The AnaChronisT

Spatial Experiences

2024-07-16T09:57:11+00:00

Review of Ágnes Györke and Imola Bülgözdi (eds.), Geographies of Affect in Contemporary Literature and Visual Culture: Central Europe and the West (Leiden and Boston: Brill-Rodopi, 2021)

Embracing Resilience and Reclaiming Happiness

2023-12-22T09:48:50+00:00

Review of Lindsey Stewart, The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021)

Tolkien Behind the Iron Curtain and Beyond

2024-04-13T08:09:26+00:00

Review of Janka Kascakova and David Levente Palatinus (eds.), J. R. R. Tolkien in Central Europe. Context, Directions, and the Legacy, Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction (New York: Routledge, 2023)

Beneath His Feet

2024-02-29T16:55:46+00:00

Review of Florian Stadtler (ed.), Salman Rushdie in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)

The Grassroots of Urningtum

2024-08-10T09:10:22+00:00

Review of Douglas Pretsell, Urning: Queer Identity in the German Nineteenth Century (Toronto–Buffalo–London: University of Toronto Press, 2024)

Breaking Barriers

2023-11-06T12:53:44+00:00

This study examines the contribution of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Osborn to the Great Awakening, a religious spiritual awakening, which happened in the Colonies in the eighteenth century. Sarah Pierpont Edward’s name was overshadowed by that of his husband, who was a representative theologian during the First Great Awakening period. The second subject of this study, Sarah Osborn, was unknown until Catherine A. Brekus shed light on her contribution to the rise of evangelicalism. Since her presence as a female missionary and former boarding school director is of great importance, this paper will empathetically highlight these aspects of her life as well. In the midst of changes in the church and society, women were experimenting with different ways of voicing their thoughts. As a very significant change in attitude, the Quaker leaders allowed women to preach. Aside from the reaction of the communities of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Osborn, this study will thoroughly elaborate on their personal lives. Their personal spiritual pilgrimage serves as a cornerstone of the present study. However, as their narratives are one-sided, we have to take into consideration the reception of their memoirs, letters, and diary entries. Amongst others, there were two important male characters in their lives, namely, Jonathan Edwards, the husband of Sarah Pierpont Edwards, and Joseph Fish, a minister, and a spiritual guide of Sarah Osborn, whose reconstructed opinion about the above-mentioned women will be detailed. In the midst of eighteenth-century societal constraints, Sarah Edwards and Sarah Osborn emerged as groundbreakers, defying traditional gender roles and laying the path for women in religious discourses. This article delves into their spiritual journeys, with a special emphasis on their resilience, intellectual capability, and firm commitment to faith.

"Theotormon hears me not"

2023-11-06T12:21:35+00:00

In the eighteenth century, rape trials were scenes of obscene shaming of violated women. English rape law supported the rich and the male; therefore, single women were at a disadvantage from the beginning. This phenomenon was commented on and challenged by writers at the end of the eighteenth century, including William Blake. This paper interprets Blake’s narrative poem Visions of the Daughters of Albion as a literary case study depicting the rhetoric of shaming. To show how language was used as a tool for shaming in a courtroom setting, I analyse the script of a trial from 1793. William Blake, by giving voice to her violated female character, Oothoon, used poetry and art to envision how women could refuse to be seen as objects defined by their chastity or the loss thereof.

“Blest Contemplation's Placid Friend”

2023-10-27T12:09:18+00:00

The article inspects the unduly overlooked literary output of late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century female poets, focusing chiefly on the innovative aspects of their Moon representations. The lunar poetry of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Helen Maria Williams, Mary Tighe, and Felicia Hemans relies partly on past conventions while bravely departing from traditional representations and seeking new directions. In their works, the Moon becomes the site for synthesising not only the past and present but also light and darkness, reason and fancy, beauty and sublimity, science and myth, coldness and congeniality. The pieces seem to fit neatly into the concept of Feminine Romanticism, as coined by Anne K. Mellor, espousing a deconstruction of hierarchies between the subject and Nature. However, the analyses of the Moon motif in these poems may shed light on how Mellor’s framework could be reconsidered and extended.

