"New human possibilities" in Patočka's philosophy of literature

Author(s): Erin Plunkett / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2020

This article considers Patočka's phenomenological account of literature in "The Writer's Concern" to defend the idea that literary writing offers a distinctive philosophical contribution. In this text, Patočka gives the writer a special claim on the activity of world disclosure and suggests that literature may offer a glimpse out of the techno-scientific framework that dominates contemporary life. I examine both science and literature as modes of relating to the world, raising questions about the distinctiveness of each and their use of the written word. Finally, I locate the philosophical advantage of literary writing in Patočka's dual claims about literature: that it offers "an individual capturing of life's meaning" and that it presents "the world" as an "undivided" whole.

"Only in Dying Life": Ursula K. Le Guin's Dry Land and Its Cultural Contestations

Author(s): Gabriela Debita / Language(s): English / Issue: 10/2020

In his seminal essay theorizing the concept of heterotopia, “Of Other Spaces”, Michel Foucault insists that his focus is on external spaces. However, given the ability of certain spaces, especially those associated with trauma and torment, to simultaneously be inhabited and inhabit the psyches of their denizens, it stands to reason that some heterotopic spaces are internal as well. One such example is Ursula K. Le Guin’s Dry Land, an inner hellscape which appears throughout her Earthsea series. The Dry Land serves to mirror, invert, and contest not only the world of Earthsea, but also the pervasiveness of Western literary and cultural influences on the genre of fantasy itself. Inspired by classical and Renaissance sources (Homer and Dante) and modernist ones (Rainer Maria Rilke and T. S. Eliot), the Dry Land, a jarring spatial and literary aberration in the context of Earthsea’s Taoist framework, serves to confront both the resistance to the finality of death and the supremacy of the Western literary canon. In doing so, it demonstrates Le Guin’s desire to distance herself from Western canonical influences, while nevertheless highlighting the fact that, given the cyclicity of literary rebellion, she is, in fact, walking in Dante’s and T. S. Eliot’s shoes.

"Quelli che stanno in cima alle scale". Nozioni minime e qualche riflessione su: 1956 e dintorni nella cultura e letteratura polacca

Author(s): Luigi Marinelli / Language(s): Italian / Issue: 2/2008

Credo si possa esser d'accordo sul fatto che i totalitarismi restano tali finché riescono a mantenere il loro appiglio, o meglio forse dire "artiglio", appunto, totale sulle società che controllano.

"TURCI" U SATIRU MATIJE ANTUNA RELKOVIĆA (1732-1798)

Author(s): Ekrem Čaušević / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 47-48/1999

Der kroatische Schriftsteller M. A. Relković wurde in Davor (Slawonien) geboren. Als Sechzehnjahriger trat er in den Militardienst in einem am Fluss Sava stationierten Grenzregiment ein. Da er sich durch Tapferkeit besonders hervorgetan hat, wurde er im Jahre 1778 zum Kapitân befördert. Als Offizier nahm er am Osterreichisch-Preussischen Krieg (1756-1773) teil, in dem er mehrmals verwundet wurde. Mit 54 Jahren tritt er in den Ruhestand und zieht nach Vinkovci, wo er stirbt und beerdigt wird.

"Женитьба" Н. В. Гоголя на болгарской сцене

Author(s): Tatiana Fed / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 2/2019

The article traces a range of performances staging Gogol’s play Marriage in Bulgaria with a special emphasis on the respective translations into Bulgarian. The theory features translation and adaptation mechanisms specifically applied to cultural realia. The staging in the Sofia Theatre is highlighted. The methodology applied belongs to the framework of cross-cultural communication studies and employs cultural-historic and reception approaches.

"Я не враг церкви, а еë друг и уверенный православный": церковная проблематика в публицистике Николая Лескова

Author(s): Marta Łukaszewicz / Language(s): Russian / Publication Year: 2019

The book contains analysis of the way of presenting issues essential for the life of the Orthodox Church in the 19th-century Russia in Nikolai Leskov’s journalistic works. Writer’s literary output is discussed in its historical and social context, against the background of contemporary press discussions. It reveals a bond between his spiritual quest, the emerging modern religiosity and changes taking place in the Church. It also allows to highlight similarities and differences between Leskov and his contemporaries and to trace the evolution of the writer’s views.

