Changing Pieces

This paper analyzes the covers of the weekly newspaper Novosti, on which the current refugee and migrant crisis is depicted with illustrations where various verbal and visual signs recontextualize the motif of barbed and razor wire. The symbolic, satiric, and metaphoric potential of barbed wire is discussed, and its functions in the narrative on migrants are defined. The examples are categorized according to the distinct semantic characteristics of acting on the body and enclosing space, and the presented research model confirms that the pronounced artistic and critical functionality of the motif of barbed wire lies precisely in the potential of establishing an antithesis that is simultaneously also an element of the satirical dialectic and the source of metaphoric interpretations. Keywords: barbed wire, satire, symbol, conceptual metaphor, semanticsWriting a summary for the history of barbed wire, from the prairies and war trenches to concentration camps, Razac (2009) stops at the con...

Three decades after American author Edgar Allan Poe laid down the foundations for the detective genre in the 1840s with his “tales of ratiocination,” native detective stories began to appear on Russian literary scene. Among them were those written by Aleksandr Andreevich Shkljarevskij today known as “the father of Russian detective fiction.” This article provides a short overview of Poe’s literary influence as well as of the conditions that brought about the onset of Russian detective fiction. It offers an extensive comparative analysis of short stories by the mentioned “fathers” and identifies many similarities in their poetics. Finally, by looking into the characteristics of American Romanticism and Russian Realism that constitute the sociocultural backgrounds of the authors, it proposes answers to questions stemming from the difference in the aspect of analysis they emphasize. Keywords: 19th century Russian detective fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, Aleksandr Andreevich Shkljarevskij, soci...

In Iza’s Ballad, Magda Szabó writes about the lives of two doctors who meet and fall in love at university. “Don’t get too involved with politics,” experienced Antal warns a seemingly ingénue Iza. To which she responds: “Politics will be my life as long as I live.” In this brief encounter, Szabó connects the predominant themes of her oeuvre: politics and life, or, to be more specific, Communism and the domestic. In its analysis of Iza’s Ballad (1963), Katalin Street (1969), and The Door (1987), this article illustrates how Szabó’s descriptions of the domestic convey the impact of Hungary’s troubled political history on the concept of the home/homeland. The article illustrates the ways in which Szabó contrasts the relatively comfortable years of Goulash Communism with the hardship endured during WWII, under Rákosi, and during the 1956 Revolution, to convey the lasting effects of the Soviet occupation on the notion of home. Keywords: Magda Szabó; Hungary; homeland; 1956 Revolution; Goula...

Characters: Over the chimneys, streaks of clouds and smoke across the sky. It is a wet and dismal night. A Saint-Petersburg mansion. In the lordly entrance, stands ARLEKIN in his tights and bells, and he follows the walkers with his eyes.TEACHER (enters, music is heard in the distance) ARLEKIN: Let me guide you. TEACHER: Impudent! ARLEKIN: Ah, no. Have pity! Please, let me guide you… Just from afar. TEACHER: Where are the police when you need them? ARLEKIN (somewhat breaking): My autumn looooove…TEACHER: Leave me!ARLEKIN (earnestly, and with misunderstood power): My queen…TEACHER (is silent) ARLEKIN: I love… you are so beautiful! Are you always so beautiful on autumn nights? TEACHER (as if in a frenzy): Scoff and scoff again! I am a single, thin woman. They pay me twenty rubles… like I’m a cook! I am tired! My voice is hoarse! You listen to me, my voice is hoarse, on my eternally hoarse lips, and I cannot dream of fantasies! ARLEKIN: Ah, no! It’s just, it seems, I’ve only had one dream...

In recent years, popular culture has witnessed the proliferation of violent female characters, while female criminality has also received increasing attention from many critics and academics. These women remain a fascination for both mainstream culture and researchers as their acts go against cultural conceptions and are even viewed as antithetical to femininity. And while the increasing presence of female violence in media and popular culture may be symptomatic of present-day society’s concerns about gender behavior, the portrayal of violent women still seems to be following genre conventions and familiar stereotypes that inevitably frame, and thus normalize, their acts within boundaries of traditional discourses on femininity. In that regard, Women Who Kill: Gender and Sexuality in Film and Series of the Post-Feminist Era presents itself as a particularly timely book that investigates the representation of women who kill in a so-called postfeminist context recognized principally by a...