Significance of Short Story Cycle in Rachel Joyce’s A Snow Garden and Other Stories: An Analytical Study Using Complexity Theory

Rachel Joyce’s short story collection A Snow Garden and Other Stories (2015) is composed of seven stories which occur during a fortnight of the holiday, Christmas season. The collection uses narrative techniques which make it a unique set of stories. The stories have an urban setting and examine the intricacies of human relationships. The sense of interconnection highlighted by Joyce in the stories elevates it to a short story cycle. A short story cycle consists of individual stories which can stand on their own as complete narratives while also maintaining fictional links running through all the stories. The paper is an attempt to establish A Snow Garden and Other Stories as a short story cycle. It also argues that by narrating the interconnected nature of human lives Joyce’s work is exploring life as a complex system. As a scientific philosophy complexity theory explores the behavior of complex systems including human societies. Complex systems are self-organizing, dynamic, evolving networks that operate without any centralized control, similar to human societies. This paper will apply the principles of complex systems to reveal patterns of human behavior represented in Joyce’s work.

Alàgbà Adébáyọ̀ Fálétí as a Yorùbá Novelist

In their introduction to a book entitled: Yorùbá creativity, fiction, language, life, and songs, Falola and Genova (2005) assert that creativity among the ̣ Yorùbá has a long history and the traditions of oral histories, storytelling, performances and dramas are parts of fundamental habit of their civilization. In the pre-colonial era, the authorship of the stories in the folktales and in some poetic genres could not be claimed by any particular artist/artiste, but due to the influence of colonial rule, western literary traditions, among others, storytellers can claim authorship of their works today. The Yorùbá make no distinction between myth, legend and history. They all come under ìtàn (Ogunsina, 1992). One Yorùbá novelist that has distinguished himself in the effective use of ìtàn (story) in novel writing is Adébáyò ̣ Fálétí. He is not only a storyteller, he is a literary historian. Every creative writer in Yorùbá society is admired and judged as competent or otherwise not only by writing in the medium of the language but by having captivating story line and on the basis of his/her use of ‘quality’ Yorùbá language (i.e. language full of proverbs and other rhetoric devices). An average Yorùbá reader of Fálétí’s novels, poetry, plays and viewer of his films usually responds with delight because of his powerful use of Yorùbá language and captivating story lines, plot construct, narrative techniques and thematic contents. Isọ la (1998) classifies all other Yorùbá major novelists apart from Fágúnwà ̣ into three groups on their use of language and creative pedigree (190). According to him, “some are mere story tellers” who use mainly casual language; 154 Lere Adeyemi there are others with mixed styles and there are a few of them who creatively exploit the genius of the language. He identifies Adébáyò ̣ Fálétí among few others as belonging to the genius category. Ogunsina (1992) groups Fálétí as a prominent historical novelist who incorporates historical materials into novel writing. I agree with Ogunsina that Fálétí’s effective transfer of histori ̣ - cal materials into fiction is a revelation of the novel’s eclectic quality and also a manifestation of Fálétí’s creative genius. Fálétí’s love of ìtàn (story) is reflected in all his literary works, be it poetry, play or novel. However, our focus in this study is to examine Adébáyọ̀ ̣ Fálétí as a Yorùbá novelist through his literary lens.

Ideological Reconfigurations: Privacy, Voyeurism and Form in Recent Malayalam Cinema

This paper traces a particular moment in the recent history of Malayalam Cinema when a shift in the representation of the private sphere was attempted. In the period after 2010, a set of new Malayalam films carried a shift in terms of aesthetics and narrative techniques and went on to unfold in a full-fledged manner by the end of the decade. The paper would look at Chappa Kurishu (Head or Tails, 2011), one of the early movies of this tide to shed light on the remarkable shift it achieves in representing the scenes of romantic and erotic intimacy on screen. As the narrative of the movie centers around the fight over a smart phone that ensues between two strangers in the city of Kochi, it gets entangled with questions of privacy, class and contest over the urban spaces. Bringing to the discussion contestations over the meanings of public and private manifested in certain urban-based movements in recent times like ‘Kiss of Love’ protests, it is argued that Chappa Kurishu can be read as a response to the contradictions arising out of the emergence of new subjects in the wake of urban transformations and the conflicting cinematic publics of multiplex and single hall theatre. The formal transactions between cinematic form and video form, the paper suggests, is one of the ways in which Chappa Kurishu attempts to respond to this situation in a way that signals the transitional position of the spectator subject.

