Cultural Blocks
The Influence of Micro Fiction of Robert A. Bloch and Fredric W. Brown on the Extra-short Stories in Japanese Literature View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Liala Khronopulo
Among the short stories by American authors translated into Japanese in the late 1950s – early 1960s, there were also extra-short stories by Robert A. Bloch and Fredric W. Brown written in the genres of social and psychological science fiction, detective stories, fantasy, and psychological horror. Japanese writers known by their experiments in the genres of extra-short mystic and detective stories, as well as in the genres of psychological horror and science fiction, note that their creative activity was partly influenced by Bloch and Brown: these are Hoshi Shin’ichi, Atōda Takashi, Akagawa Jirō, and Tamaru Masatomo. This paper examines the topics, ideas, artistic devices, and psychologism of the Japanese micro fantasy, detective stories, science fiction, and horror, as well as its metaphorical meanings and images. Allusions to Bloch’s and Brown’s micro fiction in the short-short stories by contemporary Japanese authors are analyzed from a comparative perspective. Following Bloch’s and Brown’s methods and techniques, the Japanese writers in their stories demonstrate symbolism, allegory, wordplay, and black humor, as well as probing into certain social problems and human nature. The succession of plots and philosophical ideas by Bloch and Brown is examined on the material of the short stories by Japanese authors, where the literary parallels to the American writers’ micro fiction can be traced; in addition, it is also noted that in some stories it is not the plots which are borrowed, but mostly various artistic devices. American origins of the Japanese extra-short story are investigated for the first time.
The History of the Georgian Queen and European Literary Reflections View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tamar Paichadze, Nino Mindiashvili
Literature and culture in general are often based on certain paradigmatic cognition. The initial-binary in this case is the personification and symbolization of the event or object of the person. From this point of view, certain symbolization of a person is especially strong, when the fact comes from the activity and merits of the person. A literary text is even more powerful and motivated if the mentioned symbolization and refers to a person distinguished by historical mental, moral, or cognitive characteristics. Each of the mentioned signs is to some extent realized in a specific moral or imperative idea. We consider the personal and historical factors of the Georgian Queen Ketevan who lived in the 16th century, with these parameters. The life and religious merits of Queen Katevan became a kind of unprecedented and exemplary fact for the fight against coercion, colonial or totalitarian policies and disobedience, as well as for the protection of faith, opinion, conscience and finally the rights of women (on the basis of gender). The act of martyrdom of Queen Ketevan became the bearer of a historical mission for the Christian institution of the period not only in the Queen's homeland, but also throughout the then Christian/Catholic space, in late medieval Europe, us the defense of moral and mental values. This fact has been reflected since the Baroque era in German (Andreas Griffius), French (Padre Ambrosio), Italian (Pietro de la Vella), Russian (Michael Sabinini) and Portuguese (Roberto Gulbekiani) theological, philosophical and artistic narratives.
Reason and Faith: Desacralisation and Resacralisation in Sérotonine (2019) by Michel Houellebecq , L'Anomalie (2020) by Hervé Le Tellier and Le Voyant d'Étampes (2021) by Abel Quentin
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Janet Neethling
The desacralisation of Western social practices over the last few centuries, induced by the conquests of science, among other things, has had profound effects on the functioning of society and on individual thinking. The representation of Western society in three French novels from the literary period known as “l’extrême contemporain” depicts a materialistic world that represses the spiritual dimension which forms part of the human condition. “L'Anomalie”, an apocalyptic account of a cosmic crisis that confounds scientists and philosophers, illustrates Jean-Marc Ferry’s “post-secular” perspective according to which recent scientific discoveries, far from solving the enigmas of the universe, are uncovering its thousand mysteries, rendering the idea of the supernatural less implausible. Jean Brun describes man’s sense of alienation from the mystery of existence as “an ontological separation”. Man tries to abolish this separation and conquer time and space by means of science. In “Sérotonine”, medical science succeeds in keeping the depressed protagonist alive temporarily by regulating his hormones, but his emotional and spiritual crisis takes over in an individualistic world devoid of communal rites. Le “Voyant d'Étampes” traces the efforts of a failed academic to navigate a world governed by constantly changing normative rules prescribed and described by the social sciences. How should social issues be managed in a society where neither traditional religion nor the sciences provide solutions to existential crises? In response to contemporary issues, these novels represent various forms of resacralisation: love as secular spirituality, the subliminal nature of poetry, and the new doctrines of woke ideology.
