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Research Article
Wallace Stevens, Communism, and the Artistic Imagination
Kenneth Womack*
Issue:
Volume 13, Issue 2, April 2025
Pages:
23-29
Received:
29 January 2025
Accepted:
12 February 2025
Published:
11 March 2025
DOI:
10.11648/j.ijla.20251302.11
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Abstract: In his lectures and poetry across pre- and postwar America, Wallace Stevens evinced an increasingly fervent anti-communist stance. In several seminal poems, including “A Duck for Dinner,” “A Dish of Peaches in Russia,” “Description without Place,” and “Mountains Covered with Cats,” Stevens addressed aspects of life in the Soviet Union, as well as what he perceived to be communism’s assault upon the creative imagination. For Stevens, this strident political position was in keeping with North American sentiments at the time. As Samuel French Morse remembers, Stevens “was very conservative, essentially. Eisenhower was his man, not Stevenson.” In fact, unlike many other Americans, Stevens had simply remained conservative all along—throughout the Depression, the second World War, and their respective aftermaths. By the 1950s, America’s imagination—and its anti-communist sentiments—had merely caught up with Stevens’s. Indeed, as the 1950s progressed, America’s hysteria began to manifest itself in “the red scare” and the witch hunts of blacklisting and McCarthyism. As his poetry during this era demonstrates, Stevens remained deeply concerned about communism’s potential for infiltrating American life and shifting the course of postwar society.
Abstract: In his lectures and poetry across pre- and postwar America, Wallace Stevens evinced an increasingly fervent anti-communist stance. In several seminal poems, including “A Duck for Dinner,” “A Dish of Peaches in Russia,” “Description without Place,” and “Mountains Covered with Cats,” Stevens addressed aspects of life in the Soviet Union, as well as w...
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Research Article
Rosaries and Prayerbooks: Sacred Objects of Spirituality and Religion on Antarctica
Ellen Cressman Frye*
Issue:
Volume 13, Issue 2, April 2025
Pages:
30-37
Received:
18 December 2024
Accepted:
12 February 2025
Published:
13 March 2025
DOI:
10.11648/j.ijla.20251302.12
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Abstract: In the language, literature, and culture of Antarctica, religion and spirituality have always played a supremely valuable, yet glaringly overlooked, role. For some people, like Antarctica itself, spirituality and religion often go unnoticed in their daily lives. Very slowly, as global warming and climate change have started to affect more people’s lives in an increasingly negative way, Antarctica is slowing revealing itself in its fullness and power. As both Poles begin to unveil their strengths (and sadly, weaknesses), it is also time to examine the foundational aspects of many pieces of literature, as well as previously unrevealed and unstudied things found on Antarctica: objects of spirituality and religion. This essay seeks to explore these things and objects, whether tangible or intangible, whether past or present. Just like the construction of a house of worship, I will beging with the foundational things of religion and spirituality, which is more than just a church, temple, beach, mountain, or chapel. Then, I will continue with what many would consider the “big” things of religion and spirituality, followed by the “little” things, which are innumerable. Finally, the intangible things of religion and spirituality, as found and practiced on and about Antarctica, I will attempt to analyze. The intent is to offer here a new perspective on the sacredness of Antarctica, with the hope of growing increased awareness of concern about, and passion for Antarctica, and indeed, our planet and humanity at large.
Abstract: In the language, literature, and culture of Antarctica, religion and spirituality have always played a supremely valuable, yet glaringly overlooked, role. For some people, like Antarctica itself, spirituality and religion often go unnoticed in their daily lives. Very slowly, as global warming and climate change have started to affect more people’s ...
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Research Article
Abraham Brueghel’s Engraving of The Wine of St. Martin’s Day and the Bentvueghels Fraternity in Rome
Martin William Walsh*
Issue:
Volume 13, Issue 2, April 2025
Pages:
38-41
Received:
22 February 2025
Accepted:
13 March 2025
Published:
31 March 2025
Abstract: This article examines the engraving by Rome-based Nicholas Guérard commissioned by Abraham Brueghel (1630/31-c. 1690) in 1670 and based on his great-grandfather, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s peasant festival painting The Wine of St. Martin’s Day, a mature work of the great Flemish painter recently authenticated by the Prado. The circumstances of the work’s dedication to Pope Clement X ’s nephew Don Gaspare Altieri as “General of the Holy Church,” i.e. head of the Papal military are discussed, and the Italian text of the dedication is translated. The gift to young Altieri was clearly a bid for patronage which evidently did not succeed, as Abraham relocated to Naples soon after. A period cabinet painting of the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century is also evaluated as directly based on the engraving and not upon any copy of the original painting. Given their interest in bacchic subjects, it is proposed that the latter work might have originated from the circle of the Bentvueghels (Birds of a Feather), the fraternity of Dutch and Flemish artists in Rome to which Abraham Brueghel belonged with the club name Rijngraaf (Count of the Rhine). The work was possibly a tribute to the artist and his distinguished ancestor in a Martinmas celebratory context.Keywords
Abstract: This article examines the engraving by Rome-based Nicholas Guérard commissioned by Abraham Brueghel (1630/31-c. 1690) in 1670 and based on his great-grandfather, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s peasant festival painting The Wine of St. Martin’s Day, a mature work of the great Flemish painter recently authenticated by the Prado. The circumstances of the ...
