Obsessive Aestheticism in Michael Ondaatje’s
Coming Through Slaughter.
Hédi Ben Abbes
University of Franche-Comté (Besançon)
Abstract
The act of reading is an enterprise that involves more than one part of ourselves, it is to share and interact with a text to which we respond, love, hate and have multiple reactions. The text is then filtered through both our own conscience and subconscience in a normative reaction trying to impose a certain order on the elements displayed on the paper and tend even to judge the book according to our own standards, values and beliefs. This responsive reaction entails a constant struggle with the text as an artistic performance that may unsettle, question and highlight contradictions. Truth becomes then very relative and the order of things hectic. Coming Through Slaughter is an ultimate expression of that relativity for the book stages the ambiguous relationship between the artist and the reader/ audience. The book is set on constantly shifting edge where doubt reigns supreme, and fixation is synonymous with death.
Freed from his ego and from the nets of clear discourse that seek to ensnare him, Buddy Bolden, the main character, occupies a transcendent, ambiguous zone. Completely unable to function as the centralizing ego that organizes, prioritizes and values events in a traditional narrative, he seems unscathed even by the sexual assault he undergoes.
The state of quiet sublimity and grace of Bolden’s final appearance undermines the simple, unitary reading of Bolden’s “suicidal” nature and occasions profound questions about his state of being, the imaginative vison that fuses his personality with the world and mediates contraries, a state that is labelled “madness”, both by the doctors and by critics who read Ondaatje’s Bolden as a doomed representative figure of the “extremist artist” type. Can alienation be the ultimate stage of one’s obsessive journey through the self towards freedom?
Key words: obsessive journey, the ambiguous relationship author – reader/audience
Awareness of the Other
in Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion
Florentina Anghel
University of Craiova
Abstract
Postmodernism gave Janette Winterson the chance of letting her imagination twist or cross the borders that were so unproductively limiting literary genres, language, the relation between author and work, between past and present. She playfully and arrogantly manipulates the evolution of her characters endowing them with the ability to understand their powerlessness in relation with their change in time, which eventually leads to the awareness of the other who subversively erases the conventional bearings. Mesmerized by the dominant other, Henri chooses physical limitation, which allows him to dedicate himself to his inner quest, a journey leading to alienation.
Key words: alienation, the awareness of the other, subversive discourse, obsessive discourse
Framing Victorian Opinion? Punch’s Visual Discourse
Françoise Baillet
Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France
Abstract
Launched in 1841 as a radical magazine championing the poor and dispossessed, Punch, or the London Charivari rapidly mellowed and, over the years, became the voice of the Establishment. As its popularity grew, a large team of contributors were gathered, including many talented artists such as Leech, Keene, Tenniel or du Maurier whose weekly cartoons became the periodical’s hallmark.
This paper will focus on a selection of these innumerable drawings, whose humorous comments on the political and social scene of the day may be interpreted as an alternative discourse which, together with the magazine’s columns, not only reflected but also shaped the opinion of the British mainstream.
Key words: pictorial narrative, caricature and obsession, non-conform personalities
On Yeats’ History, Memory, Forgetfulness
Felicia Burdescu
University of Craiova
Abstract
Present day Hermeneutics reconsider what we have generally called famous masters and their work. The article re-reads W. B. Yeats’ poetry in three periods of creation from the whirls of his youth to the serene creation of old age.
Yeats’ poetry goes through nightmarish history, close or remote, in space or time, which enables the hermeneut to clear out a few sore points and texts, so far debatable in point of the poet’s political aesthetic.
Using Ricouer’s ideas from Oneself As Another, we will try to shed more light on Yeats’ beginnings of creation as a split personality, only to close by alluding to Ricouer’s La memoire, l’histoire, l’oublie in point of artefact’s supremacy or atonement through creation.
By facing reality, we will point out how Yeats, as an ardent nationalist, contributed (with Eliot and Pound) to spreading nationalistic, elitist and even anti-Semitic ideas in the west of Europe, thus making room for the Nazi right extreme to appear (see also Michael North The Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, Pound).
