American & British Studies Annual
type: channel
description: The American and British Studies Annual (ABSA, ISSN 2788-2233) is an open-access scholarly peer-reviewed journal focused on American and British cultural studies. Our aim is to create a platform for scholarly exchange not only within the Czech Republic but internationally. We seek original articles that explore wide range of issues concerning American and British literature, visual arts, music and other cultural phenomena as well as cultural history. The editors encourage submissions from scholars working in various disciplines with interests in American and British cultures, as well as articles with interdisciplinary perspectives on those cultures. We also devote a portion of the journal to outstanding undergraduate student contributions.
publisher: Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, University of Pardubice
language: en
publication name: American & British Studies Annual
issn: 1803-6058
items: The Stage of Contamination: Performing Environmental Racism through Water in Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah
items: Advancing Environmental Justice By Expanding The Literary Canon
items: The Untrue Island Re-visited: Three Encounters with Orford Ness
items: The Phenomenon of Adultification in R. Riggs’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
items: Geography of the Narrative Self in Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
items: Academia Betwixt: Liminality and Transgression in David Lodge’s Changing Places
items: “Time Never Worked That Way:” Toni Morrison’s Disruption of Historical Chronology in Beloved
items: An Oceanic Tale: Trauma, Technology and Cultural Resistance in Richard Powers’s Playground
items: Rewriting the Mothers in Joyce’s Dubliners for the 21st Century: Oona Frawley’s “The Boarding House” and Elske Rahill’s “A Mother”
items: “Persistence of Difference”: the National-Cultural Identity of the Cornish as a People on the Periphery of Britain
items: Hyperreality and the Mass Production of Destiny: Baudrillardian Simulacra in Never Let Me Go
items: Translating and Interpreting George Orwell in Ukraine: A Study of Literary and Critical Engagement
items: “I Was Something You Pick Up and Take a Swig of”: Ecofeminist Toxic Discourse in Jennifer Clement’s Prayers for the Stolen
items: From “Water Liars” to Yonder Stands Your Orphan: Pastimes, Sports, and Games Inside/Outside the Frame of Barry Hannah’s Eagle Lake Stories
items: Literary Echoes from the Margins
items: White Emotion and White Scopophilia: The Myth of Docile and Brute Blacks
items: From Having Sympathy to Showing Empathy for the Demented: A Narratological Study of the Perspectives of Characters with Dementia in Away from Her, Still Alice, and The Father
items: Roles of Siblings in Folktales
items: “Nature’s Work:” Carolus Clusius and His Ties to the Sidney Circle
items: From Eastern Prophets to Syrian Yankees: Tracing the First Generations of Arab American Writers
items: Czech-ing Shakespeare: Tracing Shakespeare’s Influence (not only) in Czech Advertisements
items: Secular Shakespeare: Robert Green Ingersoll in the Context of American Bardolatry
items: Things Can Only Get Dickensian: An Analysis of Media Coverage of Britain’s Cost of Living Crisis
items: Liquid Metaphor in Becoming Animal by David Abram: A Transmodern Perspective Entangled with Phenomenological Insights
items: Henry Bibb’s (Dis)claiming Family: Malinda as a Case Study of Black Women’s Symbolic Annihilation in Antebellum Literature
items: A Personal Apocalypse: Ecological Poetics in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Greenleaf”
items: Gender Issues in Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller
items: Frustration, Boredom, and Fantasy: Augusta Webster’s “Circe”
items: Cats Can Be Dangerous to Your Relationships: Cats in the Fiction of Jim Grimsley
items: Two (Postmodern) Czech Shakespearean Adaptations: Claudius and Gertrude and Emodrink of Elsinore

The Stage of Contamination: Performing Environmental Racism through Water in Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah
type: item
description: The paper examines Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s award-winning play cullud wattah (2021) as a powerful dramatization of environmental injustice centering on the Flint Water Crisis as both a historical event and a symbol of systemic racism in the United States. Through the lens of environmental justice scholarship and the concept of “slow violence,” this analysis explores how race, class, and gender intersect to shape unequal access to clean water. The play foregrounds the lived experiences of a working-class African American family grappling with the physical, psychological, and spiritual consequences of toxic water contamination. The Cooper women represent generational responses to oppression, ranging from resignation and complicity to spiritual resilience and political activism. The staging transforms contaminated water into a powerful symbol of both trauma and resistance, while the absence of theatrical closure emphasizes the unresolved nature of the crisis. Integrating legal, political, and cultural critiques, cullud wattah emerges as a compelling call to action advocating for truth-telling, reparations, and structural change.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Flint Water Crisis
  topic: keywords
subject: cullud wattah
  topic: keywords
subject: environmental (in)justice
  topic: keywords
subject: systemic racism
  topic: keywords
subject: water contamination
  topic: keywords
creator: Andrea Holešová
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Andrea Holešová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 154
ending page: 164
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2786

Advancing Environmental Justice By Expanding The Literary Canon
type: item
description: Review of Petr Kopecký and Jan Beneš, eds. Environmental Justice in Ethnic American Literature (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2025)
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Paul Von Blum
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Paul Von Blum https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 179
ending page: 182
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2785

