Journal Description
Literature
Literature
is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on literature and cultural studies published quarterly online by MDPI.
- Open Access— free for readers, with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.
- Rapid Publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 30.7 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 2.8 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the first half of 2024).
- Recognition of Reviewers: APC discount vouchers, optional signed peer review, and reviewer names published annually in the journal.
Latest Articles
Thwarting the Tyranny of Fathers: Women in Nicole Krauss’s Great House and the Creative Transmission of Traumatic Memory
Literature 2024, 4(4), 234-246; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040017 - 5 Oct 2024
Abstract
With Great House (2010), Nicole Krauss offers a choral novel that interweaves the lives of several characters loosely connected by a huge, wooden desk that one of them relentlessly chases around the world. A possible symbol of the memory of the Second World
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With Great House (2010), Nicole Krauss offers a choral novel that interweaves the lives of several characters loosely connected by a huge, wooden desk that one of them relentlessly chases around the world. A possible symbol of the memory of the Second World War Jewish genocide transmitted to younger generations, the desk powerfully materializes transmission in its potentially traumatic, obsessional, and violent dimensions. This essay deals with the way first- and second-generation women, in the novel, develop ingenious, creative but also uncompromising responses to the inescapable duty of remembrance. While the dominating male characters freeze memory in timeless, petrified representations, these female writers expose its terrible necessity while hiding nothing of the damages memory causes to witnesses and descendants. They claim a right of inventory and use the desk as an echo-chamber reflecting both the suffering voices of children and the dark presence of defaulting fathers and failing mothers, thus allowing for a new generation to be born with a more bearable heritage.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity)
Open AccessArticle
Reconstructing Childhood via Reimagined Memories: Life Writing in Children’s Literature
by
Emma-Louise Silva
Literature 2024, 4(4), 214-233; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040016 - 27 Sep 2024
Abstract
For authors who revisit their experiences of childhood to write stories for young readers, imaginatively drawing on memories plays a prominent role in the creative process. Whereas connections between memories and narratives have featured in literary studies and children’s literature studies, the unfolding
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For authors who revisit their experiences of childhood to write stories for young readers, imaginatively drawing on memories plays a prominent role in the creative process. Whereas connections between memories and narratives have featured in literary studies and children’s literature studies, the unfolding of negotiations between memory and imagination as authors create narratives of life writing is underexplored. This article examines how negotiations of memory and imagination unfold on paper during the writing processes for Roald Dahl’s Boy (1984), David Almond’s Counting Stars (2000), and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (2014). While positioning itself in the field of cognitive literary studies and the archival study of creative writing processes, this article aims to generate insights on the reconstructive approach to memory, which considers episodic remembering as imagining the past. By transposing the study of the dynamics of writing processes, or genetic criticism, to children’s literature, I explore notes, mindmaps, manuscripts, and typescripts held at the archives of Dahl, Almond, and Woodson to chart how they imaginatively incorporate memories of their youth into their life writing. As such, this research informs understandings of the narrative genesis of the authors’ works, while drawing on the manifestations of their literary creativity in an attempt to broaden knowledge regarding memory and imagination.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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Challenging Voices: Listening to Australian Women Writers across Time to Understand the Dynamics Shaping Creative Expression for Women Writing Today
by
Odette Kelada
Literature 2024, 4(3), 197-213; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030015 - 31 Aug 2024
Abstract
This article argues for the critical need to value the voices and creative work of contemporary women writers in Australia. Historically, women writing in Australia have endured erasure, dismissal, and suppression. I argue that there is still, in the modern period, a continued
