Truthful Stories Research Articles

Paul Dawson: The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel

Paul Dawson: <i>The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel</i>

“The Tragedy of Truth” in the Geography of Mikhail Prishvin’s Grove

This article examines the theme of the forest (“grove”) in the works and diaries of Mikhail Prishvin, which for him is inextricably linked not only to environmental problems, but also to the Russian people’s awareness of their historical path and destiny, to the understanding of the concept of “truth” and its semantic content in the minds of different people. The author compares Prishvin’s book of essays Berendey’s Grove (1935–1936), the fairytale Shiptimber Grove (1953) and the writer’s diaries, which reflect his impressions of his trip to Arkhangelsk region in 1935. On his journey to the north, Prishvin was not only carrying out the duties of the People’s Commissariat of the Timber Industry (supervising logging), but also trying to reach the precious and protected forest region – the “inviolable grove”, about which he heard many stories on his way. For Prishvin, the grove is an ideal place, untouched by the “axe of the Antichrist”. And this ideal mythological topos is all the more clearly contrasted with the terrible reality of deforestation that the writer saw and reflected on in his essays and diary. Even the virgin grove that the travellers reach near the Komi border turns out to be doomed. In Prishvin’s texts, conflicting ideas about the forest are not reconciled; he writes about poetic wood and round wood that should be felled. His last book, Shiptimber Grove, is dedicated to the Dream Grove, in which the author tries to save “his” fabulous grove. The article considers various options for the title of Prishvin’s final work, reflecting the movement of his creative consciousness. One of them is The Story of Truth or The Genuine Truth. The theme of truth, or the ‘tragedy’ of truth, is perhaps the central theme in Prishvin’s thought in later years, as well as in the works of a few of his contemporary writers; in the story, he entrusts the search for ‘truth’ to his characters. The shiptimber grove, protected by the Komi people and invaded by war, becomes a multiple image and symbol in the book, including a symbol of truth, uniting the general and the personal, the natural and the human, the past and the future.

The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel by Paul Dawson, and: The Natural Laws of Plot: How Things Happen in Realist Novels by Yoon Sun Lee (review)

The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel by Paul Dawson, and: The Natural Laws of Plot: How Things Happen in Realist Novels by Yoon Sun Lee (review)

Dawson, Paul. The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel

<scp>Dawson, Paul</scp>. <i>The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel</i>

Openings after the Last Sky

Openings after the Last Sky

Dynamics of the Transmission of Trauma through three Generations of Slovene Families

In this paper, we will present a study into the dynamics of the transmission of emotional traumatic in three families of victims of World War II and post-war communist oppression. This study is taken from a broader research project in which we investigated the experiences of nonclinical families that managed to survive through three generation, and in which post-traumatic growth is present, i. e. the ability to integrate traumatic experiences and provide greater security for future generations.&#x0D; The main focus will be on how emotional content is transmitted and transformed through generations and how to recognise it in various forms of behaviour, thinking and emotions, that appear in each of the generations. As we follow the transformation of traumatic content, we will also follow the the signs that show how traumatic content has integrated and begun to bring new, deeper emotional and mental insights.&#x0D; The emotional depth of the traumatic experience is what burdens the victim the most and slows down the dynamics of trauma processing. It appears in the form of symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome, insecurity and mistrust. This is found even in victims who have articulated the trauma sufficiently to rise above intimidation, managed to develop emotionally strong and connecting interpersonal relationships, maintain faith in the future, and form a coherent narrative of their traumatic past.&#x0D; The most interesting result of the research was that all three families, regardless of their diversity, are similar in term of processing the trauma. They were all able to speak openly about their traumatic experiences. In all three families there there was a great deal of discussion and searching for the social framework and personal truth of historical events, and the desire to present and describe the events that left such deep wounds in such a way that they would be clear, reworked and accessible to future generations as a document of the reality of some tragic and difficult times.&#x0D; Another source of trauma processing was religious faith, which allowed all the participants in this study to look at trauma and life more deeply, through relationships and connections between people and through a deeper understanding of human history embedded in a broader and deeper spiritual flow. Faith helped these families to find the courage to make decisions, to face life’s challenges, and to endure even the most severe of life's trials.&#x0D; A third source that facilitates the processing and integration of a traumatic experience is secure interpersonal relationships and compassionate parenting. Despite the fact that the whole question of parenting was demanding and full of challenges for our interviewees, the quality of parenting has been improved from generation to generation, and sincere affection for children and gratitude for children were present everywhere. The ability to follow the new generation and its initiatives while maintaining a connection to its roots is a dynamic that characterises all three families. There is also a lot of thinking and conscious effort in establishing and maintaining good marital relationships in these families.&#x0D; For the recovery from trauma this study shows the importance of talking about it and also talking about it in a safe relationship until it takes a form that is genuine and at the same time clear, coherent and thus suitable for the general public. That’s when the traumatic story ceases to be traumatizing and becomes a story of courage, perseverance, and truth.&#x0D;

