2026-04-04T12:01:55Z https://olh.openlibhums.org/api/oai/

oai:olh:id:28296 2026-04-01T02:00:00Z

Translingual premodern literature in the digital age: The case of The Seven Sages of Rome/Book of Sindbad Translingual premodern literature in the digital age: The case of The Seven Sages of Rome/Book of Sindbad Bildhauer, Bettina Bonsall, Jane This introduction lays out the rationale for this special collection: rethinking premodern literary studies on the basis of recent digital opportunities, translingual theories and collaborative methods. It also gives a brief overview over the complex transmission of The Seven Sages of Rome/Book of Sindbad story matter. 2026-04-01T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.28296 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.28296 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/28296/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25999 2026-03-25T07:50:00Z

Real maravilloso, Simulakren und untote Körper. Zu Funktionen des Puppenspiels im erweiterten Kontext des hispanischen Diktatorenromans (Valle-Inclán, Asturias, Borges, Eloy Martínez) Real maravilloso, Simulakren und untote Körper. Zu Funktionen des Puppenspiels im erweiterten Kontext des hispanischen Diktatorenromans (Valle-Inclán, Asturias, Borges, Eloy Martínez) Cuntz, Michael Im Kontext der hispanischen Variante der Gattung Diktatorenroman hat sich eine antirealistische Ästhetik herausgebildet, die in direkter Auseinandersetzung mit dem Figurentheater entsteht und sich auch in der Folge mit Referenz auf Figurentheater und Puppen weiterentwickelt. Dies geschieht in Reaktion auf eine politisch-soziale Wirklichkeit, die ihrerseits Züge des Grotesken und Irrealen trägt. Diese Ästhetik wird zunächst innerhalb des von Carpentier entwickelten Konzepts des real maravilloso situiert. Anschließend werden an zentralen Texten von Valle-Inclán, Asturias, Borges, García Márquez und Eloy Martínez zentrale Funktionen von Figurentheater und Puppen wie die Problematisierung der Grenzen zwischen lebendig/unbelebt/tot, die Theatralität der Wirklichkeit (Diktatur als Farce) und eine Ordnung der Simulakren nachgezeichnet. 2026-03-25T07:50:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25999 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25999 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25999/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:23765 2026-03-25T02:50:00Z

‚Zugleich unter den Bezauberten und Zauberern‘. Funktionen erzählten Figurentheaters von Goethe bis Hettche ‚Zugleich unter den Bezauberten und Zauberern‘. Funktionen erzählten Figurentheaters von Goethe bis Hettche Ort, Claus-Michael Der Beitrag untersucht Figurentheater als Sujet deutschsprachiger erzählender Literatur vom späten 18. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert. Dabei verfolgt er zwei Ziele. Erstens wird an einer Reihe von Beispielen gezeigt, wie literarische backstage-Narrationen des Figurentheaters Puppentheater und Puppenspiel als Kunstform thematisieren, dabei die Produktion, Rezeption und Wirkung von Figurentheater reflektieren und daraus poetologischen Mehrwert gewinnen. Innerhalb der referierten literarischen Texte kann das Strukturmerkmal ‚Figurentheater‘ eher fremdreferentielle (Figurentheater dient als allegorisches Vehikel für theaterfremde Themen) oder eher selbstreferentielle Funktionen erfüllen (Figurentheater wird als Figurentheater reflektiert). Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass das Puppenspiel dem Schreiben und der Literatur ähnelt: Schreibende sind wie Puppenspieler, da sie beide durch ihre Handbewegungen Zeichen erzeugen und dies gleichzeitig beobachten können; Selbstbeobachtung wird als Fremdbeobachtung vollziehbar. Zweitens verdichtet der dritte Teil den in diesem Beitrag erstmalig gebotenen Überblick über deutschsprachiges erzähltes Figurentheater anhand der Figur des Kasperle. An den Kasperle-Rezeptionen von Theodor Storm (Pole Poppenspäler) und Thomas Hettche (Herzfaden) kann gezeigt werden, wie die poetologischen Reflexionen im Falle des Kasperle zu einer Schädigung der Figur (Storm) bzw. ihrer Verbannung aus dem Figureninventar eines künstlerisch ambitionierten Puppentheaters (Hettche) führen. Während der Verlust des Kasperle bei Storm noch sentimental verklärt wird, wird die Figur bei Hettche in einem zeitgeschichtlich motivierten und unversöhnlichen, selbsttherapeutischen Akt des erzählerischen Exorzismus getilgt, den der Roman selbst zu wenig reflektiert. 2026-03-25T02:50:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.23765 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.23765 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/23765/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25023 2026-03-17T04:45:00Z

