Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ethnos Meets Eros On The River Plate: Marcelo Birmajer, Sylvia Molloy, Anna Kazumi Stahl , Edna Aizenberg

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article deals with three contemporary novelists, Marcelo Birmajer, Anna Kazumi Stahl and Sylvia Molly in the context of a new understanding of ethnicity, sexuality and literature in Argentina. In contrast to previous eras when writing reflected a melting pot philosophy which saw Eros as a means of fusing ethnicities and eliminating particularities, today's fiction often celebrates these differences, uncovering layers of secrecy and demanding a place for various languages, sexualities and geographies.

Proustian Metaphor And The Automobile , Shawn Gorman

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In Marcel Proust's Sodome et Gomorrhe, the automobile produces a transformation in the relationship between space and time and, by analogy, a parallel transformation in art. In Proust's famous notion of involuntary memory, the similarity of a past sense impression to a present one leads to transcendence of time and space, and ultimately to metaphor. The metonymical speed of the automobile endlessly chases the sort of metaphorical "simultaneity" at work in involuntary memory. Structurally, the automobile offers the possibility of bringing together two terms by eliminating the middle term (time, space) that separated them; yet the automobile is never …

Parodie Musings On Futurism And Amore In Oliverio Girondo's Espantapájaros (Al Alcance De Todos). , Patricia Montilla

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The Argentine poet Oliverio Girondo (1891-1967) was one of the leading figures of the Spanish American avant-garde. Appearing in 1932 approximately two decades after the rise of Futurism, Girondo's third collection of poetry, Espantapájaros (al alcance de todos), mocks the already clichéd literary conventions promulgated by the avant-garde. Many of the book's poems parody the principles outlined in the founding "Manifesto of Futurism" (1909) and in F. T. Marinetti's subsequent writings.

This study closely examines the poems in Espantapájaros that play on Futurism's assault on amore and sentimentality, its scorn for woman, its promotion of sex as a sole …

Origins, Loss, And Recovery In Patrick Modiano's Voyage De Noces And Dora Bruder , Ann L. Murphy

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

By alluding to the writing of his 1990 novel Voyage de noces in the course of the narration of 1997 Dora Bruder, author Patrick Modiano invites an examination of the connections between these two works. This paper demonstrates how Voyage de noces and Dora Bruder, when studied together as a sort of diptych, are informed by what commentators have described as Modiano's simultaneous preoccupations with the expression of absence and loss, on the one hand, and with the use of writing to compensate for these, on the other. Specifically, a formal and thematic relationship between these two texts …

Repeat Offenders: Violence And Textual Economy, Scott Shinabargar

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

L'acte surréalistite le plus simple consiste, revolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu'on peut, dans la foule. (Breton, Manifestes 155)

It is difficult not to feel uncomfortable reading this well-known passage now, in light of recent events. And yet, isn't this perhaps precisely the reason such a text demands our attention? By studying similar passages in Breton's writing, we find that it is through a very particular use of language that the alienated subject acquires a sense of empowerment; and more importantly, that the force of such a discourse is extremely limited—dependent …

"The Lady In Pink: Dress And The Enigma Of Gendered Space In Marcel Proust's Fiction" , Eva Maria Stadler

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

A study of the role of clothing as central to issues of characterization, description and historical reference in Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. Focus on Odette de Crécy, one of the central characters in the novel, a courtesan who becomes the wife of Charles Swann but who first captivates the narrator's imagination when, as a child, he briefly sees her as a "Lady in Pink."

