Caryl Phillips’s Rewriting of the Canonical Romance as a Genre

The paper considers Phillips’s rewriting of the canonical nineteenth-century romances in three of his novels – A State of Independence (1986), The Lost Child (2015), and A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018). The three texts resettle the romance genre through the postcolonial concept of ‘home’. In A State of Independence, Phillips rearranges the role of one of Jane Austen’s most orthodox characters, the landowner Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park (1814), by transposing the Austenian character’s features to his protagonist Bertram Francis, a Caribbean man who comes back to his ancestral homeland after twenty years in Britain. In The Lost Child, chronicling literary-historical events in the present tense by transferring the life of the Brontë family into the protagonists of Wuthering Heights (1847) is for the author one way of calling into question the real sense of literature. It is for this reason that Phillips constructs a cyclic narration around the figure of Branwell Brontë, fictionalised by his sister Emily in the romance protagonist Heathcliff, and mirrored in The Lost Child in the character of Tommy Wilson. In A View of the Empire at Sunset, Phillips definitely overturns the colonial and genre categories by reassessing the in-between life of the Dominican-born writer Jean Rhys through her personal return journey to Dominica: as a result, the author of Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) (an intense rewriting of Jane Eyre) becomes a fictional character, and the literary events of her life sum up the vicissitudes both of the two ‘Bertrams’ – of Mansfield Park and A State of Independence – and the protagonists of Wuthering Heights and The Lost Child.

A Study of STEAM Model Development and Assessment Method for Deep Learning: Through the Voice of Mimesis and Brontë

This research aimed to explore a humanities-based STEAM (H-STEAM) model for EFL undergraduates (n = 72) to improve deeper thoughts and language proficiency in a multidisciplinary setting. The H-STEAM focused on the integration of a literature text, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and the philosophical analysis framework of mimesis as a humanities resource. For a specific teaching and learning method, various group activities based on project-based learning (PBL) were fabricated to enhance collaborative and conceptual learning both inside and outside of the classroom. Analyzing the relationship of Wuthering Heights and mimesis, learners shared and adopted peers’ opinions with openness. They could improve problem-solving ability, caring, communication skills, and self-reviewing practice when accumulating content knowledge and generating creative ideas. This study organized student-based assessment; self-assessment (SA) and peer-assessment (PA). SPSS 25 was conducted for the correlation and reliability analysis of SA and PA, and the evaluation of linguistic improvement. The results indicate that the H-STEAM facilitating PBL can be more workable through openness and community caring. The integration of collaborative and conceptual learning through PBL can empower learners’ autonomy and produce deeper thoughts, which can contribute to deep learning. Consequently, this study may suggest a path to develop H-STEAM for higher education.

