scholarly journals Patricia Highsmith's Queer Disruption: Subverting Gay Tragedy in the 1950s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Findlay
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Lesbian Couple ◽  
Gay Literature ◽  
Gays And Lesbians ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Society

<p>Published in a time when tragedy was pervasive in gay literature, Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, published later as Carol, was the first lesbian novel with a happy ending. It was unusual for depicting lesbians as sympathetic, ordinary women, whose sexuality did not consign them to a life of misery. The novel criticises how 1950s American society worked to suppress lesbianism and women’s agency. It also refuses to let that suppression succeed by giving its lesbian couple a future together. My thesis assesses the extent to which the novel broke the conventions of gay literature, and how Highsmith was able to publish such a radical text in the conservative 1950s.  The Talented Mr Ripley, a crime novel published in 1955, is more representative of both Highsmith’s work and 1950s homophobia. Tom Ripley is coded as gay through a number of often pejorative stereotypes, though the novel never confirms his sexuality. This makes it appear far more conventional than The Price of Salt. And yet, it treats Tom sympathetically and gives him a happy ending. Underneath the surface level homophobia is a story of gay survival and success, and once again Highsmith subverts the tradition of gay tragedy. However, because homophobic tropes are central to its narrative, it remains difficult to call Ripley a radical text.  In placing the two novels side by side, my thesis draws out the complexity of Highsmith’s relationship with the gay canon. I find commonalities in the novels based on Highsmith’s interest in disrupting conventional morality. She achieves this disruption by humanising outsiders such as gays and lesbians, and constructing narratives in which they are able to find the freedom and happiness that the literature of the period usually denied them.</p>

scholarly journals Patricia Highsmith's Queer Disruption: Subverting Gay Tragedy in the 1950s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Charlotte Findlay
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Lesbian Couple ◽  
Gay Literature ◽  
Gays And Lesbians ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Society

<p>Published in a time when tragedy was pervasive in gay literature, Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, published later as Carol, was the first lesbian novel with a happy ending. It was unusual for depicting lesbians as sympathetic, ordinary women, whose sexuality did not consign them to a life of misery. The novel criticises how 1950s American society worked to suppress lesbianism and women’s agency. It also refuses to let that suppression succeed by giving its lesbian couple a future together. My thesis assesses the extent to which the novel broke the conventions of gay literature, and how Highsmith was able to publish such a radical text in the conservative 1950s.  The Talented Mr Ripley, a crime novel published in 1955, is more representative of both Highsmith’s work and 1950s homophobia. Tom Ripley is coded as gay through a number of often pejorative stereotypes, though the novel never confirms his sexuality. This makes it appear far more conventional than The Price of Salt. And yet, it treats Tom sympathetically and gives him a happy ending. Underneath the surface level homophobia is a story of gay survival and success, and once again Highsmith subverts the tradition of gay tragedy. However, because homophobic tropes are central to its narrative, it remains difficult to call Ripley a radical text.  In placing the two novels side by side, my thesis draws out the complexity of Highsmith’s relationship with the gay canon. I find commonalities in the novels based on Highsmith’s interest in disrupting conventional morality. She achieves this disruption by humanising outsiders such as gays and lesbians, and constructing narratives in which they are able to find the freedom and happiness that the literature of the period usually denied them.</p>

Narrating eros and agape

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Zsolt Bojti
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Hungarian Academy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Secondary Reading ◽  
Innovation And Technology ◽  
General Readership ◽  
Gay Literature

