Literary Value Research Articles

Quantifying Quality: A Computational Approach to Literary Value in North Korea

AbstractThis article analyzes questions of literary production and literary value in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) using quantitative methods and data sets covering a significant part of the country's literary and intellectual output over forty years (1977–2016). The first part of the article adopts a thematic approach, using topic modeling and time series, to map the DPRK's literary output and investigate the influence of genre on literary consecration. The second part looks at questions of style and literary quality in the DPRK through a comparative analysis of multiple novels grouped by degree of literary prestige. It introduces a method to evaluate the originality of an author's writing style using a masked language model (BERT) and uses it to assess the role of conformity and originality in the DPRK's literary field. Even though writers consecrated by the state display a high level of stylistic conformity when writing mandated biographies of the ruling family, their independent output ranks higher in originality than nonconsecrated writers.

Interactive Design Psychology and Artificial Intelligence-Based Innovative Exploration of Anglo-American Traumatic Narrative Literature.

The advent of the intelligence age has injected new elements into the development of literature. The synergic modification of Anglo-American (AAL) traumatic narrative (TN) literature by artificial intelligence (AI) technology and interactive design (ID) psychology will produce new possibilities in literary creation. First, by studying natural language processing (NLP) technology, this study proposes a modification language model (LM) based on the double-layered recurrent neural network (RNN) algorithm and constructs an intelligent language modification system based on the improved LM model. The results show that the performance of the proposed model is excellent; only about 30% of the respondents like AAL literature; the lack of common cultural background, appreciation difficulties, and language barriers have become the main reasons for the decline of reading willingness of AAL literature. Finally, AI technology and ID psychology are used to modify a famous TN work respectively and synergically, and the modified work is appreciated by respondents to collect their comments. The results corroborate that 62% of the respondents like original articles, but their likability scores have decreased for individually modified work by AI or ID psychology. In comparison, under the synergic modification efforts of AI and ID psychology, the popularity of the modified work has increased slightly, with 65% of the respondents showing a likability to read. Therefore, it is concluded that literary modification by single ID psychology or AI technology will reduce the reading threshold by trading off the literary value of the original work. The core of literary creation depends on human intelligence, and AI might still not be able to generate high-standard literary works independently because human minds and thoughts cannot be controlled and predicted by machines. The research results provide new ideas and improvement directions for the field of AI-assisted writing.

Revisiting Literary Value and Consecration at the Turn of the Century: the Critical Reception of César Aira's Works in the 1980s and 1990s

Scholarly attention on literary production usually presupposes the value of the works studied. This article argues that a sociological approach is vital to address the historical process behind the definition of literary value. The question resides on how a successful literary career is built, such as the one of the Argentine writer César Aira, who, in stark contrast with the recognition of being in contention for the Nobel Prize in Literature of 2019, in the 1970s received only rejections from publishers.Avoiding a retrospective narrative and the opposition between internal and external analysis of literary works, this article studies the trajectory of Aira focusing on one of the mediations between the text and the context: the critical reception. I have identified primary sources that remained unexplored, and built a periodization of the reception of the books by Aira between 1981, when his first books were published, and 2001, when I find numerous indicators of his growing consecration. Paying attention to the historical, material, and symbolic dimensions, the findings contribute to scholarship on how critics’ agreements and literary value morphs, on the process of consecration amidst the erosion of authorities, and on sociocultural events key in Latin American and Argentine history.

The “Kāmūsī Corpus”: A Case Study in Manuscript Production and Knowledge Transmission in Ilkhanid Iran

AbstractThe arrival of the Mongols in Iran in the thirteenth century made a deep impact on the political, economic, and religious life of the region. With the establishment of the Ilkhanate (1250–1335), the cultural life of Iran was also transformed. The territories under Mongol control saw the appearance of new architectural styles, a renaissance of Persian literature, and a burst in the production of Islamic manuscripts. Regarding this literary production, scholars have concentrated their efforts on studying important works composed in Mongol Iran either for their scientific, literary, or artistic value. However, most of this research focuses on individual manuscripts or specific works belonging to a concrete literary genre; these do not provide a holistic picture of the production, distribution, and consumption of the huge number of manuscripts surviving from the period. In an attempt to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon, this study looks at six different manuscripts, jointly referred to as the “Kāmūsī corpus,” that share the rare characteristic of having all been copied by the same hand in fourteenth-century Iran. This article investigates the individuals involved in the production of these manuscripts, identifies the different works included in this corpus, and connects the production of these texts and the dissemination of knowledge in Ilkhanid Iran.

