In the Kingdom of Whomever: Baldwin’s Method

Empty Houses ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kurnick
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Generic Difference

James Baldwin is not only one of the more notable Anglophone twentieth-century novelists to attempt continually and with minimal success to enter the theater. He is also one of the major inheritors of the aesthetic and political problematic we have repeatedly encountered in the course of this book. Baldwin is perhaps the most important twentieth-century novelist to seriously explore what it means to make interiority the bearer of collective desire. This chapter argues that the novel of interiority reaches an impasse and a breakthrough in the work of Baldwin precisely when the contradictions inherent in the attempt to think collective problems through sexual interiority becomes unavoidably insistent—and does so through Baldwin's negotiation with the generic difference of the theater. His career makes clear that if the novel relentlessly personalizes collective issues, its theatrical preoccupation constitutes a record of the political costs of that reduction, one that demands to be read at the level of form.

An attempt to relieve oppression through the difficult paths of translation between Catalan and Spanish: The case of Avel·lí Artís-Gener

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesc Galera
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Authors

In the uneasy context of the Francoist regime, some authors tried to alleviate the difficult cultural situation through creation and translation. This is the case of Avel·lí Artís-Gener, commonly known as Tísner, a Catalan writer who was exiled to Mexico for more than twenty years. Translation from Spanish into Catalan played a major role in Tísner’s efforts to keep Catalan culture alive, and this article presents the major translation initiatives in this language combination throughout the twentieth century in order to provide enough context to give Artís-Gener’s endeavours their real weight. In Mexico, he wrote his most famous novel, Paraules d’Opoton el Vell (‘Words of Opoton the elder’), which describes the imagined ‘discovery’ of Europe by the Aztecs and creates a bond between the fate of the Nahuatl and the Catalan people under the yoke of Spanish imperialism. In 1992 Artís-Gener decided that the novel had to be retranslated into Spanish and undertook that task himself. In addition, Tísner translated major Latin American authors from Spanish into Catalan, an experience that gave him the chance to regain control of the language imposed by the Francoist regime and use it as a form of relief from the political oppression.

The Mystery of American Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-175
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Wall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Culture ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Invisible Man ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The Individual

Although best known for his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s essays, and the array of cultural and political agendas which prompt their conception, are integral to American literary theory and criticism. His essays defined the terms for ongoing debates around nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction, modernist aesthetics, and American culture. This chapter charts the various cultural, literary, and political interventions made by Ellison’s essays. Like James Baldwin (chapter 4), Ellison confronts the question of American identity, but he recasts it in terms of culture rather than of the individual. Through Ellison’s use of the vernacular process, which blends high and low styles, he maps cultural concerns onto the political stage. By emphasizing the cultural contributions made by African Americans, Ellison’s work complicates, reworks, and redefines our understanding of American culture.

scholarly journals Dis/Graceful Liberties: Textual Libertinism/ Libertine Texts in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-45
Author(s):  
Hager Ben Driss
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Political Allegory ◽  
The Aesthetic

Abstract This essay addresses J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, a Booker Prize winner in 1999. The novel captures South African political and cultural turmoil attending the post-apartheid transitional period. Far from overlooking the political allegory, I propose instead to expand on a topic only cursorily developed elsewhere, namely liberty and license. The two terms foreground the textual dynamics of the novel as they compete and/or negotiate meaning and ascendency. I argue that Disgrace is energized by Coetzee’s belief in a total liberty of artistic production. Sex is philosophically problematized in the text and advocated as a serious issue that deserves artistic investigation without restriction or censorship. This essay looks into the subtle libertinism in Coetzee’s text, which displays pornographic overtones without exhibiting a flamboyant libertinage. Disgrace acquires its libertine gesture from its dialogue with several literary works steeped in libertinism. The troubled relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical yields an ambiguous text that invites a responsible act of reading.

scholarly journals “Esther Weren’t No Harlot”: Rape and Marriage in Go Tell It on the Mountain

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Porter Nenon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Minor Characters ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Patricia Williams ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins

To consider how James Baldwin resisted racialized notions of sexuality in his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, I employ a number of black feminist critics—including Saidiya Hartman, Patricia Williams, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Hill Collins—to analyze three under-studied minor characters: Deborah, Esther, and Richard. Those three characters are best understood as figures of heterosexual nonconformity who articulate sophisticated and important critiques of rape and marriage in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Baldwin thus wrote subversive theories of race and sexuality into the margins of the novel, making its style inextricable from its politics. Baldwin’s use of marginal voices was a deft and intentional artistic choice that was emancipatory for his characters and that remains enduringly relevant to American sexual politics. In this particularly polarizing transition from the Obama era to the Donald J. Trump presidency, I revisit Baldwin’s ability to subtly translate political ideas across fault lines like race, nationality, and sex.

