Could H.P. Lovecraft Create a Semblance of Normality?

As part of historically minorized culture, Catalan literature endured difficult periods, e.g., the Francoist regime. To imagine different worlds writing in this language was even more arduous in the 20th century because of the negative attitude towards the fantastic shared by two fundamental trends of Catalan literature up to the 1970s: Noucentisme and historical realism. Nonetheless, H.P. Lovecraft was an important reference in the Catalan non-mimetic fiction that had a certain revival in post-war times. As a step towards “normalization” of Catalan literature after Franco’s death, the writers’ collective Ofèlia Dracs published several collections of short-stories of “genre” fiction–among them Lovecraft, Lovecraft! (1981). On the one hand, this article inscribes this exceptional collection in its historical context and in the contemporary Catalan literary system; on the other, it aims to shed light on Lovecraft’s role in Ofèlia Dracs’ book, proving the projection of his extraordinary supernatural world onto it by the presence not only of Lovecraftian hypotexts in its different tales, but also of metafictional elements inherited mainly from Joan Perucho’s postmodernist writings.

From Distant to Public Reading The (Hebrew) Novel in the Eyes of Many

From its very beginning, the term “distant reading” (Moretti 2000) was controversial, displacing ‘close reading’ by relying on literary histories and thereby reflecting on the entire global literary system. One of the weaknesses of this approach lies in its exclusive reliance on canonical and authoritative historiographies, one or two for each national literature, something which is bound to over-simplify the complexities of national literatures. As is known, Moretti’s proposal became a ‘slogan’ for Digital Humanities while algorithmic manipulation of texts has taken the place of reading literary (human) histories. Yet the problem of over-simplification remains, albeit differently. As an alternative, we offer a fusion approach, radicalising Moretti’s idea. In this article, we demonstrate how computer-based analysis of different readings carried out by many readers – not necessarily professionals – produces a relatively minute picture. Our case study will be the Hebrew novel, from its emergence in 1853 to the present day; a manageable corpus on which we gather information using questionnaires we have carefully created in our lab. Alongside the presentation of our approach, the actual research, and its initial findings, we will reflect theoretically on the conceptual benefits, as well as the limits, of public distance reading.

To Sit is a Verb: Incoherence and Contemporary Conceptual Writing

<p>This thesis reconceives the productive possibilities of incoherence in four works of contemporary conceptual writing. Despite a pervasive ‘recognition’ of incoherence in literary criticism, we find little formal theorisation of its structure. Against existing evaluative and mystifying impressions of incoherence in literary analysis, I propose a revised concept of incoherence. This is equivalent to the existence of a contradiction (A and not-A) in a work that problematises the work’s identity. I test this concept in four recent works of conceptual writing: Expeditions of a Chimæra by Oana Avasilichioaei and Erín Moure (with interruptions by Elisa Sampedrín); An Arranged Affair by Sally Alatalo; The Happy End / All Welcome by Mónica de la Torre; and Hu Fang’s Garden of Mirrored Flowers, translated by Melissa Lim. Each of these works extends the illogical permissibility of early conceptual thought, re-shaped by contemporary concerns. As a result, these works explore alternative representational possibilities inaccessible to the coherent arrangement. The work of these texts is self-reflexive—in respect to their own identity within a context. Consequently, we observe the ways in which incoherent texts map misalignments and contradictions in the literary system itself; drawing attention to associative constellations misconceived as causal and the uncertain divide of representation and real.</p>

To Sit is a Verb: Incoherence and Contemporary Conceptual Writing

<p>This thesis reconceives the productive possibilities of incoherence in four works of contemporary conceptual writing. Despite a pervasive ‘recognition’ of incoherence in literary criticism, we find little formal theorisation of its structure. Against existing evaluative and mystifying impressions of incoherence in literary analysis, I propose a revised concept of incoherence. This is equivalent to the existence of a contradiction (A and not-A) in a work that problematises the work’s identity. I test this concept in four recent works of conceptual writing: Expeditions of a Chimæra by Oana Avasilichioaei and Erín Moure (with interruptions by Elisa Sampedrín); An Arranged Affair by Sally Alatalo; The Happy End / All Welcome by Mónica de la Torre; and Hu Fang’s Garden of Mirrored Flowers, translated by Melissa Lim. Each of these works extends the illogical permissibility of early conceptual thought, re-shaped by contemporary concerns. As a result, these works explore alternative representational possibilities inaccessible to the coherent arrangement. The work of these texts is self-reflexive—in respect to their own identity within a context. Consequently, we observe the ways in which incoherent texts map misalignments and contradictions in the literary system itself; drawing attention to associative constellations misconceived as causal and the uncertain divide of representation and real.</p>

Translating and publishing French theatre in China

This article examines transformations in the literary translation environment in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) specifically in relation to French-language theatre. After an initial survey of literary translation in the PRC from its foundation to the present, the article studies how French-language plays have been translated and adapted for publication. In particular, it considers how French theatre has occupied a favoured position in the Chinese translation literary system over the past four decades. It then focuses on three emblematic cases, those of Molière, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Samuel Beckett. Regarding the latter, two Chinese translations of En attendant Godot/Waiting for Godot will be examined to determine how contextual factors affected translation choices. In this way, the article seeks both to contribute to current discussions on ‘translatability’ and to consider the reception of canonical French-language writers in the Chinese literary system.

