Gombrowicz's Grimaces

Gombrowicz's Grimaces
Author: Ewa Plonowska Ziarek
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1998-01-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780791436448

Examines Gombrowicz’s modernist aesthetics in the context of his critique of nationalism, his exploration of queer eroticism, and his interest in hybrid and subaltern identities.

Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form

Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form
Author: Michael Goddard
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1557535523

Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form provides a new and comprehensive account of the writing and thought of the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. While Gombrowicz is probably the key Polish modernist writer, with a stature in his native Poland equivalent to that of Joyce or Beckett in the English language, he remains little known in English. As well as providing a commentary on his novels, plays, and short stories, this book sets Gombrowicz's writing in the context of contemporary cultural theory. The author performs a detailed examination of Gombrowicz's major literary and theatrical work, showing how his conception of form is highly resonant with contemporary, postmodern theories of identity. This book is the essential companion to one of Eastern Europe's most important literary figures whose work, banned by the Nazis and suppressed by Poland's Communist government, has only recently become well known in the West.

The Exile and Return of Writers from East-Central Europe

The Exile and Return of Writers from East-Central Europe
Author: John Neubauer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2009-10-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110217740

This is the first comparative study of literature written by writers who fled from East-Central Europe during the twentieth century. It includes not only interpretations of individual lives and literary works, but also studies of the most important literary journals, publishers, radio programs, and other aspects of exile literary cultures. The theoretical part of introduction distinguishes between exiles, émigrés, and expatriates, while the historical part surveys the pre-twentieth-century exile traditions and provides an overview of the exilic events between 1919 and 1995; one section is devoted to exile cultures in Paris, London, and New York, as well as in Moscow, Madrid, Toronto, Buenos Aires and other cities. The studies focus on the factional divisions within each national exile culture and on the relationship between the various exiled national cultures among each other. They also investigate the relation of each exile national culture to the culture of its host country. Individual essays are devoted to Witold Gombrowicz, Paul Goma, Milan Kundera, Monica Lovincescu, Miloš Crnjanski, Herta Müller, and to the “internal exile” of Imre Kertész. Special attention is devoted to the new forms of exile that emerged during the ex-Yugoslav wars, and to the problems of “homecoming” of exiled texts and writers.

Gombrowicz in Transnational Context

Gombrowicz in Transnational Context
Author: Silvia Dapia
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2019-06-12
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1000011704

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) was born and lived in Poland for the first half of his life but spent twenty-four years as an émigré in Argentina before returning to Europe to live in West Berlin and finally Vence, France. His works have always been of interest to those studying Polish or Argentinean or Latin American literature, but in recent years the trend toward a transnational perspective in scholarship has brought his work to increasing prominence. Indeed, the complicated web of transnational contact zones where Polish, Argentinean, French and German cultures intersect to influence his work is now seen as the appropriate lens through which his creativity ought to be examined. This volume contributes to the transnational interpretation of Gombrowicz by bringing together a distinguished group of North American, Latin American, and European scholars to offer new analyses in three distinct themes of study that have not as yet been greatly explored — Translation, Affect and Politics. How does one translate not only Gombrowicz’s words into various languages, but the often cultural-laden meaning and the particular style and tone of his writing? What is it that passes between author and reader that causes an affect? How did Gombrowicz’s negotiation of the turbulent political worlds of Poland and Argentina shape his writing? The three divisions of this collection address these questions from multiple perspectives, thereby adding significantly to little known aspects of his work.

Who'S Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History

Who'S Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History
Author: Robert Aldrich
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2020-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000143066

First published in 2004. With subjects drawm from politics, the arts and popular culture, Who's Who in Contemporray Gay & Lesbian History, includes 500 entries from a large team of expert international contributors. The geographical scope takes in the whole of the Western world. Includes fascinating information about little-known figures as well as cult icons from World War II to the present day.

