ESD's Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
1 - 5 of 14
-
ItemTheorising translation as a process of ‘cultural repatriation’: A promising merger of narrative theory and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural transfer(John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2021-07)This article scrutinises instances where translation corresponds to what I call ‘cultural repatriation’, through the examination of two Anglophone novels about the Greek civil war and their transfer into Greece. Translation as repatriation concentrates on works which are, effectively, repatriated into their original context and made vulnerable to its aesthetic and socio-ideological encounters. The translation of Gage’s Eleni (1983a) and de Bernières’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) into Greek constitutes cultural repatriation as cultural representations in the works are constructed through a ‘foreign gaze’ and rendered problematic upon transfer. Within this context, I examine how specific strategies in the promotion, translation, and consumption of these works challenge or reinforce hegemonic versions and narrative modes of the historical narrative and lead to a renegotiation of the cultural categories constructed in them. Methodologically, the article combines Bourdieu’s sociology and narrative theory creating a robust framework for the study of cultural repatriation.
-
ItemJoy Katzmarzik, Comic Art and Avant-Garde: Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” and the Art of American Newspaper Comic Strips(European Association for American Studies, 2019)Some people do not appreciate the seriousness of newspaper comic strips, the fact that they contain cultural knowledge and can in fact be a serious and critically comment on our society. When one hears the word comic strips one usually thinks: funnies, entertainment, humor, cartoons, low art and appropriate for children (see Garfield, Peanuts, Marmaduke, etc.). In the academic sphere, apparently comic strips “fly under the radar” and “remain neglected” (Katzmarzik 12). This comes as no surprise if one were to consider how some people still view and treat comic books and graphic novels. Fortunately, in the academic sphere thanks to research such as that of Joy Katzmarzik on newspaper comic strips, and the research of other scholars on comic books and graphic novels attitudes towards these media are changing. Katzmarzik informs that so far, when approached and examined, newspaper comic strips are considered from a socio-scientific viewpoint, a media studies viewpoint, a pedagogical studies perspective, a comprehensive historical approach, within the context of popular culture and, finally, in relation to humor studies.1 Regarding newspaper comic strips in particular, there are some scholars who aim at establishing the connections between newspaper comic strips and avant-garde art thus demonstrating the shift from silliness to significance that such media can attain. Joy Katzmarzik is one such scholar whose study, Comic Art and Avant-Garde: Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” and the Art of American Newspaper Comic Strips (2019), focuses on newspaper comic strips as an avantgarde art form and questions the label of low art that is usually attributed to them (11). The overall intent of her thesis is to “disentangle the interdependence of commerce, humor, and art in newspaper comic strips” and her focus is specifically on Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes (1985-1995).
-
ItemMedia Franchises, Brand Identity and Fidelity Reconsidering the book-to-film debate in the Brand Context(ESSE, 2019)Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan have noted that fidelity may now reside in the fringes of Adaptation Studies, “but it dominates popular reviews and fan sites alike’” (qtd. in Brooker 45). I believe that this is true to a certain extent; Adaptation Studies may realize the fallacy of fidelity – that it does not pose as the end in itself anymore – but it continues to appear in academic publications all the same. What is more, mediumspecificity discourses fall back on fidelity as well. Robert Stam emphasizes that the notion of fidelity “gains its persuasive power from our sense that (a) some adaptations are indeed better than others, and (b) some adaptations fail to ‘realize’ or substantiate what we most appreciated in the source novels” (14). It appears that if fidelity is still an issue it is due to this notion of persuasive power whereby value is attached to a particular meaning, or range of meanings, which if accepted by the audience awards both creator and product with value. Unlike cultural studies which, according to Stam, are “less interested in establishing vertical hierarchies of value than in exploring ‘horizontal’ relations between neighboring media,” thus rendering adaptation forms as part of a flattened out and newly egalitarian spectrum of cultural productions” in essence deeming them just another text, the very treatment of an intellectual property as a brand or franchise entails the notion of value and vertical hierarchies. Hence, this paper adopts a cultural perspective when examining Adaptation and more specifically the book-to-film debate by considering the context of production and more so the trend of branding intellectual properties. It argues that mainstream media franchise culture seeks the branded treatment at both the horizontal and vertical level of its intellectual properties including adaptations. Therefore, the branding of entertainment appears to take precedence over the notion of fidelity where the idea of faithfulness and loyalty is established between concrete extended and abstract core identity and fidelity prompts a dialogue of meaning-making and power play.
-
ItemSeasoning the Novel: Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar( 2020)The present article examines Mark Z. Danielewski’s book series The Familiar (2015- ) by drawing upon the affordances of TV series and the practices of multimodal literature that the author has adopted in the creation of his novels. The scale of the project and the breadth of experimentation with verbal and non-verbal elements on the surface of the pages leads to a reconsideration of literary production not only in terms of the final outcome, but also in terms of the process employed. The launching of Danielewski’s ambitious 27-volume enterprise coincides with a moment in TV production that features a turn towards fewer episodes per season, signaling an alteration in TV practices that, together with other factors such as the pursuance of audience engagement and the literacy skills that the terrain of the novels requires, have led The Familiar to a pause.
-
ItemJesús Blanco Hidalga, Jonathan Franzen and the Romance of Community: Narratives of Salvation(European Association for American Studies, 2019)Jesús Blanco Hidalga contributes to the critical scholarship on Jonathan Franzen’s work by proposing the concepts of salvation and redemption. Examining Franzen’s fiction with this theoretical lens, Blanco Hidalga suggests a metanarrative quality that relates the characters in the novels to the author himself. By integrating “usually separated formal and ideological perspectives” (ix), Jonathan Franzen and the Romance of Community: Narratives of Salvation departs from established scholarly criticism, offering a fresh interpretive reading against which Franzen’s work can be approached and reconsidered.