Modern Readers Research Articles

Growing the green city: A cognitive ecostylistic analysis of Third Isaiah’s Jerusalem (Isaiah 55–66)

AbstractIn the ancient world, cities served as physical and conceptual containers to separate a controlled, orderly area from the chaos outside. The depictions of cities in the Hebrew Bible largely underwrite this paradigm. Third Isaiah’s vision of Jerusalem, however, imagines a space that challenges these engrained ideas of the urban. Conducting a cognitive ecostylistic analysis and drawing on insights from Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Text World Theory, this article examines the green city as imagined by Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56–66). Throughout the vision, the prophet creates a new (text-) world defined by urban and natural world-builders, a blend that unites seemingly paradoxical elements. The utopian character of future Jerusalem is downplayed by its grounding in the real world (both the discourse-world and its near-equivalent, the empty text-world in which the prophecy is uttered). Third Isaiah calls for a view of city space that draws on the known, dissolving existing dichotomies and categories. As such, it invites modern readers to rethink not only the biblical Jerusalem but also urban space and its relationship to nature more generally.

The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush edited by G. Pascal Zachary

<i>The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush</i> edited by G. Pascal Zachary

Aristotle, Slavery and Us

Modern readers of Aristotle’s Politics are understandably embarrassed by his defense of slavery. We often attempt to minimize the embarrassment by presenting his endorsement of slavery as a mere reflection of his time and place. I argue that this approach misrepresents Aristotle’s project and fails to grasp what we most have to learn from it. Careful attention to the text shows that Aristotle’s treatment of slavery is an innovative piece of philosophical work and a substantial revision of slavery as it existed in the ancient Greek world. I show how Aristotle develops his defense in close dialogue with certain radical critiques of slavery. Aristotle’s position turns out to have surprising points of affinity with these critiques, in particular in regarding as wholly insufficient standard defenses of slavery that ground slavery in legal conventions arising from warfare. Once we open ourselves up to engaging with Aristotle’s argument as serious philosophical work, the essential problem we encounter is to recognize that it is at one and the same time intellectually ingenious and morally abhorrent.

Reading in Crisis: Francis Russell's Reading Records and the Beginnings of the Thirty Years’ War

AbstractThis essay discusses the reading records of Francis Russell, 1587–1641, later 4th Earl of Bedford. Drawing from a previously unstudied manuscript notebook from 1620 to 1622, the author demonstrates the importance of Russell's private archive at Woburn Abbey as an important repository for political, literary, and cultural history in the early Stuart age. The notebook evidences how a nobleman of Russell's wealth, stature, and influence prepared for political office, and more broadly, how he educated himself. The notebook contains a wide variety of texts, among them histories, sermons, poetry, political pamphlets, treatises, news, and gossip, much of which Russell brought to bear on the acute political Bohemian crisis then emerging, and on its consequences for domestic politics (for example, the 1621 Parliament). The notebook's contents also reveal more about early modern reading practice and the organization of knowledge and suggest the many networks of circulation through which Russell acquired his books, manuscript tracts, and oral information.

Reading against the Forces of Boredom: Environmental Literary Culture in ‘the Age of Amazon’

This paper offers an anxious survey of factors inducing boredom or indifference in the readership of environmental writing and criticism. The first is the inertia of limited assumptions in writers and critics about how to engage readers’ attention, with inadequate ideas of what ‘genuine reading’ would be. Secondly and more insidiously, modern readers are usually now immersed in consumerist cultural contexts actively geared to encourage boredom as a market force. Reduced thresholds of attention become effectively a political agent, usually a reactionary one. Next the question is asked: is ‘the reader’ a unified subject? That is, how far are environmental texts and fears unwittingly appealing to unacknowledged fantasies of violence and harm? A final threat to readerly engagement with environmental criticism in particular is that, as the conditions of the ‘Anthropocene’ worsen, just to engage more reading and readers on environmental issues comes to seem less and less adequate, even evasive, an academic theatre only of performing opinions.

