Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219

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    Spatial Representation in Three Detective Fiction Subgenres
    (英語學系, 2018-09-??) Zi-ling Yan
    In this study I examine a limited aspect of spatial representation in Golden Age, hard-boiled and postmodern detective fiction. I situate these representations within a theory of architectural enclosure, Tschumi's pyramid/ labyrinth distinction, then employ concepts derived from Gestalt theory as pointing up an ideological tendency in the Golden Age floor plans and diagrams by which crime is contained and spaces are normalized. John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939) serves as a test case. The subsequent sections offer spatial analyses of Dashiell Hammett's "The Whosis Kid" (1925) and "Dead Yellow Women" (1925) and Paul Auster's City of Glass (1987). Hammett's stories illustrate the breakdown of visual mastery in disorienting spaces whose textual representation parallels the Op's own limited knowledge. Auster's diagrams appear to offer a synthesis of prior positions: he incorporates plans which seem to promise meaning but which ultimately fail to establish certainty. I argue, however, that Auster's plans are most effectively read in their specific socio-historical and political context and that the performantive loss of referential certainty in his potagonist reflects a form of critique that differs from earlier gernres' use of these figures.
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    Spatial Representation in Three Detective Fiction Subgenres
    (英語學系, 2018-09-??) Zi-ling Yan
    In this study I examine a limited aspect of spatial representation in Golden Age, hard-boiled and postmodern detective fiction. I situate these representations within a theory of architectural enclosure, Tschumi's pyramid/ labyrinth distinction, then employ concepts derived from Gestalt theory as pointing up an ideological tendency in the Golden Age floor plans and diagrams by which crime is contained and spaces are normalized. John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939) serves as a test case. The subsequent sections offer spatial analyses of Dashiell Hammett's "The Whosis Kid" (1925) and "Dead Yellow Women" (1925) and Paul Auster's City of Glass (1987). Hammett's stories illustrate the breakdown of visual mastery in disorienting spaces whose textual representation parallels the Op's own limited knowledge. Auster's diagrams appear to offer a synthesis of prior positions: he incorporates plans which seem to promise meaning but which ultimately fail to establish certainty. I argue, however, that Auster's plans are most effectively read in their specific socio-historical and political context and that the performantive loss of referential certainty in his potagonist reflects a form of critique that differs from earlier gernres' use of these figures.
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    Partiality, Obliqueness, Reticence
    (英語學系, 2011-09-??) Duncan McColl Chesney
    In the spirit of the stated topic, “Angel of the New,” this article addresses the question of the modern—in art, politics, and social thought—in terms deriving from Benjamin’s, and subsequently Adorno’s, experience of art in its fullest truth claims in the face of catastrophe. The article explores a certain contemporary questioning of the limits of representation and the truth-value of representations, above all art works. Making reference to Agamben and the notion of “bare life” as a key figure of modern bio-politics, it addresses several contemporary issues at the limits of aesthetic, conceptual, and political “representation” (though shying away from a full engagement with contemporary political theory proper and its concerns): death, the sublime, catastrophe. Beginning with modern changes in the understanding of death (and life) and the role of technology, instrumental rational control, and economic reason, in the formation of modern society, it discusses the catastrophic limit cases of Hiroshima and Auschwitz, arguing ultimately that a modernist commitment to art truth, even with respect to the most difficult human events, is necessary still today, despite a seeming movement beyond the modern in the reigning cultural dominant.
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    Partiality, Obliqueness, Reticence
    (英語學系, 2011-09-??) Duncan McColl Chesney
    In the spirit of the stated topic, “Angel of the New,” this article addresses the question of the modern—in art, politics, and social thought—in terms deriving from Benjamin’s, and subsequently Adorno’s, experience of art in its fullest truth claims in the face of catastrophe. The article explores a certain contemporary questioning of the limits of representation and the truth-value of representations, above all art works. Making reference to Agamben and the notion of “bare life” as a key figure of modern bio-politics, it addresses several contemporary issues at the limits of aesthetic, conceptual, and political “representation” (though shying away from a full engagement with contemporary political theory proper and its concerns): death, the sublime, catastrophe. Beginning with modern changes in the understanding of death (and life) and the role of technology, instrumental rational control, and economic reason, in the formation of modern society, it discusses the catastrophic limit cases of Hiroshima and Auschwitz, arguing ultimately that a modernist commitment to art truth, even with respect to the most difficult human events, is necessary still today, despite a seeming movement beyond the modern in the reigning cultural dominant.