scholarly journals Crossroads of Global and Local Identity in Contemporary Latvian Migrant Literature: Reflections on the Novel Stroika with a London View by W. B. Foreignerski (V. Lācītis)

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-315
Author(s):  
Ojārs Lāms

This paper deals with the contemporary migration experience as seen through the subjective lens of a literary text. The analysis focuses on the novel Stroika with a London View by the Latvian diaspora writer William B. Foreignerski (Vilis Lācītis in the Latvian version). Foreignerski combines the portrayal of proletarians’ survival with entertaining and comical scenes from daily life. In the novel the story is told from the perspective of the narrator in the first person singular, thus the different relationships between the protagonist and the surrounding environment are already defined by this choice. In the novel the image of London is of great significance as a metropolis and multicultural city in which most of the events described in the novel occur. London is the key determinant for the poetics of intercultural literature in the novel – London can be a labyrinth, an initiation, a trap or a springboard. London as a city that can provide everything that life can offer gives one a chance not only to break away from the economic limitations at home but also from the ideological narrowness of the protagonist’s homeland as it is depicted in the novel. The start of the quest for a new life at the beginning of the novel is to a certain extent traumatic as it is characteristically in traditional emigrant literature. However, with the intercultural approach used by Foreignerski, the migration experience results in the freedom to accept new ideas and in gaining new horizons for the protagonist as well as for the reader.

Author(s):  
Maria E. Brunner

The beginnings of migration literature in Germany were noticeable 20 years after the first agreements for work enlistment in the 1950s between countries around the Mediterranean on the one hand and Germany on the other. Well into the 1980s migration literature was considered to be a politically moti-vated, autobiographical and experiential kind of literature produced by migrants, most of whom were initially foreign workers. Today migrant/- migration literature or intercultural literature is considered to be the work of a generation of authors originating from families with migration experience, or migrants themselves. It is the linguistic hybridity and thematic alterity in these works which form the pre-condition for the dialogue between cultures and languages; a dialogue initiated by the successful examples of migration literature currently available on the market. Indeed, a considerable number of German-Turkish authors ’works enrich the cultural and literary scene in Germany. The article analyses the use of hybridity and mimicry as central themes in the novel Der Mond isst die Sterne auf (1998) by Dilek Zapctioglu. This novel is then compared with the stories in the collection Mutterzunge (1998) and with a novel by Emine S. Özdamar, more specifically with the novel Die Brücke vom goldenen Horn (1998), exploring language and thematic hybridization. Central themes in migration literature are issues such as the loss of the homeland, culture shock, alienation, life in and between two languages and cultures, as well as everyday, subliminal discrimination and the accumulating communication problems. The novels can therefore be defined thematically on the basis of their changing time and space coordinates, their shared theme of space diversity, their oscillation between the homeland and the foreign land, the linguistic diversity of their voices and the reflection they offer on the diaspora.


2020 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Goral

The aim of the article is to analyse the elements of folk poetics in the novel Pleasant things. Utopia by T. Bołdak-Janowska. The category of folklore is understood in a rather narrow way, and at the same time it is most often used in critical and literary works as meaning a set of cultural features (customs and rituals, beliefs and rituals, symbols, beliefs and stereotypes) whose carrier is the rural folk. The analysis covers such elements of the work as place, plot, heroes, folk system of values, folk rituals, customs, and symbols. The description is conducted based on the analysis of source material as well as selected works in the field of literary text analysis and ethnolinguistics. The analysis shows that folk poetics was creatively associated with the elements of fairy tales and fantasy in the studied work, and its role consists of – on the one hand – presenting the folk world represented and – on the other – presenting a message about the meaning of human existence.


