Books in the Europaeische Hochschulschriften / European University Studies / Publications Universitaires Europeennes series

Diversification to a degree

Aims to understand the core of Calvin's Theodicy and to demonstrate that one of the important reasons that prompted Calvin to preach for almost 2 years 159 Sermons on the "Book of Job" was to vindicate God's justice by demonstrating the meaningfulness of God's activity in human life.

Grounded in the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM), a usage-based meaning construction model of language of recent design, this research argues that illocutionary meaning either results from filling in constructional variables such as X in the Can You XVP? construction or from affording access to abstract situational cognitive models through the metonymic activation of relevant elements of their structure. One such model is the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, which is incorporated into the description of pragmatic meaning and presented as lying at the core of the conventionalization process of illocutionary constructions. The inferential path based on the instantiation of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model determines the activation of speech act values that may become conventionalized within a linguistic community. The study determines the applicability of the analytical tools developed by the LCM for illocutionary description. The illocutionary acts selected are those proposed by the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model as exploiting cultural principles of interaction.

This book focuses on the theme of foreignness and its representation in literature and cognate discourses. The volume brings together essays in English, Spanish and Catalan that consider from original and informed perspectives both the conceptualization of the foreign and foreignness in its human, geographical/spatial, historical and cultural guises, not only as contemplated but also as a lens in the act of contemplation. This multi- and inter-disciplinary collection of essays is the result of an inspired and timely collaboration between specialists in comparative literature from across the world. Dealing with fundamental questions relating to the trans- and intercultural, otherness, migration, cosmopolitanism and the global, it will be of interest to researchers and students in comparative literature, modern languages and area studies, travel writing, intercultural studies, sociolinguistics and social anthropology.

Magical realism was one of the most significant literary developments in the last century. It has become synonymous with the seductive fictions of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Ben Okri, Jeanette Winterson and Peter Carey. However, the genre has also become known for its theoretical indeterminacy. In fact, exoticist speculation, inspired by the links between magical realist literature and the world¿s cultural or political margins, has thrown the category into critical disrepute. This book rescues magical realism from misreadings and misdemeanours, tracing the historical development of the literary genre and analysing an original spectrum of magical realist texts from Latin America, Africa, India, Canada, the US, the UK and Australia. It asks such questions as: How did magical realism come to take over the world? What is the nature of its allure? Also, how does the marginal status of its authors inform the genre? Does magical realism have a political agenda? This book uses postcolonial theory to investigate notions of cultural identity and post-structural theory to examine the narrative strategies of magical realism, presenting a comprehensive historical and theoretical overview of the genre and a politically urgent argument about its subversive potentialities.

In contrast to the other synoptic evangelists the author of Matthew proceeded differently in many respects. Why did he modify the text so much and arrange ten miracle narratives one after the other at one stretch with minor interruptions? Why did he place the so-called «miracle chapters» immediately after the Sermon on the Mount. Why did he enclose them between two summary statements on either side? These are only some of the unanswered questions about chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew¿s Gospel. Beginning with Aristotle¿s theory of the drama or tragedy, the author suggests that the way the evangelist has reworked and reorganized the miracle narratives is similar to the structure of the classic drama. By discovering the narrative strategies and the discourse aspect, we are able to demonstrate how each episode corresponds to the different moments of a plot such as the initial situation, inciting moment, complication, climax with suspense and finally resolution and denouement.