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Short Stories (short + story)
Selected AbstractsThe Effects of the 1999 Turkish Earthquake on Young Children: Analyzing Traumatized Children's Completion of Short StoriesCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2010Elif Celebi Oncu The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine whether projective techniques could identify long-term consequences among children stemming from exposure to a traumatic event. The first group of children (n = 53; 26 female, 27 male) experienced 2 major earthquakes at age 7, 3 months apart, in Turkey, while a similarly matched control group (n = 50; 25 female, 25 male) did not. Both groups of children (current age: 9) completed a series of short stories related to disastrous events. Results indicated that the traumatized group evinced a range of trauma-related symptoms 2 years after experiencing the earthquakes. [source] Children's use of gesture to resolve lexical ambiguityDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 6 2009Evan Kidd We report on a study investigating 3,5-year-old children's use of gesture to resolve lexical ambiguity. Children were told three short stories that contained two homonym senses; for example, bat (flying mammal) and bat (sports equipment). They were then asked to re-tell these stories to a second experimenter. The data were coded for the means that children used during attempts at disambiguation: speech, gesture, or a combination of the two. The results indicated that the 3-year-old children rarely disambiguated the two senses, mainly using deictic pointing gestures during attempts at disambiguation. In contrast, the 4-year-old children attempted to disambiguate the two senses more often, using a larger proportion of iconic gestures than the other children. The 5-year-old children used less iconic gestures than the 4-year-olds, but unlike the 3-year-olds, were able to disambiguate the senses through the verbal channel. The results highlight the value of gesture to the development of children's language and communication skills. [source] Suffering and Domesticity: The Subversion of Sentimentalism in Three Stories by Marie Von Ebner-EschenbachGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 1 2006Charlotte Woodford The fiction of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830,1916) is set firmly in the material reality of the Habsburg Empire. Although realist in its commitment to reflecting contemporary society and its values, it has often been ,accused' of sentimentalism. This article argues that while Ebner's short stories indeed adopt some sentimental tropes, this should not be regarded as detracting from the complexity of her work. Rather, it is complex and worthy of examination in its own right. A closer and more differentiated analysis of sentimentalism in Ebner's fiction than is usually undertaken by modern criticism demonstrates that Ebner self-consciously uses sentimental strategies, such as religious imagery, the idealisation of characters or the death of a protagonist, in order to subvert the ethos of the conventional sentimental novel. This tended to reinforce women's domestic role and strengthen the reader's belief in the spiritual value of suffering. The stories ,Das tägliche Leben', ,Die Resel', and ,Der Erstgeborene' show how Ebner, by contrast, undermines the idea that suffering has any value in a religious sense, and takes issue with the idea that women should obediently submit to domestic unhappiness. [source] Julio Cortázar quotes on normal and abnormal movements: Magical realism or reality?MOVEMENT DISORDERS, Issue 8 2006Marcelo Merello MD Abstract Together with Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar was one of the most representative authors of the Latin American magical realism genre. Within his extensive body of work, many descriptions of characters suffering physical disabilities, as well as situations suggesting such medical conditions, can be extracted. In this review, two short stories by Cortázar are presented. In the first one, the main character could easily be a man suffering from corticobasal degeneration; in the second, an old woman with symptoms suggestive of progressive supranuclear palsy is clearly depicted. Despite the fact that one of the main ingredients in Cortázar's magical realism is fiction, cases described here fit real medical conditions quite well, making it hard to believe that they represent purely fantastic descriptions rather than the product of Cortázar's inquisitive observation and the description of real patients. © 2006 Movement Disorder Society [source] Hope and Purification in the Writings of Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata AidooORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2010Clayton G. MacKenzie Taban Lo Liyong sees the task of the African writer as one of "reconstructing Africa from the imperial wreck of the last two thousand seasons" (Liyong 1990, 171). The erosion of the African culture by modernization and colonialism has deprived indigenous peoples of their religions, their traditions, their mores, and in some cases their languages. It is not clear, though, what form Liyong's "reconstruction" is to take. Other commentators, like the Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide, seem more specific in demanding that the African artist should take a moral, political line in asserting that his/her active role is to "remedy a bad situation" (Ojaide 1994, 17). The object would be to purify an African way of life that has been tainted by invasive, self-gratifying, materialistic attitudes. But, again, what is that "remedy" to be? While recognition of Africa's postcolonial malaise is widespread, and its cause axiomatically and correctly assigned to the experience of colonialism, African writers have been somewhat tentative in suggesting what exactly it is that should be done. It is one thing to identify a problem, and to express it in the most forthright or damning terms, but quite another to locate and postulate the possible means for its resolution. The two Ghanaian artists whose work this paper addresses, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo, have been all too frequently accused of the pessimistic recitation of African ills. Molly Mahood has spoken of the "almost total disillusionment" (Fraser 