Between tradition and modernity: Lauddin and his “Story of the Young Captain” (commented translation and research article)

The publication (a research article and Russian translation) deals with the earliest specimen of Malay documentary prose, the memoirs of a non-professional author Lauddin, who came from a prosperous merchant family. The book describes actual historical events, which took place in the mid 18th century: the dramatic rivalry between the Dutch and the British in the Java and Sumatra regions. This rivalry was crucial for Lauddin’s fate as that of his father and brothers. In terms of its content, Lauddin's work can certainly be considered innovative. At the same time, a truthful story about events in which he himself was a witness or participant is built according to the laws of the Malay epic narrative. The book traces parallels with such classics as the “Chronicle of the Kings of Pasai”, “Malay Annals”, and “The Tale of Hang Tuah”. Thus, Lauddin shows that he sticks to the canon and, willingly or unwillingly, includes his memoirs in the traditional literary context.

Loodus tuleb tagasi: delfiinid ja saurused. Libauudistest, photoshop-muistenditest ja meemidest koroonakarantiini ajal

The article follows the narrative trend initiated by the social media posts and fake news during the first months of the corona quarantine, which claims that the decrease of contamination due to the quarantine has a positive effect on the environment and nature recovery. The author describes the context of the topic and follows the changes in the rhetoric through different genres, discussing the ways in which a picture can tell a truthful story. What is the relation between the context, truth, and rhetoric? This material spread globally, yet it was also readily “translated” into the Estonian context, and – what is very characteristic of the entire pandemic material – when approaching this material, truthful and fabricated texts, photos, and videos were combined. From the folkloristic point of view, these rumours in the form of fake news, first presented in the function of a tall tale and further following the sliding truth scale of legends, constitute a part of coping strategies, so-called crisis humour, yet, on the other hand, also a belief story presenting positive imagery, which surrounds the mainly apocalyptically perceived pandemic period and interprets the human existence on a wider scale. Even if these fake news and memes have no truth value, they communicate an idea – nature recovers – and definitely offer hope and a feeling of well-being.

