scholarly journals “I’m a I’m a Scholar at the Moment”: The Voice of the Literary Critic in the Works of American Scholar-Metafictionists

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-51
Author(s):  
Wojciech Drąg
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
American Scholar ◽  
Snow White ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Voice

Abstract In her seminal book on metafiction, Patricia Waugh describes this practice as an obliteration of the distinction between “creation” and “criticism.” This article examines the interplay of the “creative” and the “critical” in five American metafictions from the late 1960s, whose authors were both fictional writers and scholars: Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, William H. Gass’s Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, Robert Coover’s Pricksongs and Descants and Ronald Sukenick’s The Death of the Novel and Other Stories. The article considers the ways in which the voice of the literary critic is incorporated into each work in the form of a self-reflexive commentary. Although the ostensible principle of metafiction is to merge fiction and criticism, most of the self-conscious texts under discussion are shown to adopt a predominantly negative attitude towards the critical voices they embody – by making them sound pompous, pretentious or banal. The article concludes with a claim that the five works do not advocate a rejection of academic criticism but rather insist on its reform. Their dissatisfaction with the prescriptivism of most contemporary literary criticism is compared to Susan Sontag’s arguments in her essay “Against Interpretation.”

scholarly journals Why Did the Canary Die? (Sergei Yesenin about Nikolai Klyuev)

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
I. V. Kudryashov ◽  
S. N. Pyatkin
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Semantic Correlation ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Systemic Analysis ◽  
The Voice

The article is devoted to the problem of interpretation of the well-known Yesenin lines about N. A. Klyuev in the poem “In the Caucasus”. In literary criticism, the point of view has been established, according to which the eleventh verse of the poem by S. A. Yesenin contains a well-known “epigrammatic definition” expressing the extremely sharp “negative attitude” of the poet towards his former mentor. The systemic analysis of Yesenin’s poetic definitions of Klyuev, “gentle apostle” (“O muse, my flexible friend...”, 1917) and “Ladoga deacon” (“In the Caucasus”, 1924) in the historical and literary context, made it possible to find their close semantic correlation and identify the lines about Klyuev in the poem “In the Caucasus” as the author’s self-irony, expressed in the form of a comic demotion of his former teacher. It is proved that in the poem “In the Caucasus”, ironically putting himself in the place of a “dead canary”, a poet who categorically does not accept imitation in poetry, not only declares that singing “from the voice of someone else” is destructive for any talent, but also clearly makes it known that he is “not a canary,” imitating Klyuev, that their paths diverged long ago, that the canary in him “died” in his youth; and the self-ironic, harmless lines about his mentor in the poem “In the Caucasus” testify to Yesenin’s creative maturity as a great national poet who has comprehended his significance and place in Russian Parnassus.

scholarly journals Literary Perspective in Autobiography: Book "Days" and "My life" Comparison Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 227 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-83
Author(s):  
Assist. Prof. Dr. Eman Abdu-Dakeel Esae ◽  
Lecturer. Dr. Julan Hussian Judy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Background ◽  
The Self ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Comparison Study ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Creative Vision

Autobiography is the written type that related to "I" author, which is relevant to his experience life and written: their worries, affairs, sorrows, and concerns. Hence this study appeared to show how to diagnosis the nature of literary for this type, drawing it's historical background and it's relationship with literary trends in the modern Arabic prose especially the novel, which was nearest to it and most impact in its development, then stand on the denotations type of autobiography, the role of motivation, cultural background, creative vision and the talent in formulating the referential aspect through my book "days" and "my life" the two outcome out the study of comparison which settlement in the field of Arabic autobiography in modern way, telling similar accidents in many times, and telling autobiography of life in different ways that giving a clear picture of comparison through literary perspective then stand on the more accurate literary concept of this writing type about the self, finally we stand on how to draw the literary perspective and determine it in the field of autobiography through managing the most important construction of telling the narrative as an important tool of comparison to diagnosis the literary perspective by studying how to tell and use the voice, the kind of description, it's function of comparison, the measure of availability in choosing text to differentiate the function of the study for these texts which as long as stopped by critics. The study concluded that the literary function of autobiography is unstable in which it is found in one study and absent from another.   

