Waterways as Landmarks, Challenges, and Barriers for Medieval Protagonists

2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-467
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

Abstract In light of recent ecocritical approaches to literary analysis, this paper endeavors to analyze how creeks, rivers, and other waterways function in a variety of medieval and early modern texts. As the discussion of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and Titurel, of the Nibelungenlied, Njál’s Saga, Dante’s Inferno, and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron indicates, the inclusion of creeks or rivers within the narrative context indicates that major events are to occur in the protagonist’s life. Life and death are determined by the experiences at, on, or even in the river. Even if the poets do not necessarily discuss the waterways as such in their geophysical properties and dimensions, the consistent reference to and inclusion of rivers in those literary works illustrates the true extent to which pre-modern poets were already fully aware of the epistemological function which waterways could carry in human life.

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Jerzy Święch

Summary Adam Ważyk’s last volume of poems Zdarzenia (Events) (1977) can be read as a resume of the an avant-garde artist’s life that culminated in the discovery of a new truth about the human condition. The poems reveal his longing for a belief that human life, the mystery of life and death, makes sense, ie. that one’s existence is subject to the rule of some overarching necessity, opened onto the last things, rather than a plaything of chance. That entails a rejection of the idea of man’s self-sufficiency as an illusion, even though that kind of individual sovereignty was the cornerstone of modernist art. The art of late modernity, it may be noted, was already increasingly aware of the dangers of putting man’s ‘ontological security’ at risk. Ważyk’s last volume exemplifies this tendency although its poems appear to remain within the confines of a Cubist poetics which he himself helped to establish. In fact, however, as our readings of the key poems from Events make clear, he employs his accustomed techniques for a new purpose. The shift of perspective can be described as ‘metaphysical’, not in any strict sense of the word, but rather as a shorthand indicator of the general mood of these poems, filled with events which seem to trap the characters into a supernatural order of things. The author sees that much, even though he does not look with the eye of a man of faith. It may be just a game - and Ważyk was always fond of playing games - but in this one the stakes are higher than ever. Ultimately, this game is about salvation. Ważyk is drawn into it by a longing for the wholeness of things and a dissatisfaction with all forms of mediation, including the Cubist games of deformation and fragmentation of the object. It seems that the key to Ważyk’s late phase is to be found in his disillusionment with the twentieth-century avant-gardes. Especially the poems of Events contain enough clues to suggest that the promise of Cubism and surrealism - which he sought to fuse in his poetic theory and practice - was short-lived and hollow.


Jurnal KATA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Nanny Sri Lestari

<p>Sebuah peristiwa, dalam kehidupan manusia, dapat menjadi inspirasi bagi penulisan sebuah cerita. Pengarang, sebagai bagian dari masyarakatnya, mengangkat relung-relung kehidupan manusia, ke dalam sebuah cerita. Namun harus dipahami, bahwa pengalaman pengarang dalam kehidupannya sehari-hari, juga mempengaruhi subjek yang ditulisnya. Saat ini tidak dapat dipungkiri lagi, bahwa teknologi komunikasi yang sangat canggih, telah mempengaruhi perkembangan karya sastra. Media penulisan karya sastra, tidak lagi melalui media cetak seperti kertas tetapi sudah melalui peralatan modern yang sesuai jamannya. Namun demikian ragam karya sastra prosa, seperti cerita pendek, justru mampu mengisi ruang media kommunikasi tersebut. Dua orang pengarang, yang menulis cerita pendek di media masa, berusaha mengangkat isu tentang lingkungan. Isu yang diangkat, lebih menekankan kepada masalah lingkungan alam dengan mengangkat isu tentang pohon sebagai bagian dari kehidupan manusia. Tujuan penelitian ini, untuk menelusuri struktur cerita pendek yang mengangkat isu lingkungan dalam jalinan ceritanya. Untuk memenuhi tujuan penelitian, langkah awal dari penelitian ini, adalah melakukan pendekatan struktur cerita, yang kemudian dikaitkan dengan pencarian makna cerita tersebut. Sering sekali di balik sebuah cerita ada pesan yang ingin disampaikan kepada masyarakat pembacanya. Bentuk pesan tersebut tersirat, dalam jalinan struktur cerita pendek tersebut. Pesan yang disampaikan, dalam kedua cerita pendek tersebut,  adalah pesan tentang lingkungan alam, yang  saat ini tidak pernah diperhatikan oleh masyarakat. Dengan alasan, kebutuhan ekonomi yang sangat dominan.</p><p><em>An event, in human life, can be an inspiration for writing a story. The author, as a part of his society, lifts the niches of human life, into a story. But it must be understood, that the author's experience in everyday life, also affects the subject he wrote.</em><em> </em><em>Today it is undeniable, that highly sophisticated communication technology, has influenced the development of literary works. Media writing literature, no longer through print media such as paper but have been through modern equipment that fit his era.</em><em> </em><em>However, the variety of prose literary works, such as short stories, is able to fill the media space communications. Two authors, who write short stories in the mass media, try to raise issues about the environment. Issues raised, more emphasis on the issue of the natural environment by raising the issue, about the tree as part of human life. The purpose of this research, is to trace the structure of short stories, which raised environmental issues in the composition of the story. To fulfill the purpose of research, the first step of this research, is to approach the structure of the story, which is then linked with the search for the meaning of the story. Very often, behind a story, there is a message to be conveyed to the readers. The form of the message is implied, in the composition of the short story structure. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society. The message conveyed, in both short stories, is a message about the natural environment, which today is never noticed by society.</em></p>


