A Historicist Novel

PMLA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-397
Author(s):  
George Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
War Literature ◽  
Greatest Generation ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Crisis Of Meaning ◽  
History Books

The vortex of the twentieth century, the late 1930s and early to mid 1940s, provides an appropriate setting for Jennifer Egan's experiment in historical fiction. Many popular histories have glorified the bands of brothers and Rosie the Riveters of the so-called greatest generation. The best fiction and poetry of the 1940s offered a different, unflattering view. Journalists from that era—Martha Gellhorn, for one—said they needed fiction to get the history right (313). Literary treatments of the war focus on its incommunicability and on the crisis of meaning it inspired, but they have been vastly overshadowed by popular history books, documentaries, movies, and television shows that depend for their very production and distribution on an appeal to the fantasies that the contemporary war literature contradicts. In a decade when the idea of making America great again seems supercharged by notions of America when it was supposedly great, we can use some diving into the wreck.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Murnaghan ◽  
Deborah H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Pleasure Reading ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Classical Myths ◽  
Classical Culture

The book’s subject is the widespread and formative reception of classical culture that takes place in childhood, with a specific focus on children’s pleasure reading in Britain and America from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The production of literature designed to foster children’s connection to antiquity is identified as an adult project, which begins with the retelling of classical myths in the 1850s and which this study traces primarily in myth collections and works of historical fiction. Attention is also given to adults’ memories of their own childhood encounters with antiquity and the uses and meanings assigned to those encounters in memoirs and other works for adult readers.

The Trans-Asian Pathways of ‘Oriental Products’: Navigating the prohibition of narcotics between Turkey, China, and Japan, 1918–1938

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
DANIEL-JOSEPH MACARTHUR-SEAL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Turkish Government ◽  
Medical Market ◽  
Opium Production ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Historic Significance ◽  
Drug Prohibition

Abstract Patterns of opium production and distribution shifted immensely over the course of the twentieth century, with output falling by three-quarters, almost nine-tenths of which now takes place in Afghanistan. Supporters of drug prohibition trumpet the success of this long-term decline and hail the withdrawal of the four largest opium producers—India, China, Iran, and the Ottoman empire—from the non-medical market, but this seemingly linear trend conceals numerous deviations of historic significance. Among the most notable and little known is Turkey's prolonged resistance to international restrictions on the narcotics trade and the efforts of state and non-state networks to substitute Turkish opium for the diminishing supply of once-dominant Indian exports to a still opium-hungry China in the first half of the twentieth century. This article uses neglected League of Nations and Turkish government sources alongside international newspapers and diplomatic reports to demonstrate the extent of connections forged by state and non-state actors between Turkey and East Asia, expanding on recent research on trans-Asian connections in commerce and political thought.

Visualizing Winchester: a brand history through iconic Western images

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence H. Witkowski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Wild West Shows ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Lever Action ◽  
The Media ◽  
Heroic Narrative

Purpose This paper aims to present a visually documented brand history of Winchester Repeating Arms through a cultural analysis of iconic Western images featuring its lever action rifles. Design/methodology/approach The study applies visual culture perspectives and methods to the research and writing of brand history. Iconic Western images featuring Winchester rifles have been selected, examined, and used as points of departure for gathering and interpreting additional data about the brand. The primary sources consist chiefly of photographs from the nineteenth century and films and television shows from the twentieth century. Most visual source materials were obtained from the US Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and the Internet Movie Firearms Database. These have been augmented by written sources. Findings Within a few years of the launch of the Winchester brand in 1866, visual images outside company control associated its repeating rifles with the settlement of the American West and with the colorful people involved. Some of these images were reproduced in books and others sold to consumers in the form of cartes de visite, cabinet cards and stereographs made from albumen prints. Starting in the 1880s, the live Wild West shows of William F. Cody and his stars entertained audiences with a heroic narrative of the period that included numerous Winchesters. During the twentieth century and into the present, Winchesters have been featured in motion pictures and television series with Western themes. Research limitations/implications Historical research is an ongoing process. The discovery of new primary data, both written and visual, may lead to a revised interpretation of the selected images. Originality/value Based largely on images as primary data sources, this study approaches brand history from the perspective of visual culture theory and data. The research shows how brands acquire meaning not just from the companies that own them but also from consumers, the media and other producers of popular culture.

