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This research focuses on and serves as the foundation for the creation of a theatrical world, supporting the play’s structural narrative to raise awareness of a historical event and to spotlight historically silenced and suppressed voices of color. The gasoline baths occurred at the El Paso, Texas border in 1917 when Mexicans were inhumanely disinfected with toxic chemicals as they sought entrance into the U.S. as a result of discriminatory beliefs and practices. Primary research will include published articles and books, focusing on the event that will serve as source material for the play developmental process. Secondary research efforts will include U.S. immigration policies of the time as well as identifying key historical figures. Carmelita Torres, a central figure in the event, will serve as the main protagonist and voice of the play. The narrative will showcase her advocacy for her community as well as demonstrate the gender bias role of women. Ultimately, this play intends to serve as a catalyst for change, creating a space for conversation, empathy, and transformation to awaken an audience towards moral and social action.

This article looks at both Miriam Halahmy's historical novel for children, The Emergency Zoo, set during several days of mass pet culling in London prior to World War II and Hilda Kean's published research on the somewhat conveniently forgotten phenomenon, entitled The Great Dog and Cat Massacre. In both these works we observe the strong connection between child and pet, emphasised all the more in a period of uncertainty brought on by impending conflict. The reader is also presented with a detailed exploration of the child's worldview as compared to that of the adults' largely hierarchical humanistic perceptions, a way of thinking which is taken as one of the key contributory causes of the terrible pet cull of 1939. Comparisons are then drawn with the treatment of the child–animal relationship and that of household pets during the current Russo-Ukrainian War (the largest European conflict since World War II) as broadly represented in newspaper articles and photographic reports. These reports not only recognise the importance of the child–animal relationship (especially in terms of alleviating trauma and providing a sense of well-being) but also demonstrate that animals are both perceived as refugees and rightly given refugee status. Through an analysis of the strong contemporary media focus on the child and animal refugee, along with the comparison drawn with both Halahmy's novel and Kean's historical study, the article concludes that there is clear evidence showing that more recent perceptions of the child–animal relationship and the improved status of pets have been specifically shaped by both posthumanist thinking and the various debates concerning the nature and consequences of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernice Thurman Hunter's Booky trilogy depicts the economic hardships of a white, working-class girl nicknamed Booky who lived in Toronto, Canada, in the Great Depression. This article analyzes hundreds of letters sent to Hunter from two cohorts of readers: adults who grew up in the 1930s and school-age children coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s. The adult letters brim with details of their own Depression-era childhoods, while young readers express shock at how difficult things were in 1930s and compare Booky's experiences to their own challenges and privileges. The letters' revelations demonstrate how readers used a piece of historical fiction to grapple with the past—be it their own childhoods or the history of childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In reading Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2000) this essay proposes a definition of total war that illuminates the close connection between the rhetoric of war and the rhetoric of imperialism. Building on the recent scholarly accounts of how "totality" is never truly possible, this essay sees total war not as a descriptor of reality but rather as a rhetorical strategy that categorizes entire populations as ally or enemy—a binary that both emerges from and remains in tension with the binaries structuring imperialism (white/nonwhite, civilized/savage). Total war, that is, defines colonial subjects as allies with their colonizers against white, European enemies. White Teeth explores these contradictions, this essay argues, by revisiting the binary rhetoric of the Second World War. And in challenging the relationship between imperial and wartime categories, Smith's novel resists the tendencies of both imperial and anti-imperial forms of history to represent the past in terms of just such totalizing categories. As historical fiction, White Teeth counters this totalizing tendency and, dwelling instead in ambiguity and uncertainty, suggests that a truly decolonial history depends not on reversing imperial categories but on rejecting them altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do we remember the dead with such intensity in Britain, as if they were still among us? I argue that Hilary Mantel makes a critical intervention in this debate with her