Academic literature on the topic 'Allegorismo narrativo'

This paper builds on previous calls for a green cultural criminology that is more attuned to narrative, as well as a narrative criminology that does not limit itself to nonfictional stories of offenders, in two ways. First, it considers how a particular kind of environmental narrative—that of climate change—appears, as well as criticisms thereof. In analysing and assessing existing climate change narratives, this paper contemplates the approach of heritage studies to loss and the (theme of) uncertainty surrounding climate-induced migration and human displacement. Second, this paper allegorises the fable of The Three Little Pigs as a story of climate change migration—an aspect of climate change that is misrepresented (and sometimes missing) in the discourse. This paper concludes with additional arguments for approaching, reading and analysing stories regarding human–human and human–environment relationships.

L'articolo presenta un’'approccio sincronico alla pericope della tempesta sedata. Dalla prospettiva della tradizione cristiana, dall'’antichit al medioevo, abbiamo cercato di individuare le chiavi di lettura allegorica, secondo le quali i diversi motivi letterari del testo erano interpretati come simboli di altre realt di carattere spirituale. L'ordine dei capitoli Š seguente: 1. l'analisi dell’intreccio narrativo; 2. l'interpretazione allegorico-simbolica della pericope nella tradizione dei Padri e degli scrittori del medioevo; 3. Le prospettive dell’interpretazione allegorico-simbolica trasmessa dalla tradizione; 4. Nuove proposte.

AbstractThis article examines a central narrative and ethical motif of Edmund Spenser’sFaerie Queene —the golden chain—in the context of Spenser’s broader debts to Homeric epic. While largely neglected in favor of more immediate sources, such as Virgil’sAeneidand Tasso’sGerusalemme Liberata, the influence of Homer’sIliadandOdysseyis profoundly felt in Spenser’s mythography of strife. In its representation of the consequences of cosmological and spiritual strife,The Faerie Queenerealizes the classical and late antique allegorical tradition of interpreting Homeric epic as illustrative of the doctrines of pre-Socratic philosophers such as Heraclitus and Empedocles. Its moral landscape structured according to the oppositional yet complementary forces of love and strife, Spenser’s epic enacts the Homeric-Empedoclean epic of the allegorists so as to offer its own etiology of discord, one sympathetic with, but also distinct from, that of Homer.

This essay examines contemporary feminist dystopias to study the phenomenon of gender pandemics. Gender pandemic narrative allegorises possible aftermaths of patriarcavirus, unleashing many natural disasters that force global biopolitics to hinder gender equality. The main objective of this essay is to explain how gender pandemics are appropriated in patriarchal utopian discourses as a pretext to control female empowerment, diagnosing women as diseased organisms that risk the state’s well-being. Moreover, the novels explore the interdependence between biology and sociality, portraying the acute vulnerability of female bodies during and after the pandemic conflicts, inasmuch as patriarchal power arranges a hierarchical value system of living that reinforces gender discrimination. Particularly, the COVID-19 emergency is analysed as a gender pandemic: the exacerbated machismo and the growing distress in the female population prove that women are afflicted with a suffocating patriarcavirus, which has critically gagged them in the first year of the pandemic.

Abstract This article investigates the use of biblical stories and text in the preaching of Joshua Feuerstein, a popular Facebook evangelist, and focuses on how biblical stories are used to position the viewer in comparison to biblical characters and texts. Taking a discourse dynamics approach (Cameron & Maslen, 2010), a corpus of 8 short videos (17 minutes 34 seconds) and their comments (2,295) taken from the Facebook are analysed first, for the presence of metaphorical language and stories taken from the Bible. Second, they are analysed for the role of metaphor in the narrative positioning (Bamberg, 1997) of the viewer, particularly as it relates to Gibbs’s notion of ‘allegorises’, or the ‘allegoric impulse’ (Gibbs, 2011). The corresponding text comments from the videos are then also analysed for the presence of the same biblical metaphor, focusing on how commenters interact with the metaphor and Feuerstein’s positioning of them. Findings show that biblical metaphorical language is used to position viewers and their struggles in the context of larger storylines that compare everyday experiences to biblical texts. This comparison can happen both in explicit narrative positioning of viewers with explicit reference to the Bible, and implicit positioning, through the use of unmarked biblical language. Analysis of viewer comments shows that use of metaphorical language is successful in building a sense of camaraderie and shared belief among the viewer and Feuerstein, as well as viewers with one another.

