Volume 140, Issue 3-4

The Fuller Brooch is considered the earliest English representation of the five senses. The central character, representing sight, is thought to also hold one or more figurative meanings, linked to ideas and concepts that were current in King Alfred’s cultural context. These figurative meanings were presumably meant to be emphasised and clarified by the two objects this figure is holding. So far, however, these have not been satisfactorily interpreted, with most scholars tentatively identifying them as plants or cornucopias. This study makes a case for these objects to be torches, embodying the concept of light, so central in the theme of the oculi mentis ‘eyes of the mind’ and in Alfred’s ideas of wisdom and learning. The relevance of divine light in the Alfredian cultural framework emerges clearly from the translations into English of the Soliloquia , of the Consolatio Philosophiae and of the Regula pastoralis . Evidence also emerges from the iconography of the inluminatio ‘illumination’ of the oculi mentis for the acquisition of divine wisdom featuring in the Utrecht Psalter (and its later copies), and from the iconographical connection between torches, light and God that can be seen in the historiated initial of one of the hymns of the Durham Hymnal.

The Old English poem Maxims I has generally been regarded as a wisdom/catalogue poem listing miscellaneous gnomes without any major structural or thematic unity. It has also been suggested that it actually consists of three separate works, as it is divided into three in the manuscript. Against these views, this article will argue that the poet has a design and purpose in mind, and intends to produce a unified work. In listing gnomes, the poet focusses on good matches of beings or concepts, since well-matched pairs represent one of the fundamental principles in the order of the world in Biblical tradition as well as in the ‘scientific’ tradition of the time that ultimately went back to the ancient Greek theory of quaternity. Near the beginning of the work, the poet actually refers to the principle by the gnome tu beoð gemæccan ‘two are companions’ (l. 23b), with several clear-cut examples of well-matched pairs of beings or concepts. Various pairings of this type are dealt with throughout the work, and in order to remind the readers of this key concept, the poet inserts multiple series of short and simple gnomes listing good matches in all three parts. By this cumulative process, the poet presents truths, norms, and patterns in the Anglo-Saxon world and locates them in a wider context of the world order established by God the Creator. The thematic unity, as well as lexical, dialectal, and metrical affinities demonstrated in all three parts suggest that Maxims I is intended as a unified work. In fact, the three parts seem to have circulated together for a long time even before they were copied into the Exeter Book in the latter half of the tenth century.

This study re-examines the idea that Eadwacer in the short Old English ‘Elegy’ Wulf and Eadwacer is a literary representation of the historical Odoacer, a fifth-century Germanic king of Italy, and Wulf is his historical and traditional literary opponent, Theoderic the Ostrogoth. The text of the poem is compared for the first time with the historical records of the contention between Odoacer and Theoderic, and particularly of the siege of Ravenna (490–493). A new and revealing analogue is identified in a seventh-century chronicle of this event by John of Antioch, which introduces Odoacer’s wife as a woman who is starved to death, mirroring a puzzling detail in the poem. It is argued that the historical record (itself featuring literary influence) explains the characters and scenario of Wulf and Eadwacer , which can thus be re-interpreted as a linguistically highly adept and bitter lyric spoken by Eadwacer’s wife, lamenting her marriage to him and longing for her outlaw love, Wulf, set in the landscape of northern Italy. It is argued that it is a unique example of a poem in the (possibly Continental-derived) Anglo-Saxon Theoderic tradition, which was otherwise lost save for a few brief allusions in other poems. It is also suggested that the importance of its speaker and her feminine viewpoint ought to be incorporated into our concept of “heroic” poetry, as it existed in England by the latter tenth century.

From the perspective of the Environmental Humanities, ozone exerts a special fascination that is rooted in its ambiguity. It is assessed quite differently depending on whether it is encountered in the stratosphere, where the ozone layer protects us from ultraviolet radiation, or near the ground, where it is classified as a harmful substance and pollutant. Since humans cause both its formation near the ground and its destruction in the stratosphere, ozone is perceived not only as a natural phenomenon but also as an anthropogenic problem. Ever since Friedrich Schönbein discovered ozone in 1839, chemists, meteorologists, and educated citizens alike have tried to understand its ambivalent effects. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a lively debate developed in popular media to sound out the risks for human beings and the possibilities of building resilience – long before the interdisciplinary career of these concepts that we can witness today. Among the various factual and fictional texts that participated in the controversial debates about ozone, satire plays a special role, functioning per se as a meta- and counter-discourse. In the English satirical magazine Punch in particular, we can observe the emergence of satirical ozone poetry as an inventive subgenre. Presenting unknown ozone poems, this article analyses how they playfully question the emerging natural sciences and ridicule media coverage, humorously reveal insecurities, and mock cultural practices. At the same time, I argue, they should be considered an artistic medium of building resilience. 1

