Big Data : el crítico frente al algoritmo (Lectura distante de la narrativa española editada en el año 2019)

Author(s): Adolfo R. POSADA / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 10/2019

Resumen: El modelo teórico de Franco Moretti fundamentado en la distant reading no es solo útil para reflexionar acerca del papel desempeñado por el crítico en la era de los algoritmos y el futuro de la investigación filológica con el auge del posthumanismo, sino además para gestionar la información recabada y realizar un análisis acelerado y sintético del fenómeno literario por medio de la abstracción de datos de alto volumen (big data). Así pues, sobre la base de los planteamientos de Moretti, se propone en este trabajo una lectura distante del panorama de edición de la narrativa española en el año 2019 a través de las gráficas elaboradas ex profeso con los datos obtenidos durante la pesquisa, a fin de ofrecer una visión general de su estado actual en términos de volumen de edición, programación anual de las publicaciones y distribución de los autores según el lugar y año de nacimiento, así como su género. Abstract: Franco Moretti’s theoretical model based on the distant reading not only is useful to think about the role played by the critic in the age of the algorithms and the future of the philological research with the rise of the Post-humanism, but also to manage the collected information and carry out an accelerated and synthetic analysis about the literary phenomenon by means of the massive data sets abstraction (big data). Consequently, in the light of Moretti’s approach, in this work we address a distant reading of the Spanish narrative’s edition panorama in the year 2019. Through the graphs generated ex professo from the data gathered during the inquiry, this article aims to bring out a general vision upon the current situation of the Spanish narrative in terms of the number of literary works edited in 2019, the yearly publishing plan and the authors distribution according to the place and the year of birth, as well as their gender.

Why Are They So Afraid of Children’s Books? The Subversive Power of Imagination (Part 1)

Author(s): Olga Bukhina / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The article discusses the subversive power of children’s books as it is expressed in many classical and contemporary works for young readers. Starting with a brief psychological explanation of the source of creativity and playfulness in children’s literature, the author uses a Bakhtinian approach in analysing the carnivalesque quality of these books in their ability to create a topsy-turvy world, to use ‘a festive laughter,’ to present grotesque bodily transformations, and to discuss the lower stratum bodily functions such as food consumption and excretion. Many adults often underestimate the power of children’s literature, and at the same time, some books are considered dangerous; therefore, they need to be protected from various attempts to censor or to ban them as unappropriated for children.

O ciałach, które się stają. Feminizm materialny w literaturze dla dzieci i młodzieży

Author(s): Adrianna Zabrzewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2019

Trites, R. S. (2018). Twenty-first-century feminisms in children’s and adolescent literature. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. As a review article dedicated to Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature (2018) by Roberta Seelinger Trites, the paper aims to discuss the material turn in feminist theory and its implications with respect to research on gender in literature for young readers. After presenting Trites as a researcher and briefly discussing her earlier works, the author of the article takes a little detour to retrace various approaches to embodied subjectivity in feminist thought. An account of different approaches to the question of corporeality – as expressed in the writings by Susan Bordo, Judith Butler, or Elizabeth Grosz – serves as a background against which the theories of material feminists such as Karen Barad’s can be fully displayed. Simultaneously, this discussion sets the scene for showing how Trites’s employment of material feminism can be translated into research on literature for children and teenagers in a way that opens new fields of inquiry and new planes of interpretation. The subsequent part of the article discusses each of the chapters of the book to show how questions of mattering, becoming, and knowing in being intersect with perspectives crucial to contemporary feminisms, e.g. critical race theory, ecocriticism, queer theory, and disability studies.

