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Introduction: The Object In France Today, Martine Antle

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Gilles Lipovetsky has aptly characterized the last two decades of the twentieth century as a period of ideologies crumbling into ethical ambiguity and contradictory values…

The Fictions Of Surrealism, Walter A. Strauss

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Surrealism is an attitude toward life, even more than a literary and artistic movement. It aspired to no less than the remaking of man and the world by reintroducing "everyday" magic and a new idealization of the Female. In many respects, its goal was spiritual renewal. This enterprise was most prominently successful in the domain of poetry and painting. The major spokesman for the movement, Andre Breton, disliked the novel. Nevertheless, the members of the movement and their associates made numerous ventures into prose fiction, with notable results. Four types of fiction are delineated: the neo-Gothic romance; the adventure diary …

Addressing Success: Fame And Narrative Strategies In Colette's La Naissance Du Jour, Juliette M. Rogers

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Colette's La Naissance du jour (1928) is probably her most renowned work on the complex mother-daughter relations between her mother Sido and herself. Yet, as I demonstrate in this article, the book is just as much about renown itself. Beginning with the theoretical works of Leo Braudy (The Frenzy of Renown), John Rodden (The Politics of Literary Reputation), and a close analysis of La Naissance du jour, I look at the ways in which Colette manipulated her narratives to create her own public images ofherself. These manipulations would allow her to perpetuate the fame that …

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Anderson, Stephanie. Le Discours Féminin de Marguerite Duras by Julia Lauer-Chéenne

Booker, M. Keith. Literature and Domination: Sex, Knowledge, and Power in Modern Fiction by Frédérique Chevillot

Chevillot, Frédérique. La Réouverture du texte by Susan Ireland

Cixous, Hélène. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Jeff Schneider

Descombes, Vincent. The Barometer of Modern Reason: On the Philosophies of Current Events by André Pierre Colombat

Holmgren, Beth. Women's Works in Stalin's Time: On Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandelstam by Serafima Roll

Lyotard, Jean François. Political Writings. Trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman by Ronald Bogue

McPherson, Karen S. …

Combas & Co. Or The Figure And The Great Divide, Monique Yaari

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The young painter, Robert Combas, leader of the 1980s "figuration libre" 'free figuration' movement, is seen here both as representative of stylistic and thematic trends in contemporary French art, and as illustrative, through the unfolding of his career, of the object "painting" and its sociology in contemporary France. Examined are: first, the "Postmodern convergence" of figurative, indeed narrative art, with the collapse of the "great divide" between elite and popular art forms; and second, traits such as hypertrophic verbal paratext, high erotic content, and political stand. Similar threads are followed in the work of a number of other artists, old …

Introduction To The Special Issue, Adelaida López De Martínez

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

It is quite appropriate that Studies in Twentieth Century Literature should devote its 20th-anniversary special issue to the literature of Latin American women writers…

Female Divinities And Story-Telling In The Work Of Tamara Kamenszain, Naomi Lindstrom

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Tamara Kamenszain (b. Argentina, 1947), in her creative writing and her essays, brings together two concerns. One is her examination of concepts of woman and femininity. She specializes in mythical and archetypal representations of woman. Her texts present such figures as the great mother and forest nymphs. On many occasions, she evokes a past in which female divinities were respected, even in the Judaic tradition that is frequently Kamenszain's frame of reference. The other current that stands out in Kamenszain's writing is her interest in Jewish traditions of informal narrative. In her texts, folk narrative displaces learned and canonical narrative. …

Gorgeous Pedagogy, Debra Castillo

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Elena Poniatowska's recent Luz y luna, Ias lunitas immediately impresses the reader with its beauty; it is akin to a "coffee table book" in its sheer gorgeousness. I intend to explore the question of how to read the gorgeous object within the context of Poniatowska's oeuvre and within the frame of a pedagogical endeavor. Poniatowska, of course, represents the epitome of the elite but socially conscious Latin American author. As in certain of her other works (but perhaps more obviously here, because of the very nature of this book), the mix of elitism and social consciousness undergoes a multiple displacement. …

Dynamics Of Change In Latin American Literature: Contemporary Women Writers, Adelaida López De Martínez

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Over the last twenty-five years Latin American societies have undergone profound changes. Where once the legalized abuses of dictatorships gave new meaning to the word "silence" for both men and women, now large segments of the population fight hard to sustain democratic regimes throughout the Continent. Repressive governments are being replaced, and shattered economies have begun to recover. Encouraged by the ever-increasing strength of international feminism, Latin American women (from Chiapas, Mexico, to Plaza de Mayo in Argentina) have risen to play key roles in this socio-political reformation. The writing of female authors has proliferated in this environment, and the …

Usurping Difference In The Feminine Fantastic From The Riverplate, María B. Clark

