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“You Two Are the Bad Guys!” Intergenerational Equity, Ecophobia, and Ecocentric Card Games in Disney’s Strange World (2022)
Franz Kafka, Roberto Bolaño, and the “Artificial Intelligence” of Posthumous Authorship
Sacrificial Love (Of Cyborgs, Saviors, and Driller, a Real Robot Killer) in the Comics Descender and Ascender
‘Enter Kent, Gloster, and Bastard’: Beginning King Lear and the Choice of the Audience

Journal Description

Humanities

Humanities is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on the meaning of cultural expression and perceptions as seen through different interpretative lenses. Humanities is published monthly online by MDPI.

Open Access— free for readers, with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.
High Visibility: indexed within Scopus, ESCI (Web of Science), ERIH Plus, and other databases.
Rapid Publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 27.8 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 4.5 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the second half of 2024).
Recognition of Reviewers: reviewers who provide timely, thorough peer-review reports receive vouchers entitling them to a discount on the APC of their next publication in any MDPI journal, in appreciation of the work done.

Impact Factor: 0.3 (2023)

Imprint Information Journal Flyer Open Access ISSN: 2076-0787

Latest Articles

16 pages, 297 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Myth of Mosca: Instances of Antirealism in Eugenio Montale’s «Xenia»

by Marco Tirrito

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060126 - 10 Jun 2025

The objective of this essay is to demonstrate the fictional nature of the character Mosca in Xenia I and Xenia II, the first two sections of Eugenio Montale’s collection Satura (1971), and to illustrate the strategies through which the author makes this [...] Read more.

The objective of this essay is to demonstrate the fictional nature of the character Mosca in Xenia I and Xenia II, the first two sections of Eugenio Montale’s collection Satura (1971), and to illustrate the strategies through which the author makes this possible. Although Mosca is inspired by the historical figure of Drusilla Tanzi, the poet employs a series of macrotextual, thematic, linguistic, and rhetorical devices to elevate the female figure to that of a poetic character. The study briefly addresses these various devices and seeks to refute the hypothesis of a diary-like memorial structure in Xenia, advocating instead for a “narrative–novelistic” structure, which leverages the typical mechanisms of narrative fiction. The contribution demonstrates how the combination of these strategies significantly influences the character of Mosca, ultimately leading to her absorption within the fictional world of narrative poetry. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Interpretation of Fictional Characters in Literary Texts: History of Literary Criticism, Philosophy and Formal Ontologies)

27 pages, 316 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Hearing Written Magic in Harry Potter Films: Insights into Power and Truth in the Scoring for In-World Written Words

by Jamie Lynn Webster

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060125 - 10 Jun 2025

This paper explores how sound design in the Harry Potter film series shapes the symbolic significance of written words within the magical world. Sound mediates between language and meaning; while characters gain knowledge by reading and seeing, viewers are guided emotionally and thematically [...] Read more.

This paper explores how sound design in the Harry Potter film series shapes the symbolic significance of written words within the magical world. Sound mediates between language and meaning; while characters gain knowledge by reading and seeing, viewers are guided emotionally and thematically by how these written texts are framed through sound. For example, Harry’s magical identity is signalled to viewers through the score long before he fully understands himself—first through music when he speaks to a snake, then more explicitly when he receives his letter from Hogwarts. Throughout the series, characters engage with a wide array of written media—textbooks, letters, newspapers, diaries, maps, and inscriptions—that gradually shift in narrative function, from static props to dynamic, multi-sensory agents of transformation. Using a close analysis of selected scenes to examine layers of utterances, diegetic sounds, underscore, and sound design, this study draws on metaphor theory and adaptation theory to examine how sound design gives writing a metaphorical voice, sometimes framing it as character, landscape, or moral authority. As the series progresses, becoming more autonomous from the literary source, written words take on greater symbolic significance, and sound increasingly determines which texts are granted narrative power, whose voices are trusted, and how viewers interpret truth and agency across media. Ultimately, written words in the films are animated through sound into agents of growth, memory, resistance, and transformation. Thus, the audio-visual treatment of written magic reveals not just what is written, but what matters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Music and the Written Word)

