In 2018, Latvia was celebrating its centenary. During its centenary year, Latvia was seriously re-evaluating its national history, cultural heritage, folklore heritage, and national literature. Since the time it has become an independent state, there have been many different historical-cultural events that have influenced not only Latvia’s path after the establishment of Latvia’s statehood, but the development of Latvian literature as well. Although the country of the population little less than 2 million and constituting 0.03% of the world share, as well as of the land area of 62,200 square km (Countries …) seems small and young to big nations, the Latvian culture and literature have produced striking, though still little known in the world, cultural and literary values.

After detecting a gap in cultural studies regarding the influence of Western esotericism on Latvian culture, this paper attempts to illustrate the presence of Western esotericism in Latvian literature. From the late 19th century, Latvian writers searching for new means of expression found a source of inspiration in esotericism, gaining metaphors and symbols from Spiritualism, Theosophy and Agni Yoga/Living Ethics. With particular attention paid to Antons Austriņš (1884–1934), Viktors Eglītis (1877–1945), Rihards Rudzītis (1898–1960) and Konstantīns Raudive (1909–1974), the author seeks to show that the influence of esotericism on the creative work of writers strongly differs: some adopted esoteric ideas without a critical approach, others did some sifting and reworked them, while others, having read a few esoteric texts or having heard something about it, just got some idea or image. As the artist’s worldview is reflected directly in their creative work independently of the author’s own will, the paper argues that it would be timely for contemporary literary studies to focus greater attention on the connection of authors with Western esotericism.

The first half of the 20th century was an extremely significant period in the history of Latvia. After the end of the World War I and the fall of the Russian Empire, on the map of Europe new countries appeared — Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland. From the first days of their existence, the new countries started to build new relations with the former metropolis — Soviet Russia, later (from the end of 1922) USSR. During the time period from 1901 to 1940, three basic models were developing which demonstrated an attitude towards Latvia in the Russian artistic and public consciousness. For understanding a place Latvia took in the Russian consciousness one of the most important binary oppositions in these models was the opposition of “ours – theirs.” The first model started to develop already in the 18th century when Latvian territories had been annexed to the Russian Empire forming governorates of Livonia and Kurland. The eastern part of Latvia — Latgale, at first became a part of Pskov, but later Vitebsk Governorate of the Russian Empire. Due to their geographical location, these territories became an integral part in the journeys to the countries of Western Europe for the Russian writers, officials, and philistines. The second model began to form after the Proclamation of Independence of Latvia on November 18, 1918 and it demonstrated the attitude of Soviet Russia to a new independent country. One of the central themes of this model was participation of Latvians (Latvian Riflemen) in October Revolution of 1917 and in the Russian Civil War that broke out shortly after the revolution. The third model was forming in the consciousness of Russians who had been living in the territory of Latvia when Independence of Latvia was proclaimed and border agreement between Latvia and Russia signed. This model was also significantly enriched by representatives of Russian Emigration who had escaped or had been expatriated from Soviet Russia.

Nowadays, problems of regionalism have appeared in the centre of political life in a lot of countries. Therefore, the study into a sociocultural, and political-economic situation in a specific region, as well as the development of the theory of a regional identity has become an important research issue for the humanities and social sciences. Focusing on the subject of regionalism, the research into regions’ cultural and historic peculiarities has become one of the tasks for the humanities, one of the possible sources of which is a literary text. This research deals with Latgale’s narrative analysis in the Latvian literature of the first decades of the 20th century as a means for the study into Latgale’s regional identity which allows establishing the indicators of regional identity. The aim of the research is to analyse how Latgale’s regional identity is reflected and created in the Latvian literature of the first decades of the 20th century. This time period has been chosen for the purposes of the research as it marks the beginning of the formation of Latgale’s image in the public consciousness of Latvian people, as well as it is related to the period of the national awakening and establishment of the statehood in Latvia. The study uses theoretical insights on the relationship between a person, place, and regional identity; as well as it uses the data on Latgale and Latgalians found in the Latvian periodicals of that period as an additional source of information. In order to analyse the reflections of regional identity which can be found in literature, the research uses the texts which show both the internal and external identifications, in particular, both the texts that were written by people from Latgale, and the texts whose authors were writers who visited Latgale as travellers, or stayed there over a certain time. The literary texts under study include such features of Latgale’s regional identity as its nature, landscape, architecture, Catholicism, characteristic features of its people, language, history, and memory, which in general create a positive and harmonious image of Latgale in the literature of the early 20th century and up to the 1920s, which contradicts the official discourse reflected in the periodicals.

The construction of the Latvian literary space follows many paths; one of the most important of which is the translation of quality literary works into Latvian. Being both the linguistic creation exercise that shapes the literal language and the source of literary culture and inspiration, the reception of works, especially when they are represented on stage, provokes not only literary controversies but also questions the societal order. The study of the staging of van Lerberghe’s Pan and Maeterlinck’s Le Miracle de saint Antoine of the 1920s aims to identify and analyze the change of reception of two authors in the Latvian cultural arena.

One of the most striking characteristics of the Latvian culture and literature in the first decades of the twentieth century is the focus on diverse cultural and literary currents dominating the Western Europe cultural space. Having been greatly influenced by the phenomena of other cultures and literatures, Latvian literature reveals transformations in human’s individual and collective consciousness. The change of the paradigm of culture can be traced via the analysis of the reception process of significant “alien” impulses and their impact on “one’s own” cultural space. The aim of the article is to study the importance of the monumental opera Salome (1905) by Richard Strauss in Latvia’s cultural space of the first half of the twentieth century and its reception in literature by analysing Aspazija’s (Elza Rozenberga; 1865–1943) novel The Autumn Nightingale [Rudens lakstīgala] (1933). The “alien” discourse in Aspazija’s novel becomes “one’s own” pre-text and a significant tool for depicting the atmosphere in the nation’s biography and the perception of woman in the end of the nineteenth century society.