(Ne)vidljivi okoliši: problem klimatske (ne)pravde u klimatskoj fikciji

Author(s): Marijeta Bradić / Language(s): Croatian / Publication Year: 0

This paper addresses the problem of representation of climate change in literature, through the prism of environmental and climate justice as movements emerging from certain limitations of climate sciences that are approaching climate change from a political and ethical perspective. The movements of environmental and climate justice are based on the assumption that world’s most politically and economically powerful nations function in a way that enables them to maintain their own high consumption levels while shifting the ecological burdens onto less developed countries. In other words, those who contribute the least to the pollution of the environment will be affected the most by the ecological crisis. In the context of climate change, injustice is manifested within marginalised groups, including women who are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of environmental pollution and ecological catastrophes. Although these movements are politically oriented, they can also be seen as cultural movements focused on the questions of ideology and representation, as shown in contemporary literature and literary criticism (Sze 2002). In this sense, the common place in contemporary theory is that literary texts could be useful for establishing communication between climate science and general public (Ghosh 2016; Mehnert 2016; Trexler 2015). Following this assumption, the text will analyze Helen Simpsons’ Diary of an Interesting Year as an example of how contemporary literary production can effectively present abstract and hardly visible climate issues and thus contribute to climate justice discussions.

1914 И КРАЯТ НА БЪЛГАРСКОТО ВЪЗРАЖДАНЕ:

ЯВОРОВ КАТО КОЛЕКТИВНА МЕТАФОРА

Author(s): Plamen Antov / Language(s): English,Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2016

This article, which may conventionally be classified under the genre philosophy of history, develops two metaphors of high symbolic value. The first is the year 1914, as the start of World War I, the third and last in a se-ries of wars at the start of the 20th century in which Bulgaria was involved. It led teleologically to the year 1919 (Neuilly) which marked the symbolic – therefore absolute – end of the Bulgarian National Revival. The second metaphor is the figure of Yavorov in its his mytho-biographical projection – the poet’s suicide in October 1914 can be seen as a collective metaphor, as a metaphor of a collective ontological loss; but also as an attainment of a qualitatively new state; as the loss of the Revival’s monolithic national aspect and the acquiring of the tragic experience of Modernity and its social fragmentariness.

A „parafrázis eretneksége” és a felismerés között

Adalék Bori Imre Krúdy- és Kosztolányi-monográfiája prózaelemzői módszereinek vizsgálatához

Author(s): Marko Čudić / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2020

More so verbally than in writing, Imre Bori’s prose-poetic research is criticized, sometimes even by his most devoted students, for placing too much focus on the detailed presentation and description of the topic or story of the analysed narratives, which, using a term popular today, can be described as a “spoiler” to those interested in reading Bori’s books before approaching the novels and short stories analysed in them. However, fewer dare to claim that this would consequently be to the detriment of theoretical findings and accurate classification within literary history. The goal of this research is to uncover that this is by no accident, as well as that the reason for this might not be neither in the benevolence of the critics, nor in the indispensable underlying respect expressed for the Professor. One of the main tenants of my research is the so-called “Imre Bori Paradox” which consists of three seemingly conflicting features (especially viewed through the eyes of literary scholars today): exceptional thoroughness in analysis, detailed thematic descriptions, and the occasionaly vexing lack of sources and references. While there is not much to do about the latter, I believe that the former two do not only not exclude one another, but they directly depend on one another and stem from one another. I will attempt to prove this (pre) assumption based on two famous monographs by Imre Bori, his books devoted to the works of Gyula Krúdy and Dezső Kosztolányi.

A Psychoanalytic Reading of Selected Persian Children’s Plays

Author(s): Zeinab Karimi,Bahee Hadaegh / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2020

Once theatre aims at children, who are the citizens and decision makers of the future, it can influence the course of society through the values and worldviews that it promotes. The exceptional capacity of this medium in engaging the audience, along with children’s receptiveness, necessitates a meticulous study of the ideologies embedded in plays. This study unravels how these ideological factors can hamper the theatre’s main purpose which is to encourage the audience to form individual fantasies. Accordingly, Žižek’s theories are drawn upon for their hints on ideology, fantasy, reality, and subjectivity. Taking his psychoanalytic views into account, four Persian plays are examined to determine what ideologies underlie these plays’ motifs and instructions, as well as what may justify their presence in plays. On close inspection, it becomes evident that these plays are loaded with conscious manipulative ideologies which are intended to train homogeneous social members rather than present objective glimpses of real life.

