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A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory
... However, until the mid-20th century, this trend has intensified instead of ebbing. Although Lady Macbeth's moniker of "Devil Queen" has not been completely eliminated, the negative controversy caused by Macbeth has indeed decreased [4]. Critics' view of Lady Macbeth becomes more tolerant with the passage of time. ...
As one of the four great tragedies written by the world’s literary giant Shakespeare (1564-1616), Macbeth (1606) has attracted a lot of literary critics. Thus, Lady Macbeth as the most prominent female character in the play, should have been highly discussed. However, scholars at home and abroad have focused on the social background of the play, the tragic image of Macbeth and the supernatural and bloody images in the play. Little domestic research of Lady Macbeth from the feminist criticism can be found. This thesis therefore aims to use traditional feminist criticism as a theoretical basis and the play as an analytical text to study the image of Lady Macbeth. This thesis draws inspiration from feminist Shakespearean criticism and follow its research perspective and methodology to give a new interpretation of Lady Macbeth.
... To begin with, the death and burial rites of the Basukuma are elements of culture. According to Marx, culture is inseparable from the historical conditions in which human beings create their material lives, and the relations of exploitation and domination governing the socio-economic order of a particular phase of human history can determine the whole cultural orientation of the society (Selden et al. 2005). For Marx, the society comprises a superstructure with religious, ideological and the educational institutions determining the position of individuals. ...
Guided by a Marxist perspective on literature, and Muleka’s Performer-centrism, this paper highlights and discusses different manifestations or gestures that covertly suggest that there are elements of classes in some of the burial ceremonies, which are accompanied by performances among the Basukuma ethnic group of Tanzania. It reports the findings of a study whose data were collected using interviews held with respondents selected via snowball sampling. Note-taking served as a prominent data collection tool. Documentary review supplemented interviews, especially to collect data on the traditions of the Basukuma as one of the ethnic groups in Tanzania found predominantly in the Lake Victoria Zone. The study found that the burial ceremonies of the Basukuma are class conscious as manifested by their symbolic, incantatory, and invocatory performances. Indeed, when chiefs, singers, breech-birth and twins die, their burials require special burial ritual performances such as incantations, invocations and symbols that differentiate them from other rank and file individuals whose burial ceremonies lack fanfares characterising privileged individuals. Overall, these burial ceremonies graced by symbolic gestures among the Basukuma also help to unify the community since individuals define themselves in terms of who they are and what to expect from them and the community as a whole.
AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan teknik pembacaan puisi Peri Sandi Huizche terhadap puisi yang dibacakan dan respons estetik pembacaan puisi Peri Sandi Huizche bila dibandingkan dengan pembaca lainnya dengan judul yang sama pada media sosial youtube. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif deskriptif dengan memerlukan dokumentasi serta simak-catat sebagai teknik pengumpulan data. Data pada penelitian ini menggunakan teori Wolfgang Iser. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kajian respons estetik adalah mengenai proses pemaknaan teks. Proses pemaknaan teks adalah wujud dari adanya penafsiran. Makna konteks yang diperoleh pembaca mengarahkan pembacaan. Pembaca berperan memberikan tanggapan estetik dengan pengisian tempat terbuka melalui proses konkretisasi (hasil pembacaan). Maka dari itu penting bagi pembaca memiliki pengetahuan yang luas tentang kehidupan agar konkretisasinya menjadi sempurna melalui pembacaan. Tepat atau tidaknya pemahaman terhadap teks yang diperoleh mempengaruhi teknik pembacaan pada puisi. Kata kunci : respons estetik, puisi, media youtube
KESALINGAN SEBAGAI GAGASAN PENCIPTAAN KARYA SENI Patung Agnes Aulia Program Studi Seni Murni, Fakultas Seni Rupa dan Desain Institut Seni Budaya Indonesia (ISBI) Bandung Jalan Buah Batu No.212, Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia agnes.aneyy@gmail.com ABSTRACT Greeting is an interaction between people that happen at the beginning of relation. There is a tolerance value in greeting activity in wich people could accept each other appearance even with very different backgrounds. That tolerance value in the form of mutuality is reinterpreted by sculpture artwork with an abstract-formalism style. Sculpture artwork focused on assemble objects with binary opposition characteristics, which are feminine and masculine. Those binary opposition characteristics adapted in mutuality between material and material, material and form, and between forms. Material with feminine characteristics assembled with material that has a masculine characteristic. Feminine form assembled with masculine form. Feminine material is used to form the masculine object, et cetera. The sculpture artwork creation upholds tolerance value in greeting since study preparation, concept, execution, up to displaying the artwork. The materials are taken from Singajaya Village, Cihampelas District, West Bandung City, West Java Province, Indonesia. Those materials are roots-branches and house wall materials wich are an adaptation from the neighbourhood environtment in that village. Singajaya Village has been chosen as a location because there is a real case about tolerance value in form of mutuality in greetings are little happened wich influenced the uncomfortable living.The local villagers who lived outside the housing area and the newcomers who lived inside the housing area are not so much accepting each other at the beginning. But, the least acceptance from each group built an inconvenience, especially with the fact that they are living together and should socialize. The sculpture artwork intend to visualize that mutuality could make a harmony without bothering each person or group. The mutuality between humans is reinterpreted to be a mutuality between materials that created to be two sculpture artworks based on village situation, abstract-formalism style and feminine-masculine characteristics. Artworks displayed inside a room with eye level height. In hope, with this paper, appreciators could understand that differences should unite, not separate. Keyword : Greeting, tolerance, mutuality, sculpture artwork. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tegur sapa merupakan suatu interaksi antar manusia yang menjadi awal relasi. Terdapat nilai toleransi dalam kegiatan tegur sapa di mana individu atau kelompok manusia dapat saling menerima keberadaan masing-masing bahkan dengan latar belakang yang sama sekali berbeda. Nilai toleransi berupa kesalingan tersebut direinterpretasikan melalui karya seni patung dengan penggayaan abstrak-formalis. Karya patung berfokus pada penggabungan objek dengan karakteristik oposisi biner, yaitu feminin dan maskulin. Karakter oposisi biner tersebut diadaptasi pada kesalingan antara material dan material, material dan bentuk objek, serta bentuk objek dan bentuk objek. Material dengan karakteristik feminin digabungkan dengan material dengan karakteristik maskulin. Bentuk objek feminin digabungkan dengan bentuk objek dengan karakteristik maskulin. Material feminin digunakan untuk membentuk objek maskulin dan sebaliknya. Penciptaan karya seni patung tersebut menjunjung nilai toleransi dalam tegur sapa sejak penyusunan kajian, konsep, pengerjaan, hingga penyajian karya. Material yang digunakan berasal dari Desa Singajaya, Kecamatan Cihampelas, Kabupaten Bandung Barat, Provinsi Jawa Barat, Indonesia. Material tersebut adalah akar-ranting dan bahan dinding rumah yang merupakan adaptasi dari lingkungan tempat tinggal warga di desa tersebut. Desa Singajaya dipilih sebagai lokasi karena terdapat kasus nyata di mana nilai toleransi berbentuk kesalingan dalam tegur sapa yang minim terjadi ternyata berdampak terhadap ketidak-nyamanan bertempat tinggal. Masyarakat lokal desa yang tinggal di luar perumahan dan masyarakat pendatang yang tinggal di dalam perumahan pada awalnya saling tidak menerima keberadaan masing-masing. Namun, dengan kurangnya penerimaan dari masing-masing kelompok, justru membuat ketidak nyamanan, terutama karena fakta bahwa mereka tinggal berdampingan yang sudah seharusnya saling bersosialisasi. Karya patung bertujuan untuk memvisualisasikan bahwa kesalingan dapat membentuk suatu harmoni tanpa mengganggu kenyamanan masing-masing individu maupun kelompok. Kesalingan antar manusia tersebut direinterpretasikan menjadi kesalingan antar material yang dibuat menjadi karya patung berjumlah 2 dengan landasan situasi desa, penggayaan abstrak-formalis dan karakteristik feminin-maskulin. Karya disajikan di dalam ruangan dengan keinggian eye level. Harapannya, dengan tulisan ini apresiator dapat mengerti bahwa seharusnya perbedaan ada untuk mempersatukan, bukan memisahkan. Kata kunci: Tegur sapa, toleransi, kesalingan, dan seni patung
This paper presents a case study on the teaching of a 30-hour module of English Linguistics for two courses in the first-cycle degree programme in Modern Cultures and Languages. Data gathered through students’ evaluation forms have been contradictory: the module scored high as far as students’ satisfaction was concerned but it scored low regarding interest. This paper shows how students’ feedback has helped us introduce changes. These are illustrated in the main part of this paper. They engage with pedagogical knowledge, methodologies and practices, as well as linguistic approaches specifically chosen to unpack the potential of the content of the module, improving students’ language awareness and language skills.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Dear Ijeawele or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017) provides fifteen suggestions to her childhood friend Ijeawele who seeks the advice of the writer regarding how to raise her baby girl Chizalum Adaora up a feminist. Nothing so far has been done to connect this essay with any theory. Therefore, this paper attempts to study Dear Ijeawele or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017) from the perspective of Marxism. Here men are considered as the upper class who governs females through hegemony while women are the proletariat or lower class who believes in the ideology of the patriarchal society. It shows that Adichie wants women not to become a commodity. Rather, females must develop their own economic base as well as identity. So, this paper delves into details into the analysis Dear Ijeawele as it has deep-rooted connection with Marxist point of view..
In this research I discuss the narration technique in three of William Faulkner works Absalom, Absalom!, Light in August, and As I Lay Dying. Faulkner uses multiple narrators in those three works. The aim of my thesis writing is to discuss how the narration technique with multiple narrators is used in those three novels. Faulkner applies multiple narrators in a form of narration that completes each other in certain modes of narration hence the readers could understand the story of each novel in many different point of views. There are several modes of narration that Faulkner applies such as supporting narration mode, negating narration mode, questioning narration mode, and dominance narration mode
Reader-Response Theory lays full stress on the idea that reader actively contributes something to the meaning of the text. This theory opposes the former theories' perspectives of a literary text and transfers the task of the meaning of the text to the reader. The literary work is more than the text, for the text only exists on life when it is realized (read). The convergence, the union, of text and reader brings the literary work into existence. The reader is an active agent in the meaning creation for the text is full of gaps that the reader must fill in by a creative act. So, this theory is a means of getting students to interpret, to evaluate and to interact with literature. Therefore, the role of the teacher is to inform the students that they can reach the meaning of the text without having to depend on other information outside the text; understanding the meaning of the text lies behind their reading of the text only. This motive will create curiosity among students and help in building the students' confidence as readers, as well as helps them understand the benefits of working on their own.
