Dr Christopher Rollason: BILINGUAL CULTURE BLOG

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: www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/GhoshandOrwellJan09.pdf

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

“A Viagem do Elefante” (“The Elephant’s Journey” – not yet available in English), published in 2008, is José Saramago’s latest novel, and he has said it may be his last. In its warmth, geniality and good humour, as well as its joyful exploration of the resources of the Portuguese language, it does indeed have a feeling of farewell to literature that might recall Shakespeare’s in “The Tempest” (“Our revels now are over”), and, like the play in which Shakespeare bids adieu to the stage, this mellow work is, ultimately, a comedy in which threats never quite come to fruition and no-one dies untowardly.

Saramago recounts what is in itself a true story, the journey of an Indian elephant and his retinue across land and sea, plain and mountain, all the way from Lisbon to Vienna. It was in 1551 that King João III of Portugal gifted an Indian elephant to his cousin the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, son-in-law of the Emperor Charles V. Saramago thus returns to the genre of the historical novel in which he wrote so memorably in “Memorial do Convento” / “Baltasar and Blimunda”. That novel, set in the eighteenth century, focused on the Portugal of the Inquisition, though not excluding the wider European world, in, for instance, the figure of Domenico Scarlatti. The new novel starts in Portugal but fans out through Spain and Italy to its Austrian finishing-point: more pan-European, it also takes in, as no previous Saramago novel had done in significant fashion, another wider world, that of empire. The book’s twin heroes are, beyond all doubt, the elephant Solomon (Salomão or Solimão) and his mahout or keeper (in Portuguese, “cornaca”), Subhro (later absurdly renamed Fritz), a Bengali Indian and nominal Christian convert, arrived in Portugal via Goa. The dignified and resourceful figure of Subhro is  a fictional vindication of the ordinary person recalling other such characters in Saramago’s work – Blimunda, Lídia in “O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis” / “The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis”, or the optician’s wife in “Ensaio sobre a Cegueira” / “Blindness”. Through Subhro, too, Saramago engages as he had never done before with the culture of India, as when, in inquisitorial Portugal, Subhro recounts the story of the elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesh.

As in “Memorial do Convento”, Catholicism is a lurking presence in the pages of a narrative this time set in an earlier period, that of the Council of Trent (happening while the tale unfolds), the Counter-Reformation and the ideological counter-offensive against Protestantism. The Inquisition threatens, but while the church throws up both an absurd attempt at exorcism and a fake miracle involving the elephant, here, in marked contrast to the tragic finale of the earlier novel, no-one actually falls into its institutional clutches, and the “alien” Subhro reaches destination safe and sound. There is, meanwhile, some implicit intertextuality with Saramago’s interrogation of biblical orthodoxy in “O Evangelho Segundo Jesús Cristo” / “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”, as in passages rewriting the stories of Lazarus and the Gadarene swine.

If “A Viagem do Elefante” marks Saramago’s return to the historical novel – far more successfully than Salman Rushdie’s recent damp-squib stab at that genre in “The Enchantress of Florence”, and on a par with Amitav Ghosh’s remarkable tour de force in “Sea of Poppies”, it also finds him engaging in the art of (purposive) comedy to a greater extent than in any other of his novels, the black humour of “O Homem Duplicado” / “The Double” included. Here we may identify a continuity with its predecessor, “As Intermitências da Morte” /  “Death at Intervals”, whose second half marked a new departure combining Gothic fantasy in the mode of E.T.A. Hoffmann with an exuberant high comedy. If the author’s intuition is that this elephant’s odyssey may be the last in a long and distinguished line of novels, then we may join with him in crowning this empathetic feat of narration as, indeed, the Portuguese Nobel laureate’s very own “The Tempest”.

NOTE: I discussed Saramago's “As Intermitências da Morte”/"Death at Intervals" in this blog on 18 January 2006.

Now out is the latest issue (Vol, VII, Nos. 1 & 2, Jan & July 2008) of the journal REFLECTIONS (Bhagalpur, India; ed. Dr Gauri Shankar Jha, ISSN 0973-046X).

The articles include, inter alia, studies of: 'Amitav Ghosh: A Writer as an Activist' (Sanjay Kumar Singh), 'Mulk Raj Anand: The Man and the Novelist' (Raihan Raza), '[Aravind Adiga's] "The White Tiger": A Bundle of Nonsense' (Gauri Shankr Jha), and 'Claiming Voice - Women in Manju Kapur's "Home"' (P. Tripathy); Tennessee Williams (S. Kumaran), Indian sources of T.S. Eliot's criticism (Madhu Mishra), John Steinbeck (Elangbam Hemanta Singh), and Jean-Franços Lyotard and Postmodernism ('Munir').

Also included (pp. 61-64) is MAQUETTE (originally MAQUETA), a short story by Cristina Galeano (Uruguay), translated from the Spanish by Christopher Rollason.

Dr Jha may be contacted at: profgsjha06@rediffmail.com; profgsjha08@gmail.com

Now published in ATLANTIS, the journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN) (Vol. 31, No. 1, June 2009, pp. 9-22), is my comparative study of Poe and Borges:

"The 'Character of Phantasm': Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Jorge Luis Borges' 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'". The full text is on-line at: www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/31.1/2009Rollason.pdf; this article was presented in a shorter version as a paper at the the International Conference: Edgar Allan Poe, 200 Years Later at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain (February 2009) - see entry on this blog, 14 February 2009.

Acaba de salir en ATLANTIS, la revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos (AEDEAN) (Vol. 31, No. 1, junio 2009, pp. 9-22), mi estudio comparativo de Poe y Borges:

"The 'Character of Phantasm': Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and Jorge Luis Borges' 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'". El texto completo se ubica en: www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/31.1/2009Rollason.pdf; este artículo fue presentado en una versión más breve en el congrso internacional: Edgar Allan Poe, 200 Years Later, en la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (Albacete, España) en febrero de 2009 - véase entrada para 14-II-2009 en esta bitácora.

