Signs of Decline? Prostheses and the Ageing Subject

This chapter reveals that the cultural association of cosmetic prostheses with ageing stems, at least in part, from satirical sources that paradoxically both bulwark and mock the hegemony of physical wholeness and youth. Emphasizing the extent to which preferences for youth were intertwined with demands for physical completeness, this chapter exposes how the dominance of these two physical states was undermined by stories that either ridicule the process of concealment for elderly users or present unlikely prostheticized heroes in unconventional ways. The chapter draws from genres such as the Gothic, sensation fiction, and imperial adventure fiction. It argues that, despite their differences, the depictions of ageing prosthesis users selected challenge the dominance of physical wholeness/youth by laughing at the absurd results that these demands effected.

How Does Male Readership Impact Character Portrayals in Contemporary Young Adult Adventure Novels?

Adventure fiction has traditionally followed a male protagonist in their search for selfhood and saviorhood. In the case of contemporary adventure fiction, authors are likely to follow the conventions of the adventure story in order to fit the genre’s stereotypes, which in turn reinforce gender stereotypes. This research paper discusses how contemporary young adult adventure novels typically perform within society’s narrowly defined perception of male readership. While the novels attempt to perpetuate powerful female roles, the male characters fit the fantasy of traditional, male adventure stories. After analyzing traditional stories such as Paradise Lost and Beowulf and modern novels such as Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, I conclude that there are disparities between the portrayal of male and female characters: from the main hero to the minor characters to the antagonists, young adult adventure novels tend to follow traditional tropes in order to satisfy male readers. Even if the authors subvert the patriarchal tropes by adding female heroines or helpful minor characters, the overall work of literature creates a fantasy world that reinforces the traditional roles and desires expected of young boys. In time, these portrayals could encourage male readers to act patronizingly or dismissively toward girls and women.

Od legendy do faktu — od faktu do legendy. Wczesne romanse podróżnicze H. Ridera Haggarda

The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the time of great geographical explorations and discoveries which also constituted a source of inspiration for the fin-de-siecle writers. Between 1880 and 1920 there emerged a variant of adventure fiction, usually defined as the “quest romance” or “imperial romance”. The article discusses three such texts by H. Rider Haggard: King Solomon’s Mines (1885), Allan Quatermain (1887) and She (1887). It concentrates mainly on the interrelation between fact and legend (the process of one turning into the other) and on the function of the peritext — the title page, the introduction, the footnotes or the quoted texts from the fictional reality — in establishing that relation as well as blurring the barrier between the fictitious world and the world of the actual readers.

Text and Discourse Linguistic Creativity of Children's English-Language Adventure Fiction

The article explores the specificity of linguistic creativity in the discourse of children's English-language adventure fiction of the 1950s. The aim of the research is to develop the parametrization and vector-space method of discourse and text linguistic creativity assessment to evaluate the linguistic creativity potential of individual texts displaying similar discourse features. To serve as the research data three discourse fragments were selected, which represent three basic narrative types, Orientation, Complicating Actions, Evaluation and Resolution. To achieve the aim, the author applies the procedure of parametrization analysis followed by general and analytic statistics analysis and vector-space modelling. With the system of 52 parameters featuring linguistic creativity in phonology, word-formation, morphology, lexicology and phraseology, syntax, and graphics, the author manually annotates and processes the discourse fragments of similar size exemplifying three narrative types of adventure fiction literature, with the total sample size of 55,000 characters. General statistics analysis allowed revealing the absolute and relative parameter values in three discourse fragments and defining the relative parametric activity of single parameters and parameter levels. Analysis of variance helped define the correlation indices of parameter paired combinations, which resulted in detecting significant binary parameter groups . Individual parameter values and their binary groups served to construe the vector-space models of discourse and text linguistic creativity for the discourse narrative types under consideration. Thus, the author obtained an efficient instrument for discourse linguistic creativity evaluation and, furthermore, for assessing the potential of each individual text in terms of displaying stronger or weaker correlation with the vector coordinates of the discourse linguistic creativity vector-space model. With the frequency and variance analysis, the author disclosed two types of discourse linguistic creativity performance techniques, that is the individual parameter activation and the parameter synchronization. Both must be considered when the decision on linguistic creativity assessment in a concrete text is made. The resulting model shows that the parameter values of linguistic creativity in individual texts can manifest themselves in appearing both higher and lower than the reference parameter values of discourse creativity, which can contribute to disclosing new directions in creativity processing and understanding.

