Popularization and/or Trivialization of Philosophy in Voltaire's Narrative Candide or Optimism

CLEaR ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
Ivana Majksner ◽  
Tina Varga Oswald
Keyword(s):  
Structure Characterization ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
General Readership ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Philosophical Writings

Abstract Voltaire produced his works within the literary-historical period of Classicism and Enlightenment, in which the prevalent role of literature was educational. The period also dictated what genre, theme, style and structure authors should follow. However, more and more changes of literary genres appear, and the process of stratification of literature into high and trivial takes place. The aim of this paper is to describe the polarization of two mutually different processes involved in the literary shaping of Voltaire's philosophical narrative Candide or Optimism. In Voltaire's narrative, the popularization of philosophy, in order to simplify and illuminate the philosophical writings of G. W. Leibniz, results in the changes of style and content that become understandable to the general readership since they work within the scheme of an adventure novel. In this process, trivialization does not affect only the genre, but is also present in other parts of literary analysis and interpretation such as the theme, motifs, structure, characterization, narrative techniques, stylistic features, and so on.

scholarly journals The Role of Pragmatics in Literary Analysis: Approaching Literary Meaning from a Linguistic Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-40
Author(s):  
Kanhaiya Kumar Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Politeness Theory ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Literary Meaning ◽  
Spoken Interaction ◽  
Linguistic Approaches ◽  
The Relationship

The present paper aims to produce a detailed account of the term ‘pragmatics’ and explore, by presenting and reviewing different models, its role in literature as it appears to be evident in different linguistic approaches to the study and analysis of literary genres. It is a fact that various pragmatic approaches such as speech act theory, conversational implicature, politeness theory, and relevance theory are developed mainly in relation to spoken interaction, yet, as some studies suggest, they offer invaluable insights to the study of literary texts. Consequently, the paper also strives to shed some light on the relationship these two terms – literature and pragmatics – enjoy so that their commonalities can be unmasked. It also tries to explore how pragmatics may help find out the ‘context’ and ‘meaning’ of literary discourse.

scholarly journals “Only I Am the Brahma”: Religion and Narrative in the Netflix Thriller Series Sacred Games (2018–2019)

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 478
Author(s):  
Ana Ashraf
Keyword(s):  
Gain Control ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Nuclear Attack ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The Way

Sacred Games (2018–2019), based on Vikram Chandra’s novel of the same title, is India’s first Netflix crime thriller series. This series shows how the lives of a Sikh policeman, Sartaj Singh, and a powerful gangster, Ganesh Eknath Gaitonde, weave together in a mission to save Mumbai from a nuclear attack. The series immediately received critical acclaim and viewers’ appreciation, but the way the series represents the (mis)use of metanarratives of religious and political ideologies, as they come to influence Gaitonde’s life, needs further perusal. For this purpose, this article investigates how Gaitonde’s life, and its abrupt end, are shaped and challenged by the larger ideological and religious metanarratives of his milieu. At the same time, this article examines Gaitonde’s ability to gain control over his own narrative despite the overwhelming presence of these metanarratives. More specifically, Gaitonde’s transgressive will and his desire to tell his story are brought under scrutiny. Along with the analysis of Gaitonde’s character, this article also examines how the use of various cinematic and narrative techniques heightens self-reflexivity and metafictionality in Sacred Games and emphasizes the role of mini-narratives as unique, singular, and contingent, in contrast to the generic, universal, and permanent tones of metanarratives.

Ethnohistorical Archaeology and the Mythscape of the Naga in the Chiang Saen Basin, Thailand

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Piyawit Moonkham
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Building Construction ◽  
Local People ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
The People ◽  
Divine Retribution ◽  
The Town

Abstract There is a northern Thai story that tells how the naga—a mythical serpent—came and destroyed the town known as Yonok (c. thirteenth century) after its ruler became immoral. Despite this divine retribution, the people of the town chose to rebuild it. Many archaeological sites indicate resettlement during this early historical period. Although many temple sites were constructed in accordance with the Buddhist cosmology, the building patterns vary from location to location and illustrate what this paper calls ‘nonconventional patterns,’ distinct from Theravada Buddhist concepts. These nonconventional patterns of temples seem to have been widely practiced in many early historical settlements, e.g., Yonok (what is now Wiang Nong Lom). Many local written documents and practices today reflect the influence of the naga myth on building construction. This paper will demonstrate that local communities in the Chiang Saen basin not only believe in the naga myth but have also applied the myth as a tool to interact with the surrounding landscapes. The myth is seen as a crucial, communicated element used by the local people to modify and construct physical landscapes, meaning Theravada Buddhist cosmology alone cannot explain the nonconventional patterns. As such, comprehending the role of the naga myth enables us to understand how local people, past and present, have perceived the myth as a source of knowledge to convey their communal spaces within larger cosmological concepts in order to maintain local customs and legitimise their social space.

