Saskia Lettmaier
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199569977
- eISBN:
- 9780191722066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569977.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
This chapter opens with a case study (Orford v. Cole) that presents in detail the way the breach-of-promise action was structured around nineteenth-century notions of ideal womanhood. It provides a ...
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This chapter opens with a case study (Orford v. Cole) that presents in detail the way the breach-of-promise action was structured around nineteenth-century notions of ideal womanhood. It provides a consideration of the strategies practised by plaintiffs and their counsel to obscure the structural inconsistency, and compares these strategies to those practised by other nineteenth-century women similarly positioned on the outskirts of domesticity, on the dangerous interface between the public and the private, so to speak: women writers and women scientists. The chapter finds evidence for the success of these strategies in both the phenomenal awards secured by early-period breach-of-promise plaintiffs and in the fictional records that date from the early period. In the early period, there is no evidence of any fictional exploitation of the structural inconsistency. Rather than exploiting the suit-immanent inconsistency, writers in the early period display a marked tendency to create an inconsistency by inverting the feminine ideal and casting that inversion in the plaintiff role. The artistic effects of this studied ‘miscasting’ – of putting a widow or virago figure where a true woman should be – are both ludicrous and faintly nauseating. In this disharmony, in both the depiction and the reaction it evokes, there is an element of the grotesque, which may be regarded as the dominant aesthetic of early-period breach-of-promise fiction.Less
This chapter opens with a case study (Orford v. Cole) that presents in detail the way the breach-of-promise action was structured around nineteenth-century notions of ideal womanhood. It provides a consideration of the strategies practised by plaintiffs and their counsel to obscure the structural inconsistency, and compares these strategies to those practised by other nineteenth-century women similarly positioned on the outskirts of domesticity, on the dangerous interface between the public and the private, so to speak: women writers and women scientists. The chapter finds evidence for the success of these strategies in both the phenomenal awards secured by early-period breach-of-promise plaintiffs and in the fictional records that date from the early period. In the early period, there is no evidence of any fictional exploitation of the structural inconsistency. Rather than exploiting the suit-immanent inconsistency, writers in the early period display a marked tendency to create an inconsistency by inverting the feminine ideal and casting that inversion in the plaintiff role. The artistic effects of this studied ‘miscasting’ – of putting a widow or virago figure where a true woman should be – are both ludicrous and faintly nauseating. In this disharmony, in both the depiction and the reaction it evokes, there is an element of the grotesque, which may be regarded as the dominant aesthetic of early-period breach-of-promise fiction.
Ceri Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199547845
- eISBN:
- 9780191720901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547845.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Each element in the syllogism of the conscience has been tested and found faulty, and each breakdown has been expressed through an alteration in the poet's flesh. Though under Christian theology an ...
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Each element in the syllogism of the conscience has been tested and found faulty, and each breakdown has been expressed through an alteration in the poet's flesh. Though under Christian theology an enquiry into the body is also an enquiry into the godhead that it images, the form mirrored by the poems is not flawless. In Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan, the body is forced into a grotesque shape by the divine pressure to speak. The psychological costs of maintaining a conscience are the aetiolated attitudes of boredom, irony, and opportunistic agreement. They appear in a caricature of a body which is tortured, particulated, involuted, written, on and wrung out. It is thus never wholly the poets' own as it utters someone else's intruded words. Though poems murmur about techniques of control, the devices of grace force disgruntled ejaculations from them. They are more than they mean to say. Such a consciously inadequate use by the poets must shake the position which metaphysical poetry has held for two decades, through Lewalski's scholarly vigour, of being a solely and stoutly Protestant poetics of the Word. Indeed, Stuart writers show that the torques produced by enigma, aposiopesis, subjectio, antanaclasis, and chiasmus engineer the conscience with perhaps a little discomfort in a prosthetic poetics.Less
Each element in the syllogism of the conscience has been tested and found faulty, and each breakdown has been expressed through an alteration in the poet's flesh. Though under Christian theology an enquiry into the body is also an enquiry into the godhead that it images, the form mirrored by the poems is not flawless. In Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan, the body is forced into a grotesque shape by the divine pressure to speak. The psychological costs of maintaining a conscience are the aetiolated attitudes of boredom, irony, and opportunistic agreement. They appear in a caricature of a body which is tortured, particulated, involuted, written, on and wrung out. It is thus never wholly the poets' own as it utters someone else's intruded words. Though poems murmur about techniques of control, the devices of grace force disgruntled ejaculations from them. They are more than they mean to say. Such a consciously inadequate use by the poets must shake the position which metaphysical poetry has held for two decades, through Lewalski's scholarly vigour, of being a solely and stoutly Protestant poetics of the Word. Indeed, Stuart writers show that the torques produced by enigma, aposiopesis, subjectio, antanaclasis, and chiasmus engineer the conscience with perhaps a little discomfort in a prosthetic poetics.
