scholarly journals LITERATURE AND SPIRITUALITY IN THE POST-SECULAR AGE

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-55
Author(s):  
Faisal Nazir
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Current State ◽  
Analytical Potential ◽  
And Function

This paper attempts to reconsider the nature and function of the ‘spiritual’ dimension in literary texts and in literary study in the context of the present state of the discipline of literary studies. The present era is often defined as a ‘post-secular’ era, one in which themes of spirituality and mysticism are increasingly noticeable in literary works. The paper argues that to maintain its relevance to contemporary writers and readers, literary criticism has to (re-)address these themes in a concrete and effective way. The paper recommends a comparative approach to the discussion of spirituality and mysticism in contemporary literature and literary criticism. In order to carry effective analytical potential, this approach, the paper emphasizes, has to be developed from specific spiritual traditions. The paper first discusses the disciplinary crisis literary studies have always been exposed to since their inception as a discipline of study in academic institutes. It then reviews the current state of the discipline and describes how the discipline came to be dominated by scientific and social approaches. Finally, it  suggests the reinstitutionof the ‘spiritual’ element in literary study as a way out from the state of crisis in the discipline of literary studies. The paper thus attempts to strengthen the disciplinary identify of literary studies while exploring interdisciplinary aspects of the study literature.

Poiein—Political Infinitive

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stathis Gourgouris
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
American Universities ◽  
Research Framework ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social

From a certain standpoint, Marjorie Perloff's lament, in her 2006 MLA Presidential Address, that literary study has been relegated to a secondary position in the research framework of our profession has merit. This standpoint, however, rests on a retrospective (if not nostalgic) comparison of today's institutional parameters with the enviable autonomy that literary study once enjoyed, a self-authorization that demarcated not merely the practice of literary study (or literary criticism) but even what we might call a literary way of thinking. This was how the institution of theory in American universities took hold, and it is elementary to recall that many other disciplines, principally in the social sciences but also in the arts, conceded to literary studies the vanguard of the methodological and epistemological reconfigurations of their own disciplinary boundaries. Anthropologists, historians, film critics, and art historians, who suddenly acceded to the position of theorist, came to regard literary studies as an inventory for whatever new terms or concepts they deemed necessary in unsettling their own disciplinary givens.

scholarly journals Literatur – grundsätzlich mehrsprachig!? Das politische Potenzial literarischer Mehrsprachigkeit heute, am Beispiel von Barbi Marković’ Superheldinnen

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Sandra Vlasta
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Major Language ◽  
Political Challenge ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Literary Prizes ◽  
And Function

Literature – Multilingual on Principle?! The Political Potential of Literary Multilingualism Today, using the Example of Barbi Marković’s Superheldinnen. Research on literary multilingualism is increasingly based on the assumption that literature per se is multilingual. This is true for concepts such as Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘polyphony’, in which multilingualism occurs in the form of social, regional and historical variants within one major language. Similarly, it applies to Rainier Grutman’s concept of hétérolinguisme, which expands Bakhtin’s notion and includes actual language changes. Recently, Till Dembeck has even called for a philology of multilingualism that would accommodate literary multilingualism in literary criticism. Using Barbi Marković’s novel Superheldinnen (2016) as an example, I discuss this recent development in multilingual literary studies and analyse concepts, forms and function of literary multilingualism. In so doing, I underline the transcending character of literary multilingualism that expresses itself on various levels: linguistically, formally, medially and with respect to culture. Thus, I aim to illustrate the enormous political potential of literary multilingualism. In fact, multilingualism in literature, as opposed to literature in times of a “monolingual paradigm” (Yasemin Yildiz), poses a political challenge on various levels. Concepts, such as national literature, literary field, but also literary studies and their institutions (i.e. language departments) reach their limits if literature is understood as being multilingual. In the second part of this article, I discuss the difficulties that come with literary prizes, literary studies and the access to the literary field. These often express themselves as concrete problems for individuals who, for instance, have difficulties accessing the literary field.

scholarly journals Poetry in Transmedial Perspective: Rethinking Intermedial Literary Studies in the Digital Age

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heike Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Digital Age ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Experimental Poetry ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Literary Practice ◽  
Media Change ◽  
Single Medium

Abstract In the digital age. literary practice proliferates across different media platforms. Contemporary literary texts are written, circulated and rea|d in a variety of media, ranging from traditional print formats to online environments. This essay explores the implications that the transmedial dispersal of literary culture has for intermedial literary studies. If literature no longer functions as a unified single medium (if it ever did) but unfolds in a multiplicity of media, concepts central to intermediality studies, such as media specificity, media boundaries and media change, have to be reconsidered. Taking as its test case the adaptation of E. E. Cummings’s experimental poetry in Alison Clifford’s new media artwork The Sweet Old Etcetera as well as in YouTube clips, the essay argues for a reconceptualization of contemporary literature as a transmedial configuration or network. Rather than think of literature as a single self-contained medium that engages in intermedial exchange and competition with other media, such as film or music, we can better understand how literature operates and develops in the digital age if we recognize the medial heterogeneity and transmedial distribution of literary practice.

