Academic literature on the topic 'Theme of labyrinth'

Cette recherche a un objectif précis : étudier les diverses modalités selon lesquelles le motif du labyrinthe se pose comme principe privilégié de l'esthétique du récit chez Patrick Modiano. Cela se fera, dans la généralité, à la lumière de la méthodologie de la poétique textuelle sans pour autant omettre le rôle que pourrait jouer le contexte sur les choix thématiques de l'écrivain. Dans les romans de Modiano, le labyrinthe à plusieurs modes d'existence. Nous en avons discernés trois : le labyrinthe ontologique, dont l’évocation est liée à l’identité du personnage. Le deuxième devrait s’appeler le labyrinthe mémorial dont la présence est en rapport avec le caractère spécifique doté à la mémoire des personnages. Le troisième mode du labyrinthe concerne l’espace labyrinthique dans lequel errent les êtres romanesques de Modiano. Analyser les liens forts divers et multiples que le roman de Modiano établit avec le motif du labyrinthe est un domaine qui n’a pas pris l’intérêt qu’il méritait dans les travaux critiques consacrés à l’écrivain français. Comme nous le verrons au cours de cette recherche, Modiano trouve dans le labyrinthe, en tant que forme comme en tant que sujet, une source d’inspiration extrêmement vitale, dynamique et sans cesse renouvelable. Abstract The current paper aims to study the different forms by which the theme of labyrinth imposes itself as a preferred narrative structure in the novels of the French writer Patrick Modiano. Theoretically speaking, the current research paper will limit itself to the theoretical framework of the textual poetics which relies on the study of literary texts without paying much attention, neither to the context, nor to the life of its author. The analysis of the strong and varied links that Modiano's novels establish with labyrinth represents a field which has not received adequate attention by the critical studies dedicated to this French writer. As it will be shown throughout the current paper, Modiano views labyrinth both as a form and a subject to be a very vital, dynamic, and infinitely renewable inspiration.

For a number of Italian writers the modem city has come to mean as much a style, a fractured syntax, a paratactic sign-system, as a physical construct with certain demonstrable boundaries. In the works of such authors as halo Calvino and Francesca Duranti the crisis of reason is symbolized by indeterminate aleatory structures - such as the labyrinth or the chessboard - all of which can be considered variations on the theme of the modem city. Calvino and Duranti’s invisible or labyrinthine cities serve as an infinitely malleable poetic dramatization of the mind. The cities are both projections of their respective narrators and images that shape the reader's experience. By analysing the spatial structures of the narratives and by examining the use of space as a locus of fantasy this article shows how these novels chart cityscapes of the mind.

The importance of the labyrinth and the mirror in the history of culture has never ceased. This article reflects on what they agree on and what can be learned from them. The effort to determine where these myths converge brings me to the theme of the monster, which, however, is not always the same. In the article I point out the differences: the Minotaur represents power and is born alongside the labyrinth; the mirror monster, on the other hand, is inside the subject, and it is also an outer voice — an alter ego. Ethical consequences can be drawn from these observations.

AbstractThe article is a comparative study of the well-known mythological sujet of the chained hero and another popular motif, that of the labyrinth. The author lists in brief various versions of the legend about the chained hero, widespread in the Caucasian-Near Eastern region, emphasising the most significant details: tracing the motif of theomachy as a sin, and retribution common for all of them. The paper includes the analysis of such features of the chained hero as his ambivalence going back to the archetypal twoness; twins representing a positive character and that of the snake (dragon) nature. Another reason for the ambivalence of the chained hero is his chthonic nature, observable in the place of his imprisonment or his environment. The cave here is approximating to a labyrinth-like covert, and the idea of a labyrinth, in its turn, points to the motif of initiation. The Caucasian-Near Eastern complex of the stories about the chained/neutralised chthonic heroes allows to anew elucidate the cave-labyrinth theme in the vast proto-Caucasian context, and to probably give original interpretations to newly found artefacts depicting respective symbols.

In this paper we use the discourse analysis as theoretical framework to discuss the renowned Octavio Paz’s essay, The labyrinth of solitude. Although there are many studies that have been made about this theme which are mainly based on the history of ideas and the philosophy of the culture, in this case we propose a different perspective which focuses on the linguistic features that are used to construct the subject of enunciation in the literary essay. We consider Émile Benveniste’s concepts of his theory of enunciative operations in order to reveal the different positions that the author takes in the text, as well as how he constructs his reader.

