The authors are not original, and they do not create anything from original minds but compile from existing texts. Text is not a unilinear entity but a heterogeneous combination of texts. Any text is at once literary and social, creative and cultural. M. Bakhtin finds in a Socratic dialogue the earliest form of novel, heteroglossia, and dialogism, which in the late 1960s J. Kristeva calls as intertextuality to describe the phenomenon of a continual exchange and relationship building between texts. Intertextuality is the means of communication between “several writers and a reader” within one literary text based on several texts. As for the theory of Intertextuality, the suggested presentation is intended to analyze Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel “Gravel Heart” compared with William Shakespeare’s drama “Measure for Measure”. This Renaissance drama is deeply influential from the novel’s title (“Unfit to live or die. O gravel heart!”) till its conclusion. Gurnah’s composition reveals the characteristics of novatory in traditional literature. The methodology of the research will focus on comparing both works in three aspects: personages; composition; time and space correlation. At the end of the presentation, I will share the new research topics for “Gravel Heart,” which will demonstrate the further steps in the new discussions.

References:

1. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In M. Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination: four essays by M. M. Bakhtin.

2. Word, dialogue, and the novel. In T. Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva reader. New York: Columbia University Press. LeFevre, K. B. (1987)

3. Gurnah, A. (2017). Gravel Heart. Bloomsbury: London, UK.

4. Shakespeare, W. 1564-1616. (2003). William Shakespeare's “Measure for Measure”. Auburn, CA :Audio Partners.

This theme delves into how literature navigates the crossroads of heritage and innovation in an ever-evolving world. At the intersection of cultural traditions and technological advancements, it examines how ancient narratives are reinvented to remain relevant and how new media (webtoons, AI, metaverse) are reshaping literary forms and practices. By combining global and local perspectives, it highlights intercultural dialogues, creative hybridizations, and the challenges of literary creation in an age of global connectivity. An invitation to reimagine literature as a bridge between the past and the future!

Thomas Aquinas is an important theologist and philosopher in the Middle Ages in Europe. His theory of love is rich in content and has important research value. Aquinas’ classification and meaning of love constitute his view of love, and his view of love has a perfect form of love. Aquinas divides love into affection, friendship and charity. Behind it is the emotional care of the holy love, which is the true feeling of Aquinas knowing love and belongs to companion’s love in psychology of love. As a devout Christian religious believer, Aquinas’ love is deeply influenced by Christian doctrine, which reflects that religion has a certain relationship with love. Religious ideas can affect love and love can also affect religious concepts, both of which have certain social and cultural attributes.

Sino-British gay pornstar Tyler Wu’s online persona and branding are strongly built upon the premise that one is being provided a glimpse into his intimate sexual encounters. His self-produced adult videos are often accompanied by tone-setting idyllic, private, and erotic narrative textual pieces and monologues. These showcase a gamut of characteristics found as motifs and themes present in tongzhi wenxue 同志文学 stories, themselves deeply steeped in the homosexual traditional in Chinese Literature.

Despite Wu’s rise to Pornhub’s 2nd most-viewed gay pornstar in 2024 – where he stands as the sole Eastern Asian male – no literature has been produced on either the peculiarities of his work or his feats in the field of pornography. I believe his unique brand of adult content beckons further research.

As such, through an intermedial analysis and comparison, I posit that Wu’s body of work can be linked to the lurid erotic tales present in the online-circulated tongzhi wenxue and Boys’ Love narratives. I pinpoint the actor’s homages to these genres, showcasing his willingness to fuse these realms. Interviews and conversations with the actor and producer have also provided more profound insight into this intermedial connection.

The character dynamics, enacted narrative and plots, language and romanticised settings of Tyler Wu’s pornographic content are highly evocative of those found in these online genres. A lure into a world where the sexual content is colored with allusions to long-lasting friendships, timeless bonds, and fated encounters. The insisted-upon link between a story-telling approach to pornography that provides the viewer with a fantasy of sexual intimacy, which is akin to the premise of those online novels, sets Wu’s work apart in a domain characterised by an emphasis on the sexual act rather than the setting in which the sexual act takes place. These dimensions are also absent in Wu’s collaborations with other pornstars, where the actor does not hold creative control.

Establishing this link involves tracing the evolution and transformation of the tongzhi wenxue genre over time. Wu’s current artistic endeavours are, in my view, the most recent iteration of this form of pornographic literature - one that has now transcended its illicit and censored online existence to achieve marketability and reach a broader audience. Tyler Wu’s work and artistic direction are now invaluable when discussing East Asian homosexual representation in adult media, offering pertinent insights into issues of non-hegemonic masculinity as well as the representation and visibility of Chinese queerness.