Racial Realism

2019 ◽  
pp. 267-284
Author(s):  
Jolie A. Sheffer
Keyword(s):  
Mourning Dove ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Black Authors ◽  
Writers Of Color ◽  
Us Imperialism ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Winnifred Eaton ◽  
Racial Realism ◽  
Definition Of

Realism as it has been articulated by white, middle-class literary gatekeepers since its heyday in the early twentieth century (and frequently into the present) has failed to address racism and imperialism of the era. Gene Jarrett describes black authors developing new literary forms in order “to re-create a lived or living world according to prevailing ideologies of race or racial difference.” This chapter expands Jarrett’s definition of “racial realism” beyond the black-white binary in order to show how writers of color from a variety of backgrounds crafted their own versions of realism, deploying allegory and making strategic use of stock genres such as the oriental romance and the western. For white readers in particular, these seemingly “nonrealist” plot elements provided intellectual distance from the contemporary injustices of racism in the age of US imperialism. However, for in-group readers, racial realism functioned both literally and figuratively to highlight experiences of racism and to legitimize histories too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented in mainstream literary realism. Writers such as Winnifred Eaton and Mourning Dove created their own texts that were shaped by multiple literary ancestors and spoke simultaneously, though distinctly, to white readers and to their own communities of color.

ON THE FORMATION OF GERMAN REALISM

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (77) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
A.S. Bakalov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Regional Literature ◽  
Empirical Level ◽  
New Business ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
The Times ◽  
Life Phenomena ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

The relevance of research. In German literary criticism, there is no unambiguous definition of the phenomenon of literary realism, however, at the empirical level, it is understood as a literary system based on a mimetic-oriented depiction of reality, often critically comprehended and subjectively colored due to the norms and ideas that are taking shape in society. Research methodology. Complex and systematic methods of literature analysis are applied. In this article, the author comes to the conclusion that the realism of the turn of the XIX - early XX centuries. retains its main principles of artistic comprehension of the world, and at the same time the signs that do not allow talking about its dissolution in the eclectic picture of the emerging modernity. The main thing remains the disclosure of "the essence of life phenomena through their individualized generalization (typification)", analysis and specific historical logic of presentation Realism at the turn of the 19th - early 20th centuries. closely associated with such phenomena as regional literature, "new business-like", historical novel. On its basis, workers' and proletarian-revolutionary literature developed in many ways. In German literature of the twentieth century. realistic tendencies intensified in the times following the historical and political catastrophes, primarily after the two world wars lost by Germany. Realism played a significant role in the literature of the Weimar Republic (the works of E.M. Remarque, L. Feuchtwanger, L. Frank and others), while in contact with modernist and avant-garde trends (for example, with "new business-like"). Realism turned out to be no less significant after 1945, having equally influenced the formation of the literatures of West and East Germany (writers of the "group of 47", Erwin Strittmatter, "socialist realism", etc.). German realism, which emerged in the middle of the 19th century, was able to demonstrate its flexibility and ability to enter into alliances with other natural artistic directions, without losing its main specificity - the desire for materiality, the authenticity of personal and collective experience, as well as symbolizing the "obvious" with the goal of approaching the "true".

scholarly journals Die dilemma van die literere vorm van Openbaring 2 en 3

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Grové
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Apocalyptic Literature ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Definition Of

The aim of this study is to investigate the still unsatisfactorily addressed problem of the literary form of Revelation 2 and 3. In this article formula­tions and elements in the Old Testament prophecies (as pointed out by Aune, 1983) as well as the proposed definition of apocalyptic genre by Aune (1986) are applied. In this article Aune’s definition of apocalyptic literature, as applied by him to Revelation in totality, is applied specifically to Revelation 2 and 3. At the same time the findings of Aune (1990) that the seven pericopae have the form of royal edicts, as well as the conclusion of Shea (1983) that these messages have a covenantal form, are evaluated. The conclusion arrived at in this study points to the following: formally these seven messages are prophetic apocalypses as well as royal edicts. They display neither the form of epistles nor of Hittite vassals. As far as their content is concerned, they have a prophetic character which corres­ponds to the Old Testament prophecies. Each message in Revelation 2 and 3 functions as a book of comfort, conveys the idea of Christ as King, and states the promises of God to the seven churches. The messages in Re­velation 2 and 3 do not represent a single typical literary form of antiquity: it rather displays a combination of literary forms - and this should be taken into account in the interpretation of Revelation 2 and 3.