This paper studies George Bernard Shaw's play 'Mrs. Warren's Profession' as a true picture of Victorian patriarchal society. The paper uses non-empirical methods of Textual Analysis and Close Reading Method to analyse the play from textual and thematic point of view. The feminist approach of 'New Womanhood' by W. H. Cooley (1904) as a theoretical framework is used to analyse the selected play and the characters in it. The paper intends to uncover the position and status of women in Victorian society by analysing the female characters in the play as unconventional and un-Victorian in attitudes, interests, preferences, values and ways of lives. The paper aims to highlight the hypocrisy and monstrosity of socially powerful capitalist class the way play portrays it. The paper proposes to find out the elements of new womanhood in female characters, Mrs. Warren and Miss Vivie Warren. The study interprets the struggle of female characters as rebel to liberate themselves from the patriarchal pseudo-morality, male-chauvinistic conventions, male-oriented values, institutions and tenets of society. The themes of prostitution, poverty, starvation, hypocrisy, rotten morality and values of patriarch society, individuality, overthrow of authoritative powers, and relationships or understanding between two different generations are intended to be studied and discussed in context with the selected work in this paper. This paper may be helpful to unfold the idea for readers that the fall of women is actually the fall of society and is a real tragedy.
Dudley Wrights’ book Vampires and Vampirism (1914) might well be said to be the first serious attempt in English to compile vampire stories and reports from all over the world, as well as to elucidate how far a certain amount of scientific truth might underlie these accounts. In this work, the author makes a statement that has passed unnoticed for both Anglosaxonists and vampire hunters: ‘There is an Anglo-Saxon poem with the title A Vampyre of the Fens (186). The veracity of this claim is demolished by the fact that students and scholars of Old English literature well know that such a poem does not exist. Besides, the dearth of vampiric literature in England before William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh or Walter Map is widely attested. Finally, it is significant that the term ‘vampyre’ was not used in English until 1734, as reported by the Oxford English Dictionary. The evidence that refutes Wrights affirmation is, as we can see, overwhelming, and yet there is some truth in his words.
The current study examines how women’s roles have changed in Indian society through an analysis of Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters (1998), Home (2006) The Immigrant (2009), and literary works. This paper analyzes the quest for feminine identity and the struggle for change in the female protagonists in the select works. Her fiction projects raise feminist concerns and feminist issues. In Indian tradition goddesses like Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Durga are worshipped in every household. Thus, the women are expected to have goddess-like characteristics to escape the scrutiny of critical eyes and feel trapped by such mundane situations. The prime objective behind the feminist movement was to change the destiny of women and make them realize that the time has come when they stop suffering silently in helplessness. Women in Indian society have never been recognized as persons apart from their assigned duties as mothers, wives, and daughters. The female protagonists of Kapur, Nina (The Immigrant), Virmati (The Difficult Daughters), and Nisha (Home) attempt to break away from the dependence syndrome that patriarchal agents have imposed upon them. The current study centers on the female protagonists’ quest for uniqueness and self-identity and avoids being perceived as self-sacrificing rubber dolls. They must struggle for their existence, which has been going on for centuries and will probably continue for a long time.
The paper tries to observe and emphasize the use of English literature to learn the language by using technology and digital tools. This helps in teaching as well as in learning. Students can focus on learning language skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing) and areas of language and grammar. Appropriate literary texts contain language in its purest form and activities supported by technology can
help students to learn the language. Digital learning and teaching are an inevitable part of education these days. Learners can get access and expertise in language through online activities prepared with the help of different texts of different genres. The paper contains possible language learning activities using literature as a base with applying various digital learning approaches and tools. It also contains issues teachers face while using technology for teaching purposes. For the class of non-native learners, using literature to teach language can be challenging for teachers, and for that appropriate texts must be chosen by teachers. This paper has taken into account the above-given challenges and arguments.
This study analyzes the figurative language used in the song lyrics of Adele’s album “30”. The song writer plays words and language to create attraction and distinctiveness towards the lyric of the song. Figurative language has the ability to be more impactful for the readers. This study is aimed to answer two problems of the study, they are: (1) To identify the types of figurative language used in the song lyrics of Adele's album "30". (2) To analyze the meaning of figurative language found in the song lyrics of Adele's album “30”. The data was analyzed based on the theory of figurative language proposed by Knickerbocker and Reninger (1974) and theory of Meaning proposed by Geoffrey Leech (1974).The result of this study showed there are 7 types of figurative language found in Adele’s album “30”. They are simile, personification, metaphor, synecdoche, hyperbole, irony and paradox. This study found 3 simile, 2 personification, 4 metaphor, 2 synecdoche, 13 hyperbole, 1 irony and 3 paradox. And otherwise in analyzing the contextual meaning this study found some types of meaning used in lyrics of song, those are connotative meaning, thematic meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, and stylistic meaning. The data were presented descriptively and formally by using some tables.
