Literary Prose Research Articles

On R. Kahn's Attempt at Hiding Keynes's General Theory IS-LP (LM) Model from the Economics Profession: How Hicks's SI-LL (Hansen's IS-LM) Model Was Substituted for Keynes's IS-LP (LM) in the General Theory

A careful reading of Kahn’s 1978 Journal of Economic Literature article and his 1984 book, The Making of Keynes’s General Theory, demonstrate that he is trying to deceive his readers by hiding the fact that Keynes was the inventor and originator of the first IS-LM model, which Keynes would have designated as IS-LP, where LP stands for Liquidity Preference Function. Kahn was well aware of the fact that Keynes had introduced the IS-LP (LM) model in December 4th,1933 in a student lecture. He had read the 1934 draft copy of the General Theory where the model is present. He also read chapter 21 of the General Theory, especially pp.297-306. It is quite impossible for Kahn not to have covered Keynes’s explicit IS-LP (LM) analysis on pp.298-303 of the GT, given that he cites pages 297-298 and p.305 of the General Theory. Kahn deliberately attempts to mislead and deceive his readers about Keynes’s mathematical analysis on pp.304-306. This deception, duplicity and dishonesty on Kahn’s part was first explicitly noticed by Hutchison in 1977, although Hutchison barely scratches the surface of Kahn’s deceit and duplicity. The results of Kahn’s deception, along with the similar deceptions of Joan Robinson, was to create immense confusion. This confusion was instrumental in the creation of the myth that the General Theory was a vague and ambiguous book because Keynes, as a Marshallian methodologist, had refused to provide any formal, mathematical model of his theory in the General Theory because of the supposed radical uncertainty of the future. This then led to the “What did Keynes really mean in the General Theory” view of Keynes’s theory. The result was that Hicks’s inferior version of Keynes’s IS-LM was accepted as what Keynes had to have meant because at least it was clear, had some math in it, plus some graphs that economists could understand. The result was that Keynes’s original superior analysis and work was lost. The near unanimous belief among economists that Keynes’s GT is composed only of Keynes’s elegant, literary prose, and that he never provided any formal, mathematical model of his theory in the GT, is the result of their acceptance of a myth concocted by the Robinsons and R. Kahn. R. Kahn’s deliberate misrepresentation of Keynes’s mathematical analysis in chapter 21 on pp.304-306, as being composed of mere identities without any behavioral content, was aimed at misleading potential readers of that chapter so that pages 298-306 would be skipped over. Unfortunately, the Robinsons and Kahn have succeeded. It is now up to the historians of economic thought to correct this catastrophic, egregious error.

Religious discourse in Hellenistic and Roman times: content topoi in Greek epigraphic cult foundations and sacred norms

In Greek inscriptions on cult foundations and regulations from the Hellenistic period onwards it is possible to see the development of an especial religious discourse that includes ancient and new hymnic elements, in addition to new topoi that do not belong to the Hymn tradition. This new religious discourse develops incorporating new features of Greco-Roman religion, strongly influenced by oriental cults, and at the same time well aware of the new philosophical trends that very much pervaded religion at this time. Some sacred inscriptions from the third century BC onwards show precedents of elements well attested in the sacred literary prose of the second century AD. In this paper, the main topoi that constitute this new religious discourse will be analyzed looking specifically at the topoi concerning the founder of the sacred institution or norms, the god or gods worshipped and the worshippers, and also the topoi concerning the content of the foundation norms and the resources used to force the observance of the norms.

Comparative comparison between the characters of Jamie’s tale of (Salamon & Absal) and Avicenna ’s Hayy Ebn Yaqzan and Andalusian Ebn Tofeyl’s hayy Ebn Yaqazan

