scholarly journals NARCISSISTIC PERVERSION IN RELIANCE ON THE CHARACTERS IN THE SELECTED WORKS OF CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE: PSYCHOANALYTIC ASPECT

2019 ◽  
pp. 111-131
Author(s):  
Olga Smolnytska
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Epistolary Texts ◽  
Opinion Journalism

Narcissism as a multifaceted problem is studied in contemporary Ukrainian literary studies, including in psychoanalytic works devoted to philology. In particular, it is a project of the psychohistory of the Ukrainian literature proposed by Nila Zborovska. But the problem of narcissistic perversion, which is becoming more and more relevant in modern times, has not yet been isolated in literary criticism. Instead, fiction is an example of a clear depiction of such a problem in the images of imitators, egocentric manipulators, the display of unhealthy (sick) relationships etc. The main features of the perverse narcissist are singled out in the article. At the same time, manifolds and greater breadth of this type were found in the example of fiction (as opposed to the regularities in accessible psychoanalytic studies). The examples of hysteria and hysteroidism in reliance on the heroines of Lessya Ukrainka are considered, compared with the image of Lisa Khokhlakova in the novel by F. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”. The paralyzed Ukrainianity and paralyzed Christianity in the feminine version are singled out. It is found that the absence of sublimation (in relation on Nerisa) leads to loss of moral qualities. The research emphasizes on the national identity (Nerisa vs Euphrosyne and Antaeus). The characters of Nerisa (“Orgy” by Lessya Ukrainka) and Salome (O. Wilde) are compared. The Lady Macbeth syndrome was identified as one of the signs of perverse narcissus. On the basis of the analyzed texts, there are extracted some binary oppositions, such as: sacred/profane, introvert/extravert, spiritual/fleshly, up(top)/low, creativity/imitation, Eros/Thanatos. Methods of research: comparative, Jungian (analytical psychology), translation studies, mythological, intermedial. For a clearer understanding of the clinical picture of feminine characters, the historical context is presented. The material of the analysis is artistic literature and opinion journalism (epistolary texts). Attention is paid to the texts of the Ukrainian, British, American, Austrian, Russian literatures, as well as folklore and mythology of different nations. Keywords: text, work, archetype, character, narcissistic perversion, narcissist, manipulation, aggressor, victim.

The homeland and the city: Rural and urban decolonization in Patricia Grace’s Potiki

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pia Brückner
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The City

Over the last decade, studies from multiple academic disciplines have started to examine the city’s role as a place of decolonization for Māori people in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article uses those multidisciplinary findings as a basis for literary criticism by re-examining the role of the city in Patricia Grace’s second novel Potiki (1986). Indigenous urbanites are generally deemed impossible and ‘unnatural’ within the inherited colonial ideology. And even though the novel foregrounds a Māori family’s return to their ancestral land, this article argues that the very success of this return is based on the interrelation between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ strategies of decolonization. While the colonial urban–rural binary often seems reinforced, the novel inverts the power positions between colonizer and colonized, thereby promoting decolonization. At the same time, some characters become unconsciously entrapped in a romanticized pre-migration idyll, which the harsh reality of agricultural working life cannot satisfy. In order to assess the effectiveness of the different decolonizing strategies employed by the characters, my analysis utilizes the postcolonial key concepts of binary opposition, the liminal, the interstice, ambivalence, double consciousness and cultural appropriation, and examines the degree to which inherited binary oppositions are either maintained or defied by Pākehā and Māori within the novel.

scholarly journals Theist–Atheist Encounters in Les Misérables, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Plague

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Peter Admirand
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Interreligious Dialogue ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Les Miserables

Turning to the novels, Les Misérables, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Plague, this article focuses on theist–atheist encounters within fiction as guides and challenges to contemporary atheist–theist dialogue. It first provides a discussion of definitions pertinent to our topic and a reflection on the value and limitations of turning to fiction for the study and development of theist–atheist dialogue specifically, and interreligious dialogue more broadly. In examining each of the novels, I will first provide a very brief historical context of when each novel was written, the time and place the covered scenes transpire in the novel, and the authors’ positions toward religion(s) when writing their books. I will close the article on some lessons to glean from these fictional dialogues for contemporary theist–atheist dialogue.

