Döblin, (Bruno) Alfred (1878-1957)

Author(s):  
Todd Heidt

Alfred Döblin’s contributions to modern literature consist primarily of his montage style, epic narrative structures and critical eye toward contemporary culture. His masterpiece Berlin Alexanderplatz. Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf (Berlin Alexanderplatz. The Story of Franz Biberkopf) brought international acclaim and is often credited as the first German-language city novel. He was Jewish and thus fled the Nazi regime, settling in Hollywood for a time. He returned to Germany as a French Cultural Officer; however, he found Germany unwilling to cope with the recent past. Feeling out of place in Germany, he emigrated again in 1953 to France, and he died in 1957. Döblin was born the fourth of five children in Szcecin (modern-day Poland). His father abandoned the family when Döblin was still young, motivating his mother to relocate to Berlin in 1888. He grew up in working-class neighborhoods and studied medicine. His first publication, Lydia und Mäxchen (1906), parodically and self-reflexively deals with Döblin’s role as author, but found little readership. In 1912 he married Erna Reiss, with whom he had four sons. He published a collection of short stories, Die Ermordung einer Butterblume (The Murder of a Buttercup), in 1913. The title story features a salesman who absent-mindedly knocks the flower off a buttercup during a walk. His resulting fear of nature’s revenge for this misdeed (often read as a symbolic rape) escalates to neurotic levels. Döblin here combined his literary talents with his medical training, which included training in psychiatry.

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 848-852
Author(s):  
Dr.B.R. VEERAMANI ◽  
A. KUMARAVALLI

Dr. Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) is one of the leading writers of the India today. She has won the Jnanpith Award for the year 2000, which is the highest literary award of India today. She belongs to the family of Sattra adhikars (Head of Vaisnava monastery) of South Kamrup in Assam. Her father, Late Uma Kanta Goswami, was an economist, who worked as the Director of Public Instruction of the Government of Assam. Indira did her schooling in Guwahati and Shillong. She has written eighteen novels, and several hundreds of short stories. Her novels and short stories have been translated into many Indian and Foreign languages. She tries to write from her direct experiences of her life. She only moulds her experiences with her imagination. Her language is like a velvet dress by which she endeavors to cover the restless soul in its journey through existence. But however hard, she might try, the fabric of this dress seldom takes on the texture of velvet or fine Muslim, and it comes out rather tattered. Sometimes they feel that it is a futile effort to arrest the soul with language and capture it in cold print. It is better, perhaps to feel it only in numb science. But, then, those very experiences impel a person to unload them from the psyche by creative effort which gives a sort of relief. And, the tattered fabric has a beauty which puts to shame the finest of velvets.


Author(s):  
Judith Fletcher

Stories of a visit to the realm of the dead and a return to the upper world are among the oldest narratives in European literature, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and extending to contemporary culture. This volume examines a series of fictional works by twentieth- and twenty-first century authors, such Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, which deal in various ways with the descent to Hades. Myths of the Underworld in Contemporary Culture surveys a wide range of genres, including novels, short stories, comics, a cinematic adaptation, poetry, and juvenile fiction. It examines not only those texts that feature a literal catabasis, such as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, but also those where the descent to the underworld is evoked in more metaphorical ways as a kind of border crossing, for instance Salman Rushdie’s use of the Orpheus myth to signify the trauma of migration. The analyses examine how these retellings relate to earlier versions of the mythical theme, including their ancient precedents by Homer and Vergil, but also to post-classical receptions of underworld narratives by authors such as Dante, Ezra Pound, and Joseph Conrad. Arguing that the underworld has come to connote a cultural archive of narrative tradition, the book offers a series of case studies that examine the adaptation of underworld myths in contemporary culture in relation to the discourses of postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 543-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean M Bruce

This article argues that the property television programme, Love It or List It (2008–), employs conventions from the classic screwball comedy to both consolidate its position within the lucrative realty TV market – especially in response to the recent (2008) recession – and negotiate modern gender dynamics within the home. Its Depression-era (1930s) financial and aesthetic resonances are not incidental. And, as with much contemporary culture, this modern iteration of the screwball comedy is not discretely contained by medium or genre of influence: Love It or List It also borrows flourishes from documentary, tabloid TV, melodrama and the gothic novel. In keeping with its reference to a kind of baseball pitching style that is difficult for hitters to anticipate, the screwball’s tendency to suddenly switch course has been identified as its central means for engaging in cultural critique. Love It or List It as an exemplar of reality TV’s recombinant style is still very much like its cinematic predecessor: it has the adeptness to say many things to many audiences. This article makes no claims for Love It or List It’s progressive politics; rather, as with some classic screwball comedies, it explores the possibility that equivocating, shifting course or otherwise abandoning narrative logic register a profound ambivalence about marriage, coupledom and the family home as sacrosanct loci of modern life.


