Papers by Eduardo Valls Oyarzun
Neophilologus
This article provides a comparative study of the underlying cognitive structures laid out in Arth... more This article provides a comparative study of the underlying cognitive structures laid out in Arthur Machen’s decadent novella The Great God Pan (1894) and Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873). It scrutinizes the images of the “chamber of consciousness” and “the house of life”, deployed by the German philosopher and the Welsh author respectively, and explores how the use and the stylistic qualities of both images affect and determine the overall conception of reality exposed in each work. This analysis helps identify Nietzschean undertones in Machen’s novella, which, in turn, allows an interpretation of The Great God Pan through the lens of Nietzsche’s discourses on cognition and reality. The reading resulting from the analysis puts forward two conclusions. Firstly, Nietzsche’s concept of “Dionysian wisdom” brings to light and informs a specific and yet unexplored source of horror in Machen’s novella, i.e., the feeling of revulsion developed by Helen...
Nordic Journal of English Studies, 2022
Critical assessments of Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) more often than not aim so... more Critical assessments of Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) more often than not aim solely at discussing a larger cultural phenomenon, to wit, the Ealing Comedies and their impact on postwar Britain. Readings outside this paradigm are scarce. The film, however, engages with several issues the recent phenomena of neo-Victorian fiction and film consistently address. These are the relationship between the past and the present (as well as the capital role memory plays in it), nostalgia as the underlining desire for the new recasting of Victoriana, the reassessment of history through marginal and/or alternative identities, as well as the blatantly post-modern continuous deferral of meaning. This article explores these issues in order to inscribe the film within neo-Victorian aesthetics, not only to update the critical discourse about the film, but also to reveal what the film has to say about neo-Victorian culture.
Neophilologus, 2023
This article provides a comparative study of the underlying cognitive structures laid out in Arth... more This article provides a comparative study of the underlying cognitive structures laid out in Arthur Machen's decadent novella The Great God Pan (1894) and Friedrich Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense" (1873). It scrutinizes the images of the "chamber of consciousness" and "the house of life", deployed by the German philosopher and the Welsh author respectively, and explores how the use and the stylistic qualities of both images affect and determine the overall conception of reality exposed in each work. This analysis helps identify Nietzschean undertones in Machen's novella, which, in turn, allows an interpretation of The Great God Pan through the lens of Nietzsche's discourses on cognition and reality. The reading resulting from the analysis puts forward two conclusions. Firstly, Nietzsche's concept of "Dionysian wisdom" brings to light and informs a specific and yet unexplored source of horror in Machen's novella, i.e., the feeling of revulsion developed by Helen Vaughn's victims after they experience Dionysian rapture. Secondly, the analysis of the concepts of reality implied in Nietzsche's and Machen's imagery contributes an argument for the idea of reality as becoming in the context of Machen's novella.
English Studies, 2022
ABSTRACT The present article offers a Deleuzian reading of Picnic at Hanging Rock (Joan Lindsay, ... more ABSTRACT The present article offers a Deleuzian reading of Picnic at Hanging Rock (Joan Lindsay, 1967) that does not start by analysing binary oppositions, but rather construes the space and, more specifically, its synthesis in and through time as processes of “different/ciation” and “becoming”. The article probes into Deleuze’s idea of the first synthesis of time in the novel. Time can be read as a synthesis, a contraction of differences in repetition. This resonates with the “elemental rhythms” of nature the novel overtly identifies as constitutive of the natural space. These rhythms are in turn projected onto different fictional levels, so much so that the novel reads like an organic spread of the patterns of nature into the very structure of the narrative. Victorian identities and cultures attempt to resist the spread of this pattern, albeit to no avail. Finally, the spread of the said pattern reveals the possibility of a new virtual set of relational tools for the self to encounter the other via processes of different/ciation and becoming.
