European Language and the Resistance

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-128
Author(s):  
Julia Elsky

This chapter looks at language choice within the context of Franco-Polish relations in the Resistance in Romain Gary’s novel Éducation européenne. It draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia to analyze characters who speak in multiple languages but whom Gary represents in French. Gary’s use of heteroglossic French and of multilingualism in the novel is a response to the politics of La France libre, the journal where excerpts from his novel were first published. French and Polish authors of numerous articles focus on links between France and Poland—especially through a shared history of Romantic Revolution—as an expression of European democracy, one that could pave the way for a united Europe in the postwar period. Gary represents this link through language, but he also inserts Jewish language into the discussion, including the Jewish people in a European Resistance.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-83
Author(s):  
Sorcha De Brún

Abstract The publication of the Irish-language translation of Dracula in 1933 by Seán Ó Cuirrín was a landmark moment in the history of Irish-language letters. This article takes as its starting point the idea that language is a central theme in Dracula. However, the representation of Transylvania in the translation marked a departure from Bram Stoker’s original. A masterful translation, one of its most salient features is Ó Cuirrín’s complex use of the Irish language, particularly in relation to Eastern European language, character, and landscapes. The article examines Ó Cuirrín’s prose and will explore how his approaches to concrete and abstract elements of the novel affect plot, character, and narration. The first section explores how Dracula is treated by Ó Cuirrín in the Irish translation and how this impacts the Count’s persona and his identity as Transylvanian. Through Ó Cuirrín’s use of idiom, alliteration, and proverb, it will be shown how Dracula’s character is reimagined, creating a more nuanced narrative than the original. The second section shows how Ó Cuirrín translates Jonathan Harker’s point of view in relation to Dracula. It shows that, through the use of figurative language, Ó Cuirrín develops the gothic element to Dracula’s character. The article then examines Ó Cuirrín’s translations of Transylvanian landscapes and soundscapes. It will show how Ó Cuirrín’s translation matched Stoker’s original work to near perfection, but with additional poetic techniques, and how Ó Cuirrín created a soundscape of horror throughout the entirety of the translation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farzad Sharifian ◽  
Mehri Bagheri

Abstract This paper explores conceptualisations of xoshbaxti (‘happiness / prosperity’) and baxt (‘fate / luck’) in Persian, adopting a combined historical and contemporary analysis. The expression xoshbaxti consists of the free morphemes xosh (‘pleasant’) and baxt (‘fate’). The root of baxt originates from the Proto-Indo-European language (bʰeh₂g). An historical analysis returning all the way to the Proto-Indo-Iranian religion shows that the concept of baxt captured the idea of a pre-determined destiny by conceptualising Bhaga as a god who dispenses fortune. Data from a number of Persian encyclopaedias, dictionaries and weblogs, as well as a word association task carried out by a group of speakers of Persian, revealed that xoshbaxti in contemporary Persian is largely associated with what is considered to be a “good” married life. Overall, the findings of this study illustrate the usefulness of combining diachronic and synchronic approaches when analysing cultural conceptualisations. The study also shows that attempts to trace the historical roots of cultural conceptualisations may benefit from insights gained in other fields, such as the history of religions. In this context, the multidisciplinary nature of the newly developed field of Cultural Linguistics provides an effective basis for cross-disciplinary openness, which has the potential to deepen the scope of analyses undertaken.


