Inventing the Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
R. Bracht Branham
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Theoretical Underpinning ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Ancient Novel

This chapter offers a brief account of how Bakhtin conceived of the ancient novel in the 1930s, asking whether his work provides a proper theoretical underpinning for any historical approach to the genre and, given such an approach, how narrative evolved in antiquity. Although written some fifty years earlier, Bakhtin’s essays on ancient literary history were unavailable in English until collected and translated in The Dialogic Imagination (1981). Although not literally new, these essays are novel both to many students of fiction precisely because Bakhtin focuses his discussion on antiquity—the significance of which for the novel, he argues, has been “greatly underestimated”—and to classicists besides because these scholars are unlikely to know the studies of Dostoevsky and Rabelais for which Bakhtin first became known in the West.

Minorities in the Contemporary Egyptian Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Youssef
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robust Analysis ◽  
Specific Approach ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Historical Moment

This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising. This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.

СТАЛИНДИК БИЙЛИК Ч.АЙТМАТОВДУН КӨРКӨМ ОЙ ЖҮГҮРТҮҮСҮНДӨ

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-87
Author(s):  
Б. Ниясалиева ◽  
Н. Алтыкеева
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Good Luck ◽  
The West ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
The Government

Аннотация. Ч.Айтматов “Кылым карытар бир күн” романында ачыктап бере албаган бийлик маселеси кийинки демократиянын учурунда романдын уландысы катары берилген “Чынгызхандын ак булуту “ аттуу чыгармасында таама көрсөтүлдү. Аталган чыгарма сталиндик бийликти сынга алуу менен бийликтин курмандыктары болгон күнөөсүз адамдардын оор тагдырын чагылдырат. Сталиндин образын ачуу максатында элдик легендага кайрылып, Чынгызхандын образы аркылуу Сталиндин образын чагылдырган. Чыгармадагы Тансыкбаевдин образы мансапка манчыркап, адам тагдыры менен ойногон наадан адамдардын образын ачууда колдонулган. Абуталип, Эрдене, Догуланг – булар бийликтин курмандыктары. Алар алдыда өлүм күтүп турса да, өз көз караштарынан тайышпады, өлүмгө тике кароо менен жеңиш дайыма алар тарапта экендигин аныктай алышты. Ырас, Тансыкбаев да өз максатына жете алган жок, Чынгызхан болсо батышты багынтам деген тилегине жетпеди, ал эбегейсиз күчүн жоготту, мындан ары анын жолу болбоду. Түйүндүү сөздөр: образ, демократия, каарман, легенда, идея, көркөм ой жүгүртүү. Аннотация. Проблема правительства, которую Ч.Айтматов не смог раскрыть в романе “И дольше века длится день, ярко показаны в произведении “Белое облако Чингизхана” созданное во время демократии как продолжение названного произведения. В данном произведений критикуется и отражается тяжелая судьба безвинного народа, которые стали жертвами сталинского режима. Писатель обратился к народной легенде для раскрытия образа Сталина, через образ Чингизхана. В произведений образ Тансыкбаева применятся для раскрытия образов людей, которые ради собственного нажива использовали судьбы народа. Абуталип, Эрдене, Догуланг – они жертвы правительства. Несмотря ни на что, они не отреклись от своих убеждений, стояли на смерть ради справедливости. В статье говорится о не достижении своей цели Тансыкбаева, о не покорении Чингизханом Запада, о том, что Чингизхан потерял всю свою силу и удача его покидает. Ключевые слова: власть, образ, демократия, герой, легенда, идея, художественное размышление.. Annotation. The problem of the government, which Ch. Aitmatov could not reveal in the novel “And the day lasts more than a century”is clearly shown in the works “White cloud of Genghis Khan” created during the democracy as a continuation of the title work. In this work criticized and reflected the heavy fate of innocent people who were the victims of the Stalinist regime. The writer appealed to the folk legend to reveal the image of Genghis Khan the writer conveys the image of Stalin. In the work (composition) the image of Tansykbaev will be used to reveal the images of people who used the people’s destinies for their own profit . Abutalip, Erdene, Doulan-they are the victims of government. No matter what, they didn’t renounce their beliefs, stood to death for justice . The article says about not achieving the goal of Tansykbaeva, about not conguering the West by Genghis Khan and that Genghis Khan lost all his strength and good luck leaves him. Key words: power, image, democracy, hero, legend, idea, artistic reflection.