Literary History after Literary Dominance

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-494
Author(s):  
Eric Hayot
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Genre Fiction ◽  
The Future ◽  
Television Film ◽  
Institutional Field ◽  
Film And Video

Abstract The various pronouncements of the nation’s dissolution seem to have been premature. Literary history is still very much within the nation, especially if one considers the realm of the middle- and lowbrow, or indeed the vast swaths of genre fiction. What has changed in literary history is the position of literature itself. The discipline of literary study (whether one thinks of it as literary history or literary criticism) institutionalized itself during a period of literary dominance. Now that that dominance is over—now that the field of narrative aesthetic culture includes television, film, and video games, and now that those genres dominate not only markets but the forms of representativity that used to belong almost exclusively to literature—what is the future for literary studies, either as a scholarly discipline or as an institutional field?

The Study of English Literature from Tawhidic Perspective (Pengajian Sastera Inggeris Menurut Perspektif Tawhid)

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355
Author(s):  
Aimillia Mohd Ramli
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Islamic Perspective ◽  
Present Concept

The prominence of English literature in literary studies has made it an important part of the discourse surrounding Islamisation of Knowledge (IOK). Because of his involvement in this movement, Syed Ali Ashraf’s (1925-1998) argument that English literature contained “intuitive truths” that transcended religious boundaries has been widely adopted as an approach in the study of literature, which is defined here as a written body of works dealing with artistic expressions, from an Islamic perspective. This paper argues, however, that his insistence on normative morality and spirituality in English literature as both providing guidance for human behavior and a basis for literary criticism is problematic. Part of the problem is the widely-held notion that literature, in general, only functions as the medium for the propagation and development of values and cultural refinement. Syed Naquib al-Attas’s (1931 – present) concept of Islamisation, however, places adabiyyÉt or literature in its proper relation to adab or proper bahaviour and etiquette that locates Allah at the highest place in the order of existence. Following Al-Attas, the author argues that the study of English literature should then be conducted through a comparative approach of both English and Islamic literatures that privileges not only the Islamic understanding of values but also leads to the acknowledgement and worship of Allah. Keywords: Islamisation of Knowledge, English Literature, Comparative Literature, Literary Criticism. Abstrak Keutamaan sastera Inggeris dalam pengajian kesusasteraan telah menjadikannya satu subjek penting dalam wacana berkaitan Islamisasi Ilmu Pengetahuan (IOK). Kerana penglibatan beliau dalam pergerakan ini, pendapat Syed Ali Ashraf (1925-1998) bahawa sastera Inggeris mengandungi "kebenaran intuitif" yang menjangkaui sempadan agama telah diterima  sebagai perspektif Islam buat kajian sastera, yang boleh disimpulkan sebagai hasil-hasil karya yang berkaitan dengan ekspresi artistik. Walaubagaimanapun, penulis berpendapat bahawa kepentingan yang diberikan of Syed Ali Ashraf kepada moral dan kerohanian normatif dalam sastera Inggeris sebagai panduan untuk tingkah laku manusia dan asas kritikan sastera akan menimbulkan berbagai masalah. Sebahagian daripada masalah ini adalah tanggapan bahawa sastera, secara umumnya, hanya berfungsi sebagai medium untuk penyebaran dan pembangunan nilai-nilai dan perkembangan budaya. Konsep Islamisasi Syed Naquib al-Attas (1931-), bagaimanapun, menempatkan adabiyyat atau sastera dalam konteks hubungannya dengan adab atau tingkahlaku dan tatasusila yang meletakan Allah di tempat tertinggi dalam urutan kewujudan. Seperti Al-Attas, penulis berpendapat bahawa kajian kesusasteraan Inggeris harus dilakukan melalui pendekatan komparatif di antara sastera Inggeris dan sastera Islam yang bukan sahaja menitikberatkan pemahaman Islam mengenai nilai-nilai murni tetapi juga mengagungkan Allah. Kata Kunci: Islamisasi Pengetahuan, Kesusasteraan Inggeris, Kesusasteraan Perbandingan, Kritikan Sastera.

Ecocriticism in Japan

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masami Yuki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Literary Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Cross Fertilization

This article examines the history of Japanese ecocriticism. It explains that while the association between literature and nature is so deeply imprinted in the Japanese mind, environmentally oriented literary criticism did not exist in Japan until it was imported from the United States in the middle of the 1990s. It discusses the shift in Japan’s academic landscape of literary environmentalism and describes the three major phases in the emergence of Japanese ecocriticism. These include the introduction of the literary movement from the early 1990s to 2000, the development of a comparative approach in the 2000s, and the cross-fertilization between ecocriticism and Japanese literary studies in the late 2000s to the present.

