Back in Time: The Bildungsroman and the Source of Moral Agency

Good Form ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 124-152
Author(s):  
Jesse Rosenthal

This chapter focuses on the Bildungsroman, studying the philosophical and literary significance of the novel of development. Through readings of Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks (1866), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, and John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, it suggests that the ethical foundations of the concept of Bildung—and in particular the idea of sensus communis (common sense)—made form in the Bildungsroman, lay the groundwork for one's own understanding of what makes a novel count as an object of study. The operating principle in the narrative structure of the Bildungsroman is the discovery that one is already a member of a community, and that one's decisions can be understood as stemming from that community. Proper cultivation means the development of a character that can understand and respond to the pre-existing, yet unconscious, shared consensus: the sensus communis. This sort of reciprocity between individual and community is actually a better description of how moral intuition worked, at its more refined levels, than references to physical sensation.

Author(s):  
Rajaa Radwan Hilles Rajaa Radwan Hilles

This paper deals with the narrative order of time in Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations. Time is crucial in narratological structure as it establishes a logical relation for events in the narrative. Besides, a narrative develops its point of view through the voices in the narrative. This point of view is called focalization. This paper assumes that the sequence of events in Dickens’s Great Expectations does not follow a linear order and consequently, the point of focalization changes throughout the narrative. Accordingly, the current paper intends to investigate the order of narration in the novel. It intends to explore the ultimate thematic concern of the novel as well. The discussion will be in the light of Gerard Genette’s narratological structure and will be applied on Dickens’s Great Expectations. It is the 13th novel in his independent literary works. It has been published unillustrated in 36 weekly instalments in All the Year Round from 1860 through 1861. Then, it has been published in three volumes by Chapman & Hall in1861. The narrative voice has a great impact on the story’s timeline and on the readers because it is narrated in the first-person voice by the protagonist, Philip Pirrip. (Davis, 2007: P 126) The analysis is based on Genette’s theorization of time order in telling a story and communicating a broader point of view that the author intends to make throughout the whole narrative structure.


Good Form ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 78-123
Author(s):  
Jesse Rosenthal

This chapter looks at another narrative mechanism that an author could use to imply that there was a “law” governing the text: humor. This is not, as the chapter shows through a discussion of Romantic and Victorian writings on the subject, a humor that was defined by its ability to make a reader laugh. Rather, humor was a strategy used to produce, in the reader, the experience of unspoken agreement and shared community with others. Unlike Oliver Twist, David Copperfield does not rely on an inaccessible back-story. Instead, it relies on a shared understanding, but one so implicit that it seems to be more of an intuitive sense than any sort of rational knowledge. It relies, in other words, on the idea of sensus communis (common sense). The narrative of David's progression is always measured against this backdrop of an anonymously judging public of which he is part, and the novel's narrative method seeks to move him into agreement with that public. The novel thus uses humor to underscore the idea that one's individual intuitions are shared, though in ways that are difficult to conceptualize. Charles Dickens's narrative technique makes use of an externalization, into the social sphere, of a reader's individual feeling.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Sri Sabakti

This research is aimed to expose the narrative structure of the novel Ca Bau Kan by using semiotical theory. The source of the data is the novel Ca Bau kan written by Remy Silado and published by KPG, eight edition, 2004. The data is collected by doing the library research. The teory applied in this research is the emiotical theory, especially the literary analysis of Subur Laksono Wardoyo that the analysis of the text of prose can be applied by using three fases; the analysis of the basic scheme narrative, the analysis of mean signifier, and the analysis of syntagmatics and pragmatics. The result of this research showed that the narrative structure in the novel CBK that (1) the life of Tinung before being a ca bau kan, (2) the life of Tinung as a ca bau kan, and (3) the life of Tinung after not being a ca bau kan anymore. Based on the narrative structure, it was found that “ Love is only one. No measurement is needed” is the mean signifier and able to be clarified by the analysis of syntagmatics-paradigmatics based on the biner oposition of weak x strong.AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan mengungkapkan stuktur narasi dalam novel Ca Bau Kan (CBK) dengan menggunakan teori semiotika. Penelitian ini menggunakan sumber data novel CBK karya Remy Silado yang diterbitkan oleh KPG, cetakan kedelapan tahun 2004. Pengumpulan data dilaksanakan dengan teknik kepustakaan. Teori yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah teori semiotika, khususnya analisis sastra menurut Subur Laksono Wardoyo bahwa analisis teks prosa dapat dilakukan melalui tiga tahap, yaitu: analisis skema naratif dasar, analisis signifier utama, dan analisis sintagmatik-paradigmatik. Hasil penelitian menggambarkan bahwa struktur narasi pada novel CBK adalah sebagai berikut: 1) kehidupan Tinung sebelum menjadi ca bau kan, 2) kehidupan Tinung sebagai ca bau kan, dan 3) kehidupan Tinung setelah tidak menjadi ca bau kan. Berdasarkan struktur narasi, maka didapatkan bahwa “Cinta cuma satu, kagak perlu takaran” merupakan penanda utama dan dapat diperjelas melalui analisis sintagmatik-paradigmatik yang didasarkan atas sebuah oposisi biner lemah x kuat.