21 pages, 1162 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Eco-Rebels in Contemporary Ukrainian Children’s Literature as a Tool for Forming Readers’ Eco-Activity

by Tetiana Kachak and Tetyana Blyznyuk

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 124; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060124 - 10 Jun 2025

The issue of environmental protection and nature conservation has gained global importance, and its solution requires not only scientific and technological efforts but also the education of an environmentally conscious and active young generation. Children’s literature serves as an effective means for this [...] Read more.

The issue of environmental protection and nature conservation has gained global importance, and its solution requires not only scientific and technological efforts but also the education of an environmentally conscious and active young generation. Children’s literature serves as an effective means for this task. The article analyzes the eco-pedagogical potential of contemporary Ukrainian children’s literature through the prism of young eco-rebels. These characters inspire readers with their emotional power, eco-centric worldview, and bold resistance to environmental injustice. They contribute to the formation of ecological values in readers through emotional impact. Based on the ecocritical interpretation and typological comparison of Ghosts of Black Oak Wood by Bachynskyi and Taming of Kychera by Polyanko, we observe that the components of representation of the ecological topic are problematic eco-situation; behavior models, young eco-rebels’ actions and deeds; and eco-initiatives. The article further presents the results of ecocritical dialogues on environmental topics with 26 readers aged 14–15 (Ukraine). The methodology included interactive tools (e.g., Padlet) and surveys, which revealed that literary engagement promoted critical thinking, empathy, and personal eco-involvement. The findings confirm that children’s literature, when integrated with dialogic and participatory teaching methods, can serve as a powerful tool for shaping environmental literacy and civic responsibility in youth. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Rebels with a Cause: Representations and Explorations of Politics and Activism in Children's and YA Literature)

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28 pages, 1735 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Scholarly Paradox Affecting the Two Evies: Librarianship, ‘Harmful’ Books, and ‘Perfection’ in Memes from The Mummy (1999) Media

by Rachel L. Carazo

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060123 - 9 Jun 2025

Meme studies that evaluate specific media characters are growing in popularity, and with the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Mummy (1999) in 2024, the scholarly gap involving memes related to The Mummy narratives became apparent. This article, therefore, focuses on memes depicting the character [...] Read more.

Meme studies that evaluate specific media characters are growing in popularity, and with the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Mummy (1999) in 2024, the scholarly gap involving memes related to The Mummy narratives became apparent. This article, therefore, focuses on memes depicting the character of Evelyn “Evie” Carnahan, who has been played by Rachel Weisz and Maria Bello. Through the analysis, which takes librarianship and gender perspectives due to Evie’s character, four meme categories emerge: (1) general librarian stereotypes, (2) the ‘dangerous/harmful book’ trope, (3) gender issues, and (4) the choosing of the ’real’ (better) Evie. This study finds that the professional and personal issues experienced by Evie in the films—and in the memes—are the same ones that remain problematic for women, librarians, and female librarians in the contemporary world. Moreover, rather than trying to choose between Evies, it is more useful to interpret Weisz’s and Bello’s renderings as critical parts of a whole—a complete woman, librarian, scholar, and adventurer—especially since both iterations of the character face stereotypes involving gender, maternal status, and career aspects. Full article

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15 pages, 219 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Unbearable Birth: Natality in Louise Glück’s Averno

by Reena Sastri

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060122 - 9 Jun 2025

This essay argues for the importance of the overlooked theme of natality in the poetry of Louise Glück. In its guise as mortality, human finitude causes pain through the permanence of death; in its guise as natality, finitude can also be an occasion [...] Read more.