Reading Habits and Stylistic Discrepancy in Northanger Abbey

2024-04-03T08:23:10+00:00

In the past decades, scholarly discourse surrounding Northanger Abbey has predominantly favoured a two-part structural division, attributing stylistic disparities to the novel’s extended composition and publication process. However, a more intricate perspective emerges from a division into three stylistically unique sections. This reflects more closely the different stages of Catherine Morland’s development and the impact of her reading habits within varying narrative contexts. While the novel explores the activity of reading books, it also delves into questions of interpreting and comprehending the world. Catherine’s fascination with Gothic novels serves as both a narrative device and a thematic exploration, reflecting her vivid imagination and the tensions between fiction and reality. This essay contends that the trichotomous division offers a more nuanced perspective on the interplay between narrative structure and character evolution. It emphasises the role of reading habits in Catherine’s growth and underscores the transformative potential of literature in shaping perspectives, shedding new light on the novel’s narrative style. To investigate the stylistic changes of Northanger Abbey and their correlation with Catherine Morland’s development, this essay utilises a blend of quantitative stylistic analysis and close reading, highlighting how Austen’s narrative technique reflects and shapes the protagonist’s journey.

Non(sense)-Places

2023-11-06T12:01:39+00:00

Space as the locus of a game (“field”) has been a common metaphor in analysing Victorian nonsense literature: Elizabeth Sewell’s 1952 monograph incorporated it already in its title, The Field of Nonsense, while Susan Stewart’s study, Nonsense (1978), identifies discursive operations of nonsense-making “within a closed field.” However, little has been said about space as a motif (or topos) in the primary texts of nonsense. Although Gillian Beer in her 2016 book Alice in Space treats certain spatial aspects of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, the spaces of Edward Lear’s limericks are yet to be explored. The paper attempts such an exploration by invoking anthropologist Marc Augé’s term “non-place” (non-lieu) from his 1992 study (first published in English in 1995 with the title Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity). Augé describes a central part of what he calls supermodernity within the context of anthropology, a field apparently far away from my primary concern. Yet it is not difficult to recognise similarities between lonely spots of modern cityscape such as train stations, shopping malls, airplane cabins, or driver’s seats—and the places in Lear’s poems like the snippets of countryside in the limericks or the Great Gromboolian Plain. Augé’s analyses of excess of space (as well as time), especially space perceived in travel, and of places unconcerned with (social) relations, history, or identity, where solitude reigns, ring familiar when reading Lear’s limericks and nonsense songs. By incorporating the main qualities of the non-place, this paper offers an interpretive framework for Lear’s nonsense poetry that can be potentially extended to Victorian nonsense literature in general.

Cruising and Code

2023-10-25T10:57:02+00:00

In homophobic cultures, “cruising,” or the clandestine pursuit of sexual relations with strangers, is both a pleasurable act and a means of connecting with other queer individuals. This article utilises cruising as an analytical and methodological framework through which to examine Eric Stenbock’s “The True Story of a Vampire” (1894) as the author’s allegorical effort to combat his social and sexual isolation. Reading Stenbock’s text through this subcultural queer practice reconfigures the archetypal “stranger”—here, the vampire Count Vardalek—from simply threatening to also a personification of potential pleasure and queer community. This reading expands upon recent work in queer theory that argues the artistic works of fin-de-siècle aesthetes were a means of gaining sexual self-knowledge and a sense of personal independence within systemic oppression. These critical re-readings call attention to the often subliminal or coded language of queer expression within art; as such, this article posits the benefits of applying queer practices like cruising to literary analysis, particularly toward texts only publishable if their queer themes remain subtextual.