AbstractFin-de-SiècleA Hungarian version of the present paper was published as “Erósz és Agapé: Erotextus Edward Prime-Stevenson Imre: Egy emlékirat című regényének expozíciójában” (2019) in Literatura affiliated with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Supported by the ÚNKP-19-3 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology.” gay literature in English operated with a double narrative: one narrative offers a historical (and “innocent”) reading available to general readership; the other offers a personal (often illicit) reading available to the susceptible and initiated readers only. The double narrative, thus, allowed authors to give subtle visibility to same-sex desire in their works that would evade censorship. This paper argues that there is a similar double narrative in the exposition of Imre: A Memorandum by the American music critic and émigré writer Edward Prime-Stevenson. The double narrative of the novel, however, differs from that of prior gay literature. I argue that Prime-Stevenson thought it was a literary sin that prior gay literature offered a sensual, erotic, or even pornographic, subversive secondary reading to susceptible readers. In my reading, Prime-Stevenson consciously planted cues in the exposition of the novel, thus, created an erotext to trigger a similar subversive and illicit reading of his text. However, Prime-Stevenson used this technique to demonstrate that purely erotic literary representations denigrate same-sex desire; therefore, in what followed, he presented a different, agapeic view on same-sex desire. The paper substantiates that Prime-Stevenson’s intention was to break away from earlier narrative “traditions” of gay literature to offer a naturalised and legitimised representation and “script” of “homosexuality” per se. Prime-Stevenson did so in a crucial period of time, as the term “homosexual” just barely entered the English language and its pejorative connotations may not have been set in stone. The paper, as a result, casts a new complexion on sexuality as a literary phenomenon and the relevance of a complex narrative structure composed of “snares” and “false snares” in the exposition of Imre, which plays a crucial role in Prime-Stevenson authoring one of the very first openly homosexual novels in English, which has a happy ending.

scholarly journals Suburbia as a Narrative Space in the Cinematic Universe of Douglas Sirk

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-132
Author(s):  
Nieves Alberola Crespo ◽  
José Javier Juan Checa
Keyword(s):  
Gender Perspective ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Douglas Sirk ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Society ◽  
Unique Ability

Douglas Sirk, now fully recognized as an influential filmmaker, was considered a successful but uninteresting director in the 1950s. His melodramas were considered bland and subsequently ignored because they focused on female-centric concerns. In the following decades, he started to be considered as an auteur that not only had an impeccable and vibrant mise-en-scène, but also a unique ability to deliver movies that might seem superficial on a surface level but were able to sneak in some subtle and revolutionary criticism about American society. The aim of this paper is to analyse the most rebellious and subversive aspects of Sirk’s classic All that Heaven Allows (1955) from a gender perspective and how Todd Haynes’s tribute Far from Heaven (2002) added new challenges by touching upon thorny subjects that already existed in Sirk’s time but were deemed taboo for mass audiences.

scholarly journals The Real America: Representation of American Society in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Based on Michel Foucault’s Notions of Institutions, Normalization, and Surveillance

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iraj Soleymanjahan ◽  
Nasser Maleki ◽  
Hiwa Weisi
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Jack Kerouac ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Government ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Road ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
On The Road ◽  
American Society ◽  
Fitting In

This study aimed to scrutinize and analyze the novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac in the light of the political theory of Michel Foucault. The focus, however, would be specifically on the concepts of normalization, institutions and surveillance put forward in his book Discipline and Punish (1995), coupled with some other works that wrestle with the close links of power, society, and institutions. This research seeked to describe the real America in the 1950s, a decade that witnessed both conformism and radicality, represented in the novel. The study pointed out that the novel was a depiction of the American society in the 1950s in which distinct, overlapping institutions did a great deal in restricting the freedom of individuals who seeked liberation and authenticity. The American government draws on the power of the law, police, prison, academia, family, and different other overlapping and satellite institutions, working hand in hand to create a matrix. The concept of matrix, therefore, highlights the nexus through which the normalization and conformity of the individuals are guaranteed, leading to the creation of perfect institutionalized men who are reduced to the level of simpletons. The whole novel becomes the story of some men who advocate abnormality as their credo to live a free life. Quite the contrary, they are transitioned into meek and docile bodies whose identity hinges on being like others in fitting in and following the norms through different dominant fragmenting institutions.

scholarly journals An Eco-critical Analysis of Moby Dick

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 86-90
Author(s):  
Yue Zhao ◽  
◽  
Mengyang Zhang ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Herman Melville ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Author ◽  
American Society ◽  
Realistic Significance

Moby Dick is well acknowledged as a world masterpiece by the American author Herman Melville. This paper attempts to analyze Melville’s Moby Dick by the theory of eco-criticism. In order to better approach the American society before the 1950s, the author aims to scrutinize the novel with eco-criticism from three such aspects as nature, society and spirit so that the present society can gain some insights in preventing and solving similar problems. Divided into several parts as follows, this paper introduces Melville and Moby Dick as well as eco-criticism first and then interprets the novel via eco-criticism in three aspects, and finally ends with its realistic significance as a conclusion.

