‘A Study of Suicide’

This chapter presents a reading of A. Alvarez's The Savage God. The book is not chiefly a literary critical study, but is, in the words of its subtitle, ‘A Study of Suicide’. Moreover, while it contains considerable scholarship upon the subject of suicide, it is by no means an impersonal book. The portrait of Plath and her death at its beginning and the corresponding portrait of Alvarez and his own suicide attempt at its end would, with grim inappropriateness, these days be termed ‘life writing’. As Alvarez switches genres, biography becomes central and the poetry peripheral; Plath's significance to the book is as a case study of a suicide as much as a poet. The Savage God is then the decisive step towards the current position, where Plath criticism is overwhelmingly biographical criticism.

Impressões (des)arquiviolíticas homo-bio-ficcionais da exterioridade: Silviano Santiago e suas/nossas Mil rosas roubadas / (Un)Archiviolitical Impressions Homo-Bio-Ficcional of Exteriority: Silviano Santiago and His/Ours Mil rosas roubadas

Resumo: A partir da fronteira-sul, biolócus geoistórico e sobretudo epistemológico, a qual pensamos e erigimos nossas reflexões crivadas e atravessadas pelos nossos corpos fronteiriços e pelas nossas sensibilidades biográficas/locais de pesquisadores situados em um lócus periférico, buscaremos, assentados em uma teorização de caráter crítico-biográfico fronteiriço (NOLASCO, 2015), e em uma metodologia eminentemente bibliográfica, (des)arquivar o projeto da exterioridade homo-bio-ficcional do intelectual mineiro Silviano Santiago, essencialmente no que convém ao seu romance escrevivente Mil rosas roubadas (2014). Dessa forma, optamos por trabalhar com a impressão do arquivo do mal/da exterioridade (NOLASCO, 2018a) de Silviano na tentativa de abri-lo, (des)arquivá-lo. Ao fazê-lo, (des)arquivamos as nossas próprias histórias e sensibilidades. Subsidiados pelo discurso ensaístico crítico-biográfico fronteiriço, ao escrevermos e teorizarmos acerca desse projeto homo-bio-ficcional (des)arquivando-o, expomo-nos, sofremos de um mal. Nesse prisma, o espaço biográfico o qual nossas reflexões se aquilatam é da ordem dos afetos, das sensibilidades, da sobrevida, contudo, sempre respaldado pela distância, lugar reservado à crítica e à amizade política (NOLASCO, 2010).Palavras-chave: crítica biográfica fronteiriça; arquivo; Silviano Santiago.Abstract: Our research is based on the South-frontier, biolócus geoistórico and mainly epistemological, where we think and erect our thinking trespassed through our frontier bodies and our biographic/local sensibilities as researches located in a subaltern locus. Our research is based on a biographical-critical theorization (NOLASCO, 2015), and in a bibliographical methodology. As from that, we will (un)archive the homo-bio-ficcional exteriority project of Silviano Santiago, a Brazilian intellectual from Minas Gerais, especially with which is related to his escrevivente novel Mil rosas roubadas (2014). In this way, we willwork with the archive of the evil/of Silviano’s exteriority impression (NOLASCO, 2018a), trying to open it, to (un)archive it. When we do it, our own histories and sensitivities are (un)archived. Based on the essayistic biographical-critical frontier speech while writing and theorizing about this homo-bio-fictional project, (un)archiving it, we expose ourselves, we suffer from the evilness. Therefore, the biographical space in which our reflections are based is of the affection order, of the sensitivities and of the sobrevida, but it is also back up for the distance, place reserved to the critics and the politicized friendship (NOLASCO 2010).Keywords: frontier biographical criticism; archive; Silviano Santiago.

