Relationship between Sublime and Magical Realism Explored in The Monkey From the beginning of The Monkey, a short story located within Isak Dinesen's anthology Seven Gothic Tales, the reader is taken back to a “storytime” world he or she may remember from childhood. Dinesen's 1934 example of what has been identified as the "Gothic Sublime" sets the stage for analysis of its relationship to other types of literature. What constitutes Sublime literature? More importantly, how may sublime literature relate to Magical Realist literature? Through examination of The Monkey, the relationship between Sublime literature and Magical Realist literature can be defined. Scholars have traced the history of Sublime literature back to the third century literary critic Longinus. In his work Peri Hypsos, he lays the groundwork for the Sublime literature that still exists today. "Sublimity is always an eminence and excellence in language" (qtd. in Arensberg 3). "Excellence and eminence" are conveyed through rhetorical devices found in the text. Many of these devices are also found in works identified as Magical Realist works of literature. Longinus' characteristics are evidenced throughout The Monkey. One such characteristic is the use of elevated language to describe a scene or action: The Prioress received her nephew within her lofty parlor. Its three tall windows looked out, between heavy curtains which had on them borders of flower garlands done in cross-stich, over the lawns and avenues of the autumnal garden. From the damask-clad walls her long-departed father and mother gazed down, out of broad gilt frames, with military gravity and youthful grace, powered and laced for some gr... ... middle of paper ... ...ic realms cannot merge. For these reasons, based on the examination of these two works, one cannot assume that Sublime literature and Magical Realist literature are the same, nor can one assume that they are genres of one another. They seem to have many characteristics in common, and therefore one would assume that they maintain a close relationship, although independently. By comparing and contrasting another genre of literature with Magical Realism, the defining boundaries that make up Magical Realism are narrowed. Works Cited Arensberg, Mary. The American Sublime. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986. Dinesen, Isak. Seven Gothic Tales. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas Inc., 1934. Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Longinus. On the Sublime. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.
grew up to create an automobile Tucker that was years ahead of its time. He was
When analyzing the film Tucker, it is easy to see there are several external factors that contributed to his difficulty in the automobile industry. The first was really an intermingling of two threats, the threat of suppliers and rivalry. With the car industry being in the mature stage of the industry life cycle there were three major automobile manufactures and they controlled most of the market share in the industry. With them having such large market shares they also controlled much of the materials that went into manufacturing an automobile this included steel. Tucker faced this challenge when he attempted to buy steel to manufacture his vehicles and learned there was no steel to be purchased because the big three already controlled all of the available steel. From the assistance of Howard Hughes Tucker learned of a failing helicopter manufacturing plant that had in their possession more than enough steel to make the cars that Tucker needed to make. Tucker eventually gained access to the steel from the helicopter plant either through acquisition or merger th...
Every so often a man or women has an idea that is innovative, amazing or in some cases far ahead of its time. Unfortunately it is far too common that these ideas are lost or stifled by people who are afraid of the change they may bring. Since people also tend to believe if something seems too good to be true it probably is, these ideas may not get enough good attention until it is too late. Preston Tucker was one of these innovative people with a great idea. In 1944 he began work on a car that was safe, reliable, and groundbreaking. So far ahead of its time it made the wrong people nervous. The car was first christened as the Tucker Torpedo but due to concerns over torpedo not sounding safe, it was changed to the Tucker 1948. These amazing cars turned out to be one of the most revolutionary automobiles ever made and would have remained so if it weren’t for a slander campaign by the United States government.
Today SNAP is the new name of the federal Food Stamp Program. “SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The name was changed to SNAP to meet the needs of clients, which includes a focus on nutrition and an increase in the amount of benefit received” ("supplemental nutrition,"2011). Another detail about SNAP is its ability to respond to changing needs caused by economic cycles or natural emergencies on the local, state and national levels. It is second to unemployment insurance in its responsiveness to economic changes. SNAP is very helpful to low-income families’ monthly resources, increasing the chance families is able to meet basic needs.
Preston Tucker was an American automobile dreamer in the early 1900s. He was famous for creating a new innovative car which would have a safe design, including seat belts, safety glass, and a directional third headlight.
Giants and Angels roam the pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”, and “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World”, creating the perfect scene for magical realism. Many of the elements within these stories coincide with each other; this has everything to do with the overall component of magical realism, which binds together similarities and sets apart differences. The theme of each story can be found within the other and can stand by itself to represent the story it belongs to, the settings are similar in location and the ability to change but different in their downsides and the writing style is so similar it is complicated to find any differences. Marquez is a master story-teller whose works of art can only be compared with each other.
