Literary Expression Research Articles

Russian rap and its literary value: analysis of social-political themes in the texts of Miron Fedorov (Oxxxymiron)

This article presents an analysis of the literary value of Russian rap through the lens of Miron Fedorov, better known as Oxxxymiron. The focus of the research lies in the social-political themes expressed in his lyrics. The article explores how rap texts serve as a means of profound literary expression, enabling the author to provide their responses to pressing societal issues. This study contributes to the understanding of how rap music can function as a form of literature and how it fosters a dialogue on crucial topics within contemporary society.

Revitalizing Javanese Islamic Literature: A Philological and Oral Tradition Study in Coastal Culture

This study explores a spiritual occurrence that flourishes and develops within the framework of Pesantren, a significant aspect of Javanese Islamic tradition. One notable spiritual activity that flourishes in Pesantren is known as Pesantren literature. The term 'Pesantren literature' refers to literary works that originate and develop within the Pesantren environment, encompassing both the physical and spiritual realms. Noteworthy characteristics of Pesantren literature include the following. Pesantren literature is predominantly composed in Arabic and is typically written in Arabic script. At times, Pesantren literature may be composed in the new Javanese language with Arabic-pegon script. It emerged and gained momentum during the 18th century, experiencing rapid development in the 19th century. Pesantren literature encompasses both oral and written traditions. It is often recited during specific ceremonies and occasionally performed as a form of performing art. Pesantren literature exhibits varying degrees of influence from Arabic and Persian literature. In conclusion, Pesantren literature has been a vital spiritual and literary tradition in the Indonesian archipelago, particularly in Java. It has evolved as a unique form of literary expression within the Pesantren environment, encompassing both oral and written traditions. Received: 6 April 2024 / Accepted: 27 October 2024 / Published: 05 November 2024

O umieraniu ciała i obumieraniu ducha. „Jak nie zabiłem swojego ojca i jak bardzo tego żałuję” Mateusza Pakuły

The study focuses on the problem of corporeality and spirituality in relation to Mateusz Pakuła’s prose debut How I Didn’t Kill My Father and How Much I Regret It. The author of the article presents the analysed work against the background of the contemporary funeral tradition and makes genre determinations in an attempt to show the specificity of Pakuła’s literary expression. He shows the drama of a father and a son presented in the funeral diary, pointing on the one hand to the dying of the body (father), and on the other to the deep spiritual crisis of both protagonists (father, son). In the case of the father, it concerns the inability to bear his own pain and a request for euthanasia, and in the case of the son, it is a drama of choice, i.e. accelerating the death of the father or passivity and accompanying his father in a painful and long dying.

Typographic tools for semantic exploration in Aravind Adiga's “The white tiger”

This study aims to explore the typographic strategies employed by Aravind Adiga in his novel The White Tiger, focusing on how visual elements contribute to the narrative’s thematic depth and infer deeper meaning. Through detailed discourse analysis, the research investigates the use of typography, including bold text, italics, capitalization, superscript, and other extra-linguistic elements as tools for emphasizing key moments, conveying character emotions, and highlighting deeply entrenched social, political and bureaucratic injustices. The method involves a close reading of the novel and a semiotic analysis of the typographic variations to interpret their symbolic significance. The results reveal that Adiga’s typographic choices are not merely aesthetic but serve as a powerful narrative device that enhances the reader’s engagement and understanding of the novel’s underlying messages, fostering a profound understanding of the protagonist's journey from darkness to light. Conclusively, Adiga’s innovative use of typography in The White Tiger adds a layer of artistic insight that enriches the novel’s exploration of corruption, social inequality, and the complexities of human ambition. The analysis underscores typography as a vehicle for deeper literary expression, offering new insights into Adiga's narrative technique where language and style converge to convey powerful, emotive meanings.

Exploring Dalit Experience in Bengal: A Critical Analysis of Manohar Mouli Biswas's Narrative Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal

The Namashudra community, formerly derogatorily referred to as Chandal, endured untouchability in colonial Bengal. Following the partition, in West Bengal, they initiated a revolutionary literary movement to articulate and transmute long-suppressed sorrow into a mode of resistance. It not only breaks the prevalent assumption that Dalit literature does not exist in Bangla but also serves as a challenge to the pervasive myth of Bengal being a casteless society. The article modestly endeavours to explore the intricate issues of caste within the narrative of Manohar Mouli Biswas's work Surviving in My World: Growing Up Dalit in Bengal (2015), which is a translation of his Bengali book Amar Bhubone Ami Beche Thaki (2013). The article seeks to explore how the aspects of caste, politics, and hegemony work within the text, and how existential exclusion is sincerely articulated through the literary expressions of the Bengali Dalit author. Additionally, the study has undertaken an in-depth textual analysis of Biswas's writings to investigate how he uses his works to establish an identity for his community.

