Interlitteraria

Editor’s Note

2023-01-19T18:12:08+02:00

Editor’s Note

Mapping the symbolic capital of a nation: Riga in fin-de-siècle Latvian novels

2023-01-19T18:12:07+02:00

This article concentrates on the representation of Riga in six fin-de-siècle Latvian novels written by Augusts Deglavs, Jānis Poruks, and Andrejs Upīts. The relations between the country and the city were changing significantly at the time due to growing social mobility in the Baltic littoral. However, in this paper we also argue that to a considerable extent the descriptions of Riga preserve principles previously employed by Latvian writers who tend to focus on minute descriptions instead of mapping a broader territory. The representation of living conditions in Riga thus fluctuates between true-tolife episodes and the recycling of certain stereotypes that determine the overall perception. More specific elements enter into literary texts in two ways. First, as psychological close-ups become more nuanced, they suggest closer links between fictional characters and carefully depicted milieus. Secondly, in our last example we discover an ideologically conscious effort of Latvian identity construction as the author, Deglavs, promotes the necessity of mapping Riga as the symbolic national capital, thus summarising and transforming ideas already implicit in earlier representations of the city.

The Collective Memory and its Transformations: The Great War and the Battle for Independence in Lithuania (1914–1920)

2023-01-19T18:12:07+02:00

The author aims to discuss three topics using the memory research method. The first part discusses construction of the imagined community and collective memory of 19th century Lithuanian intellectuals in a country where education in the national language, and the printing of books and papers, were banned. The second part of the article presents the impact of the Great War and the struggle for independence on collective memory as revealed in memoirs written in the 1914–1940 period by fighters on the front lines, refugees, intellectuals, and people in the occupied country. The third part discusses the extinction of the Great War and the battle for independence from collective memory as a natural and specially constructed phenomenon, caused by the Soviet regime.

Unveiling the Perpetrator’s Gaze in Pedro Lemebel’s Novel Tengo miedo torero

2023-01-19T18:12:06+02:00

In the last decades, there has been a gradual shift in memory studies to approach traumatic events from the perpetrator’s view, rather than the victim’s. While this has been possible in some contexts – such as that of World War II – due to the availability of incriminatory material, it has been unfeasible in others because of its inexistence. In Chile, for example, the testimony of the dictatorship’s top authority Augusto Pinochet is unavailable because of his denial to accept responsibility in the country’s genocide, an aspect that has hindered victims from understanding his criminal motivations. When such is the case, we argue that fictional narratives may become a suitable way to recreate unknown events and thus facilitate a more coherent narrative of the past. We aim to demonstrate this by analysing the articulation of fictional dialogues uttered by Pinochet in the novel Tengo miedo torero (2001) by Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel.

Cubanness and Americanness: Identity Negotiations in Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy by Carlos Eire

2023-01-19T18:12:06+02:00

This article explores emerging identities in the memoir Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy by Carlos Eire. The narrator experiences multiple exiles during his voyage into the diverse cultural landscapes of the USA and treats those transitions as symbolic deaths leading to cultural renewal. The character interprets everything through his selective recollections from Cuba, and the constant critique of his antiquated roots diminishes the value of past experiences. The process of Eire’s Americanisation is inevitably linked with his anti-nostalgia. The essay emphasises the moments when the narrator reproduces himself through transformation, and his reminiscences of Cuba tend to be more positive. Although this journey takes place within the American environment, Eire experiences the “nearness” of Cubanness, which lessens his attachment to Americanness. Ethnic foodways and ties of kinship are the primary elements bridging Carlos with Cubanidad. Negotiating the narrator’s identity is a fluid process of cultural renewal when he struggles with “in-betweenness” and attempts rejection of his Cuban self. However, life experiences change his approach, giving him a greater appreciation for his ethnic roots.