This essay argues for the importance of the overlooked theme of natality in the poetry of Louise Glück. In its guise as mortality, human finitude causes pain through the permanence of death; in its guise as natality, finitude can also be an occasion for wonder at the unlikely chance of having been born, and the contingency and possibility for beginning something new associated with natality by Hannah Arendt and others. In Glück’s work, the theme of natality comes across in poems concerning pregnancy, birth, infants, children, and mothers. Several of her poems feature a hybrid identification as child and as mother, a hybridity that enables the apprehension of natality and that leads to a mode of poetic speech that originates in, and is imbricated with, listening as an alternative to knowing. This essay examines some of Glück’s earlier poetry in these terms before turning to her 2006 volume Averno, which retells the myth of Persephone. Undeniably preoccupied with death, Averno is, I argue, equally concerned with birth, mindful that human finitude itself is double or hybrid. Although many poems cast Demeter as a smothering, possessive mother, Averno, at key moments, takes into account a mother’s perspective as well as a child’s. This hybrid identification gives rise to the emergence of an unexpected lyric voice that both listens and sings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hybridity and Border Crossings in Contemporary North American Poetry)

18 pages, 538 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Curious Knowledge: Diego Valadés’ Rhetorica Christiana as a Cabinet of Curiosity

by Julia Domínguez

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 121; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060121 - 4 Jun 2025

This essay examines Diego Valadés, a Franciscan missionary, as a Renaissance “curioso” whose life and work were driven by insatiable inquisitiveness and a desire to acquire knowledge. Through his Rhetorica Christiana, Valadés, much like collectors of cabinets of curiosities and Wunderkammer, celebrated [...] Read more.

This essay examines Diego Valadés, a Franciscan missionary, as a Renaissance “curioso” whose life and work were driven by insatiable inquisitiveness and a desire to acquire knowledge. Through his Rhetorica Christiana, Valadés, much like collectors of cabinets of curiosities and Wunderkammer, celebrated the richness of indigenous cultures in New Spain. Following the Renaissance ethos of curiosity-driven exploration that fostered a global pursuit of knowledge, Valadés’ work functions as a textual cabinet of curiosity, reflecting his experiences in New Spain and incorporating indigenous flora, fauna, and cultural elements unfamiliar to European readers. His text, originally intended to be titled Suma de todas las ciencias, embodies a new and modern knowledge system that is encyclopedic and proto-scientific in nature. However, Valadés’ intellectual pursuits were constrained by the conservative court of Philip II, where intellectual freedom often faced scrutiny. His work bridges the Renaissance’s intellectual curiosity with mnemonic practices, illustrating how collecting and memory techniques were intertwined in expanding the global understanding of the natural world. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

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15 pages, 242 KiB

Open AccessArticle

When Nature Speaks: Sacred Landscapes and Living Elements in Greco-Roman Myth

by Marianna Olivadese

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060120 - 4 Jun 2025

This article explores Greco-Roman mythology through the lens of ecocriticism, focusing on how sacred landscapes and natural elements were imagined as animate, divine, and morally instructive forces. In ancient Mediterranean cultures, nature was not merely a passive setting for human action but a [...] Read more.

This article explores Greco-Roman mythology through the lens of ecocriticism, focusing on how sacred landscapes and natural elements were imagined as animate, divine, and morally instructive forces. In ancient Mediterranean cultures, nature was not merely a passive setting for human action but a dynamic presence—rivers that judged, groves that punished, and mountains that sheltered or revealed. Texts such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s Georgics, and Homer’s epics present nature as both sacred and sentient, often intervening in human affairs through transformation, vengeance, or protection. Forests, springs, and coastlines functioned as thresholds between human and divine, civilization and wilderness, mortal and eternal. By analyzing these representations, this article reveals a rich tradition in which nature teaches, punishes, guides, and transforms, long before ecological consciousness became a formalized discipline. Drawing connections between classical literary landscapes and contemporary environmental concerns, the article argues that myth can inform today’s ecological imagination, offering an alternative to extractive, anthropocentric paradigms. Recovering the reverence and narrative agency once granted to nature in classical thought may help us rethink our ethical relationship with the environment in the age of climate crisis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue World Mythology and Its Connection to Nature and/or Ecocriticism)

20 pages, 3700 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Notes Towards a Phenomenological Anthropology of Travel and Tourism

by Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060119 - 4 Jun 2025

This paper is an introduction to the Humanities Special Issue on ‘The Phenomenology of Travel and Tourism’. It is made up of four sections, the first two of which provide the main focus of discussion. We start by considering the idea of travel [...] Read more.