Author(s):  
Jana Bennett

This chapter places Catholic teaching on questions of life and death against the background of a Catholic vision of salvation history, emphasizing that Catholics see no necessary opposition between Christian faith and progress in scientific understanding of the creation. The chapter then considers questions concerning abortion, contraception, and techniques for artificial reproduction. The second half of the chapter focuses on questions concerning death. Catholic teaching views human life in this world as finite, and thus sees death as intrinsic to the current human condition. After considering Catholic teaching on euthanasia, the chapter considers Catholic discussion of war, the death penalty, and care for the environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 86-117
Author(s):  
Mark G. Altshuller ◽  

The Little Tragedies and Belkin’s Tales were written at the same time. In the former, Pushkin examines the main, eternal, and insoluble confl icts of existence: love and death, life and death, inspiration and hard work, youth and old age. These confl icts are tragic, and are in principle insoluble, for humanity. Their collision constitutes the very essence of human life and of human civilization. But — according to Pushkin — what is insoluble for humanity as a whole might be, at least partly, resolved by way of a compromise, when it comes to individual human lives. This is what Belkin’s Tales are about.


Author(s):  
David Benatar

The Human Predicament engages life’s big questions. Are our lives meaningless? Is death bad? Would immortality be better? Alternatively, should we hasten our deaths by acts of suicide? Many people are tempted to offer comforting, optimistic answers to these existential questions. The Human Predicament offers a less sanguine assessment and defends a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism. It is argued that while our lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the insignificant beings that we fear we are. There is no point to human life as a whole, and individual human lives have no cosmic purpose. Nor is meaning the only way in which our lives are deficient. A candid appraisal reveals that the quality of life, although less bad for some people than for others, leaves much to be desired in even the best cases. Death, however, is not generally the solution. It exacerbates rather than mitigates our cosmic meaninglessness. It can release us from suffering but even when it does, it imposes another cost—annihilation. The human predicament is thus forged by both life and death. This unfortunate state of affairs has nuanced implications for how we should think about immortality and suicide, which are also discussed in The Human Predicament.


Author(s):  
Henry M. Parsons

A “systems study of mankind” should incorporate analyses of the cost/effectiveness of life and human factors analyses of death. Various methods have been adopted for placing a dollar value on human life. Human factors studies can attempt to prevent loss of life in vehicular accidents, incorporate the number of lives saved as a criterion of the benefits of improvements in defense systems, examine the nature of behavior governed by deterrence, and investigate some of the complexities of population control. Systematic investigation might also be conducted into the parameters of death. An ecological projection suggests that a nuclear war may occur to counteract the disequilibrium of nature resulting from technology, including the population explosion.