Caroline McCracken-Flesher
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195169676
- eISBN:
- 9780199787876
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195169676.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Revealed as “the Author of Waverley” by his financial crash, Scott reworks his authorial identity, developing new personae even as he admits his authorship. In the Malachi Malagrowther letters, a ...
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Revealed as “the Author of Waverley” by his financial crash, Scott reworks his authorial identity, developing new personae even as he admits his authorship. In the Malachi Malagrowther letters, a persona foregrounding the grotesque body that Scotland has become in an English context, allows him to intervene more deliberately in the economics of politics: he successfully challenges British banking laws as they apply to Scotland. In Chronicles of the Canongate, the persona is a putative author in search of an audience to lend him authority. He learns that relevance depends on his audience's engagement — their disagreement rather than their quiet compliance. Scott constructs an activist relation between writer and reader.Less
Revealed as “the Author of Waverley” by his financial crash, Scott reworks his authorial identity, developing new personae even as he admits his authorship. In the Malachi Malagrowther letters, a persona foregrounding the grotesque body that Scotland has become in an English context, allows him to intervene more deliberately in the economics of politics: he successfully challenges British banking laws as they apply to Scotland. In Chronicles of the Canongate, the persona is a putative author in search of an audience to lend him authority. He learns that relevance depends on his audience's engagement — their disagreement rather than their quiet compliance. Scott constructs an activist relation between writer and reader.
Kathryn M. Grossman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199642953
- eISBN:
- 9780191739231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199642953.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
Chapter 2 examines the political and poetic universe of Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866) in the light of La Légende des siècles and William Shakespeare as well as Shakespeare’s The Tempest. ...
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Chapter 2 examines the political and poetic universe of Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866) in the light of La Légende des siècles and William Shakespeare as well as Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Following the spectacular success of Les Misérables, Les Travailleurs de la mer at first seems to head off in a different direction by depicting the mighty battles against nature of a lone hero on an Anglo-Norman reef. What use are his triumphs, if there is no one to notice them—and if they yield no reward in their aftermath? Hugo suggests that creative activity can be a goal unto itself because, as a mode of transport, it transforms everything it touches. Monsters and metaphoricity, the grotesque and the sublime, serve to move the reader into new realms of being. Heroic action, too, can convey the French nation beyond Napoléon III’s twisted regime into a new republican era.Less
Chapter 2 examines the political and poetic universe of Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866) in the light of La Légende des siècles and William Shakespeare as well as Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Following the spectacular success of Les Misérables, Les Travailleurs de la mer at first seems to head off in a different direction by depicting the mighty battles against nature of a lone hero on an Anglo-Norman reef. What use are his triumphs, if there is no one to notice them—and if they yield no reward in their aftermath? Hugo suggests that creative activity can be a goal unto itself because, as a mode of transport, it transforms everything it touches. Monsters and metaphoricity, the grotesque and the sublime, serve to move the reader into new realms of being. Heroic action, too, can convey the French nation beyond Napoléon III’s twisted regime into a new republican era.
