Literature

13 pages, 251 KB

Open AccessArticle

Sex and the Single Girl and Boy: Eliza Sharples, Richard Carlile, and Radical Reproduction 1831–1833

by Gail Turley Houston

Literature 2025, 5(3), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030022 - 19 Aug 2025

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This case study examines the reproductive choices of republican couple Eliza Sharples (1803–1852) and Richard Carlile (1790–1843) and the conflicted political and personal trajectories of those choices. This includes examination of his initial public writings supporting birth control methods set next to his [...] Read more.

This case study examines the reproductive choices of republican couple Eliza Sharples (1803–1852) and Richard Carlile (1790–1843) and the conflicted political and personal trajectories of those choices. This includes examination of his initial public writings supporting birth control methods set next to his retrogressive attitudes about women’s roles and his increasingly conservative and patriarchal attitudes about sexuality while using Sharples’s pregnancy out of wedlock to make his case for “moral marriage.” It sets his ideas next to Sharples’s proto-feminist uses of her pregnancy (confinement) vis-à-vis his confinement in jail as she seeks to show how her “confinement” does “labor” for republican and feminist causes. The paper highlights a crisis when the jail rescinded Sharples’s right to visit Carlile and studies the rhetoric used in the heated, desperate, triangulated exchanges between the jailors, Carlile and Sharples. Full article

21 pages, 371 KB

Open AccessArticle

Literarinesses—A Bag of Three-Sided Coins

by Christine A. Knoop and Stefan Blohm

Literature 2025, 5(3), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030021 - 12 Aug 2025

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Abstract

The theoretical question of what makes texts “literary” has a long tradition in literary studies. At the level of concrete individual encounters/transactions between readers and texts, literariness has been shown to reflect how actual readers pre-categorize, approach, and process texts. Literariness has been [...] Read more.

The theoretical question of what makes texts “literary” has a long tradition in literary studies. At the level of concrete individual encounters/transactions between readers and texts, literariness has been shown to reflect how actual readers pre-categorize, approach, and process texts. Literariness has been approached from three different angles: the study of formal and semantic features of literary language, which dates back to the formalist beginnings of the concept; the study of literary reading modes and the generalized literary categories in which they are grounded; and the study of actual reading experiences. We argue (1) that these three aspects are mutually dependent and, in fact, constitute three sides of the same coin and (2) that different texts and genres instantiate distinct literariness profiles, that is, distinct ‘literarinesses’ in the mind of the reader—what makes a text literary differs between text types. Building on previous work in linguistics, literary studies, psychology, and stylistics, we discuss the cognitive implications of these two central claims for the reader. We also integrate our approach with extant research on genre-specific profiles and develop a set of ideas for future research in this field. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Literary Experiments with Cognition)

18 pages, 302 KB

Open AccessArticle

Attention, Please! Maria Edgeworth’s Educational Short Fiction as Literary Experiments with Attention

by Hannah Armour and Sibylle Baumbach

Literature 2025, 5(3), 20; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030020 - 8 Aug 2025

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Abstract

In her aim to establish education as a scientifically grounded discipline—conceived as “an experimental science” in her non-fictional treatise Practical Education (1798)—Maria Edgeworth pioneered the integration of literary attention into educational practice. This paper examines her use of different short prose forms as [...] Read more.

In her aim to establish education as a scientifically grounded discipline—conceived as “an experimental science” in her non-fictional treatise Practical Education (1798)—Maria Edgeworth pioneered the integration of literary attention into educational practice. This paper examines her use of different short prose forms as a means of cultivating attentional capacities in young children and adolescents, while simultaneously providing educators with adaptable tools for designing exercises targeted to varying levels of attentiveness. Through close analysis of two narratives, “The Purple Jar” and “The Good French Governess”, we argue that Edgeworth’s short stories and tales experiment with various degrees of (narrative) complexity to foster the development of two key attentional habits, the transition of thought and the abstraction of attention, both essential for navigating everyday environments. Our findings suggest that Edgeworth’s literary experiments not only contribute to our understanding of attentional affordances of different short fiction forms and help advance knowledge about literature and cognition; they also underscore the pedagogical potential of “attention narratives” in educational contexts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Literary Experiments with Cognition)

10 pages, 174 KB

Open AccessArticle

Between Place and Identity: Spatial Production and the Poetics of Liminality in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Fiction

by Maria Miruna Ciocoi-Pop

Literature 2025, 5(3), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030019 - 4 Aug 2025

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Abstract

This article investigates the role of space in the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides, focusing on The Virgin Suicides (1993) and Middlesex (2002) through the lens of spatial theory. Drawing on key thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Edward Soja, Yi-Fu Tuan, and [...] Read more.

