Fairy Tale Epic

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-100
Author(s):  
Jed Rasula

Joseph Conrad’s novel Nostromo is the focus of this chapter. Hailed as its author’s most comprehensive effort at historic panorama, epic in scale, Nostromo also (if somewhat surreptitiously) engages the diminutive form of fairy tale. Combining epic with fairy tale provides the perplexing indeterminacy many readers detect, which is often attributed to Conrad’s literary impressionism. What he reveals, however, is that even the supposedly factual enterprise of history is subject to the vicissitudes commonly accorded “creative” (thus fictive) literary forms like epic, lyric, and fairy tale. History and myth emerge from Nostromo as helpless collaborators in the hybrid fabrications of modern fiction.

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-152
Author(s):  
OLGA YU. PROTSENKO ◽  

The expression "fairy-tale reality" is an oxymoron, because the idea that a fairy tale is something unrealistic, impossible and knowingly false has entrenched in the minds of people. A fairy tale in the form in which it exists today is a fantastic genre that modern writers combine with other genres and get new literary forms and plots. A series of novels by J. Rowling about Harry Potter, “The Lord of the Rings” by R. Tolkien, “Song of Ice and Fire” by J. Martin are modern bestsellers. No one believes in the reality of what is described in these books, but from this they do not lose popularity. The thing is that at the heart of storylines, characters and conflicts are archetypes and mythologies familiar to us from childhood. This once again proves people's interest in everything inexplicable.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. S104-S119
Author(s):  
Diana Diamond
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Efnan Dervişoğlu

Almanya’ya işçi göçü, neden ve sonuçları, sosyal boyutlarıyla ele alınmış; göç ve devamındaki süreçte yaşanan sorunlar, konunun uzmanlarınca dile getirilmiştir. Fakir Baykurt’un Almanya öyküleri, sunduğu gerçekler açısından, sosyal bilimlerin ortaya koyduğu verilerle bağdaşan edebiyat ürünleri arasındadır. Yirmi yılını geçirdiği Almanya’da, göçmen işçilerle ve aileleriyle birlikte olup işçi çocuklarının eğitimine yönelik çalışmalarda bulunan yazarın gözlem ve deneyimlerinin ürünü olan bu öyküler, kaynağını yaşanmışlıktan alır; çalışmanın ilk kısmında, Fakir Baykurt’un yaşamına ve Almanya yıllarına dair bilgi verilmesi, bununla ilişkilidir. Öykülere yansıyan çocuk yaşamı ise çalışmanın asıl konusunu oluşturmaktadır. “Ev ve aile yaşamı”, “Eğitim yaşamı ve sorunları”, “Sosyal çevre, arkadaşlık ilişkileri ve Türk-Alman ayrılığı” ile “İki kültür arasında” alt başlıklarında, Türkiye’den göç eden işçi ailelerinde yetişen çocukların Almanya’daki yaşamları, karşılaştıkları sorunlar, öykülerin sunduğu veriler ışığında değerlendirilmiş; örneklemeye gidilmiştir. Bu öyküler, edebiyatın toplumsal gerçekleri en iyi yansıtan sanat olduğu görüşünü doğrular niteliktedir ve sosyolojik değerlendirmelere açıktır. ENGLISH ABSTRACTMigration and Children in Fakir Baykurt’s stories from GermanyThe migration of workers to Germany has been taken up with its causes, consequences and social dimensions; the migration and the problems encountered in subsequent phases have been stated by experts in the subject. Fakir Baykurt’s stories from Germany, regarding the reality they represent, are among the literary forms that coincide with the facts supplied by social sciences. These stories take their sources from true life experiences as the products of observations and experiences with migrant workers and their families in Germany where the writer has passed twenty years of his life and worked for the education of the worker’s children; therefore information related to Fakir Baykurt’s life and his years in Germany are provided in the first part of the study.  The life of children reflected in the stories constitutes the main theme of the study.  Under  the subtitles of “Family and Home Life”, “Education Life and related issues”, “Social environment, friendships and Turkish-German disparity” and “Amidst two cultures”, the lives in Germany of children who have been  raised in working class  families and  who have immigrated from Turkey are  evaluated under the light of facts provided by the stories and examples are given. These stories appear to confirm that literature is an art that reflects the social reality and is open to sociological assessments.KEYWORDS: Fakir Baykurt; Germany; labor migration; child; story


