“The Glorious Impossible”

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Michael O’Connell

Alice McDermott’s work is often cited as being an exemplar of the best that contemporary Catholic literature has to offer, and yet sustained close readings of her fiction are lacking. In this essay, I discuss how her work fits in the larger conversation about contemporary literature of belief, focusing on her novels Charming Billy and Someone. In Charming Billy, McDermott connects the act of storytelling to the practice of belief, emphasizing how what we choose to believe affects how we act. In Someone, she uses the form of the novel to depict the patterns of grace that are present in our life, whether we are consciously aware of them or not. Both novels allow for the possibility of the divine presence at work in the world, but her characters’ struggles over what to believe and how to act on these beliefs reflect the tensions of faith in the modern age.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-39
Author(s):  
Dibaranjan Mondal

The present paper attempts to focus the model of contesting modernities dealing with conceptual problems rather than the importance of logic and science. The Home and the World (1916), written by Rabindanath Tagore, a fictional autobiographical novel can be read as the model of contesting modernities. In the research article, it is an attempt to explore the textual responses to contesting forms of modernity in abstract ideas about the issues of nation and gender in the context of Swadeshi Bengal in the early decades of twentieth century. After re-reading the text, it can be applied to the larger question of formation of nation and true nationalist and liberty of women. The novel grows out of the anti-partition Swadeshi movement, the issues of the home and the world, the tradition and the modern approach of life. The novel focuses the battle of ideas between western culture and revolution against the western culture in colonial period. Two protagonists of the novel such as Nikhilesh and Sandip in the novel represents two kinds of ideas in the light of the spirit of the Modern age as revealed in Sabuj Patra. From their ideas reveal two types of nationalists’ project. Nationalism always can be viewed as a process of cultural invention. Nikhilesh is a logical man and supports for non-violence. He likes true mental freedom that can be achieved by the projects of nationalism full of humanism. At the other hand, Sandip prefers to aggressive political freedom and power after grabbing over other nations and national resources. Bimala, third protagonist, is ultimately disillusioned to the nationalist project of Sandip about the emancipation of gender. So Modernity, the recreated form of culture can be viewed with humanistic features such as love, co-operation, sympathy, sacrifice etc.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Liudmyla Harmash

The article reveals some features of postmodern aesthetics that were borrowed by modern literature from romantics, and are now undergoing a period of criticism. It is shown how a fiction reflects the continuity between contemporary literature and previous literary phenomena, which consists in the perception, transformation, and critical rethinking of aesthetic ideas and concepts. For this purpose, the genesis of Norminton’s novel Arts and Wonders was traced and a literary technique such as ekphrasis, that means a verbal description of a painting, was researched. An analysis of the two most significant ekphrasises – Vertumn and The Librarian – showed that the author of the novel raises the problem of copy or plagiarism, which today has gained particular relevance both in the world of art and in the academic environment. It was showed that Norminton solves this issue by referring to the traditional concept of mimesis. Despite the declaration of the need to imitate nature, Arts and Wonders demonstrates that the contemporary author asserts his right to free creative imagination, including the interpretation of historical facts and figures. The literary text refers to the artifacts which are presented in the arsenal of culture that are freely combined according to a kaleidoscope principle. Raising the question of the dialectical unity of such aesthetic categories as “beauty” and “ugliness”, Norminton enters into a polemic with the forerunner of postmodernism – romanticism. At the same time, the writer also poses questions about the correlation in the artist’s work of parts and the whole, about the need to achieve a balance of proportions between the elements that make up a work of art. Determining the genre originality of the novel, the author of the article concludes that it is a complex synthetic form that combines the features of picaresque novel, a biographical novel, a travel book, a historical novel, an artist's novel, and a Bildungsroman, which as a result forms a new genre variety – an adventure novel about the artist.


