The Argonautic Expedition: The First Worldwide Naval Epic

The Greek mythology is widely acclaimed as one of the richest treasures of universal epics; the myth of the Argonautic Expedition is one of the most interesting Greek myths. Some scientific authorities hold the opinion that the story of the Argonauts was no more than an inspiring fairy-tale, while others insist, it was a real historical event. They believe that it took place in 1225 BC, and Colchis was a country located in the Caucasus Mountains, near today’s country of Georgia. After a life-long study of more than thirty years using ancient texts and information coming from nautical maps and geography, oceanography and other fields of science, we propose that the real events were quite different from the currently proposed location. The Argonauts, and ancient Greeks at large, wanted to find a sea route to transport silk textiles and new species from the Far East countries to Greece or at least to open the Overland Route leading from the Black Sea to the Far East. In addition, they wanted to transport to Greece silkworm eggs to cultivate silkworms in Greece and produce silk. They started their journey from Iolcus and travelled around the Globe; they reached Colchis, Aeëtes' land that was actually China. They took from China eggs of the wild Silkworm instead of the real one and, sailing through the Indian Ocean, reached Suez, where they were forced to pull their ship across the land to reach Tritonis Lake. From there, they exited into the Mediterranean and arrived at Iolcus, the city from which they started their journey. That journey was made by the Argonauts around 1510 BC. Presently, giving a plethora of bibliographic references, we shall carefully attempt to expose the real events that happened during those ancient times under the mission code name "transporting the Golden Fleece to Greece". We shall say, who did this perilous feat, when and where it happened, what was the real purpose of the Argonauts’ journey, which were the correct routes followed carefully by the Argonauts, what were the countries they crossed or visited and finally what the Argonauts accomplished with that journey.

Hedeggerian Thinking and The Role of Memory in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

Heidegger’s existentialism goes beyond the limits of the human brain’s functioning where thinking is more than what rationality may generate. In his essay “What is called Thinking?” Heidegger mentions that thinking and thanking are related. This relationship is clarified in Margaret Visser’s The Gift of Thanks, where she describes gratitude emphasizing the role of memory in expressing it. On this basis, one explores how thanking is performed in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale examining both memory and thinking interferences in the course of the characters’ thanking. Leontes sudden jealousy makes him loose all positive thoughts imprisoning Hermione, who expects reward having but obeyed his wishes to convince his friend to stay. After the trial scene, Paulina brings Leontes' recollections into life; by enumerating his wife's amiable personality. In act five, the remorseful king blames himself for his ingratitude. One considers this as the recovery of his memory since “both memory and thanks move their being in the thanc” as Heidegger asserts it. The final scene proves one’s assumption, that to thank is to think where Leontes thanks Paulina graciously by marrying her to his most honest servant Camillo. In short, to utter “thankfulessness would be thoughtlessness”

Geo-environmental Factors in Three Persian Folk Stories: A Preliminary Study

Stories mirror the essential function of human cognitive activity. In the present preliminary study, we hypothesized that the mental spaces that make up the stories can be influenced by the environmental conditions of their creators. For this purpose, three stories from three different climatic zones in Iran were selected and a content analysis method was used to analyze their components. Results showed significant differences between the mental spaces of different geographic regions in these three stories. This finding could be considered as a step taken to show the extent to which an individual’s cognition and cognitive processing in general and the creation of meaning in particular, is an extension and representation of embodied experience. We have discussed the subject in the framework of narrative analysis as well as cognitive semantics.

'Controlled by' and 'Controlling with' Sex: Comparing Portrayal of 'Nooran' and 'Haseena Begum' - Two Female Characters of Khushwant Singh's Modern Classic: Train to Pakistan

Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), a quintessential post-colonial novel and a lucid modern classic - is based on the societal conditions and upheavals of during and post-liberation Pak - Indo subcontinent in 1947. Having set the plot of his novel in a fictional Punjabi village 'Mano Majra' - located near to the India - Pakistan border, Singh attempted to analyze how human relationships change in a tormented - apocalyptic society. However, this paper aims at studying how in an overtly masculine society as portrayed in the novel, amidst the fright of religious persecution, sexualized violence, the fallaciousness of mob rule, and formation of new identities via displacement - two of the novel's main female characters - Nooran, who is sexually subjugated within the text, and Haseena Begum, who uses her bodily charm to meet her days ends, stand out differently due to the disparity in their social orientations, and life choices. To explore the posed query, this paper will use Virginia Woolf's ideas from -"Professions for Women" (1942) an article apparently archaic today, but the ideas posited in it were very much contemporary to the novel's setting, as well as Julia Kristeva's apparently contemporary ideas in - "Woman Can Never Be Defined" (1974), where these critics talked about women's sexuality, their professions, their privileged relationship with father/paternal figure of their family, and how all these lead them to abidance towards prejudiced masculine norms set by the society.

The Unemployed Main Character in the Fiction of Kunut Hamsun and Najeeb Mahfouz: A Comparative Study in the Light of Sustainable Development