National character in the allegorical prose of M. Tarkovsky and A. Bushkovsky

This article analyzes the Russian national character as the main theme in the works of M. Tarkovsky and A. Bushkovsky. The criteria for selecting the research material is the date of publication (2019) and the presence of an allegorical plot, which depicts the traditionalism, spirituality, controversy, and at the same time holism, sense of humor, and depth of national character. The author views national character as the foundation of artistic world in the allegorical prose; as well as gives characteristics to the key motifs, such as faith, labor, challenges, antagonism of the alien, unfamiliar to a Russian person. The article employs the systemic-holistic approach towards revealing the typological features of the modern traditionalist prose by M. Tarkovsky and A. Bushkovsky. The research is based on the comparativism, which allows determining the common trends and uniqueness of both authors. The article identifies the invariant constructions and images (portrait, landscape, detail, language). The elements of biographical method are used for correlating the hero with personal experience and worldview of the author. The structural-semantic method allows focusing on the aesthetic object, revealing the semantic meaning of methods used by the writers to create the image. Hermeneutics characterizes the allegory and symbol as fundamental means of expressing the authorial intentions, which reflect the ideological and aesthetic changes in the literary system. This article is first to analyze the literary texts of modern authors from the perspective of ethnopoetics.

The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization

This study of contemporary Irish expatriate fiction offers a boldly original world-facing rather than nation-focused overview of the contemporary Irish novel. Chapters examine how Irish narrative deals with the United States in a time of declining global hegemony, a rising China and Asia, a thwarted and turbulent Global South, and a European Union that has decisively reshaped Ireland in the last half century. The author argues that in a late capitalist world defined by volatile economic and cultural globalizations, the Irish novel is struggling to imagine new ways to narrate the country's relationship to the world capitalist system and to find new place for Irish writing in the world literary system. Looking at a rapidly-changing Ireland in a rapidly-changing international order, Joe Cleary offers new readings of novels by Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Joseph O'Neill, Deirdre Madden, Mary Costello, Naoise Dolan, Aidan Higgins, Colum McCann, Ronan Sheehan and Ronan Bennett.

Translation, ideology, and creativity

Early translation studies scholars explored the relationship between translation and literary creation, showing that translation serves innovative purposes in literary systems that are in crisis, or that are weak or relatively young. Translation also acts as an ‘alibi ’for the introduction of difference. These early explorations leave out the role of ideology in the creative aspects of translation, a role articulated in both discourse theory and postcolonial theory. As a form of linguistic interface, translation introduces discourse shifts, destabilizes received meanings, creates altern ate views of reality, establishes new representations, and makes possible new identities. All these changes can produce creative results in a literary system and a culture. These creative dimensions of translation are particularly apparent in post-colonial contexts, illustrated here by the nexus of language interface, translation, and literary creativity in Ireland from the end of the nineteenth century to the present.

De mica en mica s’omple la pica de Jaume Fuster: un intent de consolidar la novel·la negra i policíaca a Catalunya

Discussing the Catalan crime fiction may appear as a challenging scientific task due to its lacking autochthonous tradition. The scholars exploring this issue have come to conclusion that, even though there were authors such as Rafael Tasis o Manuel de Pedrolo, whose contribution to this literary genre’s solid foundations seems indubitable, Jaume Fuster is the writer responsible for its consolidation in the Catalan literary system in the 1970s. The aim of the present paper is to analyze Jaume Fuster’s De mica en micas’omple la pica in a specific historical context in order to present some of his foreign influences and inspirations. Specifically, it investigates whether the author remained indifferent to external literary products or whether he chose deliberately some of the archi-genre’s elements in order to implement and consolidate crime fiction in Catalonia. For this purpose, we have applied some of the principles of Even-Zohar’s Polysystem Theory. The results showed that De mica en mica s’omple la pica not only has played a major role in the consolidation of crime fiction but it also placed its author in one of the central positions in the Catalan literary polysystem. Moreover, Fuster tended to interact with different foreign traditions by using in his works modified crime fiction components based on the unique repertory conditioned by the geopolitical situation of Catalonia.

Traducción feminista transnacional: instrumentalización y manipulación de la recepción transnacional del relato autobiográfico sobre violencia sexual

Transnational feminist translation studies stand for activism, cooperation and solidarity in connecting feminist thinking developed in all parts of the world (Alvarez et al. 2014, Castro/Ergun 2017, Flotow/ Farahzad 2017, Flotow 2019). One of the important issues is wartime sexual violence, which is the focus of this article, and constitutes a feminist, transnational phenomenon. The account of wartime sexual violence by female victims faces instrumentalization and manipulation by the agents involved in the publication process, including the translators, who are an active part of the patriarchal literary system, with the purpose “to make them fit in with the dominant, or one of the dominant ideological and poetical currents of their time” (Lefevere 1992: 8). The transnational reception, thus, is driven by ideological and commercial interests that agents in a literary system negotiate. The aim of this article is to analyse the transnational reception process, examined under the perspective of transnational feminist translation, and based on questions as who rewrites and how is the wartime sexual violence account rewritten. Undertaking a case study, the diary ‘Eine Fau in Berlin’ of an anonymous female author, Anonyma, who describes rape, prostitution and the gender relations in the context of Second World War, an analytical framework is developed to shed light on the question how women’s writing on wartime sexual violence and its transnational reception are determined by mechanisms of instrumentalization and manipulation that are due to the conceptions and moral values that prevail over wartime sexual violence in two different political and historical eras. We conclude that transnational feminist translation enables activism and solidarity about wartime sexual violence beyond geographical limitations. This leads to the empowerment of the victims on a transnational level.