scholarly journals “A Multitude of Drops.” David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and the Subject between Space and Time

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Noémi Albert
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Constant State ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cloud Atlas

Abstract David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) presents its readers with a “borderless world.” This borderlessness concerns space and time, with complex and interweaving spatiotemporal planes. In this fictional world, the subject will serve as an entity that brings together disparate spatialities and temporalities through an intricate symbolic web that connects the subject’s body to the world it inhabits. Numerous versions of past, present, and future run in parallel, the actual and the virtual coexist, and the text folds upon itself. The novel operates a constant state of liminality, a state that will be embodied by the subject. Seemingly in a paradoxical way, the multiple liminal states identifiable in the novel convey the ultimate sense of borderlessness. It is exactly the work’s heterogeneity, its jumps through time and space, its interrupted chapter structure that lend it a special unity and coherence that erases both geographical and temporal borders. The novel’s structure goes into thematic depths and creates a bridge, a constant interplay between form and content, captured in the metaphor of the concertina. Consequently, Cloud Atlas creates a constantly shifting world where the only fixed entity is the subject and its comet-shaped birthmark.

Delving into Horror

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Perception Of Time ◽  
Definition Of

The springboard for this essay is the author’s encounter with the feeling of horror and her attempts to understand what place horror has in philosophy. The inquiry relies upon Leonid Lipavsky’s “Investigation of Horror” and on various textual plunges into the fanged and clawed (and possibly noumenal) abyss of Nick Land’s work. Various experiences of horror are examined in order to build something of a typology, while also distilling the elements characteristic of the experience of horror in general. The essay’s overall hypothesis is that horror arises from a disruption of the usual ways of determining the boundaries between external things and the self, and this leads to a distinction between three subtypes of horror. In the first subtype, horror begins with the indeterminacy at the boundaries of things, a confrontation with something that defeats attempts to define it and thereby calls into question the definition of the self. In the second subtype, horror springs from the inability to determine one’s own boundaries, a process opposed by the crushing determinacy of the world. In the third subtype, horror unfolds by means of a substitution of one determinacy by another which is unexpected and ungrounded. In all three subtypes of horror, the disturbance of determinacy deprives the subject, the thinking entity, of its customary foundation for thought, and even of an explanation of how that foundation was lost; at times this can lead to impairment of the perception of time and space. Understood this way, horror comes within a hair’s breadth of madness - and may well cross over into it.

HUNTING GWENDOLEN: ANIMETAPHOR INDANIEL DERONDA

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chase Pielak
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Daniel Deronda ◽  
Animal Imagery ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Animal Representations

In George Eliot'sDanielDeronda, animal vitality figures prominently in shaping the human shell, to use an opening animal metaphor. Approaching the significance of the animal leads to a reading of Gwendolen Grandcourt's character as a responsible creature. Gwendolen is Eliot's heroine, one half of the pair of protagonists around whom the novel revolves. Eliot's fantastic character takes shape in three movements, each punctuated by its own animal metaphor: Gwendolen morphs from Lamia to mastered-animal to white doe. Animal imagery appears at the edge of the human, the point at which humanity gains and loses subjectivity, and Gwendolen's novel is fundamentally one of finding her place in the world, her singularity, her responsibility. Images of animals stand in the linguistic gaps – in the places words fail – to figure the subject.1Animals appear at the end of the ability of language to mean. Nevertheless, this analysis is not intended to encompass the complex range of animal representations in George's Eliot's oeuvre, or even to catalog every example inDaniel Deronda. Instead, it suggests the possibility of using animal metaphor as a map for reading a Victorian heroine.

scholarly journals Tatiana Koltochikhina’s batiks: «From the beginning without the end»

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
И.В. Октябрьская
Keyword(s):  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
The Subject

Батик роспись по ткани один из древнейших видов искусства, восходящих к ремеслам, преобразующим вещный мир по законам красоты. Рукотворная природа делает причастным это декоративное творчество к творению. Под руками художника по батику Татьяны Колточихиной пространство ткани превращается в пространство мира. Ее мир не имеет границ в пространстве и времени. Он древний и вечный. Поверхность бытия на полотнах художника растресканная, как поверхность старых картин, напоминает о глубине памяти и непреходящем характере творческих исканий. Batik, the textile painting, is one of the most ancient art forms, dating back to the crafts, transformed the subject world according to the laws of beauty. Manmade nature makes this decorative work involved into creation. At the Tatiana Koltochikhina’s hands, craftsman in batik, the space of textile turns into the space of the world. Her world does not have the borders of space and time. It is ancient and eternal. The surface of the existence on the artist’s canvases is cracked, as the surface of the old pictures, reminds the memory depth and the imperishable nature of the artistic explorations.