2020 ◽  
pp. 21-33

Chronotope is being concerned as the literary-aesthetic category in the world literature critical studies, expressing the scope of the universe interpretation, the author’s outlook and imagination regarding the world foundation, defining personages, the composition means of expressing the sequence and duration of the events. In the following development of the scientific-theoretical thought in the world, a chronotope is accepted to be one of the poetic means to demonstrate the reality as well as to be a literary process that is basic for the expression of the reality in the compositional construction and illustration of the plot relying on the writer’s intention and the ideological conception of the literary work. The chronotope enables to cognate the literary world picture created by the author in terms of the descriptive subject and object of the work. Some of the topical tasks of contemporary literature are to analyse the fictional epic real evidences comparatively, typologically and individually in the writers' works exist in the same time and space, in the same space and different time, in the same time and different spaces. The aim of the research is to generalize the chronotope forms scientific-analytically, comparative-typologically and theoretical on the examples of Chingiz Aitmatov's "The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years".


Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter

Hieroglyphs have persisted for so long in the Western imagination because of the malleability of their metaphorical meanings. Emblems of readability and unreadability, universality and difference, writing and film, writing and digital media, hieroglyphs serve to encompass many of the central tensions in understandings of race, nation, language and media in the twentieth century. For Pound and Lindsay, they served as inspirations for a more direct and universal form of writing; for Woolf, as a way of treating the new medium of film and our perceptions of the world as a kind of language. For Conrad and Welles, they embodied the hybridity of writing or the images of film; for al-Hakim and Mahfouz, the persistence of links between ancient Pharaonic civilisation and a newly independent Egypt. For Joyce, hieroglyphs symbolised the origin point for the world’s cultures and nations; for Pynchon, the connection between digital code and the novel. In their modernist interpretations and applications, hieroglyphs bring together writing and new media technologies, language and the material world, and all the nations and languages of the globe....


IJOHMN ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Abhishek Verma

In the modern age of globalization and modernization, people have become selfish and self-centered.  Feeling of sympathy and kindness towards poor people have almost bolted from the hearts of those who have richly available resources.  They leave needy people running behind their luxurious chauffer-driven cars.  Poor and marginalized people keep shouting for help for their dear ones but upper class people trying to show as if they did not hear any long distant sound crept into their eardrums.  This trauma, agony, pain and sufferings is explored in the novel, The Foreigner.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-356
Author(s):  
Anca Sîrbu

AbstractWith the rapid onset of an unprecedented lifestyle due to the new coronavirus COVID-19 the world academic scene was forced to reform and adapt to the novel circumstances. Although online education cannot be regarded as a groundbreaking endeavour anymore in the21st century, its current character of exclusivity calls for deeper understanding of, and a sharper focus on the “end-consumer” thereof as well as more cautious procedures to be exercised while teaching. While millennials are no longer thought of as being born with a silver spoon in their mouth but with an iPad or any sort of device in their hand (irrespective of their social status), adults are more hesitant when coerced to alter course unexpectedly and turn to new methods of attaining their learning goals. This is why proper communicative approaches need to be thoroughly considered by online instructors. This article aims at presenting teachers with a set of strategies to employ when the beneficiaries of online academic education are adult learners.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Rana Sağıroğlu

Margaret Atwood, one of the most spectacular authors of postmodern movement, achieved to unite debatable and in demand critical points of 21st century such as science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism in the novel The Year of The Flood written in 2009. The novel could be regarded as an ecocritical manifesto and a dystopic mirror against today’s degenerated world, tending to a superficial base to keep the already order in use, by moving away from the fundamental solution of all humanity: nature. Although Atwood does not want her works to be called science fiction, it is obvious that science fiction plays an introductory role and gives the novel a ground explaining all ‘why’ questions of the novel. However, Atwood is not unjust while claiming that her works are not science fiction because of the inevitable rapid change of 21st century world becoming addicted to technology, especially Internet. It is easily observed by the reader that what she fictionalises throughout the novel is quite close to possibility, and the world may witness in the near future what she creates in the novel as science fiction. Additionally, postmodernism serves to the novel as the answerer of ‘how’ questions: How the world embraces pluralities, how heterogeneous social order is needed, and how impossible to run the world by dichotomies of patriarchal social order anymore. And lastly, ecocriticism gives the answers of ‘why’ questions of the novel: Why humanity is in chaos, why humanity has organized the world according to its own needs as if there were no living creatures apart from humanity. Therefore, The Year of The Flood meets the reader as a compact embodiment of science fiction, postmodernism and ecocriticism not only with its theme, but also with its narrative techniques.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Micael Davi Lima de Oliveira ◽  
Kelson Mota Teixeira de Oliveira

