The paper addresses the issue of the traces of traditional cultural patterns of coexistence of the living and the dead in Iranian fiction by analyzing the structure of the heterotopies in two novels by female writers, namely Tuba and the Meaning of Night (Tubā va ma’nā-ye šab) by Šahrnuš Pārsipur and Gypsy by the Fire (Kouli-ye kenār-e ātaš) by Moniru Ravānipur. It also acknowledges the literary potential of spatial representation and metaphors in women’s identity discourse and the reframing of traumatizing experiences, as well as other problems of society in transition between the traditional social structure and modern individualism. 

Fitting into the current law and literature movement, the article focuses on the literary depiction of changes within divorce proceedings in nineteenth-century France based on Guy de Maupassant’s novel Bel-Ami. Written in 1885, the book depicts, in a highly realistic manner, fault-based divorce proceedings at the time of its creation. In the introduction, I briefly touch upon the evolution of the French divorce proceedings throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its final outcome: the legalisation of a dissolution of marriage in 1884. The article attempts to answer the question how that revolutionary change of the divorce law influenced the novel’s content and how Guy de Maupassant depicted the dissolution of marriage in his work, and to verify if this depiction reflects legal reality.

The article focuses on the prose experiment Die Auswandernden by the Austrian writer Peter Waterhouse and the illustrator Nanne Meyer in 2016. The book falls in the category of literary texts reflecting refugee and asylum-seeker experiences1 that have appeared on the German book market since 2012. The paper aims to describe the literary strategies Waterhouse uses to represent the refugee condition. It explores the author’s implicit programmatic statements, the construction of the female protagonist as a refugee and asylum seeking figure and Waterhouse’s reflections on language, especially the language of Austrian judiciary system.

Literature does not need to be solely confined to text, but can be accompanied by moving images, animation, sound, music, as well as a multi-linear narrative, which has become easier to integrate due to the use of hypertext and augmented reality (AR) technology. One author who readily uses such innovations is Stu Campbell, more widely known by his alias, Sutu. Aside from being a writer, Campbell is also an interactive designer and illustrator who combines art and technology in order to produce unique and experimental works. Campbell is inspired by multiple genres and formats through which he addresses poignant themes, such as memory and its loss, the imminent passage of time, as well as the meaning of identity and reality in our increasingly digital and fast-paced environment. Therefore, this paper discusses the selected works of Stu Campbell in the context of their experimental and technological nature drawing on Paola Trimarco’s discussion of “affordances,” a term originally derived from psychologist James L. Gibson, denoting the opportunities and limitations in certain environments. The works discussed are the following: Modern Polaxis, a multilinear comic in the form of a private journal which depends on AR technology to advance its narrative, Nawlz, a cyberpunk webcomic created on a horizontal interactive digital canvas, and These Memories Won’t Last, a semi-autobiographical webcomic which incorporates music, sound and animation.

The function of dance in Shakespeare’s plays, as in all Renaissance culture, has its roots in antiquity, in which dance symbolized concord and harmony that reflected the cosmic movements of celestial bodies. In this context the significance of dance in the ball scene at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet presents itself as a fascinating material to be studied from the perspective of the theatrical potential of the dramatic text. In this scene, music and dance play a symbolical role the aim of which is to highlight the dramatic irony realized by the fusion of rhetorical language and choreography, with the rich formalized poetic language and the ball situation as the key elements of the plot. This fusion opens a range of possible theatrical interpretations, each decision having a major influence on the meaning of this episode. In the article the ball scene is analyzed from the literary, dramatic and historical perspective. The realization of its theatrical potential is illustrated with chosen stage interpretations which prove this scene’s crucial role in suggesting possible interpretations of the whole tragedy.