ABSTRACT

The traces of Edgar Allan Poe in the work of Jorge Luis Borges have long been recognised, but both in the Argentinian writer's own hands and others', comment has tended to concentrate on three areas of the American author's work, namely: the detective fiction; the novel Arthur Gordon Pym; and Poe's literary theory. This paper will explore another facet, i.e. the possible intertextual relations and parallels between Poe's tales of terror and Borges' admired metaphysical fictions. The side-by-side examination of 'The Fall of the House of Usher', Poe's most celebrated Gothic tale, and 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', Borges' fable of the intellectual attraction of an imaginary planet, reveals significant links, both overt and covert, between Borges' tale and Poe's, highlighting the seductively similar yet also strikingly divergent forms in which both writers privilege the textual and intertextual in exploring and developing the concept of a parallel reality.

RESUMEN (Nota: este texto sólo existe en versión inglesa)

EL “CHARACTER OF PHANTASM”: ‘THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER’ DE EDGAR ALLAN POE Y ‘TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS’ DE JORGE LUIS BORGES

La presencia de huellas de Edgar Allan Poe en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges es un fenómeno ya reconocido. Sin embargo, los comentarios al respecto, de parte tanto del mismo Borges como de la crítica, se han limitado en general a tres áreas de la obra del norteamericano, a saber: los relatos policiales; la novela Arthur Gordon Pym; y las teorías literarias de Poe. En este artículo se explorará otra faceta: las relaciones y los paralelismos identificables a nivel intertextual entre los relatos de terror de Poe y las célebres ficciones metafísicas de Borges, tomando como textos de referencia ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, el más famoso de los cuentos góticos de Poe, y ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, la fábula borgiana de la atracción intelectual de un planeta imaginario. Su examen simultáneo revelará unos vínculos significativos, tanto abiertos como encubiertos, entre los dos textos, trayéndose así a colación los modos, seductoramente semejantes y a la vez llamativamente divergentes, por los que los dos escritores destacan lo textual y lo intertextual en su exploración del concepto de una realidad paralela.

EDGAR ALLAN POE BICENTENNIAL CONFERENCE –

"POE ALIVE IN THE CENTURY OF ANXIETY",

ALCALÁ DE HENARES (SPAIN), 21-23 MAY 2009

Report by Christopher Rollason, Ph.D - Metz, France - rollason54@gmail.com

Between 21 and 23 May 2009, the University of Alcalá (Alcalá de Henares, Madrid province and region, Spain) played host to the international conference "POE ALIVE IN THE CENTURY OF ANXIETY / POE PRESENTE EN EL SIGLO DE ANSIEDAD", the second academic event of this nature to be organised in Spain for the bicentennial of the great American writer's birth (the first took place at the Albacete campus of the University of Castilla-La Mancha from 3 to 6 February). Now, the torch was taken up by the historic city of Alcalá de Henares, the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes and a UNESCO World Heritage site. During these days, the Colegio de San Ildefonso and the former Trinitarios convent welcomed Poe scholars from numerous Spanish universities, from other European countries and from the USA, to deliver lectures or papers in either Spanish or English.

The event was organised by the host university's Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Estudios Norteamericanos (University Research Institute for American Studies - IUIEN; now rebaptised as the Instituto Franklin: www.institutofranklin.net), with the support of the US Embassy to Spain. The principal organisers were Prof. José Antonio Gurpegui Palacios and the Institute's project administrator Cristina Crespo. The present brief note is not intended to replace the official programme, to which those interested are referred (http://www.institutofranklin.net/pdfs_menus/poe_program.pdf); the aim is, rather, to share my personal impressions - which are necessarily incomplete, since, as we know, in an event of this kind with panels organised in parallel sessions it is, alas, never possible to attend everything.

The conference included four plenary lectures, of which three offered global readings of Poe's work. In the inaugural session, Prof. Djelal Kadir (Pennsylvania State University) spoke on "E.A. Poe: America's Conscience and Epistemic Anxiety"; Prof. Félix Martín Gutiérrez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) examined aspects of "Edgar Allan Poe: Delirios de un Confabulador" ("Edgar Allan Poe: Reveries of a Schemer"); and, in the closing lecture, Prof. Boris Vejdovsky (University of Lausanne, Switzerland), in "Poe's Catastrophic Fiction: Judgment and Responsibility in Poe's Century", linked the sensations of collapse and disintegration in a tale like "The Fall of the House of Usher" to the repercussions of the present financial crisis. The fourth plenary lecturer, Christopher Rollason (Metz, France), offered, in "Tell-Tale Signs: Edgar Allan Poe and Bob Dylan – Towards a Model of Intertextuality", an intertextual perspective, examining Poe's traces in the work of the famous American singer-songwriter and the parallels between the two oeuvres, both of which hover on the borderline between elite and mass cultures. This lecture included a Power Point presentation designed by the architect Hilda Hurtado (Mexico).