This article investigates the role of space in the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides, focusing on The Virgin Suicides (1993) and Middlesex (2002) through the lens of spatial theory. Drawing on key thinkers such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Edward Soja, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Doreen Massey, the study explores how Eugenides constructs spatial environments that not only frame but actively shape the identities, desires, and traumas of his characters. In The Virgin Suicides, suburban domestic spaces are shown to function as heterotopias—sites of surveillance, repression, and mythologized femininity—while Middlesex engages with transnational and urban spaces to narrate diasporic and intersex identity as dynamic, embodied, and liminal. The analysis reveals that Eugenides uses space as both a narrative device and a thematic concern to interrogate gender, memory, and power. Rather than passive backdrops, the novelistic spaces become charged arenas of conflict and transformation, reflecting and resisting dominant socio-cultural discourses. This study argues that space in Eugenides’ fiction operates as a critical register for understanding the politics of belonging and the production of subjectivity. By situating Eugenides within the broader field of literary spatiality, this article contributes to contemporary debates in literary geography, gender studies, and American fiction. Full article

31 pages, 356 KB

Open AccessArticle

“Mutual Cunning” in King Lear: A Study of Machiavellian Politics

by Carolyn Elizabeth Brown

Literature 2025, 5(3), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030018 - 23 Jul 2025

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Abstract

When scholars view characters in King Lear through a Machiavellian lens, they read Edmund, Goneril, and Regan as stock Machiavels. In contrast, they often perceive Cordelia, Kent, and Edgar as selfless, apolitical characters. This essay argues that the latter characters are more complicated [...] Read more.

When scholars view characters in King Lear through a Machiavellian lens, they read Edmund, Goneril, and Regan as stock Machiavels. In contrast, they often perceive Cordelia, Kent, and Edgar as selfless, apolitical characters. This essay argues that the latter characters are more complicated and politically adroit than they are often judged to be. They are Machiavellian as well, but Shakespeare conceives them within a more appreciative view of the concept of realpolitik. This essay explains the characters’ strategies by relating them to Machiavelli’s tenets of achieving and maintaining political power. The central quandary of the play is the lack of a male heir to the throne. Cordelia attempts to solve the problem by marrying the King of France for political reasons. She has an alliance with Kent, who helps her to justify her invasion of her homeland with French forces. Once the plans for a surprise attack go awry, Cordelia does not follow Machiavellian strategies and is consequently killed. Ironically, Edgar is as ambitious as Edmund, whom he lets plot against his father and bring about Gloucester’s slow decline so as to inherit his father’s fortune while Edmund incurs the blame for his father’s demise. Like Kent, he enlists a disguise for self-advancement. The most adroit Machiavellian characters—Edgar, Kent, and the King of France—all survive through chicanery and cunning. Shakespeare illustrates that secular methods of governorship defeat the old world of divine politics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Realpolitik in Renaissance and Early Modern British Literature)

10 pages, 233 KB

Open AccessArticle

Reading as Resistance: Dialectics of Passivity and Agency in Cortázar’s Short Fiction

by Santiago Juan-Navarro

Literature 2025, 5(3), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030017 - 18 Jul 2025

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Abstract

This article re-examines Julio Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” (1956) and “Instructions for John Howell” (1963) through the lens of reader-response theory, hermeneutics, and cognitive narratology. Traditionally viewed as examples of the fantastic, these stories are interpreted here as complementary explorations of passive and [...] Read more.

