Abstract:The research narrative is a genre of contemporary African American novels told from the narrow point of view of one character who is obsessive in their frustrating and pleasurable pursuit of knowledge through long periods of textual study. The protagonist of a research narrative is often affiliated with an institution of higher education. Research narratives are littered with dissertations and academic books; many of these novels include excerpts from the texts that their protagonists study or write. Narration closely focalized through one character is necessarily unreliable; these novels invite readers to oscillate between sympathy for and skepticism of their protagonists. Research narratives are simultaneously invested in and skeptical of historical knowledge, particularly knowledge of enslavement and fugitivity. David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident (1981) establishes traits of the research narrative. The genre has flourished in works including Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist (1999), Victor LaValle's Big Machine (2010), Mat Johnson's Pym (2011), and Danzy Senna's New People (2017). This essay argues for the research narrative as a genre of Black novels that theorize an ambivalent relationship to the past.
{"title":"The Chaneysville Incident and the Research Narrative in Contemporary African American Literature","authors":"C. Thorsson","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The research narrative is a genre of contemporary African American novels told from the narrow point of view of one character who is obsessive in their frustrating and pleasurable pursuit of knowledge through long periods of textual study. The protagonist of a research narrative is often affiliated with an institution of higher education. Research narratives are littered with dissertations and academic books; many of these novels include excerpts from the texts that their protagonists study or write. Narration closely focalized through one character is necessarily unreliable; these novels invite readers to oscillate between sympathy for and skepticism of their protagonists. Research narratives are simultaneously invested in and skeptical of historical knowledge, particularly knowledge of enslavement and fugitivity. David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident (1981) establishes traits of the research narrative. The genre has flourished in works including Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist (1999), Victor LaValle's Big Machine (2010), Mat Johnson's Pym (2011), and Danzy Senna's New People (2017). This essay argues for the research narrative as a genre of Black novels that theorize an ambivalent relationship to the past.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"55 1","pages":"17 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43567523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
requires a “collaborative attitude” (168). This compelling argument demands a different form of attention and engagement by the reader of Schaffer’s own text, as it pushes us outside of the narrative and thematic understanding of care we have been tracing, asking us to consider “community as the condition of writing” (186). Schaffer ends with a heartfelt demonstration of the ways that care theory and “care readings” can shape our approach to scholarship, teaching, and academic service. The humility with which Schaffer concludes her study is an invitation to join a scholarly and professional community informed by care. When Schaffer shares how care community thinking applies to teaching, I found myself consulting her work as if it were a professional guide, reflecting on the ways that I run my own classes as an effort to “meet another’s needs.” At a time in our history when a global pandemic and demands for racial justice have transformed our personal and professional relationships, pulling into clearer focus our ethical responsibilities, Schaffer’s work offers a way to feel, to reflect, and to act with care.
{"title":"Postcolonial Realism and the Concept of the Political by Eli Park Sorensen (review)","authors":"Ashwin Bajaj","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.0012","url":null,"abstract":"requires a “collaborative attitude” (168). This compelling argument demands a different form of attention and engagement by the reader of Schaffer’s own text, as it pushes us outside of the narrative and thematic understanding of care we have been tracing, asking us to consider “community as the condition of writing” (186). Schaffer ends with a heartfelt demonstration of the ways that care theory and “care readings” can shape our approach to scholarship, teaching, and academic service. The humility with which Schaffer concludes her study is an invitation to join a scholarly and professional community informed by care. When Schaffer shares how care community thinking applies to teaching, I found myself consulting her work as if it were a professional guide, reflecting on the ways that I run my own classes as an effort to “meet another’s needs.” At a time in our history when a global pandemic and demands for racial justice have transformed our personal and professional relationships, pulling into clearer focus our ethical responsibilities, Schaffer’s work offers a way to feel, to reflect, and to act with care.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"55 1","pages":"122 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45716538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.0013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"450 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135288938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism by S. Pearl Brilmyer","authors":"David Sweeney Coombs","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.0006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49537699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
had their time robbed from them or through processes of scale that are slow and steady, a longue durée of captivity. The question of time throughout Scales of Captivity produces an affective mode of reading reminiscent of the Benjaminian angel of history. The violent wreckages of colonial and capitalist histories pile up into a critical mass, propelling us into some urgent sense of an ever-unfolding present, while we cannot turn away but must witness its many tangled elements. Much of the strength of Brady’s book lies in its holding together and witnessing of the many texts, histories, and theories she engages from one chapter to the next. Nevertheless, it is these strengths of Brady’s text that also leave something to be desired about where this will take us. The conclusion attempts to speak to these loose ends, although it raises the question: what sort of imaginations might be possible if “scale holds a lien on our imagination” (240)? Brady gestures toward the ongoing promise of scalar masquerades and impersonations in Latinx literature that challenge coloniality (244). However, she ultimately posits that possibilities are only revealed through the “reparative witnessing to this violence” (246). This is not a climactic resolution or clean fix, which only ever reinstates scalar logics about a singular world order. Instead, Brady proposes that possibility lies in the recognition that there are many worlds and multiple realities, a “thinking without scale” afforded through Latinx literary figurations of the child.