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This article argues for the critical need to value the voices and creative work of contemporary women writers in Australia. Historically, women writing in Australia have endured erasure, dismissal, and suppression. I argue that there is still, in the modern period, a continued lack of awareness, recognition and education on Australian women’s writing despite targeted awards and the achievements of the feminist movement. This piece reflects back across time, drawing on interviews I conducted and PhD thesis research with women writers in Australia at the turn of the twenty-first century, and maps how the legacies of gendered notions of writers impacted women at this pivotal era to consider what this may mean for women writing today. It also explores how feminist theories such as écriture féminine are helpful for framing and understanding the responses of Australian women writers to the shifting notions of sexual difference and agency in writing. This article aims to provide insights into the complexities of liberation for women from the past to modern times, and the impact of gender on creative expression in Australia across changing social periods.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women’s Writing in Modern Times)
Open AccessArticle
Exploring the Agential Child in Death-Themed Picturebooks: A Comparative Analysis across Cultures
by
Cheng-Ting Chang
Literature 2024, 4(3), 184-196; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030014 - 12 Aug 2024
Abstract
The status of adults and children in children’s literature is a complex, long-debated issue. Marah Gubar introduced the kinship model, challenging the notion of children as voiceless and emphasizing their agency as human beings. This study argues that the model can serve as
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The status of adults and children in children’s literature is a complex, long-debated issue. Marah Gubar introduced the kinship model, challenging the notion of children as voiceless and emphasizing their agency as human beings. This study argues that the model can serve as a fruitful framework for examining the representation of children in death-themed picturebooks because the phenomenon of death places children and adults in a relatively equal position and implies similarities between them. It analyzes 11 picturebooks featuring agential child protagonists and published in the UK, the US, Japan, and Taiwan. The analysis is directed at four representations: the independent child, the atomized child, the helpful child, and the analogous child and adult. Each exploration describes whether and how the texts illustrate the model’s key points: (1) a child’s voice and agency; (2) the relatedness, connection, and similarity between children and adults; and (3) the gradual, erratic, and variable nature of development from childhood to adulthood. The findings highlight the heterogeneity of agential children across cultures and suggest that scrutinizing childhood requires engagement with adulthood. This perspective inspires us to reconsider the adult-child dichotomy and expand our imagination of what children can be across cultures.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
Open AccessArticle
Econormative Childhoods in Wimmelbooks on the Four Seasons: Analysis of Central European Wordless Informational Picturebooks
by
Krzysztof Rybak
Literature 2024, 4(3), 172-183; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030013 - 31 Jul 2024
Abstract
More and more informational picturebooks on environmental topics have been published in recent years, many focusing on the inevitable climate change. Conversely, there is still a tendency in contemporary picturebooks to represent the climate traditionally, irrespective of actual climate change. A particularly interesting
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More and more informational picturebooks on environmental topics have been published in recent years, many focusing on the inevitable climate change. Conversely, there is still a tendency in contemporary picturebooks to represent the climate traditionally, irrespective of actual climate change. A particularly interesting case is the representation of the seasons, especially in books aimed at the youngest ‘readers’, such as wimmelbooks. Not only are they crucial for developing emergent and visual literacy, but they also contain normative images that constitute a prototype for the child. The ‘norms’ picturebooks present are based on the authors’ ideologies that constitute all informational picturebooks as their authors interpret facts. Hence, this article aims to analyse the visual strategies used and the ideologies expressed by wimmelbooks from Poland and Germany in representing the seasons (Marcin Strzembosz’s Jaki to miesiąc? [2002] and Ali Mitgutsch’s Mein Wimmel-Bilderbuch: Frühling, Sommer, Herbst und Winter [2007], among others). The preliminary research shows that the authors seem to propose traditional, idyllic, ecologically normative images of the environment, which I propose to call econormative (inspired by the word ‘aetonormative’), such as snowy winters, sunny summers, etc.; hence, wimmelbooks seem to assent to stereotypical depictions of the seasons associated with the notion of ideal childhoods set in econormative environments.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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Children’s Nonfiction, Biography, and Their Responsibilities to Children
by
Joe Sutliff Sanders
Literature 2024, 4(3), 160-171; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030012 - 30 Jul 2024
Abstract
A debate over whether children’s nonfiction should “speculate” was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children’s nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres
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A debate over whether children’s nonfiction should “speculate” was launched in 2011. Understood within the context of changing demands on children’s nonfiction, it reveals a contested construction of childhood and suggests that the rules of critical engagement might be different in different genres of children’s nonfiction.
Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
Open AccessArticle
Sámi on Display: Sámi Representations in an Early Nonfiction Book for Children
by
Inger-Kristin Larsen Vie
Literature 2024, 4(3), 147-159; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4030011 - 27 Jun 2024
Abstract
Lisbeth Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook En lappefamilie: tekst og bilder fra Nordland (A Lappish family: text and pictures from Nordland) from 1905 is one of the first Norwegian nonfiction picturebooks for children about the life of Sámi. It contains Bergh’s own illustrations
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Lisbeth Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook En lappefamilie: tekst og bilder fra Nordland (A Lappish family: text and pictures from Nordland) from 1905 is one of the first Norwegian nonfiction picturebooks for children about the life of Sámi. It contains Bergh’s own illustrations and text passages in Norwegian, English, and German, which signals that the book addresses a national and international audience. Simultaneously, the book is published in an era characterized by an increasing interest in indigenous tourism, demonstrated through the popularity of world exhibitions and «human zoos». In this article, I explore Bergh’s nonfiction picturebook in the light of “human zoos” and “living exhibitions” at the beginning of the 1900s and how her book alludes to the depiction of the Sámi for entertainment and information purposes. My close reading shows how the book reflects the categorization and systematization of the world and of exotic ethnic groups at the time. Furthermore, the reading confirms the book’s very distinctive position in Norwegian children’s literature history, and how it may have acquired a particular role in the promotion of Norwegian tourism at the beginning of the 20th century.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Narrative Fallibility, and the Young Adult Reader
by
Jessica Allen Hanssen
Literature 2024, 4(2), 135-146; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020010 - 27 May 2024
Abstract
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon presents a remarkably complex narrator, 15-year-old Christopher Boone. Due to his implied autism spectrum condition, Christopher is possibly the ultimate in “reliable” narrators: he struggles to articulate emotions and is incapable
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon presents a remarkably complex narrator, 15-year-old Christopher Boone. Due to his implied autism spectrum condition, Christopher is possibly the ultimate in “reliable” narrators: he struggles to articulate emotions and is incapable of telling or understanding lies. His point of view (POV) is an extreme form of first-person limited, with Christopher at times seeming (or even yearning) to be more computer than human. The limitations of Christopher’s experience are reflected in his narrative self-presentation, and while, ordinarily, these would damage any sort of achieved authority, they instead underscore the book’s powerful thematic messages. Christopher’s narrative fallibility echoes the developmental stage of its crossover young adult (YA) audience: Curious Incident works with fallibility to establish a strong narrative voice that inspires an empathetic connection between Christopher and his implied reader. This article therefore considers how narrative fallibility is linked to constructions of adolescence in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and further explores the relationship between the narrator and the implied reader(s). Positioned within narratology-based theories and secondary research on Haddon and representations of neurodiversity in YA literature, it provides guidance for teachers and scholars who might question the value of authenticity in this or similar novels.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
Open AccessEssay
How the Character of the Narrator Constructs a Narratee and an Implied Reader in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights
by
Richard Grange
Literature 2024, 4(2), 122-134; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020009 - 24 May 2024
Abstract
The third-person omniscient narrator of fiction texts for children holds the ability to access characters’ thoughts, fly where they will within the story, and interact with time and tense. Philip Pullman characterises this kind of narrator as a multiscient sprite, not a human
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The third-person omniscient narrator of fiction texts for children holds the ability to access characters’ thoughts, fly where they will within the story, and interact with time and tense. Philip Pullman characterises this kind of narrator as a multiscient sprite, not a human seeing and telling, but something else which possesses unhuman-like qualities. This paper uses an analysis of the narrator’s voice, character, and choices to access two other characters created by the story being told—the narratee and the implied reader, both of whom may well be thought of as child characters produced by the text. A profile of these two products is then presented. Through a close textual analysis, which draws out untagged parts of Northern Light’s narrator’s speech, an examination of the kinds of characters the narratee, and implied reader could be seen to be is gathered. The narrator’s ability to intensely empathise with characters is passed onto the narratee and also normalised by aspects of the story, including the alethiometer, a device from the created world of the story which is imbued with strikingly similar qualities to the narrator. Lyra, the book’s protagonist, and the instrument interact with each other in a manner akin to the narrator and narratee, both having an agency which the implied reader could be bestowed with from reading the text.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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The Specificity of Fantasy and the “Affective Novum”: A Theory of a Core Subset of Fantasy Literature
