한국 웹소설은 2010년대 중반 이후 스마트폰과 PC를 매개로 한 온라인 연재 방식이 정착하며 폭발적으로 성장한 새로운 형태의 서사다. 한국 웹소설의 핵심 특성은 일 단위 연재와 실시간 소통이라는 매체적 특성에 기반한 독자-작가 간의 유기적 상호작용에 있다. 독자의 즉각적인 재미 추구와 작가의 민활한 반응이 상호 의존적 관계를 형성하며, 5000-6000자 내외의 짧은 분량과 주 5-7회의 높은 연재 빈도로 현대인의 콘텐츠 소비 패턴에 최적화된 '퀵 픽션' 형태를 구축했다. 초기 무료 제공에서 웹툰의 성공 모델을 벤치마킹한 플랫폼 중심의 유료 과금 체계와 지식재산권 보호 구조로 발전하며, 플랫폼 자본주의 경제의 핵심 산물로 자리매김했다.

서사적 측면에서 한국 웹소설은 「나 혼자만 레벨업」, 「전지적 독자 시점」,「재벌집 막내아들」 등에서 나타나는 게임 판타지, 성좌물, 회귀/빙의/환생 등의 장르적 문법을 정형화했다. RPG 요소(능력치, 스킬, 레벨업, 퀘스트)를 적극적으로 차용하여 '서사의 게임화' 를 구현하며, 게임에 익숙한 세대에게 몰입하기 쉬운 세계관을 제공한다. 특히 아즈마 히로키의 '게임적 리얼리즘' 개념을 독창적으로 변용하여, 자율적인 규칙계 위에 구축된 가상 현실이 자기완결적인 실재감을 생성하는 서사 방식을 구축했다. 주인공이 주어진 세계관과 규칙을 '플레이' 하는 방식으로 서사가 전개되며, 독자는 유능한 플레이어의 '핵' 이나 '치트키' 를 통한 성공을 관람하듯 대리적 쾌감을 느낀다.

한국 웹소설의 차별성은 일본 및 미국 웹소설과의 비교를 통해 더욱 명확해진다. 일본 웹소설이 오타쿠 문화와 미소녀 게임의 '캐릭터 소비 패턴' 에 기반하여 개별 캐릭터의 매력과 관계성에 중점을 두는 반면, 한국 웹소설은 '현실 개입을 통한 정보 우위' 라는 모티프를 극한까지 발전시키며 독자가 능동적인 서사 창조자로 전환되는 급진적 구조를 만들어냈다. 미국 웹소설이 LitRPG나 프로그레션 판타지 등 다양한 장르에서 '서사의 게임화' 를 구현하되 한국적 '게임적 리얼리즘' 의 독특한 변용은 보이지 않는 것과 대조적으로, 한국 웹소설은 매체적 특성과 서사 문법, 비즈니스 모델이 유기적으로 결합된 독자적인 '신서사 모델' 을 구축했다. 한국 웹소설은 플랫폼 자본주의 시대의 고유한 매체적, 서사적 특성을 통해 '게임적 리얼리즘' 을 창조적으로 변용하며, 독자와 작가, 캐릭터 간의 경계를 허무는 새로운 '신서사 모델' 을 제시하는 흥미로운 문학적 현상이다. IP 확장성을 염두에 둔 강력한 산업화 전략과 해외 진출 용이성을 바탕으로, 한국 웹소설은 글로벌 디지털 서사 시장에서 중요한 역할을 수행하며 새로운 서사적 경험을 제공하는 선두 주자로 발전할 것으로 전망된다.

이 연구의 목적은 한국 웹소설 '이혼물' 을 분석함으로써, 대중문화의 서사적 장치로서의 '이혼' 의 사회·문화적 역할을 이해하는 데 있다. 이혼물이란 남녀 주인공의 이혼이 서사의 주된 내용인 한국 웹소설의 하위장르다. 본래 이혼물은 2010년대 후반 '여성향' 장르인 로맨스와 로맨스 판타지에서 먼저 형성되었으나, 2020년대 현재는 남성향 장르인 판타지, 현대 판타지 장르에 전파되었다.

이 연구의 가설은 한국 웹소설 이혼물이 특히 2010년대 이후 가시화되기 시작한 한국의 젠더 갈등 양상과 관계적이라는 것이다. #metoo 운동, '페미니즘 리부트' 와 그에 따른 백래시는 한국의 성별 갈등을 첨예화했다. 이는 결국 '연애 포기' 나 '결혼 포기' 로 이어지는 친밀성의 문제를 가시화했다. 이러한 사회적 맥락 속에서 웹소설 이혼물은 특히 남녀 젠더의 증오와 분노, 원망을 재현하는 스토리텔링 형식으로 각광을 받았다.

이 연구는 남성향/여성향 이혼물의 대표적 작품들을 분석함으로써, 이혼이라는 개인사/가족사적인 파국이 재현되는 양상을 살펴보았다. 2장에서는 알파타르트의 <재혼황후> 를 중심으로 여성향 웹소설의 주류 문법을 검토했다. '재혼황후' 의 주인공은 본래 사회적 성공에 온전히 몰입한 탓에 친밀성의 위기를 겪고 있었다. 그리고 이혼은 주인공이 가족적 친밀성을 누리면서도, 사회적 성공을 추진할 수 있게 만드는 계기로 작동했다. 3장에서는 <천마재혼>, 이혼 후 <코인 대박> 등의 작품을 검토했다. 이러한 남성향 웹소설 작품들은 공통적으로 아내의 감정적·물질적 착취 때문에 사회적 성공이 좌절된 남성을 주인공으로 삼았다. 그리고 이혼은 새로운 친밀성 파트너를 탐색하고, 한편으로는 가부장제의 짐(burden)에서 해방된 채 사회적 성공을 추구할 수 있는 계기가 되었다. 요컨대 남성향 및 여성향 이혼물에서 이혼은 사회적 성공과 친밀성의 추구라는 모순적인 목표를 함께 추진할 수 있게 만드는 사건이었다. 즉 이혼물은 다만 '로맨틱' 하지 않은 현실적 조건을 포착하는 데 그치는 것이 아니라, 그러한 적대적 환경에서 번성하는 새로운 친밀성 관계의 양상을 제시했다.

요컨대 한국 웹소설 이혼물은 현대 가부장제 자본주의의 '좋은 삶' 의 양상을 재현하고 있다. 한국 웹소설 이혼물은 여성의 사회진출 및 '여권 신장' 이 기존의 가부장제 성별분업 및 친밀성 관계를 파괴하는 양상을 포착했으나 새로운 사회적 협업의 형태나 대안적인 친밀성 형태를 제시하지는 않았다. 이혼물은 오히려 자본주의 사회에서의 명령(사회적 성공)과 가부장제 사회에서

반려자에게 주어지는 기대(친밀성)를 동시에 거머쥐는 환상적 주체를 상상하고 있다. 이러한 점에서 이혼물은 우리 시대 청년들에게 주어진 좋은 삶의 각본이 얼마나 어려운 것인지 드러내는 문화적 텍스트다.

이 발표는 조선왕조를 배경으로 한 SF소설의 상상력과 문화적 의미를 비교 분석하기 위한 시론이다. 미국계 중국인 켄 리우는 중세 동아시아를 배경으로 한 스팀펑크와 유사한 이야기를 만들어내고 있는데, 이때 증기보다는 바람이나 물, 동물, 또는 기(氣)나 기관술(機關術)을 동력으로 삼고, 이를 일러 ‘실크펑크’라고 명명하였다. 그는 단편 <Beidou(2010)> 임진왜란에 출정한 명나라 원군 이여송 부대의 참모 담원사가 육지와 해상에 불[孔明燈]을 띄우고, 이에 삼각측량법으로 방향을 잡아 4만 명의 부대를 일본군의 감시를 피해 평양성으로 진군시켰다는 대체역사를 직조하면서, 2000년부터 중국이 구축한 독자적인 위상 항법 및 위치 정보 시스템 ‘베이더우[北斗]’가 갖는 의미를 덧씌웠다. 천문 관측과 국가 통치의 연관성, 별자리와 권력의 은유 등이 두드러진다.

반면, 정명섭이 참여한 ‘조선스팀펑크연작선’ 『기기인도로』,(2021)에서는 조선 전기를 배경으로 증기 기술이 실제로 도입되었다는 대체역사적 상상력을 펼친다. 이성계, 정도전, 조광조 등 실존 인물을 등장시켜, 증기기관과 같은 서구적 과학기술이 조선의 정치·사회 구조에 미치는 영향을 탐색한다. 특히 <증기사화>에서는 증기기술을 둘러싼 훈구파와 사림파의 갈등이 단순한 권력 투쟁을 넘어, 신기술의 수용과 저항, 전통과 혁신의 충돌로 확장된다. 이는 조선의 유교적 질서와 외래 기술의 긴장 관계, 그리고 사회적 변동의 가능성을 SF적 상상력으로 재구성한 것이다.

이처럼 두 작품 모두 조선 왕조의 역사적 맥락과 동아시아적 세계관을 바탕으로, 과학기술의 도입이 사회와 인간에 미치는 영향을 다각적으로 형상화한다. 켄 리우의 실크펑크는 조선을 배경으로 하면서도 우주적 질서와 인간의 운명을 중국적 미학과 과학적 상상력으로 재해석하는 반면, 정명섭의 조선스팀펑크는 구체적인 정치 상황과 기술의 상호작용에 초점을 맞춘다. 본 연구는 이러한 비교를 통해 동아시아 SF의 지역성, 장르적 변용, 그리고 전통과 기술, 역사와 상상력의 역동적 상호작용을 조명하고자 한다.

I participated in a volunteer translation project aimed at supporting sponsored children overseas. My contribution involved translating personal letters and educational materials from Korean into English, facilitating meaningful communication between Korean sponsors and children in various countries. This experience deepened my understanding of cross-cultural narratives and language mediation, which directly informs my interest in comparative literature and translation studies.