16∼18C 古詩選集에 반영된 漢代民間樂府의 選錄현황과 의의

As the folk’s Yuefu poems in Han Dynasty have the unique foundation called “Mingachaejib”, they have several characteristics to be noted. The characteristics include the fact that there are many folk’s Yuefu poems whose authors are not known but which are written by ordinary people and that they reflect the social situation during Han Dynasty. As for the transmission of the actual social reality, they had strong narrativity as these truthful stories of the ordinary people’s poetry, and they used the unique words and were free style for folk’s Yuefu poems only, which has contributed to the development of the future history of poems. To find out the evaluation by poets of Qing Dynasty of folk’s Yuefu poems having unique attractiveness of Han Dynasty, this study select 4 kinds of collection of old poems. The “Gosigi” or the collection of old poems written during Han Dynasty and “Chaesukdanggosiseon”, “Gisiwon” and “Gosisangseok”, which were the collections of old poems written during Qing Dynasty are all the collection of poems by type. They all have the poems written from early Zhou Dynasty to Sui Dynasty. In addition, from the perspective of the completion time, they were all written during 16th ~18th century. The types, numbers and common list of the folk’s Yuefu poems of Han Dynasty from 4 collections of old poems were summarized and, based on the summary, several characteristics are found. First, the biggest difference in perception was found in “Japgayosa”. Among 4 collections of old poems, only “Chaesukdanggosiseon” did not contain any japgayosa” but it contained the “Gyomyogasa” the most. But, if viewed from the flow of collection of old poems other than that, it had more types of folk’s Yuefu poems which were uniformly allocated and its rate of selection of japgayosa was not low. Second, the “Gyomyogasa” in the common selection list are related to the ancestral rites, and it showed less selection rate than the collection of old poem of Gosigi except Chaesukdanggosiseon as the time passed down. Third, among the common selection list, the “Sanghwagasa” takes the most ratio and showed more selection rate than the collection of poems “Gosigi” in later years. This happens because the characteristics from the unique “Mingachaejip” are mostly exposed in the Danghwagasa, thus attracting the interest of recorder. Fourth, the selection rate of “Japgokgasa” in the common selection list has increased in the collection of poems written in later days than in the collection of poem “Gosigi”. That also showed that people were more interested in the works reflecting the society of that time as shown in the case of Sanghwagasa. Though the Gochwigoksa was the military song, its contents were not limited to the war but were more related to the love between men and women. Therefore, they are less posted in the Gosiwon written by Shen Deqian, who argued the motto of ‘onyudonghu’ but opposed to the ‘buyeom’ as well as in “Gosisangseok” which succeeded that. In the common selection list of 4 collections of old poems, the “Sanghwagasa” took up the most part because the recorder found out that the characteristics from ‘Mingachaejip’ were displayed in the ‘Sanghwagasa’ the most. It shows that what the scholars who selected the poems for 4 collections of poems written in 16th ~ 18th century wanted to see the reality and true social life of people lived in Han Dynasty through the folk’s Yuefu poems of Han Dynasty.

Discursive strategies for disinformation on WhatsApp and Twitter during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election

This paper aims to analyze and compare the discursive strategies used to spread and legitimate disinformation on Twitter and WhatsApp during the 2018 Brazilian presidential election. Our case study is the disinformation campaign used to discredit the electronic ballot that was used for the election. In this paper, we use a mixed methods approach that combined critical discourse analysis and a quantitative aggregate approach to discuss a dataset of 53 original tweets and 54 original WhatsApp messages. We focused on identifying the most used strategies in each platform. Our results show that: (1) messages on both platforms used structural strategies to portray urgency and create a negative emotional framing; (2) tweets often framed disinformation as a “rational” explanation; and, (3) while WhatsApp messages frequently relied on authorities and shared conspiracy theories, spreading less truthful stories than tweets.

Varia: Beauty and/(n)or Truth: A (Hermeneutic) Rhetoric of the Aesthetic

“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –,” a line of poetry by the nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson can be used as a signpost for this article, which attempts a hermeneutic regress from the postmodern to the archaic, in search of a rhetoric for the aesthetic. In this textual tour, some of the master narratives of our culture examining various versions of the story of beauty and truth are visited, and more specifically (always in backward motion), the work of the postmodern theorists Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, the German philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger, the English Romantic poet John Keats, the Greek philosophers Plato and Parmenides, and, last but not least, the Greek poet Sappho. Paul de Man, the “sad” patriarch of postmodernism, who engaged deeply with the cardinal problem of the truth of poetry and its relation to reality, contests that all language is figurative and rhetorical, and hence unable to represent the real. De Man demystifies aesthetics exploding a whole tradition of aesthetic theory based on the ontology of language, that is, the relation between “word” and “thing.” Along the same lines, the deconstructive critique of Jacques Derrida supports that linguistic figurality contaminates not only literature but philosophy as well, playing mimetic games of seduction that limit reality to a textual frame. On the far side of deconstruction, the hermeneutic theory of Hans- Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger give figurality an overwhelming power by establishing a rhetoric of ontology and presence. Heidegger’s radical reformulation of truth as aletheia and its conjunction with beauty, not only reflects the romantic identification of “beauty is truth,” as best expressed by the poet John Keats, but also points back to Plato who “aporetically” devoted a lifetime to a search for the beautiful and the true, coming up with multiple and contradictory views. As we move into archaic times, the whispering voice of Parmenides unexpectedly recommends the rhetoric of persuasion as the way to truth, while Sappho, celebrating presence and union, employs an erotic rhetoric that names not only human, but natural and divine encounters of beauty and truth.

