Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.10
P. Hayward
The 1984 feature film Splash initially included a scene featuring an embittered, older mermaid (referred to as the “Merhag” or “Sea-Hag” by the production team) that was deleted before the final version premiered. Since that excision, the older mermaid and the scene she appeared in have been recreated by fans and the mer/sea-hag has come to comprise a minor element in contemporary online culture. The term “Merhag,” in particular, has also spread beyond the film, being taken up in fantasy fiction and being used—allusively and often pejoratively—to describe notional and actual female characters. Drawing on Mary Daly’s 1978 exploration of supressed female experiences and perspectives, this essay first examines Splash and associated texts with regard to the general figure of the hag in western culture (and with regard to negative, ageist perceptions of the ageing female), before discussing the use of “Merhag” and “Sea-Hag” as allusive pejoratives and the manner in which their negative connotations have been countered.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.24
Chhandita Das, P. Tripathi
Literary renditions of cities have always gravitated towards the spatial imagination and its ethical counterpart outside the textual space. This paper explores the multicultural geography of the North Indian city Allahabad (recently renamed Prayagraj) observed through Neelum Saran Gour’s postcolonial narratives Allahabad Aria and Invisible Ink, projecting the narrative alignment of spatial aesthetics and cultural ethics. Interrogating the spatial dimensions of a “narrative world” within narrative theory (Ryan) and its interdisciplinary crossover with cultural geography (Sauer; Mitchell; Anderson et al.), the article seeks to examine Gour’s literary city not simply as an objective homogeneous representation, but as a “kshetra” of spatio-cultural cosmos of lived traditions, memories, experiences and collective attitudes of its people, in the context of E. V. Ramakrishnan’s theoretical reflections. The article proposes new possibilities of adapting the Indian concept “kshetra” to spatial literary studies; its aim is also to suggest a new source of knowledge about the city of Allahabad through a community introspection of “doing culture” in the texts, bringing into view people’s shared experiences, beliefs, religious practices and traditions as offshoots of the postcolonial ethos. The article aims to re-contextualize the city’s longstanding multicultural ethics in the contemporary times of crisis, which may affect a shift in the city’s relevance: from regional concern to large-scale significance within ethnically diverse South Asian countries and beyond.
城市的文学再现总是倾向于空间想象及其文本空间之外的伦理对应物。本文通过Neelum Saran Gour的后殖民叙事《Allahabad Aria》和《Invisible Ink》，探讨了印度北部城市阿拉哈巴德(最近更名为Prayagraj)的多元文化地理，突出了空间美学和文化伦理的叙事一致性。在叙事理论(Ryan)及其与文化地理学(Sauer)的跨学科交叉中对“叙事世界”的空间维度的质疑;米切尔;Anderson等人)，本文试图在E. V. Ramakrishnan理论反思的背景下，将你的文学城市不仅仅作为一个客观的同质表现，而是作为一个由生活传统、记忆、经验和人民集体态度组成的空间文化宇宙的“kshetra”来审视。本文提出了将印度“kshetra”概念引入空间文学研究的新可能性;它的目的也是通过对文本中“做文化”的社区反思，提出关于阿拉哈巴德市的新知识来源，将人们的共同经历、信仰、宗教习俗和传统视为后殖民精神的分支。这篇文章的目的是在当代危机时期重新审视这座城市长期以来的多元文化伦理，这可能会影响这座城市相关性的转变:从区域性关注到在种族多样化的南亚国家及其他地区的大规模意义。
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.21
A. Wicher
Some influence of Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale, also known as the story of the patient Griselda, on Shakespeare, and particularly on The Winter’s Tale, has long been recognized. It seems, however, that the matter deserves further attention because the echoes of The Clerk’s Tale seem scattered among a number of Shakespeare’s plays, especially the later ones. The experimental nature of this phenomenon consists in the fact that Griselda-like characters do not strike the reader, especially perhaps the Renaissance reader, as good protagonists of a tragedy, or even a problem comedy. The Aristotelian conception of the tragic hero does not seem to fit Griselda because there is no “tragic fault” in her: she is completely innocent. It was thus a bold decision on the part of Shakespeare to use this archetype as a corner stone of at least some of his plays.
