To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Rome, fiction.
Journal articles on the topic 'Rome, fiction'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 journal articles for your research on the topic 'Rome, fiction.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Martynov, D. E. "The Ancient Past and Fiction, or about the Construction of Worlds by Humanities Scholars: A Review of Books." Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki 163, no. 1 (2021): 190–205. http://dx.doi.org/10.26907/2541-7738.2021.1.190-205.
Full textAbstract:
This paper reviews three novels by different modern authors, all published in 2020 and applying to the realities of Ancient Rome. Marik Lerner’s science fiction novel “Practical Ufology” fits within the subliterary genre of “accidental travel”, and any background information from the Roman-Byzantine life is not very appropriate in the adventure text. The new novel “The Triumphant” by Olga Eliseeva, a professional historian, can be labeled as a form of the “science novel” genre, because it has numerous references and “anchors” that only an educated person is able to understand. The main canvas of O. Eliseeva’s novel is a synthesis of the personalities and actions of Julius Caesar and Constantine the Great, so the writer used the motif of the fantasy world, in which the Roman Republic and Rome are replaced by Latium and Eternal City with the Nazarenes (i.e., Christians) playing an important role in its future. The trilogy “Divine World” by Boris Tolchinsky, a professional politologist, is the most radical inversion of the reality with its own alternative history. The world of the Amorian Empire is a synthesis of the ancient Mediterranean and the ancient Egyptian civilizations. These texts can be considered as “imperial literature” tied to the post-Soviet realities and projects aimed to find a better future.
2
Holderness, Graham. "‘Our Troy, our Rome’." Critical Survey 34, no. 4 (2022): 93–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/cs.2022.340406.
Full textAbstract:
In Titus Andronicus, the many classical literary sources of the play function as templates for its events, as if the tragedy had already been anachronistically pre-written by poets of the Augustan era. The literature of the past, like history, serves, in Titus’s own words, as ‘a pattern, precedent and lively warrant’ (5.3.57) for present action and behaviour. When literature and drama appear to become the basis and precedent for human experience, then there is a two-way process of consolidation and de-realisation. Dramatic and poetic literature can start to look more like history; but at the same time real events can take on the complexion of a mere fantasy repetition, in Hamlet’s words ‘a fiction, a dream of passion’ (3.2.179). Pieced together, this continual evocation of literary, dramatic and poetic precedent constitutes a vision of Rome which is explicitly identified as an aesthetically crafted fantasy for oral narration and dramatisation on the early modern stage.
3
Budner, Keith. "How Does a Moorish Prince Become a Roman Caesar? Fictions and Forgeries, Emperors and Others from the Spanish "Flores" Romances to the Lead Books of Granada." Medieval Globe 5, no. 2 (2019): 149–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.17302/tmg.5-2.8.
Full textAbstract:
This article reads the two Spanish versions of the Flores romance as ideologically embedded in the conflict and contact between Christians and Muslims in medieval Iberia, as well as after the "Reconquista" of 1492 and the subsequent renegotiation of Spanish-Morisco relations. It argues that the printed version of the romance, published in 1512 and frequently reprinted, imagines a fictional resolution to the problem of the Moriscos' socio-political status by making its Morisco protagonist an emperor of Rome. It contrasts this successful fiction with a failed contemporary forgery that had a similar goal: the Lead Books of Granada.
4
Turner, Andrew. "The Poet and the Praetor: Travel Narratives from Early Second-Century Italy." Antichthon 43 (2009): 109–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0066477400001982.
Full textAbstract:
Travel was an inescapable fact of life for the citizens of early second-century CE Rome. People constantly travelled from Rome to Italy, from Rome to the provinces, and from the provinces to Rome; on business, public or private, as immigrants, or for personal reasons, including health and tourism. News of travel was also ever present. In a rigidly hierarchical society which paid continual homage to the princeps, but which also maintained the fiction that his actions were accountable to the Roman people, his extensive travels throughout Italy and the provinces were constantly documented and available for all citizens to see – through inscriptions, through panegyric, and through coins.
5
Frame, Alex. "Fictions in the Thought of Sir John Salmond." Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 30, no. 1 (1999): 159. http://dx.doi.org/10.26686/vuwlr.v30i1.6021.
Full textAbstract:
A Lecture delivered for the Stout Centre's "Eminent Victorians" Centennial Series in the Council Chamber, Hunter Building at Victoria University on 31 March 1999. The author pays tribute to the late Sir John Salmond by discussing the role of "fiction" in law and in the thought of Sir John. The author notes the nature of fiction as a formidable force, as it facilitates provisional escape from the tyranny of apparent fact and forget about the suspensory nature of fiction. There are three types of "fictions" in the legal world: legislative fictions, whereby the world is refashioned in accordance with the legislator's desires; constitutional fictions, which places fictional boundaries on government rule; and corporate fiction, which creates a fictional corporate personality for companies. The author concludes that it is purpose that keeps fiction honest, and that the relationship between fiction and purpose is just as important as that between hypothesis and fact.
6
Sandy, Mark. "The Sense of an Ending: Poetic Spaces and Closure in Keats’s 1819 Odes." Romanticism 28, no. 2 (2022): 188–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/rom.2022.0554.
Full textAbstract:
Following Frank Kermode’s distinction, in The Sense of an Ending, between the stability of myth and the changeability of fiction, Keats’s ‘Ode on Indolence’ offers an understated self-conscious presentation of myth and fiction in comparison with the Nightingale and Grecian Urn odes. All three of these odes invest in mythologies as much as they remain alert to their own poetic frames and the fictive nature of the fictions behind them. This poetic self-awareness reconnects Keats’s odes with the reality of death behind the mythic figures of nightingale, urn, and indolence. Such subtle, shifting, self-awareness is also the hallmark of Keats’s ‘To Autumn’ and the poetic legacy it bestows to Wallace Stevens’s ‘Sunday Morning’, ‘Autumn Refrain’, and ‘The Woman in Sunshine’.
7
Wang, Yi. "Carpe Diem Revisited in Poetry, Fiction and Film." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 10, no. 3 (2020): 294. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1003.04.
Full textAbstract:
Carpe Diem is considered to be an eternal theme in English literature. Being pervasively spread through all ages, it is indeed of universal significance, reflecting one of the important philosophical issues of human world. Albeit this phrase was first created by Horace in ancient Rome, it has greatly influenced the renaissance poetry and the metaphysical poetry of the 17th century. This paper sets out to analyze different representations of Carpe Diem or its variations in various literary forms, namely, poetry, fiction and even film. After these contemplations it is safe to say that the connotation of this theme is the concrete reflection of positive philosophy of life, rather than the seemingly negative ways of living life in common sense. Carpe Diem plays its due significance in the conflicts between human studies and theology, secularism and afterlife, feudalism and humanism in the history of human thoughts.
8
Billows, Richard. "Legal Fiction and Political Reform at Rome in the Early Second Century B. C." Phoenix 43, no. 2 (1989): 112. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1088211.
Full text
9
Pagliuca, N. M., C. Gasparini, and D. Pietrangeli. "A journey towards the earth's core at the geophysical museum of Rocca di Papa (Rome, Italy)." Geological Curator 8, no. 7 (2007): 341–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.55468/gc390.
Full textAbstract:
This paper introduces the Geophysical Museum of Rocca di Papa (Roma, Italy) where visitors can encounter a fascinating journey towards the Earth's core. The aim of the Museum, which was founded on February 26th 2005, is to make the language of Geophysics friendlier and to show the relationship between science and science fiction. The Geophysical Museum is housed in the historical Geodynamic Observatory, built in 1889 by the famous seismologist Michele Stefano De Rossi. The Museum explains the main topics of Geophysics through the use of posters, movie presentations and interactive experiments and presents the stages of scientific research that led to the modern definition of the Earth's internal model. The main focus of the Museum has been school students of all ages, with eight thousand visitors in two years. The Museum connects geophysics to the world of nature and by using science fiction techniques, shows that science is not only the product of certainty or established facts, but also the product of trials and failures. Visitors will find special importance given to seismology, with a special section of ancient and modern seismographs. There is also a room dedicated to a three-dimensional projection system where the visitor can enjoy movies about Alban Hills earthquakes to appreciate the geological evolution of volcanism in this area. This article falls under our Open Access policy
10
Matravers, Derek. "Non-Fictions and Narrative Truths." Croatian journal of philosophy 22, no. 65 (2022): 145–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.52685/cjp.22.65.1.
