Emphasis In Text Research Articles

Jonah's Complexes and Our Own: Psychology and the Interpretation of the Book of Jonah

This article employs attribution theory to investigate why readers have made such widely varying judgments concerning the character Jonah. This branch of social psychology examines the ways in which we go about judging other people (and literary characters), including our tendency to assume that behavior is a function of robust character traits rather than the situations in which a person finds him- or herself. While some biblical scholars have appealed to ‘Jonah complexes’ in order to explain the prophet's actions, Jonah does not conform to any version of this psychological model. Nevertheless, such models are helpful to the extent that they respond to the text's emphasis on metaphors of enclosure and exposure and the fundamental human fears and fantasies which stem from this dimension of human life. This study proposes that focusing on this dimension can help one to understand why readers have made dramatically different assessments of Jonah's character and his relationship with his God.

Towards an ‘Afropolitan Deixis’: Hospitality and ‘You’ and ‘We’ Narration in Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow

This article foregrounds the spatial politics implicit in the practice of hospitality towards African foreign nationals that Phaswane Mpe addresses in his novel Welcome to Our Hillbrow. Even though critics have frequently emphasized the novel's preoccupation with the idea of hospitality, the notion has not yet been employed as an overall optic through which to read the text's engagement with non-national African migrants. Neither has the novel been analyzed explicitly with reference to narratological scholarship on ‘you’ and ‘we’ narration. My reading focuses on how hospitality towards African migrants is denied, contested and extended in the diverse and complex spatial arenas depicted in the text. I argue that this is achieved in particular through Mpe's innovative deployment of both ‘you’ and ‘we’ narration. Drawing on Fludernik's approach to these narrative forms from the perspective of linguistic deixis and West-Pavlov's theories of ‘postcolonial deiXis’, I suggest that Mpe makes use of what I would tentatively call an ‘Afropolitan deixis’. The pronominal deictic of the title phrase ‘our Hillbrow’, which recurs as a determiner of various place names throughout the novel, is firmly anchored in the local geography of Hillbrow but simultaneously embraces spaces within Africa and across the world. Yet instead of giving rise to a mere celebratory tenor, this understanding of Afropolitanism is tied up with the text's emphasis on the tragic discrepancy between an envisioned hospitality and its absence in the narrative present that comes to the fore in its frequent employment of counterfactuals.

You Know You Love Me

In this paper, I analyse young women's video remixes of the teen drama Gossip Girl. With its emphasis on glamour, style, and status and its interpellation of young female viewers as the ideal consumers within neoliberal regimes, Gossip Girl bears many of the marks of post-feminist media. Drawing on an archive of videos posted to YouTube during the programme's first two seasons, I show how young video makers re-imagine the programme's post-feminist aesthetics. Gossip Girl fan videos frequently seek to create emotional intensity through repetition of close-ups on the female face. They also use innovative digital editing techniques to alter television's realist aesthetic and portray split, fragmented, or contradictory subjects. This focus on the face and amplification of affect cuts out the source text's emphasis on the teenage body as a vehicle for product placement, and challenges the neoliberal privileging of economic success and independence. At the same time, the videos also contain their own limitations, reproducing the young female body as a site of spectacle.

A Cripped Erotic: Gender and Disability in James Joyce's "Nausicaa"

"Nausicaa" produces what I call a "cripped erotic" through its counter-narrative to disabled asexuality (particularly through Gerty's limp and her gendered disabled subjectivity) and a more nuanced understanding of how gender, desire, and disability function. It also challenges ocularcentric constructions of desire and heteronormative constructions of sex itself. Considering this episode, along with the use of the blind stripling in "Lestrygonians" and the text's emphasis on the olfactory, I argue for the text's sensory schema as a way of intervening in conceptions of gender, sexuality, and ability (what constitutes ability in and of itself).

Barry, the Fish with Fingers (review)

Reviewed by: Barry, the Fish with Fingers Deborah Stevenson, Editor Hendra, Sue. Barry, the Fish with Fingers; written and illus. by Sue Hendra. Knopf, 2010. 32p. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-95894-6 $18.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-85894-9 $15.99 Ad 5-8 yrs. Know what fish could really use? Fingers. Or so asserts Barry, a plump blue swimmer who claims the full complement of ten digits. Barry, quite the salesman, promises that fingers will solve every fish's problem; he's right, since the problem turns out to be boredom, and the fingers open up a world of fishy possibilities ("With fingers I can … Finger-paint! Play the piano!"). When Barry's spellbound audience asks where they can get themselves some fingers, Barry notes the case of finger-like fishsticks that's just sunk nearby. The joke likely worked a lot better in the book's original British incarnation than here, since "fish fingers" is what fishsticks are called [End Page 435] in the UK; nor does the plot make a lot of sense—it's not clear, for instance, where Barry got his own fingers (do cases just plummet regularly into the sea?). Nonetheless, the sheer absurdity of the finger-puppet-brandishing, tickling fish is hard to resist all on its own, and the text's emphasis on dialogue, and silly dialogue at that, offers plenty of opportunity for over-the-top readaloud theatrics. Stylistically, the illustrations are cheerful but somewhat bland; though the medium is credited as gouache, its flat, unvarying colors, stylization, and crisp layering suggest digital creation, with a result that's stronger graphically than narratively. The fish provide an aquarium-bright rainbow of colors, though, and wide-eyed, broadly theatrical Barry is an enjoyable star act. Read it with gusto and be prepared to retrieve bits of Mrs. Paul's best from the fish tank later. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Loving Mountains, Loving Men (review)

