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Volume 14
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Humanities, Volume 14, Issue 2 (February 2025) – 20 articles

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15 pages, 249 KiB  
Article
What Is Heritable: Power, Magic and Spirit in Marie-Elena John’s Unburnable
by Rachel L. Mordecai
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020038 - 19 Feb 2025
Abstract
In Marie-Elena John’s 2006 novel Unburnable, Lillian Baptiste returns to Dominica from the United States intending to confront the secrets and traumas of her maternal family line. The novel structures Lillian’s developing apprehension of who her mother and grandmother were and what [...] Read more.
In Marie-Elena John’s 2006 novel Unburnable, Lillian Baptiste returns to Dominica from the United States intending to confront the secrets and traumas of her maternal family line. The novel structures Lillian’s developing apprehension of who her mother and grandmother were and what they endured in late-colonial Dominica around a series of revelations regarding each woman’s imbrication within the realm of the magico-spiritual, which includes magic, Obeah and their cognates; Catholicism; spells and curses; ghosts and other spirit manifestations; and extra-sensory perception. The reader comes to understand Lillian as (and sometimes before) Lillian comes to understand herself: the last in a line of magico-spiritually powerful women whose encounters with colonial catastrophe and its heteropatriarchal, racist–classist machinations are both figured through and navigated by way of that power. Where socioeconomic and political power may conventionally be regarded as the proper subject of realist fiction and social-science inquiry, and magico-spiritual power as within the ambit of magical-realist fiction and folklore studies, Unburnable proposes worldly and magico-spiritual power as inhabiting the same material, political and psycho-social plane of Caribbean reality: as mutually entangled, co-constituting, reciprocally illuminating and, above all, dually heritable forces. In this way, the novel issues an invitation to rethink questions of power in the shadow of the Caribbean plantation and consider anew the ways in which it is, on the one hand, hoarded, bequeathed and weaponized against the vulnerable and, on the other, fluid, arcane in its sources and workings, and susceptible to insurgent counter-deployments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rise of a New World: Postcolonialism and Caribbean Literature)
14 pages, 219 KiB  
Article
Franz Kafka, Artificial Intelligence and the Paradoxical Recognition of Selfhood
by Leah Tomkins
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020037 - 19 Feb 2025
Abstract
At the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka (1883–1924), this paper explores the complexities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the lens of Kafka’s literary and professional work, especially those relating to the dynamics of recognition and misrecognition. Through Kafkan eyes, both philosophical [...] Read more.
At the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka (1883–1924), this paper explores the complexities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the lens of Kafka’s literary and professional work, especially those relating to the dynamics of recognition and misrecognition. Through Kafkan eyes, both philosophical and technological hankerings after recognition and its connection with the notion of the ‘true self’ are thrown into sharp relief, whether this ‘truth’ is related to authenticity or to accuracy. This encourages us to challenge some of the core assumptions of our relationship with systems and tools, including (1) the taken-for-granted formula of recognition being good, misrecognition being bad; (2) the suggestion that aligning AI with human values will make it, and therefore us, safer and more secure; and (3) the assumption that the masters are in charge in the master/slave dialectic that is often used to express the relationship between humans and technologies. The paper references three of Kafka’s most famous works, The Trial, The Castle and In the Penal Colony, in ways that are accessible to those new to Kafka. More seasoned Kafka enthusiasts will be able to see and contextualise the paper’s themes and provocations within these works, and extrapolate to his other writings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
22 pages, 299 KiB  
Article
Signs and Semblances: The Problem of Likability in Some Recent Productions of Much Ado About Nothing
by James Newlin
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 36; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020036 - 18 Feb 2025
Abstract
Following the “intertextual turn” in adaptation studies, scholars of Shakespearean performance have embraced the interpretive possibilities offered by infidelity, focusing increasingly on the corrective potential of recent stagings and adaptations. Such productions are not primarily valuable as progressive rewrites, however. In claiming not [...] Read more.
