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This article addresses connections between the fictional writings of Franz Kafka and Maurice Blanchot by examining the window motif in their stories. This motif has a central meaning for both [...]

Padgett Powell has a habit of saying provocative things, and one such line that struck me was, 'I am gay in every way except the sex.' While an undergraduate at [...]

South African-born Lindsey Collen, based for most of her writing years on the Indian Ocean Republic of Mauritius, has been propelled to fame in the postcolonial English-language sphere for twice having gained the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa region. Best known for her first winner, the breakthrough novel The Rape of Sita (1993, 1995, 2001), she has nevertheless also published several other works, notably in the local Kreol language. She is hailed there as an activist publicising advanced causes through the medium of her innovative short and long fictions, as this summary demonstrates afresh., Late in the 1980s an aspirant woman writer picked from the rotating stand in a second-hand bookshop an old paperback with a lurid cover and vaguely familiar title--or at least [...]

In his short story collection Les Diaboliques (1874), Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly made dandyism an important narrative principle. He transferred the subtle and playful revolt that George Brummell staged in high society England to the literary realm. Like the British dandy, Barbey's storytellers cultivate an aesthetic of dissimulation and duplicity. They weave gaps into their narratives and disguise their own role and perspective as narrators. They subvert literary conventions and narrate under false pretenses. Barbey ties the seductive quality of narrative and the power of fiction to such deviations from tradition and norm. His storytellers do not provide what their listeners expect or ask for. Instead--like Brummell--they constantly tease, surprise, and thus seduce. Their narratives can provide great textual pleasures and yield great power because--like the transparent gauzes that veil and unveil the bodies of Barbey's heroines--they do not gradually reveal their secrets but instead reveal and conceal simultaneously, duplicitously., Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly was a notorious dandy whose eccentric dress and unusual personality stood out in the literary salons of nineteenth-century Paris. His tightly laced corset and overdimensional Spanish hat [...]

Das Erdbeben in Chili (1807), like so many of Heinrich von Kleist's eerily fascinating texts, has been read and reread from a multitude of theoretical angles with reliance upon countless [...]

A sense of terror underlies the seemingly uneventful daily life of Morgana, Mississippi. Terror--surprisingly, perhaps, one of Eudora Welty's favorite words--governs much of the psychological existence of human beings in [...]

IN HIS 2003 ARTICLE 'IS THE NOVEL DEAD?' MARK Mordue put forward the thesis that fiction is in trouble and literary nonfiction is taking its place. I have edited both [...]

This article discusses the manner in which women are portrayed in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Topics include New England history, social class, sex role, and internal narrative.

In the five years since Margaret Atwood's novel Alias Grace (1996) appeared, a number of readers have been attracted to the implications of the quilting trope. Each of the novel's [...]

In several of her novels, Margaret Atwood offers a clear picture of Toronto. That picture is so accurate that, when the Modern Language Association met in Toronto in 1997, The [...]

A resume is presented of the best-selling novel 'Shitsurakuen' by Watanabe Junichi, in which the two main protagonists have an adulterous affair, and which gave adultery a fashionable prestige.

Askold Melnyczuk's 'What is Told' is a novel illustrating dilemmas faced by the displaced subject in its effort to renegotiate and individual and cultural presences. Melnyczuk's perspective is both individual and socio-historic and he summarizes the varied experiences of an extended family in both personal and historical context, whilst sometimes alluding to their mythology and folklore. Individual and cultural presence is displayed as ongoing and re-visionary.

Ivan Turgenev's novel 'Ottsy i deti' (Fathers and Sons) is traditionally seen as portraying generational conflicts in Russia, and more precisely the relationship between Turgenev and 'Sovremennik' (The Contemporary) journal. However, it is suggested that inspiration for the novel was actually attributable to Turgenev's relationship with his daughter and his own role as a father.

The fictional world of Ivan Turgenev was 'Hellenistic' in character while that of Nathaniel Hawthorne's was 'Hebraic.' Striking similarities are evident in Turgenev's 'The Marble Faun' and Hawthorne's 'Song of Triumphant Love' when the narrative nucleus, symbolic development, ethical ambivalence and incidental detail of their works are analyzed. Both believed that evil can be overcome but cannot be removed entirely. A 'sense of sin' can be detected in the roles of the statuary or of the fauns and satyrs they used in their novels. However, an ethical difference is apparent.

Marie Jeanne Riccoboni's novels critique the vain aristocratic values and challenge male hegemony prevalent in 18th century French society. Through the character of Cressy in 'L'Histoire du Marquis de Cressy', Riccoboni demonstrates the male perception of women and how Madame Cressy revolted against the patriarchal trend by committing suicide. Subjugation of women and their manipulation by men is a thematic constant in Riccobani's novels. However, the novels end with visions of revolutionary changes and dismantling of the cultural ideologies and gender stereotypes of the 'ancien regime.'

Works of fiction on early 19th century witchcraft such as the 'Crucible,' published in 1953, dwelt on wide-ranging social and political trials and turmoils in the early American republic. Works including 'The tragedy of Superstition' and 'Rachael Dyer,' which dealt with the Salem witch trials, had a common theme that discarding reason could cause major upheavals in the society.

