José Donoso’s fiction was often interpreted as an amazing example of literary technique, but also as an expression of its author’s capacity of creating incredible characters involved in numerous ...actions that permanently challenges the reader. In his well-known novel
(1970), his most famous writing, the Chilean author evaluates the relationship between imagination and reality in a human universe dominated by violence and death. In this context, Humberto Peñaloza’s attempt to compile the history of Azcoitía family represents not only the desperate attempt of an intellectual to emphasize the importance of the written word, but also a clear hint to the Latin American realities of the previous centuries.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s masterpiece
(1965) ignores all details of traditional chronology and should be interpreted as an exquisite artistic form of Latin American “neo-baroque” which ...characterizes its Cuban author’s style. Havana, the capital and the center of interest within this book, thus becomes an intricate labyrinth which expresses the complexity of human life in a given political and social context, but also illustrates the textual choice of a unique writer determined to ignore all previous patterns of literary representation and expression. The metaphor of “the lost city” goes through the text and influences all the characters’ choices and attitudes (including sometimes their self-imposed exile), expressing the quintessence of a way of life that would completely disappear after the Cuban Revolution.
The article is a tribute to the famous scholar Lev Samoilovich Ospovat, who together with his wife Vera N. Kuteishchikova, paved the way for the Latin American literary studies in the USSR. Lev ...Samoilovich started with his studies of Pablo Neruda’s life and work; he was the first to write and publish a book in Russian on the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda: A Survey of His Work (1960). A year later on the basis of this book, he defended his PhD dissertation. Subsequently, its author, critically reflecting on his experience, admitted that he often followed some officially imposed stereotypes in the interpretation of Neruda’s work and evolution. At the same time, even in this book one clearly sees an attempt to overcome the stereotypes, especially with regard to the attribution of Neruda's poetry to the method of socialist realism, and to understand the poetic world of the Chilean poet not only in connection with his political activities. L.S. Ospovat became widely known as the author of two books from the series “Life of Outstanding People” — Federico Garcia Lorca and Diego Rivera and a number of brilliant articles and prefaces. The result of Lev Ospovat’s Latin American studies was the book New Latin American Novel he co-authored with his wife; the book retains its value up to nowadays. At the end of his life Ospovat became interested in Pushkin studies and published several articles containing interesting discoveries in this area. The article is accompanied by fragments from Lev Ospovat’s memoirs that of L.S. Ospovat, which allows the reader to get an idea of the kind, highly intelligent, honest and very attractive person.
This paper addresses a major theme in the modern American novel: Conflict as a catalyst for constant change. Between the 1920s and 1930s can be traced a major paradigm shift from a post-World War I ...search for individualism and independence to one of a Depression-era emphasis on collectivism and solidarity. Analysis of several prominent literary works from this era leads to the conclusion that American fiction encodes American history and that conflict and contradiction explain the development of the modern American fiction.
Among contemporary Latin American writers, the Cuban Guillermo Cabrera Infante occupies a special place. He represents the temptation of playing with words and with very complex narrative strategies, ...in order to make up a text,
(1965), impossible to be analyzed with the traditional approaches frequently used by the literary critics. This magnificent text is not entirely a novel, nor a collection of short stories, the author himself defining it as a “free book”, representing his own deep nostalgia for his beloved city, Havana, which he lost forever after the complete success of the Cuban Revolution.
The paper deals with the ethical principles of James Arthur Baldwin, an outstanding US writer of the mid-20th century, which echo the moral imperatives of Leo Tolstoy. African American writers ...traditionally displayed great interest in Russian literature, which is connected with the figure of A.S. Pushkin who along with A. Dumas was regarded as a symbol of talent of a person with African roots; visits to Soviet Russia of African American writers, especially of Langston Hughes who significantly influenced Baldwin’s worldview; and their search for creative ideas which they found in Russian literature, like Richard Wright, his mentor in literature. James Baldwin knew literature very well, including Russian literature, and through Martin Luther King, Jr., his friend and leader of the Civil Rights movement, was greatly affected by Tolstoy’s theory of non-resistance to evil, which he not only advocated but also tried to put into practice. The analysis of some of his works shows certain similarities with Leo Tolstoy. This is especially characteristic of his essays and the artistic world of his novels. The comparison of the great Russian writer’s views with the ideas of the most popular African American writer of the mid-20th century can help understand Leo Tolstoy’s role in forming the ideological platform of African American literature more deeply, and, on the other hand, get an insight into the creative laboratory of the writer who became a prophet for his generation whose voice was important for millions of his compatriots.
The Muslim world has been plagued by imperial interests, cultural ravaging and plundering, unequal partnership with the West. However, since the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks, the Arab world has ...moved to the center of political and cultural debates and attracted the major number of representations in American writings. These writings form a new phenomenon called neo-orientalism and revolve around a major theme: Muslim Arabs as victims of fundamentalist dogma. This study explores the ways in which neo-orientalism developed and was communicated to the reader in the United States after 9/11. The literature on this phenomenon is limited; therefore, there exists a need for the study of neo-orientalism through contemporary fictions that deal directly with Arab-American relationship. This study also investigates the assumption implicit in the conception that contemporary American novel is in solidarity with the state ignoring its imperial ambitions and its saturation with hegemonic practices. In response to the terrorist attacks, novel has been one of the most effective genres to represent the feelings of the nation and the concern of the country. This part of the study will refer to different attitudes and political orientations of novelists, which allow novel to follow the mainstream politics and do not grapple with the hegemonic interests.
AbstractScrutinizing the diverse history of the Atlantic world reveals intriguing insights into the complex interactions between the Orient and the Occident. While Islamophobia and Orientalism are ...commonly discussed in relation to Muslims and Arabs, the somewhat archaic term Mahometanism shares semantic similarities but is less familiar in contemporary literature. This study adopts a methodology rooted in literary theory to examine the trajectory of the term Mahometanism in Orientalized discourse from the 11th to the 18th centuries. Comparing European Mahometanism with its American counterpart, this study claims that the former primarily symbolizes the perpetual religious conflict between Christianity and Islam, whereas the latter represents the clash of civilizations, transitioning from religious perspectives to secular attitudes during America’s separation from Britain. Given the scant body of relevant literature, the current study makes a unique contribution by offering a deeper understanding of the evolvement of Mahometanism over time and its enduring significance in the literary canon alongside its profound implications on past and modern-day anchors between the East and the West.
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