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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2011

Purdue University

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literary theory

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Writing And Reading Of Fan Fiction And Transformation Theory, Veerle Van Steenhuyse Dec 2011

The Writing And Reading Of Fan Fiction And Transformation Theory, Veerle Van Steenhuyse

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Writing and Reading of Fan Fiction and Transformation Theory" Veerle Van Steenhuyse discusses the experience of immersive reading fan fiction offers to fans based on her analysis of fan fiction about the television series House, M.D. (2004-). Van Steenhuyse postulates that a text is immersive when it evokes a mental construct with the presence of a text-independent reality. In the case of fan fiction, this reality is a "transformed universe" that builds on and deviates from particular primary texts. Following the work of Marie-Laure Ryan and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Van Steenhuyse argues that readers feel immersed when …


Inanimate Speech From Lovecraft To Žižek, Apple Z. Igrek Dec 2011

Inanimate Speech From Lovecraft To Žižek, Apple Z. Igrek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Inanimate Speech from Lovecraft to Žižek" Apple Z. Igrek explores an influential line of reasoning associated with our contemporary loss of the Real. The argument describes how the contingencies and nuances of social life have been reduced to an operational, friction-free, and homogeneous realm of signs. Slavoj Žižek contends that our inherently traumatic relationship with the Other is being foreclosed and replaced by an omnipresent technological screen of virtual communication. The danger of this shift, identified as the "digital break," is that it facilitates an extraordinary form of divine violence which strikes back at the social system …


Latino Identity In Allende's Historical Novels, Olga Ries Dec 2011

Latino Identity In Allende's Historical Novels, Olga Ries

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Latino Identity in Allende's Historical Novels" Olga Ries analyzes the concept of individual and group identity found in five historical novels by Isabel Allende. Ries argues that while Allende's protagonists come from different backgrounds and different epochs, they share a process of psychological transformation and that affects their identity formation. The result is the formation of a transnational "Hispanic" identity, group as well as individual. In Ries's reading of Allende's texts, transnational Hispanic identity is based simultaneously on the Mexican/Hispanic concept of mestizaje and on the US-American concepts of the "melting pot" and the "American Dream."


Autoethnography And Garcia's Dreaming In Cuban, Samantha L. Mcauliffe Dec 2011

Autoethnography And Garcia's Dreaming In Cuban, Samantha L. Mcauliffe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Authoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban" Samantha L. McAuliffe positions Cristina Garcia's novel as a text of self-discovery and cultural reconciliation. McAuliffe examines multilingualism and hybridity in Dreaming in Cuban and postulates that the novel represents what Marie Louise Pratt calls the "contact zone" where cultures meet and clash. As autoethnography, Dreaming in Cuban allows an insider view of what being Cuban American really means. The reader is able to experience the conflict those with a hybrid identity experience through the eyes of one in the midst of that conflict. Further, McAuliffe suggests in her analysis …


Old And New Medialities In Foer's Tree Of Codes, Kiene Brillenburg Wurth Sep 2011

Old And New Medialities In Foer's Tree Of Codes, Kiene Brillenburg Wurth

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Old and New Materialities in Foer's Tree of Codes" Kiene Brillenburg Wurth analyzes how intermediality works — not what it "is" — in the analysis of literary texts. How intermedial can texts "do," precisely when they consist only of words? Do such texts compel us to reconsider literature as a verbal art? Her analysis focuses on a recent book by Jonathan Safran Foer: Tree of Codes (2010), a literary work cut out of the remains of Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles (1934). Brillenburg Wurth points out how intermediality works as a productive interaction not only between …


(Inter)Mediality And The Study Of Literature, Werner Wolf Sep 2011

(Inter)Mediality And The Study Of Literature, Werner Wolf

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "(Inter)mediality and the Study of Literature" Werner Wolf elaborates on the "intermedial turn" and asks whether this turn ought to be welcomed. Wolf begins with a discussion about the definitions of "medium" and "intermediality" and the impact these concepts and practices exert on scholarly, as well as student competence. He argues that despite of the fact that literary studies ought not simply turn into media or cultural studies, mediality and intermediality have become relevant issues for both teaching and the study of literature especially in the fields of comparative literature and (comparative) cultural studies. Following his postulate …


The Spirit Of Matter In Büchner, Barbara Natalie Nagel Sep 2011

The Spirit Of Matter In Büchner, Barbara Natalie Nagel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Spirit of Matter in Büchner" Barbara Natalie Nagel investigates different vectors of Georg Büchner's materialism: historical, philosophical, ethical, physiological. The analysis of what Büchner presents to be a necessary link between physiology and revolution aims to show how Büchner has a tendency first to entangle two relatively static, binary oppositions — literal/figurative and material/spiritual — in order then to play them against one another. Büchner thus uses the dynamics of literalization to evoke necessity: for example, if the revolution is conceived of in physiological terms, then the will either has to become physiological or biology has …