Following the “intertextual turn” in adaptation studies, scholars of Shakespearean performance have embraced the interpretive possibilities offered by infidelity, focusing increasingly on the corrective potential of recent stagings and adaptations. Such productions are not primarily valuable as progressive rewrites, however. In claiming not to be “Shakespeare”, these productions make testable claims about the nature of the Shakespearean playtext. In this paper, I examine two recent stage productions and one non-traditional film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing: Kenny Leon’s 2019 Public Theater production, Chris Abraham’s 2023 Stratford Festival production, and Will Gluck’s 2023 romantic comedy Anyone But You. All three performances are consciously unfaithful to Shakespeare’s text or setting, and their revisions attend to making the characters’ behavior more palatable for a contemporary liberal–progressive audience. Yet when we compare these revisions with the original playtext, Shakespeare’s own views come into sharper relief, as does our own inclination to identify with characters that Shakespeare’s immediate audience may have felt quite distanced from. I argue that in their drive to correct the play and make the characters more likable, these productions paper over Shakespeare’s critique of the arbitrary construction—and violent enforcement—of social hierarchy. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s notion of the parergon, I show that Shakespeare’s deliberate narrative framing invites a more skeptical, disapproving understanding of his characters. My hope is that this discussion leads to an understanding of Much Ado About Nothing as a “problem play” rather than a “problematic” one. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Shakespearean Performance: Contemporary Approaches, Findings, and Practices)
22 pages, 4499 KiB  
Article
Woman, Life, Freedom, and the Comics Classroom After Mahsa Amini
by Jane Tolmie
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020035 - 18 Feb 2025
Abstract
Since the 2022 death of Mahsa Jina Amini in custody of the Guidance Patrol or morality police in Tehran, Iran, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi can also function in the classroom as a comics touching point for human rights discourses around the world and [...] Read more.
Since the 2022 death of Mahsa Jina Amini in custody of the Guidance Patrol or morality police in Tehran, Iran, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi can also function in the classroom as a comics touching point for human rights discourses around the world and in particular—though not exclusively—those that impact women. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who brought intersectionality to the forefront of cultural and political discourses in 1989, has used the phrase “say her name” to draw attention to the deaths of women and children, especially Black women and children, at the hands of law enforcement officers. Chants of “Say her name, Mahsa Amini”, rang among protesters outside Khalifa International Stadium in Qatar ahead of Iran’s first match of the World Cup 2022 against England. Now in 2025, cultural conversations around feminism and creativity as resistance can turn to the woman, life, freedom movement in Iran. Shervin Hajipour’s song “Baraye”, meaning “for” in Persian, which was inspired by tweets echoing protesters’ calls for change, became an anthem of the uprising and exists in comic art as well as song. The comics classroom can address the concerns and issues surrounding Amini’s death and the ongoing relevance of Persepolis as a coming-of-age text about living as a woman in Iran. In dialogue with the works of Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson, Hillary Chute, Sally Munt, and bell hooks, this piece addresses the pedagogy of human rights through comic art as crisis witnessing. With attention to comics material from two members of the Iranian diaspora, Shabnam Adiban and Farid Vahid, from the 2024 collection Woman, Life, Freedom, put together by Satrapi, this piece navigates potential Orientalism and Islamophobia in the Western classroom through engagement with intersectional feminism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feminism and Comics Studies)
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9 pages, 177 KiB  
Essay
Curious Travellers: New Journeys for the Home Tour
by Mary-Ann Constantine
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020034 - 17 Feb 2025
Abstract
This short concluding chapter reflects on the work of an ongoing collaborative academic project focused on the C18th home tour. Curious Travellers could be described as a ‘crucible’ project—a space in which different media, different perspectives, and different research skills combine and collide. [...] Read more.
This short concluding chapter reflects on the work of an ongoing collaborative academic project focused on the C18th home tour. Curious Travellers could be described as a ‘crucible’ project—a space in which different media, different perspectives, and different research skills combine and collide. Currently funded by the AHRC, it is a digital humanities project involving TEI tagging and crowd-sourcing, but its foundation is archival research into manuscripts. It is focused through the influential Tours of Wales and Scotland published by the naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant, yet it seeks to unpick the multiple voices and collaborations behind his texts and to explore their legacy in the journeys and texts of others. The creation of new editions continues to generate new topics and research questions, including Anglophone/Celtic-language interactions; the writings of women tourists; the role of material objects (specimens and souvenirs) and of visual culture in knowledge exchange and production. Increasingly, project researchers are relating their work to broader global contexts of colonialism and environmental history. The diversity of the genre has proved hugely stimulating for a range of audiences beyond academia: community engagement and creative practices have been a key feature from the start. There are, of course, challenges—practical, methodological, financial. This reflective piece will acknowledge the constraints, as well as the possibilities, of being multi-stranded, cross-disciplinary—and intermittently funded. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing: New Directions)
22 pages, 338 KiB  
Article
Trembling Curiosity: Sex and Desire in El curioso impertinente and Carne trémula
by Bruce R. Burningham
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020033 - 14 Feb 2025
Abstract
There is a longstanding connection between “curiosity”, “desire”, and “sexuality”. This connection can be found in texts as diverse as works of scripture like the Hebrew Bible and the Quran as well as in contemporary works of critical theory. Miguel de Cervantes explored [...] Read more.
