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Poetry by Jonas van de Poel

The purpose of this study is to foreground one specific aspect of the continuation of the influen... more The purpose of this study is to foreground one specific aspect of the continuation of the influence of British Romanticism, its aesthetic, and, subsequently, to delineate its modern form in Cody-Rose Clevidence’s Beast Feast. To do so means to provide a description of the major features of the Romantic aesthetic, based on its theoretical framework, both philosophical and literary, and to perform close readings of Beast Feast from within this framework, analysing and outlining similarities and differences between Beast Feast and its Romantic forebears.
This comparative approach does not aim to prove that similarities between Beast Feast and the aesthetic of Romanticism render the former to be equal to the latter. Doing so would simply be a superimposition of Romanticism on a contemporary poetics. Instead, this study will show that the Romantic aesthetic functions as a unifying concept, and that Beast Feast re-evaluates this aesthetic, rather than, for instance, subscribing to new cultural dominants, such as what McSweeney termed the ‘Necropastoral’, or what Vermeulen and van den Akker describe as ‘metamodernism’, and that this re-evaluation renders Beast Feast – for those who deem classification an absolute necessity – Neo-Romantic more than anything else.

Part A "In a review of Ariana Reines' Mercury (in The Volta, January 2012) Daniel Moysaenko consi... more Part A "In a review of Ariana Reines' Mercury (in The Volta, January 2012) Daniel Moysaenko considers that 'After reading poems involving hardcore sex, butt plugs, fake nails, tans and greased basketballs bouncing, I feel overwhelmed, as though stranded on some nightmarish, or at least carnivalesque porn set.'

Linguistics by Jonas van de Poel

Within the realm of discourse modes, narration, the telling or writing of a story consisting of a... more Within the realm of discourse modes, narration, the telling or writing of a story consisting of a sequentially ordered set of events, is an efficient way to convey the subjective human experience. A narrative is not to be interpreted as factual; it is not a reproduction of reality, but rather a representation of reality the narrator deems suitable to contextual circumstances. In its subjectivity, a narrative can even be seen as not only representing, but also constructing reality. Through narration, speakers construct a representation of their identity, their relation to other speakers and to society in general, and the way they perceive their past, present, and future experiences. It is for these reasons that, within the field of discourse analysis, narrative analysis holds tremendous value as an insight into how language users apply storytelling to communicate their perception of reality. In what follows, a short narrative will be analyzed utilizing the work of Labov, Georgakopoulou and Goutsos, focusing on how evaluative devices contribute to the construction of the narrator's identity.

Literary Criticism by Jonas van de Poel

Technological progress in the nineteenth century carried mankind’s experience of locomotion to da... more Technological progress in the nineteenth century carried mankind’s experience of locomotion to dazzling new heights. Where before, riding horses, skating on ice, sailing the winds, or the simple act of running were the utmost one could achieve with regards to attaining high speeds, the advent of the Industrial Age provided a wide range of new possibilities. The invention of the steam engine, especially, enabled new developments in the relation between man and motion. So how did these developments alter this relation? How is this altered relation reflected in nineteenth century literature? And what are the philosophical, psychological and conceptual foundations for this relation?

Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 debut novel Fight Club describes a protagonist attempting to cope with the... more Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 debut novel Fight Club describes a protagonist attempting to cope with the effeminising effects of the cultural industry and its advertising complex, a dissatisfactory corporate career that involves criss-crossing the American landscape by plane, and contemporary consumer culture in general. This struggle results in schizophrenia, the creation of a virile and violent fight club, a destructive alter ego, and the militaristic, fascist, revolutionary " Project Mayhem" -an anarchic project to undermine and destroy as much of the American urban landscape as possible. Fight Club also tells the story of how life in a postmodern hyperspace can result in cognitive dissonance. In what follows, this depiction of the urban landscape inhabitant's reaction against the unfulfilling nature of rationalized capitalism and the commodified cultural aesthetic production in late capitalist, postindustrial society will be explored through a critical analysis of Fight Club.

Aesthetics by Jonas van de Poel

As representative of the modernist sublime, Black Square asserted its place as a continuation of ... more As representative of the modernist sublime, Black Square asserted its place as a continuation of a philosophical aesthetic tradition first theorized in the 18th century by Edmund Burke, and, subsequently, by Immanuel Kant. Despite the Soviets’ opposition to the avant-garde’s modernism, the totalitarian art of Stalinism and socialist realism was more modern, and more of a continuation of avant-garde art than it claimed to be, inter alia, as this paper will contend, due to the lingering aesthetic of the sublime in its literature, painting, and architecture. Mainly basing itself on cultural analyses written by Boris Groys, and Burkean and Kantian definitions of the sublime, this paper illustrates in what form the tradition of the sublime aesthetic lived on in utopian, totalitarian, Stalinist, socialist realist art.