Brilliant models of allegory and secretive tales are observable in mystical and philosophical works of Persian literature in verse and prose. Avicenna is the first person who has written the philosophical tale of Hayy Ebn Yaqzan in mystical clothing and symbolic style. In this philosophical and symbolic epistle, Avicenna has represented evolution stages of human in request of hidden secrets and sublime insight and spiritual life, and in travers of behavior stages he became aware of the truth that there is a spiritual life other than corporeal life. Therefore he is guided to spiritual world by sense and by the help of active wisdom. Then Andalusian Ebn Tofeyl has combined Avicenna ’s tales of Hayy Ebn Yaqzan and Salamon & Absal and recompiled it in a symbolic form and wrote it out with philosophical array. In this tale Hayy Ebn Yaqzan was grown alone in an island and he was attracted by comprehension and perception of the reality by external senses, recognition of palpable worlds and by discovery. Despite some similarities with Persian archaic tales, ((Salamon & Absal)) is a Greek legend in fact, which was received by Honayn Ebn Eshaq in east by translation from Greek into Arabic for the first time. This tale contains allegorical and philosophical aspects and has Greek quality and Alexandria quality. This tale was changed into a mystical and discovery tale by Avicenna . In fact he made it a part of his ((philosophy of east and west)) equivalent of common philosophy. Jamie wrote the original narrative of Honayn Ebn Eshaq in a symbolic form with artistic, elegant and eloquent statement. This poem is Jamie’s shortest ‘Orang, and also his most gnostic ‘Orang, of his famous Haft ‘Orang. In this tale Salamon is the symbol of soul and Absal is the symbol of body. This research studies the introduced characters in Jamie’s Salamon & Absal and Hayy ebn Yaqzan in Avicenna ’s and Andalusian Ebn Tofeyl’s tales.

“Like photographs of ghosts”: representing post-apartheid South Africa in Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) heard its first testimony in April of 1996. Two years later, in 1998, the first volume of the report of the commission was published. While it aims to be a document representing closure in terms of the history of apartheid, the TRC report is rife with gaps and omissions across the long history of apartheid. Approaching this history and its legacy in literary prose, Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative (2010) serves as a counter-history to the TRC’s narrative of closure. Extending formal strategies from his earlier works, including composite literary form and performative modes of writing, Vladislavić employs photography and ghosts within his text to unsettle official history and to offer a melancholic approach to the past of apartheid and its ongoing effects in post-apartheid South Africa.

Postcolonial Literature and World Englishes: A Corpus-Based Approach of Modes of Representation of the Non-Standard in Writing

The present study investigates the representation of non-standardised varieties of English in literary prose texts. This is achieved by creating and annotating a corpus of literary texts from Scotland, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. The analysis addresses two major topics. Firstly, the extent of representation reveals clearly distinct feature profiles across regions, coupled with varying feature densities. Feature profiles are also relevant to individual characters, as certain traits such as social status, ethnicity, or age can be signalled by linguistic means. The second topic, accuracy of representation, compares the features observed in literary texts with descriptions of the actual varieties, and suggests that representations of varieties may differ from their real-life models in the sense that highly frequent features may be absent from texts, while less frequent but more emblematic ones, or even invented ones, may be used by authors to render a variety of English in their texts.

Литературно-критическая проза М. Цветаевой: поэтика на фоне традиции

Литературно-критическая проза М. Цветаевой: поэтика на фоне традиции

A Research-Based Evidence of the Effect of Graphic Organizers on the Understanding of Prose Fiction in ESL Classroom

Graphic organizers (GOs) are fast becoming acceptable standard instructional tools across subjects in the education arena globally. However, this visual representation of information is yet to be recognized and integrated into the teaching methods in Nigerian schools. This study, therefore, presents a research-based investigation of the usefulness of GOs in the appreciation of prose literature in Nigeria, with a view to foregrounding their use in Nigerian schools. Specifically, the study seeks to find out whether senior secondary students in prose literature-in-English in Nigeria who are taught with GOs perform better in prose and comprehension assessments. Four project secondary schools with total of 100 students were purposively selected for the study. The schools were grouped into two: graphic-based schools (GBS) and non-graphic-based schools (NGBS). Whereas the GBS was exposed to instruction via eight graphic organizers, the NGBS served as control. Subjected to descriptive statistics and one-sample t test analysis, the investigation reveals that graphic organizers make students take charge of the learning process in prose literature classes, and it concludes that these visual instructional elements guarantee student understanding and achievement. The study, thus, recommends the incorporation of graphic organizers in the teaching and learning processes across subjects in Nigerian schools.

