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1

Al-Zubidi, Haitham Kamil, and Noor Hassan Radhi. "Spirituality in Mary Oliver’s Poetry." Al-Adab Journal 2, no. 137 (2021): 19–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.31973/aj.v2i137.1626.

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Mary Oliver is an American poet who has been so much fascinated by the natural world since her childhood. Natural world occupies a very large space in her poetry, if not her entire poetic work. She was born in Ohio 1935, and she spent her childhood there surrounded by Nature. She graduated from high school and went to Vassar college and Ohio State University, yet she could not get a degree. She moved to New York where she met the sister of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the famous American poet and playwright. She got a closer look to Edna’s works by organizing her papers for almost seven years. As for career, she held the position at Bennington College by being the Catherine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. Later on she settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts for almost forty years inspired by the natural scenes there which are conveyed in her collections.
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Maver, Igor. "Slovene poetry in the U.S.A.: the case of Ivan Zorman." Acta Neophilologica 32 (December 1, 1999): 77–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/an.32.0.77-84.

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Ivan Zorman was both a musician and a poet, born in 1889 in Šmarje near Grosuplje and died in 1957 in Cleveland (Ohio). In 1893 his family emigrated to the United States of America, first to Ely, Calumet, Cleveland and then to some other American towns. After a brief return to Slovenia in 1898/9, where Zorman attended elementary school in Velesovo near Kranj, they finally settled down in 1904 in Cleveland. In 1907 Zorman took up the study of modern languages (English, French and Italian), history and music at Western Reserve University and graduated only in music in 1912. For a number of years, during 1908 and 1956, he was chief organist and choir leader (like his father) at the parish church of Sv. Lovrenc in Newburgh near Cleveland. During 1920 and 1925 he was professional director of the "Zorman Philharmonic". Not only was he known as a musician, he was very much present in the public life of the Slovene community living in Cleveland, as the enthusiastic teacher of Slovene literature in the Slovene school of the "Slovenski narodni dom", as a poet, translator and public speaker.
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Maver, Igor. "Slovene poetry in the U.S.A.: the case of Ivan Zorman." Acta Neophilologica 32 (December 1, 1999): 77–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/an.32.1.77-84.

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Ivan Zorman was both a musician and a poet, born in 1889 in Šmarje near Grosuplje and died in 1957 in Cleveland (Ohio). In 1893 his family emigrated to the United States of America, first to Ely, Calumet, Cleveland and then to some other American towns. After a brief return to Slovenia in 1898/9, where Zorman attended elementary school in Velesovo near Kranj, they finally settled down in 1904 in Cleveland. In 1907 Zorman took up the study of modern languages (English, French and Italian), history and music at Western Reserve University and graduated only in music in 1912. For a number of years, during 1908 and 1956, he was chief organist and choir leader (like his father) at the parish church of Sv. Lovrenc in Newburgh near Cleveland. During 1920 and 1925 he was professional director of the "Zorman Philharmonic". Not only was he known as a musician, he was very much present in the public life of the Slovene community living in Cleveland, as the enthusiastic teacher of Slovene literature in the Slovene school of the "Slovenski narodni dom", as a poet, translator and public speaker.
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Beal, Jane. "David K. Coley, Death and the Pearl-Maiden: Plague, Poetry, England. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2018, 220 pp." Mediaevistik 32, no. 1 (2020): 469–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/med.2019.01.122.

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David K. Coley (Associate Professor of English, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia) has produced an intriguing new book examining the four poems of the Pearl Manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x. – Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – in the context of late-medieval English and European plague treatises, texts, and discourses. Coley considers the Black Plague as a cultural trauma, which deeply affected the poet, who, motivated either by subconscious post-traumatic feeling or conscious artistry, used the same language and exempla used in plague texts in key passages of his poems. Coley indicates that his goal in the book <?page nr="470"?>is “to investigate how the history of the medieval plague experience might be simultaneously forgotten and remembered in late medieval literature” (5) and, more specifically, to examine:
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Ozer, Murat. "Tulip in the Desert." American Journal of Islam and Society 18, no. 4 (2001): 191–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v18i4.1998.

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The poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) of the Indiansubcontinent, who has been called the most serious Muslim philosophicalthinker of modem times by Fazlur Rahman, does not occupy the place hedeserves in the memory of the 'Umma of Islam today. For this fallen'Umma which has not produced world-class thinkers for centuries, this stateof amnesia cannot be afforded if the desire for revival is genuine. To thisend, I believe, the recent book of Mustansir Mir, Tulip in the Desert: ASelection of the Poetry of Muhammad Iqbal is a very timely contribution.The book consists of twelve short chapters preceded by an introductionon the life, poetry and philosophy of Iqbal. The author, who edited andtranslated this selection from Urdu and Farsi, is a professor in theDepartment of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Y oungston StateUniversity, Ohio. His book is more than a collection of Iqbal's poetry. Heputs his own background to the service of the reader. Each chapter startswith a commentary on the poems selected according to a theme. Each poemis supplied with extensive explanatory notes, which sometimes take morespace than the poem itself. As the author rightly states, these commentariesand notes elucidate Iqbal's use of historical, religious, philosophical andliterary resources of the Islamic tradition. The book is a comprehensiveintroduction to various aspects of Iqbal's ideology and art in his poetry.Considering that the number of existing books on Iqbal is far less thansufficient as compared to the magnitude and importance of his work, thepresent one is a significant contribution to commemorate Iqbal, and teachlay people, as well as the learned, his recipe for overcoming the problemsthat Muslims have been facing for centuries ...
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Gontarski, S. E. "“An American bitch”: Beckett’s Love’s Labor’s Lost." Tekstualia 2, no. 6 (2020): 73–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0014.5181.

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Samuel Beckett is not often thought of as a love poet, but much of his early poetry explores such personal relationships in intimate terms. In Shakespeare’s most poignant plays, love is almost always lost (except for his most formulaic comedies), as it is in Beckett’s poetry, despite one’s labors. This essay explores that thread of love in Beckett’s poetry, and, more importantly, its return in his late media experiments as a series of hauntings, a preoccupation that Derrida would call hauntology. The principal fi gures of Krapp’s Last Tape, “Ohio Impromptu”, “...but the clouds...”, “Ghost Trio”, and “Eh, Joe” remain haunted by failed love as they replay, time and again, the separation and its ghostly aftermath after one of the partners either dies or leaves to pursue what at the time was deemed a higher goal, art, of one form or another. This treatment of Beckett’s writings on love was originally delivered as a keynote address, “Beckett’s Love’s Labor’s Lost”, for the University of Gdańsk Samuel Beckett Seminar, “Beckett’s Faces”, and for the BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY 2018 Festival and Literary Conference as something of a backstory to the laboratory fi lm made during and sponsored by that conference and called Beckett on the Baltic: Love’s Labor’s Lost. Its world premiere was held at the BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY 2019 Festival and Literary Conference.
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Orozco, Violeta. "Costa primera." La Palabra y el Hombre, revista de la Universidad Veracruzana, no. 48 (October 7, 2019): 34–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.25009/lpyh.v0i48.2871.

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Violeta Orozco es una poeta bilingüe mexicana. Se graduó de la maestría en Letras Hispánicas (Ohio University) y empezó el doctorado en Letras Hispánicas en Rutgers University. Su proyecto de investigación se enfoca en las poetas marginales latinoamericanas desde la perspectiva del feminismo.
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Kopkiewicz, Aldona. "Chroboty, echa, oho! Słuch i inne zmysły w poezji Mirona Białoszewskiego." Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka, no. 30 (September 28, 2017): 259–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/pspsl.2017.30.12.

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The very relation between possibility of writing and sensitivity is a main concern of this interpretation of Miron Białoszewski’s poetry. At the start, I notice traumatic state of writing subjectivity, which I see as a negative affect. Białoszewski’s trauma manifests itself as an acedia in the Leżenia poetry cycle, in which the poet searches for another, positive affective simulation as well. He finds it in the very work of language, of sounds, and of material reality surrounding him. As he tries to revive himself and his writing mainly through the senses of touching and hearing/listening, I use the model of subjectivity described by Jean-Luc Nancy in the essay On listening, to understand how creative, writing subjectivity works on sensual and language levels.
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Rompalo, Anne M., Yu-Hsiang Hsieh, Terry Hogan, et al. "Point-of-care tests for sexually transmissible infections: what do ‘end users' want?" Sexual Health 10, no. 6 (2013): 541. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sh13047.

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Background Clinicians and developers identify sensitivity as an important quality in a point-of-care test (POCT) for sexually transmissible infections (STIs). Little information exists regarding what patients want for STI POCTs. Methods: A qualitative study, encompassing five focus groups among attendees of STI and adolescent health centres in Baltimore, Maryland, and Cincinnati, Ohio, were conducted between March 2008 and April 2009. Discussion topics included advantages and disadvantages of having a POCT, perceived barriers to using POCTs in the clinic setting and at home, priorities for the development of new POCTs for STIs, and envisioned characteristics of an ideal POCT. All discussions were recorded and transcribed. A qualitative content analysis was performed to examine frequencies or patterns of recurring codes, which were regrouped and indexed to identify salient themes. Results: Patients attending STI and adolescent outpatient clinics are in favour of diagnostic tests that are rapid, easy to read and simple to use. Home testing options for POCTs were acceptable and provided better confidentiality, privacy and convenience, but clinic-based POCTs were also acceptable because they offer definitive results and ensure immediate treatment. Barriers to home POCTs centred on cost and the ability to read and perform the test correctly at home. Opinions did not differ by patient ethnicity, except that Hispanic participants questioned the reliability of home test results, wanted high sensitivity and desired bilingual instructions. Conclusions: Patients attending STI and adolescent medical centres are in favour of STI POCTs if they are affordable, rapid, easy to read and simple to use.
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Gagnier, Regenia. "BOOK REVIEW: edited by Joseph Bristow.The Fin-de-Si�cle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005." Victorian Studies 48, no. 4 (2006): 771–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/vic.2006.48.4.771.

