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In recent decades, cinema has become a document of the past as a source to complete the information contained in the written text and official documents. But since the twentieth century there have been long discussions on this subject, since the cinema and historiography were looked distrustfully. At present, however, most of the authors agree that cinema is a document of the past. In this sense, a film set in the past cannot be asked to be absolutely accurate and truthful, but is always sincere. with Silencio roto, Armendáriz recalls the antifascist struggle of the machine. This paper aims to analyze the representation of the machine by identifying and analyzing the three main elements of the narrative construction of the reference film: characters, action and conflict. Knowing that other authors have studied this film, this paper aims to address the subject from a new perspective, as a complement to previous research. Thus, the director has retaken the question of the guerrilla of the 40's, taking into account the brutal experiences of the defeated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing can give us all greater joy. Does that sentence make sense in the academic world? Writing rarely receives the academic attention it deserves. Its value in conveying information, ideas, and argument is obvious, but do we neglect the positive contribution that the quality of writing can add to academic papers? This essay argues that too much academic writing loses impact by striving too hard for 'impossible objectivity'. Arguments need emotion too, provided by stories and words used well, which benefits writers and readers. This essay suggests reasons for giving greater attention to the way we write: from personal fulfilment, through to persuasive power, to writing's ability to make connections. Writing has the potential to be a source of joy and inspiration not just a necessary chore that goes with the job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates an empirical analysis of the visual order of membership categories in a way consistent with both an early ethnomethodological research interest and recent arguments in membership categorization analysis. Early ethnomethodological studies have highlighted that we can infer and understand the membership categories of observed people about whom we have no information in advance, even without talking to them. Recent membership categorization analysts have argued the methodological importance of using video data. Given this, fictional films serve as video data to advance the investigation into the visual order of membership categories since audiences do not know the fictional characters' information in advance and cannot talk to them. We analyze how potential audiences understand fictional characters' membership categories and how production crew members organize the visual and conversational order of membership categories. The analysis illustrates that our practical inferences of fictional characters' membership categories are based on conversations among characters and visually available information. Such visually available information includes environments and lighting, as well as characters' clothes, body orientations, facial expressions, and physical distance from each other. In other words, production crew members of fictional films design the visual and conversational order for remote audiences by arranging visually available information and fictional characters' conversations. The findings provide insights into the "possible correctness" and "defeasibility" of membership categorization practices. Particularly regarding fictional characters' membership categories, production crew members can employ the "possible correctness" and "defeasibility" of categorization practices to mislead audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responses to the pernicious influences of mainstream pornography on its viewers fall into two main sorts: regulation and education. Pornography has long been a core topic in analytic feminist philosophy, but it has largely focused on issues around regulation, in particular with trying to undermine arguments against regulation on the grounds that pornography should count as protected speech. Here I instead look at some ways that philosophy can contribute to an education‐based approach, in particular to what has been called an 'education to address pornography's influence'. I first argue that philosophical considerations can help to motivate this kind of overall approach to countering pornography's influence, but the main contribution of the paper is to contend that such considerations can also contribute to shaping the kind of content and messaging that such an education should have. I discuss two related issues, focusing on pornographic films. The first concerns the status of pornographic films as fiction; it is misleading and unhelpful to tell teenagers and young adults that pornography is 'just fiction', as is sometimes proposed, but it is not clear what more effective and accurate message might be offered instead. The second concerns the ways that pornographic films often present the people (and in particular the women) who perform in them as ideals or archetypes when it comes to what kinds of sexual acts people typically choose and enjoy, which I argue is a neglected form of objectification. I briefly evaluate some suggestive examples of proposed messaging, targeted at teens and young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of European Public Service Media (PSM) in the commissioning and scheduling of local series over the past three decades. With a comparative approach between the main European television markets (Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain), the schedules of 30 seasons of 25 general-interest channels have been analysed to explore how the