Showing papers in "Neohelicon in 2018"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe a process of co-authoring life narratives that transforms literature into a practice which helps and heals clients, in which the therapist serves as the client's writing coach, equipping the client to work through his or her "problems" by means of life writing.
Abstract: Narrative therapy is a process of co-authoring life narratives that transforms literature into a practice which helps and heals clients. In a sense, the therapist serves as the client’s writing coach, equipping the client to work through his or her “problems” by means of life writing. Narrative therapy, emerging from a post-modern, social constructive background, constitutes a unique approach to personal healing, and life writing, as a meaning-constructing activity and the prototype of narrative therapy, has its therapeutic functions. The process of healing through life writing can take place in a classroom setting characterized by openness and empathy. I have witnessed such healing in my three years of research, and have discovered how the two-fold self—Self-1 and Self-2—co-author life narratives and foster healing. Self-1 acts as the main character as well as an involved narrator, while Self-2 acts as the narrator, listener, and counselor, and life narratives usually appear as a dialogue between these two selves. Self-1 and Self-2 merge when an epiphany occurs in the author’s writing that allows him or her to make sense of life experiences. Self-2 has different perspectives and resources that Self-1 lacks, and can re-narrate and assign new meanings to life experiences. Moreover, Self-2 deconstructs stereotypes and frees Self-1 from oppressive narratives by offering alternative life stories.
7 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined how two important narratological concepts, fabula and sjuzhet, can be employed in the studies of classical Chinese poetry and found that fabula in lyric poetry consists of both material elements and lyrical elements.
Abstract: By examining how two important narratological concepts, fabula and sjuzhet, can be employed in the studies of classical Chinese poetry, this article attempts to unlock the potential of narrative techniques in the criticism of lyric poetry It finds firstly that fabula in lyric poetry consists of both material elements and lyrical elements; secondly, interpretation of Chinese eulogistic poems entails not only comprehension of the events presented in the text, but also the hyper-textual background of the poet; thirdly, the understanding of space in lyric poetry requires the knowledge of story, discourse, the poet’s composing process, as well as the readers’ engagement From a cognitive poetics perspective, the article argues that complete aesthetic appreciation of lyrical poems needs the readers’ imagination, knowledge, mental state, and the text Finally, as demonstrated in its analysis of some Chinese classic poems, this article stresses that the readers’ cognition of the poet’s life is crucial, and can be applied as a pragmatic approach to understanding Chinese lyric poetry
6 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that not all stories are created by the normal and usual emotions, and that there exist so-called unnatural emotions in contemporary avantgarde and antimimetic narratives, which are physically, logically, or humanly impossible.
Abstract: The beginning of the twenty-first century witnessed not only an “affective turn” in contemporary fiction but also an “affective turn” in literary criticism. In the current scholarship of emotion studies, critics mainly focus on the mimetic aspects of emotion from a cognitive perspective while neglecting its antimimetic aspects. This article argues that not all stories are created by the normal and usual emotions. Instead, there exist so-called unnatural emotions in contemporary avant-garde and antimimetic narratives, which are physically, logically, or humanly impossible. Through presenting unnatural emotions, contemporary avant-garde narratives not only foreground the fictionality of unnatural narratives but also generate defamiliarizing effects. Taking Ian McEwan’s “Dead as They Come” as an example, the article proposes a synthetic approach to unnatural emotions by combining both naturalizing reading strategies and unnaturalizing reading strategies, so as to make the unnatural narrative work readable without losing its unnaturalness.
4 citations
TL;DR: This paper revisited the much debated conception of unnatural narrative and called for diachronic and transnational perspectives, revealing the unnaturalness of impossible storyworlds in Zhiguai tales by taking a close look at such unnatural elements as unnatural characters, unnatural space, and unnatural time at local level.
Abstract: This article continues the author’s previous work on unnatural narrative across borders and unnatural narrative in the national literatures written in languages other than English. With Zhiguai tales of the Six Dynasties in China as its central concern, it pursues three major goals: (1) to revisit the much debated conception of unnatural narrative and to call for diachronic and transnational perspectives, (2) to reveal the unnaturalness of impossible storyworlds in Zhiguai tales by taking a close look at such unnatural elements as unnatural characters, unnatural space, and unnatural time at local level, and (3) to further examine the unnaturalness of this genre by investigating the storyworld boundary transgression at global level.