The papers presented in the various panels covered a very wide range of facets, textual, intertextual and theoretical, of Poe's writing: I will here mention a number of them, without in any wishing to detract from the value of those not named. Those presenting more general views of Poe's work included: Andrzej Dorobek (Higher State School of Professional Education, Plock, Poland), "Psychedelic Relevance of E. A. Poe for the 20th Century American Culture"; Daniel Taylor Ogden (University of Uppsala, Sweden), "Poe and the Technological Sublime" (on a lesser-known but important aspect of Poe, his role as a questioning pioneer of science fiction); Peter Caverzasi (Lehman College, CUNY, New York), "Animism and Adaptation in Poe's Short Stories"; Eulalia Piñero Gil (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), "'Memento mori': E. A. Poe's Rituals of Death and the Female Dead Body"; Maya Zalbidea Paniagua (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), "New Psychoanalytical Readings of 'The Premature Burial', 'William Wilson' and 'The Colloquy of Monos and Una'"; and, on the teaching of Poe's tales in the context of literature and education, Miguel Berga Bagué, Pere Gifra Adroher and María Antonia Oliver (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), "Enseñar Poe en una Facultad de Humanidades: Interdisciplinariedad e Intervención Textual" ("Teaching Poe in a Faculty of Humanities: Interdisciplinarity and Textual Intervention").

Other papers focused on individual works of Poe, including: for the short stories, Luis Girón Echevarría (University of Extremadura), "Cryptography and wordplay in Poe's 'The Gold-Bug'"; for Poe's solitary novel, Marita Nadal (University of Zaragoza), "Unspeakable Effects: Parodic Treatment of Horror and Terror in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym"; and for the poems, Slawomir Studniarz (University of Warnia and Mazury, Olsztyn, Poland), "Sound and Sense Relation in Edgar Allan Poe's Poetry: A Study of 'Ulalume'", and Carmen Lara-Rallo (University of Málaga), "An Intratextual Approach to 'The Raven': Intuitive and Ecstatic Echoes Behind Poe's 'Mathematical Problem'". Intertextual or inter-generic readings were offered by: Juana Celia Djelal (Pennsylvania State University), "Poe and the Ancients – Thresholds of Anxiety" (on Poe and the Greek and Latin classics); Antonio Ballesteros (National Distance Education University [UNED], Madrid), "Edogawa Rampo, el Poe japonés" ("Edogawa Rampo, the Japanese Poe"); Borja Menéndez Díaz-Jorge (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), "Visions of the Avant-Garde in Poe's 'Fall of the House of Usher'" (linking Poe's tale to painting and the cinema); and Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan (University of Valladolid), "Comentarios de Poe acerca del realismo pictórico" ("Poe's comments on pictural realism"). Finally, also featured were aspects of the relationship between Poe and Spanish culture, in: Eusebio Llácer Llorca and Nicolás Estévez (University of Valencia), "La obra literaria de Edgar Allan Poe en la prensa española de Posguerra" ("Poe's writing in the post-Civil War Spanish press", i.e. in the earlier years of Francoism); and Cristina Flores Moreno (University of La Rioja), "Circulation and Reception of Edgar Allan Poe's Poetry in Spanish Modernism: Antonio Machado".

The aspects of Poe analysed in the lectures and papers were, then, infinite in their variety. In addition to the strictly academic part, the event also included: an exhibition, in the cloister of the Trinitarios, of poems by Poe translated into a remarkable range of languages, conceived by the Paris-based artist William Wolkowski; a talk, accompanied by slides, on Amontillado (the variant of sherry immortalised by Poe in one of his Spanish-inspired tales, "The Cask of Amontillado") and its presence in Poe's work and its adaptations in other media, given by José Luis Jiménez García, of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (himself from Jerez, the Andalusian cradle of sherry) and followed by a sherry-tasting session in the Trinitarios garden; and, finally, the closing dinner, held in the imposing and hospitable venue of the Nuevo Parador de Alcalá.

This conference succeeded in generating a visible and contagious atmosphere of literary passion and intellectual camaraderie: there is no doubt that it has marked another step forward in the development of Poe studies among both Spanish and non-Spanish specialists. Meanwhile, the bicentennial commemorations continue: in Spain, two more conferences are in preparation, in Cáceres (November) and Valencia (December), as well as less academic celebrations such as the Semana Gótica (Gothic Week) of Madrid, which is scheduled for late October and will include Poe-related activities. Over 2009, Spain has been and is positioning itself as one of the countries making the biggest efforts to recall and promote the still dazzlingly current work of this major American writer: right up to the end of the bicentennial year, we can be sure that there will be plenty of Amontillado in the cask!

NB: this report appears with the approval of the conference organisers

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Conferencia del dr Christopher Rollason, con presentación de Power Point - Poe y Dylan

Lecture by Christopher Rollason, with Power Point presentation - Poe and Dylan

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Alcalá de Henares: Edificio Trinitarios; Colegio San Ildefonso; Museo Cervantes / Cervantes Museum

POE EXPERTS BELOW / ABAJO, EXPERTOS DE POE: Antonio Ballesteros; Borja Menéndez / Christopher Rollason

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Photos / Fotos: Christopher Rollason and Ana González-Rivas Fernández

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23 April 2009 saw the official launch, at the Cervantes Institute in Delhi, of the reissue of a nineteenth-century Bengali translation of the first part of Cervantes' DON QUIJOTE. This version (an indirect translation via English), by Bipin Behari Chackrabarti, first appeared in 1887. The new edition, which includes a critical introduction, has been prepared by Professor Shyama Prasad Ganguly, of the Centre for Hispanic Studies at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. A special aspect of this edition is that four of the chapters are presented in *two* different Bengali versions: a) Chackrabarti's own; and b) a contemporary rendition by a distinguished Bengali scholar: this will allow those interested to make a comparative study of nineteenth- and twenty-first-century translational practices.

Professor Ganguly is the author of the book "Quixotic Encounters: Indian Responses to the Knight from Spain", which I have reviewed in both English  www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/Quijote.pdf; and Spanish www.embajadaindia.net/docs/revista06.pdf - see also this blog, entry for 15 June 2007.