historical fictions Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020). Her novels are theoretical and political interventions that allow us to critically evaluate historiographic, heritage and commemorative practices in contemporary Britain. I argue that they demonstrate the harmful consequences of commemorations centred around the continuous revival of the dead, because this practice justifies injuries against and negligence of the living through an appeal to imagined ancestors, who cannot engage in compromise or change their minds. This mode of knowing the past results in social standstill and the perception of social and political change as a threat. Thinking through the characteristics of this historical epistemology with Martin Davies, Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Nietzsche, I go on to argue that Hilary Mantel's intervention exposes the violent consequences of such a mode of knowing the past and proposes a radical alternative: rather than negotiating with the dead, it reminds us to focus on the needs of the vulnerable living in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While summarization has been extensively researched in natural language processing (NLP), cross-lingual cross-temporal summarization (CLCTS) is a largely unexplored area that has the potential to improve cross-cultural accessibility and understanding. This article comprehensively addresses the CLCTS task, including dataset creation, modeling, and evaluation. We (1) build the first CLCTS corpus with 328 instances for hDe-En (extended version with 455 instances) and 289 for hEn-De (extended version with 501 instances), leveraging historical fiction texts and Wikipedia summaries in English and German; (2) examine the effectiveness of popular transformer end-to-end models with different intermediate fine-tuning tasks; (3) explore the potential of GPT-3.5 as a summarizer; and (4) report evaluations from humans, GPT-4, and several recent automatic evaluation metrics. Our results indicate that intermediate task fine-tuned end-to-end models generate bad to moderate quality summaries while GPT-3.5, as a zero-shot summarizer, provides moderate to good quality outputs. GPT-3.5 also seems very adept at normalizing historical text. To assess data contamination in GPT-3.5, we design an adversarial attack scheme in which we find that GPT-3.5 performs slightly worse for unseen source documents compared to seen documents. Moreover, it sometimes hallucinates when the source sentences are inverted against its prior knowledge with a summarization accuracy of 0.67 for plot omission, 0.71 for entity swap, and 0.53 for plot negation. Overall, our regression results of model performances suggest that longer, older, and more complex source texts (all of which are more characteristic for historical language variants) are harder to summarize for all models, indicating the difficulty of the CLCTS task. Regarding evaluation, we observe that both the GPT-4 and BERTScore correlate moderately with human evaluations, implicating great potential for future improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the participation of white women in whipping enslaved individuals in the West Indies throughout the eighteenth century in both fiction and historical examples. While sensibility and sentimentality were growing in popularity in metropolitan England, white women in the West Indies encountered and participated in scenes of violence that shocked many metropolitan viewers. During the last decade of the eighteenth century, images appeared that seem to condemn the African Slave Trade and promote abolitionist rhetoric. While these scenes of suffering do portray the brutal reality of whipping in the West Indies, these depictions also emerge at a period in which flogging became more overtly sexualized. Examining the 1792 print 'A Forcible Appeal for the Abolition of the Slave Trade' by Richard Newton, this article contextualizes the flagellation and sexual undertones of the white woman in the print. Comparing this print to the flagellation erotica, often sold in the same establishments as prints like Newton's, the sexual undertones in the print are complicated. Through the fetishization of the pain of enslaved women, metropolitan inhabitants of England could voyeuristically indulge in these scenes of misery without explicitly seeking out flagellation or pornographical works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews two books "Lavinia" by Ursula Le Guin and "Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk" by Boris Akunin and translated by Andrew Bromfield and a film "The Green Knight" directed by David Lowery. The article includes a description of each as well as a look at the theme of historical fiction and historical fact in each of the reviewed items.

