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This article aims at a comparative reading of a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets and Mawlana's ghazals from a Levinasian perspective. We will argue how Shakespeare and Mawlana (Rumi) both represent an ethical relationship with the Other in their poems, where the needs and demands of the Other are prioritised. We will also contend that although Shakespeare's sonnets are not exclusively concerned with secular love or eroticism, they are closer to the Levinasian notion of desire or a-satiable desire in which transcendence becomes possible through need. On the other hand, Mawlana's ghazals in which need and erotic feelings are disparaged also warn about satiable desire and need. This is not to suggest that the results of this comparison can be extended to Shakespeare's sonnets and Mawlana's ghazals in general, but that a similar Levinasian reading is occasionally possible and might shed new light on connections between English and Persian lyric poetry. Keywords: desire, Levinas, Mawlana, need, satiability, Shakespeare, William Shakespeare and Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi come from two different cultures, the West and the East. William Shakespeare lived in the Elizabethan period in the sixteenth century, in London, England. [...]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, first appearing as the opening poem to Lyrical Ballads, has proved to be highly enigmatic since its publication. The blending of supernatural and reality along with the intricacy of the underlying structure seem to have added to the complication. The present article is an attempt to read the poem through the lens of Algirdas Julien Greimas’s actantial model and semiotic square to shed some light on the semantic richness of the poem. The results seem in line with Coleridge’s idea of imagination as the Mariner’s imagination in co-presence with his will, along with the Moon as the source of Nature’s benignity and his muse, assist him with his object-value: the unity between man, Nature, and the Creator. Moreover, the Mariner’s suffering and atonement could be attributed to his moments of reasoning and free-will, devoid of imagination or spirituality and associated with the presence of the sun or diurnal elements. Greimas’s model offers the possibility to elucidate the moments of confusion as ‘void’ or ‘all’ phoric states of passion in which the absence of diurnal and nocturnal elements or their co-presence could justify the Mariner’s wanton murder of the Albatross or his survival.

The article offers a fresh interpretation of Barrie's narrative, emphasizing the dynamics of affect and class. Topics include the exploration of affective relationships between the narrator and the waiter, the implications of class and social status, and the transformative power of empathy and consideration in human interactions.

Willa Cather wrote "Death Comes for the Archbishop" and "Shadows on the Rock" based on the missionary life of Europeans in Quebec and New Mexico. In both novels she depicts a different type of colonizer-colonized relationship. The colonizers arrive with their stereotypical views about the natives to purportedly civilize them. But later, through their interaction with the natives, their superior, patronizing attitude gradually changes, so that, the boundary between the colonizer and the colonized becomes blurred. Contrary to their presuppositions about natives and also the long-established colonial attitude, the missionaries in these two novels treat the natives sympathetically and in some cases equally. Using Homi Bhabha's theory of hybridity, this essay attempts to analyze these two novels in terms of the depiction of cultural relation/interaction.

Twentieth-century drama has made the stage a site for reflecting on science. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, considered by many as one of the most striking contributions to “science plays,” portrays the elusive yet crucial short meeting of the two pillars of quantum physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in the autumn of 1941. The play employs ‘real’ scientists as characters that recurrently refer to and explain their scientific ideas such as uncertainty and complementarity, recognized as the Copenhagen Interpretation. Adopting the approach of possible worlds theory, this article analyses the concept of ‘possible worlds’ as projected in Copenhagen in light of the idea that physics itself has proposed a proliferation of parallel universes (multiverse). In fact, our main thesis is that the play offers an alternate history and brings about a myriad of counterfactuals that are tested as “drafts.”

While enacting innovative learner-centered practices has been reported to instigate, at least initially, student negative responses in diverse contexts, studies in translation education adhering to teaching approaches informed by social-constructivism have paid no great attention to student resistance, as one potential threatening factor, in response to the newly employed approaches. This study aims at addressing this under-researched but important aspect in the design, development, and implementation process. In a course redesign plan aimed at advancing towards a learner-centered approach in the course literary translation, we found student resistance as one major threat to the plan's ultimate success. Although attempts were made to anticipate student resistance and enact several prevention strategies, by mid-semester we found the majority of the students still resistant. An investigation into student resistance types and sources revealed that the majority of the students did not perceive the problem as being instructor-owned. Data collected through the questionnaire on students' characteristics alongside follow-up interviews highlighted students' lack of motivation as one important variable worth investigating in the first place. Results from the analysis of motivational factors better justified student resistance. Implications were discussed in the light of the relevant literature for our pedagogical purposes in the upcoming semester.

The article focuses on how early modern poets and playwrights, including Marlowe, Donne, and Shakespeare, explore the significance of the face in interpersonal encounters. Topics include Marlowe's depiction of wonder and mystery through facial descriptions, Donne's poetic focus on the face as a site of emotional expression, and Shakespeare's evolving treatment of faces and gazes as central to themes of knowledge, recognition, and artistic representation in his plays.

