scholarly journals Éruptions et irruptions : de quelques avatars de la citation dans Under the Volcano de Malcolm Lowry

E-rea ◽  
2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre SCHAEFFER
Author(s):  
Steven Earnshaw

Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano places the committed drinker, in the form of ex-Consul Geoffrey Firmin, in the Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’ festival, so that the main character encounters ‘hell’ in physical and spiritual dimensions. The novel is technically innovative in its aim to register the subjective experience of the Existential drinker: Geoffrey Firmin’s world is constructed through a highly-individualised, expressionistic symbolism, a mid-century representation of the modern, alienated self, abandoned and suffering despair in a Godless world – the latter made evident by the novel’s attention to the rise of totalitarianism, which forms the backdrop to the events here on a day close to the onset of World War II. There is discussion of the novel’s difficulty and form, and a comparison of some aspects of the novel with Kafka’s The Trial, and how these relate to representation of the Existential drinker.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-186
Author(s):  
Randall Stevenson

Abstract Ferris Wheels seem to fascinate film-directors – notably Carol Reed in The Third Man (1949), based on Graham Greene’s story and script. Though Ferris Wheels figure less conspicuously in twentieth-century novels, Malcolm Lowry provides an exception in Under the Volcano (1947), a novel also comparable to The Third Man in other ways. One explanation might be that Greene simply drew on Lowry’s example when developing his film-script (later published as a novella) – work begun very shortly after Under the Volcano had appeared. More plausibly, each writer might be understood to have responded separately, though similarly, to the unique pressures of their age. Identifying how these stresses were represented in their work, through cognate symbologies, may suggest some productive ways of reading historically.


1986 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-115
Author(s):  
Gérard Pecorari

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-265
Author(s):  
D. V. Zakharov

The article sets out to acquaint readers with early works by Truman Capote that have never been published in collections of his early prose. It concerns his school exercises, some of which appeared in The Trinity Times newspaper, as well as short stories penned before 1942 during his time at Greenwich High School. A brief abstract of these works gives an idea of the talent of the writer, who became aware of his vocation very early in life. The article discusses Capote’s other manuscripts discovered in American archives, including a draft ‘Article about a group of young people in Moscow’, referred to by Capote as ‘A Daughter of the Russian Revolution.’ This documentary piece describes the children of the Soviet elite whom Capote met during his visits to Moscow in 1956, 1958 and 1959. Among his other important finds, D. Zakharov mentions the manuscript of the short story Another Day in Paradise, dedicated to the writer Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano), whom Capote met in Sicily. The article raises the question of including the aforementioned works in the writer’s general bibliography, offering arguments in favour of their subsequent publication.


2012 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Lewis ◽  
Belinda Lewis

The 2011 Japanese earthquake and subsequent malfunction at the Fukushima nuclear power plant occurred at the apex of a complex crisis of nature. While some commentators claim that the Fukushima malfunction was the result of a ‘natural disaster’, others situate the event within a broader context of human interventions in ecological and natural systems. Exercised through the global mediasphere, these environmental language wars are formed within crisis conditions and a crisis consciousness that have extensive genealogical roots. This article examines the crisis of nature in terms of contemporary and genealogical language wars that are embedded in a cultural politics of apocalysm. In particular, the article problematises the concept of ‘nature’ in terms of the disaggregation of human and non-human life systems. It argues that this disaggregation confounds the cultural politics of life (-death) systems, leading to excessive violence on the one hand, and Romantic idealisation on the other. The article recommends a reconceptualisation of nature that implicates all humans and human desires across the global mediasphere.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-246
Author(s):  
Tadd Graham Fernée

This article comparatively examines French and English literature based on two novels published in 1947, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano and Jean-Louis Curtis’ The Forests of Night. Both novels employ the mythic device to construct narratives on the twilight of the British Empire and the German occupied French Vichy regime, respectively, depicting experiences of resistance and collaboration on the eve of and during the Second World War. Both invent a system of symbolic imagery modelled on the Surrealist template in Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine, that turns the classical mythic device still prevalent in the early 20th century (i.e. in Joyce or Eliot) upside down. The revolution in Mythic Imagination follows the Structuralist Revolution initiated by Durkheim, Saussure and Bachelard, evacuating fixed ontological architecture to portray relational interdependency without essence. These novels pursue overlapping ethical investigations, on “non-interventionism” in Lowry and “fraternity” in Curtis. The novels raise questions about the relation between colonialism and fascism and the impact of non-Western mythic universes (i.e. Hinduism) upon the Mythic Imagination. They have implications for our understanding of gender relations, as well as the value of political activism and progress.


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