Author(s):  
Maggie Vinter

Last Acts: The Art of Dying on the Early Modern Stage argues that the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater offered playwrights, actors, and audiences important opportunities to practice arts of dying. Early modern plays also engage with devotional traditions that understand death less as an occasion for suffering or grieving than as an action to be performed, well or badly. Active deaths belie the narratives of helplessness and loss most often used to analyze representations of mortality and instead suggest ways that marginalized and constrained subjects might participate in the political, social, and economic management of life. Some of these strategies for dying resonate with ecclesiastical forms or with descriptions of biopolitics within the recent work of Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. Yet the art of dying is not solely a discipline imposed upon recalcitrant subjects. Since it offers suffering individuals a way to enact their deaths on their own terms, it discloses both political and dramatic action in their most minimal manifestations. Rather than mournfully marking what we cannot recover, the practice of dying reveals what we can do, even in death. By analyzing representations of dying in plays by writers including Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson alongside both devotional texts and contemporary biopolitical theory, Last Acts shows how theater reflects, enables, and contests the politicization of life and death.


Tekstualia ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (39) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
Tomasz Bocheński

The article examines the differences between black humour in the work of André Breton and the reinterpretation of this category in contemporary Polish literature. For Breton, the aesthetic of black humour was a blasphemous gesture against the mediocrity of culture and society, against a sentimental approach to life and death. By contrast, recent conteptualizations of black humour are often linked with the carnivalesque and ironic aspects of culture, which are interpreted as a sign of forgetting about the nonsense of existence and death. The literary works by authors like Manuela Gretkowska, Krzysztof Varga and Ignacy Karpowicz only confi rm these observations. The article is also concerned with the writings by Zbigniew Kruszyński, Wiesław Myśliwski and Magdalena Tulli, whose uses of black humour signify resistance against trivialization of eschatological issues.


2017 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 611-622
Author(s):  
Dorota Żygadło-Czopnik

Old age: socio-cultural anti-phenomenonin the literary works of Jiřina ŠiklováJiřina Šiklová is a Czech sociologist and writer. She published under different names, mainly abroad. In the times of the former regime she was persecuted and imprisoned. She wrote anumber of bestselling books: Deník staré paní 2003, Dopisy vnučce 2007, Matky po e-mailu 2009, Stoupenci proměn 2012, Vyhoštěná smrt 2013. Books of this Czech writer haven’t been translated yet into Polish. From the perspective of an old woman she presents old age as a specific moment in human life. Šiklová writes akind of adiary in which she speaks about the current situation brought to her by life. In her books, the writer solves problems between grandparents and grandchildren as well as the issues of asixty year old woman taking care of her octogenarian mother. Šiklová provides an independent reaction to the problems of aging society. She teaches her readers to accept old age, not only as loss of strength, but as atime belonging to the fullness of human life. At the same time in avery business like manner and with no sentiment she offers a number of steps that can help in old age.Stáří — sociálnĕ-kulturní antifenoménv literární tvorbĕ Jiřiny ŠiklovéJiřina Šiklová je česká socioložka apublicistka. Publikovala pod různými jmény, především v zahraničí. Za minulého režimu byla pronásledovaná avězněná. Napsala nĕkolik literárních bestsellerů: Deník staré paní 2003, Dopisy vnučce 2007, Matky po e-mailu 2009, Stoupenci proměn 2012, Vyhoštěná smrt 2013. Knihy české spisovatelky ještĕ nebyly přeložené do polštiny. Z pohledu staré ženy popisuje stáří jako specifický moment v životĕ človĕka. Šiklová píše svého druhu deník, ve kterém hovoří oaktuálních situacích, které jí život přináší. Spisovatelka v knihách řeší problémy mezi prarodiči avnoučaty nebo starosti šedesátileté ženy, která se musí postarat o svoji osmdesátiletou matku. Šiklová představuje svébytnou reakci na problém stárnutí populace. Učí čtenáře přijímat stáří nikoli jako pouhý úbytek sil, ale jako období náležející k plnosti lidského života. Zároveň přitom zcela věcně anesentimentálně upozorňuje na řadu kroků, které mohou stáří usnadnit.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document