Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Adelson, Leslie A. Making Bodies Making History: Feminism and German Identity by Sander L. Gilman

Barrat, Barnaby B. Psychoanalysis and the Post-Modern Impulse: Knowing and Being Since Freud's Psychology by Mitchell Greenberg

Calinescu, Matei. Rereading by Laurence M. Porter

Donahue, Neil H. Forms of Disruption: Abstraction in Modern German Prose by Burton Pike

Feminisms of the Belle Epoque, A Historical and Literary Anthology. Jennifer Waelti-Walters and Steven C. Hause, Eds. (Translated by Jette Kjaer, Lydia Willis, and Jennifer Waelti-Walters by Christiane J.P. Makward

Hutchinson, Peter. Stefan Heym: The Perpetual Dissident by Susan M. Johnson

Julien, Eileen. African Novels and …

Aping The Ape: Kafka's "Report To An Academy", Ziad Elmarsafy

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The "Report to an Academy" narrates a curious situation: an ape presents (or rather, performs) a report to an academy. What he presents is an autobiography. Like so much in Kafka, the "Report" is a parable about writing in general and about the writer's identity in particular. This essay attempts to address these issues through a close reading of Kafka's text against Blanchot's L'espace littéraire. Central to this endeavour is an analysis of the ape's use of the first-person pronoun as someone who fashions himself while, at the same time, presenting a theatrical autobiography featuring the self in question. …

The Perilous Journey From Melancholy To Love: A Kristevan Reading Of Le Médianoche Amoureux, Karen D. Levy

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Since the publication of Michel Tournier's first novel Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique in 1967, in which his protagonist Robinson makes fruitful the very earth of his desert island and eventually accedes to the cosmic transcendence embodied in his mentor and companion Vendredi, this contemporary French writer has boldly explored alternative forms of sexual expression that challenge traditional biological definitions of identity as well as norms of accepted behavior. The basis of his investigations is the anguish-ridden separation from the maternal, as experienced under diverse manifestations usually by male characters, and the irremediable solitude which then stretches over that …

Writing A Dynamic Identity: Self-Criticism In The Work Of Tchicaya U Tam'si, Chaibou Elhadji Oumarou

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Very few Africans have had the courage to express their outrage at the stifling African traditions with the vigor and consistency of U Tam'Si. In fact, self-criticism is a major theme in Tchicaya's work as he strives to build a dynamic identity through a dynamic writing style. A dynamic identity changes with time and it is directed toward the future as opposed to static identity, which is concerned with only the past. This essay problematizes his efforts to create that identity and explores the rationale behind his self-criticism. Not content with his identity, he looks for a dynamic model that …

A Contemporary Fairy Tale: García Márquez' "El Rastro De Tu Sangre En La Nieve", Arnold M. Penuel

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The pattern usually found in fairy tales is for the hero or heroine to struggle against, and finally overcome, what seem to be overwhelming odds, after which he or she lives happily ever after. This pattern, according to Bruno Bettelheim, is emblematic of the struggle required of every individual in real life in order to develop the maturity to cope with, and thrive in, the world. García Márquez' story, "El rastro de tu sangre en la nieve," whose dominant intertext is the fairy tale, turns this pattern on its head. Handicapped by privileged upbringing, cultural narcissism, and the necessity of …

Hervé Guibert: Writing The Spectral Image, Donna Wilkerson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This paper explores the relationship existing between AIDS (in particular the body-with-AIDS or the corps sidaïque), writing, and the spectral image in Hervé Guibert. While taking into account postmodern theory on the image, photography, and the notion of the "real," this essay examines the similitude between the image as plague and AIDS in order to reveal some central components of Guibert's postmodern conceptualization—namely the complex interplay of fact and fiction as it pertains to the body-with-AIDS. For example, the body is a privileged site from which the text radiates. It can also be mistaken for the "real" body of …

The Conspiracy Of The Miscellaneous In Foucault's Pendulum, Ken Kirkpatrick

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Like Name of the Rose, Foucault 's Pendulum grows out of and comments on Umberto Eco's theoretical work. Eco's decision to turn to a conspiracy, rather than a straight detective format for his second novel fits with his recent concern about how interpretative communities function in a period of divisive, diffuse critical theory. Yet Foucault's Pendulum does not merely amplify or dramatize his position; rather, it undermines it by becoming excessively involved in generating conspiracy. It is a satire in which the thing satirized proves more interesting and engaging than the satirical position. Nevertheless, Eco does raise concerns about …

Twentieth-Century Latin American Literary Studies And Cultural Autonomy, Naomi Lindstrom

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Since the 1920s, when scholars first began to specialize in Latin American writing, the subject of Latin American literary studies has grown from a small subset of Spanish and Portuguese literary research and teaching to become the largest field within Hispanism and a significant presence in comparative literature. The expansion of their place in the academic world has often prompted students of Latin American literature to wonder whether, in being swept into the mainstream, their field has not left out of account the historical situations of Latin American nations. These reflections lead critics back to a problem that has troubled …

The Lessons Of The Living Dead: Marcel's Journey From Balbec To Douville-Féterne In Proust's Cities Of The Plain: Part Two, Jonathan Warren

