“The title of Salman Rushdie’s famous essay, which later formed the title of a book of essays by him, ‘Imaginary Homelands’, is based on one side of a common and age-old perception of home: we make it in the mind or the imagination. Ordinary language has versions of it too: home is where the heart is, I don’t feel at home in my own town/country, this is my spiritual home, etc. On the other hand, there is a physical aspect to home too – ranging from walls associated with ancestral property or parents or some other such inheritance, and extended, through the imagining of communities, as Benedict Andersen would phrase it, sometimes to a land, a country, even a nation. To say that any one of these broad definitions of home is wrong is to cut off large sections of humankind: those who do not belong where they live or those who cannot return to where they used to live. To feel at home and to live at home are both valid cravings, and though they do not necessarily overlap, neither can be dismissed in favour of the other” Tabish Khair

Home in Western Language is a compilation of selected papers presented at the 7th BAKEA Symposium, 2021. In the time of the pandemic, when home has acquired more meanings, this book reads the idea of home and explores its connotations as presented in different genres and ages of English, American, French and literatures.

The author has dwelt, especially in the theoretical part, upon general questions which are side-issues in respect to the theme that he has treated. But this will not seem a digression to those who remember that, strictly speaking, there are no particular philosophical sciences, standing by themselves. Philosophy is unity, and when we treat of Æsthetic or of Logic or of Ethics, we treat always of the whole of philosophy, although illustrating for didactic purposes only one side of that inseparable unity. In like manner, owing to this intimate connexion of all the parts of philosophy, the uncertainty and misunderstanding as to the æsthetic activity, the representative and productive imagination, this firstborn of the spiritual activities, mainstay of the others, generates everywhere else misunderstandings, uncertainties and errors: in Psychology as in Logic, in History as in the Philosophy of Practice. If language is the first spiritual manifestation, and if the æsthetic form is language itself, taken in all its true scientific extension, it is hopeless to try to understand clearly the later and more complicated phases of the life of the spirit, when their first and simplest moment is ill known, mutilated and disfigured. From the explanation of the æsthetic activity is also to be expected the correction of several concepts and the solution of certain philosophic problems which generally seem to be almost desperate. Such is precisely the spirit animating the present work. And if the present attempt and the historical illustrations which accompany it may be of use in winning friends to these studies, by levelling obstacles and indicating paths to be followed; if this happen, especially here in Italy, whose æsthetic traditions (as has been demonstrated in its place) are very noble, the author will consider that he has gained his end, and one of his keenest desires will have been satisfied.

In the perusal of the Irish literature, we see that the strength of this conservative instinct has been of the greatest service in the preservation of the early monuments in their purity. So much is this the case, that in many tales the most flagrant contradictions appear, the author or scribe being unwilling to depart at all from that which he found handed down. For instance, in the “Great Breach of Murthemney,” we find Laeg at one moment killed, and in the next riding black Shanglan off the field. From this conservatism and careful following of authority, and the littera scripta, or word once spoken, I conclude that the distance in time between the prose tale and the metrical originals was very great, and, unless under such exceptional circumstances as the revolution caused by the introduction of Christianity, could not have been brought about within hundreds of years. Moreover, this same conservatism would have caused the tales concerning heroes to grow very slowly once they were actually formed. All the noteworthy events of the hero’s life and his characteristics must have formed the original of the tales concerning him, which would have been composed during his life, or not long after his death.

The aim of this book is to shed light on dystopia within the circle of twentieth century literature by analysing the development of totalitarianism and its detrimental effects, such as dehumanisation and social unrest that shattered the unity of society in three basic forms as reflected in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1953), George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Thus, it explores the beginning of totalitarianism resulted from an inborn instinctive drive as reflected in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1953) first, then its formation and rise in George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945), then finally the ill effects of it in both society and in individuals in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Totalitarianism, together with “Fascism”, in the twentieth century can be confined to the period between 1922 and 1975. It starts with Mussolini; is followed by Hitler and Stalin, then ends with the death of Franco. It was during the rule of totalitarians that all ideals promising peace were abused to claim the rule, terror and fear factors were resorted to secure a totalitarian power at the expense of millions of deaths, torture and social unrest. In these novels, William Golding and George Orwell criticise how totalitarianism is established, and maintained by fear, manipulation and terror in the twentieth century.