scholarly journals Seeing constructed realities: images and law in the contemporary American novel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Drew Amidei
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Verbal Language ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Political Criticism

In the new digital era, novelists have developed new tools to aid them levy political criticism against targets that have traditionally 12en outside the reach of the novel. By examining four contemporary American novels, I seek to examine how novelists use embedded photography to levy political criticism against systems and entities that rely on verbal language. My chief argument is that the ambiguity of language, when compounded with the ambiguity of photographs, forces readers into a mode of active interpretation which allows them to question concepts they usually take for granted. The hope is that by better understanding how these authors convey their messages we can better understand not just the systems they criticize, but build a model for future activist writing and criticism.

INCARCERATION, TRANSFORMATION AND AWARENESS IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN NOVEL

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Mariam Youssef
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Novel ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Ernest Gaines ◽  
Male Incarceration

 This article examines the theme of black male incarceration in the African American novel. Black male incarcerated characters are frequently presented as the most socially aware characters in the novel, in spite of their isolation. In different African American novels, black male incarcerated characters experience a transformation as a result of their incarceration that leads to a heightened awareness of their marginalisation as black men. Because of their compromised agency in incarceration, these characters are not able to express black masculinity in traditional ways. Using novels by Richard Wright, James Baldwin, John A. Williams and Ernest Gaines, I argue that black male incarcerated characters use their heightened awareness as an alternative method of expressing black masculinity.

Wieland; or The Transformation, and Memoirs of Carwin, The Biloquist

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Brockden Brown
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Spontaneous Combustion ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Actual Case ◽  
Her Family ◽  
American Novels

One of the earliest American novels, Wieland (1798) is a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennyslvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism. The plot turns on the charming but diabolical intruder Carwin, who exercises his power over the narrator, Clara Wieland, and her family, destroying the order and authority of the small community in which they live. Underlying the mystery and horror, however, is a profound examination of the human mind's capacity for rational judgement. The text also explores some of the most important issues vital to the survival of democracy in the new American republic. Brown further considers power and manipulation in his unfinished sequel, Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, which traces Carwin's career as a disciple of the utopist Ludloe.

Obsolescence

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 718-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
American Novel ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Status ◽  
Material State ◽  
Different Response

I was invited by the MLA committee on the status of graduate students in the profession to speak at a convention workshop entitled “Keywords for a Digital Profession.” My keyword was obsolescence, a catchall term for a multiplicity of conditions; there are material obsolescences, institutional obsolescences, and purely theoretical obsolescences, each type demanding a different response. I spent years pondering theoretical obsolescence while writing The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television. The book argues, in part, that claims about the obsolescence of cultural forms often say more about those doing the claiming than they do about the objects of the claims. Neither the novel in particular nor the book more broadly nor print in general is dead, and agonized announcements of the death of such technologies and genres often serve to re-create an elite cadre of cultural producers and consumers, ostensibly operating on the margins of contemporary culture and profiting from their claims of marginality by creating a sense that their own values, once mainstream and now decaying, must be protected. Two oft-cited reports of the National Endowment for the Arts, Reading at Risk (2004) and To Read or Not to Read (2007), come to mind; like numerous other expressions of anxiety about the supposed decline of reading, each rhetorically creates a cultural wildlife preserve in which the apparently obsolete can flourish (United States). These texts suggest that obsolescence is, in this case at least, less a material state than a political project.

How Hitler Nearly Destroyed the Great American Novel

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-234
Author(s):  
Ryan Holiday
Keyword(s):  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
John Fante ◽  
Archival Record ◽  
Second World

Investigative journalist Holiday scrutinizes the archival record to clarify the collision of historical forces that long haunted the trajectory of Ask the Dust. Informed by primary research into the John Fante papers at UCLA Library Special Collections and beyond, this essay explains how in falling victim to political pressures of the Second World War, the novel gains significance that remains relevant to our own age today. Before Mussolini’s fascist censors targeted Fante’s writings, agents of Adolf Hitler were hijacking the attention of Fante’s editor and draining the assets of his publisher for releasing an unauthorized, unexpurgated edition of the dictator’s notorious Mein Kampf in a legal case that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The issues involved in that case and their effects upon Ask the Dust teach us as much about Fante’s day and age as about our own era of alt-right provocateurship and #atnoplatform.

scholarly journals Cultural Violence represented in Indonesia and American Literatures

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 03003
Author(s):  
Fatchul Mu’in ◽  
Rustam Effendi
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Black People ◽  
American People ◽  
African American People ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Cultural Behavior ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Cultural Violence

This article is aimed at describing the lives of dominated people of both Indonesia and America. Among the dominated people in Indonesian community are Indonesian Chinese people, and those in American community are African American people. The discussion on some Indonesia novels of post tragedy of 1998 shows that personally Chinese faced a hard life; and socially they were dominated. Therefore, it can be concluded that: (1) the personal behaviour of Indonesian Chinese is represented through the hard life, (2) social behaviour of Indonesian Chinese is represented through the dominated social life, and (3) cultural behavior is represented through the religious life with many problems.This is say that the cultural behaviour of Indonesian Chinese in Indonesia novels is represented through cultural violence. The similar result of discussion on some American novels of post slavery shows that (1) the black man as the representation of Black people (African-Americans) was always in a dilemmatic condition leaving him without any options. Whatever he chose, will have negative consequences, (2) the struggle for ‘equality’ through ‘violence’ will result in a ‘tragic fate’, and (3) the novel reflected the black people who yearned for freedom from white domination and expected to have good education, good employment, and equality in political opportunity, law enforcement/law protection, and in other sociocultural life.

