Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905749
Irving Goh
Abstract:This essay addresses an aspect of failure that I call "shared unshareability," which brings us to a reckoning that—despite failure being an experience that can be commonly shared—there is always something of failure that never leaves the personal. Articulating failure's shared unshareability can thus help us understand why some of us cannot dissociate ourselves from our sense of failure. I elucidate failure's shared unshareability through a selection of Yiyun Li's texts that deal with the failure to want to live, and further show how melodrama and writing are implicated.
{"title":"Shared Unshareability, Suicidality, and the Melodrama of Living on after Failure in Yiyun Li","authors":"Irving Goh","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905749","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay addresses an aspect of failure that I call \"shared unshareability,\" which brings us to a reckoning that—despite failure being an experience that can be commonly shared—there is always something of failure that never leaves the personal. Articulating failure's shared unshareability can thus help us understand why some of us cannot dissociate ourselves from our sense of failure. I elucidate failure's shared unshareability through a selection of Yiyun Li's texts that deal with the failure to want to live, and further show how melodrama and writing are implicated.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74591095","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905746
David P. Rando
Abstract:What can critical animal studies learn by temporarily directing attention away from representations of nonhuman animals in literature? Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? allow readers to experience the hopes of engineered or artificial nonhuman creatures. Without presuming to know the unknowable or to make the animal speak, these novels help to further animal liberation discourses by democratizing the ostensibly human concept of hope, opening new paths of empathy between nonhuman and human animals while making it harder to accept the instrumentalization of nonhuman animals under anthropocentric capitalism.
{"title":"Nonhuman Animals and Hope: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep","authors":"David P. Rando","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905746","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:What can critical animal studies learn by temporarily directing attention away from representations of nonhuman animals in literature? Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? allow readers to experience the hopes of engineered or artificial nonhuman creatures. Without presuming to know the unknowable or to make the animal speak, these novels help to further animal liberation discourses by democratizing the ostensibly human concept of hope, opening new paths of empathy between nonhuman and human animals while making it harder to accept the instrumentalization of nonhuman animals under anthropocentric capitalism.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76366388","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905755
Julie Olin-Ammentorp
{"title":"Cather and Opera by David McKay Powell (review)","authors":"Julie Olin-Ammentorp","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905755","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72535566","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905751
Garrett Bridger Gilmore
{"title":"Outside Literary Studies: Black Criticism and the University by Andy Hines (review)","authors":"Garrett Bridger Gilmore","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905751","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85908174","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905743
Nan Zhang
Abstract:Attentive to the transmutation of British liberalism as a political philosophy in the early twentieth century, this essay examines how E. M. Forster's Howards End brings together multiple intellectual sources that trouble standard divisions between liberal and conservative affiliations in reimagining a liberal culture. From the root and branch image of the wych-elm to the "sweetness and light" (79) of the grass, and to the "little platoon" (136) of Howards End, the essay offers fresh interpretations of Forster's novel and reconnects his work with a group of thinkers as diverse as Edmund Burke, William Gladstone, Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Hobhouse, and John Maynard Keynes.
{"title":"\"The New Economy and the Old Morality\": Reimagining a Liberal Culture in Howards End","authors":"Nan Zhang","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905743","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905743","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Attentive to the transmutation of British liberalism as a political philosophy in the early twentieth century, this essay examines how E. M. Forster's Howards End brings together multiple intellectual sources that trouble standard divisions between liberal and conservative affiliations in reimagining a liberal culture. From the root and branch image of the wych-elm to the \"sweetness and light\" (79) of the grass, and to the \"little platoon\" (136) of Howards End, the essay offers fresh interpretations of Forster's novel and reconnects his work with a group of thinkers as diverse as Edmund Burke, William Gladstone, Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Hobhouse, and John Maynard Keynes.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78170227","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905756
Cecilia Rossi
fiction must have been a result of her having needed “a break from the bleakness of her overcontemplated experienced reality” (163) of the mid-1920s. While readers new to Cather and Cather scholarship may find few problems here, others will be baffled by several areas of Powell’s analysis. In spite of its shortcomings, anyone writing about Cather and opera in the future will want to consult this volume. Cather and Opera is accessible both to readers new to Cather and to those who want to know more about opera in Cather’s fiction. Helpfully for future researchers, Powell includes two appendices, the first listing operas by composer and title, and the second listing Cather’s relevant works and the operas referenced in each. His work on the opera scene of Cather’s youth is lively, helping readers “understand the extent to which classical music would have permeated the frontier world” (8). He also reminds us, sometime eloquently, of the centrality of opera to Cather, making an excellent case that Cather’s “early introduction to opera helped give her a sense of artistic possibility and the aspiration to pursue it” (167). Perhaps even more importantly, Powell emphasizes the importance of the arts in Cather’s work, and in all our lives. Cather went to university to study medicine, he notes, but she quickly realized “that art was every bit as essential to human survival” (42).
