scholarly journals The Bakhtinian Carnival in Chicano Novels by Rolando Hinojosa

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina K. Bronich ◽  
Maria I. Baranova
Keyword(s):  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Rolando Hinojosa ◽  
Literary Devices ◽  
The Town

The article discusses Rolando Hinojosa’s novels Klail City and The Valley about the 20 th century Chicano community. The analysis bears on the carnival theory by Mikhail Bakhtin. Carnivalesque images and literary devices examined in the novels create the feeling of the infinite festivity and prove the omnipresence of Bakhtinian carnival in the novelist’s early works. The fictional world of Rolando Hinojosa operates following the rules of the carnival. The life of the Chicano community is organized around the town square, where religious ceremonies are travestied and typical carnival rituals such as “the feast of fools,” election and dethroning of the King, carnival sacrifice, and “the funeral banquet” are perfomed. The analysis of Hinojosa’s novels using Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory sheds light on the main ideas of Klail City Death Trip Series. The festive character of the bodily imagery represents the triumph of life over death, while the macabre laughter helps Chicanos to defeat their fear of death.

Linguistic organization of the duality of mythological worlds in B. Pasternak’s poem "Wind" ("Veter")

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 (5) ◽  
pp. 74-79
Author(s):  
I. V. Yakushevich
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Lexical Resources ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Poetic Text ◽  
Pine Trees ◽  
The One ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Linguistic Means

This article presents a linguopoetic analysis of Boris Pasternak’s poem "Wind" ("Veter") from the position of the lingual embodiment of the duality of mythological worlds. This research focuses on the symbol of "the wind as a spirit", upon which the poem’s whole mystical idea relies. The purpose of this article is to reveal which the linguistic means used to translate the duality of mythological worlds, as well as how this cognition merges with the author’s experience and determines the poem’s figurative system and idea. The understanding of the duality of mythological worlds requires the law of participation (L. L vy-Bruhl) – the identification of the mental, emotional, and physical properties of a person and nature. In Pasternak’s poem, the suffering and rushing "I" of the deceased lyrical hero becomes the wind. In this study, the word-symbol "wind" is studied in the semantic and semiotic aspect as a sign. Its signifier is the lexeme wind meaning 'perceptual idea of an air flow'; signified – the symbolic meaning of 'spirit, soul, immortality', due to the etymological meaning of the word and pagan mythology. The results reveal that the symbol "wind" is the carrier of the duality of mythological worlds, and it programs the fictional world of the poem: on the one hand, these are the actual world of the lyrical heroine, the house, and the wind, which swings pine trees; on the other hand – the imaginary world of the spirit of the dead lyrical hero. The lexical resources of the poetic text translate this opposition in the ratio of the words I and wind, personal pronouns I and you, as well as the words ended and alive. At the grammatical level, the duality is expressed by the contrast of the verbal forms of the past and present time, as well as by the passage from the indirect thought (the lyrical hero’s mental monologue) to the 3rd person narrative about the wind and the pine trees and by the return of the poem to the lyrical hero’s indirect thought at the end. This is how Pasternak implements one of the main ideas of his novel "Doctor Zhivago" – the idea of immortality, which is confirmed in the article by referring to the novel’s macro context and biographical materials.

“There is no such thing as pure fiction”: Impossible worlds and the principle of minimal departure reconsidered

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Mikkonen
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Impossible Worlds ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Literary Devices

AbstractAs has been argued in various theories of fiction, there can be no such thing as a totally fictional world. This paper seeks to examine the principle of minimal departure, defined by David Lewis and Marie-Laure Ryan, as an explanation for the impossibility of total fiction that would undermine all assumptions based on our actual world. The principle says that readers reconstrue the fictional world as being the closest possible to the reality we know, unless otherwise indicated.By drawing examples from the ontologically fluid worlds in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, I suggest new areas in narrative analysis where the principle could be applied and point out some limitations in earlier definitions of this notion. On the one hand, we can examine those narrative and literary devices that directly play upon the principle of mimimal departure and allow fiction to enlarge the scope of the world that must be explained. On the other hand, I argue that questions of modality in fiction may be relatively immune to this principle. I thus introduce the rule of suspension of modal claims, indicating the need to refrain from making assumptions, in any strong sense, about what may be possible, necessary, or contingent in a fictional world. The principle of suspension of modal claims emphasizes the way fiction may encourage epistemological and ontological doubt rather than mimetic or antimimetic expectations (i.e. principles of minimal and maximal departure), compelling our judgement of the possibility and reality of fiction to hesitate, to linger over a range of possibilities.

scholarly journals Traditions of Mexican Corridos in Rolando Hinojosa’s “The Valley” and “Klail City”

2021 ◽  
pp. 224-232
Author(s):  
Maria I. Baranova
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Chicano Literature ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Mexican American Literature ◽  
Folk Hero ◽  
Xix Century ◽  
Rolando Hinojosa

The paper dwells on the traditions of Mexican and Mexican-American ballads called “corridos,” such as “Ballad of Gregorio Cortez,” in the novels of Texas writer Rolando Hinojosa. Corrido that emerged in the XIX century and continues developing today is a unique phenomenon of Mexican and Mexican-American literature. It serves as a worthy material for understanding the problems of cultural interaction, cultural border and multiculturalism. The paper aims at defining the role of corridos in the fictional world of Rolando Hinojosa, the novels “The Valley” and “Klail City” were taken to be analyzed. It gives a brief overview of the genre development based on the key works of the top scholars who study corridos in Russia and abroad. The article also dwells on the creation of the corrido about the folk hero Gregorio Cortez. There is a hypothesis proposed to explain Hinojosa’s decision to opt for the Mexican ballads: the writer was averse to the didactic and propagandistic ideas of Chicano literature of that time which prompted him to use corridos as a means of the hidden moral. Traditional corrido motifs such as revenge, injustice and social inequality are analyzed. The article concludes that in Hinojosa’s polyphonic and fragmented novels, corrido type stories perform plot-forming and compositional functions, direct the reader’s perception.