La Fontaine's 17th-century version of the tale of Psyche provides insights into the nature of fiction. La Fontaine's 'Psyche' represents a departure from the then-dominant tradition of heroic romance, particularly because of the hero's absence. Cupidon's concealment reflects a new type of representation which highlights the gap between description and reality. Psyche is also not described directly; her perfection is portrayed in terms of other well-known heroines and, finally, left to the reader's imagination. In addition, the tale is structured to suggest fiction's self-reflecting nature, with the second half mirroring the first.

The modern Vietnamese novel originated from the south, and did not revolt against traditional literary values, unlike the novels published in the north. The first modern Vietnamese novelists were influenced by two Sino-Vietnamese literary traditions, namely the 'knight-errant' and the 'scholar-beauty' stories. The 'knight-errant' story involved a knight who would act individually, often rebelling against the established authority, rather than leading great armies into battle. The 'scholar-beauty' stories involve a scholar who meets a beautiful maiden, falls in love, overcomes obstacles, passes official examinations, marries her, and lives happily ever after.

Anatolij Kim's recent novel 'Otec-les' addresses a wide range of philosophical, historical and aesthetic issues using cyclical, emblematic and mythical patterns. The novel offers unusual ways of perceiving reality and human existence through a composite of realistic episodes and mythic as well as religious beliefs. It also addresses ontological, ecological, psychological and historical concerns which reveals the unending relationship between humans and other living things. Thus, 'Otec-les' provides philosophical challenges in unique and fascinating ways.

Fyodor Dostoyvsky's novel 'Notes from the Underground' reflects Old Testament lamentations and suggests the protagonist's longing for God as well as the author's criticism of secular morality. In the context of Biblical references, the Undergound Man's disdain of monumental grandeur signifies the Biblical curse on Babylon and the forty years referred to in several contexts reflects the Biblical lamentation of wandering in the wilderness. These references in part one as well as the non-theoretical stance of part two indicate Dostoevskij's belief in religion and his condemnation of secular existentialism.

THE RECENT POPULARITY OF FICTION BY African-American women authors has almost obscured the remarkable work in poetry since the 1960s. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, poets, such as June Jordan, [...]

It is unfortunate that literary works of Koreans living in China have received very little attention in the West since their short stories or what is termed as 'tchalbun sosol' depict social changes in the country as perceived by Korean immigrants. They portray the dramatic transformations to a market economy and the increasing lawlessness of a changing People's Republic of China. The stories of four male Korean authors, namely, Ku Ho-jun, Cho Un-ch'ol, Pak Il and Ch'ae Ch'ol-hjo, which were published in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin province, were selected.

The three stories from Herodotus Book 3 are reviewed and analyzed. These stories involve migratory motifs, and so they are not treated as precious nuggets of Persian history thinly overlaid with a Greek veneer.

Robert Hazel fictional work is analyzed and critically presented. It is stated that his less successful fiction work reminds people of the dazzling, descriptive detail and heartbreaking images that make the poetry of Robert soar.

During most of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, Ellis Burden is the man whom Jack Burden believes to be his father. Jack habitually refers to him as 'the [...]

A study of Russian writer Maxim Gorky is presented with emphasis on his controversial work, A Confession. The novel is examined for the significance of God-seeking aspects as well as God-building.

William Faulkner created Yoknapatawpha County in fifteen books and more than fifty stories. Although these individual works are autonomously coherent, they may be considered as single body. When that is [...]

In one of her essays Flannery O'Connor claims that the best American fiction has always been regional. This fiction has 'passed to and stayed longest wherever there has been a [...]

F. Scott Fitzgerald showed extraordinary interest in evolutionary biology during his time. His preoccupation with this subject matter is evident in his works such as 'The Great Gatsby,' 'This Side of Paradise' and 'The Beautiful and Damned.' Fitzgerald was particularly concerned with the related principles of accident and heredity, the question of eugenics as a possible remedy for many societal ills and the revolutionary theory of sexual selection proposed by Charles Darwin in 'The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.'

It is argued that Nathalie Sarraute's writing, and her portrayal of violence in particular, is best analysed from a Kleinian angle. Sarraute's novels 'Les Fruits D'Or' and 'Disent les Imbeciles' are both examined.

'War and Peace' by Tolstoy has come to be seen as an authentic account of the 1812 war, yet veterans of that war criticized it in a number of ways. These criticisms are examined in detail.

Milan Kundera's 1991 novel 'Nesmrtelnost' (Immortality) explores the role of the author and reader in the late 20th century with references to literary polemics. The novel plays with the reader's perceptions by establishing a fictional world containing three plausible worlds. These worlds are the world of the self-disclosing narrator in the person of Kundera, the world of the characters and the amorphous world of the immortals where authors meet to discuss their fates. Kundera's defacilitation of the I-narrative stresses the subjectivity of the reader in interpreting a text, whether this text is one of fiction or of an individual.