Narrative Genre Research Articles

Imagined States: Law and Literature in Nigeria, 1900–1966 By Katherine Isobel Baxter

Reviewed by: Imagined States: Law and Literature in Nigeria, 1900–1966 by Katherine Isobel Baxter Nathan Suhr-Sytsma Imagined States: Law and Literature in Nigeria, 1900–1966 BY KATHERINE ISOBEL BAXTER Edinburgh UP, 2019. viii + 205 pp. ISBN 9781474420839 cloth. The opening claim of Katherine Isobel Baxter’s Imagined States is that we can locate a crucial continuity between Nigeria as colony and as postcolony in “the state of exception” or “the suspension of the rule of law” (1). Even as Baxter evokes Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception, her book challenges Agamben’s lack of interest both in colonial contexts and in the role of the imagination. By contrast with Agamben, Baxter aims “to show how British and Nigerian fiction writers … attended to and made visible the inventive force of the law [in Nigeria], not least in the suspension of the rule of law” (5). There’s a dialogic relation, then, between the law and literature of the book’s subtitle: on the one hand, Imagined States shows how narrative genres—“popular, middlebrow, and literary fiction,” along with memoir and newspaper journalism (6)—portray the law and related concerns from corruption to treason; on the other hand, the book demonstrates “the role of invention and imagination not only in the representation of the law but also in its operation and in its suspension” (11). At stake is a question that is both theoretically intriguing and politically urgent: “at what point does such invention become an exception to the law—an action with the force of law which nonetheless is no longer within the bounds of the law?” (24). Across seven chapters, beginning with the formation of the protectorates of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria in 1900 and ending with the fall of the First Republic in 1966, Imagined States examines texts that include Edgar Wallace’s Sanders adventure series, Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson, Onitsha market literature, journalism covering the trial of Obafemi Awolowo and other Action Group members in 1962–63, and especially early novels by Cyprian Ekwensi and Chinua Achebe. I found much to appreciate in Baxter’s literary analysis, from the explication in chapter 2 of District Commissioner fiction as a distinct subgenre of colonial adventure fiction, which casts the colonial officer as synonymous with civilization and thus with the law, through the virtuosic reading in chapter 7 of Achebe’s A Man of the People (1966), in which varieties of violence repeatedly displace the law. Reading the book in a year when critical race theory had become a political football in the United States, I also found myself interested in how Baxter handled race in law (most often common law, though she mentions customary and Islamic law) and literature. While earlier chapters tend to treat the racism of [End Page 198] colonial governance and British fiction in the register of caustic irony, chapter 4, focusing on Achebe, more directly acknowledges “the racist representations of West Africa found not only in popular fiction, like Wallace’s, but also in middle-and highbrow fiction, such as that of Cary and Conrad” (86). How do we decide when to ironize and when to call out racism in literature? The fourth chapter suggests a potential third option by analyzing the protagonist of Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, Obi, in terms of “deracination” (103). Rather than judging Obi for his moral failing, writes Baxter, “we must attend to the way Obi is deracinated by the systems of privilege and exception introduced by colonialism” (103). It is not entirely clear, however, whether the author is referring to the way Obi is caught up in the racial hierarchies imposed by colonialism or just the (etymologically warranted) sense of “deracination” as uprooting. In order to compare numerous forms of prose narrative, Baxter reasonably brackets drama and poetry. Still, Baxter’s lens offers insights beyond the selected genres. In Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, set in the 1940s though written in the 1970s, one of the most famous District Officers in Nigerian literature, Simon Pilkings, tries to prevent the titular horseman, Elesin, from committing ritual suicide. Although Soyinka insists that his play is not a “clash of...