According to Michael Riffaterre's (1924-2006) semiotic theory, the reading of poems includes two stages; an exploratory (heuristic)and a reading-oriented (retroactive) stage. The first stage involves the search for meaning and the second stage considers the implications of language. This approach in reading the text may explain the relationship between covert and internal accumulation of elements and systems in the text. This then brings the reader or critic to the Hypogram and ultimately leads to the perception of these issues and uncovers the poems structural matrix. In Nima's "Phoenix",after the consideration of ungrammatical elements, the accumulation, descriptive systems and the structural matrix of the "Phoenix" are uncovered as follows;the accumulation of the Phoenix, its location and community, the descriptive systems of despair and homesickness of the poet and the indifference and despair of the society, and the matrix of despair - suffering and sorrow - death – and a promising future.
Feminist writings as part of the corpus of gender literary canons have, in no small measures, contributed to the expansion of humanistic studies. This is primarily because they examine social relations between the male and female sexes. This chapter attempts an evaluation of feminist imagery and masculine energy in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa This is with a view to gaining a better and more profound Knowledge of its thematic, ideological and aesthetic thrusts. Also, the task of this critical analysis of Aidoo’s selected play is intended to promote women’s work and also state that women too have a voice and they have meaningful contribution to make to the world. The framework of this chapter is based on feminism and psychoanalysis. A feminist approach here becomes more challenging because the chapter deals with a play on female protagonist, written by female author. Through the ambience of the various events in the play, the chapter establishes that although Anowa, the heroine is, on the façade, portrayed as a series of repulsions, she is, nonetheless, an attractive character. There is a sense in which it can be argued that in the genetic, feminist matrix, the author and the heroine embrace, and that Aidoo’s feminist imagery, is in reality, a mask for her Masculine energy. In the main, the two major characters: Anowa and Kofi are x-rayed to make a case for the need for re-orientation in the society particularly following the discovery that the feminist Assertive Will underlies Aidoo’s play. While applauding the indomitable personality of the heroine, the chapter highlights various means by which Anowa’s defiance of phallocentric edifice captures her feminist ideology. Thus, the chapter concludes that should any value judgement be pronounced on Anowa’s behaviour, the parameter of evaluation has to be based on an even male- female morality.
Pada dasarnya manusia tidak bisa hidup tanpa bahasa dan budaya, bahasa dapat disikapi sebagai wacana yaitu cara mengatakan, menuliskan atau membahasakan peristiwa, pengalaman, pandangan, dan kenyataan hidup tertentu yang tidak terlepas dari kondisi sosial budaya yang melatarbelakanginya. Wacana-wacana yang muncul dari budaya patriarki telah menciptakan sebuah cara pandang yang selama ini berlaku begitu saja. Cara pandang ini bisa sama, berbeda, bertolak belakang atau berlawanan. Salah satu agenda pokok yang harus dilakukan adalah bertarung dalam pembentukan dan penafsiran wacana publik (public discourse). Penulis berupaya mendeskripsikan wacana budaya patriarki tersebut dengan membuat pola pengkajian bentuk pemosisian perempuan dan laki-laki yang dikonstruksi oleh pengarangnya melalui teks-teks yang dinarasikan dalam wacana sastra melalui pendekatan analisis wacana kritis yang dipahami dan dimaknai bahwa relasi antara perempuan dan laki-laki dalam wacana sastra dikonstruksi berdasarkan ideologi pengarangnya. Wacana tidak terbatas pada teks, melainkan juga terdapat sebuah praktik produksi yang menyebabkan adanya teks tersebut atau terdapat kesadaran pembuat teks (kognisi sosial), serta pengaruh penting dari konteks situasi, sosiokultural, dan historis yang mempengaruhi produksi teks sehingga menimbulkan wacana tertentu. Analisis wacana kritis dilakukan dengan cara menentukan deskripsi bahasa, menginterpretasi atau menafsirkan, kemudian mengeksplanasi teks-teks yang ada.
This article explores the poetry of KPD Maphalla as a distinguished creative writer who left his footprint on African literature, Basotho literature in particular. His creative writings has brought significant changes in the lives of Africans who found hope in poetry. His creative writing reflects an African worldview because his poetry is like a mirror that Africans can hold up to look at themselves. It a mirror that shows them who they have been and who they are now. His artistic expression gave Africans a voice, and his creative works are viewed as having a positive impact in many societies. Maphalla’s creative art played an important role in the social and cultural development of the Basotho community, and his creative expressions in different genres expressed the political, spiritual, historical as well as social concerns for his people. His creative writing covers dimensions such as political, historical, and sociological issues. For this article, both thematic discourse analysis and multiplicity of meaning will be employed as guiding frameworks to examine Maphalla’s poetry under discussion.