The Untrue Island Re-visited: Three Encounters with Orford Ness
type: item
description: The present paper deals with three texts inspired by the topography and secretive military history of the East Anglian offshore shingle spit Orford Ness. Each may be considered a specific example of a hybrid genre. The first part presents Robert Macfarlane’s Ness (2019) as an explicitly eco-centric and experimental poetic response to this unique territory. The poem’s five “more-than-human forms” are related to the notions of haecceities, the smooth space, Aeon, and the concept of rhizomes in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. The latter part of this article focuses on Polly Crosby’s fictional island Dohhalund from her second novel, The Unravelling (2022). Though this novel is referred to as a historical mystery, it clearly does not represent the traditional whodunit genre. First, the treatment of Orford Ness in Crosby’s text will be confronted with another hybrid of a book, W. G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn (1995), a novel acknowledged by Crosby as a major influence. The final section shifts focus to Crosby’s island setting as a site of transformation, offering a surprisingly non-anthropocentric perspective comparable to that of Macfarlane’s Ness.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Orford Ness
  topic: keywords
subject: island space
  topic: keywords
subject: Robert Macfarlane
  topic: keywords
subject: Polly Crosby
  topic: keywords
subject: ecocriticism
  topic: keywords
creator: Magdalena Potočňáková
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Magdalena Potočňáková https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 141
ending page: 153
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2784

The Phenomenon of Adultification in R. Riggs’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
type: item
description: This article examines the representation of adultification in Ransom Riggs’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011), focusing on how the narrative positions children within adult roles and responsibilities. Central to the analysis are the concepts of boundary dissolution and parentification, alongside the recurring tropes of the child redeemer and the lost child, and pervasive experiences of trauma and ennui. Through these frameworks, Riggs’s characters are shown inhabiting liminal identities that blur conventional distinctions between childhood and adulthood. Drawing on Kathryn Bond Stockton’s theory of “growing sideways,” the article explores how the peculiar children resist linear models of development and instead inhabit non-normative trajectories of growth shaped by delay, repetition, and queer temporality. By examining these narrative and psychological dimensions, the discussion highlights how Riggs portrays childhood as a space of burden, responsibility, and vulnerability. Ultimately, the article argues that Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children challenges conventional frameworks of childhood, offering a complex vision of growth and identity that unsettles developmental norms.
subject: Student Contributions
  topic: section
subject: adultification
  topic: keywords
subject: childhood studies
  topic: keywords
subject: Young Adult fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: non-normative growth
  topic: keywords
subject: child redeemer
  topic: keywords
creator: Nikola Kmošková Bajerová
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Nikola Kmošková Bajerová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 165
ending page: 178
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2783

Geography of the Narrative Self in Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
type: item
description: This paper examines how Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) engages in ongoing debates concerning embodied consciousness and personal identity yet to be resolved by current theories linking mind and body. The analysis integrates a neuroscientific approach (Greenfield), narrative self theory (Dennett, Schechtman), pre-narrative self-consciousness (Zahavi), embodied narrative (Brandon), transpersonal psychology (Grof), and Eastern philosophical concepts (Blackmore, Watts) with close textual analysis to study how Turton's protagonist navigates self-definition across multiple bodily experiences. His behaviour and actions are influenced by emotions, skills and reasoning that he perceives as temporarily acquired from the body and mind of his current 'host’. Although initially it may appear paradoxical, Turton's narrative constructs a complex geography of personal identity, suggesting that consciousness persists independently of specific embodiment, while remaining fundamentally shaped by bodily experience. This paper examines the capacity of speculative fiction to engage with philosophical problems of the mind-body relationship and to advocate for alternative approaches to selfhood and embodied consciousness.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: subjective consciousness
  topic: keywords
subject: narrative self
  topic: keywords
subject: embodiment
  topic: keywords
subject: speculative
  topic: keywords
subject: mind-body relationship
  topic: keywords
creator: Elzbieta Perkowska-Gawlik
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Elzbieta Perkowska-Gawlik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 125
ending page: 140
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2782

Academia Betwixt: Liminality and Transgression in David Lodge’s Changing Places
type: item
description: David Lodge’s Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975) captures academia’s inherent liminality through its exchange academics on two campuses. This paper examines how Lodge frames academic exchange as a ritualized border-crossing, drawing on Arnold Van Gennep’s rites of passage and Victor Turner’s interstructural situations to analyze characters suspended between places and their liminal experiences, Philip Swallow’s transformative sojourn in America and Morris Zapp’s humbling exile in England. The novel’s geo-poetic contrasts – Euphoria’s sun-drenched ambition versus Rummidge’s industrial simplicity – portrays campuses as two distinct geographies where the forces of deterritorialization and reterritorialization unfold. Lodge’s formal experimentation – epistolary chapters, film scripts, and metafictional play – creates an alternative “narrative liminality” where readers inhabit a “third space” between fiction and reality. The analysis highlights key scenes which extend this liminality beyond the text. Ultimately, Changing Places transforms the campus novel into a comic but insightful study of transgression in which geographic, institutional, and textual border-crossings reveal the unstable fault lines beneath academic life. NOTE: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 41st AAAS Annual Conference “Space Oddities: Urbanity, American Identity, and Cultural Exchange,” held at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria, November 21-23, 2014
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: David Lodge
  topic: keywords
subject: Changing Places
  topic: keywords
subject: academia
  topic: keywords
subject: geocriticism
  topic: keywords
subject: narrative liminality
  topic: keywords
subject: transgression
  topic: keywords
creator: I. Murat Öner
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 I. Murat Öner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 113
ending page: 124
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2781