Unbridling the "Tamed Other"

2023-11-06T15:37:42+00:00

This article investigates late-Victorian literary depictions of the imagined “Gypsy” by examining the “Szgany” of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Contemporary ethnographic and legal sources are also employed to uncover Stoker’s reading of “the Gypsy” and the shift from domestic to recognisably foreign roles assumed in works of fiction. This discussion tackles the interaction of landscape and ideology, the historical and ethnographical context of the late nineteenth century, and the general significance of “the Gypsy” in these narratives. Building on the Gothic notion of the de-localised (Oriental) Other, this article introduces a new concept, the re-localisation of the de-localised Other, exemplified by the connection made between the “Szgany” of Stoker’s Transylvania and the “ordinary gipsies all the world over.” The re-localisation effort results in a shift in the layers of domestic Gypsies’ otherness and creates an atmosphere that is ripe for contagion and Oriental invasion, yet is rooted in the ordinary, the “real” that is recognisable to the Victorian middle-class reader. In this article, the relevant processes behind constructing the Gypsy—like gothicisation and orientalisation—are studied, employing a perspective that emphasises the interrelatedness of the Other and the landscape. Together, these aspects of the novel establish a “couleur locale” fitting for the sinister activities of Dracula. Additionally, Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Silver Blaze" and "The Speckled Band" serve as texts for comparison, as they showcase the domestic Other, notably in the role of the scapegoat, the petty, ordinary criminal.

“What, then, was my new friend?”

2023-10-18T16:13:59+00:00

Edward Prime-Stevenson’s novel, Imre: A Memorandum (1906), is a recollection of the unfolding relationship between a Hungarian soldier, Imre, and Oswald, an Englishman, whose first-person narration conveys the story through a unique perspective. The novelette functions as a piece of educational literature that aims to break away from the earlier stereotypes of homosexuality’s portrayal, especially of Wildean stereotypes, which, according to Prime-Stevenson, only fuel the negative connotations attached to same-sex desire. The advancement of the narrative is influenced by three main reasons: the book as a piece of educational literature, the restricted and strictly controlled speakable discourse on homosexuality, and Oswald’s experience told from his point of view. The aim of the paper is to argue that the speakability of homosexuality is only possible in a self-censored narrative frame, which pre-emptively decides the limits of the discourse that can be spoken. First, I present Judith Butler’s interpretation of the 1994 congressional statute that prohibited the self-declaration of homosexuality in the US military, in order to reflect upon the performative operation of implicit censorship. Then I explore how self-censorship functions in the dialogues between the protagonists, and argue that Prime-Stevenson’s novel uses narrative “blanks” as a means and ways of creating the discursive frame in which, and only in which the speakability of homosexuality becomes possible. Thereby, I aim to present that for the novel to fulfil its function as educational literature, and to provide a sympathetic reading of homosexual love, it is of crucial importance to maintain the narrative frame and, thus, the limits of the speakable discourse. For Prime-Stevenson, it was only through this perspective that same-sex desire seemed portrayable.

Cyclical Time as the Liminal Space of Suffering and Denial in the Narrative of Septimus Warren Smith

2024-03-08T12:44:20+00:00

Through comparing and contrasting studies from philosophy and mainly contemporary literary theory, this paper aims to outline how a complex temporal paradox is refigured in Septimus Warren Smith’s fictive experience. It is the argument of the article that we can detect the presence of a divergent, modern variant of the concept of Eliade’s archaic cyclical time in this experience, battling with a predominantly linear temporal paradigm, presented through the fictional society of the novel. I argue that linear time is inherently paradoxical as it simultaneously builds and corrodes the individual and that, in Septimus’s experience, cyclical time serves very similar purposes. I observe how Septimus’s fictive modern cyclico-linear time compares to Virginia Woolf's “moments of being” and isolate three types of moments pertinent to Septimus’s experience: the traumatic profane, the psychotic sacred, and the collective haunted. Through defining these three temporal concepts and underlining their presence in the narrative experience of Septimus, I aim to outline how the concept of cyclical time itself becomes a dark, intangible zone in the novel where transcendence is manifested as a consequence of trauma and denial. Septimus immerses himself in the liminal space of dark cyclical time both in hopes of healing, as he tries to amend his fragmented self, and out of necessity, as the post-war society’s denial banishes him into a hellish terrain of endless repetition. Tragically, through the ignorant effort of self-healing through denial, the novel’s society abandons its function to reintroduce Septimus to linear temporal experience. Hence, Septimus finally succumbs to be completely consumed by the liminal space of dark cyclical time. He fulfils both society’s unspoken wish to disappear and his own need to be free from his trauma—all the while an oblivious fictional world moves on in time.