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Erdogan, Ebru. "Urban Aesthetics; Visual Quality Evaluation of “Konya Türbeönü” the Historical Urban Square." Open House International 41, no. 1 (2016): 43–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ohi-01-2016-b0006.

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Konya developed as a city with a single centre in historical period, the mound (höyük) known as Alaeddin’s Hill. This is still the central feature of the urban settlement of Konya. The tomb of the great humanist, poet and philosopher, Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumii, is also here. The most prestigious section of Konya during the Seljuk and Ottoman periods was the Konya Türbeönü, the space in front of his tomb. The historical city centre maintains its liveliness in the area between Alaeddin’s Hill and the tomb of Mevlana. This historical city centre is the most accessible area in the city and functions fully as such while bearing its historical identity. The transformation of Konya from single-centred city to multi-centred city resulted in considerable changes in the city’s silhouette. The Konya Türbeönü Square was redesigned and presented for use. While defining the effect of outdoor spaces on human life, they are evaluated as places that meet basic physical, social and psychological requirements. Since the planning process of the Konya Türbeönü Square was not participative, it has remained a focal point of intense discussions and debates about its meeting users’ needs have arisen. This article studies user satisfaction with the design of the Konya Türbeönü Square and investigates the effects of changes on users. The study survey, asked for demographical information about the users, the sensorial effects of the outdoor space, the effects of its landscape and general satisfaction. The questionnaire was administered to 300 people, including 100 architects who are educated in designing, shopkeepers who are interaction with this area everyday and laypersons. Evaluating the questionnaire data revealed the physical landscape quality and the behavioural and functional qualities of the users along with the visual qualities of the historical urban square’s former/older condition. This study aims to show how participative planning can improve future projects.
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Blain, Virginia. "Joseph Bristow, ed. The Fin de Siècle Poem: English Literary Culture and the 1890s. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. Pp. 352. $55.00 (cloth)." Journal of British Studies 45, no. 3 (2006): 688–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/507242.

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Hurol, Yonca, and Ashraf M. Salama. "Editorial: Urban Transformations in Rapidly Growing Contexts." Open House International 44, no. 4 (2019): 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ohi-04-2019-b0001.

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Cities have always been sources of inspiration for poetry. However, the modern western cities, which are the origins of secularity, have inspired poets in different ways. Charles Baudelaire captured the poetic dimensions of modernity in Paris in the 19th century. He wrote about the night life of Paris which became possible after street lighting. He wrote about corruption. Baudelaire also wrote about the changing character of commercial places in cities and tried to grasp the feelings of people as a ‘flaneur': an individual stroller at city streets. The philosopher Walter Benjamin got inspired by Baudelaire's poems and formed his philosophy, which relates poetics to modernity during the 20th century. Modern cities take an important role in his philosophy too, because Benjamin was making a collection of political event news in the cities of Germany. Then he had to leave Germany because of the growth of fascism. He left his collection behind. When he went to Paris he wrote about the passages and the poetic dimensions of modern city life. When Nazi army came to France, he had to leave Paris too. The poetry of Baudelaire and the philosophy of Benjamin are evidences for the poetic nature of modern city life. The relationship between the modern city and the free individual can easily be felt in their works. However, when you read heir work, you can easily understand that today's Paris is not the same Paris any more. It is still poetic, but in another way.
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Sahlan, Alan. "Messages For Humanity In "Bula Malino" (Quiet Moon) (A Poem by Kaimuddin Idrus Muhammadalbuthuni Ibnu Badaruddin)." IJLECR - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE EDUCATION AND CULTURE REVIEW 2, no. 1 (2016): 43–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.21009/ijlecr.021.05.

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The 2013 Curriculum describes the core competencies (KI) into four aspects of competence, namely (1) spiritual, (2) social, (3) cognitive, and (4) psychomotor aspects. The spiritual and the social aspects of learning materials development is done in an integrated manner, namely through the development of cognitive aspects (knowledge) of KI 3, and psychomotor aspects (skills) of KI 4. Therefore, the integration literature values in the areas of learning may be one of the teacher's choices. The objective is to make the learning materials comply with students' schemata or insight. Based on the content analysis that has been done in some local literatures both in folklores and poetries, local literature contains a lot of character values. Thus, local literatures may contribute to the implementation of 2013 Curriculum, so that teachers can integrate them in the development of learning. Local literatures in Southeast Sulawesi such as; Oheo Folklore for Tolaki people, Wandoke-Doke te Lakolo-kolopua Folklore for Muna People, or Wandiu-Diu Folklore for Buton people contains a lot of character values, both in terms of spiritual and social values. Folk Songs such as Kabanti, Kantola also has similar values in the society; they have humanistic, moral, mutual assistance, hard work, discipline, and struggle values. Spiritual values in the local literatures, among others are, belief in the greatness of Allah SWT, confidence in God's grace in all its activities, and surrender to Allah. Character values on learning in the implementation of the 2013 Curriculum, among others are; discipline, hard work, honesty, responsibility, working together, affection, and respect. Thus, the values of the local literature or local culture is highly relevant to the values of character education, and therefore local literature values can be integrated in the learning area designed by teachers in the implementation of 2013 Curriculum, especially in developing KI 1 and KI 2 in learning.
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Sahlan, Alan. "Messages For Humanity In "Bula Malino" (Quiet Moon) (A Poem by Kaimuddin Idrus Muhammadalbuthuni Ibnu Badaruddin)." IJLECR - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE EDUCATION AND CULTURE REVIEW 2, no. 1 (2016): 43–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.21009/ijlecr.021.15.

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The 2013 Curriculum describes the core competencies (KI) into four aspects of competence, namely (1) spiritual, (2) social, (3) cognitive, and (4) psychomotor aspects. The spiritual and the social aspects of learning materials development is done in an integrated manner, namely through the development of cognitive aspects (knowledge) of KI 3, and psychomotor aspects (skills) of KI 4. Therefore, the integration literature values in the areas of learning may be one of the teacher's choices. The objective is to make the learning materials comply with students' schemata or insight. Based on the content analysis that has been done in some local literatures both in folklores and poetries, local literature contains a lot of character values. Thus, local literatures may contribute to the implementation of 2013 Curriculum, so that teachers can integrate them in the development of learning. Local literatures in Southeast Sulawesi such as; Oheo Folklore for Tolaki people, Wandoke-Doke te Lakolo-kolopua Folklore for Muna People, or Wandiu-Diu Folklore for Buton people contains a lot of character values, both in terms of spiritual and social values. Folk Songs such as Kabanti, Kantola also has similar values in the society; they have humanistic, moral, mutual assistance, hard work, discipline, and struggle values. Spiritual values in the local literatures, among others are, belief in the greatness of Allah SWT, confidence in God's grace in all its activities, and surrender to Allah. Character values on learning in the implementation of the 2013 Curriculum, among others are; discipline, hard work, honesty, responsibility, working together, affection, and respect. Thus, the values of the local literature or local culture is highly relevant to the values of character education, and therefore local literature values can be integrated in the learning area designed by teachers in the implementation of 2013 Curriculum, especially in developing KI 1 and KI 2 in learning.
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Butterfield, R. W. (Herbie). "Kenneth M. Price, Whitman and Tradition: The Poet in His Century (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990, £12.95). Pp. 179. ISBN 0 300 04683 9. - Peter Stitt and Frank Graziano (eds.), James Wright: The Heart of the Light (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1990, £27.50 cloth, £9.95 paper). Pp. 425. ISBN 0 472 06403 3 (cloth), 0 472 06403 7 (paper). - Kevin Stein, James Wright: The Poetry of a Grown Man: Constancy and Transition in the Work of James Wright (Athens: University of Ohio Press, 1989, £23.15). Pp. 222. ISBN 0 8214 0909 3." Journal of American Studies 25, no. 3 (1991): 515–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021875800034654.

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Bartlett Hines, Emily. "Monique R. Morgan, Narrative Means, Lyric Ends: Temporality in the Nineteenth-Century British Long Poem (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009), 233 + x pp., £39, $59.95 (USD), €46, ISBN-13: 978-0814211113." Victoriographies 3, no. 2 (2013): 217–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/vic.2013.0139.

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Oliveira, Maria Aparecida de. "VIRGINIA WOOLF E A CRÍTICA FEMINISTA." IPOTESI – REVISTA DE ESTUDOS LITERÁRIOS 23, no. 2 (2019): 18–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.34019/1982-0836.2019.v23.29177.