I. A. Ruffell
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199587216
- eISBN:
- 9780191731297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587216.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines the extent, range, and limits of comic self-reflexivity, which has recently been considered under the term ‘metatheatre’. The logical contradictions of such ...
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This chapter examines the extent, range, and limits of comic self-reflexivity, which has recently been considered under the term ‘metatheatre’. The logical contradictions of such self-reference are situated alongside other forms of comic impossibility, and presented not as a form of distancing but as a form of audience involvement and intensification, in a dialogue with other empirical forms of comic impossibility, in which a fictional but grotesque baseline is maintained. Comic self-reference, despite its impossibility, acts as a tether for the audience. Even in less obviously metatheatrical plays (Clouds, Lysistrata, Ecclesiazousai), spikes in comic self-reference are shown to be narrative intensifiers and variations in the extent of self-reference are related to specific, often gendered, ideological demands.Less
This chapter examines the extent, range, and limits of comic self-reflexivity, which has recently been considered under the term ‘metatheatre’. The logical contradictions of such self-reference are situated alongside other forms of comic impossibility, and presented not as a form of distancing but as a form of audience involvement and intensification, in a dialogue with other empirical forms of comic impossibility, in which a fictional but grotesque baseline is maintained. Comic self-reference, despite its impossibility, acts as a tether for the audience. Even in less obviously metatheatrical plays (Clouds, Lysistrata, Ecclesiazousai), spikes in comic self-reference are shown to be narrative intensifiers and variations in the extent of self-reference are related to specific, often gendered, ideological demands.
Uri McMillan
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479802111
- eISBN:
- 9781479865451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479802111.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The conclusion serves both as a summation of the book’s arguments and an extension of its recurring trio—objecthood, black performance, and avatar production—into the twenty-first century. Mimicking ...
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The conclusion serves both as a summation of the book’s arguments and an extension of its recurring trio—objecthood, black performance, and avatar production—into the twenty-first century. Mimicking the architecture of the chapters, the conclusion ends Embodied Avatars with yet another unlikely historical pair: pop and hip-hop dynamo Nicki Minaj and sculptor Simone Leigh. It zeroes in on Minaj’s canny manipulation of her voice in her zesty cameo on Kanye West’s single “Monster”; her thrilling scream in that song recalls Heth’s earlier outburst, and the women’s shared wielding of grotesque aesthetics. Building off of Kobena Mercer’s scholarship, the conclusion restages and develops this term through Minaj’s artifice-laced performance in the music video accompaniment to West’s single, a particularly fraught piece that was swiftly banned upon its release. This discussion is followed with a turn to Leigh’s video art opus Breakdown, in which an archetypal black woman (performed by opera singer Alicia Hall-Moran) performs a stunning mental breakdown. The conclusion dissects this artwork’s avatar-play via its skilled execution of failure, its suggestion of the roles diasporic black women perform for the duration of their lives. This provocative pair, bridging high art and popular culture, is enhanced through brief appearances by other contemporary subjects (and their avatars)—including visual and performance artist Narcissister, digital creation Kismet Nuñez, and musician Janelle Monáe.Less
The conclusion serves both as a summation of the book’s arguments and an extension of its recurring trio—objecthood, black performance, and avatar production—into the twenty-first century. Mimicking the architecture of the chapters, the conclusion ends Embodied Avatars with yet another unlikely historical pair: pop and hip-hop dynamo Nicki Minaj and sculptor Simone Leigh. It zeroes in on Minaj’s canny manipulation of her voice in her zesty cameo on Kanye West’s single “Monster”; her thrilling scream in that song recalls Heth’s earlier outburst, and the women’s shared wielding of grotesque aesthetics. Building off of Kobena Mercer’s scholarship, the conclusion restages and develops this term through Minaj’s artifice-laced performance in the music video accompaniment to West’s single, a particularly fraught piece that was swiftly banned upon its release. This discussion is followed with a turn to Leigh’s video art opus Breakdown, in which an archetypal black woman (performed by opera singer Alicia Hall-Moran) performs a stunning mental breakdown. The conclusion dissects this artwork’s avatar-play via its skilled execution of failure, its suggestion of the roles diasporic black women perform for the duration of their lives. This provocative pair, bridging high art and popular culture, is enhanced through brief appearances by other contemporary subjects (and their avatars)—including visual and performance artist Narcissister, digital creation Kismet Nuñez, and musician Janelle Monáe.
