Language, Memory, and Exile in the Writing of Milan Kundera
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Visione Del Mondo
Weltanschauung - Visione del mondo Art Forum Würth Capena 14.09.09 – 07.08.10 Opere e testi di: Kofi Annan, Louise Bourgeois, Abdellatif Laâbi, Imre Bukta, Saul Bellow, John Nixon, Bei Dao, Xu Bing, Branko Ruzic, Richard von Weizsäcker, Anselm Kiefer, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Marcos Benjamin, Twins Seven Seven, Paavo Haavikko, Hic sunt leones, Nelson Mandela, Kyung Hwan Oh, Jean Baudrillard, Huang Yong Ping, Nagib Machfus, Inge Thiess-Böttner, Guido Ceronetti, Richard Long, Yasar Kemal, Igor Kopystiansky, Imre Kertèsz, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Kazuo Katase, Milan Kundera, Frederich William Ayer, Günter Uecker, Durs Grünbein, Mehmed Zaimovic, Enzo Cucchi, Vera Pavlova, Franz-Erhard Walther, Charles D. Simic, Horacio Sapere, Susan Sontag, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, George Steiner, Nicole Guiraud, Bernard Noël, Mattia Moreni, George Tabori, Richard Killeen, Abdourahman A. Waberi, Roser Bru, Doris Runge, Grazina Didelyte, Gérard Titus-Carmel, Edoardo Sanguineti, Mimmo Rotella, Adam Zagajewski, Piero Gilardi, Günter Grass, Anise Koltz, Moritz Ney, Lavinia Greenlaw, Xico Chaves, Liliane Welch, Fátima Martini, Dario Fo, Tom Wesselmann, Ernesto Tatafiore, Emmanuel B. Dongala, Olavi Lanu, Martin Walser, Roman Opalka, Kostas Koutsourelis, Emilio Vedova, Dalai Lama, Gino Gorza, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Robert Indiana, Nadine Gordimer, Efiaimbelo, Les Murray, Arthur Stoll, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Boris Orlov, Carlos Fuentes, Klaus Staeck, Alì Renani, Wolfang Leber, Alì Aramideh Ahar, Sogyal Rinpoche, Ulrike Rosembach, Andrea Zanzotto, Adriena Simotova, Jürgen -
PHILIP ROTH and the STRUGGLE of MODERN FICTION by JACK
PHILIP ROTH AND THE STRUGGLE OF MODERN FICTION by JACK FRANCIS KNOWLES A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) July 2020 © Jack Francis Knowles, 2020 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Philip Roth and The Struggle of Modern Fiction in partial fulfillment of the requirements submitted by Jack Francis Knowles for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Examining Committee: Ira Nadel, Professor, English, UBC Supervisor Jeffrey Severs, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Michael Zeitlin, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Lisa Coulthard, Associate Professor, Film Studies, UBC University Examiner Adam Frank, Professor, English, UBC University Examiner ii ABSTRACT “Philip Roth and The Struggle of Modern Fiction” examines the work of Philip Roth in the context of postwar modernism, tracing evolutions in Roth’s shifting approach to literary form across the broad arc of his career. Scholarship on Roth has expanded in both range and complexity over recent years, propelled in large part by the critical esteem surrounding his major fiction of the 1990s. But comprehensive studies of Roth’s development rarely stray beyond certain prominent subjects, homing in on the author’s complicated meditations on Jewish identity, a perceived predilection for postmodern experimentation, and, more recently, his meditations on the powerful claims of the American nation. This study argues that a preoccupation with the efficacies of fiction—probing its epistemological purchase, questioning its autonomy, and examining the shaping force of its contexts of production and circulation— roots each of Roth’s major phases and drives various innovations in his approach. -
Reading Guide the Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Reading Guide The Book of Laughter and Forgetting By Milan Kundera ISBN: 9780060932145 Plot Summary With its seven interrelated parts--rich in story, character, and imaginative range--The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1978) is the novel that brought Czech-born Milan Kundera his first big international success. Aaron Asher's new translation, commissioned and monitored by Kundera himself, conveys beautifully into English the nuances and the tone of the author's original text. "Part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography" (as the New York Times described it), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is, above all, the wonderfully integrated stories of men and women living in a world of public oppression and private longings, a world in which history may be rewritten overnight and in which love may fall victim to either political intrusion or personal betrayal. The seven parts of Kundera's novel explore different aspects of human existence in the twentieth century, particularly as they are affected by life in the police state of the narrator's fictionalized Bohemia. In 1971, three years after the Russian occupation of his homeland, Mirek--under surveillance by the not-so-secret police--seeks to retrieve his love letters from his former lover, Zdena. Marketa and her husband, Karel, must cope with Karel's increasingly childlike mother while at the same time dealing with the amoral Eva and memories of past desires. At a small French summer school, two American girls learn the lessons of laughter. Displaced to a provincial town in Western Europe, Tamina ("all the other stories are variations on her own story") urgently tries to retrieve memories of her husband and their past together in Bohemia, memories recorded in notebooks that she left behind at her mother-in-law's house in Prague. -
1What Is a Novel?
