Search Results (479)

This study introduces the Real-To-Fictional Ontology (RTFO), a structured framework designed to analyze the dynamic relationship between reality and fiction in literary works, with a focus on preparatory materials and their influence on narrative construction. While traditional Italian philology and genetic criticism have distinct theoretical and editorial approaches to avant-text, this ontology addresses their limitations by integrating fine-grained textual analysis with contextual biographical avant-text to enhance character interpretation. Modeled in OWL2, RTFO harmonizes established frameworks such as LRMoo and CIDOC-CRM, enabling systematic representation of narrative elements. The ontology is applied to the case study of Cesare Pavese’s La luna e i falò, with a particular focus on the biographical avant-text of Pinolo Scaglione, the real-life friend who inspired key aspects of the novel. The fragmented and unstable nature of avant-text is addressed through a factoid-based model, which captures character-related traits, states and events as interconnected entities. SWRL rules are employed to infer implicit connections, such as direct influences between real-life contexts and fictional constructs. Application of the ontology to case studies demonstrates its effectiveness in tracing the evolution of characters from preparatory drafts to final texts, revealing how biographical and contextual factors shape narrative choices. Full article

Origen’s prosopological exegesis, derived from a technique developed for Homeric interpretation by the Alexandrian grammarians and applied by Christian interpreters to some texts of the Scriptures, has been already studied in its principal aspects by a few scholars in the 1980s, especially M.-J. Rondeau and B. Neuschäfer. However, the discovery of a corpus of 29 Greek homilies which have been attributed to Origen makes necessary a reexamination of the previous studies, in order to verify (and possibly correct) their results. This study aims to present such a comparison, analyzing some examples of prosopological exegesis in the new Homilies on the Psalms in the light of other examples in Origen’s remaining literary oeuvre; furthermore, it aims to show that Origen adopted (and adapted) an exegetical technique typical of the Alexandrian Homeric philology. Full article

This study examines non-standard comparative and superlative adjective forms in Ukrainian and English, emphasizing their evaluative meanings and grammatical deviations. While prescriptive grammar dictates conventional comparison patterns, modern discourse—particularly in advertising, informal communication, and literary texts—exhibits an increasing prevalence of innovative comparative structures. Using a corpus-based approach, this research identifies patterns of positive and negative evaluative meanings, revealing that positive evaluations dominate non-standard comparatives in both languages, particularly in advertising (English: 78.5%, Ukrainian: 80.2%). However, English exhibits a higher tolerance for grammatical flexibility, while Ukrainian maintains a more restricted use, primarily in commercial and expressive discourse. The findings highlight the pragmatic and evaluative functions of such constructions, including hyperbolic emphasis, rhetorical contrast, and branding strategies. These insights contribute to research on comparative grammar, sentiment analysis, and natural language processing, particularly in modeling evaluative structures in computational linguistics. Full article

This article investigates the role of space in the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides, focusing on The Virgin Suicides (1993) and Middlesex (2002) through the lens of spatial theory. Drawing on key thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Edward Soja, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Doreen Massey, the study explores how Eugenides constructs spatial environments that not only frame but actively shape the identities, desires, and traumas of his characters. In The Virgin Suicides, suburban domestic spaces are shown to function as heterotopias—sites of surveillance, repression, and mythologized femininity—while Middlesex engages with transnational and urban spaces to narrate diasporic and intersex identity as dynamic, embodied, and liminal. The analysis reveals that Eugenides uses space as both a narrative device and a thematic concern to interrogate gender, memory, and power. Rather than passive backdrops, the novelistic spaces become charged arenas of conflict and transformation, reflecting and resisting dominant socio-cultural discourses. This study argues that space in Eugenides’ fiction operates as a critical register for understanding the politics of belonging and the production of subjectivity. By situating Eugenides within the broader field of literary spatiality, this article contributes to contemporary debates in literary geography, gender studies, and American fiction. Full article

The study of historical monuments within both architectural and literary frameworks reveals a dynamic interplay between scientific observation and artistic interpretation—a vital characteristic of travel writing/the travelogue. This approach, exemplified by British traveler and writer Henry Finnis Blosse Lynch (1862–1913), reflects how factual detail and creative representation are seamlessly integrated in depictions of sites, landscapes, and cultural scenes. This case study highlights Lynch as a pioneering explorer who authored the first comprehensive volume on Armenian architecture and as a writer who vividly portrayed Armenian monuments through both verbal description and photographic imagery, becoming the first traveler to document such sites using photography. Additionally, this paper emphasizes the significance of Lynch’s detailed accounts of architectural monuments, churches, monasteries, cities, villages, populations, religious communities, and educational institutions in vivid language. The careful study of his work can contribute meaningfully to the investigation of the travelogue as a literary genre and to the preservation and protection of the architectural heritage of historical and contemporary Armenia, particularly in regions facing cultural or political threats. Full article

