Literal Dimension Research Articles

Clay

What is the ontologizing effect of a care framework? And how can clay cease to insist on itself as an abstracted medium of self‐making? The artists Jade Montserrat, Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, and Cassils each work clay as a material in their performance. Their toil of working with this organic material signals to the work of self‐care as maintenance and ecological maintenance, a sign of the forces of reproduction that may befall marginalized people and communities within the collective care of the earth. Drawing up an analysis of the maintenance work of these three clay performances, this article builds toward an ecocritical framework that takes account of the literal dimensions of what might otherwise fall into the trappings of an abstract, conceptual affinity. That is, existing as conceptually closer to nonhuman nature carries duties and responsibilities, labor and toil, burdens of care, self‐care, maintenance, and the sweaty, untidy, unraveling, by nature always unfinished work of recovery. The article explores a notion of transactional care, asking after the distributed ontologizing effect, the widened field of enclosure, and the matrices of legibility that earth‐care paradigms might afford.

An analysis of 4c skill on heat in facing the industrial revolution era 4.0

The purpose of writing this article is to find out how to build human character to face the industrial era 4.0, so that they have an understanding of digital literal dimensions and can increase the graduates’ competence who have 4Cs skills (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication) by using collaborative inquiry, especially on temperature and heat material. This type of research is a quasi experiment with a pretest-posttest control group design. The result of this research is that students 4Css skills using collaborative inquiry learning model are better than students4Cs skills using conventional learning at SMA Negeri 14 Medan. Then, it is hoped that they will be able to produce humans who are in accordance with the demands of the industrial era 4.0. With 4Cs skills, they can gain and increase cooperation in a group to solve certain problems, increase their tolerance for peer opinions, try to think critically and creatively to solve problems related to something.

Transformation model for character education of students

The aim of the current study is to find out and explain the transformation of character education of students observed from the role of teacher in line with the vision, responsibility, social sensitivity, logical ability, and honesty in producing well prepared output to encounter today's global digital. This study applied qualitative approach with phenomenological type of sociology-oriented educational research that is general, flexible, dynamic, exploratory, and experiences developed during the research process. Data analysis through reducing information, presenting information, verification, and concluding. Result of the study found that transformation of student character education is an effort made to face 21st-century education (Industry 4.0 revolution) today where every educational institution implements digital literacy habits (Digital-age Literacy) in the classroom/school learning as transformation of character education of modern students in order to gain understanding of these digital literal dimensions and to develop digital literacy learning materials and methods at school and outside of school. The application of digital literacy becomes finding of model in transformation of student character education that is inseparable from the role of teachers in learning activities applied in line with their vision, responsibility, social sensitivity, logical ability and honesty to produce a well-prepared output to face global digital with the flow of developmental applications, technology and to be able to compete at the international level.
 
 Keywords: Transformation of Character Education, Digital Literacy and the Role of Teachers

Du vagabondage à la sainteté – la quête de soi dans Becket ou l’honneur de Dieu de Jean Anouilh

At first glance, the protagonist of the play has none of the characteristics of a vagabond. However, subjected to a more thorough analysis, he proves to be endowed with many features typical of a wanderer, such as alienation, unrest, loneliness, social isolation and individualism. In the text he is described as a man who is « in the search for himself, » his exile is, first and foremost, a metaphysical search for his own « self » and for the meaning of life. He is also a character undergoing a metamorphosis – from a lecher he becomes a saint. The shift seems to come as a consequence of being an exile from his own country. This exile, however, in its literal dimension, becomes too heavy a burden for him, and, be rid of the burden, he chooses to die a martyr. This article presents the evolution of the personality and the shift in the social standing of the character, as well as the reasons for, and consequence of, his exile.

QUO VADIS’ OU TESTAMENT STUDIES? ’N RESPONS

This article responds to that of Prof Douglas Lawrie “Old Testament: Quo Vadis?” The author agrees with Lawrie’s focus on the historical and literal dimension of the Old Testament text as well as the important contribution by feminist Old Testament scholars. However, there are a few challenges that Old Testament studies have to face in future: Do the students come to the university with a historical consciousness? Do the students have the language abilities to appreciate the literary features of the Old Testament? What is the role of the Old Testament in an African context? What is the relationship between Old Testament and church? There is a saying: “If the church has problems with her doctrine, she listens to the New Testament. If the church has problems with her life, she listens to the Old Testament.” We in South Africa are in desperate need for people to live the biblical values of humanity and social justice. Old Testament studies can make an important contribution. Some people say “Knowledge is power.” We can change this saying to emphasize another aspect: “Knowledge is service.” Old Testament scholars must accept the challenge to serve the academic world, the church and society with their knowledge of the Old Testament, otherwise the Old Testament will be a forgotten book and no-one will live its important values.

