81 research outputs found
Affective everyday in narratives of Muslim women migrating to the UK 1906 – 2012
No full textThis thesis uses affect theory and studies of emotion to analyse literary
representations of the everyday in fictional and non-fictional writing about Muslim
migrant women in the UK from 1906 to 2012. Postcolonial literary studies tend to
value exceptional events over mundane life, which causes possible issues of
exoticism and a danger of homogenising distinct experiences. This thesis offers a
theorisation of migration that foregrounds everyday experience through an
engagement with theories of objects, bodies and space, as well as emotional
experiences that are specific to migrant subjectivity. It analyses two groups of texts:
early twentieth century travel writing by Atiya Fyzee, Shahbano Begum Maimoona
Sultan and Zeyneb Hanoum, and contemporary literary texts by Yeshim Ternar,
Farhana Sheikh, Monica Ali, Leila Aboulela, Elif Shafak and Fadia Faqir. The thesis
is structured thematically into three sections, each section containing two chapters,
one about travel writing and another about contemporary texts. In the first section, in
order to examine how the texts negotiate foreignness in daily life, I consider
hospitality theory, which describes how social power relations are based on roles of
host and guest. In the second section, I argue that melancholia is an emotional
experience endemic to migrancy. The texts demonstrate how this emotion is
manifest communally as well as individually, which also shows the political potential
of emotion. In the third section, I investigate how emotional processes of migration
are described spatially in the texts. The findings of this research show that emotional
knowledge is a major concern for migrant writers as a way of engaging with and
critiquing the social and political climates of each text. This is produced through
narrations about feeling in general and specific emotions, such as irritation or
anxiety. Emotional experience is illustrated in conjunction with identities that are
both fluid and intersectional, where gender and class converge with ethnicity and
religion. The texts also show specifically affective styles of writing that concentrate
on focalising women’s intimate experiences through, for example, diary entries,
bildungsroman or psychological realism. While the differing contexts reflect the
particularities of each experience, there are sufficient similarities of narrative content
and style to suggest that affective experience is a major concern for this body of
literature. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the productive uses of affect theory as a
critical stance for analysing postcolonial literature
Contemporary Sibyl. Sibylline themes in the twentieth century literature
No full textThe paper deals with some instances of exploiting the theme of the Sibyl in twentieth century literature, e.g. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, J. Joyce’s Ulysses, M. Butor’s The Modifcation, P. Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl, W. Golding’s The Double Tongue
The “Jewish Sibyl” in Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus
No full textThe article examines passage 71. 4 of the Protrepticus by Clement of Alexandria, in which the pagan Sibyl is called a “Jewish prophetess”. The passage appears unique, because no other known Christian text before Clement addresses the Sibyl as a Jewish prophetess. Moreover, the “Jewish Sibyl” of the Protrepticus contradicts the opinion prevailing among Christian apologists that the Sibyl was a divinely inspired, but still pagan prophetess, the view Clement himself shares in some passages of the Stromateis. There was an attempt to explain away this extraordinary idea by supposing that Clement has in view the pagan Sibyl who makes prophecies about Jews (R. Buitenwerf). Other scholars rightly rejected this attempt. It was also proposed, albeit without detailed argumentation, that Clement was influenced by Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles, where the Sibyl speaks of herself as a relative of Noah who settled in Babylon after the flood, but later migrated from Babylon to Greece and became known there as the Sibyl from Erythrae in Asia Minor (N. Zeegers-Vander Vorst). By examining various works by Clement as well as texts by ancient and Christian authors, the author of the present paper attempts to endorse this latter proposal. Relying on the statements of Lactantius about the Sibyl from Babylon, which are connected with his quotations of fragments from the Sibylline Oracles, attributed by him to the third book, one can infer that fragment 1 of the Oracles belonged to the third book in the time of Clement. Therefore, it can be stated with sufficient certainty that Clement’s designation of the Sibyl as a Jewish prophetess in Protr. 71. 4, where he quotes just vv. 10–13 of this fragment, goes back to the Sibyl’s characterization of herself as a relative of Noah in Book 3 of the Oracles. This also makes it probable that Clement was familiar with this book of the Oracles directly, without any mediators.