scholarly journals Consumption and the Indian Diaspora: A Study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rashmi Das ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Food Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Indian Diaspora ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Grotesque ◽  
Grotesque Body

For the diaspora, consumption remains a significant exercise, as it acts as a means of appropriation of the host land, while also being an agency of assimilation and categorisation. Moreover, the fact remains that consumption or eating simultaneously entails regeneration and violence. As such, this paper justifies how the locus of consumption is multifaceted, being not only physical, but also metaphorical, and at times hyperreal, whereby the diaspora exists not only as consumers, but also as an item of consumption by the hosts. For this purpose, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003) has been analysed through the methodology of close reading, to present how food and its narrative is used as a repetitive metaphor and an ideological implement, which further illuminates the technicalities of consumption among the Indian diaspora. To set the stage, this paper briefly summarises the development of food studies as a genre, which has successfully enlarged the scope of literary criticism and research. Theoretically, this paper draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s discourse of food and eating as presented in his work Rabelais and His World (1965). By examining the unifying trope of food, this paper attempts to study the numerous dichotomies between the diasporic body and the concept of the grotesque body, as put forward by Bakhtin. This paper also attends to the concept of “culinary citizenship” (Mannur, 2010, p. 20) and traces the way it is overturned in favour of culinary “interorientation” (Bakhtin, 1965/1984, p. 317).

scholarly journals Fortæller og tema. Pontoppidans Mimoser læst igen

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (102) ◽  
pp. 10-31
Author(s):  
Jørgen Holmgaard
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Thematic Structure ◽  
Vertical Relationships ◽  
Short Novel ◽  
Life Projects ◽  
The Way

Narration and thematics. Pontoppidan’s Mimoser read once againIn Danish literary criticism Pontoppidan’s short novel Mimoser (1886) has maintained a reputation for being an enigmatic piece of fiction. What is it really about, and what is its point in the end? This paper approaches the text by close-reading the oblique, changing relationships between the implied narrator, the characters he presents, and the grim story he tells about how their life projects are ruined. In contrast to the elusive enunciation of the text, its thematic structure is very stable, however. The ‘vertical’ relationships between parents and their children persistently dominate the grown-up children’s wishes and futile attempts to form permanent ‘horizontal’ matrimonial relationships. Especially the dominance of the mother in relation to the son is decisive for the outcome of these conflicts. Eventually, the paper sketches what happens to the way Pontoppidan narrates in his long, monumental novels later on. 

Outlaws and Misfits: The Identities of Modernist Criticism

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-356
Author(s):  
Ben Knights
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Emotional Maturity ◽  
English Departments ◽  
Emotional Autonomy ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Implicit Identity ◽  
The University ◽  
Cultural Positioning

The images of the writer as exile and outlaw were central to modernism's cultural positioning. As the Scrutiny circle's ‘literary criticism’ became the dominant way of reading in the University English departments and then in the grammar-schools, it took over these outsider images as models for the apprentice-critic. English pedagogy offered students not only an approach to texts, but an implicit identity and affective stance, which combined alert resistance to the pervasive effects of mechanised society with a rhetoric of emotional ‘maturity’, belied by a chilly judgementalism and gender anxiety. In exchanges over the close reading of intransigent, difficult texts, criticism's seminars sought a stimulus to develop the emotional autonomy of its participants against the ‘stock response’ promulgated by industrial capitalism. But refusal to reflect on its own method meant such pedagogy remained unconscious of the imitative pressures that its own reading was placing on its participants.

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

When Is a Religion Like a Weed?

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-18
Author(s):  
Nathan Rein
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Study ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
The Way

Caroline Schaffalitzky de Muckadell's 2014 article, "On Essentialism and Real Definitions of Religion," offers a comprehensive rationale for the use of real, essentialist definitions of religion in the field of religious studies. In this article, I examine her arguments and the proposed definition she supplies. I argue that a close reading of Schaffalitzky's piece, concentrating especially on the way she uses examples, helps to demonstrate that she and her anti-essentialist opponents view the field of religious studies in incommensurable ways. While Schaffalitzky views definitions as serving the analytical study of religion as an object, her opponents view definitions primarily rhetorically and seek to focus attention on the process of defining.

Contortionist, Caricature and the Grotesque Body

Umní / Art ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol LV (5) ◽  
pp. 400-408
Author(s):  
Tomáš Winter
Keyword(s):  
The Grotesque ◽  
Grotesque Body

The Castle of Otranto

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Horace Walpole
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Game Changer ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Grotesque

‘Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious intentions’ The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. After the grotesque death of his only son, Conrad, on his wedding day, Manfred determines to marry the bride–to–be. The virgin Isabella flees through a castle riddled with secret passages. Chilling coincidences, ghostly visitations, arcane revelations, and violent combat combine in a heady mix that terrified the novel's first readers. In this new edition Nick Groom examines the reasons for its extraordinary impact and the Gothic culture from which it sprang. The Castle of Otranto was a game-changer, and Walpole the writer who paved the way for modern horror exponents.

The Justified Body: Hauerwas, Luther and the Christian Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Justin Nickel
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
The Way

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis (1545) and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification.

scholarly journals Art (and) Criticism: Hart Crane and David Siqueiros

Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Alicja Piechucka
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Hart Crane ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article focuses on an analysis of Hart Crane’s essay “Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros.” One of Crane’s few art-historical texts, the critical piece in question is first of all a tribute to the American poet’s friend, the Mexican painter David Siqueiros. The author of a portrait of Crane, Siqueiros is a major artist, one of the leading figures that marked the history of Mexican painting in the first half of the twentieth century. While it is interesting to delve into the way Crane approaches painting in general and Siqueiros’ oeuvre in particular, an analysis of the essay with which the present article is concerned is also worthwhile for another reason. Like many examples of art criticism—and literary criticism, for that matter—“Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros” reveals a lot not only about the artist it revolves around, but also about its author, an artist in his own right. In a text written in the last year of his life, Hart Crane therefore voices concerns which have preoccupied him as a poet and which, more importantly, are central to modernist art and literature.

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