Literary Phenomenon Research Articles

The Global World in the Pre-Modern Era: Lessons from the Past for Our Future With a Focus on the Early Modern Novel Fortunatus (1509)

There are many efforts underway today to investigate the true extent to which the notion of globalism already applied to the pre-modern world. This study reviews some of the major scholarly contributions, examines major historical, social, and literary developments and phenomena in the Middle Ages that lend themselves well to support the argument that early forms of globalism certainly existed, and illustrates this specifically through a close reading of the anonymous German novel Fortunatus, first printed in Augsburg in 1509. The conclusions that can be drawn from this highly popular work, republished and translated many times far into the late seventeenth century, find significant confirmation in even much earlier texts and historical networks. Hence, carefully modified and adapted, the concept of globalism finds confirmation already in the pre-modern world.

Hunger, World, the X: On Ghosh and Miller’s Thinking Literature Across Continents

This essay constitutes an unorthodox response to Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller’s Thinking Literature Across Continents: instead of attempting to conventionally engage with a text that challenges the idea of any unitary totality as a whole, I opt instead to dwell on the interplay between language and silence in three different sites of inquiry within the text: the first concerns the question of hunger, for which I take as my starting point Ghosh’s own starting point in the first chapter of the book, namely Rabidranath Tagore’s reflections on a brief episode on the river Ganges. I excavate the transcontinental provenance of these reflections for western, particularly Kantian, aesthetics before I focus on two aspects within the episode that such a framing misses or remains silent about: the paradoxical tendency of material satiation to demote the importance of hunger (as paradigmatically exposed in Brecht); and the indeterminacy of the kind of hunger that is involved in the boatman’s response within Tagore’s text (as evidenced by prehistoric cave paintings). Finally, I demonstrate the importance of taking these complications into account when reading Ghosh’s own extensive interest in foregrounding hunger within the literary phenomenon and its hermeneutic reception. In the second part of the essay, I dwell on Ghosh’s critique of prevailing notions of “world literature” in the fifth chapter of the book by demonstrating the ontological (Heideggerian) rather than empirical meaning of world in his writing, and, by extension, the subtractive and absence-centered meaning of what he calls the “more than global.” Finally, I turn to J. Hillis Miller’s reading of Wallace Stevens’s “The Motive for Metaphor” in the fourth chapter as an exemplary site for the exploration of the interface between poetics, hermeneutics and ontology that is central to Ghosh’s theory of the literary, and thus serves to highlight, in Miller’s very engagement with the failure of language as an issue of concern in the poem, the possibility of dialogue between the two critics: indeed, as I show, Stevens’s figure of the “X” serves both as a signifier of the ineffable and as one for criss-crossing, for the “across” involved in “thinking literature across” authors, continents and traditions.

The Construction of Sublime in Re-writing Practices

Bu makale yeniden yazma pratiklerinde, yüce olanın yazın mevcudiyetinin olanağını araştırmaktadır. Jean François Lyotard’ın telaffuz ettiği biçimi ile yeniden yazma post modern edebiyatın alımlanmasında kurucu bir kavram olarak anlaşılıyor olsa da, bu pratiğin aslında yazının kendisi kadar eski olduğu da iddia edilebilir. Ancak bir tekrar mekaniği, izden ime geçişi mümkün kılmaktadır. İmgeden sembole geçiş yazıyı mümkün kılan olanak olarak, düşünceye geçişi de taahhüt altına almaktadır. Sözgelişi on binlerce yıl boyunca aynı mağara duvarındaki resimlerin üzerinden geçerek resimleri canlı tutan ressam da; esrarını mesneviden aldım diyen ya da iambic pentameter ölçüsü ile sone yazan şair kadar yeniden yazma pratiğini gerçekleştirmektedir. Bu deneme yazının dolayımında anonimleşen yazar ile burada ve şimdinin algısının taşıyıcısı olarak maddi anlamda kendisine mahkûm yazar imgelerinin yazın uzamdaki karşılaşmalarının yarattığı bitimsizliği yücenin inşası olarak ele alıyor. Bu karşılaşma için yeniden yazım bir olanak yaratmaktadır. Bu, gerçek olandan düşsel olana geçişin yarattığı bir yazınsal olanaktır. Geçiş, ontolojik anlamda maddesel olanın düşünsel olana aktarımıdır. Bu aktarım yeniden yazımın yazarları arasında bir geçişliliği mümkün kılar. Makale bu yazın olayı Jorge Luis Borges ve Nathaniel Hawthorne üzerinden betimleyerek işaret ediyor.