The Sentimentalist Terrain of Ora V. Eddleman Reed’s Twin Territories Fiction

Abstract This article grapples with the messy legacy of Ora V. Eddleman Reed, editor of Twin Territories magazine in the Muscogee Nation, Indian Territory, at the turn of the twentieth century. Twin Territories vocally opposed US statehood in Indian Territory and furthered the literary careers of many Native writers. It was an important and influential venue of Native literary expression in the early twentieth century that deserves greater attention from Indigenous literary and print culture studies. However, the magazine’s ambitions and how we make sense of its legacy are complicated by Eddleman Reed’s racial politics, her own (non)citizenship, and the contents of her short sentimental fiction, all of which did as much to reinscribe racialized notions of Indigeneity as they did to challenge prevailing settler assumptions about Native people. Reed has been hailed as a recovered Cherokee writer, but her family’s rejected Cherokee Nation enrollment applications and recent genealogical research raise critical questions about framing her in this way.

Representation of Saudi Culture in Digital Poetry

In today's world, characterized by technology and artificial intelligence, societies have become interconnected, and the global community resembles a small village. Within this digital realm, the identities of nations and their inhabitants manifest through their expressive tools and artistic forms. The recipient perceives, through the digital space, a portrayal of these societies. In the case of Saudi society, a progressive community, its artistic and literary expressions are prominently featured on social media platforms and other online spaces, both official and unofficial. These platforms serve to depict the components and cultural backgrounds of the society, which it leans upon. The digital space becomes a canvas for its aspirations, emotions, and the diverse spectrum of its orientations and tendencies. The study tracked the most prominent transformations in Saudi culture through the digital poetic text, relying on digital poetic models through which the meeting of the past with the present was presented, and monitoring the manifestations of Saudi culture and its presence in the digital poetic text. The study concluded a number of results, the most important of which is that the Saudi poetic text presented a picture of the elements of Saudi culture, and the digital poetic models were able to show the meaning and deepen it in the mind of the recipient and evoke all those elements to embody the image of Saudi culture.

Searching for Traces of the Shi in Tombs of the Jin Dynasty

Abstract Scholars of Jin history have noted a flourishing literati culture after the mid-Jin period, but excavated tombs suggest a more complicated picture. The shi, referring to literati without official titles, constituted a prominent group in Northern Song tombs, as evidenced by their epitaphs, but this group appears to have nearly vanished from the Jin tombs. To search for traces of the shi, this article comprehensively examines the social elites’ tombs with burial inscriptions and ink writings, where the shi would most likely be laid to rest. It shows that the text and paratext of epitaphs, as well as the tombs that yielded them, contain direct information about the shi and their interactions with other officials and non-official elites. Analysis of ink writings suggests that the shi played a role in the advanced literary expression in the tombs of some non-literati local elites. Examining these traces of the shi in tombs allows us to reintegrate them into broader society, investigate their interactions with other elites, and attain a more holistic understanding of Jin elite society and culture.

Introduction to the Special Issue Commemorating the 170th Anniversary of the 1853–1854 Preston Lock-Out

This introduction to the special issue commemorating the 170th anniversary of the Preston strike and lock-out of 1853–1854 explains the significance of one of the most famous industrial disputes of the nineteenth century, updates its historiography since the publication of H.I. Dutton and J.E. King’s 1981 study, ‘Ten Per Cent and No Surrender’: The Preston Strike, 1853–1854 , provides context and a chronology, and summarises the eight articles of new research presented here. The articles examine women’s impact on the dispute and its impact on them, the role of Irish workers, the question of intimidation and conflict between workers, cultural and literary expressions of the dispute, its significance and legacy, and one creative interpretation of it, using animation. The editors argue that the Preston strike and lock-out had a wide impact, was widely reported, and had a strong cultural resonance, making it a microcosmic episode of mid-Victorian Britain. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

The Interwoven Aesthetics and Identification: On Aesthetic Modernity in Frankenstein

Frankenstein is famous for its exploration of humanity in its bizarre plots, but the importance of this work also lies in its aesthetic modernity, which is revealed under the veil of the complementarity of aesthetics and identification. Based on the relevant theories of aesthetics and modernity, this thesis attempts to analyze the aesthetic connotation and literary expression of Frankenstein from both aspects of content and form and to reveal the aesthetic modernity in this novel. The novel exquisitely depicts the desire and reflection of the created “monster” on beauty and identity, exposes the social ills and humanity defects resulting from Enlightenment modernity in the contradiction between the construction of subjectivity and the modern aesthetic shackles, expands the scope and boundary of sympathy in the switch of multiple narrative perspectives, thus constructing a community of compassion in literary creation. As a result, Frankenstein and its research from the perspective of aesthetic modernity have great literary value and significance.

