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