Frankenstein: Creation as Catastrophe

PMLA ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 883-903 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sherwin
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Primal Scene ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Oedipal Complex ◽  
Psychoanalytic Interpretation ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Creative Self

Much in Frankenstein suggests that the novel and classical psychoanalysis are meant for each other. The creation becomes a significant act, at once paradigmatic and intensely human, when viewed as a repetition of Frankenstein's primal-scene trauma, with the Creature emerging as a representation of the scene and the related oedipal complex. A psychoanalytic interpretation, however, requires a drastic secondary revision of Frankenstein, and not enough insight is purchased by so much blindness. The analyst repeats, yet fails to elucidate, the misreading of world, self, and Creature that renders Frankenstein a tiresome neurotic. But before this personal collapse Frankenstein achieved the sublime. His catastrophe of origination, engendering a creative self that anxiously pursues an impossible desire and an artifact that both represents and eclipses the creator, serves as a paradigm of the genesis of any sublime artwork, any uncanny reanimation project.

Homosexualité, Islam et désacralisation du pouvoir royal dans Le jour du Roi d'Abdellah Taïa

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-143
Author(s):  
Taïeb Berrada
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Identification Process ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Oedipal Complex ◽  
The Creation

In his novel Le jour du Roi Abdellah Taïa explores the theme of alterity in its relation to two political and symbolic forces: expressing one’s self in the language of the Other and narrating homo-erotic and homosexual relationships in Morocco under the dictatorship of Hassan II. It is the translation of these two aspects that leads to the creation of a new narrative about homosexual Franco-Moroccan identity. This narrative, in turn, reveals the instability of a model of identification subjected to a normalizing sexual apparatus controlling bodies and minds in a place where homosexuality is still punishable by law. This renders the identification process for the two main characters of the novel particularly problematic as they can no longer sustain it without going back to the sources of foundational myths and more particularly to the original murder in Islam. This article argues that the killing of one character by the other goes back to the original murder of Abel by Cain, a model which becomes emancipated from the Western Oedipal complex, translating a new conception of a love relation between two male characters. By so doing, it calls for a reevaluation of the normativity imposed by the king who is using his power based on a patriarchal interpretation of religious legitimacy in view of political gain.

Ч. АЙТМАТОВДУН «ТООЛОР КУЛАГАНДА» РОМАНЫНДАГЫ ПЕЙЗАЖДЫК СҮРӨТТӨӨЛӨР

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-94
Author(s):  
Н. Алтыкеева ◽  
Б. Ниясалиева
Keyword(s):  
Full Moon ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Additional Tool ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Aesthetic Values

Аннотация. Макалада романдын мазмунунан орун алган пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөр талкууланат. Пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөр чыгарманын көркөмдүүлүгүн, эстетикалык баалуулугун арттыруу менен катар эле каармандардын образын тереңден ачып берүүдө, окуялардын өнүгүп-өсүшү жана алдыда боло турган окуялар тууралуу окурманга маалымат берүүдө кошумча каражат катары колдонулат. Жазуучу романда пейзаждык сүрөттөөлөрдү өтө кылдат колдонгону байкалат. Алсак, тоо адамдагы улуулук жана бийиктикти айгинелейт, толукшуган ай жан- дүйнөнүн бөксөрбөй толуп турушун көрсөтөт, ачык асмандын алай-дүлөй түшкөн көрүнүшкө айланышы - каармандын ички сезими, уйгу-туйгу ойлонуусу, жан дүйнөсүнүн бурганак болушун ачып көрсөтүүдө маанилүү болсо, чабалекейлердин тынымсыз учуп чабалакташы, жан алакетке түшүп чыйпылдашы – алдыда боло турган кырсыктуу окуя тууралуу кабар берсе, согуштун апааты жашыл шибердин, бак-дарактардын күлгө айланышы, чымчык-куштардын күздү күтпөй кайдадыр учуп кетип жатышы менен түшүндүрүлөт. Tүйүндүү сөздөр: пейзаж. роман, идея, легенда, эпилог, каарман, негизги окуялар. Аннотация. В статье дается пейзажное описание. Пейзажное описание используется в произведении как дополнительное средство эстетических ценностей и помогает раскрыть образы героев, и действия произведения. Писатель в романе тонко использует пейзажное описание. Например горы возвышенное и самое ценное в человеке, а полная луна – счастливое душевное состояние человека, а превращение безоблачного неба в бущующий вид – указывает, как неспокойно в душе главного героя, его беспокойные мысли, как бушует его внутренний мир, а ласточки неспокойно летающие, предвещают несчастье, птицы улетающие раньше времени, превращение зелёной травы, деревьев в пепел предвещают ужасы войны. Ключевые слова: пейзаж. роман, идея, легенда, эпилог, герой, главное событие Annotation. The article discusses the landscape description. The landscape description is used in the work as an additional tool for aesthetic values and helps to reveal the images of heroes, and in the development of the action of the work/ The writer in the novel subtly uses the landscape description. The mountains are the sublime and the most valuable in a person, and the full moon is a happy state of mind of a person, and the transformation of a cloudless sky into a raging view indicates how restless the soul of the protagonist is, his restless thoughts. How his inner world is raging, and the swallows are restlessly flying, foreshadow the misfortune, the birds flying away ahead of time, the transformation of green grass, trees in the forehead the horrors of war. This article describes the idea of the story "Do not kill" which is given instead of the epilogue in the novel "When the mountains fall" which was written by Ch.Aitmatov. It considers the role of a story that calls to live in peace and to end wars that are occurring in the world. Keywords: Landscapе, novel, idea, legend, epilogue, hero, main event.

