American Prose Research Articles

The Theme of Preservation and Retreat of National Identity in the Novel "Daughters of Memory" By Peter Najarian

In the article, we examined the novel “Daughters of Memory” depicting the Armenian reality by Peter Najarian, the author of many novels, short stories, and literary criticism. P. Najarian is an Armenian novelist who made a great contribution to the American prose of the 20th century. The novel “Daughters of Memory” by the Armenian-American writer Peter Najarian is one of the best works depicting the life of Armenian Diaspora. Here the writer clearly emphasizes the “laws” of the new world, moral standards, the internal drama of the Armenian with the combination of old and new life, material and spiritual interests. Wherever foreign Armenian writers are, they pursue the preservation of national identity and national spirit with their works, without which the Armenian in the Diaspora, lacking national subsoil under his feet, a lifestyle cultivated for centuries, a national environment, a vision of a desired homeland, is doomed to assimilation. Najarian’s novel “Daughters of Memory” is a search for identity and an attempt to cling to it. The author of the book captured in its pages the gradual alienation from one’s national roots of an Armenian isolated in a foreign land, the retreat, the incapacity of some children of genocide witnesses to comprehend and value the past, the painful reality of not taking history lessons to heart, Americanization, the denial of national values, and the eroding of the moral image of the Armenian nation through attempts to use art as a weapon against assimilation and alienation. The purpose of the article is to reveal and appreciate the theme of national identity with its reflections and manifestations by studying the novel “Daughters of Memory” by Peter Najarian, an Armenian-American English writer of the 20th century. In the novel, we examined the problems faced by the Armenian-American writer, the tireless efforts and struggles to preserve the national identity and right to live of Armenians around the world.

Literackie przestrzenie agencji reklamowych w wybranych powieściach po 1945 r.

This article focuses on the literary depiction of advertising agencies in selected prose works after 1945. These specific spaces first appeared in American prose. After 1989, Polish writers also began to portray them. Despite this, they have not yet been extensively described by domestic literary scholars. This paper attempts to outline their characteristic features. It explores the evolution of the American advertising novel genre, pointing out Polish attempts to adopt it in the early 21st century. It also focuses on the spatial structure of advertising agencies and the organization of work conditioned by a specific corporate culture. The methods used for analysis include literary interpretation and narratology.

Национальная самоидентификация героя-эмигранта в эмигрантской прозе Г. Иванова и Г. Миллера. Статья вторая: кризис творческой самореализации

The author compares the American prose writer Henry Miller’s novel Tropic of Cancer (1934) and the Russian poet Georgy Ivanov’s story Disintegration of the Atom (1938). The aim of the article is to compare the plot situations of the emigrant heroes’ self-identification in the aspect of the manifestation of their national and cultural identity in order to understand how the problem of national self-identification of a person of the modern era in emigration is aggravated. The second part of the article draws attention to the collision of creativity and the interpretation of art (literature) by the central characters. It is concluded that Miller and Ivanov agree on the idea of the crisis of culture and the dying of art in the situation of modernity. In the story of a hero, an aspiring writer, Miller shows the transformation of avant-garde ideas and the conformism of a contemporary artist. Miller’s central character appears as a spiritually integral person, capable of creative realization and capable of challenging a civilization stricken with cancer. Ivanov depicts a creatively sterile man-“atom”, unable to overcome the existential impasse in the crisis of modern civilization. Although in both works the heroes assert the highest value not of art, but of real life, sensuality, bodily passion, Ivanov’s hero cannot accept life and renounces it unlike Miller’s hero, who accepts himself and the world. The novel Tropic of Cancer is interesting in the aspect of imagology: it shows a number of images of Russian emigrants as perceived by an American hero. This is an American “view” of the Russian emigrant, different from the automyth of Russian emigrant writers (Georgy Ivanov). Geographically, Miller sees Russia as the most distant part of Europe. The dominant feature of Russians in Tropic of Cancer is irrationality (“crazy Russians”), but Miller, unlike Ivanov, captures both the pragmatism and conformism of Russian emigrants. The emigrant writer Boris, on the one hand, appears as a type of a European avant-garde artist; on the other hand, Russian roots are manifested in his aesthetics and attitude to the world. Boris turns out to be similar to the hero of Ivanov’s story, a creatively sterile person, immersed in the world of ideas, the break with which reflects the creative growth of the hero of Miller’s novel. A skeptical assessment of Russian idealism brings Miller and Ivanov closer together. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Invariant and Variability Boundaries as Indicators of the Translation Adequacy (Exemplified by Contemporary American Prose)