Key words: hermeneutics, memory, forgetfulness, history, William Butler Yeats
Normality towards Obsession
in Beat Generation’s Discourse
Mihai Coşoveanu
University of Craiova
Abstract:
Karl Marx wrote in 1859: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness".
The case of the Beat Generation comes as an example to the above mentioned statement. It was the society that pushed these writers to show their attitude toward a rather bad system which seemed to mutilate and manipulate people with an outrageous easiness. Their discourse follows a preordered course: a continuous parallel between what a normal life should be and what obsessive attitudes can be triggered by injustice, greed, avarice and lust for power.
Key words: obsessive, consciousness, victim, power, discourse
White Racism and Black Violence
in Richard Wright's Native Son :
A Study in the Context of
The Theory of Social Identity & Self-Categorization
Radwan Gabr Radwan Elsobky
Egypt ,Al Menoufiya University
Abstract
Native Son reads as a protest novel. Bigger leads a miserable life. He is angry about poverty and racism. He is always conscious of his blackness and categorized himself as being of inferior class. So he tries to prove that the Afro-American people are existent. The novel goes round Bigger's attempts to find himself as a man and to find a social identity for his black class inside the big white one. Racial discrimination, poverty, impotence and oppression cause Bigger to be violent and to have aggressive tendencies. The interpretation of Bigger's violence can be based on the hypotheses of both the theory of social identity and self-categorization theory which stipulate that 'frustration leads to violence'. This theory focuses on the distinction between social identity and personal identity. And with reference to both theories, either the individual's personal identity or social identity, is salient.
Key words: African-American literature, racism, discrimination, social identity, personal identity
William Blake’s Visionary Identity
Cătălin Ghiţă
University of Craiova
Abstract
My interpretative task in this essay is threefold. Firstly,I intend to distinguish between the creative self and the empirical self. Afterwards, I may move on to describe the manner in which the creative self is articulated, anticipating that Blake’s self-representation is that of a vates (poet, prophet, and seer, all in one). But Blake is not artistically at ease with himself until he has managed to project an opposite representation, a textual identity which sometimes surpasses mere textuality. This figure, as I intend to show in the final section, is embodied by Urizen, the sterile god of reason, who represents the counterpart of Los, the incarnation of human imagination at its best.
Key words: William Blake, visionary identity, creative self, empirical self
Edwidge Danticat’s Obsessive Discourse
in The Dew Breaker
Florence Labaune-Demeule
Université Jean Moulin -Lyon 3, France
Abstract
In E. Danticat’s novel The Dew Breaker, the figure of the dewbreaker stands at the heart of the preoccupations of all the characters, whether they live in Florida, New York or Haiti.
Though apparently seamless, with chapters which tell the story of different characters who seem not to be connected with one another, the novel highlights the haunting presence of the dewbreaker. Though his violent acts belong to the past, he remains an obsessive figure, both for himself and for his former victims.
Strangely enough, such obsessions cannot always be voiced, and the discourse of most characters turns out to be obsessive.
Because Edwidge Danticat gives a voice to such obsessed characters in her narrative, the novel can also be viewed as obsessive for the reader.
This paper will examine in what respect the dewbreaker’s presence is an obsessive figure and how it haunts the lives and discourses of the characters. It will then demonstrate that the dew breaker’s presence also haunts the reader in an obsessive way. Obsession is what makes these narrative jigsaw-puzzle pieces coherent and cohesive in E. Danticat’s eponymous novel.
Key words: African-American literature, obsessive discourse, obsessed and obsessive characters
Language Redemption in Isabel Allende’s
The House of the Spirits
Andreea Iliescu
University of Craiova
Abstract
With a well-defined style of magical realism, The House of the Spirits tries to encapsulate the insightful observations of the on-going life, the power of words and of recollection. Only the words are able to rescue memory and to bear witness to life. Recollecting is projected as a complex process of understanding. The written words prevent life from being erased by oblivion. In her novel, Isabel Allende depicts the use of language more like a cure, like a therapeutic device rather than a tool. Within a realistic setting, characterized by a plethora of magical hints, the author frames numerous attempts to seize the mystery that breathes behind things.