A Marriage between Tricksters: Literary Heritage in Charles W. Chesnutt's "The Wife of His Youth"

A Marriage between Tricksters:Literary Heritage in Charles W. Chesnutt's "The Wife of His Youth" Yuki Miyazawa Charles W. Chesnutt expresses his outlook on creativity very clearly in the essay "Superstitions and Folk-Lore of the South" (1901). He notes that his knowledge of conjuration, a folk belief prevalent among African Americans in the southern US, provided "literary value" instead of a "sociological bearing" for his stories in The Conjure Woman (1899): Imagination . . . can only act upon data—one must have somewhere in his consciousness the ideas which he puts together to form a connected whole. Creative talent, of whatever grade, is, in the last analysis, only the power of rearrangement—there is nothing new under the sun. I was the more firmly impressed with this thought after I had interviewed half a dozen old women, and a genuine "conjure doctor;" for I discovered that the brilliant touches, due, I had thought, to my own imagination, were after all but dormant ideas, lodged in my childish mind by old Aunt This and old Uncle That, and awaiting only the spur of imagination to bring them again to the surface. (865) Here, "data" signifies the knowledge of African American folklore that Chesnutt acquired during his stay in North Carolina. In his short story collection, Chesnutt uses his knowledge of folklore to directly address the African American conjure tradition as noted by many scholars.1 He employs this mechanism in "Stories of the Color Line" and in the novel The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Eric J. Sundquist argues in his extensive study of ethnicity in American literature that although Chesnutt mentions his "curt personal belief that conjure [is] 'superstition'" (295), [End Page 271] he simultaneously "circles back, by the path of personal and historical memory, to merge his narrative art with the stories of the black ancestors" (297). It seems that writing fiction functioned as a way for Chesnutt to preserve racial memory. Chesnutt writes about the African American culture of the South, using features such as dialect and a folklore-based plot. Yet, he writes in a form adopted from European culture, sometimes quoting English and American writers such as Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Lincoln. Considering his statement that "one must have somewhere in his consciousness the ideas which he puts together to form a connected whole" (865), the European elements to which the characters sometimes refer, together with the African American elements, must be contemplated. An appropriate example of this notion can be found in "The Wife of His Youth" (1898), a well-known story that represents the African American and European sides of Chesnutt's own background. In this story, the protagonist Ryder is a mixed-race man who escapes from the South and becomes a member of a progressive society in the North by virtue of his pale skin and acquisition of knowledge about English literary culture. Later, he reunites with a black woman who used to be his wife back in the South. As Sundquist notes, English literary culture, which is evident from Ryder's direct quotations of Shakespeare and Tennyson, and, in a broader sense, his cultivated character, might be no more than something "laden with idealized notions borrowed from European culture" (301). The simultaneous use of the African American folklore of the southern US and European texts in "The Wife of His Youth" reflects Chesnutt's origins as a product of an environment filled with diverse cultures. Chesnutt's utilization of the two cultures as a cornerstone of his fiction evokes the concept of "double consciousness" proposed by W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, Chesnutt's colleague at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), states in "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (first published in 1897 as "Strivings of the Negro People"), Chapter 1 of The Souls of Black Folk (1903), that an African American is born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, [End Page 272] this sense of always looking at one's...

Interpreting the Labor and Legacy of the Independent Literary Typist; or, the Typing of Ethel Kate Dickens

While analysis of the figure of the “typewriter girl” abounds in literary scholarship, few have yet taken the real typewriting women, those individuals involved in the production of literature, as serious subjects of literary study. This article focuses on one such typist, Ethel Kate Dickens (1864–1936), in an examination of the types of intellectual and social work that constituted her literary-adjacent career. Ethel Dickens was not only a representative “independent literary typist” at the turn of the twentieth century, she was also the granddaughter of the “inimitable” Charles Dickens, a business owner, and a playwright; she typed for G. B. Shaw, J. M. Barrie, and other notables. Leveraging evidence that includes Barrie's “The Twelve Pound Look,” archival letters, historic typewriting manuals, and a wide array of periodicals, I argue that reevaluating her work as specifically literary labor recuperates significant processes that are frequently omitted from official accounts of literary history. Recovering the interpretive and transformative processes of Ethel Kate Dickens's professional literary copying thus expands what it might mean to make and experience literature, and to have literary value, beyond the persistent paradigms of “originality” that continue to structure literary studies today.

