Literature Compass 

About: Literature Compass is an academic journal published by Blackwell Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Literary criticism & Scholarship. It has an ISSN identifier of 1741-4113. Over the lifetime, 1233 publications have been published receiving 4268 citations.

The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages†

Abstract: ‘The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages’– a two-part article – questions the widely held belief in canonical race theory that ‘race’ is a category without purchase before the modern era. Surveying a variety of cultural documents from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries – chronicles, hagiography, literature, stories, sculpture, maps, canon law, statuary, illustrations, religious commentary, and architectural features – the study considers racial thinking, racial law, racial formation, and racialized behaviors and phenomena in medieval Europe before the emergence of a recognizable vocabulary of race. One focus is how a political hermeneutics of religion – so much in play again today – enabled the positing of fundamental human differences in biopolitical and culturalist ways to create strategic essentialisms demarcating human kinds and populations. Another focus is how race figures in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe (beginning as Latin Christendom) in this time. Part I –‘Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages’– surveys the current state of race theory, and puts in conversation race studies and medieval studies, fields that exist on either side of a vast divide. Part II –‘Locations of Medieval Race’– identifies and analyzes specific concretions of medieval race, while continuing to develop the theoretical arguments of Part I.

Modernist Studies and the Bildungsroman: A Historical Survey of Critical Trends

Abstract: The term Bildungsroman, or “novel of formation,” remains at once one of the most vexing, but also one of the most fruitful contributions that German letters have made to the international vocabulary of literary studies. This article presents a survey of critical trends in Bildungsroman studies, from the early twentieth century to the present, but with an emphasis on scholarship from the last decade. Special attention is paid to work done in modernist studies. The article is divided into three parts. The first presents a broad historical overview and explores the problems raised by diverging critical traditions in Germany and the English-speaking world. The second focuses on the rise of feminist and historicist modes of inquiry between 1980 and 1995. The final part explores some of the most recent contributions to the genre, with special emphasis on colonial and post-colonial studies.

Toward a Blue Cultural Studies: The Sea, Maritime Culture, and Early Modern English Literature

Abstract: This article explores the cultural meanings of the maritime world in early modern English literature. Placing English literary culture in the context of the massive ocean-bound expansion of European culture that began in the 15th century, it suggests that the sea’s ancient meanings shifted in the early modern period as geographic experience and knowledge increased. The article examines some recent developments in maritime studies, sometimes called a ‘new thalassology’ (from the Greek thalassos, the sea); distinguishes these trends from now-traditional New Historicist and Atlantic studies; and suggests how these methods can contribute to a ‘blue cultural studies’. The new maritime humanities speaks to a series of modern discourses, including globalization, postcolonialism, environmentalism, ecocriticism, and the history of science and technology. The article provides two examples of how these maritime discourses can change our interpretations of early modern English literature, first by examining a canonical poem – Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ – and second through reconsidering a historical context, the ‘Bermuda pamphlets’ on which Shakespeare seems to have drawn in The Tempest.

Naturalizing the Supernatural: Faith, Irreverence and Magical Realism

Abstract: Starting from a basic understanding of magical realism as a mode of narration that seeks to naturalize the supernatural, this essay draws a distinction between faith and irreverence in magical realist discourse. It offers a brief account of magical realism’s conceptual and literary history, analyses the state of current critical discourse and suggests ways in which nuanced modes of reading magical realist literature can be developed. Drawing from the early theorizing of Alejo Carpentier, the article proposes that one strand of magical realism is characterized by the desire to affirm non-western world views and cultural modalities. On the other hand, Carpentier’s contemporary, Jorge Luis Borges, provides the paradigm for an alternative view of magical realism that sees it as similar in key respects to postmodern literary projects. These contrasting approaches are then tested with reference to the magical realism of Ben Okri and Salman Rushdie.