Copyright of Slovenská Literatúra: Revue Pre Literárnu Vedu is the property of Institute of Slovak Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Domestic violence involves abuse imposed on one partner by another to establish power or to induce pleasure. The Power and Control Wheel educates both the victims and abusers about abusive behavior governing domestic violence. Abir Mukherjee's Death in the East (2019) narrates the story of Captain Wyndham, the protagonist, who is on a quest to get rid of his opium addiction in Assam. He meets a person from his past, Caine/Carter, who is accused of murder. Wyndham decides to arrest Carter, but he finds out that Carter has been murdered. Wyndham and Sergeant Surrender-not Banerjee, camaraderie, try to solve the murder mystery, which eventually allows them to reveal the hidden truth. In recent years, the evidence of domestic abuse has been presented in cases such as the defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. This case signifies the importance of this study. This paper tries to address intimate partner violence predominantly exists in society through the novel, Death in the East, and throws light on domestic violence as a social misconduct through the lens of the Duluth Model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposing a model through which to document Romantic translation that is focused on recovering the translators who organised its processes, the present article coordinates two recently prominent concepts; that is, sociability and performativity. It argues that these two terms should be studied in tandem, and that they require close attention to concrete material and technological practices and contexts of mediation in order to become fully tractable. The German-English historical novel Walladmor (1823–1824) is examined as a case study to demonstrate the potential of this article's proposals for reading Romantic translation. This text initially appears as a pseudotranslation, and is such a key example of that mode that it was the first pseudotranslation to be branded as such; however, it soon morphs into a pseudo-backtranslation upon its translation into its pseudo-original language, revealing layers of performativity and sociability in this involuted interlinguistic movement. Building on this case, the article offers a detailed discussion of sociability and performativity in Romantic contexts and beyond, showing that the presumption all Romantic translation is service translation ignores its potential as a wellspring of creativity and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature is the property of Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study of materials and constructive systems for the conservation and preservation of architectural heritage is of great relevance in the case of the Royal Alcazar of Seville, a World Heritage Site since 1987. This palatial complex stands out for its plasterwork decorations and this work aims to study the most significant anomaly: the detachment of all the pineapples presented on the sebka surfaces. The present study focused on the organoleptic inspection of pineapples, together with a planimetric survey and the study of their environmental conditions. The study developed has allowed (i) to establish the hypothesis of the different fixation systems used over time; (ii) to identify anomalies present in decorative pineapples; and (iii) to analyse recent emergency actions undertaken in the pineapples to prevent their detachment. The results obtained represent novel information of historical, artistic, and constructive interest in these ornamental pieces in plaster, useful for future conservation and restoration interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Cultural Studies / Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of Journal of Cultural Studies / Kultur Arastirmalari Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article deploys the material metaphor of "flat surface" to read the unexpected cross-modal affinities between amateurish cover design and professional storytelling in Chinese web novels. Canvassing the ways visual and verbal artifacts put into play metaphoric associations with "flat surface," this essay interprets the popular fascination with flatness as a symptom of China's alignment with ubiquitous computing in its transition to a post-Fordist cultural economy when the world is increasingly conceived as a flat horizon. The author first exhibits a selection of spoof covers and argues that their willful indulgence in two-dimensionality is an antidote to the uncanny similarity of illusionist covers born out of what Mario Carpo calls "mass customization" in the digital era. Then the author turns to examine the web novel Zhuixu 赘婿 (Matrilocal Son-in-Law) by Fennu de Xiangjiao 愤怒的香蕉 (Angry Banana), a highly acclaimed alternate history fiction with a curiously lousy cover, focusing on how Angry Banana's cover designs and narrative storytelling convey the flattening effect. The author attributes the fascination with flatness to the rise of post-Fordism in China's cultural economy by demonstrating how the protagonist in Zhuixu succeeds in flattening "all under heaven" (tianxia 天下) by way of nonhumanizing his existence and weaponizing an internet of things (IoT) while embracing a post-Fordist network of work, life, and governance. Finally, the author furnishes a few more examples to suggest the broader trends toward flatness in Chinese web novels and concludes by discussing the critical edge of the metaphor of flatness in its applicability to post-Fordist cultural analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the method