Search

This essay analyzes a debate over the exegesis of two letters involving an allusion to Amadis de Gaula, amid the shift in Anglo-Spanish relations occurring in the winter of 1568-69. It argues that the Spanish ambassador Guerau de Spes's Amadis allusion was more subtle and politically significant than has been recognized, and that the English censure of his text relied on the material circumstances in which it was read. This analysis sheds new light on how the English Privy Council read the Amadis allusion as both an oblique criticism of Elizabeth I and a libel against her secretary of state, William Cecil. As an unusually well-documented interpretive debate over topical allegory, this incident helps explain how both the existence and the procedure of literary censorship in early modern England remained contingent upon political, rhetorical, and material circumstances of production and reception in relation to perceived authorial intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "fairy tale" was introduced to China in the early twentieth century. Subsequently, a wave of collecting and publishing fairy tales, along with other genres of folklore, spread all over China. By the early 1930s, the most influential editor in this folklore collection movement, with more than a thousand tales in multiple volumes, was Lin Lan. The tales were collected from everyday people in rural areas. These tales have demonstrated a continuing interactive history of oral storytelling and written records in Chinese history. By the late 1930s, many of the tales from the Lin Lan series had been introduced to the West. However, at the same time, questions about the actual identity (or identities) of "Lin Lan" and why the Lin Lan phenomenon occurred were never openly mentioned or discussed. Further, Lin Lan is still unknown beyond the Chinese-speaking world. This article revisits the Lin Lan phenomenon, examines the social background, and argues that Lin Lan should be appropriately acknowledged as the "Brothers Grimm of modern China" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present commentary is to introduce relevant issues with respect to the measurement of executive function in physical activity studies. Suggested definitions of executive function are introduced, and executive function tasks that are commonly used in the neuropsychological literature are presented and briefly described. The extant literature on physical activity and cognition is discussed, and issues relative to the limitations of this body of literature are raised. In summary, research on the effect of physical activity on executive function is still in its infancy. We encourage researchers in this field to provide a clear definition of executive function, to carefully consider the relevance of published effect sizes to their own research questions, and to consider either providing a logical rationale for their selection of particular executive function measures or to use multiple measures of executive function when exploring relationships between physical activity and executive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Fanaticism” and its cognates, “fan” and “fanatic,” have been defined in inconsistent, contradictory, and often, nondiscriminant ways across disciplines. Due to these problematic conceptualizations, and particularly the mixed yet growing state of the literature in marketing, there is a need to revisit the phenomenon. Through a comprehensive review and synthesis of the existing literature, this article identifies the key defining characteristics of consumer fanaticism (i.e. “affective commitment” and “extraordinary pursuit”) and presents a typology (consisting of four types of fanaticism, i.e. rewarding, destructive, stigmatized, and rogue) to demonstrate the socially situated and subjective nature of the fanatic label. In doing so, the authors advance current theorizing on this topic by explaining and resolving the conflicting and paradoxical perspectives that currently exist in the literature. The authors also present a framework that distinguishes consumer fanaticism from other forms of consumption. They propose a research agenda for future studies of consumer fanaticism and demonstrate its strong potential to contribute fresh insights into other marketing phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article examines the debates surrounding the 1956 Writers' Congress in East Germany as part of a complex and conflicted process of negotiation and contestation between writers, institutions, the East German government, and the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in a year that witnessed, initially, widespread efforts at liberalisation in much of the socialist world (the USSR, Poland, and Hungary, as well as the GDR) and, subsequently, a crackdown on dissent (especially in Hungary and the GDR). The article shows that there was considerable dispute in the run-up to the congress, as well as during the congress itself and in its aftermath. The goal is to demonstrate that the 1956 Writers' Congress was more contested than is sometimes believed, and that, on a larger scale, East German literary life in the 1950s was less conformist than its critics have sometimes claimed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes Pablo Montoya's Adiós a los Próceres, based on postnationalism reflections by Bernat Castany. Firstly, I briefly introduce the current discussion about the relationship between literature and nation. Subsequently, I establish two parts of analysis: a "destructive" one, in which I study the work's criticisms to the nation's concept and a "constructive" one, in which I identify Adiós a los Próceres' postnational alternative and its link with the cosmopolitanism that characterizes Montoya's literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Intersecoes: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) 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.)

