Inner Speech as a Gramophone Record

2018 ◽  
pp. 114-140
Author(s):  
Angela Frattarola
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
First Person ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
Dialectical Relationship

In Jean Rhys’s fiction, advertisements, songs, books, and voices of others impinge upon the interior monologues of her characters. In particular, the popular songs that are integrated into Rhys’s first-person novels enhance the auditory nature of her interior monologues. Yet, while the songs referenced in Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939) sometimes foster automatic responses and clichéd understandings for her narrators, they can also instill a sense of defiance and comfort, making music one of the few channels for a momentary sense of fulfillment and expression. By surveying Rhys’s depiction of popular gramophone recordings and their Bohemian associations in her short stories, this chapter reveals how Rhys crafts and commodifies a bohemian voice in her novels, which sounds out the dialectical relationship between a middle-class public with an appetite for lurid tales of the underbelly of society and so-called bohemians, who pushed the boundaries of individuality and freedom.

Translation and Its Affects

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-215
Author(s):  
William A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Language ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Vanity Fair ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
Do So

Vanity Fair (1848) famously opens with a departure. As Becky Sharpe flounces off from Miss Pinkerton's academy, she takes leave of her patron by telling her “in a very unconcerned manner … and with a perfect accent, ‘Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux.’” Miss Pinkerton, we learn, “did not understand French, she only directed those who did: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosed head … said, ‘Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning’” (7). This performance of befuddlement on the part of a respectable schoolmistress bespeaks a whole collection of Victorian cultural norms about language competence in general and about the French language in particular. Even though the action is set in a period when Becky's speaking “French with purity and a Parisian accent … [was] rather a rare accomplishment” (11), the novel was written for a mid-nineteenth-century audience that could mainly count on middle-class young ladies to have acquired this degree of refinement—or at least to aspire to do so.

Late Ozu: New Generation and New Salaryman Film

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woojeong Joo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Commodity Culture ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
New Generation

This chapter covers the last years of Ozu’s career in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Shochiku and the director himself were confronted by the younger generation’s challenge to established styles of everyday realism. The first part discusses the contextual basis of this change, from economic recuperation of postwar Japanese society, to the new wave of film industry, as epitomised by the boom of Nikkatsu’s Sun tribe films and the appearance of television. It is suggested that Ozu, though adopting certain aspects of the new changes, essentially maintained his styles and subject matters of urban everyday life and generational conflict, albeit with lesser critical perspective. This can be reflected in his ‘new salaryman films’ of this era, a genre that inherits the middle-classness of the shōshimin film, but with a brighter tone as to class consciousness, anticipating the appearance of television hōmudorama (home drama) genre. In the second part, such new salaryman films as Good Morning (1959) and An Autumn Afternoon (1962), are critically analysed, in terms of their active acknowledgement of new commodity culture and the ensuing banality of middle class everyday life.

On the Veranda: Jean Rhys’s Material Modernism

Jean Rhys ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Lou Emery
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea ◽  
Good Morning ◽  
Material History ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Experimental Prose ◽  
Key Characters

This chapter focuses on the veranda in Rhys’s writing as an architectural space that opens onto multiple stories, its material history embedded within five centuries of imperial conquest and conflict, the slave trade, the Middle Passage, the plantation, and the plantation’s legacies in city spaces of early 20th-century Europe. As a creolized architectural form, the veranda speaks also to global circuits stretching from its origins in West Africa and India through Europe and the Americas, with the Caribbean as a central point of transit. I analyse the veranda in Rhys’s writing – including several of the short stories and the novels Wide Sargasso Sea, Voyage in the Dark, and Good Morning, Midnight – as framing key characters, conflicts, and events within the transcontinental reach of this deep history. The layering of time and space, as built into the veranda, situates also the experimental prose of Rhys’s Caribbean modernism.

2. Openings

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-29
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Great Economy

‘Openings’ examines the openings of short stories, which move swiftly to introduce subject, event, and motivation, using techniques of speech, viewpoint, description, situation, and timing. Awareness that closure and resolution have been built into the conception of the story from its start brings an expectation of great economy in plotting and characterization. Classic short stories of the 19th century favoured a third-person narrator in order to create the impression of a window onto life. The strategy cultivates the illusion of knowledge, reaching into the interior of characters as well as seeing their appearance. First-person narrators also pose an interesting perspective as they offer authentic psychological exploration of character.

scholarly journals A CONDIÇÃO FEMININA EM MORNAS ERAM AS NOITES, DE DINA SALÚSTIO

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Demétrio Alves Paz ◽  
Mithiele Da Silva Scarton
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
First Person ◽  
Cape Verdean ◽  
Academic Journals ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Broad View

