Category Archives: Literature

February 18

Racial Dilemma in Twain’s Huck Finn

posted by

On the 18th of February 1885, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in the United States. Twain’s picaresque novel set in the 1840s, is about a young boy called Huck who runs away from home and floats down the Mississippi River. On his way he meets a runaway slave  Jim and […]

»»
February 17

Sadeq Hedayat: Forbidden Voice of Iranian Literature

posted by

On the 17th of February 1903, the Iranian modern writer Sadeq Hedayat was born in Tehran, Iran. A child of Iranian aristocratic parents, Hedayat went to a French catholic school, and in 1925, was selected together with a few other students to travel to Europe to continue his studies. There, he pursued various unsuccessful enterprises […]

»»
February 16

De Sade, Pornography and Women: A Reappraisal by Angela Carter

posted by

On the 16th of February 1992, Angela Carter, one of England’s most valuable female writers of picaresque fiction, magical realism and cultural thought, died in London of lung cancer at the age of 51. In her obituary in The Telegraph, she was remembered for “the exuberant fantastic invention, the interest in archetypal fairytale patterns, and […]

»»
February 09

Fyodor Dostoyevsky and His Epileptic Nirvana’s

posted by

On the 9th of February 1881, one of the most prolific Russian writers, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, died of complications after a pulmonary haemorrhage in Saint Petersburg in the Russian Empire. On the day of his death he asked his wife to read him a passage from the Bible (Matthew 3:14-15): “But John forbid him, saying, I […]

»»
January 17

Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’: Comedy or Tragedy?

posted by

On the 17th of January 1904, The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov had its premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre. The play was staged by the famous actor/director and creator of the eponymous Stanislavski method, known as “method acting”, Constantin Stanislavski. The original intention of Chekhov was for The Cherry Orchard to be a comedy; […]

»»
January 13

Kostis Palamas and the Olympic Anthem

posted by

 “And then I saw that I am the poet, surely a poet among many a mere soldier of the verse, but always the poet who desires to close within his verse the longings and questionings of the universal man, and the cares and fanaticism of the citizen. I may not be a worthy citizen; but […]

»»
January 04

Charlotte Lennox’s ‘The Female Quixote’

posted by

On the 4th of January 1804, the English author and poet Charlotte Lennox, née Ramsay, died in London. The fact that she was buried in an unmarked grave at Broad Court Cemetery is, in some metaphoric way, meaningful. In her writing, and especially in The Female Quixote (1752) (or The Adventures of Arabella) – a novel imitating […]

»»
January 03

The Good Soldier Švejk: A Fool Against the System

posted by

 “When Švejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: ‘I really don’t know why those loonies get so angry when they’re kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be […]

»»
December 29

The Awakening of Joyce’s Lust for Beauty

posted by

For those soul-searching, here is an excerpt from  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce (1882 – 1941). This autobiographical Künstlerroman is unprecedented in literature for its use of free indirect speech prefiguring Joyce’s stream of consciousness technique. American modernist poet Ezra Pound had the novel published in book format […]

»»
December 24

Capote’s Christmas Memory

posted by

We dedicate the festive winter holiday week to inspirational quotes which mark cultural or historical landmarks from around the world. To keep the  Holy Eve excitement of our childhood alive, here is an excerpt from A Christmas Memory (1956), an autobiographical short story by classic American novelist Truman Capote (1924 – 1984) which has become a literary staple […]

»»