Reconceiving the Divine in Eliette Abécassis’ La répudiée

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 376-393
Author(s):  
Raquelle K Bostow
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
The Face ◽  
French Author

Abstract Eliette Abécassis’ La répudiée (2000) narrates a rare story of female mystical practice in the face of her impending repudiation from a Hasidic community, which excludes women from intellectual engagement with religious texts. Set in the fictionalised neighbourhood of Meah Shearim in Jerusalem, the novel’s main character, Rachel, faces a divorce under the law of halakhah when she fails to become pregnant after ten years of marriage. Yet, throughout the novel, Rachel asserts her own individualised spiritual practice by locating the ‘divine’ within the love that she shares with her partner, placing her on the path of mysticism. To articulate Rachel’s intuition of the divine within human relationships, I rely on French author Hélène Cixous’ secularised notion of the juifemme: a woman who rewrites sacred texts, conceives of a God detached from dogmatic religion, and locates the divine within the other and the self.

The Face of the Contemporary: Lost World Fantasies of Finding Lot’s Wife

Sodomscapes ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Intercultural Contact ◽  
The Face ◽  
Incarnational Theology

Chapter six examines a relatively unknown Victorian lost-world romance fantasy, Alfred Clark’s The Finding of Lot’s Wife (1896). The novel converts the legend of Lot’s wife, traditionally a cautionary tale of moral turpitude, into a stark lesson on the perilous consequences of intercultural contact in the Orientalizing theatre of colonial Palestine. Clark’s central contribution to the Sodom archive, however, resides in the novel’s prescient staging of a world in which insights associated with Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology of myth converge with the theological residue in Levinas’s writings – notably, the self-emptying action of kenosis, which Levinas takes from Pauline incarnational theology. Clark is no theologian, but his interest in the ethical provocations of kenosis is as keen as Levinas’s—and perhaps more viscerally arresting because of its narrative immediacy. This feature powerfully contributes to the innovation The Finding of Lot’s Wife brings to the Sodom archive. Clark’s ingenious intertwining of Blumenbergian and Levinasian treatments of myth effectively imagines the urgent contemporariness of the legacy of Lot’s wife. Clark shows how the lethal and reparative dimensions of that legacy asymmetrically impinge on each other, producing an arresting narrative image of dread commingled with hope and urgent consequence.

scholarly journals Self-Destructive Behavior Analysis of Hannah Baker in The Thirteen Reasons Why Novel

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-32
Author(s):  
Jeantriani Febrita ◽  
Eka Margianti Sagimin
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Defense Mechanisms ◽  
Defense Mechanism ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Destructive Behavior ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Defense

This study investigates Self-Destructive Behavior of Hannah Baker in Thirteen Reasons Why novel, conducted in qualitative approach analysis of self-destructive behavior of the main character and what reasons or the causes of it through the narratives in the Thirteen Reasons Why novel. The goal of the study is to analyze how self-destructive behavior impacted the main character, Hannah Baker which is described using the theory of Self-Destructive Behavior and Defense Mechanisms by Sigmund Freud (1966). The result of this study shows that Hannah Baker developed the self-destructive behavior as a defense mechanisms from herself that triggered by trauma from the past. It started with the non-suicidal self-destructive behavior but soon turns into the suicidal self-destructive behavior. This study also shows how a suicide can really be an impact of the behavior that happens in the novel resulted from a non-suicidal self-destructive behavior that is not handled well, and all the mistreatments that the main character felt which produce the desire for ending her life.Keywords: Self-Defense Mechanism, Self-Destructive Behavior, Sigmund Freud, Suicide, Thirteen Reasons Why.

scholarly journals Restoration of the Self through History and Myth in Lina Kostenko’s “Marusia Churai”

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-45
Author(s):  
Myroslava Tomorug-Znaienko
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
History And Myth ◽  
Unique Individual

