scholarly journals Presence and absence of the belated witness in two short stories by Mavis Gallant

1970 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-76
Author(s):  
Joseph Ballan
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Mavis Gallant ◽  
Concentration Camp Survivors ◽  
Western European ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Post War ◽  
Holocaust Survival ◽  
Old Friends

This essay extends Michael Levine’s theory of the ‘belated witness’ as an approach to the question of how Holocaust survival is represented in literature, by considering how the absence of such a witness is made perceptible in two stories by Mavis Gallant. Much of Gallant’s short fiction critically analyzes various aspects of post-war western European cultures, but the two stories considered here (‘The Old Place’ and ‘Old Friends’) are unique in her published fiction in that they feature concentration camp survivors as main characters.  According to Levine, the ‘belated witness’ is a narrative figure, different to the survivor him or herself, who enables and supports testimony to trauma. This essay argues that this kind of figure is absent in both stories by Gallant, but that rather than a banal absence (i.e., simply missing from the dramatis personae), this absence is significant (i.e., is the conclusion of Gallant’s analysis).

Społeczeństwo holenderskie i los Żydów: skomplikowana historia

2016 ◽  
pp. 425-434
Author(s):  
Dan Michman
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Western European ◽  
Post War ◽  
Of Greece

The percentage of victimization of Dutch Jewry during the Shoah is the highest of Western, Central and Southern Europe (except, perhaps of Greece), and close to the Polish one: 75%, more than 104.000 souls. The question of disproportion between the apparent favorable status of the Jews in society – they had acquired emancipation in 1796 - and the disastrous outcome of the Nazi occupation as compared to other countries in general and Western European in particular has haunted Dutch historiography of the Shoah. Who should be blamed for that outcome: the perpetrators, i.e. the Germans, the bystanders, i.e. the Dutch or the victims, i.e. the Dutch Jews? The article first surveys the answers given to this question since the beginnings of Dutch Holocaust historiography in the immediate post-war period until the debates of today and the factors that influenced the shaping of some basic perceptions on “Dutch society and the Jews”. It then proceeds to detailing several facts from the Holocaust period that are essential for an evaluation of gentile attitudes. The article concludes with the observation that – in spite of ongoing debates – the overall picture which has accumulated after decades of research will not essentially being altered. Although the Holocaust was initiated, planned and carried out from Berlin, and although a considerable number of Dutchmen helped and hid Jews and the majority definitely despised the Germans, considerable parts of Dutch society contributed to the disastrous outcome of the Jewish lot in the Netherlands – through a high amount of servility towards the German authorities, through indifference when Jewish fellow-citizens were persecuted, through economically benefiting from the persecution and from the disappearance of Jewish neighbors, and through actual collaboration (stemming from a variety of reasons). Consequently, the picture of the Holocaust in the Netherlands is multi-dimensional, but altogether puzzling and not favorable.

Vasyl Bezkorovayny’s vocal works in Ukrainian music of the first half of the XX century

2019 ◽  
pp. 500-515
Author(s):  
Nataliia Kosaniak
Keyword(s):  
Choral Music ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Western European ◽  
Vocal Works ◽  
Post War ◽  
Talented Artist

Vasyl Bezkorovayny (1880–1966) was a talented artist, an active figure in the musical life of Galicia and a representative of post-war Ukrainian emigrants in the United States of America. He wrote more than 350 works of various genres. Among them are compositions for symphony orchestra; vocal works — for chorus, ensembles or solo singing; chamber and instrumental music — for piano, violin, zither, cello; music for dramatic performances. The article deals with the archival and musicological analysis of expressive and stylistic features of V. Bezkorovayny’s vocal works, based on the materials of Stefanyk Lviv National Library of Ukraine. Attention is paid to the place of the composer’s vocal masterpieces in the context of Ukrainian vocal music of the first half of the XX century. The most important achievements of the composer related to the genres of choral and chamber vocal music. In style, the composer’s works combine the influences of M. Lysenko, composers of the «Peremyshl school» and Western European romantic and post-romantic models. The original secular choral music of V. Bezkorovayny covers genres of songs, plays, and large-form choirs. In his solo songs the influences of romantic western European music and Ukrainian folk songs affected the formation and approval of the composer’s style. Keywords: vocal music, chorus, solos, melodic-intonation means, harmony, rhythm.

