Baudelaire's Creole Gothic : A Postcolonial Afterlife for Les Fleurs du mal

Baudelaire’s verse poetry is informed by a pervasive Creole Gothic resonance. Two separate but related topoi, the Undead and the Living Dead, lie at the heart of the collection’s necrological imaginary of slave and zombie labour. It is this Gothic double-trope of death-in-life/life-in-death that activates the Gothic Creole strain running through Les Fleurs du mal. Ironically, those poems that seem to evoke most directly the Creole world that Baudelaire encountered in 1841, firstly in Mauritius and then in Réunion, avoid all evocation of plantation slavery. Conversely, the city poems associate modern metropolitan life with the idea of slavery, representing it as a living death and death as a merely temporary and reversible escape. The collection’s representation of this ‘living death’ foreshadows the construction (by Orlando Patterson, most notably) of transatlantic chattel slavery as ‘social death’. As for the poetic representation of the ‘Undead’, this centres on the figure of the zombie. The zombie is essentially a slave for whom death has proved no guarantee against an endless ‘living death’ of hard labour. If the Creole inflection of Baudelaire’s imagery relates primarily to the realities of industrialized plantation labour and to the chattel slavery on which it was based, it is further reinforced by indices of tropical localisation and of racial difference, more specifically pigmentation. However subliminal its resonance, this Creole Gothic strain guarantees for Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal a vivid postcolonial afterlife.

Illuminating five possible dimensions of self-care during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: Self-care is about taking care of yourself. It is a proactive action involving steps to develop, protect, maintain and improve health, wellbeing or wellness. Self-care can be seen as a repertoire of practices – different things you do that help you care for you, no matter how small. It is an act of treating yourself like you would a close friend. The importance of valuing self-care has not changed in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, in fact more awareness and appreciation for what one can do to empower yourself may indeed be valued more. Methods: In this paper, I draw on data from 53 participants aged over 18 years who responded to an online qualitative questionnaire between the months of May to June in 2020. Poetry derived from all the participants has been generated to both represent their voice and to provide a provocation that ignites our heart and mind to consider what is good in life. Results: To further conceptualise self-care, five possible dimensions of self-care (mindfulness, self-compassion, habits, time and agency) are suggested and the aspects within these dimensions are described juxtaposed with poetic representation that illuminates practices and mindsets engaged with during a pandemic. Conclusions: When thinking about self-care across five possible dimensions, this framework becomes useful for capturing a holistic and authentic view of both proactive actions and the variety of practices that can be engaged with. Empowerment is possible in partnership with self-compassion and awareness, where a self-kindness supports proactive decisions to be made on a daily basis that support wellbeing. Central is that no matter one’s situation, difficulty and suffering during a pandemic, gratitude and awareness for oneself is possible.

La Murcia modernista de los siglos XIX-XX. Autores del modernismo y el asentamiento del trovo o poesía popular repentizada como arte escénico

Desde que en 1880 comienza oficialmente el periodo conocido como Modernismo, en la región de Murcia, la corriente fue asumida con el mismo grado de rechazo si bien es cierto que autores como Ricardo Gil dejaron entrever en su pluma la influencia parisina de la que hará gala Rubén Darío como figura literaria mundial indiscutible. Lo cierto es que, en ese cambio de siglo convulso, y debido al capital extranjero, el territorio del sureste español emerge en el sector primario de la minería, y es en ese contexto minero donde el modernismo arquitectónico eclosiona, pero también en torno al denominado Café Cantante, la representación poética del Trovo o poesía oral improvisada, evolucionando así de la calle y el ámbito tabernario, al arte escénico. Since the period Known as Modernism officially began in 1880, in te Murcia region, the current was assumed with the same degree of rejection, although it is true that authors such as Ricardo Gil, hinted at the Parisian influence of wich Rubén Darío will show off as the undisputed world literary figure. The truth is that, in this turbulent turn of the century, and due to foreign capital, the territory of the Spanish southeast emerges in the primary sector of mining, and it is in this minig context, where architectural modernism hatches, but also, around the so-called Café Cantante, the poetic representation of the Trovo or improvised oral poetry, thus evolving from the Street and the tavern enviroment, to performing art.

Odysseus’s Apologoi and Narrative Therapy

This chapter discusses how Odysseus, in the telling of his own tales, may function as a poetic representation of the stages of necessary therapeutic intervention, rather than a clinical record of a patient in treatment. It argues that Odysseus's narrative shares many features with one psychological intervention, the modern counseling approach called Narrative Therapy. The Odyssey shows Odysseus using his tale of travels in order to revise his own past among the Phaeacians, ultimately re-authoring his tale and creating a sense of identity that prepares him to act in the future. This process is therapeutic for the epic's audiences as well, insofar as it advances concerns about agency and human identity explored in the epic's first few books and models the ways in which identities and concepts of action are constructed through narrative. Through Odysseus's story, the epic affirms that people can be affected negatively by their experiences, that controlling narrative is an important part of agency, and that problematic worldviews can, in fact, be rehabilitated through action and speech.