scholarly journals V.Nabokovʼs King, Queen, Knave: Love Story from the Life of Mannequins or a Novel about the Mysteries of Writing?

Author(s):  
Alla Zlochevskaya ◽  

This article is devoted to the analysis of the formal content structure V. Nabokov / Sirin’s second novel “King, Queen, Knave” (1928). The “realistic” narration about adultery is here сlosely connected with metaphysical themes and the features of game poetics. The theme of mannequins, dolls and maps is interpreted here in a quite new way. It is shown that, contrary to popular belief, not the figures of mannequins and dolls highlight the images of the characters, their soulless and mechanistic, but, conversely, the novel “King, Queen, Knave” shows how the blanks of literary heroes types, with a wave of the Author’s magic wand, turn into real people. From the stereotypical figures of the triangle husband – wife – lover and the banal plot about adultery, V. Sirin created a fresh and unusual story with non-standard and accurately drawn characters, with a non-trivial structure of the plot and original narrative models. From the sketchy narrative of adultery, the true dominant theme of the novel emerges – the revival of the inanimate, the creation of the “living life” of a literary text. In every episode, in every moment of the narrative, in every plot course, the Author emphasizes his dominant, organizing and creating role. The law of the Author’s willfulness dominates over the eventual field of the novel and forms game poetics of the novel. The elements of the game and the chance reign here and control the logic of the plot development, the atmosphere is created by the card name, the crazy old man-illusionist, various models of sports games (tennis, mountain skiing, sports equipment store, etc.) and children’s (dolls), dressing up and carnival masks, etc. The Author, in the face of chance / or fate, throws trick-mirages (a pistol that turned out to be a lighter, etc.) to the heroes, and then brutally exposes them; organizes driving rain or sends deadly disease. From the game in the play quite naturally emerge two Russians – the “representatives” of the Author in the text.

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mladena Prelić

The paper offers a reading of the novel London, Pomaz by Petar Milošević (b. 1952 in Kalaz, Hungary) in the key of individual and collective identity positionings, from the aspect of sociocultural anthropology. The novel, published in 1993, is framed as a love story spanning the East and West, until recently divided by the Cold War, and the protagonists are Serbs from the area around Budapest, a community to which both the author and his main character Ičvič belong. The character's surname, which is actually non-existent, has been formed from the suffixes -ić and -vić characteristic of patronymic Serbian surnames, in the Hungarianized version of -ič and -vič. Through a series of sequences, the novel describes the protagonist's life cycle from Pomaz, a small town between Budapest and Szentendre, where Ičvič was born, and Budapest, to Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, Venice and London, and finally back to Pomaz, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Ičvič encounters different people and situations, others' stereotypes and prejudices as well as his own, unfulfilled expectations and the illusion of freedom in a world that has supposedly risen above ideological divisions, while next door, his (former) country is riven by ethnic war, the small community to which he belongs by birth is gradually disappearing, and in the supposed democratization processes following the fall of the Berlin wall, power and control merely take new forms. The situations in which the protagonist finds himself provide the possibility of reading/reading into them the relationship we:others or I:others, in other words, of different identity formations and positionings, not only of Ičvič himself but also of other characters and the collectivities to which they actually or supposedly belong. The assumption is that, despite the significant differences between a literary text and ethnography, a literary work can be used, with due methodological caution, as a source in anthropological research.


