Pub Date : 2021-11-24DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2005514
Hawk Chang
As a Nigerian writer of fiction in English, Chinua Achebe is well known for articulating an African identity that is distinguishable from colonizers’ constructions, partly because relevant studies have historically been dominated by white voices and have muffled or excluded those of local people (Daniels 68). According to Philip Whyte, “Achebe’s explicitly pedagogical aim was to provide a narrative of African (more specifically Igbo) history from the inside to counter the representation previously monopolized by Western outsiders” (12). Robert L. Ross argues that Achebe’s writing often chronicles “Nigeria’s experience with colonialism” through “an African viewpoint” (23). However, it is an oversimplification to assert that Achebe is blind to some positive aspects of colonial legacies, as political science scholar Bruce Gilley contended in his analysis of Achebe’s prose work There Was a Country: A Profound History of Biafra (646–47). Overall, Achebe is a pragmatist who is committed to reinvigorating the indigenous culture in the colonial context, simultaneously maintaining awareness of the complicated legacy of colonization. A distinct emphasis on the indigenous identity is evidenced in Achebe’s works Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), and Arrow of God (1964), which Achebe critics such as Neena Gandhi (60–62) and Simon Gikandi (31–34) have highlighted. Similar expression of a curiously African identity is evident in Achebe’s short story “The Sacrificial Egg” (1962), which tells of the transformation of Umuru from an idyllic village to a commercial port under the influence of colonization. Achebe’s criticism of colonialism is clear in many of his works, and the co-existence of local and Western ways of life in this particular story does not promote the integration of different cultural values. Rather, this short piece features Julius Obi, the male protagonist, and his spiritual journey as he transitions from a self-important, well-educated elitist who despises his own culture to a man of humility who pays great respect to African traditions and cultural values. This echoes Alassane Abdoulaye Dia’s argument that, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005514
作为一名尼日利亚英语小说作家，Chinua Achebe以清晰地表达非洲人的身份而闻名，这种身份与殖民者的建构截然不同，部分原因是相关研究在历史上一直由白人的声音主导，掩盖或排除了当地人的声音(Daniels 68)。根据菲利普·怀特(Philip Whyte)的说法，“阿奇贝明确的教学目标是从内部提供非洲(更具体地说是伊博人)历史的叙述，以对抗以前被西方局外人垄断的再现”(12)。罗伯特·l·罗斯(Robert L. Ross)认为，阿切贝的作品经常通过“非洲视角”记录“尼日利亚的殖民主义经历”(23)。然而，政治科学学者布鲁斯·吉利(Bruce Gilley)在分析阿奇比的散文作品《有一个国家:比夫拉的深刻历史》(646-47)时指出，断言阿奇比对殖民遗产的一些积极方面视而不见，未免过于简单化了。总的来说，阿奇贝是一位实用主义者，他致力于在殖民背景下重振土著文化，同时保持对殖民复杂遗产的认识。阿奇比的作品《分崩离析》(1958)、《不再安逸》(1960)和《神之箭》(1964)中对土著身份的明确强调得到了证明，尼娜·甘地(60-62)和西蒙·吉坎迪(31-34)等阿奇比评论家都强调了这一点。在阿切贝的短篇小说《献祭的蛋》(1962)中，也明显地表达了一种奇怪的非洲身份，它讲述了在殖民统治的影响下，乌穆鲁从一个田园诗般的村庄转变为一个商业港口。阿切贝对殖民主义的批评在他的许多作品中都很明显，在这个特殊的故事中，当地和西方生活方式的共存并没有促进不同文化价值观的融合。相反，这篇短文描绘的是男主角朱利叶斯·奥比(Julius Obi)的精神之旅，他从一个自视甚高、受过良好教育、蔑视自己文化的精英，转变为一个非常尊重非洲传统和文化价值观的谦逊之人。这与Alassane Abdoulaye Dia的观点相呼应，https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005514
{"title":"A Window on One’s Identity: Cultural Identity In Chinua Achebe’s “The Sacrificial Egg”","authors":"Hawk Chang","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.2005514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005514","url":null,"abstract":"As a Nigerian writer of fiction in English, Chinua Achebe is well known for articulating an African identity that is distinguishable from colonizers’ constructions, partly because relevant studies have historically been dominated by white voices and have muffled or excluded those of local people (Daniels 68). According to Philip Whyte, “Achebe’s explicitly pedagogical aim was to provide a narrative of African (more specifically Igbo) history from the inside to counter the representation previously monopolized by Western outsiders” (12). Robert L. Ross argues that Achebe’s writing often chronicles “Nigeria’s experience with colonialism” through “an African viewpoint” (23). However, it is an oversimplification to assert that Achebe is blind to some positive aspects of colonial legacies, as political science scholar Bruce Gilley contended in his analysis of Achebe’s prose work There Was a Country: A Profound History of Biafra (646–47). Overall, Achebe is a pragmatist who is committed to reinvigorating the indigenous culture in the colonial context, simultaneously maintaining awareness of the complicated legacy of colonization. A distinct emphasis on the indigenous identity is evidenced in Achebe’s works Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), and Arrow of God (1964), which Achebe critics such as Neena Gandhi (60–62) and Simon Gikandi (31–34) have