scholarly journals Is There “the Conspiracy against the Human Race”? The Philosophy of Man in the weird fiction Short Stories of Thomas Ligotti

Author(s):  
Łukasz Damian Wróbel
2020 ◽  
Vol nr specjalny 1(2020) ◽  
pp. 311-334
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Luboń ◽  

The article discusses the conventional models and translation techniques, which are most common among the Polish translators of the weird fiction by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The proposed classification of such models, aimed at either “popularisation,” “stereotypisation” or “revision” of Lovecraft’s short stories, presents the impact of extra-textual factors (vision of the writer, target group of readers, cultural and political influences) on the content, language and style of translated works by the American author. The comparative analysis takes into consideration one of the early short stories by Lovecraft, “Dagon” (1917), and its Polish versions by Arnold Mostowicz (1973), Robert Lipski (1994) and Maciej Płaza (2012).


Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Eller

This chapter examines Ray Bradbury's creativity and publishing record in two niche market genres—weird and the detective fiction—during the war years as his maturing process, both self-taught and mentored, continued. It begins with a discussion of Bradbury's relationship with the editors and publishers of Weird Tales and the frustrations he experienced as he sought to have his weird fiction printed. It then considers Bradbury's venture into detective fiction following the wartime suspension or outright demise of a number of pulp magazines catering to fantasy and science fiction, successfully placing several stories in Detective Tales, New Detective, and Dime Mystery. Under Julius Schwartz's entrepreneurial stewardship, at least thirty-eight Bradbury short stories from this period circulated, but failed to sell.


2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-63
Author(s):  
G. Waddell

John Bachman (1790–1874) was co-author with John James Audubon of The viviparous quadrupeds of North America (1842–1848). His other major books were The doctrine of the unity of the human race examined on the principles of science (1850) and A defense of Luther and the Reformation (1853). He wrote approximately 70 articles on topics ranging from religion to natural history including scientifi c methodology, wild plants, variation in domesticated plants and animals, hybrids, agriculture, bird migration and animal markings.


CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Stefan Herbrechter

The article takes its cue from Olivier Rey's recent book Une question de taille (a question of size) and develops the idea of humanity ‘losing its measure, or scale’ in the context of contemporary ecological catastrophe. It seems true that the current level of global threats, from climate change to asteroids, has produced a culture of ambient ‘species angst’ living in more or less constant fear about the survival of the ‘human race’, biodiversity, the planet, the solar system. This indeed means that the idea of a cosmos and a cosmology may no longer be an adequate ‘measurement’ for scaling the so far inconceivable, namely a thoroughly postanthropocentric world picture. The question of scale is thus shown to be connected to the necessity of developing a new sense of proportion, an eco-logic that would do justice to both, things human and nonhuman. Through a reading of the recent science fiction film Interstellar, this article aims to illustrate the dilemma and the resulting stalemate between two contemporary ‘alternatives’ that inform the film: does humanity's future lie in self-abandoning or in self-surpassing, in investing in conservation or in exoplanets? The article puts forward a critique of both of these ‘ecologics’ and instead shows how they depend on a dubious attempt by humans to ‘argue themselves out of the picture’, while leaving their anthropocentric premises more or less intact.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Evans

The Many Voices of Lydia Davis shows how translation, rewriting and intertextuality are central to the work of Lydia Davis, a major American writer, translator and essayist. Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2013, Davis writes innovative short stories that question the boundaries of the genre. She is also an important translator of French writers such as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. Translation and writing go hand-in-hand in Davis’s work. Through a series of readings of Davis’s major translations and her own writing, this book investigates how Davis’s translations and stories relate to each other, finding that they are inextricably interlinked. It explores how Davis uses translation - either as a compositional tool or a plot device - and other instances of rewriting in her stories, demonstrating that translation is central for understanding her prose. Understanding how Davis’s work complicates divisions between translating and other forms of writing highlights the role of translation in literary production, questioning the received perception that translation is less creative than other forms of writing.


Author(s):  
Christopher Rosenmeier

Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.


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