There is a longstanding connection between “curiosity”, “desire”, and “sexuality”. This connection can be found in texts as diverse as works of scripture like the Hebrew Bible and the Quran as well as in contemporary works of critical theory. Miguel de Cervantes explored such a connection more than four centuries ago in El curioso impertinente, an exemplary novella embedded in the 1605 part one of Don Quixote. Through a comparative reading of Cervantes’s El curioso impertinent, Pedro Almodóvar’s 1997 film Carne trémula (itself a free adaptation of Ruth Rendell’s 1986 novel Live Flesh), and Luis Buñuel’s 1955 film Ensayo de un crimen, this essay analyzes the intersection of curiosity and desire—inflected through the lenses of both Girardian and Lacanian theory—in order to explore the fundamental role not just of curiosity in early modern Spain, but also in the representation of modern (and postmodern) sexuality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)
19 pages, 3110 KiB  
Article
(Il)legible Orthodoxy: Diligence and Impertinence Before Inquisitorial Curiosity
by Kathryn Phipps
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020032 - 12 Feb 2025
Abstract
This article proposes the Spanish Inquisition as a site of productive conflict between the polyvalent significations of curiosity in early modern Spain. On one hand, the Spanish Inquisition promoted curiosity through diligent inquiry, while on the other it prosecuted those whose curiosity led [...] Read more.
This article proposes the Spanish Inquisition as a site of productive conflict between the polyvalent significations of curiosity in early modern Spain. On one hand, the Spanish Inquisition promoted curiosity through diligent inquiry, while on the other it prosecuted those whose curiosity led them to impertinence. This article examines the significance of an archival curiosity whose dubious relevance within the archive highlights its fundamental illegibility before Inquisitorial curiosity. This article argues that despite an ethos of apparent orthodoxy and cryptic invitations to curious readers, the manuscript ultimately fails to prompt Inquisitorial inquiry and itself becomes designated as “Escrito curioso por su valor caligráfico” by an unidentified archivist. Impertinent as an archival misfit and insolent in its failure to adhere to standards of confession, the “Escrito curioso’s” playful provocations invite a diligent reader to peruse its depths, only to find obstinate opacities nestled within the umbrage of orthodoxy. Ultimately, the article contends that the “Escrito curioso” ironically elucidates the Inquisition’s paradoxical dependence upon the heretical curiosity it condemned. As a diligent expression of undying faithfulness to the Church and her Inquisition, it is relegated to the forgotten margins of the Holy Office’s operations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)
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16 pages, 711 KiB  
Article
Medicine, Crime and Realism in Ouida’s ‘Toxin’ (1895)
by Louise Benson James
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 31; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020031 - 12 Feb 2025
Abstract
In 1895, Ouida published a short story called ‘Toxin’ in the Illustrated London News which prompted an outraged response from the British medical establishment. In their words, this tale of an English surgeon who decides to murder his patient depicts ‘the search after [...] Read more.
In 1895, Ouida published a short story called ‘Toxin’ in the Illustrated London News which prompted an outraged response from the British medical establishment. In their words, this tale of an English surgeon who decides to murder his patient depicts ‘the search after scientific truth as naturally leading to crime’. The British Medical Journal considered Ouida’s story ‘an attack […] on the medical profession’. This article analyses the story and the BMJ’s response, considering it in relation to crime fiction and realism. It further looks at reports of medical crimes in the late-nineteenth century, and considers Ouida’s deployment of diphtheria, a virulent epidemic of its time, through reports of the recently discovered cure in medical journals and the popular press. I argue that the reason the BMJ felt so threatened by her depiction of a murderous doctor is in great part due to Ouida’s attention to medical realism: the threat of fiction’s entanglement with the real. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Victorian Realism and Crime)
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14 pages, 199 KiB  
Article
‘I Took Every Possible Care to Have Them Well Preserved’: Travelling Plants and Networks of Collection from India to England in the Letters of William Roxburgh to Sir James Edward Smith
by Kathryn Walchester
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020030 - 12 Feb 2025
Abstract
The final decades of the eighteenth century saw the significant expansion of botanical propagation and collections across the globe, both as an aesthetic corollary and to provide the underpinning resources for imperialism. The focus of this article is the development of the network [...] Read more.
