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Journal articles on the topic 'Absurdist fiction'
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1
Rahim, Sifatur. "Absurd (anti)Heroes’ Journey toward Happiness: A Psychoanalytic Comparison between Arthur Fleck and Meursault." Spectrum 17 (November 30, 2023): 101–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/spectrum.v17i1.69005.
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In his philosophical writing, The Myth of Sisyphus (1979), Albert Camus ponders the futility of the search for unity and absolute in this seemingly indifferent universe, and surmises that true happiness comes from accepting the meaninglessness of human existence. This particular school of thought is known as absurdism, and the narratives that fall under this discipline are referred to as absurdist texts. Camus not only expounds on the scopes of absurdism but also puts them into practice through his fiction. One such seminal absurdist novel by Camus is The Outsider (1987). In the novel, the writer delineates how the protagonist, Meursault, finds contentment by accepting his fate. A similar state of happiness is attained by Arthur Fleck, the protagonist of the film Joker (2019), when he accepts and assumes his proper place in society. From the onset, Fleck and Meursault may appear quite different from each other. However, upon closer inspection, the subtle similarities in their characteristics are perceptible, which bind them to a common threat of absurdity. It is undeniable that both Fleck and Meursault have committed homicide. Nonetheless, there is a greater force behind their acts than free will, and that is their unconscious drive. This paper explores the workings of the unconscious and its manifestation in Fleck and Meursault’s actions while explicitly commenting on the relationships with their respective mothers. This comparative study also highlights how both of them discover true happiness once they finally learn to accept their fate and reality. Spectrum, Volume 17, June 2022: 101-113
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Rasheed, Nausheen, Mamona Yasmin Khan, and Shaheen Rasheed. "Philosophical Exploration of Absurdism and Existentialism: A Comparative Study of Kafka's Work The Metamorphosis and The Trial." Global Social Sciences Review VI, no. II (June 30, 2021): 94–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.31703/gssr.2021(vi-ii).10.
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The philosophical stance about the existence of being and the meaning of life has been a widely discussed subject among philosophers and critics. Existentialism says that a man can construct his own meaning of life by making judicious use of his awareness, free wills and personal responsibilities, but absurdism believes that there is no meaning of life out there. The focus of this study is to explore the absurdist and existential aspects in Kafka's fiction The Metamorphosis (1915) and The Trial (1925). This is qualitative comparative research, and the data which have been collected for this purpose is through purposive sampling techniques. In this study, Camus' theory of absurdism and theory of existentialism has been adopted as a theoretical framework. The study explores in what ways the traces of absurdism and existentialism are present in Kafka's fiction The Metamorphosis and The Trial. The findings show that characteristics of absurdism and existentialism are found in both the works of Kafka and are comparable with each other. For future recommendations, a comparative stylistic analysis of these selected novels can be carried out.
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Shafi, Uzma. "Postmodernist Literary Movement: A Comprehensive Study of Technique in Vonnegut’s Novels." International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (2017): 203–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.2.4.24.
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Kurt Vonnegut is an integral part of the postmodernist literary movement and a master of satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. The uniqueness of Vonnegut's works is that in addition to having excellent themes, the novels are also technically accomplished and colorful. Vonnegut refuses to confine himself to a single form of fiction, which is something that is certainly clear from a review of his books. In reality, modal diversity is demonstrated in each of his works. Vonnegut, a man of profound vision, tries to experiment with brilliant techniques in his novels, including science fiction, comic science fiction, black humor, dark humor, morbid humor, gallows humor, meta-fiction, satire, political satire, postmodernism, dark comedy, war novels, absurdist fiction, modes of absurdity, and semi-autobiographical writing. In his works, he deftly weaves these strategies around his theme. He draws attention to the numerous social defects, the atrocities of war, and the sorrows of modern man. He imagines a society free of societal ills, where people are not enslaved by technology. This essay aims to analyze the literary devices used by Vonnegut in his works.
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Nawaz, Arshad, Muhammad Ijaz, and Khalid Mehmood Anjum. "Postmodern Absurdist Critique of Julian Barnes’s The Only Story." Global Language Review VI, no. II (June 30, 2021): 94–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.31703/glr.2021(vi-ii).11.
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This research paper endeavors to examine the postmodern absurdism as a literary sub genre in postmodern fiction. It delves deep into the concept of absurdism by concentrating upon the characteristics that distinguish it as a postmodern sub genre. Through the analysis of the postmodern novel, The Only Story (2018), this research paper illustrates how the characteristics of absurdism haven impact upon a postmodern society characterized by boredom, meaninglessness, futility, and confusion. It also highlights how different characters, events, and places have been portrayed in the novel to depict the absurdity of human existence. The theoretical paradigm of the research is based upon Thomas Nagel’s Essay “The Absurd” which is about postmodern space of absurdism and was presented in the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division. The study limelight's how the absurd occurrences and bizarre characters found in the researcher's primary text depict the complexity of the postmodern absurd world in both literal and metaphoric dimensions.
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Massaad, Dr Madoline. "The Intersection of Reality and Fiction in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: A Study of Absurdity and Metadrama." International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 9, no. 3 (2024): 251–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.93.31.
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The article titled "The Intersection of Reality and Fiction in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: A Study of Absurdity and Metadrama" explores how Tom Stoppard's play transforms the minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet into central figures within an absurdist framework. This study examines the play’s themes of human identity, confusion, and helplessness, common in the Theatre of the Absurd, using postmodernist metadramatic techniques. By employing metadrama, Stoppard highlights the blurred lines between reality and fiction, as seen in the characters' struggles to understand their existence within the play. The paper delves into the philosophical implications of absurdity, drawing on the ideas of Albert Camus and other theorists to illustrate how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead reflects the chaotic and purposeless nature of human life. Through various metadramatic devices like the play within a play, role-playing, and the breakdown of conventional narrative structures, Stoppard's work is analyzed as a profound commentary on the human condition and the search for meaning in an incomprehensible world.
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Pérez, Vincent. "The Fourth Reich: Ishmael's Reed's The Terrible Twos and the Triumph of Celebrity Culture." Popular Culture Review 28, no. 2 (December 2017): 4–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2831-865x.2017.tb00328.x.
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AbstractDonald Trump's rise to the U.S. presidency was foretold in many 20th century works of dystopian fiction as well as Western Marxist scholarship written during and after the Nazi era. The most prescient modern dystopian novel, Ishmael Reed's The Terrible Twos (1982), has much in common thematically with earlier American dystopian fiction while also sharing the bleak vision of U.S. mass (media) culture postulated by Frankfurt School theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). But Reed's novel diverges dramatically from these earlier writings, whether fictive or scholarly, through its farcical and absurdist postmodernist depiction of a future neo‐fascist America in which popular (media) culture reigns triumphant even as spaces of resistance take shape amid the seemingly overdetermined ideological and cultural landscape.
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Ōmori, Kyōko. "Narrating the detective:nansensu, silent filmbenshiperformances and Tokugawa Musei's absurdist detective fiction." Japan Forum 21, no. 1 (May 8, 2009): 75–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555800902857070.
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Ponomareva, Anastasiia. "Absurdist Fiction in the Focus of Philosophy: Máirtín Ó Cadhain and his Novel "The Dirty Dust"." Философская мысль, no. 12 (December 2022): 42–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.25136/2409-8728.2022.12.38927.
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The subject of the study is the phenomenon of the absurd in Irish fiction and its relation to philosophical discourse. Absurdist fiction is proposed to be analyzed from the point of view of the philosophical meanings embedded in it. Most often, this is the interpretation of the absurd as a concept meaning a person's discord with the world. The novel by the Irish writer Ó Cadhain is considered as representing the absurdity of the human existence. In the analysis of the novel, the methods of modern cultural knowledge were used: the description of various sociocultural trends and phenomena, their theoretical generalization. The purpose of the work is to clarify the meaning of the absurd for the constitution of human existence. The article explores the connection of the realities present in the novel with the philosophy of traditionalism. The absurd is investigated as an indicator of the "silencing" of meaning. The factors that bring together the views of modernists who wrote about the absurd and the traditionalist doctrine are: fixation of the destruction of the habitual way of life, self-integrity, perversion or disappearance of the hierarchical social order, substitution of values, a direct indication of the "end of time" (eschatology). Changes in speech almost always act as an indicator of the heroes losing their own identity. With the help of this indicator, as a rule, loss of connection with Another, global alienation and dehumanization of a human being are recorded. Thus, the importance of the category of the absurd for fundamental philosophical ontology is proved.
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Weber, Stephanie. "Gender, Race, Color, Glass: A Reading of Clothing and Decoration in Paul Scheerbart’s Glass Utopias." Utopian Studies 33, no. 3 (November 2022): 424–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0424.
