Contemporary Novels Research Articles

Women Writers’ Perspective on War

Abstract This article presents a comparative analysis of a specific corpus that centers around women writers (translators and artists) as heroines, within the so-called ‘female continent’ in the post-Yugoslav fiction (a concept defined by Tijana Matijević in 2020). The analysis is centered around three different generations of women writers’ perspectives on the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, in three contemporary novels published in the 2010s: Svetlana Slapšak’s Ravnoteža (2016, Engl. Equilibrium), Ivančica Đerić’s Nesreća i stvarne potrebe (2012, Engl. Misfortune and Real Needs), and Lana Bastašić’s Uhvati zeca (2018; Engl. translation Catch the Rabbit, 2021). The comparative analysis is done with respect to three ‘circles’ of interpretation: a) the literature on anti-war women’s writing; b) the literature on the theme of exile in post-Yugoslav fiction and c) the literature on the history of anti-war feminist organizing during the nineties.

A Study on Lesbian Representation and the Reconfiguration of Normative Intimacy in Korean Contemporary Novels

A Study on Lesbian Representation and the Reconfiguration of Normative Intimacy in Korean Contemporary Novels

Technology’s Influence on the Metaphorical Language in Contemporary Literature: A Transformative Force and a Formidable Challenge

This study sheds light on the intricate ways technology is reshaping the landscape of metaphorical language in contemporary writing. It delves into the burgeoning trend of aesthetics heavily influenced by technology. By meticulously analyzing a curated collection of visually captivating digital images, the study explores how technical language is used to craft these images and how digital constructs imbue them with a unique character.Furthermore, the study goes beyond imagery, comprehensively examining the influence of technology on characterization and plot structure within contemporary novels. It acknowledges the emergence of characters and narrative elements that are fundamentally driven by technology, exploring how these innovations are shaping the way stories are told and experienced by readers. Ultimately, the study highlights the transformative potential of technology. It recognizes how technology can enrich and expand the metaphorical repertoire available to contemporary writers. However, it also acknowledges the challenges that technology presents in terms of maintaining the nuance and authenticity of language, as well as the potential for the erosion of traditional linguistic values.

Reclaiming History: The Role of Memory in Afro-American Literature

This research explores the pivotal role of memory in Afro-American literature, focusing on its multifaceted functions as a tool of resistance, cultural preservation, and historical reinterpretation. Memory in Afro-American literature emerges as a dynamic force that not only documents personal and collective experiences but also challenges dominant narratives of oppression and erasure. Through a nuanced examination of literary works spanning from slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass' "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" (1845) to contemporary novels like Toni Morrison's "Beloved" (1987), this study illuminates how memory serves as a means of reclaiming agency and identity amidst historical trauma.The research discusses critiques of relying on memory in literature, acknowledging concerns about subjectivity and historical accuracy. It argues that memory in Afro-American literature transcends mere recollection, offering profound insights into the complexities of African American experiences and histories. By exploring examples such as Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937) and James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" (1963), the study demonstrates how Afro-American authors use memory to confront systemic injustices, preserve cultural heritage, and inspire social activism.Ultimately, Afro-American literature's enduring legacy lies in its ability to reshape historical narratives through the transformative power of memory. By interrogating memory's intersections with literature and activism, this research invites readers to engage critically with the past and envision a future grounded in truth, empathy, and reconciliation. Through its exploration of memory's role in shaping identity, justice, and cultural resilience, Afro-American literature continues to provoke thought and inspire meaningful dialogue on the enduring legacies of slavery, segregation, and the ongoing quest for equality.

Dynamics of Ethnic Boundaries: Rethinking Insider-Outsider Dichotomy in Northeast India

Northeast India has a history of being strategically populated with non-tribal people since colonialism, leading to resentment among the indigenous population and the emergence of sub-nationalism rooted in local culture and history. This sub-nationalism asserts the insider-outsider dichotomy, (native tribal v/s non-native settler), resulting in ethnic conflicts and demands for secession. Amidst the region’s rich cultural diversity and the presence of numerous smaller ethnic groups, the contemporary literature from Northeast India, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction and drama, serves as a critical lens to unravel the dynamics of ethnic boundaries. Integrating Fredrik Barth’s notion of “ethnic boundaries,” which posits that migration and mobility, with their accompanying social processes of exclusion and incorporation, maintain distinct ethnic categories, this article attempts to analyze how contemporary literature from the region unveils the myth of the insider-outsider dichotomy at play. This will be examined through a nuanced interpretation of two contemporary novels from Northeast India, Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill (2014) and Anjum Hasan’s Lunatic in My Head (2007). By foregrounding Barth’s theoretic framework, the select novels decipher the underlying dynamics of exclusion and incorporation, challenging the conventional binary of “insider” and “outsider.” This study makes a noteworthy contribution to the discussions around society, ethnicity, and peace in Northeast India, using textual analysis method where literary narratives are interpreted in their sociopolitical contexts. It highlights the importance of challenging existing suppositions regarding ethnic identity and adopting a comprehensive and inclusive approach toward promoting peace in the region.

