The Socialist Housing Projects as Non-Places in Post-2000 Polish Literary and Cinematic Narratives

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
My Svensson
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Young Female ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Artistic Representations ◽  
Cinematic Narratives ◽  
Story Collection

Beginning approximately a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a cultural wave of various artistic representations of the socialist housing projects ( blokowisko in Polish) arose in Poland. Three such works, Krzysztof Bizio’s short story collection Zresztą latem wszystkie kwiaty są takie piękne [Besides, in Summer All Flowers are Beautiful] (2003), Robert Gliński’s feature film Cześć, Tereska [Hi, Tereska] (2001), and Sylwester Latkowski’s documentary Blokersi (2001), well illustrate this new cultural trend. A common feature of these works is the complete absence of cultural or national landmarks; the life of the protagonists revolves around the housing projects and the non-places of supermodernity. The atmosphere in the stories ranges from gloom to darkness and their endings are usually unresolved or tragic. However, despite the despair and even fatalism surrounding especially the young female characters, all of the protagonists manage to find spaces of refuge, where they can unlock their imagination. Drawing on Marc Auge’s study of the non-places of supermodernity and Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, while comparing the works to the contemporaneous Swedish film Lilya 4-Ever (2001), this article emphasizes the transnational character of the blokowisko and its universal meaning as a non-place.

scholarly journals Across community barriers: female characters in Vimala Devi’s short stories

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. e45888
Author(s):  
Cielo Griselda Festino
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Women Characters ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Short Story Cycle ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Story Cycle ◽  
Story Collection

This article brings a reading of the short-story collection Monção [Monsoon] ( 2003) by the Goan writer Vimala Devi (1932-). The collection can be read as a short-story cycle, a group of stories related by locality, Goa, character, Goans, from all walks of life, and theme, in particular women´s milieu, among other literary categories. In her book, written from her self-imposed exile in Portugal, Devi recreates Goa, former Portuguese colony, in the 1950s, before its annexation to India. A member of the Catholic gentry, Devi portrays the four hundred years of conflictive intimacy between Catholics and Hindus. Our main argument is that Devi´s empathy for her culture becomes even more explicit in Monção when her voice becomes one with that of all her women characters. Though they might be at odds, due to differences of caste, class and religion, Devi makes a point of showing that they are all part of the same cultural identity constantly remade through their own acts of refusal and recognition. This discussion will be framed in terms of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s theory of autobiography (2001) as well as the studies on Goan women by the Goan critics Propércia Correia Afonso (1928-1931), Maria Aurora Couto (2005) and Fátima da Silva Gracias (2007).

scholarly journals Subverting Gender in Laxmi Raj Sharma’s ‘Intriguing Women’

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-145
Author(s):  
Kaustubh Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
And Performance

This paper close reads the short story collection Intriguing Women by Laxmi Raj Sharma to explicate upon the theme of ideological subversion within it. Sharma deploys his female characters as agents of destabilisation that assert their own identity and thus question the dominant social constructs. In doing this, these characters raise questions about the ruling ideology and its established norms of behavior, selfhood and performance. While Sharma’s usage of motifs and structural forms makes the stories works of art, the actions of his characters make them didactic and pushes the readers towards questioning some of their fundamental assumptions.

scholarly journals Галерея мужских образов в рассказе А.К. Гольдебаева Галчонок

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ксения Морозова
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Fallen Women ◽  
The World ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Established Order

The motif of the Apocalypse passes through all the works of the Samara writer A.K. Goldebaev (Semenov). But if in his early works he did not highlight the end of the world (It seems distant and therefore not so scary to the author), years later he realizes the seriousness of what is happening – death isapproaching. In the story The Young Jackdaw (In the Established Order), published in 1910 in the short story collection Knowledge, the writer starts a conversation about the fallen women. However, this topic is not the leading one, and the female characters are not central ones. In this article, the author attempts to reveal the true meaning of the work through the analysis of the system of male characters.

scholarly journals Petite idole énigmatique aux yeux allongés et pleins de rêve ». Les stéréotypes orientalistes dans Le Harem entr’ouvert d’A.-R. de Lens

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-210
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Sokołowicz
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Story Collection

The present paper describes some orientalist stereotypes concerning women and manifesting themselves in Le Harem entr’ouvert (1919), a short story collection by Aline Réveillaud de Lens (1881–1925), a French painter and writer, whose works are devoted mainly to North Africa. The paper focuses on three, most common, stereotypical representations of the Oriental woman according to which she is, firstly, a beautiful odalisque serving the man; secondly, extremely sensual and thus unfaithful and, finally, jealous and, sometimes, very cruel. The author attempts to explain the origins of those representations and to answer the question why A.-R. de Lens used them in her writings

scholarly journals The Intertextual Use of Greek Mythology in Agatha Christie’s Detective Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Tatiana Ternopol
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
The Face ◽  
Greek Myths ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
Over Time

This study investigates the intertextual use of Greek mythology in Agatha Christie’s short stories Philomel Cottage, The Face of Helen, and The Oracle at Delphi, a short story collection The Labours of Hercules, and a novel, Nemesis. The results of this research based on the hermeneutical and comparative methods reveal that A. Christie’s intertextual formula developed over time. In her early works, allusions were based on characters' appearances and functions as well as on the use of motifs and themes from Greek myths. Later on, she turned to using allusory character names; this would mislead her readers who thought they already knew the formula of her stories. Although not a postmodern writer, A. Christie enjoyed playing games of allusion with her readers. She wanted them not only to solve a case but also to discover and interpret the intertextual references.

scholarly journals Matijaner Meyera in Translation: Cultural Identity Construction Through Untranslatability of Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Barnali Talukder
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cultural Distance ◽  
Linguistic Identity ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Primary Resource ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
Bengali Language

The concepts of language and cultural identity of a speaker are entwined as they complement each other. However, translation poses a challenge to the identity language predominantly constructs. Therefore, translatable elements of language get the stage of universality while the untranslatable-s essentially bring forth the culture they are descended from. In this study, a short story collection from Bangladesh, Matijaner Meyera, where there is a celebration of diverse branches of Bengali language, has been brought to light to show how untranslatability of a number of culture-oriented vocabularies vibrantly tells about Bengali culture. The primary resource includes a lot many culture-oriented vocabularies as well as few phrases that English, as a language, cannot accommodate in it. Inability of other languages to penetrate such culture-rooted belongings of Bengali language showcases the power a language retains to protect itself from any invading force. This study has argued in favor of the untranslatable base of Bengali that English, due to cultural distance, cannot embrace linguistically. Therefore, such cultural difference eventually develops a distinct linguistic identity of Bengali through untranslatability that this study has attempted to divulge.

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