Abstract How does commitment work in a novel whose narrator upholds political views and ethical standards that are unacceptable to the common reader? In Jonathan Littel’s Les Bienveillantes the former SS officer who tells the story of his participation in the Final Solution is unable to preserve the coherence of his own point of view.… Continue reading Luc Rasson | Engagement als (zelf)onthulling: over Jonathan Littels Les Bienveillantes
Month: June 2014
Anouk van der Pluijm | Hedendaags Engagement. Grote Ideeën in het Klein
Abstract Het engagement is terug in de literatuur. Daarmee is het slechts enkele decennia afwezig geweest in de dominante theorieën over literatuur en vele literaire werken die in deze periode als belangrijk zijn bestempeld. Ook Hans van Stralen, literatuurwetenschapper in Utrecht en Amsterdam, herkent deze terugkeer wanneer hij zegt dat: “[a] greater interest in ethics… Continue reading Anouk van der Pluijm | Hedendaags Engagement. Grote Ideeën in het Klein
Marrigje Paijmans | De zelfkant van de ander
Abstract It is a well known fact that Michel Foucault around 1970, quite instantly, lost all interest in modern literature. Although his work from 1976 on shows a regain of his fascination for literary text, his attention had shifted towards texts from antiquity and the early middle ages. In theatre plays by Euripides, rhetoric lectures… Continue reading Marrigje Paijmans | De zelfkant van de ander
Emily Miles | Redrawing the Lines Foreclosure: The Possibilities Presented by a Bakhtinian Outlook on the Novel
Abstract What if censorship begins before we even start speaking? In “Ruled Out: Vocabularies of the Censor”, Judith Butler provides sufficient evidence of this oft-overlooked possibility, assigning this form of pre-censorship with a recycled term: foreclosure. While many other scholars limit their focus to how censorship is enacted after a text is produced, Butler uses… Continue reading Emily Miles | Redrawing the Lines Foreclosure: The Possibilities Presented by a Bakhtinian Outlook on the Novel
Casey Haskins | Literature, Autonomy, and the Complexity of Aesthetics
Abstract In this article Haskins addresses what he calls the autonomy problem in aesthetic theory. The controversy here is, firstly, whether a work of art derives its value from its being art as such or from its instrumental (for example moral) efficacy and, secondly, whether the causes for its existence are autonomistic or heteronomistic. Haskins… Continue reading Casey Haskins | Literature, Autonomy, and the Complexity of Aesthetics
Charles Altieri | Why “Appreciation” Ought be Revived as a Model for the Study of the Arts
Abstract Having heard all too often the importance of literary education for developing various cognitive skills in relation to cultural contexts, the author proposes the possibility of resurrecting the concept of appreciation as a focus for talking about the values education can pursue through the arts. Appreciation is the study of performances – in life… Continue reading Charles Altieri | Why “Appreciation” Ought be Revived as a Model for the Study of the Arts
Marjolein van Tooren | De tweede-generatiemigrant als romantische held: het ‘geval’ Paul Smaïl en zijn roman Ali le Magnifique
Abstract Ever since Paul Smaïl started publishing his novels, literary critics wondered if there was a Frenchman hiding behind this name. Three years ago, Jack-Alain Léger revealed that he invented the writer, but without explaining why. Analysis of the three autobiographical novels of Smaïl and of his latest book, the controversial Ali le Magnifique, shows… Continue reading Marjolein van Tooren | De tweede-generatiemigrant als romantische held: het ‘geval’ Paul Smaïl en zijn roman Ali le Magnifique
Wang Ning | Postmodernity, Postcoloniality, and Globalization: A Mainly Chinese Cultural and Literary Perspective
Abstract This essay is the author’s continuous study of globalization. From a Chinese and Marxist perspective, the author offers his reconstruction of globalization: (1) as a way of global economic operation; (2) as a historical process; (3) as a process of financial marketization and political democratization; (4) as a critical concept; (5) as a narrative… Continue reading Wang Ning | Postmodernity, Postcoloniality, and Globalization: A Mainly Chinese Cultural and Literary Perspective
Donata van der Rassel | What is left behind – The role of Friday in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe
Abstract In this article the controversial character of Friday in the rewritten story of Robinson Crusoe Foe, is read as the remnant or l’objet petit a from the Lacanian symbolic realm to the real. The novel itself is read as an allegory of the symbolic coming of age of man where the inherent gap between… Continue reading Donata van der Rassel | What is left behind – The role of Friday in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe
Joost Burgers | Tropes in Distention: Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of “Paradox” in Postwar America
Abstract In this article Burgers addresses the rather curious institutionalization of the American literary critical movement the New Criticism. The curiosity being that the New Critics developed the meat and bones of their critical doctrine before the Second World War, but only received wide-spread attention after the war. Of course, taking into account other factors,… Continue reading Joost Burgers | Tropes in Distention: Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of “Paradox” in Postwar America