John Osborne’s Luther: An Islamic Interpretation for Boosting Human Fraternity

The fictional world John Osborne builds up in Luther (1961) dramatizes Martin Luther’s spiritual journey from rooted Catholicism to emerging Protestantism. Throughout the journey, Martin’s religious tendency varies according to the belief he adheres to. This paper examines if the aspects of the Christian doctrine Martin is fed with at first and the initiatives he undertakes later on can be reinterpreted through the lens of Islam. The study tries to prove that drama can be used as a platform that enhances religious and multicultural proximity rather than distance between the western world and the Muslim community. It analyzes the Christian tenets in Luther to demonstrate how the religious values embedded in Osborne’s representation can be brought close to the principles of the Islamic doctrine. Hence, another endeavour for boosting human fraternity is presented based on picking up a modern English drama that was written sixty years ago and analyzing some of its aspects from an Islamic perspective.

Les Soixante-quinze Feuillets de Marcel Proust ou la fabrique du masque

Les Soixante-quinze Feuillets by Marcel Proust or the production of the mask In Search of Lost Time, the narrator is not the writer, and we can find out several models behind one character. In other words, Proust created a mask he put on reality to avoid criticism and problems with his family, but also to look for the essence of beings and things by focusing the truth. Pseudonyms are not a game but a real poetic of the Name. The recent publication of his Soixante-quinze Feuillets (Gallimard, 2021) shows how Proust transformed his autobiography into a fictional world. That preliminary version exposes the methods he used to hide himself and the way he was experimenting the powers of the imagination and composition. It is the writer’s laboratory, an important source for genetic study of Proust’s masterpiece.

“The End of Human Exceptionality”: The Shift of the Anthropological Dominant in Science Fiction

Based on the methodological proposals of literary anthropology, in particular on the conceptual ideas of C. Levi-Strauss (structural anthropology), J. Ortega y Gasset (“dehumanization of arts”), J.-M. Schaeffer (“the end of human exceptionality”), M. Foucault (the fall of a human being from the humanistic pedestal of culture), the article under studies emphasizes the violation of the anthropological dominant in science fiction, which is very typical of the fantasy genre. Consequently, there arise new principles of constructing personosphere of a literary text. On the example of the novel “City” (1953) by an American science fiction writer Clifford Simak, the article traces the way a human being shifts from the center of personosphere to the “outskirts” of narration, whereas its image acquires fictional parameters. This all happens due to the phenomenon of “anthropocene” (the term by G. Canavan), which implies the harmful consequences of the human reigning over the nature. In addition, the author of the article introduces the notion of “phantasoid’ – a character of the fictional world of fantasy (outlined by the narrator) that functions exceptionally in the imagination of a certain fantastic character and is somehow related to his previous experience. The novel by C. Simak outlines a gradual shift of the anthropological vector: the heterogeneous image of a human turns into a counter-image, whereby particular significance is attached to the change in the attitude towards mankind. In the text, human culture is perceived as something alien, while Simak’s image of a human being ruins the so called imagological stereotype, along with the reader’s receptive expectations. The role of the attractor in the novel is assigned to “antromorphized” and “humanized” creatures (plants, animals, objects, robots, mutants), which indicates the drastic breach with the previous genre tradition, as well as higlights a peculiar polemic connection with classical literary science fiction. This all proves the metamorphic nature of science fiction and its transition into the hyperreal dimensions of fantasy, where different artificial forms of life and mentality can peacefully coexist with each other.

Haec urbs est Thebae

This paper analyses the use of proximal deixis in Mercury’s prologue to Plautus’ Amphitruo. The study revolves around the referential ambiguity that characterizes proximal deictics such as here and this city, arguing that it contributes significantly to the blurred distinction between reality and fiction that is typical for Plautine theatre, and for his prologues in particular. The paper shows (1) that proximal deictics play a crucial role in Mercury’s creation of and transition into the fictional world; (2) that their unique referential features during audience address enable Mercury to transform the spectators’ surroundings in addition to his own; and (3) that their use underlines the similarity between Rome and fictional Thebes, which is subsequently connected to the Greek setting of Plautus’ plays and their performance during Roman festivals. Moreover, the paper claims that Mercury partly relies on proximal deixis for the inductive effect of his prologue.

