Real Likenesses presents a radical new approach to artistic representation. At its heart is a serious reconsideration of the relationship between medium and content in representational art, which counters current dominant theories that make attention to the former inevitably a distraction from attending to the latter. Through close analysis of paintings, photographs, and novels, Michael Morris proposes a new understanding of the real likenesses we encounter in representational art; what they are, how they are made present to us, and (...) how they are created. The result is an intuitive way of thinking about how these art forms work. (shrink)

In the business world, one of the key challenges is how to survive in ever changing business environments and outperforming the competitors, while keeping the operational cost at minimum and profits at maximum level. In other words, this can be described as the problem of improving operational efficiency and reducing cost. Over the past few years due to global financial challenges, it has become even more important to improve the operational efficiency and reduce costs to survive through these tough conditions. (...) Like other successful implementations of Lean philosophy, especially in automobile, aerospace, steel and healthcare, it can be applied in cable manufacturing to achieve competitive, sustainable and profitable processes. The main focus of Lean philosophy is to create value for the stakeholders and end customers by reducing the non-value added activities or waste, and laying a strong foundation towards sustainable growth, by focusing on continuous process improvement. The overall philosophy provides a focused approach for continuous process improvement and the targeting of a variety of tools and methods to bring improvements. This paper presents case studies for Lean scheduling of manufacturing processes and exemplify how Lean scheduling processes allow organisations to maintain the continuous improvement philosophy. This paper also addresses the key elements of rescheduling processes i.e. how to schedule and when to schedule. Further, the paper will exemplify key benefits of Lean scheduling and how the Cable industry could benefit from the proposed approach. (shrink)

This monograph contributes to the scientific misconduct debate from an oblique perspective, by analysing seven novels devoted to this issue, namely: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (1925), The affair by C.P. Snow (1960), Cantor’s Dilemma by Carl Djerassi (1989), Perlmann’s Silence by Pascal Mercier (1995), Intuition by Allegra Goodman (2006), Solar by Ian McEwan (2010) and Derailment by Diederik Stapel (2012). Scientific misconduct, i.e. fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, but also other questionable research practices, have become a focus of concern for academic (...) communities worldwide, but also for managers, funders and publishers of research. The aforementioned novels offer intriguing windows into integrity challenges emerging in contemporary research practices. They are analysed from a continental philosophical perspective, providing a stage where various voices, positions and modes of discourse are mutually exposed to one another, so that they critically address and question one another. They force us to start from the admission that we do not really know what misconduct is. Subsequently, by providing case histories of misconduct, they address integrity challenges not only in terms of individual deviance but also in terms of systemic crisis, due to current transformations in the ways in which knowledge is produced. Rather than functioning as moral vignettes, the author argues that misconduct novels challenge us to reconsider some of the basic conceptual building blocks of integrity discourse. (shrink)

The subject of this contribution concerns the evolution of Eco’s thought on the problem of the false, from the first writings (in which the sign is just what can be used to lie) to the reflections of the late 1980s on the strength of the false, in a more culturological perspective. The essay will therefore trace an evolution that establishes in Eco’s theory a continuity between reflection on falsehood, reflection on falsification and the theory of fiction, while in a second (...) time it will retrace all of Eco’s narrative going to highlight how all novels have to do with the false, or at least with the non-verifiability of the true. From this point of view, it will be argued that novels are the best place for Eco to affirm the strength of the false, for the nomothetic power of fictions. (shrink)

