Linda Hutcheon

A theory of parody : the teachings of twentieth-century art forms

Examines the historical development of parody in order to examine its place, purpose and practice in the postmodern world of contemporary artforms.

The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History

That postmodern theses have deep roots in the present human conditions is confirmed today in the document on architecture issued by the Polish union Solidarity. This text accuses the modern city of being the product of an alliance between bureaucracy and totalitarianism, and singles out the great error of moder architecture in the break of historical continuity. Solidaritys words should be meditated upon, especially by those who have confused a great movement of collective consciousness [postmodernism] with a passing fashion.

Interventionist Literary Histories: Nostalgic, Pragmatic, or Utopian?

rels of ancients and moderns), literary history as we know it appears to have grown out of eighteenth-century antiquarian interests. In its earliest form it was often simply a compendium of information about writers (of practically anything), usually in straightforward chronological order. With Friedrich Schlegel, the story goes, came the shift from this sort of vast sequence of authors to a more limited corpus (and thus canon) of literary texts.1 The nineteenth century is generally viewed as the time of the greatest achievement in this vein, and many fundamental principles of Western literary history as a discipline were established then.* It is no coincidence that the same moment in history also witnessed the rise of a new form of national cultural self-awareness. A Western literature from the start (as in the various European quar-

Death drive: Eros and Thanatos in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

In their different ways, a series of Germanic artists and thinkers – the poet Novalis, the philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and, most powerfully, composer Richard Wagner – all espoused at one point in their lives the view that death should not only be welcomed but ardently desired, even sought after as the final rest after a life of striving and suffering.

On the art of adaptation

hence will delay the onset of the kind of global climate changes that are liable to turn El Niño into a serious hazard. Our affair with El Niño is approaching a critical juncture. Constant El Niño could soon become 1⁄2ckle. Will he grow more intense? Will his brief visits become prolonged? As yet we have no de1⁄2nite answers. But we have learnt that much can be done to avoid calamities by implementing appropriate policies, even when the available scienti1⁄2c information has large uncertainties. Above all, we need to guard against the temptation to defer dif1⁄2cult political decisions because of a perceived need for more accurate information. Much more can be learnt from our affair with El Niño. We need to do so in a hurry, before we succeed in changing him. Despite the argument implicit in Spike Jonze’s latest 1⁄2lm, Adaptation, every age can justly claim to be an age of adaptation. The desire to transfer a story from one medium or one genre to another is neither new nor rare in Western culture. It is in fact so common that we might suspect that it is somehow the inclination of the human imagination–and, despite the dismissive tone of some critics, not necessarily a secondary or derivative act. After all, most of Shakespeare’s plays were adapted from other literary or historical works, and that does not seem to have damaged the Bard’s reputation

Displacement and Anxiety: Empire and Opera

Despite Edward Said’s extensive analysis of the manifestations of Orientalism in European culture, music receives little of his attention. Yet he had a strong interest in the art form and frequently used musical imagery in his critical language.1 His formal treatment of empire and opera, for instance, was confined to a discussion of the genesis—and not the music or narrative—of Verdi’s Aida in Culture and Imperialism.2 Like him, many have written about nineteenth-century Paris as the hub of Orientalist study and even more specifically about the French Romantic taste for the exotic and the Orientalist in literature (Nerval’s Voyage en Orient or Hugo’s Les Orientales) and in the visual arts (the paintings of Delacroix or Ingres). Ralph Locke and Susan McClary, among others, have discussed the nature and politics of the exotic in French music in general.3 Many have made the obvious generalizations about the link between colonialism and Orientalism, but few have tied the overt operatic explorations of imperialism directly and concretely to the historical fact that France was an active colonial power in North Africa and the Islamic Middle East in the middle and late nineteenth century.4

Productive Comparative Angst: Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism

This article by Linda Hutcheon is a review of Charles Bernheimer’s 1993 ACLA report as well as Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, the collection of essays discussing the extend of the report from various point of views. The nature of the essays reveals the close relation among the social sciences, their overarching fields and how comparative literature finds itself in such state of affairs. On this, Hutcheon writes her essay summarizing the challenges posed by various definitions for the extent of comparative literature. The writers contributing Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism has varying positions. Putting them together, Hutcheon claims that such an angst for a definition of a vague field is actually its strength. As the discussions on relatively recent tendencies such as feminism or postcolonial studies gain popularity, Hutcheon observes that the literary studies takes a more central position in social sciences. Her ideas provide an example for the relation between comparative literature and cultural studies where the interdisciplinar approaches makes the problem of boundaries more eminent. The ideas presented in the paper still carries relevance today and I believe Turkish translation might help further discussions on the field in Turkey.

Adapting a Canonical Canadian Novel for the Operatic Stage: A Dystopia for Our Times

A plain, cream-coloured leaflet listed the program for the day-long Opera Exchange symposium at the University of Toronto – ‘The Handmaid’s Tale: No Balm for this Gilead.’ From 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday 2 October 2004, a mixed audience of academics, students, and members of the general public assembled to hear a series of lectures and presentations on Margaret’s Atwood’s chilling futuristic novel turned opera. While the house lights are up and people are taking their seats and reading their programmes a proscenium-arch-filling Video Conference screen displays ... four moving ‘screen-savers’ [the first of which reads] ‘International Historical Association Convention, 20–25 June, 2195, Twelfth Symposium on the Republic of Gilead (Formerly the United States of America).’ (Ruders, xiv)

Interdisciplinary Opera Studies

LINDA HUTCHEON is University Profes sor of English and Comparative Litera ture at the University of Toronto. Her most recent books include A Theory of Adaptation (Routledge, 2006) and, in collaboration with Michael Hutcheon, Opera: The Art of Dying (Harvard UP, 2004), Bodily Charm: Living Opera (U of Nebraska P, 2000), and Opera: Desire, Dis ease, and Death (U of Nebraska P, 1996). I HOLD THIS TRUTH TO BE SELF-EVIDENT: THAT AN ART FORM CONSIST

O corpo perigoso

A adaptacao operistica de Richard Strauss de Salome de Oscar Wilde transgride todas as regras de representacao do corpo feminino: este corpo nao e apenas contemplado pelo ‘olhar masculino’ mas tambem contempla, com resultados poderosos e mortais. Na versao de Strauss, Salome oferece um desafio as teorias canonicas tanto do ‘olhar’ quanto do feminino enquanto objeto.