Studies in English Drama and Poetry vol. 3. Reading subversion and transgression
Studies in English Drama and Poetry vol. 3. Reading subversion and transgression
Contributor(s): Paulina Mirowska (Editor), Joanna Kazik (Editor)
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: english language;english drama;english poetry;subversion;transgression
- Print-ISBN-13: 978-83-7525-994-0
- Page Count: 274
- Publication Year: 2013
- Language: English
Staging Transgression Stories in the Later Middle Ages: Divine Fiat, Truth and Justice in the N-Town Play of the Annunciation
Staging Transgression Stories in the Later Middle Ages: Divine Fiat, Truth and Justice in the N-Town Play of the Annunciation
(Staging Transgression Stories in the Later Middle Ages: Divine Fiat, Truth and Justice in the N-Town Play of the Annunciation)
- Author(s):Estella Ciobanu
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:15-30
- No. of Pages:16
- Keywords:staging transgression stories;Later Middle Ages;Divine Fiat;Truth and Justice;N-Town Plays
- Summary/Abstract:The Middle English Annunciation plays dramatise a heterological encounter whose stakes, Mary’s willing collaboration with God in the salvific project, can be brought to bear on both the Christian meta-narrative and the condition of women in late medieval Western society. Despite their edifying thrust, however, the Annunciation plays also stage transgression by referencing or intimating a breach of law, whose more overt forms range from recounting the story of Adam and Eve’s transgression of the divine commandment, coded in theological discourse as original sin, to the enactment of the Incarnation as transgression of natural law by divine fiat, an authorised transgression (Prosser) implicitly coded as transcendence and dramatised in the NTown Play 11 in a spectacular stage direction with a heavy dogmatic burden. I use the notions of truth regimes (Foucault) and truth formulae (Weir) to investigate the play’s less obvious unauthorised transgression (Prosser), manifest in the implicit interrogation of the Christian truth regime, i.e., the Lucan and Incarnational orthodoxy grounding the script, as it emerges from the divine debate on human redemption. Furthermore, reading the N-Town heavenly parliament with Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo points out the entanglements of kyriarchal truth regimes in power and the ensuing violence of representation (Armstrong and Tennenhouse). I argue that the play’s brief suggestion that the deity is overly revengeful appears itself transgressive of both contemporary theology and the secular ordo. This secondary discourse – a form of glossolalia (Certeau) – not only disrupts the naturalisation of human justice modelled on divine self-consistency but also intimates the self-legitimising drive of patriarchal discourses of worldly auctoritas.
Legal and Social Discourse of Matrimony in Selected N-Town Cycle Plays
Legal and Social Discourse of Matrimony in Selected N-Town Cycle Plays
(Legal and Social Discourse of Matrimony in Selected N-Town Cycle Plays)
- Author(s):Tomasz Wiącek
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:31-44
- No. of Pages:14
- Keywords:legal and social discourse;matrimony;N-Town Plays
- Summary/Abstract:The Marriage of Mary and Joseph, Joseph’s Doubt and The Trial of Mary and Joseph are fifteenth-century pageants from the cycle known as The N-Town Plays (or Ludus Coventriae). The first centres on legal and social controversies surrounding the upcoming marriage of Joseph and Mary. The second revolves around Mary’s supposed adultery whereas in the third Mary is publicly accused of breaking marriage vows and Joseph of harbouring the alleged offender. The purpose of this paper is to analyze, first of all, why the marriage of Mary and Joseph is regarded as legally valid, even though it does not fulfil the requirement of marital intercourse or social obligation of giving birth. Secondly, the argument will move on to the possible reasons behind such a nigh sacrilegious representation of the Holy Couple and the undermining of its pure character with legal objections and subsequent accusations of lewd conduct. Lastly, the paper will provide an explanation as to why this borderline heretical dramatization was accepted by both society and the Ecclesia. Additionally, it will elucidate the medieval society’s tendency to equate the nature of earthly verdicts with divine law and the influence of this tendency on the plays’ reception. The method of analysis will be based chiefly on a comparison of all three plays with the codes of medieval canon law, such as Gratian’s Decretum, works of Doctors of the Church, late medieval marriage treatises composed by bishops and theologians and additional twentieth-century studies.
