Browsing by Subject "Spatial theory"

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From the [purgos] to the [teichos] : the social nature of walls in the Iliad and Archaic Greece
(2021-07-30) Thomas, Zoé Elise; Beck, Deborah
This report uses spatial theory to analyze the social nature of walls in the Bronze Age and Archaic Aegean and the literary manifestation of the social nature of walls in the Iliad. It begins with an overview of the historical and archaeological evidence for walls as a social phenomenon in the Bronze Age and Archaic Aegean, including relevant artistic evidence in addition to settlement patterns and excavation reports. Then, it analyzes all instances of the words τεῖχος and πύργος within the Iliad and the narrative context for their usage. The findings of this report show that there are two main categories of usage: military interest settings (battle scenes, construction of fortifications, and strategizing and ordering troops) and community interest settings (expressions of social bonds, especially anxiety over their preservation, scenes of high emotion, and similes). Of these, τεῖχος is more commonly used for military scenes, while πύργος is more commonly used for community scenes. The result of this pattern indicates an attention paid by the poet to the use of these specific vocabulary words to denote the overall effect of a scene for the audience. Τεῖχος reinforces for the audience the military setting of the Iliad, while πύργος signals a greater level of emotional weight for both the characters and for the audience. In combination with the audience’s previous knowledge of the story and other forms of foreshadowing, τεῖχος and πύργος help to guide audience interpretation by signaling the tone of a scene. Moreover, τεῖχος and πύργος provide a framework for understanding the narrative for those audience members who were not previously familiar with the stories by drawing on their experiences of the logistical and social nature of the walls around them. While the binary distinction between military and community should be expanded upon, this initial foray into examining the vocabulary of the built environment of the Iliad from a spatial perspective provides a new way of discussing the cultural context and impact of the epic.
Reading, writing, roaming : the student abroad in Arab women's literature
(2012-05) Logan, Katie Marie; El-Ariss, Tarek; Cullingford, Elizabeth
“Reading, Writing, Roaming: The student abroad in Arab women’s literature” details new developments in a sub-genre of Arabic travel literature, the study abroad narrative. An increasing number of female writers, and particularly female writers born after the colonial period, study in Europe and write about their experiences in memoirs or fictionalized accounts. Their intervention in the genre offers alternative modes of cultural interaction to the binaries of power detailed in earlier narratives. They suggest a move away from earlier texts such as Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, where the binary between colonizer and colonized is inverted rather than demolished. The protagonists of Fadia Faqir’s My Name is Salma and Somaya Ramadan’s Leaves of Narcisuss deconstruct this binary by creating specific spaces of multiplicity and heterogeneity. These spaces can be physical, as is the cottage in which Salma rents a room, or they can be literary, like the traditions of British and Arabic literature that Ramadan’s novel brings together. The women in these narratives embark on not just travel but education, developing tools of reading and writing to help them re-construct a literary and political history. The traditions and places produced by feminine narratives alter the framework of canons and spaces defined by national terms, creating what Jahan Ramazani calls transnational “alliances of style and sensibility.” Using Kristeva’s work on women’s and monumental time, I argue that women participate in specific modes of time and space, modes defined by dynamic, cyclical changes, that allow them to create these kinds of projects. Through shared living spaces and hybridized literary traditions, Faqir and Ramadan re-write the study abroad narrative to include for a greater possibility of experiences and interactions. They appropriate a structure originally available only to privileged young men and apply it to women, even to an impoverished refugee in Salma’s case. These novels encourage readers to move beyond the colonial and even the postcolonial discourse by developing new vocabularies for discussing traditions, cultures and the value of education.