As for Thomas Hardy’s Jude The Obscure, the cause of Jude’s tragedy has always been a topic of great concern in literary study. The existing researches lay more stress on external factors such as social contradictions and class orders, claiming that the inferior class status and the hidden social injustice are the main causes of Jude’s disaster. However, this paper argues that Jude’s weak ethical consciousness and his deviation of ethical identity play a vital role in his tragedy, which is the deeper root of his obscurity. Due to his excessive emphasis on free will and unconstrained desire while neglecting his responsibilities and obligations assigned to him by his ethical identity, Jude fell into multiple predicaments in marriage, career and interpersonal communication, and finally passed away in an unknown and sorrowful manner. This paper mainly explores how Jude deviates his ethical identity in love relationship, father-son relationship, and teacher-student relationship, as well as the profound influence on his tragic life.

This article identifies the existence of narrative aspects in dramatic monologues chiefly by discerning commonalities between dramatic monologists and first-person narrators in prose. It establishes that narrative concepts such as fictional self-making, strategic techniques employed to construct fictional identity, dissonant/consonant self-narration, discursive choices, reliability and intentionality of the monologue, as well as temporal aspect (temporality of speech act, temporality of action, and frequency of narrated events) can be detected in this poetic form. The interdisciplinary approach this article proposes is tested out on a narrative reading of Browning’s “Pictor Ignotus,” “Porphyria’s Lover,” and Tennyson’s “St. Simeon Stylites,” followed by a comparative reading of Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” and Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” Based on these analyses, we suggest that first-person narrators and dramatic monologists are engaged in projecting their identities through the narrative text, that they intentionally convey ideologies through the narrating act and control narrative aspects such as time, presentation of characters and scenes in order to claim ownership of the narrative.

The Portrait of a Lady is Henry James’s early best work with the exquisite and graceful form of Jamesian “upper-class parlor.” For a long time, “thing” narrative in the novel has been overshadowed by the abundant discussion of its characterization, plot and themes of love, moral, culture and etc. The neglect of things leads to the disconnection between the thing narrative as a set of discourse system and the meaning of the work. In fact, the novel is flooded with “things,” such as clothes, houses and artworks. These things work together to weave consciousness of gender, class, and culture into the meaning web of the masterpiece by constructing the characters’ identity in their invasion of humans with their “material power.”

The notion of “narrative transculturation” is postulated by Angel Rama and it is widely used in the literary analysis. This article, through textual analysis methodologies, tries to approve the hypothesis that Legends of Guatemala meets all the phases of narrative transculturation indicated by Angel Rama: the language, the narrative structure and the worldview. In short, in the language, Asturias changes and recombines some words of the indigenous language, transforming them into Spanish. In the narrative structure, the use of enumeration, repetition and onomatopoeia is very frequent, which is also one of the characteristics of Mayan works. As for the worldview, Asturias talks about the Mayan-Quiche myth and its combination with the Catholic religion, creating a mythical-magical atmosphere. All these three phases show the miscegenation between two cultures. This style also has a long-lasting influence on Asturias’ works and makes him one of the precursors of the famous technique “magical realism.”

The article considers idyllic and chaotic chronotopes as the spatio-temporal basis of “The Squabble” or “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich” written by Russian-Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol. This short story, being the last one in the cycle “Mirgorod” is one of the most interesting ones as for chronotopical organization. The terms “chaotic chronotope” and “idyllic chronotope” are used in the article as specific spatio-temporal items, which form the chronotopical basis of the short-story and its plot-line. These two kinds of time and space combination are considered as the main ones in the whole cycle “Mirgorod.” Therefore, the author analyses socio-historical and chronicle-everyday chronotopes, mythological, cyclical, daily, calendar, socio-historical time; loci of the church, the puddle, the steppe space, chronotopic images of the house, wattle fence, the local court, the motive of food, spatial and temporal oppositions “present / past,” “external / internal space,” “closed / open space”; the sound filling of the space and its changes with the developing of the plot. The author also proves that the doings of the main characters are reflected at the spatial level and have spatial consequences and examines the author’s and the narrator’s points of view on the unravelling of the plot.

Few studies, if not at all have been conducted to explore the realistic aspects in Abdul-Wali’s short stories. This study attempts to look at how Abdul-Wali employs a western literary genre to reflect the humane dimension through the lens of local issues, as well as to offer non-Arabic speakers an insight of the writings of Yemeni short story with an emphasis on its privacy. Abdul-Wali’s stories unequivocally voice a realistic picture of social and political issues with unwavering determination and candor. The study’s significance lies in its endeavor to unbosom the striking similarities between ancient and modern occurrences, to put it another way, the old lives in the shadow of the new, the matter that grants the stories a sense of continuum and continuity. It also addresses the unrelenting epidemic of displacement of individuals who turn to emigration as their only avenue of hope. The study uses a postcolonial theory and a descriptive-analytical approach to explore and investigate the primary themes of realism in the stories understudy. The research is mostly a text-based investigation that includes an examination of major primary sources. The study captures a timeless question of national identity, nostalgia, and the universality of human experiences as well as the intimacy of the relationships depicted.

