Novel Mega Best-Seller Karya Luluk HF Mariposa dalam Kajian Resepsi Sastra

This study discusses the reception of readers of the mega best-seller novel entitled Mariposa by Luluk HF. The purpose of this study is to (1) describe the reader's responses, (2) describe the horizon of readers' expectations, and (3) describe the factors that cause differences in responses and the horizon of expectations of readers of Mariposa's novel. The method applied is descriptive qualitative. This study uses a reception aesthetic approach that seeks to find consistent reception patterns as a reflection of the way the reader responds to the text. The research data consisted of texts containing the responses of twenty respondents from the data source in the form of the Goodreads reader site. The research results obtained are as follows. First, not all readers respond positively to the intrinsic elements of the novel, especially the characterization of the female protagonist who is considered to show aggressive behavior with a love motive. Second, most of the horizons of readers' expectations do not match the reality in Mariposa. Readings are generally motivated by curiosity because of the hyperbolic labeling of the novel, recommendations from friends, and the discourse of filming the novel. Third, the factors that cause the difference or suitability of the horizon of readers' expectations for the Mariposa novel are knowledge of literature, knowledge of life, and experience of reading literary works.

Witnessing Women: Quo Vadis, Cinema?

The essay explores how two women filmmakers, each deploying her unique vision through the perspective of a female protagonist, stage a transformative encounter with the act of bearing witness to genocide. The Diary of Diana B. (Dnevnik Diane Budisavljević, 2019, Croatia) directed by Dana Budisavljević, and Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020, Bosnia-Herzegovina), directed by Jasmila Žbanić, both compel us to bear witness to mass atrocities while avoiding the pitfalls of turning suffering into a spectacle, and by sidestepping the predictable cinematic conventions of redemption and closure, both formally and narratively. In my analysis of the films as anti-spectacles through the framework of Trinh T. Minh-ha’s ‘speaking nearby’, I argue for the concept of ‘women’s world cinema’, a kind of cinema that is made by women, speaks to women’s experiences, and/or addresses the spectator as female while also speaking nearby instead of about its subjects in ways that eschew conventional spectatorial alignments and co-optations of traumatic experience.

In the Footsteps of the Absent Father: The Protagonist as a Writing Subject in the Work of Ronit Matalon

The article addresses the literary development of the young female protagonist in Ronit Matalon’s early writing, and the character’s relationship with her absent father. Despite the prevalence of this theme, little research has been dedicated to the father-daughter relationship in Matalon’s work and its influence on the daughter’s decision to become a writer. The article examines this theme in Matalon’s young adult novel, A Story that Begins with a Snake’s Funeral (1989). My main argument here is that the father-daughter relationship in Matalon’s work is central to the construction of the daughter’s ’decision to write‘, and points to the issue of inter-generational accountability, in which the daughter is entitled to an inheritance from her father despite her critical view of him. As I will show in my reading of the novel, the fictional representation of this relationship bears an autobiographical imprint, particularly in light of Matalon’s choice to quote her father, Felix Matalon, and to lend his voice to the father figure in her writing. As part of the exploration of this theme, which consists of both fictional and autobiographical aspects, I suggest that the heroine’s efforts to place her absent father in the context of her life and to cope with his absence through her writing point to Matalon’s own efforts to deal with her father’s legacy by writing about him and giving him a place in the Israeli literary canon, while maintaining a critical attitude towards him.

A life story forged by successive migrations: the case of Lucia

The aims of this article are divided in two: (i) show that life stories of migrants are currently necessary because they contemplate a discursive look that is at once social, historical and psychological; (ii) to investigate the identity “mysteries” of the protagonist and narrator of the novel Lucia, written by Olga Canllo Salomon, which tells the life of a poor Argentinian girl who, through displacements/migrations, found her place in the world after being forced to flee the military regimen that ruled her country in the 1970s. This female character fits into what I call “transclass subjects” because she went through life’s hardships hoping to find something better. The article relies on the theoretical convergence of life stories according to Machado (2018; 2019) and the Semiolinguistics proposed by Charaudeau (1983; 2006), to which I also add the ideas of Cyrulnik (2015) to explain/apply the notion of resilience, a feature of the novel’s female protagonist. I hope this article serves as testimonial of the research I have been conducting for some years and to which I now add the figure of migrants. Finally, excerpts of Lucia are cited to illustrate the imaginaries of beliefs of her homeland as well as her emotions, fears, and audacity

La fuerza de la sangre cervantina en el espejo de una novela de Kleist

In 1808, the German author Heinrich von Kleist published the novella The Marquise of O., which bears an obvious resemblance to The Force of Blood from Cervantes’s Exemplary Novels. In both cases, the female protagonist marries a man after being raped by him. At first sight, Kleist’s text seems to testify to a degree of progress in female emancipation because the victim has doubts about accepting the rapist as her husband. Other aspects of his novella are less conducive to proving such a progress. Kleist stresses the pressures of family honour more than Cervantes does, and he does not restrict himself merely to qualifying rape as a sin or crime. He also hints at the possibility of an unconscious yielding to bodily needs, questioning thus the power of reason to govern sexual desires.