The object of the study is the novel "The Collector" by the American writer Nora Roberts. Interrelation of the contents’ meaning invariant and its variability inevitably springing up in the fiction translation process due to linguistic as well as extra-linguistic factors is analytically considered. Special heed is paid to the transcendence of the admissible or «tolerated» variability which is bound not only to infringe the translation invariant, but also to distort the original contents’ meaning as well as its distinctive stylistic features. Examples in the form of textual excerpts borrowed from the original and its published translation are compared and juxtaposed on the basis of the detailed linguistic examination of the voluntary deviations from the original made up by the translator both involuntarily, i.e. erroneously, and deliberately. They consist mostly either of the source text’s contents omission or introduction of his/her personal dysfunctional, redundant, and completely unjustified additional information to the target text. The examples are mainly classified according to the factors causing either the variability of the source text or its meaning’s distortion as well as to the effectiveness of various means aimed to protect the translation invariant. In most cases, the authors suggest their own equivalent versions of either omitted or distorted original’s excerpts as appropriate contextual correspondences. The authors conclude that such excessive variability in the translation of the novel into Russian distorted the general meaning of the original, changed its semantics and stylistics.

Semiotic dimensions of the U.S. literary and medical discourse

The purpose of the study is to analyze the semiotic features of American fiction devoted to medical issues. Research methods: systematization, generalization, narratological method, methods of semiotic analysis and receptive aesthetics. The object of the study is a corpus of American prose works united by medical themes (XIX-XXI centuries). Scientific novelty. The article examines the most important signs-symbols in the semiotic system of literary and medical prose discourse in the USA, reveals the author's intentions regarding the use of these signs, as well as the expected receptive potential of the reader. Conclusions. The semiotic code of fiction plays a key role in the interpretation of the images of the doctor and the patient in prose works devoted to medical issues, actualizes the reader's perception, revealing the distribution of institutional roles and the peculiarities of communication in the chronotope of the clinical environment.

THE IMAGE OF “AN ORDINARY AMERICAN” IN J. UPDIKE’S SHORT STORIES

The article is devoted to the study of the short story genre in the context of the second half of the twentieth century American literature, an attempt is made to show the way of the genre from the form of standard story to so called “psychological sketch”. The short story manifested the national originality of American prose, the peculiarities of the national character and local color earlier and more fully than other forms. It developed the traditions of folk stories, folk humor, and satire. The object of analysis is J. Updike’s short story "Pigeon Feathers", that is concentrated on the middle class problems of American society and the “ordinary Americans”. Updike became an innovator in the short story genre, embodying the best ideas of his predecessors and developing his own ideas of genre diversity. According to both national and American critics, the main stylistic feature of Updike's short story collections is the close connection between them, most of them continuing each other, leaving behind a through plot and a single emotional experience.

BELARUSIAN AND AMERICAN LITERATURE ABOUT THE FIRST WORLD WAR: THE EXPERIENCE OF CORRELATIVE RESEARCH

The article is devoted to the scientific trend in the comparative and correlative study of distant literary traditions based on the material of Belarusian and American prose about the First World War; a model for the comparative study of cultural traditions formed in Western Europe and the United States of America is considered by highlighting resonant motives at similar structural levels in nationally specific literatures; the complementarity and parity of Belarusian and American prose about the First World War is demonstrably substantiated by the generally recognized text samples of Western European prose on the said subject. The relationship between the structural levels of multicultural artistic texts and groups of motives characteristic of them, which are composed of conceptual motive dominants, is revealed and substantiated.

