scholarly journals Literary Representation of Sport in Historical Turmoil: On Józef Hen’s “The Boxer and The Death”

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 291-299
Author(s):  
Paulina Korzeniewska-Nowakowska

The present article strives to analyze a sporting war short story The Boxer and The Death by Józef Hen as an exemplary piece of sports writing immersed in a historical context. Although there is no entrenched tradition of sports writing in the Polish literary expression, the story offers a very classic sports narrative anchored in the Holocaust reality. Following the presentation of the figure of Hen and providing historical background for sport in concentration camps, the author analyzes the story, focusing on its two main characters: Janusz Kominek and Walter Kraft, as well as the values and symbols they represent. It is also argued that The Boxer and The Death fulfills the criteria of a traditional western, melodramatic narrative, and conforms to Robert J. Higgs’s Adonic model of an athlete in literature.

Author(s):  
Elena Dotsenko

Tom Stoppard’s drama has been one of the eminent and internationally known phenomena of contemporary theatre for several decades. Nevertheless, the polemics are still relevant whether Stoppard’s plays belong to postmodern or postdramatic or any other current trend. The article regards Stoppard’s theatrical experiment as a postmodern one. Moreover, the use and even development of postmodern techniques are noted not only as far as his early plays of the 1960s and 70s are concerned, but as a characteristic of the later dramas by Stoppard. Recently the playwright has created three major epic plays characterized by a deep understanding of historical context: “The Coast of Utopia”, “Rock’n’Roll”, and “Leopoldstadt”. The author of the article considers two later plays as original pieces, having in common some autobiographical details. “Rock’n’Roll” presents the years from 1968 to 1990 in Czechoslovakia and compares the interpretation of “freedom” in the West and that under the Communist regime. “Leopoldstadt” is a play about Austrian Jews and the Holocaust. The article analyzes the artistic devices of representation of the cultural and historical background in each of the plays.


2007 ◽  
pp. 156-177
Author(s):  
Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini Fracapane

The article deals with the most important events of the Holocaust in Denmark. The first part outlines the broader historical context of the events of October  1943 and the deportation of Danish Jews. It also contains a critical comment on the mainstream historical narration, particularly those aspects that concern the situation of Jewish prisoners at Theresienstadt. The second part is an overview of the latest research into the Danish aspects of the Holocaust, such as the expulsion of Jewish refugees, the rescue operation of October 1943, and the actual number of deportees. The author also presents results of her own research of the Danish remembrance culture.


This chapter reviews the book The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War (2014), by Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, translated by Jessica Setbon. The Story of an Underground is about the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) who founded an underground movement during the Holocaust. The armed underground developed a plan to escape to the forests and join the partisans. The ghetto was liquidated in the summer of 1944. Many of the remaining Jews were sent to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps. The book highlights the dilemmas of Jewish armed resistance such as difficulties in obtaining weapons and training, some of the failures of the resistance, and some of the positive aspects of those who thought differently from members of the armed resistance.


Author(s):  
Marvin A. Sweeney

This chapter surveys the historical background for the composition of the book of Ezekiel, covering roughly three centuries—from the reign of Hezekiah until the early Persian period. This background is essential to the book’s proper interpretation, given one of its most characteristic and prevalent features: oracles that are dated. The present chapter not only recounts the rise and fall of successive Assyrian and Babylonian empires, but also shows how the book has addressed the context of that evolving environment. The book’s explicit chronology thus ties this political history to the experience of the Judean exiles in Babylon.


2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
Anthony Cordingley

Abstract Relationships of political domination in Beckett’s Comment c’ est (1961)/How It Is (1964) are typically read through a specific historical moment (the Holocaust, the Algerian War) or literary representation (Dante, Sade). This article reveals spectres in the text from the long history of the colonisation of Ireland to the legacy of Renaissance and Enlightenment humanism; it explores Beckett’s sense of complicity in the Anglo-Irish Ascendency.


Author(s):  
Hylkje de Jong

Abstract When working with the Groningen edition of the Basilica, it is necessary to apply the periodical divisions of Roman law (classical Roman law, Justinianic law, early and later Byzantine law) to the texts in order to make the differences in meaning, according to their historical background, better visible. Each historical context shows its own characteristics, for example in expressions and references. To interpret data from the Basilica correctly, one must also know how to collect all relevant fragments.


