Sleepwalking certainties: agency, aesthetics, and incapacity in W.G. Sebald���s 'Austerlitz' and Hermann Broch���s 'The Sleepwalkers'

When we first encounter the narrator of Austerlitz, he is wandering around the unfamiliar town of Antwerp with, he tells us, ���unsicheren Schritten��� (1; 9). As well as reflecting the unfamiliarity of the locale, these ���uncertain steps��� evince a proud modesty characteristic of the classic Sebaldian narrator, a wanderer who discreetly relays the stories of the people and places he is privileged to encounter. Although Sebald does not use the phrase, steps of this sort, unpurposed yet unerring, are made with what is commonly known in German as somnambule Sicherheit: the legendary surefootedness of the sleepwalker. The convergence of sleepwalking and certainty in a single phrase poses an interesting challenge to one of the central tenets of the English-language canonization of Sebald, for his writing has been most highly valued for its ability to move the reader through apparent certainties towards a salutary uncertainty. But somnambule Sicherheit also presents the possibility that the current may be reversed, that narrative may move under cover of uncertainty towards certainty. That Sebald criticism has not been more troubled by this possibility is in no small part due to the fact that it tends to deploy the notion of sleepwalking with a minimum of reflection on its theoretical ramifications. To evoke some of the complexities of this matter, I first offer a brief cultural history of sleepwalking, as well as a brief account of the topic of uncertainty in Sebald criticism. Most of my argument, however, involves an extended comparative analysis of sleepwalking in Sebald's Austerlitz and Hermann Broch's 1933 trilogy The Sleepwalkers. Although these writers have not previously been the object of any sustained comparison, sleepwalking in Broch's novels illuminates much that is left implicit on the topic in Sebald's fiction and points toward some difficult questions regarding the role of aesthetics and agency in Sebald's work.

Varieties of capitalism and investments in human capital

This paper explores the relationship between national institutional archetypes and investments in training and development. A recent trend within the literature on comparative capitalism has been to explore the nature and extent of heterogeneity within the coordinated market economies (CMEs) of Europe. Based on a review of the existing comparative literature on training and development, and comparative firm-level survey evidence of differences in training and development practices, we both support and critique existing country clusters and argue for a more nuanced and flexible categorization.

Den ofr��nkomliga nationalismen

The necessary nationalism This article deals with the role of fictional narratives, especially the modern novel, in the formation of national identities. Naguib Mafouz���s Cairo trilogy is referred to as an example of how literature may both serve as the mirror image of national identities and as an agency in their formation. The sense of community attachment to a modern state is ���thinner��� than to a family or traditional village and/or tribe, though no less vital. Drawing on Norbert Elias���s concept of ���survival unit,��� Benedict Anderson���s ���imagined communities��� and recent studies in the field of comparative literature by Gregory Jusdanis and Azade Seyhan, this article argues for the necessity of the nation ��� in spite of its unfavourable chauvinistic reputation. This contention is discussed in relation to recent literary developments in Turkey and recent debates on nationhood in a Swedish context.

Can���t Afford the Manolos? Buy the Book!: Chick Lit & Contemporary Consumerism

At the airport, across from the magazines at Wal-Mart, and probably somewhere near the front of local bookstores ��� chick lit is everywhere. One would probably recognize it from a distance as a sea of shiny pink1, the small glossy paperbacks cheerfully beckoning from their carefully constructed display. Chick lit has exploded into the western2 market over the last decade, captivating millions of readers with their tales of young, urban professional women navigating the worlds of careers, relationships, and of course, shopping. By the end of the novel, each of these components is generally resolved in somewhat formulaic fashion

The travel imagination and the hybrid reality in the wake of colonialism

The ���traveling imagination,��� is of paramount importance to both western and postcolonial travelers. Since both groups create ���travel imaginations��� by extensive reading, the nature of the books that inform them must directly affect their travels. A westerner, for example, who reads only colonial-era accounts has the ���travel imagination��� of a different generation. If all perspectives were represented equally in libraries, the ���travel imagination��� of a given person would be entirely his/her own. But usually the ���traveler���s imagination��� is biased by prevailing opinion. Libraries are not democracies, and sometimes extensive reading only indoctrinates the reader with the biases of the canon. Perhaps the following generalization will be helpful. Westerners are able to create ���traveling imaginations,��� based on the books they trust. But postcolonials, who have reason to be suspicious of what they read, have complicated ���traveling imaginations.��� Sometimes postcolonial travelers base their ���traveling imaginations��� on what they read, and sometimes, in opposition to what they read. The books discussed in this thesis, In Patagonia, The Cruise of the Shark, The Happy Isles of Oceania, A Passage to England and The Enigma of Arrival, were first published in, 1977, 1939, 1992, 1971 and 1987, respectively, in what Ali Behdad calls the ���age of colonial dissolution.��� Perhaps it would be more accurate to say these books are set in the ���age of colonial demolition.��� For the most part, the empires in these texts are in ruins, or at least in the process of being dismantled. In fact, two of the authors, Nirad Chaudhuri and V.S. Naipaul are canonical post-colonial thinkers.