Dilemmas of a subculture: An analysis of BDSM blogs about Fifty Shades of Grey

Sexualities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 987-1008
Author(s):  
Lucie Drdová ◽  
Steven Saxonberg
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Public ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Fifty Shades Of Grey

Recently, much has been written in the mass media about the novel and film Fifty Shades of Grey. It was widely portrayed as an example of BDSM (a common abbreviation for the terms bondage, discipline, dominance, submissivity, sadism and masochism) subculture and used as a symbol of sadomasochistic identity. But is this public view based on the self image of BDSM subcultural members or is it a figment of the imagination of writers and journalists? This article presents the voice of BDSM activists, who are silenced and excluded from the public debate. Using a virtual ethnographic method, we analyse the BDSM blogosphere as a platform for subcultural expressions of opinion. We combine this with a documentary analysis. In doing so, we examine how BDSM subculture members perceive themselves in contrast to the mainstream view of them pictured in the book Fifty Shades of Grey. This article investigates to what extent the subcultural conception of BDSM corresponds to the book's depiction and where it differs fundamentally.

Written on the Body: Ekphrasis, Perception and Deception in Heliodorus' Aethiopica

Ramus ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 111-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Whitmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Solid Material ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
The Novel ◽  
White Space ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
The Moment

Novels have so much solid and monolithic bulk when they sit in a hand or on a shelf; inside, the pages are forests of symbols, as though even in books of such magnitude the sentences needed compression to fit on to pages. How different to poetic volumes, beguilingly slender, their pages brilliant with blank, white space, across which the spindly words stretch like gossamer. In terms of content, however, novels are rarely as monolithic as their physical form suggests. From earliest times since, the genre has dealt, centrally, with themes of metamorphosis, transubstantiation, the fundamentally permeable nature of the self. The solid material aspect of the novel often masks a central preoccupation with the fluidity of identity.In the compass of this article, I want to explore the central role accorded by Heliodorus, arguably the greatest of ancient novelists, to questions of perceptual deception, to seeing and seeming; and in particular, I want to explore the role of artworks within Heliodorus' narrative economy. The narrative turns, as is well known, on the amazing paradox of an Ethiopian girl born white. Charicleia's skin colour is a visual trap, an illusion. Given that her freakish pigmentation is the result of her mother's glancing at an art-work at the moment of conception, Charicleia can almost be said to be a walking ekphrasis, an embodiment of the illusory traps of the unreal.

Post-communist Interpretation of History in the Albanian Literature in Kosovo

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Lindita Tahiri ◽  
Muhamet Hamiti
Keyword(s):  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Fictional Truth

This article focuses on stylistic choices in the novel Im atë donte Adolfin (My father loved Adolph) by the Albanian author in Kosovo Mehmet Kraja (2005) as a strategy to generate a post-communist perspective of interpreting history. By blending first-person narration as confidentiality and third-person narration as conventionality (Barthes, 1978), the possessive construction ‘my father’ in this literary text serves both as referential label and deictic, generating dual focalization (Phelan, 2005). The heterodiegetic narrator is positioned simultaneously as a neutral eye witnessing narrator and as a signal of subjectivity. Even in cases of intradiegetic role the narrator remains detached interweaving his voice with the voice of the character. The synchronized overt and distant narratorial stances in this novel correspond with the demonstration of historical discourse as both subjective and factual narration. The relationship between fiction and truth has been widely treated in the post-modern intellectual thought, and as Borg (2010) points out in his study on Beckett and Joyce, the radical narrative innovations are “examples of a peculiarly modernist engagement with the nature of factual and fictional truth” (p. 179), suggesting that in modern literary texts “every event exists factually and fictionally at the same time” (p. 187). As a resonance to Borg’s analysis of modernist literature, in Kraja’s novel the knowledge about history consists of both factual and imaginative elements, bringing “the moment of truth in all its potential” (p. 191).

The Failure of the American Dream in “The Great Gatsby”- Fitzgerald

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 299
Author(s):  
Zamira Hodo
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
American Dream ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Discrimination ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
Good Guide

The American Dream is one of the most important issues, which has drawn the attention of literary criticism through many years. It represents the ideals of a nation: equality, liberty, pursuit of happiness and democracy; ideals that have been understood in different ways by people. The real values related to these ideals changed and deviated from what it was meant into the enormous desire and greed for wealth and power. Fitzgerald tried to reveal that social discrimination is present and no one is treated as equal to others. The following research over the novel “The Great Gatsby” demonstrates how the dream cannot be successful because of the way it is misunderstood by the society and people’s materialism view of modern life. The characters and their attitudes through the chronology of the story are the embodiment of disappointment and the lack of moral values in the pursuance of a dream. Qualitative research used in this study aims to give a clear image and a deep analysis of the novel’s major themes, symbols, the period of writing, author’s life, various perspectives of the American Dream and its failure. We expect this thesis to be a good guide for further readings and projects with an explicit goal that the achievement of a dream does not necessarily requires the loss of the self and an excessive significance to what ruins the personal and the others future.

