Post Modern Literature

"This book covers all Bernardine Evaristo’s major works: Lara (1997) and Lara (2009), The Emperor’s Babe, Soul Tourists, Blonde Roots and Hello Mum. Each chapter focuses on a particular novel, combining a close analysis of the author’s technique with a penetrating understanding of the basic themes which underlie all of Evaristo’s work. This monograph exposes that Evaristo is not simply interested in “multicultural” issues; to label them as such is to overlook her achievement as a novelist. It shows instead how Evaristo combines apparently disparate elements – for example, historical research with late-twentieth century allusions in a narrative such as The Emperor’s Babe – to show how African-Caribbeans have been coming to Britain for thousands of years. Yet Evaristo is not just interested in the African-Caribbean experience; this book shows how she tries to question those basic concepts – for example “Englishness” or “patriotism” – which lie at the heart of mainstream white culture in contemporary Britain. It argues that Evaristo is interested in alternative constructions – not only of nationalism, but of other basic issues such as race, gender and class. Her books give the chance for hitherto marginalized characters – slaves, women, or victims of a patriarchal world – to tell their stories and postulate alternative views of the world they live in.


Above all, this monograph shows how Evaristo refuses to be pigeon-holed; she is not simply “a black British writer,” but someone who focuses on the interconnectedness of society. This book calls for readers to adopt a more enlightened approach, not only to issues of culture and identity, but to the work of Evaristo as a whole.
"

Ο 20 ος αιώνας θεωρείται «σύντομος» σύμφωνα με τον ιστορικό Eric Hobsbawm. Ωστόσο τα γεγονότα που συνέβησαν κατά τη διάρκειά του δεν μπορούν να χαρακτηριστούν έτσι καθώς συγκλόνισαν τόσο πολύ την ανθρωπότητα που η απόρροια τους κρατάει ως σήμερα. Το Omega Minor είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα που βασίζεται στον παραλογισμό, που τελικά έγινε πράξη. Είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα για το πώς η ανθρωπότητα στράφηκε εναντίον του ίδιου της του εαυτού, και ίσως δεν διστάσει να το ξανακάνει.

À luz das discussões advindas da Filosofia e da Teoria Social acerca da pós-modernidade, este trabalho busca refletir, por uma perspectiva discursiva, sobre o lugar da leitura de obras literárias na contemporaneidade. Procura-se compreender como as práticas sociais como a leitura de livros são transformadas pelas condições sócio-históricas do atual período histórico e pelas práticas discursivas em torno dela.

Abstract:
This research work has used the text Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid. It has discussed the point that it is man who is the architect of his destination. The purpose of this academic work is to enable the human beings to unveil their gold star supremacy. It helps an individual to tear off his dependency upon fortune. This is the dilemma of human society that lower classes consider themselves a burden on the ground. This study negates the view that in order to flourish in life the man should be of some privileged class.
It has made the use of qualitative method and historical approach for finding the relevant material and collecting enough evidences to support the claim of the paper. It reflects that how each of the character, in the text, manages to drive himself towards his destiny of fortune or destruction. This reading engrosses its readers to the purpose of their living.
The study precedes the theory of free will by the French philosopher and existentialist playwright Jean Paul Sartre. It commences upon the stair that every man is born with free will and decision making power. So, it is totally up to the person that how he drives his being in society and gains his individual dignity and prosperity in life. It surmises, although class hierarchies are a part of society but they are present in order to distinguish between the successful and flop ones.

The paper seeks to examine the relation of the woman with her body - desire, sexuality, control of her own body - and  her "place" within the patriarchal society in Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" from her short story collection of the same name  (1979)keeping in mind the context: second wave feminism, and the genre itself:  short story that has "extracted the latent content of fairy tales" (Carter), which in this case is Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard".

We read for pleasure and from various writings we derive that pleasure. Not just one kind of writing can provide us all the enjoyment that readers want to have from the reading exercise. Readers get pleasure from different genres of writing like poetry, prose, fiction, drama and media. Prose is one of the most important areas of writing which is distinguished from poetry in the sense that it is not rhythmic like poetry. The word "prose" first appears in English in the 14th century. It is derived from the Old French prose, which in turn originates in the Latin expression prosa oratio (literally, straightforward or direct speech). There are critical debates on the construction of prose. Prose in its simplicity and loosely defined structure is broadly adaptable to spoken dialogue, factual discourse, and to topical and fictional writing.

