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This article charts a course from the literature of the classical world through to a select number of classic texts in sociology by Marx, Weber and Bauman, and some more recent psychoanalytically informed studies, to offer a metaphor for the vicissitudes of structure and fluidity in this time of turbulence and extremes. The episode from Homer's Odyssey featuring the passage of Odysseus and his men between the twin monsters of Scylla and Charybdis is seen as offering an image of the two tendencies of our time towards extreme forms of fluidity in the form of the liberalisation of markets and marketisation of most private and public sectors on the one hand, and a proliferation and mutation of bureaucratic practices seen as an aspect of structural conditions on the other. The dysfunctional relation and polarisation of these tendencies and their consequences are analysed in turn as leading first to a culture of narcissism (Lasch, 1978), then to perversion (Long, 2008; Hoggett, 2010) at a social as well as a socially constructed individual level. The article makes use of free association and amplification in working with images and metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the absence of allusions to Luther in the Adagia, Erasmus' use of particular adages in his apologiae and letters helps to clarify his shifting strategies in debating not only Luther but his Catholic opponents. Initially interested in distinguishing between Luther and his Catholic critics and intent on bringing his fellow reformer back into the fold with adages softened by explicit framing, Erasmus eventually makes less conspicuous and more offensive use of proverbs, deploying them to conflate his enemies and represent himself as trapped between their partisan agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the different ways in which some groups of educators are marginalized within the Canadian education system. The author draws on existing literature to examine how intersectionality in complex identities causes severe marginalization for Internationally Educated Teachers (IETs), especially female IETs. The author found ten strategies from Ryan's (2006) theory of social justice leadership to help school leaders to address teacher marginalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We live in an age of proliferating conflicts, an age that is characterized by the falling apart of old explanatory patterns on the one hand and the often fundamentalist and even violent re-assertion of particular positionalities on the other. Concepts such as the notion of truth have become problematic and have been relativized by postmodern thinkers, and so have the norms and structures based upon essentialist truth claims. Conversely, where to position oneself and how to construct cultural patterns of orientation has become one of the most urgent and difficult tasks of the individual as well as of whole societies since we are placed between the Scylla of an old-fashioned essentialism and the Charybdis of a new-fangled arbitrary valuelessness in which anything goes. These issues often give rise to violent conflict and they raise important ethical questions. This article discusses the function of literature as one of the prime tools used by humans in order to turn the contingent chaos of experience into structured orientational patterns. It presents a conversational ethics of dialogic exchange and negotiation which accepts the conversational gambit posed by otherness. This approach advocates openness and tolerance towards difference while insisting on the necessity of particularity and positionality. The article in this context discusses the uses and pitfalls of universalism as well as of particularity, and it probes the possibility of establishing consensus in the midst of conflict and incommensurability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Homer's first great work, the Iliad, the Odyssey is the second oldest epic work forming the background of the Western literature. It recounts the adventures and misfortunes of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, after the Trojan War, which lasted for ten years. Although the focus of the epic poem is on Odysseus himself, several female characters, including Penelope, leave an impact on him, add different shades to his story and mature him. Through various female characters, Homer indeed reflects admirable qualities of women in the patriarchal Greek tradition. There is also the depiction of women as unfaithful seductresses by male characters like Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Menelaus in the same tradition. Thus, this study aims to point out the two different approaches towards women in the Odyssey as a patriarchal work and analyse Homer's attitude through the depiction of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the annual IASIL Bibliography, serving as an overview of recent research in Irish literary studies, with a focus on Anglophone writing. Topics include the compilation by the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL) bibliography subcommittee, encompassing works in various languages such as Irish, Chinese, French, and more, providing a resource for scholars and students.

