Literary Form Research Articles

Prayer Motifs and National Consciousness in Changing Conditions of Reception: As Exemplified by the Works of Ivan Shmelev and Boris Zaitsev

This article presents the role of selected motifs of prayer depicted in the works of first-wave Russian emigrants in the creation of a certain type of national mythology. The starting point of the considerations is a reflection on the status of emigrant literature at the time of its creation, during the period of political changes in the Soviet bloc, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and today. From the beginning, émigré literature has served as a certain treasury of images and symbols, which are treated as necessary elements for maintaining the national identity of emigrants. The article presents selected motifs from the works of Ivan Shmelev’s The Year of the Lord and Pilgrimage, and Boris Zaitsev’s Saint Sergius of Radonezh, showing prayer as an element of ritual, as a collective request, and as an act of deep contact with God. The analysis of the selected examples shows that regardless of the literary form, narrative perspective, or the way the subject was presented, the writers showed prayer motifs in a patriotic context, while mythologizing pre-revolutionary Russia and bringing the idea of “Holy Rus” to life. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been an increased interest in emigrant literature, and the ideas contained therein have proven to be very important for the formation of the new national consciousness of Russians. Today, due to another political change in Russia and its political isolation, émigré literature is of renewed importance in Russian circles. The writers whose works are discussed in this study are regarded as the main Orthodox writers of the twentieth century, and the image of praying Russia is again the basis for building a new national identity. The study concludes with the observation that the value of emigrant literature should be studied in the context of the time of its creation.

Chinese esthetics through language in poetry: A comparative study of the Chinese wényán and modern báihuà

China was greatly transformed in its encounters with the imperial West in the 19th and 20th centuries, where its ways and traditions that were authoritative for thousands of years were challenged and pushed to evolve toward modernity. Among things that were made to change, the classical written Chinese – wényán – was replaced by the modern báihuà, prioritizing efficient information transformation over the expression of semantic and esthetic depth. However, classical Chinese esthetics continued to inspire modern Chinese literati, in their exploration and discovery of means to express their Chineseness in a modern reality. Through examining the literary form of poetry, this study investigated the differential characteristics of the classical and modern Chinese esthetics through the appreciation of classical and contemporary Chinese poems, as mediated by the written languages: wényán and modern báihuà. Presented with four comparable pairs of classical and contemporary poems, 48 participants indicated their preference and rated their poem-reading experience based on language esthetics, imaginativeness, precision, complexity of imageries, profundity of meaning, and the intensity of emotions and resonance elicited. Compared to contemporary poems, classical poems were perceived as significantly more beautiful in their language, more imaginative, more precise, more complex in their imagery, more profound in their meanings, and more effective in eliciting emotions and resonance. Reasons for poem type preference suggested that classical and contemporary poems were both appreciated for their differential expressions of the highest Chinese esthetic standard – the White Bì (贲), through effortless precision or purity.

Global Forms in Bolaño’s 2666: Genre, Race, Capital

ABSTRACT Roberto Bolaño’s posthumously published 2666 is a novel split into five parts without a clear logic of organization. I argue that its unity lies in the way each section takes up and then dissolves the conventions of an Euro-American genre, negating its usual organization of meaning and therefore relation to history. I argue that these genres are structures of experience which decompose in confrontation with the colonial destruction of life. Since there is no single received literary form that adequately represents the transformations of racial violence, Bolaño negates a procession of genres as a way of testifying to the complex matrix of power, death and revolt in the contemporary world. Subsequently, I demonstrate my interpretation with a reading of Book I, “The Part about the Critics”, as an academic novel. This genre has historically represented the world of an academic elite institutionally sheltered from the movements of history. Bolaño rewrites Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” as an allegory of colonial mining to stage the reemergence of slavery in the form of the university discourse.

