In this essay, I discuss salient themes of The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). I hold that The Child To Come’s main thrust is this: ‘The issue is not that there is no future but rather that there is no sure way of orienting toward that future, either to save it or to survive it’. The chall…[Read more]

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]

‘Narrative Theory’ is an online introduction to classical structuralist narratological analysis. The sixth section deals with the structural positioning of narrators with respect to the narrative act and the fictional world(s) contained by the narrative. Contents: 1. Author, narrator, and narrative person; 2. Kinds of narrative positions; 3.…[Read more]

‘Narrative Theory’ is an online introduction to classical structuralist narratological analysis. The fourth section deals with the modes of narrative, “showing” and “telling”, as theorized by Henry James and other theorists of the dramatic aesthetics in narrative. Outline: 1. Two concepts of narrative distance. 2. The theory of the novel before…[Read more]

The tension between feminism and national liberation is a commonplace of political mobilization across the postcolonial world. This essay traces how postcolonial nationalist and transnational feminist agendas were brought into conflict during the defense of a thesis on the novels of the Syrian writer Ghada al-Samman (b. 1942) that took place in…[Read more]

Beginning with television’s popularization and mass availability in the 1950s, TV has extensively been employed to transport and mediate history. From the early televisual experiments of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek to more recent examples such as Quantum Leap, The X-Files and Continuum, Science Fiction television and its subgenre of A…[Read more]

‘Narrative Theory’ is an online introduction to classical structuralist narratological analysis. The third section deals with the narrative articulation of time, taking as a guideline Gérard Genette’s theory in ‘Narrative Discourse’, modified as required. Outline: 1. The Generation of Story Time. 2. Fabula time. 3. Story time: order. 4. Story…[Read more]

This article shows the high degree of correlation between the ways in which the right and the left hemispheres process and organize information and Whitehead’s understanding of the two pure and direct modes of perception, causal efficacy and presentational immediacy. The neuroscience is drawn from the recent work of Iain McGilchrist and Robert…[Read more]

Call for Papers

‘Narrative Theory’ is an online introduction to classical structuralist narratological analysis. The second section addresses the structure of the action or fabula provided by the Russian Formalists, notably by Boris Tomashevski, contemplated from the standpoint provided by Mieke Bal’s structuralist theory of narrative. The chapter addresses the…[Read more]

The literary relation between Parvin E’tesami and Walt Whitman remains a largely unexplored field. This article analyzes the connection between “God’s Weaver” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” to shed light on Parvin’s creative reception of Whitman. Creating a mixed-breed spider, combining characteristics from both
Whitman’s insect and the Persi…[Read more]

The gothic literature is not necessarily the antagonist in the history of the Enlightenment values.