4 citations
4 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the construction of gender in children's literature by focusing on the phenomenon of tomboyism as a typical case of cross-genderism, and the various ways in which cross-gendered traits in children are regulated and policed.
Abstract: This article explores the construction of gender in children’s literature by focusing on the phenomenon of tomboyism as a typical case of cross-genderism. It seeks to probe into different representations of tomboyism, and the various ways in which cross-gendered traits in children are regulated and policed. In particular, the article aims to call attention to a balanced approach to gender issues in children’s literature which highlights the dynamics of sociality and individuality in the construction of children’s gendered identities. To this end, two contemporary children’s stories (one American and one Chinese)—Tomboy trouble (Wyeth 1998) and Tomboy Dai An (Jia xiaozi Dai An, Yang 2005)—are selected for comparative analysis. Instead of setting up a simplistic dichotomy between the conservative and the progressive as suggested by the stories’ drastically different intentions and agendas, the article argues that Tomboy trouble and Tomboy Dai An, which represent respectively the idealist focus on individuals and the realist focus on gender’s social dimensions, can complement and reinforce each other when juxtaposed and read together. As examples, they highlight the possibility and importance of alerting children to the interrelationship between individual choice, agency and material social realities. It is proposed that an awareness of the ways in which individuality can be simultaneously enabled and constrained by sociality will hopefully serve as the basis for action, agency and resistance on both individual and collective levels.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a coloured protagonist of Bessie Head's A question of power lives as a hybrid in a state of liminality, and tries to dismiss the worldview of colonialism and the postcolonial nationalism of South Africa and reconstruct her shattered identity in the Third Space of Motabeng.
Abstract: Hybridity has been a controversial issue not only in eugenic hypotheses of the nineteenth century but also in the postcolonial, cultural, linguistic, and geographical contexts. It can be seen as a ‘Janus-faced’ entity. Theorists like Bhabha consider it as a ‘Third Space’ which is fraught with ambiguities, while some use the term ‘liminal’ to point to its location in history, culture, and society in general. This essay deals with a ‘coloured’ writer’s coloured character in the light of hybridity. Elizabeth, the coloured protagonist of Bessie Head’s A question of power lives as a hybrid in a state of liminality, and tries to dismiss the worldview of colonialism and the postcolonial nationalism of South Africa and reconstruct her shattered identity in the ‘Third Space’ of Motabeng. Elizabeth’s hybridity and her iconoclastic condition are intensified by rampant liminal elements in the novel. The essay follows the intricate interrelationships of hybrid elements in terms of Elizabeth’s multi-faceted character, her garden, and the borders she crosses in the course of the novel. Hybridity here is by no means a mere inter-racial issue, the attempt here is to relate this concept to the anti-conventional and iconoclastic; the things that are liminal and indefinable within established epistemology.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate three conceptions of fictional characters: the first, promoted by "textualist" critics such as Roland Barthes, regards characters as collections of semes, and insists on their subordination to the demands of narrative discourse; the second, characteristic of analytic philosophy and represented in this article by the work of Amie Thomasson, asks how statements referring to characters can receive a truth value, and ascribes to characters the status of abstract artifacts; and the third, inspired by Possible Worlds theory, theorizes characters from an internal point of view
Abstract: This article investigates three conceptions of fictional characters The first, promoted by “textualist” critics such as Roland Barthes, regards characters as collections of semes, and insists on their subordination to the demands of narrative discourse The second, characteristic of analytic philosophy and represented in this article by the work of Amie Thomasson, asks how statements referring to characters can receive a truth value, and ascribes to characters the status of “abstract artifacts” Whereas these two approaches describe characters from an external point of view, namely the point of view of the real world, the “world” approach, inspired by Possible Worlds theory, theorizes characters from an internal point of view, the point of view of the storyworld It is argued that once one adopts an internal point of view, characters are not imagined as incomplete creatures made of language, but as possible persons sharing the ontological completeness of the inhabitants of the real world: within the world of Macbeth, Macbeth is not a character but a normal human being But not all referents of proper names in fiction present this status: it is argued that “characterhood” is a scalar concept, ranging from possible persons to referents of proper names who lack individuating and mental human substance
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, four contemporary Hungarian authors (Adam Bodor, Laszlo Darvasi, Zsolt Lang, and Miklos Meszoly) whose novels are interpreted as magical realists by some critics due to the unnatural elements of story worlds and metafictional narrative techniques they use are discussed.