Literary Theorist to University President: An Interview with Steven Knapp

Literary Theorist to University President:An Interview with Steven Knapp Jeffrey J. Williams (bio) Those in literary studies will know Steven Knapp from his 1982 essay "Against Theory," which he co-wrote with Walter Benn Michaels. Though focused on the question of intention in interpretation, it was taken as a challenge to doing theory in general and drew a stream of responses over the next decade. Knapp also wrote two books dealing with literary issues such as personification and literary value, but in the 1990s he began working in administration as a dean, provost, and, from 2007 to 2017, president of George Washington University. Oftentimes administration, especially upper administration, is opaque to scholars and critics, so this interview aims to shed light on what chief officers actually do. In addition, Knapp discusses "Against Theory" and his transit through some of the central locations of theory in the 1970s and 1980s: Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Berkeley. Born in 1951, Knapp attended Yale (BA, 1973), taking courses with Harold Bloom and other influential critics, and Cornell (PhD, 1981), studying with M. H. Abrams, Neil Hertz, and others there. His first professorial job was at Berkeley (1978–94), where he encountered Michaels, Frances Ferguson, Joel Fineman, and Stephen Greenblatt, who started the journal Representations in the 1980s and forged the New Historicism. "Against Theory" is sometimes taken as marking the shift from an emphasis on theoretical speculation to one on cultural and historical context, but Knapp's critical work has not been New Historicist. His first book, Personification and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge (1985), sorts through the problematic relation of the literal and the figurative and the status of allegory in literary history, and his second, Literary Interest: The Limits of Anti-Formalism (1993), takes up some of the issues of "Against Theory," the role of authorial intention interpretation and the distinctiveness of literature. First published in Critical Inquiry 8 (1982), "Against Theory" prompted a cycle of responses, the first round of which, with rejoinders from Knapp and Michaels, is collected in Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism (ed. W. J. T. Mitchell, 1985). A sequel, "Against Theory 2: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction" [End Page 473] (Critical Inquiry 14 [1987]), enjoined a series of responses in law and philosophy as well as literature. Although he had served on various committees and as vice-chair of graduate studies in the English department at Berkeley, Knapp had not served in a full-time administrative position until he moved to Hopkins as dean of Arts and Sciences in 1994, stepping up to provost in 1996 through 2007, when he was appointed president of George Washington. After completing his second term he returned to teaching English, though in February 2020 he again answered the call to administration, becoming president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh (encompassing Art, Natural History, the Science Center, and the Andy Warhol Museum). Though with less time for his own scholarship, he has pursued an interest in religion and belief, resulting in Philip Clayton and Knapp, The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith (2011), which spurred a series of responses and a reply, collected in Confronting the Predicament of Belief: The Quest for God in Radical Uncertainty, edited by James W. Walters, Clayton, and Knapp (2020). This interview took place on March 9, 2022, at the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was conducted by Jeffrey J. Williams and transcribed by Catherine Evans, a PhD student in the Literary and Cultural Studies Program at Carnegie Mellon University. jeffrey j. williams: You've gone from being an English professor to a university president, and now are president of the Carnegie Museums. I don't think that people have a good idea of what university presidents really do. We see them at graduation and sometimes they're quoted in press releases, but can you say what university presidents do, in your experience? steven knapp: First of all, I must say it's rather varied, because the institutional structures vary so much. I happened to have been a dean and provost at a very decentralized private university, Johns Hopkins University, after having been a faculty member and in various vice-chair positions at a...

Literary Value and Social Identity in the ‘Canterbury Tales’ by Robert J. Meyer-Lee

Literary Value and Social Identity in the ‘Canterbury Tales’ by Robert J. Meyer-Lee

Research on the Influence of International Communication of Chinese Literature on Teenagers' Physical and Mental Health in the Digital Humanistic Environment.