Full textAbstract:
This paper starts from the fact that the study of narrative in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy is almost exclusively the study of fictional narrative. It returns to an earlier debate in which Hayden White argued that “historiography is a form of fiction-making.” Although White’s claims are hyperbolical, the paper argues that he was correct to stress the importance of the claim that fiction and non-fiction use “the same techniques and strategies.” A distinction is drawn between properties of narratives that are simply properties of narratives and properties of narratives that play a role in forming readers’ beliefs about the world. Using this distinction, it is shown that it is an important feature of non-fictions that they are narratives; it is salutary to recognise non-fictions as being more like fictions than they are like the events they represent.
11
Goff, Barbara. "Revolution in Antiquity: The Classicizing Fiction of Naomi Mitchison." Clotho 4, no. 2 (2022): 155–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/clotho.4.2.155-179.
Full textAbstract:
The writer and activist Naomi Mitchison (1897–1999) came from a prominent establishment family but was a member of the Labour Party and the wife of a Labour MP. Her work was explicitly marked by the Russian Revolution, even when she wrote about antiquity. In the 1920s and 1930s, she produced a number of works of historical fiction set in ancient Greece and Rome, which were highly regarded at the time. The works use the canvas of antiquity to experiment with many forms of political and social radicalism, with a challenging focus on female sexuality. The article discusses four specific representations of revolution which mobilize female agency in ways that are themselves highly unconventional. However, these representations also invoke the Fraserian figure of the dying king who leads the revolution to disaster, compromising the revolutionary energy. This tension speaks to Mitchison’s own contradictory social positioning as a patrician radical. In 1972, however, the novel Cleopatra’s People revisits the theme and stages a more successful uprising. This novel is centered on the sacrificial queen instead of a king, it enlists a mass of people, and saves the revolution by hiding its key figures in Africa. During her final excursion into antiquity, Mitchison thus found a way to press history into useful service.
12
Gago Mariño, Manuel, and Jesús García Sánchez. "The Iron Age looks at Rome for the first time in audiovisuals: fiction, cultural imaginary and historical reality in Barbarians and Britannia." Ex Novo: Journal of Archaeology 6 (February 11, 2022): 187–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.32028/vol6isspp187-197.
Full textAbstract:
Two recent fiction series produced for video-on-demand (VOD) platforms show the conflict between the Roman Empire and indigenous peoples from the perspective of the latter for the first time. Thus, transforming the traditional Roman historical genre into a more diverse and multifocal space. But, in Barbarians and Britannia this new audiovisual optic manages the representation of this historical reality in completely opposite ways.
13
levi, jane. "Melancholy and Mourning: Black Banquets and Funerary Feasts." Gastronomica 12, no. 4 (2012): 96–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2012.12.4.96.
Full textAbstract:
The article investigates a range of lavishly staged banquets evoking death and funerary rituals in history and fiction, comparing them with actual funerary practices involving food. Examples discussed range from the ancient world (Greece, Rome, Egypt) to Renaissance Italy, early modern Britain, and eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain and France. By exploring the symbols of food and dining as entertainment and ritual, it contrasts the elaborate melancholy of the black banquet with the cathartic effectiveness of the funeral feast, and assesses the heightened impact of the borrowing of funerary symbols for entertainment in periods where such rites had a much more prominent role in daily life. It concludes that whereas the funeral feast has a constructive contribution to make to the process of mourning, the black banquet is little more than a gratifyingly macabre—if entertaining—indulgence.
14
Deslandres, Dominique. "« … alors nos garçons se marieront à vos filles, & nous ne ferons plus qu’un seul peuple1 » : religion, genre et déploiement de la souveraineté française en Amérique aux XVIe-XVIIIe siècles – une problématique2." Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 66, no. 1 (2014): 5–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/1021080ar.
Full textAbstract:
Cet article revisite l’histoire de la fiction du métissage, sous l’éclairage croisé de la religion, du genre et des Imperium Studies. Les premiers résultats de l’analyse montrent qu’entre les années 1500-1680, les Autres pouvaient facilement s’assimiler à la société des Français par les voies privilégiées et éminemment genrées qu’étaient le baptême et le mariage. Or mettre en regard ces voies d’assimilation avec l’échec que fut la chimère (tout aussi genrée) de faire un seul peuple franco-amérindien, permet de faire ressortir des mécanismes mentalitaires qui jouèrent en faveur de la tentation impérialiste – celle du roi de France, en veine d’absolutisme, comme celle de l’Église de Rome, catholique et donc universelle.
15
ROYNON, TESSA. "A New “Romen” Empire: Toni Morrison's Love and the Classics." Journal of American Studies 41, no. 1 (2007): 31–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021875806002738.
Full textAbstract:
An important but little-studied feature of Toni Morrison's novels is their ambivalent relationship with classical tradition. Morrison was a classics minor while at Howard University, and her deployment of the cultural practices of ancient Greece and Rome is fundamental to her radical project. Indeed, the works' revisionary classicism extends far beyond the scope of established criticism, which has largely confined itself to the engagement with Greek tragedy in Beloved, with the Demeter/Kore myth in The Bluest Eye and with allusions to Oedipus and Odysseus in Song of Solomon.1 Morrison repeatedly subverts the central role that Greece and Rome have played in American self-definition and historiography. In Paradise, for example, the affinity between the Oven in Ruby and the Greek koine hestia or communal hearth critiques the historical Founding Fathers' insistence on their new nation's analogical relationship with the ancient republics. And in their densely allusive rewritings of slavery, the Civil War and its aftermath, Beloved and Jazz expose the dependence of the “Old South” on classical pastoral tradition. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that in her most recent novel – Love (2003) – Morrison further develops the transformative engagement with America's Graeco-Roman inheritance that characterizes all of her previous fiction.2
16
Cufurovic, Mirela. "Popular Imagination Versus Historical Reality." Public History Review 25 (December 27, 2018): 1–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v25i0.6157.
Full textAbstract:
Historical films have been subject to controversy and criticism within the discipline of history upon the rise of popular interest in new and innovative forms of historical representation. The five to seven years between the release of Gladiator (2000) and Rome (2005-2007) saw an upsurge of historical films focusing on the ‘epic’: the spectacular, monumental and immersive periods of history that exude a mix of historical reality and speculative fiction. This paper argues that it is not historical accuracy or film as historical evidence that matters, but the historical questions and debates that film raises for its audience and the historical profession regarding the past it presents and its implication on history. Such questions and debates base themselves around the extent to which filmmakers are able to interpret history through images and what kind of historical understandings it hopes to achieve. This paper analyses the complexity of public history through a comparative study of reviews on five online message boards, such as IMBD, Amazon, TV.com and Metacritic, relating to HBO’s Rome – chosen due to its unique ability of igniting historiographical debate by presenting history as an accident, thus allowing audiences to question and reinterpret the outcome of historical events.
KEYWORDSHBO; Rome; Film; Historiography; Public History; Popular Imagination
17
HOBDEN, FIONA. "History Meets Fiction in Doctor Who, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’: A BBC Reception of Ancient Rome on Screen and Online." Greece and Rome 56, no. 2 (2009): 147–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0017383509990015.
