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The intricately crafted worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin provoke us into thinking about our own world’s constructs, our languages, and our very being. Though The Tombs of Atuan sets many puzzles for readers, subjectivity, or what it means to be an individual person, is an overarching theme. The paper demonstrates how The Tombs’ narrative leads readers through three stages of identification of name to subject: an initial, partial identification (Tenar), a passage to namelessness and near-negation of self (Arha) and finally, the retrieval of the name (Tenar). These three stages, or moments of naming, (and calling) reflect an active, violent and unstable process of subjectivation – a process through which human beings do seem to go, in the passage from childhood to adulthood. The fact that we are beings whose journeys can include radical destruction and transformation is itself crucial. The paper concludes that a certain will to power, friendship and a limited type of self-knowledge or intuition all subsist the stripping away of the name and self in Arha, (and in the passage from childhood to adulthood), and enable a performative and experiential retrieval of identity. As such, it seems that if The Tombs of Atuan is to yield any notion of a subject, no set of universally true and immutable conditions can be delineated. Rather, an individual’s who is formed and performed in the ethical sphere, meaning that performative and transformative practices and events occurring with, and in relation to, others contribute to the very constitution of self. In this respect, parallels between Tenar’s story and women’s initiation rites can be drawn. Le Guin’s tale may provide symbols and moments by which to understand the profound transformation a child undergoes in adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grass's autobiographical volume Beim Häuten der Zwiebel is indebted to a range of world-literary predecessor texts, chiefly and most widely researched among them is Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus Teutsch (1669). However, it will be argued here that the full import of Simplicissimus emerges only when considered in conjunction with another, rather less closely examined source text, Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1867), whose eponymous protagonist furnishes the image of the self as alliaceous construct of layers without a core that also informs Grass's own use of the onion trope. Between them, Simplicissimus and Peer Gynt provide Grass with an intertextual model for auto-subversive self-writing that exposes the autobiographical conceit of 'telling the truth about the self' (Lejeune) for the fiction it is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the question of identity in the book "Bhava," by U. R. Ananthamurthy. Topics include the identity presented by the South Asian literature, the identity crisis of modern men, and the story of three generations or identities such as Dinakar, Prasad, and Viswanatha Shastri in the novel.

A literary criticism of the book "The Autobiography of a Sex Worker," by Nalini Jameela is presented. The autobiography outlines the tensions grow from the battle between the assertion of the self and loss of identity. It focuses on the sex worker named Naini, who started learning the lessons of survival during childhood and offers a picture of street sex workers.

An essay concerning the aspect of humanist self in literature is presented, citing the philosophy of Australian philosopher Anthony Kwame Appiah on the conflict between poststructuralist critic and humanist artist and the aspect of myth as a form of recontextualized language.

This essay explores the ways in which Racine defines the physical and conceptual spaces which his characters inhabit in Bérénice, and illustrates the semantic complexity of some of the play's principal terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By approaching letter writing as vernacular literacy practice, this paper examines how twentieth-century ordinary Lithuanians organized their letter-writing practices and how these practices were embedded in their everyday lives. The analysis is based on the data that comes from the Database of Private Written Lithuanian Language, developed jointly by a team of researchers working in Lithuania and the U.S.A. The analysis reveals that for many ordinary Lithuanians, letter writing was often embedded within their everyday activities in terms of time, place, domain, participants, tools, and style. Even though letter writing was perceived by many writers as informal writing, references to “poor” handwriting point to the complex interrelationship between vernacular and institutional literacies: informal (vernacular) writing was affected by a formally imposed understanding of “good” and “proper” writing.

An essay is presented on particular way of originating the self in writing and thinking as in evident in author Caleb Williams's memoirs which are an attempt to transcend his historical situation by occupying the role of an impartial spectator articulated by philosopher Adam Smith. Topics include Caleb using the principle of self-administration, the books "Things As They Are," and "The Adventures of Caleb Williams," by author William Godwin, and Smith's theorization of sympathetic relations.

The process of identity formation is quite a complex one, requiring stages upon stages of self-examination and evaluation. In literatures written the world over, it can be argued that much of that literature focuses on the self and the society. Thus, it is an artist's representation of the self in literature that makes for imaginative fiction. The essay examines the causes of the trauma and presents the protagonists of the novels under study as characters who suffer from schizophrenia. It examines cultural stereotypes and deconstructs the fragmentation of postmodern identity and argues that the authors' cultural background influences their representations of identity in the novels under study. The essay therefore surveys the cultural representations of Bellow's and Wright's protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patrick White's Voss and Arun Joshi's The Strange case of Billy Biswas, though set in entirely different places, (Australia and India respectively) have many similarities and they provide an interesting area of investigation for a comparative study. Both the novels belong to the genre of quest literature where journey is the controlling pattern .The basic emphasis of both the novels is on spiritual awakening and reintegration with the 'self'. The paper will try to explore how the protagonists of the two novels have achieved the spiritual and metaphysical transformation in the course of their adventurous journey into the wilderness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on themes of utopia and aesthetics of self in art, which particular focus on the novels of author John Banville such as "The Book of Evidence" and "The Sea." Topics discussed include the utopian image in the book "The Principle of Hope," by Ernst Bloch, the concepts of abstraction, epiphanies, and literary allusions of aestheticism in Banville's novels, and the literary genre Kunstlerroman, or novel depicting the maturation of a young artist.

A speech given by U.S. literature scholar Louis J. Budd entitled "En Route: Tramping Beyond Innocence, Sagebrush, and Steamboats," is presented. In the speech, Budd advocates for author Mark Twain's travel writings "A Tramp Abroad" and "Following the Equator." He comments on the political nature of the texts and questions their anti-imperialistic natures. He explains the self-framing Twain undertakes in these books and notes their use of humor.

