Modern Literature Commons^™

Get Busy Living: Leaping Out Of Confinement With Kierkegaard In The Shawshank Redemption, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

This article offers a Kierkegaardian reading of The Shawshank Redemption (1994), arguing that the film functions not as a miracle narrative but as a cinematic enactment of existential theology. While existing scholarship frequently interprets Shawshank through biblical typology or Foucauldian notions of incarceration, few consider how the film dramatizes Kierkegaard’s categories of anxiety, despair, and the leap of faith. Shawshank presents prison as more than a space of punishment—it becomes a refuge from the “dizziness of freedom,” a structured escape from the terrifying burden of possibility. Brooks’s suicide tragically embodies what Kierkegaard calls the “despair of weakness,” the inability to …

Tolstoy And The Serving Mentality & Moral Imperative, Reed Hofer

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The primary characters (ones with a point of view) in Leo Tolstoy’s short stories exhibit a degree of success in their general efforts through their own serving mentality and the moral imperative they demonstrate over the course of the narrative. The methodology behind the analytical task of determining the impact of the serving mentality on their success focused on general analysis of seven Tolstoy short stories with some cross-comparison given. The results indicate to what extent a protagonist continued or changed their serving mentality throughout, and how that shift may have influenced their success. The aggregate points of success allotted …

Deaf Characters In Young Adult Literature, Kimberly Gangwish

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

The multicultural literature movement has its roots in civil rights and the desire to give voice and representation to marginalized cultures. Literature is a societal artifact that can inform and influence the development of cultural identity. Deaf culture is a unique culture that is underrepresented in young adult literature. This underrepresentation places more importance on accurate representations of Deaf culture since young adult fiction may be the only exposure to Deaf culture that both hearing and deaf teenagers may have. Accurate representation in literature is necessary for deaf to see themselves in what they read and for hearing to better …

Toward Diversity In Texts: Using Global Literature To Cultivate Critical Perspectives, Rick Marlatt

Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education

Abstract Literature study in the 21st Century should be characterized by the inclusion of global texts that afford diverse students the opportunity to engage in their literacy development through and alongside authors, characters, and storylines that represent their own linguistic and cultural traditions. In this narrative analysis, I reflect on the importance of equity-driven literature study from my perspective as a teacher educator at a Hispanic-Serving Institution in the Southwestern United States. Following an introduction to the political and institutional contexts surrounding text selection in schools and a brief review of the literature, I situate myself and my students as …

Fixing Ground Zero: Race And Religion In Francis Lawrence’S I Am Legend, Michael E. Heyes

Journal of Religion & Film

Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend is a complex intertext of Matheson’s novel of the same name and its two previous film adaptations. While the film attempts to depict racism as monstrous, the frequent invocation of 9/11 imagery and Christian symbolism throughout the film recodes the vampiric dark-seekers as radical Islamic terrorists. This serves to further enshrine an us/Christians vs. them/Muslim dichotomy present in post-9/11 America, a dichotomy that the film presents as “curable” through the spread of Christianity and the fall of Islam.

Jest In Time: The Problems And Promises Of The Holy Fool In Francesco, Giullare Di Dio, Ordet, And Ikiru, Peter L. Doebler

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper is a study of Roberto Rossellini’s Francesco, giullare di Dio (The Flowers of St. Francis, 1950), Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), and Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955) through the theoretical lens of the religious figure of the holy fool. First, I assert that each film employs a foolish character in order to critique the contemporary culture, particularly resisting modern attempts to soften or ignore extreme elements of Christian teaching, such as sacrificial self-giving for others or the hope of bodily resurrection. Second, I argue that the content of a fool character affects the film’s form, creating a subversive …

Reviewed Work: The Housemaid By Amma Darko, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

A relative newcomer to the Ghanaian fiction-writing scene, Amma Darko is the author of a 1991 novel published in German and then issued in 1995 in its original English as Beyond the Horizon (see WLT 72:2, p.468).

Under The Tongue By Yvonne Vera, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

"Grandmother says it is sometimes good to forget, to bury the heavy things of now, the things which cannot be remembered without death becoming better than life." But survival lies in the speaking of silence, in the silence of voices beaten and lost, in the silence of "the many words a woman must swallow before she can learn to speak her sorrow and be heard," in the silence of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters.

The Seasons Of Beento Blackbird By Akosua Busia, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

As the African diaspora continues to define its own unique position and global contributions, African diaspora studies are necessarily asserting themselves as essential to the cultural-diversity and multiculturalism discourse in the U.S. and, most important, as an indispensable part of the current discourse on pan-Africanist consciousness, global identity, and the new world order.