Advancements in science and technology have not only brought hope to humankind to produce disease-free offspring, but also offer possibilities to genetically enhance the next generation’s traits and capacities. Human genetic enhancement, however, raises complex ethical questions, such as to what extent should it be allowed? It has been a great challenge for humankind to develop robust ethical guidelines for human genetic enhancement that address both public concerns and needs. We believe that research about public concerns is necessary prior to (...) developing such guidelines, yet the issues have not been thoroughly investigated in many countries, including Malaysia. Since the novel often functions as a medium for the public to express their concerns, this paper explores ethical concerns about human genetic enhancement expressed in four Malay science fiction novels namely Klon, Leksikon Ledang, Transgenesis Bisikan Rimba and Transgenik Sifar. Religion has a strong influence on the worldview of the Malays therefore some concerns such as playing God are obviously religious. Association of the negative image of scientists as well as the private research companies with the research on human genetic enhancement reflects the authors’ concerns about the main motivations for conducting such research and the extent to which such research will benefit society. (shrink)

The article discusses how women murderers embedded in the victim-turned-avenger narrative function as vehicles of social criticism in three contemporary Swedish crime novels, Henning Mankell’s The Fifth Woman, Håkan Nesser’s Woman with Birthmark and Fredrik Ekelund’s Nina och sundet [Nina and the Strait]. The murderers’ performances of murder, based on parody and irony, question masculinity and its institutionalized practices. By rendering vulnerable the discourse of hegemonic masculinity, these performances prove their subversiveness and critical potential. At the same time they (...) renew the crime fiction genre and particularly the feminist crime novel in which female agency is identical with the agency of the detective. (shrink)

A new generation of climate fiction called Cli-fi has emerged in the last decade, marking the strong consensus that has emerged over climate change. Science fiction’s concept of cognitive estrangement that combines a rational imperative to understand while focusing on something different from our everyday world provides one linkage between climate fiction and science fiction. Five novels representing this genre that has substantial connections with science fiction are analyzed, focusing on themes common across these books: their framing of the (...) climate change problem, their representations of science and scientists, their portrayals of economic and environmental challenges, and their scenarios for addressing the climate challenge. The analysis is framed through Taylor’s ideas of the social imaginary and the sociology of expectations, which proposes that expectations are promissory, deterministic, and performative. The novels illustrate in varying ways the problems attending the science-society relationship, the economic imperatives that have driven the characters’ choices, and the contradictory impulses that define our connections with nature. Such representations provide a picture of the challenges that need to be understood, but scenarios that offer possibilities for change are not as fully developed. This suggests that these books may represent a given moment in the longer trajectory of climate fiction while offering the initial building blocks to reconsider our ways of living so that new expectations and imaginaries can be debated and reconceived. (shrink)

In "Peripheralities: 'Minor' Literatures, Women's Literature, and Adrienne Orosz de Csicser's Novels" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek discusses events surrounding Adrienne Orosz de Csicser's work. For the contextualization of the events Tötösy de Zepetnek employs his own framework of "comparative cultural studies" here applied to "minor literatures" and women's literature and Shunqing Cao's "variation theory." While Orosz's novels are not considered exceptional, the author achieved notoriety after locked up in a mental institution. In addition to three published novels, (...) in an unpublished novel Orosz narrates her love affair with a Roman Catholic bishop. Knowledge about her novel's contents resulted in the bishop orchestrating Orosz's commitment to a mental hospital. The context in which Orosz's texts are located in is the socio-political situation in Hungarian society prior to and shortly after the First World War. (shrink)

The environment is one of the salient issues that continues to challenge the political and cultural aspects of the society. The question that interrogates this paper is whether environmentalism is a modern phenomenon or has existed from the past? The paper also exposes the importance of the environment in the 19th century and its relation to politics. By focusing on two novels by Captain Frederick Marryat, a conservative and right-wing writer, the paper shows the approach to environmentalism defended by (...) Tory governments in the Victorian period. Addressing also the topic of youth education through narrative fiction, the example of Captain Marratt's The Children of the New Forest (1847) and Masterman Ready (1841) offers insights into the relationship between education, sustainability and collective memory. (shrink)