Key words: the power of writing, reclaiming the past, recording, preserving memories, bearing witness to life
The Obsession of Whiteness in Kenneth White’s Work
(a literary and psycho-analytical interpretation)
Pierre Jamet
University of Franche-Comté
Besançon, France
Abstract
Kenneth White is a contemporary Scottish poet whose early work wasacknowledged in the 1960s by André Breton, the Pope of Surrealism, whenhe was only a language assistant at the Sorbonne. After forty yearsof presence on the international literary scene, White now enjoys thestature of a leader himself, since he created the InternationalInstitute for Geopoetics. The recurrence of whiteness in his poetry isa striking feature which can be interpreted both as a personal “myth”(whiteness taking on a centripetal quality) and as an anonymity,perhaps a paradoxical pseudonym (whiteness now taking on a centrifugalquality).
Key words: Kenneth White, psycho-analitical interpretation, the obsession of whiteness, personal “myth”, paradoxical pseudonym
The Alienated Outsider in Alexander Buzo’s
Norm and Ahmed
Abdul-Qader A. Khattab
Mutah University, Jordan
Abstract
My paper will explore an important theme in Alexander Buzo’s play, Norm and Ahmed. This theme is related to the historical cultural conflict between the White culture, represented by Norm, and the dark alien Other’s culture, represented by Ahmad. The relationship between the White man and the darker non-Western "Other" is well crystallized in the context of imperialism in which Norm and Ahmad can be differentiated and opposed. Both characters, nonetheless, have inherited a long history in which their ancestors were either colonizers or colonized. The history that has been bequeathed to Norm is, supposedly, a glorious one, in which the White man has always assumed superiority. On the other hand, the history to which Ahmad belongs seems rather a history of defeat and domination by the invading colonial British Empire, in which Ahmad’s ancestors had always been inferior to the White English man. What Buzo has done in this play is a reversal of the traditional roles, where the darker Other assumes superiority over the frustrated and defeated White man who has lost the glory of his colonial heroic ancestors.
Key words: alienation, the White English man, the darker Other
Drieu La Rochelle:
Among Oblivion, Controversy and Blame
Ioan Lascu
University of Craiova
Abstract
Drieu la Rochelle is the well-known author of several novels and books of poetry and some of them enjoyed a certain glory in the epoch: e.g. Beloukia, L’hommeàcheval, Les chiens de paille. His most famous book is undoubtedly his diary (Journal), shocking and always contested and blamed, written from September 9th 1939 until March 14th 1945. In Drieu’s work the triumph of blood over ink is definitive and literature seems there to be unable to restore life values. As concerns this famous French diarist, for him literature was neither relief nor healing.
Key words: madness, rebellion, suicide, historical and cultural pessimism
On Molloy’s Obsessive Quest
Adriana Lăzărescu
University of Craiova
Abstract
This paper investigates different methods to create artistic displays by an unusual narrator, Molloy, who makes use of his own obsession to find his mother in order to be able to rediscover and understand himself. Beckett’s originality here lies in his utmost power to abandon himself as an author, step aside and let his character be in charge of the novel. In fact, what Beckett does is to transform himself in an instrument for his character to use, he is only his copier, and, as such, he copies down his own stories and creations. As a simple viewer of what Molloy writes, Beckett witnesses how, page after page, his narrator’s obsessive discourse leads him to artistic failure.
Key words: Irish literature, obsessive writing, memory and habit, identity/alterity, artistic failure
Flaubert and the Visual Discourse
Camelia Manolescu
University of Craiova
Abstract
In Gustave Flaubert’s opinion, a book is re-created by the means of an image. The visual element is its major characteristic. He uses the color sensation and its combinations in order to re-create, in his most important novel Salammbô, the history of a civil war and the history of an ancient city, Carthage. Like the impressionist painters, G. Flaubert discovers the substance that offers the global sensation, the red color. The obsessive theme, the red death image, finds its extraordinary expression in the Axe Defile episode.