Zenzele: A Letter For My Daughter By J. Nozipo Maraire, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

"A luta continua," the slogan for the revolution in much of southern Africa, is a befitting theme for Nozipo Maraire's mother-to-daughter clarion call to "remember" in order to know and be, for it is in knowing what makes one that one then knows how to be how to absorb "multiple frames of reality." Thus the essence of a mother's legacy to her daughter as she enters a new world, leaving her native Zimbabwe to study at Harvard, in the USA.

Without A Name By Yvonne Vera, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

A relative newcomer to the literary scene, Yvonne Vera joins the rising ranks of Zimbabwean writers and African women writers, earning her place with promising credentials, academic and literary. Vera is the author of two previous works, a volume of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992), and a poetic novel, Nehanda (1993; see WLT 69:i, p.212), which were shortlisted for the Regional Commonwealth Writers Award in 1993 and 1994 respectively.

Nadezda Obradovic. African Rhapsody: Short Stories Of The Contemporary African Experience., Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

African Rhapsody, an anthology containing the work of twenty-five contemporary writers, prides itself on its diversity of topics from sixteen countries of North, South, East, and West Africa. In this fine harvest authentic stories are told by African writers about African characters and the overwhelming realities of their lives in Africa. Where similar anthologies have focused primarily on stories written in English with a few token translations from the French, African Rhapsody gives breadth not only to stories written originally in English but also to translate stories - five from French, three from Arabic, and one Portuguese. The foreword by …

Annie John, By Jamaica Kincaid, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Annie John, originally published as a series of short stories in The New Yorker magazine, is the story of the title character's childhood and adolescent years in Antigua, West Indies. The novel is divided into eight chapters, each with its own title and internal unity of plot. Set in Antigua, these eloquent and engaging chapters chronicle Annie's confused understanding of the rift between her happy, carefree girlhood years of adulation for her mother and the power struggle and rebellion that mark Annie's transition into adolescence. The tale is told simply, with unrelenting and unapologetic candor, in the hypnotic narrative voice …

In The Ditch, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Originally written as a collection of "observations" and published serially in The New Statesman, In the Ditch, Buchi Emecheta's first novel, is discussed almost always only in relation to Second Class Citizen (1974), its rightful chronological predecessor. Like its companion piece, In the Ditch is heavily autobiographical, following Eme­cheta's own descent into the "ditch" of welfare living and enforced dysfunctionality.

The Heinemann Book Of African Women's Writing By Charlotte H. Bruner, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

African Rhapsody, an anthology containing the work of twenty-five contemporary writers, prides itself on its diversity of topics from sixteen countries of North, South, East, and West Africa. In this fine harvest authentic stories are told by African writers about African characters and the overwhelming realities of their lives in Africa. Where similar anthologies have focused primarily on sto­ries written in English with a few token translations from the French, African Rhapsody gives breadth not only to sto­ries written originally in English but also to translated sto­ries-five from French, three from Arabic, and one from Portuguese. The foreword by Chinua …

The Author(Ity) Of The Text: The Dialectic Tension Between Fidelity And Creative Freedom -- The Case Of Wole Soyinka's “Free” Translation Of D. O. Fagunwa's Ogboju Ode, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Partant de la premisse selon laquelle toute traduction est necessairement une inter­ pretation, on examine la traduction de Wale Soyinka d'un texte yoruba de D. 0. Fagunwa et on discute du probleme de la liberte en traduction en commenr;ant par bien situer l' auteur et le texte dans leur contexte culture! et politique.

The sense of an author, generally speaking, is to be sacred and inviolable. (John Dryden, Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles, 1680)

Le traducteur n' est maftre de rien; ii est oblige de suivre partout son auteur, de se plier a toutes ces variations avec une …

African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, And Continuity By Isidore Okpewho, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Along with the publication of his two earlier scholarly works, The Epic in Africa (1979) and Myth in Africa (1983), Isidore Okpewho's latest book, African Oral Literature, seems to have completed the natural course of scholarship "in the field," as Afracanists continue their scholarly attempts ar (re)visioning/(re)writing African oral traditions and literatures from an "insider" perspective--from the horse's moth, so to speak.

Literary Translation And Culture Consciousness: The Experience Of Translating D.O. Fagunwa's Igbo Olodumare From Yoruba Into English, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Le processus de traduction implique l'interprétation précise du sens contextuel du texte-source dans la mesure où les contraintes syntaxiques et associatives de la langue cible le permettent. À cette fin, le traducteur littéraire doit se poser les questions fondamentales suivantes avant de commencer la traduction d'une œuvre : quelle est l'essence stylistique de l'original ? quels en sont l'intention et le but ? Que faire lorsque le texte est culturellement marqué ? C'est en tenant compte de ces interrogations que nous examinerons la traduction du yoruba à l'anglais de Igbo Olodumare de D.O. Fagunwa.