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O presente artigo estabelece as relações entre a A room of one’s own e a crítica feminista, observando como essa tem revisto e ressignificado o ensaio de Virginia Woolf. Serão problematizadas questões como a exclusão feminina dos espaços públicos, das esferas políticas e, consequentemente, da literatura e da história. Depois disso, abordaremos a personagem Judith Shakespeare. Por último, duas questões problematizadas serão tratadas nesta análise, a primeira refere-se à tradição literária feminina e a segunda refere-se à própria frase feminina.
 Palavras-chave: Crítica feminista, Judith Shakespeare, tradição literária feminina.
 Referências
 AUERBACH, E. Brown Stocking. In: ______. Mimesis: a representação da realidade na literatura ocidental. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1971.
 BARRETT, M. Introduction. In: WOOLF, V. A room of one’s own and Three guineas. Introd. Michèle Barrett. London: Penguin, 1993.
 ______ (ed.). Women and writing. London: The Women’s Press, 1979.
 BOWLBY, R. Feminist destinations and further essays on Virginia Woolf. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 1997.
 ______. Walking, women and writing: Virginia Woolf as flâneuse. In: ARMSTRONG, I. (ed.). New Feminist discourses: critical essays on theories and texts. London: Routledge, 1992.
 CAUGHIE, P. L. Virginia Woolf & postmodernism literature in quest and question of itself. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1991.
 COELHO, N. N. Dicionário crítico de escritoras brasileiras. São Paulo: Escrituras, 2002.
 ______. A literatura feminina no Brasil contemporâneo. São Paulo: Siciliano, 1993.
 GILBERT, S. Woman’s Sentence. Man’s Sentencing: Linguistic Fantasies in Woolf and Joyce. In: MARCUS, J. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury: A Centenary. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.
 GILBERT, S.; GILBERT, S. Shakespeare’s sisters: feminist essays on women poets. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1979.
 ______. The madwoman in the attic: the woman writer in the nineteenth-century literary imagination. New Haven: Yale University, 2000.
 ______. The war of words. vol.1 of No man’s land: the place of the woman writer in the twentieth century. New Haven: Yale University, 1988.
 HUSSEY, M. Virginia Woolf: A to Z. New York: Oxford University, 1995.
 JONES, S. Writing the woman artist: essays on poetics, politics, and portraiture. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania, 1991.
 MARCUS, J. Art and anger: reading like a woman. Columbus: Ohio State University, 1988.
 ______. Virginia Woolf and the languages of the patriarchy. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1987a.
 MINOW-PINKNEY, M. Virginia Woolf and the problem of the subject: feminine writing in the major novels. New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 2010.
 MOERS, E. Literary women: the great writers. New York: Doubleday, 1976.
 MUZART, Z. L. Escritoras brasileiras do século XIX. Florianópolis: Mulheres, 2005.
 OLSEN, T. Silences. New York: Seymour Lawrence, 1978.
 RICH, A. Of woman born: motherhood as experience and institution. New York: W W. Norton, 1995.
 ROSENBAUM, S.P. Women and fiction: the manuscript versions of A room of one’s own. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
 SHOWALTER, E. Feminist criticism in the wilderness. In: GILBERT, S.; GUBAR, S. Feminist literary theory and criticism. New York; London: W. W. Norton, 2007.
 SNAITH, A. Introduction. In: WOOLF, V. A room of one’s own and Three guineas. Oxford: Oxford University, 2015.
 STETZ, M. D. Anita Brookner: Woman writer as reluctant feminist. In: ______. Writing the woman artist: essays on poetics, politics and portraiture. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania, 1991.
 WALKER, A. In search of our mother’s gardens. In: ______. In search of our mother’s gardens: womanist prose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
 WOOLF, V. A room of one’s own and Three guineas. Introd. Anna Snaith. Oxford: Oxford University, 2015.
 WOOLF, V. A room of one’s own and Three guineas. Introd. Michèle Barrett. London: Penguin, 1993.
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Weiner, Stephanie Kuduk. "Monique R. Morgan. Narrative Means, Lyric Ends: Temporality in the Nineteenth-Century British Long Poem. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-8142-1111-3. Price: US$47.95." Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, no. 57-58 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/1006545ar.

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Nnyigide, NM. "Agmag Igbo dka Ngwar n’kwalite Ezi Nchekwa na Nkwsiike haobodo." UJAH: Unizik Journal of Arts and Humanities 15, no. 2 (2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ujah.v15i2.9.

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Ka Najira nwerechara onwe ya n’af 1960, olileanya tt mamala ya b na ihe ga-adz mma. Mana ka oge na-aga, a chptara na ihe na-akawanye nj. Usoro chch d iche iche daptara. Nd am na nd nkt achala mana nd gara n’ihu na-akawanye nj. O bu ihe doro anya na chch ha b nke nchgbu na fnfju akpa. N’agbanyegh na Chineke ji aknaba na ngozi d iche wee ch Najira mma, ag ka na-af m ya n; iheegwu na oke j na-eme oge niile; tt nne na nna anagh akwnwuziri m ha gw akwkw; nd ntoroba gara mahadum enweghkwa r. Aj nd d etu a na-ebute gbaaghara n’obodo ma na-etinyekwa tt m Najira na mp d iche iche dka izu ohi, tr mmad, igbufu mmad, kwafu bara mmad dka mmiri, dgz. b ihe nd a kpalitere mm omenchcha chpta z d iche iche agmag Igbo, kachas ab ederede Igbo ga-esi nye aka n’ibelata aj nd a ma weta udo na ezi nchekwa ma kwalitekwa nkwusiike nke ohaobodo. N’ime nke a, a tlere ab ederede Igbo d iche iche iji chpta echiche nd odeeab Igbo gbasara nd chch obodo Najira nakwa aro na z d iche iche ha tptara a ga-esi wee belata aj nd a, ka e wee nwee ike kwalite ezi nchekwa na ganiihu obodo Najira.After the Nigerian independence in 1960, the expectation of many of her citizens was that things would be better. But as time went on, it was observed that things were becoming worse. Different systems of government emerged. The military and civilians ruled but situation went forth to be bad. It was obvious that their governance was bad and characterized with selfish interest. Notwithstanding that God blessed Nigeria with many resources; her citizens are still suffering from hunger; terrible things always happen; many parents could no longer afford their childrens’ school fees; youths that graduated from the university are unemployed. This kind of unhealthy situation brings about social instability and encourages some Nigerian to engage in different crimes like robbery, kidnapping, extra judicial killings, and murder of different kinds, etc. it is against this background that the researcher hopes to examine different ways the Igbo literature, especially the Igbo written poetry could help to control this ugly situation and bring about good security and also promote social stability. The study analyzed some written Igbo poems in order to observe the position of some Igbo poets concerning the situation of governance in Nigeria and their contributions on how to improve it, so as to promote good security and progress in Nigeria.
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"Reading and writing." Language Teaching 37, no. 1 (2004): 62–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s026144480423213x.

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04–64Andrews, Richard (U. of York, UK). Where next in research on ICT and literacies?English in Education (Sheffield, UK), 37, 3 (2003), 28–41.04–65Beard, Roger (Leeds U., UK; Email: R.F.Beard@education.leeds.ac.uk). Not the whole story of the national literacy strategy: a response to Dominic Wyse. British Educational Research Journal (London, UK), 29, 6 (2003), 917–928.04–66Bournot-Trites, M. and Seror, J. (University of British Columbia, Canada; Email: monique.bournot-trites@ubc.ca). Students' and teachers' perceptions about strategies which promote proficiency in second language writing. Revue Canadienne de Linguistique Appliquée/Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics (Ottawa, Canada), 6, 2 (2003), 129–157.04–67Gardner, Dee (Brigham Young University, USA). Vocabulary input through extensive reading: a comparison of words found in children's narrative and expository reading materials. Applied Linguistics (Oxford, UK), 25, 1 (2004), 1–37.04–68Hu, Jim (U. College of the Cariboo, Canada). Thinking languages in L2 writing: research findings and pedagogical implications. TESL Canada Journal/Revue du TESL Canada (Burnaby, Canada), 21, 1 (2003), 39–63.04–69Jarvis, Scott (Ohio University, USA; Email: Jarvis@ohio.edu), Grant, Leslie, Bikowski, Dawn and Ferris, Dana. Exploring multiple profiles of highly rated learner compositions. Journal of Second Language Writing (New York, USA), 12, 4 (2003), 377–403.04–70Mihwa Chung, Teresa and Nation, Paul (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ). Technical vocabulary in specialised texts. Reading in a Foreign Language (Hawai'i, USA), 15, 2 (2003), 103–116.04–71Ndiaye, M. and Vandeventer Faltin, A. (University of Geneva, Switzerland; Email: Anne.Vandeventer@lettres.unige.ch). A spell checker tailored to language learners. Computer Assisted Language Learning (Lisse, The Netherlands), 16, 2–3 (2003), 213–232.04–72Pecorari, Diane (Stockholm University, Sweden; Email: Diane.Pecorari@English.su.se). Good and original: Plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing (New York, USA), 12, 4 (2003), 317–345.04–73Ridgway, Tony (Queen's U., UK). Literacy and foreign language reading. Reading in a Foreign Language (Hawai'i, USA), 15, 2 (2003), 117–129.04–74Shi, L., Wang, W. and Wen, Q. (University of British Columbia, Canada; Email: ling.shi@ubc.ca). Teaching experience and evaluation of second-language students' writing. Revue Canadienne de Linguistic Appliquée/Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics (Ottawa, Canada), 6, 2 (2003), 219–236.04–75Stuart, Morag (U. of London; Email: m.stuart@ioe.ac.uk). Getting ready for reading: a follow-up study of inner city second language learners at the end of Key Stage 1. British Journal of Educational Psychology (Leicester, UK), 74 (2004), 15–36.04–76Stuart, Morag (U. of London, UK; Email: m.stuart@ioe.ac.uk), Dixon, Maureen, Masterson, Jackie and Gray, Bob. Children's early reading vocabulary: description and word frequency lists. British Journal of Educational Psychology (Leicester, UK), 73 (2003), 585–598.04–77Takagaki, Toshiyuki.The revision patterns and intentions in L1 and L2 by Japanese writers: a case study. TESL Canada Journal/Revue TESL du Canada (Burnaby, Canada), 21, 1 (2003), 22–38.04–78Van de Poel, K. and Swanepoel, P. (Centre for Language and Speech, University of Antwerp, Belgium; Email: vanpoel@uia.ua.ac.be). Theoretical and methodological pluralism in designing effective lexical support for CALL. Computer Assisted Language Learning (Lisse, The Netherlands), 16, 2–3 (2003), 173–211.04–79Wang, Lurong (University of Toronto, Canada; Email: lwang@oise.utoronto.ca). Switching to first language among writers with differing second-language proficiency. Journal of Second Language Writing (New York, USA), 12, 4 (2003), 347–375.04–80Warner, Lionel (Newlands Girls' School, Maidenhead, UK). Wider reading. English in Education (Sheffield, UK), 37, 3 (2003), 13–18.04–81Williams, Mary (Brunel U., UK). The importance of metacognition in the literacy development of young gifted and talented children. Gifted Education International (Bicester, UK), 17, 3 (2003).04–82Wyse, Dominic (Liverpool John Moores U., UK; Email: d.wyse@livijm.ac.uk). The national literacy strategy: a critical review of empirical evidence. British Educational Research Journal (London, UK), 29, 6 (2003), 903–916.
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22

Reid, Christy. "Journey of a Deaf-Blind Woman." M/C Journal 13, no. 3 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.264.

