Jean-Claude Dunyach, Poet of the Flesh

2018 ◽  
pp. 39-51
Author(s):  
Natacha Vas-Deyres
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Sea Water ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Love Stories ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Universe

Jean-Claude Dunyach, born in 1957, has published more than a hundred short stories in a career of over thirty years. He belongs to a generation of contemporary French science-fiction writers that includes figures such as Roland C. Wagner, Emmanuel Jouanne, and Jean-Marc Ligny. At a time when French science fiction was struggling to explore new ways of storytelling influenced by surrealism or the Nouveau Roman, this generation has given science fiction new life by mixing a hard-science approach with the supernatural, fantasy and the fantastic, while paying glowing tributes to authors of the Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon sf: Duntach’s influences include Samuel Delany, Ray Bradbury, and more particularly, J. G. Ballard. The specificity of Dunyach consists of making metaphysical concepts tangible for the reader by giving them a symbolic substance: time itself becomes tangible as a sea of sand, stone, ashes, sea water; love stories can be petrified as semiprecious stones and worn as trophies—even the universe itself complies as a sheet of paper or a piece of cloth that can be creased. The characters in his short stories are hurt or twisted, often with cracks in their past, but they still act as links between the individual and the collective: for Dunyach, any kind of system—in particular a political one—can be defined by the way it deals with marginality. Dunyach favors an individual point of view for a better detection of the system’s weaknesses (cities, societies, religions, or relationships with time and death). In that respect, the most accomplished characters in his work are the “AnimalCities”: these living, extraterrestrial, city-shaped animals made of flesh and cartilage travel through space from node to node on the web of the universe. Their symbiotic liaison with humanity gradually leads humans to understand the global nature of reality.

The Science Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward James
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Over Time

This chapter discusses the science fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold. Bujold has written about fourteen science fiction books and a number of short stories: approximately six thousand pages of text. Almost all of her science fiction stories have been set in the universe sometimes known by her fans as the Vorkosiverse after its central character, Miles Vorkosigan. Although her writing as a whole has expanded beyond that universe, her science-fictional universe has remained unusually restricted. One explanation for her decision to restrict herself in this way is that Bujold is interested above all in character. While some science fiction writers are interested in developing different “what-if” scenarios and focusing on how that “what-if” changes a society, Bujold has shown herself to be concerned primarily in how her characters and the society they live in develop over time. She has built up a large and devoted fan base not because they want to see her develop numerous new universes and explore all the boundaries of her genre, but because they share the author's own fascination with her characters and want to see how they change and grow.

A Story of the Days to Come: H.G. Wells and the Language of Science Fiction

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
New World ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
World Language ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Individual Citizen ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual

This article argues that, unlike most other science fiction writers, H.G. Wells gives considerable attention to language and language change in his futuristic writing; this is because he was, from the beginning of his career, fascinated by the ways in which language had shaped human lives and cultures. In many of the early scientific romances, particularly The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau, failures in communication play an important part in the events of the story. In the later utopias such as The World Set Free and The Shape of Things to Come, Wells makes English the basis of a new world language, which plays an essential part in establishing social cohesion and extending the cognitive powers of the individual citizen.

Joseph Hall and Neo-Stoicism

PMLA ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 1130-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Chew
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Ethical Point ◽  
Rule Of Life ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Thomas Browne ◽  
The Universe

During his own lifetime Bishop Joseph Hall was nicknamed “our spiritual Seneca” by Henry Wotton and later called “our English Seneca” by Thomas Fuller; as a result it has recently become fashionable to associate him with seventeenth-century English Neo-Stoicism. A seventeenth-century Neo-Stoic is of interest presumably because he points in the direction of eighteenth-century Neo-Stoicism, away from a revealed religion toward a natural religion, away from faith toward reason. In a recent article Philip A. Smith calls Hall “the leading Neo-Stoic of the seventeenth century” and says that he enthusiastically preached the “Neo-Stoic brand of theology” to which Sir Thomas Browne objected. This theology maintained that “to follow ‘right reason’ was to follow nature, which was the same thing as following God.” Smith goes on to say that “what most attracted seventeenth-century Christian humanists like Bishop Hall was the fact that Stoicism attempted to frame a theory of the universe and of the individual man which would approximate a rule of life in conformity with an ‘immanent cosmic reason‘”—though in the same paragraph he also mentions the point “that Neo-Stoic divines of the seventeenth century were interested in Stoicism almost exclusively from the ethical point of view.” He cites Lipsius to show how a Christian might reach an approximation between the Stoic Fate and Christian Providence, leaving the reader to assume that Hall might also have made this approximation. He says that “the natural light of reason, as expounded by the Stoic philosophers, became, for seventeenth-century Neo-Stoics, the accepted guide to conduct” and that “religious and moral writers endeavored to trace a relationship between moral and natural law which in effect resulted in the practical code of ethical behavior commonly associated with Neo-Stoicism.”

