Reuven TSUR
Translation Studies, Cultural Context, and
Dante
Abstract: In his article, "Translation Studies, Cultural Context,
and Dante," Reuven Tsur explores limits of legitimacy in translation studies.
Tsur's approach is a critique of the theoretical assumptions and their
application in Edoardo Crisafulli's cultural interpretation of Seamus Heaney's
decisions in translating the Ugolino episode in Dante's Inferno. Crisafulli
claims that Heaney's choices show internal consistency, and can be accounted
for by appealing to "the Irish situational context." Instead, Tsur argues
that Crisafulli's cultural interpretations are arbitrary and that a more
satisfactory account can be offered through an analysis of constraints
within a conception of the aesthetic object as an elegant solution to a
problem. Another disagreement concerns the intertextual processes between
Dante's segment and Heaney's volume of original poetry in which it is printed.
It is suggested here that by juxtaposing two texts, high-salient features
of one text may reinforce similar features in the other and promote their
salience.
Mark AXELROD
Popular Culture and the Rituals of American
Football
Abstract: In his article, "Popular Culture and the Rituals of
American Football," Mark Axelrod reflects on meanings of cultural practice
in American popular culture. Before globalization -- driven by economics
-- became a fact of life with profound implications, there were myths and
rituals that provided a kind of insulation from the mysteries of life.
These practices were ritualized by "primitive" men and women who, seemingly,
did not understand the universe as well as we moderns do. But in fact one
only needs to witness throngs of Baltimoreans rushing after a caravan of
cars attempting to kiss the Vince Lombardi Trophy as if it were a passing
Torah and genuflecting to their NFL Ravens to realize that very little
has changed since the days of pine and mosses. In American scholarship,
one of the most fascinating areas of myth and ritual, and one of the least
explored, is that dealing with American football. Drawing on the thought
of Arnold van Gennep, C.G. Jung, and Mircea Eliade among others, Axelrod
raises the ritual of the sport from the baseness of physical contact and
violence to the level of cultural practice, replete with all the sacred
mysteries of any other ritual, past or present.
Benton Jay KOMINS
Popular Culture, Kitsch as Camp, and Film
Abstract: In his article, "Popular Culture, Kitsch as Camp,
and Film," Benton Jay Komins argues that at the crossroads of kitsch, between
the irresistibly human and total spuriousness (Milan Kundera’s and Clement
Greenberg’s respective definitions), lies the first serious glimmer of
camp. Komins evaluates the connections between the phenomenon of kitsch
and the phenomenon of camp through a theoretical discussion and the cinematic
language of Percy Adlon’s Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989-90).
Critics like Susan Sontag and Andrew Ross, as well as Adlon’s film, ask
us to consider if camp is a pretentious expression of kitsch that belongs
to the "artsy" demimonde. As Komins argues, two questions lie at the heart
of the camp phenomenon: How does the camp sensibility contribute to contemporary
interpretations of art and what promise of change does it playfully conceal?
Susana VEGA-GONZÁLEZ
Memory and the Quest for Family History
in One Hundred Years of Solitude
and
Song of Solomon
Abstract: In her article, "Memory and the Quest for Family History
in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Song of Solomon," Susana
Vega-González explores similarities between the novels of García
Márquez and Morrison with a special focus on the use of memory and
imagination. Based on theoretical models, Vega-Gonzálezas proposes
that fictional representations are a means of rewriting history, a particular
aspect of literay discourse. The texts under scrutiny constitute true quest
stories of characters who search for their family history along their own
identity amidst the dangers of capitalism and its excessive desire for
progress and class ascendance. The break with narrative linearity through
such recollections of things past, the reliance on the supernatural and
the advocacy of hybridity are some of the features that link Morrison ad
García Márquez with magic realism, a literary mode that contributes
to their rewriting of a history peopled with the ghosts of slavery, colonialism,
and imperialism.
