British Fiction Research Articles

Representation of SIBERIA Linguocultural Concept in the English Fiction of the 18th – early 20th Centuries

The article describes and systematizes the constants and cultural codes of SIBERIA, a linguocultural concept, through the case of British and American linguistic cultures. Mythologization of SIBERIA, built on the «friend-or-foe» dualism, reveals similarities with the mythologeme of the «World Tree» (an inner cultural space of the people’s cosmic world of firmness, desire to build the «middle world», opposite to the «lower world» of nature, vast territories, extreme cold, giantism, and terrifying social conditions). The permanent and variable elements of SIBERIA, represented in the artistic discourse, are considered; the explication found in some English works of the 18th – 20th centuries are investigated for their frequency and, further, classified

Negotiating Conflict: Regional and National Identities in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction in English

Pakistan has frequently been viewed as a stronghold of Islamic radicals, often overlooking the fact that various trends of both dormant and obvious conflicts exist between the politics of religion and region. Whereas the former is mainly controlled by the state, the latter is generally influenced by language and ethnicity. The state’s monolithic notion of national identity, from the country’s birth in 1947 to the present, has overshadowed the regional identities mainly the Pashtuns, Baluchis, and Sindhis, and disregarded the minority credos such as Shias, Parsis, Ahmadis, Hindus, and Christians. The present article aims to explore how contemporary Pakistani fiction in English spotlights images of a fragmented national self, underlining plights of the aforementioned marginal groups and exhibiting strong resistance to hidebound national identity. Reviewing contemporary Pakistani fiction in English with a particular focus on the fiction of Bapsi Sidhwa, Sara Suleri, Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Bina Shah, and Jamil Ahmad, this paper aims to bring critical attention of the scholars to the socio-cultural and political valuation of the regional identities.

AN OVERLOOKED ADULTERESS: ANNABELLA’S IRRESISTIBLE PASSION IN ANNE BRONTË’S THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL

ABSTRACT: Most critics and readers of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) focus on the triangle formed by Helen Graham, her first husband Arthur Huntingdon and the second one Gilbert Markham. However, as I argue here, Brontë narrates yet another romantic story, that of Arthur and his mistress Annabella. Helen’s unhappiness is actually caused by Annabella’s earlier decision to marry a richer, aristocratic man rather than Arthur, whom she loves. Since Helen is Arthur’s second choice he never truly loves her, nor does Annabella love her husband Lord Lowborough. Arthur and Annabella’s irresistible passion and ensuing adultery ultimately destroys both marriages and are, thus, a central (but neglected) aspect of the plot. Likewise, both Annabella’s unique characterization as an adulteress and her adultery with Arthur have been overlooked as Anne Brontë’s singular contribution to the history of how this theme has been represented in British fiction.

Post-Millennial Indian Dystopian Fiction: A Developing Canon of Precarity, (Im)purity and Ideas of India(nness)

This paper is interested in an emerging canon of post-millennial Indian dystopian fiction in English and the related themes of precarity and (im)purity. After introducing some recent novels and texts from the domestic Indian literary scene, the paper looks to demonstrate how precarity, (im)purity and changing ideas of India(nness) are manifested in Prayaag Akbar’s Leila, a 2017 Indian post-millennial dystopian novel in English. To focus on these particular themes, I consider the novel’s urban geography in terms of its modes of segregation, specifically how the walled sectors of the dystopian, near-future metropolis divide a city ruled over by the Repeaters and pervasive surveillance systems, whilst the Slums and the Outroads lie beyond the city limits. This focus on (im)pure involves an examination of representations of class, privilege, freedom of movement and religious affiliation. Overall, this paper is especially interested in how the dystopian as a narrative mode is harnessed in order to recount ‘precarious’ urban existence, a theme that runs through the wider body of post-millennial Indian dystopian fiction. Through discussion of the (im)purity trope and particularly through the narrative mode of the dystopian, I argue that Leila, like other recent Indian works of this genre, tangentially engages with certain socio-political themes of the second decade of the millennium such as segregation and develops ideas of India(nness) in relation to the Indian post-millennial contemporary.