In 3/4, a trembling question: Mediterranean literature?

AbstractIn counterpoint to debates on littérature-monde, I outline the emergence of Mediterranean literature, uniquely positioned as a concept to productively break with old frustrations over globalizing universalist tendencies, and the French/francophone divide. The modern Mediterranean selectively striates and structures a detotalitizing literature whose self-consciousness creatively prolongs the composite genealogies and trajectories of preand early modern texts, histories, and ideas to the present day. While ambiguous and contradictory modes of discourse abound on and in the Mediterranean, Mediterranean literature diverges aesthetically in its avoidance of the norms of writing back in the critical, resistive political traditions to decolonize French and francophone literary prose. It seeks illogical, poetic alternatives instead. It attempts to reconcile prosody and prose with a deep, archaic poetic archive that stretches from twentiethcentury post-structuralism, structuralism, and earlier avant-gardist intellectual modes, further back to early Islamic ritual, and even pre-Islamic poetics. Its dominant thrust shifts attention toward a poetry-centric swerve across the entirety of the modern Mediterranean’s textual-literary littoral. In its wake, in the light of the potential intertextual openings it instigates, an immense literary transhistoricity and translinguistic divergence emerges, which short-circuits polemical identity politics and (trans)nationalist-linguistic reflexes to inscribe and understand literature. Through an unfolding of the notions of illogic, indefinition, innumerability, enigma, mobility, emergence, resonance, and the dichromatic in works by Salah Stétié, Emmanuel Hocquard, and Abdelwahab Meddeb, I am able to present an illustration of what a close reading of a prototypical piece of modern Mediterranean literature may resemble.RésuméEn contrepoint aux débats sur la littérature-monde, nous traçons les contours d’une littérature méditerranéenne, uniquement posée pour mettre fin aux anciennes frustrations autour des tendances universelles globalisantes, et de la scission français/francophone. La Méditerranée moderne allonge et étale une littérature détotalisante, dont l’autoconscience prolonge jusqu’au présent les trajectoires et les généalogies composites de textes, d’histoires et d’idées médiévales et pré-modernes. Bien qu’abondent, sur et dans la Méditerranée, des modes de discours ambigus et contradictoires, la littérature méditerranéenne se diverge d’un point de vue esthétique en évitant les normes de la contreattaque, selon les traditions de la résistance politique et critique pour décoloniser la prose française et francophone. Elle recherche plutôt des alternatives illogiques et poétiques. Elle tente à réconcilier la prosodie et la prose à travers des riches archives archaïques et poétiques, décèlant ainsi le poststructuralisme et le structuralisme du vingtième siècle, en passant par les modes intellectuels avant-gardistes précédents, et en remontant jusqu’aux rites de l’islam naissant, et même à la poétique antéislamique. La force dominante de la littérature méditerranéenne porte notre attention vers une embardée intellectuelle, axée sur le poétique, dans tout le pourtour textuel-littéraire de la Méditerranée. Dans son sillage, à la lumière des ouvertures intertextuelles potentielles qu’elle inaugure, voit le jour une immense divergence littéraire transhistorique et translinguistique, ce qui court-circuite les politiques identitaires polémiques, ainsi que la méthodologie d’inscription et de compréhension de la littérature que visent les reflexes (trans)nationalistes-linguistiques. A travers un dépliement des notions d’illogique, indéfinition, innombrabilité, énigme, mobilité, émergence, résonance, et le dichromatique, dans des œuvres de Salah Stétié, d’Emmanuel Hocquard, et d’Abdelwahab Meddeb, nous présentons une illustration de ce à quoi ressemblerait une lecture close d’une œuvre méditerranéenne moderne prototype.