Queer Transgressions in Twentieth-Century Polish Fiction

Queer Transgressions in Twentieth-Century Polish Fiction
Author: Jack J. B. Hutchens
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2020-07-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793605041

Throughout the twentieth century in Poland various ideologies attempted to keep queer voices silent—whether those ideologies were fascist, communist, Catholic, or neo-liberal. Despite these pressures, there existed a vibrant, transgressive trend within Polish literature that subverted such silencing. This book provides in-depth textual analyses of several of those texts, covering nearly every decade of the last century, and includes authors such as Witold Gombrowicz, Marian Pankowski, and Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Jack J. B. Hutchens demonstrates the subversive power of each work, showing that through their transgressions they help to undermine nationalist and homophobic ideologies that are still at play in Poland today. Hutchens argues that the transgressive reading of Polish literature can challenge the many binaries on which conservative, heteronormative ideology depends in order to maintain its cultural hegemony.

Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper
Author: Paul Hegarty
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2012
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781845195526

Dennis Cooper's writing has acquired a ferocious reputation for its bold experimentation, its transgressive content, and its emotional content, which is both romantic and touching, as well as cold and hard-edged. For over 20 years, Cooper has explored the boundaries of human living, with sexuality's centrality to that living. The extreme situations he develops in his writing bring out parts of the gay experience that a consensual 'community' often shies away from - likewise the heterosexual mainstream. His most important genre is undoubtedly fiction, but Cooper has also written poetry, large quantities of journalistic works - notably for Artforum and Spin - and has had great success and recognition recently with theatrical works. Dennis Cooper: Writing at the Edge - now available in paperback - enters deep into the worlds that Cooper fabricates, and into the coolness of his expression. This challenging work is addressed by a group of mostly young and new critical writers and academics who provide creative responses to Cooper's artistry. The contributions, which cover the breadth of Cooper's work, develop themes and devices that advance his profound and disturbing world-view. In addition to the artistic responses, the topics in the critical pieces range from sexuality in the suburbs to neurological responses via the limits and possibilities of bodies. The book also looks at the implications of contemporary electronic communication as outlined in Cooper's recent work, and his use of space. Cooper's writing receives a multi-faceted contextualization. His literary ideas are made accessible to any reader interested in learning why, today, Cooper is regarded as one of the foremost writers in expressing the psychological point behind the centrality of sexual expression.

Transformative Fictions

Transformative Fictions
Author: Daniel Just
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2022-07-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100060800X

Transformative Fictions: World Literature and Personal Change engages with current debates in world literature over the past twenty years, addressing the nature of literary influence in centers and peripheries, the formation of transnational literary and pedagogical canons, and the role of translation and regionalism in how we relate to texts from around the globe. The author, Daniel Just, argues for a supranational but sub-global perspective of regions that emphasizes practical reasons for reading and focuses on the potential of literary texts to stimulate personal transformation in readers. One of the recurring dilemmas in these debates is the issue of delimitation of world literature. The trouble with the world as a frame of reference is that no single researcher is bound to have the in-depth knowledge and linguistic skills to discuss works from all countries. In response, this book revives literary theory and recasts it for the purposes of world literature, by making a case for the continuing relevance of literature in the age of new media. With the examples of fictional and nonfictional writings by Milan Kundera, Witold Gombrowicz and Bohumil Hrabal, Just shows that regional literatures offer differing methods of activating readers and thereby prompting personal change. This book would be of general interest to anyone who wants to explore personal change through literature but is particularly indispensable for literary professionals, researchers, and postgraduate and graduate students.

Uncensored

Uncensored
Author: Ann Komaromi
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2015-06-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0810131242

Literature that was self-published and informally circulated in the former Soviet Union in order to evade censorship, in addition to prosecution of its authors, came to be known as samizdat. Vasilii Aksenov, Andrei Bitov, and Venedikt Erofeev were among its most acclaimed practitioners. In her innovative study, Ann Komaromi uses their work to argue for a far more sophisticated understanding of the phenomenon of samizdat, showing how the material circumstances of its creation and dissemination exercised a profound influence on the very idea of dissidence. When a text comes to life as samizdat, it necessarily reconfigures the relationship between author and reader. Using archival research to fully illustrate samizdat’s social and historical context, Komaromi arrives at a more nuanced theoretical position that breaks down the opposition between the autonomous work of art and direct political engagement. The similarities between samizdat and digital culture give her formulation of dissident subjectivity particular contemporary relevance.