Este estudo, partindo da história do mito sebástico e do seu papel central no padrão da autognose nacional de Portugal, analisa como é que a literatura pós-25 de Abril reescreve e reinterpreta a narrativa mítica do sebastianismo.  Os quatro romances que constituem o corpus analítico do trabalho – nomeadamente O Mosteiro (1980) de Agustina Bessa-Luís, As Naus (1988) de António Lobo Antunes, Jornada de África (1989) de Manuel Alegre, e O Conquistador (1990) de Almeida Faria –  através de diversas estratégias discursivas realizam o mesmo objetivo, isto é, a desconstrução e a profanação do mito de D. Sebastião. Desta forma, o estudo analisa como é que estas quatro obras ficcionais do corpus reinterpretam e reescrevem com a ajuda de poéticas diferentes a narrativa do soberano mítico dentro das matrizes da cultura pós-revolucionária e pós-moderna. / Present study demonstrates how four
novels of the post-revolutionary period deconstruct and rewrite the myth of king Sebastian. The four novels of the analytic corpus – namely Agustina Bessa-Luís’ O Mosteiro (1980), As Naus (1988) from António Lobo Antunes, Jornada de África (1989) from Manuel Alegre, and Almeida Faria’s O Conquistador (1990) – arrive through diverse discursive and poetic strategies to the same conclusion: to the very deconsruction and profanation of the national myth and the mythical figure of the king. Thus, the study concentrates on how these four fictional works rewrite and reinterpret the myth within the frame of post-revolutionary, post-modern Portuguese culture with the help of divergent poetics of the novel

Racial discrimination, violence, and inequality are the most prominent factors creating troubles for black people in North America and apartheid South Africa for long. These factors show the authority of the whites over black races. The very big problem is the sordidness and wretchedness of Black's life regarding their shelter which includes home structure and its location. Many critics and writers have been writing about racism. The purpose of this research is to analyze 'Racism' revealed through the "Physical" aspects of the concept of 'Home' that is mentioned in the book"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett.

The subtitle of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) is not "A Novel,” but "A Biography." Though Woolf's diaries establish that Orlando's subject owes homage to Vita Sackville-West, her long-time lover, the text's fantastical plot marks it as a work of fiction. Yet Orlando's male narrator insists that his account — Orlando's "life story" — is true. This paper explores this tension by pulling apart what we know as the “subject” (in a biography) vs. “character” (in a novel); biographer vs. narrator; and narrator vs. author. Working through Percy Lubbock's and Marthe Robert's attempts at defining the novel, Boris Tomashevsky's stab at "narrative,” and Hermione Lee's work on "biography,” this paper unmasks the biographer-narrator's pretensions to objectivity and truth-telling. Because Orlando's narrator "has a desire to mislead, to ring true" (Marthe Robert), he is fundamentally a novelist — yet in this text, he is also a character that Woolf dresses up as a biographer in order to ridicule the profession, to mock. Orlando is A Biography, then, because it is a caricature, "a joke,” a romp.

The aim of this thesis is the analysis of mythological figures that appear in American Gods written by Neil Gaiman, specifically those that have major influence on the protagonist or those that make bigger appearance throughout the novel. The first part of the thesis presents biography and the work of the author and it tries to look closely on his journey as a writer. The second part presents the origin story of the novel and its summary. The final part of this chapter deals with the question of human belief in higher power. The third and fourth chapters compare the mythological characters with literature of their origin and how they influence the story. It also points out parts of their personality that differ from the originals.

Üstkurmaca gerçek ve kurgu kavramları üzerinde duran edebiyat kavramıdır. Üstkurmaca, sadece edebiyat eserlerinin değil hayatın kendisinin dahi bir kurmaca olduğuna inanır. Bu minvalde, üstkurmaca, roman ve hikayede anlatılanların gerçek değil birer kurgu olduğunu gösterir okura. bu makalede üstkurmacanın temel özelliklerini yansıtan Kara Kitap romanı incelenecektir.

