Epistolary Fiction

Author(s):  
Toni Bowers

This chapter focuses on epistolary fiction. In epistolary fiction, stories unfold by means of letters exchanged among fictional correspondents. The governing pretence is that the letters that make up the work represent not fiction at all, but a real-life exchange among correspondents who do not expect their communications ever to become public; only later are the letters collated for publication, often not by the supposed letter writers themselves. Typically written in a moment-by-moment simple past or present progressive tense, stories in epistolary form tend to privilege scenes of intense emotion or suspense, when fictional letter writers are uncertain or confused and the way forward is not clear. There is no controlling narrative voice; the characters who contribute to the telling of the story are themselves trying to determine what particular events mean.

Author(s):  
Garrett Cullity

In Paradise Lost, Satan’s first sight of Eve in Eden renders him “Stupidly good”: his state is one of admirable yet inarticulate responsiveness to reasons. Turning from fiction to real life, this chapter argues that stupid goodness is an important moral phenomenon, but one that has limits. The chapter examines three questions about the relation between having a reason and saying what it is—between normativity and articulacy. Is it possible to have and respond to morally relevant reasons without being able to articulate them? Can moral inarticulacy be good, and if so, what is the value of moral articulacy? And, thirdly, can moral philosophy help us to be good? The chapter argues that morality has an inarticulacy-accepting part, an articulacy-encouraging part, an articulacy-surpassing part, and an articulacy-discouraging part. Along the way, an account is proposed of what it is to respond to the reasons that make up the substance of morality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-192
Author(s):  
Wendy Silver

Purpose Organizations will need HR departments that take bold new approaches if they are to weather the uncertainty and changes on the horizon. This paper aims to discuss what makes an organization or a leader BRAVE, and examples of HR professionals and organizations leading the way are provided to help readers bravely shape their own organizations. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws upon various real-life examples of organizations whose HR departments are leading the way. Findings Organizations need BRAVE HR professionals and leaders to create, implement and communicate key initiatives to ensure companies make decisions that support workplace cultures that people choose to join and remain a part of. Originality/value No amount of technology can replace the forward-thinking thought, communication and action that being BRAVE requires. This paper will help HR professionals gain a braver perspective.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Feli Gonzalez ◽  
David Facal ◽  
Ana Belen Navarro ◽  
Arjan Geven ◽  
Manfred Tscheligi ◽  
...  

The HERMES Cognitive Care and Guidance for Active Aging project proposes an integrated approach to cognitive assistance, promoting the autonomy of elderly users through pervasive technology. This work aims to describe elderly people’s opinions when they are presented scenarios developed in this project. Two focus groups were organized in Austria and Spain with a view to collecting their impressions about the way in which the technological device can cover their needs; complementarily, a second session was conducted including a quantitative questionnaire. Although some participants were reluctant to use the technology, they welcomed some functionalities of the HERMES system and they considered that using them can help them to become familiar with them. Usefulness, usability, and use of real-life information for functionalities such as cognitive games are considered to be key areas of the project. This evaluation has provided the developers of the system with meaningful information to improve it and it guarantees that the system addresses elderly people’s needs.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 134-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Bush

Purpose The No Harm Done films provide hope and give support to those affected by self-harm. The accompanying digital packs dispel myths, answer frequently asked questions, provide practical advice and signpost to further help and support. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach YoungMinds employed its sector-leading expertise in youth and parent engagement. Both the films and digital packs were co-created with young people, parents and professionals, reflecting their real-life experiences of self-harm. Findings The project responded to young people who self-harm telling us they feel isolated, alone, in need of hope and help to counteract the negative and frightening messages widely available online. Parents confided they also feel isolated and that it is their fault their child is harming themselves. Teachers told us they see the signs but cannot bring themselves to say anything, and even if they want to, they cannot find the words to reach out to young people. Originality/value Quote from a professional “I personally found the No Harm Done short films to be incredibly valuable resources for my practice with young people. The way the films have been produced will make it a lot harder for young people that I work with to judge the action of self-harm given that there are no graphic harming words/stories and the films themselves do not come across as triggering. I feel enthusiastic that these films will encourage understanding and empathy from peers and spark conversation enabling those who have no knowledge around self-harm to be more accepting, open and supportive of those who have issues with self-harm.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 30-42
Author(s):  
Barbara Kornacka

The aim of thise paper is to show how the setting out of the narrative voice determines the historical discourse. The analysis of the narrative voice leads to some considerations about memory and to the examination of recollection in these two novels. That, in turn, allows an exploration of the way in which the historical discourse is constructed. In those cases where the voice in the historical discourse is given to subaltern subjects, they contribute to a more plural history.


