Horror amid Sweetness

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Ewa Górecka
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Oil Painting ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Semiotic Systems ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
Important Form

Postcards, once an important form of communication which has now been driven out of contemporary culture by emails and other instant messages, are the least known among the metatexts of Sienkiewicz’s novel. The time of the novel’s creation and the fact that it was quickly recognized as a bestseller contributed to the production of numerous postcards that presented scenes and characters from Quo vadis. They deserve attention not only for their artistic variety (style, technique, format, and so on), but also for their coexistence with kitsch. The presence of this aesthetic category in intersemiotic interpretations of Sienkiewicz’s work implies the need for determining which parts of the novel particularly encourage kitsch. Postcards referring directly to Quo vadis reveal the presence of different types of kitsch. Due to the novel’s subject matter, religious, erotic, and patriotic kitsch are observed most often, followed by the kitsch of death and suffering. In order to understand the connection between Sienkiewicz’s Quo vadis and kitsch, it is not enough to determine its types. Kitsch on postcards tends to be integrated into an intertextual and periphrastic strategy. Whether through the vehicle of a photograph, watercolour painting, oil painting, engraving, or sculpturography, the purpose of creators of illustrations was usually to put across the idea of the novel and its aesthetic value. Importance was also attached to the expectations of potential purchasers of postcards, both those who had and those who had not read Quo vadis. Thus, the postcards are valuable evidence not only of the artistic interpretation of the novel in different semiotic systems but also of the perception of ancient Rome in twentieth-century European culture.

scholarly journals METHODS AND TECHNIQUES OF MYTHOLOGIZATION IN S. RUSHDIE’S NOVEL ‘THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET’

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Vasiljeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Orpheus And Eurydice ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Indian Origin ◽  
Methods And Techniques ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Iconic Images

The study is devoted to the analysis of methods and techniques of mythologization in the novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet written by the British author of Indian origin S. Rushdie. The paper explores the narrative organization of the novel, in which images and motifs of ancient mythology are used as a special code for artistic interpretation of European culture of the second half of the 20th century. The article examines the artistic reality of the novel, which combines the modern history of rock culture and classical mythology of Ancient Greece. S. Rushdie addresses problems related to the nature of creativity using as the main plot-forming motifs such mythologemes as the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the myth of alldevouring Tartarus, twin myths. The study shows that a typical technique for creating expressive threedimensional multivocal images in Rushdie's novel is a combination of real facts from the world of rock culture and mythological allusions, intertwining, overlapping and collision of various motifs and plots of Greek mythology, which, taken all together, generates the original artistic reality. The article analyzes how the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice acquires a cultural dimension in the novel and what techniques are used by the author to activate the extensive cultural memory of the Orphic myth. The concentration and interpretation of iconic images and motifs of ancient mythology are used in the novel for artistic analysis of the state of culture in the second half of the 20th century and of its attempts to counter the catastrophic tendencies of destruction and death of the modern civilization.

Costumes in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo vadis and their Literary and Painterly Sources

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Ewa Skwara
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Classical Education ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Status ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
Colour Coding

Sienkiewicz had to dress the characters of Quo vadis in period garments. Their descriptions rarely appear, but they are highly suggestive of how the author understood ancient Rome and tried to recreate it in his work. Sienkiewicz gives detailed descriptions of costumes only when they concern the most important figures in his novel, or if clothing plays an important role in the plot. The rest of the protagonists are treated as collective characters whose clothing is identified only in terms of togas, stolae, or the robes of the poor. Beside the ubiquitous tunic, other Latin names of clothing primarily indicate the status of characters or are mentioned when Sienkiewicz uses clothes to disguise them. In those cases, the ubiquitous tunic receives an adjectival descriptor of colour or shade, which in the world of Quo vadis has a differentiating function. The names of the characters’ outfits have their origins in Roman literature. The terms introduced in the novel allow for an easy recreation of the author’s reading list, which consists of the basic works of a classical education—Cicero, Suetonius, Plutarch, Pliny, Horace, Propertius, Juvenal, Martial. Sometimes Sienkiewicz mixes his classical terminology with those of ecclesiastical Latin, creating an unintendedly humorous effect. However, the writer’s use of costume colour seems to have been inspired by the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Henryk Siemiradzki. This chapter will explore the very close relationship between text and paintings, and utilizes Sienkiewicz’s colour coding to pinpoint some of the images on which he drew.