MITOLOGICA HEROICA (I): ГРАМАТИКА МИТА О НАХОДУ СИМЕУНУ

Author(s): Đorđe N. Kebara / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 69/2019

В этой работе мы представим терминологическое дистинктивное значение понятия „мифологика”, учрежденного французским антропологом Клодом Леви-Строссом. Понятие „мифологика” будет интерпретироваться в контексте странствующих мифологических мотивов, присутствующих в коллективном бессознательном (брошенный ребенок, герой-подкидыш, герой совершающий инцест, миф о рождении героя, культурный герой). Надстройка „героика” относится к героям сербской героической народной поэзии и мифологическим моделям, с которыми они были объединены. Следовательно, методом работы является сравнительный мифоанализ древной поэзии. Предметом будут модели и вариации, общие для античной, средневековой и сербской народной поэзии. Цель работы – показать, как эти мотивы развиваются с точки зрения сербского устного творчества. Тема относится к мотиву „брошенного ребенка”, а в связи с двумя песнями о Находе Симеуне, которые были собраны Вуком Стефановичем Караджичем.

ЧУДО ЗАДАНОГ СВЕТА

Author(s): Olja S. Vasileva / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 70/2019

СРПСКИ ДОПРИНОС ОБЕЛЕЖАВАЊУ ПЕТСТОГОДИШЊИЦЕ ПРОТЕСТАНТСКЕ РЕФОРМАЦИЈЕ

Author(s): Branka B. Ognjanović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 70/2019

БРЕНДОВИ У КЊИЖЕВНОСТИ, ЈЕЗИКУ И УМЕТНОСТИ

Author(s): Nataša P. Rakić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 70/2019

The New Humanities in the ‘Post-University’: Introduction

Author(s): Arleen Ionescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Many scholars think nowadays that the mission of the university should still be, in Mark Taylor’s words, ‘a responsibility to serve the greater social good’: to cultivate ‘informed citizens who are aware of and open to different cultural perspectives and are willing to engage in reasonable debate about critical issues. The present article is an introduction to the main problems the study of Humanities faces nowadays in Universities.

Страшни истории в градските легенди в чешки и български контекст

Author(s): Rosina Kokudeva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2020

The article offers a study of horror stories in urban legends from Bulgaria and the Czech Republic in comparative aspect. It proposes a specific classification, which groups horror stories as follows: 1) mysterious events and encounters with supernatural beings, which neither harm, nor help the participants; 2) omens or encounters with supernatural beings, which cause death or other harm to the participants; 3) mysterious signs or encounters with supernatural beings, which help people; 4) evocation of spirits; 5) crime stories: murders or harm – with or without deliberate intention; 6) rumours; 7) parodic horror stories. Parallels drawn between particular stories from the two countries point to the existence of a common folkloric substratum that manifests their universal character and international distribution. Largely, the motifs in those stories result from social life and specific social practices of modern times, but some also have deeply archaic origins.

КЊИЖЕВНА СОЦИЈАЛИЗАЦИЈА И НАСТАВА КЊИЖЕВНОСТИ

Author(s): Marina M. Petrović Jülich / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 71/2020

Im Schulsystem sollte die Literatur nicht nur durch traditionelle Verfahren–Frontalunterricht und analytische Verfahren, die durch Frage (der/die Lehrende) und Antwort (der/die Lernende) vermittelt werden. Vielmehr musste das in unserer multimedialer Zeit auch auf andere Weise geschehen, die handlungs- und produktion- sorientiert sind und andere Medien nicht ausser Acht lassen (Film, Musik, Hörspiel, Computer). Um den Ist-Zustand im intitutionellem Literaturunterricht zu beleuchten, wurden unter einer Gruppe von 10 Germanistikstudierenden qualitative Untersu- chungen durchgeführt und die durch Interwievs gewonnenen Daten analysiert. Das Ziel der Untersuchung war es, nicht nur den Ist-Zustand zu untersuchen, sondern auch Vorschläge für die Änderung der Unterrichtspraxis zu geben.