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ABSTRACT This article revisits the utopian fiction of German science-fiction writer and poet Paul Scheerbart, considering the place of race and gender in his fantastical glass architectural spaces. This is primarily done through a reading of clothing and decoration in these texts, elements that are often explicitly mentioned in relation to women and people of color. Historical context concerning modernist paradigms, metaphorical interpretations of architectural glass, the connection between clothing and architecture, and the place of women in the Werkbund provides a framework that serves to extrapolate the significance of some of Scheerbart’s narrative elements, demonstrating the ways Scheerbart’s philosophies both aligned with and departed from the modernist trends that were gaining force during his career. His constant self-contradiction, humor, and absurdist plots, however, undermine any notion that Scheerbart’s fiction should be understood as straightforward polemics, and serve to complicate his position within the philosophical traditions he has been aligned with.
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Romero-Reche, Alejandro. "Avant-garde humour as ideological supplement." European Journal of Humour Research 10, no. 3 (October 11, 2022): 39–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.663.
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In 1939, when the Spanish civil war had recently ended, avant-garde humorists Miguel Mihura and Tono published an absurdist propaganda ‘novel’, María de la Hoz [María of the Sickle], about the republican zone during the conflict. Unlike other Francoist propaganda pieces of the time, it did not focus on the violence or the alleged moral degeneracy of the ‘reds’ but rather on what its authors perceived as the absurdity of egalitarianism and the progressive ideals. The novel, while not contradicting the emerging official ideology, conspicuously overlooked some of its key tenets, particularly those related to nationalism, Catholicism and Franco’s leadership. This article contextualises María de la Hoz in the development process of Spanish avant-garde humour and in Francoist propaganda fiction during and immediately after the civil war in order to analyse the ideological stance it represented and, potentially, reinforced. As a political piece, the book seems to convey the position of an affluent middle class who did not enthusiastically believe in Francoism but preferred it to the republican alternative, caricatured as a communist regime by nationalist propaganda.
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Alzouabi, Lina. "Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: The Dual Motif." European Journal of Language and Culture Studies 1, no. 6 (November 18, 2022): 24–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.24018/ejlang.2022.1.6.44.
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Following two world wars, the human essence was affected by pessimism and a loss of faith. As a result, new existentialist literature was produced, resulting in a new wave of absurdist fiction plays. The theatre of the absurd was first termed by Martin Esslin, whereas the term ‘absurd’ was first used by Albert Camus in his classic essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’. Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” a tragic comedy, (1952) is among the most mysterious dramas of the twentieth century that represents the philosophy of absurdism. By adopting the philosophy of theatre of the absurd in analyzing “Waiting for Godot,” this study focuses on Beckett’s employing the dual motif in the plot of the play and its implications, represented in chances that play a significant role rather than logic in the characters’ lives. As a result, the study concludes that Beckett’s use of such a technique underlines the equal opportunities in the world of the play, where chances have their effects on humans; Godot might or might not come, and the characters might leave or not: illustrating the unpredictability of the real world.
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Moosavi Majd, Maryam, and Nooshin Elahipanah. "The Enchanted Storyteller: John Barth and the Magic of Scheherazade." International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences 59 (September 2015): 65–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilshs.59.65.
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During the fifties he was considered to be an existentialist, and absurdist and later a Black Humorist, yet, John Barth proved that he would never subscribe to any specific theory and would make his own world of/about fiction by himself. A traditional postmodernist as some of the critics calls him; he was obsessed with Scheherazade the narrator of the Thousand and one Nights and her art of storytelling. This essay aims to depict Barth’s employment of the frame narrative and embedding structure which are the main devices of Scheherazade’s mystifying narratives. Revealing the architectonic structure of his writing, we would demonstrate how traditional technique can bridge postmodernist aesthetics to recreate and replenish the exhausted materials in writings.
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Kolarič, Jožef. "Billy Woods’s Literary Intertexts." Text Matters, no. 10 (November 24, 2020): 182–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.10.11.
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While—like all artistic forms—it allows for deviation from this standard rule, rap is heavily reliant on building blocks of sixteen bars and a refrain. In addition, rhyme plays a prominent role in structuring rap, which is why the form is also colloquially referred to as “rhyming.” In view of this, Billy Woods’s record Today, I Wrote Nothing was a considerable departure from the existing rap norm. On the record, Woods stylistically adapted a collection of works by Russian absurdist writer Daniil Kharms, which was also called Today, I Wrote Nothing. Kharms was known for writing short prose without any formal structure. Most of his stories deal with absurd situations and slapstick humour. The structure of the fragmented fiction is adapted into rap on Woods’s record. The long rap verses are replaced by short songs without any specific narrative. The record maintains the non-structure of Kharms’s writing, as well as its absurdity, but it abandons any semblance of traditional rap. The second important stylistic and structural choice made in Woods’s record was the integration of aspects of Flannery O’Connor’s writing, particularly its humour and darkness. The article will focus on how Billy Woods integrates intertextuality into his lyrics to give the songs additional layers of meaning.
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Bijelic, Marijana, and Lucija Mandaric. "SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN SVETOSLAV MINKOV'S SHORT STORIES." Ezikov Svyat volume 21 issue 2, ezs.swu.v21i2 (May 26, 2023): 144–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.37708/ezs.swu.bg.v21i2.18.
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This paper analyses the role of the motifs associated with the development of science and new technologies in Svetoslav Minkov’s short stories. The author developed a rather unusual hybrid genre which consists of fantastical, science-fictional, satirical and absurdist elements. In the first phase all the elements (even those typical of science fiction) are merely in the function of representing an estranged, mystical, diabolical world; whereas in the second one, evil is no longer mystified in the form of a strange diabolical presence – now it becomes clear that the main source of the absurd is a form of capital production as well as the new model of modern pseudo-rationality that reduces the human life to a role in profit making and consumer spending, resulting in its total subservience to the market. After the loss of religious faith, or metaphysical ground, i. e. the ultimate loss of the Father, symbolical and social order have become circumferential systems of production and consumption, so the new man is no longer a child of God, but rather a strange being whose lack of being is represented by metaphors of either an animal or a robot.
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LeMon, Kathryn. "Three Blocks." After Dinner Conversation 4, no. 8 (2023): 5–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/adc20234872.
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How would we treat others, if they wore our face? In this work of absurdist philosophical fiction, the narrator walks three blocks each day from her car to her work. However, she has a unique situation whereby those in need “wear her face.” This makes it nearly impossible for her to ignore the plight of the homeless man selling flowers to make extra money, the beggar in front of the coffee shop asking for change, or the woman picking up her belongings in the rain. Ajmal, her coworker, doesn’t share her ability to see his face others, and, like most people, ignores the plight of others around him. He calls the narrator a saint, but she argues otherwise. She argues that, given what she sees, she really has no choice but to help. The story ends with the narrator being locked outside overnight, and another person with a similar skill, finds her and gives her a place to stay for the night.
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Al-Shamali, Farah. "The City of Baghdad in Iraqi Fiction: Novelistic Depictions of a Spatiality of Ruin." Middle East Research Journal of Linguistics and Literature 3, no. 02 (December 9, 2023): 12–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.36348/merjll.2023.v03i02.002.
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The Iraqi novel has contended with brutish forms of violence for the better part of the past century that have essentially reshaped the narrative experience unto space. Writers are confronted with the challenge of typifying a search for meaning in and amongst character-altering ruin. At the height of its maturity today, as various works convey spatial woundedness particularly in the city of Baghdad, there is a relationship between fiction and urban reality symbolizing an image of complexity. They play host to a fantastical blending of the real and unreal. They see through to the mediational potencies of absurdist violence, one that is acted out this performativity on the page a matter of survival. The selected works respectively depict the pre-revolutionary capital before moving into the bitter decades to follow. Many build worlds that are mired in the crippling present day engaging the normativity of the spatial wound to make sense of the nonsensical. The novels Hunters in a Narrow Street, The Corpse Washer, Frankenstein in Baghdad and Tashari and short story “The Corpse Exhibition” work towards that end. They critically ponder decrepitude and death as it joins life in the realm of the real, legitimate ruination of place as aesthetic in the liminal imaginary and create the conditions with which to imagine the spatial afterlife of destruction. The extracted articulations and thoughts around each are informed by the critical theoretical lenses of three landmark thinkers of space and place and how the latter equates to the emotionality of man. Keywords: Baghdad, Space and place, Literature, Fiction, Wounded identity, War, Ruination, Dystopia.
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Holmqvist, Jytte. "Fellini in Memoriam – The Absurdist Elements of Fellini’s Cinema as a Reflection of our Disrupted COVID-19 Reality." IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities 9, no. 1 (July 29, 2022): 143–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.22492/ijah.9.1.11.
