2. My scientific pursuits from my postdoctoral (habilitation) dissertation have found its teaching equivalent in the form of a seminar titled Anthropology of Writing and Reading, which I am currently holding at the Institute of Polish Philology, University of Wrocław. During the course, in collaboration with students I am analysing the problems regarding the area of theory and practice of the creative process, questions of the relation between the author and his creative output, as well as issues of reading theory/practice and reception of literary works by literary audience. The seminar helped me, in part, to clarify and prepare materials for my dissertation Negating Machine..., which initiated and is currently guiding my academic research towards literary anthropology. In connection with the topic of this course and apart from the literary and reading questions some intimate literary works (diaristic, epistolary) of selected Modernistic, mainly Polish, writers were subjected to analysis. In cooperation with the students I studied the relationship between biography and existence versus literary creativity and fiction. Referring to the figures of the writers, reconstructed on the basis of their intimate texts I applied the concept of person – worked out three decades ago by the research unit of Maria Janion. In my opinion, …show more content…
Whilst tracing the diary and prose of Białoszewski (also the tabooed areas therein) I indicated the difference in disclosing sexuality as compared to the other modern writer, born almost half a century later, Adam Wiedemann. This comparative selection was dictated by similar problems concerning social conventions and a unique autobiographical prose of the latter writer. Equally important was the discussion, published then in the literary magazines, about Adam Wiedemann 's prose, tabooisation of sexuality and its disclosure in recent
The novel is nurtured with a very soft but sophisticated diction. The essay itself portrays the author’s style of sarcasm and explains his points in a very clear manner. In addition, the author has used vocabulary that is very easy to understand and manages to relate the readers with his simplistic words. The author is able to convey a strong and provoc...
Kristeva, Julia. "A Question of Subjectivity--an Interview." Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. Ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, 1989.
1.Chenier,Elise. “Sex,Sexuality and the Third Reich.” History 115: Introduction to the History of Sexuality. Class lecture at Simon Fraser Univerity, Burnaby,BC, October 9,2013
One example of gender criticism Chopin accounts in her writing is the love between the women in the novel which has been suppressed throughout history as “lesbian” encounters in order to uphold male power and privilege (LeBlanc 2). Edna’ friendships with Mademoiselle Reisz and Adele Ratignolle both act as different buffers into Edna’s sexual and personal “awakening.” Edna’s a...
“The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer” is a male perspective of a case against Katherina Hetzeldorfer, a woman accused of acting like a man during sexual acts, as well as having a wife who she passed off as her sister. This account highlighted the lack of representation for women accused of homosexuality in medieval Europe as well as the negative view of women taking on male roles. The “Lesbian Love Letter from a German Manuscript” is a more informal, first-person account of a sapphic relationship. It is poetic in nature, with the author utilizing figurative language to praise her lover’s beauty. “The Penitential of Theodore” is a set of instructions for priests to guide confessors in penance. It is an excellent example of the controversy in opinion about male versus female homosexuality. Specific rules govern detailed sexual interactions, implying that these acts happened as precedents for the rules. Many of these rules regard homosexual relations and the number of years of penance necessary to absolve oneself of the sin. As a commentary on the theories of social constructionism and essentialism, Alice Echols’ “Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past” review offers thoughtful insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each argument. This cluster of texts illustrates a diverse experience of lesbianism in medieval Europe while commenting on the lack of male understanding of lesbian
Through this sympathetic faculty, a writer is able to give flesh, authenticity and a genuine perspective to the imagined. It is only in this manner that the goal of creating living beings may be realized. Anything short of this becomes an exercise in image and in Kundera’s words, produces an immoral novel (3). The antithesis of liv... ...
Ethnography is a research method used to explore different cultures from a personal view. Many anthropologists have sought to use ethnography as their main study method because of its specificity and opportunity to get hands on. Those that participate in ethnographies are expected to accurately record detailed accounts of the society in which they are staying, but at the same time maintain a critical distance.
