The Double-Headed Arrow of Trauma: The Morally Traumatised Perpetrator in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow

Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow (1991) gave rise to much controversy when it came out, for this novella revolves around a traumatised Nazi doctor exiled in the US whose life is narrated in a disorienting reverse chronology by what would seem to be his own dissociated conscience. Despite the abundant academic publications on this experimental narrative, such as those that read it as a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) piece of fiction, the origin of the protagonist’s damaged psyche and the diverse symptoms he suffers from have not yet been explored from the viewpoint of perpetrator trauma, a moral-related syndrome distinct from PTSD that affects victimisers haunted by remorse. Drawing on trauma theory and the recently developed concepts of perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS) and moral injury, this article aims to contribute to the scholarly conversation on Amis’s novella by arguing that its narrative voice, backwards temporality, intertextuality and recurrent motifs perform the perpetrator/protagonist’s moral-based trauma provoked by an acute sense of shameful guilt and the fear of being discovered. The article concludes by suggesting that, through this staggering work, Amis gives readers not only an opportunity to actively remember and reflect on the Nazi genocide but also an insight into trauma from an unusual but necessary perspective.

The Historical and Psychological Significance of the Unorganized Games of New Zealand Primary School Children

<p>In the Spring of 1948 while teaching at a primary school, I observed a small group of girls playing a game called "Tip the Finger". During the game one of the players chanted the following rhyme: "Draw a snake upon your back And this is the way it went North, South, East, West, Who tipped your finger?" I recognized immediately and with some surprise that this rhyme contained elements which were not invented by the children and were probably of some antiquity. I knew, for example, though only in a vague and unlearned manner, that the four pattern of the North, South, East and West and the Snake symbolism were recurrent motifs in mythology and folklore. I was aware also that there did not exits any specialized attempt to explain the part that games of this nature played in the lives of the players.</p>

The Historical and Psychological Significance of the Unorganized Games of New Zealand Primary School Children

<p>In the Spring of 1948 while teaching at a primary school, I observed a small group of girls playing a game called "Tip the Finger". During the game one of the players chanted the following rhyme: "Draw a snake upon your back And this is the way it went North, South, East, West, Who tipped your finger?" I recognized immediately and with some surprise that this rhyme contained elements which were not invented by the children and were probably of some antiquity. I knew, for example, though only in a vague and unlearned manner, that the four pattern of the North, South, East and West and the Snake symbolism were recurrent motifs in mythology and folklore. I was aware also that there did not exits any specialized attempt to explain the part that games of this nature played in the lives of the players.</p>

The Poetics of Mysticism in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s Prose

We often find the Soviet past at the core of Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s works, and most critics agree that the description of everyday life and historicity are fundamental principles of her prose. Nonetheless, episodes which record the characters’ mystical experiences play a fairly significant part in Ulitskaya’s works. However, they receive considerably less attention in research on her oeuvre. In this paper, the author focuses on the mystical component of Ulitskaya’s novels and most recent short stories and attempts to define the thematic and structural characteristics of the mystical episodes. In the first part of the paper, the author reviews the constant elements of the characters’ mystical experiences in different works. These experiences are primarily connected with encountering death and are based on the character’s borderline position and the permeability of the frontier between “reality” and the afterworld. This frontier is marked out by recurrent motifs, which symbolically bestow upon death the meaning of transformation (transubstantiation) and revival. From a structural point of view, the delineation of the frontier between the two worlds can be explained, among others, through the characteristics of fantasy. In the second part of the paper, the article examines this aspect of the mystical episodes of Ulitskaya’s works with reference to Tzvetan Todorov’s concept, which defines the fantastical as an interim phenomenon between the “uncanny” and the “miraculous”. The characters’ mystical experiences in the episodes examined here receive a rational explanation (dream, hallucination before dying, psychological disorder), which cancels their fantastic nature. As a result of this duality of a rational explanation and the simultaneous uncertainty about judging the experience, the mystical episodes of Ulitskaya’s works can be categorised as “fantastical and uncanny”. When these episodes are examined from the point of view of the properties of the genuinely mystical texts, we find a “profane mysticism”, primarily as a result of the neutrality of the narrator’s discourse, the blurriness of the difference between what is real and what is supernatural, and the proximity of the narrator’s and the author’s positions.

