InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.9
Christian Ylagan
{"title":"Who We Are Is What Makes Us Laugh: Humour as Discourse on Identity and Hegemony","authors":"Christian Ylagan","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.9","url":null,"abstract":"There exists a sociocultural function to humour that is geared towards maintaining order through a subversion (or inversion) of the more serious, structured status quo, and while there is a pragmatic side to the dispensation of humour across any given society, humour can also serve a fundamentally ontological function in determining and representing a group’s identity. Though notions of social organization and culture exist and are perpetuated primarily within a group’s literary canon, as espoused for example in the privileging of genres such as the epic or the novel as loci of national identity, this paper argues that such identities can be just as effectively – if not better – constructed through popular representations in humour, especially in satirical content found in “ephemeral” mediums such as comic strips. Such representations in turn can be mobilized to complement or even dismantle the status quo and offer alternative paradigms of understanding national identities and cultural affiliations.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.9","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45959358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.7
H. Wong
{"title":"The Imagination of Criminals in Victorian London in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde","authors":"H. Wong","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.7","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I write about the split of London described in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll, decent and belonging to the middle class, fail s to resist the transformation into Mr. Hyde, gross and belonging to the lower class. It represents the fear of the West Enders, who thought that the East Enders were uncivilized and threatening. In order to rationalize their fear, the West Enders imagined the East Enders as criminals, which corresponds to Edward Said’s discussion of Orientalism. In Orientalism, Said discusses how the West represents the Orient as the Other, and produces the category of the Orient grounded on a geographical framework of thinking. In much the same way, the story of Jekyll and Hyde demonstrates a narrative construction of the lower class living in the East End London as criminals. The influence of Cesare Lombroso’s theory of criminology present in the story serves as important evidence of the West Enders’ imagination. In Criminal Man (1876), Lombroso investigates the atavistic criminal, which illustrates the middle-class imagination of the body of the East Enders. Establishing the notion of atavism, Lombroso belittles the lower class by criticizing them as the demonstration of “regression to an earlier stage of evolution.” Examining the details of the geographical demarcation portrayed in the story, this paper hopes to elucidate the cultural imagination of criminals in Victorian London.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46324417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.17
A. Kõvamees
{"title":"Literature Defined by Language? Some Remarks on the Definition of Estonian Literature","authors":"A. Kõvamees","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.17","url":null,"abstract":"In the era when multiculturalism is one of the key concepts and the relationship between foreign and own is shifting, the definition of national literature has been in the centre of discussions. In Estonia the issue has been raised most prominently in connection with the Estonian Russianlanguage writer Andrei Ivanov (born 1971) whose works have turned out to be difficult to classify. How to define Estonian literature? Is it a literature written in the Estonian language, literature written by Estonians, literature associated with Estonia or is it a literature written in Estonia? Especially small nations like Estonians tend to define one’s identity according to the language spoken and ethnicity, not the citizenship. There are various significant shifts in Estonian literary history, for example, when the beginning of Estonian literature is discussed, then Baltic German authors are included but when the Estonian literature made by Estonians is born in the 19th century, Baltic German literature disappears from Estonian literature, although Baltic German literature continued until the 20th century. The aspect of value plays a significant role, as what is included or excluded in the literary history is associated with ideological choices. It is only recently that the inclusion of Baltic German literature into Estonian literature is taking place. The position of Estonian Russian literature has also shifted from rejection and periphery in the spotlight and the works by Andrei Ivanov have played a crucial role in that process. Taking the Estonian Russian-language literature and Baltic German literature as examples, the article addresses the question of defining (national) literature.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43863884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.15
Shaomin Zheng