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Case Report
Of Women Pioneers, Relics and Proto-Abstractions: A Visual Analysis of O’Keeffe’s Manhattan
Robmarie Lopez*
Issue:
Volume 13, Issue 2, April 2025
Pages:
42-48
Received:
7 March 2025
Accepted:
20 March 2025
Published:
10 April 2025
Abstract: Oddly rendered in abstract, cubist forms, O’Keeffe’s Manhattan (1932) is a transitional work in the artist’s canon. Painted as a commission for a mural proposal exhibition, Manhattan features elements unusual for the artist at the time: a sublimely large canvas, a sense of geometric minimalism, a series of floating peonies and calico roses which intriguingly contrast with the skyscraper theme of the painting. A formal and visual analysis of Manhattan suggests that its unusual composition acts as a precursor to works of 1950’s Abstract Expressionism like Pollock’s Ritual and Kline’s Black Reflections. Endogenous to the painting, issues of gender and woman-as-pioneer are addressed using flowers to feminize the theme of the skyscraper, considered a masculine subject in O’Keeffe’s time. Alternative readings to the established triumph of gender include that of personal transformation and of the skyscraper as a relic of the naïve optimism of the gilded age. By echoing the color palette and composition of animal skull works like Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses, O’Keeffe established a parallel between the mystical and animistic qualities of animal bones and the otherworldly quality of the skyscraper as an awe-inspiring monolith of progress. Experimentations with arrangement also suggest the skyscraper and its ideals are dormant rather than dead, “coming to life” despite the dark circumstances which surround the nation. Thus, an analysis of Manhattan can further clarify the development of Abstract Expressionism as well as the themes underlying American modern art in the 1930s and O’Keeffe’s artistic and personal transformation.
Abstract: Oddly rendered in abstract, cubist forms, O’Keeffe’s Manhattan (1932) is a transitional work in the artist’s canon. Painted as a commission for a mural proposal exhibition, Manhattan features elements unusual for the artist at the time: a sublimely large canvas, a sense of geometric minimalism, a series of floating peonies and calico roses which in...
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Research Article
“If Anything, It Intensified Them”: Social Atomism in Open City
Hui Lyu*
Issue:
Volume 13, Issue 2, April 2025
Pages:
49-55
Received:
31 March 2025
Accepted:
15 April 2025
Published:
29 April 2025
DOI:
10.11648/j.ijla.20251302.15
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Abstract: This article explores social atomism in Teju Cole’s Open City through the lens of Georg Simmel’s urban sociology. Julius, the novel’s Nigerian-German narrator, emerges as a quintessential figure of emotional detachment shaped by the conditions of modern metropolitan life. The novel’s depiction of New York City—fractured by architectural disjointedness, socio-economic disparity, and pervasive anonymity—constructs a spatial environment that nurtures isolation and withdrawal. These urban conditions directly shape Julius’s psychological reserve and solitary disposition. Social atomism in Open City is reflected across three dimensions of Julius’s life: his inability to confront his past, seen most starkly in his emotional withdrawal from Moji’s accusation and his erasure of personal memory; his alienation in public spaces, expressed through his aimless urban wanderings and psychological detachment from the crowds around him; and his distant or failed interpersonal relationships, including his estrangement from family, his disconnection from his lover, university professor, neighbor, and his inability to sustain solidarity with members of his own ethnic community. Though he occasionally reaches toward connection through memory, conversation, or gestures of empathy, these attempts are consistently undermined by the blasé attitude and emotional reserve that Simmel identifies as core to urban modernity. Julius’s detachment ultimately underscores a broader vision of city life, where fleeting solidarities prove inadequate to counter the isolating pressures of the metropolis. Open City thus offers a portrait of urban existence defined by disconnection, where individuals, like Julius, drift alone among the social atoms of the city.
Abstract: This article explores social atomism in Teju Cole’s Open City through the lens of Georg Simmel’s urban sociology. Julius, the novel’s Nigerian-German narrator, emerges as a quintessential figure of emotional detachment shaped by the conditions of modern metropolitan life. The novel’s depiction of New York City—fractured by architectural disjointedn...
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