Literary Theory Research Articles

The Powers and Perils of Solitude: Perspectives from Eighteenth-Century French Literature, Religion, and Medicine

This article examines various meanings of solitude in eighteenth-century Europe, with emphasis on French thought and culture. Part 1 is a survey of literary representations of solitude and contemplation. Part II is devoted to the Jansenist convulsionnaires, Catholic dissidents who took part in a larger appeal against the repressive Unigenitus Bull of 1713. Although the convulsionary movement sought to attract crowds and publicity, it was also grounded in a Jansenist tradition of spiritual retreat that was emulated by the movement’s de facto patron saint, the appellant deacon François de Pâris. Part III features writings by Zimmermann and Tissot, who medicalized solitude for three reasons: belief in the ethos of sociability, concern over the pathogenic powers of the imagination, and suspicion towards the passions that drove some people to fix their minds exclusively on certain ideas. To show solitude’s harmful consequences for those who spent too much time absorbed in ideas, they made intriguing connections between secular knowledge-seekers and the religiously devout. The Jansenist convulsionnaires were one of the dangerously zealous groups whom they cited to illustrate their arguments.

The stakes of “Imitation”: debating modern poetics and national identity in late ottoman literature

ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, Ottoman culture witnessed a concerted effort to develop a national literature on par with modern European literature and culture. This was also the time when Ottoman intellectuals began to develop a systematic approach to literary analysis. Debates on the imitation, translation, and adaptation of Western forms were central to this period. This article examines the evolution of the concept and practice of imitation as part of these debates. This detailed analysis of the theoretical discourse surrounding the concepts of imitation and authenticity contributes to the broader field of literary theory and comparative literature. By introducing the theoretical rigor inherent in Ottoman-Turkish intellectual practice and highlighting its specific conceptual tradition, the article not only bridges the gap of non-Western critical thought in contemporary literary history, but also offers a fresh perspective on the much-debated East–West paradigms and cross-cultural approaches in literary studies and beyond.

Femmes ouvrières, la part sensible du travail : L’Excès-L’Usine de Leslie Kaplan et Daewoo de François Bon

For a long time reduced to a mere energy power, to a machine for production, the working body regains its human and sensitive dimension in the literary production that accompanied the economic crisis of the last three decades. Starting from the 1980s, literary representations of the body are indeed impacted by social and economic changes and the physical and psychological damage they have caused. Incorporated into the flesh and mind, these social violences make the bodies of workers the very principle of their identity and, therefore, the place of questioning for the entire contemporary society.

A Connection Between Knot Theory and Linear Algebra

In knot theory literature, a lot of references treated the topic of computing the Alexander polynomial and proved that the Alexander polynomial is a knot invariant. In this paper, we concentrate on an unconventional connection between knot theory and linear algebra in computing the Alexander polynomial and introduce an approach depending linear algebra tools to show that the Alexander polynomial is a knot invariant. Also, we connect this approach to the way of Fox coloring to suggest another way to prove that the 3-coloring is a knot invariant and confirm what is already known about the 3-coloring of the trefoil and the figure eight knots.

Concealed and compromised: masking, autism and graphic medicine

ABSTRACT While the phenomenon of autistic masking, in which individuals on the autism spectrum conceal their true selves to conform to neurotypical norms, is increasingly examined in psychological contexts, it is comparatively understudied in literary representations. The present article, centred on the 2022 anthology, Sensory: Life on the Spectrum, An Autistic Comics Anthology, curated by Bex Ollerton, close-reads selected autobiographical comics to demonstrate how autistics leverage the graphic medium to depict the lived experiences of masking. The article analyses the compromise of selfhood inherent in this phenomenon, and it investigates the intricacies of identity, neuronormative expectations and the toll of performing neurotypicality. The medium of comics becomes a potent medium to present the impact of masking on neurodivergent individual’s sense of self and belonging. Furthermore, the article underscores the potential of graphic medicine in exposing neuroableism, amplifying neurodivergent voices and advancing discourse on neurodiversity within literary and cultural contexts.