This presentation compares discourses on the Korean Peninsula as they appear in Sekai, a general-interest magazine founded by Japanese intellectuals in 1946, and Sanzenri, a Zainichi Korean magazine launched in 1975. Both publications, though based in Japan, demonstrated strong interest in the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Despite being published in the same country, the nature of their discourse differed significantly due to differences in the ethnic subjectivity of their publishers.

In the 1980s, coverage of Korea increased rapidly following the death of Park Chung-hee and the rise of the Chun Doo-hwan military regime. Sekai distanced itself from North Korea, with which it had maintained close ties during the 1970s, and shifted its focus to Kim Dae-jung and the democratization movement in South Korea. Sanzenri, meanwhile, showed interest in issues such as settlement in Japan, treatment of minorities, and the Korean diaspora, linking these to its discourse on the Korean Peninsula.

This presentation thus seeks to examine the shifts in Korea-related coverage and differing problem consciousness reflected in Sekai and Sanzenri during the 1980s. Through this comparison, it aims to analyze how media discourse on Korea varied depending on the publishing body and to clarify the cultural impact these media had on perceptions of Korea and Japan.

The main character of Yu Jin-oh's(兪鎭午) short story “Memories of Shanghai” (1931) gets to meet Seo Young-Sang, a Chinese friend he acquainted during his study in Japan, in Shanghai by chance, and then unexpectedly stumbles onto a conspiracy. After spending several days in Chinese prison, he is freed to return home but finds out that Mr. Seo was executed while he was in the prison.

In the 1931 edition of “Memories of Shanghai,” there is a scene where the main character gets to hear the song called 'International' in the prison to which, failing to meet Seo Young-Sang, he was taken by unidentified assailants. But in the 1939 edition, the word 'International' is deleted. The reason for the deletion was probably because of self-censorship against ideological suppression. In the work, the date on which the main character was taken to the prison by somebody is clearly stipulated as January 17. And January 17, 1931 is the day Five Martyrs of the League of Left-Wing Writers (左聯五烈士) including Rou Shi(柔石) and Yin Fu (殷夫) were arrested by the Chinese Nationalist Party(國民黨 or KMT). Yu Jin-oh, imagining ideological solidarity between Korean main character and China's left-wing writers, was attempting to combine his passion for political ideal transcending nation and language with the date of ‘January 17' into an entity.

Having written socially critical novels ever since his debut in the literary circles in late 1920s, Yu Jin-oh transformed himself to take on the mantle of reality-embracement after experiencing political persecution through the 'Research Institute of Korean Society' incident (朝鮮社會硏究所事件). In that sense, “Memories of Shanghai,” announced in 1931, can be regarded as the work written when his radical political awareness was at its height.

2005년 한일 수교 40주년에 발표된 소설 『사랑한 후에 오는 것들』(공지영・츠지 히토나리)은 양국 간의 화해와 우호를 남녀의 사랑 이야기로 형상화한 기념비적 성격을 지닌 텍스트다. 이 소설은 한일 인물의 만남과 이별, 재회를 그림으로써, 양국을 상징하는 인물이 정치적, 역사적 갈등을 넘어 상호 이해와 공감으로 나아가는 서사적 전략을 취하고 있다. 특히 역사적, 민족적 의식의 틀 안에서 일본을 바라보던 여주인공 최홍과 이웃나라인 한국에 대해 무관심했던 아오키 준고가 우연히 마주하게 됨으로써, 점차 서로의 존재를 이해하며 사랑의 결실을 맺게 된다는 것이 로맨스의 핵심 동기로 자리하고 있다.

그런데 2024년 동명의 드라마로 재해석된 서사는 원작의 기본 줄거리를 유지하면서도, 인물의 행동 동기나 이야기의 분위기 면에서 뚜렷한 변화를 보인다. 소설의 경우와는 달리 드라마의 여주인공은 과거사나 민족 정체성과 같은 무거운 문제의식보다는 세련된 이미지나 취미에 이끌려 도쿄로 향하며, 그 타지에서의 생활은 일상의 연장선으로 자연스럽게 묘사된다. 이러한 변주는 단지 매체 전환에서 야기된 차이라기보다, 지난 20년간의 한일 문화적 지형 변화를 반영한 시대적 감각의 변동으로 이해할 수 있다.

실제로 2000년대 중반 이후 한일 관계는 정치적으로 반복된 갈등 국면에도 불구하고, 문화 영역에서는 일상적 접촉과 감각적 친밀성이 강화되는 양상을 보였다. 글로벌 자본, 디지털 미디어, 관광의 일상화는 양국의 대도시 간 유사성을 확장시켰고, 드라마는 이를 배경으로 사랑 이야기를 재구성한다. 작중에서 서울과 도쿄는 더 이상 민족적 차이가 부각되는 공간이 아니라, 서로를 닮은 도시적 일상의 공간으로 변모했으며, 인물 간의 관계 역시 ‘한국인과 일본인’이 아닌 ‘서울 사람과 도쿄 사람’의 만남으로 재편된다.

따라서 원작 소설이 역사적 인식의 차이나 정체성의 충돌을 극복하는 과정을 중심에 놓았다면, 드라마는 그러한 무게감을 덜어내고 범속한 두 남녀의 연애 과정을 그리는데 치중한다. 민족적 차이가 주된 갈등의 요소로서 더이상 기능하지 않게 됨으로써, 두 인물에게 부여되었던 역사적 상징성은 약화되는 한편, 두 인물의 관계가 지속될 개연성은 오히려 강화된다. 이는 한일 젊은 세대의 문화 교류가 더 이상 국가 간 우호라는 정치적 프레임에 갇히지 않고, 도시적 감각과 일상적 접촉의 층위에서 새로운 관계성을 형성하고 있음을 보여준다.

〈사랑 후에 오는 것들〉의 이러한 변주는 한일 문화 교류의 주체와 감각이 어떻게 달라졌는지를 보여주는 지표라 할 수 있다. 역사적, 민족적 정체성의 차이를 전제로 했던 오랜 대화 방식에서 서로 닮아 있는 문화적 유사성에서 갈등을 풀어나가는 새로운 대화 방식으로, 한일 커뮤니케이션 양상이 점차 변화해 온 과정이 이 소설 및 드라마의 시차 속에서 구체적으로 가시화된 셈이다.

From the seminal works of Moretti onward, the evolutionary approach has been central to the field of distant reading, offering a large-scale, data-driven framework for understanding the historical development of literary forms. However, equating literary evolution with natural selection poses major methodological challenges, particularly in modeling the ‘environment’ in which literary forms circulate and compete. This environment comprises multiple overlapping dimensions —social, political, economic, and more— whose effects are difficult to isolate and assess empirically. In my work, I focus on one of these dimensions, drawing from Bourdieu’s theory to model literary reception as staged within a social field. I then turn to Digital Social Reading platforms —specifically Goodreads— which, by combining the functionalities of a social network (making friends, following users, joining groups) and a book cataloging system (reviewing, rating, creating lists), provides an empirical basis for studying the social landscape of literary reception.

Through network analysis, I identify distinct reader communities characterized by coherent taste patterns that emerge and stabilize over time. By contrasting trends in readers’ choices within a specific community against a null model of cultural drift, I test whether genre preferences evolve due to value-driven selection or stochastic imitation dynamics. The findings suggest that while cultural drift plays a role, selective pressures within reader communities actively shape literary preferences, particularly in the rise and decline of specific genres. Ultimately, this study models one of the key ways in which the social environment drives literary change —by forming niches that exert a detectable selective pressure over the literary landscape, favoring certain forms, or genres, over others.

Stylometric authorship attribution is the task of assigning texts of unknown, pseudonymous or disputed authorship to their most likely author, often based on a comparison of the frequency of a selected set of features that represent texts. The way stylometric methods typically approach authorship attribution is to use the frequencies of a large number of simple features, such as words or character sequences, to determine of the degree of similarity between texts. These similarities, in turn, are interpreted as an indicator of the likelihood for two texts to have been written by the same author: the more similar the feature vectors, the more likely is identical authorship.

The parameters of the analysis, such as feature selection and the choice of similarity measure or classification algorithm, have received significant attention in the past. Two additional key factors for the performance and reliability of stylometric methods, however, are corpus composition and corpus language. They are relevant not only for the results in a specific case, but also for the overall performance and reliability of stylometric methods of authorship attribution. Therefore, the aim of ongoing research by our group is to disentangle the influence of corpus composition and language on the performance of stylometric authorship attribution: To what extent do the attribution accuracy and robustness of such approaches depend on the language of the materials, on the one hand, and on corpus composition, on the other? How do these two factors interact with each other, and how do they interact with feature selection?

This paper reports on results relevant for one part of this issue, that of language, by investigating four distinct but broadly comparable corpora in a classification scenario. In order to investigate the role of language independently of corpus composition, all four corpora were automatically translated into the other three languages using the DeepL machine translation system.

We can show that corpora of different language and composition lead to different attribution accuracy levels and different best-performing features, an expected result. We can also show that translated corpora (at least when all texts have been translated by the same machine translation system) usually lead to a lower attribution accuracy, overall, compared to their counterpart in the original language.

We will also report on preliminary results concerning the second part of the question, namely the influence of corpus composition on attribution accuracy, also in a multilingual setting. Here, we aim to show that using corpora composed of texts with high within-author similarity of texts and low between-author similarity of texts, in terms of basic metadata (such as author gender, subgenre, narrative perspective, or time of composition) generally leads to higher attribution accuracy than when the inverse is true (low within-author similarity and high between-author similarity).

Un nouvel outil numérique de visualisation est proposé pour l’analyse des textes littéraires dans une perspective comparative, à partir d’une approche novatrice. Il offre une lecture à distance particulière dans la mesure où il ne s’applique ni à une grande masse de données ni à un large corpus de textes à la fois, mais à un seul texte, dont il ne retient que la dimension visuelle, indépendamment de sa mise en page. Cette forme visuelle du texte est façonnée par les paragraphes et les chapitres, qui rythment le texte en fonction de leur longueur respective.

