scholarly journals The Resistance of Memory in Stavrogin’s ‘Confession’

Author(s):  
Viktor M. Dimitriev
Keyword(s):  

The article investigates the resistance of memory as a typical narration technique in Dostoevsky’s works, especially in confessional texts. The attention is focused on a fragment of the unpublished chapter “At Tikhon’s” from an unrealized version of the novel The Possessed: Stavrogin bought a photograph of “one girl”, which he perceives as a photograph of Matryosha herself. The article attempts to explain how Stavrogin organizes memories in his “confession” and why the cases of memory aberrations become both the constructive elements of the genre of literary confession and an original “tool” for the protagonist’s self-knowledge. The illustrative memory aberration is considered here in connection with the problems of narration, the psychology of the protagonist, and the visual forms of representation.

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-530
Author(s):  
Cara Weber

Victorian writers often focus questions of ethics through scenes of sympathetic encounters that have been conceptualized, both by Victorian thinkers and by their recent critics, as a theater of identification in which an onlooking spectator identifies with a sufferer. George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871–72) critiques this paradigm, revealing its negation of otherness and its corresponding fixation of the self as an identity, and offers an alternative conception of relationship that foregrounds the presence and distinctness of the other and the open-endedness of relationship. The novel develops its critique through an analysis of women's experience of courtship and marriage, insisting upon the appropriateness ofmarriage as a site for the investigation of contemporary ethical questions. In her depiction of Rosamond, Eliot explores the identity-based paradigm of the spectacle of others, and shows how its conception of selfhood leaves the other isolated, precluding relationship. Rosamond's trajectory in the novel enacts the identity paradigm's relation to skeptical anxieties about self-knowledge and knowledge of others, and reveals such anxieties to occur with particular insistence around images of femininity. By contrast, Dorothea's development in ethical self-awareness presents an alternative to Rosamond's participation in the identity paradigm. In Dorothea's experience the self emerges as a process, an ongoing practice of expression. The focus on expression in the sympathetic or conflictual encounter, rather than on identity, enables the overcoming of the identity paradigm's denial of otherness, and grounds a productive sympathy capable of informing ethical action.


PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 782-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Javier Martínez

This article examines the prevalence of confusion and incoherence in James Baldwin's 1962 novel Another Country, arguing that the novel should be read as an extended and theoretically rich meditation on the difficulty of gaining self-knowledge in oppressive social contexts. Its central thesis is that the novel is motivated less by the tragedy of Rufus Scott's suicide early in the novel than by the ethical imperative that compels all the characters to risk their sense of self (to figuratively commit suicide) in order to better understand the circumstances they face. Through this “suicidal” sensibility, Baldwin examines how self-knowledge in oppressive contexts frequently depends on people making extreme shifts in their conception of self—of who they are in relation to their society. These shifts are often dreaded and appear self-menacing, but Baldwin ultimately implies that they hold liberatory promise.


Author(s):  
M. Moklytsia

The relevance of the study is due to the need to include the novel "Ulysses" by J. Joyce in university and, if possible, school curricula in foreign literature, as well as the need for its interpretation, despite the excessive complexity of the text and difficulty of perception. It is also important to return the legacy of D. Vikonska, a writer, critic, art critic and literary critic, to modern Ukrainian culture. Research methodology: a model of analysis of the modernist novel "Ulysses", created on the basis of the research work of D. Vikonska “James Joyce. The secret of his artistic face” (1934). Scientific novelty: for the first time the analysis of the novel "Ulysses" is carried out with the broad involvement of the half-forgotten studio of D. Vikonska, which has not lost its relevance, clearly articulates the modernist nature of the work, including surreal style. The purpose of the study: to draw attention to the outstanding figure of D. Vikonska as the founder of Ukrainian Joyce studies, to include her in the modern literary process, to show with her help the significant role of Joyce's novel "Ulysses". Conclusions. The answer to the question why Joyce's novel Ulysses is considered a landmark work of modernism should be concise but convincing, based on macro- and microanalysis of the text. First of all, it is a unique example of the author's self-expression, extreme subjectivism (the whimsy of Joyce's nature), transformed into universalism. No one is as subjective as Joyce is, no one is as universal as he is. Such can only be a conscious modernist who has passed the difficult path of search outside, in the world of culture, and inside, looking into the irrational depths of his own psyche. This is the most rational, intellectual and at the same time irrational, or visionary, according to K.G. Jung, type of creativity. Second: this is the boldest (revolutionary, in the words of Vikonska) challenge to tradition (or Cultural Canon, according to K.G. Jung), which manifested itself in the ironic parody of almost all known literary forms and narrative means, many moral and ethical norms. Third: it is a brilliant example of the author's style, a variant of surrealism, which grows out of naturalism and turns into neomythologism. Joyce's style is characterized by the following features: associative metaphorical writing, author's dictionary, which includes numerous innovations, narrative reception of the flow of consciousness; use of dreams, delusions, other boundary conditions; a bizarre intertwining of past and present, when dead and living characters are equal in meaning; consistent reflection of the external in the internal and vice versa; a labyrinth of human wanderings in search of pleasures, meaning, cognition and self-knowledge. Joyce modeled the next stage in the development of culture – the transition from modernism to postmodernism, from an ironic re-reading of tradition to playing with it.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina A. Shikhanova ◽  
Alexander V. Belobratov

The study investigates the speech organization of Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel’s novel “Lucinde” (1799), which was written at the time of “universal poetry” theory creation and became its true embodiment. One of the key problems of the text is thinking and self-knowledge of the speaking subject. It is also connected with the role of language and dialogic speech in these processes. In this respect the important things are interaction of the speaker with “nameless”, definition and denomination of phenomena (all of them are necessary stages of knowledge), narrative itself, and plot deploying the speech canvas. In the course of these processes the expressive and cognitive abilities of the language are “tested”, its imperfections are revealed, and attempts are made to overcome them. Thus, “Lucinde” appears as a work typical for Early Romanticism with its search for a genuine language, pronounced self-reflexivity and the “socratic” dialogism of the novel form.