Feverish: Self-Induced Fever and the Creative Mind

<p>This thesis is a hybrid work that combines the critical and creative components of the Creative Writing PhD in a novel, Feverish. It includes notes, an afterword, and a full bibliography. Feverish is a novel narrated by Gigi, a writer who wishes to induce a fever in herself. The thesis aims to present more than a fictional account of a quest for fever. It aims, rather to travel with the mind of the protagonist. Gigi is not exclusively engaged in quest-related transactions in her present. Her interest in fever moves her to consider events from her past and her upbringing in Apartheid South Africa. It reminds her of a teenaged fascination with brain fever in Wuthering Heights. It prompts her to research fever-related aspects of psychiatric history and Jewish history. It drives her to research the law on consent to self-harm. As Gigi’s interest in fever leads her to these and other topics, so the thesis follows her, so the form adapts. In both its form and its content, Feverish presents a view into a mind. It provides glimpses of the events that shaped the mind. It describes where the mind goes when in the single-minded grip of a quasi-fever. The novel contains strands of theory, memoir, creative non-fiction, ficto-criticism. These different forms are layered upon each other. At times they make way for each other. At times they assert themselves over each other. In the notes at the end of the novel, the theoretical strand is at its most assertive. The notes present Gigi’s mind at its most critical, when it is directed at supporting the theoretical aspects of her quest. They support Gigi’s accounts of her research by providing additional information and citations. The narrative arc is provided by a chronological account of the days Gigi devotes to her fever quest. What follows here is a skeleton account of the novel. Feverish opens with a conversation between Gigi and a friend. This conversation spurs Gigi to explore brave artistic acts, and to the decision to induce a fever in herself. She remembers childhood holidays. Books, and in particular the nineteenth-century children’s literature that featured fever, are the focal point of these memories. Gigi recalls one particular holiday, taken at a time when a friend of hers, Simon, was just starting to show signs of mental illness. Gigi starts planning her fever. She writes a ‘fever manifesto’. But she worries her siblings will think her insane. She remembers Alberto, a schizophrenic patient of her father’s for whom recovery had, according to his parents, been foretold. Gigi’s husband, son and daughter are introduced. The family has a dinnertime discussion on bravery, anti-Semitism and terrorist attacks. Gigi starts researching fever. She imagines a conversation between her deceased father and Simon about Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist who induced malaria in patients suffering from neurosyphilis. Gigi’s father and Simon discuss an historic ‘showdown’ between Wagner-Jauregg and Freud. Gigi remembers Steve Biko’s death and her father’s aggressive response to a guest who supported Biko’s doctors. Gigi is distracted from her research into fever by her son, who is vacuuming his room. She tells him a friend of hers is thinking of inducing a fever in herself. He explains the difference between fever and hyperthermia. Gigi realises that, to induce true fever, she will have to become ill. This prompts memories of the meningitis her brother suffered from as a child. Gigi uses Fildes’s famous painting, The Doctor as the starting point in an argument for a universal desire to be watched over in illness. Gigi imagines a conversation she feels she ought to have had with her father, about (mental) illness in Wuthering Heights. They test the characters against each one’s ability to empathise with Catherine’s ‘brain fever’. Their discussion of Nelly’s status as servant prompts in Gigi the memory of a shameful childhood act. A visit from a friend from law school prompts Gigi to research the law that could impact on her quest. She reviews case law relating to consent to self-harm, personal autonomy, and the boundaries of criminal law. Her research is interrupted by domestic concerns: her cat kills an endangered bird; her son writes a fever-related essay for school; she accompanies a friend in looking for her errant daughter. At the end of the novel Gigi and her family confront a crisis. It becomes clear that Gigi is not the only family member unsettled by fever.</p>

Feverish: Self-Induced Fever and the Creative Mind

<p>This thesis is a hybrid work that combines the critical and creative components of the Creative Writing PhD in a novel, Feverish. It includes notes, an afterword, and a full bibliography. Feverish is a novel narrated by Gigi, a writer who wishes to induce a fever in herself. The thesis aims to present more than a fictional account of a quest for fever. It aims, rather to travel with the mind of the protagonist. Gigi is not exclusively engaged in quest-related transactions in her present. Her interest in fever moves her to consider events from her past and her upbringing in Apartheid South Africa. It reminds her of a teenaged fascination with brain fever in Wuthering Heights. It prompts her to research fever-related aspects of psychiatric history and Jewish history. It drives her to research the law on consent to self-harm. As Gigi’s interest in fever leads her to these and other topics, so the thesis follows her, so the form adapts. In both its form and its content, Feverish presents a view into a mind. It provides glimpses of the events that shaped the mind. It describes where the mind goes when in the single-minded grip of a quasi-fever. The novel contains strands of theory, memoir, creative non-fiction, ficto-criticism. These different forms are layered upon each other. At times they make way for each other. At times they assert themselves over each other. In the notes at the end of the novel, the theoretical strand is at its most assertive. The notes present Gigi’s mind at its most critical, when it is directed at supporting the theoretical aspects of her quest. They support Gigi’s accounts of her research by providing additional information and citations. The narrative arc is provided by a chronological account of the days Gigi devotes to her fever quest. What follows here is a skeleton account of the novel. Feverish opens with a conversation between Gigi and a friend. This conversation spurs Gigi to explore brave artistic acts, and to the decision to induce a fever in herself. She remembers childhood holidays. Books, and in particular the nineteenth-century children’s literature that featured fever, are the focal point of these memories. Gigi recalls one particular holiday, taken at a time when a friend of hers, Simon, was just starting to show signs of mental illness. Gigi starts planning her fever. She writes a ‘fever manifesto’. But she worries her siblings will think her insane. She remembers Alberto, a schizophrenic patient of her father’s for whom recovery had, according to his parents, been foretold. Gigi’s husband, son and daughter are introduced. The family has a dinnertime discussion on bravery, anti-Semitism and terrorist attacks. Gigi starts researching fever. She imagines a conversation between her deceased father and Simon about Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist who induced malaria in patients suffering from neurosyphilis. Gigi’s father and Simon discuss an historic ‘showdown’ between Wagner-Jauregg and Freud. Gigi remembers Steve Biko’s death and her father’s aggressive response to a guest who supported Biko’s doctors. Gigi is distracted from her research into fever by her son, who is vacuuming his room. She tells him a friend of hers is thinking of inducing a fever in herself. He explains the difference between fever and hyperthermia. Gigi realises that, to induce true fever, she will have to become ill. This prompts memories of the meningitis her brother suffered from as a child. Gigi uses Fildes’s famous painting, The Doctor as the starting point in an argument for a universal desire to be watched over in illness. Gigi imagines a conversation she feels she ought to have had with her father, about (mental) illness in Wuthering Heights. They test the characters against each one’s ability to empathise with Catherine’s ‘brain fever’. Their discussion of Nelly’s status as servant prompts in Gigi the memory of a shameful childhood act. A visit from a friend from law school prompts Gigi to research the law that could impact on her quest. She reviews case law relating to consent to self-harm, personal autonomy, and the boundaries of criminal law. Her research is interrupted by domestic concerns: her cat kills an endangered bird; her son writes a fever-related essay for school; she accompanies a friend in looking for her errant daughter. At the end of the novel Gigi and her family confront a crisis. It becomes clear that Gigi is not the only family member unsettled by fever.</p>