"Without a Cross": The Cultural Significance of the Sublime and Beautiful in Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans

1997 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Blakemore
Keyword(s):  
James Fenimore Cooper ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Tribes ◽  
Last Of The Mohicans ◽  
Historical Moment

This essay demonstrates that James Fenimore Cooper was incorporating the language and values of Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) into the "world" of The Last of the Mohicans (1826). In the Enquiry Burke's distinction between the sublime and beautiful centers on traditional distinctions between men and women-an "eternal distinction" that Burke continually underscores. In Mohicans Cooper initially incorporates the beautiful into the sublime, in an intentionally illusive "mix" that corresponds to the illusory mixing of the white and Indian races. He then reinscribes Burke's distinction between the sublime and beautiful as an eternal distinction between whites and Indians-writing "out" the problem of the "Other" (gendered "femininity" and alien, "red" beauty) in a meditation of the significance of culture and race in America. In retrospect, Mohicans is a novel of ambiguous "crosses" and complicitous combinations-a novel of fatal and fruitful mixes comprising a series of covert traces telling a secret story contradicting Cooper's overt, racial ideology. Yet it is this "pristine" ideology that finally overpowers and double-crosses the novel's "other" message. Written in 1826, at a specific historical moment when the Indian tribes were being removed or destroyed, the novel reaffirms a racial ideology tortured with its own historical ambiguities.

The Short Story: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
The Press ◽  
Character Study ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Plot Design

The Short Story: A Very Short Introduction charts the rise of the short story from its original appearance in magazines and newspapers. For much of the 19th century, tales were written for the press, and the form’s history is marked by engagement with popular fiction. The short story then earned a reputation for its skilful use of plot design and character study distinct from the novel. This VSI considers the continuity and variation in key structures and techniques such as the beginning, the creation of voice, the ironic turn or plot twist, and how writers manage endings. Throughout, it draws on examples from an international and flourishing corpus of work.

Violence, Memory, and History: Geoffrey of Monmouth and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-344
Author(s):  
Jonathan Brent
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Geoffrey Of Monmouth ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

Kazuo Ishiguro has suggested that his work of medieval fantasy, The Buried Giant (2015), draws on a “quasi-historical” King Arthur, in contrast to the Arthur of legend. This article reads Ishiguro’s novel against the medieval work that codified the notion of an historical King Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1139). Geoffrey’s History offered a largely fictive account of the British past that became the most successful historiographical phenomenon of the English Middle Ages. The Buried Giant offers an interrogation of memory that calls such “useful” constructions of history into question. The novel deploys material deriving from Geoffrey’s work while laying bear its methodology; the two texts speak to each other in ways sometimes complementary, sometimes deconstructive. That Ishiguro’s critique can be applied to Geoffrey’s History points to recurrent strategies of history-making, past and present, whereby violence serves as a mechanism for the creation of historical form.

scholarly journals Forgotten Books: On the Making of Jane Porter’s "Thaddeus of Warsaw"

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-328
Author(s):  
Joel J. Janicki
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
National Hero ◽  
The Creation

This article attempts to identify and examine some of the factors and sources that led to the creation of a largely forgotten prose work of English fiction titled Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) which became an immediate and extraordinary success. Jane Porter’s novel deals with a fictitious Polish patriot Thaddeus Sobieski, who is modelled on the Polish national hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The novel presents an excellent illustration of the cultural links between Great Britain and Poland towards the end of the 18th century and constitutes a cautionary tale for Porter’s English readers, one that creates a basis for moral reform and political engagement.

scholarly journals Interpretation of an Epoch in the Novel "the Big Green Tent" by L. Ulitskaya: Linguistic-Cultural Analysis of Verbal Lexicon

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Ildar Ch. Safin ◽  
Elena I. Kolosova ◽  
Tatyana A. Gimranova
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Russian Verb ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Emotional Style ◽  
Illustrative Material

