scholarly journals The City of “Matera” Cultural Capital and Cinematographic Destination with the Power of Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. p13
Author(s):  
Manola Maria ◽  
Tsatalbassoglou A.
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Italian Literature ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Rural South ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The City

Aliano is a small village in the province of Matera (Note 1). The city is characterized by the exceptional nature and the uniqueness of a “lunar landscape”, of a vast expanse of eerie beauty. The area was not always accessible for the same reasons, it became world famous for completely different reasons and specifically through the novel of a writer called Carlo Levi (Note 2). This particular author has left a strong mark on the history of Italian literature, although his work is not very rich. The place and the conditions of his new life as an exile in a poor isolated village of southern Italy, became the reason for the creation of his most important book entitled "Christ stopped at Eboli (Note 3).The book presents the rural south of Italy through its social condition, but not only as the result of an unbearable for the country archaic condition, but also as a place of existence of an important civilization. In this way the author’s narrative, as argued by Palmieri (2020), works as an objective account that is subjectively equated to a literary form.[… Christ did not arrive at this dark land where there is no sin and redemption, where evil is not moral, but an earthly pain that always exists in life. Christ stopped at Eboli.] (Levi, p. 12).

Restoration Theatre and the Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Transition ◽  
Strong Affinity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Restoration Theatre ◽  
Restoration Comedy ◽  
London Stage

This chapter explores the broad cultural transition from drama to novel during the Restoration period, which triggered one of the most productive periods in the history of the London stage. However, when it comes to the eighteenth century proper, the novel is more likely to be identified as the century's most significant and appealing popular genre. The chapter considers why the novel has largely superseded drama as the literary form to which ambitious and imaginative literary types without a strong affinity for verse writing would by default have turned their attention and energies by the middle of the eighteenth century. Something important may have been lost in the broad cultural transition from drama to novel. This chapter, however, contends that many things were preserved: that the novel was able to absorb many of the functions and techniques not just of Restoration comedy but of the theatre more generally.

Violence, Memory, and History: Geoffrey of Monmouth and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-344
Author(s):  
Jonathan Brent
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Geoffrey Of Monmouth ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

Kazuo Ishiguro has suggested that his work of medieval fantasy, The Buried Giant (2015), draws on a “quasi-historical” King Arthur, in contrast to the Arthur of legend. This article reads Ishiguro’s novel against the medieval work that codified the notion of an historical King Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1139). Geoffrey’s History offered a largely fictive account of the British past that became the most successful historiographical phenomenon of the English Middle Ages. The Buried Giant offers an interrogation of memory that calls such “useful” constructions of history into question. The novel deploys material deriving from Geoffrey’s work while laying bear its methodology; the two texts speak to each other in ways sometimes complementary, sometimes deconstructive. That Ishiguro’s critique can be applied to Geoffrey’s History points to recurrent strategies of history-making, past and present, whereby violence serves as a mechanism for the creation of historical form.

Re-membering Syria’s Traumatic Past: Gender, Poetics, and Loss in Manhal al-Sarrāj’s As a River Should

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 202-227
Author(s):  
Linda Istanbulli
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traumatic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

Abstract In a system where the state maintains a monopoly over historical interpretation, aesthetic investigations of denied traumatic memory become a space where the past is confronted, articulated, and deemed usable both for understanding the present and imagining the future. This article focuses on Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr (As a river should) by Manhal al-Sarrāj, one of the first Syrian novels to openly break the silence on the “1982 Hama massacre.” Engaging the politics and poetics of trauma remembrance, al-Sarrāj places the traumatic history of the city of Hama within a longer tradition of loss and nostalgia, most notably the poetic genre of rithāʾ (elegy) and the subgenre of rithāʾ al-mudun (city elegy). In doing so, Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr functions as a literary counter-site to official histories of the events of 1982, where threatened memory can be preserved. By investigating the intricate relationship between armed conflict and gender, the novel mourns Hama’s loss while condemning the violence that engendered it. The novel also makes new historical interpretations possible by reproducing the intricate relationship between mourning, violence, and gender, dislocating the binary lines around which official narratives of armed conflicts are typically constructed.

scholarly journals City image as a personification of female nature in “The Dead [City of] Bruges” by Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-109
Author(s):  
Marina A. Kozlova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
City Image ◽  
Image System ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City