Politics and Narrative in Ireland's Decade of Commemorations

Politics and Narrative in Ireland's Decade of Commemorations Sara Dybris McQuaid (bio) and Fearghal McGarry (bio) Commemoration has become an increasingly important analytical category through which to understand historical narratives, social practices, cultural formations, and political challenges in contemporary Ireland. This is not least a result of the ongoing impact of the large-scale, state-sponsored commemorative program the Decade of Centenaries, which runs from 2012 to 2023. This program uses the events of a significant political transition in the past (Ireland's violent evolution toward national independence) as a commemorative prism for existential reflections on the Ireland(s) of the present and the future. As a political genre, commemoration is a powerful tool for harnessing the past, for capturing and reordering politics in the present, and for staking out claims to the future. As a narrative genre, commemoration works to arrange events and figures in relation to each other, and to invest these with shared values and meanings for groups and societies. In the context of the Decade of Centenaries engagements with the past have become a crucial vehicle for democratic participation, and commemoration has arguably come to reshape political subjectivities as well as languages and materials of cultural expression. Put differently, commemorating the past is now a dominant practice through which individuals, groups, and institutions understand, orient, and position themselves in relation to each other. In this special issue we examine politics and narratives in Ireland's Decade of Commemorations. We use the term commemorations in order to include events and engagements that do not officially form part of the Decade of Centenaries but, crucially, take place within this context and become part of its critical mass. [End Page 8] Commemorative Governance: Politics in Ireland's Decade of Commemorations Examining the politics of Ireland's Decade of Commemorations means conceptualizing commemoration as a particular form of politics, as well as studying this commemorative era as a particular context for politics. As a form of politics, commemoration is frequently a practice of contestation that sees relationships between the past and the present drawn along competing lines, with diverging criteria influencing the selection of quintessential events and figures or incommensurable interpretations of their importance. Here different political interest groups draw on history as a resource to undergird contemporary projects, whether by claiming credit for the glories of the past or by proclaiming themselves as heirs or guarantors of an evocative heritage, tradition, culture, or identity. Thus commemoration becomes a fundamentally political construction. Eric Hobsbawm has argued that official commemoration, such as the institution of public ceremonies or the erection of monuments, is about "inventing traditions" through processes of formalization and ritualization characterized by reference to the past.1 According to this argument, these constructed versions of the past bound citizens into collective national identities, particularly during the nineteenth-century shift from traditional to modern societies. While Hobsbawm is often cited to argue for the fundamentally political nature of contemporary commemoration (as a top-down instrument of presentist legitimization and competition), his key insight for this special issue is his focus on how the state plays a crucial role in "linking both formal and informal, official and unofficial, political and social inventions of traditions."2 In order to capture these linkages in Ireland's commemorative program, we consider the official Decade of Centenaries not just as a form of programmatic politics of commemoration but as a form of "governance of commemoration." That is, we recognize commemoration as a site of several modes of intervention, with indirect [End Page 9] and contingent patterns of authority,3 where state and society come to share the responsibility for reviewing and renewing the origins, boundaries, and narratives of the national community. The structural design of the Decade of Centenaries program—which features a "state ceremonial strand," "historical strand," "community strand," and "creative imagination strand"—illustrates how the Irish state attempts to introduce a form of meta-governance in which different sectors and stakeholders are allowed a certain measure of autonomy and a variety of entry points and expressions are encouraged. Importantly, the Decade of Centenaries also constitutes a particular context for politics. The official program forms an exceptionally long scale and deeply immersive...

Автометаописание и автопсихологизм как метапоэтические принципы А. И. Солженицына

The autobiographical character of Solzhenitsyn’s oeuvre, inseparable nature of ethical and aesthetic views, have shaped the author’s unique aesthetics. From the point of view of the author of this article, eliciting the meta-poetic principles defines the way of comprehension of Solzhenitsyn’s artistic world, of his ‘phenomenon’. The article presents the analysis of two of Solzhenitsyn’s significant meta-poetic principles: self-meta-description and self-psychologism. The research is based on Diary R-17 which should be introduced into the readers’ and researchers’ circulation as an important key to understanding Solzhenitsyn’s artistic method. An insight into the French edition of the Diary has allowed the author of this article to trace the stages of working on The Red Wheel, and to regard Solzhenitsyn’s ‘creative laboratory’ as a whole. At the same time the diary records broaden the readers’ understanding not only of the ways of creating a historical novel, but of the writer’s biography, of his reading range and literary context, of his predecessors in the genre of historical narrative, of the writer’s techniques and methods. The article turns the spotlight on the fact that Solzhenitsyn does not bestow his biography on characters close to him, he imparts to them the train of his thoughts, the capacity for Tolstoy’s ‘soul dialectics’, making them the author’s self-psychological counterparts. This article is a part of a substantial research of Solzhenitsyn’s system of meta-poetic principles, including the ‘world vision’ on the functions and the responsibility of the artist and the art to the world; on the judgement on the creative work of other authors. The author of the article has an objective to understand the writer’s aesthetics, that was formed under the influence of a vital aspiration to record the history of the Russian revolution, to tell the hidden truth about the history of Russia.

