scholarly journals Doris Lessing’s Science Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 167-176
Author(s):  
Ms. Shikha Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Private Problems ◽  
Post War ◽  
Story Writer

Doris Lessing, the Nobel Laureate (1919-2007), a British novelist, poet, a writer of epic scope, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. She was the “most fearless woman novelist in the world, unabashed ex-communist and uncompromising feminist”. Doris has earned the great reputation as a distinguished and outstanding writer. She raised local and private problems of England in post-war period with emphasis on man-woman relationship, feminist movement, welfare state, socio-economic and political ethos, population explosion, terrorism and social conflicts in her novels.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

Speculative Realism and Science Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Willems
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cormac Mccarthy ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Neil Gaiman ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

A human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. One of the ways that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is by taking non-human things to be as valid objects of investivation as humans, allowing a more responsible and truthful view of the world to take place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. Willems considers the works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett.

scholarly journals Rat Cities and Beehive Worlds: Density and Design in the Modern City

2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 722-756
Author(s):  
Jon Adams ◽  
Edmund Ramsden
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Social System ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Nestled among E. M. Forster's careful studies of Edwardian social mores is a short story called “The Machine Stops.” Set many years in the future, it is a work of science fiction that imagines all humanity housed in giant high-density cities buried deep below a lifeless surface. With each citizen cocooned in an identical private chamber, all interaction is mediated through the workings of “the Machine,” a totalizing social system that controls every aspect of human life. Cultural variety has ceded to rigorous organization: everywhere is the same, everyone lives the same life. So hopelessly reliant is humanity upon the efficient operation of the Machine, that when the system begins to fail there is little the people can do, and so tightly ordered is the system that the failure spreads. At the story's conclusion, the collapse is total, and Forster's closing image offers a condemnation of the world they had built, and a hopeful glimpse of the world that might, in their absence, return: “The whole city was broken like a honeycomb. […] For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky” (2001: 123). In physically breaking apart the city, there is an extent to which Forster is literalizing the device of the broken society, but it is also the case that the infrastructure of the Machine is so inseparable from its social structure that the failure of one causes the failure of the other. The city has—in the vocabulary of present-day engineers—“failed badly.”

The Ethical Summons Extended by Le Clézio’s “Martin” and Other Casualties of Peer-Victimization

Janus Head ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-135
Author(s):  
Keith Moser ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Peer Victimization ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
The World ◽  
Effects Of Bullying ◽  
Invaluable Tool

This interdisciplinary essay investigates J.M.G. Le Clézio’s short story “Martin” from the collection entitled La Fièvre (Fever) from the lens of recent empirical studies related to bullying. The 2008 Nobel Laureate in Literature creates a rending portrait of the physical and cerebral anguish suffered by casualties of peer-victimization. The profound inner turmoil experienced by the protagonist Martin mirrors the searing pain felt by millions of innocent victims around the world on a daily basis. Although the nefarious, long-term effects of bullying are often dismissed by misinformed individuals as a reflection of “boys being boys,” research unequivocally demonstrates that bullying is a global pandemic that should be taken seriously. In this disquieting narrative from the early part of his illustrious career, Le Clézio extends an ethical summons to the reader which compels us to think harder about the dire social consequences of bullying. Specifically, the tragic dénouement leaves little room for ambivalence concerning the author’s position related to the anguish experienced by casualties of peer-victimization. In “Martin,” it is the destabilizing realism that attacks the sensibilities of the reader the most. Although this text is a work of fiction, it deeply resonates with the reader given that deplorable incidents, which leave deep inner scars, like the one described in “Martin” occur far too often all across the globe. When analyzed in conjunction with the disconcerting research compiled by international scholars from around the world, “Martin” is an invaluable tool that allows us to catch a small glimpse of the unbearable torment felt by the victims of these heinous crimes.