Abstract: This paper is about four contemporary Hungarian authors (Adam Bodor, Laszlo Darvasi, Zsolt Lang, and Miklos Meszoly) whose novels are interpreted as magical realists by some critics due to the unnatural elements of story worlds and metafictional narrative techniques they use The novels are comparable also in the way they create fictional worlds of a historical Central Europe depicting it as a borderland of cultural hybridity The main objective is to discern various textual strategies and narrative procedures of “making magic” by using interpretative tools of magical realism, Todorov’s theory of the literature of fantastic, and concepts of unnatural narratology It also aims to measure the capacity of resistance to naturalization of the different ways of making magic in narration, to assess the relation between the unnatural in fiction and the understanding of regional history, and to draw some more general insights regarding the novels’ modes of narration and generic structure
2 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present how the negotiation of the multilingual inheritance in the Austro-Hungarian Empire worked in Liviu Rebreanu's case, and their case illustrates not only the process of literary emergence coming after the decline of AustroHungarian Monarchy, but also the mobilization of a state of hybridity, made possible by the very existence of this multinational aggregation.
Abstract: The article aims at rendering how the negotiation of the multilingual inheritance in the Austro-Hungarian Empire worked in Liviu Rebreanu’s case. Generally esteemed as the most important novelist of the interwar period, Liviu Rebreanu (1885–1944) was educated—both as an intellectual and as a writer—within a cultural environment stamped by the features of the early twentieth-century Budapest. In fact, his first literary takes (between 1907 and 1909) should be related to German and Hungarian languages, whose perfect command is proven through the writer’s extensive readings from the two literatures. Also, young Rebreanu had a close relationship with Hungarian writers; some of them became his collaborators, while others had been translated or imitated. His reinvention as a “national writer” implied thus to re-define and repress this multilingual inheritance. Before he became a “major” writer of an emergent literature, Rebreanu had developed as a “minor” author (in Deleuze’s terms) within an environment marked by diglossia, by the overlapping of several literary cultures, and by their conflictual articulation. At the same time, his case illustrates the process of literary emergence coming after the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but also the mobilization of a state of hybridity, which was made possible by the very existence of this multinational aggregation.
2 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a new approach to readers' emotional engagement with narrative is proposed to examine them in the wider context of readers' storyworld (re)construction and comprehension, and apply this newly proposed framework to an analysis of surprise, suspense, and curiosity in narrative experience.
Abstract: This essay advances a new approach to readers’ emotional engagements with narrative, proposing to examine them in the wider context of readers’ storyworld (re)construction and comprehension. For demonstration, it applies this newly proposed framework to an analysis of surprise, suspense, and curiosity in narrative experience, the three emotional effects viewed by Meir Sternberg as narrative’s defining interests. By appealing to cognitive frames and reader’s framing acts, it identifies frame-shifting, frame-completion, and frame-matching as their respective underlying mechanisms. Effectiveness of this approach in practice may prompt us to rethink emotion’s proper role in narrative communication, as well as question the necessity of relying on a story-discourse dichotomy while addressing related issues.
TL;DR: Based on a systematic comparative study of David Copperfield and its Chinese translation by Lin Shu, the authors makes a detailed analysis of the language and rewriting strategies in the translation, and summarizes the rewriting patterns.
Abstract: Lin Shu’s Chinese translations of foreign novels at the turn of the twentieth century, contributing partly to the emergence of modern Chinese language and literature, have been criticized for their unfaithfulness and rewriting of the source texts. However, from the perspective of intercultural communication, his rewriting strategies, presenting certain patterns, become valuable clues of cultural mediation and ideological manipulation in his time. Based on a systematic comparative study of David Copperfield and its Chinese translation by Lin Shu, this paper makes a detailed analysis of the language and rewriting strategies in the translation, and summarizes the rewriting patterns. It then discusses how the language strategies and rewriting patterns reflect the translator’s cultural mediation and ideological manipulation of the poetics of translation, which was presented by his multidimensional ambivalent mentality when he as a patriotic intellectual was turning to the Western culture in the historical turning point of great social transformation in China. Underlying the translator’s individual ideology, the manipulation of the mainstream social ideology is also discussed, which reflects the mutual relationship between politics, poetics, and ideology in that special historical period.