NATIONAL IDEA AS THE DOMINANT OF YURIY KOSACH JOURNALISM 30S OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

2019 ◽  
pp. 283-289
Author(s):  
Nataliia Poplavska
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Task ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
Complete Neglect

The article analyzes Yuriy Kosach’s journalism of the 30s of the twentieth century as a component of multifaceted creativity in the context of historical circumstances and literary and critical essays, the national idea as its dominant is singled out. It was emphasized that the relevance of the study is due to almost complete neglect of his 1930s journalism in contemporary research and insufficient attention to its conceptualism. It is noted that the Ukrainian journalistic narrative can not be imagined today without the work of Yuri Kosach, as his work is large, recently the reprint of works in Ukraine began to appear: the novel “Rubicon Khmelnitsky”, the collection “Prose of the lives of others”, novels “The Winner Pondi “,” Day of anger “, a historical prose in three books, novels and stories on the pages of the magazine” Courier Kryvbas “).Attention is paid to the fact that Yuri Kosach’s journalistic work of this period is a reflection of his ideological and ideological struggles, aesthetic orientations, manifestations of changes and fluctuations in his personal priorities. Were described his publications such as “To the Genesis of Ukrainian Nationalism”, “Dogma of the Struggle”, “On the Meeting of the 27th Anniversary of November”, “On the Guard of the Nation”, published in the “Ukrainian Word” weekly. It was revealed that Yuriy Kosach’s contemporary journalistic work gives an opportunity to characterize his vision and understanding of national problems, to understand their vision. The main problem that Yuri Kosach was interested in in the 1930s was the political life of both Western Ukraine and Ukraine as a whole. He made significant efforts to organize and define strategic priorities in solving the main task of activating Ukrainians in the establishment of national self-affirmation and Ukrainian statehood.

scholarly journals BUMIPUTRA AUTHOR’S RESISTANCE TOWARD POLITICAL HEGEMONY AND CANONIZATION OF BALAI PUSTAKA IN THE NOVEL HIKAYAT KADIROEN AND STUDENT HIDJO

LITERA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hary Sulistyo ◽  
Endang Sartika
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Literary Politics ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Colonial Government

The ideological and aesthetic contestation of Balai Pustaka, forcing writer‟s resistance particularly Bumiputra writers. The ideological contestation occurs because Balai Pustaka as the apparatus of the Colonial government suppress the resistance attitudes of the indigenous authors. The authors, who ideologically contradicted with the government, resisted the politics of literature through their works. This research is intended to reveal the canonization of Balai Pustaka which governs the aesthetic and ideological standards of literary works and the resistance of Bumiputra authors toward the hegemony of the Dutch East Indies. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative approach by seeing the text as the representation of hegemony and resistance as well as linking textual and contextual issues to describe literary politics and the reflection of general politics. The objects of this research are the text and historical context represented in the novel Hikayat Kadiroen and Student Hidjo. The results show that Hikayat Kadiroen presents exemplary attitudes of fair leaders in solving peoples‟ problems and representing the identity of Indonesian literature. Whereas Student Hidjo portrayed concern for the Indigenous people by criticisizing the political hegemony on racial basic. The resistance of Bumiputra authors was shown by raising resistance theme toward colonialism in the Dutch East Indies, as a form of resistance toward political hegemony and canonization of Balai Pustaka.Keywords: hegemony and resistance, Dutch East Indies, cultural identity.RESISTENSI PENGARANG BUMIPUTERA TERHADAP HEGEMONI POLITIK DAN KANONISASI BALAI PUSTAKA DALAM NOVEL HIKAYAT KADIROEN DAN STUDENT HIDJOAbstrakKontestasi ideologis dan estetis Balai Pustaka, menghadirkan sikap-sikap perlawanan khususnya para penulis Bumiputra. Pertarungan ideologis terjadi karena Balai Pustaka sebagai apparatus pemerintah Kolonial, menekan sikap-sikap perlawanan pengarang Pribumi. Para pengarang yang secara ideologi berseberangan dengan pemerintah, melakukan resistensi atas politik kesusastraan melalui karya-karyanya. Tujuan penelitian ini mengungkapkan kanonisasi Balai Pustaka yang mengatur standar estetis dan idelogis karya sastra dan perlawanan kelompok Bumiputra terhadap hegemoni yang diterapkan di Hindia Belanda. Metode penelitian ini diawali dengan melihat teks sebagai representasi hegemoni dan resistensi dalam novel Hikayat Kadiroen dan Student Hidjo. Menghubungkan persoalan tekstual dan kontekstual untuk menjabarkan politik sastra dan cerminan politik general. Hasil penelitian menunjukan Hikayat Kadiroen menghadirkan sikap keteladanan pemimpin yang adil terhadap rakyat dalam menyeselaikan persoalan dan merepresentasikan identitas kultural kesusastraan Indonesia. Sedangkan Student Hidjo, menunjukkan sikap kepedulian terhadap Pribumi dengan kritik terhadap hegemoni politik atas dasar rasialis. Resistensi pengarang Bumiputra terhadap Balai Pustaka, ditunjukkan dengan mengangkat tema perlawanan terhadap kolonialisme di Hindia Belanda, sebagai bentuk resistensi terhadap hegemoni dan kanonisasi Balai Pustaka.Kata kunci: hegemoni dan resistensi, Hindia Belanda, identitas kultural.

