A Study of Suffering and Martyrdom in Islamic Ta'ziya and Christian Passion Plays

Author(s): Ammar Sh. K. Al-Khafaji / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

The theme of suffering and martyrdom occupies a central place in the history of religion from the earliest time. In the myths of the ancient Near East, the hero is slain, but his death, then, guarantees the revival of life. Sacrifice is a means of reaching higher and loftier stages of life; the Biblical and Qur'anic story of Abraham, who so deeply trusted God that he, without questioning, was willing to sacrifice his dear son, points to the importance of such sacrifice. Greek theater, on the other hand, grew out of a religious festival, and was often concerned with the deepest questions about morality and the relationship between mortals, gods, and fate. It was theoretically a temple of the god Dionysus, with his altar in the center. Church history is also rich in examples of art enhancing religious teaching. From the beginning of early churches through the Middle Ages and beyond, people interact with images, music, ritual symbols and drama. Mystery, Miracle, Morality, which developed successively, have led to the creation of what is called now “the passion plays of Christ”. The passion play is a dramatic presentation which depicts Jesus Christ's passion, his trial, suffering, and death. It is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in Catholic tradition. The counterpart of the Christian Passion play in Islamic tradition is the “Ta'ziyeh” which means Condolence Theatre. It commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of Prophet Muhammad. As Christ gave his life as a sacrifice for the sake of humanity, Imam Hussein is seen as having sacrificed himself for the sake of Islam. In both traditions the theme of martyrdom is celebrated through literature.

Pause as a Discursive Element in Hemingway’s Selected Short Stories

Author(s): Hakan Gültekin,Mustafa Zeki Çıraklı / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

The impetus behind this study is to investigate how pauses produce silence that indicate (a) declaration of nothingness, (b) psychological resistance and (c) ideological stance. The paper investigates the pauses in the texts and reveals the relationships between silence produced by pauses and themes of the stories. The paper argues that, first; Hemingway portrays the psychological resistance of the fictional characters using silence. Second, silence is used as a thematic marker in Hemingway’s stories implying nothingness. Lastly, silence contributes to ideological stance.

Disabled Vision and Schizophrenia in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Author(s): Mustafa Zeki Çıraklı / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explores how the central character’s self-image is determined by the primary Subject, which orients social perception, and how the characters are primarily concerned with their public image since social perception from without (how they are perceived) shapes their self-perception. As the process of self-realization is interrupted by the disorientation of self-perception, the characters cannot construct a true Self of their own. Their vision is disabled by the prevailing primary Subject, and the persona is unable to perceive the world from her perspective reversing the existing binary. As there is no self-perception (a point of reference), identity formation ends in failure, and the persona turns out to be a passive object having a negative image of herself. She, first, suffers from split of personality and schizophrenia, then declines her negative self-image through surrogate images, and finally drives herself to insanity.

Muriel Spark’s Employment of Burlesque: Parody of Detective Fiction in Not to Disturb

Author(s): Serkan Ertin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Parody contributes to the improvement of literary genres since it is the key to various popular subgenres as in the case of the development of detective fiction. Muriel Spark’s Not to Disturb, among the contemporary examples of parody of detective stories, is about a group of sinister servants in a Swiss chateu awaiting impatiently the bloody deaths of their employers, dictating memoirs and even selling the fim rights beforehand. Analysed in terms of its plot structure, characterisation and setting, the novel proves to be a brilliant example of parody of detective stories.

The Analysis of Social Stratification in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life from a Marxist Perspective

Author(s): Gizem Kaptan / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

While the Industrial Revolution makes England a great power in the world, it brings about a huge gap between the middle class and the working class. Observing the condition of the society, Marx and Engels create their well-known claim of class struggle in The Manifesto of the Communist Party. They emphasize the gap between these two classes and how to revolt against the capitalist system by the working class. This paper ventures to study the difference between the middle class and the working class in the Victorian society together with the way to overcome the bourgeoisie supremacy by the proletariat from the perspective of Marxist literary theory. It analyses how the capitalist system makes working class people’s lives miserable while it enriches the lives of the middle class people. In this respect, Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton will be studied in parallel with the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Harold Bloom’s Concern and “The Touch” that Always Does Wonders

Author(s): Beture Memmedova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

This paper deals with the current debates as whether literary canon or classical works are destined to fall into oblivion or survive.

Justice or injustice in Shakespearean plays: The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure

Author(s): Fatma Yalvaç,Şule Okuroğlu Özün / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

The purpose of this study was to discuss the concept of justice in Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. The justice of Shakespearean courts and its effects on society are the focal points. Some examples are given from both of the plays admitting that justice is hard to define in these works since the legal authorities of each play perform a different style in the administration of laws. The conclusions will shed further light on the discussions about how the issues related to justice are reflected in Shakespearean plays.

