Rereading the Future

PMLA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (3) ◽  
pp. 640-646
Author(s):  
Cynthia Port
Keyword(s):  
Graduate School ◽  
The Novel ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Opening Scene ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Dynamic Relation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Central Station ◽  
The Way ◽  
The House Of Mirth

I noticed the dynamic relation between age and narrative the second time i read edith wharton's the house of mirth. on my first experience of reading the novel, as an undergraduate of eighteen, I was engaged by its thwarted love story and saddened by Lily Bart's tragic but honorable end. When I reread the novel in graduate school, however, I was about to turn twenty-nine, the age at which Lily's marriage prospects and high expectations for the future begin to fade. Although Lily is widely admired for her remarkable beauty, readers are alerted in the novel's opening pages to the incipient erosion of that beauty. Even as Lawrence Selden finds his eyes “refreshed” when he catches a glimpse of Lily at Grand Central Station, remarking that “he had never seen her more radiant” (37), he credits this impression to the way her dark hat and veil have temporarily restored “the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing” (38). While Selden silently muses about her age (“here was nothing new about Lily Bart. … [H]ad she indeed reached the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?” [37–38]), Lily declares that she's “as old as the hills” (38); she perceives that “people are getting tired” of her and saying she “ought to marry” (42). Lily is ambivalent about marriage as her “vocation” (as Selden puts it [43]) but undertakes this quest. By the end of the novel, having lost her social and economic standing and failed to secure a husband—and thereby a future—she puts her affairs in order and overdoses on chloral (43). Her age is certainly not the only factor contributing to her decline: Selden's continuing fascination with Lily affirms that she has remained dis-tractingly attractive (even if, perhaps, “ever so slightly brightened by art” [39]), and the novel attributes her social descent more directly to her financial circumstances than to her age. Nevertheless, the opening scene of The House of Mirth emphatically establishes twenty-nine as a precipice over which Lily Bart falls to her doom.

scholarly journals Working in the world of the pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-102
Author(s):  
Luke Tredinnick ◽  
Claire Laybats
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Information Professionals ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Way

This paper compiles a series of responses from key information professionals to the novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Respondents were invited to answer the questions how the pandemic has impacted on their work, and how it might change the way of working in the future. Contributors to the article include Scott Brown, Steve Dale, Denise Carter, Alison Day, Hal Kirkwood and Emily Hopkins.

Cervantine Criticism since 2000 and into the Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 647-680
Author(s):  
Bruce R. Burningham
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Current Century ◽  
Critical Perspectives ◽  
The Way

The past two decades have seen an explosion in Cervantes scholarship. Indeed, it would perhaps not be an exaggeration to suggest that the last twenty years arguably represent the Golden Age of Cervantes criticism: slightly more than half of scholarly works written since 1888 have been published during the last two decades. In other words, during the last twenty years, the body of Cervantes knowledge has more than doubled, greatly expanding our variety of critical perspectives along the way. This chapter discusses the ‘across the centuries’ trend resulting from the various anniversary celebrations related to Cervantes, the ‘Cervantes and the Americas’ collections, Cervantes’s treatment of Islam, and the modernity of the novel, among other trends that have expanded Cervantine criticism since the turn of the current century.

Vampire Religion

2002 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Herbert
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
The Future ◽  
Moral Conception ◽  
William Robertson ◽  
European Civilization ◽  
The Way

THIS ESSAY HIGHLIGHTS AND SEEKS to trace the conflicted logic of the strong religious motivation exemplified in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). First it analyzes the tensions in Stoker's polemic against the primitive other of religion/ superstition, setting that polemic off against those of two late-Victorian anthropologists, William Robertson Smith and James Frazer. For these theorists, the basis of the superstitious mentality lies in the principle of taboo, according to which the divine and the unclean are one and the same and divinity manifests itself in contagious physical transmission. Dracula on the level of its overt homiletic rhetoric presents the campaign waged against vampirism by Van Helsing and his friends as an allegory of the suppression of wicked archaic superstition in the name of enlightened, spiritualized Christian religion. Yet the novel is itself an emanation of a deeply superstitious mentality: it powerfully endorses a moral conception (a familiar one to the Victorian middle classes) based on the perils of the contagious transmission of uncleanness, it portrays the disgustingly filthy Count as an object of religious veneration, and it ascribes frightening magical agency to religious instruments like crucifixes and communion wafers. Along the way it proclaims an ideology of the violent purification of society from the influence of enemies of religion, particularly unclean women and, implicitly, Jews - the ideology against which Frazer particularly warns as posing a lethal danger for the future of European civilization. The argument of Dracula about the relations of religion and superstition is irresolvably contradictory. At the same time, Stoker carries out an exposéé (or offers a case in point) of the perversely reflexive relations obtaining between vampirism and Christian religion in the age of the dominance of evangelicalism. He echoes earlier writers, notably Feuerbach, in diagnosing a strain of vampiric sadism at the heart of Christian piety. In its theme of erotically charged blood-drinking, Dracula evokes in particular the dominant motifs of the Wesleyan hymnal, and thus bears witness to the pathology that energizes Victorian spirituality.

scholarly journals Covid-19, Fourth industrial revolution and the future of elections in Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Joseph Olusegun Adebayo ◽  
Blessing Makwambeni ◽  
Colin Thakur
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
The Future ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Initial Focus ◽  
The Way

The initial focus of this study was on exploring the potential impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on future elections in Africa. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale and complexity, 4IR could change humanity and human existence as we presently know it. The suddenness with which the novel coronavirus pandemic has shut down life across the globe, including the cancellation and postponement of scheduled elections, led to a realignment of the research goals. The study thus includes ways in which 4IR and unforeseen global emergencies like pandemics can impact future elections, with specific reference to Africa.