According to the World Health Organisation, until 16 June, 2020, the number of confirmed and notified cases of COVID-19 has already exceeded 7.9 million with approximately 434 thousand deaths worldwide. This research aimed to find repurposing antagonists, that may inhibit the activity of the main protease (Mpro) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as partially modulate the ACE2 receptors largely found in lung cells, and reduce viral replication by inhibiting Nsp12 RNA polymerase. Docking molecular simulations were performed among a total of 60 structures, most of all, published in the literature against the novel coronavirus. The theoretical results indicated that, in comparative terms, paritaprevir, ivermectin, ledipasvir, and simeprevir, are among the most theoretical promising drugs in remission of symptoms from the disease. Furthermore, also corroborate indinavir to the high modulation in viral receptors. The second group of promising drugs includes remdesivir and azithromycin. The repurposing drugs HCQ and chloroquine were not effective in comparative terms to other drugs, as monotherapies, against SARS-CoV-2 infection.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 1198-1201
Author(s):  
Syed Yasir Afaque

In December 2019, a unique coronavirus infection, SARS-CoV-2, was first identified in the province of Wuhan in China. Since then, it spread rapidly all over the world and has been responsible for a large number of morbidity and mortality among humans. According to a latest study, Diabetes mellitus, heart diseases, Hypertension etc. are being considered important risk factors for the development of this infection and is also associated with unfavorable outcomes in these patients. There is little evidence concerning the trail back of these patients possibly because of a small number of participants and people who experienced primary composite outcomes (such as admission in the ICU, usage of machine-driven ventilation or even fatality of these patients). Until now, there are no academic findings that have proven independent prognostic value of diabetes on death in the novel Coronavirus patients. However, there are several conjectures linking Diabetes with the impact as well as progression of COVID-19 in these patients. The aim of this review is to acknowledge about the association amongst Diabetes and the novel Coronavirus and the result of the infection in such patients.


2013 ◽  
pp. 174-183
Author(s):  
Piotr Sadkowski

Throughout the centuries French and Francophone writers were relatively rarely inspired by the figure of Moses and the story of Exodus. However, since the second half of 20th c. the interest of the writers in this Old Testament story has been on the rise: by rewriting it they examine the question of identity dilemmas of contemporary men. One of the examples of this trend is Moïse Fiction, the 2001 novel by the French writer of Jewish origin, Gilles Rozier, analysed in the present article. The hypertextual techniques, which result in the proximisation of the figure of Moses to the reality of the contemporary reader, constitute literary profanation, but at the same time help place Rozier’s text in the Jewish tradition, in the spirit of talmudism understood as an exchange of views, commentaries, versions and additions related to the Torah. It is how the novel, a new “midrash”, avoids the simple antinomy of the concepts of the sacred and the profane. Rozier’s Moses, conscious of his complex identity, is simultaneously a Jew and an Egyptian, and faces, like many contemporary Jewish writers, language dilemmas, which constitute one of the major motifs analysed in the present article. Another key question is the ethics of the prophetism of the novelistic Moses, who seems to speak for contemporary people, doomed to in the world perceived as chaos unsupervised by an absolute being. Rozier’s agnostic Moses is a prophet not of God (who does not appear in the novel), but of humanism understood as the confrontation of a human being with the absurdity of his or her own finiteness, which produces compassion for the other, with whom the fate of a mortal is shared.


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