A Place in Nowhere: Architectural Placemaking in the Tararua Ranges

<p>The resulting thesis asks, ‘how can architecture curate our experience of site to facilitate placemaking’. It finds that architecture can create distinctive and diverse ‘places’ in large landscapes by enabling new ways for people to engage with the site. These places result in a deeply felt experience and, when positioned in a series, they highlight the significance of the landscape. The thesis examines a significant route within the Tararua Forest Park known as the Southern Crossing. The thesis explores how architecture can curate this experience to better connect us to place. This is facilitated by a series of nine architectural interventions that test and refine methods for situating, orientating, temporalising and contextualising one’s experience of space. Starting with site analysis, the thesis finds that subjectivity can provide deeper insights and more powerful concepts when related to experience. It finds that narrative methodologies enable the study of actuality and this is accompanied with the ability to interpret spatial elements which affect this experience. This is opposed to contemporary approaches which are focused on objectivity and fact. Through evolving narrative techniques, a way for the architecture to curate one’s experience of each site is discovered. The design methodology does away with contemporary abstract views. Instead, the process focuses on understanding how the architectonic elements influence the spatial experience to better connect us to place.</p>

A Place in Nowhere: Architectural Placemaking in the Tararua Ranges

<p>The resulting thesis asks, ‘how can architecture curate our experience of site to facilitate placemaking’. It finds that architecture can create distinctive and diverse ‘places’ in large landscapes by enabling new ways for people to engage with the site. These places result in a deeply felt experience and, when positioned in a series, they highlight the significance of the landscape. The thesis examines a significant route within the Tararua Forest Park known as the Southern Crossing. The thesis explores how architecture can curate this experience to better connect us to place. This is facilitated by a series of nine architectural interventions that test and refine methods for situating, orientating, temporalising and contextualising one’s experience of space. Starting with site analysis, the thesis finds that subjectivity can provide deeper insights and more powerful concepts when related to experience. It finds that narrative methodologies enable the study of actuality and this is accompanied with the ability to interpret spatial elements which affect this experience. This is opposed to contemporary approaches which are focused on objectivity and fact. Through evolving narrative techniques, a way for the architecture to curate one’s experience of each site is discovered. The design methodology does away with contemporary abstract views. Instead, the process focuses on understanding how the architectonic elements influence the spatial experience to better connect us to place.</p>

Formation of skills of working with cultural codes in classes in philological disciplines

The article deals with the formation of skills of working with cultural codes in the process of teaching literary disciplines in bachelor's, master's and postgraduate studies. The author proceeds from the modern understanding of the cultural code as an integral concept, which includes a large number of interrelated elements (mythological archetypes, ideologems, intertextuality phenomena, behavioral stereotypes). The interest in this problem is relevant. The totality of cultural codes is the symbolic capital of nations, social groups, and generations. From a scientific point of view, the use of the concept of a unique writer's code is very productive. A great artist of the word passes on a certain creative code as a baton to subsequent writer's generations a unique system of artistic signs (quotes, characters, keywords, plot schemes, genre models, narrative techniques, etc.), recognized by both readers and writers-followers. There are such personal cultural codes as Gogol's, Leskovsky's, Chekhov's, and Dostoevsky's code. The cultural code is usually implemented in a literary text in both explicit and implicit forms. These are satirical and humorous works, associative lyrical prose, alternative historical and quasi-documentary texts, and fantastic literature. The very presence of hidden semantics and complex intertextual references sets the reader the task of adequate creative decoding of the work. Literary works created with the use of cinematic code (editing effects, freeze-frame, detail enlargement, visual dynamics) are also difficult to decipher. The article deals with the choice of literary disciplines that have large resources for the purposeful study of cultural codes. The assessment of the means of identifying the cultural code in a literary text is given. Attention is paid to developing an accurate understanding and targeted use of the system of concepts that each discipline has. This is due to the difficult metamorphoses in our era of the philological thesaurus due to the development of the sometimes contradictory conceptual apparatus of relatively autonomous foreign-language literary scientific systems. In the process of deepening the knowledge of such a conceptual apparatus, undesirable eclecticism should be avoided. The main result of such work is seen by the author of the article in the gradual acquisition of all the knowledge, skills and abilities that allow students to find the optimal balance between the practice of scrupulous concrete analysis of a particular literary text and a holistic vision of the cultural era and the literary process as a large-scale dynamic system.

“At the Western Palace”: The Dehumanization of Whiteness, Americanness, and Chinese-Americanness in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior

The dehumanization of whiteness in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) inheres in the overarching ghosthood metaphor. While first generation Chinese American immigrants in The Woman Warrior attribute the power of transforming people into ghosts to the United States of America as a country, the questioning of a person’s humanity by calling them a “ghost” is not reserved for white people alone. Chinese American immigrants also run the risk of losing their humanity and becoming ghosts if they renounce their relatives and their heritage. The husband of the first-person narrator’s Chinese aunt, Moon Orchid, is an example of a Chinese American man, who turns into a ghost on account of swapping his Chinese wife for a much younger American one. The clinic in which Moon Orchid’s husband works, a chrome and glass Los Angeles skyscraper, becomes a vehicle for the metaphoric representation of the United States as the Western Palace – also the title of the fourth of the five chapters of The Woman Warrior, exemplifying narrative techniques employed by Kingston in order to render the above mentioned dehumanization.

