This paper argues that the story of Solomon and Azrael is originally Arabic. This story, transmitted in the West through translations, (so to speak) invades even English-language poetry. Surprisingly, seven English-language poets in the nineteenth century either translated or adapted this story. Neither this story nor those poets have been considered by Edward Said although they played a major role in the transmission of this story in the West. Therefore, this paper aims at tracing, identifying, and classifying the Islamic versions of the story; tracing the English translations and adaptations of the story; and finally examining the relationships between those English poems and the Islamic texts in ways identifiable as motif-based.

With a New Formalist critical approach, this paper attempts to explore the poetic forms of the three single-sentenced sonnets (12, 15 and 29) by William Shakespeare, focusing on their poetic diction, artistic skills of figurative language, and unique syntactical and structural patterns. In examining the poetic language or verbal characteristics of the three sonnets, the paper will emphasize the importance of the poetic forms that are sidestepped by other critical interpretations. The poetic forms are important because they not only display unique artistic skills and create distinctive poetic effects but also possess signifying power, pointing to main ideas of the poems. Thus the paper argues that the poetic forms of the three sonnets are not only important organic parts of the poems but also help form and develop their complicated meanings. The paper first investigates Sonnets 12 and 15 by closely comparing some similar poetic diction in both poems, as it illustrates not only “the best words in their best order,” but is also loaded with crucial signifiers of the important themes, such as to preserve youth and beauty through procreation and eternal verse. Then, the paper will carefully compare and contrast Sonnets 12, 15 and 29, focusing on their syntactical and structural patterns, as all the three sonnets contain interesting similarities and striking differences in terms of grammar, syntax, structure and meanings. Moreover out of all Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, these three are commonly accepted by modern editors as the only ones written in just one single sentence. Through analyzing the unique poetic forms of the three sonnets, we can clearly see how Shakespeare skillfully unifies the artistic poetic forms with important themes.

This article argues that some of the adaptations performed in the most popular Iranian sitcom, Kolāh Ghermezī, are Shakespearean tragedies: Othello (1603), Romeo and Juliet (1591–1595), Hamlet (1599–1602) and Pericles (1607/1608). It examines the director’s recontextualization of Shakespeare. The director changes the plot, adds moral lessons and silences the violence, as do adapters of Shakespeare’s dramas for children. Pastiche and the dialogical tradition of the carnivalesque, where animals play the role of humans and men become women, are also present. The choice of puppets who play Shakespearean characters is highly related to their public persona as being introduced as cunning, helpful, or simple-minded. The results, coming from carefully scrutinizing the performances with the help of adaptation methodologies, can be of significance to those interested in the adaptation of Shakespeare in a different setting with a diverse audience.

In the instance of Thomas De Quincey, an opium-eater and a stern critic of China, the essay examines how the two Opium Wars shaped the Victorian idea of China, and how the discourses of free trade and sovereign equality contributed to the pedagogy of British imperialism in China. Unlike the Jesuits’ admiration for China since the sixteenth century, De Quincey’s criticism of China marked a decisive turn in the European idea of China since the early nineteenth century. Situating De Quincey’s criticism in relation to writings on China by William Gladstone, Edward negotiated with China’s resistance through discursive and institutional practices in the fields of diplomacy, political economy, and international law. Finally, the essay investigates how British “armed negotiation” exemplified the moral limits of Victorian liberalism as the rhetoric of empire.

The journey is a common theme in the works of Naomi Shihab Nye. As early as her two chapbooks Tattooed Feet (1977) and Eye-to-Eye (1978), the framework of the journey has been present to shape her nomadic convictions. Many of her later works, such as Habibi (1999), There is No Long Distance Now (2011), and The Turtle of Oman (2014), adopt a travel-specific approach as well. Wherever encountered, Nye’s journeys involve an act of travelling though not in the traditional sense, and this shows in four features by which those journeys are characterized: continuity, circularity, multiplicity, and spatiality. To prove this point, the study aims to examine Nye’s employment of the journey which, as the discussion of a number of her poems, short stories, and novellas will show, draws on and departs from the conventions of the traditional journey in older literature. Though Nye does employ the journey as a means of geographical mobility and discovery, her ultimate purpose is to redefine the journey as a discursive practice through which resistance to different aspects of life becomes possible.

The interest in the modern self, which originated in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, led to the birth of the “I-novel” in Japan and the “confessional novel” in Korea. Whereas Western naturalism captures others and the individual in relation to society, “Japanese naturalism” usually describes a writer’s private life in a space that is unconnected to society. This practice comes from Futon (蒲團) by Tayama Katai, which is regarded as “prototypical shishōsetsu.” The fact that the beginning of the 20th century was the time when sovereignty was lost was an opportunity for the Korean confessional novel to be significantly differentiated from the Japanese I-novel. As a result of reflecting the historical reality of the ethnic community, the Korean confessional novel has not an extreme individualistic aspect but a socialized aspect instead. In Mansejeon (만세전), a typical confessional novel by Sangseop Yeom, the inner side and sociality interact with each other, incorporated into a single subject of willingness to overcome the reality of colonization. Although Confessions by Rousseau gave the same task of forming the modern self to Japan and Korea, the Japanese and Korean writers carried out the task differently in the specificity of the historical and political situations faced by each country.

