Aesthetic Studies - Page 3

Latin American Revolutionary Poetry and Songs

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Benjamín Valdivia

University of Guanajuato (Mexico). E-mail: valdivia@ugto.mx

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s0n4

Latin America has been defined as a land which has no other possibilities than its future. Since the historic times gave to this part of the world the fate of being oppressed, all its past was an expectancy of a self-consciousness in search of identity. ¿What are we if our language and traditions were sacked by cruel conquerors? We were, from there, a search for being ourselves.

In any place and time, protest expressions are a common way in the battling to attain power. In many forms, protest is linked to the arts, as they are privileged vehicle for making a stand in favor of a specific political position, or to support an opposition. Arts are, in this connection, used to be subsidiary for an ideology, a set of assumed principles, or a desideratum sustained by some social group. In the other side, arts are ambiguous, or abstract, and need some amount of interpretation. The hermeneutic process applied to arts must cover all gaps and suppositions to complete, almost always in a verbal way, the idea; or to precise with words any lack of sense. Direct declarations or obvious elements give place to pamphletary pieces, but artists accept these if they can establish with certainty a militant proposition. In that, poetry is the best way for a fusion of the abstract realm of musicality with the direct phrasing of politics. In that case, the result is a song, transmitting concepts, but with the empowering of sounds. Martial rhythms, or traditional schemes already adapted in the basis of culture, can be a good option for composers having this purpose.

In Latin America, protest is almost a way of life, due to political conflicts, war, invasion, and submission, are continuous experiences from past centuries to present. Some philosophers, as we established before, think Latin America as a world region having a serious search for identity, since each stage of its past seems to be a destruction of any possibility of feel the life as a normal property of human beings; and seems, too, an expulsion from its proper self. Because of this historical feeling of not belonging, Latin America has only one stage for self-recovery or redemption: the future. Colonial oppression is a principal item whenever we search for a definition appliable. But, at the same time, we recognize a constant trend inside the heart of Latin America: revolutionary expressions inviting to build a better future or claiming for a transformation in a self-affirming way. For all of this, one can understand why exists a variety of artistic Latin American expressions aligned in this profound path to build a better life. Its revolutionary songs and poetry intent to service for that…FULL TEXT PDF>>

In Defiance of the Pandemic – The Poetic Word

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Yes, I Mean Poetry, Now!

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona. Email: aclassen@arizona.edu

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s0n3

Introduction

In a certain way, COVID-19 has forced the world to wake up again and to realize how little we are in control of our own existence. We have increasingly built a world of fantasy on the basis of science and medicine over the last decades or so, but one tiny virus has now brought that house of cards down in an incredibly short period of time, and no end is in sight while I am writing these lines (July 2020). We have been asleep for far too long, dreaming of a bright future in which everything would be possible without any costs to ourselves and the earth. But we live now in the Anthropocene, the new age in which the earth is slowly but certainly getting out of control because of the human impact, while we humans also face the horrifying reality that we are surrounded by an infinite number of viruses that could all become deadly for us.[i] How do we then live under those circumstances, and where do we find ourselves now that we are coming out of these dreams?[ii]

            Throughout the centuries, if not millennia, pandemics have raked humanity, taking a huge toll each time, but then people managed somehow to pick up their previous activities and kept living, deeply shaped by the tragedy, but still, living.[iii] However, there were the dead, thousands, if not millions. And the grief, the mourning, the personal suffering, the huge questions, WHY? And, WHAT IS THE PURPOSE of it all? Love or religion did not help to prevent anything, death came and cut down so many people, good ones and bad ones, old and young, men and women, all races, all genders; the grim reaper has never made a difference; it’s only the number that matters, the more the better, at least from death’s perspective. We could almost re-write human history as a history of suffering, of tears, or pain, and question the true nature of the creature we call homo sapiens. All founders of world religions have been deeply moved by this realization and have tried, more or less successfully, to come to terms with these almost quixotic questions. If we have to die anyway, why do we live?[iv] We only need to think of the Crusades, the Hundred Years’ War, the Thirty-Years’ War, World War I and II, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan wars, the Biafra War, the Kosovo War, the civil war in Syria, the war between Saudi-Arabia and Yemen, and countless other conflicts, and could despair over the endless aggression and hostility in the name of this or that religion, ideology, political claims, or racist notion. It almost seems a miracle that humankind has not yet annihilated itself by now, especially in light of the nuclear threat since the Cold War, a threat that has not effectively been eliminated until today, irrespective of what poets might have said about it ever since the first explosion….FULL TEXT PDF>>

[i]. Michael B. A. Oldstone, Viruses, Plagues, and History: Past, Present, and Future (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2010); Michael G. Cordingley, Viruses: Agents of Evolutionary Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); the current literature on this topic is legion.