2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorene M. Birden

AbstractThis study presents two aspects of the novel in question, its humor and its structure. It shows that both have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, and begins by reminding us that the author herself was long misunderstood because of early critical misreadings and presuppositions. It then continues to demonstrate that the two aspects studied are in fact interrelated; the so-called flawed structure, actually a framing structure, is in fact a firm form that is carefully underpinned by the instances of humor. It proceeds by presenting and dispelling the basic myths about the author and the novel, then presents the structure and the reasons for misconceptions of it before proceeding to map the humor using Attardo's system of humor rhythm mapping. Chlopicki's character frames also contribute to a demonstration of parallel characterization which contradicts another, minor myth, that of the unsuitability of the hero for the heroine. The study as a whole attacks the ideas of humorlessness in Brontë fiction, the inferiority of Anne's work and the feebleness of the structure of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.


PMLA ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dianne F. Sadoff

Little Dorrit is both a narrative about authority and an examination of the authority of narrative. The novel links vocation with sonhood and storytelling with fatherhood and self-generation. Little Dorrit, however, tells a double story, of a daughter as well as of a son. If the son’s story relates the search to replace the father and to discover paternal authority, the daughter’s story details the horrors and consolations of incestuous desire and generational collapse. Storytelling that seeks the father as origin reveals paternal deception and inauthenticity; incestuous structures of desire attempt to collapse genealogy on the hero and heroine, making paternal origin unknowable and creating an overdetermined narrative ending. Dickens’ double story, then, identifies yet questions genealogy and the patriarchal family as metaphors for narrative structure.


Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Barry Stephenson

A foundation stone of Hans Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is the notion of the sensus communis. The philosophical significance of a “sensus communis” (common sense) begins with Aristotle, who offered scattered reflections. The topic was taken up in earnest in Enlightenment thought and in German idealism, but it became more of an individual faculty, lacking the deep sense of community and tradition found in earlier formulations. In this paper, the author demonstrates Gadamer’s debt to Pietist thought, examining his appropriation and use of the theology of Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782), a leading figure in Swabian Pietism, whose ideas had a significant impact in theological circles and broader cultural life. Gadamer’s critique of the Enlightenment’s ‘prejudice against prejudice,’ owes a debt to the Pietist conception of the sensus communis and his practical philosophy to Pietism’s emphasis on ‘application’ as a fundamental aspect of a hermeneutical triad.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1197-1202
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abdullah Abduldaim Hizabr Alhusami

The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of intertextuality in the novel Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) by the female Saudi novelist and short story writer Laila al-Juhani. Intertextuality is a rhetoric and literary technique defined as a textual reference deliberate or subtle to some other texts with a view of drawing more significance to the core text; and hence it is employed by an author to communicate and discuss ideas in a critical style. The narrative structure of Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) showcases references of religious, literary, historical, and folkloric intertextuality. In analyzing these references, the study follows the intertextual approach. In her novel The Waste Paradise, Laila al-Juhani portrays the suffering of Saudi women who are less tormented by social marginalization than by an inner conflict between openness to Western culture and conformity to cultural heritage. Intertextuality relates to words, texts, or discourses among each other. Moreover, the intertextual relations are subject to reader’s response to the text. The relation of one text with other texts or contexts never reduces the prestige of writing. Therefore, this study, does not diminish the status of the writer or the text; rather, it is in itself a kind of literary creativity. Finally, this paper aims to introduce Saudi writers in general and the female writers in particular to the world literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 264-280
Author(s):  
E. N. Proskurina ◽  