Full textAbstract:
‘Ancient Rome!’ The door of the iconic police box squeaks open. The camera pans, following a dark-haired man as he emerges, pushes through a curtained doorway, and, with a glint in his eye, glee in his smile, and a touch of London in his voice, announces their destination to his redhead companion. So begins ‘The Fires of Pompeii’, the second episode in the fourth season of the current BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) science-fiction drama Doctor Who. And so, no doubt, began the scribbling of pens on notebooks, as classicists who examine popular receptions of ancient Greece and Rome recognized a fresh opportunity to explore the dynamics of modern engagements with the classical world. At the time of broadcast, I was ensconced in my Liverpool office, writing the final lecture of a new undergraduate module devoted to Roman society. The topic was ‘Receptions of Roman Life’. My plan was to contrast depictions of Roman life in different media from distinct periods to encourage our students to recognize how modern reconstructions of Roman society are variously informed by questions of authority, genre, and cultural contexts. Serendipitously, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ provided an engaging contemporary reception of the Roman world on television.
18
Hammond, Andrew. "The reluctant Europeans: British novelists and the common market." Literature & History 26, no. 2 (2017): 213–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306197317724664.
Full textAbstract:
Despite Britain’s long-standing reputation as a ‘reluctant European’, little research has been done on the treatment of the European Union in cultural production. This essay analyses responses to integration in British fiction of the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on cultural materialist theory, the essay finds the same mixture of indifference and hostility that marked public discourse and argues that such responses were moulded by the Euroscepticism current amongst governmental and media elites. As illustrated by the work of Nancy Mitford, John Berger, Elizabeth Wilson, Tim Parks and others, engagement increased between the Treaty of Rome and the turn of the twenty-first century, although ideological commitment to ‘Project Europe’ remained largely absent.
19
Egerton, Karl. "Player Engagement with Games: Formal Reliefs and Representation Checks." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80, no. 1 (2021): 95–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpab058.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Alongside the direct parallels and contrasts between traditional narrative fiction and games, there lie certain partial analogies that provide their own insights. This article begins by examining a direct parallel between narrative fiction and games—the role of fictional reliefs and reality checks in shaping aesthetic engagement—before arguing that from this a partial analogy can be developed stemming from a feature that distinguishes most games from most traditional fictions: the presence of rules. The relation between rules and fiction in games has heretofore been acknowledged but not examined in detail, giving an impression of a tension that is constant. However, the paired concepts of formal reliefs and representation checks, once introduced, allow us to explain how rules and fiction interact to alter the ways in which players engage with games in a dynamic but limited way.
20
Walsh, Richard G. "Passover Plots." Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts 3, no. 2-3 (2010): 201–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/post.v3i2/3.3.201.
Full textAbstract:
Various modern fictions, building upon the skeptical premises of biblical scholars, have claimed that the gospels covered up the real story about Jesus. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is one recent, popular example. While conspiracy theories may seem peculiar to modern media, the gospels have their own versions of hidden secrets. For Mark, e.g., Roman discourse about crucifixion obscures two secret plots in Jesus’ passion, which the gospel reveals: the religious leaders’ conspiracy to dispatch Jesus and the hidden divine program to sacrifice Jesus. Mark unveils these secret plots by minimizing the passion’s material details (the details of suffering would glorify Rome), substituting the Jewish leaders for the Romans as the important human actors, interpreting the whole as predicted by scripture and by Jesus, and bathing the whole in an irony that claims that the true reality is other than it seems. The resulting divine providence/conspiracy narrative dooms Jesus—and everyone else—before the story effectively begins. None of this would matter if secret plots and infinite books did not remain to make pawns or “phantoms of us all” (Borges). Thus, in Borges’ “The Gospel According to Mark,” an illiterate rancher family after hearing the gospel for the first time, read to them by a young medical student, crucifies the young man. Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum is less biblical but equally enthralled by conspiracies that consume their obsessive believers. Borges and Eco differ from Mark, from some scholarship, and from recent popular fiction, in their insistence that such conspiracy tales are not “true” or “divine,” but rather humans’ own self-destructive fictions. Therein lies a different kind of hope than Mark’s, a very human, if very fragile, hope.
21
Nikolić, Časlav V. "„KAD BIH BIO ISTORIČAR“: VULKANI I ISTORIJA U ROMANU „KOD HIPERBOREJACA“ MILOŠA CRNjANSKOG." Nasledje, Kragujevac XVIII, no. 50 (2021): 371–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.46793/naskg2150.371n.
Full textAbstract:
When we repeat the question of Wilhelm Dilthey about the possibility of historical cog- nition with Peter Sloterdijk, our interpretation will shed light on the perspective of the heroes in the novel At Hyperboreans by Miloš Crnjanski. This hero thinks of himself as a historian by taking into account what preceded written history. What precedes official history is not only what has not been recorded in human existence, but above all those values that establish our planet. The comprehensive historical opinion about Italy and Rome, as Crnjanski examines in fiction, also implies a geological understanding of the Italian peninsula. Insights into the genesis of the soil can be seen in what shapes the conditions in which culture is created. That is why Crnjanski says that volcanoes define the beginning of Italian civilization. When the story of the beginning becomes the story of volcanoes, the narrative transforms historical thinking. From the historical, anthropogonic and polytygonic consciousness, that opinion opens to cos- mogonic phenomena. In this paper, narrative and symbolic aspects of the geological drama of our world are examined as elements of the apocalyptic image of Rome before the beginning of the Second World War.
22
Alston, Richard. "The fiction of History: recalling the past and imagining the future with Caesar at Troy." Classica - Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos 23, no. 1/2 (2010): 143–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.24277/classica.v23i1/2.164.
Full textAbstract:
This essay considers the nature of historical discourse through a consideration of the historical narrative of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The focus is on the manner in which Lucan depicts history as capable of being fictionalised, especially through the operation of political power. The discourses of history make a historical account, but those discourses are not, in Lucan's view, true, but are fictionalised. The key study comes from Caesar at Troy, when Lucan explores the idea of a site (and history) which cannot be understood, but which nevertheless can be employed in a representation of the past. yet, Lucan also alludes to a ‘true history’, which is unrepresentable in his account of Pharsalus, and beyond the scope of the human mind. Lucan’s true history can be read against Benjamin and Tacitus. Lucan offers a framework of history that has the potential to be post-Roman (in that it envisages a world in which there is no Rome), and one in which escapes the frames of cultural memory, both in its fictionalisation and in the dependence of Roman imperial memory on cultural trauma.
23
Fulkerson, Laurel. "J.-C. Jolivet, Allusion et fiction épistolaire dans les Héroïdes: recherches sur l'intertextualité ovidienne (Collection de l'École Française de Rome 289). Paris/Rome: École Française de Rome, 2001. Pp. 356. ISBN 2-7283-0561-7. €48.00." Journal of Roman Studies 93 (November 2003): 383–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0075435800063565.
Full text
24
Fulkerson, Laurel. "J.-C. Jolivet, Allusion et fiction épistolaire dans les Héroïdes: recherches sur l'intertextualité ovidienne (Collection de l'École Française de Rome 289). Paris/Rome: École Française de Rome, 2001. Pp. 356. ISBN 2-7283-0561-7. €48.00." Journal of Roman Studies 93 (November 2003): 383–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3184723.
Full text
25
Flower, Harriet I. "Fabulae Praetextae in context: when were plays on contemporary subjects performed in Republican Rome?" Classical Quarterly 45, no. 1 (1995): 170–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s000983880004177x.
Full textAbstract:
The fabula praetexta is a category of Roman drama about which we are poorly informed. Ancient testimonia are scanty and widely scattered, while surviving fragments comprise fewer than fifty lines. Only five or six titles are firmly attested. Scholarly debate, however, has been extensive, and has especially focused on reconstructing the plots of the plays.1 The main approach has been to amplify extant fragments by fitting them into a plot taken from treatments of the same episode in later historical sources such as Livy, Dionysius, or Plutarch.2 This method was extended by Mommsen and others in their efforts to identify new titles and plots by isolating passages in the historians which seem written in a dramatic style, and could therefore be interpreted as derivations from historical plays.3 Such a line of approach is both risky and subjective. It is based on the desire to recover a lost genre, which modern scholars feel must or should have existed. It is tempting to imagine that the Romans would have encouraged a thriving national theatre on historical themes. Such a genre, it is argued, would have been influential in shaping the average Roman's view of past events and the treatment of famous episodes by later historians.4 The conclusions reached have virtually no basis in the ancient sources we actually have. The result is largely a fiction created by the scholarly imagination.