The Intertextual Use of Greek Mythology in Agatha Christie’s Detective Fiction

Author(s): Tatiana V. Ternopol / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This study investigates the intertextual use of Greek mythology in Agatha Christie’s short stories Philomel Cottage, The Face of Helen, and The Oracle at Delphi, a short story collection The Labours of Hercules, and a novel, Nemesis. The results of this research based on the hermeneutical and comparative methods reveal that A. Christie’s intertextual formula developed over time. In her early works, allusions were based on characters' appearances and functions as well as on the use of motifs and themes from Greek myths. Later on, she turned to using allusory character names; this would mislead her readers who thought they already knew the formula of her stories. Although not a postmodern writer, A. Christie enjoyed playing games of allusion with her readers. She wanted them not only to solve a case but also to discover and interpret the intertextual references.

„Самотният крояч“ на романа

Author(s): Roumiana L. Stantcheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2021

In the 1920s and 1930s, the theory of the novel started becoming visible in the texts of novels themselves. This article examines novels with experimental narrative structures, comparing for the first time Bulgarian, Romanian, and French texts that tried new literary ‘cuts’. These writers discussed the role of the narrator throughout the text itself, either in their own name or through the narrator’s voice. They declared a search for authenticity and sought the connection of literature with another ‘fashionable tailor’: Cubism in art. It became apparent that these Modernists displayed a negative attitude towards Paul Bourget, a French writer who had at the time ‘cut out’ an emblematic figure of a successful European novelist. An increased interest in America and the Americans – in a tentative mixture of admiration or rejection – could also be observed in these novels.

Литературна компаративистика под друго име

Author(s): Cleo Protokhristova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2021

This article discusses Ian Bostridge’s book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, which – beyond the label of musicological research dedicated to Franz Schubert’s song cycle “Winterreise” (“Winter Journey”), a masterpiece of Romanticism that was based on poems by Wilhelm Müller – stands out with its remarkable achievements in the field of comparative literature and calls attention to the contemporary state of this academic discipline.

Структура на наратива в повестта на Павел Вежинов „Бариерата“

Author(s): Inna Gazheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2021

This article attempts to analyze P. Vezhinov’s literary work in the context of the possible binary interpretation of its narrative: realistic and fantastical. It researches the ways the raw material of the story is transformed into the plot such as external composition, focalization, the structure of the characters, and the organization of the modal-temporal aspect. It pays special attention to the peculiarities of the novella’s literary space. Both protagonists are characterized as characters of the open space. The space of the male protagonist appears flat, while the female hero maneuvers in a volumetric space. Manev's movements across the flat horizontal space are chaotic in their nature – they represent the erratic wavering of a man who lost list way and has only found purpose once Antonia Dorothea appeared in his life. The article proves that the rite de passage, which acts as the plot framework in this literary piece, doesn’t culminate in the protagonist’s achievement of a “new identity” within the novella. The study concludes that the “realistic” motivation behind the events of the novella doesn't contradict the “metaphorical” one: in both cases, this is a story about "rejection" – about the possible spiritual transformation of the protagonist that was never materialized.

Mirosława Hanusiewicz-Lavallee, W stronę Albionu. Studia z dziejów polsko-brytyjskich związków literackich w dobie wczesnonowożytnej

Author(s): Krzysztof Fordoński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

Review of: Krzysztof Fordoński - Mirosława Hanusiewicz-Lavallee, W stronę Albionu. Studia z dziejów polsko-brytyjskich związków literackich w dobie wczesnonowożytnej, Lublin 2017, Wydawnictwo KUL, ss. 351

Hélène Cixous’s Creaturely "Poethics"

Author(s): Marta Segarra / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s and Sarah Kofman’s conception of writing, Anat Pick’s notion of the ‘creaturely’ and Kári Driscoll’s ‘zoopoetics’, this article discusses the relationship between textuality and animality in Hélène Cixous’s work. Cixous’s writing has been described as inscribing the body in the text, which may be considered an ethical engagement; her embodied poetics can thus be called a creaturely poethics. The analysis focuses mostly on Cixous’s latest texts: Les Sans Arche d’Adel Abdessemed (2018), Animal amour (2021) – which deal openly with animals – and her recent fictions on the Shoah, 1938, nuits (2019) and Ruines bien rangées (2020). In them, animality not only traverses human and non human animals, but also beings considered inanimate, such as Osnabrück’s synagogue. Particularly, Ruines bien rangées gives a voice – and, above all, a ‘cry’ – to all beings reduced to silence, and therefore to death, by the Nazis.

