Smiljan Grbac, Slovnica kastavskega govora
Review of: Smiljan Grbac, Slovnica kastavskega govora, Udruga Čakavski senjali, Kastav, 2021., 197 str. ISBN: 978-953-48136-3-8.
More...We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Review of: Smiljan Grbac, Slovnica kastavskega govora, Udruga Čakavski senjali, Kastav, 2021., 197 str. ISBN: 978-953-48136-3-8.
More...
Review of: Ada Maršanić, Tri desetljeća Katedre Čakavskog sabora Grobnišćine, Katedra Čakavskog sabora Grobnišćine, Grobnik, 2022., 417 str. ISBN: 978-953-7548-08-7.
More...
Review of: Martina Bašić, Zač se reče...? Frazemi, izreke i poslovice crikveničko-vinodolskoga kraja, Centar za kulturu „Dr. Ivan Kostrenčić“ Crikvenica, Crikvenica, 2022., 158 str. ISBN: 978-953-7532-31-4.
More...
The article concerns the relevance of the issue of genre heredity between literature and cinema. The cinematography actively turned to the genre of biography even in the first decades of its development, in the era of the silents. It did not disappear from the view of cinematographers throughout the 20th century. Recently, this genre has been activated both in cinema and on television, which increased the interest of researchers. Hence, the receptive problematics of the Ukrainian philosopher, theologian, poet and teacher Hryhorii Skovoroda’s biography (1722–1794) is analysed in the cinematographic discourse. It was noticed that the figure of the outstanding philosopher did not attract the proper attention of cinematographers either in Soviet period (only one feature film and one documentary film were shot) or in the time of Ukraine’s Independence. However, even those few films only partially represent the “Ukrainian Socrates” to the viewer. It is stated that documentary production, in contrast to the feature films, is represented by a number of films about Hryhorii Skovoroda, which, of course, differ in their quality and creative potential. However, having an aesthetic and cognitive value, they all present a certain way of processing biographical material (letters, memories, stories of contemporaries), his writings and creative works (philosophical, literary, musical works) and perform an important function of popularizing this outstanding personality and his creative heritage. It is concluded that the cinematographic actualization of the philosopher’s biography and works in recent decades is due to the new historical situation, to the desire to perceive his legacy in a new light, to debunk the existing biographical myths. Skovoroda’s philosophical ideas not only remain relevant in the 21st century, but also appear as markers of Ukrainian identity in the modern reality.
More...
Literary awards have been analyzed within the system of book awards and ratings in Ukraine; their characteristics have been studied along with the criteria for the selection of texts and editions, assessment methodology as well as the impact the awards have on the recognition of authors and their books in Ukraine and beyond. Selected for the analysis were already published texts, thus focus is placed on book awards, ratings and rankings. In order to develop a methodology for the assessment of literary works as part of book awards, their systematization under various criteria has been put forward. Distinction has been drawn between the concepts of a literary and a book award; specifics of competitions, awards and ratings have been provided. Literary awards are based on the discussion of the content, namely relevance, freshness, artistic merit, aesthetic value and others; book awards consider a totality of literary criteria and the publishing characteristics of the publication and its culture. The study concentrates on the methodology of book selection, assessment criteria, marketing potential and fiction authors-winners of a dozen of book awards, namely Book Forum Best Book Award, Book of the Year rating, BBC Book of the Year, Best Ukrainian Book (rating by Korrespondent magazine), LitAkcent of the Year, Critic’s Rating, Golden Writers of Ukraine and others. The nominations of book competitions and awards for fiction have been discussed. The specifics of each of the awards with regards to the selection and assessment of literary works has been identified along with their coverage in media, promotion of sales, impact on further assessment of the book in the system of book procurement and the potential for translations being made into other languages. Book of the Year rating, BBC Book of the Year, LitAkcent of the Year and others have been used to analyze the nominations for literary works of various genres: poetry, prose, special genre literature, belles-lettres, memoirs, documentary, scripts, drama, teenage and children’s literature.
More...