26
Demmerling, Christoph. "Von den Lesewelten zur Lebenswelt. Überlegungen zu der Frage, warum uns fiktionale Literatur berührt." Journal of Literary Theory 12, no. 2 (2018): 260–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2018-0015.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract The following article argues that fictional texts can be distinguished from non-fictional texts in a prototypical way, even if the concept of the fictional cannot be defined in classical terms. In order to be able to characterize fictional texts, semantic, pragmatic, and reader-conditioned factors have to be taken into account. With reference to Frege, Searle, and Gabriel, the article recalls some proposals for how we might define fictional speech. Underscored in particular is the role of reception for the classification of a text as fictional. I make the case, from a philosophical perspective, for the view that fictional texts represent worlds that do not exist even though these worlds obviously can, and de facto do, contain many elements that are familiar to us from our world. I call these worlds reading worlds and explain the relationship between reading worlds and the life world of readers. This will help support the argument that the encounter with fictional literature can invoke real feelings and that such feelings are by no means irrational, as some defenders of the paradox of fiction would like us to believe. It is the exemplary character of fictional texts that enables us to make connections between the reading worlds and the life world. First and foremost, the article discusses the question of what it is that readers’ feelings are in fact related to. The widespread view that these feelings are primarily related to the characters or events represented in a text proves too simple and needs to be amended. Whoever is sad because of the fate of a fictive character imagines how he or she would fare if in a similar situation. He or she would feel sad as it relates to his or her own situation. And it is this feeling on behalf of one’s self that is the presupposition of sympathy for a fictive character. While reading, the feelings related to fictive characters and content are intertwined with the feelings related to one’s own personal concerns. The feelings one has on his or her own behalf belong to the feelings related to fictive characters; the former are the presupposition of the latter. If we look at the matter in this way, a new perspective opens up on the paradox of fiction. Generally speaking, the discussion surrounding the paradox of fiction is really about readers’ feelings as they relate to fictive persons or content. The question is then how it is possible to have them, since fictive persons and situations do not exist. If, however, the emotional relation to fictive characters and situations is conceived of as mediated by the feelings one has on one’s own behalf, the paradox loses its confusing effect since the imputation of existence no longer plays a central role. Instead, the conjecture that the events in a fictional story could have happened in one’s own life is important. The reader imagines that a story had or could have happened to him or herself. Readers are therefore often moved by a fictive event because they relate what happened in a story to themselves. They have understood the literary event as something that is humanly relevant in a general sense, and they see it as exemplary for human life as such. This is the decisive factor which gives rise to a connection between fiction and reality. The emotional relation to fictive characters happens on the basis of emotions that we would have for our own sake were we confronted with an occurrence like the one being narrated. What happens to the characters in a fictional text could also happen to readers. This is enough to stimulate corresponding feelings. We neither have to assume the existence of fictive characters nor do we have to suspend our knowledge about the fictive character of events or take part in a game of make-believe. But we do have to be able to regard the events in a fictional text as exemplary for human life. The representation of an occurrence in a novel exhibits a number of commonalities with the representation of something that could happen in the future. Consciousness of the future would seem to be a presupposition for developing feelings for something that is only represented. This requires the power of imagination. One has to be able to imagine what is happening to the characters involved in the occurrence being narrated in a fictional text, ›empathize‹ with them, and ultimately one has to be able to imagine that he or she could also be entangled in the same event and what it would be like. Without the use of these skills, it would remain a mystery how reading a fictional text can lead to feelings and how fictive occurrences can be related to reality. The fate of Anna Karenina can move us, we can sympathize with her, because reading the novel confronts us with possibilities that could affect our own lives. The imagination of such possibilities stimulates feelings that are related to us and to our lives. On that basis, we can participate in the fate of fictive characters without having to imagine that they really exist.
27
Аnchishina, E. A. "THE ROLE OF LEGAL FICTIONS IN MODERN LAW ENFORCEMENT PRACTICE." Bulletin of Udmurt University. Series Economics and Law 30, no. 5 (2020): 697–705. http://dx.doi.org/10.35634/2412-9593-2020-30-5-697-705.
Full textAbstract:
This article is devoted to defining the role of legal fictions in modern law enforcement practice. To do this, the author reveals the content of this category, paying attention to the absence of the need to consider fiction as something false and contrary to objective reality. Further, the author defines the meaning of legal fictions, conducting a detailed analysis of their main functions on the example of the civil legislation of the Russian Federation and the corresponding law enforcement practice. At the same time, its practical aspect is mainly studied. The main attention is paid to the protective function of legal fiction, the essence of which, as the author shows, is to restore violated rights and establish a balance of interests of the parties to the legal relationship, as well as to protect the rights of third parties. The features of this function are considered on the examples of the following fictions: fiction of the occurrence of a condition or non-occurrence of a condition; fiction of the presence of powers; fiction of non-conclusion of a contract. The author comes to the conclusion that fiction as a method of legal technique is used not only by the legislator, but also finds independent application in practice, which is reflected in the explanations of higher courts considered in this article.
28
Barnard, John Levi. "Ancient History, American Time: Chesnutt's Outsider Classicism and the Present Past." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 129, no. 1 (2014): 71–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2014.129.1.71.
Full textAbstract:
This essay advances a theory of black classicism as a mode of resistance to the dominant narrative of American history, according to which the United States was to be a new Rome, rooted in the best traditions of classical antiquity yet destined to surpass its antecedent through the redeeming power of American exceptionalism. In the late nineteenth century this narrative reemerged as a means of getting beyond sectional conflict and refocusing on imperial expansion and economic growth. For Charles Chesnutt, a post-Reconstruction African American writer, the progress of American civilization was a dubious notion, a fiction suited to the nation's imperial purposes. In opposition, Chesnutt developed an outsider classicism, challenging the figuration of the United States as inheritor of the mantle of Western civilization by linking the nation to the ancient world through the institution of slavery—a very present relic of the past.
29
Novikova, Liudmyla. "Dynamics of changes in the image of Ukraine in the audiovisual art of the XXI century." Materìali do ukraïnsʹkoï etnologìï 21 (24) (November 30, 2022): 112–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.15407/mue2022.21.112.
Full textAbstract:
The article reviews some of the established stereotypes and new trends in the image of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the world audiovisual art. Traditionally, all nations rely primarily on stereotypes in their attitudes towards others. Most of the time, in the screen arts (especially when it comes to American films, television programmes, etc.), Ukrainians, russians, or Belarusians are portrayed as either «russians» or «Slavs» with a russian-centric identity. Cases of positive cinematic representation of Ukrainians in the twentieth century were an exception, the most notable of which was the film «The Fisherman’s Boots» (1968) by British director M. Anderson. The prototype of the protagonist, Cyril Lakota, the Archbishop of Lviv, who, after 20 years in a Siberian hard labour camp Gulag, is unexpectedly released and allowed to move to Rome, was Josyf Slipyj. After 1986, the theme of the Chornobyl tragedy became widespread in audiovisual artworks dedicated to Ukraine and Ukrainians. The disaster at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant was perceived by the international community primarily as a real threat of a total nature, about which it is necessary to know as much as possible in order to protect the lives and health of the population of different countries. At the same time, the study of the psychological aspect of the tragedy, its impact on the minds of the direct participants, and the change in attitudes towards Chornobyl over time became a subject of particular artistic interest. In the twenty-first century, the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, and the Ukrainian-russian war finally put an end to the interpretation of Ukrainian characters in world cinema as marginal representatives of the Russian screen narrative. A number of fiction and non-fiction films and TV series were released about various aspects of the lives of Ukrainians, who are now clearly identified by their nationality and citizenship. A special role in this process is played by thematic programmes with historical content developed and implemented by T. Snyder.