The paper analyzes Lina Kostenko’s historical novel in verse portraying the life of the 17th century  Ukrainian minstrel poet Marusia Churai, condemned to death for poisoning her faithless lover. This work, which grows out of Kostenko’s individualized mythical perception of Marusia Churai legend, represents a unique individual construct in which the heroines’ quest for self-realization is kept in tune with the same yearning of the poetess herself; the author’s attitude towards the myth resembles the heroine’s relations with history. The narrative mode of the novel functions mainly in three aspects; these are the heroine’s confrontation with the carnivalized reality of her trial; her subjective journey inward, into the  ruined self, when her execution was pending; and her objective pilgrimage outward, into the history of her ruined land, after getting pardon. The paper touches upon various aspects of the heroine’s perception of history. The main character is depicted as a witness of contemporary events and a bearer of the Word who keeps harmony with the sacred truth of the past. The Hetman’s ‘pardon’ allows Marusia to move freely through history in order to achieve a deeper understanding of her ruined land and seize its spirit. In the experience of the heroine the historical reality appears as versatile and polyphonic, at the same time remaining integral and inseparable from her personality. Kostenko asserts the rights of poets to create their own epochs, to recreate the past or present from within their own mythical experience, becoming thus not only myth-bearers but also mythmakers.

scholarly journals The Self-Actualization of the Main Character in the Novel Anak Rantau by Ahmad Fuadi

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 212-220
Author(s):  
Indra Putra Pahlewi ◽  
Agus Nuryatin ◽  
Deby Luriawati
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Awareness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Peak Experience ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Self Acceptance ◽  
The Many

The novel Anak Rantau by Ahmad Fuadi was chosen as the object of research because of the many aspects of self-actualization that are raised in the story, especially regarding the main character's struggles in facing the realities of life and its twists.. The purpose of this research was to describe and explain the process and characteristics of the main character's self-actualization in the novel Anak Rantau by Ahmad Fuadi. This study used a literary psychology approach. The psychological theory used was Abraham Maslow's self-actualization. Hepi started the process of self-actualization since he was abandoned in Tanjung Duren village by his father. Hepi fulfilled 14 traits of self-actualization. The nature of self-actualization that he has was 1) efficient observation of reality; 2) self-acceptance and others as they are; 3) spontaneity, simplicity, and reasonableness; 4) focus on the problem; 5) the need for privacy; 6) function autonomously; 7) appreciation that is always fresh; 8) social awareness/interest; 9) interpersonal relationships; 10) democratic; 11) differences between means and objectives; 12) creativity; 13) independence, and 14) peak experience.

scholarly journals WOMAN STRUGGLE IN CAHAYA CINTA PESANTREN NOVEL BY IRA MADAN

LINGUISTICA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Rahma Lubis And Syamsul Bahri
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Hierarchy Of Needs ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Self Actualization

The title of this thesis is Woman Struggle in Cahaya Cinta Pesantren Novel by Ira Madan. This study aims to analyzing how is the woman struggle for her ambition of  Marshila Silalahi  in term of hierarchy of needs that she had faced. The source of the data of the analysis is Cahaya Cinta Pesantren novel and the data are the linguistic features that are formed as sentences by the first woman main character. The writer applies the theories from Maslow (1943) about the hierarchy of needs. Based on its form, Maslow was devided the struggle into 5 stage model, they are (1) Physiological needs, (2) Safety needs, (3) Love and Belonging needs, (4) Esteem needs, (5) Self-actualization. The writer devided the data based on each types of self-actualization by Maslow in Hierarchy of needs. Struggle is related to subconscious mind phychologically, the female character is potrayed to reach her ambition with personal reasons to get something in her struggle. The sources of data of this research are any statements, dialogues and actions that prove or describe the self-actualization of a woman struggle in the novel Cahaya Cinta Pesantren (2014) by Ira Madan. Finally the struggles in each types of selfactualization can be interpreted through Marshila Silalahi sentences of the novel and it is found that hierarchy of needs reflect woman struggle.