Un logiciel, Narra 2.0, a été développé afin de mesurer ces longueurs textuelles successives et générer un tableau de mesures, donc une suite numérique à partir de laquelle sont produites des données statistiques et, grâce à des algorithmes, des visualisations. Ces dernières montrent ainsi le rythme du texte en fonction de la longueur de ses paragraphes ou de ses chapitres, soit la fréquence des changements – et de locuteurs et de thèmes – dans le texte, une dynamique propre à l’écrit.

Cette méthodologie offre la possibilité de comparer les textes dans le temps (au fil des éditions), dans l’espace (de diverses régions géographiques) et pour un même auteur ou courant littéraire. Elle permet également d’appliquer la méthode éprouvée des atlas – stellaires du XIXe et XXe siècles –, aux recherches comparatives. À titre d’exemple, Un Atlas des spectres de textes littéraires, a confirmé l’existence d’une corrélation entre la longueur des paragraphes et le genre littéraire ou la période d’écriture.

If Lotman speaks of “symbolic meaning” as a simple synonym for significance, Umberto Eco prefers to speak of “symbolic mode” to underline that symbols are not qualitatively different signs but signs that are used in a particular way, which is symbolic. In short, the symbolic mode is a semantic-pragmatic attitude, particularly recurrent in certain contexts (for example those steeped in mysticism). What we would like to argue is that the symbolic mode, if on the one hand always opens to the risk of vagueness, on the other – precisely because it opens up different interpretative paths–- allows “meetings” of communities of interpretation, and for this reason it appears particularly functional and strategic in certain contexts that have the very purpose of creating communities: religious discourse, political discourse, memorial discourse…

Migrating from literary (authorial) texts to collective impersonal contexts, symbols take on a further cultural function: memorial and connective.

This research examines the polyphonic interplay of motifs across folklore, focusing on the figures of Odin from Norse mythology and Ali Kishi from the Kor-oğlu epic. While Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony traditionally applies to literary texts, we extend its principles to folkloric narratives, where distinct yet interconnected voices and motifs form a dialogical relationship. Central to this exploration is Bakhtin's idea of dialogue as a tension between the Self and the Other (Bakhtin, 1963), enabling the comparison of cross-cultural narratives.

Key to this study is the motif of the horse as a reflection of the hero’s alter ego, encapsulated in the Turkic saying: “The horse is to the man as the wing is to the bird,” as noted by Mahmud Kashgari in his 11th-century dictionary. Françoise Aubin further articulates this idea, stating that in Turkic and Mongolian epics, the horse represents the hero’s double.

This duality is also evident in the Northern saga, where Odin, disgusted as an old man, guides Sigurd to select his legendary horse, Grani. The selection process, involving driving horses to a river where one exceptional steed emerges, mirrors the episode in the Kor-oğlu epic, where Ali Kishi, a blind figure akin to Odin, facilitates the selection of a magical horse. These parallels highlight recurring motifs of blindness, guidance, and the union of terrestrial and celestial realms, as embodied in the horse’s symbolic significance.

By comparing these narratives, the research underscores how shared themes and motifs traverse cultural boundaries, enriching our understanding of polyphonic storytelling within folklore and its dialogical engagement across traditions.

Modern semiotics pays special attention to the concept of enunciation, in particular markers of subjectivity and polyphonic discourse. The view of enunciation as an act or process has become the central problem of Paris Semiotic School in recent decades.

Jean-Claude Coquet, the creator of subjective semiotics, suggests moving away from the opposition “statement/ enunciation” (Coquet, 1984) and considering enunciation as a synonym for meaning in general.

And Marion Colas-Blaise introduces the concept of “trans- enunciation” as a phenomenon that permeates semantic layers at different semiotic levels: literary text, photo, video clip, etc. (Colas-Blaise, 2023).

The connection between the phenomenon of polyphony and the concept of enunciation in literary texts was noted by Mikhail Bakhtin (1963) and Oswald Ducros (1984). However, the problem of expressing a polyphonic enunciation in a theatrical context remains little studied. Meanwhile, theatrical semiotics is a special area of the sign world. According to Yu. M. Lotman (1989), in the theater, “everything is semiotics,” from makeup and facial expressions to the norms of behavior of the spectator in the auditorium, from the theater stage to the ritualized theatrical atmosphere.

We propose to look at the problem of theatrical enunciation through the prism of the concept of truth. The actor must treat the words he speaks “as truth, that is, turn lies into truth” (Vakhtangov, 1918), and this attitude underlies the “fantastic realism” movement, like the second voice in a polyphonic work. The truthfulness of the statement can also become a metadiscourse technique, as in the case of films about theater (the leitmotif If I could tell you ... in the film by Marina Merkoulova and Alexander Myagchenkov “The Way Home. Vakhtangov Chronicles”, 2023).

This research examines the polyphonic interplay of motifs across folklore, focusing on the figures of Odin from Norse mythology and Ali Kishi from the Kor-oğlu epic. While Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony traditionally applies to literary texts, we extend its principles to folkloric narratives, where distinct yet interconnected voices and motifs form a dialogical relationship. Central to this exploration is Bakhtin's idea of dialogue as a tension between the Self and the Other (Bakhtin, 1963), enabling the comparison of cross-cultural narratives.

Key to this study is the motif of the horse as a reflection of the hero’s alter ego, encapsulated in the Turkic saying: “The horse is to the man as the wing is to the bird,” as noted by Mahmud Kashgari in his 11th-century dictionary. Françoise Aubin further articulates this idea, stating that in Turkic and Mongolian epics, the horse represents the hero’s double.

This duality is also evident in the Northern saga, where Odin, disgusted as an old man, guides Sigurd to select his legendary horse, Grani. The selection process, involving driving horses to a river where one exceptional steed emerges, mirrors the episode in the Kor-oğlu epic, where Ali Kishi, a blind figure akin to Odin, facilitates the selection of a magical horse. These parallels highlight recurring motifs of blindness, guidance, and the union of terrestrial and celestial realms, as embodied in the horse’s symbolic significance.

By comparing these narratives, the research underscores how shared themes and motifs traverse cultural boundaries, enriching our understanding of polyphonic storytelling within folklore and its dialogical engagement across traditions.

Keywords: Polyphony, Odin and Ali Kishi, Magical Horse Motif, Cross-Cultural Folklore, Symbolism in Epics

This article explores Adam Mickiewicz’s poem “Aryman i Oromaz” through a polyphonic lens, focusing on his interpretation of the concepts of “good” and “evil.” The author seeks, through analysis, to uncover the diverse sources that informed Mickiewicz’s poetic vision, examining the artistic features of the poem and the concepts it conveys. This poem is part of Mickiewicz’s “Oriental Flowers” cycle, which includes poetic translations from Arabic poetry, and it specifically addresses a fragment from the French translation of the Avesta. This fragment describes the cosmogonic views of Zoroastrianism, particularly its understanding of the creation of the world and the cosmic order. Influenced by his understanding of the holy text, Mickiewicz attempts to reconstruct the religious tradition’s foundational imagery for the Polish audience.

For Mickiewicz, this topic is central not only to affirming his own worldview, where the triumph of good over evil is a core theme but also to aligning his personal experiences with the teachings of Zoroastrianism. In his engagement with an ancient and foreign religious narrative, Mickiewicz finds resonance with his values, beliefs, and life experiences. The analysis of the poem reveals how the poet adheres to the core plot of the French translation while shaping his own vision of the issue, deeply rooted in his moral and ethical values. Through this process, Mickiewicz creates a complex narrative that transcends a mere translation, transforming it into a creative reinterpretation that reflects his personal and cultural perspectives.

Some elements in the poem, which reflect key concepts from the translated text, suggest that Mickiewicz initially intended a straightforward translation of the original text. However, as the process progressed, his interpretation began to take precedence, leading to a deeper, more individualized reading. This points to the polyphonic nature of the work, where multiple voices, including those of the original religious tradition, Mickiewicz’s thoughts, and the cultural and historical contexts, interact to form a rich and multifaceted interpretation. Thus, Mickiewicz’s poem should be viewed not merely as a translation but as a reimagining of the original text, reinterpreted through a new artistic and philosophical context.

Myths that we know today as fantastical fiction started out as accounts believed to be realist. Greek myths over the years have, after centuries of change, reached a stage when certain myths can be considered standard since they are the ones that survived the test of time and made a place for themselves. The research aims to explore Greek myths through the texts of Madeline Miller which revisit the famous Greek myths that find authenticity in Homer’s version of the same, dealing with Odysseus and Achilles. The primary texts acting as a doorway to these are Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. The research proposes to unravel the symbols used in the texts, the dialogic narrative they build around the already popular myths, and their function in the formation of a culture. Revisionist mythmaking as a genre has evolved over the years and has made a place for itself in the literary sphere. Miller’s version of the myths explores the sidelined characters and develops their story around the main characters from the parent myths. This revisioning adds a new dimension to the myths and a new perspective for the readers to explore.

This study analyzes Jongmyo Shrine, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in Korea, through the lens of Lotman's semiotic theory of space. Drawing on his concepts of cultural boundaries, spatial hierarchy, and the dynamic interplay between center and periphery, the study explores how Jongmyo's spatial organization embodies and reinforces Confucian principles. The shrine's architecture, with its emphasis on transitional spaces and the role of light, is interpreted as a semiotic system that facilitates the transformation of meaning and the creation of a sacred atmosphere. Furthermore, the presentation examines how Jongmyo's horizontal expansion over time reflects Lotman's notion of cultural texts as dynamic, evolving structures, signifying continuity and eternity. By investigating the interaction between physical structure and ritual performance through this framework, this study sheds light on Jongmyo's significance as a living semiotic text that transmits cultural memory and reinforces ideological values across generations.

