Search results

After my public lecture on "Literature and Life" in March 1980 at the Riyadh University Center for Girls [sic], a student asked me with some asperity: "It's all very well to try to live like a book; but what if no one else is prepared to read? What if you are dismissed as an irresponsible dreamer?"I found an answer to her question at the tail end of a metaphor:" Everyone reads life and the world like a book. Even the so-called' illiterate.' But especially the 'leaders' of our society, the most 'responsible' nondreamers: the politicians, the businessmen, the ones who make plans. Without the reading of the world as a book, there is no prediction, no planning, no taxes, no laws, no welfare, no war. Yet these leaders read the world in terms of rationality and averages, as if it were a textbook. The world actually writes itself with the many-leveled, unfixable intricacy and openness of a work of literature. If, through our study of literature, we can learn ourselves and teach others to read the world in the 'proper' risky way, and to act upon that lesson, perhaps we literary people would not forever be such helpless victims." It is difficult to say that very last bit to a woman in Saudi Arabia. So I added, half to myself, and with a sense of failure: "Mere literary studies cannot accomplish this. One must fill the vision of literary form with its connections to what is being read: history, political economy-the world. And it is not merely a question of disciplinary formation. It is a question also of questioning the separation between the world of action and the world of the disciplines. There is a great deal in the way." In that exchange I was obliged to stress the distinction between my position and the position that, in a world of massive brutality, exploitation, and sexual oppression, advocates an aesthetization of life. Here I must stress that I am also not interested in answers to questions like "Whati s the nature of the aesthetic?" or "How indeed are we to understand 'life'? "My concern rather is that: 1) The formulation of such questions is itself a determined and determining gesture. 2) Very generally speaking, literary people are still caught within a position where they must say: Life is brute fact and outside art; the aesthetic is free and transcends life. 3) This declaration is the condition and effect of "ideology."4 ) If "literary studies "is to have any meaning in the coming decade, its ideology might have to be questioned

This book is the first study of how 'weird fiction' emerged from Victorian supernatural literature, abandoning the more conventional Gothic horrors of the past for the contemporary weird tale. It investigates the careers and fiction of a range of the British writers who inspired H. P. Lovecraft, such as Arthur Machen, M. P. Shiel, and John Buchan, to shed light on the tensions between 'literary' and 'genre' fiction that continue to this day. Weird Fiction in Britain 1880-1939 focuses on the key literary and cultural contexts of weird fiction of the period, including Decadence, paganism, and the occult, and discusses how these later impacted on the seminal American pulp magazine Weird Tales. This ground-breaking book will appeal to scholars of weird, horror and Gothic fiction, genre studies, Decadence, popular fiction, the occult, and Fin-de-Siècle cultural history

Among the numerous Malay writers of our time Shahnon Ahmad stands as one of the most famous. Several points can be mentioned in that respect. First, he has published fourteen novels in twenty-five years apart from dozens of short stories. One of his novels, Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan (translated into English under the title "No harvest but a thorn") is a household name in Malaysia as it has been for years a textbook for secondary school children. He has been awarded numerous literary distinctions such as Hadiah Sastera for his novel Srengenge (the sun) in 1973, Hadiah Pejuang Sastera (Prize for Literary Fighters) in 1976 and, finally in 1982, he was awarded the most prestigious literary award in Malaysia, i.e. Anugerah Sasterawan Negara which is the Writer Laureate Award and he was among the very first Malaysians to receive it. His most famous novel, Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan has been translated into several languages such as English, French, Dutch, Russian, Japanese and Danish. Dozens of articles have been written about him not only by Malaysian critics but also by foreigners. Finally several theses have been written on Shahnon Ahmad. So it appears that this writer is probably the most talked about author in Malaysia at present.

"This book presents a range of analytical responses towards 9/11 through a critical review of its literary, non-literary and cultural representations. It examines the ways in which this event has shaped and complicated the relationship between various national and religious identities in contemporary world history. Unlike earlier studies on the topic, this work reconciles both eclectic and pragmatic approaches by analyzing the stereotypes of nationhood and identities as also by questioning theoretical concepts in the context of latest political developments. The chapters focus on discourses, themes, imagery and symbolism from across fiction and non-fiction, films, art, music, and political movements. The volume addresses complexities arising within different local contexts (e.g., Hunza and state development); surveys broader frameworks in South Asia (representation of Muslims in Bollywood films); and gauges international impact (US drone attacks in Islamic countries; treatment meted out to Muslims in Europe). It also connects these with relevant theory (e.g., Orientalism) and policy perspectives (e.g. Patriotic Act). The authors further discuss consequences for minorities and marginalization, cultural relativism vs ethnocentrism, clash of civilizations, fundamentalism, Islamization and post-9/11 'Islamophobia'. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of South Asian literature, Islamic studies, literary criticism, political sociology, sociology and cultural studies, those in media and the interested general reader"--

In Informe contra mí mismo Eliseo Alberto appropriates and configures as literary genre the political informe that Cuba's socialist government has solicited from thousands of its citizens over the years. In Alberto's informe (originally "commissioned" by the Cuban government, but elaborated and marketed for the international literary community some twenty years later) the state ideological apparatus becomes, literally, the pre-text for a narrative of disillusionment. Alberto's text is more, however, than an instance of revisionist history, since the ambitious experimentation with narrative form and historiographical convention represents a serious inquiry into the nature of these discourses. Indeed, while the binaries of literature and history, poetry and politics, storytelling and argumentation structure the narrative, they are not resolved, ultimately, in favor of one term over the other, but rather performed and deconstructed. Informe contra mí mismo is published in a historical juncture in which Cuba appears to face just two choices, represented by the metanarratives of socialist revolution, on one hand, and of the inexorable globalization of capital, on the other. These choices, however, offer Cuba a national narrative either of protracted resistance to global capitalism under a totalitarian regime or of wholesale capitulation. Informe contra mí mismo begins to lay the discursive groundwork from which alternative

