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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Éric Touya De Marenne. Simone De Beauvoir: Le Combat Au Féminin. Presses Universitaires De France, 2019., Tessa Ashlin Nunn
Éric Touya De Marenne. Simone De Beauvoir: Le Combat Au Féminin. Presses Universitaires De France, 2019., Tessa Ashlin Nunn
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Review of Éric Touya de Marenne. Simone de Beauvoir: Le combat au féminin. Presses Universitaires de France, 2019. pp. 128.
Modernity, Postmodernity, And Transgression In Sábato's Esthetics: Poetic Dissemination, Defeat Of Utopias, Returning Bodies , María Rosa Lojo
Modernity, Postmodernity, And Transgression In Sábato's Esthetics: Poetic Dissemination, Defeat Of Utopias, Returning Bodies , María Rosa Lojo
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
After defining the problematic term "Postmodernity" and its possible application to Latin America, the position of Ernesto Sábato as an essayist and narrator is discussed in light of Modernity (questioned by him as the rationalist and enlightened canon, but applauded as romantic and surrealistic rebellion), and Postmodernity with which it connects from diverse axis: the poetic of desire and that of transgression (vanguard movements related to Foucault, Bataille and Derrida), the theory of reality as "fragment" and "simulacrum" and the suppression of oppositions in the paroxysm of "symbolic exchange." Sábato would transcend from the central proposition of his writing, the …
Interview, Ghada Amer, French,, Fuencisla Zomeño
Interview, Ghada Amer, French,, Fuencisla Zomeño
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This paper analyzes the influence of postmodernism in Paloma Díaz-Mas's feminist approach through two short stories, "The World According to Valdés," and "In Search of a Portrait." The political situation after Franco's death embraced democracy which allowed writers to pay more attention to intellectual concerns. Women writers steered the radical positions of the 1970s toward a more philosophical and intellectual analysis of reality and artistic expression during the eighties. In these two short stories, Díaz-Mas addresses women's issues by questioning the scope of modernist and humanist views. She criticizes the modernist concept of unity (text/identity) pointing out the discrimination that …
The Oldest Trick In The Book: Borges And The "Rhetoric Of Immediacy'', James Winchell
The Oldest Trick In The Book: Borges And The "Rhetoric Of Immediacy'', James Winchell
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In his most "philosophical'' texts, Jorge Luis Borges paradoxically posits the act of reading as the scene of affectively "immediate" experience: his reader reads a reader reading (ad infinitum). This sort of hyper-meditated, specular imitation actually comes to mirror the substantive preoccupation of the "philosophical" text itself. Borges thereby breaks down what Theodor Adorno calls "concept fetishism'' by making mimesis his textual concept. Given Italo Calvino's claim for the novelty of "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" in relation to modern genres, I propose a two-fold thesis: first, that this typically Borgesian narrative juxtaposes concept and mimesis (a traditional …
Snares: Pere Gimferrer's Los Espejos/ Els Miralls, Margaret Persin
Snares: Pere Gimferrer's Los Espejos/ Els Miralls, Margaret Persin
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
With the publication of Els miralls, Pere Gimferrer effected a major shift in philosophical and linguistic perspective. It is the first collection to be published in Catalan, and thus represents for the well-known writer a change in direction for him as a poet and spokesperson of his culture and his generation. But the change is more than one of mere language coding. For in this collection, the Catalan poet confronts all the snares of language which he views as limiting of creativity and originality. He adopts a variety of poetic strategies and voices in an attempt to come to …
Voices Of Authority And Linguistic Autonomy In Niebla , Mary Lee Bretz
Voices Of Authority And Linguistic Autonomy In Niebla , Mary Lee Bretz
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Miguel de Unamuno's works have often been studied as expressions of his philosophy or life experience. More recent literary theory has eschewed approaches that foreground the author, preferring to focus primarily on the text or the reader. Utilizing Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the novel, this paper analyzes Niebla, one of Unamuno's most frequently studied works, to illustrate that new literary theories can enrich our reading of the text. Bakhtin argues that the novel is characterized by many voices or styles which the novelist welcomes and exploits. The novel should not be viewed as having a single style but as …
The Order Of Bourgeois Protest, Geoffey Waite
The Order Of Bourgeois Protest, Geoffey Waite
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Relatively little theoretical work is currently being produced by Western "Leftists" on committed protest culture. Simultaneously and not by chance, Western Marxism has drifted increasingly away from solidarity with the concept and practice of the vanguard party and toward a more or less easy compact with the problematic of poststructuralism and postmodernity. This relative paucity of discussion of commitment and protest stands in significant relationship to two critical moments: first, a powerful, overtheorized tradition of Western Marxist debate about commitment and protest (Benjamin, Sartre, Barthes, Marcuse, Adorno, among others); second, a wide-spread, undertheorized work-a-day practice of "traditional" liberal …
Eco's Echoes: Fictional Theory And Detective Practice In The Name Of The Rose, David H. Richter
Eco's Echoes: Fictional Theory And Detective Practice In The Name Of The Rose, David H. Richter
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is a serio-comic pastiche of the detective story set in the middle ages, which uses history as "a distant mirror" to comment, from a Western Marxist perspective, on contemporary political issues. Structurally, however, The Name of the Rose is a fictional enactment of many of the semiotician's recent critical and philosophical ideas. ( 1) Eco's discussion of "abductive" reasoning in C. S. Peirce and Aristotle appears in a detective not only more fallible than Sherlock Holmes but more aware of what his powers consist of and why they work and fail. (2) Eco's …