This paper is an introduction to the Humanities Special Issue on ‘The Phenomenology of Travel and Tourism’. It is made up of four sections, the first two of which provide the main focus of discussion. We start by considering the idea of travel ‘in comfort’, which, as we show, has been historically bound up with cultures of the mobile virtual gaze. Comfort, by this reckoning, reflects a phenomenological disposition whereby the act of gazing at an object of spectacle is understood not in purely visual terms but as a spatial and somatic prefiguring of that object as an object of spectacle. A phenomenology of comfort, we argue, steers consideration towards the way forms of travel or tourism practice reflect embodied or disembodied modes of engagement with the world. This line of enquiry brings with it the need for more fine-grained analyses of questions of experience, which is picked up and developed in the second section. Here, we examine some of the important and foundational work that has helped push forward scholarship oriented towards the development of a phenomenological anthropology of travel and tourism experiences. Accordingly, a key aim of this paper, and of the Special Issue it provides the introduction to, is to push further and more resolutely towards these ends. The third section is an overview of the nine Special Issue contributions. The paper ends with Kay Ryan’s short poem, ‘The Niagara River’, a quietly foreboding meditation on the hazards of travelling in too much comfort and of reducing the world to little more than ‘changing scenes along the shore’, all the while remaining blind to what awaits downstream. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Phenomenology of Travel and Tourism)

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14 pages, 525 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Antigone’s Claim: Hölderlin’s (and Hegel’s) Insights into a Legal and Genealogical Conundrum of the Tragedy

by Kathrin Holzermayr L. Rosenfield

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 118; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060118 - 3 Jun 2025

This approach to Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles’ famous play modulates in significant ways the usual readings in which Antigone has become, over the centuries, an example of an early claim for natural law. Hölderlin’s insights inaugurate a new and innovative view that significantly [...] Read more.

This approach to Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles’ famous play modulates in significant ways the usual readings in which Antigone has become, over the centuries, an example of an early claim for natural law. Hölderlin’s insights inaugurate a new and innovative view that significantly affects this understanding. His version points to the authentically Greek legal aspect of Antigone’s position as an epicler daughter, claiming her dynastic prerogative to take over the palace and her father’s legacy. Hölderlin’s clues guide us to a reading that restores the tragic dilemma beyond the black-and-white Christian polarization of saintly Antigone and evil Creon and enhances both the heroine’s and Creon’s ambiguities in this rich and ironic text. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Hölderlin and Poetic Transport)

15 pages, 274 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Age Enfreakment in Nursing Home Drama

by Anna Gaidash

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060117 - 31 May 2025

This essay explores how the concept of enfreakment can be used to analyze older adult characters in late 1970s US American theatre, focusing on D.L. Coburn’s The Gin Game and Tennessee Williams’s This is the Peaceable Kingdom. These tragicomedies reflect societal fears [...] Read more.