Short fiction writing in English by Chinese university students: An integrated F-A-I-T-H approach

English Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Gang Sui
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
University Students ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Writing Workshops ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
Stylistic Elements ◽  
Chinese University Students

When delivering a speech at a meeting of the Writers’ Congress, Ernest Hemingway said as a fiction writer: A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it. (1937) Does this statement still ring true today? If it does, what approach should and can be taken for Chinese university students to write ‘truly’ during their fiction writing workshops in English when they know what they try to accomplish is indeed something fictional or self-evidently ‘untrue’? What characterises the main thematic and stylistic elements of Chinese students’ short stories written in English as creative outcomes?

scholarly journals The Traumatic Syndrome

1972 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 391-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hector Warnes
Keyword(s):  
Life Style ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
The Other ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Dynamic Pattern ◽  
Traumatic Neurosis ◽  
Concentration Camp Survivors ◽  
Characteristic Features

This paper demonstrates both the similarities and the differences between concentration camp survivors and those suffering from other forms of psychiatric reactions resulting from trauma. In the former the systematic degradation, humiliation and persecution over a prolonged period of time, along with a sense of hopelessness and/or helplessness are characteristic features. Found at the other extreme of the spectrum is the acute traumatic event occurring in civil life and resulting in a classical traumatic neurosis but not leading to a total transformation of personality and life style. Between these two forms of psychiatric reactions there are various pathogenetic and pathoplastic mechanisms, sometimes overlapping but showing the underlying dynamic pattern of survival threat.

scholarly journals Animosity towards Women in Eudora Welty's Literary Canon

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Women's Identity ◽  
Male Perpetrators ◽  
The Social ◽  
Delta Wedding ◽  
Personal Consciousness

The paper investigates Eudora Welty’s concept of animosity towards women in her fiction. Her novels and short stories portray rape, sexual exhibitionism, sexual threats and brutality as inhuman experiences that sarcastically result in a vicious conversion of indignity and humiliation to the female sufferer instead of the male perpetrators. Welty suggests that this context creates a sense of intolerance which acts as a destroyer of women’s identity and sense of self. In this paper, the researchers attempt to reveal the mechanisms that subvert women’s sense of identity in a world usually controlled by men. Welty’s vision, in this sense, is that the social consciousness of the woman does not only evolve from the personal consciousness, but also intricately interacts with it. Welty’s works that are central to this study include Delta Wedding, The Robber Bridegroom, and the short fiction, including The Whole World Knows and Sir Rabbit.

scholarly journals Did Youth Destabilize Politics? Western European Social Democracies and Student Movements in «the Long Sixties»

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismail Ferhat
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Student Movements ◽  
International Institute ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Western European ◽  
Progressive Reforms ◽  
Post War ◽  
Democratic Parties

Student movements during «the Long Sixties» had a profound impact on Western politics and societies. One of the major political families in Western Europe, the social-democratic parties, were particularly affected. A major governmental force in a majority of Western European democracies, their post-war views on education, founded on optimistic and careful prospects (democratization of schools, progressive reforms) were destabilized by student protests and radicalism. How did social democrats react to the strong criticism of the universities, pedagogies and hierarchies in educational institutions that they had helped to build? This article is based on archives, documents and publications from the Socialist International, kept at the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), and on documents held by several national archives and libraries. It uses a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, linking political history and educational studies.

‘Forlorn on the Fringe of Life’: Exploring Working-Class Childhood in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Argha Kumar Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Verbal Abuse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Parental Rejection ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
The One

Abstract In Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘Life of Ma Parker’, the old, widowed charwoman is plagued by ‘unbearable’ thoughts of her deceased grandson Lennie: ‘Why did he have to suffer so?’ Lennie’s unfortunate death in the story is not a solitary instance of tragic portrayal of working-class childhood in Mansfield’s short fiction. In several of her tales she empathetically explores the marginalized existence of such children, occasionally juxtaposing their deplorable existence with their elite counterparts’. From social exclusion, child labour, parental rejection, infant and child mortality on the one hand to physical and verbal abuse, bullying in the school and appalling living conditions on the other; Mansfield's exploration of the working-class childhood in her short fiction is not only psychologically complex but sociologically significant. Focusing on the relevant short stories in her oeuvre, this brief analysis intends to closely examine such depictions of marginalized childhood experiences, particularly in light of the oppressive societal conditions that validate their repressive alienation and sufferings. Tracing various biographical circumstances that may have fostered Mansfield’s deep empathy with the children’s’ predicament, this analysis also draws attention to her subtle oblique narrative strategies that effectively represent the plight of working-class children in a convincing and an ingeniously nuanced manner.

‘The Magazine Short Story and the Real Short Story’: Consuming Fiction in the Feminist Weekly Time and Tide

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Clay
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
Periodical Studies ◽  
The Subject

This chapter examines the short fiction content of the feminist weekly Time and Tide alongside readers’ letters printed in the periodical’s correspondence columns. A basic unit of magazine production the short story is also ‘definitional to modernism’ (Armstrong 2005: 52), and during the interwar period its status as commodity or art became the subject of increasing scrutiny and debate. Drawing on examples from amateur writers and well-known figures such as E. M. Delafield, the chapter explores how Time and Tide negotiated readers’ expectations for short fiction amongst its core target audience of women readers. Building on Fionnuala Dillane’s application of affect theory to periodical studies (2016), the chapter uses her concept of ‘discursive disruption’ to consider moments of conflict between Time and Tide and its readers over the short stories it published as moments of opportunity for the periodical to expand its scope, readership and brow, and renegotiate its position in the literary marketplace.

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