by
Geoff M. Boucher
Literature 2024, 4(2), 101-121; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020008 - 17 May 2024
Abstract
This article proposes a new approach to the nature of a core set within fantasy fiction that regards it as a speculative literature of the exploration of subjectivity, one which at its limit conjectures fresh possibilities for the subjective world. To motivate acceptance
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This article proposes a new approach to the nature of a core set within fantasy fiction that regards it as a speculative literature of the exploration of subjectivity, one which at its limit conjectures fresh possibilities for the subjective world. To motivate acceptance of this proposed approach, I begin by surveying the existing state of debate in the critical field. I notice the emergence of widening agreement on the idea that fantasy is a literature of the impossible. I then develop the logical implications of this widening agreement in the critical field, arguing that it entails a representational definition of fantasy literature, which implies a modal approach to the core set that defines this literary order. I suggest that the marvellous mode, the kind of writing which represents the impossible, is a broad class that includes other speculative literatures, and that what differentiates these is the referential world within which the impossible happens. The aim here is to break up monolithic conceptions of the impossible, while pointing to a motivation for developing an understanding of the specificity of a core set of fantasy texts that proceeds by way of contrasts. After explaining why I am extremely skeptical about the definition of science fiction as a “literature of the possible”, I probe descriptions of the difference between fantasy and sci-fi. I propose that whereas some science fiction is a literature of conjectural objectivity, guided by the “cognitive novum”, a significant group of fantasy texts is a literature of speculative subjectivity, guided by an “affective novum”.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue American Sci-Fi)
Open AccessArticle
Set Moves: Constructions of Travel in Commercial Games for Children
by
Melissa Jenkins
Literature 2024, 4(2), 87-100; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020007 - 9 May 2024
Abstract
During the long nineteenth century, Western publics experienced the invention and proliferation of commercial games for children. Card games, board games, and other parlor games were no longer for adults only; these new offerings formalized some aspects of what it meant for a
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During the long nineteenth century, Western publics experienced the invention and proliferation of commercial games for children. Card games, board games, and other parlor games were no longer for adults only; these new offerings formalized some aspects of what it meant for a child to engage in play. Many games centered travel, becoming sites for children to simulate adult agency in movement through space. This paper examines the stories told by narrative card games and board games about travel, especially travel within and between urban centers. The games present the city as microcosm of the world. Child players are invited to construct multiple national and ethnic identities as they pretend to be city travelers. The games attempt to teach children, and their caregivers, how to travel. I argue that the structures and aims of the games evolve over time, keeping pace with new mores surrounding work and leisure travel. I also argue for connections between games and the “set moves” of narrative fiction and theatre.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Constructions of Childhood(s) in Fiction and Nonfiction for Children)
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The “Yao” in Li Bai’s Poetry and Its Emotional Implications
by
Yanxin Lu
Literature 2024, 4(2), 75-86; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020006 - 30 Apr 2024
Abstract
In Li Bai’s poems, the term yao or medicine is frequently employed as an idea-image. The meaning of yao can be further divided into four distinct types, each corresponding to its functions in different contexts. It represents the elixir found on Penglai Island,
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In Li Bai’s poems, the term yao or medicine is frequently employed as an idea-image. The meaning of yao can be further divided into four distinct types, each corresponding to its functions in different contexts. It represents the elixir found on Penglai Island, having the power to elevate a person to immortality; the elixir stolen from the Queen Mother of the West by Heng’E; the immortal herbs pounded by the Jade Rabbit; and the medicine used for treating diseases. In addition, Li Bai’s poems also contain elixir liquid (danye 丹液), potable gold (jinye 金液), and other substances referred to as yao. Unlike specific terms like “cinnabar”, these names are more general in nature. The medicines, their names, and the general terms in poems carry different emotional implications, e.g., his admiration for immortality, and a means to criticize his own time, to express his aspirations and lamentation over the passage of time. The “Yao” also serves as a symbol of healing and nourishment, especially in the context of friendship. All these points deserve to be meticulously explored.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Death, Dying, Family and Friendship in Tang Literature)
