19th-century Fiction Research Articles

A Feminist Approach to the Images of Women in <i>That Long Silence </i>and <i>Palace of Desire (Qasr Al-Shawq)</i>: A Comparative Study

This paper investigates the depiction of women in Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence and Naguib Mahfouz's Palace of Desire (Qasr Al-Shawq) according to the feminist approach. The study seeks to compare and contrast the way these two novels, which are considered among reputable 20th century fiction, represent female characters and their struggles for asserting their individualities in two types of male-dominated societies. That is to say, Shashi Deshpande, the Indian authoress of That Long Silence fathoms the struggles of women in a traditional Indian society. In this novel, she mirrors the great challenges that women face in such a patriarchal system. Therefore, this research traces the heroines’ experience highlighting how the novelist has tackled misogynism and biased societal prospects. On the other hand, Mahfouz's Palace of Desire sheds light on the stereotyped images of women and feminists attempts to free women within the changing political and societal setting of Egypt then. Aida's personality represents the ambitious woman who reconciles with her desires and does her best to assert herself in a male-dominated society despite all the social constraints trying to limit her aspirations. In this comparative study between the two concerned novels, the researcher seeks to reveal the similarities and differences in the representations of women in two different cultural backgrounds. So, the paper examines how each of these two novelists criticizes the patriarchal structures and advocates feminism in his/ her society exposing the ways through which gender roles and societal norms are presented. The study shows a deep understanding of feminist literary criticism by highlighting the cultural influence of the two societies in which women’s sufferings are revealed. So, the findings of the research offer new insights into the gender roles, misogynism, stereotyped images of women, old traditions and patriarchal systems in literature.

Walking through the text: The representation of mobility in late 19th-century Latvian fiction

Walking through the text: The representation of mobility in late 19th-century Latvian fiction

Review: Busse. 2020. Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in 19th-Century Narrative Fiction: A Corpus-Assisted Approach

<scp>Review</scp>: Busse. 2020. <i>Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in 19th-Century Narrative Fiction: A Corpus-Assisted Approach</i>

Rewriting Victorian Stereotypes: Questions of Female Identity in Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent

Contemporary British novelist Sarah Perry’s pastiche, The Essex Serpent (2016), goes beyond the way women were portrayed in 19th-century fiction in several ways, including their relationships with men. Therefore, it is worth having a closer look at the complexity of female-male relationships represented in the novel. After a brief outline of the social construct known as Victorian marriage, I will examine the three main female characters’ relationships with men, let them be husbands, suitors or, for that matter, comrades. In this way, I intend to prove that these women understand female-male relationships on a spectrum transcending the stereotypical roles offered to them by Victorian society.

SILENCE IN JANE URQUHART’S THE STONE CARVERS

Silence is traditionally recognized as a space of time in which words are not articulated and meaning is not convened. But, silence emerges to have a variety of meanings in literary texts, and that meaning is determined by the context within which silence is placed. The treatment of the theme of silence in 19th century fiction is associated with social injustice and war violence. As shown in the writings of that century, silence replaces feelings and ideas that the authors and/or their characters cannot find the words which can express the victims’ profound pain. In The Stone Carvers (2001), Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart introduces silence as moments of unspoken language, each moment produces two, or more, oppositional meanings, which may affect the characters differently. This research sheds light on the moments of silence that are shown in Urquhart’s novel.