The first examples of the novel genre in modern Arabic literature emer-ged with the innovation movements initiated in this country after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. In terms of technique and fiction, the Arab novel's reaching the desired standards and the first novel examples in the literary sense were made possible by the contributions of many writers who came to the fore with their different identities from writing novels. One of these writers, better known as a critic, is Ibrāhīm ʽAbd (...) al-Qādir al-Māzinī. Māzinī, who has written works in many fields of literature, is a master writer who has mostly written psychological novels. The aim of this study is to examine the themes that Māzinī, one of the important names of Arabic literature, included in his novels. In our study, Māzinī's novels Ibrāhīm al-Kātib, Ibrāhīm al-Thānī and Thalāthat Rigâl wa’mra’ah were examined and in these novels, mainly love, affection, pressure of tradition, despair, pessimism, disappointment, sadness, fear, delusion, jealousy and stinginess were examined. It has been determined that themes such as While many different themes were seen in the novels of many writers of his time, it is seen that the themes in Māzinī's novels are mostly psychological themes that reflect the inner world of man. In this respect, Māzinī differs from many other Arab novelists. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive sociological study of the nature and dynamics of the modern world, through the use of a series of anthropological concepts, including the trickster, schismogenesis, imitation and liminality. Developing the view that with the theatre playing a central role, the modern world is conditioned as much by cultural processes as it is by economic, technological or scientific ones, the author contends the world is, to a considerable extent, theatrical - a phenomenon experienced as inauthenticity or a (...) loss of direction and meaning. As such the novel is revealed as a means for studying our theatricalised reality, not simply because novels can be understood to be likening the world to theatre, but because they effectively capture and present the reality of a world that has been thoroughly theatricalised - and they do so more effectively than the main instruments usually employed to analyse reality: philosophy and sociology. With analyses of some of the most important novelists and novels of modern culture, including Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Mann, Blixen, Broch and Bulgakov, and focusing on fin-de-siecle Vienna as a crucial threshold chronotope of modernity, Permanent Liminality and Modernity demonstrates that all seek to investigate and unmask the theatricalisation of modern life, with its progressive loss of meaning and our deteriorating capacity to distinguish between what is meaningful and what is artificial. Drawing on the work of Nietzsche, Bakhtin and Girard to examine the ways in which novels explore the reduction of human existence to a state of permanent liminality, in the form of a sacrificial carnival, this book will appeal to scholars of social, anthropological and literary theory. ". (shrink)

This article examines figurations of returning to the community in two of Léonora Miano’s novels. These novels offer an opportunity to broaden the notion of returning to community that, in philosophical debates, tends to be essentialist and abstract. In Les aubes écarlates and La saison de l’ombre, two clans find themselves confronted with the abduction of community members who become child soldiers or slaves. The physical or spiritual return of those abductees to their communities is at the core (...) of the novels, and it is closely linked to questions of memory. Understanding the dynamics of return as a figuration—both in the literary sense and in Norbert Elias’s process sociology sense—helps us look at the concrete interactions that make up a community. This article analyzes the physical, mnemonic, and spiritual dimensions of returning to community and looks at the significance of inventing new rituals and forms of community. (shrink)

This paper’s main thesis is that in virtue of being believable, a believable novel makes an indirect transcendental argument telling us something about the real world of human psychology, action, and society. Three related objections are addressed. First, the Stroud-type objection would be that from believability, the only conclusion that could be licensed concerns how we must think or conceive of the real world. Second, Currie holds that such notions are probably false: the empirical evidence “is all against this idea…that (...) readers’ emotional responses track the real causal relations between things.” Third, responding with a full range of emotions to a novel surely requires that it be believable. Yet since we know the novel is fiction, we do not believe it. So in what does its believability consist? (shrink)

At the time of its publication in 2016, Edward K. Chan's The Racial Horizon of Utopia entered a field that included relatively few full-length studies of race in speculative fiction or science fiction, and even fewer of race in utopian literature. Ground-breaking in that respect and offering a compelling examination of race within utopian novels of the 1970s through 1990s, Chan's book makes a vital contribution to the field of utopian studies.Chan notes a shift in focus in post-1970s utopian (...) fiction away from delineating the workings of an imagined utopian society and toward shaping what he refers to as "the Subject of Utopia". In conjunction with this, he identifies this period as characterized by "the... (shrink)