Literary Form and Coastal Sublimity in Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest

Literary Form and Coastal Sublimity in Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest

THE GENRE FEATURES OF THE WORKS OF DIMITRY ROSTOVSKY ABOUT THE ILYA ICON OF THE HOLY MOTHER

The author of the article examines the two earliest works by St. Dimitry Rostovsky — “The Miracles of the Most Holy and Blessed Virgin Mary” (1677) and “The Bedewed Fleece” (first edition 1683), created on the basis of the first work. Both books, in terms of content and genre characteristics, represent a legend about the miraculous icon — the Ilya Icon of the Holy Mother of God. The icon was the main shrine of the Boldinsky Trinity Ilya Monastery. A historical and literary analysis of both books showed that both “The Miracles of the Most Holy and Blessed Virgin Mary” and “The Bedewed Fleece” have a certain set of motifs about its miracles and deeds, which puts them on a par with the texts of other legends about miraculous icons. The heyday of this genre occurred in the 17th — early 18th century. The main miracle and the main motif of the legends created by Dimitry Rostovsky is the flow of tears from the icon, which occurred in 1662: the Ilya Icon of the Holy Mother began myrrh-streaming and praying to the Divine Son for the salvation of the entire human race. The remaining miracles describe healings from illnesses and ailments that occur through prayer in front of the icon. However, the composition and style of these books, which reflect new trends and a new style — the Baroque style, differ significantly from the works of this genre. The main difference is that Dimitry Rostovsky inserts additional narratives into the text. He adds moral teachings to the book “Miracles of the Most Holy and Blessed Virgin Mary” and moral teachings, conversations and attachments to the book “The Bedewed Fleece.” They play an important role in the architectonics of the text and carry a significant semantic load, thereby creating a new literary form in the context of the genre of tales about miraculous icons.

Language Plurality and Practices of Translation in Sigmund Freud's Work: Another Chapter in the History of Multilingualism in the German-Speaking Lands

abstract: By bringing together various examples of multilingualism in Freud's work, this article addresses the question of how experiences of linguistic diversity and translation might have affected the development of psychoanalytic language thinking. In a historical perspective, by conceiving of humans as essentially polyphonic and every language as ambiguous, Freud's theory stands in remarkable opposition to the romantic conception of a unique mother tongue and the long-standing cultural devaluation of multilingualism in the German-speaking lands. It therefore deserves to be reassessed and integrated into current research on the history of cultural and literary forms of multilingualism.

Poïétique et politique du littéraire : Annie Ernaux, une écriture « au-dessous de la littérature » ?

In Une femme (1987; A Woman's Story), Annie Ernaux declared that she wished to remain “au-dessous de la littérature” (“below literature”). To what extent is this position, which she has maintained over the last decades, compatible with her consecration as a writer? This article considers the publication of Les Années (2008; The Years) as a turning point followed by the publication of several collaborative and dialogic texts that call into question established literary forms and make visible the process of creation, that is to say the poiesis of the œuvre. By revealing the act of writing, Ernaux contributes to establishing a genealogy of her work, even showing it to have a mythical dimension which is nevertheless tied to socio-political concerns. Exploring the resonance between Ernaux's literary pieces and her paratextual interventions highlights the complex network on which Ernaux's conception of writing, and position towards the idea of literature, are built.

Introduction: the multimodality of cringe comedy in screen and digital media productions

Abstract The millennial moment reflects an occupation with truth aiming for clear interpretations of the surrounding reality. Owing to the political conditions at the turn of the twenty-first century, both media and literary forms showed considerable interest in documentation. As inspections of truth yield no precise results, documentation shape-shifted into self-reflective presentations of social and personal failings. According to Patrick (Wöhrle, Patrick. 2021. Two shades of cringe: Problems in attributing painful laughter. Humanities 10(3). 99. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/h10030099.), media has developed patterns of presentations that irritate rather than settle the viewers’ down thus destabilizing the conventional sender–message–recipient format. Interestingly, literary treatments have shown similar tendencies towards more integration of the spectator. Engagement with social or political conditions stems originally from a gap between what we know and what we see which engenders humour at many occasions based on superiority or incongruity. In post-millennial times especially with the Covid-19 outbreak, feeling strange, awkward or embarrassed are feelings of the mundane. Here, cringe comedy is a forerunner. Cringe humour holds deep sense of incongruity once attending to the ambivalence the term carries. Humour, which is supposedly a tool of both pleasure and relief, becomes rather a trigger of some painful visceral affect that ‘cringes’.