Aesthetics of Form as Social Philosophy: Re-reading Lukács. Introduction to the Issue

Author(s): Andrew Simon Gilbert,Christine Magerski / Language(s): English / Issue: 29/2020

This volume is dedicated to Georg Lukács’ concept of form. The concept itself is understood in the broadest sense as the result of drawing boundaries, which open a framework for communication and social mediation. Form, as Judith Butler aptly remarked with regard to the scope of the term in the work of the early Lukács, is nothing that is added to the expression, but rather it becomes a condition, a sign and the possibility of its subjective and objective truth (Butler 2011). Even more: As Form, according to Lukács, can never be understood outside of its own genesis, the concept becomes the presupposition of a practice of literary and cultural studies which sees itself as the critical reading of the genealogy of forms (Menke 2018). To such a reading, the volume shows, Lukács not only subjected the forms of literature, life and the social, but did so with a degree of lucidity unmatched in literary and cultural studies to this day. If the possibilities of the form-genealogical approach remained largely unfollowed, it was because the problem of form highlighted by Lukács was overshadowed by the dogmatism with which he later tried to solve it.

Afazja Leo Lipskiego: perseweracje, przesunięcia, zblokowania

Author(s): Olga Osińska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2020

The article deals with the similarities between aphasia and trauma with reference to the work of Polish writer, Leo Lipski. In the first, theoretical part the author refers to Israeli scholar Ilit Ferber’s argument proving the existence of clear analogies between Freud’s description of aphasia (to some extent consistent with the contemporary approaches in medicine) and his definition of trauma, which was introduced later. In the second, analytical part of the article the author tackles the problem how Lipski’s aphasic disorders are reflected in the formal structure of his texts and how they became a subject of his fiction. With the foregoing theoretical assumptions, the author argues that while there is no equality between aphasia and trauma, one can find structural similarities in depicting both the latter as well as the former in the text. And so three characteristics of Lipski’s work, determining its uniqueness, have been distinguished, all being specific to both aphasia and trauma. The author refers to them as a) the perseveration, b) the misalignment of language, and c) the blockings of language, and subsequently describes each of them based on the examples of Lipski’s texts.

Afirmacja zmiany. Uwagi o wpływie technologii cyfrowych na literaturoznawstwo

Author(s): Marek Kaźmierczak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2020

In this is the review of Ewa Szczęsna’s book Digital Semiopoetics Kaźmierczak focuses on key themes such as the digital sign, text and discourse. He also refers to the new discipline called “digital semiopoetics”.

Akceptacja, podziw, lęk. Natura w twórczości Franciszka Karpińskiego

Author(s): Tomasz Chachulski / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 0

Franciszek Karpiński in his works refers to almost all meanings of “nature”, which were used in the 18th century: he perceives nature as a constellation of specific traits, as a characteristic of a person or a thing, as the opposition to culture. Karpiński’s poems demonstrate how he uses these terms. Certain patterns emerge from it: nature is the source of self-knowledge, it signifies what is primeval, authentic and true – not beautiful but ethical. Nature is the world reluctant to suffering, the space of sensitivity and harmony. Alienation and evil are the consequence of crossing nature’s boundaries. The beauty of the world (“the book of nature”, “the spectacle of nature”) is admired by the lyrical subject. The categories Karpiński uses when describing the perfection of the world are taken from Denis Diderot’s works; he also uses – through Jacques Delille’s “Gardens” – George Buffon’s “Natural History”, which he himself translated in 1783. In his later works, probably because of his translation of “The Book of Psalms”, Karpiński underlines the unconditioned submission of nature to the Creator. The term “God of nature” is also used in the Psalms (1786) and the Pious Hymns (1792).

ALBANOLOGJIA International Journal of Albanology

Frequency: 2 issues / Country: North Macedonia

ALEVİLİKTE MUHALİF DİL VE SÖYLEM: ALEVÎ TÜRKÜ VE DEYİŞLERİ ÜZERİNE BİR ANALİZ

Author(s): Adem Çaylak,Cansu Kaymal / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 22/2020

Inspired by the Shia movement that defended the rights of the Ahl-al Beyt, Alevism had a political opposition identity as of its birth. Alevism has been seen as “fifth column”, “heterodox”, “heretic”, a “separatist “ religion sect and a “deviation” from the dominant religious understanding and practice by the Ahl-al Sunnah. The trauma created by these policies of marginalization, oppression and cruelty from history to the present day has nurtured a culture of introverted closure and hiding, an outward-looking resistence and opposition. The opposing identity formed was expressed in the folk songs, poems and phrases that are the reflection of the Alevis anthropological, sociological and culturel life styles. This article aims to reveal the formation of social and political opposition in Alevi political culture by analyzing the opposing language and discourse elements in Alevi poetry, phrases and folk songs. Literature review and discourse analysis methods are used in the article. With the literature review, oppositon of the Alevism belief and the Bektashi cult have been researched in a historical context. With the dicourse analysis the phrases of the poets who reveal the anthropological and sociological character of Alevism and comes from the “abdal tradition” such as Pir Sultan Abdal, Kaygusuz Abdal, Nesimi, Virani, Harabi, Yunus Emre etc. are examined, and the religious and political oppositon elements of rebellion in these saying were revealed.