“Time Never Worked That Way:” Toni Morrison’s Disruption of Historical Chronology in Beloved
type: item
description: This article reads Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) as a form, intervention and expansion of Black temporality. Rather than retelling history in linear time, Morrison uses a recursive, ghosted narrative that deconstructs the divide between past and present. Drawing on Tao Leigh Goffe's concept of “maroon time,” the novel is here read as a refusal of Enlightenment chrononormativity as well as racial capitalism's demand for closure, progress, and resolution. With Morrison's free indirect discourse, fractured pace, and spectrality, Beloved inscribes time as trauma, survival, and resistance. The novel re-writes the Black womb as a site not of reproduction but of temporal disjunction, its form possessing a fugitive beat that shatters Western historiography. Morrison extends the grammar of Black narration by architecting a temporality which is incomplete, relational, and speculative, rendering the novel an ethical and political site of refusal.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Toni Morrison
  topic: keywords
subject: Beloved
  topic: keywords
subject: time
  topic: keywords
subject: linearity
  topic: keywords
subject: closure
  topic: keywords
subject: temporality
  topic: keywords
creator: Yazdan Mahmoudi
creator: Sayyed Navid Etedali Rezapoorian
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Yazdan Mahmoudi , Sayyed Navid Etedali Rezapoorian https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 102
ending page: 112
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2780

An Oceanic Tale: Trauma, Technology and Cultural Resistance in Richard Powers’s Playground
type: item
description: The article appears to be one of the first academic treatments of Richard Powers’s Playground (2024) to delve into the intertwining narratives of humanity and nature within the Anthropocene epoch. Powers examines the ethical, emotional, and existential dilemmas posed by climate change and technological advancement through his characters and their engagement with an aquatic ecosystem. We explore how the author addresses the issues of environmental (ocean) pollution, AI, childhood trauma, (de)humanisation, and cultural resistance to reflect the complexities of the human condition represented in Anthropocene fiction. Within the interdisciplinary realm, we bring together various perspectives from the (environmental) humanities and ecocultural studies, emphasizing the crucial significance of discussing current crises through culture. An ecocritical reading of Playground reveals how Powers critiques anthropocentrism and illustrates the consequences of ecological neglect, ultimately advocating for a more harmonious coexistence with the natural world. Powers’s captivating story of personal tragedies, environmental issues, anxieties of the Anthropocene, cultural myths, and the critique of overreliance on technology prompts readers to reflect on their roles within the global ecosystem, the importance of environmental stewardship, and the urgency of addressing climate change, while fostering a sustainable future.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Anthropocene anxiety
  topic: keywords
subject: climate change
  topic: keywords
subject: myth
  topic: keywords
subject: neocolonialism
  topic: keywords
subject: techno-utopianism
  topic: keywords
subject: underwater world
  topic: keywords
creator: Andrii Bezrukov
creator: Oksana Bohovyk
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Andrii Bezrukov , Oksana Bohovyk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 83
ending page: 101
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2779

Rewriting the Mothers in Joyce’s Dubliners for the 21st Century: Oona Frawley’s “The Boarding House” and Elske Rahill’s “A Mother”
type: item
description: Within the multifaceted portrayals of the people in James Joyce’s seminal short story collection Dubliners (1914), a complex and not particularly positive portrayal of motherhood emerges, as the mothers attempt to support their children in ways that may appear rather problematic. For example, in “The Boarding House,” Mrs Mooney manoeuvres the well-off Mr Doran into an affair and, consequently, a wedding with her daughter, knowing he will be careful not to harm his reputation. Similarly, in “A Mother,” Mrs Kearney attempts to use the Irish Revival to improve her family’s social standing by arranging for her daughter Kathleen to be hired as an accompanist for four concerts, and then later insists on Kathleen being paid all the promised money regardless of the changing circumstances. In 2014, the collection Dubliners 100: Fifteen New Stories Inspired by the Original was published, with each story set in the early twenty-first century and adapted by a different contemporary Irish writer. This article thus aims to show how two women writers, Oona Frawley and Elske Rahill, rewrite and update Joyce’s portrayal of Irish motherhood in their versions of “The Boarding House” and “A Mother.”
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: James Joyce
  topic: keywords
subject: Dubliners
  topic: keywords
subject: contemporary Irish short story
  topic: keywords
subject: rewriting
  topic: keywords
creator: Petr Anténe
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Petr Anténe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 70
ending page: 82
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2778