The Zoharic Proverb: A One-Line Dialogue The Zoharic Proverb: A One-Line Dialogue Feuerstein, Hillel The zoharic proverb is a distinctive four-word aphoristic form embedded in the Zohar, a thirteenth-century mystical corpus. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of polyphony, the article considers how proverbs function as ‘external agents’ in the text—formally integrated yet marked by an autonomous, quasi-oral voice. Characterized by a formulaic structure, dense alliteration, and archaic or newly coined vocabulary, the proverb combines the resonance of oral utterance with the precision of the writer’s craft. Two principal contexts are analyzed: in homiletic passages, the proverb condenses theosophical ideas into concise, gnomic statements; in narrative dialogues, especially physiognomic (face reading) episodes, it punctuates speech as a diagnostic punchline that reorients perception. Attention to its syntax, rhythm, and distribution shows how the proverb shapes the flow of the zoharic text while remaining set apart from it. By bringing paremiological methods into dialogue with zoharic philology, the study argues that the proverb constitutes a distinct poetic device rather than a stylistic curiosity. Its role in bridging oral and textual registers illuminates the polyphonic dynamics of the Zohar and contributes to broader discussions of textuality. 2026-03-17T04:45:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25023 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25023 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25023/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:28045 2026-03-02T03:10:00Z

Poetry off the Page: Intersecting Practices and Traditions in British Poetry Performance Poetry off the Page: Intersecting Practices and Traditions in British Poetry Performance Thomas, Helen Brady, Andrea Howarth, Peter The introduction to Poetry off the Page: Intersecting Practices and Traditions in British Poetry Performance collection. 2026-03-02T03:10:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.28045 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.28045 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/28045/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24386 2026-02-06T03:50:00Z

A Manifesto That Reads Itself: Towards a palimpsest method for 'reading' site-specific works of art A Manifesto That Reads Itself: Towards a palimpsest method for 'reading' site-specific works of art Ben Alon, Dori A method is proposed for reading video works as a palimpsest: examining the source texts (the original manifestos), the visual text, and, perhaps most importantly, the spatial context, and then adding an often-overlooked layer: the location and its history as a third ‘text.’ Relying on the notion of the linguistic turn, this method ‘reads’ different constructs as ‘texts’; relying on the notion of the spatial turn, it views space as an essential context on which the entire interpretation of the text is based. The article focuses on one video segment from Manifesto, a thirteen-channel video installation created by the German artist Julian Rosefeldt in 2015. In this work, Rosefeldt offers a broad perspective on the corpus of twentieth-century art manifestos; but instead of using them as guides he turns them into material for his work. The chosen segment, ‘Dadaism,’ is based on excerpts from manifestos and texts written by members of that movement. It is set in a graveyard, where a widower reads a eulogy. 2026-02-06T03:50:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24386 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24386 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24386/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25294 2026-01-30T07:40:00Z

Online Visual Reconceptualisation of Humorous Stereotypes: The Case of Catalonia Online Visual Reconceptualisation of Humorous Stereotypes: The Case of Catalonia Castañar-Rubio, Guillem Zhimeng, Bai Catalan people have traditionally been one of the targets of ethnic joking in Spanish humour. In canned jokes, Catalans are the butts of slurs that depict them as thrifty, stingy and business-oriented (Davies, 2009). Over the last few decades, digital communication has brought changes to this type of humour worldwide (Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman, 2015; Laineste and Fiadotava, 2017), and jokes about Catalans are not an exception. Traditional canned jokes have been replaced by multimodal items that include images or video. Moreover, ethnic humour is also affected by social reality. The Catalan pro-independence movement, which gained momentum from 2009 and has since then caused upheaval in Spanish society and its political arena, has also generated lots of online ethnic humour about Catalans (Griale Observa, 2017). On some occasions, old joke scripts of canniness and stinginess are reused for this purpose. Nevertheless, humorous attacks on other aspects of the Catalan identity have also appeared in the form of new ethnic scripts. This paper undertakes a qualitative analysis of 102 memes. The goal is to determine how Catalans have been humorously visualised online during the Catalan self-determination process. It is argued that the new digital humour combines ethnic scripts attached traditionally to Catalan people with new ethnic scripts created ad hoc during the independence process. 2026-01-30T07:40:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25294 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25294 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25294/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25329 2026-01-30T02:15:00Z