This article discusses madness and saintliness in Dostoevsky’s novels and investigates how the madman and the saint discern between good and evil. I first explore the metaphysical, spiritual, and moral universe of Dostoevsky’s characters by drawing on William Desmond’s philosophy of the between. Second, I argue that the madman’s misconstrual of reality can be grasped as an idolatrous, divisive, and parodic imitation of the good. Third, I reflect on disembodied discernment. In some cases, due to the weakness of the (...) moral agent, the good cannot be properly embodied in space and time, even if a person exhibits ethically sound discernment. Fourth, I look at examples of holy discernment and examine how, through love, the genuinely good person is able to transform idolatry into a universal and cosmic sacramentalism. (shrink)

This paper insists on similarities between Heidegger’s presentation of Dasein’s authentic understanding of time in Being and Time (§§ 79-80) and Thomas Mann’s attempts to “narrate time itself” in The Magic Mountain. It shows that Thomas Mann’s temporal experiments can contribute to a phenomenology of temporality, not merely by “illustrating” philosophical theses, but also by achieving something that goes beyond any phenomenological consideration on time: the enactment of fundamental temporal experiences.

Phenomenological literary criticism has long taken the one-on-one exchange with an other as the model for thinking about the reader-to-text relationship. However, new novels portraying genocides and civil wars are more likely to position readers as witnesses. Drawing on Jean-Luc Marion’s description of the subject as witness as well as works by Kelly Oliver and Jacques Derrida, this article offers a phenomenological description of the reader as witness. As witness, the reader is situated both by the literary text and (...) also by his or her particular embodied and intersubjective relations to the world. Constituted and no longer constituting, the reader/subject as witness finds herself a site in which other’s decisions have already been made, and her responsibility arises from the decisions she makes possible for others in the future. (shrink)