Images of sculptures in the poetry of Giorgis Manousakis

Author(s): Michał Bzinkowski,Rita Winiarska / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2016

The imagery of fragmentary sculptures, statues and stones appears often in Modern Greek Poetry in connection with the question of Modern Greeks’ relation to ancient Greek past and legacy. Many famous poets such as the first Nobel Prize winner in literature, George Seferis (1900-1971), as well as Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) frequently use sculptural imagery in order to allude to, among other things, though in different approaches, the classical past and its existence in modern conscience as a part of cultural identity. In the present paper we focus on some selected poems by a well-known Cretan poet Giorgis Manousakis (1933-2008) from his collection “Broken Sculptures and Bitter Plants” (Σπασμένα αγάλματα και πικροβότανα, 2005), trying to shed some light on his very peculiar usage of sculpture imagery in comparison with the earlier Greek poets. We attempt to categorize Manousakis’ metaphors and allusions regarding the symbolism of sculptures in correlation with existential motives of his poetry and the poet’s attitude to the classical legacy.

Il mito di Prometeo riscritto

Author(s): Adriana Grzelak-Krzymianowska / Language(s): Italian Issue: 19/2016

The Prometheus myth is an essential part of European culture, observed in each literary epoque, being variously interpreted and adopted.This article aims to examine the presence and meaning of the myth about theTitan in one of the works of Giacomo Leopardi La scommessa di Prometeobasing on both ancient and earlier Italian literary tradition in depicting the deity. Leopardi, well familiar with ancient and contemporary culture, rewrites the myth in the way to express his vision of human life. Although his idea seems original and new he obviously makes use of many motives already present in earlier tradition transforming them and reinterpreting to create a new and significant quality.

Die Märchenhafte Rhetorik – die Redekunst in der Ilias

Author(s): Marek Hermann / Language(s): German Issue: 19/2016

The story about the introduction of idolatry in Malalas’ Chronicle

Author(s): Krzysztof Hilman / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2016

A Note on the Latin Granicies 'Border' and the -(it)ies formations in the Corpus of Medieval Latin in Poland

Author(s): Katarzyna Jasińska,Dariusz R. Piwowarczyk / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2016

The Polish medieval Latin corpus is a specific collection oftexts created during the Middle Ages in the Polish lands. The language itselfhad a special status as it was no longer the native language of any specific population.Consequently, it underwent changes in the lexicon to the extent thatboth Latin forms were transferred into Polish and the Polish ones into Latin.Such is the case with the word granicies ‘border’ which was transferred fromthe Polish word granica ‘border’. The baffling thing is that the transfer itselfcreated a word within the non-productive Latin fifth declension. The purposeof the present article is to try to explain why it was transferred to this specifictype of inflection.

Alexander, his teacher, and the status of philosophy in Plutarch of Chaeronea: an inquiry into the meaning of a certain exchange of letters

Author(s): Joanna Komorowska / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2016

Acicatar o Regime: O “Depoimento de uma Angolana”, em O Libertino Passeia por Braga, a Idolátrica, o Seu Esplendor, de Luiz Pacheco

Author(s): Sofia Santos / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 15/2016

Luiz Pacheco was, possibly, one of the most provocative authors that had published during the Salazar Regime. In parallel to the context that Luiz Pacheco does of “Depoimento de uma Angolana” in “O Libertino Passeia por Braga, a Idolátrica o seu Esplendor”, firstly edited in 1970, by his seal, Contraponto”, we will go through the paragraphs that Maria Alice Veiga Pereira, the author of the text in appreciation, dedicated to the ill‑treatments of the slaves workers, to the “conventional lies imposed by an hateful social regime”, to the racism e all of its retinue of irrational attitudes, to the economical nonsense of the cotton plantation, amongst other experiences that this primary‑school teacher has lived for the 30 years that she co‑habited in that regime. Faces of a polyhedral Violence that will hardly be atoned; a stain not only in the history of Angola, but also in the human history.

(Des)Aparição: Vergílio Ferreira na Polônia

Author(s): Gabriel Borowski / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 15/2016

This paper aims to identify and analyse references to the work by the Portuguese writer Vergílio Ferreira (1916‑1996) in the Polish press. It is the first approach towards the issue of the reception of his ouvre in Poland.