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The current COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to “think outside the box”. As societies across the planet gradually become more interconnected, the dominance of outmoded social practices surrounding human interaction, work, leisure and space is being challenged on a daily basis. Mediatic productions such as film have always presented opportunities for expanding the reach of particular messages and disseminating topical views and perspectives. In honour of Federico Fellini (1920-1993) on the 100th anniversary of his birth, this paper undertakes a comprehensive comparison between the bold and absurdist cinema of the Post-Neorealist filmmaker and today’s also strange and perplexing social environment. Contextualising his cinema within an auteurist framework, we highlight how ground-breaking Fellini was in embracing the unconventional; by doing so he provided a practical guide for navigating contemporary reality. With productions that seduce and impress viewers worldwide, Fellini defied established cinematographic practices, as exemplified by his experimentation with overlapping narrative styles. His films bestir a new way of thinking by generating an anomalous world, one where events take place beyond the scope of what the viewer anticipates as “natural”. But the appraisal of what is “natural” is contingent upon the viewer’s belief structure: by presenting a world where events happen outside the realm of practical expectations, Fellini’s timeless cinema questions outdated belief systems and sets the guidelines for how to navigate the unanticipated complexities of the contemporary world. Reality and fiction merge into one.
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Starkey, Kenneth, Sue Tempest, and Silvia Cinque. "Management education and the theatre of the absurd." Management Learning 50, no. 5 (October 22, 2019): 591–606. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350507619875894.
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In this article, we recommend the drama of theatre of the absurd as a novel space for critically reflecting upon management and management education as shaped by the forces of emotion, irrationality and conformism rather than reason. We discuss the theatre of the absurd as uniquely relevant to understanding our troubled times. We present a brief overview of the history of business schools and management education. We apply the idea of absurdity to the world of business schools and management education, focusing on the work of one of the theatre of the absurd’s leading proponents, Eugène Ionesco. We emphasise the importance of fiction and fantasy as key aspects of organisation and education. We contribute to debates about management education by reflecting on possible futures for management education and the business school, embracing the humanities as a core disciplinary focus. We suggest that this will help rebalance management education, retaining the best of the existing curriculum, while re-situating the study of management in its broader historical and philosophical nexus.
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Sokolova, Irina V., and Irina A. Shishkova. "COMPOSITIONAL TECHNIQUES OF POST-POSTMODERNISM (ON THE MATERIAL OF MODERN AMERICAN SHORT FICTION)." Vestnik of Kostroma State University 28, no. 4 (February 28, 2023): 47–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2022-28-4-47-53.
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The article deals with the latest methods of constructing a literary text in American short fiction. There are two main types of narrative: theatrical performance and psychological sketch. Theatricality finds expression in the elements of surrealism, magical realism, absurdity. Sometimes it develops into an overt puppet theatre performance. The psychological sketch takes the form of an emotional monolog or an impression. The article analyses the transformations of the author – he constantly changes masks, breaks up into plurality of self; as well as of the protagonist, a passive, problem creature, often a person with damaged psyche. The article substantiates the need to study new concepts of constructing a literary text. Modern authors create “explosions of truth”, most often impartial, moving away from the usual canons and inventing new ones, sometimes taken to the extreme, exaggerated means of artistic expression. It is argued that a story is able to “capture” the momentary and barely noticeable. A striking sample of modern literary techniques is Frederic Tuten's collection “Self-Portraits: Fictions” (2010), an example of intertextuality, essential for the aesthetics of post-postmodernism.
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Ma, Shuo. "The Influence of Existentialism on Chinese Science Fiction Literature." Communications in Humanities Research 21, no. 1 (December 7, 2023): 91–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.54254/2753-7064/21/20231427.
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Existentialist philosophy has exerted a profound and extensive influence on contemporary society, extending its impact beyond the domain of philosophy to significantly shape the arts, including literature and cinema. This paper adopts existentialist theory as its primary analytical framework, employing methodologies such as textual analysis and comparative research to provide a concise examination of how existentialist concepts and perspectives, notably those pertaining to Absolute Freedom, The Others, Absurdism, and Humanism, have influenced and integrated with Chinese science fiction novels. The primary objective of this research study is to delve into a selection of recent Chinese science fiction novels that have garnered prestigious awards and exhibited significant international influence. Through a thorough examination of the works authored by these award-winning writers, this research seeks to elucidate the overarching traits and thematic elements within Chinese science fiction that have been influenced by existentialist philosophies. This research endeavor not only offers an avenue for delving into the philosophical underpinnings that inform Chinese science fiction but also provides a scholarly lens through which we may attain a more profound comprehension of the humanitarian essence that permeates these literary works.
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Howes, Christina Angela. "“The World is still Beautiful”: An Eco-philosophical Reading of Eugene McCabe’s Victims Trilogy." Estudios Irlandeses, no. 18 (March 17, 2023): 172–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.24162/ei2023-11702.
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This paper focuses on Irish writer, playwright and television screenwriter Eugene McCabe’s fictional representation of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ in his trilogy Victims, published in the collection Heaven Lies about Us (2005). Living most of his life on his family farm on the Monaghan/Fermanagh border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, McCabe had a deep understanding of the historically entrenched hatreds, bigotry and fundamentalisms of its inhabitants, and his fiction reflects the human tragedy underlying the violence. This paper draws on an eco-philosophical framework to suggest that by capturing the entanglement between the natural and cultural place-world McCabe’s poetics offers, from a liberal humanist perspective, an indictment of anthropocentric patriarchy at the root of violent dispute. McCabe’s literary world, evoking natural and cultural landscapes, encapsulates the absurdity of isolating territories via false political borders, marginalizing the value of bioregion and diversity and ignoring the vital oneness of humanity. Thus, though McCabe’s short stories are indeed culturally and politically specific, in shedding light on the self-destructiveness of human behaviour they are ultimately timeless and universal.
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Atamanchuk, Viktoriia, and Petro Atamanchuk. "Modelling the personage’s fictional consciousness in the play by Igor Kostetskyi “The twins will meet again”." Revista Amazonia Investiga 10, no. 45 (October 29, 2021): 42–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.34069/ai/2021.45.09.4.
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The objective of the article is to outline the correlations between the usage of the elements of the absurdist aesthetics, different artistic paradoxes and methods of modelling the fictional consciousness of personage. The aim of research is to define internal and external dimensions of personage’s fictional consciousness construction with the help of the cognitive literary studies methodology. The methodology of cognitive literary criticism is the basis for the analysis of modelling principles, applied in the research of personage’s fictional consciousness in I. Kostetskyi’s play “The Twins Will Meet Again”. Thus, the study of the play is based on actualization of cognitive phenomena and establishing their correlations with forms of artistic reflection. The cognitive method is used to determine the theoretical foundations of the functioning of the character’s fictional consciousness in the dramatic work. The poetics of the absurd in a drama defines agglutinative forms of reflection of the personages’ fictional consciousness.
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Sadek, Rima. "Liminality, Madness, and Narration in Hassan Blasim’s “The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes” and “Why Don’t You Write a Novel Instead of Talking about All These Characters?”." Humanities 12, no. 3 (June 16, 2023): 50. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/h12030050.
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The fiction of Hassan Blasim addresses the horrors of contemporary Iraq and centers on the crisis of identity that is part of the immigrant’s experience. Blasim’s protagonists try to forget past traumas related to their homeland by developing new identities ingrained solely in the present. Yet, the past resurfaces in the form of nightmarish dreams, madness, and fractured narratives where fiction and reality intersect and overlap. Inhabiting a constant state of liminality imprints itself on the body and psyche of the border crossers and leads to their physical or mental demise. Drawing on theories of madness, liminality, and narration advanced by Shoshana Felman and Michel Foucault, I analyze Blasim’s two short stories “The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes” and “Why Don’t You Write a Novel Instead of Talking About All These Characters?” I argue that the imaginative space of literary narration, an in-between, liminal space between reality and fiction, is the space where ethico-political paradoxes and the absurdity of real-life trauma, death, and chaos are transformed into a meaningful literary dialogue that can expand reality and offer new spheres of understanding of the trauma that shapes the lives of Blasim’s characters.
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KUZMENKO, Yu. "Yasutaka Tsutsui's writings in the context of formation of the science fiction in the Japanese literature of the 20th century." Bulletin of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Oriental Languages and Literatures, no. 27 (2021): 39–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/1728-242x.2021.27.39-44.
