scholarly journals Hélène Cixous’s „The Exile of James Joyce”: A Biographical Limit Case

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Eva C. Karpinski
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Limit Case ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Gender Marginalization

This article examines Hélène Cixous’s biographical monograph The Exile of James Joyce as a limit case of biographical praxis. Joyce’s biography is read in the context of Cixous’s own evolving personal motif of exile, revealing her autobiographical investment in becoming a writer through reading Joyce. She pushes the boundaries of the biographical genre at the intersections of autobiography, literary criticism, and biography, defying simple generic classifications and exposing the limits of conventional demarcations between the artist, the work, the biographer, and the critic. As a result, the text becomes a creative-interpretive hybrid project, where the biographical code has been displaced by focus on epistemological, psychological, and textual problems implicit in the rela­tionship between the biographer and the biographical subject. Her approach invites us to consider the following questions: How does she rewrite Joyce through her own multiple experiences of exile that she also shares with Jacques Derrida? What difference does gender make in the construction of the biographical subject as the great modernist “genius”? How does gender marginalization impact her authority as a biographer? The discussion is also framed through some larger questions concerning the aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, and political role of biography in approaching modernist literature and culture: Is biography an art or a craft? What kind of knowledge does biography generate? How far is biography a form of discursive violence and voyeurism? How can attention to affect and intimacy offer new insights into the aesthetics of the biographical genre?

Modernism and Non-Translation

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Reading Key ◽  
Modernist Fiction ◽  
Selection Of

Modernism and Non-Translation proposes a new way of reading key modernist texts, including the work of canonical figures such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. The topic of this book is the incorporation of untranslated fragments from various languages within modernist writing. It explores non-translation in modernist fiction, poetry, and other forms, with a principally European focus. The intention is to begin to answer a question that demands collective expertise: what are the aesthetic and cultural implications of non-translation for modernist literature? How did non-translation shape the poetics, and cultural politics, of some of the most important writers of this period? Twelve essays by leading scholars of modernism explore American, British, and Irish texts, alongside major French and German writers, and the wider modernist recovery of Classical languages. They explore non-translation from the dual perspectives of both ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, unsettling that false opposition, and articulating in the process their individuality of expression and experience. The range explored indicates something of the reach and vitality of the matter of translation—and specifically non-translation—across a selection of poetry, fiction, and non-fictional prose, while focusing on mainly canonical voices. Offering a series of case studies, the volume aims to encourage further exploration of connections across languages and among writers. Together, the collection seeks to provoke and extend debate on the aesthetic, cultural, political, and conceptual dimensions of non-translation as an important yet hitherto neglected facet of modernism, helping to redefine our understanding of that movement. It demonstrates the rich possibilities of reading modernism through instances of non-translation.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Ciaran McMorran
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Euclidean Geometry ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Finnegans Wake ◽  
Non Euclidean Geometry ◽  
Geometric Concepts ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Modes Of Thought

This chapter explores how James Joyce evokes an overarching concern with the linear in his works, both formally (in terms of the Euclidean ideal of rectilinearity) and conceptually (in terms of linear narratives, histories, arguments, modes of thought, etc.). In particular, it considers how the non-linearity of Joyce’s works reflects a wider questioning of the straight line in modernist literature which followed the development of non-Euclidean geometries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This chapter also provides an overview of the geometric babble which entered into the context of Joyce’s writing following the popularization of non-Euclidean geometry in modernist art and literature, as well as the “fashionable nonsense” associated with the application of geometric concepts in contemporary literary criticism. By referring to the source texts which informed Joyce’s articulation of multiple geometric registers, it traces his engagement with non-Euclidean geometry to his early readings of Giordano Bruno’s mathematical and philosophical works, illustrating how notions associated with the curvature of the straight line inform the structural composition of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Michael Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
National Subject ◽  
The Aesthetic

The introduction surveys the awkward meeting of modernism and the disabled body, summarizing the various ways in which disability is represented in modernist literature and art. The introduction also treats the formative role of disability in the aesthetic function itself insofar as ideas of autonomy require a contingent, vulnerable body on which to establish judgment. This sets the stage for a discussion of how modernist art and literature contribute to the disqualification of certain bodies, often using them as metaphors for cultural decay and social unrest. The role of eugenics, criminal photography, racial anatomy, and uplift during the Progressive Era contributed to invalidating certain bodies while reinforcing a normative national subject. The introduction also studies the connection between modernist aesthetic futurity (“Make it new!”) and the biofuturistic scenarios of medical science and genetic purification.