The Message of “Chèvrefeuille”

Abstract The apparent ambiguity at the heart of Marie de France’s lai “Chèvrefeuille” has beguiled generations of readers. This short twelfth-century Old French verse text purports to tell a simple story of how the exiled Tristan manages to signal to Yseut as she passes through a forest with her entourage, and its only interpretive difficulty seems to be the way Tristan communicates his message by carving some words or letters onto a stick. This article argues that, by debating what exactly Tristan writes, the scholarship on “Chèvrefeuille” leaves aside the intertext of the Tristan tradition, and by extension, the literary and affective investments of the lai. This narrow critical question leads to a broader problem of how literature can or should be read. Reading “Chèvrefeuille” as imbricated in the twelfth-century Tristan tradition underscores the pleasure of recognition that both modern reader and medieval receiver might experience and invites a re-examination of the role of the imagination in the study of medieval literature.

Declaration The approach of the scholar Ibn forak in his book "Mushkil al-Hadith and its Explanation"

This research highlights the scholar “Ibn Fourk’s” book “Al-Hadith Problems” in the aspect of understanding the text of the hadith and its jurisprudence and repelling the contradiction from it; this is because the science of the various hadiths is a great science with rules and foundations that only those with exceptional and profound linguistic, rhetoric, interpretation, Al-Hadith, jurisprudence and its origins can comprehend. Ibn Fourk was an Imam and one of the Islamic figures that fit under this category. Recently, there have been a lot of problematic issues in hadith texts that appear to be ambiguous and contradictory, and given the importance of the hadith problems, which eliminates the problem and contradiction from the hadith. It is worthwhile to highlight the methodology of scholars who have written in this field in order to be aware of their method and scientific and doctrinal approach. This research demonstrates the Imam's efforts and methodology, and scientific value of his book.Many scholars who spoke about names and characteristics who came after him were influenced by his approaches, like Imam al-Bayhaqi and others of al-Ash’ari school who paid a lot of attention to the names and characteristics, such as, hand, eye and intercourse, and exaggerating in interpretation. The modern reader should have knowledge about these interpretations and curriculums of the contemporaries. It is obvious from the methods of scholars in decoding ambiguities and problems in al-Hadith texts through scientific methods, so that the reader may distinguish the approach of Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jamaa'ah from the approach of people of opinion and speech.

The Art of Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Multimodal Perspective

Using Dan Brown's Wild Symphony, Craig Silvey's The Amber Amulet, and Jon McGregor's In Winter the Sky as its case studies, this article attempts to explore a number of mechanisms and strategies contributing to the multimodal fiction construction and posing challenges for modern readers of all ages. The article proposes to examine multimodal resonance as a cognitive mechanism enhancing the emotional impact of multimodal stories on recipients and triggering the receptive mechanism of narrative empathy. Various semiotic resources, both free resources, such as photos, maps, and illustrations, and bound ones, including font types and typographical experiments, are analyzed from the standpoint of their role in fictional world creation. The article makes an original contribution to the Multimodal Stylistics Studies by hypothesizing the relevance of identifying two distinctive mechanisms of foregrounding: visual foregrounding as a range of formal ways to construct a multimodal text that focuses the reader's attention with the help of free semiotic resources, and graphic foregrounding, which has bound semiotic resources at its heart. The findings of the research prove that it is the combination of elements of stylistic, cognitive and linguo-semiotic analyses that might provide a new and effective methodology for interpreting a multimodal literary text. The overall outcome testifies to the importance of further research into varied mechanisms of foregrounding as a complex phenomenon essential for our better understanding of the embodied character of reading.

The “Special Charm” of Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov

The article attempts to unravel what the special “charm” of Svidrigailov, the hero of the F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment,” suggested in the article by B. N. Tikhomirov, is for the modern reader. As he develops the “characterology and psychology of a new type” with inspiration (B. N. Tikhomirov), the writer reveals the “prototype” of the modernist and postmodernist hero in the image of Svidrigailov. The techniques include the creation of “novel within a novel” within the work in the form of a “Svidrigailov text.” The article shows that Svidrigailov’s “charm” is revealed as the charisma of a hero who stepped from the 19th into the 20th century. Dostoevsky not only influenced the literature of postmodernism, but also created a prototype of a postmodern novel, in which the narrative is structured as that of the hero, rather than the author, and where the laws of cryptopoetics, fragmentary composition, shifting narrative plans — from real reproduction of events to illusory-dreamlike, and even delusional associations of the hero prevail. The article concludes that Dostoevsky’s hero is close to the contemporary hero of modernism and postmodernism with his attitude to the game and mythologization, his irony, cynicism, lack of faith, theatricalization of life collisions, integration of the levels of being and non-being.