[ii]. David Farrier, Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction. Posthumanities, 50 (Minneapolis, MN, and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2019); Reinhold Münster, “The Anthropocene, Technology and Fictional Literature,” Humanities 9(3), 56 (2020); https://doi.org/10.3390/h9030056; Gregers Andersen, Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis: A New Perspective on Life in the Anthropocene. Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).

[iii]. Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death, ed. Monica Green. Medieval Globe (Kalamazoo: Arc Medieval Press, 2015); John Aberth, Plagues in World History. Exploring World History (Lanham, Boulder, et al.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011); Pest: Die Geschichte eines Menschheitstraumas, ed. Mischa Meier (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2005);  Peter C. Doherty, Pandemics. What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

[iv]. In the Middle High German verse narrative, “Der arme Heinrich,” by Hartmann von Aue (ca. 1190), the protagonist is destined to die a very early death because of leprosy. A medical doctor down in Salerno, Italy, has told him, however, that if a young nubile virgin were willing to die for him, then her blood could heal him. This is, of course, impossible, but at the end, when Heinrich is awaiting his death while staying with a farmer whom he had granted numerous privileges before, the man’s young daughter learns of this miracle cure and quickly volunteers to die for him so that he could live. Although her parents are horrified about this, she develops such rhetorical skills in justifying her decision that they have to give in, as much as it grieves them deeply. Heinrich also accepts her offer, but just before the doctor is then about to cut open her body to take out her heart, the protagonist peeks through a hole in the wall and suddenly realizes the terrible misdeed that he is about to commit via the doctor. Like in an epiphany, he recognizes the spiritual beauty within and the ugly nature of his body outside, so he forgoes the sacrifice, despite her vehement protests. Amazingly, he is then miraculously healed because God, the speculator cordis (the scrutinizer of the heart), has observed that Heinrich has healed spiritually, which makes it possible for him to return to the living completely recovered in body and mind.

               When the girl discusses her decision to sacrifice herself for Heinrich, she explains: “till now worldly desires that lead to hell have not touched me. Now I thank God that in my young days he has given me the good sense to scorn this fragile life completely. I intend to surrender myself into God’s power, pure as I am now. I fear that if I get old, the sweetness of the world will draw me underfoot, as it has drawn very many whom its sweetness has duped. Then I might well be denied to God. . . . Our life and our youth are mist and dust. Our stability trembles like a leaf. He is surely a misguided fool who likes to fill himself with smoke . . . who cannot grasp this and who pursues the world; for a silk cloth is spread over the fool dung before us. He whom the splendor seduces is born for hell and has lost nothing less than both soul and body.” The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, trans. with commentary by Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 225. I have argued before that the young woman actually symbolizes Heinrich’s soul, and only when he accepts his spiritual and material side as a holistic whole, can he live fully. Albrecht Classen, “Herz und Seele in Hartmanns von Aue “Der arme Heinrich.” Der mittelalterliche Dichter als Psychologe?,” Mediaevistik 14 (2003): 7-30; id., “Utopian Space in the Countryside: Love and Marriage Between a Knight and a Peasant Girl in Medieval German Literature. Hartmann von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich, Anonymous, ‘Dis ist von dem Heselin,’ Walther von der Vogelweide, Oswald von Wolkenstein, and Late-Medieval Popular Poetry,” Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: The Spatial Turn in Premodern Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen, with the collaboration of Christopher R. Clason. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 9 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 251-79.

