Abstract:In Heshel's Kingdom, Dan Jacobson explores the impact of the British Empire's expansion on Lithuanian Jewry. His memoir constructs a "mattering map" of the experience of his family, after the death of his grandfather, Heshel. Like more than thirty thousand other Jews, the bereaved family moved to a welcoming South Africa.Heshel's Kingdom is a split/screen account, alternating between Kimberley, South Africa, and Varniai, Lithuania. Their juxtaposition leads Dan Jacobson to chart the experiences of two Jewish communities, and construct a narrative map of familial and communal life. This split/screen account is not symmetrical. For the South Africa narrative, the narrator relies on familial and personal history. But for Lithuania he must tease out information from absence, seeking bits and remnants of the murdered Lithuanian Jewish community in order to find a purchase on which to reconstruct life in his grandfather's Varniai, a small, Nazi-destroyed Lithuanian town.The narrator interrogates the images of the two communities: Jacobson addresses the jacket-cover photograph of grandfather Heshel as if it might speak to him, and thus help him discover details of the life of his Lithuanian grandfather, whom he never knew. Asking questions, Jacobson invites the reader to engage with him as if they were looking together at a family-album: familial-networks begin to emerge, and kinship relationships elaborate the family's life in South Africa; once activated the narrator can tease it into continuing the search for family experience. But the questions about Lithuania do not elicit much in the way of answers, for that Jewish community was destroyed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian helpers. Following the narrator's lead, the reader's imagination works to construct a comparative account both of the Jewish immigration to South Africa and the Jewish catastrophe in Lithuania, defining a "mattering map" of modern Jewish experience.
{"title":"Dan Jacobson's \"Mattering Map\": Heshel's Kingdom as a Split-Screen Family Album","authors":"M. Baumgarten","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In Heshel's Kingdom, Dan Jacobson explores the impact of the British Empire's expansion on Lithuanian Jewry. His memoir constructs a \"mattering map\" of the experience of his family, after the death of his grandfather, Heshel. Like more than thirty thousand other Jews, the bereaved family moved to a welcoming South Africa.Heshel's Kingdom is a split/screen account, alternating between Kimberley, South Africa, and Varniai, Lithuania. Their juxtaposition leads Dan Jacobson to chart the experiences of two Jewish communities, and construct a narrative map of familial and communal life. This split/screen account is not symmetrical. For the South Africa narrative, the narrator relies on familial and personal history. But for Lithuania he must tease out information from absence, seeking bits and remnants of the murdered Lithuanian Jewish community in order to find a purchase on which to reconstruct life in his grandfather's Varniai, a small, Nazi-destroyed Lithuanian town.The narrator interrogates the images of the two communities: Jacobson addresses the jacket-cover photograph of grandfather Heshel as if it might speak to him, and thus help him discover details of the life of his Lithuanian grandfather, whom he never knew. Asking questions, Jacobson invites the reader to engage with him as if they were looking together at a family-album: familial-networks begin to emerge, and kinship relationships elaborate the family's life in South Africa; once activated the narrator can tease it into continuing the search for family experience. But the questions about Lithuania do not elicit much in the way of answers, for that Jewish community was destroyed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian helpers. Following the narrator's lead, the reader's imagination works to construct a comparative account both of the Jewish immigration to South Africa and the Jewish catastrophe in Lithuania, defining a \"mattering map\" of modern Jewish experience.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"18 1","pages":"349 - 359"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74382544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:According to Vladimir Nabokov, exactness of detail in the composition and the reading of literary texts can yield "the sensual spark without which the book is dead": one needs, for instance, to understand the topography of Mansfield Park in order to respond to Austen's "stereographic charm." Speaking after Stuart Gilbert's chart of the episodes of Joyce's Ulysses but before Gifford and Seidman's maps in Ulysses Annotated, Nabokov protested against "the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings" and advised careful readers to "prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom's and Stephen's intertwining itineraries clearly traced." Nabokov himself draws maps in his (posthumously published) lecture notes of the 1950s. This paper comments on the "stereographic" implications of his maps and then turns to Nabokov's biography of Pushkin's African great grandfather. Studying the possible origins of Abram Gannibal, Nabokov reads maps of Ethiopia. Though his essay is largely a matter of the critique of sources, the course of Ethiopian river-beds seems to give him "the sensual spark" which, despite his vexed insistence on the literal in Ulysses, follows Joyce's novel in understated transmutation of stereographic detail into symbolism.