The Inescapable Intertextuality of Blade Runner: The Video Game

2016 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Clara Fernandez-Vara
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Digital Games ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
Blade Runner ◽  
The World ◽  
Digital Environments ◽  
Source Materials

The video game adaptation of Blade Runner (1997) exemplifies the challenges of adapting narrative from traditional media into digital games. The key to the process of adaptation is the fictional world, which it borrows both from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner (1982). Each of these works provides different access points to the world, creating an intertextual relationship that can be qualified as transmedia storytelling, as defined by Jenkins (2006). The game utilizes the properties of digital environments (Murray, 2001) in order to create a world that the player can explore and participate in; for this world to have the sort of complexity and richness that gives way to engaging interactions, the game resorts to the film to create a visual representation, and to the themes of the novel. Thus the game is inescapably intertextual, since it needs of both source materials in order to make the best of the medium of the video game.

scholarly journals Categories of everyday knowledge in German professional discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 00063
Author(s):  
Natalia Shnyakina ◽  
Anna Klyoster
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Frame Analysis ◽  
Professional Discourse ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Categorical Structure ◽  
Cognitive Action ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Of Cognition ◽  
Everyday Knowledge

The study of language as a cognitive phenomenon makes it possible to identify patterns of categorical division of the world. This paper considers the issue of the characteristics of everyday knowledge categories verbalization in professional discourse. On the basis of language fragments, objectifying ideas about the cognitive situation, through frame analysis, surface realizations of significant cognitive categories are investigated, among which are the subject of cognition, the object, the cognitive action, the instrument, the result, space and time. The named semantic nodes form the categorical structure of the frame behind the language fragment. The analysis demonstrates the compatibility of everyday and scientific knowledge division by a speaker; still, it illustrates the specificity of the language expression of frame nodes within the framework of professional discourse.

Świat po katastrofie. Motywy postczarnobylskie w powieści Очамимря Ołeksandra Irwańca i w dramacie Na początku i na końcu czasów Pawła Arje

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 121-136
Author(s):  
Paulina Olechowska ◽  
Marta Zambrzycka
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Chernobyl Disaster ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Do So

The subject of the article is the analysis of post-Chernobyl themes in the novel by Oleksandr Irwaniec Ochamimriya and in Pawel Arje’s play At the beginning and end of time. The Chernobyl disaster played a key role in the development of contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture. Chernobyl very quickly became a universal metaphor that have gone far beyond ecology and into a cultural and political context. In both works, the atomic explosion (taken literally by Arje, as the explosion of the No. IV reactor in Chernobyl and by Irvacek more vaguely as an explosion) is a key element of the plot, aff ecting both the fate of the characters and the shape of the surrounding reality. Although these works belong to two diff erent literary genres and showcase two diff erent conventions of presenting reality, they are connected by a post-apocalyptic vision of the world and the concept of a looping time. The heroes of both texts live in a time after the catastrophe, deprived of civilized goods and isolated from the rest of the world. In the novel by Irwaniec, this time after the catastrophe is a sort of “new medieval” with a decidedly pessimistic expression while in Arje’s drama the return to the pre-industrial worldview contains hope for fi nding traditional values. Both texts also address issues relevant to the modern post-Soviet society, but they do so in very different ways. Irwaneć uses grotesque, to deprive his characters of complexity, while Arje makes his characters deeply tragic and psychologically probable.

scholarly journals Prishvin and Trotsky: a Man “like a pharmacist” in the novel “The World Cup”, journalism and the Writer’s Diary

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-177
Author(s):  
A. M. Podoksenov ◽  
V. A. Telkova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Period ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
World Cup ◽  
Russian Art ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
First Time

The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the subject of the article is the question of the influence of L. D. Trotsky [Bronstein], who was one of the key leaders of Bolshevism, who headed the October Revolution, on the worldview and creativity of M. M. Prishvin, which has not yet been considered in the European studies. It is shown that in Russian art it is difficult to find an artist of the word, whose work would be to the same extent conditioned by the influence of the ideological and political context. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time an attempt was made to show how, through individual characters in his works, Prishvin in an artistic and figurative form reflected the characteristic features of behavior, everyday habits, the style of thinking and speech of Trotsky. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of previously unpublished due to censorship restrictions of the writer’s works: the story “The World Cup”, journalism of the revolutionary years and the 18-volume Diary, which became available to the reader only in the post-Soviet period. It is shown that, depicting Trotsky as a “pharmacist” who, according to his recipes, is trying to create the future of a huge country, Prishvin seeks not only to artistically reflect his moral appearance and personality traits, but also to convey the features of the ideological and political struggle in Soviet society.

scholarly journals Philosophical Versions of the Eternal Storyline About Cupid and Psyche: from Neoplatonism to Christianity