The concept of evil is foregrounded in most of the poems of Khan. This paper focuses on the theme of evil in its variant shapes that are foregrounded in Khan’s poetry. For this purpose, both the collections of Khan, “Velvet of Loss” and “Pale Leaf (Three Voices)” are used for the data under study. Only those poems are selected that bear the foregrounded theme of evil. The poems that foreground the evil are Octopus, I Won’t Talk, The Dawn, The City, In a Café, Labyrinth, Nostalgia, Nemesis, Eclipsed Moon, Space-Scape, and Inertia. The presence of evil that negatively shapes the human condition is indirectly projected for making the reader taking interest which, in turn, compels them to become conscious of their plight in the present and terrifying dangers in the future. This consciousness, ultimately, leads to the reformation of society. In this regard, Khan can be taken as a great reformer of the society who carries a sense of sympathy and empathy through his terse and stenographic style. Lastly, this paper will guide local researchers for furthering research in the area of Pakistani Literature in English. In this regard, local voices will be analyzed for local issues and problems.

Michel Butor, born in 1926, one of the leaders of the French New Novel movement, has written only four novels between 1954 and 1960. The most famous of them is La Modification (Second thoughts), published in 1957. The author of the paper analyzes two other Butor’s novels: L’Emploi du temps (Passing time) – 1956, and Degrés (Degrees) – 1960. The theme of absence is crucial in both of them. In the former, the novel, presented as the diary of Jacques Revel, a young Frenchman spending a year in Bleston (a fictitious English city vaguely similar to Manchester), describes the narrator’s struggle to survive in a double – spatial and temporal – labyrinth. The first of them, formed by Bleston’s streets, squares and parks, is symbolized by the City plan. During his one year sojourn in the city, using its plan, Revel learns patiently how to move in its different districts, and in its strange labyrinth – strange because devoid any centre – that at the end stops annoying him. The other, the temporal one, symbolized by the diary itself, the labyrinth of the human memory, discovered by the narrator rather lately, somewhere in the middle of the year passed in Bleston, becomes, by contrast, more and more dense and complex, which is reflected by an increasinly complex narration used to describe the past. However, at the moment Revel is leaving the city, he is still unable to recall and to describe the events of the 29th of February 1952. This gap, this absence, symbolizes his defeat as the narrator, and, in the same time, the human memory’s limits.
 In Degrees temporal and spatial structures are also very important. This time round, however, the problems of the narration itself, become predominant. Considered from this point of view, the novel announces Gerard Genette’s work Narrative Discourse and his theoretical discussion of two narratological categories: narrative voice and narrative mode. Having transgressed his narrative competences, Pierre Vernier, the narrator of the first and the second parts of the novel, who, taking as a starting point, a complete account of one hour at school, tries to describe the whole world and various aspects of the human civilization for the benefit of his nephew, Pierre Eller, must fail and disappear, as the narrator, from the third part, which is narrated by another narrator, less audacious and more credible.

The aim of this work is to present a lattice Boltzmann (LB) model devoted to dealing with non-Newtonian free surface flow. The combination of LB solver with a free-surface model allows dealing with multiphase flows where the density ratio in between the two considered phases is so high that the lighter phase can be neglected. For this particular set of multiphase models, the interface between the two phases is numerically reconstructed and transported via a diffusion equation. Moreover, the application of a Carreau approach for viscosity modelling allows the introduction of effects related to shear stress on fluid flow evolution. Two different non-Newtonian silicon-like materials have been considered here, namely the polystyrene and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Here, the author, after the mandatory model validation with a reference configuration, presents some applications of injection moulding for two different test-cases: the former is the injection in a labyrinth-like gasket, whereas the latter is the injection in a porous media. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Fluid dynamics, soft matter and complex systems: recent results and new methods’.

Robert Browning quite as an exception to his contemporary Victorian poets opted for the psychoanalysis of his characters in his poems. His obsession of delving deeper into the psyche of his characters most often lent his poems with the essence and atmosphere of a story, to be more accurate – a short story. Browning’s readers still today hovers in the labyrinth created in his poetic world. He leaves his readers in such a juncture from where the readers time and again look back into the plot of his poems to find answers of the mysteries invested by the poet. Stylistically being much ahead of the contemporary trend of poetry, Browning’s poems could be labeled as futuristic. His artistic faculty in his poems can only be somewhat explained and understood if analyzed from the perspectives of a short story. Only then the crossroads where Browning leaves his readers in his poems can find a destination and provide a literary solution. One of the most extraordinary poems of Robert Browning is ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. This paper is an analysis of the poem from the perspective of the features of a short story. The plot and theme of the poem is quite obscure especially the ending of the poem leaves the readers with a feeling of puzzle and incompleteness. In order to explain this puzzle and incompleteness this study presents an elaborate discussion of the characteristics of short story. Then it discusses the storytelling ability of Browning in his poems and finally based on the findings presents an analysis of the poem to determine the matching characteristics of a short story in the poem. The study is completely based on a qualitative analysis.