William Golding

Sir William Gerard Golding (1911–1993), the writer of Lord of the Flies (LOTF), occupies a pivotal position within the post–World War II canon of writers. Though Golding does not seem to belong to any particular “school” or movement of fiction writers who wrote at the height of Cold War and its aftermath per se, he is a staple in high school, college, and university curricula all over the globe. His magnum opus, Lord of the Flies (1954), transformed him into a writer who commands worldwide attention. In the book he attacked the belief in any stable notions of civilization, society, and culture, and was keen to show the innate depravity of the human spirit. His trilogy To the Ends of the Earth, which comprises Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989), further explores his themes of the civilizing process and class consciousness, while the travelogue An Egyptian Journal (1985) shows his fascination for the ancient land and his journey there after he won the Nobel Prize in 1983. His famous quote about humanity, “Man produces evil as a bee produces honey,” speaks of his disbelief in the progress and the health of modern civilization and any stable notions of human progress. His Nobel Prize citation stated it was given “for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in a world of today,” thus summarizing his lifelong mission as a writer. Golding’s themes are class consciousness, human society (particularly what happens to it in isolation), modern and postmodern trauma with respect to human dreams and aspirations, and, lastly, the entire notion of “civilization” itself. His fiction has been analyzed with recourse to anthropology, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, narratology, trauma studies, and queer scholarship. Critical commentary on Golding continues to grow, especially around LOTF, due to its continued relevance owing to themes of violence, totalitarianism, queer studies, and its apocalyptic vision. It should be stressed, however, that compared to LOTF, his only play, The Brass Butterfly (1958), his Poems (1934) and his other nonfiction, such as A Moving Target (1982) and The Hot Gates (1965), the three short narratives in The Scorpion God (1971), and even his posthumous The Double Tongue (1995), have received scant attention. Though the themes of the essential drama of human conflict played against the backdrop of morality, human choice, and postmodern trauma that remain foundational to human existence might be applied to any 20thcentury writer, they are particularly germane to Golding’s works.

“But man is not made for defeat”: insights into Ernest Hemingway’s dementia

ABSTRACT Ernest Hemingway is widely regarded as one of the greatest fiction writers of all time. During his life, he demonstrated several signs of psychological suffering with gradual worsening and presentation of cognitive issues over his late years. Some of his symptoms and the course of his disease suggest that he might have suffered from an organic neurodegenerative condition that contributed to his decline, which culminated in his suicide in 1961. In this historical note, we discuss diagnostic hypotheses compatible with Hemingway’s illness, in light of biographical reports.

گل بنگلزئی نا افسانہ غاتا کتاب، دڑد آتا گواچی؛ نا جاچ اس

When the industrial revolution and progressive tendencies in the nineteenth century influenced every sphere of life, literature could also not escape such trends. At that time, fiction (short story) was introduced as a new genre in literary world and soon it managed to generate a distinction. Like the other languages ​​of the world, fiction writers of Brahui literature also effectively adopted this genre. Among the pioneer Brahui fiction writers, the name of Gul Bangulzai is also well known who initiated the fiction writing. The effects of the progressive literary movement can be seen in his fiction writings. Gul Bangulzai in his book of fiction, Darhd ata Guachi, centralized the topic on the problems of ordinary individuals and lower class of the region. The book was first published in 1984, thus, standing the second book in Brahui literature after Dr. Taj Raisani's book, Anjeer na Phul. In, Darhd ata Guachi, Gul Bangulzai mainly reflected the problems of village life in a unique manner. Gul Bangulzai skillfully identified the problems of farmers, laborers, women, shepherds, and gypsies. Additionally, the themes also include poverty, starvation, the hardships of weather, cruelties of higher class, the culture and traditions of people of Baluchistan, and their mentality. The fiction also depicted the stunning natural landscapes of this region. In the fictions of Gul Bangulzai frustration, deprivation, helplessness, cruelties, and poverty are observable. However, ultimately, the message it conveys that after the dark night there is a dawn of new morning and hope which is another distinguished beauty of the fictions of Gul Bangulzai, bestows him a unique status in Brahui literature wherein most fictions revolves around the complications of village life.

Words of Turkish Origin in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien is undoubtedly one of the most widely read epic fiction writers, translated into almost forty world languages. His works describe the entire history of an imaginary world, from the very beginning of its creation until the creation of man and are imbued with a constant struggle between good and evil. On the opposite sides, there are different races of humanoid creatures, among which are: elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, trolls, etc. They all have elaborate genealogies and cultural characteristics. The extremely rich philological education of the author himself contributed to that. The connections between Tolkien’s work and Nordic myths have been shown in detail in science so far. This is most obvious when choosing mythological symbols and names. The author even created an elven language inspired by the Finnish language, for which he used runic alphabet. However, the names of the places where orcs, goblins and other servants of evil live, as well as their personal names, were not created after the example of elves. According to their phonetic characteristics, these names are significantly different from elven and human ones. In this paper, attention will be focused on such names, considering that they possess phonetic and semantic characteristics of the Turkish language, especially its older variants, and that they carry certain meanings that still exist in the modern Turkish language.

