Indigenous Semiotics in “The Transistor” by Shahnaz Bashir: Application of Roland Barthes’ Codes to Kashmiri Narrative

The research focuses on the indigenous critical perspective when applied through semiotics of Barthes’ codes to the Kashmiri narratives. The study briefly reviews indigenous perspective as explained by Professor Jody Byrd and Aileen Moreton-Robinson after giving reference to Heather Harris about indigenous epistemology. This follows linking it to semiotics through Barthes’ codes with their review and association to cultural indigenousness. The research also reviews the Kashmiri narrative tradition and analyses the short story “The Transistor” in the light of this theoretical perspective to show that Kashmiri indigenousness as presented through signs and symbols when interpreted as indigenous semiotics show the specific Kashmiri resistance, conflictual cultural practices, and indigenous sovereignty under paracolonialism. The research, however, falls short of proving how the Kashmiri cultural paradigm shifts under paracolonial presence which requires separate inquiry from another angle.

Aproximación a un Estudio Estilístico de la Fraseología Representada en la Crónica Troyana (Juan de Burgos, 1490)

This article aims to contribute to the knowledge of Medieval Hispanic Phraseology by means of the stylistic analysis of the phraseological units, which are represented in the Crónica troyana (Juan de Burgos, 1490). To achieve this aim, this study is based on the methodological program proposed by Echenique Elizondo (2003), in order to tackle the historical and stylistic analysis of these units. From the selection of two passages referring to amor and to militia in the context of the Matter of Troy, the combinations contained in the Crónica troyana will be analyzed in contrast to the rest of peninsular versions derived from the Historia destructionis Troiae (c. 1287). This is intended to advance the knowledge of the phraseology represented in the narrative tradition of the Matter of Troy in the Hispanic domain.

Amerindian Wayúu Legacy and Garciamarquezian Literary Fable

García Márquez is the only novelist of the so-called Latin American Boom whose origins lie in the rural world. Does this bear on his personal upbringing, and does it project onto his literary fabulation/storytelling? This article attempts to reply in the affirmative to these questions, recognizing the intercultural and regional context whence the author comes and carrying out a perspectivist reading that will compare the highly frequent images of the supernatural in his stories and novels to the hierophantic images of Wayúu-Amerindian narrative tradition—to which the domestic servants who accompanied his childhood in the home of his maternal grandparents in Aracataca belonged. Among the author’s narratives, the first explicit mention of the Wayúu people (the Guajiros) occurs in “Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo.” And his intercultural childhood, which can be read as an autobiographical trait, is noticeable in the character Ulises’s heteroglossia in “Eréndira,” in the Buendía children in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and in Sierva María in Of Love and Other Demons. The article argues that the intercultural childhood of the novelist is the source of the co-presence of the natural and the supernatural as unfolded in these writings, which had Colombian culture and history almost as their exclusive subjects. To this innovative reinvention of the Colombian nation, the article attributes two larger cultural consequences: first, the subversion of national literary tradition, and second, the change in Colombia’s self-image brought about by its reception.

Egyptian Dystopias of the 21st Century

During the first two decades of the 21st century an increasing amount of narratives termed as Arabic dystopian fiction appeared on the Arabic literary scene, with a greater part authored by Egyptian writers. However, what characterises/marks a work as a dystopia? This paper investigates the dystopian nature of a selection of Egyptian literary works within the frame of the dystopian narrative tradition. The article begins by introducing the features of the traditional literary dystopias as they will be used in the analysis. It then gives a brief overview of the development of the genre in the Arabic literature. The discussion that follows highlights common elements and identifies specific themes in six Egyptian novels selected for the analysis, thereby highlighting differences and similarities between them and the traditional Western dystopias. The article calls for a categorisation of Arabic dystopian narrative that takes into consideration social, political, historical and cultural factors specific for the Arabic in general, and Egyptian in particular, literary field. Keywords: Arabic literature, dystopia, dystopian literature, contemporary literature, Egypt, fiction, speculative fiction.

