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Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900
01 Jan 1998-
TL;DR: Moretti as mentioned in this paper explored the fictionalization of geography in the nineteenth-century novel and found that space may well be the secret protagonist of cultural history, in a series of one hundred maps, alongside Spanish picaresque novels, African colonial romances and Russian novels of ideas.
Abstract: In a series of one hundred maps, Franco Moretti explores the fictionalization of geography in the nineteenth-century novel. Balzac's Paris, Dickens's London and Scott's Scottish Lowlands are mapped, alongside the territories of Spanish picaresque novels, African colonial romances and Russian novels of ideas, in a path-breaking study which suggests that space may well be the secret protagonist of cultural history.
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TL;DR: In this paper, Reema's boy has returned with a tape recorder and an addled brain, having been sent to the mainland to learn to be a teacher, and he has concluded that the "18 & 23s" are an inversion of the lines of longitude and latitude on which Willow Springs was once located on maps.
Abstract: Lyrical, seductive, and justly celebrated, the prologue of Gloria Naylor’s 1988 novel, Mama Day invites the reader into a fictive world that in its location, history, customs, and beliefs is a world elsewhere. Belonging to the United States, but part of no state, Willow Springs can be located only on the map that the front matter of the book helpfully provides. A place that has been black owned and self sufficient since 1823 when an enslaved conjure woman compelled her master to deed the land to her and her descendants, its existence is anomalous in the extreme. What renders this unfamiliar world accessible to many readers is the narrator’s language. The use of black vernacular English and the direct address to the reader create an illusion of intimacy that is reinforced by the narrator’s invitation to include readers in on a joke that is told at the expense of a resident of Willow Springs. “Reema’s boy” is mocked as a classic example of an educated fool. Schooled on the mainland, Reema’s boy, in the only identity the narrator grants him, has returned with a tape recorder and an addled brain. He has subsequently published his ethnography of Willow Springs in which he identified the island’s “unique speech patterns” and specified examples of “cultural preservation.” His “extensive field work” has yielded what seems to those on the island who read even the introduction of his book an inane conclusion. The “18 & 23s,” the all purpose phrase that encodes something both of the island’s history and its philosophy, he has determined, is actually an inversion of the lines of longitude and latitude on which Willow Springs was once located on maps. From this observation, Reema’s boy has extrapolated the conclusion that inversion is the key to the worldview of Willow Springs, a place where in order to assert their cultural identity, people had “no choice but to look at everything upside-down” (8). Such a conclusion may impress his fellow academics, but the people of Willow Springs dismiss him and his findings. They wonder “if the boy wanted to know what 18 & 23 means, why didn’t he just ask?” (8). Then they go on to admit that they would not or could not have told him. Had he learned to “listen,” however, he would have found out for himself.1 Reema’s boy is not the only butt of this joke. The buzz words that the narrator attributes to the ethnographer are at least as common among literary critics. Indeed, the narrator’s words might be taken less as a joke and more as a warning to those who would reduce the complexity of the author’s vision to catch phrases. But, just as the residents of Willow Springs have had fun with Reema’s boy, misleading him as often as telling him “the God-honest truth,” Naylor seems to be having some fun of her own. Critics have been attentive to the many allusions in Mama Day to The Tempest, Hamlet,
5 citations
01 Dec 2019
TL;DR: Fogarasi as discussed by the authors investigates the contemporary critical potentials of close reading in the light of recent developments in computation assisted analysis, and draws on three major texts from 1977: de Man's draft on "Literature Z", his lecture on "The Concept of Irony", and the first and second Geneva Protocols.
Abstract: Abstract In his article “A Distant View of Close Reading: On Irony and Terrorism around 1977,” György Fogarasi investigates the contemporary critical potentials of close reading in the light of recent developments in computation assisted analysis. While rhetorical reading has come to appear outdated in a “digital” era equipped with widgets for massive archival analysis (an era, namely, more keen on “distant,” rather than “close,” reading), Paul de Man’s insights concerning irony might prove useful in trying to account for the difficulties we must face in a world increasingly permeated with dissimulative forms of threat and violence. The article draws on three major texts from 1977: de Man’s draft on “Literature Z,” his lecture on “The Concept of Irony,” and the first and second Geneva Protocols. The reading of these texts purports to demonstrate the relevance of de Man’s theory of irony with respect to the epistemology of “terrorism,” but it also serves as an occasion to reflect upon questions of distance, speed, range, scale, or frequency, and the chances of “rhythmanalysis.”
5 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigates the manifold interactions between textual and diagrammatic elements and argues that Pynchon's work might be considered a medial counterpart of a map if the topographical approach, instead of being considered a comparison between fictional and real locations, is understood as a scrutiny into the operations indispensable to creating a fictional territory.
Abstract: Abstract My article investigates the manifold interactions between textual and diagrammatic elements. First, it outlines the changes in literary and cultural studies in the wake of the so-called ‘topographical turn,’ which have made possible the identification of certain cartographic practices as cultural techniques. Second, it discusses Friedrich Kittler’s idea of literature as a cultural technique itself, and considers how this concept can be reconciled with the topographical turn. Third, it analyses a handful of cartographic techniques employed in narratives and argues for a field of scriptural operations that provide a common ground for jointly reading maps and novels. Fourth, it carries out a reading of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow which focuses on how the diagrammatic inscription of the V2 rocket and its arc condition both the protagonists’ movement on the novel’s plane and the map-making instances in the narrative. Fifth and finally, it points out why Pynchon’s work might be considered a medial counterpart of a map if the topographical approach, instead of being considered a comparison between fictional and real locations, is understood as a scrutiny into the operations indispensable to creating a fictional territory.
5 citations
Cites background from "Atlas of the European Novel 1800-19..."
...One such case is the comparison of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional account of white-collar crime in the City of London with the statistics in criminology during the era (see Moretti 1998, 134–137)....
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