highlighted. Similar expression of a curiously African identity is evident in Achebe’s short story “The Sacrificial Egg” (1962), which tells of the transformation of Umuru from an idyllic village to a commercial port under the influence of colonization. Achebe’s criticism of colonialism is clear in many of his works, and the co-existence of local and Western ways of life in this particular story does not promote the integration of different cultural values. Rather, this short piece features Julius Obi, the male protagonist, and his spiritual journey as he transitions from a self-important, well-educated elitist who despises his own culture to a man of humility who pays great respect to African traditions and cultural values. This echoes Alassane Abdoulaye Dia’s argument that, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005514","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"151 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46145113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-24DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2005523
Leonard Neidorf
The critical fortunes of Beowulf ’s homecoming speech, the lengthy speech in which the returned hero narrates his Danish adventure before the Geatish court (ll. 2000–2151, 2155–2162), changed considerably over the course of the twentieth century. Though once regarded as a crude summary reflecting composite authorship or serial performance, the speech is now recognized as a sophisticated rhetorical performance through which the hero proclaims his fitness to rule Geatland.1 One passage in the speech that has recently garnered insightful commentary concerns the hero’s interaction, or lack thereof, with the Danish princess Freawaru, the daughter of Hrothgar, during his time at Heorot. Beowulf says:
{"title":"Beowulf and Freawaru","authors":"Leonard Neidorf","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.2005523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005523","url":null,"abstract":"The critical fortunes of Beowulf ’s homecoming speech, the lengthy speech in which the returned hero narrates his Danish adventure before the Geatish court (ll. 2000–2151, 2155–2162), changed considerably over the course of the twentieth century. Though once regarded as a crude summary reflecting composite authorship or serial performance, the speech is now recognized as a sophisticated rhetorical performance through which the hero proclaims his fitness to rule Geatland.1 One passage in the speech that has recently garnered insightful commentary concerns the hero’s interaction, or lack thereof, with the Danish princess Freawaru, the daughter of Hrothgar, during his time at Heorot. Beowulf says:","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"182 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58962980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-24DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2005522
S. Barnes
During the ongoing centennial of Kristin Lavransdatter’s publication (The Wreath in 1920; The Wife, 1921; The Cross, 1922), a new generation of readers is discovering Sigrid Undset’s trilogy. Notoriously difficult to interpret, its complexities can tax even a seasoned reader to the breaking point. If, however, good imaginative writing “is ideally as ambiguous and opaque as life itself,” intentionally absent of any “swiftly expressible message,” as John Updike once described it (29), then Kristin Lavransdatter is an exemplary work. For instance, how should readers think about the story’s protagonist? Kristin is self-sacrificing and vengeful, pious and self-pitying, unforgiving and generous. Her childhood at Jørundgaard and her dotage at Rein Convent could be viewed as mere bookends, unsatisfying authorial “gestures,” bracketing what is otherwise a lifetime of struggle, marked more by moral failure than by triumph. Similarly, how should readers understand Erlend Nikulaussøn, Kristin’s husband? At one moment, he is dashing and courageous; in the next, he is reckless, imprudent, and selfish beyond belief, imperiling everyone he loves for the briefest of pleasures. Quick to overlook others’ wrongdoings, he is equally hasty in forgetting his own, exposing a moral shallowness that clouds his vision, hiding from himself the consequences of his folly. Kristin and Erlend are, of course, only the two most obvious challenges readers must face in Undset’s trilogy. Even so, grappling with such difficulties can be revelatory, and not only of the text, for in struggling with the story, readers can be led to unexplored reaches in their own souls. The stakes, then, of taking up such a work are high, for the consequences of misreading can be two-fold: a misinterpretation of the story cannot easily be separated from a misunderstanding of the self. This interpretive interplay between reader and text is relevant to this essay’s purpose, but only as a secondary concern. Its primary objective is to remain within the narrative, examining the ways that two of its characters engage with other imaginative works. In other words, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005522
