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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Where Are The Women?: An Ecofeminist Reading Of William Golding’S Lord Of The Flies, Hawk Chang
Where Are The Women?: An Ecofeminist Reading Of William Golding’S Lord Of The Flies, Hawk Chang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
The absence of female characters and their voices in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) has been previously examined. On the surface, this fiction focuses on the struggle and survival of a group of boys who are left alone on a Pacific island against the background of nuclear warfare. The only presence of women in the story seems to be the aunt via a boy’s narration. However, when approaching the fiction through the lens of ecofeminism, we can find a range of feminized entities which are metaphorically embodied in the natural surroundings of the secluded island. The boys’ interactions …
“No Roses, White Nor Red, Glow Here”: The Motif Of The Garden In Two Proserpine Poems By A. Swinburne And D. Greenwell, Cristina Salcedo González
“No Roses, White Nor Red, Glow Here”: The Motif Of The Garden In Two Proserpine Poems By A. Swinburne And D. Greenwell, Cristina Salcedo González
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In this article, I discuss Algernon Swinburne’s and Dora Greenwell’s engagement with the myth of Proserpine through an analysis of the motif of the garden, which takes central stage in both accounts. The examination will illustrate how the authors’ outlined images of the garden challenge the dominant representation of the motif within Western literary tradition, offering a re-interpretation of the myth as social commentary.
Sex Between Women And Indianness: Vulnerable Casted Bodies, Antonia Navarro-Tejero
Sex Between Women And Indianness: Vulnerable Casted Bodies, Antonia Navarro-Tejero
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her essay, "Sex Between Women and Indianness: Vulnerable Casted Bodies," Antonia Navarro-Tejero examines the lesbian experience, using two heterosexual voices representing the lesbian abject: Shobha Dé’s popular bestseller novel Strange Obsession (1992) and Karan Razdan’s Bollywood film Girlfriend (2004), as they espouse the dominant ideology of heteronormativity, rendering homosexuality as a western illness that taints the Indian culture. First, the author provides an overview of the history of lesbian desire in India, and how it is rendered by Hindu nationalists. Then, following the postulates of Michel Foucault, she analyzes both cultural texts with respect to how same-sex desire is …
Trespassing Physical Boundaries: Transgression, Vulnerability And Resistance In Sarah Kane’S Blasted (1995), Paula Barba Guerrero, Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo
Trespassing Physical Boundaries: Transgression, Vulnerability And Resistance In Sarah Kane’S Blasted (1995), Paula Barba Guerrero, Ana Mª Manzanas Calvo
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Sarah Kane’s Blasted has been analyzed from various perspectives that address the layers of destruction it exposes. From the questioning of its title and meaning, to the unravelling of the protagonists’ abusive relationship, the analyses have emphasized the depiction of vulnerability as the defining human trait that Jean Ganteau observes in contemporary British literature. However, a key aspect has been overlooked in the critical response to the play: for Kane vulnerability does not equal helplessness, but rather stands in opposition to it. Hence, this article concentrates on how Blasted formulates a new understanding of vulnerability that fits Judith Butler’s later …
Resilience As Regeneration In Kate Atkinson’S Life After Life, Beatriz Domínguez García
Resilience As Regeneration In Kate Atkinson’S Life After Life, Beatriz Domínguez García
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In Life After Life (2013), British writer Kate Atkinson returns to the rewriting of History as her-story that characterized her early fiction. The protagonist’s lifespan overlaps with the major historical events of the twentieth century, allowing the writer to explore how those affected the individual lives of women and, at the same time, problematizing history, memory, and the past. Above all, Life After Life highlights the deep vulnerability of women to systemic gender violence, although it also emphasizes women’s resilience. The purpose of this paper is to examine Atkinson’s peculiar rendering of resilience, which interestingly she locates in the body, …
Decolonizing Adoption Narratives For Transnational Reproductive Justice, Sung Hee Yook, Hosu Kim
Decolonizing Adoption Narratives For Transnational Reproductive Justice, Sung Hee Yook, Hosu Kim
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In their article “Decolonizing Adoption Narratives for Transnational Reproductive Justice,” Sung Hee Yook and Hosu Kim examine narratives emerging from transnational adoption practices, focusing on how birth mothers’ narratives—in which a victim-mother makes choices to give a child for adoption in hopes of a better life for the child, and awaits that child’s return—develop alongside and deviate from the normative orders of motherhood. While birth mothers’ self-transformative narrative illuminates their subjectivities—apart from victimhood, simmering in the latent form of agency—Yook and Kim argue that a compelling narrative of self-mastery produces another discursive trap which renders the numerous less-masterful birth mothers …
The Sin Of Pride In Dressing Bodies In Spanish And Anglo-American Ballads, Ana Belén Martínez García
The Sin Of Pride In Dressing Bodies In Spanish And Anglo-American Ballads, Ana Belén Martínez García
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "The Sin of Pride in Dressing Bodies in Spanish and Anglo-American Ballads" Ana Belén Martínez García argues that trying to decipher the reasons for characters to dress in a certain way may help discover the underlying sociocultural mechanisms that prevail. The author aims to reveal the gender divide associated to clothing through a comparative approach towards popular literature in Spanish and English. She uses Judith Butler's theory of performative acts in order to conduct the text analysis. Clothes-related acts feature prominently in the case of popular balladry. Spanish "romances" and Anglo-American ballads are poems that were and …
Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided for the introduction.
Ecocriticism And Gender/Sexuality Studies: A Book Review Article On New Work By Azzarello And Gaard, Estok, And Oppermann, Keitaro Morita
Ecocriticism And Gender/Sexuality Studies: A Book Review Article On New Work By Azzarello And Gaard, Estok, And Oppermann, Keitaro Morita
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
A Survey Of Slovenian Women Fairy Tale Writers, Milena Mileva Blazić
A Survey Of Slovenian Women Fairy Tale Writers, Milena Mileva Blazić
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "A Survey of Slovenian Women Fairy Tale Writers" Milena Mileva Blažić begins with an introduction to the Slovenian fairy tale writing tradition dating back nearly 150 years. While male authors published collections of tales, women writers published only individual fairy tales and owing to their biographies giving birth to children and caring for their families gained less, if any, recognition in literary history. Blažić's overview of Slovenian women writers of fairy tales and scholarship about the genre includes the related genre of youth literature. Blažić's survey is placed in the context of West European fairy tale writing …
The Heroine's Journey, Catherine Bailey
The Heroine's Journey, Catherine Bailey
The Hilltop Review
My current research focuses on representations of gender in contemporary literature and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on feminist criticism. Furthermore, I am interested in the ways in which ancient mythology, fairy tales, and folklore have shaped--and continue to shape--societal ideals about normative gender behavior. While some myth critics profess the benefits of framing one's life in terms of a grand narrative--an archetypal "hero's journey"--feminist critics and queer theorists argue that these sweeping narratives can be damaging to people of all genders by forcing them into limiting social scripts. Much of my recent research has explored the question of …