The article is devoted to the images and motives of the East in the poetry of the author of the Eastern emigration Boris Volkov (1894, Ekaterinburg – 1954, San Francisco). The work of this poet, writer, publicist is still unknown to the domestic reader, although during his lifetime he had a fairly wide publication geography: from Harbin to San Francisco. However, his works were never reprinted, and the manuscript of the novel “The Kingdom of the Golden Buddhas” is considered lost. The analysis involved Volkov’s book of poems “In the dust of foreign roads”, published in Berlin in 1934. Of its four parts, the oriental flavor is especially distinct in the first. Individual works of this part constituted the object of study of this article. The autobiographical substrate of Volkov’s poetry is revealed, the intersection of motives and imagery with the poetic world of Gumilyov is shown. The influence of the Eastern world, its philosophical teachings on the creative worldview of Volkov is investigated. In his poetic thinking, traces of Sufism, Islam, and the philosophy of Lao Tzu are palpable. Exotic images of China and Mongolia weave an intricate pattern in the first cycles of the book, integrating into the depicted biographical circumstances and expanding their semantic palette. “Alien” is trying hard to become “ours” at the level of a philosophical attitude to the world and the fate of the poet himself. He is close to the poetic attitude of the inhabitants of the East to life and death, based on ancient traditions and customs. The poems reflect the confusion of the experiences of the lyrical hero, warrior and wanderer, who has found a place in life as a result of an action-packed duel with fate.


Author(s):  
Luka Bešlagić

This paper analyses the experimental film Sonne halt! by Ferry Radax, an Austrian filmmaker renowned for his unconventional approach to cinematic practice. Filmed and edited between the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, the film at first may appear to be a belated homage to the previous European experiments in avant-garde cinema, already carried out a few decades earlier. However, since there have been no great ‘historical avant-garde’ movements in Vienna in the period between the two world wars – according to the novel argument made by Klaus Kastberger – it was already the middle of the 20th century when the ‘original’ avant-garde strategies were finally acknowledged in Austria, and simultaneously appropriated by the ‘neo-avant-garde’. In this peculiar historico-cultural context Sonne halt!, in its fragmentary non-narrative structure which resembles Dadaist or Surrealist playfulness and openness, innovatively and radically interweaved two disparate film registers: moving image and spoken language. Various sentences arbitrarily enounced throughout the film – which have their origin in Konrad Bayer’s unfinished experimental, pseudo-autobiographical, montage novel der sechste sinn – do not constitute dialogues or narration of a traditional movie script but rather a random collection of fictional and philosophical statements. At certain moments there is a lack of rapport between moving image and speech – an experimental attempt by Ferry Radax to challenge one of the most common principles of sound and narrative cinema. By deconstructing Sonne halt! to its linguistic and cinematic aspects, this article particularly focuses on the role of verbal commentaries within the film. Article received: December 28, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Bešlagić, Luka. "Interweaving Realities: Spoken Language and Moving Images in the Sonne halt!, Experimental Film by Ferry Radax." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): . doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.228


2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pearl L. Brown

ASSESSMENTS OF ELIZABETH GASKELL’S two novels of social purpose typically conclude that North and South, published in 1855, is a more mature work stylistically and ideologically than Mary Barton, published in 1848. North and South is said to integrate the narrative modes of romance and realism more effectively than Mary Barton (Felber 63, Horsman 284), and to provide a more complicated narrative structure (Schor, Scheherezade 122–23), a more complex depiction of social conflicts (Easson 59 and 93) and a more satisfactory resolution of them (Duthie 84, Kestner 170). North and South is also said to deal with “more complex intellectual issues” (Craik 31). And the novel’s heroine, Margaret Hale, has been seen as Gaskell’s most mature creation — a woman who grows in self-awareness as she adapts to an alien environment (Kestner 164–166) and, unlike Mary Barton, becomes an active mediator of class conflicts (Stoneman 120), the central consciousness that brings together “the lessons of social change and romance” (Schor, Scheherezade 127).1 The reconciliation of these conflicts she inspires through her influence over both mill owner and worker has been praised as a more effective and credible narrative resolution to the social problems depicted in the novel than the reconciliation between mill owner and worker in Mary Barton (David 36).


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