Throughout the nineteenth century, cosmopolitanism was an energizing force in Europe’s cultural and literary production. As the clash between cosmopolitanism and nationalism intensified in the nineteenth century, nationalist discourses glorified single ethnic or national entities while cosmopolitanism underlined the importance of interdependence in politics. Known for his originally cosmopolitan attitude to society, James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) was an Irish translator and writer who used the properties of the East and the West in his translations, verse, and prose. Mangan’s authorial path was original, especially when the relationship between his work and givens of cosmopolitanism was considered. Although there are studies on his works, little attention has been paid to his prose work. In this study, Mangan’s stories titled “The Thirty Flasks,” “The Man in the Cloak. A very German Story,” and “The Three Rings” are analyzed concerning cosmopolitanism. Mangan’s characters experience transformation, which accounts for a unique blend of cosmopolitan subjectivities. Mangan’s characters also experience psychological and physical development, presenting an original treatment of cosmopolitanism which contributes to Mangan’s unique style, elsewhere noted as Manganesque. Mangan’s nationalism and cosmopolitanism submit a grey area, especially when his literary accomplishment as an Irish nationalist who intellectually fought against British imperialism is considered.

This paper aims to explore the outstanding achievements and academic contributions made by the famous translator Song Zhaolin in the field of foreign literature studies in China. This paper argues that Song Zhaolin’s contributions in this academic field are mainly reflected in two aspects. Firstly, it is reflected in the translations of English and American novels. His translations of famous British 19th-century novels such as A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, and American 20th-century novels such as Herzog and The Adventures of Augie March have won him a wide readership. He made great contributions to the art of literary translation by pursuing the ideal balance between domestication and foreignization and the ingenious combination of science and art. Secondly, he worked vigorously in editing several large-scale series of world literary classics such as The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, The Complete Works of the Brontë Sisters, and The Complete Works of Saul Bellow, making his essential contributions to the dissemination of famous writers from many countries in the Chinese-speaking world. At the same time, he also played a due role in the popularization of world literature and the improvement of the cultural quality of the nation.

Famous pediatrician and human rights activist Binayak Sen was booked for sedition and hounded as a Naxalite in 2007. This decision was condemned by human rights activists from around the world as a case of insinuation and false accusations. In 2012 Mumbai based journalist Dilip D’Souza offers a discourse by deconstructing this case in his book The Curious Case of Binayak Sen through an intersection between law and literature. This paper delineates this piece of non-fiction within the ambits of Kafkaesque and Orwellian metaphors from literature in India’s post-colonial context. Asserting this text’s paradoxical status, once as literature and once as a legal document, D’Souza opens new annals in the socio-political genre. Also, designating this methodology of indictment to McCarthyism in the United States, this paper shall establish how the ramifications of India’s colonial past sanction and entwine concepts like Kafkaesque, Orwellian and Neo-McCarthyism to hunt Naxalites. These books allow a triangular study of the work to probe if Binayak Sen is an ‘urban naxal’ and if sedition and dissent is well pronounced in India.

Few critical works have been produced aimed at discovering the sources for Achebe’s novels and how he has adapted the factual materials to create his fiction. Understandably, it is difficult to do a source study of works of an iconic writer such as Achebe. The present study sets out to re-examine the story of Okonkwo and Ikemefuna in view of a similar incident that happened about the same period and in the same area in which Things Fall Apart is set. The objective is to underscore the relevance of literature in chronicling and disseminating the socio-cultural values and ideals of the societies that were confronted with the challenges of colonialism in the wake of the twentieth century. Consequently, an actual incident that took place between two neighbouring communities to Achebe’s home community is here analyzed as the possible source for the Okonkwo and Ikemefuna narrative in Things Fall Apart. The two incidents are analyzed along the lines of the location and period of the action; the key characters involved; the murder and the reparation process. Explanations are based on some aspects of Igbo customs and traditions. The historical incident provides some details that are missing from the novel. The task in this essay is to identify the parallels between the historical incident and the recreation in the story but with a particular focus on history, location/setting and characterization. However, the names of the historical actors are masked because their descendants are still alive and related to one of the researchers.

Having been one of the valuable aesthetic trends in the West in the 20th century, British formalist aesthetics is worthy of attention from the academia. Prof. Gao Fen’s monograph British Formalist Aesthetics and Its Literary Writing Practice comprehensively construes aesthetic theories of Roger Fry and Clive Bell, and literary writings of Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey from Chinese-Western double aesthetic perspectives. Its originality lies, first of all, in its holistic inquiry into formalist aesthetics in the West, as well as their commonality and creativity, manifesting remarkably their theoretical and academic values. Second, it is methodologically innovative since it follows the principle of Chinese-Western double perspectives to reevaluate the British aesthetics. Third, it accentuates the employment of Chinese aesthetic criticism and invokes abundant categories from Chinese poetics, heralding a meritorious attempt to take Chinese culture to the global stage.