This essay explores how the concept of enfreakment can be used to analyze older adult characters in late 1970s US American theatre, focusing on D.L. Coburn’s The Gin Game and Tennessee Williams’s This is the Peaceable Kingdom. These tragicomedies reflect societal fears and stigmas surrounding aging, linking back to the historical context of freak shows. Enfreakment intersects with themes of otherness and ableism, highlighting the sensationalism associated with freak culture. The social construction of P.T. Barnum’s freak and older adults as non-hybrids (Haim Hazan) shares common ground. Using a comparative approach and close reading, this research reveals that the fictional nursing home setting limits freedom and produces both repulsion and compassion through its residents, showcasing invective as a protocol of enfreakment. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Literature in the Humanities)

20 pages, 312 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Plato Under Review: What Is Going Wrong in Academic Philosophical Writing

by Giacomo Pezzano

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060116 - 29 May 2025

This paper addresses the problem of stylistic pluralism in philosophical writing, arguing that its progressive narrowing to the form of the paper is not just an esthetic issue but can also have negative effects on the development of academic research itself. The contribution [...] Read more.

This paper addresses the problem of stylistic pluralism in philosophical writing, arguing that its progressive narrowing to the form of the paper is not just an esthetic issue but can also have negative effects on the development of academic research itself. The contribution is divided into two parts (Sections 1–3 and 4–5). In the first part, after introducing the problem and outlining the main features of the philosophus academicus’s writing, two main forms of criticism of “paper-centrism” in academic philosophy are discussed—one more “anti-academic” and the other more “intra-academic”. In light of these criticisms, the issue of the relationship between form and content in philosophical writing is analyzed with particular respect to the problem of the sense of truth, arguing that style communicates philosophical values beyond content. In the second part, this thesis is illustrated by examining, as a case study, the specific sense of truth conveyed in Plato’s dialogues—first through a literary analysis of Platonic writing, and then through a thought experiment inspired by media theory. Finally, the ethical and epistemic concerns raised by the growing “mono-stylism” of philosophical writing are brought together into a unified framework, by proposing a preliminary sketch of an ethics of philosophical research and pointing to some possible examples of alternative research practices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Philosophy and Classics in the Humanities)

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18 pages, 266 KiB

Open AccessArticle

To Blanch an Ethiop: Motifs of Blackness in The Tempest and Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness

by Christina Lynn Gutierrez-Dennehy

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 115; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060115 - 29 May 2025

In the period between 2021 and 2022 immediately following the COVID-19 lockdowns, there were 37 professional or academic productions of The Tempest in the United States. The play was by far the most produced of Shakespeare’s works in this timespan, and those 37 [...] Read more.

In the period between 2021 and 2022 immediately following the COVID-19 lockdowns, there were 37 professional or academic productions of The Tempest in the United States. The play was by far the most produced of Shakespeare’s works in this timespan, and those 37 productions represent a 280% increase compared to 2019, in which there were 13 such productions. Considering The Tempest’s hyper-popularity within the context of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the birth of We See You White American Theatre’s calls for reform in 2020, this paper seeks to understand anew the way in which Shakespeare constructs blackness in the play. Indeed for all of its beauty and magic, The Tempest stages a violent anti-blackness in its treatment of Caliban. In particular, I argue an unexplored connection between The Tempest and Ben Jonson’s 1605 court masque, The Masque of Blackness, itself an exploration of the construction of race for a particular early modern audience. My exploration here began as a partial answer to a question posed by Robin Alfriend Kello: “how do you balance [an] attraction to the richness of Shakespearian verse against these layered histories of racial violence and exclusion?” A deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s version of blackness may grant insights into areas of intervention for those theaters reaching for The Tempest amidst national calls for anti-racist theatrical work. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)

13 pages, 299 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Beatrice, Laura, and the Others: The Fin de Siècle Debate on Female Inspirers and the Popularising Turn of Giovanni Federzoni and Eugenia Codronchi (Sfinge)

by Arianna De Gasperis

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060114 - 27 May 2025

Between the late-nineteenth and the early-twentieth centuries, Beatrice and Laura, as literary characters and beloved women of Dante and Petrarch, were at the centre of a vigorous scholarly debate, which gained traction in Romagna’s literary circles. Offering a comparative analysis of two key [...] Read more.