Anuario de Estudios Filológicos
Epos : Revista de filología
El presente artículo plantea un elemento poco tratado en la relación de influencia de Joseph Conr... more El presente artículo plantea un elemento poco tratado en la relación de influencia de Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) sobre The Great Gatsby (1925), de Francis Scott Fitzgerald, a saber: la estructura, el desarrollo y el alcance ideológico de la metáfora de lo morboso como manifestación de la disfuncionalidad implícita en los sistemas sociales que no observan el principio de responsabilidad. El artículo presenta un marco teórico en el que se definen las líneas maestras del concepto de responsabilidad conradiano, que es análogo, como se sostiene en el artículo, al concepto de responsabilidad promovido por Friedrich Nietzsche, y mantiene diferencias cruciales con el concepto de Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). El referido marco se emplea para indagar en el campo tropológico de la enfermedad y la podredumbre en la novela de Francis Scott Fitzgerald. A modo de conclusión se abordan las diferencias entre responsabilidad social y responsabilidad individual como elemento diferenciador de los principi...
Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens
A Pleasure of Life in Words a Festschrisft For Angela Downing Vol 2 2006 Isbn 84 611 3497 4 Pags 613 636, 2006
Estudios De La Mujer En El Ambito De Los Paises De Habla Inglesa 2001 Isbn 84 699 4683 8 Pags 341 352, 2001
Epos : Revista de filología
El presente artículo plantea un elemento poco tratado en la relación de influencia de Joseph Conr... more El presente artículo plantea un elemento poco tratado en la relación de influencia de Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) sobre The Great Gatsby (1925), de Francis Scott Fitzgerald, a saber: la estructura, el desarrollo y el alcance ideológico de la metáfora de lo morboso como manifestación de la disfuncionalidad implícita en los sistemas sociales que no observan el principio de responsabilidad. El artículo presenta un marco teórico en el que se definen las líneas maestras del concepto de responsabilidad conradiano, que es análogo, como se sostiene en el artículo, al concepto de responsabilidad promovido por Friedrich Nietzsche, y mantiene diferencias cruciales con el concepto de Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). El referido marco se emplea para indagar en el campo tropológico de la enfermedad y la podredumbre en la novela de Francis Scott Fitzgerald. A modo de conclusión se abordan las diferencias entre responsabilidad social y responsabilidad individual como elemento diferenciador de los principi...
Estudios Irlandeses, 15, 2020
Oscar Wilde's fairy tale "The Birthday of the Infanta" (1891) echoes an ellective affinity, which... more Oscar Wilde's fairy tale "The Birthday of the Infanta" (1891) echoes an ellective affinity, which hitherto has not been discuss very often, between Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy and Oscar Wilde's aesthetic principles, to wit, the idea of cruelty, its association with pleasure and its depiction in Art and Culture. The essay discusses these ideas in the tale, by pinpointing the specific affinities between both authors, which are semiotic and aesthetic in nature. Thus, the essay boasts a novel interpretation of the tale, firstly, because it highlights the ideas of reading and interpretation of cruelty in an aesthetic milieu as the textual driving force; secondly, because the analysis categorically challenges traditional moral readings of the story, which nowadays still inform a great deal of critical readings of the text. Resumen. El relato "The Birthday of the Infanta" (1891), de Oscar Wilde, refleja una de las afinidades electivas menos exploradas entre el pensamiento del filósofo alemán Friedrich Nietzsche y los principios estéticos del autor irlandés, en concreto: el concepto de crueldad, su asociación con el placer y la sublimación de esta idea en el arte y la cultura. Se exploran estos principios en el relato, señalando las coincidencias de planteamiento entre ambos autores, que son de carácter semiótico y estético. Así, se da un nuevo sentido al relato, primero, porque se incorpora la noción de lectura e interpretación de la estética de la crueldad como principio rector del texto, y, segundo, porque el análisis permite rechazar categóricamente la lectura moral tradicional que, aun hoy, impregna buena parte de las lecturas críticas del relato. Palabras clave. Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, decadentismo, crueldad, esteticismo.
Revista de Humanidades 40, 2020
El artículo aborda una relectura de la novela breve The Duel (Joseph Conrad, 1908), que se caract... more El artículo aborda una relectura de la novela breve The Duel (Joseph Conrad, 1908), que se caracteriza como una revisión crítica de las políticas hegemónicas basadas en el conflicto (aquellas que, hoy por hoy, determinan el fenómeno del populismo). Desde un análisis de la principal premisa retórica de la novela, la conceptualización de la guerra como duelo, el autor presenta las premisas ideológicas que explora al texto: la construcción de un enemigo antagónico en un espacio relacional dialéctico; la afirmación de un estado de excepción como eje de dicho espacio; y la dinámica de la resemantización como forma de mantener vivo el conflicto. El texto de Conrad, visto desde la perspectiva del pensamiento de Deleuze, plantea una crítica a estas políticas identitarias, pues revela un espacio de pensamiento ajeno a la dialéctica, y a través del cual se puede desmontar su mecanismo sistémico.
