Dr Christopher Rollason: BILINGUAL CULTURE BLOG

Recently released in France is NEW YORKER (Mercury, 2009, 532 279 8 – www.huguesaufray.com), the third album of Dylan covers by the veteran French singer Hugues Aufray (the previous two are AUFRAY CHANTE DYLAN, a single album from 1965, and AUFRAY TRANS DYLAN from 1995, a double CD featuring re-recordings of the 1965 songs plus new material).

This time too, Aufray has for the most part chosen the re-recording route, but introducing a new element in the form of duets, with well-known singers, French or France-resident (or in one case, a trio). The songs are, as before, in Hugues Aufray’s own French-language adaptations. The album consists of 13 tracks, of which the opener, ‘New Yorker’, is a prose narrative by Aufray himself, the closing track, ‘Cloches sonnez’ (‘Ring Them Bells’), features Aufray solo, while of the rest the trio is ‘Nous serons libres’ (‘I shall be releaesd’), with Pep’s and Wasis Diop, and the remaining 10 are duets. Of the 12 songs proper, 10 have already appeared in French translation on AUFRAY TRANS DYLAN (one of them on AUFRAY CHANTE DYLAN too), the ‘new’ songs being the above-mentioned ‘Cloches sonnez’ and ‘Tout comme une vraie femme’ (‘Just Like a Woman’, with Jane Birkin). Of the remaining 9, ‘Au coeur de mon pays’ (‘Heartland’, with Arno) is only dubiously by Dylan, who is generally believed to have confined himself to contributing the music for Willie Nelson’s words for that song, on which the two duetted on the latter’s 1993 album ACROSS THE BORDERLINE.

The remaining 8 are: ‘La fille du nord’ (‘Girl from the north country’), with Eddy Mitchell (this is the song that features on all three Aufray albums); ‘N’y pense plus, tout est bien’ (‘Don’t think twice, it’s all right’), with Carla Bruni); ‘Mr l’homme orchestre’ (‘Mr Tambourine Man’), with Laurent Voulzy; ‘Knock Knock, ouvre-toi porte du ciel’ (‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s door’; retitled from 1995’s ‘Knock-Knock ouvre-toi porte d’or’), with Bernard Lavilliers; ‘L’homme dota d’un nom chaque animal’ (‘Man gave names to all the animals’), with Alain Souchon; ‘Tout l’monde un jour s’est planté’ (‘Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 and 35’), with Didier Wampas; ‘Dans le souffle du vent’ (‘Blowin’ in the wind’), with Francis Cabrel; and ‘Jeune pour toujours’ (‘Forever young’), with Johnny Hallyday. Some of the songs have snatches of English, notably Birkin’s contribution to ‘Just like a woman’.

An ‘authentic’ feel is given to the album by the participation of American musicians associated with Bob Dylan himself, including Charlie McCoy, Larry Campbell and David Hidalgo.

The packaging includes the full text of Aufray’s French adaptations, plus brief texts by Aufray himself and ... Bob Dylan, who reminisces on times passed with Hugues Aufray in Paris (‘Hugues introduced me to all the sights: the Bastille, the Cathedral at Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe ... He showed me where Marat had lived and Robespierre ... I told him that if he came to New York, I would show him where Alexander Hamilton and Poe lived’).

The general quality of the interpretations is high: Aufray has lavished care on this recording. A question mark hovers over Carla Bruni’s presence: she sings beautifully on ‘Don’t think twice’, but what would the Dylan of 1965 have said about a song of his being performed by the French president’s wife? I only ask ....

I am pleased to have just discovered that at:

www.ces.uc.pt/publicacoes/rccs/artigos/75/RCCS75-Espaco%20Virtual-179-180.pdf,

the Portuguese journal based in Coimbra,

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais - http://www.ces.uc.pt/publicacoes/rccs/

 in its No 75 (Outubro 2006), p. 180,

featured an appreciative review in Portuguese, by José Manuel Mendes of the site

The Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate - www.wbenjamin.org/walterbenjamin.html  -

of which I am co-editor. Mentioned, in particular, was my article:

“Globalisation and Particularism in the Work of José Saramago: the Symbolism

of the Shopping-Mall in A Caverna” - www.wbenjamin.org/saramago.html

It is a particular pleasure to be mentioned in this way by the RCCS, a journal to which I contributed on several occasions in the 1980s. For more on RCCS, see entry on this blog for 11 Nov 2008.

