tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7334205599297722121.post588494207190102174..comments2023-12-06T14:43:06.715-08:00Comments on Transwoman Times: February Made Us ShiverJustine Valinottihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10852069587181432102noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7334205599297722121.post-51211763093150158722010-03-04T06:36:47.723-08:002010-03-04T06:36:47.723-08:00I think I'd probably put forward the notion th...I think I'd probably put forward the notion that rite of passage novels in the US also tend to serve as a recapitulation of the colonising adventure and national definition. It's not simply character being defined by environmental challenge but also populating and defining national space through the characters. Twain's river would be extremely problematic in, say, europe, because it would have to be part of a whole tradition of reference. Even with the urban, I couldn't say that it would be easy to find works similar to Paterson in broader world literature.<br />The flip side might be that US literature rarely makes any substantial approach to what it means for a character to be american, because the shaping role of landscape is so difficult to depict when primacy is given to the 'new found land'.<br />Fantasy / past is possibly similarly colonising that mythic empty history of the land.<br />Just had a lecturer in american lit. come by who was trying to work out whether there was a similar framework for female character rite of passage fictions and whether early lesbian frontier settings were evidential, but neither of us felt on firm ground with that one.<br />Does any of that make sense for you ?Sophiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776623935042983118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7334205599297722121.post-64048975177210796022010-03-03T21:58:52.414-08:002010-03-03T21:58:52.414-08:00Sophie, I'd never seen the term "heimatsl...Sophie, I'd never seen the term "heimatsliteratur" until you posted. It looks like an interesting concept.<br /><br />Why do you think that so much of America's heimatsliteratur, if you will, is about young men escaping from domesticity of one kind or another (cf Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn and The Call of the Wild), or into some fantasy they have about their own or someone else's past?Justine Valinottihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10852069587181432102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7334205599297722121.post-5920057992596811362010-03-01T09:08:52.536-08:002010-03-01T09:08:52.536-08:00I always liked the designation 'heimatsliterat...I always liked the designation 'heimatsliteratur', which doesn't quite translate as national literature.And I suppose I looked at these two works as such ; attempts at sweeping judgements rendered less banal, and conservative, by an appeal to nation specific myth.<br />Or maybe I just couldn't find Holden Caulfield remotely sympathetic and 'american pie'came over as sentimental 50's iconography.<br />On the other hand, I suppose anything was better than 'vincent'.Sophiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08776623935042983118noreply@blogger.com