{"title":"The romance of Tristan and Isolde in Kristin Lavransdatter","authors":"S. Barnes","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.2005522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005522","url":null,"abstract":"During the ongoing centennial of Kristin Lavransdatter’s publication (The Wreath in 1920; The Wife, 1921; The Cross, 1922), a new generation of readers is discovering Sigrid Undset’s trilogy. Notoriously difficult to interpret, its complexities can tax even a seasoned reader to the breaking point. If, however, good imaginative writing “is ideally as ambiguous and opaque as life itself,” intentionally absent of any “swiftly expressible message,” as John Updike once described it (29), then Kristin Lavransdatter is an exemplary work. For instance, how should readers think about the story’s protagonist? Kristin is self-sacrificing and vengeful, pious and self-pitying, unforgiving and generous. Her childhood at Jørundgaard and her dotage at Rein Convent could be viewed as mere bookends, unsatisfying authorial “gestures,” bracketing what is otherwise a lifetime of struggle, marked more by moral failure than by triumph. Similarly, how should readers understand Erlend Nikulaussøn, Kristin’s husband? At one moment, he is dashing and courageous; in the next, he is reckless, imprudent, and selfish beyond belief, imperiling everyone he loves for the briefest of pleasures. Quick to overlook others’ wrongdoings, he is equally hasty in forgetting his own, exposing a moral shallowness that clouds his vision, hiding from himself the consequences of his folly. Kristin and Erlend are, of course, only the two most obvious challenges readers must face in Undset’s trilogy. Even so, grappling with such difficulties can be revelatory, and not only of the text, for in struggling with the story, readers can be led to unexplored reaches in their own souls. The stakes, then, of taking up such a work are high, for the consequences of misreading can be two-fold: a misinterpretation of the story cannot easily be separated from a misunderstanding of the self. This interpretive interplay between reader and text is relevant to this essay’s purpose, but only as a secondary concern. Its primary objective is to remain within the narrative, examining the ways that two of its characters engage with other imaginative works. In other words, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005522","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"178 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43397814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-24DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2013149
Mingqiang Li
In 1709, Nicholas Rowe emended the last word in line 1786 to “Wife” (1:47), thus starting a heated dispute of more than 300 years over whether this word should be “wise” or “wife”. Jeanne Addison Roberts sets forth very clearly and detailedly and chronologically the editorial history of this word and the different views of editors and scholars from 1709 to 1974 in her 1978 article “‘Wife’ or ‘Wise’—The Tempest l. 1786”. It can be seen in the article that “wife” is preferred by some editors and scholars, “wise” by some others, and a few editors even waver between “wise” and “wife”, adopting “wife” in one edition and then changing it back to “wise” in another, or contrariwise (203–205). After checking all the First Folios in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Roberts discovered two copies (#’s 73 and 6) with “clear examples of ‘wife’” (206) and five copies (#’s 2, 12, 18, 54, and 62) whose “f ’s” show “damage on the right side of the crossbar” (207), and she also found that “among copies in which the letter looks like long ‘s,’ there are at least twelve cases of what appear to be fragments of a broken crossbar on the right side of the letter” (207). Depending on this discovery, she concludes in the same article “that the letter, originally an ‘f,’ was bent or broken in the process of printing, thus transforming the original ‘wife’ to ‘wise’” (207). https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2013149
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Pub Date : 2021-11-24DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2005516
B.Durga Devi, Divyajyoti Singh
