Devī Māhātmya

The Sanskrit narrative text Devī Māhātmya—“The greatness of the Goddess” (also known as Durgā Saptaśatī and Caṇḍī Pāṭha, henceforth DM)—extols the tripartite triumphs of the all-powerful Goddess (Devī, Ambikā, Caṇḍikā, Durgā) over the universe-imperiling demons. Devī manifests for the protection of the gods, and cosmic order as a whole, in times of dire need. These exploits of this formidable feminine power constitute the first articulation of a Great Goddess within the Indian subcontinent. While the DM equates supreme reality with the feminine Hindu concepts of maya (illusion, magic), śakti (power, force, energy), and prakṛti (material nature), it posits no systematic theory. As only narrative can, the DM instead masterfully interweaves these philosophical strands, along with preexisting feminine faces within the Vedic fold, into the figure of a feminine divine whose greatness surpasses that of the Vedic pantheon, and even that of the cosmic Trimurti comprised of the “Great Gods” Brahma, Vishnu [Skt. Viṣṇu], and Shiva [Skt. Śiva]. The DM serves not only to exalt the Goddess as supreme, but also celebrates her paradoxical nature: she is both one and many, immanent and transcendent, liminal and central, gentle and fierce, motherly and martial. Yet there is no ambiguity in her status as all-powerful. She is utterly invincible. While power is something the gods possess, power is something the Goddess is. It is she, then, who ultimately creates, preserves, and destroys the universe and all beings within it. Variously dated between the 4th and 8th century ce, the DM finds a home as part of the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa, comprising chapters 81–93 thereof. Far from a textual relic, the DM is recited as liturgy in goddess temples, during individual daily spiritual practice, and at temples and homes especially during the autumnal navaratra (“nine nights”) Hindu Goddess festival, commonly known as Durgā Pūjā. The DM independently circulates not only within this rich liturgic life, but as a standalone mythological, philosophical, and theological authority on the Hindu Goddess. In this respect, it is not dissimilar from the Bhagavad Gita’s circulation independent of the Mahābhārata in which it is couched. The DM’s recitation is considered beneficial for listeners and reciters alike. As exemplified and overtly stated in the DM, engaging the glories of the Goddess invariably secure her protection and benediction.

Liberal Feminism: Emphasizing Individualism and Equal Rights in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You

Liberal feminism is the emerging mainstream feminism that spotlights gender inequality and women’s liberation within the context of liberal democracy. The aim of the study focuses on the perspectives of liberal feminism using prominent ideas of liberal thinkers in Meena Kandasamy’s award-winning novel When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017). The methodology of the study includes concepts of liberal feminism in the text, and it is substantiated and explored using the ideologies of notable liberal thinkers such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and The Subjection of Women. The protagonist’s transition from a submissive to a self-liberated persona strengthens the novel’s credibility as a liberal feminist text. The paper also attempts to show that the concepts of liberal feminism very well appear in the selected text.

The Dance of Aurora

This chapter suggests that embodied ritual practices of the feminine—involving media, art, psycho-spiritual technologies, and techniques of the occult—manifest transmedial auric fields that weave the dance of Aurora, the dance of awakening of the Goddess of Light. These fields resonate with the universal heart vibe, channeling the healing energies of the cosmic Mother to the physical, the digital, the mental, and the tech-noetic. Specific examples from the work of three women are presented, namely Dr. Lila Moore, Vedava (the author of this chapter) and Sedona Soulfire. These modern creatrixes actualize their media priestess function by fusing consciousness and the imaginative with the ancient and the futuristic, in the convergence of art, body, technology, and 21st century feminine spirituality.

Leader or Leaderess? Consequences of Using Feminatives for the Perception of Leadership

According to the Implicit Leadership Theory, leadership roles are assigned in the process of social construction and depend upon the level of congruence with the cognitive representation of a leader. Previous studies show that this cognitive representation is much more likely to involve a leader being a male rather than a female. The article presents the results of an experiment aimed at tentatively verifying whether the use of the feminine forms could increase the cognitive availability of the representation of a woman as a leader. In the experiment, 135 teams (N = 307 respondents) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: 1) generic instruction (without the use of feminatives, “Please, draw a leader”), 2) inclusive instruction (using feminatives, “Please, draw a leader/leaderess”). The results showed a significant interaction between the experimental manipulation and the proportion of women in the team. The use of feminine forms increased the percentage of females drawn as leaders only in teams with a high female-to-male ratio.

Women with Split Identity; A Literary Analysis based on the selected Female Portrayals in Literature

Female characters in Literature are portrayed through diverse dimensions such as heroic figures, objects of desire, rebellious individuals, icons of female liberation and individuals with fragmented identities. Those potrayals reflect the the feminine self which is surrounded by the awareness of her negated existence, stereotyped images of womanhood, the sense of lack of belonging, and repressed individuality. Thus the study focuses on analyzing the female literary portrayals like ‘Nora Helmer’in ‘The Dolls House’ by Henric Ibsen, ‘Adela’ in ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ by Federico Garcia Lorca and ‘Emma Bovary’ in ‘Madame Bovary’ by Gustave Flaubert, ‘Maggie Tulliver’ in The Mill On the Floss by George Eliot and ‘Kattrin’ in Mother courage and Her children by Bertolt Brecht with the objective of bringing to the surface the socially determined fatal end and the symbolic disappearance of the feminine figure. In analyzing and elaborating the perspectives which are discussed within the research paper the theoretical perspectives of Simon de Beauvoir (‘The second sex’), Sigmund Freud, (‘Civilization and its Discontents’,)and Slavoj Zizek, (‘Looking Awry’) are referred with a thorough consideration. Consequently the woman figure whose identity is negated and given less vitality is identified as an inferior and vulnerable social figure within the existing social order and thus the literary characters like Adela, Nora, Emma, and Maggie Tulliver portray the antagonism between the social principle of ‘Repression’ and the feminine ‘ Liberation’. In contrast to the characters such as Adela, Emma and Nora who negate the social other in pursuing their determined routes towards the self-satisfaction, the feminine portrayals like Kattrin and Maggie Tulliver adopt the self-denial and renunciation of desires for the betterment of the social other. Thus the characters like Nora, Emma and Adela become capable of gratifying their intense abomination towards the social order while Kattrin and Maggie Tulliver with their self-sacrifice and altruistic motives achieve a serene satisfaction. In that sense it can be identified that their self-annihilation leaves behind a symbol of identity rather than nihilistic reality implying a more psychological vitality without being just a physical deterioration.

