scholarly journals Decoding the causation of a happy ending

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-44
Author(s):  
Mojca Pretnar
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Causal Sequence

This study addresses the question of causation in common human efforts to achieve and maintain happiness by attempting to gain insights into the causation of a happy ending in narratives, doing so through the investigation of an example of the metaphorical pursuit of happiness, as presented in the theme of pursuing immortality. It compares two versions of the same story that ends with the agent’s failure to achieve immortality, but the two stories have different outcome emotions: the Chinese legend “Du Zichun” 杜子春 ends with a tragic tone, while “Toshishun” 杜子春, as retold by Akutagawa, ends with a happy state of mind. A closer look into the information encoded in the three main elements of the narrative structure (the goal, the causal sequence and the agent of both stories) reveals some significant differences. The process of decoding the final causation is carried out first by a comparison of the image schemas underlying the goal; second, the numeric symbolism behind the causal sequences is examined; and third, the use of positive junctural and outcome emotions. The investigation reveals that the new story with a happy ending is a product of a shift in perspective.

The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander C. Loney
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Multiple Meanings

This book is the first in-depth examination of revenge in the Odyssey. The principal revenge plot of the Odyssey—Odysseus’ surprise return to Ithaca after twenty years away and his vengeance on Penelope’s suitors—is the act for which he is most celebrated. This story forms the backbone of the Odyssey. But is Odysseus’ triumph over the suitors as univocally celebratory as is often assumed? Does the poem contain and even suggest other, darker interpretations of Odysseus’ greatest achievement? This book offers a careful analysis of several other revenge plots in the Odyssey—those of Orestes, Poseidon, Zeus, and the suitors’ relatives. It shows how these revenge stories color one another with allusions (explicit and implicit) that connect them and invite audiences to interpret them in light of one another. These stories—especially Odysseus’ revenge upon the suitors—inevitably turn out to have multiple meanings. One plot of revenge slips into another as the offender in one story becomes a victim to be avenged in the next. As a result, Odysseus turns out to be a much more ambivalent hero than has been commonly accepted. And in the Odyssey’s portrayal, revenge is an unstable foundation for a community. Revenge also ends up being a tenuous narrative structure for an epic poem, as a natural end to cycles of vengeance proves elusive. This book offers a radical new reading of the seemingly happy ending of the poem.

Narrating eros and agape

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Zsolt Bojti
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Hungarian Academy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Secondary Reading ◽  
Innovation And Technology ◽  
General Readership ◽  
Gay Literature

AbstractFin-de-SiècleA Hungarian version of the present paper was published as “Erósz és Agapé: Erotextus Edward Prime-Stevenson Imre: Egy emlékirat című regényének expozíciójában” (2019) in Literatura affiliated with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Supported by the ÚNKP-19-3 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology.” gay literature in English operated with a double narrative: one narrative offers a historical (and “innocent”) reading available to general readership; the other offers a personal (often illicit) reading available to the susceptible and initiated readers only. The double narrative, thus, allowed authors to give subtle visibility to same-sex desire in their works that would evade censorship. This paper argues that there is a similar double narrative in the exposition of Imre: A Memorandum by the American music critic and émigré writer Edward Prime-Stevenson. The double narrative of the novel, however, differs from that of prior gay literature. I argue that Prime-Stevenson thought it was a literary sin that prior gay literature offered a sensual, erotic, or even pornographic, subversive secondary reading to susceptible readers. In my reading, Prime-Stevenson consciously planted cues in the exposition of the novel, thus, created an erotext to trigger a similar subversive and illicit reading of his text. However, Prime-Stevenson used this technique to demonstrate that purely erotic literary representations denigrate same-sex desire; therefore, in what followed, he presented a different, agapeic view on same-sex desire. The paper substantiates that Prime-Stevenson’s intention was to break away from earlier narrative “traditions” of gay literature to offer a naturalised and legitimised representation and “script” of “homosexuality” per se. Prime-Stevenson did so in a crucial period of time, as the term “homosexual” just barely entered the English language and its pejorative connotations may not have been set in stone. The paper, as a result, casts a new complexion on sexuality as a literary phenomenon and the relevance of a complex narrative structure composed of “snares” and “false snares” in the exposition of Imre, which plays a crucial role in Prime-Stevenson authoring one of the very first openly homosexual novels in English, which has a happy ending.

