Drawing upon the writings of British cultural critic Raymond Williams, this article examines a pervading concern with representations of the city and the countryside as political sites and wider symbols of contextual ...Drawing upon the writings of British cultural critic Raymond Williams, this article examines a pervading concern with representations of the city and the countryside as political sites and wider symbols of contextual social and economic shifts in the Granta 2013 list of Best of Young British Novelists. The article argues that the 2013 Granta list examines Williams＇ legacy from a twenty-first century perspective, offering a range of fictions that represent the rapidly changing socio-political, cultural and economic landscapes of contemporary Britain. Through textual analysis and contextualized readings, it suggests that the novels featured on the 2013 list do not offer a purely pastoral view of Britain, but use the natural world as a platform to stage wider discussions regarding a range of present-day issues.展开更多
The dawn of the 21st century saw images of intellectuals in novels change in a drastic way.Intellectuals,and those in the humanities in particular,are no longer portrayed as privileged Enlightenment thinkers or sages ...The dawn of the 21st century saw images of intellectuals in novels change in a drastic way.Intellectuals,and those in the humanities in particular,are no longer portrayed as privileged Enlightenment thinkers or sages with Confucian ideas of salvation.In the novels that take intellectuals as their subject matters,such characters often end up involved in betrayal,self-exile,or spiritual/mortal death.This is not a historical process,nor an inevitable course for intellectuals to be sure,but it remains a legitimate question to ask why these fictional intellectuals are becoming,more often than not,new tragic heroes.Why are they becoming misfits in their society and ending up in exile,abandonment,and even death?The present paper examines different images of intellectuals and the makings of their destinies.展开更多
The dialectic of localism and cosmopolitanism,with the opposition between nationalists and cosmopolitans,since independence and perhaps even before,is an element that structured the spiritual life and the literature o...The dialectic of localism and cosmopolitanism,with the opposition between nationalists and cosmopolitans,since independence and perhaps even before,is an element that structured the spiritual life and the literature of a country such as Brazil,as it was pointed out by Antonio Candido.This dialectic in a globalized country which had been transformed by an extremely rapid urbanization,nowadays is perhaps stronger than ever.That could be seen in contemporary literature,on the level of the imaginary but also on the level of the representation of cities such as Manaus in the north of the country(Relato de um certo Oriente,by Milton Hatoum),Recife in the northeast(Estive la fora,by Ronaldo Correia de Brito),or Brasilia in the central west(Cidade Livre,by Joao Almino).Through these three novels,this essay aims to analyze how a few years after the end of the dictatorship,at a time marked by important changes in Brazilian society,the fiction grasps the articulation between local specificities and the“globalized”city.To that extent,the reading of many urban contemporary fictions will build a kind of mosaic of Brazil and its cultural varieties,through the prism of the city.展开更多
文摘Drawing upon the writings of British cultural critic Raymond Williams, this article examines a pervading concern with representations of the city and the countryside as political sites and wider symbols of contextual social and economic shifts in the Granta 2013 list of Best of Young British Novelists. The article argues that the 2013 Granta list examines Williams＇ legacy from a twenty-first century perspective, offering a range of fictions that represent the rapidly changing socio-political, cultural and economic landscapes of contemporary Britain. Through textual analysis and contextualized readings, it suggests that the novels featured on the 2013 list do not offer a purely pastoral view of Britain, but use the natural world as a platform to stage wider discussions regarding a range of present-day issues.
文摘The dawn of the 21st century saw images of intellectuals in novels change in a drastic way.Intellectuals,and those in the humanities in particular,are no longer portrayed as privileged Enlightenment thinkers or sages with Confucian ideas of salvation.In the novels that take intellectuals as their subject matters,such characters often end up involved in betrayal,self-exile,or spiritual/mortal death.This is not a historical process,nor an inevitable course for intellectuals to be sure,but it remains a legitimate question to ask why these fictional intellectuals are becoming,more often than not,new tragic heroes.Why are they becoming misfits in their society and ending up in exile,abandonment,and even death?The present paper examines different images of intellectuals and the makings of their destinies.
文摘The dialectic of localism and cosmopolitanism,with the opposition between nationalists and cosmopolitans,since independence and perhaps even before,is an element that structured the spiritual life and the literature of a country such as Brazil,as it was pointed out by Antonio Candido.This dialectic in a globalized country which had been transformed by an extremely rapid urbanization,nowadays is perhaps stronger than ever.That could be seen in contemporary literature,on the level of the imaginary but also on the level of the representation of cities such as Manaus in the north of the country(Relato de um certo Oriente,by Milton Hatoum),Recife in the northeast(Estive la fora,by Ronaldo Correia de Brito),or Brasilia in the central west(Cidade Livre,by Joao Almino).Through these three novels,this essay aims to analyze how a few years after the end of the dictatorship,at a time marked by important changes in Brazilian society,the fiction grasps the articulation between local specificities and the“globalized”city.To that extent,the reading of many urban contemporary fictions will build a kind of mosaic of Brazil and its cultural varieties,through the prism of the city.
