scholarly journals Interplay of Fantasy and Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 324
Author(s):  
Mohsin Hassan Khan ◽  
Qudsia Zaini ◽  
Md Jakir Hossain
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Fine Line ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Midnight's Children ◽  
Familiar World ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Human Desire

Fantasy and realism are the traits to be found in every culture and individual. Fantasy was often dismissed for being a thing associated with children. This was a practice found to be rampant in the past or it was rather a matter of the past so to say. After centuries of oblivion, people have started giving importance to fantasy when there is a lot of chaos in the society. Fantasy as a genre that helps us to band together, explain, change and form an opinion on reality. Fantasy can surely tempt the human desire, for more than the familiar world of the readers, into ease, anyway from reality and communicate with immense imagination that the readers can connect to. With this in mind, the paper tries to analyze Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children the bizarre and the fantastic blurs the boundaries between the real and plausible in the novel, thereby problematizing the identities of gender, parenthood, and nationality, and renders the readers into a state of uncertainty by incorporating oblique references or links. It also aims to critically analyze and discuss how the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred in literature. The importance of this study is to connect the fine line of fantasy with reality in literature and to present perceptions to the readers on how literature is understood differently by different people.

scholarly journals Fantastic beginning in the novel by L. I. Borodin “It Never Happened”

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Ol'ga Stanislavovna Sukhikh
Keyword(s):  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Holistic Analysis ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
The Way

The novel “It Never Happened” by L. I. Borodin is analyzed from the perspective of peculiarities of the embodiment of fantastic beginning therein. The author employs the holistic analysis of the text. The goal of this research consists in studying the synthesis of the fantastic and the real alongside determining the nature of the extraordinary in the novel; analysis of its key function and methods of its introduction into the artistic world. It is established that the synthesis of the fantastic and the real is associated with fact that Borodin does not intend  to create an image of some extraordinary world, but seeks to actualize his emotions and find the way to resolve the internal conflict via fantastic means –  journey of the narrator into the past. The relevance and novelty are defined by the fact that the work of L. I. Borodin has not previously become the object of comprehensive literary study, although it is interesting from the perspective of problematic and poetics, reflection of the theme of guilt, which is meaningful in the works of L. Borodin. It is proven the crucial function of the fantastic in the novel “It Never Happened” is associated with psychologism. The extraordinary in the plotline is a “derivative” from the emotional drama of the narrator, the strongest desire to redeem himself, and repair what was done in childhood.

scholarly journals Connection and Disconnection in Tom’s Midnight Garden

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ-tls for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Mouhiba Jamoussi
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
The Individual

This paper entitled ‘Connection and Disconnection in Tom’s Midnight Garden’ aims to challenge a particular reading of Philippa Pearce’s novel Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958) as nostalgic and concerned with aging and death. Tom’s Midnight Garden is regarded by some literary critics as a nostalgic work concerned with the past rather than the present. Its protagonist Tom is sometimes considered as disconnected from the real world and living in the fantastic. This paper will argue that, quite the contrary, Tom’s Midnight Garden stands against disconnection, between the child and the adult, the fantastic and the real, and the past and the present. Tom’s Midnight Garden celebrates connection through the interrelation between the self and the other, through a fantastic world constantly interwoven with the real, and a past tightly tied to the present. This paper relies on a thorough reading of the novel, on findings on the child-adult relationship, and on the effects of connection and disconnection on the individual.

scholarly journals An Abstract Expressionist: A Study of Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-15
Author(s):  
Thirupathi Reddy Maram
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Abstract Expressionist ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Human Desire

The novel, Bluebeard (1987) presents a dialogue between abstract and representational painting, pointing out both the value and shortcomings of each school. It may end by imagining a type of art in which the usual boundaries separating the real and the artificial fall away; an art that is able to capture the complexity, sorrow, and beauty of life itself. On the other hand, it focuses on human’s cruelty to human. However, the novel also shows that even in the midst of war and death and sorrow the innate human impulse is a creative one. The novel discovers the human desire to create as it investigates the nature of new art itself. Vonnegut was mostly inspired by the grotesque prices paid for works of art during the past century. He thought not only of the mud-pies of art, but of children’s games as well.

Ghost Meat

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Catherine Belling
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Linear Topology ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
The Devil

Abstract The ambivalent attraction of feeling horror might explain some paradoxes regarding the consumption of representations of atrocities committed in the real world, in the past, on actual other people. How do horror fictions work in the transmission or exploitation of historical trauma? How might they function as prosthetic memories, at once disturbing and informative to readers who might otherwise not be exposed to those histories at all? What are the ethical implications of horror elicited by fictional representations of historical suffering? This article engages these questions through the reading of Mo Hayder’s 2004 novel The Devil of Nanking. Hayder exploits horror’s appeal and also—by foregrounding the acts of representation, reading, and spectatorship that generate this response—opens that process to critique. The novel may productively be understood as a work of posttraumatic fiction, both containing and exposing the concentric layers of our representational engagement with records of past atrocity. Through such a reading, a spherical rather than linear topology emerges for history itself, a structure of haunted and embodied consumption.

scholarly journals Deconstructing the Text and (Re)Constructing the Past: History and Identity in Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 125-138
Author(s):  
Ksenija Kondali
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Spatial Representation ◽  
Past History ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
Diverse Cultures

