Categorization and taxonomy are topical issues in intertextuality studies. Instead of increasing the number of overlapping or contradictory definitions (often established with reference to limited databases) which exist even for key concepts such as ''allusion'' or ''quotation'', we propose an electronically implemented data-driven approach based on the isolation, analysis and description of a number of relevant parameters such as general text relation, marking for quotation, modification etc. If a systematic parameter analysis precedes discussions of possible correlations and the naming of features bundles as composite categories, a dynamic approach to categorization emerges which does justice to the varied and complex phenomena in this field. The database is the HyperHamlet corpus, a chronologically and generically wide-ranging collection of Hamlet references that confront linguistic and literary researchers with a comprehensive range of formal and stylistic issues. Its multi-dimensional encodings and search facilities provide the indispensable 'freedom from the analytic limits of hardcopy', as Jerome McGann put it. The methodological and heuristic gains include a more complete description of possible parameter settings, a clearer recognition of multiple parameter settings (as implicit in existing genre definitions), a better understanding of how parameters interact, descriptions of disregarded literary phenomena that feature unusual parameter combinations and, finally, descriptive labels for the most polysemous areas that may clarify matters without increasing taxonomical excess.
The pervasiveness of alcohol in John Dos Passos's major works, Manhattan Transfer and USA, has been widely noticed. Yet abstinence, the opposite, is just as conspicuous. This article explores the dialectical implications of drink vs. abstinence, which-together with considerations of the cultural history and contemporaneous political issues connected with alcohol-reveal that drink plays an intricate role in Dos Passos's socio-political critique.While drink symbolizes human life with all its complexities and contradictions, its opposite, abstinence, exemplifies the inhumaneness of a reduced world view that prioritizes the instrumental logic of capitalism and demands unquestioning subjugation to the given conditions.Contemporaneous critics of John Dos Passos's USA trilogy complained that "almost everyone lives from bar to bed" and that the characters "drink enough liquor to make this the most eloquent temperance tract since The Beautiful and Damned" ("Unsigned review" 147; De Voto 127). 2 Since then, other critics have remarked on the prominence of drink in Dos Passos's works. Colin Hutchinson, for example, compares drink and hedonism in USA with their role in Pynchon's Against the Day. He argues for a putative Puritanism in Dos Passos, as the heavy drinkers all meet with "grim fates" (178). But, pace Hutchinson, the "grim fates" I am deeply grateful to Alan Robinson and Roy Sellars as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and highly valued suggestions.
Sixta Quassdorf analyzes §25 of David Foster Wallace's novel The Pale King. In both form and content, the chapter reveals a masterly condensation of the human in a dehumanized bureaucracy. While the phrase »turns a page« is repeated about 100 times, representing the power of monotony and alienation, we also find variation, rhythmic disruption and flashes of poetic insight that reveal the unassailability of human creativity. In addition, by experiencing formal elements that echo the narrative's meaning, the reader is almost put into the protagonists' position, which goes beyond simply »turning pages.«
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