In "Literary Variation of Indian Buddhist Stories in Chinese 志怪 Novels," Wei Guo discusses Buddhist Sutra scriptures which have been a reservoir of inspiration for Zhiguai novels since their first introduction in Chinese literature. Buddhist texts were less relevant for the "documentary" tradition of Chinese literature owing to their rough structure, vague context, and lack of a sense of history and reality, since they were originally intended as texts of didacticism. Hence, in order to integrate these exotic literary (...) materials with local aesthetic concepts, Chinese writers explored creative adaptations including the addition of adding detail, linguistic embellishments, and the endowment of each story with specific narrative scenes in terms of character, place, and time. Guo argues that Indian Buddhist stories have been remolded in Zhiguai novels and transformed from imaginary religious literature into figurative and documentary literature whereby the convergence of the source texts with the target texts shows the processes of formation of world literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Nature in Nineteenth-Century British Novels:Doing the MathJoseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. KrugerIThree broad ambitions animate this study. Building on research in evolutionary social science, we aimed (1) to construct a model of human nature—of motives, emotions, features of personality, and preferences in marital partners; (2) use that model to analyze some specific body of literary texts and the responses of readers to (...) those texts, and (3) produce data—information that could be quantified and could serve to test specific hypotheses about those texts.Evolutionary social science is still in the process of constructing a full and adequate model of human nature. Evolutionary social scientists know much already about how human reproductive behavior and human sociality fit into the larger pattern of human evolution. They still have much to learn, though, about the ways literature and the other arts enter into human nature. Our model of human nature draws on our knowledge of imaginative culture, integrates that knowledge with evolutionary theories of culture, and produces data that enable us to draw conclusions on an issue of broad significance for both literary study and evolutionary social science: the adaptive function of literature and the other arts.1In order to make advances in knowledge, it is necessary to choose some particular subject. Genetics is a basic science that applies to all organisms, but geneticists first got an empirical fix on their subject by focusing minutely, with Mendel, on peas, and, with Morgan, on fruit flies. In place of peas and flies, we have taken as our subject British novels of [End Page 50] the longer nineteenth century (Austen to Forster). As a literary topic, the subject is fairly broad, but our theoretical and methodological aims ultimately extend well beyond the specialist fields of British novels, the nineteenth century, British literature, narrative fiction, or even literary scholarship generally. This study is designed to engage the attention of literary scholars in all fields and also to engage the attention of social scientists. If it achieves its aims, this study would help persuade literary scholars that empirical methods offer rich opportunities for the advancement of knowledge about literature, and it would help persuade social scientists that the quantitative study of literature can shed important light on fundamental questions of human psychology and human social interaction. Our own research team combines these two prospective audiences. Two of us (Carroll and Gottschall) have been trained primarily as literary scholars, and two of us (Johnson and Kruger) primarily as social scientists.The focal point for this study is "agonistic" structure: the organization of characters into protagonists, antagonists, and minor characters. The central question in the study is this: does agonistic structure reflect evolved dispositions for forming cooperative social groups? Suppressing or muting competition within a social group enhances group solidarity and organizes the group psychologically for cooperative endeavor. Our chief hypothesis was that protagonists and good minor characters would form communities of cooperative endeavor and that antagonists would exemplify dominance behavior. If this hypothesis proved correct, the ethos reflected in the agonistic structure of the novels would replicate the egalitarian ethos of hunter-gatherers, who stigmatize and suppress status-seeking in potentially dominant individuals. If suppressing dominance in hunter-gatherers fulfills an adaptive social function, and if agonistic structure in the novels engages the same social dispositions that animate hunter-gatherers, our study would lend support to the hypothesis that literature fulfills an adaptive social function.2One of our chief working hypotheses is that when readers respond to characters in novels, they respond in much the same way, emotionally, as they respond to people in everyday life. They like or dislike them, admire them or despise them, fear them, feel sorry for them, or are amused by them. In writing fabricated accounts of human behavior, novelists select and organize their material for the purpose of generating such responses, and readers willingly cooperate with this purpose. They participate vicariously in the experiences depicted and form personal opinions about the qualities of the characters. Authors and readers [End Page 51] thus collaborate in producing a simulated experience of emotionally responsive evaluative judgment. If agonistic structure is a... (shrink)

Classical aesthetics cherishes the image of a self‐contained author who expresses himself by creating a work of art. This definition is markedly challenged by authors who create their work in co‐operation with a congenial partner. Twin authors are a rare phenomenon but they show that it is possible to split up a literary project and to write novels in tandem. In 1997 I approached some joint authors, questioning them on their common experience, on the distribution of their work load (...) and the harmonisation of the style and content of their novels, as well as the individual steps of production. The material I accumulated was complemented by investigations on late writers such as the brothers Goncourt and the double author Ellery Queen.The project made it evident that twin authors display a number of common features which are characteristic of their trade. All authors asked reported that writing in tandem required a pervasive internal harmony and mutual calculability. A close personal relationship appears to be vital, in the sense that the partners complement each other in their skills and views. When they assemble the material for their plots, most twin authors draw on journalistic research rather than on inspiration and empathy. Their novels normally appeal to a down‐to‐earth taste and avoid digressions into poetry or copious descriptions of feelings and moods. (shrink)

Little scholarly attention has been paid to the torture scenes in Ian Fleming’s canon of Bond novels and short stories (1953–1966), despite the fact that they represent some of the most potent sites of the negotiations of masculinity, nationhood, violence and the body for which Fleming’s texts are critically renowned. This article is an intersectional feminist reading of Fleming’s canon, which stresses the interpenetrations of homophobia, anticommunism and misogyny that are present in Fleming’s representation of torture. Drawing on close (...) readings of Fleming’s novels and theoretical discussions of heteronormativity, homophobia and national identity, this article argues that Fleming’s representations of torture are sites of literary meaning in which the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity are policed and reinforced. This policing is achieved, this article argues, through the associations of the perpetration of torture with homosexuality and Communism, and the survival of torture with post-imperial British hegemonic masculinity. Fleming’s torture scenes frequently represent set pieces in which Bond must reject or endure the unsolicited intimacy of other men; he must resist their seductions and persuasions and remain ideologically undefiled. Bond’s survival of torture is a metonymy for Britain’s survival of post-Second World War social and political upheaval. Further, the horror of torture, for Fleming, is the horror of a hierarchy of hegemonic masculinity in disarray: Bond’s survival represents the regrounding of normative heterosexual masculinity through the rejection of homosexuality and Communism. (shrink)

