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Volume 95 - January 1980

Contents

Page 3 of 7

Research Article

  • History, Fiction, and the Ground Between: The Uses of the Documentary Mode in Black Literature

  • Barbara Foley
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, pp. 389-403

  • Although the so-called nonfiction novel is ordinarily seen as a distinctly post-World War ii phenomenon, Afro-American literature has from its beginnings relied to a marked degree on the documentary mode. Close scrutiny of Afro-American prose narrative provides the basis not only for revising some common literary-historical generalizations but also for examining the nature of mimesis and historicity, since Afro-American writers have employed a wide range of techniques to persuade their readers of the truths proposed in their texts. A consideration of the uses of factuality in this body of literature enables us to make broader theoretical distinctions among the kinds of propositions conveyed by various types of fictional narratives and to illuminate the shady borderline between factual and fictive discourse.

  • The Paradox of Power and Mystery: Carlos Fuentes' Terra nostra

  • Lucille Kerr
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, pp. 91-102

  • Mystery and mystery texts dominate Terra nostra, Fuentes’ novel about absolute authority. Both El Señor, the protagonist who covets eternal power, and Fuentes, the author who appears to assert his privilege through the fiction, are betrayed by their own strategies. Failing to recognize his inability to exert absolute control over history, El Señor, trying to master a set of mysterious texts he believes hold the key to his power, attempts to mold reality to his own desires. Although Fuentes understands the impossibility of creating a truly simultaneous text, he nevertheless tries to realize his plan through the novel’s complex narrative network. That network, however, needs the support of a linear mystery fiction, which thwarts the reader’s desire for solutions but fails to triumph over the bounds of literature itself. Thus the assertions of absolute authority by El Señor and Fuentes reveal the very powerlessness they would disprove.

Other

Forum

  • Patterning in Beowulf, Continued

  • T. C. S. Langen
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, p. 870
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Indexes

Forum

  • Patterning in Beowulf

  • Constance B. Hieatt
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, p. 246
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Other

Forum

  • Finnegans Wake and Ulysses

  • Bernard Benstock
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, pp. 103-104
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  • Patterning in Beowulf, Continued

  • Thomas Elwood Hart
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, pp. 870-872
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Other

Forum

Other

Indexes

Program

Other

Forum

  • Fiction and Film

  • John Mosier
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, pp. 247-248
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Reports of the Regional Modern Language Associations

Forum

  • Hedda Gabler and Nora Helmer

  • Christine M. Bird
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 October 2020, pp. 105-106
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Page 3 of 7