Buchbesprechungen

Angela Schrott/Christoph Strosetzki (Hgg.): Gelungene Gespräche als Praxis der Gemeinschaftsbildung. Literatur, Sprache und Gesellschaft (Historische Dialogforschung, Band 5), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Sybille Große) Julia Weitbrecht/Maximilian Benz/Andreas Hammer/Elke Koch/Nina Nowakowski/Stephanie Seidl/Johannes Traulsen: Legendarisches Erzählen. Optionen und Modelle in Spätantike und Mittelalter (Philologische Studien und Quellen, Band 273), Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2019 (Beatrice von Lüpke) Anastasija Ropa/Timothy Dawson (eds.): The Horse in Premodern European Culture (Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture LXX), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Sonja Fielitz) Veronika Hassel: Das Werk Friedrichs von Hausen. Edition und Studien (Philologische Studien und Quellen, Band 269), Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2018 (Simone Leidinger) Norbert Kössinger/Claudia Wittig (Hgg.): Prodesse et delectare. Case Studies on Didactic Literature in the European Middle Ages/Fallstudien zur didaktischen Literatur des europäischen Mittelalters (Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Beihefte, Band 11), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Jan Stellmann) Eva Rothenberger: Ave praeclara maris stella. Poetische und liturgische Transformationen der Mariensequenz im deutschen Mittelalter (Liturgie und Volkssprache, Band 2), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Anja Becker) Justin Vollmann (Hg./Üb.): Eberhard der Deutsche: Laborintus. Nach dem Text von Edmond Faral herausgegeben, Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2020 (Fritz Peter Knapp) Ann-Kathrin Deininger: Könige. Konzeptionen von Herrschaft im ›Prosalancelot‹ (Studien zu Macht und Herrschaft. Schriftenreihe des SFB 1167 »Macht und Herrschaft – Vormoderne Konfigurationen in transkultureller Perspektive«, Band 3), Göttingen: Bonn University Press, 2019.(Christiane Witthöft) Britta Maria Wittchow: Erzählte mediale Prozesse. Medientheoretische Perspektiven auf den Reinfried von Braunschweig und den Apollonius von Tyrland (Trends in Medieval Philology, volume 37), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Wolfgang Achnitz) Pia Claudia Doering: Praktiken des Rechts in Boccaccios Decameron. Die novellistische Analyse juristischer Erkenntniswege, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2020 (Moritz Rauchhaus) Arvind Thomas: Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019 (Curtis Runstedler) Stefan Rosmer: Der Mönch von Salzburg und das lateinische Lied. Die geistlichen Lieder in stolligen Strophen und das einstimmige gottesdienstliche Lied im späten Mittelalter (Imagines medii aevi, Band 44), Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2019 (Britta Bußmann) Stefan Hannes Greil/Martin Przybilski (Hgg.): Nürnberger Fastnachtspiele des 15. Jahrhunderts von Hans Folz und aus seinem Umkreis. Edition und Kommentar, unter Mitarbeit von Theresia Biehl, Christoph Gerhardt und Mark Ritz, mit einem Beitrag von Nikolaus Ruge, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Johannes Janota) Seraina Plotke/Stefan Seeber (Hgg.): Schwanksammlungen im frühneuzeitlichen Medienumbruch. Transformationen eines sequentiellen Erzählparadigmas (Beihefte zur Germanisch-Romanischen Monatsschrift, Band 96), Heidelberg: Winter 2019 (Hans Rudolf Velten) Nina Scheibel: Ambivalentes Erzählen – Ambivalenz erzählen. Studien zur Poetik des frühneuhochdeutschen Prosaromans. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Nicolas Potysch) Achim Aurnhammer/Nicolas Detering: Deutsche Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit. Humanismus, Barock, Frühaufklärung (UTB 5024), Tübingen: Narr, 2019 (Sofia Derer) Anne Rolfes: Ein Zeitalter voller Narren: Locos und locura im Siglo de Oro (Spanische Forschungen, Reihe 2, Band 43), Münster: Aschendorff, 2019 (Marina Ortrud M. Hertrampf) Carmen Rivero: Humanismus, Utopie und Tragödie (Mimesis, Band 73), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020 (Michaela Peters) Ignacio Arellano (ed.)