Quo vadis and Ancient Rome in the United States, 1896–1905

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Ruth Scodel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
Widespread Interest ◽  
Complex Influence

The immense success of Quo vadis in the United States prompted widespread interest in both its most interesting character, Petronius, and in its account of the reign of Nero. Although Sienkiewicz mentions the Satyricon only briefly, in the period following the novel’s appearance new translations of the Cena Trimalchionis were published, along with editions intended for students of Latin, despite the Satyricon’s earlier reputation as decadent and its association with pornography. Sienkiewicz’s sympathetic portrayal of Petronius was probably responsible for making this reception of the Cena possible. The general educated public was also concerned about the historical basis of Quo vadis. Readers who found the novel too sensational, as many did, not surprisingly also questioned its historical accuracy. Debates about the novel also show the complex influence of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which accepts Tacitus’s account of Nero’s persecution, but more generally argues that Christian accounts of persecutions are exaggerated. American critics of Quo vadis applied Gibbon’s arguments about Diocletian’s persecution to Nero’s. Academics who provided expert guidance seem uncritical compared to ancient historians today: while they point out that Tacitus did not have personal knowledge of Nero’s reign, they do not consider his sources or methods.

The Paradoxes of Quo vadis

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Jerzy Axer
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Religious Vision ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Quo Vadis

Both the manner in which Sienkiewicz constructed his vision of ancient Rome and the way it affected contemporary readers appear paradoxical. This chapter presents four examples of these contradictions. The topographical vision of the Eternal City constructed in the novel reflects the perception of a pilgrim tourist visiting it in the late nineteenth century; nevertheless that vision restored the sense of connection held by native Italians with the tradition of Urbs Roma. The characters endowed in the novel with the greatest freedom of movement belong to Sienkiewicz’s world rather than to classical antiquity. As for the historical characters, they are passive and essentially form part of the novel’s mock-up of Neronian Rome. The book turned out to be very attractive to European readers, giving them an impression of genuine contact with their Roman heritage. Yet this effect was achieved by an author who drew upon the tradition of a Latinity imported into Poland and who, in addition, gave a central place to the motif of a Slavic martyr evangelizing her Roman oppressors. Readers who were completely unaware of the slogan ‘Poland, the Christ of Nations’, and understood nothing of the book’s patriotic codes, could nonetheless feel the authenticity of the author’s experience of something that can be called a ‘totalitarian system’. In this way, thanks to a Polish writer, European readers were given a vivid and impressive vision of Nero’s time, told from the point of view of the weak and oppressed. It was a historical and religious vision that seemed more believable than anything the writers of the West could offer them.

ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION OF THE IMAGE OF WOMEN IN THE WORKS OF SHUHRAT

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 198-204
Author(s):  
Nodira Soatova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Hard Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Artistic Interpretation

This article is devoted to the study of the artistic interpretation of the image of the Mother in the works of Shuhrat. The article analyzes and interprets in the poet's powerful poems the image of a woman as a symbol of love, and hard work, Lola tergan qiz”, “Umr yoldoshimga”, “Yor ketib”, “Senin sevging”, “Yorin savoli”,“Sevibqolsang”, “Kushni kiz”, “Ikhtiyorim kulinda”, “Sevgi iztirobi”, “Sevging kuzingda” , “Ilk sevgining yarasi”, “Sevgimda yon deysan”, “Sevgimga ishonsang bas”, “Senga ataganim”. Also a loving mother, and in the novel "Golden Stainless" as a humble woman Jannat, mother Adolat a faithful wife Aziza

Obsolescence

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 718-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
National Endowment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
American Novel ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Status ◽  
Material State ◽  
Different Response

I was invited by the MLA committee on the status of graduate students in the profession to speak at a convention workshop entitled “Keywords for a Digital Profession.” My keyword was obsolescence, a catchall term for a multiplicity of conditions; there are material obsolescences, institutional obsolescences, and purely theoretical obsolescences, each type demanding a different response. I spent years pondering theoretical obsolescence while writing The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television. The book argues, in part, that claims about the obsolescence of cultural forms often say more about those doing the claiming than they do about the objects of the claims. Neither the novel in particular nor the book more broadly nor print in general is dead, and agonized announcements of the death of such technologies and genres often serve to re-create an elite cadre of cultural producers and consumers, ostensibly operating on the margins of contemporary culture and profiting from their claims of marginality by creating a sense that their own values, once mainstream and now decaying, must be protected. Two oft-cited reports of the National Endowment for the Arts, Reading at Risk (2004) and To Read or Not to Read (2007), come to mind; like numerous other expressions of anxiety about the supposed decline of reading, each rhetorically creates a cultural wildlife preserve in which the apparently obsolete can flourish (United States). These texts suggest that obsolescence is, in this case at least, less a material state than a political project.

scholarly journals Gogolesque in the novel “The Life of Arseniev” by Ivan Bunin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Vranchan
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Old World ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Artistic Interpretation