A Review on Instructing English through Literary Genre

This study aims to highlight the utilization of literary genre as a well-liked method for instructing both language skills (that is to say, writing, reading, speaking, and listening) and language fields (that are grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary). Why employing literary textbooks in foreign language classrooms and the main motives for choosing appropriate fictional texts in these classrooms are emphasized to make the reader acquainted with the motivating incentives and standards for foreign language teachers’ employing and picking erudite textbooks. Additionally, the teaching of language skills and literary genre gains benefits of diverse fields of literature (like drama, poems, tragedy and tales) to language teaching and to several difficulties met by language teachers in the sphere of instructing English using fiction (i.e. shortage of training in the field of literature teaching English as a Second English and Teaching English as a Foreign Language curriculums, deficiency of precise aims describing the function of fiction in English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language, foreign language teachers’ not possessing the experience and preparation in literature, and lack of suitable teaching tools to be utilized by foreign language teachers in a class milieu) are taken into consideration.

Parenthetical constructions: structure and semantics

The present article studies structural models and semantic content of parenthetical insertions in modern English fiction. The relevance of the research is determined by its focus on the study of the corpus of parenthesis in the modern English language within the framework of the general science issue ‘man and the language’. The study is novel in that it is carried out using evidence from modern English literature (texts written by S. King, J. Barnes, D. Mitchell, J. Coe, Laura van den Berg). This article will be of interest to researchers dealing with problems of parenthesis in modern English and to specialists in semantic syntax.

Rewriting Universes: Post-Brexit Futures in Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe Quartet

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a new strand of British fiction that grapples with the causes and consequences of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union. Building on Kristian Shaw’s pioneering work in this new literary field, this article shifts the focus from literary fiction to science fiction. It analyzes Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe quartet—comprised of Europe in Autumn (pub. 2014), Europe at Midnight (pub. 2015), Europe in Winter (pub. 2016) and Europe at Dawn (pub. 2018)—as a case study in British science fiction’s response to the recent nationalistic turn in the UK. This article draws on a bespoke interview with Hutchinson and frames its discussion within a range of theories and studies, especially the European hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. It argues that the Fractured Europe quartet deploys science fiction topoi to interrogate and criticize the recent rise of English nationalism. It further contends that the Fractured Europe books respond to this nationalistic turn by setting forth an estranged vision of Europe and offering alternative modalities of European identity through the mediation of photography and the redemptive possibilities of cooking.

Novel Cleopatras: Romance Historiography and the Dido Tradition in English Fiction, 1688–1785 by Nicole Horejsi

<i>Novel Cleopatras: Romance Historiography and the Dido Tradition in English Fiction, 1688–1785</i> by Nicole Horejsi

Indecent Proposals: Plotting Marriage inOur Mutual FriendandThe Mystery of Edwin Drood

ABSTRACTThe abundance of problematic proposals in nineteenth-century British fiction suggests a breakdown in the already inequitable gendered social ritual of proposing and accepting marriage. Coercive proposals, in particular, disrupt the element of a woman's free choice that Victorians assumed to be critical to successfully performing this ritual. Using speech act theory as its analytical framework, this article examines how Charles Dickens, in Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, presents two case studies of marriage proposals that are not merely coercive but are explicitly threatening. The threats that Bradley Headstone and John Jasper embed in their proposals can be read as invalidating the performative promises of the proposals themselves, as the act of promising suggests an effort to fulfill the wishes of the promisee, while the act of threatening suggests an effort to violate those wishes deliberately. This is more than a semantic distinction: because marriage proposals were and are such a significant part of Victorian life and the Victorian novel, their proper performance is a requirement of stability in the social order and the literary form. When the ritual of the proposal breaks down into threats, so too does the obligation of its recipient to respond according to conventional scripts, and the words and actions of Lizzie Hexam and Rosa Bud suggest that Dickens saw in such proposals opportunities for the expansion of women's agency at the extreme margins of the marriage plot.

