Suchergebnisse

Gagne reviews BLOOD NARRATIVE: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts by Chadwick Allen.

Reflects on Cao Zueqin's novel, Honglou Meng, which is considered a "literary monument" & national treasure by Chinese readers. It is noted that the lengthy book, known in Western translation as both Dream of the Red Chamber & Story of the Stone, follows the lives of the extended Jia clan as it experiences a gradual loss of its fortunes. Although there is basically no plot & very little conflict, the story's significance has been related to the internal aesthetics of the text as well as its picture of the historical & cultural context of China at the peak of its power & glory. The richness of the vivid descriptions of old China during the 18th-century reign of the Manchu emperor is pointed out, along with Zueqin's brilliant presentation of everyday life; extraordinary degree of textual density; & superb manipulation of narrative rhetoric. Attention is also given to the architectonic symmetries of the novel's design & the multi-layered quality of the text. The allegorical nature of the seemingly mundane story is discussed. J. Lindroth

A review essay on books by (1) Abdul Rasheed Na'Allah (Ed), Ogoni's Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998); (2) Onookome Okome (Ed), Before I Am Hanged: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Literature, Politics and Dissent (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000); (3) Craig W. McLuckie & Aubrey McPhail (Eds), Ken Saro-Wiwa: Writer and Political Activist (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000); & (4) Femi Ojo-Ade, Ken Saro-Wiwa: A Bio-Critical Study (New York: Africana Legacy Press, 1999). These four texts examine the legacy of Nigerian author & political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Even though the four texts tend to compartmentalize the multiple aspects of Saro-Wiwa's life, they are praised for demonstrating the connections between these disparate components of Saro-Wiwa's life, especially the relationship between his literature, political activism, & business prowess. Saro-Wiwa's philosophy that literature addressing the injustices experienced by marginalized groups should be taken "to the streets" is discussed. It is contended that the four books demonstrate that Saro-Wiwa's sarcasm was primarily directed at Nigerian society rather than the nation's elites. The respective texts are praised for critiquing Saro-Wiwa's works from a critical perspective; specific attention is directed toward his memoir On a Darkling Plain: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War & his vision for humankind. It is concluded that an anthology of Saro-Wiwa's works is needed & that additional developments in the Niger River delta since his execution in 1995 require critical attention. J. W. Parker

Der Autor untersucht die Verbreitung moderner Texte in Palästina vor der Aufhebung der Zensur 1908, nach der zahlreiche Zeitungen und Zeitschriften gegründet wurden und das kulturelle Leben generell aufblühte. Im Einzelnen informiert er über die damals in der Region vorhandenen Bibliotheken, privater und religiöser Art, die Abonnenten von Zeitschriften und Zeitungen aus dem Libanon und aus Ägypten und die Verfasser von Leserbriefen, die in diesen publiziert wurden. Dabei wird deutlich, dass eine lesende Elite in ganz Palästina existierte, diese sich zahlenmäßig nicht sonderlich von den Eliten in Syrien und Irak unterschied, im Vergleich zum Libanon und zu Ägypten aber gering ausfiel. (DÜI-Mjr)

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 narratives might emerge. (Cuban Stud/DÜI)

Examines the "interpretive turn" in legal philosophy based on the premise that statutes & constitutions are texts, & that literary interpretation may enhance legal interpretation. Theoretical positions on legal interpretation include intentionalist, textualist, value-maximizing, historical, neopragmatist, & critical. Intentionalism is first examined, since it is used in most interpretive theories of law. Next, its two main rivals in analytic jurisprudence, textualism & value-maximization are studied. The three approaches from the continental tradition, historical, pragmatist, & critical theories of interpretation, are then examined. The many eligible interpretations of a literary text do not result in a single authoritative or correct interpretation; & therefore, the adequacy of theory interpretation should be based on its satisfactory answer to the question of indeterminacy & authority. 102 References. L. A. Hoffman

The poetry of Saint John Perse, although it has fallen into obscurity, is revived in a case study in what is being called world literature. The author maps the vicissitudes of Perse's epic Anabase in order to reconsider the origins of a conceptual framework for world literature based on the "spiritual economy" in which translators are key actors. The great deal of international currency given to Anabase places the poem at the very origins of a growing debate about the nature of internationalism, & provides a lingua franca to evaluate the tensions between irrational forces & rational organization in modern poetics. Analysis of the poem identifies the theme of a spiritual economy to be realized in the material of poetry, & the suggestion of a form a world of poetry that joins diffuse national literatures to the totality of the world's literary production. T.S. Eliot's translation highlights the tension between the uses of myth & the solutions to the "anarchy in contemporary history" that draws on the mythic voice structures as the ordering principle as in Frazers' Golden Bough. Benjamin translation withholds a reading of origins, & rather locates translation itself is an epistemological method for gesturing towards original kinship. If translators are primary actors in the divulgation of world literary texts, Anabase leads to the contrary conclusions of how can a world literary text be brokered by translation and predictable marketplaces and ideas when translations by giants of 20th century literature are fraught by circumstance, or remain under lock and key? References. J. Harwell

In Cuba, race, nation, and popular music were inextricably linked to the earliest formulations of a national identity. This article examines how the racialized discourse of blanqueamiento, or whitening, became part of a nineteenth-century literary narrative in which the casi blanca mulata, nearly white mulatta, was seen as a vehicle for whitening black Cubans. However, as the novels of Cirilo Villaverde and Ramón Meza reveal, the mulata's inability to produce entirely white children established the ultimate unattainability of whiteness by nonwhites. This article analyzes the fluidity of these racial constructs and demonstrates that, while these literary texts advocated the lightening of the nation's complexion over time, they also mapped the progressive "darkening" of Cuban music as popular culture continued to borrow from black music. (Cuba Stud / GIGA)

Richard Weisberg returns to the origins of the American law and literature movement by the democratic impulse of two authors of the beginning of the 20th century, Dean John Henry Wigmore and Judge Benjamin Cardoza; he subsequently describes the variants that are emerging today on the European continent. The central legal understanding of the law for its practitioners, as well as for laypeople, is the literary text itself. The stories of judges, the rules of law, lawyers, and political authorities habituate the professional reader to the "human comedy" with which he or she must deal each day, and pushes the reader to be more attentive to the discourse of authority. A scrupulous reading of the two classic works of law and literature (Camus' The Stranger, and Herman Melville's Billy Budd) permits the demonstration of the methodology of this new interdisciplinary field. Adapted from the source document.

Considers the relationship of Peter Szondi's reading of the Austrian poet & playwright Hugo von Hoffmannsthal in relation to an earlier essay on the early romanticist Friedrich Schlegel. Analysis of the connection between the two figures finds that Hoffmannsthal's poetics resembles the concept of romantic irony & simultaneously modifies it. Szondi distinguishes between the two romanticists in Hoffmannsthal's continuously unfolding text that is countered by Schlegel's constant push of text into the future. The opposition between the two poets derives from where they locate spirit. Szondi relates the disparate works in echo of a subject no longer present that is heard by the readers. References. J. Harwell

The translator -- unlike the mere reader or even the literary critic -- has to direct his attention to every single word of a text. By his very nature, he brings to light from his worm's eye view "technical" details which otherwise are easily overlooked. With Shalamov, who consciously uses a limited array of instruments for his Kolyma Tales, this view of how the text works & of course the way Russian & German languages differ shows how strongly the effect of the tales depends on decisions concerning small details -- be it a cadence, a pause, a tense, or word choice. Adapted from the source document.