Writings Research Articles

The Emergence of Modern Prose Narrative in Iraq: Maḥmūd Aḥmad al-Sayyid and the Search for Form

Abstract This paper examines the efforts of the early twentieth century writer Mahmud Ahmad al-Sayyid (1903–1937) to remake literary culture in Iraq. Al-Sayyid’s essays advocated abandoning what he characterized as socially disinterested and decorative prose, urging Arab writers to embrace a literature of social commitment. Al-Sayyid charted a path that sought to distance Arabic cultural production from European influence, envisioning literary rebirth through the politics of anti-colonialism and by establishing solidarity with other colonized peoples. Yet these efforts were itinerant and often contradictory. Al-Sayyid’s circuitous path toward an embrace of the realist short story embodies the complexities of cultural formation during a dramatic historical shift. Aesthetically, these complexities manifest in the syncretism of al-Sayyid’s fiction, which engaged with and reproduced extant Arabic literary forms and themes. This article historicizes the emergence of a modern prose tradition in Iraq through critical assessments of the early modern Iraqi maqāmah and the short prose form of the ruʾyā, arguing that the circulations of these local forms were critical to the making of the reformist prose of al-Sayyid. It then examines the novella Jalāl Khālid, arguing that the text’s formal indeterminacy and narration of romantic and revolutionary failure inscribes an ironic stance toward the project of the nation and its aesthetic corollary, the novel. Finally, the article analyzes al-Sayyid’s short story “Sakrān” (1929), which is emblematic of a decades-long realist trend in Iraqi prose fiction that reoriented Iraqi prose toward a global trend of literary realism in the global south.

“Repensar Portugal”: Almeida Garrett, Alexandre Herculano e Eduardo Lourenço

Almeida Garrett (1799-1854) and Alexandre Herculano (1810-1877) are the two main authors representing Romanticism in Portugal or, at least of the first generation, which is inevitably confused with the struggles for the implementation of Liberalism in the country. Contemporaries, they corresponded with each other and wrote fictional works, which aimed to consider the role of Portugal, as a national and also cultural body. In short, they reflected, through literary production, on the homeland situation after the French invasions (1807), the trauma of the flight from the Court to Brazil (1807), the Liberal Revolution (1820) and the Civil War (1828-1834) between absolutists and liberals, both of whom took sides with the constitutionalists and, finally, ended up in exile. Upon returning, Garrett and Herculano formed a group of intellectuals who aimed to reflect on the country's destiny, immersed in so many crises. Regarding his works, Eduardo Lourenço (1923-2020), honored in this year of his centenary of birth, wrote important texts, also in order to “rethink Portugal”, as he invented in the writings of the two 19th century writers ways of pondering the Portuguese political, religious and cultural situations. We therefore analyzed excerpts from four narratives by nineteenth-century authors: O Arco de Sant’Ana: crónica portuense (1845/1851) and Viagens na minha terra (1846), by Almeida Garrett; O Monge de Cister ou a época de D. João I (1848) and “O pároco da aldeia (1825)” (1851), by Alexandre Herculano. These are texts written in the Shandian narrative style, in which the narrators' digressions are what interest us most in this study. In addition to O labirinto da saudade (1978) and Mitologia da saudade seguido de Portugal como destino (1999), by Lourenço, we will dialogue, in our investigations, with the productions of Maria de Fátima Marinho (1999) and Sergio Paulo Rouanet (2007), among other authors.

Perfil revisado: Vicente Aleixandre, Antonio Machado y otros lectores de Carolina Coronado en la Edad de Plata

Important authors of the Spanish Silver Age such as Vicente Aleixandre or Antonio Machado show, at some point in their work, the reading and influence of the romantic writer Carolina Coronado (1820–1911). This article analyses the reception of Coronado's work in Vicente Aleixandre's La Destrucción o el Amor (1935) (specifically, in the poem "La luna es una ausencia", which the author dedicated to her) as well as in Antonio Machado's poem “A José María Palacio”, present in the second edition of his book Campos de Castilla (1917). It also traces the peculiar presence of the author in the work of other twentieth century writers such as Ramón Sijé or Gerardo Diego; but it mainly focuses on the authorial image that they all construct of Coronado, as well as the aspects and motifs that most interested them in her writing.

