scholarly journals Buddhist Precepts and the Diagnosis of Women’s suffering in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Shaereh Shaereh Shaerpooraslilankrodi ◽  
Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Self ◽  
The Core ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Dependent Arising ◽  
Mahāyāna Buddhism ◽  
Universal Nature

<p>In Doris Lessing’s fictions, the effects of the world outside on the female self-transcendence are invariably lost, and instead the journey in the world within is notably emphasized. Similarly in <em>The Golden Notebook</em> the didactic bend of the female enlightenment is firmly entrenched to the world within where personal harmonies parallel the mystical patterns of self-development. Moreover, the detailed exploration of the novel foregrounds the female characters’ hard effort to end their suffering which is the core of Buddhist teachings. Hence, while Lessing is not specifically attempting to portray Buddhist principles in her novel, her vision captures the universal nature of humankind’s attempts to overcome suffering which is the most emphasized concept in Buddhism. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to use Buddhist philosophical thoughts, particularly the founding of the pioneer of Mahayana Buddhism, Nagarjuna, in his book <em>Mulamadhyamakakarika </em>to look more closely at the root of women’s suffering and their prescription to overcome it. The methodology appropriated entails depiction of clinging as the root of female suffering which is overtly discussed in Nagarjuna’s philosophy. After diagnosis of clinging disease as the root of suffering, this paper presents Nagarjuna’s prescription to end suffering through viewing the “empty” nature of beings and “dependent arising”. By examining the root of female suffering and offering the method for its eradication, we depart from other critics who examine Lessing’s works under Sufi mystic thoughts. This departure is significant since we reveal, unlike Sufi patterns within which the suffering is only diagnosed, Lessing’s mystic aim in shaping her female characters is not only to detect their suffering, but like Buddhism, to suggest a prescription for it. </p>

scholarly journals Tradition Versus and Modernity in Laila al-Juhani’s The Waste Paradise: An Intertextual Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1197-1202
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abdullah Abduldaim Hizabr Alhusami
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Saudi Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Story Writer

The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of intertextuality in the novel Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) by the female Saudi novelist and short story writer Laila al-Juhani. Intertextuality is a rhetoric and literary technique defined as a textual reference deliberate or subtle to some other texts with a view of drawing more significance to the core text; and hence it is employed by an author to communicate and discuss ideas in a critical style. The narrative structure of Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) showcases references of religious, literary, historical, and folkloric intertextuality. In analyzing these references, the study follows the intertextual approach. In her novel The Waste Paradise, Laila al-Juhani portrays the suffering of Saudi women who are less tormented by social marginalization than by an inner conflict between openness to Western culture and conformity to cultural heritage. Intertextuality relates to words, texts, or discourses among each other. Moreover, the intertextual relations are subject to reader’s response to the text. The relation of one text with other texts or contexts never reduces the prestige of writing. Therefore, this study, does not diminish the status of the writer or the text; rather, it is in itself a kind of literary creativity. Finally, this paper aims to introduce Saudi writers in general and the female writers in particular to the world literature.

scholarly journals KONSEP DIRI SEORANG DA'I

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Noormawanti, Iswati
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Core ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Entire Complex ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

The concept of self is an understanding of the attitude of the individual towards himself so that it results in the interaction of two or more people. Self-concept is a factor that communicates with others. The concept of self is the views and attitudes of individuals towards themselves, characteristics and individual and self-motivation. The self-view includes not only individual strengths but also weaknesses and even failures. This self-concept is psychological, social and physical. Self-concept is our views and feelings about ourselves, which include physical, psychological and social aspects. The concept of self is not just a descriptive picture, but also an assessment of ourselves, including what we think and how we feel. Anita Taylor defines self-concept as "all you think and feel about you, the entire complex of beliefs and attitudes you hold abaout yourself '. Human behavior is a product of their interpretation of the world around them through social interaction. Behavior is often a choice as a feasible thing to do based on how it defines the existing situation. The definition they give to other people, situations, objects and even themselves determines their behavior. So it is individuals who are considered active to regulate and determine their own behavior and environment. While the core of the individual is consciousness (consciousness). self-development depends on communication with others, which shape or influence themselves

scholarly journals CELIE: A PORTRAYAL OF AN AFRO-AMERICAN WOMAN'S REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL VALUES

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Ekawati Marhaenny Dukut ◽  
Nuki Dhamayanti
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
American Women ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
The World ◽  
Color Purple

The world of literature can be a medium of expressing the writer's expressions and ideas. Universal topics such as, love, death, and war often become subject mailers in the world of literature. In the novel, of The Color Purple. Alice Walker describes the oppression experienced by Afro American women in the female characters of Celie, Nellie, Shug Avery, Sofia, and Mary Agnes who faced sexual discrimina!ions in a patriarchal society. Womanhood, education, and lesbianism are factors that help the Afro American women to free themselves from traditional values. The Color Purple puts into words the process of its main character, Celie, who tries to reject and escape from the male domination of her world. The other Afro American women characters that help Celie to find her selfidentity represent the manifestation of the rejection of the traditional values. This article. which uses the socio-historical alld feminism approach. is intended to analyse the Afro-American women's rejection of traditional values by focusing on the major character of' Walker's The Color Purple. Celie. as she develops from being a victim of traditional values to the rejoiceful discovery of her selfidentity.

