scholarly journals The Disease Narrative in Albert Camus’ The Plague

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ya Fen Huang
Keyword(s):  
Medical Science ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Port City ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
The World ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

In many literary works, a character’s physical disease or illness also metaphorically references various universal characteristics of the human condition—death, religion, politics and relationships—as they are interworked amidst healthy and unhealthy bodies. In the case of Albert Camus’ The Plague, the epidemic of bubonic plague in the Algerian port city of Oran is considered an allegory for the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944. The highly infectious disease disrupts citizens’ lives in real time, with consequences that further manifest throughout the world to varying degrees and in varying timeframes thereafter. This paper attempts to explore Camus’s metaphoric connotations of “the plague” within these social, cultural and historical narratives. This interdisciplinary study will also bring together analyses of literary and non-literary texts about the disease narrative, while also addressing literary theories related to medical science in order to better understand the allegorical definitions of illness, death, disability and exile in The Plague.

Camus and Tragedy in Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Apparent Absence ◽  
The World ◽  
Educational Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Tragedy is a central theme in the work of Albert Camus that speaks to his 46 years of life in “interesting times.” He develops a case for the tragic arts across a series of letters, articles, lectures, short stories, and novels. In arguing for the tragic arts, he reveals an epic understanding of the tensions between individual and world manifest in the momentum of liberalism, humanism, and modernism. The educational qualities of the tragic arts are most explicitly explored in his novel The Plague, in which the proposition that the plague is a teacher engages Camus in an exploration of the grand narratives of progress and freedom, and the intimate depths of ignorance and heroism. In the novel The Outsider Camus explores the tragedy of difference in a society obsessed with the production of a normal citizen. The tragedy manifests the absurdity of the world in which a stranger in this world is compelled to support the system that rejects their subjectivity. In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus produces an essay on absurdity and suicide that toys with the illusion of Progress and the grounds for a well-lived life. Across these texts, and through his collection of letters, articles, and notes, Camus invites an educational imagination. His approach to study of the human condition in and through tragedy offers a narrative to challenge the apparent absence of imagination in educational systems and agendas. Following Camus, the tragic arts offer alternative narratives during the interesting times of viral and environment tragedy.

scholarly journals Being there yet not there: why don’t embodied responses to literary texts jar with one another?

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elspeth Jajdelska
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Narrative Coherence ◽  
Perceptual Cues ◽  
Metaphor Comprehension ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Being There ◽  
Post Hoc

AbstractLanguage and literature can stimulate the embodied resources of perception. I argue that there is a puzzle about why we experience sequences of these embodied responses as integrated and coherent, even though they are not anchored in space and time by a perceiving body. Some successions of embodied representations would even be impossible in real world experience, yet they can still be experienced as coherent and flowing in response to verbal texts. One possibility is that embodied responses to language are fleeting; they need not be integrated because they do not depend on, or relate to, one another as they would in perception. Yet it is the potential for embodied representations to linger and connect with one another which underlies new and persuasive embodied literary theories of vividness, narrative coherence and metaphor comprehension. Another possibility is that readers anchor their embodied representations in a notional human body, one endowed with superhuman powers, such as omniscience. But this account relies on implausible, post hoc explanations. A third possibility is that integrating embodied representations produced by language need be no more problematic than integrating the deceptively patchy information harvested from the environment by perception, information which gives rise to an experience of the world in rich and continuous detail. Real world perceptual cues, however, sparse though they might be, are still integrated through grounding in specific points in time and space. To explain the integration of embodied effects, I draw on sensorimotor theories of perception, and on Clark’s suggestion (1997,

scholarly journals Lê Tuyên’s literary criticism and Camus’s existentialist philosophy

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 376-386
Author(s):  
Nguyen Dinh Minh Khue
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Medieval Literature ◽  
Existentialist Philosophy ◽  
Existential Perspective ◽  
Insight Into