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

By analyzing the narrative of Marcel's journey by the "little train" from Balbec to Douville-Féterne the essay engages with the Proust criticism of Georges Poulet, Paul de Man, and Julia Kristeva to support Hayden White's claim that "it is legitimate to read Proust's narrative as an allegory of figuration itself." Like the Madeleine episode, this one serves as a point from which retrospection and prospection radiate. Central to the discussion is the description of Verdurins' dinner party guests as they stand ready to board the train on the platform at Graincourt: their vivacity, compared to a sort of extinction, suggests …

The Post-Boom In Spanish American Fiction, Donald L. Shaw

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The article discusses the dating of the beginning of the Post-Boom, the factors involved in discussing it, and lists possible representative writers belonging to it. The views of Skármeta, Allende and others are reported and a list of possible Post-Boom characteristics is suggested. It is argued that there are difficulties in the way of relating the Post-Boom easily to Postmodernism, but that the notion of Post-colonialism may prove helpful in future criticism.

Eva Luna: Writing As History, Lynne Diamond-Nigh

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The Bildungsroman of Eva Luna's development as a writer reflects—in a somewhat fragmented manner—important developments in Latin American literary history. Her personal quest was paralleled by an aesthetic quest, manifested in the trying on and taking off of various genres, literary movements and myths characteristic of Latin America; she even goes so far as to allude explicitly to specific authors and their individual works. Although some of these are simply lightheartedly parodied, others are reworked and reinterpreted in the light of the feminist enterprise of the past twenty-five years. Eva Luna transgresses fundamentally by having an intellectually strong, sexual, nurturing, …

Literary Invention And Critical Fashion: Missing The Boat In The Sea Of Lentils, Elzbieta Sklodowska

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In pursuing the relation of Sea of Lentils (1979) to the Spanish American literary canon, I argue that while Benítez-Rojo's novel did not fall into the category of the already canonized—and therefore was spared a parricidal gesture of the Post-Boom writers—neither did it belong amidst the previously marginalized texts. I suggest that Sea of Lentils concentrates its internal critique of language and representation around the process of remembering in a manner that is radically at odds not only with the "traditional" historical novel, but with the official voice of the ascendant testimonio as well. Moreover, the notion of memory as …

The New Novel / A New Novel: Spider's Webs And Detectives In Luisa Valenzuela's Black Novel (With Argentines), Sharon Magnarelli

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The article analyzes Valenzuela's novel in relation to Shaw's summary of projections about the directions the new novel will or should take. Specifically, it examines the novel in terms of the detective novel to which the title alludes and demonstrates that Valenzuela departs from the traditional detective novel with its quest for knowledge. In Valenzuela's novel there are no definitive answers, only obscurely intuited connections, which we would perhaps prefer not to make, for Valenzuela eschews both a master narrative and a narrative of mastery. Nonetheless, as the article demonstrates, the protagonists' search for motives, their quest to understand the …

Reviews Of Recent Publications, Various Authors

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Elisabeth Bronfen. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Feminity and the Aesthetic by Lisa Maruca

Jacques Dupin: Selected Poems. (Translated by Paul Auster, Stephen Romer, and David Shipiro.) by Maryann De Julio

Carolyn A. Durham. The Contexture of Feminism: Marie Cardinal and Multicultural Literacy by Yolanda Astarita Patterson

Mike Gonzalez and David Treece. The Gathering of Voices: The Twentieth-Century Poetry of Latin America by Steven F. White

Emily D. Hicks. Border Writing: The Multidimensional Text by Roselyn Constantino

Robin Régine. Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic by Peter Hitchcock

Kari Weil. Androgyny and the Denial of Difference by Brigitte Roussel

Introduction To The Special Issue, Donald L. Shaw

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Introduction to the special issue

Only Joking? Gustavo Sainz And La Princesa Del Palacio De Hierro: Funniness, Identity And The Post-Boom, Philip Swanson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The Mexican Gustavo Sainz has been seen as one of the initiators of the Latin American Post-Boom, largely because of the humor, accessibility and interest in popular culture that characterize some of his work and are often said to characterize the Post-Boom in general. His 1974 novel La princesa del Palacio de Hierro (The Princess of the Iron Palace) is a representative case. However, the Post-Boom's incorporation of "popular" elements within a relatively sophisticated "new novel" framework is a highly problematic process. This can be seen, in this novel, in the broad relationship of the "funny" and the "serious." The …

Ideology And Structure In Giardinelli's Santo Oficio De La Memoria, Gustavo Pellón

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The article studies the most recent novel by Argentine novelist Mempo Giardinelli from the point of view of its polyphonic structure. Santo Oficio is compared to one of its models, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and the respective modern and postmodern aesthetics ofboth novels are discussed. Giardinelli's approach in this ambitious novel is contrasted with that of major authors of the Latin American Boom. A family tree of the Domeniconelle family, the protagonists of Santo Oficio, is included.

Alvaro Mutis And The Ends Of History, Gerald Martin

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Part of the confusion of the current literary and critical moment, in Latin America and elsewhere, involves a debate as to whether the most characteristic forms of contemporary writing are the more apparently transparent (in contrast to current critical practice) or the more impenetrable and indecipherable of literary texts. This debate is of particular relevance to Latin American discussions about the so-called "Post-Boom," and the work of the Colombian Alvaro Mutis, a writer who came late to narrative fiction and to critical attention, offers several insights into the links between writing, criticism and idology at this moment close to the …