{"title":"Victorian Contingencies: Experiments in Literature, Science, and Play by Tina Young Choi (review)","authors":"J. M. Miller","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2023.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2023.0008","url":null,"abstract":"had their time robbed from them or through processes of scale that are slow and steady, a longue durée of captivity. The question of time throughout Scales of Captivity produces an affective mode of reading reminiscent of the Benjaminian angel of history. The violent wreckages of colonial and capitalist histories pile up into a critical mass, propelling us into some urgent sense of an ever-unfolding present, while we cannot turn away but must witness its many tangled elements. Much of the strength of Brady’s book lies in its holding together and witnessing of the many texts, histories, and theories she engages from one chapter to the next. Nevertheless, it is these strengths of Brady’s text that also leave something to be desired about where this will take us. The conclusion attempts to speak to these loose ends, although it raises the question: what sort of imaginations might be possible if “scale holds a lien on our imagination” (240)? Brady gestures toward the ongoing promise of scalar masquerades and impersonations in Latinx literature that challenge coloniality (244). However, she ultimately posits that possibilities are only revealed through the “reparative witnessing to this violence” (246). This is not a climactic resolution or clean fix, which only ever reinstates scalar logics about a singular world order. Instead, Brady proposes that possibility lies in the recognition that there are many worlds and multiple realities, a “thinking without scale” afforded through Latinx literary figurations of the child.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"55 1","pages":"113 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49665932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper analyzes the formal occurrence of the edible child in Monica Ali’s 2003 novel Brick Lane, language which crystalizes stereotypical identity markers of the immigrant Bengali woman: food preparation and child-rearing. I both identify the strides Ali’s novel makes and temper them, refusing a dichotomic understanding of the text as either participating in the exoticization of Bengali women, largely through cuisine, or representing an ethos of independent womanhood, but rather arguing for the interdependence of such readings. Ultimately, I find that Nazneen’s linguistic connection between food and children, focalized through the close, third-person narrator, signifies her relationship to both eating and motherhood, casting each as a coping mechanism to quell her worsening depression, even as she begins to find independence romantically and economically.
{"title":"“So Cute, I Could Eat Him Up”: Maternal Hungers in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane","authors":"M. Dietz","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2022.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2022.0031","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper analyzes the formal occurrence of the edible child in Monica Ali’s 2003 novel Brick Lane, language which crystalizes stereotypical identity markers of the immigrant Bengali woman: food preparation and child-rearing. I both identify the strides Ali’s novel makes and temper them, refusing a dichotomic understanding of the text as either participating in the exoticization of Bengali women, largely through cuisine, or representing an ethos of independent womanhood, but rather arguing for the interdependence of such readings. Ultimately, I find that Nazneen’s linguistic connection between food and children, focalized through the close, third-person narrator, signifies her relationship to both eating and motherhood, casting each as a coping mechanism to quell her worsening depression, even as she begins to find independence romantically and economically.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"54 1","pages":"410 - 425"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49019986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article employs the comparable theoretical frames of Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo)’s “achronology” and James Phelan’s “anachrony” to examine the role of haunting in Eden Robinson (Haisla/Heitsuk)’s Monkey Beach. Focalized through the perspective of Lisamarie Hill, a developing medicine woman, the novel portrays Lisa’s struggles to envision a future beyond her own present, marked by the intergenerational abuses of the Port Alberni Indian Residential School. As a move away from previous studies of communal traumas, in which a victim’s link to past harm annihilates the idea of a livable future, I read haunting in Monkey Beach as both rooted in the past but gesturing towards a projected future. By locating Lisamarie’s futurity as created in the autonomous renegotiation of her bodily violations, an act initiated in her encounter with ghosts, I argue that Monkey Beach produces an ethical, multi-vocal narrative enabled by surrogate storytelling.