Zur Struktur und Rolle ästhetischer Erfahrung in Emil Staigers »Die Kunst der Interpretation« (1951)

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Klauk ◽  
Tilmann Köppe
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Aesthetic Properties ◽  
The Aesthetic

AbstractCurrent accounts of the aims and methods of criticism as developed in Emil Staiger’s seminal essay »Die Kunst der Interpretation« typically do not concentrate on the role of aesthetic experience. We clarify the notion of aesthetic experience employed in Staiger’s essay and point out the centrality of aesthetic experience for his view of criticism. According to Staiger, aesthetic experiences are central to the aesthetic merit of an artwork, they guide the critic’s appreciation of aesthetic properties, and literary criticism should be concerned with the elucidation of how aesthetic properties are based on other manifest properties of a work. We also review some recent alternative reconstructions of Staiger’s view, and offer some routes to a critique of his view that is based on his central assumptions concerning the aims and methods of criticism, rather than on a rejection of them.

scholarly journals Intended Fallacies: Lowered Horizons, Ideological Inversions and Employed Intimacy. Translating Judita Vaičiūnaitė’s Early Poetry into Russian

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Gintarė Bernotienė
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Original Poetry ◽  
General Scheme ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Secondary Importance ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Translational Process

The case of the translations of Lithuanian poetess Judita Vaičiūnaitė (1937–2001) early poetry into Russian clearly illustrates the damages an original literary text (and the author’s institution) bore seeking to gain a statewide readership. In this article the Soviet translational practice of the 1960s is discussed as a phenomenon typical of Soviet literature when intentional rewriting, expurgation and ideological remakes of the authorial text were considered to be normal.The lowered horizons when translating the minor nationality’s original poetry, notable ideological inversions and the use of the source text in the most general scheme of the plot in Vaičiūnaitė’s early poetry translations into Russian, and even intimacy used in favour of ideological records marked not only the weakness and incompetence of amateur translators but also the pressure of the censoring institutions upon the author. The invisible chains of Soviet literary patronage demonstrated that the aesthetic value of the original and its translations for the publishing and propaganda industry of that time were of secondary importance. Wishing to spread their work to the wider circle of the Soviet readers and to strengthen the symbolic power, most often authors used to agree to the substitutions and editorial interventions into the authorial text. The interactions between the propagandist-educational character of the translations of that time and the artistic aims of the translational process in Soviet literary criticism were discussed later, after the revision of the Soviet heritage, evaluating the role of literature as a servant of the Soviet power machine.The fact that Vaičiūnaitė publicly never mentioned her early poetry translations into Russian reveals her attitude towards the prevalent translational practice: it was negatory as well as instrumental. Having agreed with the imprints of the Soviet literary patronage on the translations of her texts, she took the step gaining personal legitimisation in the state-wide Soviet literary universe.

‘Comunicare con il popolo’: Novel, Drama, and Music in Mazzini’s Work

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlotta Sorba
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Active Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Art ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter observes and relocates the role of the arts in Mazzini's political reflections, seeing in it a kind of prelude to the aesthetic dimension of politics generally explored in the 20th century. Through a close analysis of his large output of literary and musical criticism (1826–44), it shows how the language of the arts, and especially drama as ‘the social art par excellence’, was considered by the Italian thinker to be the main means to communicate to the public – in a forceful and emotional way – political and national goals. Mazzini believed that, in the specific case of Italy, opera, with its active power to move, thrill, and provoke enthusiasm in Italian theatres, could play a crucial political role.

