What's Old Made New

This article showcases a guided research project that explores Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer (2015) as an adaptation of Hamlet. A digital component to the project further visualizes the reach of Shakespeare's work into that of contemporary writers of color. The discussion underscores how an undergraduate research experience in canonical English literature opens new connections to contemporary depictions of a globalizing world, as well as how digital tools can visualize those connections and grant the student a valuable set of skills.

The Ideological Ranting in the Debut Novels of the Contemporary Pakistani Writers

People believe that ideologies work for their betterment by showing them a path of prosperity. However, they fail to understand the consequences of blindly following a specific ideology. In their debut novels, the contemporary writers of Pakistan depict the working of one of these ideologies: religion. The present study aims to analyze the projection and exploitation of power in the name of religion: how people suffer for the sake of faith, and the manipulation that follows it in these selected novels: The Prisoner, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, How it Happened, and Agency Rules. The study also highlights the link between religious ideology and the conditioning of the minds of people. The analysis takes place in the light of Marxist theory. The study discovers the role of religious ideology in overpowering helpless people with the belief that following a certain path will reward them in life after death.

Дослідження експериментальної літератури (Оксана Ковацька, Експериментальні вітрила української прози 20-х років ХХ століття)

The present study is dedicated to the contemporary research of the experimental literature, which was recognized as outstanding phenomena and as the form of artistic transgression during last time. The reason for reflection on this topic was the publication of the author’s monograph by Oksana Kovatska Experimental Sails of Ukrainian Prose of the 1920s (Kyiv 2020). The researcher appreciates the element of experiment in the Ukrainian post-revolutionary literature, and highly appreciates the innovative search of the young generation of contemporary writers. In particular, she focuses on three figures of literary experimentation, considering them in the context of the works of Viktor Petrov (Domontovych), Arkadii Liubchenko and Mike Johansen. Oksana Kovatska’s monograph is published as a pioneering work in the dimension of the problem presented here.

“A Convenient Ventriloquist’s Dummy”: The “Christopher Isherwood” Character in Christopher Isherwood

<p>The “Christopher Isherwood” character first appears in Lions and Shadows (1938), Christopher Isherwood’s lightly fictionalised autobiography. Its foreword claims that “Isherwood” is merely a “guinea-pig” and asks us to read Lions and Shadows “as a novel” (xv). In the foreword to Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the author distances himself from his namesake once again: “‘Christopher Isherwood’ is a convenient ventriloquist’s dummy, nothing more” (np). This thesis examines Christopher Isherwood’s relationship with the “Christopher Isherwood” character in five texts: Lions and Shadows, Goodbye to Berlin, Prater Violet (1945), Down There on a Visit (1962), and Christopher and His Kind (1976). In doing so, I attempt to answer the question, ‘what happens when Christopher Isherwood gives his name to the narrator of his fiction?’ The second paragraph of Goodbye to Berlin begins, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking” (1). The critical consensus is that this paragraph is indicative of a namesake narrator who acts as a detached observer, withholding judgment, existing only as a vessel through which the story can be told. I maintain, however, that as Isherwood and “Isherwood” have the same name, we are compelled to compare and contrast the two. Isherwood’s biographer, Peter Parker, claims that “Isherwood liked to imagine himself his own creation” (np). Through his construction of “Isherwood,” Isherwood creates a self – one that does not pre-exist his texts. Isherwood’s novels anticipate a new kind of autobiographical writing, transparent and aware in their fictionality, four decades before it is formally recognised as a genre; while contemporary writers all over the world are now publishing autofiction more than ever before, there was a writer, alone the English island in the 1930s who preceded them all. His name, and his character, is Christopher Isherwood.</p>

“A Convenient Ventriloquist’s Dummy”: The “Christopher Isherwood” Character in Christopher Isherwood