From a Philological and Philosophical Perspective

Forum: Close Reading Any interpretation or analysis of a text or an image, of a map, or a constellation of stars requires full attention to the details in order to reach a maximum understanding of what is presented to us, whether we consider, for example, a fifteenth-century poem by Oswald von Wolkenstein or a novel by the Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller. If we do not first gain a comprehensive knowledge of the meaning of every word, the individual phrases, sentence components, and then of the complete text, we hardly can venture into the critical examination. No interpretation will be solidly built, whether from a Marxist, Feminist, Structuralist angle, or drawing on the history of mentality, without that condition being met as postulated by New, and in this regard actually Old, Criticism. We can easily fail to perceive the important messages of a text if we do not grasp, for instance, dialect variations, jargons, metaphorical expressions, but then also the meter, rhyme, and tonality of the language used, not to forget style, idiosyncratic expressions, idiomatic phrases, etc. Every text that enters an aesthetic framework is built on a highly sophisticated structure, and without knowing all the nuts and bolts, we won't have a chance to penetrate deeper into its fundamental content and essence. To make a comparison, I cannot venture into analyzing the spiritual meaning of a Gothic cathedral if I do not have the virtual blueprint in front of me. As a matter of fact, every foreign language teacher, that is, every teacher, for instance, lays the foundation for the task at hand, a close reading, which grows over time and should get closer and closer to the core of the matter as a natural progression. In that process, however, something surprising happens we are all familiar with. Since the earliest Biblical times, and throughout the ages until today, reading has been a medium for uncovering the many different levels of meaning, that is, we practice exegesis. Dante knew this exceedingly well (Tenth Letter to Can Grande della Scala), and before him Thomas Aquinas had explicated it in a magisterial way in his Summa Theologica , beginning with the literal dimension, turning to the typological or allegorical, then to the tropological or moral, and finally reaching the anagogical or spiritual (Henri de Lubac, S.J., Exegese medievale, 1959). Of course, some of the most painful conflicts in the history of Western civilization were the results of differing readings of texts (Jews versus Christians; see now Alexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust, 2007) and their meanings. …

“I have no story to tell!”: Maternal Rage in Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black

Intertexts, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2000 Ihave no story to tell!”: Maternal Rage in Susan Hill’s The Woman in Blacli D o n n a C o x U n i v e r s i t y o f H u l l Preface This paper considers Susan Hill’s novel The Woman in Black, atext that, despite its adaption by Stephen Mallatrat into along-running theatri¬ cal production for the West End, has received little critical attention in terms of literary analysis. It makes use of psychoanalytical and post¬ structuralist theory to comment upon the location of the writing subject andtheproductionofnarrativeinrelationtoamaternalpresenceoperating as aschematic absence in Hill’s text. Just as the fictional mother haunts the textual production of Hill’s main character, Victorian ghost story motifs and textual references haunt the storyline of her novel so that amechanics of intertextuality may be seen to operate within its literal dimension. Its own narrative mechanism also offers ahaunting from within, as stories witlnnstoryareunravelledsothat,justasthenarrative“I”ishauntedbyits terrible tale, the story itself is revealed within another layer of narrative. Thispresentsuswithacomplexinterleavingofnarrationreminiscentofthe convolutednarrativestructureofEmilyBronte’sWutheringHei^/hts,ex¬ cept that in this parodic tale, “the wind did not moan through the case¬ ment” (Hill95).2 TheintertextualreferencescontainedinthetextualbodyofTheWoman in Black function by means of an implied extra-textual presence, which is actually amechanics of operative absence in the textual structure. The storyline is haunted by these other texts, which pre-exist it and rely upon thereader’srecollectionofpasttextualencountersthatmaybecalledupby the interpretative act. This scenario of reading echoes the replay of past eventstowhichKippsissubjectedinhisownpsychicalarena.Whentheaf¬ fairs of Mrs. Drablow are first related to him, he notes that “[t]he business beginning to sound like something from aVictorian novel ...” (28). He later describes Eel Marsh House as “like the house of poor Miss Havisham”(61).Theactivationofsuchcommentsreliesuponthereader’s recognition of the motifs, characters and conventions of Victorian texts. Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1860) is an absent presence in the text due to the inference carried in its title. Kipps may be said to occupy the place of the detective in astructure which is dependent for the success of its revelatory movement upon the depiction of tantalizing suspense. What is hidden provides the page-turning impetus to reveal, while its horror is w a s 7 4 Cox—“I have no story to tell! 7 5 directly dependent upon remaining concealed. To stave ofFhis terror of the unknown, Kipps reads the poetry of John Clare and Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian (93-4, 107) as if wishing to displace himself from his “present” situation by being absorbed into texts tied to other spaces and places. It is perhaps ironic that Clare’s poem “I Am” contains the lines, Ilong for scenes, where man hath never trod Aplace where woman never smiled or wept. (Ricks 169) Another character who reads himself to sleep due to the effects of an unsettling haunting is Professor Parkins in the M. R. James short story, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.” Events of the day cause him to “get out abook” while being contained within the pages of one (James 83). The Professor, formerly possessed of acertainty that ghosts are “not real,” is haunted by anotliing which comes in answer to awhistle. The name of this short story will be recognized as the title of Hill’s chapter, “WhistleandI’llCometoYou”inwhichSpiderthedogcomestohisname in adirect performative result of tlie auditory signifier. It is interesting that anotherdimensionisaddedtotliisintertextualscenariobyJames’simplied reference to the Robert Burns’s poem, “Oh, Whisde, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.” This tertiary' haunting of text within text within text is analogous to the mechanics of the story with which we are presented, in which Jennet’s story is contained within Kipps’s narration of the ghost storywhichisrecollectivelyplacedwithinhisprimarynarrationwithwhich the text opens. This results in abreakage of the narrative “I” which becomes dislocated in its very localized existence, tied as it is to the con¬ ventions of textual representation. “I” becomes “not-I” in this intrusion of sign systems one into the other. Kippswriteshisghoststoryagainstthestereotypedconventionsofthe Victorian ghost story. His tale will not tell of “dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tappingatcasements,ofbowlingsandshriekings,groaningsandscuttlings...

