Prodromos, Aristophanes and a lustful woman

Author(s): Przemysław Marciniak / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2015

This paper discusses one of the satires penned by Theodore Prodromos Against a lustful old woman. The text of the poem preserved in fi fteen manuscripts consists of 102 verses and tells a very simple story – the narrator furiously attacks an older woman, who despite her age and the social expectations, attempts to have an erotic life. Although Prodromos uses in his works imagery borrowed from both Aristophanes and Lucian he expresses views of the Byzantine society concerning ‘the crone in heat again’.

The Lack of Communication in Grace Paley’s “Mother”: A Stylistic Analysis

Author(s): Özgü Ayvaz / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Stylistics is a study on what effect is created on the hearer or on the reader via a specific use of language; therefore, a stylistic analysis of an everyday conversation or a literary work, such as a poem, a play, a short story and/or a novel aims at delineating the message conveyed or themes intimated. In this sense, stylistic analysis of a text illustrates what is meant by means of that specific use of language, and it makes a literary work more understandable for the reader as it discloses its implicit themes that are not stated directly in a poet’s or writer’s expressions and her/his use of language. Stream-of-consciousness technique, used mostly in 20th century works, is used in Grace Paley’s short story entitled “Mother”. The story is about the narrator’s recollections of her mother and her family conveyed through the stream-of-consciousness technique. Through a stylistic analysis, which involves an analysis of discourse situation, point of view, average sentence length, lexis, grammar, figures of speech, and speech presentation, this study aims to unveil the implications of the feelings of the mother as well as the daughter and familial distance, all of which contribute to the major theme of lack of communication in the family as represented in the story.

Dva prostory, dva časy: rasová utopie Euclidese da Cunhy

Author(s): Šárka Grauová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 57/2018

The article overviews the genesis of the Brazilian War of Canudos and tries to shed some light upon Euclides da Cunha's way of fighting the scientific racism that condemned Brasil as a country of unbounded miscigenation. Starting from Gumplowitz's theory of „historic race“, Euclides da Cunha shows that the autochtonous inhabitants of sertao, separated from the coast as it was, actually did not form a hybrid and unstable race with Portuguese colonists, but a “living rock of Brazilian race”.

Střet tradice s modernitou v arabském světě Román Hlasy Sulajmana Fajjad˙a

Author(s): Jitka Jeníková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 57/2018

The clash of traditional Arab society with the modernity in a form of colonization served as a source of tremendous confusion. The novel Voices (1972) by Egyptian writer Sulayman Fayyad is the first Arab novel which approaches the topic of the interaction between “Us” and “The Others” in a completely different way. The Voices are unprecedented metaphor of the relationship between “Us” and “The Others” and unlike any other novel before it harshly criticizes the backwardness and the obscurantism of some Arab-Egyptian traditions and celebrate the advancement of “The Others”. It is also a rare testimony of the atmosphere in Arab world after the defeat of the united Arab armies in so called Six Day War in 1967.

Арапски дистопијски роман: историјски контекст и жанровске одлике

Author(s): Shahla Ujayli / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 174/2021

Хасан Бласим: реквијем за Ирак, реквијем за књижевност

Author(s): Meysun Gharaibeh Simonović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 174/2021

The paper discusses the work as well as immanent poetic views of the contemporary Iraqi prose writer Hassan Blasim. His literary works thus far include two collections of poetic and prose compositions that were written over a period of time, The Shia’s Poisoned Child (2016) and Dictionary Man (2019); two collections of stories, The Madman of Freedom Square (2009) and The Iraqi Christ (2013); and finally the novel God 99 – Emails of the Emil Cioran Translator (2018). Blasim’s gift for writing, expressed in prose miniatures found in these collections, earned him the status of “perhaps the greatest living Arab author”, and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, as well as being short-listed for a number of other important literary awards.

Romantická ironie jako protihráčka entuziasmu u Borgese a Cortázara

Author(s): Vít Kazmar / Language(s): Czech Issue: 65/2022

The study offers an interpretation of Borges and Cortázar in the light of romantic irony, in particular Friedriech Schlegel’s concept from the Athenaeum fragment 37 where irony is defined as an art of controlled enthusiasm. This is something that can be found in Borges, at the level of language, in the figure of litotes, in his penchant for brevity and a relative disdain for novels. In Cortázar, the taming of enthusiasm manifests itself more openly, as a contrast of two alternating modes of speech. Thus, Borges and Cortázar embody two answers to the question of enthusiasm.