scholarly journals The conceptual metaphors of narrative structure: Gestural evidence for spatialized form in storytelling

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kimmel
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Specific Task ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Conceptual Metaphors ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Spatial Logic ◽  
Scene Content

This paper explores conceptual tools whereby narratively competent adults conceptualize the structure of literary events, as opposed to their scene content. My focus lies on how narrativity as a mode of thought is constituted through metanarrative discourse and what role embodied representations play in it. This global level of story cognition takes the form of conceptual metaphors such as TIME IS A PATH, CAUSALITY IS FORCE, or THEMATIC REALMS ARE SPACES/PLANES. Two kinds of evidence for this claim are combined: (a) linguistic metaphors for story gist, and, more extensively, (b) metaphorical gestures that accompany story summarization and commentary. Based on footage in which German literary critics discuss books, my specific task is to identify the various dimensions of story logic that gestures refer to. Overall, the data suggests that narrative form is systematically rooted in spatial logic and that dedicated structural devices dynamically co-evolve with the retelling of content. The study thus contributes a demonstration of Lakoff’s (1987) “spatialization of form hypothesis”, i.e. the wide ranging claim that structural cognition is rooted in image schemas.

scholarly journals Happiness at Work: Rules for Employee Satisfacion and Engagement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Femi Cadmus
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Employee Satisfaction ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
Genetic Trait ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Work Rules

The concept of employee satisfaction and engagement is not new. Quite recently, however, there appears to be renewed interest in positive psychology, tracking what makes for happiness in general, and how this translates in the workplace. Cultivating and maintaining a climate and culture which breeds happy, motivated, and productive employees in a library setting requires hard work. A positive and productive workplace does not just happen. Happiness itself is a difficult concept to analyze and understand. What is it, and what makes for happiness? The pursuit of happiness could simply be just that-the pursuit of an elusive and unattainable ideal. While people tend to be generally happy in pleasant circumstances, others in challenging environments with none of the accoutrements of comfortable living are also able to experience happiness and satisfaction. Could it be that happiness is actually a state of mind which exists regardless of outward circumstances? Some recent studies have even posited that happiness is actually a genetic trait written in the DNA, and as a result some people have a propensity to be happier than others.

Absent Felicity

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Andrew Sanders
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Human Condition

‘Happiness’, as we now commonly understand the term, is not something we should expect to meet in Shakespeare’s work. When he employs alternative words – such as ‘felicity, ‘merry’ or ‘blessed’ – he rarely seeks to convey what latter-day readers might assume to be the concept of ‘happiness’ that we accept as an agreeable state of mind. Shakespeare’s ‘happy’ seems to apply to circumstances rather than to a state of mind. His characters often appear to be luckier in their happiness rather than actual achievers of happiness. The idea that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ is an essential part of the definition of the human condition (as in the founding documents of the American Revolution) may well owe far more to John Milton’s use of the words ‘happy’ and ‘happiness’ and the common acceptance of ‘happiness’ as a socially and politically desirable condition.

Tacitus and Techniques of Insidious Suggestion

Antichthon ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 64-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Develin
Keyword(s):  
Historical Record ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Causal Sequence

Tacitus is remarkably confident in the analysis and interpretation of motive and causal sequence. Having made up his mind on a matter, he opens up with all the stylistic artillery he can muster. With one eye open for pretence, he is by no means reticent to take upon himself the responsibility for stripping away the pretence and revealing the intentions and state of mind of characters. This will be readily granted. Yet it is in fact notable how often he seems to depart from the practice of simply setting forth the results of his researches and interpretations as outright statement. He creates, as it were, a distance between himself and facts, suspicions, rumours, motives and the reports of his sources. This provokes a number of questions, dealt with here in three sections. First, there are instances where he appears to allow uncertainty, where he uses expressions alluding to report, varying from rumour to historical record: why and when does he do this? In the same vein, why and when does he cite authorities and among them why does he cite some by name, which he does so seldom? Second, there is a distinct, but connected, category of usage which presents alternatives of motive. Last, I will examine larger, thematic areas where techniques are combined.

A Garden State of Mind

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (23) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fass
Keyword(s):  
State Of Mind
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