scholarly journals 'Always think of the objects': Ekphrasis as aesthetics in the contemporary novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucy Eleanor Alston
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Infinite Jest ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Temporal Qualities

<p>It is a commonplace that ekphrasis – the description in literature of a visual work of art – brings to the fore questions of representation and reference. Such questions are particularly associated with the ‘postmodern’; ekphrasis is thus often subsumed under the category of metafiction. There has been little critical attention, however, to how the ekphrastic mode might be understood in aesthetic terms. This thesis considers the nature of ekphrasis’s referential capacity, but expands on this to suggest a number of ways in which the ekphrastic mode evinces the aesthetic and ontological assumptions upon which a text is predicated. Two case studies illustrate how the ekphrastic mode can be figured to different effect. In comparing these two novels, this thesis argues that the ekphrastic mode makes clear the particular subject-object relations expressed by each. If Lukács is correct in asserting that the novel mode expresses a discrepancy between ‘the conventionality of the objective world and the interiority of the subjective one’, ekphrasis provides a fruitful but under-explored avenue for critical inquiry because, as a mode, it is situated at the point at which subject and object must converge. The first chapter of this thesis is concerned with Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), a novel that includes both traditional ekphrastic descriptions and embedded photographs and references to critical theory that function ekphrastically. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) provides a contrast: the novel makes continued reference to film – a medium defined by its temporal qualities – but as used in the novel the ekphrastic mode implies a fixed, ahistorical schema. The implications that such differences have on the novel mode and critical discourse are explored in the final section of the thesis.</p>

scholarly journals 'Always think of the objects': Ekphrasis as aesthetics in the contemporary novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lucy Eleanor Alston
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Infinite Jest ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Temporal Qualities

<p>It is a commonplace that ekphrasis – the description in literature of a visual work of art – brings to the fore questions of representation and reference. Such questions are particularly associated with the ‘postmodern’; ekphrasis is thus often subsumed under the category of metafiction. There has been little critical attention, however, to how the ekphrastic mode might be understood in aesthetic terms. This thesis considers the nature of ekphrasis’s referential capacity, but expands on this to suggest a number of ways in which the ekphrastic mode evinces the aesthetic and ontological assumptions upon which a text is predicated. Two case studies illustrate how the ekphrastic mode can be figured to different effect. In comparing these two novels, this thesis argues that the ekphrastic mode makes clear the particular subject-object relations expressed by each. If Lukács is correct in asserting that the novel mode expresses a discrepancy between ‘the conventionality of the objective world and the interiority of the subjective one’, ekphrasis provides a fruitful but under-explored avenue for critical inquiry because, as a mode, it is situated at the point at which subject and object must converge. The first chapter of this thesis is concerned with Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station (2011), a novel that includes both traditional ekphrastic descriptions and embedded photographs and references to critical theory that function ekphrastically. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) provides a contrast: the novel makes continued reference to film – a medium defined by its temporal qualities – but as used in the novel the ekphrastic mode implies a fixed, ahistorical schema. The implications that such differences have on the novel mode and critical discourse are explored in the final section of the thesis.</p>

scholarly journals THE AESTHETIC OF INTERTEXTUALITY IN THE ARAB FEMINIST NOVEL"WOMEN IN HELL" BY " AICHA BENNOUR"AS MODEL

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 483-492
Author(s):  
Rabiaa HLITIM ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Research Work ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Flexible Form ◽  
Holy Quran ◽  
The Holy Quran ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
The Aesthetic

The corpus of the novel, through its different components and structures, has focused on the mechanism of intertextuality considering that the novel is the literary type that is most capable of absorbing different texts and reshaping them in its discourse, it therefore remains the most open and flexible form. The contemporary novel does not stand out if it is not bound up with variable discourses and various types of religious and historical writings. In this research work, we have tried to study the aesthetics of intertextuality in the Arab feminist novel, taking as an example the novel by " Aïcha Bennour" "Women in Hell ". This contemporary writer has taken the Holy Quran, history and literary production as a reference for her writings in order to express the Arab women′s suffering.

The Uncomfortable Ordinary

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Laura E. Tanner
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Novel Studies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Way

Despite extensive dialogue among Robinson scholars about the role of the ordinary in her fiction, critical attention limits itself almost exclusively to the transformation of the everyday. This chapter focuses instead on the way that, for Robinson’s protagonists, loss settles uneasily into the everyday; the aesthetic defamiliarization of a taken-for-granted world often translates into the intimate experience of estrangement. The power of representation that critics associate with Robinson’s rendering of ordinary things emerges from an intensity of perception that marks her characters’ expulsion from the taken for granted. Scarred by grief, illness, aging, and trauma, Robinson’s characters inhabit a world of transcendent beauty suffused with the terrifying threat of loss. This chapter introduces the concept of the “uncomfortable ordinary” within the frameworks of everyday life theory, Robinson criticism, contemporary novel studies, and recent dialogues on the lyrical novel to argue for the complexity, relevance, and contemporaneity of Robinson’s fiction.