Freedom above the Law: Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber
Freedom above the Law: Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber
(Freedom above the Law: Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber)
- Author(s):Bodas Fernández Lucía
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:45-54
- No. of Pages:10
- Keywords:Freedom above the Law;Friedrich Schiller;Die Räuber
- Summary/Abstract:The aim of this paper is to analyze one of the most problematic works of the German poet and philosopher, Friedrich Schiller: his first play, Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1782). Following Hammer and Hart’s Gadamerian literary hermeneutics, I will focus on the subversive role that Schiller attaches to the figure of the criminal in this work. Written seven years before the French Revolution, the play has traditionally been interpreted as a pre-revolutionary drama that stresses the emancipatory power of the Enlightenment and the Revolution. The way in which Schiller appears to use the dichotomy between criminal and society supports this view: the noble criminal opposes the Law as the incarnation of a severe and narrow rationalism. However, the shared tragic end of the Moor brothers, the protagonists of the play, proves the enlightened emancipation to be fallible and reveals its inner despotic potential. This is not due to the final retrograde meaning or because the play is not intimately concerned with freedom and individual autonomy. Instead, its ultimate aim is not to be propagandistic, or even constructive, but harshly critical, uncovering and bearing witness to the oppressive character of Schiller’s contemporary society and its public (penal system) and private (family) institutions. Subverting the traditional association between criminal-evil/compliant-good and virtuerecompense/vice-punishment, Schiller breaks up with the retributive logic on which he does not rely, as if it were a kind of unrecognized superstition that undermines autonomous thinking and action. Through this reversal, Schiller exposes the irrational bases of the retributive urge rooted in Christian humanism, which is not founded upon true justice but upon vengeance and the heteronomy of transcendent concepts that cannot support an autonomous moral.
Geographic Transgression and Epic Theatre: The Subversiveness of the Pastoral Idyll in Edward Bond’s Lear
Geographic Transgression and Epic Theatre: The Subversiveness of the Pastoral Idyll in Edward Bond’s Lear
(Geographic Transgression and Epic Theatre: The Subversiveness of the Pastoral Idyll in Edward Bond’s Lear)
- Author(s):Schardt Andreas
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:55-66
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:geographic transgression;epic theatre;subversiveness;Pastoral Idyll;Edward Bond’s Lear
- Summary/Abstract:The pastoral has often been defined in terms of an idyllic retreat where man can regain his former unity with nature, from which he has been alienated as a consequence of urban life. At the same time, however, the pastoral is not merely escapist, but explores the very problems of the city, contemporary society, politics and the human condition in general. It can thus be called a subversive form, serving as a vehicle to question contemporary values, roles and morals by offering a context where these issues can be freely scrutinised and criticised. A similar interest in contemporary affairs underlies the concept of the epic theatre, which, by definition, intends to create an awareness of existing social plights in the audience, thus aspiring to political reforms. This article analyses the overlap between pastoral elements and the notion of the epic theatre using Edward Bond’s Lear (1971). Not only will it be demonstrated how Bond uses the king’s retreat into a pastoral idyll to convey his views about the origins of extreme behaviours like cruelty and violence in modern societies but also to what extent this attempt at a redefinition of received standards fits the notion of the epic theatre. Contrary to the opinion expressed by some scholars that the pastoral has become obsolete in modern times, this paper hence argues that this mode is a broad and flexible category that has survived up to the dramatic tradition of the twentieth century and is, due to its oscillation between evasiveness and subversiveness, capable of being incorporated in such a “radical” concept as Brecht’s theatre.