TL;DR: The autograph man (2002) as mentioned in this paper is a postsecular novel with a post-secular approach to account for Smith's productive adaptation of some religious motifs, which shape the identity of its protagonist Alex-Li Tandem and construct the narrative with their meanings and significance.
Abstract: This article elucidates the substantial value of Jewish and Zen elements in The autograph man (2002) by approaching the novel through the lens of postsecularism. Postsecularism herein indicates the return of religion in contemporary literature, pointing to the co-existing and co-creative relationship between the religious and the secular in a modern context. Such a postsecular approach provides a pertinent framework to account for Smith’s productive adaptation of some religious motifs, which shape the identity of its protagonist Alex-Li Tandem and construct the narrative with their meanings and significance. This article accordingly demonstrates the book’s postsecular theme by analyzing Alex’s negotiation with his Jewish and Zen traditions, and the novelistic adaptation of the ten sefirot of Kabbalah in Judaism and the Zen classic The pictures of ten bulls. It concludes that Smith’s postsecularism provides insights into a modern religious identity as well as the substantial role religion plays in a contemporary discourse.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that both deixis and delayed decoding are ultimately related to the manipulation of narrative distance; they produce a kind of uncanny effect of simultaneous immediacy and distance which is fittingly in line with epistemological doubt as an aspect of modernist sensibility.
Abstract: Conrad’s Falk portrays the act of cannibalism of a white man to propose that even resorting to cannibalism can find its moral justification within the society that abhors such actions. This effect is achieved by means of simultaneous narrative distance and involvement created through both deictic shifts in various narrative spaces (embedded within the main narrative space and constituting the textual world, subworlds and possible worlds with multiple spatio-temporal shifts) and delayed decoding which results in imperfect knowledge worlds delivered by the personal, justifying viewpoint of the intradiegetic narrator. As such, both deixis and delayed decoding, we argue, are ultimately related to the manipulation of narrative distance; they produce a kind of uncanny effect of simultaneous immediacy and distance which is fittingly in line with epistemological doubt as an aspect of modernist sensibility.
TL;DR: The Hermit's Story as discussed by the authors is representative of speculative realist post-nature imagination: nature has its own system of logic independent of human consciousness, and as one part of nature, mankind has an own animality beyond reason.
Abstract: As a rising contemporary nature writer, Rick Bass shows in his nature imagination some unique features distinct from previous eco-literature, features characterized here as “speculative realism”. A newly emerging school of philosophy which has just come to the fore in the past decade, speculative realism resolves the opposition of subject and object by recognizing the “reality” of the world independent of human subjectivity, thus minimizing the constraints imposed by human mind in understanding the world and leading us to what Meillassoux terms “the great outdoors”. Bass studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and then worked as a petroleum geologist for nearly 10 years before moving to the remote Yaak Valley in 1987, where since then he has engaged himself in the nature. “The Hermit’s Story”, a short story he published in 1999, is representative of his speculative realist post-nature imagination: nature has its own system of logic independent of human consciousness, and as one part of nature, mankind has its own animality beyond reason. With his speculative realist post-nature imagination, Rick Bass is making an attempt to bring his readers into the “real” nature, and this is different from the traditional nature writing, which, from the anthropocentric perspective, either describes the Utopian beauty of the nature or makes futile appeals to protect it.
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the inherent link between ante-narratives and later narratives in order to provide a new point of view for understanding the "genealogy" of the Chinese narrative tradition.
Abstract: The Bronze Age lasted for more than 1500 years. The “arch-writing” on bronze wares constituted the logical starting point of the Chinese narrative tradition. When observing from a narratological perspective, the significance of the ante-narrative on bronze wares is all the more self-evident. Through detailed discussion regarding the various categories of “lines/ornament”, “weave/knit”, “empty/full”, and “fear/joy”, this chapter will attempt to analyze the inherent link between ante-narratives and later narratives in order to provide a new point of view for understanding the “genealogy” of the Chinese narrative tradition. Meanwhile, a series of interesting questions must also be addressed: How did Chinese characters and their predecessors influence narrative? Why did the Chinese ancients attach particular importance to the concept of a “brief text and short narrative”? Where is the common ground between different forms of traditional art? Why did this art always put emphasis on “vividness” and “vitality”? Were there any “forerunners” of the structural modes of narrative works? How did the Chinese view of “food is the paramount necessity of the people” impact on the creation and enjoyment of the narrative? Where did the “charm” of the narrative classics come from? How and when did the fictional narrative based on imagination come into being?