Algeria: Sarah Haidar’s Reflections on Conflict

Author(s): Anna Rocca / Language(s): English / Issue: 14/2018

This study explores the literary representations of conflict and the pivotal roles that the act of writing and the function of literature assume in Algerian writer Sarah Haidar’s fictional work Virgules en trombe (2013). Haidar denounces conflict in her homeland, characterizing it as a form of human insanity often originating from an individual internalization of shame and fear. In highlighting the hypocrisy and pettiness that lie at the basis of these conflicts, Haidar invites the reader to consider the oft-damaging results of human fallibility and calls for the envisioning of a new type of literature free of nationalistic and egotistical projections. Haidar’s original form of noir fiction embraces, reflects upon, expands, sublimates and evolves from conflict, often with gritty humor, thus suggesting that this new form of literature could be a medium through which the processes of healing and transformation can begin.

Amoscritura: «cuerpos atrabesados». Somatología poética de Mario Martín Gijón

Author(s): Ewa Śmiłek / Language(s): Spanish / Issue: 15/2019

The body, although not presented in a direct way, connects the two main themes of Rendicción (2013), the second volume of poetry by Mario Martín Gijón. Based on the theory of José Enrique Finol (presented in the work La corposfera. Antropo-semiótica de las cartografías del cuerpo, 2015), I carry out an analysis of how the corporeality is depicted in the poetry of Martín Gijón. In the said poetry book, the body has not only obtained the status of the object (linked to the themes of love and eroticism), it has also become an assistance of the artistic activity. In this way, the poetry is embodied (Merleau-Ponty, 1993), the word is a living body with all its creative powers.

AN INVESTIGATION OF ECOLITERACY AND IGBO COSMOLOGY IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S ARROW OF GOD

Author(s): Cindy Anene Ezeugwu / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2020

The study interrogates the relationship that exists between language, literacy and the environment given the fact that the need for its sustainability is of essence especially in the contemporary times. This paper investigates eco-literacy in Achebe’s literary corpus Arrow of God. Findings suggest that long before campaign for environmental protection became a global trend, Igbo societies have made significant in road towards saving the biosphere from harmful effects due largely to human induced activities. These attempts are made manifest through traditional religion, myth, superstition and other cultural practices. The researchers’ contend that though the Igbos’ contribution may be deemed insignificant compared to the enormity of the emerging issues, it is still not out of place to assume that the present imput by government, and other agencies towards this direction are rather complementary to the efforts being made by the Igbo societies. The study adopts the Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory for the inquiry and concludes that if the colonizers had known the thoughts of the Igbo concerning the ecosystem, they would have probably helped to strengthen eco-literacy ideology using natural and sustainable in road already created. The study recommends the need to revert back to some of these natural means which could help to sustain the environment.

Andrej Sládkovič v chorvátskej recepcii

Author(s): Marijan Šabić / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 2/2021

The article is a contribution to the research of Slovak-Croatian literary and cultural relations. It focuses at the reception of Andrej Sládkovič (1820 – 1872) in the Croatian context. The second half of the 19th century is investigated through the analysis of contributions to Croatian literary magazines and newspapers such as Danica, Dragoljub, Vienac, Slavonac and Nada. The analysis of the 20th century and contemporary reception looks at texts published in various magazines, books and anthologies which contain translations by Luko Paljetak, Dubravka Dorotić Sesar and others. Since Sládkovič did not have any personal contacts with Croatian intellectuals of the time, the presence of his work in the 19th century Croatian cultural space was scarce. Wider recognition of his oeuvre came much later and in the late 20th century, it was intensified by the establishment of a Slovak studies programme at the University of Zagreb (as part of Czech studies in 1994 and as a separate programme in 1997). While in the 19th century, period magazines and newspapers – albeit sporadically – do mention Sládkovič, but do not contain any translations of his work, nowadays, translations are available, but are usually only known in the narrow academic circles of (mainly) Slavic studies experts.