The encoding and decoding of a text, akin to the chess puzzle of memory devised by Nabokov, represent a dialogue between reader and writer. Should either party fail to communicate, the symbols lose their efficacy. Symbols in a text typically inhabit a liminal space where positions of similarity and divergence converge, generating an exchange of experiences. Beyond humanity’s "known" domain, writers fixate on the unintelligible and uncodifiable—the unstable elements adrift within chaotic order. From Nabokov’s Speak, Memory to contemporary author Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory, readers confront deviant clues—erratic signposts that paradoxically evoke existential authenticity. When conventional interpretive frameworks falter, readers must realign with the writer’s logic, enacting a form of symbolic rewriting. This rewriting redirects memory toward alternative hermeneutic pathways, unveiling silenced voices buried beneath historical ruins. We maintain that writers still desire the dialogue to persist; The volatile constituents within petrified systems catalyze symbolic renewal—a writerly act of dismantling monologic hierarchies, thereby emancipating readers from epistemic cul-de-sacs and reorienting them toward polyphony. Updating the symbolic system renews the textual world-model. An obsolete world-model—marked by the erasure of the Other and the hegemony of a singular center—perpetuates injustice in memory, rendering memory of the silent ones uninhabitable. Symbolic reconstruction thus carries redemptive significance, emphasis on polyphonic systemic interplay resonates with Habermas’s concept of the lifeworld. Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory summons the resurrection of the Other and the reconstitution of fragmented wholes. Her marked symbols guide readers into memory’s shadowed zones to recover those drowned by oppressive narratives, confronting the aftermath of 20th-century Otherness-erasure and step into a new world model.

By the nineteenth century, silent reading had replaced reading aloud in Europe. In this context, depiction of ‘loud reading’ in works of European writers acquired new meanings. Apart from numerous functions identified by Eric de Haard, such as moving the plot, character representation, prose embellishment, such episodes may serve metatextually, as a means of shaping the literary canon. Though obviously influenced by the existing canon, fellow co-writers aspire to channel their literary views through citing other authors. The present paper analyses reading episodes in Charlotte Brontë’s novels. I argue that in Brontë’s oeuvre reciting is used as a metatextual gesture intending to broadcast the writer’s preferences. The presence of so many books mentioned in passing, without referring to their authors, stresses the importance of the episodes where the writers are named, let alone those where their works are read out loud. Brontë’s deployment of different techniques to acquaint her readers with them – direct or transformed citing, retelling, declamation, summarizing – indicates that she carefully chose methods of inserting pieces by other writers. Taken together, these recited passages form the nucleus of the canon as Brontë perceives it. Considering literary discussions in which her characters are engaged and their expressed preference of national literature (Shakespeare, Scott, Cowper), of particular interest are the episodes where her characters cite from foreign sources. As these insertions may be regarded as examples of heteroglossia, both linguistic and authorial, reciting foreign works may be seen as an attempt to shape the literary canon parallel to the national one. Among other functions, Brontë’s use of foreign literature serves as a vehicle for cultural exchange, highlighting the interconnectedness of European literary traditions. By incorporating German and French drama, poetry, and balladry, Brontë positions her work within a cosmopolitan literary framework. This strategy not only elevates the cultural capital of her novels but also challenges the insularity of the English literary canon (which is so vivid in Jane Austen’s novels), advocating for a more inclusive and dialogic approach to literature. Charlotte Brontë’s use of characters’ reading and recitation transcends the boundaries of narrative technique, serving as a metatextual gesture that shapes and critiques the literary canon. Through her careful selection and integration of texts – both English and foreign – Brontë constructs a nuanced vision of literary value that reflects her aspirations as a writer and cultural mediator. By inviting the reader to engage with these works, she not only enriches her narratives but also fosters a deeper appreciation for the diversity and dynamism of the literary tradition.

本文从文学文化角度探讨如何与中国银龄群体共同营造“未来花园”，以应对老龄化社会的需求。通过分析浪漫主义文化背景、文学理论以及实际案例，结合AeX研究团队的园宇宙万象共植项目，探讨如何通过实际养花、种植类植物、精神花园和数字元宇宙的结合，为中国老年人创造一个专属的社群空间，丰富他们的精神生活，促进文学文化的交流与传播。特别突出作者在项目中的具体工作和贡献，包括运营、植物诗歌分享和数据整理等，并展望后续工作，以水仙花为例，探讨其文化寓意和活动策划。

The purpose of this research is to study the stories and memories of oppressed women, to present and analyse the characteristics of women's narratives and memories. In order to appreciate the limits of memory that autobiographical reconstructions are subject to, it is important to remember that memories are complex constructions, not records of reality, and that both individual and cultural memories are imaginative reconstructions of past events. Because memories are reconstructed from the relevant present, they say more about the present needs of the narrator or autobiographer than about any event in the past life of the autobiographical subject.

The aim of the research is to identify and analyse the significance and limitations of memory in the narratives of oppressed women, the narration of experiences and the influence of a specific socio-historical environment and cultural affiliation on the construction of self-narrative identity. The short stories of Nutsa Ghoghoeberidze (collection "Train of Happiness") and oral histories of oppressed women ("Lost History-Memory of Oppressed Women") were selected as research objects.

Paul Eakin's concept of relational identity was chosen as the theoretical framework for the research, emphasising that our news is not always self-chosen, but that we are involved in it because we belong to a particular culture. The narratisation of experience and the construction of narrative identity are determined by culture.

Aleida Assman's three forms of memory stabilisation - Assman identifies three forms of memory stabilisation: affect, symbol and trauma.

Fukugō-Osen (Compound Pollution), written by a Japanese female author Sawako Ariyoshi (1931-1984), is a newspaper novel serialized in Asahi Shimbun from 1974 to 1975. It covers the effects of chemicals on the human body and the environment, including pesticides, food additives, factory effluents, and synthetic detergents. Ariyoshi, known for her bestselling novels in post-war Japan, spent more than 10 years researching and interviewing experts to write this novel. While this novel appealed to a wide readership, it faced strong rebuttals from the government, scientists, and industries.

This presentation explores a dialogue between literature and science by female writers through a comparative analysis of Compound Pollution and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). In Compound Pollution, the author refers to Silent Spring as a novel by a female writer who successfully demonstrated the dangers of chemicals such as DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), even in the face of criticism by male scientists. She anticipates that similar criticisms will be leveled at herself for writing Compound Pollution.

In the 1970s, environmental awareness and the grassroots consumer movement spread among Japanese women. After witnessing the outbreak of Minamata disease in the 1960s, it became clear that advances in science, technology, and economics would have a serious impact on the environment. With the rapid development of scientific technologies and the use of chemical products in everyday life, Ariyoshi describes the difficulty of proving the safety of using chemicals and critiques scientific positivism. Using the format of a newspaper novel and a conversational style, she aimed to write not an accusation or warning but an “easy-to-understand and interesting” story to make people aware of the “truth.”

After her short novel was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize in 1956, Ariyoshi energetically published novels, plays, and reportage as a popular writer in the 1960s and 1970s. With the rise of mass media, many of her works have been adapted into movies and television dramas. This study will clarify the position of Compound Pollution in her broader body of works and the background of its creation. Compound Pollution is a novel that uses experimental media, genre, and style as a female writer to communicate scientific knowledge to the general reader.

Abstrast

This article explores the development of comparative research in Uzbek literary studies, focusing on its historical evolution and the contributions of key scholars. Initiated in the latter half of the 20th century, comparative research has advanced significantly, incorporating the works of prominent Uzbek authors in a global literary context. The study highlights Navoi's "Khamsa," literary relations between Uzbek and world literature, and significant figures such as Abdullah Qahhor and Jack London. It examines genre-specific studies, such as autobiographical confessions, through a comparative analysis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Leo Tolstoy, revealing universal themes of morality, self-reflection, and cultural values. The article underscores the significance of comparative literature as a method to deepen understanding of national and global literary heritage.

Angela Carter is famous for her subversive writings, her exuberant allusiveness to fairy tales and Gothic tales, and above all, her dazzling postmodernist techniques in bringing everything together. Incorporating Gothic and postmodernist techniques, Carter’s fairy-tale writings demonstrate her unparalleled originality and wide-ranging literary influences. While postmodern Gothic characterizes Carter’s generic style, fairy tale constitutes the structural principle.

Noticeably, Carter’s postmodern Gothic fairy tales are permeated with Oriental elements and references. Based on close reading and contextualization, this thesis sets to extract the “Orient” from Carter’s postmodern Gothic fairy tales, probing into its formation and interpreting its significance. On the one hand, as a literary element, the Orient is historically interwoven with the Gothic literary tradition in presenting Western imagination of the other. On the other hand, with the rise of postmodernism and critique of Orientalism, this “Orient” constructed by Eurocentrism was and is still under deconstruction. Given that Carter is highly conscious of both critical theories and her own creative writings, her (re)presentation of the Orient comes not as a mimicry of tradition, but a deliberate divergence from the traditional orientalist discourse which allows further critical reflection of it.

In order to address the issue in a more specific context, this thesis also looks into Carter’s individual perspective with special attention to her experience in Japan and the self-professed political commitment of her writings, aiming to qualify Carter’s (re)representation of the Orient and her conscious engagement with orientalist discourse by writing back in a subversive way. The Orient is aesthetically significant to Carter’s postmodern Gothic style, and most importantly, it is politically relevant to Carter’s “decolonialising” project and “demythologising business”.