Between the late-nineteenth and the early-twentieth centuries, Beatrice and Laura, as literary characters and beloved women of Dante and Petrarch, were at the centre of a vigorous scholarly debate, which gained traction in Romagna’s literary circles. Offering a comparative analysis of two key case studies—La vita di Beatrice Portinari (1904) by Giovanni Federzoni, and Laura’s biographical profile from Femminismo storico (1901) by Sfinge (Eugenia Codronchi Argeli)—this article reconstructs the popularising turn of this debate and its effect on medieval female characters’ reception as poetic inspirers. While Federzoni is motivated by didactic aims, seeking to facilitate readers’ access to the Commedia by deconstructing Beatrice’s abstraction, Sfinge elevates Laura as a model for contemporary women. Through an accessible structure and a hybrid methodology blending historical inquiry with literary imagination, both authors challenge allegorical readings and reclaim Beatrice and Laura as historically grounded figures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Interpretation of Fictional Characters in Literary Texts: History of Literary Criticism, Philosophy and Formal Ontologies)

19 pages, 356 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Zenchiku’s Mekari: Staging Ambiguous and Hollow Worlds

by Daryl Jamieson

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060113 - 26 May 2025

Konparu Zenchiku (1405–c. 1470) was the son-in-law of Zeami Motokiyo. Zeami is the most famous nō actor–writer–composer–showman–impressario, but Zenchiku brought nō back from the shōgun’s court to the temples, effectively resacralising the art form for a troubled, violent age. This paper asks whether [...] Read more.

Konparu Zenchiku (1405–c. 1470) was the son-in-law of Zeami Motokiyo. Zeami is the most famous nō actor–writer–composer–showman–impressario, but Zenchiku brought nō back from the shōgun’s court to the temples, effectively resacralising the art form for a troubled, violent age. This paper asks whether Zenchiku’s approach to theatre has anything to teach us as contemporary creators and audiences in our own unstable era and, simultaneously, whether contemporary modes of interpretation, such as queer musicology, can highlight new aspects of Zenchiku’s work. Focusing on the under-studied and under-performed play Mekari—which dramatises a ritual cutting of seaweed at the Kanmon Strait between the islands of Kyūshū and Honshū as the new lunar year dawns—this paper explores how Zenchiku’s work plays with—crosses back and forth over—multiple physical, temporal, and spiritual boundaries in both its text and performance, leaving the audience with a sense of ambiguity and questioning the received wisdom of conventional capitalist reality. This paper concludes with a look at Kyōto School philosopher Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of the hollow expanse, or a place of limitless possibility. This paper argues that the audience viewing these ambiguities cultivated by Zenchiku’s sacred dramas—via the music, words, and staging together—might themselves be given a glimpse into the radically open place of the ‘hollow expanse’. The first full English translation of Mekari is included in Appendix A. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space Between: Landscape, Mindscape, Architecture)

19 pages, 290 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fictional Characters as Story-Free Denoting Concepts

by Francesco Orilia

Humanities 2025, 14(6), 112; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14060112 - 22 May 2025

Some realist views about fiction are non-objectual in that they see fictional characters not as objects but rather as properties or the like; notably, kinds, roles, or denoting concepts. The view centered on denoting concepts proposed in Orilia’s “A Theory of Fictional Entities [...] Read more.

Some realist views about fiction are non-objectual in that they see fictional characters not as objects but rather as properties or the like; notably, kinds, roles, or denoting concepts. The view centered on denoting concepts proposed in Orilia’s “A Theory of Fictional Entities Based on Denoting Concepts” (2012) is presented in this paper with further motivations and details and in relation to issues not previously dealt with from its perspective. This view differs from other proposals of this sort, such as those by Cocchiarella and Landini, for its flexibility in allowing for story-free fictional characters: they can migrate from one story to another. This migration is granted in two ways, one that relies on the preservation of salient common features and another grounded on an appropriate causal connection between stories, typically involving authorial intentions. A more detailed account of this connection and of its interplay with the preservation of salient features is elaborated. Moreover, the phenomenon of fictionally non-existent characters (as in fiction within fiction) is addressed. Finally, the presence in fiction of historical, plural, indeterminate, and identity-inconsistent characters is examined and analyzed in terms of denoting concepts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Interpretation of Fictional Characters in Literary Texts: History of Literary Criticism, Philosophy and Formal Ontologies)