30
Marmo, Costantino. "Fictiones nelle filosofie medievali e filosofie medievali nelle fictions." Mediaevalia Textos e estudos 40 (2023): 11–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.21747/21836884/med40a1.
Full textAbstract:
This contribution is divided into two independent parts: in the first part, it will deal not so much with examining individual cases of fictio and their role within a certain philosophy or an author, as to see how philosophizing or reasoning through fictiones has been theorized and practiced during the twel-fth and thirteenth centuries; in the second part, it will try, instead, to share what can be found reading medieval setting novels, and in particular medieval crime fiction, namely which image is given of medieval philosophers, philosophies and types of knowledge, and what type of role a wide range of disciplines going from medicine to the arts of trivium play within those narratives
31
Bawardi, Basiliyus. "First Steps in Writing Arabic Narrative Fiction: The Case of Hadīqat al-Akhbār." Die Welt des Islams 48, no. 2 (2008): 170–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006008x335921.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractThis study tracks the significant literary activity of the Beirut newspaper Hadīqat al-Akhbār (1858-1911) in its first ten years. A textual examination of the newspaper reveals that Khalīl al-Khūrī (1836-1907), a central figure of the nahda and the owner of Hadīqat al-Akhbār, believed that an adoption of a new Western literary genre into the traditional Arabic literary tradition would provide the Arab culture with tools for reviving the Arabic language and create new styles of expression. The textual analysis of numerous narrative fictions that were published in the newspaper demonstrates two significant matters: first, Hadīqat al-Akhbār was the first Arabic newspaper to publish translations from Western narrative fiction, especially from the French Romance stories. Secondly, it will be shown how Khalīl al-Khūrī constructed a fetal model of Arabic narrative fiction by publishing a fictional narrative of his own, Wayy, idhan lastu bi-ifranjī (Alas, I'm not a foreigner), in 1859-1861. The literary activity in Hadīqat al-Akhbār, as the following study illustrates, played a substantial role in changing the aesthetic literary taste, and paved the way for the birth of an authentic Arabic narrative fiction.
32
Kroon, Frederick, and Paul Oppenheimer. "Why Realisms about Fiction Must (and Can) Accommodate Fictional Properties." Philosophies 8, no. 5 (2023): 82. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8050082.
Full textAbstract:
The topic of fictional objects is a familiar one, the topic of fictional properties less so. But it deserves its own place in the philosophy of fiction, if only because fictional properties have such a prominent role to play in science fiction and fantasy. What, then, are fictional properties and how does their apparent unreality relate to the unreality of fictional objects? The present paper explores these questions in the light of familiar debates about the nature of fictional objects.
33
Stenuit, Bernard. "Horace, son éducation et la politique (jusqu’en 30)." L'antiquité classique 88, no. 1 (2019): 103–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/antiq.2019.3950.
Full textAbstract:
Horace : poète officiel, chantre de la Paix retrouvée, chargé par Auguste de composer l’hymne de la grande fête nationale de 17 ACN, le Chant séculaire. Quel contraste ce portrait offre-t-il avec l’ensemble des allusions à sa formation et à ses premières expériences, jusqu’en 30, où paraissent absents la vocation d’orateur et le sens politique ! Quel contraste aussi avec les années discrètes qui suivent la déroute de Philippes. À ce moment, républicain vaincu, mais sauf, il se met à écrire, pour un cercle d’amis seulement, loin de toute ambition politique. Telle est la persona qu’il construit, particulièrement dans les Satires. Mais la politique le rattrape. Son indépendance était toute relative. Horace ne pourra jamais vivre dans la seule fiction poétique et la parodie. L’alternance entre liberté poétique et positionnement politique peut éclairer certains passages des Satires, et plus particulièrement le récit apparemment banal du voyage hautement diplomatique à Brindes (I, 5). Les années 42-30 furent déterminantes pour Horace, comme elles le furent pour le destin de Rome.
34
Katic, Ana. "The epistemic role of fiction in scientific models." Theoria, Beograd 63, no. 3 (2020): 5–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/theo2003005k.
Full textAbstract:
Giere?s analysis of the epistemic role of fiction in science and literature is the representative of antifictionists. Our research finds the three inconsistencies in his main paper regarding the comparison of fiction in scientific models and literary works. We analyze his argument and offer our solution to the issue favoring the perspective of fictionalism. Further, we support a typological differentiation of false representation in science into fictional and fictitious. The value of this differentiation we demonstrate by giving the example of digital organisms in system biology. The paper aims to help better understanding of fiction in science and to avoid the oversimplification of literary fiction.
35
Zipfel, Frank. "The Pleasures of Imagination. Aspects of Fictionality in the Poetics of the Age of Enlightenment and in Present-Day Theories of Fiction." Journal of Literary Theory 14, no. 2 (2020): 260–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-2007.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractInvestigations into the history of the modern practice of fiction encounter a wide range of obstacles. One of the major impediments lies in the fact that former centuries have used different concepts and terms to designate or describe phenomena or ideas that we, during the last 50 years, have been dealing with under the label of fiction/ality. Therefore, it is not easy to establish whether scholars and poets of other centuries actually do talk about what we today call fiction or fictionality and, if they do, what they say about it. Moreover, even when we detect discourses or propositions that seem to deal with aspects of fictionality we have to be careful and ask whether these propositions are actually intended to talk about phenomena that belong to the realm of fiction/ality. However, if we want to gain some knowledge about the history of fiction/ality, we have no other choice than to tackle the arduous task of trying to detect similarities (and differences) between the present-day discourse on fictionality and (allegedly) related discourses of other epochs. The goal of this paper is to make a small contribution to this task.The starting point of the paper are two observations, which also determine the approach I have chosen for my investigations. 1) In the 18th century the terms »fiction« or »fictionality« do not seem to play a significant role in the discussion of art and literature. However, some propositions of the discourse on imagination, one of the most prominent discourses of the Age of Enlightenment, seem to suggest that this discourse deals more or less explicitly with questions regarding the fictionality of literary artefacts as we conceive it today. 2) The concepts of imagination and fictionality are also closely linked in present-day theories of fiction. Naturally, the question arises how the entanglement of the concepts of fictionality and imagination can be understood in a historical perspective. Can it function as a common ground between 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality? Is imagination still used in the same ways to explain phenomena of fictionality or have the approaches evolved over the last 250 years and if yes, then how? These kinds of questions inevitably lead to one major question: What do 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality have in common, how much and in what ways do they differ?For heuristic reasons, the article is subdivided according to what I consider the three salient features of today’s institutional theories of fiction (i. e. theories which try to explain fictionality as an institutional practice that is determined and ruled by specific conventions): fictive utterance (aspects concerning the production of fictional texts), fictional content (aspects concerning the narrated story in fictional texts) and fictive stance (aspects concerning the reader’s response to fictional texts). The article focusses on the English, French and German-speaking debates of the long 18th century and within these discourses on the most central and, therefore, for the development of the concept of fiction/ality most influential figures. These are, most notably, Madame de Staël, Voltaire, Joseph Addison, Georg Friedrich Meier, Christian Wolff, the duo Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger as well as their adversary Johann Christoph Gottsched.The relevance of the article for a historical approach to the theory of fiction lies in the following aspects. By means of a tentative reconstruction of some carefully chosen propositions of 18th-century discourse on imagination I want to show that these propositions deal in some way or other with literary phenomena and theoretical concepts that in present-day theory are addressed under the label of fiction/ality. By comparing propositions stemming from 18th-century discourse on imagination with some major assertions of present-day theories of fiction I try to lay bare the similarities and the differences of the respective approaches to literary fiction and its conceptualisations. One of the major questions is to what extent these similarities and differences stem from the differing theoretical paradigms that are used to explain literary phenomena in both epochs. I venture some hypotheses about the influence of the respective theoretical backgrounds on the conceptions of fictionality then and today. An even more intriguing question seems to be whether the practice of fictional storytelling as we know and conceive it today had already been established during the 18th century or whether it was only in the process of being established.
