Religion as Escape and New Shelter: Defamiliarizing History in Popular Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-319
Author(s):  
Lindita Tahiri ◽  
Anton Berishaj
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Popular Novel ◽  
Self Protection

The downfall of Realist Socialism in the post-communist environment of the Albanian speaking countries opened the way for the development of a variety of literary genres as well as for the growth of popular fiction. This paper focuses on the best-seller by Ben Blushi Living in an island (2008) which covers four centuries of Ottoman occupa-tion of Albania. The novel has provoked profuse debates within the Albanian speech-communities in the Region and was accused by the Muslim community for endangering the religious harmony and tolerance of Albanians. This paper argues that the blame derives from the interchange between the author and the narrator and from the inabil-ity to differentiate between different points of view within the narrative. Although literary critics have generally developed negative connotations about popular fiction as a kind of literature associated with industry, entertainment and escapism, the arti-cle claims that the popular novel by Blushi raises an important public debate about vital historical concerns such as whether the acceptance of Islam by Albanians was wilful or imposed. Rather than giving simple answers to these questions, Blushi’s novel provokes alternative ways of thinking about whether Albanians agreed to banish Christianism and accept Islam due to violent intrusion or due to free will, and if the conversion into another religion was a new way of survival and a shelter of self-protection.

Representasi Sikap Kebangsaan Anak Muda dalam Hegemoni Negara pada Novel Populer

Metahumaniora ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Muhamad Adji
Keyword(s):  
New Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Third ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Popular Novel

AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk memperoleh gambaran tentang sikap kebangsaananak muda Indonesia pada tiga novel populer yaitu Ali Topan Anak Jalanan karya TeguhEsha, Lupus: Makhluk Manis dalam Bis karya Hilman Hariwijaya, dan Balada Si Roy karya GolaGong. Alasan pemilihan objek penelitian di atas adalah karena ketiga novel tersebut memilikitingkat popularitas yang tinggi pada tiap zamannya sehingga membuat tokoh utamanyamenjadi representasi anak muda Indonesia pada zamannya masing-masing. Pertanyaanpertanyaanyang memandu tulisan ini adalah 1) Bagaimana keindonesiaan digambarkanpada ketiga novel tersebut dan 2) Bagaimana sikap kebangsaan direpresentasikan tokohanak muda pada ketiga novel tersebut. Dari hasil kajian didapatkan simpulan bahwasikap kebangsaan yang ditampilkan pada ketiga novel tersebut memiliki tingkatan yangberbeda-beda. Novel Ali Topan Anak Jalanan menunjukkan sikap kebangsaan dengan lebihkritis. Hegemoni orde Baru pada masa itu belum berhasil karena novel populer masihmenampilkan tokoh anak muda yang kritis dan cenderung memberontak terhadap nilainilaiideologi Orde Baru. Periode ’80-an menampilkan novel populer dengan tokoh anakmuda yang memiliki sikap kebangsaan yang terbelah. Pertama, anak muda yang dapatmenerima realitas yang dikontruksi Orde Baru, dengan menjalani sistem tersebut danmemposisikan dirinya sebagai bagian dari sistem tersebut. Hal itu direpresentasikan olehtokoh Lupus dalam novel Lupus: Makhluk Manis dalam Bis. Kedua, anak muda yang tidakdapat menerima realitas yang dikonstruksi Orde Baru, dengan cara keluar dari bagiansistem tersebut. Hal itu direpresentasikan oleh tokoh Roy dalam Balada Si Roy.Kata kunci: kebangsaan, anak muda, novel populer, Orde BaruAbstractThis study aims to obtain a picture of Indonesian nationalism in the three popularnovels that were Ali Topan Anak Jalanan by Teguh Esha, Lupus: Makhluk Manis dalam Bisby Hilman Hariwijaya, dan Balada Si Roy by Gola Gong. The reason for choosing the object ofresearch above is that all three novels are recognized to have high levels of popularity in eachera so that made the main characters became a representation of Indonesian youth at that time.The questions that guide the writing are 1) How Indonesianness described in the third novel?2) How does nationalism represented by youth in these three novels. From the study results isobtained the conclusion that nationalism is displayed on the third novel has a level different.Ali Topan Anak Jalanan show a nationalism more critically. The New Order’s hegemony atthat time has not been successful because the novel still showing a critical youth and tends torevolt against the ideological values of the New Order. The ‘80s period featured a popular novelwith a youth character who had a split nationalism. First, the youth who can accept the realitythat the New Order has constructed, with the system and position itself as part of the system.It was represented by the Lupus’s character in the Lupus: Makhluk Manis dalam Bis. Second,the youth who can not accept the facts constructed by the New Order, by going out from thatpart of the system. It was represented by Roy’s character in the Balada Si Roy.Keywords: nationalism, youth, popular novel, New Order

