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this article analyses the use of a set of composite indicators as a measure of competitiveness. Based on the rank tests of Spearman and Kendall (1938), we show that the rankings induced by these different competitiveness indices are very closely correlated. Moreover, on the basis of a critical analysis of these indicators, we prove that they cannot be used as a measure of countries' competitiveness. Indeed, the lack of theoretical and empirical basis in the choice of variables and their weights leads to problems of interpretation in terms of economic policy. The "scores" obtained for these various indicators should therefore be interpreted with caution and composite indices should rather be used as indicator or benchmark variables for the competitiveness resulting from side tables. ; This article investigates the use of a series of composite indicators as a measure of global competitiveness. Using Spearman and Kendall (1938) rank correlation tests, we show that rankings resulting from those competitiveness indices are highly correlated. Furthermore, a critical analysis of these indicators indicates that they cannot be used as an empirical measure of countries competitiveness. Indeed, the lack of theoretical and empirical basis for the choice of variables and weights inside the indices brings some interpretations problems in terms of economic policy. "Scores" obtained using these indicators have to be taken with caution. These indices have to be rather used as indicatory variables or competitiveness benchmarks resulting in dashboard. ; this article analyses the use of a set of composite indicators as a measure of competitiveness. Based on the rank tests of Spearman and Kendall (1938), we show that the rankings induced by these different competitiveness indices are very closely correlated. Moreover, on the basis of a critical analysis of these indicators, we prove that they cannot be used as a measure of countries' competitiveness. Indeed, the lack of theoretical and empirical basis in the choice of variables and ...

West Germany's terrorist period of the 1970s is still a troubling and fascinating subject for Germans, not least because of the high proportion of women involved, most notoriously Ulrike Meinhof. The present study examines the West German print media of the 1960s and 1970s, from the right-wing 'Bild' to the left-leaning 'Der Spiegel'to explore how violent women - both terrorists and others - were represented in image and text. This is the first book to explore print-media representations of German terrorism from an explicitly gendered perspective, and one of very few books in English to addres

1 CD-ROM ; La Europa de finales del siglo XIX y primera mitad del XX es una clara muestra de los fenómenos opresores del mundo moderno a nivel político, moral, religioso, entre otros. En centro Europa, lugar de nacimiento de Kafka y Nietzsche, se generarían fenómenos históricos que afectarían directamente sus obras. Kafka vivió durante todo el contexto que gestó la Primera Guerra Mundial. Nacido en 1883, su obra comienza a hacerse elocuente a comienzos del siglo XX, y en su elocuencia comienzan a develarse los atolladeros humanos del aparato represor del poder. Esta última idea, de una u otra forma, es una manifestación de la influencia sobre su obra del pensador Friederich Nietzsche, quien vislumbró el aniquilamiento del hombre en el mundo moderno, la décadence. ; Abstract: The Europe of the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century is a clear example of the oppressive phenomena of the modern world in the political, moral, religious, among others. In central Europe, the birthplace of Kafka and Nietzsche would generate historical henomena that directly affect their work. Kafka lived throughout the context that gave origin to the First World War. Born in 1883, his work began to be eloquent in the early twentieth century, and his eloquence, begin to unravel the human quagmires of the repressive apparatus of power. This last idea, of one way or another, are also manifestations of the influence the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who foresaw the destruction of man in the modern world, the decadence.