TL;DR: In the semi-autobiographic novel Nekropola (Necropolis, 1966) of the Slovene author Boris Pahor, the main character revisits the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof where he spent part of his imprisonment during the Second World War as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the semi-autobiographic novel Nekropola (Necropolis, 1966) of the Slovene author Boris Pahor (born in 1913), the main character revisits the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof where he spent part of his imprisonment during the Second World War. During this visit the world of the concentration-camp prisoner and the world of the concentration-camp survivor are reunited. In both worlds the (lack of) connection between the protagonist and the surrounding characters, and the hereto related emotional spectrum of loneliness (alienation, distance, solitude) occupy a central position. Earlier research pointed out that the reunion of the concentration-camp world in the memories of the protagonist and the world he lives in now emphasizes the discrepancy between these two worlds. Based on the narrative concepts described by Michael Rothberg (timelessness, falsifiability and normality vs the extreme), this article indicates that this discrepancy actually does not only originate in the confrontation between the world of the past and the present. Illustrated by the very different and sometimes opposite effects of the constant confrontation with loneliness, distance and alienation, present paper reveals that this hiatus between past and present is embedded in the state of mind, or rather, in the identity of the main character.
TL;DR: This paper explored the representation of space in Don DeLillo's White Noise (Penguin, New York, 1985) in order to reveal its influence on the protagonist's psyche and its significant role in deciding his fate.
Abstract: This article explores the representation of space in Don DeLillo’s White Noise (Penguin, New York, 1985) in order to reveal its influence on the protagonist’s psyche and its significant role in deciding his fate. In particular, it discusses how the geographical coordinates and physical features of the novel function as complicit agents in shaping up the protagonist’s unstable state of mind and leading him to face an undesirable fate. The article takes into account Merlin Coverley’s concept of psychogeography to delineate the embodiment of the city (atmosphere) as an integral part of the protagonist’s life and a defining feature of postmodern American fiction. A psychogeographic understanding of White Noise further illuminates that urbanity, in its twentieth-century spirit, affects the psyche of the leading character who displays this deep impact through wandering (compulsively) in and around his urban environment. The article then clarifies how the city eventually reigns triumphant as the protagonist falls victim to hallucination and deep isolation, or is left with an aporetic moment of decision: to take on murder as the only alternative to reorder his life.
TL;DR: The authors discusses the binding together of the terrorist's and the victim's perspectives in Sam Mills's Blackout and Malorie Blackman's Noble Conflict. But their approach is shaped by postcolonial and ethical approaches to narrative and readings drawn Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.
Abstract: This article discusses the binding together of the terrorist’s and the victim’s perspectives in Sam Mills’s Blackout and Malorie Blackman’s Noble Conflict. In staging this kind of encounter, the contemporary children’s novel can explore the origins and workings of terrorist organisations, as well as counter-terrorist institutions, encouraging young readers to enter into critical engagement with different forms of violence that are connected with resistance to oppression and injustice. The terror-saturated dystopian visions fashioned by this generation of children’s writers are read as allowing them to raise crucial questions about the rightness of waging war on an abstract concept of ‘terror’ that exists forever in potential and about the justification of the state’s recourse to counter-terrorism legislation that seeks to criminalise not just terroristic practices but also radical thought. The article is shaped by postcolonial and ethical approaches to narrative and readings drawn Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.
TL;DR: In this article, a new and fresh critical perspective on Gao Xingjian's (mainly post-exile) dramaturgy of the predicament of modern man through a reexamination of two of its most salient elements: the dramatic technique of shifting pronouns and the performative concept of the "other shore".