Carpatho-Ukraine’s defeat as a precursor of WWII

Rusin ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 201-222
Author(s):  
A.I. Kudriachenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
International Context ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Territorial Claims ◽  
The Third Reich

The paper analyzes the course of events and the international context of Сarpatho- Ukrainian state’s rise and defeat in terms of role and impact of the leading European actors at the end of the 1930’s. Based on an in-depth study of the wide range of literature, documents and relevant archives, the author highlights the role of Carpatho-Ukraine, which for a short period happened to be at the epicenter of the geopolitical interests of the states whose actions or inaction fueled the warmongers. The revival and strengthening of a number of European countries at that historical period deteriorized international relations. The erosion of the Versailles-Washington bases intensified the contradictions in the foreign policy between the victorious and vanquished states. The defeated countries reinforced their positions, since the victors, who were expanding their military might at the expense of Czechoslovak Republic, including Transcarpathia, were becoming more submissive in accommodating territorial claims. This situation largely updated the approaches to the Ukrainian question. The variability of the ways to solve it largely depended on the situational decisions of the Third Reich political leadership.

scholarly journals Neurological status and imaging spinal cord in patients with infectious spondylitis: is it possible to comparisons with spondylogenic myelopathy?

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina E Makogonova ◽  
Aleksandr Yu Mushkin ◽  
Pavel V Gavrilov
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
Neurological Status ◽  
Pathological Process ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Radicular Symptoms ◽  
Symptoms And Signs ◽  
Infectious Spondylitis

Spend a literary analysis of the role of radiation diagnosis in the first place - magnetic resonance imaging to visualize changes in the spinal cord in infectious spondylitis. Neurological disorders, manifested by radicular symptoms and signs of spinal cord irritation to deep paresis and plegia in violation of the pelvic organs, are observed in the majority of patients with spondylitis and may be due to the spinal cord and its roots and / or a breach of its microcirculation on the background of the pathological process in the vertebrae. Dynamic (pre- and postoperative) imaging of the spinal canal and its contents in tuberculous and nonspecific spondylitis is important for a more complete assessment of the disease, and for the prediction of the dynamics of neurological disorders. (For citation: Makogonova ME, Mushkin AYu, Gavrilov PV. Neurological status and imaging spinal cord in patients with infectious spondylitis: is it possible to comparisons with spondylogenic myelopathy?. Reviews on Clinical Pharmacology and Drug Therapy. 2017;15(2):64-72. doi: 10.17816/RCF15264-72).

“Whoever Imitates a People Becomes One of Them”: A Hadith and its Interpreters

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-426
Author(s):  
Youshaa Patel
Keyword(s):  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Ibn Taymiyya ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis article examines the canonization of the Prophetic hadith, “Whoever imitates a people becomes one of them,” which became the keynote expression of tashabbuh (reprehensible imitation), a Sunni doctrine commonly invoked by religious authorities to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims. First, I analyze how the Partisans of Hadith transmitted and classified the hadith, highlighting the pivotal role of Abū Dāwūd (d. 275/889) in canonizing the tradition. I then trace the divergent trajectories of its interpretation over time, especially the glosses of two brilliant Damascenes: Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 1061/1651). This study draws not only from hadith commentaries but also from treatises on law, ethics, and Sufism, illustrating how hadith interpretation takes place in multiple Islamic literary genres. A detailed appendix catalogues the collections of hadith that transmit the tradition; compares different narrations in order to date and locate its circulation; and visually maps its isnād networks.

Facilitating Reading Engagement in Shared Reading

Poetics Today ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-251
Author(s):  
Mette Steenberg ◽  
Charlotte Christiansen ◽  
Anne Line Dalsgård ◽  
Anne Maria Stagis ◽  
Liv Moeslund Ahlgren ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
International Student ◽  
Student Assessment ◽  
Shared Reading ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Reading Engagement ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
International Student Assessment ◽  
Specific Practice ◽  
Educational Need

Abstract This article responds to this special issue's overarching interest in the relation between modes of reading and the experiences of actual readers by analyzing how the specific practice of shared reading facilitates readers’ engagement in literary reading. The article responds both to an under-investigated dimension of the practice of shared reading, that of the role of facilitation, and to a pressing articulated and educational need to develop additional and better methodologies for fostering literary reading engagement, as existing results from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have demonstrated the importance of reading engagement for both academic achievement and social mobility. By linking the notion of engagement within the PISA framework with phenomenologically oriented empirical research on expressive reading and the notion of emergent thinking in existing shared reading research, the article argues for the role of the reader leader in facilitating literary engagement. These connections may inspire literary scholars to consider the link between literary analysis and the didactics of literary reading.