Leslie Marmon Silko’s story “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” (1974) is an important work of the “the second wave” (Allen 8) of Native American writing. In the story, Silko shows an “understated celebration of death of a beloved Indian grandfather” (Rosen xi). However, the death of the Indian elder becomes a site for reassertion of Indian tradition and culture of the indigeneous people of America. Molly Andrews in her essay ‘Narrating Moments of Political Change’ observes: “As such, stories play a vital role, not only in constructing the political world as it is, but also as it might be, depicting how it once was. These stories are never consensual—it is the mark of humankind to contest the stories of other individuals and communities. But stories are one of the primary vehicles through which politics are articulated and debated.” The question arises whether the story “The Man to Send Rain Clouds” is a political narrative or whether it can be justiciably read in the frame of a text engaged with identity politics? Since narratives are a part of the community, especially narratives that consciously evoke questions of differences in culture the present story becomes an exemplary specimen of investigation into politics of identity and further offers a negotiated alternative to lived experience where ‘exclusion’ or dominance is practised. In ‘The Man to Send Rain Clouds’ the family decides to take a limited dispensation from Christianity—as much as will suit the demands of the community and align with the wishes of the departed individual. Molly Andrews notes, ‘narratives are central to the machination of politics, for in constructing the stories about what is and isn’t working, and how this compares to a notion of ‘how it should be’ we are invariably deciding what aspects of social/political/economic/cultural life are and are not relevant to the current problem and its solution—in other words, the lifeblood of politics. Thus, political narratives engage the imagination, not only in constructing stories about the past and the present, but in helping https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005516
莱斯利·马蒙·西尔科的小说《送雨云的人》(1974)是美国原住民写作“第二波”(Allen 8)的重要作品。在这个故事中，西尔科“低调地庆祝了一位心爱的印第安祖父的去世”(Rosen xi)。然而，印第安老人的去世成为了重申印第安传统和美洲土著人民文化的场所。莫莉·安德鲁斯(Molly Andrews)在她的文章《叙述政治变革的时刻》(narratives Moments of Political Change)中观察到:“因此，故事扮演着至关重要的角色，不仅在构建政治世界的现状方面，而且在描绘它曾经的样子方面。”这些故事从来都不是双方同意的——与其他个人和社区的故事争论是人类的标志。但故事是政治表达和辩论的主要工具之一。”问题来了，《送雨云的人》这个故事是一个政治叙事，还是可以在一个涉及身份政治的文本框架中合理地解读?由于叙事是社区的一部分，特别是那些有意识地唤起文化差异问题的叙事，所以当前的故事成为调查身份政治的典范样本，并进一步提供了一种协商的替代方案，以替代“排斥”或统治的生活经验。在《送雨云的人》中，这个家庭决定从基督教中获得有限的豁免——尽可能多地满足社区的要求，并与死去的个人的愿望保持一致。莫莉·安德鲁斯(Molly Andrews)指出，“叙事是政治机制的核心，因为在构建关于什么是有效的、什么是无效的故事，以及如何将其与‘应该如何’的概念进行比较的过程中，我们总是在决定社会/政治/经济/文化生活的哪些方面与当前问题及其解决方案相关，哪些方面无关——换句话说，这是政治的命脉。”因此，政治叙事涉及想象力，不仅在构建关于过去和现在的故事，而且在帮助https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005516
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Pub Date : 2021-11-24DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2005521
Jeremy C. De Chavez
It is not surprising that Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day has solicited several psychoanalytic readings. The novel’s central character, Mr. Stevens, exhibits symptoms of someone afflicted by an acute form of repression. Critics, cognizant of the compatibility of theory and text, have thus turned to Freudian psychoanalytic concepts to explain Mr. Stevens’s motivations, drawing on the theory’s hydraulic understanding of libidinal energy. Brian Shaffer, for example, has described the novel as “one of the most profound representations of repression masquerading as professionalism” (87). He cites a litany of examples to illustrate Mr. Stevens’s constant evasions of circumstances that will force a confrontation with uncomfortable political and sexual issues, and how his repressed aggression and desires are sublimated into abstract ideals such as dignity and greatness. For Shaffer, the “most striking examples of sexual repression center around the Stevens-Kenton relationship” and he presents an interesting reading of their verbal jousts as betraying sublimated sexual desire. For him, it is clear that Stevens is “self-censoring [and] self-deceptive” (70). Utilizing the same theoretical resources but arriving at a radically different reading of the novel, Ruth Parkin-Gounelas argues that “there is no deception in Stevens’ act. The dictates of the superego do not repress Stevens’ emotions; they have replaced them” (41). For Parkin-Gounelas, Mr. Stevens has completely internalized the superego of both his biological father and his symbolic father, Lord Darlington. This dual introjection leads to the erasure of Mr. Stevens’s own ego. She contends that Mr. Stevens’s biological father stands for the “superego of the father” that he has internalized since childhood. As for Lord Darlington, Mr. Stevens’s substitute father, Parkin-Gounelas claims that he stands for “another kind of superego” (39). She suggests that it is through this manner that “Ishiguro explores the way the imperatives of deference and duty may rage with savage cruelty against the ego” (38). I am convinced that the difference in Shaffer’s and Parkin-Gounelas’s interpretation results from the absence of Mr. Stevens’s case history. Since the Oedipal https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005521