Dante as Dramatist: The Myth of the Earthly Paradise and Tragic Vision in the "Divine Comedy"

The overwhelming concentration on questions of allegory in Dante studies, Franco Masciandaro contends, has come at the expense of considerations of the poem's literal dimension. And while the dramatic quality of the Divine Comedy is often recognized, few critics have made it the object of sustained inquiry. In Dante as Dramatist, Masciandaro refocuses on the poetry of the theater in the Commedia by examining Dante's interpretation of the myth of the Earthly Paradise as it is represented in a number of key episodes of Inferno and Purgatorio. His principal objective is twofold: to analyze Dante's dramaturgy, especially the creative force of the tragic rhythm that the scenes under scrutiny produce as they succeed one another; and to show how Dante stages the action of the pilgrim's journey to the Earthly Paradise as the fundamental conflict between the dream of a future, second innocence, which ignores the tact of evil, and the recovery of another innocence, analogous to that found in Eden before the Fall. Dante as Dramatist will be of unique interest not only to students and scholars of Dante but also to those who study dramatic forms in literature and theories of the tragic.

Perceiving Similarity and Comprehending Metaphor

We conducted a series of 3 experiments to assess the comprehension of 4 types of cross-modal (synesthetic) similarities in nearly 500 3.5-13.5-year-old children and more than 100 adults. We tested both perceptual and verbal (metaphoric) modes. Children of all ages and adults matched pitch to brightness and loudness to brightness, thereby showing that even very young children recognize perceptual similarities between hearing and vision. Children did not consistently recognize similarity between pitch and size until about age 11. This difference in developmental timetables is compatible with the view that pitch-brightness and loudness-brightness similarities are intrinsic characteristics of perception (characteristics based, perhaps, on common sensory codes), whereas pitch-size similarity may be learned (perhaps through association of size with resonance properties). In a parallel verbal task, even 4-year-old children showed at least some capacity to translate meanings metaphorically from one modality to another (e.g., rating "low pitched" as dim and "high pitched" as bright). But not all literal meanings produced metaphoric equivalents in the youngest children (e.g., rating "sunlight" brighter but not louder than "moonlight"). Improvements with age in making metaphoric translations of synesthetic expressions paralleled increasing differentiation of meanings along literal dimensions and increasing capacity to integrate meanings of components in compound expressions. We postulate that perceptual knowledge about objects and events is represented in terms of locations in a multidimensional space; cross-modal similarities imply that the space is also multimodal. Verbal processes later gain access to this graded perceptual knowledge, thus permitting the interpretation of synesthetic metaphors according to the rules of cross-modal perception.

Nuclear Arms and the Desire for World Destruction

war, based on rational self-interest or survival instincts, are not adequate to explain the potential for nuclear annihilation. The desire for world destruction is presented as being derived from the desires for individual selfdestruction, for aggressive destruction, for mutual death, and for war itself. Images for world-destructive deities are examined as projections of this desire. It is argued that the attraction to destruction is not most fundamentally an attraction to biological death but, rather, to a symbolic or archetypal process of death and rebirth. This process can be seen in the primitive rituals of world destruction and regeneration which may have been, in the Neolithic period, the precursors of the first wars. Attitudes toward war and nuclear arms are examined as fundamentally archetypal processes expressed in the literal dimension.