14 pages, 210 KiB

Open AccessArticle

No Small Parts (Only Speechless Women)

by Paige Martin Reynolds

Humanities 2025, 14(5), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050111 - 20 May 2025

When it comes to acting in modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays, size is more than all talk. That is, though how much a character speaks often serves as the measure of a role’s size, “small parts” may have a lot to say—and, as [...] Read more.

When it comes to acting in modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays, size is more than all talk. That is, though how much a character speaks often serves as the measure of a role’s size, “small parts” may have a lot to say—and, as it turns out, the actors playing them may have a lot (or too little) to do. Some modern approaches to dramaturgy and practice may mean that the performers playing roles not qualified as large are susceptible to isolation throughout the artistic process, possibly having reduced rehearsal time. If the number of spoken lines influences the number of rehearsal hours, an actor playing a “small part” may be at a disadvantage when it comes to opportunities for character development and the benefits of creative collaboration. (In a rehearsal process for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, how active might Hippolyta’s participation be if she is not doubling as Titania?) Additionally, having fewer lines on the stage can mean inheriting more labor behind the scenes, since an available body is a valuable commodity in the economy of production (what tasks might Ursula undertake during Much Ado About Nothing?). The tension between “playing conditions” and “working conditions” in the theater is thus especially heightened for Shakespeare’s women, whose onstage existence can throw an uncanny shadow upon the offstage experiences of those who play them. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)

18 pages, 780 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Graffiti and the Aura of Anonymity

by Adrian Guo Silver

Humanities 2025, 14(5), 110; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050110 - 19 May 2025

Graffiti’s dual existence as both public art and illicit practice has generated sustained legal, cultural, and aesthetic debates. This article examines the role of anonymity in shaping how graffiti is recognized, regulated, and interpreted within both legal frameworks and artworld aesthetics. Focusing on [...] Read more.

Graffiti’s dual existence as both public art and illicit practice has generated sustained legal, cultural, and aesthetic debates. This article examines the role of anonymity in shaping how graffiti is recognized, regulated, and interpreted within both legal frameworks and artworld aesthetics. Focusing on the legal battle over 5Pointz, a prominent New York graffiti site that was whitewashed in 2013 and demolished in 2014, I analyze how the Cohen v. G&M Realty L.P. case reveals a structural tension between graffiti’s collective ethos and the legal system’s emphasis on identifiable authorship. Drawing upon legal studies, urban cultural theory, and aesthetics, this article explores how the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) mediated the legal recognition of graffiti, often privileging curated, institutionally sanctioned works while rendering anonymous street art legally vulnerable. I further synthesize scholarly perspectives on 5Pointz to highlight how legal discourse constructs and delimits the status of graffiti within public spaces. Ultimately, I argue that anonymity functions not simply as an absence of authorship but as an aesthetic and political mode of experiencing the object, one that challenges traditional frameworks of artistic attribution and cultural legitimacy. By interrogating the legal and ideological forces that shape graffiti’s recognition, this article situates anonymity as a central, yet often overlooked, feature of graffiti’s critical and aesthetic power. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Law and Literature: Graffiti)

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13 pages, 238 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Tell Me/‘I Am Listening’: Ocean Stirrings and the Creole Vocalization of Nelson’s Royal Readers

by Antonia MacDonald

Humanities 2025, 14(5), 109; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050109 - 19 May 2025

In this article, I explore Merle Collins’ reworking of poems from the Nelson’s Royal Readers. Focusing on Part V of Ocean Stirrings, I explore Collins’ use of poetic form to represent the mental unravelling and restitching of Louise Langdon Norton Little, the [...] Read more.