<p> This article is the verbal lexicon analysis based on the text of the novel "The Big Green Tent" by L. Ulitskaya. The creative manner of the contemporary writer attracts the attention of researchers, her writings describe the emotional experiences of the heroes and also give a generalized image of time full of historical details and features. The language of her stories and short stories is characterized by a special style in the description of time realities. A verb in the text allows the author to express the events and the circumstances that characterize an action in its dynamics due to the fact that verbal categories reflect the real reality in our consciousness. The method of linguistic cultural analysis of verbal lexicon in the novel "The Big Green Tent" made it possible to single out exactly those language units that the writer carefully selects for the creation and interpretation of the era. A special emphasis in the study is made on the creation of an expressive-emotional style of narration using the stylistic capabilities of the Russian verb. The individual author's methods of narration expressiveness creation are singled out: synonymous series, euphemisms, colloquial lexicon, etc. The conducted study and a careful analysis of the selected factual material testifies that, recreating an epoch, the master of the word invariably uses that language arsenal that brightly and fully conveys the color of time. L. Ulitskaya is able to be not only an indifferent witness of the epoch, but also her tenacious observer and interpreter. The analyzed factual material and the main points of this research can be used in the courses on stylistics and linguistic culturology, and also as an illustrative material during the classes on the linguistic analysis of a literary text.</p>

scholarly journals Kino, czytelnik i czytający. O Geniuszu Michaela Grandage’a

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Zwierzchowski
Keyword(s):  
Publishing House ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ulterior Motive ◽  
Thomas Wolfe ◽  
The Creation ◽  
House Building ◽  
Adam Mickiewicz

Zwierzchowski Piotr, Kino, czytelnik i czytający. O Geniuszu Michaela Grandage’a [The Cinema and Two Types of Readers. About Michael Grandage’s Genius]. „Przestrzenie Teorii” 32. Poznań 2019, Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 371–381. ISSN 1644-6763. DOI 10.14746/pt.2019.32.20. In Genius (2016) by Michael Grandage books are present in many ways. The main characters are William ‘Max’ Perkins, an editor of the Charles Scribner’s Sons publishing house and Thomas Wolfe, a writer starting out at the time. The film is concerned with their relationship and the creation of the novel. The book functions as both a work and an artefact (also as typescript). Literature is a conversation topic and a way of living. One of the most important spaces is the publishing house building. Piotr Zwierzchowski, however, analyses Genius primarily as a contribution to reflections on the act of reading and its film visualization, referring to the distinction introduced by Alberto Manguel(modelled on Barthes’ écrivain and écrivant) between the reader as someone who reads “with no ulterior motive” and one “for whom the text is a vehicle towards another function”.

scholarly journals Human Fetal Development And The Ways Of Asthabrata As An Idea In The Creation Of Sinjang Batik Tulis

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-106
Author(s):  
Danang Priyanto ◽  
FP Sri Wuryani
Keyword(s):  
Fetal Development ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Development Stages ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Human Fetal Development ◽  
Full Protection

Human beings which are wired as leaders should live based on the practice of transcendent value and total clarity on noble deeds. It functions as a guideline in living to avoid the crisis of morality that often occurs today. One of the values in this leadershipquality is the teaching of asthabrata containing the noble deeds of a leader who symbolized in the elements of the universe: the fire, the ground, the water, the air, the moon, the clouds, the sun, and the stars. The stage of human fetal development occurs from the age of one to nine months. These stages, along with the teachings of asthabrata become the base of an idea in the creation of batik art. The idea comes from the question of how to process the development stages of human fetal and ways of asthabrata as a base on creating the batik artwork which conveys sublime values about leadership. The purpose of this batik artwork creation are:incorporating the concept of human fetal development as part of human life cycle with the tradition of batik; Conveying the sublime sublime of leadership based on the asthabrata which refers to human nature as a natural born leader. The creation processcovering the method of design exploration, design process, and batik as a result of design by establishing the combination ofhuman fetal development and the asthabrata. The result shows nine sinjang batik tulis artworks, covering; Hamasesa Tan Pilih Warna (manage without seeing the color), Sukci (sacred), Hanguripi Sagung Dumadi (give strength to all life), Girise Kang Samya Miyat (be who you want to see), Sorota Hayem Angayomi (make peaceful and full protection), Jembar Tanpa Pagut(sincerity without limit), Muntir Tan Ana Pedhote (infinite rotation), Panengeraning Keblad (signpost), and Ngudi Kasampurnan(sharpening perfection). 

scholarly journals City image as a personification of female nature in “The Dead [City of] Bruges” by Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-109
Author(s):  
Marina A. Kozlova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
City Image ◽  
Image System ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City

The paper is devoted to the peculiarities of the creation of the personified image of the city in the novel “The Dead [City of] Bruges” by Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach, which, according to the author himself, represents not only the protagonist, but also its organising force. The Belgian author draws on an earlier literary tradition, according to which the city appears to the poet's mind in the form of a woman. The image of the city is built on the combination and interaction of different elements, among which those that are considered in the article: the theme of duality, the motif of reflection, which becomes the main constructional principle of the image system of the novel, as well as references to mythological and literary archetypes. The theme of duplicity is directly connected with the category of correspondence or analogy, which is central to Rodenbach's oeuvre and forms a peculiar poetics of reflection and determines the choice of expressive means. Dualism is associated with a hostile, dark and demonic force, contrasted with the "holy" and infallible feminine ideal, embodied in the image of the perished beloved, who is also a prototype of the city. The poeticised image of the city is related to archetypical figures that are typical of European symbolism – first of all, Ophelia, but also Orpheus and Narcissus, all this through an appeal to the symbolism of water and the otherworld, then through the main character's attempt to overcome the border between worlds and create a new myth about love that defeats death.

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