Ethics and Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Internal Relation ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Literary Techniques ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
Suitable Expression

Moral philosophers typically assume that literary texts have no significance for ethical reflection beyond providing one possible source of examples of moral problems. This is in line with philosophy’s long-standing hostility towards literature; it is described as an ancient quarrel even by Plato, whose expulsion of the poets from his republic is often cited as a founding gesture of the discipline. However, some recent writers on ethics contest this assumption. Neo-Aristotelian theorists see the novel as a medium in which their approach finds its most suitable expression. Proponents of moral perfectionism see literary techniques as indispensable in achieving their desired relation to their readers. Others of no particular theoretical affiliation see literary texts as exemplifying the internal relation of reason to imagination, feeling and sensibility in fundamental modes of moral thought. Taken as a whole, these arguments suggest that a moral philosopher’s evaluation of the ethical significance of literature reveals fundamental features of their conception of ethics in general, of the relation between moral philosophy and other philosophical concerns or questions, and hence of philosophy itself.

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Literary Techniques

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

scholarly journals LANGUAGE TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH PROSE INTO UKRAINIAN (ON THE BASIS OF THE COLM TOIBIN’S NOVEL ‘HOUSE OF NAMES’)

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (10(78)) ◽  
pp. 156-159
Author(s):  
Iryna Dumchak ◽  
Sofiia Shemerliuk
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Original Text ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Original Language ◽  
English Prose

The article deals with the peculiarities of transformations in the process of translation of English prose into Ukrainian. Despite the large number of works covering this issue, the problem of translating prose texts is not dismissed. There is a need to systematize and study the types of lexical and grammatical transformations, used in translating literary texts, in practice. To observe the process of formation of inter-language transformations, the novel by an Irish writer Colm Toibin ‘House of Names’ has been chosen. The various scientists’ approaches to establishing the transformation types are analyzed. It is revealed that due to differences in the syntactic, grammatical and morphological structures of the English and Ukrainian languages, lexical and grammatical transformations are widely used in translation. Lexical transformations are the deviations from direct vocabulary matches. The lexical transformations are mainly caused by the fact that the volume of the lexical units of the original language and the language of translation do not coincide. Among lexical transformations, the most common are generalization, concretization, compensation, lexical additions. Grammatical transformations are to transform the structure of a sentence in the translation process according to the rules of the source language. The transformation can be complete or partial depending on whether the structure of the sentence changes completely or partially. The article presents the examples of the grammatical transformations of inversion, replacement, addition and omission comparing the original text and its translation.

scholarly journals CRITICAL STUDY OF IRANIAN MOVIE »NASSEREDIN SHAH, ACTOR OF CINEMA «ON THE BASIS OF THEORIES OF THE POSTMODERN NOVELS

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirzad Tayefi ◽  
Mohammad Hossein Ramezani Fookulaee
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Postmodern Literature ◽  
Visual Texts ◽  
French School ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Visual Text ◽  
The Relationship

Contrary to the French school of comparative literature, according to which it is merely possible to compare the two written texts in terms of conditions, in the American approach, the adaptation of literary texts to various arts, including cinema, is possible, which leads to a better understanding of literature. Since novels and films have many similarities, they are in many respects similar to each other, and two genres are considered analogous.These commons provide a good ground for discussing a movie from the perspective of a new literary theory and critique, and allow us to use the concepts and terminology we normally know as a tool for discussing the novel to critically explore the structure and art and the themes of the film. On the other hand, in recent years, the term "postmodernism" has been widely criticized about the novel in our country, and many new fiction writers also have a fascination with postmodern style fiction. Therefore, in this research, first, reviewing the views of some of the most important postmodern literature scholars, nineteen techniques used in postmodern novels are explored, and their qualitative method of applying them to Naser al-Dinshah film actor have been investigated.The results of the study show the relationship between literature and cinema (as a visual text) and the ability to compare the two written and visual texts; as many techniques used in the writing of postmodern novels are also with a high frequency have been used in the studied film

scholarly journals RUSSIAN PROSE OF KAZAKHSTAN: EURASIANITY AND DIALOGUE OF CULTURES

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (5(74)) ◽  
pp. 6-9
Author(s):  
S.V. Ananeva
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Aesthetic Perception ◽  
The World

The poetry of the large genre form –the story and the novel includes «openness» as a fundamental opportunity that is endowed with the author and the reader. The poetics of works «in motion» creates a new mechanism of aesthetic perception, expanding the national picture of the writer's world. The concept as a focus of knowledge about the world expands the boundaries of the study of prose by I. Schegolikhin, T. Frolovskaya and K. Keshin. The concepts of the Motherland, memory, oblivion in the literary texts of Russian writers of Kazakhstan are extremely important. A literary work enters into complex non-textual relations with the surrounding reality, expanding the spiritual horizon of society, while preserving traditions and continuity

scholarly journals Strategies to Overcome Translation Losses in the Novel “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck to Achieve Adequacy in Translation

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Konul Khalilova ◽  
Irina Orujova
Keyword(s):  
John Steinbeck ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Grapes Of Wrath ◽  
Thought Patterns ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Current Article ◽  
The Given ◽  
Different Levels