Frederik Pohl

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Page
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Agent ◽  
Fiction Writers

One of science fiction's undisputed grandmasters, Frederik Pohl built an astonishing career that spanned more than seven decades. In publishing novels, short stories, and essays, Pohl won millions of readers and seemingly as many awards while leaving a lasting mark on the genre. This book traces Pohl's extraordinary journey from discovering books as a boy at the Brooklyn Public Library to publishing the novel All the Lives He Led at age 91. A first-of-its-kind study, the book delves into the iconic works of fiction like The Space Merchants, Jem, and the tales of the Gateway universe, as well as Pohl's creative alliances with the likes of C. M. Kornbluth, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov. But the book also examines Pohl's as-essential contributions in other areas. He represented many of the major science fiction writers as a literary agent in the 1940s and 1950s. He helped professionalize the field by midwifing science fiction publishing at Ballantine and Ace Books. Finally, while working at Galaxy and If, he aided countless careers as, in Gardner Dozois' words, “quite probably the best SF magazine editor who ever lived.”

Pietro Pomponazzi’s De immortalitate and his clandestine De incantationibus

2001 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 87-115
Author(s):  
Paola Zambelli
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Spontaneous Generation ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Universe

The importance of Aristotelianism during the Renaissance is one of the points most emphasized in the past twenty years by American historians. In the Faculties of Arts, professors were obliged to illustrate Aristotelian texts and commentaries; but, of course, they did not subscribe to all of the original doctrines of Aristotle: so Van Steenberghen, Kristeller and C. B. Schmitt consider most of them, above all Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525), as »eclectics«. Having emerged unscathed from the dispute on his treatise »De immortalitate animae« and on its apologies, Pomponazzi circulated two handwritten treatises which were even more subversive of orthodox beliefs on fate and on the natural causes of prodigies and incantations. From a Stoic point of view and thanks to his readings of Bessarion, Ficino and Giovanni Pico, he analyzed the Neoplatonic theses on chance and determinism, astrology and magic, and the position of man in the universe. His late treatises deal with these questions (free will as attributed to the individual by Christian doctrine and by numerous philosophers, or, instead, the conditioning to which man’s body, or his passions, or — according to a more radical thesis — his entire personality is subjected by the influence of the stars; the great conjunctions of the stars and the cyclical nature of history; the spontaneous generation of man; the capacity of the astrologer and the natural magician to produce incantations and prodigies, etc.).

scholarly journals COUNTERACTION TO THE SYSTEM AND ANTI-SYSTEM IN THE STRUGATSKY BROTHERS'STORY "SNAIL ON THE SLOPE"

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-9
Author(s):  
I. V. Bratus
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Future ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Future Work

Aspects of countering the system and anti-system are considered in the Strugatsky brothers ' novel "Snail on the slope". It is proved that science fiction writers managed to recreate quite complex aspects of the interaction of various systems within the framework of literary heritage. The broad palette of writers has absorbed an understanding of contradictions with underlying causes. In this article, some aspects of the interaction of the individual and the system, systems and anti-systems are demonstrated. Special attention is paid to the Soviet realities, which became the basis for the artistic picture of the fantastic world. This indicates the uniqueness of "Snail on the slope". One of the unique qualities is the influence on the story "Snail on the slope" by Franz Kafka (novels "The Process", "The Castle"). When analyzing the story, the focus of countering the system and the anti- system is transferred to the idea of the future. It is proved that the writers abandoned the continuous optimistic model of the future inherent in their earlier works. Strugatsky brothers have worked out in detail the mechanism of the inability to evolve into the future without radical changes in the essence of man. The literature of the second half of the twentieth century contains an extraordinary potential for understanding our current realities. Somewhere we are even in a more "winning" position – the authors and readers of that time had a more narrowed range of analysis, which was naturally inherent in "their time". At the same time, we are also partially vulnerable, especially in the historical and cultural context. Because the time of writing a work leaves an imprint on its content, the keys to its understanding are often in the social parallels of everyday life, which is fully understood by contemporaries, and "descendants" need to explain certain specific aspects of everyday life, psychological model or banal meaning of a particular word (they become anachronisms or acquire a different meaning). At the same time, it is worth paying attention to those questions that are transcendental in nature. Strugatsky brothers in "Snail on the Slope" experienced a corresponding experience – they tried to create a multi-faceted picture of the world with "their own" laws. At the same time, the task they set was not only to come up with, but also to "guess" the true concept, to bring the artistic fabric of the work closer to the "truth of life". Therefore, this work is fundamentally different from a significant part of their literary heritage, it is a kind of "experimental platform". They did not try to repeat this experience in their future work.

scholarly journals “Life as Suffering”: the Motive of Revenge in the Novel by E. T. A. Hoffmann “The Marquis de la Pivardière” and the Novel by J. Janin “The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman”

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
N. M. Ilchenko ◽  
Yu. A. Marinina
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
National Image ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Universe

