Hamlet as an Arab Intellectual: A Marxist Reading of Mamduh Adwan’s Play Hamlet Wakes Up Late

The paper aims at reading Mamduh Adwan’s play Hamlet Wakes up Late (1978) from a Marxist perspective to broadly examine how life under a Capitalist system along with its foreign investments and trading services can easily destroy the political, social as well as the cultural surroundings of a certain nation. Throughout his play, Adwan brilliantly adapts Shakespeare and offers a Marxist point of view to comment on how the West continues to dominate the East with its economic power. Importantly, in employing Shakespeare’s portrayal of Hamlet as a tragic hero, Adwan uses him as a dramatic archetype to comment on one of the Shakespearean’s famous political quotes “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. Seen from this perspective, the paper will read Adwan’s play from a Marxist viewpoint to demonstrate how he has in fact used Hamlet’s lack of intellectualism to criticize the Syrian policy of “The Six Day War” defeat to Israel.

Byron’s Spanish Afterlives: Emilio Castelar’s Vida de Lord Byron

This article examines Emilio Castelar’s Vida de Lord Byron (1873), the first Spanish biography of Byron. Borrowing most information from Moore’s and, especially, Lescure’s biographies of the poet, Castelar provides an apologetic and over-romantic portrait of Byron, in which he tries to reconstruct his private life and inner self, depicting him as a tragic hero who, despite his excesses, should be recognised as a universal genius. Castelar’s biography, which became an immediate success, illustrates the keen interest that Byron still aroused in Spain in the late nineteenth century and it deserves to be considered in the study of Spanish Byronism, a cultural phenomenon that includes but should not be limited to the literary reception of his poetry.

Aligning with Sociopaths: Character Engagement Strategies in Highsmith’s and Minghella’s Talented Mr. Ripleys

Patricia Highsmith’s stated reason for writing The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) was to see if she could elicit empathetic engagement for her immoral protagonist Tom Ripley. Amongst other factors, she achieves her goal by allowing readers to align affectively with the protagonist’s road to self-discovery. Her experiment culminates with Tom’s fruition into an aggressive consumer, thus resolving his and the readers’ apprehensions. On the other hand, Anthony Minghella’s Ripley leaves more room for interpretation. In his interviews, the filmmaker states that he does not aim for his protagonist to remain the sociopath from Highsmith’s novel. Instead, his story explores the absence of a father figure and how it affects his main characters. Consequently, he frames Tom as an underprivileged youth whose emotional instability brings about his demise. To this end, he employs victimization scenes, as well as moral disengagement cues. I argue that, amongst other factors, such an application of an industry-tested design of emphatic concern elicitation obscures the filmmaker’s initial intent. As a result, Minghella’s Tom can be seen as a manipulative sociopath, as well as a victimized tragic hero.

Griselda’s Afterlife, or the Relationship between Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale and the Tale of Magic

Some influence of Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale, also known as the story of the patient Griselda, on Shakespeare, and particularly on The Winter’s Tale, has long been recognized. It seems, however, that the matter deserves further attention because the echoes of The Clerk’s Tale seem scattered among a number of Shakespeare’s plays, especially the later ones. The experimental nature of this phenomenon consists in the fact that Griselda-like characters do not strike the reader, especially perhaps the Renaissance reader, as good protagonists of a tragedy, or even a problem comedy. The Aristotelian conception of the tragic hero does not seem to fit Griselda because there is no “tragic fault” in her: she is completely innocent. It was thus a bold decision on the part of Shakespeare to use this archetype as a corner stone of at least some of his plays.

Dialogue or Narrative? Exploring Tensions between Interpretations of Genesis 38

We examine dialectical tensions between “dialogue” and “narrative” as these discourses supplant one another as the fundamental discourse of intelligibility, through juxtaposing two interpretations of Genesis 38 rooted in changing interpretative paradigms. Is dialogue properly understood as a narrative genre, or is narrative the content about which people are in dialogue? Is the divine–human relationship a narrative drama or is it a dialogue between a god and human beings? We work within parameters laid out by the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer (primarily representing dialogue) and Ricoeur (primarily representing narrative). On the one hand, a feminist approach can develop Tamar as a courageous hero in impossible circumstances, strategizing to overturn Judah’s patriarchal naïveté. On the other hand, Judah seems to be able to be read as a tragic hero, seeking to save Tamar. These readings challenge one another, where either Tamar’s or Judah’s autonomy is undermined. By putting these interpretations into dialogue, our aim is to show that neither dialogue nor narrative succeeds the other with finality, and that we can achieve a fragile integration of the two (dialogue and narrative) despite their propensity toward polarization.