Weisstein, Ulrich. Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973: A Review Article

Ulrich Weisstein is considered one the pillars of comparative literature. He has a Ph.D. in comparative literature (1954) from IU. He was one of the first to do so from the IU Comparative Literature Program. In his famous book, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, He attempts to draw the line between different concepts like comparative, national, and world literatures. He dedicates long chapters to explain genres throughout histories as well as movements. He belongs the French school of comparative literature in which he believes that there is transference of impact between the influencer and the influenced by. In this article, Weisstein is not only a writer, but also, a historian who traces back concepts like stof, motif, genre, movement, and school. He differentiates, compares and presents his viewpoint of World Literature (WL), National Literature (NL) and Comparative Literature (CL).

Escaping Arrow’s theorem: the Advantage-Standard model

AbstractThere is an extensive literature in social choice theory studying the consequences of weakening the assumptions of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. Much of this literature suggests that there is no escape from Arrow-style impossibility theorems, while remaining in an ordinal preference setting, unless one drastically violates the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA). In this paper, we present a more positive outlook. We propose a model of comparing candidates in elections, which we call the Advantage-Standard (AS) model. The requirement that a collective choice rule (CCR) be representable by the AS model captures a key insight of IIA but is weaker than IIA; yet it is stronger than what is known in the literature as weak IIA (two profiles alike on x, y cannot have opposite strict social preferences on x and y). In addition to motivating violations of IIA, the AS model makes intelligible violations of another Arrovian assumption: the negative transitivity of the strict social preference relation P. While previous literature shows that only weakening IIA to weak IIA or only weakening negative transitivity of P to acyclicity still leads to impossibility theorems, we show that jointly weakening IIA to AS representability and weakening negative transitivity of P leads to no such impossibility theorems. Indeed, we show that several appealing CCRs are AS representable, including even transitive CCRs.

Wen, Literature, and Belles Lettres: Reconfiguring Chinese Literature in Nineteenth-Century English Sinology

ABSTRACT This article examines the fluid nature of literature as exemplified both semantically and conceptually in the English-language studies of Chinese literature conducted by Western Sinologists in the nineteenth century. If Chinese literary modernization of the early twentieth century is seen as shaped by the contact with foreign literary theories, Sinologists in the nineteenth century had already engaged actively with English literary concepts to reconfigure Chinese literature in their English-language writings. This article contends that, regardless of their impact on Chinese literary modernity, the Sinologists’ conceptions underlined the aesthetic and generic concerns that are fundamental to the modern understanding of literature and thereby fostered a renewed imagination of Chinese literature in the English-speaking world. Examining a wide range of primary materials, including dictionaries and Sinological writings, this article aims to unfold their transcultural naming and legitimizing process that gave rise to the knowledge category of Chinese literature through contingent English and Chinese literary terminology, narrative frameworks, and categorization schemes. This article traces the unnoticed history in comparative literary history to offer a genealogical understanding of the Western conception of Chinese literature. It also provides a new dimension for reviewing and analyzing the dialogue and interplay between Western and Chinese literary ideas within the Sinologists’ writings prior to the overwhelming influence of Western literary ideas during the period of Chinese literary modernity.

Does habitus provide the framework for Scandinavian cooperation?

This article argues that habitus is the basis for Scandinavian cooperation. The article makes two contributions. First, it endeavours to contribute to the literature on Scandinavian cooperation by demonstrating, through the article’s empirical data, that shared habitus provides the structural framework for Scandinavian cooperation. Habitus drives together the bureaucratic, diplomatic, and political personnel of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, including those who work within, or as state representatives, at International Organisations (IOs), despite them being members of differing communities of practice. Habitus also shapes Scandinavian approaches to practices within IOs and global politics. The second contribution the article makes is a theoretical one, to International Relations practice theory literature, through demonstrating the usefulness of habitus as a conceptual tool in examining the basis for close bonds and cooperation between groups of states.

