Loading...

Synergy I: Marginalisation, Discrimination, Isolation and Existence in Literature

by A.Nejat Töngür (Volume editor) Yıldıray Çevik (Volume editor)
©2021 Edited Collection 324 Pages

Summary

Studies on the distinguished works of English and American literature of various genres like poetry, plays and fiction are included in this book focusing on and around the central themes of “Marginalisation, Discrimination, Isolation, and Existence.” The aim of the book is to investigate the issues of “Marginalisation, Discrimination, Isolation, and Existence” within the frameworks of gender, colonization, multiculturalism, religion, race, generation gap, politics, technology, immigration, and class.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the editors
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Foreword and Dedication
  • Table of Contents
  • LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
  • INTRODUCTION
  • I: A PERENNIAL QUEST FOR ETERNAL EXISTENCE: JEANETTE WINTERSON’S FRANKISSSTEIN: A LOVE STORY (Aslı Özlem TARAKCIOĞLU)
  • II: WOMEN’S PURSUIT OF POLITICAL RIGHTS IN ENGLAND: SALLY SIMMONDS FROM A SIMPLE MAID TO A STRONG ACTIVIST IN GERTRUDE COLMORE’S SUFFRAGETTE SALLY (Alev KARADUMAN)
  • III: GARDEN AS A POST-ANTHROPOCENTRIC SPONTANEITY IN AUDEN’S “THEIR LONELY BETTERS:” AN ECOPSYCHOLOGICAL READING (Nurten BİRLİK and Merve GÜNDAY)
  • IV: VICTORIAN HYPOCRITICAL SEXUAL POLITICS: SARAH WATERS’ TIPPING THE VELVET (Duygu SERDAROĞLU)
  • V: MARGINALISED FLANEURS IN VENICE IN THE WORKS OF MANN, WINTERSON AND ISHIGURO (Kuğu TEKİN)
  • VI: RHINOCEROS OF OCEANIA: PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS, PROPAGANDA, SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT IN G. ORWELL’S 1984 AND E. IONESCO’S RHINOCEROS (Zafer PARLAK)
  • VII: THE ETHICS OF SCIENCE AND THE INVISIBLE MAN THROUGH SOCIAL AND CULTURAL SCRIPTS AND TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS (Timuçin Buğra EDMAN, Hacer GÖZEN, Yusuf KASİMİ)
  • VIII: DISCRIMINATION AND IDENTIFICATION IN COLONIZED SOCIETIES: D.H. LAWRENCE’S AMERICAN WRITINGS (Fatma Aylin BAYRAKÇEKEN AKIN)
  • IX: MONSTER OR VICTIM: ISOLATION AND LONELINESS IN FRANKENSTEIN BY MARY SHELLEY (Gökşen ARAS)
  • X: TRANSNATIONALIZING POST-APARTHEID LIFESTYLES IN “CULTURAL HYBRIDITY” AS REFLECTED IN COCONUT (Yıldıray ÇEVİK)
  • XI: A PROBLEM PLAY: QUESTIONS AND AMBIGUITY IN KING LEAR (Emine Seda ÇAĞLAYAN MAZANOĞLU)
  • XII: (BI-)CULTURAL FISSURES AND (DIS-)SIMILAR IDENTITIES IN LEILA ABOULELA’S ELSEWHERE, HOME (A. Nejat TÖNGÜR)
  • XIII: MIGRATION: DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND VIOLENCE IN MULTICULTURAL BRITAIN IN MAGGIE GEE’S THE WHITE FAMILY (Zeynep Rana TURGUT)
  • XIV: IS CHIVALRIC LOVE THE TRUE LOVE? (Elif GÜVENDİ YALÇIN and Hatice Gönül ÜÇELE)

←8 | 9→

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Gökşen ARAS

Assist. Prof. Dr., Atılım University, Department of English Language and Literature, Turkey. ORCID: 0000-0002-2523-4976, goksen.aras@atilim.edu.tr

Fatma Aylin BAYRAKÇEKEN AKIN

Assist. Prof. Dr., Istanbul Sağlık ve Teknoloji University, Department of Translation and Interpreting. ORCID: 0000-0002-0717-9627, aylinbayrakceken@hotmail.com

Nurten BİRLİK

Prof. Dr., Department of Foreign Language Education, Faculty of Education, Middle East Technical University, 06531, Ankara, Turkey. ORCID: 0000- 0002-4544-9595, nur69tr@yahoo.com

Emine Seda ÇAĞLAYAN MAZANOĞLU

Research Assistant Dr., Hacettepe University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID: 0000-0002-9595-4899, emineseda.caglayan@hacettepe.edu.tr

Yıldıray ÇEVİK

Assist. Prof. Dr., Department of Translation and Interpreting, Faculty of Sciences and Letters, Arel University, Tepekent, Istanbul, Turkey. ORCID: 0000-0003-2967-6517, cevikyildiray@yahoo.com