Ukraińska prasa dla dzieci początku XXI wieku: cechy okresu przejściowego

Thе article is devoted to main trends of the developing Ukrainian periodics for children and adolescent in 2000–2011. The research of the features of the repertoire of the Ukrainian children’s magazines in 2000–2010 from the perspective of the history of the modern Ukrainian press makes it possible to recreate the conventional «portrait» of a children’s magazine of the transition period and to describe the ‘communicative effectiveness’ or ‘functionality’ of a magazine for children and youth of the transition period in general. The aim of the article is to analyze the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the outlined group of magazines that appeared during the period of significant commercialization of the media market and the transformation of the publishing sphere – from paper to digital, assesses the functional potential of magazines for children at the time in terms of their ability to respond to the needs of a modern reader – a growing up child in the age of digital technologies. The main consequences of the commercialization of Ukrainian publishing sphere in general and publishing of magazines for children in particular are described, such as: the catering for the general reader in order to increase circulation and as a consequence – the dominance of multifunctional polythematic magazines; the lead of entertaining texts over literary and informative, digitization and «inetrnetazition» of traditional print magazines, the emergence of convergent publications, in which content was placed on different platforms; replacing creativity with standard commercialized approaches; attraction in publishing approaches to mass culture; dominance in the layout and design of publications of the aesthetics of animation with screen iconography or its imitation; publication of bilingual – Russian and Ukrainian – versions of one magazine, rapid spread of licensed Russian-language gloss magazines, etc. The special attention is paid to the problem of the massification of periodicals for children – magazines that took on a canon-forming function and nurtured new generations of readers with an undemanding, uncritical aesthetic taste. Key words: press for children, repertoire of children’s magazine, communicative effectiveness, transition period, commercialization of publishing sphere

Lazarillo de Tormes: A Graphic Novel by Enriqueta Zafra

Reviewed by: Lazarillo de Tormes: A Graphic Novel by Enriqueta Zafra Debora Zamorano Zafra, Enriqueta. Lazarillo de Tormes: A Graphic Novel. U of Toronto P, 2021. Pp. 124. ISBN 978-1-4875-2938. Lazarrilo de Tormes, a graphical novel, is an innovative and captivating adaptation of one of the classics of Spanish Literature, the anonymous sixteenth-century work, Lazarillo de Tormes. Lazarillo was the bastard son of a prostitute. He works for various masters who teach him dirty ways to survive. His life with his different masters reveals the corruption in imperial Spain. This work created the picaresque novel, a genre that, according to the author, shows injustice while amusing the reader. Zafra’s graphic novel is based on the first four versions of the book as well as the censored version of 1573. One of Zafra’s objectives in writing her graphic novel is to explain the historical context of the original novel to the modern reader. Therefore, she concentrates the original novel history on different periods of time: before 1554, when the novel was first written; the period when it was first printed; the period when it was censored; and when it was published again after being censored. The author also mentions the combination of its final version and other works. Because the original book had many different editions, there is a chronological disruption of six centuries among these various editions of the book. These disruptions are captured in the structure of the book. The structure includes Zafra’s acknowledgments and the introduction, where she gives the reader an overview of the history of the original novel and the main differences [End Page 632] in her novel. Zafra then dedicates a page to the 1553 book, where she briefly explains the anonymity of the anti-hero. Following this, she displays the history of the first translation of the book and why it was translated from Spanish to English. Next, Zafra shows the readers the illustrations of the four editions of the book, and Lazarillo begins his case as the predecessor of many literary anti-heroes which leads to the first chapter of Zafra’s novel. In this first chapter, Lazarillo gives an account of his childhood. The author believes that the last conversation of the chapter, where Lazarillo accused religious people of robbing their flocks, possibly took place before the publication of the censored version of the book. Lazarillo went against powerful men in Spanish society at the time; hence the need to censor the book. The author then makes a pause in the story and details the characters implicated in Lazarillo’s editorial history. The editorial history is particularly important and clarifying for todays’ readers. As Zafra points out: “Our graphic novel reconstructs his [censor Juan López de Velasco] editorial input in an interactive way so that the reader is able to witness the reasons behind his decisions, his network and alliances and entrepreneurial approach to the export of his version to the American market” (xv). The following section mentions the importance of the year 1599, when the success of the censored Lazarillo version occurred. Through a funny conversation, Zafra depicts Miguel de Cervantes supposedly giving his opinion about the book. In chapter two, Zafra describes how Lazarillo settled down with a priest and what happened to him. Zafra then gives the story another pause to explain the conversations about the versions of the novel in 2019. The illustrations show a professor teaching to his students about the transformations and adversities of Lazarilo’s editorial history. Zafra then goes back to the story in the remaining chapters of her novel. One of the successes of the original book stems from its influencing of other books with similar style, such as works as Guzmán de Alfarache’s and Miguel de Cervantes’s works. Zafra follows the graphic novel Don Quixote (2011) by Rob Davis, adapted from the novel written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605. This may be a reason why Zafra features Miguel de Cervantes as probably the ultimate reader of Lazarillo de Tormes in her graphic novel. In it, Zafra discusses how Cervantes could have reacted to some issues he might have had with...

