Bücher von Marta Zapala-Kraj

Essay from the year 2015 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 5.0, , language: English, abstract: Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949 and educated at St. Benedict¿s School, Ealing. He graduated from Clare College, Cambridge and then won a research fellowship to study at Yale University from 1971-73. He was awarded the Whitbread Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Described as one of the most original 1980s British writers, Ackroyd was compared with novelists such as Salman Rushdie or Jeanette Winterson. Modestly, Ackroyd considers his output, which includes poetry, biographies, and novels simply as ¿writing¿, being the result of the simple creative impulse. "One can [...] assume that unlike any piece of fiction, metafiction is fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon its own nature, its modes of production, and its intended effect on the reader."

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: Nowadays the word ¿Mafiä refers nearly all groups or gangs involved in organized crime. However, originally, Mafia meant an organized criminal organization of Italian, predominantly Sicilian, heritage. In fact, this word is a mere literary creation while the real name is ¿Cosa Nosträ meaning ¿our thing¿.For many years the common understanding of the Mafia was strictly limited by argument on whether there even was a Mafia. In the recent decades that argument was more or less settled, and the principal argument remaining is whether or not organized crime and the Mafia are one and the same thing. According to Finckenauer:To this end, this useful primer to the phenomenon quite rightly tarts with a simple question that begs a complex answer: what is organized crime? Sometimes, the mobsters are easy to identify, a collection of ne¿er-do-wells with no visible source of income but owning flashy cars and homes; involved in the staples of organized criminality, whether trafficking drugs or infiltrating legitimate businesses. The old stereotypes, which were always something of a caricature, are becoming even less applicable in the modern world. [...]In part the confusion revolves around an understanding of the real nature of organized crime that existed since the earliest days of the nation and, indeed, earlier. It is worth remembering that, organized crime achieves its status not only by the fact of groups of practitioners, but also due to the fact that organized crime is syndicate crime in which certain activities are apportioned out to the various gangs and honored in the main by these gangs.What is interesting, in the beginning and even till the 1950s, many people regarded the Mafia not as law-breaking criminals but as role-models and protectors of the weak and the poor, as the state offered no protection to the lower classes. The question arises, where from such interest and the phenomenon of ¿good-Mafia-attitude¿ within the societies all over the world. As it will be presented within the course of this paper, out of the numerous fiction books and movies, above all, Mario Puzo¿s The Godfather from 1969 and obviously the film adaptation made by Francis Ford Coppola ¿ were so successful that they deeply shaped a general understanding of the mafia [...]

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, , language: English, abstract: In their texts, The Chronicles of Narnia, the novel is full of elements of myth. Some of the concepts in the novel are borrowed from Greek Mythology, like the fauns, centaur, dryads, and minotaur, while giants, dwarfs are from the Norse mythology. Also, elements of Christianity are also seen in the novel, such as Aslan the lion, often compared to Jesus Christ. Apart from these, one can trace the various archetypal images, so strongly linked with the one very particular type of the story ¿ that of the quest.