Between paternalism and colonialism: Czechs and Slovaks from the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century

The study focuses on the postcolonial analysis of the development of mutual Czech-Slovak relations from the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. The core of the analysis are specific literary representations of these mutual relationships based on the textual corpus of Czech and Slovak literature. In the broader public discourse of Central European literature, Czech-Slovak relations are only rarely analysed using postcolonial criticism. In the field of literary science, this is an unexplored area of Czech-Slovak relations. The contribution therefore seeks to complement postcolonial research on the material of Czech and Slovak non-fiction texts, as well as neglected novels. It focuses on the postcolonial analysis of literary representations of mutual Czech-Slovak relations, which developed between paternalism and colonialism in the observed period. The critical reading of these literary representations is based on the description of power relations identifiable through more or less conspicuous features of superiority and subordination, which are relevant to interpret through postcolonial theories. The author of the paper is aware of the specifics and differences of power relations between small cultures in the Central European area compared to the analysis of relations between a large empire and a politically subordinate colonial culture. For this reason, he expands the repertoire of terminology from postcolonial criticism (Homi H. Bhabha and Edward W. Said) and uses not only the basic terms colonialism and Orientalism, but also other terms to define the diverse scale of the power relationship of the Czechs to Slovak culture, e.g. paternalism (to introduce the Czech figure of the elder brother), pre-colonialism (to introduce the Czech figure of the savior) and anticolonialism (to introduce the Czech figure of the Slovaks as victims). Using postcolonial terminology, the study approaches specific literary figures that have become part of Czech thinking about Slovak culture. The situation of Slovak culture in the observed period can be interpreted through Kiossev’s metaphor of self-colonization, which reflects the positive reception of the cultural and educational mission of the Czechs in Slovakia. The used corpus of texts from Czech and Slovak literature and its analysis served as a starting point for understanding cultural stereotypes and literary representations of nascent national identities. Czech colonialism developed in the political, cultural and linguistic framework, first as a recognition of Slovakia by Czech slovakophiles, after 1918 it was already part of the discussion in the public space. All these period attitudes of the Czechs towards Slovakia were prescribed in literary texts of a fictional and non-fictional nature and as part of the Czech cultural memory they filled the Czech cultural myth about Slovakia.

‘The Book of My Mother’ as national allegory: subaltern nationalism and political unconscious in early twentieth century Azerbaijani fiction

ABSTRACT This paper analyses Jalil Mammadquluzadeh’s drama, The Book of My Mother (Anamın Kitabı), to understand Azerbaijani nationalism in the early twentieth century. Under the repression of industrialization and colonialism, Azerbaijani national identity found its expression in literary products. Through Fredric Jameson’s concepts of national allegory and political unconscious, we examine The Book of My Mother as a fictional representation of Azerbaijani nationalism during its formative period. Ultimately, this article addresses a gap in the growing literature on Azerbaijani nationalism by applying Jamesonian critical literary theory to encourage further research in subaltern nationalism for other cases, especially within the Central Asian context.

Echoes of Memory and Identity: A Psychological and Theoretical Analysis of the Ripple Effect in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day

This paper explores the psychological and literary dimensions of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, focusing on how memory and past choices impact the protagonist’s identity. Utilising Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian archetypes, and cognitive dissonance theory, the study delves into Stevens’s emotional suppression, internal conflicts, and gradual self-awareness. Additionally, narrative and postmodern literary theories are applied to analyse Ishiguro’s narrative style, revealing the protagonist’s selective and unreliable memory. This interdisciplinary approach demonstrates how Stevens’s recollections and repressed emotions create a ripple effect that shapes his identity and underscores the human experience of introspection and regret. The findings highlight the intricate interplay between memory and identity and the significance of psychological insights in literary analysis.

A multimodal understanding of the role of sound and music in gendered toy marketing.

