Vol 10 No 2 2018 - Page 2

‘Filthy creation’: the Problem of Parenting in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Debapriya Goswami

Assistant Professor of English, Department of Basic Science and English, NSHM Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Durgapur. Orcid: 0000-0002-6801-0083. Email: dg81186@gmail.com

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.20

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to bolster the relevance of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein by engaging contemporary bioethical discourses on procreation and parenting. It claims that, besides being a celebrated science fiction for the last two centuries, the novel bears pensive suggestions on parenthood. Exploring the ways in which the creature suffers in the hands of its creator, the paper argues that Frankenstein anticipates the need for an ethics of parenthood. The paper discusses the deficiency in Frankenstein’s parenting, as it seeks to reread his position vis-à-vis his creation. In recent times, parenthood and procreation have been a major bioethical concern. By presenting the views of contemporary philosophers on parenthood, the paper unfolds Shelley’s ingenuity in staging the disturbing ramifications of imprudent parenting on children as early as in the nineteenth century. The paper, hence, is an effort to underscore the contemporaneity of Shelley’s ideas on parental choices which she proficiently enfolds in the narrative of a gothic fiction.

Keywords: Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, parenting, bioethics, procreation.

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More Horrible than the Monster: Social Antagonism and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Ghiasuddin Alizadeh

PhD candidate of English Literature, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.

Orcid: 0000-0002-4119-2251. Email: Ghiasuddin.alizadeh@gmail.com

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.19

Received January 15, 2017; Revised May 21, 2018; Accepted May 22, 2018; Published May 26, 2018.

Abstract

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has often been considered as a political novel and an attempt to account for the dire consequences of the failure of the French Revolution. However, contrary to the common vogue for identifying Frankenstein’s monster with the negative dimensions of political and revolutionary movements, a careful reading of the novel reveals a deeper problem hidden behind the figure of the monster. This study is an attempt to read Frankenstein in the light of the politico-psychoanalytical ideas of Slavoj Žižek in an attempt to prove the fact that the monster is Mary Shelley’s fantasy construction in order to conceal the ontological antagonism which marks the socio-symbolic order. By drawing on Žižek’s concept of fantasy and its role in obfuscating the fundamental inconsistency of the Other, the research has tried to disentangle the world of the novel from the horrible presence of the monster, by bringing to light a more frightening horror against which the monster turns out to be a protective screen, namely, the horror of the Real.

Keywords: fantasy; French Revolution; the Real; the monster

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‘I know I will hear what I heard before:’ The Role of Music in Narrative Progression

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Andrea Pérez Mukdsi

University of North Georgia, U.S.A. Orcid ID 0000-0003-3922-1073. Andrea. Email: PerezMukdsi@ung.edu

Received November 01, 2017; Accepted March 25, 2018; Published May 24, 2018.

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.17a

Abstract

This article constitutes an initial approach to the analysis of musical instances as narrative progression-related marks. For this purpose, I examine the short “Meeting” (1966) by the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar using the notions of instability and tension coined by James Phelan. I show in what way the story-discourse model of these texts uses various musical elements that produce a high/low degree of character presence/reader immediacy within the narrative progression. Ambiguity represents one of Cortázar’s characteristic traits, due to the fact that instabilities are seldom resolved in the story and tensions are left to the reader’s empathetic constructions. I argue that the musical material that either motivates or comes forth from this text is the force that shifts the narrative away from ambiguities and propels the character and reader forward through the absence of closure and completeness that is frequent in most Cortázar’s narratives.

  Keywords: Julio Cortázar, Mozart, music, narratology

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Frames, Vanishing Points and Blindness: Frankenstein and the Field of Vision

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Will Greenshields

Independent Researcher.  ORCID: 0000-0003-1464-7182. Email: willgreenshields88@gmail.com

 Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.18

Received January 14, 2017; Revised March 14, 2018; Accepted April 02, 2018; Published May 18, 2018.

Abstract

Whilst the preponderance of references made in Frankenstein to the instruments and organs of the visual field has been repeatedly acknowledged by the text’s readers, little sustained attention has been paid to the field that these instruments and organs both construct and occupy. In this paper we will examine the particularity of this field, outlining its structure (the vanishing points and framing), content (its peculiarities and obscurities) and subjects (their modes of witnessing and blindness). Opening with an analysis of Walton’s visual field qua desirous fantasy in light of his reference to “keeping”, we closely study the visual fields constructed by the artistic, scientific and profane eyes of Shelley, Frankenstein, Clerval and the monster.

