Literature, Volume 6, Issue 2 (June 2026) – 7 articles

This article examines the representation of mental illness, emergency treatment, and recovery, in Ned Vizzini’s 2006 Young Adult novel, It’s kind of a funny story. Existing criticism has predominantly pursued what we term “diagnostic realist” approaches, which evaluate fictional representations against clinical criteria. We both affirm what this work achieves and make the case for extending it. Drawing on work on disability representation in Young Adult Literature and perspectives from Mad Studies, we propose that a social model lens, which locates mental difference within social and structural contexts rather than within individual pathology, opens out further possibilities for understanding what this and related novels do. We then demonstrate how close attention to Vizzini’s artistry—including to his use of romance conventions, figurative language, intertextuality, and first-person focalisation—reveals a text that does not simply mirror mental illness realistically, but which actively dramatises how social environments, institutional structures, and modes of creative expression shape the experience of and recovery from mental ill health. Rather than displacing diagnostic approaches, we argue that these wider critical paradigms, inclusive of the social model and attendant attention to craft, can enhance understanding of the help such novels can provide for different kinds of readers. Full article

In Literature and Revolution, a classic of literary criticism and literary theory, Leon Trotsky gave attention to the work of several outstanding women writers. This article examines his critical treatment of these Russian women poets and their work. It shows that he consistently denigrated both the women and their writing by deploying conventional stereotypes and misogynist tropes, including those of the witch and of gynaecological writing. He targeted especially the women’s religious commitments and the domestic orientation of their work, portraying them as immured in a decadent and obsolescent pre-revolutionary culture. Literature and Revolution was published in 1924, before Trotsky slid from political power as a result of the ascent of Stalin, and from the time of its publication, it has remained an influential study of the relationships between political revolution and literary activity, especially, though not exclusively, on the Left. Trotsky did devote attention to the cultural production of contemporary women writers, though not as much or as seriously as that he gave to their male counterparts. It is argued that, in pursuing his ideological objectives of reorienting literature towards revolutionary values and themes, Trotsky’s analysis nevertheless worked to uphold and reinforce, rather than to challenge, existing concepts of gender difference and gender hierarchy. Full article

In our current moment, sport and romance are uniting in the creation of YA sports fiction titles that are flooding the market and enjoying widespread popularity. Despite this exciting intersection between sport and romance in the world of fiction for young people, little research has been conducted on the realities and possibilities of the genre. This paper employs inductive thematic analysis to explore answers to the question: How does sport function across three current, contemporary, high-quality YA sport romances? Findings reveal how, within each text, the protagonist’s relationship with sport is initially represented as a romance trope that is, at best, idealized, and at worst, dangerous. This is followed by the introduction of a fellow teen who foments romantic interest in the protagonist, and serving as an unwitting rival, reveals the flaws and failings of the initial sporting suitor. The protagonist, now under the spell of a new love, is forced and enabled to see, confront, and redefine their relationship with sport. This paper is important in the way it invites purposeful consideration of sport and romance and their intersections in young adult literature at a time when YA sport romances abound but scholarly examination of the genre is just beginning to emerge. Full article

In his poem The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare uses ekphrasis—the virtuosic description of a piece of art such as a painting, tapestry, or tableau—to critique the Roman ideal of female virtue. After her husband’s description of her beauty incites Tarquin to rape her, Lucrece processes her wrong and positions herself heroically by identifying herself with the figure of Hecuba in a painting of the fall of Troy. She then commits suicide, and her body becomes a vehicle of political renewal, prompting Roman men to revolt against the Tarquins and found the Roman Republic. Shakespeare’s wronged Roman women imitate Lucrece, ekphrastically orienting themselves to destruction in hopes of effecting political change. Tracing Lucrece-inspired moments of ekphrasis across multiple plays reveals how Shakespeare is in conversation with ancient literary techniques, critiques of Stoicism, and the moral concerns about Lucrece’s suicide raised in the Christian tradition. I argue that Shakespeare’s deliberate omission of ekphrasis from the story of the Stoic Portia highlights her suicide as unnecessary and reveals the self-destructive power of the Roman ideal of female virtue. While we may be tempted to think of ekphrasis as purely decorative, in these ekphrastic moments, poetics, philosophy, and political action are intertwined. Full article

Taylor Swift’s songwriting is frequently analyzed through the lens of confessional songwriting, blurring the boundaries between factual and fictional storytelling. This article proposes understanding her work as transmedia meta-autobiographies, a genre characterized by self-reflexivity and the questioning of autobiographical rules. Drawing on Mueller-Greene’s definition of meta-autobiography and intersectional theories, the study analyzes Swift’s lyrics, music videos, and paratextual elements, specifically focusing on selected works after her split with Big Machine Records, as this marks a different era in her creative work and is also linked to the discourse around her re-recordings. The analysis demonstrates how Swift utilizes transmedia storytelling to perform the act of remembering and writing, effectively staging her “self” across various media formats. This self-representation could according to the rules of the genre function as a counter-narrative to traditional male-centric autobiographical forms by centering girlhood. However, the article also highlights contradictions regarding authenticity and the commodification of this identity. Full article

This study examines the hypothetical issue of the impact of ancient Egyptian beliefs on Africa as a whole. Several focal points are explored. These include (1). The situation of the discipline of folklore within allied academic specializations. (2). Culture diffusion within Africa, and (3). Spoken folk stories as the only field that integrates, in the space and time continuum, culture on the one hand, with its bearers/(society), on the other. (4). [Beside the] colonial past, the problem, is a result of a number of academic factors that include: (a). The establishment at universities of African studies departments that confine the continent to the sub-Saharan tier excluding Africa of the North; thus, folklore is isolated without a proper stage for studying it academically (see Dorson 1972); (b). The stereotyping concerning the capacity of scholars with unfamiliar names or recognized departmental membership as capable of dealing with theory or innovation, though some of their ideas are adopted by the famous without accrediting the source; (c). Ignoring the unfamiliarity for the family (especially under conditions of secrecy; cf. bias, ethnocentrism); and (d). Inadequacy of academic classroom pedagogy on the basics of verbal lore. Folklore in its original, mainly verbal branches, as represented by Stith Thompson’s monumental works on motif (1955–1958), and its predecessor by Antti Aarne on Type, (1910, 1928, 1961/1964), whose coverage, especially on Africa of the North, is seriously lacking in both the Type and Motif Indexes. The tracking of this line begins with recent calls for need for morphological studies of a South African tale (Dseagu [2001] 2021). An association among various regions of Africa with ancient Egypt concerning mythological contacts merits this investigation. Full article

In this article I interrogate how the film The Reluctant Fundamentalist aligns with as well as problematizes racial capitalism. The optic of racial capitalism enables me to trace the film’s articulation of race relations within the US and the power of white supremacy internationally, particularly as they manifest in the geopolitics of the US empire. The optic of racial capitalism foregrounds the inextricability of what Cedric Robinson termed racialism and the historical development of capitalism(s). The film demonstrates how racial capitalism is naturalized through the creation of aspirations for the symbolic markers of upward mobility and the acquisition of wealth, which is to say, cultural as much as financial capital. The film also illustrates that racial capitalism is a work in progress; it is neither singular nor homogeneous in its effect as it mutates across the world; it derives its power from the construction of racial infrastructures, political–economic institutions, states and, as I will argue in this essay, through regimes of racial affect. Full article