Dazzling Estrangement: Modernism, Queer Ekphrasis, and the Spatial Form of Nightwood

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 749-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Glavey
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Spatial Form ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The Aesthetic

The reputation of Djuna Barnes's Nightwood as a work of “marginal” modernism is complicated by its affinities with the aesthetics of high modernism, a fact signaled by its role as the inspiration of Joseph Frank's theory of spatial form. At once emblematic and eccentric, the novel is devoted to both recognition and obscurity. Nightwood enacts this paradox through a strategy of queer ekphrasis that aestheticizes moments of loss, giving aesthetic form to experiences of stigma in order to “dazzle” them. Attending to Barnes's spatial form will forward debates about modernism and queer theory, suggesting a more useful vocabulary for both: an account of the aesthetic that is neither wholly subversive nor wholly conservative and a nuanced account of queerness that does not subscribe to either total negation or total affirmation.

Psychopathology, Inner Space and the Automotive Death Drive: J.G. Ballard

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Sey
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Aesthetic Expression

This paper uses a detailed reading of the 1973 novel Crash!, a work of dystopian science fiction by British author J.G. Ballard, to outline a new theory of psychopathology in a thoroughly technologised culture. The paper proposes that, in the light of the evidence of the novel, it may be possible to reconceptualise both trauma and the somatic relationship to pathology, through the mediation of a saturated technoculture, at least in the sense of a closer investigation of the relationship between perversity and aesthetic expression. The argument concludes that there is a privileged relationship between such extreme forms of pathological symptom as are presented in the novel, and the aesthetic form itself, which leads to a more productive understanding of psychopathology.

scholarly journals Omniscience et polyphonie : esthétique de l’engagement dans L’espace d’un cillement de Jacques Stephen Alexi

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Józef Kwaterko
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Magic Realism ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Jacques Stephen Alexis ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article is a sociocritical reading of the novel L’espace d’un cillement (1959) by Jacques Stephen Alexis. In  this novel the Carib is an important chronotope and the magic realism, understood as programmatic discourse, reaches a peculiar level of aesthetic complexity. I will demonstrate how Jacques Stephen Alexis confronts the topoi of the Carib and Haïti, generating thus a discourse permeated by transcultural images. I will also focus my attention on the political aspects of the novel’s narration, on how the “proletarian” language of the omniscient narrator negotiates its voice with the free indirect speech of the characters who are shaped by their sensual relationship to reality. I will study the aesthetic form taken by the ideological message of the novel with the help of Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia (diversity of languages), heterophony (diversity of voices), and heterology (diversity of social discourses).

Ishiguro at the Limit: The Corporation and the Novel

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-405
Author(s):  
Chris Holmes
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Corporate Personhood ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Corporate State

Abstract The early twenty-first century has seen a radical shift in how the aesthetic form of the novel addresses the abstraction of labor and the precarity of minority communities that have come to epitomize neoliberal capital. Novels increasingly attempt to formulate institutions apart from the privatizing drive that seeks to corporatize all civil society. This ambition to differentiate the novel from the primary ideology of this period has been marked by the emergence of a particular mode of critical rejoinder to the pervasive corporatist mind-set, a mode called limit thinking, in which novels draw attention to themselves as texts with which to produce new forms of thinking rather than as storehouses of information or political treatises. The writer Kazuo Ishiguro's novels Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go present limit thinking as a means to offset the prevailing form of totalizing thinking in the West: corporate personhood. That corporate body, with its obvious intentions toward absolute privatization, has been allowed a unique form of embodiment. The imagined body of the corporation has been gifted the presumption of thought. Understanding the limits of the novel—and by contrast the seeming limitlessness of the corporate state of mind—prepares us to understand how the novel resists an epistemological system into which it incorporated and how, in doing so, it shifts the kinds of questions we ask of the novel from those of what does the novel know? to how is the novel thinking?