Jason Oliver Chang
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040863
- eISBN:
- 9780252099359
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040863.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book tells the history of anti-Chinese politics in Mexican culture. It reveals the hidden influence that anti-Chinese racism, or antichinismo, has had on the formation of the revolutionary ...
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This book tells the history of anti-Chinese politics in Mexican culture. It reveals the hidden influence that anti-Chinese racism, or antichinismo, has had on the formation of the revolutionary government and mestizo national identity. The imagined racial figure of Chinese men created a profound impact in Mexican society. The book employs an Asian Americanist critique to evaluate Mexico as a racial state to discuss the political function of antichinismo at various points of national crisis. After the revolution, the social rights mandate of the 1917 constitution created a new rationality for the legitimacy and authority of the national state – to care for the good of the indigenous population. This book shows how Mexican politics relied upon racism against Chinese people to create polemical notions of the public good that helped generate new relationships between the government and the governed. The book is divided chronologically to attend to three major phases of antichinismo: the disposable worker, the killable subject, and the pernicious defiler. Through discourses of Chinese racial difference, diverse Mexican actors created alternative visions of the nation and helped rework the relationships of rule and consent. A regional approach to telling this national story illustrates that people took up antichinismo for different reasons but coalesced through the state ideology of revolutionary government’s mestizo nationalism.Less
This book tells the history of anti-Chinese politics in Mexican culture. It reveals the hidden influence that anti-Chinese racism, or antichinismo, has had on the formation of the revolutionary government and mestizo national identity. The imagined racial figure of Chinese men created a profound impact in Mexican society. The book employs an Asian Americanist critique to evaluate Mexico as a racial state to discuss the political function of antichinismo at various points of national crisis. After the revolution, the social rights mandate of the 1917 constitution created a new rationality for the legitimacy and authority of the national state – to care for the good of the indigenous population. This book shows how Mexican politics relied upon racism against Chinese people to create polemical notions of the public good that helped generate new relationships between the government and the governed. The book is divided chronologically to attend to three major phases of antichinismo: the disposable worker, the killable subject, and the pernicious defiler. Through discourses of Chinese racial difference, diverse Mexican actors created alternative visions of the nation and helped rework the relationships of rule and consent. A regional approach to telling this national story illustrates that people took up antichinismo for different reasons but coalesced through the state ideology of revolutionary government’s mestizo nationalism.
Jaime Harker
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643359
- eISBN:
- 9781469643373
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643359.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter explores the central role of transgressive sexuality in the literary creations of Southern lesbian feminists, both in their embrace of grotesque sexual southernness and their critiques ...
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This chapter explores the central role of transgressive sexuality in the literary creations of Southern lesbian feminists, both in their embrace of grotesque sexual southernness and their critiques of the intersection of sexuality and power. Most Southern feminist writers embraced the Southern grotesque to explore a wide range of hitherto unspeakable sexual practices.Less
This chapter explores the central role of transgressive sexuality in the literary creations of Southern lesbian feminists, both in their embrace of grotesque sexual southernness and their critiques of the intersection of sexuality and power. Most Southern feminist writers embraced the Southern grotesque to explore a wide range of hitherto unspeakable sexual practices.
DOROTHY YAMAMOTO
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198186748
- eISBN:
- 9780191718564
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186748.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter reviews the various ways in which the shared bodiliness of humans and animals has been shown to haunt medieval texts and images. Further avenues for research are suggested, such as the ...