Keywords: Frankenstein, aesthetics, ethics.

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Khortha, a Dying Language and Urgency to Retain its Pure Variety

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Swati Priya1 & Rajni Singh2

1Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT(ISM) Dhanbad. Email: swati.jha@hotmail.com

2Associate Professor of English, IIT(ISM) Dhanbad, India. Email: rajnisingh18@gmail.com.

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.17

Received February 09, 2017; Revised March 15, 2018; Accepted April 05, 2018; Published May 07, 2018.

 Abstract

Languages are repositories of history, they express identity and contribute to the sum of human knowledge. (David Crystal, 2000). The linguistic diversity is really a benchmark of cultural diversity. Language, knowledge and culture are intricately woven. If a language is lost, the knowledge and cultural aspects of that community becomes extinct.   The present study discusses about language death and the factors that leads to the language death in the world and in India. The prime focus of the study is to consider Khortha, a tribal language being spoken in Jharkhand and its neighboring states, as an endangered language. Khortha is fading away and is on the verge of losing its identity, the paper hence discusses some of the preventive measures to revitalize the language and safeguard it from getting extinct. The study has been presented through the data collected from the communities living in the outskirts of Dhanbad and the linguistic variation has been shown based on various parameters.

Keywords: Language death, tribal language, language revitalization, linguistic variation

Positioning Kali in Thuggee Tradition

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Rasheda Parveen1 & Akshaya K. Rath2  

1Doctoral Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Rourkela. Email: butan_rozy@yahoo.co.in. 

2Assistant Professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Rourkela. Email: akrath2001@gmail.com.

 Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.16

Received December 09, 2017; Revised March 31, 2018; Accepted April 05, 2018; Published May 07, 2018.

Abstract:

In British India, positioning Kali within the thuggee cult and rationalizing human sacrifice ran parallel and witnessed a paradigmatic shift by the end of the nineteenth century. The cult provided a basis for high romanticization and assisted in the mission of projecting a disgraced religious practice. This paper explores how the mother-figure was idealized for rationalizing human sacrifice and the religious symbols were overused. Central to the discussion is the role of the earthly and celestial body of the goddess that codified the practice in its extremity. In addition, controlling the body and subjugating the Orient remained operative within the discourse of mother-worship.

Key Words: Kali Worship; Human Sacrifice; Thuggee; Colonialism; Criminal Tribe

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The Prodigal Sons of Africa Proselytized to Christianity: Cultural Renegades and Apostates in Achebe’s Novels

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Virender Pal

Department of English, University College Kurukshetra. ORCID: 0000-0003-3569-1289. Email: p2vicky@gmail.com

 Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.15

Received January  11, 2017; Revised March 15, 2018; Accepted March 25, 2018; Published May 07, 2018.

Abstract

In the postcolonial world the literary writers and postcolonial theorists have made immense contributions to piercing through the veil of the policies of colonialism. While the theories of the theorists written by Colonialism remain and are read and understood by a privileged few, literature is read by people across all the cultures and nationalities. Chinua Achebe is one of the most important name among such writers who have contributed immensely to postcolonial studies. His novels show that colonialism was an enterprise to plunder the natural resources of the enslaved countries in the name of spreading the light of civilization. This spreading of light of civilization lead to the annihilation of local cultures as the local cultures were systematically obliterated and replaced with the alien white culture. His first novel Things Fall Apart was written as a reply to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The novel asserted that Africa was civilized before the arrival of the whites. In No Longer at Ease (1960) he studies the impact of sustained colonial rule on his people. The current paper is a study of Chinua Achebe’s novel No Longer at Ease and Things Fall Apart. The novesl shows that the indigenous culture and religion was the best for the Africans. The imposition of an alien culture has created intractable problems for the Nigerians and the remedy lies only in going back to the roots, to the Ibo “commonsense.”

Keywords: colonialism, Christianity, Ibo, Africa, corruption.

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Cinema as the Platonic Cave: French Thinkers’ Views on Media Education

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Alibek Serikbekovich Begalinov, Madina Serikbekovna Ashilova, Kalimash Kapsamarovna Begalinova

Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan.

Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages, Kazakhstan

 Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.14

Received December 23, 2017; Revised March 10, 2018; Accepted March 20, 2018; Published May 07, 2018.

Abstract

The views of prominent French philosophers-poststructuralists on the nature of cinema, television and their connection with the system of modern education are explored in the article. The main goal of the research is to answer the question: can modern media act as a teacher? Do they have a positive impact on the upbringing process, or do they harm it? Each of the thinkers presented in the article has its own point of view. However, together they bring a general idea of ??interconnection and interdependence of media and education system. The novelty of the article is a scrupulous study of this aspect in the work of French thinkers, analysis, synthesis of their ideas and concepts, and, as a result, determining the influence of modern media on both education system and overall development of society.

Keywords: philosophy of education, philosophy of upbringing, pedagogy of perception, deconstruction of cinema, postmodern, cinema philosophy, pyrotechnic imperative, simulacrum.

 

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‘Forgive Me Father, for I have Sinned’: The Violent Fetishism of Female Monsters in Hollywood Horror Culture

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Adharshila Chatterjee

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Women’s Christian College, Kolkata. ORCID: 0000-0001-5351-0328. Email: adharshila.chatterjee@gmail.com

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.13

Received December 23, 2017; Revised March 10, 2018; Accepted March 20, 2018; Published May 07, 2018.

Abstract

In the generic gothic cornucopia, the figure of the female ‘victim’ becomes merely a physical signifier of the disembodied, biopolitics of violence that underlies the hyperrealistic, reiterative function of the visual body, which is to enact aggression in a vicious unending loop. It is a form of violence that is written on carefully choreographed, gendered bodies, which are manipulated as objects of graphic male fantasies. Since then, popular representations of femininity in the Hollywood gothic culture have remained mostly trapped within the finite, stunted constructions of the infantile, virtuous ‘good’ woman, the carnal/ cold femme fatale and the monstrous Other – terms that are subsumed in a pervasive categorical insulation, which does not allow for much mobility when it comes to their metonymical boundaries. This paper investigates the visual politics and polemics of our cultural engagement with monsters in popular films, which occupies an impressively broad range – “from movie monsters to psychotic killers, from the abusive family member to the horrific politician”. (Baumgartner and Davis 2008) Attempting a conjunction between Kristeva’s conception of the Abject, Laura Mulvey’s postulations on narrative cinema and voyeurism, and Barbara Creed’s theories on feminism, film and femme castratrice, I seek to examine the qualitative scope, evolution and appropriation of the ‘monstrous-feminine’ (Creed) in Hollywood horror/ thriller genre and negotiate the possibility of a female heroine/ anti-heroine whose performative value can disrupt and overhaul the castration complex and sexual anxiety of the classic cinemas of terror.

Keywords: Female Monsters, Monstrous Feminine, Abject Body, Hollywood, Horror

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Modern Advertising Practice: Gender Images and Stereotypes Generation

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Anel Kanatovna Naisbayeva1 Aliya Rmgazinovna Massalimova2 Azhar Kuanyshbekovna Zholdubayeva3

1PhD student, Cultural Studies, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Republic of Kazakhstan. Email: anelechka90@mail.ru

2Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Al-Farabi Kazakh National Universit,

3Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University

 Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.12

Received December 23, 2017; Revised March 10, 2018; Accepted March 20, 2018; Published May 07, 2018.

Abstract

Since nowadays mass media are not only an important institutional setting, but also an information transfer and gaining channel, they have a substantial effect on generation and fixation of gender stereotypes in public consciousness. It is for this reason that mass media are considered as one of the leverages effecting broad public consciousness. Therefore, gender images and stereotypes, which prevail in advertising texts and subjects, become permanent in consciousness of common persons. The relevance of this article is stipulated by the fact that the results of the studies extend scientific perceptions of gender stereotype phenomena, which may promote enhanced study of positive and negative gender stereotypes existing in national advertising. In this article, the main trends in the development of gender stereotypes in modern advertising practice, as well as public stereotype mentality, widespread public stereotypes along with male and female images fixed in public consciousness of people in the former Soviet republics (evidenced from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine), are discussed. With a view to studying gender images and stereotypes’ generation in modern advertising practice, we have carried out a sampling analysis of print (magazine) advertising published in magazines of different countries in the Russian language.

Keywords: advertising, advertising area, gender stereotypes, gender images, gender roles, gender markedness.

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