WhatWHAT is ISa ANovel? NOVEL? WHAT1 IS A NOVEL? novel is a piece of prose fiction of a reasonable length. Even a definition as toothless as this, however, is still too restricted. Not A all novels are writtten in prose. There are novels in verse, like Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin or Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. As for fiction, the distinction between fiction and fact is not always clear. And what counts as a reasonable length? At what point does a novella or long short story become a novel? André Gide’s The Immoralist is usually described as a novel, and Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Duel’ as a short story, but they are both about the same length. The truth is that the novel is a genre which resists exact definition. This in itself is not particularly striking, since many things – ‘game’, for example, or ‘hairy’ – resist exact definition. It is hard to say how ape-like you have to be in order to qualify as hairy. The point about the novel, however, is not just that it eludes definitions, but that it actively undermines them. It is less a genre than an anti-genre. It cannibalizes other literary modes and mixes the bits and pieces promiscuously together. You can find poetry and dramatic dialogue in the novel, along with epic, pastoral, satire, history, elegy, trag- edy and any number of other literary modes. Virginia Woolf described it as ‘this most pliable of all forms’. The novel quotes, parodies and transforms other genres, converting its literary ancestors into mere components of itself in a kind of Oedipal vengeance on them. -
Ota Filip's Wallenstein Und Lukretia
James Jordan “Die Geschichte ist die Geschichte ihrer zahlreichen Interpretationen” Ota Filip’s Wallenstein und Lukretia In Wallenstein und Lukretia (1978), Ota Filip expounds his personal theory regar- ding Wallenstein’s first marriage. Kepler’s horoscope had predicted that Wallen- stein’s first wife would die early, and that he would return to military life and great deeds but also to a pitiful death. Wallenstein seeks to prolong the life of his wife and confound the predictions. He is drawn into a personal moral dilemma and into the conflicts of the Counter-Reformation. Filip uses the historical setting to draw parallels with Czechoslovakia under Communist rule, in terms both of public versus private morality and the tension between conservative power-driven cliques and more progressive forces. He uses a descendant of Wallenstein’s ser- vant as a framework narrator, a professional historian in Czechoslovakia whose personal search for truth brings him into conflict with the orthodoxies of Marxist historical reconstruction. This self-reflexive element enables Filip both to use the historical novel as a tool of social and political criticism and to comment on the process of historical reinterpretation in the service of a dominant ideology. The figure of General Wallenstein presents an enigma which has fascinated writers and historians, including Friedrich Schiller, Alfred Döblin, and Golo Mann, since his death in 1634. The unreliability and inconsistency of much of the evidence surrounding his life, and in particular his character and motivation, have brought historians to the borders of fiction and crea- tive writers into engagement with historical facts and the limits of their in- terpretation. -
The Thought of Literature: Notes to Contemporary Fictions
The Thought of Literature Notes to contemporary fictions Jason Childs A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Technology Sydney, February 2018. Certificate of original authorship I certify that the work in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree nor has it been submitted as part of requirements for a degree except as acknowledged within the text. I also certify that the thesis has been written by me. Any help that I have received in my research work and the preparation of the thesis itself has been acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated in the thesis. This research is supported by an Austalian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Signature of Candidate: Production Note: Signature removed prior to publication. February 20, 2018 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I am deeply grateful to Robyn Ferrell for taking over my supervision at a late stage in my candidature. Her feedback on my ideas and drafts, always generous and incisive, was invaluable in completing this work. Without Berndt Sellheim’s encouragement, I would not have begun this project; without his support, I would not have finished it. I am blessed to call him my friend. Martin Harrison was an important mentor for several years prior to starting this work and my supervisor during its defining early stages. Fellow students of Martin's will understand when I say that, despite his untimely death in 2014, there is not a sentence here that wasn’t written in conversation with him. -
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Maxwell Institute Publications 2000 The eD ad Sea Scrolls: Questions and Responses for Latter-day Saints Donald W. Parry Stephen D. Ricks Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi Part of the Religious Education Commons Recommended Citation Parry, Donald W. and Ricks, Stephen D., "The eD ad Sea Scrolls: Questions and Responses for Latter-day Saints" (2000). Maxwell Institute Publications. 25. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/25 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maxwell Institute Publications by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Preface What is the Copper Scroll? Do the Dead Sea Scrolls contain lost books of the Bible? Did John the Baptist study with the people of Qumran? What is the Temple Scroll? What about DNA research and the scrolls? We have responded to scores of such questions on many occasions—while teaching graduate seminars and Hebrew courses at Brigham Young University, presenting papers at professional symposia, and speaking to various lay audiences. These settings are always positive experiences for us, particularly because they reveal that the general membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a deep interest in the scrolls and other writings from the ancient world. The nonbiblical Dead Sea Scrolls are of great import because they shed much light on the cultural, religious, and political position of some of the Jews who lived shortly before and during the time of Jesus Christ. -
Rein in Den Elfenbeinturm!