Lê Tuyên was among the most notable literary critics of South Vietnam during the period 1954 – 1975. He has been best known for being one of the first Vietnamese to adopt and apply phenomenological criticism, especially Bachelardian analysis of the imaginaire and poetic reveries. However, in our opinion, there are other philosophical views rather than Bachelardian thought embedded in Lê Tuyên’s literary criticism, one of which is existentialist ideas. In this paper, based on the fact that Lê Tuyên frequently cited Camus and published several articles introducing Camus’s ideas, we would like to discover the notable relationship between Lê Tuyên and Albert Camus with an aim to get deeper insight into the existential perspective in Lê Tuyên’s literary criticism. We thus make a comparison between Camus’s existentialist philosophy and Lê Tuyên’s view of human life presented in his works of literary criticism. There are two main similarities. Firstly, Camus and Lê Tuyên both focused on discovering and analyzing the absurdity of human condition. They also both argued that absurdity is not a property of life, but an experience formed in our relationship with the world. Secondly, while analyzing the revolt of heroes and heroines in Vietnamese late-medieval literature agaisnt absurdity, Lê Tuyên agreed with Camus that illusory hopes, metaphysical beliefs and ignorant rebellions should be criticized, but it is crucial to dialogue with life, to fully understand what life is and what we truly are.

Truth, proof and evidence

Homeopathy ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 97 (02) ◽  
pp. 89-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Swayne
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
The Third ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of

The study and practice of medicine, in its most personal and intimate functions, its most sophisticated scientific and technological manifestations, and its philosophical and ethical ramifications, are central to our understanding of the human condition. Homeopathic medicine: its insights, the questions that it begs, and the scientific and philosophical challenges it presents, has a significant contribution to make to this process.To be actively and seriously engaged with homeopathy is an adventurous undertaking. It is to be engaged in exploring both human nature and the nature of the world we inhabit. And in that process we are also engaged in the pursuit of truth and the exploration of reality.This paper deals first with the layout of the playing field on which homeopathy has to compete to be taken seriously. It then discusses three concepts: reality, truth and knowledge, which are objectives for which we strive and principles that guide us in that striving. In the third part it introduces the concept of ‘personal knowledge’ as an essential ingredient of scientific discovery and the pursuit of truth. And finally it proposes that the homeopathic community in general, and the Faculty of Homeopathy in particular, must expand its vision with a definition of a new paradigm, the new model of healthcare and medical science to which the vision aspires.

scholarly journals „Słuchajcie, co wam teraz powiem…”, Obsługiwałem angielskiego króla Bohumila Hrabala – fikcja literacka a „historia opowiadana”

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 73-100
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Uczkiewicz-Styś
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Natural Object ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
The World

Oral history accounts area natural object of research for anthropologists, sociologists, researchers of cultural studies, ethnologists, as well as psychologists engaged in memory studies. As narratives of experience they became the antipositivist rebellion against the monopoly of major historical narratives that, according to the reflection of the second half of the 20th century, were supposed to lead to the catastrophes of war and genocide.  In historiographic research the questioned positivist discourse based on the corresponding theory of the truth has become counterbalanced by the discourse of memory. As a consequence, also in historical research there is noticeable appreciation for other, non-classic, forms of historical narratives which include oral history accounts.  What can a researcher of literary fiction contribute to reflections on oral history whose greatest value should be authenticity, this “truth of experience”? To what extent can literary texts in the convention of a narrative of appeal, first-person narrative, monologue (in which crucial roles are played by dialogue, orality and rhetoric of the text) be read in the perspective of oral history?  When analyzing I Served the King of England novel by Bohumil Hrabal – author who by default rejects ‘the macrocosm’, the world of great politics, historical necessities, social processes, for the world of microcosm, i.e. a life of each person and what is more, he rejects any need for psychological or sociological (or any other) analysis of this microcosm – one can notice that the dichotomy of literary fiction and the authentic experience of oral history is not that obvious as it may seem. Categories of text, narration and memory, although analyzed from different research perspectives, are common for both forms. 

Does Literature Matter Today? Thoughts of the Outside

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Shaobo Xie
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The World

The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents as a significant event in the age of neoliberalism. It argues that, in spite of the different premises and the resulting interpretative procedures respectively championed by the two co-authors, both of them anchor their readings of literary texts in a concept of literature that is diametrically opposed to neoliberal rationality, and both impassionedly safeguard human values and experiences that resist the technologisation and marketisation of the humanities and aesthetic education. While Ghosh's readings of literature offer lightning flashes of thought from the outside of the Western tradition, signalling a new culture of reading as well as a new manner of appreciation of the other, Miller dedicatedly speaks and thinks against the hegemony of neoliberal reason, opening our eyes to the kind of change our teaching or reading of literature can trigger in the world, and the role aesthetic education should and can play at a time when the humanities are considered ‘a lost cause’.