A within-statement baseline comparison for detecting lies

To make veracity judgements in individual cases, practitioners may rely on baselining. That is, they may evaluate a statement relative to a baseline statement that is known to be truthful. We investigated whether a within-statement verbal baseline comparison could enhance discriminatory accuracy. Participants (n = 148) read an alibi statement of a mock suspect and provided a veracity judgement regarding a critical two-hour period within the alibi statement. This critical element was either deceptive or truthful and was embedded into an otherwise truthful story. Half of the participants received additional instructions to use the surrounding truthful elements of the statement as a baseline. Instructing participants to make a within-statement baseline comparison did not improve the accuracy of credibility assessments.

Embedding lies into truthful stories does not affect their quality

SummaryWhen given the opportunity, liars will embed their lies into otherwise truthful statements. In what way this embedding affects the quality of lies, however, remains largely unknown. This study investigated whether lies that are embedded into truthful stories are richer in detail and contain higher quality details compared to lies that are part of entirely fabricated statements. Participants (N = 111) were asked to provide a statement that was either entirely truthful, entirely fabricated, or had the fabricated element of interest embedded into an otherwise truthful story. Results indicated that lies embedded in a fabricated statement are not qualitatively different from lies embedded in an otherwise truthful statement. Supporting Bayes factors provided moderate to strong evidence for this conclusion. Accordingly, verbal credibility assessment tools based on the verbal content measured in this study may be robust against the embedding of lies.

News literacy helps children tell fact from fiction

Workshops build children's ability to distinguish truthful stories from fake news, giving them the confidence and knowledge to identify trustworthy media sources

Guilt and Its Purification

Guilt and Its Purification

Ibn Khaldūn on Sufism: A Story of Truth vs. Falsehood in Three Parts

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 44, 4, 2019 © The Maghreb Review 2019 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources IBN KHALDŪN ON SUFISM: A STORY OF TRUTH VS. FALSEHOOD IN THREE PARTS FITZROY MORRISSEY* AND RONALD L. NETTLER* Ibn Khaldūn’s thought on Sufism has engendered much scholarly debate. We enter this debate with our analysis of his ideas and intellectual methods concerning Sufism. The section on Sufism in his Muqaddimah is our main textual source, while an important secondary source is Muhsin Mahdi’s book, Ibn Khaldūn’s Philosophy of History (1957). We identify three stages in Ibn Khaldūn’s account of the history of Sufism, showing that Ibn Khaldūn was favourably disposed towards early pietistic Sufism, respectful towards second-stage, ‘codified’ Sufism, yet hostile to the later trends of ‘metaphysical Sufism’, such as that of Ibn ‘Arabī. The reasons for his views, we suggest, lie in his general intellectual/religious outlook, which favours Andalusian Aristotelian philosophy and Mālikī jurisprudence; these traditions together, for Ibn Khaldūn, constitute the perfect template for society and the individual in their search for knowledge, their striving for proper religious observance, and their social and political stability. The later versions of some of the ‘ulūm, notably kalām and Sufism, often violate this principle, in mixing various kinds of (often dubious) philosophy with the Law and religious doctrine, claiming thereby to achieve knowledge and understanding of God and creation. These for Ibn Khaldūn are erroneous claims; such mixtures cannot yield true knowledge, and thus do they threaten true philosophy, religious doctrine and practice, and society and polity. Further, Ibn Khaldūn’s ‘philosophy of history’, in its scheme of inexorable developments in human history and culture, subsumes all philosophical thought and religious doctrine and practice; philosophy and religion here are subject to the same regularities that operate in general history and culture. We treat Ibn Khaldūn’s thought on Sufism, as outlined above, from this perspective, placing strong emphasis on the issue of epistemology in his story of Sufism in three parts. INTRODUCTION A good deal has been written on the subject of the great North African thinker Ibn Khaldūn’s (d. 1406) views on Sufism. Since the pioneering 1884 German dissertation by Herman Frank1 and the long 1947 article on the topic by Miya * University of Oxford 1 Frank, 1884. 404 FITZROY MORRISSEY AND RONALD L. NETTLER Syrier,2 several scholars have attempted to resolve the issue, often coming to quite different conclusions, largely as a result of the different ways in which they have viewed Ibn Khaldūn as a thinker. Thus Ibn Khaldūn has been depicted as an adherent of ‘monistic’ Sufism of the kind associated with Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 1240), Ibn Sab‘īn (d. 1271) and their interpreters;3 as a ‘benign’ critic of,4 or someone who was ‘decidedly unsympathetic and ungenerous’5 to, that same kind of Sufism; as a critic of that kind of Sufism in his capacity as a follower of the philosophical tradition of Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1242);6 as a Sufi who saw Sufism as the true essence of Islam,7 or whose philosophy of history ought to be understood with reference to the Sufi dichotomy of ẓāhir and bāṭin;8 as a ‘nuanced’ observer of Sufism who was sympathetic to and interested in early, pietistic Sufism, yet critical from a socio-political perspective of the later ‘monistic’ Sufis;9 or as a critic of Sufism as a result of his ‘sociological mode of thinking’.10 Though those scholars who have worked on the subject have contributed to our understanding of Ibn Khaldūn’s views on Sufism, in our view there is still more to be said on the topic and Ibn Khaldūn’s thought in general. Our contribution to the issue is based on a close and detailed reading of the texts in which Ibn Khaldūn discusses Sufism, namely the section on Sufism in chapter six of the Muqaddimah, his treatise on Sufism titled Shifā’ al-sā’il wa...