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The article is of an overview nature and is devoted to the writings by Yasutaka Tsutsui in the context of formation and development of the science fiction genre in the Japanese literature of the second half of the 20th century. It traces the origins of this genre in Japanese folklore and traditional literature, briefly examines the generally accepted classification of four generations of Japanese science fiction writers and analyzes stages of the writer's creative development as one of the three SF masters in modern Japan. The article suggests identifying four periods in Tsutsui Yasutaki's creative career: experimentation on the verge of absurdity, black humor, and social satire in the 60's of the 20th century, transition to the pure literature in the 70's, interest in metafiction in the 80's and cyber fiction in the 90's, reflecting the latest trends in the Japanese literature of the second half of the last century. Trying to comprehend and reflect the crisis phenomena of Japanese reality in the second half of the 20th century, the writer openly exposes the shortcomings of modern society – spiritual impoverishment, prosperity of consumerism, loss of high ideals and values, etc. In his early science fiction works, elements of social criticism and increased attention to the inner world of modern man and his social nature can be often observed. Later metafiction is full of various deconstructivist techniques: fragmentation, fabulation, and distortion of time – which makes them a valuable source for understanding trends in the Japanese postmodernism in general and metafiction in particular. Special attention should be paid to the author's approach to writing – in interactive communication with interested internet readers, which opens new horizons for artistic creativity and creation of a literary text.
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Żyto, Kamila. "Detours of absurdity: Coen brothers’ Fargo in the noir melting pot of genre patterns." Literatura i Kultura Popularna 24 (April 18, 2019): 39–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.19195/0867-7441.24.4.
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Detours of absurdity: Coen brothers’ Fargoin the noir melting pot of genre patternsThe idea of film noir, especially neo-noir, viewed as a stable and clear genre has as many supporters as detractors. The controversy is nothing new, and a compromise is still elusive. The reason for such an impasse is not merely the intransigent stance of opponents, the strength of their arguments, but is also a result of the hybridization of genres in main stream cinema and elsewhere. I discuss the problem presented by film noir in the context of the question of generic identity on the example of the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning Fargo. The movie is an interesting case study as it does not make use of any of the genres typical for film noir in its unadulterated form i.e. genres associated with film noir in its classical era. In Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen skillfully combine elements of the detective story though not necessarily associated with hard-boiled fiction with crime shows, gangster movie with thrillers about psychopaths, comedy with tragedy and family drama with melodrama of mischance. The result remains the same — the world of Fargo stays noir, dark and pessimistic and permeated with the absurd.
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Addei, Cecilia. "“Walahé!”; “You should have seen it”: Validating the Truth of Wartime Absurdities in Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged." Gragoatá 23, no. 45 (April 30, 2018): 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n45a1097.
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Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged is a fiction based on the civil wars in the West African countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone as a result of the breakdown of democracy. It employs the point of view of a child narrator, Birahima, a literalist picaro, to narrate wartime atrocities. The novel, mainly a satire, employs the devices of irony and humour that allow Birahima to present his world, which is turned upside down, and morality, reversed, in a way that makes the reader laugh in spite of the horror. The reality of Birahima’s wartime experience, which has left him in a kind of developmental “limbo”, is difficult to believe to be true. However, he makes every effort in his use of language to prove the truthfulness of the absurdity he narrates. This paper considers how the protagonist/narrator Birahima’s entry into war leaves him in an absurd, cyclical limbo while he resorts in frustration to validate his absurd experience through appealing to God, folk wisdom and dictionaries.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“WALAHÉ!”; “VOCÊ TINHA QUE TER VISTO”: VALIDANDO A VERDADE DOS ABSURDOS DA GUERRA EM ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED, DE AHMADOU KOUROUMAAllah is Not Obliged, de Ahmadou Kourouma, é uma obra de ficção baseada nas guerras civis nos países da África Ocidental Libéria e Serra Leoa resultantes do colapso da democracia. Através do ponto de vista de um narrador infantil, Birahima, um pícaro literalista, a obra narra as atrocidades da guerra. O romance, essencialmente uma sátira, emprega os recursos da ironia e do humor para permitir que Birahima apresente seu mundo deturpado e sua moralidade invertida de uma maneira que faz o leitor rir apesar do horror. É difícil aceitar como verdade a realidade que Birahima vivenciou na guerra, que deixou o seu desenvolvimento em uma espécie de limbo. No entanto, ele se utiliza da linguagem ao máximo para provar a veracidade do absurdo que ele narra. Este artigo considera como a entrada do protagonista / narrador Birahima na guerra o deixa em um limbo cíclico e absurdo, enquanto ele se frustra para validar sua experiência absurda apelando a Deus, à sabedoria popular e aos dicionários.---Artigo em inglês.
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Azevedo, Guilherme. "Does Organizational Nonsense Make Sense? Laughing and Learning From French Corporate Cultures." Journal of Management Inquiry 29, no. 4 (December 5, 2018): 385–403. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1056492618813203.
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Organizational cultures can contain enduring traits that apparently make no sense. To shed some light on how and why organizational nonsense happens, I examine the case of some apparently nonsensical attributes often associated with French corporations. As nontraditional research, I propose a methodology combining cultural interpretation and production of fiction. I use humor to build ideal-typed representations through three satirical vignettes that depict elegant design generating widespread patching across organizations, working meetings becoming the ceremonial dumping of faits accomplis and absurdity being naturalized as normal organizational practice. These vignettes provide points-of-entry to examine some poorly understood aspects of French corporate cultures, interpreted with the support of arguments of historical, sociological, and institutional nature. The resulting interpretation depicts systems of groups that seek for a cordial cohabitation by continuously renegotiating their essentially ascribed positions.
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Sierz, Aleks, and Merle Tönnies. "“Who’s Going to Mobilise Darkness and Silence?”: The Construction of Dystopian Spaces in Contemporary British Drama." Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 9, no. 1 (May 1, 2021): 20–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0002.
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Abstract This article examines the recent explosion of British dystopian plays, analysing their changing characteristics from the 1990 s to the 2010 s. After an initial brief look at precursors, it then focuses on examples of new writing which tackle the idea of dystopia in the absurdist manner typical of the 2000 s. In a third step, the focus is on the dystopian drama of the 2010 s and its more conventionally structured plots, which at the same time increasingly include ironic and parodistic elements. It becomes clear how this comparatively new genre is able to shake off the constraints of traditional dystopian writing and develop recognisable characteristics of its own. Throughout, emphasis is put on the “reality” of the plays’ fictional worlds, on the usage of the stage space, and on how the audience’s relationship with the stage is constructed as a double bind of distance and closeness.
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Bennis, Mohammed. "Demystifying the Absurd in Samuel Beckett's Fiction and Drama." International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 5, no. 2 (July 15, 2023): 147–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.36892/ijlls.v5i2.1276.
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Understanding the philosophy of the Absurd has always solicited the attention of modern and post- modern critics, scholars and researchers. The Absurd remains one of the most inscrutable concepts that both philosophy and literature have produced ever. The Absurd as a vision of life came at a time when Western societies were experiencing a transitional juncture in terms of social, cultural, philosophical, political and technological changes. These societies were progressively shifting from traditional values of conservatism and uniformism that were essential characteristics of the first half of the Twentieth Century to a more experimental and avant-gardist culture that defines most of modernist and post-modernist contexts. Writers of the period reflected the mood of the age which hinged on an outspoken need for change that would meet the aspirations of younger generations. However, the change writers were seeking was thwarted by the looming shadow of the philosophy of the Absurd which incarnated a deep feeling of loss of faith, pessimism and belief in the futility of human existence that finds its sustainabiliy in the meaninglessness of man’s endeavour to impart meaning to life. Absurdists problemized human actions and convictions, believing that they would lead to no avail as they are mere abstract notions devoid of any substantial significance or viability. I have always been struck by the similarity between the Absurd and cyberspace which is a defining marker of the 21th Century digital technology. Both breed virtual and abstract spaces : one on the stage and the other on digital tools’ screens. I even argue that William Gibson’s seminal defintion of cyberspace could be applicable to the Absurd as both a concept and a literary genre. Gibson defines cyberspace as « a consensual hallucination experienced by billions of legitimate operators… » (Gibson, 1984). Indeed, the phrase « consensual hallucination » finds relevance in the literary works of the Absurd, especially Samuel Beckett’s novels and plays which squarely dramatize the nothingness of human beliefs, values and convictions which are represented as sheer hallucinations and abstractions that humans consent to take for granted. Beckett’s philosophy of the Absurd will be examined through his « deformalization » of literary genre, deconstruction of language and disembodiment of the individual self.
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Neimneh, Shadi Saleh. "POSTCOLONIAL ARABIC FICTION REVISITED: NATURALISM AND EXISTENTIALISM IN GHASSAN KANAFANI’S MEN IN THE SUN." Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics 7, no. 2 (September 30, 2017): 238. http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i2.8356.