Cicero’s writings as learning texts for humanities students: from Augustus Wilkins to Cicero Digitalis

The heritage of the ancient Roman politician, orator and thinker Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC), is considered as a set of texts that over centuries have been included in the curricula for humanities students, significantly changing the narrative tradition and detecting a way of understanding what is related to humanities. The key questions for the authors is the following: how and for what purposes was Cicero’s heritage presented to humanities students in educational texts in the first two decades of the 20th and 21st centuries? At the beginning of last century, scholars’ attention to Cicero was largely due to Augustus Samuel Wilkins (1843–1905), Paul Monroe (1869–1947) and his disciple Ellwood Cubberley (1868-1941). Many textbooks compiled by P. Monroe, A.S. Wilkins and E. Cubberley were published one after another. Thanks to the educational books of P. Monroe, A.S. Wilkins and E. Cubberley, different approaches to presenting Cicero's works for educational purposes were developed. It is these approaches that were reflected in educational books for humanists a century later. In Russian textbooks, sourcebooks, and anthologies on history of pedagogy, Cicero was mostly a figure of omission not only in the first decades, but throughout the entire 20th century. At the beginning of the 21st century, many learning books for humanities students appeared. Their authors and compilers consider Cicero as an author who left a conceptual description of pedagogical reality (a detailed description of educational process) and chose a narrative description (description of what happened through the eyes of those who take part in it). We have to regret that the Russian domestic tradition of including Cicero's heritage in the content of humanitarian education has hardly undergone any changes over a century: fragments of his works continue to be presented on a small scale, are practically not grouped according to key issues, and rarely accompanied by pedagogical commentaries. The question of why some texts were selected while others were not, can be asked to every author and compiler who included Cicero's texts in their books for humanities students. The search for answers to this “eternal question” can be associated both with the flexibility of the humanitarian curriculum, and with the personal preferences of the authors and compilers of learning books.

Official and Real Biographies in Context of Soviet Tradition of Non-Material Incentives for Labor during Great Patriotic War

The question of the use of the official labor biography in the 30—40s of the twentieth century as a means of instilling a sacred attitude to work in a Soviet person, a method of non-material stimulation of the production process is considered. The relevance of the study is due to the interest in biography in the context of the history of labor, in the authors’ appeal to the problem of forming a new attitude to work during the period of industrialization and the years of the Great Patriotic War. Attention is paid to the role of periodicals. The results of a comparative analysis of the official and real biography, recovered from the materials of the personal file, are presented. The question is raised about the tasks of the official biography of the Hero of Socialist Labor in this period. The novelty of the research is seen in the attraction of unpublished data from the production archive of the Gorky Railway, in the reconstruction of real biographical data. The authors compare the official and real biographies. The possibility of using heroic biography as a method of non-material stimulation of labor has been proved. The author’s reconstruction of the biography of Ivan Georgievich Makarov — Hero of Socialist Labor is presented. The experience of analytical research of documentary historical sources and their comparison with the narrative tradition is described.

Counter-Narrative Tradition

The term “counter narrative” refers to a narrative that takes on meaning through its relation with one or more other narratives. While this relation is not necessarily oppositional, it involves a stance toward some other narrative(s), and it is this aspect of stance, or position, that distinguishes counter narrative from other forms of intertextuality. The article explained, “counter‐narratives only make sense in relation to something else, that which they are countering counter narratives has been seen as a means of opposing or resisting socially and culturally informed master narratives (about, for example, skin colour, ethnicity, and food culture), which are often normative or oppressive, or exclude perspectives or experiences that diverge from those conveyed through master narratives. In this sense, counter narratives play a role in storytellers positioning themselves against, or critiquing, the themes and ideologies of master narratives. Used in this way, “counter narratives” refer to “the stories which people tell and live which offer resistance, either implicitly or explicitly, to dominant cultural narratives” This articles explains the counter narratives on perception of black skin colour and food culture. Both the concepts of counter-culture and counter-narrative tradition are new in the folklore field of Tamil traction.