毫不奇怪，石黑一雄的《日之余波》(The Remains of The Day)已经征求了好几篇精神分析读物。小说的中心人物史蒂文斯先生表现出患有严重压抑的症状。批评家们认识到理论和文本的兼容性，因此转向弗洛伊德的精神分析概念来解释史蒂文斯的动机，利用该理论对力比多能量的水力理解。例如，布赖恩·谢弗(Brian Shaffer)将这部小说描述为“伪装成专业主义的压抑的最深刻的表现之一”(87)。他列举了一长串的例子，来说明史蒂文斯不断回避那些会迫使他面对令人不安的政治和性问题的环境，以及他被压抑的攻击性和欲望是如何升华为尊严和伟大等抽象理想的。对谢弗来说，“性压抑最显著的例子集中在史蒂文斯和肯顿的关系上”，他对他们的言语较量进行了有趣的解读，认为这背叛了升华的性欲。对他来说，很明显史蒂文斯是“自我审查和自我欺骗”(70)。鲁思·帕金-古内拉斯运用了同样的理论资源，但对小说的解读却截然不同，她认为“史蒂文斯的行为没有欺骗。超我的命令并没有压抑史蒂文斯的情绪;他们已经取代了他们”(41)。在帕金-古内拉斯看来，史蒂文斯已经完全内化了他的生父和他的象征性父亲达林顿勋爵的超我。这种双重内省导致了史蒂文斯自我的泯灭。她认为，史蒂文斯的生父代表了他从小就内化的“父亲的超我”。至于史蒂文斯的代父达灵顿勋爵，帕金-古内拉斯声称他代表着“另一种超我”(39页)。她认为正是通过这种方式，“石黑一雄探索了顺从和责任的必要性可能会对自我产生野蛮的残忍”(38)。我确信，谢弗和帕金-古内拉斯的解释之所以不同，是因为没有史蒂文斯先生的病例史。从俄狄浦斯开始https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005521
{"title":"The Symbolic Fiction of Mr. Stevens: A Lacanian Reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day","authors":"Jeremy C. De Chavez","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.2005521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005521","url":null,"abstract":"It is not surprising that Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day has solicited several psychoanalytic readings. The novel’s central character, Mr. Stevens, exhibits symptoms of someone afflicted by an acute form of repression. Critics, cognizant of the compatibility of theory and text, have thus turned to Freudian psychoanalytic concepts to explain Mr. Stevens’s motivations, drawing on the theory’s hydraulic understanding of libidinal energy. Brian Shaffer, for example, has described the novel as “one of the most profound representations of repression masquerading as professionalism” (87). He cites a litany of examples to illustrate Mr. Stevens’s constant evasions of circumstances that will force a confrontation with uncomfortable political and sexual issues, and how his repressed aggression and desires are sublimated into abstract ideals such as dignity and greatness. For Shaffer, the “most striking examples of sexual repression center around the Stevens-Kenton relationship” and he presents an interesting reading of their verbal jousts as betraying sublimated sexual desire. For him, it is clear that Stevens is “self-censoring [and] self-deceptive” (70). Utilizing the same theoretical resources but arriving at a radically different reading of the novel, Ruth Parkin-Gounelas argues that “there is no deception in Stevens’ act. The dictates of the superego do not repress Stevens’ emotions; they have replaced them” (41). For Parkin-Gounelas, Mr. Stevens has completely internalized the superego of both his biological father and his symbolic father, Lord Darlington. This dual introjection leads to the erasure of Mr. Stevens’s own ego. She contends that Mr. Stevens’s biological father stands for the “superego of the father” that he has internalized since childhood. As for Lord Darlington, Mr. Stevens’s substitute father, Parkin-Gounelas claims that he stands for “another kind of superego” (39). She suggests that it is through this manner that “Ishiguro explores the way the imperatives of deference and duty may rage with savage cruelty against the ego” (38). I am convinced that the difference in Shaffer’s and Parkin-Gounelas’s interpretation results from the absence of Mr. Stevens’s case history. Since the Oedipal https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005521","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"174 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48861027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-23DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2005518
Lamiaa S. Youssef