“Persistence of Difference”: the National-Cultural Identity of the Cornish as a People on the Periphery of Britain
type: item
description: Cornish identity has been shaped by both Celtic and English influences. The county’s proximity to other Celtic peoples and its position on the periphery of Britain has fostered a “persistence of difference,” which, in turn, helped create a clear national-cultural identity, unique among other English counties. Cornish identity is also tied to forces of nature, industry, and tourism and, since the 19th century, the region and its people have experienced many changes, threats, and challenges. It has been during these times of upheaval and change that the Cornish have sought outlets to express and preserve their culture and infuse them with a distinct Cornish identity. The present paper discusses such cultural markers as language variety, politics, sport, and religion in this context and suggests that the Cornish, as a minority population group, have a national-cultural identity distinct from that of the majority English population, and that the position of the Cornish, as an ethnic group, is similar to that of minority groups in other countries (e.g. Basques, Catalans, or Rusyns).
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Cornish
  topic: keywords
subject: periphery
  topic: keywords
subject: identity
  topic: keywords
subject: nationality
  topic: keywords
subject: culture
  topic: keywords
creator: Eva Eddy
creator: Jonathan Eddy
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Eva Eddy, Jonathan Eddy https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 56
ending page: 69
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2777

Hyperreality and the Mass Production of Destiny: Baudrillardian Simulacra in Never Let Me Go
type: item
description: Existing scholarship on Never Let Me Go has primarily engaged with its ethical, philosophical, and socio-political implications, particularly regarding cloning, human rights, and the commodification of life. While critics such as Rachel Carroll and Amit Marcus have examined the novel’s deconstruction of normative discourses on humanity, and Shameem Black has explored its engagement with multiculturalism and globalization, insufficient attention has been given to its postmodern ontological dimensions. This article addresses this critical gap by applying Jean Baudrillard’s theories of hyperreality, simulation, and simulacra to Ishiguro’s dystopian narrative. It argues that Never Let Me Go functions as a meditation on the dissolution of reality, wherein clones exist as third- and fourth-order simulacra — entities that mask the absence of a profound reality. Through an analysis of Hailsham’s institutional mechanisms, the novel’s representations of nostalgia, and the commodification of identity, this study illuminates the ways in which Ishiguro’s work critiques the hyperreal structures that define late capitalist societies. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how Never Let Me Go challenges conventional distinctions between the authentic and the artificial, exposing the mechanisms through which contemporary societies manufacture consent and obscure the erosion of human agency.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: hyperreality
  topic: keywords
subject: simulation
  topic: keywords
subject: simulacra
  topic: keywords
subject: Jean Baudrillard
  topic: keywords
subject: Kazuo Ishiguro
  topic: keywords
creator: Ali Selki
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Ali Selki https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 43
ending page: 55
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2776

Translating and Interpreting George Orwell in Ukraine: A Study of Literary and Critical Engagement
type: item
description: This article explores the different ways George Orwell’s works have entered Ukrainian culture, with a particular focus on the translations that have introduced his sharp political commentary to Ukrainian readers. Apart from translations, we will examine other channels of interpretation, such as various adaptations and critical analyses, which have further expanded Orwell’s reach and influence in Ukraine. By analyzing these various forms of transmission, we would like to shed light on how Orwell’s themes have resonated in a Ukrainian context, and how his works continue to inspire reflection and discourse in a nation with its own complex history of sociopolitical struggle. This study represents the first attempt to gather and analyze the various interpretations of Orwell’s legacy within Ukraine.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: George Orwell
  topic: keywords
subject: translations
  topic: keywords
subject: Ukraine
  topic: keywords
subject: adaptations
  topic: keywords
creator: Iryna Malyshivska
creator: David Livingstone
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 David Livingstone, Iryna Malyshivska https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 30
ending page: 42
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2775

“I Was Something You Pick Up and Take a Swig of”: Ecofeminist Toxic Discourse in Jennifer Clement’s Prayers for the Stolen
type: item
description: Echoing ecofeminism’s long-standing concerns with the interconnection between the oppression of women and the degradation of the environment as a consequence of patriarchal and capitalist systems, this paper suggests that Jennifer Clement’s acclaimed novel Prayers for the Stolen (2014) should be read as representative of an ecofeminist toxic discourse, which enables the oppressed, where weak women characters find agency in telling their story and drawing attention to the multi-layered toxicity they have had to face. Such a reading not only highlights the novel’s preoccupation with and warning against pollution, toxicity, and overall environmental degradation – thus far explored by few scholars of Clement’s work – but also illuminates the inescapable connections Clement repeatedly draws between how nature and women are physically and mentally abused and poisoned by the same toxic patriarchal and capitalist forces.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: ecofeminism
  topic: keywords
subject: toxicity
  topic: keywords
subject: Prayers for the Stolen
  topic: keywords
subject: Jennifer Clement
  topic: keywords
subject: toxic discourse
  topic: keywords
creator: Anežka Morysová
creator: Jan Beneš
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Anežka Morysová, Jan Beneš https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 16
ending page: 29
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2774