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This article looks into the postcolonial Arabic narrative of Ghassan Kanafani to examine its underplayed existential and naturalistic aspects. Postcolonial texts (and their exegeses) deal with the effects of colonization/imperialism. They are expected to be political and are judged accordingly. Drawing on Kanafani’s Men in the Sun (1963), I argue that the intersection among existentialism and naturalism, on the one hand, and postcolonialism, on the other, intensifies the political relevance of the latter theory and better establishes the politically committed nature of Kanafani’s fiction of resistance. In the novella, the sun and the desert are a pivotal existential symbol juxtaposed against the despicable life led by three Palestinian refugees. The gruesome death we encounter testifies to the absurdity of life after attempts at self-definition through making choices. The gritty existence characteristic of Kanafani's work makes his representation of the lives of alienated characters more accurate and more visceral. Kanafani uses philosophical and sociological theories to augment the political nature of his protest fiction, one acting within postcolonial parameters of dispossession to object to different forms of imperialism and diaspora. Therefore, this article explores how global critical frameworks (naturalism and existentialism) enrich the localized contexts essential to any study of postcolonial literature and equally move the traditional national allegory of Kanafani to a more realist/unidealistic level of political indictment against oppression.
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Bhuyan, Kangkan. "Victims of Gendered Portrayals: Female Characters in the Selected Fiction of Arun Joshi." New Literaria 04, no. 01 (2023): 94–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.48189/nl.2023.v04i1.013.
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The purpose of this research paper is read the female characters in the fiction of the Indian English novelist Arun Joshi as victims of gendered portrayals. The protagonists of Joshi’s fiction are anti-heroes with questionable morals and characterized by a twisted idealism in whose wake of destruction the female characters simply by dint of their gender are almost always sidelined and victimized. A looming sense of doom preordains those seeking fulfillment in Joshi’s dystopic world and as such the female characters, mostly relegated to traditional and stereotypical gender roles, have no say or choice in the unfurling of their destinies. They are simply a means to an end – for the protagonist to arrive at a certain stage in his life, and for the writer to depict the absurdity of materialistic existence which degrades the souls of the protagonists. This paper will examine the gender-biasedness in the depiction of the female characters in the three novels by Arun Joshi, namely, The Last Labyrinth, The Foreigner and, The Strange Case of Billy Biswas with a view to bring them to the foreground to highlight their suffering, limitations imposed by their gendered portrayals and suppressed voices. Such foregrounding of the female characters will also serve to expose the hypocrisies of male character portrayals in patriarchal texts as well as in their analyses and criticisms.
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Ali, Hira, Tabinda Khawer, and Noor-ul Ain. "Representation of Female Figure in Sidhwa’s “The Bride”." ANNALS OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PERSPECTIVE 1, no. 2 (December 31, 2020): 91–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.52700/assap.v1i2.21.
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The research aims at examining the essence of patriarchy in the ill-treatment of post-colonial women. Women were deliberately manipulated in that era. This highlights the absurdity of patriarchal society as a governing power. The ruthless customs, honor of tribes and word of shame has only meanings for women. A patriarchal society like Pakistan which is repressive and oppressive gives privilege to men and allows their harsh treatment toward women, they are considered inferior to men and are sexually oppressed. This work covers the ways of Sidhwa with which she has applied the feministic approach in her work through gynocritic lense and concludes the excellence of the writer by which she has presented such a marvelous piece of English fiction in the history of Pakistan. We will also make an effort to depict the suppressed, objective, gendered and marginalized journey of Sidhwa’s woman.
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Гиздатов, Газинур Габдуллавич, Ольга Дмитриевна Буренина-Петрова, and Баян Абдужапаровна Сопиева. "CULTURE AS A TEXT AND A PROJECT IN THE POST-SOVIET DISCOURSE (BY THE EXAMPLE OF KAZAKHSTAN)." ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics, no. 1(35) (January 31, 2023): 30–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.23951/2312-7899-2023-1-30-47.
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Представлен анализ семиотических аспектов значимых текстов и визуальных образцов в дискурсивной арт-практике постсоветского Казахстана. Литературоцентричность как универсальное свойство всей постсоветской визуальной культуры раскрывается на не изученном ранее материале, имеющем интермедиальную и интертекстуальную специфику. Анализ арт-дискурса осуществляется как на тематическом, так и на риторическом уровне с использованием верифицируемых для данных уровней научных методов (контент-анализ, метод критического дискурс-анализа, метод деконструкции). В результате арт-объекты постсоветского Казахстана с включенными в них текстами или их заменяющие проанализированы в локальном историко-политическом контексте. Выявлены три проекта: евразийский, пантюркский и либеральный, которые в качестве заданных интертекстов определили социальные и культурные границы и оценки казахстанских художников. Проекты имели свои исторические основы, они по-прежнему определяют реальную политику, а сами арт-идеи, возникшие в рамках этих проектов, находят медиальное отражение. В работе впервые в научной литературе доказывается, что медиальные эксперименты в практике казахстанского актуального искусства (тексты и перфомансы Сергея Маслова, Зияхана Шайгельдинова (Шай-Зии), Ербола Мельдибекова) задокументировали процесс происходящего, отразили травматичность самой реальности. Они в первый и единственный раз в общественном пространстве страны средствами арт-практики критиковали квазиреальный мир казахстанского общественного и культурного пространства. В самом казахстанском актуальном искусстве всегда было много текста и подтекста, который нередко непосредственно включался в арт-объекты и / или же их создавал. В статье прослеживается, что это были такие текстовые образчики, которые рождали свой смысл вместе с визуальной идеей в заданной точке времени, что можно назвать созданием дискурса. В работе также выявлено, что представители актуального казахстанского искусства использовали эстетику абсурда как механизм преобразования постсоветской обыденности в иную и новую реальность аналогично тому, как это происходило в литературе абсурда ХХ столетия. При этом визуальные образчики в казахстанской практике конца ХХ и начала ХХI века стали реальными культурными агрегаторами, они заменили письменный текст и повлияли на его функционирование в культуре при переходе от слова к взгляду. В работе выявлено практически не изученное до сих пор использование эстетики телевизионной интермедиальности в казахстанском contemporary art. Арт-проекты и манифесты казахстанских художников 90-х годов ХХ века и 2000-х годов представлены как уникальные общественно-политические дискурсивные тексты, спрогнозировавшие конкретные социально-политические реалии постсоветской страны. The article presents an analysis of the semiotic aspects of significant texts and visual samples in the discursive art practice of post-Soviet Kazakhstan from the 1990s to nowadays. Literary centricity as a universal property of the entire post-Soviet visual culture is revealed on the previously unstudied material, which has intermedial and intertextual specifics. Art discourse is analyzed on the thematic and rhetorical levels, using verifiable scientific methods for these levels (content analysis, critical discourse analysis, the deconstruction method). As a result, the art objects of post-Soviet Kazakhstan, with the texts included in them, are analyzed in the article in the local historical and political context. Three projects were identified: Eurasian, Pan-Turkic, and liberal. As given intertexts, they determined the social and cultural boundaries and assessments of Kazakhstani artists. The projects, as written and proved in the article, had their historical foundations and still determine the real policy. The art ideas which appeared within the framework of these projects find a modern medial reflection. The work, for the first time in the scientific literature, proves that medial experiments in the practice of Kazakhstani contemporary art (texts and performances by Sergei Maslov, Ziyakhan Shaigeldinov (Shai-Ziya), Yerbol Meldibekov, Elena and Viktor Vorobyov, as well as modern actionists) documented the process of what is happening, reflected the traumatic nature of reality itself. For the first and only time in the public space of the country, as the article shows, by means of art practice, these experiments have criticized the quasi-real world of Kazakhstan's social and cultural space. In the Kazakh contemporary art itself, there have always been a lot of texts and subtexts, which are often directly included in art objects or have created them. The article traces that these were such text samples that generated their own meaning along with a visual idea at a given point in time, which can be called the creation of discourse. The work also reveals that representatives of contemporary Kazakh art used the aesthetics of the absurd as a mechanism for transforming post-Soviet everyday life into a different and new reality, similar to how it happened in absurdist fiction of the twentieth century. At the same time, visual samples in Kazakhstani practice of the late 20th and early 21st centuries became real cultural aggregators, they replaced the written text and influenced its functioning in culture. The article reveals the still practically unexplored usage of the aesthetics of television intermediality in Kazakhstani contemporary art. Art projects and manifestos of Kazakh artists of the 1990s and the 2000s are presented as unique socio-political discursive texts that predicted the specific socio-political realities of the post-Soviet country.
