In the Wake of the Novel: The Oriental Tale as National Allegory

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srinivas Aravamudan
Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adetunji Kazeem Adebiyi-Adelabu

Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams offers an extensive treatment of homosexuality, a preoccupation which, until recently, is rare in black African fiction. On this account, as well as its depth and openness, the work has attracted some critical attention. It has been read from a masculinity perspective, as a coming-out novel, as a national allegory, as a work that challenges the notion of fixed sexuality, as a work that normalises same-sex sexuality, and so forth. Unlike these studies, this article examines the representation and disquisition around same-sex preference in the novel, with a view to demonstrating how some myths about homosexuality are exploded in the groundbreaking work, and showing that the narrative could also be apprehended as intellectual advocacy for the right to same-sex orientation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-341
Author(s):  
Isabel Gómez

How does one translate an avant-garde classic? How might a translation mediate between experimentalism and canonicity as a work travels away from its culture of origin? This article studies Héctor Olea’s Spanish translation of Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma (1928) as one response to these questions from a Latin American translation zone. First translated for the Barcelona publishing house Seix Barral (1977), his work soon traveled back across the Atlantic to be re-edited into a critical edition for Biblioteca Ayacucho (1979). This article examines letters from the publisher’s archive to demonstrate that debates over the novel as avant-garde art, literary ethnography, or Brazilian national allegory influenced their views on translation. By including two incompatible translation approaches—transcreation and thick translation—the volume reveals an unresolved paradoxical treatment of cultural hybridity at the heart of the text.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-228
Author(s):  
Magdalena Zdrada-Cok

This article analyses the novel “La vieille dame du riad” (2011) by Fouad Laroui, a Moroccan-Dutch writer of French expression. We examine the strategies (generic and intertextual) used by the novelist to ridicule the Orientalist prejudices which persist in the current time. Generic hybridity (the presence of some elements of the detective story, fantasy novel and oriental tale) is used to develop the satirical dimension of the novel.


Author(s):  
Markman Ellis

This essay examines novel’s relation with empire through the relationship between the form of the novel and the ideology of empire. It analyses the themes of colony and cross-cultural global encounters in popular prose subgenres of the eighteenth century, including the robinsonade, imitations of Crusoe’s island adventures, and the oriental tale, free imitations of the Islamic story collection. Although contemporary discourse on the British Empire argued that it was founded on ideas of liberty, commerce, and Christianity, the problem of slavery presented a powerful contradiction and growing controversy. Depictions of slavery in the sentimental novel advertised the asymmetrical violence endemic to the slave system, contributing to the emerging campaign for the abolition of the slave trade and, eventually, the emancipation of the slaves. Nonetheless, Gothic fictions found creative potential in the terrors of slavery and in folk beliefs derived from slave society, such as obeah and the zombie.


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolette Bragg

This article argues that David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon relates two narratives, one of hospitality and one of the nation. Rather than corroborating each other, these narratives conflict. By emphasising the novel’s account of hospitality and the accommodation of the stranger, this article intervenes in readings of the novel as a national allegory. Rather than simply a legacy of colonialism with revised legitimacy, the nation in Remembering Babylon signals the failure of hospitality.


2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (8) ◽  
pp. S33-S33
Author(s):  
Wenchao Ou ◽  
Haifeng Chen ◽  
Yun Zhong ◽  
Benrong Liu ◽  
Keji Chen

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document