Following the publication in FWLS (Vol. 2, No. 3, 2010) of a first cluster of essays centred on the historical outlines and the projection into English of Estonian poetry, as well as on the reception of French literature in Estonia, the representation of Estonian literature in FWLS will now be expanded.

When speaking about the role of German literature in Estonia we have to take into account the special status of this literature for Estonian culture: for centuries, the German language was the language of power, education and culture as well as of communication in Estonia. Estonian literature was born in the lap of German-language culture, based on the model of German-language literature and, at the beginning, it was even created by the originally German-speaking authors. The leading position of German literature was overrun only by the Soviet regime that politically pushed Russian literature into the forefront to replace German literature. It was basically starting from the Soviet period when German literature became a “translated” literature.

The roots of the grotesque exist in a very old tradition of culture and folklore. Thinking of the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg, it is possible to find several motifs and elements which may work as the grotesque, or which may inspire literature and art. The grotesque has existed in Estonian literature in different periods, and it may convey social and political meaning (e.g. F. Tuglas’ and A. Gailit’s works). The grotesque indicates the deformations of the real world, and it also creates a new world with a deformed structure. The grotesque and absurdity in literature became tools of rebellion against the Soviet regime (e.g. A. Valton’s, V. Vahing’s works). The grotesque in Soviet literature also included political and social criticism, although sometimes it was disguised: as an ambivalent and polysemic phenomenon, it made it possible to play with several meanings, including meanings which may have been forbidden. Grotesque motifs and images give Estonian poetry a more playful character, and represent the grotesque as a phenomenon of play (I. Laaban’s and A. Ehin’s surrealist poetry). The most important thing grotesque images tell us in contemporary times is that something is wrong, that people do not feel comfortable in a situation, and that this is a grotesque situation which combines tragedy and laughter.

The article examines the new developments in Estonian playwriting of the 1990s and 2000s in the context of Western postdramatic theatre. Democratization of the Estonian theatre system (first of all, the appearance of small privately-managed theatres as an institutional alternative to state theatres) and the abolition of Soviet-time censorship created the necessary makings of artistic changes both in the field of theatre and playwriting. The changes, supported by lively exchange of influences and ideas between Estonian and Western theatre, have been rather gradual than radical. The spread of new writing practices like so-called directors’ dramaturgy and collective devising of performances have given rise to substantial changes in the poetics of playtexts, based to a great extent on postdramatic aesthetics. The documentary theatre of Merle Karusoo and the post-modernist playwriting of Mati Unt are observed more closely in the article, as well as particular modes of devising performance and textual strategies used by the Theatre NO99. The new playwriting practices, most closely intertwined with the processes of creating theatre performances, put forward a range of questions related to the definition and status of drama as a literary genre.

When the editors of Forum for World Literature Studies invited me to edit a special issue on “Korean Literature,” I instantly thought about four genres of literature: poetry, novel, play, and criticism. But the problem was that most of the scholars who specialize in Korean literature are not bilingual. Of the four submissions, I had to translate three into English. Another problem was how to deal with each genre, and I decided to let each scholar choose his or her own authors of interest. The result is not that bad.

Kim Chunsoo was one of the best poets in Modernist Korea, and “Choyongdanjang” is his masterpiece. This poem is, however, problematic because it does not open up if readers approach it in a traditional way. I suggest we see each poem as a tableau, with beautiful images. That is, it is a picture-poem—symbolic, allegorical, psychological, biographical, as well as Modernistic and Postmodernistic in form. I analyze it beginning with Kim Hyun’s reading and suggest how to better read it.

This article examines the oeuvres of In-Hun Choi and Sok-Yong Hwang, the two magnates in contemporary Korean fiction writing, through the lens of local, national, and global intersections by juxtaposing various political and historical contexts with their formal innovations. By explicating a space wherein a contingent local configuration appears in relation to multiple identifications in a larger context, I put forth an argument that Choi and Hwang chart a vexed but counterhegemonic space to illustrate what “inhabiting local contradictions” and “engaging global mandates” simultaneously entail.

