5,506 research outputs found

    Whose story is it anyway? The ethics of narration and the narration of ethics in Summertime and Die Sneeuslaper

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    Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation analyses and compares the narrative strategies in J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime and Marlene van Niekerk’s Die sneeuslaper and considers the implications of these strategies for the authors’ exploration of the ethics of writing. Much has been written about the literary oeuvres of both Coetzee and Van Niekerk, including studies of the translations of Van Niekerk’s Afrikaans novels into English. There are few “interlingual” comparative studies of contemporary works in Afrikaans and English, however, and certainly none to my knowledge which compares the work of Coetzee and Van Niekerk. My contribution to the conversation about Coetzee’s and Van Niekerk’s work, but also to an increasingly multilingual and interconnected South African literary criticism, will be a comparison of one recent work by each of these two authors, written in English and Afrikaans respectively. I draw on the theories of Bakhtin, Barthes and Levinas to consider the ethical dimension of texts in which “double-voicedness”, a questioning not only of existence, but of the self is fore grounded in the content and narrative structure; where there is a shift in focus from the author to the reader (“the birth of the reader”) and “utterances” are made with the response of “the other” in mind

    "The day of the great writer is gone for ever": Author surrogacy in Martin Amis’s Money and J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime.

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    This study focuses on the use of author surrogacy in the novels Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis and Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life by J.M. Coetzee. It addresses the connection between their use of author surrogacy and their comments on what scholars classify as the postmodern cultural condition. Both authors have written themselves into their novels with a different purpose but both used strikingly similar themes to incorporate this purpose, although the stress on these themes varies. Authorial power, the distinction between the real and the imagined, and the fading line between high- and lowbrow culture are examples of the topics discussed in this study with regards to author surrogacy and the postmodern cultural condition. This study concludes that, through their use of author surrogacy, J.M. Coetzee mainly aims to critique, while Martin Amis satirises postmodern culture. Keywords: Amis, author surrogacy, authorial power, Coetzee, fact-fiction distinction, high- and lowbrow culture, postmodern cultural condition

    A Companion to the Works of J.M. Coetzee

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    Studies on the author J.M. Coetze

    O doświadczeniu obcości języka w twórczości J.M. Coetzeego. Słowo wstępne

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    The present foreword refers to the address delivered by J.M. Coetzee on the occasion of conferring upon him by the University of Silesia the doctor honoris causa degree. Particular attention is paid to his thoughts on the role of English in the world of today. The author of the foreword shows that reflection on language in general and its role in moulding one’s identity in present in the Nobel laureate’s works, including his most recent novels. Further into the foreword, the author briefly discusses text reprinted in Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne: the already mentioned address by J.M. Coetzee, the conversation with the Author, and an article devoted to his works written by Robert Kusek.The present foreword refers to the address delivered by J.M. Coetzee on the occasion of conferring upon him by the University of Silesia the doctor honoris causa degree. Particular attention is paid to his thoughts on the role of English in the world of today. The author of the foreword shows that reflection on language in general and its role in moulding one’s identity in present in the Nobel laureate’s works, including his most recent novels. Further into the foreword, the author briefly discusses text reprinted in Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne: the already mentioned address by J.M. Coetzee, the conversation with the Author, and an article devoted to his works written by Robert Kusek

    O doświadczeniu obcości języka w twórczości J.M. Coetzeego : słowo wstępne

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    The present foreword refers to the address delivered by J.M. Coetzee on the occasion of conferring upon him by the University of Silesia the doctor honoris causa degree. Particular attention is paid to his thoughts on the role of English in the world of today. The author of the foreword shows that reflection on language in general and its role in moulding one’s identity in present in the Nobel laureate’s works, including his most recent novels. Further into the foreword, the author briefly discusses text reprinted in Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne: the already mentioned address by J.M. Coetzee, the conversation with the Author, and an article devoted to his works written by Robert Kusek

    Relationship between activity in human primary motor cortex during action observation and the mirror neuron system

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    The attenuation of the beta cortical oscillations during action observation has been interpreted as evidence of a mirror neuron system (MNS) in humans. Here we investigated the modulation of beta cortical oscillations with the viewpoint of an observed action. We asked subjects to observe videos of an actor making a variety of arm movements. We show that when subjects were observing arm movements there was a significant modulation of beta oscillations overlying left and right sensorimotor cortices. This pattern of attenuation was driven by the side of the screen on which the observed movement occurred and not by the hand that was observed moving. These results are discussed in terms of the firing patterns of mirror neurons in F5 which have been reported to have similar properties

    Linking differences in action perception with differences in action execution

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    Successful human social interactions depend upon the transmission of verbal and non-verbal signals from one individual to another. Non-verbal social communication is realized through our ability to read and understand information present in other people's actions. It has been proposed that employing the same motor programs, we use to execute an action when observing the same action underlies this action understanding. The main prediction of this framework is that action perception should be strongly correlated with parameters of action execution. Here, we demonstrate that subjects' sensitivity to observed movement speeds is dependent upon how quickly they themselves executed the observed action. This result is consistent with the motor theory of social cognition and suggests that failures in non-verbal social interactions between individuals may in part result from differences in how those individuals move

    Skin-Friction Measurements on Mathematically Generated Roughness in a Turbulent Channel Flow

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    Engineering systems are affected by surface roughness, however, predicting frictional drag has proven to be challenging. The present work takes a systematic approach by generating and manufacturing surfaces roughness where surface statistics, such as rms, skewness and power-spectral density can be controlled. The frictional drag on these surfaces is measured in a turbulent channel flow facility
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