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This study intended to define the concept of a feminine fantastic as a narrative mode in contemporary short fiction by women writers from Argentina and Uruguay. As a point of departure, the study examined the narrative techniques and conventions of the fantastic and their strategic use for the expression of feminine concerns. The concept of the feminine was used in the sense of referring to an interpretation of femininity as a construct of language rather than an essentially feminine narrative mode based on a biological gender division. An overview of fantastic short stories by women writers from Argentina and Uruguay …

The Stone And Its Images: The Poetry Of Nancy Morejón, Alan West

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The essay explores the roots of Nancy Morejón's poetry within the context of a transculturated afro-Cuban identity. Beginning by an examination of the poems that directly deal with the orishas of santería, the essay moves on to some of her more lyric poetry. Morejón's relationship to Dulce María Loynaz provides particular interest in how both writers treat the metaphor of the house in two important poems. This is followed by a discussion of some of Morejón's overtly feminist poetry, placed both within a Cuban context of the history of its revolution, and the displacement of exile (in dialogue with Cuban …

The Subject, Feminist Theory And Latin American Texts, Sara Castro-Klaren

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

From a feminist perspective, this essay reviews and analyzes the interaction between metropolitan feminist theories and their interphase with the academic criticism of texts written by Latin American women. Discussion focuses on the question of the subject, which the author believes to be paramount in feminist theory, in as much as the construction of gender and the historical subordination of women devolve on the play of difference and identity. This paper examines how the problematic assumption by feminist theorists in the North American academy of Freudian and Lacanian theories of the subject pose unresolved problems and unanticipated complications to subsequent …

The Early (Feminist) Essays Of Victoria Ocampo, Doris Meyer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This study examines the essays written by Ocampo between 1920 and 1934, prior to the time when she publicly voiced her adhesion to feminism and the rights of women in Argentine society. In these works from her Testimonios in which Ocampo struggles to find her voice as a female writer, the maleable essay serves her need to engage in discursive dialogues from the margins of the literary culture of her time. Both as a woman and a member of the oligarchy, she questions cultural assumptions and gender-based binary structures common among the male writers of her time, many of whom …

Power, Gender, And Canon Formation In Mexico, Cynthia Steele

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

I propose to analyze Castellanos's trajectory from marginalized ethnographer and critic of "latino" society, to presidential insider and ambassador, and the first modern Mexican woman writer to be accepted into the literary canon. I will explore the intersection of politics, gender, and the (self-) creation of a literary persona with regard to the following issues: 1) the tension between self-exposure and self-censorship in Castellanos's literary work; 2) Castellanos's intense and problematic relationship with her illegitimate, mestizo half-brother; 3) the coincidences and contradictions between Castellanos's journalistic account of her relationship with her servant Maria Escandon, and Maria's own oral history twenty …

Geography, (M)Other Tongues And The Role Of Translation In Giannina Braschi's El Imperio De Los Sueños, María M. Carrión

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The Big Apple seems to be the central axis for the readerly and writerly "I" in El imperio de los sueños (Empire of Dreams), by Giannina Braschi. Readers can easily realize that the text is not just about New York, but that it actually journeys through praise and blame, drinking and dancing, talking and perversing many other cities and landscapes. El imperio is a space of bohemia with streaks from the Latin American Quarter in Paris, the barrio chino barcelonés, the zaguanes of Borges's Buenos Aires, from colonial houses in Old San Juan; it evokes dandy places, …

Filling The Empty Space: Women And Latin American Theatre, Kirsten F. Nigro

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In recent years, Latin American women have begun to appropriate and fill a space once empty of their presence. This essay looks at the work of four such women, (Diana Raznovich and Cristina Escofet of Argentina, Raquel Araujo of Mexico and the Peruvian Sara Joffre), to see how they give substance and voice to their particular concerns. In the process, this essay focusses on: 1) the notion of gender as performance; 2) the feminist deconstruction of narrative; 3) the female body in theatrical space; and 4) new, postmodern ways of doing feminist political theatre.

Spanish American Women Writers: Simmering Identity Over A Low Fire, Ksenija Bilbija

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

After establishing the parallel between the kitchen and the alchemist's laboratory, this article shows that traditionally, the kitchen has come to symbolize the space associated with the marginalization of women. However, the recent explosion of the novels dedicated to the resemantization and reevaluation of the realm of the kitchen is the best evidence that it is also a space from which much creativity emanates. A close reading of two such cookbook/novels, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Like Potatoes for Varenike by Sylvia Plager, points toward a quite parodic and critical gender perspective. Furthermore, it calls for a …

Dramatic Strategies Made Clear: The Feminist Politics In Griselda Gambaro's Puesta En Claro, Sandra Cypess

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In this essay I explore the feminist aspects of Puesta en claro, written in 1974, when Griselda Gambaro was not yet considered a writer who paid attention to feminine issues. Yet to the extent that Gambaro always focuses on the constellation of problems relating to power relations, she is including feminine and feminist issues in her text, and continues a tradition many critics relate to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, as I shall argue in my conclusion. Seen within the trajectory of Gambaro's dramaturgy, Puesta en claro, as a play from the 1970s is also remarkable in …