MTV’s The Hills: A Leading American Docusoap

<p>This thesis explores the relatively uncharted academic territory of the American docusoap, and case studies The Hills as a pertinent example of this burgeoning television genre. Docusoap is a ‘mixed-genre’ that enhances factual material with the story-telling techniques of fictional drama. Whilst many academics have studied the origins of British docusoap and have registered the influence upon it of ‘public service’ objectives in programming, less attention has been paid to the emergence of the docusoap in the commercially-driven American television context. It is in this context that the docusoap has entailed a more overt blending of the attributes of ‘documentary’ and ‘soap opera’ for purely entertainment purposes. Testifying to the need to reconcile risk with conservatism in a commercially-driven schedule context, the generic mix within The Hills draws from the genres of soap opera and ‘reality’ TV, both of which bring the advantages and assurances of a well-demonstrated audience popularity. Having recently completed its sixth and final season, The Hills exemplifies current developments within the American docusoap form. This docusoap details the lives of a group of attractive, affluent young people in their early twenties who work and socialise within the entertainment and fashion industries of Los Angeles. Significantly, The Hills maintains the voyeuristic allure of a ‘reality’ TV premise and enhances this by adapting the melodramatic aesthetics and distinctive narrative strategies of soap opera to a degree that is more overt than other docusoaps, aside, of course, from that which characterised its forerunner, Laguna Beach. This thesis undertakes a close examination of the generic and institutional positioning of The Hills in four distinct chapters. Chapter One examines the generic position of docusoap as a ‘mixed-genre’ and the institutional role The Hills performs for the youth-oriented MTV network. Chapter Two analyses the specific fictional narrative techniques The Hills uses to enhance its documented footage whilst Chapter Three addresses the controversies that have emerged due to this docusoap’s blending of the fictional and the factual. Finally, Chapter Four details how the docusoap’s ability to appeal to lucrative young viewers positions The Hills as a powerful promotional tool for MTV’s consumerist messages.</p>

MTV’s The Hills: A Leading American Docusoap

<p>This thesis explores the relatively uncharted academic territory of the American docusoap, and case studies The Hills as a pertinent example of this burgeoning television genre. Docusoap is a ‘mixed-genre’ that enhances factual material with the story-telling techniques of fictional drama. Whilst many academics have studied the origins of British docusoap and have registered the influence upon it of ‘public service’ objectives in programming, less attention has been paid to the emergence of the docusoap in the commercially-driven American television context. It is in this context that the docusoap has entailed a more overt blending of the attributes of ‘documentary’ and ‘soap opera’ for purely entertainment purposes. Testifying to the need to reconcile risk with conservatism in a commercially-driven schedule context, the generic mix within The Hills draws from the genres of soap opera and ‘reality’ TV, both of which bring the advantages and assurances of a well-demonstrated audience popularity. Having recently completed its sixth and final season, The Hills exemplifies current developments within the American docusoap form. This docusoap details the lives of a group of attractive, affluent young people in their early twenties who work and socialise within the entertainment and fashion industries of Los Angeles. Significantly, The Hills maintains the voyeuristic allure of a ‘reality’ TV premise and enhances this by adapting the melodramatic aesthetics and distinctive narrative strategies of soap opera to a degree that is more overt than other docusoaps, aside, of course, from that which characterised its forerunner, Laguna Beach. This thesis undertakes a close examination of the generic and institutional positioning of The Hills in four distinct chapters. Chapter One examines the generic position of docusoap as a ‘mixed-genre’ and the institutional role The Hills performs for the youth-oriented MTV network. Chapter Two analyses the specific fictional narrative techniques The Hills uses to enhance its documented footage whilst Chapter Three addresses the controversies that have emerged due to this docusoap’s blending of the fictional and the factual. Finally, Chapter Four details how the docusoap’s ability to appeal to lucrative young viewers positions The Hills as a powerful promotional tool for MTV’s consumerist messages.</p>

Traumatic Experiences and their Representation in Narratives: A Study

With the rise of psychiatric literature and medical humanities, trauma studies have gained significant focus in recent years. The studies that were done by Kidd (2005), Perring (2013), Olive (2014), Seran (2015), Tembo (2017), Hussain et al. (2018), Finck (2006), Durrant (2012), Long (2012), De Mey (2012), Curtis (2015), Karpasitis (2010), Ward (2008) and Dauksaite (2013), particularly, deal with diverse traumatic experiences. At the same time, they also throw light on the issues of the representation of trauma in narratives. They have examined narrative strategies, like the use of transgenerational empathy, intermediality of text and image, syntax disruption, ellipses, text/image layout, repetitions, symbols, photograph insertion, and assimilation, intertexts, framing of panels, inter-textuality, repetition, fragmentation, and flashback, that can be employed to deal with the challenges for the representation of traumatic experiences in narratives. This paper argues that the narrative features and techniques embedded in the narratives can be utilized for the representation and understanding of diverse traumatic experiences. The narrative components like plot (event), character and theme can be analyzed to discuss the psychological trauma of different characters. Researches can also rely on narrative techniques like flashbacks, flashforward, frame story, events in parallel, narrative shift, multi-perspectivity, repetitive designation, epiphany, amplification, imagery, tone, use of repetitive sentence structure, hamartia, peripetia, and comparison to examine how these techniques help represent the psychological trauma of the characters in the narratives.