Albena LUTZKANOVA-VASSILEVA
Testimonial Poetry in East
European Post-Totalitarian Literature
Abstract: In her article, "Testimonial Poetry in East European
Post-Totalitarian Literature," Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva reexamines the
belief that postmodern literature and deconstructive writing have parted
literary and theoretical discourse from reality, thereby obstructing and
annihilating our access to history. Lutzkanova-Vassileva exemplifies her
prognosis in an inquiry into post-totalitarian and postmodern Bulgarian
literature and its texts of poetry. Born in the turmoil of communism’s
debacle, the analysis is an attempt to illustrate that, contrary to denying
reference, postmodernism solely rejects the reduction of reference to a
world that is perceptible and cognitively masterable. Rethinking what many
have seen as a self-referential literature, with the break between language
and reality -- its leading stylistic principle, Lutzkanova-Vassileva seeks
to establish that in the very decomposition of artistic language, in the
demise of its capacity to refer to phenomenal reality and endow it with
meaning, the truth of another, so far suppressed reality emerges. This,
she claims, is the reality of crisis and catastrophe, the reality of minds
on the brink of disintegration, the reality of both historical and personal
invalidation. Recording the stories of failing minds and chronicling breakdown
after breakdown, the often incoherent, almost clinical discourse of the
postmodern text in Bulgarian literature, Lutzkanova-Vassileva argues, provides
powerful testimony to a climactic moment in contemporary history.
Anikó IMRE
Gender, Literature, and Film in Contemporary
East Central European Culture
Abstract: In her article, "Gender, Literature, and Film in Contemporary
East Central European Culture," Anikó Imre discusses gender, literature,
and film in Hungary in the context of East Central European national cultures
of the 1980s and 1990s. Anikó Imre analyzes the analogous gender
structures that underlie both nation and literature in these transitional
cultures. She challenges both social science studies of post-communist
transitions and studies of East Central European literatures and cultures
for their traditional neglect of gendered desire as a political factor.
Thereby, Imre adopts a deconstructionist, feminist, and post-colonial approach
to Hungarian "postmodernist" literature and film, which, similar to other
East Central European cultures, combine an intense interest in the female
and the feminine with the refusal of political commitment conveyed in poetic
forms. Imre investigates the interrelationships among these features in
order to point to a male intellectual culture emasculated by colonization,
whose use of "poetic pornography" disguises an effort to defend patriarchal
privileges threatened by the effects of the transition.
Babis DERMITZAKIS
Globalization and Conferencing Comparative
Literature in Egypt and Slovenia
Abstract: In his article, "Globalization and Conferencing Comparative
Literature in Egypt and Slovenia," Babis Dermitzakis discusses two recent
conferences in the discipline of comparative literature. The former conference
was held on the topic of literary criticism in Cairo and the latter on
the genre of the romantic epic poem in Ljubljana. The implicit and explicit
objective of both conferences was to discuss as well as to demonstrate
a stand against globalization with specific reference to culture and literature.
The conference participants as much as the organizers intended to show
that cultures and countries peripheral to economic, political, and cultural
centres -- in particular the global impact of American culture -- possess
important products of culture, including such in literature and in the
study of literature, that is, in literary and culture theory. Although
acknowledging English as the tool of communication serving the objectives
of globalization, the argument is proposed that there are possibilities
to avoid or at least to mitigate the marginalization of peripheral cultures
and their scholarship and to establish meaningful dialogue with scholars
globally.
Steven TÖTÖSY de ZEPETNEK
The New Knowledge Management: Online Research
and Publishing in the Humanities
Abstract: In his article, "The New Knowledge Management: Online
Research and Publishing in the Humanities," Steven Tötösy discusses
the problematics of research in the humanities online. He argues that while
there are legitimate questions about scholarly material in the humanities
online, the reality is that most undergraduate as well as graduate students
today use the web for at least the initial stages of their research. In
order to increase the quality of content of scholarship on the web, scholars
in the humanities ought to get involved with new media scholarship and,
consequently, publish new work online. However, as obvious this may be,
scholars in the humanities tend to be suspicious of online publishing and
are slow to adopt new media technology. In the paper, Tötösy
discusses aspects of both theory with regard to the information highway
and new media technology and practical matter such as online research.
Tötösy hopes that while a radical change in thinking and practices
is not going to happen too soon, scholars will employ, increasingly, the
possibilities and the advantages -- in both content and form -- new media
technology offers for knowledge management and scholarship in the humanities.
Book Review Articles
Luise von
FLOTOW
The Systemic
Approach, Postcolonial Studies, and Translation Studies:
A Review
Article of New Work by Hermans and Tymoczko
A. Robert
LAUER
The Systemic
Approach and Valle-Inclán, Semiotics and the Spanish Comedia:
A Review
Article of New Work by Iglesias Santos and de Toro