Various - "Georgian Poetry 1911 12"

Various - "The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858"

Moliere (Poquelin) - "The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman"

John Ruskin - "Mornings in Florence"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862




This serious character the American is apt to wear abroad as well as
at home. When he travels, he is wont to be in a hurry, and to examine
curious cities as if he were making sharp bargains against time. In
spite of the wonderful power of adaptation which makes him of all men
the best cosmopolitan, he never is quite perfect in his assumption of
another nationality, and he generally falls short of a thorough
appreciation of its mirthful principle. If he emigrate to France, he
soon feasts upon frogs as freely and speaks with as accurate an accent
as the Parisian, but he cannot quite assume the gay _insouciance_
of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and
imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt
raillery,--the "chaff,"--with which Britons disport themselves; if to
China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a
camel's-hair pencil, but all Oriental _bizarrerie_ fails to
thoroughly amuse him. Wherever he may go, he settles at once and
easily into the outward life of the people among whom he is,--while he
always reserves within himself a cold, stern individuality; he often
is angered when he should be amused, and retorts with resentment when
he should reply in repartee. Still, the American is not sombre to the
core. He has a kind of grim merriment bestowed somewhere in the
recesses of his being. It is quaint and severe, however, and abounding
in dry conceits. It inclines more to the nature of sarcasm than of
flashing wit or genial humor. There is apt to be the bitterness about
it which would provoke a heavy blow, unless it had been itself so
weighty in attack as to crush what might have sprung into
resistance. It passes from badinage into personalities and
recriminations. In these respects it is consonant with the general
bearing of the American character. The levity of wit and the
pleasantry of humor appear at first purposeless; they are immaterial,
and, even when most palpably present, seem, like Macbeth's
encountering witches, to make of themselves air, into which they
vanish. But sarcasm, and the direct application of ridicule, effect
something at once; their course may be swift and cloudy, like that of
the bullet, but it has a definite end in view; they are discharged and
sweep away invisibly, or like a dark speck at most, but the crash and
shiver of the distant target show that the shot has told. They are
practical, and the American understands them; as for mere wit and
humor, he will perhaps investigate them when there shall come to him
that season of leisure which he mythically proposes to enjoy when
there shall be no more work to do, and into which he is usually
ushered by one busier even than himself, and less tolerant of idleness
and folly,--Death, the great Chamberlain of Eternal Halls.

There is another characteristic of American wit and humor: they are
evanescent and keen, escaping adroitly from the snares of the
printer. America cannot boast of her satirists or humorists as forming
a class like the great English and European groups, and yet her
literature is enriched with many volumes wherein may be found the most
brilliant wit and the most genial, genuine humor. Seldom, however, are
these the main features of the books in which they occur; they are not
bound in the great, all-important chain, but are woven into the little
threads which underlie it; the obtuse or careless reader may easily
overlook them, passing on to the end without suspecting the treasures
which he has missed; and the foreigner, who does not look for such
qualities among a people so perversely practical as Americans, will be
apt entirely to ignore their possible existence. Again, if the
writers are first-class men, their birth is the most purely American
characteristic they possess. Their cast of thought and culture denotes
that they belong to other times and lands as well as to this. They
would have been at home among the _literati_ of Queen Anne's
day,--for their fellowship has been with such in spirit, if not in the
flesh. Therefore the prejudiced, and they whose perceptions are not
quick to recognize the finer traits which indicate the real character
of men and of their works, are wont to say that here is nothing new,
nothing indigenous to the soil, only an outgrowth of the Old
World,--merely exotics, which would soon perish from the pains of
transplanting, if they were not carefully fostered.

As a bit of drift-wood warns the most unpractised eye of the direction
which a current takes, so the light, ephemeral _brochures_ of any
epoch give a plain hint of the tendency of its thought. The librarian
and historian know the value of newspapers and pamphlets, for in them
can be found what big books and voluminous records do not
contain. From pasquinades, caricatures, and bits of comedy or satire
can be drawn an idea of the popular humor of any era, which the works
of great authors fail to convey. They are spontaneous and unstudied,
regardless alike of reputation already established, which must be
maintained, and of that which may yet be won; for they come from
unknown sources, and exist solely for their own sakes and by their own
vitality. They are, therefore, trustworthy assistants to him who
studies the spirit of any people or generation.

In this respect American humor has been ill represented. Comic
publications have appeared only at rare intervals, and comic journals
have soon degenerated into stupidity or coarseness. Yet this has not
been for lack of material, but of a proper editorial faculty, and from
the want of a habitude or a willingness on the part of those who
conceive clever things to note them down and give them out in black
and white. When "Vanity Fair" first appeared, we thought we saw in it
the germ of a journal which might be an exponent of our national
spirit of mirthfulness, and we took occasion to say so briefly. We
have not been disappointed. The five volumes which have already been
published in weekly numbers have been true to the honest purpose which
the conductors proposed to themselves and the public in their
prospectus, and are fair representatives of the wit and humor which
are in their essence allied to the merriment and the satire of
Hawthorne and Lowell, Holmes and Saxe, although, of course, they are
not yet developed with like delicacy and brilliance. There is in
these pages a vast deal of genuine, hearty fun, and of sharp, stinging
sarcasm; there are also hundreds of cleverly drawn and cleanly cut
illustrations. Better than these, there is a fearlessness of
consequences and of persons, when a wrong is to be combated, an error
to be set right. And this Touchstone has been impartial as well as
sturdy in his castigation; he has not been blind to the faults of his
friends, or slow in bidding them imitate the excellences of his
enemies; he had "a whip of scorpions" for the late Administration,
when others, whose intuitions were less quick, saw nothing to
chastise, and he has not hesitated to rebuke the official misdemeanors
of these days, because officers have _per contra_ done other
portions of their duties well. According to his creed, a wrong cannot
be palliated into a right, but must be reformed thereto; he has no
tolerance for that evil whose cure is obvious and possible, and he
treats boldly and severely the subjects of which the timid scarcely
dare to speak.

It cannot, of course, be claimed for "Vanity Fair" that it is all
clever. The brightest wit must say some dull things, and a comic
journal can hardly help letting some dreary attempts at mirth slip
into its columns. We could point out paragraphs in this serial which
are most chaotic and unmeaning, and some, indeed, which fall below its
own excellent standard of refinement; but we do not remember ever to
have met in its pages a _double-entendre_ or a foulness of
speech. We must advise its conductor (who, we may say in passing, is a
gentleman whose writings have not infrequently appeared in the
"Atlantic") never to allow his paper to descend to the level of the
_ignoble vulgus_; and we are glad that in wishing "Vanity Fair"
long life and prosperity we have to censure it only for some slight
violations of good taste, not for any offence against modesty or
decorum. It deserves admission to the library and the drawing-room.





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