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.

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.

Apocalypse and Post-History (Antoine Volodine)

Beyond Return ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 195-243
Author(s):  
Lucas Hollister
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Aesthetic Movement ◽  
French Theory ◽  
Literary Histories

This chapter examines the work of Antoine Volodine, which represents one of the most radical attempts to situate a literary project outside of any inscription in literary history, national or linguistic belonging, and authorial ownership. The chapter begins with a close reading of the historical, political, and aesthetic rhetoric of Volodine’s dystopian ‘romånce’ View of the Boneyard (1998). This analysis provides a precise textual reference to ground a broader reflection on the strategies of encryption and deployment of temporal paradoxes in Volodine’s invented aesthetic movement, ‘post-exoticism.’ The conclusion of this chapter argues that Volodine’s work represents less a post-formalist repoliticization of literature than an expression of radical intransitivity, a concept that has become synonymous with formalist excess, with that mid-century French theory that the ‘return to the story’ was supposed to supplant, but which I read as a direct challenge to reductive literary histories and cultural geographies. I thus argue that Volodine is a writer who uses the dreamscapes of dystopian political fiction to perform paradoxes and explore a radically open conception of literary voice and meaning.

scholarly journals Haere Mai Me Tuhituhi He Pukapuka: Muri Iho Ka Whawhai Ai Tatou: Reading Te Rangikaheke

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Arini May Loader
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Moderate Amount ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Literary Quality ◽  
Scholarly Attention

<p>This thesis reads Te Rangikaheke's texts through the editorial, Te Arawa and biographic dimensions of the writer and the texts. Te Rangikaheke was a prolific nineteenth century writer who produced over 800 pages of manuscript material. 1 Although he has enjoyed a moderate amount of scholarly attention, this has tended to focus on attribution, cataloguing and tracing publication, transcription and translating, commentary on authenticity and literary quality and his account of history. Specifically, the first core chapter explores issues concerning the editing of Te Rangikaheke's manuscripts by Governor George Grey and the effects of Grey's editing decisions on the texts. This chapter explores the nature of the relationship between Grey and Te Rangikaheke, the effects of this relationship on Te Rangikaheke's texts, and what the dualities of Pakeha/Maori and Governor/Native might mean in terms of the texts. Responding to the calls of American Indian Literary Criticism for studies of Indigenous topics to engage deeply with the contexts of iwi and place, the second core chapter looks at Te Rangikaheke as an Arawa writer and explores issues around identity and articulating an Arawa literary history. Finally, a biography of Te Rangikaheke elaborated from previously known and new biographic details combined with a close reading of his name and three of Te Rangikaheke's letters. Ultimately, it is anticipated that this thesis will forge new pathways into in the study of Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikaheke and his writing, and that these new pathways will clear some much needed space in which a deeper analysis of Te Rangikaheke's writing can be articulated. Furthermore, beyond its focus on a single writer, this thesis extends the scholarship on nineteenth century Maori writing, Maori historical studies, and Maori intellectual history and in this way speaks to a contemporary Indigenous intellectual agenda.</p>

Theology Still?

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (3) ◽  
pp. 674-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wickman
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Know How ◽  
Spiritual But Not Religious ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Critical Methods

“I hope my attitude will not be regarded as irreverent,” Maurizio Ascari declares before launching into a critique of Franco Moretti's critical methods (3). By contrast, I undertake no critique of Moretti's methods, but my attitude toward his work is at least somewhat irreverent, if also appreciative. I titled an early draft of this essay “Distant Reading and the New Poetics of Enchantment; or, Toward a Literary History That Is Spiritual but Not Religious.” This title was self-consciously outrageous, since there is little that is overtly enchanted, let alone spiritual, about Moretti's criticism. Indeed, one of the recurring rhetorical fillips in his book Distant Reading involves the disparagement of close reading as a kind of theology: “At bottom,” close reading is “a theological exercise—very solemn treatment of very few texts taken very seriously—whereas what we really need is a little pact with the devil: we know how to read texts, now let's learn how not to read them. Distant reading: where distance … is a condition of knowledge” (48; see also 33, 67, 89, and 113). By invoking enchantment and spirituality to describe his work, then, I was looking to underscore, a little cheekily, how rigorous engagement with his “pact with the devil” reveals similar features to those Moretti partly discredits—namely, credulity, “superstition” (Johnson 84), and “mystery” (Goodwin xiii). In essence, my aim was to employ close reading—of distant reading—as a kind of return, if not revenge, of the repressed.

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.

scholarly journals Haere Mai Me Tuhituhi He Pukapuka: Muri Iho Ka Whawhai Ai Tatou: Reading Te Rangikaheke

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Arini May Loader
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Moderate Amount ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Literary Quality ◽  
Scholarly Attention