Confucianism and Folklore in Vietnamese Fantasy Short Stories: <em> The Case of Ghost Stories </em>

Truyền kỳ, which is a genre of fantasy short stories, was formed and developed in the historic period of medieval literature of Vietnam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite being derived from a similar Chinese genre, the truyền kỳ of Vietnam was the work of the endogenous development of the national fantasy short story, which was closely associated with folk literature and historical prose. However, at the time of its inception, as well as at the glorious top of this genre, truyền kỳ had never been accepted as an official genre. It was rather a metaphor for unorthodox discourse in formal Confucian society. The reason is that truyền kỳ founded the first elements of folk narrative genres that were considered inferior and which Confucius advised Confucians to reject. Therefore, truyền kỳ deeply influenced Confucian doctrines, yet in this genre by itself, the deficiencies of Confucian philosophy related to the metaphysical world were exposed in competition with other non Confucian religions that had emerged, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and especially folklore. By analyzing ghost stories that represent the most typical case or expression of the complex relationship between Confucianism and folklore in the Vietnamese truyền kỳ genre, this article concludes that all the ontological crises of Confucianists that manifested in truyền kỳ derived from this tradition of folklore which created a minor discourse of a Confucian literatus who wrote on the periphery of official Confucianism.

Writing bodies, wording illness and countering marginalization: graphic autopathographies as a genre

ABSTRACT The hegemonic oppression by biomedical discourses and erroneous cultural assumptions of degeneracy doubly marginalise the chronically ill and exclude them from domains of productivity. Personal narratives of lived illness experience help to contest metanarratives of dominant discourses, counter the marginalisation occasioned by social and medical othering of diseased bodies, and act as co-discourses that supplement the understanding of illnesses. In this scenario, graphic autopathographies become performative tools through which the marginalised seeks redressal using verbal, spatial and temporal representations of self, body, and illness. Drawing theoretical insights from Arthur Frank, Carolyn R. Miller, Elisabeth El Refaie, Susan Sontag, and Michel Foucault, the article investigates how the chronically ill seek to overcome biomedical reduction and social exclusion by way of this hybrid narrative genre that helps engender participation and resuscitation of the patient’s voice and agency. For this end, the article examines select graphic memoirs and extends the resulting observations to understand autopathographies in general.

Vinum Regum: Classic themes in fine drinking stories

ABSTRACT Drinking stories are a narrative genre that revolves around drinking and its functions. While drinking stories commonly refer to large amounts of alcohol, young people, transgressive meanings, and interactional goals, the article focuses on the practice of fine drinking, a type of drinking that is characterised by quality, service, and atmosphere. The present article scrutinises the content of adults’ drinking stories when there is no intoxication involved by analysing interviews with Italian participants who come from different sectors of alcohol production, distribution, and consumption. In this contribution, fine drinking stories are regarded as a sub-genre of drinking stories because of some specificities that seem to characterise them. The analysis results in six main themes that show a cultural imperative in playing a central part of Italian enogastronomic tradition and in protecting people from heavy episodic drinking.