В статье рассматривается пассаж 71, 4 из Протрептика Климента Александрийского, в котором языческая Сивилла названа “еврейской пророчицей”. Уникальность этого фрагмента состоит в том, что прямых высказываний христианских авторов о Сивилле как о еврейской пророчице до Климента нам не известно. Более того, еврейская Сивилла Протрептика противоречит господствующему среди апологетов представлению о Сивилле как боговдохновенной, но все же языческой пророчице. Высказывалось предположение, что Климент имеет в виду не еврейское происхождение Сивиллы, но то, что она пророчествует о евреях, однако оно было справедливо отвергнуто. Предполагалось также, хотя и без развернутой аргументации, что на Климента оказала влияние III книга собрания Оракулов Сивилл, в которой Сивилла говорит о себе как о родственнице Ноя, поселившейся после потопа в Вавилоне, но затем переселившейся в Грецию, где она пророчествовала как Сивилла из Эритр в Малой Азии (Н. Зегерс-Фандер Форст). Автор статьи стремится обосновать это второе предположение, исследуя различные произведения Климента, а также тексты античных и христианских авторов. Опираясь на высказывания Лактанция о Сивилле из Вавилона, связанные с цитируемыми им фрагментами Оракулов, которые он относит к 3-й книге, можно полагать, что фрагмент 1 принадлежал 3-й книге во времена Климента. Это позволяет с достаточной уверенностью утверждать, что именование Сивиллы “еврейской пророчицей” в Protr. 71, 4, где Климент цитирует как раз ст. 10–13 этого фрагмента, восходит к характеристике Сивиллой себя в 3-й книге Оракулов как родственницы Ноя, пришедшей из Вавилона. Это позволяет в свою очередь считать, что Климент был прямо знаком с 3-й книгой, а не пользовался ею через посредников
Review of Sophie and the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance
No full textGeorge Eliot\u27s afterlife in adaptations of and sequels to her works is thin compared to those of such contemporaries as Dickens and the Brontes, and similarly the number of novels in which she appears as a character is meagre. True, as early as 1881 the characterization of Theresa in The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford was inspired by the friendship of its author, William Hale White, with Marian Evans in the 1850s, when both lived in publisher John Chapman\u27s house at 142 Strand. Theresa is an idealized character, but recall White\u27s corrective to George Eliot\u27s Life ... by her husband 1. W Cross, in which he laments the absence of salt and spice in the Marian Evans that Cross is carefully recreating. Patricia Duncker, offering George Eliot as the Sibyl in Sophie and the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance, the latest novel to depict her, goes rather for salt and vinegar.
Between White and Duncker there has been a smattering of fictional representations of George Eliot. Some, like J. E. Buckrose\u27s Silhouette of Mary Ann (1931) and Elfrida Vipont\u27s Towards a High Attic: The Early Life of George Eliot (1970), concentrate on the young Marian Evans, up to the point at which she enters into the relationship with Lewes and becomes George Eliot and a published author. Others focus on the relationship with John Cross, which is more susceptible to psychologizing and less to anxious moralizing than that with Lewes. In lohnnie Cross (1983), Terence de Vere White presents an infantilized Cross, overwhelmed by his bride\u27s sexual demands. In one of the episodes of The Puttermesser Papers (1997), Cynthia Ozick allows her heroine Ruth Puttermesser a romance with a painter, a copyist, in which she channels George Eliot and he Cross: the copyist insists that the key emotional dynamic was Cross\u27s infatuation with Lewes, triangulated through George Eliot. Deborah Weisgall in The World Before Her (2008) makes Cross a staid but devoted businessman, and George Eliot more wily and less dependent than in most accounts, fictional or otherwise. Most recently, Robert Muscutt in Heathen and Outcast: Scenes in the Life of George Eliot (2011) employs the novelist\u27s disciple Edith Simcox as presiding narrator, calling on other voices to show a feisty Mary Ann, making central her relationship with brother Isaac (here relentlessly rigid, domineering, vindictive and materialistic)
A study of the course offerings in home economics as presented in the catalogues published by twenty American universities, 1953
No full textBiographical Fiction’s Challenge to Realism: Patricia Duncker’s Sophie and the Sibyl and Alicia Giménez Bartlett’s Una habitación ajena
No full textStarting from a brief discussion of biographical fiction and the challenges it poses to realism, this case study compares Patricia Duncker’s Sophie and the Sibyl (2015), centered on George Eliot alongside various real and fictional characters (some of whom drawn from Eliot’s own fiction), and Alicia Giménez Bartlett’s Una habitación ajena (1997), focused on the (fictional) diary of Virginia Woolf’s cook Nellie Boxall and on the relationships between the writer and her domestic servants. This study considers the texts’ complex narrative structures, the reliability or otherwise of their narrators and the hypocrisy or otherwise of the historical protagonists, and, crucially, the critique of their authors’ discussions of realism in their respective ‘manifestos’ (in particular Chapter 17 of Eliot’s Adam Bede and Woolf’s “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”). In their investigation of the gaps between theory and practice, between present and past, between authorial, narrative and historical subjectivity, and between conceptions of how reality can and should be represented, the novels seek not so much to give us historically believable contexts and individuals, as, rather, to explore the distances and continuities between the intellectual, literary and ethical premises that shape our constantly transforming understanding of these concepts