I am pleased to note that my article:

-     'How totalitarianism begins at home: Saramago and George Orwell', in In Dialogue with Saramago: Essays in Comparative Literature, eds. Mark Sabine and Adriana Alves de Paula Martins, Manchester: University of Manchester, 2006, pp. 105-120; http://yatrarollason.info/files/SaramagoandOrwell.pdf

(see this blog, entries: 25-4, 30-5 and 26-7 2006)

has been included in the reading list for the course 'Descobrir Saramago' ('Discovering Saramago'), to be offered from 2 to 6 November 2009 to secondary school teachers of Portuguese and organised by the Centro de Formação da Associação de Escolas de São Miguel e Santa Maria (Azores, Portugal) - see programme at:

www.cenform.web.pt/2009/prog_web_nov/76_saramago.doc

(organiser: Clarisse Ribeiro Medeiros).

The aim of the course is to increase teachers' knowledge and understanding of the work of Portugal's most distinguished living writer. I am more than honoured to have this study of mine included on it.

Llamo a vuestra atención el número de 2009 de la revista argentina ISEL, publicada por el Instituto Superior de Estudios Lomas de Zamora (Buenos Aires). Esta revista se destaca por la calidad no sólo de sus textos, principalmente sobre temas educacionales, filosóficos y literarios, sino también de su diseño gráfico, hallándose todos los artículos enriquecidos por ilustraciones a colores de calidad excepcional. Entre los textos, señálense: 'La intimidad en el diván' (estudio de "Mujercitas" / "Little Women", de Louisa May Alcott), de Marcela Pereyra: 'Laberintos: Acerca de los tiempos de un espacio' (evocación polifacética de la localidad de Adrogué, de fuertes connotaciones borgianas), de Diego Gojzman; y el extenso estudio (magníficamente ilustrado) 'Ópticas de la Modernidad de Julio Verne a Walter Benjamin' (pp. 66-97), de Álvaro Cuadra (Chile), en cuyas páginas tengo el honor de encontrar citado un texto mío también sobre Benjamin (cf. esta bitácora, entrada del 24-IX-2007), 'The Task of Walter Benjamin's Translators' (p. 74).

Más informaciones sobre la revista: www.isel.edu.ar

I am pleased to note the choice of the issue of ORAL TRADITION (22, 1, March 2007 - http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/22i - see entry on this blog, 27 June 2007) containing the proceedings of the symposium ‘Bob Dylan’s Performance Artistry’ held in 2005 at the University of Caen (France) (see this blog, 30 September 2005) as the main subject-matter for the 6 October 2009 session of ‘After Postmodernism’, an seminar for anthropology majors at Grinnell College, Iowa, USA, taught by Prof. Katya Gibel Mevorach:

http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/ant/F09/ANT%20310%20Postmodernism%20%20Beyond%202009%20Weekly%20Semester%20Schedule%20AugR.doc.

For 6 October, students are asked to prepare, read and take part in a roundtable discussion, ‘focusing on the broad themes in each article related to ethnographic representations’, of the following articles from the Dylan issue of ORAL TRADITION:

(i)                Désveaux, Emmanuel. “Amerindian Roots of Bob Dylan’s Poetry.”

(ii)               Rollason, Christopher.  “Sólo Soy Un Guitarrista”:  Bob Dylan in the Spanish-Speaking World––Influences, Parallels, Reception, and Translation.”- - http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/22i/Rollason.pdf; see this blog, 30 September 2005

(iii)             Thomas, Richard F. “The Streets of Rome: The Classical Dylan”

I am of course enormously flattered and grateful to find my own work being the subject of such close and detailed analysis in a college classroom.