Commitment in painting

Abstract This introductory piece situates Sartre’s What is Literature? in a historical and theoretical context. Historically, it points out that it is shaped by issues of collaboration during the Occupation of France in World War II; and, consequently, when writers such as Robert Brasillach are executed for collaboration, it sees literature as a matter of life and death. Theoretically, it addresses the idea of commitment in both writing and painting; and it addresses Sartre’s argument in terms advanced by Adorno’s criticism of Sartrean ideas of commitment and existentialist choice. Sartre distinguishes prose literature from other arts, including especially painting, and claims that prose, in describing the world, reveals fundamental truths about persons; and, once those truths are revealed, they pose a question to the reader of whether she wishes to change the facts of the world. For Sartre, ‘parler, c’est agir’. This is his ‘commitment’, and it devolves into a choice between capitalism and communism. Adorno shows that Sartre is interested in choice in merely abstract terms, and not in material and empirical choices that are made. The piece examines the relation between ‘parler’ and ‘agir’ specifically in terms of the actions made by and on paintings, to argue that what is really at stake in any contemporary political choice is the radical potential not of prosaic content but of aesthetic form.

The Uses of Poetry: Renewing an Educational Understanding of a Language Art

Drawing upon research undertaken for a project that explored the cultural value of poetry in lifelong learning, we argue for the renewal of a specifically educational understanding of poetry as a language art. In a context of increasingly instrumental approaches to the uses of poetry in educational settings, late twentieth-century discussions and perspectives on the relationship between poetry (as a distinct language art and distinctive mode of language use), experience and learning are examined in order to argue for the importance of poetry as poetry in education. Differences between poetry and other language arts such as literary prose and rhetoric are explored in an attempt to seek conceptual clarity about poetry as a mode of language use. The work of British educationist James Britton, in particular, is seen as important in this regard and his synthesis of intellectual resources from philosophy, psychology, and literary studies. We conclude by arguing that the distinctiveness of poetry and the essence of its utility in education arises from its self-conscious effort to draw attention to its symbolic nature and that poetry as poetry meets a deeply human need to symbolize.

Literary Translation and Cultural Challenges: JhumpaLahiri's The Namesake

This paper discusses how the nature of literary translation differs from other forms of translation by looking at practical difficulties and challenges notable in the Arabic translation of Lahiri's novel The Namesake (2003). The difficulties discussed are cultural differences which have created “untranslatable” cultural-bound words and phrases, as well as specialized vocabulary. The paper explores the conflict between the translator's duty to accuracy and his/her duty to literary translation as an art form. One problem faced by the prose-translator is finding terms in his or her own language that are faithful as much as possible to the meaning of certain words in S.L. For example, there are words which describe specific rituals or those related to typical architecture, fabrics, and cookery; these and many others represent the specific culture of the original text and the translator needs to be careful when translating them. The researcher finally suggests that there is a need to expand the perimeters of translation studies specially those dealing with literary prose because the translators and researchers lay more emphasis on the translation of poetry.

The Sudden Success of Prose – a Comparative View of Greek, Latin, Old French and Old Norse

The article presents a new model for understanding the sudden success of prose in four literatures: Greek, Latin, French and Old Norse. Through comparison and quantitative observations, and by focusing on the success of prose rather than its invention, it is shown that in all four cases two or three decades were crucial for creating prose literature. This turn can be described by the term »librarization«: the fact that private book collections and reading habits emerged helps us understand the space into which a host of prose writers were suddenly writing. This reading habit factor (inlcuding reading aloud) has been underplayed in previous scholarship mostly focused on authorial choices and invention. For two of the literatures (Greek, French) the fast dynamics of the rise of prose has already been identified and discussed, but for the two others (Latin, Old Norse), the observation is new. It is also suggested that the exactly contemporary rise of French and Old Norse prose (c. 1200-1230) most probably is connected. The four literatures are each shown in chronological charts so as to visualize the timeline and the relation between poetic and prosaic works. The article furthermore reflects on a number of characteristics and implications of prose literature by drawing on comparisons and contrasts between the ancient and the medieval, important among which is the profound effect of prose librarization on the canonization of existing poetic literature.