조선 후기 관서 명승 六六洞의 성립과 詩的 형상화

This article introduces Yukyuk-dong (or thirty six Dongcheon) in Samdeung-hyeon, which was highlighted in the 19th century as one of the famous scenic spots in Pyeongan-do, and explains the origins of the names of the 36 Dongcheon and the characteristics of the Chinese poem ‘Yukyuk- dong’ created based on each Dongcheon. The extant Chinese poems based on Yukyuk-dong were mostly written in the 19th century, and the tendency of some writers to form a series of 36 poems is captured. Eom Gi (1760~1820), who first gave names to the 36 Dongcheon in Yukyuk-dong at the end of the 18th century, revealed the origins of each Dongcheon and reproduced the actual scenery into 36 poems composed in seven-word verse. While projecting legends related to immortals, he paid attention to topographical characteristics such as strangely shaped rocks, cliffs, waterfalls, and the unique flow of rivers, and expressed each Dongcheon by reflecting the natural phenomena or human activities he captured. Eom Gi's poem had a profound influence on the creation of a series of poems by the group of Shin Heon, Jo Yeon-myeong, Kim Hyeon-eung, and Lee Heon-myeong while touring Yukyuk-dong in 1837. Each of these four people's exchanging poems is compiled together with Eom Gi's poem under the title Yukyuk Yeonhwa, and generally uses materials similar to Eom Gi's to establish the image of Yukyuk-dong. Meanwhile, in the early 19th century, Shin Wi (1769~1845), Jo Deuk- young (1762~1824), and Jeong Won-yong (1783~1873), each wrote 36 poems composed in five-word verse to describe Yukyuk-dong. They connected the history of immortals and Buddhist legends, Chinese writers, and place names etc with the poems but embodied in different content from Eom Gi's poem. The series of ‘Yukyuk-dong’ poems created by 19th century writers not only contributed to securing the status of Yukyuk-dong as a scenic spot, but are also significant in that they show an aspect of the cultural phenomenon of discovery and enjoyment of scenic spots.

Journey along the edge of the night: the image of the 20th century writer in contemporary foreign cinematography

BACKGROUND: The interdependence of a person's creative abilities and the features of his life order, behavior, state of health, building social communications is widely discussed in literature, art, sociology, psychology, narrative medicine and the history of medicine (in particular, the question of the impact of health and disease on the possibilities of creative work and the reflection in the images and characters of the diseases suffered by the writer, the experience of overcoming the disease is discussed). At the same time, in public discourse, creative abilities are often present (and connected) in the contour of psychological and mental health disorders.
 AIM: To study the image of a writer of the 20th century, expressed in modern cinema, as the equivalent of the perception by public consciousness of the characteristics of the behavior and thinking of the writer.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was carried out by the method of quantitative content analysis of popular movies and biographies of foreign writers of the 20th century (n=10). The facts and features of deviant behavior and thinking of writers recorded in biographical works and the representation of the writer's image in cinema were compared.
 RESULTS: The content analysis of the biographies and image of the writer presented in films for the 10 most frequently encountered psychopathological symptoms reflects a much more pronounced frequency of demonstrating the symptoms of the writer's mental health disorder in films (with the exception of the subcategory “depressive thoughts”) than in the actual data of his biography, and the severity of psychopathological symptoms is higher in film images of writers who have never received psychiatric care. Manifestations of maladaptation are shown in films in 9 out of 10 main characters, while the fact of maladaptation of 6 out of 10 writers is actually confirmed. At the same time, the deviant psychological features confirmed in the biography are much less often presented in films, and the greatest discrepancy is observed in the subcategories “feeling depressed” and “excessive impulsiveness”. However, a comparison of the ratio of the frequency of cases of positive, indifferent and negative perception/attitude towards the writer reflected in his biography and presented in films shows that society actually has a more positive attitude towards the writer than is shown in cinema.
 CONCLUSION: The peculiarities of the behavior and creative thinking of writers in the public consciousness are still perceived in many cases as manifestations of mental pathology, while creative people are assigned a special social status that “justifies” the deviation of their lifestyle and behavior from accepted standards. The robustness of the stereotype about the correlation between creative abilities and the presence of psychopathology is largely formed by the heuristics of accessibility.

Wartime intelligence experience in the works of Barbara Pym and Muriel Spark

ABSTRACT This paper looks at the possibilities of fiction in understanding intelligence, taking two female 20th century writers as case studies, Barbara Pym, and Muriel Spark. It considers how they did or did not draw on their wartime experience in their fiction. It asks why fiction still matters in an era of ever-more accessible archives and public records. It concludes that authorial choice, self-censorship, redacting and editing by others suppressed Barbara Pym’s official wartime experience as an Examiner or censor. It suggests that the role was undervalued both at the time and subsequently as a source of intelligence. The paper concludes that Muriel Spark exploited to the full a short exposure to black propaganda, highlighting how three of her works of fiction offer readers insights into ethical questions of deception, manipulation, and surveillance.