1980, 15) of Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born; and Liyong has described the work as one of those "tearing down exercises" (Liyong 1990, 176). Adeola James has identified a "certain somberness" (James 1990, 17) and Arlene Elder a "pessimism" (Elder 1987, 117) in Aidoo's short stories; and Femi Ojo-Ade has styled the Ghana of No Sweetness Here as "hell" (Oje-Ade 1987, 174). The optimistic dimensions of their work have often gone unnoticed. Even contemporary readings that have attempted to soften the gloom of the two texts have sought in some way to qualify their observations. Tsegaye Wodajo's excellent study of five Armah novels, Hope in the Midst of Despair: A Novelist's Cures for Africa (2005), perceives The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born as a literature of protest that finds a hopeful riposte in the later novels. And while Nanna Jane Opoku-Agyemang's fine 1999 essay brings a valuable comparative dimension to No Sweetness Here, her insights fail to lift the pall of despair that is customarily judged to hang over this collection of eleven stories. This paper will argue that Aidoo's No Sweetness Here and Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born offer greater scope for optimism than many critics have hitherto suggested; and that both articulate a process of purification that actively opposes the dystopian settings of their respective narratives. [source] The Self and the Other: On James Joyce's ,A Painful Case' and ,The Dead'ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 5 2007Benjamin Boysen Throughout the majority of the short stories Dubliners (1916), the phenomenon of love is severely distorted and bitterly debased due to the socio-ideological circumstances in this modern metropolis; but even though love should be able to steer round the lethal traps set up by the Catholic and capitalistic order of society, it is nevertheless far from certain that things will turn out well. In addition to the external difficulties, love must overcome the narcissistic temptation consisting in the rejection or the reduction of the otherness of the other. This is the case when the subject, spellbound by the sorcery of narcissism, is incapable of perceiving the other as anything but a means instead of a goal in itself, as is clearly illustrated in ,A Painful Case' and ,The Dead'. In opposition to ,A Painful Case', which reveals the deadly and tragic consequences of the narcissistic lure, ,The Dead' is the only one of the short stories in Dubliners to offer the outlines for an ethics of love formulated by the fundamental alienation towards the other, who manages to defy the subject's egalitarian attempts for mastery. In the latter, the other designates the very heterogeneity and unconsciousness of the subject that forms the premise for any possible subjectivity and identity of the ego; the other is, in other words, the otherness or unconsciousness of the subject, but also the very presupposition for identity and subjectivity, which is generously bestowed upon it. [source] Literature, Pornography, and Libertine EducationORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 1 2004Jřrgen Dines Johansen The objective of this article is not to write an apology for pornography, not because it is impossible to defend, but rather because it has been done so brilliantly by Susan Sontag in her seminal essay ,,The Pornographic Imagination''.1 The objective is to analyze a certain kind of literary pornography from both literary and psychological, here psychoanalytic, points of view. The term covers, basically, pictorial and literary representations of sexual activities. Literary pornography has been cultivated in drama, poetry, and prose fiction, whether short stories or novels. Furthermore, there are representations of sexual activities in the visual arts and literature considered great by any artistic standard, and then there is a tremendous lot of mere trash. Finally, pornography is not something given once and for all, but a designation used relative to the norms of a given group at a given time. Much of what our great-grandparents, grandparents, and even our parents considered pornographic, seems to most of us today endowed with a certain innocence and sentimentality. To encompass all the facets of this subject in a single article is impossible. This essay considers a certain aspect of genre convention: pornography presented in a framework of education. [source] One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason?BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 4 2003Genet, the Argentine Liberal Project Betrayal is one of the key narrative tropes in the fiction of the Argentine writer Roberto Arlt. The psychological and existential implications of the betrayals found in novels such as El juguete rabioso (1926) and El amor brujo (1933) have attracted much critical comment, as have the links between the betrayals found in Arlt's fiction and the work of Jean Genet. Arlt's oeuvre has been read in relation to the turbulent political context of 1920s and 30s Argentina, in particular the failure of the Liberal Project of economic development through immigration that was introduced after the fall of the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852, the economic collapse of 1929 and the ensuing military coup of 1930. Critics have suggested that betrayal in Arlt represents an attack on bourgeois hypocrisy, a middle-class attempt at transcending one's environment, or a reversal of dominant social values. This paper however intends to deepen the understanding of betrayal in Arlt's fiction by examining it as a political gesture, a quality overlooked by many studies. A reading of the political nature of betrayal in Genet's work and an engagement with Bersani's queer reading of Funeral Rites alongside Said's analysis of Genet as an anti-identarian revolutionary, allows the reader of Arlt to reassess the political gesture contained in betrayal, and to move towards a reading of the development in Arlt's fiction either side of the military takeover of 1930, moving from his critique of the rising petit-bourgeois classes in El juguete rabioso (1926) to a clear realisation and encouragement of class consciousness in the short stories of El criador de gorilas (1936). [source] The Effects of the 1999 Turkish Earthquake on