The Short Story: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
The Press ◽  
Character Study ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Plot Design

The Short Story: A Very Short Introduction charts the rise of the short story from its original appearance in magazines and newspapers. For much of the 19th century, tales were written for the press, and the form’s history is marked by engagement with popular fiction. The short story then earned a reputation for its skilful use of plot design and character study distinct from the novel. This VSI considers the continuity and variation in key structures and techniques such as the beginning, the creation of voice, the ironic turn or plot twist, and how writers manage endings. Throughout, it draws on examples from an international and flourishing corpus of work.

NEW INSPIRATION FROM CHINA'S PHILOSOPHY OF "UNITY OF MAN AND HEAVEN": CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS UNDER THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
PU JINGXIN
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Human Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
New Type ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Ancient Chinese ◽  
Self Protection ◽  
Harmonious Community

Abstract: The danger of the novel coronavirus has not yet come to an end, and new variants have begun to attack the world. What philosophy should humankind’s strategy be based on when human society as a group is fighting against Covid-19, as the pandemic ravages the world? Unfortunately, political leaders of various countries have failed to achieve the overall awareness of attacking the pandemic for a shared future for mankind so far. In the face of the pandemic, mankind as a whole urgently needs to break through the narrow nation-oriented ideology of seeking only self-protection. The International Community should establish a new type of international cooperation featuring the concept of harmony of "all things under heaven as a unity". The international relations system dominated by the power ofwestern discourse is now in a bottleneck. The main aim of this article is to study the ancient Chinese wisdom of "the Unity of Man and Heaven" philosophy and build a global harmonious community. The author argues that the “export” of the aforementioned wisdom must be a priority for Chinese scholars. Keywords: Tao; Unity of Man and Heaven; Novel Coronavirus; Anthropocentrism; Harmony.

Pinocchio e l’evoluzione

Revue Romane ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-293
Author(s):  
Margareth Hagen
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Public ◽  
Continuous Evolution ◽  
Narrative Interpretation ◽  
Theories Of Evolution ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Pedagogical Literature

The first chapters of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio were printed in 1881, the same year as the publication of the novel I Malavoglia, Giovanni Verga’s masterpiece of verismo. While every critical reader of Verga’s realism has pointed out his particular narrative interpretation of evolution, Collodi’s has novel very seldom been connected to the theories of evolution, even if Darwin’s ideas were highly present in the public debate in Florence during the last decades of the 19th century. The reasons for this silence are primarily to be found in the genre of Pinocchio, in the fact that it is children literature, and therefore primarily related to the narrative mechanisms of the fairy tales and pedagogical literature. Focusing on Pinocchio, the article discusses to which degree Darwinism can be traced in Collodi’s literature for children, and questions if the continuous metamorphoses of Pinocchio can be read also in connection with the naturalist conception of the literary characters as unstable, in continuous evolution, and not only as part of the mechanisms of fairy tales and mythological narratives.

scholarly journals The Peculiarities of Iris Murdoch’s artistic method (based on her novel “The Black Prince”)

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 90-94
Author(s):  
N. Telegina ◽  
T. Butsyak
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Complex Investigation ◽  
Philosophical Aspect ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Good And Evil

For the purpose of defining Iris Murdoch’s artistic method a complex investigation of the problems and style of her famous novel “The Black Prince” was made. Special attention was given to the philosophical problems of Good and Evil, Contingency and Necessity in human life, absurdity, choice, aloofness, to the philosophical aspect of the novel, which is revealed with the help of the flash-back technique. The problems raised in the novel, its sensitive main character absorbed in psychoanalysis and looking for the sense of existence, naturalistic details & the postscripts, revealing different subjective points of view on the same events, prove that the novel should be regarded as existentialist