Insulin Units and Conversion Factors: A Story of Truth, Boots, and Faster Half-Truths.

Conventional insulin concentration units (IU/mL or just U/mL) are bioefficacy based, whereas the Système International (SI) units (pmol/L) are mass based. In converting between these two different approaches, there are at least 2 well-accepted conversion factors, where there should be only 1. The correct value is not the most-used or well-accepted using online calculators, some journal styles, laboratory reports, and published articles. In short, an incorrect insulin conversion factor is widely used which underreports insulin concentrations by ~15%, with potentially significant research and clinical implications. This short commentary describes the history of insulin IU definitions and conversion factors, and highlights the widespread nature of conversion factor misuse, to provoke deeper interest and thought regarding numbers we so often use without thinking.

Men of Paper: Polish Lustration Law and Its Faulty? Biographical Basis

This article describes how, in contemporary Poland, the questionable nature of the materials in the formerly secret police files is sometimes forgotten, most significantly in the process of lustration. It attempts to explain why the public would support lustration laws and/or engage in gossip stemming from the files, despite knowing their shortcomings. After briefly summarizing the long process by which agreement was reached concerning the Polish lustration bill, and describing some of the unique qualities of Polish lustration, the article presents arguments for why the formerly secret police files might be popularly accepted as the foundation used for the judicial process. The main justification discussed is found in literary and scholarly attempts to read the files biographically and to use them as inspiration for new biographies. The article shows that scholarly queries into secret police files as historically useful sources coincide with Polish popular interest in non-fiction literature and memoirs. I propose that fitting the police files within the already popular genre of biography offers entertainment value, while at the same time offering the documents legitimacy. This article shows that whereas scholars and authors of popular memoirs treat the files within a range of possibilities, the lustration process has room only for a straight forward reading of a file as a truthful story about an individual.