Art in the Digital during and after Covid: Aura and Apparatus of Online Exhibitions

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João Pedro Amorim1 & Luís Teixeira2
1Universidade Católica Portuguesa, School of Arts, CCD/CITAR, pamorim@porto.ucp.pt, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0267-1276

2Universidade Católica Portuguesa, School of Arts, CCD/CITAR, lteixeira@porto.ucp.pt, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1206-4576 

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s1n2

Abstract

The public health measures that were put in place to contain COVID-19 impacted the lives of people and institutions alike. For its global impact and transformation, the pandemic has the potential to be classified as a mega-event. Such radical events have become great opportunities to the testing of new technologies and forms of organisation, (Masi, 2016) that might in the future become prevalent. The impact of the pandemic was particularly felt in the contemporary art world, as the entire cultural activity was suspended. During this period, art institutions and collectives around the world reacted by adapting and providing alternative materials online. This paper aims at reflecting upon the challenges facing the exhibition of contemporary art online. Following Boris Groys’ (2016) actualisation of Walter Benjamin, we problematise how the digital reproduction of art affects the aura of an artwork. Proposing a critique of the apparatus of digital platforms, we analyse how the digital reproduces and enhances ideological structures that overpass the whole of society. For that purpose we analyse how four different organisations (an artist-run space, an art gallery, a museum and an art biennale) have migrated their activity to online platforms. The case-studies will allow a broad understanding of the different approaches available – with some radically taking advantage of the digital environment, and others merely digitising the role taken henceforth by printed catalogues.

Keywords: reproducibility of the work of art, Art in the Digital, Aura, Contemporary Art, apparatus

The Way of the Firang: Illustrating European Social Life and Customs in Mughal Miniatures (1580 CE -1628 CE)

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Soujit Das1  & Ila Gupta2

1Assistant Professor of History of Art, Government College of Art and Craft Calcutta, West Bengal, India.

2Retired Senior Professor, Department of Architecture and Planning & Joint Faculty, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India.

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s1n1

Abstract

During the sixteenth century, along with the rise of the Mughal Empire, the social landscape of India changed drastically with the advent of the European colonial powers. In 1580 CE, following the First Jesuit Mission to the Court of Emperor Akbar, a new cross-cultural dialogue was initiated that not only impacted the socio-economic and political fabric but also the artistic productions of the time. The growing presence of the European traders, ambassadors, soldiers, and missionaries in the Mughal world also lead to several curious narratives that were widely circulated. These tales also gave birth to cultural misconceptions as the Europeans on several occasions were seen as social evils. They were often collectively addressed as Firang/Farang or ‘Franks’ and were perceived as ‘strange and wonderful people’ or ‘ajaib-o-ghara’ib’. It was during the Mughal reign when for the first time in Indian visual culture, a conscious attempt was made to document the life and customs of the European people. This paper attempts to understand how the processes of cultural alienation and Occidentalism had influenced the representation of Europeans in Mughal miniatures. It also argues how Mughal artists innovate new iconographic schemes to represent and perpetuate a sense of the ‘other’. How artists used these identity markers to establish notions of morality as well as of Islamic cultural superiority. The select illustrations also attempt to elucidate how these representations of Europeans were culturally appropriated and contributed to the Mughal ‘fantasy excursions’.

Keywords: Firang, Mughal, miniatures, Occidentalism, cross-cultural encounters

Editorial: Reflections on Literature and Art at a Time of Pandemic

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Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay

Profesor Titular, Miembro de Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (Nivel I), CONACyT, Mexico, Departamento de Arte y Empresa, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. Chief Editor, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. Email: chiefeditor@rupkatha.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.00

Imagine the dystopia created by this viral holocaust. Incendiary piers start, burning bodies in wastelands. At night wastelands reportedly turn into a mass crematorium. At a University hospital in New Jersey, the bell rings every half an hour, announcing the passing away of a Covid victim. Ideas of nation states, frontiers, countries have only enclosed people in prisons of illusion.  Such unreal lineations become fault lines for nationalism, migrations, war and hierarchical exclusion. The Corona virus however is not impeded by such boundaries. It transmits from human to human; it affects people without distinction of nationality, economics, franchise, and turns humans into targets with a kind of Dawkinsian indifference.