Stranger in a Strange Land: The struggle for cultural and personal identity in Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

In order to explicate Murakami's version of the official culture, I have analyzed the novel with the works of several different theorists. Primarily, I drew my own understanding of the official culture from Raymond Williams's examination of culture in Marxism and Literature. His terminology became helpful in writing about the operation of the System and the Town, though it did not define that operation precisely. Williams's work also introduced me to the theory behind the official culture's manipulation and exclusion of historical aspects in order to create their "official" version of history, from which the official culture draws its identity. For further analysis of the treatment of history, I turned to Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Though it examines the official culture's manipulation of history in a much more in-depth manner, it seems to have influenced Murakami's treatment of individual memories and cultural histories. For instance, the herd ofunicoms in the End of the World resembles Nietzsche's description of the ''unhistorical herd," or has the potential to resemble it. With these theories I was able to access the mechanisms of cultural control that Murakami depicts in the form of the System and the Town, and from there I was able to develop a model for how the narrator struggles to subvert that control. Both sides of that struggle are depicted and re-imagined many times throughout Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Harold Pinter, cinema e literatura : os limites da realidade

Partindo de duas quest��es te��ricas preliminares, uma, da representa����o (liter��ria e cinematogr��fica)do real e do imagin��rio, tanto no ��ngulo da produ����o como no da sua recep����o e, a outra, da articula����o entre formas de express��o art��sticas distintas, ou seja, da interdisciplinaridade, este trabalho examina a presen��a do tema relativo aos limites entre realidade e fantasia no teatro, no cinema e na literatura, centrando sua aten����o na obra de Harold Pinter. Consta de duas partes, cada uma com tr��s cap��tulos. Na primeira, "Os pressupostos," discute-se as quest��es que fornecem seu substrato te��rico. A segunda �� dedicada ao corpus, identificando em seu t��tulo o tema investigado: "Os limites da realidade." Quanto �� quest��o da representa����o, procura-se refutar "a afirma����o de que a arte seja uma imita����o da realidade. Uma releitura da Po��tica, de Arist��teles, refor��ada pela opini��o de diversos estudiosos da mesma, permite afirmar que a m��mese corresponde, isto sim, a uma representa����o que envolve uma constru����o em que elementos da realidade s��o organizados segundo uma verdade criada pela pr��pria obra, de acordo com crit��rios inerentes a ela. Al��m disso, atrav��s de uma leitura de Kathryn Hume, procura-se afirmar a intera����o sinest��sica quase que permanente dos impulsos realista e da fantasiana literatura, identificando os tipos com que a fantasia se manifesta e as t��cnicas usadas para sua cria����o. A primeira parte encerra-se com um exame do relacionamento da literatura com as artes visuais e dram��ticas, rela����es inter-disciplinares que situam este trabalho na literatura comparada.Dentre v��rios autores cujas obras contribuem para tal fim, destaca-se Martin Esslin, que estabelece os limitesde cada uma das artes dram��ticas, identifica contatos delas com a literatura e permite, atrav��s de uma leitura de seu estudo sobre o teatro do absurdo, seja estabelecida a evolu����o que liga Arist��teles a Pinter. O corpus centra-se na obra de Pinterpara o teatro e para o cinema, sem limitar-se a ela,pois s��o tamb��m analisadas obras de outros escritores e cineastas, estabelendo-se aproxima����es ou contrastes entre elas. No quarto cap��tulo est��o agrupadas obras nas quais desponta a imposi����o de verdades pela for��a fisica ou verbal. A luta pelo poder, a expuls��o de elementos estranhos, d��vidas sobre a identidade e a inter-penetrablidade arte-vida caracterizam o cap��tulo seguinte. A ��nfase tem��tica do sexto cap��tulo recai sobre as limita����es impostas pela condi����o humana. Praticamente todas as obras expressam a impossibilidade da exist��ncia de certezas absolutas e de uma perfeita distin����o dos limites da realidade. Com isso, �� poss��vel afirmar n��o ser o objetivo da arte reproduzir a realidade. Mesmo que o fosse, tal tentativa resultaria infrut��fera devido ��s limita����es humanas.

Ci��ncia e tecnologia na obra liter��ria de Edgar Allan Poe e Machado de Assis

O trabalho tem por objetivo verificar de que forma os avan��os cient��ficos e tecnol��gicos da humanidade influenciaram a obra de Edgar Allan Poe e de Machado de Assis. A an��lise prop��e revelar o olhar desses escritores acerca das novas possibilidades que eram oferecidas �� sociedade com o intuito maior de evidenciar o papel da literatura nesse processo, uma vez que o homem �� capaz de enxergar todo o comportamento de uma ��poca e, conseq��entemente, a si mesmo, atrav��s da obra liter��ria. Essa atitude de ���olhar para tr��s��� e para ���dentro de si mesmo���, acredita-se, permite que o homem avance ainda mais. Para realizar a an��lise proposta, a pesquisa utiliza-se de conceitos como o de intertextualidade e interdisciplinaridade, muito caros �� Literatura Comparada, com o fim de promover rela����es entre as diferentes ��reas do saber ��� Literatura e Ci��ncia ���, entre os diferentes escritores e, por fim, entre os diversos g��neros liter��rios que constituem o corpus do presente estudo. Ap��s um breve panorama da hist��ria do desenvolvimento dos avan��os cient��ficos e tecnol��gicos da humanidade, procede-se ��s an��lises dos textos selecionados, procurando apontar e relacionar o pensamento dos escritores, provando que id��ias sobre os avan��os cient��ficos e tecnol��gicos est��o presentes na produ����o liter��ria de cada um. Por fim, ap��s o confronto estabelecido durante todo o trabalho entre o pensamento e o posicionamento dos escritores, discutese o papel da literatura no desenvolvimento e avan��o da humanidade.