The Story of the War Gamelan Is A Story of Truth

Stories about gamelan used in warfare are regarded as a character in a fairy tale, a story ofthe past apocryphal. The slogan of history that says no document no historical is an expression that history should not be based solely on “people said" or a story that is not necessarily true, he should be based on the facts of historical events occurred, so that the necessary documents to uncover the historical events. A historical narrative method is needed in the process of developing the method known as historical methods. The ancient manuscripts as a source of literary history, many stores historical events related to culture, especially with the musical arts. In this article will be discussed is the word Bheri and Mrdangga of two ancient manuscripts that ofwhich have been translated into Indonesian by previous researchers.Keyword: gamelan, war gamelan, story, mredangga, bheri

Of Reality. The Purposes of Philosophy by Gianni Vattimo

Reviewed by: Of Reality. The Purposes of Philosophy by Gianni Vattimo Brian O'Keeffe Gianni Vattimo, Of Reality. The Purposes of Philosophy. Translated from the Italian by Robert T. Valgenti. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2016. 235 pp. The touchstone for Gianni Vattimo's reflection in Of Reality is a saying of Nietzsche: "There are no facts, only interpretations." Nietzsche then adds, "And this too is an interpretation." Down the postmodern rabbit hole we go, vainly clutching at truths or facts, scrabbling for any toehold that might arrest the play of interpretations. It is an endless freefall of course—we should not expect to find our footing in reality, or finally reach a stable philosophical foundation for knowledge. But what is the status of Nietzsche's 'thesis'? Is it a fact to say there are no facts? Is this an unarguable, uninterpretable truth? Nietzsche's rider, "And this too is an interpretation," cannily refuses to let that putative 'truth' remain standing where all other verities have fallen away. Nietzsche refuses to let himself off the hook of his own proposition (if that is what it is), and so he falls with us yet further down the rabbit hole. Like a bewildered Alice, we ask our philosophical questions: what is reality? What is truth? Can there be facts? But Nietzsche always has the same crafty answer: they are just interpretations, just words, metaphysical lures for those too philosophically faint-hearted to face up to the hermeneutical "truth." If everything is an interpretation, and hermeneutics is the philosophy of interpretation, then hermeneutics is all we have. Vattimo characterizes hermeneutics as the lingua franca of philosophy today, our current lingo, the koiné of modern thought. If hermeneutics in the 20th century sprang from Heidegger and Gadamer, then "it seems undeniable that hermeneutics broadly construed as philosophy—in the sense that it has acquired at least since Heidegger and Gadamer—can only be formulated in that Nietzschean maxim" (16). The specific consequence for hermeneutics is that Heidegger and Gadamer will have to be re-read—and radicalized—through Nietzsche. The broader consequence, given this hermeneutic "hegemony" (30), is that there is no point in objecting that postmodernism is out of date, or "dé[post]modé" (29). We remain post-Nietzschean, we have to abide with the various prophets of extremity, and we still have some 'incredulity' to work though, especially vis-à-vis the grands récits that philosophy has recounted for us—the story of Truth, or the story of Being. The text we will still be reading is the portion from Twilight of the Idols, entitled "How the 'True World' Became a Fable," and our Nietzschean conversations, even in 2017, will still be dialogues with those exemplary exponents of radical hermeneutics, namely Donald Trump and Kellyanne Conway, she of the 'alternative facts.' Would that it were not so. But since it is so, Vattimo proposes that we roll up our philosophical sleeves and adopt the Nietzschean motto in order to see what we might make of those imposing philosophical words—Truth, and Being. In [End Page 341] order, besides, to inspect the 'reality' of the supposedly real world. The title of Vattimo's book might be deemed ironic in that regard, or certainly hedged about by scare quotes. (We will get to the implications of placing words in quotation marks presently.) In any case, what interests Vattimo is reality (or "reality"), and what we might truthfully say about it. Of Reality collects the three lectures Vattimo gave at the University of Leuven in 1998, and the four Gifford Lectures he gave at the University of Glasgow in 2010. There is also an "intermission" essay entitled "The Temptation of Realism," and an "Appendix," which adds a further eight essays. The objections to postmodern thought are well-known. It has been deemed glib, lacking political and ethical seriousness when confronted with the violently real realities of today's world. It prefers the playground puerilities of the spectacle, the simulation, the Matrix. The objection to hermeneutics is that it is not so much glib as naïve: while Gadamer underpins his philosophical hermeneutics by envisaging interpretation as a dialogue, the philosophical proviso he adduces...