Themes of Chronicle Drama

Chronicle drama occupies a central position in modern literature which represents a field for interaction of ideas and actions, as it works as storage for historical and human experience. It records a sequence for the history. This study aims to examine the main themes of chronicle drama. Thus, it tracks the history of modern literature as a wide source for this literary genre. The study adopts a historical and analytical methodology in order to clarify the broader dimensions related to chronicle drama and its sources. Historically, chronicle drama was used to dramatize the facts and work as an expression of factory life of kings. That’s why King John of Shakespeare in 1553 was the first one of this genre. The study concludes that chronicle drama mirrored surrounding circumstances of the facts since its early times. So, it was effected by the historical conditions. This is clearly appeared in the early works like Henry the Fifths, Tragedy of Richard III The life and Death of Jaike Strew and so, the previously mentioned "The King John". So it was affected politically and socially by the European historical context. The research also indicates that the Elizabethan Dramatists put the basics of the later stage of literature development especially on the level of techniques. This appears in Shakespeare’s works who used to end the drama with restoration and disordering which still exists in postmodern literature.

تشكيلُ النّص الأدبيِّ ما بعد الحداثيِّ

يسعى هذا البحث إلى تبيان ملامح تشكيل النّص الأدبيّ ما بعد الحداثيّ، والوقوف على أبرز المفاهيم الأولية التي وظفها النّقاد في أطروحات ما بعد الحداثة، والتي شكّلت الاختلافات الجوهرية في الفرق بين النّصوص الحداثيّة وما بعدها، كما ترنو الدراسة إلى استكناه إشكالية النّص ما بعد الحداثيّ من خلال استدعاء بعض النّصوص الشّعرية والروائية المعاصرة التي تعزز حضور بعض سماته فيه، متبعة في ذلك، المنهج الوصفيّ التحليليّ. وقد عمد البحث إلى تحديد الملامح التي شكلت ماهية النصوص ما بعد الحداثية من خلال البحث في المفاهيم الأوليّة، كما وردت على لسان منظري ما بعد الحداثة نظريًا، ومن ثمّ تطبيق هذه المفاهيم على عينة من النصوص الشعرية والروائية المعاصرة. وخلصت الدراسة إلى أن تشكيل النصوص ما بعد الحداثية جاءت مغايرة لنصوص الحداثة السابقة لها، وأن هناك بونًا شاسعًا بينهما؛ فالنصوص الأولى منحت القارئ دورًا فاعلًا في المشاركة في عملية إنتاج النصوص مما يضمن له صرورة البقاء، على العكس من النصوص الحداثية التي اتسمت بالانغلاق والجمود. الكلمات الدّالة: الحداثة، ما بعد الحداثة، النّص، المفاهيم الأوليّة Abstract: This research attempts to crystalize basic characteristics of Postmodern Literature and sheds light on the most prominent and basic concepts that were employed by many critics in dissertations of Postmodernism, which constitute fundamental differences between Modern Literature and Postmodern Literature. In addition, the study seeks to elucidate characteristics of Postmodern Literature through tackling some contemporary works of poetry and novels that enhance the presence of some postmodern characteristics; this is based on the descriptive analysis approach. The purpose of this research is to define the main essence that formed Postmodern Literature through studying the basic concepts according to perspectives of postmodern theorists, then applying these concepts on some contemporary novels and poetry works. Conclusion of the study indicated that forming Postmodern Literature was more different than former Modern Literature. There is an obvious difference between them; Postmodern Literature granted the reader an active role in order to take part in creation of any literary works, which guaranteed his engagement and interaction, unlike Postmodern Literature which was characterized by its enclosure and rigidity. Key words: Modernism, Postmodernism, Literary work, Basic concepts.

