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Some of the most important and popular Victorian novels are Bildungsromane, in which authors construct or rather reconstruct their own life experiences as formative processes. To mention just David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, Marius the Epicurean, and so on. Following its long development history from ancient narratives to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, the Bildungsroman enters as a newly established fictional tradition into Victorian culture and literature through Carlyle’s threefold literary reception of the novel of formation and displays its subsequent flourishing and complexity as a literary system encompassing particular thematic and narrative patterns. In this study, a number of novelistic works by Henry James are scrutinized, and each faces the question as to whether its thematic and narrative perspectives fit the pattern and shape of the Bildungsroman.
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The main focus of analysis in the article is the evolution of the protagonist in relation to the complex system of characters in the diegetic world of John Irving’s “The World According to Garp”. Throughout the essay, Garp’s maturation and evolution is being continuously analytically measured against the other characters masterfully aligned within the story by author to support the protagonist’s growth, contrast and elucidate him. A typology of characters by their diegetic function is introduced, separating them into three main groups: people, creations, symbols. The linking reciprocal element between them is the protagonist, not only connecting all the characters, but also traversing through their roles on the way to his own posthumous ascension. Starting the novel as a regular human being, the protagonist is gradually transformed into a writer – creator of worlds and characters, to finally ascend into a symbol for the new world upon his death.
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In his 1981 book-length essay From Bauhaus To Our House, Tom Wolfe not only presents a compact history of modernist architecture, devoting the pages to masters such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe but also frontally attacks modern architecture and complains that a small group of architects took over control of people’s aesthetic choices. According to Wolfe, modern buildings wrought destruction on American cities, sweeping away their vitality and diversity in favour of the pure, abstract order of towers in a row. Modernist architects, on the other hand, saw the austere buildings of concrete, glass and steel as signposts of a new age, as the physical shelter for a new, utopian society.This article attempts to analyse Tom Wolfe’s selected criticisms of the modernist architecture presented in From Bauhaus to Our House. In order to understand Wolfe’s discontent with modernist architecture’s basic tenets of economic, social, and political conditions that prompted architects to pursue a modernist approach to design will be discussed.
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A special focus on the consequences of colonialism, what the author calls postcolonial awareness, is required because of the importance and timeliness of this legacy in the contemporary world. Postcolonial literature is tasked in this context with recording the traces of cultures either disappearing or already lost due to the actions of colonizing powers. The author discusses examples of literary texts that fulfill this function through various forms of narration and imaging. In the novel Tracks by Louise Erdrich we find an approximation of the way of life of the Chippewas, before they were confined in reserves, in the narrative of Nanapush which is addressed to his granddaughter. In the text of the Cameroonian writer Leonora Miano, La saison de lombre, we can “listen” to voices that record the experience of being abducted and taken into slavery. Richard Flanagan, in turn, recalls the traumatic experience of the loss of life, land, and culture during the colonial genocide in Tasmania, and one of the last testimonies relating to these experiences is that of an Aboriginal girl, one of the heroines of the novel Wanting.
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The article discusses the project of decolonizing education of Native Americans on the example of the novel LaRose by Louise Erdrich and la paperson’s theory of decolonization. In her novel, Erdrich returns to the second half of the nineteenth century to expose the mechanisms that led to the nationwide creation of boarding schools for First Nation children that were a means of mass assimilation of Indigenous Americans. Separation from home and the ban on speaking native languages led to a sense of cultural alienation and the conditions in underfunded schools often resulted in increased student mortality. Recalling the trauma of boarding schools, experienced by many generations, Erdrich proposes a cultural and ideological reclaiming of the education system so that it is not identified only with the colonizer’s institutions. Thus, she is involved in a decolonization project, which is conceived as acting in the name and for the good of the local community. Decolonization understood in this way, as the construction of a new order on the foundations of the old one, is perceived as an affirmation of indigenous cultures and an action focused on political change.
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This article analyses selected stereotypes present in the novels of Louise Erdrich – in the so-called Love Medicine series, The Round House, and LaRose. The author juxtaposes the deconstruction of stereotypes of Native Americans with the deepening of the psychological portraits of Polish Americans, focusing on the topics of history and religion. The most important motifs are the heroes’ dependence on fundamentally understood Catholicism and on Ojibwe shamanism. The article draws attention to the effects of forced Christianization for the Ojibwe people and to the unreflective continuation of Catholicism in the descendants of Polish immigrants, both of which lead to a blurring of identity and to internal conflicts oftentimes externalized through self-destructive actions. The author also draws attention to humorous themes that show how the characters deal with the dilemmas resulting from the conflict of cultures.