This article re-examines Julio Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” (1956) and “Instructions for John Howell” (1963) through the lens of reader-response theory, hermeneutics, and cognitive narratology. Traditionally viewed as examples of the fantastic, these stories are interpreted here as complementary explorations of passive and active reading, offering a literary dialectic that parallels the reflections articulated in Cortázar’s Rayuela [Hopscotch] (1963). Drawing on Wolfgang Iser’s theories of textual gaps and reader cooperation, Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of appropriation, and more recent approaches to cognitive immersion and narrative engagement, this study argues that both stories dramatize reading as an ethical and political act. “Continuity of Parks” illustrates the dangers of uncritical textual consumption, culminating in the protagonist’s epistemic and existential annihilation, while “Instructions for John Howell” presents a model of insurgent readership, where the spectator’s appropriation of the play foregrounds the risks and possibilities of narrative intervention. By analyzing the use of metalepsis, destabilized focalization, and narrative layering in these stories, this article highlights how Cortázar anticipates contemporary concerns regarding reader agency, interpretive autonomy, and the sociopolitical implications of literary engagement. Full article

14 pages, 222 KB

Open AccessArticle

Unpacking the Power of Style: An Analysis of Stylistic Sentences in the Novel Ukhozi Olumaphiko

by Nontembiso Patricia Jaxa

Literature 2025, 5(3), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030016 - 3 Jul 2025

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Abstract

In the analysis of isiXhosa literary texts, the role of stylistic sentences in enhancing the meanings and reinforcement of themes and their impact in foregrounding the textual features has been largely ignored and under researched. This study is intended to explore the efficacy [...] Read more.

In the analysis of isiXhosa literary texts, the role of stylistic sentences in enhancing the meanings and reinforcement of themes and their impact in foregrounding the textual features has been largely ignored and under researched. This study is intended to explore the efficacy of stylistic sentences in the isiXhosa creative work Ukhozi Olumaphiko. In Ukhozi Olumaphiko, the author artfully employs periodic, cumulative, and balanced stylistic sentences for the realization of different purposes in the story. In this study, content analysis has been used as a qualitative and quantitative research technique, as it allowed for a detailed examination of the novel Ukhozi Olumaphiko. Stylistic sentences were identified, interpreted, and coded, using integer coding for classification. Employing literary stylistics as a theoretical approach, the stylistic sentences were analysed according to their literary impact and effect. The findings indicate that the author utilises periodic sentences predominantly in the beginning stages of the story, a spread of cumulative, balanced, and periodic sentences in the middle stages, and periodic and cumulative sentences more in the end stages of the novel. The stylistics mentioned enhance the themes, textual meanings, and narrative features of Ukhozi Olumaphiko text and are useful in weaving suspense in a way that captures the reader’s attention and evokes emotions. Full article

11 pages, 207 KB

Open AccessArticle

“That Is Not It at All; That Is Not What I Meant, at All”: Gender and Communication in T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

by Jill Channing

Literature 2025, 5(3), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5030015 - 23 Jun 2025

Viewed by 559

Abstract

T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has long been examined through the lenses of modernist alienation and psychological paralysis. While previous scholarship has emphasized the poem’s existential themes and innovative form, it has often overlooked the central role of [...] Read more.

T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has long been examined through the lenses of modernist alienation and psychological paralysis. While previous scholarship has emphasized the poem’s existential themes and innovative form, it has often overlooked the central role of gendered discourse in shaping Prufrock’s communicative anxieties. This article argues that Eliot critiques patriarchal norms by portraying Prufrock’s paralysis as a product of masculine performance anxiety—his fear of miscommunication, emasculation, and judgment in interactions with women. Drawing on contemporary sociolinguistic frameworks by Deborah Tannen and Jennifer Coates, the analysis reveals how Prufrock’s internal monolog reflects early 20th-century anxieties around shifting gender roles and expectations. By situating Prufrock within both the literary traditions and sociocultural tensions of Eliot’s time, the article offers a new interpretation of the poem as a subtle but powerful commentary on the constraints of patriarchal communication. This reading not only deepens our understanding of Eliot’s engagement with gender but also reframes Prufrock’s alienation as a socially constructed and gendered crisis. Full article

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Literature, Volume 5, Issue 3 (September 2025) – 8 articles

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