The transformation of reality and the Arabic novel's aesthetic response

1994 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabry Hafez
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapid Pace ◽  
Modern Arabic

The rapid pace of the change sweeping through the Arab world over the last few decades has profoundly affected both its various cultural products and its writers' perception of their national identity, social role and the nature of literature. The aim of this paper1 is to discuss the major changes in the sociopolitical reality of the Arab world, the cultural frame of reference and the responses of one of the major literary genres in modern Arabic literature: the novel. It is assumed here that there is a vital interaction between the novel and its socio-cultural context, in that novels encode within their very structure various elements of the social reality in which they appear and within whose constraints they aspire to play a role. Their generation of meaning is enmeshed in a variety of cultural, psychological and social processes, and their reception therefore brings into operation an array of experiences necessary for the interpretive act.

The Form of Man

Human Forms ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 31-54
Author(s):  
Ian Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Project ◽  
The One

This chapter examines how the science of man became the natural history of man, a history not of individuals or nations but of the human species. A new biological conception of species “as an entity distributed in time and space,” released from the synchronic grid of Linnaean taxonomy as well as from a providential cosmology, comprised what Philip Sloan has called the “Buffonian revolution.” That revolution would be as consequential for literary genres, especially the novel, as it was for the natural and human sciences, in part due to Buffon's recourse to a literary style and techniques of “speculative thought experiment,” probabilistic reasoning, “analogical reasoning, and divination” in his scientific method. The chapter then looks at the debate over the history of man that broke out in the mid-1780s between Immanuel Kant and Gottfried Herder. One of the great intellectual quarrels of the late Enlightenment, it signposted the forking paths of Kant's critical philosophy, on the one hand, and the scientific project of natural history on the other.

The Coptic Church in Popular Fiction on the Eve of the Arab Spring:Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nichole Perera
Keyword(s):  
Popular Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Coptic Church ◽  
Significant Addition ◽  
Theological Controversy ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice

The 5th century CE was a period of intense theological controversy concerning the relationship between the human and divine in Christ. This dispute led to the permanent separation of the Egyptian Coptic church from Imperial Orthodoxy. The events of the 5th century, previously confined to academic scholarship, have recently become the subject of popularizing works like Agora (2009), The Jesus Wars (2010), and 428 AD (2009). The Arabic novel Azazeel (2009), written by the Egyptian Islamic scholar Youseff Ziedan, is a significant addition to these other works. Like The Da Vinci Code in its use of “actual” historical evidence, Azazeel purports to be a compilation of newly discovered Syriac scrolls written by the Coptic monk Hypa, which detail his spiritual trials between 411 and 437 CE. The novel sparked great controversy in Egypt among Coptic Christians for creating a misleading picture of important figures and events in their early history. Copts felt that a Muslim scholar was appropriating the voice of a Coptic monk without clearly signalling it was a work of fiction in order to produce a false account of Coptic origins. Though published before the Arab Spring, it soon became further evidence of the oppressive intentions of the Muslim majority against a Coptic minority in Egypt. Azazeel is different from other similar works in English because the events of the 5th century are still part of the living identity of Copts.

Foggy Muddle

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Jesper Gulddal
Keyword(s):  
Popular Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modes Of Operation ◽  
Circular Structure ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Car Accident ◽  
Investigative Process ◽  
The Way

This chapter on Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse takes a narratively unmotivated car accident as the starting point for a discussion of genre negation as a force of innovation in Hammett’s writing. As a violent interruption of preestablished modes of operation, the accident embodies the way in which the novel relates to the conventions of popular fiction only to wreck and overturn them. Thus, the linearity of the investigative process is replaced with a circular structure; the purity of genre is replaced with references to a catalogue of popular fiction templates, none of which are fully executed; narrative closure is replaced with ambiguity and contingency; and the classic figure of the ‘sidekick’ is literarily blown to pieces in what Gulddal reads as another emblematic representation of the principle of genre mobility.

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