Elements of Literature
Bilingual Autobiographical Memories in Ethnic Novels : Untranslatable Feelings View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Oana Condurache
The juxtaposition between reality perceived in childhood and the impact of events experienced in adulthood reverberates strongly in autobiographical literature. In an essay called "Child Play", Gillian Brown studies childhood representations in literature and disassociates between "a child's reality" and "an adult's reality", stipulating that "a child's imagination differs from the reality which he experiences, as opposed to that perceived by adults" (2003: 16). In autobiographies, adult narrators' memory is based on reality drawn from childhood memories, but this is disrupted by possibly repressed traumatic experiences. In the case of an autobiographical novel, the narrator illustrates either dispersed or explicitly personal events, based on the outcome of the aforementioned juxtaposition. If a third element appears that amplifies the ambiguity of the narrative, there is another dimension of comprehension and analysis to the text. For example, a bilingual narrator can construct the illusion of a double identity, both textual and metatextual. Thus, in order to interpret the peculiarities of the bilingual narrators, I base my explanations within literary, sociological, and psychological paradigms, In this paper, I explain and elaborate a few notions on elements applied in the narrative discourse identified in two semi-autobiographic Ethnic American novels, written by Chicana writers, Sandra Cisneros, and Gloria Anzaldúa. I cross-reference that with theories based on psychiatric studies aimed at the cognitive processes of the bilingual self. My study explores the discrepancies between the self accessed memories in the native language and the adopted language to measure the intensity of autobiographical discourse.
Infernal Wisdom of the 'Crazy Old Crone': Age, Gender, and Resistance in Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Matthew Landers
In a normative sense, wisdom, as a cognitive quality, describes the mental processes that produce and, perhaps more importantly, reinforce behaviors that have been pre-approved by one’s social group—behaviors that the group deems appropriate to the contexts and contingencies of a given situation. In this essay, I consider the ways in which social attitudes toward ageing and gender influence the production of alternate, subversive forms of wisdom. By analysing Tokarczuk's consistent positioning of William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” in ironic conflict with the traditional ethics of rural, Catholic, Polish society, I explore the emergence of an 'infernal wisdom' that guides the actions of the novel’s main character, Janina Duszejko. In the process, I will argue that Janina experiences a pivotal alienation from her community, both because she rejects the traditional mores of her village, and also because her criticisms of tradition are dismissed, predictably, as the ravings of a ‘crazy old crone’. I show that this experience of social and ethical alienation, typified in the designation of ‘crone,’ sparks her transformation into an agent of disruption, a Blakeian fallen angel standing in judgment over the accepted wisdom of her traditional community, which is to say the patriarchal wisdom of men and religion. Rather than being diminished by social dismissal, Janina exploits the biases of others to bring a hellish form of justice to fruition.
Featured Representations of a 'Heavenly' Social Existence in Spanish Catholic Literature: Diverging Perspectives on the ‘Social Question’
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Juan Manuel García Fernández
In this work I examine Spanish Catholic writers’ literary representations and discussions on the notions of “heaven,” “paradise,” and the meaning of life in relation to labor. More concretely, I argue that writers Ramón Sánchez Díaz’s Jesús en la fábrica (1911) and Concha Espina’s El metal de los muertos (1920) depict differently those concepts when describing the “necessary” actions that should be taken against the poor conditions of the working class that modern industrialization had caused. Whereas Sánchez Díaz focuses on the promise of heaven in the afterlife, Espina defends that it is crucial to fight for changes in the political and social spheres and for the “creation” of a heavenly social existence. Sánchez Díaz and Espina’s novels therefore present two different ethical systems and behavioral models regarding the possible actions that can be taken against the struggles brought by industrialization and the ethics of capitalism. These examples then help to understand how religious discourses can contribute to legitimize or challenge issues and problems about the social question, social class, and the economic system that defines them. Similarly, this approach to these works and authors overcomes a reductive understanding of Spanish Catholicism, showing the diverging voices and perspectives that existed within Catholic publics.
