Spectral Histories: The Queer Temporalities of Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Mulvany
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Temporal Logic ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Central Character ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Teenage Girl ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
Temporal Aspects ◽  
Queer Temporality

Set in mid-eighteenth century London, Emma Donoghue's first historical novel, Slammerkin reconstructs the life of a teenage girl hanged in 1764 for the murder of her mistress and, in doing so, attempts to position the girl's murderous outburst as a reaction to the psychical traumas suffered throughout the course of her short and brutal life. This essay attends to the temporal aspects of Slammerkin in order to examine how the novel offers a subtle queering of both temporal normativity and the sequential temporal logic that heteronormative culture is contingent upon. Moreover, it explores how Donoghue's ventriloquization of the central character, Mary Saunders, speaks not only to the spectralization of women in history but also to the social ghosting of those whose lives appear to be out-of-joint with normative modes of time. By reading Donoghue's reparative gesture through recent articulations of spectrality and queer temporality, I present the novel as a form of narrative crypt that provides a phantasmal space for the spectral return of those who have been abjected from history, not only as a consequence of their gender, race, and class, but also because of their inability or refusal to comply with the normative temporal rhythms of the society in which they live.

Living Rough

Living Cargo ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Blevins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
William Hogarth ◽  
Person Account

The second chapter offers an extended reading of A Harlot’s Progress that illustrates the novel’s spectacular orchestration of far-flung art-historical citations taken from the social satires of William Hogarth. By depicting the search of an eighteenth-century abolitionist for an authentic, first-person account of the violence of slavery, the novel underscores the condition of human life at the intersection of law and commerce, and the problematic relationship between the reading public and the instances of cruelty on which they are easily transfixed.

scholarly journals The evolution of the Italian novel (based on the works of Clorinda Di Fini), part 1

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
A.A. Katorova ◽  
Y.S. Boronenkova
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Alessandro Manzoni ◽  
Giovanni Verga ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Novel ◽  
Italian Novel ◽  
Historical Periods

The article deals with the evolution of the Italian novel in different literary and historical periods, starting with the epic poem of Antiquity up to the historical novel (“The Betrothed” by Alessandro Manzoni) and the social novel (“The House by the Medlar-Tree” and “Mastro-don Gesualdo” by Giovanni Verga). Based on the works of Italian philologist Clorinda Di Fini, the article shows how the focus of narrative shifts from the fate of the upper classes to the lives of ordinary people in a larger historical context, as well as the author's position in the novel moves towards impersonality and objective reflection on social problems

scholarly journals BARCAROLE PRINCIPLE IN A GENRE-COMPOSITIONAL ORGANIZATION OF “BERESTECHKO” BY LINA KOSTENKO

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Valentyna Saіenko
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Central Character ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Time Flow ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
First Time

The paper deals with a historical novel in verse by the celebrated modern Ukrainian writer Lina Kostenko, for the first time analyzing it totally in a synesthetic way — through the component of musicality (namely barcarole principle of poetic creativity). The folklore origins of barcarole in the world culture have been traced, as well as the peculiarities of the absorption of the genre by professional music and literature, especially Ukrainian. Formation of the genre in the creative work of the author of “Berestechko”, who is the poet of a special musical feeling, deserves special attention. Barcarole is one of the forms of modernity in the creative thinking of Lina Kostenko; it is a natural writer’s way of perceiving reality and transforming it into an aesthetic system of artistic work (both in poems and the novel in verse). Being inclined to poetically adopt chamber and solo musical genres, the poetess creates a special voice polyphony in “Berestechko”, where each sense construct of a modern unity, i. e. novel lyric epos and barcarole, sounds both separately and complementarily, and the part of a protagonist merges into “I” of a speaker. The compositional function of barcarole in “Berestechko” is the modeling of a central character of the text. It is hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, spiritually undermined by the recent defeat. The barcarole elements are used for constructing the author’s version of this failure and its consequences, which spread around Ukraine as circles on water; absorbing a soothing rhythm of a song, which can cure the soul with love; shaping the architectonics of the text in the form of 'splashes'-'circles' with poly-functional titles and subtexts. In the genre structure of the novel, barcarole is essential both in the development of the theme and its stylistic implementation. In the unity of the work, one may notice “prelude”, the main part, and “postlude”, each part with its artistic sense. The images typical for a barcarole — water, boat, song, woman, love, etc. — are designed in accordance with the agrarian microcosm of the main character and its symbolic senses. Time flow, self-immersion, and love do not only spiritually heal hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, but give his life a direction and endow his figure with grandeur. The neoromantic potential of barcarole and the novel in verse correspond well and join in the final coda about the unshakable courage and heroism of the Ukrainian warriors. 

scholarly journals Rózsa Ignácz’s Torockói gyász [‘Torockó Mourning’]: Identity Beyond the Borders of Time and Space

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Zoltán Abádi-Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Narrative Techniques