The current article involves the issues of losses, gains, or survivals contributing to literature in the process of translation. It represents a thorough study based on the novel “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck from English and, respectively, its translation into Azerbaijani by Ulfet Kurchayli. It investigates the problematic areas or challenges emerging from the source-text discrepancies. Furthermore, this article also concentrates on the issue of cultural non-equivalence or the losses occurring in translating English literary texts into Azerbaijani. The paper identifies the translation techniques adopted by the translator of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Adopting certain techniques rather than others has led to many losses on different levels. The translator’s important role as a cultural insider is also emphasized. The wide gap, distance, or the differences between the cultures, languages, and thought patterns of the English and Azerbaijani language speakers are the main factors resulting in various losses in the process of translation. Coping with these extra-linguistic constraints is harder than the linguistic ones as the translator has no choice in the given situations, deleting these elements from the TT or replacing them with elements that do not fit the context. This article aims at determining translation losses and gains, defining ways that the translator employs for compensating losses, through the analysis of John Steinbeck’s style in The Grapes of Wrath. The article concludes that there are some situations where the translation of a certain text from the SL into the TL embraces alteration in the whole informational content of the text, in the form of expressions or words.

scholarly journals Corpus Assisted Approach To Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-40
Author(s):  
Samuel Kwesi Nkansah
Keyword(s):  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Numerical Data ◽  
Qualitative Description ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Context Of Use ◽  
Objective Investigation

Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born is a novel known for its extensive portrayal of the ills and anomalies in the Ghanaian society right after independence. The majority of studies on the novel have overwhelmingly concluded that corruption is the preoccupation of the text. This view appears skewed in many respects. This paper argues that the corpus assisted approach can contribute methodologies to support objective investigation of the subject matters of the text. This study, adopting the corpus-assisted approach in a mix of numerical data and qualitative description of Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born, used frequencies of the occurrence of pejorative terms in the text to determine the dominant subject matters in the novel. The approach reveals that “rot” and “decay” are the most dominant motifs used, followed by “filth”, “corruption”, and “bribery”. It suggests that clusters, i.e., recurrence of words, characters’ association with the words, and context of use serve as textual cues in thematic exploration. The approach aids in revealing that the real intent of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is that the total breakdown of the society rests on seemingly insignificant characters. The paper has implications for methodological approaches to thematic analysis of literary texts, particularly, the novel.

scholarly journals To the question of transformation of literary texts into stage version (“Three Years” of A. P. Chekhov in theatrical interpretation of S. V. Zhenovach)

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
Daria Savinova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Action Identification ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Authorial Intent ◽  
Stage Direction ◽  
New Type ◽  
Theatre Studies

This article is dedicated to the question of text transformation from authorial intent to stage impersonation. Despite the established tradition of studying the questions of recoding of literary text into theatrical, there is yet no theoretical-literary substantiation. Recoding is considered a complex process of creating a new type of text by the theatre director for staging a play. Therefore, an attempt is made to analyze the elements of transformation of literary text into its stage version, using the example of S. V. Zhenovach’s unpublished manuscript for stage direction based on A. P. Chekhov’s novella “Three Years”. The novelty of this research consists in determination of the patterns in transformation of literary text into stage version. The tools and means of expression applied in theatre and literature are different. If in literature it is possible to set several task and solve them all within the framework of the novel, then in theatre, it must be one ultimate task that organizes the action. Identification of the key peculiarities of existence of such type of text as “stage direction” on the example of transformation of the novella “The Years” from the authorial intent to stage impersonation demonstrated its significance for not only theatre studies, but also the theory of literature.

Karl Barth's Moral Thought

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald McKenny
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Theological Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
The Right

Does theological ethics articulate moral norms with the assistance of moral philosophy? Or does it leave that task to moral philosophy alone while it describes a distinctively Christian way of acting or form of life? These questions lie at the heart of theological ethics as a discipline. Karl Barth’s theological ethics makes a strong case for the first alternative. This book follows Barth’s efforts to present God’s grace as a moral norm in his treatments of divine commands, moral reasoning, responsibility, and agency. It shows how Barth’s conviction that grace is the norm of human action generates problems for his ethics at nearly every turn, as it involves a moral good that confronts human beings from outside rather than perfecting them as the kind of creature they are. Yet it defends Barth’s insistence on the right of theology to articulate moral norms, and it shows how Barth may lead theological ethics to exercise that right in a more compelling way than he did.

Ian McEwan’s Redescriptions

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-80
Author(s):  
Thom Dancer
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
John Banville

This chapter focuses on theories of modesty as redescription at work in literary texts. Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Saturday, and Solar demonstrate critical modesty in two interrelated ways. His novels offer a modest vision of literary efficacy as severely circumscribed by literature’s entanglements with the larger world. At the same time, to the extent that McEwan grants some relevance to the literary, it is through a style of epistemologically modest narration that seeks to redescribe a situation without judgment. The chapter illustrates the effects of a critically modest approach to reading McEwan’s fiction by contrasting it with different approaches by critics such as John Banville and Elaine Hadley. In contrast to these critics who find McEwan’s novels to be self-satisfied and politically quietist, I argue that McEwan narrates and formalizes the process of thinking in such a way as to intensify the mismatch between the reader’s experience of the world and the redescription of that experience in the novel. Novels such as Atonement, Saturday, and Solar demonstrate the value of epistemological modesty precisely at those moments when their main characters fail most spectacularly to achieve it.

The Curse of Realism

2019 ◽  
pp. 8-24
Author(s):  
Karin Kukkonen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Counter Model ◽  
Cognitive Approaches To Literature ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

This chapter challenges the assumption that throughout history the novel gets progressively better at realism and at matching its language in cognitive processes. It characterises this assumption as “the curse of realism,” which retroactively imposes standards from the nineteenth-century novel onto texts from earlier periods and evaluates them as lacking stylistic and narrative achievements that they never aimed for. A counter-model, based on embodied cognition and predictive, probabilistic cognition, is proposed. This allows cognitive approaches to literature to move away from a teleological perspective (where the novel improves its match with cognition) and towards a dialectic perspective (where literary texts can relate to cognition in ways that are not inherently more accurate than others). This chapter lays the overall theoretical foundations for the case studies in the following chapters.

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