‘Self’ (noun) is described as ‘the set of someone's characteristics, such as personality and ability, which are not physical and make that person different from other people’ in Cambridge Advance Learner’s Dictionary. Every human being possesses a ‘self’ which in relation to the other entities that he lives with authenticates his own existence. Women face this struggle more as they have to struggle double in order to assert themselves, first as an individual and second as an individual beyond the labelled gender. Shashi Deshpande uses familial ties and relationships as a tool to portray the intricate struggle of women in the development and assertion of self.
Keywords: Self, Women characters, gender, Shashi Deshpande,  In the Country of Deceit.

In this most accessible sequence in Pound's epic, poetry no longer manifests itself as the superimposition of order onto disorder: male, authoritarian, "the phallus or spermatozoid charging head on, the female chaos" (Natural Philosophy of Love, 170), but as passive, fragmented, circumstantial. The poetry seems symptomatic of a mind brutalized, perhaps even unhinged. POOR EZ! But Pound's critics are not all moved. Because of Pound's problematic stature as a preeminent man of letters, and as a high priest of fascism, an anti-Semite and a crackpot economist, critics have failed to observe the formal implications of how first Mussolini, and especially Pound function as sacrificial bullocks in the Pisan sequence. Il Duce and Pound are pharmakoi, at once casualties of a shift in the historical winds, poisonous, medicine for cultural renewal out of the ravages of war, the focus for the emotional and irrational fragments seemingly dispersed across the landscape of the Pisan Cantos. We must defer discussing the charges against Pound, substantial though they may be, in order to inquire how Pound's role as pharmakos shapes the matter and form of the Pisan sequence. Specifically: how sincere is Pound in registering the experience of a man "on whom the sun has gone down"(74/430)? How precise is he in transforming that experience into a poetics of victimization that diverges radically from the fascistic implications of his earlier, geometric and phallo-centric aesthetic, and indeed, bears study as a crucial anticipation of post-modern poetics? By comparing the palpably disintegrating interior and exterior landscapes of the Pisan sequence by reference to attractor states in complex systems, new and significantly original orderings seem to emerge spontaneously, contingently, and with significance beyond the emphasis of either the formal or substantial issues at stake with Pound's imprisonment.

What is the relationship between metaphysics and political revolution? Despite being two of the most widely discredited concepts in contemporary European philosophy, this chapter argues that we are witnessing the return of both in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. Their return, however, is no mere repetition of the previous forms of classical metaphysics and modern revolution- defined by totality and the state. Rather, it is a differen- tial return: a return that changes something fundamental about these concepts and breathes into them a desperately needed new life. Many contemporary Eu- ropean philosophers have announced the "end of metaphysics" and the "death of philosophy." They have buried the ideas of metaphysics and revolution many years ago, but continue to pursue the endless task of vilifYing them- Jest their specters return from the grave.

• Editors' Introduction: A(nother) Bash in the Tunnel / Neil Murphy & Keith Hopper

• The Hidden Narrator / Aidan Higgins

• Representation as a Hollow Form, or the Paradoxical Magic of Idiocy and Skepticism in Flann O'Brien’s Works / Thierry Robin

• Voidance in The Third Policeman / Robert Lumsden

• Flann O’Brien: A Postmodernist Who Happens to be a Thomist / Carlos Villar Flor

• "Un-Understandable Mystery": Catholic Faith and Revelation in The Third Policeman / Jennika Baines

• Infernal Poetics / Infernal Ethics: The Third Policeman Between Medieval and (Post)Modern Netherworlds / Maciej Ruczaj

• Butter-Spades, Footnotes, and Omnium: The Third Policeman as ’Pataphysical Fiction / Anthony Adams

• "That Carrousel Inside and Outside My Head": Flann O’Brien and Pale Fire / Joseph Brooker

• Lightness of Touch: Subtracting Weight from the Narrative Structure of At Swim-Two-Birds / W. Michelle Wang

• Flann O’Brien’s The Hard Life & the Gaze of the Medusa / Neil Murphy

• Tall Tales and Short Stories: Cruiskeen Lawn and the Dialogic Imagination / Flore Coulouma

• Flann, Fantasy, and Science Fiction: O’Brien’s Surprising Synthesis / Val Nolan