“Seeking out Strangeness”: Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul
“Seeking out Strangeness”: Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul
(“Seeking out Strangeness”: Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul)
- Author(s):Michał Lachman
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:67-78
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:Seeking out Strangeness;Tony Kushner;Homebody/Kabul
- Summary/Abstract:Tony Kushner’s 1997 play Homebody/Kabul tells a story of an English woman who decides to leave her cozy London flat, travel to Kabul and marry a Muslim. Her English husband and daughter follow her to Afghanistan only to fall victim to all kinds of cultural misunderstandings. The play, staging multiple dislocations on personal, cultural and linguistic levels, presents characters forced to inhabit a foreign and hostile culture which they cannot describe, comprehend and, eventually, survive. By placing his protagonists in an entirely different cultural milieu from the one they were brought up in, Kushner creates a possibility for investigating the impact of cultural difference. The play dramatizes subversive power of ordinary words and everyday activities which assume disruptive potential when confronted with a foreign culture. Ultimately, Kushner’s idea is to present the Western mind and identity as cultural constructs which are very difficult to transgress and negotiate.
The Silencing of Dissent: Harold Pinter’s Bleak Political Vision
The Silencing of Dissent: Harold Pinter’s Bleak Political Vision
(The Silencing of Dissent: Harold Pinter’s Bleak Political Vision)
- Author(s):Paulina Mirowska
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:79-91
- No. of Pages:13
- Keywords:silencing of dissent;Harold Pinter;Bleak Political Vision
- Summary/Abstract:The article centres upon one of Harold Pinter’s last plays, Celebration, first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 16 March 2000. Similarly to Party Time, a dystopian political play written almost a decade earlier, Celebration pursues the theme of a sheltered zone of power effectively marginalising a social “other.” This time, however, Pinter adopts the mode of comedy to dramatise the fragile and circumscribed existence of dissent and the moral coarseness of complacent elites. The article traces a number of intriguing analogies between Celebration and Pinter’s explicitly political plays of the 1980s and 1990s dealing with the suppression of dissident voices by overwhelming structures of established power. It is demonstrated how – despite the play’s fashionable restaurant setting, ostensibly far removed from the torture sites of One for the Road, Mountain Language and The New World Order – Pinter succeeds in relating the insulated world of Celebration to the harsh reality of global oppression. What is significant, I argue here against interpreting the humorous power inversions of the social behaviour in Celebration as denoting any fundamental changes in larger sociopolitical structures. It is rather suggested that the play reveals the centrality of Pinter’s scepticism about the possibility of eluding, subverting or curtailing the silencing force of entrenched status quo, implying perpetual nature of contemporary inequities of power. I also look at how the representatives of the empowered in-group in the play contain transgressing voices and resort to language distortion to vindicate oppression.
Quantum Mechanics and the Relativity of Human Identity: Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood
Quantum Mechanics and the Relativity of Human Identity: Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood
(Quantum Mechanics and the Relativity of Human Identity: Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood)
- Author(s):Jadwiga Uchman
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:93-104
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:quantum mechanics;relativity of human identity;Tom Stoppard;Hapgood
- Summary/Abstract:Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood has often been discussed as a spy drama employing intertextual references to physics (quantum mechanics, uncertainty principle) and mathematics (Euler’s geometry) to detect a traitor in the English secret-service network. On several occasions, however, Stoppard has argued that the play is specifically about a woman, Hapgood, whose identity is not easy to define. On the one hand, she is the leader of a group of agents. On the other, she is the mother of little Joe, whose father is Joseph Kerner, a member of the network and an atomic physicist whose explanations of physics and mathematics illuminate the meaning of the events of the play. Apart from the two elements inherent in the identity of Hapgood, that is, the “technical” and the “personal,” she also appears in the double role of herself and her twin sister, Celia, this being an attempt, and a successful one, to confirm the suspicions that the traitor in their midst is Ridley, who not only is a double agent working both for the English and the Russians but also has a real twin brother.
