scholarly journals Literature and the Shaman:

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rowland

The paper first considers the role of Jungian ideas in relation to academic disciplines and to literary studies in particular. Jung is a significant resource in negotiating developments in literary theory because of his characteristic treatment of the ‘other’. The paper then looks at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C.S. Lewis whose own construction of archetypes is very close to Jung’s. By drawing upon new post-Jungian work from Jerome Bernstein’s Living in the Borderland (2005), the novel is revealed to be intimately concerned with narratives of trauma and of origin. Indeed, a Jungian and post-Jungian approach is able to situate the text both within nature and in the historical traumas of war as well as the personal traumas of subjectivity. Where Bernstein connects his work to the postcolonial ethos of the modern Navajo shaman, this new weaving of literary and cultural theory points to the residue of shamanism within the arts of the West. 

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-53
Author(s):  
István Ladányi

The School of Stylistics in Zagreb and the School of Literary Studies in Zagreb had a dominant role in the shaping of literary studies in Croatia. From its beginnings in the late 1950ʼs, it can be only investigated in correlation with the other Yugoslav centres of literary studies, mainly with the literary researches and translations carried out at the University of Belgrade. The School of Literary Studies in Zagreb was influenced by the Structuralist schools and Russian Formalism. In the research focusing on the history of the novel (Viktor Žmegac, Milivoj Solar and others), the interest was raised in Bakhtinʼs theoretical works (both the Russian editions and their translations). Especially the notions of carnivalization, chronotope and the concept of the novel’s polyphony are discussed in works on the history of the novel. The influence of the latest Russian and international readings of Bakhtin’s work can be seen in Croatian literary studies in the researches and editions by Vladimir Biti and his co-workers, from the beginning of the 1990’s onwards.


Author(s):  
Iryna Rusnak

The author of the article analyses the problem of the female emancipation in the little-known feuilleton “Amazonia: A Very Inept Story” (1924) by Mykola Chirsky. The author determines the genre affiliation of the work and examines its compositional structure. Three parts are distinguished in the architectonics of associative feuilleton: associative conception; deployment of a “small” topic; conclusion. The author of the article clarifies the role of intertextual elements and the method of constantly switching the tone from serious to comic to reveal the thematic direction of the work. Mykola Chirsky’s interest in the problem of female emancipation is corresponded to the general mood of the era. The subject of ridicule in provocative feuilleton is the woman’s radical metamorphoses, since repulsive manifestations of emancipation becomes commonplace. At the same time, the writer shows respect for the woman, appreciates her femininity, internal and external beauty, personality. He associates the positive in women with the functions of a faithful wife, a caring mother, and a skilled housewife. In feuilleton, the writer does not bypass the problem of the modern man role in a family, but analyses the value and moral and ethical guidelines of his character. The husband’s bad habits receive a caricatured interpretation in the strange behaviour of relatives. On the one hand, the writer does not perceive the extremes brought by female emancipation, and on the other, he mercilessly criticises the male “virtues” of contemporaries far from the standard. The artistic heritage of Mykola Chirsky remains little studied. The urgent task of modern literary studies is the introduction of Mykola Chirsky’s unknown works into the scientific circulation and their thorough scientific understanding.


Paramasastra ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aprinus Salam

Literary studies can not be separated from the literary theory initiated and developed by “Western” scholars. Indonesian Literature also refers to these theories in interpreting and explaining literary works. This paper intends to ask the historical contextuality and the theoretical independence of Indonesian literature as a nation that has a historicity different from the West. The main offer in this paper is the importance of a theory called the theory of harmony-constitution. The important objectives of the theoretical point of view of the theory of harmony-the constitution are 1) all efforts to build an independent society and social justice, 2) a happy and safe condition, and hence the freedom that has been achieved should always encourage unity, sovereignty and prosperity, and 3) the acknowledgment “on the blessings of almighty God and by the noble driven.” Methodologically, the theory of harmony-constitution is based on semantics. This theory can be used to analyze social and cultural issues, but in the case of this paper will be tested to study literary works, especially the poetry of Chairil Anwar.


Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy ◽  
Nicholas J. Wheeler

This chapter examines the role of humanitarian intervention in world politics. It considers how we should resolve tensions when valued principles such as order, sovereignty, and self-determination come into conflict with human rights; and how international thought and practice has evolved with respect to humanitarian intervention. The chapter discusses the case for and against humanitarian intervention and looks at humanitarian activism during the 1990s. It also analyses the responsibility to protect principle and the use of force to achieve its protection goals in Libya in 2011. Two case studies are presented, one dealing with humanitarian intervention in Darfur and the other with the role of Middle Eastern governments in Operation Unified Protector in Libya in 2011. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether the West should intervene in Syria to protect people there from the Islamic State (ISIS).