The Screwtape Letters as Epistolary Fiction

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-125
Author(s):  
Charles A. Huttar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Cultural Criticism ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Epistolary Fiction ◽  
Rich History

Epistolary fiction, often thought of as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, enjoys considerable vitality in our time and has attracted much welcome critical attention in recent years. The focus, however, has been on selected aspects of the epistolary tradition, to the neglect of others that are part of its rich history. At the same time, discussions of C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (1942) have generally concentrated on its theological, moral, and satirical aspects, with little consideration of the generic identification declared in the book's title. Attention to its striking affiliations with the epistolary tradition in fiction sheds light on Lewis's artistry in the work, on current critical discourse concerning epistolarity, on Lewis's social and cultural criticism, and on his contributions to critical theory. In the present study, selected aspects of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century epistolary tradition are briefly surveyed; then, matters of setting, plot, characterization (especially), and handling of viewpoint in The Screwtape Letters are considered, as well as its widespread debts to the literary heritage and its relationship to Lewis's own contributions as a literary scholar and critic. Attention is given to the implications of Lewis's original preface which has recently been discovered.

The Meaning of Children's Poetry: A Cognitive Approach

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Coats
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Holding Environment ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Clear Sense ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Children's Poetry

Critical attention to children's poetry has been hampered by the lack of a clear sense of what a children's poem is and how children's poetry should be valued. Often, it is seen as a lesser genre in comparison to poetry written for adults. This essay explores the premises and contradictions that inform existing critical discourse on children's poetry and asserts that a more effective way of viewing children's poetry can be achieved through cognitive poetics rather than through comparisons with adult poetry. Arguing that children's poetry preserves the rhythms and pleasures of the body in language and facilitates emotional and physical attunement with others, the essay examines the crucial role children's poetry plays in creating a holding environment in language to help children manage their sensory environments, map and regulate their neurological functions, contain their existential anxieties, and participate in communal life.

The Shop-Girl Revolutionary in Henry James's The Princess Casamassima

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Mullin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Change ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Local Color ◽  
Literary Naturalism ◽  
Public House ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Marginal Characters

Abstract This essay argues that the complex political resonances of Henry James's The Princess Casamassima (1886) can be further elucidated through closer critical attention to one of its more marginal characters, the shop-girl Millicent Henning. Ebullient, assertive, and, for many early reviewers, the novel's sole redeeming feature, Millicent supplies the novel with far more than local color. Instead, James seizes on a sexual persona already well established within literary naturalism and popular culture alike to explore a rival mode of insurrection to that more obviously offered elsewhere. While the modes of revolution contemplated by Hyacinth Robinson and his comrades in the Sun and Moon public house are revealed to be anachronistic and ineffectual, Millicent's canny manipulation of her sexuality supplies her with an alternative, effective, and unmistakably modern mode of transformation. The novel's portrait of ““revolutionary politics of a hole-and-corner sort”” is thus set against Millicent's brand of quotidian yet inexorable social change.

Homosexuality in K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams: Demythologising the Imaginings and Universalising the Reality

Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adetunji Kazeem Adebiyi-Adelabu
Keyword(s):  
Coming Out ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Black African ◽  
Sex Preference ◽  
National Allegory ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Sex Orientation ◽  
The Right

Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams offers an extensive treatment of homosexuality, a preoccupation which, until recently, is rare in black African fiction. On this account, as well as its depth and openness, the work has attracted some critical attention. It has been read from a masculinity perspective, as a coming-out novel, as a national allegory, as a work that challenges the notion of fixed sexuality, as a work that normalises same-sex sexuality, and so forth. Unlike these studies, this article examines the representation and disquisition around same-sex preference in the novel, with a view to demonstrating how some myths about homosexuality are exploded in the groundbreaking work, and showing that the narrative could also be apprehended as intellectual advocacy for the right to same-sex orientation.

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

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Calculative Trust

This Introduction to the book does three things. First, it introduces the concept of trust and develops a definition of trust as the ‘expectation of no harm in contexts where betrayal is always a possibility’. Next, it identities two conceptions of trust that guide the book, ‘calculative trust’ and ‘trust as suspension’, which provide very different explanations for how actors form expectations that another will be trustworthy. It then shows how trust as suspension opens up a new theory of accurate signal interpretation and demonstrates how this theory is superior to costly signalling-based theories of accurate signal interpretation. The final section of the Introduction sets out the rationale for the case studies and the key assumptions.

scholarly journals Photovoltaic BIPV Systems and Architectural Heritage: New Balance between Conservation and Transformation. An Assessment Method for Heritage Values Compatibility and Energy Benefits of Interventions

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5107
Author(s):  
Cristina S. Polo López ◽  
Floriana Troia ◽  
Francesco Nocera
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
Assessment Method ◽  
Architectural Heritage ◽  
Historical Building ◽  
Improve Energy Efficiency ◽  
Building Integrated Photovoltaic ◽  
Architectural Language ◽  
Guidance Documents ◽  
The Aesthetic

This paper proposes to identify an approach methodology for the incorporation of building-integrated photovoltaic systems (BIPV) in existing architectural heritage, considering regulatory, conservation and energy aspects. The main objective is to provide information about guidance criteria related to the integration of BIPV in historical buildings and about intervention methods. That will be followed by the development of useful data to reorient and update the guidelines and guidance documents, both for the design approach and for the evaluation of potential future interventions. The research methodology includes a categorization and analysis of European and Swiss case studies, taking into account the state of preservation of the building before the intervention, the data of the applied photovoltaic technology and the aesthetic and energy contribution of the intervention. The result, in the form of graphic schedules, provides complete information for a real evaluation of the analyzed case studies and of the BIPV technological system used in historical contexts. This research promotes a conscious BIPV as a real opportunity to use technology and a contemporary architectural language capable of dialoguing with pre-existing buildings to significantly improve energy efficiency and determine a new value system for the historical building and its environment.

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