The article deals with the peculiarities of the patriarchal noble-peasant life description in the novel “The Life of Arseniev” (1930) by Ivan Bunin, focuses on the use of characteristic Gogol’s images and techniques. Moreover, the comparison of the artistic interpretation ways of the patriarchal past by the writers reveals the Gogol's influence on the position of Bunin as the author, which is presented in the novel in different ways: from the point of view of an observer narrator who topographically accurately depicts the reality and life of the family estate, and from the point of view of an emigrant, focused on memories of the past, conveying an emotional sense of the connection between generations. In general, Bunin continues to develop the theme of the collision of immobile patriarchy with the quick movement of time that destroys the old serfdom, so his novel is imbued with nostalgia for the small-scale world going into the past. In Bunin's nostalgia, there are echoes of Gogol's sorrow about the doomed old world life.

scholarly journals HISTORICAL REMINISCENCES OF THE COSSACK CHRONICLES IN THE NOVEL “HETMAN IVAN VYHOVSKY” BY I. NECHUY-LEVYTSKY

2019 ◽  
pp. 151-160
Author(s):  
Оksana Slipushko ◽  
Anastasiya Katyuzhynska
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Active Subject ◽  
Comparative Aspect ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Personal Understanding

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the artistic interpretation of historical events and figures in the novel “Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky” by I. Nechuy-Levytsky. Particular attention is paid to the implementation of the specifics of Baroque historiography in the novel. The characteristic features of the author’s historical conception and influence of the cossack chronicles on its formation are determined. The historical fiction of I. Nechuy-Levytsky is represented by author’s historiosophical and ideological-aesthetic views, based on personal understanding of the Ukrainian history. I. Nechuy-Levytsky presents his own historical conception of the period of I. Vyhovsky’s activity, which is connected with certain features and characteristics of the provisions of Baroque historiography. An artistic rethinking of the role and place of personality in history and history in the life of humanity in the worldview of I. Nechuy-Levytsky is analyzed. The peculiarities of the interpretation of hetman Ivan Vyhovsky’s character in the cossack chronicles and the novel by I. Nechuy-Levytsky in the comparative aspect are substantiated. It is determined, that the estimation of hetman’s activity differs from that set out in the cossack chronicles. Therefore, unlike the chroniclers, who negatively characterize the political activity of I. Vyhovsky, the writer represents the human personality as a state creator, active subject in history. In addition, much attention is paid to the individualization of the image of the ruler, in particular the disclosure of the psychology of his actions. In conclusion, in the artistic interpretation of I. Nechuy-Levytsky hetman I. Vyhovsky is represented as the bearer of political views and ideological positions, that played a significant role in the formation and development of the idea of Ukrainian statehood and became a continuation of the historical conception and ideological dominants of the cossack chronicles.

scholarly journals The Polygamist (extract)

1972 ◽  
Vol 1 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 97-111
Author(s):  
Ndabaningi Sithole
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
The Novel ◽  
National Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Congregational Church ◽  
A Charge ◽  
Hard Labour ◽  
African Nationalism

The Revd. Ndabaningi Sithole is leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union and a minister in the American Congregational Church. He joined nationalist politics in Rhodesia in 1960 and in 1964 was sent to prison on a charge of subversion for calling on his supporters to resist UDI with any means at their disposal. After completing his sentence he was sent into detention, but in November 1968 he was re-arrested and in February 1969 sentenced to six years’ hard labour on a charge of plotting to assassinate cabinet ministers of the Rhodesian Front. The various laws under which the Revd. Sithole has been held prohibit, among other things, the publication in Rhodesia of ‘any information, pictorial or in writing’ about restricted or imprisoned individuals and also prevent any communication between them and members of the public. This means that two earlier books by Sithole, African Nationalism and the novel Obed, may not be circulated in Rhodesia and that this latest work, The Polygamist, will not be published there. The Polygamist deals with the clash between African and European culture among the Africans in Rhodesia and apparently contains autobiographical elements. It deals with the conflict between an African chieftain — ‘the polygamist’ — and his eldest son, who becomes a christian and shocks his elders by electing to marry only one wife. Interestingly enough, the novel comes down on the side of European culture, but not without a good deal of wry humour expressed at the expense of both sides, as the following extract shows.

scholarly journals Quo Vadis, Homo Viator? / Journeys in Jože Hradil’s Faceless Pictures

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-121
Author(s):  
Zsuzsa Tapodi
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Identity Preservation ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
Identity Shifts

Abstract In Jože Hradil’s Faceless Pictures [Slike brez obrazov] the characters go astray or get into the attraction of adventures and set off for a journey. The spiritual and identity shifts can be interpreted along these eternal human desires as well. A patchwork of remembering and forgetting, the internal journeys of identity preservation, spontaneous or forced assimilation, tolerance and all kinds of politics-induced human deformations are depicted in the novel. The text traces the roles of the journey defined by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant such as the search for justice, peace, immortality and finding the spiritual center. This study examines how the concrete physical journey changes into an internal road determining the evolution of personality.

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