Еволюція творчого методу Е. Л. Доктороу

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (1931–2015) is the American prose writer, in the literary heritage of whom one finds 12 novels, 4 of which had screen versions, 3 volumes of short stories and 1 stage drama, an editor and a scientist. The writer provided more than once a self-commentary to his creative works, his interviews became the indispensable source of his works’ understanding. Doctorow consistently wrestled the traditional approach to literature. Many a researcher turned to his literary heritage. The examination of the Doctorow’s creative method evolution was carried out in two stages. First the main characteristic features of the literary works were singled out, later on by means of the comparative method the two main novels “Ragtime” and “Loon’s Lake” correlation from the point of view of the writer’s depiction evolution was carried out. The characteristic features of the novels are violated chronology, combining of reality with the invented, depicting the protagonists at the moment of the greatest changes, different arts genres fusion manifested in style, excessive fascination with the naturalistic details. The novel “Ragtime” is an objective, author’s narration, “Loon Lake” is the monologue of the I-form narrator. In “Ragtime” the prose writer combined the style of “new journalism” with “retro”. “Loon Lake” is an attempt to create the main image, render the inexhaustibility of the plenitude of life. In the novel “Ragtime” literature is melted with music, whereas in “Loon Lake” prose is melted with poetry of vers libre.

ИЗУЧЕНИЕ СОВРЕМЕННОГО ЛИТЕРАТУРНОГО ПРОЦЕССА НА ЗАНЯТИЯХ ПО ЗАРУБЕЖНОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ В ВУЗЕ

The paper presents the stages of work on the block "Modern Foreign Literature" as part of the discipline "History of Foreign Literature". The main trends in Western European and American prose are highlighted. The following genres are characterized: anti-utopia, transformer novel, myth novel, philological novel; phenomena: neorealism, seterature (in particular, fanfiction). The specificity of fantastic literature at the present stage is determined. Common features for the literature of the late 20th – early 21st centuries are traced: intertextuality, hypertextuality, openness, polyvariability of ideas, mythologism.

Representation of the literary protagonist’s figure and its authorial characterization in translation (exemplified by American prose)

Interrelation of literary and linguistic aspects in translating prosaic literary works - a contemporary American novel - into Russian is dealt with. Paramount attention is focused on the most significant literary aspect - the protagonist’s figure and its characterization formulated by the author of the original as well as her peculiarities recreated and represented in the translated text. The protagonist’s main features are defined concretely on the basis of the authorial description and characterization of her appearance, behavioral, psychological and some other personal individual traits represented in detail in the original, but, however, either deliberately distorted or erroneously translated. The methodology of research is based primarily on the comparative linguistic analysis of relevant excerpts taken from the original and its published translation. Special attention is paid to the results of the performed distortions followed by the authors’ detailed commentaries and, in most cases, their own suggested versions of contextual correspondences. A strictly systematized explicit classification consisting of four types of the translation invariant’s violation, defined and exposed by the authors, will, hopefully, help systematize them while teaching translation to philology students as well as caution translators of literary prose, both beginners and advanced ones, against making mistakes of this sort in their practical creative activities.