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Kolmakova, O. A., and M. N. Zhornikova. "Dostoevsky’s Ethical and Aesthetical Conception and the Problem of Russian National Identity in A. Ponizovsky’s novel <i>Turning into a Listening Ear</i>." Vestnik NSU. Series: History and Philology 23, no. 2 (February 21, 2024): 126–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.25205/1818-7919-2024-23-2-126-137.
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Purpose. The aim of the article is to investigate the influence of the F. M. Dostoevsky's creative heritage on the ideological and artistic originality of A. Ponizovsky's novel Turning into a Listening Ear (2013).Results. Ponizovsky's interpretation of Dostoevsky related to the theme of the Russian world and Russian identity. Two plotlines, social (ordinary Russians’ stories) and philosophical (controversy around them), create a conflict field typical for Dostoevsky's works: meaning of life and absurdity of existence, cruelty and compassion, Russian people and Russia. Dostoevsky's intertext is found at all levels of text organization. A deep philosophical understanding of the Russian life’s problems is achieved due to a set of Dostoevsky's intertexts, which have acquired the status of metanarratives in Russian culture (Grushenka's legend about the saving onion, devil's anecdote about a quadrillion kilometers on the way to paradise, Svidrigailov's image of eternity as a bathhouse with spiders). Following Dostoevsky's stylistic strategies includes the usage of a polyphonic novel resources, and reproducing individual techniques of the writer's poetics (anachronism, coexistence of fiction and non-fiction, using of Holy Scripture's text). The very person of Dostoevsky becomes an object of controversy for Ponizovsky. Colliding two concepts of the classic’s image – Freudian and Christian-oriented, the modern author creates a portrait of Dostoevsky’s conflicting personality.Conclusion. The perception of F. M. Dostoevsky's work by A. Ponizovsky is not only reminiscent, but also “genetic” by its nature due to the worldview commonality of these Russian writers.
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Ivy, Marilyn. "De fâcheux incidents. Énigmes criminelles du quotidien dans le Japon d'après-guerre." Anthropologie et Sociétés 22, no. 3 (September 10, 2003): 85–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/015560ar.
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Résumé De fâcheux incidents. Énigmes criminelles du quotidien dans le Japon d'après-guerre Cet article analyse les incidents Glico-Morinaga du milieu des années 1980 et leur relation avec les notions bourgeoises d'ordre social et de criminalité dans le Japon d'après-guerre. Lors des événements, un groupe s'appelant « l'Homme mystère aux 21 visages » harcela sans répit des entreprises d'alimentation, les médias et la police. Ces incidents démontrent que les conventions narratives du roman policier moderniste (établies par l'auteur Edogawa Rampo) ont profondément pénétré la conscience quotidienne des consommateurs japonais. Ces conventions ont contribué à brouiller la frontière entre fiction et réalité dans les représentations des crimes par les médias - notamment lors des incidents GM que l'on appela « le premier crime du 21e siècle » au Japon. La façon dont le groupe des 21 visages a manipulé le lexique moderniste - crime et détection, vérité et fausseté, théâtre guérilla et absurdité situationniste - illustre éloquemment la « stabilité » de cette société souvent présentée comme l'incarnation d'un régime postindustriel stable sans criminalité.
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Sadkowski, Piotr. "La transposition profane de l’Exode dans Moïse fiction de Gilles Rozier." Quêtes littéraires, no. 3 (December 30, 2013): 174–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.31743/ql.4619.
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Throughout the centuries French and Francophone writers were relatively rarely inspired by the figure of Moses and the story of Exodus. However, since the second half of 20th c. the interest of the writers in this Old Testament story has been on the rise: by rewriting it they examine the question of identity dilemmas of contemporary men. One of the examples of this trend is Moïse Fiction, the 2001 novel by the French writer of Jewish origin, Gilles Rozier, analysed in the present article. The hypertextual techniques, which result in the proximisation of the figure of Moses to the reality of the contemporary reader, constitute literary profanation, but at the same time help place Rozier’s text in the Jewish tradition, in the spirit of talmudism understood as an exchange of views, commentaries, versions and additions related to the Torah. It is how the novel, a new “midrash”, avoids the simple antinomy of the concepts of the sacred and the profane. Rozier’s Moses, conscious of his complex identity, is simultaneously a Jew and an Egyptian, and faces, like many contemporary Jewish writers, language dilemmas, which constitute one of the major motifs analysed in the present article. Another key question is the ethics of the prophetism of the novelistic Moses, who seems to speak for contemporary people, doomed to in the world perceived as chaos unsupervised by an absolute being. Rozier’s agnostic Moses is a prophet not of God (who does not appear in the novel), but of humanism understood as the confrontation of a human being with the absurdity of his or her own finiteness, which produces compassion for the other, with whom the fate of a mortal is shared.
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Zhilichev, Pavel E. "Metadrama in V. Mirzoev’s Works." Critique and Semiotics 40, no. 1 (2022): 380–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.25205/2307-1737-2022-1-380-399.
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This paper deals with the specifics of metadrama in Vladimir Mirzoev's works. The metatextual aspect of the communicative structure of Mirzoev’s plays is based on uti-lizing traditional actants of the dramatic intrigue, including kings, jesters, army officers, magicians, Hamlet, Don Juan, etc. Mixing references to classic and contemporary literature, Mirzoev’s texts take palimpsest (G. Genette), pastiche (R. Dyer) as a basis for developing dramatic action and tension. For example, The Tower decon-structs the archetype of Don Juan by combining the elements of the traditional plot with the iconography of the Tarot, references to well-known Russian classics, and elements of avant-garde aesthetics. Moreover, another “layer” of the “palimpsest” is formed by interactions with the “absurd authors of the past” (Harms, Pinter), weaving the position of interpretation (philological, directorial) into the discursive structure. Overall, the usage of palimpsest and pastiche corresponds with the dramatic intrigue of metamorphosis, the depiction of an absurdist cosmogony of a fictional world that stands on the deconstruction of cultural cliches and re-shaping the consciousness of both the characters and the recipients.
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Howes, Christina. "Stretching the Temporal Boundaries of Postmemorial Fiction: Shades of Albert Camus’ Absurd in Biyi Bandele Thomas’ Burma Boy." Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 45, no. 2 (December 28, 2023): 225–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.28914/atlantis-2023-45.2.11.
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Nigerian-British writer and playwright Biyi Bandele Thomas’ novel Burma Boy (2007) is inspired by his father’s combat experience in the Burma Campaign of World War Two. This postmemorial re-enactment not only commemorates his father but also the marginalised black African soldiers who participated in that campaign. Critical attention paid to Bandele’s work has noted his surrealistic and satirical style, usually in alignment with a post-colonial epistemology. This paper aims to show how the novel evokes the origins of a trauma and the futility of war within an African consciousness, alongside broader ontologies concerning the modern condition. I contend that through an aesthetics of the Absurd, as outlined by Albert Camus, Burma Boy not only evokes the absurdity of war but transcends its temporal wartime boundaries by offering a broad reflection on the fundamental cause of the author’s father’s wartime trauma: the divorce of humankind from the reality of existence. Thus, I conclude that this post-generational novel leverages an aesthetics of the Absurd to address contemporary political and environmental concerns.
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Addei, Cecilia. "“Walahé!”; “You should have seen it”: Validating the Truth of Wartime Absurdities in Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged." Gragoatá 23, no. 45 (April 30, 2018): 24–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.v23i45.33563.
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Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged is a fiction based on the civil wars in the West African countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone as a result of the breakdown of democracy. It employs the point of view of a child narrator, Birahima, a literalist picaro, to narrate wartime atrocities. The novel, mainly a satire, employs the devices of irony and humour that allow Birahima to present his world, which is turned upside down, and morality, reversed, in a way that makes the reader laugh in spite of the horror. The reality of Birahima’s wartime experience, which has left him in a kind of developmental “limbo”, is difficult to believe to be true. However, he makes every effort in his use of language to prove the truthfulness of the absurdity he narrates. This paper considers how the protagonist/narrator Birahima’s entry into war leaves him in an absurd, cyclical limbo while he resorts in frustration to validate his absurd experience through appealing to God, folk wisdom and dictionaries.---Original in English.---DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.2018n45a1097.
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Šemelák, Martin. "The suffering of existence in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go." Ars Aeterna 10, no. 2 (December 1, 2018): 8–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/aa-2018-0008.
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AbstractThis paper deals with the British dystopian novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, in which human clones are forced to donate their organs in an alternate reality set in 1990s England. Through the characters of the novel, various manifestations of suffering are examined from the viewpoint of existentialism. The whole concept of donation might be understood as a metaphorical expression for human life, as well as the omnipresent consciousness of its finitude. Ishiguro has prepared the ground for disturbing discussion where two ostensibly different groups of people – clones, whose only purpose is to donate their vital organs, and “normal people” as the recipients – suddenly appear to be indistinguishable in terms of mortality and the general experience of human existence. This paper focuses on the concept of existential anguish in the context of the novel’s story. Using an unobtrusive science fiction narrative, Never Let Me Go encourages readers to contemplate the essence, meaning and purpose of human life, and it quietly points to topics that are usually treated as highly sensitive: the inevitability of death and apparent absurdity of human existence.
