The buoyant shift from form and structure to the fluid constructs of meaning turned discernible in Jacques Derrida's "Deconstruction." Meaning or reality that had so long been enjoying a fixed and definite status was worn out with the advent of the theory of deconstruction. The turnaround of what was considered real or true became…

The Great Terror of 1936--1938 and mass deportations of "enemies of the people" between the 1930s and the 1950s are among signature atrocities committed by Stalinist Russia. Claiming the lives of several million Soviet citizens and foreign nationals, these executions and deportations were a silenced topic until the collapse of the Soviet…

This article applies Linguistic Criticism tools (Fowler, 1981) as methodological framework for interpreting narratological devices in fiction pointing out the relationship between the perspective of the narrator and the character. Fragments from a Kosovan contemporary novel by Mehmet Kraja (2005) are analysed focusing on the non-intrusive…

This paper shows how a significant, but short-lived, episode in Scotland's educational history--the rise and decline of Socialist Sunday Schools (SSSs) in the first half of the twentieth century--provoked controversial debates about issues that continue to have relevance today. The first half of the paper explains the origins of SSSs, their links…

This paper has two complementary objectives. After providing some theoretical perspectives on fiction generally, and on the teaching of fiction more specifically, it firstly evaluates, from a literary-critical perspective, a reasonably representative selection of the portrayal of teachers and teaching in some twentieth-century Anglo-Irish fiction…

The paper intends to reread Jamaica Kincaid's short story, 'Girl' (1978) and provide new insights into its understanding. It aims to analyse the poetic qualities, word choice, and structure of the text that are left not fully discussed by recent scholarship. The structure as well as the poetic language of 'Girl' make it an unconventional piece of…

How an author communicates with a reader is a central consideration in the critical examination of any text. When considering the communication of ideas from young people whose voices are seldom heard, the journey from author to audience has particular significance. The construction of children and young people as 'authors' is important,…

Literary criticism of children's literature asserts a one-directional view of power with the adult writer constructing the child reader. Using "aetonormativity"-- adult perceptions of normality -- this paper explores what happens when children co-construct publishable fiction. Our analysis of drama and creative writing workshops shows…

Parallel structure is one linguistic feature implemented to bring aesthetics to the delivery of the English language. Traditional grammar and writing classes usually emphasize that parallelism must be observed when the language is used. In literature, as well as in real-life usage, however, parallelism is often flaunted to effect various purposes,…

Mohsin Hamid is an exponent of postcolonial characterization and possesses a specific touch of today's hero in local Asian context. His pen is fluent on social fiction portraying Indo-Pak culture. Few writers could rise to the height of fame right with only a couple of preliminary works. Hamid secured it through his first novel "Moth…

This study will try to read the stories of Sabahattin Ali, who has written various books in Turkish, within the context of Marxist literary aesthetics, assess the types and characters in the stories of Sabahattin Ali within that framework, and observe the social levels and the gaps between them based on the relationships between the two extreme…

Ventura García Calderón (1886-1959) was a Peruvian man of letters and a diplomat who was at the center of the hispanophone community in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. Known as a proponent of Spanish American literature, García Calderón achieved a global celebrity for his dramatic, colorful, and ironic short stories. These…

This article draws on my experiences of teaching "Stone Cold" to respond to a blog post suggesting that the novel holds little educational value. I argue that the novel's narrative style helps to foster criticality while its subject matter can help students see the relevance of literature to the world around them. Relating this to…

Environmental education owes its very existence to a particular interpretation of reality. The author's purpose in this article is to examine critically the "selected fictions" on which that view of reality is based--to examine the ways in which perceptions of environmental problems and issues are "conditioned by our position in…

This article presents an interview with the noted Nepali American fiction writer Samrat Upadhyay. Samrat Upadhyay's fiction is mostly about his native country of Nepal, but he writes mainly for an Anglo-American audience. In the interview, Upadhyay not only discusses his own work, but he also examines samples of prose by other Asian or Asian…