scholarly journals A new myth regarding the Great Trek: Reinvention of identity in Die pad na skuilhoek [The path toSkuilhoek] by Hans du Plessis.

Literator ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlies Taljard

This article aims to illustrate how Hans du Plessis, in his novel Die pad na Skuilhoek [The path to Skuilhoek] (a place of shelter), subverts the way in which history had been presented in historical novels in the past by addressing social issues that contemporary readers find relevant. The first part of the article deals with the social codes that shape the identities of the main characters and how these identities are relevant in terms of the social framework within which the novel is received. In the second place the focus will shift towards Du Plessis’s representation of cultural and national identities. The question: ‘Who were the Afrikaners at the time of the Great Trek?’ will be answered with reference to these identities. In conclusion it will be pointed out how Du Plessis avoids dated practices of historical interpretation by choosing ecocrticism as the ideological framework for his novel and is, in this way, constructing a new social myth about the Great Trek.

Author(s):  
Gail Marshall

This article gives an account of the immediate publication context of George Eliot’s first novel, Adam Bede, in terms of competing opportunities for leisure, anxieties about the reading of fiction, the publishing industry, and the social and political context of February 1859. It examines the way in which the novel engages with its first readers, specifically through its treatment of the experience of reading fiction, and the ways in which Adam Bede differs from readers’ previous experiences. The article argues that the novel’s impact is determined by its engagement with the past of its setting, and by the ways it which it encourages a historically-nuanced appreciation in its readers, and that these factors are integral to Eliot’s articulating a new form of realist fiction.


2011 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 23-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Stefanoni

The arrival of Evo Morales to power in January of 2006 –supported with an unprecedent 54% of the votes– marked a milestone in Bolivian political history and opened the way to an ambitious project of re-foundation of the country. Those events were translated in the call for a Constituent Assembly and in the nationalization of hydrocarbons, within the framework of a strong “ruralización de la política”. More than five years of that one triumph has passed and after a re-election with 64% of the votes in December 2009 that consolidated the “evista” hegemonyhas declined.  Now the government faces a series of challenges tied to the effective materialization of the change proposed in the re-foundational speeches. This article analyses the novel experience of “Indians in the power” centered in the tension between the changes implemented and the inertias of the past in spheres such as the democratic radicalization, the social equality, the model of development, and the political project. All these themes affected by a powerful, and yet somehow vague objective: the decolonization of the country.La llegada de Evo Morales al poder en enero de 2006 ―avalado con un inédito 54% de los votos― marcó un punto de inflexión en la historia política boliviana y abrió paso a un ambicioso proyecto de refundación del país. Esos ejes se tradujeron en la convocatoria a una Asamblea Constituyente y en la nacionalización de los hidrocarburos, en el marco de una fuerte “ruralización de la política”.  A más de cinco años de aquel triunfo y luego de una reelección con el 64% en diciembre de 2009 que consolidó la hegemonía “evista”, el gobierno enfrenta una serie de retos vinculados a la materialización efectiva del cambio propuesto en los discursos refundacionales. En este artículo se analiza esta experiencia novedosa de “los indios en el poder” centrada en la tensión entre los cambios operados y las inercias del pasado en esferas como la radicalización democrática, la igualdad social, el modelo de desarrollo y el proyecto político. Temas todos ellos atravesados por un objetivo tan poderoso como por momentos impreciso: la descolonización del país.


Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.


1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 202-227
Author(s):  
Linda Istanbulli

Abstract In a system where the state maintains a monopoly over historical interpretation, aesthetic investigations of denied traumatic memory become a space where the past is confronted, articulated, and deemed usable both for understanding the present and imagining the future. This article focuses on Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr (As a river should) by Manhal al-Sarrāj, one of the first Syrian novels to openly break the silence on the “1982 Hama massacre.” Engaging the politics and poetics of trauma remembrance, al-Sarrāj places the traumatic history of the city of Hama within a longer tradition of loss and nostalgia, most notably the poetic genre of rithāʾ (elegy) and the subgenre of rithāʾ al-mudun (city elegy). In doing so, Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr functions as a literary counter-site to official histories of the events of 1982, where threatened memory can be preserved. By investigating the intricate relationship between armed conflict and gender, the novel mourns Hama’s loss while condemning the violence that engendered it. The novel also makes new historical interpretations possible by reproducing the intricate relationship between mourning, violence, and gender, dislocating the binary lines around which official narratives of armed conflicts are typically constructed.


