It seems it is especially postmodern literature that undermines the belief in a clear and direct relationship between the physical world and the language depicting it. Quite recently, especially the possible worlds theories and their application in literary theory have tried to explain this relationship. Analyzing the narrative techniques used by Donald Barthelme in his short story The Dragon, ...

In answering the question 'what is special about the gene' from a literary perspective, the article suggests that if literary appreciation is often seen as a mark of human exceptionalism, knowledge of the gene may undermine this claim. Tracing some of the historical and philosophical complexities that circulate around the word 'gene', the article argues that in one sense 'the gene' plays the le...

World Literature, traditionally known as Comparative Literature, draws together literatures and cultures of a wide variety of countries and regions. Western and non-Western literary traditions are included in the curriculum, which emphasizes overall the junction – and not division of the past and present, ancient and modern. Ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome – the roots of Classical Traditio...

This article examines connections between the Protestant Reformation and American literature and argues that Protestantism’s best expression exists in contemporary iterations of self-reliance. The first part focuses on William Ellery Channing’s and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s literary criticism of John Milton, a poet who represents the Protestant ideals these writers combine with American principles ...

Fracastoro was, like Leonardo, a universal man, and, perhaps for that very reason, has lacked an adequate biography. Rossi is jejune and outdated, and the harvest of Fracastoro's manuscripts is only just beginning. Hence, the old biography of W. P. Greswell, 1801, ed. 2, 1805, still has its uses, for it concentrates almost entirely on Fracastoro as a poet and philosopher and uses many primary t...

Fracastoro was, like Leonardo, a universal man, and, perhaps for that very reason, has lacked an adequate biography. Rossi is jejune and outdated, and the harvest of Fracastoro's manuscripts is only just beginning. Hence, the old biography of W. P. Greswell, 1801, ed. 2, 1805, still has its uses, for it concentrates almost entirely on Fracastoro as a poet and philosopher and uses many primary t...

Semiotics is one of the theories of reading literary texts.  This theory systematically studies the causes and factors involved in the process of production and interpretation of the signs. One of the main topics in semiotics deals with implicit meaning wherein the scholars examine the implied significance of the signs in addition to their explicit significance. Sadegh Chubak’s Tangsir is one o...

T he notion of the contemporary West China literature originated in the 1980s when in 1982, the literary magazine Yang Guan proposed to start Dunhuang Arts as a particular school of literary and artistic works. In 1983, poets and critics in Gansu and Xinjiang were engaged in discussions of the emergent New Frontier Poetry. In 1984, critics such as Sun Keheng and Tang Qi pointed out that the new...