In recent years, Arab activists have confronted authoritarian regimes both on the street and online, leaking videos and exposing atrocities, and demanding political rights. Tarek El-Ariss situates these critiques of power within a pervasive culture of scandal and leaks and shows how cultural production and political change in the contemporary Arab world are enabled by digital technology yet emerge from traditional cultural models. Focusing on a new generation of activists and authors from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, El-Ariss connects WikiLeaks to The Arabian Nights, Twitter to mystical revelation, cyberattacks to pre-Islamic tribal raids, and digital activism to the affective scene-making of Arab popular culture. He shifts the epistemological and historical frameworks from the postcolonial condition to the digital condition and shows how new media challenge the novel as the traditional vehicle for political consciousness and intellectual debate. Theorizing the rise of "the leaking subject" who reveals, contests, and writes through chaotic yet highly political means, El-Ariss investigates the digital consciousness, virality, and affective forms of knowledge that jolt and inform the public and that draw readers in to the unfolding fiction of scandal. Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals maps the changing landscape of Arab modernity, or Nahda, in the digital age and traces how concepts such as the nation, community, power, the intellectual, the author, and the novel are hacked and recoded through new modes of confrontation, circulation, and dissent

Die fortschreitende Medialität des Alltags ist eines der großen Charakteristika des 21. Jahrhunderts. Das Konzept der Virtualität lässt Mediengrenzen verschwimmen und beeinflusst damit auch die Literatur. Ricarda Julia Vodermair untersucht Autobiographisches im Kontext von Weblogs und sozialen Netzwerken und zeigt, wie die Digitalisierung Darstellungsformen und Inhalte modifiziert und sich Selbstkonstruktionen zu virtuellen Selbstinszenierungen wandeln. Ihre literatur- und medienwissenschaftliche Perspektive eröffnet ein erweitertes Verständnis davon, was Virtualität als ästhetisches, strukturelles, gesellschaftliches und subjektkonstituierendes Phänomen gegenwärtig ausmacht und bedeutet.

Comparisons not only prove fundamental in the epistemological foundation of modernity (Foucault, Luhmann), but they fulfil a central function in social life and the production of art. Taking a cue from the Practice Turn in sociology, the contributors are investigating the role of comparative practices in the formation of eighteenth-century literature and culture. The book conceives of social practices of comparing as being entrenched in networks of circulation of bodies, artefacts, discourses, and ideas, and aims to investigate how such practices ordered and changed British literature and culture during the long eighteenth century.

Die einen schreiben Bücher, die anderen verlegen sie. Was aber, wenn Autoren in fiktionalen Werken über Verleger schreiben? Werden sie als freundlich und unterstützend oder eher als feindselig und ausbeuterisch porträtiert? In welcher Beziehung stehen sie zu anderen Akteuren des Literaturbetriebs, welche narrativen Funktionen übernehmen sie im Text? Alessandra Goggio nimmt sich diesen in der Literaturwissenschaft bisher kaum beachteten Fragen an und versucht - anhand von Beispielen aus der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur - die spezifischen Darstellungs- und Fiktionalisierungsverfahren zu erörtern und im Rahmen der sogenannten "Literaturbetriebsliteratur" zu deuten.

Das Werk Paulus Hochgatterers zeichnet sich aus durch thematische Brisanz, dichte Rätsel- und Verweisstrukturen sowie feinkörnigen Realismus. Dieser liegt nicht zuletzt in einer Fülle an materiellen Dingen, die als Ausrüstungsgegenstände und Werkzeuge in Erscheinung treten, als Konsumartikel, seltsame Kultobjekte, heimliche Handlungsmotoren - und die dabei einen Begriff mit langer, wechselhafter Diskursgeschichte aufrufen: den Fetischismus. Bernhard Oberreither analysiert im Kontext historischer und gegenwärtiger Fetischdiskurse, wie sich vermeintlich unschuldige Dinge oft als Schlüssel zur Rätselstruktur der Texte Hochgatterers erweisen. Und wie dessen Texte zugleich als hochgradig reflektierter Kommentar zum stets prekären, verdächtigen, mithin "korrupten" (Hartmut Böhme) Verhältnis des Menschen zu seinen Dingen zu lesen sind.

