A Novel classification framework for the Thirukkural for building an efficient search system

Thirukkural, a Tamil classic literature, which was written in 300 BCE is a didactic literature. Though Thirukkural comprises 1330 couplets which are organized into three sections and 133 chapters, in order to retrieve meaningful Thirukkural for a given query in search systems, a better organization of the Thirukkural is needed. This paper lays such a foundation by classifying the Thirukkural into ten new categories called superclasses that is helpful for building a better Information Retrieval (IR) system. The classifier is trained using Multinomial Naïve Bayes algorithm. Each superclass is further classified into two subcategories based on the didactic information. The proposed classification framework is evaluated using precision, recall and F-score metrics and achieved an overall F-score of 82.33% and a comparison analysis has been done with the Support Vector Machine, Logistic Regression and Random Forest algorithms. An IR system is built on top of the proposed system and the performance comparison has been done with the Google search and a locally built keyword search. The proposed classification framework has achieved a mean average precision score of 89%, whereas the Google search and keyword search have yielded 59% and 68% respectively.

Environmental Ethics of Buddhism: Ecological Values in the Mirror of Wisdom by Erdeni Galshiev

The aim of this article is to analyze one of the most outstanding works of Buryat didactic literature – The Mirror of Wisdom by Erdeni Khaibzun Galshiev (1855 – 26 June (9 July) 1915) and to identify the Buddhist ecological values in it. We argue that in the modern context of global environmental awareness as well as local ecological problems in the Baikal region, Russia, The Mirror of Wisdom, and its described practices for laymen have become extremely significant and can serve as the guideline for sustainable living. We start with the overview of the historical background of Buddhism on the territory of the republic of Buryatia, Russia, go on with the general structure of The Mirror of Wisdom by Erdeni Galshiev, and proceed to the analysis of ecological values, such as non-harming to other creatures, the law of karma, non-attachment, and so on. The analysis shows that although written a century ago and not aimed initially to bring together the inter-related issues of population, consumption and the environment, The Mirror of Wisdom suggests certain conclusions concerning these issues and can contribute to ecological sustainability as well as economic and social justice.

Experience of training grammar at non-language University (the case of studying Russian by medical students)

Studied are issues related to ensuring better quality and efficiency of teaching the Russian grammar to students not specializing in philology. Relevance of this subject is illustrated, on the one hand, by the lack of attention paid by researchers to the problems arising from teaching Russian in non-linguistic universities. On the other hand, it is illustrated by significant shifts in the quality and methodology of acquiring knowledge by nowadays students who were born in the Internet era and are oriented towards digital and practical learning while being unprepared to real (non-virtual) communication and often incapable of presenting their thoughts in a precise and logical way. Based on the analysis of linguo-didactic literature and many years of practical work at a non-linguistic university, the author's methodology of motivating students to learn and master the norms of Russian grammar is provided. Characteristic of the aforementioned approach is a synthesis of traditional reproductive teaching methods with creative activities, which enable full engagement of students’ imagination, development of their conceptual thinking, motivating them to study the language and, through this process, to active self-expression. Moreover, a substantial creative component implied by this method enables overcoming a serious problem of modern pedagogics: students use Internet resources to have ready answers. The aforementioned positive aspects of the comprehensive approach to teaching grammar to non-philologists appear a useful pedagogical experience that can be recommended for educating students in other language sections within a course.