En Informe contra mí mismo Eliseo Alberto imagina de nuevo el "informe" que el régimen cubano le solicitara en los años setenta, convirtiendo el estratagema gubernamental en pleno género literario. Por lo tanto, el informe original representa, literalmente, el pre-texto para la narrativa de desengaño que en los años noventa el autor lanza al mercado internacional. El texto de Alberto es, sin embargo, mucho más que una instancia de historia revisionista, puesto que su innovador manejo de la forma literaria y de las normas historiográficas representa una profunda indagación retórica y epistemológica en estas prácticas discursivas. Por cierto, en vez de resolver a favor de un término u otro las consabidas dicotomías de literatura e historia, poesía y política, estética e ideología, Alberto indaga en las dicotomías mismas, llevando a cabo su deconstrucción. Informe contra mí mismo se edita en una coyuntura histórica en la que al parecer Cuba enfrenta dos posibilidades, representadas por las "metanarrativas" de revolución socialista y de la globalización capitalista-estadounidense. Estas metanarrativas, sin embargo, ofrecen a Cuba dos caminos derrotistas: el de una lucha perpetua contra el capitalismo global — bajo un régimen totalitario— o el de una capitulación absoluta ante el mismo fenómeno. Informe contra mí mismo representa nada menos que una contribución importante al proyecto discursivo del cual podrán surgir narrativas alternativas.

In 2005, the controversial novel We Need to TalkAbout Kevin by Lionel Shriver was published. It caused a major dispute, especially in the United States of America, since it addressed the sensitive issue of school shootings. Also shattering the last taboo of motherhood, as the British Telegraph putit, the novel tells the story of a mother who does not connect emotionally with her son and blames him for her failed career and marriage ("Controversial"). Although provocative in itself, it was the book's winning the "Women's Prize for Fiction" (WPfF) which acted as a catalyst for the controversy. Not only did the novel now reach a bigger audience, but the prize obviously rewarded authors writing about shocking topics. Awarded to women writers since 1996, the prize had already been controversial for years at the time of Shriver's win and once again proved to spark gender debates. Book Studies seems to be a good point of departure to discuss the WPfF and its controversies in an academic way. This discipline, once famously described as "interdisciplinarity run riot" (Darnton 67) nowadays engages in the production, distribution and reception of books, as well as with all possible influences, be they economic, political, sociocultural, religious or otherwise.

There is still-growing interest in narrative in the context of offender rehabilitation. Recent moves towards a 'narrative criminology' have referenced literary theory and the tools of literary criticism, and have demanded exchange with other disciplines. This article responds with an examination of how a humanities-informed literary critical analysis might complement and extend social science's understanding of narrative work with offenders. The article analyses how and to what effect literary fiction is used in prisons and probation. Against the broader background of findings from prison literature programmes, it offers an in-depth analysis of the work of the Berlin prison theatre company aufBruch, from a literary critical as well as a narrative criminological perspective. With reference to Maruna's notion of the 'redemption script' and more recent narrative criminology, as well as to literary and cognitive theory and experimental psychology, it is suggested that an understanding of how literary fiction 'works' may enhance the theory and practice of narrative work with offenders.

Through consideration of Bessie Head's fiction and essays, the paper that follows investigates Head's use of fiction to challenge the hegemony of South African history, a history that fails to represent black South Africans except as "objects of abuse and exploitation" (Head, A Woman Alone 66). The absence of a subject position in history for black South Africans betokens a need for critical reevaluation of the structures and language of that history. History should document and create a people's identity; however, Head contends that South African historical discourse has obliterated the historical identity of black South Africans. The imaginative freedom that fiction allows provides Head with a radical means for reinscribing an alternative historical identity. Through four interrelated sections, then, this paper describes and evaluates the way in which Head's works challenge existing historical discourse by working through literature to establish an alternative set of historical structures. The Botswana land, offers Head, a space for experimentation with writing styles that evade reproducing an account of historical oppression and also for the practical construction of a new world. This construction includes agricultural reform that would give power over the forces of production to the workers of the land and which would in turn provide these workers with both economic and spiritual independence. The novels, however, display an incongruous duality wherein the construction of Head's new world is interfered with by the dominating voice of South African history. Hence, the subject and the problem of the novels becomes a conflict for the authority of history. Head's efforts towards constructing a new world also seek to implement women as a primary labor force in both material and creative production, thereby further challenging a history that has rendered women as sexual commodities. The Collector of Treasures offers a culmination of this conflict. Here, Head offers a strategy of narrative fragmentation interrelated with a dialogic, multi-voiced discourse that dismantles the single-voiced structure of a history determined by the politics of repression. Fiction offers a freedom of structure and thought unavailable to the historian; therefore fiction transgresses the boundaries created by a repressive history and is able to establish an original and self-sustaining historical world.

Virginie Despentes has become one of France's most commercially successful and celebrated novelists. However, while the French press has often labelled Despentes' novels as crime fiction ('polars'), there has been little in-depth scholarly discussion of how her work engages and transforms the conventions of the genre. Studies of Despentes' queer/feminist themes and rhetoric would benefit from a more sustained attention to her ambivalent appropriations of the masculinist tropes of brutal crime fiction, and studies of French crime fiction would benefit from considering Despentes as key figure in the development of French queer/feminist crime fiction. Examining novels ranging from Baise-moi to Apocalypse bébé, this article argues for the interest in reading them as crime fiction, and notably as works that underline the risks that accompany efforts to rewire masculinist genres from within and orient them towards feminist and queer concerns.