AND ACTION!: REINTERPRETATION AND SIMULATION OF HISTORY THROUGH FILM IN DELILLO’S AMERICANA AND LIBRA

Author(s): Slađana S. Stamenković / Language(s): English / Issue: 26/2019

Linda Hutcheon claimed that the only way to access the past is to use texts and textual recordings of it. Today, we can interpret the mass media as textual evidence of the past which is at the same time an artifact and a means of rewriting history. Modern mass media seem to shape and reshape history and even our whole reality. Therefore, one can argue that history may be interpreted as what Baudrillard defined as a simulacrum. In Don DeLillo’s novels, media are frequently used to give access to or retell past events. In both Americana and Libra, DeLillo introduces the film as a piece of evidence which offers insight into history. In Americana, David Bell sets to make a documentary on one Native American tribe, yet he decides to overtake the film and shoot the story of his life. In Libra, it is the media, and specifically the Zapruder film, which helps Nicholas Branch track the story of Kennedy’s assassination. In both novels, history is revealed to be a simulation, but also a basis upon which our everyday reality exists.

Aniołki Pynchona. Wieczny wrzesień, wieczna kobiecość? (W sieci)

Author(s): Alicja Piechucka / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Thomas Pynchon is an acclaimed American writer associated with postmodernism. His fiction offers complex insights into the social, cultural and political dimensions of American life, describing a variety of important phenomena, such as the invasion of entertainment industry, the expansion of new technologies, the strengthening of regimes within apparently democratic establishments. Pynchon dissects the linguistic mechanisms of communication and of shaping human consciousness.

ANN PETRY VE AMERİKAN ROMANINDA ETNİSİTE VE IRKÇILIK

Author(s): Önder ÇAKIRTAŞ / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 3/2012

This paper, through the novel of Black woman novelist Ann Petry, aims to clarify the social and psychological impacts of the period in which the Blacks were pointed as a target for racist discriminations. In this study, we tried to show the survival of a black heroine against all the injustices and tortures towards her and her portrayal in respect with psycho-social perspectives together with the partiality of Ann Petry as a black person. Ann Petry tries to display the identity problem in American community by portraying a character who is a victim of racist behaviors just because of her skin color.

Annie Proulx

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 2020

The philosophical underpinnings and existential implications of Annie Proulx’s fiction situate it in the tradition of literary naturalism. The writer portrays characters from the lower social classes, people who are unable to overcome the impasse in which they have found themselves. Far from idyllic sentiments, Proulx’s approach to the experience of place connects her to the writers associated with so-called new regionalism. She shows the degrading influence of the life amidst beautiful natural surroundings on individual human psyche. Proulx looks closely at the processes of the commodification of regional culture and interprets them as symptoms of a dangerous global tendency.

ASPECTS OF FRIENDLY LOVE IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE AND SULA

Author(s): Gordan Matas / Language(s): English / Issue: 9/2017

This work analyzes the concept of love among African American female friends. Their ‘friendly’ love, i.e. the strong emotional connection of female characters in both novels by Toni Morrison, was depicted as a necessary means in overcoming the racism and sexism that African American women were exposed to. Such friendships became a means of self-realization and emancipation for African American women who were subjected to repression both by white and black men.

ATTITUDES TO THE PAST IN TONI MORRISON’S JAZZ AND PARADISE

Author(s): Gordan Matas / Language(s): English / Issue: 10/2017

This work analyzes the complex manner in which Toni Morrison addresses the issue of history in her novels, with a specific emphasis on her novels Jazz and Paradise. Black writing in the United States depicts experience that is specifically African American. In other words, black literature records the historical and cultural circumstances that no other group shares. Toni Morrison frequently fuses aspects of the traditional omniscient narrator with the unreliable element of more limited narrators. By merging these aspects, Morrison presents the difficulties for African Americans both in telling the story of their past and in releasing themselves from it. Moreover, Morrison creates a fiction out of a fragment of recorded history. In so doing, she has at the same time created a myth, in the sense that it is not just a piece of fiction that attempts to bear witness to historical events, but also a story that embodies a particular historical contradiction, i.e. the necessity to remember the past, while being aware of the dangers of becoming locked in it.

