110 research outputs found
Ethiques du corps dans Antarctica de Claire Keegan
No full textA selection of stories from Claire Keeganʼs first collection Antarctica (1999) is here examined through the perspective of ethos. Each story, the author argues, illustrates the clash between two etymological meanings of ethos through a dramatic conflict between inherited practices and the idiosyncratic disposition of the characters (i.e. tradition vs. taste). The contrast is explored within a frame which brings together Camille Pagliaʼs theory of literature and the arts as an extension of the archaic connection between sexuality and religion and Judith Butlerʼs theory of performativity. Within this frame one of the storiesʼ major features is a taste for taking risks. Instead of putting the body at a distance for the mind’s sake, Keeganʼs stories seem to invite the reader to take the risk of exploring it (i.e. the body), even if such a risk may lead to death
The Course Management System, e-Class at Democritus University of Thrace: Where do we Stand?
No full textMigrations transatlantiques latentes dans 'The Yellow Bird' de Tennessee Williams
No full textThe literary transatlantic migrations in Tennessee Williams’ “The Yellow Bird” (1947) are studied from the point of view of parodic rewriting and recycling. The structure of the story produces polyphonic effects that create a dramatic tension between the tragic and the comic, the present and the past, the real and the imaginary, as they move to and fro between the Ancient and the New Worlds. The effects and ensuing tensions are achieved through the latent interposition of the phoenix, a symbol whose presence is periphrastically hinted at as early as the title: the “yellow bird” is a transatlantic figure out of British modernism (for Williams recuperated it from D. H. Lawrence’s work) which embodies rebirth and renewal. It takes under its aegis Alma, a minister’s daughter whom it accompanies in her metamorphosis into a prostitute. The article uses the concepts of heteroglossia and performativity to demonstrate that Alma’s transformation is due to her acting out the meaning of her name in various languages. Through this performance, Alma’s identity is diffracted into multiple facets from literal, acclimatized, or endogenous Puritanism to a transatlantic literary crossbreed. Eventually, by means of an inverted correspondence, Alma, the prostitute, proves to be a parody of the Virgin Mary. As Mary, Mother of God is mother to her own creator, so Alma is a metaleptical and metafictional figure of the author. Transatlantic migrations are thus part of a larger issue that concerns fiction in general and Williams’ oeuvre in particular. The story (like Williams’ work in general) questions the impermeability of the boundaries that define time, space, genders and genres to highlight the interdependence that develops between the individual and the community, realism and fantasy, reality and fiction
Ion d’Arthur W. Verrall et The Importance of Being Earnest d’Oscar Wilde
No full text<p>In 1890, while Wilde was writing A House of Pomegranates and Lady Windermere's Fan, The Ion of Euripides was produced at the Theater Royal in Cambridge, in a translation by Arthur W. Verrall. The translation, published in bookstore in this same year, includes an introduction and an atypical afterword by the translator. According to Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh and Ian Ross, either Verrall's translation of the Ion or its Cambridge production or both inspired Wilde's episode of the handbag in the recognition scene of Earnest.</p><p>Following this path, the present paper will attempt to show that the impact of Verrall's book on Wilde's writings goes beyond a mere formal thematic connection. The Ion of Verrall - rather than that of Euripides - serves to create a tension between idealism and pragmatism, the verticality of tragedy and the horizontality of comedy that underpins Earnest’s structure. Then the tension between verticality - that of idealism and tragedy - and horizontality - that of farce and pragmatism - will be read in an autobiographical context. The meeting between the private and the public will finally allow us to argue that the play is subtly double-edged; for if the concept of earnestness is disparaged within it, it is also an inherent quality of Wilde’s farce, a Victorian virtue that, although never flaunted, rubs off on the Playwright’s Oeuvre.</p><p>En 1890, alors que Wilde rédigeait son deuxième volume de contes, A House of Pomegranates, et sa comédie Lady Windermere’s Fan, la tragédie d’Euripide Ion était produite au Theatre Royal, à Cambridge, dans une traduction d’Arthur W. Verrall[1]. La traduction, parue en librairie en cette même année[2], comporte une introduction et une postface « atypiques » du traducteur. Selon Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh et Ian Ross, c’est la traduction de Verrall, sa production à Cambridge ou les deux à la fois qui ont inspiré à Wilde l’épisode du sac à main dans la scène de reconnaissance d’Earnest.</p><p>En suivant cette piste, la présente communication tentera de monter que l’impact du livre de Verrall sur l’œuvre de Wilde va au-delà d’un rapport formel. L’Ion de Verrall - plutôt que celui d’Euripide – sert à créer une tension entre idéalisme et pragmatisme, la verticalité de la tragédie et l’horizontalité de la comédie. Puis, la tension entre la verticalité – celle de l’idéalisme et de la tragédie- et l’horizontalité - celle de la farce et du pragmatisme - sera lue dans un contexte autobiographique. L’étonnante rencontre entre le privé et le publique qui s’opère dans cette pièce nous permettra, enfin, d’avancer que le concept d’earnestness n’est pas seulement moqué ; il constitue aussi un trait identitaire qui caractérise la farce d’Oscar Wilde, son œuvre toute entière. </p><p> </p><p>[1] http://www.cambridgegreekplay.com/plays/1890/ion .</p><p>[2] Disponible en ligne sur https://archive.org/details/euripidouionionw00euriuoft</p
Performative betrayals: Christian gender politics or Christianity on trial in Oscar Wilde's Salomé
No full textOscar Wilde’s symbolist drama Salomé (1892) was written directly in French, a language the playwright “adore[d] without speaking it well” (Ellmann). In order to avoid awkward phrasing in the dialogues, Wilde minimized the importance of language in favour of the show. In consequence in Salomé silence is at least as important as speech, and showing or suggesting through performance makes up for telling. The eponymous heroine is therefore mainly shaped by quotations. These are either stated by third characters or “translated” into images through performance. The enunciated quotations epitomize the male characters’ gaze while the “performed” ones, which are actually scraps and bits from Biblical, Greek and Roman myths, are more inherent with Salome’s “essential nature”. Consequently, in this gender-oriented drama, Salomé appears as a discursive and plastic construct which brings together male representations of the feminine as both an ideal and a threat (notably the 19th century myth of the femme fatale) as well as performative evocations of archetypal female characters (such as Isis, Ishtar). The above characterization process aims at opposing two versions of a Janus-faced Salomé, whose identity can either be a man’s issue lying outside her control , or an embodiment of the archetypal matriarchal female. In both cases, Salomé functions as a self conscious postmodern construct whose self is shaped by texts and narratives.
However, when Herod is imploring her not to listen to her mother and to ask for something else than Jokanaan’s head, she answers: “It is not my mother’s voice that I heed. It is for mine own pleasure that I ask the head of Jokanaan”. By so doing, Salomé breaks with the tradition she stems from, both biblical and mythological, and attempts to start a new one in which pleasure becomes a yardstick by which she defines herself for us who are invited to use it, too, in order to redefine identity and gender.
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