Illocutionary Compulsion as a Sign of Pseudocommunication

The study is timely and actual, since at present, due to the aggravation of interethnic and interstate relations, it is necessary to study discursive mechanisms, taking into account which would more successfully develop methods and models of dialogical discourse, formulate criteria and choose adequate means of carrying out dialogical activities at different levels of communication. The purpose of the study is to identify the features of dialogical speech in ineffective communication situations. The dialogical discourse fragments extracted by applying continuous sampling method the 20th century fiction which served as the material of the study. The methods of contextual analysis, interactional and intentional analysis were used in the study. The research allows comprehend from a linguistic point of view the regulation process of speech behavior of the dialogical interaction participants, to deepen the knowledge of nature and features of speech communication. Illocutionary compulsion is considered to be creating conditions by the communicant when the communicative partner is forced to participate in the communicative process contrary to the will and desire. The factor of illocutionary compulsion means dialogic interaction infringement on the communicative level, performing communicative characteristics of the dialogical discourse and determining the unity of the content aspect of the dialogical interaction; on the interactive level, which determines the interconnectedness of speech actions in communication; and on the perceptual level, associated with the personal socio-psychological and emotional-expressive characteristics of the communicants. On the communicative level such violations mean inconsistency of communicative intentions and strategies of the partners, inadequacy of the illocutionary focus, both structural and semantic incompatibility of replicas of partners, uninformativeness, unactuality, insignificance of messages within the dialogical interaction, violation of the principles governing speech communication. On the interactive level, such violations are manifested as the lack of interaction synchronization of speech actions of the communicants, non-focus of the partners actions on correlating the goals of each of the parties and on organizing their achievement, the lack of connection between speech courses and the lack of verbal and non-verbal signals providing interaction regulation. On the perceptual level such violations are incompatibility of peculiarities of worldview and world perception of the communicants, inadequacy of perception, interpretation and assessment of communicative partners of each other, inconsistency in motivation for actions, inadequate tonality of communication, incompatibility of expression of an emotional state and psychological mood. Thereby the factor of illocutionary compulsion promotes the formation of pseudocommunicative contacts situations. The process does not lead to the jointly created result, since it is carried out exclusively as a speaking process. The phenomenon of the pseudocommunicative contact includes various types of other negative phenomena and is characterized by the lack of general communicative meaning. The communication is made as a process but not a result therefore it is considered as unsuccessful, ineffective and unpromising

‘Modern’ Law and Its Subjects in Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor (1937)

State law as the main transformative device to build a ‘modern’ Egypt has encountered tremendous resistance, yet legal scholars seem utterly uninterested in the matter while historians struggle to account for the reasons of the subjects’ resistance by using archival materials often produced by state officials themselves. In this article, I turn to literature to explore and interrogate literary representations of the rural subjects of ‘modern’ law, and their various forms of resistance to ‘modern’ law itself. In an effort to highlight the benefits of ‘turning to literature’ for legal scholars, I begin with one of the most acclaimed masterpieces and foundational works of the modern Egyptian literary canon: Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor (1937). Listening to the awkward silences and garrulous voices of the Diary’s subjects opens a window onto the strained relations between ‘modern’ law and its subjects in which class, language, and centre/periphery dynamics all play a role. Considering what repertoire these subjects ‘spontaneously’ mobilise to challenge the ‘modern’ law further brings into view their alternative doxic understanding of law and justice.&#x0D; Keywords: ‘Modern’ law, hegemonic legal modernity, everyday resist­ance, extra-judicial justice, vocal dissent, rural subjects, rural courtroom, Egypt, 20th-century fiction, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm, Diary of a Country Prosecutor.

Another turn of the screw on the history of the reaction object construction

AbstractThis article deals with the Reaction Object Construction (ROC), as inShe smiled disbelief, where an intransitive verb (smile), by adding an emotional object (disbelief), acquires the extended sense “express X by V−ing” (i.e. “She expressed disbelief by smiling”). Earlier research has suggested a diachronic connection between the ROC and Direct Discourse Constructions (DDCs) of the typeShe smiled, “I don’t believe you”(Visser 1963–1973). More recently,Bouso (2018)has shown that the ROC is primarily a feature of 19th century narrative fiction. This paper aims to bring together these insights. On the basis of a self-compiled corpus and De Smet’sCorpus of English Novels, it investigates the productivity of the ROC in 19th and 20th century fiction, and the role of DDCs in its development. The results reveal a peak in the productivity of the ROC that coincides with the development of the sentimental novel, and a correlation between the development of the ROC on the one hand and of those DDCs that have been mistakenly hypothesised to be its single source constructions on the other. Extravagance is proposed as a triggering factor for the use of the ROC in the 19th century as an alternative to DDCs.