Buchbesprechungen

Angela Schrott/Christoph Strosetzki (Hgg.): Gelungene Gespräche als Praxis der Gemeinschaftsbildung. Literatur, Sprache und Gesellschaft (Historische Dialogforschung, Band 5), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Sybille Große) Julia Weitbrecht/Maximilian Benz/Andreas Hammer/Elke Koch/Nina Nowakowski/Stephanie Seidl/Johannes Traulsen: Legendarisches Erzählen. Optionen und Modelle in Spätantike und Mittelalter (Philologische Studien und Quellen, Band 273), Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2019 (Beatrice von Lüpke) Anastasija Ropa/Timothy Dawson (eds.): The Horse in Premodern European Culture (Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture LXX), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Sonja Fielitz) Veronika Hassel: Das Werk Friedrichs von Hausen. Edition und Studien (Philologische Studien und Quellen, Band 269), Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2018 (Simone Leidinger) Norbert Kössinger/Claudia Wittig (Hgg.): Prodesse et delectare. Case Studies on Didactic Literature in the European Middle Ages/Fallstudien zur didaktischen Literatur des europäischen Mittelalters (Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Beihefte, Band 11), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Jan Stellmann) Eva Rothenberger: Ave praeclara maris stella. Poetische und liturgische Transformationen der Mariensequenz im deutschen Mittelalter (Liturgie und Volkssprache, Band 2), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Anja Becker) Justin Vollmann (Hg./Üb.): Eberhard der Deutsche: Laborintus. Nach dem Text von Edmond Faral herausgegeben, Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2020 (Fritz Peter Knapp) Ann-Kathrin Deininger: Könige. Konzeptionen von Herrschaft im ›Prosalancelot‹ (Studien zu Macht und Herrschaft. Schriftenreihe des SFB 1167 »Macht und Herrschaft – Vormoderne Konfigurationen in transkultureller Perspektive«, Band 3), Göttingen: Bonn University Press, 2019.(Christiane Witthöft) Britta Maria Wittchow: Erzählte mediale Prozesse. Medientheoretische Perspektiven auf den Reinfried von Braunschweig und den Apollonius von Tyrland (Trends in Medieval Philology, volume 37), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Wolfgang Achnitz) Pia Claudia Doering: Praktiken des Rechts in Boccaccios Decameron. Die novellistische Analyse juristischer Erkenntniswege, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2020 (Moritz Rauchhaus) Arvind Thomas: Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019 (Curtis Runstedler) Stefan Rosmer: Der Mönch von Salzburg und das lateinische Lied. Die geistlichen Lieder in stolligen Strophen und das einstimmige gottesdienstliche Lied im späten Mittelalter (Imagines medii aevi, Band 44), Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2019 (Britta Bußmann) Stefan Hannes Greil/Martin Przybilski (Hgg.): Nürnberger Fastnachtspiele des 15. Jahrhunderts von Hans Folz und aus seinem Umkreis. Edition und Kommentar, unter Mitarbeit von Theresia Biehl, Christoph Gerhardt und Mark Ritz, mit einem Beitrag von Nikolaus Ruge, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Johannes Janota) Seraina Plotke/Stefan Seeber (Hgg.): Schwanksammlungen im frühneuzeitlichen Medienumbruch. Transformationen eines sequentiellen Erzählparadigmas (Beihefte zur Germanisch-Romanischen Monatsschrift, Band 96), Heidelberg: Winter 2019 (Hans Rudolf Velten) Nina Scheibel: Ambivalentes Erzählen – Ambivalenz erzählen. Studien zur Poetik des frühneuhochdeutschen Prosaromans. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2020 (Nicolas Potysch) Achim Aurnhammer/Nicolas Detering: Deutsche Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit. Humanismus, Barock, Frühaufklärung (UTB 5024), Tübingen: Narr, 2019 (Sofia Derer) Anne Rolfes: Ein Zeitalter voller Narren: Locos und locura im Siglo de Oro (Spanische Forschungen, Reihe 2, Band 43), Münster: Aschendorff, 2019 (Marina Ortrud M. Hertrampf) Carmen Rivero: Humanismus, Utopie und Tragödie (Mimesis, Band 73), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020 (Michaela Peters) Ignacio Arellano (ed.)/Lope de Vega: Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2019 (Blandine Daguerre) Janina Niefer: Inspiration and Utmost Art. The Poetics of Early Modern English Psalm Translations (Religion und Literatur, Band 5), Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018. 466 S.; Florian Kubsch: Crossing Boundaries in Early Modern England. Translations of Thomas à Kempis’s De imita­tione Christi (1500–1700) (Religion und Literatur, Band 6), Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018. 296 S.; und: Carmen Dörge: The Notion of Turning in Metaphysical Poetry (Religion und Literatur, Band 7), Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018 (Christoph Ketterer) Lisa Hopkins: Greeks and Trojans on the Early Modern Stage. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020 (Sarah Briest) Florian Lippert/Marcel Schmid: Self-Reflection in Literature (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, Band 202), Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2020(Lukas Müsel) Michael La Corte: Emblematik als Teil der profanen Innenraum­gestaltung deutscher Schlösser und Herrenhäuser. Vorkommen – Form – Funktion. Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2019 (Nicolas Potysch) Michael Dopffel: Empirical Form and Religious Function. Apparition Narratives of the Early English Enlightenment (Beiträge zur Englischen und Amerikanischen Literatur, volume 38), Leiden: Ferdinand Schöningh. 2020 (Catherine Belsey (†)) Graduiertenkolleg Literarische Form (Hg.): Dynamik der Form. Literarische Modellierung zwischen Formgebung und Formverlust. Unter Mitwirkung von Sona Lisa Arasteh-Roodsary, Gina Derhard, Jutta Gerber, Katharina Andrea Kalthoff, Thomas Kater, Simon Scharf, Kerstin Wilhelms. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2019 (Eva Axer) Shinu Sara Ottenburger/Peter Trawny (Hgg.): Werner Hamacher: Studien zu Hölderlin. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2020 (Michael Woll) Anna Danneck: »Mutterland der Civilisazion und der Freyheit«. Frankreichbilder im Werk Heinrich Heines (Epistemata. Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Schriften – Reihe Literaturwissenschaft, Band 919), Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2020 (Walther Müller-Jentsch) Lisa Ebert: Ambiguity in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Paderborn: Brill, 2020. 274 pp.; and: Olga Springer: Ambiguity in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress, 2020 (Sophie Franklin) Nicolaas van der Toorn: Le Jeu de l’ambiguïté et du mot. Ambiguïté intentionnelle et jeu de mots chez Apollinaire, Prévert, Tournier et ­Beckett (Faux Titre, volume 435), Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi, 2019 (Rolf Lohse) Albert C. Eibl: Der Waldgang des Abenteuerlichen Herzens. Zu Ernst Jüngers Ästhetik des Widerstands im Schatten des Hakenkreuzes (Beiträge zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, Band 395), Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020 (Steffen Röhrs) Christiane Maria Binder: Bakhtin Revisited: Constructions of Iden­t­ity Through Time and Place in English and New English/Postcolonial Literature. Trier: WVT, 2020 (Rocco Coronato) Doerte Bischoff/Susanne Komfort-Hein (Hgg.): Handbuch Literatur & Transnationalität. (Handbücher zur kulturwissenschaftlichen Philologie, Band 7), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019 (Max Graff) Martina Allen: GenReVisions. Genre Experimentation and World-Construction in Contemporary Anglophone Literature. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020 (Kai Wiegandt) Jian Liu: Eine Poetik der Fremdheit. Zur Verarbeitung von China-Motiven in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur im 21. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2020 (Arne Klawitter)