The Maintenance of Holiness and the Contours of Leadership: Form and Characterization in the Book of Numbers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nathan Daily
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Structure Characterization ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Methodological Study ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Divine Violence ◽  
Literary Setting

The book of Numbers presents numerous problems for interpreters who attempt to garner a sense of meaning from the disparate texts and genres found interspersed throughout the work. This dissertation is a methodological study that incorporates features of form-critical theory, which developed over the course of the 20th century and continues to evolve in the 21st century, alongside literary approaches to the biblical text, specifically the analysis of characterization, to present a new reading of the book of Numbers. After surveying recent research on the book of Numbers, new developments in form-critical method, and approaches to characterization in biblical studies, the work offers a methodological proposal for reading Numbers along synchronic lines, according to the rubrics of structure, characterization, and literary setting. The approach analyzes the form rather than the formation of the text, and, by highlighting the role of characterization within the form-critical enterprise, provides a reading that considers the structure and flow of the book of Numbers as well as, through intertextual readings, the significance of Numbers in the broader structure of the Torah. The remainder of the work analyzes four texts from the book of Numbers: The Commission of the Levites (3:5-51); The Purification of the Levites (8:5-22); The Three-Day Journey from Sinai (10:33-11:34); and The Complaint of Miriam and Aaron (11:35-12:15). Each text is read in relation to the dominant structural marker of the Torah, the toledoth formula, and, particularly, the final formulaic marker in 3:1. Each of the four texts presents a model of Judean leadership set in a narrative that sequentially builds by using the Levites as characters that are assigned roles and appear as illustrations for additional roles necessary to maintain holiness in the camp. As the Torah is structured as a creation text (Gen 1-2; Exod 40:17), the dissertation finds that material in Numbers, which follows the completion of the creation narrative in Exod 40:17 by resetting the narrative chronologically to the same time (Num 3:1; 7:1; 9:15; cf. 1:1), is designed to illustrate the levitical task to maintain creation through attending to holiness. Now that creation has reached completion with the dangerous presence of the holy deity residing within Israel, proper management under proper leadership will result in blessing, but inattentiveness to holiness by the leadership or others is liable to incite danger. The new reading attends to discussions of structure, plot, and coherence in Numbers as well as theological concerns related to leadership, holiness, and divine violence.

Introduction to a Poetics of Diversity

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chaos Theory ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Single Root ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Accessible Form

This book reproduces the texts of four lectures, followed by discussions, and two interviews with Lise Gauvin published in Introduction à une poétique du divers (1996); and also four further interviews from L’Imaginaire des langues (Lise Gauvin, 2010). It covers a wide range of topics but key recurring themes are creolization, language and langage, culture and identity, ‘monolingualism’, the ‘Chaos-world’ and the role of the writer. Migration and the various different kinds of migrants are also discussed, as is the difference between ‘atavistic’ and ‘composite’ communities, the art of translation, identity as a ‘rhizome’ rather than a single root, the Chaos-World and chaos theory, ‘trace thought’ as opposed to ‘systematic thought’, the relation between ‘place’ and the Whole-World, exoticism, utopias, a new definition of beauty as the realized quantity of differences, the status of literary genres and the possibility that literature as a whole will disappear. Four of the interviews (Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9) relate to particular works that Glissant has published: Tout-monde, Le monde incrée, La Cohée du Lamentin, Une nouvelle région du monde. Many of these themes have been explored in his previous works, but here, because in all the chapters we see Glissant interacting with the questions and views of other people, they are presented in a particularly accessible form.

Language and the Subject

Joseph Conrad ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Yael Levin
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Heart Of Darkness ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Experimental Narrative

The chapter focuses on Conrad’s scenes of suspension as sites for an investigation of language and its role in the creation of the modernist subject. Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Victory are read as the serial restaging of an unsolicited encounter with the language of the other. These unwarranted interruptions contribute to an exploration of a particularly passive and fragmented subjectivity that relinquishes the agency and cohesion afforded the Cartesian cogito. The insistence on the oral tradition is thus read not as an attempt to resurrect speech within an essentially silent medium but as a dramatization of the role of language in the evolution of the modernist subject and the narrative that houses him. Those same experimental narrative techniques that are often associated with Conrad’s commitment to an inherently epistemological philosophical inquiry are attributed here to the author’s effort to chart the ontological coordinates of character and narration.

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