scholarly journals Converted by un confit de canard: Political Thinking in the Novel Soumission by Michel Houellebecq

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-599
Author(s):  
Marie Demker
Keyword(s):  
German Society ◽  
George Orwell ◽  
The Novel ◽  
State Monitoring ◽  
French Society ◽  
Political Literature ◽  
Michel Houellebecq ◽  
Socialist Utopia ◽  
Tabloid Press ◽  
The Church

From a certain perspective, literature is always political. Literature in a broad sense has been a source of uprisings and protest at least since Martin Luther nailed his theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 – and probably much further back in history than that. Narratives are the most potent way to articulate both political praise and criticism within a given society. In his political satires, British author George Orwell reviled all kinds of totalitarianism and the idea of a socialist utopia. Swedish writer and journalist Stieg Larsson wrote explicitly dystopian crime stories targeting the Swedish welfare state. German novelist Heinrich Böll turned a critical eye on the development of the tabloid press and the use of state monitoring in German society. In the same tradition, Michel Houellebecq has been seen as a very provocative writer in his tone and in his use of political tools. He has articulated a nearly individual anarchist perspective combined with authoritarian and paternalistic views. In Soumission, Houellebecq uses the European idea of multiculturalism to explode our political frames from within. This article explores the perception of religion in Soumission, assesses the critique Houellebecq directs towards French society and European developments, and examines Houellebecq’s perception of democracy and politics. The following questions are addressed: does Houellebecq’s critique come from a classical ideological perspective? Does he describe any elements of an ideal society – even if only as the reverse of a presented dystopia? What kind of democracy does the text of Soumission support or oppose?

The Free Responsible Action of the Individual

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Extreme Situation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
Responsible Action ◽  
Action Type ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

If, as Chapter 12 argues, much of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking remains stable even as he undertakes the novel conspiratorial resistance, what is new in his resistance thinking in the third phase? What receives new theological elaboration is the resistance activity of the individual, which in the first two phases was overshadowed by the resistance role played by the church. Indeed, as this chapter shows, Bonhoeffer’s conspiratorial activity is associated with what he calls free responsible action (type 6), and this is the action of the individual, not the church, in the exercise of vocation. As such, the conspiratorial activity is most closely related to the previously developed type 1 resistance, which includes individual vocational action in response to state injustice. But the conspiratorial activity differs from type 1 resistance as individual vocational action in the extreme situation.

Orley Farm

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Trollope
Keyword(s):  
George Orwell ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Family Experience

There was a power of endurance about her, and a courage that was almost awful. Did Lady Mason forge a codicil to her husband's will, allowing Orley Farm to pass to her son or not? Orley Farm centres on this case of forgery, and the anguish and guilt of Lady Mason. Surrounding this enigmatic woman and her apparent crime are her elderly lover, Sir Peregrine Orme; her principled but thoughtless son, Lucius; and, not least, a group of determined lawyers. Orley Farm contains the plot with which Trollope was most pleased. Drawing on family experience of the loss of an inheritance, the novel tackles the tremendous question of property fraud. The result, as George Orwell observed, is one of the most brilliant novels about a law suit in English fiction. Orley Farm dates from a confident period of its authorâs life. It breathes an air of writerly assurance, with Trollope at the height of his competitiveness with Dickens. In this work Trollope claims the Victorian legal novel as his own.

Dichtung und Wahrheit – und Recht

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
George Orwell ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ingeborg Bachmann ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
Dichtung Und Wahrheit

Art and literature are seismographs: they sense changes. And often they are ahead of their time and anticipate new truths. This volume attempts to show the significance of such artistic advances in knowledge and perception for the study of law by means of examples. The articles by nine authors collected here range from an introduction to the thematic connection of poetry, truth and law to an analysis of works of William Shakespeare, Charles Reade, Alexander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin, George Orwell, Peter Kurczek, Ingeborg Bachmann, an excerpt from the novel "Justizpalast" by Petra Morsbach and a study on the TV crime series „Tatort“.

scholarly journals The main Problem of Boris Vasiliev’s Novel «Alexander Nevsky» (On the 800th Anniversary of the Birth of the Saint Prince Alexander Nevsky)