The Author is Dead, Long Live the Author! Postmodern Metanarrative and the Performance of the Author Function

This research paper critically examines the meta-narrative text The Master of Petersburg, a novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, which has the figure of the author at the centre of its narrative structure. In his fictions, Coetzee is not shy of dislodging what Roland Barthes calls ‘reality effect’ in order to critically assert the role of the authorial figure; this is also to be seen in the novel Slow Man where Coetzee ruptures the realist texture of the narrative by introducing the figure of Elizabeth Costello who enters the text, as well as the life of Paul Rayment an amputee, as the author figure who is responsible for her creation i.e. Paul Rayment himself. At the same time Coetzee in order to explore the issues of writing at its ethical dimension, transforms some realist tropes at his disposal. For instance, in Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee with a brilliant manoeuvre plays on the trope of epistolary novels and presents the novel in a form of a series of lectures delivered by Elizabeth Costello, an Australian author of international fame. But in a brilliant ironical move, Coetzee through the performance of the authorial voice breaks the realist structure of the Novel. The paper will, however, primarily focus on the novel The Master of Petersburg (1994), which is a meta-narrative in which Coetzee actively interrogates the ethics of writing as in this novel he places the fictively re-imagined figure of Dostoevsky in Petersburg in late 1868, after the murder of his step-son Pavel. In this novel like his earlier novel Foe(1986), Coetzee examines the process of artistic creation and ethics involved in the event of writing, as Coetzee in his novel evokes a mix of historical factors and fictive characteristics which inspired and featured in Dostoevsky’s novel The Devils. Through a close examination of the interstitial spaces between the two novels, this paper explores the figure of the author and its performance in postmodern fiction. The author as the figure has caused much debate in the postmodern fiction and narrative theory. Post Roland Barthes’s declaration ‘author is dead’ many deconstructionist and narrative theories have debated the relevance of author figure in fiction, and the meta-narrative and self-referential nature of postmodern literature make these debates even more potent. This paper seeks to explore the debate concerning the author figure from Bakhtin, Barthes, Bennet and Foucault and try to understand the implications which the author figure has in a postmodern text through a close examination of Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg.

Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in contemporary Russian Poetry

Leading Austrian artists of the first quarter of the 20th century, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, did not attract the Russian writers attention until the 1990s, when the development of Russian postmodern literature was conductive to the attention to their experiments, polystylistics, cultural symbolism and aestheticism. It is stressed that although the heritage of these artists was adapted to the aesthetic project of Russian postmodernism, poetic statements about them revealed aspects of art that are not obvious to the common viewer. First of all, in the Russian poetry of the 1990s and the early 2000s (Alexander Ulanov, Alexander Skidan, Irina Mashinsky, Polina Barskova, Elena Fanailova) it was convincingly shown that Schiele’s expressionism directly takes it start from the symbolism of Klimt, and Klimt’s aesthetics already contains Schiele’s one, but Schiele’s manner retains the achievements of Klimt. Further, the author shows a connection between these artists and the achievements of physics along with the cultural and political atmosphere of the time. Finally, it was reported that the achievements of these artists opposed Nazism because Klimt and Schiele demonstrated the inadmissibility of any form of oppression. Regardless of the private thoughts or the works of Klimt and Schiele, these ideas are conveyed by the very form of their works and the approach to style: the semanticization of the material and the ability to give life to the depicted characters. Particular techniques and devices of expressiveness of both artists were interpreted as auxiliary to their humanistic ideas, and it should be recognized as the contribution of poetry to art history.

Fragmentation and Postmodern studies: An analysis of Mohsin Hamid’s Novel “How to get filthy rich in rising Asia”

In this study, the fragmentation as postmodernist narrative technique in Mohsin Hamid’s novel “How to get filthy rich in rising Asia” is examined. He uses structural inequalities, grammatically incorrect sentences, phrases and dependent clauses. The term fragmentation is coined by Bell Hooks to highlight the problem of “hierarchy of oppression” within the feminist paradigm. Fragmentation is the major thematic concern of postmodern art that sets new parameters for the narrative techniques of postmodern literature. Fragmentation in the literary work involves complexity on semantic level where the various words act as signifier and signified at the same time. Therefore, this study probes the fundamentals of fragmentation in the text that reflects the radical changes in the postmodern society and focuses on the little narratives that create fragmented truth and cause anarchy, uncertainty and chaos in the world.