The present article is a bibliographic review of the studies published on literary heritage from 1950 to 2017 in the bibliographic citation databases Scopus and Web of Science (WoS). The main objective of this paper is to define the state of art of the research on this topic. The data analysed are the number and evolution over time of scientific studies that have dealt with literary heritage, the list of the scientific journals which have published these studies and the list of the main authors, universities and countries that have worked on this topic. The paper also identifies the main topics of research on literary heritage. The results confirm that research on literary heritage is an increasing topic with multiple research lines. Beyond pure literary and book conservation perspectives, one of the research lines in rise is the heritage perspective. This research line conceives intangible and tangible elements related to literature as expressions of intangible literary heritage. In this scenario we conclude that research on literary heritage could benefit from a multidisciplinary approach that nourishes literary heritage studies from the experience obtained in other heritage related fields resulting in a significant improvement in research and outputs related to literary heritage.

Having various applications such as religious, psychological, sociological, and artistic, the myths have been intertwined with humans and their minds from the very beginning and up to now it has still been the same. The special atmosphere that is dominant in poetry has allowed the myths to have a much clearer manifestation in poems. Most poets benefit from their national and cultural myths. However, at times, they also use the myths of other nations to convey their own social, political, and cultural messages. This issue is caused by the existence of international communications in terms of language, religion, and different cultures among various countries. Apparently, in our modern life such communications are not very little and as compared to the past, it is much easier for the poets and writers to become familiar with various cultures. In fact, to express various intentions, the Iranian contemporary poets have also benefitted from the myths of other nations, such as Greece, Rome, India, Egypt, and others. In this article, while considering the poems of four contemporary Iranian poets, namely Sohrab Sepehri, Ahmad Shamloo, Mohammad Reza Shafiei Kadkani, and Tahereh Saffarzadeh, we studied the extent to which the Iranian poets have paid attention to the myths of other nations. The findings revealed that the Iranian contemporary poets have mostly benefitted from the myths of Greece and Rome; however, they have not been inattentive to the myths of other nations.

The light novel is a new literary genre heavily influenced by the Japanese character-oriented subculture in the postmodern era. This genre does not belong to a traditional literary lineage but has emerged as the literary equivalent to contemporary visual subcultures. The main purpose of this genre is not to depict reality as does naturalistic literature but to imitate the fictional worlds represented in manga, anime, and video games. However, light novels are not fictional u/dystopias completely removed from reality and social ethics. To the contrary, they inevitably relate to distinctive ethical problems. This paper focuses on light novels and its ethical issues during the 2000s and 2010s, when the light novel matured as a genre. First, we examine Tsukasa Fushimi’s Ore no imōto ga konna ni kawaii wake ga nai [My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute], one of the most important works in this era, relating to the Moe culture and its unethical consumption of characters’ physicality. Second, we analyze the otherworldly fantasy genre, the most widely consumed genre in the 2010s, and consider its dual attitude to reality: escape from real-life society and sympathy for social minorities. This analysis clarifies the moral ambiguities and conflicts embedded in contemporary light novels.

William Golding’s debut post-war novel Lord of the Flies is the tale of a party of English school boys who after a plane crash marooned on a desert tropical island. To establish their own model of community based on rules, order and democracy, they attempted to arrange an assembly, deciding to elect a chief. The democratic election was a kind of tug of war (power struggle) between Ralph and Jack which ironically instead of bringing peace and solidarity sowed the seeds of discord and enmity and led to a split and antagonism in that vulnerable fledgling community and potentially paved the way for the later conflict and confrontation between the two communities whose points of differences and type of values were significant. The present paper aims to study the formation of two communities under the leaderships of Ralph and Jack and examine their sets of principles and ethics in the light of Bakhtinian theories and those of Eric Fromm. The paper also demonstrates the way one community was based on such Bakhtinian dialogic and ethical values as “responsibility,” “answerability” and “self-other” relationship whereas the other was based on monologic principles and those qualities, delineated by Fromm, such as individualism, total freedom and authoritarianism.

Japanese translations of Korean literature during the Japanese occupation established the foundations for the translation of Korean literature into other languages, and reflected the political dynamics and colonial agenda in Korea at the time, thereby illustrating the political aspects or dimensions of this body of literature. The objective of this study is to show how traditional Korean ethical imperatives, which are on display in Korean literature, were transformed in the process of the translation of this literature into Japanese. This goal will be approached through a focus on the fable “The Wedding of the Mouse” which originated in India and spread to East Asia and Europe. The original Indian version of “The Wedding of the Mouse” concerns a mouse who seeks a spouse, and it conveys the message that one’s nature does not change. In China, this theme was transformed into the teaching that one should know one’s place, and in Korea, into a moral criticism of the vanity of parents in their seeking of higher status through their children’s marriage. In the 1920s, Korean literary works were translated into Japanese within the framework of the cultural policies of the ruling Japanese, and Korean-Japanese marriage was promoted in light of the cultural assimilation policy of the era. In such a context, marriage in the Japanese translations of “The Wedding of the Mouse” is positively portrayed as a process of self-discovery, in light of which these versions also critique in-group marriage and concubinage. This theme resonated with the self-perceived essence of colonialism, through which one nationality sought to expand beyond its own boundaries and to explore new territories with a sense of conviction and adventure, and an eye on the future. This suggests that translations of “The Wedding of the Mouse” during the period of Japanese colonialism served as a tool to accomplish political rule through cultural assimilation.