Brittle bonds: queer relationalities in literary and cinematic forms in India

Abstract From factories to hostels, homes to neighbourhoods, how do embodied practices in stratified spaces shape the contemporary terrains of queerness in India? In this article, I analyse two recent cultural texts from India, Neeraj Ghaywan’s Geeli Pucchi (Sloppy Kisses, 2021) and Hansda Sowvender Shekhar’s (2018) novel My Father’s Garden, Speaking Tiger Books, Delhi, to engage with the fraught dynamics of relationality and queerness. My analysis contests any easy celebration of community – by foregrounding the movements of dispossessed protagonists who do not fit into the paradigm of the privileged subject of queer politics. Yet these texts capture the fleeting possibilities of reaching towards one another in spaces carved through the operations of exclusion and discrimination. I bring together two texts in which the direct references to sexual identities formed via governmental or non-governmental networks are largely absent; rather, they ask fundamental questions about the in-between terrain of the relational. The dynamics of distance and connection is opened up in complex ways in these cinematic and literary texts as they create imaginative idioms to explore the brittleness of queer bonds formed through the hierarchized operations of class, caste and ethnicity. Through an analysis of the formal aspects of these texts, and the practices of spectatorship and readership they facilitate, I seek to underline how formations of sexuality in India can be unpacked only through a close engagement with the critical discourse on gender, caste and ethnicity.

Flash fiction as a distinct literary form: some thoughts on time, space, and context

ABSTRACT This article combines a craft-focused approach with a stylistics perspective to consider the ways in which flash fiction may be said to operate as a unique literary form. In the opening section flash fiction is defined in relation to what are usually seen as its two closest literary companions: prose poetry and the short story. This is followed by an introduction to the linguistic phenomenon known as deixis, and to related concepts from the field of Narratology. These ideas are subsequently illustrated and explored through the close analysis of several short texts and used to uncover what might be considered the defining features of the form. The earlier taxonomic approach of William Nelles is also evaluated in the light of more recent creative practice. The article concludes by arguing that the mobilisation of a story world is a necessary requirement for a text to be classified as flash fiction, by highlighting the importance of deft manipulation of deictic elements, and finally by suggesting that the unique communicative context evoked by flash fiction has significant implications for its interpretation.

Harmony Justesse Analogia Linguae: Literature as a “First Language of God” in the Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar

Balthasar is, first and foremost, a Germanist. His theology is internally related to literature. This article shows how deep this link is, starting from three aspects: the literary coordinates that appear to be integrated in the theological structure of his thought, the theological language that Balthasar discovers in the literature, and the use of some literary instruments to engage with theology. Overall, Balthasar bases this profound and internal use of literature on the harmony/harmonization (Zum-stimmen-bringen/justesse/analogia linguae) he discovers between literary form or style and theological content. This harmony, justesse, or analogia is mediated by the free creativity of the author of the literary text under the power of the Spirit and sustained by the analogia entis and Christological analogia entis.

Sprehod Irene Novak Popov po narečni beneški poeziji

The article focuses on studies of contemporary poetry from Beneška Slovenija/Slavia Friulana (Venetian Slovenia) by the literary historian Irena Novak Popov. Considering Venetian-Slovenian works as a subsystem within Slovenian literature, Irena Novak Popov recognises its distinct literary form and acknowledges its unique development, which is tied to a specific historical and social framework. She explores this subsystem as a distinct artistic and cultural phenomenon in relation to the mainstream system of Slovenian literature and strives to make the literature of the western edge of the ethnic Slovenian territory more visible in public literary discourse, establishing it as the subject of expert analysis. Through analyses of the individual poetics of a number of authors (Marina Cernetig, Viljem Černo, Aldo Klodič, Gabriella Tomasetig, Andreina Trusgnach and others), she suggests some peculiar components of Venetian-Slovenian writing. The present article highlights the special attitude of Venetian-Slovenian authors towards the local language and their heterogenous presentation of spatial reality.

Visual articulacy and periphrasis in the art of the unmentionable

ABSTRACT For reasons of personal safety, artists are not always allowed to mention directly and articulately events in history and the issues that arise therefrom. One of the skills of the artist is to employ suggestiveness and allusiveness in regard to what they are contemplating. This method is used in contemporary Iranian art. Here I take a number of examples from six contemporary artists who have used different means to fly under the radar of state authorities to be expressive without being explicit. In each of these the central idea is allusion as a way of not mentioning the precise subject so as not to incriminate the artist. In time, a shared imaginary of the unmentionable becomes the characteristic ‘language’ of the Iranian artist. My subject is a study of visual periphrasis in Iranian art in the modern period. This first appeared long ago in literary form in classical Persian poetry and has recently re-emerged in several modernist and contemporary movements in the art of protest and polemic in periods of repression and state censorship. I argue that this is concealed in the barely observable, or in what is missing altogether, and is present only in allusion and suggestion.