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I sat alone on the beach under the shade of a big umbrella. My husband, Bill, and our three children were in the condo taking a break from the Florida sunshine. Dreamily, I gazed at the vast Gulf of Mexico, the brilliant blue sky stretching endlessly above. I was sitting about 50 feet from the surf, but I couldn't actually see the waves hitting the beach; I was almost blind. It was a windy day in late May and I loved feeling the ocean breeze sweeping over me. I imagined I could hear the waves crashing onto the surf, but the sound was only a memory. I was totally deaf. Although I had a cochlear implant and could hear the waves, the cry of sea gulls, and many other sounds with the technology, I wasn't wearing it at the moment and everything I heard was in my mind. As a child, my understanding of speech was better and my vision was clearer. My diagnosis was optic atrophy at age 5 and my vision gradually degenerated over the years. For unknown reasons, nerve damage caused hearing loss and during my teens, my hearing grew worse and worse until by the time I was ready for college, I was profoundly deaf. I chose to attend Gallaudet University because my high school teachers and my parents felt I would receive better services as a deaf and blind student. I feel it was a very good decision; when I entered Gallaudet, it was like entering a new and exhilarating world. Before attending Gallaudet, while I struggled to cope with hearing loss combined with severely low vision, my world grew smaller and smaller, not being able to communicate efficiently with others. At Gallaudet, I suddenly found I could communicate with almost anybody I met on campus using sign language. Thus, my self-confidence and independence grew as I proceeded to get a college education.It wasn't an easy route to follow. I didn't know Braille at the time and depended on using a CCTV (closed captioned television) electronic aid which magnified text, enabling me to read all my college books. I also relied on the assistance of a class aid who interpreted all my teachers' lectures and class discussions because I was unable to see people's signing unless they signed right in front of my face. It was slow going and often frustrating, trying to keep involved socially and keeping up with my coursework but when I was 13 years old, my vision specialist teacher who had worked with me from 5th grade until I graduated from high school, wrote a note for me saying, "Anything worthwhile seldom comes easy." The phrase stuck in my mind and I tried to follow this philosophy. In 1989 after 7 years of persistence, I graduated with a Bachelor's of Arts degree in psychology. With the B.A. in hand and having developed good communication skills with deaf and deaf-blind people using sign language and ASL (American Sign Language), I was ready to face the world. But I wasn't exactly ready; I knew I wanted a professional job working with deaf-blind people and the way to get there was to earn a master's degree. I applied for admission into Gallaudet's graduate school and was accepted into the vocational rehabilitation counselling program. While I thoroughly enjoyed graduate school experience, I got to work with my class mates one-on-one more often and there were a lot more hands-on activities, it became obvious to me that I wasn't prepared for graduate school. I needed to learn Braille and how to use Braille technology; my vision had worsened a lot since starting college. In addition, I needed a break from school and needed to gain experience in the working world. After completing one and a half years and earning 15 credit hours in the master's program, I left Gallaudet and found a job in Baltimore, Maryland.The job was with a new program for adults who were visually and hearing impaired and mentally disabled. My job was assisting the clients with independent living and work related skills. Most of the other staff were deaf, communicating via ASL. By then, I was skilled using tactile signing, putting my hand on the back of the signer's hand to follow movements by touch, and I made friends with co-workers. I felt grown up and independent working full-time, living in my own apartment, using the subway train and bus to travel to and from work. I didn't have any serious problems living on my own. There was a supermarket up the road to which I could walk or ride a bus. But I needed a taxi ride back to the apartment when I had more groceries than I could carry. I would leave a sign I made out of cardboard and wrote my address in big black numbers, on my apartment door to help the driver find my place. I used a white cane and upon moving to Baltimore, an Orientation and Mobility (O and M) teacher who worked with blind people, showing them how to travel in the city, taught me the route to my work place using the subway and bus. Thus, I was independent and knew my way to work as well as to a nearby shopping mall. One day as I stood on the subway station platform holding my white cane, waiting for my train, the opposite train pulled in. As I stood watching passengers hurrying to board, knowing my train would arrive soon on the other side, a woman ran up to me and started pulling my arm. I handed her my notebook and black marker I used for communicating with people in the public, telling her I couldn't hear and would she please write in large print? She frantically scribbled something, but I couldn't read the note. She then gave me back the pen and pad, grabbed my arm again and started pulling me towards the train. I refused to budge, gesturing towards the opposite tracks, clearly indicating I was waiting for the other train. Finally, she let go, dashed into the train before the doors closed. I watched the train pull away, sadly reflecting that some people who wanted to help, just didn't understand how to approach disabled people. As a deaf-blind traveller, it was my duty to help educate the general public how to assist disabled persons in a humane way. After I established my new life for a few months, Bill was offered a position in the same program and moved to Baltimore to join me. He had worked at the Helen Keller National Centre in New York where I met him while doing a summer internship there three years before. I was thrilled when he got the job working beside me and we got to know each other on a daily basis. We had been dating since we met although I was in college and he was working and living in New York and then Cleveland, Ohio. Bill being hearing and sighted, was skilled in sign language and communication techniques with deaf-blind people. He had a wonderful attitude towards disabled people and made me feel like a normal person who was capable of doing things. We shared a lot and were very comfortable with each other. After nearly six months together in Baltimore, we married in May 1992, several weeks before my 28th birthday.After our first year of marriage living in Maryland, Bill and I moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. We wanted to live closer to my family and parents, Ron and Judy Cummings, who lived in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 176 miles north of Little Rock. I wanted to go back to school and entered the deaf education program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with the goal of becoming a teacher for deaf-blind students. I never dreamed I would have a deaf-blind child of my own one day. My vision and hearing loss were caused by nerve damage and no one else in my family nor Bill's had a similar disability.I was pregnant with our first child when I entered UALR. In spite of my growing belly, I enjoyed the teacher training experience. I worked with a deaf-blind 12-year-old student and her teacher at the Arkansas School for the Deaf; observed two energetic four-year-olds in the pre-school program. But when my son, Joe was born in June 1994, my world changed once again. School became less important and motherhood became the ultimate. As a deaf-blind person, I wanted to be the best mom within my abilities.I decided that establishing good communication with my child was an important aspect of being a deaf-blind mom. Bill was in full agreement and we would set Joe on the kitchen table in his infant carrier, reciting together in sign language, "The three Bears". I could see Joe's tiny fists and feet wave excitedly in the air as he watched us signing children's stories. I would encourage Joe to hold my fingers while I signed to him, trying to establish a tactile signing relationship. But he was almost two years old when he finally understood that he needed to sign into my hands. We were sitting at the table and I had a bag of cookies. I refused to give him one until he made the sign for "cookie" in my hand. I quickly rewarded him with a cookie and he got three or four each time he made the sign in my hand. Today at 16, Joe is an expert finger speller and can effectively communicate with me and his younger deaf-blind brother, Ben.When Joe was two and a half, I decided to explore a cochlear implant. It was 1996 and we were living in Poplar Bluff by then. My cousin, who was studying audiology, told me that people using cochlear implants were able to understand sound so well they didn't need good vision. I made an appointment with the St. Louis cochlear implant program and after being evaluated, I decided to go ahead. I am glad I have a cochlear implant. After months of practice I learned to use the new sound and was eventually able to understand many environmental sounds. I never regained the ability of understanding speech, though, but I could hear people's voices very clearly, the sound of laughter, birds singing, and many more. Being able to hear my children's voices is especially wonderful, even when they get noisy and I get a headache. That fall I went to Leader Dogs School for the Blind (LDSB) where I met Milo, a large yellow Labrador retriever. At LDSB I learned how to care for and work with a dog guide. Having Milo as my companion and guide was like stepping into another new and wonderful world of independence. With Milo, I could walk briskly and feel secure. Milo was a big help as a deaf-blind mom, too. With Milo's guiding help, it was wonderful following my children while they rode tricycles or bikes and the whole family enjoyed going out for walks together. Our second son, Ben, was born in February 1999. He was a perfectly healthy little boy and Bill and I were looking forward to raising two sons. Joe was four and a half years old when Ben was born and was fascinated in his new brother. But when Ben was 5 months old, he was diagnosed with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (LCH), a rare childhood disease and in some cases, fatal. It was a long, scary road we followed as Ben received treatment at the children's hospital in St. Louis which involved making the 150 mile trip almost weekly for chemotherapy and doctor check-ups. Through it all, Ben was a happy little boy, in spite of the terrible rash that affected his scalp and diaper area, a symptom of LCH. Bill and I knew that we had to do everything possible to help Ben. When he was a year old, his condition seemed stable enough for me to feel comfortable leaving my family for two months to study Braille and learn new technology skills at a program in Kansas City. My vision had deteriorated to a point where I could no longer use a CCTV.Bill's mom, Marie Reid, who lived in Cleveland, Ohio, made a special trip to stay at our home in Poplar Bluff to help Bill with the boys while I was gone. I was successful at the program, learning Braille, making a change from magnification to Braille technology. Upon returning home, I began looking for a job and found employment as a deaf-blind specialist in a new project in Mississippi. The job was in Tupelo and we moved to northern Mississippi, settling into a new life. We transferred Ben's treatment to St. Judes Children's hospital located in Memphis, 94 miles west of Tupelo. I went to work and Bill stayed home with the boys, which worked well. When Ben had to go to St. Judes every three weeks for chemotherapy, Bill was able to drive him. The treatment was successful, the rash had disappeared and there were no traces of LCH in Ben's blood tests. But when he was almost 3 years old, he was diagnosed with optic atrophy, the same eye disease I suffered from and an audiologist detected signs of inner ear hearing loss.Shocked at the news that our little son would grow up legally blind and perhaps become deaf, Bill and I had to rethink our future. We knew we wanted Ben to have a good life and as a deaf-blind child, he needed quality services. We chose to move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania because I knew there were good services for deaf-blind people and I could function independently as a stay-home mom. In addition, Cleveland, Ohio, where Marie Reid and several of Bill's siblings lived, was a two hour's drive from Pittsburgh and living near family was important to us. With regret, I left my job opportunity and new friends and we re-located to Pittsburgh. We lived on a quiet street near Squirrel Hill and enrolled Joe into a near-by Catholic school. Ben received excellent early intervention services through the Pittsburgh public school, beginning Braille, using a white cane and tactile signing. The Pennsylvania services for the blind generously purchased a wonderful computer system and Braille display for me to use at home. I was able to communicate with Joe's and Ben's teachers and other contacts using e-mail. Ben's Braille teacher provided us with several print/Braille books which I read to the boys while Ben touched the tactile pictures. I made friends in the deaf and deaf-blind community and our family attended social events. Besides the social benefits of a deaf community, Pittsburgh offered a wonderful interpreting service and I was able to take Ben to doctor appointments knowing an interpreter would meet me at the hospital to assist with communication. I also found people who were willing to help me as volunteer SSPs (support Service Providers), persons whose role is to assist a deaf-blind person in any way, such as shopping, going to the bank, etc. Thus, I was able to function quite independently while Bill worked. Perhaps Bill and I were a bit crazy; after all, we had enough on our plate with a deaf-blind son and a deaf-blind mom, but love is a mysterious thing. In October 2003, Tim was born and our family was complete. Having two school-aged children and a baby on my hands was too much for me to handle alone. Bill was working and busy with culinary arts school. We realized we needed more help with the children, plus the high cost of living in the city was a struggle for us. We decided for the family's best interest, it would be better to move back to Poplar Bluff. After Joe and Ben were out of school in June, my mom flew out to Pittsburgh to escort them back to her home while Bill finished his externship for his culinary arts degree and in the late summer of 2004, we packed up our apartment, said good-bye to Pittsburgh, and drove to Missouri. The move was a good decision in many ways. Poplar Bluff, a rural town in south-eastern Missouri, has been my hometown since I was 10 years old. My extended family live there and the boys are thriving growing up among their cousins. Ben is receiving Braille and sign language services at public school and reads Braille faster than me!While both Bill and I are deeply satisfied knowing our children are happy, we have made personal sacrifices. Bill has given up his career satisfaction as a professional cook, needing to help look after the children and house. I have given up the benefits of city life such as interpreting and SSP services, not to mention the social benefits of a deaf community. But the children's well-being comes first, and I have found ways to fulfil my needs by getting involved with on-line groups for deaf-blind people, including writers and poets. I have taken a great interest in writing, especially children's stories and hope to establish a career as a writer. While I work on my computer, Bill keeps busy engaging the boys in various projects. They have built a screened-in tree house in the backyard where Ben and Tim like to sleep during warm summer nights.“It's almost 5 o'clock," Bill signed into my hand, rousing me from my thoughts. Time to prepare for our homeward journey the next day to Poplar Bluff, Missouri.Christy and Family
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23