Uncertain Waters and Irony in Australian Settler Literatures

Critics are increasingly recognizing the presence of irony in environmental cultures, often stressing its ability to highlight disjunctions between the individual’s convictions and their compromised behaviors. This article extends this work by taking up the relationship between irony and settler-colonial imaginaries in writings about unpredictable bodies of water. Focusing on settler writing in Australia, the article juxtaposes nineteenth-century author Henry Lawson and contemporary novelist Jane Rawson to argue that irony constitutes a form of environmental knowledge, calling up norms and hierarchies regarding water but also creating openings toward waters that cannot be given meaning. Lawson’s writings about ephemeral rivers and lakes stress their divergence from metropolitan ideas of water’s continuity, presence, and visibility. Largely ignoring Indigenous peoples’ relationships with water, his ironies of overturned expectations and norms make contact with but also disparage water in unfamiliar forms. By contrast, Rawson’s A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (2013) employs irony to grasp how climate-changed floodwater disrupts settler norms founded upon the erasure of floodplains and of Indigenous and colonial histories of urban rivers. Juxtaposing Rawson with Lawson illuminates an ongoing need to be cautious about the ideals that irony may evoke in response to changing and uncertain waters. At the same time, irony provides a multivalent tool to critically address what Mark Rifkin calls “settler common sense,” to glimpse the persistence of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives, and to acknowledge occluded forms of environmental agency.

ظاهرة التناص مع القرآن والحديث في رواية "القاهرة الجديدة" لنجيب محفوظ: دراسة وصفية تحليلية

The concept of religious intertextuality involves integrating selected religious texts, whether from the Holy Quran or the noble Prophetic Hadith, into the original text of a novel. These texts are carefully chosen to harmonise with the narrative context and serve a cognitive or artistic purpose. It is undeniable that the Holy Quran and the Prophetic Hadith are among the most significant sources from which both ancient and contemporary novelists have drawn inspiration, prominently featuring them in their creative works. Consequently, this research aims to investigate the phenomenon of religious intertextuality in Naguib Mahfouz’s novel “Cairo Modern,” intending to comprehend the reason for its employment within the novel’s texts. The research follows a descriptive-analytical statistical methodology. Among the key findings are that Naguib Mahfouz was significantly influenced by Islamic culture, as evidenced by his extensive incorporation of religious texts from the Holy Quran and the Prophetic Hadith in “Cairo Modern.” This influence extends to shaping the events and narrative structure, enriching the fictional texts to generate new meanings. The results also suggest that creative writing critically depends on such literary vitality derived from the mechanism of interweaving and blending known texts, known as intertextuality. This process proves to be a crucial and dynamic tool for both authors and readers alike.

Unnatural World—the Study of Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five from the Perspective of Unnatural Narrative

As one of the most outstanding contemporary novelists, Doris Lessing, a famous British female writer, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Doris Lessing’s new work Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five has been studied at home and abroad mainly in the aspects of feminism and Sufism in the work. Based on the unnatural narrative theory of post-classical narratologists Jan Albert and Brian Richardson, this paper analyzes the unnatural narrative factors in the stories from three aspects: unnatural space, unnatural role and unnatural behavior. The unnatural of the novel is to prove the unnatural nature of the world in the novel from three aspects: impossible story space, story role and characters’ behavior, and analyze the author's intention behind these unnatural factors -- the world is an interconnected whole, and the progress of human civilization requires people of all countries to be open-minded, inclusive, communicate with each other and learn from each other, in order to jointly promote the overall progress and prosperity of world civilization.

Trails of Erasure: imagining the reality of co-migrations in contemporary climate fiction

ABSTRACT In this article, I am going to trace ‘trails of erasure’ in two contemporary novels that introduce a wider trend in climate fiction: Firstly, both Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour (2012) and Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations (2020) indicate a tendency to envision temporalities that render climate threats more imminent and, secondly, both novels imagine spatialities that align human and non-human forms of migration. Thus, they closely connect human and non-human ways of coping with climate change, which may be considered a form of deep adaptation to our current climate crisis. However, they not only challenge but also reinscribe problematic gender and class discourses in the process.