A Comparative Study of the Ghost Literary Motif in Snow in Midsummer by Guan Hanqing and Hamlet by Shakespeare

In classical Chinese literature, employing the literary motif of the ghost represents both the writers’ desire to escape the pattern of didactic literature promoted by Confucianism and their attempt to revolt against the rigidity of the Confucian dogma that is far too entrenched in reality and inhibits their creativity. Written during the Yuan Dynasty (1279– 1368) by Guan Hanqing (1225–1302), Snow in Midsummer presents the injustice of Dou’E who dies for a crime she did not commit, with the girl returning to the world of the living in the form of a ghost to obtain her justice. The motif of the vengeful ghost also appears in Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) play, Hamlet . In this essay, I will investigate comparatively the dramatic aesthetics through which the spirits are outlined in the two plays, the comedy used by Guan Hanqing and Shakespeare, respectively, in the scenes of the appearance of spirits, and last but not least, the religious substratum contained in the symbolism of these ghosts. After a contrastive analysis of the dramaturgical and aesthetic construction of the two spirits in these plays, I argue that, despite their belonging to two different cultural spaces, both authors question through the supernatural the moral values of the societies in which they lived.

A Soft War Against the Church: Reading Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a Didactic Novel

Many works of literature are devoted to giving readers explicit or implicit instructions or teachings about a philosophy, an ideology, a craft, a lifestyle, or other ends. These works are supposed to entertain and teach and, accordingly, they are labeled as didactic literature. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (DVC) is a highly controversial novel that has been largely debated and discussed because of its content and intended message. In this novel, Brown intentionally presents an alternative understanding to Christianity which is received mostly as heretic and blasphemous. In many occasions, Brown avers that the visions he gave in his DVC are the findings of his research on Christian doctrines and institutions. Thus, they are accurate facts though they are written in a piece of fiction. He also emphasizes that he aims to share newly acquired knowledge with his audience through the pages of his work. This paper is an attempt to study Brown’s DVC as a didactic novel. It ultimately aims to show how Brown manipulated the didactic theory of sugar-coated pill in his DVC to teach Christians about the theology and history of their religion. Adopting a descriptive-analytic method, the study first tackles Brown’s Christian ideology. Then, it analyzes his DVC showing how he used different devices and techniques of didactic novels for the purpose of instructing his readers. The study concludes that DVC is not a mere piece of fiction but a didactic novel that used fiction as a cover to pass historical and theological teachings.