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Antić, Maja D. "MAGICAL REALISM AS A FORM OF EXPRESSION IN CRISES: MARLEN HAUSHOFER’S NOVEL THE WALL." Folia linguistica et litteraria XIII, no. 41 (2022): 11–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.31902/fll.41.2022.1.
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The article deals with Magical Realism, which depicts a literary expression in times of crisis and upheaval. According to Michael Scheffel, Magical Realism is a narrative style that finds expression in times of boundless disorder. Scheffel sees the unlimited disorder as a result of a dual world view (rational/irrational), which usually comes to light through a crisis (identity crisis, war, threat). On this theoretical basis, this article examines Marlen Haushofer's novel The Wall as a literary example of a time of crisis. The novel The Wall offers a multitude of possible interpretations, depending on the reader's approach and the expectations one has of the work. The exceptional value of this prose work lies precisely in the complexity of interpretation. Science fiction, (female) Robinsonade, adventure prose, utopia, women's novel, post-apocalyptic novel, latent autobiography, or dystopia - these are the previous perceptions of the narrative. This novel emphasizes the absurdity and irrationality of human action and strives for a universal historical diagnosis. As a model of Magical Realism, this prose work expands on the conception of realism in the traditional sense.
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Dahal, Madhav Prasad. "Workings of Cyborg: Bridging Humans and Machines in The Matrix." Humanities and Social Sciences Journal 14, no. 1 (October 20, 2022): 26–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hssj.v14i1.57991.
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Machines are human-made objects and subservient to humans. However, the simulated world dominated by cyborgs has led the humanity to postmodern fluidity. The cyborg, an artificially intelligent machine works with extra super power either inspired by divinity or satanic impulse. This article studies how The Matrix (1999), a science fiction film, blurs the distinction between human beings and simulated reality. The Wachowskis, the writers and directors, bring fusions between humans and the machines. The film unfolds the dynamics of human–machine interface in which humans ultimately remain subservient to machines. The study interprets the film from the postmodernist perspective concentrating on the ideas of Fredrick Nietzsche, Jean Francois Lyotard and Davis Ashley, who characterize postmodernism as indeterminacy, confusion and absurdity. It reflects on the question whether machines are doing good to humanity. It analyzes the movie from the lens of cinema as a culture industry. Its finding suggests humanity is trapped in a complex chain of simulated reality. The study adds insight on how Cyborgs have blended the material with virtual reality.
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Coombe, Rosemary J. "The Properties of Culture and the Politics of Possessing Identity: Native Claims in the Cultural Appropriation Controversy." Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 6, no. 2 (July 1993): 249–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0841820900001922.
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Between March 21,1992 and April 14,1992 Canadians witnessed a remarkable proliferation of controversy on the pages ofThe Globe and Mail. The issue was “cultural appropriation” or “appropriation of voice” in fictional and nonfictional writing. Articles, editorials, and letters to the editor considered the propriety of depicting a culture other than one’s own, telling “someone else’s story”, and whether it was possible to “steal the culture of another.” The debate was remarkable because of its emotional intensity, the absurdity of the analogies drawn in support of the respective arguments, and the inability of the protagonists to recognize each other’s terms of reference. Especially striking were the rhetorical tropes of possessive individualism adopted by all participants in the discussion.
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Ходина, Елена Юрьевна. "Prose Miniatures of A. Givargizov from the Book “Transition”: Experience of Analysis of a Creolized Text." Tomsk state pedagogical university bulletin, no. 1(225) (January 30, 2023): 123–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.23951/1609-624x-2023-1-123-131.
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Существующие сегодня исследования приемов и стратегии креолизации текста доказывают интерес ученых к семиотически сложным объектам, соединяющим принципы вербального и визуального кодирования информации. Однако креолизованная прозаическая миниатюра для детей – малоизученный феномен, хотя он занимает значимое место в истории детской литературы и современном литературном процессе. Цель – проанализировать особенности креолизованных прозаических миниатюр для детей, созданных современным писателем Артуром Гиваргизовым и художником-иллюстратором Викторией Семыкиной. Материалом исследования являются прозаические миниатюры из книги «Переход» Артура Гиваргизова. Исследование выполнено в русле семиотического подхода к анализу текста, с опорой на литературоведческие работы о прозаической миниатюре, в том числе в творчестве современных детских писателей, а также о приемах и стратегиях креолизации текста. Креолизованная прозаическая миниатюра для детей представляет собой целостный вербально-визуальный феномен, вбирающий в себя свойства различных знаковых систем. Характерные ее признаки – лаконичный сюжетно и (или) образно завершенный вербальный текст, составляющий образное и смысловое единство с визуальными элементами. Прозаические миниатюры могут восходить к самым разным жанровым матрицам. Артур Гиваргизов обращается к жанрам анекдота и небылицы. Абсурдистская поэтика текстов обусловливает и специфику иллюстраций: в них проявляется игра художника с пропорциями, звукоподражания используются в качестве элементов иллюстрации и т. д. Тематически миниатюры книги Гиваргизова «Переход» обыгрывают название книги. В целом они о правилах существования ребенка в социальной и фантазийно-игровой реальностях, о возможностях и сложностях перехода из одной в другую. Еще один смысловой вектор – осмысление трудностей перехода с языка условных обозначений правил дорожного движения на язык игры, обусловливающих коммуникативные сбои в отношениях детей и взрослых. При креолизации миниатюр книги «Переход» используются разные стратегии: в большинстве случаев изображение обрамляет текст, создавая дополнительные смысловые акценты и привнося интерпретацию художника в идейно-тематическое поле произведения. Но в ряде миниатюр А. Гиваргизова созданный В. Семыкиной визуальный облик печатного текста превращен в часть иллюстрации: шрифт и его расположение достраивает изображение, которое в свою очередь дополняет или подкрепляет ассоциативное и идейно-тематическое содержание вербального текста. Образно-смысловая слитность вербального и визуального компонентов в книге «Переход» позволяет говорить о креолизованном тексте. Через стратегии креолизации Артуром Гиваргизовым и Викторией Семыкиной реализуется авторская игра с читателем/зрителем, которому предлагается уловить смысловую взаимосвязь вербального и визуального компонентов текста. The existing studies of techniques and strategies of text creolization prove the interest of scientists in semiotically complex objects that combine the principles of verbal and visual coding of information. However, the creolized prose miniature for children is a little-studied phenomenon, although it occupies a significant place in the history of children’s literature and the modern literary process. The aim is to analyze the features of creolized prose miniatures for children created by modern writer Arthur Givargizov and illustrator Victoria Semykina. The research material is prose miniatures from the book “Transition” by Arthur Givargizov. The research is carried out in line with the semiotic approach to text analysis, based on literary works on prose miniature, including in the works of modern children’s writers, as well as on techniques and strategies of text creolization. The creolized prose miniature for children is an integral verbal-visual phenomenon that incorporates the properties of various sign systems. Its characteristic features are a laconic plot and (or) figuratively completed verbal text that makes up a figurative and semantic unity with visual elements. Prosaic miniatures can go back to a variety of genre matrices. Artur Givargizov turns to the genres of anecdote and fiction. The absurdist poetics of the texts also determines the specifics of the illustrations: they show the artist’s play with proportions, onomatopoeia is used as elements of illustration, etc. Thematically, the miniatures of Givargizov’s book “Transition” beat the title of the book. In general, they are about the rules of a child’s existence in social and fantasy-game realities, about the possibilities and difficulties of transition from one to another. Another meaning of the title of the book is the comprehension of the difficulties of transition from the language of traffic rules symbols to the language of the game, which cause communicative failures in the relations of children and adults. When creolizing miniatures of the book “Transition”, different strategies are used: in most cases, the image frames the text, creating additional semantic accents and bringing the artist’s interpretation into the ideological and thematic field of the work. But in a number of A. Givargizov’s miniatures, the visual appearance of the printed text created by V. Semykina is turned into part of the illustration: the font and its location completes the image, which, in turn, complements or reinforces the associative and ideological-thematic content of the verbal text. The figurative-semantic fusion of the verbal and visual components in the book “Transition” allows us to talk about a creolized text. Through the strategies of croelization by Arthur Givargizov and Victoria Semykina, the author’s game is realized with the reader/viewer, who is invited to grasp the semantic relationship of the verbal and visual components of the text.