RAUS AUS DEM ELFENBEINTURM! - REIN IN DEN ELFENBEINTURM! LITERATUR(WISSENSCHAFT) IN DER ZERREISSPROBE Erwartet man in der Gesellschaft von einem Slawisten als Vertreter der Geisteswissenschaften, Neu- es über den slawistischen Bestsellerautor Dostojewski zu erfahren, eventuell Aufklärung darüber zu erhalten, wie 'unser' beliebtester talk-show-Autor Andrzej Szczypiorski aus Polen Naziverbrechen be- wertet oder ganz einfach Unterhaltung durch die Gedichte des emigrierten russischen Lyrikers Iosif Brodskij, hierzulande schon seit Jahren nur mehr "Joseph Brodsky" genannt, dann wären diese Er- wartungen völlig legitim. Denn: Information, Aufklärung und Orientierung sowie kurzweilige Unterhaltung sind die üblicherweise der Literatur, aber teils auch ihrer Kritik entgegengebrachten Erwartungen.- Oder vielleicht doch nur Hoffnungen? Doch muß - keineswegs nur die slawistische - Literaturwissenschaft die Gesellschaft immer wieder darin enttäuschen, ihr all dies zu bieten. Deshalb fordert man von ihr, sie solle - wie so manche unse- rer Disziplinen - endlich ihren lebensfernen "Elfenbeinturm" verlassen! Kriecht man doch als Geisteswissenschaftler über Jahrzehnte auf der Objektebene der Vorlesungen vor sich hin, da mag es nicht von Schaden sein, wenn man sich mal kurzzeitig auf die Metaebene ka- tapultiert. Aus dieser Vogelperspektive sieht ja doch alles so ganz anders aus: Da läßt sich nicht mehr übersehen, daß von den 52 800 Buchneuerscheinungen im Deutschland des Jahres 1994 gerade mal eine bis zwei etwa mit der bulgarischen Literatur zu tun haben. Durch die Entscheidung für die Metaebene wird alles kompliziert: "In welcher Sprache soll ich zu Ih- nen sprechen?" - so läßt Johannes Bobrowski den wichtigsten Dichter der sorbischen Moderne, Ja- kub Bart, fragen: Denn sein bäuerlich-sorbisches Volk verstand seine artifiziellen Gedichte nicht. In welcher Sprache soll man sprechen? In der Literatur? In der Literatur w i s s enschaft? Natürlich in einer verständlichen - wird man zu Recht entgegnen. -
ELUCIDATING the EXISTENTIAL STRUGGLE of CZECHOSLOVAKIANS Aswini.P (Research Scholar, Acharya Nagarjuna University)
VEDA’S JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOELL) Vol.5 An International Peer Reviewed Journal Spl.Issue 3 http://www.joell.in 2018 NATIONAL SEMINAR PAPER ELUCIDATING THE EXISTENTIAL STRUGGLE OF CZECHOSLOVAKIANS Aswini.P (Research Scholar, Acharya Nagarjuna University) ABSTRACT Czechoslovakia, a central European country was occupied by Austro- Hungarian Empire after First World War (1914- 1918). Later Germans occupied it during the Second World War (1939-1945). It was liberated in 1945 by Soviet and American forces. In 1946 Communist party won the elections and occupied Czechoslovakia until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Czech was peacefully dissolved and became the independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993. Modern Czech literature is divided into numerous periods like 19th century, the avant-garde of interwar period, the years under Communism and the Prague Spring, and the literature of the post- Communist Czech Republic. Milan Kundera (1929 - ) comes under the year of Communism and Prague Spring. In his two novels The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he described the gloomy life of Czechs, who were under the control of Communists from 1948-1989. Keywords: Exile, Absurdity, Communist Regime, Struggle, Existence, Identity, Facticity, Authenticity. Author(s) retain the copyright of this article Copyright © 2018 VEDA Publications Author(s) agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License 168 Proceedings of National Seminar on “Language of Literature and Culture” held on 22nd & 23rd Nov., 2018. Organised by the Dept. of English, JMJ College for Women, Tenali. -
In 1975, Seven Years After the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, Milan Kundera Left His Country for France
