A Study on the Novel Education for the Spiritual Growth and the Healing of Vanity for Youth: Focusing on “Frog” by Kim Sung-han

Abstract This study aims to investigate how the Biblical view of the Suffering Servant transforms a basic pattern of the hero’s journey into a narrative of spiritual growth in modern literature. In this article, especially, I will examine the novel Deep River by the 20th-century Japanese Catholic novelist, Endō Shūsaku, paying special attention to his use of Jungian archetypes. Unlike the beautiful and gracious Holy Mother of Christian belief, the image of Endō’s feminine divinity is what we think as ordinary, depressing, shameful, and even ugly. As the very embodiment of this motherly divine Love, the hero of the novel eventually figures out that his journey should be structured analogously to the narrative of the Suffering Servant. This hero helps people discover the mother-like God and invites them into their own spiritual journey in which they accept the vulnerability, ineffectiveness and helplessness of human existence.

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A moral jester? : David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest's hidden moral heart

10.32920/ryerson.14655864.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Michael GL Bacal

Keyword(s):

Spiritual Growth ◽

David Foster Wallace ◽

The Novel ◽

Infinite Jest ◽

Avant Garde ◽

Moral Dimensions ◽

Society Today ◽

Alternative Reading ◽

Do So

In this thesis, I explore the frequently overlooked moral dimensions of David Foster Wallace's seminal novel Infinite Jest. I seek to propose, in spite of the commonly cited iconoclasm of the text, an alternative reading of it as an old-fashioned bildungsroman concerned with the possibilities of moral and spiritual growth. In particular, I illuminate the unconventional way Wallace reimagines classic narratives of redemption and salvation under the surface of the novel, and I develop a framework with which to understand their centrality. Furthermore, I address how this belongs to his larger attempts to reconcile many of the traditional thematic concerns of the novel with several of the challenges presented by the postmodern avant-garde. I argue that, in its efforts to do so, Infinite Jest helped to renew, in many powerful and unexpected ways, the classic story of redemption and offer a profound meditation on many larger ills plaguing society today.

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ESTATES IN LEO TOLSTOY’S NOVEL “RESURRECTION”: FROM DENOUNCING LUXURY TO LIFE ON LAND

Philological Class ◽

10.51762/1fk-2021-26-02-12. ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 144-154

Author(s):

Valeria G. Andreeva ◽

◽

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Spiritual Growth ◽

The Novel ◽

Inner Life ◽

Creative Imagination ◽

The People ◽

Work Family ◽

The Individual ◽

First Time ◽

Final Text

For the first time in literary criticism, the author of the article turns her attention to the image of the estate in Tolstoy’s later artistic work, showing the dynamics of the writer’s views on estate life, the image of an ideal estate, which for Tolstoy was always associated with the motives of work, family life, proper attitude towards the people, etc. It is noted that in 1880–1910, the estate theme in Tolstoy’s creative imagination was directly related to the problems of land ownership, proper management and correct and gradual path of the individual and their spiritual growth. The picture of estate life In Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection” is realized in two contrasting versions: luxurious existence of the upper class and the aristocracy, not supported by any content, and transforming into a new image of the working life of the intelligentsia and landowners on the land. The author demonstrates the facts of impoverishment of estate life at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, which are introduced in the artistic world of the novel. It is proved that the idea in the work of inseparable connection of a person with the people around him and with humanity at large, which is the key conception of the novel, is directly related to Tolstoy’s understanding of the change of the forms of estate life, important and dear for the writer himself. Of great importance in the novel is the awareness of the characters of natural life, which is presented in contrast to civilization, which deviates from the basic laws of love and goodness. On the basis of an analytical comparison of the drafts of the novel and the final text, the author substantiates the importance of the estate theme for understanding the feelings of the protagonist and his inner life, for organizing the epic artistic world of the novel. The article illustrates the stages of the dialectical movement of Dmitry Nekhlyudov and the connection between the estate and family themes. The author rethinks some episodes of the novel that have received controversial interpretations in science and reveals the artistic links that connect different chapters of the work.