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania 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 present paper starts from a short introduction of the major aspects debated regarding the stylometric measures used for extracting the personal signature added by a particular author to its English written works. Those measures are used in the context of indicating an author from a limited cardinality set of authors being given a set of documents or a defined indicators values which characterizes the semantic way that an author is writing its works. The paper addresses the problems of the semantic level of a work depending on the tokens that he uses in the paper, tokens that are extracted in a preprocessing step of analysis. The tokens are defined using a lexical ontology, for the English words referring to WordNet, and the automatic extracting of those tokens from the words found in the particular processed papers. The main vocabulary richness evaluation metrics are presented taking into account the major literature review and extracting the main steps into a new proposed metric that is combining the vocabulary richness with the semantic layer of a paper. The concept of author mark is described. The objective of this research paper is highlighted into the new proposed metric that is non-dependent on the main subject discussed in the analyzed paper. This objective leads to a general metric that combines documents from different subjects into a metric that can describe the vocabulary richness of a specific author depending on the works that he had written. Furthermore, the analysis is conducting into a time evolution of this metric, using the extraction of the trend of the author's vocabulary richness indicator. Using a set of 13 years values of this indicator upon a specific author, the results are presented in this research paper. Future work refers to inserting this metric into a general description of the author mark into his specific English written works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most Ming emperors composed poetry, but their poetic interests and degrees of understanding differed. This article analyzes the poetry of Ming emperors, as well as related historical source materials, in an effort to uncover its various applications regarding the expression of emotions, palace festivals, imperial activities, and foreign affairs. Ming emperors wrote poetry to display their virtue and great achievements. They composed four-character and Yuefu poetry in an effort to imitate both the Shijing and the literary tradition established by earlier emperors. They also penned old-style poems and quatrains to express their emotions and aspirations. However, not only did their residence at court limit the range of topics found in their poetry, they moreover deliberately used poetry to glorify the nation and the imperial image, which resulted in a poetic output that was fixed in form and monotonous in content. During the Ming, imperial poetry was disseminated to the public via handwritten copies, stone inscriptions, descriptive notes, anthology extracts, and novels written by officials. Despite such diverse means of dissemination, a large amount of imperial poetry has been lost or adulterated. Yet, regardless of its authenticity or literary quality, officials and the people nonetheless read the emperor's poetry not only for interesting anecdotes, but also to attain a glimpse into the emperor's character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historische Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter 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.)

Even though the unequal reach of the state has become an important concern in the literature on developing democracies in Latin America, empirical measures of intracountry variation in state capacity are scarce. So far, attempts to develop valid measures of the reach of the state have often been hampered by inadequate data. Leveraging insights from national-level scholarship, this article proposes a tax-based measure to capture such intracountry variation. Drawing on a comprehensive data set of municipal finance and estimates of economic activity derived from nighttime lights, it maps state capacity in Ecuador. The article validates the measure on the basis of survey data collected by the Latin American Public Opinion Project. A multilevel analysis demonstrates that citizens tend to be more satisfied with the services provided by the state in municipalities with higher state capacity, which strengthens confidence that the measure picks up relevant differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores the history of U.S. state patronage of literary production in the 1970s and 1980s. Emphasis is given to authors receiving funding from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Fellowship Program and the transition of support from politically dissident literature to minimalist fiction and realist novels. Other topics include populism, the influence of President Ronald Reagan, and conflicts between critical judgement and popular taste.

