{"title":"Staging the Tories' Islamic Jihad against George I and the Whigs in Edward Young's The Revenge","authors":"Hussein A. Alhawamdeh","doi":"10.1111/oli.12436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12436","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes Edward Young's nuanced employment of Islam and appropriation of the Qur'an, first translated into English as <jats:italic>The Alcoran of Mahomet</jats:italic> in 1649, to attack allegorically the Tories' aspirations to support James Francis Edward Stuart (1701–1766), who was nicknamed “the Old Pretender” by the Whigs and James III by the Tories, to restore Catholicism/Islam into Hanoverian England. Edward Young's <jats:italic>The Revenge</jats:italic> (1721), which adapts Shakespeare's <jats:italic>Othello</jats:italic> (1604), dramatizes the Moor Zanga, who is of royal Moorish descent and the captive of the Spanish general Don Alonzo, performing Jihad on himself in revenge for the slaughter of his father king and nation by Alonzo/George I. The character of the Muslim Zanga embodies two levels of materialization and refashioning from the Whigs' perspective: Firstly, he connotes George I's Turkish servants, Mahomet and Mustapha, who signify the Hanoverian king's power and dominance over the Turks. Secondly, he draws a parallel to the Old Pretender's and the Tories' rebellions of 1715 and 1719 within a Jihadist and Qur'anic framework, serving as a political allegory of the Tories' attempts to dethrone George I.","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140147627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gestures of neighbor‐love literature, philosophy, and givenness","authors":"Irina Hron","doi":"10.1111/oli.12445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12445","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the literary, philosophical, and phenomenological dimensions of neighbor‐love. Phenomenologically speaking, neighborly love must be <jats:italic>given</jats:italic>, that is, it must be given voluntarily through attitudes, actions, or gestures. But whom do we actually acknowledge as our neighbor, and why? Adopting a comparative literary approach, this paper argues that literature is not philosophy's adversary but its creative interlocutor: Ilse Aichinger's poem “Foundling” transcends anthropocentric perspectives, presenting the Neighbor as a being beyond denomination by translating it from human to animal. Doris Lessing's novel <jats:italic>The Diary of a Good Neighbour</jats:italic> depicts the unpredictable and accidental nature of encounters with the Neighbor, leaving no room for personal choice. Ultimately, Amélie Nothomb's <jats:italic>Les catilinaires</jats:italic> illustrates how the Neighbor can be a persistent annoyance that both irritates and resists systematic thinking. These literary works outline a nuanced poetics of neighbor‐love and givenness that extends beyond any anthropological, theological, or religio‐ethical concept.","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140073499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"La motivation littéraire. Du formalisme russe au constructivisme By Hans Färnlöf, Paris: Classiques Garnier. 2022. pp. 273. ISBN: 9782406131038","authors":"Morten Nojgaard","doi":"10.1111/oli.12444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12444","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Voici un ouvrage qui vient à son heure, puisque les questions de la cohérence, de la successivité et de la lisibilité du texte littéraire sont au cœur des préoccupations critiques actuelles. Travaillant depuis longtemps sur la structure du roman naturaliste dans un esprit proche de celui des études de Philippe Hamon sur les romans zoliens, Hans Färnlöf se risque à en élargir la perspective en proposant une théorie générale de la motivation littéraire, c’est-à-dire des principes qui permettent de convertir une suite arbitraire d’événements en une série logique d’actions concaténées. Afin de généraliser la logique événementielle observée dans les romans réalistes et naturalistes, Hans Färnlöf a recours aux théories littéraires avancées par les formalistes russes actifs dans les années vingt et trente du siècle dernier. À cet effet Färnlöf donne une présentation critique des idées sur la motivation littéraire des trois grands formalistes russes, Chklovski, Tynianov et Tomachevski. Ce procédé est d’autant plus heureux que, par là, il comble aussi une lacune de la critique littéraire de langue française : s’il existe de nombreuses études en anglais et en allemand sur l’école formaliste russe, le domaine francophone n'offre que peu de travaux sur la question, mise à part l’anthologie de Todorov (2001).