***

I add that I have, furthermore, just discovered that my article on Dylan in the Spanish-Speaking World was *also* discussed and quoted at length, in the version appearing on the Bob Dylan Critical Corner site, in a text which appeared on 23 August 2007 in NY TID, a long-established and prestigious Swedish-language weekly based in Helsingfors, Finland (author: Sven-Erik Klinkmann; www.nytid.fi/arkiv/artikelnt-684-5167.html). In the same piece, Klinkmann also discusses the book by Nicola Menicacci, 'Bob Dylan, L'Ultimo Cavaliere' (see this blog, 27 September 2005), reviewed by myself, again, on Bob Dylan Critical Corner. Not knowing Swedish, I have had to rely on Google’s rough machine translation into English to get a general idea of this article. However, it is clear that the author sees both Nicola’s analysis of esoteric and elements in Dylan’s work and my suggestion of a link between Federico García Lorca and Dylan’s ‘Standing in the Doorway’ as examples of Dylanological ‘overinterpretation’, of enthusiastic Dylan scholars ‘reading too much’ into the song texts. Be that as it may, it remains gratifying to find my work and Nicola’s examined at such length in a well-respected newspaper, and I am very grateful to Sven-Erik Klinkmann for his attention!

Just published is the 2009 issue (no 27) of HISPANIC HORIZON (ISSN 0907-7522), the journal (bilingual in English and Spanish, and this time with incursions into Hindi too) of the Centre of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin American Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi.

Among the highlights of this issue are two articles on Octavio Paz ('Octavio Paz as a critic and connoisseur of art' - Susnighda Dey and 'Reading Octavio Paz Today' - Indrani Mukherjee); a comparison of José Martí and Rabindranath Tagore (Preeti Pant), a re-reading of the famous picaresque novel 'Lazarillo de Tormes' (in Spanish - Nicolas Balutet), and a study of 'The Spanish Civil War in its International Context' (Joan Maria Thomas). There are three classic Latin American poems, by José Martí, Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz, newly translated into Hindi. Also featured is a retrospective by Gokulananda Nandan looking back on the Centre's activities since the last issue, with particular focus on the conference on 'Multiculturalism in Spain' held in January 2009 and organised jointly with the Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona.

Included too (pp. 80-107) is my own article: 'Problems of translating Indian Writing in English into Spanish, with reference to "A Married Woman" by Manju Kapur', which was given as a lecture at JNU in 2006 - see this blog, 15 March 2006 - and analyses the Spanish translation of that novel by Dora Sales Salvador, 'Una mujer casada'

(available on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/MANJUTRANSREV)

Contact: Meenakshi Sundriyal, Editor,  msundriyal@jnu.ac.in

**

Acaba de publicarse el número para 2009 (No 27) de HISPANIC HORIZON (ISSN 0907-7522), la revista (bilingüe en inglés y castellano, y en esta ocasión también con material en hindi) del Centre of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin American Studies de la Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), de Delhi.

Destaquemos en este número, entre otras aportaciones, dos textos sobre Octavio Paz ('Octavio Paz as a critic and connoisseur of art' - Susnighda Dey y 'Reading Octavio Paz Today' - Indrani Mukherjee); un artículo comparativo sobre José Martí y Rabindranath Tagore (Preeti Pant), una relectura de la célebre novela picaresca 'Lazarillo de Tormes' (en castellano - Nicolas Balutet), y un estudio de 'The Spanish Civil War in its International Context' (Joan Maria Thomas). Hay también tres poemas clásicos latinoamericanos, de José Martí, Pablo Neruda y Octavio Paz, en nuevas versiones en lengua hindi. Señálese igualmente un texto retrospectivo de Gokulananda Nandan detallando las actividades del Centro desde el último número de la revista, con hincapié en el congreso sobre 'Multiculturalism in Spain', realizado en enero de 2009 y organizado conjuntamente con la Universitat Rovira i Virgili de Tarragona.

También está incluído (pp. 80-107) un texto de mi autoría: 'Problems of translating Indian Writing in English into Spanish, with reference to "A Married Woman" by Manju Kapur', el cual vio la luz como conferencia dictada en la JNU en 2006  - véase esta bitácora, 15-III-06 - y analiza la traducción al castellano de dicha novela (traductora: Dora Sales Salvador), 'Una mujer casada'

(disponible en línea en: http://yatrarollason.info/files/MANJUTRANSREV)

Contactar: Meenakshi Sundriyal, redacción, msundriyal@jnu.ac.in

I am pleased to inform all my correspondents that today, 31 August 2009, is the official launch day of the new and improved version of YATRA, my personal website - which hosts or links to most of my writings. Please note the new url: http://yatrarollason.info.

