scholarly journals Metatextualities in the Kenyan Swahili novel: A case study reading of Kyallo Wamitila’s Dharau ya Ini

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-138
Author(s):  
Lutz Diegner

Contemporary Swahili novels transgress the boundaries of the novel text itself. They employ metatextualities of different categories in order to fulfil a variety of functions. In this essay, I explore metatextualities in the Kenyan Swahili novel, and provide a case study reading of one of the novels by the prolific and award-winning writer Kyallo Wadi Wamitila. My reading of Wamitila’s novel Dharau ya Ini (Contempt of the Liver, 2007) concentrates on metanarration and metareference. I analyse how narration, especially point of view, is used and how it is discussed and reflected upon by the text and in the text itself (metanarration). Another focus will be put on instances of metareference, especially on references to oral literature and to the literary genres of drama and poetry, as part of a work of prose. These analyses are done by a close reading informed by current research on metatextualities, and, in one of the examples, by phonostylistics. A general purpose of this study is to show how Swahili novel writing as African language writing participates in global discourses on, and practices in, literature and the arts. In a perspective of East(ern) African literature, it argues that Swahili literature and literary studies provide stimuli to literary theory and practice otherwise still dominated by its Anglophone counterpart in the region, and beyond. As regards Swahili literature, it reflects the crucial impact of Kenyan writing since about the turn of the millennium, in a sphere hitherto dominated by writers from Tanzania. The study is part of a research project I am undertaking in analysing metatextualities in contemporary Swahili novels by both Tanzanian and Kenyan writers.

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Swanwick

A brief review of the state of music education in the UK at the time of the creation of the British Journal of Music Education (BJME) leads to a consideration of the range and focus of topics since the initiation of the Journal. In particular, the initial requirement of careful and critical enquiry is amplified, drawing out the inevitability of theorising, an activity which is considered to be essential for reflective practice. The relationship of theory and data is examined, in particular differentiating between the sciences and the arts. A ‘case study’ of theorising is presented and examined in some detail and possible strands of future development are identified.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 339-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Stetz

Long ago, Margery Williams'sThe Velveteen Rabbit(1922) taught us that toys become real when they are loved. Literary genres, however, become real when they are parodied. The neo-Victorian novel, therefore, must now be real, for its features have become so familiar and readily distinguishable that John Crace has been able to have naughty fun at their expense inBrideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century(2010), where John Fowles'sThe French Lieutenant's Woman(1969) stands as representative of the type. Crace's treatment of Fowles's first-person narrator results in a remarkable effect: the ironic commentary upon the nineteenth century from a twentieth-century vantage point that runs throughout the novel gets subjected, in turn, to ironic commentary from a twenty-first-century point-of-view:


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-36
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Bak

This article has three aims, all of them related to the theory and practice of intertextuality. Firstly, the article makes an attempt to reconstruct the Augustinian-Lutheran type of discourse. A number of modern theologians and historians of philosophy have observed that the main currents within Christian theology have their basis in a specific discourse organization of textual utterances. With reference to these observations, the article maps out some dominant features of Augustine’s and Luther’s discoursive practices. The type of discourse thus reconstructed contains grammatical, logical-argumentative, narrative and rhetoric-figurative characteristics, and – as a matter of fact – it manifests a high degree of applicability in the field of literary studies. Secondly, the article applies the reconstructed type of discourse to analyze a masterpiece of Swedish twentieth-century literature, the novel Dykungens dotter (The Marsh King’s Daughter, 1985) by Birgitta Trotzig (1929–2013). In several interviews, Trotzig makes evidently contradictory remarks on Augustine and Luther. She dissociates herself from their anthropology at the same time as she hints that their view of human conditions has made a deep impression on her. The article’s application intends to throw light on this precarious hermeneutic situation. The intense presence of the Augustinian-Lutheran type of discourse in the novel made apparent through the application indicates that an interpretation of Trotzig’s writings by means of Augustinian-Lutheran intertexts is hermeneutically motivated in spite of her own negative declarations. Thirdly, the article makes use of the reconstructed type of discourse in order to examin Gérard Genette’s notion of architextuality. There is a theoretical incongruence in his notion. On an explicit definitory level, architextuality includes all types of discourse and modes of enunciation. On a conteptual level, however, the notion of architextuality is constructed on the pattern of literary genres. The article’s application demonstrates that Genette’s notion requires some corrections to live up to its definitory commitments. The Augustinian-Lutheran architext comes into conflict with some of Genette’s linguisticly construed structuralistic categories and demands a more discoursive and hermeneutic way of thinking.


Kalbotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 160-181
Author(s):  
Iva Novakova

The present paper is based on the assumption that the language of the novel is characterized by a statistically relevant overrepresentation of certain linguistic units (e.g. lexemes, key words, collocations and colligations, Siepmann 2015). First steps towards checking the validity of this hypothesis had been undertaken in pioneering works in the 1990s/2000s (e.g. Stubbs & Barth 2003). These studies were however limited by the small size of their (exclusively English) corpora. The present study explores the role of some patterns (phraseological motifs) in distinguishing French literary subgenres. It also proposes a case study of some motifs related to the verbal (dire avec sourire ‘to say with a smile’) and non-verbal communication (adresser un sourire ‘to send a smile’). Unlike traditional corpus-stylistic analyses, which frequently focus on the style of a single author, our corpus-driven approach identifies lexico-syntactic constructions in literary genres which are automatically extracted from the corpora.The main purpose is to show the relevance of the notion of phraseological motif (Legallois 2012; Longrée & Mellet 2013; Novakova & Siepmann 2020) for the distinction of literary subgenres. Linking form and meaning, these ‘multidimensional units’ fulfil pragmatic as well as discursive functions.The data has been extracted from large French corpora of the PhraseoRom research project https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr. They are accessible on http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/phraseobase/index.html and contain 1000 novels (published from the 1950s to the present), partitioned into six sub-corpora: general literature (GEN), crime fiction (CRIM), romances (ROM), historical novels (HIST), science fiction (SF) and fantasy (FY).The results of our study reveal some unexpected differences between the literary subgenres: e.g. the motif dire d’une voix ‘to say in a voice’ in HIST compared to GEN. In FY, expressions of verbal communication are related to shouting and screaming. Expressions related to the non-verbal communication (prendre dans ses bras ‘to take in one’s arms’) are specific to ROM, where body language is overrepresented. In SF, there is a very limited number of these types of expressions. More generally, the motifs provide the link between the micro level (phraseological recurrences) and the macro level (the fictional script).


Author(s):  
Rajaa Radwan Hilles Rajaa Radwan Hilles

This paper deals with the narrative order of time in Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations. Time is crucial in narratological structure as it establishes a logical relation for events in the narrative. Besides, a narrative develops its point of view through the voices in the narrative. This point of view is called focalization. This paper assumes that the sequence of events in Dickens’s Great Expectations does not follow a linear order and consequently, the point of focalization changes throughout the narrative. Accordingly, the current paper intends to investigate the order of narration in the novel. It intends to explore the ultimate thematic concern of the novel as well. The discussion will be in the light of Gerard Genette’s narratological structure and will be applied on Dickens’s Great Expectations. It is the 13th novel in his independent literary works. It has been published unillustrated in 36 weekly instalments in All the Year Round from 1860 through 1861. Then, it has been published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall in1861. The narrative voice has a great impact on the story’s timeline and on the readers because it is narrated in the first-person voice by the protagonist, Philip Pirrip. (Davis, 2007: P 126) The analysis is based on Genette’s theorization of time order in telling a story and communicating a broader point of view that the author intends to make throughout the whole narrative structure.


Author(s):  
Laurie Champion

The short story is the only genre that can be considered uniquely American. The genre began as sketches, or tales, as in the classic tale “Rip Van Winkle.” The genre remained undefined until Edgar Allan Poe’s well-known 1842 review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales. Since Poe’s review, in which he distinguished short fiction from other genres, the American short story has evolved both in form and in content. Like other genres, the short story has evolved through various movements and traditions such as realism, modernism, and postmodernism; however, it has remained unique because of publishing opportunities that differ from longer works such as the novel. The short story genre shares elements of fiction with the novel, traditionally consisting of characteristics such as plot, character, setting, point of view, theme, and writing style. Although the short story shares elements of literature and writing devices with other literary genres, avenues for publication differ greatly. Unlike a novel, a short story is not published as a single entity. It is usually presented with works by other authors in a journal or magazine or in a collection of previously published stories by one author. The rise in popular magazines during the 1920s gave rise to the short story, as the magazines provided a publication outlet. During the second half of the 20th century the short story became less commercial and more literary, paving the way for artistic stories such as one appropriately called “The New Yorker Story.” However, as it became less commercial, the short story fell from popularity and became somewhat obscure in the manner in which poetry remains. Because short stories do not sell, publishers are hesitant to produce them. But during the 1970s, American universities began teaching creative writing classes, and the short story provided a suitable genre for teaching the art of fiction writing. Hence, the American short story experienced a renaissance, and a wave of literary journals emerged. About this time, minimalism was one of the styles most often used in the short story. Raymond Carver built on what Ernest Hemingway had started in America, and the short story took on a new form. During the latter half of the 20th century and early 21st century, women and ethnic writers were given more opportunities to publish short fiction, and the short story reflected progress in civil rights issues. Currently, the rise in technological advances has brought even more opportunities for publication, and more and more American authors are publishing short stories online, now a respected publication venue.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (9) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Visvaganthie Moodley