<p>This thesis reads Te Rangikaheke's texts through the editorial, Te Arawa and biographic dimensions of the writer and the texts. Te Rangikaheke was a prolific nineteenth century writer who produced over 800 pages of manuscript material. 1 Although he has enjoyed a moderate amount of scholarly attention, this has tended to focus on attribution, cataloguing and tracing publication, transcription and translating, commentary on authenticity and literary quality and his account of history. Specifically, the first core chapter explores issues concerning the editing of Te Rangikaheke's manuscripts by Governor George Grey and the effects of Grey's editing decisions on the texts. This chapter explores the nature of the relationship between Grey and Te Rangikaheke, the effects of this relationship on Te Rangikaheke's texts, and what the dualities of Pakeha/Maori and Governor/Native might mean in terms of the texts. Responding to the calls of American Indian Literary Criticism for studies of Indigenous topics to engage deeply with the contexts of iwi and place, the second core chapter looks at Te Rangikaheke as an Arawa writer and explores issues around identity and articulating an Arawa literary history. Finally, a biography of Te Rangikaheke elaborated from previously known and new biographic details combined with a close reading of his name and three of Te Rangikaheke's letters. Ultimately, it is anticipated that this thesis will forge new pathways into in the study of Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikaheke and his writing, and that these new pathways will clear some much needed space in which a deeper analysis of Te Rangikaheke's writing can be articulated. Furthermore, beyond its focus on a single writer, this thesis extends the scholarship on nineteenth century Maori writing, Maori historical studies, and Maori intellectual history and in this way speaks to a contemporary Indigenous intellectual agenda.</p>

Coetzee’s Critique of Language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Literary Experience ◽  
The Way

The critique of language at stake in this chapter is Fritz Mauthner’s little-known Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (1901–2), a text remembered in philosophical circles chiefly because of a brief, categorically negative aside in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). In comparing Mauthner with Coetzee’s own critique of language, McDonald’s wider interest lies in reflecting upon the way in which scholarship often treats literary texts as the vehicles for ideas that can be unproblematically ‘compared’ with philosophical texts. What is involved, McDonald asks, in crediting the fact that literary texts are not ‘quasi-philosophical essays in disguise’? His answer draws on further questions of literary history and the practice of close reading, and examines the faultlines between philosophical questions and literary experience. In particular, through a reading of Disgrace he suggests that the formal workings of literary texts have the potential to unsettle the very salience of the philosophical questions being posed.

scholarly journals REPRESENTATION OF ISLAMIC FEMINISM IN ABIDAH EL KHALIEQY’S NOVELS

LITERA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-484
Author(s):  
Dipa Nugraha ◽  
Suyitno Suyitno
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
Ecriture Feminine ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Feminist Literary Criticism ◽  
The Family ◽  
Reform Period ◽  
Female Writers

The Indonesian literary tradition during the reform period was marked by the rise of female writers who raised the issue of feminism. Within the framework of locality and contextuality, the feminism movement echoed by female writers comes in diverse expressions. This study aims to describe the reference figures and issues of Islamic feminism that are represented in novels by Abidah El Khalieqy. This research uses a feminist literary criticism approach. The data sources of the research are three novels by Abidah El Khalieqiy, namely Perempuan Berkalung Sorban, Geni Jora, and Mataraisa. The technique used to gather feminist voices in the three novels is a close reading. The analysis was conducted using a descriptive qualitative method. The results of the study are as follows. First, Islamic feminist figures who were referred to by the feminism movement were Fatima Mernisi and Riffat Hassan. Fatima Mernisi is known as a misogonic hadith critic, while Riffat Hassan uses the hermeneutic principle in the interpretation of the Quran. Second, the issues of feminism represented are: the lives of women in the pesantren tradition, the position of women in the family, the view of normal sexual relations and relationships, and the interpretation of the hadiths and verses of the Qur'an relating to women. Islamic feminism voiced by Abidah El Khalieqy brings its own color compared to the Western feminism movement which refers to the concept of ecriture feminine. Keywords: Islamic Feminism, ecriture feminine, Indonesian literary history, politics of difference, intersectionality REPRESENTASI FEMINISME ISLAM DALAM NOVEL-NOVEL KARYA ABIDAH EL KHALIEQY AbstrakTradisi sastra Indonesia masa reformasi ditandai maraknya penulis perempuan yang mengangkat permasalahan feminisme. Dalam bingkai lokalitas dan kontekstualitas, gerakan feminisme yang digaungkan para penulis perempuan hadir dalam ekspresi yang beragam. Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan tokoh rujukan dan persoalan feminisme Islam yang direpresentasikan dalam novel-novel karya Abidah El Khalieqy. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kritik sastra feminis. Sumber data penelitian adalah tiga novel karya Abidah El Khalieqiy, yaitu Perempuan Berkalung Sorban, Geni Jora, dan Mataraisa. Teknik yang dipakai untuk mengumpulkan suara-suara feminisme di dalam ketiga novel adalah pembacaan cermat (close reading). Analisis dilakukan dengan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Hasil penelitian sebagai berikut. Pertama, tokoh feminis Islam yang menjadi rujukan gerakan feminisme adalah Fatima Mernisi dan Riffat Hassan. Fatima Mernisi dikenal dengan kritik hadist misogonis, sedangkan Riffat Hassan dengan prinsip hermeneutika dalam tafsir Alquran. Kedua, persoalan feminisme yang direpresentasikan adalah: kehidupan perempuan dalam tradisi pesantren, kedudukan perempuan dalam keluarga, pandangan terhadap relasi dan hubungan seksual yang normal, dan tafsir terhadap hadist dan ayat Al-quran berkaitan dengan perempuan. Feminisme Islam yang disuarakan Abidah El Khalieqy membawa warna tersendiri dibandingkan dengan gerakan feminisme Barat yang merujuk pada konsep ecriture feminine. Kata kunci: feminisme Islam, ecriture feminine, sejarah sastra Indonesia, politik perbedaan, interseksionalitas.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document