Author(s):  
Kapil Telang ◽  
Rahul Jain ◽  
Ajoy Sodani ◽  
Prachi Shaw ◽  
Susmit Kosta

The current study was aimed to find out whether the COVID-19 virus is detectable upon the fruits and vegetables after coming in close contact with a patient suffering from nSARS-CoV-2. We included ten subjects, who tested positive for nSARS-CoV-2 RNA within seven days of the experiment. After explaining the experiment, a tray filled with seasonal vegetables and fruits were placed in front of them. The tray remained within their reach, for next thirty minutes. The subjects were requested to remove their face masks and remain so throughout the task. They were requested to manipulate the food articles the way they liked. Subjects were instructed to cough into their hands and then to manipulate each item at least 5 times, during the experiment. Thereafter, the trays were moved into an open and shaded area with free flow of natural air but no direct sunlight. After 1-hour, swabs were taken from surfaces of items by thoroughly rubbing over each of them. Samples were sent immediately to our RT-PCR lab. The nSARS-CoV-2 RNA was not detected, from the samples collected from the fruit/vegetable, at the end of one hour of the direct exposure to the COVID-19 patients. Our results suggest, even after direct exposure to and significant handling by the COVID-19 patients the nSARS-CoV-2 RNA remains undetected after one hour of storage in open. The fruits and vegetables, in real-life situations, are unlikely to act as a fomite and play any significant role in the spread of this disease.


Author(s):  
Irina Kulikovskaya ◽  
Liudmila Kudinova ◽  
Maria Guryeva ◽  
AF AF
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Kathrin Deventer

Festivals have been around, and will always be around; no matter the political context they are embedded in, supported by, or hindered by. Why? Simply because society develops, it transforms, it is dynamic and it needs space for reflection and inspiration. Festivals are platforms for people to meet, and for artists to present their work, their creations. This gives festivals an enduring, quite independent mission and reason to exist: as long as festivals strive to offer a biotope for artists and audiences alike and point to questions which concern the way we live and want to live, they will be a fertile ground for a meaningful development of society – and an offer for serving the public wellbeing. What are the challenges festivals are facing today? There are a series of very complex questions related to festivals’ positioning us as human beings in an interconnected, global society, our relation to nature and the immediate surroundings, our stories of life so that as many citizens as possible can be part of the societal discourse, can be enriched, can be touched, can be heard, can be moved. Individuals, interest groups, nationalities, countries, even continents are interconnected. What does this mean for a festival? Travelling across Europe for work and pleasure and meeting citizens from all walks of life has taught me that citizens, a term that connects individuals to some larger constructed community, are just people, everyday people, going about their lives. People connect with other humans and their human stories, real life encounters. Abstract theory and jargon are meaningless when they lack real life connections. Meaningful festivals of the future will offer possibilities for new connections among people: they invite people to travel in time and in space; they inspire to connect human stories, enriching them with new, unexpected, colourful stories!


2018 ◽  
pp. 67-108
Author(s):  
Erin Michael Salius

Chapter 2 focuses on another trope that upsets the realist and rationalist discourse of slavery: spirit possession. Whereas existing scholarship stresses the postmodernist resonances of this trope, the chapter argues that Catholicism serves to frame—and even to facilitate—the antirealist effect that spirit possession has on two contemporary narratives of slavery. First is Ernest Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which is one of the earliest examples of the genre and a novel rarely associated with either spirit possession or Catholicism. By highlighting where Jane’s narrative voice is possessed by other speakers, this chapter documents how the Catholic characters in the novel enable it to engage radically antirealist views about history without ultimately endorsing them. The second part of the chapter focuses on Leon Forrest’s critically acclaimed but insufficiently studied novel Two Wings to Veil My Face, which also figures storytelling as a kind of spirit possession. Despite its obvious skepticism towards organized religion, the novel depicts these spiritual intercessions as Catholic sacraments: rituals of eating and drinking that recall the Eucharist. Thus, Catholicism is implicated in the way the narrator remembers slavery and in the parts of his history that are “beyond understanding.”


Author(s):  
Felicity Chaplin

La Parisienne is frequently associated with prostitution, whether in the narrow sense of the streetwalker or courtesan or the general sense of the object and subject of consumption. Tracing her development in nineteenth-century art and literature, this chapter examines the way the Parisienne as courtesan is re-presented in cinema in Charles Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923), Alain Cavalier’s La Chamade (1968), and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001). Cinematic courtesans have their prefigurations in both real life courtesans of the Second Empire, as well as in representations in French art, literature, and visual culture (Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Balzac, Zola, Dumas fils). Motifs associated with the Parisienne courtesan include the familiar tropes associated with Paris as a demimonde: desire, pleasure, and consumption. Alongside these tropes are the visual and narrative motifs on which the iconography of the Parisienne courtesan is based: fashion or style (often conceived to denote luxury and leisure), transformation (usually from provincial to high class), ambiguity (insofar as her class origins, motivations, and emotional allegiances are generally obscure), and the ménage à trois (films featuring Parisienne courtesans often involve the choice between an earnest but poor lover and a rich benefactor).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document