Timuçin Buğra EDMAN

Assoc. Prof. Dr., Duzce University, Department of English Language Teaching, Duzce, Turkey. ORCID: 0000-0002-5103-4791, timucinbugraedman@duzce.edu.tr←9 | 10→

Hacer GÖZEN

Assist. Prof. Dr., Isik University, School of Foreign Languages, Istanbul, Turkey. ORCID: 0000-0001-5013-7804, hacergozen@gmail.com

Merve GÜNDAY

PhD Candidate in English Literature, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. ORCID: 0000-0002-7345-9870, mervegndy@hotmail.com

Elif GÜVENDİ YALÇIN

Assist. Prof. Dr., Gümüşhane University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID: 0000-0001-7780-1613, guvendielif@gmail.com

Alev KARADUMAN

Assist. Prof. Dr., Hacettepe University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID: 0000-0001-5865-7396, karaduman@hacettepe.edu.tr; alvkaraduman@gmail.com

Yusuf KASİMİ

Assist. Prof. Dr., Duzce University, Department of English Language Teaching, Duzce, Turkey. ORCID: 0000-0003-0613-8812, yusufkasimi@duzce.edu.tr

Zafer PARLAK

Assist. Prof. Dr., Istinye University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID: 0000-0002-7452-0354, zafer.parlak@istinye.edu.tr; zparlak@yahoo.com

Duygu SERDAROĞLU

Lecturer Dr., Atilim University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID: 0000-0001-9545-7772, duyguserdaroglu@yahoo.com

Aslı Özlem TARAKCIOĞLU

Assoc. Prof. Dr., Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Translation and Interpreting. ORCID: 0000-0001-8353-5526, asli.tarakcioglu@hbv.edu.tr←10 | 11→

Kuğu TEKİN

Assist. Prof. Dr., Atilim University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID: 0000-0003-0123-8523, kugu.tekin@atilim.edu.tr

A. Nejat TÖNGÜR

Assist. Prof. Dr., Maltepe University, Department of English Language Teaching. ORCID: 0000-0002-1204-4399, nejattongur@maltepe.edu.tr; anejatt@yahoo.com

Zeynep Rana TURGUT

Lecturer Dr., Atilim University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID: 0000-0003-2048-966X, rana.selimoglu@atilim.edu.tr

Hatice Gönül ÜÇELE

Prof. Dr., İstanbul Aydın University, Department of English Language and Literature. ORCID:0000-0002-7700-7898, gonulucele@aydin.edu.tr

←11 | 12→←12 | 13→

INTRODUCTION

This book offers content from diverse resources, including works of authors, poets, and playwrights from different ages, races, genres, and cultures regarding the themes of “Marginalisation, Discrimination, Isolation and Existence”. The book aims to investigate the issues of “Marginalisation, Discrimination, Isolation and Existence” within the frameworks of gender, colonization, multiculturalism, religion, race, generation gap, politics, technology, immigration, and class. Studies on the outstanding works of English Literature, American Literature, and Post-Colonial Literature of various genres like poetry, plays, and fiction are included in this book, focusing on and around the central theme of “Marginalisation, Discrimination, Isolation and Existence”. The book comprises canonical works by authors, playwrights and poets including W. Shakespeare, W. H. Auden, H.G. Wells, G. Orwell, E. Ionesco, T. Mann, J. Winterson, D. H. Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, Sarah Waters, M. Shelley, as well as the works of the post-colonial writers like Leila Aboulela, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kopano Matlwa, Maggie Gee who have been gaining worldwide recognition recently.

Extensive and intensive analysis is incorporated into the accepted articles so that they contribute to the relevant field of the studies. The book, which is intended to be the first of the three books covering the areas of literature, translation studies and linguistics, respectively, is designed to reflect the wide range of perspectives of the leading Turkish scholars in an eclectic way with the titles Synergy I: Literature, Synergy II: Translation Studies and Synergy III: Linguistics.