{"title":"Griselda’s Afterlife, or the Relationship between Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale and the Tale of Magic","authors":"A. Wicher","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.11.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.11.21","url":null,"abstract":"Some influence of Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale, also known as the story of the patient Griselda, on Shakespeare, and particularly on The Winter’s Tale, has long been recognized. It seems, however, that the matter deserves further attention because the echoes of The Clerk’s Tale seem scattered among a number of Shakespeare’s plays, especially the later ones. The experimental nature of this phenomenon consists in the fact that Griselda-like characters do not strike the reader, especially perhaps the Renaissance reader, as good protagonists of a tragedy, or even a problem comedy. The Aristotelian conception of the tragic hero does not seem to fit Griselda because there is no “tragic fault” in her: she is completely innocent. It was thus a bold decision on the part of Shakespeare to use this archetype as a corner stone of at least some of his plays.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84876822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.08
Anna Reglińska-Jemioł
The article discusses the evolving image of female characters in the Mad Max saga directed by George Miller, focusing on Furiosa’s rebellion in the last film—Mad Max: Fury Road. Interestingly, studying Miller’s post-apocalyptic action films, we can observe the evolution of this post-apocalyptic vision from the male-dominated world with civilization collapsing into chaotic violence visualized in the previous series to a more hopeful future created by women in the last part of the saga: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). We observe female heroes: the vengeful Furiosa, the protector of oppressed girls and sex slaves, the women of the separatist clan, and the wives of the warlord, who bring down the tyranny and create a new “green place.” It is worth emphasizing that the plot casts female solidarity in the central heroic role. In fact, the Mad Max saga emerges as a piece of socially engaged cinema preoccupied with the cultural context of gender discourse. Noticeably, media commentators, scholars and activists have suggested that Fury Road is a feminist film.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.26
D. Punter
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.05
R. Bartnik
This paper aims to present the main contours of Burns’s literary output which, interestingly enough, grows into a personal understanding of the collective mindset of (post)-Troubles Northern Ireland. It is legitimate, I argue, to construe her fiction (No Bones, 2001; Little Constructions, 2007; Milkman, 2018) as a body of work shedding light on certain underlying mechanisms of (post-)sectarian violence. Notwithstanding the lapse of time between 1998 and 2020, the Troubles’ toxic legacy has indeed woven an unbroken thread in the social fabric of the region. My reading of the novelist’s selected works intends to show how the local public have been fed by (or have fed themselves upon) an unjustified—maybe even false—sense of security. Burns, in that regard, has positioned herself amongst the aggregate of writers who feel anxious rather than placated, hence their persistence in returning to the roots of Northern Irish societal divisions. Burns’s writing, in the above context, though immersed in the world of the Troubles, paradoxically communicates “an idiosyncratic spatiotemporality” (Maureen Ruprecht Fadem’s phrase), namely an experience beyond the self-imposing, historical time limits. As such, it gains the ability to provide insightful commentaries on conflict-prone relations, the patterns of which can be repeatedly observed in Northern Ireland’s socio-political milieu. Overall, the main idea here is to discuss and present the narrative realm proposed by Burns as (in)determinate, liminal in terms of time and space, positioning readers between “then” and “now” of the region.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.02
L. Gearon
Literature is a lie which seeks to tell a truth. Espionage is a trade dependent on deceit. Where the two professions meet, the dissembling knows no limit (Gearon, “A Landscape of Lies in the Land of Letters”). John le Carré, the nom-de-plume of the late David Cornwell (1931–2020), reflected more than any novelist of our time on the interface of literature and security. In his case, that was a life lived in service, to the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and the Security Services, MI5, and a life lived, too, in the service of literature. The author stated: “I’m a liar, born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist” (Sisman 1). In The Pigeon Tunnel, le Carré aptly characterizes his autobiography as “stories from my life,” the subtitle of his work. It is a narrative in which the dual worlds of security and secret intelligence are inseparable from his love of and dedication to writing; there is little or no separation from his life and his art. Born in 1931 and educated in the English public-school system he was a patriotic schoolboy during the Second World War. Skilled at languages and loving literature, he left England, as he himself admits, to escape a difficult relationship with his father, and to study modern languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland. It was there, as his autobiography details, that a dedicated patriot developed an intense love of all literatures, especially German. David Cornwell’s national service as part of the British Army’s Intelligence Corps was put to good use in the interrogation of those who crossed from the other side of what was now called the Iron Curtain to where he was stationed in Allied-occupied Austria. Vienna, in the early period of the Cold War, was the crossroads of intelligence. Look simply to the novels of the time by Graham Greene above all to see the spies on those streets. Completing his National Service, David Cornwell returned to England, and Oxford, in 1952, at an age when today he would be called a mature student, at Lincoln College. His unofficial and covert duties Text Matters, Number 11, 2021 https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.11.02