2020 ◽  
pp. 372-388
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Czyżak

The article contains considerations regarding memory of the Holocaust in Polish contemporary prose and analyses the arguments for and against fictitious representations of theShoah. The author discusses the changes in treating fiction which narrates the history of Jewish people during the Second World War – from works of fiction published after the war (e.g. Wielki Tydzień by Jerzy Andrzejewski) to popular thrillers written in the 21st century. The main part of this article is devoted to a novel Tworki written by Marek Bieńczyk in 1999, telling a story of young people – Poles and Jews – employed in a mental hospital during German occupation. The novel was at the centre stage of discussion about relationship between fiction and the Shoah theme, yet the author of the article argues that it may serve as an important stepping stone in exemplifying history. This literary vision of the Holocaust (defined as “pastoral thriller”) shows educational possibilities of fiction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swagata Sinha Roy ◽  
◽  
Kavitha Subaramaniam ◽  

If one has not read local English novels like The Garden of Evening Mists and The Night Tiger, one would never be able to imagine the wonders of locales depicted in these two books. One of the reasons the authors here want to visit a said destination is because of the way a certain place is pictured in narratives. Tan Twan Eng brings to life the beauty of Japanese gardens in Cameron Highlands, in the backdrop of postWorld War II while Yangsze Choo takes us into several small towns of Kinta Valley in the state of Perak in her beautifully woven tale of the superstitions and beliefs of the local people in Chinese folklore and myth in war torn Malaysia in the 1930s and after. Many of the places mentioned in these two novels should be considered places to visit by tourists local and international. Although these Malaysian novelists live away from Malaysia, they are clearly ambassadors of the Malaysian cultural and regional heritage. In this paper, a few of the places in the novel will be looked at as potential spots for the coming decade. The research questions considered here are i) what can be done to make written narratives the new trend to pave the way for Visit Malaysia destinations? ii) how could these narratives be promoted as guides to the history and culture of Malaysia? The significant destinations and the relevant cultural history of the regions will be discussed in-depth to come to a relevant conclusion.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-255
Author(s):  
James Bernauer

This essay rescues the memory of Jesuit partisanship for Jews and Judaism from a widespread indifference, both scholarly and popular. This memory complicates a long history of Jesuit hostility to Jews and is at the source of a new inter-religious identity for Jesuits. Jesuit rescuers of Jews during the period of the Holocaust crossed traditional borders in embracing a reverence and respect for Jews and Judaism. Both German Jesuit and French Jesuit resistance to Nazism are examined. The Jesuit righteous and resisters formed a spiritual alliance with such important scholars as Augustin Cardinal Bea, Joseph Bonsirven and Henri de Lubac. The witness of the former and the scholarship of the latter prepared the way for the April 24, 1960 petition from the Jesuit Biblical Institute in Rome that requested a declaration on the Jewish People from the Vatican Council, the first institution to make such an appeal to the council fathers. The council’s adoption of Nostra aetate with its reshaping of the relationship between Catholics and Jews was one of the most significant outcomes of this rebellion of the righteous.


1964 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Elwood

Female playwrights of varying degrees of quality were reasonably plentiful in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century England; but, except for Eliza Haywood, few of these playwrights doubled as actresses, at least with sufficient success for us to be aware of their talents. Even the stage career of Mrs. Haywood, one extending at least from 1715 to 1737, has not been documented in its entirety before now. It deserves attention because it adds some details to the scanty biography of this woman who is best known as a novelist, a novelist who turned out scandal chronicles long before Richardson made the novel morally acceptable, and who in 1751 produced what may be the first domestic novel in English,The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. Along the way she had some success as a publisher, as the first woman writer of a periodical for women, as a poet, and as a playwright and actress. It was her efforts in the theater that drew the attention of such men as Jonathan Swift and Richard Savage and brought her into a rather lengthy association with Henry Fielding. And it was her theatrical experience that contributed much to her eventual skill as a novelist. She liked the stage, and much of what we like in her later work she owed to the stage.