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Ruby Rich’s Dream Library: Feminist Memory-Keeping as an Archive of Affective Mnemonic Practices
by
Sharon Crozier-De Rosa
Literature 2024, 4(2), 62-74; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020005 - 30 Apr 2024
Abstract
In the so-called West, feminist activists and scholars have long been traumatised by the erasure of their histories via dominant patriarchal narratives, which has served as an impediment to the intergenerational transmission of feminist knowledge. Recently, while acknowledging the very real and ongoing
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In the so-called West, feminist activists and scholars have long been traumatised by the erasure of their histories via dominant patriarchal narratives, which has served as an impediment to the intergenerational transmission of feminist knowledge. Recently, while acknowledging the very real and ongoing impact of this historical omission, some feminists have issued a call to turn away from a narrative of women’s history as ‘serial forgetting’ and towards an acknowledgement of the affirmative capacity of feminist remembering. At the same time, memory theorist Ann Rigney has advocated for a ‘positive turn’ in memory studies, away from what she perceives to be the field’s gravitation towards trauma and instead towards an analysis of life’s positive legacies. In this article, I combine both approaches to investigate one feminist memory-keeper’s archive, analysing what it reveals about ‘the mechanisms by which positive attachments are transmitted across space and time’. Throughout her life, little-known ‘between-the-waves’ Australian feminist Ruby Rich (1888–1988) performed multiple intersecting activist activities. While she created feminist memories through her work for various political organisations, she also collected, stored and transmitted feminist memories through her campaign for a dedicated space for women’s collections in the National Library of Australia. Propelled by fear of loss and inspired by hope for remembering, Rich constructed a brand of archival activism that was both educational and emotional. In this paper, I examine the strategies Rich employed to try to realise her dream of effecting intellectual and affective bonds between future feminists and their predecessors.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity)
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Συνουσία in Late Antique Neoplatonic Schools: A Concept between Social History, History of Education and History of Philosophy
by
Marco Alviz Fernández and David Hernández de la Fuente
Literature 2024, 4(1), 45-61; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4010004 - 21 Feb 2024
Abstract
It is well studied that some Pythagorean principles lied at the foundations of the Late Antique Neoplatonic School. The main reason for that conclusion to be drawn is the two biographies of the Samian sage written by the Neoplatonic philosophers Porphyry of Tyre
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It is well studied that some Pythagorean principles lied at the foundations of the Late Antique Neoplatonic School. The main reason for that conclusion to be drawn is the two biographies of the Samian sage written by the Neoplatonic philosophers Porphyry of Tyre and Iamblichus of Chalcis. Accordingly, the archetypical image of Pythagoras became a major ideal for which every pagan philosopher aimed in Late Antiquity. Henceforth, masters and their disciple circles comprised a micro-society which can reasonably be analyzed as a whole. Suffice it to say that they were small and cohesive charismatic communities whose isolation from the outside world aroused a living harmony from which emerged long-standing emotional bonds. Consequently, the Pythagorically rooted κοινός βίος (Iambl. Vit. Pyth. 6.29: τὸ λεγόμενον κοινοβίους) can easily be ascertained in the biographical literature around the philosophical schools from Plotinus to Damascius (cf. Porph. Vit. Plot. 18.6-14; Procl. In Resp. passim). It is a way of life in common which was also known at the old Athenian Academy (according to Plato’s only explicit reference to Pythagoras (Resp. 600a-b: Πυθαγόρειον τρόπον τοῦ βίου) and has sometimes been defined even as “coenobitic”, in analogy with other contemporary phenomena. But from our point of view, it can be better understood through an analysis of the concept of συνουσία—that is, the meetings of philosophers with their companions (ἑταῖροι) in a specific place which turned into a sort of spiritual household. With this contribution, we aim at focusing on the redefinition of the Neoplatonic συνουσίαι as a legacy of the Platonic notion of συνουσία, stemming from Pythagorean κοινόβιοι. To sum up, we will revise this issue and the state of the art, with the redefinition of Late Antique συνουσία as a terminus technicus in the biographic literature around the Neoplatonic Schools, aiming at opening new paths for the understanding of the Pythagorean–Platonic heritage in Late Antiquity.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Greek Literature and Society in Late Antiquity)
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A Discussion on Life Consciousness in Du Fu’s Poems
by
Shuchu Liu
Literature 2024, 4(1), 31-44; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4010003 - 17 Jan 2024