Women’s Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique by Ellen E. Berry

Reviewed by: Women’s Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique by Ellen E. Berry Laura Hinton Women’s Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique, by Ellen E. Berry. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 176pp. $108.00 cloth; $28.99 ebook. In Women’s Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique, Ellen E. Berry suggests that “the term negative aesthetics” indicates “a varied set of thematic concerns” related to “extreme, bizarre, or violent situations especially involving the female body” and other trauma-based relations inscribed into literary prose texts (p. 2). She argues that the use of negative aesthetics by a number of contemporary women writers embraces formal strategies that resist realism or narrative closure in the novel, that decenter both conventional plot structure and [End Page 505] the Enlightenment concept of self. Negative aesthetics are, in general, a product of literary postmodernism whose texts resist foundationalism and provide “a critique of all claims to universality or absolute truth” (p. 3). Postmodern texts tend to provide “thematic emphases on radical difference, heterogeneity, multimodality, [and] instabilities of identity,” suggesting “a breakdown in ‘the official story’ as formerly repressed voices (of women, minorities, queers, outlaws of all kinds) emerge into the mainstream” (p. 3). The version of literary postmodernism that Berry terms negative-aesthetic texts are not only inherently political by questioning the validity of signs and structures of meaning but also overtly feminist because they call into question—and even upend—the rules of “contemporary capitalist heteropatriarchy” (p. 2). Her book analyzes a myriad of diverse writers and their prose texts as they engage negative aesthetics for overtly political, dramatically feminist purposes in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Berry’s introduction does an admirable job of linking recent literary criticism to her understanding of negative aesthetics—by specifically incorporating studies by Rita Belsky, Lisa Hoagland, Marie Lauret, and several others. However, while her review of postmodernism and its negative aesthetics is certainly informed, Berry’s introduction to her term might include a deeper theoretical grounding for such a study. I found missing at least some reference to Hegel’s concept of negation and a clear discussion of those who came after him. I would have liked to have read about Berry’s newly minted concept of negative aesthetics in the context of the larger historical-philosophical debates so important to the development of intellectual modernity. Her well-articulated and truly interesting analyses of various women’s texts in the following chapters make clear that negative aesthetics does, in fact, embrace and enhance concepts of Hegelian negation as forms of structural irony, made all the more vital for their potential political resonances within these feminist literary critiques of society, Western logic, and literature itself. Chapter one’s analysis of the “apocalyptic feminism” inscribed by Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto (1967) reconsiders the critical neglect of what Berry calls this manifesto’s “uncompromising extremity and explosive negativity,” in which the narrator calls for the eradication of “the government, the economy, and the entire male gender” (p. 19). SCUM acts as a litmus test for Berry’s notion of a negative aesthetics through its ritualized uses of profanity, suffusion of “sardonic humor,” and even “homicidal rage” launched verbally against the male sex (p. 20). Negative aesthetics mirrors in SCUM the moral repugnance of those potential readers and critics who have avoided such work by offering the logic of a negation philosophy that reincorporates the abject as the social and psychical material that is [End Page 506] lost by institutional discourses, including some versions of feminism itself. What is truly inspiring is the way in which Berry teaches us how to read SCUM—not just as another critique of patriarchy but as a purposefully urgent if volatile text whose “feminist rant” functions as a textual “[site] of pure excess” (p. 29). By discussing Solana’s textual excess and setting a context for Solana’s explosive language, Berry suggests the energy it produces is not wayward but calculated for a certain affect and that the text undergoes its own process of achievement in feminist manifest discourses through its negation of both language and conventional terms. Berry convinces us that a text like Solanas...

Polskie przekłady wybranych fragmentów prozy włoskiej w świetle uwarunkowań kulturowych i historycznych recepcji literatury obcej w PRL

Polish Translations of Selected Fragments of Italian Fiction in the Light of Cultural and Historical Determinants of the Reception of Foreign Literature in the People’s Republic of Poland The article focuses on the role of cultural and historical determinants that influence literary translation. The objects of analysis are selected translations of fragments of contemporary Italian fiction – novels by Natalia Ginzburg (Lessico famigliare) and Giuseppe Dessí (Paese d’ombre), and a short story by Beppe Fenoglio (23 giorni della città di Alba) – which were published in the 1970s in the Literatura na Świecie, a Polish literary magazine devoted to foreign literature. The analysis of the phenomenon of fragmentation of Italian literary prose, which occurred in the selected translations, makes it possible to observe the impact of the target culture of that time on the way in which foreign literature was presented to the target reader.