Text Matters ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 205-217
Author(s):  
Adam Sumera

Waterland (1992), directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal on the basis of the screenplay by Peter Prince, is a film adaptation of Graham Swift’s novel under the same title, published in 1983. The book could be called unfilmable although the history of cinema knows examples of successful screenings of apparently unfilmable novels, e.g., The French Lieutenant’s Woman. In the case of Swift’s novel, the main potential difficulties could be seen in its wide scope, its intricate mosaic character, and its style. The article analyzes the changes introduced in the adaptation, including the shift of the contemporary action from Greenwich, England to the American city of Pittsburgh. The way of connecting the present with the past by means of “time travel” is discussed. Consequences for possible interpretation resulting from omitting certain elements of the book and introducing new material as well as changing the order of presentation of some of the scenes are shown. Comments on the film are juxtaposed with interpretations of some aspects of the novel taken from key critical texts on Swift’s book. Also specifically cinematic solutions present in Gyllenhaal’s movie are taken into account.


Nordlit ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Hanna Maria Hofmann

The novel Berge Meere und Giganten was written in 1924. I would like to focus my attention on the 7th book in the novel, whose title is Die Enteisung Grönlands (The Melting of the Polar Ice in Greenland). To begin with, I will give a short summary of what the novel is about. The project to melt Greenland's polar ice forms the culmination of a history of the whole of humanity running from the 20th century all the way until the 27th century. Using all their military and technological might, the heat of the Icelandic volcanoes is captured in solid form and transported by ship to the Arctic. With the help of a gigantic net, this heat is then unloaded on to Greenland, thus melting its ice. Greenland ‘strikes back' however, firstly by casting a magical spell. My central thesis is that Döblin`s Greenland fiction is about the destruction of the myth of Greenland and that this ultimately documents a crisis of the mythological itself. 


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
GISÉLLE RAZERA

Resumo: Este trabalho deriva da análise do livro Pantera no Porão, de Amós Oz, sob o prisma do ensaio “Mal-estar na Civilização”, de Sigmund Freud, e do livro As origens do to-talitarismo, de Hanna Arendt. Além disso, tem na obra Holocausto, história dos judeus na Europa na Segunda Guerra Mundial, de Martin Gilbert, o texto que embasa a contextuali-zação do chão histórico sobre as condições de vida do povo judeu no Velho Continente e no artigo “O Estado de Israel: fundamentos históricos” a fundamentação que visa descrever o processo de formação do Estado de Israel. A abordagem apresentada neste artigo busca dar evidência ao modo como a perseguição aos judeus – descrita por Arendt e Gilbert, além dos pressupostos de Freud – está representada nas páginas de Pantera no porão, narrativa que tem como pano de fundo a fixação da comunidade judaica em terras árabes. Palavras-chave: Amós Oz – Pantera no Porão – Holocausto – Totalitarismo – Israel. Abstract: Panther in the Basement: totalitarianism, persecution, malaise and experience This work is derived from the analysis of Amos Oz's Panther in the Basement, under the prism of Sigmund Freud's essay "Malaise in Civilization" and Hanna Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism. In addition to the history of the Jews in Europe in World War II, by Martin Gilbert, the text of the Holocaust, the history of the Jewish people in the Old Conti-nent and the article "The State of Israel: Historical grounds" the grounds for describing the process of formation of the State of Israel. The approach presented in this ar-ticle seeks to give evidence to the way in which the persecution of the Jews – described by Arendt and Gilbert, in addition to the assumptions of Freud – is represented in the pages of Pantera in the basement, narrative that has as background the fixation of the Jewish com-munity in Arab lands. Keywords: Amos Oz - Panther in the Basement - Holocaust - Totalitarianism – Israel.


1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 756-786
Author(s):  
Alfredo Mordechai Rabello

This article is dedicated to the memory of my friend, Professor Ze'ev Falk teacher and researcher, who always displayed a great interest in the history of the Jewish People.Foreword: The Jews had been living in Spain since the Roman period, when Spain became part of the Roman Empire. Much later, Spain was conquered by the Visigoths. King Alaric II (484–507) enacted a code based largely on the Theodosian Code (438), namely the Breviarium Alaricianum (506), of which many laws dealt with the Jews. During this period the Visigoths were Arian and their treatment of the Jews was relatively good. In this article I shall examine the way Visigothic Catholic Spain dealt with the Jews and Judaism.


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