Multiple levels of literacy in Kopano Matlwa’s literature. The case of Evening Primrose (2018)

The paper explores distinctive ways in which Kopano Matlwa’s novel Evening Primrose (2018) employs continuities and discontinuities between surface-level literary expression and underlying identity and cultural literacy. It is a desktop study centred on Kopano Matlwa’s novel Evening Primrose (2018) as a primary text, as well as of secondary expository texts for theoretical and earlier literary commentary that constitute the article’s conceptual matrix. I demonstrate how the author’s thematic manoeuvring challenges notions of determinist culture and official mapping as fixed, as well as espouse conceptions of globalism that accommodate identity and cultural heterogeneity. As I discuss stylistic dimensions of the narrative from the vantage point of the theory of ecocriticism, I include the tenets of Es’kia Mphahlele’s concept of African humanism as well as the concepts of ‘borderland’, ‘code-switching’ and ‘integration literacy’. My findings have led to the conclusion that the novelist’s discourses are encoded in the texture of the novel in ways that portray the South African post-apartheid milieu as informed by an intricate intersection of distinctive identity and cultural literacies that the various characters display. My scrutiny of the environment-adoptive cognitive processes in the mind of Matlwa’s characters has led to a novel analogy between integration identity and cultural literacy and unitary grammar, reached psycholinguistically through code-switching.Contribution: This study provides new insights into how the novelist Kopano Matlwa employs literary discourse uniquely to explore South Africa’s post-apartheid, evolving social psyche in ways that diagnostically assert alternative cultural identity intersections, readings and articulation. The paper plumbs beneath surface-level characterisation to externalise how key character categories of the novel under discussion do practicalise the potency of the post-apartheid context to forge a composite heterogeneity of cohabiting and mutually respecting cultures that have entered it. In novel ways, the theoretical matrix applied in the analysis of the novel galvanises a recognition of commonalities hitherto unidentified, mainly between tenets of originally Eurocentric ecocriticism and those of an Afrocentric African humanism. I compare the characters’ successful creation of new cultural literacies, integrated with a new environment, to a successful integration of unitary grammar related to the linguistic process of code-switching. In this way, a new kind of relationship is projected between literary analysis and language learning.

The Influence of African Heritage on Afro-American Literary Expression

This research paper explores the profound influence of African heritage on Afro-American literary expression. It begins by examining the historical context, emphasizing the impact of the transatlantic slave trade and early Afro-American literature's retention of African cultural elements. The Harlem Renaissance is highlighted as a pivotal moment that celebrated African roots and set the stage for future literary developments. Central themes derived from African heritage, such as resistance, resilience, and connection to ancestry, are analyzed, illustrating their prominence in both historical and contemporary works. The paper deal with storytelling techniques and narrative structures influenced by African oral traditions, folktales, and myths, highlighting how these elements enrich Afro-American literature. The use of rhythmic language, communal narration, and the call- and-response pattern are discussed as significant aspects that enhance narrative depth and cultural authenticity. The integration of African symbols, music, and communal values as cultural motifs is explored, showcasing how these elements infuse literary works with layers of meaning and cultural resonance. The reclamation of African identity is a key focus, with discussions on Afrocentric perspectives in modern literature, the impact of the Black Arts Movement, and contemporary literary movements. The challenges and opportunities of navigating dual heritage and cultural hybridity are addressed, emphasizing the complexities of identity formation and cultural expression.

Los corridos revolucionarios publicados por la imprenta de Eduardo Guerrero (México, siglo XX)

Based on the question of how much the editorial dimension has been considered in the production and circulation of the revolutionary corrido, in this paper I present the results of the research around the first compilation of this literary subgenre, published in 1931 not by a researcher, but, precisely, by an author, editor and printer of popular literature. I am referring to Eduardo Guerrero and his Corridos históricos de la revolución mexicana desde 1910 hasta 1930. In addition to offering a profile of Guerrero's publishing house, recovering primary and secondary sources, I place the compiled volume in its context, critically assuming its biases and the fact that it is made up of materials that originally circulated as broadsheets, whose dynamics may contradict the commemorative vocation of the compilation. Then, I address the results of the main analysis, which is the editorial dimension of the broadsheets around four aspects (the graphics, the enunciation of the titles, the organization of the texts and the authorship). All these aspects are inseparable from the complete understanding of the history of popular printing in the 20th century and from the evolution of the revolutionary corrido as a literary expression aimed fundamentally to be oralized.