This article sheds some light on ethical issues in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge from the cognitive poetic perspective, especially Marie-Laure Ryan's theoretical framework of the Possible Worlds Theory. It is argued that Miller's play could be considered as cognitive ethical narrative as it highlights ethical considerations (centrally, issues of right and wrong, value and choice) in relation to the cognitive valences of the characters as well as those of the readers (who are steered to imaginatively apprehend the possibility that narrative actions and values may occur in the real world). As such, viewing the play through the lens of cognitive poetics can illustrate its ethical affordances, particularly with respect to the issue of choices, which ultimately endow human life with meaning. Adding some reflections on the philosophical implications of Sartre and Levinas, it is proposed that the protagonist's act of betrayal is circumstantially complex. The conflict of values it involves could be illuminated through the consideration of the conflicting anguished W-world/Social O-world of the protagonist and the Communal O-world/hospitable Wworld of the community in which he lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), we examine J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) to explain how the conceptual metaphor 'ARGUMENT IS WAR' is central to the novel's thematics and to the fictional 'staging' of debates concerning authorial emplotment through the workings of the 'social mind'--here the prospective readership. We focus on the inter-character discourse staged during the civilized confrontation between Susan Barton (the character attempting to be an author) and Daniel Foe (the author) in an attempt to have their intended stories told. Thus the socially aware minds of both parties involved greatly contribute to the formation of the well-known plot of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). As a result of this argumentative path (ARGUMENT IS WAR), Susan and her framing narrative lose ground to the impositions by Foe and the exigencies of the social mind. A reading of the novel in terms of social mind with a focus on CMT reveals the cognitive complexity of the functioning of the social mind as a controlling medium in Foe., INTRODUCTION Foe (1986) is the story of a female castaway named Susan Barton who, having been cast out of the ship sailing from Bahia to Bristol by the mutinous sailors [...]

En este trabajo se estudia la manera en la que Cormac McCarthy (1933-) representa la 'sublimidad natural' en The Border Trilogy ['Trilogía de la Frontera'] [(1992-1998), donde esta noción se establece a partir de la experiencia nostálgica de los personajes, en tanto en cuanto el autor sitúa en primer plano la inalcanzable 'sublimidad natural' del salvaje Oeste, así como sus fascinantes escenas pastoriles. La revisión de algunas teorías de lo sublime, en particular las de Edmund Burke (1757), permitirá entender cómo la sublimidad se combina con un sentido inconsolable de pérdida de lo pastoril. McCarthy recrea en primer plano el deseo de los personajes de una vida bucólica y, de este modo, escenifica su propio proceso de experimentación de lo sublime. El modo en que los protagonistas de estos relatos responden a esta experiencia es entendido en el artículo como un índice de caracterización. El artículo desvela también la importancia del estilo en la representación de la 'sublimidad natural' y propone que la proyección estilística de esta deviene en 'sublimidad artística.' Así, la representación artística del objeto no es percibida sensorialmente de forma distinta a su naturaleza. Lo sublime instala la consciencia en el sujeto hasta el punto de hacerle creer que la sublimidad es un modo de aprehender el mundo o, de manera más sencilla, es una cualidad experiencial de la persona. En The Border Trilogy, McCarthy ha llevado al primer plano la 'sublimidad artística' centrándose en la pérdida de lo pastoril; de este modo, el autor representa la naturaleza salvaje como el espacio natural ideal.Palabras clave: Cormac McCarthy; The Border Trilogy {'Trilogía de la Frontera']; nostalgia de lo pastoril; 'sublimidad natural'; la frontera; el salvaje OesteThis article discusses the way Cormac McCarthy (1933-) represents the 'natural sublime' in The Border Trilogy (1992-1998), where the notion is by and large distinguished as a kind of nostalgic experience on the part of characters insofar as the writer foregrounds the unattainable 'natural sublimity' of the Wild West as well as its charming pastoral scenes. Drawing on theories of the sublime, particularly those of Edmund Burke (1757), an attempt is made to shed light on the modality of the merging of the sublime with an inconsolable sense of pastoral loss. Foregrounding the characters' desire to live a bucolic life, McCarthy dramatizes the very process of experiencing the sublime on their part. The modality of the protagonists' response to this experience, it is argued, becomes an index of character. The essay also reveals the importance of style in representing the 'natural sublime' in these novels, arguing that stylistically their rendering of the 'natural sublime' approaches what could be called the 'artistic sublime.' In this sense, the artistic representation of the object is no longer distinguished from the nature of the object in one's sensation. The sublime, therefore, grounds consciousness in the subject, making that subject believe that sublimity is concerned with the way one apprehends the world or, simply put, the quality of a person's experience. In The Border Trilogy, the writer foregrounds the 'artistic sublime' by focusing on the loss of the pastoral vision. In this way, McCarthy presents wilderness as the ideal pastoral space of nature.Keywords: Cormac McCarthy; The Border Trilogy; pastoral nostalgia; the 'natural sublime'; the frontier; the Wild West, Nostalgia and the Sublime in Cormac McCarthy's The Border TrilogyI. IntroductionAs an American novelist, Cormac McCarthy (1933-) creates fictional characters emblematic of American life in the latter half of the [...]

'His is a writing that does not reject, delete, eliminate but one that absorbs, recycles, accommodates,' says Peter Boxall of Don DeLillo (43). Here we face fiction that attempts to [...]