STUDY OF DECORATIVE VARIETY IN GORONTALO KARAWO FABRIC IN AESTHETIC AND SYMBOLIC ELEMENTS

ARTic ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
Apsari Dj Hasan
Keyword(s):  
Manufacturing Process ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Decorative Motifs ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
The Aesthetic

This study aims to examine the decorative types of Gorontalo karawo fabrics in aesthetic and symbolic elements. Researchers want to know as made in the research design, aspects that are present in the decoration of fabrics in aesthetic and symbolic elements. This study uses a number of related theories to get results, and as a determinant, the authors use aesthetic theory, as well as historical approaches. With this theoretical basis, the author seeks to describe the aesthetic aspects and symbolic meanings that exist in Gorontalo karawo fabric. Through the data collection of the chosen motif and provide a classification of motives, the part is used as a reference for research material. The results showed that Gorontalo filigree had an aesthetic value consisting of unity formed from the overall decorative motifs displayed, complexity formed by complexity in the manufacturing process, and intensity of seriousness in the manufacturing process or the impression displayed on the filigree motif. The aesthetic form also reflects the diversity of meanings for communication, such as the symbol of a leader with his noble instincts, a symbol of cultural cooperation, which is worth maintaining, and ideas about nature conservation. This research proves that the decoration in Gorontalo filigree cloth (karawo) does not only act as a visual value, but also as a communication of cultural meanings and social status. Of all these distinctive motifs show a relationship between humans and humans and humans with nature. The influence of culture from the Philippines is also known to have a strong influence on the emergence of the Gorontalo filigree namely manila filigree.

Brief Analysis for the Aesthetic Form of Chinese Garden Art

2014 ◽  
Vol 584-586 ◽  
pp. 650-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bian Ling Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Development History ◽  
Artistic Conception ◽  
High Uniformity ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Forms

Chinese garden art has developed gradually along with the neutralization--lasting appeal--artistic conception trend till to the peak, meanwhile, those aesthetic forms can be existed synchronously with historical advancement, logic arrangement in parallel and correspondence as well as abundance and deepening of the interior connotation and exterior extension, which represent the high uniformity of the development history and logics of Chinese garden art. Nowadays, the landscape garden development is required to probe its root, explore its cultural soul, so as to base itself upon the garden industry all over the world. Additionally, the function of traditional aesthetic form will show the powerful functions, declare publicly the deep influence of modernized landscape garden development.

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: EAST AND WEST STUDIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (09) ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Aziza Komilovna Akhmedova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Ideal ◽  
The Ideal

The article analyzes the results of the research on the representation of the aesthetic ideal through the image of the ideal hero in two national literatures. For research purposes, attention was paid to highlighting the category of the ideal hero as an expression of the author's aesthetic views. In Sinclair Lewis’s “Arrowsmith” and Pirimkul Kodirov's “The Three Roots”, the protagonists artistically reflect the authors' views on truth, virtue, and beauty. In these novels, professional ethics is described as a high noble value. The scientific novelty of the research work includes the following: in the evolution of western and eastern poetic thought, in the context of the novel genre, the skill, common and distinctive aspects of the creation of an ideal hero were revealed by synthesis of effective methods in world science with literary criteria in the history of eastern and western literary studies, in the example of Sinclair Lewis and Pirimkul Kodirov.

scholarly journals Una mirada a la parodia desde el formalismo ruso: "Tristram Shandy" de Laurence Sterne

2011 ◽  
pp. 299
Author(s):  
María Djurdjevic
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Laurence Sterne ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Russian Formalism ◽  
Tristram Shandy ◽  
Postmodern Novel ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Aesthetic

El artículo aborda la revolucionaria lectura de la novela Tristram Shandy (1767) de L. Sterne por los formalistas rusos (Shklovski), que subrayó la importancia de los aspectos formal y paródico de esa obra, calificada también como la primera novela postmoderna. No obstante, la parodia como herramienta de reflexión metaliteraria está en uso desde la antigüedad griega. Se aborda paralelamente el hito principal de la teoría literaria y cultural rusa –la reconexión con la tradición filosófica premoderna– que ilustra que toda labor hermenéutica depende de las normas estéticas de la tradición cultural desde la cual se estudia.The article tackles a revolutionary reading of the Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy (1767) by Russian Formalism (V. Shklovsky, 1921), focused on the importance of its formal and parodic aspects. The novel has also been assessed as the first postmodern novel in history. But the parody is being used as a tool for metaliterary thinking from the times of the Ancient Greece. Thus, this text also tackles the principal milestone of the Russian Literature and Cultural Theory –its reconnecting with the pre- Modern philosophical tradition– illustrating how our hermeneutic work depends on the aesthetic norms of the cultural tradition we belong to.