Literary nature and socio-environmental reality in early modern French critical writing about the pastoral

Seventeenth-century French authors produced some of the first critical works devoted entirely to the pastoral. In this article, the author argues that examining these critical works allows us to add a socio-environmental layer to our understanding of this literary mode. This article explores Rapin’s Dissertatio de carmine pastorali (1659) and Fontenelle’s Discours sur la nature de l’églogue (1688). As they debate which aspects of rural life should be included or excluded from this classical literary form, Rapin and Fontenelle give centre stage to a problem raised in later class-conscious as well as ecocritical critiques: idealized representations of rural spaces have the capacity to hide the issues of social and environmental change. This article focuses on how their theories of the pastoral address this problem. While the challenges of rural labour and environmental change may be obscured by pastoral fiction, they are given visibility in critical writing about this literary mode.

Utopie contra Ideologie – Ingeborg Bachmanns Textstrategien zwischen Sprachethik und literarischer Ethik

Focusing on Ingeborg Bachmann's Musil essay Utopia versus Ideology, the article outlines aspects of literary and language ethics. Both Robert Musil's and Ingeborg Bachmann's works are characterized by transdisciplinary, philosophical-literary thought centered on ethical con-cerns. The literary form is appreciated in its critique of ideologies; Bachmann, with Musil, speaks about literature as formulating open ideologies instead of closed ones, and according to both, this means: utopias. Due to the polyphony of literary texts and the linking of ethical statements to character perspectives, these statements appear in their intrinsic connection to experience and to moments of cognition – Musil's anderer Zustand – and therein as a philo-sophically precise representation of a true-to-life ethics that puts situational contexts as well as application- and motivation-problems in the foreground. In the search for the right expression, which is particularly noticeable in Musil and Bachmann, e.g. through the variation of literary modes like essay, poetry and novel as well as through the metaphoricity of speech, a language ethics manifests itself.

Tragic Poetry and the Cultural Foundation of Power: A Re-examination of Franco Moretti’s Theory of Tragic

Franco Moretti posited in his 1983 book, Signs Taken for Wonders, that we live in a post-tragic and anti-tragic age in which tragic has been replaced by compromise both in fiction and in the modern lyric. The present article tries to re-examine Moretti’s conjecture in a historic period which has given up compromise and revived the tragic. In Moretti’s terms, tragic’s condition of existence involves “a civilization irreparably divided between hostile entries and values”. Whenever history allows this radical division between two irreconcilable systems of values, tragic finds a literary form of expression. In this article, tragic’s main contemporary elective form in Ukraine is poetry, while fiction seems somewhat slower in keeping pace with the rapid tragic of history. Moreover, the diary as a confessional genre closer to poetry is also a medium more suitable for the contemporary tragic than fiction. Read by tens of thousands, maybe even more, Ukrainian poetry and diaries are the direct proof of a return to a tragic era, confirming Moretti’s 1983 diagnosis: tragic works within and against the absolutist ideologies. Tragedy may indeed be “an unrepeatable ‘exception’ in the history of literary forms”; but the substance of tragic finds its contemporary expressions in this age of anti-compromise in confessional poetry and, to a lesser extent, in other confessive genres (diaries and memoirs). Tragic poetry is a response to the reappearance of the cultural foundation of absolutist power; its confessional nature is an attempt to rehumanize a history unleashed against the human.

Research on the impact of ecological literature on the environment and society—taking Chinese ecological literature as an example

China’s rapid economic development is accompanied by severe environmental problems. Chinese government has taken some measures to improve environmental conditions and protect diverse ecosystems, but these problems still exist. Science and technology are the main measures to improve the ecological environment, but the impact of ecological literature on the environment cannot be underestimated. As a medium for expressing opinions and emotions, ecological literature has become an important way to reflect the social environment, which has attracted widespread attention from ecological and environmental scholars and social people. Therefore, this article aims to explore the power of ecological narratives in ecological literary works and how this narrative affects people’s awareness and social behavior of ecological and environmental. Taking China as an example, this article analyzes the ecological narrative elements, the influence of readers, the influence of social public opinion, and the influence of the Chinese government’s environmental policies in many ecological literary works in China. Finally, it was discovered that ecological literature, as a literary form, shows the power to transcend time and space, profoundly affects the environmental awareness of contemporary society, and lays a solid foundation for the improvement of the ecological environment.