The African-American poet’s dilemma: Langston Hughes\u27 and Countee Cullen\u27s poetic response to a prejudiced world
No full textThe black poet’s identity is directly affected when living in a society of mixed messages caused by segregation laws, where socially he is deemed inferior, and consequently this is reflected in his poetry, as is the pressure of integrating with established white poetics forms. In an attempt to find a place in which to belong, he utilises his African heritage and a feeling of collectiveness within his community, but this is not always successful. More hope lies in his ability to assimilate into the American poetic structure, adding his own input along with the white literary canon
Melancholic Migrations and Affective Objects in Fadia Faqir’s My Name is Salma
No full textMelancholia has been read as an individual pathological response to loss, a national cultural reaction to the end of the British Empire, and as a collective political emotion felt by socially marginalised groups. Fadia Faqir’s 'My Name is Salma' (2007) conceives of melancholia as exceeding both individual and national boundaries. The novel illustrates how processes of migrant melancholia are caught up with the gendered, religious and racial relationship of bodies, space and objects. Attempts to alleviate melancholia through investing in objects in line with normal cycles of mourning remain inconclusive due to the way consumerist spaces are structured to normalise whiteness. The novel’s engagement with melancholia as political through communal emotions that make visible injustice rejects Freudian notions of melancholia as negatively pathological. In particular, emotion has a didactic function by reminding the reader of structural inequalities and how the history of European imperialism fuels present-day xenophobia. Ultimately, by transforming prior understandings of melancholia, the novel shows how migrants are in a unique position to refute the national project that upholds designations of rights, citizenship and belonging
Maltesische legenden von der Sibylla
No full textThis text is a German writing of two folk Maltese stories concerning Sibyl, a female prophet with mystical powers that appears in various cultures and traditions. In these Maltese legends, Sibyl (Maltese "Issettisibella" or "Settusibilla") was said to have lived on Earth for 4000 years, from after the sin of Adam and Eve, until the time of the Virgin Mary. She was also believed to be the sister of Solomon, with whom she shared wisdom. She was a wise and beautiful woman, favoured by God, but despite her wisdom and prophetic abilities, she could not prophesise the birth of Virgin Mary, assuming that she herself would bear the Son of God. When Mary was chosen as the Mother of God, Issettisibella became enraged, swore to reside forever in Hell, and was swallowed by a chasm that led there, where she forever resides undying.peer-reviewe
A study of the Sybil Chant and its dramatic performance in the Spanish Church (ninth to sixteenth centuries)
No full textThis study encompasses the development of the Sibyl Chant in
Spain from its early beginnings within the liturgy as a musical piece,
through its growth into a dramatic ceremony associated with the Play of
the Prophets, its move from Latin into the vernacular and details of its
performance, to its formal abolition in the sixteenth century.
The Latin Sibylline poem, Judicii siqnum, which first appears in
St. Augustine's City of God and the sermon Contra Judaeos, Paganos; et
Arianos, prophesies the events on Judgement Day. Its entry into the
liturgy in Spain is examined in the first chapter which, drawing on
hitherto undiscovered examples of the chant from the ninth century to the
fifteenth, concludes that, although the text of the chant my have been
known within the Hispanic rite, its music is a product of French
ecclesiastical influence. With its establishment within the liturgy and
subsequent dissemination across the Peninsula by the house of Cluny, it
was sung in almost every cathedral city until the sixteenth century as
part of the sixth or ninth lesson of Christmas Matins. The second chapter
traces its development into a dramatic ceremony in the fifteenth century.
A study of known texts from Catalonia, and hitherto unknown examples of
the sermon with rubrics indicating dramatic activity from an early date
in Castile, concludes that the Sibyl ceremony was a product of the Ordo
Prophetarum. From the thirteenth century, the Latin of the chant was
often superceded by the vernacular. A comparison, in the third chapter,
of Catalan and Castilian versions reveals that they owe little to the
Judicii siqnum, and Provengal examples which have been considered their
Source, and a Catalan troubadour influence is argued. The final chapter
explores the practice of the Sibyl ceremony, with details of its
performance: its liturgical position, costume, staging, attendant
practices and final prohibition
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