scholarly journals Recent Contributions to the Irish Novel by Sara Baume, Anna Burns and Eleanor O’Reilly: On Language, Words and Wordlessness

Oceánide ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Margarita Estévez-Saá
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Unstable Condition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Irish Women ◽  
Identity Crises

The purpose of this contribution is to study three young writers who have offered, in the past three years, in a distinctively new voice, further instances of the Irish writers’ endless ability to experiment with the form of the novel. Sara Baume’s "A Line Made by Walking" (2017), Anna Burns’s "Milkman" (2018), and Eleanor O’Reilly’s "m for mammy" (2019) are three representative instances of the potential of the form of the novel in the hands of Irish women writers. Each of these novels deserve a study in its own due to their complexity and interest, but analysing them together offers us a unique opportunity to assess the thriving state of novel writing in Ireland, especially in the hands of Irish women writers.The three novels object of our study deal with identity crises, and they similarly represent their protagonists as struggling against society and its structures, be it the family, local communities, the world of art, nature or politics. Furthermore, the three authors have been able to devise alternative narrative styles, techniques and even endings that enabled them to render the complexities of the topics dealt with as well as to represent the unstable condition of their protagonists. In addition, Baume, Burns and O’Reilly have significantly chosen as protagonists female characters with artistic or intellectual aspirations who allow the authors to endow their respective narratives with metaliterary meditations on the possibilities as well as limits of language, words and wordlessness.

scholarly journals Pursuit of Truth in Doris Lessing’s Shikasta: Plato and Nagarjuna in Conversation

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Shaereh Shaerpooraslilankrodi ◽  
Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Intuitive Knowledge ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Main Obstacle ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Self Transcendence

<p>In Doris Lessing’s novels, obtaining Truth to transcend the soul has been notably emphasized. Similarly, in <em>Shikasta, </em>the necessity<em> </em>to acquire genuine awareness has been focused as the mere way to self-transcendence. The detailed inspection of the novel explicates how human species live in amnesia, unable to remember their authentic reality and trapped in the disease of individuation. While the novel does not reject reason as the mean to “remember” the Truth, it mainly regards mindfulness and intuitive knowledge as a tool to achieve authenticity. The facets of amnesia and illusionary conception of the world make the novel a satisfactory text under both Plato’s and Nagarjuna’s interpretation of visionary world. However, its tilt towards non-dual patterns to attain Truth makes Nagarjuna’s approach a contribution to Plato’s rational manner in this regard. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to apply Plato and Nagarjuna’s pursuit of Truth to examine Lessing’s elucidation of authentic knowledge in <em>Shikasta</em>. The methodology appropriated in the paper entails depiction of visible world as an illusion of the Real pointed in Plato’s allegory of Cave and Nagarjuna’s Mundane Truth. We clarify emotion as the main motivator of such illusionary status stressed in both Plato and Nagarjuna’s thoughts. We argue that while the importance of reason and eradicating emotion cannot be ignored, what adjoins people to Truth is mindfulness and intuitive knowledge which is close to Nagarjuna’s non-dual patterns. By examining ordinary life as the illusion of Real, and emotion as the main obstacle to achieve the Truth emphasized in both Nagarjuna and Plato’s trends, we depart from other critics who undermine the eminence of essentialist trace in Lessing’s works and examine her approach towards Truth merely under postmodern lens. This departure is significant since we clarify while essentialism has been abandoned to a large extent and supporters of Plato have become scarce, amalgamation of his thoughts with spiritual trends opens a fresh way to earn authenticity in Lessing’s novel. </p>

scholarly journals Patriarchal Oppression and Women Empowerment in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Tifanny Astrick
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
African Women ◽  
Women Empowerment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Made In

This study examines how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus interrogates the oppressions of women in the Nigerian patriarchal society and how women empower each other lead them to women empowerment. The study shows how the oppressions of women is represented through female characters which perpetually put women in disadvantaged positions as portrayed in Purple Hibiscus. One of the most despicable oppression among the so well-known cultural practices in Nigeria is the patriarchal oppression. However, as the events unfold, efforts will be made in order to reveal of how African women are rated based on the good and real women as represented by Beatrice and Ifeoma. I argue that Adichie's approach to subvert patriarchal oppression describes that despite the struggle and pain, women assert themselves in the world of patriarchy through education and sisterhood. Adichie’s novel suggests women empowerment through social transformation confronted by women. The title of the novel, "Purple Hibiscus" may refer to a particular type of flower, but it also emphasizes the triumph of the innovative suggesting that the unusual is not necessarily bad as it looks which aims to women empowerment.