From “Water Liars” to Yonder Stands Your Orphan: Pastimes, Sports, and Games Inside/Outside the Frame of Barry Hannah’s Eagle Lake Stories
type: item
description: For most of his career, Mississippi author Barry Hannah was deemed the postmodern heir to William Faulkner and is best known for the short fiction in his landmark collection Airships (1978), which begins with the muchanthologized story “Water Liars.” Like many of the meta-fictionalist masters of the 1970s (Barth, Coover, etc.), Hannah stepped inside/outside the frame of his fictions, often in his case by using highly elevated language, and syntax to depict a rogue’s gallery of down-and-out characters, as well as the construction of numerous autobiographical personas, which wink and wave to his initiated readers. Thus, Hannah’s fiction is not only funny, it is playful, as if to invite the reader into some fictional game. As Hannah’s career developed, this sense of gamesmanship only seemed to increase as the characters and settings of many fictions began to reappear or return for cameo appearances. The characters first introduced in “Water Liars” reappear intermittently throughout Hannah’s thirty-year career and populate the community we come to know as Eagle Lake, the setting for Hannah’s final novel Yonder Stands Your Orphan (2001). While other critics have examined Hannah’s passions for tennis and golf as having thematic significance, this article will focus on the pastime of fishing as well as many other intertextual games played inside/outside the frame of Hannah’s Eagle Lake Stories, to reckon with how they inform his swan song, Yonder Stands Your Orphan. Ultimately, the paper will consider to what extent writing itself is a literary game on a meta level, a dynamic in which writers and tellers of tall tales strive against not only their peers but also their forbears.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Barry Hannah
  topic: keywords
subject: William Faulkner
  topic: keywords
subject: Southern Literature
  topic: keywords
subject: Postsouthern Fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: Game Theory in literature
  topic: keywords
creator: Brad Vice
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Brad Vice https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-12-16
publication date: 2025-12-16
starting page: 1
ending page: 15
doi: 10.46585/absa.2025.18.2773

Literary Echoes from the Margins
type: item
description: [review of Milena Kaličanin and Soňa Šnircová, eds. Representations of the Local in the Postmillennial Novel: New Voices from the Margins (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022)]
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Šárka Bubíková
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Šárka Bubíková https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-16
publication date: 2024-12-16
starting page: 150
ending page: 152
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2603

White Emotion and White Scopophilia: The Myth of Docile and Brute Blacks
type: item
description: This article investigates the resilience of the docility and brutality myths attributed to African Americans as demonstrated by three fairly recent film renditions. The focus is on the historical origins and the continued relevance of these tropes through white scopophilia and cognitive dissonance. The myths are analyzed in terms of their role in justifying racial hierarchies and reinforcing white supremacy within historical and contemporary contexts. Through a critical examination of historical texts by Lerone Bennett Jr. and portrayals in films such as Django Unchained and Twelve Years a Slave, the study demonstrates how these stereotypes are alternately emphasized or diminished to maintain white dominance. It argues that white America constructs African American identities with a strategic oscillation between docility and brutality to sustain control and alleviate white guilt. This manipulation is facilitated by psychological mechanisms that allow white individuals to hold contradictory beliefs about race without recognizing their inconsistencies. By detailing the dynamic usage of these myths, the article highlights how they are not static, but are strategically deployed to reaffirm white moral and authoritative supremacy as needed. The conclusion calls for a critical reassessment of racial representations in media and historical narratives to disrupt these enduring racial myths.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: white supremacy
  topic: keywords
subject: scopophilia
  topic: keywords
subject: docility myth
  topic: keywords
subject: brutality myth
  topic: keywords
subject: white guilt
  topic: keywords
subject: cognitive dissonance
  topic: keywords
creator: Sayyed Navid Etedali Rezapoorian
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sayyed Navid Etedali Rezapoorian https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 120
ending page: 131
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2586

From Having Sympathy to Showing Empathy for the Demented: A Narratological Study of the Perspectives of Characters with Dementia in Away from Her, Still Alice, and The Father
type: item
description: The present study discusses the challenge of choosing an appropriate narrative structure for representing the unreliable perspective of characters with dementia in cinematic adaptations. The argument is that the chosen frameworks and techniques should create sympathy and empathy in readers/audience, and the ideal empathetic adaptation should choose narratological frameworks with the lowest level of coherence, narrative distancing and external focalization. As prototypical examples, the study focuses on the cinematic adaptations of three literary texts which treat dementia as their main thematic concern: Away from Her (2007), Still Alice (2014), and The Father (2021). The study employs critical categories and conceptualizations proposed by Per Krogh Hansen regarding unreliable perspectives, as well as the critical views of Gulce Torun, the latter of whom domesticates Endel Tulving’s mnemonic functions of episodic memory in her narratological discussions regarding the rapport between unreliable perspectives and memory. The analysis identifies features of intranarrational, internarrational, and extratextual unreliability as well as corresponding features of semantic, episodic, archival, and constructivist memory in the adaptations.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: dementia
  topic: keywords
subject: unreliability
  topic: keywords
subject: Per Krogh Hansen
  topic: keywords
subject: memory
  topic: keywords
subject: narrational perspective
  topic: keywords
creator: Hossein Mohseni
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Hossein Mohseni https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 103
ending page: 119
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2585

Roles of Siblings in Folktales
type: item
description: This article examines the portrayal of siblings and sibling relationships in folktales. It focuses on tales from collections with either British or American cultural backgrounds that include siblings as main or secondary characters. The methodology in this research is strongly inspired by the study of sibling relationships in young children’s literature conducted by Laurie Kramer, Sonia Noorman, and Renee Brockman in 1999. Folktales are analysed in terms of the birth order of main characters, their gender, and themes that characterise the relationships and behaviour of siblings. The structuralist framework of Vladimir Propp is employed to classify character functions, such as heroes, helpers, and villains, within the narratives. Furthermore, this article challenges, to some extent, certain traditional views regarding folktale characters, ultimately highlighting the importance of scholarly research into sibling dynamics in literature.
subject: Student Contributions
  topic: section
subject: folktale
  topic: keywords
subject: character type
  topic: keywords
subject: siblings
  topic: keywords
subject: birth order
  topic: keywords
subject: structuralism
  topic: keywords
creator: Kateřina Pecková
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Kateřina Pecková https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 132
ending page: 149
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2582

