Modern Literature Commons^™

Taking Refuge In “How:” Dissecting The Motives Behind Cholly’S Rape In The Bluest Eye, Rebecca Andrews

Undergraduate Review

Most parents see parts of themselves in their children. They see their own familiar eyes, their sense of humor, and their long legs. Parents desire to nurture their child’s every hope and dream, and also want to raise their children in a safe and secure environment. However, what if a father saw in his daughter everything that he hated in himself? What if this same father never learned to love in a nurturing way from his own parents? The effects would be devastating. Toni Morrison examines such a scenario in her 1970 novel The Bluest Eye through the rape Pecola …

Gina Bonakdar Nahai: Fantasies Of Escape And Inclusion, Mojgan Behmand

Collected Faculty Scholarship

Cry of the Peacock, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, and Caspian Rain are the enticing titles of Gina Bonakdar Nahai’s Iran-focused novels, published in 1991, 1999, and 2008 respectively. And the titles hold true: the narratives reflect the pain, melancholy and dream-like beauty conveyed in the titles as they divulge characters who strive to escape the restrictions of their community, religion, government, and gender. In the meantime, as the author depicts these fantasies of escape and attempts at flight –and frequently harshly punishes them–, the characters achieve a hitherto unknown feat, namely the depiction of Jewish Iranian main characters …

The Mother Tongues Of Modernity: Modernism, Transnationalism, Translation, Roland K. Végső

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The relation of modernism to immigrant literatures should not be conceived in terms of an opposition between universalistic and particularistic discourses. Rather, we should explore what can be called a modernist transnationalism based on a general universalist argument. Two examples of this transnationalism are explored side by side: Ezra Pound’s and Anzia Yezierska’s definitions of the aesthetic act in terms of translation. The readings show that the critical discourses of these two authors are structured by a belief in universalism while showing opposite possibilities, both generated by modernist transnationalism. The essay concludes that we now need to interpret the cultures …

U.S. Latinos’ Use Of Written Spanish: Realities And Aspirations, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper reports on an investigation of writing in Spanish in the lives of U.S. Latinos. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted with informants recruited from among students and former students of high school and college Spanish courses. The interviews were transcribed and coded for concepts and emergent themes (Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Bogdan & Biklen, 1992). Some themes that emerged relate to what U.S. Latinos do with written Spanish and what they would like to be able to do; other themes include classroom experiences, extra-academic avenues of acquisition, the social position of varieties of Spanish, language maintenance, and intergenerational loss. …

Photograph: Poet On Dust Jacket, Richmond, Virginia 1996, Alexander Long

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Beyond "Infinite Jest": Post-Postmodern Solidarity In 9/11 Narratives, Najwa Heather Al-Tabaa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My thesis interrogates the postmodern view of popular culture as being banal and questions Theodore Adorno's view of postmodern consumer culture as ultimately anti- human(istic). My re-reading of postmodern popular culture finds that there is potential for meaningful human interaction through popular culture. My re-reading asserts that popular culture is capable of being a vehicle for solidarity. In my analysis I locate a postmodern paradigm shift in which human solidarity becomes a necessary consideration and focus of postmodern narratives and art forms. I term this shift "post-postmodernism" which is marked by a focus on solidarity.1 While the shift to the …

La Voz 2010, Loyola Marymount University, Modern Languages & Literatures Department

La Voz Student Journal

LA VOZ is published by the Modern Languages & Literatures Department, Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA.

Pathos, Winter 2010, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editors: Joel Eisenhower and Richard Hernandez

Issue 11

Rotrou’S Bélisaire: Hierarchy And Meaning, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Bélisaire (1643) differs significantly from the bulk of Rotrou’s theater, perhaps above all in its array of profoundly disparate features. The notion of hierarchy offers a means of organizing the dissimilar elements and understanding the play as a whole. Like so many of Rotrou’s plays, the subject is not original. Its source is Mira de Amescua’s El ejemplo mayor de la Desdicha.

Ecocriticism, The Elements, And The Ascent/Descent Into Weather In Goethe’S Faust, Heather I. Sullivan

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

The ostensibly religious and ethical significance of Faust's final ascension after his death tends to distract, if not blind, readers to other possible implications of that upwards movement and to the idea that he may continue and return "back to earth." The assumption that heavenly powers reward Faust leads to the claim that Goethe's tragedy validates the quest of "land developers" or those who would strive regardless of the consequences. I propose, in contrast, that we read Faust's "final" ascension alongside Goethe's weather essay, "Witterungslehre 1825," and thereby note that this upward motion is not necessarily "final" at all but …

Konsep Malu Orang Melayu Dalam Novel Saga : Satu Kajian Sosiolinguistik., Norazlina Mohd. Kiram

Student Works (2010-2019)

The concept of shyness is an important concept as it encompasses the principles, behaviors, beliefs and rules that should be observed by its society. In relation to this, the concept of shyness among Malays is regarded as peculiar and unique as it is based on the Holy Quran and as-Sunnah. Basically, it is considered as a character awareness concept for the Malays which is very much related to self  worth, dignity and maintenance of one’s face. This being the starting point, the research  tries to put forward an analysis of the concept of shyness among Malays which is  explored in …

[Introduction To] Mother Tongues And Nations: The Invention Of The Native Speaker, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Bookshelf

This monograph examines the ideological legacy of the the apparently innocent kinship metaphors of “mother tongue” and “native speaker” by historicizing their linguistic development. It shows how the early nation states constructed the ideology of ethnolinguistic nationalism, a composite of national language, identity, geography, and race. This ideology invented myths of congenital communities that configured the national language in a symbiotic matrix between body and physical environment and as the ethnic and corporeal ownership of national identity and local organic nature. These ethno-nationalist gestures informed the philology of the early modern era and generated arboreal and genealogical models of language, …

Venezuelan Avant-Garde: María Calcaño's Erotic Poetry, Giovanna Montenegro

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Abstract: This essay treats the Venezuelan avant-garde and its historical development through the poet María Calcaño (1906-1956). An analysis of Calcaño’s work reveals how her erotic avant-gardism was excluded from male-dominated avant-garde literary circles in Venezuela in the 1920s and the 1930s. Rather than analyzing the Latin- American avant-garde as a product of European vanguardisms, I show how Calcaño’s poetry draws upon women’s physical and erotic experience to generate a new female- authored avant-garde poetic corpus. Calcaño therefore produces work that illustrates the poetic expression of women’s identity in Venezuela. She is the first poet who breaks with poetic forms …

Kurt Vonnegut, Authorship And The Purpose Of Literature: A Study Of Kilgore Trout, Danielle M. Benesh

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The works of Kurt Vonnegut demonstrate the author's lifelong interest in the purpose of literature and the role of the author in a postmodern society. Through the use of his most frequently recurring character, the science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut questions the ways in which an author's works influence readers and ponders the relationship between society and art. These themes are explored in detail in the four novels which feature Kilgore Trout most prominently: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions and Timequake. A study of these novels reveals a progressive personification of the Trout figure, as …