scholarly journals The Captivity Narrative and East-West Understanding in Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Crimean War ◽  
Common Humanity ◽  
The West ◽  
Mary Rowlandson ◽  
Captivity Narrative ◽  
East West

The American captivity narrative, like John Smith’s account of his rescue by Pocahontas, derives its plot from accounts of captivity in the conflicts with Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. This cross-cultural provenance is reflected in Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies which can be usefully compared with the greatest of the American texts, The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), in regard to characters, plot, setting and sympathy for the colonized. In The Kindness of Enemies the captivity narrative goes both ways, into the East and into the West, and there are different ways and degrees of being a captive. Reading Aboulela’s novel requires ananalytic historical perspective on a Nineteenth Century Sufi rebellion during the Crimean War seen in counterpoint to the present besieged state of contemporary Britain. The novel broadens our common humanity as we share Natasha’s problem of having “morphed into something completely different” on her difficult journey into the West, into history and into her divided consciousness. Aboulela presents, in place of projection, an involving interchange and interpenetration of people, events, imagery and (opposing) cultures. My reading, organized around the motifs of dreams and sword, follows the struggles of protagonist and narrator Natasha with intercultural guilt during her research into the Chechen resistance to Russian colonization.

scholarly journals PECULIARITIES OF THE CHRONOTOPE THROUGH THE PRISM OF IDENTITY PROBLEM OF THE URBAN NOVEL CHARACTER

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaya Semih
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Closed Space ◽  
Main Principle ◽  
Eternal Return ◽  
Identity Problem ◽  
The West ◽  
Temporal Space ◽  
Urban Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
East West

The article analyses the chronotope of the novel by Orhan Pamuk Silent House through the prism of identity problem. The purpose of the article is to establish a connection of this problem to the peculiarities of the interpretation of the chronotope (which is a result of analysis of the opposites capital-country and East-West. The urban issue of the Silent House grounds on the eschatological paradigm and the cyclic concept of the world, the concept of eternal return; this attests a postmodernist understanding of the categories of time and space. Hence, the composition of the novel is a peculiar spatial and temporal mosaic and narrative polyphony. In the temporal space of the Silent House the spatial (home and provincial town) and temporal (past and present) images, motive of travel (real and metaphysical in the form of memories), of the travelers acquire the semantics of existential metamorphosis that lead to moral and spiritual initiation. And the closed space of the novel — the house of Mrs. Fatma and the provincial Turkish town — appears as a special topos-gerontope, the main principle of which is a freezing of the time. In this way Pamuk realizes typical for his works problems of relations between the West and the East and self-identification.

Agonising Liminality: A Study Of Orhan Pamuk’s Snow

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
A. Ezhugnayiru
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Republic Of Turkey ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town ◽  
Unpleasant Experience

                      This article throws light on the distress a liminal experience could give for an individual or to a community who belong to a specific ethnicity, regarding the novel Snow written by the Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk. Turkey located geographically in the edges of landscapes where the east and the west meet encounters this liminality over a couple of decades and stays as the setting of the novel Snow. In the liminal state, people fall in the breaks and crevices of the social structure which they think.The liminal stage individual encounters, a period of instability and vulnerability. Orhan Pamuk's Snow reflects the unpleasant experience of progress from the Islam arranged Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. The setting of the novel, the town of Kars, a periphery city fringe to Turkey stands as a representative of Turkey's minimization from the world. Pamuk supplements the fruitless condition of the city all through this novel.

Us and them: East–West relations reconsidered

2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-331
Author(s):  
Leigh Sarty
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cold War History ◽  
East West

This paper frames the contemporary challenge of the People’s Republic of China in the context of Cold War history. It shows how apparent echoes of the past—Beijing's continued embrace of “socialism;” a partnership with Russia that recalls the Sino–Soviet alliance—help illuminate the sources and nature of present-day East–West conflict, and suggests that Francis Fukuyama's much-pilloried “End of History?” has been misunderstood. Viewing the twenty-first-century standoff with Chinese (and Russian) authoritarianism in historical perspective, the paper concludes, casts prospects for the West more positively than recent conventional wisdom would suggest.

Identity and Coexistence in the Eastern Mediterranean, ca. 1600

1998 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 113-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Dursteler
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
The Many ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
East West

Of the many European states that interacted with the Ottoman Empire in the early modern era, few did so as extensively as the Most Serene Republic of Venice,La Serenissima. The two empires shared a lengthy border and a common historical trajectory for almost 500 years, during which time the political and economic fortunes of both were intimately intertwined. While occasionally interrupted by brief periods of open hostility, for the most part this relationship was characterized by peaceful coexistence. Venetian historiography at present, however, is unable to explain this reality. Rather, in painting the picture of Venice’s relations with the Ottoman Empire, scholars have relied on broad strokes that depict a series of rather simple, binary relationships—East/West, Muslim/Christian, Venetian/Turk. This dichotomy is readily apparent in the titles of important monographs on the topic:Islam and the West, Europe and the Turk, Venezia e i turchi.

scholarly journals “Unfathomable Event of the Fatal Time” or the Russian theme in the novella “Vision” by in E. T. A. Hoffmann

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-50
Author(s):  
Natal'ya Mikhailovna Il'chenko
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Literary Images ◽  
Russian Literary ◽  
Scientific Significance ◽  
The Fantastic