Abstract
Respecting life and protecting life are the core values of Chinese culture. As the greatest poet nurtured by Chinese culture, Du Fu showed a distinct consciousness of life in his poems. With the passage of time and the changes in his physical body,
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Respecting life and protecting life are the core values of Chinese culture. As the greatest poet nurtured by Chinese culture, Du Fu showed a distinct consciousness of life in his poems. With the passage of time and the changes in his physical body, Du Fu became sensitively aware of the existence of life. Government service was the main way to realize the value of life for scholars of Tang, and this way was frustrated by reality for a long time, particularly for the poet Du Fu, who faced the crisis of settling his life. Although Du Fu wanted to find a place to settle his life in the other dimensions of the human world, in the real and imaginary drunken world and the natural world, he could not overcome the frustration concerning the relationship between the ruler and the minister, and he often felt the pain of nowhere to settle his life and the insignificance of life when its meaning becomes absent.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Death, Dying, Family and Friendship in Tang Literature)
Open AccessEditorial
Introduction: Fairy Tales and Other Horrors
by
Laura Tosi and Alessandro Cabiati
Literature 2024, 4(1), 22-30; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4010002 - 25 Dec 2023
Abstract
In a Christmas 2017 interview with the British magazine Fortean Times, the celebrated Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro described ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘the original Cinderella’, and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as ‘a horror story’, before affirming that ‘horror
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In a Christmas 2017 interview with the British magazine Fortean Times, the celebrated Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro described ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘the original Cinderella’, and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as ‘a horror story’, before affirming that ‘horror and the fairy tale walk hand in hand’ (del Toro 2017, p [...]
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Severed Limbs and Monstrous Appetites: (Re)Defining Fairy-Tale Horror from the Seventeenth Century to the Present)
Open AccessArticle
The Devil’s Marriage: Folk Horror and the Merveilleux Louisianais
by
Ryan Atticus Doherty
Literature 2024, 4(1), 1-21; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4010001 - 22 Dec 2023
Abstract
At the beginning of his Creole opus The Grandissimes, George Washington Cable refers to Louisiana as “A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay”. This anti-pastoral view of Louisiana as an ecosystem of horrific
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At the beginning of his Creole opus The Grandissimes, George Washington Cable refers to Louisiana as “A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay”. This anti-pastoral view of Louisiana as an ecosystem of horrific nature and the very human melancholy it breeds is one that has persisted in popular American culture to the present day. However, the literature of Louisiana itself is marked by its creativity in blending elements of folktales, fairy tales, and local color. This paper proposes to examine the transhuman, or the transcendence of the natural by means of supernatural transformation, in folk horror tales of Louisiana. As the locus where the fairy tale meets the burgeoning Southern Gothic, these tales revolve around a reworking of what Vladimir Propp refers to as transfiguration, the physical and metaphysical alteration of the human into something beyond the human. The focus of this paper will be on three recurring figures in Louisiana folk horror: yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil. Drawing upon works including Alcée Fortier’s collection of Creole folktales Louisiana Folktales (1895), Dr. Alfred Mercier’s “1878”, and various newspaper tales of voodoo ceremonies from the ante- and post-bellum periods, this article brings together theorizations about the fairy tale from Vladimir Propp and Jack Zipes and historiological approaches to the Southern Gothic genre to demonstrate that Louisiana, in its multilingual literary traditions, serves as a nexus where both genres blend uncannily together to create tales that are both geographically specific and yet exist outside of the historical time of non-fantastic fiction. Each of these figures, yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil, challenges the expectations of what limits the human. Thus, this paper seeks to examine what will be termed the “Louisiana gothic”, a particular blend of fairy-tale timelessness, local color, and the transfiguration of the human. Ultimately, the Louisiana gothic, as expressed in French, English, and Creole, tends toward a view of society in decay, mobilizing these elements of horror and of fairy tales to comment on a society that, after the revolution in Saint-Domingue, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Civil War, was seen as falling into inevitable decline. This commentary on societal decay, expressed through elements of folk horror, sets apart Louisiana gothic as a distinct subgenre that challenges conventions about the structures and functions of the fairy tale.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Severed Limbs and Monstrous Appetites: (Re)Defining Fairy-Tale Horror from the Seventeenth Century to the Present)