This article suggests that the relationship between literature and knowledge can be described more precisely through elements of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, which is presented with a focus on its relevant concepts (autopoiesis, functional differentiation, second-order observation, symbolically generalized communication medium, etc.) For Luhmann, truth is not the expression of an adaequatio rei, but a symbolically generalized communication medium that participates in the autopoiesis of communication. As the article argues, fictionality can also be regarded as a symbolically generalized communication medium, and the as-if character of fictional discourse enables the inclusion of knowledge elements, although they are textually indistinguishable as such from non-knowledge elements. This is interpreted as an expression of the “paradoxical foundation of all knowledge” described by Luhmann. Paradoxically, literary fiction can make contributions to the production of knowledge, as will be briefly demonstrated in the conclusion with three examples (Sigmund Freud, Luigi Pirandello, and Yannick Haenel).
More...
The paper looks at the translation of stories from Sandra Cisneros’s novel The House on Mango Street. Marija Stamenković translated the novel into Serbian in 2003, and Mirjana Radovanov Matarić translated five stories from the book two years later, which were published in Serbian literary magazine Polja. Based on a comparative analysis, the paper explores translation strategies and techniques employed by translators, as well as translation solutions for particular translation issues. Given that Cisneros’s work represents a piece of multicultural literature, the study also addresses how translators manage to impart cultural aspects of the original text. The paper demonstrates that both translators achieve an enviable level of grammatical, semantic, and stylistic equivalence in their translations; however, Mirjana Radovanov Matarić’s translation is slightly more suitable due to the use of a foreignization strategy that better conveys cultural meanings and messages.
More...
This paper discusses the importance of artificial languages in Samuel Delany’s novel, Babel-17. The analysis will show how an artificial language called Babel17 affects those who learn it, what it does to their personal identity, and how it makes them behave on a subconscious level. Moreover, other artificial languages in the novel will also be addressed, showing the difficulty of establishing communication between characters who speak different languages, as translating correctly and having the right words for what one wants to express becomes increasingly important. Additionally, in order to establish a certain connection, knowing the language alone is not enough ‒ one must also possess enough self-awareness. Finally, this research is important because artificial languages offer glimpses into fictional characters’ perception of reality, and the conclusion one draws from them can be applied to how one analyses “real” languages as well.
More...
New Nature Writing reflects many of the anxieties which are becoming increasingly prevalent in the Anthropocene, an era which necessitates temporal leaps between the present moment, the deep past, and the deep future. Coming to contextualize our impact on the planet in the Anthropocene era in such expansive, geological terms poses profound challenges to the ways we have conventionally framed our wider place on Earth. When viewed through the lens of deep time, our impact on the planet has been comparatively brief, but we are scarcely beginning to comprehend its lasting effects. While the scale of the environmental problems we have created often seems insurmountable, this chapter argues that writing which helps us to think about deep time and acclimatizes us to its vast scale can itself serve as a way for us to grapple with the immensity of the problems we face. Through a consideration of the writing of new nature writers Robert Macfarlane and Kathleen Jamie, it looks at how their engagements with deep time challenge the feelings of helplessness that the scale of the environmental crisis can sometimes burden us with. By arguing that coming to terms with the Anthropocene is to come to terms with a changing narrative we tell ourselves about our role on the planet, it considers how New Nature Writing is playing a crucial role in this narrative shift more specifically, as it explores different ways for us to reimagine our relationship with the more-than-human world in the Anthropocene era.
More...
Narratives of the Anthropocene function in the realm of not only scientific but also popular discourses. Indeed, the most popular narratives of the Anthropocene, namely the story of the apocalypse and the story of progress, with their respective temporalities, are particularly well-represented in comics. The present article looks at the Anthropocene through the lenses of word and image, tracing the response of the medium of comics to the ongoing catastrophe, including Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land (2020), Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette’s modern take on Swamp Thing (2019) and Richard McGuire’s Here (2014). Paying the Land is a story of the Dene people and their response to the Anthropocene. Drawing on the opposition between nature and progress, it examines whether empathy can stop capitalistic exploitation of Indigenous communities and the land which they cherish. Swamp Thing, seemingly a narrative of environmental apocalypse, also functions as a story of ecological reconciliation and regeneration. Finally, Here builds on and deconstructs the narrative of progress, demonstrating how a specific location has and will be transformed from 3,000,500,000 BCE to 22,175 CE, offering the reader/viewer a non-chronological look at environmental changes. Apart from the visions of the now and the future that these graphic narratives present, temporality coded in their “grammar” (layout, panels and gutters) is also discussed.
