Robert Graves and The White Goddess

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran Brearton
Keyword(s):  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
Celtic Studies ◽  
Literary Techniques

This lecture discusses The White Goddess, a novel written by Robert Graves that was first published in May 1948. It is an intellectual and difficult book that has a toehold in many academic disciplines, including anthropology, literary studies, and Celtic studies. As an author, Graves has been described as the ‘bard’ of ‘an alternative society’ and as a ‘a unique figure in British literary life’. The lecture determines that The White Goddess can be both a help and a hindrance when it comes to looking at Graves' life and work. It also presents the literary techniques Graves used in the novel.

scholarly journals Literature and the Shaman:

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Witch

The paper first considers the role of Jungian ideas in relation to academic disciplines and to literary studies in particular. Jung is a significant resource in negotiating developments in literary theory because of his characteristic treatment of the ‘other’. The paper then looks at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C.S. Lewis whose own construction of archetypes is very close to Jung’s. By drawing upon new post-Jungian work from Jerome Bernstein’s Living in the Borderland (2005), the novel is revealed to be intimately concerned with narratives of trauma and of origin. Indeed, a Jungian and post-Jungian approach is able to situate the text both within nature and in the historical traumas of war as well as the personal traumas of subjectivity. Where Bernstein connects his work to the postcolonial ethos of the modern Navajo shaman, this new weaving of literary and cultural theory points to the residue of shamanism within the arts of the West. 

Satire and Realism in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: an Interpretative Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pride And Prejudice ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
Interpretative Analysis

Jane Austen is acknowledged for the application of realism and satire in her novels. This paper focuses on the analysis of realism and satire in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; however, her entire oeuvre spotlights the features (of satire and realism) alongside robust feminism: typical of her literary taste and temperament, not necessarily of the Romantic Age which she lived in. Rigorous analysis and realistic observation reveals that the employment of realism and satire in Pride and Prejudice, are quite obvious, in all sorts of aspects including narrative, settings, themes and characters. Analysis of the novel under study leads to the observation that satire and realism go hand in hand in the said novel—intermittently—and thoughtfully. Conclusively, it is observed that Jane Austen’s literary life had a tremendous influence on how to subsume realism (primarily through matrimonies) of age and satire on a romantic society (whereby ideals collapse headlong), in Pride and Prejudice.

Reading Beyond the Code

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Communicative Acts ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Code Model ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Central Claim

This book explores the value for literary studies of relevance theory, an inferential approach to communication in which the expression and recognition of intentions plays a major role. Drawing on a wide range of examples from lyric poetry and the novel, nine of the ten chapters are written by literary specialists and use relevance theory both as an overall framework and as a resource for detailed analysis. The final chapter, written by the co-founder of relevance theory, reviews the issues addressed by the volume and explores their implications for cognitive theories of how communicative acts are interpreted in context. Originally designed to explain how people understand each other in everyday face-to-face exchanges, relevance theory—described in an early review by a literary scholar as ‘the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle’s’—sheds light on the whole spectrum of human modes of communication, including literature in the broadest sense. Reading Beyond the Code is unique in using relevance theory as a prime resource for literary study, and is also the first to apply the model to a range of phenomena widely seen as supporting an ‘embodied’ conception of cognition and language where sensorimotor processes play a key role. This broadened perspective serves to enhance the value for literary studies of the central claim of relevance theory: that the ‘code model’ is fundamentally inadequate to account for human communication, and in particular for the modes of communication that are proper to literature.

Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending "Critical Attitudes" in the Face of Societal Ruination

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Wallbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
Literary Techniques

Adrian J. Wallbank, "Literary Experimentation in Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues: Transcending 'Critical Attitudes' in the Face of Societal Ruination" (pp. 1–36) In the aftermath of the French "Revolution Controversy," middle-class evangelical writers made a concerted effort to rehabilitate the moral fabric of British society. Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (1795–98) are recognized as pivotal within this program, but in this essay I question whether they were really as influential as has been supposed. I argue that autobiographical evidence from the period demonstrates an increasing skepticism toward overt didacticism, and that despite their significant and undeniable penetration within working-class culture, the Cheap Repository Tracts, if not all "received ideologies," were increasingly being rejected by their readers. This essay examines the important contribution that Rowland Hill's Village Dialogues (1801) made to this arena. Hill, like many of his contemporaries, felt that British society was facing ruination, but he also recognized that overt moralizing and didacticism was no longer palatable or effective. I argue that Hill thus experimented with an array of literary techniques—many of which closely intersect with developments occurring within the novel and sometimes appear to contradict or undermine the avowed seriousness of evangelicalism—that not only attempt to circumvent what Jonathan Rose has described as the "critical attitudes" of early-nineteenth-century readers, but also effectively map the "transitional" nature of the shifting literary and social terrains of the period. In so doing, Hill contributed signally to the evolution of the dialogue form (which is often synonymous with mentoring and didacticism), since his use of conversational mimesis and satire predated the colloquialism of John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae (1822–35) and Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations (1824–29).