Utopian Realism

Around the turn of the nineteenth century writer, and opinion leader, Frida Stéenhoff (1865–1945), developed a theory of the future and the present of society, and argued that contemporary ideas of the social, ethical, and aesthetical were provisional, not comparable to the coming. An affinity between drama and theory, as well as investigations of peace as an idea, are distinctive features of her writing. Her play, Stridbar ungdom / Pugnacious Youth (1907), can be positioned in a tradition of peace dramas spanning from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to Sarah Kane’s Blasted. This article studies the utopian potential of peace in Pugnacious Youth. By reading the play with Ruth Levitas’ method the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society (IROS) – suggesting that utopia is a method rather than a goal in itself – peace does not emerge negatively, as non-war, but as concrete development and possible presence. Furthermore, the division between realism and idealism when it comes to militarism and peace, as well as the realist and idealist branches of the peace movement, are problematized. In conclusion, it appears that studying ideas of peace in fiction enables an alternative entry into the actualization of its not-yet-here quality.

The multi-genre structure of J. Metham's poem “Amoryus and Cleopes” (1449) and bestiary motifs in the “encyclopedic” episode of its plot

The subject of research in this article is a multi-genre composition, and the research material is the medieval English poem “Amoryus and Cleopes”, underestimated by modern literary criticism: essays by English researchers about it are extremely few, and works by foreign researchers, apparently, are completely absent; in the 108 years since its first publication, it was published once again in Middle English, but was never translated not only into other languages, but also into modern English. There are also no scholars specializing in the work of its author, the mid-15th century writer John Metham. Meanwhile, this is definitely an interesting work, since it varies the plot from the Fourth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and its creator copies Ovid’s material not mechanically, but quite creatively, including it in a genre- and stylistically variegated composition of plot episodes. In the process of research, we identified the boundaries of these episodes and focused attention on one of them, within the framework of which the poet Metem put into the heroine’s speech a lot of information of the “encyclopedic” type, obviously gleaned from various bestiaries and works of medieval zoologists. Our goal was to identify motifs transferred into the poem from the most famous of these works. Along the way, Metham's verse forms were described, and his free handling of the Chaucerian heptath used in the poem was revealed. Our article shows that the traditional attitude to the 15th century as a “barren age” is not entirely justified and that between the death of Chaucer and Lydgate and the appearance of the Scottish “Chaucerians” at the end of the century, there were English authors with an original style and works with individual poetic features.

A MIGHTY ONE: THE LEADERSHIP, SERVICE, AND LEGACY OF FRANCES HESSELBEIN

AbstractThe author, the editor‐in‐chief of Leader to Leader, begins her tribute to Frances Hesselbein quoting from the 20th century writer George Bernard Shaw, including the following: Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.’’ She further discusses her close working relationship with Frances, and in describing the issue you are now reading, reflects that “She commanded the hearts and minds of the incredible mosaic of accomplished leaders and contributors who have assembled in this special commemorative issue of her beloved Leader to Leader journal. And we recognize that this is a mere drop in the bucket of the influence and impact of the mighty Frances Hesselbein.”

Disputing the Deluge: Collected 21st Century Writings on Utopia, Narration, and Survival by Darko Suvin (review)

Disputing the Deluge: Collected 21st Century Writings on Utopia, Narration, and Survival by Darko Suvin (review)

PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS OF RELIGIOUS ORIGIN

In Kazakh phraseology, a special group consists of phraseological units of religious origin. The specifics of the study of such phraseological units is the need to focus on religious sources. In phraseological units of religious origin, both religious and secular worldviews are represented in the Kazakh language. Therefore, such phraseological units were considered in the paper not as «religious», but as «based on religion».The purpose of the study is to describe the structural and semantic features of phraseological units of religious origin. In this regard, the tasks are set to show the space of their use and their connection with religious sources.One of the peculiarities of the connection of Kazakh phraseological units with the Quran, hadith is that phraseological units are not reflected in the Quran, hadith in the same lexical composition, i.e. they are not extracted from religious writ ings, but are semantically related to their texts. Phraseological units related to religious rites, religious personalities, religious folklore, religious morality are referred thematically to this group. The figurative and situational motivation of such phraseological units is connected with the religious folk knowledge of native speakers of the Kazakh language.Phraseological units of religious origin in the Kazakh language are structurally divided into phraseological units in the form of a phrase and phraseological units in the form of a sentence.In Kazakh phraseological units of religious origin, only three lexemes act as the lexical core: Allah (God, Tengri), iman, and sacred numbers.Religious folklore, especially religious epics, has a special place in the formation of Kazakh phraseological units of religious origin. Therefore, linguistic facts were collected and analyzed from religious epics, as well as from the phraseological dictionary.