O Barroco Hispano-americano: primero sue��o ou Sor Juana In��s de La Cuz

The current dissertation is linked to the research line Po��ticas da modernidade e da p��s-modernidade (modern and post modern poetics), which is being developed for the Programa de P��s-gradua����o em Estudos da Linguagem (Program of post graduation in language studies), in the area of Literatura Comparada (comparative literature) CCHLA/UFRN. The main aim of the research is to show the reading of Primero sue��o by sor Juana In��s de la Cruz, in the middle of the contemporary age, through an eclectic analysis which elucidates the baroque in its most recent concept; the social context and the life as a nun of sor Juana and the analysis of the poetry starting from the glance to the literary text. The perception of the baroque eon universal as a constant artistic movement from its appearance to the present time thus highlighted based on the most modern studies by the baroque specialists: Eug��nio d Ors, O barroco (s/d), Severo Sarduy, Barroco (s/d) and Gilles Deleuze, A dobra: Leibniz e o barroco (1991). In that research, it will be presented the translation/transcreation of the study object corpus still guided by the translatological theories of Haroldo de Campos (2004), Da tradu����o como cria����o e como cr��tica, Walter Benjamin (1971), A tarefa do tradutor and Jacques Derrida (2006), Torres de Babel

O FRAGMENTO EM TUTAM��IA E NO LIVRO SOBRE NADA

This study is connected to the research line Po��ticas da Modernidade e P��s -Modernidade, of the Programa de P��s-Gradua����o em Estudos da Linguagem, in the subarea: Comparative Literature - CCHLA/UFRN. Its main goal is to see fragmentation of writing as an aesthetic resource highlighted in the work of Tutam��ia by Guimar��es Rosa (1908-1967), and in Livro sobre nada by Manoel de Barros (1916). We undertake as a starting point the view that these works are allegorical expressions. We have as a basis the German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1984) conception about baroque allegory, that uses amorphous fragment and constitutes a dialectical expression, in which each person, each thing, each relation, may mean any other one (1984, p. 196). We see the stylistic features as used by Guimar��es Rosa and by Manoel de Barros in the construction of poetics capable of breaking the boundaries between artistic genres, literary and discursive, adding oral, musical and plastic elements to writing. We also analyze the development of fragmentary poetics, in which the voice of the narrator/lyrical I, the characters, space, plot and time exhibit the fragment as a factor that contributes to the great ambiguity of the two works and to create a new language, performative and vibrant, rich in alluring images, allegories

Os Brutos: tradi����o liter��ria e a mem��ria cultural do Serid��

Partindo do princ��pio de que a for��a centralizadora do discurso do narrador sob o universo romanesco encontra-se regido por nuan��as s��cio-ideol��gicas que fazem parte do mundo psicol��gico do autor, procede-se uma leitura cr��tica de Os Brutos (1938), romance de estr��ia do escritor Jos�� Bezerra Gomes. O trabalho mencionado visa a tecer algumas considera����es em torno do ponto de vista do narrador, enfocando a encena����o do EU no cen��rio art��stico-liter��rio e sua interfer��ncia no modo de narra����o da citada obra. O procedimento metodol��gico adotado foi a pesquisa bibliogr��fica, e como aporte te��rico recorreu-se �� cr��tica especializada que trata da tem��tica em quest��o. Ao final percebeu-se que o discurso do narrador possui um car��ter ambivalente, o qual permite que o interlocutor presente n��o assuma uma perspectiva fixa diante do que narra

Por dentro da cidade: solid��o e marginalidade em Rubem Fonseca

The fictional work of the author Rubem Fonseca, since its debut in 1963, with the book of tales entitled Os Prisioneiros, it has been evoking a continuing interest in their readers and in the specialized criticism. The doctoral thesis entitled Por dentro da cidade solid��o e marginalidade em Rubem Fonseca turns itself to his tale, it is considered by many as the most pungent of the author s literature. It is chosen a corpus of varied tales of the author, and still having as foundation the ideas from scholars of literary narratives, among them Antonio Candido (1980; 1987; 2006), Alfredo Bosi (1999; 2006) and still Walter Benjamin, (2000a; 2000b), the thesis discusses the contemporary Brazilian literature, more specifically the fonsequiana fiction, which exposes in an intense way the modern human condition in big cities: our dramas, inconstancies, desires and loneliness.