KUNDERA’S NOVELS IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSLATION Jan RUBES In 1975, seven years after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Milan Kundera left his country for France. This was at the time when Husak’s power made it easer to get rid of “anticommunist elements”. Kundera had chosen France for several reasons. First, he spoke French relatively well. In the early sixties, he translated and published an anthology of Apollinaire’s poetry. Secondly, his books, and especially “The Joke”, published in France, had been very successful. Thirdly, he was, like most Czech intellectuals, attached to French cultural heritage. Upon his arrival in France, Kundera had been known as the author of the novel “The Joke” (1968), a book of short stories “Laughable Loves” (1970), and an other novel “Life is Elsewhere” (1973). His fourth book, “The Farewell Waltz” was published in 1976, some months after his arrival in France. The interest in Kundera and the success of his books in France seem easy to comprehend. Since 1966 Czechoslovak intellectuals tried to integrate new democratic elements in the political practice. In the beginning of 1968 the communist party, which until then had rejected any attempt at post Stalinist reforms, became the initiator of the social transformation process. The role of communist intellectuals was essential : whereas they had legitimized the cultural policy of the party since the 50s, suddenly they became, in the context of liberalization, the most dynamic group in society. In France, the situation of a number of very well known intellectuals who joined the party after World War Two was similar. -
Cze0s, Hit Dubeek, Hint at CIA Links
Cze0s, Hit Dubeek, Hint at CIA Links • By Dusko Doder The program included schedule advisories or guid- „.iisshington Post Porelirn Service the ominous-sounding state- ance papers. PRAGUE, March 10 — ment that alle ged "con- The radio, which was once Czechoslovakia's govern- nectfons of the opposition financed by the CIA, broad- ment launched a major at- people will be judged in casts daily to Czechoslova- tack On former Communist forums other than this" in- Ida, Hungary, Romania, Po- Party = elader Alexander terview. land and Bulgaria. It often Dtbeek and his supporters Political observers here uses material smuggled out tonight, strongly hinting interpreted the public at- of Communist countries to that they' have maintained tack on the leaders of the the West links with the U.S. Central "Prague Spring" — the brief The only clear reference intelligence Agency. period of liberalizing re. to Dubcek in the papers The 'charges were made forms that Dubcek intro- shown on the screen was a during a 45-minate televi- duced in 1968 before it was letter he wrote 0after. the sion interview with Capt. crsuhed by the Soviet-led in- death of Josef Smrkovsky, a Pavel Minarek, a Czech' in- vasion — as a clear warning prominent leader of the telligente agent who infil- against dissident activities "Prague Spring." trated the TJ.S.-operated Ra- between now and next The thrust of Minarik's re- dio Free Europe. The inter- month's Communist Party marks was that RFE is still view, broadcast live here, congress. a branch of the CIA and was also carried over Inter- These observers said that that Czechoslovak dissidents vision, the network linking theer are no indications that were knowingly working for 111 Soviet-bloc countries. -
Encounter: Essays by Milan Kundera
TIM JONES is a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. His thesis explores Milan Kundera's three, critically-neglected French novels, Slowness, Identity, and Ignorance. His paper on Slowness can be found at the Review of European Studies website. Book Review Encounter: Essays by Milan Kundera Trans. by Linda Asher, London: Faber and Faber, 2010, 192 pp., £12.99, ISBN 978-0-571-25089-9 / Tim Jones ALMOST EXACTLY HALFWAY THROUGH his latest collection of essays, Milan Kundera provides, in a manner with which readers of both his fiction and non- fiction will be familiar, a working definition of the noun that he has chosen for his title. An encounter, he informs us, is ‘not a social relation, not a friendship, not even an alliance’, but ‘a spark; a lightning flash; random chance’ (pp. 83– 84). This explanation grants some cohesion between the thematic concerns and peformative elements of a book in danger of appearing frustratingly eclectic, which blends reworked versions of material published elsewhere—in some cases, as with Kundera’s musings on musician Iannis Xenakis, decades ago— with entirely new compositions, together introducing a series of fascinating subjects but mostly refusing to dwell on any single one for more than a few short paragraphs. The second of Encounter’s nine parts, for example, discusses several European novels that Kundera finds particularly interesting, but in affording each only two or three pages his explorations often sound much like the truncated soundbites that novels of his own, such as Immortality and Slowness, work hard to denounce.