Losing Touch

2023-11-06T12:12:46+00:00

The paper discusses J. M. Coetzee’s first novel, Dusklands (1974), which comprises two novellas. “The Vietnam Project” is narrated by Eugene Dawn, an American mythographer, who works on a report facilitating psychological warfare in the Vietnam War. The second novella, “The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee,” tells the story of an eighteenth-century Dutch explorer’s journey and encounter with the Namaqua people in Southern Africa. Following the author Coetzee’s perspective, the paper does not focus on the figure of the oppressed, but on the oppressor instead, and the way he, specifically his relation to his body, is affected by either twentieth-century American imperialism or eighteenth-century colonisation. This paper argues that both Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee are trapped in their respective vicious dehumanising circle of imperialism/colonialism where they wish to become “disembodied.” In Dusklands, disembodiment appears in the form of fantasies and feverish dreams; nevertheless, it has a sustained effect on the way Dawn and Jacobus interact with others. The paper draws on theories of dehumanisation, Matthew Ratcliffe’s view on the relation of touch and reality, and the concept of vulnerability as investigated by Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero.

Cosmopolitanism and Neocitizenship in Teju Cole’s Open City and Zadie Smith’s NW

2023-10-27T12:15:54+00:00

This paper examines the possible new dimensions of the cosmopolitan disposition and a phenomenon that can be called neocitizenship in two contemporary literary works, Teju Cole’s Open City and Zadie Smith’s NW. The main question the paper explores is how literary narratives portray the clash of cosmopolitan attitudes with material and economic interests in contemporary neoliberal societies. It is argued that some characters can theoretically identify with the classical, human-centric idea of cosmopolitanism based on the principle of fair treatment, but it remains an unattainable utopia because they bump into obstacles when putting principles into practice. Julius is an example of this attitude in Cole’s Open City. Other characters, such as Natalie in NW, exemplify the pragmatic notion of self-entrepreneurial neocitizenship which is constrained by the inhuman practices of neoliberalism. They are flexible and opportunistic characters who work meticulously to achieve personal success and seem successful on the surface. However, it turns out that both of these characters, who believe in cosmopolitan ethics and are more down-to-earth neocitizens, only chase a mirage and eventually fail in the novels, which can be retraced to the fact that they live in denial and are unable to come to terms with past deeds.

Bagatelling Stories in Ali Smith’s Autumn

2024-02-01T09:23:22+00:00

Ali Smith’s Autumn, often called the first ever (post-)Brexit novel, portrays the dystopian reality of the modern UK, overwhelmed by the plurality of narrative voice and the manipulative mass culture of lies. As a way of resistance, Ali Smith restores faith in the capability of storytelling as an art form to connect, communicate and enable change. Stories in Autumn become the manifestations of (creative) life force and display an ability to act as self-sufficient agents. Storytelling as an art form appears as a foundation for sustaining life in narratives and people alike as well as a way of connecting people. Interacting with stories is portrayed as an exercise in interpretation, a process of making sense of how and why things happen in the world, a skill essential in (post-)Brexit UK. In the novel, the stories are compared to a home, a safe space for those who were cast out by the discourses of Brexit nationalism and serve as a form of constructive dialogue between past and present generations.