2020 ◽  
pp. 164-194
Author(s):  
Nataliia Nikoriak

The article under studies reveals the terminological polymodality of the concept of “cinemanovel” as a screened novel; film genre; an original narrative work that tends to a screenplay; literary text written on the basis of the film and the screenplay to it (film “novelization”). An overview of modern theoretical and practical discourse of the cinemanovel genre is presented in the paper. It has been emphasized that some researchers try to find out the origins of this genre by analyzing the samples in a comparative and intermediate way, while others focus on clarifying the specifics of individual novels, concluding on the synthetic and hybrid nature of this genre. In particular, in this aspect, the cinemanovel-prequel by A. Kokotiukha “The Red. Without a Front Line” (2019) has been analyzed. This text, based on a film screenplay, appears to be a rather complex construct that acquires a double coding – cinematic and literary – hence the genre of the novel (as a product of the synthesis of two arts) contains the key features of both. On the one hand, we have to deal with the preservation of the cinematic codes that pass from the screenplay: fragmentation, word visualization, documentalism, eventfulness, editing, alternation of angles and plans, time reduction, dialogues, character formation in action, characterization through speech, conciseness of phrases in certain scenes to create the effect of maximum tension, image condensation, accumulation of internal tension in the episode. On the other hand (as a result of the so-called “novelization”), the text acquires genre features of the novel. These are: the scale of the narration (although fragmented and condensed), the description of characters’ lives is presented in line with historical events, with the disclosure of their psychology and inner world. Finally, the work is also marked with specifically architectonic, i.e. the author connects his cinemanovels together by means of a plot, the main character and a general artistic idea.


Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams

Origami is a traditional Asian fine art of creating three-dimensional structures by folding paper. Recently, engineers have started to exploit the functional advantages of foldable structures. Formal representations of origami structures are limited. Most of the origami research describes an origami structure by providing the geometric properties of creases and vertices. This paper proposes a novel representation of an origami structure by describing the faces. An origami sheet is first pixelated with evenly distributed cellular agents, referred to as cells. Pixelization makes the origami structurally analogous to an LED matrix screen, with each of the cells being one LED pixel on the screen. Every cell will possess two key properties that contribute to determine the entire pattern: the cell type, which is analogous to the color of the LED; and the cell size, which is analogous to the light intensity of the LED. Therefore, a collection of cells with the same cell type (color) could represent the rough profile of an origami face, while the sizes of the cells are used to determine the face borders.. Creases and vertices can be subsequently determined by attaining the precise borders among faces. In this paper, we will also propose a crease restoration algorithm to determine the face borders and creases that then enable a fold to the final origami shape. The novel pixelated multicellular representation of origami enables new computational origami design methods as well as new self-folding origami structures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Kristen Marangoni

The enigmatic setting of Beckett's novel Watt has been compared to places as diverse as an insane asylum, a boarding school, a womb, and a concentration camp. Watt's experience at Knott's house does seem suggestive of all of these, and yet it may more readily conform to the setting of a monastery. The novel is filled with chants, meditations, choral arrangements, hierarchical classifications, and even silence, all highly evocative of a monastic lifestyle. Some of Watt's dialogue (such as his requests for forgiveness or reflections on the nature of mankind) further echoes various Catholic liturgies. Watt finds little solace in these activities, however. He feels that they are largely rote and purposeless as they are focused on Knott, a figure who in many ways defies linguistic description and physical know-ability. Watt's meditations and rituals become, then, empty catechisms without answers, something that is reflected in the extreme difficulty that Watt has communicating. In the face of linguistic and liturgical instability, the Watt notebooks present a counter reading that can be found in the thousand plus doodles that line its pages. The drawings reinforce as well as subvert their textual counterpart, and they function in many ways as the images in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The doodles in Watt often take the form of decorative letters, elaborate marginal drawings, and depictions of a variety of people and animals, and many of its doodles offer uncanny resemblances in form or theme to those in illuminated manuscripts like The Book of Kells. Doodles of saints, monks, crosses, and scribes even give an occasional pictorial nod to the monastic setting in which illuminated manuscripts were usually produced (and remind us of the monastic conditions in which Beckett found himself writing much of Watt). Beckett's doodles not only channel this medium of illuminated manuscripts, they also modernize its application. Instead of neat geometric shapes extending down the page, his geometric doodle sequences are often abstracted, fragmented, and nonlinear. Beckett also occasionally modernized the content of illuminated manuscripts: instead of the traditional sacramental communion table filled with candles, bread and wine, Beckett doodles a science lab table where Bunsen burners replaces candles and wine glasses function as beakers. It is through these modernized images that Watt attempts to draw contemporary relevance from a classic art form and to restore (at least partial) meaning to rote traditions.