World War I, fed from economic interests and disputes of European countries, brought together great destructions. On those dates Ottoman State was already in a pickle and being involved in this war made the situation worse for him. Of course victory or defeat at war effects not only the troops but also the whole nation. As a member of society almost evey literates were effected by such great catastrophe so that they had to be the spokesmen of the society. We can see the similar state for the literature which has sociological side. Researches on the literary works prove that the writings show us the state of the people of the hard times. World War I deeply impressed the Turkish Nation the reflections of which can be seen on literary works. The stories, written in the daily Yeni Mecmua in the years 1917-1918 by Ömer Seyfettin, are good examples of this situation. Taking old time hero types Ömer Seyfettin, tried to remind the values to the nation with the title of 'Old Heroes'. At the same time his 'New Heroes' titled stories tried to reflect the success and positive atmosphere of the Dardanel War (Çanakkale Savaşı). The purpose of this study is to analyse Ömer Syfettin's heroes and their special features in the stories which were gathered under main headings 'Eski Kahramanlar' and 'Yeni Kahramanlar'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the publication of literary works in Zambia has been held captive by the challenges facing the book industry, in particular the economic crisis. The economic challenges have led to high costs in publishing, and inevitably the cost of purchasing books has also been high. The publishers have depended on government procurement for their book sales – but government is more concerned about purchasing textbooks. Many publishers have depended on the sales of textbooks to generate funds to publish literary works, but the overdependence on government procurement has left publishers financially vulnerable. The diminished publishing opportunities for writers of literary works have driven some writers into self-publishing as an alternative. However, this option has not answered the problem, in part because it is more concerned about quantity rather than quality of publications. The interventions into the book industry by writers' associations, the publishers' and booksellers' associations, the Curriculum Development Centre, writing awards and government policy have provided enough stimulation. A change in government policies, however, could go a long way towards stimulating the growth of the industry and exposing unknown writing talent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the works of playwright William Shakespeare which talk about the sea. It mentions the tragedy "Antony and Cleopatra" which concerned with the relationship between the sea and the state. It notes that in the opening scene of the play "The Tempest," the Boatswain draws attention to the impertinence of political hierarchy in the midst of a sea-storm. Classic readings in Shakespeare that have explored the symbolic meanings of his seas are also noted.

Copyright of Dirasat: Human & Social Sciences is the property of University of Jordan 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 her article "Challenges and Possibilities for World Literature, Global Literature, and Translation" Kathleen Shields argues that Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur was grounded in translation practice: in creating a canon representing the best of each nation, translation occupied centre stage. Nation-building in Europe in the nineteenth century was combined with the idea of transnational literature where translation was an important tool of transmission and exchange, as well as a way of decentering from a strong monolingual base. There are four challenges for comparative literature now. Firstly, the nation state is weakening. Secondly, despite the growing interest in world literature since the 1990s, Goethe's idea of Weltliteratur is in decline, replaced by the rise of English as a lingua franca and pivot language for translations. Thirdly, asymmetries in relations between languages, and the very small number of translation languages, are becoming more marked. Finally, digital reading means that literary products are simply "there," fluidly absorbed into ever-changing canons with no visible means of mediation. What then are the opportunities offered by the European tradition of translation studies? Could polysystem theory help to re-examine the filters and asymmetric relations that exist between producers and consumers of literary texts? Can translation studies map relations of prestige to arrive at not only an ethics but also a geopolitics of literature? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the socio-medical history of Jakarta between 1945 and 1979. It mentions that the literature on the history of post-independent Indonesia focuses on the politics. It states that the population of Jakarta was influenced by bilateral relations of Indonesia. It mentions that Dokter Djawa School founded in Batavia, Illinois in 1851.

The article discusses various papers published in this issue including one by Ronit Frankel on South African literature since the period of transition to a democratic state, one by Annie Gagging on women writing and one by Anna-Lena Ovine on Advice's fiction "Purple Hibiscus."

The article is a study of politicians' views on literature based on motions and debates in the Swedish parliament 2000-2010. The aim is to investigate the political agenda for literature and the functions ascribed to literature, reading and books during the period. The first part examines the uses of the concepts literature, reading, and books and these notions are traced into ideology as well as theoretical traditions within literary studies. The ways these concepts are used has political consequences for regulations and support of litterature and book trade as a whole. Literature is throughout the period and by most speakers credited with a particular value and becomes a symbol of a better and more democratic world. This Utopian vision of literature is significant as it is transformed into real-life politics and regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship of Bildung and the State as represented in literature. It states that as Bildung offers a pattern of development of the modern nation, it also expresses the foundational violence of the nation-state. It cites as an example Nietzsche's phrase for the modern state as "the coldest of cold monsters," which is interpreted as cold enough to endure national habit and custom.