The migration was made necessary by Yahoo's decision to close, as of 26 October 2009, its Geocities facility, under which my site was previously hosted at: www.geocities.com/christopherrollason.

I very much hope you will find the new site, ably designed by Ismael Ochoa Pelayo (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico), more professional and user-friendly. I will welcome all comments and suggestions, via the Contact or Guestbook facilities.

All the urls for my articles hosted on the site have changed. The old ones will still be valid till 25 October, but if you have any links on your own site either to my site as such or to article(s) on it, I would appreciate it if you could change them, and let me know. The migration code  is:

OLD URL – www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/ARTICLE.pdf;

NEW URL – http://yatrarollason.info/files/ARTICLE.pdf,

so for all new urls, just substitute the actual filename for ARTICLE in the second formula. Many thanks in advance.

I will continue to add new material to the site as before. I now officially launch the new YATRA, and hope you will enjoy visiting it!

Me complace informar a la totalidad de mis correspondientes que hoy, el 31 de agosto de 2009, es el día oficial de estreno de la nueva y mejorada versión de YATRA, mi sitio web persona - el cual alberga, o enlaza hacia. la mayoría de mis escritos. Os pido, así, el favor de apuntar la nueva url: http://yatrarollason.info.

Esta migración se ha impuesto debido a la decisión de Yahoo de cerrar, a partir del 26 de octubre de 2009, su servicio geocities, con el cual mi sitio se albergaba anteriormente, en: www.geocities.com/christopherrollason.

Espero mucho que hallaréis el nuevo sitio, expertamente diseñado por Ismael Ochoa Pelayo (Puerto Vallarta, México), más profesional y más atractivo. Me llegarán bienvenidos cualesquiera comentarios o sugerencias, a través de las funciones Contact o Guestbook.

Han cambiado todas las url de los textos míos albergados en el sitio. Las antiguas permanecerán válidas hasta el 25 de octubre: no obstante, le rogaría a quien tenga en su propio sitio cualquier vínculo o hacia mi sitio como tal o hacia uno o varios de sus artículos, me haga el favor de efectuar las necesarias modificaciones, y hacerme saber. El código para la migración es el siguiente:

ANTIGUA URL – www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/ARTICLE.pdf;

NUEVA URL – http://yatrarollason.info/files/ARTICLE.pdf -

así, para todas las nuevas url, es sólo substituir el actual nombre de archivo por ARTICLE en la segunda fórmula. Mil gracias de antemano.

Seguiré enriqueciendo el sitio con material nuevo, como antes. Ahora procedo al lanzamiento oficial del nuevo YATRA, y ¡mucho espero que visitarlo os resulte una agradable experiencia!

Those interested in José Saramago may wish to know of the two following pieces of news:

1) Recently published in Portugal is a 416-page book of interviews, with Saramago himself and other people connected to his work:

http://www.portoeditora.pt/produtos/catalogo/ficha/id/1458680

Uma longa viagem com José Saramago

João Céu e Silva

Porto Editora, 2009

ISBN: 978-972-0-04276-7

2) October 2009 will see the release of a brand-new Saramago novel. The title is CAIM, or CAIN: so, as in ‘The Gospel According to Jesus Christ’, we will find Saramago wrestling with the angel and questioning received biblical narratives and the status of religion. The book will appear simultaneously in Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan versions and will be featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair. See, in Spanish:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Saramago/carga/Dios/salva/Cain/elpepucul/20090827elpepucul_4/Tes -

EL PAÍS 27-VIII-09

and in Portuguese: http://blog.josesaramago.org/indexpor.php.