In our quest to negotiate the present and define our place within the continuum of the human experience, we try to engage with the past, examining relics, searching for roots, and sifting through memories. As members of a group, our engagement is shaped by two representations of the past: history and collective memory. The latter term was introduced by the French philosopher and sociologist, Maurice Halbwachs, in his seminal work On Collective Memory first published in 1950. Collective memory is a conglomeration of individual recollections of past experiences handed down from one generation to another, thus helping in the formation of a group identity that differentiates it from other groups, each with its own collective memory. In that respect, collective memory is different from history, which is a physical representation of past events in the form of accounts, monuments, and artifacts. Whereas neither has a claim to objective representation of the past because both are mere interpretations by their transmitters, collective memory is more dynamic because it is more apt to engage with the present and can undergo gradual transformation based on how the group defines its identity and envisions its future. For African Americans, “It was the memory of slavery and its representation through speech and art works that grounded African American identity” (Eyerman 2). This identity did not take form in the land of origin, where people identified themselves through tribal affiliations, but was defined or rather imposed on them through the experience of slavery and its subsequent reproductions that gave rise to the group’s collective memory. The Charles family in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is a microcosmic representation of that collective memory which binds the different group members together and ultimately saves them from utter loss and despair. The surviving members of that family span three generations reflecting the growing distance from https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005518
{"title":"Remnants of the Past and the Quest for Identity: Reading August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson in the Context of Collective Memory","authors":"Lamiaa S. Youssef","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.2005518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005518","url":null,"abstract":"In our quest to negotiate the present and define our place within the continuum of the human experience, we try to engage with the past, examining relics, searching for roots, and sifting through memories. As members of a group, our engagement is shaped by two representations of the past: history and collective memory. The latter term was introduced by the French philosopher and sociologist, Maurice Halbwachs, in his seminal work On Collective Memory first published in 1950. Collective memory is a conglomeration of individual recollections of past experiences handed down from one generation to another, thus helping in the formation of a group identity that differentiates it from other groups, each with its own collective memory. In that respect, collective memory is different from history, which is a physical representation of past events in the form of accounts, monuments, and artifacts. Whereas neither has a claim to objective representation of the past because both are mere interpretations by their transmitters, collective memory is more dynamic because it is more apt to engage with the present and can undergo gradual transformation based on how the group defines its identity and envisions its future. For African Americans, “It was the memory of slavery and its representation through speech and art works that grounded African American identity” (Eyerman 2). This identity did not take form in the land of origin, where people identified themselves through tribal affiliations, but was defined or rather imposed on them through the experience of slavery and its subsequent reproductions that gave rise to the group’s collective memory. The Charles family in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is a microcosmic representation of that collective memory which binds the different group members together and ultimately saves them from utter loss and despair. The surviving members of that family span three generations reflecting the growing distance from https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.2005518","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"166 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45995599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-23DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.2005515
Ankit Raj, Nagendra Kumar
In the framing chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut recounts what he learned in his Anthropology course at the University of Chicago—that people are essentially the same and that nobody is “ridiculous or bad or disgusting” (7). He further confesses that this is the reason he never writes stories with villains (7). Though largely true, his claim seems debatable if one examines two of his characters—Norman Mushari and Norman Mushari Jr.—the two being the objects of study in this article that propounds an alternate understanding of Vonnegut’s assertion. These characters have startling similarities with the archetypal trickster figure of American Indian myths as commented upon by Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung among others.