{"title":"Literary Stereography: Nabokov Drawing and Reading Maps","authors":"Leona Toker","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:According to Vladimir Nabokov, exactness of detail in the composition and the reading of literary texts can yield \"the sensual spark without which the book is dead\": one needs, for instance, to understand the topography of Mansfield Park in order to respond to Austen's \"stereographic charm.\" Speaking after Stuart Gilbert's chart of the episodes of Joyce's Ulysses but before Gifford and Seidman's maps in Ulysses Annotated, Nabokov protested against \"the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings\" and advised careful readers to \"prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom's and Stephen's intertwining itineraries clearly traced.\" Nabokov himself draws maps in his (posthumously published) lecture notes of the 1950s. This paper comments on the \"stereographic\" implications of his maps and then turns to Nabokov's biography of Pushkin's African great grandfather. Studying the possible origins of Abram Gannibal, Nabokov reads maps of Ethiopia. Though his essay is largely a matter of the critique of sources, the course of Ethiopian river-beds seems to give him \"the sensual spark\" which, despite his vexed insistence on the literal in Ulysses, follows Joyce's novel in understated transmutation of stereographic detail into symbolism.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"15 1","pages":"361 - 369"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79527391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Joseph Conrad: Slow Modernism by Yael Levin (review)","authors":"Richard J. Ruppel","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0024","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"1 1","pages":"383 - 386"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88643791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Worlds Enough: The Invention of Realism in the Victorian Novel by Elaine Freedgood (review)","authors":"Noa Reich","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"25 1","pages":"375 - 379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87857624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay investigates several instances of travel writing in the Dickens weekly magazines, Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1859–1895), that make use of the common Victorian phrase "At Home" in their titles, particularly "At Home at Tehran" (1862), "At Home in Siam" (1857), "Mrs. Mohammed Bey 'at Home'" (1862), and "The Japanese at Home" (1862). Some of these articles illustrate the British making themselves "at home" in the world, while others purport to provide an exotic glimpse into the domestic lives of others abroad. The variety of these articles' topics and settings offer to map the imperial world for the armchair reader "at home" in Britain, yet the articles themselves are limited by Dickens's editorial preferences for collective authorship and a humorous tone, which flatten the very cultural distinctions that the travel writing genre promises to illuminate. It is argued that the periodicals' emphasis on Dickensian humor often results in the ridicule of other countries' domestic behavior, thereby contributing to the popular Victorian perception of British domesticity as superior to that of the rest of the world.
{"title":"Mapping Domesticity \"At Home\" and Abroad in the Travel Writing of Dickens's Household Words and All the Year Round","authors":"J. Durgan","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay investigates several instances of travel writing in the Dickens weekly magazines, Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1859–1895), that make use of the common Victorian phrase \"At Home\" in their titles, particularly \"At Home at Tehran\" (1862), \"At Home in Siam\" (1857), \"Mrs. Mohammed Bey 'at Home'\" (1862), and \"The Japanese at Home\" (1862). Some of these articles illustrate the British making themselves \"at home\" in the world, while others purport to provide an exotic glimpse into the domestic lives of others abroad. The variety of these articles' topics and settings offer to map the imperial world for the armchair reader \"at home\" in Britain, yet the articles themselves are limited by Dickens's editorial preferences for collective authorship and a humorous tone, which flatten the very cultural distinctions that the travel writing genre promises to illuminate. It is argued that the periodicals' emphasis on Dickensian humor often results in the ridicule of other countries' domestic behavior, thereby contributing to the popular Victorian perception of British domesticity as superior to that of the rest of the world.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"68 1","pages":"259 - 280"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83189048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Mary Seacole's memoir Wonderful Adventures is recognized for its negotiation of various genres of Victorian writing, including autobiography, travel writing, the slave narrative, and a burgeoning Caribbean tradition of letters. It is a text which is usually interpreted through conventions of Empire, or through the lens of Postcolonial studies. Attempting to bridge this either/or approach, this article focuses on Seacole's construction of narrative commonalities: I ask, why would a woman so clearly bent on defying the limitations placed on her by gender and race, and whose achievements appear so exceptionally individual, undergird her narrative with constant references to collective identities—often in their most stereotypical abstractions? To answer this question, I engage in close readings that explore the tension between the typical and the specific though Seacole's use of terminology, focalization and passive voice, and the repeated use of antiphonal structures such as an AAB pattern. I show how Seacole's self-representation, and her reference to black communities and individuals, draw on trickster sensibilities, thus expanding previous readings of her text that consider her either subversive or complicit in the imperial project. I suggest that Seacole injects Jamaican and black Atlantic sensibilities into her text, even as she uses Victorian rhetorical devices, making the two traditions complementary—as they seem to be in her life.