• An Béal Bocht and An tOileánach: Writing on the Margin—Gaelic Glosses or Postmodern Marginalia? / Brian O’Conchubhair

• A Saga to Remember: Flann O’Brien’s Unfinished Novel / Amy Nejezchleb

• A Flann O’Brien Checklist

J.G. Ballard's 2004 novel Millennium People is a post-modern detective dystopia that investigates a political uprising among the intellectual middle class in the gated community of Chelsea Marina, London. It employs a retrospective narration told by the protagonist, David Markham, who initially has the intention to investigate his ex-wife's death in the Heathrow airport bombing. As he meets the paediatrician Dr. Richard Gould and former college film studies lecturer Kay Churchill, however, he gets seduced by the allure of violence that the rebels offer, forgets his initial aim and participates in acts of meaningless terrorism. In this novel, Ballard not only demonstrates the relation between violence and community but also the meaninglessness of terrorism whose intention is to change the dynamics of the law and state. This paper will demonstrate the way Ballard depicts the pointlessness of violent actions in transforming the dynamics of certain social and political conditions of a society. Moreover, it will emphasize on Ballard's concept that violence is at the heart of social communities; it is the repressed desire of people that are subjected to the power of authorities.

Ο προσδιορισμός ζητημάτων ποιητικής στο πολυδιάστατο έργο του Θανάση Βαλτινού (1932 - ), και αναλυτικότερα η τοποθέτηση αυτού στη χορεία της μεταμοντέρνας ελληνικής λογοτεχνίας, συνιστούν θέματα πραγμάτευσης της εισήγησης. Συγκεκριμένα, πρόκειται να αναλυθούν οι κύριες συνιστώσες της λογοτεχνικής παραγωγής του συγγραφέα, μιας από τις πλέον πειραματικές και ρηξικέλευθες της μεταπολεμικής δημιουργίας, και να τεθούν καίρια ερωτήματα αναφορικά με την ειδολογική τοποθέτηση των επιμέρους έργων του τελευταίου. Η κατακερματισμένη μορφή των κείμενων, που προβάλλονται ως ψήγματα μιας παρελθούσας ανθρώπινης δραστηριότητας, η αποσπασματικότητα και εν γένει μερική θέαση της πραγματικότητας, η ανασύνθεση γνώριμων λογοτεχνικών μορφών ή η εισαγωγή άλλων που εντοπίζονται στις παρυφές της λογοτεχνίας (χαρακτηριστική καθίσταται η περίπτωση της ημερολογιακής γραφής, που πολλές φορές αντιστρέφεται ώστε να υποβοηθά την εκτύλιξη της έστω και υποτυπώδους πλοκής) συνθέτουν το ‘’σκοτεινό’’ έργο του συγγραφέα, με την τόσο συνειδητή ματιά πάνω στην Ιστορία. Σύμφωνη με την παραπάνω κρίση, η θεωρητική κάλυψη του μεταδομισμού και της αποδόμησης, ως γνήσιων προϊόντων της αναθεωρητικής ματιάς των τελών της δεκαετίας του ’60 και των αρχών αυτής του ’70, δύναται να συστήσει το μέσο εκείνο, στη βάση του οποίου θα αναδειχθούν οι επιμέρους εκφάνσεις μιας ελεγχόμενης από τον συγγραφέα αναντιστοιχίας. Αξίζει να σχολιασθεί πως θα καταβληθεί προσπάθεια να μελετηθούν λιγότερο γνωστά έργα του τελευταίου (Θα βρείτε τα οστά μου υπό βροχήν, Ημερολόγιο 1836-2011) ή άλλα που, πρόσφατα εκδομένα, δεν έχουν απασχολήσει ακόμη ιδιαίτερα την κριτική (Ο τελευταίος Βαρλάμης). Τέλος, η εισήγηση θα ολοκληρωθεί με τη λεπτομερή καταγραφή των στοιχείων αυτών που συνηγορούν σε μια σαφή τοποθέτηση του συγγραφέα στη χορεία των Ελλήνων μεταμοντέρνων δημιουργών.