ONLY STAYING THE COURSE REALLY MATTERS

This article addresses the peculiarities of genre, style and personages of V. Sorokin’s new novel «Doctor Garin» (2021) with the reference to the latest critical reviews. It is stressed that «Doctor Garin» is the first writer’s experience in the adventure fiction and that because of this fact his novel for the first time has both the happy ending and a protagonist with positive character traits. Also the genres of romance, fairy tale, menippea and even stealth are mentioned as having some features in common with Sorokin’s novel. A special attention is paid to the associative connection with Russian literature.

Children’s historical narrative of the early XXI century (based on the story “The Ghost of the Network» by Tamara Kryukova)

In the core of the research is a modern Russian historical narrative for children. On the example of the historical adventure fiction “The Ghost of the Network” written by Tamara Kryukova the work identifies and describes the main characteristics of this type of narrative due to the trends in modern children’s literature, features of modern teenagers’ world perception, changed conditions of social life, etc. The artistic narrative is analyzed in the mainstream of discursiveness due to its open and fluid nature, the cultural and historical nature of the narrative artistic discourse and its inclusion in a wide cultural and discursive context, the polyphonic nature of the stories that form the basis of the narrative discourse of Tamara Kryukova’s children story “The Ghost of the Network”, which covers almost 700 years old and takes the reader to the distant era of Ancient Russia, the main “ingredients” of the historical narrative include the author’s fantasy in the form of a ghost from ancient history, which frightens a scientist who finds himself on a night highway, completely deserted by a mystical coincidence. The leading method is narrative analysis. Thematic and discourse analysis is used as an auxiliary method. In the course of the study, conclusions are drawn. The work reveals the features of a modern children’s historical narrative, combining elements of an adventure-fantasy genre, interweaving the past and the present, history and fiction, taking into account the peculiarities of a modern teenager, living not only in real, but also in virtual space. The enrichment of this story allows the authors to achieve cultural and historical continuity, give the text a semantic dimension, educational meanings, and include modern linguocultural national knowledge in it.

TRANSFORMATION OF TRADITIONAL FANTASY CHARACTERS IN JOE ABERCROMBIE’S ‘THE FIRST LAW’ TRILOGY

Joe Abercrombie is a prominent contemporary British author famous for working in such a currently popular branch of fantasy as grimdark. The characteristic feature of Abercrombie’s novels is a conscious play with conventions, traditions and clichés of classical fantasy. This article is devoted to analysis of some central figures of Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy: infamous warrior Logen Ninefingers, young nobleman Jezal dan Luthar, inquisitor Sand dan Glokta, and Bayaz, First of the Magi. The study aims to reveal, through comparison with classical models, how the mentioned characteristic feature of Abercrombie’s books manifests itself at the level of character development. The analysis shows that for creating his characters Abercrombie employs classical archetypes (a wise mentor, a young protagonist on a long journey to find treasure), which have roots, as much as fantasy literature itself, through adventure fiction and chivalric romance, in the fairy tale and mythos. However, in distinction from the authors of classical fantasy such as J.R.R. Tolkien and his numerous less talented followers, Abercrombie fills the characters who impersonate those archetypes in his works with psychological content that is not in accord with or even contradicts their traditional plot functions. Moreover, the writer changes and transforms the meaning of those functions, thus creating a complex, shadowy realistic image of his grimdark fantasy world instead of an optimistic fairy-tale one typical of earlier fantasy books. Abercrombie’s characters are not only realistic and impressive, they are built upon a three-element structure, more complex than that of characters in classical fantasy, which demonstrates the development of this kind of literature in general.