‘TALKING POLITICS’: TYRANNY, PARLIAMENT, AND CHRISTOPHER BROOKE'S THE GHOST OF RICHARD THE THIRD (1614)

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHELLE O'CALLAGHAN
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Inns Of Court ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

The career of the MP and poet Christopher Brooke, in particular his The ghost of Richard the third (1614) and his activity in the 1614 ‘addled’ parliament, forms the basis of this study of Jacobean political culture. Brooke's career foregrounds the close interaction of political and literary cultures in the period; he was a leading member of the political circle, the ‘Sireniacs’, which had strong parliamentary ties, and was one of the Inns of Court-based ‘oppositional’ Spenserian poets. Together with his fellow ‘Sireniac’ MPs, Brooke vehemently opposed the definition of impositions as the domain of absolute rather than ordinary powers of the crown because of the threat this posed to the rights of parliament and the subject. The ghost of Richard the third provides an example of parliamentary debates entering a wider print culture, where impositions merged with broader civic issues. Political language in this period was not confined to the realms of high theory and Brooke's poem illustrates the complex mediation of political discourses through literary forms. A humanist discourse of tyranny provided Brooke with a coded language, enabling him to articulate his concern for the health of the commonwealth and to address areas of ideological conflict in early Stuart political culture.

The Racial Borderlands of the Korean War

2020 ◽  
pp. 203-240
Author(s):  
Daniel Y. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Writers Of Color ◽  
War Novels ◽  
Us Imperialism ◽  
Detention Centers ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Korean War

This chapter brings together an array of Korean War novels, authored by US writers of color, to engage in a counterhegemonic project of cultural memory that explores the conflict’s significance for African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans: Toni Morrison’s Home, Rolando Hinojosa’s trilogy of works set during the conflict (Korean Love Songs, Rites and Witnesses, and The Useless Servants), and Ha Jin’s War Trash. These works critique the mistreatment of US soldiers of color and Chinese combatants by those in command. Morrison’s and Hinojosa’s novels emphasize the racism that persisted within the newly integrated US military, and Jin’s highlights the plight of prisoners of war in US-administered detention centers. These novels also highlight, however, nonwhite soldiers—including African American and Chicano servicemen—who committed atrocities during the conflict. Hinojosa’s and Jin’s writings, moreover, contextualize the war in a wider and longer set of historical trajectories: the former suggests a connection between US imperial aspirations as they took shape in 1950 and the ones that led to the US-Mexico War a century before; the latter conveys how the Korean War has been framed by the nationalist mythology of the People’s Republic of China as a great victory against US imperialism.

Victorian Fictions of Computational Creativity

AI Narratives ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 144-164
Author(s):  
Megan Ward
Keyword(s):  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Computational Creativity ◽  
Alan Turing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Definition Of

In designing his foundational test of AI, Alan Turing refers to Ada’s Lovelace’s Victorian pronouncement that a machine cannot be intelligent because it only does what it is programmed to do. This idea continues to shape the field of computational creativity as the ‘Lovelace objection’. This chapter, however, argues that the term is a misnomer; Lovelace actually proposes a much more nuanced understanding of human–machine collaboration. Returning to Lovelace’s 1843 essays, I situate them within broader Victorian debates about originality in literary realism, especially in relation to Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope’s fictional uses of ‘mechanicity’. This chapter hopes to intervene in contemporary discussions of computational creativity, which continue to invoke the Lovelace objection as a means to focus on a human-centred definition of ‘creativity’. Seeing computational creativity as the outgrowth of a long history of human–machine originality may open up the field to that history’s creative symbiosis.

Abstract Body Language: Documenting Women's Bodies in Theatre

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (54) ◽  
pp. 111-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Cutler
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The University

In this article, the first of a sequence on the ways in which women's bodies are recorded in performance documentation, Anna Cutler offers a new conception and systematic definition of three performance documentations – the ‘Proper’, the ‘Processual’ and the ‘Residual’. She argues against traditional and literary forms of documentation (the ‘Proper’) as a means by which women and women's bodies have been and continue to be excluded from performance records, and proceeds to discuss two theoretical types of body in performance: the ‘Inscribed’ (which represents an ideologically shaped, constructed, and censored body) and the ‘Potential’ (which represents the creative and ongoing moments of change made by the body in performance). She proposes the ‘Potential Body’ as a model for performance documentation, since, though difficult to translate into written forms, it offers a more effective communication of both the body and of live performance. Given the continuing prevalence of the written word as the primary mode of performance documentation, the author makes a case for écriture féminine to be appropriated as a writerly tool to document women's bodies and particularly the ‘Potential Body’ in performance. She concludes with a discussion of the theory and practice of Hélène Cixous' writing in relation to women's performance methodologies. The debate is taken up by Susan Melrose in the article following this. Anna Cutler is currently producing events for the Belfast Festival, while completing her doctoral research in the Department of Literary and Media Studies at the University of North London.