2017 ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Dagmar Kročanová

The article discusses several Slovak plays with the theme of the Holocaust; namely Ticho (Silence) by Juraj Váh, Holokaust (Holocaust) by Viliam Klimáček, and Rabínka (The Woman Rabbi) by Anna Grusková. It also briefly refers to Návrat do života (Return to Life) and Antigona a tí druhí (Antigone and Those Others) by Peter Karvaš, both mediating traumas from concentration camps. Two plays (Ticho and Návrat do života) were written and staged immediately after the Second World War. Karvaš’s Antigona is a rare occurrence of the theme in Slovak drama during the Communism (in the early 1960s), whereas Klimáček’s and Grusková’s plays are recent, both staged in 2012. The article focuses on several aspects of these five plays: on dramatic characters representing “victims”, “witnesses” and “culprits” (Panas, quoted in Gawliński 2007: 19); on references about and/or representation of the Holocaust in dramatic texts; and on the type of the conflict(s) in the plays. It also mentions specific approaches of respective authors when dealing with the theme of the Holocaust, as well as with the relevance of their reflection of the theme for Slovak society in respective periods.


Author(s):  
Y. Yin

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In 17&amp;ndash;18<sup>th</sup> century, the spread of the image of the Qing Imperial Garden witnessed the cross-cultural exchanges and promoted the development of English Landscape Garden style. The reciprocal ‘far away foreign land’ between Chinese and British cultures and the influence of historical context had caused the discrepant view of European on Chinese gardens. This project focuses on the differences of cultural heritage values found in the two kinds of gardens: from the design of space and structure, poems and paintings representing designers' concepts, humanities factors, design conception, gardening elements and etc. Which hopes to fill up the gaps of relevant studies and stress the importance of documentation for gardens between the East and West. There are three aspects to illustrate the inner differences under the surface similarities between the two kinds of gardens. Firstly, the distortion and discontinuity through out the introduction and translation.This research attempts to cross-examine such an argument through an investigation into the journey to the West by the carrier of Chinese Imperial garden ideas. Then the meaning of ‘views of nature’ in the English Landscape Garden was inconsistent with the Chinese concept of ‘natural state of the world’. Thirdly, the differences of historical background, culture and values between the Qing Imperial Garden and the English Landscape Garden. All in all, this research could well invite a more factually-based understanding of the Sino-English architectural interactions as well as the Chinese contributions to the world architecture.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rose Anna O'Rorke Plumridge

<p>This thesis is a scholarly edition of Katherine Mansfield’s Urewera Notebook. The General Introduction summarises the purpose to which the notebook has been put by previous editors and biographers, as evidence for Mansfield’s happiness or unhappiness in New Zealand throughout 1906-8. It then offers an overview of the historical context in which the notebook was written, in order to demonstrate the social complexity and geographical diversity of the terrain that Mansfield covered during her 1907 camping holiday. This is followed by an analysis of Mansfield’s attitudes towards colonials, Maori and the New Zealand landscape. Mansfield’s notebook is permeated by a sense of disdain for colonials, especially when encountered as tourists, but also a fascination with ‘back-block ’settlers and a sense of camaraderie with her travelling companions. Mansfield repeatedly romanticised Maori as a noble ‘dying race’ with a mythic past, but was also insightfully observant of the predicament of Maori incontemporary colonial society. Her persistent references to European flora, fauna and ‘high culture’, and her delight in conventionally picturesque English gardens, reveal a certain disconnect from the New Zealand landscape, yet occasional vivid depictionsof the country hint at a developing facility for evokingNew Zealand through literature.In the Textual Introduction I discuss the approaches of the three prior editors of the notebook: John Middleton Murry polished, and selectively reproduced, the Urewera Notebook, to depict Mansfield as an eloquent diarist; Ian A. Gordon rearranged his transcription and couched it within an historical commentary which was interspersed with subjective observation, to argue that Mansfield was an innate short story writer invigorated by her homeland. Margaret Scott was a technically faithful transcriber who providedaccuracy at the level of sentence structure but whoseminimal scholarly apparatus has madeher edition of the notebook difficult to navigate,and has obscured what Mansfield wrote. I have re-transcribed the notebook, deciphering many words and phrases differently from prior editors. The Editorial Procedures are intended as an improvement on the editorial methods of prior editors.The transcription itself is supported by a collation of all significant variant readings of prior editions. Arunning commentary describesthe notebook’s physical composition, identifies colonial and Maori people mentioned in the text, and explains ambiguous historical and literary allusions, native flora and fauna,and expressions in Te Reo Maori. The Itinerary uses historical documents to provide a factually accurate description of the route that Mansfield followed, and revises the itinerary suggested by Gordon in 1978. A biographical register explains the social background of the camping party. This thesis is based on fresh archival research of primary history material in the Alexander Turnbull Library, legal land ownership documents at Archives New Zealand, historical newspapersand information from discussions with Warbrick and Bird family descendants.A map sourced from the Turnbull Cartography Collection shows contemporary features and settlements, with the route of the camping party superimposed. Facsimiles of pages from the notebook are included to illustrate Mansfield’s handwriting and idiosyncratic entries. Photographs have been selected from Beauchamp family photograph albums at the Turnbull, from the Ebbett Papers at the Hawke’s Bay MuseumTheatre Gallery, and from private records.</p>


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