We have spent a good deal of this semester concentrating on the sublime. We have asked what (in nature) is sublime, how is the sublime described and how do different writers interpret the sublime. A sublime experience is recognizable by key words such as 'awe', 'astonishment' and 'terror', feelings of insignificance, fractured syntax and the general inability to describe what is being experienced. Perception and interpretation of the sublime are directly linked to personal circumstance and suffering, to spiritual beliefs and even expectation (consider Wordsworth's disappointment at Mont Blanc). It has become evident that there is a transition space between what a traveler experiences and what he writes; a place wherein words often fail but the experience is intensified, even understood by the traveler. This space, as I have understood it, is the imagination. In his quest for spiritual identity Thomas Merton offers the above quotation to illustrate what he calls 'interpenetration' between the self and the world. As travel writers engage nature through their imagination, Merton's description of the 'inner ground' is an appropriate one for the Romantic conception of the imagination. ...
What can be said about the sublime? Class discussion led to the definition of sublime as the element found in travel literature that is unexplainable. It is that part of travel literature where the writer is in awe of his or her surroundings, where nature can be dangerous or where nature reminds a human being of their mortality. The term "sublime" has been applied to travel texts studied in class and it is hard not to compare the sublime from texts earlier in the term to the texts in the later part of the term. Two texts that can be compared in terms of the sublime are A Tour in Switzerland by Helen Williams and History of a Six Weeks' Tour by Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. There are similarities and differences found in both texts concerning individual perspectives of travel and the sublime. The main focus of this commentary will be comparing and contrasting the perspectives of Williams and Shelley within their respective texts, the language of the sublime and the descriptions of the sublime.
Within the parts, he discusses topics of pleasure and pain, passion, infinity, beauty, ugliness, the physical cause of love, and the effect of words, among numerous other topics. Throughout his writing, readers discover that his feeling towards terror weigh out over all positive notions. Burke’s writing helps to establish the foundation of sublime theory. In addition, it will help in applying sublime theory to Lord Byron’s writing.
Millar P. H. “On the point of the Imitation Game.” Mind, New Series, Vol. 82,
In this piece, Tuck presents many ideas about the way literary works are written in order to convey her message: that readers must utilize abstract thought in order to effectively grasp various elements of fiction. Tuck establishes the concept of codependency between the reader and the author early on in the piece by quoting the 20th century philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, but it is her declaration that, “fiction is a creative act, an act of the author’s imagination and likewise, ideally, it should be read with the same imagination”, which solidifies her stance that literature is not meant to be read in the same monotonous and prescribed way we read habitually, but rather it is our responsibility
In conclusion, the sublime and the beautiful are major topics in romantic poems and novels. Different authors bring out the different ways they can be seen and interpreted. In the novel Frankenstein and the poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, the sublime and the beautiful are shown through the feelings and the mind of the main characters. In the poem “Mont Blanc,” the sublime is shown through the complexity of nature and how man will never truly be able to understand it. In order to have something beautiful there must be something sublime, and in order for they’re to be something sublime there must be something beautiful.
In the 1950s, Norbert Wiener made an observation on feedback theory, that all intelligent behavior is the result of feedback machines. The best example of a feedback machine would be a thermostat, which records the temperature in the room and compares it to the wanted temperature, and then changes the heat based on the difference between the two. Also in 1950, Alan Turing developed the Turing Test. A person asks another human, called the foil, and a computer questions via keyboard and screen, then try to tell which one is the computer. This is repeated with different foils and questioners, if many people cannot tell the difference between the two, then the computer can be considered intelligent. In 1955 Herbert Simon and Alan Newell developed The Logic Theorist, which is considered the first AI program. It would visualise the problem given as a tree diagram, then choose the branch that is most likely to solve the problem. In 1956, John Mccarthy organized a conference he called “The Dartmouth summer research project on Artificial Intelligence.” Though the conference was not successful, the topics discussed there led to more research later on. From then on, this fiel...
In considering the definitions and implications of Artificial Intelligence, many philosophers have reached extremely different conclusions. Alan Turing, author of the Turing Test, believed that an intelligent machine would be able to imitate perfectly a human. Margaret Boden, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Sussex, contends that a machine is intelligent if it possesses and displays certain human values. Moving away from the pure...
There are many perceptions of what a dream actually is. Some view dreams as the subconscious trying to speak to people, and others see it as religious visions of the future. Over the years, physicians and psychologists have collected countless amounts of research and evidence to support their viewpoints on dreams. I have always believed that dreaming is a time when the brain develops and analyzes important information (Bernstein 149). Dreams do not mean anything specific, and everyone has their own cultural perspectives of dreams. In reality, no one has the power to analyze and tell people the meanings of their dreams. According to Bernstein’s psychology book, dreaming is a time when the brain experiences story-like perceptions and sensations.