The final decades of the eighteenth century saw the significant expansion of botanical propagation and collections across the globe, both as an aesthetic corollary and to provide the underpinning resources for imperialism. The focus of this article is the development of the network between botanists in India and England in the 1790s through the correspondence between William Roxburgh (1751–1815), superintendent of the Botanical Garden in Calcutta from 1793, and Sir James Edward Smith (1759–1820), who as Sarah Law notes, was ‘a focus of correspondence with every serious botanist in the world’ (Law, 2007, 184). Such networks were sustained by letters describing the plants and the treatment they needed, the habitat from which they had been taken, and details of how they had been collected and packed. Epistolary writing between plant hunters and British collectors can be understood, I suggest, as a form of travel writing. This is a form in which correspondence builds connections and relationships between fellow scientists and enthusiasts and the fragmentary focus on place, and the mobility of humans is replaced by close attention to the aesthetic and biological details of plants and the best ways of securing their successful transport across the globe. Using an ecocritical frame, this article explores the position of plants and biological specimens themselves as travellers and considers the ways in which their care and preservation have been articulated through sociable correspondence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing: New Directions)
17 pages, 318 KiB  
Article
Oneiric Witnessing: Dreamscapes of War
by Magdalena Zolkos
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020029 - 11 Feb 2025
Abstract
Are wartime dream diaries a testimony to violence and its impact on society and culture? Do dreams shape and respond to history and the collective remembrance of war? This article argues that wartime dream collections constitute a testimonial practice that brings visibility to [...] Read more.
Are wartime dream diaries a testimony to violence and its impact on society and culture? Do dreams shape and respond to history and the collective remembrance of war? This article argues that wartime dream collections constitute a testimonial practice that brings visibility to experiences hidden from the public domain and missing from dominant discourses on war. Connecting post-2022 Ukrainian dream diaries and theoretical contributions to cultural dream analysis by Charlotte Beradt, Georges Didi-Huberman, and Wilfred Bion, I argue that recognizing dream sharing as witnessing raises ethical and political questions because it is not a constative speech act, but a form of thinking about and action on history. Within this ethical–political perspective, sharing dreams is never merely about relaying contents to the reader but a relational act of self-disclosure. I conclude that to read records of war dreams is inseparable from being called upon to receive and offer hospitality to a dream. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Cultural Studies & Critical Theory in the Humanities)
11 pages, 230 KiB  
Article
“Curiosa Impertinente”: Women and Curiosity on the Spanish–North African Borderlands
by Catherine Infante
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020028 - 7 Feb 2025
Abstract
In European imaginings of the Islamic world, women incited intense curiosity and were often depicted by early modern writers as sexualized subjects and curious objects of male desire. However, this Orientalist fascination ignores the very curiosity of these women and their desire to [...] Read more.
In European imaginings of the Islamic world, women incited intense curiosity and were often depicted by early modern writers as sexualized subjects and curious objects of male desire. However, this Orientalist fascination ignores the very curiosity of these women and their desire to glean knowledge about the world around them. While curiosity became increasingly valued in the early modern period as a means of progress, female curiosity was still often linked to the perils of excess (Neil Kenny). This essay examines this apparent contradiction by focusing on the Muslim protagonist in one of Miguel de Cervantes’s plays that takes place on the Spanish–North African borderlands. In Los baños de Argel (1615), Zahara defends her desire to inquire about the world by portraying herself as a “curious impertinent” (“curiosa impertinente”), a name that clearly recalls the tale of “El curioso impertinente” intercalated in the first part of Don Quixote (1605). Moreover, Zahara harnesses her ability to ask questions to further her goals and ambitions. Ultimately, through a close reading of the female protagonist in this play, I argue that Cervantes considers the ways in which women asserted their own curiosity and represented themselves as agents of inquiry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)
33 pages, 354 KiB  
Article
A Pragmatic Analysis of Shakespeare’s Richard III: Language Strategies: Persuasion, Domination, and Control
by Manuel Macías-Borrego
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020027 - 7 Feb 2025
Abstract
This pragmatic analysis of Richard III examines how conversational strategies, speech acts, and Gricean maxims reveal the true intentions and nature of Richard and other characters. While Shakespeare’s history plays are often explored through social, cultural, historical, and political lenses, this approach focuses [...] Read more.