Vernon Lee scholars have often studied her writings on the Italian Renaissance in connection with Walter Pater's. Whilst acknowledging the evident influence of Walter Pater, such a critical perspective risks overlooking Lee's own contribution to the Victorian creation of the "Renaissance myth" – which, in her case, was to outlive its fin-de-siècle frenzy. Moving from the recent developments in Lee scholarship, this study investigates the presence and the function of the Italian Renaissance in Lee's writings with specific focus on issues of gender and genre. From this perspective, Lee's relationship with characters, places, villas, and masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance works as a catalyst for the construction of cultural memory, mediated through hybrid narrative forms. Chapter I explores the phenomenology of the Italian Renaissance as a nineteenth-century myth. In particular, it takes into consideration the works of Jules Michelet and Matthew Arnold, and it highlights the influence that Jacob Burckhardt and John Ruskin had on Victorian culture in spite of their diverging opinions. After grounding Lee's work in the fin-de-siècle tradition of Walter Pater and John Addington Symonds, chapter II investigates Lee's two collections of Renaissance essays – Euphorion and Renaissance Fancies and Studies – from an intertextual perspective which unveils the gender specificity of Lee's writings, but also the construction of gender that these essays deploy at a textual level. Chapter III explores Lee's fascination with Italian landscapes, which she portrays as spaces of culture. The plasticity of landscape and its meanings – which can be sensed in Lee's prose, but also in Edith Wharton's and D. H. Lawrence's – enables Lee to bounce back and forth in time, moving from contemporary Italy to the imagined landscapes of the Renaissance. This textual strategy is made possible by Lee's theorization of the "genius loci," which also provides her with a starting point for endorsing cultural politics steered by democratic sympathies. Finally, chapter IV focuses on Lee's fluid idea of literary genres. Indeed, the Renaissance is a "trans-genre" topos that Lee repeatedly explores in her essays as well as in her travelogues, supernatural tales, and a number of unpublished writings dating from the first two decades of the twentieth century, long after the end of the fin-de-siècle Renaissance frenzy.

Desde la época de la Conquista hasta la pandictadura, la crítica de la literatura hispanoamericana siempre pone un énfasis especial en la conjugación de los fenómenos literarios con los movimientos políticos continentales. La pandictadura hispanoamericana ha nutrido una serie de composiciones novelísticas que giran en torno a los intensivos movimientos estudiantiles, anarquistas y proletarios, los golpes de estado, el sistema de la tortura, la desaparición, el exilio, la represión, la implementación de la economía neoliberal, el compromiso de los escritores disidentes, etc. Sin embargo, con el derrumbe de los regímenes totalitarios, la creciente ola de la globalización y la tecnologización, el vertiginoso proceso de la transculturación, la orientación de la disciplina filosófica hacia la construcción de la subjetividad y la estética contemporánea de la posmodernidad, el continente y su literatura se encaminan al período post-dictatorial caracterizado por el surgimiento de nuevos discursos y la confrontación entre las voces del pasado y el presente. Tanto el panorama social como literario están caracterizados por la fuerte heterogeneidad, complejidad y diversidad que desestabilizan el canon literario. En la presente Tesis se propone analizar las nuevas maneras de escribir y consumir la literatura en la época post-dictatorial, en comparación con la narrativa de los años del "boom" literario mediante el análisis de las figuras de los/las exiliados/exiliadas, las mujeres/homosexuales, y los/las hijos/hijas en la narrativa contemporánea en la región de Cono Sur (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay). El objetivo principal de la presente investigación consiste en explorar las transformaciones que ha experimentado la narrativa contemporánea del Cono Sur con respecto a la generación anterior bajo la circunstancia de que los temas y los lenguajes novelísticos anteriores están a punto de agotarse. Se centra en cuatro obras representativas de la época: La burla del tiempo del chileno Mauricio Electorat, Las teorías salvajes de la argentina Pola Oloixarac, Historia del pelo del argentino Alan Pauls y Poeta chileno del chileno Alejando Zambra, además de unas cien obras complementarias. ; From the Conquest to the dictatorship, the criticism of Spanish-American literature always places special emphasis on the combination of literary phenomenons with continental political movements. The Spanish-American dictatorship has nurtured a series of novelistic compositions that revolve around the student, anarchist and proletarian movements, the authoritarian system, coups, exile, repression, the implementation of the neoliberal economy, the