A Study of Women-Nature Connections of The Rabbit Hutch from the Perspective of Ecofeminism

Tess Gunty is one of the most recognized contemporary novelists in America. Her debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, is a mesmerizing work reflecting the individual struggles to survive and connect in a decadent modern society where everyone seems to be isolated from the outside world, whether physically or spiritually. Ecofeminism emphasizes that women and nature are closely connected as they are considered to be in an inferior status and, therefore, oppressed and dominated by men in the patriarchal society. This study intends to focus on what kind of interconnectedness of women and nature is presented in the novel and further provide an analysis of their twin domination and oppression by the male agencies of The Rabbit Hutch within the Ecofeminist theoretical framework. The novel offers ecofeminist narratives that illustrate the objectification and commodification of women and nature and exhibit the dangers of men’s master mentality and masculinized exploitation towards women and nature. The study concludes that oppressed by patriarchal agencies, women and nature formed a mutually supporting relationship. Under value dualism and hierarchical oppositions, women and nature are instrumentalized or commodified by the dualistic ideologies adopted by patriarchal agencies.

Encoding indefinite human reference without indefinite pronouns: the case of Chinese presentationals

Abstract The Chinese sequence yǒu rén [exist person] is both the minimal existential-presentational construction and the functional equivalent of indefinite pronouns in encoding indefinite human reference. This dual characteristic prompts the question of whether yǒu rén functions as a presentational construction comparable to similar forms in other languages. Building on a literary corpus of Chinese contemporary novels, this study aims to determine if yǒu rén displays the behavioral properties of presentational constructions. First, presentational yǒu rén constructions are distinguished from both locative-existential and generic-existential ones based on a set of features including predicate selection in the coda, presence and function of the locative expression, and the co-dependent interpretation of the nominal rén. Next, the discourse function of yǒu rén is examined by assessing its contrast with regular nonpresentational sentences and the anaphoric potential of the entity it introduces. While establishing the boundaries between the three construction types, the study also analyzes the co-expression pattern observed within a gradient and compositional approach.

A dialogue with Dostoevsky: extremism, media and polyphony

ABSTRACT In this article, I aim to demonstrate how a contemporary novelist can write about extremism in the social media age and in the process engage with the literary consciousness of the past. Although several novelists have written about extremism in recent years – notably Kamila Shamsie in Home Fire (2017), Guy Gunaratne in In Our Mad and Furious City (2018) and John Wray in Godsend (2019) – few efforts have yet been made to show how it relates to the experience of life online. I argue that for a novelist wanting to explore extremism today the precursor it would be most valuable to revisit is Fyodor Dostoevsky. He perceived how in mid-nineteenth-century Russia the new mass medium of the newspaper was transforming consciousness and heightening radical sentiment, and explored this in Crime and Punishment (1866) and Demons (1871). Through a sustained engagement with these works, I interrogate the opportunities offered by entering into dialogue with him and consider how his most important narrative technique, polyphony, can be reimagined in the social media age.

A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ORDUBADI’S DRAMA “SEVGİLƏR”

M. Said Ordubadi who started his literary career in the beginning of the XX. century was an Azerbaijani contemporary novelist. He always aimed to reach his reader and be didactic with his works. Ordubadi who wrote to be benefit to people, is renowned for historical novels in Azerbaijani literature. But he started with poetry and continued to write in other genres like short stories and novels too. He also wrote some essays for some magazines or newspapers. Some of his dramas were published in little books or journals when he was alive or some of them were published after his death, for the first time in “Əsərləri” in Bakı, 1964. His two dramas published in this book are in verse. And the other four dramas are in prose. “Sevgilər” and “Maral” are the dramas written in verse. This examination is a stylistic analysis of Ordubadi’s poetic drama “Sevgilər”. The instrinsic approach has been taken as the basis for this analysis. According to the available data, none of his dramas has ever been examined in terms of stylistics. So the analysis based on some stylistic devices has aimed to show what sort of personal style Ordubadi tried to use to reach his audience or reader. This examination will provide the readers/audience some concrete examples with reference to how Ordubadi deliberately used stylistic devices in the drama.

Does simplification hold true for machine translations? A corpus-based analysis of lexical diversity in text varieties across genres

Extensive studies have described the linguistic features of human translations and verified the existence of the simplification translation universal. However, little has been known about the linguistic features of machine translations, although machine translation, as a unique modality of translation, has become an integral part of translation practice. This study is intended to test whether the simplification translation universal observed in human translations also holds true for machine translations. If so, are simplification features in machine translations different significantly from those in human translations? And does genre significantly affect simplification features? To this end, we built a balanced comparable corpus containing three text varieties, i.e., machine translations, human translations and target-language originals across three genres namely contemporary novels, government documents and academic abstracts. Based on the corpus, we conducted a systematic comparison of lexical diversity, as a proxy for simplification, of different text varieties. The results show that simplification is corroborated overall in both machine and human translations when compared with target-language originals, and machine translations are more simplified than human translations. Additionally, genre is found to exert a significant influence on the lexical diversity of different text varieties. This study is expected to expand the scope of corpus-based translation studies on the one hand and to offer insights into the improvement of machine translation systems on the other hand.