“Nature’s Work:” Carolus Clusius and His Ties to the Sidney Circle
type: item
description: Philip Sidney’s European sojourn (1572-1577) was undoubtedly a formative experience, one that shaped his political and literary development. Unsurprisingly, it has received much commentary. Nevertheless, one rather neglected sphere of influence on Sidney’s education that deserves fuller attention is the coterie of high-standing and learned figures based in Central Europe, many of whom Sidney either corresponded with or met in person. This essay will consider the role of Carolus Clusius (1526-1609), a distinguished French botanist employed at the imperial court in Vienna. The influence of Clusius in Sidney’s intellectual circle and Sidney’s correspondence network will be surveyed, as well as whether Sidney’s exposure to the work of Clusius and other botanists, physicians and emblematists would have inspired Sidney’s ideas.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Philip Sidney
  topic: keywords
subject: Carolus Clusius (Charles de l’Écluse)
  topic: keywords
subject: correspondence network
  topic: keywords
subject: Early modern intellectuals
  topic: keywords
subject: Sidney circle
  topic: keywords
creator: Martina Kastnerová
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Martina Kastnerová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 91
ending page: 102
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2581

From Eastern Prophets to Syrian Yankees: Tracing the First Generations of Arab American Writers
type: item
description: The article discusses the first generations of Arab American writers with the aim to identify the narrative strategies they employed. The focus is primarily on the representatives of the Mahjar movement (Khalil Gibran, Ameen Rihani) along with observations of the roles that they adopted through their writing pursuits (the role of the prophet/man of letters). Furthermore, the text examines selected literary works of Salom Rizk, Vance Bourjaily, and William Peter Blatty as the representatives of the second generation of Arab American authors who desired to be identified as Americans. The article argues that in the first two generations of Arab American writers, the authors’ storytelling techniques are generally rooted either in self-orientalizing narrative strategies as represented by the character of an “Eastern prophet” or by an assimilating strategy epitomized by the character of a “Syrian Yankee.”
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Arab American literature
  topic: keywords
subject: immigrant narrative
  topic: keywords
subject: self-orientalizing
  topic: keywords
subject: assimilation
  topic: keywords
creator: Zuzana Dostálová
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Zuzana Dostálová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 75
ending page: 90
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2580

Czech-ing Shakespeare: Tracing Shakespeare’s Influence (not only) in Czech Advertisements
type: item
description: Shakespeare’s plays are indisputably among the most translated, staged, and adapted works for both theatre and screen. The texts undergo updating, recontextualization, and transcultural adaptation to engage audiences across different age groups, thereby facilitating their reception. This article explores Shakespeare’s position in modern popular culture. Initially, Shakespeare’s status in popular culture is discussed, drawing on the concepts of Graham Holderness (1988), Douglas Lanier (2002, 2006), and Marjorie Garber (2008). The article then examines selected popular Shakespearean representations, such as Richard Burt’s concept of “Schlockspeare” (2002), which focuses on the use of catchphrases, references, along with both textual and visual allusions to Shakespeare in advertising (e.g. mortgage loans from Commercial Bank, a Shakespeare-inspired yogurt, etc.). The objective is to demonstrate that popular culture serves to disseminate Shakespeare’s work without diminishing its inherent value, echoing Graham Holderness’s assertion that Shakespeare is, here, now, always, what is currently being made of him.”
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: William Shakespeare
  topic: keywords
subject: popular culture
  topic: keywords
subject: Shakespeare-themed advertisement
  topic: keywords
subject: advertising themes
  topic: keywords
subject: cultural capital
  topic: keywords
creator: Ivona Mišterová
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Ivona Mišterová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 62
ending page: 74
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2578

Secular Shakespeare: Robert Green Ingersoll in the Context of American Bardolatry
type: item
description: As American Literature began to depart from European models in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Shakespeare came to be venerated with increasing enthusiasm, and was often regarded in quasi-religious terms, even as other British writers fell out of favor. This “Bardolatry” culminated in the late nineteenth century with the critical and appreciative writings of Robert Green Ingersoll, who was both the most prolific writer on Shakespeare and the most celebrated atheist and secularist of his age. Ingersoll’s appropriation of Shakespeare, as both a sceptic whose political and religious opinions reflected his own and an object of religious veneration to resemble and challenge the figure of Christ, exercised a strong influence on later writers, both popular and academic. This influence shaped the way in which Shakespeare is now widely regarded in America as the one indispensable secular writer and the center of a world canon.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Shakespeare
  topic: keywords
subject: Ingersoll
  topic: keywords
subject: Atheism
  topic: keywords
subject: Secular
  topic: keywords
subject: World Canon
  topic: keywords
creator: Colin Cavendish-Jones
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Colin Cavendish-Jones https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 48
ending page: 61
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2576

