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Modernism And Postmodernism. The Margins Of Articulation, Rainer Nägele

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The difference between 'Modernism' and 'Postmodernism' is not one of definitions. The latter is rather a radicalization of a tendency inherent already in Modernism: calling into question the underlying principles of definitions, delimitations and boundaries. If, in Modernism, this tendency is marked by an increasing self-reflective gesture of the text, Postmodernism radicalizes this self-reflection to the point where the self-reflective circle and its closure are broken. The subversion of demarcation takes place not only on the semantic level, but on the level of the text's literal and linguistic qualities. Such a move displaces particularly any totalizing project, which, for example, …

«Quotation And Literary Echo As Structural Principles In Gabriele Wohmann's Frühherbst In Badenweiler.», Walter H. Sokel

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In her novel of 1978, Wohmann uses the montage technique—quotations, literary echoes, erudite allusions—of the «classics of modernism» to put the contemporary West German phenomenon of «New Inwardness» in an ironic light. Her protagonist, the composer Hubert Frey, retreats from the stresses of contemporary life to the Black Forest spa of Badenweiler. New Inwardness in him appears allied to New Conservatism which, in reaction to the New Left of the sixties, revives the old German ideal of the «A-Political Man.» Echoing a work of restaurative mentality, Stifter's Nachsommer, Frey's Frühherbst looks back nostalgically on Goethe's classicist phase. As Goethe …

In The Cemetery Of The Murdered Daughters: Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina, Sara Lennox

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Bachmann's novel Malina is about the absence of a female voice. The unnamed female I of this novel defines herself with respect to two male figures. Malina is her Doppelgänger, the voice of male reason which women must assume if they wish to speak at all. In relationship to Ivan, her lover, the I constitutes herself as traditionally feminine and suffers the agonies of romantic love. Though evidently miserable, the I must represent herself as content with her position between these two men, simply inversions of one another. Yet the novel also contains another story of the I which …

Avant-Garde: The Convulsions Of A Concept, Michael T. Jones

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The current status of the «avant-garde» provokes many questions, which include both inner-artistic matters and matters of history and society commonly associated with Marxist or reception-oriented thinkers. The convolution of questions cannot be disentangled; efforts to confront the dilemmas of the avant-garde cannot abstract from matters of commodification, recent reception, or the complex dialectic of «classical» and «modern.» The essay deals with the most recent manifestations of avant-garde aesthetic impulses. It emphasizes the historical and social aspects of German theorizing in contrast to purely formalist or ahistorical conceptions commonly found elsewhere. It insists that such «materialist» theory does greater justice …

The Gender Of Authorship: Heiner Müller And Christa Wolf, Helen Fehervary

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The relationship between sexuality and politics has always been an underlying assumption of the avant-garde. In recent East German avant-garde literature, the notion of authorship as production has become associated with technological rationality and the patriarchal socialist state. The ensuing crisis of the traditional male author has thus led necessarily to a radicalization of subjectivity and to the politics of gender. A comparison of two contemporary texts, one by a female author, one by a male, shows that the crisis of authorship assumes two distinctly different forms when differences in gender are taken into account. The East German authors Heiner …

Socialist Patriarchy And The Limits Of Reform: A Reading Of Irmtraud Morgner's Life And Adventures Of Troubadora Beatriz As Chronicled By Her Minstrel Laura, Biddy Martin

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Irmtraud Morgner's Life and Adventures of Troubador Beatriz is one of several important anti-patriarchal texts to come out of the GDR over the past ten years. It is a complex and ambitious attempt to elaborate the meaning of women's emancipation in a socialist society, an attempt which is structurally and thematically marked by a struggle between oppositional and orthodox approaches to questions of sexuality, knowledge and power. This particular reading of the text emphasizes the limitatons which traditional Marxist analysis and representational practices impose upon a textual field which necessarily introduces conflict and difference into the repressive stability of GDR …

Introduction: Francophone And Lusophone Literatures In Africa, Claire L. Dehon

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Introduction to the special issue

Sembène's Progeny: A New Trend In The Senegalese Novel, Albert Gérard, Jeannine Laurent

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The growth of the Nouvelles Editions Africaines in Senegal has proved favorable to the promotion of a national literature whose grass-roots inspiration is in obvious reaction against the elitist proclivities of earlier writers trained in French universities. The younger novelists follow in the footsteps of Sembène Ousmane, depicting actual living conditions among the under-privileged and usually silent majority in present-day Dakar. Recent examples are Aminata Sow Fall's La Grève des battù (1979), Moussa Ly Sangaré's Sourd-muet, je demande la parole (1978) and Mariama Bâ's Une si longue lettre (1979). Such works are designed for a local readership, which is numerous …

Literary Aftershocks Of The Revolution: Recent Developments In Algerian Literature, Eric Sellin