Writing Novels, Simulating Voices: Euphonia, Trilby, and the Technological Sounding of Identity

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-360
Author(s):  
Riley McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sound Recording ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice

This article troubles a tendency in literary criticism to equate novelistic speech with sound recording. It recovers the history of Joseph Faber's Euphonia (a speech simulator exhibited from the 1840s to the 1880s) in order to articulate an alternative vocal ontology of the novel—one of simulation rather than recording. The Euphonia has striking parallels to the eponymous heroine of George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894): their comparably mechanized utterances flatten hierarchies of difference, instead of phonographically using the voice to archive particularity. In dialogue, the Euphonia and Trilby elucidate the relationship between page and voice as always collaborative, though contoured by power.

scholarly journals EKSISTENSI PEREMPUAN DALAM NOVEL AKU LUPA BAHWA AKU PEREMPUAN KARYA IHSAN ABDUL QUDDUS: TINJAUAN KRITIK SASTRA FEMINIS (WOMAN EXISTENCE IN THE NOVEL OF AKU LUPA BAHWA AKU PEREMPUAN BY IHSAN ABDUL QUDDUS: AN OVERVIEW OF FEMINISM LITERARY CRITICISM)

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 236
Author(s):  
Indah Ika Ratnawati
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The People ◽  
Good For

AbstractWoman Existence in The Novel of Aku Lupa Bahwa Aku Perempuan by Ihsan AbdulQuddus: An Overview of Feminism Literary Criticism. Feminisme fight for two thingthat have not owned the women in general, i.e their equality with men and autonomousto decide what is good for themselves. Similary with Ihsan Abdul Quddus, raised thetheme of women who tries to break the tradition. The method used in this research isdescriptive quality by interpreting the text analysis contained in the novel of I ForgetThat I Am Woman. Starting with collection of words, written or spoken sentences relatedto the character of pro feminisme and contra feminisme. Used to find any characterthat agree with feminisme and character that against feminisme this chain of events thatled to the spirit eme of emrgence of existentialisme of feminisme. From the analysisabove that the character of contra feminisme are not only men but there also womencharacthers. Most of the characters are men who oppose Suad, but there are alsoyoung people who contra feminisme. In the novel of I Forget That I Am Woman, thecharacter into the self. From the analysis of existentialisme conducted by Suad characterhave awareness of being a high self. Suad is a woman who has always been a subjectamong the people around her and managed to be a woman who free tobe the selfwholly.Keywords: profeminisme, contrafeminisme, existentialism of feminismeAbstrakEksistensi Perempuan dalam Novel Aku Lupa Bahwa Aku Perempuan karya IhsanAbdul Quddus: Tinjauan Kritik Sastra Feminis. Feminisme memperjuangkan dua halyang selama ini tidak dimiliki kaum perempuan pada umumnya, yaitu persamaan derajatmereka dengan laki-laki dan otonom untuk menentukan apa yang baik bagi dirinya.Sama halnya dengan Ihsan Abdul Quddus mengangkat tema perempuan yang mencobamendobrak tradisi. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kualitatifdeskriptif dengan cara menafsirkan analisis teks yang terdapat dalam novel Aku LupaBahwa Aku Perempuan. Dimulai dengan pendataan kata-kata, kalimat tertulis ataulisan yang berkaitan dengan tokoh profeminisme dan tokoh kontrafeminisme. Digunakanmenemukan tokoh-tokoh mana saja yang setuju adanya feminism dan tokoh tidak setujuadanya feminisme rangkaian peristiwa ini yang menyebabkan munculnya semangateksistensialisme feminisme. Dari analisis di atas bahwa tokoh kontrafeminisme tidakhanya laki-laki tetapi ada juga tokoh perempuan. Kebanyakan tokohnya adalah lakilakiyang menentang Suad, tetapi ada juga tokoh anak muda yang kontrafeminisme.Dalam novel Aku Lupa Bahwa Aku Perempuan, tokoh yang profeminisme kebanyakanlaki-laki dibanding tokoh perempuan yang menerima perempuan menjadi sang Diri.237Dari analisis eksistensialisme yang dilakukan oleh tokoh Suad memiliki kesadaranakan menjadi Diri yang sangat tinggi. Suad adalah perempuan yang selalu menjadisubjek di antara orang-orang di sekitarnya dan berhasil menjadi perempuan yangbebas untuk menjadi sang Diri seutuhnya.Kata-kata kunci: profeminisme, kontrafeminisme, eksistensialisme feminisme