Franks, Rachel. "A Taste for Murder: The Curious Case of Crime Fiction." M/C Journal 17, no. 1 (2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.770.

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Introduction Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular genres. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as one in every three new novels, published in English, is classified within the crime fiction category (Knight xi). These new entrants to the market are forced to jostle for space on bookstore and library shelves with reprints of classic crime novels; such works placed in, often fierce, competition against their contemporaries as well as many of their predecessors. Raymond Chandler, in his well-known essay The Simple Art of Murder, noted Ernest Hemingway’s observation that “the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer […] competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well” (3). In fact, there are so many examples of crime fiction works that, as early as the 1920s, one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’, Dorothy L. Sayers, complained: It is impossible to keep track of all the detective-stories produced to-day [sic]. Book upon book, magazine upon magazine pour out from the Press, crammed with murders, thefts, arsons, frauds, conspiracies, problems, puzzles, mysteries, thrills, maniacs, crooks, poisoners, forgers, garrotters, police, spies, secret-service men, detectives, until it seems that half the world must be engaged in setting riddles for the other half to solve (95). Twenty years after Sayers wrote on the matter of the vast quantities of crime fiction available, W.H. Auden wrote one of the more famous essays on the genre: The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict. Auden is, perhaps, better known as a poet but his connection to the crime fiction genre is undisputed. As well as his poetic works that reference crime fiction and commentaries on crime fiction, one of Auden’s fellow poets, Cecil Day-Lewis, wrote a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake: the central protagonist of these novels, Nigel Strangeways, was modelled upon Auden (Scaggs 27). Interestingly, some writers whose names are now synonymous with the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, established the link between poetry and crime fiction many years before the publication of The Guilty Vicarage. Edmund Wilson suggested that “reading detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking” (395). In the first line of The Guilty Vicarage, Auden supports Wilson’s claim and confesses that: “For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (406). This indicates that the genre is at best a trivial pursuit, at worst a pursuit that is bad for your health and is, increasingly, socially unacceptable, while Auden’s ideas around taste—high and low—are made clear when he declares that “detective stories have nothing to do with works of art” (406). The debates that surround genre and taste are many and varied. The mid-1920s was a point in time which had witnessed crime fiction writers produce some of the finest examples of fiction to ever be published and when readers and publishers were watching, with anticipation, as a new generation of crime fiction writers were readying themselves to enter what would become known as the genre’s Golden Age. At this time, R. Austin Freeman wrote that: By the critic and the professedly literary person the detective story is apt to be dismissed contemptuously as outside the pale of literature, to be conceived of as a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste (7). This article responds to Auden’s essay and explores how crime fiction appeals to many different tastes: tastes that are acquired, change over time, are embraced, or kept as guilty secrets. In addition, this article will challenge Auden’s very narrow definition of crime fiction and suggest how Auden’s religious imagery, deployed to explain why many people choose to read crime fiction, can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment. This latter argument demonstrates that a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. Crime Fiction: A Type For Every Taste Cathy Cole has observed that “crime novels are housed in their own section in many bookshops, separated from literary novels much as you’d keep a child with measles away from the rest of the class” (116). Times have changed. So too, have our tastes. Crime fiction, once sequestered in corners, now demands vast tracts of prime real estate in bookstores allowing readers to “make their way to the appropriate shelves, and begin to browse […] sorting through a wide variety of very different types of novels” (Malmgren 115). This is a result of the sheer size of the genre, noted above, as well as the genre’s expanding scope. Indeed, those who worked to re-invent crime fiction in the 1800s could not have envisaged the “taxonomic exuberance” (Derrida 206) of the writers who have defined crime fiction sub-genres, as well as how readers would respond by not only wanting to read crime fiction but also wanting to read many different types of crime fiction tailored to their particular tastes. To understand the demand for this diversity, it is important to reflect upon some of the appeal factors of crime fiction for readers. Many rules have been promulgated for the writers of crime fiction to follow. Ronald Knox produced a set of 10 rules in 1928. These included Rule 3 “Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable”, and Rule 10 “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them” (194–6). In the same year, S.S. Van Dine produced another list of 20 rules, which included Rule 3 “There must be no love interest: The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar”, and Rule 7 “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better” (189–93). Some of these directives have been deliberately ignored or have become out-of-date over time while others continue to be followed in contemporary crime writing practice. In sharp contrast, there are no rules for reading this genre. Individuals are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction. There are, however, different appeal factors for readers. The most common of these appeal factors, often described as doorways, are story, setting, character, and language. As the following passage explains: The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next. The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being immersed in an evocation of place or time. The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others’ eyes. Readers who most appreciate skilful writing enter through the doorway of language (Wyatt online). These doorways draw readers to the crime fiction genre. There are stories that allow us to easily predict what will come next or make us hold our breath until the very last page, the books that we will cheerfully lend to a family member or a friend and those that we keep close to hand to re-read again and again. There are settings as diverse as country manors, exotic locations, and familiar city streets, places we have been and others that we might want to explore. There are characters such as the accidental sleuth, the hardboiled detective, and the refined police officer, amongst many others, the men and women—complete with idiosyncrasies and flaws—who we have grown to admire and trust. There is also the language that all writers, regardless of genre, depend upon to tell their tales. In crime fiction, even the most basic task of describing where the murder victim was found can range from words that convey the genteel—“The room of the tragedy” (Christie 62)—to the absurd: “There it was, jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb” (Maloney 1). These appeal factors indicate why readers might choose crime fiction over another genre, or choose one type of crime fiction over another. Yet such factors fail to explain what crime fiction is or adequately answer why the genre is devoured in such vast quantities. Firstly, crime fiction stories are those in which there is the committing of a crime, or at least the suspicion of a crime (Cole), and the story that unfolds revolves around the efforts of an amateur or professional detective to solve that crime (Scaggs). Secondly, crime fiction offers the reassurance of resolution, a guarantee that from “previous experience and from certain cultural conventions associated with this genre that ultimately the mystery will be fully explained” (Zunshine 122). For Auden, the definition of the crime novel was quite specific, and he argued that referring to the genre by “the vulgar definition, ‘a Whodunit’ is correct” (407). Auden went on to offer a basic formula stating that: “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (407). The idea of a formula is certainly a useful one, particularly when production demands—in terms of both quality and quantity—are so high, because the formula facilitates creators in the “rapid and efficient production of new works” (Cawelti 9). For contemporary crime fiction readers, the doorways to reading, discussed briefly above, have been cast wide open. Stories relying upon the basic crime fiction formula as a foundation can be gothic tales, clue puzzles, forensic procedurals, spy thrillers, hardboiled narratives, or violent crime narratives, amongst many others. The settings can be quiet villages or busy metropolises, landscapes that readers actually inhabit or that provide a form of affordable tourism. These stories can be set in the past, the here and now, or the future. Characters can range from Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, from Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple to Kerry Greenwood’s Honourable Phryne Fisher. Similarly, language can come in numerous styles from the direct (even rough) words of Carter Brown to the literary prose of Peter Temple. Anything is possible, meaning everything is available to readers. For Auden—although he required a crime to be committed and expected that crime to be resolved—these doorways were only slightly ajar. For him, the story had to be a Whodunit; the setting had to be rural England, though a college setting was also considered suitable; the characters had to be “eccentric (aesthetically interesting individuals) and good (instinctively ethical)” and there needed to be a “completely satisfactory detective” (Sherlock Holmes, Inspector French, and Father Brown were identified as “satisfactory”); and the language descriptive and detailed (406, 409, 408). To illustrate this point, Auden’s concept of crime fiction has been plotted on a taxonomy, below, that traces the genre’s main developments over a period of three centuries. As can be seen, much of what is, today, taken for granted as being classified as crime fiction is completely excluded from Auden’s ideal. Figure 1: Taxonomy of Crime Fiction (Adapted from Franks, Murder 136) Crime Fiction: A Personal Journey I discovered crime fiction the summer before I started high school when I saw the film version of The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. A few days after I had seen the film I started reading the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, featuring his famous detective Philip Marlowe, and was transfixed by the second paragraph: The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying (9). John Scaggs has written that this passage indicates Marlowe is an idealised figure, a knight of romance rewritten onto the mean streets of mid-20th century Los Angeles (62); a relocation Susan Roland calls a “secular form of the divinely sanctioned knight errant on a quest for metaphysical justice” (139): my kind of guy. Like many young people I looked for adventure and escape in books, a search that was realised with Raymond Chandler and his contemporaries. On the escapism scale, these men with their stories of tough-talking detectives taking on murderers and other criminals, law enforcement officers, and the occasional femme fatale, were certainly a sharp upgrade from C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. After reading the works written by the pioneers of the hardboiled and roman noir traditions, I looked to other American authors such as Edgar Allan Poe who, in the mid-1800s, became the father of the modern detective story, and Thorne Smith who, in the 1920s and 1930s, produced magical realist tales with characters who often chose to dabble on the wrong side of the law. This led me to the works of British crime writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers. My personal library then became dominated by Australian writers of crime fiction, from the stories of bushrangers and convicts of the Colonial era to contemporary tales of police and private investigators. There have been various attempts to “improve” or “refine” my tastes: to convince me that serious literature is real reading and frivolous fiction is merely a distraction. Certainly, the reading of those novels, often described as classics, provide perfect combinations of beauty and brilliance. Their narratives, however, do not often result in satisfactory endings. This routinely frustrates me because, while I understand the philosophical frameworks that many writers operate within, I believe the characters of such works are too often treated unfairly in the final pages. For example, at the end of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry “left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” after his son is stillborn and “Mrs Henry” becomes “very ill” and dies (292–93). Another example can be found on the last page of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith “gazed up at the enormous face” and he realised that he “loved Big Brother” (311). Endings such as these provide a space for reflection about the world around us but rarely spark an immediate response of how great that world is to live in (Franks Motive). The subject matter of crime fiction does not easily facilitate fairy-tale finishes, yet, people continue to read the genre because, generally, the concluding chapter will show that justice, of some form, will be done. Punishment will be meted out to the ‘bad characters’ that have broken society’s moral or legal laws; the ‘good characters’ may experience