scholarly journals “Excited Snails”. Radicalism and apoliticalism in the novel “Smoke” by Ivan Turgenev

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 228-249
Author(s):  
Valeria G. Andreeva
Keyword(s):  
Creative Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Virgin Soil ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
The Family ◽  
Epic Novel ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Central Characters

The article is devoted to clarifying the problematics and genre originality of the novel “Smoke” by Ivan Turgenev, revealing the universal opposition behind the heroes’ external wars of words, particularly noticeable in the example of the opposition “life — deadness”. The author of the article argues that an important socio-political assessment of the heroes does not convey the entire intention of the writer, presenting the theory of the civilisational development of Russia. One of the main ideas in the civic novel “Smoke” is the idea of progress, which is considered both at the level of disputes between Westernisers and Slavophils, and at the level of ontological life foundations. In the fictional world of the novel, the denied positions of the Slavophils are greatly simplified, and the Westernisers’ views asserted in general are softened and corrected by figurative oppositions. The article demonstrates the connection between the idea of progress and the family theme, the role of the new hero-figure of the post-reform era in the fate of Russia. The novel “Smoke” is considered in the context of Ivan Turgenev’s late creative work, his intertextualities with the stories “Ghosts”, “Enough”, its connection with the subsequent epic novel “Virgin soil” are noted. Special attention is paid to the conflict between the creative hero and the environment, the high society, the path of the personality and the responsibility of a person for each of his actions. The characters of the central characters of the novel are considered, the change in the writer’s intention is shown, gradually reducing the image of Sozont Potugin, whom Ivan Turgenev endowed with thoughts and beliefs dear to him.

scholarly journals Metafictional Dialogism in O. Henry’s Short Stories

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Chin Ching Lee
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The Self ◽  
Centrifugal Forces ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Social Censure ◽  
The City ◽  
Literary Devices

<p>According to Mikhail Bakhtin, language is ideologically saturated. The verbal constructs—novelistic discourses as “hybrid constructions” here—are loci where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide. Authorial speech, narrator’s speech, and also characters’ speech are interwoven in the text to exhibit diverse ideas, and to disclose polyphonic textualities. In light of Bakhtin’s aforementioned idea, this paper will discuss O. Henry’s attempts to orchestrate “the voices of the city” in four short stories: “The Gift of the Magi,” “An Unfinished Story,”, “Mammon and the Archer,” and “An Unfinished Christmas Story.” New York is portrayed as an ambivalent setting of prosperity and poverty, of dreams built up and broken. Literary devices such as twist endings, parodic adaptations and incorporated genre not only lay bare the textual fictitiousness, but question the permanency of social systems such as capitalism. In addition, the narrators’ descriptions evoke concerns for the exploited within the text, while the self-reflexive authorial intrusions make comments on the hegemonic capitalism with-out. O. Henry, who “speaks through language,” does succeed in creating texts of heteroglossia. Humanistic compassion for the exploited proletarian and social censure against capitalist violence are both displayed.</p>

Mikhail Bakhtin

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Bernard-Donals
Keyword(s):  
Mikhail Bakhtin

Stanislaw Sreniowski, From a Book of Madness And Atrocity

2008 ◽  
pp. 312-316
Author(s):  
Jacek Leociak
Keyword(s):  
Common Fate ◽  
Normal Life ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Town

The title of this text, From the Book of Madness and Atrocity, published here for the first time, indicates its generic and stylistic specificity, its fragmentary, incomplete character. It suggests that this text is part of a greater whole, still incomplete, or one that cannot be grasped. In this sense Śreniowski refers to the topos of inexpressibility of the Holocaust experience. The text is reflective in character, full of metaphor, and its modernist style does not shun pathos. Thus we have here meditations emanating a poetic aura, not a report or an account of events. The author emphasises the desperate loneliness of the dying, their solitude, the incommensurability of the ghetto experience and that of the occupation, and the lack of a common fate of the Jews and the Poles (“A Deserted Town in a Living Capital”; “A Town within a Town”; “And the Capital? A Capital, in which the town of a death is dying . . . ? Well, the Capital is living a normal life. Under the occupation, indeed . . . .”).

Interactive acculturation of Turkish-Belgian parents and children in Flanders: A case study of Beringen

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-428
Author(s):  
Özgün Ünver ◽  
Ides Nicaise
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Maternal Employment ◽  
Domain Specificity ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Town

This article tackles the relationship between Turkish-Belgian families with the Flemish society, within the specific context of their experiences with early childhood education and care (ECEC) system in Flanders. Our findings are based on a focus group with mothers in the town of Beringen. The intercultural dimension of the relationships between these families and ECEC services is discussed using the Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM). The acculturation patterns are discussed under three main headlines: language acquisition, social interaction and maternal employment. Within the context of IAM, our findings point to some degree of separationism of Turkish-Belgian families, while they perceive the Flemish majority to have an assimilationist attitude. This combination suggests a conflictual type of interaction. However, both parties also display some traits of integrationism, which points to the domain-specificity of interactive acculturation.

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