Literature in New Media: A Comparative Study of Literary Affordances of Lance Olsen’s “10:01” in Traditional and Digital Medium

The recent advances of the digital era invoke an array of new media for communication. This impressive feat of technology purveys a wide range of new affordances to communication unviable in print. The new media affordances of the electronic and the digital have impacted the creative literary compositions, providing innovations in contemporary literature. Postmodern literature being the initiation of experimental works has strived to reinvent the affordances of literary fiction. It has now advanced into resorting to digital technological affordances to maximize narrative inventiveness. Lance Olsen’s “10:01”, a postmodern novel adapted as hypertext fiction, is an exemplar of such feat. This research examines the literary affordances of the chosen text in print and its hypertext adaptation within the framework of affordance theories. The study unveils the inlaid new media aesthetics and viabilities of the digital in relation to the traditional medium of print by focusing on affordances. The paper asserts the significance of theorizing the aesthetics involved in digital textuality by holding print and electronic literature at the intersection. This study aims to establish the shift in literary analysis paradigms of text due to the emergence of New media.

TO THE ISSUE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE DIRECTION IN LITERATURE AFTER MODERNISM: THE VISUAL AND THE TRUE HORISON OF KNOWLEDGE IN W. GOLDING’ NOVEL «FIRE DOWN BELOW»

Предмет изучения в статье составляют дидактические аспекты романа У. Голдинга в их отношении к аналогичным направлениям литературы постмодерна. Рассмотрение данных аспектов в эпистемологическом горизонте произведения позволяет заключить, что они были обращены против ограничений эпического пространства и когнитивных искажений картины реальности в модернизированных формах романа. The subject of the article accounts for the didactic aspects by Golding’s novel as related to similar currents of thought in postmodern literature. The insights into these aspects within the epistemological horizon of the work in question leads to the conclusion that they are directed against the cognitive distortions of the picture of the world and restrictions of its ontological framework in modernistic novels.

Artistic Modelling of History in the Literature and Non-Fiction of a Post-Totalitarian Society

An artistic interpretation of historical facts is quite relevant in the literature and non-fiction of a post-totalitarian society. Prose works on historical themes are valuable and interesting in that they create an illusion for readers to be present in a certain period of historical time, and it is the artistic modeling of events that makes priceless facts of history completely disappear. The historical past is an inexhaustible material that word artists have been referring to for centuries, creating the best examples of fiction. Prose texts of historical subjects are perceived by each next generation in a new way, historical events and phenomena are interpreted from different angles, the activities of famous figures of the past are widely covered. Non-fiction literature is a kind of literature that is on the verge of artistry and documentary. The main non-fiction genres are a diary, autobiography, biography, memoirs, confession, letters, etc. On the one hand, non-fiction literature claims to recognize the author’s subjective truth about him in her texts; on the other hand, only the reader can either, demonstrating full confidence in the author, call this text documentary, or admit the presence of poetry and aesthetics in the work and tilt the scales in the direction of artistry. The material for observation and research of the phenomenon of artistic modeling are works that allow us to trace the most common, in our opinion, models of correlation of historical and artistic consciousness in postmodern literature and non-fiction of a post-totalitarian society.

THE CONCEPTS OF ‘METATEXTUALITY’ AND ‘METAFICTION’ IN LITERARY CRITICISM

Undoubtedly, the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century are notable for the extensive artistic experiment, including metatextual and metafictional phenomena. Such scholars as Gérard Genette, Anna Wierzbicka, Patricia Waugh, Linda Hutcheon, Robert Sholes, and many others focused on the mentioned issues in their research work. Therefore, this paper considers metatextuality and metafiction in the theoretical perspective tracing the origins of metatextuality and its connections with postmodern literature. The terms ‘metatext’ and ‘metafiction’ appeared as rather close in time. Notably, both of them are based on the discursive practices of the late 20th century. However, the term ‘metatext’ originated in the scholarly practice of structuralism. It is obvious that ‘metatext’ was constructed by analogy with the concept of ‘metalanguage’. Either of them does not exist without the initial text (or language). Metatextual elements are important for analyzing styles, genres, types of expression, discursive functions, and more. On the other hand, the term ‘metafiction’ has an obvious connection with genre studies. Metafiction qualifies as a special kind of literary text that became characteristic of the postmodern era. Such features as self-referentiality of artistic expression, introspection, and self-consciousness became essential for postmodern aesthetics. Metatextuality relates to the narrative theory and metacritiсism, while metafictionality is applicable within the intertextual analysis. Thus, the paper highlights an advance of metadiscourse in the cultural consciousness of the late 20th century.