Phenomenology of memory and images of native land in poetry of Farit Yakhin

The aim of this article is to show some deep senses of Farit Yakhin's poetry, represented, in particular, by the subject of his homeland. There are writers whose development continues along the "peripheral" line of motion of today's Tatar literature. "Peripheral", contrary to our thinking, does not mean "low quality", since often this "marginal status" is determined by the fact that the vector of literary development is defined by "new" or, on the contrary, "conservative" guidelines, and in its light, one that preserves the successive traditionality of writing, varying with a brilliant individual originality within strictly defined limits , is evaluated as something different and therefore "peripheral". But it must be said that the approach of current preference (we have the right to study it within the framework of the "sociology of reading activity") is somewhat wrong, because it does not give the opportunity to study a literary phenomenon to its full extent? Farit Yakhin is a great writer, and we cannot help but complain that, despite the quantitative size of his artistic production, it has not yet been properly publicized

The dramatic writing workshop as a mediating practice between literary creation and social phenomenon

The workshop of theatrical writing can be understood as a literary and artistic mediation practice because it can allow people to open themselves to cultural objects that they do not usually frequent. The playwright Luc Tartar met with several groups of teenagers to conduct writing workshops aimed at developing their taste for literature, transforming their relation with writing and develop their sensitivity to theatre. The writing workshops were then able to bring to light the psychosocial reality of youth while they gave material to the production of the playwright who thus found an artistic material in direct contact with this youth. This device based on an interaction that informs about the sociology of youth and invites to reassess the processes of literary creation from a mix of practices. This mediation can be thought in terms of literary engagement because it creates a space of sociability and exchange for young people and is imbued with it, participating in the legitimation of this social category.

Czech Literary Culture in the Post-Digital Era

This study examines the changes within Czech literary culture since 2000 in relation to the process of remediation. The starting methodological point is in examining a structure of a literary system within a model proposed by Siegfried J. Schmidt. The impact of new creative approaches which utilise interactive network media and also of available publishing platforms are observed in terms of the increase in the size of the literary active group of the population. The study further investigates publishing options via the Internet used mainly by amateur authors, complementary phenomena in print production, as well as the impact of these innovative forms on the dynamics of the book market. The ways in which texts are received are examined particularly from the point of enhancing the role of the reader within interactive media and attention is paid to the qualitative changes within the reception frameworks (transnational and non-literary contexts). And finally, the ways in which literary phenomena are handled is largely related to the reflection of the critical state of the current literary criticism and new virtual formats of critiquing literature. The study shows that the evolutionary changes which were brought about by extending the use of digital media within literary communication have been so extensive that the Schmidt model of analysis has proven insufficient.

Niewidoma kobieta, niewidoma pisarka. Tożsamości Jadwigi Stańczakowej

The article concerns Jadwiga Stańczakowa, a blind journalist and writer, and friend of Miron Białoszewski. The author analyses Stańczakowa’s writing as an independent literary phenomenon deserving its own interpretation. Drawing on autobiographical and autoethnographic work by Maria Reimann, who is also an author with a disability, the author observes the emancipatory meaning of blindness. The text present three identities of Jadwiga Stańczakowa. First, the author shows her as a woman and asks if her blindness affected her femininity and sexuality. Secondly, the author interprets fragments of texts written by Stańczakowa during depression. Finally, she describes the writer’s identity, the most autonomous, although they all depend on Białoszewski.

Gramatica Critică Sau Critica Gramaticii?

Abstract Gramatica critică a limbii române (The Critical Grammar of the Romanian Language), authored by Ștefan Găitănaru, was published in 2018, at the University of Pitești Publishing House. The launch of this book took place during the National Conference on Adaptation, Conservation and Rejection in the Evolution of the Romanian Cultural/ Linguistic/ Literary Phenomenon, held at the Faculty of Letters in Sibiu, on May 24, 2019. The purpose of the book, mentioned by the author in the Preface, is to update the grammar research, emphasizing the normative aspect. Thus, we witness a descriptive-normative grammar, with a classical structure: part I - Morphology and part II - Syntax, each section comprising the description, analysis and interpretation of specific components. This Critical Grammar brings to the surface controversial aspects regarding the grammatical structure of the Romanian language, with pertinent observations and recommendations, with solid arguments, for or against, from case to case.