For more on the event, see, in Spanish:

http://www.laregion.es/noticia/90007/india/presentaci%C3%B3n/reedici%C3%B3n/quijote/bengal%C3%AD/instituto/cervantes/

("Se presenta en India la reedición del 'Quijote' en bengalí" ["Presented in India: reissue of 'Don Quixote' in Bengali"]) - La Región, 5 May 2009)

and in English:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=b42d0225-be0c-45f3-a741-f3e5420777cb

"Bengali 'Don Quixote' gets new lease of life" - Hindustan Times, 8 May 2009

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El 23 de abril de 2009, fue lanzada, en el Instituto Cervantes de Delhi, la reedición de una decimonónica traducción al bengalí de la primer parte del QUIJOTE de Miguel de Cervantes. Esta traducción, realizada por Bipin Behari Chackrabarti (por la vía indirecta a través del inglés), apareció por primera vez en 1887. La nueva edición, que incluye una introducción crítica, ha sido preparada por el profesor Professor Shyama Prasad Ganguly (Centre for Hispanic Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi). Como aspecto especial de esta edición, señalamos que cuatro de los capítulos aparecen en *dos* versiones diferentes: la de Chackrabarti y una traducción contemporanea realizada por un eminente estudioso bengalí: esto permitirá el estudio comparativo de las prácticas de traducción características de los siglos XIX y XXI.

El profesor Ganguly es el autor del libro "Quixotic Encounters: Indian Responses to the Knight from Spain", el cual ha sido reseñado por mí mismo, en versiones inglesa: www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/Quijote.pdf

y española:

www.embajadaindia.net/docs/revista06.pdf - véase esta bitácora, entrada 15-VI-2007.

Más información sobre el evento - en castellano:

http://www.laregion.es/noticia/90007/india/presentaci%C3%B3n/reedici%C3%B3n/quijote/bengal%C3%AD/instituto/cervantes/

"Se presenta en India la reedición del 'Quijote' en bengalí" - La Región, 5-V-2009)

y en inglés:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=b42d0225-be0c-45f3-a741-f3e5420777cb

"Bengali 'Don Quixote' gets new lease of life" - ["'Quijote' bengalí adquiere segunda vida"]- Hindustan Times, 8-V-2009

The French literary magazine TRANSFUGE, No 30 (May 2009), carries an interview with Vikram Seth ('Vikram Seth: 'Á San Francisco, la solitude est une mode de vie" ['In San Francisco, solitude is a way of life']; interviewer: Marine de Tilly; pp. 39-41), centring on the newly-published French translation of 'The Golden Gate', his California-set novel-in-verse from 1986. Details of the translation are: 'Golden Gate' [no article], trans. by 'Claro', Paris: Grasset, 2009. Only now, after 23 years, does this work of Seth's appear in French: in the interview, Seth describes the book as 'tout simplement intraduisible' ('quite simply untranslatable' - p. 41), and expresses his pleasure at nonetheless having it appear in French: he lauds the translation and says it should have been published as co-signed by the translator! Asked on the no doubt still, to some, controversial issue of the 'non-Indianness' of 'The Golden Gate', Seth argues (p. 39) that roots are not confined to one place: there are trees like the banyan which can be transported and replanted anywhere.

TRANSFUGE has a site at www.transfuge.fr, but the articles are subscriber-only.

BEYOND HERE LIES … NOTHING? - some impressions of Bob Dylan's album TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE

If nothing else, TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE (2009) has produced a new crop of firsts for Bob Dylan. It has become his first-ever album to reach number one in both the US and the UK, and has made him the oldest living artist ever to top the British album chart (a feat he had already achieved in the US with MODERN TIMES), and, again in Britain, the artist distinguished, if that is the word, by the longest time-gap between successive number one albums. Indeed, probably only fact-file obsessives will have known that prior to this album Dylan had had four number ones in his home country and/but six totally different chart-toppers across the Atlantic. The new album's success does, then, suggest there must be a consensus in the air about something.

However, in the British case further examination reveals that Dylan's three previous number ones were NASHVILLE SKYLINE in 1969 and SELF PORTRAIT and NEW MORNING in 1970 - all decidedly minor works. Before those three, he had spent 13 weeks atop the UK chart in 1968 with JOHN WESLEY HARDING, an album generally considered a major artistic achievement but whose commercial success had much to do with the groundswell of sympathy arising from Dylan's near-brush with death in his famous motorcycle accident. Is the commercial success of TOGETHER THROUGH LIFE, like that of MODERN TIMES before it, a reflection less of the album's quality than of a comparable sympathy vote, brought on by the artist's advancing years and the realisation that he won't be with us forever - that 'it's not dark yet, but it's getting there'?

My own feeling at this stage of the game is that we are dealing with a musically agreeable, cleanly produced and perfectly listenable Dylan album, but not one that is saying anything much of interest about anything in particular. Regarding Dylan's 21st-century output, I was and remain highly enthusiastic about 'LOVE AND THEFT' (and wrote at length about that album in THE BRIDGE, No 14), but have yet to be convinced by MODERN TIMES; and intuit that, for all the Latin warmth of David Hidalgo's accordion, lyrically this new offering will have a hard time winning me over. The fact that all but two of the songs are the product of collaboration with Robert Hunter doesn't help the evaluation of this as a Dylan album, but as with the earlier joint efforts with Jacques Levy and Sam Shepard, we may suppose the bulk of the writing process to have been Dylan's own (after all, it is, like 'Desire', billed as a Bob Dylan album) while not concluding therefrom that the resultant songs must be a priori brilliant.