Research Background. With the enhancement of China's international influence, China has stepped into the international ecological environment in the fields of economy, politics, culture, art, and so on, accompanied by the spread of China's culture and literature. China's 5000-year-old cultural history and artistic characteristics are integrated into the ecological field of the international environment. Research Purpose. The international spread of Chinese literature also has a certain impact on the physical and mental health of teenagers. This paper studies and discusses the impact of international communication of Chinese literature on teenagers' physical and mental health in the digital humanistic environment. Under the development environment of Digital Humanities in China, the impact of Chinese literature on the healthy psychology of teenagers, the impact content, and the characteristics of each were evaluated. Through the comparison of physical and mental health growth of adolescents in different ages, the characteristics of physical and mental health of adolescents are explored. The coupling degree of physical and mental health of adolescents in different development environments is compared and analyzed. Research Results. Through the research, it is found that with the development of Digital Humanities, the spread of Chinese literature with internationalization has a positive impact on the physical and mental health and psychological quality construction of teenagers and plays a promoting role in promoting mental health, increasing personal quality, and improving teenagers' correct values. The various ideological and moral qualities of Chinese literature can play a greater role in helping and growing up the physical and mental health education of young people in the new era and are also the literary value of promoting the quality education of the next generation of young people in the world.

The Cairo Trilogy from the Perspective of Orientalism

Before the 1980s, the meaning of Orientalism was single, that is only to carry out research in various fields related to Oriental civilization, and to excavate, narrate and write knowledge. Orientalism written by the Arab-American scholar Edward W. Said, is one of the representative works of colonial cultural theory that emerged after the 1990s. <i>The Cairo Trilogy</i> (<i>Palace Walk</i>, <i>Palace of Desire</i>, <i>Sugar Street</i>), written by Egyptian Realist writer Naguib Mahfouz in series, published in 1956 and 1957. The story which focused on national identity in the novel takes place in three old neighborhoods in Cairo, Egypt, so this novel is also known as <i>The Cairo Trilogy</i>. Unlike other diaspora writers, Mahfouz did not have multiple nationalities and never left the land he grew up in, but was caught up in the tumultuous times of modern Egypt and experienced the violent clash of Eastern and Western ideologies and cultures. His Cairo Trilogy not only provides a visual representation of Islamic-Arab culture, but also conveys the attitudes and perceptions of the 'other' and his adherence to the local culture through his characters. Focus on the main idea from <i>The Cairo Trilogy,</i> this article will attempt to briefly explain the literary value and significance of the Cairo Trilogy from the perspective of Said's Orientalism.

A Study on the 1904 Chinese Translated Version of &amp;quot;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;The Treasure Island&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;&amp;quot;

Treasure Island is a novel published by Stevenson in England in 1883. Because of its great literary value, it has become a must-read literary work recommended by the Ministry of Education in compulsory education. At present, many translations have been published. It was first introduced in China in 1904 (the 30th year of the Guangxu era). This translation was born in the special historical period of the late Qing Dynasty, which has important research significance, but it has not attracted the attention of relevant research in mainland China, and more research has focused on the new translation within Chinese domestic. Based on this, this study takes the scanning version of Treasure Island published by the Commercial Press in 1904 as the object, studies some features of this version. It was found that this version is a re-creation of the original text that is adapted to the culture of the country. The language form selects a high variety language with high communication ability, avoiding sensitive and offensive content, changing the narrative perspective, and making a condensed description at the same time. These experiences may have some help in countering cultural colonialism and protecting weak cultures today, and also make supplements to the translation research activities in the late Qing Dynasty.

Minority Writing across Cultures: From (Yi) Literature to World Literature (s)

Abstract: Through an analysis of the work of the Yi () poets, Aku Wuwu, Jidi Majia, and Jimu Langge, this paper discusses the significance of Yi literature in translation, circulation, and production, with an additional focus on the development of minority literature in the context of world literature. A variety of factors enable the translation of ethnic minority literature, including the content and characteristics of the literature itself, the cultural ideologies and literary values of societies, and the personal motivations of authors and translators. In turn, the translation and distribution process introduce the unique experiences of the minority subject into the realm of world literature. Presenting ethnic minority literature in various forms, including recitation performance and multimedia, these Yi poets enhance the range of sensory experiences for readers while drawing attention to poetic traditions and enriching the ways in which world literature circulates. Moreover, the travels of ethnic minority writers introduce new cross-cultural writing and advances world literature’s ideals of prosperity, equality, and freedom. In sum, Yi literature represents a global development of ethnic minority literature as “anthropological literature” that enriches the content of world literature.