With dark humor about a dark future

Abstract This article analyses the relationship between black humor and dystopian literature. In dystopia, humor can appear on the surface as language or situational comics, but there is also a deeper link between these two literary phenomena: they confront the reader with an unexpected notion in order to bring him to a critical reflection. There are many dystopias in the Nordic literature that use comic elements. Three of them are discussed in this article: Axel Jensens Epp (1965), Lena Anderssons Duck City (2006) and Kaspar Colling Nielsens Den danske borgerkrig 2018–24 (2013). The analysis shows that classic black humor is enriched with other tragicomic, satirical or surrealistic elements and significantly contributes to the critical tone of the text. In all cases humor is used for the same purpose, and this is a critique of superior power (the so-called superiority theory). Therefore, humor can be considered not only as a stylistic means, but also as a principle of construction of the dystopian works.

Transvalorizări Hipertextuale În Palimpsestul Narativ Sara De Ștefan Agopian

Abstract In this paper, I will examine the novel Sara, published by Stefan Agopian in 1987. The novel is a rewriting of the Book of Tobit, from the Old Testament, and is preceded by another novel written by the prose writer on the same biblical theme, entitled Tobit. I will approach the work from the perspective the overvaluation that certain notions suffer, in the transition from the Bible to its narrative Agopian. Transvalorization is a literary phenomenon discussed by G. Genette in his study, Palimpsestes (1982), but my method is not entirely faithful to the narrator.

Depicting the Divine. Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Mann

Depicting the Divine. Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Mann

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF THE DRAMATICAL WORKS BY ERIC-EMMANUEL SCHMITT

The article studies the drama of the modern French-speaking author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. It analyses of the problems of the French artist's plays, the role of his work in the context of the literary process of the XX-XXI century and traces the development of his philosophical thought. The article used comparative-typological, comparative-historical and structural methods to study the stated issues, which made it possible to compare the dramatic works of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt with other literary phenomena, to single out his creative achievements in the literary field of the postmodern period, especially in their systems in the works of this author: the play "Guest" is taken for a more detailed analysis. It is noted that the determining factor in the formation of philosophical worldviews of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt was the writing of a thesis on Denis Diderot and acquaintance with other famous artists of the Enlightenment. While working on his research, the writer could not miss the study of contemporary trends in philosophy and literature, including drama. The ideas and beliefs of artists of the Enlightenment had a great influence on the formation of Schmitt's philosophical thought: he was inspired by their belief in the possibility of human knowledge, considered man not only as a sensitive but also as an intelligent being; like the Enlightenment, the French writer turned to a variety of religious themes and metaphysical ways of thinking. The author is convinced that philosophy is around everyone: it should not be hidden behind pathetic phrases and complex texts; it should live in the form of fairy tales, plays, and dialogues. The philosopher must be able to mix the humour with the serious things, so Schmitt took on the responsibility of talking to people about important things in a simple way and he treats this task as a mission. Tracing the author's own style, it is concluded that in general, Schmitt's spiritual development took place mainly under the influence of Enlightenment thinkers, so his work used the principles and techniques inherent in the work of educators.

PRÁTICAS DE LEITURA DO TEXTO LITERÁRIO E DIMENSÕES INTERDISCIPLINARES

Este artigo tem por objetivo propor um modelo de leitura de textos literários fundamentado na ideia de que estes apresentam potencialidades epistemológicas, compreendidas como dimensões ensináveis. Essas correspondem a conteúdos sedimentados na forma estética da obra de arte literária e que são passíveis de serem ensinados em situações pedagogicamente orientadas por um mediador de leitura. Para tanto, abordamos considerações de Schneuwly (2004) e Schneuwly & Dolz (2010) sobre gêneros e Cosson (2014) acerca de letramento literário, além de estabelecermos categorias como macro e microdimensões de conteúdo e propormos um modelo de aula de leitura de base temática, que parte da leitura imanente para a identificação, e posterior reflexão, do caráter epistêmico do fenômeno literário. Concluímos que, ao considerarmos o texto como produtor de conhecimentos, concebemos os gêneros discursivos literários como unidades de ensino a serem exploradas em suas macro e microdimensões.
 PALAVRAS-CHAVES: Análise. Leitura. Modelos. Textos literários.

Analisis Kohesi Gramatikal (Konjungsi) dalam Novel Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk Karya Ahmad Tohari

Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui unsur gramatikal yang ada pada novel Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk karya Ahmad Tohari. Unsur gramatikal yang diambil adalah seluruh unsur konjungsi. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif, karena penelitian kualitatif adalah penelitian yang paling cocok dengan fenomena sastra. Teknik analisis (Content Analysis) juga digunakan untuk wacana yang berhubungan dengan isi wacana novel, baik secara verbal maupun nonverbal; wacana verbal dalam penelitian ini adalah novel yang jumlah keseluruhan isi wacana tersebut yang dimaksud. Sampel utuh dari isi teks novel Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk adalah menggunakan sampel 2 cerita dari 3 cerita. Tiap cerita penulis akan mengambil 15 paragraf untuk di analisis. Dengan jumlah 30 paragraf. Gramatikal pada aspek konjungsi menunjukkan persentase pemakaian kohesi gramatikal pada aspek konjungsi sebanyak 62 pasang kalimat atau 60,78%.