More...
An awareness of deep time—both humanity’s deep past and the Earth’s deep future—and an understanding of its existential implications can significantly enhance the chances that humanity might still be able to transition towards an ecologically sustainable way of inhabiting the biosphere. This essay explains in detail why this is so, using analysis of a science fiction story that evokes existential horror at humanity’s ultimate cosmic insignificance. With the tools of “terror management theory” (a paradigm of existential thought based on the work of Ernest Becker and emphasizing the saliency of the denial of death in human motivation and behaviour) and of “existential economics” (an approach postulating that the way in which the economic system is organized and operates is crucially influenced by this widespread denial of death), the essay suggests that death denial has turned into the capitalist denial of life, and that only a deep reconciliation of humanity with its true ontological place in the universe will make it possible for us to transition towards a regenerative rather than a destructive system. This will entail new modes of human thinking, feeling, and acting anchored in a shared sense of “joyful insignificance,” as well as a renewed sense of “cosmic indigeneity”—a sense that all humans are indigenous to this planet and that this fact has major implications for how we ought to live into the deep future, anchored in our deep past.
More...
The European colonization of Australia introduced a new population into a continent in which Indigenous people had practiced cyclic burning as a form of ecosystem maintenance since time immemorial. The settlers’ complete disdain for Indigenous knowledge and related practices caused these customs to largely fall into disuse. One result of this was an increased vulnerability of landscapes to bush fires, a factor that has risen to the fore in the early twenty-first century. The fires that have swept across the landscape with increasing frequency and ferocity have provoked fears of a rolling, fiery apocalypse that might make living in many areas of the continent untenable. This marks a new phase of settler anxiety that has been fuelled by extensive coverage of fires on broadcast and digital media platforms. Blending discussions of Indigenous culture, 19th-21st-century European settler visual art, literature and modern communications media, this article begins by examining the nature of Anthropocene modernity and the very different worldviews and practices of Australian Indigenous peoples. Particular attention is given to senses of time and of living and working with fire. Subsequent sections open up the topic with regard to the planetary present and how we might adjust to the future.
More...
Despite being written half a century before the term “eco-anxiety” (Gifford and Gifford) was coined, J. G. Ballard’s disaster fictions can be read in the context of the social psychodynamics of climate change. My aim in this article is to demonstrate that in J. G. Ballard’s fiction, climate catastrophes and the devastation of nature cause the characters to realize that the Earth is not going to be able to sustain human life much longer, and their psychological reaction is either subdued anger or strange numbness. In order to do this, I analyze two short stories by Ballard: “Deep End” (1961) and “Low-Flying Aircraft” (1975) and show how their protagonists are affected by the landscape they inhabit: de-populated wastelands whose wildlife is extinct or mutated. I argue that it is their awareness that human civilization on earth is coming to its end that results in the state of mind akin to eco-anxiety. The characters are immersed in their own inner space and in these stories clocks mark not the passage from past to future but a countdown to the end.
More...
Contemporary climate fiction (cli-fi) frequently invokes the concept of apocalypse to explore the experience of living through the era of unprecedented climate change and environmental disaster that has been named the Anthropocene. Yet, as often as apocalyptic narratives are deployed to express those anxieties and experiences, they so often ignore the histories and presents of peoples who have already lived through multiple apocalypses—in particular, the ongoing violence of settler colonial exploitation of the land now called North America. Considering the role that settler colonialism has played in the development of the current crisis, we turn to two recent works by the Métis writer Cherie Dimaline and Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich to consider how the act of cultural storytelling challenges Western notions of linear temporalities. Our analysis of Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves will explore how the settler-colonial narratives of scientific progress is challenged through Indigenous storytelling and collective memory, and our analysis of Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God will examine how Indigenous modes of understanding operate through a cyclical timescape that allows for alternative methods of existing with and within the larger world.
More...