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Van der Colff, M. A. "Aliens and existential elevators: absurdity and its shadows in Douglas Adams’s Hitch hiker series." Literator 29, no. 3 (July 25, 2008): 123–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/lit.v29i3.128.
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According to twentieth-century existentialist philosophy, the universe as we know it is steeped in senselessness, and the only possible means of survival is the construction of subjective meaning. Douglas Adams’s fictional universe portrayed in his “Hitch hiker” series reflects the arbitrary nature of existence, and the characters dwelling in this narrative space are faced with two existential choices: the one is defiance in the face of senselessness, the other is bleak despair. This article explores the existential choices made by prominent characters in the “Hitch hiker” series. The article distinguishes between and analyses the Sisyphus characters and their polar opposites (or nihilist shadows) in Douglas Adams’s “Hitch hiker” series. Adams’s characters, be they human, alien or sentient machine, all face the same existential choice: actuate individual meaning, or resort to despondency. Characters who choose the first option are regarded as Sisyphus figures, whereas characters who choose the latter are referred to as shadows or nihilist nemeses.
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Dillard, Joseph. "Dream Sociodrama." Journal of Psychodrama, Sociometry, and Group Psychotherapy 65, no. 1 (March 1, 2017): 73–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.12926/16-00009.1.
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An outgrowth of Moreno's sociodrama and sociometry and the AQAL (all quadrants, all lines, all levels, all states, and all styles) model of Ken Wilber, dream sociodrama is one methodology of a multiperspective, integral life practice called integral deep listening (IntegralDeepListening.com). A playful excursion into constructive absurdity, dream sociodrama asks the protagonist to choose three life issues and then tell a dream or nightmare or share a waking drama. Alternatively, the protagonist may choose a sociocultural crisis or a historical or fictional event, or the group can present a shared issue, such as a work problem. Several group members take one role in the drama and answer scripted questions designed to generate transformations, often surprising and cosmically humorous, followed by the protagonist doing the same. All develop action plans based on recommendations elicited by the interviewing process.
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Nišić-Leskovci, Fahrija, Anita Cucović, and Vedat Bayrami. "Fikcionalno obistinjenje historije kao drame svijesti u romanima Ugursuz i Karabeg Nedžada Ibrišimovića." Historijski pogledi 7, no. 11 (October 6, 2024): 434–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.52259/historijskipogledi.2024.7.11.434.
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New historicism establishes that the historiographical discourse is essentially narrative, that historiography necessarily behaves like a story. The problem boils down to the relationship between fiction and faction, to the narrative functioning of historiographical material. Novelistic prose can solve this relationship by being loyal or by undermining the idea of logical coherence in the narration, formal plot, time sequence and psychological explanation. Reality is, therefore, a semantic landfill that requires selection and formulation, be it through history or history, and in that process narrative/discursiveness, mimeticity, and rhetoric cannot be avoided. In the novels Ugursuz and Karabeg Ibrišimović sees the content of the past as a landfill of floating stories that write history as a story. At the same time, the story is freed from the unequivocal context of historiographical understanding and interpretation, and gives itself to endless interpretability, multiplied possibilities of interpretation offered by the literary context. With this, the meaning of the facts is checked by moving them from the historiographical context to the literary one, and also to the parabolic form, which is characterized by narrative disguise and complexity, paradoxicality, ambiguity and absurdity. In Ugursuz, the state of complete value emptiness opens the way for the heroes to transfer reality into the illusion of their own power, which is encouraging, and thus appropriated paves the way for an alienated self-image. With alienated emotional states, their sick needs and their sick actions are also alienated. In Karabeg, the angel inhabits the thoughts and hearts of the heroes and witnesses their danger in the conflicts of their own reason and emotions, thus revealing their slavish relationship towards higher goals or, on the other hand, towards the determination to follow their own destiny/nature.
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McGuinness, Paul, and Alex Simpson. "Hauntological cinema: Resisting epistemic erasure and temporal slippage with Sorry to Bother You." Sociological Review 70, no. 1 (October 26, 2021): 178–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00380261211054264.
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Through a hauntological analysis of Boots Riley’s Afrosurrealist comedy, Sorry to Bother You (2018), we explore how fiction can empower sociologists to think beyond the limits of empiricism to better encounter experiences of erasure and senses of temporal disjuncture that characterise capitalist realism. The panoramic power of cinematic world-building enables representations of the ontologically reified but empirically elusive atmosphere of capitalist realism. Sorry to Bother You, we argue, rearticulates through Afrosurrealism the absurdity of capitalist realism’s whitewashing of its innately racialising violence. Drawing upon the thought of Mark Fisher (1968–2017) we examine the film’s central allegorical spectres: the code-switching comedy of the insidious White Voice, the body horror of the Equisapien human–horse hybrids, and the reality warping influence of shadowy megacorporation Worry Free. By resisting the empirical trappings of capitalist realism, hauntology is able to critique the wavering repression of the no longer and the not yet – the ignored legacies of unresolved traumas and a nostalgia for a future we were promised but never arrived. In response, Sorry to Bother You re-presents to a mass audience the spectre of a positive abolitionism and brings into focus an acid communist horizon using hauntological techniques that visualise experiences denied a presence under capitalist realism. This article aims to highlight the ontological and political potentialities of such works of art and their analysis.
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Shaw, Aimie. "Les mondes métaleptiques d’Éric Chevillard." Voix Plurielles 10, no. 1 (May 6, 2013): 118–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.26522/vp.v10i1.796.
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L’œuvre d’Éric Chevillard est composée d’intrigues kaléidoscopiques dans lesquelles se trouvent des personnages chimériques sans vision claire de comment réaliser leurs projets absurdes. Le lecteur, comme le personnage, est donc confronté à des histoires qui ont le potentiel de le mener dans plusieurs sens. Chaque fois que le lecteur se sent sur le point d’esquisser le portrait d’un homme qui aurait pu changer profondément le monde (Dino Egger, 2010), chaque fois qu’il croit que le narrateur a épuisé la liste de répercussions de l’extinction du dernier orang-outan (Sans l’orang-outan, 2007) ou lorsque le protagoniste réussit enfin à écrire quelques mots de ses mémoires (Du hérisson, 2002), Chevillard incorpore un nouveau doute ou une nouvelle hésitation, et manipule les attentes antérieurement établies par le texte. Subséquemment, plus le lecteur lit, plus se perd-il dans l’histoire, et à la place d’un dénouement net se trouve une série de propos emberlificotés provoquant chez le lecteur une incertitude profonde. Une certaine impossibilité, ou une résistance, émerge en tentant de résumer les éléments qui forment les univers romanesques de Chevillard. Bien qu’individuellement chaque aspect de sa fiction ressemble de près ou de loin aux préoccupations esthétiques d’autres auteurs contemporains, la vue d’ensemble résulte en une suite de contradictions fuyantes qui nous empêche de saisir son esthétique et de la réduire à un tout unidimensionnel.
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ANGUI, Aimé. "Murambi, Le Livre Des Ossements De Boubacar Boris Diop : Une Fictionnalisation De L’horreur." REVUE D’ÉTUDES AFRICAINES 1, no. 3 (January 1, 2016): 99–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.61585/pud-rea-v1n303.
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Le devoir de mémoire a toujours été inscrit dans le projet et le canevas rationnels de Boubacar Boris Diop. La traçabilité est perceptible depuis les Tambours de la mémoire (Paris, L’Harmattan, 1990). En effet, les souffrances, les meurtrissures, l’horreur et les génocides que connaissent les peuples, surtout africains, sont devenus des sujets cruciaux pour l’auteur dans ses projets littéraires. La peur ou l’obsession de l’oubli, selon lui, doivent conduire tout bon écrivain ou "faiseur de conscience" à immortaliser "ces monstruosités", à les partager avec l’humanité, de sorte à créer dans toutes les consciences des traces indélébiles. Pour lui, il faut mettre fin aux abominations et aux comportements kafkaïens ou absurdes de l’homme. De Les Tambours de la mémoire à Murambi, le livre des ossements (Stock, 1997 ; NEI, 2000), l’écriture de l’horreur se fait jour dans toutes ses aspérités et sa rugosité. Elle s’emmitoufle dans un "véridisme" et un réalisme propre à la fiction pour glaner des évènements propres à l’Histoire qui se veut un message inquisiteur et accusateur. Ce qui confère à Boubacar Boris Diop un cachet d’auteur qui est le critique et l’analyste de la contemporanéité. Cela dit, quel message véhicule l’auteur ? Comment l’horreur, expression de la barbarie et de l’inhumanité, est-elle fictionnalisée ? Quels sont les indices textuels qui démontrent que son texte romanesque côtoie la réalité de façon asymptotique ?