Influence Of Industrialization On 19th-Century Fiction

Influence Of Industrialization On 19th-Century Fiction

Germanic Nominations of British Titles and Their Functioning in the 19th Century Fiction Texts

The article concerns identification of semantic potential of lexical units with a Germanic origin joined into thematic group "English titles of nobility", and actualization of their meanings in the literary texts of the 19 th century. The sources of language material were the works of early Victorian period writers. The undertaken semantic and functional analysis of lexemes earl, knight, lord / lady enabled the author to conclude that when they indicate social status of the character depicted in the work of art or are used as an etiquette form of address, they implement direct meaning. It has been noted that alongside with lord / lady, the French loanwords sir / madame are used as forms of polite address in dialogues between the characters. The lexemes-titles can function in figurative meaning, i.e. knight maybe used to indicate valour as one of the main qualities of a noble person of high social status, Lord is used to denote the Creator, lady – to speak about any woman, as well as a wife, a mistress. The analysis of the data obtained resulted in deduction that in literary texts of the 19 th century the meanings of lexemes-titles, comprising thematic group English Nobility Titles, can express the following: the noble origin in the name of a person, a polite form of address in communication, nomination of a social status as well as some commonly shared character traits inherent to an aristocratic class representative; nomination of people in accordance with a family status or gender.

Fiction – one register or two?

Abstract In this paper our focus is on analyzing register variation within fiction, rather than between fiction and other registers. By working with subcorpora that separate text within and outside of quotation marks, we appromixate fictional speech and narration. This enables us to identify and compare linguistic features with regard to different situational contexts in the fictional world. We focus in particular on the novels of Charles Dickens and a reference corpus of other 19th-century fiction. Our main method for the register analysis is Multi-dimensional Analysis (MDA) for which we draw on altogether four dimensions from two previous MDAs. The linguistic distinctions we identify highlight similarities between fictional speech and involved registers such as face-to-face communication, and between narration and more informational and narrative prose. In addition to the detailed information on register features that characterize speech and narration, the paper raises more general questions about the ability of register studies to deal with situational contexts within fiction.

Америка в поэзии Серебряного века: начало культурной концептуализации

The artistic image of America began to take shape in the 19th century Russian prose and journalism and became one of the universals of Russian culture. Its poetic interpretation, however, started in the early 20th century. The article explores the origin of the poetic conceptualization of America as a continent, state, and cultural space in the poetry of the Silver Age. The analysis of poems by N. Gumilyov, S. Yesenin, V. Mayakovsky, and others identified the semantic features of the poetic representation of America as well as the repertoire of the main semantic messages about the country. The important conceptual components of the image are the “discovery of America”, “Columbus”, “America as an earthly paradise”, “a distant place, an object of dreams”, “a target for development”, and others. The aesthetics of such schools of poetry as futurism and symbolism influenced the style of writing an imagery, however, the key meanings and messages, however, remained very similar. The perception of America changed after the Russian Revolution. Poets who had been to the faraway land tried to provide a realistic description of its advances in industry, urbanization, and multinationalism. They had their ideological principles and were critical of capitalism as a whole. Hence, they viewed absolute rationalism, business and capital — the ultimate American values — as a reason for the loss of spirituality in American culture. The poems now contrasted the two countries — the spiritual Russia and the materialistic America. The contrast later evolved into a more abstract poetic dialogue about the global opposition between the West and the East. The first attempts of poetic conceptualization of a different culture subsequently underpinned the artistic conceptualization of America in the 20th century fiction, poetry, and journalism. Their impulses can still be traced in the common perception Russians have of America as a country, which is confirmed by linguistic dictionaries and studies in humanities.