<p>The “Christopher Isherwood” character first appears in Lions and Shadows (1938), Christopher Isherwood’s lightly fictionalised autobiography. Its foreword claims that “Isherwood” is merely a “guinea-pig” and asks us to read Lions and Shadows “as a novel” (xv). In the foreword to Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the author distances himself from his namesake once again: “‘Christopher Isherwood’ is a convenient ventriloquist’s dummy, nothing more” (np). This thesis examines Christopher Isherwood’s relationship with the “Christopher Isherwood” character in five texts: Lions and Shadows, Goodbye to Berlin, Prater Violet (1945), Down There on a Visit (1962), and Christopher and His Kind (1976). In doing so, I attempt to answer the question, ‘what happens when Christopher Isherwood gives his name to the narrator of his fiction?’ The second paragraph of Goodbye to Berlin begins, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking” (1). The critical consensus is that this paragraph is indicative of a namesake narrator who acts as a detached observer, withholding judgment, existing only as a vessel through which the story can be told. I maintain, however, that as Isherwood and “Isherwood” have the same name, we are compelled to compare and contrast the two. Isherwood’s biographer, Peter Parker, claims that “Isherwood liked to imagine himself his own creation” (np). Through his construction of “Isherwood,” Isherwood creates a self – one that does not pre-exist his texts. Isherwood’s novels anticipate a new kind of autobiographical writing, transparent and aware in their fictionality, four decades before it is formally recognised as a genre; while contemporary writers all over the world are now publishing autofiction more than ever before, there was a writer, alone the English island in the 1930s who preceded them all. His name, and his character, is Christopher Isherwood.</p>

A través de la pantalla: Infancias queer en la literatura argentina del nuevo milenio

Childhood is taken up time and again in Argentine literature of the first decades of the 21st century. These are novels that engage various forms of humor, from extreme satire to imposed naivety. This broad register serves to destabilize ideas established throughout the 20th century about the management of the lives of minors. Imaginaries formed by television have become part of several texts, together with what could be termed the “infant library”, that is to say, the children’s literature read by contemporary writers. Argentine narrative of the period accounts for the serious social crisis caused by the hegemony of neoliberalism, as well as its consequences on children’s lives, revealing the fissures in the discourses surrounding their rights. The present article examines these issues in relation to three recent novels: Quedate conmigo (2017) by I. Acevedo, La maldición de Jacinta Pichimahuida (2007) by Lucía Puenzo and Osos (2010) by Diego Vecchio. They will be addressed here within the theoretical frameworks offered by Kathryn B. Stockton in her book The Queer Child (2009). --- La infancia es retomada por la literatura escrita en Argentina durante las primeras décadas del siglo XXI en novelas que apuestan a diversas formas del humor. Desde la sátira extrema hasta una ingenuidad impostada, aparece un registro amplio que sirve para desestabilizar ideas fijadas a lo largo del siglo XX en lo relacionado con la administración de la vida de los menores de edad. Los imaginarios televisivos entran a formar parte de los textos fundiéndose con la “biblioteca infante”, es decir, con las lecturas que acompañaron las infancias de los y las escritoras contemporáneos. La narrativa argentina del período también da cuenta de la grave crisis social producida por la hegemonía del neoliberalismo, así como sus consecuencias en las vidas de las infancias, lo que tendió a mostrar las fisuras de los discursos en torno a sus derechos. Estas discusiones quedan registradas en las tres novelas—Quedate conmigo (2017) de I. Acevedo, La maldición de Jacinta Pichimahuida (2007) de Lucía Puenzo, Osos (2010) de Diego Vecchio—que serán abordadas aquí desde los marcos teóricos ofrecidos por la teoría queer, en particular por la propuesta de Kathryn B. Stockton.