Refleksje amerykańskie Juliusza Słowackiego

The aim of this article is to present Juliusz Słowacki’s statements regarding the American continent. Though the research material is limited, it can be surmised that Słowacki consistently viewed the Mundus Novus (both its northern and southern parts) as a realm of contradiction: on the one hand a place, where positively perceived democratic changes took place, and on the other a land permanently stained with the crime of its colonisers.The introductory part of the text presents the poet’s inspirations from the American prose of Chateaubriand and the adventure novels of James Fenimore Cooper. Further on, I focus on Słowacki’s adolescent works. Although he never chose to depict the idyllic American wilderness, his poems Oda do młodości and Do Michała Rola Skibickiego revealed a strong connection between the symbolism of the botanical world and the historical changes which occurred after the continent’s discovery up till the American Revolutionary War and Bolivar’s activity in South America. The aforementioned contradictions also appeared when Native American characters were mentioned – praise of the noble, innocent savage were mixed with stereotypes and mocking depictions of North American Indians. Another important topic is Słowacki’s change of opinion concerning the US, expressed in a letter to his mother from 1834, in which he makes known how disappointed he is about American pragmatism and lack of ideals. In the final part of the text, I juxtapose Fanny Calderon de la Barca’s traveller’s account from her time in Mexico with Słowacki’s notes on this work and discuss an anecdote about Christopher Columbus from one of the letters to Salomea Bécu.

The French Reception of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Belated Consecration

The French Reception of <i>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>: A Belated Consecration

Kyra Markham: An Introduction

Kyra Markham: An Introduction

THE METAPHYSICAL DIMENSION OF CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE WORKS OF J.L. BORGES AND J. CORTAZAR)

Modern literature largely overlaps with the philosophical genre, and in some cases, philosophy itself is qualified as a special genre of literature. Contemporary Latin American prose by J. Cortazar and J. L. Borges demonstrates its metaphysical dimension associated with an attempt to rethink and develop a number of philosophical ideas and plots at the level of an imaginary experiment with abstract entities. Analysis of a number of works by these authors shows the complex and multi-vector nature of their ontological and existential searches, making it possible to see in them modeling of potential philosophical and cosmological models of the future, which expands the boundaries of both philosophical and literary analysis.

The Thirties: Great Depression and American Literature

American literature in the 1930s was heavily influenced by the era of Great Depression – deep political, economic and financial crisis found variant representations in American prose, poetry and drama. Despite the crisis, writing itself flourished. New plays were staged by Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Maxwell Anderson, Thornton Wilder and William Saroyan – playwrights whose work is regarded as the nation’s greatest dramatic achievements. The decade is also often described as one of the great ages of the novel, encompassing the best works of John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos and Zora Neale Hurston among others. Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, Kenneth Fearing and William Carlos Williams were among those making significant contributions to American poetry.Vitality in literature cannot, however, be related simply to the issues raised by the Depression. The imperatives and impulses which drove Americans to write were as diverse in the 1930s as in any other decade. Focusing on the ways in which matters of radical politics, national identity and ‘escapist’ culture were examined within contemporary literature, this paper discusses how authors were pulled in various directions at once: political radicalism vs escapism; literary modernism and theatricalism vs realism; region vs nation; man vs nature; and nostalgia vs hope for the future. Versatility of the literary landscape reminds us not to reduce the literary 1930s to simplistic notions of the ‘Depression Era’ or the ‘Red Decade’.

PRAGMATIC ADAPTATION OF THE ORIGINAL AND ITS CONTENTS’ FUNCTIONAL INVARIANT (exemplified by contemporary American prose translations)

PRAGMATIC ADAPTATION OF THE ORIGINAL AND ITS CONTENTS’ FUNCTIONAL INVARIANT (exemplified by contemporary American prose translations)

Author’s Digression in the English Literary Text Space: Types of Cohesion

One of the most critical problems of the Linguistics of text is the structure study of the literary text, principles of its organization following the rules of the compositions that suggest splitting the linguistic work into the interconnected parts. In this regard, it is necessary to research the individual compositional and significant elements of the text and their role in forming the whole work. The paper focuses on revealing structural and syntactic properties of the author’s digressions, namely, detecting such concepts as integration/non-integration of the author’s digressions in the English literary prose. Integrated and non-integrated types of author’s digressions into the academic space of the text have been distinguished based on interpretative-textual and compositional analysis. The analysis of the text-forming function of the author’s digression contributed to defining the features of the cohesion of the literary text and included in its elements. The analysis results show that the author’s digressions can be both integrated and non-integrated. Non-integration of the author’s digression lies in their composition-semantic independence, and integrated author’s digressions are the ones that the author weaves into the text with different types of cohesion. This research promotes the studies of the cognitive aspect of the author’s digression in the different genres literary texts of English and American prose.