In this article, I explore Merle Collins’ reworking of poems from the Nelson’s Royal Readers. Focusing on Part V of Ocean Stirrings, I explore Collins’ use of poetic form to represent the mental unravelling and restitching of Louise Langdon Norton Little, the mother of Malcolm X. Louise Litte—a Grenadian migrant woman—is depicted as unmoored by the travails of racism in early twentieth century USA. Louise’s ensuing psychological cataclysm is refracted through the prism of the memories of her grandmother’s Creole voice—an oral text which discursively radicalizes the colonial agenda that was core to the Royal Readers. I argue that Collins is intentional in her use of a decolonized poetic versification to represent Louise Little’s imaginative maneuvering into self-reclamation. Transposing her grief and loss onto the poems learnt when she was a child, Louise is depicted as poetically and creatively harnessing her grandmother’s grassroot wisdom on the value of strategic resilience. This retelling allows Louise to survive the trauma of her incarceration in a U.S. mental hospital and returns her to her Caribbean self: Oseyan. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rise of a New World: Postcolonialism and Caribbean Literature)

15 pages, 9063 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Graffiti in the Lawscape: Seizing the Circuits of Valorization of an Elusive and Resistant Practice

by Cecilia Brazioli and Andrea Mubi Brighenti

Humanities 2025, 14(5), 108; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050108 - 15 May 2025

In this piece, we approach graffiti from the perspective of the ‘circuits of valorization’ that qualify as well as quantify it. We understand a valorization circuit as an assemblage of cultural, legal, economic and geographic dynamics surrounding a given artefact, which eventually confer [...] Read more.

In this piece, we approach graffiti from the perspective of the ‘circuits of valorization’ that qualify as well as quantify it. We understand a valorization circuit as an assemblage of cultural, legal, economic and geographic dynamics surrounding a given artefact, which eventually confer a certain ‘value’ to it. Here, we look at examples of global graffiti, with attention to how cities and administrations juggle with its controversial valorization, implementing various policies to rein it in, but also to exploit it. Typically, graffiti appears and lives in ill-defined, metamorphic urban spaces: as an urban artefact, graffiti occupies loose, interstitial places and rhymes with an aesthetic of defacement and infestation. The ‘in place/out of place’ dialectic is thus central for claims to legitimacy, legality, and, ultimately, also the ‘quality’ of graffiti. Through the lens of radical legal pluralism, we argue that graffiti can insert a distinctive dynamism into the lawscape, rather than be a sheer inert object of urban policies. Graffiti itself actively participates, not simply in populating the lawscape, but in its actual crafting. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Law and Literature: Graffiti)

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24 pages, 358 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Marriage and the Devil: The Literary Exchange, Values, and Power Structures of Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenská

by Lucyna Darowska

Humanities 2025, 14(5), 107; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050107 - 13 May 2025

The article examines the inspiring relationship between the well-known Prague journalist Milena Jesenská and the world-famous writer Franz Kafka—authors of different genres who shared reflections on being human, the world, religion, and prose. It elaborates on the commonalities and the divisions, the mutual [...] Read more.

The article examines the inspiring relationship between the well-known Prague journalist Milena Jesenská and the world-famous writer Franz Kafka—authors of different genres who shared reflections on being human, the world, religion, and prose. It elaborates on the commonalities and the divisions, the mutual admiration as well as the irreconcilable differences, which can also be mapped onto selected works by both authors. In her articles, Jesenská criticizes social and political issues, elaborating a normative position, in the sense of describing the stance, attitudes, and politics that are needed for change. Kafka’s position, as if complementary to Jesenská’s, shows only this human world. On the basis of some of their letters, articles, and prose works, this article examines the relationship between the two authors and the textuality of their relationship, as well as their shared and different values in the contexts of various power relations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prague German Circle(s): Stable Values in Turbulent Times?)

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