Intelligible History, Negated Subjects: The Pressures of Intimacy in Michael Crummey's and Michael Winter's Historical Novels

This article explores the implications of Lauren Berlant’s essay “Trauma and Ineloquence” (2001) regarding the therapeutic effects of narrative, also addressing the critical work of other theorists that have tackled the question of the artificiality of personal and historical narratives. By connecting Berlant’s insights into the notion of intelligibility with those of Roland Barthes, of testimony theorists and of other critics on ineloquence, my analysis aims to throw light on two historical novels that are articulated through intimate events that prevent certain speakers (Berlant’s negated subjects) from producing testimony and, therefore, participating in mainstream narratives and accessing justice. The novels River Thieves (2001) by Michael Crummey and The Big Why (2004) by Michael Winter hold the past as a scandal where carnal entanglements degrade the epic sweep of the events and show the disruptive effects of non-normative knowledges. Intimacy, thus defined as a lawless and shameful element in society, intersects with the economic and sexual pressures imported into the colonies by the empire (Povinelli 2006; Stoler 2006a). In this context, Newfoundland, in Canada, represents a colony where the ethics of European and American civilization are called into question.

"Perimeters of Grief": Elegy in and out of Bounds in Fred D'Aguiar's Memorial Poetry

While Fred D’Aguiar’s preoccupation with acknowledging the dead and honoring their memory gives his work an idiosyncratic elegiac quality, it is with the publication of the poetic sequence “Elegies”, from the collection Continental Shelf (2009), that the author overtly pitches himself in the traditional terrain of the elegy as a poetic genre. This sequence, a response to the Virginia Tech shootings (April 16, 2007), the deadliest gun rampage in US history to date, invites critical attention not only because it remains critically unexamined, but also because through its title it presents itself as an elegy when an anti-elegiac turn has been identified in modern poetry. This paper will explore D’Aguiar’s intervention in the debate surrounding elegy’s contemporary function as a genre which oscillates between the poles of melancholia and consolation, thus contributing to shaping the contours of an ancient but conflicted poetic form for the 21st century. I will be arguing that D’Aguiar’s poem suggests that for elegy to serve the troubled present it may benefit from the cultivation of an unembarrassed attachment to the deceased, from avoiding depoliticizing tragedy and from the exposure of its socio-historical underpinnings. In sum, it should be open to engaging with such critical issues as the struggles of collective memory, or the turning of grief into mass-mediated spectacle.

Phonological Remarks on Spanish Loanwords in English

This paper focuses on loanword phonology in the context of Spanish words that have become part of the English lexicon in the 20th century. The background section shows that attention has been paid to Spanish words used in English from a lexical point of view, but scarcely regarding phonology. Furthermore, the few existing studies of loanword phonology do not deal in depth with Spanish and English as an example of crosslinguistic contact. Therefore, this paper aims at contributing to the explanation of the phonological adaptations occurring in Spanish words when integrated into English, and therefore the conditions of English phonology that operate in the process of perception and production of Spanish loanwords. In doing so, two areas of interest are analysed: vowel phonemes and consonant phonemes, mainly in relation to their distinctive features and the distribution of units and also considering related phenomena such as phonetic and orthographical factors.

Frasier: A Cultural History, by Joseph J. Darowski and Kate Darowski

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Afrodiasporic Female Automobility and Motel-Dwelling in Lesley Nneka Arimah's "Windfalls"

This article explores Lesley Nneka Arimah’s “Windfalls” (2017) from a literary mobility studies perspective, applying notions of mobility studies such as the driving-event, friction, arrhythmia, and stickiness for an in-depth textual analysis. Given that its female migrant protagonists are constantly on the move, tropes of mobility recur throughout the story. Cars, filling stations, parking lots, truckers, motels and the figure of the sojourner play a pivotal role in defining its Afrodiasporic protagonists’ postmigratory mobilities in the United States. Arimah’s depiction of automobility and motel-dwelling underlines her theme of a flawed mother-daughter relationship and their impossibility of achieving the promised American Dream. A close reading of the fictional travellers’ displacements uncovers a critical analysis of automobility and motel-dwelling as forms of subversion of hegemonic mothering. Particular attention is drawn to how the female protagonists’ motilities are determined by their racialised gendered bodies. By analysing the literary representation of concrete and tangible mobilities performed by female Nigerian migrants, this study acknowleges the importance of exploring a key characteristic of third-generation Afrodiasporic fiction which has mostly gone unnoticed.

Christopher Isherwood's "Right" and "Wrong" Anti-Semitism: A Political Reading

There are numerous references to Christopher Isherwood’s prejudices against Jews in scholarly literature; however, this subject has not yet been approached in depth. This study aims to fill that void by dissecting the author’s bias against Jews: its origin and nature. The article discusses the references to Jews in the writer’s novels, memoirs and diaries within the frame of reference of Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory which holds that humans innately derogate those who are perceived as being opposed. A close reading reveals that Isherwood, in a specific social and political context, considered Jews alien to him and —in accordance with social identity theory predictions— he instinctually derogated them. Before his stay in Berlin, Judaism did not interest him and he disliked Jews because he regarded them as ‘exotic’. During the rise and rule of Nazism, the writer felt compelled to support Jews —although reticently— because they had become the main target of persecution of national socialism. Later, once in America, Isherwood distinguished between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ anti-Semitism and stated that Jewish politics were whining and belligerent. Even though he had Jewish friends, his diaries show a persistent instinctual dislike of Jews. Ironically, the anti-prejudice fighter could not help having his own prejudices.

Forget Not Who Thou Art: Contradictory Identification in Ruiz de Burton's Play Don Quixote de la Mancha

In her play Don Quixote de la Mancha. A Comedy, in Five Acts, Taken from Cervantes’ Novel of that Name (1856), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton is seen to identify with her Don Quixote, a cathartic character who views himself as impotent and mistreated. The identification of Don Quixote as a colonized, mad Californio is not accidental, but done for ideological effect. He serves as an expression of an incipient —even if problematic— oppositional identity for Californios within the new Anglo/US hegemonic regime post-1848. It is a contradictory identification, loaded with racial and class anxieties, which aims to redress the decentering and despoliation of Californios as a whole while shining a light on those upper-class Californios who associated with their US colonizers. This article suggests that the play’s significance, and indeed uniqueness, is the creation of an incipient border identity for the Californios through the prism of madness.

INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON RESEARCH WRITING, edited by Pilar Mur-Dueñas and Jolanta Šinkūnienė (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018)

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LA LITERATURA GÓTICA LLEGA AL NUEVO SUR: INFLUENCIA Y REFORMULACIÓN DEL GÓTICO EN LA OBRA DE FLANNERY O'CONNOR, by José Manuel Correoso Rodenas (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2020)

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TEACHING AND RESEARCHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES, by Elżbieta D. Lesiak-Bielawska (Krakow: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2018)

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