The wretched gloomy world Samuel Beckett exposes to view in Endgame, where the characters have learned to live with their variety of afflictions, both mental and physical, draws the attention of many critics to the psychology of the characters and the absurdity of its world. This article aims to analyze Samuel Beckett’s Endgame in light of psychoanalysis, especially Freud’s theory of life drive and death drive. It examines Hamm’s psyche and argues that although Hamm desires his prolongation of life, he is psychologically dead and longs for his biological death to come so that he can end his suffering, infliction, and the meaninglessness of his existence.

Ernest Hemingway is regarded as one of the most important and influential American novelists in the 20th century. Many researchers have studied his literary works, but there are limited comprehensive studies on his short stories from an ecological perspective. With the hope of re-reading the text and arousing ecological consciousness to live in harmony with nature, this article explores the ecological view that human beings regard nature as the source of spiritual strength and seek sustenance and relief in it. Firstly, it analyzes the respect for life and death in the theory of “reverence for life” represented by Indian Camp at the beginning of In Our Time, Hemingway’s first collection of short stories. Secondly, it examines the consciousness of ecological holism and returning to nature in The Big Two-Hearted River. Thirdly, it considers the recalling of natural beauty in Fathers and Sons. The article concludes that the process of human beings’ self-fulfillment in Hemingway’s short stories is also the process of their understanding of ecological holism between human and nonhuman.

American drama researches in China have undergone roughly three stages — restoration in 1980s, initial prosperity in 1990s, and full prosperity and dynamism in the 21st century pacing towards integration and systematization on a scaled basis. The drama studies changed from thematic studies to formal and aesthetic studies carried out with pluralistic paradigms under the influence of Western literary theories. Researches have not only focused on issues of philosophy, religion, morality, and ethics in drama works but are also conducted from social, historic, political, and / or cultural perspectives. Not a few problems have appeared in American drama studies in the Chinese academic circle, yet opportunities co-exist with challenges.

The first half of 19th century is commonly thought to be the Danish Golden Age with its cultural blossom and success in spheres of art, science, literature and philosophy. In The Cultural Crisis of the Danish Golden Age: Heiberg, Martensen and Kierkegaard, however, Jon Stewart provides a reflection on this age through its very opposite, the haunting crisis in Danish cultural life. Stewart argues that the diagnosis of the crisis and the struggle to provide solutions by Heiberg, Martensen and Kierkegaard are one of the shaping forces of the cultural ferment. The common apprehension of the crisis grounds the affinity among Heiberg, Martensen and Kierkegaard, despite of their apparent divergence in philosophical concerns. The affinity, Stewart argues, lies in the mode of Hegelian speculative thinking they all adopt in their diagnoses and solutions of the crisis. From the logic behind Stewart’s argument, cultural crisis and cultural golden age thus grow up as two opposites with the mediating dynamic between them. The significant implication of Heiberg’s speculative poetry, Martensen’s speculative theology and Kierkegaard’s controlled irony, Stewart argues, for our age with increasing encounter with differences and diversities, lies in their view of individual things not as separate from one another, but as in interdependence based on their dialectical relations of identity and difference.

Philip Roth is an influential writer in contemporary American literature. In his long‑lasting productive period, he has published a large number of works with a wide range of content. In the face of such a heavyweight writer, it is necessary to have a deep and conclusive research on his whole creation. Su Xin’s research work Research on the Evolution of the Contemporary Jewish American Writer Philip Roth (2015) is a unified research on Roth. The book reviews Roth’s creation from a macro perspective and discusses his evolutionary characteristics in the flow of four stages of his works. Her book also applies a multi‑dimensional criticism method and a multi‑perspective interpretation of Roth’s representative works.

Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice by Professor Richardson elucidates lucidly the theory of unnatural narratives, traces the history of unnatural narratives from antiquity to the present, provides some analyses of unnatural texts, and addresses a number of pressing theoretical questions. This book is the first monograph on the theory of unnatural narrative, filling in a major gap in contemporary narrative theory. Unnatural works break through the generic and spatio‑temporal narrow limits of largely realistic fictions and include texts of various types, periods, genres, and cultures, and this book argues that this constitutes the material for a poetics of another literary “Great Tradition” which Professor Richardson attempts to construct. His ultimate ambition is to establish a more comprehensive and encompassing narrative theory.