Abstract: Although the theatre of Gao Xingjian has been widely researched, the tragic potential of his dramaturgy has hitherto received little attention. Scholars have hinted at the possibility of interpreting certain plays by Gao from the perspective of tragedy; however, this suggestion was never developed into a full-fledged theory. Both his pre and post-exile work has been variously categorized as experimentalist, absurdist, grotesque, and Zen, but never as tragic. Existing scholarship focuses mainly on issues of transnationalism and transculturation with regard to dramatic aesthetics and dramatic technique, whereas Gao’s intentional engagement with tragedy as both an art form and a philosophical outlook—which can be traced back to Escape (Taowang 1995), inspired by the Tiananmen Square events of 1989—has generally been overlooked. This paper aims to present a new and fresh critical perspective on Gao Xingjian’s (mainly post-exile) dramaturgy of the predicament of modern man through a reexamination of two of its most salient elements: the dramatic technique of shifting pronouns and the performative concept of the “other shore”. By elaborating on Gao’s transhistorical definition of tragedy as the eternal confrontation between the individual and his own Self (“About Escape” 1990), and drawing on selected scholarship on tragedy and the tragic, this paper ultimately characterizes Gao’s plays as “thirdspace tragedies”, owing to the presence—at a subtextual level—of an interstitial psychological field dominated by multiple tensions, lacerations, subjugations and divisions which affect the characters and their relationship to external reality and/or the realm of imagination.
TL;DR: In the late 19th century, Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, undertook to strengthen, on the basis of scholarly principles, the weakened inner cohesion of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and publish a 20 volume series, in German and in Hungarian, or "Kronprinzenwerk" (The Crown Prince's Work) as it was known as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the late 19th century, Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, undertook to strengthen, on the basis of scholarly principles, the weakened inner cohesion of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and publish a 20 volume series, in German and in Hungarian, “The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in word and picture”, or “Kronprinzenwerk” (“The Crown Prince’s Work”), as it was known. The series attempted to provide scientific argumentation to prove the spiritual unity of the peoples living in Central Europe and their difference from other groups. After the volumes were published, as a result of monumental changes that occurred in the early 20th century, new literatures were born in Central and Eastern Europe, the old ones entered a new phase and the highest levels of world literature. The last representatives of the era, however, did not follow the earlier examples and the collectivism and shared homeland consciousness suggested by the Monarchy and turned towards subjectivism. They uncovered previously untouched depths of the soul and of language in their works, fighting old age, death, suicide, fear, depression, inexpressibility, and the feeling of helplessness.
TL;DR: The authors discusses the consumer attributes of the transformation undergone by Robinson Crusoe in the Chinese educational book market when the novel is adapted into new curricular editions for Chinese pupils in their after-class reading.
Abstract: Children’s books are inevitably commercialized products in modern consumer society. Apart from having the more recognized mission to meet literary and educational requirements, the production and consumption of children’s books are also profoundly influenced and shaped by the spirit and material condition of consumer culture. This paper discusses the consumer attributes of the transformation undergone by Robinson Crusoe in the Chinese educational book market when the novel is adapted into new curricular editions for Chinese pupils in their after-class reading. It explores how consumer culture shapes the adaptation and turns this eighteenth-century English novel into a commodified literary and educational text from the material perspective of its planning and marketing which exploit the opportunities brought by the curriculum reform, the paratextual perspective of its cover design to better suit the electronic screen in the online purchasing environment, and the textual perspective of its adaptations in plot and style to meet the Chinese readers’ hermeneutic expectations. It reveals a Chinese consumer culture that seizes the opportunity brought by the curriculum reform and turns an English classic into a desirable commodity to arouse and manipulate the purchasing desire of parents by catering for the curricular requirements and educational expectations.
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the cause of the tension within the narrative theory raised by McHale and found that Bakhtin's dialogue, monologue, and double-voiced discourse were interpreted by Tzvetan Todorov as a form of formalism.
Abstract: In the history of contemporary narrative theory, Mikhail Bakhtin exists like a unique “specter” due to his narrative theories, which are classified as the early theories of structuralism and also closely related to the new narratology. Although Bakhtin’s dialogue, monologue, and double-voiced discourse were interpreted by Tzvetan Todorov as a form of formalism, Bakhtin’s theory of the polyphonic novel was questioned by Todorov. Wayne Booth had completed constructing the rhetoric of fiction in the 1960s, but when he got in touch with Bakhtin in the 1980s, he was shocked to find that Bakhtin had “awakened” him. The narrative theories of Booth and Bakhtin strongly resonate in the relationship construction regarding the author and the protagonist, the narrator and the reader, and the resonation is also revealed from a novel’s rhetoric to its ethics. Booth’s student James Phelan further realized the importance of Bakhtin in promoting the study of narrative ethics. In Wallace Martin’s Recent theories of narrative, the references and discussions about Bakhtin were truly “everywhere.” The purpose of this article is to analyze the cause of “the tension within the narrative theory” raised by McHale.