Faces of the Self

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Vanita Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Face ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis paper traces the centrality of the human face in the construction of modern individuality. It argues that the face of individuality no less than that of typology, is mired in and born of historical and political conditions that are subsequently disavowed in order that the individual (and the face she bears) is rendered a product of nature, an instantiation of the universal. Attempting to denaturalize and defamiliarize the authority invested in the face, this paper maps out three interrelated arguments: that the human face is historically produced; that its history is closely tethered to the production of modern subjectivity, and that its status as a purveyor of meaning relies upon the reiteration of preexisting norms through which it can be “read.” And yet, while this paper turns to the nineteenth century to trace the novel privileging of the face as an extension of selfhood, interwoven through this history is the figure of the “effaced” Muslim woman and the Muslim terrorist type.

The Curious Case of Professor Godbole: A Passage to India Re-Examined

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 426-435
Author(s):  
David Shusterman ◽  
Paul Fussell
Keyword(s):  
The Elderly ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Human Reality ◽  
Individual Consciousness ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe

Although many critics of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India have mentioned that Professor Godbole, the Hindu educator, behaves somewhat queerly during the course of the novel, no one, so far as I can discover, since the book's publication in 1924 has seemed to have any serious doubt that Godbole is a man of genuine goodwill or that he is the source of much that is good. This conventional attitude has been expanded upon within recent years by several critics who have put Godbole forward as Forster's primary spokesman for cosmic and divine truth. Forster's point, they claim, is that Hinduism is closer to this truth than any other religion; the author is using Godbole to make this revelation known. To James McConkey, one of the proponents of the Godbolean viewpoint, “the full measure of the success” of Forster's Indian novel “suggests that Forster has finally come to terms with himself and his universe.” These terms are imparted through Godbole “the only person in all the novels who becomes the character-equivalent of the Forsterian voice.” Godbole's position is “one of detachment from human reality and from the physical world, a detachment obtained by as complete a denial of individual consciousness as is possible, that denial and remove bringing with them a sense of love and an awareness of unity.” Hindu metaphysics “bears a number of definite relationships to the stabilized Forsterian philosophical position.” It is Godbole who is “the one most responsible for whatever sense of hope is granted” in the last section of the novel. The “way of Godbole is the only possible way: love, even though to exist it must maintain a detachment from the physical world and human relationships, offers the single upward path from the land of sterility and echoing evil.” To Hugh Maclean, another Godbolean adherent, Mrs. Moore, the elderly Englishwoman, finds completeness only after death through the intercession of Godbole; the latter “excludes nothing” from his spiritual life, and because of this he “will be able [ultimately] to encompass everything.” It is only Godbole whose mind has seized on the order of the universe. Forster is advocating above everything else that people should become like Godbole, one who is able to accomplish the “absorption of the self within a transcendental frame of reference.”

The Sacred Fount: The Narrator and the Vampires

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 407-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Rebecca West ◽  
Human Relationships

Criticism of Henry James's controversial novel The Sacred Fount has tended rather insistently to take one of two interpretive directions. Since Edmund Wilson's famous essay “The Ambiguity of Henry James” appeared in 1934 and made everyone more aware of the potential complexity of James's handling of the focus of narration, the perhaps more frequently encountered approach to the novel has been one which regards it, like The Turn of the Screw and In the Cage, as principally another Jamesian experiment with a narrator of doubtful omniscience. The other approach, one still found in many treatments of the novel, tends rather to accept completely the narrator's version of events at Newmarch and looks for the meaning and significance of the work in his most obvious preoccupation during the weekend in which those events occur, the vampire theme of fulfillment and depletion in intense human relationships. Both approaches are valid. Indeed, one of the impressive aspects of the serious criticism of The Sacred Fount is that nearly all of the important attempts at analysis have been and remain true to some degree. Leon Edel, following and building on the hints of Wilson, has shown that the novel clearly is about “appearance and reality,” and R. P. Blackmur has pointed out the parabolic nature of the story and called attention to The Sacred Fount as the “nightmare nexus” in the Jamesian struggle “to portray the integrity of the artist and… the integrity of the self.” Even Rebecca West, in her witty dismissal of the book some years ago, was correct—more correct than she knew perhaps since she gives James no credit for a deliberate and skillfully manipulated irony—-in recognizing and mocking the disparity between the passion, pride, and labor expended by the incredibly egocentric, narcissistic narrator and the, if not completely trivial, at least gossamer issues involved. But the irony, like the ambiguity, is both constant and conscious. Unlike the narrator, to whom James has frequently been compared, James presides confidently over his fictional world like, in Lady John's words, “a real providence,” who “knows” (p. 176).

