Helen E . Mundler-Arantes | UPEC (original) (raw)

Academic books by Helen E . Mundler-Arantes

Rewritings of the Noah Myth in the 21St Century: New Readings from a Drowning World. Collection: Studies in English and American Literature and Culture. Rochester: New York, Camden House (Boydell and Brewer). 2022., 2022

With the rise of concern about global warming in recent years, climate-change fiction, or clifi, ... more With the rise of concern about global warming in recent years, climate-change fiction, or clifi, has become increasingly important both as a publishing phenomenon and as an area of academic study and research. Flood narratives have become a subsection of clifi in their own right. This book proposes new readings of four recent rewritings of the Noah myth, Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich, Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy, When the Floods Came by Clare Morrall, and The Flood by Maggie Gee.
Helen E. Mundler’s book takes into account the wealth of criticism that has appeared on these texts in recent years, acknowledging important contributions from critics including Adam Trexler, Adeline Johns-Putra, and Astrid Bracke. However, her book’s strength is that it takes a new approach, going beyond the topicality of the texts and treating them not just as ideological statements but giving them their due as literary artifacts. And while the importance of climate change is beyond debate, this book takes a more balanced approach that places it within a wider context of the multiple crises of the Anthropocene.

Helen E. Mundler is Associate Professor of English Studies at Université Paris-Est Créteil, France (UPEC). She has published monographs on A.S. Byatt and Liz Jensen.

This book was published on 13th September 2016 by Camden House (New York), and is available on Am... more This book was published on 13th September 2016 by Camden House (New York), and is available on Amazon, or directly from the publisher (Boydell and Brewer).

A study of the works of A.S. Byatt (400 pages). In French. Paris, L’Harmattan, mars 2003. This bo... more A study of the works of A.S. Byatt (400 pages). In French.
Paris, L’Harmattan, mars 2003.
This book is available on Amazon.fr , or you can request a copy from me for 10 euros + postage and packing (mundler.students@gmail.com).

Novels by Helen E. Mundler by Helen E . Mundler-Arantes

Advance Information, L'Anglaise. This novel will be published by Holland House (April 26th 2018,... more Advance Information, L'Anglaise.
This novel will be published by Holland House (April 26th 2018, UK; September 2018, USA).

A novel. Stockport (UK), Dewi Lewis, 2003. This book is available on Amazon. Another novel wi... more A novel.
Stockport (UK), Dewi Lewis, 2003.
This book is available on Amazon.
Another novel will be coming out in April 2018 (UK) and September 2018 (USA).

Articles on A.S. Byatt (see also "Film") by Helen E . Mundler-Arantes

Http Www Theses Fr, 1998

L'oeuvre d'a. S. Byatt (nee 1938), auteur prolifique et erudite, a ete etonnamment neglig... more L'oeuvre d'a. S. Byatt (nee 1938), auteur prolifique et erudite, a ete etonnamment negligee par les etudes du roman britannique contemporain, ne suscitant que quelques aticles. Cette these constitue une premiere longue etude de sa fiction. Notre corpus se compose de la fiction entre 1978 et 1996. Notre etude porte sur les procedes auto-reflexifs romanesques intertextuels et intratextuels, que nous cherchons a examiner a travers l'analyse du 'texte dans le texte' afin d'etablir une poetique de l'oeuvre byattienne et de la situer dans l'ethique et l'esthetique postmodernes. Byatt double les niveaux diegetiques, inclue la mise en abyme du personnage- ecrivain, utilise toute une gamme de textes intercalaires fictifs et authentiques, et invente de nouvelles formes hybrides, en faisant preuve notamment d'un pastiche brillant neo-victorien dans possession, son ouvrage le plus applaudi. Ce travail se divise en trois parties, correspondant approximativement a ce que nous avons nomme l'intertextualite canonique, aux formes d'intertextualite autres que canoniques (tels le conte, le tableau, que nous avons reunis en analysant leur aspect emblematique dans le romanesque), et a l'innovation dans le deploiement du texte dans le texte dans le dernier roman de byatt, babel tower, ou la nature du texte et les limites de la textualite sont remises en question. La structure de cette these est donc chronologique, et suit l'evolution naturelle de l'oeuvre de byatt. Dans chaque chapitre nous etablissons dans un premier temps les rapports entre les diverses parties du texte afin d'eclairer le projet de l'ouvrage entier; ainsi se definit l'etude hermeneutique, etude qui s'etend, se complique et se complete par l'etude d'une seconde categorie de 'texte dans le texte', que nous nommons 'la forme double', se composant des modes tels l'ironie et la parodie, ainsi que des tropes rhetoriques tels la metaphore, l'allegorie, ou, ce qui represente un depart de la rhetorique traditionnelle et une etape vers l'innovation postmoderne, l'illustration 'intersemiotique'.