TL;DR: In this paper, Romanian scholars have ignored Transylvanian folklore dealing with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the experience of being a soldier in the imperial army, which can be explained by the fact that these cultural artefacts did not fit the Romanian nationalist narrative in politics and social science about the importance of ethnic unity.
Abstract: To date, Romanian scholars have ignored Transylvanian folklore dealing with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the experience of being a soldier in the imperial army. The gap can be explained by the fact that these cultural artefacts did not fit the Romanian nationalist narrative in politics and social science about the importance of ethnic unity. To address this gap, the paper maps out and discusses the images of the Dual Monarchy and especially of the Emperor in soldierly folklore. The main argument is that these images were shaped by the perception of and attempts to overcome the traumatic and often incomprehensible experiences of military service that peasant soldiers had to go through.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the relation between Carlo Michelstaedter's thought and the social-politic structure of the late Austro-Hungarian empire and demonstrate that the deepest sense of the fall of Habsburgs monarchy becomes clear assuming a meta-historical value.
Abstract: In our paper we will discuss the relation between Carlo Michelstaedter’s thought and the social-politic structure of the late Austro-Hungarian empire. We try to demonstrate that in the Michelstaedter’s philosophical work the deepest sense of the fall of Habsburgs monarchy becomes clear assuming a meta-historical value. Due to his peripheral origin Michelstaedter could interpret in an original way the cultural, anthropological and social causes that combined to bring about the crisis of the double-headed monarchy. In our discussion we will refer to the Tatossian’s assumption that the psychoanalysis, and above all the central psychoanalytic structure of Oedipus complex, represents an useful anthropological description of the late Austro-Hungarian society.
TL;DR: The authors examines fictionality in Zuozhuan in terms of communicative intent, sender of fiction, receivers of fictionality, and consequences on the logos and ethos, and argues that fictionality facilitates its compiler to utilize various means of fiction fictionality so that the receivers conceive many interpretive assumptions, thus shedding much light to later generations in composing history.
Abstract: Zuozhuan (Spring and autumn annals with Zuo’s commentary) initiated a narrative practice in Chinese historiography, which features not only records of historical events, but also various mysterious and unsubstantiated phenomena, such as divinations, omens, acts of mystical justice, apparitions and dreams. They played important roles for interpreting fictionality as a rhetorical resource in Zuozhuan. To elaborate fictionality and its competing relations with factuality, this paper subscribes to some Chinese scholars’ idea that it is from Zuozhuan on that fictionality endows Chinese historiography some “literary cover”, and analyzes those events in Zuozhuan. Moreover, enlightened by a rhetorical approach to fictionality proposed by Nielson, Phelan, and Walsh, this paper examines fictionality in Zuozhuan in terms of communicative intent, sender of fictionality, receivers of fictionality, and consequences on the logos and ethos. It argues that the communicative intent of Zuozhuan facilitates its compiler to utilize various means of fictionality so that the receivers conceive many interpretive assumptions, thus shedding much light to later generations in composing history.
TL;DR: Quatre dramaturges contemporains, Lars Noren, Marius von Mayenburg, Maissa Bey and Mohamed Kacimi, envisagent d'eviter la sur-photogenie des attentats terroristes tels that relates and parfois mis en scene par les images pour en proposer a representation jouant sur l'intimite, l’enfermement des spectateurs dans des dispositifs rappelant la prise d'otages Le spectateur se trouve contraint a conscientiser the situation d
Abstract: Quatre dramaturges contemporains, Lars Noren, Marius von Mayenburg, Maissa Bey et Mohamed Kacimi envisagent d’eviter la sur-photogenie des attentats terroristes tels que relates et parfois mis en scene par les images pour en proposer une representation jouant sur l’intimite, l’enfermement des spectateurs dans des dispositifs rappelant la prise d’otages Le spectateur se trouve contraint a conscientiser la situation dans laquelle se sont trouves recemment de nombreux Europeens, a Paris, Londres ou Madrid, y compris dans des lieux de spectacle, a Moscou notamment Il s’agit d’echapper a l’effet-panique d’un tel evenement, a tenter de le penser en congediant egalement la tentation de l’esthetisation de la violence, voire de l’empathie envers le tueur La piece de theâtre n’y parvient d’ailleurs pas toujours : la comprehension court le risque de la justification Seul un public de theâtre qui s’empare de la representation comme un espace de representativite – un lieu ou il peut penser et juger ses propres valeurs – est probablement a meme de garder a la fois en memoire et a distance la violence exercee
TL;DR: A comparative study of the aesthetics represented by the Greco-Roman critic Longinus and the Chinese Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi through what I would call the cosmic sublime is presented in this paper.