The Norwegian novelist Kunut Hamsun published his novel Hunger in 1921. The novel was translated into English by George Egerton. In this novel, Hamsun introduces the character of Andereas Tangen, a journalist who has a good life but starts to lose his living, and his essays begin to be refused. He becomes unemployed and suffers poverty, hunger, and homelessness for some time. By the end of the novel, he finds a job on a ship that is sailing from his town Christiania to fetch coal. During the 1930s the Egyptian novelist and short story writer Nageeb Mahfouz wrote his collection of short stories (Hams Eel- Gnoon) The Whisper of Madness. Among this collection, he published his short story (Al- Goo) The Hunger. In this short story, the main character, Ibrahim Hanafy has been working in a factory until he cuts his arm in an accident and loses his job. He becomes unemployed and he, with his family, suffers hunger and many social and psychological difficulties. He hates his life, tries to commit suicide but is saved coincidently by the son of the factory's owner. The man promises Ibrahim to find him a job. This paper aims to show that the unemployed main character in Hamsun's and Mahfouz's works is unable either to love a partner or to have a friend and if he is married, he is unable to keep his marriage relation. Another aim of the paper is to shed light on the negative relations of the unemployed character on one side with his god and with the government of his country on the other side. The third aim of the paper is to emphasize that unemployment, in Hamsun's and Mahfouz's works, leads the once good character to try to commit suicide. Thus the paper comes into three parts: the first part deals with Tangen’s failure to have a love relation or enjoy a friendship. This part also tackles Hanafy’s disability to protect his love for his wife. The second part introduces Tangen’s criticism of his god and of the government in his country. In the third part, the paper discusses the once good characters, becoming unemployed, thinking of death as a solution, and may try to commit suicide. The paper depends on the theory of needs' priority and the method of social and psychological analysis in tackling its topic.

The Postmodern Multi-Layered Narrative of Existential Feminist Subjectivity: The Case of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace

Postmodern fiction demonstrates a suspicion about the narrative status of history. Arguably, its project is to reveal the illusion of truth in history because of history's reliance on texts. There is no doubt that historical events occur, but their transmutation into “fact” and their transmission to posterity are limited by their narrativization and textualization. In the Afterword to her novel, Alias Grace (1996) – a fictionalized narrative centering on a real-life person embroiled in a double murder in 1843 – Margaret Atwood reveals her interest in this problem with “history”. She tells the reader, “I have of course fictionalized historical events … as did many commentators on this case who claimed to be writing history”. The purpose of this paper is thus to consider Margaret Atwood’s novel, Alias Grace as a postmodern fiction that seeks to reveal the illusion of truth in history through her use of innovatory narrative techniques. Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “double-voiced” is used to examine the permitted, surface-level utterances – and the necessarily conflicting actual narratives – of the two narrators in Atwood’s novel. However, the term is also applied in the broader feminist/theoretical context of the silencing of the female subject more generally. Atwood establishes a fragmented, multiplicity narrative. This arises from the reported and somewhat self-aware observations of the eponymous Grace and a doctor named Simon Jordan. Seemingly, the author’s own authority does not exist. Atwood thus exploits the slippery nature of language that does not have some kind of “truth” imposed upon it. The historical “truth” about Grace Marks is never revealed, not because Atwood is “leaving it to the reader's imagination” but because Atwood plays with the problem of personality as a social construction. Almost invisible as “author”, Atwood nevertheless reveals just how language can be manipulated and made to conform to a certain version of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’. However, in Alias Grace, Atwood also recuperates the voice of a supposedly murderous woman by revising the myth of woman’s silence and subjugation. Because her speaking voices are required to practice “double-voicing” to be heard, through presenting the reader with both voices, Atwood recuperates the moments of existential liberation to be heard from emergent voices.

Comparative Examination of Motifs and the Representation of Identies in Selected Works of Kamau Brathwaite and Helene Johnson

This paper is an attempt to consider the deployment of literary motifs to discuss the representation of identities in the selected works of Kamau Brathwaite and Helene Johnson. The analysis was informed by the need to identify the adherence to the preponderant theme of the quest for identity and the representation of identities in American Literary tradition. This study critically appraised and analyzed the development of the African-American and Caribbean literary traditions within the conscious space of displacement and identity renegotiation. The study revealed that the selected and critically pieces of the writers amplify the similarity or uniformity in the sociohistorical experiences of displacement from the root, search for identity and reinstatement of lost values in the enabling milieus of the writers.

The Problem-Solution Approach to Study Indonesian Literatures in a Global Context

This study was aimed to describe the problems of learning literature and offered the solutions that were expected to overcome the problems of learning Indonesian literature in schools in a global context. This study used a qualitative approach and contextual methods through a literature study. The results of this study indicated that only through continuous efforts the problems of literary learning could be realized as follows: Students were needed to be guided to know literature in a fun way and instill longing. Students read literary works directly, not summaries or reviews. Students were given the freedom to convey various interpretations in discussing literary works. Every opinion or achievement of student work was given an award. The portion of literary appreciation must be prioritized in literary learning. Knowledge of theory, definition and literary history was sufficient to serve as secondary information when discussing literary works. Reading and writing skills were closely related to learning to appreciate literature. Literary appreciation began with reading activities, while literary expression was related to writing literary works. Thus, literacy development through literary learning in the form of reading habits and writing skills in turn was able to form a strong generation and can compete in a global life that was full of challenges.

A Bakhtinian Reading of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness in line with Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. Heart of Darkness is Conrad’s novel written in 1899, in which Marlow narrates the story of the voyage he took part in up the Congo River into the Congo State in Africa. This paper analyses Conrad’s text in relation to Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony to show how Conrad represents the various voices and discourses in the narrative through a dialogic pattern that serves to illustrate the thematic concern of the novel. The paper highlights how the voices and discourses that exist both within Marlow’s discourse as well in the other characters’ discourses work together to formulate Conrad’s stance on imperialism and his critique of its ideological manifestations.

Stylistic Analysis of the Convincing Book Troy Horse and Other Short Stories

Serious Examination of the Use of Language by the Trojan Horse and Other Short Stories is the main objective of this review, which was originally intended to analyze the quality of his artistic work and demonstrate its contribution to literary development. This work aims to serve as a bridge between readers and writers, concentrating on the choice of words and metaphorical methods. The book attempts to examine the strengths and limitations of word use and metaphors, based on the theoretical foundations that have been compiled.