/Lope de Vega: Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2019 (Blandine Daguerre) Janina Niefer: Inspiration and Utmost Art. The Poetics of Early Modern English Psalm Translations (Religion und Literatur, Band 5), Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018. 466 S.; Florian Kubsch: Crossing Boundaries in Early Modern England. Translations of Thomas à Kempis’s De imita­tione Christi (1500–1700) (Religion und Literatur, Band 6), Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018. 296 S.; und: Carmen Dörge: The Notion of Turning in Metaphysical Poetry (Religion und Literatur, Band 7), Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018 (Christoph Ketterer) Lisa Hopkins: Greeks and Trojans on the Early Modern Stage. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020 (Sarah Briest) Florian Lippert/Marcel Schmid: Self-Reflection in Literature (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, Band 202), Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2020(Lukas Müsel) Michael La Corte: Emblematik als Teil der profanen Innenraum­gestaltung deutscher Schlösser und Herrenhäuser. Vorkommen – Form – Funktion. Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2019 (Nicolas Potysch) Michael Dopffel: Empirical Form and Religious Function. Apparition Narratives of the Early English Enlightenment (Beiträge zur Englischen und Amerikanischen Literatur, volume 38), Leiden: Ferdinand Schöningh. 2020 (Catherine Belsey (†)) Graduiertenkolleg Literarische Form (Hg.): Dynamik der Form. Literarische Modellierung zwischen Formgebung und Formverlust. Unter Mitwirkung von Sona Lisa Arasteh-Roodsary, Gina Derhard, Jutta Gerber, Katharina Andrea Kalthoff, Thomas Kater, Simon Scharf, Kerstin Wilhelms. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2019 (Eva Axer) Shinu Sara Ottenburger/Peter Trawny (Hgg.): Werner Hamacher: Studien zu Hölderlin. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2020 (Michael Woll) Anna Danneck: »Mutterland der Civilisazion und der Freyheit«. Frankreichbilder im Werk Heinrich Heines (Epistemata. Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Schriften – Reihe Literaturwissenschaft, Band 919), Würzburg: Königshausen &amp; Neumann, 2020 (Walther Müller-Jentsch) Lisa Ebert: Ambiguity in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Paderborn: Brill, 2020. 274 pp.; and: Olga Springer: Ambiguity in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &amp; Ruprecht Unipress, 2020 (Sophie Franklin) Nicolaas van der Toorn: Le Jeu de l’ambiguïté et du mot. Ambiguïté intentionnelle et jeu de mots chez Apollinaire, Prévert, Tournier et ­Beckett (Faux Titre, volume 435), Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi, 2019 (Rolf Lohse) Albert C. Eibl: Der Waldgang des Abenteuerlichen Herzens. Zu Ernst Jüngers Ästhetik des Widerstands im Schatten des Hakenkreuzes (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, Band 395), Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020 (Steffen Röhrs) Christiane Maria Binder: Bakhtin Revisited: Constructions of Iden­t­ity Through Time and Place in English and New English/Postcolonial Literature. Trier: WVT, 2020 (Rocco Coronato) Doerte Bischoff/Susanne Komfort-Hein (Hgg.): Handbuch Literatur &amp; Transnationalität. (Handbücher zur kulturwissenschaftlichen Philologie, Band 7), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Max Graff) Martina Allen: GenReVisions. Genre Experimentation and World-Construction in Contemporary Anglophone Literature. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020 (Kai Wiegandt) Jian Liu: Eine Poetik der Fremdheit. Zur Verarbeitung von China-Motiven in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur im 21. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2020 (Arne Klawitter)