The events of the Russian Revolution, which took place one hundred years ago in October 1917, are reflected in Ayn Rand's first novel We the Living. This article shows Rand's relationship to the Russian Diaspora—though her name is not usually associated with Russian émigré authors. This article compares Rand's work with the novels of another Russian émigré writer—Mark Aldanov (Escape, Suicide)—which shows a common comprehension of the October Revolution in the works of both writers, with similar art images, interpretations (...) of the reasons for the revolution, and an understanding of its harmful consequences for Russia. (shrink)

BackgroundUnderstanding representations of disease in various art genres provides insights into how patients and health care providers view the diseases. It can also be used to enhance patient care and stimulate patient self-management.MethodsThis paper reviews how cardiovascular diseases are represented in novels, films, and paintings: myocardial infarction, aneurysm, hypertension, stroke, heart transplantation, Marfan’s disease, congestive heart failure. Various search systems and definitions were used to help identify sources of representations of different cardiovascular diseases. The representations of the different diseases (...) were considered separately. The Common Sense Model was used a theoretical model to outline illness perceptions and self-management in the various identified novels, films, and paintings.ResultsMyocardial infarction followed by stroke were the most frequently detailed diseases in all three art genres. This reflects their higher prevalence. Representations ranged from biomedical details through to social and psychological consequences of the diseases.ConclusionsArtistic representations of cardiovascular diseases reflect cognitions, emotions, and images of prevalent disease. These representations shape views and behaviour of ill and healthy persons regarding heart diseases. As these representations are amenable to change, they deserve further research, which may be instrumental in improving the quality of life of persons struck by cardiovascular diseases. Changing illness perceptions appears to be a method to improve self-management and thereby quality of life in patients with various cardiovascular diseases. (shrink)

Literary narratology has rightly devoted much attention to analysing the source(s) of verbal information about the story world, usually discussed under the label “narration”, and to any agent(s) that present(s) non-verbalized perspectives on it, usually discussed under the label “focalization”. Assessing the identity of narrators and focalizers is crucial for understanding what is going on in the story world. Which narrative agent is in charge? Is the narration and/or focalization layered? If the latter, is there any “colouring” by the higher-level (...) narrative agent of anything said, thought, or experienced by the lower-level agent? Is the information provided trustworthy? Nuanced? Prejudiced? Narration and focalization have supra-medial as well as medium-specific dimensions. Over the past years, the issue of how these concepts function in the medium of comics, which combines visuals and language, has begun to be systematically addressed. This paper aims to show how the visual mode can, on its own or combined with the written-language mode, signal the sources of narration, focalization, and joint narration-and-focalization, as well as distinguish between different levels at which these take place. (shrink)