Aural/Oral Sonnets of Ted Berrigan

Author(s): Sławomir Wącior / Language(s): English / Issue: 11/2019

The present paper attempts to investigate the problem of interaction of the visual and sound dominants in the composition of a canonical now cycle of The Sonnets created by Ted Berrigan—an American poet of the second generation of New York Poets. The topic is all the more interesting as the sonnet as a poetic form represents a closed form which by definition foregrounds shape and pattern rather than sound. Berrigan’s uniqueness of technique bridges the two extremes of representation by disintegrating the rigid structure of the sonnet and allows the poet to build the poems not out of the blocks of three/four/six/eight line stanzas but out of a single unit of a one line stanza. They undergo, in turn, a dynamic process of random permutations in keeping with theories of aleatory music and collage composition. Furthermore, Berrigan supplements the visual dominant with language substance of colloquial American speech which is “overheard,” appropriated and variously recycled in successive poems. Both theoretical comments of Berrigan and the poems he included in the sequence confirm the centrality of aural/oral dimension of his sonnets.

Baranek czy tygrys? Nie-ludzkie oblicza Boga w poezji T.S. Eliota i R.S. Thomasa

Author(s): Małgorzata Grzegorzewska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2018

The text illustrates the changes in representations of the Invisible in religious poetry: the crisis of language caused by the rejection of the idea of the Logos in Western culture leads to the obscuring of the symbolic transparency present in the sacred art created in the medieval and early modern period. The traditional animal imagery used in the past to illustrate the mysteries of the faith is replaced in twentieth-century poetry by opaque representations of the non-human face of God. The argument is illustrated by reference to the “speaking” and simultaneously “mute” pictures in the poetry of T.S. Eliot and the Welsh poet R.S. Thomas. The poems of Thomas, which reveal clear traces of apophatic theology, can be viewed as a response to the challenges of the post-secular age.

Bībeles motīvi Stīvena Kinga romānā “Zvēru kapiņi”

Author(s): Bārbala Simsone / Language(s): Latvian / Issue: 1/2014

The theme of this article is devoted to the creative works of Stephen King, the living classic of horror literature. Biblical motifs frequently play a significant role in his works and they are included in his novels from the positions of peculiar inversion. This article focuses on the novel “Pet Sematary” published in 1983 that analyses one of the most universal fears of human beings from various points of views: the fear from death. The article examines the deliberate author ’s periphrasis of the biblical motif in this novel, particularly the Gospel of the New Testament, where the central event is the death of Jesus Christ and resurrection or the so-called Easter story. The article analyses the way how S. King, resorting random allusions, other means of language and thematic interconnections, deconstructs several biblical notions in a peculiar way and offers solutions for the theme of the inevitability of the cycle of life and death in a modern context.

Bioarcheologia niepełnosprawności

Author(s): Magdalena Matczak,Jane E. Buikstra,Jessica Pearson,Andrzej Marek Wyrwa / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2020

The authors discuss disability research conducted within the framework of the bioarcheology of disability – a trend that has seen dynamic development in recent years. They outline the history of this research, its goals, methods and theoretical approaches. Bioarcheology, which focuses on studying osteological material in a cultural context, provides meaningful information on the diseases and impairments experienced by people in the past. This research has shown that different attitudes to disabled people have been adopted across the ages. Discussing these attitudes, the authors focus on care and concern for disabled people. They then present the debate on the key research problems of the bioarcheology of disability and make new research proposals.

