Cross-Colonial Poetics: Souffles-Anfas and the Figure of Palestine

PMLA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 128 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia C. Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Abdelkebir Khatibi ◽  
Point Of Reference ◽  
The Way

From the mid-1960s onward, Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian writers have turned to the question of Palestine as a model of political and aesthetic innovation. Taking the Moroccan cultural journal Souffles-Anfas as an early, paradigmatic example of the literary turn to Palestine in the Maghreb, I argue that writers such as Abdellatif Laâbi and Abdelkebir Khatibi used Palestine as a springboard for “cultural decolonization,” reactivating global anticolonial discourses in order to articulate a relational, cross-colonial Maghrebi identity. Focusing on discussions of language, poetic form, and cultural autonomy, I show that Palestine served as a point of reference in debates on postcolonial Maghrebi culture. Without muting the ethical pitfalls inherent in representing a heterogeneous anticolonial struggle in a postcolonial context, I take this example of cross-colonial poetics as an invitation to rethink along multidirectional, transnational lines the way we approach Maghrebi and, more generally, postcolonial literature and culture.

Semiotics of Clothes in Postcolonial Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-215
Author(s):  
Somaye Sharify ◽  
Nasser Maleki
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Female Immigrant ◽  
Cultural Displacement ◽  
Romance Fiction ◽  
Dress Codes ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe present study intends to examine the link between clothes and cultural identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Hema and Kaushik” (2008). It will argue that Lahiri explores her protagonists’ cultural displacement through their items of clothing. We want to suggest that the protagonists’ clothes are employed in each narrative as signifiers for the characters’ cultural identities. The study will further show that each item of clothing could be loaded with the ideological signification of two separate cultures. In other words, it aims to demonstrate how ideology imposes its values, beliefs, and consequently its dominance through the dress codes each defines for its subjects. Moreover, it intends to suggest that the link between clothing and identity is most visible and intense in the case of female immigrant characters rather than men. Drawing on Luptan’s structure of the Cinderella line, we will explore Lahiri’s protagonists’ cultural transformation from simple ethnic girls to stylish American ladies through their items of clothing. The study will conclude that the “Cinderella line” does not work in Lahiri’s realistic stories the way it does in fairy tales and romance fiction.

Recreating Experience in Nigerian Fiction: Camillus Ukah’s Sweet Things and the Politics of its Production

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon Awuzie
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Nigerian Literature ◽  
The Way

This article contends that, in the same way as some postcolonial literature, the latter third generation Nigerian literature is a product of the writer’s experience. When the writer does not reproduce his sociopolitical experience, he reshapes his expectations into literature. The writer manipulates his experience into creative activity that fulfils his innate desire – this is the same desire which he is ordinarily unable to achieve in reality. This article argues further that even though the literature is a product of the writer’s experience, it is harmless and beneficent. Using Camillus Ukah’s Sweet Things as a representative text of the fiction produced by a latter third generation Nigerian literature writer, emphasis is made on the way in which Camillus Ukah has recreated his experience. It concludes that through the novel, Ukah expresses his bitterness towards a certain matrimonial experience that is of his particular concern.

scholarly journals Vatersehnsucht. Botho Strauß erzählt sich seine Herkunft

2017 ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Andrzej Denka
Keyword(s):  
Literary Form ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Narrative Fragments ◽  
Point Of Reference ◽  
The Way

Botho Strauß (b. 1944), German playwright, novelist and essayist, devotes his book Herkunft [Origin] (2014) to a subtle portrait of his slightly underestimated father, who died in 1971. This sample of prose is typical of Strauss as it encompasses meditative descriptions, disquisitions, aphorisms and narrative fragments. This narration contains numerous biographical details about his father, as well as his mother and the writer himself, and it tells us a lot about his youth and cultural maturation. Strauss’ hometown, Bad Ems, provides a certain topographic point of reference here. This is a highly personal and emotional text which simultaneously exhibits all esthetic properties that characterize Strauss’ style. This text is also about the way different sensory stimuli incite our memory and how difficult it is to find a literary form adequate to reconstruct memory.

The Work of the Words

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-98
Author(s):  
Megan Kaes Long
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Text Setting ◽  
Tonal Language ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Organizational Framework ◽  
Musical Systems ◽  
Regular Text ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Composers of homophonic partsongs developed formulaic text-setting schemas that translated poetic meter into musical meter: line lengths determine phrase lengths, poetic accents establish musical accents, and poetic form controls cadences and formal boundaries. Consequently, text-setting establishes an increasingly deep mensural hierarchy. At the same time, schematic text-setting codifies an organizational framework that parallels the way the mind constructs musical meter. According to dynamic attending theory, listener attention peaks in response to environmental regularities; this theory suggests that regular metrical frameworks like those in homophonic partsongs facilitate tonal expectation by drawing listener attention toward metrically accented harmonic events. Regular text-setting contributes to musical meter in a period when mensural structures are giving way to metrical ones. A new metrical style and a new tonal language emerge in tandem in the early seventeenth century, and the balletto repertoire highlights the close relationship between these evolving musical systems.

scholarly journals Filial Descent: The African Roots of Postcolonial Literature in Italy

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Cristina Lombardi-Diop
Keyword(s):  
Strong Influence ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Black African ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Generational Shift ◽  
Narrative Forms