hardships and may suffer but they will, generally, prevail. Crime Fiction: A Taste For Justice Superimposed upon Auden’s parameters around crime fiction, are his ideas of the law in the real world and how such laws are interwoven with the Christian-based system of ethics. This can be seen in Auden’s listing of three classes of crime: “(a) offenses against God and one’s neighbor or neighbors; (b) offenses against God and society; (c) offenses against God” (407). Murder, in Auden’s opinion, is a class (b) offense: for the crime fiction novel, the society reflected within the story should be one in “a state of grace, i.e., a society where there is no need of the law, no contradiction between the aesthetic individual and the ethical universal, and where murder, therefore, is the unheard-of act which precipitates a crisis” (408). Additionally, in the crime novel “as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder” (408). Thus, as Charles J. Rzepka notes, “according to W.H. Auden, the ‘classical’ English detective story typically re-enacts rites of scapegoating and expulsion that affirm the innocence of a community of good people supposedly ignorant of evil” (12). This premise—of good versus evil—supports Auden’s claim that the punishment of wrongdoers, particularly those who claim the “right to be omnipotent” and commit murder (409), should be swift and final: As to the murderer’s end, of the three alternatives—execution, suicide, and madness—the first is preferable; for if he commits suicide he refuses to repent, and if he goes mad he cannot repent, but if he does not repent society cannot forgive. Execution, on the other hand, is the act of atonement by which the murderer is forgiven by society (409). The unilateral endorsement of state-sanctioned murder is problematic, however, because—of the main justifications for punishment: retribution; deterrence; incapacitation; and rehabilitation (Carter Snead 1245)—punishment, in this context, focuses exclusively upon retribution and deterrence, incapacitation is achieved by default, but the idea of rehabilitation is completely ignored. This, in turn, ignores how the reading of crime fiction can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment and how a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. One of the ways to explore the connection between crime fiction and justice is through the lens of Emile Durkheim’s thesis on the conscience collective which proposes punishment is a process allowing for the demonstration of group norms and the strengthening of moral boundaries. David Garland, in summarising this thesis, states: So although the modern state has a near monopoly of penal violence and controls the administration of penalties, a much wider population feels itself to be involved in the process of punishment, and supplies the context of social support and valorization within which state punishment takes place (32). It is claimed here that this “much wider population” connecting with the task of punishment can be taken further. Crime fiction, above all other forms of literary production, which, for those who do not directly contribute to the maintenance of their respective legal systems, facilitates a feeling of active participation in the penalising of a variety of perpetrators: from the issuing of fines to incarceration (Franks Punishment). Crime fiction readers are therefore, temporarily at least, direct contributors to a more stable society: one that is clearly based upon right and wrong and reliant upon the conscience collective to maintain and reaffirm order. In this context, the reader is no longer alone, with only their crime fiction novel for company, but has become an active member of “a moral framework which binds individuals to each other and to its conventions and institutions” (Garland 51). This allows crime fiction, once viewed as a “vice” (Wilson 395) or an “addiction” (Auden 406), to be seen as playing a crucial role in the preservation of social mores. It has been argued “only the most literal of literary minds would dispute the claim that fictional characters help shape the way we think of ourselves, and hence help us articulate more clearly what it means to be human” (Galgut 190). Crime fiction focuses on what it means to be human, and how complex humans are, because stories of murders, and the men and women who perpetrate and solve them, comment on what drives some people to take a life and others to avenge that life which is lost and, by extension, engages with a broad community of readers around ideas of justice and punishment. It is, furthermore, argued here that the idea of the story is one of the more important doorways for crime fiction and, more specifically, the conclusions that these stories, traditionally, offer. For Auden, the ending should be one of restoration of the spirit, as he suspected that “the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin” (411). In this way, the “phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law” (412), indicating that it was not necessarily an accident that “the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries” (408). Today, modern crime fiction is a “broad church, where talented authors raise questions and cast light on a variety of societal and other issues through the prism of an exciting, page-turning story” (Sisterson). Moreover, our tastes in crime fiction have been tempered by a growing fear of real crime, particularly murder, “a crime of unique horror” (Hitchens 200). This has seen some readers develop a taste for crime fiction that is not produced within a framework of ecclesiastical faith but is rather grounded in reliance upon those who enact punishment in both the fictional and real worlds. As P.D. James has written: [N]ot by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order restored from communal or personal disruption and chaos (174). Dorothy L. Sayers, despite her work to legitimise crime fiction, wrote that there: “certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will some time come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks” (108). Of course, many readers have “learnt all the tricks”, or most of them. This does not, however, detract from the genre’s overall appeal. We have not grown bored with, or become tired of, the formula that revolves around good and evil, and justice and punishment. Quite the opposite. Our knowledge of, as well as our faith in, the genre’s “tricks” gives a level of confidence to readers who are looking for endings that punish murderers and other wrongdoers, allowing for more satisfactory conclusions than the, rather depressing, ends given to Mr. Henry and Mr. Smith by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell noted above. Conclusion For some, the popularity of crime fiction is a curious case indeed. When Penguin and Collins published the Marsh Million—100,000 copies each of 10 Ngaio Marsh titles in 1949—the author’s relief at the success of the project was palpable when she commented that “it was pleasant to find detective fiction being discussed as a tolerable form of reading by people whose opinion one valued” (172). More recently, upon the announcement that a Miles Franklin Award would be given to Peter Temple for his crime novel Truth, John Sutherland, a former chairman of the judges for one of the world’s most famous literary awards, suggested that submitting a crime novel for the Booker Prize would be: “like putting a donkey into the Grand National”. Much like art, fashion, food, and home furnishings or any one of the innumerable fields of activity and endeavour that are subject to opinion, there will always be those within the world of fiction who claim positions as arbiters of taste. Yet reading is intensely personal. I like a strong, well-plotted story, appreciate a carefully researched setting, and can admire elegant language, but if a character is too difficult to embrace—if I find I cannot make an emotional connection, if I find myself ambivalent about their fate—then a book is discarded as not being to my taste. It is also important to recognise that some tastes are transient. Crime fiction stories that are popular today could be forgotten tomorrow. Some stories appeal to such a broad range of tastes they are immediately included in the crime fiction canon. Yet others evolve over time to accommodate widespread changes in taste (an excellent example of this can be seen in the continual re-imagining of the stories of Sherlock Holmes). Personal tastes also adapt to our experiences and our surroundings. A book that someone adores in their 20s might be dismissed in their 40s. A storyline that was meaningful when read abroad may lose some of its magic when read at home. Personal events, from a change in employment to the loss of a loved one, can also impact upon what we want to read. Similarly, world events, such as economic crises and military conflicts, can also influence our reading preferences. Auden professed an almost insatiable appetite for crime fiction, describing the reading of detective stories as an addiction, and listed a very specific set of criteria to define the Whodunit. Today, such self-imposed restrictions are rare as, while there are many rules for writing crime fiction, there are no rules for reading this (or any other) genre. People are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction, and to follow the deliberate or whimsical paths that their tastes may lay down for them. Crime fiction writers, past and present, offer: an incredible array of detective stories from the locked room to the clue puzzle; settings that range from the English country estate to city skyscrapers in glamorous locations around the world; numerous characters from cerebral sleuths who can solve a crime in their living room over a nice, hot cup of tea to weapon wielding heroes who track down villains on foot in darkened alleyways; and, language that ranges from the cultured conversations from the novels of the genre’s Golden Age to the hard-hitting terminology of forensic and legal procedurals. Overlaid on these appeal factors is the capacity of crime fiction to feed a taste for justice: to engage, vicariously at least, in the establishment of a more stable society. Of course, there are those who turn to the genre for a temporary distraction, an occasional guilty pleasure. There are those who stumble across the genre by accident or deliberately seek it out. There are also those, like Auden, who are addicted to crime fiction. So there are corpses for the conservative and dead bodies for the bloodthirsty. There is, indeed, a murder victim, and a murder story, to suit every reader’s taste. References Auden, W.H. “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on The Detective Story, By an Addict.” Harper’s Magazine May (1948): 406–12. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.harpers.org/archive/1948/05/0033206›. Carter Snead, O. “Memory and Punishment.” Vanderbilt Law Review 64.4 (2011): 1195–264. Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976/1977. Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. London: Penguin, 1939/1970. ––. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: HarperCollins, 1920/2007. Cole, Cathy. Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction. Fremantle: Curtin UP, 2004. Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Glyph 7 (1980): 202–32. Franks, Rachel. “May I Suggest Murder?: An Overview of Crime Fiction for Readers’ Advisory Services Staff.” Australian Library Journal 60.2 (2011): 133–43. ––. “Motive for Murder: Reading Crime Fiction.” The Australian Library and Information Association Biennial Conference. Sydney: Jul. 2012. ––. “Punishment by the Book: Delivering and Evading Punishment in Crime Fiction.” Inter-Disciplinary.Net 3rd Global Conference on Punishment. Oxford: Sep. 2013. Freeman, R.A. “The Art of the Detective Story.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1924/1947. 7–17. Galgut, E. “Poetic Faith and Prosaic Concerns: A Defense of Suspension of Disbelief.” South African Journal of Philosophy 21.3 (2002): 190–99. Garland, David. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Random House, 1929/2004. ––. in R. Chandler. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Hitchens, P. A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice and Liberty in England. London: Atlantic Books, 2003. James, P.D. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction since 1800: Death, Detection, Diversity, 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010. Knox, Ronald A. “Club Rules: The 10 Commandments for Detective Novelists, 1928.” Ronald Knox Society of North America. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.ronaldknoxsociety.com/detective.html›. Malmgren, C.D. “Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective and Crime Fiction.” Journal of Popular Culture Spring (1997): 115–21. Maloney, Shane. The Murray Whelan Trilogy: Stiff, The Brush-Off and Nice Try. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1994/2008. Marsh, Ngaio in J. Drayton. Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime. Auckland: Harper Collins, 2008. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books, 1949/1989. Roland, Susan. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction. London: Palgrave, 2001. Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Omnibus of Crime.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1928/1947. 71–109. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, 2005. Sisterson, C. “Battle for the Marsh: Awards 2013.” Black Mask: Pulps, Noir and News of Same. 1 Jan. 2014 http://www.blackmask.com/category/awards-2013/ Sutherland, John. in A. Flood. “Could Miles Franklin turn the Booker Prize to Crime?” The Guardian. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/25/miles-franklin-booker-prize-crime›. Van Dine, S.S. “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1928/1947. 189-93. Wilson, Edmund. “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944/1947. 390–97. Wyatt, N. “Redefining RA: A RA Big Think.” Library Journal Online. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2007/07/ljarchives/lj-series-redefining-ra-an-ra-big-think›. Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.
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24