Rózsa Ignácz’s historical novel Torockói gyász [‘Torockó Mourning’] (1958) deals with the staggering tragedy of Transylvanian Torockó in 1702. But the referential pattern that emerges from the dramatic plot clearly points beyond eighteenth-century time and space in partly overt and mostly covert ways: to the early twentieth-century post-Trianon fate of the Hungarians in Transylvania, and beyond, to the destructive post-1945 totalitarian communist regime in Hungary, as well as to the backlash of the 1956 anticommunist and anti-Soviet revolution and war of independence. The narrative techniques of expanding early eighteenth-century time and space will be examined through the ways in which thematic threads of collective identity are woven in the novel in general, and the customs, habits, and the religious affiliation of the community are handled in particular. Theories of Jan Assmann, Michael Bamberg, David Herman, Erving Goffman, Fritz Heider and Anselm L. Strauss as well as observations of Ignácz researchers such as Lajos Kántor, Gabriella F. Komáromi, and Erzsébet Dani will be used.

scholarly journals The evolution of the Italian novel (based on the works of Clorinda Di Fini), part 2

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-31
Author(s):  
A.A. Katorova ◽  
Y.S. Boronenkova
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Alessandro Manzoni ◽  
Giovanni Verga ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Novel ◽  
Italian Novel ◽  
Historical Periods

The article deals with the evolution of the Italian novel in different literary and historical periods, starting with the epic poem of Antiquity up to the historical novel (“The Betrothed” by Alessandro Manzoni) and the social novel (“The House by the Medlar-Tree” and “Mastro-don Gesualdo” by Giovanni Verga). Based on the works of Italian philologist Clorinda Di Fini, the article shows how the focus of narrative shifts from the fate of the upper classes to the lives of ordinary people in a larger historical context, as well as the author's position in the novel moves towards impersonality and objective reflection on social problems.

Distributed Cognition and Women Writers’ Representation of Theatre in Eighteenth-Century England: ‘Thoroughly to unfold the labyrinths of the human mind’

2019 ◽  
pp. 170-186
Author(s):  
Ros Ballaster
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sarah Fielding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cognitive Experience ◽  
The Mind

Readers in the mid-eighteenth century were increasingly invited to translate their knowledge about the social extension of mind learned in the experience of theatre to ‘new’ prose forms of the periodical and the novel. Women writers in these forms found opportunity to present women as cognitive agents rather than affective vehicles. Four works by women serve to illustrate this case: Eliza Haywood’s The Dramatic Historiographer (1735), Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier’s The Cry: a new dramatic fable (1754), Charlotte Lennox’s Shakespeare Illustrated (1753-4), and Frances Brooke’s The Old Maid (1755-6). These printed prose works invoke memories of performance – the co-presence of the real bodies of audience and actors. But they often do so to claim the superior cognitive experience of the reader’s engagement through print with a fictional persona in the ‘mind’. The prose work is imagined as a repository of socially extended mind for its audience, an opportunity not only to recreate the experience of communal consumption of the artwork which theatre affords, but also to provide a more sophisticated form of narrative scaffolding. Distance and reflection are enabled by the absence of the performer’s body and the judicious authority of a framing narrator.

Analytical Study of Violence Theme in Victoria Schwab’s This Savage Song

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Study ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Vicious Cycle ◽  
Aggressive Approach ◽  
Research Article ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Right

This research article focuses on the theme of violence and its representation by the characters of the novel “This Savage Song” by Victoria Schwab. How violence is transmitted through genes to next generations and to what extent socio- psycho factors are involved in it, has also been discussed. Similarly, in what manner violent events and deeds by the parents affect the psychology of children and how it inculcates aggressive behaviour in their minds has been studied. What role is played by the parents in grooming the personality of children and ultimately their decisions to choose the right or wrong way has been argued. In the light of the theory of Judith Harris, this research paper highlights all the phenomena involved: How the social hierarchy controls the behaviour. In addition, the aggressive approach of the people in their lives has been analyzed in the light of the study of second theorist Thomas W Blume. As the novel is a unique representation of supernatural characters, the monsters, which are the products of some cruel deeds, this research paper brings out different dimensions of human sufferings with respect to these supernatural beings. Moreover, the researcher also discusses that, in what manner the curse of violence creates an inevitable vicious cycle of cruel monsters that makes the life of the characters turbulent and miserable.

Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Scottish History

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: A Socio –Political Study of Poverty and Injustice

IJOHMN ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
RASHMI Ahlawat
Keyword(s):  
Indian Society ◽  
Poor People ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
White Tiger

Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize winning debut novel The White Tiger is sharp, fascinating, attacks poverty and injustice. The White Tiger is a ground breaking Indian novel. Aravind Adiga speaks of suppression and exploitation of various sections of Indian society. Mainly a story of Balram, a young boy’s journey from  rags to riches, Darkness to Light transforming from a village teashop boy into a Bangalore entrepreneur. This paper deals with poverty and injustice. The paper analyses Balram’s capability to overcome the adversities and cruel realities. The pathetic condition of poor people try to make both ends meet. The novel mirrors the lives of  poor in a realistic mode. The White Tiger is a story about a man’s journey for freedom. The protagonist   Balram in this novel is a victim of injustice, inequality and poverty. He worked hard inspite   of his low caste and overcame the social hindrance and become a successful entrepreneur. Through this novel Adiga portrays realistic and painful image of modern India. The novel exposes the anxieties of the oppressed.

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