It is evident throughout Wislawa Szymborska’s poetry that she is an extremely knowledgeable and worldly woman. Her writing is strongly influenced by her worldly perspective and the value she places upon it. Her experienced view of the world and the knowledge that her experience brought her resulted in a recurring motif of intellect throughout her works. The motif is glaringly prevalent in the poems “An Opinion on the Question of Pornography”, “Discovery”, “Soliloquy for Cassandra”, and “Conversation with a Stone”. Wislawa Szymborska’s views on the importance of worldly experience led to her portrayal of intellect and knowledge as potentially dangerous and extremely powerful agents.
It is noteworthy to be stated clearly at the outset of the present paper that literary theories are composed of a mere plethora of highly debatable ideas, concepts and assumptions. They are in other words, strikingly vague, opaque and of a typical flexibility. According to Wellek and Warren (1966, p. 30) }there are then, not only one or two but literally hundreds of independent, diverse, and mutually exclusive conceptions of literature, each of which is in some way right~. That is, the diversity of literary theories and even the contradiction between them sometimes, is something natural.
To support her thesis she strongly focuses on creating her ethos or her credibility as a writer. Through her impressive use of ethos, she gives the trustwort...
Psychoanalysis is the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts (“Psychoanalysis”). This transfers to analyzing writing in order to obtain a meaning behind the text. There are two types of people who read stories and articles. The first type attempts to understand the plot or topic while the second type reads to understand the meaning behind the text. Baldick is the second type who analyzes everything. Since his article, “Allure, Authority and Psychoanalysis” discusses the meaning behind everything that happens in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” we can also examine “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” in the same manner.
... to mind works written by subsequent generations of women novelists. One sees Chopin’s text straining toward, among other elements, the narrative innovations achieved in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and The Waves. One is also reminded of the “lyric” novels of the American writer Carole Maso, whose so-called experimental works typically eschew plot and conventional linear narration. In a recent book of essays, Maso admits that her erotic novel Aureole was “shaped by desire’s magical and subversive qualities,” she notes; “[desire] imposed its swellings, its ruptures, its erasures, it motions.” (Break Every Rule, 115). If contemporary authors like Maso are able to access such boundless spheres of narrative play, it may be due in part to the pioneering efforts of writers such as Chopin, who first began to articulate the need for such liberating spaces in the novel.
As we all know that reading and writing plays a major role in the advancement of our knowledge but we have never expected that literature also plays a role to confer upon love and desire. In the essay “Why Literature?” Mario Vargas Llosa mentioned about the importance of literature and how it play an important function in the lives of people and the society itself. What I found to be the most interesting and unexpected function of reading and writing was the part when the author mentioned about the fact that “literature has served to benefit upon love and desire and the sexual act itself the status of artistic creation” (“Why Literature?” Mario Vargas Llosa). The author also wrote that without literature than eroticism wouldn’t even have exist. Therefore a society without literature, love and pleasure would be poorer in which there wouldn’t be relationships in the society.
Literature plays an important role as a part of the cultural heritage. Thus, literature is the soul of our civilization, the center of our religion, and the machine we can travel back in the time of our old civilizations. In addition, literary works are able to take the readers beyond the limited experiences of readers’ lives. They show the lives of others. The literary works covey the social, political, and cultural backgrounds of the time when the stories or novels were written. The author of the book, “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes expresses that authors are always the agents of their times. According to the statement conducted by Roland, to get the fully understanding of the text, he recommends
Anthropology is known as the study of human beings, over time and space. We often look at anthropology as just the evolution of mankind and their basic development. After taking a class in Cultural Anthropology, I’ve come to realize how much more in depth it is. There are many different aspects that we do not look at. We do not need to be anthropologists to see how these concepts can apply to our daily lives. Anthropology makes you to look at the world differently than you were taught too. Cultural anthropology, has a holistic approach that helps us to see how one society relates to itself and how that society can be taken on its own terms without bias. It helps to identify our own way of viewing various different cultures around the world and realize that the way we do things and see things may not be the only right way there is. There are other people around the world that are different from us and do things differently that we are used to or that we find to be “the right way”.