Forgetting To Remember: Anamnesis And History In J. M. G. Le Clézio's Desert, Kathleen White Smith
Forgetting To Remember: Anamnesis And History In J. M. G. Le Clézio's Desert, Kathleen White Smith
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Unlike most of Le Clezio's previous works. Desert has a specific historical framework. The story of the young boy Nour records the struggle of the Saharaoui people of the western Sahara to claim their land from the French invaders of the early twentieth century. A second narrative, set in the present, continues that story through the experiences of Lalla: unlike the story of her predecessor, the narrative in which she figures has no clear reference to the current, militant political situation established in the western Sahara by the independence movement known as Polisario. Containing both story and document, text and …
Bakhtin And Buber: Problems Of Dialogic Imagination, Nina Perlina
Bakhtin And Buber: Problems Of Dialogic Imagination, Nina Perlina
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Recent publications of biographical materials on Mikhail Bakhtin demonstrate that he was familiar with the writings of Martin Buber. The philosophical and aesthetic verbal expression of Buber's ideas within the time-spatial universe of Bakhtin's own awareness allows us to discuss this obvious biographical evidence in a wider cultural context. The central opposition of Buber's and Bakhtin's systems is the dialogic dichotomous pair: "Ich und Du" (I and Thou), or "myself and another." Bakhtin's dialogic imagination is rooted in the binaries of the subject-object relations which he initially formulated as "responsibility" and "addressivity," that is to say, as individual awareness and …
Circumscription: Proust's The Captive And The Problem Of Other Minds, Carol De Dobay Rifelj
Circumscription: Proust's The Captive And The Problem Of Other Minds, Carol De Dobay Rifelj
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Central to Proust's Remembrance as a whole and to The Captive in particular is Marcel's attempt to discover what other people think and feel. But, as reading the work in the light of modern analytic philosophy shows, his efforts are thwarted by the deceptions of others and by his own irreconcilable views. The other is radically inaccessible, yet the object of our search; the self is a stable entity, yet multiple, changing, and a fiction constituted by language; language is communication, yet the source of error. These are the problems which confront philosophy and literature when they try to come …
The Doubles In Julien Gracq's Au Château D'Argol, Andrée Douchin-Shahin
The Doubles In Julien Gracq's Au Château D'Argol, Andrée Douchin-Shahin
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In Julien Gracq's Au Château d'Argol, the resolution of a psychological double (as in the Doppelgänger novels) opens onto a metaphysical quest. In the process, doubling becomes so compounded that the narrative resembles a kaleidoscopic pattern of multiple reflections. Gracq's personal search into the nature of man is set against other hypotheses and formulations such as philosophical systems, religion, psychoanalysis, literature, music, etc. In the novel, man's dualism is viewed as an inescapable fact. However, even though the dogma of the Redemption is rejected, man, in spite of his "flaw," is held responsible for the acts he wills.
Juan Ramón Jiménez And Nietzsche, John P. Devlin
Juan Ramón Jiménez And Nietzsche, John P. Devlin
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The young Juan Ramón Jiménez shared the enthusiasm for the writings of Nietzsche prevalent among his contemporaries. More significant are the interest in and affinity with Nietzsche which persisted into the poet's maturity. Jiménez found in Nietzsche not only a man of ideas but a poet who claimed to be a potent spiritual force. Both writers held that the modern age could recover a sense of spiritual integrity through the will of the individual to live and interpret human existence as an aesthetic phenomenon. Nietzsche's views on the nature of art and the role of the artist helped to sustain …
"The Universal Andalusian," "The Zealous Andalusian," And The "Andalusian Elegy.", Richard A. Cardwell
"The Universal Andalusian," "The Zealous Andalusian," And The "Andalusian Elegy.", Richard A. Cardwell
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Biographers and critics have been content to repeat Juan Ramón Jiménez' own comments concerning the influence upon him of Krausism, the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and the personality and model of Francisco Giner de los Ríos. In general, little discussion of the nature of that contact and virtually no evidence for arguing the importance or the shape of Krausist ethos on Jiménez' intellectual formation have been adduced. In previous studies I have considered Jiménez' literary apprenticeship in the light of the Krausist contacts. In the present study I further contend that Platero у уо, arguably his best known work, …
Semiotic Consequences, Jonathan Culler
Semiotic Consequences, Jonathan Culler
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This paper outlines the semiotic perspectives of Saussure and Peirce and the points at which these quite different theories intersect. It considers the implications of these points of intersection for literary studies and uses the example of Oedipus Rex to illustrate the semiotic character of acts and facts.
Affective Consciousness In La Nausée, Benjamin Suhl
Affective Consciousness In La Nausée, Benjamin Suhl
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
La Nausée, a key to Sartre's work, centers on an affective comprehension of the world, which becomes cognitive in the author's philosophy. Nausea is the affective equivalent of Descartes's systematic doubt and of Husserl's reduction. The recent publication of Sartre's earliest writings permits us to isolate his fundamental concerns, later to be developed in the novel: contingency and its evasion in bad faith. A certain Antoine Roquentin is shaken by the fear of becoming submerged in Bouville, physically and socially. He passes through an acute crisis, recorded blow by blow in his diary. It leads to a radical change …