commitment of dissident writers, the strong ideological collision, etc. However, with the collapse of y those totalitarian regimes, the growing wave of globalization and technologization, the fast-moving process of transculturation, the orientation of the philosophical discipline towards the construction of subjectivity and the contemporary aesthetics of postmodernity, the continent and its literature are directed to the post-dictatorial period, characterized by the emergence of new discourses and the confrontation between the voices of the past and the present. Both the social and literary panorama are characterized by strong heterogeneity, complexity and diversity that destabilize the literary canon. In this thesis we propose to analyze the new ways of writing and consuming literature in the postdictatorial era in comparison with the narrative of the years of the"boom" by analyzing the figures of exiles, women/homosexuals , and sons/daughters in contemporary narrative in the Southern Cone region (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay). The main objective of this research is to explore the transformations that the narrative of the Southern Cone has undergone with respect to the previous generation under the circumstance that previous novelistic themes and languages are about to expire. Four noveles have been taken as example: La burla del tiempo (2004) of the Chilean Mauricio Electorat, Las teorías salvajes (2008) of Argentina Pola Oloixarac, Historia del pelo (2010) of the Argentine autor Alan Pauls and Poeta chileno (2020) of the Chilean Alejando Zambra, in addition to some 100 complementary works.

Dr. Miloje Milojević (1884-1946) was a central figure in Serbian music criticism and academic essays between the World Wars. A large part of his writings on music were dedicated to the issue of the Serbian 'national music style', its means of expression, and the question of modernity, i. e. to what extent modernity is desirable in the 'national style'. This paper analyzes some twenty articles - reviews, essays, and writings for special occasions - published by Milojević between 1912 and 1942 in various Serbian newspapers magazines and collections: Srpski književni glasnik (The Serbian Literary Magazine, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1923, 1924, 1935), Prosvetni glasnik (The Educational Herald, 1914, 1921, 1942), Politika (The Politics, 1921, 1922 1923, 1937, 1938, 1940, 1941), Muzika (The Music, twice in 1928) Spomenica-album Udruženja muzikanata Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1928-1930 (The Commemorative Volume - The Album of the Society of Musicians of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1928-1930, 1930), Smena (The Change, 1938), and Slavenska muzika (The Slavonic Music, 1940). In the course of those thirty years Milojević passionately believed that the future of Serbian music lies in the 'national style', i.e. in the artistic transformation of anonymous Serbian folk songs and melodies. In spite of the changes of styles that occurred over the years, he never gave up anticipating the appearance of an ingenious composer who would develop the 'national style' to its climax and enrich Serbian music with 'national' symphonies, operas and chamber music. Milojević was in favour of a 'national style' mainly on principle. He rarely got into a discussion about the stylistic and technical means he considered most suitable for the 'national style'. In his text Naš muzičko umetnički program (Our music and artistic programme), published in the Serbian Literary Magazine in 1913, and another article, Za folklornu muziku (In favour of Folk Music), published in the Belgrade daily newspaper Politics in 1921, he recommended that Serbian 'national style' composers followed the model of some representatives of the European national schools of romanticism impressionism and moderately modern music. In a special kind of manifesto Za ideju umetnosti i umetničkog nacionalizma kod nas (In favour of the idea of art and artistic nationalism in Serbia), published in 1935 in the Serbian Literary Magazine, he gave an indirect answer to the question of which means of musical expression he preferred in the 'national style'. For example, he singled out the composition Sever duva (North Wind) by Kosta P. Manojlović (1890-1949), from his collection of choral songs Pesme zemlje Skenderbegove (The Songs from the Land of Skenderbeg, 1933), as an outstanding example of what he meant by 'national style'. This Albanian folk music was transformed into a relatively modern, but yet not avant-garde composition. Therein lies the answer as to what kind of 'national style' Milojević preferred. An advocate of a moderately modern music language, he wished Serbian art music to use its very rich folk heritage as best as it could. He was well aware that times had changed, and that there was not much inclination towards this style and ideology in the interwar period. However, he never abandoned this idea. Basically, he never accepted more radical, expressionist treatments of folk elements as a solution to