A descriptive analysis of the spanish translation of Manhattan Transfer and their role in the spanish construction of John Dos Passos

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Departamento de Filología inglesa. Fecha de lectura: 06 de mayo de 201

American Literature and Science

Literature and science are two disciplines are two disciplines often thought to be unrelated, if not actually antagonistic. But Robert J. Scholnick points out that these areas of learning, up through the beginning of the nineteenth century, “were understood as parts of a unitary endeavor.By mid-century they had diverged, but literature and science have continued to interact, conflict, and illuminate each other. In this innovative work, twelve leaders in this emerging interdisciplinary field explore the long engagement of American writers with science and uncover science’s conflicting meanings as a central dimension of the nation’s conception of itself. Reaching back to the Puritan poet-minister-physician Edward Taylor, who wrote at the beginning of the scientific revolution, and forward to Thomas Pynchon, novelist of the cybernetic age, this collection of original essays contains essential work on major writers, including Franklin, Jefferson, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Twain, Hart Crane, Dos Passos, and Charles Olson. Through its exploration of the ways that American writers have found in science and technology a vital imaginative stimulus, even while resisting their destructive applications, this book points towards a reconciliation and integration within culture. An innovative look at a neglected dimension of our literary tradition, American Literature and Science stands as both a definition of the field and an invitation to others to continue and extend new modes of inquiry. A thoughtful collection that reveals how the concept of ‘science’ has evolved from Franklin to cyberpunk, and how it has transformed American literary form and expression. —American Literature Innovative. . . . The first systematic examination of this neglected dimension of the American literary tradition. —American Renaissance Literary Reporthttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/1013/thumbnail.jp

Forms of social commentary in The Cairo and USA trilogies

Ova disertacija pripada području kroskulturalne znanosti o književnosti. Cilj joj je postaviti okvir za tumačenje književnih postupaka u djelima koja pripadaju različitim kulturnim sustavima, koja pokazuju određene formalne i tematske odrednice i koja se bave nekom vrstom društvenoga ili političkoga komentara. Teorijski okvir unutar kojega će se ti postupci razmatrati teorija je otvorenih i zatvorenih sustava. Pokazat ćemo kako je kulturno-politički sustav u kojemu su autori pisali utjecao na odabir retoričkih i književnih metoda i postupaka te na koji se način prikazuje ideja nacionalnog identiteta u tim djelima. Glavna je teza rada da otvoreni sustav uvjetuje korištenje eksperimentalnih metoda kod Dos Passosa, poglavito isprekidane naracije, montažnih postupaka, intertekstualnosti te jezične eksperimentalnosti. S druge strane, zatvoreni sustav u kojemu je pisao Naguib Mahfouz uvjetovao je odabir tradicionalnih postupaka i metoda naracije, izraženoga simbolizma i narativne uniformnosti. Analizom političkoga komentara tih djela pokazat će se kako su književni postupci povezani sa širim kulturnim prostorom i osobnom političkom filozofijom autora ili položajem u pojedinoj književnoj tradiciji. Radi se o djelima koja se mogu svrstati pod naziv velikog američkog romana i velikog arapskog romana. Djela su to koja se bave kompleksnim uređenjem odnosa u dva različita civilizacijska sustava. Moj doprinos znanosti i disciplini komparatistike temelji se na činjenici da nikad nije napravljena poredbena studija ta dva djela u više od pola stoljeća od kada su objavljena, a ta je činjenica posebno značajna ako se uzmu u obzir kompleksni politički i drugi odnosi ova dva kulturna prostora u novijoj povijesti. Moj se doprinos također temelji i na činjenici da je teško pronaći djela iz žanra socijalnoga realizma koja detaljnije progovaraju o svim kompleksnostima uređenja tih društava.This thesis belongs in the field of crosscultural literary studies. Its aim is to set a framework for the interpretation of literary procedures in literary works which belong to different cultural systems, which display certain formal and thematic guidelines and which deal with some kind of social or political commentary. The theoretical framework within which these procedures will be considered is the theory of open and closed systems. We will show how the cultural and political system in which the authors wrote influenced the choice of rhetorical and literary methods and procedures. The main thesis is that an open system conditions the use of experimental methods in Dos Passos, especially intermittent narration, procedures using montage, intertextuality and linguistic experimentation. On the other hand, the closed system in which Naguib Mahfouz wrote determined the selection of traditional practices and narrative procedures, strong symbolism and narrative uniformity. Through the analysis of the political comments of these works we will show how literary procedures are associated with the broader cultural space and the position of authors in a particular literary tradition and political system. Since these two authors belong to different literary traditions, it is important to situate them in the proper literary context and show what influences, if any, they worked under. In the case of Dos Passos, we will situate his social chronicles in the context of a tradition of critical realism that started with writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Jack London and Frank Norris in the 1890s. In the case of Naguib Mahfouz, the literary context is somewhat different, because the novel as a genre is unknown in Egypt until early twentieth century. Mahfouz occupies a unique place in the history of Egyptian literature, being at once an originator and culminating practitioner of the genre of social realism in novel form. In the case of both writers, it will be shown that their unique place in their national literatures is reaffirmed by the fact that no writers continued the genres or practices which they employed. Dos Passos’s experimental narration still stands unique in the history of American literature, while a new generation of Egyptian writers have a problematic relationship with Mahfouz, whom they consider a pioneer, but against whom they also rebel and write in new genres, from a more modern perspective. By all accounts, these two literary works may carry the title of the Great American Novel and the Great Arabic Novel. They deal with the complex social relations in two different societies. My original contribution to knowledge and to the discipline of comparative literature lies in the fact that no comparative study of these two works has been done in more than half a century since their publication. This is a fact which is especially noteworthy considering the complex political and other relations of these two cultural spaces in recent history, as well as the fact that it is hard to find two literary works that speak in more detail about the complexities of these societies