The role of the Kurdish Press (1898-1920) in the deployment and Emergence of the Kurdish Literary Arts and Literary Criticism

Literary output is the sum of the process of artistic creativity. Literary study is as science to literature which forms one side of the triangle, along with two other sides of the literary theory and the history of literature. Literary criticism studies and analyzes literary outcomes and evaluates them from intellectual, literary and artistic points of view. Due to the delay in the appearance of books and printing presses and publishing houses in the Kurdish language, the Kurdish press since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century has played an active role and has undertaken the task of spreading the products of Kurdish literature where poetry formed the greatest part. Also, the Kurdish press has contributed from its early beginning, especially the period between the emergence of the first newspaper in Kurdish in 1898 to the ends of the first World war in 1920 and the emergence of modern literary arts in the Kurdish language, whether prose (Essay, Artistic story, and theatrical texts) or poetic types (Epic, poetic story and prose poem). Moreover, the first attempts to study literary criticism emerged and later evolved into an integrated technical literary work according to the plans and curricula to become an integrated cash scientific criticism theory. This study examines the role of the Kurdish press, between the period (1898-1920) in the deployment and the emergence of Kurdish literary prose and poetry, as well as tracing the footsteps of the emergence and development of the critical process in the Kurdish literature in that time period exclusively.

Contemporary English – a challenge for non-native speakers

The paper focuses on contemporary American English and its challenge for those who are exposed to it as non-native users. Due to globalisation, the two main varieties of English (British and American) are becoming closer than they used to be as native speakers of both communicate directly and influence their varieties significantly. The traditional differences between British English and American English are less meaningful, however, English nowadays develops rapidly. The focus of research is based on current trends in both grammar and vocabulary, analysing contemporary American literary prose as many new words and new ways of using grammar in British English come from American English due to the influence of American popular culture and media. Contemporary literary prose is a valuable material of natural written and spoken language. In the paper, both speeches (that of the narrator and characters) are analysed, focusing on expressions and grammatical structures which are likely to attract a non-native reader. The selected samples of the language are discussed and systemised with an aim to generalise some trends typical for contemporary English. Keywords: contemporary English; vocabulary; grammar; informal language;

Translation studies aspect of textual concepts in the perspective of correlation of possible worlds and narrative

The article suggests a new comprehensive semantic and cognitive approach to textualconcepts of French literary prose at semantic, metasemiotic and metametasemiotic levels.The research focuses on revealing textual concepts through a new approach of classificationin translating process and result view the cognitive and communicative dynamics in theunfolding textual concepts. Such approach allowed to create a hierarchy of textual conceptsand define their functions in the mid-20-th century French novels in their correlation of possibleworld and narrative organization. Such approach results in comprehension of text transformationproblem in the novels under consideration.

The Time Before Us (The Unpast in W. S. Merwin, W. Benjamin, and V. Woolf)

Freud and Winnicott have expressed the opinion that if their psychoanalytic ideas are correct, then poets and writers will have thought of them first. The author of the present article, who, in a previous work, has developed the concept of “actual time” on metapsychological grounds, concurs with their opinion by showing that variants of “actual time” can be found in the works of the American poet W. S. Merwin, the British writer Virginia Woolf, and the German philosopher Walter Benjamin. Their poetry, literary prose, and philosophy, respectively, are shown to resonate with the time dimension of the psychoanalytic process.

A Study of Relationship between Translation Studies Students’ Critical Thinking Ability and the Quality of Literary Prose Text Translation

This study aims to find the relationship between students of translation studies’ Critical Thinking Ability and the quality of translation of prose text. To this end, a Ricketts Critical Thinking Ability questionnaire (2003) which contained 33 items and some paragraphs of Mrs Dalloway novel by Virginia Woolf, which is literary text, were given to the 60 MA students of translation study at Fars Science and Research Azad University. The students’ translation corrected based on Vinay and Darbelnet’s model. The obtained data were analyzed by using SPSS software and the correlation between Critical Thinking ability and Translation Quality Scores found to be .320 and significant at .013. Thus the results indicated that there was a relationship between Critical Thinking Ability of translators and their translation quality of literary text.

Thomas Mann in English

Thomas Mann in English