scholarly journals Ireland and the Balkans Conflict in Edna O’Brien’s The Little Red Chairs

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-123
Author(s):  
Orsolya Szűcs
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Landscape Functions ◽  
Critical Exploration ◽  
Contemporary Reality

Abstract History has always been a major critical exploration point in Edna O’Brien’s works. Notable for its realistic Irish specificity, her fiction interrogates problems of history, memory, and society with an audacious awareness. In her 2015 novel, The Little Red Chairs, O’Brien goes beyond the familiar Irish cultural context and creates a propitious alternative life-story for Radovan Karadžić, a Serbian war criminal from the Balkans conflict of the 1990s. Attending closely to the novel’s factual-fictional narrative strategies and its visceral language, this essay explores how O’Brien combines stereotypical elements from the Irish contemporary reality with Eastern European sagas as well as history to then create a compelling humanitarian plotline. The novel has a particular rendering of natural elements that act as a mnemonic witness device. The essay also looks at how the landscape functions as a reflective tool, often acting as a separate “character” of the narrative.

Rīgas humānistu motīvs Roalda Dobrovenska romānā „Magnus, dāņu princis”

2021 ◽  
pp. 172-180
Author(s):  
Ausma Cimdiņa
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Russian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role

The novel “Magnus, the Danish Prince” by the Russian diaspora in Latvia writer Roald Dobrovensky is seen as a specific example of a biographical and historical genre, which embodies the historical experience of different eras and nations in the confrontation of globalisation and national self-determination. At the heart of the novel are the Livonian War and the historical role and human destiny of Magnus (1540–1683) – the Danish prince of the Oldenburg dynasty, the first and the only king of Livonia. The motif of Riga’s humanists is seen both as one of the main ideological driving forces of the novel and as a marginal reflection in Magnus’s life story. Acknowledged historical sources have been used in the creation of the novel: Baltazar Rusov’s “Livonian Chronicle”; Nikolai Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”; Alexander Janov’s “Russia: 1462–1584. The Beginning of the Tragedy. Notes of the Nature and Formation of Russian Statehood” etc. In connection with the concept of Riga humanists, another fictitious document created by the writer Dobrovensky himself is especially important, namely, the diary of Johann Birke – Magnus’s interpreter, a person with a double identity, “half-Latvian”, “half-German”. It is a message of an alternative to the well-known historical documents, which allows to turn the Livonian historical narrative in the direction of “letocentrism” and raises the issue of the ethnic identity of Riga’s humanists. Along with the deconstruction of the historically documented image of Livonian King Magnus, the thematic structure of the novel is dominated by identity aspects related to the Livonian historical narrative. Dobrovensky, with his novel, raises an important question – what does the medieval Livonia, Europe’s common intellectual heritage, mean for contemporary Latvia and the human society at large? Dobrovensky’s work is also a significant challenge in strengthening emotional ties with Livonia (which were weakened in the early stages of national historiography due to conflicts over the founding of nation-states).

Helping the novel: Neoliberalism, self-help, and the narrating of the self in Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelia Poon
Keyword(s):  
Modern Technology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Realist Novel ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Vantage Points

Self-help books sell the myth of self-determinism, empowerment and the eternal hope of reinvention, reasons no doubt for their enormous popularity. In this article, I examine Pakistani-born Mohsin Hamid’s latest novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) which, with its catchy, hyperbolic title signalling its masquerade as a self-help book, openly and ironically advertises itself as a satire. The object of the novel’s satire is the capitalist, neoliberal notion of the self that is predicated on an overweening sense of control and complete agency. Neoliberal subjectivity endorses the care and transformation of the self in order to take best advantage of a market economy, since the means to achieving material affluence is seen simply as a matter of individual choice and personal will. In the novel, Hamid brings into productive tension the conventions and assumptions of the self-help genre with those of the more traditional realist novel in order to interrogate not just the neoliberal self but the very ways in which the self is narrated and constructed. Engaging in particular with the affordances of technology in his novel as a thematic, Hamid appropriates the vantage points and perspectival positions made possible by modern technology to undermine the solipsistic self of the self-help book. He further exploits the narrative energies of the novel form to foreground a sense of historical contingency to lay bare various modes of self-constitution and self-narration. Through his use of metatextual narrative strategies, Hamid raises fundamental questions about the genre of the novel itself and the ways in which it is intimately invested in the insinuation of the development of a self. These questions, I argue, ultimately underline his affirmation of the novel’s important place and the ethical role it can play at this contemporary moment of late and global capitalism.