Goggin, Joyce. "Transmedia Storyworlds, Literary Theory, Games." M/C Journal 21, no. 1 (2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1373.

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Abstract:
IntroductionThis essay will focus on some of the connections between digitally transmitted stories, games, narrative processes, and the discipline whose ostensible job is the study of storytelling, namely literature. My observations will be limited to the specific case of computer games, storytelling, and what is often unproblematically referred to as “literature,” in order to focus attention on historical and contemporary features of the development of the relationship between the two that remain largely unexamined. Therefore, one goal of this essay is to re-think this relationship from a fresh perspective, whose “freshness” derives from reopening the past and re-examining what is overlooked when games scholars talk about “narrative” and “literature” as though they were interchangeable.Further, I will discuss the dissemination of narrative on/through various platforms before mass-media, such as textually transmitted stories that anticipate digitally disseminated narrative. This will include specific examples as well as a more general a re-examination of claims made on the topic of literature, narrative and computer games, via a brief review of disciplinary insights from the study of digital games and narrative. The following is therefore intended as a view of games and (literary) narrative in pre-digital forms as an attempt to build bridges between media studies and other disciplines by calling for a longer, developmental history of games, narrative and/or literature that considers them together rather than as separate territories.The Stakes of the Game My reasons for re-examining games and narrative scholarship include my desire to discuss a number of somewhat less-than-accurate or misleading notions about narrative and literature that have been folded into computer game studies, where these notions go unchallenged. I also want to point out a body of work on literature, mimesis and play that has been overlooked in game studies, and that would be helpful in thinking about stories and some of the (digital) platforms through which they are disseminated.To begin by responding to the tacit question of why it is worth asking what literary studies have to do with videogames, my answer resides in the link between play, games and storytelling forged by Aristotle in the Poetics. As a function of imitative play or “mimesis,” he claims, art forms mimic phenomena found in nature such as the singing of birds. So, by virtue of the playful mimetic function ascribed to the arts or “poesis,” games and storytelling are kindred forms of play. Moreover, the pretend function common to art forms such as realist fictional narratives that are read “as if” the story were true, and games played “as if” their premises were real, unfold in playfully imitative ways that produce possible worlds presented through different media.In the intervening centuries, numerous scholars discussed mimesis and play from Kant and Schiller in the 18th century, to Huizinga, and to many scholars who wrote on literature, mimesis and play later in the 20th century, such as Gadamer, Bell, Spariousu, Hutchinson, and Morrow. More recently, games scholar Janet Murray wrote that computer games are “a kind of abstract storytelling that resembles the world of common experience but compresses it in order to heighten interest,” hence even Tetris acts as a dramatic “enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans in the 1990’s” allowing them to “symbolically experience agency,” and “enact control over things outside our power” (142, 143). Similarly, Ryan has argued that videogames offer micro stories that are mostly about the pleasure of discovering nooks and crannies of on-line, digital possible worlds (10).At the same time, a tendency developed in games studies in the 1990s to eschew any connection with narrative, literature and earlier scholarship on mimesis. One example is Markku Eskelinen’s article in Game Studies wherein he argued that “[o]utside academic theory people are usually excellent at making distinctions between narrative, drama and games. If I throw a ball at you I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories.” Eskelinen then explains that “when games and especially computer games are studied and theorized they are almost without exception colonized from the fields of literary, theatre, drama and film studies.” As Eskelinen’s argument attests, his concern is disciplinary territorialisation rather than stories and their transmedial dissemination, whereas I prefer to take an historical approach to games and storytelling, to which I now direct my attention.Stepping Back Both mimesis and interactivity are central to how stories are told and travel across media. In light thereof, I recall the story of Zeuxis who, in the 5th century BC, introduced a realistic method of painting. As the story goes, Zeuxis painted a boy holding a bunch of grapes so realistically that it attracted birds who tried to enter the world of the painting, whereupon the artist remarked that, were the boy rendered as realistically as the grapes, he would have scared the birds away. Centuries later in the 1550s, the camera obscura and mirrors were used to project scenery as actors moved in and out of it as an early form of multimedia storytelling entertainment (Smith 22). In the late 17th century, van Mieris painted The Raree Show, representing an interactive travelling storyboard and story master who invited audience participation, hence the girl pictured here, leaning forward to interact with the story.Figure 1: The Raree Show (van Mieris)Numerous interactive narrative toys were produced in the 18th and 19th, such as these storytelling playing cards sold as a leaf in The Great Mirror of Folly (1720). Along with the plays, poems and cartoons also contained in this volume dedicated to the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720, the cards serve as a storyboard with plot lines that follow suits, so that hearts picks up one narrative thread, and clubs, spades and diamonds another. Hence while the cards could be removed for gaming they could also be read as a story in a medium that, to borrow games scholar Espen Aarseth’s terminology, requires non-trivial physical or “ergodic effort” on the part of readers and players.Figure 2: playing cards from The Great Mirror of Folly (1720) In the 20th century examples of interactive and ergodic codex fiction abound, including Hesse’s Das Glasperlenspiel [Glass Bead Game] (1943, 1949), Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962), Saporta’s Composition No. 1 (1962), and Winterson’s PowerBook (2001) that conceptually and/or physically mimic and anticipate hypertext. More recently, Chloé Delaume’s Corpus Simsi (2003) explicitly attempts to remediate a MMORPG as the title suggests, just as there are videogames that attempt, in various ways, to remediate novels. I have presented these examples to argue for a long-continuum view of storytelling and games, as a series of attempts to produce stories—from Zeuxis grapes to PowerBook and beyond—that can be entered and interacted with, at least metaphorically or cognitively. Over time, various game-like or playful interfaces from text to computer have invited us into storyworlds while partially impeding or opening the door to interaction and texturing our experience of the story in medium-specific ways.The desire to make stories interactive has developed across media, from image to text and various combinations thereof, as a means of externalizing an author’s imagination to be activated by opening and reading a novel, or by playing a game wherein the story is mediated through a screen while players interact to change the course of the story. While I am arguing that storytelling has for centuries striven to interpolate spectators or readers by various means and though numerous media that would eventually make storytelling thoroughly and not only metaphorically interactive, I want now to return briefly to the question of literature.Narrative vs LiteratureThe term “literature” is frequently assumed to be unambiguous when it enters discussions of transmedia storytelling and videogames. What literature “is” was, however, hotly debated in the 1980s-90s with many scholars concluding that literature is a construct invented by “old dead white men,” resulting in much criticism on the topic of canon formation. Yet, without rehearsing the arguments produced in previous decades on the topic of literariness, I want to provide a few examples of what happens when games scholars and practitioners assume they know what literature is and then absorb or eschew it in their own transmedia storytelling endeavours.The 1990s saw the emergence of game studies as a young discipline, eager to burst out of the crucible of English Departments that were, as Eskelinen pointed out, the earliest testing grounds for the legitimized study of games. Thus ensued the “ludology vs narratology” debate wherein “ludologists,” keen to move away from literary studies, insisted that games be studied as games only, and participated in what Gonzalo Frasca famously called the “debate that never happened.” Yet as short-lived as the debate may have been, a negative and limited view of literature still inheres in games studies along with an abiding lack of awareness of the shared origins of stories, games, and thinking about both that I have attempted to sketch out thus far.Exemplary of arguments on the side of “ludology,” was storytelling game designer Chris Crawford’s keynote at Mediaterra 2007, in which he explained that literariness is measured by degrees of