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"Postsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Haomin Gong's dynamic study of these paradoxes, or "unevenness," provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production. He begins his investigation of "uneven modernity" in China by constructing a critical framework of unevenness among different theoretical schools and expounding on how dialectical thinking points to a metaphysical paradox in capitalism and modernity: the inevitable tension between a constant pursuit of infinite fullness and a break of fullness (unevenness) as the means of this pursuit. In the Chinese context, this paradox is created in the "uneven developmentalism" that most manifestly characterizes the postsocialist period. Gong goes on to investigate manifestations of the dialectics of unevenness in specific cultural events. Four case studies address respectively but not exclusively literature (the prose of Yu Qiuyu), popular fiction (Chi Li's neorealist fiction), commercial cinema (the movies of Feng Xiaogang), and art-house cinema (Wang Xiaoshuai's filmmaking). Representing different aspects of cultural production in postsocialist China, these writers and directors deal with the same social condition of uneven development, and their works clearly exhibit the problematics of this age. Uneven Modernity makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of China studies as well as the study of uneven development in general. It addresses some of the most popular, yet understudied, cultural phenomena in contemporary China. Specialists and students will find its insights admirable and its style accessible."--Project Muse

Der Verfasser untersucht die Widerstandsliteratur unter historischem, politischem und sozialem Aspekt hinsichtlich ihrer Kontinuität. Zunächst wird die historische Bedeutung des antifaschistischen Kampfes der KPD dargelegt. In der Literatur wurden die Stilmittel Camouflage und Sarkasmus zu Gunsten einer direkten alltäglichen Gebrauchslyrik in Form von Witzen, Parolen, Verballhornung von NS-Lyrik aufgegeben. Damit sollte die Bevölkerung zum Widerstand motiviert werden. Lieder und kleine Sketche werden als Manifestationen des Ringens von KZ-Häftlingen um die Erhaltung des Selbstbewußtseins gedeutet. Die literarische Arbeit des Bundes Proletarisch-Revolutionärer Schriftsteller, seine illegalen Produktionen werden dargestellt. Zeitschriften wie "Stimme aus Deutschland" sollten die Verbindung zum Exil aufrechterhalten. In Hinblick auf die literarische Form bemerkt der Verfasser, daß die Kontinuität über die Diskontinuität (Einbringung neuer ästhetischer Ausdruckskraft) dominiert. (RR)

This book tells the timely and much-needed story of the state's interest in supporting literary production in post-war Britain. Working with unexamined sources it charts the forgotten record of state sponsorship into conversation with Britain's transformation into a successful multicultural democracy.

AbstractThis article introduces the role of medievalisms in British and Anglophone children's fantasy literature since the 1950s, focusing on how these texts impact the development of national identity. Children's fantasy literature often contributes to a nationalistic tradition of nostalgia for the Middle Ages, glorifying and reproducing that period for contemporary readers by including medieval narratives and what Clare A. Simmons calls 'perceived codes of values', as well as the customary medievalised trappings: castles, knights, magicians, etc. However, in the face of globalisation, recent fantasy has begun to reflect changes in the British experience of itself and the outside world. The explosive popularity of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels and the subsequent rise of other new fantasy for children have placed these new forms of medievalism on a global stage through wide translation, spin‐off media and merchandise. This article is especially concerned with how these texts balance questions of racial and spatial relationships to establish insider identity for their young readers.

"Liminal periods in politics often serve as points in time when traditional methods and principles organizing society are disrupted. These periods of interregnum may not always result in complete social upheaval, but they do open the space to imagine social and political change in diverse forms. In 'Queering the Enlightenment: kinship and gender in eighteenth-century French literature', Tracy L. Rutler uncovers how numerous canonical authors of the 1730s and 1740s were imagining radically different ways of organizing the masses during the early years of Louis XV's reign. Through studies of the literature of Antoine-François Prévost, Claude Crébillon, Pierre de Marivaux, and Françoise de Graffigny among others, Rutler demonstrates how the heteronormative bourgeois family's rise to dominance in late-eighteenth-century France had long been contested within the fictional worlds of many French authors. The utopian impulses guiding the fiction studied in this book distinguish these authors as some of the most brilliant political theorists of the day. Enlightenment, for these authors, means reorienting one's relation to power by reorganizing their most intimate relations. Using a practice of reading queerly, Rutler shows how these works illuminate the unparalleled potential of queer forms of kinship to dismantle the patriarchy and help us imagine what might eventually take its place."--Page 4 of printed paper wrapper