scholarly journals Re-imagining Histories, Re-inventing the Self in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

2019 ◽  
pp. 165-176
Author(s):  
Vanja Vukićević Garić
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Existential Psychology ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Main Assumption ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
The Subject

Justifiably classified as an example of postmodern realism, or a “restorative metafiction” (O’Hara), Ian McEwan’s popular and critically acclaimed novel Atonement (2001) in its entirety reasserts its author’s frequently cited statement that “imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity.” Focusing mainly on the metafictional ending, which, as a kind of unusual post-scriptum, introduces a thematic, structural and an ontological twist re-directing the whole story, this paper explores the limits and the power of creative imagination to re-generate, amend and meaningfully extend personal histories, pointing to the fundamentally ethical dimension of the contemporary self-conscious fiction. The phenomenological connection between ars memoria, imagining, (re-)writing and the Self is seen through the main assumption of the existential psychology that the subject is capable of transcending oneself, recreating and re-inventing oneself in and by means of narrating the self as well as others. Analysing Briony Tallis as both a character and an author within the novel, in her narrative of her own as well as others’ histories, this paper will address ethical possibilities of the self-reflective fiction to connect subjectivity to the world questioning at the same time the boundaries of past, present and the idea of reality.

scholarly journals The Last Man and ‘The First Woman’: Unmanly Images of Unhuman Nature in Mary Shelley’s Ecocriticism

Perichoresis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
Éva Antal
Keyword(s):  
Mary Shelley ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Last Man ◽  
The One ◽  
The Last Man

AbstractMary Shelley in her writings relies on the romanticised notions of nature: in addition to its beauties, the sublime quality is highlighted in its overwhelming greatness. In her ecological fiction, The Last Man (1826), the dystopian view of man results in the presentation of the declining civilization and the catastrophic destruction of infested mankind. In the novel, all of the characters are associated with forces of culture and history. On the one hand, Mary Shelley, focussing on different human bonds, warns against the sickening discord and dissonance, the lack of harmony in the world, while, on the other hand, she calls for the respect of nature and natural order. The prophetic caring female characters ‘foresee’ the events but cannot help the beloved men to control their building and destroying powers. Mary Shelley expresses her unmanly view of nature and the author’s utopian hope seems to lie in ‘unhuman’ nature. While the epidemic, having been unleashed by the pests of patriarchal society and being accelerated by global warming, sweeps away humanity, Mother Nature flourishes and gains back her original ‘dwelling place’.

scholarly journals The Spiritual Features of the Experience of qi in Chinese Martial Arts

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 836
Author(s):  
Veronica Cibotaru
Keyword(s):  
Martial Arts ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
The Core ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Transcendence

I argue in this article, grounding on a phenomenological analysis of the experience of qi in Chinese martial arts, that the experience of qi in this framework can share the features of a secular spiritual experience, in other words of a spiritual experience that is not religious, at least not necessarily. I put in evidence five features that can characterize the experience of qi in Chinese martial arts and that arguably pertain to spirituality: (1) the importance of individual experience; (2) self-transcendence and the quest for authenticity; (3) the connection with a transcendent dimension; (4) the importance of corporeity and at the same time the apprehension of a dimension which cannot be reduced to corporeity; (5) the use of imagination in order to grasp a transcendent dimension that presupposes the use of metaphors. Consequently, the experience of qi in Chinese martial arts suggests the possibility of a form of spirituality that is not necessarily bound to religion and that at the same time is not a mere rejection of traditional religions. At the same time, I argue that the experience of qi in Chinese martial and energetic arts reveals radical possibilities of human experience at the core of which are fundamental transcendental structures of human experience, i.e., the experience of our body and the experience of the world through our body. This suggests the idea that phenomenology has an important potential for the investigation of spirituality and opens towards a research field that can be deeper explored.

scholarly journals Ecofeminism in Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann: An Adventure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ-tls for Translation &amp; Literary Studies ◽  
Najla R. Aldeeb
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Future ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Liberal Culture

Doris Lessing's Mara and Dann: An Adventure (1999) is a fantasy novel with focus on nature. Lessing portrays a world in which oppression by a male-dominated society is at the root of countless problems. It depicts the effects of global warming in the future emphasizing that the domination of women is the core of all crises in the environment. The novel implies that women are able to lead as most of the female characters in the novel play the role of the leader starting from Daima, the woman who protects Mara and Dann as children, to Orphne the woman who heals Dann from addiction. Applying Greta Claire Gaard’s (1993) principles of ecofeminism to literature classifies and justifies the cause of the movement (p. 20). This paper sheds light on Gaard’s four types of ecofeminism in Lessing’s Rama and Dann: An Adventure: liberal, culture, social and socialist by discussing the apocalypses, patriarchal legacy, pathetic fallacy and radical orthodoxies as features of ecofeminism.

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