36
Rabinovich, Irina. "Hawthorne’s Miriam – a female enigma: A seductive femme fatale or a victim of abuse?" Ars Aeterna 13, no. 1 (2021): 16–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/aa-2021-0002.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract In his last published novel, The Marble Faun (Hawthorne, 1974), in spite of his seeming sympathy for Miriam’s plea for friendship, Hawthorne’s narrator relates to Miriam as a “guilty” and “bloodstained” woman, who similarly to the female Jewish models portrayed in her paintings, carries misery, vice and death into the world. The narrator’s ambiguity vis-àvis Miriam’s moral fibre, on the one hand, and his infatuation with the beautiful and talented female artist, on the other, stands at the heart of the novel. The goal of this paper is mainly addressed at examining Miriam’s position in Hawthorne’s fiction, through an analysis of his treatment of his other “dark” and “light” women. Furthermore, I enquire whether Miriam is to be perceived in terms of the popular stereotypical representations of Jewish women (usually, Madonnas or whores), or whether she is granted more original and idiosyncratic characteristics. Next, I discuss Hawthorne’s treatment of Miriam’s artistic vocation, discerning her distinctiveness as a female Jewish 19th-century artist. Finally, Hawthorne’s unconventional choice of Rome as the setting for his novel unquestionably entails reference to the societal, cultural and political forces at play.
37
Buonanno, Milly, Franca Faccioli, Paola Panarese, et al. "Gender and media studies in Italy: The GEMMA research programme." Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies 8, no. 2 (2020): 269–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jicms_00021_1.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract This multi-authored article presents new, investigative strands of the research unit GEMMA (GEnder and Media Matters, established in 2010) at the Department of Communication and Social Research of the Sapienza University of Rome. GEMMA's main objective is to explore the multi-layered relationships between gender and media in the peculiar conditions of the contemporary 'media saturated' environment, employing an approach that maps the media's potential for changing cultural representations of gender. Without renouncing the representational approach, the recent iterations of GEMMA research have shifted focus towards addressing new objects and paths of investigation. Ranging across a variety of media and genres, from television and advertising, to public communication campaigns, from web-based social networks to dating platforms, from documentary to fiction, from wellness reality to cooking shows, the latest works that have been conducted during the 2016‐19 years investigate forms of agency displayed by individuals, groups or institutions directly involved and engaged in the production and consumption of media texts relevant to gender. In this article, the authors summarize their research as contributing to the composition of a polyphonic text on gender and media in Italy.
38
Bareis, J. Alexander. "The Implied Fictional Narrator." Journal of Literary Theory 14, no. 1 (2020): 120–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2020-0007.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractThe role of the narrator in fiction has recently received renewed interest from scholars in philosophical aesthetics and narratology. Many of the contributions criticise how the term is used – both outside of narrative literature as well as within the field of fictional narrative literature. The central part of the attacks has been the ubiquity of fictional narrators, see e. g. Kania (2005), and pan-narrator theories have been dismissed, e. g. by Köppe and Stühring (2011). Yet, the fictional narrator has been a decisive tool within literary narratology for many years, in particular during the heyday of classical literary narratology. For scholars like Genette (1988) and Cohn (1999), the category of the fictional narrator was at the centre of theoretical debates about the demarcation of fiction and non-fiction. Arguably, theorising about the fictional narrator necessitates theorising about fiction in general. From this, it follows that any account on which the fictional narrator is built ideally would be a theory of fiction compatible with all types of fictional narrative media – not just narrative fiction like novels and short stories.In this vein, this paper applies a transmedial approach to the question of fictional narrators in different media based on the transmedial theory of fiction in terms of make-believe by Kendall Walton (1990). Although the article shares roughly the same theoretical point of departure as Köppe and Stühring, that is, an analytical-philosophical theory of fiction as make-believe, it offers a diametrically different solution. Building on the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths as developed by Kendall Walton in his seminal theory of fiction as make-believe (1990), this paper proposes the fictional presence of a narrator in all fictional narratives. Importantly, ›presence‹ in terms of being part of a work of fiction needs to be understood as exactly that: fictional presence, meaning that the question of what counts as a fictional truth is of great importance. Here, the distinction between direct and indirect fictional truths is crucial since not every fictional narrative – not even every literary fictional narrative – makes it directly fictionally true that it is narrated. To exemplify: not every novel begins with words like »Call me Ishmael«, i. e., stating direct fictional truths about its narrator. Indirect, implied fictional truths can also be part of the generation of the fictional truth of a fictional narrator. Therefore, the paper argues that every fictional narrative makes it (at least indirectly) fictionally true that it is narrated.More specifically, the argument is made that any theory of fictional narrative that accepts fictional narrators in some cases (as e. g. suggested by proponents of the so-called optional narrator theory, such as Currie [2010]), has to accept fictional narrators in all cases of fictional narratives. The only other option is to remove the category of fictional narrators altogether. Since the category of the fictional narrator has proved to be extremely useful in the history of narratology, such removal would be unfortunate, however. Instead, a solution is suggested that emphasizes the active role of recipients in the generation of fictional truths, and in particular in the generation of implied fictional truths.Once the narratological category of the fictional narrator is understood in terms of fictional truth, the methodological consequences can be fully grasped: without the generation of fictional truths in a game of make-believe, there are no fictional narratives – and no fictional narrators. The fictionality of narratives depends entirely on the fact that they are used as props in a game of make-believe. If they are not used in this manner, they are nothing but black dots on paper, the oxidation of silver through light, or any other technical description of artefacts containing representations. Fictional narrators are always based on fictional truths, they are the result of a game of make-believe, and hence the only evidence for a fictional narrator is always merely fictional. If it is impossible to imagine that the fictional work is narrated, then the work is not a narrative.In the first part of the paper, common arguments for and against the fictional narrator are discussed, such as the analytical, realist, transmedial, and the so-called evidence argument; in addition, unreliable narration in fictional film will be an important part in the defence of the ubiquitous fictional narrator in fictional narrative. If the category of unreliable narration relies on the interplay of both author, narration, and reader, the question of unreliable narration within narrative fiction that is not traditionally verbal, such as fiction films, becomes highly problematic. Based on Walton’s theory of make-believe, part two of the paper presents a number of reasons why at least implied fictional narrators are necessary for the definition of fictional narrative in different media and discusses the methodological consequences of this theoretical choice.
39
Summerley, Rory. "Approaches to Game Fiction Derived from Musicals and Pornography." Arts 7, no. 3 (2018): 44. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/arts7030044.
Full textAbstract:
This paper discusses the construction of consistent fictions in games using relevant theory drawn from discussions of musicals and pornography in opposition to media that are traditionally associated with fiction and used to discuss games (film, theatre, literature etc.). Game developer John Carmack’s famous quip that stories in games are like stories in pornography—optional—is the impetus for a discussion of the role and function of fiction in games. This paper aims to kick-start an informed approach to constructing and understanding consistent fictions in games. Case studies from games, musicals, and pornography are cross-examined to identify what is common to each practice with regards to their fictions (or lack thereof) and how they might inform the analysis of games going forward. To this end the terms ‘integrated’, ‘separated’, and ‘dissolved’ are borrowed from Dyer’s work on musicals, which was later employed by Linda Williams to discusses pornographic fictions. A framework is laid out by which games (and other media) can be understood as a mix of different types of information and how the arrangement of this information in a given work might classify it under Dyer’s terms and help us understand the ways in which a game fiction is considered consistent or not.
