scholarly journals READING TOURS INTO MALAYSIAN NARRATIVES: LOCALES IN THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS AND THE NIGHT TIGER

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swagata Sinha Roy ◽  
◽  
Kavitha Subaramaniam ◽  

If one has not read local English novels like The Garden of Evening Mists and The Night Tiger, one would never be able to imagine the wonders of locales depicted in these two books. One of the reasons the authors here want to visit a said destination is because of the way a certain place is pictured in narratives. Tan Twan Eng brings to life the beauty of Japanese gardens in Cameron Highlands, in the backdrop of postWorld War II while Yangsze Choo takes us into several small towns of Kinta Valley in the state of Perak in her beautifully woven tale of the superstitions and beliefs of the local people in Chinese folklore and myth in war torn Malaysia in the 1930s and after. Many of the places mentioned in these two novels should be considered places to visit by tourists local and international. Although these Malaysian novelists live away from Malaysia, they are clearly ambassadors of the Malaysian cultural and regional heritage. In this paper, a few of the places in the novel will be looked at as potential spots for the coming decade. The research questions considered here are i) what can be done to make written narratives the new trend to pave the way for Visit Malaysia destinations? ii) how could these narratives be promoted as guides to the history and culture of Malaysia? The significant destinations and the relevant cultural history of the regions will be discussed in-depth to come to a relevant conclusion.

Author(s):  
Hawraa Al-Hassan

The book examines the trajectory of the state sponsored novel in Iraq and considers the ways in which explicitly political and/or ideological texts functioned as resistive counter narratives. It argues that both the novel and ‘progressive’ discourses on women were used as markers of Iraq’s cultural revival under the Ba‘th and were a key element in the state’s propaganda campaign within Iraq and abroad. In an effort to expand its readership and increase support for its pan-Arab project, the Iraqi Ba‘th almost completely eradicated illiteracy among women. As Iraq was metaphorically transformed into a ‘female’, through its nationalist trope, women writers simultaneously found opportunities and faced obstacles from the state, as the ‘Woman Question’ became a site of contention between those who would advocate the progressiveness of the Ba‘th and those who would stress its repressiveness and immorality. By exploring discourses on gender in both propaganda and high art fictional writings by Iraqis, this book offers an alternative narrative of the literary and cultural history of Iraq. It ultimately expands the idea of cultural resistance beyond the modern/traditional, progressive/backward paradigms that characterise discourses on Arab women and the state, and argues that resistance is embedded in the material form of texts as much as their content or ideological message.


HISTOREIN ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Costas Gaganakis

<p>This article attempts to chart the “paradigm shift” from social history, dominant until the early 1980s, to new cultural history and the various interpretive trends it engendered in the 1990s and 2000s. The privileged field of investigation is the history of the Protestant Reformation, particularly in its urban aspect. The discussion starts with the publication of Bernd Moeller’s pivotal <em>Reichsstadt und Reformation </em>in the early 1960s – which paved the way for the triumphant invasion of social history in a field previously dominated by ecclesiastical or political historians, and profoundly imbued with doctrinal prerogatives – and culminates in the critical presentation of interpretive trends that appear to dominate in the 2010s, particularly the view and investigation of the Reformation as communication process.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (4 (463)) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Benedikts Kalnačs

The article focuses on the representation of the year 1918 in Latvian literature. On November 18, the independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed, and in the years to come international recognition of the state’s sovereignty followed. In retrospect, this event stimulated a number of salutary descriptions and interpretations and certainly provides a milestone in the history of the Latvian nation. It is, however, also important to discuss the proclamation of independence in the context of the Great War that brought a lot of suffering to the inhabitants of Latvia. Therefore, a critical evaluation of the events preceding the year 1918 is certainly worthy of discussion. The article first sketches the historical and geopolitical contexts of the period immediately before and during the Great War as well as the changed situation in its aftermath. This introduction is followed by a discussion of the novel 18 (2014) by the contemporary Latvian author Pauls Bankovskis (b. 1973) that provides a critical retrospective of the events leading to the proclamation of the nation state from a twenty-first century perspective. Bankovskis employs an intertextual approach, engaging with a number of earlier publications dealing with the same topic. Among the authors included are Anna Brigadere, Aleksandrs Grīns, Sergejs Staprāns, Mariss Vētra, and others. The paper contextualizes the contribution of these writers within the larger historical picture of the Great War and the formation of the nation states and speculates on the contemporary relevance of the representation of direct experience, and the use of written sources related to these events.


Author(s):  
Maria Voronova

The article is devoted to the scientific and organizational activities of O. Prytsak in Ukraine after 1991. It was during this period against the background of favorable political circumstances that the scientist was able to come to Ukraine and begin his active work on the development of historical science in our country. The key directions to which the scientist’s activity was directed are considered. First of all, much attention is paid to the establishment of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, as well as the revival of the journal “Eastern World”. In addition to the development of Oriental studies, O. Prytsak dealt with other issues concerning the development of historical science in Ukraine. He proposed to create the Department of Historiosophy at Kyiv State University named after Taras Shevchenko. At the historical faculty of this university O. Prytsak gave lectures on philosophy and methodology of history. During the study period, the scientist had repeatedly acted as a dissertation supervisor and was an official opponent in the defense of dissertations. In the personal archive of the scientist one may find reviews and responses to works on the history of Ukraine of the Middle Ages, the age of the Cossacks, the history of nomadic peoples of Asia, oriental linguistics, general linguistics, as well as political and cultural history. The article highlights O. Prytsak’s participation in the scientific events, in which he made reports that were the results of his research in the field of the Ukrainian history and oriental studies. As a result of the study, it was concluded that O. Prytsak made a great contribution to the revival of Oriental Studies in Ukraine, was active in establishing the Department of Historiosophy at Kyiv State University named after Taras Shevchenko, brought up a whole galaxy of students who are currently well-known and authoritative researchers both in Ukraine and abroad. The scientific activity of the scientist has received recognition all over the world, as evidenced by his numerous international awards and distinctions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-146
Author(s):  
Karin Wolgast

