The Social Context of 4QInstruction Reconsidered

The nature and the social context of Instruction were often discussed in the scholarship. Its relatively high number of copies that have been found in Qumran, and a series of shared literary, linguistic and ideological similarities to compositions often closely associated with the Qumran movement led scholars to debate the attribution of Instruction to this group of texts. This paper argues that the pericope in 4Q418 frg. 81, which uses extensively priestly language and metaphors, reflects similar social context and structure as the Community Rule, and therefore Instruction should be placed among the writings of the community. I will use two-stage analysis of the pericope, which will offer insight on the identity of the addressee, and try to bring some fresh insights on the literary unity of the composition.

Lyrical object and other lyrical characters in J. Brodsky’s cycle “Part of Speech”

The object of this research is the poetics of J. Brodsky's cycle “Part of Speech” as literary unity. The subject of this research is the subjective organization of poems included in the cycle “Part of Speech”. Special attention is given to the nature of value attitude of the lyrical object towards other characters depicted in poems of the cycle. Such attitude is viewed as an aspect of authorial artistic reflection and assessment of depicted reality. Following the footsteps of S. N. Broytman, the author interprets the lyrical object as a speech bearer, as well as the main (encompassing other) perspective on the world in the poem. The lyrical character is a supported character, being assessed by the lyrical object (lyrical characters include a “lyrical addressee” and “lyrical You”). The scientific novelty of this research consists in viewing the nature of value attitude of the lyrical objects towards other lyrical characters in the “Part of Speech” as an aspect of poetics of the cycle as literary unity (previous studies were dedicated only to separate poems of J. Brodsky’s cycle). The analysis of selected texts of the cycle indicates the specific nature of the relationship between lyrical object and other characters depicted in the poems: 1. the relationship of the lyrical object with other characters (the lyrical heroine, “You”, etc.) is built as an anti-dialogue, demonstrating total loneliness of the lyrical object; 2. The theme of loneliness in the cycle also intersects with the artistic images for yourself; 3. in the “Part of Speech”, the forms of indirect representation of the lyric object (when the lyrical subject refers to himself as another) also point at his self-centeredness, loneliness, and disruption of ties with others.

Compilation of stories “On Both Sides” by Dewi Lestari: belles-lettres as the foundation of literary unity

This article examines the modern Indonesian women's prose. The object of this research is novelistics of the prominent Indonesian writer Dewi Lestari and the compilation of stories “On Both Sides” (Rectoverso; 2013). The collection demonstrates the features common to popular women's literature, as well as to meaningful, socially biased women's prose of Indonesia of the XXI century, known as “sastra wangi”. The subject of this analysis is the correlation of characteristics inherent to the two aforementioned phenomena in the stories by Dewi Lestari; while the goal consist in finding the beginning that allows the writer to blend different literary codes. The research is based on descriptive and comparative methods. Neither in Indonesia nor outside it, the women's prose “sastra wangi” has not been considered as a holistic literary phenomenon due to diversity of the discourses applied therein. The scientific novelty and relevance of this study are defined by the attempt to analyze sastra wangi based in on the works of the prominent contemporary Indonesian writer. It is revealed that literary unity of the texts of stories of Dewi Lestari imparts belletristic character on her writing, which allows combining the fields of classic and popular literature. This fact is important for understanding the artistic peculiarities of contemporary Indonesian women's prose sastra wangi as a whole.

The Art of Writing from the Border: Narrative Decentralisation and Pluricultural Identity Construction in Tomizza’s Franziska (1996)