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Most Algerian Francophone literature has been written since 1950, and thus the development of that literature has been intimately linked to the political events which forged the Algerian nation. Especially influential was the 1954-62 war of independence which for many years was a major contextual element in the literature. With the passage of time, the Revolution has begun to be less and less cognitive in the lives and works of the young writers. For some, Revolution lives on in the oneiric evocations of horrors glimpsed, for others it is something relegated to history, whereas for yet others it has become …

Evembe's Sur La Terre En Passant And The Poetics Of Shame, Richard Bjornson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In Sur ta terre en passant, Evembe fashions a poetics of shame from the ordinary experiences of life in a large African city (Yaounde). He does it in such a way that the hallucinatory qualities and scabrous details of one individual's state of consciousness mirror the malaise which characterizes the larger social reality. The protagonist Iyoni (whose name means «shame» in the dialect of Evembe's native Kribi) experiences both misery and social respectability in an environment where traditional values have been lost, only to be replaced by artificial, dehumanizing hierarchies and an attitude of materialistic acquisitiveness. Despite the mysterious …

Politics And The New African Novel: A Study Of The Fiction Of Francis Bebey, W. Curtis Schade

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

From its inception African fiction has been strongly marked by political themes. In the late 1950's the virulent satire of Mongo Béti and Ferdinand Oyono stated the case against the denigration of African values inherent in all aspects of the colonial system. Their style and message subsequently gave way to novels focusing upon the drama of the transition of power at the moment of Independence. Whether optimistic or disillusioned, many of these novels featured real events and people, often thinly disguised, and sought to give an «inside» picture of that historical moment. Other tendencies developed in the late 60's, most …

Sembène Ousmane's Xala: The Use Of Film And Novel As Revolutionary Weapon, Kenneth Harrow

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Sembène Ousmane's Xala was written as a novel and made into a film in 1974. It is a biting attack upon the newly risen bourgeois class that has ascended to power and wealth in Senegal since independence. The ideological framework of Xala rests upon Marxist assumptions adapted to and modified by the circumstances in Africa. The distinctively Senegalese features which mark Sembène's portrayal include Muslim and traditional religious beliefs which form the basis of the class oppression and the sexism depicted in Xala. They also supply the title to the work since xala means impotency in Wolof, and it …

Luandino Vieira's Short Fiction: Decolonization In The Third Register, Irwin Stern

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The central theme of Luandino Vieira's short fiction is the «anthropological» daily existence in the musseques, slums, which surround the city of Luanda. The socio-political question of the epoch—the liberations movements and the repression by the colonial rulers—do not escape the author's view. Prior to the publication of Luandino's works, the language of Angolan fiction was indistinguishable from that of standard Portuguese fiction. The relationship of Quimbundo, the Bantu dialect of Luanda, and Portuguese is the key to the originality of Luandino's works. This becomes quite evident in the collections Velhas estórias and No amigamente na vida.

Language …

Satire In African Letters: Black Appraisals Of White Ethnologists In The Works Of Ferdinand Oyono, Tchicaya U'Tam'si And Yambo Ouloguem, Ingeborg M. Kohn

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Among the black African writers who have singled out whites for satirical treatment, the novelists Ferdinand Oyono and Yambo Ouologuem and the poet Tchicaya U'Tam'si have focused on a certain type of ethnologist: the man who has come in the guise of explorer and scientist, but whose prejudices, ignorance, greed, presumptuousness and other negative characteristics are soon unmasked by his native hosts. In their works, we find portraits depicting the white ethnologist that are not only unanimous expressions of scorn and contempt, but also examples of the skillfull use of satire as a literary weapon.

Theme And Imagery In Tchicaya U Tam'si's A Triche Coeur, Emil A. Magel

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Partaking of the universal search for self-knowledge, Gerald Felix Tchicaya U Tam'si's A Triche Coeur explores and evaluates the assumptions which shape his African identity. The thematic movement of the volume progresses from his initial state of naive ignorance of the realities of African history to a more mature awareness of it. Through images of uprooting and regeneration, the poet discovers both the blood-stained truth of European colonization of Africa and the traitorous collaboration of its renegades. Casting off the myths of the civilizing mission, the noble savage and the romantic posturings of the Negritude poets, U Tam'si releases himself …

Käfka's Influence On Camara Laye's Le Regard Du Roi , Patricia A. Deduck

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In Le regard du roi, Camara Laye attempted to assimilate into his own fictional world the structure, techniques, and themes which he found in the works of Kafka. A close analysis of the novel reveals not only significant influence, but direct imitation of Kafka. Although certain Kafkaesque techniques—for example, the limited perspective, and the dispensation with time and space as measurable quantities—are often used effectively in the novel, they lose much of their intricate complexity in a fictional world allowing, as Laye's does, for positive resolution. Such techniques become integral and meaningful elements only when Laye uses them within …