behind Nietzsche's genealogical critique. I do not offer a comprehensive characterization and defense of his execution of this critique, but I sometimes allude to elements of it in order to illustrate its method. I review versions of genealogical critique that consist in challenging the epistemic standing of moral judgments (their justification or their truth) by exposing their historical contingency. I argue that they misconstrue Nietzschean genealogy, which is best conceived as a pragmatic enterprise, which aims at uncovering their function and asking whether they are useful or harmful. I argue that such a pragmatic conception of genealogy accounts for its peculiar combination of history and fiction. I then show how this pragmatic view of moral judgments fulfills Nietzsche's ambition to develop a compelling naturalistic conception of them and explain the importance he ascribes to a functional critique of them. I conclude by considering two questions this pragmatic conception of genealogy poses for its critical bearing: How can moral judgments best explained in terms of their functional usefulness turn out to be harmful? Since Nietzsche believes that any practice, including morality, has multiple functions, how is a functional critique of morality even possible? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One hundred years after the publication of Ulysses (1922), the novel that would immortalize James Joyce, his ouvre continues to attract readers, intellectuals and artists as much as his private life still fascinates Joyceans, writers and a general public. The present contribution analyses three recent additions to the so-called 'Joyce industry', studying a series of fictional texts that feature the allegedly inexhaustible topic of the Irish writer's complex relationship with women. Annabel Abbs's The Joyce Girl (2016), Nuala O'Connor's Nora (2021) and Kerri Maher's The Paris Bookseller (2022) are the focus of the present contribution, three biofictions of, respectively, Joyce's daughter, his wife Nora and of Sylvia Beach, the woman who published Ulysses in book form. It is our intention to assess the extent to which these narratives offer a retrieval of three women's stories, to study them in the context of recent vindications of biofiction as a subgenre that must be distinguished from both biography and historical fiction and, above all, to account for the undeniable interest and even popularity of women related to Joyce among Joycean scholars but also among average readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines notions of national identity and diversity in Thailand during the twentieth century. It draws on ethnographies, historical fiction, jungle adventure, romance, and official documents to question common notions of Thai identity and of what constitutes socially relevant Thai-language writing. The focus is in part on so-called hill peoples, whom scholarship has generally regarded as irrelevant to an understanding of Thai society. The study suggests a recurring debate among rival Thai perspectives on society, identity, and inequality. I divide the range of social imaginaries into three groups. Some manifest unambiguous pluralism and interethnic equivalence. Others express a class-based critique of the harm that derives from hierarchy and social inequalities. The third view insists on Thai distinction from and superiority over other peoples. The implications of this chauvinism are often elitist, sometimes racist, and also at times authoritarian. Of the three views that I identify, the emphasis on pluralism and interethnic equivalence has never received any notice from scholars of Thai society and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical fiction has long been one of television's most prominent genres. It was not until the advent of streaming TV in the 21st century, however, that the genre reached its radical feminist potential. Written, directed, produced by and starring women, contemporary women's historical fiction has exploded as both a marketable and an ideological genre. Three series - Good Girls Revolt (Amazon, 2016), Mrs. America (Hulu, 2020), and Halt and Catch Fire (AMC, 2014–17)—exemplify women's challenge to the orthodoxy of male-driven historical fiction. These three shows not only reclaim women's 20th Century American histories, but they also refute accepted conceptualizations of the genre and of History itself. Through circular storytelling, the blending of fact and fiction, and new female archetypes, these three series narrate coherent and consistent women's histories heretofore missing in popular memory. From this foundation, these series discuss, debate, and fantasize about women's lived experiences in the past, as well as commenting on the present and dreaming about the future of women's lives and desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Count de Rethel: An Historical Novel (1779) can be ascribed to Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806) as a translation of Anecdotes de la cour de Philippe-Auguste (1733) by Marguerite de Lussan. The action is set at the court of Philip II of France, known as Philip Augustus, at the time of the war with King Henry II and the Crusade with Richard