The first chapter has Assoc. Prof. Tarakcıoğlu’s article in which she dissects how Winterson, in her monsterpiece, Frankissstein: A Love Story, inventively plays on the characters, plot, genre, gender, identity, meaning, time, and transtextual elements. In the second chapter, Dr. Karaduman explores women’s political rights in the early 20th century with reference to Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Harriet Mill, and Virginia Woolf’s ideas about women’s liberation in Gertrude Colmore’s Suffragette Sally. In Prof. Birlik’s and Ms. Günday’s chapter, they give an ecopsychological reading and explore the fluid psychodynamics activated by the garden in its mirror-like existence in Auden’s “Their Lonely Betters”. Dr. Serdaroğlu, in the fourth chapter, dwells on the hypocritical handling of gender stereotyping, in Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. Dr. Tekin traces saunterings of Mann’s “Gustav von Aschenbach” in Death ←13 | 14→in Venice, Winterson’s “Villanelle” in The Passion and Ishiguro’s “Jan” in “Crooner” in Venice in the fifth chapter. In the sixth chapter, Dr. Parlak sheds light on past and present social engineering and propaganda methods with references to George Orwell’s 1984 and Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. The seventh chapter by Assoc. Prof. Edman, Dr. Gözen and Dr. Kasimi investigate the inevitable ramifications of science on man through the science fiction novel, The Invisible Man and the ethics of science. In the eighth chapter, Dr. Bayrakçeken Akın shows how Lawrence depicts discrimination and identification in colonized societies that challenge implicitly conventional understandings of multi-culturalism and diversity. In the ninth chapter, Dr. Aras investigates the theme of isolation and loneliness, which definitely goes beyond psychological and/or physical breakdown and also leads to darkness, disaster, destruction, and eventually to death in M. Shelley’s Frankenstein. Dr. Çevik deals with how Kopano Matlwa, in Coconut, explores the points of cleavages, transnationalism experiences, and changing cultural norms in South Africa in the tenth chapter. The eleventh chapter has Dr. Çağlayan Mazanoğlu’s analysis of King Lear in terms of problematic political and familial questions it raises. The twelfth chapter has Dr. Töngür’s article in which he analyses how prejudices, clichés and presumptions complicate the lives of both people with similar identities and people from incongruent cultures in Aboulela’s stories in Elsewhere, Home. Dr. Turgut’s concern in the thirteenth chapter is the pathos underlying Maggie Gee’s portrayal of the multicultural Britain wherein xenophobia prevails and the author’s anti-racist stance against the rising waves of nationalism. In the fourteenth chapter, Dr. Güvendi-Yalçın and Prof. Üçele demonstrate the idea of courtly love within the concepts of gender, sexuality, marriage and rape in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.

←14 | 15→

Aslı Özlem TARAKCIOĞLU

I: A PERENNIAL QUEST FOR ETERNAL EXISTENCE: JEANETTE WINTERSON’S FRANKISSSTEIN: A LOVE STORY

Abstract: Jeanette Winterson’s 2019 novel, Frankissstein: A Love Story, is a stunning afterlife of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which has been subjected to innumerable rewrites, adaptations and remade films. Different from the previous ones, Winterson, in her work, creates two parallel interesting stories by interweaving an amusing version of the classical story in the 19th century Switzerland and the story of a transgender transhumanist dealing with artificial intelligence in today’s Britain. While creating a literary feat, Winterson, at the same time, seems to lead us to quest the duality – even the multi-layers – of existence. Thus, the aim of this study is to show how Winterson, in her monsterpiece, Frankissstein: A Love Story, inventively plays on the characters, plot, genre, gender, identity, meaning, time and transtextual elements in order to provide us with a wider perspective over the humanity and the purpose of its existence.

Keywords: Frankissstein: A Love Story, Jeanette Winterson, hybridity, AI, transhumanism, posthumanism, existence

Jeanette Winterson’s 2019 novel, Frankissstein: A Love Story, is a stunning afterlife of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein which has been subjected to innumerable rewrites, adaptations and remade films. Different from the previous ones, Winterson, in her work, creates two parallel interesting stories by interweaving an amusing version of the writing process and beyond of the classical story in the 19th century Switzerland and the story of a transhumanist couple, a transgender physician and an expert in AI (AI) and robotic engineering, dealing with AI in today’s Britain. While creating a literary feat, Winterson, at the same time, seems to lead us to quest the duality and the multi-layers – of existence by inventively playing on the characters, plot, genre, gender, identity, meaning, time and intertextual elements in order to provide us with a wider perspective over the humanity and the purpose of its existence. She seems to circle around the meaning of being “human” in the 21st century and the timeless passion of human beings for eternal existence scattering transhumanistic and posthumanistic sparks around.←15 | 16→

Winterson’s monsterpiece, Frankissstein: A Love Story, still a love story at its core, playfully and perceptively brings the romantic 19th century background in which Mary Shelley penned her Gothic classic and the contemporary transhumanistic world of AI and smart-tech together by relating two mirrored stories. While flashing on the dispute between poetry and the bit as well as on technology and human, the novel also leads the reader to question if the creation of life artificially in pursuit of eternity might be as exasperating as Shelley imagined and depicted. The use of posthumanism and transhumanism in the backbone of the work, furthermore, highlights the ever-growing impact of science and technology upon our perceptions of humanism and the existence of humanity.