The Mathematics in a Dramatic Text – A Disappearing Number by Complicite
The Mathematics in a Dramatic Text – A Disappearing Number by Complicite
(The Mathematics in a Dramatic Text – A Disappearing Number by Complicite)
- Author(s):Tomasz Wiśniewski
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:105-114
- No. of Pages:10
- Keywords:mathematics in a dramatic text;A Disappearing Number;Complicite
- Summary/Abstract:A Disappearing Number gives vent to Simon McBurney’s fascination with science, in this case with mathematics. The story of the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan constituted the groundwork for the collective theatrical production whose literary “translation” was published by Oberon Books in 2007. This article investigates the ways in which the text de-automatises dramatic conventions. On the one hand, the text, as a literary record of the theatrical production, seems to be an intersemiotic translation of the “original,” which suggests its secondary, derivative character, but, on the other hand, because of its status as a dramatic text, A Disappearing Number enters the sphere of literature which is intrinsically subordinated to the powers of imagination. In this way, it is argued, Complicite associates mathematics with art (literature): these are the spheres where imagination is of the greatest importance. This is made explicitly apparent in the characters’ utterances and in various textual strategies. A Disappearing Number begins, for example, with an explanation of a mathematical concept provided by Ruth, a lecturer, in a “university lecture hall.” The explanation is followed by a strictly meta-theatrical greeting of the audience. The illusion of the stage is emphasised as much as the immutable nature of mathematical reality at this point. The function of mathematics is not restricted to the thematic dimension of the play; mathematical principles are also decisive for the construction of the model of the world. Simultaneity of action, for instance, reflects the complicated nature of certain equations, the Great War is associated with the number of its victims, Ramanujan’s death is shown on stage through a metaphorical subtraction and the passing of the number zero, and even the title suggests some equivalence between a number and a life of a human being.
Sensory Transgression: Literary Representations of Women’s Sight and Hearing in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Sensory Transgression: Literary Representations of Women’s Sight and Hearing in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
(Sensory Transgression: Literary Representations of Women’s Sight and Hearing in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
- Author(s):Monika Sosnowska
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:115-126
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:sensory transgression;literary representations of women’s sight and hearing;William Shakespeare;Hamlet
- Summary/Abstract:The article focuses on literary representations of women’s sight and hearing in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It firstly addresses the meaning and significance of sensory perception in Western culture. The emphasis is put on the transgressive usage of the senses and the gendering of sensory perceptions which fulfil many cultural functions: determining our cognition, being the tools of power relations or conditioning our sensations. Sensual perception is examined as an unstable cultural construct undergoing changes in time. The textual analysis of Hamlet presents the way in which Ophelia and Gertrude perceive, revealing the manner in which cultural formations of the senses were constructed in Shakespeare’s works. Linguistic images of transgressive female perception emerge from a comparison between representations of sensual experience of male and female characters in the play.