Revelaciones de Pan y Luna: Revisión de la recepción de Virgilio en la época victoriana, 2020
Victorian Britain received Virgil's poetry as indispensable to understand the greatness of the An... more Victorian Britain received Virgil's poetry as indispensable to understand the greatness of the Ancient period, even though he was deemed inferior to poets in the Greek tradition. Late in the 19 th Century, the rise of British Imperialism triggered a vindication of Virgil's poetry. Thus, Alfred Lord Tennyson read Virgil as a poet committed to the Neo-Platonic principles of the Victorian culture. This reading must be revisited in view of the dialogue that Robert Browning establishes with Virgil's poetry in his poem "Pan and Luna", that supports a much more transgressive view of the Latin Poet.
La recepción de Nietzsche en España, 2018
Prague Journal of English Studies, 2018
e author of this paper lays out a system of hermeneutics based on the idea of morbidity aimed at... more e author of this paper lays out a system of hermeneutics based on the idea of morbidity aimed at checking the commitment (or the lack thereof) of individual subjects to Victorian ethics. e system stems from omas Carlyle’s political agenda based on his concept of “hero worship”. e system is then deployed in order to probe into the purported morbidity of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. According to the author of this paper, the character of Marlow represents a curious mixture of the heroic archetype proposed by Carlyle, combined with new critical standpoints from other philosophical programmes (specifically Nietzsche’s) proposed at the end of the nineteenth century. Firstly, the author of this paper tackles the prototype of the hero (a sort of medium between reality and Divine Truth) omas Carlyle posited in his On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841). e author of this paper then describes how Marlow shares some of the hero’s features (most notably social responsibility and work ethic), but fails to embody the main trait of Carlyle’s “great men”, namely, their ability to recognize Divine Truth. Indeed, rather than asserting the existence of the Truth, Marlow’s narrative reveals the existence of multiple truths, thus creating a sort of politically morbid revision of Carlyle’s formula.
Babel Afial, 2018
The following pages tackle the Sherlock Holmes Canon (in the late Victorian period) by probing in... more The following pages tackle the Sherlock Holmes Canon (in the late Victorian period) by probing into the hermeneutical nature embedded in the system of detection it develops. After discussing the notion of “revealing,” the article delves into several strategies that lead up to the construing of Sherlock Holmes not so much as a detective, but as an artist, specifically, a decadent, fin-de-siècle type of artist, in the aesthetic vein of Oscar Wilde. Furthermore, the overall re- interpretation of the character helps disclose the postmodern momentum that sits at the core of the Sherlock Holmes canon in particular and the decadent movement in general. Lastly, the article analyses the novel The Sign of Four (1890) in order to illustrate the general principles posited here and how they bespeak part of the attraction the character of Holmes showcases nowadays.
Ángulo Recto, 2010
Resumen El consenso crítico entiende la obra de William Faulkner como un gran constructo textual ... more Resumen El consenso crítico entiende la obra de William Faulkner como un gran constructo textual confi-gurador de un espacio mítico muy concreto: el sur estadounidense. Sin embargo, la posición que ocupa la única incursión del autor sureño en el género de la hardboiled crime fiction, la novela Santuario (Sanctuary, 1931), está aún por determinar. La crítica especializada ha detectado en la novela ciertos elementos consustanciales a la " gran narrativa " del mito del sur, pero nunca ha explorado, de forma sistemática, cómo se imbrican los mecanismos propios del género hardboiled en el entramado mítico de la obra de Faulkner. Se propone un marco de análisis que explica los modos de violencia (violencia física y " violentación ") que articulan Santuario. Dicho marco, en úl-tima instancia, sirve al autor para explicar cómo Faulkner logra incorporar el patrón estructural de la novela negra (hardboiled crime fiction) al proceso de construcción del mito del sur, proponiendo así una dimensión mítica, muy particular, del género. Palabras clave: William Faulkner, Santuario, novela negra, mitocrítica. Title: From hardboiled fiction to black legend: violence, responsibility and myth in William Faulkner's Sanctuary Abstract The critical consensus understands William Faulkner's work as a great textual construct configuring a very concrete mythical space: the South. However, the place of Sanctuary –his only incursion in hardboiled crime fiction, is still to determine. The specialized critics has detected in the novel some inherent elements in the " big narrative " of the Southern myth, but it has never explored systematically how the mechanisms of the hardboiled genre plait in Faulkner's work mythical grid. We propose an analysis frame that explains the types of violence (physical violence and violentation) that articulate Sanctuary. That frame, at last, is used by the author to explain how Faulkner gets to add the structural pattern of crime fiction into the construction process of the Southern myth, proposing thus a very particular mythical dimension of the genre.
