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The tableau, an art form originating from theatres and the visual arts, is also a literary phenomenon. Literary tableaux are short scenic interruptions or pictorial compositions arresting the narrative flow and serving as highlighted moments where time stands still. Either they are scenes of intense emotion, or they occur at a crucial point in the plot. This paper distinguishes between two modes of writing that are at work in literary tableaux, which I will call absorption and contemplation. Absorption is a mode of writing and reading related to formal realism. In his theory about tableaux, Denis Diderot advocates for a realist art and literature that can create the illusion of a close relationship between the work of art and the reader/beholder. Focusing on the 18thcentury English writer Henry Fielding, this paper provides a close reading of selected scenes from the novel Tom Jones, arguing that Fielding created his own tableaux of contemplation. These instances are metafictional moments in which the narrator interrupts the narrative to converse with the reader about an event or a character in the novel. Often, they contain references to classical art and are a mix of epic, tragic and comic elements. Fielding's tableaux explicitly present their own fictionality, consulting with the reader about the difference between art and life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simply put, hyperreality is used to denote something that does not yet exist in the sense of being undeniably demonstrable. According to Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation (1981), hyperreality is a state where reality has been replaced by simulacra, meaning that what is real and what is fictional is indistinguishable. Equally, hyperreality starts as soon as one replaces the question of 'if by 'when'. Therein, in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, it becomes quite difficult to establish whether or not Grace Marks is innocent, pure and wrongly accused of the horrible murders of her employer Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. Likewise, Grace's memory (which, strangely enough, is referred to in terms of its absence rather than its presence since she is supposedly suffering from amnesia) is some sort of virtual reality, an entire world in itself, where Grace can appear to be anything she wants to be. By constantly overlapping the Canadian landscape, Grace's subconscious enables a window into the world within, one of the past, the present and the future, some sort of interface between three different psychological entities with their corresponding and symbolic representations of the landscape. The present paper looks into the novel from behind the lens of the Canadian landscape (although scarce in occurrences) as a metonymy of hyperreal mindscapes: doubly displaced both geographically (she is an Irish immigrant), and mentally (she seems to be manifesting a form of multiple personality disorder), Grace simultaneously exists in hyperreal mindscapes, mimicking and replicating, stating and questioning, challenging readers who are left adrift in a textual world where the boundaries between reality and representation become blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the many frameworks of interpretation that Margaret Atwood's dystopia (or ustopia, as she calls it) The Handmaid's Tale allows, a particularly challenging one is its reading in/as palimpsest. Choosing not to favour an attempt at hierarchizing the narrative construction and the fabula contained in Offred's spoken tale - transcribed from audiocassettes two centuries after the deployment of the Christian fundamentalist coup d'état that turned the United States into a horrifying inferno for women -, and also leaving on the sidelines the seductive, yet rather facile feminist evaluation that the novel invites, this paper focuses on metafiction and the rewriting of "herstory", in an analysis of the 'Historical Notes' that conclude the novel, going backwards rather than forwards in tracing its art and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to discuss the opinions on 9/11 expressed in the newspaper The Guardian by two important contemporary novelists, namely Ian McEwan and Martin Amis, shortly after the attacks, attempting to trace the way in which their views on the event that had just taken place constituted a starting point for their fictional works on the matter. Under focus will be: two articles signed by Ian McEwan, "Beyond Belief", published on September 12th, 2001 and "Only Love and Then Oblivion", on September 15th, and one by Martin Amis, "Fear and Loathing", published on September 18th, 2001. An important aspect is that, as Amis puts it in a later article, "the novelists were now being obliged to snap out of their solipsistic daydreams: to attend, as best they could, to the facts of life" (2008: 13). In light of this statement, the paper aims at creating a framework for the subsequent analysis of the fictional works by the same authors, starting from the premise that the subjectivity they express in the press articles is enhanced to a greater extent in literature, where practically everything may be said under the pretence of being fictional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary literary texts increasingly recycle older writings, assuming extra depth and addressing a cultivated reader. Their scaffolding reveals the intertextual