I, known as the Lionheart. This inspired revival of fictionalised medieval history heralding romanticism in the age of sensibility refashions the codes of chivalry according to the aesthetics of the second half of the eighteenth century. This essay focuses on the interplay between fiction and history, between the present of writing and the rewriting of history through Cavendish's translational prism, featuring the Middle Ages as a golden age of heroism and the Count de Rethel as a paragon of ancient virtue set against contemporary men of fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical fiction can be understood as a hybrid space: it represents the past and simultaneously allows a consideration of the culture it is written in. Under the assumption that novels help address cultural shifts and attitudes, this paper aims to investigate how, why, and with what implications medical discourses surrounding women are depicted in fiction. This paper explores the manifold conceptualizations of hysteria in An Inconvenient Wife written by Megan Chance in 1998, arguing that the novel presents a complex view of discourses of medicalization. Its central claim is that the novel constructs hysteria not only as a tool of oppression but also as a tool with which to escape social constraints and patriarchal control. Through understanding historical fiction as not merely commenting on the past, but as addressing contemporary issues, the text adds to discussions centering on intersections of medicine and literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Ponniyin Selvan (Ponni’s Son) novels by Kalki, serialized from 1950 to 1954 and set during the medieval ages in the Tamil country against the backdrop of a power struggle between and within the two South Indian dynasties of the Cholas and the Pandyas, during the reign of Parantaka II (also known as Sundara Chola) roughly from 958 CE to 973 CE, represent a format of the historical novel that addressed the post-independence anxieties about language, tradition and regional identity within popular Tamil print culture in the 1940s and 1950s. Kalki’s historical romances were written amidst specific socio-political movements that gained momentum in the early and mid-twentieth century. This article situates the revivalist and reformist agendas espoused by nationalists such as Kalki in the twentieth century within the context of the ideological shifts and turbulences in Tamil political and public spheres concerning Tamil language and literary history, through an analysis of the Ponniyin Selvan series as a representative text of this shifting context of Tamil identity formation, as a popular historical novel and a collective memory text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 3‐month excavation conducted in Area G at Sarūq al‐Ḥadīd yielded novel insights into the historical occupation, abandonment and utilisation patterns of the site. The archaeological strata unearthed during our excavation dating span a significant timeframe, ranging from the fourth to the first millennium BC. Employing a stratigraphical approach, we systematically established a relative chronological sequence for the area supported by C14 absolute dating. This methodological framework enabled us to discern the temporal evolution of the site, unveiling pertinent information regarding the nature of occupation, the construction phase of the well and its temporal utilisation and the occurrences of natural phenomena such as climatic disruption, alluvial processes and sand accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study investigates the cognitive processing and perception of counterfactual historical fiction and its effects on readers' receptivity to fascism, superstitious beliefs, and satisfaction with the present state of politics. Counterfactual historical fiction presents alternative realities where history diverges from the official historiography, such as in Robert Harris' novel Fatherland, which depicts a counterfactual world where Hitler won WWII. It was hypothesized that reading this genre incurs additional cognitive costs and is perceived with less realism and more aesthetic appreciation compared to historical fiction. Methods: Seventy-four subjects were divided into two groups and presented with two versions of paragraphs from Fatherland. An experimental group read the original version, describing a counterfactual reality where Hitler is still alive in 1964 (counterfactual historical fiction). A control group read a manipulated version, where events are made plausible by being backdated to 1941 (historical fiction). The study employed a triangulation of methods, utilizing online eye tracking and self-report questionnaires with 7-point Likert scale measurements. Results: The results indicate that counterfactual historical fiction is associated with increased cognitive demands at the first point of divergence, i.e., the first linguistic cue indicating counterfactuality. This genre also induced less perceived realism of history (factuality) and more surprise. Both versions of the text impacted readers by decreasing agreement with fascism, reducing superstitious beliefs, and enhancing their positive evaluation of the current political