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In this blueprint of a story, the narrator's nonchalance regarding geographical and historical location belies unsuspected concerns about the modern nation state and family history. The article begins by unpacking the claims of different nations to host Borges's story set in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Fast-forwarding to 1943, the circumstances of composition of 'Tema del traidor y del héroe' point to a critique of political crisis and barbarism. A surprising number of intertexts dovetail tellingly with Borges's narrative spanning two continents and four generations of real, as well as imaginary, human beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the comparative study in dynamics on the excellence of the poem "Hildebrandslied." In various languages, the versions of actions in which a noble father slays a noble son in the battlefield is said to have fascinated heroic poetry students. The versions are so like and yet unlike with one another. According to Scholar G. Baesecke, who approached the problem from the point of view that is diffusionist in nature, there are affinities between certain traits in various versions, which in-turn postulated givers and receivers, and so end up with plausible movement of this plot in time and space. Thirteen years afterwords, another Scholar J.D. Vries revealed a different approach. The legend of the father who killed his son has Germanic heroic tradition attached to it at a single stroke is as strong in the Hildebrandslied as in Shahnameh and the Aided Aenfir Aife. What follows the acceptance of the inevitability of battles is that it continues masterly. The legend is a portrayal of long range battle and then hand to hand combat.

The article focuses on Blaise Pascal, the mathematician, physicist and philosopher and his notion of delectation. The first text which Pascal devotes to analyzing unbelief and the process of persuasion is the "Art de persuader." The text clearly shows the influence of the Port-Royal tradition but its shifting terminology poses a number of problems. Pascal begins by stating that there are two ways in which opinions can be received into the soul, through the entendement, the natural but not the most common method or through the volonté the normal method but one which people are ashamed to admit to. But how without appeal to the intellect can Pascal hope to change the unbeliever's emotional responses. It is of course evident that the choice of facts is made particularly with a mondain unbeliever in mind, for while the success of Pascal's presentation from the unbeliever's point of view lies in the accuracy of its observation, its success from Pascal's lies in the way he can, through his observation, modify the way the unbeliever sees the world. His aim is to alter his angle of vision, to offer him a new perspective.