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, an English-language travelogue about China's food, cities, and customs and culture published by British author Fuchsia Dunlop in 2008, has sparked a strong reaction overseas, and is of great significance to the international dissemination of Chinese culture, especially Chinese secular culture. Currently, domestic and international research on the book focuses on translation studies and cross-cultural communication paths, and little has been done on its study of Chinese secular culture writing. However, it is precisely Chinese secular culture that has triggered Fuchsia, as a cultural "other", to open up multiple reflections on cross-cultural identity, thus promoting the deeper dissemination of Chinese secular culture. This paper takes the Chinese secular culture writing in Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper as the object of study, summarizes the contents and characteristics of Chinese secular culture writing, and then explores the significance of Chinese secular culture for the overseas dissemination of Chinese culture as well as cross-cultural identity under the wave of globalization. The paper is divided into three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction introduces the object and background of the study, the current status of research at home and abroad, as well as the research methodology and significance. The main text consists of three chapters: Chapter 1 first clarifies the content and value of Chinese secular culture, and elaborates on the practical possibilities of Chinese secular culture for the overseas dissemination of Chinese culture; Chapter 2 summarizes the Chinese secular culture written in Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, which includes dietary culture, urban culture, and rural customs, and analyses what kind of cross-cultural reflections these secular cultures have triggered in the author; and Chapter 3 goes on to explore the characteristics and cultural significance of Chinese popular culture in cross-cultural communication. At the level of value identity, Fuchsia's attitude towards Chinese secular culture, including food culture, has changed from "shock" to "recognition"; at the level of cross-cultural identity, Fuchsia has pursued and rebuilt her self-worth in the process of learning Chinese culture, and completed a journey of cultural roots in the perspective of globalization, and confirmed her own cultural identity in the context of globalization, and re-recognized herself. In terms of cross-cultural identity, Fuchsia traces and rebuilds her self-worth in the process of learning Chinese culture, completes a cultural root-searching journey under the perspective of globalization, and confirms her own cultural identity in the context of globalization to know herself again. The conclusion summarizes the whole study and draws conclusions. This paper argues that the writing of Chinese secular culture in Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper highlights the unique value of secular culture in Sino-foreign cultural exchanges, such as its popularity, acceptability, wide dissemination, and two-way interaction, in order to stimulate the thinking and transformation of the cultural identity of the "other", to make the Chinese culture deeply involved in the identity thinking under the tide of globalization, to promote the deep-level dissemination of Chinese culture, and at the same time, to confirm her own cultural identity in the context of globalization, and to re-know herself. This will enable Chinese culture to be deeply involved in the identity thinking under the wave of globalization, promote the deep-level dissemination of Chinese culture, and at the same time enable Chinese readers to re-examine their own cultural traditions in a roundabout way from an external perspective. This is of great academic value and practical significance for exploring the choice of content and the tendency of the path of Chinese culture spreading overseas.

This paper examines modernity through Tash Aw’s portrayal of intra-Asian migrant subject-making, where diaspora is reconstructed within the evolving narrative of neoliberal urbanity. By centering Malaysian migrants as neo-urban dwellers in Shanghai, Five Star Billionaire deconstructs diasporic paradigms, foregrounding urban nostalgia as the emotional labor of navigating the simultaneity of Asian modernity and late capitalism. Through the layering of uneven temporalities onto Shanghai’s urban fabric, the novel envisions a diasporic futurity—where homecoming is both desired and deferred, modernity is continually disarticulated and rearticulated through nostalgia. Aw’s deconstruction thus reframes diaspora within a broader Global South affiliation, mapping Shanghai’s precarious position in the world-system.

Aw visualizes how late capitalism “lives” in Shanghai by paralleling his five characters’ fragmented and classed socio-economic conditions. By embedding their nostalgia within Shanghai’s materiality, Aw reconstructs diasporic longing as a force complicit in exclusionary urban belonging. Rather than enabling resistance, nostalgia turns inward, becoming self-referential or melancholic mourning. For Justin, nostalgia is narcissistic yet politically precarious—it distances him from his family’s “across Asia” real estate expansions but remains entangled in class hierarchies. His aestheticized vision of longtang and slums romanticizes spaces of historical erasure and labor exploitation, reinforcing urban nostalgia’s complicity in producing “old Shanghai” as a commodified, exoticized spectacle. Meanwhile, Phoebe’s performative cosmopolitanism and Yinghui’s entrepreneurial feminism exemplify neoliberalism’s absorption of nostalgia, where longing and belonging is reframed into narratives of self-reinvention and elite mobility. When situated within Shanghai’s materiality, nostalgia’s fragility is weaponized—reinforcing elitism, regionalism, and a cosmopolitanism that is paradoxically inclusive and exclusionary.

The characters’ nostalgia thus illuminates the city’s historical negotiations, where past, present, and future are relentlessly rehearsed and reproduced in unresolved tension. Aw’s narrative of “reinvention of the self” parallels the city’s continuous reinvention of modernity. Through this dialogue, Aw captures Shanghai’s urbanity—a resilient living force that nostalgically longs for its cosmopolitan glamour of the 1930s while simultaneously navigating semi-colonial remnants, socialist experiments, condensed modernization, and neoliberal accelerations. By situating Shanghai within a glocalized framework while downplaying its national identity, Aw suggests the potential for an urban identity that transcends temporal zones and national boundaries. Yet, the unresolved trajectories of his characters reflect his ambivalence toward Shanghai’s metropolitan future.

Drawing on WReC, Jameson, Benjamin, and Boym, this paper challenges the unhistorical “achieved” Western modernity by presenting geopolitical variants born in the hyper-localities of Asia. By interrogating diaspora and metropolis “simultaneous” with Asian modernity, this paper examines the full “worlding” of capital as positioned within “world-literature.” Situating Shanghai within a comparative lens, this study traces the localized expressions of modernity across East and West, considering their distinct cultural histories, modernization trajectories, ideological constructs, and neoliberal conditioning.

Literary critics have not often shown interest in Rabindranath Tagore’s views on Buddhism. This has resulted in his most outstanding Buddhist drama not being fully explored. Chandalika differs greatly from the other Buddhist dramas in the world in the depth of its Buddhist view. 　

Tagore’s Chandalika is based on “Sardulkarna-Abadan,” which focuses on an orthodox Buddhist concept of the ascetic path to self-emancipation. Tagore changes the focus and dramatizes a Bodhisattva path which prioritizes the liberation of all sentient beings without seeking self-emancipation.

In “Sardulkarna Abadan” Prakriti who is fascinated by Ananda’s beauty asks her mother to use her magical power to allure him. Thanks to Buddha’s help, Ananda goes back to his temple. In Tagore’s story Ananda comes back to Prakriti for her emancipation.

Ananda says to her, “Give me water” which suggests his respect for an outcaste girl, who belongs to the most dehumanized caste. His words cause Prakriti’s awakening. They also arouse in her a burning longing for him. Prakriti wants to make an offer of worship for him, but he does not come. Under her mother’s magic spell, Ananda is forced to turn toward her. Using magical power is like churning mud, but Prakriti believes that mud can never be purified without churning it. This mud signifies the walls of categorization and segmentation. Tagore describes Ananda’s anger as well as suffering and conflict because his anger should destroy the mud walls which distinguish self from others, the fetter of sacred and secular dualism so that the falsehood of Prakriti’s birth will be shattered.

Ananda’s calling makes her believe that she has boundless pure water within her. When the handful of water she gave to him mingles with his holy vow it becomes one fathomless boundless sea, which washes away her fate as a Chandalini, a curse worse than the gallows. She believes that her mortal pain is the gift she offers for Ananda’s vow. Anand suffers from intense fire, but he has to incorporate her sufferings for her emancipation.

In the end he comes to her, his body bearing the load of the soul’s defeat. Ananda was dragged down to her earth, but she believes that without his fall and defeat she can never be raised. He can never be freed when she is not. Ananda’s passage to the Bodhisattva is interrelated with Prakriti’s emancipation.

Ananda’s coming to her creates Prakriti’s new life as well as his release from the mud wall of segregation. Ananda’s love awakens Prakriti’s revelation and her self-abandoning worship for Ananda, which helps Ananda break the fetters of his ascetic approach and take a step toward a bodhisattva’s enlightenment.

Theory of world literature used to stand extensively on the premises of translatability and readability through which works of literature become recognized as world literature. However, one alternative avenue of theoretical investigation for the ways literatures achieve global avowal is through the other chances offered by ‘misreading’ ‘mistranslation’ and ‘untranslatability.’ Untranslatability is a relatively new means of inspection in literary studies and criticism, which revisits the act of translation by re-considering the moments of failure, resistance, and impossibility of translation. If translatability has been regarded as the only and secure road to synthesize globally recognized literature, yet untranslatability might also enhance the possibility of supplementing literary worldliness. The article tests and investigates the chances of universalizing and canonizing literature through the spectrum of misreading and mistranslation by applying such notions in the cases of Borges and Kafka.

Genocide. Specicide. Ecocide. Tierracide: these paradigms involving the massive devastation of our planet in the Anthropocene haunt contemporary cultural production and, as I want to show in this paper, reflect what the Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht calls ‘perverse resilience’ and the ‘death of resilience.’ My paper traces this death of resilience via scenarios of human/non-human animal entanglements in the biopolitically real convergence of mass slaughter of animals and human genocide and how world literature responds to this. In "The Rings of Saturn" (1995), for example, a literary perambulation across East Anglia, the German-British author W.G. Sebald compares the mass extermination of herrings with the horrors of colonialism in Belgian Congo and the Holocaust. In North American fiction, genocide of the Indigenous people and the near-extinction of the bison come together in John Williams’s "Butcher’s Crossing" (1960), Michael Blake’s "Dances with Wolves" (1988), and in Louise Erdrich’s novel "Roundhouse" (2012). Doris Pilkington’s/Nugi Garimara’s memoir "Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence" (1996) explores the interface of the eradication of Australian Indigenous culture and rabbits, a species imported by Europeans and then declared as vermin, and the Chinese author Jian Rong’s novel "Wolf Totem" (2004) deplores the environmental devastation, eradication of wolves, and subsequent destruction of culture in Inner Mongolia as a form of colonial ethnocide.

My work draws on Glenn Albrecht’s discussion of Earth emotions and his negative outlook on any kind of resilience in an age in which eco-alienation keeps increasing in devastating proportions. I do, however, also wish to invoke counter-philosophies such as George Monbiot’s activism for rewilding the planet, Baptiste Morizot’s Wild Diplomacy, and Canadian First Nations scholar Tasha Hubbard’s work on "Singing Back the Buffalo". What are their messages of hope and does contemporary literature also develop these?