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This chapter reviews the various ways in which the shared bodiliness of humans and animals has been shown to haunt medieval texts and images. Further avenues for research are suggested, such as the role of animal lore and fables in collections of exempla, or the grotesquely blended bodies that people the margins of medieval manuscripts. Lastly, a close reading is offered of some further works in which the human-animal interface is an important thematic element, shaping (and constraining) the kinds of texts that are produced: the romance of William of Palerne, and the various accounts (including that of Gower in Vox Clamantis) of the Rising of 1381.Less
This chapter reviews the various ways in which the shared bodiliness of humans and animals has been shown to haunt medieval texts and images. Further avenues for research are suggested, such as the role of animal lore and fables in collections of exempla, or the grotesquely blended bodies that people the margins of medieval manuscripts. Lastly, a close reading is offered of some further works in which the human-animal interface is an important thematic element, shaping (and constraining) the kinds of texts that are produced: the romance of William of Palerne, and the various accounts (including that of Gower in Vox Clamantis) of the Rising of 1381.
Miriam Silverberg
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222731
- eISBN:
- 9780520924628
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222731.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a ...
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This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a self-consciously modern ethos that challenged state ideology and expansionism. This book uses sources such as movie magazines, ethnographies of the homeless, and the most famous photographs from this era to capture the spirit, textures, and language of a time when the media reached all classes, connecting the rural social order to urban mores. Employing the concept of montage as a metaphor that informed the organization of Japanese mass culture during the 1920s and 1930s, the book challenges the erasure of Japanese colonialism and its legacies. It evokes vivid images from daily life during the 1920s and 1930s, including details about food, housing, fashion, modes of popular entertainment, and attitudes toward sexuality. This study demonstrates how new public spaces, new relationships within the family, and an ironic sensibility expressed the attitude of Japanese consumers who identified with the modern as providing a cosmopolitan break from tradition at the same time that they mobilized for war.Less
This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a self-consciously modern ethos that challenged state ideology and expansionism. This book uses sources such as movie magazines, ethnographies of the homeless, and the most famous photographs from this era to capture the spirit, textures, and language of a time when the media reached all classes, connecting the rural social order to urban mores. Employing the concept of montage as a metaphor that informed the organization of Japanese mass culture during the 1920s and 1930s, the book challenges the erasure of Japanese colonialism and its legacies. It evokes vivid images from daily life during the 1920s and 1930s, including details about food, housing, fashion, modes of popular entertainment, and attitudes toward sexuality. This study demonstrates how new public spaces, new relationships within the family, and an ironic sensibility expressed the attitude of Japanese consumers who identified with the modern as providing a cosmopolitan break from tradition at the same time that they mobilized for war.
Neil Cornwell
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074097
- eISBN:
- 9781781700969
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074097.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on the antecedents to the absurd. It first traces the antecedents of the absurd to the older stages of Greek theatre, and reveals that the absurd can be found in Greek tragedy, ...
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This chapter focuses on the antecedents to the absurd. It first traces the antecedents of the absurd to the older stages of Greek theatre, and reveals that the absurd can be found in Greek tragedy, which returned to the European consciousness during the Italian Renaissance. The chapter then studies absurdity as seen in medieval drama, which featured a dramatised allegory of morality, and the works of Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift. It describes Sterne's work as ‘nonsense prose’ and reveals that Swift's ‘gloomy world’ in prose and poetry came from medieval forebears, and even had an affinity with the danse macabre tradition. The final part of the chapter examines the adoption of the ‘Romantic grotesque’ and pre-Surrealist nonsense by several popular authors, including Charles Dickens, Lewis Caroll, Nikolai Gogol and Ugo Foscolo.Less
This chapter focuses on the antecedents to the absurd. It first traces the antecedents of the absurd to the older stages of Greek theatre, and reveals that the absurd can be found in Greek tragedy, which returned to the European consciousness during the Italian Renaissance. The chapter then studies absurdity as seen in medieval drama, which featured a dramatised allegory of morality, and the works of Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift. It describes Sterne's work as ‘nonsense prose’ and reveals that Swift's ‘gloomy world’ in prose and poetry came from medieval forebears, and even had an affinity with the danse macabre tradition. The final part of the chapter examines the adoption of the ‘Romantic grotesque’ and pre-Surrealist nonsense by several popular authors, including Charles Dickens, Lewis Caroll, Nikolai Gogol and Ugo Foscolo.