Концептуальный статус нереферентного употребления местоимений в литературно-критическом дискурсе писателя-беллетриста XIX века Н. Д . А хшарумова

The author uses personal and possessive pronouns in the literary and critical discourse of the 19th century writer and fiction writer N. D. Akhsharumov (1820-1893). The question is raised about the specificity of communicativeness of the pronouns used by the author, characterized by a wealth of referential and non-referential interpretations. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that for the first time a discursive analysis of the reference of two categories of pronouns in literary and critical work, unknown to a wide circle of readers, is offered. The material of the study uses the literary and critical article “On the enslavement of art” (1858), which expresses the main aesthetic and ethical approaches of the writer to understanding creativity. A phased discursive analysis of personal and possessive pronouns is carried out with the identification of their basic functions: reference (deictic - anaphoric) and non-reference (conceptual). It is shown that when changing the function of pronouns from the reference to the non-reference, the text status of the language units also changes. It is proved that pronouns in the author’s context with non-reference use acquire the status of modus concepts of the author’s narration.

Speech-bundles in the 19th-century English novel

We propose a lexico-grammatical approach to speech in fiction based on the centrality of ‘fictional speech-bundles’ as the key element of fictional talk. To identify fictional speech-bundles, we use three corpora of 19th-century fiction that are available through the corpus stylistic web application CLiC (Corpus Linguistics in Context). We focus on the ‘quotes’ subsets of the corpora, i.e. text within quotation marks, which is mostly equivalent to direct speech. These quotes subsets are compared across the fiction corpora and with the spoken component of the British National Corpus 1994. The comparisons illustrate how fictional speech-bundles can be described on a continuum from lexical bundles in real spoken language to repeated sequences of words that are specific to individual fictional characters. Typical functions of fictional speech-bundles are the description of interactions and interpersonal relationships of fictional characters. While our approach crucially depends on an innovative corpus linguistic methodology, it also draws on theoretical insights into spoken grammar and characterisation in fiction in order to question traditional notions of realism and authenticity in fictional speech.

The productivity of secondary verbs in artistic prose of the twentieth century. (based on the works of Y. Yanovsky, M. Stelmakh, O. Honchar)

The productivity of word-building verbs is observed. About 1200 units of verbal lexemes are involved by the method of a fragmentary sample from the works of M. Stelmakh, Y. Yanovsky (novel in the short stories “Riders”), and the novel “The Cathedral” by O. Gonchar. The fiction of these writers demonstrates the emergence of the Ukrainian-language word-formation tradition at various stages of historical development, as well as the classic examples of idiostyle, which still remain the objects of linguistic analysis. The purpose of the paper is to explore the word-building models of verbs in the 20th-century fiction. The task of the article — to compare the models of the different types of verbs in the novels, which have been mentioned. There are strong reasons to say that the constancy of the word-formation models of the verb corps is the main source of enreaching all functional styles's vocabulary in the modern Ukrainian language. It is anticipated that this trend will affect the development of Ukrainian language in the future. Therefore, the relevance of the study is not only in the scientific analysis of representations of certain periods of the functioning of language, but also in determining the laws of its further development. The productivity of verb-formation types of the verbs on the fiction prose has been examined. The role of secondary verbs with multistructural formants for the explication of actions, states, processes, and their dynamics in the fiction text has been determined. The role and the meaning of formants in verbal models creating have been shown. The attention has been focused on the verbal affixes in fiction. The role of word-formation formants for transferring of productivity of action, process, and state has been recorded.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Suicide in 19th-century Australian fiction

Suicide in 19th-century Australian fiction

Graham Holderness, Re-Writing Jesus: Christ in 20th-Century Fiction and Film.

Graham Holderness, <i>Re-Writing Jesus: Christ in 20th-Century Fiction and Film.</i>

Re‐writing Jesus: Christ in 20th‐Century Fiction and Film. GrahamHolderness. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 256 pp. $29.95 paperback.

Re‐writing Jesus: Christ in 20th‐Century Fiction and Film. GrahamHolderness. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 256 pp. $29.95 paperback.

The head trauma amnesia cure: The making of a medical myth.

The myth that a second head trauma can restore memory to someone with a previous head injury is evident in popular fiction and believed by a significant number of people. The double trauma amnesia plot device appeared in 19th century fiction and was fully formed by the 1880s. This article explores the contributions of scientific and popular ideas related to brain symmetry and memory permanence that fueled inaccurate ideas about memory recovery following brain injury.