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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
On The Dark Side: Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" And Valenzuela's "La Palabra Asesino" , Donald L. Shaw
On The Dark Side: Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" And Valenzuela's "La Palabra Asesino" , Donald L. Shaw
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Conrad’s famous “The Secret Sharer” and the short story “La palabra asesino” [“The Word ‘Killer’” in its English translation] by the Argentine Luisa Valenzuela both concern psychological self-exploration and self-discovery, through contact with a killer, a situation which challenges conventional moral standards. It is suggested that a comparison between the two stories may throw reciprocal light on both of them. In each story an act or acts of murder becomes a trigger which sets off a train of psychological events, somewhat different in the two cases. Discussion of the differences highlights the authors' priorities and the significance they attach to …
Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures , S. E. Sweeney
Nabokov's Amphiphorical Gestures , S. E. Sweeney
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In addition to using two primary kinds of metaphors (those that clarify descriptions, and those that develop into leitmotifs), Nabokov's fiction demonstrates a third kind that is characterized by extended analogies, baroque, seemingly uncontrolled imagery and rhetoric, and, most importantly, fundamental ambiguity. Although this inherent ambiguity is developed throughout the comparison, it is never resolved. Because of this distinguishing characteristic, I have named such metaphors "amphiphors," after one of Nabokov's own neologisms. Nabokov's comments in Nikolai Gogol and Lectures on Russian Literature, as well as direct allusions to Gogol embedded in a few amphiphors, suggest that this device evolved …
Numa And The Nature Of The Fantastic In The Fiction Of Juan Benet, David K. Herzberger
Numa And The Nature Of The Fantastic In The Fiction Of Juan Benet, David K. Herzberger
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Perhaps the most rewarding critical approach to the novels of Juan Benet is one that encompasses the irrational and seeks to reveal the mysterious— one that can be closely identified with the notion of the fantastic. The view of the fantastic developed in the present study is based on a synthetic modification of the precepts of Todorov and Rabkin, and places emphasis on the hesitation of the reader when confronted with a diametric reversal of the laws of the text. Both the literary theory and prose fiction of Benet can be closely linked to the fantastic: the former through Benet's …