The Mystery of the Missing AIDS Crisis: A Comparative Reading of Caper in the Castro and Murder on Main Street

Abstract This article addresses the seeming absence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in video games from the 1980s and 1990s, the height of the US AIDS crisis. As Adrienne Shaw and Christopher Persaud have noted, stories about HIV/AIDS were pervasive across American popular media during this period, which also represented a boom in video game development. However, documentation remains of only a handful of early video games that mention HIV/AIDS. This article argues that, far from being absent from video game history, HIV/AIDS and the US AIDS crisis were actually influential in shaping a number of the design elements and narrative genres that have become important to contemporary video games. Scholars like Cait McKinney have demonstrated how people living with HIV/AIDS in America played a crucial part in the evolution of internet technologies that now form the backbone of video games. Through a comparative reading of two games by C. M. Ralph, Caper in the Castro (1989) and Murder on Main Street (1989), this article demonstrates how HIV/AIDS has also manifested in the content and form of video games, even (and perhaps especially) when it seems absent. Derritt Mason has explained how Caper in the Castro, widely celebrated as the first LGBTQ video game, contains clear echoes of the AIDS crisis. Yet, as this article demonstrates, HIV/AIDS remains a powerful presence even in Murder on Main Street, Ralph’s “straight version” of the game. Together, these games offer a microcosm through which to explore larger tensions between HIV/AIDS and video games, with the AIDS crisis representing a key element of what Cody Mejeur has termed the “present absence of queerness in video games.”

FORENSIC TESTIMONY AS A GENRE OF NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

Previous narrative researches have never focused on witnesses as the primary tellers of events in courtroom, but rather on lawyers. It stipulated the need to foreground the role of the witnesses who have first- hand knowledge of these events. To that end, this paper explores forensic testimonies from a new perspective and suggests to consider this type of institutional discourse as a separate kind of the narrative genre. In order to classify forensic testimonies as a genre of narrative discourse it was essential to provide a systematic review of contemporary literature related to the problem of genre definition with the aim of determining relevant criteria for assigning discourses specific generic affiliation. These criteria include: the institutional roles of the participants in courtroom context, the pragmatic goals of the lawyers and the witnesses in co-construction of the story within the testimony, as well as the constraining nature of courtroom context. Further the results of theoretical analysis of genre definition were mapped on major narrative dimensions (tellership, tellability, linearity, embeddedness and moral stance) in institutional context of courtroom hearings. The findings of this research showed that witness narratives in testimonies are fragmented, characterized by nonlinear chronology and nonlinear causal logic of events presentation; even though the witnesses are restricted in what and how they tell, the stories they tell are highly relevant for the fact detection in court; testimonies are of dialogical nature, with the lawyers inevitably becoming co-tellers of the witness story; testimonies are embedded into power-asymmetrical ‘question-answer’ pattern of examination; the identity of the witness (and their credibility) is constructed and deconstructed throughout the testimony.

FORENSIC TESTIMONY AS A GENRE OF NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

Previous narrative researches have never focused on witnesses as the primary tellers of events in courtroom, but rather on lawyers. It stipulated the need to foreground the role of the witnesses who have first- hand knowledge of these events. To that end, this paper explores forensic testimonies from a new perspective and suggests to consider this type of institutional discourse as a separate kind of the narrative genre. In order to classify forensic testimonies as a genre of narrative discourse it was essential to provide a systematic review of contemporary literature related to the problem of genre definition with the aim of determining relevant criteria for assigning discourses specific generic affiliation. These criteria include: the institutional roles of the participants in courtroom context, the pragmatic goals of the lawyers and the witnesses in co-construction of the story within the testimony, as well as the constraining nature of courtroom context. Further the results of theoretical analysis of genre definition were mapped on major narrative dimensions (tellership, tellability, linearity, embeddedness and moral stance) in institutional context of courtroom hearings. The findings of this research showed that witness narratives in testimonies are fragmented, characterized by nonlinear chronology and nonlinear causal logic of events presentation; even though the witnesses are restricted in what and how they tell, the stories they tell are highly relevant for the fact detection in court; testimonies are of dialogical nature, with the lawyers inevitably becoming co-tellers of the witness story; testimonies are embedded into power-asymmetrical ‘question-answer’ pattern of examination; the identity of the witness (and their credibility) is constructed and deconstructed throughout the testimony.

