Abstract Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales are not as well-recognised as his novel or his dramatic works. This paper circles around two of his tales, The Happy Prince and The Nightingale and the Rose. Through a postmodernist outlook, this study postulates the vigorous diatribe of Wilde against the consumer culture which was dominant within Victorian society. Wilde asserts that the Victorian mind-set claims that happiness is attainable through accumulating signs of affluence and he ironically mocks this notion of happiness which is entitled to commodified objects. To him, happiness is defined through a strict sense of Christian morality and Christ-like love and kindness. His aesthetic views are entangled with morality and he fails to celebrate art for art’s sake. Moreover, this study asserts that Wilde is aware of the dominant language games, and his application of the technical language game for the Prince, the Nightingale, and the Swallow is in debt to his monolithic morality or his opportunistic character. At last, Wilde refuses to celebrate beauty if morality is absent and in this way, his aesthetic concerns become rather contradictory.
{"title":"The Commodified Happiness: The Only Established Source of Meaning in Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and The Nightingale and the Rose","authors":"Younes Poorghorban","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2022-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2022-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales are not as well-recognised as his novel or his dramatic works. This paper circles around two of his tales, The Happy Prince and The Nightingale and the Rose. Through a postmodernist outlook, this study postulates the vigorous diatribe of Wilde against the consumer culture which was dominant within Victorian society. Wilde asserts that the Victorian mind-set claims that happiness is attainable through accumulating signs of affluence and he ironically mocks this notion of happiness which is entitled to commodified objects. To him, happiness is defined through a strict sense of Christian morality and Christ-like love and kindness. His aesthetic views are entangled with morality and he fails to celebrate art for art’s sake. Moreover, this study asserts that Wilde is aware of the dominant language games, and his application of the technical language game for the Prince, the Nightingale, and the Swallow is in debt to his monolithic morality or his opportunistic character. At last, Wilde refuses to celebrate beauty if morality is absent and in this way, his aesthetic concerns become rather contradictory.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124388749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Ladislav Vít The Landscapes of W.H. Auden’s Interwar Poetry: Roots and Routes (New York and London: Routledge, 2022). 143 pp","authors":"P. Chalupský","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2022-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2022-0010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122879785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper examines the institutionalisation of psychiatric treatment in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Taking up the work of Michel Foucault, the paper examines how those suffering from mental illness were classified as disruptive and unfit for society, subsequently labelled mad and institutionalised in facilities more akin to semi-judicial structures than medical facilities. McMurphy, having manipulated a transfer for himself from a state work farm to what he perceives will be the less rigorous confines of a mental institution, epitomises the disruptive presence of the madmen, bringing a world of disorder and chaos to the staff and patients of the mental ward. Self-proclaimed as the head “bull goose looney”, McMurphy reflects the counter-culture movements of the 1960s in the United States in his rejection of the rules and regulations imposed upon him by what amounts to a totalitarian system of control. A wild indomitable force of nature, McMurphy becomes a totem for Chief and the other patients, an embodiment of the human spirit the patients have forfeited inside the institutional system.
