Search results for " Critic"

“C’est la vie, c’est la narration”: The Reader in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Textermination and David Lodge’s Small World

2016

Abstract This article considers two metafictional academic novels from the reader’s point of view. It argues that this critical vantage point is suggested (if not imposed) by the fictional texts themselves. The theoretical texts informing this reading pertain either to reader response or to theories of metafiction, in an attempt to uncover conceptual commonalities between the two. Apart from a thematic focus on academic conferences as pilgrimages and the advocacy of reading as an ethically valuable activity, the two novels also share a propensity for intertextuality, a blurring of the boundaries between fictional and critical discourse, as well as a questioning of the borderline between fic…

Renate Haas, ed. Rewriting Academia: The Development of the Anglicist Women’s and Gender Studies of Continental Europe. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang…

2017

Identity and War in Michael Ondaatje’s

2012

Abstract This paper addresses the issue of identity in relation to war through a close reading of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. It investigates the connections between war and the construction of identity, focusing on aspects such as violence and death. In his novel Ondaatje uncovers private histories alongside the framing events of World War Two. Kip’s perception of war and his way of living through it suggest that the engagement on the world’s battlefield is riddled with inner conflicts separating people or bringing them together. In The English Patient what is at issue is the quest for a redefinition of the self: Hanna, Kirpal Singh and Almásy attempt to liberate the self throu…

A Man of Vision: Dumitru Ciocoi-Pop (1943-2019)

2019

Alexander Search with Suman Gupta, Fabio Akcelrud Durão and Terrence McDonough. Entrepreneurial Literary Theory: A Debate on Research and the Future …

2017

“Never Some Easy Flashback”

2012

Abstract This paper provides a close reading of Paul Farley’s 160-line poem, “Thorns.” The poem is read in dialogue with William Wordsworth’s celebrated Romantic ballad “The Thorn.” Special attention is given to Farley’s treatment of memory and metaphor: It is shown how the first, exploratory part of the poem elaborates upon the interdependent nature of memory and metaphor, while the second part uses a more regulated form of imagery in its evocation of a generational memory linked to a particular place and time (the working-class Liverpool of the 1960s and 1970s). The tension between the two parts of the poem is reflected in the taut relationship between the poet and a confrontational alter…

Spaces of Identity: Gender, Ethnicity, and Race in Salome of the Tenements (1923) and Quicksand (1928)

2018

Abstract The 1920s marked a fervent time for artistic and literary expression in the United States. Besides the famous authors of the decade, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner, Anzia Yezierska and Nella Larsen, among other female writers, also managed to carve “a literary space” for their stories. Yezierska and Larsen depicted the struggles and tribulations of minority women during the fermenting 1920s, with a view to illustrating the impact of ethnicity and race on the individual female identity. Yezierska, a Jewish-American immigrant, and Larsen, a biracial American woman, share an interest in capturing the nuances of belonging to a particular community…

Al hilo de la literatura latinoamericana: estudios literarios/estudios culturales / To the thread of Latin American literature: literary studies / cu…

2017

Resumen: El presente trabajo constituye un recorrido bibliográfico por la crítica y la teoría literaria hispanoamericana de los últimos 50 años, sin afán de exhaustividad, como tarea colectiva (congresos etc) y personal. Sus hitos más significativos son: cómo se formó y fue derivando el canon literario en Hispanoamérica. Las teorías postcoloniales y su aplicación al Nuevo Mundo. Las orientaciones de la crítica y la teoría literaria en / sobre Latinoamérica. La irrupción y pervivencia de los estudios culturales. Nuevas modas críticas: estudios transatlánticos, tecno escritura, ecocrítica, crítica genética... Palabras clave: canon, crítica literaria, teoría literaria, teorías postcoloniales, …

Oppressive Faces of Whiteness in Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress

2018

Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress contributes significantly to the literary debate on the definition of whiteness. The socio-historical construction of whiteness emerging from the novel is amplified by white imagery dovetailing with the claims made about white people directly. For the African American first person narrator, Easy Rawlins, living in post-World War II Los Angeles, whiteness mostly spells terror. The oppressive faces of whiteness consist in the following trajectories: property relations, economic exploitation, labour relations, the legal system, different miens of oppressive white masculinity denigrating blackness, spatial dynamics of post-World War II Los Angeles and the w…

Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Bewilderment Trilogy” as Bildungsromane

2018

Abstract In this essay, Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Bewilderment Trilogy” is read as a series of Bildungsromane that test the limits of that genre. In these thematically unrelated novels, characters reach critical points in their lives when they are confronted with the ways in which their respective childhoods have shaped their grownup expectations and professional careers. In each, the protagonist has a successful career, whether as a musician (The Unconsoled), a detective (When We Were Orphans), or a carer (Never Let Me Go), but finds it difficult to overcome childhood trauma. Ishiguro’s treatment of childhood in these novels foregrounds the tension between individual subjectivity and the formal st…