Search results for "Literary Criticism"
showing 10 items of 113 documents
Melville’s Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America’s Most Elusive Author
2020
“At the Receiving End of Severe Misunderstanding”: Dambudzo Marechera's Representations of Authorship
2011
The Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera (1952–1987) is the object of a cult phenomenon: his figure represents a relevant site of sense-making and his earlier unfavorable African criticism is challenged. Marechera’s fiction has a strong autobiographical dimension that results in a metadiscourse on the meanings of authorship, where the notion of misunderstanding represents a central trope. This essay aims not only at drawing an overview of Marechera’s representations of authorship, but also at suggesting that Marechera was actively involved in the construction of his authorial image, and that the notion of misunderstanding captures the changes that have taken place in the contexts of his cri…
A Comparative Analysis of Translations of Lucian Blaga’s Poetry into English
2020
Abstract The complexity of Lucian Blaga’s poetry is a matter of common knowledge. Part of this complexity is related to the elements of prosody that Blaga skilfully employs, to say nothing of the philosophical vein which infuses his writings, and which derives, understandably, from his philosophical work. Mention should also be made of the lyrical character of Blaga’s dramatic works, which adds significantly to the effort of translating his writings into English, or any other language for that matter. In what follows, we intend to offer a bird’s eye view of the volumes that have been translated into English and to analyse a selection of poems comparatively, in order to signal challenges and…
Clarice Lispector, Agua Viva: Autobiography, Exile, Violence
2019
Abstract Considered “the great witch of Brazilian literature”, acclaimed as the best woman-writer of Jewish origin and the perfect example of an exquisite reconfiguration of European modernist ideas, Clarice Lispector is a fascinating author. This is obvious since her first novel Perto do coração selvagem (Near to the Wild Heart, 1943), a book that was awarded several literary prizes in Brazil, even if afterwards the text would be often ignored within the critical studies dedicated to Lispector. Compared to Borges and Kafka and even to the narrative strategies used by Virginia Woolf (apparently influenced by James Joyce’s stream of consciousness, even if Lispector underlined that she had no…
Profane and sacred love in the writings of Julius Evola
2019
Abstract Noticing the steep degradation of love in the modern society, Evola makes an effort to overpass the social, commercial or biological conceptions of love and to unravel the forgotten ideas about love. Looking at the current modern situation, few people could imagine love as transcendent, as a force capable of overpassing the limitations of a human being. As emphasized by Evola, the union between the two lovers, when it is conceived as the unification of the opposite tendencies in a sacred union, can find the lost path towards the Unity. By detachment and transmutation, the use of the sexual energy may even lead to supra-natural powers, ecstasies and elevated consciousness.
Teaching Petrarchan and Anti-Petrarchan Discourses in Early Modern English Lyrics
2012
The aim of the present article is to help students realize that Petrarchism has been an influential source of inspiration for Early Modern English lyrics. Its topics and conventions have lent themselves to a wide variety of appropriations which the present selection of texts for analysis tries to illustrate. A few telling examples from Spenser, Sidney, Donne and Marvell have been chosen where the topic of the lady cast as a valuable treasure is variously addressed. Whereas Spenser’s Sonnet 15 of his Amoretti conveys the lover’s confident hope of its possession in a near marriage, Sidney’s Sonnet 37 of Astrophil and Stella portrays his frustration at the idea of being robbed of his cherished…
Concrete/Visual Poetry
2011
Dots, Lines, Areas and Words: Mapping Literature and Narration (With some Remarks on Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”)
2009
The so-called spatial turn of the humanities has led to an increasing interest in mapmaking. Looking at various trends in map-making the paper evaluates possible links and cooperation between cartography and literary studies. Differentiating between two central questions - which features of literature may be considered as spatial and in what way literature as a social practice could become spatially relevant – the paper argues that maps of literature should be based on specific features that constitute a literary text as opposed to other forms of art and discourse. Claiming that maps of literature should provide more than a visualisation of structure or an illustration of certain forms or c…
Echoes of Sapphic Gods and Goddesses, Immortality, Eros and Thanatos in the Work of Modernist Women Poets
2020
Abstract In the context of Modernism’s constant return to the past that results in self-knowledge and innovation, certain women writers found Sappho’s writings relevant for their own poetic endeavours. My article will mainly focus on the mythological aspects of both Sappho’s and the modernist women’s poetry. Invocations of and allusions to gods and goddesses and other mythical figures, which involve introspection and expressing certain erotic concerns in stylised ways, will be discussed in order to show how all these women poets innovated. and, in many different ways, significantly enriched the literature of their times. Critics have mainly focused on H.-D.’s poetry in relation to Sappho’s,…
“Something Hungry and Wild is Still Calling”: Post-Apartheid Gothic
2012
International audience; The postcolonial Gothic is now a mode widely covered by literary criticism, but South Africa has often been left out of investigations. This paper argues that only now that apartheid has ended can writers and critics explore how the Gothic manifests itself in South African literature. Showing possible connections between the postcolonial Gothic and recent South African fiction, it seeks to define a new category that can help define the contours of the literary field in South Africa: post-apartheid Gothic.