The Nature of Contemporary Catharsis in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…
The Nature of Contemporary Catharsis in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…
(The Nature of Contemporary Catharsis in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…)
- Author(s):Dagmara Krzyżaniak
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:127-135
- No. of Pages:9
- Keywords:nature of contemporary catharsis;Marina Carr;By the Bog of Cats
- Summary/Abstract:Hester Swane, the protagonist of Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats..., one of the most subversive female characters in modern Irish drama, is a contemporary Medea. As her suffering becomes extreme and her despair escalates, she performs a mercy killing of her own child. Carr uses the Greek source and adds some contemporary (psychological) circumstances to create her play and her heroine. This results in a new type of tragedy and a new type of catharsis potentially experienced by the audience. It is this relation between the fiction of art and the reality of life that is the main subject of the present considerations. Tragedy has always been more than a representation of a tragic experience. Its role of stirring emotions, however, should be reassessed and looked at from a perspective other than that of Aristotle’s pity and fear. The workings of a tragedy upon the contemporary psyche are also to be demonstrated to be much different than just an abreaction and a discharge of emotional tensions or ventilation of feelings. These theories of catharsis should be reconsidered and the psychoanalytical perspective replaced with the most recent findings of cognitive-behavioural therapy in psychology. The application of the emotion exposure procedure used in psychotherapy to the understanding of the nature of contemporary catharsis in modern tragedy introduces a link between theories concerned with the way drama affects the audience that were previously found exclusive: the dramatic theatre and the epic theatre. The contemporary tragedy, as it is demonstrated by the analysis of Marina Carr’s play, engages viewers’ emotions and empathy and awakens (re)cognition just like cognitive-behavioural therapy involves both emotion exposure and cognitive
Gender/Genre Disruption in Bryony Lavery’s Her Aching Heart
Gender/Genre Disruption in Bryony Lavery’s Her Aching Heart
(Gender/Genre Disruption in Bryony Lavery’s Her Aching Heart)
- Author(s):Edyta Lorek-Jezińska
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:137-147
- No. of Pages:11
- Keywords:gender/genre disruption;Bryony Lavery;Her Aching Heart
- Summary/Abstract:The objective of the present paper is to examine the two contrastive yet interconnected processes activated in parody: conservative and revolutionary. The conservative drive is associated with the continuation and reinforcement of the parodied original while the revolutionary drive refers to the transgressive and critical potential of the parodic text, often realised in mockery, satire or deconstruction. Her Aching Heart by Bryony Lavery, a parody of a Gothic romance, displays both of these tendencies, which in their interplay and opposition lead to the point of the cultural disruption in an attempt at lesbian representation. The parody of the Gothic historical romance in Her Aching Heart is performed through exaggeration, replacement and experiment in gender roles distribution. With the Gothic romance’s heavy dependence on clear gender oppositions, Lavery’s exploration of the same-sex casting, multiple role-playing, and cross-dressing necessarily and subversively redefines the genre’s formula, leading to the point of its disintegration. In this respect, the play can be classified as selfparodic and self-referential. Its interest lies in questioning the possibility of representation of alternative forms of love within as well as without the convention of romance, and thus indirectly searching for the possibility of formulating alternative lesbian dramaturgy.
Tolkien’s Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: Creative Drama or Scholarly Exercise?
Tolkien’s Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: Creative Drama or Scholarly Exercise?
(Tolkien’s Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: Creative Drama or Scholarly Exercise?)
- Author(s):Rory McTurk
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:151-165
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:Tolkien;Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún;creative drama;scholarly exercise
- Summary/Abstract:J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún consists of two long narrative poems on the major events of Völsunga saga, making use, where possible, of eddic sources as well as the saga, and accompanied by notes written by Tolkien himself, but edited and augmented by his son. The poems, written in eddic metres and consisting to a large extent of dialogue, are amenable to analysis in terms of Terry Gunnell’s concept of dialogic eddic poetry as a form of drama; hence the use of the term “drama” in the paper’s title. The first of the two poems partly fills the gap left by the lacuna in the Codex Regius, the manuscript in which the edda poems are mainly preserved, but with a much smaller number of stanzas than the 200–300 stanzas that Tolkien evidently believed the lost leaves contained (221), the reason for this apparently being that the smaller number of stanzas accords better with the overall structure of his poem. The book as a whole thus shows a tension between scholarly and creative impulses. Tolkien’s treatment of his sources is considered in the context of his fondness for “creating depth” (identified by Shippey 272–81). Tolkien’s exclusion from his poems of the figure of Áslaug, presented in Völsunga saga and its sequel, Ragnars saga, as the ancestress of a line of kings and the daughter of Sigurðr and Brynhildr, who nevertheless claim to have had chaste relations, leads to a discussion of the relations between these two and their equivalents in related narratives: the Faroese ballads of Sjúrður, the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, and the German-influenced Old Norse Þiðreks saga. The prominence of Sigurðr’s horse in these various narratives in turn raises the question of whether the presentation of relations between Sigurðr and Brynhildr in Germanic and especially Scandinavian tradition may owe something to a distant memory of the Indo-European ritual associated with the installation of kings, in which, as indicated by M. L. West, the queen lay with the corpse of a stallion while verses were chanted encouraging it to impregnate her (414–19).