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-55
Author(s):  
Yuliya G. Kotaridi
Keyword(s):  
Eternal Life ◽  
Genre Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
European Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cupid And Psyche ◽  
Mythological Studies

<p>The subject of this paper is the transformation of the poetics of Cupid and Psyche plot in its national and historical modifications in European literature. The methodology of the analysis is based on mythological studies (A.&nbsp;N.&nbsp;Veselovsky, A.&nbsp;F.&nbsp;Losev) and genre studies (M.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;Bakhtin, S.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;Averintsev, E.&nbsp;M.&nbsp;Meletinsky, etc.). Allegorization of the images of Love and Soul appeared in the antiquity long before the novel by Apuleius &ldquo;Asinus Aureus&rdquo; or &ldquo;Metamorphoses&rdquo; (the 2<sup>nd</sup> century AD). In a&nbsp;Greek epigram Eros is often associated with the element of fire that puts the soul&nbsp;&mdash; &ldquo;Psycho&rdquo;&nbsp;&mdash; to a variety of ordeals and tortures. In &ldquo;Metamorphoses&rdquo; by Apuleius the tale about Cupid and Psyche can be seen as an allegorical narration about the soul traveling around the world and looking for ways to Love and eternal life. Later, the parabolic core of the ancient story was enriched with new motifs from the arsenal of mythology, Neoplatonism and Christianity. The archetypical basis and platonic paradigm of the plot in &ldquo;Metamorphoses&rdquo; by Apuleius go together in a syncretic unity, that provides universality and polysemy of the different versions of tales about Cupid and Psyche in European literature. The neoplatonic version of the story, which interprets the reunion between Cupid and Psyche as the Union of God and Soul, is represented in literature by writings of Fulgentius, Boccaccio, Heine, Coleridge, Żuławski and others.</p>

scholarly journals An Analysis into the Travels of the Translated Self in V.S Naipaul’s Half A Life

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Gora Chand Das
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Life Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The World

V.S.Naipaul expertly exhibited a great craftsmanship in literary pieces like fiction, travel and journalistic writing. His fictional world reveals a critical look on the world and also utilizes its traditions, customs and cultures. Naipaul’s writing express the ambivalence of the exile, a feature of his own experience as an Indian in the West Indies, a West Indies in England, and a nomadic intellectual in a post colonial world. Naipaul adhered to the form of the traditional narrative, and by doing away with the technical devices of the stream of consciousness; he exhibits his power of writing by making his readers share the inevitable irony and paradox of modern life form by its quintessential self-division and inner conflict. The protagonist of Naipaul’s fiction may be different persons but there may be sensed a thread of continuity in their fate and there “limbotic” status. He has described the theme of a quest for identity, a sense of displacement, alienation, exile of an individual in the backdrop of colonial and postcolonial period. The act of displacement, his trying efforts to organize his experience, and his gazing back to know about his roots and his continuing search for the desirable self can be clearly stated in his novel Half A Life (2001). In the novel Half A Life, Willie Chandran is a migrant from one place to another and then to another. And he keeps on doing that through both Half A Life, and its sequel Magic Seeds (2004).  

scholarly journals The characters of Eremey Aipin is pursuit of identity (based on the novel “In Search of the Primordial Land”)

Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 78-88
Author(s):  
Tatyana Yuryevna Kolyagina
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Methods Of Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Identification Analysis

The subject of this article is the problem of identity of the characters in the novel &ldquo;In Search of the Primordial Land&rdquo; by the regional Khanty writer Eremey Aipin. The goal is to describe the key vectors of reflections of the main characters on personal and national identity. The author aims to analyze the path of spiritual and social becoming, as well as finding true identity in the world and society of the protagonists of the novel &mdash; &ldquo;man of the kin&rdquo; Matvey Taishin and the hero &ldquo;without kith or kin&rdquo; Roman Romanov. The study leans on the interdisciplinary comprehensive approach, with the use of cultural-historical, typological, ethno-cultural, axiological and imagological methods of analysis. The scientific novelty lies in examination of the characters of the literary work from the perspective of their identity and identification. Analysis is conducted on the two ways of finding true identity by the characters in the small and big world. Path of &ldquo;man of the kin&rdquo; is the cognition of capabilities of staying in the world, strengthening of inviolable faith as the essential link in the chain of life, nature, Cosmos, and humanity. Path of the hero &ldquo;without kith or kin&rdquo; is a series of initiations (according to V. Y. Propp), as a result of which he gradually assimilates to the &ldquo;earthly world&rdquo;, having acquired the experience of merging with society. It is proven that solution of the questions on personal, social and national identity of the characters of the novel is interrelated with the author's traditionalistic worldview. The conclusion is made that in a crisis historical situation, the characters of the novel intuitively tilt towards ancient cultural memory of humanity, seeing its as a basis for reconstruction of identity.

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