O presente trabalho, relacionado ao estudo desenvolvido pelo projeto de pesquisa intitulado Mulheres fortes: O conto africano de língua portuguesa de autoria feminina (PROBIC/FAPERGS), tem por objetivo analisar a condição feminina presente em nove contos da obra Mornas eram as noites, de autoria da escritora cabo-verdiana Dina Salústio. A partir da leitura de obras críticas de especialistas nas literaturas africanas de língua portuguesa, como Maria Aparecida Santilli (2007), Manuel Ferreira (1987), Pires Laranjeira (1995) e Simone Caputo Gomes (2006; 2013), assim como em artigos publicados em revistas acadêmicas, revisamos a fortuna crítica da autora com o intuito de conhecer seus temas. Nas nove narrativas, observamos que há figuras femininas diferenciadas, representando um amplo apanhado de todas as classes sociais e de diferentes idades. A grande maioria das histórias é narrada em primeira pessoa, o que aproxima o leitor da condição feminina e também funciona como uma espécie de pedido de cumplicidade por parte das narradoras para sentir-se parte desse emaranhado de sentimentos e situações em que elas se encontram.Palavras-chave: Literatura de autoria feminina. Conto. Literatura cabo-verdiana. Dina Salústio. Condição feminina.ABSTRACTThis article, related to the study developed in the research project Strong Women: African short stories written by women writers (PROBIC/FAPERGS), aims to to analyze the women’s condition in 9 (nine) short stories in Warm were the nights, by the Cape Verdean writer Dina Salústio. From the reading of critical works by scholars of African Literature in Portuguese Language such as Maria Aparecida Santilli (2007), Manuel Ferreira (1987), Pires Laranjeira (1995) e Simone Caputo Gomes (2006, 2013), as well as articles in academic journals, we revised the critical works about the author to get a better knowledge of her themes. In the nine narratives, we noted that there are differentiated feminine figures, representing a broad view of all social classes and different ages. The majority of stories were narrated in the first person, which connect the reader to the women’s condition as well as it works as a kind of asking for partnership by the narrators to feel part of this connection of feelings and situations in which the characters are involved. Keywords: Women’s writing. Short story. Cape Verdean Literature. Dina Salústio. Women’s condition.

scholarly journals Consumption and Consumer Society as Postmodernity in Contemporary Thai Fiction

MANUSYA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Saowanit Chunlawong
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Consumer Society

This article aims to scrutinize the postmodern concept of consumption and consumer society from the Thai perspective through four Thai short stories written in a period exemplary of economic change including “Hong Thoe Hong Chan Khan Kan Duai Khwam Ngao” (Your Room, My Room Separated by Loneliness), by Paritat Hutangkul; “Pathanukrom Chiwit Chabap Khon Chan Klang Krungthep” (The lexicon of the life of middle class Bangkokians) and “Ching ming” (Tomb sweeping day), by Win Lyovarin; and “Lok Bai Lek Khong Salman” (The little world of Salman), by Kanogpong Songsompuntu. Each represents Thai society as a consumer society where people live between constant dilemma and vital agony. In these four stories, consumption is corrupt eroding social norms, moral values, and human dignity. Since consumption is an apparatus of the system of production, it perpetuates it by exploiting the individual’s needs and desires. People cannot evade a perpetual rise in consumption, and are therefore bound to this socio-economic mode.

Alternate Realms of Authority

2018 ◽  
pp. 214-260
Author(s):  
Sujata S. Mody
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
World War I ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
World War ◽  
Strategic Responses ◽  
Women's Speech ◽  
The Impact

Chapter 5 examines two landmark Hindi short stories that contested aspects of Dwivedi’s literary agenda. In ‘Dulāīvālī’ (quilt-woman), Banga Mahila used regional and domestic women’s speech in addition to Dwivedi’s preferred standard, Khari Boli prose. Her fictional exploration of the impact of nationalist ideals on middle-class Bengali women in the Hindi-belt further challenged the patriarchal authority with which Dwivedi and other nationalists sought to shape an emergent nation. Chandradhar Sharma ‘Guleri’, in ‘Usne kahā thā’ (she had said), employed regional/ethnic speech that was also gendered, as masculine and vulgar, once again flouting Dwivedi’s preferences for an upright, Khari Boli standard. His story, featuring a Sikh soldier fighting in Europe during World War I, upheld some nationalist ideals, but also defied conventional mores. Both stories underwent extensive editorial revisions, yet there remains a record in their final published versions of their authors’ defiance, and of Dwivedi’s strategic responses to such challenges.

Una borghese piccola piccola: Ragazze milanesi in Giorgio Scerbanenco ed Elio Pagliarani

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 574-590
Author(s):  
Federica Santini
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Experimental Poetry ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
And Gender

The project consists of a study of selected works by two authors who have not been connected or compared before, experimental poet Elio Pagliarani and noir writer Giorgio Scerbanenco. Specifically, the study explores several coinciding representations of lower-middle class women in Pagliarani’s poem La ragazza Carla and Scerbanenco’s collection of short stories Milano Calibro 9. Through references to existing scholarship on each author and analytical readings of the texts, the study aims to demonstrate how the two writers, who were active at the same time in Milan, showed much attention to class and gender issues in their work, and thus obtained similar results through very different stylistic approaches. In addition, the study explores the underlying reasons for which Pagliarani and Scerbanenco chose to focus on realistic representations of Milanese women within their distinct narrative scopes. Finally, the article has the secondary goal of breaking the canon by focusing on two genres, experimental poetry and popular literature, which are rarely if ever considered together.

“We Were Not at School Today”: First-Person Pronouns and Discursive Construction of Identities by Emerging Middle-Class Chinese Parents

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-306
Author(s):  
Yanmei Han ◽  
Jianping Chen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
First Person ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Chinese Parents ◽  
Young Parent ◽  
Involved Parents

Abstract In the process of China’s dynamic social changes over the past decades, the young-parent identity construction of an emerging middle class and the resulting changes of social-cultural values in this context have attracted the attention of academic research in recent years. With the focus on the discursive construction of parent identity, this study examines the utilization of first-person pronouns in three different interactional contexts, namely, parent-teacher interaction, parent-parent interaction, and parent-child interaction. The study further explores the patterns of alignment between the parents and their children, parents and teachers of their children, and peer parents during the process of identity construction, followed by a discussion of the implication that young, emerging middle-class Chinese parents fundamentally shape themselves as “concerned” and “involved” parents and the change of values between collectivity and agency. The study not only demonstrates the dynamic and pluralistic nature of parent identity but also deepens our understanding of the indexical roles of first-person pronouns in the discursive construction of emerging middle-class Chinese parent identity and its relationship with the recent social-cultural changes in the Chinese context.

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