My Love DMZ is a carefully crafted play using Korean mysticism, which points to history and pollution. Though its theme is grave, the play presents it in such a pleasant and delightful way. Oh borrows magic, just as Shakespeare treats his serious themes of betrayal and revenge lightly with magic in The Tempest.

Much of Kim Hyun’s work is an attempt to find a way out in literature that moves us beyond social and mental repression toward a sense of transcendence. For him, literature plays a key role in forging a space that provides the reader with a specific differentiating attainment of the recognized subject. He articulates the dimension of reflective distance in the form of reading as both torture and reverie. In doing so, he elaborates on how a reader can avoid not only debilitating contentment with the pleasure of reality reflected in the text but also the danger of yielding to fascination with the ideal he desires in reading.

亨利克·约翰·易卜生（Henrik Johan Ibsen，1828-1906）对于世界戏剧的巨大贡献获得批评界的普遍认同，被称作“现代戏剧之父”：他“一方面运用人道主义的思想武器来批判封建残余和大资产阶级，另一方面又凭借个人的精神反叛去追求个性彻底解放的理想”（王忠祥 86）。百十年来，易卜生批评主要集中在两个阶段：“易卜生主义”（Ibsenism）①与“易卜生化”（Ibsenization）②。学者们对易卜生戏剧的结构、内容、语言、人物、舞台演出等展开了多维研究，理论视角涉及象征主义、现实主义、女性主义、心理主义、生态批评、道德批评等诸多方面，取得了丰硕的成果③.

Henrik Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea is a drama about ethics of freedom and choice. “Sea marriage,” “secular marriage” and “abnormal child” are three knots in Ellida’s mind, forcing her into identity confusion and perplexity. Only by returning to the starting point to make an independent and free choice can she untie the knots in her mind. The stranger and Wangel not only represent two different modes of existence, but also symbolize different developmental stages of human civilization. Ellida’s choice does not only reflect a personal choice between different modes of existence, but also implies an ethical choice at the critical moment of human evolution, which exerts a great impact on the future and fate of human beings.

The Master Builder explores the issue of ethical identity. Solitude emerges as an inevitable problem within all ethical relationships in the play, as well as in society at large. As a Master Builder, Solness is constantly confused about his own ethical identity, because his definition of what it means to be a Master Builder differs from others’ understanding. In order to escape the solitude of the soul, he struggles to pursue a clear ethical identity. This paper traces the main source of Solness’s confusion by using the pursuit of ethical identity as the central route. His physical and mental condition before becoming an architect is completely different from what it is after he becomes one. Eventually, he realizes that his suffering stems from a crisis of conscience during the process of pursuing, experiencing, and self-evaluating. The way to verify his ethical identity is also the way to release himself from the suffering caused by the solitude of the mind.

Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a play about the ethical conflicts between individuals and society. From the perspective of ethical literary criticism, this paper re-examines the work to uncover the ethical values embedded within it. Through the plot of marital conflict triggered by borrowing money with a forged signature, A Doll’s House reveals the contradictions between social ethics and family ethics: Nora prioritizes the happiness and harmony of her family, disregarding social and ethical taboos; her husband Helmer, on the other hand, values social ethical order and adheres strictly to social norms, yet he fails to understand his wife’s crime committed in the name of “love.” Because of their differing ethical beliefs, the characters inevitably stand in opposition to each other, leading to the collapse of the family.

Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı, one of the most significant poets of the republican period in Turkey, aimed simplicity through the use of metre and rhyme as he believed that poetry should be a simple expression of feelings. He successfully represents the emotionality of childhood in his poetry using various other genres and modes such as tales and nursery rhymes. The simplicity of the tone and the style of the poems, thus, is significant.

Thomas Hardy and Cahit Sitki Taranci are two significant representatives of modern English and Turkish poets. Their poems are marked by an intense preoccupation with death, which is actually in parallelism with the sense of ending and crisis of representation experienced by most intellectuals of their time. Poetry was a means of revealing their uneasiness about the overwhelming idea of death. Therefore, both Hardy and Taranci wrote poems dealing with the passing of time, transience, and aging. Thoughts of coming close to the end made them write poems anticipating their own deaths as well. Some of their poems display a willingness to die because they consider death also as a sort of relief that keeps them away from all their worldly sufferings. However, the possibility of being forgotten after they die was another important concern in their poems because they clang to life with all its pleasing details and traumatic experiences. Thus, death also meant a separation from the beloved ones and familiar things in life to them. Moreover, death is represented as a way of dissolution into nature in Hardy’s and Taranci’s poems but this process has different implications.

