{"title":"Trauma and the Irish Experience: The Example of M. J. Hyland’s Carry Me Down","authors":"D. Drozdovskyi","doi":"10.54664/oajq2634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/oajq2634","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyses the philosophical features of M. J. Hyland’s novel Carry Me Down (2006), spotlighting this text in the epistemological paradigm of post-postmodernism. The analysis considers some of the distinctive features of the Irish novel in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, such as anticolonial explications and the smashed type of identity of the characters. Carry Me Down reveals the post-postmodern tendency of searching for the truth and explaining the nature of human beings as a combination of the humanitarian and the biophysical. The novel’s protagonist has a special superpower of detecting lies in the discourses produced by other characters. His inability to accept lies physically may be linked to the post-postmodern tendency of rejecting the hybrid combination of truth and untruth, typical of some kinds of postmodernist writing. The analysis also explores the representation of trauma in Hyland’s novel.","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129340580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pathos and Comfort of the City Against the “Torrents of Progress”: Ignatius Reilly’s New Orleans in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces","authors":"P. Kurtin","doi":"10.54664/nafs5415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/nafs5415","url":null,"abstract":"Viewed from the perspective of the trickster-type main character Ignatius Reilly and his engagement with his surroundings and other characters as citizens in a series of picaresque adventures, the city of New Orleans in the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) becomes a space of pathos and comfort, indicative of Ignatius’s paralysis and inability to leave it, caused by his innate paranoia of the doctrine of progress in the modern age. At a point in history when the postcolonial and postindustrial city is trying to rebrand itself as a tourist haven, the chronotope of New Orleans functions as a place of suspended modernity, offering comfort in the pathos of its entropy, stagnation and nostalgia against the raging torrents of modernity that reign outside its city limits in the rest of the country.","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129065643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Varia: The Enduring Power of the Classical World View","authors":"David Jenkins","doi":"10.54664/oxnn5529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/oxnn5529","url":null,"abstract":"For the poet, prophet, and politician, as for the lover, the king, and the anthropologist, the human is the measure of all things. Philosophers and psychologists define us as a perceiving consciousness, an object determined by the environment, a subject not only capable of heroic individualism but also of esoteric understanding. For some, our measure is beyond things and our true worth lies not only in the here and now but rather in our freedom to transcend the bounds of self and prevail beyond the limits of temporality. For the artist, whose creative consciousness aims to redeem the human image from the constraints of brute anonymity, the questions about our status must be asked if not finally answered. The article considers the role that the classical world view plays in the process of artistic redemption. It looks at the Judeo-Christian and Classical legacies and their interpretations. Nineteenth-century Russian literature and religious philosophy are then analysed. The article winds up with a reading of select poems by Osip Mandelstam as special attention is paid to the ethical stance of the poet when confronted with the dictates of totalitarian power.","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127129202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Interview with Éilís Ní Dhuibhne","authors":"Ludmilla Kostova","doi":"10.54664/thae7892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/thae7892","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127664998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Irishman in America: Irishness and Belonging in Roddy Doyle’s Oh, Play That Thing","authors":"G. Giambona","doi":"10.54664/pspp3412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/pspp3412","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this article is to analyse Roddy Doyle’s representations of Irishness and Ireland in Oh, Play That Thing (2004). The novel is the second instalment in Doyle’s The Last Roundup Trilogy, a historical fiction describing the making of the Irish nation through the adventures and misadventures of Henry Smart, its protagonist. In the novel, constructions of Irishness are projected onto the outside world through Henry’s picaresque travels in the United States. The article examines how Irishness is constructed in the book and how it becomes intertwined with identity construction in other minority groups.","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116712393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Bulgarian Literature as World Literature, edited by Mihaela P. Harper and Dimitar Kambourov (Review Essay)","authors":"Petya Tsoneva","doi":"10.54664/waxv6353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/waxv6353","url":null,"abstract":"The essay reviews a recent collection of seminal critical readings of Bulgarian literature as “world literature.” Published by Bloomsbury Academic, the volume under discussion contributes to the study of the dynamic interaction of “minor” literatures with local, regional, and wider manifestations of global literary space. It is organized in four sections of thematic contributions authored by scholars from Bulgaria and beyond that discuss historical, geographical, economic, and genetic processes in the development of Bulgarian literature. The review follows the sections closely, and is attentive to specific phenomena, positions, texts, and contexts that render the concept of “minor literature” negotiable and open to reformulations. As most of the static labels are nowadays flushed into the conglomerate of “marginocentricity” and the reality of “quality literature” is no longer a criterion in the admission of local literatures to worldwide prominence, literary circulation has, to a great extent, become a function of the global market. The publication of the reviewed volume is the outcome of a vigorous effort to establish Bulgaria’s literary location within these processes and beyond them.","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127827529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Enlightenment Geographies: Representations of China in John Bell’s Travels (1763) by Pavel Petkov","authors":"Ludmilla Kostova","doi":"10.54664/cvlv9520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/cvlv9520","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131269810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Philosophical Posthumanism by Francesca Ferrando","authors":"Alexandra Glavanakova","doi":"10.54664/jeqg7240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/jeqg7240","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128685983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Swiftian Inspirations: The Legacy of Jonathan Swift from the Enlightenment to the Age of Post-Truth, edited by Jonathan McCreedy, Vesselin M. Budakov, and Alexandra K. Glavanakova","authors":"Hristo Boev","doi":"10.54664/jdpi1184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/jdpi1184","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115534185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"By Way of Old Petersburg: Desmond O’Grady and Russian Poetry","authors":"A. Kononova","doi":"10.54664/qqht1491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.54664/qqht1491","url":null,"abstract":"The article takes on a direction which has great potential for further studies of contemporary Irish poetry: studying the work of Irish poets through their relation to Russian literature. It focuses on the reception and reimagining of Russian poetry in the work of Desmond O’Grady, one of the leading figures in Irish poetry, who started writing in mid-1950s. The article studies three poems by O’Grady which are addressed to his Russian counterparts: “Missing Andrei Voznesensky,” “Joseph Brodsky Visits Kinsale,” and “My City,” a translation from Anna Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero.” None of these poems has yet been subject of thorough critical analysis. Each of the poems has become a signpost on O’Grady’s poetic map and an important element of his own “private mythology.” When analysed in the wider context of Irish poetry, they help form a clearer picture of the influence Russian literature has had on contemporary Irish poets.","PeriodicalId":124585,"journal":{"name":"VTU Review: Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127598507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}