The Formation of Genres in the Renaissance and After

2021 ◽  
pp. 179-193
Author(s):  
Alastair Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
New World ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Renaissance Period ◽  
Practical Information ◽  
The One

This chapter analyses the formation of genres in the Renaissance period and after. It is true that the early modern historical context made possible the revival of several ancient genres and the fresh invention of new ones. Explorations and new world discoveries, for example, stimulated a return to classical georgic, which appealed to the appetite for practical information on the one hand and on the other for images of exotic places. Again, the development of a print culture was a prerequisite for several important kinds. For the most part, however, ‘formation’ may be misleading. The Renaissance was not always characterized by new forms; often it worked by adapting old forms or imparting to them a new spirit. The majority of the principal kinds had already been available in the Middle Ages. Occasionally, a new genre had no ancient precedent, so that one had to be faked. This was the case with the ‘poetics’ genre; its social basis was the novel activity of literary criticism. The chapter then considers genre metaphors, as well as the writing metaphor.

scholarly journals CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE CHAPTER “REBELLION”, IN THE NOVEL “THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV” OF F. M. DOSTOEVSKY (Problems of the suffering of the innocent)

2021 ◽  
Vol XII (38) ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Marina Koprivica
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Unconditional Love ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The World ◽  
Brothers Karamazov

F. M. Dostoevsky is one of the world's great writers who, while preserving the autonomy of a literary work, incorporated into his works issues of an ethical-philosophical and religious character. He permeated his works with echoes of these topics, but, in addition to the literary stamp, in some chapters he concretized ethical-philosophical and religious issues, for example, in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov", in the chapters "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor”. Concerning his spirituality and his perspective on life and society, Dostoevsky belongs to writers whose moral norms are the foundation and imperative of their poetics. He paid special attention to those who were "insulted and humiliated, ", the so-called "little people", especially children who suffer in the world of adults. In this light, we can also say that the title of the chapter "Rebellion" is a seal of Dostoevsky's work, and our work focuses on the central theme of "Rebellion" - the relationship of adult characters to the suffering of children in the world, and the very purpose of punishment for crimes which cannot adequately be redeemed. By analyzing this key chapter of the novel, through concrete images of the suffering of children and the attitudes of Ivan Karamazov, we emphasize the motif of crime and punishment in "The Brothers Karamazov": the question of freedom, that is, free will, but also love towards people who are close, which Dostoevsky problematizes, especially in the parent-child relationship. We also point out the creative task of this Russian writer; his effort to solve the eternal enigma of man as a being, through which the writer wants to solve the riddle of God. Ivan's rebellion against such an arrangement of God is also shown, in which the suffering of the innocent is allowed, with the hero's rejections of future harmony at the expense of the suffering of the innocent and powerless. In this chapter, which has so far received little attention in literary criticism, Dostoevsky also questioned the eternal questions of man through the experience of lived truth, with the view that there is no goal worthy of a single human life or a child's tears. In his complex task, synthesizing in the sphere of literature, ethical-philosophical and religious attitudes, Dostoevsky determines the essence of man and his moral values, opposing the postulates of the notion of unconditional love to rational will, determined by social, generally accepted factors. Based on a wider range of contrasts and contradictory attitudes of Dostoevsky's heroes, especially Ivan Karamazov in "Rebellion", from atheism, faith and agnosticism, to rebellion and preaching, we conclude that these categories are strongly intertwined in the rich literary amplitude of Dostoevsky - writer and ethicist, philosopher, and preacher in literature - and not only permeate, but always end with the apotheosis of a love for man, especially for the so-called "little man", and for unprotected children, indicating the author’s strong compassion for the suffering of the innocent.

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Simone
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Existential Perspective

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.

Poetics of literary dream in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s novel “Sideline”

2021 ◽  
pp. 132-143
Author(s):  
M. A. Lipina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Structural Model ◽  
Sudden Change ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Psychological Function ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
Original Idea ◽  
Falling Asleep ◽  
And Function ◽  
The City

The paper is dedicated to studying the oneiric text of S. Krzhizhanovsky’s novel “Sideline.” The topicality of the research is due to modern literary criticism interest in examining various aspects of artistic hypnology of Russian writers, as well as studying the works of “returned” authors, including S. Krzhizhanovsky. The realization specifics of the structural model of the literary dream in question can be presented as the following scheme: unconscious falling asleep – dream-journey – awakening by falling down. Different variants of artistic implementation of the main metaphors connected with dreaming are analyzed: “dream-life” in the image of briefcase-cushion and the image of “million-brained” dream of equality and brotherhood; “dream-death” in the image of the leader of a dream world, with the prevalence of thanatological vocabulary in the description of the city of dreams. The ways of imitating the space of real dreaming in the oneiric text of the novel are studied: awakening by falling, sudden muteness of characters, sudden change of location, etc. Also, the specifics of using the plot device of an unannounced dream is considered contributing to the illusion of “reality” of everything that happens to the character in the city of dreams. An attempt is made to consider the oneirotop of the novel in terms of classification by genre and function, plot and composition, images and esthetics and characters, as well as artistic functions of dreams in the literature (plot function, psychological function, idea, and symbolic function). The oneiric text of Krzhizhanosky’s novel “Sideline” is viewed as an artistic realization of the author’s original idea of the subconscious, dreamy origin of a communist utopia.

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