Poets and writers who introduced Byron to the Albanians a few years before his death, who expressed their sympathy, respect, and admiration for his works, and who were influenced by him in one way or another are Jeronim De Rada, Elena Gjika, Anastas Kullurioti, Faik Konica, Asdren, Luigj Gurakuqi, Ismail Kadare, Agim Shehu, Dhori Qirjazi, Faik Deda, etc. Some of them even wrote poems about Byron. Out of all the aforementioned Albanian poets, one of the Albanian poets most influenced by Byron was Asdren. Using qualitative and comparative literary methods, this article examines the impact of Byron’s poetry on Asdren’s poetry by focusing on the main similarities and differences of these two poets who belong to different literatures and cultures. The paper concludes that Asdren is beyond doubt one of the poets most influenced by Byron. His poems have strange and interesting similarities as well as concordance with the themes, motifs, messages, and style of Byron’s poems. Most likely, Asdren read Byron’s poems and tried to imitate his way of writing, therefore Asdren’s poems are quite similar to Byron’s poems in terms of themes, motifs, symbols, style, etc., though there are differences between their poems as well. The themes and motifs of tyranny, rebellion, struggle for freedom, sacrifice, suffering, honor, death, etc., connect Byron’s poetry to Asdren’s.

William Golding’s Pincher Martin is about the problem of maintaining one’s identity in the face of death/non-existence. To give himself an illusion of being alive, Martin, who died at the beginning of the novel, creates a fictitious world of a rock, to which he clings for metaphysical survival. The rock where his survival is staged is, in a metaphorical sense, Lacanian symbolic order which is created to give Martin a sense of identity, while protecting him against Lacanian real, his non-existence. Martin, however, would not admit the fictionality of his world which also implies the fictitiousness of his own identity. At the end of the novel, the black lightening, Lacanian real as “unquestionable nothingness” (Golding 1956/2013: 95), reveals the fictionality of Martin’s symbolic order, and erases the rock as well as Martin himself whose identity is constructed on his fictional world, as if they were words written on the paper. This is Martin’s second death as the Žižekian ‘symbolic death’ which exposes the fictionality of the symbolic order and human identity.

Historically, both the male and the medical gaze have sexualized and pathologized the female anatomy. Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body simultaneously perpetuates and problematizes the alliance between patriarchy and science that objectifies and disempowers women and their own stories. Her novel’s genderless narrator first eroticizes her/his beloved Louise and later abandons her because she suffers with leukemia, leaving her in the hands of her husband-doctor, a man whom she no longer loves or trusts. Under the umbrella of medical humanities, this essay explores how Winterson’s narrator dehumanizes and silences Louise by becoming the anatomist of her cancer to possess her entirely from afar and to mourn the loss of access to her sexual body; vicariously experiencing leukemia through storytelling, and thus depriving Louise of her right to make choices in her life, the comforting presence of the person she loves by her side, and the therapy of narrating her own account about terminal illness on the look of death.

An ungendered narrative is a work of fiction where the gender of one or more characters remains undisclosed throughout the entire work or a significant portion of it. This lack of gender results in the deconstruction of gender, and the narrative transcends a fixed gender binary. This paper discusses the importance given to characters’ gender in the history of literature as well as the ungendered narrative’s attempt to change this importance by not gendering the characters. In addition, this paper identifies the attributes common to the select ungendered narratives, that is, how ungendered narratives are written (including the stylistic and thematic features authors employ), that may help determine whether a work of literature can be called an ungendered narrative. The ungendered narrative highlights the insignificance of gender in fiction and real life, imploring readers to stop casting judgments based on gender and sexuality, which can lead to violence, trauma, ostracism, and abandonment. This narrative’s strength calls for additional such works, and this paper provides a framework for authors who intend to create them.

Almereyda’s adaptation of Hamlet (2000) has been considered as highly provocative, since it plays with time and space dimensions in a definitely challenging way. This ‘attempt’ at the original play could have introduced profound changes in the traditional interpretation of the Shakespearean story. Furthermore, in this age, dominated by streaming platforms and digital technologies, a revision of this last film version of Hamlet , the most technological to date, seems particularly relevant, especially after having celebrated its twentieth anniversary.Concentrating primarily on the display of technology in the film version analysed, this article interprets the grasp of the timelessness in Hamlet’s story resorting to the so-called ‘technologies of memory’. This dominance of technology can lead human beings to mistake the image for the real, and this absence of distinction, as well as the US corporate imperialism in which the protagonist is immersed, is what I aim to investigate in relation to the presence of the Ghost. 1