L’implicite dans la traduction : une étude de cas portant sur Récifs de Romesh Gunesekera. La traduction de la culture sri lankaise en français

2023-01-19T18:12:05+02:00

The Implicit in Translation: A Case Study of Récifs by Romesh Gunesekera. Translating Sri Lankan Culture to French. This article aims to shed light on how the translator of Reef, a novel written by the Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera, has dealt with culture-specific lexis originating from the Sri Lankan context. We chose this novel because it contains many references to Sri Lankan culture. The terms referring to Sri Lankan realities appear in names of Sinhala or sometimes Tamil origin. First, we will assess whether the French translation utilised a source-oriented or target-oriented translation approach. Secondly, we will work on the strategy of literal translation, focusing on translating the implicit. Thirdly, we will see the use of the Sri Lankan English language as it appears in the original novel. The author of the novel voluntarily chose the ‘Sri Lankan English’ register to remain in the local context. Are there traces of these linguistic nuances in the French translation or did the translator decide to choose the register of contemporary standard French? Our findings suggest that the translation of Reef follows a source oriented approach and succeeds in referring to local realities of Sri Lanka, maintaining specific Sri Lankan terms, which in most cases become comprehensible in the context.

La imagen estereotipada de Hungría transmitida por Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

2023-01-19T18:12:05+02:00

The stereotypical image of Hungary transmitted by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. This study focuses on stereotyped images and topics relating to Hungary and the Hungarians, as presented by the Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in his travel book Oriente (The Orient), written in 1907 en route to the Ottoman Empire. Two chapters from part one of the book are about a stage in his journey that was a boat trip along the Danube, starting in Vienna and finishing in Budapest. This section of the book deals with the Hungarian Kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In these chapters the author displays a rudimentary knowledge of Hungarian history, and interprets the political and social reality of the country in a simplistic, topical, distorted way. The author describes the landscape and the historic monuments, as well as making a political analysis of the ambitions of Hungarians within the Empire. He compensates for his his lack of knowledge by offering his readers stereotyped images of what, in his time, would be seen as typically Hungarian. Nevertheless, he succeeds in foretelling the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and suggests this would happen as a consequence of an armed conflict, even though he cannot imagine how near in time it actually was, or the circumstances surrounding it.

Le voyage et la conception déplacée de la diversité

2023-01-19T18:12:04+02:00

Travel and diversity as a dislocated conception. Diversity designates an essential and constitutive conception for Comparative Literature, the discipline which has a particular interest in the Other, the one who is situated outside the limits that define the conform and the habitual. In this respect, the act of going away becomes equivalent to an initiative that might offer an unusual experience for the individual who changes place and discovers a new condition of being and living. Writer travellers, among those who promote such an act of movement, render the experience of the unusual conditions through which the diverse is exposed to their senses. By taking as reference the words of the writer travellers from the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries who represent a geo-cultural diversity, this work aims to display that multitude of conceptual aspects that create for the traveller a condition of exchange, innovation and creativity. Actually, in travel, an exceptional experience takes places that is also the origin of the creation of literary works intended to relate the diverse, a notion with the capacity to propound overtures related to the understanding of the Other and to suggest new ‘displacing’ approaches, which the comparative discipline of literatures can appropriate in a more inclusive, visible and sensible way.

Theological Discourse in the Formation of the Literary Tale: How Worldview came to Dominate Narrative

2023-01-19T18:12:04+02:00

This study is motivated by new perspectives that help to expend the boundaries of multidisciplinary research. The article examines the discourse on the literary tale with regard to its theological specificity of narrative and how worldview came to dominate it. The most significant examples of German, Russian, Polish, Romanian and Ukrainian tales are analysed, taking into consideration national ethos. The specifics of the genre are explored in their historical and cultural contexts, with an emphasis on the difference between the literary tale and the folktale. Previous research indicates that the poetics of literary tales of this type has not been studied sufficiently. The paper aims to examine the literary tale within an ethno-national historical context, considering the main aspects of the Christian religious ethos of the 19th century. Our methodology includes an integrative multidisciplinary approach that combines the principles of historical poetics, hermeneutics, receptive poetics and classical methods of folkloristics in the light of transitivity theory.