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Jean E. Conacher

Youth literature within the German Democratic Republic (GDR) officially enjoyed equal status with adult literature, with authors often writing for both audiences. Such parity of esteem pre-supposed that youth literature would also adopt the cultural–political frameworks designed to nurture the establishment of socialism on German soil. In their quest to forge a legitimate national literature capable of transforming the population, politicians and writers drew repeatedly upon the cultural heritage of Weimar classicism and the Bildungsroman, Humboldtian educational traditions and Soviet-inspired models of socialist realism. Adopting a script theory approach inspired by Jean Matter Mandler, this article explores how directive cultural policies lead to the emergence of multiple scripts which inform the nature and narrative of individual works. Three broad ideological scripts within GDR youth literature are identified which underpin four distinct narrative scripts employed by individual writers to support, challenge and ultimately subvert the primacy of the Bildungsroman genre. A close reading of works by Strittmatter, Pludra, Görlich, Tetzner and Saalmann reveals further how conceptual blending with classical and fairy-tale scripts is exploited to legitimise and at times mask critique of transformation and education inside and outside the classroom and to offer young protagonists a voice often denied their readers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-184
Author(s):  
Željka Flegar

This article discusses the implied ‘vulgarity’ and playfulness of children's literature within the broader concept of the carnivalesque as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World (1965) and further contextualised by John Stephens in Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction (1992). Carnivalesque adaptations of fairy tales are examined by situating them within Cristina Bacchilega's contemporary construct of the ‘fairy-tale web’, focusing on the arenas of parody and intertextuality for the purpose of detecting crucial changes in children's culture in relation to the social construct and ideology of adulthood from the Golden Age of children's literature onward. The analysis is primarily concerned with Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes (1982) and J. K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2007/2008) as representative examples of the historically conditioned empowerment of the child consumer. Marked by ambivalent laughter, mockery and the degradation of ‘high culture’, the interrogative, subversive and ‘time out’ nature of the carnivalesque adaptations of fairy tales reveals the striking allure of contemporary children's culture, which not only accommodates children's needs and preferences, but also is evidently desirable to everybody.


2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Gabriel Proulx

Valérie par Valérie opens new critical paths which are fertile, though difficult to unpack. Published under the enigmatic and collective name La Rédaction, this book – whose main (or only) author seems to be Christophe Hanna – develops what we could call a viral critique, which seeks to occupy dominant ideologies to undermine them from within rather than oppose them with a new ideology. This article aims firstly to define Hanna's viral critique, based on his own theoretical works and Guy Debord's notion of spectacle as a social and economic mechanism. It then analyzes the specific form taken by that critique in Valérie par Valérie, where the author opposes the separation of literary and non-literary forms, as well as contemporary ultracapitalism and its political-economic ramifications. Finally, the ethical implications of this type of implicit critical exercise are explored through semioethics, in order to determine the efficiency of Hanna's project.


2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
Carla Marcantonio

FQ books editor Carla Marcantonio guides readers through the 33rd edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival held each year in Bologna at the end of June. Highlights of this year's festival included a restoration of one of Vittorio De Sica's hard-to-find and hence lesser-known films, the social justice fairy tale, Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1951). The film was presented by De Sica's daughter, Emi De Sica, and was an example of the ongoing project to restore De Sica's archive, which was given to the Cineteca de Bologna in 2016. Marcantonio also notes her unexpected responses to certain reviewings; Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (2019), presented by Francis Ford Coppola on the large-scale screen of Piazza Maggiore and accompanied by remastered Dolby Atmos sound, struck her as a tour-de-force while a restoration of David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) had lost some of its strange allure.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document