Open AccessArticle
Taoist Death Care in Medieval China—An Examination of Wu Tong’s (吳通) Epitaph
by
Lianlong Wang
Literature 2023, 3(4), 473-481; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature3040032 - 28 Nov 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
Survival and death are the two most important things in life. The ancient Chinese people attached great importance to death, so the funeral ceremonies were very complete. Since its inception, Taoism has actively participated in funeral activities, so the combination of epitaphs and
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Survival and death are the two most important things in life. The ancient Chinese people attached great importance to death, so the funeral ceremonies were very complete. Since its inception, Taoism has actively participated in funeral activities, so the combination of epitaphs and tomb inscriptions has a historical origin. The establishment of a unified dynasty in the Sui Dynasty provided an opportunity for the integration and development of Taoism in the north and south. The Mao Shanzong (茅山宗) in the southern region began to spread to the north, gradually integrating Lou Guan Dao (樓觀道) and becoming the mainstream of Northern Taoism. The epitaph of Wu Tong in the Sui Dynasty is engraved with rich Taoist symbols, and the epitaph text adopts the language content of “Zhen Gao” (真誥), which is a typical representative of the integration of Northern and Southern Taoism and reflects Taoism’s concern for death.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Death, Dying, Family and Friendship in Tang Literature)
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Fairy Tale Sources and Rural Settings in Dario Argento’s Supernatural Horror
by
Peter Vorissis
Literature 2023, 3(4), 457-472; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature3040031 - 28 Nov 2023
Abstract
This article examines three of Dario Argento’s supernatural horror films (Suspiria, Phenomena, and Dark Glasses) and their use of fairy tale imagery and narratives, which distinguishes them from murder-mystery-oriented giallo films. In them, Argento locates his characters, rather than in
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This article examines three of Dario Argento’s supernatural horror films (Suspiria, Phenomena, and Dark Glasses) and their use of fairy tale imagery and narratives, which distinguishes them from murder-mystery-oriented giallo films. In them, Argento locates his characters, rather than in urban environments, in rural spaces (forests, fields, mountains) where the supernatural elements of their stories blossom. Suspiria represents a primarily aesthetic exploration of parallels between fairy tales and contemporary horror, while Phenomena uses these two modes to examine the conflict between the rational and irrational, the natural and the supernatural. Dark Glasses initially appears to be one of his more traditional gialli, but it abandons these tropes with a simplified plot evoking the story of “Little Red Riding Hood”; this shift is accomplished by moving the action of the film out of Rome and into the dark forests of the countryside. Dark Glasses, I argue, therefore represents a self-conscious move to unite in a single film the two major strands of Argento’s filmography and to expose some fundamental elements of his general cinematic approach—namely, the unique capacity of stylized aesthetics and irrational elements to convey the experience of very real, human terror and evil.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Severed Limbs and Monstrous Appetites: (Re)Defining Fairy-Tale Horror from the Seventeenth Century to the Present)
Open AccessArticle
Capitalism, Ecosocialism and Reparative Readers in Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest
by
Sneharika Roy
Literature 2023, 3(4), 446-456; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature3040030 - 12 Nov 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War, which ravaged human and nonhuman lifeworlds. Le Guin offers two competing discursive systems through which to interpret human and nonhuman alterity—Terran industrial capitalism, grounded in physical
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Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War, which ravaged human and nonhuman lifeworlds. Le Guin offers two competing discursive systems through which to interpret human and nonhuman alterity—Terran industrial capitalism, grounded in physical and symbolic violence, and Athshean ecosocialism, rooted in an ethics of non-violence and forest-centred nominalism. Le Guin appears to suggest that both “readings” of Athshea are locked in an intractable, adversarial logic, typical of the “paranoid” reading practices that Eve Sedgwick would theorise twenty-five years later. In its sensitivity to the spectrum of negative affect covering anticipatory anxiety about forestalling pain, symmetrical suspicion, and fear of humiliation, the novella offers an uncanny prefiguration of paranoid practices. Le Guin suggests that the way out of the paranoid clash of civilisations can be found in two “reparative” reading stances—Selver’s reinterpretation and rearrangement of components of the oppressor’s culture into new, unexpected wholes (hermeneutic reassemblage) and the alien observers’ valorisation of disinterested curiosity over action as a categorical imperative (cerebral equivocity). Le Guin thus seems to offer a reparative poetics avant la lettre.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue American Sci-Fi)
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