Odette's role as a fashionable woman, as one of the best-dressed women in Parisian society, gives unity to her character. The description of her clothing, however, not only provides the occasion for …

Toward A Meta Understanding Of Reality: The Problem Of Reference In Russian Metarealist Poetry , Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Through an in-depth analysis of Russian metarealist poetry, the paper seeks to undermine the increasingly popular belief in the self-referential nature of postmodern literature and deconstructive writing. To challenge the conviction that postmodern texts have cut off literary discourse from reality, the author focuses on the writing of Olga Sedakova and Elena Shvarts. Her analysis of Sedakova's Vrata, Okna, Arki attempts to draw a parallel between the schools of Russian symbolism and metarealism, and demonstrate the increased referential potential of metarealist writing. While symbolism juxtaposes the mundane reality here to the eternal spiritual world beyond, she argues in the …

The Value Of Kitsch. Hermann Broch And Robert Musil On Art And Morality, Patrizia C. Mcbride

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article examines the discourse on kitsch articulated by Austrian novelists Hermann Broch (1886-1951) and Robert Musil (1880-1942) between 1930 and 1950. In particular, I focus on the ways in which the two novelists draw the distinction of value between real and pseudo art (or kitsch). As I argue, their disagreement on this matter is emblematic of dilemmas that continue to confront aesthetic evaluation today. While Broch anchors value in a metaphysical realm on the outside of aesthetic discourse, assuming a late-idealistic notion of art, Musil frames the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' art within an empirical, relativistic, and immanent …

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Edwards, Catherine, ed. Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789-1945. Christina Ujma

Gilman, Sander L. and Jurek Becker. A Life in Five Worlds. David Malcolm

Rodden, John, ed. Conversations with Isabel Allende. Daniela Melis

Schrift, Alan D., ed. Why Nietzsche Still? Reflections on Drama, Culture, and Politics. Jennifer Marston William

Viegnes, Michel, ed. Hugo et la chimère. Recherches & Travaux 62. Kathryn M. Grossman

Winston, Jane Bradley. Postcolonial Duras: Cultural Memory in Postwar France. Carol J. Murphy

Surveillance And Liberty In Céline's New York, The City That Doesn't Sleep (Around) , Jennifer Willging

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay focuses on Ferdinand Bardamu's account of his stay in New York City in Louis-Ferdinand Céline's bleak bildungsroman, Journey to the End of the Night (1932). In it I explore the rather surprising absence of reference to the Statue of Liberty in a text narrated by a French immigrant of sorts who spends weeks on Ellis Island and who immediately personifies the city as an androgynous, steely, and indeed statue-like woman. Applying to the text Foucault's theories on the disciplinary nature of modern western society, I suggest that it is Bardamu's suspicion that he is under unobtrusive yet constant …

Inspiration And The Oulipo , Chris Andrews

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In the Ion and the Phaedrus Plato establishes an opposition between technique and inspiration in literary composition. He has Socrates argue that true poets are inspired and thereby completely deprived of reason. It is often said that the writers of the French collective known as the Oulipo have inverted the Platonic opposition, substituting a scientific conception of technique—formalization—for inspiration. Some of the group's members aim to do this, but not the best-known writers. Jacques Roubaud and Georges Perec practice traditional imitation alongside formalization. Imitation is a bodily activity with an important non-technical aspect. Raymond Queneau consistently points to an indispensable …

Where Am I? Who Am I? The Problem Of Location And Recognition In Helena Parente Cunha's Woman Between Mirrors , Joanne Gass

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Helena Parente Cunha's novel, Woman Between Mirrors explores the many ways in which a dominant and domineering patriarchy can and does impose itself upon its subjects through what Louis Althusser calls interpellation. Parente Cunha's woman, a true twentieth-century heroine, faces her divided self—a self determined by ideology—and begins a quest which will end when she becomes an "I" before her shattered mirrors. But before that can happen, she must author herself, and, in the process of writing herself, she must overcome the demons of location and recognition. In the material sense, the woman must locate herself geographically, historically, socially, and …

The Public Becomes Personal: From Ernaux's Passion Simple To Journal Du Dehors, Michelle Scatton-Tessier

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Drawing on an interview in April 1997 with contemporary French writer Annie Ernaux, this article analyzes the interplay between female narrators and quotidian spaces in Passion simple (1991) and Journal du dehors (1993). Ernaux's writing career, spanning nearly thirty years, develops continually from depictions of physical spaces and the gestures or attitudes these spaces prescribe. Ernaux's spaces are not neutral; each bears the strong markings of a specific social class and gender. As this study illustrates, a radical shift exists between the author's 1991 and 1993 texts. Here, she distances herself from the traditional domestic space, as depicted in Passion …