scholarly journals “The journalistic criminal novel” “In Cold Blood” by Truman Garcia Capote in the context of “new journalism” problem

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 194-201
Author(s):  
Tatyana Alexandrovna Khitarova ◽  
Yelena Georgievna Khitarova
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
The Novel ◽  
New Journalism ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Cold Blood ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
New Form ◽  
American Society ◽  
In Cold Blood

The success of the ‟new journalism” in the United States in the 60s of the last century had an impact on the literary process. Truman Garcia Capote's novel ‟In Cold Blood” is an attempt to create a new form of fiction and nonfiction novel, which combines the features of nonfiction and journalism. So there is a genre of ‟criminal journalistic novel”. The author is involved in the investigation of a criminal case. The analysis reveals common typological features of a crime novel. Capote's approaches to the text are investigated, which are similar to journalistic professional methods – interview, reportage, essay. A comparison with previously published works was accomplished, which localises this novel in a different epoch at a new artistic level. The study also identifies the points of contacts and variances in the evaluation of the novel in Western and Russian criticism. The article offers conclusions. Capote's novel ‟In Cold Blood” allows to be focused not only on real criminal events, but also on the moral state of American society in the proposed time frame. The novel differs from the journalistic reportage, there is a special form of a work of art-a journalistic novel-investigation. The synthesis of literature and journalism also proved fruitful for Norman Kingsley Mailer 's nonfiction novels.

Die Spur des Stoffs. Ermittlungsrausch in Friedrich Glausers Die Fieberkurve

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89
Author(s):  
Mareike Schildmann
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Conservative Approach ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract This article traces some of the fundamental poetological changes that the traditional crime novel undergoes in the work of the Swiss author Friedrich Glauser at the beginning of the 20th century. The rational-analytical, conservative approach of the criminal novel in the 19th century implied – according to Luc Boltanski – the separation of an epistemologically structured, institutionalized order of “reality” and a chaotic, unruly, unformatted “world” – a separation that is questioned, but reestablished in the dramaturgy of crime and its resolution. By shifting the attention from the logical structure of ‘whodunnit’ to the sensual material culture and “atmosphere” that surrounds actions and people, Glauser’s novels blur these epistemological and ontological boundaries. The article shows how in Die Fieberkurve, the second novel of Glauser’s famous Wachtmeister Studer-series, material and sensual substances develop a specific, powerful dynamic that dissipates, complicates, crosslinks, and confuses the objects and acts of investigation as well as its narration. The material spoors, dust, fibers, fingerprints, intoxicants and natural resources like oil and gas – which lead the investigation from Switzerland to North Africa – trigger a new sensual mode of perception and reception that replaces the reassuring criminological ideal of solution by the logic of “dissolution”. The novel thereby demonstrates the poetic impact of the slogan of modernity: matter matters.

Thermal Conductivity Performance Modeling and Characterization of a Novel Anisotropic Conductive Adhesive Used in Lead-Free Electronics Packaging

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Combs ◽  
S. Manian Ramkumar ◽  
Satish Kandlikar
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Conductivity ◽  
Base Material ◽  
Bond Line ◽  
Thermal Interface Material ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Conductive Adhesives ◽  
Curing Conditions ◽  
Bond Line Thickness ◽  
Significant Research ◽  
American Society

The continued desire to utilize an alternative to lead-based solder materials for electrical interconnections has led to significant research interest in Anisotropic Conductive Adhesives (ACAs). The use of ACAs in electrical connections creates bonds using a combination of metal particles and epoxies to replace solder. The novel ACA discussed in this paper allows for bonds to be created through aligning columns of conductive particles along the Z-axis. These columns are formed by the application of a magnetic field, during the curing process. The benefit of this novel ACA is that it does not require precise printing of the adhesive on pads and also enables the mass curing without creating shorts in the circuitry. This paper will present the findings of the thermal conductivity performance tests using the novel ACA and its applicability as a thermal interface material and for assembling bottom termination components, power devices, etc. The columns that act as electrical conduction paths also contribute towards the thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity of the novel ACA was measured utilizing a system that is similar to that in ASTM (American Society of Testing Materials) D5470 standard. The goal was to examine the influence of Bond Line Thickness (BLT), particle loading densities, particle diameters and adhesive matrix curing conditions on the electrical and thermal performance of the novel ACA. This paper will also present a numerical model to describe the thermal behavior of the novel ACA. The novel ACA’s applicability for PCB-level assembly has also been successfully demonstrated by RIT, including base material characterization, effect of process parameters, failures, and long-term reliability. Reliability testing included the investigation of the assembly performance in temperature and humidity aging, thermal aging, air-to-air thermal cycling, and drop testing.