High Reach Extendable Turret (HRET) System is very effective not only in interior fires, but also in fires in different areas. It has many advantages as well as disadvantages. The important thing is to constantly consider the disadvantageous factors during use and to take precautions against it. Internal fuselage fires pose a great risk to aircraft. This is because the entire fire load is accumulating in this area. High Reach Extendable Turret (HRET) System has been specially produced for use in fires in this region. However, despite being such a useful system, it is not widely used, especially in our country. Since airport firefighting vehicles are special production vehicles, their cost is higher than other fire extinguishing vehicles. High Reach Extendable Turret (HRET) System also adds additional cost to these vehicles. Often, providers do not provide these featured tools to avoid cost, ignoring the benefits of the High Reach Extendable Turret (HRET) System. Along with all the factors, attention should be paid to the regular maintenance of the system. The system, which will not work at the time of the event, will bring us more harm than good, despite all its qualities. As a result, firefighting vehicles with High Reach Extendable Turret (HRET) System are particularly effective in interior hull fires. In national and international norms, a separate parenthesis should be opened for these tools and supply should become mandatory. This will create fully equipped fire crews and increase the success rate in combating aircraft interior fires.
Proverbs are the sayings of the wise that affect the society in many various ways. In scholarship, proverbs constitute a significant field of study not only in the discipline of Literature but in other areas as well. This is possible due to the flexibility, contextuality and the multiplicity of their meanings. In African cultural settings, and particularly in Kenya and more specifically among Agĩkũyũ community, proverbs function as the infallible avenues for ferrying messages successfully to their assigned targets. Further, as proverbs enjoy the tenure of flexibility and contextuality they are able to bend to the discretion of the user rendering unequaled service to the community. This paper seeks to explore and investigate the utilization of proverbial wisdom in the sports arena. Sports is one of the developing sectors and constitute a significant portion of social harmony in the community, the nation as well as in international relations. The proverbs are drawn from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross. This postcolonial novel has an imaginary geographical setting: Ilmorog. The study takes a qualitative research design based on the interpretivist paradigm. The interpretation is informed by poststructuralist theory. Data from the text are broken into quotations, analogies, metaphors and images to assist in the analysis. The findings of the study will contribute in the comprehension and appreciation of the role played by writers in highlighting the issues that affect society. Consequently, society will be motivated towards a positive multidisciplinary reading culture. The results of the study will also aid researchers who may want to carry out similar or related scholarship in Literature or any other related disciplines.
In most African societies, festivals play especially important roles linked to the survival of the society. This paper investigates the festival motif in Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests with the purpose of illuminating further his exploration of elements of indigenous African (Yoruba) lore. The paper contends that the satiric mode explored trenchantly in Soyinka's play's organizing and structuring principles. The paper posits that satiric mode is the fundamental backbone of his work, not just a decoration. The paper explains further that the festival's motif and cultural celebration built into the structure of the selected play and properly harnessed raw material for his poetry. The methodology is analytical and complemented by hermeneutics theory. By vigorously exploiting African (Yoruba) experience, festival motif, and satiric modes, in a manner relevant to the moral development of his world, it will be seen that Soyinka, succeeds in laying the foundation for a truly Nigerian national literature and it is, in fact, on this that his strengths as a satirist playwright lie
The status of theory in the Digital Humanities (DH) has been the subject of much debate. As a result, we find different theory narratives competing and entangled with each other. If at all, these narratives can only be grasped and examined from a somewhat detached perspective. Here, we attempt to investigate these elusive narratives by means of a conceptual history approach. In doing so, we define different theory dimensions, ranging from specific cultural and literary theory frameworks to more generic uses of the concept of theory . We examine the use and semantic changes of these theory notions in a large corpus of DH journals. Using a mixture of heuristic methods and approaches from the field of distributional semantics, we aim to create tellable conceptual stories of DH theory.
Posthumanism is a postmodernist theory which means beyond human beings. It has received attention in the last two decades of the twentieth century on. It emphasises the belief that it is not only man who monopolises the universe for his own welfare and benefits. In fact, there is no bias toward a species against the other species. According to this theory, he is no more at the center of the cosmos.The present study attempts to examine posthumanism in literature through studying its principles in Mark Twain's short story " A Dog's Tale". This paper handles the examination of certain qualities which are supposed to be confined to man but here they are granted to animals. The dog in this story is given an identity. She has humane attributes more than her master, the scientist, and his colleagues. This paper is divided into two sections. Section one is an introductory. It handles posthumanism, its characteristics and its relation with literature. In addition, it sheds the light upon the American writer Mark Twain as a posthumanist.Section two examines the features of the main characters in "A Dog's Tale" which make them having humane qualities and enable them to think and behave like intelligent creatures equivalent to humans in having the right to live decently and to be treated respectably and mercifully. The final part of the paper is the conclusion which sums up the results of the study.
This paper aims at giving more insights into how African women at large can reverse the traditional trend to be the architects of their own empowerment as dealt with in the selected novels like Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross by the well-known Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In these novels, the author raises the thought-provoking issue of the great responsibility befalling African women to achieve their own empowerment today. The results of our findings will lead us to impart to the reader that the responsibility befalling African women to achieve their own empowerment is quite tremendous. With this in view, African women must use the potentials that they are endowed with so as to set the good example to the coming generation. Through the lens of feminism, womanism, and Marxist literary criticism this paper arouses African women’s awareness on the place they must carve out for themselves on the social, political, and even economic arena if they really want to stop paying lip service to gender equality.