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Conversation between Katarzyna Ojrzyńska and Natalia Pamuła
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The role of mass protest has been recurrently central yet controversial in the American culture. Central because American history presents a constellation of significant collective protest movements, very different among them but generally symptomatic of a contrast between the people and the state: from the 1775 Boston Massacre and the 1787 Shays’s Rebellion, to the 1863 Draft Riots, but also considering the 1917 Houston Riot or anti-Vietnam war pacifist protests. Controversial, since despite—or because of—its historical persistence, American mass protest has generated a media bias which labelled mobs and crowds as a disruptive popular expression, thus constructing an opposition—practical and rhetorical—between popular subversive tensions, and the so-called middle class “conservative” and self-preserving struggle.
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On July 15, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin held a summit in Helsinki that immediately set off a chain reaction throughout the world. By now, barely two months later, that summit is all but forgotten for the most part, superseded by the frantic train of events and the subsequent bombardment from the media that have become the “new normal.” While the iron secrecy surrounding the conversation between the two dignitaries allowed for all kinds of speculation, the image of President Trump bowing to his Russian counterpart (indeed a treasure trove for semioticians) became for many observers in the U.S. and across the world the living proof of Mr. Trump´s subservient allegiance to Mr. Putin and his obscure designs. Even some of the most recalcitrant GOPs vented quite publicly their disgust at the sight of a president paying evident homage to the archenemy of the United States, as Vercingetorix kneeled down before Julius Cesar in recognition of the Gaul’s surrender to the might of the Roman Empire. For some arcane reason, the whole episode of the Helsinki summit brought to my mind, as in a vivid déjà vu, Cormac McCarthy´s novel Blood Meridian and more specifically, the characters of Judge Holden and the idiotic freak who becomes Holden´s ludicrous disciple in the wastelands of Arizona. In my essay, I provide some possible explanations as to why I came to blend these two unrelated episodes into a single continuum. In the process, I briefly revisit some key texts in the American canon that fully belong in the history of “mental captivity” in the United States, yet to be written. Obviously, I am not in hopes of deciphering the ultimate reasons for current U.S. foreign policy, and the more modest aim of my article is to offer some insights into the general theme of mental captivity through a novel and a textual tradition overpopulated with “captive minds.”
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The article attempts to shed light upon the evolution of Gary Snyder’s “mountains-and-rivers” philosophy of living/writing (from the Buddhist anarchism of the 1960s to his peace-promoting practice of the Wild), and focuses on the link between the ethics of civil disobedience, deep ecology, and deep “mind-ecology.” Jason M. Wirth’s seminal study titled Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis provides an interesting point of reference. The author places emphasis on Snyder’s philosophical fascination with Taoism as well as Ch’an and Zen Buddhism, and tries to show how these philosophical traditions inform his theory and practice of the Wild.
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This paper examines two American works of fiction concerning how teenage characters explore and manifest their identity, looking up to transcendentalist ideas, whether consciously or not. The paper puts forth the most individualistic protagonists and investigate their motivation, ways of escaping the society’s expectations and the interaction between them and their environment. The first source analyzed: the film Little Women directed by Gillian Armstrong tells the story of the March family living in the 1860s Concord, influenced by the spirit of transcendentalism. The second source discussed: John Green’s novel Paper Towns employs the notion of a character coming back to transcendentalist values and authors in the 21st century. This paper shows how the teenagers use the transcendentalist ways, whether they are aware of them, and defy the rules of the society frequently represented by the people in their closest environment.
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This paper deals with the relationship between history and brand in Joy Kogawa’snovel Itsuka, which portrays the struggle of Japanese Canadians for the historicaltruth. By analyzing the conflict between the official history and the history advocatedby Japanese Canadians, we demonstrate that one true history does not exist, but thathistory is based on different ideological positions that a particular person can assume.By connecting history and brand, the cultural-contextual interpretation proves thatthe advocacy of a particular type of history can shape individuals or groups, and thathistory as brand can be seen as a power-exercising device. Brands have been identifiedas signs which affect one another. Therefore, the two versions of history thatKogawa’s novel offers will be analyzed as signs that, when in contact, can changeboth themselves as well as the system in which they function.
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Purpose of the article is to outline “actual” artwork’s perception problems after the example of Oscar Wilde “Salome” literary and stage history in 1890 – 1900ths, using as a historical-&-culturology studies’ objectification mechanism basic theses of Jose Ortega y Gasset “dehumanization of art” panmodernistic theory. The methodology presupposed multidiscipline approach – – simultaneous implementing of the sociological and historical-&-culturology methods with the elements of the hermeneutics and structural analytics. The scientific novelty of the study means that for the first time stage interpretations of the early European Modern emblematic play have been analyzed, leaning for the basic principles of the panmodernistic theory, hitherto popular in the worldwide culturology and fine arts research quarters. Conclusions. “Actual” artwork’s perception by the literary-&-stage product consumer is an important part of each epoch historical segment of the dramatic-&-theatre discourse. The dramatic destiny of Oscar Wilde one-act tragedy “Salome” and its interpretations in the European theaters of the late 19th – early 20th century helped to display the main point of the problem –– the contradiction between the realistic-&-romantic art, preferred by the audiences and art critics of those days, to early modernistic creative works, needed another communicative format for its adequate perception. Step-by-step, but evident changes of the esthetic paradigms and artistic systems, characterizing the Ukrainian theatre process from 1990ths, actualize the extrapolation of the designated problematics to the nowadays theatrical reality.
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COVID 19 is just one more problem we humans have to face today. Crises, such as global warming, species extinction, climate change, and the extended use of anxiolytics and antidepressants by all sections of the population including youngsters, are telling us we are out of sync with Nature, and with our Self. Here, I suggest we need to change the focus of our attention from outside to inside, and from the overextended use of logical thinking mind associated with the brain to the feeling-mind linked with the heart. I associate the thinking mind with the male principle and the feeling heart-mind with the female principle. This change can bring about the necessary next step in our evolution by providing us with a way to connect with the deeper Self or Essence to obtain Higher Guidance. This epistemological way of knowing is based on intuition, and heart-based esoteric traditions throughout the ages have known about it. However, to find solutions to the multiple problems we are facing today, many more people need to learn how to tap into their heart-mind. In this article, I explore and expand on these ideas from different angles, including the scientific.
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In certain way, “displacement” refers to the change. It is the action of a body that moves from a certain space to another. In addition to its obvious physical implications, in the case of human displacement, there are also great subjective implications. In this way, displacement can be of other orders, as symbolic, metaphysical and mental, we can also consider even maturation as the displacement from one psychic state to another. In this case, the present work aims to analyze the different figurations of the concept of displacement present in the work: Displacement — A travelogue by Lucy Knisley, as well as the affiliation of the work to a narrative tradition perpetrated by authors who take the daily genre and the trip report as a means of subjective construction of reality, both in literature and in comics. In order to do so, will be used authors who studied the writing of female authors, having the travel narrative as a research horizon, such as Sonia Serrano and Miriam Adelman; as well as authors who focus on the specificities of the comic language that, under the aegis of “graphic novel”, engender an aesthetic construction that privileges the autobiographical narrative (Santiago Garcia and Hilarry Chute). We intend to highlight the richness that the comics bring to the symbolic construction of the genre “travel diary/narrative” through its peculiarities of self-representation.
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In certain way, “displacement” refers to the change. It is the action of a body that moves from a certain space to another. In addition to its obvious physical implications, in the case of human displacement, there are also great subjective implications. In this way, displacement can be of other orders, as symbolic, metaphysical and mental, we can also consider even maturation as the displacement from one psychic state to another. In this case, the present work aims to analyze the different figurations of the concept of displacement present in the work: Displacement — A travelogue by Lucy Knisley, as well as the affiliation of the work to a narrative tradition perpetrated by authors who take the daily genre and the trip report as a means of subjective construction of reality, both in literature and in comics. In order to do so, will be used authors who studied the writing of female authors, having the travel narrative as a research horizon, such as Sonia Serrano and Miriam Adelman; as well as authors who focus on the specificities of the comic language that, under the aegis of “graphic novel”, engender an aesthetic construction that privileges the autobiographical narrative (Santiago Garcia and Hilarry Chute). We intend to highlight the richness that the comics bring to the symbolic construction of the genre “travel diary/narrative” through its peculiarities of self-representation.
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Müller discusses the subversive potential of bodies with disabilities dancing. Her argument is couched in Sally Banes’s theory of dance and Sherry Badger Shapiro’s concept of aesthetic activism. She describes how a non-normative body in motion can become a space of resistance to various forms of social oppression and exclusion. Using crip theory to interpret committed choreographies she demonstrates that they have a real effect on the formation of social relationships and changes in the public sphere. Thus, cripping dance represents an activist strategy– a cultural practice aimed at destabilising the existing divisions into visible and invisible.
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The article explores the British and American tradition of disability activism, which has constituted a political force since the 1970s. The focus is on the performativity of protest activities, from demonstrations to sit-ins, and the notion of visibility which is crucial for achieving both political goals and for the emergence of a new positive group identity for people with disabilities. The strategies that activists use to break conventional medical and charitable representations of disability are presented through notable examples such as the 504 sit-in, Capitol Crawl, demonstrations on accessible transport and Stop Telethon.
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In this chapter from the book Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance (New York: New York University Press, 2018), McRuer examines practices of crip resistance, both from a theoretical perspective (conceptualisations of resistance in queer theory and disability studies), and in a practical sense (analysing crip strategies of resistance developed by the disability community and by activists in Greece, the US, UK, Spain and Chile).
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