The Paranormal Surrounds Us: Psychic Phenomena in Literature, Culture, and Psychoanalysis by Richard Reichbart

The Paranormal Surrounds Us is a tied-together collection of essays by Richard Reichbart, a practicing psychoanalyst whose several strong interests and lifelong love for the mystery of psi, and sense of adventure and ethical sensibility, give the collection several points of focus. In addition to his current analytic practice of many decades, he has also been a student of literature, a playwright, a Yale-trained attorney, and an activist for Native American and African American rights. The book is as scattered as he has been, but it is so full of insights and pleasing prose, that it doesn’t lose much for that. In this time when we prefer our intellectual material in bite-sized chunks, like sparky TED Talks and internet articles, this may feel especially friendly to many. If there is an implicit, underlying focus to the work, it may be implicitly biographical: one curious man’s study of, to paraphrase Freud, the vicissitudes of psi – its expression in our finest literature, in our private and shared unconscious processes, in our different subcultures, in the deepest privacy of intensive psychotherapy, and in the legal and cultural presumptions that implicitly structure our thinking and behavior. There are three main sections to the book: Psi Phenomena in Western Literature, Psi Phenomena and Psychoanalysis, and Psi Phenomena and Culture.

The Pleasures of Imagination. Aspects of Fictionality in the Poetics of the Age of Enlightenment and in Present-Day Theories of Fiction

AbstractInvestigations into the history of the modern practice of fiction encounter a wide range of obstacles. One of the major impediments lies in the fact that former centuries have used different concepts and terms to designate or describe phenomena or ideas that we, during the last 50 years, have been dealing with under the label of fiction/ality. Therefore, it is not easy to establish whether scholars and poets of other centuries actually do talk about what we today call fiction or fictionality and, if they do, what they say about it. Moreover, even when we detect discourses or propositions that seem to deal with aspects of fictionality we have to be careful and ask whether these propositions are actually intended to talk about phenomena that belong to the realm of fiction/ality. However, if we want to gain some knowledge about the history of fiction/ality, we have no other choice than to tackle the arduous task of trying to detect similarities (and differences) between the present-day discourse on fictionality and (allegedly) related discourses of other epochs. The goal of this paper is to make a small contribution to this task.The starting point of the paper are two observations, which also determine the approach I have chosen for my investigations. 1) In the 18thcentury the terms »fiction« or »fictionality« do not seem to play a significant role in the discussion of art and literature. However, some propositions of the discourse on imagination, one of the most prominent discourses of the Age of Enlightenment, seem to suggest that this discourse deals more or less explicitly with questions regarding the fictionality of literary artefacts as we conceive it today. 2) The concepts of imagination and fictionality are also closely linked in present-day theories of fiction. Naturally, the question arises how the entanglement of the concepts of fictionality and imagination can be understood in a historical perspective. Can it function as a common ground between 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality? Is imagination still used in the same ways to explain phenomena of fictionality or have the approaches evolved over the last 250 years and if yes, then how? These kinds of questions inevitably lead to one major question: What do 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality have in common, how much and in what ways do they differ?For heuristic reasons, the article is subdivided according to what I consider the three salient features of today’s institutional theories of fiction (i. e. theories which try to explain fictionality as an institutional practice that is determined and ruled by specific conventions): fictive utterance (aspects concerning the production of fictional texts), fictional content (aspects concerning the narrated story in fictional texts) and fictive stance (aspects concerning the reader’s response to fictional texts). The article focusses on the English, French and German-speaking debates of the long 18thcentury and within these discourses on the most central and, therefore, for the development of the concept of fiction/ality most influential figures. These are, most notably, Madame de Staël, Voltaire, Joseph Addison, Georg Friedrich Meier, Christian Wolff, the duo Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger as well as their adversary Johann Christoph Gottsched.The relevance of the article for a historical approach to the theory of fiction lies in the following aspects. By means of a tentative reconstruction of some carefully chosen propositions of 18th-century discourse on imagination I want to show that these propositions deal in some way or other with literary phenomena and theoretical concepts that in present-day theory are addressed under the label of fiction/ality. By comparing propositions stemming from 18th-century discourse on imagination with some major assertions of present-day theories of fiction I try to lay bare the similarities and the differences of the respective approaches to literary fiction and its conceptualisations. One of the major questions is to what extent these similarities and differences stem from the differing theoretical paradigms that are used to explain literary phenomena in both epochs. I venture some hypotheses about the influence of the respective theoretical backgrounds on the conceptions of fictionality then and today. An even more intriguing question seems to be whether the practice of fictional storytelling as we know and conceive it today had already been established during the 18thcentury or whether it was only in the process of being established.