scholarly journals A NOVEL 5 TITIK 1 KOMA BY MUHAMMAD KAMAL IHSAN ON PERSPECTIVE AL-GHAZALI’S SUFISM

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Khairatun Nisa
Keyword(s):  
Mental Condition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
Religious Books ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Extraordinary Experiences

Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that the novel 5 Titik 1 Koma by Muhammad Kamal Ihsan contains aspects of akhlaki and amali sufism that are in line with Sufism Al-Ghazali's thinking, especially in the stages (maqâmat) and conditions (ahwâl) by which a person sâlik. However, there are differences in the formulation of elements of happiness that must be possessed, even though basically they are interconnected in their implementation.This novel tells the story of the struggle of a mute woman who is studying in Egypt named Zaritsa through the main character named Ihsan. Zaritsa 's determination has provided extraordinary experiences for other characters in this novel, so that they become better people and are more grateful to God for all the pleasures they feel. In addition to containing stories, this novel also contains an explanation of five points and one comma itself, namely gratitude, patience, confidence, sincerity, honesty, and love.The Sufism aspect contained in this novel which is also explained by Al-Ghazali in the form of maqamat is a spiritual level that must be attained by a sâlik and ahwal, namely the mental condition of a salik. Maqâmât and ahwâl contained include: Repentance, patience and gratitude, zuhud, tawakkal, mahabbah (love), sincerity, and honesty. Everything is in accordance with what was mentioned by Al-Ghazali, but there are differences in the use of terms such as the use of sincerity in the face of all the tests that Al-Ghazali called ridha.In addition to Maqamat and Ahwal, this novel also contains the formulation of happiness that will be achieved by Jiaka humans to have gratitude, patience, confidence, sincerity, honesty, and love. The formulation of happiness is in line with Al-Ghazali's view, but Al-Ghazali uses a different language, namely knowing oneself, knowing God, knowing the world, and knowing the hereafter. By recognizing these four things, then someone will surely be grateful, patient, confident, sincere, honest, and love as mentioned by the novelist.The suggestions conveyed based on this research are novel writers, especially Islamic novels to better popularize Sufism values, given the large number of people interested in reading novels compared to reading religious books directly. Researchers are expected to enrich their studies with other methods of literary research, so as to add to the treasures for research in literature, in the form of novels, films, poems, short videos, poems, songs and so on.

scholarly journals AUTONOMOUS MOTIVATION OF PROTAGONIST’S SELF DETERMINATION IN NICHOLAS SPARKS’ THE BEST OF ME

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-78
Author(s):  
Irma Oktia Waila ◽  
Sri Wulan
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Autonomous Motivation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Controlled Motivation

Nicholas Sparks’ The Best of Me is a novel that tells the story of a love journey between Dawson Cole and Amanda Collier, who is forced to be blocked by Amanda's parents who do not approve of their love because of differences in social class so that in the end they have to separate. However, after being separated for so long they are reunited with different circumstances. The strength of this novel is the moral value of the main character. This study aims to examine the self-determination that exists in the protagonist. In examining this novel, the writers adopt descriptive qualitative research. There two forms of self-determination. They are autonomous motivation and controlled motivation. The study is focused only on the autonomous motivation of the protagonist’s self determination in the novel. Two aspects are found as the protagonist’s autonomous motivation. These aspects happen to the protagonist’s love story in the novel. The first is loyalty and the second firmness of love. The protagonist shows his self-determination by means of two aspects.

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