Ne Zha 2 (Ne Zha: Mo Tong Nao Hai, 哪吒之魔童闹海, 2025) is a prime example of the modernization of traditional literary intellectual property (IP). It has achieved the highest box office gross in Chinese cinematic history and ranks among the top five highest-grossing films globally. This article uses a case study approach to examine the adaptation strategies of Ne Zha 2 (2025), offering strategic insights for future film adaptations. The analysis focuses on four key dimensions—character, plot, theme, and esthetics—to explore how these elements contribute to the film’s adaptation. The findings reveal that the film strikes a balance between intertextuality and innovation, achieved through multidimensional character development, narrative subversion, contemporary thematic reinterpretation, and sophisticated esthetic techniques. By maintaining the emotional connection to the classical IP, the adaptation not only delivers stunning visual spectacles but also provides a culturally immersive experience, revitalizing traditional mythology with contemporary relevance. Full article

This article explores the often-overlooked question of how literary reading might give rise to experiences that readers themselves identify as spiritual. Framed by William James’s account of “mystical susceptibility” and recent psychological models of spirituality as altered states of consciousness involving shifts in perception, affect, and cognition, the essay asks how engagement with narrative may occasion such states. Drawing from selected examples and critical traditions, it examines the conditions under which reading becomes spiritually resonant. Theologically, the piece considers the formation of attentiveness and imaginative receptivity in writers such as Teresa of Avila and Jessica Hooten Wilson. From affect theory, it engages Rita Felski’s language of enchantment; from cognitive studies, it draws on empirical approaches to literary studies and Tanya Luhrmann’s work on absorption and the cultivation of spiritual perception. By drawing attention to absorption as a psychological and aesthetic phenomenon, this article suggests a renewed interdisciplinary approach—one that connects empirical studies of attention and transformation with older theological and affective insights. In this way, literature may be examined not as a site of doctrinal meaning or subjective feeling alone, but as a form of engagement capable of opening readers to spiritual insight whose impact might be measured through qualitative means. Full article

This paper presents a conceptual and methodological framework for using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to “deep map” cultural heritage sites along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, with a focus on the 1588 Spanish Armada wrecks in County Kerry and archaeological landscapes in County Sligo’s “Yeats Country.” Drawing on interdisciplinary dialogues from the humanities, social sciences, and geospatial sciences, it illustrates how digital spatial technologies can excavate, preserve, and sustain intangible cultural knowledge embedded within such palimpsestic landscapes. Using MAXQDA 24 software to mine and code historical, literary, folkloric, and environmental texts, the study constructed bespoke GIS attribute tables and visualizations integrated with elevation models and open-source archaeological data. The result is a richly layered cartographic method that reveals the spectral and affective dimensions of heritage landscapes through climate, memory, literature, and spatial storytelling. By engaging with “deep mapping” and theories such as “Spectral Geography,” the research offers new avenues for sustainable heritage conservation, cultural tourism, and public education that are sensitive to both ecological and cultural resilience in the West of Ireland. Full article

The present study highlights how the Canaanite Amarna Letters offer unique insight into Canaanite literary culture in the Late Bronze Age. The letters represent the diplomatic acumen of scribes writing letters for local elites that were sent to the Egyptian court in the mid-fourteenth century BCE. Yet they also preserve the earliest evidence of Canaanite literary forms and compositional practices. The letters include memorized formulae and expressions, word pairs, poetic devices, and the use of repetition to frame poetic units, which are common in the practices of later first-millennium scribes working in this same region, including those who wrote the Hebrew Bible. The letters also offer insight into the ways that the scribes combined memorized units into new narrative contexts. Such features added literary texture to the letters, but also contributed to their rhetorical aims. While some poetic passages in the letters may be novel compositions, there is also evidence that literary forms and expressions were integral to Canaanite scribal education by the Amarna period. The Canaanite Letters therefore set an important precedent for literary creation, and for the scribes’ bricolage practices in the process of creating new diplomatic letters. Full article

In the past hundred years, three pontiffs have written apostolic letters to commemorate anniversaries relating to Dante: in 1921, Benedict XV marked the sixth centenary of the death of the great poet; in 1965, Paul VI judged it opportune to write on the occasion of the seventh centenary of his birth; and in 2021, Pope Francis added his voice to the numerous others wishing to honour the memory of the supreme Florentine poet on the seventh centenary of his death. Each letter is a product of its time: one hundred years ago, the Pope—still confined within the Vatican and refusing to recognise the Kingdom of Italy due to the Roman Question—addressed his text “to the beloved sons, professors and pupils of literary institutes and centres of higher learning within the Catholic world”; Paul VI, in full accord with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and its vision of a Church seeking collaboration with the world, addressed his writing to Dante scholars more broadly, and within the same letter, together with other academic authorities, established the Chair of Dante Studies at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan; Pope Francis today, in his outward-facing style of evangelisation, challenges everyone to (re)read Dante, whose teaching remains relevant seven hundred years after his death. Despite the differing political contexts and ecclesial agendas, Benedict XV, Paul VI, and Pope Francis are united on one point: Dante is a Christian poet—critical of the Church, certainly, but loyal to his faith and desirous of a religious institution that is more serious and less corrupt. This brief study presents the homage which the Church, today, seven centuries later, renders to this Poet—now widely recognised as a passionate witness of an arduous and active faith, in pursuit of justice and freedom. Full article