{"title":"Literature in Motion: Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas by Ellen Jones (review)","authors":"Cecilia Rossi","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905756","url":null,"abstract":"fiction must have been a result of her having needed “a break from the bleakness of her overcontemplated experienced reality” (163) of the mid-1920s. While readers new to Cather and Cather scholarship may find few problems here, others will be baffled by several areas of Powell’s analysis. In spite of its shortcomings, anyone writing about Cather and opera in the future will want to consult this volume. Cather and Opera is accessible both to readers new to Cather and to those who want to know more about opera in Cather’s fiction. Helpfully for future researchers, Powell includes two appendices, the first listing operas by composer and title, and the second listing Cather’s relevant works and the operas referenced in each. His work on the opera scene of Cather’s youth is lively, helping readers “understand the extent to which classical music would have permeated the frontier world” (8). He also reminds us, sometime eloquently, of the centrality of opera to Cather, making an excellent case that Cather’s “early introduction to opera helped give her a sense of artistic possibility and the aspiration to pursue it” (167). Perhaps even more importantly, Powell emphasizes the importance of the arts in Cather’s work, and in all our lives. Cather went to university to study medicine, he notes, but she quickly realized “that art was every bit as essential to human survival” (42).","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87980760","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905745
Henry Ivry
Abstract:This essay argues that Zora Neale Hurston's work reorients several key ideas central to contemporary Black studies and the environmental humanities. In particular, I examine how Hurston's understanding of the co-constitutional relationship between human and nonhuman worlds and her search for a narrative across temporal and geographical scales connects the Black diaspora and restructures our understanding of the Anthropocene. This essay claims that Hurston's work anticipates an incipient strand of contemporary Black studies that turns to ecology both to understand and imagine a world outside of anti-Black violence.
{"title":"Ecologies from the Cargo: Zora Neale Hurston and the Long Anthropocene","authors":"Henry Ivry","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905745","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay argues that Zora Neale Hurston's work reorients several key ideas central to contemporary Black studies and the environmental humanities. In particular, I examine how Hurston's understanding of the co-constitutional relationship between human and nonhuman worlds and her search for a narrative across temporal and geographical scales connects the Black diaspora and restructures our understanding of the Anthropocene. This essay claims that Hurston's work anticipates an incipient strand of contemporary Black studies that turns to ecology both to understand and imagine a world outside of anti-Black violence.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84123427","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905744
Yael Segalovitz
Abstract:The last decade witnessed a blooming interest in Faulkner's soundscapes, but his conceptualization of readerly listening has yet to be thoroughly discussed. This essay argues that, in The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner cultivates a specific phenomenology—a negative audition—in his reader that holds an ethical valence: an attunement to sonic stimuli, which one is socially and bodily taught to register as inaudible. These internal readerly guidelines paradoxically advance a reading of Faulkner's novel against its own racial bias.
{"title":"The Music of the Prose Takes Place in Silence: Sound, Fury, and Faulkner's Negative Audition","authors":"Yael Segalovitz","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905744","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The last decade witnessed a blooming interest in Faulkner's soundscapes, but his conceptualization of readerly listening has yet to be thoroughly discussed. This essay argues that, in The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner cultivates a specific phenomenology—a negative audition—in his reader that holds an ethical valence: an attunement to sonic stimuli, which one is socially and bodily taught to register as inaudible. These internal readerly guidelines paradoxically advance a reading of Faulkner's novel against its own racial bias.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74639945","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 : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mfs.2023.a905748
Emad Mirmotahari
Abstract:This essay argues that Dinaw Mengestu's novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears testifies to how reading and reading acts—broadly defined and of a variety of texts and text types—becomes an identity in and of itself for the novel's narrator, Sepha. The narrator is an Ethiopian immigrant-exile who settles in Washington DC and is unable to forge identifications with white or Black Americans, or with other Ethiopians and Africans. Reading constitutes the narrator's way to make sense of his conditions and reconcile himself with his unbelonging to any human collective.
{"title":"The Reading Self in Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears","authors":"Emad Mirmotahari","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2023.a905748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2023.a905748","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay argues that Dinaw Mengestu's novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears testifies to how reading and reading acts—broadly defined and of a variety of texts and text types—becomes an identity in and of itself for the novel's narrator, Sepha. The narrator is an Ethiopian immigrant-exile who settles in Washington DC and is unable to forge identifications with white or Black Americans, or with other Ethiopians and Africans. Reading constitutes the narrator's way to make sense of his conditions and reconcile himself with his unbelonging to any human collective.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80662842","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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