This paper examines Geraldine Brooks’ latest novel People of the Book (2008) in light of postmodern critiques of history and the desire to explore and signify the past through processes of deconstructing male-centered dominance and (re)constructing histories. The paper highlights ethno-spatial representation that involves intercultural dynamics behind the fate and importance of the manuscript. Drawing on discussions of postmodern views of history and identity construction, I engage the novel against the background of these and other postmodern and postcolonial concerns, also considering intertextual effects stemming from the mixing of genres and sub-genres. Lastly, I offer a reflection about the potential of this fictional account, based on the real-life fate of a prayer book that has testified to the spirit of interfaith tolerance and mutual enrichment of diverse cultures, to provide a context for understanding contemporary preoccupations with heritage, history, memory and identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Magic As Art in Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-280
Author(s):  
Augusta Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Poetic Representation ◽  
Fairy Story

In The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany crafts a fairy-story in which magic serves as an allegory for art. Elfland is a place of art, its timeless beauty created and sustained through magic; and its influence extends to the real world in the form of artistic inspiration. Indeed, elfin magic functions as art does: it preserves the past, renews one's vision, and imbues the material world with meaning. Dunsany's portrayal of art as magic in the novel is a poetic representation of his understanding of art as discussed in his non-fiction works. The novel concludes with a moment that symbolizes the creation of art: Earthly fields enchanted by elfin magic represent the familiar beauties of nature ‘enchanted’ into flights of fancy by the poet's words.

scholarly journals Nick Joaquin’s Cándido’s Apocalypse: Re-imagining the Gothic in a Postcolonial Philippines

Text Matters ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 114-126
Author(s):  
Marie Rose B. Arong
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
Critical Area ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The University ◽  
Do So

Nick Joaquin, one of the Philippines’ pillars of literature in English, is regrettably known locally for his nostalgic take on the Hispanic aspect of Philippine culture. While Joaquin did spend a great deal of time creatively exploring the Philippines’ Hispanic past, he certainly did not do so simply because of nostalgia. As recent studies have shown, Joaquin’s classic techniques that often echo the Hispanic influence on Philippine culture may also be considered as a form of resistance against both the American neocolonial influence and the nativist brand of nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the emergence of Gothic criticism in postcolonial writing, Joaquin’s works have rarely received the attention they deserve in this critical area. In this context, this paper explores the idea of the Gothic in Joaquin’s writing and how it relates to Joaquin being the “most original voice in postcolonial Philippine writing.” In 1972, the University of Queensland Press featured Joaquin’s works in its Asian and Pacific writing series. This “new” collection, Tropical Gothic (1972), contained his significant early works published in Prose and Poems (1952) plus his novellas. This collection’s title highlights a specific aspect of Joaquin’s writing, that of his propensity to use Gothic tropes such as the blending of the real and the fantastic, or the tragic and the comic, as shown in most of the stories in the collection. In particular, I examine how his novella (Cándido’s Apocalypse) interrogates the neurosis of the nation—a disconnection from the past and its repercussions on the present/future of the Philippines.

Hydraulic Laboratory at University of Liège

2018 ◽  
pp. 80-89
Author(s):  
Willi H. Hager
Keyword(s):  
Basic Research ◽  
The Novel ◽  
University Campus ◽  
Current Position ◽  
Professional Background ◽  
The Past ◽  
Comprehensive Picture

The Hydraulic Laboratory of Liège University, Belgium, is historically considered from its foundation in 1937 to the mid-1960s. The technical facilities of the various Buildings are highlighted, along with canals and instrumentation available. It is noted that in its initial era, comparatively few basic research has been conducted, mainly due to the professional background of the professors leading the establishment. This state was improved in the past 50 years, however, particularly since the Laboratory was dislocated to its current position in the novel University Campus. Biographies of the leading persons associated with the Liège Hydraulic Laboratory are also presented, so that a comprehensive picture is given of one of the currently leading hydraulic Laboratories of Europe.

Aesthetic Dilemmas of Adaptation and the Politics of Subjectivity: Animating the Chinese ClassicJourney to the West

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengcheng You
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The West ◽  
The Real ◽  
Quest For Meaning ◽  
National Allegory ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Monkey King

This article reviews four major Chinese animated adaptations based on the classic Journey to the West. It shows how these adaptations, spanning four historical phases of modern China, encapsulate changes in Chinese national identity. Close readings underpin a developmental narrative about how Chinese animated adaptations of this canonical text strive to negotiate the multimodal expressions of homegrown folklore traditions, technical influences of western animation, and domestic political situations across time. This process has identified aesthetic dilemmas around adaptations that oscillate between national allegory and individual destiny, verisimilitude and the fantastic quest for meaning. In particular, the subjectivisation of Monkey King on the screen, embodying the transition from primitivistic impulse, youthful idealism and mature practicality up to responsible stewardship, presents how an iconic national figure encapsulates the real historical time of China.

The Pornographer and McGahern's Allusive Practice

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-297
Author(s):  
Tom Walker
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Present Value ◽  
The Past

Allusions to other texts abound in John McGahern's fiction. His works repeatedly, though diffidently, refer to literary tradition. Yet the nature of such allusiveness is still unclear. This article focuses on how allusion in The Pornographer (1979) is depicted as an intellectual and social practice, embodying particular attitudes towards the function of texts and the knowledge they represent. Moreover, the critique of the practice of allusion that the novel undertakes is shown to have broader significance in terms of McGahern's whole oeuvre and its evolving attempts to salvage something of present value from the literature of the past.

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