The findings support the idea that reception peculiarities of Christian tale poetics predominantly focus on plot development, personosphere, chronotope, Christian tokens, divine symbols and paradigms. The focused was both on the encoded religious intentions of literary tales (requiring receptive decoding of allusions) and the transparently expressed appeals to God with an emphasis on Christian hermeneutic instruction. Accordingly, fabulous archetypes related to religious morality were analysed using the example of Pushkin’s literary tales.

Overall, distinction between the genres of Christian fairy tale, Christmas tale and Christian fantasy appeared to be the most productive. We conclude that the genre matrix of the fairy tale remains open to various modifications, and consequently, fairy tale narrative structures when combined with Christian motifs actuate other genre forms. We emphasise that reception of theological discourse on a literary tale depends on the readers’ psycholinguistic competencies and the peculiarities of their religious identity.

Deconstructing a Disempowering Normative Identity: Angela Carter’s Adaptations of the Ashputtle Story

2023-01-19T18:12:03+02:00

Historically speaking, fairy tales have been powerful instruments in the education of children and in the transmission of moral standards from one generation to the next, from the dominant class to less powerful groups. As they make certain ways of life or ideals appear attractive and others repellent, fairy tales also contribute to form normative identities in their young readers. A normative identity combines a descriptive account of who one is with a normative account of what one ought to do. Such identities can be empowering or disempowering. Fairy tales can be seen as using a technique of narrative persuasion to impose normative identities on their audiences, making certain ideals and ways of life appear natural and self-evident. To deconstruct a disempowering normative identity imposed by a fairy tale involves separating its descriptive and normative components and making vivid the problematic aspects of the norms, values, and ideals involved. In this article, we analyse Angela Carter’s deconstruction of a disempowering normative identity imposed on women by the Ashputtle fairy tale, as told by the Grimm brothers. In our analysis, based on close reading and philosophical criticism, we reveal how Carter herself makes use of the fairy-tale technique of narrative persuasion in her deconstructive work, vividly bringing out certain appalling consequences of the ideals of submission and self-sacrifice implied by the Grimm version of the Ashputtle story, thereby also subverting that version.

Entre la tradition sénégalaise et le néo-colonialisme français : l’oppression systématique des jeunes filles dans La nuit est tombée sur Dakar d’Aminata Zaaria

2023-01-19T18:12:03+02:00

Between Senegalese tradition and French neo-colonialism: Systematic oppression of young girls in La nuit est tombée sur Dakar by Aminata Zaaria. The purpose of this article is to examine the systematic, intercultural oppression of young girls in La nuit est tombée sur Dakar, a 2004 novel by the Senegalese author Aminata Zaaria. Her female protagonists, two seventeenyear- olds, subject themselves to sexual exploitation by white men in order to escape poverty. In their birthplace, the village of Lëndëm (‘darkness’ in Wolof, the most commonly spoken language in Senegal), the girls are forced into traditional gender roles from a very young age, i.e. their sexuality is strictly controlled by men. This environment is, however, influenced by the Western way of life: on TV and in glossy magazines, Europe is presented as a paradise on earth. Dakar, viewed by the elder inhabitants of Lëndëm as a “cursed city”, is a place where white men have all the power and, just as in colonial times, they use it in order to sexually abuse African women. By analysing traditional society from a sociological perspective (based on the works of Abdoulaye Bara Diop and Rosalie Aduyai Diop), as well as by applying the postcolonial and psychological theoretical framework to the dynamics presented in the text, this paper strives to demonstrate that it is difficult to speak of “freedom of choice” in the case of a vulnerable, traumatised subject. For both protagonists, this “disguised prostitution” is a survival strategy, going beyond a simple materialism: they are led to believe that it is a small price to pay for a better life. The article presents intercultural oppression as a double-edged sword in that in every environment, young girls are treated as mere objects, expected to silently play their roles.

