“Writer’s block” in Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man or Perhaps Only –

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-97
Author(s):  
Finuala Dowling
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Olive Schreiner ◽  
Writer's Block ◽  
Writer’S Block

A new edition in 2015 by Dorothy Driver of the unfinished novel, From Man to Man or Perhaps Only –, and the accessibility of Liz Stanley’s Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) have made it possible to speculate on reasons for Olive Schreiner’s apparent “writer’s block” in not completing the novel that she felt so passionately about and worked on intermittently for forty-seven years. I argue that Schreiner’s progress was impeded by several factors: her fixation on a rare flash of “illumination” which produced the novel’s exquisite Prelude; her conflating of the ending of the novel with her own end; her commitment to “baking bread” for her country; and her inclusion, near the end of the novel as it now stands, of a scene in which two characters express the agony and anxiety associated with publication. Keywords:  Olive Schreiner, From Man to Man, writer’s block

Between Intimacy and Distance, a “Neutral Territory”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Greyser
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Writer's Block ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Textual Space ◽  
Writer’S Block

This chapter examines masculine individualism’s push–pull relationship with sympathy, beginning in The Scarlet Letter’s Custom-House. There, Hawthorne’s narrator sympathetically presses Hester Prynne’s dusty, scarlet A against his heart, feeling a burning tingle as he places himself in her position. Sections read touch and untouchability in The Scarlet Letter, exploring what encouraged male readers to overcome what Henry Thoreau referred to as masculinity’s “gulf of feeling” to experience sentimental connection. Writing through alienation and writer’s block, Hawthorne’s tingling connection with Hester in the Custom-House propelled him to complete the novel in just five weeks, after being fired from his position as surveyor. His imagined intimacy with Prynne emerges against myths of the self-made man and the untouchable citizen-subject. Readings of tactility reveal alphabetic print and textual space as sites of flux and flow, intimacy and distance, as writers and readers sympathetically lean into and recoil from page and print.

scholarly journals FENOMENA 'WRITER’S BLOCK' DALAM NOVEL METROPOP 'THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOVE' KARYA IKA NATASSA

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-157
Author(s):  
Tania Intan
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Psychological Symptom ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Writer's Block ◽  
Work Support ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
Research Problems ◽  
Writer’S Block

Writer’s Block is a psychiatric phenomenon experienced by writers in the form of a deadlock when writing because of certain obstacles. This study discusses the writer’s block that the female protagonist experienced in the metropop novel The Architecture of Love by Ika Natassa. Data was collected by the documentation study technique and reviewed with a literary psychology approach. The theoretical foundation used is the theory of Bergler, Singer Barrios. The research problems formulated are how the writer’s block phenomenon is displayed in the novel The Architecture of Love, and how the narrative elements in the work support the themes presented by the author. The results showed that the writer’s block phenomenon experienced by the main character was especially caused by unhappiness that is manifested in the form of apathy, anger, anxiety, and problems with other people (ex-husband). Because the writer’s block is a psychological symptom, in this novel, the disorder can be overcome with therapy in the form of relaxation and establishing relationships with new people. As a romance-themed novel, the metropolitan novel The Architecture of Love is built by narrative elements that support the writer’s block theme.

scholarly journals METAFICTITONAL NARRATIVE QUALITIES OF CHIMERA

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 168-190
Author(s):  
Alireza Farahbakhsh ◽  
Narges Yeke Yazdani
Keyword(s):  
Role Model ◽  
New Method ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Writer's Block ◽  
Separate Section ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Writer’S Block ◽  
Postmodern Novel

This paper seeks to discern the narratological aspects of John Barth's famous essay titled “Literature of Exhaustion” in narrative qualities of his own novel, Chimera. Different narrative elements are discussed in the process of reading the essay; they include “The Construction and Deconstruction of Illusions in Chimera”, “The Orchestration of Polyphony of Voices”, “The Decadence of Mythology” and “Barth’s Success in the Pedagogy of Writing”. Each concept will be discussed in a separate section. The first section aims to discuss the concept of metafiction. Barth tries to represent the clash between real and represented worlds to confirm the fact that the boundary between reality and fiction becomes vague in the process of the novel. The second section focuses on "Heteroglossia" as one of the major themes of the novel. All of the characters represent Barth's voice in Chimera. The third section examines the influence of mythology and its decadence. The author attempts to advance a new method of writing by the traditional mimic forms and intertexual games. The last section intends to examine Barth's pedagogy of writing. He tries to create new fictions out of what already has been said in the world of fiction. The article concludes that Chimera is a rich postmodern novel that can be a role-model for writers to avoid originality and writer's block in writing.

ON WRITER'S BLOCK: A MEDITATION ON SADISM

2015 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 52-63
Author(s):  
Jean McGarry
Keyword(s):  
Writer's Block ◽  
Writer’S Block

Soviet Freedom in South Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-103
Author(s):  
David Johnson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Olive Schreiner ◽  
Political Journalism ◽  
Political Freedoms ◽  
The Many

The reception in South Africa of the utopian tradition initiated by Marx, Engels and Lenin is analysed, focusing on the period from 1910 to 1930. The chapter examines the early South African dreams of freedom derived from or influenced by classical Marxism: the political journalism of Olive Schreiner from the 1880s to 1920; the novel 1960 (A Retrospect) by James and Margaret Scott Marshall; the Christian-influenced dreams of David Ivon Jones and Josiah Gumede; the 1928 Native Republic Thesis prescribed for South Africa by the Soviet Union’s Comintern; the literary visions of freedom of Edward Roux (inspired by Swinburne) and J. T. Bain (inspired by William Morris), as well as the many dreams expressed in literary form in the pages of The International and successor CPSA newspapers The South African Worker and Umsebenzi; J. M. Gibson’s ideal of an economic freedom that supersedes the political freedoms of liberalism; and the Stalinist telos driven by ‘the deepening economic crisis’ and culminating in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Roux’s political cartoons envisioning freedom and published in Umsebenzi are analysed.

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