This paper will be an introduction, analysis, synthesis, critique, evaluation and pastoral application of dealing with Post-Modernism (PM) as a current day worldview and idol. This worldview will be synthesised briefly with the periods of Enlightenment and Modernity for the sake of historical background. It will be critiqued theologically comparing how it stacks up in contrast with God’s word and evaluated on its own merit. PM will be dealt with in a pastoral methodology, of temperate application, for PM is not just a worldview, it is first and foremost a person, with a real heart, soul, body and mind. Hence, the question of how we must deal with this world view is just as important as how we discuss it, for we are discussing ultimately about a person made in the image of God (imago Dei).

Autori pomenutih tekstova su mlađi ili stariji, govore BHS ili
Francuski (ponekad i oba jezika), poznati su ili nepoznati: oni
su jednostavno muškarci i žene koji žele sa čitaocem podijeliti
svoju viziju budu}nosti, svoje bojazni i snove. jedna stvar ih
međusobno zbližava: specifična emocionalna veza s Bosnom
i  Hercegovinom,  stečena  rođenjem  ili  po  usvojenju. Naime, budućnost jedne zemlje ne zavisi samo od političke, ekonomske  ili  kulturne  elite, već  od  svih  onih  koji  žele  aktivno  učestvovati u njenom razvoju. stoga je cilj ovog projekta bio i da se dâ riječ ljudima koji o Bosni i Hercegovini govore svakodnevno po kafićima ili na internetskim forumima.

Les auteurs des textes en question sont jeunes ou vieux,
bosno- ou francophones (parfois même les deux), connus
ou méconnus : ce sont tout simplement des hommes et
des femmes qui ont souhaité partager avec le lecteur leur
vision de l’avenir, leurs craintes et leurs rêves. Une seule
chose  les  rapproche  :  un  lien  affectif  particulier  avec  la
Bosnie-Herzégovine,  qu’il  soit  de  naissance  ou  d’adoption. En effet, l’avenir d’un pays ne dépend pas que d’une
élite  politique,  économique  ou  culturelle,  mais  de  tous
ceux qui souhaitent participer activement à son développement. Ainsi, l’objectif de ce projet était aussi de donner une voix à des gens qui parlent de la Bosnie-Herzégovine tous les jours au café, ou dans des forums sur le net.

The article comments upon the existing Polish translation of the novels of Donald Barthelme from the point of view of Venutian theory of translation.

The paper was presented during The 1st International Conference in Translation Studies - Translatingthe Untranslatable in Gdańsk (24-26.03.1999). Its expanded and corrected, Polish language version was published as “Egzotyzować  defamiliaryzację? Problemy przekładu postmodernistycznej powieści amerykańskiej - Donald Barthelme” (“Foreignise  Defamiliarisation? Problems of Translation of Post Modern American Novel - Donald Barthelme”) in: Kubiński, Wojciech, Ola Kubińska and Tadeusz Z. Wolański eds. "Przekładając nieprzekładalne. Materiały z I Międzynarodowej Konferencji Translatorycznej Gdańsk - Elbląg". . Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2000, pp. 183-190. Polish text is available at: https://www.academia.edu/387926/Egzotyzowac_defamiliaryzacje_Problemy_przekladu_postmodernistycznej_powiesci_amerykanskiej_-_Donald_Barthelme

Like most of my paper, this research will be a fairly trailblazing as both the books and the subject are rather new and uncovered ground. Hopefully creating a path for future students and researchers to continue. Pat Baker’s The Silence of the Girls from (2018) and Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2011) are relatively new and to my knowledge no research has been done on them. For those who have not yet read the books, allow me to briefly summarize them. The Silence of the Girls focusses mostly on the point of view of Briseis: a short look into her childhood, her life as wife to king Mynes, and then the book centres on her life in the camp of the Greeks as Achilles price. From her point of view, the reader experiences the silence of the camp while the fight happening in the distance and the city always looming over them, as well as the ever lingering presence of danger and death between the people. The Song of Achilles starts with the banishment of Patroclus, his joined journey to adulthood along with Achilles along with their education and their friendship developing into a relationship. When Achilles is called to fight in the war, Patroclus has to figure out his own role and place in the Trojan War, as he sometimes disagrees with the way the older kings handle situations. Well aware of the prophecy over Achilles, Patroclus struggles with Achilles’ wish to be an immortalized hero and his own wish to have a life with the man he loves.