Literature in music theory and psychology shows that, even in isolation, musical sounds can reliably encode gender-loaded messages. Musical material can be imbued with many ideological dimensions and gender is just one of them. Nonetheless, studies of the gendering of music within multimodal communicative events are sparse and lack an encompassing theoretical framework. The present study attempts to address this literature gap by employing a critical quantitative analysis of music in gendered toy marketing, which integrated a content analytical approach with multimodal affective and music-focused perceptual responses. Ratings were collected on a set of 606 commercials spanning a ten-year time frame and strong gender polarization was observed in nearly all of the collected variables. Gendered music styles in toy commercials exhibit synergistic design choices, as music in masculine-targeted adverts was substantially more abrasive-louder, more inharmonious, and more distorted-than in feminine-targeted ones. Thus, toy advertising music appeared deliberately and consistently in line with traditional gender norms. In addition, music perceptual scales and voice-related content analytical variables explain quite well the heavily polarized affective ratings. This study presents a empirical understanding of the gendering of music as constructed within multimodal discourse, reiterating the importance of the sociocultural underpinnings of music cognition. We provided a public repository with all code and data necessary to reproduce the results of this study on github.com/marinelliluca/music-role-gender-marketing.

Parallel Horizons: A Comparative Voyage through Modernist and Postmodernist Waves in Australian and Indian Writing

This paper undertakes a comparative exploration of modernist and postmodernist movements in Australian and Indian literature, examining their transformative influence on the global literary landscape of the 20th century. Modernists introduced subjective expressions and disruptive narrative techniques, exploring psychic fragmentation, while postmodernists playfully challenged conventional literary representations. In Australian modernism, Patrick White's "Voss" (1957) critiques imperialism through surreal characterization, and Christina Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children" (1940) employs expressionistic symbolism to highlight marital oppression. Indian modernists, including Tagore and Anand, fused indigenous and Western influences in socially-conscious works addressing colonialism. Transitioning to postmodernism, Peter Carey's "Bliss" (1981) and Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" (1981) utilize intertextual pastiche to interrogate post-Independence national identities. Modernists disrupt narrative continuity to unveil alienation, while postmodernists expose storytelling's artifice through self-referentiality. The paper argues that narrative shifts between movements reflect changing assumptions about identity and power relations during anti/post-colonial transitions. Australian postmodernists, like Carey, reframe national myths from marginalized perspectives. In Indian postmodernism, Rushdie's carnivalesque narration destabilizes post-Independence identity constructions. In conclusion, modern and postmodern literature document the reconstitution of identity amidst profound societal change. Cross-cultural analysis enriches understanding of how global aesthetic movements intersect with localized interpretations. This study contributes to the discourse on evolving identity in literature, underscoring the significance of narrative transformations across distinct cultural and historical contexts.

Felt Anticipation: Rhythm, Expectation, and Emotion in Friederike Mayröcker’s Poetic Spoken Atmospheres

Abstract This paper addresses the work of the Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker (1924–2021) with an interdisciplinary approach contextualised within Cognitive Poetics and Cognitive Literary Theory studies. The specific focus of this study is the voice and the meaning produced through the proposed notion of a ‘poetic spoken atmosphere’. The poetic spoken atmosphere is understood here not as the unique property of an audio-text but rather as an intersubjective phenomenon emerging at the intersection of the poetic language and a listener. This notion underlines the importance of voice and its effects in the dynamics of poetry reception in order to investigate sound patterns and meaning-making dynamics, approaching three specific processes – rhythm, expectation, and emotion. The general theoretical frame of this study is based on principles of both phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Likewise, the analysis of Mayröcker’s poems is based on her recordings, available on the Lyrikline platform of the Haus für Poesie Berlin, from which spectrograms were generated to complement the textual and acoustic analysis. The observations of this study address the vocal structures modulating what can be termed an ‘insideness’, which allows to analyze sound attributes such as duration, intensity, ubiquity, and disappearing. Recognising such attributes help us to understand the emotional level of poetic sounds, i. e. the relationship between feeling and meaning in listening, hypothesising that meaning is indeed felt. Finally, the paper offers a comparative perspective that suggests further research on the basis of the paper’s theoretical-analytical methodology, and it provides specific examples from several literary systems.