The paper is devoted to the peculiarities of the creation of the personified image of the city in the novel “The Dead [City of] Bruges” by Georges Raymond Constantin Rodenbach, which, according to the author himself, represents not only the protagonist, but also its organising force. The Belgian author draws on an earlier literary tradition, according to which the city appears to the poet's mind in the form of a woman. The image of the city is built on the combination and interaction of different elements, among which those that are considered in the article: the theme of duality, the motif of reflection, which becomes the main constructional principle of the image system of the novel, as well as references to mythological and literary archetypes. The theme of duplicity is directly connected with the category of correspondence or analogy, which is central to Rodenbach's oeuvre and forms a peculiar poetics of reflection and determines the choice of expressive means. Dualism is associated with a hostile, dark and demonic force, contrasted with the "holy" and infallible feminine ideal, embodied in the image of the perished beloved, who is also a prototype of the city. The poeticised image of the city is related to archetypical figures that are typical of European symbolism – first of all, Ophelia, but also Orpheus and Narcissus, all this through an appeal to the symbolism of water and the otherworld, then through the main character's attempt to overcome the border between worlds and create a new myth about love that defeats death.

THE HISTORY OF THE CREATION OF THE BALLET "THE WHITE-HAIRED GIRL"

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-91
Author(s):  
Chen Xinheng ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Dance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Chinese Opera ◽  
Chinese Leadership ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Classical Ballet

The article is devoted to the history of the creation of the ballet "The White-Haired Girl", which was included among the "exemplary productions" during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The plot of the ballet, based on class contradictions between landowners and peasants, has folklore origins: first it appeared in the novel, then the first national Chinese opera was created, later adapted for cinema and became the basis for the ballet. The ballet "The White-Haired Girl" was commissioned by Chinese leadership. It includes the historical facts of the class struggle and shows the formation of a personality ready to resist exploitation and fight for freedom for all. The ballet's music, composed by Yan Jinxuan, also includes revolutionary folk songs and numbers taken from the opera of the same name. Compared to the opera, the ballet enhances revolutionary features in the characters. The choreography harmoniously combines classical ballet pas with the characteristics of Chinese folk dance and martial arts. The ballet "The White-Haired Girl" is performed with ongoing success since its inception in 1965 to the present day and is rightly considered a "red classic" with a high ideology and artistry.

The originality of the “estate topos” in the A.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the First”

2020 ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
Anna S. Akimova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Childhood Memories ◽  
Research History ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Peasant Household ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Poor Peasant ◽  
The City

Moscow is the city which united the characters of A.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the First”. Kitay-Gorod is the space where the action of the first book is mainly set. In the novel Tolstoy showed in great detail the everyday life of the city and its inhabi- tants. According to the I.E. Zabelin’s research (“History of the city of Moscow”) in late 17 — early 18 th centuries Moscow was like a big village that is why Tolstoy relied on his childhood memories about the life in the small village Sosnovka (Samara Region) describing the streets of Moscow. The novel begins with the description of a poor peasant household of Brovkin near Moscow, then Volkov’s noble estate is depicted and Menshikov’s house. The space of the city is expanding with each new “address”. Moscow estates, and in particular, connected with the figure of “guardian, lover of the Princess-ruler” V.V. Golitsyn, in Tolstoy’s novel are inextricably linked with the character’s living and with the life of the country. The description of the palace built by Golitsyn at the peak of his career is based on the Sergei Solovyov’s “History of Russia in ancient times”. Golitsyn left it and went to his estate outside Moscow Medvedkovo and from there in exile.

Beyond the Canon

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Merchant
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Women's Roles ◽  
Women’S Roles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
The City

This chapter examines traditional music as a means to construct a cohesive pre-Soviet past in Uzbekistan. Traditional music encompasses three maqom traditions with roots in cities that currently exist within the borders of Uzbekistan: Xorazm maqom, Shashmaqom, and Tashkent-Ferghana maqom. The chapter first considers the history of the construction of the canon of traditional music in Uzbek institutions before discussing traditional music and maqom's links to nationalism in the city of Tashkent. It then looks at women's roles performing the great works in the maqom tradition, along with two masters of this tradition, Yunus Rajabi and Munojat Yulchieva. It also explores the role of maqom in the shift in cultural capital in Uzbekistan after independence. The chapter concludes with an assessment of dutar ensembles as an area of contested gender identity that is very much context dependent.

scholarly journals A “STRANGENESS IN MY MIND” BY ORHAN PAMUK – HOW THE NOVEL IS MADE

