in older adults.

A literature review on firms' internationalisation through e-commerce

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Riccardo Resciniti ◽  
Federica De Vanna
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
International Business ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Foreign Markets ◽  
New Markets ◽  
Integrative Framework ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

The rise of e-commerce has brought considerable changes to the relationship between firms and consumers, especially within international business. Hence, understanding the use of such means for entering foreign markets has become critical for companies. However, the research on this issue is new and so it is important to evaluate what has been studied in the past. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of e-commerce and internationalisation studies to explicate how firms use e-commerce to enter new markets and to export. The studies are classified by theories and methods used in the literature. Moreover, we draw upon the internationalisation decision process (antecedents-modalities-consequences) to propose an integrative framework for understanding the role of e-commerce in internationalisation

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