The article offers a reflection on the consequences of the postsecular turn for the literary studies. Those include the critical elaboration of the very discourse of literary studies, i.e.
a question on the roots of the discipline and its involvement in essentially oppressive secular narrative, the genealogy of the notions used and the scope of the questions posed. What is
being also thought through is the the range of the texts in whose case the application of the notion “postsecularism” seems justified, in relation to their themes, form, historical and cultural context. What is also being treated as elements of the postsecular turn are the usages of the language which transgress the Modernist assumption of its self-referentiality, which in turn allows one to talk of the religious dimension of the literary work. The author
mentions Walter Benjamin as a forerunner of such a manner of thinking. Other authors discussed include Michael W. Kaufmann, John A. McClure, Kathryn Ludwig, Magdalena Maczynska and Lee Morrisey.

The Complete Conference Talk given by Alain Robbe-Grillet at the 1996 Oxford University Alain Robbe-Grillet Conference (September). Presented in the Original French of Alain Robbe-Grillet, transcribed in English by Edouard d'Araille. Robbe-Grillet discusses the relationship between his novel-writing and film-making pursuits, which embraced the New Novel and the New Wave. He looks at the different nature of telling a story through words, and telling a story with images and sound. And of course he discusses his writing/film collaboration with Alain Resnais that resulted in their iconic work 'Last Year at Marienbad'. Robbe-Grillet's talk ranges through the fiction styles of Balzac and Flaubert, the dream analysis of Freud, the films of Michelangelo Antonioni and his own novels and feature films, among other topics. Personal anecdotes mix with theoretical reflections on art theory and the difference between the task and means of the writer and filmmaker are elucidated better perhaps than anyone before. Robbe-Grillet's brief Q&A after giving this talk is included at the end of this talk, in which he responds to some challenging questions from professors Roch C. Smith, Anthony Fragola and Ben Stoltzfus.. This paper is extracted from the complete conference proceedings published as 'In the Temple of Dreams' (1999/2006/2016).

This 'Open Discussion' is between the key participants of the 1996 Oxford University Alain Robbe-Grillet Conference and it took place after Robbe-Grillet and the six contributors had delivered their papers. Dr. Ann Jefferson of Oxford University was chairing the open discussion and the key participants who contributed were: Professor Roch C. Smith, Professor Anthony Fragola, Professor Raylene Ramsay, Professor Royal S. Brown, Professor Pierre Van Den Heuvel and Ben Stoltzfus, Professor Emeritus. The discussion took in all of the topics of the day - the relationship between novel-writing and film-making in Alain Robbe-Grillet's output, the significance of dreams and the unconscious in his work, the role of the feminine element in his art (both literary and filmic) and the tasks of literary theory in regard to the kinds of work he has created. The current document is a transcription of every word as it was said, transcribed from the audio and video documents of the day. Edouard d'Araille has edited these into the present format so that the open discussion, which was perhaps the most lively part of the conference, could be appreciated by scholars who are interested in exploring themes within Alain Robbe-Grillet's work. Any discussion in French has been translated into English for this text.

The novel The Road (2006) represents a detour in the writings of American novelist Cormac McCarthy. Its concise prose and apocalyptic setting signalize a departure both from his early novels (which are closer to the Southern Gothic) than his latest ones (Westerns). By following a Father and Son’s journey through a devastated country, the author makes a commentary on contemporary United States of the post-9/11, and the rise of the neocons and the strengthening of neoliberalism. In order to investigate how the book figures the present, this master thesis highlights elements of our time that materialize in the narrative. Thereunto, it starts locating McCarthy’s work in the contemporary American literature, and The Road’s role in his bibliography, culminating in the analysis of the focalization in this novel, and what it represents. Afterwards, the axis of the this work turns to the 9/11 literary production, and once again how the novel stands out in this group – opposing The Road to an...