{"title":"Narrative Ethics of Post-Modern Visual Culture between Chinese “Diors Series” and Western “Loser Series” in Comparative Perspective","authors":"Shaomin Zheng","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.15","url":null,"abstract":"The main characteristics of the post-modern culture such as counterculture, non-conformism, virtualization, fragmentation, mass culture, business culture and irrationalism etc., decide the post-modernity of visual culture. “Film”, as an indispensable element of visual culture, has a narrative ethics that can be used for an interpretation of ethical orientation and ethical values in post-modern visual culture. This article, by comparing “Diors image” in Chinese Diors series with “loser image” in western loser series, the typical post-modern visual image, takes the post-modern context as the focal point and makes a further study of “Diors culture” or “loser culture”, which is formed in the phenomenon of post-modern culture, and thus explores narrative ethics and ethical values in post-modern visual culture.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45686846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.16
Fabienne Gilbertz
{"title":"Interferenz statt Verspätung – Die Polysystemtheorie als Beschreibungsmodell für ‚kleine‘ Literaturen","authors":"Fabienne Gilbertz","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.16","url":null,"abstract":"Interference instead of Belatedness – Polysystem Theory as a Descriptive Model for ‘Small’ Literatures. Luxembourg literature can be considered a ‘small’ literature from various angles. Its small size, young age and the existence of a sparsely diffused language within a multilingual setting are features that also apply to other small European literary systems and that affect their self-perception fundamentally. In that context, Jeanne E. Glesener has identified a “discourse on smallness” which is developed by the literary centres and unconsciously internalized by the actors of small literary systems themselves: this discourse is essentially shaped by the ideas of creative sterility, poor visibility and, particularly, literary belatedness. However, as Glesener points out with respect to Pascale Casanova’s concept of literary time, the notion of belatedness wrongly implies that all literary systems sooner or later generate the same literary phenomena; it is therefore highly problematic. This paper introduces Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory – which has been designed in view of the Israeli literary system – as an alternative descriptive model for ‘small’ and multilingual literatures. Proceeding from the example of Luxembourg ‘Heimatliteratur’ in the second half of the 20th century, I would like to argue that by openly acknowledging every system’s historical and sociological characteristics and by excluding the notion of comparison from the analysis, the concept of ‘polysystemic interference’ allows for a more neutral study of literary contacts and literary change.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.16","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49460763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.6
Francis K. H. So
{"title":"Economic Obsession in Early Literary Imagination: Shakespeare, Jonson and More","authors":"Francis K. H. So","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.6","url":null,"abstract":"That revenues, profits, wealth, valuables, properties and various forms of riches can be so attractive to most people is because these resources affect the operational mode of social economy and personal well-being. As a major driving force of social development, the desire to accumulate wealth affords people the prospect of leading a comfortable life. Yet the acquisition of which may bring down other people to become poorer and creating potential social injustice. Three interrelated concepts in money spending: consumption, fear of poverty and social justice/injustice are markedly shown in some of the great minds among English writers. \u0000In this article, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Ben Jonson’s Volpone and Thomas More’s Utopia are used to demonstrate the concerns of the early modern English mentality. Some scholars have suggested that the first two playwrights reflected the fear that their London would come to be ruled by corruption, swindling, greediness, vicious competition and unethical business practices. In this pre-capitalist economy, people are seen to adopt unfair competition and reciprocal malice in order to accumulate wealth. Entrepreneurial liberation in economic affairs sets off the dark side of hu manity in which the playwrights were most probably implicated. \u0000To counteract this rapacious thinking, Thomas More offers his conception of a wealthy and happy worldly life. Not to attack the self-centered, bene fit gaining intentions, Utopia builds up a society that claims fairness, commonwealth, more obligations than privileges and the wiping away of vanity. Mercantilism is not denied, yet private property is contained. Written earliest among the three works, Utopia anticipates the two plays that dwell on social evils sparked by over concern for personal gains. \u0000Generally, the three works lay the foundation of positive and negative aspects of economy in terms of production, marketing, circulation, consumption and services of the English mind of that era. The social mood borders on the financial and political matters of the bourgeois class while providing a mega-worldview as well as micro-worldview of economic concern of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48238790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.5860/choice.46-3690
J. Hart