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Pub Date : 2021-08-05DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1965517
Jing-Yu Zhang
{"title":"Revisiting the Tortoiseshell Cat: Subjectivity and Discursive Dilemma of the American wife in Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”","authors":"Jing-Yu Zhang","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1965517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1965517","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"127 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58962759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2021.1965516
Alan S. Horn
“The Unfortunate Lover” (1648–49) by Andrew Marvell has provoked a range of modern interpretations (Berthoff 1966; Patterson 1978; Stocker 1986; Enterline 1987; Klawitter 2009; Hirst and Zwicker 2012), with little consensus on its tone or purpose. Michael Riffaterre’s semiotic theory of literature (1978, 1983) can help to clarify the structure and meaning of this challenging poem, while shedding light on some of the sources of its ambiguity. According to this theory, every poem derives from a sentence, phrase, or single word that need not appear in it directly. It elaborates that minimal starting-point (its “matrix”) by reference to clusters of verbal association already present in the reader’s mind – received ideas, common phrases, well-known passages from other works, literary conventions, and the like – that Riffaterre calls “intertexts.” Applying this thesis to Marvell’s “Unfortunate Lover,” it is possible to show how the poem expands and transforms the phrase fortune in love, which is echoed in the title, through two contrasting generic intertexts: heroic narrative and Petrarchan lyric. The former offers an exemplary representation of fortune itself, the power ruling the individual struggle against contingency, while the latter dramatizes fortune in the special context of love as the fickleness of a lady’s favor. Riffaterre holds that the poem’s initial expansion of its matrix (the “model”) governs the form of successive variants. In the case of “The Unfortunate Lover,” the first stanza constitutes the model – the original extended variant of the phrase fortune in love. The first two couplets repeat and develop the concept of love in the mode of pastoral allegory, while the third, through the conventional simile of a meteor, introduces the idea of fortune as it stereotypically applies to love in the form of passion’s inconstancy. The final couplet, however, raises a concern that seems out of place, prefiguring the clash of generic codes around which the poem is structured. It is not pastoral lovers who are traditionally expected to “make impression upon Time” (8) but the noble hero. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1965516
{"title":"Marvell’s “the unfortunate lover”","authors":"Alan S. Horn","doi":"10.1080/00144940.2021.1965516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1965516","url":null,"abstract":"“The Unfortunate Lover” (1648–49) by Andrew Marvell has provoked a range of modern interpretations (Berthoff 1966; Patterson 1978; Stocker 1986; Enterline 1987; Klawitter 2009; Hirst and Zwicker 2012), with little consensus on its tone or purpose. Michael Riffaterre’s semiotic theory of literature (1978, 1983) can help to clarify the structure and meaning of this challenging poem, while shedding light on some of the sources of its ambiguity. According to this theory, every poem derives from a sentence, phrase, or single word that need not appear in it directly. It elaborates that minimal starting-point (its “matrix”) by reference to clusters of verbal association already present in the reader’s mind – received ideas, common phrases, well-known passages from other works, literary conventions, and the like – that Riffaterre calls “intertexts.” Applying this thesis to Marvell’s “Unfortunate Lover,” it is possible to show how the poem expands and transforms the phrase fortune in love, which is echoed in the title, through two contrasting generic intertexts: heroic narrative and Petrarchan lyric. The former offers an exemplary representation of fortune itself, the power ruling the individual struggle against contingency, while the latter dramatizes fortune in the special context of love as the fickleness of a lady’s favor. Riffaterre holds that the poem’s initial expansion of its matrix (the “model”) governs the form of successive variants. In the case of “The Unfortunate Lover,” the first stanza constitutes the model – the original extended variant of the phrase fortune in love. The first two couplets repeat and develop the concept of love in the mode of pastoral allegory, while the third, through the conventional simile of a meteor, introduces the idea of fortune as it stereotypically applies to love in the form of passion’s inconstancy. The final couplet, however, raises a concern that seems out of place, prefiguring the clash of generic codes around which the poem is structured. It is not pastoral lovers who are traditionally expected to “make impression upon Time” (8) but the noble hero. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2021.1965516","PeriodicalId":42643,"journal":{"name":"EXPLICATOR","volume":"79 1","pages":"123 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46227150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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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