Exploring User-Centered Evaluation in a Tertiary-Level, Audio-Describer Training Program

Introduction: Audio description (AD) should satisfy the needs of people who are visually impaired; however, quality assessment in university training programs has rarely been based on feedback provided by AD users. Aiming to help students truly understand the needs of people who are visually impaired and their criteria for AD, this study adopted user-centered evaluation in an AD training program offered by a university in Hong Kong. Method: Three evaluators with visual impairment, representing the views of AD users, were invited to evaluate 29 students’ film clips that included AD and discuss their evaluation criteria. Eleven students participated in focus-group interviews and were asked to comment on AD products and discuss their own evaluation criteria. The evaluation criteria of the two groups were compared qualitatively and quantitatively with the aid of the software NVivo. Results: The results showed discrepancies between the users’ and the trainees’ criteria as well as differences in their focuses when evaluating the AD products. The users’ criteria were more numerous; however, certain criteria were perceived exclusively by the trainees. Discussion: Without sufficient knowledge of users’ needs, AD trainees are inclined to provide redundant information (e.g., easily identifiable film sounds and speaker information) while neglecting some aspects of AD (e.g., the prudent use of pronouns and literary expressions), which are deemed important by the users. Implications for Practitioners: The results prompted AD instructors to integrate user feedback into AD training to improve students’ understanding of how to produce AD that better meets its users’ needs.

Attending to Illness Metaphors

Abstract Critiques such as Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor have encouraged the renunciation of metaphorical thinking about illness. This article suggests a level of discernment toward implicit interpretations of illness instead of an all-or-nothing removal of metaphor from the rhetoric surrounding illness. Rather than doing away with metaphorical thinking about illness in a total and absolute sense, the article reflects on illness metaphors to explore what insight they may have to impart about lived experiences of illness. With the help of literary expressions in Camus’s The Plague, the article depicts ways that through a discerning attitude toward metaphorical thinking on illness, an elemental affirmation of being within the necessary limits on the human condition is given space to breathe.

MULTI-THEORETICAL EXPLICATION OF EXPERIMENTAL TYPOGRAPHY: THE CONTEXT OF 21ST CENTURY LITERARY TEXTS

This study is a multi-theoretical explication of selected 21st-century literary texts with a focus on determining how literary pieces with experimental typography can be analyzed which places emphasis on a literary primer that can be produced from the textual analysis, interpretation, and explication of the texts analyzed. This research study examines the significance of experimental typography in selected literary texts, specifically focusing on Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me Novel, Austin Kleon’s Newspaper Blackout, and shape poetry. The findings revealed that authors employ various types of experimental typography to convey additional layers of meaning in their works. The analysis of Tahereh Mafi's novel "Shatter Me" identifies the use of strikethrough, the management of space, and the unconventional use of mechanics as experimental typography techniques. In blackout poetry, the interaction between visual and textual elements through the use of semiotics plays a vital role in conveying the intended message. Shape poetry, on the other hand, integrates language, design, and visual representation to create a cohesive composition, offering a unique and visually engaging reading experience. Based on the findings, it is concluded that writers utilize multiple modalities manifested in experimental typography, embedding symbolism in literature. Readers must recognize these modalities and analyze their impact on literary elements to develop accurate interpretations. The study recommends further exploration of 21st-century literary analysis, emphasizing works incorporating experimental typography and innovative forms of literary expression. It suggests making a primer on experimental typography available to literature students to enhance their understanding of typography's expressive potential. Additionally, the study proposes exploring other modalities employed by modern writers and testing the primer's usability in schools to optimize its impact on students' learning experiences and curriculum enhancement. This research contributes to the understanding and appreciation of experimental typography in contemporary literature.

Китайская национальная литература в годы Японо-китайской и Второй мировой войн (1937–1945 гг.)

The Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the World War II (1939–1945) constituted tumultuous periods in Chinese history, marked by significant socio-political upheavals and military conflicts. Amidst these turbulent times, Chinese literature underwent notable transformations, influenced by the prevailing ideological currents and the exigencies of wartime conditions. This article endeavors to elucidate the trajectory of Chinese national literature during these pivotal years, examining its evolution, thematic variations, and socio-cultural impacts. The ideological rivalry between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) profoundly influenced literary production during the wartime era. Literary works aligned with each ideological faction served as vehicles for propagating their respective narratives and agendas. A comparative analysis of these works offers insights into the divergent literary expressions arising from ideological polarization. The exigencies of wartime conditions and the socio-political milieu precipitated a transformation in traditional literary forms. Prose and poetry, in particular, underwent significant evolution to cater to the changing needs and sensibilities of a mass readership. New genres emerged, reflecting the shifting thematic concerns and the imperative of engaging with modern realities. The role of literary organizations during this period cannot be overstated. These associations served as platforms for intellectual exchange, fostering collaboration among writers and artists. By providing avenues for creative expression and critique, they played a pivotal role in shaping the trajectory of wartime literature. The artistic output of various regions in China during the war years contributed to the dissemination of anti-militaristic sentiments and the fostering of patriotic fervor. Through nuanced portrayals of the human cost of conflict and the resilience of the Chinese people, literature emerged as a potent tool for galvanizing national unity and resistance against external aggression. In conclusion, the examination of Chinese literature during wartime underscores its role as a reflection of ideological contestation and societal transformation. Through diverse literary expressions, ranging from propaganda to introspective reflection, literature served as a potent medium for both anti-militaristic sentiments and the consolidation of patriotic fervor in China.

MODERNIST EXPERIMENTS AND NARRATIVE INNOVATIONS IN JAMES JOYCE’S NOVELS

The presented paper underscores the enduring relevance of Joyce's works within the scientific literary community. The work meticulously reviews, analyzes and evaluates James Joyce's innovative narrative technique in close connection with modernist literature. The relevance of the issue raised in the paper is confirmed, first of all, by the fact that Joyce's trace in modernist literature remains one of the main centers of scientific literary studies. The primary reason of this is the powerful influence of Joyce's work on literary evolution. Concrete examples are used to show the innovativeness of Joyce's work and the literary methods by which the author deviated from the established literary standards. The work delves into the themes of Joyce's works, which revolved around alienation, dislocation, disillusionment, and existential issues Each of these issues are discussed from the perspective of the era, on the basis of which it was determined that modernism was a kind of reaction to the socio-political and cultural events of the 20th century. The work generally tries to bring the very innovative linguistic experiments that made Joyce's modernist literature. Joyce's modernist works such as "Ulysses" or "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" are full of radical departures from classical literary standards. His complex narrative techniques, including even stream-of-consciousness and linguistic experiments, continue to pose a significant challenge to the modern scientific community, whose research focuses on the limits of literary expression and the inherent possibilities in language.

Genre Classification of Books in Russian with Stylometric Features: A Case Study

Within the literary domain, genres function as fundamental organizing concepts that provide readers, publishers, and academics with a unified framework. Genres are discrete categories that are distinguished by common stylistic, thematic, and structural components. They facilitate the categorization process and improve our understanding of a wide range of literary expressions. In this paper, we introduce a new dataset for genre classification of Russian books, covering 11 literary genres. We also perform dataset evaluation for the tasks of binary and multi-class genre identification. Through extensive experimentation and analysis, we explore the effectiveness of different text representations, including stylometric features, in genre classification. Our findings clarify the challenges present in classifying Russian literature by genre, revealing insights into the performance of different models across various genres. Furthermore, we address several research questions regarding the difficulty of multi-class classification compared to binary classification, and the impact of stylometric features on classification accuracy.

Bots and Books: How Artificial Intelligence is Shaping Contemporary Literature

The coming of the robotized millennium has brought about a period of time in which artificial intelligence (AI) has a significant impact on many facets of existence for humans, including the literary arts. This research paper explores the various ways that AI is changing the field of literature. AI has had a significant and all-encompassing impact on literature, from the development of new forms of literary expression to the improvement of conventional writing techniques. The examination of literature produced by AI takes up a large amount of the paper. It highlights noteworthy endeavors and projects that use AI to produce literary works, from poetry collections to novels in their entirety. The paper explores the distinctive features of AI-generated literature, such as its stylistic inclinations, thematic concerns, and structural patterns, through case studies of texts written by AI. It also discusses how these works have been received critically, illustrating the various viewpoints held by readers, academics, and literary critics regarding the significance and uniqueness of texts created by artificial intelligence. The collaborative potential of AI in the process of creating literature is further examined in this work. It looks at how modern poets and writers are using AI tools to improve their creative processes, from coming up with ideas and getting beyond writer's block to trying out novel narrative structures and styles. The study offers insights into the useful applications and advantages of artificial intelligence (AI) in literature through surveys and interviews with authors who have used AI into their creative processes It looks forward to more developments in AI technology and how they can transform the literary industry. It provides a nuanced view of the future of literary creativity in the robotized millennium by highlighting the opportunities and problems posed by AI in the literary arena. The research advances knowledge about AI's influence on the direction of literature by combining historical study, current case studies, and futuristic conjecture.