scholarly journals 'Always think of the objects': Ekphrasis as aesthetics in the contemporary novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucy Eleanor Alston
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Infinite Jest ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Temporal Qualities

<p>It is a commonplace that ekphrasis – the description in literature of a visual work of art – brings to the fore questions of representation and reference. Such questions are particularly associated with the ‘postmodern’; ekphrasis is thus often subsumed under the category of metafiction. There has been little critical attention, however, to how the ekphrastic mode might be understood in aesthetic terms. This thesis considers the nature of ekphrasis’s referential capacity, but expands on this to suggest a number of ways in which the ekphrastic mode evinces the aesthetic and ontological assumptions upon which a text is predicated. Two case studies illustrate how the ekphrastic mode can be figured to different effect. In comparing these two novels, this thesis argues that the ekphrastic mode makes clear the particular subject-object relations expressed by each. If Lukács is correct in asserting that the novel mode expresses a discrepancy between ‘the conventionality of the objective world and the interiority of the subjective one’, ekphrasis provides a fruitful but under-explored avenue for critical inquiry because, as a mode, it is situated at the point at which subject and object must converge. The first chapter of this thesis is concerned with Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), a novel that includes both traditional ekphrastic descriptions and embedded photographs and references to critical theory that function ekphrastically. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) provides a contrast: the novel makes continued reference to film – a medium defined by its temporal qualities – but as used in the novel the ekphrastic mode implies a fixed, ahistorical schema. The implications that such differences have on the novel mode and critical discourse are explored in the final section of the thesis.</p>

scholarly journals Development of painting in Maratha area

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (9) ◽  
pp. 198-202
Author(s):  
Sushma Jain
Keyword(s):  
Madhya Pradesh ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Many

The painting tradition in the Maratha region dates back to prehistoric times. Human beings have left examples of paintings with a very careful reflex of behavior. In the primitive tendons of Madhya Pradesh, we are surprised today by the many linear signs of the human and the aesthetic form of the weapons, following the craving to be cultured and ornate on that barbar. मराठा क्षेत्र में चित्रकला परंपरा का प्रारंभ प्रागैतिहासिक काल से होता है। मानव ने बहुत ही प्रांरभ में व्यवहार की सजगता के साथ चित्रों के उदाहरण छोड़े हैं। मध्यप्रदेश की आदिम कंदराओं में हमें उस बर्बर पर सुसंस्कृत और सुअलंकृत होने की लालसा के अनुगामी मानव के रचे अनेक रेखीय चिन्ह तथा अस्त्र शस्त्रों के सौंदर्य प्रधान रूप आज हमंें आश्चर्य चकित करते है।1

scholarly journals The Logical Basis of a Literary Text, or What Does Porfiry Petrovich Hide in F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”?

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-259
Author(s):  
Valentina E. Vetlovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Literary Text ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Logical Basis ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Individual

<p>The article explores the role of logical connections in an epic text. It is these connections, according to the author of the article, that connect the individual components of the narrative (motifs, complexes of motifs) and make up in the reader&rsquo;s perception for the missing elements. The reticence and failures to mention, common in fiction, appear in the narrative for various reasons. Sometimes due to the aesthetic principles of the writer who prefers ambiguity to a completed statement depriving readers of the opportunity to finish thinking over a vague idea. And sometimes, due to the author&rsquo;s conviction that there is no need to explain the idea implied by what has been earlier said. But it also happens that the omissions in the narrative are engendered by the requirements for the presentation of a chosen topic, for example in crime fiction. But these reasons may go together as it occurs in Crime and Punishment. These ideas are illustrated by the analysis of one of the themes of the novel Crime and Punishment.</p>

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