scholarly journals “The Quest Narrative” Reconsidered:

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-106
Author(s):  
Natsuko NOJIMA
Keyword(s):  
Quest Narrative

Kafka's The Trial

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Modernism ◽  
Abstract Language ◽  
Fundamental Uncertainty ◽  
Anonymous System ◽  
Quest Narrative

The Trial, written from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925, is a multifaceted, notoriously difficult manifestation of European literary modernism. Written in a relatively abstract language, it tells the story of Josef K., who is accused of a crime he has no recollection of having committed (and whose nature is never revealed to him). The novel has often been interpreted theologically, expressing a form of radical nihilism in a modern world abandoned by God. However, it has just as often been read as a parable of the cold, inhumane rationality of modern bureaucratization. Like many other novels of this turbulent period, it offers a tragic quest-narrative in which the hero’s search for truth and clarity (about himself, his alleged guilt, and the anonymous system he is facing) progressively leads to greater and greater confusion, ending with his execution. In this volume, the contributors deal with a range of issues arising in this work. Theology is central, and related to that are questions of justice, law, ethics, resistance, and subjectivity. All the contributors view the novel as responding to a context of rapid modernization, and questions of metaphysics intersect with the most mundane challenges of everyday life. There is here a fundamental uncertainty, a context of skepticism, that the contributors approach from a variety of angles.

scholarly journals THE «QUEST NARRATIVE» RECEPTIVE MODEL IN MIKHAIL SHISHKIN’S STORY «BLIND MUSICIAN»

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-165
Author(s):  
Ol’ga A. Grimova
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Framework ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Quest Narrative

The article is devoted to the study of the receptive model of Mikhail Shishkin’s prose. The material of the story «Blind Musician» explores the mechanisms by which the text «routes» readers’ perception. This narrative can be considered to be «quest narrative», decoding which, a reader relies on various kinds of keys. One of the most signifi cant is the title, which is possible to interpret in terms of various contexts. Literary one leads us to an obvious comparison of the modern text with the Vladimir Korolenko’s famous story «The Blind Musician». Mythological one suggests correlation with ancient and Christian plots. Within the philosophical framework it is possible to establish a correlation of Mikhail Shishkin’s ideas with the teachings of Gnostics and Pythagoreans. Taking into account each of the listed semiotic codes allows a new decoding of the reference assignment of the sign put into the title. Thus, the «blind musician» turns out not only to be physically blind Roman, but also Evgenia, who needs to become mentally «blind» in order to continue to love, to be a «musician». The analysis revealed the peculiarities of the narrative organisation of Mikhail Shishkin’s text. The level of presentation of the narration turns out to be more important than the plot itself, there is a reconsideration of the main narrative instances, and the clear certainty of the subject of speech is lost.

scholarly journals Musical Structure as Narrative in Rock

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Fernando Encarnacao
Keyword(s):  
Rock Music ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Sense Of Home ◽  
Quest Narrative

In an attempt to take a fresh look at the analysis of form in rock music, this paper uses Susan McClary’s (2000) idea of ‘quest narrative’ in Western art music as a starting point. While much pop and rock adheres to the basic structure of the establishment of a home territory, episodes or adventures away, and then a return, my study suggests three categories of rock music form that provide alternatives to common combinations of verses, choruses and bridges through which the quest narrative is delivered. Labyrinth forms present more than the usual number of sections to confound our sense of ‘home’, and consequently of ‘quest’. Single-cell forms use repetition to suggest either a kind of stasis or to disrupt our expectations of beginning, middle and end. Immersive forms blur sectional divisions and invite more sensual and participatory responses to the recorded text. With regard to all of these alternative approaches to structure, Judy Lochhead’s (1992) concept of ‘forming’ is called upon to underline rock music forms that unfold as process, rather than map received formal constructs. Central to the argument are a couple of crucial definitions. Following Theodore Gracyk (1996), it is not songs, as such, but particular recordings that constitute rock music texts. Additionally, narrative is understood not in (direct) relation to the lyrics of a song, nor in terms of artists’ biographies or the trajectories of musical styles, but considered in terms of musical structure. It is hoped that this outline of non-narrative musical structures in rock may have applications not only to other types of music, but to other time-based art forms.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Espen Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Quest Narrative

Franz Kafka’s The Trial stands as one of the most influential and emblematic novels of the twentieth century. Yet, as the overused adjective “Kafkaesque” suggests, rather than as a work of art in its full complexity, it has all too often been received as an expression of some vaguely felt cultural or psychological malaise—a symbol, perhaps, of all that we do not seem to comprehend, but that nevertheless is felt to haunt and influence us in inexplicable ways. Its plot, however, is both complex and completely unforgettable. A man stands accused of a crime he appears not to have any recollection of having committed and whose nature is never revealed to him. In what may ultimately be described as a tragic quest-narrative, the protagonist’s search for truth and clarity (about himself, his alleged guilt, and the system he is facing) progressively leads to increasing confusion before ending with his execution in an abandoned quarry. Josef K., its famous anti-hero, is an everyman faced with an anonymous, inscrutable yet seemingly omnipotent power. For all its fundamental strangeness, the novel seems to address defining concerns of the modern era: a sense of radical estrangement, the belittling of the individual in a bureaucratically controlled mass society, the rise perhaps of totalitarianism, as well as the fearful nihilism of a world apparently abandoned by God....

Gender, Race, and Narrative in On the Road

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Ronna C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
The Road ◽  
Successful Method ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Quest Narrative

Johnson explores a successful method for teaching the seminal Beat novel: Kerouac On the Road. She focuses on gender, sexuality, and race, using a feminist lens to reveal how Kerouac employed consistently deft moves of thematic installation and subversion to transform the canonical quest narrative into the postmodern.

scholarly journals Roguish Self-Fashioning and Questing in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything”

Text Matters ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 100-117
Author(s):  
Jason Blake
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
First Person ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Closed World ◽  
Yugoslav Wars ◽  
A Minor ◽  
In Transit ◽  
Quest Narrative

This paper examines self-fashioning in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything,” a story about a Sarajevo teenager’s journey through ex-Yugoslavia to the Slovenian town of Murska Sobota. His aim? “[T]o buy a freezer chest for my family” (39). While in transit, the first-person narrator imagines himself a rogue of sorts; the fictional journey he takes, meanwhile, is clearly within the quest tradition. The paper argues that “Everything” is an unruly text because by the end of the story the reader must jettison the conventional reading traditions the quest narrative evokes. What begins as a comic tale about a minor journey opens out, in the story’s final lines, into a story about larger historical concerns, namely, the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. By introducing contemporary history, Hemon points beyond the closed world of his short story, while rejecting the quest pattern he has established.

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