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"Truthfulness and falsehood in literature."
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The Fabrication of American Literature
Literary histories typically celebrate the antebellum period as marking the triumphant emergence of American literature. But the period's readers and writers tell a different story: they derided literature as a fraud, an imposture, and a humbug, and they likened it to inflated currency, land bubbles, and quack medicine.
Excavating a rich archive of magazine fiction, verse satires, comic almanacs, false slave narratives, minstrel song sheets, and early literary criticism, and revisiting such familiar figures as Edgar Allan Poe, Davy Crockett, Fanny Fern, and Herman Melville, Lara Langer Cohen uncovers the controversies over literary fraudulence that plagued these years and uses them to offer an ambitious rethinking of the antebellum print explosion. She traces the checkered fortunes of American literature from the rise of literary nationalism, which was beset by accusations of puffery, to the conversion of fraudulence from a national dilemma into a sorting mechanism that produced new racial, regional, and gender identities. Yet she also shows that even as fraudulence became a sign of marginality, some authors managed to turn their dubious reputations to account, making a virtue of their counterfeit status. This forgotten history, Cohen argues, presents a dramatically altered picture of American literature's role in antebellum culture, one in which its authority is far from assured, and its failures matter as much as its achievements.
eBook
Secrets, lies and children's fiction
\"Many children learn from a very young age about the importance of always telling the truth. They also learn that telling lies is necessary if they are to survive in a world that paradoxically values the truth but practises deception. Secrets, Lies and Children's Fiction demonstrates how this paradox is played out in texts for children and young adults, how secrets and lies may be a necessary means for survival and adaptation, and how mendacity may have its virtues. Kerry Mallan examines a wide selection of international texts, spanning several decades, including picture books, novels, and films. By drawing on diverse fields of scholarship, Mallan makes important connections between children's literature, philosophical and moral complexities, and cultural and social tensions. Secrets, Lies and Children's Fiction provokes thinking about what passes as 'the truth', the consequences of truth telling and lying, and the sacrificial arbitrariness of scapegoating. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel
This volume deals with the occurrence and development of unreliable first-person narration in twentieth century Western literature. The different articles in this collection approach this topic both from the angle of literary theory and through a detailed reading of literary texts. By addressing questions concerning the functions, characteristics and types of unreliability, this collection contributes to the current theoretical debate about unreliable narration. At the same time, the collection highlights the different uses to which unreliability has been put in different contexts, poetical traditions and literary movements. It does so by tracing the unreliable first-person narrator in a variety of texts from Dutch, German, American, British, French, Italian, Polish, Danish and Argentinean literature. In this way, this volume significantly extends the traditional 'canon' of narrative unreliability. This collection combines essays from some of the foremost theoreticians of unreliability (James Phelan, Ansgar Nünning) with essays from experts in different national traditions. The result is a collection that approaches the 'case' of narrative unreliability from a new and more varied perspective.
eBook
Compelling confessions
Compelling Confessions: The Politics of Personal Disclosure is a collection of essays whose shared purpose is to offer an accessible interdisciplinary exploration of the social dynamics behind confessional discourse. As various contributors to this collection demonstrate, confession is ubiquitous in contemporary culture, not only within psychological or therapeutic frameworks or literary analysis, but also in internet discussion groups, in the criminal justice system, in political rhetoric, in so-called \"reality\" and interview-style television programming, in writing pedagogy and, increasingly, in the testimonial strain observable in contemporary scholarship. Yet, \"telling one's story\" raises questions, not only about authorial intent or authenticity, but also about the pressures disclosure can impose upon its audiences. Far less ubiquitous than confessions themselves, as these contributors suggest, are the critical tools that general audiences might employ in order to better evaluate the rhetoric of personal disclosure. It is, in fact, the shortage of such tools – responses and procedures that could be stated plainly and implemented by any reader or viewer – that Compelling Confessions sets out to address.
eBook
Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe
\"Larvatus prodeo,\" announced René Descartes at the beginning of the seventeenth century: \"I come forward, masked.\" Deliberately disguising or silencing their most intimate thoughts and emotions, many early modern Europeans besides Descartes-princes, courtiers, aristocrats and commoners alike-chose to practice the shadowy art of dissimulation. For men and women who could not risk revealing their inner lives to those around them, this art of incommunicativity was crucial, both personally and politically. Many writers and intellectuals sought to explain, expose, justify, or condemn the emergence of this new culture of secrecy, and from Naples to the Netherlands controversy swirled for two centuries around the powers and limits of dissimulation, whether in affairs of state or affairs of the heart. This beautifully written work crisscrosses Europe, with a special focus on Italy, to explore attitudes toward the art of dissimulation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Discussing many canonical and lesser-known works, Jon R. Snyder examines the treatment of dissimulation in early modern treatises and writings on the court, civility, moral philosophy, political theory, and in the visual arts.