Znovuzabydlování domu v románu Navždycky Vergília Ferreiry

Author(s): Karolina Válová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 65/2022

This article is dedicated to Vergílio Ferreira’s lyrical reflective novel Forever (Para Sempre, 1983) and presents the spatial analysis of the house. The novel’s protagonist Paulo returns to his childhood home. The house, which has been abandoned for years, provokes a need in him to review his life, which leads to a search for the meaning of human existence in general. Paulo, the self-diegetic narrator, is returning to the house of his childhood. It is the definitive return that begins the last phase of his life, the time remaining until his death. Wandering around the house, running down the corridors, up and down the stairs, entering each room, he finds a stopped time, rediscovers his past, and thinks about his future and his dreams. There are four symbols that represent the four main rooms, which work as the keys to interpretation.

Invaze do veřejného prostoru Hrdinky severokorejské prózy počátku padesátých let

Author(s): Miriam Löwensteinová,Matěj Valošek / Language(s): Czech Issue: 65/2022

Since its official foundation in 1948 till the second half of 1950s, the DPRK literature comingled the domestic socialist (“proletarian”) and the Soviet models. Therefore, the stories of the new, required characters significantly recoded maternity, thematizing the extreme devotion to the country and the party-spirit. The result is the women’s presence out of the classic family space, their entering into the public spheres and the confirmation of their capacity in the extreme era of the Korean war (1950–1953) and the subsequent period of the building of industry and the collectivisation. However, the growing cult of personality of Kim Ilsŏng (1912–1994) and his family soon returned these characters to the lesser roles, in which they exist only in relationship with the highly mythologized Great Leader.

Feuerstein pokoljárása és Hameiri megmenekülése. Avigdor Hameiri háborús prózája

Author(s): Zsombor Hunyadi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2021

ЧОВЕК И ПРИРОДА (распони класичне кинеске поезије)

Author(s): Dušan Pajin / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 533/2022

ПЕСМА ЧИНИ ЧОВЕКА БЕСМРТНИМ, КАО МОЛИТВА

Author(s): Radmila Gikić Petrović,Kayoko Yamasaki / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 533/2022

A számi irodalom fekete könyve. Niillas Holmberg Juolgevuoððu (Mezítláb) című kötetéről

Author(s): Johanna Domokos / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: IX/2022

The 2018 volume of poems by Niillas Holmberg, a prominent young representative of Saami literature, raises one of the most important questions for Saami: whose property and what their home became, and how this affects the Saami themselves? How can we restore man’s humility to the earth, the natural world, his intimate relationship with them? How can we question the order of power deeply ingrained in us? Moreover, how can we roll back to another starting point of our far-flung, branched-out paths that make it impossible for man to exist for himself and his surroundings? Niillas Holmberg contemplates on this necessary local and global metanoia. With this volume, published as his sixth volume, at the age of 28, the author dissects the shifted values and power not only interculturally but also intraculturally.

Turning the Wheel of Dharma Adhyeṣaṇā Fragments in Old Uighur Referring to the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra and the Suvarṇaprabhāsasūtra

Author(s): Aydar Mirkamal,Simone-Christiane Raschmann / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

The Old Uighur fragment (GT15-64) preserved in National Library of China, Beijing and its parallel fragments (Ch/U 6005 + Ch/U 6411 + Ch/U 7287) preserved in the Berlin Turfan collection are different copies of the same text. This text consists of two parts, an adhyeṣaṇā verse that extols the merit of good deeds, which is immeasurable when one implores the Buddha to turn the dharma-wheel, and a colophon. Although the adhyeṣaṇā part contains many quotations from the Suvarṇaprabhāsasūtra, the colophon indicates that it is an original literary work by Buddhist monks who praise the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra.