Several translations of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce exist in a variety of languages, even, recently, Chinese. It was published in 1922 and was thereupon translated to German, French, Polish, and Czech. One might be surprised to learn that three translations of the Irish novel have appeared in Brazilian Portuguese, with a fourth one planned to be published soon. Unfortunately, the circumstances and the translators behind these publications have scarcely been considered outside of Brazil. To discuss these historically ignored texts is to highlight a marginalized country’s perspective and contribution to Western literature. Thus, the main purpose of this article is to introduce to the reader these three translations and their characteristics through the analysis of the three Brazilian translations of the novel and their usage of polysemic words and vulgar language according to Lawrence Venuti’s concepts of domesticating and foreignizing translations. Analyzing such traits addresses current transnational concerns in the fields of modernism, postcolonial literature, and translation. A dialogue is brought to the forefront concerning possible connections and bridges the translators might have established between the two cultures and languages. This article also discusses whether the three translations could be considered minor literature according to Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of the term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the meanings attributed to literature in language education by Finnish General Upper Secondary teachers of English as a Foreign Language. The study employs a phenomenological research design structured around the concepts of language education, literature and values in education. The phenomenological analysis examines five semi-structured interviews from teachers who have experience in including literature in their language education practice. The interviews were conducted both in person and over the phone and audio-recorded, transcribed and processed using qualitative data management software. The analysis showed that literature in language education was experienced as challenged, challenging, framed, a cultural phenomenon, a cultural practice, a path for cross-curricular collaboration, tool for learning and an opportunity for personal growth. The values transmitted through these meanings reflected a balancing act between acknowledging the value of literature for individuals' holistic growth and the value literature holds for language learning. The results suggest that literature in language education as a phenomenon is more than select texts and practices in a pedagogical setting. Furthermore, employing literature within the language education paradigm can narrow the gap between foreign language teaching and teaching literature, because both language education and teaching literature value the personal growth of the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents some reflections on the relationship between literature, history and religion in Late Antiquity, which are meant primarily as a response to Anna‐Katharina Rieger and Sarah A. Cramsey, but also takes into consideration some of the other articles in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Mentally vulnerable' young people are a strong focal point in public debate and policy in Denmark at present, and a variety of cultural activities are now being offered to them. Building on ethnographic fieldwork (April 2018-August 2019) with so-called mentally vulnerable young women (aged 18-36) who meet in literature reading groups, this article seeks to connect the reading group with the phenomenon of 'mental vulnerability', first through a review of the historical emergence and contemporary use of the term, and second by considering what (painful) experiences the term signifies for individuals belonging to this category. This contextualization involves a discussion of literature on the role of context in anthropological analyses. The article concludes with an empirical contradiction: the reading group provides a sanctuary from everyday demands for purposefulness and productivity, but it can also be used as a strategy for navigating such demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As she briefly notes, this delineation of Homer is reminiscent of Michel Foucault's "author-function": that "the name of an author is not precisely a proper name among others" but rather "points to the existence of certain groups of discourse and refers to the status of this discourse within a society and culture."[35] The "absent author" furthermore reaches forward again to Barthes: "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing" ("Author", 147). Stolen, mistaken, and confused identities weave their way through the "Eumaeus" episode of James Joyce's I Ulysses i : bodied forms of the lies and storytelling with which the episode is permeated.[1] A man spuriously named Lord John Corley mistakes Leopold Bloom for a friend of Blazes Boylan; the keeper of the cabman's shelter where much of the episode is set is "said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris, the invincible"; someone bears "a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk"; the story-telling and uncertainly named sailor D. B. Murphy transforms Simon Dedalus into a circus performer, and, when asked, Stephen Dedalus claims only to have "heard of him."[2] Though it is now rarely discussed in criticism, these malleable or questionable identities nudge at the unconscious Homeric roles played, for instance, by Bloom and Stephen, and further take their lead from the parallel episodes of the I Odyssey i . For the "Butler" of I The Authoress i (and Butler's other Homer-related writing) sees the author as the focus of literary scholarship: "art is only interesting in so far as it reveals an artist" intimates that this persona at least believes a "good reader" will be rewarded with a glimpse of the author (or an intimate knowledge and surety of her actions). [Extracted from the article]

Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet (2020) is a reimagining of the death of Shakespeare's only son, and the existential havoc that the event causes in the protagonists' life. However, the title is slightly misleading because the novel's central character is Hamnet's enigmatic mother, Agnes Hathaway, better known as Anne. The narrative oscillates between two timelines: the present begins on the day the plague first afflicts Hamnet's twin sister Judith and soon after takes away the boy himself, a trauma that risks breaking both the family bonds and fragmenting the individual psyche. The past swings back to Agnes's meeting her future husband about 15 years earlier. Though Hamnet died of unknown causes, O'Farrell attributes it to the bubonic plague that raged throughout the country at the time with devastating consequences, an aspect of the story that is highly topical due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Hamnet is a text crossed by a number of deaths, both in the family of the dramatist and of his wife. As such, it is argued, the novel explores various forms of risk: physical, psychological and emotional. At the same time, it examines the different strategies that the human psyche activates to heal its wounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature has been gaining growing attention in second language (L2)/foreign language (FL) education globally. In a number of places such as Hong Kong, literature has recently been given greater emphasis in the L2/FL curricula. This article reports part of a large‐scale study examining learners' views of two English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language (EFL) modules on literary genres recently incorporated in the EFL curriculum, namely short stories (ShS) and poems and songs (P&S), from curricular and assessment perspectives. A total of 1190 secondary school students in Hong Kong completed a questionnaire, yielding quantitative and qualitative data; the 2347 comments collected explained their perceptions from multiple angles. Overall, the participants held positive views of the ShS module being incorporated into the curriculum, but only neutral views of the P&S module. When considering assessment, the respondents demonstrated ambivalence towards the modules; they were mostly against these genres being examined and if unexamined, they were generally not interested in studying them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this unique book, Eisner investigates the wide breadth of editions of Dante Alighieri's I Vita nuova i , itself a highly unique book in which the medieval Italian poet intersperses previously written poems with prose commentary to create an overarching narrative. Toward the beginning of I Vita nuova i , Dante refers to the ' I libro de la mia memoria i ' ("book of my memory"), as if the contents of his memory are somehow written out like a "book". But a book like Eisner's should correct that lack of attention if it is to integrate Dante's original enterprise in composing I Vita nuova i with the variegated interpretations of it that have emerged through the centuries. [Extracted from the article]

The expression that professionals should be led by their moral or ethical compass is increasingly used by academics, policy makers, professionals, and educational institutes. Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS), for example, explicitly aim to educate their students to become professionals equipped with a moral compass. This moral or ethical compass is a metaphor of which people intuitively grasp its meaning, but our literature review also shows that various interpretations are possible. We found three clusters of proposed ethical compasses expressing its a) content, b) form, or c) use, which we present in this article. Thereafter, we evaluate which compass can meaningfully assist (young) professionals and, therefore, should be part of the aims and content of education provided by UAS. Based on this evaluation, we describe the possibilities and boundaries of UAS' contribution to the development of their students' ethical compass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]