Paradox and Tragedy in Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island and Seneca’s Oedipus Rex: A Comparative Study

The stratagem of employing paradoxical scenario in any form of artistic expression has been a timeless creative scheme. A very famous example of paradox may be seen within Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, with the titular character’s pursuit of truth and goodwill leading to his own tragic downfall. Similarly, tragic expression has been at the centre of humans’ outlet for cathartic release. Thus, both paradox and tragedy tend to emerge in different ways in works of literature. The present study is focussed on recognizing and exploring the traces of commonalities of paradox and tragic elements between Oedipus Rex and Shutter Island(2003),by the renowned crime and mystery novelist, Dennis Lehane by considering the heroes in both narratives and the situations that their character attributes incite. The authors in both cases assign character attributes of a traditional tragic hero which constantly inform their actions, thereby creating an inevitable journey of personal downfall. The moments of anagnorisis are imbued with intense guilt and grief as both the protagonists realize that they themselves are the cause for their problems.

THE ROLE OF FATE IN TRAGEDY: A CASE STUDY OF ROTIMI’S THE GODS ARE NOT TO BLAME

The traditional pagan view of human tragedy which existed several centuries back in the ancient Greek religious myths was transposed not only to Western Europe but also to the African context in the literary representation of reality in tragedy. Common religious metaphysics across cultures occasionally occasion common conception of human tragedy across generations of human history, but such cosmological cross-cultural convergence does not take for granted their dynamic perspectives on the role of fate in human tragedy. To be sure, the audiences of each time, view and appreciate tragedy within their unique geo-political and cultural milieu. In this sense, Erich Auerbach’s new historicist reading and post-modern montage of texts and commentaries validly confirms humanity’s representation of reality from their religious and traditional customary dispensations across space and time. Coming into the world in the West African Nigerian Yoruba metaphysical universe, the tragic personage holds his fate in his own hands. The gods and supernatural beings in the invisible realms claim foreknowledge of the fate which the tragic hero brings into the world, yet do not influence the fate-holder in the winding trail of life to the fulfillment of tragic fate. The gods in the mythico-religious worldview of the Yoruba natives permit the fulfilment of prehistoric fate based on the fate-holder’s individuality, as dictated by his carnal nature. This paper therefore posits that tragedy occurs as a product of the constant working of fate in the tragic hero which fulfills itself in a tragic conflict through the hero’s free-will, according to the prophecy of the gods in Ola Rotimi’s The gods are not to blame. This is more so in the Aristotelian concept of catharsis in tragedy due to the interplay between prehistoric fate and historic fate, the latter being the product of the former. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0876/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

An Exploration of Karna’s Last Days through the Prism of Aristotle's Hamartia

Purpose: The Mahabharata by Vyasa and the Iliad by Homer both have a surfeit of Heroes. The two great heroes are Karna from the Mahabharata and Achilles from the Iliad. They have a few things in common as their lives are heavily influenced by fate. As fate is inescapable, they confronted their death head-on. The figures of Karna and Achilles stand out dramatically in both Indian and Greek mythology respectively casting everyone else in the gloom, thus making both the masterpieces incomplete without these heroes. Though these spartan heroes were invincible due to their origin, they lay their lives in Kurukshetra and Trojan wars respectively. They decided to be glorious despite knowing the fact that they would die in the battle. Few characters in the ancient literature have been drawn with such perfect skill and insight into human nature as Maharathi Karna, a character who has never been truly understood, has been continually misinterpreted despite the completeness, candor, and clarity of the amazing Epic in providing us with specifics of his existence. The most important aspect of his life narrative which is often overlooked or glossed over by modern writers which has far-reaching implications is that Karna was born out of wedlock and so cast away at birth. His adroitness and the values he lived and loved for standing him in good stead for a hero. Design / Methodology/Approach: The paper is prepared by accumulating secondary data from educational websites and written articles. The study shall be carried out with the use of Research Journals, Scholarly Books, Doctoral Theses, and websites. This qualitative research is carried out by studying and interpreting the existing knowledge on the subject using the keywords “Karna”, “Epic”, “Tragic flaw”, “Battle”, “Loyalty” which are accessible in online articles, peer-reviewed journals, publications and a variety of related portals. Findings/Result: Karna's entire life was spent trying to figure out who he was and to find an answer to the same. Karna's life also shows us how life is full of unrelenting choices; the options being limited. Friendship with someone who has aided at times of need and to whom one has sworn lifelong loyalty and friendship is admirable, but there must be a fine line drawn between this duty and other, more important responsibilities. Karna is, without a doubt, a figure who, in Aristotelian terminology, possesses the classical features of a tragic hero, as well as a figure with a great deal of literary potential. Originality/Value: This paper attempts to make a sincere study of Karna as a tragic hero under classical examples of Aristotle's ‘Hamartia’ where a hero wants to ‘Triumph’ but while doing so he commits an intentional error and ends up achieving exactly the opposite with disastrous results. The story of the life of Karna is pre-eminently great nevertheless fate and destiny played an unwarranted and calamitous game facilitating the reader of the Epic to identify himself or herself with the Tragic Hero. Paper Type: Exploratory research paper.