A.S. Byatt, Before and After Possession: Recent Critical Approaches (Book Practices and Textual Itineraries), 2017

A.S. Byatt’s “Baglady” has received little critical attention. It is generally considered an anom... more A.S. Byatt’s “Baglady” has received little critical attention. It is generally considered an anomaly in this erudite writer’s oeuvre, and can appear at first sight as an insubstantial text. It tells the story of an Englishwoman’s misadventure in a shopping mall in the Far East: separated from her group, she is first robbed, then breaks her shoes, and finally finds herself, unkempt and penniless, outside the mall, and barred from re-entry, with no means of contacting her husband or group. The reader is at once invited to “read” Daphne – to participate in her construction and deconstruction as character, as the security guard who refuses her entry is unable to do – and to read the unstated subtext which comments on the shifting relations between dominated and dominant, subservient and served.

See previous file for abstract;

FAAAM (Nanterre, France), no IV, 2010: 65-77.

Etudes britanniques contemporaines, no 11, juin 1997: 9-18.

Articles on Liz Jensen (see also "Film") by Helen E . Mundler-Arantes

Literature, 2022

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

In Claire Bazin and Guyonne Leduc (ed.). Littérature Anglo-Saxonne au féminin : Renaissances et H... more In Claire Bazin and Guyonne Leduc (ed.). Littérature Anglo-Saxonne au féminin : Renaissances et Horizons, 18-20 siècles. Paris, L’Harmattan, 2012 : 145-158.

Résonances no 14, septembre 2013.

Résonances no 11 : 59-75, juin 2010.

La Géographie dans le monde anglophone: espace et identité. Ouvrage dirigé par Marie-Françoise Al... more La Géographie dans le monde anglophone: espace et identité. Ouvrage dirigé par Marie-Françoise Alamichel et Olivier Brossard, éditions Michel Houdiard (Paris), octobre 2010 : 83-100.

Helen E. Mundler is Associate Professor of English Studies at Université Paris-Est Créteil, France (UPEC). She has published monographs on A.S. Byatt and Liz Jensen.

Http Www Theses Fr, 1998

A.S. Byatt, Before and After Possession: Recent Critical Approaches (Book Practices and Textual Itineraries), 2017

See previous file for abstract;

FAAAM (Nanterre, France), no IV, 2010: 65-77.

Etudes britanniques contemporaines, no 11, juin 1997: 9-18.

Literature, 2022

Résonances no 14, septembre 2013.

Résonances no 11 : 59-75, juin 2010.

Études britanniques contemporaines, 2018

Ce recit constitue le quatrieme chapitre de A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters de Julian Bar... more Ce recit constitue le quatrieme chapitre de A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters de Julian Barnes (1989), un ouvrage qui reecrit et reconfigure le mythe biblique de Noe de diverses manieres. The Survivor peut etre lu dans le contexte d’un grand nombre de fictions contemporaines basees sur l’histoire de Noe qui ne se referent que de maniere oblique au recit biblique. La ‘survivante’ eponyme est une jeune femme qui redoute la guerre nucleaire et croit que l’Apocalypse est imminente. La forme double du recit permet de raconter deux histoires simultanement, l’une dans laquelle elle prend la mer pour echapper aux retombees d’une bombe nucleaire et une autre ou elle est internee dans un hopital psychiatrique et recoit un traitement pour sa paranoia. Cet article propose une relecture de The Survivor a la lumiere du travail recent portant sur l’ecocritique, la critique de la « litterature nucleaire » et les « critical animal studies ». Il analyse a la fois la forme du recit et le commentaire que le roman apporte du monde contemporain.

Ce recueil de nouvelles liees entre elles par des themes communs, est encadre par deux recits qui... more Ce recueil de nouvelles liees entre elles par des themes communs, est encadre par deux recits qui se repondent, "Charlene and Trudi go Shopping" et "Pleasureland". Dans les deux nouvelles, deux jeunes femmes tentent de vaquer a leurs occupations dans une ville qui se trouve au bord de l'apocalypse. Affrontant avec courage le desastre a l'occasion d'un tour des magasins dans le premier recit, les protagonistes se preparent, dans le dernier, a mourir. Ces deux nouvelles peuvent se lire comme un commentaire de l'"apocalypse" postmoderne : selon cette idee, la mimesis n'est plus possible, et le sujet doit lutter pour sa survie. Cet article se propose d'analyser les limites et les contradictions inherents au concept d'"imagination postmoderne" et de demontrer que le processus createur, meme dans un monde qui se trouve au bord de l'autodestruction, n'est que subverti, jamais detruit.