PREDADORES: quando a literatura narra as relações de poder em Angola

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
SILVIO DE ALMEIDA CARVALHO FILHO
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Political Stance ◽  
Relations Of Power

Este artigo esquadrinha as relações de poder, em Angola, emergentes em Predadores, romance escrito por Pepetela, um dos mais instigantes intelectuais angolanos da atualidade. Ao delinear como o autor narra o ”outro”, em especial, a apropriação do público pelo privado, assim como o oportunismo polá­tico, detectamos os contornos de seu posicionamento polá­tico. As principais temáticas sobre as relações de poder, recortadas nessa obra, comprovam que a sua literatura estrutura uma crá­tica sócio-polá­tica, extremamente perspicaz, da sociedade e dos Estados angolanos contemporá¢neos. Palavras-chave: Angola. Pepetela. Relações de Poder.  PREDADORES: when literature recounts the relations of power in Angola Abstract: This article discusses the power relations in emergent Angola inPredadores, a novel written by Pepetela, one of the most intriguing Angolan scholars nowadays. By analyzing how the author narrates the ”other”, in particular, the appropriation of the public by the private sector, we can identify the contours of his political stance. The main themes on the power relations focused on the novel evidence that his literature structures extremely clever socio-political criticism of both Angolan contemporary society and State. Keywords: Angola. Pepetela. Power relations.  PREDADORES: cuando la literatura narra las relaciones de poder en AngolaResumen: Este artá­culo explora las relaciones de poder en Angola emergentes en Predadores, novela escrita por Pepetela, uno de los más importantes intelectuales angoleños hoy. Para esbozarcómo el autor dice el "otro", en particular la apropiación de público para el oportunismo privado, asá­ como polá­tica, detectamos su posicionamiento polá­tico. Las principales temáticas sobre lasrelaciones de poder recortadas en este trabajo vienen comprobar que la literatura estructura una crá­tica sociopolá­tica bastante perspicaz de la sociedad y de los Estados angoleños contemporáneos. Palabras clave: Angola. Pepetela. Relaciones de poder.  

“Mendacious Inventions”, Veracious Perceptions: “The Peruvian Reality of Vargas Llosa's La Ciudad Y Los Perros”

1987 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-466
Author(s):  
Frederick M. Nunn
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Gabriel Garcia Marquez ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Nobel Lecture ◽  
American Novel ◽  
X Ray ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Literary Achievement ◽  
Os Sertoes

“The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own serves only to make us more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.”Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Lecture, 1982In the second half of this century, we have been told, the Latin American novel came of age. Authors no longer felt constrained to subject indigenous contents to alien forms. Instead contents suggested forms truly representative of societies, polities, and cultures in search of identity and struggling with numerous historic problems, some not even of their own region's making.Although Latin American novels have long been recognized as important to the area's cultural development, as indicators of literary achievement, and as valuable sources for scholars, few works published between Machado de Assis's Dom Casmuro (1900) and Miguel Angel Asturias's Men of Corn (Hombres de maiz, 1949) could be described as aesthetic magna opera. In the long hiatus essayists took up the task of portraying reality, producing such classics as Euclides da Cunha's Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertões, 1902), José Vasconcelos's The Cosmic Race (La raza cósmica, 1925), José Carlos Mariátegui's Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana, 1927), Alberto Edwards Vives's The Aristocratic Fronde (La fronda aristocrática, 1927), and Ezequiel Martínez Estrada's X-Ray of the Pampa (Radiografía de la pampa, 1933).

scholarly journals Poetics of Narrative in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Novel “A Pale View of Hills”

2019 ◽  
pp. 57-64
Author(s):  
Yaryna Oprisnyk
Keyword(s):  
Current Paper ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Verbal Expression ◽  
Verbal Language ◽  
Japanese Aesthetics ◽  
Narrative Techniques

The current paper explores the narrative strategies and poetics of intermediality in Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel “A Pale View of Hills” (1982). Particular attention is paid to the notions of narrative unreliability and subjectivity exemplified by the ambiguous first-person narrative in the novel. The researcher focuses on the narrative techniques, as well as on the numerous lexical and other literary means that emphasize the unreliability of the narrator, who is also the protagonist. It allows revealing the hidden emotions and tendency to self-deceit. In addition, the paper traces the features of Japanese aesthetics and literature in the novel. The most peculiar among them are concise verbal expression, lack of emotion, and audiovisuality, which is primary concentration of the narrative on the visual and auditory images, rather than on the characters’ internal psychological processes. A range of narrative strategies and special literary effects in “A Pale View of Hills”, being characteristic for the art of cinematography, make the novel a vivid example of the cinematographic (cinematic) literature, which requires a different, more image-oriented perception of the reader. Among such techniques, the most notable are the enhanced symbolism of sensual images; revealing the characters’ actual feelings and thoughts through their non-verbal language and dialogues; fragmented and elliptic nature of the narrative that resembles the technique of montage; and the plasticity of chronotope, which is represented by the active use of flashbacks in the novel.

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