2 research outputs found
The Apocalyptic Vision in Modernist and Romantic Poetry: A Comparative Study between T. S Eliot’s The Hollow Men and Lord Byron’s Darkness
No full textThis paper aims to explore how both romantic and modern eras experience a traumatic change that led many writers to delve into an apocalyptic vision. T.S. Eliot (1925) and Lord Byron (1816) are among the poets who hold the apocalyptic. They reflect on the causes and nature of the Apocalypse using different tropes. On the one hand, Eliot (1925) believes that spiritual hollowness in postwar countries leads to destruction, and that the trauma of the Great War turns the European societies upside down. He employs certain images and symbols to illuminate the deadness of western culture. He further uses a fragmented style to reflect the fragmented atmosphere of post war Europe. On the other hand, Byron (1816) believes that the end of the universe comes as a result of the animalistic life in industrial societies. He implements images and symbols to illustrate his apocalyptic view. The use of melancholic mood emphasizes Byron’s pessimistic vision of humanity. The chaotic form of “Darkness” indicates the chaos brought by the industrial revolution. Accordingly, by using a comparative method of data analysis, this paper demonstrates that Eliot focuses on the external perception of the apocalypse while Byron tackles the apocalyptic psychology of the traumatized people. Besides, Eliot uses depersonalization in his poems; whereas, Byron focuses on the individual subjectivity making his poems unable to reach the universal dimension
Hailsham as an Intimate Space: A Bachelardian Reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
No full textThis paper aims to investigate the role played by Hailsham, the fictional boarding school in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in the mind of its central characters as seen through Gaston Bachelard’s conception of space. The article then aims to explore how the memory of Hailsham works as a coping mechanism for some of the novel’s characters, especially for Kathy. After a brief survey of Bachelard’s spatial criticism, the article then discusses the elements of intimacy in the space of Hailsham and portrays the boarding school as a oneiric house or a childhood home in Bachelard’s terms. By using an analytical method, this study offers an examination of two notions, that of memory and that of imagination, which are built upon the aspect of association and intimacy. Following the development of the plot of Never Let Me Go, the article sheds light on the role played by the so-called “cottages” in the shaping of these character’s relations to themselves, to each other, and to the outside world. This paper opens the door to other critics to read Never Let Me Go from the perspective of other spatial theorists like Mitchel Foucault, Henri Lefevbre, and Edward Soja