Miriam Silverberg
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222731
- eISBN:
- 9780520924628
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222731.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter examines the placing of the consumer-subject within mass culture; erotic grotesque nonsense as montage; Japanese modern culture as politics; and the documentary impulse. It places the ...
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This chapter examines the placing of the consumer-subject within mass culture; erotic grotesque nonsense as montage; Japanese modern culture as politics; and the documentary impulse. It places the years of erotic grotesque nonsense within the global modern culture of the 1920s and 1930s, and positions the Japanese modern culture of those decades within a Japanese modernity stretching from the state-sponsored modernization policies of the Meiji era into the late twentieth century. It also agrees in part with John Frow's distinctions. For Frow, modernism refers to a bundle of cultural practices, some of them adversarial; modernization is an economic process with social and cultural implications; and modernity, overlapping with the modernization process, is a philosophical category designating the temporality of the post-traditional world.Less
This chapter examines the placing of the consumer-subject within mass culture; erotic grotesque nonsense as montage; Japanese modern culture as politics; and the documentary impulse. It places the years of erotic grotesque nonsense within the global modern culture of the 1920s and 1930s, and positions the Japanese modern culture of those decades within a Japanese modernity stretching from the state-sponsored modernization policies of the Meiji era into the late twentieth century. It also agrees in part with John Frow's distinctions. For Frow, modernism refers to a bundle of cultural practices, some of them adversarial; modernization is an economic process with social and cultural implications; and modernity, overlapping with the modernization process, is a philosophical category designating the temporality of the post-traditional world.
Miriam Silverberg
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520222731
- eISBN:
- 9780520924628
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520222731.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The Modern Girl makes only a brief appearance in histories of prewar Japan. She is a glittering, decadent, middle-class consumer who, through her clothing, smoking, and drinking, flaunts tradition in ...
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The Modern Girl makes only a brief appearance in histories of prewar Japan. She is a glittering, decadent, middle-class consumer who, through her clothing, smoking, and drinking, flaunts tradition in the urban playgrounds of the late 1920s. Who was this Modern Girl? What made her do what she did? These two questions, raised by the Japanese Modern Girl's contemporaries, are also the two problems posed in this part of the montage of Japanese erotic grotesque nonsense. The Modern Girl was a highly commodified cultural construct crafted by journalists who debated her identity during the tumultuous decade of cultural and social change following the great earthquake of 1923. This chapter deals more with the representation of the Modern Girl as the most predominant Japanese cultural heroine of the era than with the actual beliefs or practices of the young women of that era.Less
The Modern Girl makes only a brief appearance in histories of prewar Japan. She is a glittering, decadent, middle-class consumer who, through her clothing, smoking, and drinking, flaunts tradition in the urban playgrounds of the late 1920s. Who was this Modern Girl? What made her do what she did? These two questions, raised by the Japanese Modern Girl's contemporaries, are also the two problems posed in this part of the montage of Japanese erotic grotesque nonsense. The Modern Girl was a highly commodified cultural construct crafted by journalists who debated her identity during the tumultuous decade of cultural and social change following the great earthquake of 1923. This chapter deals more with the representation of the Modern Girl as the most predominant Japanese cultural heroine of the era than with the actual beliefs or practices of the young women of that era.
Michelle Osterfeld Li
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759755
- eISBN:
- 9780804771061
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759755.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book draws from theories of the grotesque to examine many of the strange and extraordinary creatures and phenomena in the premodern Japanese tales called setsuwa. Grotesque representations in ...