This article examines one of Tomizza’s unjustifiably understudied texts within two primary contexts: one formed around the historical, political and social background of early 20th-Century Trieste, the other around the author’s recurrent concern with hybrid characters and geopolitical, cultural and linguistic borderlands. At the surface, these contexts are dramatised to revisit a political and ethnic conflict from the viewpoint of one of its most invisible victims. To uncover the novel’s more deep-running operations, however, this study takes a narratological approach and applies perspectives associated with imagology and linguistic hybridity as well as theories of border writing and border-crossing. Whereas the narrative fusion of historical reconstruction, self-reflexive commentaries, epistolary testimonies and mythical fictionalisations creates a discourse of literary fragmentation and deterritorialisation, the protagonist’s biographical background and socio-culturally embedded experiences are interlaced to represent a liminal character formed by dual perspectives, plurilingual enunciations and incompatible loyalties. Franziska exists between history and myth and as she increasingly acquires different cultural codes, she also comes to linger, irreconcilably, between different and conflicting cultural civilisations. Just as the multidimensional text questions norms of literary unity, so does this fluid character expose stereotypical conceptions of ethnic identities. As an amalgamated device, the self-referential narrator and the border crosser he constructs expose not only ideals of linguistic and cultural purity but also totalitarian conceptions of geographical and cultural borders. Ultimately, this experimental literary operation implicates the reader in a democratic literacy of multiple perspectives that questions normative notions of identities, belonging, culture and nationhood.

Standing at the Edge of Reconstructable Transmission-History: Signs of a Secondary Sabbath-Oriented Stratum in Genesis 1:1-2:3

Past studies of the formation of Genesis 1 have varied between a hypothesis of ‘Word’ and ‘Act’ Strata, the idea of a secondary Sabbath-oriented (Holiness) Stratum, and Arguments for literary unity. This article gathers older and new arguments to advance the hypothesis of a secondary Sabbath-oriented stratum.

Genre System of Russian XVIII Century Satirical Magazines

Satirical magazines are a unique form of the XVIII century literature. Standing outside the dominant in the XVIII century normative poetics, they share its didactic intent. They develop a specific genre system consisting of short literary forms. The research aims to create a structural model of this system. It involves multiple factors: the literary forms it includes are defined on several irredundant criteria. Its main genres are the editor’s essay, the reader’s letter, and parodies. The editor as the subject of an essay is a fictional character. Readers’ letters, whoever their real authors might be, coexist with editor’s essays in a common fictional space. Such genres as newspaper articles, recipes, dictionaries are objects of parody. A character sketch is the basic element of the system. Compressed or extended, it can appear as a description or a narrative. A character sketch as well as other genre modes may take the shape of essays, letters, parodies. Many short forms show a tendency towards cyclization. The magazine as a whole is a literary unity held together with the help of several mechanisms: the editor’s and readers’ personae, formal and thematic parallels between texts, sometimes a common constructive principle or even a single plot. The diversity of simultaneous structuring principles makes the genre system of the satirical magazines complex and flexible, so as to vary aesthetic impressions for the sake of a common didactic goal.

THE ESSAY IN RUSSIAN 18th-CENTURY SATIRICAL MAGAZINES

18th-century satirical magazines laid the foundations of the essay as a genre in the modern sense of the word. They formed a paradigm of essay in its various forms. The paper presents a typology of essays in satirical magazines. There are considered such magazines as Vsyakaya vsyachina (All Sorts of Things) edited by Catherine II, I to i se (This and That) and Parnasskiy shchepetil’nik (The Parnassian Vendor) by Mikhail Chulkov, Truten’ (The Drone), Pustomelya (The Tattler), Zhivopisets (The Painter) and Koshelek (The Purse) by Nikolai Novikov, Rasskazchik zabavnykh basen (The Teller of Amusing Stories) by Aleksandr Ablesimov etc. Essays are divided into three classes: in the first one, reflection and description form the structural basis of the text; the second is organized by narration; the third one combines the features of the first two. The classes are further subdivided into types according to the role of the editor as a fictitious persona being the primary subject of speech in the magazine. The first type of all classes is formed by essays that focus attention on the editor; articles where the editor plays a secondary role fall within the second type. In class I, type 1 is formed by essays characterizing the editor, while those in which other topics prevail fall under type 2. In class II, essays in which the editor takes part in the plot form type 1, while those where they do not fall into type 2. In class III, type 1 is characterized by the editor’s hegemony throughout the whole text, while in type 2 the editor’s position may change from part to part of the essay. The classification also takes into account such devices as dialogue and frame. Essays involving fantasy elements are specially marked. The editor’s persona makes essays in satirical magazines unique among all versions of the genre. It unites all the articles in a single magazine. This gives the magazine integrity, making it a continuum. Thus, essays become part of a complex literary unity.