“Special Feature: The Achievements of John Dennis,” ed. Claude Willan. 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, ed. Kevin L. Cope

“Special Feature: The Achievements of John Dennis,” ed. Claude Willan. <i>1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, ed. Kevin L. Cope</i>

Angela Carter and Modern Japanese Fiction: Her Reencounter with Western Literary Legacies

Abstract This paper discusses the echo of modern Japanese literature in Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972), which was written in Tokyo and Chiba, paying particular attention to four of the most influential authors in this intertextual novel: Junichiro Tanizaki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Yasunari Kawabata, and Yukio Mishima. Significantly, as well as being innovators of Japanese fiction, these writers were also great reinterpreters of Western literary legacies, who constructed their own original styles by absorbing both Japanese and non-Japanese literary traditions. The article, therefore, explores how Carter reencountered Western literary legacies through reading modern Japanese literature in order to clarify her feminist and political responses to the reinterpretation of the European and American canon by authors from the Far East.

고전소설을 활용한 감성교육

This article presents a method for how to educate the emotion of ‘love’ using classical novels in liberal arts classes at universities. Classical novels were difficult for modern readers to enjoy due to barriers to entry such as archaic words and Chinese characters, stereotypes of “no fun”, and other cultural customs due to differences in the times. In order to overcome this situation, this article proposed to instrumentally deal with classical novels in liberal arts classes at universities. Instrumental handling of classical novels means that they are free to read classical novels and ‘misread’ them to open a place of thought. This also means that classical novels are consumed in terms of fun. If liberal arts classes are aimed at improving critical thinking rather than conveying knowledge, it is also meaningful to use classical novels in this way, and students may have an opportunity to be interested in classical novels. In order to handle classical novels instrumentally, accessibility must be improved through translation and students must be motivated to read. Therefore, this article suggested to students how to read classical novels through the theme of ‘love’ in liberal arts classes. In the class, classical novels were used as a tool to look into the emotion of ‘love’. This is based on what Erich Fromm calls ‘The Art of Loving’. In other words, love is an object to study and learn, and it will be used as a tool to indirectly experience love for students in their 20s through classical novels. The class was divided into three parts: “What is love?” “The event surrounding love,” “Love and deviance,” and with the instructor’s lecture, students formed a group of presentations and personal assignments. This composition can be carried out differently depending on the instructor’s intention.