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This book draws from theories of the grotesque to examine many of the strange and extraordinary creatures and phenomena in the premodern Japanese tales called setsuwa. Grotesque representations in general typically direct our attention to unfinished and unrefined things; they are marked by an earthy sense of the body and an interest in the physical, and, because they have many meanings, can both sustain and undermine authority. The book aims to make sense of grotesque representations in setsuwa—animated detached body parts, unusual sexual encounters, demons and shape-shifting or otherwise wondrous animals—and, in a broader sense, to show what this type of critical focus can reveal about the mentality of Japanese people in the ancient, classical, and early medieval periods. It places Japanese tales of this nature, which have received little critical attention in English, within a sophisticated theoretical framework, focusing on them in the context of the historical periods in which they were created and compiled.Less
This book draws from theories of the grotesque to examine many of the strange and extraordinary creatures and phenomena in the premodern Japanese tales called setsuwa. Grotesque representations in general typically direct our attention to unfinished and unrefined things; they are marked by an earthy sense of the body and an interest in the physical, and, because they have many meanings, can both sustain and undermine authority. The book aims to make sense of grotesque representations in setsuwa—animated detached body parts, unusual sexual encounters, demons and shape-shifting or otherwise wondrous animals—and, in a broader sense, to show what this type of critical focus can reveal about the mentality of Japanese people in the ancient, classical, and early medieval periods. It places Japanese tales of this nature, which have received little critical attention in English, within a sophisticated theoretical framework, focusing on them in the context of the historical periods in which they were created and compiled.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759755
- eISBN:
- 9780804771061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759755.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the grotesque in Japanese setsuwa tales. The book considers the similarities in the roles of creatures, such as animated ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the grotesque in Japanese setsuwa tales. The book considers the similarities in the roles of creatures, such as animated detached body parts, flesh-eating demons, demonic women, and animal spirits, without downplaying the diversity of such representations, and traces the precedents of the grotesque in setsuwa in early Japan, China, and India. It also shows how theories of the grotesque, combined with careful consideration of the cultural, historical, and social contexts of the tales, can enrich our understanding of setsuwa.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the grotesque in Japanese setsuwa tales. The book considers the similarities in the roles of creatures, such as animated detached body parts, flesh-eating demons, demonic women, and animal spirits, without downplaying the diversity of such representations, and traces the precedents of the grotesque in setsuwa in early Japan, China, and India. It also shows how theories of the grotesque, combined with careful consideration of the cultural, historical, and social contexts of the tales, can enrich our understanding of setsuwa.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759755
- eISBN:
- 9780804771061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759755.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines the history of the concepts of the grotesque and setsuwa, suggesting that they developed separately, but that many aspects of grotesque theory are relevant to setsuwa. It ...
More
This chapter examines the history of the concepts of the grotesque and setsuwa, suggesting that they developed separately, but that many aspects of grotesque theory are relevant to setsuwa. It discusses the relevant views of Mikhail Bakhtin in his Rabelais and His World and highlights the diversity of the narratives of the setsuwa. The chapter also mentions that the most prominent feature of groups of narratives and the idiosyncrasies of individual setsuwa tales is a single beast comprised of heterogeneous parts.Less
This chapter examines the history of the concepts of the grotesque and setsuwa, suggesting that they developed separately, but that many aspects of grotesque theory are relevant to setsuwa. It discusses the relevant views of Mikhail Bakhtin in his Rabelais and His World and highlights the diversity of the narratives of the setsuwa. The chapter also mentions that the most prominent feature of groups of narratives and the idiosyncrasies of individual setsuwa tales is a single beast comprised of heterogeneous parts.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759755
- eISBN:
- 9780804771061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759755.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines grotesque representations of copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth in setsuwa tales. It analyzes five tales and suggests that the representation of copulation, ...
