The Ontological Work of Genre and Place: Wuthering Heights and the Case of the Occulted Landscape

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-138
Author(s):  
Lauren M. E. Goodlad
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Trade Flows ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Wuthering Heights ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
History Of ◽  
Atlantic Slavery

This essay shows how genre and place enable the “ontological reading” of narrative fiction. Such sense-making dialectics enable readers to infer the terms of existence that shape fictional worlds. World-systems thinkers have theorized the critical premise of material worlds shaped though ongoing processes of combined and uneven development. Ontological reading is a comparative practice for studying the narrative work of “figuring out” those processes—for example, through the “occulted landscapes” of Yorkshire noir. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights () can be likened to a species of crime fiction in prefiguring the “hardboiled” pull from epistemological certainty to ontological complication. Whereas David Peace's millennial Red Riding series of novels and films palimpsestically layers multiple pasts and presents, Wuthering Heights’ photomontage-like landscape airbrushes the seams of combined and uneven histories. Both narratives evoke moorland terrains conducive to a long history of woolens manufacturing reliant on the energized capital and trade flows of Atlantic slavery. Both works body forth occulted landscapes with the capacity to narrate widely: their troubling of ontological difference—between human and animal, life and death, past and present, nature and supernature—lays the ground for generically flexile stories of regional becoming. Ontological reading thus widens literary study.

Rites of Passage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Michaels
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Sexual Maturity ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Transformational Process ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Vulnerable Community ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This chapter examines the classical Hindu life-cycle rites, the term saṃskāra and its history, and the main sources (Gṛhyasūtras and Dharma texts). It presents a history of the traditional saṃskāras and variants in local contexts, especially in Nepal. It describes prenatal, birth and childhood, initiation, marriage, old-age, death, and ancestor rituals. Finally, it analyzes the transformational process of these life-cycle rituals in the light of general theories on rites of passage. It proposes, in saṃskāras, man equates himself with the unchangeable and thus seems to counteract the uncertainty of the future, of life and death, since persons are confronted with their finite existence. For evidently every change, whether social or biological, represents a danger for the cohesion of the vulnerable community of the individual and society. These rituals then become an attempt of relegating the effects of nature or of mortality: birth, teething, sexual maturity, reproduction, and dying.

Popular Fiction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roslyn Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of popular fiction in Australia. The question of place has always been central to Australian fiction, not only as a thematic element but also as a critical or political preoccupation. In part, this is because popular fiction writers, wanting to attract broad audiences, either exploited their Australian content to appeal to international readers or have excised the local to produce a generic and thus more readily accessible setting for outsiders. The chapter considers works by popular fiction writers who adopt a range of positions in relation to their focus on place, but often tackle many different aspects of Australian social and historical change. These novels cover various genres such as crime fiction, historical fiction and romance, science fiction and fantasy, and include Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), Nevil Shute's On the Beach (1957), Damien Broderick's The Dreaming Dragons (1980), and Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute (2001).

The Diaspora of the Novel

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis
Keyword(s):  
Uneven Development ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.

Sons and Fathers in the Major Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis A. Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Private Schools ◽  
History Of Rhetoric ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Male Adolescents ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
History Of

Abstract: A major focus of the school themes in the collections of Roman declamations knowrn as controversiae (practice court cases) is the period of a young man's adolescence, and especially his relationship with his father during this period. In part this can be explained because teachers in the private schools of rhetoric selected themes that naturally appealed to their students——male adolescents in their mid and late teens. This focus is especially notable in the Major Declamations, and since they are the only full examples of controversiae,the phenomenon can most easily be explored in reference to this werk. In its nineteen declamations youths are generally portrayed sympathetically, in contrast to their fathers who are often cruel and harsh. Relations between the two are generally very strained. The themes were popular because they reflected the reality of growing up in a paternally dominated society where fathers had absolute power(even of life and death) over their sons. These declamations therefore had a cathartic effect and escapist value fer Roman teenaged boys,who could vent or explore in legitimate and acceptable ways their repressed, pent-up, and often hostile feelings toward their fathers. The declamations therefore provide an important resource, when used judiciously, for associating social history with the history of rhetoric.

Agency and the Senses in the Context of Museality from the Perspective of Aesthetics of Religion

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-133
Author(s):  
Isabel Laack ◽  
Esther-Maria Guggenmos ◽  
Sebastian Schüler
Keyword(s):  
European History ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Senses

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to apply the perspective of aesthetics of religion to the context of museality, focusing on notions of the agent and the senses. After sketching different roles of agency in the field of museality and suggesting some theoretically interesting links to research on European history of religions, the notion of agency will be extended to aesthetic, sensual, bodily, cognitive, and other aspects of experience, perception, sense-making, and interpretation of objects and media in the context of museality. Furthermore, questions of how specific cultural and religious sense hierarchies affect the interaction of agents with museality are raised. Finally, the insights gained are applied to a discussion of the analytical value of the concept of 'museality.'

scholarly journals Erratum: Marion Werner. Global Displacements: The Making of Uneven Development in the Caribbean

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 527
Author(s):  
Jackie Smith
Keyword(s):  
Uneven Development ◽  
Review Symposium ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Original Publication ◽  
Future Issue ◽  
Book Review Editor ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Review Editor ◽  
The Caribbean

Volume 25(1) of the Journal of World-Systems Research initially included a review by Jeb Sprague of Marion Werner’s Global Displacements: The Making of Uneven Development in the Caribbean, DOI 10.5195/JWSR.2019.920. Because the book review editor decided it would be better suited for inclusion in a proposed review symposium, she removed the review from the website, with the idea that it would run in a future issue. This was done in error, since by the time the decision was made to reschedule the review, it had already been published in the first issue of volume 25. Accordingly, a slightly revised version of the review has been restored to its original publication site. The book review editor regrets the mistake and apologizes for the confusion.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document