Transgressing the Normative in Edwin Morgan’s “Message Clear”
Transgressing the Normative in Edwin Morgan’s “Message Clear”
(Transgressing the Normative in Edwin Morgan’s “Message Clear”)
- Author(s):Monika Kocot
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:167-174
- No. of Pages:8
- Keywords:transgressing the normative;Edwin Morgan;Message Clear
- Summary/Abstract:Edwin Morgan’s poetics of the language-game can be seen as functionalised in many contexts: historical, cultural, social, political, and aesthetic. A genuine Scot, known for his subversive political and social views, Morgan often engages in linguistic transgressive play in order to undermine the presumptions of the mainstream discourse but also to question the veristic rules of poetry writing. Insisting on expressibility and recognising a grounded, limited subjectivity as all that is on offer in socially structured practice, Morgan works at and against frontiers of the possible, transgression of limits being integral to his forms of attention. The paper attempts to analyse Morgan’s concrete poem “Message Clear” which undermines cognitively privileged habits of observation, preferred value systems, and dominant cultural assumptions. The analysis focuses on the poem’s “verbivocovisuality” (Joyce) and morphodynamics, which not only question the one-way linear flow between poet and reader but also point to the idea of “freeplay” (Derrida).
The Rite-of-Passage Structure in Medieval and Early Modern Visionary Accounts
The Rite-of-Passage Structure in Medieval and Early Modern Visionary Accounts
(The Rite-of-Passage Structure in Medieval and Early Modern Visionary Accounts)
- Author(s):Jacek Kowzan
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:177-187
- No. of Pages:11
- Keywords:rite-of-passage structure;medieval and early modern visionary accounts
- Summary/Abstract:The aim of this paper is to apply Arnold van Gennep’s and Victor Turner’s conceptual scheme of the rite of passage to medieval and early modern visions of the hereafter. Most of the visionary accounts (e.g., Drythelm’s Vision, Thurkill’s Vision, St. Patrick’s Purgatory) share a great deal of similar material. Usually these are stories about a man who is mysteriously taken to the otherworld during his deep sleep, trance, severe sickness or a similar state which, in Carol Zaleski’s words, is called a near-death experience. Afterwards a visionary is brought back to tell his community about the things he saw. From such a composition, one can work out that visions, in most cases, have a threefold structure of rites de passage: separation (pre-liminal phase), transition (liminal or margin phase) and aggregation (post-liminal phase). A threshold (limen) stage between separation from one state and integration into another is a crucial one as it implicates not only transgression but also transformation of a visionary. The liminal phase is being regarded here as a point of entry and exit between zones of this experience. It also includes the suspension of social roles and, by definition, being “not in control.” On his return, the visionary can be perceived by the community as a messenger or a prophet, depending on the circumstances.
Damsels and Demons: Transgressive Females from Clarissa to Carmilla
Damsels and Demons: Transgressive Females from Clarissa to Carmilla
(Damsels and Demons: Transgressive Females from Clarissa to Carmilla)
- Author(s):Agnieszka Łowczanin
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:189-199
- No. of Pages:11
- Keywords:Damsels and Demons;transgressive females from Clarissa to Carmilla
- Summary/Abstract:Stories featuring female vampires transgress moral boundaries and subvert the cultural allocation of gender. The purpose of this paper is to look at the first Victorian example of such a story, “Carmilla” by J. S. Le Fanu, and see its ambiguous presentation of female characters and sexuality from the perspective of the literary delineation of women in the early eighteenth-century and later gothic novels, thus demonstrating their continuity in the depiction of both female subjugation and self-assertion, but also inadequacy of gender distinctiveness. Defoe’s and Richardson’s novels feature strong, assertive women who subvert moral, class and gender codes. Their “unfeminine” resourcefulness, obduracy and determination to follow their own will clash with patriarchal expectations of subservience and ultimately lead to their victimisation. Distressed, but not defeated, these characters anticipate the arrival of gothic “damsels in distress” who move in a world similarly populated by villains who similarly prevail and transgress conventional representations of gender. “Carmilla” likewise features controlled female characters juxtaposed with the empowered ones. The strength and twist of the story lie in the presentation of women who, bowing to patriarchy, deceive and subvert its solidity by acknowledging female sexuality and demonstrating its endurance, permeating the crust of Victorian male respectability.