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: EAST AND WEST STUDIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (09) ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Aziza Komilovna Akhmedova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Ideal ◽  
The Ideal

The article analyzes the results of the research on the representation of the aesthetic ideal through the image of the ideal hero in two national literatures. For research purposes, attention was paid to highlighting the category of the ideal hero as an expression of the author's aesthetic views. In Sinclair Lewis’s “Arrowsmith” and Pirimkul Kodirov's “The Three Roots”, the protagonists artistically reflect the authors' views on truth, virtue, and beauty. In these novels, professional ethics is described as a high noble value. The scientific novelty of the research work includes the following: in the evolution of western and eastern poetic thought, in the context of the novel genre, the skill, common and distinctive aspects of the creation of an ideal hero were revealed by synthesis of effective methods in world science with literary criteria in the history of eastern and western literary studies, in the example of Sinclair Lewis and Pirimkul Kodirov.

“A GREAT PART TO PLAY”: GENDER, GENRE, AND LITERARY FAME IN GEORGE MOORE’S A MUMMER’S WIFE

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joellen Masters
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
George Moore ◽  
Literary Fame

An actor is one who repeats a portion of a story invented by another.— George Moore, “Mummer-Worship” (1891)THE COMPLEXITIES OF GEORGE MOORE’S CHARACTER, his reactions to Victorian life, and his experimentation with literary styles and genres make him a persistently marginal, albeit intriguing, character in literary studies. “[H]is best work,” Lloyd Fernando has observed, “rests to this day in an artistic as well as social limbo which resists complete definition” (10). A Mummer’s Wife (1885), his second novel, has been studied for Moore’s debt to French novelists, in particular Flaubert, or for the author’s reaction to the British circulating libraries’ power.1 In response to controversy over A Mummer’s Wife’s perceived crudeness, Moore claimed “I have a great part to play — I am fighting that Englishman [sic] may exercise a right which they formerly enjoyed, that of writing freely and sanely” (qtd. in Hone 114), even appointing himself “un ricochet de Zola en Angleterre.”2 Without exception then, author and scholars regard A Mummer’s Wife as a transitional work, the book that brought naturalism into the British tradition. The novel, however, suspended in that artistic and social limbo, has not come under scrutiny for additional and alternative readings.3

Oportūnists, ļefists, majakovskietis, šāds-tāds inteliģentiņš Linards Laicens PSRS: biogrāfiskais aspekts un „Limitrofija”

2021 ◽  
pp. 98-109
Author(s):  
Ilze Ļaksa-Timinska
Keyword(s):  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Attention ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
Constant Control ◽  
Politically Persecuted ◽  
Sources Of Influence

The article focuses on the part of Linards Laicen’s (1983–1937) biography marginalised in contemporary literary research – his life in the USSR. In literary studies, the main attention is paid to the writer’s early work; his move to the USSR is seen as a break in his writer’s creative growth, highlighting his obedience to the demands of socialist realism and schematism. The article outlines the most important aspects of Laicens’s biography, trying to construct his potential worldview and find the causal links to his arrival in the USSR. In 1932, Laicens was forced to emigrate to Moscow, where he spent the last five years of his life. Even though the Soviet government had tightened control over the artistic processes, Laicens continued to write according to his aesthetics, risking not only being censored but also politically persecuted. In 1935, Laicen’s last novel, “Limitrofija”, was published. It was written at a time when socialist realism was recognised as the only legitimate direction of art creation in the USSR. The article analyses the circumstances of the novel’s origin, poetics, features of modernism, sources of influence, publishing difficulties, and reception. After analysis of the documents available in the archives, correspondence, notes, publications, as well as the text of the novel itself, it is concluded that Laicens’s location in the USSR is not unambiguous/voluntary, and the novel “Limitrofija” is also part of his modernist and experimental literary contribution. This shows the continuity of Laicens’s creative search, although the USSR is dominated by political censorship and constant control and threats.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC AS A PREDECESSOR OF SCIENCE FICTION PROSE

2021 ◽  
pp. 113-124
Author(s):  
Natalia Pakhsaryan ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cyrano De Bergerac ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Century Literature

The article considers the genre of Cyranoʼs novel «Another world», widely discussed in both domestic and foreign literary studies. It explores the elements of science fiction in contrast to those of the miraculous, as they appear in the 17th-century literature, and identifies the features of utopianism and the peculiarities of scientific forecasting in the work. Both parts of «Another world» are examined in their similarities and differences from one another, as well as combination of universalism and topical issues of the novel with narrative irony and burlesque.

THE HERO OF THE NOVEL BY I. MALYSHEV “NOMAKH” AND THE YEGOR LETOV’S POETICS

2021 ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
Denis L. Karpov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
Civil War Era

Contemporary literature is being formed in a difficult situation of polyphony of the modern consumer culture. Mainstream discourses are mixed with subcultural ones, the authors are influenced not only by the literary tradition itself, but also, for example, by rock culture. Thus, the countercultural, subcultural experience, which until recently was considered as peripheral, is actively being introduced into the socio-cultural discourse of modern Russia through the assimilation by authors claiming a place in the center of the country’s literary life. The novel by I. Malyshev “Nomakh” may be considered as an example of such influence. It became a finalist of the literary prize contest “Big Book” in 2017. The novel is clearly influenced by countercultural ideology, in particular by E. Letov, one of the most popular and reputable representatives of the West Siberian counterculture. At the same time, there are no direct references or quotations from the poetry of the Omsk musician in the novel. Rather, one can see some stylistic likenesses, similar figurative complexes. The reception of a historical character from the civil war era is based on the learned principles of poetics and Letov’s worldview. In addition, adopting the intellectual experience of the counterculture, I. Malyshev’s novel not only relays a certain ideology, but also, with the help of artistic means, recreates or completes the images of its hero, historical character, and cultural heroes, which he focuses on.

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