Things Can Only Get Dickensian: An Analysis of Media Coverage of Britain’s Cost of Living Crisis
type: item
description: The period following the 2008 financial crisis saw the UK enter a period of austerity, exacerbated by the wide-ranging welfare spending cuts of consecutive Conservative governments. Nevertheless, when it appeared that the situation could not become more dire for struggling Britons, the country found itself in the grips of a cost of living crisis precipitated by several concurrent developments such as inflation, an energy crisis, and the fallout from Brexit. Using qualitative thematic analysis, this article examines coverage of the crisis by the British press by exploring how individual newspapers on both the political right and left have chosen to report on the indicators, causes, and victims. The aim is to establish whether the standard political leanings of the papers apply here, or whether the situation is so exceptional in its urgency that the usual stereotypes (strivers/scroungers, deserving/undeserving poor) have been abandoned for a more unified discourse.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: cost of living crisis
  topic: keywords
subject: austerity
  topic: keywords
subject: inflation
  topic: keywords
subject: inequality
  topic: keywords
subject: mental health
  topic: keywords
subject: thematic analysis
  topic: keywords
creator: Alice Tihelková
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Alice Tihelková https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 32
ending page: 47
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2575

Liquid Metaphor in Becoming Animal by David Abram: A Transmodern Perspective Entangled with Phenomenological Insights
type: item
description: Becoming Animal (2010) by David Abram represents a significant contribution to eco-phenomenological literature. The work describes how, by focusing on the aspect of becoming animal, i.e., tuning our senses to the pulse of the Earth, we can become fully human. The main point of the present paper is to explore the figurative language so abundantly used by the author to determine how it can play a part in opening our senses and helping us to engage with extra-linguistic reality. One recurring theme in the work is interbeing and the fluidity among all participants, a premise which influenced the selection of transmodern concepts as one of my analytical approaches. My examination of figuration is supported by conceptual metaphor theory enriched by the embodied phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his descriptions of how the body plays a crucial role in the creation of metaphorical expressions. The exploration of imagery reveals that metaphor exhibits not only transmodern movement across signs and extra-linguistic reality but is liquid in itself, featuring the potential for free, spirited reversibility, as well as oscillation between metaphorical analogy and literal meaning.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Abram
  topic: keywords
subject: Becoming Animal
  topic: keywords
subject: perception
  topic: keywords
subject: metaphor
  topic: keywords
subject: fluidity
  topic: keywords
subject: embodiment
  topic: keywords
creator: Agata Walek
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Agata Walek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 15
ending page: 31
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2574

Henry Bibb’s (Dis)claiming Family: Malinda as a Case Study of Black Women’s Symbolic Annihilation in Antebellum Literature
type: item
description: Existing scholarship on the autobiography Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb prioritizes Bibb’s masculinity and the impact of slavery on Black families, often overlooking the complex experiences of enslaved Black women such as Bibb’s first wife Malinda within such a narrative. Amy Lewis’s article “Who’ll Speak for Malinda?” distinguishes itself by offering an alternative narrative focusing on Malinda’s experience. My paper builds on Lewis’s work by arguing that despite condemning slavery, Bibb’s narrative inadvertently perpetuates Malinda’s symbolic annihilation. Through a close reading of Bibb, my study attempts to reveal how enslaved women’s experiences are often omitted, trivialized, and condemned in American antebellum literature. By devoting particular attention to the “symbolic annihilation” of enslaved women, this paper responds to Amy Lewis’s call for alternate narratives and offers a critical shift in reading and interpreting depiction and omission of Black women in ex-enslaved narratives throughout nineteenth-century antebellum America. This approach has the potential to uncover the complex realities of Black women to offer valuable insights into their lives and experiences, thus challenging dominant interpretations of slave narratives.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: enslaved Black women
  topic: keywords
subject: symbolic annihilation
  topic: keywords
subject: slave narratives
  topic: keywords
subject: gender and slavery
  topic: keywords
creator: Asmaa Alshehri
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Asmaa Alshehri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2024-12-06
publication date: 2024-12-06
starting page: 1
ending page: 14
doi: 10.46585/absa.2024.17.2573

A Personal Apocalypse: Ecological Poetics in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Greenleaf”
type: item
description: Mrs. May, the main character in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Greenleaf,” undergoes a personal apocalypse. Her destiny is foreshadowed throughout the short story in her struggle with accepting ecological thinking. This paper analyses “Greenleaf” through an ecocritical perspective and focuses on O’Connor’s unique employment of the trope of apocalypticism as well as nature metaphors. While previous research in O’Connor studies has delved into the theme of ecology, the concern of this paper is to discuss the author’s ecological poetics, which thus far remain under-researched. Building my analysis on Paul Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor, I will argue that Mrs. May’s personal apocalypse is metaphorical and expresses the theme of anthropocentrism as a cataclysmic force. My goal is to demonstrate how O’Connor’s ecological poetics become evident through apocalyptic tropology and nature metaphors.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Flannery O’Connor
  topic: keywords
subject: Paul Ricoeur
  topic: keywords
subject: ecocriticism
  topic: keywords
subject: metaphor
  topic: keywords
subject: anthropocentrism
  topic: keywords
creator: Simona Bajáková
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Simona Bajáková https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-05
publication date: 2023-12-05
starting page: 106
ending page: 120
doi: 10.46585/absa.2023.16.2512

