A very important publicist work by Georgian classic writer of 19th-20th centuries Vazha-Pshavela — “Cosmopolitanism and Patriotism” was published in 1905 and became one of the most discussed topics among the intellectual society of Georgia. The publication of the essay with this kind of content was a considerable fact in the beginning of 20th century when the controversy between the different countries and people revealed other types of essential controversies like: National and Colonialist determinations, Free thinking and Ideology, Spirituality and Scientific-Technical progress. Due to all these circumstances Vazha-Pshvela’s idea was assessed as a declaration of writer’s strong position, expressed in his fictional works as well. But, was it just a declaration? Maybe it was a prophetic warning of the danger which was going to threaten regularly not only Georgia, but some other small countries throughout the world? What was the attitude of Georgian society towards the writer’s position and are there any analogies in the western thinking?

In 2015 researchers, philologists and readers of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), a famous poet and novelist, are celebrating his 140 anniversary. His works have been discussed and studied in many countries and translated into many languages, including English, Spanish, French, and Russian, to name a few. Books, hundreds of articles, manuscripts, various commentaries, and essays in different journals, magazines, and reviews have explored background, life, and art. To honor this anniversary, in this essay we discuss a paradox around his popularity: Rilke, a German-language poet, has become one of the most popular poets in the English-speaking world. First, we provide a short overview of Rilke’s literary heritage in his native language. Then, we discuss his popularity in the English-speaking world by looking at the main biographies and books around Rilke’s life and his art, and translators of his works into English, and pondering on the reasons of his popularity.

There is a strong affinity between Kipling and Islam. Kipling’s preoccupation with Islam has been the focus of few studies. In building on those studies and in being inspired by Post-structural assumptions concerning the possibility of creating a multi-faceted interpretation of a text by utilizing a variety of perspectives, and the rejection of a single meaning of a text, this paper analyzes Kipling’s (to say open) poetry from an Islamic perspective. This paper argues that Kipling’s treatment of those expressions results in a metonymic gap, polysemy, and undecidability. In so doing, the paper aims at bridging “the metonymic gap” in Kipling’s poetry and exploring his attitudes towards some Islamic precepts such as Asma’ Allah Al-Husna (English: Allah’s Beautiful Names), Al-Shahadah (English: the Testimony), Al-Sirat (English: the Path), and Jinn.

This essay critically re-examines the “test-of-time” definition of a classic, which is, at best, a method, not a criterion. Taking James Joyce’s high-modernist work Ulysses as a test-case, it argues that a work needs to be considered significant or insignificant not because it passes or does not pass the test of time, which logically makes it unamenable to any evaluation during its author’s lifetime, but because it engages, at least at a meta-level, substantial political, cultural, social, philosophical, and aesthetic questions. Ulysses has been a milestone in Western cultural history, reflecting or triggering the evolution of the Occidental world view. Arguably, it also occupies a key place in humanity’s larger endeavours to understand itself, as attested by several twentieth/twenty-first century thinkers, across a wide spectrum of disciplines — political theory, ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, psychology, historiography, and cultural studies, to name a representative few — citing Joyce to illustrate their ideas. Probably, this has to do with Joyce’s unapologetically meticulous engagement of quotidian lived life, even to extremes of triviality, which is the subject of what I propose to call delicate épistèmes. Within literary studies, Ulysses is considered a paradigmatic text for many approaches, which makes it a ‘critical classic’ as well.

Within the contours of contemporary feminist theory, this paper aims to undermine critical allegations assuming that Naguib Mahfouz is an anti-patriarchal novelist introducing a “balanced view” of the feminine/masculine nexus in his novels. This paper provides a new reading of Midaq Alley, Mahfouz’s celebrated novel, to uncover the hidden patriarchal ideology underpinning the narrative. Located in the intersectional discourses of hegemony and patriarchy, Mahfouz’s narrative aims to distort the identity of the female protagonist by transforming her into a rebellious whore dismantling the foundations of a patriarchal society. On this basis, the novel promotes the masculine narrative advocated by the domineering patriarchal community. By denouncing the justified rebellion of the marginalized protagonist against male brutalities, the author views the powerless female subaltern as a transgressor of domestic traditions. Instead of exploring the spaces — what feminist critics call silences — that exist in domestic collective memory with regard to women, Mahfouz portrays his female protagonist in a way which complies with indigenous patriarchal norms about women. Instead of dealing with Hamida, the female protagonist of the novel, as a victim of a patriarchal society regulated by masculine cultural constructs, the author stresses masculinity and macho conviviality, providing little space for the projection of the female counter-narrative.

People’s lives in South Africa were dangerously affected by the policies of apartheid. White people of conscience, like the natives, were also prone to the repercussions of these policies. As a result, these whites lived as a minority within another minority, suffering from unbearable psychological wounds because of their racial identity, the necessity to be politically active, and their yearning for privacy. This paper investigates this predicament in Nadine Gordimer’s Occasion for Loving (OFL) specifically. Jessie, a white liberal woman, shows that living in such a milieu is so demanding, for she, like most of Gordimer’s female protagonists, lacks this sense of belonging that she starts questioning her being in South Africa. While using basically a psychoanalytic lens, Jacques Lacan’s model of human development, along with some of Bakhtin’s and Bhabha’s concepts, the paper demonstrates that after an arduous psychological journey which epitomizes the author’s understanding of this dilemma, Jessie succeeds in constructing an identity of her own. Gordimer’s heroine concludes that the personal and the political cannot be set apart in apartheid South Africa. This paper then aims at shedding light on the process of white female identity construction in this turmoil, suggesting that the novel under scrutiny endows the white woman in Africa with an intricate compromise to enjoy, at least partially, a satisfactory self-image.