eBook
Does social media information credibility influence social commerce purchase intention of skincare products? Evidence from Facebook
Social commerce is transforming consumer purchasing behaviours by blending social media interactivity with e-commerce functionalities, and most purchases today are evidently facilitated through social media platforms with ease. Recognising the importance of credibility in skin-related purchases, this study aims to examine how social media information credibility factors, specifically source credibility and electronic word of mouth (e WOM) credibility, influence consumers’ purchase intentions for skincare products on Facebook, considering the mediating roles of trust in online communities and perceived privacy risk. Primary data were collected through a structured survey from 384 skincare purchasers who made their purchases via Facebook, and the model was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). Further, the results reveal that source credibility, e WOM credibility, and trust in online communities positively influence social commerce purchase intention (SCPI), while perceived risk has a negative effect. Trust in online communities also reduces perceived risk and mediates the relationship between information credibility and purchase intention. Hence, these findings highlight the pivotal roles of trust and risk perceptions in shaping online consumer behaviour in the social commerce space, especially within the skincare market. The study emphasises the need for businesses to leverage credible information sources and build trustworthy online communities to enhance consumer confidence and engagement. Moreover, it contributes to the growing literature on social commerce by offering insights from an emerging market context, Sri Lanka, and suggests future research into broader dimensions of credibility and cultural comparisons to deepen the understanding of social commerce.
Journal Article
Cryptocurrency Portfolio Allocation under Credibilistic CVaR Criterion and Practical Constraints
The cryptocurrency market offers attractive but risky investment opportunities, characterized by rapid growth, extreme volatility, and uncertainty. Traditional risk management models, which rely on probabilistic assumptions and historical data, often fail to capture the market’s unique dynamics and unpredictability. In response to these challenges, this paper introduces a novel portfolio optimization model tailored for the cryptocurrency market, leveraging a credibilistic CVaR framework. CVaR was chosen as the primary risk measure because it is a downside risk measure that focuses on extreme losses, making it particularly effective in managing the heightened risk of significant downturns in volatile markets like cryptocurrencies. The model employs credibility theory and trapezoidal fuzzy variables to more accurately capture the high levels of uncertainty and volatility that characterize digital assets. Unlike traditional probabilistic approaches, this model provides a more adaptive and precise risk management strategy. The proposed approach also incorporates practical constraints, including cardinality and floor and ceiling constraints, ensuring that the portfolio remains diversified, balanced, and aligned with real-world considerations such as transaction costs and regulatory requirements. Empirical analysis demonstrates the model’s effectiveness in constructing well-diversified portfolios that balance risk and return, offering significant advantages for investors in the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency market. This research contributes to the field of investment management by advancing the application of sophisticated portfolio optimization techniques to digital assets, providing a robust framework for managing risk in an increasingly complex financial landscape.
Journal Article
Getting by in a bibliometric economy: scholarly publishing and academic credibility in the Nigerian academy
Why are Nigeria’s universities launching a growing number of open access journals while simultaneously expecting their academic staff to publish ‘internationally’? And what impact do these expectations have on Nigerian journals? Drawing on interviews with editors and publishers, we describe the emergence of a hyperlocal ‘credibility economy’ within the Nigerian academy. The great majority of Nigerian scholarly journals are excluded from Scopus and Web of Science, the two main global citation indexes. Stigmatized by geography, Nigerian journals are ignored, rendered invisible, classed as poor quality or condemned as ‘predatory’. Historicizing these trends, we illustrate our argument with four case studies: two science and technology journals hosted by universities and two independent publishers, one with expertise in African studies, the other in information studies. In each case, we explore the motivations, commitments and strategies of editors and publishers. Their stories exemplify the impact of colonial histories, global discourses and bibliometric infrastructures on African research publishing cultures. The histories, logics and fragilities of this regional research ecosystem reveal how Africa’s scholars and publishers are getting by – but only just – amid the metricized judgements of the global research economy.
Journal Article