The Scent of the Righteous vs. the Scent of the Wicked: Body Odor as a Social Indicator of Morality in Rabbinic Literature

Abstract Perceiving the odor emitted by one’s body or clothes as a manifestation of moral identity is a cross-cultural sociological and literary phenomenon. Odors were perceived as a mark that set social boundaries and they made it possible to distinguish between groups of people by their status or identity. In the Christian, Muslim, and Bahai traditions holy people, such as prophets, martyrs, and shahids, were perceived or described as smelling good. In Jewish cultural discourse, smell is a sociological-religious indicator that distinguishes, whether symbolically or realistically, between the good and the corrupt. The term “foul smell” is mentioned in association with negative people, mainly with regard to sexual promiscuity. In contrast, a good fragrance is emblematic of the Patriarchs (Abraham), people with stringent sexual morals (Joseph), and Torah scholars.

Um olhar sobre as relações entre literatura e teledramaturgia: a literatura comparada como um horizonte possível

O artigo concebe a Literatura Comparada como um arcabouço teórico profícuo para se analisar as relações estabelecidas entre literatura e teledramaturgia devido às especificidades interdisciplinares dessa metodologia, que se articula com várias teorias e fornece um instrumento teórico rico e coerente para se ater aos fenômenos literários e culturais. A relação imanente entre literatura e teledramaturgia é analisada longe de determinadas posturas acadêmicas excludentes. Desse modo, justifica-se essa postura pelo próprio traço do cenário contemporâneo marcado pela multiplicidade de expressões, temas e formas, no que tange à produção artística.

Commune sepulcrum

In Roman literature, Troy appears as a locus memoriae on several occasions. As a locus memoriae is an image of a location’s past state, it inevitably recalls that past state’s absence in the present. Troy as a literary locus memoriae recalls its own present absence, that it is only a ruin, or – according to Lucan – even less than a ruin. In this context, a literary phenomenon, i. e. the depiction of Troy being the equivalent of the absence of/or the grief for the loss of something or somebody can later be traced in the Roman poetry. Catullus, mourning his brother’s death at Troy, calls the city the common grave (commune sepulcrum) of Asia and Europe in his carmen 68. Regarding Troy, several complex allusions can be noticed in Vergil’s Aeneid recalling both Catullus 68 and 101, the two poems that are in both thematic and intertextual connection with each other. The purpose of the present study is to examine – by means of analysing the above mentioned intertexts – what kind of special locus memoriae Troy becomes in the Aeneid. This will be of crucial importance to observe the way Troy later appears in Lucan’s Bellum Civile.

Literature from the perspective of interpretative anthropology

Kryminalna odyseja oraz inne szkice o czytaniu i pisaniu [Criminal Odyssey and Other Essays About Reading and Writing] by Wojciech J. Burszta and Mariusz Czubaj is not the first text written together by the two scientists. Their other joint work was, for instance, published over a decade ago in 2007 Krwawa setka. 100 najważniejszych powieści kryminalnych [The Bloody Hundred. The 100 Most Important Crime Novels]. What is more, together with the two above-mentioned texts, Czu-baj’s monography published in 2010, Etnolog w Mieście Grzechu. Powieść kryminalna jako świa-dectwo antropologiczne [An Ethnologist in the City of Sin. The Crime Novel as an Anthropological Testimony], creates a thematically consistent cycle devoted to “the stories of crime and punishment” whose key to interpretation is Clifford Geertz’s concept of interpretative anthropology.The authors of the “Criminal Odyssey…” admit that the choice of the literary examples pre-sented in their work was subjective. Thus, one could accuse the authors of incompleteness resulting from the choice of these particular texts as well as their contexts. However, it seems that the authors did it purposefully, which also complies with Greetz’s attitude, as he believed that a complete study of any cultural phenomenon is a utopian project. Paradoxically, it is the very incompleteness that induces the reader to inquire further, which is the subject of “Czytanie” [Reading] (pp. 17–58), the first essay of the “Criminal Odyssey…”. It serves as an “introduction to reading”, complemented with the following essays which focus on specific problems and which, if examined separately, seem to be subject to the case studies of literary phenomena, poetics of specific writers, or motives. One could also examine Burszta and Czubaj’s work from another perspective and read it not as an anthropological interpretation of literature, but as a literary conceptualisation of anthropology.