Cultural and religious representations may seem different from one culture to another. Yet the concept of the ‘Force’ that George Lucas developed in the Star Wars saga (1977–2019) has been compared to the Judeo-Christian and East Asian religions and traditions, and even to the Greco-Roman philosophical concept of ‘pneuma’. In turn, the Igbo of Nigeria believe in the existence of ‘Chi’, an enigmatic concept that has given rise to various interpretations. This article conducts a comparative analysis of the concept of ‘Force’ in Lucas’ Star Wars saga and the Igbo ‘Chi’ in Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta’s novel Kehinde (1994). It focuses on the principle of duality these works establish between the natural and supernatural worlds and its relevance for the twin characters in the narratives. The connections between the ‘Force’ and the twins Luke and Leia and between ‘Chi’ and Kehinde and her dead twin sister Taiwo evoke the epic structure of a hero that must, in Joseph Campbell’s terms, “slay [the] dragon” (Campbell and Moyers 1988/1991: 182). The article examines the relevance of religion and myths in these twentieth-century narratives that readdress the development of the heroes’ identity and their struggle to offer audiences role models to confront modern social and political questions.

Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent is an Arab American literary piece of fiction that symbolizes the remarkable emergence of this kind of literature in the early years of the twenty-first century. The social and political atmosphere in the USA after 9/11 ushered in the rise of this ethnic literature to worldwide prominence. In addition to the desire to challenge the multi-faceted oppression that Arab Americans confront in the USA – gender-related, sexual, racial, and ethnic – the literary canon of Arab American writers also discuss the experiences of exile and displacement that Arabs go through when settling in the USA and how such experiences affect their sense of authenticity. As such, this paper examines the politics of exile as projected in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent , taking the co-protagonist Han as a prototype of Arab exiles living in the USA. In addition to employing critical and analytical approaches to the novel, this paper relies on a socio-cultural conceptual framework based on perspectives of prominent critics such as Edward Said, Avtar Brah, and Svetlana Boym, to name a few. This paper argues that the politics of exile – such as nostalgia, memory, and displacement – make Arab American identity more convoluted and interlaced with the dilemma of authenticity, featuring feelings of estrangement, loneliness, and homesickness.

This article focuses on the retrospective narrative in the Iranian American novelist Dina Nayeri’s Refuge (2017). We argue that the novel’s interpretations of acts of remembering, which presuppose confession and re-evaluation, define the ways of constructing the refugee identity of the main character, Niloo. Within the discourse of retrospection, the self appears in the mode of reflection over past events, and thanks to temporal distance, the self can verbalize changes in perception of the past self. Thus, retrospection becomes a psychological and narrative endeavor during which identity is created through the experience of re-evaluation. The interaction between then and now as well as their final convergence in the end of the novel result in the continuity of experience and coherence of identity. Niloo’s ontology of becoming is possible through the re-living of the past, its interpretation, and its integration into the present. In other words, the possibility of reflection over experience is the very condition for her becoming. The main character concentrates on her meetings with her father in different cities (Oklahoma City, London, Madrid, and Istanbul) and her re-evaluation of her emotional experience during those meetings. These moments of re-evaluation explicate the dynamics of her identity construction, which shifts from a rejection of her past to an embrace of it.

At the wake of the twenty-first century, Richard Powers updates Shelley’s motif for the posthumanist context. His novel Orfeo pictures Peter Els; an aged, American version of Viktor Frankenstein, as he runs away from Homeland Security after 9/11. His crime is having composed the musical masterpiece of his life by altering the DNA of a bacteria, which is mistaken for an act of bioterrorism. Powers’ novel looks back at Shelley’s existentialist concerns about the ethical dimension of a creative freedom that questions the very limits of humanity. The parallelisms between both novels go beyond the development of this motif and deep into the structural arrangement of plot and character development to suggest that Shelley’s narrative lies behind the thematic and compositional arrangement of Powers’ work, and evidence the endurance of Shelley’s literary impact. 1

There is an important countertradition in U. S.-American literature that goes against intense feelings and instead highlights apathy, unfeeling and disaffection. As a few scholars from affect studies have recently argued, apathy can signal a “detachment from attachments to hegemonic structures of feeling” and holds “the potential for striving toward a radical politics of liberation” (Yao 2021: 17). Literary texts that highlight apathy formally and thematically thus reflect on broader socio-political contexts of emotional withdrawal that was caused, for example, by labor fatigue, late capitalism and addiction, and pose a challenge to the affective status quo. One recent text that stages this complex dance between feeling and unfeeling is Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2018 novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation . In this article I argue that Moshfegh’s novel complicates the apathetic protagonist’s naïve goal of re-affection – that is, her attempt to overcome apathy, find happiness and reintegrate into society – by embedding her emotional experiences within an overpowering affective economy that is constituted by media, capitalism, neoliberalism and other socio-political forces. Instead of ‘correcting’ the affective pendulum from a solipsistic apathy into a naïve happiness, Moshfegh’s novel ‘awakens’ her readers to a more complex and undetermined spectrum of affective structures.