Simplicity appears to be this album's hallmark, but, as with NASHVILLE SKYLINE and PLANET WAVES (the latter, incidentally, being another of Dylan's US number ones), a question mark hovers as to whether this is the simplicity of blissful enlightenment or the naïve simplicity of the banal. Technically, the songs are carefully constructed around clear rhyme-schemes (this may be Hunter's doing), and they are (mercifully) shorter and more economical than the diffuse, rambling MODERN TIMES songs. Nonetheless, on an actual majority of tracks the writing comes over as thin and gruel-like. 'Jolene' is a flat and featureless slice of country blues, and (sorry, Bob) far less memorable than the Dolly Parton song of the same name. 'Shake Shake Mama' is a clichéd blues number in the undistinguished mould of 'The Levee's Gonna Break': I fail to see the interest of lines like 'Shake shake mama like a ship going out to sea' (where is the resemblance?) or 'Down by the river Judge Simpson is walkin' around / Nothing shocks me more like that old clown' (whoever Judge Simpson may be, he's a pale shadow of Dylan's grudge-holding and stilt-walking or false-hearted and web-spinning magistrates from the past). The would-be social criticism on 'It's All Good' is simply anaemic by the side of, say, 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)' or even, God help us, 'Slow Train'. As to the most place-specific song, 'If You Ever Go To Houston' (the one Dylan chose to bring out first in live performance, in Dublin on 5 May 2009 - and which does look as if it might perhaps be about something), yes, it may be a critique of George Bush's Texas or the Second Amendment, and it does have a potentially interesting anachronism in the Mexican War reference - but any impact it might have is undermined by the sheer bleating pointlessness of a line like 'Mister policeman, can you help me find my gal?'.

All in all, after a few plays I began to wonder whether Dylan had positioned the album's opening track, 'Beyond Here Lies Nothin'', as a warning to the listener, to expect precisely … nothing. Should future listenings sooner or later honour any of the tracks as redeeming this album's lyrical blight, I might just about hand a nickel or a dime to 'Forgetful Heart' and, perhaps, 'This Dream of You'. In both, we find a sliver of intertextuality interacting with some just-about rescuable writing. In the first, the lines 'Forgetful heart / like a walking shadow in my brain / All night long / I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain' recall both Shakespeare's Macbeth ('Life's but a walking shadow') and the Edgar Allan Poe of 'The Raven', and the song also has a Kafkaesque door that may never have existed; the second offers, again, Poe-like imagery - 'shadows ... on the wall / Shadows that seem to know it all'. In these two tracks, there is, perhaps, a faint flickering of the old 'flames in the furnace of desire' - and yet, and yet, surely at this stage in Dylan's career, could we not have been given a bit more to reflect on than whether or not this album is up to the standard of ... well, of NASHVILLE SKYLINE?!! Bob, whatever colours you have in your mind, couldn't you have shown us one or two more of them on this record?

**

NOTE added 25-VI-2009:

This review is also on my Yatra site at: www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/DylanTOGETHERTHROUGHLIFE.pdf

it will be published later this year in the UK Dylan magazine THE BRIDGE.

Hay una versión española de este texto, traducida por Carla Vanessa Gonzáles, en la entrada de esta bitácora correspondiente al 25-VI-2009.

I draw to your attention the book INDIAN LEGENDARY WRITINGS IN ENGLISH: MULK RAJ ANAND, R.K. NARAYAN AND RAJA RAO, ed. Jaydeep Sarangi, Delhi: Authorspress, 2009. This volume collects 26 essays, some of them previously published, on these three key figures of Indian Writing in English. There are five articles on Anand, four on Rao and 17 on Narayan. Contributors include, on Anand, Binod Mishra and Jaydeep Sarangi; on Rao, Gauri Shankar Jha; on Narayan, Subhendhu Mund (on 'The Guide') and Ludmila Volna ('The Town of Malgudi: The World of R.K. Narayan's Novels').

The 14-20 May 2009 issue of the Paris weekly LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR is billed as an 'India special', and features, inter alia, a long interview with Vikram Chandra: 'La justice ou le chaos' ['Justice or chaos')', pp. 46-47; interviewers: François Armanet and Gilles Anquetil).

The interview text is on-line at:

http://hebdo.nouvelobs.com/hebdo/parution/p2323/articles/a401293-.html?xtmc=vikramchandra&xtcr=1

The novelist, whose SACRED GAMES (in French LE SEIGNEUR DE BOMBAY) has proved a big seller and critical success in France, talks on his reasons for writing that novel, the interrelations between the underworld and the rest of society (including institutions like the intelligence service), the extent to which his novel prefigured the Bombay bomb attacks, and the strengths and challenges of Indian democracy.

He stresses (p. 46 - I re-translate from the French) 'the way crime impregnates the diverse facets of my city': 'The detective novel has always had that function, since the Memoirs of Vidocq. The investigator explores all the strata of the city, historical and social, and as he unveils the links between the world of the rich and the underworld, between past and present, the reader creates a map of the world'.

The interview is of major interest, and also indicates Vikram Chandra's rising profile in France. Unfortunately, though, there is a flagrant error when, again on p. 46, he is described as 'l''auteur des "Tigres d'Allah"', i.e. as the author [sic] of "The Srinagar Conspiracy" (the title is different in French), a novel published in 2000 by *another* Vikram (A.) Chandra, an Indian TV presenter. This is not the first time this error has appeared in the French press: I only hope those responsible will be made aware of it and that it will be the last …

Acaba de ser publicado, en la revista ENTRECULTURAS de la Universidad de Málaga (Número 1, 2009, 33-43), un estimulante artículo de Miguel Sáenz, el muy conocido traductor de literatura anglosajona y alemana al castellano: www.entreculturas.uma.es/n1pdf/articulo02.pdf  

En este texto, "El castellano bien templado", el autor plantea una extensa y fecunda analogía entre traducción y música, desde puntos de vista tanto teóricos como prácticos, explicándonos que "cuando me sitúo ante un texto (que normalmente coloco en un atril), me siento como un músico dispuesto a acometer la tarea de descifrar, asimilar y expresar lo que otro compuso".  Me complazco añadir que este excelente estudio hasta incluye, en una nota en su página 38, una cita de un texto  mío: “Translating a Transcultural Text – Problems and Strategies: On the Spanish Translation of Vikram Chandra’s ‘Love and Longing in Bombay’” (de Dora Sales y Esther Monzó) - www.  seikilos.com.ar/LoveAndLonging.html. Aquí quedan mis agradecimientos al eminente traductor Miguel Sáenz por  honrar mi trabajo de este modo: es un verdadero halago.

