Miraculous Realism

At the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, two movies from northern-Francophone Europe swept almost all the main awards. Rosetta by the Walloon directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the Golden Palm, and L'humanité by the French director Bruno Dumont won the Grand Prize; both won acting awards as well. Taking this "miracle" of Cannes as the point of departure, Niels Niessen identifies a transregional film movement in the French-Belgian border region—the Cinéma du Nord or "cinema of the North." He examines this movement within the contexts of French and Belgian national cinemas from the silent era to the digital age, as well as that of the new realist tendency in world cinema of the last three decades. In addition, he traces, from a northern perspective, a secular-religious tradition in Francophone-European film and philosophy from Bresson and Pialat, via Bazin, Deleuze, and Godard, to the Dardennes and Dumont, while critiquing this tradition for its frequent use of a humanist vocabulary of grace for a secular world. Once a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, the Franco-Belgian Nord faced economic crisis for most of the twentieth century. Miraculous Realism demonstrates that the Cinéma du Nord's rise to prominence resulted from the region's endeavor to reinvent itself economically and culturally at the crossroads of Europe after decades of recession.

An authoritative study of this postsecular film movement from the French-Belgian border region that rose to prominence at the turn of the twenty-first century. At the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, two movies from northern-Francophone Europe swept almost all the main awards. Rosetta by the Walloon directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the Golden Palm, and L’humanité by the French director Bruno Dumont won the Grand Prize; both won acting awards as well. Taking this “miracle” of Cannes as the point of departure, Niels Niessenidentifies a transregional film movement in the French-Belgian border region—the Cinéma du Nord or “cinema of the North.” He examines this movement within the contexts of French and Belgian national cinemas from the silent era to the digital age, as well as that of the new realist tendency in world cinema of the last three decades. In addition, he traces, from a northern perspective, a secular-religious tradition in Francophone-European film and philosophy from Bresson and Pialat, via Bazin, Deleuze, and Godard, to the Dardennes and Dumont, while critiquing this tradition for its frequent use of a humanist vocabulary of grace for a secular world. Once a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, the Franco-Belgian Nord faced economic crisis for most of the twentieth century. Miraculous Realism demonstrates that the Cinéma du Nord’s rise to prominence resulted from the region’s endeavor to reinvent itself economically and culturally at the crossroads of Europe after decades of recession. “This book not only makes a major contribution to the field but also creates a new area in this field: the opening up of discussion of the Cinéma du Nord in geopolitical, historical, and theoretical terms, through a blend of fine close reading and broader commentary.” — Sarah Cooper, author of The Soul of Film Theory

The present collection of essays endeavours to furnish informed responses to central questions posed by the editors: Is the fact that the marvellous coexists with the factual and never resolves itself into the supernatural an indication that the whole literary project of 'magical realism' is an instrumental and representational form which can be regarded as particularly suitable for reconciling dichotomies and oppositions otherwise experienced as intolerable? Was 'magical realism' an explosive process in cultural dynamics, taking place at intersections of heterogeneous cultures most favourable to the efflorescence of this type of literature? The authors of the various essays - on Patrick White and David Malouf, Ben Okri, Syl Cheney-Coker, Robert Kroetsch, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Jack Hodgins, Salman Rushdie, Janet Frame, Wilson Harris and others - provide a dynamic focus on the reality at stake beneath the surface representations of 'magical realism' in post-colonial literatures.

Mennonite literature has long been viewed as an expression of community identity. However, scholars in Mennonite literary studies have urged a reconsideration of the field’s past and a reconceptualization of its future. This is exactly what Reading Mennonite Writing does. Drawing on the transnational turn in literary studies, Robert Zacharias positions Mennonite literature in North America as “a mode of circulation and reading” rather than an expression of a distinct community. He tests this reframing with a series of methodological experiments that open new avenues of critical engagement with the field’s unique configuration of faith-based intercultural difference. These include cross-sectional readings in nonnarrative literary history; archival readings of transatlantic life writing; Canadian rewritings of Mexican film’s deployment of Mennonite theology as fantasy; an examination of the fetishistic structure of ethnicity as a “thing” that has enabled Mennonite identity to function in a post-identity age; and, finally, a tentative reinvestment in ideals of Mennonite community via the surprising routes of queerness and speculative fiction. In so doing, Zacharias reads Mennonite writing in North America as a useful case study in the shifting position of minor literatures in the wake of the transnational turn. Theoretically sophisticated, this study of minor transnationalism will appeal to specialists in Mennonite literature and to scholars working in the broader field of transnational literary studies.

For almost two millennia, Jesus' story has been retold in various forms and fashions but in the last century a new way of reimagining the man from Galilee has sprung up in the form of novels about the life ofJesus. While the novels themselves are asvaried as their authors, this work aims to introduce readers to some common literary strategies and theological agendas found in this phenomenon by surveying a few prominent examples. It also explores the question of what happens when we examine theintertextual play between these reimaginings and their Gospel progenitors as we allow these contemporary novels to pose new questions to their ancient counterparts. An intriguing hermeneutical circle ensues as we embark on our quest for the fictional Jesus and accompany his incarnations as they lead us back to re-examine the canonical portraits of Jesus anew.

This book provides a detailed exploration of the spiritual and religious contexts and subtexts of contemporary fiction.

Culture in the Anteroom introduces an English-speaking readership to the full range of Siegfried Kracauer's work as novelist, architect, journalist, sociologist, historian, exile critic, and theorist of visual culture. This interdisciplinary anthology---including pieces from Miriam Bratu Hansen, Andreas Huyssen, Noah Isenberg, Lutz Koepnick, Eric Rentschler, and Heide Schl pmann---brings together literary and film scholars, historians and art historians, sociologists, and architects to address the scope and current relevance of a body of work dedicated to investigating all aspects of modernism and modernity. The contributors approach Kracauer's writings from a variety of angles, some by placing them in dialogue with his contemporaries in Weimar Germany and the New York Intellectuals of the 1940s and '50s; others by exploring relatively unknown facets of Kracauer's oeuvre by considering his contributions to architectural history, the history of radio as well as other new media, and museum and exhibition culture.

In this innovative work, Ming Dong Gu examines Chinese literature and traditional Chinese criticism to construct a distinctly Chinese theory of fiction and places it within the context of international fiction theory. He argues that because Chinese fiction, or xiaoshuo, was produced in a tradition very different from that of the West, it has formed a system of fiction theory that cannot be adequately accounted for by Western fiction theory grounded in mimesis and realism. Through an inquiry into the macrocosm of Chinese fiction, the art of formative works, and theoretical data in fiction commentaries and intellectual thought, Gu explores the conceptual and historical conditions of Chinese fiction in relation to European and world fiction. In the process, Gu critiques and challenges some accepted views of Chinese fiction and provides a theoretical basis for fresh approaches to fiction study in general and Chinese fiction in particular. Such masterpieces as the Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase) and the Hongloumeng (The Story of the Stone) are discussed at length to advance his notion of fiction and fiction theory.