Playing with the reader is one of the main characteristics of V. Nabokov’s creativity. His books is a ‘literary crossword puzzle‘, charade, and mystification that demand parity, intellectually equal, and with the similar art preferences reader. Reader equally participates with author in an esthetic process. The reader follows the writer-‘wizard‘ in the text, and first, enters game process to take esthetic ‘pleasure from the text‘; second, he is getting involved in the ‘composite games by rules‘. The main means of the (...) organization of literary game in Russian-language novels of V. Nabokov is a play with ‘someone else’s word‘. V. Nabokov addressed to someone else’s texts to mock social writers or to degrade a certain hero in parodic and ironic ways. The writer in ‘someone else’s word‘ did not mock predecessors similar to his own spirit, but discredited a modern person who disappeared from the world of the real culture. One of the important composition elements of game in V. Nabokov’s novels is symbolics of key. The theme of keys obviously or indirectly sounds both in the debut Nabokov’s novel ‘Mashenka‘, and in later books: ‘Invitation to execution‘, ‘Luzhin’s Protection‘, ‘Feat‘, and ‘Gift‘. A number of motives is connected with the theme of keys and the closed doors: wandering, homelessness, downtime, initiation, and crossing. The process of searching for those keys is an attempt to find answers to ontological questions, and this is essential for V. Nabokov. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo analiza la construcción de la infancia en las novelas El mercurio (1968), El río de la luna (1981) y Esta pared de hielo (2005), de José María Guelbenzu, a la luz de los conceptos mítico-simbólicos de Bachelard y Durand para demostrar que funciona como un absoluto primigenio al que se busca volver constantemente, pues resguarda a los personajes hasta el inminente choque con la realidad adulta. Esto para concluir que desde la adultez los personajes observan la infancia (...) con el anhelo de volver allí, lo que tiene una función paliativa mediante la memoria y la palabra, por ello, la narrativa de Guelbenzu plantea regresar al ámbito infantil desde las imágenes literarias y así conservar ese mundo de fantasía. Abstract This article analyzes the construction of childhood in the novels El mercurio (1968), El río de la luna (1981) and Esta pared de hielo (2005), by José María Guelbenzu, in the light of the mythical-symbolic concepts of Bachelard and Durand to demonstrate that it functions as a primitive absolute to which it is sought to return constantly, since it protects the characters until the imminent clash with adult reality. This to conclude that in their adulthood the characters observe childhood with the desire to return there, this has a palliative function through memory and word, therefore, Guelbenzu’s narrative proposes the return to the child environment trough literary images to preserve that world of fantasy. (shrink)

With an eye on how post-colonial novels by authors Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o address aesthetic and environmental problems that preceded the Modern period, the intent of this essay is to emphasize how their fiction connects readers with a pre-industrial, premodern, and, strangely enough, radically new ways of thinking about books and the living world beyond them. To this end, the essay looks at this non-western literature through the lens of ecologist Aldo Leopold’s land-based ideas regarding epistemology, ethics, (...) and ecology. (shrink)

The need to be surrounded by stories, through a continuous production of and listening to narrations, is a distinctive feature of humankind. Even biology, although part of the Natural Sciences, is a discipline that “tells stories”, because it has to do with time, with the relationships between organisms and with the depths and transformations of life. Starting from the assumptions of a reading pedagogy that promotes the pleasure of reading among children, without the aim to educate and conform, the purpose (...) of this contribution is to bring out a specific didactic potential scattered throughout children’s novels, to propose interdisciplinary learning-teaching paths in biology at school by including children’s literature in science classes. (shrink)

That C. P. Snow had first-hand experience both in science and writing was taken for granted in the years of controversy over ‘the two cultures’, but neither the quality of his experience nor the circumstances of his eventual adoption of a literary career was given close enough consideration. Snow's own statements on these two points are often misleading. Yet the autobiographical nature of his fiction throws significant light on the subject. An examination of the autobiographical elements in Snow's novels (...) in the light of his conception of the novel raises the question of whether his shift from science to literature was exactly the result of a genuine choice and also reveals that the two cultures dichotomy is embedded in his personal experience. (shrink)

Drawing on aspects of Foucauldian feminist theory Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent offers original and detailed readings of six critically under-valued novels: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, A Laodicean, Two on a Tower and The Well-Beloved, demonstrating Hardy's peculiarly modern appreciation of how individuals negotiate the forces which shape their sense of self. Tracing his interest in the evolutionary debate and the woman question this book reveals a new politically engaged rather than a (...) grimly pessimistic Hardy. (shrink)