scholarly journals Tradition Versus and Modernity in Laila al-Juhani’s The Waste Paradise: An Intertextual Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1197-1202
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abdullah Abduldaim Hizabr Alhusami
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Saudi Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Story Writer

The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of intertextuality in the novel Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) by the female Saudi novelist and short story writer Laila al-Juhani. Intertextuality is a rhetoric and literary technique defined as a textual reference deliberate or subtle to some other texts with a view of drawing more significance to the core text; and hence it is employed by an author to communicate and discuss ideas in a critical style. The narrative structure of Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) showcases references of religious, literary, historical, and folkloric intertextuality. In analyzing these references, the study follows the intertextual approach. In her novel The Waste Paradise, Laila al-Juhani portrays the suffering of Saudi women who are less tormented by social marginalization than by an inner conflict between openness to Western culture and conformity to cultural heritage. Intertextuality relates to words, texts, or discourses among each other. Moreover, the intertextual relations are subject to reader’s response to the text. The relation of one text with other texts or contexts never reduces the prestige of writing. Therefore, this study, does not diminish the status of the writer or the text; rather, it is in itself a kind of literary creativity. Finally, this paper aims to introduce Saudi writers in general and the female writers in particular to the world literature.

Doris Lessing and the Forming of History

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
First Century ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Youth Politics ◽  
European Cinema ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Post War

The death of Nobel Prize-winning Doris Lessing sparked a range of commemorations that cemented her place as one of the major figures of twentieth- and twenty-first- century world literature. This volume views Lessing’s writing as a whole and in retrospect, focusing on her innovative attempts to rework literary form to engage with the challenges thrown up by the sweeping historical changes through which she lived. Contributors provide new readings of Lessing’s work via contexts ranging from post-war youth politics and radical women’s writing to European cinema, analyse her experiments with genres from realism to autobiography and science-fiction, and draw on previously unstudied archive material. The volume also explores how Lessing’s writing can provide insight into some of the issues now shaping twenty-first century scholarship – including trauma, ecocriticism, the post-human, and world literature – as they emerge as defining challenges to our own present moment in history.

scholarly journals Supervivientes del Apocalipsis: un relato de ciencia ficción ‘gitano’

2020 ◽  
pp. 210-227
Author(s):  
María Sierra
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Main Role ◽  
Nuclear Disaster ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roma People ◽  
Post War ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors

En 1977 Monde Gitan, una revista francesa dedicada a la llamada “cuestión gitana”, publicó un artículo titulado Les survivants de l’Apocalypse, de Jean Ortica, integrante de una conocida familia ‘gitana’ del país. Se trata de un breve relato de ciencia ficción centrado en una catástrofe nuclear. En la historia, una familia de supervivientes debe aprender a vivir desde cero, sin poder apoyarse en la herencia de siglos de civilización. Son los romaníes quienes se sienten, en consecuencia, protagonistas de la historia de la humanidad y responsables del nacimiento de un nuevo mundo. Este relato puede ser leído de varias maneras, desde una historia de ciencia ficción distópica hasta una utopía gitana; incluso, podría ser entendido como un intento de adoctrinamiento asimilacionista por parte de la sociedad mayoritaria, desde una visión “civilizatoria”. El artículo explora estos múltiples sentidos como vía de entrada para el estudio de la situación del pueblo romaní en la Francia (y la Europa) de posguerra, teniendo en cuenta los factores sociales y culturales del contexto histórico -señaladamente, el miedo atómico propio de la Guerra Fría- pero también la situación del pueblo romaní tras el Holocausto nazi. Se trata de una forma de representar y combatir el anti-gitanismo desde la imaginación de la capacidad de agencia en un contexto de ficción extremo. In 1977 Monde Gitan, a French journal devoted to the so-called “Gypsy Question” published an article entitled “Les survivants de l’Apocalypse”. Its author was Jean Ortica, a member of a well-known “gypsy” family in France. It was a Science Fiction short story portraying a nuclear disaster. The narration stresses on how a surviving Roma family have to adapt and live starting from scratch, incapable of relying on the inherited history of centuries of civilization. The Roma are the people who thus play the main role in the new history of the humankind, feeling responsible for the birth of a new world. This story can be read in several ways, from a dystopian science fiction story to a gypsy utopia narration; It could even be understood as an attempt at assimilationist indoctrination by the majority society, from a "civilizatory” vision. The article explores these multiple meanings in connection with the study of the situation of the Roma people in post-war France (and Europe), taking into account the social and cultural factors of the historical context - remarkably, the rise of nuclear fear in the Cold War- but also the situation of the Roma people after the Nazi Holocaust. This story represents and faces anti-gypsyism from the self-imagination of the Roma capacity for agency within a fictionalized extreme context.