Playing to be influencers: A comparative study on Spanish and Colombian young people on Instagram

This paper explores and describes how Colombian and Spanish young people present themselves on Instagram according to the social game and the symbolic capital that they infer as normative from influencers. The methodology used combines the focus group technique (seven groups) with a content analysis of the profiles of the informants (N = 651). In total, 53 first-year creative industries university students participated. The results show that the work developed by the influencers has given rise to an aspirational narrative genre that young people tend to emulate according to the Instagram habitus in order to be recognised as leading players. Their self-presentation has three main features: a) a preference for showing ‘in-classifying’ practices such as leisure and tastes for freedom; b) the predominance of a specific type of profile and gestures that avoids self-production markers and aspires towards a global audience; and c) the normalisation of self-promotional discourse. Most informants experience Instagram as a game in which they compete to accumulate visibility conceived as relational validation, although in the case of Colombian informants there is a more professional outlook towards the platform. Finally, for all of them, Instagram constitutes a serious game, and many of them admit to feeling too exposed. As a result, they have implemented self-surveillance practices, such as consulting with peers before posting photographs, using secondary accounts and deleting posts.

“As Time Grows Older, the Qurʾān Grows Younger”

This article explores the role of ambiguity in the Qurʾān. It examines the concept of ambiguity, its ethical function in literature, and its reception in the tafsīr tradition with special reference to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 606/1210) exegetical programme. Further, and by way of focusing on the narrative genre of the Qurʾān, the article analyses a Qurʾānic pericope, Q. 12:52-53, to illustrate the extent to which ambiguity impacts on the text, and what that means for the ethical teaching of Qurʾānic narratives. Without denying that ambiguity is located in the reader too, the article argues that ambiguity resides in the Qurʾānic text itself, and that this ambiguity has the function of expanding the Qurʾān’s interpretive universe and ethical potential.

Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity by Wei Yu Wayne Tan

Reviewed by: Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity by Wei Yu Wayne Tan Gerald Groemer Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity. By Wei Yu Wayne Tan. University of Michigan Press, 2022. 266 pages. ISBN: 9780472075485 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). It will surprise few readers of this journal to hear that men and women with visual disabilities played a major role in the development of early modern Japanese culture. Visually impaired men recited Tale of the Heike and other narratives (as they had since medieval times); composed the bulk of the koto repertory; created countless songs with shamisen accompaniment; served as acupuncturists, masseurs, moneylenders, and scholars; and engaged in innumerable other professions. Especially in western and southern provinces, visually disabled biwa-playing priests or monks (mōsō) cultivated and performed their own genres of narrative and song. Visually disabled women worked as musicians (goze), folk-religious healers, and shamans and created and performed a variety of sung and narrative genres that they diffused to every region of the land. Excellent Japanese-language studies of the blind men's guild (tōdō), of goze and mōsō organizations, and of the arts and activities of visually disabled individuals have been available for decades. In Western languages, scholars including Susan Matisoff, Ingrid Fritsch, Hugh de Ferranti, Alison Tokita, Maren Ehlers, and myself have published many papers, book chapters, and monographs on the subject. In the study under review, based on a 2015 dissertation submitted to Harvard University, Wei Yu Wayne Tan sets out to present a more complete picture of visual disability in early modern Japan. This is a laudable effort, and several chapters of the book shed welcome light on regions that have not yet been adequately illuminated in Western-language research. [End Page 334] But first, who is to count as the subject of a book titled Blind in Early Modern Japan? Who in Edo-period Japan was considered blind? This cannot be determined outside of its specific historical and cultural context and requires examining the society within which the language and criteria for identification and categorization are situated. Tan is of course aware of this and assures the reader that his use of the term "blind people" foregrounds "the experience and identity of blind people and also reflects the references in historical sources" (p. xiv). Yet since Edo-period Japanese did not use English, the notion that certain persons considered themselves "blind people" thanks to their experience and self-identification as "blind people" is either false or tautological. Early modern Japanese with visual disabilities did not, in truth, identify or experience themselves as "blind people" at all. Rather, they described themselves as zatō, kengyō, goze, oyakata, zamoto, or the like when they spoke of their attributed social status or their position in an occupational collective; as mekura (dark-eyed—today a discriminatory term), me ga warui (eyes are bad), me ga mienai (eyes cannot see), or the like when explaining their impairment or disability; as "masseur" or "biwa player" when referring to their occupation; as "father" or "son" when relating their family situation; or as "poor" or "wealthy" when considering their economic position in society. This clutter of categories and self-identifications obviously presents a problem for a writer wishing to represent what being blind in early modern Japan was all about, and Tan wisely recognizes that "blind people," however defined, constitutes a crowd far too large and heterogeneous to be adequately covered in one monograph. Instead of seeking to include anyone and everyone who could be counted as somehow visually impaired, Tan focuses on the largely subjective claim of "disabled identity" (p. 5) and on the notion of "status identity," which seeks to combine the objectivity of social status—something Tan too simplistically maintains was "defined by occupation" (p. 7)—with a notion of identity that hovers between a social attribution and an individual choice. The two concepts are interrelated because Tan defines blind status identity as a "disabled identity tied to membership in the Kyoto guild" (p. 9). "Blind people" in early modern Japan cannot, however, be defined on the basis of guild membership, because such membership was...