The American Sinologist Benjamin Schwartz remarks that the Axial Age is “the age of transcendence”. In line with Schwartz’s argument, Ying-shih Yü observes that, in the Chinese breakthrough, the contrast between the actual world and the transcendental world is much less radical and absolute than that found in other civilizations. Yü considers inwardness to be the defining characteristic of the Chinese conception of transcendence and thus speaks of an “inward transcendence”. Upon closer examination, however, Yü’s rigid dichotomy between the Chinese and Western views of transcendence proves simply unfounded. The notion of inward/immanent transcendence can be considered as a common concept shared by both Chinese and Western intellectual tradition—a rigorous study on its varying forms of concretization in Chinese and Western literary texts will lead us further towards fully understanding its connotations and possible implications for our thinking patterns. In the German novel Zauberberg, Castorp’s is by no means an external transcendence—there is, throughout the story, no indication of the existence of the metaphysical world. The transcendence is immanent in the physical world. The argument that the immanent/inward transcendence is exclusive to the Chinese mind is but another example of essentialist dichotomy.

Contemporary realist writing faces the challenge of reconnecting mimesis with ontology. Historically, as seen in Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, mimesis has been deeply tied to human life-worlds. However, in its current urgent connection with ontology, the focus shifts: life-worlds no longer belong exclusively to humans, nor are they necessarily meaningful in relation to humans. Now, especially after a decisive environmental turn in millennial fiction, one aspect that stands out to me as particularly vital is to pinpoint the writing in which the environment returns in mimesis. A literary theory, challenging human-character-centered approach to literary analysis, favorable to appreciating the form of things-clustered fiction needs to be secured. This project will read three exemplary novels, including Barkskins (2016) by Annie Proulx, The Overstory (2018) by Richard Powers and Migrations (2020) by Charlotte McConaghy. These contemporary novels are mainly realistic in tenor, distinct from the speculative fiction, elevating environmental writings in the novels under discussion to the analysis that can pay due attention to agencies and affordances of human environments. I will explore the argument that the novels under discussion are things-centered fiction, especially in the sense of form. They place the realism of environments at the center and other formal elements such as characterization, and plotting can be understood as derivatives. This things-centered form challenges a blasé cohabitation with environments and in turn highlights the human characters’ capacities—or limitations—for change.

It is rare for a poem to make it into national, let alone international news, and go viral on social media. In 2021, a 22-year-old poet accomplished this: Amanda Gorman recited her spoken word poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Gorman’s occasional poem calls for unity, collaboration, and healing after a period of political turmoil and division. It urges overcoming past difficulties and trauma, honouring history, and moving toward a brighter, more utopian future.

The poem was not only a response to the contested 2020 presidential election and the escalating culture wars; significant parts were written and rewritten in reaction to the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6. Gorman’s vision of hope draws on Afrofuturism and the literary traditions of the African American community, such as signifyin(g)—a hallmark of African American expression—and the religious language of Black sermons. It simultaneously references historical documents, political discourse, and pop culture, creating a blend of pathos and progressiveness. On one hand, the poem resonates with the nation’s past; on the other, it embodies a youthful spirit. As Brandy E. Underwood observes, referencing a popular Twitter hashtag, Gorman’s work delivers “a healthy dose of Black Girl Magic.”

The poem’s impact stemmed not only from the text but also from its connection to a specific moment and place in time, Gorman’s powerful recitation, her symbolic appearance, and persona. These elements coalesced, intertwining intra-, inter-, and extratextual layers in an inseparable way. Given its viral popularity, translations were quickly commissioned worldwide. In Europe, in particular, debates arose over who should translate the poem, raising questions about (i) a translator's ability to translate the poem accurately, (ii) translation ethics, and (iii) the role of identity in both of these. The controversy peaked with the Dutch and Catalan translations, as original translators Marieke Lukas Rijneveld and Víctor Obiols stepped down or withdrew.

This paper explores the aesthetics, politics, and ethics of translating Gorman’s poem, focusing on the role of identity. It examines how elements of Gorman’s work—including her recitation, symbolic appearance, and persona—can be adapted into text. It addresses translational challenges and ethics, referencing debates around Rijneveld and Obiols, and analyses strategies by European publishers in Germany, Sweden, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Expanding on the political and ethical implications of translator selection, the paper then focuses on the German translation by Uda Strätling, Hadija Haruna-Oelker, and Kübra Gümüşay to highlight discursive and linguistic challenges related to race and African American literary traditions.

By reflecting on these aesthetic, political, and ethical dimensions, the paper aims to provoke debate on the translation process. It asks three central questions: (i) To what extent can or should the translator’s identity translate Gorman’s persona? (ii) How do these considerations affect the poem’s interpretation and reception? (iii) Are these issues distinctly European, shaped by colonial and post-colonial dynamics, revealing underlying cultural attitudes toward race and translation ethics?

본 연구는 전근대에 편찬된 경주 지리서 『동경잡기』가 20세기 초에 활자화 및 일본어 번역된 양상에 주목하여, 한국과 일본의 경주 지리서 재편 양상과 간행 배경을 살피는 데에 목적을 두었다. 1910년 한일합병을 전후로 조선으로 이주한 일본인 지식인들은 조선 고서를 수집 및 번역하는 데에 열의를 쏟았다. 일본인들은 조선고서간행회, 조선연구회 등의 연구단체를 설립하여『사씨남정기』, 『평양속지』를 비롯한 다양한 장르의 조선 고서들을 활자화하거나 일본어로 번역하였다. 한편, 이에 대해 최남선(崔南善)은 조선광문회(朝鮮光文會)를 설립하여 조선 고서를 주체적으로 활자화하기 시작했다. 요컨대 1910년을 전후로 조선인과 일본인이 각자 조선 고서를 재편하는 데에 힘썼던 셈이다.

이들의 간행본에 대한 연구자들의 관심은 비교적 이른 시기부터 이어져 왔으나, 그들의 고서 간행은 1920년대에 기획된 조선 고서 시리즈 「통속조선문고」가 다소 개작이 이루어진 것과 달리, 직역 혹은 활자화 자체에 초점을 두었기 때문에 텍스트를 중심으로 한 연구가 적은 실정이다. 그러나 1910년대에 그들이 일정한 목적을 지니고 해당 작품들을 간행한 정황을 살펴보는 일은 일제강점기 초기 양국의 시각 차이를 확인한다는 측면에서 중요한 일이다.

본고는 당대의 고서 재편 양상을 확인하는 작업의 일환으로, 경주 지리서 『동경잡기』의 재편 양상을 확인하고자 하였다. 이에 일본인이 주체로 활동한 조선고서간행회, 조선연구회의 간행본과 조선인이 주체로 활동한 조선광문회의 간행본을 비교 대상으로 삼았다. 세 단체에 의해 공통적으로 간행이 이루어진 조선 고서는 『동경잡기』가 거의 유일하다는 점에서 본 연구는 또한 주목할 만하다.

이에 따라 본고는 세 판본이 원문으로 삼은 『동경잡기』를 추정하고, 이를 재편한 양상을 확인하기로 한다. 예시로, 조선연구회는 서문에서 『동경잡기』의 판본을 두 개 이상 확인하였으며, 조선광문회는 간오(刊誤)를 추가하여 원문의 잘못을 바로잡고자 하였다. 이러한 시도를 텍스트를 중심으로 확인하는 일은 단순히 활자화가 제대로 이루어졌는지를 확인하는 것 이상으로, 고도(古都) 경주를 둘러싼 당대 양국의 시각 차이를 확인할 수 있다는 점에서 의의를 지닌다.

이 연구는 한국의 고대 무속 행위에서부터 죽음을 제재로 한 중세의 한시와 제문, 2010년대 이후 창작된 세월호 문학까지를 경유하여 한국 문학에서 ‘죽음 이후’를 형상화하는 방식을 살핀 후, 올바른 공동체적 애도는 어떠한 모습이어야 하는지를 고민해보는 것을 목표로 한다.

인간은 죽음에 있어서 늘 당사자이며 주변인이다. 죽음은 당사자에게는 일생에서의 마지막 관문을 통과함으로써 삶을 마무리하는 과정이며, 타자의 죽음을 맞닥뜨린 주변인에게는 죽은 이의 부재를 인정한 후 일상을 재건해야 하는 과제를 남긴다. 다시 말해, 인간에게 있어 죽음은 필연적이며 불가피한 것으로서 죽은 자는 죽음의 의례를 무사히 통과하여 존재 변화를 이뤄내야 하고, 산 자는 망자의 죽음을 받아들여야 한다. 이에 각 문화권에서는 죽음을 수용하고 받아들이는 '애도'의 방식이 다양하게 나타나며 사회에 따라 상이한 죽음관을 형성하였다.

그러나 애도는 죽음을 맞이한 당사자와 죽은 자를 마주한 산 자 개인의 차원에서만 이루어지지는 않는다. 특히 전쟁이나 재해, 역병 등으로 인해 다수의 사상자가 발생한 이후, 애도는 공동체의 과업으로 남게 되며 망자를 향한 충분한 예우와 애도 기간을 갖추지 못할 경우 죽음은 사회 구성원들에게 큰 트라우마로 남게 된다. 사회에는 크고 작은 죽음이 매일 자리하며, 따라서 애도를 수행하는 공동체의 방식을 사유하는 일은 인간에게 있어 죽음을 대비하는 일만큼이나 위급하며 중요한 위상을 지닌다고 볼 수 있을 것이다. 이에 이 연구는 한국 사회가 고대부터 현대에 이르기까지 죽은 자를 애도하고 산 자를 위로해 온 방식을 문학의 측면에서 살핌으로써 올바른 공동체적 애도에 대해 고민해보고자 한다.

한국 사회가 망자를 애도하는 가장 오래된 방식은 망자천도굿으로부터 발견할 수 있다. 의례의 형식을 빌려 이뤄지는 굿거리에서 애도는 개인을 넘어 특정 죽음과 의례에 연루된 여러 존재들이 참여하게 된다. 이는 죽음과 애도가 신과 인간, 먼저 죽어 제장에 불려온 여러 망자를 아우르는 '굿 참여자'라는 공동체의 차원에서 이뤄짐을 말하는 것이기도 하다. 사령굿의 전 과정이 이런 모습을 보여주지만, 특히 서울 새남굿의 도령돌기, 함경도 망뭇굿의 타승풀이는 죽음이 망자만의 것이 아니며, 다른 존재들의 도움과 참여로 이뤄짐을 직접적으로 보여준다.