DEMYTHOLOGISING SOCIAL FICTIONS IN ANGELA CARTER’S REINTERPRETATIONS OF FAIRY TALES

The paper focuses on culture stereotypes embodied in fairy tales and the ways of their representation in twice-told tales. The awareness of pressure of stereotypes in culturally central texts led to their persistent revision by the 20th century women writers. In “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories”, Angela Carter appropriates some of Charles Perrault’s classical plots calling it a “demythologizing business”. The paper studies “social fictions” regarding women scrutinized in Carter’s reinterpretations of Beauty and the Beast plot. As their overall structure analysis testifies, critical approach to conventional culture’s concepts of gender predetermines the mode of narration - “stories about fairy stories” and female character perspective. These allow for the use of metacommentary that centres on economic issues concerning young women. Alongside with their fears, these issues are thematised by foregrounding recurrent motifs and law words. As the research shows, the major female character’s motivations that their flat prototypes lack are exposed; the 1st person narration also absent in the pretext permits the author to articulate criticism of “social fictions” underlying classical fairy tales through the female character’s mouthpiece in feminist terms. The introduction of a foil triggers the female character’s self-discovery and the multiple reinterpretations of the same plot shattering its ruthless changelessness provide new life scenarios for her.

Recurrent motifs in pharmaceutical cocrystals involving glycolic acid: X-ray characterization, Hirshfeld surface analysis and DFT calculations

Crystallization studies on some pyridinecarboxamides and methylated xanthines with glycolic acid as coformer, were carried out on formation of synthons and their influence on stability and solubility, the energy landscape and stabilization energies.

Mirages and phobias of Modernity. The principal subject of O. Slavnikova’s prose

The article analyzes the principles behind the dominant subject of O. Slavnikova’s books, which relies on a flexible scheme built from several recurrent motifs and examines the relationship between talent and fate, the latter understood as an unplanned course of events. Invading the character’s plans, fate forces an ordeal on its victim, often subduing them completely and toying with them capriciously. It acts through a double (often a grotesque copy of the protagonist), destined to ruin the original. In a world of reflections and distorted mirrors, a person is split up into a myriad of invariants, no longer able to distinguish the truth. Slavnikova’s novels also feature a special type of character: an unconventional (gifted/strange) person in imposed circumstances, normally deprived of freedom of choice because life seems to be guided from above, with any action requiring fate’s ‘authorization’. On the whole, the dominant plotline reveals contemporary individual fears and challenges which define the way of life in Slavnikova’s creative universe.

The Armenian Epic “Daredevils of Sassoun” and the Mahābhārata: Similarity of the Ethnographic Substratum

The author summarizes the results of his search for parallels between the Armenian epic “Sasna cṙer” (“Daredevils of Sassoun”) and the Mahābhārata. The comparative study has revealed considerable similarity in the “ethnographic substratum” of both epics, particularly that relating to the archaic social organization mirrored by the epic. The earliest layer of both the Armenian and the Indian epics retains the memory of a rural, largely pastoral society, in which an important role was played by the fraternities of young warriors. In the Armenian epic, this is indicated by recurrent motifs such as the young heroes’ rampage followed by exile, the foundation of their own outpost in the backwoods, young male warriors’ fraternities, their defense of herds, warding off enemy attacks, battle frenzy (a common characteristic of all the Sasun heroes), their immutable tutor and leader (“uncle”) Keri Toros, allusions to orgiastic feasts, premarital freedom enjoyed by boys and girls, etc. In Armenians, these motifs were supported by the existence until the recent times of age sets, described by ethnographers. The comparative study of the Armenian epic reveals its hitherto unnoticed socio-historical aspects. Its wider use for studying other epic traditions (not only Indo-European but also those of other peoples inhabiting the Caucasus and the Eurasian steppes) will contribute to the comparative epic studies.

Comedy, Class, and Nation

This chapter studies the comic novel. If British and Irish culture in the post-war decades underwent some radical social and political upheavals, the novel registered and critiqued these transformations in part through the development of a particular comic mode. Comedy in British and Irish novels published from 1940 to 1973 often turned around the difficult intersection of class and nation. Alongside this overarching attention to class and nation, a number of other recurrent motifs can be traced in the comic novel of the period, such as the representation of cultural commodification, the decline of traditional values, and the emergence of new forms of youth culture. In the context of such widespread changes to the narratives that shaped public life, the comic novel expressed an ironic scepticism concerning the capacity of any cultural narrative to offer an adequate account of contemporary identities.