2021 ◽  
pp. 257-271
Author(s):  
Денис Владимирович Макаров
Keyword(s):  
Russian Literature ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Government ◽  
Artistic Images ◽  
Artistic Image ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Основная цель исследования состоит в выявлении основной проблематики романа «Александр Невский» и в исследовании особенностей художественного образа святого благоверного князя Александра Невского в художественном произведении одного из выдающихся представителей советской военной прозы Бориса Львовича Васильева. Начиная со второй половины 1990-х годов писатель воплощает в литературе образы выдающихся древнерусских князей и создаёт в своих исторических романах целую галерею художественных портретов: Владимира Святого, Ярослава Мудрого, Владимира Мономаха и многих других. В работе применяется сравнительно-исторический метод и метод филологического анализа. Для достижения указанной цели анализируется основная проблематика романа Бориса Васильева. В качестве наиболее актуальных для Руси XIII в. вопросов, поднимаемых автором, выделяются проблемы духовного наследия Византии, феодальной раздробленности, двоеверия, взаимоотношения власти (государства) и Церкви, исторического выбора между Востоком и Западом. Автором статьи предпринимает сопоставление образа святого благоверного князя Александра Невского прежде всего со знаменитым памятником древнерусской литературы XIII в. «Повесть о житии Александра Невского». Также в статье указываются предшественники Бориса Васильева в создании образа благоверного князя Александра Невского в русской литературе XIX и XX вв., среди которых поэты Аполлон Николаевич Майков, Лев Александрович Мей, Константин Михайлович Симонов и писатели Алексей Кузьмич Югов, Василий Григорьевич Ян, Анатолий Александрович Субботин, Сергей Павлович Мосияш. Наиболее важные результаты исследования состоят в выявлении основных особенностей художественного образа святого благоверного князя Александра Невского в романе Бориса Васильева. The main purpose of the research is to identify the main problems of the novel «Alexander Nevsky» and to study the features of the artistic image of the saint Prince Alexander Nevsky in the artistic work of one of the outstanding representatives of Soviet military prose - Boris Lvovich Vasiliev, who turned in the second half of the 1990s-2010s to the embodiment in artistic images of outstanding Ancient Russian princes and created in his historical novels from 1996 to 2010 a whole gallery of artistic images: Vladimir the Saint, Yaroslav the Wise, Vladimir Monomakh and many others. To achieve this goal, the main problems of the novel by Boris Vasiliev are analyzed. The research highlights the problems of the spiritual heritage of Byzantium, feudal fragmentation, dual faith, the relationship between the government (state) and the Church, the historical choice between East and West are highlighted as the most relevant issues for Russia of the XIII century raised by the author, the problems of the spiritual heritage of Byzantium, feudal fragmentation, dual faith, the relationship between the government (state) and the Church, the historical choice between the East and the West. The comparison of the image of the saint Prince Alexander Nevsky is undertaken, first of all, with the famous monument of ancient Russian literature of the XIII century «The Story of the Life of Alexander Nevsky». The work also identifies the literary predecessors of Boris Vasiliev in creating the image of the blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky in Russian literature of the XIX and XX centuries, among them the poets Apollo Nikolaevich Maykov, Lev Alexandrovich May, Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov and the writers Alexey Kuzmich Yugov, Vasily Grigoryevich Yan, Anatoly Alexandrovich Subbotin, Sergey Pavlovich Mosiyash. The comparative-historical method and the method of philological analysis are used in the work. The most important results of the study are to identify the main features of the artistic image of the saint Prince Alexander Nevsky in the novel by Boris Vasiliev.

scholarly journals Othering and Selfing: Reading Gender Hierarchies and Social Categories in Michel Houellebecq's Novel Soumission

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Wening Udasmoro
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
French Society ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Gender Hierarchies

In literature, questions of the self and the other are frequently presented. The identity politics that gained prominence after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 has occupied considerable space in this debate throughout the globe, including in France. One example of a novel dealing with the self and other is Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission (2015). This article attempts to explore the processes of selfing and othering in this work. The politics of identity that seems to present Muslims and Islam as the other and French as the self is also extended to other identities and aspects involved in the novel. This article attempts to show, first, how the French author Houellebecq positions the self and other in Soumission; second, the type of self and other the novel focuses on; and third, how its selfing and othering processes reveal the gender hierarchy and social categorization of French society. It finds that the novel presents a hierarchy in its narrative through which characters are positioned based on their gender and sexual orientation, as well as their age and ethnic heritage.