Bioregional Biography: The Landscapes of the Lives of Emily Carr and Emma Bell Miles

Author(s): Kateřina Prajznerová / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

AS authors of place-based, personal essays, Emily Carr (1871-1945) and Emma Bell Miles (1879-1919) were pioneering cartographers: pioneering in the sense that they were breaking new ground, in terms of the literary history of their respective places as well in terms of the genre of biography; cartographers in the sense that each devoted her life to writing about a place she knew, about herself, creating a body of work that offers a map for others, native-born or not, to find their own way. This chapter examines the interplay of place, self, and narrative in Carr’s portrait of Victoria, British Columbia, and Miles’s portrait of Walden’s Ridge, Tennessee, around the turn of the twentieth century. My aim is twofold: to illustrate, on the example of particular sites, each author’s individual artistic imbrication in the landscape that was her home, an imbrication that resulted in a lasting addition to the literary map of North America; simultaneously, by gleaning references to these particular sites from multiple volumes of their personal nonfiction and pairing the two life-lines into a cross-continental conversation, to show that Carr and Miles relate to place in strikingly similar ways—when their journal entries and essays are surveyed and over-laid, bioregional biography takes shape.

Bird Cloud: wymarzony (?) dom Annie

Author(s): Małgorzata Rutkowska / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

The philosophical underpinnings and existential implications of Annie Proulx’s fiction situate it in the tradition of literary naturalism. The writer portrays characters from the lower social classes, people who are unable to overcome the impasse in which they have found themselves. Far from idyllic sentiments, Proulx’s approach to the experience of place connects her to the writers associated with so-called new regionalism. She shows the degrading influence of the life amidst beautiful natural surroundings on individual human psyche. Proulx looks closely at the processes of the commodification of regional culture and interprets them as symptoms of a dangerous global tendency.

Bleeding Edge of Postmodernism: Metamodern Writing in the Novel by Thomas Pynchon

Author(s): Simon Radchenko / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

Many different models of contemporary novel’s description arose from the search for methods and approaches of post-postmodern texts analysis. One of them is the concept of metamodernism, proposed by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker and based on the culture and philosophy changes at the turn of this century. This article argues that the ideas of metamodernism and its main trends can be successfully used for the study of contemporary literature. The basic trends of metamodernism were determined and observed through the prism of literature studies. They were implemented in the analysis of Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Bleeding Edge (2013). Despite Pynchon being usually considered as postmodern writer, the use of metamodern categories for describing his narrative strategies confirms the idea of the novel’s post-postmodern orientation. The article makes an endeavor to use metamodern categories as a tool for post-postmodern text studies, in order to analyze and interpret Bleeding Edge through those categories.

BODY MEMORY AND THE DE/RE-CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY IN OCTAVIA BUTLER’S KINDRED

Author(s): Suzana Režić Miler,Sanja Runtić / Language(s): English / Issue: 17/2017

This paper examines the interaction between the physical and the historical in Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979). It focuses on Butler's envisioning of the heroine's body as a site of repressed traumatic memory and its potential to reconstruct the dominant national narrative in both historical and contemporary terms. Acknowledging the universal experience of trauma and its emotional scars, Butler's novel retrieves and rewrites the history of slavery from within the body of the oppressed. Analyzing the slave mentality concomitant to bodily dispossession through inflicted torture and sexual abuse, the paper shows that history is inevitably written in the body itself, emphasizing the fact that bodies interacting with history can never be removed from it. It also explores the de/reconstructive scope of the fantastic genre in conveying the historical immediacy and uncovering the resistance consciousness and its adept subversion of the power structures. Finally, it highlights the significance of the novel's time frame, characters' names, and geographic sites as the nexus between the individual and national history.

Bohemians, Vagabonds, and Wanderers of the “Ragged Promised Land” in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

Author(s): Daria Anna Urbańska / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/2018

The article focuses on the journey into the “ragged promised land” (80) in On the Road. It can be seen as an escape of the main protagonist Sal Paradise from his roots and from the conformity of American society. Kerouac, having a Franco-Canadian heritage, presents a marginal possibility of heterogeneity in a homogenous postwar America. The author depicts additional mentors and heroes met along the way. They are, among others, tramps and hoboes, ragged wanderers and the Fellahin of Mexico, as well as Sal’s travel companion Dean Moriarty. Sal experiences something true and meaningful among those living on the margin of society. He travels considerable distances: from coast to coast across the United States, from boarder to boarder and to Mexico. The real journey, though, is inward, a passage through the wilderness of the self, the true “ragged promised land”.