중국인 학습자의 한국 현대시 읽기 불안감과 불안 요인에 대한 연구 - 중국 내 고급 한국어 학습자를 대상으로 -

This study focuses on advanced learners who are learning contemporary Korean poetry in China, and identifies the characteristics of their anxiety in reading modern Korean poetry, revealing the factors that cause anxiety, and identifies the pattern of anxiety regarding poetry reading according to various learner variables under each factor. The purpose of this study is to derive educational proposals necessary for the education of contemporary Korean poetry in China. In this study, 34 undergraduate students and 20 graduate students, a total of 54 learners, were selected as subjects in the Korean language department at Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China, and their anxiety in reading modern Korean poetry was measured through questionnaires and post-interviews. As a result of the study, a total of six factors of anxiety were extracted, and the pattern of the anxiety, according to learner variables under each anxiety factor, was examined. Additionally, the level of anxiety in Chinese learners’ reading poetry was divided into three categories of ‘severe-moderate-mild anxiety’, and whether there was a difference in the level of anxiety felt by learners, according to the level of anxiety within the six factors of anxiety, was measured. Finally, through multiple regression analysis, factors of anxiety affecting reading anxiety in modern poetry were examined. (Dalian University of Foreign Languages)

A study into shared reading groups, with specific relation to religious reading.

This paper examines a live shared-reading group conducted through The Reader Organization, with the approval of the University of Liverpool's ethics committee. It is a revised excerpt from a successful inter-disciplinary Ph.D. thesis undertaken within the School of Psychology. The intention in forming the group was to explore the reading of Marilynne Robinson's Home by a wide variety of modern readers of different backgrounds and persuasions, in the light of religious writing in an age of diminished religious tradition. The main research question was to test what literature can do in carrying meaning which can be seen as religious, or was previously deemed religious, among readers who may not think of themselves in such terms. The second was to see how a shared community-group setting can enable collaborative engagement with the challenge to develop different ways of thinking, beyond the individual default of either religious dogma or anti-religious prejudice. The method employed overall in the wider Ph.D. study was Grounded Theory: essentially, empirical analysis rather than top-down conceptualization. Grounded Theory, in refusing to begin from rigidly preassembled categories, is appropriate to a literature-inflected study and, in particular, a literary study that is concerned with religious meaning in situations of humanitarian crisis. It allows the possibility of empirical work and careful detailed analysis, amid a complex of overlapping psychological, spiritual, and family concerns entangled within the experience of modern life. In this particular case study, which may be described as a form of Action Research, the researcher, also acting as the reader leader of the group, brought developed tools taken from psychologist Wilfred Bion, introduced to the reading group itself during the sessions as a means of measurement and navigation through the novel. If the aim was simply to undertake a study of the text, then this paper would be more narrowly literary, but the concern was with wider real-world effects in relation to individuals within the group work. Through close examination of the week-by-week transcripts of the reading group, this study highlights the search for moments of development, or what might have stood in the way of development. The researcher used a consensus group of three supervisors to check the selection of the best moments (failing or succeeding in coming closer to what will be called below, after Bion, "0") recorded in the written transcripts of the sessions. One of the most powerful findings in this study is what will be called a mini-tradition developed by the group members in praxis, in terms of practices which they find, use, and come back to during their work with more difficult and painful passages in the text.

ON THE QUESTION OF THE PRACTICAL DIRECTION OF THE CREATIVE HERITAGE OF A. I. KOSHELEV

Aim. To evaluate the practical orientation of the journalistic, publishing, and memoir activities of A. I. Koshelev.Methodology. The basis of the study is the content analysis of journalistic articles and memoirs of A. I. Koshelev in order to identify the author's orientation towards solving real problems facing the state. The creative heritage of A. I.Koshelev is studied in the context of the political events of the 19th century. Results. An important difference between A. I. Koshelev and most of his associates in the Slavophile circle is revealed: the predominantly practical orientation of literary and journalistic creative work. There are no abstract philosophical works among the works of the thinker, attention is focused on the practical issues of the life of the country in the 19th century: the socio-political structure, the development of the economy and finance, railway construction, publishing, etc. Research implications. Practical interest to the modern reader can be found in the judgments of A. I. Koshelev on optimizing the structure of the state life of Russia and on improving the forms of interaction between the authorities and the people. The relevance of the publicist's legacy is due to his negative attitude towards radicalism and commitment to the ideas of preserving the historical foundations of society and state.