10. The letterless canon

2021 ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
Ilan Stavans
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Stand Up Comedy ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Comedy Film ◽  
Film Scripts ◽  
The Way

“The letterless canon” argues that Jewish literature from the mid-twentieth century onward is not restricted to fiction, poetry, and theater. The book as a tool for the dissemination of knowledge has undergone a metamorphosis. Along the way, the border between high-brow and popular culture has been erased. Comic strips like Superman and graphic novels can be viewed as literary artifacts. Indeed we should consider the work of Will Eisner (A Contract with God), Art Spiegelman (Maus), and Alison Bechdel (Fun House), each of whom offers different contributions. There is also the matter of stand-up comedy, film scripts, and television shows which examine, from a Jewish perspective, gender, racial, and class issues.

scholarly journals Transgender and The Literary Imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Gender Reassignment ◽  
Jazz Musician ◽  
Post War ◽  
American Authors ◽  
Selection Of

Transgender and the Literary Imagination examines a selection of literary fiction by British, Irish and American authors first published between 1918 and 2000, each text featuring a protagonist (and in some cases two) whose gender identity differs from that assigned to them at birth: George Moore’s naturalistic novella set in an 1860s Dublin hotel, Albert Nobbs (1918); Angela Carter’s dystopian feminist fantasy The Passion of New Eve (1977); Jackie Kay’s contemporary fiction inspired by the life of a post-war jazz musician, Trumpet (1998); Patricia Duncker’s historical fiction based on the life of a nineteenth-century colonial military surgeon, James Miranda Barry (1999); David Ebershoff’s The Danish Girl (2000), a rewriting of the life of Lili Elbe, reputed to be the first person to undergo gender reassignment treatment. A key concern for this study is the way in which transgender lives – whether historical or fictional – have been ‘authored by others’: named, defined and appropriated in ways which obscure, displace or erase transgender experiences, identities and histories. By revisiting twentieth-century narratives and their afterlives, including stage and film adaptations, this book aims to examine the legacies of this representational history, exploring the extent to which transgender potential can be recovered and realised.

scholarly journals Debates sobre o tecnobrega e indústria cultural em tempos de pós-fordismo * Debates on tecnobrega: culture industry in times of post-fordism

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAQUEL SANT'ANA
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Brazilian Music ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The Press ◽  
Restructuring Process

<p><strong>Resumo:</strong> As últimas décadas do século XX foram marcadas por uma profunda reestruturação produtiva que afetou também a chamada “indústria cultural”. No campo da música, a alegação de que haveria uma crise causada pela circulação de cópias ilegais marcou a reorganização do setor. Neste artigo, analiso o debate em torno do tecnobrega, circuito de música popular que foi transformado em modelo para a indústria fonográfica nacional. Essa construção discursiva contou com participação de imprensa, programas televisivos e análises acadêmicas, que construíram, aos poucos, uma imagem de que o gênero seria a superação da dicotomia centro versus periferia. Esse caso permite pensar algumas das novas configurações da indústria cultural no mundo pós-fordista.</p><p><strong>Palavras-chave:</strong> Tecnobrega – Indústria Fonográfica – Circuitos Musicais.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstract:</strong> The last decades of the Twentieth Century were marked by a profound restructuring process that has also affected the so-called "culture industry". In the music field , the claim that there would be a crisis caused by the circulation of illegal copies marked the sector reorganization. This article analyses the debate on the tecnobrega circuit of popular music which has been transformed into a model for the Brazilian music industry. This discursive construction had debates in the press, television shows and academic analysis, which gradually built an image that such genre would be the breakthrough of the center versus periphery dichotomy. This case allows us to consider some of the new settings of the culture industry in the post-Fordist world.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Tecnobrega – Phonographic Industry – Music Circuits.</p>

scholarly journals High treason. The activity of The Communist Party of Western Belarus in Vilnius in 1930–1935

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-93
Author(s):  
SERGIUSZ ŁUKASIEWICZ
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
The City ◽  
Grand Duchy

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to explain the activities of the Communist Party of Western Belarus in Vilnius during the fi rst half of the thirties of the twentieth century. The author’s aim is to show the organisation, theory and practice of this illegal party. Further-more, the intention is to present the activities of Vilnius police towards communist sym-pathizers and activists. Founded in 1923 in Vilnius, the Communist Party of Western Belaruswas a branch of The Communist Party of Poland. This organization like the polish communist party was illegal. Its aim was to combat the Polish state and to perform electioneering for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Although the name of the party could indicate a desire for independence of Belarus, in practice it was for the removal of the north eastern provinces of the Second Republic of Poland to the USSR. CPWB activity had a special dimension in Vilnius. As the region’s largest city and former capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnus was home for many nations, religions and cultures. Moreover, Vil-nius was the most important fi eld for communist action. Given the number of inhabitants, industrialized multi-ethnic character, communists had the opportunity to develop wide subversive and conspiratorial work. In addition, the city was the great centre of production and distribution of communist publications, which allowed the spread of propaganda in both its administrative boundaries and in the Vilnius Voivodeship.

Ancient History for Girls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Murnaghan ◽  
Deborah H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Classical World ◽  
History Texts ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Ancient Record ◽  
Ancient Women

This chapter considers the strategies used to make history texts and works of historical fiction set in antiquity appealing to girl readers of the first half of the twentieth century, who were increasingly exposed to books with active girl heroines. Despite the severe constraints on ancient women and girls, such writers as Dorothy Mills, Caroline Dale Snedeker, Erick Berry, and Naomi Mitchison contrive to provide their readers with independent, resourceful ancient counterparts. They achieve this by filling in the silences of the ancient record, setting their stories on the spatial and temporal margins of the classical world, and devising plots in which girls act in the place of absent or inadequate brothers.

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