I draw to your attention the April 2009 edition of the London-based print magazine CONFLUENCE: SOUTH ASIAN PERSPECTIVES  (confluenceuk@btinternet.com). This lively and stimulating publication covers a wide range of political, economic, arts and literary subjects concerning the countries of South Asia and their diasporas.

The literary material in this issue is very strong, and includes the following reviews: by Val Nolan, of the novel 'The Sweet and Simple Kind' by Yasmine Gooneratne (which looks to be Sri Lanka's answer to 'A Suitable Boy'); by Reginald Massey, of a study of Ruskin Bond by Som Parkash Ranchan; and by Padmaja Thajore, of John Thieme's volume on R.K. Narayan in the Contemporary World Writers series (University of Manchester Press). Also included, on pp. 14-15, is a three-way dialogue on Indian Writing in English bringing together Nilanshu Agarwal, Ludmila Volna and myself (this interview has also appeared in the Indian journal THE QUEST and on-line; see entries on this blog for 24-6-08 and 29-12-08).  

CONFLUENCE has a website: www.confluence.org.uk (apparently not identical to the print edition).  

 Con motivo del día del libro, la noche del 23 de abril Madrid se convirtió en un hervidero de lectores y escritores compartiendo charlas y experiencias literarias (en la página web http://www.madrid.org/lanochedeloslibros/ podéis consultar las diversas actividades que se organizaron para celebrar lo que se llamó "La noche de los libros"). Uno de los actos programados estaba dedicado, como no podía ser menos en este año de bicentenario, a la figura de Edgar Allan Poe. Este acto, además, constituía en sí mismo una gran novedad: se trataba del primer concierto de cómic celebrado en España. Música, actuación y arte gráfico se aunaron magistralmente, encandilando al público.

            José Ramón García puso las notas de piano a los cuentos de Poe, mientras eran interpretados por el actor Felé Martínez, y el artista Jack Mircala les daba forma con sus cartulinas. Todo perfectamente coordinado. Una gran pantalla mostraba al público las representaciones de Mircala, fiel al estilo que presenta en su libro ilustrado Siniestras Amadas (véase entrada en esta bitácora del 19-I-09, punto 15), dedicado a las hermosas mujeres que habitan la vida y la obra de Poe. Durante una hora y media se leyeron "El cuento mil y dos de Scheherezade", "Eleonora" y "El Gato negro", cada uno de ellos con un ritmo y un tono propios. Los aplausos del Ateneo, que llenó todas sus butacas, fueron los garantes del éxito que tuvo este primer concierto de cómic, o lectura ilustrada.

**

The night of 23 April 2009 - DAY OF THE BOOK - saw Madrid seething with readers and writers exchanging conversations and literary experiences (for the programme - "La noche de los libros" - see www.madrid.org/lanochedeloslibros/) One of the events was, fittingly for the writer's bicentennial year, dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. This event was also a major breakthrough as it offered the first concert centred round comic book illustration to be held in Spain, with a fusion of music, drama and graphic art which held the public spellbound.

            José Ramón García provided a piano accompaniment to Poe's tales, recited by the actor Felé Martínez and illustrated by the artist Jack Mircala. All was perfectly coordinated. A large screen displayed Mircala's images, faithful to the style he has used in his illustrated book Siniestras Amadas (see entry in this blog for 19 Jan 09, point 15), dedicated to the beautiful women who people the life and work of Poe. The ninety minutes of readings included "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade", "Eleonora" and "The Black Cat", all recited with the appropriate rhythm and tone. The event was held in the Madrid Athenaeum to a full house, and the applause testified to the success of this pioneering 'comic book concert'.

** Nota amablemente proporcionada por / Note kindly supplied by: Ana González-Rivas Fernández

Now on-line at:

www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/Sophie.pdf

 is my review of:

Maria Dolores Narbona Carrión (ed.), Sophie Treadwell: Contexto teatral, biografía, crítica y traducción de su obra Machinal, Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2007, paperback, 193 pp., ISBN 978-84-9747-181-7

**

The book reviewed is in Spanish but the review is in English: I hope it will interest those concerned with American theatre, US women's writing, and translation and reception studies.

**

Abstract:

It is usually stated that significant modern American theatre begins with the work of Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), but, as with other literary forms, that generic history may also be viewed and re-viewed from a female perspective, and the present volume comes as a timely reminder of the contribution to that same American theatre made all but simultaneously by O'Neill's contemporary, the journalist, novelist and, above all, dramatist and theatre producer Sophie Treadwell (Stockton, California, 1885 - Tucson, Arizona, 1970). Consisting of diverse editorial material in Spanish and a new translation (the first-ever into Spanish) of Treadwell's best-known play, Machinal (1928), this book is by definition aimed at a Hispanophone public. The present review, it is hoped, may nonetheless also be of interest to English-speaking readers and scholars, as an index of the reception outside the Anglophone world of women's theatre from the US and as evidence of the capacity of Sophie Treadwell's writing to cross borders - as also of the problems and challenges involved in translating a work which, on closer scrutiny, reveals itself to be in some aspects a product of cultural hybridation (Treadwell was of part-Mexican origin, and, from today's theoretical perspectives, doubly liable to subalternhood).