Resumen
Julia Álvarez ofrece una auténtica búsqueda identitaria dominicana-americana haciendo uso de las voces narrativas de Salomé Ureña y Camila Henríquez Ureña en su libro In the Name of Salome (2000). En este artículo examino como estas tres mujeres transgreden el canon literario y el tradicionalismo patriarcal, tanto en República Dominicana como en los Estados Unidos, para establecer una identidad propia dada a través de la escritura. Partiendo del concepto de matria de Julia Kristeva propongo que lo trascendental femenino se encuentra en la matria literaria que logran establecer principalmente a través de su obra literaria y su labor pedagógica.
The buoyant shift from form and structure to the fluid constructs of meaning turned discernible in Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction. Meaning or reality that had so long been enjoying a fixed and definite status was worn out with the advent of the theory of deconstruction. The turnaround of what was considered real or true became subjacent while challenging all the existing binaries that had been hegemonizing human comprehension of the world (Derrida, 1997). Relying on the theory of deconstruction by Jacques Derrida, the study examines the shift from form and structure to the text itself regarding its privileged and marginal aspects of meaning with particular reference to the novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes. The study suggests that the interplay between privileged and marginal aspects of meaning can constructs multiple meanings and interpretations of a single text. It has further been added that the nature of the theory of deconstruction—change in the fixed status of meaning/reality—at the same time, is a representation of the indefinite nature of modern man who has experienced a bumpy ride of social and religious values resulted due to the political, industrial, economic and technological revolutions. The paper finds that the fluidity of meaning that is the sole characteristic of the theory of deconstruction traverses the contemporary Pakistani fiction in its dealing of the sensitive matters such as religious extremism and dictatorship etc., and Muhammad Hanif’s selected novel is the perfect example of it.
Jhumpa Lahiri in her collection of short stories, “The Interpreter of Maladies”, has accentuated on the multifarious level of complexities that ooze along the repository of feelings and emotions of an individual, in a subterraneous manner. Two short stories of the book, namely “The Interpreter of Maladies” and “Sexy” unveil the lack of contentment, frustrations and craving for a harmoniously reciprocal relationship amongst the protagonists, who through their life struggle, sometimes prioritizes the culture with its prevalent ideals, while on the other hand instinctively let their individualities float on the intrinsic urge to follow the passionate longing for a natural instincts. Derrida's deconstruction deals with the tactics of decentering as well as subverting the privileged term in favour of the prominence of the marginalized one, and thereby promoting a free play of dominance of both the central and repressed ideas and meanings without having a hierarchy. Now, in both the above mentioned stories, conforming to the features of deconstruction the prime characters show their allegiance to the dominant cultural ethics, notions, values, ideas, customs and behaviour, but an instinctive, repressed personal yearning for the affinity with a more compatible and considerate partner, which remains subterraneous in their psyche and constantly strives to possess the centre of their instrumental impetuses of life.
Presenting the outlines of the postmodern philosophy of historiography as it shapes the theoretical background for the analysis of the historical novel, this study aims to render that the recent understanding of history and its reconceptualization in decolonizing fictional (re)writings still provides the “re-visionary” stance seen in contemporary postcolonial narratives. After the introduction of postmodern innovations in theoretical and imaginative writing, there has emerged a rather newfangled view of the historical novel and an increasing inclination for narratives that attempt to reimagine historical moments and chronicles they integrate into their fictional worlds to pursue a re-visionary questioning. The critical frameworks of postcolonial historical fiction and speaking subalterns have moved on in postmillennial historical novels and political novels. Considering that postcolonial literary theories and fictional (re)writings attempt to deconstruct homogenous discourses and the Eurocentric (history) writing of the colonizer, it is claimed that, for the sake of textual decolonization, recent works of postcolonial historical writing intersect in several ways with the newfangled view of the historical novel.
