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1 Point of view, consciousness and interaction The study of point of view in fiction is the study of the endless possibilities of the relationship between a fiction’s story-world, including the entities within that world, and the way that story-world is presented to (in fact, and at the same time, created for) the reader or viewer. This broad definition allows us to see that accounts of point of view concern themselves with issues beyond those to do with fictional characters but also helps to explain why characters, as among the most important elements of a
specific, falsely definitive present moment of a modern, or even post-modern condition in the visual arts. We must, so to speak, play with both these timeframes if we want to think the empreinte . Let us call this the anachronistic point of view. It does not seek to deny history, quite to the contrary. However, we should be well aware that no history
Evidence is provided by place names and personal names of Nordic origin for Danish settlement in England and Scotland in the Viking period and later. The names show that Danish settlement was densest in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire but can also be traced outside the Danelaw. In the North, Danish settlers or their descendants moved across the Pennines to the Carlisle Plain, and from there along the coast of Cumberland and on across the sea to the Isle of Man, and perhaps back again to southern Lancashire and Cheshire before the middle of the tenth century. There,was also a spread of Danes around south-western England in the early eleventh century, reflecting the activities of Cnut the Great and his followers. After the Norman Conquest, Nordic influence spread into Dumfriesshire and the Central Lowlands of Scotland. It was in the more isolated, northern communities that Nordic linguistic influence continued to thrive.
This book explores the theoretical and critical concept of filmic point of view. Its case studies are six acclaimed and accomplished instances of ‘classical Hollywood cinema’: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra, 1936), Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks, 1939), Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948), Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962). The book’s particular contributions to the study of filmic point of view are to use ‘communication’ as an idea which permits new ways of approaching this topic, and to offer detailed explorations of the filmic representation of character experience (including character ‘consciousness’ and interaction), and of the relationship of film to other media of communication (especially print media and the novel). With respect to character experience, it is argued that the often-held distinction between an inner realm of thought and feeling and an outer realm of behaviour and objects fails to do justice to the human experience of ‘being-in-the-world’ and film’s ability to represent it. With respect to film’s relationship to other media, it explores the traversing of the public, the private and the social that narrative fiction film represents, in a way that aligns the medium with the novel. The book is offered as a demonstration and defence of the value of a ‘conversational’ critical method that entails detailed scrutiny of our film-viewing experiences and of the language we use to describe those experiences, and eschews the construction of a taxonomy designed for general applicability.
This is a full-length study of Jeanette Winterson's work as a whole, containing in-depth analyses of her eight novels and cross-references to her minor fictional and non-fictional works. It establishes the formal, thematic and ideological characteristics of the novels, and situates the writer within the general panorama of contemporary British fiction. Earlier critics usually approached Winterson exclusively either as a key lesbian novelist, or as a heavily experimental and ‘arty’ writer, whose works are unnecessarily difficult and meaningless. By contrast, this book provides a comprehensive, ‘vertical’ analysis of the novels. It combines the study of formal issues – such as narrative structure, point of view, perspective and the handling of narrative and story time – with the thematic analysis of character types, recurrent topoi, intertextual and generic allusions, etc., focused from various analytical perspectives: narratology, lesbian and feminist theory (especially Cixous and Kristeva), Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Jungian archetypal criticism, Tarot, Hermetic and Kabalistic symbolism, myth criticism, Newtonian and Post-Newtonian Physics, etc. Novels that read superficially, or appear simple and realistic, are revealed as complex linguistic artifacts with a convoluted structure and clogged with intertextual echoes of earlier writers and works. The conclusions show the inseparability of form and meaning (for example, the fact that all the novels have a spiralling structure reflects the depiction of self as fluid and of the world as a multiverse) and place Winterson within the trend of postmodernist British writers with a visionary outlook on art, such as Maureen Duffy, Marina Warner or Peter Ackroyd.
The construction of an underground car park beneath the main square of Turin, Italy in 2004 led to the unearthing of the skeletonised remains of twenty-two individuals attributable to the early eighteenth century. At this time the city was besieged during the War of the Spanish Succession in a hard-fought battle that resulted in unexpected triumph for the Piedmontese, a victory that marked a fundamental turning point in Italian history. The current study assesses the strength of evidence linking the excavated individuals to the siege and assesses their possible role in the battle through consideration of their biological profiles, patterns of pathology and the presence of traumatic injuries. This article presents the first analysis of evidence for the siege of Turin from an anthropological point of view, providing new and unbiased information from the most direct source of evidence available: the remains of those who actually took part.
This article defends the view that Gothic Studies should encourage research on contemporary gothic youth cultures from a Cultural Studies point of view. This is justified on two grounds: research on these youth cultures is a unique chance to consider gothic as a living cultural practice and not just as textual analysis mostly disengaged from the present; on the other hand, these subcultures are currently under attack by the media and moral minorities, especially in the USA, and Gothic Studies could - maybe should - help correct this regrettable situation born of prejudice against, and ignorance about, Gothic itself. The article reviews the embarrassing position of the Gothic Studies researcher today as regards gothic youth cultures and calls for the reinforcement of the poor knowledge we have of the evolution of these cultures in the last 20 years.
The role played by Fantasmagoriana in the genesis of Frankenstein and The Vampyre has largely prevented the full critical appreciation of this work in its original context of production, i.e. the French market of supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century, paving the way to the so-called frénétique vogue. By analysing a manuscript appendix to Fantasmagoriana, drafted between the mid-1820s and the mid-1830s and bound within a copy formerly belonging to the Roman family Gabrielli-Bonaparte, this article reinstates Fantasmagoriana within the environment of Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic culture and its renewed interest in the supernatural. Whereas English-speaking criticism has normally approached Fantasmagoriana through Tales of the Dead, i.e. Sarah Utterson’s Gothicizing and partial translation of 1813, an analysis of Fantasmagoriana from the point of view of its original readership will enable us to rethink the specificities of the French Gothic beyond Anglocentric perspectives.
Black music played a crucial role in the work and life of James Baldwin. What Baldwin heard in the music guided his sense of political reality and human possibility, his invention of character, his shifting analytical point of view, and his decisions about what to do, when, and how to do it during his life in private and career in public. The music, therefore, also offers his critics and his readers important insight and guidance in their own experience and interpretation of his work. This brief essay accounts for some of the most basic connections between Baldwin and black music; it serves here as an introduction to a list of songs, some of which offered Baldwin important guidance and some of which offer his readers access to deeper meanings in his work. A playlist of songs, curated by Ed Pavlić and Justin A. Joyce, is available on YouTube at www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtSYQ5bCX-C-IZkeQ_PX7ncsbdjI32HSy