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This chapter examines grotesque representations of copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth in setsuwa tales. It analyzes five tales and suggests that the representation of copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth was designed to minimize the role of the female body in these acts when compared to the male body. The chapter also explains that, in Buddhist setsuwa, the female body is condemned for drawing men to it, and that women are blamed for pursuing men and destroying their chances of enlightenment.Less
This chapter examines grotesque representations of copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth in setsuwa tales. It analyzes five tales and suggests that the representation of copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth was designed to minimize the role of the female body in these acts when compared to the male body. The chapter also explains that, in Buddhist setsuwa, the female body is condemned for drawing men to it, and that women are blamed for pursuing men and destroying their chances of enlightenment.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759755
- eISBN:
- 9780804771061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759755.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines the representation of animal spirits in setsuwa focusing on foxes, monkeys, a tree with bird spirits, snakes, wild boars, raccoons, dogs, and tengu. It suggests that while the ...
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This chapter examines the representation of animal spirits in setsuwa focusing on foxes, monkeys, a tree with bird spirits, snakes, wild boars, raccoons, dogs, and tengu. It suggests that while the behaviors and functions of various animal spirits overlap with each other and with those of oni, each animal spirit has idiosyncrasies affecting its role as a grotesque representation. The chapter also argues that the depiction of animal spirits reveals the fragility of people, particularly in their attempts to conquer fears and illusions.Less
This chapter examines the representation of animal spirits in setsuwa focusing on foxes, monkeys, a tree with bird spirits, snakes, wild boars, raccoons, dogs, and tengu. It suggests that while the behaviors and functions of various animal spirits overlap with each other and with those of oni, each animal spirit has idiosyncrasies affecting its role as a grotesque representation. The chapter also argues that the depiction of animal spirits reveals the fragility of people, particularly in their attempts to conquer fears and illusions.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804759755
- eISBN:
- 9780804771061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804759755.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the grotesque in setsuwa tales, which, it suggests, embodies the tensions between individuals and groups competing for power as well as between ...
More
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the grotesque in setsuwa tales, which, it suggests, embodies the tensions between individuals and groups competing for power as well as between the dominant and the suppressed. It also argues that, unlike their western counterparts, the grotesque representations in setsuwa are connected to Buddhism and other Asian religions, and that they supplement the sense of beauty apparent in Japanese poetry, in Genji, and in other Japanese classics in which language regarding the body or bodily functions tends to be absent or indirect.Less
This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the grotesque in setsuwa tales, which, it suggests, embodies the tensions between individuals and groups competing for power as well as between the dominant and the suppressed. It also argues that, unlike their western counterparts, the grotesque representations in setsuwa are connected to Buddhism and other Asian religions, and that they supplement the sense of beauty apparent in Japanese poetry, in Genji, and in other Japanese classics in which language regarding the body or bodily functions tends to be absent or indirect.
Kathryn Hume
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450013
- eISBN:
- 9780801462870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450013.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter examines the ways in which the grotesque can affect even the contemporary reader. Sophisticated readers pride themselves on being unshockable, but the grotesque depends upon shock, upon ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which the grotesque can affect even the contemporary reader. Sophisticated readers pride themselves on being unshockable, but the grotesque depends upon shock, upon visceral responses that amount to an internal shiver or sense of recoil. Yet critics consider the grotesque impossible in the present day because we no longer have a single dominant culture to react against; and if the grotesque cannot currently exist or is unable to disturb readers, then it cannot be offered as a transgressive technique or means of discomfiting readers. However, the chapter maintains that the grotesque does still exist, and attempts to define it in its myriad forms and examine the reasons as to why the grotesque is used to affect the reader in the first place.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which the grotesque can affect even the contemporary reader. Sophisticated readers pride themselves on being unshockable, but the grotesque depends upon shock, upon visceral responses that amount to an internal shiver or sense of recoil. Yet critics consider the grotesque impossible in the present day because we no longer have a single dominant culture to react against; and if the grotesque cannot currently exist or is unable to disturb readers, then it cannot be offered as a transgressive technique or means of discomfiting readers. However, the chapter maintains that the grotesque does still exist, and attempts to define it in its myriad forms and examine the reasons as to why the grotesque is used to affect the reader in the first place.