The volume, edited by María Dolores Narbona Carrión, of the University of Málaga, consists of the following: an introduction and chronology, both by the editor; a study of the theatrical context of the play Machinal, again by the editor; a general account of Treadwell's life and work, by Miriam López Rodríguez, with a bibliography of writings by and on the author; and a translation into Spanish of Machinal (under the same title), by María Dolores Narbona Carrión and Ricardo Vivancos Pérez

For followers of Indian Writing in English (IWE), it is always interesting to learn of an IWE book being translated into an Indian language. Now out is Manju Kapur's novel HOME from 2006 (see this blog: entry for 31 May 2006), in Malayalam translation - a first for this autthor in this language (though her earlier novel DIFFICULT DAUGHTERS has existed for some time in Marathi). The translation is by Jibu Jamal (Kottayam: DC Books, 2009). For a notice, see NEELA PADMANABHAN: 'About joint families', THE HINDU 21 Apr 2009:

 http://www.hindu.com/br/2009/04/21/stories/2009042151041403.htm

Review of Hunt Henion, THE DON Q POINT OF VIEW, Eureka (Montana): SHIFT AWARENESS BOOKS, 2008, 148 pp., 1SBN: 978-0-9822054-19, www.shiftAwareness.com

**

Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes’ world-famous novel, has offered generations of entranced readers a world where the boundaries between imagination and reality are porous, ever-changing, and repeatedly crossed. In the ninth chapter of Part I, Cervantes himself claims the book is ‘really’ a translation from an author writing in Arabic, Cide Hamete Benengeli; in the third chapter of Part II, the Don and Sancho are told about a book that is none other than the first part of Cervantes’ novel featuring themselves. Readers have been similarly imaginative. In the American literary tradition, Washington Irving tells of a Spanish countryman who solemnly believes Sancho and the Don to be real people; in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer spins yarns of elephants and diamonds and tells a sceptical Huck: “if I wasn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called “Don Quixote”, I would know without asking”.

Now, more than four centuries on, Hunt Henion’s The Don Q Point of View comes as the latest in a long line of tributes. It might be thought difficult to say anything new about the Don, but in these pages we have a reliving of the Man of la Mancha’s life and hard times that is startling in its originality.

The book’s narrating “I” tells the reader that he who writes actually was, in a past life, a Don Quixote who in real truth existed. The reader who agrees to suspend disbelief, or to believe all the way, is rewarded with a remarkable journey. Hunt Henion retraces his steps as the Don, riding side by side with Sancho across the La Mancha plain: and tells how the book Miguel de Cervantes wrote combined fact with fiction, mixing true recollections of Don Quixote’s life with his own elaborations and inventions.

G.K. Chesterton saw Cervantes’ Don as no better than a “lean and foolish knight’”. Hunt Henion’s Quixote is at the antipodes of any such travesty. He is lean, but he is not foolish. He is one whose vision aspires beyond the surface of things and makes of the world a constant battlefield between good and evil. Despite defeats and disappointments, the paladin of the good never says die, and goes on believing till his last breath in “the impossible dream”. The Don whom Hunt Henion brings to life is the heroic Quixote, the one who on a dusty road frees the chained prisoners bound for the galleys, the one who declares “I am who I am” and refuses to be another. Our narrator relives a life in which he, as Don Quixote, challenged the rigidities and cruelties of Spain in the Inquisition era, never faltering in his vision of a kinder and juster world. In the epoch of Barack Obama, this re-created Quixote is one who stands up against the giants and enchanters of oppression, and shouts long and loud, for all the world to hear, “YES, WE CAN!”

NB: This review is also on the Shift Awareness site accompanying the book details, at:

http://www.shiftawareness.com/The-Don-Q-Point-of-View.php

http://www.salondulivreparis.com

tuvo a México como país invitado, y participaron 42 escritores mexicanos (siendo 9 de ellos mujeres). Me fue posible escuchar a cuatro de éstos: Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Volpi, Elena Poniatowska y la escritora de lengua maya, Briceida Cuevas Cob. Las intervenciones que oí fueron todas de máximo interés y demostraron la capacidad de la literatura mexicana para atraer a un gran público en el extranjero. Saludo también la iniciativa de la librería parisina Gibert Joseph, la cual se esforzó en hacer disponible una enorme cantidad de libros mexicanos o sobre México, de literatura y otros géneros, tanto en castellano como en francés. Total, este evento proporcionó un inmenso "baño de mexicanidad" por el cual se difundieron los valores y la creatividad del mayor país  hispanoparlante del mundo.

Photos of / fotos de Jorge Volpi and Elena Poniatowska, de / by Christopher Rollason

The Paris Book Fair for 2009, held from 13 to 18 March:

http://www.salondulivreparis.com

featured Mexico as guest nation, with the participation of 42 Mexican writers (9 of them women). I was able to hear four of them: Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Volpi, Elena Poniatowska and the Mayan-language writer Briceida Cuevas Cob. Their speeches were all of major interest and testified to the capacity of Mexican literature to attract a large public abroad. I also salute the initiative of the Paris bookshop Gibert Joseph in making available an enormous number of Mexican books or books about Mexico, both fiction and non-fiction and in both Spanish and French. The entire event offered an exposure to things Mexican which succeeded in diffusing the values and the creativity of the world's most populous Spanish-speaking country.

I draw your attention to a new publication from Indian poet Anuraag Sharma, as well as to his new translation of the Anglo-Canadian poet Andrew Parkin.

Anuraag's latest volume, PAPA AND OTHER POEMS, has been published (2008) by A.R.A.W.LII. Publications, Ajmer, India (www.arawlii.com). It is accompanied by two forewords and one five afterwords. The fifth afterword (pp. 66-68) is by myself and can be found at:

www.geocities.com/christopherrollason/Anuraagintro.pdf

The same publisher has issued (2009) Anuraag's translation into Hindi (in a parallel text Hindi/English edition) of Andrew Parkin's STAR OF A HUNDRED YEARS: A SCENARIODE FOR SIR RUN RUN SHAW.  This dramatic poem is a tribute to the Singapore film director and major exponent of Chinese-language cinema. Andrew Parkin, long resident in Hong Kong and the author of five other volumes of poetry, now lives in Paris.