The linguistic elaboration and philosophical-ideological potential of Ingeborg Bachmann's works

The article examines the creative work of the famous twentieth century writer Ingeborg Bachmann. Various influences (philosophy, music, literature, personal life) on the formation of the writer's worldview, on her artistic style, on the way of reflecting her philosophical views and worldview in various genres: lyrics ("Die gestundete Zeit"), radio plays ("Der gute Gott von Manhatten") and novels ("Malina") are considered. The role of philosophy and the study of the scientific achievements of Wittgenstein and Heidegger in the formation of Bachmanns philosophical views and worldview, the influence of art (music and literature) on her creative path are analyzed. The attention is also paid to Bachmann's personal contacts with representatives of "Group 47", with writers P. Celan, M. Frisch, personal relationships with which significantly affected her life and her work, many facts of contacts with which are mentioned in the texts of the writer. Peculiarities of linguistic representation of Bachmann's worldview in her works by means of lexical, syntactic, graphic means are analyzed and shown on the material of texts.

Cai Yuanpei’s Knowledge Taxonomy and the Divide Between Science and Metaphysics in Modern China

Cai Yuanpei was a renowned 20th century Chinese educator. He is best known for his role as the chancellor of Peking University and his belief in “inclusiveness and tolerance (jianrong bingbao).” This essay examines Cai Yuanpei’s knowledge taxonomy both in his early 20th century writings and in his academic policies as Chancellor of National Peking University (1917–1923). As chancellor, Cai made a conscious effort to recruit faculty members who aimed to bring about revolutionary changes to Chinese culture. While his original vision was to integrate scientific methodologies with the intuitive philosophies of xuanxue (玄学), the dominant trend in Chinese scholarship became heavily focused on science. This essay delves into Cai’s exposure to Japanese intellectual influences around 1900, and how it influenced Cai’s initial knowledge taxonomy and its connection to Cai’s definition of science disciplines in modern Chinese education. Cai’s view toward science and philosophy evolved from an emphasis on a continuum between the two in the early 1900s to their separation, as science gained momentum and philosophy became increasingly subordinate to science. The essay shows how Cai’s efforts to create a modern educational system in China where science would be balanced with intuitive learning played out to a predominance of science in Chinese learning.

Emotional Abuse in Shashi Deshpande\'s "That Long Silence"

Abstract: Indian English Literature has its roots in the works of the 19th century writers such as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath Tagore, and Sarojini Naidu. In this paper we have reflected mental harassment or emotional abuse through the literary work of famous writer Shashi Deshpande. Her novel “ That Long Silence “ is about a character “Jaya” whose journey of self discovery is a difficult one. She is the victim of the patriarchal society that has denied her the freedom to pursue her dreams. The novel highlights the struggle of women in India. It shows how women are expected to conform to the norms of society and how they are often denied basic rights to make decisions about their own lives. Deshpande encourages women to take charge of their own lives and to be independent and self-reliant.

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

О влиянии романа «Что делать?» Н. Г. Чернышевского на повесть «Яр» С. А. Есенина

There is evidence of Yesenin’s acquaintance with What is to be done? by Chernyshevsky, which happened during the adolescent years of the future poet, while he was studying at the Spas-Klepikovskaya second-class teacher’s school in 1909–1912. From the novel by a 19th century writer individual plot twists (the “living corpse” line), some stylistic findings and the author’s judgments (about the mystery, the liar, Hamlet) seem to have migrated to the story of the 20th century poet, of course, in a veiled and transformed form. It can also be assumed that one of the moments of Chernyshevsky’s exile was reflected in a minor character in Yesenin’s story (the city of Vilyuysk and the Vihlyuisky shooter – with the loss of one letter). Meanwhile, any estimations of the influence of Chernyshevsky’s poetics on the artistic fabric of Yesenin’s story remain hypothetical, for which reason other possible interpretations of the “dark places” of Yar are given. Yesenin could be attracted by the biographical data of a number of heroes (the city of Ryazan and the Oka river are mentioned) in connection with his own place of birth in the Ryazan region, as well as by an innovative approach to the novel genre (with the inclusion of dreams and the presence of other insertions); the poet himself also introduced many additional elements into Yar – ethnographic descriptions of the wedding and the ritual of plowing around the village against epizootic, folklore quotations from non-ritual songs and funeral lamentation, proverbs and sayings, etc. As a result, the complex compositional and plot structure of Yesenin’s story is quite comparable to the multifaceted nature of Chernyshevsky’s n ovel, with its adventurous line, with many philosophical digressions, with the trips of the heroes (the motive of wandering). Unlike What is to be done?, aimed at the future, Yar depicts everyday life of peasants and traditional festive culture, it is replete with sketches of regional rural life, which eventually has become a valuable ethnographic material.