근대의 제문과 한시를 통해서는 공동체가 죽음을 기억하는 방식을 살필 수 있다. 한글 제문은 가족의 죽음을 애도하는 현장에서 읽히는, 현장성 있는 문자 문학이다. 제문에 사용된 서술 전략과 감정 노출의 방식, 애도의 형상은 다수의 선행 연구에서 다루어 온 바 있다. 그러나 이러한 연구는 주로 여성이 작성한 한글 제문에 초점을 맞추어 왔으며, 조선 이후 창작된 제문에는 큰 관심을 가지지 않았다는 점에서 한계를 지닌다. 따라서 이 글에서는 『이승과 저승을 소통하는 한글 제문』에 실린 부모님에 대한 제문을 전체적으로 조망함으로써 기존 제문과의 차이를 살핀 후 남녀 간 애도 방식의 차이 등을 확인하고자 한다. 한편, 한시에서 개인적 죽음을 애도하는 시편들이 어떻게 공동체적 위로의 장으로 확장될 수 있는지를 탐색하고자 한다. 애도시는 특정 개인의 죽음을 계기로 창작되어 시인의 사적 감정이나 개인적 추념에 머무르는 것으로 이해되기 쉽다. 그러나 이러한 시편들은 종종 망자에 대한 단순한 기억을 넘어, 유족과 지인, 나아가 애도를 공유하는 공동체 전체를 염두에 두고 창작된다. 그 과정에서 한시는 상실감을 치유하고 망자에 대한 기억을 환기하며, 위로의 기능을 수행할 수 있다. 이러한 맥락에서 애도시는 단순히 비탄이나 칭양(稱揚)의 정서를 표현하는 데 그치지 않는다. 따라서 애도시를 살피는 일은 애도 수행의 주체가 죽음을 수용하는 방식과 전통적 애도 관습을 따름으로써 죽음에 대한 보편적 공감대가 형성되는 과정을 이해하는 일과 다르지 않을 것이다.

마지막으로, 2010년대 중반부터 현재에 이르기까지 창작된 세월호 문학을 통해 현대 한국 사회에서 유효한 공동체적 애도의 방식을 고민해보고자 한다. 2014년에 있었던 세월호 참사는 304명의 사상자를 발생시키며 현대 한국 사회에 큰 충격을 가져왔다. 특히 세월호 참사는 ‘막을 수 있었던’, 국가에 의한 인재라는 점에서 국민들로 하여금 국가 권력을 불신하도록 했으며, 창작자들에게는 정치적 올바름에 대한 부단한 반성을 수행하도록 했다. 즉 세월호 참사는 한국 사회가 공유하는 하나의 트라우마이자 한국 문학의 한 분기점으로서 개인과 공동체적 삶을 긴밀하게 연결하는 하나의 계기로 작용했으며, 2010년대 중반 이후 세월호를 기억하려는 문학이 꾸준하게 창작되며 애도, 나아가 연대의 장으로 개인을 호명하고 있다. 이 연구에서는 세월호 참사 이후 매달 마지막 주 토요일에 진행되는 ‘304 낭독회’와 34명의 시인이 참여한 ‘생일시’ 프로젝트를 대상으로 세월호 이후의 문학을 톺으며 공동체적 애도의 방식을 고민한 후, 이러한 애도가 망자를 넘어 산 사람을 위로할 수 있는 가능성에 대해 고찰해보고자 한다.

죽음의 필연성과 그에 대한 애도의 필요는 시대를 초월하는 보편 감각이다. 그러나, 동시에 하나의 죽음이 발생한 사회적 · 역사적 맥락에 따라 각 죽음을 수용하고 망자를 배웅하는 애도의 방식은 다양하게 나타날 수 있다. 따라서 이 연구에서는 문학의 장 안에서 텍스트 고유의 특질과 텍스트 외적 맥락에 따라 애도를 수행하는 방식을 살핀 후, 이러한 애도의 관습을 한국 사회 전반으로 확대시켜 공동체적 애도와 윤리에 대해 고민하는 결론으로 나아가고자 한다. 이러한 시도는 '죽음과 그 이후'라는 존재론적 숙명에 대해 시대별 맥락이 함의하는 특수성과, 애도의 다양한 문학적 방식이 시대를 불문하고 재호명될 수 있는 이유를 고찰하는 계기를 마련할 수 있을 것으로 기대한다.

In the educational and cultural services of national museums all over the world, there are often publications aimed at younger audiences or those who are more distant from art history. There are also tourist guides or itineraries which often become objects of memory (so-called merchandise), or proof that you have been there and are very interested in what you have learned. There are also catalogs of temporary exhibitions, or special edition books about the museum's milestones, or even editions of famous works that contribute to the identity and recognition of the museum where they are kept and displayed.

In addition to the information, mysteries or ambiguities that works of art contain and which constitute material that feeds general knowledge and activates curiosity, and their use in digital media, with the help of AI, and dissemination through social networks, these works of fine art give rise to books which are also considered objects that require the participation of the reader, activated by their architecture and the engineering of paper.

We know that the book, and its materiality was an old revolution, without much surprises nowadays for designers, publishers and bibliophiles. What could perhaps be a more important contribution would be to museology and the relationship to be consolidated in favor of this area of knowledge application with literary reading studies. As we read in the session summary for sub-theme 14, these are works, genres and formats that raise “important questions on the nature, practice, and relevance of comparison, and indeed of the notion of literature itself.”.

In this communication, we will use two examples of pop-up books about the São Vicente Panel, painted by Nuno Gonçalves around 500 years ago, a piece of art in the collection of the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon that is most valuable because of the uncertainties of those portrayed (a crowd of 58 characters around a Saint), and we will compare them with two other books - one is mostly a fiction text about the Panels and the other one is non-fiction about the “surprising object” that is the printed book.

The book as a panel or a panel as a book, two artistic objects that merit an approach that we will only begin to address in this communication which in our perspective has promoted an encounter that can be replicated in other cases, beyond the strictly didactic and the “trivial pursuit” spirit that some pedagogical instruments propose. We will highlight the contribution of the book as an object to the reading of a panel enhanced by the skills activated in multimodal reading (in this case seeing, manipulating and understanding) that create a closer relationship between visitors and the museum.

Since the mid-20th century, scholars in the English-speaking world have explored the theme of image replacement in Xinmenhua (New Door Paintings), deconstructing the threefold subject of the Xinmenhua phenomenon as an artistic event: political power, the artist community, and the general public. They have also delved into two key spatial relationships. The first focuses on changes in wartime artistic patterns and the reconstruction of artistic sectors, particularly the differentiation and cooperation between the occupied zones, the Nationalist-controlled areas, and the liberated zones. The second examines the interaction between public space for wartime propaganda and the private spaces of people's lives. Through these layers of analysis, Western scholars have gradually unveiled the significance of Xinmenhua in the context of modern Chinese art history. This paper examines the unfolding of this narrative mode, combining image and text, and applies a perspective from the history of social thought to analyze the social influence and power of Xinmenhua, with particular attention to the deeper meaning of “image replacement.” It first discusses the mission of wartime art and Yan’an art, focusing on the social transformation efforts behind them and how cultural representation helped mobilize the Anti-Japanese National United Front. Furthermore, it distinguishes Ximenhua from traditional door god paintings by shifting from a wishful icon format to a more celebratory and participatory social expression. By analyzing several key Xinmenhua works, this paper reveals the transformation of the public’s mentality—from a focus on prayers to one of active participation in wartime celebrations and the changing form of social organization, from "small family" to the collective "big family." It also highlights the influence of traditional New Year prints on the posting style of Xinmenhua, particularly its placement on anti-Japanese households' doors, propagating ideas of “Anti-Japanese glory” and “Illustrious doorways,” while exploring the evolving functions of New Year prints: not only as tools for Anti-Japanese mobilization and decoration but also as symbols of recognition and social affirmation.

The academic community has already widely recognized the intermedia writing in the work The Unconsoled. This paper explores the relationship between the artistic philosophy and political justice conveyed by Kazuo Ishiguro in his intermedia writing. The small Central European city in the novel is plunged into an inexplicable crisis, and the citizens place high hopes on art, especially expecting the arrival of the protagonist, Ryder, to resolve this crisis. However, Ryder’s absurd experiences seem to confirm Plato’s view that art should be banished from the “Republic”. However, the exploration of various musical genres and art forms in the novel, along with its polyphonic writing and Kafkaesque experimental style, illustrates the close relationship between art and politics. The paradox of the use of art is shown in a humorous way, implying a contest between dependent art and autonomous art. The novel suggests that dependent art, represented by mass art, weakens the perceptual consciousness of the people. Commercial temptation and political manipulation lead people into a state of being unconsolable. Meanwhile, the people in crisis have already begun to develop a consciousness of change under the enlightenment of modern/postmodern music, experiencing painful metamorphosis, seeking the path to future freedom and happiness, and striving to build a just and good life.

The Goldfinch (2013), a classic work by the renowned American author Donna Tartt (1963-), took her over two decades to complete and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014. The novel weaves the famous painting The Goldfinch and the protagonist Theo's growth narrative into a central thread, presenting Theo's inner activities and ethical choices at each stage of his development through visual imagery. It also charts Theo's journey from initial confusion and hesitation following trauma towards eventual identity reconstruction and awakening. The paintings featured in the novel, including The Goldfinch, serve as important symbols. Other notable works mentioned include Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and Frans Hals' Boy with a Skull. When Theo gazes at these paintings, they seem to gaze back at him. Unlike typical subject-object gazes, the paintings' gaze is non-specific and void, meaning it can be directed at anyone who views it. This creates an interactive dynamic where the viewer's gaze is guided by the painting, leading to a sense of equality between the artwork and the observer.

