scholarly journals Twelve Chinese Zoosigns of Zodiak: Tradition and Modernity

Author(s):  
Vladimir N. Denisenko ◽  
Yu Xu Zheng

The work is devoted to the origins and peculiarities of zodiac signs in the ancient Chinese tradition. The study is carried out within the frames of linguocultural approach towards interpreting animalistic metaphors, namely, the zoonyms of the twelve zodiac signs which in China, are used to characterize people concerning their date of birth and are passed on from generation to generation. Chinese zodiacs are based on the astronomic theory of constellations and human worship (idolatry) of totems. It focuses on the comparison of zoonym metaphors reflected as Chinese zodiac signs both in the Chinese and Russian languages proceeding from the theory of metaphor in modern cognitive aspect to detect similarities and differences, and as well, the study of cultural roots of zoonym metaphors revealed in the Chinese zodiac signs. The object of the study concerns zoonyms of zodiac signs possessing the relevant meaning in the Chinese zoological lexis. The work elaborates the definition of the notion zodiac, describes the processes of the genesis, formation and development of the Zodiac culture and its specific cultural relevance; according to the analysis undertaken, the means to differentiate twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and those of Chinese fairy tales, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, in Russian - animals were discussed and verified as to I.A. Krylovs fables. The conclusion states that metaphors are determined by the language itself, and linguocultures of various nations are reflected in specific metaphors and other peculiarities.

2020 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Goral

The aim of the article is to analyse the elements of folk poetics in the novel Pleasant things. Utopia by T. Bołdak-Janowska. The category of folklore is understood in a rather narrow way, and at the same time it is most often used in critical and literary works as meaning a set of cultural features (customs and rituals, beliefs and rituals, symbols, beliefs and stereotypes) whose carrier is the rural folk. The analysis covers such elements of the work as place, plot, heroes, folk system of values, folk rituals, customs, and symbols. The description is conducted based on the analysis of source material as well as selected works in the field of literary text analysis and ethnolinguistics. The analysis shows that folk poetics was creatively associated with the elements of fairy tales and fantasy in the studied work, and its role consists of – on the one hand – presenting the folk world represented and – on the other – presenting a message about the meaning of human existence.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 126-141
Author(s):  
S.S. Kulakov

The increasing number of dysfunctional families causes an increase in the number of civil litigation on the education of the child, where the relationship between the persons are highly conflictual. The actual task is study the one of components in the structure of the psychological relationship - emotional and semantic constructs underlying semantic perception of each other and the child's parents. Examination of 42 testees (parents) from harmonious families and 54 testees (parents) during the forensic psychological and psychiatric examination (regarding the definition of child`s residence or the order of meetings for the child and the parent who don`t live with it) by methods "Geometric test of relations" and "Semantic Differential" showed that in families where is highly conflictual relationship, there is positive assessments of herself and her child, while assessment of the spouse (wife) characterized inversion. This negative attitude toward the spouse (wife) is not the other parent's negative characteristics. It is the ignoring the other parent's positive characteristics. The positive acceptance of all family members was revealed in harmonious families.


Author(s):  
Brian E Cox

This article follows an earlier assessment of Bentham’s views on guardianship 1 that touched on but did not explore connections or departures between guardian-ward and parent-offspring relations, about which Bentham was not as precise as he might have been. Further, he added complexity to the issue by describing parents as occupying dual roles: guardians and ‘masters’ (employers) of their own offspring. These relations are now considered, on the one hand, in the wider context of ‘special relations’ and ‘duties’ and, on the other hand, alongside some appreciation of Bentham’s personal perspectives. However, the main object of the present article is to assess similarities and differences between parents and guardians in legal, status and functional terms. It uses the profile of guardian-ward relations provided by the previous article 2 as a benchmark. The article concludes by affirming that ‘being a parent’ and ‘being a guardian’ have quite different meanings.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (101) ◽  
pp. 122-139
Author(s):  
Thor Grünbaum

Action in Narratology, Literature, and LifeIn this article I argue that the representation of simple, bodily action has the function of endowing the narrative sequence with a visualizing power: It makes the narrated scenes or situations ready for visualization by the reader or listener. By virtue of this visualizing power or disposition, these narrated actions disrupt the theoretical divisions, on the one hand, between the narrated story and the narrating discourse, and on the other hand, between plot-narratology and discourse-narratology. As narrated actions they seem to belong to the domain of plot-narratology, but in so far as they serve an important visualizing function, these narrated actions have a communicative function and as such they can be said to belong to the domain of discourse-narratology. In a first part of the article, I argue that a certain type of plot-narratology, due to its retrospective epistemology and abstract definition of action, is unable to conceive of this visualizing function. In a second part, I argue that discourse-narratology fares no better since the visualizing function is independent of voice and focalization. In a final part, I sketch a possible account of the visualizing function of simple actions in narratives.


Author(s):  
В.В. Крюков ◽  
О.В. Шлегель

В статье рассматриваются методики в расследовании уголовных дел, касающихся должностных преступлений коррупционной направленности и преступлений против личности, совершаемых по мотиву национальной ненависти или вражды. Выявлены и предлагаются к обсуждению как общие аспекты, способствующие раскрытию вышеуказанных категорий преступлений с одной стороны, так и особенности, связанные с их спецификой – с другой стороны. Также авторами предложены новые методологические особенности для раскрытия и расследования указанных категорий дел, помогающие предварительному следствию успешно справляться с поставленными задачами. The article discusses the methods of scientists in the investigation of criminal cases concerning official crimes of corruption and crimes against the person committed on the basis of national hatred or enmity. Scientists have identified common aspects that help in the disclosure of both categories of crimes on the one hand, and on the other hand, in accordance with their specifics, the features of the


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
John W De Gruchy

Nelson Mandela and Dietrich Bonhoeffer have become twentieth century icons of resistance against illegitimate regimes and oppression. Both of them were committed makers of peace who were forced by circumstances to engage in violent resistance, the one in an armed struggle and the other in a plot to assassinate a dictator. This recourse to violent means in extraordinary circumstances was driven by moral and strategic considerations that followed a similar logic, even though their contexts were different in important respects. In this essay, we explore these similarities and differences, as well as their reasons for engaging in violent action, and offer certain propositions based on their narrative for responding to political oppression and the call for regime change today.