Patrick White (May 28, 1912-September 30, 1990) was the first Australian to receive the Noble Prize for Literature. Though Patrick White writes on many themes to suit his purpose, his novels revolve mainly around one major concern, the quest for self. Quest plays a vital role in knowing the true purpose of life. The reward of quest is gaining the deeper understanding of one's True Self and the discovery of a new and different way of being. Quest can be fulfilled only through prolonged suffering and by experience. Patrick White's central characters, male and female, typically struggle through several layers of experience and finally achieve their identity. This paper entitled Quest Motif in Patrick White's Novel Voss presents how Voss, a German explorer, undergoes a quest for self and finally achieves his identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a female artist find and re-define herself in a world largely constructed by men? In the embrace of a multiplicity of voices, the accompanying image and poetic text in this essay explore the experiences, desires, and longings of a young girl as she journeys with her subjectivity through her social world in search of emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the book "Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust" by Joshua Landy, with particular focus given to its interrogation of the themes of autobiography and selfhood in the novel "A la recherche du temps perdu" by Marcel Proust. The author's critique of Landy's demarcations between the narrator and the author of Proust's novel is also examined.

Many postcolonial studies of the relationship between the 'empire' and the 'margin' have revealed that it is characterized by persistent dominance and exploitation. Scholars like Frantz Fanon have argued that colonial encounters between the West and Africa constitute a relationship of dominance and oppression in which the oppressed is maintained as an exploited Other to the dominant Self. While the power differential in this relationship is obsessively guarded through varying forms of othering, the dominant self subtly explores new ways of upholding the structures of supremacy over the Other. Gender is one such subtle means, in the sense that the colonial Other is often ingeniously conceived as the traditional female who is a subordinate (Other) to the male. This essay examines ways in which such othering through gendering is achieved in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses female expressions of self in the 20th-century autobiographies of three Bengali women: "Jiboner Jhorapata" (1972) by Sarala Devi Chaudhurani; "Jiboner Rongomonche" (1989) by Santisudha Ghosh; and "Sediner Kotha" (1982) by Manikuntala Sen. Set in the context of the political upheavals of pre-partition, early 20th-century Bengal, the texts are examined for their depictions of unstable, fragmented female identities amid anticolonial struggles and the social aspects of modernity.

Abstract: The paper reframes the discussion of the superfluous man tradition by relying on the vocabulary and insights of postmodern discourse of the self. It argues that along with such commonly discussed attributes as ineffectiveness, alienation, and heightened self-reflexivity, the superfluous men in Turgenev''s Diary of a Superfluous Man, Dostoevskii''s Notes from the Underground, and Bitov''s Pushkin House suffer from a (proto)-postmodern malaise whose manifestation is the dissolution of the autonomous, essential self that exists independently of language. Furthermore, the paper suggests that somewhat paradoxically, the awareness of this malaise and the anguish associated with it become not more but less intense with the advent of the postmodern era. Of the three characters I consider, Leva Odoevtsev, the protagonist of Bitov''s postmodern novel, seems to be the least aware of his condition and the least paralyzed by it. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The author explores the role of the found object in Pierre Bergounioux's "Miette." This examination serves as a way to explore the relationship between the processes of socialization and individuation, as well as the tension between the we-identity and I-identity. The views of Bergounioux on the link between the individual and the community is informed by his reading of Elias' figurational theory is attested by references in fictional and non-fictional texts. According to the author, the stories of "Miette" testify to Bergounioux's preoccupation with the status of the self within the community.

The article analyzes the book "The Woman Warrior," by Maxine Hong Kingston, discussing the theme of the autobiographical self as understood in a postmodern context. The poetics of postmodernism are said to conflict with the traditional autobiographical form. The issue of ethnicity is also discussed as a complicating factor. The ways in which Kingston deals with these issues, through deconstructive narrative strategies and questioning of conventions, are described. Her decentralization of her autobiographical self is said to constitute a metafictional critique of the genre of autobiography. Kingston's redefinition of multiculturalism and ethnicity in literature is also discussed.

An essay is presented on the representations of the self, community, and language in the poetry of poet Jay Wright. Affirmation and selfhood are themes in Wright's poetry. Several poems discussed include "Jalapeña Gypsies," "Benjamin Banneker Sends His 'Almanac' to Thomas Jefferson," and "The Continuity City: Spirit and Body." Topics explored include language, speaker, African American poetry, and the notion of returning in light of a journey towards community.

The article discusses strategies of sense production in "The Man Who Found a Pistol," by Rudolfo Anaya based on the hermeneutics perspective of structuralism and semiotics alike. The purpose of the prolonged narrative tangent is to establish a parallel between the man and the narrator. The double narrative perspective is structurally consistent with the overriding paradigmatic presence of doubles in a story aside from playing an important role in the strategy of sense production.

The article explores what occurs among individuals inside the family, network of friends, profession, religious group, community and nation. The product of the psychological, cognitive, and affective forces emanating from the individual, in continuous interaction with one's social environment is the development of the human character. It discusses the uniqueness of every person. Society with its social institutions owes its existence as well as continuing nourishment to its individual members. It describes Henry Roth's "Call It Sleep."

Presents information about several papers discussed at the "Emily Dickinson International Society" (EDIS) Oxford Conference 2010. Topics include the discussion of Emily Dickinson's forty bound fascicles of poems as cure for sexual immaturity, the dichotomy of self in her posthumous poetics and its differences to other contemporary American romantics, and her connection with the poet John Keats. The conference features panelists including Edith Wylder, Yuji Kato, and Martin Greenup.