On the other hand, though, the virus innervates solidarity in humans, which is manifest as the indivisibility of the herd. Yet, we are only capable of ignorant and conflicted response towards the possible evolution of, what Petrashov called, ‘noocenosic’ ecosystems. For Petrashov, biological agents like humans would have to compromise to co-exist or live with other powerful collectives like the virus and similar nanometrical entities that percolate through this wide world. On several occasions we may not have adequate knowledge about coping with threats that are so microscopic and intangible. Various respond activities have been proposed. Contrasted to proposals of precautionary survival aided by statistical indicators, we hear of views like that of some Swedish administrators who say that forced quarantine strategies are already conditioned by biopolitical responses to acts of war and terrorism. Epidemiological caution is supposedly built on a politics of panoptical surveillance. Hence it is not an indispensable tool in the management of the pandemic. Social evolutionary thinkers like Stephen Goundry speaks of the physically interactive gestures tht are necessary for social life and survival, and say that quarantining goes against natural human evolution.

2.

But the virus has forced us to reconsider what it means to live under the fear of death or even speciate extinction. This is where the artist’s personality comes at stake – since the artist, like all other human beings, is just another human being who has to respond to signals in its immediate environment, sometimes erroneously drifting, and sometimes doing the right thing. The virus has also generally coerced us to recognize true human worth out of the consciousness of our fragile life in the biological world. This global pandemic gives us a moment to reflect on the nervous and weedy layers of artifice that we have used to cover life’s raw and beautiful texture. The virus has instigated a psychosis in terms of not just statistical effects of disease and precipitant mental depression but from its threats to creative life. Biological virulence, is linked to media virulence, it turns human creativity into a whimpering shot in the dark. On a daily basis, we seem to be trapped in a world constantly manipulated by media pseudologies. There is little scope of independent thinking. Good examples of independent thinking are not hard to find though. Pepe Mujica, the former president of Uruguay, who was called “the poorest President” by the BBC, has a wonderful precept from Montevideo, where he tried to experiment with a lifestyle statement that was aimed at a distant and long-term amelioration of narcotic traffic in Central America. Mujica’s lessons were easy and difficult to achieve at the same time – he demonstrated that narcotic economy results from human greed of material things, not for substance abusers, which is another problem elsewhere, but for poor people in Uruguay, El Salvador, Colombia and other countries, who participated in the trade. Mujica’s own life, like Gandhi’s, was a demonstrable proof of this grand simplicity that touches the core of our humanity.

In a world where ‘art’ has become a product of investment economy, it is now time to acknowledge that anonymous art is better than art of the genius. Folk art is superior to masterpieces. Ritual is superior to art in a show-case. True novels are lived rather than parcelled out by the giant media. Neatness is more beautiful than décor and an unassuming home is more divinely aesthetic than a furnished salon with books printed by the media houses.

The project hence is to liberate humane expression from cinders of decadent royalty and big business, and from the fantasies spotlighted by newspapers and TV news. The virus forces us to confide in the warmth and love of home. It is the same love that preserves us at any time of want or hardship. Anthropophilia causes us to care for each other. It makes us committed and risk our life for others.  It is this capacity to empathise that saves us. Empathy, care, regard for others and for kin, are more important than any art that the media celebrates. The human being sacrifices love in order to become a monster of one’s passion – but no good comes out of it. The friendship of working class people is more precious than the social prestige commanded by the elite. The painted face of the news presenter secretly mocks at the ineptitude of the common man.

3.

The virus cannot be taken as an incentive to create “viral poetry”, as a testament of human art, like an Instagram post without any meaning beyond the instant. Browsing through the poetry section of last week’s Vanity Fair, we see on its page, the same incongruous union of contemporary “vanity” and “art”. The very title is pompous and instantaneous: “Why Poetry Is Having a Moment Amid the Global Quarantine”. As we read further we are introduced to the post-marketing world: “The poem is enjoying a bump in cultural relevance as the world sits at home and considers its surroundings. Why your timeline is possibly suddenly sprinkled with verse”. The Vanity Fair article is a precise reminder of how the same interweaving wealth of media magnate, collector, consumer and wealthy business personnel, fashion industry, ‘art’ is also actively spreading an idea of its own self-organizing poetry or art. The obnoxious twitter, the rigmarole of all things flashy and apple, blend wirh the empty tragedy of people locked at home.