Abstract The likening of the lark to the Christian worshipper as in Herbert’s “Easter Wings” was anticipated by both Spenser and Shakespeare in references that have been overlooked to date. These stand in a tradition most richly represented by the early fourteenth- century French allegorist Guillaume de Deguileville, in his Pèlerinage de l’Ame, in which the pilgrim soul, guided towards the gate of Heaven by his guardian angel, finds himself surrounded by larks whose cruciform shapes in flying match their singing of the name “Jhesu.” Having fallen for the second time when fighting the dragon, Spenser’s Red Cross Knight rises on the third morning to find himself victorious. In his rising he is compared with the lark at dawn. The Edenic setting (which underlines the theme of the redemption of “fallen” man by the risen Christ) is also illuminated by Deguileville’s Ame; Spenser’s two trees are reminiscent of the “green and the dry” in the French allegory, according to which Christ appears as the apple pinned to the dry tree in reparation for the apple stolen by Adam. When one examines Shakespeare’s reference to the lark in Sonnet 29 in the light of the tradition represented by Deguileville (whose work not only Spenser but also Shakespeare might have read in English translation) the question arises as to whether the beloved addressed in line 10 (“thee”) could be Christ, and the speaker a Christian worshipper moving from self reproach to Christian gratitude. Such an interpretation is challenged by the standard assumption that the sonnets reflect a narrative produced by a love triangle. But from Petrarch’s Canzoniere on, sequences of love sonnets had contained poems of religious adoration.

This research explores the ways cannibalism in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Haunted (2005) and Nicolas Winding Refn’s film The Neon Demon (2016) are a consequence, and reflective, of the consuming nature of creative industries. The research draws from this exploration that the consumptive characteristics of cannibalism often allegorise the processes and careers of artists. Specifically, the sacrificial nature of putting oneself into one’s work, the notion of the tortured artist, and the competitive nature of creative industries, where the hierarchy is ascended through others’ losses. In the framing narrative of Haunted, seventeen writers are trapped within an isolated writing retreat under the illusion of re-enacting the Villa Diodati and writing their individual masterpieces. When inspiration fails them, they sabotage their food supply in order to enhance their suffering, and thus their eventual memoirs. The writers turn to cannibalism, not only to survive but to remove the competition. By consuming each other, they attempt to manufacture themselves as ‘tortured artists’, competing to create the most painful story of the ‘writing retreat from hell’. In The Neon Demon, the protagonist, Jesse, begins as an innocent young woman who becomes embroiled in the cutthroat modelling industry. Favoured for her natural beauty, Jesse antagonises her fellow models, developing narcissistic tendencies in the process. At the film’s end she is cannibalised by these rivals, indicating the industrial consumption of her purity, the restoration of individual beauty by leeching off of the young, and the retaining of the hierarchy by removing the competition. Employing close readings of both literary and cinematic primary source material, this interdisciplinary study investigates a satirical trend within cultural representations of cannibalism against consumptive and competitive creative industries. In each text, cannibalism manifests as a consequence of these industrial pressures, as the desire for fame forces people to commit unsavoury deeds. In this regard, cannibalism acts as an extreme extrapolation of the dehumanising consequences of working within this capitalist confine.

Arno Schmidt’s tripartite Leviathan (1949; written 1946—1948) is one of the few German narratives composed immediately after World War II. Different from the then newly-propagated Trümmerliteratur (literature among the ruins) or the literature of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coping with the past), Schmidt’s writing condensed and “dehydrated” narrative events, weaving antiquity and his personal experience into one in order to lay bare historical lines of continuity. Relating to Pytheas of Marsilia, to an ethics based on praxis and to modern physics, he undertakes a demanding topography of “hell descents” within which he also put into doubt political and academic demands upon a cultural legacy that was, to him, anything but timeless. The essay explores Schmidt’s didactic, innovative use of allegory and other rhetorical devices as tools for understanding long-term consequences of failures of interpretation and forceful restrictions on the play of imagination.

The character of Bimala in Tagore’s Ghare- Baire or The Home and the World as a symbol of struggle for the liberation of Bengali woman as well as Bengal remains at the centre of scholarly discussion since the publication (1916), translation (1919) and the film adaptation (1984) of the novel. Bimala, the main protagonist of the novel is presented as a native Indian woman who gets western education and lives a modern lifestyle due to her marriage. She has conflicting attitudes, feelings and thoughts which recur randomly in the narrative. The paper focusses on the character of Bimala and interrogates the location of her agency with respect to the rising Swadeshi movement and the political excesses on one hand and her relationship with Nikhil and Sandip on the other. On a further note, reflecting on the political and epic underpinnings of Bimala (caught between the gradual and the radical approach to Swadeshi), the paper intends to stretch beyond her “situation” (the apex of the triangular relationship) and explore her self-realization at the end of the novel. Bimala, the woman set between the option of choices between the ‘motherland’ and the ‘two-men’ gradually transgress from the shackles of her naïve identity to become the beset New Woman. To explore Tagore’s rewritten epic of a woman (epitomized in real life as the New Woman), we need to discuss how the writer helped shaping the image of the New Woman through his conscious evoking of Bimala in the role of Sita, Nikhil in the role of Rama and Sandip in the role of Ravana. In response to the popular inscriptions of Bharatmata, Tagore allegorises the iconographic representation of Bimala resembling the “divine feminine strength (Shakti)for creation and (Kali) for the cause of destruction.” (Pandit 1995,217-19).