ДЕТИ «БОЛЬШИЕ» И «МАЛЫЕ»: «ДЕТСКИЙ» ФЕЛЬЕТОН ВАСИЛИЯ СЛЕПЦОВА В КОНТЕКСТЕ ПОЛЕМИКИ О ДЕТСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ И ВОСПИТАНИИ 1860-Х ГОДОВ

The article analyzes Vasily Sleptsov’s feuilleton A Spring Walk with Children Along the Streets of Saint Petersburg (1863), part of the Petersburg Notes cycle. Addressed to progressive youth of the 1860s, the feuilleton is seen here as evidence of ongoing public debate about the role of childhood in shaping man and citizen, as it seeks to find the most appropriate way to write for and about children in a changing socio-political environment. The study examines the uniqueness of Sleptsov’s literary form. On the one hand, it could be described as a feuilleton; on the other hand, it reveals signs of various genres of children’s educational literature. This use of a genealogically complex form may indicate similarities in rhetorical strategies employed by writers and educators in discussions about younger generations, whether they be children or young adults. It is also suggested that in the 1860s, children’s literature and childhood discourse were influenced not only by literature for adult readers but also by the tradition of critical reflection. Sleptsov’s feuilleton can be considered an example of reverse genre transfer, as it explicitly demonstrates how narrative forms adapted by children’s literature influence adult literature.

Постать Наталії Кобринської крізь призму робіт української діаспоріянки в Канаді Ірени Книш

Іntroduction. The article is devoted to the study of the works of a bright representative of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada - Irena Knysh, in which she analyzes the life, creative and social progress of the theoretician and the founder of organized feminism in Ukraine, the organizer of the first Ukrainian feminist organization and the first national almanac on the topic of gender equality - Natalia Kobrynska. Methods. An anthropocentric approach is used, which makes it possible to focus on the personality of Kobrynska and her feminist and gender works in both organizational and literary formats. The principles and methods of historical and anthropological research are used (the principle of anthropological interpretation and reduction, based on which the work of Kobrynska is analyzed as a way of self-objectification of the writer) in combination with biographical (analysis of biographical material about Kobrynska), historical and analytical (study of social and political influences on the formation of Natalia Kobrynska's emancipatory ideas and her structuring of the ideology of feminism into an organizational form), figurative and stylistic methods (analysis of the writer's literary work). The results. Analyzing the works of Irena Knysh dedicated to Kobrynska, the author tried to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of Natalia Kobrynska's activity and the constant components of her intellectual worldview, through the prism of which Irena Knysh saw her: in her versatile human essence, in complex inner self-development, in dialogue with herself and her environment. There is no doubt that Kobrynska's artistic works have become a valuable asset of national literature, and her social and public, primarily feminist activity is a unique page in the history of the Ukrainian social-democratic movement. Conclusions. The activities of Nataliya Kobrynska and the research of Irena Knysh become particularly relevant in today's difficult times, when Ukrainian feminism faces new challenges and responds to them. Again, as 140 years ago, Ukrainian feminists have to fight for Ukraine, for their rights in Ukraine and abroad

Metaphorical Figures for Moral Complexity

Abstract: If literary narrative as a practice is well suited to capture morally complex situations, that is in large part due to the work of literary (that is, narrative and stylistic) form . This article examines the specific contribution that metaphorical language makes to the literary negotiation of moral complexity. The discussion is positioned vis-à-vis debates on the specific forms of moral knowledge that literature can provide, which I distinguish from both propositional meanings and the dilemmas entertained by analytic philosophers (for instance, the trolley problem). Instead, I draw on metaphor theory to suggest that metaphorical language can enrich the moral resonance of literature by deepening (and complicating) readers' engagement with fictional characters and the situations in which they are embedded. These metaphorical figures probe the experience captured by Cora Diamond under the rubric of the "difficulty of reality." This idea is illustrated through a close reading of Lauren Groff's short story "Flower Hunters," which skillfully orchestrates metaphorical language so as to encapsulate the protagonist's existential and moral impasse in times of ecological crisis.