40
Turnbull, Michael T. R. B. "'Celestial Fireworks' – Father Malachy's Miracle (1931)." Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 9, no. 1 (2023): 125–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.16922/jrhlc.9.1.5.
Full textAbstract:
In his satirical novel, 'Father Malachy's Miracle' (1931), Bruce Marshall (24 June 1899–18 June 1987), the Edinburgh-born author of over forty books, presents the reader with an elderly Benedictine monk, Fr Malachy Murdoch, who has been sent from his monastery in the Scottish Highlands to improve the singing and the manners on the altar of St Margaret's Church in Edinburgh – like many of the episodes in the novel, Marshall's characters, thinly-disguised, are based on 'real' people – in spite of the author's protestations to the contrary.<br/> After a chance but testy meeting with a dapper Episcopalian clergyman who challenges the monk to prove that miracles can really happen. Malachy impulsively jettisons his brief and accepts the challenge, deciding to petition God to move an adjacent dancehall of ill repute (along with its clientele) onto the windy summit of the Bass Rock, a volcanic island some twenty miles away in East Lothian. Inexplicably, the displacement immediately becomes a tourist attraction – for which Malachy is roundly admonished by a cardinal newly-arrived from Rome.<br/> He begins to grasp the wider implications of what he has done. He regrets his hasty reaction and implores God to restore the seedy dancehall to its former site beside the Church of Saint Margaret of Scotland – he is left with an abiding sense of guilt and failure. Interviewed in Rome by the literary critic Luigi Silori in 1959, Marshall confided that 'the author should not preach. This is why the clergy generally does not understand me very well – because they expect me to preach, and I don't want to do this.'<br/> So why has this comic masterpiece been almost forgotten? Recently, new research into 'Father Malachy's Miracle' has revealed just how closely Marshall's deft fictionalisation imitated real life – the thin line between fact and Marshall's fiction.
41
Reinsborough, Michael. "Science fiction and science futures: considering the role of fictions in public engagement and science communication work." Journal of Science Communication 16, no. 04 (2017): C07. http://dx.doi.org/10.22323/2.16040307.
Full textAbstract:
The imagination of possible scientific futures has a colourful history of interaction with scientific research agendas and public expectations. The 2017 annual UK Science in Public conference included a panel discussing this. Emphasizing fiction as a method for engaging with and mapping the influence of possible futures, this panel discussed the role of science fiction historically, the role of science fiction in public attitudes to artificial intelligence, and its potential as a method for engagement between scientific researchers and publics. Science communication for creating mutually responsive dialogue between research communities and publics about setting scientific research agendas should consider the role of fictions in understanding how futures are imagined by all parties.
42
Gittel, Benjamin. "In the Mood for Paradox? Das Verhältnis von Fiktion, Stimmung und Welterschließung aus mentalistischer und phänomenologischer Perspektive." Journal of Literary Theory 12, no. 2 (2018): 300–320. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jlt-2018-0017.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract It is widely acknowledged that responses to fiction can be divided into two categories: emotions or moods. Research on the paradox of fiction, however, solely focused on emotional responses to fiction. This paper analyses the different potentials of the mood concept with regard to the paradox of fiction: its potential to avoid the paradox on the one hand and its potential to rise a new paradox of fiction, a paradox of fiction for moods, on the other. To this end, the paper distinguishes two different meanings of the everyday concept of mood and two different paradigms in the research on moods. The mood concept can designate not only affective states of an individual (moods1), but elusive, nuanced atmospheres of objects, places or situations (moods2). The mentalistic paradigm, widespread in psychology and analytic philosophy, generally assumes that moods are mental states with a certain quality of feeling (and physical symptoms). Moods2 are regarded by such approaches, if they discuss them, as a secondary phenomenon based on subjective perception. In contrast, the phenomenological paradigm focuses on moods2 and, if it accommodates moods1 as well, often postulates a characteristic connection between the two: moods1 reveal extra-individual atmospheres (moods2) that are assumed to exist in some ontologically robust sense. Therefore, moods1 can be said to have a world-disclosing function within the phenomenological paradigm. Researchers in the mentalistic paradigm deal, among other issues, with the difference of emotions and moods1. One way in which moods1 differ from emotions is that they lack an intentional object and it is for that reason that the concept of mood1, at first glance, seems to offer a solution to the paradox of fiction. The paradox of fiction presumes that we have emotions with regard to fictional objects. If it were possible to redescribe the alleged emotions as more subtle mood1 responses without clear intentional objects, this would undermine a central premise of the paradox and dissolve it. However, such a redescription seems not equally plausible for all cases discussed in the debate (e. g. the green slime case). Therefore, moods1 can only be one element of a more subtle ›phenomenology‹ of affective reactions towards fiction and the »paradox avoiding potential« of the mood concept is limited. The paradox creating potential of the mood concept emerges if one takes into account the outlined complex semantics of the concept »mood« and the postulated world-disclosing function of moods1. It seems possible to construct a new paradox, the paradox of fiction for moods: (a) Only real entities or representations of real entities can evoke moods1 with world-disclosing function (because this mood1 evocation is actually immersion in an atmosphere). (b) Many entities in fictions are not real. (c) Nevertheless, fictions can evoke moods1 with world-disclosing functions (e. g. with regard to places, situations) in the recipient. The paper argues that the outlined paradox can be dissolved by pointing out that the expression »moods1 with world-disclosing function« in sentence (a) means something different than in (c). While the expression in (a) relates to the idea of grasping an atmosphere (mood2) that somehow is »in the world«, it means acquiring a non-propositional form of knowledge, namely knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation, in (c). The idea that it is possible to acquire knowledge of what-it-is-like by means of fiction has often been postulated in the research literature, but rarely been spelled out in greater detail. The paper argues that such an acquisition can occur, among other possibilities, on the basis of mood1 evocation, but that the conditions for the acquisition of knowledge of what-it-is-like by means of fiction are more demanding than under usual circumstances: A recipient of fiction can reasonably be said to acquire knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation if the fictional representation evokes a mood1 which is characteristic of a situation S and the recipient understands this mood1 as an affective reaction to a situation of the type S. Please note that moods2 play no explanatory role in the second interpretation of »world-disclosing function«. Since assumption (a) and assumption (c) concern different world-disclosing functions or, in other words, different mechanisms of world-disclosure, there is no paradox. Although moods1 evoked by fictional representations (with some limitations pointed out in section 4) do not possess a world-disclosing function in the sense the phenomenological tradition postulated, it is possible to ascribe these moods1 a world-disclosing function, even within a non-phenomenological framework: They allow the recipient the acquisition of a knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation or in a certain place. Ultimately, for the paradox of fiction for moods seems to hold what could be said about the classical paradox of fiction as well: Even if the paradox ultimately dissolves, its analysis can be instructive for related research fields like the debate on knowledge from fiction which takes moods rarely into account until now.
43
Vouilloux, Bernard. "Les lieux de l’art. Topique, topographie et typologie des ateliers en fiction." Romantisme 202, no. 4 (2023): 13–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.3917/rom.202.0013.
Full textAbstract:
En régime réaliste, la typologie fictionnelle des ateliers passe par la gestion narrative et symbolique de leurs adresses et s’inscrit dans des savoirs partagés : les liens d’interdépendance entre typologie et topographie engagent donc une topique , les lieux de l’art constituant ainsi des topotopes . Ceux-ci disent quelque chose, d’un état, d’une situation, d’un statut dans la société, à quoi se mêlent également les prédispositions du tempérament et les affects de l’humeur. Tout en témoignant des évolutions que connaissent à la fois l’urbanisme parisien et la « cote » des quartiers, les informations livrées par la fiction participent à la compréhension des représentations qui sont attachées aux carrières des artistes fictifs. Dans la seconde moitié du siècle, ces représentations s’assombrissent à un degré tel qu’elles semblent ne plus avoir d’autre issue que la politisation du topotope.