BÖLÜM 4 ELIA KAZAN’IN ROMANLARINDA VE AMERİKA AMERİKA FİLMİNDE GÖÇ ÖYKÜSÜ

Author(s): Tanju İnal,Burcak Yakici / Language(s): Turkish / Publication Year: 0

1912, Türk, Ermeni ve Rumların yaşadığı Kayseri’nin Germir kasabasından Amerika’ya göç eden Stavros Topuzoğlu’nun kulaktan kulağa yayılan serüven dolu göç öyküsünün tüm hanelerde yankılandığı bir yıl. Bu ilk ve öncü göçü, ailenin diğer bireyleri; baba Serafim Topuzoğlu’nun ve ailesinin Amerika’ya göçü izleyecektir. Bu göçmenler arasında dört yaşında, İstanbul doğumlu, daha sonra Amerika’nın ünlü yönetmenleri arasında sayılacak olan Elia Kazan da vardır. Babası, kardeşinin New York’ta başlattığı halı ticaretine güvenerek tüm ailesiyle birlikte büyük umutlarla Amerika’ya göç eder. Amerika’da yerleştikleri bölgenin demografik yapısı Ermeni-Rum ve Araplardan oluşur. Yabancılar “getto”larda “azınlıkta” ve “kapalı bir toplum” olarak yeni bir yaşama başlarlar. Elia Kazan da New York, New Rochell’de bu şekilde yaşama adım atar. Dört yaşında Amerika’yı tanımış, on iki yaşında Türkiye’ye tatile gelmiş; değişik yıllarda da babasının doğduğu yeri Germir’i ziyaret ederek köklerini tanımıştır.

Book Reviews

Author(s): Ioana Cistelecan,Magda Danciu,Floarea Mateoc,Marius Miheţ,Dorel-Aurel Mureșan,Giulia Suciu,Éva Székely,Anca Tomoioagă / Language(s): English,French / Issue: 1/2020

Brownstones with Stories to Tell: Houses in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude

Author(s): Izabella Kimak / Language(s): English / Issue: 11/2019

This article constitutes an analysis of the depiction of houses in Jonathan Lethem’s 2003 novel The Fortress of Solitude, universally labeled a novel of gentrification. It is my contention that despite being criticized for its alleged celebration of the process the text nevertheless paints a more nuanced picture of gentrification. It does so through the depiction of houses—t he titular brownstones of this essay—that function both as a synecdoche for a larger neighborhood or community that they are situated in and as a reflection of the dynamics of the family units that occupy them.

Cartea străină

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Author(s): Rodica Grigore / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 10-11/2019

Review by Rodica Grigore.

Challenging the Dominant Discourse: Khan’s My Guantanamo Diaries and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror

Khan’s My Guantanamo Diaries and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror

Author(s): Jeffrey Carr / Language(s): English / Issue: 23/2020

This study juxtaposes Mahvish Rukhsana Khan’s powerful memoir My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me (2008) with the post-9/11 rhetoric of political leaders and the mainstream media in the United States during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In her work, Khan exposes the extreme, dehumanizing conditions endured by military prison detainees – many of whom Khan argues were falsely arrested – and advocates for their right to receive fair hearings. The several examples of evident torture revealed by the interviewed detainees throughout the text contrast sharply with the rhetoric from speeches and interviews of early twenty-first century American political leaders, such as President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and the news coverage from neoliberal media outlets like CNN and Fox News. Similarly, the brutal representations in Khan’s memoir contrast with the largely positive depictions of torture in popular films and television programs. To support the validity of Khan’s claims, the article will also consider the available War on Terror-era interrogation logs from the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp. This study seeks to illustrate the ability of prevailing power structures to interpellate consumers of mass media while simultaneously suggesting that literature possesses a unique potential to challenge dominant discourses, as it has done throughout history. Finally, this paper argues that works by Khan and other Muslim American authors have the power to disrupt the current racist and xenophobic episteme and challenge the ideological consensus fostered by mainstream media.