the problems of 'national style'. It is also very significant that he never mentioned the name Béla Bartók in his writings, which is something we analyze in this paper. He was never able to give up romanticism, a style that never had time to fully develop in Serbian music. Serbian folk music was a perfect basis for composing in a romantic style. Nevertheless, due to many unfavourable circumstances in Serbian history, the Serbs became part of European music world only at the beginning of the 20th century, when it was too late to develop a modern romantic national style. ; Problem srpskog nacionalnog muzičkog stila, njegovih izražajnih sredstava kao i stepena poželjnog moderniteta toga stila, obeležio je značajan deo muzikografije Miloja Milojevića (1884-1946), centralne ličnosti srpske muzičke kritike i esejistike u razdoblju između dva svetska rata. U radu se pristupa analizi Milojevićevih tekstova o muzičkom nacionalizmu i otkriva piščeva 'formula' nacionalnog stila.

The author of the article examines the role of the generation of the 1960s in the national and cultural development of independent Ukraine. The paper posits that the demand for the heroic myth of that generation is based on the credibility gained due to its protests against the repressive politics of the Soviet regime. It also became the yardstick for generations of the 20th century. On the other hand, the paper pays attention to the sharp criticism of the phenomena of this generation in different discussions from the early 2000s to the present. Both trends – cult and discreditation – refl ect the public opinion concerning the current reevaluation of the 1960s generation. Intellectuals and artists consider the generation of 1960s to be the leading one in the new history, as it was the fi rst one who liberated totalitarian regime and had caused the decline of it. There is no doubt in the value of this generation. In the sphere of culture, they controverted so-called «Soviet values», which was the cause of absolute crisis of the Soviet model of state at the end of 1980s. Social and cultural activity of the representatives of the 1960s generation has provoked the appearance of new intellectual formations, which were set up in the early 1990s at the same time with establishing newly independent states, especially Ukraine. At the time when Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, the generation of the 1960s (shistdesiatnyky) was the most infl uential and determined the cultural priorities of the young state. It was not accidental that a number of writers of 1960s got engaged in the political life (I. Drach, V. Yavorivskyi, P. Movchan, M. Zhulynskyi), some of them became ambassadors (Y. Shcherbak, D. Pavlychko, L. Lukyanenko), while other continued working in artistic societies and in mass media (Yu. Mushketyk, B. Oliynyk, R. Ivanychuk) or just wrote their literary works that were free of censorship and ideological limitations (V. Shevchuk, L. Kostenko, Y. Hutsalo, V. Drozd). Thus new merits and success, achieved by the 1960s writers had strengthened their authority in society and promoted creation the cult of generation, which has its place in literary and cultural discourse till now. Public opinions, obligatory school lectures and unchanged literary cannon attest their strong position in the contemporary life of the country. However, even such position did not secure the representatives of 1960s from sharp and discriminative critic of their cult. There were a few reasons for this, which provoked tensions in the wide discussion of the problem. That tension was also shown in media or during public debates. We can see it even in fi ction, for example in the novels by Lina Kostenko, Oksana Zabuzhko and others. Under postcolonial circumstances and due to different social and cultural complexes and re-sentiments, the position of the 1960s generation is projected onto the broader problem scope. Firstly, the paper elucidates the issues of national consciousness and rebuilding of separate Ukrainian identity. Secondly, what is very important, Ukrainians undergo a complicated period of destroying of the Soviet stereotypes and break away from totalitarian traumatic past. In this case, the generational differences are not only interesting, but also essential, since they show the changes of social consciousness which are not always visible for the general public. Keywords: the generation, the moral authority, society, literature, culture, identity. ; Розглянуто роль і місце покоління 1960-х років у національно-культурному становленні незалежної України. Зауважено затребуваність героїчного міфу цієї формації, що здобула авторитет своїм протестним потенціалом у минулому і стала осьовим поколінням ХХ століття. З іншого боку, характерною є також гостра критика покоління, що звучала в дискусіях 2000-х років, а також залишає простір дискусійного напруження донині. Обидві тенденції – культу й дискримінації – відображають суспільну думку щодо сучасної переоцінки шістдесятництва. Ключові слова: покоління, шістдесятники, моральний авторитет, суспільство, література, культура.