{"title":"Shakespeare in Theory and Practice","authors":"J. Hart","doi":"10.5860/choice.46-3690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.46-3690","url":null,"abstract":"The article is about theory and practice in Shakespeare, but while he used the word “practice,” he never employed the term “theory.” After discussing practice a little, I shall examine how Shakespeare refers to poetry and poets, philosophy and philosophers with some brief connections with art, theatre, music, painting and mimesis. Shakespeare showed no inclination for criticism or theory in essays or non-fiction prose, but, as can be seen, for instance, in Hamlet’s instructions to the players, his work, poetry and plays, contain if not a theory of art, theatre and poetry at least some representations of and reflections on such matters by speakers, narrators and characters.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48144697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.18
Arne Merilai, Katre Talviste
{"title":"A Small Literature in the Service of Nation-Building: the Estonian Case","authors":"Arne Merilai, Katre Talviste","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.18","url":null,"abstract":"The idea of Estonia’s cultural and national self-sufficiency emerged in the nineteenth century. The contribution of writers and poets was essential to this development. Literature anticipated not only cultural, linguistic, and artistic, but also the economic and political emancipation of Estonians. Cultural practices leading to this emancipation were largely based on Baltic German models; many key elements to the independent Estonian national identity are of foreign origin. On the one hand, the nineteenth-century nationbuilding could therefore be described as self-colonization. On the other hand, it rather created a new nation than transformed a preexisting one, since the very concept of national identity was introduced by this process. Through various political and cultural upheavals, the most influential authors from this seminal period of the Estonian modern culture have remained iconic to this day. The traditional identification with them is so strong that the tentative origins of the nation and the identitary struggles of the national poets themselves may often be forgotten and the personal and individual nature of their contribution downplayed.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.18","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47386587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.12
Lanxiang Wu, Xiaolin Zhou
{"title":"Essence of Technology and Ecological Disaster: A Heideggerian Reading of Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood","authors":"Lanxiang Wu, Xiaolin Zhou","doi":"10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.12","url":null,"abstract":"In his criticism about modern technology, Martin Heidegger etymologically examines the word “Technē” and points out that, technology, as a mode of revealing, does not solely refer to the bringing forth of truth through machine-based experiments and exploration, it also contains the poetic revealing inside which a saving power can be found. Following this argument, this paper conducts a textual analysis of Margaret Atwood’s 2009 novel The Year of the Flood and argues that the Compound elites are so delivered over to technology that they have turned everything into standing-reserve, and thereby have fueled the impending ecological disaster in their pursuit of bioengineering innovation. By contrast, a Heideggerian meditative person – Adam One, the leader of God’s Gardeners, illustrates the practice of “arts of the mind” by his words and his deeds, exemplifying the possibility of poetic revealing in an emblematic way. Although the trajectory of environmental deterioration cannot be reversed, the ending of the novel does strike a promising note by referring to music, an old form of fine arts.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.12697/IL.2019.24.1.12","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43446328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
InterlitterariaPub Date : 2019-01-03DOI: 10.12697/IL.2018.23.2.11
A. Kõvamees
{"title":"Variations on a Motive: Hamsun and Tammsaare","authors":"A. Kõvamees","doi":"10.12697/IL.2018.23.2.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/IL.2018.23.2.11","url":null,"abstract":"In 1935 Ma armastasin sakslast (I Loved a German) was published. In 1928 Victoria (1898) by Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) was published in Estonian. The first was written and the second translated by A. H. Tammsaare (1878– 1940). Parallels between these two authors have been most often discussed in connection with Pan (1894) and Kõrboja peremees (The Master of Kõrboja, 1922). Both authors have earned their canonical position in literature thanks to the novels Markens Grøde (Growth of the Soil) (1917), in the case of Hamsun, and Tõde ja õigus (Truth and Justice, I–V, 1926–1933) in the case of Tammsaare. These novels have been “sorted out” to be included in the canon, while Ma armastasin sakslast and Victoria have not received as much attention. In both novels love is the central theme – in Hamsun’s novel the main characters are the miller’s son Johannes and the landlord’s daughter Victoria, and in Tammsaare’s novel the student Oskar and a baron’s grand daughter, Erika. This article examines the connections between Hamsun and Tammsaare by analysing the novels Victoria and Ma armastasin sakslast, discussing among others the motive that has been widely used in world literature, namely the (archetypical) story of lovers – Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. Both novels can be considered as variations on that motive as Tammsaare, for example, adds the social aspect, so that the archetypical love story set in the Republic of Estonia enables him to discuss topics essential to him. In the article the main emphasis is on Tammsaare’s novel.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43453159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}