Showing papers in "Modern Language Review in 2012"

Making Sense of the Translingual Text : Russian Wordplay, Names and Cultural Allusions in Olga Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov

Abstract: This article examines the effects of translingual wordplay, Russian names, and cultural allusions in Olga Grushin's novel. The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Applying Wolfgang Iser's concepts of the implied reader and the repertoire of the text, the analysis considers various interpretative possibilities which may be actualized by bilingual and monolingual readers. The article concludes that while Russian elements in the text may elicit recognition on the part of the bilingual reader, they potentially serve as a device of defamiliarization for the monolingual reader, creating a parallel between the reading process and the protagonist's disorientation in the Soviet Union during glasnost'.

The cognitive realism of memory in Flaubert's Madame Bovary

Abstract: The ‘cognitive realism' of memory in Madame Bovary is investigated by means of relevant research in the cognitive sciences, drawing conclusions which complement those of traditional literary criticism. In particular, Emma Bovary's memory is elucidated with reference to cognitive-dissonance theory: the human need for coherence between memory and self-image renders the trajectory of her married life psychologically explicable. The findings help account for critics' ambivalent or contradictory responses to Emma's story, and yield hypotheses concerning readers' responses more generally. They also suggest conclusions regarding the disjuncture between literary Realism (which corresponds to our assumptions about cognition) and cognitive realism (which corresponds to the underlying cognitive realities).

'A Thingy World': Iris Murdoch's stuff

Abstract: This essay considers two of Iris Murdoch's novels, The Black Prince (1973) and The Sea, the Sea (1978), and argues that the representation of objects in both offers us manifold interpretative possibilities, and a new approach to some of Murdoch's most significant ideas. It examines how the relationship between the subject and the object in her fiction is negotiated, and how objects inform her theories of character, contingency, and forgiveness, and suggests that in these two novels the way in which the self exists among objects eventually constitutes its own construction and definition.

‘Cose di Platone fatte Toscane’ : language and ideology in two vernacular translations of Plato printed by Francesco Priscianese

Abstract: In 1544 two vernacular versions of Plato's works appeared in Rome from the press of the Florentine humanist Francesco Priscianese: the first was a translation of Plato's Symposium made by Ercole Barbarasa da Terni; the second, a version of Plato's Phaedrus by the Sienese man of letters Felice Figliucci. Each Platonic dialogue was accompanied by Marsilio Ficino's interpretations. Modern scholars have so far focused on Priscianese's activity as a grammarian and promoter of the vernacular, and on the role he played in the debate on language.1 However, the reasons that led him to print these two important Platonic texts have attracted little attention. Similarly, although Michel Plaisance, Brian Richardson, and others have magisterially demonstrated the importance of print in the history of vernacular culture, many aspects of this history, especially outside Florence, still remain to be studied. In particular, there is a need to reassess the way in which the political exiles in Rome, many of whom were prominent artists and scholars, produced and transmitted their works during the first years of the Medici principato, at a time when Duke Cosimo I was launching a vast enterprise of vernacularization that would serve the political ideology of his regime. The purpose of this article is to fill this gap by examining the circumstances surrounding the publication of Plato's works by one such exile: Francesco Priscianese. It will show that Priscianese's press.

Swimming against the Stream: Weggehen ehe das Meer zufriert by Laure Wyss

Abstract: Weggehen ehe das Meer zufriert: Fragmente zu Konigin Christina von Schweden (1994) by the Swiss writer Laure Wyss (1913–2002) is part novel, part biography, part autobiography. It does not focus solely on Christina of Sweden, but interleaves three separate chronological periods and offers an introspective consideration of the relationship between past and present, particularly with respect to the persecution of Jews under National Socialism. A repeated reference to ‘fragments’ serves as a metaphor for the inadequacy of words fully to express human experience as Wyss reviews her own past and articulates the desire for a more tolerant, vibrant Europe.

New mothers for a new era? Images of mothers and daughters in post-Soviet prose

Abstract: Although feminists in the West have played a major part in the rediscovery of women writers in Russia, and since glasnost women’s writing has flourished more in Russia than in any other cultural period, there have still been relatively few studies focusing specifically on the representation of mothers in Russian culture Moreover, the comparative absence of the theme of mothers and daughters in Russian literature reflects the suppression of the feminine in Russian culture as a whole The absence of a female genealogy is particularly evident in Russian literature, which has devoted considerable attention to “fathers and sons”: the relations between male generations of intellectuals, and their interaction with the state The aim of this paper is to show that relationships between mothers and daughters – largely ignored in women’s writings of the Soviet period – constitute a significant theme in the writings of contemporary women writers in post-Soviet Russia, as in Western Europe While only relatively few Russian women writers have been directly influenced by feminist writings, some contemporary works depict fascinating mother-daughter relationships that can be illuminated by recent feminist and psychoanalytical theories on maternity published in the West

The name in evidence: Richard Millet's Le Renard dans le nom

Abstract: In Richard Millet’s 2003 recit, Le Renard dans le nom, the fox in the name is the vulpes etymologically present in the name of the principal character Pierre-Marie Lavolps. When a young girl is murdered, Lavolps is presumed to be the murderer on the evidence of his name. Examination of the evidence brings associations with animality and the archaism of rural France, but also the cultural symbolism of the fox, as represented by Le Roman de Renart. In the end, the name is seen to function as a fragile metaphor for an otherness that overflows, for example, the name as understood by literary onomastics.

'The age of a mistaken nationalism': histoire croisée, cross-national exchange and an Anglo-French network of periodicals

Abstract: This article uses the toolbox of histoire croisee to study Anglo-French interaction in Ford Madox Ford's English Review and Transatlantic Review and T. S. Eliot's Criterion. It argues that histoire croisee allows for a more nuanced sense of processes of internationalization than Pierre Bourdieu's nationally inspired field theory and accounts for the selected magazines' varying degrees of success by combining both methodological perspectives. While Eliot's Criterion, despite its European ambitions, catered for a predominantly British audience, Ford's Transatlantic Review lacked a well-defined national readership, thus failing to acquire symbolic (and therefore economic) capital in Paris, London, and New York.