Abstract: This essay features a comparative study of the aesthetics represented by the Greco-Roman critic Longinus and the Chinese Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi through what I would call the cosmic sublime. Both Longinus and Zhuangzi, I propose, articulate an aesthetic ideal of the cosmic sublime, by which I mean the grandeur captured by a cosmic perspective or obtained from contemplating phenomena of a planetary scale, as well as the emotions associated with experience of the sublime. And both seek to theorize the sublime by positing the great-small and subject-object distinction. While concurring to the importance of great natures in producing and appreciating sublime images, the two thinkers diverge with regard to the relation of the subject and object of aesthetic judgment. Where Longinus presages Kant in emphasizing the preeminence of the judging mind in comprehending cosmic phenomena, Zhuangzi asserts the merging of the aesthetic subject with the primal simplicity, a claim that anticipates Holderlin and Nietzsche’s call to identify with the Dionysian One. As an aesthetic category, the cosmic sublime provides a vantage point from which to view how the human mind confronts and conceptualizes grandeur of an infinite dimension. As a comparative lens, the cosmic sublime helps reveal not only a new aesthetic ideal but also a distinctive Chinese aesthetics analogous to the Western sublime tradition.
TL;DR: In this paper, the applicability of paranoia and its ensuing effects on individuals in Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (Penguin Group, New York, 1962) is examined.
Abstract: The present paper sets out to examine the applicability of paranoia and its ensuing effects on individuals in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Penguin Group, New York, 1962) so as to observe how authorities in a given culture impose controls on mavericks so as to forestall possible threats. Paranoia in the above-mentioned work, is argued, engenders a perennial phobia within the inflicted, which brings about an identity crisis exerting influence over their temperament and conduct. Indeed, Kesey’s work perfectly exemplifies the sort of treatment undergone by those suffering from mental illness and the way they are mistreated. The protagonist, McMurphy, being cognizant of the way authorities enforce stringent regulations on their subjects, seeks to exhort those confined in the hospital to extricate themselves from their pathetic and deplorable condition, disabusing them of the wrong notions instilled into them.
TL;DR: This paper analyzed three different perspectives on war as a catalyst and expression, face of decadence with Jaroslav Hasek, Good Soldier Svejk, Liviu Rebreanu, and Joseph Roth's novel, The Radetzky March, and found that the image of the Imperial officer as well as the simple soldier puts into play a code of honor and a kind of solidarity meant to overcome the sensibilities of national identity.
Abstract: First World War is the turning point of building a new era, which will preside over the emergence of new forms of radicalism, of totalitarian regimes. But before that, the First World War closes in a brutal manner the slow decadence of some great empires, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through his totalizing vocation, the novel is the most appropriate document capable of recording this process that leads to finis monarchiae. In the present paper I analyzed three different perspectives on war as a catalyst and expression, face of decadence with Jaroslav Hasek’s novel, Good Soldier Svejk, Liviu Rebreanu’s novel, Forest of the Hanged, and Joseph Roth’s novel, The Radetzky March. From the joyful apocalypse of Hasek’s novel to the “wounded identities” of Rebreanu’s heroes and the aristocratic ethos cultivated among the bourgeoisie on which the empire is based in Roth’s novel, we have a complex picture of the decline of belle epoque society and the values on which it relies. The image of the Imperial officer as well as the simple soldier puts into play a code of honor and a kind of solidarity meant to overcome the sensibilities of national identity. I have been pursuing this conflict between unifying, imperial identity and national identities as a factor of the empire’s dissolution, especially where double engagement provokes a tragic tension.