Boatmen, Wastrels, and Demons: Figures of Literature

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Sawhney
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The World ◽  
National Literatures

Engaging some of the questions opened by Ranjan Ghosh's and J. Hillis Miller's book Thinking Literature Across Continents (2016), this essay begins by returning to Aijaz Ahmad's earlier invocation of World Literature as a project that, like the proletariat itself, must stand in an antithetical relation to the capitalism that produced it. It asks: is there an essential link between a certain idea of literature and a figure of the world? If we try to broach this link through Derrida's enigmatic and repeated reflections on the secret – a secret ‘shared’ by both literature and democracy – how would we grasp Derrida's insistence on the ‘Latinity’ of literature? The groundlessness of reading that we confront most vividly in our encounter with fictional texts is both intensified, and in a way, clarified, by new readings and questions posed by the emergence of new reading publics. The essay contends that rather than being taught as representatives of national literatures, literary texts in ‘World Literature’ courses should be read as sites where serious historical and political debates are staged – debates which, while being local, are the bearers of universal significance. Such readings can only take place if World Literature strengthens its connections with the disciplines Miller calls, in the book, Social Studies. Paying particular attention to the Hindi writer Premchand's last story ‘Kafan’, and a brief section from the Sanskrit text the Natyashastra, it argues that struggles over representation, over the staging of minoritised figures, are integral to fiction and precede the thinking of modern democracy.

The Integral Nature of Ethnicity and Religion during Northern Ireland’s Troubles

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Peter Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
The World ◽  
Sectarian Conflict ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
Religious Other

Northern Ireland’s Troubles conflict, like many complex conflicts through the world, has often been conceived as considerably motivated by religious differences. This paper demonstrates that religion was often integrated into an ethno-religious identity that fueled sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland during the Troubles period. Instead of being a religious-based conflict, the conflict derived from historical divides of power, land ownership, and civil and political rights in Ireland over several centuries. It relies on 12 interviews, six Protestants and six Catholics, to measure their use of religious references when referring to their religious other. The paper concludes that in the overwhelming majority of cases, both groups did not use religious references, supporting the hypothesis on the integrated nature of ethnicity and religion during the Troubles. It offers grounding for looking into the complex nature of sectarian and seemingly religious conflicts throughout the world, including cases in which religion acts as more of a veneer to deeply rooted identities and historical narratives.

Text Prophetism

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Elvira Lumi ◽  
Lediona Lumi
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
Poetic Text ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
Life On Earth

"Utterance universalism" as a phrase is unclear, but it is enough to include the term "prophetism". As a metaphysical concept, it refers to a text written with inspiration which confirms visions of a "divine inspiration", "poetic" - "legal", that contains trace, revelation or interpretation of the origin of the creation of the world and life on earth but it warns and prospects their future in the form of a projection, literary paradigm, religious doctrine and law. Prophetic texts reformulate "toll-telling" with messages, ideas, which put forth (lat. "Utters Forth" gr. "Forthteller") hidden facts from fiction and imagination. Prometheus, gr. Prometheus (/ prəmiθprə-mee-mo means "forethought") is a Titan in Greek mythology, best known as the deity in Greek mythology who was the creator of humanity and charity of its largest, who stole fire from the mount Olympus and gave it to the mankind. Prophetic texts derive from a range of artifacts and prophetic elements, as the creative magic or the miracle of literary texts, symbolism, musicality, rhythm, images, poetic rhetoric, valence of meaning of the text, code of poetic diction that refers to either a singer in a trance or a person inspired in delirium, who believes he is sent by his God with a message to tell about events and figures that have existed, or the imaginary ancient and modern world. Text Prophetism is a combination of artifacts and platonic idealism. Key words: text Prophetism, holy text, poetic text, law text, vision, image, figure

Los avatares del logos

2001 ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Leticia Flores Farfán
Keyword(s):  
Georges Bataille ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
The World ◽  
The Human Condition

Assuming with Georges Bataille that men is a being who is not in the world “like water within the water”, that is to say, in an immanent and lack of distinction state, but that its destiny is shaped in the permanent significant joint or logos to which its unfinished nature jeopardizes him, we analyze the form in which the mythical story, characterized like a sacred word with symbolic and ontological quality within the perspective of Mircea Eliade, gives account of the wound or the original tear that constitutes the human condition.

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