The relevance of this research is defined by the scientific significance of the problem of Germany-Russia relations as an important factor of cross-cultural interaction. Dresden has imprinted hundreds of Russian names. This found reflection in the novel “Vision” by E. T. A. Hoffmannn, inspired by the experiences during his life in Dresden. The German romanticist appeared to be in the center of anti-Napoleonic War for a few month in 1813. Hoffmann also expressed his emotions in letters, diary notes, and publicistic texts. The “Unfathomable Event” of the novella “Vision” allowed avoiding unambiguity of explanation of the “fatal, difficult, and turbulent time”, as well as preserving the magic of the fantastic. It is noted that E. T. A. Hoffmann described in the novel and related texts the situations borrowed from life, reminiscences of the parlous Dresden days. At the same time, he highlighted the liberation mission of the Russian troops. Special attention is given to application of the so-called Serapiontic principle, which implies the transformation of reality in the consciousness of the imaginative nature. The novelty of this research consists in observation that the fantastic event described in the novel, turned Hoffmann into the “translator” of the meaning of feat of the Russian participants of the Liberation wars in the language of images. Such approach presented the peculiarities of development of the Russian theme and Russian literary images in the works of the German romanticist in the historical perspective.

scholarly journals Murakami on the Shore: beyond the dialogue between Japan and the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. e51791
Author(s):  
Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Final Draft ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Postdoctoral Research ◽  
East And West ◽  
East West ◽  
The Way

 The novel Kafka on the Shore is one of the most enigmatic works of contemporary writer Haruki Murakami. Since its very release, critics and scholars have been sharing their impressions and interpretations on various aspects of the book, one of them being the abundant references to Western elements (myths, songs, writers, icons and so forth). The present paper is the final draft of the postdoctoral research ‘Murakami on the shore: the dialogue with the West in the construction of the novel’, developed from July 2015 to June 2016. It aims at rethinking (as well as questioning) the way the study of the relation between Japan and the West can be addressed in the novel. The research, conducted as a bibliographical investigation, used key concepts like cultural identity (Hall, 2006) and border-blurring (Auestad, 2008). It defies the tendency of studying cosmopolitan authors like Haruki Murakami from the perspective of East-West duality, and defends that such analysis ought to consider East and West as complementary, almost inextricable, not regarding them as opposite or impermeable, and never as a limitation to the author himself.

scholarly journals An Ecocritical Reading of Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 232
Author(s):  
Hossein Sheikhzadeh ◽  
Abdolghafour Bejarzehi
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Waste Land ◽  
American Expatriates ◽  
Heart Of Darkness ◽  
Actual Environment ◽  
The Mind

Landscapes are not simply something objective and unchallenged out there but the work of the mind made by the strata of memory. This paper attempts to show that an ecocritical reading of Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky (1949) helps one in better understanding of this novel of post-colonial alienation and existential despair. Bowles is an American writer and a composer who is undoubtedly the most arresting example of cross-cultural influence concerning a Western author and the Middle East and North Africa.  His fiction mostly focuses on American expatriates travelling in exotic locations. The Sheltering Sky is an encounter with the Sahara, not only the physical one but the desert of moral nihilism into which one may wander blindly. The boundless desert acts here as a metaphor and the journey symbolizes one’s own journey into the depth of his/her soul. The desert also projects an apocalyptic vision in the struggle between the West and the East and the Sahara becomes in fact a Conradian Heart of Darkness, an Eliotian Waste Land, and a Sartrean No Exit. In the novel the actual environment becomes in some ways pale and covert under the psyche of the writer. Consequently we come to know that Bowles's own knowledge and awareness of the same environments left traces in his work. Accordingly we may wrap up that the environment bears a direct impact on our understanding of it. 

scholarly journals East-West Dichotomy in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 198-207
Author(s):  
Soumya Samanta
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
East West

Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle is a historical novel that is set during the Ottoman reign. The novel presents the metaphysical opposition of East and West, self and the other, intuition and reason, mysticism, science and global and local, and the recurring issues of conflict of civilization, identity crisis, and cultural variations. Orhan Pamuk as a postmodern writer tries to bridge the gap between the East and the West through his writings. Although Turkey is at the backdrop in most of his novels, the treatment of themes is universal. The paper proposes the theory of Orientalism by Edward Said, which represents the encounter and treatment of the "Orient." The concept of identity expressed by Pamuk in his wide range of novels also can be related to the “Orient” and “Occident.” The culture of the East has always been portrayed as the binary opposite of Europe in history and fiction. The loss of identity of the East reflected in the works of Pamuk is an outcome of the clash between East and Europe, further leading to chaotic contexts and dilemmatic protagonists. Individuals unable to choose between the traditional self and the fashionable West mourn the lost identity of a country and their self.

Values and intergroup perceptions of East Germans and West Germans in 1998 1This research was supported by a grant from the German Research Society (We 1106/3-1).

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-272
Author(s):  
Jörg Doll ◽  
Michael Dick
Keyword(s):  
Research Society ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Perceived Similarity ◽  
The West ◽  
Need For Uniqueness ◽  
German Research ◽  
East German ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
East West

The studies reported here focus on similarities and dissimilarities between the terminal value hierarchies ( Rokeach, 1973 ) ascribed to different groups ( Schwartz & Struch, 1990 ). In Study 1, n = 65 East Germans and n = 110 West Germans mutually assess the respective ingroup and outgroup. In this intra-German comparison the West Germans, with a mean intraindividual correlation of rho = 0.609, perceive a significantly greater East-West similarity between the group-related value hierarchies than the East Germans, with a mean rho = 0.400. Study 2 gives East German subjects either a Swiss (n = 58) or Polish (n = 59) frame of reference in the comparison between the categories German and East German. Whereas the Swiss frame of reference should arouse a need for uniqueness, the Polish frame of reference should arouse a need for similarity. In accordance with expectations, the Swiss frame of reference significantly reduces the correlative similarity between German and East German from a mean rho = 0.703 in a control group (n = 59) to a mean rho = 0.518 in the experimental group. Contrary to expectations, the Polish frame of reference does not lead to an increase in perceived similarity (mean rho = 0.712).

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