The recent loss of composer Robert Ashley (1930–2014) prompted in some of us a grab-bag of reflections – private but perhaps peculiarly shareable. My first encounter with Ashley's music was when I was working in college radio in Chicago. We used to receive CDs from the label Lovely Music Ltd., among others. I suppose it was my first full-blown exposure to what we now call post-minimalist music, although these CDs did include earlier sound-art minimalism such as Alvin Lucier's. I'm not sure whether I got to hear William Duckworth's, Joan LaBarbara's, David Behrman's, Robert Ashley's, or ‘Blue’ Gene Tyranny's music first, but despite some scepticism, I did find all of this music strangely attractive in ways I didn't expect.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S004029821600070X

(Previously published version of the article: 
https://www.academia.edu/12166638/Crash_and_getting_me_started_How_Robert_Ashley_changed_my_mind)

This paper presents a detailed discussion of The End, the sixth and final instalment in the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle cycle of autobiographical novels.

Some critics and reviewers have been sceptical about the critical reception given the Knausgaard cycle: would the acclaim given to the male heterosexual author for the honesty with which he writes about the struggle to balance literary creation with the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood have been accorded to lesbian or even women authors, a reviewer in the journal The Walrus wonders, for example. Yes, on both counts, I would answer.

But I’m not convinced that this vaguely condemnatory manner of categorising literary experience is fully satisfactory or ultimately illuminating. Knausgaard’s narrative mythologizing of his personal as well as familial struggles against the background of certain sociological and historical changes is one that speaks to someone even of my own very different background as a Canadian of Afro-Caribbean heritage born in London, England, who is himself striving to find his voice and achieve authenticity as a writer.

For me, the main value of Knausgaard’s novelistic cycle resides in his implicit questioning of the fictionality of fiction and his blurring of the boundary between the “voice” and the writing self. The work of this particular white male novelist then is of potentially powerful and liberating value to writers of diverse backgrounds.

My discussion will explore some of the challenges, shortcomings, and possibilities of Knausgaard’s The End and his My Struggle cycle in general.

Lo spettacolo teatrale The Rocky Horror Show (1973) di Richard O’Brien e, successivamente, l’adattamento cinematografico The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) di Jim Sharman possono essere considerate due pietre miliari del musical. Per temi e struttura, essi rappresentano la massima espressione della rivoluzione sessuale che va a cavalli tra gli anni '60 e '70 ed emblema del movimento di libertà sessuale. Il successo del musical risiede nella presa in giro degli stereotipi del gotico sia letterario che cinematografico, creando una enorme, irriverente parodia. Se il riferimento più evidente è il Frankenstein di Mary Shelley e la versione cinematografica di James Whale, meno analizzato è il rapporto con Benighted (1927) by John B. Priestley e la pellicola The Old Dark House (1932) sempre di Whale e adattata dal romanzo di Priestley. Proprio questa risulta, infatti, vera fonte di ispirazione per il lavoro di O’Brien, piuttosto che il Frankestein. Il contributo analizzerà questo rapporto, focalizzando la sua attenzione sugli elementi della “liturgia del Rocky Horror Show”, sui riferimenti in parodia e proponendo una visione dell’opera di O’Brien come una meta-aprodia.

The novel The Road (2006) represents a detour in the writings of American novelist Cormac McCarthy. Its concise prose and apocalyptic setting signalize a departure both from his early novels (which are closer to the Southern Gothic) than his latest ones (Westerns). By following a Father and Son’s journey through a devastated country, the author makes a commentary on contemporary United States of the post-9/11, and the rise of the neocons and the strengthening of neoliberalism. In order to investigate how the book figures the present, this master thesis highlights elements of our time that materialize in the narrative. Thereunto, it starts locating McCarthy’s work in the contemporary American literature, and The Road’s role in his bibliography, culminating in the analysis of the focalization in this novel, and what it represents. Afterwards, the axis of the this work turns to the 9/11 literary production, and once again how the novel stands out in this group – opposing The Road to another contemporary book: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. Lastly, the formal analysis of the narrative will investigate the apocalypse and the dialectic established between it and dystopia, which are the two forces dueling in the book. Thus, by articulating this movement we investigate the role of the characters, setting and time. As Fredric Jameson theorizes, we live in the age of Late Capitalism, also known as Post-Modernity, and this appears throughout the novel, as we will demonstrate in the present work. The main theoretical foundation of this thesis is, again, given by Jameson in his The Political Unconscious, in addition to concepts formulated by Tom Moylan on utopia/dystopia, and Frank Kermonde on apocalypse, among others.