Abstract The essay concentrates on two seminal postcolonial novels by authors of African descent: Cristina Ubax Ali Farah’s Madre piccola (2007) (Little Mother: A Novel) and Gabriella Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) (Queen of Flowers and Pearls). It argues that these works give expression to an African diasporic urban generation that is changing the literary legacy of the Horn of Africa. The co-presence of multiple genres, with orality appearing as a strong influence on their written narrative forms, places these novels within the larger formation of a black African literary tradition. By looking at these two novels from an Africanist perspective, the essay takes into consideration their plurilingual interventions, the use of glossaries and linguistic borrowings, alongside the presence of Somali and Amharic cultural references. It highlights the authorial perspective as a ‘filial descent’ that addresses the complexity of a postcolonial generational shift in contemporary African literature. By placing these works within an African literary tradition and showing their critical de-centring of this tradition, the essay reconfigures a possible space of cultural autonomy for African postcolonial writing, away from the Italocentric space of discourse that has so far dominated its critical reception in Italy.

scholarly journals Democracy and Competing Values

1996 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Saward
Keyword(s):  
Competing Values ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Point Of Reference ◽  
The Way

Where it is Practised, Democracy is a) Not The Only principle practised, and b) practised differently from the way it is practised in other places. If democracy has a clear meaning and clear requirements – I shall argue that it does – then we should be able to map out the bases on which degrees of democracy are traded off in the name of other values, and with what justification. In attempting to make some inroads into the serious conceptual and empirical problems this topic presents, my point of reference will be the modern nationstate, though the use of the phrase ‘political units’ throughout signals the fact that the argument largely holds for other geographically-defined entities as well.

Oecuménisme méthodologique et dialogue entre paradigmes

1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (S1) ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verena Haldemann ◽  
Ron Lévy
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Internal Reference ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
High Quality Research ◽  
Quality Research ◽  
External Point ◽  
Point Of Reference ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTWhile multi-method research is currently provoking much interest, there is little reflection on the legitimacy of this kind of research and on the conditions for achieving high quality research. This article first describes the scientific and socio-political contexts from which this movement towards multi-method research has emerged. It then goes on to discuss why comparative analysis is central to the triangulation of methods and why the notion of triangulation itself requires an external point of reference. It is suggested that the reason why we produce only half-hearted or even illigitimate comparisons is because the reference points are hidden. For multi-method research to be of high quality it must clearly externalize valid inferences at each moment in the spiral of knowledge, identify its analytical logic and establish its internal reference points. (This article is the result of joint research and the respective positions of the authors are reflected in the way in which the article is presented.)

scholarly journals Włoska historia jednego gatunku

2020 ◽  
pp. 191-197
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Kowalik
Keyword(s):  
Point Of Reference ◽  
The Way

The text is devoted to Giancarlo Alfano and Francesco de Cristofaro’s monograph Il roman­zo in Italia published in 2018. The work is an attempt to systematize the information about Italian tradition of the genre which nowadays unquestionably dominates the publishing market. Moreover, it describes the structure of the publication, metho­dological assumptions adopted by the authors, their objectives, and the way of their realisation. The analysis of these elements shows whether the work discussed can be an important point of reference for future academic works dedicated to Italian novels.

scholarly journals The tourist gaze in English, Italian and German travel articles about Puglia: A corpus-based study

ICAME Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-72
Author(s):  
Angela D’Egidio
Keyword(s):  
German Language ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
Comparable Corpora ◽  
Tourist Gaze ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Travel Writers ◽  
Travel Articles ◽  
Online Travel ◽  
Point Of Reference ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper shows how online travel articles may provide important insights into how a tourist destination is perceived and to what extent what is known as the ‘tourist gaze’ may be used to recontextualise tourist material in order to produce more effective tourist texts, which meet receivers’ expectations. For this purpose, three comparable corpora of online travel articles in English, Italian and German language were assembled and analysed in order to understand the way ordinary travellers perceive and experience a tourist destination in Italy (Puglia) by taking language as a point of reference. The first fifteen words of the frequency lists in the three corpora highlighted what landmarks and elements of attraction English, Italian and German travel writers gaze at while on holiday in Puglia. The analysis demonstrated that the Italian tourist gaze is different from the English and German tourist gazes, since not all of them focus on the same landscapes, and even when they gaze at the same sights, their perception and representation are often different. The similarities and differences between the ways the tourists behave suggest a distinction between a model of ‘global gaze’ embodied by English and German travellers, seen as ‘outsiders’, and a model of ‘local gaze’ embodied by Italian tourists, seen as ‘insiders'

Ron Padgett’s Inner-Outer Spaces

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmine Shamma
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Spatial Poetics ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines a range of poems by Ron Padgett which muse on lived-in spaces. Accordingly, this chapter illuminates the “nuts and bolts” of Padgett’s poems through close readings, coupling formal criticism with “gossip” of interview material to pursue more decisive statements regarding the distinct ways in which this form is unique in the way that it registers sought or actual lived in space. This becomes particularly possible within this close examination of Padgett’s poetry. As Padgett utilizes a particularly supple sense of poetic form, exhibiting a control on the page that reflects a control of thought, over and above the rigid limitations of urban space and structures of inherited form, he constructs metaphors that pursue the explosion of structural constraints. This chapter resists shying away from the ramifications of such explosions, ending this study of spatial poetics in the contemporary moment.

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