Authorial Enchantments in the Fictions of Henry James, Philip Roth, and Joshua Cohen

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-405
Author(s):  
Adelais Mills
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Philip Roth ◽  
Joshua Cohen ◽  
Fault Lines

Print literature has always existed in an ecosystem of media forms, among which the attention of audiences have been shared. Periodically, however, novelists have expressed concerns for the charms of literature in relation to its competitors. This article explores three interrelated experiments that harness the effects of authorial presence to revive the capacity of literary fiction to detain readers. Henry James's ‘The Death of the Lion’ (1894), Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer (1979) and Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers (2015) speak to each other by mobilising the trope of the author in ways that probe the fault lines in under-nuanced accounts of the author's coercive role in delimiting the meaning of a literary work. These texts, I offer, reimagine the author not as a disciplining force but as a compelling figure, working in distinctive ways to summon readerly attention.

Cross Scripts: Inscribing Hebrew into Jewish American Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 90-107
Author(s):  
Hana Wirth-Nesher
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Philip Roth ◽  
Jewish American Literature ◽  
Achy Obejas ◽  
Joshua Cohen ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
Michael Chabon

Abstract Most Jewish immigrants to America during the early 20th century arrived speaking Yiddish or Ladino and using Hebrew and Aramaic for liturgical purposes. When subsequent generations abandoned the first two languages, Hebrew and Aramaic were retained, used primarily for liturgy and rites of passage. Jewish American writers have often inserted Hebrew into their English texts by either reproducing the original alphabet or transliterating into Latin letters. This essay focuses on diverse strategies for representing liturgical Hebrew with an emphasis on the poetic, thematic, and sociolinguistic aspects of these expressions of both home and the foreign. Hebrew transliteration is discussed for its literary (rather than phonetic) rendering, for its multilingual creative contact with the other languages and cultures of each narrative. Among the authors whose works are discussed are Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, Nathan Englander, Joshua Cohen, Achy Obejas, and Gary Shteyngart.

scholarly journals John Leech and "Punch" - Tattooing the Story of an Age in a 'Newspaperized World'

Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
Simona Catrinel Avarvarei
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Visual Appearance ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
Selection Of

As tattoos are both drawing and text that imprint the epidermis in inky arabesques of Delphic symbolism, Punch or The London Charivari acted, for more than one-hundred and sixty-one years (1841-2002) as the sharply witty, bitterly satirical chronicle of its own time. With a weekly circulation of approximately 50,000 – 60,000 issues in the mid-Victorian period, Punch became one of the most influential journalistic witnesses in mid-Victorian Britain, renowned for its unique sense of humour, audacious approach to current social and political matters and, most of all, for an unprecedented mastery of caustic illustrations, in a fresh approach to capture and caricaturise the spirit of the epoch, equally unprecedented in its dynamism and expansion. Although throughout the 1840s the magazine built its popularity more on political analysis than on satirical drawing, ”Punch's Pencillings” would turn the magazine into a vivid fresco, whose inimitable touch and magnetism have come to be osmotically associated with John Leech (1817-1864). With his undeniably remarkable artistic touch he managed not only to define the overall architecture of the magazine, but also to create a new understanding of humorous drawings, introducing the world to the concept of 'cartoon' as we all know it today. This article examines a selection of his three-thousand drawings published in Punch, in an attempt to recompose, through curved charcoal lines, the jigsaw of what Henry James coined as “newspaperized world,” at times when, as Lucy Brown argues, Britain was forging the modern concept of news. It is not only the social, cultural and political milieu that interests us, but also the extratextual implications of a visual appearance and narrative that pervaded the literary scene, as nineteenth-century journalism shared its boundaries with the realm of literary fiction.

Religious Motives of the Creation of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

2020 ◽  
pp. 133-161
Author(s):  
Илья Сергеевич Вевюрко
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Religious Consciousness ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Rewritten Bible

В статье исследуется гипотетическое отношение авторов псевдоэпиграфов, как носителей религиозного сознания, к их собственному творчеству. Для этого выявляется специфика псевдоэпиграфа как особого типа текста, а также рассматриваются различные виды литературного творчества и его мотивации, с тем чтобы выявить наиболее релевантные мотивы. Также предпринимается обзор и критика существующих гипотез природы псевдонимии в парабиблейской литературе, включая концепции, касающиеся предпосылок и условий создания «переписанной Библии». Выясняются причины, по которым, отличаясь и от канонического текста, и от литературной фикции, но представляя собой то, что сами его создатели считают записью откровения, псевдоэпиграф не мог не быть псевдонимичным по условиям литературного процесса эпохи, его породившей. В конце статьи сделаны выводы о природе отношения псевдоэпиграфического корпуса текстов к каноническому. There is explored in the article a hypothetical attitude of the authors of pseudepigrapha, given that they had a religious consciousness, to their literary work. For such a purpose there is revealed a specifity of pseudepigraph as a special type of text, and different types of literary creativity and its motivation are examined in order to identify the most relevant motives. There is also undertaken the review and criticism of existing hypotheses of the nature of the pseudonymity in parabiblical literature, including concepts relating to the background and conditions for the creation of a «rewritten Bible». There are clarified the reasons for which pseudepigraph, differing from both the canonical text and the literary fiction, but representing what its creators themselves consider to be a record of revelation, could not but be pseudonymous in conditions of the literary process of the era that gave rise to it. At the end of the article, conclusions are drawn about the nature of relation between the pseudepigraphic corpus of texts and the canonical one.