The fiction of postmodernity: dialectical studies of Martin Amis, Don DeLillo and Salman Rushdie

This thesis is a dialectical study of fiction by Martin Amis, Don DeLillo and Salman Rushdie. It situates novels by these three writers in relation to a Western Marxist theoretical understanding of the postmodern and the culture of postmodernity, particularly as developed in the writings of Fredric Jameson. While the thesis is intended to demonstrate how such theoretical accounts help illuminate interpretation of contemporary, postmodern fiction, it also suggests how that fiction might provide a critique, or expose the limitations, of those theoretical or conceptual models themselves.The thesis traces, in selected examples of Amis's, DeLillo's and Rushdie's fiction, elements of dialectical conflict. It describes the means by which the texts enact simultaneously a form of ideological complicity with what Jameson (borrowing from the economist Ernst Mandel) calls 'late capitalism' and a measure of social and cultural critique. It is with this identification of both the ideological and critical features of postmodern fiction that the thesis is principally concerned.Chapter 1 charts a Western Marxist model of transition from modernism to postmodernism both through the theoretical writings of Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno and Fredric Jameson and through brief studies of examples of modernist and late-modernist fiction. It concludes with an acknowledgement of the difficulties Western Marxist aesthetics have had in identifying any critical potential in postmodern culture. Nonetheless, the literary studies which succeed chapter one offer lengthy discussions of postmodern fiction which carry out Jameson's insistence that a properly Marxian analysis must attempt to identify both the affirmative and the critical moments of cultural commodities. This is a step which, though acknowledging its significance, Western Marxist critics have thus far been reluctant to take.Chapters two to four, which address the work of Amis, DeLillo and Rushdie, focus particularly on issues such as the loss of a cultural (semi)autonomy in the postmodern and the effect this has had on notions of aesthetic critical distance. While they attempt to reassert the continuing worth and validity of that Western Marxist tradition of cultural critique, these studies also imply some necessary revision of its treatment of postmodernity's cultural products. This latter point is addressed in the final chapter

"At the edges of perception": William Gaddis and the encyclopedic novel from Joyce to David foster Wallace

"Longer works of fiction," a character in William Gaddis's JR complains of the current literary scene, are now "dismissed as classics and remain . . . largely unread due to the effort involved in reading and turning any more than two hundred pages" (527). This study argues that despite most literary critics constructing American postmodernism as a movement that privileges short works, in contrast to the encyclopedic masterworks of modernism, there are in fact a large number of artistically sophisticated contemporary novels of encyclopedic scope that demonstrate often ignored lines of continuity from works like James Joyce's Ulysses. In arguing this, I attempt not just to draw attention to a neglected strain in contemporary American fiction, but also to provide a more accurate context in which those few recent encyclopedic novels that have assumed centrality, like Gravity's Rainbow, might be evaluated. In doing so, this thesis also seeks to demonstrate the pivotal position of William Gaddis who, despite publishing four impressive novels that engage with the legacy of modernism and pre-empt elements of postmodernism, has been excluded from most studies dealing with the transition between the two movements. Through detailed readings of four encyclopedic novels - Gaddis's The Recognitions, Don DeLillo's Underworld, Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations, and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest - I show Gaddis's continuation of encyclopedic modernism, the importance of his example to later writers, and the continuing vitality of the encyclopedic novel beyond the defined limits of modernism. However, as these novels try to encompass the full circle of knowledge, in order to do justice to their diverse learning I have adopted a different approach in each chapter. Very broadly, they attempt to encircle art, psychology, science, and literature, which, taken together, attempt to synthesise a defence of the contemporary encyclopedic novel. While minimalist writers from Raymond Carver to Ann Beattie have affirmed that less is more, this thesis argues that, in some cases, more really is more