In the era dominated by visual culture, the concept of "gaze" has long been a topic of scholarly interest, often associated with dichotomies such as "self-other," "seeing-being seen," and "subject-object." Contemporary philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) introduced the theory of "the gaze of the portrait," which extends traditional gaze theory. Nancy posits that portraits exist in three simultaneous states: resemblance, evocation, and gaze. This reveals that the gaze is a process where the subject actively emits and returns to itself through outward expansion, aiming not to emphasize an absolute dominant other but to facilitate self-understanding and reconstruction. Nancy's theory transcends the traditional subject-object dichotomy, achieving equality between subjects. Expanding from portraits to broader visual fields and even social contexts, Nancy's theory offers profound insights: the gaze is fundamentally a self-reflexive act, where the subject's visual attention expands outward and ultimately returns inward for self-examination and reconstruction.

The paintings in The Goldfinch, such as those viewed by Theo and his mother at the exhibition "Portraits and Still Lifes: Masterpieces of the Northern Golden Age," are all portraits. Works like Boy with a Skull and The Goldfinch significantly influence Theo's identity formation and growth experience. As a coming-of-age novel, why did Donna Tartt choose portraits as the ethical thread guiding Theo's life? How does Theo become entangled with these visual artworks throughout his growth? What impact do these visual works have on Theo's identity consciousness, leading him to achieve self-reconstruction and redemption after continuous struggle and hesitation? Portraits differ from other types of paintings in that their subjects possess autonomy. Painters endow them with the power to actively gaze at others, transforming them from passive objects into active participants. In the context of visual culture, this interaction between portraits and viewers often involves ethical issues, implying certain ethical premonitions and revealing relationships that influence ethical choices. These dynamics point to the era of visual ethics we face today. Visual ethics is not a fixed academic concept or rule but rather a reflection of the ethical issues, awareness, and behaviors involved in visual activities within a specific historical context, reshaping people's existing behavioral patterns. In the museum, the protagonist Theo directly appreciates the portrait paintings from the perspective of a tourist. Under the powerful visual impact of "viewing the paintings", it metaphorically implies a certain spiritual similarity and resonance between people and paintings, as well as the undercurrent of Theo's ethical dilemma that surges under this similarity. After the museum explosion, Theo, carrying the famous painting The Goldfinch, lived in multiple places, experiencing a period of wandering and instability: from the Barber family in New York to his father's home in Las Vegas and then to the Hobie family in New York. As a teenager, the radiance of the painting awakened his deepest and most hidden pursuit of self-identity and a sense of belonging, allowing him to make new choices and establish new ethical relationships. The misfortune of losing his mother at a young age and being left unattended led him astray, but in fact, Theo's inner self was always struggling. Every time Theo saw The Goldfinch again, he had different moods and thoughts. While he was "gazing" at The Goldfinch, the painting was also "gazing" at him. The gaze he sent out spread outward to the painting and eventually returned to the self-examination of himself - he was looking at the painting, but in fact, he was looking at himself. There was no dominant party between Theo and The Goldfinch. People and paintings were equal, and the gaze was mutual. It was through the "gaze" at the painting that he continuously re-recognized himself and pursued his self-identity, ultimately making the right ethical choices.

The reason why Donna Tartt chose "portraiture" as the ethical thread that accompanies and guides Theo throughout his life is that portraiture, with its "spiritual life", ultimately responds to the connection between the subject and the entire world. In the unique visual experience of "viewing a painting", it involves Theo's ethical consciousness and the ethical dilemmas he faces, which prompts him to re-examine and change his ethical behavior patterns. In the visual perception of painting, the similarity between the painting and Theo foreshadows the upcoming ethical dilemmas and life changes; further, Theo associates the elements in the painting with his own emotions and transforms this emotion into practice, thereby establishing new ethical relationships with others; ultimately, under the gaze of the painting, he conducts a profound reflection and examination of his past behavior, thus achieving the reshaping of his ethical self. Therefore, reading a painting is no longer a simple visual activity, but an active visual behavior filled with ethical implications, which not only influences Theo's personal will but also fundamentally alters his life trajectory. Through the similarity of the painting, the evocation of the painting, and the gaze of the painting, Theo gradually realizes the value of his spiritual life and gains the courage to face life's failures in the continuous practice and failure of his identity.

As Nancy said, "Portraiture makes death a work: it makes death a work in life, in the image, in the gaze."Although Fabritius' life ended in the Delft explosion, he captured the ordinariness and tenacity of life in the image of this yellow bird, allowing viewers thousands of years later to perceive it. Donna Tartt also uses the most delicate visual writing to juxtapose the lost, confused, and shattered despair of this young man with his yearning for love, belonging, and intimacy, outlining Theo's tortuous yet sincere inner journey. Portraiture, still life, and other visual artworks carry not only the art itself but also the spiritual resonance that spans thousands of years with the viewer, thus enabling this "young man with a skull" to awaken and examine himself in the constant struggle and wavering, ultimately achieving ethical redemption of himself, and allowing the self that was lost in the process of growth to be rediscovered, recognized, and given the power of life.

Based on these preliminary thoughts, this article, based on Nancy's theory of artistic gaze, intends to explore the process of the protagonist's identity search reflected in the visual ethics of "The Goldfinch", hoping to provide a new perspective for multi-faceted interpretation of the text.

Yiyun Li has been a prominent Chinese American writer who has produced eight fictions since 2003. She was originally known for her fusion of Chinese elements into her English writing, while for her latest collection published last year, the Anglophone critics start to appreciate its theme and narration, rather than its Chinese-ness. This research endeavors to look through the transformation of Yiyun Li’s writing, ranging from its theme, characterization, to its language style, and particularly, its transition from translation literature to writing for global English readers. The representations of changes, the reasons behind it, and a comparison between she and Geling Yan in terms of their Chinese-ness in their works, will comprise the complete project. There has been research from scholars on Li’s language style, but the focus has been mainly on the Chinese-ness shown in her works before 2018. Therefore, this research would be the first one that could be found pertaining to Li’s 21-year publishing career, from ‘A Thousand Years of Good Prayers’ to ‘Wednesday’s Child’. The methodology of literary linguistics derived from Geoffrey Leech’s ‘Style in Fiction: a Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose’ will be employed to present more detailed and objective evidence.

This paper adopts a multidisciplinary approach, integrating literary analysis, psychoanalytic theory, and ecotherapy frameworks to examine the interwoven themes of the supernatural sublime, trauma, and healing in Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief. Drawing on key sources such as Jake Doberene’s exploration of monstrosity, Katerina Sarafidou’s essay “The Descent into the Hell of Self-Knowledge,” Carl Jung’s The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, and Jack Voller’s discussion of the supernatural sublime—specifically the conservative mode of aesthetic recovery—this study provides a nuanced analysis of Percy Jackson’s journey of individuation and transformation.

Voller’s concept of the supernatural sublime illuminates the role of divine and natural forces in Percy’s narrative, revealing how encounters with the mythic and the monstrous serve as catalysts for psychological growth. Sarafidou’s insights into Hell as a reflection of the personal psyche deepen the analysis of Percy’s traumatic descent into the underworld to rescue his mother, who has been dragged to Hell by the Minotaur. This descent mirrors the Jungian process of confronting the shadow self, where Percy’s struggles with abandonment, marginalization, and self-doubt unfold in mythic dimensions.

Through an ecotherapeutic lens, this paper also explores the role of water as a vital restorative force in Percy’s healing journey. Historical and theoretical perspectives on hydrotherapy, as explored by Adams and Marks, underscore water’s regenerative power, both physically and symbolically, in Percy’s transformation. As the son of Poseidon, Percy’s affinity with water becomes a conduit for self-discovery and resilience, aligning with broader themes of elemental healing.

Further, the concept of the “serpent mind” in The Lightning Thief—representing the lack of awakened Kundalini energy in Jungian depth psychology—embodies Percy’s personal shadow, which encompasses his unresolved trauma, fears, and struggles with his biological father’s abandonment. His status as a marginalized learner, grappling with ADHD and dyslexia, reinforces this shadow, marking him as an outsider in both mortal and divine realms. However, the serpent also signifies latent potential—a force of enlightenment and transformation. Like the coiled Kundalini energy awaiting activation, Percy’s spirit is awakened by his purified buddhi—the organ of intuition, composed of insight—driven by the urge to save his mother. His ultimate sacrifice—choosing the greater good over personal desire—aligns with Kantian notions of the sublime, rewilding the hero through an encounter with the supernatural sublime’s transformative power.

By emphasizing Voller’s framework, this paper further explores the thematic ambivalence of traumatic familial love and divine encounters in Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, drawing intertextual connections to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Through this lens, Percy’s mythic journey as a twelve-year-old boy embodies the interplay of light and dark, trauma and healing, revealing the enduring power of personal myth in confronting the dualities of human experience.

The present study discusses the translation process and the role of translators in the literary adaptation from Russian to Bengali during the Soviet period, specifically after World War II. A long literary relationship developed between Russia and Bengal in the 20th century. While exploring the reasons for this relationship, it is noticed that the history of the revolution and political empowerment in the Soviet Union received worldwide publicity. The impact of this political event also reached the undivided Bengal. After the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1917, the external world became interested in how the ‘brand new’ social system was functioning and how the place of ideals in the political sphere was taking practical shape. That immense interest resulted in extensive literary reception. Subject to the research, this paper will try to focus on the interaction between Russian and Bangla in the post-World War II era where translation became the main tool to establish a literary contact.

The proposal for this paper is two-dimensional. One portion is conservation-based and another in parallel is analytical. The conservation-oriented part essentially results in formulating a literary history of the Russian-Bangla literary connection and filling up the vague areas of proper documentation. This paper will essentially focus on the inclusion of Russian literary studies in Bengali periodicals of the twentieth century. Included literary periodicals and magazines are: Prabasi, Bharati, Soviet Desh, Soviet Bangla Patrika, Harkara, Amritabazar Patrika, Induprakash, etc. All these periodicals and magazines were published in Kolkata and targeted an urban readership who were partially aware of international politics and literature. The analytical portion tries to comment on the qualitative approach adopted by the translators, publishers, and the Soviet governance during the translation process.

Relation between the Russian and Bengali languages contributes to a larger literary history of the twentieth century where Translation Studies become relevant to form a theoretical base.

The current paper is an attempt to converse, contest, and compare literary histories and translation theories which go hand in hand with the idea of Comparative as well as World Literature.