Search results for "fiction"
showing 10 items of 419 documents
Associations between identity processes and success in developmental tasks during the transition from emerging to young adulthood
2019
Little is yet known of how personal identity processes of exploration and commitment develop beyond adolescence and how they interact with developmental tasks of young adulthood. Employing the DIDS (The Dimensions of Identity Development Scale; commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth, exploration in depth and ruminative exploration) in a longitudinal sample of Finnish young adults (measurement at age 24 and 29; N = 854, 63% women), the results of this study suggested 1) that identity commitment and exploration levels, in general, decrease over time, 2) that success in developmental tasks but not sex moderate this development, and 3) that among developmental…
“Historical fiction is back”: (Non)Fictional Pasts and Presents in Fred Khumalo’s metahistorical romance, The Longest March
2023
International audience; This article examines the ways Fred Khumalo’s second historical novel, The Longest March, blends different genres – from the use of gothic tropes to the rewriting of historical romances – to reflect on both the fabricated and limited nature of narrative, as well as its necessity in the South African context. The article concludes that The Longest March qualifies as a “metahistorical romance”, as it blurs the boundary between fiction and nonfiction while questioning historical discourse.
The Soviet Spy Thriller. Writers, Power, and the Masses, 1938-2002
2022
It is commonly held among scholars that in the Stalin years no specific mass literature existed in the Soviet Union; what do we do, then, with Lev Ovalov’s Major Pronin or with Lev Sheinin’s stories, which began to appear since the mid-Thirties? What about Nikolai Shpanov’s post-war million-sellers? The Soviet authorities did not like to admit that they published low-quality literature aimed at the uncultured masses; they valued, however, its propa- ganda potential, hence this contradictory situation. Spy narratives, moreover, connected as they are with conspiracy theories, were of course welcomed in the atmosphere of the great purges. These works are no continuation of the “Red Pinkerton” …
The uneven transition towards universal literacy in Spain, 1860–1930
2021
This study provides new evidence on the advance of literacy in Spain during the period 1860–1930. A novel dataset, built with historical information from the Spanish population censuses (over 8000 ...
The democracy–ochlocracy–dictatorship transition in the Sznajd model and in the Ising model
2005
Abstract Since its introduction in 2000, the Sznajd model has been assumed to simulate a democratic community with two parties. The main flaw in this model is that a Sznajd system freezes in the long term in a non-democratic state, which can be either a dictatorship or a stalemate configuration. Here we show that the Sznajd model has better to be considered as a transition model, transferring a democratic system already at the beginning of a simulation via an ochlocratic scenario, i.e., a regime in which several mobs rule, to a dictatorship, thus reproducing the corresponding Aristotelian theory.
Playing with Time in Digital Fiction
2015
The exceptional quality of digital fictions lies in their inherently dynamic nature, how they may be flexibly programmed to generate new content and alter the already existing contents. This adds a new temporal level, compared to traditional fictions. Digital games, especially, incorporate aspects of simulation and narration in their structure. As interactive and dynamic media form, games are specifically temporal in nature. They offer us the flexibility and preciseness of digital simulations, with the potential of psychologically engaging narrative qualities, which together open up a whole new field of experimenting with temporally dynamic media. Much of the new media fictions partake in a…
Los Subalternos en las ficciones de apropiación de menores
2013
the rol of the subordinates in the appropriation of children during the Argentinian Dictatorship has been questioned in several disciplines. However, are the works of the writer Martín Kohan which have managed to tell the untold history in a very effective way by condensing it in the creation of a credible fictional world and, because of that, grinding. In Dos veces junio, as well as in Cuentas pendientes, the consequences of the banality of evil are obvious, since it represents the consensus set within the different levels of the repressive State machinery and glipmse the consequences of all this in the life of future generations.
Ceci c'est la pipe: come si racconta l'assedio di Leningrado
2017
L'assegnazione del premio Nobel a Svetlana Aleksievič è stata interpretata da più parti come un atto di canonizzazione della letteratura non-fiction, e spesso come una prova della caduta definitiva delle barriere tra letteratura e giornalismo. Aleksievič ha però alle spalle, nella letteratura sovietica, una tradizione che, se non è definitivamente codificata, risale però probabilmente fino agli anni Trenta e, soprattutto a partire dal dopoguerra, presenta una consistenza niente affatto trascurabile. L'analisi comparata di un testo del maestro dichiarato di Aleksievič, Ales' Adamovič, la Blokadnaja kniga (scritta a quattro mani con Daniil Granin) e della più canonica delle opere letterarie s…
“The drops which fell from Shakespear’s Pen”: Hamlet in Contemporary Fiction
2012
Questions of gender, ethnicity and sexuality have all been raised by novelists intent on rewriting Shakespeare from the position of what have been seen as cultural margins. While discussions of such rewritings are ongoing, few concerted efforts have been made to trace a pattern in the treatment of Shakespearean allusion and adaptation at the hands of British and American writers of the literary mainstream. The present essay sets out to investigate the way in which three such writers —Ian McEwan, Graham Swift, and John Updike— employ allusion to/adaptations of Hamlet in their novels and what their respective stances reveal about their understanding of their role as canonical writers.