net and renders the reading process at once challenging and rewarding. A case in point is Michael Cunningham's 1998 novel, The Hours - Woolfian in content, form and politics, with obvious references to Mrs. Dalloway, as well as oblique allusions to "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" and other writings. Along these lines, the paper is intended to advance an analysis of Cunningham's multi-layered novel, foregrounding its dialogism and the strategy of its discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like other novels by Rosa Nouchette Carey, Rue with a Difference focuses on female experience as revealed through women's concerns surrounding their various family roles. It deals with marriage and maternity at a time when such domestic-related issues were obsolete and when the pervasive ideology of domesticity gave way to late Victorian ideologies. The novel's adherence to traditional domestic ideals was one of the reasons why it was considered outdated and doomed to oblivion for the most part of the twentieth century. Attempting to reassess Rue with a Difference from a more neutral perspective afforded by the passage of time, the present article is designed to prove that the novel does not fully approve the domestic ideology, displaying instead an ambivalent attitude towards it and its model of femininity. By comparing the representations of feminine family roles in Rue with a Difference with the non-fictional accounts of the models of womanhood promoted by the contrasting ideologies of Victorian culture, the paper will show that the angelic ideal is both supported and subverted within the same fictional text through the mixture of traditional and non-traditional features defining the main female characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mohsin Hamid is, along with Salman Rushdie, one of the most powerful 'postcolonial voices' in British literature to employ elements of magical realism in order to fictionally recreate a hectic contemporary history which seems to be moving faster than ever. People desperately flee from violent civil wars, seeking refuge, and politics of inclusion flourishes in Europe in response. Against this background, drawing inspiration from various violent events, like the Syrian Civil War, the fall of Mosul and the Yemeni Civil War, as well as from his personal migrant experience, Hamid publishes his fourth novel, Exit West, equally personal and political as his other novels, most notably, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, dedicated to the events of 9/11. The paper aims to analyse Exit West from the perspective of this relation between the personal and the political, tracing the role of magical realism in opening the doors towards the painfully realistic construction of otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the Social Self represented in the novel What Maisie Knew (1897) by Henry James. Its representation is analysed under the lens of his brother's (W. James) psychological theory outlined in The Principles of Psychology (1890). The concept of the Social Self in What Maisie Knew may be seen as taking shape in the images of five adults: a father and a mother, a stepfather and a stepmother and a governess. All the adults fail to fulfil their social roles as parents, apparently because their material and spiritual Selves are stronger than the social one. The representation of the Social Self in the novel is achieved via fixed focalization; the Social Selves of the (step)parents are presented from a little child's innocent, subjective point of view. The child becomes the eyes and the ears of the novel, that is, the reflector character through which the novel is narrated. Henry James almost never crosses the boundary and the radii of Maisie's perspective which is strictly kept throughout the entire narrative. It seems that through his novel H. James indirectly blames the English society where unhealthy ethics prosper and in which the devaluation of morality and ideals occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is twofold: firstly, it aims to shed light on the influence Edgar Allan Poe exerted on the work of Nikolaos Episkopopoulos by providing evidence of the Greek writer having read Poe's short fiction. Specific attention is given to the development of the aesthetic tradition in Greece, a tradition to which both Poe and Episkopopoulos are closely tied. Secondly, it explores the possible intertextual relations and parallels between Poe's female ideal and Episkopopoulos' fictional representation of women as this is exemplified in the latter's Ut Dièse Mineur (1893). The side-by-side examination of the female heroine appearing in Ut Dièse Mineur reveals significant links between Episkopopoulos' tales and Poe's, highlighting the similar manner in which both writers develop the image of a sensuous female persona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the influence of the novelists and philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the emerging and development of the modern novel as a free and outstanding form of literature, and what is more - as a form of art. The paper points out the impact of such names as Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett and Malcolm Bradbury, personalities that sought to change the status of the novel through their works. Due to these authors there appeared and flourished the tradition that we now name the "modern" novel. By the turn of the century, the novel was shifting to art; it was becoming a more interesting and more influential form of literature; it was aspiring to become a far more complex, various, open and self-conscious form, one which, in a new way, sought to be taken seriously as "art". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is to introduce some of the latest developments in the contemporary novel. In order to attain our goal, we shall proceed to firstly survey the cultural background, namely the (post)postmodernist period, then some tendencies concerning the literary genres, with an emphasis on three of the recent modes/genre - "hysterical realism", "recherché postmodernism", and the maximalist novel. In contemporary (literary) reality, the past is revisited, reconsidered, repeated, incorporated and modified, given a new meaning, and not necessarily imitated or copied, or negated; a reworking of the past to call for a new way of being in the future. The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first are characterized by an effusion of many new versions of realism, sometimes hybridized; the multi-faceted realism is a reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Second World War, Japan plunged into a deep identity crisis. This was due partly to the shock of being defeated in the war, but mostly to the inability to cope with the downfall of the Emperor, the Father of the nation, the direct descendant of the Sun goddess, who had failed to protect them. Kazuo Ishiguro's first two novels, which are set in post-war Japan, bring forth this issue through the description of a belittled father figure, undergoing an identity crisis, trying to re-establish his authority, but confessing his faults and accepting his condition. The aim of this paper is to identify the similarities between the fall of the father figure and that of the leader of the Japanese nation in both Kazuo Ishiguro's novels, as well as the differences between the consequences this has had in life and in fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of the power of words, of the realm shared by fiction, poetry and political discourse, brings us to one of the most important common points linking the language of literature and its rhetoric, on the one hand, and the rhetoric of political discourse on the other: the consistent use of figurative language to appeal to the feelings of audiences. Most people would think, whether rightly or wrongly, of politics as relatively impure and manipulative and of literary language as elevated and enlightening. The emphasis in this text, a reconsideration of Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain Speech," is not on the evaluation of the quality of the literary and political discourses, but on the devices used in the public space that heavily rely on what one usually calls fictional, literary, even poetical devices to create "extra-literary" effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pirate is a ship-raider who abides by no rules. The pirate roams the tides of the ocean exploring new territories. An experimental writer is a literary pirate who explores new textual territories and toys with literary canons. The literary pirate abides by no generic laws and inscribes rebellion in the pages of his fiction. Classicists even label them as "literary outlaws". In normative piracy, stealing, killing, destroying and ravaging are absolutely allowed. In experimental fiction, plots are either spiral, cyclic or non-existent. Characters are either strange humans or mutant creatures mirroring internal and external struggles with their worlds. Ever since the Second World War, American writers have pledged the oath of piracy and created a fiction that transcends reality. To reflect their apparent antagonism to the laws of the canons, literary genres are often introduced by the prefix "anti" such as anti-detective and anti-romance. To delineate their own code of superiority over tradition, the prefix "meta" becomes attached to historiographicmetafiction and "post" is added to post-apocalyptic fiction. Science fiction, graphic novels, psychedelic fiction are only a tip of the iceberg when it comes to enumerating how literary piracy eviscerated the laws of time, space, death, religion, morality and consciousness. Drawing on Jean François Lyotard„s contention that postmodernity is "the incredulity towards grand-narratives", this chapter shall examine how the rise of new literary genres in postmodern literature is a form of literary piracy. American Psycho (1991), One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Naked Lunch (1959) are three case studies that epitomize piracy in its many folds. Accordingly, this article shall explore the different generic transgressions from psychedelic, to anti-detective to postmodern gothic experimentations. It will equally explore how literary piracy transgresses the boundaries of reception through tackling controversial themes ranging from madness, to homosexuality to substance abuse. This essay shall culminate on tracing the parallels between actual piracy and its cultural inscription in these novels. Naturally, as actual piracy is criminalized, literary piracy is deemed as scandalous, inacceptable and highly controversial. Whether sailing across the tides of the endless sea or writing the pages of timeless novels, breaking free from the confinement of mould and tradition renders freedom irresistibly outlawed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]