‘Unsettled and Unsettling’ Women Migrant Voices After the War

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Maroula Joannou
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Kamala Markandaya ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Post War

Mary Joannou examines the place of London as a haven for English-speaking exiles and émigrés and questions the extent to which it is possible to separate English literature from the literature of the rest of the world as post-war globalization destabilized, de-territorialized and de-colonized Englishness. For the five migrant women writers addressed here - Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, and Kamala Markandaya – the attractions of migration to London, albeit bomb-damaged and shortage riven after the war, far outweighed the drabness of the environment of the metropolis. The new migrants, all politically on the left and strong upholders of freedom of speech and universal human rights, made a significant contribution to the enrichment and expansion of Britain’s literary culture in the 1940s and 1950s which was well-served by thriving post-war publishing and media industries.

scholarly journals “Concrete fragments”: An interview with Henrietta Rose-Innes

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham K. Riach
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
South African ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Writing ◽  
Story Writing ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Story Writer

South Africa has a long and rich tradition of short story writing, stretching from the early oral-style tale (MacKenzie, 1999), through the writing of the “fabulous fifties” (Driver, 2012; R. Gaylard, 2008), to the most recent post-apartheid texts. In this interview, Henrietta Rose-Innes describes her practice as a short story writer, noting how it differs from that of writing novels or poetry. For Rose-Innes, the short story offers a way to capture her view of the world; that is, in sudden, intense moments, rather than in wholly narrative terms. Combining a number of short stories into a collection, Rose-Innes suggests, can offer some perspective on the plurality of contemporary South African life. Over the course of the interview, she discusses her exploration of conventional gender categories, her unconscious use of Gothic tropes, and the possibilities for political writing in contemporary South Africa. Throughout, there is a concern for how her works negotiate questions of space and place, particularly in the context of South African writing.

scholarly journals Znaczenie obrazów symbolicznych w opowiadaniu „Nema povratka” Miodraga Bulatovicia

2017 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Justyna Fudala
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
The World ◽  
Story Collection ◽  
Post War ◽  
Symbolic Images

The importance of symbolic images in the story Nema povratka written by Miodrag BulatovićMiodrag Bulatović is a representative of a grotesque avantgarde trend in post-war Serbian literature. In his short stories and novels, he referred to the notions of evil and moral decay. In a short story collection entitled Vuk i zvono, he depicted a war-stricken countryside of Montenegro, in which all elements of the world depicted are gradually devoured by fire. Only a few of the short stories from the above-mentioned collection have been translated into Polish. In the analytical part of the article, the most important motifs found in the translated texts are discussed.Значење симболичких слика у причи Нема повратка Миодрага БулатовићаY причама из збирке Вук и звоно доминира ватра, са којом су повезане људске судбине. Читалац има утисак да је човек само играчка у рукама судбине, а ватра преовладава у ње- говом животу. Булатовић приказује свет, који изгледа као пакао на земљи. Свеприсутност људских несрећа, рата и ватре ствара слику света пуног безнађa и туге. Зло се рaђa у људи- ма и утиче на њихов даљи живот. У циљу приказања трагизма и безнађа споменути писац користи много симбола, a њиховo значење je битно за разумевање текста.

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