RSS 1.0Text Matters: a journal of literature, theory and culture nr 9/2019
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“Same Old Ed, . . . Uncommitted”: BMW Socialism and Post-Roguery in Guy Vanderhaeghe’s Early Fiction
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)In this paper I assess how Guy Vanderhaeghe’s early fiction criticizes the class-based and civil movements of post-1960s Saskatchewan through the recurring character of Ed. The protagonist of “Man Descending” and “Sam, ... -
Roguish Self-Fashioning and Questing in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything”
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)This paper examines self-fashioning in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything,” a story about a Sarajevo teenager’s journey through ex-Yugoslavia to the Slovenian town of Murska Sobota. His aim? “[T]o buy a freezer chest for my ... -
The Outlaw Machine, the Monstrous Outsider and Motorcycle Fetishists: Challenging Rebellion, Mobility and Masculinity in Kenneth Anger’s "Scorpio Rising" and Steven Spielberg’s "Duel"
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)The paper analyzes the ways in which Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963) and Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971) draw on and challenge selected road movie conventions by adhering to the genre’s traditional reliance on cultural ... -
“You’ll never meet someone like me again”: Patty Jenkins’s "Monster" as Rogue Cinema
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)Film is a powerful medium that can influence audience’s perceptions, values and ideals. As filmmaking evolved into a serious art form, it became a powerful tool for telling stories that require us to re-examine our ideology. ... -
Review of "White" by Bret Easton Ellis
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019) -
Of Grim Witches and Showy Lady-Devils: Wealthy Women in Literature and Film
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)Imagining super rich women in the real and fictional world has long been a struggle. Those few depictions that do exist are scattered across time periods and literary genres, reflecting the legal restrictions that, at ... -
Theater Without a Script—Improvisation and the Experimental Stage of the Early Mid-Twentieth Century in the United States
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)It was in the mid-twentieth century that the independent theatrical form based entirely on improvisation, known now as improvisational/improvised theatre, impro or improv, came into existence and took shape. Viola Spolin, ... -
Liminal Space in J. G. Ballard’s "Concrete Island"
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)This article explores the way in which surrealist techniques and assumptions underpin spatial representations in Ballard’s Concrete Island. With much of Ballard’s fiction using spatiality as an ideologically charged ... -
Don DeLillo’s "White Noise": A Virilian Perspective
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)Don DeLillo’s White Noise depicts a world of rapid techno-scientific and economical changes. Paul Virilio’s concepts of dromology and speed, as well as his notions of accident and technology, seem to be the most relevant ... -
“But what a place / to put a piano”: Nostalgic Objects in Robert Minhinnick’s "Diary of the Last Man"
Handley, Agata
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)
In 2003, Martin Rees referred to the present as “mankind’s final century.” A few years later, Slavoj Žižek wrote that humankind is heading towards “apocalyptic zero-point,” when the ecological crisis will most probably ... -
On Unruly Text, or Text-Trickster: Leslie Marmon Silko’s "Ceremony" as Healing
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)The article discusses Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony with a focus on textual manifestations of the figure of the trickster. The theme of shape-shifting and transformation that one usually associates with tricksters is ... -
What Ever Happened to My Peace of Mind? Hag Horror as Narrative of Trauma
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)In his pioneering study of Grande Dame Guignol (also referred to as hag horror or psycho-biddy), a female-centric 1960s subgenre of horror film, Peter Shelley explains that the grande dame, a stock character in this form ... -
A Wild Roguery: Bruce Chatwin’s "The Songlines" Reconsidered
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)This article revisits, analyzes and critiques Bruce Chatwin’s 1987 bestseller, The Songlines, more than three decades after its publication. In Songlines, the book primarily responsible for his posthumous celebrity, Chatwin ... -
“A right kind of rogue”: Lisa McInerney’s "The Glorious Heresies" (2015) and "The Blood Miracles" (2017)
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)The following article analyzes two novels, published recently by a new, powerful voice in Irish fiction, Lisa McInerney: her critically acclaimed debut The Glorious Heresies (2015) and its continuation The Blood Miracles ... -
Spaces of (Re)Connections: Performing Experiences of Disabling Gender Violence
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)The article explores the potential “healing” role performance art can have when representing disabling trauma, and engaging, as part of the creative process, participants who have experienced in their lives significant ... -
Three Layers of Metaphors in Ross Macdonald’s "Black Money"
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)In his early career, Kenneth Millar, better known as Ross Macdonald, emulated the style of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. By the 1960s he had established himself as a distinct voice in the hardboiled genre. In his ... -
Joe Brainard’s "I Remember", Fragmentary Life Writing and the Resistance to Narrative and Identity
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)Paul Ricoeur declares that “being-entangled in stories” is an inherent property of the human condition. He introduces the notion of narrative identity—a form of identity constructed on the basis of a self-constructed ... -
Heresy and Orthodoxy Now: The Zigzagging Paths of the Lawful
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)In this article I consider a certain characteristic of our times as a “secular age,” namely, a series of complications in our understanding of transgression. Transgression implies the presence of some rules and laws which ... -
“Let me hear Thy voice”: Michèle Roberts’s Refiguring of Mary Magdalene in the Light of The Song of Songs
(Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019)The article engages with the protagonist of The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Michèle Roberts, first published in 1984 as The Wild Girl. Filipczak discusses scholarly publications that analyze the role of Mary Magdalene, ...