</p>\u0000<p>En fait, on peut dire que l'objectif de cet ouvrage est triple ; établir la base théorique d’une méthodologie critique, base trouvée dans les concepts novateurs des trois formalistes russes (p. ex. « ostranenie », « sujet » ou « motivirovka »), élaborer à partir de là une théorie générale de la motivation littéraire (« […] la notion de la motivation se présente comme un outil neutre pour explorer tout récit littéraire à toute époque […] », p. 223), et, enfin, illustrer les concepts théoriques par des analyses d’œuvres concrètes. Les formalistes, Chklovski en particulier, s’intéressaient surtout aux phénomènes textuels (aux « procédés ») qui rendaient un texte « littéraire », « esthétique », «artistique », d’où par exemple leur insistance sur les effets d’« étrange » (« ostranenie ») et leur préférence pour la poésie comme le medium particulièrement apte à isoler l’art de la réalité. Ce n’est pas par hasard que Chklovski était contemporain d’André Breton et de Paul Valéry.</p>\u0000<p>Färnlöf se borne à étudier le récit fictif. Il constate que la motivation y remplit deux fonctions : donner une justification plausible de la succession des actions et des événements singuliers dans l’histoire racontée (la « fabula »), justification que Färnlöf appelle la fonction mimétique, et, d’autre part, rendre compte des principes qui ont présidé à la « mise en intrigue » de l’histoire (le « sujet » des formalistes, cf. le « mythos » de Paul Ricœur), c’est-à-dire les principes « téléologiques » qui convertissent la succession d’épisodes et de situations en ensembles signifiants. Färnlöf parle d’abord de <i>fonction</i> artistique (p. 15), mais adopte plus loin le ","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139967782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘A random assembly of geometric forms’: Thing Theory in J. G. Ballard's and Ray Bradbury's short stories","authors":"Marcin Tereszewski","doi":"10.1111/oli.12440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12440","url":null,"abstract":"Thing Theory is a relatively new field of research, developed largely by Bill Brown on the basis of an already existing new materialist movement with roots reaching back to Martin Heidegger's interrogation of the ontology of things in ‘Das Ding’. Focusing on the interconnectedness of objects, their modes of being and irreducible ‘thingness’, as well as the agency objects are shown to exert when freed from the constraints of a subject-centred perspective, this article presents a reading of three short stories by J. G. Ballard and Ray Bradbury which showcase how such issues are navigated in narrative form. Of particular interest for this article is the subject–object relationship, and the notion of ‘thingness’ as developed in Thing Theory in relation to the unique role accorded to the environment and inanimate objects in J. G. Ballard's and Ray Bradbury's selected works of fiction. It will be shown that a common theme connecting these works is the presence of a confrontation with the external world as it exists outside the definitions imposed on it by human subjects.","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139918573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Boreal ecopoetics: Christian Dotremont's site-specific writing in Sápmi","authors":"Sami Sjöberg","doi":"10.1111/oli.12434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12434","url":null,"abstract":"Northern Fennoscandia entered Christian Dotremont's (1922–1979) imagination in 1956. The Belgian avant-gardist was comfortable in Central-European artistic milieus through his involvement in CoBrA (1948–1951), but a total of 12 journeys to Sápmi between 1956 and 1978 had a profound effect on his creative work, especially the logograms he is best known for. This article studies Dotremont's travel writings and logograms as site-specific forms of writing, which can be seen as precursors to ecopoetic approaches. Dotremont's journeys took place at a cultural turning point, when ethnographers had made their field trips but mass tourism was still in its embryonic state in Sápmi. His Sápmi-inspired travel writings reveal how the idealism related to a hyperborean north initially intrigued him while he sought to elude modernity. Dotremont's cultural exchanges in Sápmi were non-artistic but manifested in his art and writing. Sápmi brought about an ecological awakening through awe that was not sublimated but a lived experience. Dotremont immersed himself in Sápmi, with fundamental repercussions to his creative exploits.","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139769803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The degenerate spouse: Eugenics and divorce in Arabella Kenealy's The Marriage Yoke (1904) and