Reviewed by: Loving Mountains, Loving Men Christopher B. Stewart Loving Mountains, Loving Men. By Jeff Mann. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. Pp. 248.) Jeff Mann has created a rich, multi-genre autobiography in Loving Mountains, Loving Men. Primarily about his deepening sense of self over the first half of his life, the narrative locus is the intersection of Mann's sexual and regional identities. It is a needed and welcome addition to a small but growing body of regional queer literature, but it would be a mistake to corral Mann's text in the hollow between "Appalachian" and "gay man." This narrative is much more: it is an intellectual, literary, cultural, and spiritual memoir that covers an important period of transition affecting most of the communities in which Mann participates. Through autobiography, poetry, and the prose poem, Mann deftly explores both the abiding and the mercurial aspects of selfhood with an honest, keen, and insightful personal voice. The multiple genres seem to reflect the author's effort to bring together the disparate aspects of his identity into one coherent expression. The text speaks from the integrity that motivates authentic self-examination, from the deepening that comes from learning to love self and others, and from the spiritual power of place. A persistent theme is the familiar Appalachian love of the land and of traditional folkways. Through Mann's eyes, we see those features, and Appalachian masculinity, anew—he writes, for example, of the ambience of 1970s forestry school at West Virginia University (28-29), and of the Appalachian penchant for summer shirtlessness and how it caught his adolescent attention (25). Another persistent theme is out-migration and the longing to return, but in Mann's case out-migration is motivated by the desire for greater acceptance of sexual difference in a more cosmopolitan environment, and for intellectual opportunity. This is reflected in his undergraduate dual majors of forestry and English. Like many of his peers, he ultimately finds a healthy synthesis by living in regional college towns and pursing a professorial career. Twenty years separates this reviewer's experience from Mann's, but much remains the same. Growing up in southern West Virginia twenty years [End Page 127] after Mann, I recognize much, but I also see a significant amount of change from what I regard as a homespun libertarianism—an Appalachian "mind your own business" culture that values both liberty and eccentricity. Like Mann, I experienced teen angst and was fearful of authentic self-expression. But, truth be told, I have experienced very little overt discrimination in Appalachia and find no higher incidence here than in more cosmopolitan areas. While I appreciate Mann's work very much, I also have reservations about the text's emphasis on intolerance as a feature of Appalachian culture. As a whole, the book does an excellent job of representing the variety and complexity of Appalachian responses to homosexuality. At no point in the narrative is Mann truly without supportive friends or growing family members or blessed mentors. At the same time, the narrative seems to rely strongly on a tone of struggle that may no longer be typical of the post-high school Appalachian queer experience, especially for those of us whose families are not or are only nominally Christian. As an example of reader-response criticism, my thoughts about intolerance in Appalachia may suggest the broader national changes the region has participated in since the 1980s. This would underscore the value of the book as a window on the cultural history of an under-documented place and period. I am grateful for any addition to the literature of non-urban queer experience because it is rare. Mann acknowledges a similar trajectory in his experiences and says, "Eventually, instead of feeling like a queer oppressed by redneck Appalachians, I began to see the oppression that Appalachians and homosexuals have in common. Clear enough, when you start to count all the queer jokes and hillbilly/West Virginia jokes you've heard" (44). As the first of its kind, Mann's text is invaluable for any survey of sexuality or gender issues. This would be true in general, but especially under Appalachian, southern, or rural...

Book Review: Addiction: Pagliaros' Comprehensive Guide to Drugs and Substances of Abuse

Addiction Pagliaros' Comprehensive Guide to Drugs and Substances of Abuse. Louis A Pagliaro, Ann Marie Pagliaro. Washington (DC): American Pharmacists Association; 2004. 462 p. US$89.00. Reviewer rating: Good The need for an authoritative, referenced, and up-to-date compilation of consumption trends and individual pharmacology for drugs and substances of abuse in North America cannot be overstated. It is this book's main objective, according to the authors' statement in the preface, and the text achieves it well. Pagliaros' is designed, first, to assist general health care professionals and, second, to serve as a review and quick reference for clinicians who specialize in the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. Given the text's emphasis on pharmacologie mechanisms, I suggest that physicians and pharmacists are the targeted readers. The 2 Canadian authors are well-known faculty at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. They have published numerous articles and textbooks on the pharmacology of substance abuse, and they have taken great care to provide us with as much information from Canadian sources as possible, which is without any doubt a clear advantage of this book. First, let me offer some clarifications about the exact content of Pagliaros' guide, which follows an unusual format for a publication in the substance abuse field. Those who may want a to treating substance abuse or dual diagnosis will find that these subjects are beyond the book's scope (although they are the focus of a planned companion text). In fact, it would have been possibly more appropriate to use the term dictionary instead of guide in the title to avoid confusing potential readers. Notwithstanding this detail, the book is worth reading and is well organized in 2 major parts. Part I provides an overview of the history and pharmacology of almost all substances of abuse, along 3 broad categories: psychodepressants (that is, opiates, sedativehypnotics, alcohol, and inhalants), psychostimulants (that is, amphetamines, cocaine, nicotine, and others), and psychedelics (including cannabis, amphetamine-like psychedelics, and indoles). Drugs that may be abused for reasons other than their specific effects on the brain, including vasodilators (such as amyl nitrate) and anabolic steroids, are not discussed anywhere in this text. This first part is scholarly documented, yet pleasant to read, thanks to the clear and concise writing style. I personally enjoyed the few literary quotations that punctuate the text, but they are easy to skip for those who want to stick to the essentials. In each category, a substantial portion of the discussion is devoted to historical landmarks in the discovery and synthesis of the major substances, to wars and laws ruling their availability, and to the cultural attitudes surrounding their use in North America-definitely an aid to better understanding the present trends in drug consumption. …