Paul Shyre\u27s Contribution to the Professional Performance of Non-Dramatic Literature 1954-1981: an Historical Survey (New York City).

This study documents, describes, examines, and orders Paul Shyre\u27s contribution to the field of oral performance of literature. The study sets as parameters the professional presentation of non-dramatic literature, that is, literature not written for dramatic performance. Shyre\u27s contribution includes fourteen adaptations of this type. During the period from 1954-1966 Shyre adapted the works of Edgar Allen Poe into a performance entitle The Theatre of Mr. Poe, followed by two adaptations based on the autobiographical novels of Sean O\u27Casey, I Knock at the Door and Pictures in the Hallway. After adaptations of compiled scripts, I Hear America Singing and U.S.A., a collaboration with John Dos Passos, Shyre returned to a third adaptation from the works of O\u27Casey, Drums Under the Windows. Yeats and Company and A Whitman Portrait were adaptations Shyre was commissioned to do at the close of this period. All of the early presentations fall into the class of things we often call group performances of non-dramatic literature. The second period from 1967-1981 begins with Shrye\u27s most successful one-person show, Will Rogers\u27 U.S.A., followed by a compiled script entitled The President is Dead, based on the Lincoln assassination. Another compiled script, New York, New York, was taken from poetry, prose, and musical lyrics based on the theme of New York City. The next two adaptations, Paris Was Yesterday and An Unpleasant Evening with H. L. Mencken, were one-person shows adapted from writings of journalists Janet Flanner and H. L. Mencken, respectively. Ah, Men, a compiled script based on writings of numerous men, closes out this period. These fourteen adaptations comprise the largest individual contribution to the professional performance of non-dramatic literature during the period 1966-1981

Explaining the self: A contextual study of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Joseph Heller

I offer an exploration of the work of these three contemporary novelists, focusing on the phenomenon of self-explanation - both in the sense of justifying oneself, and of seeking to define the nature of selfhood. I identify three roles in which (and against which) these self-explanations take place: as writers of comedy, as Jewish writers, and as American writers. Although these roles overlap, I treat them as distinct tor the purposes of structural clarity and contextualise them by locating them in related literary and cultural traditions. I am particularly concerned with the ambivalent attitudes that these writers display towards these roles, with the tensions between - and within - their theory and practice. The thesis is divided into three chapters, framed by an introduction and conclusion. Each chapter begins with a survey of some of the meanings attached to the terms "comedy", "Jewish" and "American" as generic labels, before moving on to a detailed analysis of a number of texts (by Bellow, Roth and Heller, and by others whose work shares these contexts) informed by these meanings. These close readings, which form the heart of the thesis, are divided within each chapter into three sections (one for each of the three writers). Though contextual rather than comparative in emphasis, cumulatively the thesis provides an evaluation of their works, both in relation to each other and in terms of their larger literary-historical significance

Under construction: infrastructure and modern fiction

In this dissertation, I argue that infrastructural development, with its technological promises but widening geographic disparities and social and environmental consequences, informs both the narrative content and aesthetic forms of modernist and contemporary Anglophone fiction. Despite its prevalent material forms—roads, rails, pipes, and wires—infrastructure poses particular formal and narrative problems, often receding into the background as mere setting. To address how literary fiction theorizes the experience of infrastructure requires reading “infrastructurally”: that is, paying attention to the seemingly mundane interactions between characters and their built environments. The writers central to this project—James Joyce, William Faulkner, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Mohsin Hamid—take up the representational challenges posed by infrastructure by bringing transit networks, sanitation systems, and electrical grids and the histories of their development and use into the foreground. These writers call attention to the political dimensions of built environments, revealing the ways infrastructures produce, reinforce, and perpetuate racial and socioeconomic fault lines. They also attempt to formalize the material relations of power inscribed by and within infrastructure; the novel itself becomes an imaginary counterpart to the technologies of infrastructure, a form that shapes and constrains what types of social action and affiliation are possible