Author(s):  
Iana E. ANDREEVA

This article examines the linguistic means of representing the category of everyday life in the novel by G. Sh. Yakhina “Zuleikha opens her eyes” and in its translation into Chinese. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the anthropology of everyday life, a broad line of research into everyday life. Comparative study of linguistic units, which reveal the essence of everyday human existence, makes it possible to identify lacunar units that are difficult to translate fiction in the context of the Russian-Chinese language pair. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the involvement in the analysis of linguistic methods of conveying the category of everyday life in the aspect of translating a Russian literary text into Chinese. The work used the methods of comparative, component, contextual analysis, the method of linguoculturological commenting. As a result of the study, the lexical-semantic, lexical-stylistic and grammatical lacunar units were identified, which demonstrate linguocultural barriers in the process of translating a text into Chinese. A comparative analysis of the texts was carried out in order to comprehend the lexical and grammatical transformations performed in the process of translation. As a result, the main ways of compensating for the lacunae of everyday life in Russian-Chinese translation were identified: transcription, tracing, descriptive translation, lexical-semantic replacement. In addition, it was found that the study of various options for depicting everyday life in a literary text not only makes it possible to identify lacunar units of everyday life, but also reveals the artistic and philosophical intention of the work.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-54
Author(s):  
Karthikeyan P

The novel speaks about the efforts taken by Piyali Roy, an Indian American biologist to make a study on marine mammals, especially on Irrawaddy dolphins.The novel is set in Sundarbans. Piya arrives at Sundarbans which is considered by her as a suitable place for carrying out her study. She lands on an island in Sunderbans and gets acquainted with an inhabitant of that place named Fokir. He remains to be a guide for her and instructs her about the marine habitats. Fokir being a resident of that place, he knows about the tides occurrence in the seas and the perils. Though he knows these, to the dismay of the readers, Fokir dies when a storm breaks out followed by heavy rain and powerful and devouring tides. As ideas given by Fokir could be the sources for decades of ‘research’,with the sponsorship of Nilima and involvement of local fisherman, Piya starts an institution in the memory of Fokir. The novel deals with the dislocation of people due to tide. Tide causes great havoc to the life and property of the inhabitants of the islands in Sunderbans. The poor people who have become victims of natural catastrophe suffer from hunger. I would like to bring out the human environmental relationship in the novel. Human beings depend on nature and environment. Eco Criticism on this novel helps to evaluate this literary text in the literature and environment perspective.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Ildar Ch. Safin ◽  
Elena I. Kolosova ◽  
Tatyana A. Gimranova

<p> This article is the verbal lexicon analysis based on the text of the novel "The Big Green Tent" by L. Ulitskaya. The creative manner of the contemporary writer attracts the attention of researchers, her writings describe the emotional experiences of the heroes and also give a generalized image of time full of historical details and features. The language of her stories and short stories is characterized by a special style in the description of time realities. A verb in the text allows the author to express the events and the circumstances that characterize an action in its dynamics due to the fact that verbal categories reflect the real reality in our consciousness. The method of linguistic cultural analysis of verbal lexicon in the novel "The Big Green Tent" made it possible to single out exactly those language units that the writer carefully selects for the creation and interpretation of the era. A special emphasis in the study is made on the creation of an expressive-emotional style of narration using the stylistic capabilities of the Russian verb. The individual author's methods of narration expressiveness creation are singled out: synonymous series, euphemisms, colloquial lexicon, etc. The conducted study and a careful analysis of the selected factual material testifies that, recreating an epoch, the master of the word invariably uses that language arsenal that brightly and fully conveys the color of time. L. Ulitskaya is able to be not only an indifferent witness of the epoch, but also her tenacious observer and interpreter. The analyzed factual material and the main points of this research can be used in the courses on stylistics and linguistic culturology, and also as an illustrative material during the classes on the linguistic analysis of a literary text.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (45) ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Svetozar Poštič

