From “German Wolfhounds” to “Ordinary People”

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-89
Author(s):  
Or Rogovin
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
National Character ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
James Phelan

Abstract The image of the perpetrator in Israeli Holocaust fiction changed fundamentally in the mid-1980s: from one-dimensional Nazi beasts, typical of earlier Israeli writing, to humanized individuals, whose vulnerability and multidimensionality may blur the divide between victims and victimizers. This development, which corresponds to similar patterns in other literatures (e.g., George Steiner’s Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.; Jonathan Littell’s Kindly Ones) has received relatively little critical attention, and it is discussed here through a close reading of major Israeli works of fiction—Ka-Tzetnik’s Salamandra, David Grossman’s See Under: Love, A. B. Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani—as well as more minor texts. Using theoretical work in narrative (E. M. Forster, James Phelan) and imagology (Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen on German national character), this article formulates the recent shift in modes of perpetrator characterization in terms of its poetics and its place in Israel’s literary history.

Reply

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 1020-1021
Author(s):  
Marit J. MacArthur
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Inherent Risk

I am grateful to Edward Mendelson for drawing attention to W. H. Auden in connection with my essay. There is in cultural-literary history an inherent risk that, caught up in the larger stories we are trying to tell, we may overlook the subtle insights of individual works of literature. To my own work in this area, I also try to bring the strengths of author-centered close reading. In this regard, the expertise of scholars like Mendelson is invaluable.

Gender, Genre, and Literary Firsts

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-306
Author(s):  
Erin Twohig
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Gender And Genre ◽  
Related Process

Abstract This article questions the conventional wisdom that Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Dhakirat al-jasad was the first Arabic-language novel written by an Algerian woman. Published more than a decade earlier, Zhor Wanisi’s novel Min yawmiyat mudarrisa hurra received less critical attention, despite representing an important contribution to Algerian literature and women’s life writing. Rather than accepting the “first” novel as an objective category, this article shows how the accolade has obscured works like Wanisi’s from Algerian literary history, reinforced gender and genre binaries, and subjected both authors to biased evaluation. The article draws on a corpus of book reviews, scholarly articles, and monographs to describe how Wanisi’s work was discounted as not a “true” novel, and the related process that brought Mosteghanemi to world fame. The trajectories of Wanisi and Mosteghanemi, placed side by side, suggest new avenues for our understanding of gender, literary genre, and the postcolonial dynamics of world literature.

scholarly journals Philia and neikos in Keats’s 'Song of four faeries'

Literator ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
A.C. Swanepoel
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Creative Force ◽  
Element Theory

Despite the fact that Keats’s “Song of four faeries” received very little critical attention, the poem raises interesting issues regarding the creative and destructive forces in nature. The poem presents a conversation between the four elemental faeries about union and separation. Using Empedocles’ four-element theory of creation and change in nature as framework, this article explores through close reading how the form and content of the poem mirror creative and destructive natural processes. It concludes that both Empedocles’ concepts “philia” (the creative force), and “neikos” (the destructive force), feature in both form and content, but that “philia” is more prevalent in the form, whereas “neikos” is expressed mostly in the content of the poem. Furthermore, the natural changes presented in the poem suggest themselves in the form of the poem before they become evident in its content.

A close reading of select poems by Faiz Ahmed 'Faiz'

Think India ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raihan Raza
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
The World

A close relation exists between literature and history, and I think that this relation is particularly close in times of crisis, when public and private lives, the world of action and the world of imagination, interpenetrate. I do not believe that literary history can be separated from social and political and economic history . . .'

Multiethnicity and Multilingualism in the Minor Literature of Manchukuo

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-362
Author(s):  
Yue Chen
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Northeast China ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Literary Identity ◽  
Local Complexity ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Minor ◽  
The Relationship

Although claimed as a nation-state, with a government, a territory, and citizenry, Manchukuo (1932–1945) is a colony of the Empire of Japan, appropriated from Northeast China. As such, Manchukuo’s literary identity complicates the relationship between nationalism and literature, inviting us to rethink the history of Chinese literature in specific and East Asian literary history in general. This article tackles the thorny problem of Manchukuo literary formation by going through Shuimei Shih’s concept of sinophone and Chen Pingyuan’s notion of the multiethnic, only to conclude via a reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s elaboration of Kafka that Manchukuo’s corpus is best approached as a minor literature of its own. The very colonial and local complexity of Manchukuo’s minor literature lies in its multiethnicity and multilingualism. A close reading of Mei’niang, Yokoda Fumiko, and Arsenii Nesmelov, through their deterritorialized Chinese, Japanese, and Russian stories, demonstrates the range of indigenous and exiled writers in their diverse imagination of Manchukuo’s ambiguous sovereignty.