Author(s):  
Haytham Bahoora

This chapter examines the development of the novel in Iraq. It first considers the beginnings of prose narrative in Iraq, using the intermingling of the short story and the novel, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, as a framework for reassessing the formal qualities of the Arabic novel. It then turns to romantic and historical novels published in the 1920s, as well as novels dealing with social issues like poverty and the condition of peasants in the countryside. It discusses the narrative emergence of the bourgeois intellectual’s self-awareness and interiority in Iraqi fiction, especially the novella; works that continued the expression of a critical social realism in the Iraqi novelistic tradition and the appearance of modernist aesthetics; and narratives that addressed dictatorship and war in Iraq. The chapter concludes with an overview of the novel genre in Iraq after 2003.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 777-783
Author(s):  
Dragana Frfulanović-Šomođi ◽  
Milena Savić

The design of socialist Yugoslavia received a particularly new look through the creation of Aleksandar Joksimović, which gave the new elements a traditional look, equally putting them in rank with world-famous designs of celebrated designers. This paper was created with the idea of emphasizing the importance of the creativity of Joksimović, which is within the framework of socialist norms, as an artist, remained insufficiently recognized, although his work was in the service of exclusive promotion of the cultural aspects of his country. His concept of design based on the medieval cultural tradition emerged from the framework of the then socialist clothes, and it is called grandiose exoticism. The names of the first collections given by the historical figures of medieval Serbian history are a clear indication that it is possible to draw inspiration from the past, if it is professionally approached and adequately, by contemporary trends, the audience and the market. Joksimovic's individualism, apart from design, was also reflected in the way the collection itself was modeled through models and choreographies, and clearly once again showed his step ahead of time, while the social and political circumstances forced him to stay one step behind.


2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65

Abstract This paper looks at a novel by László Krasznahorkai in the context of the narrative turn in history, which also stimulated a revaluation of the fictional historical narrative. War and War was one of a series of Hungarian historical novels, or mixed novel formations with a historical theme, published at the turn of the millennium, whose primary aim was not to recount a self-assured historical tale but rather to highlight, via the story, the models/schemas/shifts/blank spaces in our present-day comprehension of the past. This paper interprets the novel with reference to historic-philosophical conceptions (Löwith, Koselleck), tracks its references to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and argues that it transforms the teleological idea of the historical process into an apocalyptic model of history.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inna Blam ◽  
Katarína Vitálišová ◽  
Kamila Borseková ◽  
Mariusz Sokolowicz

Purpose The paper aims to analyze actual issues of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in monofunctional towns in Russia, Slovakia and Poland. The process of social investment restructuring is obviously under way in these countries. However, there can be identified a few examples where the dominant employer with the long tradition (from the soviet period, even longer) has initiated and directly influenced by the social policy the local and regional development. The paper analyzes their development during the past decades, with the special emphasis on social issues. It identifies its strengths and weaknesses and defines future research areas. Design/methodology/approach The first part of the paper defines the CSR with focus on the social sphere and relationships between local dominant employer, local government and community. Refer to the theory, the paper adopts a case study methodology to explore the specifics of CSR with a focus on monotowns, especially the role of local dominant employer and its relationship with local government and community in three selected post-communist nations – Russia, Slovakia and Poland. The research uses also the secondary data (the strategic documents, statistical data) and own observation during the study visits to the selected cities. The authors analyze the town’s development during the past decades, with the special emphasis on the social issues. Findings It is shown that maintenance and development of essential living conditions in many monofunctional towns depends upon the direct participation of large dominating companies. The paper argues that there is a principal difference between the current social policy conducted by these dominant local employers and the policy that was conducted in the past. What is more, most of the engagement of large in the social affairs in monotowns refers to the CSR concept. The paper summarizes the common features and differences in functioning monotowns in selected states, from the perspective of social responsible behaviors of dominant companies, suggests the practical implications and identifies future research areas. Originality/value The paper maps the specific kind of social responsibility interconnected with the issue of local and regional development – monotowns in Russia, Poland and Slovakia – in the countries with common political and social history. It brings in the form of case studies the detailed overview of the selected examples from Russia, Ukraine and Poland dealing with the CSR. Based on the collected data, it summarizes the advantages and disadvantage of these towns and opens the new research areas.


Author(s):  
David Paroissien

This chapter questions the view that Dickens took little interest in history and remained ignorant of the challenge of writing about the past. Following John Forster’s dismissal of A Child’s History of England as ‘that little book’, which ‘cannot be said to have quite hit the mark’, A Child’s History, Barnaby Rudge, and A Tale of Two Cities have received often unsympathetic treatment, particularly with respect to the way the past is used in his two historical novels. Read within the context of ideas about history advocated by Carlyle and Macaulay in the 1830s, this chapter contends that fresh light can be shed on Dickens’s awareness of historiography and on his familiarity with an invigorated approach to the discipline advocated by the two most prominent historians of the first half of the nineteenth century.


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