Résonances no 8 (English Studies Journal, Université Paris-VIII): 137-146, septembre 2005.

Résonances no 10 : 271-283, octobre 2008.

https://climas.u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr/numeros-parus/63-leaves-n-08-textes/437-lying-in-sam-taylor-s-the-island-at-the-end-of-the-world-helen-e-mundler

While rewritings of the Noah myth often question what Linda Hutcheon terms ‘cultural authority’, ... more While rewritings of the Noah myth often question what Linda Hutcheon terms ‘cultural authority’, and reenact the overthrowing of Lyotard’s ‘grand narratives’, Sam Taylor’s The Island at the End of the World exploits lies and liars in a particularly marked way. Father, one of the main characters and character-narrators of the novel, fools his young children into believing, for a number of years, that they are among the last survivors of a deluge which wiped out civilisation, and that the place where they live is an island surrounded by the ocean, both of which prove to be figments of his imagination. While lies are a constant and overt preoccupation in this novel, as the two elder children begin to doubt father’s veracity, this paper seeks to analyse in particular how lying works at the level of the textual apparatus of the novel, and how the implied reader becomes involved in processes of shoring up and tearing down lies.

This article is publisehd in Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines 54 | 2018 ((Re)constructions/(Re)... more This article is publisehd in Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines 54 | 2018 ((Re)constructions/(Re)inventions/(Re)mediations in 20 th Century English Literature) (online, open access)

Résonances no 9 : 103-115, septembre 2008.

Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE), 2017

“Chinese Funeral” (1990), est une nouvelle de Jane Gardam, prolifique écrivaine britannique qui c... more “Chinese Funeral” (1990), est une nouvelle de Jane Gardam, prolifique écrivaine britannique qui
choisit souvent pour sujet l’expérience des Britanniques dans des pays orientaux. Elle raconte le
voyage d’une journée d’un groupe de touristes, pour la plupart Britanniques, de Hong Kong à la
Chine continentale. De manière subtile et imbriquée, la nouvelle trace la déstabilisation des
touristes à un moment où leurs certitudes coloniales deviennent des incertitudes postcoloniales.
Les relations entre dominants et dominés, puissants et impuissants, commencent à se redessiner.
Par le biais de la trans-fictionalité, “Chinese Funeral” est comparée à un passage semblable dans
un roman postérieur de Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat (2009). Cet article cherche à
démontrer comment la lecture de ce roman permet à l’altérité de l’« Oriental » telle qu’elle est
présentée dans la nouvelle, d’être redécouverte sous un autre jour, et comment les deux textes
explorent les dissonances entre le connu et l’inconnu, l’attendu et l’inattendu, alors que les
Britanniques commencent à appréhender de nouvelles altérités qu’ils n’arrivent pas pleinement
à saisir ou à comprendre.

Journal of the Short Story in English no 52, spring 2009 : 195-206

Journal of the Short Story in English, 2017

« Chinese Funeral » (1990), est une nouvelle de Jane Gardam, prolifique écrivaine britannique qui... more « Chinese Funeral » (1990), est une nouvelle de Jane Gardam, prolifique écrivaine britannique qui choisit souvent pour sujet l’expérience des britanniques dans des pays orientaux. Elle raconte le voyage d’une journée d’un groupe de touristes, pour la plupart britanniques, de Hong Kong à la Chine continental. De manière subtile et imbriquée, la nouvelle trace la déstabilisation des touristes à un moment où leurs certitudes coloniales deviennent incertitudes postcoloniales, et les relations entre dominants et dominés, puissants et impuissants, commencent à être redessinées. Par le biais de la trans-fictionalité, « Chinese Funeral » est comparée à un passage semblable dans un roman postérieur de Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat (2009). Cet article cherche à démontrer comment la lecture de ce roman permet à l’altérité de l’« Oriental » tel qu’elle est présentée dans la nouvelle, d’être redécouverte sous un autre jour, et comment les deux textes explorent les dissonances entre connu et inconnu, attendu et inattendu, alors que les personnages britanniques commencent à appréhender des nouvelles altérités qu’ils n’arrivent pas pleinement à saisir ou à comprendre.

Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, 2017

This article offers a critical reading of three short stories, each of which explores the extent ... more This article offers a critical reading of three short stories, each of which explores the extent to which its protagonist is literally, as well as figuratively, haunted by the desire for a child. Firstly, the notion of textual haunting is proposed through an intratextual reading of each of these short stories within the author's work as a whole. Secondly, the hauntings undergone by the protagonists are analysed, both through close reading and through the notions of abjection and intergenerational haunting. Somewhat incongruously, truth becomes bolder and clearer when the supernatural element is present.

Public lecture, University of Western Michigan, 2nd April 2019.

This article is an exploration of the fusion of the personal and the theoretical in reading dysto... more This article is an exploration of the fusion of the personal and the theoretical in reading dystopian fiction from the perspective of Covid-19. It examines Atwood’s trilogy, an end-times fiction which centres on a pandemic, from the perspective of a reader reluctantly brought up in the Christian fundamentalist tradition. It then focuses on the role of the Freudian ideas of trauma and the uncanny in shaping a reaction to fear of the end of the world, or the end of a particular world, and finally looks at the danger inherent in fostering a fatalistic-apocalyptic approach to impending disaster.

Keywords: Atwood, pandemic, trauma, Freud, uncanny.

Commonwealth, no 27, 2005: 89-110.

Publication pending 2022. A paraître 2022.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (in French, Trois Mille ans à t'attendre), is an adaptation by Ge... more Three Thousand Years of Longing (in French, Trois Mille ans à t'attendre), is an adaptation by George Miller of A.S. Byatt's novella, "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye". A.S. Byatt is a British woman novelist, generally described as an "erudite" novelist, whose work I have been busy analysing, on and off and in various ways, for the past thirty years: this I mention because it provides an agreeably self-reflexive analogy to some of the processes described in the paper which follows. Studying film adaptations is something I came to quite late, when works by Byatt, and by Liz Jensen, the two novelists I have specialised in, began to be adapted for the screen. As I go on, I will place the analysis I am going to offer today in parallel with the adaptation of a courtmétrage by Byatt, "Medusa's Ankles". In the background is also the adaptation by Alexandre Aja, known for his horror movies, of Liz Jensen's The Ninth Life of Louis Draxanother highly metafictional text with elements of the supernatural, a novel in that case, reimagined succesfully, I have argued, as an action movie, in that the visual medium is used to further the central project of the narrativewhich turns on masking, unmasking, and the shock of revelation (Mundler, Louis Drax, 128). This I mention to anticipate any charge of prejudice against action movies from literary texts. In order to analyse these two adaptations, neither of which had been written about before-I was in virgin territory-I incorporated various critical views on adaptation, taking in, of course, George Bluestone's warning sixty years ago that comparing a film and a novel as "better" or "worse" than one another is as fruitless as "pronounc[ing] Wright Johnson's Wax Building better or worse than Tchaikowsky's Swan Lake" given that each is characterised by "unique and specific properties" (5-6), and some of the body of criticism that has grown up since. Linda Hutcheon insists that an adaptation is not "derivative", but is "its own palimpsestic thing": she holds that an adaptation can be regarded as a form of intertextuality, and "an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work" (Hutcheon, 8). I have also worked

Film Journal, 2022

http://filmjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Mundler.pdf

https://biosafetynow.org/gofroc-a-view-from-the-humanities/

If novel-writing is mentioned in casual conversation (which usually it is not), the question, "Wh... more If novel-writing is mentioned in casual conversation (which usually it is not), the question, "Where do you get your ideas from?" occasionally comes up. While it is guaranteed to draw a complete blank over dinner, I do sometimes ponder the way things remain lodged in one's mind for no very good reason, while much more important incidents and events inexorably fade.

November 2017. This article was originally posted on https://helenemundler.blog .

Fulbright Splitscreen , 2020

https://fulbrightsplitscreen.com/articles/helen-e-mundler/

Nearly two decades into the twenty-first century, we still live in a world of gender inequalities... more Nearly two decades into the twenty-first century, we still live in a world of gender inequalities, large and small, which are often either inadequately addressed or not addressed at all. How can women writers redress the balance?

This article was originally posted on https://helenemundler.blog .

Shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize, 17th March 2018.