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.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiangsheng Huang

BACKGROUND As of the end of February 2020, 2019-nCoV is currently well controlled in China. However, the virus is now spreading globally. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of outbreak prevention and control measures in a region. METHODS A model is built for find the best fit for two sets of data (the number of daily new diagnosed, and the risk value of incoming immigration population). The parameters (offset and time window) in the model can be used as the evaluation of effectiveness of outbreak prevention and control. RESULTS Through study, it is found that the parameter offset and time window in the model can accurately reflect the prevention effectiveness. Some related data and public news confirm this result. And this method has advantages over the method using R0 in two aspects. CONCLUSIONS If the epidemic situation is well controlled, the virus is not terrible. Now the daily new diagnosed patients in most regions of China is quickly reduced to zero or close to zero. Chinese can do a good job in the face of huge epidemic pressure. Therefore, if other countries can do well in prevention and control, the epidemic in those places can also pass quickly.


Author(s):  
Derek Hand

This chapter argues that the novel form is best suited to giving expression to the multifaceted Irish reality. Ireland, in the modern moment, is a place of incongruity and contradiction: it is at once a site of colonization and post-colonization, as well as simultaneously positioning itself as an integral part of a modern, globalized, economic union. The novel’s being bound to the immediate moment, while also aspiring toward the transcendence of immutable art, perfectly reflects an Irish mood caught between the violent actuality of war and a desire for mundane ordinariness. Indeed, it can be argued that the novel form offers a very human, and humane, lens through which to expose the hidden histories and anxieties of real people. Certainly the Irish novel has consistently done this from the seventeenth century onward, as it has charted the story of Ireland’s complex emergence into modernity.


Author(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
Jane Stabler

‘Me!’ cried Fanny … ‘Indeed you must excuse me. I could not act any thing if you were to give me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act.’ At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. There she accepts her lowly status, and gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund. When the dazzling and sophisticated Henry and Mary Crawford arrive, Fanny watches as her cousins become embroiled in rivalry and sexual jealousy. As the company starts to rehearse a play by way of entertainment, Fanny struggles to retain her independence in the face of the Crawfords’ dangerous attractions; and when Henry turns his attentions to her, the drama really begins… This new edition does full justice to Austen’s complex and subtle story, placing it in its Regency context and elucidating the theatrical background that pervades the novel.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Hai-Feng Ling ◽  
Zheng-Lian Su ◽  
Xun-Lin Jiang ◽  
Yu-Jun Zheng

In a large-scale epidemic, such as the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), there is huge demand for a variety of medical supplies, such as medical masks, ventilators, and sickbeds. Resources from civilian medical services are often not sufficient for fully satisfying all of these demands. Resources from military medical services, which are normally reserved for military use, can be an effective supplement to these demands. In this paper, we formulate a problem of integrated civilian-military scheduling of medical supplies for epidemic prevention and control, the aim of which is to simultaneously maximize the overall satisfaction rate of the medical supplies and minimize the total scheduling cost, while keeping a minimum ratio of medical supplies reservation for military use. We propose a multi-objective water wave optimization (WWO) algorithm in order to efficiently solve this problem. Computational results on a set of problem instances constructed based on real COVID-19 data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1110
Author(s):  
Olga Semenova ◽  
Julia Apalkova ◽  
Marina Butovskaya

Despite the enforced lockdown regime in late March 2020 in Russia, the phenomenon of the continued virus spreading highlighted the importance of studies investigating the range of biosocial attributes and spectrum of individual motivations underlying the permanent presence of the substantial level of spatial activity. For this matter, we conducted a set of surveys between March and June 2020 (N = 492). We found that an individual’s health attitude is the most consistent factor explaining mobility differences. However, our data suggested that wariness largely determines adequate health attitudes; hence, a higher level of wariness indirectly reduced individual mobility. Comparative analysis revealed the critical biosocial differences between the two sexes, potentially rooted in the human evolutionary past. Females were predisposed to express more wariness in the face of new environmental risks; therefore, they minimize their mobility and outdoor contacts. In contrast to them, the general level of spatial activity reported by males was significantly higher. Wariness in the males’ sample was less associated with the novel virus threat, but to a great extent, it was predicted by the potential economic losses variable. These findings correspond to the evolutionary predictions of sexual specialization and the division of family roles.


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