scholarly journals Self-Determination of Liz’s Character in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Tarwia Ulfa ◽  
Trikaloka Handayani Putri
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Love Life ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This study focuses on depicting self-determination performed by main character’s act and how her self-determination gives the impact to her existence. The self determination is the way she takes decision in love life, beliefe, and social life that give impact in her existence. The first problem talks about how Elizabeth Gilbert or Liz determines herself from the conflict in her life. The second will continue the impact she get from her self-determination. This research applies literary criticism in order to describe Self-Determination of Liz’s Character for her existentialism in the phrase, quotation, and statement that related with self-determination in the novel. To answer the problems, this study uses the theory of existentialism by Jean Paul Satre,especially in his book entitled Existentialism is Humanism. The data divides into 2 part that explain about what are the decision Liz take in love life, beliefe, and social life then the impact of her self-determination. The result from the first statement is Liz’s decision as her actualization to determine her destiny in life. Then the impact as her choise she takes is the circumstances she responsible. Key words: Self-determination, existentialism, Jean Paul Sartre, Eat, Pray, Love novel. Abstrak Penelitian ini berfokus pada penggambaran penentuan nasib sendiri yang dilakukan oleh tindakan utama dan bagaimana penentuan nasib sendiri berdampak pada keberadaannya. Penentuan nasib sendiri dari cara dia mengambil keputusan dalam kehidupan cinta, kepercayaan, dan kehidupan sosial yang memberi dampak pada keberadaannya. Masalah pertama berbicara tentang bagaimana Elizabeth Gilbert atau Liz menentukan dirinya dari konflik dalam hidupnya. Yang kedua akan melanjutkan dampak yang didapat dari penentuan nasib sendiri. Penelitian ini menggunakan kritik sastra untuk menggambarkan penentuan nasib sendiri karakter Liz untuk eksistensialismenya dalam frasa, kutipan, dan pernyataan yang terkait dengan penentuan nasib sendiri dalam novel. Untuk menjawab masalah tersebut, penelitian ini menggunakan teori eksistensialisme oleh Jean Paul Satre, khususnya dalam bukunya yang berjudul Existentialism is Humanism. Data dibagi menjadi 2 bagian yang menjelaskan tentang keputusan yang diambil Liz dalam kehidupan cinta, kepercayaan, dan kehidupan sosial kemudian dampak dari penentuan nasib sendiri. Pernyataan pertama adalah keputusan Liz untuk mewujudkan takdirnya dalam kehidupan. Maka dampak dari pilihannya yang dia ambil adalah situasi dia bertanggung jawab. Kata kunci: Penentuan nasib sendiri, eksistensialisme, Jean Paul Sartre, Eat, Pray, Novel cinta.

Persuasion: Fellow Creatures

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pam Morris
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Porous Boundaries

Persuasion overtly foregrounds the self as embodied: physical accidents and sickness are recurrent. Sir Walter Eliot’s belief in the time-defying bodily grace of nobility is subject to Austen’s harshest irony. The transition from vertically ordered place to horizontal space in Persuasion is more extreme than in any other of the completed novels. Anne Elliot’s movement from social exclusiveness to socially inclusive possibility allows Austen to challenge gender and class hierarchies traditionally held to be inborn. Her writerly experimentation expands the possibilities of narrative perspective to encompass the porous boundaries of the physical, the emotional and the rational that constitute any moment of consciousness. Her focalisation techniques in the text look directly towards Woolf’s stylist innovations. A chain of references to guns and shooting gathers into the novel contentious contemporary discursive networks on class relations, notions of masculinity and the nature of creaturely life.

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