changes in the markets have altered the role of public channels as promoters of domestic fiction and local culture. The study shows a clear division along a Northern European axis with a large, uninterrupted commissioning of locally produced fiction, while Southern European public corporations have had a lower, more erratic approach. Despite this difference, all European PSM organisations analysed have maintained and increased the volume of local series titles during the last decade despite the appearance of portfolio DTT channels and transnational SVOD services, in contrast to commercial corporations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Muslim writing, both in the US and in England, is witnessing the emergence of woman-centered fiction that puts Islam front and center. "Halal fiction," coined by Farial Ghazoul to refer to a new mode of writing advocating a theologically-conceived and ideologically-established worldview, has been used to describe the works penned by Leila Aboulela (The Translator and Minaret) and Umm Zakiyyah (If I Should Speak trilogy). Both writers have drawn praise from certain segments of the Muslim population, and attracted a robust readership. However, the critical reception of these works remains divided: a group of scholars celebrate the subversive politics of halal fiction that presents Islam as a source of empowerment for women while others express reservations about the way halal fiction validates a skewed image of the Muslim woman aligned with patriarchal norms of gender identity. This paper focuses on the thematic, critical, and aesthetic challenges of halal fiction. It argues that rather than affirming individual agency as a significant component of self-actualization, halal fiction appears to endorse a type of womanhood based on consensual subordination, and voluntary withdrawal from the world. Furthermore, halal fiction reveals a divergence in the utilization of the novel itself, largely because of that genre's strong association with secularism and dialogism. This all suggests that there is a visible discrepancy between the alleged politics of the work (Islam as a redeeming code of ethics) and its effective politics of representation (Islam as a limiting and even authoritarian ideology). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to reflect on how genres overlap in the construction of narratives and take part in the conformation of a myth of the political imaginary: the myth of Evita Perón. We seek to discuss what the accounts of fiction and history in the representation of reality are made up of. This paper is divided into four parts: historicity effect; imaginary; autofiction -- the construction of the self; and representations of Evita. The first two parts present theoretical propositions and the last two will discuss literary representations of Eva Perón, referring to some Argentinean works. We conclude that the manner in which a text is narrated creates the effect of historicity, straddling the fiction and historical genres, and converging in the imaginary. Furthermore, we accept that it is impossible to cover the whole phenomenon of the configuration of the evitista imaginary. However, it is possible to offer some contribution to the studies on this theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of extracting and analyzing character networks from works of fiction, such as novels and movies, has been the object of a number of recent publications. However, only a very few of them focus on graphic novels, and even fewer on European graphic novels. In this paper, we focus on Thorgal, a bande dessinée, i.e. a comic of the French-Belgian tradition. We manually annotate all the volumes of this series, in order to constitute a corpus allowing us to extract its character network. We perform a descriptive analysis of the network structure and compare it to real-world and fictional social networks. We also study the effect of character filtering over the network structure. Finally, we leverage complex network analysis tools to answer two research questions from the literature, related to the similarity between Thorgal and the Saga of Icelanders; and to the position of women in the series. Our data and source code are both publicly available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Torrey Peters' debut novel Detransition, Baby from 2021, a Women's Prize for Fiction nominee, problematizes gender norms by telling the story of three main characters: Reese, a trans woman, Ames, who de-transitioned to live as a man again, and Katrina, a Chinese and Jewish cis woman who is also Ames' lover and boss. Ames and Katrina are expecting a child and are testing the possibilities of having a non-conventional family together with Reese. Parenthood is, thus, the central theme of the novel which structures also the sections of book into the time before the conception and the weeks after it. By doing so, the temporal framework of the novel queers the linearity of heteronormative life courses on the form as well as the content level. Therefore, the interplay of form and content invites to critically investigate how the concept of trans time that challenges linearity and normative conformity (Halberstam, 2005) may provide useful insights into trans aging and the life course through this literary representation. Following, contemporary feminist theorists' commitments to negotiate what makes "life more livable for those whose gender presentation, identity, or bodily experience have been judged abnormal, nonexistent, or impossible" (Karhu, 2022, 304–305), this paper aims at carrying out a critical feminist literary analysis of trans aging, queer life courses and the thereof related gendered norms in Peters' novel. By relying predominantly on feminist poststructuralist theories (Butler 2004) and cultural aging studies (Maierhofer, 2019), it is the aim to challenge normativity and limited