Chakhar-Gebshi ‘s Concept of a Pious Monk

Buddhism occupies an important place in the history of culture of the Mongolian peoples, in particular from the 16th century, which corresponds to the third stage of the spread of the Buddhist religion among the Mongols. Although Buddhist teachings have wide influence on everyday life, the philosophy of Buddhism was understandable to a very small circle of adherents. For the majority of the population, ethical and didactic literature and the authority of teachers were much more important. In this regard, the image of the clergy was to be the standard of Buddhist behavior. There are amounts of non-canonical literature on the rules and instructions for righteous behavior, addressed to both laity and clergy. The article analyzes the ideal image of a monk, according to the requirements of Chakhar-gebshi Lubsantsultim on the basis of two works: “Biography of Chakhar-gebshi”, compiled by his disciple Luvsansamduvnima in 1818, and the work of Chakhar-gebshi entitled as a “Blue Book, History of Erdeni Dushi Monastery”. The biographical method used for characterizing Chakhar-gebshi allowed to show his life and him as a strict monk as a model to be followed. The methods of source study and comparative analysis were used for constructing and estimating of a model of religious behavior. The materials from “The Blue Book” ‒ a work of a monastic charter ‒ are general for monastic education and monastic environment in Mongolian Buddhism. The importance of keeping the teachings and religion of Buddha in purity and maintaining the moral image of his followers as an authority for the laity has been emphasized many times in the works of various authors. In this regard, the definitions of a pious monk written down by Chakhar-gebshi represent a complete system that combines basic Buddhist precepts. Keywords: Chakhar-gebshi, moral prescription, biography, Mongolian Buddhism, monks, charter

Ethical concepts in Russian religious-didactic literature of the 17th century

The article offers an analysis of ethical concepts in Russian religious-didactic literature of the 17th century. The main sources are alphabets published in Moscow. There were two alphabets printed by Vasily Burtsov, and an alphabet by Karion Istomin, as well as “Azbuka s oratsiey” (Alphabet with Didactics), and the manuscript “Alfavititsy didaskala” (Small Alphabet of a Teacher). These alphabets can be considered as religious-didactic literature because in addition to grammar, these manuals included the narration “On the Letters” by Chernorizets Hrabar (Hrabar, the Black Robe Wearer), extensive religious-anthropological reasoning, prayers, the Credo, Decalogue (in the Alphabet by Karion Istomin only), the Beatitudes, and other texts which were presented in Catholic catechisms of that time, as well as in the “Profession of Faith” by Peter Mogila (he used the Catholic catechism in his “Profession”). The influence of Reformation ideas is obvious, too. Several works by Karion Istomin, the alphabet primarily, were written and illustrated under the influence of “Orbis sensualium pictus” by John Amos Comenius, the last bishop of the Unity of Brethen (Bohemian or Moravian Church). The content of these manuals (including visual content) allows us to conclude that their mass publication was induced by the disciplinary revolution that began after the end of the Smuta (the Time of Troubles) in Russia, which is associated with the House of the Romanovs coming to power. The creation of a new tsardom was impossible without new people whose education was based on religious ideas and regulations. Ethical concepts in these books were almost inseparable from religious regulations, which is explained by the doctrinal aims of primary education in Russia of the 17th century.

The role of group dynamics in creating a developing educational environment of a university

The transition to an individually-oriented educational paradigm and the freedom to choose individual learning trajectories leads to the underestimation of students’ teamwork and group dynamics. The study addresses current issues in the implementation of team-building methods and technologies that have not been adequately addressed in the scientific didactic literature. Since at the present stage of its development society faces the need for specialists who able to positively and effectively adapt and interact in a work team, propose constructive ideas, and work in teams, more broad and diverse use of group forms of learning in the higher education system is needed. The article discloses the specifics of the group approach to education. Teamwork contributes to the development of personal and social and group growth and self-realization and strengthens value orientations in the formation of a humanistic worldview which, in turn, is aimed at the sustainable development of society. Such competencies include team competencies that involve the ability to solve interdisciplinary problems. The formation and development of such competencies take place in the context of teamwork. In the context of group dynamics, a student is responsible for reaching their own goals and shares the responsibility for achieving the goals of the team. A student team, in turn, is an environment where each of its members grows professionally and develops personally according to their individual trajectory of success. Theoretical analysis of group development and experimental education prove the effectiveness of group work. Group dynamics provide students with the opportunity not only to be creative but also to create a positive atmosphere and team spirit in the group.