Orality

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is perhaps the most genuine account ever written about life in Nigeria in the twentieth century. Despite the fact that the novel was initially published in 1958, many copies are still sold today. An enormous number of copies have been produced and sold worldwide. The novel has been adjusted for preparations on the stage, on the radio, and on TV. Instructors at every level utilize the novel as reading material in numerous sorts of classes, from history and social…

One of the early forms of the short story is the folk tale or fairy tale, which derives from an oral tradition. “[…] Fairy tale motifs are […] ancient and appear in many pre-Christian epics, poems, myths, fables, histories and religious narratives.” (Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick, P 44) Aesop’s fables, for example, have been most popular in the Greece culture since the fifth century before Christ, though they are mere anecdotes with a moral to follow and less short stories like the fairy tale.…

Change is inevitable. It is no secret that advancements in time and ideas are destined to change the status quo, but the foresight to analyze the gray area where change occurs is often times unknown because change does not come easy. From the world’s most renowned scholars in ancient Greece detesting the shift from oral-based rhetoric to writing, to influential elites hindering the printing press from breaking long-standing institutions, these examples parallel the modern case of writing…

Today children appear to be growing up faster and faster. It has often been said that the youth is losing their innocence at younger ages. However these ideas are new. Neil Postman wrote the Disappearance of Childhood, where he attributes to this fleeting youth to the birth of new technology, especially television. What is interesting about Postman argument is to establish his points he first begins with discussing the invention of childhood. Thus giving his readers the impression that he…

To what extent and in what ways do The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Goblin Market and Rebecca unsettle cultural definitions of gender and/or sexuality? Christina Rossetti, Daphne du Maurier and Angela Carter question and unsettle contemporary ideas of gender and sexuality respectively in Goblin Market, Rebecca and The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. Each author, writing at different periods in history and therefore different eras in terms of both the women’s rights movement and the…

The Secret of Coelho’s Success The figure of the Brazilian Paulo Coelho, who appeared in modern cultural space at the beginning of the 1990s, until now after many years, is located at the intersection of extreme points of view and diametrically opposed opinions. Paulo Coelho is well-known all over the world, and his books are read in over 150 countries. Each new book by Coelho produces a sensation and becomes popular among the readers. Since 1988, when was released his famous "The Alchemist" for…

able to read due to illiteracy. However, since it is an epic poem it is supposed to be read aloud and can have been expected to have been so. It is likely that the epic has been staged also, but its presentation has most likely been dominated by orality. At first, one could argue that the Christian traits are as obvious as with Everyman since the poem several times over and almost constantly praises God and draws parallels to the Christian universe even though the Danes and the Geats of the…

Throughout history, many people come to America by force or immigration. Many found the hardship and fulfilled the dream. At the time Olaudah Equiano arrived in America, the new land, his life and fate is set to change dramatically. In the narrative, the conflicts that Equiano wrestles within in his life are devastating account that happened in human history. Although Equiano and I live in different time, our experiences connect us with the problem of first generation settler. Examining contexts…

The conflict between the Christians and the Jesus Seminar has been an ongoing struggle since 1985. The Jesus Seminar, founded by Robert Funk, originated in 1985 as around 70 biblical scholars set out to determine the legitimacy of Jesus’ sayings (Dart). The Seminar focused on the historicity of Jesus using the best methods of science and literary criticism as it pertains to the Bible. Funk believed that the gospel writers had made Jesus into a “larger than life” figure in order to satisfy their…

Judith Kegan Gardiner writes in On Female Identity and Writing by Women that “[f]emale identity is a process and writing by women engages us in this process as the female seeks to define itself in the experience of creating art” (361). Elaine Showalter takes the case further in her discussion of gender differences in determining “whether sex differences in language use can be theorized in terms of biology, socialization, and culture; whether women can create new languages of their own; [and]…