摘要:本文运用Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo)的“年代学”和James Phelan的“年代错误”理论框架，考察了在Eden Robinson (Haisla/Heitsuk)的《猴子海滩》中鬼魂的作用。小说以发展中的女药师丽莎玛丽·希尔(Lisamarie Hill)的视角为中心，描绘了丽莎努力想象自己现在之外的未来，以阿尔伯尼港印第安人寄宿学校(Port Alberni Indian Residential School)的代际虐待为标志。在之前的公共创伤研究中，受害者与过去伤害的联系消灭了一个宜居的未来的想法，作为一种转变，我在《猴子海滩》中读到的鬼魂既根植于过去，又预示着未来。通过将Lisamarie的未来定位于她对身体侵犯的自主重新协商中，这是她与鬼魂相遇时发起的行为，我认为《Monkey Beach》创造了一种道德的、多声音的叙事，这种叙事是通过代理叙事实现的。
{"title":"Past as Presence and the Promise of Futurity in Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach","authors":"Sarah E. Stunden","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2022.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2022.0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article employs the comparable theoretical frames of Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo)’s “achronology” and James Phelan’s “anachrony” to examine the role of haunting in Eden Robinson (Haisla/Heitsuk)’s Monkey Beach. Focalized through the perspective of Lisamarie Hill, a developing medicine woman, the novel portrays Lisa’s struggles to envision a future beyond her own present, marked by the intergenerational abuses of the Port Alberni Indian Residential School. As a move away from previous studies of communal traumas, in which a victim’s link to past harm annihilates the idea of a livable future, I read haunting in Monkey Beach as both rooted in the past but gesturing towards a projected future. By locating Lisamarie’s futurity as created in the autonomous renegotiation of her bodily violations, an act initiated in her encounter with ghosts, I argue that Monkey Beach produces an ethical, multi-vocal narrative enabled by surrogate storytelling.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"54 1","pages":"390 - 409"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46252957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Postcolonial African Genocide Novel: Quests for Meaningfulness by Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba (review)","authors":"M. Vambe","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2022.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2022.0033","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"54 1","pages":"445 - 447"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47852223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Afterlife of Enclosure: British Realism, Character, and the Commons by Carolyn Lesjak (review)","authors":"Joseph Albernaz","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2022.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2022.0036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"54 1","pages":"452 - 454"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45392059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Dracula first appears in front of the British public in England not as a gentleman but in the form of “an immense dog.” This article reads Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) in the context of human-animal encounters happening on the streets of London when the fear of rabid dogs swept the city. Victorian urban projects aimed at building an urban structure securing human control over animals. Yet this vision was disrupted by the ubiquitous presence of stray dogs in London and their alleged infection with rabies. Dracula’s and Un-Dead Lucy’s prowling in London emblematize this threat of urban stray dogs. The novel’s narratives also prowl, emulating animal intelligence in the way they rely on instant perception lacking reflection and leading to a hunt. This temporal immediacy and chasing mobility of prowling narratives envision co-evolutionary intelligence, dissolving the human-animal binary which structured the domestication, or the anthropocentric urbanization, of the city.
{"title":"Prowling in London: Canines in Bram Stoker’s Dracula","authors":"Ji Eun Lee","doi":"10.1353/sdn.2022.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2022.0029","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Dracula first appears in front of the British public in England not as a gentleman but in the form of “an immense dog.” This article reads Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) in the context of human-animal encounters happening on the streets of London when the fear of rabid dogs swept the city. Victorian urban projects aimed at building an urban structure securing human control over animals. Yet this vision was disrupted by the ubiquitous presence of stray dogs in London and their alleged infection with rabies. Dracula’s and Un-Dead Lucy’s prowling in London emblematize this threat of urban stray dogs. The novel’s narratives also prowl, emulating animal intelligence in the way they rely on instant perception lacking reflection and leading to a hunt. This temporal immediacy and chasing mobility of prowling narratives envision co-evolutionary intelligence, dissolving the human-animal binary which structured the domestication, or the anthropocentric urbanization, of the city.","PeriodicalId":54138,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN THE NOVEL","volume":"54 1","pages":"370 - 389"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43973412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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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