Problem of Periodization and Some Aspects of the Late Work of F. Bret Hart

The article is devoted to the discussion of the problem of periodization and the study of the features of the late stage of the work of the outstanding American prose writer Francis Bret Hart (1836—1902). The relevance of the article is due to the need to build a coherent and consistent history of the development of American literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, an important part of which is the writer’s prose heritage. The authors comprehend Western (J. Stewart, G. Scharnhorst, A. Nissen and others) and domestic (A. V. Vaschenko, L. P. Grossman, P. E. Schegolev, A. I. Startsev, V. A. Libman, E. Yu. Rogonova, A. B. Tanaseichuk) studies on biography and various aspects of the prose writer. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time in American studies a gap in the reception of F. Bret Hart's work was filled (the absence of clear criteria for periodization); the tradition of a disdainful attitude to the European period of his work, established in American literary criticism, is refuted, in particular, it is proved that in the stories and novels of the 1880s and 1890s Bret Hart boldly goes beyond the usual themes and images: the “Californian theme”, traditional for his early prose, takes on a new dimension — in the aspect of understanding national and gender psychology (“Maruga”); amorous and melodramatic collisions are combined with an appeal to science fiction (“The Secret of the Hacienda”).

The Implementation Of T-Ex Approach On The Short Story Teaching In Efl Class

This research aims at applying the jeremiad approach in literary class particularly using short story for the purpose of finding a proper teaching design or model for character education. It is further hoped to obtain a teaching model on the text-based learning for the purpose of improving the quality of teaching of English as Foreign language (EFL) and the shaping of students’ character. These purposes will be gained through qualitative inquiry which is marked by the involvement of students as the respondents and the researchers in its implementation. The students will be considered as the objects of this study. Those students involves in British and American Prose class in English Education Department, Universitas Negeri Manado. They will be taught using the Jeremiad Approach and later will be observed as well as interview. The data of the research are mostly taken from the result of interview and observation. The interview is done with the questions of how the shaping of their character as short story is used by combining it with the jeremiad approach. The observation is carried out through students’ intellectual diary which is written in every meeting. The data are analyzed and coded in the way of Grounded Theory. The findings show the implementation of the T-Ex approach had provided students the opportunities to involve in active sharing and discussion within which they observed, questioned, tried, associated, comprehended, analyzed, created, presented, implemented, respected, experienced, and accepted as well as evaluated. In addition, the use of the students’ intellectual diaries, a kind of daily note, contributed not only to monitor the advantage of the approach to the class but also alternatively to assess authentically students’ absorption as well as competency outputs.Keywords: T-Ex Approach, Shortstory, EFL Class, Character Education

Singing the quotidian: the lyric voice and contemporary American prose poetry by women

ABSTRACT The ‘lyric’ is a celebrated mode of expression and a catch-all term used to describe a great deal of admired poetry, including ancient works, Romantic poetry and contemporary poetry. However, no-one agrees on exactly how ‘the lyric’ might be defined or how the lyric ‘I’ might be understood – some see this as an autobiographical ‘I’ and others interpret it as a persona enabling lyric poets to activate language in particular ways. Furthermore, although the term lyric has been applied to short forms of poetry, it has much less often been applied to prose poetry. Yet prose poetry, which often invokes the quotidian, is frequently lyrical and often employs the lyric ‘I’. Importantly, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, prose poetry written by American women has found new and experimental ways to position the lyric ‘I’ and, in doing so, much of it transgresses conventional lyric boundaries in order to re-assess and critique the experiences of women. Khadijah Queen’s book, I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men and What I Had On provides a powerful example as it makes use of a compelling lyric voice that comments on the everyday experiences of women as they are objectified in contemporary society.