In the 1930s the 'canonization' of selected foreign writers formed an important part of official policies towards translated literature. The term 'canonization' refers here to the process of transorming a writer into an exemplar for others to emulate. The article analyses ways in which several Western authors (Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, and André Gide) were canonized in the Soviet Union and what the role of the Party state and official criticism (ofitsial'naia kritika) was in this process. The article pays particular attention to the benefits and drawbacks of the 'canonization' from the point of view of the Party state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The detective figure, literary and real, emerged in Siam between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to bring clarity to increasingly complex social and political situations. In early detective fiction including the Seup saphakan […] Investigating it All] (1892-97) and Nithan Thorngin […] The Tales of Thorng-in] (1904-05) series this was certainly the case -- mysteries were solved, secrets revealed. In real life, however, the state's deployment of an army of detectives did not so much clarify as codify mysteries. This paper examines the links between the literary and the real detective, arguing that the appearance of detective fiction provided the vocabulary for understanding and dealing with social and political change in early twentieth century Siam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peeking is not only a universal human desire both physiologically and psychologically, but it is the motif of literary narrative as well. The literary works in different periods are usually embellished with peeking narratives, whose referential function is three fold. Firstly, it is a speech mode reflecting the theme of desire in a particular society, i.e. a map of human desire drawn by the writers. Secondly, it represents the poetic connotations of the different facets of the personality of the literary figures, revealing the volatile nature of human beings. Thirdly, it speaks for the spontaneous pursuit of sensual satisfaction and the desire for the fulfillment of aesthetic needs of each individual. The significance of peeking narrative lies in : as a mirror of the multiple dimensions of the psychology of modern writers in different periods of cultural transformation, it give rise to new ways of literary creation and enriches both the theme and form of literature; it also makes it possible to fulfill the different desires and aesthetic experience in the literary field, thus refurbishing the aesthetic expectations and imaginations of modern readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulated by the Chinese literary traditions, the traditional literary genres inherit and retain the most typical literary ideas and pursuits in the long history of Chinese literature. The change in the early 20 century Northeastern literature began in the classical verse writing. The social change from traditional to modern in the Northeastern society exerted great effect on the structure of feelings in literary practice and the generic mechanisms. The literary elements underwent great changes: some were abandoned, others adopted new forms, and new ingredients were added in. In terms of the inheritance of the past, this change is actually a gradual process of evolution rather than an abrupt revolution. Based on the analysis of real texts, we explored and described the structure of feelings in the early 20 century Northeastern society, which embodies the historical value of literary in general and the traditional literary in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the process of state formation in Botswana in the light of the major theoretical literature on the issue. It is argued that neither the geopolitical nor the fiscal theories of state formation can explain why the state in Botswana became so strong and effective. An alternative framework is outlined, in which state formation is seen as shaped by the relationship between states, regimes and social groups. The formation of a strong state in Botswana became possible because it was compatible with the interests of the ruling regime (politically as well as economically), and because the ruling regime had sufficient power to carry out a project of state strengthening.Cet article examine le processus de construction de l′État au Botswana, à la lumière d′importants travaux théoriques sur la question. Nous soutenons que ni les théories géopolitiques ni les théories fiscales sur la construction de l′État ne peuvent expliquer comment l′État, au Botswana, a tant gagné en force et en efficacité. Nous proposons un cadre différent dans lequel la construction de l′État est vue comme étant conditionnée par la relation entre les États, les régimes et les groupes sociaux. La construction d′un État fort au Botswana est devenue possible car elle était compatible avec les intérêts du régime au pouvoir (tant politiquement qu′ économiquement), et également parce que ce dernier avait suffisamment de pouvoir pour exécuter un projet de renforcement de l′État. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how Vadim Andreev (1902-1976) promoted the posthumous literature of his father, Russian author Leonid Andreev (1871-1919), through his autobiographical writings and other marketing methods. He published “A Tale about Father” while part of the Russian émigré community in Paris, France in 1938, and later published "Childhood in the Soviet Union" in 1963 and 1968 while in the Soviet Union. Other topics considered include cultural relationships, marketing strategies, symbolic capital, and the politics of literature and Russian literary canon in the Soviet Union.

This text aims to discuss the concept of nation and its applicability to non Western contexts. To consider the weight of the idea of the nation in Africa, I approach three platforms which center on the national issue - nationalism, State and literature - focusing on the Angolan context. I argue that the concept of nation is a colonial construct and imposes to the other trajectories formulations made on a centre and presumed to be fitted to everyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between literature and revolution. It explains the two major definition of the concept of revolution, first is the common concept of man which involves bloodshed and destruction for political and economic changes and second is psychological, requiring the replacement of the old order of life. It further discusses the significance of understanding the implication of revolution, which is often used with regard to political and economic institutions.