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-268
Author(s):  
Staša Babić

Modern academic disciplines of anthropology, history and archaeology are founded in the cultural, social, political context of the 18th and 19th centuries, at the times of the colonial expansion of the West European countries. Although demarcated by the objects of their study ("primitive societies", the past according to written sources, or material evidence), all these disciplines are grounded in the need to distinguish and strengthen the modern identity of the Europeans as opposed to the Others in space and time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwi Mayang Sagita ◽  
Delvi Wahyuni

This thesis is an analysis of a novel written by Celeste Ng entitled Little Fires Everywhere (2017). This analysis looks at the commodification and alienation that is experienced by women who involved in surrogacy and adoption. This analysis employes Marxist literary theory to explain the phenomena in the novel. The analysis focuses on two issues of commodification and alienation that are proposed by Karl Marx as seen through two female protagonists which are Mia Warren and Bebe Chow. This analysis also depends a lot on the narrator to determine which parts of the novel are used as the data. The result of the study shows that Mia Warren experienced commodification of the human body and four kinds of alienation such as alienation from the product of labor, alienation from the act of production, alienation from the species being, and alienation from other people bacause she becomes a surrogate mother. The other protagonist, Bebe Chow, also experienced four kinds of alienation because her child is adopted.


Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 386-410
Author(s):  
Abdolali Yazdizadeh

Hyperreality is a key term in Jean Baudrillard’s cultural theory, designating a phase in the development of image where it “masks the absence of a profound reality.” The ambiance of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) closely corresponds to Baudrillard’s notion of the hyperreal as images persist to precede reality in the fictional world of the novel. Since for Baudrillard each order of simulacra produces a certain mode of ideological discourse that impacts the perception of reality, it is plausible that the characters of this fictional context should be ideologically impacted by the hyperreal discourse. From this vantage point it is possible to have a new critical assessment of Yossarian’s (protagonist) antiheroic stance and study the role of the “business of illusion,” whose ideological edifice is based on the discourse of the hyperreal, on his antiheroic stance and actions. By drawing on Baudrillard’s cultural theory this paper aims to read Heller’s novel as a postmodern allegory of rebellion against the hyperreality of the twentieth-century American life and trace its relevance to modern-day U.S.


Author(s):  
Ulrike Gut

This chapter describes the history, role, and structural properties of English in the West African countries the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, the anglophone part of Cameroon, and the island of Saint Helena. It provides an overview of the historical phases of trading contact, British colonization and missionary activities and describes the current role of English in these multilingual countries. Further, it outlines the commonalities and differences in the vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax of the varieties of English spoken in anglophone West Africa. It shows that Liberian Settler English and Saint Helenian English have distinct phonological and morphosyntactic features compared to the other West African Englishes. While some phonological areal features shared by several West African Englishes can be identified, an areal profile does not seem to exist on the level of morphosyntax.


Author(s):  
Christina Phillips

This chapter introduces the topic of religion and literature, theorises the novel as a secular genre, and develops a concept of religion as the other in the Arabic novel. It begins with a discussion of the relationship between religion and literature, identifying imagination, metaphorical language and mythos as areas of overlap, before turning to the question of religion and the Arabic novel as a modern form which eschews faith and dogma but is nevertheless packed with religious themes, images, characters, language and intertextuality. This is accounted for by the form’s secularism, which is theorised in terms of Charles Taylor’s conditions of belief. Literary secularism is not static and stable however, thus religion emerges as the other in the Egyptian novel, with all the ambivalence which alterity characteristically entails. This religious other calls into question postcolonial studies’ over-valorisation of the East/West binary insofar as it has obscured the critical role of religion in Arab postcolonial literature and identity.


Author(s):  
Dominic Scott

This chapter discusses the effects that education can have on a person’s receptiveness to argument. The main focus is upon two passages in the Republic about poetry and music. In book III, Socrates claims that exposure to beauty in the arts can prepare one to engage in rational argument. On the negative side, book X analyses the damage allegedly done by tragedy and comedy to the minds of the audience. Overall, I conclude that, although music and poetry have a significant effect on our susceptibility to argument, exposure to good art is not actually necessary for enabling one to follow the shorter route, and exposure to bad art does not necessarily disqualify one. At the end of the chapter I consider two further passages about the effects of education and upbringing, one about gymnastics in book III, the other about the use of dialectic on the young in book VII.


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