Gabriele Reuter's ‘Eines Toten Wiederkehr’ (1901)","authors":"Fatima Borrmann","doi":"10.1111/oli.12432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12432","url":null,"abstract":"During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, eugenics emphasised human intervention to rectify a perceived distortion of the ‘natural’ evolutionary progress. One of the interventions advocated by eugenicists was the prevention of marriages that were deemed incompatible. The union between the ‘fit’ and the ‘unfit’ was constantly propagated as the reason behind the degeneration of the race, especially in the wake of the rediscovery of Mendel's theories on heredity and the repudiation of Lamarckism. Both Arabella Kenealy's <i>The Marriage Yoke</i> (1904) and Gabriela Reuter's ‘Eines Toten Wiederkehr’ (1908) portray the tragedy of such a marriage to a ‘defective’ partner. Moreover, they emphasise the lost potential of this marriage, both for the individual and the nation, by also introducing healthier characters with whom a better eugenic match could have been made. Instead, the healthy partners are burdened by the care and nursing of their mentally and physically defective partners and children. In this article I will not only show how scientific discourses are echoed and mediated within the narrative, but also how they are used to advocate for social change.","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138823510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aerial withdrawal: An atmospheric reading of Monika Maron's Flugasche","authors":"Monika Szczepaniak","doi":"10.1111/oli.12433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12433","url":null,"abstract":"In Monika Maron's <i>Flugasche</i> (1981)—the first novel from the GDR to deal with environmental issues—the poisoned atmosphere in the city of B. functions as an affective centre, around which emotions, actions and reactions of the main protagonist as well as of the other characters revolve. The journalist Josefa Nadler falls into the sphere of the environmental catastrophe and is overwhelmed by the atmospheric power of this meaningful situation. The corporeal experience of being exposed to subtle environmental violence, which has devastating consequences for the city of B. and debilitating effects on its inhabitants, evokes feelings such as fear, anger, shame and compassion. Moreover, it develops into a driving force for thoughts, decisions, commitment and resistance against the unfair air distribution, accompanied by a sense of powerlessness. The aim of the article is a re-reading of the novel with a central focus on the largely non-representational, affective and meteorological elemental spacetimes, which can not only be felt or bodily experienced but also designed or engineered in order to produce a certain time-bound structure of feeling, for example, an oppressive climate of fear.","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138823570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attentional modulation in literary reading: A theoretical‐empirical framework","authors":"Inge van de Ven","doi":"10.1111/oli.12431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12431","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract When we think of a person engaged in the act of reading literary fiction, the mental image that readily comes to mind is one of focused concentration. In our current information age, such a form of reading seems especially necessary, and often lacking. This causes a change in how we read, often described in terms of close reading versus hyperreading. Literary reading is typically associated with the former; screen‐based reading of information texts with the latter. Accounts of attention and distraction in reading research are often informed by a binary way of thinking. Literary reading, while often aligned with close reading, also involves selection, strategic allocation of attention informed by textual cues, condensation, and mind‐wandering. It never occurs in a state of continuous attention: we combine different modes, triggered by both textual and readerly characteristics. A challenge for literary studies in the present media landscape is to determine more precisely when readers read with close attention and when they skim, or what they skip. This article presents a theoretical contribution to studies of literary reading in the form of a literature review and a framework for attentional modulation. Education might benefit from a more sophisticated concept of such attentional modulations.","PeriodicalId":42582,"journal":{"name":"ORBIS LITTERARUM","volume":" 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135291057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}