SUMMARY: Harsha Ram begins responding to his colleagues by addressing Harriet Murav's concerns with the Rabelaisian carnival experience and hence temporary nature of the supra 's power discourse, using it to reiterate his point about the facile binarism of repression and resistance. Ram comments on his colleagues' interpretations of the multivalence of the supra (the mode of acculturation and civilizing; the imposition of form and hence a set of rules onto the innately disruptive experience of inebriation; "unruly" material practice, etc.). He agrees that his literary-centered history of the supra should be supplemented with the spatial history and ethnography of the Georgian feast, mapping its transitions from the Safavid-inspired gardens and taverns of old Tiflis to the aristocratic, military and vice-regal milieus of imperial Russia, to the familial and professional networks of the Soviet era. While embracing similar suggestions, Ram rejects a view that the supra evolved from nativism to nationalism, with the latter understood as a political anti-imperial project. The last half of Ram's response deals with the main disagreement between his commentators and him, pertaining to Partha Chatterjee's methodological model adapted by Ram. Some of his critics suggest that the rootedness of Chatterjee's argument in the specifics of British India and Hindu nationalism makes his model impertinent to the very material Georgian case, whereas Gyan Prakash claims that Chatterjee falls into the trap of identifying with nationalism's metaphysical oppositions instead of exposing their historicity as by-products of a colonial rule that is as modern and hybrid as any other imperial formation. Ram rejects these criticisms of both Chatterjee's and his own attempts to overcome the binarism of nation and empire and explains how his approach parallels Chatterjee's. He does this by reconstituting the nativizing Georgian elite discourse that elevated the supra to the status of a national tradition, while also pointing to the feast's culturally heterogeneous constitutive elements that cannot readily be inscribed into the narrative of the nation. Finally, Ram calls for a renewed methodological synergy between literary history and literary theory on the one hand, and history and the social sciences on the other. Харша Рам начинает своей ответ коллегам с замечания Хэрриет Мурав, сравнившей супру с раблезианским карнавальным – и потому временным – перевертыванием властных отношений. Он отталкивается от этого замечания, чтобы еще раз разъяснить свою мысль об искусственности оппозиции репрессии и сопротивления. Рам с энтузиазмом отзывается на размышления коллег по поводу мультивалентности супры, понимаемой ими и как способ аккультурации и цивилизации; и как привнесение формы и, соответственно, правил в стихийный разрушительный процесс опьянения; и как "неуправляемую" материальную практику и проч. Рам соглашается с тем, что его литературоцентричная история супры должна быть дополнена пространственной историей и этнографией грузинского пира, очерчивающей его перемещение из сафавидских садов и таверн старого Тифлиса в аристократические, военные и правительственные пространства имперской России, а затем − в семейные и профессиональные сети советского времени. Принимая подобные предложения, Рам отвергает трактовку, согласно которой супра развивалась из нативистского института в антиимперский национально-политический институт. Во второй части своего эссе Рам разбирает главное расхождение между ним и его комментаторами, относящееся к методологической модели Парты Чаттерджи, воспринятой Рамом. В частности, некоторые участники форума считают, что модель Чаттерджи укоренена в специфике Британской Индии и индуистского национализма и потому не объясняет сугубо материальный грузинский феномен супры. Гаян Пракаш добавляет, что Чаттерджи идентифицируется с имплицитно заложенной в идеологии национализма метафизической дихотомией, недооценивая его исторические корни в колониальном контексте и модерную гибридность, присущую всем имперским формациям. Рам не согласен с подобной критикой, доказывая, что Чаттерджи осознает специфику имперской ситуации и стремится преодолеть бинарность нации и империи. Рам мыслит параллельно с Чаттерджи, одновременно реконструируя нативизирующий дискурс грузинской элиты, возводящий супру в статус национальной традиции, и указывая на культурную гетерогенность составных элементов супры, не вписывающихся в национальный нарратив. В заключение Рам призывает к обновленной методологической синергии истории и теории литературы, с одной стороны, и истории и социальных наук – с другой.

