This essay explores Richard Wright’s Native Son in light of the rhetoric of possession deployed in it. I begin by revisiting Wright’s political ideas with a focus on the theme of possession, thereby ...opening up the possibility to read the novel as Wright’s critique of what C. B. Macpherson calls “possessive individualism,” a conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person and capacities, for which he owes nothing to society. Clarifying how the novel—including its naturalist narrative form—is structured by the theme of dis/possession, I demonstrate that even Bigger’s seemingly existentialist selfhood is also informed by his sense of possession. From this perspective, I argue that the novel’s controversial ending bespeaks Wright’s aspiration to an alternative to capitalist property relations.
This article addresses the sensitive, religious-political issue of the promised land. It discusses this issue from the perspective of the criticism of the promised land in the works of Walter ...Brueggemann in comparison to his artistic source of influence, John Steinbeck. After the systematic analysis of Brueggemann’s criticism of land ideology throughout his work, I elaborate on Steinbeck’s critical attitude to this topic which I offer as Steinbeck’s own alternative criticism. On top of the affirmation that “Steinbeck may have put the issue of the land most eloquently,” as suggested by Brueggemann himself, I propose that Steinbeck (unlike Brueggemann) does not fall into the trap of producing an inverted ideology and offers a balanced and timeless criticism of the promised land issue.
Marisela Connely (coord.), Seguridad humana, medio ambiente y protestas populares en Asia y África del Norte, El Colegio de México, México, 2016, 278 pp.
This article explores John Steinbeck's Vietnam War journalism as a way of understanding how hawks—those who favor military intervention—read the world with what affect theorists would call a "strong ...theory" of aggression. I argue that hawkish reading weaponizes the rhetorical precepts of synecdoche, taking its premise that a part can represent a whole as a means to escalate and invade. Steinbeck's journalism demonstrates how hawkish reading occurs not only in a hawk's depiction of the enemy abroad, but inevitably becomes a way of depicting protestors at home. What hawkish reading shows is how the hawk is dedicated to maintaining his strong theory of aggression at any cost, even when the hawk's depictions perpetuate cliché, stereotype, and ultimately, demagoguery. To explore texts like Steinbeck's for their hawkish reading is to better understand not only how the hawk uses facile language to create intense attachments, but also to better understand how the hawk's language creates dissensus at home.
Written in the light of critical discourse about the social value of literary sympathy and against the backdrop of critical whiteness studies, the article deals with John Steinbeck’s non-fiction book ...Travels with Charley in Search of America. Framed by an interest in how the writer responded to the racial separation in the United States, the article demonstrates that this work, which is often dismissed as a “charming portrayal of America,” is a serious intervention in all sites of discrimination and domination.
BY THE WAY
Professional safety,
11/2019, Letnik:
64, Številka:
11
Journal Article
Recenzirano
According to Virginia Tech historian Roger Ekirch, you're just experiencing an engrained pattern of sleep stemming from the 15th to 17th century. During this waking period, people would smoke ...tobacco, visit neighbors, interpret dreams, read, chop wood, sew, write or pray. According to Ekirch, this pattern of sleep increased people's likelihood of remembering dreams, explaining the popularity of dream interpretation during this time.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) is one of America’s most highly regarded authors, widely recognized for his Dust Bowl Trilogy, constituted by the novels, In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), ...and The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Grapes of Wrath, in particular, brought Steinbeck fame and fortune, and was largely the reason why he was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature. Grapes of Wrath also brought Steinbeck harsh criticism, threats, and anguish that forced him to move from California to the East Coast. Using a neo-historicist approach that takes into account biographical, cultural, and historical contexts, this thesis attempts to contribute to the ideas that the realism and social concerns of the Dust Bowl Trilogy are uncharacteristic of Steinbeck’s writing; that the attribution of Grapes of Wrath to Steinbeck alone is problematic; and that the writing of East of Eden (1952), which Steinbeck considered his best novel, was part of efforts to sanitize his reputation, erase his past, and bury a number of troubling secrets. A postmodern, rather than a realist, Steinbeck did not favor historical or social realism and felt much more at home writing pseudo-historical and revisionist fantasies only loosely connected to historical and other realities. East of Eden, which Steinbeck also called “the only book I have ever written,” is his most notable effort to distance himself from Grapes of Wrath. Written in the midst of the anti-communist hysterias of the late 1940s and 1950s, East of Eden is Steinbeck’s plea to be considered a patriotic American in no way associated with communism. It is also Steinbeck’s attempt to unburden himself of guilts apparently connected to the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, and Jacob and Esau. To those effects, the novel engages in a wholesale demolition and reconstruction of time, history, and the author’s psyche and identity.
Once in a joint letter written to his agent and publisher, Elizabeth Otis and Pascal Covici, John Steinbeck (1902-1968) declared, "My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each ...other... ." (Fensch38). Therefore, most of his writings deal with the lives and feelings of the ordinary people, of whom he writes with profound sympathy and heartfelt care. The vitality, strength and honesty of his works must be due to his keen perception of mankind and his success in discovering that within every man is sleeping the seed of a superman which springs up when events demand. This transformation from man to superman may take place when one has to save his own country and its people or when one is simply desperate to save one's best friend's life. This paper aims to explore the seminal role love plays in transforming the lives of the characters from ordinary to the extraordinary ones and focuses on two novellas, The Moon Is Down and Of Mice and Men to establish it. Keywords: Steinbeck, The Moon is Down, Of Mice and Men, superman, ordinary man, love, mover
Partindo das crónicas de Eduardo Mayone Dias, este artigo visa analisar a construção da imagem dos norte-americanos, utilizando contributos teóricos da imagologia, nomeadamente de Joep Leerssen e D.H ...Pageaux, Peter Firchow, entre outros. Serão analisados os mecanismos configuradores dessas imagens e equacionado o modo como essas imagens se poderão assumir como originais ou estereotipadas, integradas numa visão estereotipada enraizada no imaginário cultural da época.
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