TRANSLATION AS MENTAL INTERPRETATION ACTIVITY IN LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (28) ◽  
pp. 43-53
Author(s):  
Svitlana Gruschko
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Cross Cultural Communication ◽  
Cross Language

In the article the phenomenon of translation is regarded as mental interpretation activity not only in linguistics, but also in literary criticism. The literary work and its translation are most vivid guides to mental and cultural life of people, an example of intercultural communication. An adequate perception of non-native culture depends on communicators’ general fund of knowledge. The essential part of such fund of knowledge is native language, and translation, being a mediator, is a means of cross-language and cross-cultural communication. Mastering another language through literature, a person is mastering new world and its culture. The process of literary texts’ translation requires language creativity of the translator, who becomes so-called “co-author” of the work. Translation activity is a result of the interpreter’s creativity and a sort of language activity: language units are being selected according to language units of the original text. This kind of approach actualizes linguistic researching of real translation facts: balance between language and speech units of the translated work (i.e. translationinterpretation, author’s made-up words, or revised language peculiarities of the characters). The process of literary translation by itself should be considered within the dimension of a dialogue between cultures. Such a dialogue takes place in the frame of different national stereotypes of thinking and communicational behavior, which influences mutual understanding between the communicators with the help of literary work being a mediator. So, modern linguistics actualizes the research of language activities during the process of literary work’s creating. This problem has to be studied furthermore, it can be considered as one of the central ones to be under consideration while dealing with cultural dimension of the translation process, including the process of solving the problems of cross-cultural communication.

Double Thoughts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dean
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
De Man ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.

The Oxford Handbook of the Auditory Brainstem

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Auditory Pathway ◽  
Auditory Brainstem ◽  
Auditory Midbrain ◽  
Current State ◽  
Neuronal Mechanisms ◽  
Maladaptive Plasticity ◽  
And Function ◽  
Auditory Field

The Oxford Handbook of the Auditory Brainstem provides an in-depth reference to the organization and function of ascending and descending auditory pathways in the mammalian brainstem. Individual chapters are organized along the auditory pathway, beginning with the cochlea and ending with the auditory midbrain. Each chapter provides an introduction to the respective area and summarizes our current knowledge before discussing the disputes and challenges that the field currently faces.The handbook emphasizes the numerous forms of plasticity that are increasingly observed in many areas of the auditory brainstem. Several chapters focus on neuronal modulation of function and plasticity on the synaptic, neuronal, and circuit level, especially during development, aging, and following peripheral hearing loss. In addition, the book addresses the role of trauma-induced maladaptive plasticity with respect to its contribution in generating central hearing dysfunction, such as hyperacusis and tinnitus.The book is intended for students and postdoctoral fellows starting in the auditory field and for researchers of related fields who wish to get an authoritative and up-to-date summary of the current state of auditory brainstem research. For clinical practitioners in audiology, otolaryngology, and neurology, the book is a valuable resource of information about the neuronal mechanisms that are currently discussed as major candidates for the generation of central hearing dysfunction.

scholarly journals Expression and Function of Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptides in the Human Brain: Physiological and Pharmacological Implications

Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 834
Author(s):  
Anima M. Schäfer ◽  
Henriette E. Meyer zu Schwabedissen ◽  
Markus Grube
Keyword(s):  
Organic Anion ◽  
Physiological Role ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Efflux Transporters ◽  
Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptides ◽  
Current State ◽  
P Glycoprotein ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
And Function ◽  
Uptake Transporters

The central nervous system (CNS) is an important pharmacological target, but it is very effectively protected by the blood–brain barrier (BBB), thereby impairing the efficacy of many potential active compounds as they are unable to cross this barrier. Among others, membranous efflux transporters like P-Glycoprotein are involved in the integrity of this barrier. In addition to these, however, uptake transporters have also been found to selectively uptake certain compounds into the CNS. These transporters are localized in the BBB as well as in neurons or in the choroid plexus. Among them, from a pharmacological point of view, representatives of the organic anion transporting polypeptides (OATPs) are of particular interest, as they mediate the cellular entry of a variety of different pharmaceutical compounds. Thus, OATPs in the BBB potentially offer the possibility of CNS targeting approaches. For these purposes, a profound understanding of the expression and localization of these transporters is crucial. This review therefore summarizes the current state of knowledge of the expression and localization of OATPs in the CNS, gives an overview of their possible physiological role, and outlines their possible pharmacological relevance using selected examples.

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