I draw to your attention the first issue of CAVALCADE, a well-produced and originally conceived journal from Nigeria. Details:

CAVALCADE: A JOURNAL OF WRITING, CRITICISM AND ART - Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan-Apr 2009 - Abuja Writers' Forum, Abuja, Nigeria; editor: Emman Usman Shehu - guest editor for this issue: Dr E.E. Sule

**

The journal includes literary criticism, short stories, poems, interviews and reviews. The contributors are mostly Nigerian; there is also material from Kenya, India and Peru. The critical articles in this issue concentrate on the work of the Nigerian writer Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (1932-1967). The interviews ate with Gboyega Kolawole (Nigeria - interviewed by Uchenna Oyali) and the Denmark-resident Indian writer Tabish Khair (interviewed by Jaydeep Sarangi). There are stories by D.E. Kaze, Wumi Raji, Elnathan John and Ifeoma Chinwuba (all Nigeria). Among the authors of the poems included are: Angela Nwosu and Ismail Bala Garba (Nigeria), Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Kenya), Satish Verma  and Anuraag Sharma (India) and Carla Vanessa Gonzáles (Peru; two poems, 'Dream No 3' an 'Dream No 4', translated from the Spanish by Christopher Rollason).

**

The editors may be contacted at: abujawriters@fastermail.com; cavalcade@bigstring.com; ejahsule@yahoo.com

On-line on my Yatra site at:

http://yatrarollason.info/files/DylanCantab.pdf

is this review:

‘Big universities to study in’: Review of

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO BOB DYLAN, ed. Kevin J. Dettmar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, soft covers, xvii + 185 pp., ISBN 978-0-521-71494-5

 **

EXTRACT: 

Bob Dylan allowed academia a brief look-in on his very first album, informing the world in his spoken intro to ‘Baby, Let Me Follow You Down’ that he first met the blues guitar-player Eric von Schmidt ‘in the green pastures of Harvard University’; years later, in ‘Foot of Pride’, he berated those who ‘like to take all this money from sin, / Build big universities to study in’. Dylan’s relationship with the groves of academe is vexed but is also indisputable, as this multi-author volume now arrives to testify. The Cambridge Companions are an established series of study aids aimed in the first place at undergraduate students, covering a wide field of mostly literary subjects, ranging from Greek Tragedy through Ovid, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Woolf all the way to Modern British Women Playwrights, even taking in the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. The arrival in 2009 of a Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan among this distinguished company is first and foremost further evidence, were it needed, of the ever-growing academic respectability of Dylan studies. However, the pretensions of such a volume are one thing, and the reality another, and my aim in this review will not to be question whether Dylan’s work merits substantive academic attention (there is more than enough evidence for that by now), but to examine this particular study guide with a view to determining whether it is up to the job.

The volume, though published in the UK, is decidedly American in cast. The editor, Kevin J. Dettmar, is chair of the English Department at Pomona College, California. The contributors (nineteen, five of them women; two of the contributions have two authors) are almost entirely fellow Americans, either academics from departments of English or American Studies or professional writers, the one exception being Lee Marshall, senior lecturer in Sociology at Bristol University, England. Strikingly absent are the major names in Dylan criticism: there is nothing from Aidan Day, Michael Gray, Greil Marcus, Christopher Ricks or Stephen Scobie, though there is a piece by Eric Lott, the professor of American Studies from the University of Virginia whose book on blackface minstrelsy, Love and Theft, famously supplied Dylan with an album title (Lott’s contribution is, suitably enough, a discussion of ... “Love and Theft”).

The book consists of: an editor’s introduction; a Dylan chronology; nine general articles, all titled using the formula ‘Bob Dylan and/as ...’, grouped under ‘Part I: Perspectives’; eight album studies grouped as ‘Part II: Landmark Albums’; a bibliography; and an index. The general studies are on: Dylan and ‘the Anglo-American tradition’, ‘Rolling Thunder’, ‘collaboration’, ‘gender politics’, ‘religion’, and ‘the Academy’; and Dylan as ‘songwriter’, ‘performer’, and ‘cultural icon’ (the room for overlap between some of these categories should at once be obvious). The eight albums allotted chapters are: The Free-Wheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, The Basement Tapes, Blood on the Tracks, Infidels and “Love and Theft”. Despite the 2009 publication date, the book is in fact up-to-date as far as Modern Times, coming too late for Tell-Tale Signs (listed in the chronology as ‘announced’) and Together Through Life

(...)