{"title":"\"I Am a Creole and Have Good Scotch Blood\": Constructing Commonality in Mary Seacole's Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands","authors":"Ruth S. Wenske","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Mary Seacole's memoir Wonderful Adventures is recognized for its negotiation of various genres of Victorian writing, including autobiography, travel writing, the slave narrative, and a burgeoning Caribbean tradition of letters. It is a text which is usually interpreted through conventions of Empire, or through the lens of Postcolonial studies. Attempting to bridge this either/or approach, this article focuses on Seacole's construction of narrative commonalities: I ask, why would a woman so clearly bent on defying the limitations placed on her by gender and race, and whose achievements appear so exceptionally individual, undergird her narrative with constant references to collective identities—often in their most stereotypical abstractions? To answer this question, I engage in close readings that explore the tension between the typical and the specific though Seacole's use of terminology, focalization and passive voice, and the repeated use of antiphonal structures such as an AAB pattern. I show how Seacole's self-representation, and her reference to black communities and individuals, draw on trickster sensibilities, thus expanding previous readings of her text that consider her either subversive or complicit in the imperial project. I suggest that Seacole injects Jamaican and black Atlantic sensibilities into her text, even as she uses Victorian rhetorical devices, making the two traditions complementary—as they seem to be in her life.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"31 1","pages":"281 - 303"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84518052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The article focuses on the presence of China—its citizens, its culture—on the map of London during the Victorian age, and on the role Dickens played in locating and describing such space in the eastern part of the great metropolis and hub of the Empire. There is a mirroring between London and Canton, a curious coincidence of toponyms, suggestive of an ambiguous cultural interface.This ambivalence is associated with the victorious wars waged by England against China in order to retain the monopoly on opium trade. The intercourse between the two nations is moulded by Dickens and his contemporary journalists in ways that suggest hegemony, conflict, otherness, and the perils of miscegenation. The small Chinese community of Limehouse becomes part and target of sensational journalism and urban tourism, producing descriptions that include shades of grotesque steeped in exoticism. Opium dens are the targets of such descriptions—fear and fascination colour the spaces represented in a way that increases indeterminacy.The article dwells on the map of China, as in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis trilogy set against the China–Bengal relationship (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Flood of Fire), as well as on the map of London, especially the Limehouse area, close to the West India and East India docks. This part of London would acquire specific coloration during the Victorian age, owing, among others, to Dickens's role in describing its cultural geography.
{"title":"East Is East: Mapping China in Dickensian London","authors":"F. Orestano","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The article focuses on the presence of China—its citizens, its culture—on the map of London during the Victorian age, and on the role Dickens played in locating and describing such space in the eastern part of the great metropolis and hub of the Empire. There is a mirroring between London and Canton, a curious coincidence of toponyms, suggestive of an ambiguous cultural interface.This ambivalence is associated with the victorious wars waged by England against China in order to retain the monopoly on opium trade. The intercourse between the two nations is moulded by Dickens and his contemporary journalists in ways that suggest hegemony, conflict, otherness, and the perils of miscegenation. The small Chinese community of Limehouse becomes part and target of sensational journalism and urban tourism, producing descriptions that include shades of grotesque steeped in exoticism. Opium dens are the targets of such descriptions—fear and fascination colour the spaces represented in a way that increases indeterminacy.The article dwells on the map of China, as in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis trilogy set against the China–Bengal relationship (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Flood of Fire), as well as on the map of London, especially the Limehouse area, close to the West India and East India docks. This part of London would acquire specific coloration during the Victorian age, owing, among others, to Dickens's role in describing its cultural geography.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"1952 1","pages":"237 - 257"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87767003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens ed. Robert L. Patten, John O. Jordan, and Catherine Waters (review)","authors":"Iain Crawford","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"19 1","pages":"379 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81843705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"British India and Victorian Literary Culture by Máire ní Fhlathúin (review)","authors":"Jingxuan Yi","doi":"10.1353/PAN.2021.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAN.2021.0025","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"2 1","pages":"387 - 390"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82530047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article argues that Oscar Wilde's work employs location to blur the Victorian sense of morality. After surveying Victorian mapping practices as they relate to Wilde and ideas of moral topography, and defining Wilde's interest in and flaunting of realism, the article shows how Wilde's more specifically placed texts blur moral boundaries, while morally explicit texts provide only a vague sense of place.
{"title":"Lines in the London Fog: Oscar Wilde, Place, and Moral Transgression","authors":"Kees de Vries","doi":"10.1353/pan.2021.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pan.2021.0018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that Oscar Wilde's work employs location to blur the Victorian sense of morality. After surveying Victorian mapping practices as they relate to Wilde and ideas of moral topography, and defining Wilde's interest in and flaunting of realism, the article shows how Wilde's more specifically placed texts blur moral boundaries, while morally explicit texts provide only a vague sense of place.","PeriodicalId":42435,"journal":{"name":"Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas","volume":"4 1","pages":"331 - 348"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85292795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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