44
Steble, Janez. "The role of science fiction within the fluidity of slipstream literature." Acta Neophilologica 48, no. 1-2 (2015): 67–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/an.48.1-2.67-86.
Full textAbstract:
The paper explores the complex and contradictory role of science fiction in slipstream, the type of postmodern non-realistic literature situated between the fantastic genres and the mainstream literary fiction. Because of its unstable status of occupying an interstitial position between multiple literary conventions, the article first deals with an expansive terminology affiliated with slipstream and elucidates upon using a unified term for it. Avantpop, transrealism, and interstitial fiction all help us in understanding the vast postmodern horizon of slipstream. Furthermore, the slipstream's philosophy of cognitive dissonance in comparison to science fiction's is analysed to see the similarities and differences between them. The section is mainly concerned on expanding Darko Suvin's concept of cognition and viewing it as partially compatible with slipstream's estrangement techniques. The final part is focused on the exemplary slipstream novel Vurt by Jeff Noon, a perfect example of science fiction providing material, including latest post-Newtonian paradigms of science, for slipstream to mould it in its own fashion.
45
Jacobs, Arthur M., and Roel M. Willems. "The Fictive Brain: Neurocognitive Correlates of Engagement in Literature." Review of General Psychology 22, no. 2 (2018): 147–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000106.
Full textAbstract:
Fiction is vital to our being. Many people enjoy engaging with fiction every day. Here we focus on literary reading as 1 instance of fiction consumption from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. The brain processes which play a role in the mental construction of fiction worlds and the related engagement with fictional characters, remain largely unknown. The authors discuss the neurocognitive poetics model ( Jacobs, 2015a ) of literary reading specifying the likely neuronal correlates of several key processes in literary reading, namely inference and situation model building, immersion, mental simulation and imagery, figurative language and style, and the issue of distinguishing fact from fiction. An overview of recent work on these key processes is followed by a discussion of methodological challenges in studying the brain bases of fiction processing.
46
Magnusson, Petra. "Den skönlitterära texten." Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap 45, no. 2-3 (2015): 67–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.54797/tfl.v45i2-3.9004.
Full textAbstract:
Fiction: One Method of Meaning-Making
Due to developments in media technology, the textworlds of today are undergoing a series of rapid changes. The aim of this article is to suggest multimodal theory formation as a theory of meaning-making in schools, and to discuss the consequences regarding the way in which fiction is viewed in education. Meaning-making is considered a process wherein one acquires, but also changes and develops, experiences. In other words, meaning-making is regarded as a form of design. When meaning-making is considered as multimodal, nonhierarchical and ecological, this will necessarily impact our conception of fiction. The article draws on my doctoral thesis in which empirical material showed similarities in pupils’ meaning-making regardless of mode and media. Reading fiction plays a strong role in Swedish curriculum, but this role needs to be discussed and strongly problematized. Drawing on multimodal theory formation and discussions among contemporary literature scholars, the article does not support the conception of fictional literature as exclusive and special. Rather, the arguments used for fictional literature also apply to other modes of meaning-making in other media than the printed verbal text. Swedish steering documents show a lack of conceptual resources for understanding the processes of contemporary meaning-making. The article argues that the challenges presented by contemporary methods of meaning-making should be recognized in schools, and should lead to a questioning of the role of fiction in the Swedish curriculum. When using multimodal theory formation to understand contemporary communication, fiction is revealed as only one way, among others, to make meaning.
47
Takla, Nefertiti. "Women and Crime: Exploring the Role of Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Constructions of Female Criminality." International Journal of Middle East Studies 54, no. 1 (2022): 124–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020743822000022.
Full textAbstract:
This roundtable on women and crime was inspired by a discussion at a CUNY Dissections Seminar in April 2021, where Gülhan Balsoy presented her work in progress on Ottoman crime fiction in the early 20th century. The focus of her paper was a popular murder mystery series called The National Collection of Murders, which had been published in Istanbul in 1914. The protagonists of this fictional crime series were a mother and daughter known as the Dark Witch and the Bloody Fairy, who led an underground criminal gang living in a secret subterranean world beneath the city of Istanbul. While reading her paper the night before the seminar, I could not help but notice striking parallels between this fictional Ottoman murder mystery and the sensationalized media coverage of a 1921 Egyptian serial murder case, popularly known by the name of its alleged perpetrators, Raya and Sakina. In both the fictive Ottoman story and the Egyptian media coverage of a real crime, two sets of female relatives were presented as the respective leaders of a criminal gang that stole luxury goods from respectable families and turned their homes into human slaughterhouses. In both cases, the female gang leaders used “superstition” to deceive and trap their victims while continually outwitting the police, all against a backdrop of illicit sex.
48
Leś, Mariusz M. "„Skrajny kwadrant gwiazdozbioru” – astronomia w fantastyce naukowej." Bibliotekarz Podlaski Ogólnopolskie Naukowe Pismo Bibliotekoznawcze i Bibliologiczne 52, no. 3 (2021): 45–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.36770/bp.622.
Full textAbstract:
As the author of the article claims, there exist close and lasting links between astronomy and science fiction genre. First and foremost, both of these phenomena developed in parallel since antiquity, and both have fiction at their centre as a socially established type of imagination. Scientific hypotheses use justified fabrication, and science fiction offers images of fictional cosmologies. Many writers of proto-science fiction brought astronomical concepts into social play. Among them were astronomers and philosophers who extensively used plot devices based on mythology or allegorical transformations: from Lucian of Samosata to Johannes Kepler. Space travel, beginning with Jules Verne’s prose, is an important part of the thematic resource of science fiction. Astronomy played an important role also in the beginnings of Polish science fiction, thanks to works of Michał Dymitr Krajewski and Teodor Tripplin.
49
Newbery-Jones, Craig. "‘The Changes that Face Us’: Science Fiction as (Public) Legal Education." Law, Technology and Humans 4, no. 2 (2022): 137–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/lthj.2488.
Full textAbstract:
Much has been written on how science fiction allows us to interrogate imagined societal changes and potential yet-to-be realised futures. It also allows those who consume such texts to reflect upon their contemporaneous societies This paper refocuses this understanding of science fiction from an original and novel perspective, arguing that science fiction texts perform an educative function and can be considered a form of public legal education. To this end, this paper argues that science fiction performs a jurisprudential function in its treatment and popular presentation of legal issues and themes. Science fiction allows audiences and consumers to conceptualise abstract jurisprudential concepts, whether they are engaged with less interactive media (such as television or film) or experimenting more actively with these concepts via dynamic media (such as video games and tabletop role-playing games). This distinction between less interactive and more interactive media draws upon previous work by Newbery-Jones in 2015 that examined the jurisprudence of video games and the phenomenology of justice. It also focuses on science fiction’s potential to contribute to formal and public legal education. Finally, this paper explains the importance of public legal education in the twenty-first century and highlights science fiction’s critical role in encouraging engagement with jurisprudential themes and legal subject matter within the shifting sociopolitical landscape of the last decade.
50
Zatsepina, O. E. "LEGAL SYMBOL AND LEGAL FICTION: PROBLEMS OF DEMARCATION." Russian-Asian Legal Journal, no. 4 (January 31, 2020): 14–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.14258/ralj(2019)4.3.
Full textAbstract:
The article considers the legal symbol and legal fiction as special legal categories. The correctness of anarrow approach to their essence was established according to which the notion of «legal fiction» does notinclude fictitious phenomena, and the notion of «legal symbol» does not cover symbols prohibited by law,and symbols which represent certain values. It was revealed that both considered categories have a certaindegree of conventionality, in a specific way according to the scheme established by the legislator, thereforethey are sometimes mixed in the literature. Legal symbols, unlike legal fictions, are more fundamental, buthave an auxiliary character, since they reflect an existing legal precept, and are not part of a new legal norm,contain an encrypted meaning, but do not distort the legal reality.Legal symbols and legal fictions play a very important role in legal regulation, since they optimize it andmake it more quality, and also provide legal and linguistic economy.