How real is real: attitudes towards realism in selected post-war British fiction

Despite its apparent precision in meaning, realism as a once-held literary school of thought provokes controversies regarding its basic definition and the works attributed to it. This is particularly the case with the postmodern use of the term, most specifically in relation to fiction, with realism generally asserted as the traditional language of the genre. This paper is an attempt to discuss the implication and tenets of realism, its progress and changes, in selected works of post-war British fiction. Accordingly, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, and Ian McEwan’s Atonement are dealt with to trace realism within their respective modes of new realism, fantastic-grotesque and postmodern metafiction. Having survived the early twentieth century allure of modernism, realism has gradually evolved into a new identity capable of emerging in and mingling with new modes prevalent in postmodern fiction. Owing to the spirit of the time immediately following the Second World War and the particularities of different authors, the postmodern realism has gone beyond a mere portrayal of the objective world and is in demand of a refreshed understanding of the new outlooks contemporary realism has the potentiality to offer

Grotesque representations of deviant sexuality in Ian McEwan's selected short stories

Themes of sexuality, particularly in excessive and extraordinary forms, can readily merge into the grotesque to ameliorate their depiction and thematic impact. Ian McEwan’s early fiction best exemplifies such inclinations. The psychologically violent and excessive world of McEwan’s early fiction is basically conceived in the milieu of sex and through grotesque representations. In this relation, the present work selectively focuses on “Solid Geometry” from First Love, last Rites (1975) and “Reflections of a kept Ape” and “Dead as they Come” from In between the Sheets (1978) to illustrate the implication and range of the grotesque in McEwan’s short fiction. The selected stories are discussed for their portrayal of the grotesque, as represented through transgressive partnership and deviant sexuality. The portrayal of sexuality in McEwan’s early short fiction offers a variety of the grotesque types of narrative mingling the mode both with the fantastic and the caricature

The grotesque body in Ian McEwan’s short stories

The subject matter and imagery prevalent in Ian McEwan’s early fiction are shockingly unpleasant and justifiably notorious for their portrayal of grotesqueries to the extent that their significance has been ignored or undermined compared to his later more successful works. In the present study, we discuss these grotesque representations and their implications in a number of his short stories from the two collections of In Between the Sheets (1975) and First Love, Last Rites (1978). Our discussion of the grotesque body in the aforementioned stories relies on a synthesis of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of grotesque realism and John R. Clark’s view of the modern satiric grotesque, which involves grim laughter and degradation reinforced through scatological imagery. We thus argue that the loss of a communal and regenerative sense of human existence in the modern life style can explain the sadism, masochism, violence or fatality prevalent in contemporary fiction as exemplified in McEwan’s short stories

Pre-colonial residuals in Toni Morrison's Recitatif and Alice Walker's Everyday Use

This article examines Toni Morrison's Recitatif and Alice Walker's Everyday Use as post-colonial texts. Morrison's short story moves beyond the postcolonial aftermath to maintain pre-colonial cultural conventions. The discussion begins with how Recitatif is considered within the field of postcolonial studies, demonstrating such postcolonial concepts as diaspora, nativism and chromatism. The study also focuses on Alice Walker's short story Everyday Use, and discusses how various forms of Filiation/Affiliation and Synergy contribute to the conventions of precolonial culture. Everyday Use aims precisely at ethical propensity within colonial circumference. Thus, Walkerself-consciously illustrates the level of its pre-colonial features, which expose the colonisation dispersal of identity

Maggot therapy and monstrosity: the grotesque in Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood

Speculative fiction is able to foresee the changes of the environment and social strata via imitation of future society (Gough, 2003; Otto, 2012). With the same intention, Margaret Atwood makes use of an alternative natural medication, maggot therapy, as an important recuperative method to cure physical lesions and injuries in The Year of the Flood (2009). Historically, although once a common practice among healers of antiquity, maggot therapy has since been discarded from medical context, partly due to its carnivorous and parasitic nature. The present paper intends to discuss the implication of this kind of natural therapy and its sense of monstrosity and grotesqueness as presented in Atwood's novel. In using this therapy as motif, the novel illustrates the grotesque through exaggeration and gory and monstrous features, which lead not only the characters but also the readers to experience disorientation due to the unfamiliar state of savagery. With a focus on relevant theories of the grotesque, the study aims to highlight how the monstrosity inherent in maggot therapy renders the grotesque in this novel, that is, by juxtaposing savagery and culture and evoking repulsion and attraction

Erratum: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Interpretation: By quantifying levels and trends in exposures to risk factors and the resulting disease burden, this assessment offers insight into where past policy and programme efforts might have been successful and highlights current priorities for public health action. Decreases in behavioural, environmental, and occupational risks have largely offset the effects of population growth and ageing, in relation to trends in absolute burden. Conversely, the combination of increasing metabolic risks and population ageing will probably continue to drive the increasing trends in non-communicable diseases at the global level, which presents both a public health challenge and opportunity. We see considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in levels of risk exposure and risk-attributable burden. Although levels of development underlie some of this heterogeneity, O/E ratios show risks for which countries are overperforming or underperforming relative to their level of development. As such, these ratios provide a benchmarking tool to help to focus local decision making. Our findings reinforce the importance of both risk exposure monitoring and epidemiological research to assess causal connections between risks and health outcomes, and they highlight the usefulness of the GBD study in synthesising data to draw comprehensive and robust conclusions that help to inform good policy and strategic health planning

The grotesque in selected modern Persian and post-war British short stories

The grotesque enjoys a long history and a wide range of theoretical discussions which provide various, sometimes diverse, interpretations of this artistic and literary genre. While some scholars discuss the grotesque in association with related fields of study such as psychology or philosophy, some others basically focus on the grotesque itself. From a different perspective, the grotesque is also considered as a subject of study in terms of any or all the three levels of production; author (artistic mind), work (creation) and reader response (reception). The present study concentrates on the theories of the grotesque per se, and it is basically involved with work and partly with reception, considering that some elements of the grotesque are related to the effects it produces. This research discusses the grotesque as a focal image and mode of representation, based on a pattern developed from its recurrent elements. Accordingly, the recurrent features of the grotesque are drawn from the scholarship and are then classified and developed into hallmarks constituting the framework presented by this study. The grotesque, as a subcategory of Western aesthetics in art and literature, is also studied in this dissertation for its adaptability and extension to non-Western literature, namely short fiction. The study is thus devoted to a textual reading of selected Modern Persian as well as Post-war British short fiction. It is sought to trace the grotesque through its basic pattern in the interpretation of works from both literary traditions. In this regard, pairs of stories are thematically matched through motifs potentially associated with the grotesque. This is in line with the methodological approach to comparative studies, which requires a point of departure as the rationale for the comparison. Four sections in two discussion chapters are devoted to textual analysis of four pairs of stories. Textual analysis for each section initiates with a discussion on the common motif and is followed by close readings of both stories in the pair, which are read and interpreted in their depiction of the grotesque. A final section on each story pair concludes on the commonalities due to grotesque representations and elaborates on the variations of grotesque fiction as portrayed. This implies that the classification of grotesque fiction and its interrelatedness with the fantastic and caricature are also elaborated on. This study suggests that common misunderstandings and interpretive contradictions surrounding the meaning and the structure of the grotesque have most to do with its variations and interrelatedness, which can be best explicated in terms of its comprising a basic pattern with flexibility for its merger with other terms and modes