This essay examines two hybrid poetic texts that emerged from a period of feminist activism in U.S. and global poetry communities from 2014 to 2017: the collaboratively, anonymously authored “No Manifesto” (2015) and the radically revised second edition of the book of poetry and visual art YOU DA ONE by Jennif(f)er Tamayo. “No Manifesto” and YOU DA ONE embrace the hybrid tactics of collectivity, incongruity, and nonresolution as ways of protesting sexism and sexual violence in poetry communities. Synthesizing theories of hybridity from poetry criticism as well as immigrant and borderlands studies, the essay defines hybridity as a literary representation of cultural positions forcefully imposed upon subjects. Born out of the domination of sexual and state violence, hybridity marks the wound that remakes the subject, who develops strategies for resistance. By refusing to play by the rules of poetic or social discourse—the logics of domination that would have them be singular, cohesive, and compliant—Tamayo and the authors of “No Manifesto” insist on alternative ways of performing activism, composing literature, and entering the public sphere. These socially engaged, hybrid poetic texts demonstrate the power of the collective to disrupt the social and literary status quo. Full article

This article re-examines Julio Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” (1956) and “Instructions for John Howell” (1963) through the lens of reader-response theory, hermeneutics, and cognitive narratology. Traditionally viewed as examples of the fantastic, these stories are interpreted here as complementary explorations of passive and active reading, offering a literary dialectic that parallels the reflections articulated in Cortázar’s Rayuela [Hopscotch] (1963). Drawing on Wolfgang Iser’s theories of textual gaps and reader cooperation, Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of appropriation, and more recent approaches to cognitive immersion and narrative engagement, this study argues that both stories dramatize reading as an ethical and political act. “Continuity of Parks” illustrates the dangers of uncritical textual consumption, culminating in the protagonist’s epistemic and existential annihilation, while “Instructions for John Howell” presents a model of insurgent readership, where the spectator’s appropriation of the play foregrounds the risks and possibilities of narrative intervention. By analyzing the use of metalepsis, destabilized focalization, and narrative layering in these stories, this article highlights how Cortázar anticipates contemporary concerns regarding reader agency, interpretive autonomy, and the sociopolitical implications of literary engagement. Full article

This article explores the themes of repentance and conversion in Augustine’s Notes on Job. Despite its fragmentary and often improvisational character, Augustine’s theological vision in the Notes presents Job as an exemplum of ongoing conversion. Though not portrayed as a sinner, Job undergoes spiritual transformation, embodying the human need for continual repentance and deeper understanding of God. This treatment aligns with Augustine’s depiction of other biblical figures, such as St. Paul and the Prodigal Son, whose stories serve as models of conversion. By closely examining the rhetorical and theological function of Job in the Notes, the article suggests that Augustine’s portrayal was meant to guide readers on the path toward salvation. In doing so, it contributes to a broader understanding of how Augustine constructs conversion narratives within his biblical commentaries. Full article

This study explores how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can be theoretically integrated into literature curriculum development, using the works of Anton Chekhov and Lu Xun as illustrative case texts. The aim is to reduce barriers to language and cultural understanding in literature education and increase the efficiency and accessibility of cross-cultural teaching. We used natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze textual features, such as readability index, lexical density, and syntactic complexity, of AI-generated and human-translated “The Chameleon” and “A Madman’s Diary”. Teaching cases from universities in China, Russia, and Kazakhstan are reviewed to assess the emerging practice of AI-supported literature teaching. The proposed theoretical framework draws on hermeneutics, posthumanism, and cognitive load theories. The results of the data-driven analysis suggest that AI-assisted translation tends to simplify sentence structure and improve surface readability. While anecdotal classroom observations highlight the role of AI in initial comprehension, deeper literary interpretation still relies on teacher guidance and critical human engagement. This study introduces a conceptual “AI Literature Teaching Model” that positions AI as a cognitive and cultural mediator and outlines directions for future empirical validation. Full article

The Harry Potter fandom community around the world prefers a universe of wizards and witches that includes all people, but also has concerns about the author’s perspective regarding gender identity. This disjunction paralyzes the cultural reader with moral confusion, which is a danger to their emotional investment in the text. Although scholars have analyzed this phenomenon using fragmented prisms, such as social media activism, cognitive engagement, translation, pedagogy, and fan creativity, there is no unifying model that can be used to understand why reading pleasure endures. This article aims to fill this gap by examining these strands of research in a divergent manner, adopting a convergent mixed-methods study approach. Based on neurocognitive (EEG) values, cross-cultural focus groups, social media analysis, and corpus linguistics, we outline the terrain of reader coping mechanisms. We identify separate fan fractions and examine the corresponding practices. The results are summarized by proposing a model called the MDRL (Moral dissonance repair loop) which is a theoretical model that shows how translation smoothing, pedagogical reframing and fan-based re-moralization interact with one another in creating a system that enables the reader to be collectively able to obtain their relations with the text back to a manageable point and continue being engaged. This model makes a theoretical contribution to new areas in the study of fans, moral psychology, and cognitive literature. Full article