„MALÁ SLOVA“ A JEJICH PODÍL NA STYLU MLUVENÝCH PROJEVŮ

Author(s): Jana Hoffmannová / Language(s): Czech Issue: XXVI/2017

In contrast to written language, spoken utterances evince a much higher incidence of deictics, indefinite and pseudo-demonstrative pronouns, contact particles (phatic expressions), specific conjunctions and other connectives, interjections, fillers and hesitation sounds. Corpus-based data should make it possible to attempt a new typology of such expressions (of a broad category of “discourse markers”), independent of the traditional categorization of the parts of speech. The research of spoken Czech syntax must take into account these groups of lexical means that are innate to spoken discourse, i.e. this important area where lexis and syntax meet. Such words as the Czech jako, teda, jakoe, jakoby seem to be semantically vague or empty, but they have a special effect on the connectedness and cohesion of spoken discourse. Moreover, the syntax of spoken discourse has to be investigated in terms of its dialogic and processual nature, inevitably respecting the relationships between utterances and dialogue turns; that is why special attention must be given to “small words” employed at the beginning or end of various types of turns. Their participation in the turn-taking mechanismus, as well as other functions, demonstrates that the “small words” in most cases cannot be regarded as redundant expressions, and that they contribute to the style of spoken discourse.

O NOWYM POJĘCIU GLOSARIUSZA (NA MATERIALE LITERATURY FANTASY).

Author(s): Marzanna Uździcka / Language(s): Polish Issue: XXVI/2017

The aim of the article is an attempt to define the term “glossary” in a new way. “Glossary” is codified as a dictionary explaining difficult, outdated, rarely used and unknown words in an old or foreign-language text, or words put at the end of scientific or popular science texts. In this, its prescriptive function is emphasized. In lexicographical compendia, the other definition is evoked. In accordance with it, the glossary is identified with a dictionary compiled for a translation machine. Observation of current language use has shown that there are a few other ways of understanding the term “glossary.” Its main function is now a descriptive function. For the sake of methodology, the article discusses the most common language behavior in this regard. Glossaries found in fantasy texts are characterized in detail because they fulfill a special role in the creation and perception of this type of literary work. The main idea in the article is the argument that every product of a culture (a text) carries a fixed cultural pattern here: a perpetuating pattern. A glossary has been identified as paratext, hence its description is put forth with the tools used in the field of text studies and linguistic enre.

STYLIZACJA JĘZYKOWA W FILMACH HISTORYCZNYCH O POCZĄTKACH PAŃSTWA POLSKIEGO

Author(s): Jakub Bobrowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: XXVI/2017

The article discusses exponents of linguistic stylisation that occur in two polish historical films: Bolesław the Bold (Dir. Witold Lesiewicz, 1971) and The Nest (Dir. Jan Rybkowski, 1974). Stylistic means are divided into three basic groups: grammatical (syntactic), semantic and pragmatic. The research has shown that the creators of both films applied similar methods of stylisation. They most often used following linguistic tools: analytical forms of the Polish past tense, inversion, item archaisms, bookish vocabulary and old honorific expressions. However, one may notice quantitative differences between analysed works. Exponents of stylisation more often appear in Bolesław the Bold. On the other hand, they exhibit greater diversity in The Nest. In the final part of the article, the author claims that research into film dialogues should become an integral part of Polish stylistics.

ÚTLEÍRÁS ÉS REFLEXIÓ W. G. SEBALD MŰVEIBEN

Author(s): Judit Pieldner / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2017

W. G. Sebald’s works are preeminently related to the motif of travel, both concretely, spatially and in an abstract sense, as incessant rambling in the spaces of writing and memory. Sebald’s “ambulatory” prose is characterised by manifold connections between the concrete, physical journey and the sphere of reflection. The study is aimed at presenting the traversed historical, geocultural and medial spaces and at exploring Sebald’s enigmatic routes.

Jak z uczuć uczynić argumenty? Środki retoryczne w wybranych szkicach krytycznoliterackich Michała Grabowskiego

Author(s): Dominika Dymek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2017

The example of critical literary texts by Michał Grabowski, a critic of the romantic era, demonstrates not only his individual struggle with his own text, but also presents the model of expressing recommendations that prevailed in the 19th century critique. The example of rhetorical strategies used by Grabowski will open a discussion about a much broader issue – it will make it possible to present one of many romantic models of criticism which, despite empowering the audience, was based on a rhetorical influence on the reader's choices. Although Grabowski's criticism is characterized by a conciliatory tone, and the author seems to only provide readers with advice, his expressions also reveal attempts at controlling the development of literature and its reception. I will thus present the tools used by the author of O poezji XIX wieku, which will allow me to more fully elucidate his literary critical views.