The Duality of Voyeuristic and Phallocentric Tokens in K.S. Maniam’s “Mala”

This paper attempts to examine the Notions of voyeuristic and phallocentric tokens in K.S. Maniam’s “Mala.” In essence, the study tries to scrutinize the inherent relationship between males and females through psychic drives. These drives are mainly motivated by social milieus which control the behaviors of males and females. Therefore, males and females abide by the social manners that make them different from each other. Accordingly, my study will analyze the characters of Maniam’s “Mala.” It will specifically concentrate on female behaviors and how they are depicted in a patriarchal way. Furthermore, the analysis will tackle Maniam’s notion of voyeuristic and phallocentric ideas projected in the story. These ideas are associated with feminism and gender studies that try to bridge the gap between males and females. In this respect, my study will analyze the female protagonist Mala that tries to be equal to men in her male-dominated society. The protagonist embodies Maniam’s critique of females and their inferiority to males. Moreover, the concepts of voyeurism and phallocentrism will be applied to explore the protagonist’s internal drives caused by traditional “feminist” domestic affairs.

Identity and Desire in John Steinbeck’s “The Harness” (1938)

Emma is portrayed in the nuptial relationship which situates her to be conditional upon her husband power. She seemingly portrayed as a stereotype figure of a married woman. In fact, the closely reading gives us another insight of Emma where we can see her identity from another angle. The feminist angle in literary works was regarding patriarchal society which dominates the women’s portrayal of that time. The patriarchal flourished the society’s perception which considers that is men who ruled and controlled over women. This tradition had been stumped the women desire for approval of their existence. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the female protagonist identity and her desire portrayed and focused in “The Harness.” In order to reveal Emma’s identity and her desire, the study focus not only on Emma only but also Peter is analyzed as well, analyzing the relationship between the couple. Emma appears to be strong and independent. Although she is portrayed as a little skinny old woman who lies sick most of her lifetime, she can direct Peter not only to wear the harness but also to run and keep both their house and their farm as she wants them to be. Emma, in this sense, is very powerful and “masculine” from a modern gender point of view. Her identity seemingly is far from feminine in its reality.

Sugiharti Halim (2008): A Cinematic Portrayal of Chinese Indonesian's Ambiguous Identity

Sugiharti Halim (2008) provides a cinematic insight into the lives of Chinese Indonesians whose identities are perpetually labeled as liyan (other) in the eyes of the inlanders (pribumi). It narrates the story of Sugiharti Halim, a Chinese Indonesian girl, who struggles with her Indonesian sounding name which, instead of successfully assimilating her Chinese identity, makes her even more Chinese than before. This study aims to investigate the cinematic portrayal of Chinese Indonesian’s ambiguous identity as experienced by the female protagonist. The writer employs close textual analysis of the indie film and approaches the issue by the reading of cinematic codes (mise en scene) and the theoretical perspective of name giving developed by Watzlawik in 2016. The conflict highlited in this “indie” criticizes the position of Chinese filmmaker for being pigeoholed on the ground of their ethnicity as portrayed in most commercial films which put Chinese more as a marginalized group. Therefore, the study reveals that films have become a new means of politicizing the interest of certain ethnic group which somehow puts the Chinese Indonesians in their most vulnerable position. The study also concludes that independent films help the young Chinese filmmakers to reconnect with their Chinese heritage as they begin to pick up bits of their Chineseness which were previously miscontrued by the inherited ideals of the New Order regime.

Gender, Genre, and the Idea of the Nation

This article examines the construction of and contestation over the idea of the nation through contemporary popular cinema in India. Building on his experience of discussing the Bollywood spy thriller Raazi (2018) in an English class, the author proposes that “reading” the film in terms of gender and genre can not only help students apply modes of textual analysis to narratives in other media but also alert them to the location of such narratives within larger discursive frameworks of defining national identities. Raazi presents a critical and ideological counterpoint to the generic conventions of the spy thriller within the increasingly polarized sociopolitical context of the Indian subcontinent. The film presents an unlikely female protagonist as both the physical agent and the psychological subject of the violence integral to the “action” of an espionage film. It also interrogates the oppositional relation between the patriotic “self” and the foreign “other” that lies at the basis of the militaristic conception of the nation and ultimately reveals the shared human vulnerability of both to the traumatic effects of pursuing the idea(l) of nationalism at the expense of individual moral integrity. Thus a close reading of the film's narrative structure and conventions, as well as a critical engagement with the historical context of its production and reception, can be pedagogically fruitful ways of understanding and critiquing the processes through which a nation is collectively imagined into being.