Showing papers in "Modern Language Review in 2013"
37 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the notion of performance is often reserved for forms of oral presentation, and that such a characterization is anachronistic if projected onto Dutch literary texts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Abstract: Applied to literary texts, the notion of performance is often reserved for forms of oral presentation. This article argues that such a characterization is anachronistic if projected onto Dutch literary texts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It proposes that performance manifests itself not in orality and the physical presence of a performer but in the interaction of a text with a specific place, moment, and audience. This is illustrated through several types of performance in the Testament Rhetoricael (1562), an important collection of lyrical texts by the Flemish poet and rhetorician Eduard De Dene.
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TL;DR: The authors argue that sociolinguistic background is a relevant part of literary analysis, especially in multilingual settings, and argue that knowledge of Alsatian and German is declining in Alsace; this trilingual output is therefore the swansong of a dying breed.
Abstract: This paper argues that the sociolinguistic background is a relevant part of literary analysis, especially in multilingual settings. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers in Alsace (e.g. Arp, Vigee, Weckmann) have continued to deploy a trilingual repertoire (French, German, Alsatian Dialect), characteristic of this area's literature for centuries. Strategic language choices, code-switching, and self-translation characterize their work and give it a sense of identity. But sociolinguistic surveys show that knowledge of Alsatian and German is declining in Alsace; this trilingual output is therefore the swansong of a dying breed.
4 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined three different translations of Shelley's sonnet "Ozymandias" from the early development of Russian Symbolism and showed that the English poet could be interpreted in different ways in order to support radically different aesthetic ideas, and to reflect both the views of the literary establishment and those of the emerging Symbolist movement.
Abstract: I Shelley is a particularly significant figure in the early development of Russian Symbolism because of the high degree of critical attention he received in the 1880s and 1890s when Symbolism was rising as a literary force in Russia, and because of the number and quality of his translators. This article examines three different translations of Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ from the period. Taken together, they show that the English poet could be interpreted in different ways in order to support radically different aesthetic ideas, and to reflect both the views of the literary establishment and those of the emerging Symbolist movement. At the same time the example of Shelley confirms a persistent general truth about literary history: that the literary past is constantly recreated in terms of the present, and that a shared culture can be used to promote a changing view of the world as well as to reinforce the status quo. The advent of Symbolism as a literary movement in Russian literature is sometimes seen as a revolution in which a tide of individualism, prompted by a crisis of faith at home, and combined with a new sense of form drawing on French models, replaced almost overnight the positivist and utilitarian traditions of the 1870s and 1880s with their emphasis on social responsibility and their more conservative approach to metre, rhyme and poetic style. 1 And indeed three landmark literary events marking the advent of Symbolism in Russia occurred in the pivotal year of 1892 – the publication of Zinaida Vengerova’s groundbreaking article on the French Symbolist poets in Severnyi vestnik, the appearance of
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TL;DR: In this article, the analysis focuses on four well-known sonnets (I, X, XVIII, and XXII) which exemplify Garcilaso's fascination with temporal, spatial, and interpretative perspectives.
Abstract: Recent scholarship on Garcilaso de la Vega has contested the traditional view of his poetry as natural, transparent, and authentic and drawn attention to its intertextual and metatextual sophistication. This article seeks to contribute to this revision by examining an aspect of his Petrarchism that has generally been overlooked: its complex reflection upon perspective and the way one's viewpoint colours one's perception of reality. The analysis focuses on four well-known sonnets (I, X , XVIII, and XXII), which exemplify Garcilaso's fascination with temporal, spatial, and interpretative perspectives.
TL;DR: The authors investigates the ways in which Akhmatova's early love poetry combines features of melodrama with others that suggest its rejection, and argues that a consideration of the poetry's relationship with Melodrama furnishes insights into how the peculiar emotional intensity of some key lyrics is created.
Abstract: This article investigates the ways in which Akhmatova's early love poetry combines features of melodrama with others that suggest its rejection. It argues that a consideration of the poetry's relationship with melodrama furnishes insights into how the peculiar emotional intensity of some key lyrics is created, challenging the prevalent association of Akhmatova with tragedy, and offering a means of exploring some of the problems which arise in situating Akhmatova in relation to modernism. It demonstrates, through close readings of selected early lyric poems, that Akhmatova combines melodramatic expression with modernist impersonality to create a paradoxical, restrained melodrama.