A short story by Helen E. Mundler There might have been times in the past when Ella would not hav... more A short story by Helen E. Mundler There might have been times in the past when Ella would not have been keen on the man suspended high in his cabin, spraying orange liquid on the wings. Plane journeys were something she associated with summer, when they didn't have to de-ice before you took off, to keep the wings on their impossible glide through the ether. Edward Green stowed the cabin bags. It was the only time they had dared to knowingly go over specifics of measurement, weight and number, and nothing, fortunately, had been said (America, they suspected, would be different, and in that they were quite right). He slid a look at Ella to see how she was coping, checking she wasn't about to break out or fall apart in some way. She rarely intercepted these looks. One of Ella's things, these days, was about how she'd never learnt to look at faces, something to do with her mother being an identical twin and only recognising her own reflection, and whether Myers-Briggs introversion could be mistaken for autism or vice versa. Over the years there had been one or two incidents, a sudden attack of claustrophobia on a flight from New York to San Francisco on which every blind had been pulled down and there did, it was true, seem to be something wrong with the air, and once on a metro in Lisbon when from one minute to another she had dissolved into a cold sweat, hair in soaked streaks against her cheeks, eyes tight closed, white as a sheet. "Oh, please," she had moaned, and he had known enough to find her little purse of emergency tablets, ostensibly for travel sickness. Ten minutes later it had passed and she was fine. It was tiredness, stress, it played on her vagal nerve and that made her nauseous, or so her doctor said, after some investigation which as far as Edward Green could gather involved beating gongs and tuning into vibrations. But now he saw that she was sitting quite upright, with an expression of pleasure and expectation, even delight. How unexpected. But, he supposed, the endless to-do list involved in leaving home for a year was finally done, and they weren't yet on what came next. This was downtime. Suspension. He reached for her hand and in turning slightly in his seat found there was something between his hip and the seat: they had forgotten their free gifts. He reached into her seat for hers, scrabbled about, came up with a make-up bag. They were his and hers, his had a fish on it, hers a flower. Both contained eye-masks, socks to put on when you kicked your shoes off, chocolate, a comb, a travel toothbrush kit (he had read something unpleasant about what they put in that sort of toothpaste), and, "Oh, look!" Ella said, dipping again and coming up with a box of coloured pencils. They were very short and thin, but there were twelve colours stacked in two rows, and the sharpened points and the smell of wood were iniviting. sharp, inviting. She took them out, examined them one by one. "You can do a sketch for your notebook," said Edward Green.

These two short stories, "Heaven Haven: a Nun takes the Veil" and "Une Tempête dans un verre d'e... more These two short stories, "Heaven Haven: a Nun takes the Veil" and "Une Tempête dans un verre d'eau", appear in Résonances vol 16 (2016).

Dear colleagues, This is the handout for the creative workshop which will be held on the third d... more Dear colleagues,
This is the handout for the creative workshop which will be held on the third day of the SAES Congress in Nancy (Saturday 1st June, 09h-12h). All are welcome.
With best wishes,
Helen

Exploring creative writing practices in second/foreign language learning Conférencière d'honneur ... more Exploring creative writing practices in second/foreign language learning Conférencière d'honneur : Sara Greaves, Professeure des universités 5 ateliers au choix, matin et après-midi Tables rondes

Dear workshop participants, This is the handout you will need for Saturday. You can print it if ... more Dear workshop participants,
This is the handout you will need for Saturday.
You can print it if you want to, or just refer to it online.
I look forward to seeing you,
Helen

For reference during my paper at the SAES, 1st June 2022.

Arrangements for Saturday 4 th June, 11h-12h30, "Open Mic" event Each reader gets 10 minutes. Thi... more Arrangements for Saturday 4 th June, 11h-12h30, "Open Mic" event Each reader gets 10 minutes. This will give time for a bit of discussion. Readers (not necessarily in programme order).

This document contains the abstracts in English and French in the first section, and the biograph... more This document contains the abstracts in English and French in the first section, and the biographies in English and French in the second section. The first section goes in order of the programme, the second in alphabetical order.

There will be one or two updates before the conference.

Neel : La biographie rêvée. 14h-Laure-Hélène Anthony-Gerroldt (Chercheuse indépendante) The Fault... more Neel : La biographie rêvée. 14h-Laure-Hélène Anthony-Gerroldt (Chercheuse indépendante) The Fault-lines between Literary Criticism and Creative Writing. 14h30-Helen E. Mundler (Université Paris-Est Créteil) Literary research and creative writing: tracing the fault-lines in a personal geology. 15h-Frédéric Lefrançois (University of the West Indies) Brain It Out: Delving into the Fault of Creative Fiction. 15h30-Noëlle Mathis (Aix Marseille Université) Une langue de poche pour une lampe de proche. 16h-Florent da Sylva (Aix Marseille Université) The Cliffhanger as Multidimensional Storytelling Tool: a Typographic and Stylistic Faultline. .

Film journal, Jun 30, 2022