Literature in Focus
Asynchronous Session
History as a Predicament in Robert Coover's The Public Burning View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Zaid Mahir
In this paper, I examine the novel's pursuit of history in its treatment of a past event: the public execution of presumed communists in the McCarthy's era. I attempt to show how, in the way the novelist addresses history, conventional historiography is challenged by a constant crossing of aesthetic boundaries. My examination is informed by the larger historical framework at the heart of Coover's culture's understanding of history: that of the Enlightenment and its effects on modern-day America. The novelist is interested in history and its implications for fiction writing--particularly for the novel form. In his depiction of a catalytic event and related historical details, Coover engages in discussions of, and reflections on, the presence of the past in the narration. Yet, history appears to be a predicament for Coover, who engages in hectic experimentation with form and content to avoid narrative closure.
Featured A Dynamic Interpretation of Process: A Study of the Rhetorical Narrative of One Hundred Years of Solitude View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yongzhen Xiong
James Phelan's rhetorical narrative emphasizes the cyclical and dynamic process of authorial agency, textual phenomenon, and reader's response. It highlights the necessity of the reader in the narrative and asserts that the reader's knowledge, beliefs, and emotions should all be part of the narrative process. Also, it contends that the narrative process in the novel is primarily controlled by textual dynamics and readerly dynamics. The use of this theory to undertake a textual analysis of One Hundred Years of Solitude reveals how the narrative structure of the novel drives the reader to generate multiple narrative judgments. In terms of textual dynamics, Úrsula Iguarán is utilized as the main character, with the magical space serving as the cornerstone, to analyze how the character's conflicts shape the narrative process and enhance the reader's comprehension of the theme of solitude. Regarding readerly dynamics, it is made clear that the novel controls the narrative distance using symbolism, metaphor, and other techniques, designed to cause the reader to fully understand the implied author's rejection of the ignorant and conservative Macondo. Thus, the novel's rhetorical textual goal is accomplished in a dynamic conversation between the implied author and the reader.
The White Boy Gaze of Infatuation View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kim Hong Nguyen, Gerald Voorhees
This study explores how popular culture disciplines intersectional feminism by subjecting empowered girl protagonists to the gaze of white boys who are infatuated with them. We look at Project MC, Bureau of Magical Things, Free Rein, and Wednesday, all of which star a teen girl protagonist who has caught the attention of an adoring white boy. These teen girl protagonists create drama and mayhem in the pursuit of truth and justice; however, in an era of popular feminism, their empowerment and capacity for agency is seen as the cause for the dangerous and erratic behaviour. White boys positioned as heteronormative romantic interests are typically waiting patiently for her to come around–loving and affectionate, neither violent nor aggressive–and serve as emotional anchors and safe harbours to occasionally provide emotional shelter in an otherwise threatening world. The docile white male characters wait while she figures herself out, explores the world, and experiences an identity crisis created by feminism, and when her journey is complete, they are ready to domesticate her to white heteropatriarchal monogamy. While it seems there has been a gender reversal of sorts with he lay waiting, so to speak, and it appears as if he is there to listen attentively and be directed, his behaviour also should be seen as erratic by disrupting the narrative flow and demanding immediate attention to his confessions of love.
The Taming of the Shrew: Taming a Shrew or Silencing a Female Voice? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Oumeima Mouelhi
Though written ages ago, The Taming of the Shrew remains one of the most adapted and performed plays in Shakespeare’s literary works. Despite its bitter sweet stamp, the intent behind having Shakespeare write this play is still enigmatic. Through the double effect of glorifying his female heroine’s charismatic behavior and airing a misogynistic attitude towards women via the character of Petruchio, understanding Shakespeare’s standpoint continues to be controversial. This paper seeks to turn an analytical eye on the role of women during 16th century Renaissance and the way they were treated. Above all, it offers a critical reading of the gender roles assigned to both sexes in light of a patriarchal society and culture where female voice pays for the least non-conformism as women were perceived as “social belongings” to male supremacy.
Female Ghosts in Machines: The Cursed Femininity, Supernatural Power, and Technology View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kuo Wei Lan
This paper explores the representation of the ‘monstrous feminine’ as manifested in the abject, hysterical, and maternal body, and its connections with the feminisation of technology, in mainstream Japanese science fiction/horror films such as the Ring sequels, including Ring (1998) by Hideo Nakata, The Spiral (1998) by Joji Iida, and Ring 2 (2000) by Hideo Nakata. I argue in the paper that the female cyborg ghost, Sadako, in Ring franchise films plays out contemporary Japanese social anxieties over gender and sexuality in terms of her monstrous embodiment produced by the abjection of psychic power and a ‘feminised’ technology, and her destructive and ominous power seen as a threat or an apocalypse to Japanese patriarchal society. The paper is divided into three sections to illustrate how the patriarchal apparatus constructs Sadako’s monstrous feminine with her psychic power and vengeful curse, and how Sadako’s monstrosity reinforces the misogynistic representation of the monstrous feminine. The first section analyses Sadako’s victimisation and demonisation by the patriarchal discursive construction of psychic power, the second section examines the relationship between Sadako’s cursed video and the horror and seduction of technological simulacra, and the final section explores the ways that the different forms of the primal scene function as Sadako uses cyborgisation to operate her rebirth.
Reading at the Present Time: Reflections Based on "Jogo de Cena" View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vitor Soster
This paper ponders on the reception of narratives. Thus, three objectives are established: (i) examine the literary aspect of Jogo de Cena (2007) – a Brazilian film directed by Eduardo Coutinho –, in its essayistic form; (ii) investigate how fiction and non-fiction are built in Coutinho’s film; (iii) ascertain how the transparency/opacity of that work relates to the historicity of the relationship between producing and receiving narratives. Attaining those goals is a manner of approaching an issue related to the apparent waning of the distinction between fiction and non-fiction caused by media, and to the impoverishment of fiction in literature. This discussion aims to reflect on reading, considering contributions to Cinema, Theater and Literature Studies. This paper involves reviewing publications on that film, a description of it – considering three aspects: image, performance, and sound –, and some theoretical references from the fields mentioned above. Starting with a close reading of that descriptive study and the selection of excerpts from the film, a discussion confronts the analysis of the material with some bibliographical sources. The results are summarized as: (i) it is not possible to categorize narratives just in terms of being a commodity or an artistic work; (ii) reading narratives should consider the simultaneity of fiction and non-fiction; (iii) there is no transparency in reading since it is in an intermediate zone where historicity is present among the work, the author, the reader, and the world. Therefore, the notion of reading is rethought to face current configurations of narratives.