The role of the Qachaq movement in the development of national consciousness in Azerbaijan

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (9) ◽  
pp. 4-11
Author(s):  
Rafail Ayvaz Ahmadli ◽  
◽  
Lala Yashar Ahmadova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Key Words ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
National Character ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The North ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 19Th Century

The article discusses the role of the "gachag movement (a form of rebel movement of fugitives)" in the formation of national self-consciousness in the north of Azerbaijan, the reasons for its occurrence, an appreciation of their struggle against the russian imperial regime and against the dishonesty of local oppressors by this regime, explores the causes of popular love, praise, protection and the creation of heroic epics about them. The article reveals the special activities of such famous fugitives who gained respect among ordinary people for their courage in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, us Gachag Nyabi from Gubadli (in the former Zangezur district), Dely Alu and Gambar from Ganja, Suleiman, Murtuza and Mamed-Bek Cavalier from Karabakh, Yusif from Zagatala, Karim Efendi oglu Gutgashenli from Nukha, Gachag Karim from Gazakh and the woman Gachag Gulsum from Shamkir popularly known as “Gachag Suleiman”. The article emphasizes not only the national character of the "gachag movement" in Azerbaijan, but also their contribution to the formation of national self-consciousness to a greater extent than the role of thinkers of that time. Key words: North Azerbaijan, national identity, the Russian imperial regime, the "gachag movement", the occupation of Russian imperia, the 19th century, the struggle, local beks (nobles), gentlemen (little nobles)

Medea’s Afterlife: Encountering Ovid in The Tempest

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
John S. Garrison
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Scholars continually return to Shakespeare’s debt to Ovid in order to draw new insight into the playwright’s work. However, the relationship between The Tempest and Ovid has received relatively little critical attention. In the play’s final act, Prospero delivers a powerful speech that is taken from the sorceress Medea’s incantation in Book 7 of Metamorphoses. With these two iterations of the speech in mind, this chapter explores how performativity and literary history intertwine in the play. This line of inquiry calls into question the distinctions that scholars have previously seen between Prospero and the witch Sycorax, as well as opens opportunities to explore the effects of casting a female lead as “Prospera” in Julie Taymor’s recent film adaption The Tempest (2010).

Was Herder a Nationalist?

2007 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Eggel ◽  
Andre Liebich ◽  
Deborah Mancini-Griffoli
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
National Character ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Explicit Statement ◽  
The Creation

This article re-examines Herder's status as one of the founders of nationalism in the light of both older and more recent literature. The article focuses specifically on Herder's position with regard to the classical nationalist thesis that state and nationality should be coterminous. It argues that a close reading of Herder's oft cited and most explicit statement apparently lending support to this thesis has been misunderstood. The existing literature underestimates Herder's concern regarding the question of governance. For Herder there can be no case for statehood without just governance. As earlier drafts of his work confirm, Herder was deeply critical of the states he knew and denounced their overly bureaucratic and despotic character. He thought that nations could and should exist without being states. Depending on the circumstances, however, states might fulfil temporary functions to strengthen and preserve the national character, that most essential attribute of every nation. For Herder the diversity of nations is an insurance against despotism. It is not a licence for the creation of states.

Maurice Blanchot

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Bident
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Far Right ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
The 1950S

Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) was one of the most important writers of the French twentieth century. His novels, shorter narratives, literary criticism, and fragmentary texts exercised great influence over writers, artists, and philosophers. As a journalist and political activist, he had a public side that matched his secret and mysterious side as someone who refused to be interviewed or photographed. Maurice Blanchot: A Critical Biography, the only full-length account of Blanchot’s itinerary, therefore attempts to carry out an impossible bio-graphy. It does so by drawing on unpublished letters and on interviews with the writer’s very close friends. Beyond this, it is a theoretical work that follows the genealogy of a thinking that is at once imaginative and speculative, at once aligned with literary modernity and a close companion and friend of philosophy. It is a historical work, unpacking the ‘transformation of convictions’ of an author who moved from the far-right in the 1930s to the far-left in the 1950s and after. And it is of course a biography, showing the strong links between the author’s life and an œuvre which nonetheless aspires to anonymity. In these ways, this book claims that Blanchot’s is a life that has become the œuvre, become a literature that bears the traces of that life secretly, even if they are what drives it. Blanchot’s œuvre is reconstituted in all its contexts, at a time when the critics who attack it, just like those who elevate it in unthinking fascination, often produce one-dimensional readings.

TRANSFERRING ELECTRONS ONE BY ONE IN SINGLE ELECTRON DEVICES WITH LONG ARRAYS OF TUNNEL JUNCTIONS

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (20) ◽  
pp. 2441-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.Y. HU ◽  
R.F. O’CONNELL ◽  
YOUNG BONG KANG ◽  
JAI YON RYU
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Gibbs Free Energy ◽  
Electron Tunneling ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Single Electron ◽  
Single Charge ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Recent Theoretical Work ◽  
Single Electron Devices ◽  
Electron Devices

We review recent theoretical work on an analytical approach to the charge dynamics of electron tunneling in single electron devices consisting of long arrays with equal stray capacitances and equal junction capacitances. Our approach to the problem has two basic steps. First, we find the exact solution for the potential profiles and the associated Gibbs free energy, based on a technique for diagonalizing a particular type of a tridiagonal matrix equation. Second, we study the change of the Gibbs free energy arising from single charge transfer. The method has been applied to one-dimensional long arrays, single electron traps, and single electron turnstiles, and the results are compared with that of the existing experiments. We point out the advantages of our method vis-à-vis other approaches used in the literature.

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