Metacritic Journal


for Comparative Studies and Theory

Non-themed issue, 3.2 (December 2017)
ISSN 2457 – 8827
Christian Moraru Christian Moraru

"The World Has Become Self-Referring": Don DeLillo’s THE NAMES and the Aesthetic of the Contemporary


The essay suggests that Don DeLillo is one of the U. S. authors who have reflected most responsibly on the crisis of modernity's fundamental institutions and community structures. Compared to the relatively stabilizing deep freeze of the Cold War, the late 1980s and the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall are, as DeLillo shows especially in his post-White Noise works, more interconnected, more “systematic,” and overall more “present.” Focusing primarily on DeLillo's 1982 novel The Names and its “world...   ⇨ Read more
Olga Voronina Olga Voronina

“They Are All Too Foreign and Unfamiliar…”: Nabokov’s Journey to the American Reader


Both in Speak, Memory and in Strong Opinions, Nabokov insists on his early proficiency in English, French. This authorial stance makes it easy to believe that the writer's transition to English was easy. And yet, Nabokov's correspondence with publishers and his literary agent, Altagracia de Jannelli, reveals that this conversion was torturous and required extensive support from native speaker editors and translators. The essay documents Nabokov's inner turmoil at the time when he began to explore the British...   ⇨ Read more
Peter  Arnds Peter Arnds

From Elephant God to Man Dog: Hybridity, Mimicry, and the Homo Sacer in Salman Rushdie’s MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN


Rushdie's Midnight’s Children is a work of pastiche. As such it is typically postmodern, literature patched together from other literary texts. Using Grass's Tin Drum and the German postwar cultural-political situation as a model, Rushdie copies Grass in re-enchanting a secularized country grappling with the memory of genocide through a set of mythological paradigms. By drawing on postcolonial theory and the biopolitical concept of the homo sacer this essay analyses Rushdie's particular brand of what I have...   ⇨ Read more
Emanuel Modoc Emanuel Modoc

Nature Writing in Romania During the Post-War and Post-communist Period


Romanian literary discourse on nature and the effects of industrialization following the 1989 revolution in comparison to the ideological discourse of the post-war era. If Romanian post-war literary discourse is firmly tied to the underlying ideology of Communism, then any attempt to investigate the discourse on nature in this period must be made alongside a reading of the Communist discourse on nature. In this respect, the situation of Romanian post-1989 prose that contains aspects of the influence of...   ⇨ Read more
Ioana Bot Ioana Bot

Remembering Romanian Communist Times: New Insights on the Banality of Evil


Analysing two recent books in which prominent Romanian writers (Ana Blandiana and Gabriel Liiceanu) recount their lives during communism, we intend to reflect on how literary memoirs (written in very different forms) deal with the (recent) communist past and its troublesome heritage – not only for Romanian culture in general, but also for surviving individuals. Both authors under discussion attempt to come to terms with an evil they confronted daily in their regular lives; the questions they pose focus not only...   ⇨ Read more
Lawrence Wang Lawrence Wang

Benjamin's Voices: Irresolution and Textual Practice in ON THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY


Benjamin‘s final treatise On the Concept of History has generated significant criticism with its profound yet enigmatic statements on his historical materialism. Its internal references range from the philosopher Hegel to satirist Karl Kraus; these interludes of scientific and poetic language have garnered notable readings through Marxian lenses, as well as ample theological and literary interpretations. Reading against any simplified tradition of unity, I suggest instead an insoluble collection of distinct...   ⇨ Read more
Ovio  Olaru Ovio Olaru

Norwegian Innvandrerlitteratur and the Spell of Transnationalism


This paper focuses on the current evolution of Norwegian literature, namely on the branch of Norwegian literary activity that falls within the theoretical frame of "immigrationist literature" (innvandrerlitteratur). The paper is to be seen as a pledge against the implementation of cultural studies in the field of literary theory when dealing with such works that, through their number, are unrepresentative for a wider literary context. The argumentation relies on the fact that the phenomenon of...   ⇨ Read more
Francesco Bacci Francesco Bacci

The Originality of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and THE CHILDREN OF MEN: Religion, Justice, and Feminism in Dystopian Fiction


This paper describes the theoretical challenges and the approach through which The Handmaid’s Tale and The Children of Men describe a world which is destroying itself in a society where human rights do not matter. The main objective is to discuss the role of women in these narrative universes. A space will also be created to consider how the female condition is perceived as a threat to a totalitarian society. In doing so, we will undertake this research with a multidisciplinary approach which takes into...   ⇨ Read more