**

Here is an extract from my afterword to PAPA AND OTHER POEMS:

'The voice of Anuraag Sharma that eloquently resounds in this volume is but one of the author’s multiple voices as dramatist, translator, critic and, in the avatar which here concerns us, poet. In this his latest collection of poems, the reader encounters images that crystallise or expand around human relations, ties of kinship and friendship, as exemplified in the father-son relationship that gives the book its title. Private epiphanies flash into consciousness to illuminate and transcend a public world that has failed to deliver on its promises and has burnt itself out: still, through the word, the poet strives to make sense of disparate lives, others’ and his own.

The locus of many of the poems is recognisably subcontinental, but the reader should not expect to find a hyperspecific instance of ‘Indian poetry’: Anuraag Sharma resembles a Satish Verma rather than a Jayanta Mahapatra, with Indian motifs appearing in order to ground the poems in a determinate time and place rather than to adumbrate a full-scale critique of Indian realities (…)'

Now out is Vol. Five (February 2009) of SEVA BHARATI JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES (Midnapore, West Bengal, India), edited by Dr Jaydeep Sarangi - sarangij@rediffmail.com.  The theme of this issue is INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH.

Contributions include essays on:

Mulk Raj Anand's "Untouchable" (Punyashree Panda and Minakshi Prasad Mishra); R.K. Narayan's "The Man-Eater of Malgudi" (Sumana Biswas); Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "Heat and Dust" (Binod Mishra and Narinder Kr. Sharma); Anita Desai's "Journey to Ithaca" in comparison with Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha" (Shri Bambar S.B.); and a review of Manju Kapur's "The Immigrant" (Christopher Rollason - for more on this review and URL for on-line version, see entry on this blog for 27 Dec 08).

Also included are poems by, among others, Jayanta Mahapatra and Makarand Paranjape, a short story by Sunil Sharma, and a tribute to the late poet Niranjan Mohanty by RK. Singh.

Acaba de aparecer, en el número 2009:1 (págs. 105-107) de NEXUS (publicación de AEDEAN - Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos), mi reseña del e-libro de Ana González-Rivas Fernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), "El mundo clásico desde la mirada femenina: Margaret Fuller, Mary Shelley y George Eliot" (URL para texto completo de la reseña:

www.aedean.org/NEXUS-Archive/nexus%202009.%201.pdf ).

Este mismo número de NEXUS también incluye varios textos sobre Edgar Allan Poe (véase entrada actualizada de bitácora para 19-I-09).

**

Now available in No 2009:1 (pp. 105-107) of NEXUS (publication of AEDEAN - Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos) is my review of the e-book by Ana González-Rivas Fernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), "El mundo clásico desde la mirada femenina: Margaret Fuller, Mary Shelley y George Eliot" ("The classical world as seen by women: Margaret Fuller, Mary Shelley and George Eliot') (URL for full review text:

www.aedean.org/NEXUS-Archive/nexus%202009.%201.pdf). The book and the review exist only in Spanish.

**

The same number of NEXUS contains a number of essays on Edgar Allan Poe (see updated blog entry for 19 Jan 09).

**

Detalles del e-libro / Details of the e-book:

El mundo clásico desde la mirada femenina: Margaret Fuller, Mary Shelley y George Eliot –

Ana González-Rivas Fernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Liceus (Madrid): Biblioteca de Recursos Electrónicos de Humanidades, 2008

ISBN 978-84-9822-791-8, 167 págs.

**

Extracto de la reseña:

En este estudio de la autoría de Ana González-Rivas Fernández, que nos llega bajo la forma de e-book, se pretende analizar la presencia clásica en tres obras representativas de la literatura femenina decimonónica, siendo dos de ellas novelas británicas y la tercera una obra norteamericana perteneciente al género ensayístico. Los textos escogidos son: Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) de Mary Shelley, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, de la estadounidense Margaret Fuller (1845), y The Mill on the Floss, de George Eliot (1860). El estudio se compone de una amplia introducción definiendo el objeto de estudio y la metodología seguida, tres largos capítulos dedicados a cada una de las obras, una conclusión sintética y una generosa bibliografía, teniendo ésta última la particularidad útil e innovadora de exponer por separado las obras grecolatinas referidas a través del texto, tanto originales, como traducciones al castellano. La autora se ha tomado el cuidado de proporcionar traducciones, en notas de pie de página, de todas las citas originales en inglés, latín o griego que aparecen en el texto.

El propósito de base de este estudio es el de demostrar cómo la recepción y transformación de motivos grecolatinos por autoras femeninas (y, por ende, no pertenecientes al sistema académico como tal) resulta en una transmisión de saber "a través de lo que llamaremos vías alteracadémicas" (5), así operando transformaciones en la naturaleza del canon textual de partida. La autora trae a colación tanto los enfoques específicos al mundo clásico privilegiados por cada una de las tres escritoras, como la feminidad compartida y reivindicativa que, a fin de cuentas, las une como pioneras de la literatura moderna de mujeres. A lo largo del análisis, se hace hincapié en el papel de vanguardia de las tres escritoras, cada una con sus planteamientos feministas (no se olvida que Mary Shelley era hija de Mary Wollstonecraft), a la vez que se subrayan las circunstancias excepcionales, familiares y vitales, que otorgaron a cada una de ellas una educación (incluyendo lo clásico) y un nivel cultural fuera del común y superando con mucho la norma femenina de su época (…)