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 對於《忠義水滸傳》可以采取宗教文學的現代讀法，就是從“暴力修行”的角度切入解讀，所采用的即是“出身修行”的奇傳文體，在三教與小説的關係中，只有從道教文化才能深入理解其創作旨趣。從《宣和遺事》所保存的古本到後來的百回定本，兩本之間的敘述儘管繁簡的差異極大，但是在宗教文化的淵源上仍可見其間存在的内在關聯，其一即是天書母題（motif）：從一卷到三卷，都反映道教與民間的九天玄女信仰，相信其秘授兵符與王朝的開國創業神話有關；其二爲謫凡母題：從下凡到謫凡乃是在凡間的修行，這種思想既爲小説戲劇夙所傳承，也是全真道與净明忠孝道的教内思想；其三則是一僧一道母題：代表佛教之眼與道教之眼，從出現魯智深與公孫龍之名到繁本的詳細敘述，都各以高僧與高道的身份預示宋江的未來命運。從遺事本到定本的敘述者都依據道教文化改造巨盜宋江，使其成爲星主宋江，其形成的時期應該在金元統治下的華北地區，反映漢軍世家在北方持久抗金、抗元的忠義意識，連同華北的漢人都曾基於民族認同，借用傳述宋江及其兄弟的“忠義”事迹，寓托其同情忠義軍首領所遭遇的命運，類似的事例就如邵青、李全等其人其事。歷來的索隱派均指陳水滸好漢曾被用於影射忠義軍的領袖，而小説敘述形成的關鍵，則是借用謫凡神話夸説其人物的“非常化”，在小説中將其“出身”星君化，使之具有“神煞并存”的性格與能力，故需在暴力中完成其凡間的“修行”。從天罡院、伏魔殿的罡煞隱喻，到聚散過程中以殺止煞的暴力表現，既可使水滸人物高度的隱喻化，也方便用於影射歷史事件中的忠義軍首領。在小説敘述中所完成的這種虚構性的想像世界，證明敘述者能够成功運用“非常化”的藝術手法，方便將所有的人物悉數納入36、72的聖數中，因而創造了謫凡神話的敘述模式。在明清小説中從此建立形式結構統一的文學譜系，在明代萬曆中葉以後也啓發了系列出身、修行志傳體的寫作風尚。由此可見水滸敘述在中國小説史上的非凡成就。 This essay is a new attempt to read the Zhongyi shuihu zhuan (Allegiance and Righteousness in Water Margin) from a contemporary perspective of religious literature. The methodology includes: (1) interpreting the text by conceiving a theme of “religious conversion through violence”; and (2) assigning the novel under the genre of sagas on “the heroes’ origin and their religious conversion.” While the novel has relationships with the Three Teachings (i.e., Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism), the author’s intent can only be fully apprehended by means of Taoist culture. Although there are significant discrepancies in length and details between the relevant narratives in the early version of the Memorabilia from the Xuanhe Reign-period and those in the one-hundred chapter version of Water Margin, the two texts are intrinsically related because they both derive from a common religious culture and contain shared elements, which give rise to three motifs. The first concerns the divine books. Chapters one to three reflect some Taoist and popular beliefs in the Mysterious Goddess of the Nine Heavens, whose esoteric bestowal of military tallies is believed to be prophetic for the founding of the dynasty. The second motif is about transcendents being banished to the mortal world. In fiction and drama, there are two kinds of such visitations, namely: the transcendent (1) descending to the mortal world and (2) being banished to the mortal world. They make two kinds of religious practices and represent a creed about allegiance and filial piety maintained by the Quanzhen and Jingming Taoist Schools. The third motif is the side-by-side appearance of a Buddhist monk and a Taoist adept. These two characters each represent the visions of their respective teachings. From the first mention of Lu Zhishen’s and Gongsun Long’s names in early sources to the expanded version (Water Margin), the eminent monks and Taoist adepts play the role of harbingers of Song Jiang’s fate. Taoist culture was a common intellectual foundation for both the Memorabilia and Water Margin. Only by means of this foundation may Song Jiang be transformed from a brigand to an astral spirit. This kind of thinking probably took place during the Jin and Yuan Dynasties in northern China, as it reflects the Han troops’ continuous resistance which allied with the sense of ethnic identity of the Han people in the north against the Jin and Yuan invaders. Through recounting the deeds and allegiance of Song Jiang and his sworn brothers, the authors explicitly express their sympathy for the fate of the loyal army leaders. Parallels respectively include the episodes on Shao Qing and Li Quan. Allegorists have long treated the heroes from Water Margin as a reflection of the loyal army leaders. However, it was a crucial point when the story was first formed, because the anonymous author(s) deified the protagonists and created their “supernatural” nature by means of the concept of “transcendents being banished to the mortal world.” The protagonists were therefore imparted with “both divine and daemonic” characteristics and abilities. As such, they would need to accomplish their “religious conversion” through violence. Highly allegorical reading may work in the understanding of the evil spirits in the Court of the Big Dipper and the Basilica of Subduing Demons, as well as the agglomeration-dissipation process of stopping evil through violence. These may be understood as a metaphor for the characters in Water Margin, and for the loyal army leaders in history. The creation of a fictive, imaginary world in the novel proves the narrator’s success in the artistic technique of “supernaturalization,” whereby the protagonists are assigned to the divine numbers of 36 and 72, and hence a narrative mode of myths of “transcendents being banished to the mortal world” is created. This marked the establishment of a literary genealogy of the unified formal structure in Ming-Qing fiction and inspired a trend in the writing of hagiographic novels on religious conversion since the middle of the Wanli reign-period (1573-1620) of the Ming Dynasty. This hallmark and influence reflect the remarkable achievements of the Water Margin in the history of Chinese fiction.

