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Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Introduction: The Object In France Today, Martine Antle
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…
From Iron To Glass: Transparency And Pluralism, Maryse Fauvel
From Iron To Glass: Transparency And Pluralism, Maryse Fauvel
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The author reads a number of recent architectural constructions in Paris (mainly the Louvre pyramid, but also the Musée d'Orsay and the Institut du monde arabe) and argues that they affirm the plurality of contemporary France while at once inscribing and subverting the conventions of its (once) dominant culture: the Arab world in the heart of Paris, the museum cum railway station as the focal point of conflicting tastes, the pyramid as both accomplice and critic of history. Their pluralism qualifies them as postmodern. These monuments also propose a new role for today's museum. The building itself becomes an art …
Body / Antibody, Lawrence R. Schehr
Body / Antibody, Lawrence R. Schehr
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Unique object in the exchange-system, the gay body occupies a locus where a phantom identity and an imagined reciprocity define the poles of the subject-object relation. Made of the right stuff, it is an object circulating in a system that tends to reproduce the concept of identity in its search for mirror images of itself. Often rejected by the world, it has recently become a cynosure equated with sickness, pestilence, and death in the age of AIDS. The representations of that object change: no longer perceived as a part of libidinal economy, it has become a mass of symptoms, having …
The Fictions Of Surrealism, Walter A. Strauss
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 …
Subverting The Dominant Order: Narrative As Weapon In Simone De Beauvoir's Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels, Barbara Klaw
Subverting The Dominant Order: Narrative As Weapon In Simone De Beauvoir's Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels, Barbara Klaw
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay argues that through the narrative techniques of point of view and embedding, Beauvoir carefully constructed her narrative and those of her male and female characters in Tous les hommes sont mortels, her third novel, published in 1946, in order to explain why males dominate society and to encourage women to fight against the current patriarchal social order. Many critics view Fosca as the principal character, and his 400-page embedded recapitulation of his past as the predominant text, but shifting the focus from Fosca to Régine, who constitutes the only focalizer of present events in the embedding text, …
Addressing Success: Fame And Narrative Strategies In Colette's La Naissance Du Jour, Juliette M. Rogers
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
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. …
The Disappearance Of Objects In "Surmodernity": From Object-Images To Meta-Objects, Dominique D. Fisher
The Disappearance Of Objects In "Surmodernity": From Object-Images To Meta-Objects, Dominique D. Fisher
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This article examines various modes of disappearance of objects from modernity to the latest stage of postmodernity. From the loss of the aura to the proliferation of fractal images, whether it be in literature, contemporary art, or daily life, objects undergo a series of mutations (object-signs, image-objects, object-images, meta-objects) that lead to a new kind of obscenity in which "jouissance" 'pleasure' is released into the madness of a vision obdurated by pathos and panopticism.
What's Behind The Billboard: Dead Men And Private Parts. Object? Sign? Thing?, Peter Schofer
What's Behind The Billboard: Dead Men And Private Parts. Object? Sign? Thing?, Peter Schofer
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
It is a truism that objects and visual sign systems convey meaning. But the meanings shift radically according to the viewer and how the signs are read. Several years ago I asked an American student to photograph scenes which either shocked her or perplexed her upon her arrival in France. One photo is of a publicity panel at the entry to Le Père Lachaise cemetery. The panel consisted of nine magazine covers, including covers for magazines on children, cooking, hunting, and computers, as well as two pornographic magazines. The young student focused on just the last two covers, thus masking …
Reading In Colette: Domination, Resistance, Autonomy, Laurel Cummins
Reading In Colette: Domination, Resistance, Autonomy, Laurel Cummins
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The act of reading on the part of Colette's characters reveals itself as a dynamic involving domination and resistance. A study of passages from two of her semi-autobiographical works, La Maison de Claudine and Sido, brings to light both a positively connoted model of reading, exemplified by the character 'Colette,' and a negatively connoted model, exemplified by the older sister Juliette. While Juliette approaches texts with no sense of self, and seeks instead to be defined by the texts she reads, 'Colette' remains in relation to texts and to the discourses they contain, and resists them. Gender complicates the …
Border Crossings In Maríe Redonnet's Splendid [Seaside] Hôtel, Elizabeth A. Mazza-Anthony
Border Crossings In Maríe Redonnet's Splendid [Seaside] Hôtel, Elizabeth A. Mazza-Anthony
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Maríe Redonnet crosses previously established boundaries in Splendid Hôtel and Seaside. Her writing flows across traditional literary genres as she revisits certain motifs, characters, and situations in her novel and play. In addition to crossing the border between the novel and theater, she echoes the works of other authors—specifically Rimbaud and Duras. Moreover, within a particular text Redonnet erases subject boundaries. That is to say, her characters are not individuals; their uniqueness is washed away by a continual ebb and flow of common characteristics and traits. By creating such fluid personae, Redonnet captures the societal homogeneity that is symptomatic …
Combas & Co. Or The Figure And The Great Divide, Monique Yaari
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 …
Fashion, Bodies, And Objects, Jean-François Fourny
Fashion, Bodies, And Objects, Jean-François Fourny
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay is based on the assumption that the body has undergone a process of fragmentation that started with "modern" art and commodity fetishism that is being amplified today by an increasingly fetishistic high fashion industry itself relayed by music videos and a gigantic pornography industry. This article begins with a discussion of fetishism and objectification as they appear in high fashion shows where underwear becomes wear (turning the inside into the outside), thus expanding (or dissolving) the traditional notion of pornography because they are both reported in comparable terms by mainstream magazines such as Femmes and less conventional publications …
Introduction To The Special Issue, Adelaida López De Martínez
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 …