LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory最新文献

{"title":"The Trouble with Talking to God: Devotional Address in Jorie Graham’s Prayer Poetry","authors":"Sara Judy","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2021.1868253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2021.1868253","url":null,"abstract":"At the turn of the millennium, Jorie Graham began to pray. Appearing in the op-ed section of the New York Times on December 31, 1999, “Prayer” opens on a speaker who stands at a dock, watching a school of minnows swim with the current. As she follows the movements of the fish, the speaker observes that the minnows cannot “create current,” nor affect the “water’s downdrafts and upswirls,” but they can do something the current cannot: make that movement visible. In moving so, the minnows reveal the “motion that forces change,” the current that moves unbidden. Reflecting on this observation, the poet turns inward to muse on the limit of humanity in the currents of time. “This is the force of faith,” she concludes, as the world turns over toward a new millennium, “Never again are you the same.” Change is the morning’s lesson, and there is a bare freedom in being changed by the invisible forces that surround human experience like the current surrounds the minnows. Despite its title, “Prayer” (later printed as “Prayer (Minnows)” in Graham’s 2002 collection Never) is not obviously a prayer. The poem does not begin with an invocation – there are no “Dear Fathers” here – nor does it end with “Amen.” In fact, there is nothing in the poem which clearly suggests that it is addressed to God at all. Graham is certainly capable of writing traditional prayers, and her poetry is often full of references to the Psalms and other scriptures, or devotional texts such as Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love. Raised by an Irish Catholic father and a Jewish mother, Graham is undoubtedly familiar with the prayers of both religions, but this poem does not follow a clear tradition. Rather, upon first read, “Prayer” presents as a traditional lyric, with an unnamed “I” speaking in the first line (“Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows”) expressing an inward state of mind (“I look in and say take this”), addressed to a universal “you” (“Never again are you the same”). We might dismiss the title as a flourish – Calvin Bedient writes of Graham’s work that “it hardly matters what the title is” (“Infected by Time”) – but taking this position diminishes the precision of the poet’s language, overlooks the seriousness with which Graham considers her poetics. An underestimation of Graham’s intention to pray overlooks the repeated and","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"32 1","pages":"59 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2021.1868253","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46486823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fanny’s Place in the Family: Useful Service and the Social Order in Mansfield Park","authors":"Ruth G. Garcia","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1823183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1823183","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"328 - 344"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1823183","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45305941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jennifer Egan’s Digital Archive: A Visit from the Goon Squad, Humanism, and the Digital Experience","authors":"Daniel Fladager","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1840004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1840004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"313 - 327"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1840004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49095270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Archives, Asylums, and Remembering Landscapes in Barry’s The Secret Scripture","authors":"Shanna Early","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1823182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1823182","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"297 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1823182","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43767001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Food Becomes a Measured Thing”: Family, Food, and Violence in Latina Memoir","authors":"C. Herrera","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1836576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1836576","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"279 - 296"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1836576","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46712765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Speaking Fees: Capital, Colony, and Reference in China Miéville’s Embassytown","authors":"T. Alexander","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1800138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1800138","url":null,"abstract":"I pitied thee, pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or the other. When thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endowed t...","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"222 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1800138","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48804953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“The Spaces Between”: Bernadette Mayer’s Memory and the Interstitial Archive","authors":"S. Anderson","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1790976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1790976","url":null,"abstract":"“Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry”: Bernadette Mayer’s 1972 multimedia installation piece, Memory, combines photography and audio recording, and its first audio segment begins with...","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"257 - 277"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1790976","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46149233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Against Rights: Jeremy Bentham on Sexual Liberty and Legal Reform","authors":"Carrie D. Shanafelt","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1800135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1800135","url":null,"abstract":"“it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong” Jeremy Bentham, “A Fragment on Government,” 1776 (393) “If Wealth and Bodily Pleasures are no means of H...","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"203 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1800135","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48223619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Man-Made Menopause and Architectural Embodiment in Herman Melville’s “I and My Chimney”","authors":"J. Watson","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1800137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1800137","url":null,"abstract":"Herman Melville’s 1856 short story “I and My Chimney” illustrates a dispute between an old man and his wife about the domestic inconveniences caused by the chimney centrally located in their home. The old man desires to preserve his chimney at all costs. Meanwhile, the wife seeks to reduce the size of the chimney for mobility within the home and the comfort of her family. R. Bruce Bickley, Jr. and Clark Davis, among others, view the old man’s wife as emasculating. However, the narrator is responsible for many of the physical and mental conditions that limit his wife’s agency. Furthermore, these conditions cause her to resemble the stereotypical nineteenth-century menopausal woman. I argue that, through this narrative, Melville suggests that menopausal symptoms are male-constructed rather than biological. In order to further support my argument that Melville does not characterize the wife as a tyrant, I compare Melville’s story with Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “Revolt of ‘Mother’”—a critically-accepted feminist text. Freeman’s female protagonist experiences a similar plight to the wife in “I and My Chimney,” though scholars have interpreted both women in significantly different ways. This intertextual approach shows similarities between the short stories and encourages a new reading of Melville’s story that shows the depth of Melville’s understanding of gender, sexuality, and aging. AND Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables thrives on its engagement with mesmerism, a pseudoscience Hawthorne feared but often explored throughout his fiction. Much like a mesmerist, the novel’s narrator controls the Pyncheons and his readers using spellbinding language. Alongside this commanding language, the narrator suggests he is both embodied and disembodied, singular and ubiquitous. While scholars have examined Hawthorne’s recurrent use of mesmerism, this essay is the first to examine how Hawthorne’s narrator influences Seven Gables’ plot as a mesmeric character. In this essay, I discuss Hawthorne’s narrative style, how his narrators are embodied, and how mesmerism influences how we interpret these narrators. Then, I examine how the narrator of Seven Gables controls his readers, actively threatens the Pyncheon family, and characterizes himself as a threat to the safety of both characters and readers. Through this analysis, I hope to further the ongoing critical conversation regarding Hawthorne’s use of narrative mesmerism and its interconnectedness with the structure, style, and theme of the novel. Moreover, this essay urges scholars to further question Hawthorne’s narrators in his mesmeric stories and the evolving role of the narrator in nineteenth-century American fiction.","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"242 - 256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1800137","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42650695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Dream of Absolute Memory: On Digital Self-Representation","authors":"Liran Razinsky","doi":"10.1080/10436928.2020.1751484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2020.1751484","url":null,"abstract":"Can the traces of one’s life be exhaustively registered, archived, and accumulated? Total Recall is the title of a 2009 best-selling nonfiction book that believes this is now the case. 1 Written by...","PeriodicalId":42717,"journal":{"name":"LIT-Literature Interpretation Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"182 - 201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10436928.2020.1751484","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46983092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}