scholarly journals “In a Sea of Wonders:” Eastern Europe and Transylvania in the Irish-Language Translation of Dracula

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-83
Author(s):  
Sorcha De Brún
Keyword(s):  
Original Work ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Language Translation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Novel ◽  
European Language ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of

Abstract The publication of the Irish-language translation of Dracula in 1933 by Seán Ó Cuirrín was a landmark moment in the history of Irish-language letters. This article takes as its starting point the idea that language is a central theme in Dracula. However, the representation of Transylvania in the translation marked a departure from Bram Stoker’s original. A masterful translation, one of its most salient features is Ó Cuirrín’s complex use of the Irish language, particularly in relation to Eastern European language, character, and landscapes. The article examines Ó Cuirrín’s prose and will explore how his approaches to concrete and abstract elements of the novel affect plot, character, and narration. The first section explores how Dracula is treated by Ó Cuirrín in the Irish translation and how this impacts the Count’s persona and his identity as Transylvanian. Through Ó Cuirrín’s use of idiom, alliteration, and proverb, it will be shown how Dracula’s character is reimagined, creating a more nuanced narrative than the original. The second section shows how Ó Cuirrín translates Jonathan Harker’s point of view in relation to Dracula. It shows that, through the use of figurative language, Ó Cuirrín develops the gothic element to Dracula’s character. The article then examines Ó Cuirrín’s translations of Transylvanian landscapes and soundscapes. It will show how Ó Cuirrín’s translation matched Stoker’s original work to near perfection, but with additional poetic techniques, and how Ó Cuirrín created a soundscape of horror throughout the entirety of the translation.

scholarly journals Interweaving Realities: Spoken Language and Moving Images in the Sonne halt!, Experimental Film by Ferry Radax

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luka Bešlagić
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
Movie Script

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

scholarly journals The Rushdie Affair – Politics, Culture and Ethnicity in Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album

Politeja ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (8 (31/2)) ◽  
pp. 11-26
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Ossowska-Czader
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Hanif Kureishi ◽  
Second Generation Immigrants ◽  
The Face ◽  
British Muslims

The aim of this paper is to show how politics, culture and ethnicity interweave in the context of the Rushdie Affair in both the real‑life dimension of the historical events taking place in the late 1980s, as well as the literary dimension of the novel by Hanif Kureishi entitled The Black Album. The paper briefly outlines the Rushdie Affair as it unfolded in the British public sphere with particular emphasis placed on the process of consolidation of the Muslim identity among the representatives of different ethnic groups in Great Britain in the political and cultural context of the event which is deemed to be defining from the point of view of British Muslims. The author of the paper presents the profile of Hanif Kureishi, to indicate why he is ideally positioned to look critically at both sides of the conflict. The paper analyses the novel itself insofar as it examines the implications of the Rushdie Affair depicted in The Black Album, the reactions of the second‑generation immigrants of Pakistani descent in the face of the controversy, the influence this event exerted on the process of their searching for identity as well as their integration into British society. Two opposing identity options taken up by the protagonists of The Black Album are analysed by the author of the paper.