From that perspective of Spivak, we will spring to the point of view of Henderson to which she focuses on the discourse of the black woman writers in the world of literary recognition and reception. By the hegemonic forces pulling and oppressing the black woman, these writers have a difficulty in finding and sharing their voices; so their only way is speaking in tongues. Henderson wrote her essay in the lenses of Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism and consciousness, Hans-Georg Gadamer's dialectical model of conversation, the concepts of glossolalia and heteroglossia, and Myra Jehlen's "extra-terrestrial fulcrum". She used simple language to discuss the matters regarding the black woman as black and as woman and as a writer and to where "she" will put herself. She used contrast and examples to give light on the concepts of formalism (Bakhtin's), dialogics and dialectics with a unique emphasis of the Bible verses. The essay is not that feminist rather it is objective and "guiding" for every black woman writer of what to write and who to represent. Black woman or Black and Woman? The position of the essay can be synthesized in that line because Henderson discussed first how could a "black woman" find her voice if she does not know her focus-to racial (black) or gendered (woman)-issues. It is a reality that the black woman was never a dominant character in the records of history, literature, politics and her existence as a whole; so, it is a reality that she had been struggling-so most of the writings of black woman will be of and about their stories of pain and "desire" of freedom and equality. As Henderson put it, "what is... suggestive about black women's writing is its interlocutory, or dialogic, character, reflecting not only a relationship with the 'other(s)', but an integral dialogue with the plural aspects of self that constitute the matrix of black female subjectivity." The paper proceeded into Bakhtin's dialogism and consciousness. It was explained that the language (on dialogism) is a tool to find and maximize the social identity of a race so the consciousness will be awakened. If the consciousness is already aroused, the fulfilling of social entity will be realized. The
War is considered the undying conflict between nations and nations, between brothers and brothers. It was never resolved but always funded. We come across to a point when we realize that in war, indeed, there's no winner;; all are losers. People suffer to escape from the claws of death but most are trapped and died. We come to see that civilians are the real victims of war;; but soldiers, who we think are strong and valiant, have a great conflict in their hearts whether to instill peace and die or to kill others and live. The first paragraph is the benchmark of this paper-a campaign somehow. This paper, as a whole, starts with formalism;; and from this, it bridges the Marxist Theory by Georg Lukacs. It is appropriate to use Lukacs' "Reflectionism" theory because it is grounded from formalism. According to Bressler, "reflectionists" adapted and applied the techniques of formalism, believing that a detailed analysis of symbols, images, and other literary devices would ultimately reveal class conflict and would expose the direct relationship between the economic base and the superstructure. (1999: 215) Yusef Komunyakaa is a famous and an award-winning writer noted for his poems. He grew up in the small town of Bogalusa, Louisiana;; and he served in the US Army from 1968-1971, serving one tour of duty in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1969-1970). Since, this critic is not biographical, Komunyakaa's experiences in war is out of the interpretation and criticism. "Monsoon Season" is about the disturbing scene of war in the jungle. The persona in the poem is a soldier who remembers his battle in the jungle as he tried to survive. The monsoon season makes him remember the pain and sadness of war. The poem starts as the persona observed the rain. The rain stopped but the persona could see the drops from the leaves of the trees. As cited in the lines: A river shines in the jungle's wet leaves. The rain's finally let up but whenever wind shakes the foliage it starts to fall. Then, the persona's mind drifts back to the past and remembered his experience in the war. His memory of his dead friends in the jungle haunts him;; as well as he could still hear the gunshots and imagine the smoke of the war. And as his colleagues are dying, he has nothing to do but to sit and let them die for "choppers can't fly out the wounded." Then, he contented himself of seeing them dying. Suddenly, the persona returns to the present, but he was still affected of that experience and the depression is still afflicting him as he:
Women and brains have always been an epicentre of intrigue and controversy delineating that women must use brains in dimensions that have been predestined for them by misogynists. An intelligent woman is often marginalized as unfeminine and hoydenish capable of threatening the heteropatriarchy thereby rendering it impotent. Several pioneering works on gender identity and equality began to be written in the eighteen and nineteenth century drawing attention of the intelligentsia as well as the common folk equally, towards this burning issue. Feminist reforms were initiated as a result of the untiring endeavour of writers and critics throughout the world. The first wave of feminism was a signal for the society to revoke the existing patriarchal norms and it was strengthened further by the second and third wave of feminism with formidable writers, activists and revolutionists who fought a long drawn battle to equip women with their share of rights. Women's continued and persistent struggle against patriarchy the world over has led to society's much needed changed perspectives towards women and their intellect. Women have proved the concocted saying "women and brains do not go together" false with their sheer grit and persistent determination. Reverberating similar deliverance, this paper investigates Alice Munro's biography of the renowned first ever female mathematics professor Sophia Kovalevsky in her short story 'Too Much Happiness' with the archetypal lens of Carl Jung. Sophia, the protagonist in the story is a woman with an extraordinary intellect, a mathematician and a novelist with a rare fascinating power to conquer the world. In times when most women are compulsorily confined to the kitchen, she dares it all to make it to the University of Stockholm in Sweden and challenge the myth that a woman has less of an intellect than man. She is aware of the animus in her which is the so called male domain of a women's psyche and represents the logical thinking faculty in a woman. This paper aims at tracing the renowned Swiss psychologist Carl Jung's archetype of the animus in Alice Munro's portrayal of Sophia, to discern her psyche and to analyse and interpret how her animus affects her life and career as an intellectual in the old school patriarchal world.
Research related to reception studies on queer representation in fiction within higher education institutions (HEIs) is a vastly unexplored area in Sri Lanka. This study intends to fill the gap in existing research by prioritising the need to factor in receptors’ positions and practices in teaching and learning these works. This research aims to understand, deconstruct, and explore the varied positions and practices of receptors (lecturers and students) in the teaching and learning of a selected Sri Lankan English fiction, Funny Boy (1994) by Shyam Selvadurai at local universities. The contextual and pedagogical site selected includes three universities in the Western and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. The methodology of the study incorporates a qualitative research design to conduct a reception analysis. The primary data collection methods are in-depth interviews with three lecturers and two students and a focus group discussion with three students. The findings of this research identify and analyse the frames of reference, pedagogies, approaches, and strategies involved in the teaching and learning of the selected fictional work. These enable the analysis of varied reception positions and practices to explore their possibilities of incorporating critical and queer pedagogies to ensure a transformative learning experience within HEIs.