Again and Always: Intertextuality outside of Postmodernism

2023-01-30T13:48:09+02:00

Intertextuality became one of the most popular and important terms in the culture of the 20th century. It is usually considered in connection with postmodernism and its ironic nature. Contemporary writing is still intertextual, though far from being postmodern. Moreover, even some medieval texts appear to operate intertextual tools systematically. The article presents examples of intertextuality in different novels from both the pre-postmodern and post-postmodern worlds, and searches for a possible explanation for this phenomenon through methodical solutions that would improve our understanding of intertextuality in the frame of literature analysis. It shows that different features of intertextual writing should be carefully considered in the frame of post-postmodern literature and questions the accuracy of our approach to discussing cultural process.

Exploring the Postmodern Apocalyptic Narrative: A Jamesonian Reading of Etel Adnan’s Master of the Eclipse

2023-01-19T18:12:02+02:00

The tale of the apocalypse is considered a current subject of debate that has captivated the attention of postmodern writers. Similarly, in a postmodern atmosphere, Etel Adnan’s masterpiece, Master of the Eclipse (2009), problematises the traditional apocalyptic narrative. Thus, this study sheds light on the postmodern deconstructive aspect of Adnan’s literary text, involving how the author challenges the traditional apocalyptic narrative by foregrounding postmodern apocalyptic subjects. This last includes constant violence, international terror, the downfall of communities, and the subjection of human beings to world crises. These themes subvert the traditional apocalyptic narrative that establishes order, linearity and harmony and calls for Utopia. This study also highlights the collapse of historical metanarrative by drawing upon Frederic Jameson’s notion of ‘historical deafness’ and its consequences on the postmodern subject, including ‘schizophrenia’ and the ‘waning of affect’. It also examines the role of art, a remedy presented as a counter-response to turbulent postmodern times. It transpired that the postmodern vision advocates historical authenticity and reflects a pessimistic society’s experiences of despair and the loss of reality.

La figure de l’artiste dans la littérature française ultra contemporaine : de l’analyse thématique vers le portrait de l’homme

2023-01-19T18:12:02+02:00

The figure of the artist in French ultra-contemporary literature: From thematic analysis to the portrait of Man. This paper aims to contribute to the study of the figure of the artist through thematic analysis of several recent texts published in French. The author examines the main themes linked to the artist-protagonist, classifies them in hypernymic categories and shows that in the works of some contemporary French authors (Houellebecq, Grainville, Gailly, Le Guillou) the figure of the artist loses its romantic features, inherited from the artist novel of the nineteenth century and increasingly takes on anthropological dimensions to convey the values of the human quest. According to the author, hermeneutic interest in these works should consist in deciphering their full potential in terms of meaning beyond the surface of the artist novels.

Poetics is in the Genes. A Manifesto

2023-01-19T18:12:01+02:00

The manifesto “Poetics is in the Genes” reveals the commonality between poetics and genetics for the first time. Outside of cellular biology attempts have been made in both (text)linguistics and semiotics to describe the genome and its interactions as similar to language. However, the approach of this interpretation relies particularly on the poetic function of language and its underlying self-referentiality as the starting point. Poetic relevance reveals itself explicitly in its relationship to the cutting-edge concept of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), which thematises abundant metric and figurative phenomena and terms on several levels: accumulation, regularity, interval, different repetitions, rhythm, iamb/trochee, stressed/unstressed units, longitude, orchestration; equivalency, substitution, connotation, contrast, analogy; synecdoche, metonymy, metaphor, irony, symbol, paradox, implicature, epithet, simile; palindrome, chiasmus, ellipsis, zeugma, calembour, polysyndeton; poem, verse, stanza, chapter, refrain, (identical) rhyme, collage/bricolage, plot, composition, text, hypertext, architext, palimpsest; graphic imagery, symmetry/asymmetry; homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, archaisms, neologisms; words, phrases, sentences, syntax, definition, quote; cacophony/noise, harmony; spatial and time deixis; self-reflexivity of the utterance and utterer. From this perspective, life stems from primordial poetics as the first level. It is a convincing enough association to apply poetic analysis to the free interpretation process of genomes. A universal law of nature is that symmetry dictates design (including asymmetry): poetics is everywhere.

About the Authors

2023-01-19T18:12:01+02:00

About the Authors