Direct combustion noise: Nearfield and non-compactness influences on pressure–heat release coherence

There are several mechanisms through which turbulent flames produce sound. In low Mach number, unconfined flows, direct combustion noise – i.e., unsteady gas expansion generated by heat release fluctuations – is known to be a dominant contributor. This study is motivated by the fact that in the farfield, the coherence between spatially integrated heat release fluctuations from acoustically compact flames and direct combustion noise is unity. This suggests that the role of direct combustion noise relative to other sources can be ascertained from the value of the coherence. However, in practice it is difficult to fully satisfy the requirements to achieve a unity coherence, even in cases where direct combustion noise is the dominant noise source. This paper explores the contribution of noncompactness and nearfield effects on coherence. For the noncompactness part, while it is often the case that flames are small relative to a wavelength, they are never infinitesimally small. For the nearfield aspect, it is often not possible or practical to obtain farfield measurements, particularly in confined environments. This paper presents calculations that quantify how these noncompactness and nearfield effects influence coherence values. These calculations provide guidance on frequency ranges over which direct combustion noise will lead to near-unity coherence values, as well as required distances and optimal angles for acoustic instrumentation.Novelty and significance statementThis study presents a theoretical study on the coherence between heat release rate and acoustic pressure fluctuations, which has been mostly overlooked in prior literature. To the extent of the author’s knowledge, this is the first attempt that identify and investigate the inconsistencies between traditional theory and experimental literature on coherence. Results have implications for our previous understanding of the relationship between the heat release rate fluctuations and direct noise, aiding in future studies on combustion noise.

Identifying and developing the roles of private business actors in international regime complexes

Abstract Business actors play increasingly important roles in global governance and international regulation. This paper considers how regime complexity influences the roles of businesses and impacts opportunities for business influence on international regulatory regimes. We conducted a scoping literature review of 243 articles from the International Regime Complexity (IRC) theory literature to explore if and how complexity affects the roles of businesses and their influence on international regulation. We found that complexity presents opportunities for businesses to regime shift and exploit knowledge asymmetry in order to influence international regulation. Further, IRC theory illustrates how the roles of businesses interact and leverage one another in order to create better opportunities for influence in specific international regulatory regimes. This paper contributes to IRC theory by building on the existing non-state actor discussions and offering specific theorization of business behavior, thus starting to bridge the gap between the empirical and theoretical understanding. Second, it contributes to existing discussions in business and politics literature by developing existing knowledge on the roles of businesses in global governance to better reflect the added dimension of complexity.

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview by Jeffrey Di Leo (review)

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview by Jeffrey Di Leo (review)

What Literary Universals Are and What Culture Is Not: The Example of Descriptive Ethics

ABSTRACT Most of us would like to think that our ideas and commitments develop in a purely “objective” manner, as if they were the product of simple chains of evidence and inference. But that would be wrong. Our intellectual lives are more contingent and personal than that. In keeping with the biographical background of our intellectual engagements and commitments, the following article begins with a sort of memoir treating some key features of the author’s theoretical and scholarly development. This leads to a discussion of one prominent concern that has been a recurrent focus of Hogan’s research and writing—literary universals, especially story universals. Isolating and explaining universals is a project that is mostly ignored by literary theorists today. Insofar as it is not ignored, it is widely misunderstood. This article attempts to correct some of this misunderstanding. Rather than anything universal, humanists today are particularly enthusiastic about the idea of culture, despite its vagueness and (at best) limited explanatory value. As knowledge about culture is widely seen as undermining the study of universals, the article then turns to some criticisms of culturalism. It concludes by treating the example of how story universals bear on and illuminate the descriptive study of ethics.

Literary Universals and Their Implications for Literary Theory

Literary Universals and Their Implications for Literary Theory