The transformation of reality and the Arabic novel's aesthetic response

1994 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabry Hafez
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapid Pace ◽  
Modern Arabic

The rapid pace of the change sweeping through the Arab world over the last few decades has profoundly affected both its various cultural products and its writers' perception of their national identity, social role and the nature of literature. The aim of this paper1 is to discuss the major changes in the sociopolitical reality of the Arab world, the cultural frame of reference and the responses of one of the major literary genres in modern Arabic literature: the novel. It is assumed here that there is a vital interaction between the novel and its socio-cultural context, in that novels encode within their very structure various elements of the social reality in which they appear and within whose constraints they aspire to play a role. Their generation of meaning is enmeshed in a variety of cultural, psychological and social processes, and their reception therefore brings into operation an array of experiences necessary for the interpretive act.

Problematic Terminology in a Tentative Research Methodology for the Visual Culture of the Balkans

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Anita Paolicchi ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Western European ◽  
Interpretative Framework

"The aim of this paper is to highlight and briefly discuss some of the most problematic terms and concepts that recur in art historiography: for example, the words Byzantine, post-Byzantine, Eastern, Western and Local. These concepts are used in a misleading way not only by American and Western European authors, but also by Eastern and South-Eastern European ones: in fact, the “Balkan” art historiography based itself on the Western-European one, adopting its periodisation, terminology and interpretative framework, which led to a number of methodological problems that researchers are now trying to identify, discuss and, if possible, solve. Keywords: art historiography, South-Eastern Europe, silverwork, Byzantium. "

Caught between Two Empires: The Teaching of Persian in Bosnia at the Time of Transition from Ottoman to Austro-Hungarian Rule

DIYÂR ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-207
Author(s):  
Munir Drkić
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Similar Process ◽  
British India ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
Mass Expansion

This article considers the presence of Persian within the educational system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the westernmost frontier of the ‘Persianate world’, between the 1860s and the first decade of 1900. Based on a survey of primary sources, such as the first journals introduced in Bosnia by the Ottoman administration, I show that the introduction of new educational establishments in the 1860s and 1870s brought a mass expansion of the teaching of Persian in Bosnia. Even after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of 1878, Persian continued to be taught in old and some newly founded schools. However, the following decades saw a lively debate on the teaching of Persian, highlighting the redundancy of this language in a new social and cultural context. As a result, Persian was completely removed from Bosnian schools at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to presenting new knowledge about the spread of Persian in the Balkans, and the instruction of foreign languages in the Ottoman Empire, I intend to demonstrate here that a similar process of withdrawing and removing Persian from the educational system was occurring in Habsburg Bosnia simultaneously with the decline of Persian in British India.

Shankar Nana, Parubai, and the Author, Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-60
Author(s):  
Deepra Dandekar
Keyword(s):  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Church Missionary Society

This chapter presents the life story of the first converts Shankar Nana, his wife Parubai, and the author of the novel, Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar, their son. The life stories are based on Christian witnesses, Church Missionary Society archival records, and the Marathi Christian literature of the time that provided protagonists in the novel human agency. This chapter is important for its narrative that lies outside missionary discourse and the native Christian interest that seeks to justify conversion. Based on archival records, this chapter then constitutes the ‘other’ of the translated text.

Multiple Narratives in the Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Deepra Dandekar
Keyword(s):  
Life Stories ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Important Case ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Strong Statement ◽  
Emotional Representations

The politics of a multilayered text like The Subhedar’s Son does not lie in its strong statement of ideological issues but in its silences and its emotional representations. Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar, the author of The Subhedar’s Son, deliberately connected Christian morality with specific social groups, according them relative political significance, while disregarding others as morally and spiritually bankrupt. This chapter discusses the various narrative strategies employed by Sawakar in the Marathi novel. It explores how The Subhedar’s Son is simultaneously a Christian narrative and a Brahmin narrative that makes an important case for the Brahmin-Christian contribution to vernacular nativism and nationalism, against colonialism. The chapter describes how the novel stages religious conversion to Christianity as a modern and individualist Brahmin and upper-caste decision, the analysis of which cannot be afforded within structural explorations, but personal motivations and life stories.

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