MELUS最新文献_第2页

3区文学

MELUS Pub Date : 2023-04-10 DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlad003

Erin Pearson

{"title":"Metanarratives of Slavery","authors":"Erin Pearson","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlad003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlad003","url":null,"abstract":"I identify a prevalent but previously unremarked subgenre within contemporary narratives of slavery: metanarratives of slavery. Metanarratives of slavery emphasize the cultural perspectives through which slavery has been seen, thus making perception as much of a focus as slavery itself. I offer a preliminary taxonomy of metanarratives of slavery by focusing on three works in three formats: Kara Walker’s large-scale sculptural installation Fons Americanus (2019), Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad (2016), and Robin Coste Lewis’s long poem “Voyage of the Sable Venus” (2015). While recent scholarship has underscored the tendency of contemporary narratives of slavery to trouble a sense of straightforward access to history, it has not accounted for why so many authors and visual artists dramatize that lack of access by foregrounding intervening cultural narratives. I argue that metanarratives of slavery emphasize perspective to draw audience attention to the sources of their ideas about slavery and race. In the process, these works remain in a space I call the interim-gesturing toward a freer future without entirely letting go of the past. By recognizing that space, we can also recognize how certain writers and visual artists envision a Black diasporic aesthetic present, carved out of the ongoing catastrophe of white supremacist violence but refusing to delay pleasure and beauty for a future that may never arrive.","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"245 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135543691","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}

引用次数: 0

A Story in Sound: The Unpublished Writings of Sidney Bechet 《声音中的故事:西德尼·贝克特未发表的作品》

IF 0.2 3区文学

MELUS Pub Date : 2023-04-10 DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlad005

Jessica E. Teague

{"title":"A Story in Sound: The Unpublished Writings of Sidney Bechet","authors":"Jessica E. Teague","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlad005","url":null,"abstract":"In a letter dated 22 April 1952, to the poet and editor John Ciardi, jazz musician Sidney Bechet enclosed an eleven-page manuscript titled “Wildflower (or The Story of Frankie & Johnnie).”1 At the time, Ciardi was helping Bechet edit his autobiography, and Bechet valued Ciardi’s literary collaboration. “Should I make this a ballet, or a picture, or a stageplay and ballet combined, or maybe a book?” Bechet asked. He tells Ciardi that he has the music “all in mind,” and that “it would make a hell of a play, maybe better than Pogy[sic] and Bess.” While Bechet seems to have hoped that Ciardi, who was editor of The Saturday Review, could help him find a venue for publication or performance, these comments also suggest that Bechet did not yet know what genre or medium his story ought to take. Ciardi responded on 8 May 1952 with characteristic editorial diplomacy: “I wish I knew what to say about the Frankie and Johnny. There are certainly terrific possibilities for the scenario but I’d be bluffing and doing you no good at all if I pretended to know the right things about stage productions.” Ciardi acknowledged the theatrical potential for the treatment and promised to send a few letters to request guidance on the matter, but nothing ever became of Bechet’s “Frankie and Johnnie.” It remains unpublished and unproduced—a fragment in the archive. However, the recent discovery of this fragment along with a second untitled narrative among the papers of his Parisian manager, Charles Delaunay, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) raises new questions about how we have understood the role of narrative and writing in the artistic life of one of jazz’s most influential figures. Bechet is not usually considered a writer in the traditional sense, but perhaps he should be.","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"52 1","pages":"49 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74420978","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}

引用次数: 0

Chinese Exclusion, Indigeneity, and Settler-Colonial Refusal in C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills is Gold 张pam的《这些山有多少是金子》中的排华、土著和定居者-殖民地拒绝

3区文学

MELUS Pub Date : 2023-04-10 DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlad004

Alyssa A Hunziker

引用次数: 0

Reading with the Grain: The Ecologies of The Lowland 与谷物一起阅读:低地生态

3区文学

MELUS Pub Date : 2023-04-08 DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlad008

Michael Wutz

引用次数: 0

“A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place”: Reading Minimalism, Place, and Gender from Anzia Yezierska to Marie Kondo “一切的地方和一切的地方”:阅读从安齐亚·叶泽尔斯卡到近藤麻理惠的极简主义、地方和性别