ДУЛАТ ИСАБЕКОВТІҢ ҚАЛАМГЕРЛІК ШЕБЕРЛІГІ

In this article, the authors focused on the poet’s work, paid great attention to the analysis of his works, the disclosure of the image of a contemporary in the works, the embodiment of images based on the details found in the works. Over time, in our literature, the description of the image of the hero has become the main theme of the writer’s work. The works of the writer, especially his works in the genre of narrative, are valuable because they managed to truthfully show the bitter reality of the society in which he lives. On this basis, a number of works are takenas an example. Because the core of literature is always a person, his inner world. It can be noticedthat the hero has emotional experiences, experiences, thinking, language skills, which embodies the idea of the writer. The image of the author-it manifests itself from the language of the work in its narrative structure. Therefore, analyzing the language, narrative, structure of the work, reveals the variety of facets of the author’s image, its formation, development.

La fiaba: Morfologia, antropologia e storia

La fiaba: Morfologia, antropologia e storia

Forms of Plague in Procopius of Caesarea (Procop. De bellis. IV.14) and Evagrius Scholasticus (Evagrius. Hist. ecc. IV.29): On the Development of Clinical Medicine in the Eastern Roman Empire in the Fourth Century

The article discusses the forms of plague through the eyes of the contemporaries of the first pandemic known in historiography as "Justinian’s Plague". The Latin authors of the 6th-8th centuries did not provide detailed descriptions of the previously unknown disease and limited themselves to brief mentions of the pestilence outbreaks in various areas of the Mediterranean. Following the laws of the genre of chronicle narrative (chronicles), they could only state the fact of the spread of a major epidemic in the known world, refraining from emotional remarks. The Greek writings of the 6th century contain more detailed descriptions of the plague symptoms, which allows us to largely restore the course of the disease as it was seen by late antique physicians. Procopius of Caesarea and Evagrius Scholasticus’s reports are based on the description of external symptoms, followed by the identification of key terms that describe patients’ general condition. The first cycle of the pandemic (mid 6th century) was distinguished by early attempts to study the plague in the texts. They were accompanied by intricate and often contradictory speculations of contemporaries, with the subsequent identification of three forms of plague in the patients in Constantinople and the eastern provinces. 50 years later (in the third cycle), the Greek authors already distinguished five forms of the disease with a strict definition of the accompanying symptoms and the absence of panic, which had been noticeable in the previous period. The analysis of narrative sources allows us to conclude that late antique and early medieval authors did not know the pneumonic form of plague, in contrast to the Black Death era. For comparison, in the XIV century. Byzantine authors referred to the symptoms of the Black Death in similar terms, and used the same literary devices to describe the devastation of Constantinople and Greece. For the first time, the pulmonary form is singled out separately only in the 14th century: in the “Histories” of John Kantakuzen, in the letters of Demetrius Cydonis and Nicephorus Grigora. Thus, the conclusion is made about the gradual accumulation of general knowledge about the clinical picture of Justinian’s Plague among late antique physicians, whose works prominent representatives of Greek and Latin historiography of the 6th-8th centuries relied on.

