Series
Rodopi Perspectives on Modern Literature
Book
In recent years, there has been a continuing and persistent world-wide interest in the interaction between the two disciplines of law and literature. Although there have been many collections of primary texts that combined these two areas, this volume presents literary analyses and criticism in an attempt to assess the varied relationships between law and justice, between lawyers and clients, and between readers’ perceptions and authors’ intent, hopefully suggesting why they have continually been yoked together. One similarity between the two is that lawyers, like writers, must catch their audience’s attention by novelty of scene, distinctiveness of voice, and ingenuity of design. Furthermore, legal advocates must recreate a concrete sense of reality, developing vivid and valid pictures of a specific time and place. In short, both lawyers and writers attempt to provide a basis for juries / readers to judge defendants / characters by their motivations and their actions and to decide whether a favorable ruling / assessment is justified. Collectively, the essays in this book are designed to deal with themes of guilt and innocence, right and wrong, morality and legality. The essays also suggest that the world as it is delineated by lawyers is indeed a text that like its literary counterparts sometimes blurs the distinction between fact and fiction as it attempts to define “truth” and to establish criteria for “impartial” justice. By exploring interdisciplinary contexts, readers will surely be made more aware, more sensitive to the roles that stories play in the legal profession and to the dilemmas faced by legal systems that often succeed in maintaining the rights and privileges of a dominant societal group at the expense of a less powerful one.
Book
Until recently, discussion of ‘creativity in exile’ has focussed almost exclusively on a few European male writers, from Dante to Joseph Brodsky, who sought refuge abroad from political oppression. This volume, with accompanying 100-minute DVD, ranges much more widely, to examine the extraordinary creative endeavours in a range of media of men and women in almost every part of the world who, for a host of different reasons, have experienced displacement from their homelands. It brings together papers by academics, many of whom have experienced exile themselves, on topics as diverse as: the visual arts in Colombia, fiction by displaced indigenous peoples, convicts and slaves as exiles, writings about the partition of Bengal, the culture of Palestinian Americans, philosophers on exile, and the significance of cooking to refugee communities, which are interspersed with poems by contemporary writers in exile. The use of the DVD format has permitted the inclusion of: studio interviews with notable exiled writers from Nigeria, Cyprus and Bulgaria, extracts from two films relating to exile, a live reading of his work by an Iraqi poet, an audio and sculptural installation by a First Nations Canadian artist, and a performance by musicians in exile from Burundi.
Book
Literature and the Writer was first conceived with the hope the essays would shed light on several dimensions of the authorial craft. It was the hope of the editor that the selected essays would examine not only writers’ choice of vocabulary, but also their deliberate selection of grammatical constructions and word order and their seamless weaving together of plots and imagery. Moreover, the analyses would also draw attention to how the writing process impacts the development of characters and the formulation of thematic strands in fiction. Thus, a wide variety of authors are deliberately selected to give the text depth: writers of popular fiction as well as modern classics are included, and contrasts are established between traditional writers and those who prefer to follow experimental trends. Modernists are set against postmodernists, absurdists vs. realists, minority ethnicities vs. majority cultures, and dominant genders appear in contrast to subordinated ones. Clearly, the major tenet of the collection is that the writing profession provides an unending dilemma that deserves to be explored in more detail as readers try to determine how authorial voices confuse while simultaneously elucidating their audience, how texts are constructed by authors and yet deconstructed by the very words they choose to include, how silence functions as inaudible yet audible discourse; and how authorial self-concept shapes not only itself but is also echoed in the fictional characters / writers who appear in the texts.
Book
This volume stems from the idea that the notion of borders and borderlines as clear-cut frontiers separating not only political and geographical areas, but also cultural, linguistic and semiotic spaces, does not fully address the complexity of contemporary cultural encounters. Centering on a whole range of literary works from the United States and the Caribbean, the contributors suggest and discuss different theoretical and methodological grounds to address the literary production taking place across the lines in North American and Caribbean culture. The volume represents a pioneering attempt at proposing the concept of the border as a useful paradigm not only for the study of Chicano literature but also for the other American literatures. The works presented in the volume illustrate various aspects and manifestations of the textual border(lands), and explore the double-voiced discourse of border texts by writers like Harriet E. Wilson, Rudolfo Anaya, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Louise Erdrich, Helena Viramontes, Paule Marshall and Monica Sone, among others. This book is of interest for scholars and researchers in the field of comparative American studies and ethnic studies.
Book
It can safely be said that when literary texts are utilized or adapted by a musician to create a new work of art, it is seldom that a diminished or lessened product results. Rather, such a merging usually enlarges and enhances both text and tune, perhaps significantly changing the message of the original. Discovering exactly what the new form has to offer and how it relates to the text or melody that preceded it is often a daunting task, requiring a close examination of both the author’s and the composer’s intent.
The essays in this collection offer an analysis of several adaptations, some successful, some not so successful, and attempt to assess just what the musicians or writers have modified or changed from to the original as they re-form it into an altogether different media. Ranging from Pasternak’s appropriation of Tchaikovsky to Britten’s operatic versions of Billy Budd and the Turn of the Screw, from Celan’s use of fugal technique in his “Todesfuge” to the way that the musicianship of several women writers found voice in their writing, a broad spectrum of collaborations is examined. As readers examine an author’s respect for a long dead musician (Hopkins’ admiration of Purcell) or as they discover how John Harbison worked to transform Fitzgerald’s musicality in The Great Gatsby, it will be evident that musical adaptations often provide a richness that the originals did not possess and that the potential for greatness is heightened when the arts intersect.
The essays in this collection offer an analysis of several adaptations, some successful, some not so successful, and attempt to assess just what the musicians or writers have modified or changed from to the original as they re-form it into an altogether different media. Ranging from Pasternak’s appropriation of Tchaikovsky to Britten’s operatic versions of Billy Budd and the Turn of the Screw, from Celan’s use of fugal technique in his “Todesfuge” to the way that the musicianship of several women writers found voice in their writing, a broad spectrum of collaborations is examined. As readers examine an author’s respect for a long dead musician (Hopkins’ admiration of Purcell) or as they discover how John Harbison worked to transform Fitzgerald’s musicality in The Great Gatsby, it will be evident that musical adaptations often provide a richness that the originals did not possess and that the potential for greatness is heightened when the arts intersect.
Book
This collection of essays centers on musical elements that authors have employed in their work, thus joining heard sounds to a visual perception of their stories. The spectrum of authors represented is a wide one, from Pound to Durrell, from Steinbeck to Cather, from Beckett to Gaines, but even more unusual is the variety of musical type represented. Classical music (the quartet, the fugue, the symphony), Jazz (the jazz riff and jazz improv) and the spiritual all appear along with folk song and so-called random “noise.” Such diversity suggests that there are few limits when readers consider how great writers utilize musical styles and techniques. Indeed, each author seems to realize that it is not the type of music that s/he chooses to employ that is important. Rather, it is the realization that such musical elements as harmony, dissonance, tonal repetition and beat are just as important in prose composition as they are in poetry and song. The essayists have selected some works that may be considered obscure and some that are modern classics. Each one, however, has captured one of the varied ways in which words and music complement and enhance each other.