Aziz Nesin, a prolific intellectual in Turkish literature, is known as a poet, a novelist, a playwright, and also a short story writer. Nesin wrote over two thousand short stories for which he gained worldwide recognition. He has been regarded by many critics as a great master of humor and satire. Nesin’s work is thought to shed light on a turbulent phase in the Turkish Republican period from the establishment of the multiple-party system (1945) to the 1990s. In his stories, Nesin usually explores the relationship between the individual and the socio-political system, and he foregrounds conflicts stemming from socio-political disorganization and the inefficiency of the bureaucratic system. Political hypocrisy and bourgeois morality also come to the fore as his target of satire. On the other hand, a thorough analysis from a Derridean vantage point enables one to approach some of Nesin’s stories on a different layer of reading: with his subversive attitude, Nesin goes beyond exploration of the individual-system conflict in some of his stories and creates a space for the free play of language. “Tülsü’yü Sevmek” (“Loving Tülsü”) is one of Nesin’s short stories which appeared in his short story collection titled Yetmiş Yaşım Merhaba (Hail to My Seventieth Year), first published in 1984. The story is about a man who tells everyone he meets that he loves Tülsü, although he does not exactly know who Tülsü is. A traditional reading of the story might lead to a Platonic analysis in which Tülsü stands for the ideal love. In this respect, Tülsü may be regarded as the transcendental signified while various women stand for shadows which refer to the ideal concept of Tülsü. On the other hand, a double reading reveals that Tülsü stands as a signifier which keeps its status as a signifier all through the story, and does not refer to any transcendental signified. Throughout the story, Tülsü as a signifier corresponds to an empty locus, however, it functions well to create intersubjectivity. Looking at some of Derridean ideas might prepare the ground to see better how the word Tülsü functions as a floating signifier. This study aims to analyze Nesin’s “Loving Tülsü” and expose how it proceeds through the dissemination of signifiers and problematizes the Platonic assumption of signified in the signification process.

Agaoglu’s Lying Down to Die (1973) fictionalizes the early decades of the new Turkish Republic through Aysel and her classmates. It offers a comprehensive context to explore the identity formation processes for women against the background of the modernizing project in a conservative context. In two and a half hours in a hotel room, her attempts to trace her past act as a purgation process in which she discovers her bodily self, which she has suppressed in her efforts to build up her “imagined” identity. This essay aims to explore Aysel’s purgation process with references to the social context within which she was raised.

Ever since the 1970s and the 1980s, the studies in China on Baroque literature and Baroque culture in European in the 17th century have been showing a trend of expansion and deepening. The researches involve the origin of the concept of Baroque and Baroque literature; the overall evaluation of Baroque literature; the exploration of the Baroque literature texts and the Influence of Baroque literature. The research perspectives and methods have turned to text reading, more research in the field from a single social history criticism. However, in the current studies, there are still many problems, doubts and blind spots in the aspects such as the disordered phenomena of the trace about the source of the existence of the language, the ambiguous definition of the standard of the confirmation of the literary text of the Baroque, the unfairness of the aesthetic and cultural value judgments about Baroque literary text, one-sidedness in the understanding and evaluation of Baroque Literature and so on. Only when we face all these problems can we better have a positive effect in the future studies of Baroque literature.

The beginning years of the new millennium witnessed Chinese scholars’ passion for reviewing and reflecting on what had been done in the past. As far as foreign literature studies are concerned, Chen Zhongyi’s edited collection Foreign Literature Studies in Contemporary China: 1949–2009 turns out to be such a highlight. In particular, it has, synchronically as well as diachronically, conducted an overview of foreign literature studies in contemporary China from multiple perspectives in the past six decades. With such salient features of being suggestive and informative, the book will stand as a momentum for China’s foreign literature studies in the future.