This pragmatic analysis of Richard III examines how conversational strategies, speech acts, and Gricean maxims reveal the true intentions and nature of Richard and other characters. While Shakespeare’s history plays are often explored through social, cultural, historical, and political lenses, this approach focuses on understanding characterization through linguistic cues, especially Richard’s manipulative use of language. Pragmatics, a branch of linguistics, delves into the intended meanings behind interactions using linguistic signals, emphasizing the dynamics of conversation and context. In Richard III, speech acts—encompassing not just spoken words, but also the surrounding context—are crucial for understanding Richard’s ability to deceive, manipulate, and persuade. These speech acts not only convey what is said, but also the strategies employed to achieve specific goals, such as persuasion or domination. By applying pragmatic principles and speech act theory, this analysis enhances our understanding of Shakespeare’s characters and their interactions. Gricean maxims—quality, quantity, relevance, and manner—serve as a framework for exploring how Richard often flouts or manipulates these principles to control dialogue and perceptions. This combined approach reveals the layers of meaning and strategic language use that shape Richard’s character and the broader implications of his interactions within the play. This shows that Shakespeare’s theater continues to provide a compelling lens for exploring the relationship between language, politics, and identity, enhancing our comprehension of how literature both reflects and influences the socio-political context in which it was created. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Transdisciplinary Humanities)
13 pages, 206 KiB  
Article
‘I Heard Music’: Mansfield Park, an Opera by Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton
by Gillian Dooley
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020026 - 7 Feb 2025
Abstract
When composer Jonathan Dove first read Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, he immediately saw its operatic potential. In a newspaper interview, he is quoted as saying that the novel ‘haunted me for years’. He was particularly affected by Fanny Price and her [...] Read more.
When composer Jonathan Dove first read Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, he immediately saw its operatic potential. In a newspaper interview, he is quoted as saying that the novel ‘haunted me for years’. He was particularly affected by Fanny Price and her predicament. When the opportunity came to write the opera, Dove worked with librettist Alasdair Middleton to create an operatic work that builds on and reinterprets Austen’s novel. It is a chamber opera, originally scored for piano duet, and although Dove later made an arrangement for a chamber ensemble, he retained the piano, identifying it as a sound world with which Austen was intimately familiar. In this paper, I track the transition from the printed page via the score and the libretto to the opera, and analyse the means by which Dove and Middleton create this popular adaptation, including telescoping the plot, using and adapting Austen’s own language, incorporating music inspired by eighteenth-century glees, and using characters as a chorus, with music that enhances the impact and translates the powerful emotions on Austen’s page into raw and urgent feelings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Music and the Written Word)
19 pages, 297 KiB  
Article
Ghosts in the Machine: Kafka and AI
by Imke Meyer
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020025 - 6 Feb 2025
Abstract
The writings of Franz Kafka open, perhaps precisely because of their temporal distance to our present, a unique window onto the nexus of power, material, and the human that constitutes AI today. Anxiety and Unbehagen [discontent] are states of mind that often grip [...] Read more.
The writings of Franz Kafka open, perhaps precisely because of their temporal distance to our present, a unique window onto the nexus of power, material, and the human that constitutes AI today. Anxiety and Unbehagen [discontent] are states of mind that often grip both Kafka and his characters in an early-20th-century world increasingly dependent upon and perceived through the lens of disembodied communication and technology. But can we draw a line from Kafka’s reflections on analog media to the digital media that have come to dominate our lives in the 21st century, and whose effects are felt on a planetary scale? The short answer is “yes”. In Kafka’s analog world of technological horrors, glitches in the machinic administration of human life turn out to be not bugs, but rather features of the system; precisely the arbitrary effects that accompany the rigid implementation of rules and the slippages that occur during their merciless application enhance the power of the system as a whole. Kafka’s apparatuses and bureaucratic systems, in their powerful and toxic confluence of regularity and opacity, systematicity and arbitrariness, foreshadow the effects of AI upon our embodied existence in the 21st century. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
18 pages, 247 KiB  
Article
Colonial Catharsis: Romantic-Realism and the Imperial Gaze in Confessions of a Thug
by Kevin Frank
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020024 - 4 Feb 2025
Abstract
This article is situated in the context of Victorian imaginations saturated with stories of crime and punishment and influenced by Romantic horror and terror aesthetics involving the sublime. The author delineates how the novel’s realism is affixed to an inherent romanticism and argues [...] Read more.