The motive of revenge is analyzed on the basis of the French topos, considered as a space of crime and punishment. It is noted that the novel by E. T. A. Hoffmann and the novel by J. Janin are united by attention to fate as a catastrophic concept inscribed in the picture of life in France. The relevance of the study is associated with the problems of the formation of national identity, national image by romantics of Germany and France. It is shown that the German romantic, who relied on fantasy as a means of understanding and cognizing life, became a model for J. Janin in the perception of “observed material”. Special attention is paid to the artistic embodiment of life as an “ugly abyss” in which the heroines of E. T. A. Hoffmann and J. Janin find themselves. The results of a comparative analysis of the novel, the action of which belongs to the second half of the 17th century are presented in the article. But the writer discusses the morals of the heroes from the point of view of the romantic canon, and the novel, the action of which is attributed to the end of the 20s of the 19th century. The novelty of the research is connected with the fact that the drama of human existence (female) is viewed as a result of the fragility of earthly existence, the loss of faith in the rationality of the universe. This approach made it possible to analyze the national forms of romanticism, the individual approach of Hoffmann and Janin to understanding the moral and the sinful.

scholarly journals The irony as a sense of reality (on the example of the short stories of O. Konyskyi)

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 124-130
Author(s):  
Nadiia Boiko
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Dominant Feature ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
Empirical Research Methods ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

The article deals with the analysis of the short stories by O. Konyskyi from the point of view of irony functioning in them. S. Kierkegaard compared irony to divine madness, which, like Tamerlane, did not leave a stone unturned, because “in the irony, negativity takes precedence over positivity, freedom over necessity”. In the modern literary criticism, irony is seen, on the one hand, as an aesthetic category, the characteristic feature of which is the lack of care to make the reader laugh; it is primarily a matter of marking of the author’s perception of reality (“Ironic meaning” by S. Pokhodnia). On the other hand — irony is viewed as a stylistic figure, which is based on allegory and which testifies to the potential of the individual authorial style. However, in both cases, to understand the true meaning of an ironic statement, it is necessary to have a context, which is its main semantic background. In a number of works by O. Konyskyi, irony serves as a means to express certain traits of character and behaviour of the character and is exemplified through epithets and comparisons. Less often, it becomes a means to construct the text and a plot-forming factor, as is in the story “And we are people!” The subject of the study is irony as a complex (two-tier) message, the purpose to understand the hidden content of which requires context. The object of the literary analysis is comprised of the short stories by O. Konyskyi, that have not yet been considered from this point of view. The latter fact informs the novelty of the study. The purpose of the article is to clarify the place and the role of irony in the bulk of short stories by this writer. The outlined goal determines reaching the following objectives: to trace the dynamics of the apperiance of different types of irony in the short stories by O. Konyskyi; to identity the dependence of the frequency and the form the ironic expression; to find out the influence of the author’s ironic approach on the form the work. As a result of the analysis by means of the approaches of biographical, historical-literary and empirical research methods, it was possible to find out: despite the fact that irony is not a dominant feature of O. Konyskyi’s worldview, in his short stories works with textual irony stand out.

Laurent McAllister

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-150
Author(s):  
Amy J. Ransom
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Novel ◽  
French Canadian ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Fiction Writers

This chapter introduces the work of Laurent McAllister, the collaborative pseudonym of the French-Canadian science-fiction writers Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel. It briefly situates the careers of Meynard and Trudel within the contexts of science fiction in Québec and the larger context of science-fiction and fantasy writing, surveying their collaborative oeuvre as McAllister. It then analyses how the Suprématie cycle (comprised of the novel by McAllister and several solo short stories by Trudel) presents a fictional universe best understood through the lens of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s “rhizome.” Finally, it examines the cycle’s engagement with contemporary science fiction’s most compelling topics, transhumanism and the posthuman.

scholarly journals Rousseau in a Post-Apocalyptic Context: Angela Carter’s Heroes and Villains and Science Fiction

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Yutaka Okuhata
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The present paper discusses Angela Carter’s Heroes and Villains (1969), which parodies both “post-apocalyptic” novels in the Cold War era and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory on civilisation. By analysing this novel in comparison, not only to Rousseau’s On the Origin of Inequality (1755), but also to the works of various science fiction writers in the 1950s and 1960s, the paper aims to examine Carter’s reinterpretation of Rousseau in a post-apocalyptic context. As I will argue, Heroes and Villains criticises Rousseau from a feminist point of view to not only represent the dystopian society as full of inequality and violence, but also to show that human beings, having forgotten the nuclear war as their great “sin” in the past, can no longer create a bright future. Observing the underlying motifs in the novel, the paper will reveal how Carter attempts to portray a world where human history has totally ended, or where people cannot make “history” in spite of the fact that they biologically survived the holocaust. From this perspective, I will clarify the way in which Carter reinterprets Rousseau’s notion of “fallen” civilisation in the new context as a critique of the nuclear issues in the late twentieth century.

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