Abstract Introducing life and work of Janina Katz, the article undertakes an analysis and interpretation of her second novel, the autofictional Putska. Born on the second of March 1939, Katz belonged to a renowned Jewish family with numerous members, of whom, however, only her mother and she survived the Second World War. Their extraordinary family history may be traced in practically all of Katz’ writings, as can her Jewish cultural heritage. The novel Putska is no exception. Its composition, characters and the image it gives of life in Cracow are examined in order to make understandable the protagonist’s decision to exile herself from Poland and migrate to Denmark, much like the author herself. 1969, having fled from that revival of anti-Semite harassment which was launched by the political leadership of socialist Poland, Katz was granted asylum in Denmark, where she soon learned the language to a perfection which enabled her to unfold a widely acknowledged literary work which does not cease to speak of her unique life experience. Central perspectives on her life and work include migration, autobiography, Jewishness and social and cultural history of Poland.


Author(s):  
Ken Hirschkop

Linguistic Turns rewrites the intellectual and cultural history of early twentieth-century Europe. In chapters that range over the work of Saussure, Russell, Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Cassirer, Shklovskii, the Russian Futurists, Ogden and Richards, Sorel, Gramsci, and others, it shows how European intellectuals came to invest ‘language’ with extraordinary force, at a time when the social and political order of the continent was in question. By examining linguistic turns in concert rather than in isolation, Hirschkop changes the way we see them—no longer simply as moves in individual disciplines, but as elements of a larger constellation, held together by common concerns and anxieties. In a series of detailed readings, he reveals how each linguistic turn invested ‘language as such’ with powers that could redeem not just individual disciplines but Europe itself. We see how, in the hands of different writers, language becomes a model of social and political order, a tool guaranteeing analytical precision, a vehicle of dynamic change, a storehouse of mythical collective energy, a template for civil society, and an image of justice itself. By detailing the force linguistic turns attribute to language, and the way in which they contrast ‘language as such’ with actual language, Hirschkop dissects the investments made in words and sentences and the visions behind them. The constellation of linguistic turns is explored as an intellectual event in its own right and as the pursuit of social theory by other means.


Author(s):  
Scott Huler

In this chapter, Huler travels on foot and camps in the way that Lawson did. Huler reflects on the beauty of nature as he walks Lawson’s trek. He records his sleeping schedule and describes his experience in the tent as rough but satisfying. Huler also explores South Carolina’s small towns and explores the history of the Revolutionary War through old revolutionary-era sites.


Author(s):  
Elena V. Glukhova ◽  

The article discusses the modification of the “estate topos” of Russian sym- bolism in Andrei Bely’s memoir prose. The estates Shakhmatovo, Dedovo, Serebrianyj Kolodez played a key role in the cultural history of Russian symbolism. The peculiarity of Bely’s “estate text”, on the one hand, is that he found an original neo-mythological mode in the image of these estates, on the other hand, gave them heterotopic properties. The article shows how the tonality of his memoirs about Alexander Blok changes from the first edition in journal “Notes of Dreamers” (1922) to the last part of his memorial trilogy “The Beginning of the Century” (1932). If in the first version “Shakhmatovo” appears in neo-mythological meaning and a number of significant symbolic universals are realized, then in the latter version this way of representing the estate is practically erased. The image of Alexander Blok as a spiritual and symbolic center of estate cul- ture is changing: if originally he had the folklore features of Ivan Tsarevich, the ideal symbolist poet on a background of nature, and his wife was Tsarevna, the embodiment of Sophia the Wisdom of God, then later Blok appears as a Lord, carried away only by the issues of managing the estate, and his wife gets the features of an ordinary woman. The estate Serebrianyj Kolodez appears as a heterotopic space, and the features of the estate Dedovo are recognizable in the novel “The Silver Dove”.


Derrida Today ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-294
Author(s):  
H. Peter Steeves
Keyword(s):  
To Come ◽  

The long history of the overlap of science and philosophy finds a focal point in cosmology. In an effort to examine what happens when science and deconstruction encounter, this essay thus begins with, and follows the path of, cosmology. I start by suggesting a new solution to the oldest question in cosmology: why is there something rather than nothing? From this, I attempt to outline the way in which necessity is thought to operate by means of natural laws, tracing the sense in which science's demand for falsifiable claims creates an aporia in which its truths are not ultimately truthful and its necessity is not necessary. Focusing on the ways in which différance and the autoimmune can help us open up the work of science, I come to suggest two new tropes, that of apoptosis and the remainder, arguing that the inherent openness of science can be one of its strengths, especially if we ask the question of what remains to be asked once science has answered a question.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-46
Author(s):  
Phil O'Brien

This article reveals the cultural history of Walter Greenwood's second novel His Worship the Mayor (1934). It tracks its trajectory from being Love on the Dole's critically acclaimed semi-sequel to a dismissed and subsequently forgotten work. New and extensive archival research uncovers the censorship history of Give Us This Day, the play the novel became. It details how the stage version attracted the attention of the Lord Chamberlain's office before an intervention from the BBC's Director-General in 1952 meant it was never performed again as a radio production. Further, the reasons why the various adaptations of His Worship the Mayor were not deemed as commercially attractive as Love on the Dole are analysed; finally, I argue that Greenwood struggled to find an acceptable mediation between popular appeal and political radicalism.


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