A Comparative Study of Sister Carrie and the Great Gatsby —— from the Perspective of Ecofeminism

Sister Carrie and The Great Gatsby are both classic novels in America, which have huge impact on American literature. Sister Carrie is the first novel written by Dreiser reveals the social situation in the early 20th century and has become one of a representatives of naturalism. The Great Gatsby, written by Fitzgerald in the 1920s, reveals the life in Roaring Twenties and exposes the broken American dream, and it is one of the representatives of Modernism. These two novels have great literary value and have been studied by lots of scholars. There are many previous studies about Sister Carrie and The Great Gatsby from the perspective of feminism. Since ecofeminism was noticed and popularized in literature study, some ecofeminist scholars have analyzed these two classics separately. Few studies, however, have done research into them together from the perspective of ecofeminism. This study focuses on making a comparison between the two American novels from the perspective of ecofeminism and aims at exploring the same ecofeminist implication implied in the two works from the comparative study of the two female protagonists and the ecological environments. From the analysis of the two female characters’ sufferings and the worsening environment caused by men, it proved that the tragedies of women and the ecological environment are caused by the traditional patriarchal system and the dualism fixed in civilization. It is expected that more people would change their traditional dualistic ideas of the opposition between men and women, culture, and nature and pay attention to their equality.

Women’s Writing in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

This paper examines the significance of Jo March’s writing in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women in the context of the discourse on ‘True Womanhood’ in the mid-19th century. Jo March is an active, imaginative, creative individual and has the potential to succeed as a writer. Jo’s indulgence in reading and aspiration as a writer are indicative of alternative exploration of the gender roles of the time. However, there were many restrictions on what female writers should and should not write about at that time. She writes sensation stories to make money, which is described very negatively. However, sensation stories should not be regarded as simply low-quality literature without much literary value. They could portray women differently and provide a wide range of materials to write about. In the novel, Jo March’s moral maturity as a woman comes at the cost of suppressing her passion as a writer. The ‘successful’ work completed by Jo is depicted as a result of such moral maturity. However, Jo’s ‘growth’ as a writer could only be possible through her acceptance of the gender role imposed by society and the archetype of female artists based on piety, purity, and submission. So the achievement can be said to have been paid with her imagination, creativity, and vitality. It is clear that Jo reflects the ideal image of a woman and a female artist based on the culture of the time, but the novel also shows the possibility of overcoming the restrictions that come with it by showing what was sacrificed in the process. That’s one of the reasons why the work has a timeless appeal.

“Faces” and “Disguises” of V. Rozanov’s SolitaryThoughts and Fallen Leaves

An intensive study of V. Rozanovs work naturally actualizes the question of the reasons for the contradictory assessments that have accompanied it for more than a century. The author explains their polarity by the prevalence of subjective or stereotypical ideas about the fundamental novelty of V. Rozanovs approach to the psychology of literary creativity and to the aesthetics of secluded nudity, which the creative subject of his books invariably followed. The article examines the space of solitude as a sphere of creative realization of Rozanov, where the main attention is paid to the intuition of intimacy, interpreted by the writer as a genuine spiritual act underlying the true creativity of life and literature. In solitude the authors intuition of intimacy penetrates into the phenomena and objects of life, endows them with related intimate meanings, is reflected in them and contributes to the creation of a mythopoetic picture of the world, filled with a variety of subjective and personal ideas of V. Rozanov about God, the world, cultural and literary values, about to yourself. In the above examples, V. Rozanovs faces appear in the process of intimate rapprochement with the Absolute and revealed in ontological insights. Disguises are figurative dialectical projections of the intimate faces of the author, opposed to the traditional views on the writers personality. These are polar, familiarly traversed projections of his intimate faces designed to enhance their ontological and aesthetic significance. The philosophical concept of detachment in myth and literature, developed by A.F. Losev in Dialectics of Myth , served as a methodological basis for the study of the phenomenon of solitude and unity in V. Rozanov of the myth-maker and writer.