This article offers a reading of Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man" in terms of its affective affordances. It is argued that the poem rhetorically imagines the possibility of having "a mind of winter" as being incapable of affect, that is, being inhuman. Thus, the central theme of the relation between mind and world is cast as a double encounter between the human and non-human as well as the inhuman and the non-human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Writing in the context of an increasingly godless age, Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn poignantly reflect on the experience of going to church in modern times. Focusing on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus, and distinction, this article offers a sociological reading of "In Santa Maria del Popolo" by Thom Gunn and "Church Going" by Philip Larkin. Larkin concludes that despite its terminal decline, the church still socio-culturally matters and will continue to matter, whereas the speaker in Gunn's poem offers a cynical take on the very viability and relevance of faith in modern times. At issue in both poems is the symbolic and cultural cachet of the church in relation to art. The poems address the religious affordances and the socio-cultural relevance of art differently. While Gunn's poem puts on display the decline of religious sensibility in modern times through the decline of the symbolic capital of religious art, Larkin's poem intimates that the church continues to matter, if only symbolically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines human machines and machinic humans in the speculative fiction "We Can Build You" by Philip K. Dick. Topics include the focus of Dick's fiction on soulless humans positioned in direct contrast with posthuman machines and beings who are more human than humans, a description of the world simulacra being built by an organization in "We Can Build You," and the contrast between Dick's cold schizoid characters and his androids/machine figures who displayed emotional empathy.

This article studies a number of William Shakespeare's works with a focus on night as a metaphysical aspect from a phenomenological perspective. After presenting an introduction on the literary and philosophical significance of night as a (non)phenomenon (while also referring to the scarcity of research in this field) and of alterity on a metaphysical scale, we will try to discuss the ways in which Shakespeare, from the beginning of his poetic and theatrical career, seems to have been interested in night and the various effects he wished to achieve through invoking this (non)phenomenon. We will trace the growth of Shakespeare's thought on the metaphysical aspects of night from his sonnets and poems (Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece) to some of his more mature theatrical works (chiefly A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet and Macbeth). Our aim is to show, with the help of a phenomenological treatment of Shakespeare's language and theatre, how he moulds what can be termed a metaphysics of alterity as a literary and philosophical aspect of his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article rereads J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and its intertextual bond with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) in the framework of cognitive poetics to shed light on the complex issue of canonicity in terms of content and form/style in Foe. To this purpose, Marie-Laure Ryan's notions of textual actual world (TAW) and accessibility relations are used along with Barbara Dancygier's concept of narrative space construction to examine how Susan Barton's narrative (the postcolonial account) anchors/accesses the already consolidated TAW of Robinson Crusoe (the colonial text) to dislocate the colonizer's secluded, monologic text by superimposing another psyche, through cognitive blending, upon it. Susan's narrative incorporates her constant awareness of the social mind to assimilate - rather than push aside - the colonizer's narrative by driving it out of its monologic state toward a dialogic, multivocal exchange in the contemporary postcolonial world where Cruso(e)'s story becomes a part of Susan's story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his controversial essay, 'Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast: A Literary Manifesto for the New Social Novel' (November 1989), Tom Wolfe seems baffled as to why contemporary writers have failed to [...]

A Lie of the Mind (1985) is arguably one of Sam Shepard's most complex family plays. It displays Shepard's experiments with a fluid use of stage space and storytelling that is visually quite uncanny. In this study, we will attempt to shed light on the impossible along with the possible worlds projected in a textual fictional world in Shepard's play. Also examined are the "narrative spaces" and the "impossible/fantastic spaces" constructed in the play. Deploying Marie-Laure Ryan's views on space and possible worlds and Patricia García's model of space and its transgressions, we analyze space in the play, by and large, from two distinct perspectives: 1) the environment in which narrative is physically set up, or, to put it another way, as the medium in which narrative as a storyworld is projected and appreciated, and 2) the fantastic postmodern dramas that picture impossibilities. By deconstructing objective mapping, we argue that A Lie of the Mind's postmodern mapping aims to critique the earlier belief in claims of "truth of space" and tries to construct a totally subjective reality or architecture which summons the reader's mental activity to picture such a reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time and again Tom Wolfe has been criticized for holding conservative attitudes. Wolfe's third novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, published in 2004, has been considered by many critics as obvious evidence of his antipathy to political correctness, sexual liberty, and the American liberal education system in general. The few sympathetic critics who share Wolfe's anxiety over the life of young Americans at colleges assume that neuroscience-with its emphasis on the materiality of the mind and, consequently, the rejection of free will-has been partly responsible for the creation of conformist young people. In this article, however, we suggest that Wolfe's anxiety is not so much about neuroscience than the way it is taught at colleges and received by the public. We also show that Wolfe's criticism of liberal education rests mainly on the claim that it fails to cultivate autonomous, selfconscious students capable of critical thinking and instead fosters an egoistic, self-centered freedom which negates the Other. Here, it seems that Emmanuel Levinas's "Pedagogy of Becoming," based on his ethics of alterity, is most relevant to the idea of the desire for improving the education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]