2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Pavić Pintarić

This paper investigates the translation of pejoratives referring to persons. The corpus is comprised of literary dialogues in the collection of short stories about the First World War by Miroslav Krleža. The dialogues describe the relationship between officers and soldiers. Soldiers are not well prepared for the war and are the trigger of officers’ anger. Therefore, the dialogues are rich with emotionally loaded outbursts resulting in swearwords. Swearwords relate to the intellect and skills of soldiers, and can be divided into absolute and relative pejoratives. Absolute pejoratives refer to the words that carry the negative meaning as the basis, whereas relative pejoratives are those that gain the negative meaning in a certain context. They derive from names of occupations and zoonyms. The analysis comprises the emotional embedment of swearwords, their metaphoric character and the strategies of translation from the Croatian into the German language.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-228
Author(s):  
Robert Kurelić

The counts of Krk were one of the most prestigious and most powerful noble families in late medieval Croatia, with a dominant role attained under Nicholas IV who received the last name Frankapani from Pope Martin V in 1430. Soon after his death German language sources began to refer to the family as Grafen von Krabaten or Counts of Croatia, a somewhat peculiar designation considering that there were other prominent families such as the counts of Krbava who also maintained contacts within the Holy Roman Empire. This paper traces the development of the term von Krabaten from 1440 until the election of Ferdinand I Habsburg as king of Croatia, showing how it was used throughout the century and may have been an indication of the respect and status achieved by the Frankapani under Nicholas IV and his sons. The term is also explored as a helping tool for further research into the history of the family using sources that have hitherto been overlooked or neglected.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 1365-1370
Author(s):  
Vesna Stefanovska

Left realism emerges in the early 1980s as a separate department, or direction within the neo-Marxist critical criminology. It results from dissatisfaction and certain criticisms of the foundations on which critical criminology is built, which left realists call left idealism. Namely, they are called realists because, in their view, crime should be considered in its reality, and the causes that led to criminal behavior should be seriously looked at, which means that leftist realists focus on already experienced realities. Hence, the issues of interest to left realists are the problems faced by certain groups regarding their age, class, sex, race and place of residence. They have some similarities with structural subcultural theories, arguing that crime is a form of subcultural adaptation to lived problems and realities. The basis is that due to material constraints and circumstances, the required cultural goals and aspirations cannot be achieved by legally disposable means. The central postulate of left realism is to reflect the reality of crime, in its origin, nature and influence. This means that crime cannot be romanticized or it cannot be explained as a product of the offender's pathology or other personal characteristics. Real problems related to the crime need to be considered and resolved. In this respect, the issues of left realism are the problems that citizens face, the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator, the geographical distribution of crime, as well as the prevalence of crime in certain social areas and sectors of the community. They are particularly concerned about ignoring the crime that is taking place on the streets by truly disadvantaged and marginalized citizens, as well as the crime that takes place behind closed doors, particularly in the family. So, the perspectives of the left realists are that street crime is a serious problem for the working class, working class crime is primarily committed against other working class members, relative poverty feeds the dissatisfaction and that dissatisfaction, in the absence of political solutions creates crime, and crime can be reduced by implementing practical social policies.On the basis of what has been stated, in this paper we will elaborate the critiques of critical criminology stated by the proponents of Left Realism , a Square of crime that offers appropriate solutions for criminal and social response to crime and perspectives of left realism that predominantly rely on community-based policies.


Author(s):  
Argha Kumar Banerjee

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.


Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe

This chapter showcases a Dutch collaborator named Fritz. Fritz shared many of Tony's prewar conservative opinions in favor of the monarchy and traditional Dutch values, although he was of working-class origins, unlike Tony and Beatrix, who were Dutch bourgeoisie. But unlike Beatrix or Tony, Fritz joined the Nazi Party, wrote propaganda for the Nazi cause, and married the daughter of a German Nazi. When he was interviewed in 1992, Fritz indicated he was appalled at what he later learned about Nazi treatment of Jews but that he still believed in many of the goals of the National Socialist movement and felt that Hitler had betrayed the movement. Fritz is thus classified as a disillusioned Nazi supporter who retains his faith in much of National Socialism, and this chapter is presented as illustrative of the psychology of those who once supported the Nazi regime but who were disillusioned after the war.


Author(s):  
Harrod J. Suarez

Chapter One examines Nick Joaquin’s novella, The Woman Who Had Two Navels (which was published before the longer novel version with the same title) and two short stories from Mia Alvar’s In the Country in order to consider the critical role that writing plays in navigating the diasporic maternal. Joaquin’s novella mourns the failure of the Philippine revolution, which becomes metaphorized through a discussion about language. Alvar’s stories address both the prospects and limits of writing: “In the Country” depicts the lives of journalists working against the Marcos regime and the deleterious effects of subversive, embodied writing on the family. In “A Contract Overseas,” Alvar challenges us to think about what it means to imagine and creatively write about life abroad.


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