scholarly journals The return of poetics. Julia Kristeva vs Mikhail Bakhtin

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-261
Author(s):  
Konstantin A. Barsht ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Russian Scientific ◽  
Binary Oppositions

The article offers an analysis of the concept of “intertext” that has been put forward by Julia Kristeva in her work “The Destruction of Poetics” in comparison with Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of a universal context and “infinite dialogue”. It is concluded that Kristeva incorrectly perceived Bakhtin’s thoughts about context and dialogue, which are personalistic in nature in contrast to Kristeva’s impersonal one based on the Freudian-driven “It” and social factors of the “intertext”. The article analyzes the theoretical basis of this concept, including the crisis in literary theory in the 1970s–1980s where there was frustration by the European and Russian scientific community in the universalism of binary oppositions. In this regard, the issue of overcoming the theoretical difficulties of literary aesthetics with the help of the ternary model of aesthetic communication (“metalinguistics”), which was developed by Bakhtin in his works since the 1930s and was not heeded by Kristeva, has not yet been mastered in modern philological science. This concept is based on the idea of aesthetics as metaethics, which is built up in the process of textual communication over simple binary ethical exchange. The article suggests that the use of this idea of a ternary (metalinguistic) construction of the communicative field of a literary work can significantly advance the solution of many problems in theoretical poetics, in particular, reveal new ways for linking the discursive-textual and axiological fields of a literary-fiction text into one whole.

scholarly journals The TV Version of a Literary Work as a Form of Mass Culture

2015 ◽  
pp. 119-124
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Poltavtseva
Keyword(s):  
General Problem ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Mikhail Bulgakov ◽  
The Master And Margarita

Studies the television series as a form of mass culture within the framework of cultural anthropology. A special attention is paid to the problem of interaction between literary fiction and genre of television serial. In this regard, the author addresses “The Master and Margarita” serial directed by Vladimir Bortko and based on the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov as a particular case of interpretation which is related to the general problem of cultural codes “translation”.

Miles away from Screwing?

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Robyn Ollett
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Gothic Fiction

Literary fiction is a widely popular arena in which discourse on sexuality and queerness is produced and disseminated. The Gothic is an especially crucial mode in literary fiction that has a historically intimate relationship with queer subjectivity. Observing this relationship between Gothic fiction and queer subjectivity, in this article I analyze the representation of queer Gothic girlhood in contemporary fiction, taking as my focus John Harding’s 2010 reworking of the Henry James classic, The Turn of the Screw (1898). I show how Florence and Giles develops familiar tropes attached to the figure of the queer child and look specifically at how readings of the parent text implicate contemporary readings of this figure. With close readings that draw on the queer feminist ethics of Lynne Huffer, I consider what seems to be happening to the figure of the queer Gothic girl in contemporary fiction.

Fictions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Blacklock
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Ford Madox Ford ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
George Macdonald ◽  
Fin De Siècle

Chapter 6 considers how cultural conceptions of space had been shifted by higher spatial thought in its various forms and how this was reflected in the popular and literary fiction of the fin de siècle. Investigating the production of space in fin de siècle literature, it focuses on embodiment, the senses, and particularly narrative voice and mood. A newly configured spatiality that owes its conception to higher space becomes a driving force behind certain techniques of narrative fiction in the period and plays directly into Modernism. This chapter builds on earlier observations on things as mediating objects and on the philosophy of space to develop a widescreen vision of higher space that explores its reciprocal relationship with colonial space in the fiction of H.G. Wells, George MacDonald, George Griffith, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, and others.

scholarly journals Semantics of Verbs with the Prefix при- in a Russian Literary Work by N. V. Gogol with Reference to Their Chinese Equivalents

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 122-134
Author(s):  
Kai Yan ◽  
Yongyu Huang
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Inspector General ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
Cultural Features

The article analyzes verbs with the prefix при- in a Russian literary work and its Chinese translation from the linguistic perspective. The relevance of the work is determined by the need to overcome intercultural barriers that arise as a result of insufficient comparative analysis of Russian prefixed verbs and their Chinese equivalents in terms of semantics. The purpose of the article is to identify the semantic characteristics of the word-formation prefix при- which determine the meaning of verbs in the Russian literary fiction and its Chinese translation.To achieve this goal, we have formulated the following objectives: 1) to present the main meanings of the prefix при- in the verbs selected from “Revizor” by N. V. Gogol; 2) to find out the main ways of translating the Russian verbs with this prefix the above literary work into Chinese; 3) to identify national and cultural specifics of the translation of the prefix при- into the Chinese language.The sources of materials are contexts, containing verbs with the prefix при-, from the comedy “The Inspector General” by N. V. Gogol. The methods used are a comparative, a semantic, and a linguo-cognitive types of analyses.The novelty of the research is that it is by far the first attempt to: 1) analyze the verbs with the prefix при- in the Russian literary work and in the Chinese translated text based on the comparative, semantic, and linguo-cognitive types of analyses; 2) find out the main methods of translating verbs with the prefix при- from Russian into Chinese; 3) reveal some national and cultural features of the translation of this prefix into Chinese. In our opinion, the results obtained during the analysis are relevant for the study of such branches of linguistics as grammar, word formation, semantics, as well as cognitive linguistics and theory and practice of translation.

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