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The Eternal Rewriting: Language, Existentialism, and Play in Barth’s ‘Night-Sea Journey
Get PDFWhile the self-reflexivity of Barth’s short story collection Lost in the Funhouse is largely recognized, locating and defining its key focus has generated wider controversy, with most scholars adopting either a linguistic, metafictional stance, or a philosophical, existentialist one. Taking “Night-Sea Journey” as a case example, this paper aims to conflate both readings of Barth’s tales in order to reveal how both principles co-construct each other, for their concerns (as featured in the book) are not only correlative but inseverable. The study’s structure, mirroring that of the tale, will map the strategies employed to convey its existential preoccupations, as well as the violation of narrative expectations through which the text’s postmodern playfulness breaks in. In this way, the story’s concurrent deployment of materiality and transcendence, deep philosophy and light humor, canonical literature and satire, shall all be intertwined toward a comprehensive understanding of the collection’s major theme: the cyclical nature of human history, and the eternal rewriting of our stories
Female Sexuality Portrayed in the Scarlet Letter and its Influence in Contemporary Works such as the Handmaid´s Tale
Get PDFThe characters, situations and dilemmas presented in The Handmaid‘s Tale are a rich re-elaboration and upgrading of a topic that had been discussed a long time before Margaret Atwood published it in 1985. Back in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne encapsulated the vicissitudes and strong emotional connotations of a topic as delicate as female sexuality. While The Scarlet Letter punishes sexual intercourse and exposes the female sex as a living proof of the devil‘s mission to tempt us and lure us into sinning, The Handmaid‘s Tale takes this idea and deforms it to the point where some women are only fitted to be ―two-legged wombs, that‘s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices. This essay will show how female sexuality is treated in both works and how women aredepicted as the sinful figures that, in these two cases, embody maternity
New York City in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Get PDFThis paper explores the role of the city in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loudand Incredibly Close. It focuses on the dialogue between text and images and how both areused to present the trauma of 9/11 events in terms of the complexity of the formal aspectsused to represent the city
Puritan Experience in 17th Century New England: The Witch-Hunt Episode through the Works of John Winthrop and Cotton Mather
Get PDFThis paper outlines the relationship between how the reality of the 17th centuryNew England affected literature and how literature affected the Puritan reality. To achievethis aim, the paper will be developed through three works: the sermon preached by JohnWinthrop, A Model of Christian Charity (1630); and two of the major works of Cotton Mather:Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689) and Wonders of theInvisible World (1693). This study offers an introduction to Puritanism as well as adescriptive account of the episode of witch-hunt in Salem to be able to evince the reciprocitybetween literature and reality later on in the study. The findings from this research illustratehow a religious belief that ensued in the Reformation of the 16th century changed the waysociety thought and lived as well as how the society was reflected in literature
Myth in The Chronicles of Narnia
Get PDFThe writings of C. S. Lewis are heavily influenced by the literary tradition thatdefines the imaginary of Western culture, its mythologies, legends and tales. The aim of thisstudy is to demonstrate how several instances of these types of works are mixed and rewritten in The Chronicles of Narnia. The analysis will illustrate how Narnia’s world, charactersand plots are thoroughly constituted by the influences of the Arthurian legend, Greek andRoman mythology and fairy tales like Snow White, opening the discussion of the effect andpurpose of these sources under the lens of myth criticism
Morality in Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Get PDFThe Picture of Dorian Gray is the only novel written by Oscar Wilde that made astrong impression as much in the Victorian times as the contemporary age. This essay aimsat analysing the morality behind the story of Dorian Gray through a close philosophicalapproach; mainly, through Nietzsche‘s criticism on morality. Furthermore, the objectives ofthis paper are: to understand the social background in which works such as Wilde‘s ThePicture of Dorian Gray and Nietzsche‘s On the Genealogy of Morality existed, to come tosome conclusions about the intention of Wilde when he defended the purpose of aestheticismconsidering that many of his works dealt with morality and to reflect on the role of moralityin art