The Genre of the Book of Revelation

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Mitchell G. Reddish
Keyword(s):  
Literary Genre ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Standard Definition ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Opening And Closing ◽  
Hebrew Prophets

This chapter examines the three major candidates for the literary genre of the book of Revelation—an apocalypse, a letter, or a prophecy. The form, content, and function of the work are compared to these elements of typical apocalyptic, epistolary, and prophetic writings. Even though the opening and closing of the book follow the form of ancient letters and the work uses several literary forms that are found in the books of the Hebrew prophets, the work coheres well with the standard definition of an apocalypse. Recognizing the contributions of each of these genres to the book of Revelation, the chapter concludes that Revelation is the product of a Christian prophet whose writing best matches the literary genre of an apocalypse that is encased in an epistolary framework.

scholarly journals Tragedy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Toscano
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Ethical Conflicts ◽  
Philosophical Modernity ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

From Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics onward, tragedy has loomed large in the genealogy of literary theory. But this prominence is in many regards paradoxical. The original object of that theory, the Attic tragedies performed at the Dionysian festivals in 5th- century bce Athens, are, notwithstanding their ubiquitous representation on the modern stage, only a small fraction of the tragedies produced in Athens, and are themselves torn from their context of performance. The Poetics and the plays that served as its objects of analysis would long vanish from the purview of European culture. Yet, when they returned in the Renaissance as cultural monuments to be appropriated and repeated, it was in a context largely incommensurable with their existence in Ancient Greece. While the early moderns created their own poetics (and politics) of tragedy and enlisted their image of the Ancients in the invention of exquisitely modern literary and artistic forms (not least, opera), it was in the crucible of German Idealism and Romanticism, arguably the matrix of modern literary theory, that certain Ancient Greek tragedies were transmuted into models of “the tragic,” an idea that played a formative part in the emergence of philosophical modernity, accompanying a battle of the giants between dialectical (Hegelian) and antidialectical (Nietzschean) currents that continues to shape our theoretical present. The gap between a philosophy of the tragic and the poetics and history of tragedy as a dramatic genre is the site of much rich and provocative debate, in which the definition of literary theory itself is frequently at stake. Tragedy is in this sense usefully defined as a genre in conflict. It is also a genre of conflict, in the sense that ethical conflicts, historical transitions, and political revolutions have all come to define its literary forms, something that is particularly evident in the place of both tragedy and the tragic in the dramas of decolonization.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Marta Celati
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Renaissance Literature ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Definition Of

The first section is a general introduction to Italian Early Renaissance literature on the topic of conspiracies. It sets out the theoretical basis of this study, providing the definition of the ‘thematic genre’ of texts on political plots and contextualizing it within the historical, cultural, and political background of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. This substantial corpus consists of texts produced in different political centres and through different literary forms, but with significant thematic and ideological traits in common. The expansion of this kind of literature, in an epoch that can be rightly defined an ‘age of conspiracies’, is connected with the concentration of political power in the hands of newly established leaders. In this scenario, the fruitful interaction between literature and politics is evident in the development of two intertwined genres: historical-literary works on plots and political treatises de principe, texts that are informed by similar political perspectives and contribute to the legitimization of new types of authorities. The crucial implications that the issue of conspiracy had in the literary debate on princely power will also emerge clearly in the following century in Machiavelli’s thought. This chapter additionally introduces the crucial role played by the classical tradition in this ‘thematic’ literature. Sallust is predictably the chief source, but all texts are based on the recovery of manifold classical models and display a complex process of imitation that affects structural, thematic, stylistic, and ideological aspects. The last section offers an overview of the main fifteenth-century texts on plots.

The Literatures of America—A Comparative Discipline

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lauter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Normative Model ◽  
Writers Of Color ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Behavior

An image has long haunted the study of American culture. It limits our thought, shapes our values. We speak of the “mainstream,” and we imply by that term the existence of other work, minor rills and branches. In prose, the writing of men like Franklin, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, Bellow—to name some of the central figures—constituted the “mainstream.” Others—writers of color, most women writers, “regional” or “ethnic” male and female authors—might, we said, be assimilated into the mainstream, though probably they would continue to constitute tributaries, interesting and often sparkling, but finally of less importance. They would, we tacitly assumed, be judged by the standards and aesthetic categories we had developed for the canonical writers. At best, we acknowledged that including in the canon writers like Wharton, Cather, Chopin, and Ellison might change somewhat our definition of the mainstream, but the intellectual model imposed by that mainstream image, this Great River theory of American letters, has persisted even among mildly revisionist critics. Such critics have continued to focus on a severely limited canon of “major” writers based on historical and aesthetic categories from this slightly augmented mainstream. The problem we face is that the model itself is fundamentally misleading. The United States is a heterogeneous society whose cultures, while they overlap in significant respects, also differ in critical ways. A normative model presents those variations from the mainstream as abnormal, deviant, lesser, perhaps ultimately unimportant. That kind of standard is no more helpful in the study of culture than is a model, in the study of gender differences, in which the male is considered the norm, or than are paradigms, in the study of minority or ethnic social organization and behavior based on Anglo-American society. What we need, rather, is to pose a comparativist model for the study of American literature. It is true that few branches of academe in the United States have been so self-consciously indifferent to comparative study as has been the field we call “American literature.”

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