If God Was A Woman By Stanley Nyamfukudza, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Written from a male point of view, If God Was A Woman is a book of ten contemporary stories about women's and men's lives and relationships, women's condition, their desires, wants, and needs.

The Last Harmattan Of Alusine Dunbar By Syl Cheney-Coker, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

A reenactment of the Edenic plunder. The setting? Anglophone Anywhere, West Africa. The time? Pre- colonial, colonial, and postcolonial period. The action? The brigandage and plunder of Africa, the old yet new drama of the psychological and political effects of duplicity, and the near-genocidal tendency inherent in the lack of communal cohesiveness. What follows is all too familiar.

D. 0. Fagunwa: The Art Of Fabulation And Writing Orality, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Many non-Yoruba critics of African literature have often cited Yoruba writer D. 0. Fagunwa as a valuable contributor to African orature. However, these citations have tended to be allusions, passing references, in the critics' analyses of other African texts.1 There is still a great need for a purposeful analysis of the exact nature of Fagunwa's acclaimed literary contribution, particularly as it relates to the discussion of an afrocentric esthetic of African-language texts and the extent of his direct influence on African literature in English. Fagunwa is no stranger to Yorubas, young and old, literate and illiterate alike; but because of …

Fafa By Ebou Dibba, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

With the "coming if age" of African literature, a new generation of African writers are accessing publishing avenues such as the Macmillan Publishing Company's "M" series.

Voices From Twentieth-Century Africa: Griots And Towncriers By Chinweizu, Pamela Jo Thompson

Foreign Languages and Literature Faculty Publications

Voices from Twentieth-Century Africa, a comprehensive, one-volume introduction to African literature, is a spinoff of Chinweizu's (et alia) previous work, Toward the Decolonization of African Literature (1983; see WLT 58:2, p. 313), and a forerunner to the "anthology of 5000 years of Pan-african Literature promised therein.

Chinweizu, Ed., Voices From Twentieth Century Africa, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Voices from Twentieth-Century Africa, a comprehensive, one-volume introduction to African literature, is a spinoff of Chinweizu's (et alia) previous work, Toward the Decolonization of African Liternature (1983; see WLT 58:2, p.313), and a forerunner to the "anthology of 5000 years of Pan-african Literature" promised therein.

Ngambika: Studies Of Women In African Literature By Carole Boyce Davies, Anne Adams Graves, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Prior to the publication of Lloyd Brown's Women Writers in Black Africa (1981), Kenneth Little's Sociology of Urban Women's Image in African Literature (1980; see WLT 55:3, p.518), and Davies and Grave's Ngambika (1986), African feminist criticism existed merely in the form of occasional articles on or interviews with African women writers.

Tribaliks: Contemporary Congolese Stories By Henri Lopes, Andrea Leskes, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

The primary aim of every translation is to make the original accessible to a wider audience. This is particularly true of translations of literary works written in African and European languages (French and Portuguese).

Art And Ideology In The African Novel: A Study Of The Influence Of Marxism On African Writing By Emmanuel Ngara, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

At a time when African writers and critics are deliberately engaged in a search for a matrix within which African literary esthetics may be defined and formulated, Emmanuel Ngara's singular study of the influence of Marx- ism on African writing is a welcome contribution to the critical canons of the modern African novel. Undoubtedly, this search for a matrix calls for a constant definition of the role not only of art but also of the artist in society. On a continent still struggling to liberate itself from the impact of imperialism and Eurocentrism, it is small wonder that social- ism …

Critical Perspectives On Ngugi Wa Thiong'o By G. D. Killam, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Acknowledging the vast and continuing "realignments of power and long overdue reassessments of the cultures of the third world," the editors of the Critical Perspectives series propose, through a projected thirty-six critical monographs, to provide Euro-American audiences with the "documents and polemics" which reflect the reality of these realignments and reassessments. The thirteenth volume to appear in the series, Critical Perspectives on Ngugi wa Thiong' o, is one such document, comprising twenty-four essays by and about Ngugi, East Africa's foremost novelist and social critic (see WLT 59:1, pp. 26-30). Divided into six sections, the volume contains interviews with Ngugi and …

Ifa Divination Poetry By Wande Abimbola, Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith

Goodrich Scholarship Faculty Publications

Until the publication of Wande Abimbola's !fa Divin­ation Poetry much of the scant information available on the fascinating but complex Ifa geomantic system, commonly identified with the Yoruba of Western Nigeria, has been limited to the general comments of anthropologists and folklorists, whose studies of the system have been less significant parts of larger studies. !fa Divination Poetry is the product of long years of apprenticeship, diligent data collecting from renowned Ifa priests and research. This literary work is appropriately divided into two parts. The first part is a brief history of the elaborate system of divina­tion and an introduction …