Revista de estudios norteamericanos - 2009/10 - Nº 14
URI permanente para esta colecciónhttps://hdl.handle.net/11441/2869
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Artículo Tim O’Brien’s problematic truth: traumatic experience through storytelling in “How to tell a true war story”(Universidad de Sevilla, 2010) Vanyova Kostova, BilyanaA major theme common to war fiction is the truthful representation of a traumatic episode. This paper examines Tim O’Brien’s use of experimental techniques in “How to tell a true war story” to highlight the troublesome postmodern connection between fiction and truth, and their close interrelation with some significant motifs; namely, the nature of storytelling, the rejection of generalizations about the war, and the deconstruction of the concept of truth. Contemporary issues in trauma theory draw on the pathological crisis of truth experienced by survivors, which lead them to both a denial of the experience and an urge to reconstruct it and fill in the gaps of their memory. In O’Brien’s short story the narrator’s compulsive behaviour to tell repeatedly the same traumatic event in different versions is understood as manifestation of his post-traumatic stress syndrome. The therapeutic working-through process he tries to undergo by means of his narrative is undertaken but never successfully accomplished because neither war nor postmodernist aesthetics allow for definite answers or absolute definitions of war.Artículo Crises across the board in Cormac McCarthy’s "The Road"(Universidad de Sevilla, 2010) Ibarrola Armendáriz, AitorThis article explores the types of crises that author Cormac McCarthy has, overtly or indirectly, represented in his latest work of fiction, The Road (2006). This novel, which shows the gruesome picture of a post-apocalyptic world, can be seen to dwell upon at least three different types of crises ranging from the awe-inspiring effects of global catastrophes to the more personal fears that individuals may feel in quicklydegenerating moral environments. The main body of the article is divided into four sections which try to elucidate the specificities of each of these crises and to see how those specificities are illustrated and dealt with in McCarthy’s novel. The Road can be said to combine some of the newest ingredients of the recent trend of end-of-theworld fiction with features from more classical genres such as Gothic horror or epic narratives. One of the greatest achievements of the work is that it manages to strike a balance between despair and hope by studying in great detail how human beings may react to disasters that they themselves have created.Artículo Clifford Odets and the movies(Universidad de Sevilla, 2010) Hayes, RichardThis essay contends that Clifford Odets’s film-related work carried out in many trips to Hollywood is important for a complete understanding of his career. The essay offers a new perspective on Odets, who has conventionally been seen as an artist of great promise and social commitment who was corrupted by the money on offer from the film industry and spoiled as a writer by the seemingly easy formulae of the Hollywood movies he had to write. The essay traces Odets’s indebtedness to Hollywood film form through an analysis of Golden Boy (1937), and offers thus a way of understanding Odets’s claims about the movies as a “folk theatre”. Odets is seen as a conflicted artist, torn between a sense of responsibility to society and a need to be responsible to himself, and the essay offers a way of understanding Odets’s final, seeming failure as an artist as an expression less of the destructive power of Hollywood and more as an expression of artistic frustration.Artículo “What does it mean to be a man?”: codes of black masculinity in Toni Morrison’s paradise and love(Universidad de Sevilla, 2009) Gallego Durán, María del MarWithin the debate over the representation of contemporary Black masculinity, Morrison has played a pioneering role, especially in two of her novels –Paradise (1998) and Love (2003)– where her intervention in this debate has become deeply influential due to not only her incisive portrayal of the figure of the patriarch and the devastating effects of the institution of patriarchy on the African American family and community, but also because she has shaped “alternative masculinities,” or diverse embodiments of what it actually means to be a Black man nowadays. Morrison is bent on changing their representation by providing plural models of masculinity, which necessarily take into account other identity markers such as sexuality, class, politics, etc, in an attempt at deconstructing a monolithic or essentialist view of African American masculinity.Artículo Unreliable homodiegesis and the trace of influence: the work of E. A. Poe(Universidad de Sevilla, 2010) Fernández Santiago, Miriam; Wallhead, CeliaThe present article elaborates on the question of infl uence from the perspective of Reader-Response Criticism to extend Umberto Eco’s distinction of three paths of literary influence (contemporary, linear, and Zeitgeist) into a fourth one that involves the aesthetic dimension of literary works as artistic manifestations. The literary and critical work of E. A. Poe is used to show the functioning of both direct and reverse influence between Poe and contemporary (Charles Dickens) or later authors (Paul Bowles, Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon). Influence is traced through three main textual tools: specific images, unreliable homodiegesis, and the construction of a final effect. Analysis proceeds from first, ascertaining Poe’s influence on the above-mentioned authors; and second, exploring the nature of this relationship. The result of this analysis shows the addition of symbolism and plot development to Dickens’ work; and of international, contemporary recognition to Poe’s. It also shows the development of the postcolonial and the metafictional in the 20th-century understanding of Poe’s work, and the process by which Poe as an author is characterized to enter the world of fiction.Artículo The Reyes family or how to devour a girl's selfhood in Sandra Cisneros's "Caramelo"(2010) Delgado Marín, Candela; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana)