MYTH IN SAM SHEPARD’S “THE GOD OF HELL” AND ITS POLITICAL IMPLICATION

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-38

The article introduces the creative work of the famous American playwright Sam Shepard, whose works are almost unknown to our Uzbek reader. His plays are well known throughout the world; they influenced the formation of the worldview of readers of different nations and show the peculiarities of American culture. Despite the worldwide fame of Sam Shepard’s works, they are not studied well by literary critics. In America and Europe his works have been studied in details for a long period, and even several monographs in English have been written. However, neither in the Russian speaking, nor in the domestic literary criticism there is yet no major work on Shepard's works. The article also deals with the artistic features of the political myth of the “American dream” in one of the most scandalous plays, “The God of Hell,” dedicated to the protest against the war in Iraq. Thus, this study, which touches upon some issues of Shepard's creative work in connection with his innovative artistic originality, to a certain extent, seeks to fill this gap.

2021 ◽  
Vol XII (35) ◽  
pp. 27-43
Author(s):  
Muhammad Hossein Oroskhan ◽  
Bahee Hadaegh

The formation and the establishment of the United States firmly adheres to two beliefs of the American dream and the American west. Though the American dream was part of American culture from its beginning, the other one became the driving force of American culture in the second part of the twentieth century when Sam Shepard began his career as a playwright. During this time, American theater emerged into a main arena for the presentation of the American west. Nevertheless, Shepard attempted to avoid playing with the duality of reality and illusion in his presentation of the American west when he put forward his characters to face and experience the world to then discover their selves. At the pinnacle of his success, he wrote A Lie of the Mind, a play that is filled with heroines who would leave the violent world of men to change their destinies. As such, Shepard endeavored to free their selves and flow them to experience a new world. Likewise, Shepard’s contemporary American philosopher, Richard Rorty, believed in the importance of self and the necessity of its redescription to create his ideal society. However, hopeless to find a philosophy model, he lends to literature to find his liberal ironist. On this account, the following study is not only to provide Sam Shepard as a liberal ironist in Rorty’s term but also to reveal certain puzzling features in Shepard’s A Lie of Mind, not least of which is the reason why his female characters blow the world of the American west to search for a new world.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Emilia Riesco

<div><p>Spain suffers a demographic ageing process for several decades now, and today it is one of the most aged countries in the world. This process entails changes in the characteristics of different generations, some of which will be especially relevant in the future cohorts that advance into mature age. Specifically, the ageing of the population alters the patterns of political implication. This work analyzes the influence that gender questions and generation may have in the political behavior of the elderly. We present a relational study based on the data provided by the <em>Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas</em> (Center for Sociological Research). Our findings prove that gender and generation introduce important differences in interest as well as in social participation. We also provide conclusions on the importance of belonging to one specific generation with regard to the implication in public affairs, as opposed to frequent considerations that tend to grant more preeminence to age. Similarly, we provide relevant information on the next older generation, who will not only be important in number, but also will conceivably take on a very important main social role.</p></div>


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 128-134
Author(s):  
Zinaida Ya. Kholodova

It is well known that the discovery of Mikhail Prishvin as an original writer belongs to Ivanov-Razumnik with whom they were friends during a long period of time. However, the critic’s interpretation or Mikhail Prishvin’s artistic outlook is not covered well enough and objectively in the literary criticism due to serious ideological reasons. Ivanov-Razumnik who was in the most conspicuous place in sociaist-revolutionary party was struck out from the Soviet literary process in spite of his undoubted merits in the Russian culture. The politicisation of the Soviet literary criticism did not promote to adequate research of Mikhail Prishvin’s creative heritage too. It was no accident that the investigators of Mikhail Prishvin’s heritage passed over very significant page in writer’s life and heritage, which is his collaboration in the socialist-revolutionary direction journal «The Covenants» in 1912–1914 where Ivanov-Razumnik was literary editor and leading critic. The world-view positions difference did not promote for the critic to mark essential features of Mikhail Prishvin’s artistic outlook, which is confirmed by researching the materials of Ivanov-Razumnik’s articles and Mikhail Prishvin’s creative heritage and diaries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-29
Author(s):  
Nikolay Petev

This work analyzes political mythologization, in particular within the framework of the dialectical confrontation between the artificial images of the “Messiah” and the “World Demon”. The purpose of the work is to identify the constructive and functional features of a political myth with a specific teleological purpose. Among others, an important task is to identify the destructive trends caused by the speculative influence of a political myth. The research methodology includes the dialectical method used as a tool for investigating the internal contradictions of the political myth phenomenon This method was also used to analyze the opposition of two artificial images (the “Messiah” and the “World Demon”). The analysis of authenticity (as the correspondence between positioning and content) of political mythologization as a kind of speculative system was used to identify its specifics of functioning and impact on the objects that are the main targets. This method in combination with the primary deconstruction of a monolithic myth is necessary for the subsequent synthesis of the obtained results. The modeling method allowed us to form the characteristic features of a political myth. Some elements of ethical and psychological approaches, as well as the approaches of religious studies were also used to fix the pragmatic and speculative aspects of a political myth. The following results were obtained: 1) aestheticization is an important component of a political myth; 2) for all their seeming abstractness, the images of political mythologization have pragmatic literality; 3) the parasitical nature of political mythologization was revealed; 4) the relativity of the concepts of freedom and individuality in a political myth was shown; 5) the aspect of conformism and pragmatism of political mythologization was established; 6) political myths create conditions for destructive behavior and attitudes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-123
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

Abstract Horribile dictu, the twenty-first century is witnessing a steady decline of democracy and the rise of autocratic, self-aggrandizing rulers in many countries across the world. How long will they stay in power, however? Already since the high Middle Ages, numerous poets across Europe explored the topic of the ‘emperor in misery,’ in which an angel takes on the appearance of the emperor, which forces the latter to go through a long period of extreme suffering, being denied all respect, rejected, beaten, imprisoned, suffering from hunger and cold. Eventually, the poor emperor learns to accept his destiny, repents his previous hubris, confesses his sins, and suddenly realizes that his doppelgänger is actually an angel sent from God to teach him a lesson. Once this transformation in his soul has happened, the angel explains the entire situation, warns the emperor never to commit his sins again, and disappears. Of course, it is doubtful whether these narratives might have ever had a direct impact on the political situation, but the warning for evil rulers resonated throughout the centuries and found a remarkable continuation in one of the novellas of the Baltic-German author Werner Bergengruen (1946).


Author(s):  
Emma Simone

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-43
Author(s):  
MARIETA EPREMYAN ◽  

The article examines the epistemological roots of conservative ideology, development trends and further prospects in political reform not only in modern Russia, but also in other countries. The author focuses on the “world” and Russian conservatism. In the course of the study, the author illustrates what opportunities and limitations a conservative ideology can have in political reform not only in modern Russia, but also in the world. In conclusion, it is concluded that the prospect of a conservative trend in the world is wide enough. To avoid immigration and to control the development of technology in society, it is necessary to adhere to a conservative policy. Conservatism is a consolidating ideology. It is no coincidence that the author cites as an example the understanding of conservative ideology by the French due to the fact that Russia has its own vision of the ideology of conservatism. If we say that conservatism seeks to preserve something and respects tradition, we must bear in mind that traditions in different societies, which form some kind of moral imperatives, cannot be a single phenomenon due to different historical destinies and differing religious views. Considered from the point of view of religion, Muslim and Christian conservatism will be somewhat confrontational on some issues. The purpose of the work was to consider issues related to the role, evolution and prospects of conservative ideology in the political reform of modern countries. The author focuses on Russia and France. To achieve this goal, the method of in-depth interviews with experts on how they understand conservatism was chosen. Already today, conservatism is quite diverse. It is quite possible that in the future it will transform even more and acquire new reflections.


Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.


Author(s):  
Michael N. Barnett

How do American Jews envision their role in the world? Are they tribal—a people whose obligations extend solely to their own? Or are they prophetic—a light unto nations, working to repair the world? This book is an interpretation of the effects of these worldviews on the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews since the nineteenth century. The book argues that it all begins with the political identity of American Jews. As Jews, they are committed to their people's survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom, and pluralism. This identity and search for inclusion form a political theology of prophetic Judaism that emphasizes the historic mission of Jews to help create a world of peace and justice. The political theology of prophetic Judaism accounts for two enduring features of the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews. They exhibit a cosmopolitan sensibility, advocating on behalf of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law and organizations. They also are suspicious of nationalism—including their own. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that American Jews are natural-born Jewish nationalists, the book charts a long history of ambivalence; this ambivalence connects their early rejection of Zionism with the current debate regarding their attachment to Israel. And, the book contends, this growing ambivalence also explains the rising popularity of humanitarian and social justice movements among American Jews.


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