{"title":"The “bull goose looney” as a Totem Guide for Chief’s Writing Himself to Freedom","authors":"M. Somerville","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2022-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2022-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines the institutionalisation of psychiatric treatment in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Taking up the work of Michel Foucault, the paper examines how those suffering from mental illness were classified as disruptive and unfit for society, subsequently labelled mad and institutionalised in facilities more akin to semi-judicial structures than medical facilities. McMurphy, having manipulated a transfer for himself from a state work farm to what he perceives will be the less rigorous confines of a mental institution, epitomises the disruptive presence of the madmen, bringing a world of disorder and chaos to the staff and patients of the mental ward. Self-proclaimed as the head “bull goose looney”, McMurphy reflects the counter-culture movements of the 1960s in the United States in his rejection of the rules and regulations imposed upon him by what amounts to a totalitarian system of control. A wild indomitable force of nature, McMurphy becomes a totem for Chief and the other patients, an embodiment of the human spirit the patients have forfeited inside the institutional system.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122177037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The present paper sets out to investigate whether the conservative or upper RP accent of selected elderly speakers, namely three of the Mitford sisters, all members of the English aristocracy, manifests change or diachronic stability and uniformity over time. The typical conservative RP features looked for were: the LOT-CLOTH split, absence of the CURE-FORCE merger, SQUARE vowel realised as diphthong /εə/, SMOOTHING, KIT vowel in unstressed ending syllables and TRAP vowel realised as /æ/ instead of /a/. The procedure of the study consisted in the identification of the presence or absence of these specific features in the speech of three selected speakers in recordings made over, at least, a 15-year time span. The individuals studied were: Lady Mosley (née Diana Freeman-Mitford), Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitford and Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (née Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford). The results of these comparisons suggest that elderly upper RP speakers are not highly influenced by changes in pronunciation taking place around them and mostly maintain the preferred pronunciation of their youth. In some cases, however, a general uncertainty amongst speakers of the accent, here detected in the presence of the CURE-FORCE merger, does affect the speech of individuals over the course of time.
{"title":"The Mitford Voice: A Diachronic Inquiry into the “Upper-Crust” Accent of the Mitford Sisters","authors":"Federico Prina","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2022-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2022-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present paper sets out to investigate whether the conservative or upper RP accent of selected elderly speakers, namely three of the Mitford sisters, all members of the English aristocracy, manifests change or diachronic stability and uniformity over time. The typical conservative RP features looked for were: the LOT-CLOTH split, absence of the CURE-FORCE merger, SQUARE vowel realised as diphthong /εə/, SMOOTHING, KIT vowel in unstressed ending syllables and TRAP vowel realised as /æ/ instead of /a/. The procedure of the study consisted in the identification of the presence or absence of these specific features in the speech of three selected speakers in recordings made over, at least, a 15-year time span. The individuals studied were: Lady Mosley (née Diana Freeman-Mitford), Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitford and Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (née Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford). The results of these comparisons suggest that elderly upper RP speakers are not highly influenced by changes in pronunciation taking place around them and mostly maintain the preferred pronunciation of their youth. In some cases, however, a general uncertainty amongst speakers of the accent, here detected in the presence of the CURE-FORCE merger, does affect the speech of individuals over the course of time.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127373204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mohammad Masoodi Miyanrostaq, Seyyed Mehdi Mousavi
Abstract This paper examines the use of laughter as redemption in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Endgame. By acknowledging the somatic life of characters, Beckett’s humour problematises un-embodied philosophies of life. Challenging Hugh Kenner’s claim that Beckett’s humour is not redemptive because of the dryness and repetitions involved, it is argued that the foregrounding of fragility and vulnerability is a way of expressing deeply humane laughter in Waiting for Godot and Endgame. While highlighting that the dialectic of lack and excess is one source of Beckettian laughter, the main thrust of the argument emphasises the possibility of transcendence in a comic situation. The play of lack and excess, rather than suspending transcendental redemption, presents the human condition in its existential mundane realities. Accordingly, visceral and repetitive laughter are discussed in the two plays to bring to the fore the ironic and redemptive aspect of the comic, especially in the scenes where some sort of existential humour is implied.
