This study provides a critical survey of views on reality and truth in the realm of philosophy and literary theory. Its aim is to show how important it is to focus our critical attention on literature itself as a way of conveying a general view of totality of things, with special attention to human life and death, effort and suffering, success and failure. A work of literature and art does not characterize experience and knowledge as such, but rather the response of concrete characters to the problems of human existence and fate. The monograph deals with pre-modern philosophical reflection on reality and truth, with post-modern ways of representation of reality in myth, history, biography, autobiography and fiction, and with sublime perceptions of beauty, love and forgiveness. The views of the writers show that there are important differences in presenting reality and truth in relation to material and historical facts. But the most important distinction is in dealing with dimensions of true life of human persons in their ineffable feelings and ideas.
The study of narrative—the object of the rapidly growing discipline of narratology—has been traditionally concerned with the fictional narratives of literature, such as novels or short stories. But narrative is a transdisciplinary and transmedial concept whose manifestations encompass both the fictional and the factual. In this volume, which provides a companion piece to Tobias Klauk and Tilmann Köppe’s Fiktionalität: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, the use of narrative to convey true and reliable information is systematically explored across media, cultures and disciplines, as well as in its narratological, stylistic, philosophical, and rhetorical dimensions. At a time when the notion of truth has come under attack, it is imperative to reaffirm the commitment to facts of certain types of narrative, and to examine critically the foundations of this commitment. But because it takes a background for a figure to emerge clearly, this book will also explore nonfactual types of narratives, thereby providing insights into the nature of narrative fiction that could not be reached from the narrowly literary perspective of early narratology.
Closed off and grieving her best friend, fifteen-year-old overachiever Verdad faces prejudices at school and from her traditional mother, her father's distance since his remarriage, and her attraction to a transgender classmate.
Our contemporary moment is preoccupied with arbitrating ‘reality’. With the spectre of buzzwords like ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ we find a scramble to locate or fix some sort of universal ‘real’ beneath what are positioned as ‘fake’ articulations. To engage with this crisis, this collection argues for the importance of a new conjuncture in communication and cultural studies of media. Building on Hall’s understanding of ‘conjuncture’ as a way of grasping moments within hegemonic struggle, the essays suggest that the current moment requires a revitalization of the concept of conjuncture.
Salman Rushdie is celebrated as a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time. Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie's intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison mean to him, whether on the page or in person. He delves deep into the nature of "truth," revels in the vibrant malleability of language and the creative lines that can join art and life, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism, and censorship. Enlivened on every page by Rushdie's signature wit and dazzling voice, Languages of Truth offers the author's most piercingly analytical views yet on the evolution of literature and culture even as he takes us on an exhilarating tour of his own exuberant and fearless imagination.
The novel primarily focuses on the intricacies of the sisters' relationships, their struggles with tradition, modernity, and familial obligations, and their attempts to find suitable husbands for Yukiko, the third sister, who remains unmarried. Yukiko's marriage prospects become a central concern for the family, and much of the plot revolves around their efforts to arrange a suitable match for her despite the challenges posed by societal changes and the family's declining fortunes. Through the lens of the Makioka sisters' lives, Tanizaki explores themes such as tradition versus modernity, family dynamics, gender roles, and the impact of historical events on individual lives. The novel is celebrated for its rich portrayal of Japanese culture and society during the pre-war era, as well as its detailed character development and nuanced depiction of interpersonal relationships.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An epic Don Quixote for the modern age, “a brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder” (Time) from internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • “Lovely, unsentimental, heart-affirming . . . a remembrance of what holds our human lives in some equilibrium—a way of feeling and a way of telling. Love and language.”—Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND NPR Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie’s work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction. Praise for Quichotte “Brilliant . . . a perfect fit for a moment of transcontinental derangement.”—Financial Times “Quichotte is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism. . . . The narration is fleet of foot, always one step ahead of the reader—somewhere between a pinball machine and a three-dimensional game of snakes and ladders. . . . This novel can fly, it can float, it’s anecdotal, effervescent, charming, and a jolly good story to boot.”—The Sunday Times “Quichotte [is] an updating of Cervantes’s story that proves to be an equally complicated literary encounter, jumbling together a chivalric quest, a satire on Trump’s America and a whole lot of postmodern playfulness in a novel that is as sharp as a flick-knife and as clever as a barrel of monkeys. . . . This is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind.”—The Times (UK)
Nearly every night on every major network,"unscripted" (but carefully crafted) "reality" TV shows routinely glorify retrograde stereotypes that most people would assume got left behind 35 years ago. In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV's twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple "guilty pleasures," these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation's young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we're valued for, and what we should view as "our place" in society. Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.
Truth Vs. Falsehood a breakthrough in documenting a new era of human knowledge. Only in the last decade has a science of Truth emerged that, for the first time in human history, enables the discernment of truth from falsehood. Presented are discoveries of an enormous amount of crucial and significant information of great importance to mankind, along with calibrations of historical events, cultures, spiritual leaders, media, and more. In this cutting-edge presentation, the author shares with the reader the simple, instantaneous technique that, like litmus paper, differentiates truth from falsehood in a matter of seconds. Truth and Reality, as the author states, have no secrets, and everything that exists now or in the past—even a thought—is identifiable and calibratable forever from the omnipresent field of Consciousness itself.
The Facts is a rigorously unfictionalized narrative that portrays Philip Roth unadorned--as young artist, as student, as son, as lover, as husband, as American, as Jew--and candidly examines how close the novels have been to, and how far from, autobiography. From his childhood in Newark, New Jersey, to his explosive success as a novelist, to his critics in the Jewish community who attacked his writing, and the divorce and death of his first wife, The Facts is a playful and harrowingly unconventional autobiography, bookended by letters written by his fictional alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman. "The Facts is a lively and serious version of a novelist's life." —New York Review of Books