"En Acıklı Öykü"den "Bir İhtiras Hikâyesi"ne: Ford Madox Ford'un İyi Asker Romanında Modernist Anlatı Teknikleri ve Temalar

Modernist British fiction has been customarily associated with a small group of authors, including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Samuel Beckett and their experimental works. This highly exclusive view of modernism largely overshadowed the place and legacy of Ford Madox Ford, along with some of his contemporaries, in the history of modernist British fiction. Despite this neglect in critical trajectory, Ford’s works, in fact, anticipates the technical and thematic concerns of the modernist fiction in many ways. The aim of this paper is to explore Ford’s affinities with major modernist writers through a comprehensive analysis of his 1915 novel The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion. The subtitle of the novel “A Tale Passion” provides the necessary critical framework for literary analysis with its implications about Ford’s theory of the novel. Accordingly, the first part of the article focuses on the narrative strategies inspired by the definition of ‘tale’ and explores how Ford’s impressionistic writing style challenges the established conventions of the nineteenth century realism. The second part discusses the way Ford employs the theme of destructive passion to explore the overarching themes of shifting sense of morality and class as well as the political turmoil in the pre-war period.

번역가 문체의 코퍼스 주도적 연구 - ‘as if’ 비유 번역을 중심으로 -

This paper looks into the translator’s style by examining two translators’ translation patterns found in their Korean translations of three English fictions each. The corpora compiled for the current study are comprised of translator Lee Inkyu’s translation corpus and translator Kim Oksoo’s translation corpus. Through the ‘n-gram’ analysis, the most frequent words (MFWs) in the English texts were identified. Among the identified MFWs, ‘as if’ comparisons were chosen to be examined closely. Then the corresponding words and contexts to the ‘as if’ comparisons were extracted from the translator corpora, and the n-gram analysis for the newly compiled translation corpora followed. Consistent patterns were observed in the two translators’ multiple translation texts. The stylistic features found for each translator in this study can be used in translator attribution analysis: 1) when one or more of the two translators in question is considered to be the probable translator of an anonymously translated text and 2) by comparing the translator(s)’s stylistic traits with the anonymously translated text.

The functions of heraldic symbols in the English fiction

The article considers the main functions performed by heraldic symbols due to their verbalization in blazons as descriptions of coats of arms by a specific set of language constructs. Heraldic symbols as the quintessence of culture are analyzed in the communicative-functional aspect. There are some special characteristics of heraldic symbolic units, namely, their multifunctional orientation, the possibility of multiple interpretations, the presence of a nomination mechanism, and others. The mediative and mnemonic functions of symbols, taken from the works of Lotman, are manifested in the heraldic symbols of fiction as one of the mechanisms of cultural memory, therefore, the symbol is a mediator of the semiosis spheres. The list of functions is supplemented by the consideration of the social dimension, because heraldic symbols are potentiated in the society, therefore, the essence of the identification-integrative and adaptive-regulatory functions of heraldic symbolism is revealed. The concepts of multimodal imagery and synesthesia effect, which are embodied in the interaction of verbal and nonverbal symbols, are involved in the analysis of the blazons on the material of English fiction. The theme of symbols functioning is supplemented by the classification of the main functions and subfunctions proposed by the author. The focus of the study is also the identification function, resulting in an emphasis on the role of a special heraldic language in the expression of the personality. Taking into account the types of coats of arms, the article considers the coding function in the punning and allusive coats of arms, as well as in the heraldic lexemes borrowed from other languages. The cross-cutting idea of the article is revealed through the interpretation of heraldic symbols in their functioning in the works of English fiction and poetry and summarized in the definition of the symbol not only as a linguistic unit, but also as a semiotic phenomenon of culture.