This article explores the linguistic deviations especially on two levels: semantic and syntactic levels. Out of few Devkota's intricate poetic compositions, "The Lunatic" is considered to be the daunting poems to the average readers, students, and even teachers. Not only its English version "The Lunatic", but its Nepali version "Paagala" also can pose an equal degree of toughness to the Nepali readers. The article seeks the answers to the questions as: what sorts of semantic and syntactic deviations are there in the poem "The Lunatic"? How do these deviations occur in the poem, and why have these deviations been used there? The article focuses on the main words which have distorted the meaning system in terms of the ordinary norms of grammar. Similarly, it also points out the syntactic patterns which have overtly flouted the grammatical norms. Furthermore, it aims to discuss the motives behind the deliberate break of the rules. This article is mainly based on stylistic approach to literary theory with qualitative design. For the theoretical insights, certain related books by Shklovsky (1987), Leech (1988), and Lazar (1993) were duly consulted. After the analysis of the obtained data, it was found out that there were a considerable number of deviations on the levels of word-meaning and the word-order in the pattern of poetic expression. The sole motive of deviant text is the stylistic purpose and enhancement of the expressive range.
Ecocriticism is popularly thought of as a unidirectional exercise for preserving nature in its pristine and uncontaminated form. This view is grossly reductive because ecosystems are many, not one, local and not global. The natural green world is not always necessarily friendly to human aspirations. In fact, ‘green’ is the colour of falsehood, unreliability and deception in medieval English literature. The colonial medical discourses also endorse this diversity of the natural world. In these discourses, the tropical world of the European colonies is described as a ‘diseased world’ in contrast to the sanitized temperate world of the west. Since the boundary between humans and the environment is porous, human nature is perverted in environments hostile to human habitation. Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Pakistani Bride documents the interrelationship between the arid, bleak and closed world of mountains in Kohistan and the perversity of the isolated pockets of feuding tribes that inhabited it. It foregrounds that it is impossible to improve human nature if we simply surrender to uncontrollable natural forces and abandon all efforts to ameliorate our living conditions. It is, therefore, essential to realize that ecocriticism is not merely concerned with the protection of pristine external nature. It is an effort to reframe our interactions with nature not as mastery but as negotiation. If human-made changes have endangered the life-supporting systems of the world, we should instead, as Rachel Carson urges, explore what alternatives are available to us.
In his article, Theory, Period Styles, and Comparative Literature as Discipline, Slobodan Sucur attempts to answer the following question: Can a rapprochement be brought about between various, often antagonistic, literary-theoretical views and the concept of comparative literature itself, which requires accord, consensus, agreement, etc., for it to function as a concrete body and discipline? Sucur attempts dealing with this question in three parts of the paper: First, he establishes a relationship/link between the theoretical discord of today (humanism, formalism, deconstruction, etc.) and the high theorizing which began during the JenaBerlin phase of Romanticism (Shelling, Hegel, F. Schlegel, etc.); secondly, he attempts linking the origin of comparative literature with later Romanticism (Virgil Nemoianu’s idea of the Biedermeier) in order to account for some inconsistencies between ideas of „theory” on the one hand, and „discipline” on the other; and thirdly, he speculates on whether or not „literary history” – an idea often neglected now – can be the bridge where literary theory meets up with comparative literature as a disciplinary endeavor, that is, in the act of writing a comparative literary history.
The paper is a case study, part of a larger and older research project on the reception of modernist American literature in the cultural press of communist Romania in the 1960s. If the 1950s were the toughest years, in terms of censorship and physical atrocities, the 1960s could be considered the milder ones, while also anticipating the enlightened 1970s. We have been analyzing the Romanian cultural press as going beyond the role of an interface between an ecriture terminal and a network of readers: firstly, via translations, more or less accurate, secondly, through interviews and memories from journalists, fellow-writers, friends, family members, as reproduced from publications belonging mainly to the Eastern / Communist Bloc (Cuba included). Our research is also based on investigations run in the archives of the former secret police, the infamous Securitate. The relation between censorship and ideology …
Posthuman” does not mean after human or beyond human. It is only a reconfiguration of what it means to be human in the rapidly changing technological scenario. Though the Enlightenment concept of the human as autonomous, as a rational creature who by the use of the faculty of reason, can give any shape to the self as s/he wishes, has been discredited by Darwin’s theory of evolution, Marx’s dialectical materialism, and Freud’s psychoanalysis, yet the biological and the technological world had not infringed upon the human, thereby reducing all claims of autonomy to sarcasm, as they do in the present era. The posthuman denotes, Cary Wolfe says, “the embodiment and embeddedness of the human being is not just its biological but also its technological world (Qtd Seldon etal 284). N. Katherine Haylesin How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodie in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (1999) contends that normal human beings become post-human by using prosthetic body parts adopting computer technologies. Donna Haraway has indeed conceived of the humans as cyborgs who are part human and part machine, the machine being a prosthetic extension of the human. In this age of Information Technology and social media, a natural corollary of the posthuman condition is Digital Humanities: This essay explores how the post human condition and digital humanities impact the interactive composition and interpretation of the literary text.
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