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INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLICAL PROTOTEXT IN LEONID MOSENDZ’S NOVEL “THE LAST PROPHET”

Академічний журнал Слово і Час ◽

10.33608/0236-1477.2021.03.60-75 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 60-75

Author(s):

Yuliіa Hryhorchuk

Keyword(s):

Spiritual Growth ◽

Gospel Of Luke ◽

The Novel ◽

Historical Sources ◽

Distinctive Features ◽

John The Baptist ◽

The Subject ◽

The Common ◽

The Aesthetic ◽

Independent Work

The paper deals with the biblical prototext in L. Mosendz’s novel “Th e Last Prophet”. This work focuses on the figure of John the Baptist making the most full coverage of the prophet’s personality in Ukrainian literature. Besides the historical sources, the novel is based on the ideological and aesthetic pattern of the Holy Scripture. However, the canonical text has been significantly rethought. The specifics of interpreting the biblical prototext in L. Mosendz’s novel have not yet been the subject of special research, although many scholars paid attention to the biblical basis of the work. Therefore, the purpose of the present paper is to highlight the peculiarities of the biblical prototext embodied in the novel “The Last Prophet”. The analysis of the plot, figurative and stylistic levels was necessary for achieving this goal. At the plot level, the common and distinctive features of the biblical and fictional stories of the John the Baptist’s life have been indicated. The distinctive features appeared to be more numerous as the text of the novel complements rather than repeats the prototext (the Gospel of Luke). Psychologization, the scholarly motivation of events, the manner of filling “semantic gaps” with both oneiric visions and historical narrations are the specific features in reproducing the biblical story. The main characters of the work Jehohanan and Elizabeth, unlike original biblical characters, are endowed with portrait characteristics and shown in the dynamics of age and spiritual growth. Creating them, the author combines the Old and New Testament prototypes: Eliseba — Sarah, the Mother of God; Jehohanan — David, Elijah, Isaiah, Moses, and Messiah. In this context, the figure of Elizabeth appears as a generalized image of the Mother, and the figure of Jehohanan — as a common image of the Prophet. Th e sacred vocabulary, biblical anthroponyms, toponyms, aphorisms, stylistic figures of inversion, amplification, gradation, etc. form the stylistic level of implementing the aesthetic means of the Holy Scripture. Some biblical quotations are given as poetically modified and emotionally characterized by the writer. The biblical prototext secures ideological and aesthetic integrity for the novel but doesn’t give the plot a strict direction. Although deeply rooted in the Holy Scripture, the novel by Mosendz is a completely independent work on the search for values of a man, people, and humanity.

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The Image of the Land and Its Functions in Tolstoy’s Novel Resurrection

Studia Litterarum ◽

10.22455/2500-4247-2020-5-3-236-251 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 236-251

Author(s):

Valeria G. Andreeva

Keyword(s):

Spiritual Growth ◽

Large Scale ◽

The Novel ◽

Historical Time ◽

Late Period ◽

War And Peace ◽

National Unity ◽

Religious Consciousness ◽

Christian Anthropology ◽

National Disaster

The paper argues that Leo Tolstoy uses the national disaster paradigm represented in the epic novel War and Peace to depict the relatively peaceful time in his novel Resurrection as he raises the question of the growing crisis in Russia and the problem of the survival of Russian people. One of the central images of this latter novel is the image of the land. Its function is to support a system of Tolstoy’s antitheses that in his late period, aimed not only to rebuke the existing order but also to create a large-scale image of national unity. The image of the land in Resurrection ties together thematic and ideological strata of the novel that manifest its epic features. I argue that although Tolstoy abandoned his initial intention to make the acute social and political landrelated issue the center of his work, the motif nevertheless remains relevant. The image of the land is ciphered in the description of the severity of prisoners’ life and Nekhlyudov’s attempts to help the prisoners. Moreover, it is closely connected with all spheres of Russian life, it is a marker of Nekhlyudov’s spiritual growth that allows not only place the character’s “resurrection” within specific realities of historical time, but also presents it in the traditions of Christian anthropology. The image of the land allots the novel with trans-historical meaning and contributes to the implementation of the religious consciousness in Tolstoy’s work.

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A moral jester? : David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest's hidden moral heart

10.32920/ryerson.14655864 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Michael GL Bacal

Keyword(s):

Spiritual Growth ◽

David Foster Wallace ◽

The Novel ◽

Infinite Jest ◽

Avant Garde ◽

Moral Dimensions ◽

Society Today ◽

Alternative Reading ◽

Do So

In this thesis, I explore the frequently overlooked moral dimensions of David Foster Wallace's seminal novel Infinite Jest. I seek to propose, in spite of the commonly cited iconoclasm of the text, an alternative reading of it as an old-fashioned bildungsroman concerned with the possibilities of moral and spiritual growth. In particular, I illuminate the unconventional way Wallace reimagines classic narratives of redemption and salvation under the surface of the novel, and I develop a framework with which to understand their centrality. Furthermore, I address how this belongs to his larger attempts to reconcile many of the traditional thematic concerns of the novel with several of the challenges presented by the postmodern avant-garde. I argue that, in its efforts to do so, Infinite Jest helped to renew, in many powerful and unexpected ways, the classic story of redemption and offer a profound meditation on many larger ills plaguing society today.

Download Full-text