situation. Discussion: The study reveals the cognitive processing of counterfactual historical fiction, highlighting the need for revising current theoretical assumptions. Additionally, the positive impact on readers' attitudes and beliefs may underscore literature's potential role in fostering critical thinking, pro-social behavior, and satisfaction. Further research is suggested for subsequent empirical validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her historical novel, The Beginning of Spring, Penelope Fitzgerald explores English identity in pre-revolutionary Russia by putting her expatriate hero Frank Reid to the test in ethical situations. Engaging with critical attention to the novel’s moral meaning, this article offers an ethical reading alongside Paul Ricoeur’s study on ethical intention and Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of the face of the other. Frank’s ethical self can be imputed from his aim of becoming a just man in the Moscow business community. To achieve that aim, he must make ethical deliberations based on his practical wisdom and the moral injunction that regulates the intersubjective relationship between the self and the other. He ultimately fails his ethical aim because of the unjust institution – he is othered in/by Russia. I conclude with a gesture that the novel is Fitzgerald’s ethical intention of giving a voice to the other Russian culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an analysis of C. J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake novels (2003–2018), considering the fact that both crime and historical fiction may be used to reconceptualise collective memory in subversive ways, and with important implications for both genres. I will attempt to demonstrate that Sansom's narrative illustrates the shift in recent crime fiction from the crime itself to the historical conditions of its setting. As a result, Henrician England is presented as a very different context from that foundational time identified by Whig historiography, thereby questioning the very pillars of Englishness / Britishness that were such a central part of the country's political climate leading up to the Brexit referendum. This is not achieved through the use of any postmodern technique. Instead, the reader perceives a sense of 'neo-historical' authenticity in Sansom's fiction that results from its sensorially approaching the historico-geographical locus of the narrative through the eyes of its anachronistically cosmopolitan stranger protagonist (the lawyer Matthew Shardlake), whose walks and rides through the Tudor city turn the reader into a privileged flâneur, ultimately raising awareness of the subversive power of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are name statistics in the Gospels and Acts a good test of historicity? Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais, in a recent article of the jshj , argue that the sample of name occurrences in the Gospels and Acts is too small to be determinative and that several statistical anomalies weigh against a positive verdict. Unfortunately, their conclusions result directly from improper testing and questionable data selection. Chi-squared goodness-of-fit testing establishes that name occurrences in the Gospels and Acts fit into their historical context at least as well as those in the works of Josephus. Additionally, they fit better than occurrences derived from ancient fictional sources and occurrences from modern, well-researched historical novels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on exploring the blurred lines between fact and fiction in Finuala Dowling's novel "The Man Who Loved Crocodile Tamers". Topics include the novel's challenge in defining itself as historical fiction or imaginative storytelling, the real-life inspiration behind the character Koringa, and the difficulty of distinguishing historical accuracy from creative narrative. The piece examines how the novel merges historical elements with fiction to create a unique narrative space.

Copyright of Tropelías: Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada is the property of Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, I suggest a historical and theoretical re-evaluation of the British New Wave from the point of view of its demotic impulse. I begin by situating the kitchen-sink films within a broader framework of post-war innovation, driven by an aspiration to realism that reinvigorated British cinema and television within a novel historical conjuncture. I then investigate the specificity of British New Wave's realism – with an emphasis on the films Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and A Taste of Honey – and consider their contribution to the development of an indigenous aesthetic, characterised by a demotic impulse. The relevance of the notion of demotic in the post-war cultural panorama can be attributed to the 'equalising' powers of the Second World War. As I will suggest, a prolific parallel can be established with another moment of historical transition during what Eric Hobsbawm called 'the age of revolution', in which the spirit of egalitarianism equally lay at the root of the search for a demotic. Here, I will focus on William