I am pleased to note that the Spanish version of my essay:

'The Passageways of Paris: Walter Benjamin's "Arcades Project" and Contemporary Cultural Debate in the West', in Modern Criticism, ed. Christopher Rollason and Rajeshwar Mittapalli, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002, pp. 262-296; rev. version on Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate site, www.wbenjamin.org/passageways.html (see entry on this blog for 27 Sept 2005)

-

'El Libro de los pasajes de Walter Benjamin, La Historia No Lineal y la Internet',

http://yatrarollason.info/files/BenjaminES.pdf 

has been substantially cited in the paper "Implicaciones de la lógica digital en la comunicación de las organizaciones contemporáneas" ("Implications of digital logic in the communication of contemporary organisations") -

http://maspop.net/conversaciones/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/lagica-digital-andrea-hoare-08.pdf -

submitted in May 2008 by Andrea Hoare Madrid, a Chilean academic resident in Venezuela, as a memoir for purposes of academic promotion ('trabajo de ascenso') to the Faculty of Humanities and Education (School of Social Comunication) of the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas. I thank Andrea for quoting my essay so extensively and citing me with all correctness, and am delighted that it has been of use to her in her career.

**

Me complace señalaros que la versión en lengua española de mi ensayo:

'The Passageways of Paris: Walter Benjamin's "Arcades Project" and Contemporary Cultural Debate in the West', en Modern Criticism, ed. Christopher Rollason y Rajeshwar Mittapalli, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2002, pp. 262-296; texto revisado en: Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate, www.wbenjamin.org/passageways.html (véase entrada en esta bitácora: 27-IX-05) 

'El Libro de los pasajes de Walter Benjamin, La Historia No Lineal y la Internet', http://yatrarollason.info/files/BenjaminES.pdf 

ha sido extensamente citada en el texto: "Implicaciones de la lógica digital en la comunicación de las organizaciones contemporáneas" -

http://maspop.net/conversaciones/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/lagica-digital-andrea-hoare-08.pdf -

presentado en mayo de 2008 por Andrea Hoare Madrid, docente universiitaria chilena residente en Venezuela, como "trabajo de ascenso" en la Facultad de Humanidades y Educación (Escuela de Comunicación Social) de la Universidad Central de Venezuela (Caracas). Le agradezco a Andrea el haber citado mi texto en detalle, y me felicito por el hecho de que este trabajo mío le haya resultado de utilidad profesional en el marco de su carrera académica.

For more academic citations of this essay, see the entries on this blog for 10 October 2005 and 20 May 2008 / para más citas académicas de este trabajo, véanse las entradas en esta bitácora para el 10-X-2005 y el 20-V-2008.

En:

www.amigosdevilla.it/utilidades/de_peru_y_mas/libros.htm

("Autores y libros peruanos")

quienes se interesen por la literatura peruana encontrarán un sitio de referencia de valor, organizado por autores. Hay textos en castellano y quechua, material audiovisual, y material biográfico y crítico con enlaces a estudios críticos para una treintena de autores - César Vallejo, Mario Vargas Llosa, José María Arguedas y muchos más.

Me complace añadir que entre las entradas para la escritora Clorinda Matto de Turner hay un enlace hacia mi propio texto sobre esta autora (véase entrada en esta bitácora, 31-V-2007):

Reseña de Clorinda Matto de Turner, "Aves sin nido", edición de 2007, Boletín de la Academia Peruana de la Lengua (Lima), No 43, 2007, 173-181; http://yatrarollason.info/files/ClorindaAVESES.pdf

The Portuguese weekly EXPRESSO features, in its 12 July 2009 issue, a long and interesting article, "O tesouro da criadora de Harry Potter" ("The treasure of Harry Potter's creator", by Valdemar Cruz), on J.K. Rowling's time in Portugal, her marriage there, the places she frequented and the Portuguese influences on her work.

I am pleased to say that I am quoted on the onomastics of the sinister character Salazar Slytherin in the Potter books:

'Para o académico inglês Christopher Rollason, ex-professor da Universidade de Coimbra, esta é "uma referência evidente ao ditador fascista António de Oliveira Salazar".'