文学是一种试图讲述真理的谎言。间谍是一种依靠欺骗的行当。在这两种职业相遇的地方，掩饰是没有止境的(Gearon，“文学之国的谎言景观”)。已故作家大卫·康威尔(David Cornwell, 1931-2020)的笔名约翰·勒·卡罗(John le carr)比我们这个时代的任何小说家都更能反映文学与安全之间的关系。就他而言，他的一生都在为英国秘密情报局(MI6)和安全部门(MI5)服务，他的一生也都在为文学服务。作者说:“我是个骗子，生来就会撒谎，从小就会撒谎，被一个以撒谎为生的行业训练得会撒谎，并以小说家的身份在这个行业中实践”(《西斯曼1》)。在《鸽子隧道》中，勒·卡罗莱贴切地将他的自传描述为“我生活中的故事”，这是他作品的副标题。在这个叙事中，安全和秘密情报的双重世界与他对写作的热爱和奉献是分不开的;他的生活和他的艺术几乎没有什么区别。他出生于1931年，在英国公立学校接受教育，在第二次世界大战期间是一名爱国学生。他精通语言，热爱文学，正如他自己承认的那样，为了摆脱与父亲的紧张关系，他离开了英国，前往瑞士伯尔尼大学学习现代语言。正如他的自传所详述的那样，正是在那里，一个忠诚的爱国者对所有文学，尤其是德语文学产生了强烈的热爱。大卫·康威尔(David Cornwell)作为英国陆军情报部队的一员，在审讯那些从现在被称为铁幕的另一边穿越到他驻扎在盟军占领的奥地利的人时，发挥了很好的作用。在冷战初期，维也纳是情报的十字路口。只要看看格雷厄姆·格林(Graham Greene)当时的小说，就会发现街上的间谍。在服完兵役后，大卫·康威尔于1952年回到了英国和牛津，当时他已经是林肯学院的一名成年学生了。他的非官方和秘密职责短信问题，2021年11号https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.11.02
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.09
L. Zdunkiewicz
Patricia Highsmith’s stated reason for writing The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) was to see if she could elicit empathetic engagement for her immoral protagonist Tom Ripley. Amongst other factors, she achieves her goal by allowing readers to align affectively with the protagonist’s road to self-discovery. Her experiment culminates with Tom’s fruition into an aggressive consumer, thus resolving his and the readers’ apprehensions. On the other hand, Anthony Minghella’s Ripley leaves more room for interpretation. In his interviews, the filmmaker states that he does not aim for his protagonist to remain the sociopath from Highsmith’s novel. Instead, his story explores the absence of a father figure and how it affects his main characters. Consequently, he frames Tom as an underprivileged youth whose emotional instability brings about his demise. To this end, he employs victimization scenes, as well as moral disengagement cues. I argue that, amongst other factors, such an application of an industry-tested design of emphatic concern elicitation obscures the filmmaker’s initial intent. As a result, Minghella’s Tom can be seen as a manipulative sociopath, as well as a victimized tragic hero.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.29
P. Morawski
Much has been written about commedia dell’arte over the years, and Natalie Crohn Schmitt’s 2019 publication provides evidence of that. What one could call an impressive bibliography occupies a large part of an otherwise not very comprehensive book. It would seem, then, that the primary purpose of Performing Commedia dell’Arte, 1570–1630, a book which received the 2020 Ennio Flaiano Award in Italian Culture, is to present the existing state of knowledge rather than to put forward new theses on one of the most widespread theatrical genres in Italian (and not only Italian) culture and, above all, in theatre studies worldwide. This is not the first time that the author—an experienced researcher working at the University of Illinois, Chicago—has tackled commedia dell’arte. Published in 2014, Schmitt’s Befriending the Commedia dell’Arte of Flaminio Scala: The Comic Scenarios was devoted to a collection of old prints documenting the title scenarios. She went on to present source material that is fundamental to understanding the genre, which she brilliantly analyzed. The book raised the interest of researchers and was discussed in the most important specialist journals.1 It was undoubtedly a great contribution to the field of theatre studies. It is difficult to discuss Performing Commedia dell’Arte, 1570–1630 without referring to the author’s previous book. It is a kind of an appendix to, or perhaps a more popular version of, her history of dell’arte, intended for less specialized readers. Although Schmitt also frequently refers to Flaminio Scala’s scripts, she places her story of dell’arte in the broad context of cultural and literary studies. In fact, she has written a book about the contemporary establishment of dell’arte rather than the traditional historical narrative.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.11.28
M. Tardi
In a year punctuated by the global catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic and various other social upheavals, Don DeLillo published his seventeenth novel, The Silence, which––in many respects—can be read as a kind of coda. Novelist Rachel Kushner observes on the jacket blurb that “The Silence seems to absorb DeLillo’s entire body of work and sand it into stone or crystal,” and the book certainly distills many of the prevailing concerns in DeLillo’s previous books: technology and the inherent dangers in its global interconnectedness (Players, Cosmopolis); the compulsive allure of the screen (Running Dog, Libra, Point Omega, Zero K); consciousnessshaping communal experiences (White Noise, Mao II, Falling Man); language as a near-mystical, impenetrable socio-historical meditation (Ratner’s Star, The Names), and sports as a defining cultural moment (End Zone, Underworld). To varying degrees, all of these issues are at play within the narrative of The Silence. The book could also be seen as the third movement of a postUnderworld trio of novellas starting with The Body Artist, followed by Point Omega, and now The Silence, with each book serving as a reflection or extended meditation on the corporeality of grief (The Body Artist), when the concept of a “haiku war” collides with familial loss (Point Omega), and when people are enveloped in the immanence of a global event just beginning to take shape (The Silence). In the case of the latter, the result is a novella of fractures, what occurs off-screen or out of the frame, as the narrative momentum is propelled more by the elisions of the unsaid or undescribed, the “unknown known,” to borrow from former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s (in)famous memo, than by clearly delineated plot points. The action of the novel, minimal though it might be, centers on a seemingly global event, which appears to disable all technology––and Text Matters, Number 11, 2021 https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.11.28
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