A arte capicua da comutação: Ara, de Ana Luísa Amaral / The palindromic art of commutation: Ara, by Ana Luísa Amaral

Resumo: Procurar-se-á mostrar como Ara, o primeiro romance de Ana Luísa Amaral, se vinha anunciando pela tensão dramática que caracteriza a vasta obra poética da autora desde os anos 90. Trata-se de um romance que, não descurando a tradição modernista, se mostra consentâneo com uma matriz pós-moderna e com um título capicua, Ara, que induz ab initio um universo permeável à dissonância e à comutação. Ver-se-á como o ludismo romanesco da comutação e a exploração da auto-reflexividade permitirão integrar modos discursivos diversos – lírico, ensaístico, poético, dramático e modus faciendi romanescos vários – do romance de formação ao romance de amor, passando pelo romance social e pela autobiografia, e explorando todas as virtualidades do género.Palavras-chave: comutação; dissonância; auto-reflexividade; hibridez romanesca; moderno / pós-moderno.Abstract: I will try to show how Ara, Ana Luísa Amaral’s first novel, can be seen as an announcement of the dramatic tension that characterizes the author’s vast poetic work since the 1990s. It is a novel that, while not neglecting the modernist tradition, is consistent with a postmodern matrix bearing a title that is a palindrome. This induces ab initio a universe permeable to dissonance and commutation. It will be seen how the novelistic playfulness of commutation and the exploration of self-reflexivity will allow for the integration of diverse discursive modes – lyrical, essayistic, poetic, dramatic and modus faciendi romanesque – ranging from the Bildungsroman to the novel of love, passing through the social realist novel and autobiography, and exploring all the potentialities of the genre.Keywords: commutation; dissonance; self-reflexivity; novelistic hybridity; moderm/post-modern.

Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State: A Caribbean Rhizomatic Novel Reflecting the New Transmodern Paradigm

This article explores Haitian American writer Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State (2014) as a novel that represents our intricate and rhizomatic transmodern era. In order to prove this contention, it focuses on the novel’s amalgamation of different literary genres and modes from previous cultural paradigms—namely, the postmodern fairy-tale retelling and the social realist novel—with Euro-American as well as Haitian/Caribbean literary and sociocultural elements. The result of this mélange is a complex narrative of multiple interconnections that offers a nuanced portrait of new millennium Haitian diasporas and locals, and that most especially, recuperates subaltern Haitian voices so as to denounce the “untamed state” of the country. The article concludes by arguing that Gay’s hybrid and relational text effaces an either/or episteme which, although considerably used in Western and postcolonial theories for a while, has now become obsolete and inoperative in such a globalised and entangled world.

Demystifying the Magic in Diamond Shumsher’s Seto Bagh: History Reconsidered

Diamond Shumsher’s masterpiece, Seto Bagh, is a significant historical novel in Nepali literature. The novel made a vibrant debut in depicting historicity in fictional prose in the Nepali context. In particular, the reconsideration of the portrayal of history from a new perspective is relevant. Traditionally, this is considered a historical realist novel. Nevertheless, magical elements are profusely used in the novel. In this study, this niche opens up avenues to re-evaluate the historicity vis-à-vis magical elements. I have adopted Maggie Ann Bowers’ and Wendy B. Faris’s notions and perspectives on the theoretical lens of magical realism to demystify the magic and history in the text. Further, I have adapted the content analysis method to analyze the textual evidences from the selected novel. The main finding exhibits that the novelist has amalgamated historical facts with magical elements like supernatural beings and happenings. Thus, the novel is an example of historical magical realism. This implies that only established beliefs and theories are not sufficient to judge the literary works rightly. Therefore, new lenses should be explored to enter into the world of fictional prose works as such.

The Decadent Novel

This article argues that the decadent novel purposefully inverts the conventions of the nineteenth-century realist novel. Rather than developing bourgeois interiority, cultivating moral sympathy, and promoting conventional ideologies of gender and romance, the decadent novel focuses on detached individuals and damaging forms of desire. Refusing to provide reassuring narratives that reinforce myths of progress or camouflage the fractured, fraught nature of modern experience, these texts force readers to confront the anguish produced by modern conditions. They ask readers to meditate on the manner in which the increasing emphasis on individuation and an escalating sense of fragmentation at the turn of the century distort subjectivity and enable ever more horrifying forms of cruelty. In their representations of isolation and sadism, decadent novels amplify and exaggerate late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century forms of alienation in a way that enables further reflection on the dehumanization and deprivation engendered by modernity.

viaje narrativo y el libro de viaje medievales

El artículo señala la importancia del viaje en el relato literario medieval que responde al despertar sociocultural del siglo xii y caracteriza la llamada novela realista de los siglos xiii y xiv. En particular, al Escoufle de Jehan Renart, a la Manekine de Philippe de Remy y al Roman du comte d’Anjou de Jean Maillart. Novelas coetáneas a la expansión de los libros de viaje y ligadas a estos en la concepción del viaje. This article points out the importance of travel books in the medieval literary story that responds to the sociocultural awakening of the 12th century and characterizes the realist novel of the 13th and 14th centuries. Particularly noteworthy are Jehan Renart's Escoufle, Philippe de Beaumanoir's Manekine and Jean Maillart's Roman du comte d'Anjou. These novels are contemporary to the expansion of travel books and are connected to the concept of travel.

Rise of the Scene-and-Summary Novel

From the middle to the end of the eighteenth century, two figures above all serve as focal points for the development of a nascent theory of pacing in European literature: Henry Fielding and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Fielding one encounters a notion of “prosai-comi-epic” pace that is light, centrifugal, and sprawling but opposed to another tendency that is more solemn, centripetal, and grave. Goethe, in his correspondence with Friedrich Schiller, is concerned with epic and drama: he and Schiller begin to distinguish between those two genres in terms of pace. What one can perceive in the intersection of such discourses is a formation, within novelistic fiction, of several axes of narrative movement that lead to the formation of units like scene and summary. If this seems like a straightforward path toward the nineteenth-century realist novel, one must pause and consider the aspects of romance that are embedded in novel pacing. Here, they appear as westering, world entry, and wandering.

Spatial movement as a resistance strategy in a holocaust novel A Blessing on the Moon

Exploring Jewish resistance in relation to the Holocaust has become one major topic widely discussed in the Holocaust novels written by the second or third generations of Holocaust survivors. The fact that these writers primarily have no direct experience with the event somewhat shows that the paramount effects of the tragedy expand generations and leave trauma that lingers. To cope with the narration of atrocities, resistance strategy is often employed by the Holocaust writers and to a certain point has a function to represent the struggle of the survivors. Joseph Skibell as the third-generation writer deploys a strategy of spatial movement as a coping mechanism and resistance against atrocities in his magical realist novel A Blessing on the Moon. Using Sara Upstone�s spatial politics perspective, this research aims to investigate the spatial movement performed by the main character and to explain how it produces the resistance strategy. In doing so, it will also further examine the scale and characteristics of various spatial locations used in the novel as a means of resistance. As it goes along, the issue of trauma and identity of the Holocaust survivors and their descendants is also explained.