The emergence of a full-blown representation of same-sex sexual relationships in the Nigerian literary tradition, courtesy of Walking with Shadows (2005), demonstrates a unique expression of the universal human will hitherto unknown in Nigerian literature. In analyzing Walking with Shadows, this article argues that the Darwinist tendency, the evolutionary character embodied in conventional Nigerian narratives, is undermined in a number of respects. Since no same-sex sexual partners are primed by evolution for reproduction of humankind, this sexual phenomenon as demonstrated by the central character of this work is thus not only monumentally anti-evolutionary, but also immensely against human occupation of the earth through biological reproduction. The above tendency partly accounts for why the major same-sex character’s kin and society cannot understand him. Walking with Shadows would be read against some conventional works in the Nigerian tradition in order to show how the vital indices of identity and marked kinship enhancements indigenous to Africa and, hence Darwinian, are upstaged, even as it adds an interesting but varying literary dimension to Nigerian literature.

In a way, this article is a brief thematic summarization of the recently held Sino-British Conference on ethical literary criticism — “Ethical Power in Chinese and English Romantic Poetry” — characterized by stimulating dialogical approaches. It also serves as an introduction to Project P-O-E-T-R-Y as conducted at the Confucius Institute of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan CI) in the UK, and showcases one of the Project’s significant outcomes — Julie Callan’s forthcoming book of poetry, which is titled I Could be Chinese, and imbued with intercultural implications. Furthermore, this article attempts to verbalize the very source of ethical power — “the human heart by which we live” (in William Wordsworth’s words), and to emphasize its functions to reconnect, to recollect, to revive, to recreate, and to reshape.

Poetry on nature has always been a sparkling star in Chinese literature as well as in British literature. Chinese and British nature poetry share similar characteristics such as the pursuit of freedom and the attachment of certain emotions to natural sceneries. Meanwhile, they are also greatly different owing to the differences in cultural background, national characters and psychologies, philosophies and aesthetic traditions. This paper aims to explore the differences between Chinese and British nature poetry in terms of their concern with the relationship between man and nature and its presentation. Chinese and British nature poets appeal to different things in terms of the relationship between man and nature. In Chinese nature poems, the poet always pursues the harmony between man and nature, the self being forgotten; while in British nature poems, the scenery is regarded as a symbol of emotions, the self always being foregrounded. Chinese and British nature poetry are also different in their composing principles and methods. Generally speaking, analogy and narration are the main practice in ancient Chinese natural poetry writing, whereas personification and dramatic narration in English. In British poems, since the speaker is narrating, “the sceneries are losing their concreteness and directness with the speaker’s constant intervention” and they are presented in a single line. Chinese nature poems are the exemplification of “dramatic narration.” The sceneries are presented directly to the readers, without the interference of the poet, and with the feature of loose arrangements, multi-levels and changing perspectives.

Peach Blossom Spring has always been the ideal paradise for Chinese writers for thousands of years. The image of “Peach Blossom Spring” has become the collective memory of the Chinese people. Many writers use “Peach Blossom Spring” as a prototype to express their pursuits and dreams of ethical values. Shen Congwen is one of the outstanding representatives. He creates a beautiful and harmonious world called Xiangxi (West Hunan) for readers, and the beauty of nature and humanity demonstrated in that world becomes the ethical representation of Peach Blossom Spring in contemporary literature. Generally, this article aims to analyze the functions of “Peach Blossom Spring” from the perspective of ethical literary criticism. It intends to explore new insights into the ethical representations of “Peach Blossom Spring” in contemporary literature and to further discuss its enlightenments to current society.

Chiang Yee’s journal A Silent Traveller in Lakeland shares intent and features with the poetry of William Wordsworth with regard to the theme of solitary walks used to achieve a degree of solace and resolution at a time of personal crisis. The walks are used to unify fragments of thoughts, feelings, visions, sensory experiences and meetings; patterns of such elements moral philosophers have called “texture of being and personal vision.” These fragments are parts that form “fables” of the walking subjects; such fable-making, particularly when created on a journey or pilgrimage, can be seen as a moral and ethical endeavour that offers an alternative model to the “rule-obedience” model. Chiang and Wordsworth embark on journeys to help restore a sense of moral value after committing acts of betrayal.

Throughout the eighteenth century cave science and aesthetics developed in association with each other. Scientific writing was delivered in a subjective narrative, understanding the scientific details of the cave environment and the dynamic interrelations of the elements within it intensified aesthetic responses and entering the cave environment in order to explore it meant an engaged, rather than disinterested, aesthetic. The foundations of environmental ethics, nature perceived on its own terms, can be traced from James Hutton’s geological theories of earth processes and deep time further removing humanity from the centre of natural processes and William Wordsworth’s radical use of ordinary language in poetry to imaginatively explore the place of common humanity within nature. It is through the many scientific and imaginative responses to subterranean cave space that such traces can be identified.