The novel, which takes in a discerning re-telling of Mary Shelley’s life story, opens in Lake Geneva, Switzerland in 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley, accompanied by her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron and his physician Polidori, have to stay in-doors due to the heavy rain. While spending their days drinking and having small talk about literature, life and gender relations, they decide to have a challenge; each is supposed to write or tell “a story of supernatural” (Winterson, 2019, p. 11). Mary, scared by her vision of “a figure, gigantic, ragged, moving swiftly on the rocks” (Winterson, 2019, p. 4), distressed by the death of their first child at birth, whom she “dreamed that he was not dead and that we rubbed him with brandy and set him by the fire and he returned to life” (Winterson, 2019, p. 16) and influenced by the idea of “homunculus … that thing; that fully-formed being not born of woman” (Winterson, 2019, pp. 66–67), decides to write a story of an “undead”. She starts to write about a scientist who attempts to create a new-life form and his ‘creation’, a monster. Then, with a fictionalized twist, the story jumps from the early 1800s to a near future when the dream of Victor Frankenstein of Shelley is about to come true with sexbots and AI. The modern period offers a renovated version of the classical Frankenstein story with robots and AI instead of a man-made monster. Ry, a young transgender doctor, meets and falls in love with Victor Stein, a successful professor of AI, who carries out some secret experiments in his underground lab in a network of tunnels under Manchester. Stein, a charismatic tech giant, is involved in some cryogenic experiments and emulation on dead bodies, which would, he believes, enable him to download the contents of human brains into AI systems in order to make humans live forever. Despite the second thoughts about Stein’s intention and the acceptability of his ideas, Ry keeps on providing body parts for him to be used in his underground experiments. While the narration plies between the past and the present, the modern period gets more colourful ←16 | 17→with the existence of three other characters – who are explicitly the remakes and caricatures of the characters in the past – to straddle both worlds and to elucidate how the ideas and perceptions related to existence, identity, gender and intelligence have – or have not – profoundly been amended; a Welsh divorcé and entrepreneur named Ron Lord who makes a fortune by launching sex dolls to meet the emotional and physical needs of lonely men all over the world; an evangelical African American Christian, Claire, who appreciates the religious potential in the bots and invest in “bots for Jesus” to be used with a variety of purposes in churches; and an enthusiastic and ambitious Vanity Fair reporter, Polly D. While swinging in time, a part of the novel takes place in Bedlam, a psychiatric hospital in London in 1818, where Captain Walton brings a disoriented man to be treated named Victor Frankenstein who mysteriously vanishes after talking to Mary Shelley. The novel closes smoothly after Victor Stein also disappears mysteriously and Mary Shelley meets a young computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, Byron’s only legitimate daughter, who implies that the creation of AI, the monster of the future, has irreversibly started.

Details

Pages
324
Year
2021
ISBN (PDF)
9783631858783
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631858790
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631858806
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631846261
DOI
10.3726/b18612
Language
English
Publication date
2021 (June)
Keywords
marginalisation discrimination isolation existence English Literature
Published
Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2021. 324 pp.

Biographical notes

A.Nejat Töngür (Volume editor) Yıldıray Çevik (Volume editor)

A.Nejat Töngür is the first graduate of British Cultural Studies MA and PhD programs in Turkey. He has been working as an Assistant Professor Doctor at the Faculty of Education of Maltepe University, Istanbul. His current research fields are Comparative Literature, Post-colonial Literature, Colonial Literature, 20th Century English Novel, Scotland, and Literature and Language Teaching. He has got three published books, book chapters, articles and presentations. Yıldıray Çevik, now employed as a lecturer at the Faculty of Science and Letters, Arel University, Istanbul, has worked as an EFL/ESP teacher at various levels and institutions. He co-wrote a number of proficiency exam books, grammar course books and vocabulary development self-study materials. He did a post-PhD study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and served as a lecturer at English and American Studies Department in Skopje, Macedonia. His interests are British fiction, Afro-Anglo fiction, American drama, and the use of literature in ELT.

Previous

Title: Synergy I: Marginalisation, Discrimination, Isolation and Existence in Literature
book preview page numper 1
book preview page numper 2
book preview page numper 3
book preview page numper 4
book preview page numper 5
book preview page numper 6
book preview page numper 7
book preview page numper 8
book preview page numper 9
book preview page numper 10
book preview page numper 11
book preview page numper 12
book preview page numper 13
book preview page numper 14
book preview page numper 15
book preview page numper 16
book preview page numper 17
book preview page numper 18
book preview page numper 19
book preview page numper 20
book preview page numper 21
book preview page numper 22
book preview page numper 23
book preview page numper 24
book preview page numper 25
book preview page numper 26
book preview page numper 27
book preview page numper 28
book preview page numper 29
book preview page numper 30
book preview page numper 31
book preview page numper 32
book preview page numper 33
book preview page numper 34
book preview page numper 35
book preview page numper 36
book preview page numper 37
book preview page numper 38
book preview page numper 39
book preview page numper 40
326 pages