1994 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Kasher

In his introductory essay on the philosophical sources of The Guide of the Perplexed, Shlomo Pines points out a well-known contradiction between two conceptions of God in Maimonides' theology. On the one hand, Maimonides borrowed the Aristotelian definition of God as the intellect that cognizes itself; on the other, in line with Avicenna's Neoplatonic theory of attributes, Maimonides denied the possibility of saying anything positive about God. Pines proposes two possible solutions; first, that Maimonides was well aware of the contradiction, or, second, that he fell into the contradiction inadvertently. As Pines himself admits, however, neither solution is satisfactory.


2021 ◽  
pp. 264-269
Author(s):  
P. A. Moiseev

The review deals with Luc Boltanski's Mysteries and Conspiracies [Enigmes et complots]. The following is noted as defects of the reviewed book: detective fiction is associated with anxieties that question the framework of modern reality. Such attribution, it is argued, results from inaccurate comparison of detective fiction to a spy novel. The reviewer identifies contradictions in the definition of detective fiction: on the one hand, it is characterised by the proverbial anxiety. On the other, the writer suggests that unravelling a mystery normalises the ‘integrity of predictable expectations.' In addition, Boltanski confuses detective fiction with police procedural novels as well as the concepts of genre and theme with regard to spy novels (as a result, he dwells on ‘the genre of the spy novel,' even though spy novels are written in a number of genres). The review particularly criticises Boltanski's assessment of A. Conan Doyle's prose.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104-116
Author(s):  
Ivan O. Volkov ◽  

For the first time, in the article, Vladimir Titov’s letter (dated 12/24 February 1869) is published and commented. In the 1820s, in Russia, Titov was well-known as a writer and literature theorist, the author of a romantic novella The Remote House on Vasilyevsky Island (1829) close to Society of Lyubomudriye. The letter extracted from the archives of the National Library of Russia is addressed to Duke Vladimir Odoevsky whose relationship with Titov was friendly from the very beginning of their acquaintance. The letter focuses on Ivan Turgenev’s speech published in the first issue of Sovremennik and titled “Hamlet and Don Quixote”. Reacting to Turgenev’s article, Titov shortly and critically accesses the comparison concentrating mainly on the image of Hamlet and thoroughly expresses his opinion on the essence of his tragic state. Titov’s opinion is just the opposite of Turgenev’s complex and multidimensional interpretation. Having experienced the great impact of the philosophy of German idealism at the beginning of his career, Titov to a great extent idealizes Shakespeare’s character whom he long knows and whom he is clearly eager to vindicate. Meanwhile, Titov does not pursue the aim to absolutely advocate the romantic halo of Hamlet as a Titanic personality (grandiose intellect and scale of feeling) and to enact the tragic pathos of the inner fight only. Developing Goethe’s definition of the essence of the character’s inner conflict, Titov, on the one hand, approaches its real understanding underlying the prince’s necessity to stay in a derogatory position of a “pitiful semiclown, indecisive grouch and shred”. On the other hand, the assessment can not be absolutely objective because Titov wants to see Hamlet as a victim of the fatal fortune which turns him into a character of an almost classical tragedy of fate. Titov’s bright and developed reaction (in the document of private nature) to Turgenev’s article is attractive and important first of all for its vividly demonstrated novelty and creativity of the writer’s view, wideness and multimodality of the author’s perception of Hamlet’s image. For the first time, Turgenev gave a developed interpretation of Shakespeare’s image in the tale “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky Province” (1848). Continuing his searches in the area of “Russian” (or “steppe”) Hamlet, Turgenev creates moral and philosophical problems of the English tragedy in the crisis socio-historical and cultural atmosphere of Russia of the 1840s. However, the principles of the artistic generalization and the peculiarities of the new reading, not mentioned and not fully comprehended by his contemporaries, were surprising and rejected when the speech “Hamlet and Don Quixote” appeared, in which Shakespeare’s character is presented ultimately vividly and lively in the then current interpretation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Renz

Spinoza's ethics is grounded by a conviction which is as simple as it is programmatic: Subjective experience can be explained, and its successful explanation is of ethical relevance. For it makes us smarter, freer and happier. This is the programmatic conviction behind Spinoza's ethics and motivates many of the theses it puts forward. Ursula Renz shows which kind of a theory of the human mind informs this program. The systematic differentiation of theory parts in the architecture of ethics proves to be a decisive move: A theory part that deals with questions of the ontology of the mental is followed by a definition of the human mind as a kind of subject theory, which in turn is separated from a theory part dealing with the constitution of content. This structure makes it possible to deal separately with different problems that arise in the course of the explanation of experience. In the end, Spinoza succeeds in avoiding both reductionisms and skepticisms right from the start. In this way, two intuitions are brought together that are often considered incompatible: on the one hand, the view that experience is something irreducibly subjective, and on the other hand, the assumption that there are better and worse explanations of experience.


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