('For the British scholar Christopher Rollason, ex-lecturer at the University of Coimbra, this is "a clear reference to the fascist dictator António de Oliveira Salazar"')

This point comes from my own article on J.K. Rowling in Portugal (there is a note on it on this blog, in Spanish, entry: 4 May 2008):

'An English Teacher in Porto: In Search of Joanne Rowling', Lingua Franca (Brussels), Vol. 6, No. 1, 2003, pp. 4-8; first published rec.arts.books (Internet), 2002; on-line with photos at: www.seikilos.com.ar/Rowling_en.html; Spanish translation (trans. Leandro Fanzone) with photos, 'Una Profesora de Inglés en Porto: En busca de Joanne Rowling', 2004, www.seikilos.com.ar/Rowling_es.html; republished in on-line journal Sextante (Mexico City, Mexico), No 28, May 2008, www.sextante.com.mx

At last and almost 22 years since its completion, the full text of my doctoral thesis THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SUBJECT IN THE SHORT FICTION OF EDGAR ALLAN POE (xi + 1059 pp., University of York, England, 1987) is on-line. It can be downloaded, free of charge and without registration, as two .pdfs (vols. I and II), fully searchable and printable, at: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/113/ 

from the White Rose site (eTheses Online - Universities of York, Leeds and Sheffield). You can also download it at the British Library's EThOS site - http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do - again free of charge, but you will have to register.

I am delighted that this thesis - begun at York and completed at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, where I was fortunate to encounter a strong emphasis on American Studies - has at last become freely available to all, in this "most immemorial year" of 2009, the bicentennial of Poe's birth. I hope it will be received as a small contribution to the worldwide bicentennial celebrations (see entry on this blog, 19 January 2009).

ABSTRACT

This study is primarily concerned with the diverse processes of constitution and deconstitution of subjectivity at work in the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. The analysis is largely confined to the short fiction, although some reference is made to Poe's other work; twenty-one tales are examined, in greater or lesser detail, with the aid of various theoretical perspectives - sociological, structuralist and, above all, psychoanalytic. The aim is to present a new reading of Poe's texts which rejects traditional "unity"-based interpretations. The thesis privileges the psychological dimension, but in textual, not biographical terms; it stresses the tales' often undervalued element of modernity as well as their receptiveness to emergent processes and discourses. The psychological dimensions analysed include: the explicit presentation of mental splitting ('William Wilson') and institutionalised madness ('The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether'); the signification of alienation ('The Man of the Crowd') and self-destruction ('The Imp of the Perverse', 'The Black Cat', 'The Tell-Tale Heart') as constitutive of the subject at a determinate historical moment; the simultaneous construction and subversion of mythical signifiers of an illusory "full" subject, both metonyms (the detective, the mesmerist) and metaphors (the artwork, the interior); the symbolic emergence from repression of active female desire, perceived as threatening in the male unconscious ('The Oval Portrait', 'Ligeia'); and the disintegration of the subject under the pressure of its own repressions ('The Fall of the House of Usher'). Particular stress is laid throughout on the textual undermining of the dividing-lines between "normal" and "abnormal", "sane" and "insane", "respectable" and "criminal". It is concluded that Poe's work constitutes a map of the vicissitudes and contradictions of subjectivity in patriarchal culture; from the study of these texts, the "I" emerges as formed out of a massive repression, and as therefore constantly liable to fragmentation and rupture.

NB: The photo is of vol. III of the print version; the on-line text is, as stated above, in two volumes.

Note added 15-VII-2009: My thanks to Alberto Chimal (Mexico) for linking directly to the thesis from the Edgar Allan Poe page of his site:

http://www.lashistorias.com.mx/index.php/poe-2009/

I draw your attention to the book POSTCOLONIAL INDIAN FICTION IN ENGLISH AND MASCULINITY, edited by Dr Rajeshwar Mittapalli (Kakatiya University, Warangal, India) and Dr Letizia Alterno (recently awarded her doctorate by the University of Manchester, England) - Delhi: Atlantic, 2009, www.atlanticbooks.com - ISBN  978-81-269-1015. This book consists of the articles listed below, plus a preface by the editors and a bibliography -