scholarly journals Repercussions of Stereotyping and Cultural Bigotry in John Updike’s 9/11 Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Saleem Dhobi
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Society

This article analyzes Updike’s 9/11 novel, Terrorist to explore the implications of stereotyping and cultural bigotry in US society in the aftermath. The novelist demonstrates the problematic in the cultural integration of minorities particularly Muslims and Jews as represented by Ahmad and Jack Levy. The primary motto of the article is to analyze the novel from the perspective of the protagonists Ahmad and Jack who suffer the cultural and social exclusion in American society. Ahmad is the victim of cultural bigotry and Jack Levy faces discriminatory practices at school. The isolation and marginalization of Ahmad and Jack respectively imply the ethnic crevices prevalent in the US society. The author demonstrates that the dominant cultural groups: European and African Americans do not accept the religious minorities: Muslims and Jews. Consequently, Muslims who are overtly the targets of cultural hatred and marginalization in the aftermath of the 9/11 as portrayed in the novel become hostile toward the Western culture. The efforts for integration of religious minorities are cosmetic as exemplified in the cases of Ahmad and Jack in the text. The writer makes a balance in representing both dominant and Muslim cultures to demonstrate the problems pertaining to ethnic groups at their failure in accommodating differences. The cultural separation and hatred prevalent in US society become obstacles even for those like Jack who seek to integrate. The paper eventually demonstrates the possibility of integration of religious minorities when both mainstream Americans and people of religious minorities conform to accepting the differences.

scholarly journals The voice and the void: the scream in 1950s American science fiction film

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Hergott
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The United States ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
American Science ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Society

In the United States, science fiction film rose to prominence as a critically recognized genre in the 1950s, a decade fraught with cultural complications and contradictions and also inspired by optimism and upward trajectory. Warren Susman characterizes the period as one marked by a "dual consciousness," a time when "the fulfillment of our sweetest desires [led] inevitably to the brink of danger and damnation"; the fifties, he writes, was an age of anxiety as much as it was a time of abundance, freedom, and possibility (30). For historian David Halberstam, while a retrospective examination of the decade suggests to some a "slower, almost languid" pace, social ferment "was beginning just beneath this placid surface" (ix). Throughout the decade, notions of national security played out in conflicting ways that traversed both the public and private spheres. Science fiction, a genre that coincided with massive industry changes that saw the development of a sizable low-budget, teen-oriented independent sector, resonated deeply with such opposing and anxiety-laden articulations of both public and private security. While most previous discussions of the genre tend to focus on such concerns in their public dimension (particularly as related to political unease during the Cold War), what follows will address sci-fi' s depiction of anxieties in that other, more private realm of American society, particularly in relation to the expression of gender, sexuality, and desire. Cold War politics, the postwar consumer boom, re-entrenchment of family values and suburban home life, and industry upheavals in Hollywood are all important for understanding what is now thought of as the golden age of American science fiction film. These socio-political factors contextualize the genre's rise to prominence, its defining stylistic and thematic characteristics, and its treatment of gendered subjectivity. As we will see, while some science fiction films of the 1950s engaged or challenged cultural rhetoric related to expected norms of gendered behaviour, for the most part these films upheld the era's return to more traditional gender roles for men and women, an observation which has been taken up in the critical literature, particularly within feminist film scholarship. However, within this body of films exists a common and recurring convention that has been largely neglected by science fiction film scholars, one that warrants further study due to its implications for understanding the return to domesticity in the American postwar period. This filmic convention is the scream, a visual and aural articulation of fear expressed mostly by women (but also, and just as importantly, by men). Far from being a mere cheap gimmick employed by filmmakers alongside special effects and insatiable monsters, the scream provides valuable insight into the domestic ideologies that prevailed during the 1950s.

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