Literature in Our Time, or, Loving Literature to Bits

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Callus
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Don Quixote ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
Paul Auster ◽  
Anne Michaels

In this essay Ivan Callus provides some reflections on literature in the present. He considers the tenability of the post-literary label and looks at works that might be posited as having some degree of countertextual affinity. The essay, while not setting itself up as a creative piece, deliberately structures itself unconventionally. It frames its argument within twenty-one sections that are self-contained but that also echo each other in their attempt to develop an overarching argument which draws out some of the challenges that lie before the countertextual and the post-literary. Punctuating the essay and contributing to its unconventional take on the practice of literary criticism is a series of exercises for the reader to complete, if so wished; the essay makes no attempt, however, to suggest that a countertextual criticism ought to make a routine of such devices. The separate sections contain reflections on a number of texts and writers, among them, and in order of appearance, Hamlet, Anthony Trollope, Jacques Derrida, The Time Machine, Don Quixote, Mark Z. Danielewski, Mark B. N. Hansen, Gunter Kress, Scott's Reliquiae Trotcosienses, W. B. Yeats, Kate Tempest, David Jones, Anne Michaels, Bernice Eisenstein, Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee, Billy Collins, Deidre Shauna Lynch, Tim Parks, Tom McCarthy – and Hamlet again. The essay's length fulfils a performative function but also facilitates as extensive a catalogue of aspects of the countertextual in literature and elsewhere as is feasible or as might be dared at this stage.

Jazz als gelungene Performance – Ästhetische Normativität und Improvisation

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Bertinetto
Keyword(s):  
Successful Performance ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Right

Die Hauptfrage, die ich in diesem Aufsatz diskutieren will, ist die folgende: Welche sind die ästhetisch-normativen Voraussetzungen für das richtige Verständnis und die richtige Evaluation von Jazz? Meine These lautet: Die Jazzästhetik ist eine Ästhetik der gelungenen Performanz. Sie ist nicht eine Ästhetik der Unvollkommenheit. Ich werde meine Argumentation in die folgenden Abschnitte gliedern. Nach der Einleitung (I.) wird in Abschnitt II. die ›These der Unvollkommenheit‹ dargestellt und in III. werden anschließend einige Argumente dagegen diskutiert. In den Abschnitten IV. und V. werden die für die Jazzästhetik wichtige Frage nach dem »Fehler« und das entscheidende Thema der Normativität untersucht. Dazu werde ich geltend machen, dass die ›These der Unvollkommenheit‹ insbesondere deswegen unbefriedigend ist, weil sie die spezifische Normativität von Jazz als Improvisationskunst missversteht. In Abschnitt VI. wird schließlich erklärt, in welchem Sinne von einer Normativität der gelungenen Performanz die Rede sein kann und warum dies für unser Verständnis von Jazz bedeutend ist. Abschließend (VII.) wird diese Idee gegen mögliche Einwände verteidigt.<br><br>In this paper I aim at discussing the aesthetic-normative conditions for the right understanding and the right evaluation of jazz. My main point is this: The aesthetics of jazz is an aesthetics of the successful performance, rather than an aesthetics of imperfection. The paper will be structured as follows. SectionI introduces the topic. SectionII presents the ›imperfection thesis‹, while III discusses some arguments against it. Sections IV and V investigate two related questions: the first is about the role of the »mistake« in jazz; the second concerns the crucial topic of normativity. At this regard I will maintain that the ›imperfection thesis‹ does not work, especially because it misunderstands the specific normativity of jazz as improvisational art. Section VI is devoted to clarifying both in which sense the idea of a normativity of the successful performance is sound and why this idea is important for understanding jazz. Finally (VII) I defend this view against possible objections.

Something Gleaming

Theoria ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (165) ◽  
pp. 92-117
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Leebaw
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Way

What kinds of lessons can be learned from stories of those who resisted past abuses and injustices? How should such stories be recovered, and what do they have to teach us about present day struggles for justice and accountability? This paper investigates how Levi, Broz, and Arendt formulate the political role of storytelling as response to distinctive challenges associated with efforts to resist systematic forms of abuse and injustice. It focuses on how these thinkers reflected on such themes as witnesses, who were personally affected, to varying degrees, by atrocities under investigation. Despite their differences, these thinkers share a common concern with the way that organised atrocities are associated with systemic logics and grey zones that make people feel that it would be meaningless or futile to resist. To confront such challenges, Levi, Arendt and Broz all suggest, it is important to recover stories of resistance that are not usually heard or told in ways that defy the expectations of public audiences. Their distinctive storytelling strategies are not rooted in clashing theories of resistance, but rather reflect different perspectives on what is needed to make resistance meaningful in contexts where the failure of resistance is intolerable.

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