1. A Reading of G.V. Desani’s All About H. Hatterr as Queer Autofiction – Geetha Ganapathy-Doré

2. Marriage, Sexual Violence and Indian Masculinity: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s The

Dark Holds No Terrors and Anita Nair’s Mistress –Aparna Sundaram

3. Beyond the Phallic Axis in Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games –Adalinda Gasparini

4. Reconsidering Gender-Power Hierarchy in a Post/Colonial Society: Masculinities in Amitav

Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide –Susmita Roye

5. Kiran Nagarkar and the Discontents of Masculinity –Aysha Viswamohan

6. Mapping Masculinities in Mumbai: A Reading of Shobha Dé’s Fiction –Tripti Karekatti

7. “Tridib’s Gastric”: The Contradictory Sexual Politics of [Amitav Ghosh's] The Shadow Lines

–Stephen da Silva

8. Masculinity vs. Femininity: Perpetuation and Transgression in Arundhati Roy’s The God of

Small Things –Fewzia Bedjaoui

9. The Inheritance of Loss: Mapping Postcolonial Indian Masculinities –Purnendu Chatterjee

10. Reciprocal Relationship between Masculinity and Femininity in Thi.Ja.’s Mogamul and Mulk Raj Anand’s Gauri –N. Chandra

11. Inferiority, Individual Psychology and Cultural Determinism: An ‘Indian Complex’ in

Ra.Vi.Sastri’s A Man of No Consequence –Rajeshwar Mittapalli

Now out is Vol. II, No. 1 (Winter 2009) of PROSOPISIA: An International Journal of Poetry and Creative Writing (Ajmer, India - ISSN 0974 – 1011), ed. Anuraag Sharma - sharma_anuraag@yahoo.com (website at: www.arawlii.com).  I have the honour of being, from this issue, a member of the Editorial Board of this journal, which also includes, among others, Bill Ashcroft, Stephen Gill, John Kinsella, Jayanta Mahapatra, Les Murray, Geoff Page, Jaydeep Sarangi and E.E. Sule.

As with the two previous issues, this number of PROSOPISIA showcases poems, short stories and other creative prose from a wide range of origins - Indian, Australian, African and Latin American. The featured poets include Satish Verma and Trina Banerjeee (India), Lyn McCredden and David McCooey (Australia), and B.M. Dzukogi (Nigeria). Anuraag Sharma and Sunil Sharma (India) have contributed short stories. Also included includes (pp. 10-15) is my translation of BONFILIO, a short story by Héctor Domingo (Mexico). This translation is also available on-line at: www.ediciona.com/escritor_hector_domingo_www_hectordomingo_com_mx-dirf-1821-c15.htm (see also entry on this blog, 4 Jan 2009).

Now published is Vol. 9 No. 1 (June 2009) of the INDIAN JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES (ISSN 0974-7370), edited by Dr K.V. Dominic of the Centre for English Studies and Research, Newman College, Thodupuzha (Kerala), India. I have the honour of being a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of this journal.

This issue is dedicated to the late writer Kamala Das (1934-2009) and has her photo on the cover. The articles span a wide ramge of topics, including: identity and subjectivity in Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh (Prasenjit Das); two texts on the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra (S.K. Prathap; Satendra Kamar); a phenomenological approach to the novels of R.K. Narayan (Dhananajay Tripathi and Srikrishan Rai); and three pieces on V.S. Naipaul (Rishi Pal Singh; Veena Shukla; and, on 'The Mystic Masseur', Madhurima Srivastava).

Also included are: an interview by Nilanshu Agarwal with the US-resident Pakistani woman writer Fawzia Afzal-Khan; a number of book reviews, among them one of Nilanshu Agrawal, ed., 'Discovering Stephen Gill'; and a clutch of poems (inter alia by K.V. Dominic and O.P. Arora) and short stories (one of them a story by Shahed Zahidi, translated from the Bengali by Ahmede Hussain).

I am pleased to add that this issue also features (pp. 10-21) my own essay, "Empire, Sense of Place and Cultures in Contact - George Orwell's 'Burmese Days' and Amitav Ghosh's 'The Glass Palace'" (cf. entry on this blog for 23 January 2009). This article is also on-line at: http://yatrarollason.info/files/GhoshandOrwellJan09.pdf

Dr Dominic may be contacted at: kdominicnewman@gmail.com