FEMSLASH FANFICTION AND LESBIANISM: EFFORTS TO EMPOWER AND EXPRESS ASIAN AMERICAN WOMAN SEXUALITY

The existence of fan fiction nowadays shows more progressive development especially in this digital era when people does not only use internet for communicating and socializing across time and space but they also show their creativity, one of them is by writing a fan fiction. By writing fan fiction in online platforms, people get the opportunity to express their interests and their identities. This opportunity is also obtained by minority groups such as LGBTQ+ where they can express their identity through fan fiction. LGBTQ+ community utilizes online platform as the tool that brings benefit for them. In this case, writing fan fiction in online platforms allows people to create the preferable representation of minority groups and empower them as the part of LGBTQ+ community. This phenomenon can be seen through a website named Asianfanfics.com which shows an increasing number of fan fictions especially the ones with lesbian related tags such as girl x girl, lesbian, and femslash. Particularly, through the femslash subgenre, people use fan fiction to question the heteronormativity. Regarding to this phenomenon, an interview was conducted by choosing three Asian American fan fiction writers from Asianfanfics.com as the interviewees. Furthermore, by using gender theory and intersectionality, this article focuses on how fan fiction becomes a safe space to express their sexual identities and how lesbian relationship is viewed by Asian families.

Reproduction of encrypted messages in fiction from English into Russian

This article examines cases where translators are confronted with messagesm whose meaning is obscured by a simple cipher. Russian translators had to overcome certain difficulties while translating certain passages in the works of British (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie) and American (Edgar Allan Poe, Dan Brown) fiction writers. Substitution code (―The Gold-Bug‖, ―The Adventure of the Dancing Men‖), anagrams (―The da Vinci Code‖), as well as different kinds of text steganography (―The Gloria Scott‖, ―The Four Suspects‖) can be used to encrypt the information. Each case is illustrated with two examples. The translator has to depict not only the very process of deciphering a message, but also render its cryptic nature with the means of a target language (Russian). We show, that in half of the cases it is a mere translation of the deciphered text. It is a simpler way, because there is no need to create an analogue thereof. The grand purpose, however, remains unachieved. In two instances there were multiple translations of the same text (6 of ―The Gold-Bug‖ by E.A Poe and 9 of ―The Four Suspects‖ by A. Christie). This phenomenon can be explained not only by the popularity of the stories, but by the relatively small circulation of certain editions. We have undertaken a comparative analysis of these translations and have revealed discrepancies, concerning more and less significant translation units and, in some cases minor errors.

What can science fiction tell us about the future of artificial intelligence policy?

This paper addresses the gap between familiar popular narratives describing Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as the trope of the killer robot, and the realistic near-future implications of machine intelligence and automation for technology policy and society. The authors conducted a series of interviews with technologists, science fiction writers, and other experts, as well as a workshop, to identify a set of key themes relevant to the near future of AI. In parallel, they led the analysis of almost 100 recent works of science fiction stories with AI themes to develop a preliminary taxonomy of AI in science fiction. These activities informed the commissioning of six original works of science fiction and non-fiction response essays on the themes of “intelligence” and “justice” that were published as part of the Slate Future Tense Fiction series in 2019 and 2020. Our findings indicate that artificial intelligence remains deeply ambiguous both in the policy and cultural contexts: we struggle to define the boundaries and the agency of machine intelligence, and consequently find it difficult to govern or interact with such systems. However, our findings also suggest more productive avenues of inquiry and framing that could foster both better policy and better narratives around AI.

Text mining, Hermione Granger, and fan fiction: What's in a name?

When fans rewrite characters, how do they engage that character's identity and the social constructions around it? Fan fiction writers resist, replicate, and create oppressive social systems by changing characters between published and fan texts. As such, fan studies scholars have long been interested in how fans construct characters, an interest that has often been paired with readings of race, gender, and sexuality. Digital humanities can help confirm and nuance extant fan studies scholarship around specific characters popular in fan fiction. We used Word2Vec software to mine the text of 450 pieces of fan fiction based on J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. By focusing on the depiction of Hermione Granger in both Rowling's novels and Harry Potter fan fiction, we tested how text mining character names can reveal properties closely tied to a specific character through the relationships between the target name and other characters. Analysis via Word2Vec found that "Hermione" is used grammatically and contextually differently in the books (in which she is most like Harry and Ron) than in our fan fiction corpus (in which she is most like other girls/women). This difference suggests that these fans have a specific reading of Hermione that is communally understood even if Rowling's diction offers a different reading.

Developing the Conceptual Foundations for the Science of Penitentiary (Prison) Law — Prison Studies — as an Independent Branch of Russian Criminal Law (Second Half of the XIX — Beginning of the XX Century)

The authors analyze the historical experience of the emergence and development of the science of penitentiary (prison) law — prison studies — as an independent branch of Russian criminal law that was formed in the second half of the 19th — beginning of the 20th centuries. They pay special attention to the institutionalization of the punishment of incarceration whose theoretical foundation was laid by outstanding representatives of Russian pre-revolutionary prison studies. In this historical period, famous legal scholars, practitioners, public figures, political and fiction writers studied problems of the organization and functioning of the Russian prison service, they offered suggestions on its optimization, on improving the effectiveness of its functioning regarding the implementation of the basic principles of punishment for persons who committed illegal actions. It is noted that in the history of Russian criminal law, the institute of punishment was studied by many representatives of legal science and practice who were not only outstanding scholars, but also highly effective organizers of prison work. However even today, in the process of establishing a civilized, humane, international law- and norm-based penitentiary system in Russia, there is an acute lack of complex research which would offer a comprehensive description and characteristic of the contemporary science of penitentiary law that became unofficially known as prison studies in the second half of the 19th — first half of the 20th centuries. Taking into account the historical past of our country, it is evident that a complex approach to researching the fundamental principles of the punishment of incarceration contributes to the further development of Russia legal science, to the objective assessment of the role and place of penitentiary institutions in the system of especially authorized state bodies that possess an exclusive right to counteracting crime. The studied empirical materials allowed the authors to conclude that it is necessary to analyze and widely use this rich historical legacy, which would help contemporary legal research and practice gain new knowledge in a dynamic and consistent way.