scholarly journals “It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind”

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Leung
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Bloomsbury Group ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Physical Gestures ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Mind

The Russian ballet was celebrated amongst the Bloomsbury group in the early twentieth-century. Throughout 1910s-1930s, Virginia Woolf enjoyed Russian ballets such as Petrushka, Le Spectre de la Rose and Scheherazade staged by Michel Fokine and Sergei Diaghilev. The expressivity of the dancing body rectifies words which, as Woolf delineates in “Craftsmanship,” are dishonest in articulating emotions (Selected Essays 85). This paper thus divulges an oppositional thinking that belies Woolf’s modernist aesthetics – a compulsion to give words to emotions that should be left unsaid. In To the Lighthouse (1928), this “silence” is communicated in the dancing gestures that populate the novel. Juxtaposing the context of Woolf’s attendance at the ballet with her concurrent composition of Lighthouse, I shall argue that the aesthetic convergence between Woolf’s prose and the Russian ballet is not a coincidence – that Woolf very much had the ballet in mind when she wrote. Woolf’s and the Russian ballet’s shared aesthetics however, do not characterise this paper as a study of influence the Russian ballet had on Woolf. Rather, Woolf involuntarily deploys the language of dance/ballet in articulating ineffable emotions. I will offer a close reading that scrutinizes the underexplored physical gestures of Mr and Mrs Ramsay with a perspective of dance. In projecting emotions, Woolf’s novel sketches a reciprocal network between the dancing body and the mind. I conclude by suggesting that the communicational lapses do not sentence the failure of but sustain human kinship. By extension, the Russian balletic presentation of the dancing body will also reanimate the mind-body conundrum that has haunted academia for centuries.

The Art of the People

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-86
Author(s):  
Jan-Melissa Schramm
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Evolutionary Design ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Mystery Plays ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Political Value

This chapter traces the rediscovery of the medieval mystery plays which had been suppressed at the Reformation. The texts were painstakingly recovered, edited, and published in the first half of the nineteenth century, by medieval scholars but also by radicals like William Hone who were keen to emphasize the political value of expanding the literary canon. At the start of the nineteenth century, then, vernacular devotional drama was largely unknown; by the 1850s, the genre had been accorded a place in an evolutionary design that privileged the achievements of Shakespeare, and by the early twentieth century, performance was finally countenanced, albeit under the watchful eye of the Lord Chamberlain. This is a narrative of recuperation but also of misunderstanding, as the mystery plays were also positioned as comic burlesque and farce in constructions of the literary canon which stressed the aesthetic and religious superiority of the Protestant present.

Prophetic Tendencies: Egyptian Translators of the Twentieth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-49
Author(s):  
Maya I. Kesrouany
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Adaptation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Muhammad Husayn Haykal

The introduction explores the complex history of literary translation into Arabic from Napoleon’s arrival in Alexandria in 1789 until the 1950s. It considers the formative correlation between the stylistics of translation, the promise of fiction, and the political context as they relate to the ‘modernity’ of the novel form. Focusing on the works of four major translators - Muṣṭafa Luṭfī al-Manfalūṭī, Muḥammad al-Sibā‘ī, and Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal and Ṭāhā Ḥusayn – it highlights the different translation aesthetics from free adaptation to literal copying and biographical rewriting. It situates these trends in conversation with translation theory to offer a novel way of approaching literary adaptation in colonial situations. The introduction tackles the debate on ‘arabization’ (ta‘rīb) as opposed to pure translation (tarjama) in Egypt and considers how it has informed genealogies of the Arabic novel more broadly. Precisely because translation appears as failed emulation, the chapter addresses how through the playful adaptation of European influence of romanticism and realism, translation stages the emergence of a secular, prophetic narrative voice in the works of the four translators that challenges dominant narratives of Arab literary modernity.

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