social norms through this critical literary reading. • Analysis of representation of trans aging in Peters' Detransition, Baby (2021) • Trans aging and the life course as a juxtaposition of conformity and queer temporalities • cultural ideals of trans gender as having no future • queer temporalities and trans time as useful discursive tools to challenge capitalist notions of the life course [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypertext has been described as embodying Roland Barthes' ideal text. This paper considers that association, and the relationship of each to literary theory's historical privileging of authorial intention over reader interpretation. Firstly it outlines the rise and fall of authorial intention in literary theory, culminating in Roland Barthes' 1967 essay The Death of the Author. Secondly, it challenges the relationship between anti-intentionalism and hypertext in three ways: by exploring hypertext as a dialectical situation, which places the reader in dialogue with the author; by challenging Barthes' galaxy of signifiers as an embodiment of links; and finally, by establishing a disciplinary emphasis on hermeneutics as intrinsically readerly in nature. The paper concludes by considering whether an intentionalist approach might in fact be the best fit for hypertext fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of fictional models is extensive and rewarding in modern science. This fact captured the attention of philosophers of science, who are focusing on questions such as the following: is it possible for a fictional model to be explanatory? And, if so, in virtue of what is such a fictional model explanatory? In this paper, I discuss these questions in relation to the realism vs. anti-realism debate in philosophy of science. I focus on work developed by Alisa Bokulich who has argued for the explanatory role played by fictional models, claiming that it can be accommodated by realism in ‘a broad sense’. To this end, Bokulich introduced what she called ‘an eikonic conception’ of explanation, as opposed to the so-called ‘ontic’ conception. This move, Bokulich claims, allows non-causal explanations to be acceptable to a modified version, as opposed to a ‘naïve’ brand of realism. Roughly, a fictional model can capture aspects of reality if it manages to act as a proxy for a theory targeting a physical system. As Bokulich explains with the example of James Clerk Maxwell’s use of mechanical models, this is due to structural correspondences between a model and a theory at a certain level of abstraction. However, Bokulich does not explain how the model grasps reality. In this paper, I fill this missing piece of the puzzle. While I agree with Bokulich on the explanatory function of fictional models, I shall invoke her reading of Maxwell’s work to draw a different conclusion. Specifically, I argue that structural correspondences at various levels form what I call ‘a ladder of abstractions’ which connects aspects of a target system to the corresponding depths of descriptions. Modifying in these terms the scope of ‘representing a system’, I suggest that Bokulich’s proposed modification of realism is obviated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fiction has the potential to bring the climate crisis into the imagination and help readers understand and respond to climate change. From speculative 'cli-fi' to contemporary eco fiction, literary responses to climate change vary greatly and continue to evolve. Despite the ongoing popularity of speculative climate change fiction, climate change increasingly appears in realist genres, and in stories dealing with everyday domestic situations. Realist climate change stories come with both opportunities and challenges. The short story cycle form is particularly well-positioned to address such challenges through its capacity to create a sense of community, defamiliarise climate change discourse, generate ecological enchantment, and conceal overtly didactic messages. The short story cycle is a sustainable form because it is cyclical, iterative, and incomplete, in a way reminiscent of the natural environment. Using Richard Powers' short story cycle, The Overstory (2018), as a case study, this paper examines how realist expressions of climate change in fiction might be supported by the unique characteristics of the short story cycle form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are surrounded by narratives about digitalization – in media, in white papers, in policies and in academic discourse. This article aims to dissect policy narratives to unveil the dominant stories associated with digitalization and open a dialogue on their consequences. The empirical material includes policy documents on digitalization at the European Union, national and sub-national levels focusing on the Swedish context. The article argues that these documents not only produce narratives of digitalization that reveal a certain orientation towards reality but also become tangible constructs. Further, despite their neutral language, they should be considered part of the problem formulation. The analysis is carried out by identifying the dominant and taken-for-granted stories, and the results show that digitalization, often portrayed as a modern and innovative concept, is frequently narrated in line with rather traditional perceptions of industrialized modernity. The results indicate that digitalization is trapped in an unambiguous and cramped dramaturgy, and if policies are enacted in the same way in practice, we will face a rather un-resilient digital modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches the poetic work of a contemporary Japanese poet, Keijirô Suga, from its resonances with the discussions of ecocriticism. It proposes the critical operator of ecocritical fiction that in the gesture of the interpretative reading of the poems and the theoretical