This dissertation explores the relationship between oral and written literature through the lens of epic. Springing from an engagement with scholarship that has defined and defended the notion of an African epic, it seeks to reevaluate the relevance of this category in the case of West African literature in French. While some critics have argued that the concept of epic is too Eurocentric to be relevant to African narrative traditions, most believe that to renounce the idea of an "African epic" is to stifle comparative literature, and possibly even to reproduce the trope of a Dark Continent too primitive to produce anything great. At the same time, scholars of francophone literature regularly rely on the notion of an "epic" dimension in some contemporary texts. However, such studies too frequently conform to Mikhail Bakhtin's vision of this dimension as a grandiose but flat world of ancient heroes, utterly removed from the evolving concerns of the present--which belong to the realm of the novel. This study both draws on and challenges scholarship within these conversations in order to propose a more innovative reading of West African oral traditional narratives that we call epic, as well as their place in francophone writing. The inherently oral and performance-specific element of West African heroic narrative is a crucial motivating factor for its contemporary reincarnations in French-language literature. Rather than "flattening" the genre of epic, as Bakhtin and other critics have done, by framing it in terms of European points of reference, conservative group identities, or a navitist return to authenticity, African literature in French channels the critical reflexivity of oral heroic narrative: traditional material constantly reinvents itself in ways that are self-reflexive, adaptable to "modern" concerns, and indeed capable of offering social criticism in the present. For this reason, major African writers--specifically Amadou Hampâté Bâ of Mali, Ahmadou Kourouma of Ivory Coast, and Boubacar Boris Diop of Senegal--weave these traditions into their writing as a way of reimagining the relevance of precolonial discourse genres in the postcolonial world. A recurring goal of their novels is, for example, to challenge received interpretations of oral heroic narrative and to draw new inspiration from them regarding issues like contemporary politics, gender roles, and intergenerational relations. They also open up important theoretical questions, such as what it means to criticize the very category of "tradition" from within a "traditional" space. This strategy of rewriting allows us to think the epic-novel paradigm as depending not just on rupture, as much literary theory has emphasized, but also on continuity.The first two chapters of this study explore the category of West African epic from the point of view of colonial and postcolonial literary history and anthropology, while the final two as well as the conclusion examine how this category is mobilized in the literary work of the individual writers mentioned above: Amadou Hampâté Bâ's L'Etrange destin de Wangrin (1973) and posthumous memoirs Amkoullel, l'enfant peul (1991) and Oui mon commandant! (1994) in Chapter Three; Ahmadou Kourouma's political-historical novelistic trilogy, consisting of Les Soleils des Indépendances (1968), Monnè, outrages et défis (1990), and En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages (1998) in Chapter Four; and Boubacar Boris Diop's Wolof-language novel Doomi Goolo (2003), adapted into French as Les Petits de la Guenon (2009), in the conclusion. In general, the discursive shift that is traced over time leads away from epic as "usable past"--that is, as an interpretation of history that serves political ends--to a critical consciousness of this usability. The authors in question specifically try to reorient heroic narrative away from its generally understood function of legitimating existing power structures and transmitting dominant ideology, using it instead to articulate critiques and alternatives to these. They also draw attention to the often dangerous mobilizations of epic discourse, which involve notions of authenticity and heroism, made by political elites.