The Discourse of Orientalism in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia
The Discourse of Orientalism in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia
(The Discourse of Orientalism in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia)
- Author(s):Andrzej Wicher
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:201-215
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:discourse of orientalism;C. S. Lewis;Chronicles of Narnia
- Summary/Abstract:It has been stated, on the basis of certain motifs in The Chronicles of Narnia, that “like many Englishmen of his era, Lewis was unconsciously but regrettably unsympathetic to things and people Middle Eastern” (Ford 363). My task in this article would be to examine the nature of this prejudice because I generally agree that we can legitimately talk about C. S. Lewis’s prejudice against Oriental cultures. The crucial problem seems to be whether this prejudice was so serious and so strong that it should in turn prejudice us, not only perhaps against what Lewis had to say about the Oriental cultures, but maybe even against this author himself. Naturally, Lewis’s “anti-Orientalism” is hardly subversive in relation to his own cultural background, but it would be hard to deny that it is subversive in relation to the currently dominant discourse of multiculturalism. The material for the discussion is provided, for the most part, by the thread of Calormen, a fantastic country (appearing only occasionally in The Chronicles of Narnia, mainly in The Horse and His Boy) that shares many characteristics with a certain stereotypical conception of the Oriental civilization. But also some other books by C. S. Lewis, notably his essays, are taken into account. Some reference is also made to the famous book by Edward Said, Orientalism.
Subversive Form, Provocative Content and Truth at All Costs: Liberature of B. S. Johnson
Subversive Form, Provocative Content and Truth at All Costs: Liberature of B. S. Johnson
(Subversive Form, Provocative Content and Truth at All Costs: Liberature of B. S. Johnson)
- Author(s):Małgorzata Janik
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:217-227
- No. of Pages:11
- Keywords:subversive form;provocative content;truth at all costs;liberature of B. S. Johnson
- Summary/Abstract:The purpose of this article is to approach extreme and subversive experience in B. S. Johnson’s novels. Johnson’s fictions and his critical writings raise the problem of the condition of contemporary literature and its claims to represent the truth about reality and human existence in the era of electronic media. His novels like The Unfortunates can be viewed as classic examples of a movement known as liberature: openly defiant and subversive literature which treats formal aspects of a literary work as at least equally important as the content. Experimental and subversive techniques used by Johnson in his novels are aimed at compromising the traditional narrative as incompatible and falsifying means of giving an objective truth. According to Johnson, the function of telling fictional stories has been taken over by cinema. Storytelling in a traditional understanding is lie-telling. The novel, instead of competing with cinema, should rather turn to its appropriate task: to tell about subjective experiences and mental conditions that fall outside attempts of cinematic representations. Traditional literary forms fail to represent a credible image of a flowing, unstable reality. Thus, the most urgent task for a writer is to work out new forms and techniques that would enable him or her to create literature which could claim the right to give a genuine representation of life and reality. This study aims to analyze experimental and subversive aspects of Johnson’s novels as well as techniques used by him to create liberature.