This article is situated in the context of Victorian imaginations saturated with stories of crime and punishment and influenced by Romantic horror and terror aesthetics involving the sublime. The author delineates how the novel’s realism is affixed to an inherent romanticism and argues that the affect and effect of terror and horror resulting from colonial crimes exhibited in the novel allow readers to experience catharsis and to reassert their humanity through the imperial gaze. Additionally, readers may confirm the values of the ‘home’ nation and the justification of British colonisation through the trope of ‘bringing order out of chaos’. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Victorian Realism and Crime)
14 pages, 232 KiB  
Article
Eighteenth-Century Day Excursions: Finding Authority in the Narration of Brief Visits and “A Diversity of Objects”
by Zoë Kinsley
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020023 - 31 Jan 2025
Abstract
This article argues that a focus on the day excursion as a particular form of journey, with its inherent limits in relation to scale, distance, and duration, enables us to bring recent critical thinking on microtravel as a form with “foundations in the [...] Read more.
This article argues that a focus on the day excursion as a particular form of journey, with its inherent limits in relation to scale, distance, and duration, enables us to bring recent critical thinking on microtravel as a form with “foundations in the depth or intensity of description” into dialogue with scholarship that has given sustained attention to modes of descriptive practice that were specific to eighteenth-century British literature and the narrative representation of interior domestic space. The three English travellers under consideration are John Loveday (1711–1789), Dorothy Richardson (1748–1819), and Caroline Lybbe Powys (1738–1817). All made numerous home tour journeys of different kinds but never published their records of their travelling in their lifetimes. All displayed sustained interest in interior description, whether that was for the purpose of antiquarian research, as was the case with Loveday, and to some extent, Richardson, or as a means of collecting, arranging, and performing domestic aesthetic sensibility, as in the writing of both Richardson and Powys. The small local journeys analysed here speak of privileged leisure: the accounts offer experimentation in the narration of journeys made within limits, but those limits are rarely of opportunity. Yet these young travellers still negotiate authority: in the practice of day excursioning, and in writing up those experiences, we see each traveller utilising this compact form to find opportunities for self-assertion, employing the formulaic structures of antiquarian record and country house catalogue in order to articulate an independent curatorial voice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing: New Directions)
15 pages, 253 KiB  
Article
A Zoocritical Reading of Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799)
by Neil Cliff
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020022 - 29 Jan 2025
Abstract
Thinking about how animals are categorised in Mungo Park’s journey into the interior of Africa provides a deeper understanding of their significance in the early exploration experiences of Africa by Europeans during this era. As it stands, there certainly exists a small but [...] Read more.
Thinking about how animals are categorised in Mungo Park’s journey into the interior of Africa provides a deeper understanding of their significance in the early exploration experiences of Africa by Europeans during this era. As it stands, there certainly exists a small but growing body of animal criticism in literary studies, and what can be suitably described as the animal turn is certainly gaining momentum more broadly within twenty-first century literary criticism and debate. However, there has been scant scholarly research on this theme of animals within eighteenth-century travelling practices. In recent times, the scholarship on Park’s journey has been highly particular; new understandings of Park’s trip are still being reached. Considering such specificity, an examination of Park’s narration of nonhuman animals during his trip will not only provide original insight into this aspect of his African experience but also interpret the ways that his narrative differentiates and categorises the various animal experiences he had whilst in Africa. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing: New Directions)
9 pages, 188 KiB  
Article
Translating Franz Kafka’s “Josefine, the Singer or the Mouse People” as a Metaphor for AI
by Dylan James Peterson
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020021 - 29 Jan 2025
Abstract
Differing English translations of Franz Kafka’s “Josefine, the Singer or The Mouse People” have inspired diverse critical readings of the story. As a post-liminal text, a translation retrospectively highlights the ambiguity of the original’s rhetorical meaning. Read as a metaphor for artificial intelligence [...] Read more.