This paper analyses the concept of thrownness and the related notions of immediacy and actuality in a 1961 short science fiction story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night” by Algis Budrys. It first defines the concept of thrownness (Geworfenheit), created and coined by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his classic book Being and Time, and it explains how this notion can be employed in literary analysis in general and applied to this work in particular. The article then analyses how certain stylistic devices in the short story, namely similes, change of pace and the presentation of an inner conflict in the main character, contribute to the feeling of authenticity. In other words, it attempts to exhibit the means used in a prose work to make it seem more realistic and immediate. Finally, the work also argues that science fiction is in many ways more real than other fictional works. Although it belongs to the genre that has traditionally been denied serious literary merit, the novel view and interpretation of this story aims to disclose new horizons of artistic expression that illuminate human mental and physical frailty and stimulate a valuable inquiry into the meaning of life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-259
Author(s):  
Valentina E. Vetlovskaya

<p>The article explores the role of logical connections in an epic text. It is these connections, according to the author of the article, that connect the individual components of the narrative (motifs, complexes of motifs) and make up in the reader&rsquo;s perception for the missing elements. The reticence and failures to mention, common in fiction, appear in the narrative for various reasons. Sometimes due to the aesthetic principles of the writer who prefers ambiguity to a completed statement depriving readers of the opportunity to finish thinking over a vague idea. And sometimes, due to the author&rsquo;s conviction that there is no need to explain the idea implied by what has been earlier said. But it also happens that the omissions in the narrative are engendered by the requirements for the presentation of a chosen topic, for example in crime fiction. But these reasons may go together as it occurs in Crime and Punishment. These ideas are illustrated by the analysis of one of the themes of the novel Crime and Punishment.</p>


Author(s):  
Hendra Kaprisma

This article discusses the work of Victor-Marie Hugo entitled Le dernier jour d'un condamné " (1829). This novel tells about a death row inmate (the "I" character) who experiences an inner struggle about his desire to be free. The power of discourse and dialogue carried out by the character in the novel is the focus of analysis in this paper. The concept of power of discourse refers to Michel Foucault's thoughts and dialogical concepts adopted from Mikhail Bakhtin. This study seeks to dismantle hidden ideas as social criticism presented by the “I” character. The words that describe the anxieties of “I” seem to form a dialogue between the text and the reader. Literary readers are invited to take part in the struggle of my character's thinking about his freedom. The meaning dispute of freedom discourse that wrestles in thought becomes a condition for the formation of dialogue between the reader and the text. Therefore, the dialogic perspective makes a social literary text so that the discourse is not isolated in structure.


Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
Daria Savinova

This article is dedicated to the question of text transformation from authorial intent to stage impersonation. Despite the established tradition of studying the questions of recoding of literary text into theatrical, there is yet no theoretical-literary substantiation. Recoding is considered a complex process of creating a new type of text by the theatre director for staging a play. Therefore, an attempt is made to analyze the elements of transformation of literary text into its stage version, using the example of S. V. Zhenovach&rsquo;s unpublished manuscript for stage direction based on A. P. Chekhov&rsquo;s novella &ldquo;Three Years&rdquo;. The novelty of this research consists in determination of the patterns in transformation of literary text into stage version. The tools and means of expression applied in theatre and literature are different. If in literature it is possible to set several task and solve them all within the framework of the novel, then in theatre, it must be one ultimate task that organizes the action. Identification of the key peculiarities of existence of such type of text as &ldquo;stage direction&rdquo; on the example of transformation of the novella &ldquo;The Years&rdquo; from the authorial intent to stage impersonation demonstrated its significance for not only theatre studies, but also the theory of literature.


Author(s):  
Jimena Néspolo

This article offers a reading of the novel El Entenado (1982) by Juan José Saer, analysing the way in which it is inserted within the author’s system and within the Argentinean literary canon. The Saerian heritage is resignified by cannibalism and its presence in cultural studies. ‘Cannibalism’ stresses a relativised opposition between interior and exterior by founding an exuberant de-colonial polysemy that challenges the stigma of savagery and barbarism with which classical historiography has characterised the New World. The cannibal cleavage of texts published after the year 2000 – texts singularly crossed by the migration experience – plays with a culture of knowledge and flavour, eating and being-eaten.


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