Prague Journal of English Studies

On Province and Empire in My Ántonia and One of Ours: Cather’s 1922 The Waste Land

Paul A. Olson — 2024-10-09

Willa Cather profoundly alters her attitude towards the American experiment, World War I, and the prospect of cultural pluralism in America between her 1918 My Ántonia and her 1922 One of Ours. In doing so, she addresses the issue of what kind of culture America should have: a monistic one such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson advocated or a pluralistic one. In My Ántonia, set during the period of Great Plains settlement but extending up into World War I, she presents an intact American cultural pluralism: non-English speaking European cultures continuing their positive practices absent the monarchic repression of Central European empires. Her ethnic settlements in the Great Plains practice pluralistic democracy without intervention from centralised authority, implicitly reflecting what could happen under an emerging European anti-monarchic ethos or in an America that allowed for many ways of life. In One of Ours, on the other hand, she savages the jingoism that possessed America during, and after World War I: a repression that makes the war disastrous for pluralistic democracy. The dream falters. Her wartime Nebraska becomes repressive for Germans, Czechs, and other divergent peoples. It practices conformity, a new materialism, and meaningless religion. Indeed, the death of her novel’s hero, Claude Wheeler, is not a sacrifice that enables democratic renewal but rather offers us a self-blinded hero who dies in glorious strife only as he sees it. He actually dies for a nation increasingly making itself unsafe for democracy in an army whose soldiers are massively disillusioned by the war. Thereafter, Cather writes little in a positive vein of Nebraska or the Great Plains and its various cultures but turns to earlier New World catalyst communities such as those of Quebec, the pueblos of the Southwest, and pioneer New Mexico.

Coming and Going: The Women of T.S. Eliot

Ian Butcher — 2024-10-09

There were four influential women in Eliot's life: two wives, two women who believed that one day he would marry them, and a brief affair of which he was deeply ashamed. New evidence of some 1,131 letters sent by Eliot to one of the women, Emily Hale, available to scholars after a fifty-year embargo imposed by Eliot, throws dramatic new light on T.S. Eliot the man, and also major insights into his poetry.[i] Eliot destroyed her replies, perhaps in order to protect his reputation. Eliot claimed that poetry should be transformed into an impersonal statement, but his poetry was not as 'impersonal' as he alleged, but replete with personal incidents from his private life with his women. His troubled first wife “nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive”. Emily – his first platonic, lifelong love who lived in America – was his poem’s “hyacinth girl”; Mary was a friend he frequented in England for drives in the car, domestic dinners and culture. He finally found true happiness, and the ability to write erotic verse, when he married Valerie, thirty-eight years his junior, and with whom he found contentment in his twilight years. He also had a brief affair with Nancy Cunard, of which he was deeply ashamed. The aim of this paper is to show the various major influences these four women had on Eliot’s life and work. Focus will mainly be on Prufrock, The Waste Land, and Four Quartets.

The Wake of HCE in Shaun the Postman: Duality, Sameness and Universality in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Alberto García García-Madrid — 2024-10-09

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake constitutes one of the highest artistic expressions of modernist literature in the English language. The novel’s departure from realist conventions and its intricate language invite challenging interpretations, fostering an exploration of the narrative in terms of an imitation or reimagination of reality. The distinctive nature of the protagonist’s family, embodying real and metaphorical elements, suggests a potential fusion among the different members. In this regard, this paper focuses on the interpretation of the main male characters – father and sons – as both diverse entities and a unified presence simultaneously, and on the potential rebirth of HCE into Shaun, revealing this fatherly-filial connection especially in the concluding chapters. Central to this exploration is the examination of the concept of “duality”, shedding light on the amalgamation and reimagining of characters into these separate and unified identities. The interplay of characters, particularly the twins, is interpreted as facets of a singular entity, portraying HCE embodying both and affiliating with various characters representing Shaun. Ultimately, the paper aims to unravel the complexities of HCE’s transformation into his son by dissecting the intricacies of duality, sameness and universality throughout the novel.

Folkloric Imagery and Revolutionary Vision in Kofi Anyidoho’s A Harvest of Our Dreams: With Elegy for the Revolution

Toyin Shittu — 2024-10-09

Folklore is one of the core cultural values in traditional societies and writers who are conscious of its aesthetic relevance deploy it in their creative works. Folktale elicits imagery which underscores the relationship of humanity with nature and mythical elements. Writers exploit this relationship to establish traditionalism and pursue revolutionary vision in their works. Anyidoho uses his affiliation to, and understanding of, the Ewe cultural (one of the traditional societies in Ghana) milieu to comment on issues that are germane to the existence of the people in A Harvest of Our Dreams: With Elegy for the Revolution. This paper, through examination of some of the poems in the collection with Raymond Williams’s Cultural Materialism revealed that the poet, with poetic devices, uses folklore and traditional images to advocate for revolution in his society. The paper comes to the conclusion that the poems in the collection are replete with folklore and traditional imagery, which the poet deploys with poetic essence to satirise failings in his society.

“Can Corpses Undie?” Traces of Rothberg’s Trauma Model in Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Ace of Spades

Adewuyi Aremu Ayodeji — 2024-10-09

Interdisciplinary studies in memory have become more relevant since the turn of the twentieth century with scholars giving their divergent views. That way, personal and collective memories have been explored vis-à-vis communal identities. How tragic/traumatic events affect personal and collective memories remains the concern of trauma theory which has critically investigated both the personal and intergenerational traumas of victims of injustice. One major contribution of Michael Rothberg to collective memory is his advancement of solidarity between group victims of diverse cultures, nationalities, races, and identities in order to create a more peaceful world to live in. This paper purports that Rothberg’s multidirectional memory and theory of implication are useful theoretical tools for analysing Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Young Adult novel, Ace of Spades (2021). The paper, therefore, indicates how diverse sites of trauma in the author’s world synergise with those of the protagonists. Also, the paper notably identifies some white characters in Ace of Spades as implicated subjects of racism and white supremacy. On the whole, the premise of this paper is that the new media can serve as a convenient site of thoughtful convergence for different victim groups to devise a means of dismantling long-existing regimes of oppression and injustice.

Representations of the Local in the Postmillennial Novel: New Voices from the Margins

Nataša Tučev — 2024-10-09

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