Man’s encounter with nature: an ecocriticism analysis of western classic and contemporary novels

People regardless of race and gender significantly learn as they interact with nature that leads to resiliency, adaptation, connectivity, and the fragility and beauty of life, which helps them build a strong harmony and interaction with it. Through literature, this context was further explored to determine how is it possible for human to challenge the nature. This study aims to discover and explore the relationship of human and nature through a thematic analysis of two award winning novels, “The Old Man and The Sea” by Cuban author Ernest Hemmingway and “The Life of Pi” by Yann Martel, a Canadian writer. Through in-depth analysis, five themes emerged in this study, dominance of nature, respect for nature, spiritual intercession, perseverance, and skills over luck. Symbolisms of the two novels that constitute the themes were also compared and contrasted. This study employed ecocriticism to further understand the rhythm of human and nature’s existence.

Read like a man: comparing narratives of masculinity in adolescent literature.

Recent movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp have surfaced and challenged ideas about masculinity in popular conversations. In particular, these ideas have centered around "toxic masculinity"-a version of masculinity that reflects stereotyped, dated, and even dangerous expectations for manhood. This notion of masculinity can be reinforced in a number of ways, especially through pop culture, where it runs the risk of becoming commonly accepted or normalized. This study evaluates the narratives of masculinity in three different novels that are marketed toward high school-aged students in the United States: Lord of the Flies; Gabi, A Girl in Pieces; and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Using a critical literacy lens, this study considers the symbols, behaviors, expectations, and meanings given to masculinity in and through each novel and considers the implications of this analysis for adolescent readership inside and outside of schooling. The study concludes that the more contemporary novels showcase a range of masculine portrayals, including positive, affirming versions of masculinity, compared to a more singular and pessimistic one found in a novel traditionally used in schools. Thus, the study concludes that formal schooling may be an important way to address and disrupt unhealthy versions of masculinity.

Translocation and migrants’ live-in experiences: A literary discourse on select novels

With the huge surge of African migrants in the West, especially in the post Covid-19 era, it becomes important to investigate these migrants’ experiences as portrayed in literary texts by writers. Hence, this research examines the representation of migrant challenges in African literature through a critical discourse on two contemporary novels: Abdulrazak Gurnah's Gravel Heart and Helon Habila's Travelers. Adopting Homi Bhabha’s theory, hybridity, the study focuses on how these literary works depict the struggles of African Migrants as they navigate and interpret both cultures– West/African while in the diaspora in order to survive. The discourse highlights the issues of displacement, dislocation, alignment, cultural identity, and the struggle for survival in a foreign land. By exploring the similarities and differences between the two novels, the paper reveals the complexity and diversity of African migrant experiences as it provides insights into the broader issues of globalization, colonialism, and migration. Ultimately, the research argues that African literature plays a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the migrant experiences and in promoting social justice and human rights.

A Study on the Laboring Aunt Representation and Care Politics in Korean Contemporary Novels

A Study on the Laboring Aunt Representation and Care Politics in Korean Contemporary Novels

The Carnivalesque in Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men and Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel: A Bakhtinian Reading

ABSTRACT Two contemporary novels, namely, Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men (2011) and Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel (2020) are given a Bakhtinian reading in an attempt to trace the presence of carnivalistic elements in the two texts and to investigate their significance. As such, we argue in this paper that both novels are carnivalized in a way that does not only reflect the precarious, absurd nature of contemporary reality, but also serves narrative and esthetic ends. We also propose that even though these two novels are seemingly very dissimilar, they in fact have more in common than meets the eye. Their indulgence in the carnivalesque bridges partially, if not indeed wholly the gap between the otherwise divergent narrative worlds and establishes several channels of communication between them. The Bakhtinian reading of the two novels sheds light on the authors’ approaches to their texts which rely on a blend of the comical and serious. In consequence, the carnivalesque is evoked and the two authors benefit from its ambience of incredibility and implausibility to flesh out their takes on time, space, ideology and humankind.

An exit out of the 'hive': post-apocalyptic fictions of data capitalism and technological acceleration

Digital technologies have come to frame the everyday interactions of our world, meshing together public and private spaces into seamless singular platforms for work, socialisation and leisure. At the centre of these transformations are the market imperatives of companies who trade in predictions based upon behavioural data, utilising a range of surveillance strategies to capture information that shapes the most effective corporate interventions into our lives. Shoshana Zuboff's 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power provides a thorough overview of these issues, constructing a new vocabulary with which to identify the forces that shape political, financial, and social processes on a global scale. However, the book maintains a liberal political alignment which reaffirms the powers of the right, advocating for a partial technological deceleration which preserves the violent political-economic foundations underpinning surveillance and digital control. This article examines Margaret Atwood's The Testaments and Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon, two contemporary novels which test out the predictions of technodeterminist logic in unequivocal ways, in order to interrogate the imaginative limitations prevalent in responses to data capitalism.