Literature

This is a topic that I constantly am grappling with as I have seen it done in good ways and have seen it done in very, very bad ways. How much insight can an older white man give about the black experience during the 1960s? Of course, it’s easy to just recount history, but is there anything emotionally informative about this? How can a privileged white male know what it’s like to be a minority? I personally feel like it’s more intriguing to learn about experiences first hand. For example, I’m taking a discourses in disability class taught by a blind professor.

Though I’m French, most of the books I’ve read are foreign novels, and by foreign, I mean Americans (except for Harry Potter and a couple of other exception, but not that much), while the books I have to read for classes are French and especially French – or French-written – classics. It made me realize that I don’t really know classic books from other countries – I might have heard of them, but I’d never read them – while using American contemporary novels in my essays isn’t the best way to have a good grade! I was then wondering… quite a few things!

Pell-mell: How domestic and foreign literature is tackle elsewhere in Europe, elsewhere outside Europe, in the USA, in the UK, for instance? Are there contemporary foreign books – French books for instance – that are famous in the US, the UK, in Sweden, in Brazil, anywhere outside of its original country? What define “classic”? Does it depends on the country, or is Goethe’s concept of “Weltliteratur” (basically, global literature) real, widespread? To what extent time define whether a book is a “classic”? And, finally, any reading advice concerning foreign classics?

[I’m not quite fluent in English yet, so I hope it was understandable, and not too messy!]

When reading a feminist novel, or one based on that movement, if differentiates greatly between the gender of the author. Women, I find, speak more passionately about the subject, and are willing to stand up and ridicule the opposite sex with great meaning and intention. However, when a man is writing a book about feminism, it’s through an entirely new set of eyes. He may or may not judge the patriarchy as harshly or express similar views, even though it’s the same concept.

It’s almost a cliche at this point that the central characters in any story are rarely the most interesting ones. More often than not they tend to be relatively bland, and the story grows out of their interactions with a cast of more interesting side characters. However, every so often a protagonist will end up being the most interesting character in their story. For instance, in Osamu Tezuka’s "Buddha" manga, the Buddha is actually one of the more well-rounded and relatable characters, even given that the legends about him tend to paint him as an almost perfect, untouchable being. What are some other examples of this phenomenon, where the main protagonist really is the most interesting, or one of the most interesting, characters? What is it about them that makes them so interesting?

Explore the nature of personal identity in Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved.” This could include the nature of the character Beloved, notably in her relationships with other characters (most importantly Sethe) and her opaque origins. Additionally, the book can be examined for commentary on the dehumanizing effect of American slavery on African American identity, and how this effect lingers, thus making “Beloved” resonant.

Many considered the encyclopaedic novels of the late ’90s and early 2000’s such as Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and most prominently, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest to be, variously, postmodernist, or post-postmodernist – ‘New Sincerity," being a label applied to the latter. In the case of DFW, the abandonment of irony in place of sincerity was defined as the source of the departure from the genre or movement, while Danielewski’s act of essentially drawing out postmodern literature and all its tropes and threads to their logical conclusions was, essentially, concluding it there and then.
I read House of Leaves in my first year of university, and some years later, it is now the subject of my doctoral thesis. As I studied my way through the university, and particularly in grad school, I found very few scholars wanting to discuss postmodern literature or philosophy. In classes I took on Modernism, postmodernism was included in a one-lecture session where it was deemed to have been subsumed into "New Modernist Studies," as essentially, a subgenre of modernism rather than (depending on who was writing it) an elaboration on or even ar reaction to Modernism.
While there were stragglers throughout the ’80s, ’90s and naughties, many consider the heyday of postmodern literature to have taken place during the late sixties and throughout the seventies. Even Raymond Federman who wrote extensively on the self-reflexivity that defined these novels concluded during the ’90s that this era of self-reflexive experimentation was essentially, over. It is worth noting that while these essays were collected, many were written at the time before the term "postmodernism," had even been applied to this kind of literature (a term that was first applied to architecture before carrying over into the other arts; many of the seminal writers like Vonnegut and DeLillo were often called black humorists in their present tense). While Federman perhaps made that call prematurely in 1992, given the popularity of the first two novels I mentioned for this topic, the fact remains that whether or not the movement is "dead," it has fallen terribly out of favour. A professor confessed to me once, that it was very trendy at a time before I’d been born, or perhaps even when I was very young and as a grad student in their 20’s in the ’10s I had missed out Is postmodernism dead because it’s out of fashion? Or will it return, much like the mullet?

Analyze how gender issues in the writings of the past and present are similar to how things are now. For example, look at The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and explore something like The Golden Girls, or a play like A Raisin In The Sun. What do they say about womanhood? How have things changed? How is there still relevance from the past? What does this say about women’s role in society today?

Call Me By Your Name – the book version, ends with Elio and Oliver’s separation, but their longings for each other last for what seems like an eternity. Find Me – the sequel, picks up the storyline a few years later, and, spoiler alert, slowly leads the two star-crossed lovers back together in the end. However, the perspective has changed as the Find Me is in the POV of Elio’s father, now divorced, and his journey of finding new love with a woman much younger than himself. If Call Me, under Elio’s POV, was so successful critically and commercially, why did the author switch to his father’s, whose outlook on life may not be on who was responsible for some of the most soul-touching, sentimental and inspiring dialogues in the prequel