Poetics of Metamorphosis and “Layering” in a Story “A Small Mistake” by N.S. Leskov: Towards the Problem of the “Classical Writer’s Method”

Based on S.S. Averintsev’s study “Poetics of Early Byzantine Literature&8j1; and on the scholarly understanding of the “poetics” phenomenon, the specificity of the image in N. S. Leskov’s story “A Small Mistake&8j1; is revealed. The poetics of metamorphosis (Ovid), iconic poetics of “layer-by-layer painting&8j1; contribute to the embodiment of form-creative intentions of the 19th century writer in the creation of such an image, which brings into synthesis the “fabulous&8j1; (everyday) and the “everyday-descriptive&8j1; (everyday life), verbal and plastic-imaginative features dating back to pagan and Christian cultures, encouraging the reader to interpret actively and understand the contradictions of the image. The article continues the study of N.S. Leskov’s poetics taking into account the aesthetic foundations of his work: the principle of deliberate archaization and modernisation; the primacy of craftsmanship rooted in tradition; the “double image&8j1;; the boundary form. The teleological goals of the analysis lie in the attempt to approach an understanding of the method of the most “misunderstood&8j1; Russian classical writer.

EPOCHAL RELEVANCE OF SELECTED POST MILLENNIAL SHORT STORIES IN EAST AFRICA

Literary writers in Africa have used different genres of art to reflect and critique actions in the society at different points of history. Apart from entertaining and preserving culture, works of art have a role in creating awareness among the audience and proposing action in the society. The pre-colonial, colonial and pre-millennium texts have received significant literary attention with reference to their concerns. Most studies in Africa for example tend to focus on canonical writers and their contributions to the political and economic developments in the society. However, many post millennial short stories have received minimal critical attention. This paper, therefore, examines the socio-cultural and economic resurgence in selected post millennium short stories in East Africa in order to find out the kind of society that upcoming writers are yearning for, thus revealing the major concerns of short stories written in the 21st century. Post-colonial theory guides the analysis done in this paper and helps in demonstrating how the Millennium Development Goals influenced the thematic concerns in the five (5) short stories under discussion, which are all written by emerging post-millennial writers. The paper argues that 21st Century writers are sensitive to issues affecting their society and they, in the process of writing, attempt to propose ways of societal transformation through literature. The paper gives variety and contributes to the existing reservoir of literary analysis in East Africa.

Американское предложение

The nature, history and transformation of the American sentence in XX century American fiction is the focus of the current essay which examines the shift from the oracular to ordinary style. This is the contrast between Henry James and Ernest Hemingway, or Thomas Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy. It is a shift in tone and syntax from an elaborate rhetoric and rhythm to a pointed, direct style that wastes no words. It suggests an impatient style reflecting an age of intensity, speed, and thrust. The leisurely and intricate style of late XIX and early XX century American writers loses its energy, although individual authors experiment and, within the body of their work, shift from an initial, ornate method to one that is immediate and precise. A new, fragmented cogency takes over, although this is not a prescriptive formula. There is a stylistic pendulum at work alternating between, say, the elaborate writing of David Foster Wallace or Don DeLillo and that of Raymond Carver or Jennifer Egan. The dynamics of this shift is the center of this discussion. Examples of XX century writers include Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy and Jennifer Egan. Overlooked, the sentence remains the core of literary expression but it is a problematic form associated with such cultural changes as the telegraph, World War II and crime writing, as much as the literary imagination. Its permutations may, in fact, represent the “moral history” of America, its shifts in style reflecting the conflict between traditionalism and innovation, conservatism and experimentation.

Late Modernism in Literary Works

This writing highlights relatively the writings of late modernism in literature. It gives an overview of the development of late modernism and writers responded to it. The second half of the 20th century writings created its own genre in the literary field. There is a study to conceptualize and historicize late modernism with greater precision. We can put our attentions to the writings 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s. Each of these sections serves a double function. First, they offer close readings of late modernism writings that deal how the society witnessed changes after II World War. Second, it focuses on the aesthetic dimensions of late modernism and the writers who contributed to this through their works. Many poets responded to late modernism and highlighted the features of late modernism in their writings.