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This 1981 book is a study of wide range of fiction, from short stories to tales of horror, from fairy-tales and romances to science fiction, to which the rather loose term 'fantastic' has been applied. Cutting across this wide field, Professor Brooke-Rose examines in a clear and precise way the essential differences between these types of narrative against the background of realistic fiction. In doing so, she employs many of the methods of modern literary theory from Russian formalism to structuralism, while at the same time bringing to these approaches a sharp critical intuition and sound common sense of her own. The range of texts considered is broad: from Poe and James to Tolkien; from Flann O'Brien to the American postmodernism. This book should prove a source of stimulation to all teachers and students of modern literary theory and genre, as well as those interested in 'fantastic' literature.
Ordinary Enchantments investigates magical realism as the most important trend in contemporary international fiction, defines its characteristics and narrative techniques, and proposes a new theory to explain its significance. In the most comprehensive critical treatment of this literary mode to date, Wendy B. Faris discusses a rich array of examples from magical realist novels around the world, including the work not only of Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but also of authors like Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Toni Morrison, and Ben Okri. Faris argues that by combining realistic representation with fantastic elements so that the marvelous seems to grow organically out of the ordinary, magical realism destabilizes the dominant form of realism based on empirical definitions of reality, gives it visionary power, and thus constitutes what might be called a "remystification" of narrative in the West. Noting the radical narrative heterogeneity of magical realism, the author compares its cultural role to that of traditional shamanic performance, which joins the worlds of daily life and that of the spirits. Because of that capacity to bridge different worlds, magical realism has served as an effective decolonizing agent, providing the ground for marginal voices, submerged traditions, and emergent literatures to develop and create masterpieces. At the same time, this process is not limited to postcolonial situations but constitutes a global trend that replenishes realism from within. In addition to describing what many consider to be the progressive cultural work of magical realism, Faris also confronts the recent accusation that magical realism and its study as a global phenomenon can be seen as a form of commodification and an imposition of cultural homogeneity. And finally, drawing on the narrative innovations and cultural scenarios that magical realism enacts, she extends those principles toward issues of gender and the possibility of a female element within magical realism.
On magical realism in literature
The importance of ghosts, and liminal experience in general, in the fiction of Henry James.
Telling a story requires selecting and assembling individual elements of the events one wishes to communicate. The "nonnarrated" are the events (or parts of events) that were deliberately left out of the selection, meaning all that was not chosen to be told in the story, or chosen not to be told. Since the realm of the nonnarrated in any given story is infinitely large, studying the nonnarrated requires focusing on that which is not told but nevertheless belongs to a story. This monograph explores the phenomenon of the nonnarrated in narrative short forms from Cechov to Murakami and in novels by Dostoevskij and Robbe-Grillet.
In this strikingly personal account of recent literary approaches to the Bible, Jeffrey Staley shows how people's life experiences relate to what they read in the Scriptures. He illustrates his argument from theories of autobiography, where recent literary and feminist critiques provide him with tools for reflecting upon his childhood on a Navajo reservation and his family's five generations of contact with the Navajo people in northern Arizona and New Mexico.Using Tony Hillerman's popular detective novels as a lens to refract his own childhood memories, Staley investigates how his cross-cultural childhood and family history have contributed to his understanding of the Fourth Gospel.By combining such diverse materials as popular fiction, medieval passion plays, cultural anthropology, rhetorical studies, and autobiographical reflection, Staley takes his readers on a fascinating spiritual and intellectual journey through the Gospel of John.
The British novelist and critic Christine Brooke-Rose (born 1923) is increasingly being regarded as one of the most significant writers of the contemporary period. In her dozen novels she has explored themes as diverse as biligualism (as a metaphor for alienation) and the influence of computer technology on the humanities. As these themes suggest, Brooke-Rose is sometimes perceived as a difficult writer, especially given the dazzling virtuosity of the linguistic wordplay that enlivens her later novels. "Utterly Other Discourse" (a phrase from her 1984 novel "Amalgamemnon") provides a valuable introduction to her work; in fifteen essays--some previously published, some written for this book--scholars from America, England, and Europe examine her work from a variety of critical angles.
Argues that even though gender is not the central theme in the work of American writer Moore (1887-1972), a consideration of how gender structures her poetry allows a better appreciation of its aesthetic achievement. Draws from her entire poetic career and from unpublished letters, notebooks, and prose. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Writing and Fantasy brings together essays which restore a sense of the fantastic as a political response to cultural opportunities and pressures. It moves on from two conventional fields of discussion: the psychoanalytic, where phantasies are produced by the emergence of the consciousness, and the social, where fantasies are the production of nineteenth-century individualism. Chapters run from the classical period to the twentieth century, each focusing on a local reading of how fantasy acts as a strategy to contain or exploit specific historical and cultural moments. A wide variety of sites are investigated including the feminization of the wild west, originary and maternal spaces, highwaywomen, financial credit, and the ideal home. Multiple genres containing fantasy are explored, ranging from ghost stories to feminist utopias. Aids to the reader include an introduction summarising recent discussions of fantasy, illustrations dealing with visual fantasies, and an annotated bibliography. The new research presented here will be of great interest to academics and students in literature, history and cultural studies departments who are working in the field of the historical development of concepts of fantasy, cultural opposition, and the imbrication of politics and modes of representation.
Since its launch in 1987, Textual Practice has established itself as Britain's leading journal of radical literary theory. `You cannot ignore Textual Practice. Its international cast of contributors, well-known and new, engages today's theoretical and practical debates from the roots of modernity into post-modernism, from the politics of sexual preference, to the future of the Left, from literature to activism, with the lines crossing and recrossing.' - Gayatri Spivak, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University