Differing English translations of Franz Kafka’s “Josefine, the Singer or The Mouse People” have inspired diverse critical readings of the story. As a post-liminal text, a translation retrospectively highlights the ambiguity of the original’s rhetorical meaning. Read as a metaphor for artificial intelligence (A.I.), “Josefine” reflects an uncanny sort of regenerated reality as a conflicted narrator ponders the meaning of Josefine’s song following her disappearance. Likewise, the form produced by A.I. programs like ChatGPT following an initial human input is typically that of a narrative, albeit one devoid of creativity, replaced instead with algorithmic determinism. Philosophical questions about the discursive potential of technology such as generative A.I. pose challenges to the definitional assumptions about the form narrative takes in rhetorical situations, wherein the audience/reader is left with a message untethered from its prompter/writer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Franz Kafka in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
17 pages, 261 KiB  
Article
Echoes of Albany: The Transatlantic Reflections of Anne Grant in Memoirs of an American Lady
by Rob Sutton
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020020 - 29 Jan 2025
Abstract
This essay explores the mid-eighteenth-century travel experience of Scottish writer Anne Macvicar Grant [1775–1838]. Grant is perhaps best known for her late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century travel writing and anthropological discourse focussed primarily upon the Scottish Highlands. Yet, the majority of Grant’s childhood [...] Read more.
This essay explores the mid-eighteenth-century travel experience of Scottish writer Anne Macvicar Grant [1775–1838]. Grant is perhaps best known for her late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century travel writing and anthropological discourse focussed primarily upon the Scottish Highlands. Yet, the majority of Grant’s childhood was spent in Albany, New York. After she had established herself as a writer and published various texts dealing with her more recent experience in the Scottish Highlands, in 1808, Grant published Memoirs of an American Lady, a semi-biographical account of her childhood spent in the multicultural contact zone of a British military outpost. There are two key issues that this essay explores. First, I discuss the process of memory. Unlike intentional travelogues of the time, Grant’s text was not compiled with the aid of a diary or ledger. Grant’s entire account comprises memories of events that occurred over forty years in the past. Part of this essay then discusses the potential fallibilities of the fragility of human memory upon the traveller. While it may be anticipated that this first issue is detrimental to the account of the traveller, the second key issue that I explore is arguably advantageous to Grant’s account. The extent to which Grant, throughout her life, immersed herself within various marginalised communities undoubtedly allows for the production of a more nuanced and balanced account of external cultures than was the custom at the time. What complicates this account is the mixing of memory and cultural immersion. In her writing around the Scottish Highlands, Grant frequently relies upon her experience of certain cultures as a child to explain and convey her understanding of the different marginalised communities she encounters as an adult. Integral to this essay is the fact that this mixing of memory and cultural exposure also occurs the opposite way around. In the Memoirs, the writer’s recollections of the Mohawk or the Kanien’kehà:ka people and colonial Dutch communities as a child seem to be coloured and subjected by her more recent experience of the Highland people. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing: New Directions)
15 pages, 1747 KiB  
Article
Thinking Through the Tiger: Korean Cultural Identity, Space, and Time
by Eunkyung Yi
Humanities 2025, 14(2), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020019 - 24 Jan 2025
Viewed by 182
Abstract
In the region of Northeast Asia, Korea has been identified as a nation that has a distinctive affinity for tigers. Koreans’ lives are deeply ingrained with emotions and thoughts related to tigers, even though they have completely disappeared from Korea due to historical [...] Read more.
In the region of Northeast Asia, Korea has been identified as a nation that has a distinctive affinity for tigers. Koreans’ lives are deeply ingrained with emotions and thoughts related to tigers, even though they have completely disappeared from Korea due to historical changes and urbanization. This study first connects the image of tigers in Korean creation myths and folk tales with cultural identity. The analysis uncovers that the satire and humor present in the literature and paintings depicting tigers were employed to surmount the realistic fears associated with these creatures. Subsequently, the study delves into historical perceptions and spatial concepts by examining folk tales and maps of the Korean Peninsula that are symbolized by tigers. During the Japanese colonial period, tigers were regarded as a symbol of Korean national consciousness, and since then, they have played a significant role in disseminating national spirit and identity discourse. Finally, the analysis of Korean proverbs related to tigers reveals the profound influence of these animals on the development of Korean concepts of seasons and time. This study thus demonstrates the significant role of tigers in shaping the cultural identity and conceptual framework of space and time in Korea. Full article
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