reflection allows to identify these resonances. The journey finds temporary spaces configurations around the future, the landscape and the relationship between the human and the non-human. Thus, the article contributes to the field of knowledge of contemporary Japanese poetry and ecocriticism. Finally, contemplating the theoretical reflection, we expose an ethical position distanced from certain environmentalist positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British volunteers fought on both sides of the First Carlist War (1833-1840), the dynastic struggle between the liberal factions that championed Isabella II and the reactionary forces that supported Don Carlos's claim to the Spanish throne. Despite British intervention, the conflict did not arouse as much interest in Britain as the Peninsular War (1808-1814), but it served as the setting for several English literary works that reconstructed it from different perspectives. These fictional texts include George Ryder's Los Arcos (1845), Frederick Hardman's The Student of Salamanca (1845-1846), and Edward Augustus Milman's The Wayside Cross; or, the Raid of Gomez (1847). This paper analyses these texts focusing on their representations of Spain and the First Carlist War and shows that they mostly ignore British intervention in the conflict and perpetuate the romantic image of Spain that had emerged in Britain during the Peninsular War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nathan Salmon has defended what might be called "weak modal anti-realism"—the view that possible-object names can refer to possible objects that neither exist nor are otherwise real. But rather than adopting a similar view in the fictional case, he instead defends fictional creationism—the view that fictional characters are existent but abstract entities created by authors of fiction. In this paper, I first argue that if weak modal antirealism is defensible then weak fictional antirealism is defensible as well. Second, I argue that there is no reason to prefer fictional creationism over weak fictional antirealism but there is very good reason to prefer the latter over the former. And third, I defend weak fictional antirealism against the charge that it cannot provide a satisfactory account of statements that prima facie involve reference to or quantification over fictional characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory of mind (TOM) refers to a set of abilities which enables understanding of mental states including beliefs, emotions and intentions of self and others. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of different reading patterns including frequency of reading fiction and genre preference on TOM performance. It also aims to compare the accuracy of TOM performance under explicit goal directed and non-directed reading conditions. To achieve this objective, a sample of 72 Indian college students were randomly allocated to two groups and were evaluated on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) and the Short Story Task (SST). The two groups differed with respect to task instructions aimed at mobilizing different manner of engagement (goal directed and nondirected) with the prose in the SST. The individual reading habits and preferences of all the participants were recorded by a self report questionnaire. Scores on the novel SST showed significant positive correlation with RMET scores. No significant difference in TOM performance with respect to the different engagement styles was found, indicating that TOM abilities function continuously and equally effectively when being used in goal directed and nondirected conditions. Notably, participants who reported to prefer literary fiction performed significantly better on the SST task than the participants who prefer popular fiction. This positive link between literary fiction and TOM has important implications in clinical and developmental fields and necessitates further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the particularities of rewriting in Irish contemporary fiction through an analysis of Colm Tóibín’s House of Names (2017) within a theoretical framework of narrative ethics, this paper argues that a function of cultural healing is actualized both within the retold story of the Oresteia and in the context of civil war violence to which the novel responds. Drawing on the work of Hanna Meretoja and Dorothy J. Hale, it suggests that a source of potential ethical power is revealed through the reworking of the ancient tragedy using the structures and techniques of the contemporary novel. Traces of differing worldviews or even ways of constructing cognitive and affective complexity determine a constant oscillation between original and rewritten that creates a space of epistemological uncertainty. Valorised through the meta-ethical affect of unverifiability conceptualised by Hale, this effect is also read in light of Meretoja’s understanding of a narrative-bound sense of possibility and the challenges that both contemporary and ancient understandings of hope or catastrophe pose to its ethically valuable expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With this paper, we intend to contribute to the debate concerning Hobbes' conception of the person of the State. To be more precise, we shall argue that the philosopher's notion of the State draws influence from what classic rhetoricians called prosopopoeia. Although this similarity has been identified by some contemporary interpreters, its chief characteristics remain underexplored. This viewpoint will allow us, on the one hand, to delve into the creative role of Hobbesian representatives in the process of actively conforming the person of the State; on the other, it will enable a novel understanding of the enemies of the State as personifications or allegories conjured up by rebellious agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]