Syncretia: a virtual geography for narrative playfulness

This paper examines the strategies and theories involved in the creation of a virtual habitat; the island Syncretia located in the virtual world of Second Life®. The island is comprised of a series of narrative/play installations, which can also be considered as "artistic environments". Syncretia should be seen as an endeavor for providing a context for play, storytelling and metaphor; involving an examination of virtual geographies, cyberpsychology/Presence studies, ludology and their relationship to objets trouvé or ready-made art/architectural objects which have been utilized to a substantial degree in the structuring of the visual/narrative language of Syncretia

Discovery Islands, Earth Islands: The Theory and Practice of Island Imagery in Environmental Thought

Earth Island is a core metaphor of activist thought often applied in Environmental Analysis and related fields as a tool for thinking about the planet’s limited resources. It puts forth the claim that if only we thought of the earth as more like an island, we would better understand our connectivity to other living things and be drawn to develop better and more extensive practices of environmental stewardship. This thesis uses personal accounts of environmental life philosophies and political practices collected from residents of the Discovery Islands in British Columbia as a site for analytical comparison between the theory and practice of Earth Island. First providing an overview of the history of Earth Island and exploring existing Anthropology and Island Studies scholarship on island community dynamics and environmental perspectives, this thesis examines how the environmental relationships experienced by Discovery Islanders reflect or differ from the type of activist consciousness theoretically proposed by Earth Island. This creates a context for critically reflecting on the limits and applications of the Earth Island metaphor, and suggesting shifts in current approaches to the use of island imagery in environmental political and philosophical thought, promoting a focus on more community cooperation-oriented, less fatalistic themes

A metaphor called "Mozart"

In the following essay I shall venture on the ocean of metaphor, reducing the rashness of this project by the use of the well-worn boat of philosophy. I shall ask four questions: 1. Is it possible to realise metaphor through thought, action or emotion? 2. What is the opposite of metaphor? 3. Does an alternative to metaphorical thinking exist? 4. Does an alternative metaphorical thinking exist? However, should my project fail, perhaps the raft of metaphor itself might carry me safe to the island ruled by Ariel and Prospero, and where other shipwrecked once were met with soft music

Every Inch O'Th'Island: Cuba, Caliban and Clandestinidad

This article presents the metaphor of the character Caliban seen in Shakespeare's The Tempest that has been used as a manner to compare colonial subjectivities in postcolonial contexts throughout the Caribbean. Analyzing the sociological and economical impact of tourism on Cuba, this paper explores how tourism has given rise to a new subjected "Caliban" in Cuba through the promotion of social and economic disparities. The dispariites inherent between the tourist and the Cuban in the country are seen all throughout the island: the disparity arrives from outside of the island, affects the operations within the island, and even influences the operations "below" the island through the development of the Cuban black-market. Caliban, as this paper proposes, is subjected in "every inch" of the island, yet no longer by colonialists that arrive by ship, but by tourists arriving by plane

A village for an island : Malta in Frans Sammut's novel Samuraj

In Frans Sammut's novel Samuraj, the village in which most of the action takes place, is a metaphor of post-Independence Malta that is trying, and more often than not failing, to come to terms with what has been called the "severity of independence". The isolated, backward Village is plagued by the bipolar nature of its social make-up and strangled by its overpowering Church. Its 'moral' community takes the protagonist's refusal to toe the line as an affront to its authority, and its aggressive reaction forces him to turn to the painful, but fond memory of his battered mother for comfort, echoing independent Malta's inability to wean itself away from its colonised past.peer-reviewe

Anti-Crusoes, Alternative Crusoes: Revisions of the Island Story in the Twentieth Century

In lieu of an abstract, here are the chapter\u27s first two paragraphs: Everyone thinks they know the plot of Robinson Crusoe. The story of the man who is shipwrecked on an island alone is ubiquitous and feels deeply familiar, even for those who have not read it. Robinson Crusoe has been plagiarized, cannibalized, and serialized almost since the moment it hit the streets of London in 1719. Here is a passage from an Argentinean novel by Victoria Slavuski published in 1993 that captures the sense of familiarity and also the distance twentieth-century readers have in their relationship to Robinson Crusoe: “On days like these we promised each other that at long last we would take the time to read the copy of Robinson (Crusoe) that each household kept alongside the Bible and Twenty-five Ways to Prepare Lobster, written on Juan Fernandez by Amelita Riera. Nobody got past page fifteen of Robinson and almost nobody opened the Bible.”1 Literary critics often treat the multitude of twentieth-century versions of Crusoe as antagonistic to Defoe’s character. They tend to consider contemporary novels or films or poems as entities in competition with Robinson Crusoe’s fictional world. However, these modern renderings are never so neatly drawn. More often than not, writers use these alternative Crusoes to forge lines of affiliation and empathy, between the eighteenth century and our own time as well as between different regions and languages. Argentinean, Caribbean, and African Crusoes are in conversation with one another as much as they are in dialogue with the historic Defoe. Writers around the globe adapt and transform Crusoe and Defoe’s novel to establish a literary web of connection that has come to define our own global moment where fiction travels beyond national and linguistic borders. In this chapter I will move through a few observations on nineteenth-century Crusoes before delving into the twentieth-century map of literary islands crisscrossing the globe

'Metaphorically'

Not every metaphor can be literally paraphrased by a corresponding simile – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is not the literal meaning of ‘Juliet is like the sun’. But every metaphor can be literally paraphrased, since if ‘metaphorically’ is prefixed to a metaphor, the result says literally what the metaphor says figuratively – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is the literal meaning of ‘metaphorically, Juliet is the sun’

Landscape, culture, and education in Defoe's Robinson crusoe

In their article "Landscape, Culture, and Education in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe" Geert Vandermeersche and Ronald Soetaert discuss Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as a narrative that translates nature and our dealings with it into a literary text. Vandeermeersche and Soetaert postulate that the novel can be read as a quintessential fable of humans' cultivation of nature and the creation of individuality, which, at the same time, provides its readers with strategies for describing processes such as education. Robinson Crusoe and its characters, metaphors, and scenarios function in the "auto-communication" of culture as an enduring equipment for living (Burke), a company readers keep (Booth), and a cognitive tool in modern Western culture

Take Me Out to the Metaphor

[Excerpt] “In the fall of 2003, Judge Smith of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island wrote that “[c]ases examining the issue of workplace sexual harassment by women against women are about as common as a baseball post-season that includes the Cubs and the Red Sox . . . . Judge Smith’s observation was, of course, rooted in the perception among baseball fans, and in the popular culture, that nothing says “futility” quite like a reference to the Chicago Cubs or the Boston Red Sox. Conversely, there can be little doubt that for one in search of a baseball metaphor for success, all roads lead to the Bronx, home of the New York Yankees. This article examines judicial references to the Cubs, Red Sox, and Yankees that are based on the ongoing ninety-eight-year wait for a World Series championship on the North Side of Chicago, the recently ended eighty-six-year drought between titles in Beantown, and the twenty-six World Series trophies won so far by the men in pinstripes.