In an idealized formulation, translation and censorship mark opposite points on the spectrum of signification: if translation works to raze boundaries between text and reader, censorship strives to raise them. In scholarship on fascist Italy, this polarized definition was particularly widespread: censorship was cast exclusively as the tool of the powerful, and translation, as a way for intellectuals to smuggle subversive ideas into a xenophobic society. However, despite their apparently antithetical aims, literary historians have found archival evidence to support a more nuanced view of censorship and translation under fascism, and seminal theoretical contributions by Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida have led to wide recognition of a chiastic relationship between "repressive" censorship and "productive" translation. If, today, in light of the numerous fields which take translation and censorship as their objects of study (literature, history, psychoanalysis, cultural studies), it were possible to make a single claim about these processes, it would speak to their ability to destabilize notions of discipline, author and text. This dissertation uses these transgressive, polyvalent phenomena to unsettle a rather stubborn boundary in the postwar Italian literary panorama: "fascist" and "antifascist" literature, specifically as it relates to fictionalized wartime narratives by Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957), Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) and Beppe Fenoglio (1922-1963), intellectuals who are key for different yet convergent reasons: Malaparte, who abandoned fascism in 1931, has been depicted as an unscrupulous chameleon; Vittorini, who became antifascist in 1936, has become a symbol of redemptive conversion; Fenoglio, a partisan in the Resistance, has become synonymous with antifascist literature. In bringing together these texts, traditionally understood as reflections of their authors' politics, my dissertation examines how the rise and fall of fascism is narrativized and suggests that these political conversions—never before considered comparatively—share common anxieties as they attempt to renegotiate boundaries not just between "fascist" and "antifascist" but also between other categories of identity, including race and gender.While my dissertation locates such overlaps in "fascist" and "antifascist" texts, it also identifies a preoccupation with renegotiating boundaries shared by these fascist era texts and their postwar criticism. Perceived as a site for struggle between intellectuals and the regime, censorship and translation maintain their tantamount importance today, as their oppositional definitions—still widely held in the scholarship on Malaparte, Vittorini and Fenoglio—contribute to the reification of the emblematic positions of these intellectuals and their texts. My readings explore the ways in which censorship and translation have shaped perceptions of the texts' production and afterlife, but also how they inform narrative dynamics. After an introduction to my theoretical methods in Chapter One, in Chapter Two, I look at how categories of sexual and political "integrity" and "violation" intertwine in the plots of two novels by Vittorini, Garofano rosso [ The Red Carnation ], a famously censored fascist bildungsroman , and Conversazione in Sicilia [ Conversation in Sicily ], a story of an antifascist awakening, whose stylistic innovations were held to be the result of his experience translating Anglophone literature. As I offer new readings of previously marginalized scenes, I show how the critics' rhetorical emphasis on the censor's "violation" of Garofano and the "integrity" of Conversazione has helped construct Vittorini's emblematic position as a redemptive antifascist convert, obscuring the representations of sexual violence on which the protagonists' conversion depends. In Chapter Three, I focus on Fenoglio's Partigiano Johnny [ Johnny The Partisan ], purportedly born through self-translation from English to Italian, and show how its status as a literary monument to antifascism is predicated upon philological "conversion" efforts to restore the text to its uncensored form and thus tell the "complete" story of the Resistance. I argue that these efforts paradoxically censor a number of suggestive tensions that speak to the trauma of Italy's civil war. In Chapter Four, I turn to Malaparte's La pelle [ The Skin ], a polemical novel still caught in a debate on whether it deserves to be freed of its "cultural censorship." While the critics debate its "fidelity"" to the "truth" of the war, I explore the text's construction of its own truth claims, as it represents moments of "translation" between the Allies and the Italians.