Amaltea Revista de Mitocrítica, 2017
The James Bond phenomenon has been approached to discuss notions of British identity, imperialist... more The James Bond phenomenon has been approached to discuss notions of British identity, imperialistic ethos, issues of masculinity and commodified middle-class. However, the critical canon of the James Bond mythos has not delved into the ideological origins of the myth, namely Thomas Carlyle's (1795-1881) myth of the Hero, the " blueprint " of Victorian ideology. The article explores Sam Mendes' Skyfall (2012) as a thorough analysis of the Bond mythos as Carlylean—say Victorian— construct, most notably through the notion of " resurrection " —a significant motif in the film. The article concludes the film embraces and celebrates Victorian ideology, laden with notions of stability and dependence, embedded in the James Bond mythos.
s Français English Le statut de George Bernard Shaw comme critique d'opéra — un poste qu'il occup... more s Français English Le statut de George Bernard Shaw comme critique d'opéra — un poste qu'il occupa sous le nom de plume de « Corno Di Bassetto » dans différents journaux tels que The Star et The World — fut quelque peu négligé par les canons du journalisme de la dernière période victorienne. Néanmoins, sa critique des spectacles d'opéra des années 1880-1890 se distingue complètement en tant que discours moderne précoce le plus influent sur le théâtre musical du milieu britannique. Dans le sillage de son enthousiasme précoce pour Wagner — un trait qui imprègne ses textes sur la musique à la fin des années 1800, mais qui déclinera au tournant du siècle — la critique d'opéra de Shaw suggère une nouvelle théorie du drame musical que l'auteur applique méthodiquement à diverses traditions de l'opéra. Pour autant, cette théorie change radicalement lorsque Shaw écrit sur des auteurs français, de Léo Delibes à Jules Massenet et de Georges Bizet à Charles Gounod. Cet essai montre comment la vision du genre de Shaw change après qu'il a développé la théorie de la Force de la vie, qui, à son tour, contraint le lecteur à reconsidérer l'approche de Shaw de l'opéra traditionnel français dans les années 1880-1890. L'étude des évaluations de Shaw de la musique de scène française nous permettra de mesurer sa véritable influence sur la critique d'opéra.
Books by Eduardo Valls Oyarzun
Escolar y Mayo; Guillermo Escolar Editor, 2017
Dueños del tiempo y del espanto explora la presencia –no siempre explícita– del pensamiento de Ni... more Dueños del tiempo y del espanto explora la presencia –no siempre explícita– del pensamiento de Nietzsche en el contexto inglés del siglo XIX. Eduardo Valls rastrea así las influencias directas, pero también las numerosas afinidades electivas, que salpican la literatura victoriana, bien notorias para quien sabe que todo texto clásico tiene muchos estratos, en las obras de Byron, Emily Brontë, Dickens, Carlyle, Wilde o Stevenson, entre muchos otros. En este ensayo se combinan, por tanto, la teoría literaria con la exégesis filosófica, en uno de los mejores sentidos que pueda tener hoy la hermenéutica, para iluminar un campo siempre complejo, el de la irradiación de la filosofía continental en el horizonte discursivo anglosajón.
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Papers by Eduardo Valls Oyarzun
Books by Eduardo Valls Oyarzun