Nabokov and the Privilege of Style

Nabokov’s prose is often purple, and looks to build itself into permanent structures, even if its run-on riffs maintain a provisional quality, a sense of forms grasped for and experimental and seeking to be adequate to a fraught and cosmopolitan history. This chapter shows that the experience of reading Nabokov (on such weighty matters as political and sexual tyranny, commercialism, nationhood, and exile) can be understood through a form of biographical criticism attentive to history and how it conditions a prose style we live through from sentence to sentence. While there have been energetic conversations in literary studies in recent years about a return to form, it remains the case that stylistic readings—intimately attentive to grammar, metre and lexis—are still relatively thin on the ground. In turning to Nabokov’s modernist artistry, this chapter looks to test the field’s changing views on the critical and contextual importance of prose style against what actually happens on the page.

Biographical Criticism and the Passion Project Now

This chapter focuses on the future audience imagined for many of the biographical passion projects. It talks about more recent experiments in biographical writing by Lisa Cohen, Jenny Diski, Nathalie Léger, Monique Truong, and Kate Zambreno that share intellectual and affective motivations with the modernist practices. If the biographical and archival projects hope to assure a future readership for queer feminist life stories, then these contemporary writers volunteer as that readership through the generosity of their attention and the experimental forms of their continued custodianship. The chapter suggests that they write with the affective engagement and sense of generic activism that so many mid-century women harnessed to preserve the lives of their friends, partners, lovers, wives, and companions. In this sense, the chapter ends with a generation of women writers who, like their ancestors at midcentury, see the work of writing as inseparable from the work of recovery.

Literary Criticism In The Post-Truth Era

Post truth relates to circumstances whereby objective facts are less influential in shaping the opinion of the public, rather appealing to personal belief and emotion. Post truth era is bordering a blurry line between lies and truths, dishonesty and honesty, nonfiction and fiction. The entire phenomenon of post truth is about an individual’s opinion being worth more than the facts. As such, the present paper seeks to understand new insights or perspectives in literary criticism in the post truth era. The criticism of the literature was always based on broad schools of thoughts/theories, which were employed for many centuries. Some of the traditional approaches the paper highlights include: formalistic criticism, biographical criticism, historical criticism, gender criticism, psychological criticism, sociological criticism, mythological criticism, reader-response criticism, and deconstructionist criticism. Equally, the paper extensively analyzes some of the new perspectives or insights to literary criticism in the post truth era: reflective approach, didactic approach, partisan approach, and religious approach. In reflective approach to literature criticism in the post truth era, the meaning in the literature is reflected by the outside of its own being. On the other hand, in didactic approach to literature criticism, truth and meaning is taught in the literature. Moreover, in partisan approach to literature criticism, there is the truthful meaning that is already known and can be found in the literature. Lastly, in the religious approach to literature criticism in post truth era, the meaning and truth is the literature itself, while the outside world has nothing to do with it.

“Los nuevos retos del viejo género de la crítica biográfica: el caso de Augusto Monterroso”

ResumenEl género de la crítica biográfica ha logrado reposicionarse en el espacio de convergencia entre las ciencias sociales y la literatura, con una metodología interdisciplinaria rigurosa que obedece a los criterios de veracidad de la historia. En este artículo nos interesa, primero, exponer los postulados teóricos de la nueva crítica biográfica; y segundo, desarrollar algunas conclusiones sobre la vida y obra de Augusto Monterroso, resultado de una investigación de archivo (en la Universidad de Princeton y Oviedo) de fuentes orales, bibliográficas y hemerográficas. Nuestro objetivo es asentar la importancia de la crítica biográfica (en teoría y práctica) para la crítica literaria hispanoamericana. AbstractBiographical criticism is located in the crossroads between literature and social sciences; it has a strict historical methodology and a penchant for narrative. In this article we want, firstly, to revise its theoretic grounding and, secondly, its application in the life and works of Augusto Monterrosso. Due to various reasons, including fear of anachronism, hispano-american academy followed, from its consolidation in the half of the XXth century, the new trends of European theory –semiotics, estructuralism and post-estructuralism– while rejecting Biographical criticism as old fashioned. It is the goal of this article to reestablish its theoretical importance and remark its potential.