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-147
Author(s):  
Tsvetan RAKYOVSKI
Keyword(s):  
Main Idea ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
Private Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
Orhan Pamuk ◽  
Postmodern Novel ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The City

e article explores the diversity of narrative techniques in Orhan Pamuk’s novel A Strangeness in My Mind. The main idea is that the drama of a private life is told against the background of the drama of the life of Istanbul. To do this, the novel parallels the biographical ‘I’ of the main character and the historical ‘He’ of the City. This comparison provokes the idea of the novel’s close relation to the history of Istanbul and Turkey over the last fifty years. Orhan Pamuk does not spare the reader any of the specific, purely "Turkish problems" with the Kurds and Greeks, as well as the radical and conservative moods and public discontent from the 1950s to the 1980s. The narrative line is developed slowly and minutely,owing to the author's intention to authenticate real events through the perspective of fictional characters and vice versa - to romanticize cultural and purely civilizational processes in the last half century of the development of this part of the border between Europe and Asia. This is the only way to explain the presence of the problem of women's emancipation and the lack of that misunderstood "patriotism" which often prevents the depiction of purely national processes in life. This refutes the widespread opinion that A Strangeness in My Mind is a postmodern novel.

scholarly journals Never mind the city guides: The topos of a city in urban fantasy (with interpretative emphasis on Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere)

Ars Aeterna ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
Martin Boszorád ◽  
Simona Klimková
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
London Underground ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Urban Fantasy ◽  
The City ◽  
Constitutive Element

Abstract The paper focuses on the phenomenon of urban fantasy with a particular interest in the topos of a city, which assumes great significance as a thematic and motivic element in the subgenre. The authors touch upon the relation between (sub)genre and topos/topoi in general, but also more specifically, between urban fantasy and the city, regarding the urban area as a distinct setting with a specific atmosphere, character or genius loci. Within this frame, the paper seeks to exemplify the aforementioned relations through an interpretative study of Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere, which breathes life into the London underground scene. London Below comes to personify, literally, the vices of London Above via the use of anthropomorphic strategies. Moreover, the spatial peculiarities of the novel not only contribute to the creation of the fantastical atmosphere but they also function as a vehicle of social critique and a constitutive element of the protagonist’s transformation.

"THE PLAGUE" BY A. CAMUS AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: HUMANITY IN THE FACE OF AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Ryazantsev ◽  
◽  
Alexey V. Smirnov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Albert Camus ◽  
Nobel Prize Winner ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
World Tourism Organization ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Tourism Organization ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

The novel of the Nobel Prize winner in literature Albert Camus "The Plague" became one of the most widely read books in Europe during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. A number of researchers consider Camus to be an existentialist writer. Existentialism arises, after two bloody wars, to give answers to questions that concern humanity. Since Albert Camus wrote the novel during the Second World War, he understands the plague not only as a disease, but also as German soldiers, whom the inhabitants of France called the "brown plague" because the invaders wore brown shirts. As the inhabitants of the city of Oran resisted the plague on the pages of the work, so the inhabitants of France fought against Nazism and fascism. A. Camus in the novel "The Plague" describes the quarantine measures that take place in the city of Oran in the 40s of the XX century. The consequences of the epidemic and the behavior of the residents described in the novel have much in common with modern coronavirus realities: the decline of the economy, the growth of the number of unemployed, protests against the quarantine measures introduced; the introduction of curfews, the creation of new medicines, etc. In Russia, as in the pages of the novel, there is a decline in the economy. Thus, during the pandemic in Russia, the number of registered unemployed increased from 1.3 million people to 4.8 million, and the appeal to employment centers for support measures increased from 20% to 80%. Camus in his novel writes about the creation of an anti-plague serum, in Russia, the first in the world, a vaccine against coronavirus infection "Sputnik V" was created. The director of the hotel, described in the work, said that due to the epidemic and quarantine, the tourist business disappeared. According to the World Tourism Organization — tourism at the end of 2020 it has decreased by 77% compared to 2019, which is equivalent to the tourist activity that was recorded in the late 80s. Stray animals were shot in Oran, because they believed that they could be carriers of infection. In China, during the Covid-19 pandemic, pets were thrown out of windows because people believed that they could be the source of Covid-19, and in Denmark, more than 11 million minks were exterminated for the same reasons. The authors of this article attempted to analyze the development of the epidemiological process in the novel and plot the mortality rate from the plague according to the data of the work.

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