Young Children: Analyzing Traumatized Children's Completion of Short StoriesCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2010Elif Celebi Oncu The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine whether projective techniques could identify long-term consequences among children stemming from exposure to a traumatic event. The first group of children (n = 53; 26 female, 27 male) experienced 2 major earthquakes at age 7, 3 months apart, in Turkey, while a similarly matched control group (n = 50; 25 female, 25 male) did not. Both groups of children (current age: 9) completed a series of short stories related to disastrous events. Results indicated that the traumatized group evinced a range of trauma-related symptoms 2 years after experiencing the earthquakes. [source] Dis-enablement: subject and method in the modernist short storyCRITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2010DAVID TROTTER First page of article [source] THE OBJECT OF DESIRE SPEAKS: INGEBORG BACHMANN'S ,UNDINE GEHT' AND LUCE IRIGARAY 'S ,WOMAN'GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 2 2008Lorraine Markotic ABSTRACT This article presents a detailed examination of Ingeborg Bachmann's ,Undine geht'. It argues for the uniqueness of this work: the text's astonishing ability to depict an object who is also a subject, able to articulate her otherness. Undine is a speaking and desiring subject at the same time as she remains an object of projection. The article compares Bachmann's short story with Irigaray's extensive philosophical and feminist project, showing the many ways in which ,Undine geht' anticipates (and is ultimately more successful than) Irigaray's concept of ,woman' and her mimetic strategy. Bachmann's Undine subversively mimes what she represents; she both incarnates and eludes her representation as man's imaginary other. While ,Undine geht' appears to provide an alternative conception of female subjectivity or to articulate repressed female desire, it ultimately explores the radical complexity of these concepts. Bachmann's short story illustrates, moreover, the salience of Irigaray's attempt to examine the way in which language constructs and reproduces sexual difference. ,Undine geht' goes further, however, by also exploring the constitutive role of narrative and culture in subjectivity. The text is less an account of a female figure who finds her voice than of the difficulty and impediments to so doing. [source] Predicting Cognitive Impairment in High-Functioning Community-Dwelling Older Persons: MacArthur Studies of Successful AgingJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 6 2002Joshua Chodosh MD, MSHS OBJECTIVES: To examine whether simple cognitive tests, when applied to cognitively intact older persons, are useful predictors of cognitive impairment 7 years later. DESIGN: Cohort study. SETTING: Durham, North Carolina; East Boston, Massachusetts; and New Haven, Connecticut, areas that are part of the National Institute on Aging Established Populations for Epidemiological Studies of the Elderly. PARTICIPANTS: Participants, aged 70 to 79, from three community-based studies, who were in the top third of this age group, based on physical and cognitive functional status. MEASUREMENTS: New onset of cognitive impairment as defined by a score of less than 7 on the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ) in 1995. RESULTS: At 7 years, 21.8% (149 of 684 subjects) scored lower than 7 on the SPMSQ. Using multivariate logistic regression, three baseline (1988) cognitive tests predicted impairment in 1995. These included two simple tests of delayed recall,the ability to remember up to six items from a short story and up to 18 words from recall of Boston Naming Test items. For each story item missed, the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) for cognitive impairment was 1.44 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.16,1.78, P < .001). For each missed item from the word list, the AOR was 1.20 (95% CI = 1.09,1.31, P < .001). The Delayed Recognition Span, which assesses nonverbal memory, also predicted cognitive impairment, albeit less strongly (odds ratio = 1.06 per each missed answer, 95% CI = 1.003,1.13, P = .04). CONCLUSIONS: This study identifies measures of delayed recall and recognition as significant early predictors of subsequent cognitive decline in high-functioning older persons. Future efforts to identify those at greatest risk of cognitive impairment may benefit by including these measures. [source] Telling stories: Lessons from the Bible, literature and film provide a reference for mediation workALTERNATIVES TO THE HIGH COST OF LITIGATION, Issue 10 2005Judith P. Meyer Judith P. Meyer, of Philadelphia, shares stories from art and literature,specifically, a Bible passage, a Philip Roth short story, and a Chinese film,that show the use of mediation skills in everyday life, and serve as examples for maximizing negotiation effectiveness. [source] Fulfilments of Desire in the Work of a Self,Taught Artist: the intimate existence of Malcolm McKessonART HISTORY, Issue 5 2002Colin Rhodes This paper explores an artist whose substantial oeuvre was produced outside the usual structures of professional practice and the market. Malcolm McKesson (1909,1999) first became known around 1993 for his drawings, but there is also a significant related body of writing, most of which remains unpublished. He belongs to a category of artists now increasingly receiving serious attention, usually referred to as ,Self,Taught', or ,Outsider's. Though he was only a dozen years younger than Surrealism' first generation, he came to artistic maturity late, in his early fifties. He is interesting partly because he seemingly embodies serendipitously certain Surrealist interests and practices, especially as espoused by Breton in texts like ,The Automatic Message'. The relationships between image and text, and between intentionality and automatism are analysed through close readings of McKesson' writings and drawings, with particular attention being paid to the short story, Lost. The discussion is framed in the context of McKesson's transvestism and the complex of appropriations, fantasy and emotional uncertainty which contributed to his extraordinarily focused , and, for more than three decades, secret , creative project. [source] | ||||||||||||||||