Lo studio, come dichiarato nel sintagma d'apertura del titolo, nasce dal proposito d’indagare la presenza di un’istanza allegorica nelle strutture in prosa. A tal fine, la ricerca condotta si svincola da una definizione dell’allegoria come mera figura retorica, per rivendicarne, sulla scia della lezione benjaminiana, lo statuto di ‘forma artistica’ attraverso cui trovano espressione le contraddizioni e le aporie dell’età moderna. Adottando una declinazione storicamente e culturalmente determinata di tale forma espressiva, il raggio d’analisi dello studio è circoscritto a una ben precisa area del secondo Novecento italiano, identificabile attraverso la formula di ‘letteratura di ricerca’. Le opere in prosa afferenti a questa koiné letteraria mostrano, infatti, un frequente e sintomatico ricorso a forme di ‘allegorismo narrativo’, capaci di incidere tanto sul piano contenutistico, quanto su quello della diegesi, delle forme e strutture testuali. Sfruttando l'ampia teorizzazione esistente sull'allegoria moderna (ripercorsa e discussa nella 'Parte Prima' del lavoro) e riflettendo, nello specifico, sulla relazione tra allegoria e narrazione (indagata nella 'Parte seconda'), la ricerca approda (nella 'Parte terza') a un percorso di letture critiche, che pongono l'attenzione su una serie di testi particolarmente esemplificativi delle modalità di allegorismo narrativo illustrate e commentate nel corso dello studio. Viene attraversata, secondo tale prospettiva esegetica, la produzione narrativa di Giorgio Manganelli (Centuria, Encomio del tiranno), Guido Morselli (Dissipatio H. G.), Paolo Volponi (Il pianeta irritabile), Luigi Malerba (Il serpente e Salto mortale), Edoardo Sanguineti (Il Giuoco dell’oca) e Roberto Di Marco (Fughe).

This chapter discusses S. Ansky's Destruction of Galicia (1920). The Destruction of Galicia is a travelogue, documenting Ansky's role in the Russian war effort. This chronicle stands as one of his most complex publications. While focusing on the physical destruction of Jewish communities and the variety of duplicitous, hostile, or ineffectual responses from non-Jews, its first-person account deploys literary strategies and embedded narratives that trespass the borders separating the conventions of journalism, political propaganda, and fiction. On these shifting borders between folklore and literature, Ansky emerges in The Destruction of Galicia not just as the foundational ethnographer of east European Jewry in the pre-war era, but also as the culture's most suggestive allegorist.

Abstract This chapter is devoted to Eustathios’ literary, rhetorical, and allegorical interpretation of the Homeric gods, whose form and function in the Iliad and Odyssey have been topics of much debate from the poems’ earliest reception until today. Eustathios distinguishes between the anthropomorphic gods as characters in Homer’s mythical narrative on the one hand, and their allegorical meaning on the other. In his view, the gods, as poetic fictions, are powerful devices in the hands of the poet to motivate the Iliad’s course of event, steer the plot in its desired direction, or hint at alternative narrative paths. As allegories of the poet’s mental faculties, moreover, Homer uses them to foreground the rhetorical choices he made in composing his poem and, in this way, to showcase his own rhetorical virtuosity. In Eustathios’ reading, the gods also have a deeper allegorical meaning, as representations of, for instance, natural elements or psychological and emotional forces. This deeper meaning is vital to the philosophical-didactic potential of myth, while being intrinsically connected to its rhetorical plausibility at the same time. The chapter’s first section briefly discusses the allegorical methods of ancient exegetes, the scholia vetera, and other middle Byzantine allegorists to place Eustathios’ interpretation in its wider exegetical context.