Existential and Psychological Problems of Aging: The Perspective of Ukrainian Lyrics’ Art Representation

Purpose. Aging is intricate process of self-transformation in view of involution of body, loss of sexual attractiveness, but at the same time, old age is a time for reconsideration of self-existence in time and in the world within coherence of life sense targets and their (successful) realization. Unique individual experience of growing old implemented in Ukrainian literature (and lyrics) can complete the data received by gerontology. Moreover gender approach in literary gerontology highlights masculine / feminine phenotypical features of internal reverberating of aging. Theoretical basis. To inquire into existential and psychological problems of aging exemplified in the twentieth-century Ukrainian Lyrics it is seems to be the most effective to employ philosophical (A. Anhelova, V. Demidov, T. Dziuba, K. Pigrov, S. Lishaev, O. Khrystenko and others) and psychological (O. Berezina, S. Hamilton, V. Savchyn, Y. Sapogova and others) approaches in gerontology, as well as feministic studies on elder female body discrimination, in particular in literature (K. Woodward, J. King). Originality. This research paves the way to the development of gender and literary dimensions in Ukrainian gerontology and anthropology in general. Some of the existential and psychological problems of aging (as anxiety of body involution and decline of strength, as well as finding the compensatory pleasure in wisdom and spiritual treasures) are revealed on the material of 20th-century Ukrainian poetry (N. Livytska-Kholodna, B. Lepkyi, M. Zerov, Yurii Klen, Y. Malaniuk, Y. Tarnawsky, I. Zhylenko, S. Yovenko and others). The individual lyric experience of aging in different gender moods is anchored mostly in psychic, mental, sense-life strategies. Conclusions. Among the feminine strategies of aging self-reception there are observation of own elder body with anxiety and fear, its "invisibility", deepened feelings of loneliness, self-estrangement, but also finding the sense of life and soul harmony in own family, offspring. Masculine self-reception of aging deals with ideal spiritual model of Wise old man – more abstract than personal; masculine anxiety is caused by physical bodily declining, not attractiveness, but strength and power loosing.

La donna in Africa e il suo ruolo educativo in seno alla famiglia: un possibile baluardo contro la radicalizzazione dei più giovani? Il caso della regione sahelo-sahariana

Starting from the relationship, conjugated to the feminine, “family education-prevention of youth radicalism” and based on the research I have been conducting for ten years in countries such as Mali, Senegal and the Republic of Guinea, I intend to proceed with a speech of an anthropological nature with the aim of offering some paths of comparison for those who work at a pedagogical level, within realities marked by cultural hybridization and immigration.

Spigolature stesicoree II Osservazioni critico-esegetiche su alcuni frammenti

The paper concerns some textual and exegetical problems in Stesichorean fragments. In fr. 1 ἔν τινι πέτρᾳ, ὡς is to be read for transmitted ἔν τινι πετραίῳ; the phrase probably refers to Amycus’ punishment, who according to some textual and iconographic sources was bound by Pollux to a tree or rock; in fr. 2a Ποδάργη means ‘swift-footed’ rather than ‘white-footed’, as shown by comparison with the proper nouns Ὠκυπόδη and Ἀελλόπους. In fr. 85 κούραις should be preferred to κόραις/κόρας, because it is closer to epic diction; in fr. 89 the silver-like basin implies a hospitality scene, but probably in a humble social context. In fr. 100.7 χρυσ[ολύρα, even if the feminine of the adjective is never used elsewhere, may be a suitable supplement; at v. 9 καλλιρόου (Σιμόεντος) is better than καλλιρόους (δίνας). At fr. inc. 270a one might restore τε]ύ̣-/ χεσι λαμπομέν[α τό]θ’. Finally, at fr. inc. 303a πυλαμάχε transmitted by Athenaeus may be right and seems to be echoed in the hapax θυραμάχος found in Pratinas.

O lugar da literatura monástica feminina no cânone Barroco português

Women’s Monastic Writing within the Portuguese Baroque Canon. This article aims to approach Portuguese female monastic literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in terms of its relationship with the Baroque literary canon. Shaped at the border that separates voice and silence, the visible and the spiritual universe, the cult of moderation and the desire to assert, this literature outlined a new type of discourse, which hinted at the intense conflict between suppression and authority, which, in turn, gave rise to a permanent dialogue between the feminine ethos, the controversial character of the Baroque and the always oscillating essence of the canon. We will show, that, during the last centuries, the works of some famous female writers, such as Sóror Maria do Céu, Sóror Violante do Céu and Sóror Madalena da Glória, or of other female authors who remained in the shadows, have been differently and unequally absorbed by literary critics and historians and by great anthologists. Their writings have not ceased to be represented as preferential places of dispute, of the uninterrupted dialogue between silence and affirmation, between center and margin, which generally regulates the literary canon. Keywords: monastic, literature, feminine, canon, Baroque