{"title":"Laughing with Beckett in Waiting for Godot and Endgame","authors":"Mohammad Masoodi Miyanrostaq, Seyyed Mehdi Mousavi","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2022-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2022-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines the use of laughter as redemption in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Endgame. By acknowledging the somatic life of characters, Beckett’s humour problematises un-embodied philosophies of life. Challenging Hugh Kenner’s claim that Beckett’s humour is not redemptive because of the dryness and repetitions involved, it is argued that the foregrounding of fragility and vulnerability is a way of expressing deeply humane laughter in Waiting for Godot and Endgame. While highlighting that the dialectic of lack and excess is one source of Beckettian laughter, the main thrust of the argument emphasises the possibility of transcendence in a comic situation. The play of lack and excess, rather than suspending transcendental redemption, presents the human condition in its existential mundane realities. Accordingly, visceral and repetitive laughter are discussed in the two plays to bring to the fore the ironic and redemptive aspect of the comic, especially in the scenes where some sort of existential humour is implied.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116754237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rychter, Ewa, 2021. “Passing a looped and knotted string between their hands”. The Bible, the Women’s Liberation Movement and Women’s Bonds in Michèle Roberts’s The Wild Girl. Prague Journal of English Studies, Volume 10, Number 1, pages 23-41. doi: 10.2478/pjes-2021-0002","authors":"","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2021-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2021-0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125902734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper focuses on Peter Ackroyd’s unique type of psychogeographical writing. Therefore, apart from an overall elaboration on his works about London, it addresses his historiographic metafictional novels Hawksmoor (1985) and The House of Doctor Dee (1993). These esoteric novels provide insight into Ackroyd’s writing about the city in different time periods and make it possible to delve deeper into what this paper argues is his distinctive manner of implementing the notions of psychogeography. At the same time, it draws parallels from classical and contemporary psychogeography where appropriate and highlight his utilisation of it. The main aim of this paper is to reveal the ways in which Peter Ackroyd uses walking in the city to reflect its manipulative power over his characters which results in the transformation of their identities.
本文主要探讨彼得·阿克罗伊德独特的心理地理学写作类型。因此，除了对他关于伦敦的作品进行全面阐述外，本文还讨论了他的历史元虚构小说《霍克斯穆尔》(Hawksmoor, 1985)和《迪博士之家》(The House of Doctor Dee, 1993)。这些深奥的小说提供了对阿克罗伊德在不同时期关于城市的写作的洞察，并使我们有可能更深入地研究本文所认为的他实施心理地理学概念的独特方式。同时，在适当的地方，它从古典和当代心理地理学中得出了相似之处，并突出了他对它的运用。本文的主要目的是揭示彼得·阿克罗伊德如何通过在城市中行走来反映城市对人物的控制力，从而导致他们身份的转变。
{"title":"Peter Ackroyd’s Distorted Psychogeography","authors":"K. Garayeva","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2021-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2021-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper focuses on Peter Ackroyd’s unique type of psychogeographical writing. Therefore, apart from an overall elaboration on his works about London, it addresses his historiographic metafictional novels Hawksmoor (1985) and The House of Doctor Dee (1993). These esoteric novels provide insight into Ackroyd’s writing about the city in different time periods and make it possible to delve deeper into what this paper argues is his distinctive manner of implementing the notions of psychogeography. At the same time, it draws parallels from classical and contemporary psychogeography where appropriate and highlight his utilisation of it. The main aim of this paper is to reveal the ways in which Peter Ackroyd uses walking in the city to reflect its manipulative power over his characters which results in the transformation of their identities.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124181758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In his debut novel The Final Passage, first published in 1985, Caryl Phillips (dis)connects the English and the Caribbean spaces simultaneously imposing this inbetweenness onto his continuously misplaced characters. This paper explores the novel through the lens of disrupted parenthood, demonstrating that the ties between the family members mirror the inability of the protagonists to belong or to sustain relationships. By applying a postcolonial framework and including both canonical and recent texts produced in the field, this paper analyses how racial labels and assumptions weaken fragile bonds and further displace the characters as it also attempts to fill a gap since aspects of distress and breakdown are often neglected in literary criticism. Finally, given the background of the West Indies, the paper incorporates social and anthropological works dedicated to the region and connects Phillips’s narrative to the stories of migrants in contemporary Britain.