Follow the Hatred: The Production of Negative Feeling in Emily Brontë'sWuthering Heights

Follow the Hatred: The Production of Negative Feeling in Emily Brontë's<i>Wuthering Heights</i>

Demons of the mind: The ‘psy’ sciences and film in the long 1960s

This introduction provides context for a collection of articles that came out of a research symposium held at the Science Museum's Dana Research Centre in 2018 for the ‘ Demons of Mind: the Interactions of the ‘Psy’ Sciences and Cinema in the Sixties' project. Across a range of events and research outputs, Demons of the Mind sought to map the multifarious interventions and influences of the ‘psy’ sciences (psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis) on film culture in the long 1960s. The articles that follow discuss, in order: critical engagement with theories of child development in 1960s British science fiction; the ‘horrors’ of contemporary psychiatry and neuroscience portrayed in the Hollywood blockbuster The Exorcist (1973); British social realist filmmakers' alliances with proponents of ‘anti-psychiatry’; experimental filmmaker Jane Arden's coalescence of radical psychiatry and radical feminist techniques in her ‘psychodrama’ The Other Side of the Underneath (1973); and the deployment of film technologies by ‘psy’ professionals during the post-war period to capture and interpret mother-infant interaction.

Authenticity of liberal feminism in Namita Gokhale's texts

Liberal feminism abbreviates women’s right and their empowerment. The aim of this study highlights liberal feminism in Namita Gokhale’s works The Book of Shadows (2001), Priya: In Incredible Indyaa (2011) and Things to leave Behind (2016). The features of liberal feminism exhibit the women protagonists’ grief and exertion to attain their goal and their responsibilities. Namita Gokhale is a multifarious writer, and her popular works are The Book of Shadows (2001), Priya: In Incredible Indyaa (2011) and Things to leave Behind (2016). Indian Fiction in general as well as in Indian English Fiction, both original and in translation (Gupta, 2020). The selected works have the issues of liberal feminism ideas that reflect throughout her writing. In Namita Gokhale’s works, the major protagonists that represent liberal feminist attributes are Rachita, Priya and Tilottama. Each character has the reflection of liberal feminist ideas through their life. The notable thinkers of liberal feminism are John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft, Betty Friedan, Rosemarie Tong, Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum and Zillah Eisenstein.

Dynamic properties of abstracts to works of fiction in english

The article is devoted to dynamic transformational processes within contemporary English minitexts (small-format texts). The paper reflects the findings of a research that encompasses 500 advertising abstracts to works of fiction. Transformational dynamics is disclosed in terms of linguosynergetics based on a dynamic-and-systemic representation of evolutionary developments in book abstract discourse. Particularly, the conventional invariant discourse features are considered; non-systemic stochastic elements are revealed in such texts; abstract discourse ability of generating senses which exceed mechanic addition of text units meanings, i.e. functional synergism, is under analysis. The authors argue that fluctuations are observed on the lexical, structural and contextual levels of text organisation. The analysis of the data obtained leads to the conclusion that the system features of book abstracts are currently undergoing transformation of their pragmasemantic parameters, which are moving towards those of purely advertising discourse. Today’s trend to the reduction of the verbal communication volume shows that the prospect for further investigation of minitexts (including book abstract discourse) lies in the elaboration of the pragmasemantic synergism concept, with the said discourse feature being of special significance to the texts aimed at compact incorporation of considerable contents.

Too isolated, too insular: American Literature and the World

Are American authors homers? Do they devote too much of their attention to American concerns and settings? Is American literature as a whole different from other national literatures in its degree of self-interest? We attempt to answer these questions, and to address related issues of national literary identity, by examining the distribution of geo-graphic usage in more than 100,000 volumes of American, British, and other English-language fiction published between 1850 and 2009. We offer four principal findings: American literature consistently features greater domestic attention than does British literature; American literature is, nevertheless, significantly concerned with global loca-tions; politics and other international conflicts are meaningful drivers of changing literary attention in American and British fiction alike; and prize-nominated books are the only examined subclass of American fiction that has become significantly more international in the decades after World War II, a fact that may account for readers’ unfounded percep-tion of a similar overall shift in American literature.