“Smilers, Defilers, Reekers and Leakers” – Dogs as Tools of Subversion and Transgression in Short Stories by Edgar A. Poe, Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce
“Smilers, Defilers, Reekers and Leakers” – Dogs as Tools of Subversion and Transgression in Short Stories by Edgar A. Poe, Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce
(“Smilers, Defilers, Reekers and Leakers” – Dogs as Tools of Subversion and Transgression in Short Stories by Edgar A. Poe, Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce)
- Author(s):Anna Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:229-246
- No. of Pages:18
- Keywords:dogs as tools of subversion and transgression;short stories;Edgar A. Poe;Mark Twain;Ambrose Bierce
- Summary/Abstract:In this article I will analyze three satirical stories written by Edgar A. Poe, Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain. The common denominator of them is the presence of dogs and their eccentric subject matter and controversial narrative strategies have for many decades been treated as a major offense against the standards of literary taste. A closer analysis of such thoughtprovoking and critically underrated tales as “Toby Dammit,” “Oil of Dog” or “A Dog’s Tale” makes it evident that their powerful effect is possible thanks to transgression and subversion of generic expectations and aesthetic norms as well as social, political and religious issues that dominated the public discourse in the nineteenth-century United States. Furthermore, what might be perceived as a temporary rebellion or a mere irregularity in the literary oeuvre of three unquestionably canonical nineteenth-century writers is, in fact, a conscious, if risky, attempt on the part of Poe, Twain and Bierce to offer meaningful diagnoses of a society whose values and behaviours appear to be even more disgusting and irrational than the bizarre and often highly disturbing plotlines and extreme experiences in the fictitious worlds they created.
Great Expectations: Incest and Incompleteness in Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School
Great Expectations: Incest and Incompleteness in Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School
(Great Expectations: Incest and Incompleteness in Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School)
- Author(s):Mark Tardi
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:247-254
- No. of Pages:8
- Keywords:great expectations;incest and incompleteness;Kathy Acker;Blood and Guts in High School
- Summary/Abstract:Often situated as a radical response to the late 1970s New York punk scene, the work of American writer Kathy Acker leverages an array of subversive literary techniques to actively interrogate extremely uncomfortable social terrain: profound violence against women, physical and emotional abuse, incest, disease and severe neglect. Many of her protagonists navigate through a continual proliferation of atrocities. Yet rather than situate her characters as victims, Acker instead inverts prescribed social scripts and proactively constructs narrative webs of deeply embedded critiques of patriarchal and sexual oppression. By deploying a vast repertoire of forms – theatrical dialogues, drawings, dream maps, blatant plagiarism of canonical figures (e.g., Hawthorne, Mallarmé, Céline), fake translations – Acker paints a vivid and inventive picture of the apparatuses of control and manipulation, aggression and alienation. This essay seeks to examine how applications of logician Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and cultural critic Nick Mansfield’s ideas about “masochism as a theatrical space of power” elucidate Acker’s watershed novel Blood and Guts in High School and examine the novel’s critique of social and sexual power.
Brief Interviews with Liminality: The Case of David Foster Wallace
Brief Interviews with Liminality: The Case of David Foster Wallace
(Brief Interviews with Liminality: The Case of David Foster Wallace)
- Author(s):Katarzyna Więckowska
- Language:English
- Subject(s):British Literature
- Page Range:255-266
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:brief interviews with liminality;the case of David Foster Wallace
- Summary/Abstract:The beginning of the twenty first century can be described as a liminal period of discarding old interests and preoccupations in preparation for the arrival of something new. This feeling of standing on a threshold is also visible in literature where the growing impatience with the postmodern technique of formal play may result in the creation of a new kind of fiction. David Foster Wallace’s collection of short stories Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) is a critique of the postmodern society and its representative literary form which not only convincingly argues that the formula of metafiction has been exhausted but also points to a possible way out of the postmodern impasse and to a different kind of writing. This essay outlines the major points of the critique of metafiction as presented by Wallace and analyses his work as an example of “new” metafiction. The new form – which both embodies and departs from the “old” metafictional devices – may be best approached via reference to the mechanism of trauma, particularly to its compulsive desire to repeat the “painful” metafictional event.