A Clear-Sighted Witness: Trauma And Memory In Maryse Condé'S Desirada, Dawn Fulton

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Maryse Condé's 1997 novel recounts a young Guadeloupean woman's frustrating search for the identity of her father. Because the information she seeks is initially guarded by her mother and later contradicted by friends and family, this heroine confronts an epistemological impasse, a potentially traumatic event to which she will never have direct access. Informed by Toni Morrison's reflections on memory and invention and by recent studies in trauma theory, this essay examines the ways in which Condé negotiates this impasse in her novel, creating a narrative field of knowledge that allows for its own lacunae and maintains multiple registers of …

Jean-Marie Gleize, Emmanuel Hocquard, And The Challenge Of Lyricism, Glenn W. Fetzer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Within the past decade, one of the most pressing questions of poetry in France has been the continuing viability of lyricism. Recent models of perceiving the nature of lyricism shift the focus from formal and thematic considerations to pragmatic ones. As Hocquard's Un test de solitude: sonnets (1998) and Gleize's Non (1999) illustrate, the challenge of the lyric today serves to sharpen the sense of alterity and gives evidence of lyricism's capacity for renewal. More specifically, in presenting a reading of sonnets from both writers, this paper shows that the debates on the nature and "recurrence" of lyricism foreground the …

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Chanan, Michael. Cuban Cinema David William Foster

Izenberg, Gerald N. Modernism and Masculinity: Mann, Wedekind, Kandisnky through World War I. Aaron J. Cohen

Jonsson, Stefan. Subject Without Nation: Robert Musil and the History of Modern Identity. Post-Contemporary Interventions. Albrecht Classen

Kaiser, David Aram. Romanticism, Aesthetics and Nationalism. Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 34. Catherine Grimm

Lopez de Martinez, Adelaida and Harriet Turner. The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Novel: From 1600 to the Present. Toni Dorca

McCulloh, Mark R. Understanding W.G. Sebald. Peter C. Pfeiffer

Peterson, Dale E. Up From Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African American Soul. Kathleen M. …

Women, Subalternity, And The Historical Novel Of María Rosa Lojo , Kathryn Lehman

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

María Rosa Lojo (1954) has received critical recognition as a poet, short-story writer, and novelist. Her poetic work Visiones (1984) and Forma oculta del mundo (1991), first book of short-stories Marginales (1986), and two novels Canción perdida en Buenos Aires al Oeste (1987) and La pasión de los nómades (1994), have received prestigious awards. Lojo's most recent work, informed and inspired by archival sources, has been acclaimed by both critics and the general public for having radically altered the established representation of canonical historical figures. The novels La princesa federal (1998), and Una mujer de fin de siglo (1999), and …

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 …

The Politics Of Race And Patriarchy In Claire-Solange, Âme Africaine By Suzanne Lacascade , Valérie Orlando

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Racial discrimination, colonialism, marginalization, and imperial politics are the components of Martinican author Suzanne Lacascade's 1924 novel, Claire-Solange, âme africaine. This little-known work is shrouded in mystery. Less information is available about the author or under what circumstances she conceptualized and completed her novel. Lacascade probably contributed to various reviews and journals of the first days of the Négritude movement. The novel offers one of the first discourses on race, racial mixing, hierarchy, and colonialism as construed by blacks and whites. The author defies the power of men over women in French society of the early twentieth century. Racialized …

Personalized And Depersonalized Discourses: Irony And Self-Consciousness In Bécquer's Rimas , Cecile West-Settle

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's Rimas have long been read as a prelude to the later twentieth-century texts of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Jorge Guillén. This established reading of the Rimas emphasizes the romantic idealism of Bécquer's poetry and identifies Bécquer as a proto-symbolist poet whose work anticipates "pure" poetry in Spain. An alternate view of the Rimas, one that recognizes the ironic impulses of this poetry, reminds us that Bécquer's poetry and poetics are, rather than single-minded, grounded in paradox and concerned with one of art's central problems, that is to say, with representing what the limitless imagination produces within the …