Crumbling into Dust

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Levi Barnard
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Unfinished Business ◽  
Black Newspapers ◽  
American Literary History ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
David Walker ◽  
Historical Times

This chapter situates Chesnutt’s writing within a tradition of black classicism as political engagement and historical critique extending from the antebellum period to the twentieth century and beyond. Reading Chesnutt as a figure at the crossroads of multiple historical times and cultural forms, the chapter examines his manipulation of multiple mythic traditions into a cohesive and unsettling vision of history as unfinished business. In the novel The Marrow of Tradition and the late short story “The Marked Tree,” Chesnutt echoes a nineteenth-century tradition that included David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, and writers and editors for antebellum black newspapers, while at the same time anticipating a later anti-imperial discourse generated by writers such as Richard Wright and Toni Morrison. Chesnutt provides a fulcrum for a collective African American literary history that has emerged as a prophetic counterpoint to the prevailing historical consciousness in America.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Brazil
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Zadie Smith

In conclusion, this short chapter surveys the ways in which the novelists discussed in this book have become reference points for contemporary debates about the legacy of modernism and experimentation among novelists such as Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, and Ben Lerner. It also surveys how contemporary novelists’ engagements with art are being driven by different concerns than those of earlier writers—attempts to blur the lines between autobiography and fiction, or to recover the political and aesthetic potential of wonder and enchantment. In doing so, it shows how the interactions between art and the novel traced in this book have become part of literary history.

Kidnapped

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Ian Duncan
Keyword(s):  
West Coast ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
First Time ◽  
Adventure Stories

Your bed shall be the moorcock’s, and your life shall be like the hunted deer’s, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons.’ Tricked out of his inheritance, shanghaied, shipwrecked off the west coast of Scotland, David Balfour finds himself fleeing for his life in the dangerous company of Jacobite outlaw and suspected assassin Alan Breck Stewart. Their unlikely friendship is put to the test as they dodge government troops across the Scottish Highlands. Set in the aftermath of the 1745 rebellion, Kidnapped transforms the Romantic historical novel into the modern thriller. Its heart-stopping scenes of cross-country pursuit, distilled to a pure intensity in Stevenson’s prose, have become a staple of adventure stories from John Buchan to Alfred Hitchcock and Ian Fleming. Kidnapped remains as exhilarating today as when it was first published in 1886. This new edition is based on the 1895 text, incorporating Stevenson’s last thoughts about the novel before his death. It includes Stevenson’s ‘Note to Kidnapped’, reprinted for the first time since 1922.

The Diaspora of the Novel

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis
Keyword(s):  
Uneven Development ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.

Assessing Bypassed Hydrocarbons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanley Oifoghe ◽  
Nora Alarcon ◽  
Lucrecia Grigoletto
Keyword(s):  
Continental Shelf ◽  
Reservoir Characterization ◽  
Gamma Ray ◽  
West African ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Present Case Study ◽  
Novel Model

Abstract Hydrocarbons are bypassed in known fields. This is due to reservoir heterogeneities, complex lithology, and limitations of existing technology. This paper seeks to identify the scenarios of bypassed hydrocarbons, and to highlight how advances in reservoir characterization techniques have improved assessment of bypassed hydrocarbons. The present case study is an evaluation well drilled on the continental shelf, off the West African Coastline. The targeted thin-bedded reservoir sands are of Cenomanian age. Some technologies for assessing bypassed hydrocarbon include Gamma Ray Spectralog and Thin Bed Analysis. NMR is important for accurate reservoir characterization of thinly bedded reservoirs. The measured NMR porosity was 15pu, which is 42% of the actual porosity. Using the measured values gave a permeability of 5.3mD as against the actual permeability of 234mD. The novel model presented in this paper increased the porosity by 58% and the permeability by 4315%.

From Decline of the West to Dawn of Day

Janus Head ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
Hub Zwart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
The West ◽  
Smart Technologies

This paper subjects Dan Brown’s most recent novel Origin to a philosophical reading. Origin is regarded as a literary window into contemporary technoscience, inviting us to explore its transformative momentum and disruptive impact, focusing on the cultural significance of artificial intelligence and computer science: on the way in which established world-views are challenged by the incessant wave of scientific discoveries made possible by super-computation. While initially focusing on the tension between science and religion, the novel’s attention gradually shifts to the increased dependence of human beings on smart technologies and artificial (or even “synthetic”) intelligence. Origin’s message, I will argue, reverberates with Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, which aims to outline a morphology of world civilizations. Although the novel starts with a series of oppositions, most notably between religion and science, the eventual tendency is towards convergence, synthesis and sublation, exemplified by Sagrada Família as a monumental symptom of this transition. Three instances of convergence will be highlighted, namely the convergence between science and religion, between humanity and technology and between the natural sciences and the humanities.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document