Investigating pausology of lower-intermediate and skilled EFL learners’ writing and its relation to writing genres: A keystroke logging study

Writing has been a challenging skill for EFL learners to master since they need to learn not only lexical and grammatical resources but also planning and idea presentation in different genres. In this regard, pausological details of a piece of writing (i.e., where and when the pauses take place) can provide a bulk of information about EFL learner’s writing behavior. The present study was, therefore, conducted to examine the pause duration and location of lower-intermediate and skilled EFL learners' writing and their relation to writing genres. For the collection of data, 20 EFL learners (10 lower-intermediate and 10 advanced) took part in the study. Using keystroke logging, writing tasks on five genres of descriptive, personal narrative, argumentative, and persuasive text, as well as a job application, were given to the participants. The recorded data included the percentage of pause duration and pause location (within words, before words, before sentence, and before paragraph) of the lower-intermediate and skilled L2 writers. The statistical analysis of the data indicated that although there was no significant difference between the two groups regarding the overall means of pause duration on five genres, the advanced group had higher means on job application and persuasive writing. Moreover, significant differences between groups on different types of pause locations were found between the two groups. Practical implications for education are further discussed.

Historical Books

Historical Books Thomas Hieke, Richard A. Taylor, Christopher T. Begg, Atilla Bodor, Gerald A. Klingbeil, and Isaac Kalimi Thomas Hieke Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz Richard A. Taylor Dallas Theological Seminary Christopher T. Begg Catholic University of America Atilla Bodor The Biblicum Gerald A. Klingbeil Andrews University Isaac Kalimi Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz 858. [Prophetic Conflict Narratives in Dtr] Daewook Kim, Prophetic Conflicts in the Deuteronomistic History (BWANT 229; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2021). Pp. 150. €59. ISBN 978-3-17-039993-8. This study is a revised version of K.'s dissertation submitted to Rikkyo University (Shuichi Hasegawa, director). The work explores four narratives regarding prophetic conflict in the Deuteronomistic History (1 Sam 28:3-25; 1 Kgs 12:25–13:34; 1 Kgs 18:16-40; and 1 Kgs 22:1-38). For each pericope, the study proceeds in three steps: first, it examines the narratives according to a synchronic approach ("literary analysis"); second, it discusses the date of the narratives as revised by the Deuteronomists during the Persian period; finally, it considers the religious context and rhetorical purposes of the narratives. The Deuteronomists were interested in the theological questions of the "true Israel," the "true Yhwh," and the "true worship place." The prophetic conflicts reflect the difficulty of distinguishing between true and false prophecy: It seems that the number of false prophets using the name of Yhwh increased during the Persian period. The Deuteronomists sought to rectify the religious situation of the time and were responding to complex problems by using the conflict narrative genre. Their answers to the problem aimed to persuade the postexilic community to protect its ethnic identity, to worship Yhwh alone, and to do so exclusively in Jerusalem. [Adapted from published abstract—T.H.] [End Page 299] Google Scholar 859. [Joshua–2 Kings; Rest] Arie C. Leder, Waiting for the Rest That Still Remains: A Biblical Theology of the Former Prophets (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2021). Pp. xvi + 227. Paper $29. ISBN 978-1-5326-9549-0. In an earlier work (Waiting for the Land: The Storyline of the Pentateuch, 2010), L. traced the biblical narrative from the removal of humans from the garden of Eden to the time of their preparation for entry into the land of promise. In this companion volume, he sets forth a biblical theology of the Former Prophets (i.e., Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings). This theology has two foci: the divine presence and the land of promise, and Israel's failure to appropriate the promised rest from their enemies. The book has ten chapters. Following an introductory chapter that discusses issues of exegetical method and history of interpretation, L. examines the theme of rest in the books of the Former Prophets and the Book of Ruth. He summarizes the main narrative concern of each book, discusses how it relates to the preceding narrative, interacts with themes that modern readers may find especially challenging, develops what he calls the abiding claim of each book, and treats a text from the given book that illustrates that claim. A final chapter considers ways in which God's people in the modern world forfeit the rest God provides, choosing instead to seek alternative pursuits that amount to false altars devoted to other gods. An appendix analyzes the use of "rest" (nwḥ, mnwḥh) in the Book of Genesis.—R.A.T. Google Scholar 860. [Joshua] David G. Firth, Joshua (Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary [EBTC]; Bellingham: WA: Lexham Press, 2021). Pp. xvi + 425. $49.99. ISBN 9781-68359-440-6. F.'s commentary appears in a series that is described on its back cover in these terms: "The Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (EBTC) series locates each biblical book within redemptive history and illuminates its unique theological contributions. All EBTC volumes feature informed exegetical treatment of the biblical book and thorough discussion of its most important theological themes in relation to the canon—all in a style that is useful and accessible to students of Scripture." The commentary proper of F.'s volume is preceded by two extensive sections titled respectively "Introduction" (this addressing such topics as date, authorship, and, purpose, Joshua and the canon, the genre of Joshua...