The Two Interpretive Dogmas of Zhiren lunshi and Yiyi nizhi as ‘Rules of Competition’ and ‘Perspectives of Historicity’: A Study of Annotated Editions of Du Fu’s Poetry from the Late Ming to Early Qing

Author(s): Chi-hung Wong / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

This article revisits the history of Du Fu 杜甫 (zi Zimei 子美, 712–770) studies and demonstrates that although annotated editions of Du Fu’s poetry claim to follow zhiren lunshi 知人論世 (‘knowing the person by considering the age in which he or she lived’) and/or yiyi nizhi 以意逆志 (‘inferring the author’s intention through sympathetic effort’), which are dogmatic approaches that seemingly balance objective and subjective views, they nevertheless lead to the development of highly divergent ideas. Treating the two principles as ‘rules of competition’, annotators have attempted to refute other annotations and commentaries in the process of annotating Du Fu’s poetry. The sense of historicity in Du Fu’s poetry in these editions is also strengthened by the use of these two principles

Dumuzi and Ĝeštinanna

Author(s): Anna Krisztina Pintér / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

The present article contains the philological edition of the Old Babylonian Sumerian composition Dumuzi and Ĝeštinanna (UET 6, 11), a study of its literary characteristics, intertextual elements, allusions, and early hermeneutic techniques.

Attitudes to Nature in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and the MaddAddam Trilogy

Author(s): Laura Suchostawska / Language(s): English Issue: 10/2022

The article presents a study of relations of humans to nature in Margaret Atwood’s novel Surfacing and her MaddAddam trilogy. These novels highlight various negative aspects of the relationship between humans and nature or non-human beings, such as violence against animals, hunting and fishing, exploitation and destruction of the environment, climate change, genetic engineering and the creation of genetically modified animals and humans. On the other hand, the novels also suggest some possibilities of positive relations, such as the experience of unity with nature, deriving hope from the beauty of nature and its power of adaptation and regeneration, creating new ways of cooperating with nature and non-human beings, instead of dominating and destroying them.

Autobiographical Remembering: Memory as Resistance in Bengali Dalit Women’s Narratives

Author(s): Purbasha Mondal / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2021

This paper makes an attempt to explore how the concept of memory works as a tool of resistance in the narratives of the Bengali Dalit women writers in the Partitioned Bengal. The Bengali Dalit women have been marginalized in different ways, and the history of these women has been neglected. But the atma-katha (life-story) of the Bengali Dalit women seeks to question the accepted official historical record of Bengal. In this paper, I propose to examine the narratives of Dr. Puspa Bairagya and Kalyani Thakur Charal which were chiefly produced in the twenty-first century Bengal and were anti-caste narratives and thereby provide an insight into the counter-memories of the Bengali Dalit women. I would like to apply the autobiographical memory theory to the narratives of these writers. My prospective paper endeavors to illuminate personal agency and healing and would hope to generate a new understanding of the texts in the Indian context.

Nostalgia for a Lost Home: Exile and Trauma in Lucette Lagnado’s Memoirs

Author(s): Ichrak Issaoui,Ilhem Issaoui / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2021

This paper seeks to study exile as a traumatic experience by focusing on the multiple manifestations of trauma in the memoirs of the Jewish-Egyptian writer Lucette Lagnado. Exile, in Edward Said’s view, “is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home” (Said 2000: 173). Lagnado chose writing to voice the trauma of exile of the whole Jewish Egyptian community expelled from Egypt after the establishment of the state of Israel and the arrival of the Free Officers to power in 1952. In Lagnado’s memoirs, trauma re-surfaces in different places and times, through flashbacks and nightmares. These unwanted and suppressed memories reemerge involuntarily and keep Lagnado trapped in an ever-ending nostalgia. Both Caruth’s work on trauma and Herman’s analysis of the three stages of trauma recovery will help us better understand the place of trauma in Lagnado’s memoirs.

Loss, Longing, and Desire: The Poetics of Nostalgia in Qurratulain Hyder’s "My Temples, Too"

Author(s): Sushobhan Das / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2021

“Nostalgia,” writes Svetlana Boym, often emerges in times of “historical upheavals” or when the “rhythms of life” are suddenly “accelerated.” One can well understand that such nostalgic outbreaks are the results of the experience change. One such moment was that of the Partition of India in 1947. This paper focuses on this moment as it is depicted in Qurratulain Hyder’s novel, My Temples, Too. Hyder’s novel, that centers around the experience of Partition, is haunted by a palpable sense of loss, of rupture, and an acute longing for the places and spaces of the past that its characters witness as eroding. Following scholars like Boym, Linda Hutcheon, De Brigard, Gaston Bachelard, Edward Casey, and others, this paper first prepare the ground of its argument by showing how memory and nostalgia are often deeply rooted in everyday things, objects, and places of habitation, investing them with a sense of belonging. Thereafter, it situates Hyder’s novel in its immediate context and explores its poetics of loss, longing, and nostalgia.