Metafizika biblioteke = Metaphysics of the Library

Bibliotekarstvo kao nauka i vještina organizacije znanja i njegovih produkata evoluira te je, kao i sve ostale naučne ili praktične discipline, prisiljeno prilagođavati se vremenu. Na tom svom evolucijskom putu, općeprihvaćene teorije i poimanje biblioteke i bibliotekarstva kao struke se mijenjaju te se sve više udaljavaju od tradicionalnih predstava – gotovo do granice naučne fantastike. Pa ipak, do juče fikcijske, književnoumjetničke predstave, danas se posmatraju na krajnje konstruktivan i racionalan način. Jedan od najzanimljivijih primjera je doživljaj i vizija biblioteke u fikcijskom svijetu Jorgea Luisa Borgesa. Na tragu njegovih profetskih zapažanja utkanih u njegov književni univerzum, mnogi naučnici današnjice iz različitih oblasti kroz multidisciplinarni pristup pokušavaju rekonstruirati i kreirati sliku biblioteke budućnosti preoblikovane na način da može odgovoriti zahtjevima novog vremena. Ponajviše zahvaljujući enormnom tehnološkom razvoju i izazovima koje on sobom nosi, vizije sveopšte ili univerzalne biblioteke, biblioteke bez zidova, čine se izvodive i vode ka preispitivanju postojećih i stvaranju novih teorija o budućoj ulozi biblioteke i suštini bibliotečke prakse. Interesantno je i izazovno iz današnje perspektive struke promišljati na koji način će se poimati biblioteka u bližoj ili daljoj budućnosti, kako će izgledati i koja će od postojećih vizija, naučna ili literarna, biti bliže realizaciji u stvarnosti. = Librarianship as a science and skill of the organization of knowledge and its products is evolving and, like all other scientific or practical disciplines, it is forced to keep up with the times. In this evolutionary path, traditional theories and notions of libraries and librarianship as professions are changing and reaching far beyond the traditional ones – almost to the limits of science fictions. Nevertheless, theories which were until recently considered fictional literary and artistic performances are today already seen from an extremely constructive and rational perspective. One of the most interesting examples is the experience and vision of the library in the fictional world of Jorge Luis Borges. Following his prophetic observations woven into his literary universe, many scholars from various fields, are trying through a multidisciplinary approach to reconstruct and create an image of the library of the future reshaped in a way that can respond to demands of modern times. Mostly thanks to the enormous technological development and challenges it brings, visions of a Universal Library seem feasible and lead to rethinking of existing and creating new theories about the future role of the library and the essence of library practice. It is interesting and challenging from today’s professional perspective to think about the way that library will be understood in the near or distant future, what it will look like and which of the existing visions – scientific or literary – will be closer to realization in reality.

Givi Margvelashvili's “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” as a Metafictional Novel

Each author happily writes about himself, about the difficulties encountered in writing, about literature, - we read in Roland Duhamel's book “The Poet in the Mirror: About Metaliterature” (Dichter im Spiegel: Über Metaliteratur) [Duhamel, 2001]. This is also the case with German-speaking Georgian migrant author Givi Margvelashvili. In a 2009 German-language novel, Givi Margvelashvili in his book “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” (“Der Kantakt, Aus den Lese-Lebenserfahrungen eines Stadtschreibers”), in parallel with his account of his life, experiences and work, shows the mystery of literary fiction and invites the reader into a metafictional game. Literary critic Patricia Waugh, who plays a special role in the study of metafiction, believes metafictional texts are those that deliberately refer to themselves as an artificial creation in order to raise questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. According to her concept, metafictional texts are created by an infinite linguistic game with the world, reality, fiction, narrative [Waugh, 1984]. In the present article we will try to review the novel “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” by Givi Margvelashvili, the main motives, elements or narrative techniques, characteristic of the metafictional literature, which show the metafictional nature of The Kantakt.It should be noted from the very beginning that Givi Margvelashvili's novel “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” is based on the artistic reality of the German writer Kurt Tucholsky’s - “Rheinsberg - A Picture Book for Lovers” (“Rheinsberg - Ein Bilderbuch für Verliebte”). The Kantakt is an intertextual game with a pretext. The latter appears in the work as a book in a book, which is one of the most common motifs in metafictional literature. Because Tucholsky’s work is often found in the Kantakt, the readers cannot forget it, therefore they constantly think about it, and even compare the pheno-text with the pretext. Naturally, there are many passages in the Kantakt in which we recognize intertextual metafiction.An important metafictional event in the novel is the transformation of the main character of the work - the first "City Writer" of the German city of Rheinsberg into a "reader" character. From the "real" world of the "City Writer" - from the second layer of the novel to the fictional world of the book - the first layer (the same as his own consciousness), the "transition" into the imaginary world blurs the line between "reality" and fiction. This is where one of the techniques of metafictional literature comes into play - metalepsis.The metafictionality of the novel is evidenced by the characters in the first layer, who are aware of their fictional existence. The aim of the "reader" is for the main characters of Kurt Tucholsky’s work to realize their fictional essence too. Because of this, he leaves a message to Claire and Wolf, which is written on a blank sheet of the same book the characters belong to: “This is your mirror-book. It accurately describes how you live through readers: everything you think, say and do here, you think, say and do in your reading-life” [Margvelashvili, 2009:461). In the work, the characters are presented as reading-creatures, whose lives depend on the reader and their imagination. The function of the characters also becomes a subject of discussion in the novel: "The characters in the book are committed to reflect the lives of real people, to serve people as a kind of reading-mirror" [Margvelashvili, 2009:200], - we read in Margvelashvili's novel.Based on the fragments of the life and memoirs of the "City Writer” scattered within the work, which coincide with the life and memoirs of Givi Margvelashvili, we can argue about the biographical auto-reflexivity in the work, which is also one of the forms of metafiction. It should also be noted that there are signs of autofiction in the Kantakt.In the Kantakt, as in most metafictional texts, the character, the reader, and the author are repeatedly thematized, as well as the act of writing, narrating, and reading. The language games in the novel also have a metafictional meaning. Auto-reflexive phrases and words reveal the fictional world of the book, through which often even a parallel is drawn between the fictional and the real world. Linguistic issues, including phonology, morphology, syntax, etc., are thematized and discussed in the Kantakt as a metafictional novel.Based on these and other examples discussed in the article, we can conclude that Givi Margvelashvili's “The Kantakt, from the Reading-Life Experiences of a City Writer” is a metafictional novel, revealing the fictitiousness of this work as well as other literary texts in general, primarily the pre-text of “Rheinsberg - A Picture Book for Lovers”.