fun. Hence, whereas literature is highly formulaic and structured, storytelling is unconstrained and fun because storytellers have no rigid blueprint and can change direction at any moment. Yet, Crawford went on to explain how his storytelling machine works by drawing together individual syntactic elements, oddly echoing the Russian formalists’ description of literature, and particularly models that locate literary production at the intersection of the axis of selection, containing linguistic elements such as verbs, nouns, adjectives and so on, and the axis of combination governed by rules of genre.I foreground Crawford’s ludological argument because it highlights some of the issues that arise when one doesn’t care to know much about the study of literature. Crawford understands literature as rule-based, rigid and non-fun, and then trots out his own storytelling-model based or rigid syntactical building blocks and rule-based laws of combination, without the understanding the irony. This returns me to ludologist Eskelinen who also argued that “stories are just uninteresting ornaments or gift-wrappings to games”. In either case, the matter of “story” is stretched over the rigid syntax of language, and the literary structuralist enterprise has consisted precisely in peeling back that narrative skin or “gift wrap” to reveal the bones of human cognitive thought processes, as for example, when we read rhetorical figures such as metaphor and metonymy. In the words of William Carlos Williams, poetry is a machine made out of words, from whose nuts and bolts meaning emerges when activated, similar to programing language in a videogame whose story is eminent and comes into being as we play.Finally, the question of genre hangs in the background given that “literature” itself is potentially transmedia because its content can take many forms and be transmitted across diverse platforms. Importantly in this regard the novel, which is the form most games scholars have in mind when drawing or rejecting connections between games and literature, is itself a shape-shifting, difficult-to-define genre whose form, as the term novel implies, is subject to the constant imperative to innovate across media as it has done over time.Different Approaches While I just highlighted inadequacies in some of the scholarship on games and narrative (or “literature” when narrative is defined as such) there is work on interactive storytelling and the transmedia dissemination of stories explicitly as games that deals with some of these issues. In their article on virtual bodies in Dante’s Inferno (2010), Welsh and Sebastian explain that the game is a “reboot of a Trecento poem,” and discuss what must have been Dante’s own struggle in the 14th century to “materialize sin through metaphors of suffering,” while contending “with the abstractness of the subject matter [as well as] the representational shortcomings of language itself,” concluding that Dante’s “corporeal allegories must become interactive objects constructed of light and math that feel to the user like they have heft and volume” (166). This notion of “corporeal allegories” accords with my own model of a “body hermeneutic” that could help to understand the reception of stories transmitted in non-codex media: a poetics of reading that includes how game narratives “engage the body hapitically” (Goggin 219).Likewise, Kathi Berens’s work on “Novel Games: Playable Books on iPad” is exemplary of what literary theory and game texts can do for each other, that is, through the ways in which games can remediate, imitate or simply embody the kind of meditative depth that we encounter in the expansive literary narratives of the 19th century. In her reading of Living Will, Berens argues that the best way to gauge meaning is not in the potentialities of its text, but rather “in the human performance of reading and gaming in new thresholds of egodicity,” and offers a close reading that uncovers the story hidden in the JavaScript code, and which potentially changes the meaning of the game. Here again, the argument runs parallel to my own call for readings that take into account the visceral experience of games, and which demands a configurative/interpretative approach to the unfolding of narrative and its impact on our being as a whole. Such an approach would destabilize the old mind/body split and account for various modes of sensation as part of the story itself. This is where literary theory, storytelling, and games may be seen as coming together in novels like Delaume’s Corpus Simsi and a host of others that in some way remediate video games. Such analyses would include features of the platform/text—shape, topography, ergodicity—and how the story is disseminated through the printed text, the authors’ websites, blogs and so on.It is likewise important to examine what literary criticism that has dealt with games and storytelling in the past can do for games. For example, if one agrees with Wittgenstein that language is inherently game-like or ludic and that, by virtue of literature’s long association with mimesis, its “as if” function, and its “autotelic” or supposedly non-expository nature, then most fiction is itself a form of game. Andrew Ferguson’s work on Finnegan’s Wake (1939) takes these considerations into account while moving games and literary studies into the digital age. Ferguson argues that Finnegan’s Wake prefigures much of what computers make possible such as glitching, which “foregrounds the gaps in the code that produces the video-game environment.” This he argues, is an operation that Joyce performed textually, thereby “radically destabilizing” his own work, “leading to effects [similar to] short-circuiting plot events, and entering spaces where a game’s normal ontological conditions are suspended.” As Ferguson points out, moreover, literary criticism resembles glitch hunting as scholars look for keys to unlock the puzzles that constitute the text through which readers must level up.Conclusion My intention has been to highlight arguments presented by ludologists like Eskelinnen who want to keep game studies separate from narrative and literary studies, as well as those game scholars who favour a narrative approach like Murray and Ryan, in order to suggest ways in which a longer, historical view of how stories travel across platforms might offer a more holistic view of where we are at today. Moreover, as my final examples of games scholarship suggest, games, and games that specifically remediate works of literature such as Dante’s Inferno, constitute a rapidly moving target that demands that we keep up by finding new ways to take narrative and ergodic complexity into account.The point of this essay was not, therefore, to adapt a position in any one camp but rather to nod to the major contributors in a debate which was largely about institutional turf, and perhaps never really happened, yet still continues to inform scholarship. At the same time, I wanted to argue for the value of discussing the long tradition of understanding literature as a form of mimesis and therefore as a particular kind of game, and to show how such an understanding contributes to historically situating and analysing videogames. Stories can be experienced across multiple platforms or formats, and my ultimate goal is to see what literary studies can do for game studies by trying to show that the two share more of the same goals, elements, and characteristics than is commonly supposed.ReferencesAristotle. Poetics, Trans. J. Hutton. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1982.Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2007.Behrens, Kathi. “‘Messy’ Ludology: New Dimensions of Narrator Unreliability in Living Will.” No Trivial Effort: Essays on Games and Literary Theory. Eds. Joyce Goggin and Timothy Welsh. Bloomsbury: Forthcoming.Bell, D. Circumstances: Chance in the Literary Text. Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 1993. Delaume, Chloé. Corpus Simsi. Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer, 2003.Eskelinen, Markku. “The Gaming Situation”. Game Studies 1.1 (2011). <http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/eskelinen/>. Ferguson, Andrew. “Let’s Play Finnegan’s Wake.” Hypermedia Joyce Studies 13 (2014). <http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v13_1/main/essays.php?essay=ferguson>. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method, Trans. Barden and Cumming. New York: Crossroad, 1985.Goggin, Joyce. “A Body Hermeneutic?: Corpus Simsi or Reading like a Sim.” The Hand of the Interpreter: Essays on Meaning after Theory. Eds. G.F. Mitrano and Eric Jarosinski. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008. 205-223.Hesse, Hermann. The Glass Bead Game [Das Glasperlenspiel]. Trans. Clara Winston. London: Picador, 2002.Huizinga, Johann. Homo Ludens. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff cop, 1938.Hutchinson, Peter. Games Authors Play. New York: Metheun, 1985.James, Joyce. Finnegan’s Wake. London: Faber and Faber, 1939.Morrow, Nancy. Dreadful Games: The Play of Desire and the 19th-Century Novel. Ohio: Kent State UP, 1988.Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT UP, 1997.Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Putnam, 1962.Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.Saporta, Marc. Composition No. 1. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962.Smith, Grahame. Dickens and the Dream of Cinema. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003.Spariosu, Mihai. Literature, Mimesis and Play. Tübigen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1982.Winterson, Janette. The PowerBook. London: Vintage, 2001.Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan: 1972.
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