Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics

Zur Gewalt der Bilder in Elfriede Jelineks Prinzessinnendramen

Solibakke Ivan Karl — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:40:24 PST

The Pride and Prejudice of the Western World: The Iconicity of the Great Books

Solibakke Ivan Karl — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:40:22 PST

This article examines controversies arising from the perception of the instruments of cultural memory and the logic of their transmissibility. On the one hand, we have a carefully selected, temporally and geographically orchestrated body of texts, the Great Books, which are an enduring testament to the authority of Western intellectual artifacts. On the other hand, Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever locates a furtive transformation of collective memory in the informal practices exemplified by oral narrative and public discourse. Not only do both models rely on archives as a functional instrument of collective identity, but they also value them as institutions circumscribing social and cultural conventions. However, when synchronizing the traces embedded in oral discourse and written documents, the repositories are frequently subject to manipulation by interpretive communities. Recognizing the processes underlying archives and artifacts is essential to comprehending how canons and canonic practices impact Western cultural memory.

Squaring the Cultural Circle: Dialectical Approaches to Reading Cultural Memory

Solibakke Ivan Karl — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:40:21 PST

Introduction: Thoughts Unfinished and Messages Undelivered

Solibakke Ivan Karl — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:40:19 PST

Divine Justice and Profane Power: Benjamin’s and Kafka’s Approach to Messianism

Solibakke Ivan Karl — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:40:17 PST

Intrinsically dialectical in nature, sudden messianic change and the resolute character of the law are so closely connected with one another that both concepts should be among the key factors shaping a broad understanding of global cultures today. Whether we await the coming of the messiah as the Jewish religion teaches or commemorate his having come and died as most Christian teachings hold, it appears that Walter Benjamin’s “now of a particular recognizability” (The Arcades Project 493) remains elusive, especially with respect to the correlation between the past and the future. In the spirit of temporal vectors that converge, Benjamin’s and Franz Kafka’s approaches to messianism are considered within the dialectics that make divine justice and profane power pivotal concepts of twenty-first-century cultural theory.

Deutsch-österreichische Beethoven-Bilder: Richard Wagner, Elfriede Jelinek und “der Zorn der Schreiber”

Solibakke Ivan Karl — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:40:15 PST

The article explores how Richard Wagner’s Beethoven and Elfriede Jelinek’s Das Lebewohl draw on music and musical aesthetics to signify national and cultural aspirations in Germany and Austria. As an artistic experience that transcends borders, Beethoven’s music has often provoked questions about cultural memory, “national art forms,” and collective identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German intellectual history. Though very different in nature, Wagner’s politically charged Beethoven and the monolog that Jelinek ascribes to the right-wing Austrian politician J¨org Haider show how important music and language can be when national goals and cultural politics join forces.

Übergänge Zwischen Künsten und Kulturen.’ Die Heine-Schumann Tagung in Düsseldorf

Solibakke Ivan Karl et al. — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:40:14 PST

Heinrich Heine und Robert Schumann begegneten sich nur für wenige Stunden am 8. Mai 1828 in München. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatte der bereits berühmte Dichter seine Heimatstadt Düsseldorf seit einem guten Jahrzehnt verlassen, während der 17jährige Komponist noch nicht ahnen konnte, dass seine musikalische Laufbahn einst in der gleichen Stadt enden sollte.

Humor and National Catharsis in Roberto Cossa's El saludador

Gail Ann Bulman — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 08:00:21 PST

This article examines humor in Roberto Cossa’s El saludador and proposes that, through his unique blend of comic forms, the playwright manipulates audience reaction and provokes catharsis in his spectators. Cossa creates a comic protagonist who is a surrogate for the Argentine nation. Through their identification with the humorous protagonist/nation, spectators can consider their own reaction to the abuses the nation has suffered or self-imposed. Unlike earlier Cossa plays, which may have impeded audience catharsis, the spectator/protagonist/nation identification in El saludador promotes catharsis through audience laughter and allows spectators to purge themselves of economic and political fears in the aftermath of recent events in Argentina’s history. (GB)

Martí, Monologue, and the Metaphorical Dawn in Raúl de Cárdenas's Un hombre al amanecer

Gail Ann Bulman — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 08:00:20 PST

Un hombre al amanecer by Cuban playwright Raúl de Cárdenas traces and reflects upon the life of nineteenth-century Cuban patriot and writer José Martí, the play’s only character. However, three dramatic techniques – the interweaving of four types of monologue, the juxtaposition of past and present, and the incorporation of Martí’s own writings into the play – move the play’s focus away from Martí and toward a more contemporary view of a Cuban writer’s relationship to his nation. This article examines the play’s complicated structure and shows how Cárdenas fuses multiple perspectives on Martí’s life and writings to expose his own ambivalent relationship with Cuba, a relationship that is as poignant to the present-day writer as it was for his nineteenth-century predecessor/protagonist (GAB).

The Fetish in/as Text: Retif de la Bretonne and the Development of Modern Sexual Science and French Literary Studies, 1887-1934

Amy S. Wyngaard — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:23:31 PST

This essay examines the role of Rétif's writings in the development of the concept of erotic fetishism and in the formation of the French literary canon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rétif explored foot and shoe fetishisms more than a century before the phenomena were medically recognized, anticipating the modern psychosexual use of the term fetishism and making important contributions to the invention of the theoretical concept. Rétif's works were accorded a privileged place in early pathologies of fetishism, which provoked a series of polemics among German and French medical doctors and literary scholars centered on notions of national supremacy and literary value. Marked as bad literature, in both senses of the term, Rétif's writing was subsequently excluded from the French literary canon on moral grounds and became a kind of fetish object in the French literary corpus. (ASW)

Switching Codes: Class, Clothing and Cultural Change in the Works of Marivaux and Watteau

Amy S. Wyngaard — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 07:45:19 PST

Article compares the treatment of social class in the writing of Pierre Carlet de Chambalin de Marivaux and the art of Antoine Watteau.

Libertine Spaces: Anonymous crowds, Secret Chambers, and Urban Corruption in Retif de la Bretonne

Amy S. Wyngaard — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 06:40:11 PST

In Le Paysan perverti, ou Les Dangers de la ville (1775) Nicolas Edme Retif de la Bretonne portrays the tragic life of Edmond R.**, a virtuous young peasant seduced and corrupted by the libertine possibilities of the city.