Transgender Reassessments of the Cross-Dressed Page in Shakespeare, Philaster, and The Honest Man’s Fortune

A boy page is in love with his master. One version of this story should be familiar: shipwrecked in a strange land, Viola cross-dresses as the eunuch page boy “Cesario” so that she might serve Lord Orsino, who enlists her to woo Lady Olivia. Matters are complicated when Cesario falls in love with Orsino and Olivia with Cesario, but all plan to be married to appropriate heterosexual partners in the end.1 The story is retold less than a decade later in Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s Philaster; or, Love Lies A-Bleeding (1608–1610).2 Inspired by Viola’s escapades, this play features the boy page Bellario, whose master, Philaster, employs him to convey romantic messages to his fiancée, Arethusa. Bellario is besotted with his master and at the end of the play is revealed (to both characters and audience) as the girl Euphrasia.3 A few years later, in The Honest Man’s Fortune, the boy page Veramour delivers messages from his master, Lord Montague, to the Lady Lamira.4 Veramour adores his master and is suspected to be a girl in disguise who has been inspired by “two or three Plays” to dress as a boy (5.1, sig. Xxx2r). Eventually Veramour’s clothing is searched and he is declared to have been a boy all along. Each page presents a challenge to conventional scholarly understandings of the relationship between gender and embodiment in early modern culture. This article presents a critical reassessment of the cross-dressed page through the lens of transgender theory, focusing on its evolution through Viola, Bellario, and Veramour. It challenges the supposed “real” material body of the boy actor; it analyzes the importance of class, age, and imitation to transmasculinity; and it investigates the violences to which gender-divergent characters are subject, arguing for reading modern and early modern gender divergence comparatively. Drawing on trans theory, this article discusses the “real” and its relationship to deception, how imitation constitutes gender, the prosthetic materiality of gender, and the role of narrativization in constructing gender. Finally, in identifying gender divergence in characters who are never outed, it seeks to define early trans identities beyond violence and exposure.

Sun Tzu's Dao of Deceit Considering from a Semiotic Perspective

Semioticians’ efforts on lie study, mostly focus on lie and sign relationship, its general characteristics on the basis of a static analysis. Sun Tzu's The Art of War, the existing oldest treatise with the theme on lie whose influence extends beyond battle to other competitive spheres such as politics and business by modern readers cannot be overlooked. Sun Tzu, in contrast to semiotic studies of lying, focuses on the dynamic process of lie-sign signification, stating that lie formation is preconditioned by sign observation from the sender, the recipient, and the surrounding environment. He proposes his Xing (形) theory that the manipulation of recipient through the use of signs is the key to subdue him; he presents the formulating process of a lie-sign from the standpoint of a deceiver, which is uncommon in western culture. This study can shed new light on both the classic and the process of L-sign formulation and signification.

Disputed Emptiness: Vimalamitra’s Mādhyamika Interpretation of the Heart Sutra in the Light of His Criticism on Other Schools

The *Āryaprajñāpāramitāhṛdayaṭīkā (hereafter PHT), Vimalamitra’s (ca. the 8th- to 9th cent.) commentary on the long Heart Sutra (hereafter HS), is not merely a commentary on words and phrases of the HS, but it also refers to and criticizes non-Buddhist schools and other schools within Buddhism. However, due to its textual situation, namely, the original Sanskrit being lost and it remains only as the Tibetan translation, the discussion there has not always been well understood. In particular, it has been suggested in recent years that Vimalamitra endorsed the Yogācāra perspective in the PHT. In this paper, I will primarily examine Vimalamitra’s interpretation of the famous four sets of phrases, such as “rūpa (form) is emptiness/empty” in the PHT, and clarify Vimalamitra’s understanding of key Buddhist concepts such as “emptiness” or “dependent origination”. In doing so, I argue that the PHT is written sorely from the Madhyamaka perspective, and Vimalamitra criticizes other schools, including the Yogācāra. Furthermore, by comparison with the writings of Kamalaśīla, an older contemporary of Vimalamitra, I further clarify his position as a Mādhyamika adherent. Finally, I will discuss the significance of those philosophical arguments in the PHT to the modern readers of the HS.