An essay is presented which considers dictatorships and the role of authors and literature in opposing oppressive dictators. The author expresses the view that literature and dictatorships are in opposition to each other. The dictatorship that took control of Albania in 1944 is discussed as are relations between Albania and Yugoslavia in the mid-20th century.

This article considers the problems of the historio-graphical »Vienna 1900«-paradigm through an analysis of a literary text retrospectively ranged outside the »Wiener Moderne«, Jakob Julius David's Am Wege sterben. A re-reading of David's novel offers an insight into the aesthetic and discursive construction of the so-called »educated proletariat« as a social figuration of modernity. Am Wege sterben can be classified as »modern«, not so much in terms of aesthetics and psychology, but in the way in which it depicts the social questions and modalities of education. From the viewpoint of this social dimension of the novel, the article focuses on relations between literature and politics, as well as on naturalistic aesthetics and practices as a feature of David's contribution to and position within in the Viennese literary field around 1900. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the life and political involvements of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Specifically, the author looks at Pushkin's early poetry for signs of a kind of "advice" literature prominent in the Enlightenment that sought to engage the Czar and the aristocratic class in a dialog between literature and the state. Pushkin's abandonment of this enterprise or literary model is said to have been displaced by a more utopian concept that emphasized the artistic autonomy of the poet and ultimately a liberated, unregulated life under the Russian aristocracy.

This article traces the evolution of narratives about the supernatural woman said to live on Gunung Ledang, from oral folklore to sixteenth-century courtly texts to contemporary films. In all her instantiations, the figure of Puteri Gunung Ledang can be interpreted in relation to the legitimation of the state, with the folklore preserving her most archaic incarnation as a chthonic deity essential to the maintenance of the ruling dynasty. By the time of the Sejarah Melayu and Hikayat Hang Tuah, two of the most important classical texts of Malay literature, the myth of Puteri Gunung Ledang had been desacralized. Nevertheless, a vestigial sense of her importance to the sultanate of Melaka remains. The first Malaysian film that takes her as its subject, Puteri Gunung Ledang (S. Roomai Noor, 1961), is remarkably faithful to the style and substance of the traditional texts, even as it reworks the political message to suit its own time. The second film, Puteri Gunung Ledang (Saw Teong Hin, 2004), again exemplifies the ideology of its era, depoliticizing the source material even as it purveys Barisan Nasional ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the difficulties faced by Priya Kandaswamy in teaching non-Western literatures to a group of racially and ethnically diverse, working-class students at a public university in the U.S. It notes that Kandaswamy identified that the kinds of responses to difference in literature arises not only in ideological conditioning and ignorance, but also in simple developmental immaturity, and anxiety around one's own self. It cites that students reduce difference to sameness by focusing in possible points of commonality to their own experience. It states that the most obvious downfall of teaching non-Western literature is the unconscious beliefs and disposition of students that U.S. is more advanced and democratic than non-Western countries.

The investigation of the effects of the expansion of the European society of states on ideas and practices associated with terrorism has received too little attention in the literature. Addressing this limitation, the paper investigates how the expansion of international society and the spread of European ideas, norms and institutions have encouraged the use of terror as a means to achieve political ends. In so doing, the paper offers a historically-based theoretical framework that allows one to locate terrorism in its historical and systemic context and enables the reader to obtain a more holistic understanding of this phenomenon. It argues that the expansion of international society has given rise to five different albeit interrelated types of terrorism: 'system expanding', 'regime legitimacy-driven', 'system affirming', 'anti-systemic', and 'intra-systemic justice-oriented' terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examined the effect of school change on academic progress and behavioral problems. While the effect of placement change on behavioral problems, and case outcome has received considerable attention in the literature; its close correlate school change has largely been ignored. This paper addresses that gap. Structured interviews were used to collect retrospective data on youth''s educational experiences while in foster care (n =159). Youth reported a mean of 7.35 placement changes, and a mean of 8.26 school transfers during their average of 6.6years in care. Almost 50% of youth lagged behind their expected grade in school according to their age. Results showed no statistically significant relationships between number of school changes and academic progress as hypothesized. However, school change was significantly correlated with an increase in behavioral problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]