American Literature

Dual Identity and Self-assertion: A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

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Sultan Alghofaili

Department of English Language and Translation, College of Sciences and Arts in Ar Rass, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia. Email: ssgfiely@qu.edu.sa

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September-October 2022, Pages 1–13. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.20

First published: October 24, 2022 | Area: American Literature| License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under Volume 14, Number 3, 2022)
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Dual Identity and Self-assertion: A Study of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

Abstract

The Scarlet Letter serves as both a critique of society and a window into Hawthorne’s thoughts. In opposition to a patriarchal depiction, he wants to allow women’s individuality some room. He does not advocate setting rules and imposing them on the individual to be governed by them. Thus, he created the character of Hester Prynne who appears as commenting upon the situation of women in the 19thand century of New England society. She struggles to win a place in society and she succeeds in winning it in her revolt against the very order that at the first stage humiliates and condemns her, and accepts and honours her later on. The article traces Hester’s individual rebellion in an alien land against an artificially created corrupt religious and moral order which exploits her body and denies her humanity at first and ultimately bows down to her consistent individual morality and actions. In doing so, the article tries to show certain feminist approaches adopted by the author long before feminism would come to the mainstream of literary thoughts.

Keywords: 19th-century New England society, Feminism, puritan, badge of shame.

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The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed: The New Historical Fiction by Ina Bergmann

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New York: Routledge.  2021. ISBN: 978-0-367-63466-7 (hbk), 978-1-003-12807-6 (ebk)

Prashant Maurya

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India – 247667. Email: prashantlinguistics@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.24

The nineteenth century is a crucial phase in America’s history. Key features such as geographical expansions, the industrial revolution, development in science and technology, and America’s emergence as a super power, after the American Revolution and the War of 1812, mark the century. The Civil War becomes the most important historical event of this phase that will impact the lives of Americans in the years to come. The century has literary importance also because, during this phase, forerunners of American literature, like, Edgar Allen Poe, James Cooper, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, etc., come to the scene. Thus, the century as the setting has always been a literary choice for historical novelists.  Full-Text PDF>>

Codifying the Oral Traditions, Resisting the Colonial Machinery: A Study of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller

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Babita Devi1, Divyajyoti Singh2, Satinder Kumar Verma3

1Research Scholar J. C. Bose University of Science & Technology, YMCA, Faridabad Haryana. Orcid Id: 10000-0002-9699-864X

2Associate Professor, J. C. Bose University of Science & Technology, YMCA, Faridabad Haryana

3Assistant Professor, S.D. College Ambala Cantt. Haryana

E-mail: 1babitakpunia@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.23

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Abstract

Leslie Marmon Silko is one of the most important Native writers of America. The remarkable thing about her writings is that they never move away from tradition of her ancestors. She uses her writings to preserve and resuscitate the culture of the Natives and for that purpose, she uses the oral tradition of her people. Her writings serve both purposes: they codify the Native culture and traditions and at the same time they maintain the originality of the oral tradition. Storyteller, for instance, is one book that transcends the generic limitations posed by the Euro-American tradition. The codification of the oral tradition at the same time becomes a site for resistance to colonial policies. By codifying the oral tradition, she makes it more durable so that it is available for future generations and at the same time she exposes the reality of the colonial institutions. The book contains fiction, poetry, history, autobiography and photographs of the family. The book may seem like an interesting assortment of different genres, but it also carries an important message that it is the vitality of the culture of the Natives that has allowed them to survive against the colonial juggernaut. The paper is a study of Leslie Marmon Silko’s book Storyteller.

Keywords: Story, culture, oral tradition, whites.

Reconciling Locality and Globalization through Sense of Planet in Kiana Davenport’s the House of Many Gods

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Kristiawan Indriyanto

Ph.D Candidate, Doctoral Program of American Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. Email: kristiawan.i@mail.ugm.ac.id. Orcid ID: 0000-0001-7827-2506

 Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.24

Reconciling Locality and Globalization through Sense of Planet in Kiana Davenport’s the House of Many Gods

Abstract

This study positions the House of Many Gods, a novel written by Kiana Davenport as a possible area of intersection between globalization and environmental/eco-criticism. The primacy of locality within American environmental discourse hinders the acceptance of global theory under the assumption that embracing the global will lead into the erasure of the local altogether. In her book, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet (2008) Ursula K Heise asserts that what she considers as sense of place is incomplete without considering ourselves as a part of a global ecosystem, which she considers as sense of planet. The reading of the House of Many Gods contextualizes sense of place and sense of planet through the perspective of Ana, in which she complements her adherence of Native Hawai’ian epistemology of place with a broader outlook of environmental crisis. A global outlook of perceiving environmentalism also aligns with Transnational American Studies which perceives America from an internationalist perspective. The paper concludes that sense of place and sense of planet provides a possible intersectionality of conceptualizing local discourse of place within a global outlook of environmentalism.

Keywords: Sense of place, sense of planet, Hawai’ian literature, ecocriticism

Aestheticizing Violence: Paul Bowles’ Prolific Partnership with His Motiveless Villain in The Delicate Prey

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Sina Movaghati

Doctoral Candidate at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3433-2487. Email: sina.movaghati@as.uni-heidelberg.de

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.27

Abstract:

Many critics have regarded the violence in Bowles as “meaningless” or “motiveless.” By defining the connection between motive and act, this article tackles the indefinite nature of violence in Paul Bowles’ collection of short stories, The Delicate Prey. To this end, a study of the typical Arab character in Bowles is offered. Also, the motive behind Bowles’ villain is defined in the light of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s term “motiveless malignity.” It is discussed that the contextless violence of Bowles has an estrangement effect on the victim; and his detached narration technique, together with the excessive occurrences of violence, leads to an aesthetic experience on the reader. “Aesthetic experience” is explained based on Slobodan Markovi?’s definition of the term. It is concluded that Bowles’ maneuvers over the subject of violence should be viewed in the light of a modernist aesthetic tradition based on violence rather than praxeological humanistic chain reactions.

Keywords: Paul Bowles; The Delicate Prey; motiveless violence; aesthetic experience

 

Performative Subjects & the Irresistible Lack of Understanding in David Mamet’s Oleanna: a Butlerian Discourse Analysis

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Hojatolla Borzabadi Farahani1 & Mariam Beyad2

1Department of English language, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran

2Associate Professor, University of Tehran. Email: n_bfarahani@yahoo.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.16

Abstract:

The present study tends to explore the constitution of power and its formative effects on David Mamet’s play, Oleanna, a very controversial work dealing with sexual harassment and political correctness. The analysis is going to be done applying views and results of Judith Butler’s notion of gender and identity trouble to the play first through explanation of related key concepts like difference, decentering, subject and language, and then utilizing them to analyze the roots of sudden, surprising transformations and role-reversals of the involved characters, John and Carol, through the three acts. Furthermore, it is tried to find out the causes of unavoidable violence within the contexts of the relations going between the characters.

Keywords: gender, identity, difference, decentering, performative, understanding, violence, discourses, language

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