{"title":"Intertextual Irony: Between Relevance Theory and Umberto Eco","authors":"Andrea Brondino","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article discusses the advantages deriving from the interaction of pragmatics and literary theory in the study of literary irony. The first section argues that the current (mis)understanding of irony is the result of a centuries-long intertwinement between rhetorical and philosophical discourses. The paper then shows how the echoic theory of irony, devised by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson within the broader framework of their Relevance Theory, provides literary scholars with a different and potentially useful notion of irony and its functions. The third section compares echoic irony to Umberto Eco’s definition of irony. Intertextual irony is then defined, and identified as a fourth type of irony, in addition to verbal, situational or dramatic ironies. Literary examples and implications of intertextual irony are also analysed. In the fourth and final section expressions of a diffuse sense of rejection of irony in contemporary culture are briefly discussed. By applying an innovative methodology to the study of figurative language, this article aims to introduce the concept of intertextual irony as a reader-oriented tool for literary analysis, as well as to emphasize the role that pragmatics can play in the refinement of the vocabulary of literary criticism and theory.","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47354635","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":"Simone Weil and George Herbert on Love through Poetry","authors":"H. Roberts","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad029","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In two letters written shortly before she sailed from Marseille in May 1942, Simone Weil reveals the profound impact George Herbert’s ‘Love’ (now commonly titled ‘Love (III)’) had on her. When reciting the poem to herself during intense headaches, she had a religious experience which involved Christ descending and taking possession of her. This article offers a comparative case study of how focused attention on poetry can become a form of prayer leading to religious experience. It offers a close reading of ‘Love’ through the lens of Weil’s philosophical and spiritual writings from the last year of her life. For Weil, the beauty of poetry is analogous to the beauty of the world and hence can indicate God’s will or the ineffable order of the universe.","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47787725","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":"Reading the Sensory Trajectory of Unmoored Existence and the Poetic Encoding of Wounds in Zsuzsa Bánk’s Der Schwimmer (2002)","authors":"Shivani Chauhan","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad028","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Zsuzsa Bánk’s Der Schwimmer (2002) is a meditation on the trials of flight and dislocation. Underpinned by complex memory dynamics, the narrative reconstructs the fate of several ‘unmoored’ figures whose physical or psychological experiences of liminality exacerbate their exile. Drawing on David Howes’s concepts of ‘emplacement’ and ‘displacement’, the primary objective of this essay is to examine the poetic encoding of sensory tropes underlying the core subjects of memory, trauma and migration in the novel. Firstly, rather than reading this novel primarily as a socio-political document, this article highlights the aesthetic qualities of Der Schwimmer while offering deep insights into the subject-specific experiences of belonging and displacement. Secondly, a focus on the literary interweaving of sensory phenomena illuminates a new and under-researched aspect of transnational writing. Ultimately, this article argues that a critical focus on the sensory can open up innovative ways of understanding the aesthetic organization of Der Schwimmer.","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45390826","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":"What if State Logic Rests on Enslavement? Radical Alternatives in Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account","authors":"F. Mami","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article provides a detailed assessment of Laila Lalami’s novel The Moor’s Account (2014), in which a slave decides to escape upon becoming certain that his enslaver will never act on a prior understanding to free him. Still, his desertion carries with it the ultimate price: never seeing his home or country again. The article explores what that imaginative escape into the wilderness signifies in respect to statehood, both as an idea and as a practice. The evolving events of the novel suggest that polities create domestication not by accident, but by default. For, in Lalami’s novel, the state sells chimerical illusions to the aspiring bourgeoisie in the form of abstract debts, whose repayment fattens state coffers and enslaves the aspiring bourgeoisie. Such a stance vis-à-vis the state and its logic raises a concern with Lalami’s readership since the postcolonial arrangement rarely diverges, if at all, from this immanent logic, the one that hinges on the state’s tendential predilection for enslavement. Lalami’s readers are therefore invited to reconsider their bias against statelessness if circumventing slavery is indeed possible. The article sceptically considers whether, by pursuing such a radical approach, Lalami could be romanticizing statelessness as an easy means of circumventing postcoloniality. This essay will be engaging not only to literary scholars, but also to political economists, development planners, city designers and environmentalists.","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45884854","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":"Women Writing Travel","authors":"K. Turner","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad027","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43459101","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":"Greaney, John. The Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation","authors":"Sadbh Kellett","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48125847","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":"Galie, Jason. Don’t Be a Stranger: Russian Literature and the Perils of Not Fitting In","authors":"T. Reid","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad020","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48703547","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":"Bernini, Marco. Beckett and the Cognitive Method: Mind, Models, and Exploratory Narratives","authors":"Christopher O’Hara","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad018","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41359949","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":"Callaghan, Madeleine. Eternity in British Romantic Poetry","authors":"Jessica A. Campbell","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48813647","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":"Jagger, Jasmine. Rhythms of Feeling in Edward Lear, T. S. Eliot, and Stevie Smith","authors":"R. Crawford","doi":"10.1093/fmls/cqad022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42991,"journal":{"name":"FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45821943","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}