TL;DR: The history of dramatic translation from French to English in the Restoration period has been studied by as discussed by the authors, where an emerging orthodoxy has represented the process as one of growing English confidence in the face of the superior economic and cultural power of France.
Abstract: How should we write the history of dramatic translation from French to English in the Restoration period? An emerging orthodoxy has represented the process as one of growing English confidence in the face of the superior economic and cultural power of France. However, close reading of the ‘paratexts’ of translation and their rich layers of metaphorical suggestion poses a more complex picture. The influence of patrons, audiences, and performers forced playwrights to accept and inflect a degree of cultural hybridity in their transactions with French culture that is out of kilter with dominant historical narratives.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the intertextual strategies employed in Prodanovic's novel about the war in former Yugoslavia, which conveys the reality of the conflict by relating it through events and characters located in prior media constructions.
Abstract: In the narrative of a mass conflict, the human experience of its effects may be subsumed into the rationalizing contours of history, or they may fall completely outside our comprehension. This article examines the intertextual strategies employed in Prodanovic's novel about the war in former Yugoslavia. The text conveys the reality of the conflict by relating it through events and characters located in prior media constructions. The historical, documentary, mythic, and fictional sources focus on the signifying systems which drag the war into the horizon of expectations of those who were not there, closing the gap between reality and representation, life and art.
TL;DR: In this article, the trajectory of the metaphor of reading as a conversation in early modern French writing (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) is mapped out, with examples drawn from Latin, Italian, and Spanish literatures.
Abstract: The aim of this article is twofold. First, it maps out the trajectory of the metaphor of reading as a conversation-in particular a conversation with the dead authors of classical antiquity-in early modern French writing (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), though examples are also drawn from Latin, Italian, and Spanish literatures. And second, it explores what the topos of reading as a conversation might actually mean in terms of textual practice both for writers-how writers from Montaigne to Diderot converse with other writers in their texts-and for critics analysing how one writer is read by another.
TL;DR: This paper examined the social presence of the dead in "Michael" and "The Brothers" and argued that they dramatize a significant paradigm shift in the cultural history of death by identifying the moment when an unmediated relationship with the dead was replaced by a relationship governed by symbols.
Abstract: This article examines the social presence of the dead in ‘Michael’ and ‘The Brothers’, arguing that they dramatize a significant paradigm-shift in the cultural history of death by identifying the moment when an unmediated relationship with the dead was replaced by a relationship governed by symbols. I contrast Wordsworth’s mournful view of this development with that of Hegel, who saw this ‘mere natural being’ as a lesser state, and its loss as a desirable fall into knowledge. Although each poem is concerned with the dead, neither is an elegy; they do, however, attempt to recuperate in poetry the loss of an idealized way of living with the dead.
TL;DR: In this paper, the Bodleian catalogue gives Robert Hale as the publisher, and dates as or ♁ , with the original publication being New York: Free Press, �
Abstract: Modern Language Review, (), – [] In the footnote, confirm publication details for Friedman? Not in the online Penguin list: the Bodleian catalogue gives Robert Hale as the publisher, and dates as or , with the original publication being New York: Free Press, . (NB: publication details are not systematically checked here, only when something seemed wrong or information was missing, as in e.g. nn. , , and .) BEHIND THE MASK? SADE AND THE CENT VINGT JOURNÉES DE SODOME
TL;DR: The authors examines the literary relationship between Joyce, Borges, and Bolano, and argues that, as Borges gradually shift from the youthful tone of their early writings to the fictional canonicity of their later prose, their attitudes towards Joyce develop accordingly.
Abstract: This article examines the literary relationship between Joyce, Borges, and Bolano. After discussing Borges's and Bolano's formative years as writers, during which both openly and self-consciously endorse a Joycean aesthetic, it argues that, as Borges and Bolano gradually shift from the youthful tone of their early writings to the fictional canonicity of their later prose, their attitudes towards Joyce develop accordingly. Borges showcases his aesthetic of brevity as the antithetical response to Joyce's epic legacy. Bolano adopts Joyce's accretive method of composition, resulting in the creation of his two multi-plotted and multi-voiced gargantuan masterpieces, Los detectives salvajes (1998) and 2666 (2004).