Key words: the visual theme, obsession, the red colour
Immigrant Identities
in the Postcolonial British Novel
Roxana Marinescu
Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest
Abstract
The paper aims at analyzing the way immigrant identities are portrayed in some British novels by authors of South-Asian origin, by exploring, from a multiculturalist perspective, among others, the topic of marriage. Immigrant characters, seen crossing both the physical and cultural borders, are discussed in a dual relationship: on the one hand, with their traditional cultural background, and on the other, with the influences of their new context. The novels under discussion are by Hanif Kureishi, Meera Syal or Hari Kunzru, V S Naipaul, Atima Srivastava, Monica Ali, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai or Vickram Seth.
Key words: postcolonial literature, immigrant identities, multiculturalism, border crossing
Lacanian Outlook on the Obsessive Discourse
in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)
Brigitte Malinas-Vaugien
Université de Franche-Comté
France
Abstract
What is at stake in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula published in 1897 in the troubled times of the late Victorian period? What are the dominant discourses? What are the fears gnawing at the certitudes of the British then at the apogee of their economic, technological and colonial power? Our purpose will be to decipher the Master’s discourse focusing on the linguistic and aesthetic representation of the Other in a novel that was essentially dubbed an entertainment novel. This will entail a thorough investigation of the various explicit and implicit landmarks of an intriguing journey in both the realms of the rational and the irrational.
Key words: obsessive discourse, Lacanian outlook, the Master’s discourse, the linguistic and aesthetic representation of the Other
Alter(ed) Egos: Representations of Illness
in Contemporary British Women Poetry
Elena Nistor
University of Agronomic Sciences and
Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest
Abstract
The configuration of present-day British culture enhances a particular activation of feminine subjectivity, a narcissistic reshaping of the binary structures governing the world. Highly subjective histories illustrate the pressures of the ego experiencing dramatic conflicts between its multiple facets, from physical ailment to emotional distress. The distinct individual discourses of Sylvia Plath, Maggie Sawkins Jackie Kay and Myra Schneider break down the boundaries between health and suffering, restoring the balance through the agency of the word, for writing acts as a Derridean pharmakon blurring any distinction, creating a code that provides a more accurate understanding of the female character.
Key words: displacement, identity, alterity, female body, pharmakon
Translating Literature into Visual:
The Frankenstein Films
Victor Olaru
University of Craiova
Abstract
In the movie world, it is generally accepted the idea that scripts adapted after literary works do not necessarily turn into great films. The author considers that this opinion can be fully supported by Mary Shelley Frankenstein, which traveled all this thorny way from hand written page to celluloid. Having a careful look at the Frankenstein filmography, one could draw the conclusion that no film really managed to correctly seize the format and the spirit of the original. The literary techniques used in the book, from concentric stories to multiple flashbacks made it necessary for the script writers to draw up their own versions, using only fragments or key-ideas from the literary work.
Key words: translating literature into visual, adaptation, Mary Shelley
“The Retaliation” of the Phenotext:
Reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose
through Orhan Pamuk’sMy name Is Red
Emilia Parpală
University of Craiova
Abstract
Our research focuses on two postmodern novels: Il nome della rosa, 1980 and Benim Adim Kirmizi, 1998, the second being intertextually related to the first. Our hypothesis, due to a parallel lecture, is that the source (Eco’s novel), read from Pamuk’s perspective, undergoes a semantic enrichment: it turns into a novel of European Christian identity. Concepts as: closure vs. opening,identity vs. alterity, difference vslimit have been used as filters in our new interpretation. In order to express their view of the present, Eco and Pamuk rely on indirect patterns, making use of metaphors (such as manuscripts and miniatures), concepts (signs and styles) and sophisticated means of enunciation. The authors pay their respect to the traditional culture, delving into issues such as the survival of identity symbols in contexts of crisis generated by the clash of mentalities or civilisations.