{"title":"Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage","authors":"Anastasiia Fediakova","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2021-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2021-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In his debut novel The Final Passage, first published in 1985, Caryl Phillips (dis)connects the English and the Caribbean spaces simultaneously imposing this inbetweenness onto his continuously misplaced characters. This paper explores the novel through the lens of disrupted parenthood, demonstrating that the ties between the family members mirror the inability of the protagonists to belong or to sustain relationships. By applying a postcolonial framework and including both canonical and recent texts produced in the field, this paper analyses how racial labels and assumptions weaken fragile bonds and further displace the characters as it also attempts to fill a gap since aspects of distress and breakdown are often neglected in literary criticism. Finally, given the background of the West Indies, the paper incorporates social and anthropological works dedicated to the region and connects Phillips’s narrative to the stories of migrants in contemporary Britain.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126650910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Arab American fiction has received great attention in the post-9/11 period. This ethnic literature has been put under a critical lens due to the aspects that shape it and the issues discussed in it. One of the main objectives of Arab American fiction is to bridge cultural differences and appeal to its readers, both Arabs and non-Arabs. This particular objective is achieved by the authors’ willingness to trigger empathetic engagement with their characters. As such, this paper looks at how Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan (2003) functions in accordance with the poetics of empathy. In other words, the aim of this paper is to show how fiction appeals to its readers through empathy and how empathetic engagement sustains the characters-readers connection, taking West of the Jordan as a literary example. This paper suggests that empathy in fiction is multi-layered and serves different purposes. The arguments are based on a conceptual framework supported by scholarly perspectives of prominent critics and theorists such as Chielozona Eze, Heather Hoyt, and Suzanne Keen, to name just a few.
{"title":"Understanding the Function of Empathy through Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan","authors":"Ishak Berrebbah","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2021-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2021-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Arab American fiction has received great attention in the post-9/11 period. This ethnic literature has been put under a critical lens due to the aspects that shape it and the issues discussed in it. One of the main objectives of Arab American fiction is to bridge cultural differences and appeal to its readers, both Arabs and non-Arabs. This particular objective is achieved by the authors’ willingness to trigger empathetic engagement with their characters. As such, this paper looks at how Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan (2003) functions in accordance with the poetics of empathy. In other words, the aim of this paper is to show how fiction appeals to its readers through empathy and how empathetic engagement sustains the characters-readers connection, taking West of the Jordan as a literary example. This paper suggests that empathy in fiction is multi-layered and serves different purposes. The arguments are based on a conceptual framework supported by scholarly perspectives of prominent critics and theorists such as Chielozona Eze, Heather Hoyt, and Suzanne Keen, to name just a few.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114238553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The objective of this paper is to examine in which way the use of the oral and written discourse in Julian Barnes’s novel The Sense of an Ending (2011) reflects, on the one hand, a social hierarchy based on classificatory cultural, intellectual, and educational competencies and resources and, on the other, dominance strategies and power relations developed among the principal actors. It will be investigated how trivial discussions and letters exchanged between friends are deployed in order to sustain or eliminate control over the other(s) and indicate status positions. The proposed methodological framework of analysis is founded on Bourdieu’s approach to cultural capital, according to which cultural preferences are markers of social stratification, while highbrow aesthetic judgment is both a means to, and a stake in, upward social mobility. Foucault’s theory of a “decentralised” and ubiquitous power, dispersed at all levels and defined as an action directed to other people’s actions, will also be applied.
{"title":"Discourse, Cultural Capital and Power Relations in Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending","authors":"E. Karagianni","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2021-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2021-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The objective of this paper is to examine in which way the use of the oral and written discourse in Julian Barnes’s novel The Sense of an Ending (2011) reflects, on the one hand, a social hierarchy based on classificatory cultural, intellectual, and educational competencies and resources and, on the other, dominance strategies and power relations developed among the principal actors. It will be investigated how trivial discussions and letters exchanged between friends are deployed in order to sustain or eliminate control over the other(s) and indicate status positions. The proposed methodological framework of analysis is founded on Bourdieu’s approach to cultural capital, according to which cultural preferences are markers of social stratification, while highbrow aesthetic judgment is both a means to, and a stake in, upward social mobility. Foucault’s theory of a “decentralised” and ubiquitous power, dispersed at all levels and defined as an action directed to other people’s actions, will also be applied.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124967903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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