Symbols and symbolisms across literary genres are powerful rhetoric devices used to enhance not only writers’ style, but to convey richness in meaning that transcends narrative descriptions. However, as its interpretations are context-bound, it causes anxieties for the under-proficient language teacher who, firstmost, requires deep specific content knowledge to drive instruction and enhance cognition amongst learners. Using qualitative descriptive case study, this paper aims to provide specific content knowledge by examining the literary use of symbols, symbolisms and significance in Yann Martel’s ‘Life of Pi’, which has been prescribed as a set book for Grade 12 school-exiting learners in South Africa, for the year 2017 onwards. The paper will – by analysing arbitrary, cultural and personal symbolisms and significances, mostly through psychoanalytical lens – unravel covert meanings and messages in cultural, religious and environmental contexts whilst simultaneously showing how these are pivotal to understanding major themes in the novel.  


2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Pallarés-García

Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) is generally considered an ambiguous and unreliable narrative in terms of point of view (Morini, 2009: 53–57; Wallace, 1995: 77–97). These qualities are often attributed to the extensive use of free indirect discourse (Finch and Bowen, 1990: 5–6; Mezei, 1996: 72–75). This article aims to demonstrate that another narrative technique is also responsible for the ambiguity and unreliability of the novel. ‘Narrated perception’ (NP) portrays the sensory perceptions of a fictional character by describing events as they are experienced by that character (Fludernik, 1993: 305–309). NP has been pointed out by some critics to be a distinct narrative technique, but in general perception is included within the broader category of free indirect discourse (FID), and occasionally as an aspect of free indirect thought (FIT). This article suggests that there are some subtle differences between NP and FID/FIT, and thus it can be beneficial to examine NP separately. In fact, NP is frequently similar to pure narration in terms of form and function. As a case study, this article presents a stylistic analysis of a number of passages containing NP in Emma which do not typically feature in studies of FID/FIT. The analysis provides textual evidence of (1) the presence of Emma’s sensory perceptions within what looks like narration, (2) the close connection between perception, thought and emotion, and (3) the difficulty of distinguishing between perception and narration in some cases, which suggests the potential of NP to mislead the reader by presenting as a seemingly objective fact what later on turns out to be Emma’s mistaken assessment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002224372199904
Author(s):  
Pierre-Yann Dolbec ◽  
Rodrigo Castilhos ◽  
Marcelo J. Fonseca ◽  
Guilherme Trez

Marketization—the entry of the market logic into a field originally insulated from it—is a transformative force that has reshaped many fields, including education, healthcare, the arts, and religion. Marketization brings a unique set of challenges for established organizations: it opens a field to market-style mechanisms of consumer choice and competition, which undermines the legitimacy of established organizations, and it creates contradictory demands for organizational actions. How can established organizations adapt to marketization? To answer this question, we study the adaptation of five established religious schools to the marketization of education in Brazil. We develop the novel hybridization strategy of nested coupling and explain that established organizations respond to marketization by balancing competing demands for differentiation and conformity. We show how religious schools nest the market logic within the religious logic by reconfiguring their resources to conform to market demands while differentiating themselves through their religious orientation. Nested coupling provides a novel strategic approach for established organizations in marketized or marketizing fields, such as hospitals, museums, and schools, to capitalize on a logic that pre-exists marketization and to create a unique competitive positioning in the market.


Author(s):  
Guzel R. Nasibullova ◽  
Talant D. Bimakhanov ◽  
Alsu Kh. Ashrapova

The expression of an emotional state is a main feature that distinguishes fiction from other literary trends. The problem of emotivity is now among the most discussed issues in anthropocentric linguistics, but despite the researchers’ great attention, many of its aspects are still debatable. In the present research, features of the language transfer of emotions are investigated in the translation of fiction from English into Russian. The novel «Howl’s moving castle» by Diana Wynne Jones (1986) was selected as a material for monitoring the process of translating emotive vocabulary. Authors sought to classify the emotive vocabulary in an artistic work, and also consider and analyze the translation of this lexicon into Russian that was translated by Jones (2013). The following methods were used to solve tasks: A comparative analysis of the translation with original text, and transformational, quantitative, statistical analysis. The theoretical basis of research included classifications of emotive vocabulary that was proposed by Shakhovski (2008), and the classification of emotions by Izard (2007), as well as the classification of translational transformations by Barkhudarov (1975) and Komissarov (1990). The theoretical significance of research lies in the fact that the text emotivity phenomenon is considered according to the comparative linguistics, in general, and the theory of translation in particular. The equivalence of concepts of equivalence and adequacy of translation is justified and clearly demonstrated. The practical value of study is determined by the possibility of applying its results in the artistic translation, in teaching the methodology of translation, in development of didactic manuals on the theory and practice of translation, in the teaching English at senior courses of universities on practical lessons and seminars in special courses.


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