scholarly journals JEWGIENIJ IWANOWICZ ZAMIATIN JAKO PREKURSOR XX-WIECZNEJ POWIEŚCI ANTYUTOPIJNEJ

2018 ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Alena Brinko
Keyword(s):  
George Orwell ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Dystopian Literature ◽  
The Relationship

The aim of this article is to reveal the relationship between the author of the first dystopia, Yevgeny Zamyatin and a totalitarian regime, by means of analyzing the biography and selected works of that writer; the analysis of the novel We – a prophecy novel, which can be regarded as an exaggerated depiction of the Stalinist regime; the analysis of the influence Zamyatin’s novel had on – far more famous – works by George Orwell and Aldous L. Huxley, as well as on the anti-utopia genre (dystopian literature) in general.

The Problem of “Higher Individuals” in the Works of F.M. Dostoevsky

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Li Xiaoyu ◽  
I.I. Evlampiev
Keyword(s):  
Personal Accomplishment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Traditional Church ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
Kingdom Of Heaven ◽  
The World ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

This article deals with the controversial issue of F.M. Dostoevsky’s concept of “Higher Individuals.” The latter are people who rise above other people and have a special influence on society and on history. The authors argue that this concept is most clearly expressed in “The Diary of a Writer” (1876) as well as in the story “The Sentence”, along with Dostoevsky’s commentaries on this story. By means of a detailed analysis of Raskolnikov’s “theory” within the novel “Crime and Punishment”, it is demonstrated that only a superficial version of the concept of “higher individuals” is refuted in the heroes’ argumentations; at the same time, the novel’s characters – Marmeladov, his wife Katerina Ivanovna, and Raskolnikov – can be viewed as examples of different degrees in the personal accomplishment of this “higher personality” state. In conclusion, it is observed how a person must go through three stages of development in order to become a “higher character”: firstly, the experience of an existential crisis and the understanding of the lack of meaning in one’s life; secondly, the “rebellion” against the Creator of the world and its laws along with the rejection of the traditional church faith, whose rejection leads this person on the edge of suicide; thirdly, the acquisition of a new faith, first of all, a faith in one’s immortality, which happens in an unusual, unorthodox form, as is well demonstrated by the character of Svidrigailov in Dostoevsky’s novel. According to Dostoevsky’s doctrine, the meaning ofimmortality lies in the continuation of a person’s existence in a new form in the earthly world or in a “parallel” world similar to the earthly one, and not in the ideal Kingdom of Heaven, as the church claims. Finally, the authors maintain that the process of a character’s transformation into a “higher individual” was consistently and fully described by Dostoevsky in the stories of Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov.

Les Sans-papiers

2020 ◽  
pp. 255-266
Author(s):  
Dominic Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
French Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sans Papiers ◽  
Saint Bernard ◽  
The Church ◽  
Shed Light

Control and selection have been implicit dimensions of the history of immigration in France, shaping and defining the parameters of national identity over centuries. The year 1996 was a turning point when several hundred African sans-papiers sought refuge in the Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle church in the 18th arrondissement of Paris while awaiting a decision on their petition for amnesty and legalization. The church was later stormed by heavily armed police officers, and although there was widespread support for government policies intended to encourage legal paths to immigration, the police raids provoked outrage. This provided the impetus for social mobilization and the sans-papiers behaved contrary to expectations and decided to deliberately enter the public domain in order to shed light on their conditions. Emerging in this way from the dubious safety of legal invisibility, claims were made for more direct public representation and ultimately for regularization, while also countering popular misconceptions and stereotypes concerning their presence and role in French society. The sans-papiers movement is inspired by a shared memory of resistance and political representation that helps define a lieu de mémoire, a space which is, from a broadly postcolonial perspective, very much inscribed in collective memory.

Health Reform and Race Hygiene: Adventists and the Biomedical Vision of the Third Reich

1996 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Blaich
Keyword(s):  
Health Reform ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
German Society ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
The Church

German Seventh-day Adventists entered the Nazi era with apprehension. As a foreign sect which resembled Judaism in many respects, Adventists were particularly threatened by a society based on the principle of völkisch racism. Yet the new state also had much to offer them, for it held the prospect of new opportunities for the church. The Nazi state banished the scourge of liberalism and godless Bolshevism, it restored conservative standards in the domestic sphere, and it took effective steps to return German society to a life in harmony with nature—a life Adventists had long championed.

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