Krytyka przekładu w cyberprzestrzeni – nowe szanse i wyzwania (na przykładzie tłumaczeń Mistrza i Małgorzaty Michaiła Bułhakowa)

Translation Criticism in Cyberspace – New Opportunities and Challenges (on Polish Translations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita) The ongoing digitization of the literary heritage together with the growing competition between publishing houses have led to a situation where translation series of works considered as canonical changed their form of extending from diachronic, linear development in time to synchronic “explosion” of parallel texts, which task is to win readers-consumers with advantages of novelty, distinctness, “inventiveness.” Such translations gain a new function – they become a marketing tool for publishing houses. In my opinion the newest retranslations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of the most interesting examples of the process described above. In recent years, new Polish versions of this novel have been published at a dizzying pace (five new translations between 2015 and 2018) and in overwhelming welth (five editions were published in four different translations in 2018 alone). The new translations of Bulgakov’s novel evoke a lively response from the audience. All sorts of analysis, comparisons and opinions have been published not only in scientific journals, but also in daily newspapers, internet forums and in comments in online bookstores. In the Internet, professional translation criticism coexists with private opinions of Internet users (often based on non-literary factors) and with marketing content, advertisements, and blurbs deliberately formed as reviews. In this paper I would like to discuss new roles of professional translation criticism in circumstances described above, analyse its presence in the Internet and try to define its new objects. On the one hand, its voice should be loud and clear enough to be heard in the virtual chaos of texts, on the other hand – persuasive and lucid enough to help readers to become aware of decisions they make by choosing a particular translation and perceive the literary value of texts hidden behind attractive covers of new editions.

Traduire l’Ekphrasis. Le cas des Fleurs du mal de Baudelaire en Iran

Cultural exchanges between Iran and France started over three centuries ago. In spite of the strong relationship between the two countries, some books such as Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) went unnoticed in Iranian society. In addition to the literary value of the book, we propose to study ekphrasis in Baudelaire’s poems and its translation into Persian. Its meaning being that of a general description an artwork (imaginary or real), the term ekphrasis belongs to an interdisciplinary field of literature and art where the textual challenges we face may vary from one to another. To narrow down our study, we will focus on four chosen poems that have a minimum of two published translations in Persian, thus allowing the opportunity for a comparative study. These chosen poems, “La Beauté”, “L’Invitation au voyage”, “Les Plaintes d’un Icare” and “Femmes damnées” (“Delphine et Hippolyte”) as well as our corpus translation in Persian, are being studied and analysed through Descriptive Translation Studies. The analysis focuses on the ekphrastic aspect of these poems, their translations into Persian through syntactic and semantic levels and the influence of culture and society on the translation.

Literary Networks and Digital Media in Contemporary African Literatures

Building on recent research around digital cultural production in Africa (Ligaga, Adenekan, Nyabola), my paper seeks to engage with digital media and online spaces — blogs, social media — in relation to contemporary literary practices in Africa. Its aim is to examine issues surrounding the production and circulation of contemporary “digital-native” texts, as well as the networks, both virtual and material, that underlie them. It draws on a range of examples from contemporary anglophone Africa, from online magazines (Bakwa, Saraba, Jalada, Hekaya) and Facebook fiction to self-published popular novels by writers who use social networks and blogs to produce, advertise and circulate their work (like Nigerian writer Myne Whitman and South African novelist Dudu Busani-Dube).First, the paper examines the complex relationship contemporary digital productions bear to the materiality and literary value usually associated with print. It then seeks to question the widespread notion that digital spaces are unmoored to geography and unbound by the power structures of the print publishing sector. Lastly, by analyzing two recent initiatives from Kenya (Jalada and Hekaya), it focuses on the various scopes and geographies of these virtual literary networks and the ways in which they intersect with material and social networks, through events like festivals or writers’ workshops.

Betty A. Schellenberg. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture, 1740–1790.

Betty A. Schellenberg. Literary Coteries and the Making of Modern Print Culture, 1740–1790.

Women’s Writing, 1660–1830: Feminism and Futures, ed. Jennie Batchelor and Gillian Dow.

<i>Women’s Writing, 1660–1830: Feminism and Futures</i>, ed. Jennie Batchelor and Gillian Dow.