“Tales from the Trail”: Oratory and Affect among Alaska Dog Mushers

Abstract This paper draws from linguistic anthropological and ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate the role of award ceremonies in maintaining and creating affective orientations toward rivalry among Alaska dog mushers. It focuses on award speeches given by dog mushers and others involved in the Alaska dog mushing community and reveals a “need for narrative” that has characterized sled dog racing since its origin as an (inter)national sport. Mushing “stories” are constitutive of public talk about wins and losses in the sport, as well as about race events that take place far from view on distant trails. Specifically, “accounts,” a humorous narrative genre that pivots upon unpredictable “instinct-driven” characteristics of canine athletes, serve as an important idiom for evoking chance in describing wins and losses. The performance and appreciation of these narratives constitute the intangible heritage of Alaska dog mushers, and accounts emerge as a semiotic resource for negotiating and downplaying rivalry through orchestration of embodied intersubjective sentiments, i.e. affect.

«Psalm» of the Doukhobors Javakheti «Uzrekh Mnogo Narodu» as a Typical Example of the Genre

Psalm «Uzrekh mnogo narodu» is the most important in the liturgical and funeral practices of the Doukhobors of Javakheti. Its text, containing nine Evangelical Beatitudes, borrowed from the Orthodox Typicon, conveys the most important Christian values, which observance helps to achieve the Heavenly Kingdom. The features of musical style of the psalm (composition, scale, intonation, rhythmic) are characteristic also of other samples of a genre. The musical stanzas are of considerable length. The composition is characterized by the complexity of the principles of coordination of poetic text and melody. The wide chant of syllables is one of the genre and style features. In the development of the tune, the trichord musical phrase (a-c1-d1) plays a leading role, which varies and repeats many times. The question of the origin of the Dukhobor psalm genre is still open, but its links with Orthodox culture at the level of texts and of principles of inclusion in ritual, at the level of tune with narrative genres of musical folklore are obvious

The Current Status and Future of Narrative in High School English Education: Implications for English Education and English Literature Education

This paper attempts to define ‘narrative in English education’ and examines 30 high school textbooks to lay the foundation for building meaningful narratives for public high English education. This paper defines ‘narrative in English education’ as follows: 1) a series of real or fictional events set in a particular time and space, 2) curriculum designed to improve the reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills of English learners, and 3) an attempt to foster student growth through reconstruction of experiences rather than through general principles or information transfer. Among these three componants, the first describes the processing of knowledge via narrative thinking and narrative knowing. The second centers on meeting the goal of improving English communication skills, and the third identifies the overall educational goals of pursuing student growth, including self-reflection and self-expansion. As a result of reviewing 30 high school English textbooks, it is found that the narrative genre is present in 95 of 205 units. However, the proportion of narrative in the overall writing drops to 28 units, if reclassified by the definition of narrative stipulated by the authors, A useful narrative in English education must meet the basic requirements proposed in this paper. In particular, it is essential to provide more opportunities to learn about story grammar for high school students.