The University in America, and many countries of Europe, has become a votary of the same class culture that prepares you for this world of quick sensations. In such times as now, we are compelled to ask “How does a novel apprised in New York impact the life of a villager in East Africa, or a lemon picker in Michoacan, or the trash collector in Kolkata’s marshlands. The media novelist, so gorgeously fetishized in the academy, is no more than a colonial and pseudo-progessive metrosexual. Museums worldwide have become abominable machines of the destruction of human spirit. The Metropoitan Museum of Modern Art once exhibited works of an indigenous artist. After the exhibition, the artist asked for a little compensation for transport and installation of the exhibits. The museum said, that they displayed his work was a lot of investmet in itself – and that he should be grateful for that. The MOMA arrogance exposes the real values of the art world. Consider the invisible way in which a critic in The New Yorker creates these neocolonial evaluations for a piece of painting. She says on the home page, “Museums know the desires of our hands. The special presence of paintings comes from their being at once untouchable and viscerally evocative of touch. (April 21, 2020)”. A piece of painting is never so important, that it will continue to invoke our presence for its self-fetishization.  Painting does not transcend life and humanity – it does not need to sit in a museum and make its own publicity look so arrogant and inhumane, waiting for its bidder, and its entry into the house of a collector.

4.

True human values lie in the honesty of the heart, even of it is not ‘artistic’ by the world’s standards. There may be true worth in the greatest of writings, but its appropriation by the industrial elite, has overshadowed its preciousness in a world of self-mesmerizing profanities. Creative writing should be undertaken in one’s own language, criticism should enrich one’s own culture and values. The unthinking study and glorification of Anglophone discourse, out of which we can scarcely escape, automatically aligns us to the media elite that tries to control the world’s markets. As long as we don’t shift our attention from the sufferings of our fellow humans we shall not render a disservice to people who speak the same language as ours, who reap the fruits, flowers and grain that sustain us. True beauty is tied to this simple life of communications.  The viral moment has now created a space of introspection. It lets us focus on the essential spark of life. Academic discussions have been alienating us for long time.  The best definition of creative process is to be creative, explore – each one, one’s true hope and dream. and to hope for expiation through a humble word. It would be time, in a world freed from the virus, to identify and negate the presence of all brands of elitism.

Magical Realism: The Magic of Realism

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Ayyub Rajabi1, Majid Azizi2, Mehrdad Akbari3

1Ph.D. Student of Persian Language and Literature. Arak Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran. Email: ayob.raiabi@gmail.com

2, 3Assistant Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Islamic Azad University of Arak

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.18

Abstract

In Magical Realism the elements of reality and imagination are so elaborately interwoven that the reader simply accepts them, in such a way that all artificial and imaginary incidents in the storyline seems completely real and natural. Considering the concept of Realism, it can be realized that literature aims to surrender itself to the real world and, by the means of imagination and imagery, balances the truth. Furthermore, realism admits that it owes a repayment to the real world, the world that it indisputably surrenders itself to. The results of this study indicated that, this art and the magic of Realism and reality have transformed Magical Realism into the most appealing and real type of Realism in such a way that, despite its magical and marvelous appearance, it is mostly acceptable and believable for the reader. Additionally, this kind of literary genre is more consistent with the principles of the school of Realism than any other, and it presents the mission of the Real author and his/her commitment to the community well and beyond reality.

Keywords: Imagination; Realism; Magical Realism; Knowledge; Reality.

Analyzing Indira Parthasarathy’s High Noon in Light of G.H. Mead’s Theory of Self and Society

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Jesintha Princy.J1 & Sarika Gupta2

1Research Scholar, School of Social Science and Languages,VIT. ORCID: 0000-0001-7304-5726. Email:  jesinthaprincy@gmail.com

2Associate Professor, School of Social Science and Languages,VIT. Email: tyagisarika27@gmail.com.

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.10

 Abstract

The concept of self is the individual’s configuration of beliefs and opinions that have the primary association to his/her own behavior, “especially those ideas considered most central and enduring in the individual’s behavior” (Pasricha, 206). This organization of one’s own thoughts and beliefs relatively provides a continual experience in different social situations. The exchange, evolution, participation in the social process organizes the behavior of the individual that results in the emergence of a better self. George Herbert Mead’s analysis of self and society emphasizes that the existence of self without the experience in the social process is absolutely impossible. Indira Parthasarathy’s penmanship is often a social criticism that is embellished with an individual’s participation and response to the social setting. Analyzing the novella High Noon through the viewpoint of Mead’s theory of self and society, the process of emergence of self in the individual makes our understanding of the issues better. The development and emergence of self of the two main characters Ambi and Vembu Ayyar are observed through their reflexes in the social process they are involved in.

