21(Im)Possible New Beginnings in Ali Smith’s “Spring”

Ali Smith’s novel depicts the gloomy state of post-Brexit England by focusing on the lives of two main characters: Richard and Brittany. Smith intersects the paths of the two depressed and depressing characters to that of Florence, a pure and almost magical child, insisting on the idea that opportunities of new beginnings are constantly granted to people, as long as they are willing to change. Far from being a fairy tale, “Spring” is a serious novel about harsh realities, thus, not all the characters receive a happy ending. However, Ali Smith’s novel encourages us that as we take advantage of the chances given and we accept the constancy of change, we are the ones that actually become a fairy story.

Tall tales

Making up a story orally can sometimes be more powerful than reading out loud from a book. Claire Hewson suggests ways to improvise on a classic fairy story and encourage children to create and tell their own exciting narratives.

A Case-based Lesson: John R. R. Tolkien “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again”

The article investigates the case-technology as a means of increasing students’ motivation for reading, the significance of innovative method used in Literature Courses and the importance of the personality of the teacher are determined. The author analyzes this method, its structure, the terms of application, the necessary stages, considers those skills and abilities that are actualized with its help in the process of studying the teaching material, emphasizes that they are universal, thus, should be applied in all spheres of life, including professional. For solving these tasks an attempt is made to create a series of cases on the topic “The Life and Works of J. R. R. Tolkien. “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again”. The proposed cases include different types and forms of work in the classroom: the preparation of a presentation, the public speech, a route, an excursion, a project, a review of a given problem, etc. The objective of this work is to interest students, to reveal their creative potential, to teach them to think, to reason, to draw conclusions, to compare information, and, what is a priority, to involve them in reading fiction. The class based on the case study method is of interest to school teachers and university lecturers. The material can be used not only directly in the classroom in literature classes, but also at extracurricular activities, that will help to diversify the educational process and achieve the necessary educational results. Keywords: reading, case-technology, case, methodology, J. R. R. Tolkien, fairy-story, fantasy

Peirce’s diagrammatic reasoning and the cinema: Image, diagram, and narrative in The Shape of Water

This article aims to examine the relationship between image and narrative by means of Peirce’s first trichotomy of qualisign-sinsign-legisign or, for the purposes of the current argument, image-diagram-metaphor. It is argued that narrative, as an extended metaphor, can be examined in three modes: in the image; schematically, in the imagination; and allegorically or in a thought experiment, through hypothetic interpretation. The article outlines two kinds of diagrammatic reasoning emphasized by Peirce: corollarial deduction in which the image is ‘literally seen’ and the reasoning steps are manifest in its conclusion; and theorematic deduction where the conclusion in a diagram is subject to a hypothesis which transforms the image into something new. Demonstrating the breadth of diagrammatic reasoning with reference to the 2018 film, The Shape of Water, the article seeks to explore how allegory and diagram are mutually cooperative, based on three ontological modes: the expressive, the cognitive, and the symbolic. Its primary focus, then, is not so much on the story events of the narrative, as the way that they are visualized and characterized as the fairy story unfolds. It is suggested that the interpreting activity involved in allegory and diagram ties interpretation to metacognition, ultimately (re)recognizing the image in The Shape of Water in an attempt to ascertain the meaning of love.

You’re an Orphan When Science Fiction Raises You

In Among Others, Jo Walton’s fairy story about a science-fiction fan, science fiction as a genre and archive serves as an adoptive parent for Morwenna Markova as much as the extended family who provide the more conventional parenting in the absence of the father who deserted her as an infant and the presence of the mother whose unacknowledged psychiatric condition prevented appropriate caregiving. Laden with allusions to science fictional texts of the nineteen-seventies and earlier, this epistolary novel defines and redefines both family and community, challenging the groups in which we live through the fairies who taught Mor about magic and the texts which offer speculations on alternative mores. This article argues that Mor’s approach to the magical world she inhabits is productively informed and futuristically oriented by her reading in science fiction. Among Others demonstrates a restorative power of agency in the formation of all social and familial groupings, engaging in what Donna J. Haraway has described as a transformation into a Chthulucene period which supports the continuation of kin-communities through a transformation of the outcast. In Among Others, the free play between fantasy and science fiction makes kin-formation an ordinary process thereby radically transforming the social possibilities for orphans and others.

A Fairy in the Age of Prometheus: Chantal Chawaf’s Mélusine des détritus

Melusine is a fairy of French folklore, originating in the Poitou region of western France. She was cursed to metamorphose into a serpent from the waist down every Saturday, but in general is a positive figure, associated with fresh water and forests, the construction of castles and churches, fertility and maternity. Mélusine des détritus is a depressing new take on the fairy story. The Melusine of Chawaf’s novel is a young woman who suffers acutely from the contemporary industrial world in which she lives. She has developed severe asthma from breathing polluted air, she lives in the fear of a meltdown destroying the nuclear power plant near her town and has a vague fear that the human race as we know it will not survive much longer. She symbolizes the disenchantment of the modern world recounted by such contemporary French philosophers as Michel Maffesoli and Pierre Rabhi.

Hearing the Voice of a Shadow Child: Healthy Siblings Experience of Cystic Fibrosis and Other Life-Threatening Conditions

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a chronic, life-threatening disease, similar to other chronic life-disrupting pediatric conditions, and this creates physical and psychosocial problems for parents and the healthy sibling/s of the sick child, who often become sibling carers. It is feared that, despite good intentions, professionals fail to hear the authentic voice of those intimately involved, especially these sibling carers, who can feel they became a “shadow child.” This study is a partnership between an academic and a former CF sibling carer, who wrote a “fairy story” for his children about the Uncle they never knew. It is an effort to hear the “voice of shadow children” who can feel left behind and unseen as families and professionals focus upon their ill sibling.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SUBTEXT OF THE FAIRY STORY «THE LITTLE PRINCE» BY A. DE SAINT-EXUPERY

The timeliness of the fairy story «The Little Prince» by A. de Saint-Exupéry lies in the deep subtextuality of the work, the decoding of which enables readers to learn a complete life philosophy, grasping the true meanings of the work. So, the philosophical subtext of the work is investigated in the paper. The author analyzes in detail the images-symbols (travel image, snake, fox, flower, baobab, desert, well, planet, star, etc.) at different subtext levels, revealing the multiplicity of their interpretations. The review of the sources allows distinguishing a purely biographical approach to the implicit part of the work, but it can be decoded through the prism of the historical context of the time, as well as through philosophical aspects. The plain fantastic plot of “Little Prince” hides the whole life philosophy: one must always distinguish between what is really important and follow it, appreciate friendship and love, be responsible and kind, preserve the child, the purity of his/her soul, the openness of the universe and the fullness of the true.