The British Sentimental Novel Corpus (BSNC) and the ROC-DDC alternation at the level of the individual

This article provides a description of the British Sentimental Novel Corpus (BSNC) and a case study that explores, at the level of the individual, the relation between the Reaction Object Construction (ROC) and the Direct Discourse Construction (DDC). The BSNC is a large-scale specialised corpus that comprises full novels of eleven canonical authors across three generations from 19th century British fiction. It aims at studying language as both a social and a cognitive phenomenon and, in line with a recent trend in historical sociolinguistics, at exploring the interaction between individual and aggregate levels (see Fonteyn 2017; Hilpert 2020; Petré et al. 2019). The first part describes the methodological principles that underlie the design and compilation of the BSNC. In the second part, we present a new case study that aims to determine whether our previous aggregate findings also hold at the individual level. The results serve to confirm our hypothesis: first, individual changes in the ROC and the DDC run in parallel across almost the entire 19th century, correlating most significantly between 1851 and 1860. Second, the aggregate-level division of labour between these two functionally similar constructions turned out to be a feature of all authors in the BSNC. Last, the ROC-DDC alternation has been attested in an important proportion of the BSNC novels, with only a relatively small group of texts using solely the older and less extravagant variant (i.e. the DDC). This suggests that the alternation as such represents a cognitive reality for these individual writers across their lifespan.

دراسات ما بعد الكولونيالية، الاسلاموفوبيا وإدراج حقائق الإسلام في الأدب الأمريكي: رواية "لو يجب أن أتكلم" لأم زكية نموذجا

Islam has been growing quickly in the world, yet it is a predominately misunderstood religion. Othering Islam through media propaganda and western writings, and mis associating it with some assumptions are still rampant. Thus, the researcher attempts at showing these assumptions stereotypical prejudgments of Islam and Muslims that are commonly associated with Western assumptions resulted in Islamophobia and exploring the role of counter-discourses in contemporary Black-American Fiction by analyzing Umm Zakiyyah’s If I Should Speak and showing to what extents the novel has an important role in correcting assumptions and narrating the Islamic facts. Thus, this article highlights Umm Zakiyyah’s narrative of Islam’s truth within its historical sources the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The paper analyses Umm Zakiyyah’s reconsideration of Islam’s truth, by focusing on the meaning of Islam and being a Muslim. To do so, this qualitative and non-empirical research is conducted in a descriptive-theoretical analysis, using the selected novel as a primary source and library and online critical materials, such as books and journal articles, as secondary references. Based on the analysis, it is found that Umm Zakiyyah narrates Islam and Muslims to counter the West’s negative view on Islam. Furthermore, based on the story, the power of Muslim self-identification within the historical transparent knowledge based on the Quran’s perspectives leads to the conversion of Tamika Douglass, proving that Islam can be perceived positively by non-Muslims; in this case, it is represented within its subjectivity. It is found that the novel can be a tool of Islamic da’wah [call for the faith]. Hence, the Muslim writers and novelists should write to solve the challenges facing Muslims and the Ummah by Islamizing English fiction.

The construction of (white) working-class identity in narrative literary texts and its contribution to socio-cultural and politico-financial inequality

ABSTRACT Using Fredric Jameson’s theory of the ideologeme to trace representations of working- and white working-class characters through a selection of contemporary literary texts, this article shows how the construction of (white) working-class identity in literature has been influenced by, and fed back into, mainstream representations of the (white) working class in politics and media, thus contributing to cycles of socio-cultural, financial and political exclusion. This article continues by arguing that there is a lack of rounded and developed white working-class characters in British fiction, specifically in London and the South-East, and that contemporary authors continue to rely on typified representations rather than interrogate them, therefore remaining complicit in feedback loops that work to marginalise the (white) working class. To conclude, an argument is put forward in support of opening up space in the public arena for both imagined and real individual voices from marginalised groups to be heard, providing more direct access to channels of representation and an interrogation of the blame narratives that are used to maintain these groups’ socio-economic and political exclusion.