Keywords: self, society, social setting, behavior, socio-psychology, development, emergence.

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The Natyashastra-based analysis of Mahesh Dattani’s Where Did I Leave My Purdah

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Mrunal Chavda

Assistant Professor, Institute of Language Studies and Applied Social Sciences. ORCID:  0000-0002-3817-4124. Email: mrunalchavdaiima@gmail.com,

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.09

 Abstract

This article uses the Natyashastra, an Indian treatise on performing arts, to develop an overlooked method of theatrical analysis. This treatise offers useful insights on how gestures are produced during the performance, which has been practiced by performers across the world. While scholars research the Natyashastra in the contexts such as theatre, rasa theory, and its bodymind connection, this treatise has been employed to analyze gestures produced by contemporary Indian theatre performers in Mahesh Dattani’s Where Did I Leave My Purdah. The outlined exercise through an examination of a case study advocates a method of theatrical analysis.

Keywords: production analysis, Mahesh Dattani, Indian theatre in English, Natyashastra.

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Carnivalesque and its All-Pervasive Influence in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine

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Hassan Abootalebi & Alireza Kargar

PhD student of  English Language and Literature, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran. Email: abootalebi2010@gmail.com

M.A in English Language and Literature, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran. Email: alirezakargar1984@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.08

 Abstract

The current paper is an attempt to scrutinize and shed some light on Caryl Churchill’s play Cloud Nine (1979) with the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of carnival and carnivalesque explicated in his celebrated book Rabelais and His World (1984) which presupposes a world in which the flouting of, and challenging authority along with disrespect for, and disregard of, what is deemed sacred and valued are vital and instrumental, where individuals are liberated from any restrictions imposed on them outside carnival, and are permitted to pursue what pleases them without the least fear of being castigated, oppressed or interrupted by authorities. The selected work, as argued in the subsequent sections of the present article, presents a world where authority and social constructs as well as  conventions are all undermined and mocked. What is thought of as truth is, therefore, mocked, and the characters are no longer restricted by imposed rules and regulations. It, however, celebrates the subversion and calling into question of gender roles and demonstrates how restrictive and oppressive these roles can be, and what it is like when one is not circumscribed by societal constructions and expectations, and is given the opportunity to enjoy themselves in an unlimited way. In the first act, everyone stands in an already pre-defined position, as expected by the authorities, where no transgression is tenable, and no one seems inclined to go beyond them. The second act, however, is set in London in 1979 and women are no longer restrained by rules, and the characters as a result grow. In what follows, the words carnival and carnivalesque will be first fully defined and elaborated on, and then applied to Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine to illustrate the above-mentioned claim.

Keywords: Mikhail Bakhtin, carnival, carnivalesque, Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine

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Mythical Motifs in the Furniture of Elamite Civilization

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Neshat Madadi,1 Hassan Ali Pourmand2 & Seyyedeh  Motahareh  Mousavi3

1Department of Public, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran.

2Associate Professor, Faculty of art & architecture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

3 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran. Email: motaharehmousavi@yahoo.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.06

Abstract

Elamites the first founders of the kingdom in Iranian territory were the pioneers of the use of animal motifs in the design of Iranian furniture. Since their very inception up to their decline, they made use of such motifs as snake, lion, wild goat and duck in designing their furniture. The current essay aims at the identification of the causes of the application, culmination, and decline of these motifs in designing furniture, particularly ancient Elamite thrones. The present study is fundamental research given its objective and is qualitative and exploratory in view of its essence. Data collection is based on library studies. The results show that in Elamite civilization due to the sacredness of snake, this mythic creature is the most popular motif in designing furniture. Elamites in addition to snake used such alternative motifs as lion, wild goat, and duck which enjoyed religious and social acceptability. Such motifs were used by Elamite gods, kings or officials in religious rituals or ceremonies and the reflection of Elamite ideas in relation to these creatures is visible in the design of their furniture.

Keywords: Iranian Furniture, Motif, Elamite Civilization.

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