Pleasant and Useful Pastime Journal: The Formation of the Literary Canon

The paper considers the role of Pleasant and Useful Pastime journal in the formation of the Russian literary canon. The journal had been published for five years; in the 1790s it was widely known. As an educational periodical addressed to students of Moscow University and pupils of Moscow University Pan- sion for Nobility, it aimed to serve as a literary reference point and educate the readers’ aesthetic tastes. The paper deals with the canon composition which includes authors of the recent past, who had already received recognition by the end of the 18th century (M.V. Lomonosov, A.P. Sumarokov) and contemporary writers (G.R. Derzhavin, I.I. Dmitriev, N.M. Karamzin). The canon is determined by selecting the texts of exemplary authors as well as through assessment of the writers’ work given in literary texts, critical articles, and editorial notes. The journal is generally char- acterized by a sentimentalist tendency that was relevant at that time (despite the editors’ different aesthetic positions, for example, V.S. Podshivalov and P.A. Sokhatsky), which was reflected in the version of the literary canon presented in it. The periodical focuses on new sentimental patterns. The work belonged to classics and Derzhavin, a recognized contemporary, is reinterpreted within a sentimental paradigm.

DIASPORA AND IDENTITY IN NAIPAUL’S WORKS : A SELECT STUDY

“Write what you know” - this is the age-old advice said by someone to all the novelists. Surajprasad Naipaul, generally known as V. S. Naipaul, took it more seriously than others. Naipaul’s grandparents migrated from Uttar Pradesh India to Trinidad. His grandfather started working as an indentured laborer in the sugarcane estates there. They faced many problems regarding settlement and adjustment in this new cultural environment. That’s why Naipaul’s works are replete with the themes of diaspora. He applied his uniquely careful prose style to the point where the observer has called him the greatest living writer of English prose. Often known as the world’s writer, Naipaul is both one of the most highly regarded and one of the most controversial of contemporary writers. Much of his work deals with individuals who feel estranged from the societies. The present paper is an effort to analyze his select works based on diaspora and identity. Different characters in his fiction and non-fiction works seem to be in search of their identity in this world. Cultural-clash and hybridity, these twin themes, are also dominant in his works and I have tried to highlight all these diaspora-related issues in this paper.

“Cherchez la fiction”: Stories of Self-Realization in Anne Garréta’s Pas un jour and Leïla Slimani’s Sexe et mensonges

Faced with the hermetic interiority of post-structuralist narratives, twenty-first-century French literature tends to turn outwards and explore sociohistorical realities as a fertile source of fiction. In this article, I compare two contemporary writers rarely paired together—Anne Garréta and Leïla Slimani—to consider the enduring importance of discursive paradigms in realizing a sense of self. Although Garréta’s mechanised autobiographical aesthetic in Pas un Jour seems to jar with Slimani’s ethnographic journalism in Sexe et mensonges, I argue that both use heuristic narratives to conduct a survey of female desire whose reality is only legible in literature. Intersecting with narrative theories formulated by Barthes, Jameson and Cixous, this article argues that Slimani and Garréta perform their lived sexual experience through a carefully manufactured textual machine that grants them freedom. Only through the straitjacket of a fictional system can the reader glean the reality of female subjectivities so long obscured by myth.

Modern Kazakh novels: the genre transformation

This article discusses and analyzes the modern novel form, which went beyond the classical criteria. In particular, according to the works of such authors as T. Abdikov "Parasat Maidany", M.Magauin "Zharmak" and D.Amantay "Flowers and books", a genre modification of the modern novels is defined. As a result of the analysis of the works of contemporary writers, original tricks,and techniques for the transmission of modern reality by each author have been revealed. So, T.Abdikov resorts to a diary narrative,using for his artistic purposes it's "confessional", "reflective" function, which helps to reveal the character and creates the illusion of the authenticity and truthfulness of the depicted reality,and M.Magauin uses the paradigm of duality reflected in Western literature in the works of A. Camus, Z. Freud, C.-G. Jung. Thus, M.Magauin rises to the philosophical generalization of modern reality in the postmodern image. D. Amantay completely withdraws from the traditional forms of narration, tries to revealthe contradictory essence of modern reality.