Homofaunie: Non-human Tonalities of Listening in Derrida and Cixous

Author(s): Naomi Waltham-Smith / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

In L’animal que donc je suis Jacques Derrida suggests that the question of what would be proper to the animal should ‘change tune’. I read this extraordinary passage, in which Derrida calls for us to lend an ear to an ‘unheard-of music’ that neither emancipates the non-human nor condemns it to inarticulate noise, in conjunction with the nexus of animality, telephony and the cri de la littérature that unfolds in Hélène Cixous’s writing, exploring the significant role assumed by the sonorous in these descriptions of non-human life. For Cixous, the telephonic power of near-instantaneous substitution and of prostheticity is inseparable from the sounds produced by the coterie of animals that populate the writings of these two authors. What is intriguing is that this bestiary is almost always said with a certain homonymy or homophony. Hence this article traces what I dub an ‘homofaunie’ echoing Cixous’s series of puns and neologisms such as ‘(t)elefaun’ and ‘(t)elephantasy’ that capture Derrida’s attention. The article asks what is at stake for theorizing non-human life – not just animal but also plant and so-called inanimate life – if the mode of questioning is to be redirected by a specifically aural attunement in which listening itself is retuned under the guidance of untranslatable homophony.

I Stink, Therefore I Mink: A Manifesto

Author(s): Marie-Dominique Garnier / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The recent mass culling of mink in Denmark and elsewhere, following the animals’ contamination by a COVID-19 variant, is taken as a re-entry point into Derrida and Lacan’s mink-mediated conversation in The Beast and the Sovereign. Out of the etymological ‘stink’ attached to the mink emerges an animot gifted with (unlimited) ink, with a potential to disturb philosophies of language, to write back or strike back, as it has recently done in the form of alignments of dead yet resurfacing animals. In the wake of Derrida’s verbal disseminations around the vison, and of Lacan’s attribution of a ‘sort of language’ to the animal in The Formations of the Unconscious, this essay follows an animal pack with includes the 17 million mink programmed for (double) extinction by inhumation and cremation. A hauntology follows, adumbrated by Lacan’s interest in the ‘secretion’ of fur, mink oil and (psychoanalytic) sense, and by Derrida’s encounter with the neoliberal, crypto-vison Alain Minc in 1994.

Bugging: The Kaleidoscopic Literary Politics of Insects

Author(s): Nina Seiler / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This article analyses the appearance of insects in Polish literature of the mid-socialist period. It will elaborate a post-humanist perspective on the peaking presence of flies, wasps, bugs or worms in literary texts both as a motif and as an aesthetic strategy. The article investigates the way the deployment of insects in and through the text modulates the view of and the perspective on their human fellows, and how these modulations can be traced to the social reality of the socialist 1960s and 1970s.

D’Amaurote à Dumocala : variations sur les rois en utopie

Author(s): François Rosset / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

After recalling the figure of Pantagruel, a grandson of the king of Utopia and king of the Dipsodes - which makes it possible to evoke some of the properties of utopia, and in particular that which consists of searching within utopia itself for filial links it maintains with previous texts - the discussion is narrowed down to the figure of the king in the tradition of utopia, with Sylvain Maréchal's Last Judgement of Kings serving as an example. Next, attention is directed more specifically to the figure of the king of Poland, a figure particularly suited to stimulate the political imagination of Europeans in the 18th century, and then to the person of Stanislas Leszczyński - the only sovereign to have written a utopia. He is the author of the short novel Entretien d’un Européan avec un insulaire du Royaume de Dumocala, which is both faithful to the narrative model it helps to perpetuate and devoid of any revolutionary intentions.