Hunter S. Thompson, Transmetropolitan, and the Evolution from Author to Character

<p>This thesis examines American author Hunter S. Thompson, in the context of his own works – primarily Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary– as well as the representation of him as a character in the graphic text Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis. The evolution of Thompson from author to character and the development of that character in his own works is examined, as well as how this development allowed for his character to be fully realised in a completely fictional world. In turn, the fully developed use of Thompson’s character is the starting point for my analysis of Transmetropolitan could potentially be read as a work of New Journalism, albeit a fictional one. The first chapter examines how Thompson began writing himself as a character in his early fictional work The Rum Diary. Though largely overlooked by critics because of its long delayed publication and the focus on the more flashy and better known Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary is critical to Thompson’s development of himself as a character in his works in particular, and to his development as an author in general. Though The Rum Diary is ostensibly a purely fictional novel, this chapter examines how the character Paul Kemp is actually largely autobiographical, and how Kemp is an early version of the same character Thompson uses in his later nonfiction. I then analyse the development of that nonfiction version, Raoul Duke, in Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As The Rum Diary is not actually purely fictional, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not actually completely nonfictional. Thompson, as this chapter shows, did not believe in the divide between fact and fiction, and he uses the character he develops in Raoul Duke to write about himself while creatively embellishing the truth. I then look at how Thompson wrote himself so strongly into his character that he became inextricably viewed as actually being Raoul Duke, and how that character was in turn viewed and written about. The second chapter examines the legacy of Thompson’s fully formed self-characterisation, as it is picked up by another author and written in the fully fictional context of the graphic novel series Transmetropolitan. I consider how Transmetropolitan’s main character Spider Jerusalem continues Thompson’s self-as-character through his characterisation, behaviour, and language. Furthermore I analyse how, within the world of the series, Spider as a journalist continues Thompson’s legacy as a writer. The third and final chapter examines how Spider’s characterisation as a continuation of Thompson is an important contextual factor for considering Transmetropolitan as a work of New Journalism. I consider the connection to Thompson, the content of Spider’s articles, and the format in which the articles are depicted in the graphic novel</p>

Extracting fictional truth from unreliable sources

A fictional text is commonly viewed as constituting an invitation to play a certain game of make-believe, with the individual sentences written by the author providing the propositions we are to imagine and/or accept as true within the fiction. However, we can’t always take the text at face value. What narratologists call ‘unreliable narrators’ may present a confused or misleading picture of the fictional world. Meanwhile, there has been a debate in philosophy about ‘imaginative resistance’ in which we resist imagining (or even accepting as true in the fiction) what’s explicitly stated in the text. But if we can’t take the text’s word for it, how do we determine what’s true in a fiction? The chapter proposes an account of fiction interpretation in a dynamic setting (a version of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) with a mechanism for opening, updating, and closing temporary ‘workspaces’) and combines this framework with belief revision logic.

Metalinguistic acts in fiction

This chapter identifies and explains several primary functions of the fictional use of metalinguistic devices and considers some difficult cases. Among the more interesting functions are those that directly and indirectly report speech and thoughts from inside and outside the fictional world, and those that structure storytelling as characters perform secondary narrative roles, change narrative pace, and shift perspective. In particular, the chapter argues that when real persons are quoted in a storyworld they are ‘storified’ as near-real fictions. In cases of the misquotation of real persons, near-real fictions and near-real quotations must adequately exploit resemblances between the real and the fictional. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the similarities between fictional and nonfictional uses of metalinguistic acts. Both kinds of acts must be psychologically compelling, structure and inform interpretations of the world, import common ground, and permit secondary narration; but only in fictional contexts can the original and reporting contexts merge. This analysis is brought to bear on our understanding of imagination and make-believe.

Postdigital education in a biotech future

This paper explores a possible future of postdigital education in 2050 using the means of social science fiction. The first part of the paper introduces the shift from 20th century primacy of physics to 21st century primacy of biology with an accent to new postdigital–biodigital reconfigurations and challenges in and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The second part of the paper presents a fictional speech at the graduation ceremony of a fictional military academy in a fictional East Asian country in 2050. This fictional world is marked by global warfare and militarization, and addressed graduates are the first generation of artificially evolved graduates in human history. The third part of the paper interprets the fictional narrative, contextualizes it into educational challenges of today, and argues for a dialogical, humanistic conception of new postdigital education in a biotech future.