Wordsworth's poetic revolution to investigate the notions of egalitarianism and of demotic, which I believe can further our understanding of post-war realism in the British audio-visual landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the bloody Northern Irish Troubles in books of history and fiction. This historical civil war is still remembered as a traumatic era in Irish history, which is still fresh in the memories of those who have been abused, displaced and suffered the loss of loved ones. Irish writers endeavoured to denounce the Troubles and the absurdity of the violence and chaos as it deepened the chasm in the religious and social fabric in Northern Ireland. This study deals with Seamus Heaney's 'Bog Poems,' and the way he addresses the predicament of sectarian violence in his native Northern Ireland through the preserved bog bodies of victims murdered barbarously in ancient tribal rituals in Iron Age times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Universum is the property of Instituto de Estudios Humanisticos Juan Ignacio Molina, Universidad de Talca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Adil Yakubov (1927-2009) is one of the most important representatives of modern Uzbek literature. The author's works stand out because they boldly reveal the social, spiritual and moral issues of the period, aim to reveal the truth about man and his heart, and passionate discussions about the purpose of human life. Yakubov is a writer who focuses on historical issues as well as current issues. It is his novel Ulug'bek Xazinasi (Uluğbey's Treasure 1974) that made him known throughout the world. Yakubov's other important historical novel is Ko'hna Dunyo (Old World 1982). The author describes the period of Mahmud of Ghazni in Köhne Dünya. Avicenna and Bîrûnî, important figures of the period of Mahmud of Ghazni, play important roles in fiction. Although the novel seems to be centered on Avicenna and Bîrûnî, Yakubov actually tells about Mahmud of Ghazni. In this article, how Mahmud of Ghazni was fictionalized in the novel Ko'hna Dunyo was discussed on the basis of historical reality-fictional reality. Mahmud of Ghazni and his period described in historical sources and Mahmud of Ghazni and his period in the novel were analyzed with a comparative method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I contribute to the discussion on the cognitive value of contemporary historical fiction as a means of understanding the past. Although such means typically come from the field of history and philosophy of history, and historical accuracy seems to be the most important means, this work is concerned with historical fiction being an inspiration for an auxiliary means of the sort. Drawing on Alison Landsberg's concept of prosthetic memory, I propose the concept of prosthetic past. In order to elaborate on the idea with an illustrative example, I use Katherine Reay's The London house (2021)—a work of historical fiction that explicitly engages with the issue of historical accuracy. With regard to this, I structure the article as follows: the text opens with a broad-brush discussion of the development of the idea of understanding the past in the field of academic history and mainstream historical fiction. In the next part, I capitalise on Landsberg's prosthetic memory to give grounds to my idea of prosthetic past and refer to The London house as an example with which to elaborate on it. Subsequently, I propose a tripartite discussion of the concept-cum-novel to explicate the idea of prosthetic past. The article closes with my consideration of two implications of the presented findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding historical fiction as a hybrid space, both presenting the past and embracing the culture it is written in allows insights into the problems women face within the patriarchal society by setting them at a temporal distance. This paper explores the connections between witches, history, and medical practices in Amy McKay's The witches of New York. It first looks at how the novel queers history by introducing a female perspective embedded in memory-sharing. The paper then moves on to show how the novel contrasts gendered medicinal practices and segues into explaining how this contrast is superficial. The above serves as the ground for my key claim that, although the novel seeks to present an alternative to what it depicts as male-centric Western medical practices harmful to women, it fails to offer an alternative way of thinking. Even if it relies on the postfeminist discourse by seemingly presenting empowered feminine characters, these, under closer inspection, are shown to reinforce conservative notions of femininity through idealization of the figure of the female healer and gendered tropes of care. The paper concludes with the assertion that, although the novel aims to offer a meaningful alternative to the prevailing system of medical practice through its centering on female experiences, it cannot escape patriarchal discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laura Purcell's 2021 novel The shape of darkness, advertised as a Gothic chiller, is set in Victorian Bath and tells two interlaced stories: one of a silhouette