Author(s):  
George Eliot ◽  
David Russell

‘The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.’ The greatest ‘state of the nation’ novel in English, Middlemarch addresses ordinary life at a moment of great social change, in the years leading to the Reform Act of 1832. Through her portrait of a Midlands town, George Eliot addresses gender relations and class, self-knowledge and self-delusion, community and individualism. Eliot follows the fortunes of the town's central characters as they find, lose, and rediscover ideals and vocations in the world. Through its psychologically rich portraits, the novel contains some of the great characters of literature, including the idealistic but naïve Dorothea Brooke, beautiful and egotistical Rosamund Vincy, the dry scholar Edward Casaubon, the wise and grounded Mary Garth, and the brilliant but proud Dr Lydgate. In its whole view of a society, the novel offers enduring insight into the pains and pleasures of life with others, and explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life:. art, religion, science, politics, self, society, and, above all, human relationships. This edition uses the definitive Clarendon text.


2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 811-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph H. Lane

Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men is a political novel that deserves the serious study of political scientists interested in understanding the formative effects of American democracy. A careful reading of the novel that is informed by the classical approach to the analysis of regimes reveals the close connection between the politics of Willie Stark and the politics of modern American democracy. Furthermore, by viewing Stark's actions through the eyes of Jack Burden, a perceptive narrator who is moving toward self-knowledge, we can gain insight into both why modern democracies encourage the formation of a debilitating nihilism among their citizens and the prospects for countering these effects.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Endang Sartika

The emergence of trauma study with the publication of Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History have gained significant interest in analyzing traumatic experiences in literary works. Literary trauma is seen as the media and alternative to read the wound and trauma through narration and fiction in the form of an anxiety plot. This study aims to analyze the traumatic experiences in Eka Kurniawan's novel entitled Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas. This research is descriptive qualitative in nature. The objects of this research are the traumatic events and experiences in Kurniawan's novel. The data were collected by note taking and highlighting the relevant traumatic event and analyzed using the concept of trauma and memory of Cathy Caruth. The result shows that the characters in this novel respond to trauma differently such as having intrusive thoughts, re-experiencing the trauma through flashbacks and dreams, avoidance, and having negative feelings and moods. The novel shows that the socio-cultural environment can become the greatest source of trauma as well as offer the healing process for the traumatized through compassion and understanding. The characters' traumatic experience is narrated by the unknown godlike narrator. Through the portrayal of the characters, Kurniawan reveals how pain, suffering, and traumatic experiences lead the characters to gain high self-esteem, self-knowledge, and philosophical understanding of social reality.


Author(s):  
Lucy O’Brien

We take ourselves to learn things from reading novels. Moreover, we do not just take ourselves to learn how to acquire empathy, or feel the right thing in the right way, we also take ourselves to acquire beliefs that are true, and well supported. This is puzzling because authors of novels have an almost unconstrained licence to make things up—their work is not constrained by the truth. This chapter argues that our capacity directly to read off truths from fiction, and the power of the novelist to testify to truths, is limited. It argues that there are, however, more indirect ways of coming to truths through fiction. Nevertheless, even in those cases, the author’s power to manipulate should make the epistemically virtuous person proceed carefully. The chapter concludes by showing that the author can, however, use that power to manipulate to provide the reader with lessons in such care.


Author(s):  
Valentina Stepanova

The amount of linguistic research, dedicated to the study of lexical units based on the names of animal world’s representatives, grows every year. One of the reasons for this particular interest lies in the lack of sufficient theoretical base which could enable scientists to systematize the necessary cultural and sociolinguistic data. Researchers consider animals’ names in searching for the cultural code of a definite ethnic group, as well as pointing out specifics of the figurative component of thematic groups included in zoonyms. This approach allows them to examine those additional meanings that a certain lexical unit acquires within the stated national culture. The consideration of the corresponding units in the context of African-American writers’ works is of great interest within the originality of the plots themselves, as well as the folkloristic and mythological background found in the majority of the constructions with the zoonym element. The novel «Sula» by an outstanding writer Tony Morrison is one of these works. The writer’s texts are based on unique cultural and historical experience of African-Americans, specifics of their self-knowledge with an inherent belief in magic and myth. This article examines the termbase used for the analysis of zoonymocontaining lexical units. The most frequent nominations used for the evaluation of human characteristics and actions are demonstrated and described on the basis of the selected examples. Three categories of nomination (age, behavior, appearance) are considered in greater detail. The author of the article makes a conclusion about the frequency of the constructions with negative, neutral and positive connotations within the stated groups, as well as their usage for the description of a person's preferred and criticized qualities.


Author(s):  
Viktor M. Dimitriev
Keyword(s):  

The article investigates the resistance of memory as a typical narration technique in Dostoevsky’s works, especially in confessional texts. The attention is focused on a fragment of the unpublished chapter “At Tikhon’s” from an unrealized version of the novel The Possessed: Stavrogin bought a photograph of “one girl”, which he perceives as a photograph of Matryosha herself. The article attempts to explain how Stavrogin organizes memories in his “confession” and why the cases of memory aberrations become both the constructive elements of the genre of literary confession and an original “tool” for the protagonist’s self-knowledge. The illustrative memory aberration is considered here in connection with the problems of narration, the psychology of the protagonist, and the visual forms of representation.


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