On the Borders of the Ostensive

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsti Sellevold
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Scalar Expression ◽  
Communicative Effect ◽  
The House Of Mirth

This chapter studies uses of blushing as emotional expression both independently and in combination with the scalar expression almost in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Introducing the notion of ‘emotional vigilance’, it argues that uses of involuntary emotional expression play an essential role in the communicative effect of the novel and are enacted at both the ostensive and the non-ostensive level, through authorial agency and character behaviour respectively. The scalar expression almost pinpoints how the almost-but-not-quite-fulfilled love story between the two main characters is articulated, and arguably made to happen, by such expressions. Together, they create a rich web of implicatures and implications, the space in which the suspense of the novel and its tragic outcome are played out. The chapter thus explores the borders of the ostensive; that is to say, of the conditions within which relevance itself operates.

scholarly journals Memória, história e tradição: um diálogo entre o velho e o novo no romance Lueji, o nascimento de um império

Navegações ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Fábio Henrique Novais de Mesquita ◽  
Márcia Manir Miguel Feitosa
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
African Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Novel ◽  
The Future ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Way

As literaturas africanas em língua portuguesa despontam com muita força no século XX e, aos poucos, ganham espaço na contemporaneidade por meio de narrativas que problematizam a escrita da história a partir de epistemologias eurocêntricas. Nosso objetivo é analisar o romance Lueji, o nascimento de um império (1990), de Pepetela, a partir de olhares que nos ajudem a compreender de que forma a memória, a história e a tradição se entrelaçam em espaços-tempos diferentes e como as ações do presente se constituem por meio de uma reatualização da memória sem a pretensão de veracidade da história oficial. A tradição se constitui então como o elo entre o passado, a memória, e o futuro, reinvenção contínua do presente. As personagens centrais, Lu e Lueji, participam de realidades que questionam a força das tradições, dependendo das suas interpretações para validá-las ou não, cada uma em seus contextos. *** Memory, history and tradition: a dialogue between the old and the new novel Lueji, o nascimento de um império ***The African literatures in the Portuguese language appear and rise, strongly, in the 20th century and, slowly, get their space in the contemporaneity through the narratives which used to question the historical written based on the Eurocentric epistemology. Our goal is analyze the novel Lueji, o nascimento em um império (1990), by Pepetela, through points of view that help us to comprehend the way memory, story and tradition intertwine on different space-times and how the present actions are made by the memory upgrade without the needing of the legitimate story veracity. The tradition, therefore, was made as a bound between the past, memory and the future, a continuous present remake. The main characters, Lu and Lueji, participate on realities that question the traditions strength, depending on their interpretations to validate or no, each one in their own context.Keywords: Lueji; Angola; Lusophone African literature; Memory; History.

scholarly journals Ideology and Class Division in Veronica Roth’s Divergent

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-37
Author(s):  
Muhammad Kiki Wardana ◽  
Sumita Roy
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Dominant Trait ◽  
Class Division ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cultural Ideology ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The Way

The paper attempts to overview the ideology and the class division amongst factions in the novel. The ideology of the five factions in the future city of Chicago is embedded with self traits which dictates that everyone must fit into one dominant trait. The classification by traits or personalities makes clear provision that society will run as it is expected by the leader of the faction.  The Divergent of Veronica Roth postulates the depiction of the utopia society that turns Dystopia by the insurgent led by Tris a character that possesses all the qualities and traits of the faction.  The culture and the ideology of bourgeois and slave’s society prevail vividly in the novel which is indicated by the ruling faction, Erudite as the bourgeois while the subjugated faction, Abnegation as the slave society. This paper utilizes the descriptive approach to meticulously break down the events by selecting and highlighting the occurrences in the novel as the way of obtaining the data. The theory of ideology by Raymond Williams (1977) was used in this paper to expose the core or base of cultural ideology amongst the classes. The paper finds out that the every faction has its own ideologies even though they were rooted from the same founding fathers.

William S. Burroughs's Cities of the Red Night Trilogy: Writing Outer Space

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEX HOUEN
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Norman Mailer ◽  
Mary Mccarthy ◽  
Henry Miller ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Future ◽  
Space Age ◽  
The Way

In August 1962 the American novelist Mary McCarthy surprised everyone by extolling the virtues of William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959), thereby raising the public profile of both the novel and novelist. The occasion was an Edinburgh conference on writing and censorship organized by the publisher John Calder, and attended by literary luminaries such as Norman Mailer and Henry Miller. For McCarthy the virtue of Naked Lunch was its timeliness, the way it appeared “sort of speeded up like jet travel”; “it has that somewhat supersonic quality.” Addressing the conference audience, Burroughs went a step further, heralding a new epoch of space writing: I feel that a new mythology is now possible in the space age and that we can again have heroes and villains, with respect to the planet, and in closing I would say that the future of writing is in space and not in time.

The way of the future

1973 ◽  
Vol 131 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Rosati
Keyword(s):  
The Future ◽  
The Way

Less Power, Greater Conflict

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra C. Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Low Power ◽  
High Power ◽  
Goal Pursuit ◽  
Goal Conflict ◽  
Personal Goals ◽  
Multiple Goals ◽  
Objective Performance ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

Abstract. Power facilitates goal pursuit, but how does power affect the way people respond to conflict between their multiple goals? Our results showed that higher trait power was associated with reduced experience of conflict in scenarios describing multiple goals (Study 1) and between personal goals (Study 2). Moreover, manipulated low power increased individuals’ experience of goal conflict relative to high power and a control condition (Studies 3 and 4), with the consequence that they planned to invest less into the pursuit of their goals in the future. With its focus on multiple goals and individuals’ experiences during goal pursuit rather than objective performance, the present research uses new angles to examine power effects on goal pursuit.

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