artist whose life is marred by a string of mysterious murders of her customers and the other of a young girl who believes she is a spiritual medium and who helps her sister in fraudulent séances. The novel straddles the space between historical fiction and murder mystery, combining elements of neo-Victorian and Gothic traditions. This article investigates the question of the purpose of combining generic components of historical and detective fiction, and explores how such a blend has the transformative potential of shifting the classic detective form into metaphysical space. To this end, the article is divided into three parts: the discussion of the historical novel as an intergeneric hybrid is followed by the section concerned with classic murder mystery rules that The shape of darkness breaks. The final part focuses on the implications of this type of generic blending, especially the shift towards metaphysical detective fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes an alternative interpretation—with regard to the current state of research—of Madeline Miller's Circe as a character claiming her agency. In it, I capitalise on Devi and Khuraijam's linking witchcraft and agency in Circe as well as Alvin Goldman's theory of human action. On this basis, I substantiate the thesis that, in Madeline Miller's Circe, the protagonist claims her agency through developing her witchcraft skills. This process consists of manifesting traits pertinent to being an active character, such as intentionality, motivation through desire or beliefs, and the will to initiate. Circe gradually and slowly moves through these stages to reach her independence and self-assuredness, which she lacks in her childhood. Therefore, in order to reflect these stages, the analytical part of the article is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the rare moments of Circe's first attempts at witchcraft, which reveal her resolution and intention, even if she fails to act on them. In the second section, Circe's desires and beliefs are explored as they represent the eventual force behind her future decisions and use of witchcraft. Finally, in the last section, I explore how the previous two stages come to fruition in the shape of Circe actively exercising her will to employ her now superb witchcraft skills in defiance of the rules and conventions that have bound her into submission thus far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set in Jamaica and London in the 1820s, Sara Collins' debut novel The confessions of Frannie Langton (2019) is a neo-slave historical novel par excellence. In it, Collins shapes and reshapes several subgenres of historical fiction, such as gothic fiction, historical romance, and historical mystery. Facing a trial based on the accusation of killing her master and mistress, Frannie Langton narrates her life story in the form of confessions to her lawyer as she endeavors to remember what happened on the night of the murder. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: Is Frannie trying to remember or to forget what happened? Why does Collins add strong gothic shades to her historical novel? How does she manipulate the historical whodunits of the crime in relation to Frannie's memory? Why does Collins choose a lesbian relationship to feature the historical romance in the novel? The paper examines how a post-2000 historical novel manipulates its conventional subgenres by adhering to some and changing others, starting with the gothic, then the murder story and, lastly, the lesbian romance in telling a neo-slave story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Term ‘Latin America’ is used to describe the region of America where Romance Languages (Derived from Latin) such as Spanish, Portuguese and French are spoken. This region is renowned for its Diverse Culture, Rich History Stunning Landscapes, Encompassing Tropical Rainforests, Andean Mountains and Caribbean Beaches. Notable writers such as Gabriela Mistral, Miguel Angel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa hail from this region and have been awarded the Nobel Prize. These Nobel Laureates often explore issues specific to their home countries or regions including social injustice, Resistance and struggle for social change, National and Personal Identity, Economic Inequality and Human Rights enriching the global discourse with their unique perspective and experience. This article is a Close Reading of These Nobel Laureates speeches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article, "Narratives of the Unspoken in Contemporary Irish Fiction: Silences that Speak," explores the theme of silence in Irish literature. The collection of essays, edited by Maria Teresa Caneda-Cabrera and José Carregal-Romero, examines how silence is embedded in language, culture, society, and institutions. The essays cover various well-known Irish authors and analyze the role of silence in historical novels, aesthetics, gender, shame, and the cultural shift post-Celtic Tiger. The book offers a profound exploration of silence as a powerful force shaping Irish identity and narratives, inviting readers to contemplate its significance in actions, beliefs, and erasures. [Extracted from the article]