Gender Issues in Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller
type: item
description: Through an exploration of the comfort women system, this article analyzes how the female gender has been oppressed in history. It follows the story of Akiko, the main character of Comfort Woman (1998) by Asian American author Nora Okja Keller. Keller is one of the first authors to write about comfort women, gaining publicity for this issue. This article provides an examination of terms such as sex, gender, and gender issues. Certain concepts influencing American and Asian cultures and their stance towards gender are also analyzed, after which focus is placed on the portrayal of gender roles as illustrated in the novel. The article briefly mentions the history of the relationship between the United States and Korea. The characteristics of the comfort women system are described as well as the causes leading to its establishment such as patriarchy, Confucian traditions, and the exploitability of lower-class society. Additionally, the article highlights how the comfort women issue helped define feminist theory in the US and identifies the transnational nature of the issues involved.
subject: Student Contributions
  topic: section
subject: Nora Okja Keller
  topic: keywords
subject: Comfort Woman
  topic: keywords
subject: comfort women system
  topic: keywords
subject: gender
  topic: keywords
subject: Second World War
  topic: keywords
creator: Barbora Frizelová
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Barbora Frizelová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-05
publication date: 2023-12-05
starting page: 121
ending page: 134
doi: 10.46585/absa.2023.16.2509

Frustration, Boredom, and Fantasy: Augusta Webster’s “Circe”
type: item
description: The present article examines how Augusta Webster’s dramatic monologue “Circe” (1870), represents the problem of women’s boredom, frustration, and fantasy through the reinterpretation of the mythological Greek enchantress Circe. The analysis offers a close reading of the text supported by philosophical, historical, and cultural notions of boredom. Webster’s poem functions as an intriguing commentary on how loneliness and hatred towards domesticity are accompanied by growing sexual frustration and even misandry. My reading proposes a fresh look at Webster’s work, incorporating a number of critical, mostly feminist, analyses of the poem. Indeed, Webster’s “Circe” acts as a provocative glimpse into the psycho-scape of a bored woman who gradually reveals her incessant desires for change and a perfect lover.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Victorian poetry
  topic: keywords
subject: boredom studies
  topic: keywords
subject: Augusta Webster
  topic: keywords
subject: “Circe”
  topic: keywords
subject: revisionist mythology
  topic: keywords
creator: Dorota Osinska
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Dorota Osinska https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-05
publication date: 2023-12-05
starting page: 94
ending page: 105
doi: 10.46585/absa.2023.16.2508

Cats Can Be Dangerous to Your Relationships: Cats in the Fiction of Jim Grimsley
type: item
description: In the context of culture’s fascination with cats, the present article analyzes the use of felines in two pieces of fiction by the southern writer Jim Grimsley: the short story “The Cathouse Lovers” (1976) and his novel Comfort & Joy (1993 in German, 1999 in English). The two texts differ greatly in terms of the genre, period, as well as the role of cats in the story, yet both of them include the motif of cats that have a negative effect on the romantic and sexual relationships of their human protagonists.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: cats in literature
  topic: keywords
subject: American literature
  topic: keywords
subject: southern literature
  topic: keywords
subject: gay literature
  topic: keywords
subject: Jim Grimsley
  topic: keywords
subject: The Cathouse Lovers
  topic: keywords
creator: Roman Trušník
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Roman Trušník https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-05
publication date: 2023-12-05
starting page: 85
ending page: 93
doi: 10.46585/absa.2023.16.2506

Two (Postmodern) Czech Shakespearean Adaptations: Claudius and Gertrude and Emodrink of Elsinore
type: item
description: In her book on adaptation theory, Linda Hutcheon1 argues that “[n]either the product nor the process of adaptation exists in a vacuum: they all have a context - a time and a place, a society, and a culture.” Texts travel from their locus originis to other destinations, times, and contexts, crossing geographical, language, and genre borders, and creating their own palimpsestic identity. As Hutcheon2 states, “an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative - a work that is second without being secondary.” The objective of the article is to examine two Czech adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Claudius and Gertrude (2007) by Jiří Stránský and Jakub Špalek, which was inspired by Saxo Grammaticus and John Updike’s novel Gertrude and Claudius (2000), and Emodrink of Elsinore (2009) by Josef Prokeš. The two plays differ significantly. Stránský and Špalek retell the story that precedes the well-known events at Elsinore and remade the remake. Prokeš, on the other hand, transfers the action to an obscure nightclub, turning Hamlet into a bartender accompanied by a faithful dog (albeit embodied by a human) and incorporating some Czech allusions. The paper focuses on the intertextual aspects of the Czech plays and their vertical rather than horizontal existence.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: William Shakespeare
  topic: keywords
subject: Hamlet
  topic: keywords
subject: adaptation
  topic: keywords
subject: appropriation
  topic: keywords
subject: elasTEXTity
  topic: keywords
creator: Ivona Mišterová
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Ivona Mišterová https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-05
publication date: 2023-12-05
starting page: 72
ending page: 84
doi: 10.46585/absa.2023.16.2504