Stereotypical Poles and Their Funny Beaver (Bober) Stereotypical Poles and Their Funny Beaver (Bober) Chlopicki, Wladyslaw Brzozowska, Dorota The aim of the paper is to analyse the viral presence of the beaver in the contemporary Polish digital sphere to identify the features of a specific text that make it popular, recognised, and disseminated in certain cultural circles. Our focus is to specify the factors creating its humorous potential and highlight its role in creating and maintaining stereotypes. The material we use as an example is a short video that had apparently not been intended to be humorous but was received as such. Our hypothesis is that one of the reasons why it gained popularity was its maker’s exaggerated emotional reaction to the encounter with the actual beaver, and the language he used to reflect it. In addition, the video invoked the recreation of traditional, pre-digital stereotypes of a primitive and emotional Pole, and became viral, disseminating the ‘bober trope’. The video became popular across Slavdom, making the relation between a Pole and an animal iconic, recognisable and recontextualisable to produce further humour. The fluid transition from the video to other genres, especially memes and songs, was treated as a way of spreading the image of the stock Polish character and Polish language stereotype via an easily recognisable Polish profanity. The basic image played a vital role in constructing more elaborate narratives that reflect societal attitudes and beliefs across Slavdom. Following the early insights of iconology of movements and critical iconology, we explore the intricate relationship between the visual form of a stereotype and its corresponding symbolic meanings in order to embed images within a wider cultural context. We bring the approach up to date by drawing on the analysis of internet humour, looking at its mechanisms, such as variation, selection, emotional contagion or the need for social validation, and its increasingly transgressive character. This study points out the dynamic nature of dialogue which serves to interpret and reinterpret stereotypes across cultures and examines the qualities of the beaver video example, specifically the attitudes of the meme beaver to Poles and the reverse, the beaver impersonating a Pole, and the beaver being presented on the symbolic plane. 2026-01-30T02:15:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25329 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25329 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25329/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24119 2026-01-26T07:46:00Z

Mothers, Stepmothers, and Stepmotherlands: Jacob Maarssen and the Yiddish Tradition of Translating the Seven Sages Mothers, Stepmothers, and Stepmotherlands: Jacob Maarssen and the Yiddish Tradition of Translating the Seven Sages von Bernuth, Ruth Schmid, Achim This article offers a gendered and intersectional reading of Zibn vayzn mansters fun Roym (1676/77), Jacob ben Meir Maarssen’s Yiddish edition of The Seven Sages of Rome. While most scholarship has focused on the story cycle’s complex transmission history across languages and cultures, this study shifts the focus to representations of motherhood, stepmotherhood, and maternal authority. It argues that the Yiddish Seven Sages serves not only as a didactic text for early modern Jewish readers but also encodes allegorical meanings in which the condition of exile (goles) is mirrored in disrupted family dynamics. Drawing on the binary opposition between ‘good’ birth mothers and ‘evil’ stepmothers, the article closely analyzes the frame narrative and embedded tale ‘Tentamina’ to highlight how figures of maternal care, absence, and manipulation engage with broader concerns of gender, age, class, and communal displacement. In doing so, it repositions Maarssen’s translation within the corpus of early modern Yiddish print culture and offers new insights into the symbolic functions of family relations in Jewish literary responses to exile and social instability. 2026-01-26T07:46:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24119 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24119 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24119/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:18519 2026-01-12T04:15:00Z

Racialized Contagion and Defensive Biopolitics in The Last of Us Racialized Contagion and Defensive Biopolitics in The Last of Us Yeates, Robert In the opening moments of the video game The Last of Us Part I, players are introduced to an emerging pandemic via Austin’s Texas Herald newspaper. Below a headline warning of mass hospitalizations from a 'mysterious infection', players read of a recall of imported crops 'potentially tainted with mold': 'Initial lists distributed to vendors nationwide warned against crops imported from South America. However now the scope has extended to include Central America and Mexico'. This scene immediately suggests the racialization of the franchise’s Cordyceps brain infection (CBI), with thecontagion germinating in the global South, invading the US via its southern border, and spreading fastest in the nation’s diverse urban centres. By highlighting tainted crops as the vector of dispersal in the US, however, rather than infected humans, the franchise resists making this a simple invasion-scare narrative and instead suggests that the spread of the infection is in part a result of the capitalist exploitation of cheap land and labour in the global South. Despite its inconsistent record on racial representation and the near-absence of discussion of race across the franchise, the structures reflecting the racialization of contagion and the perpetuation of racialized hierarchies through defensive biopolitics remain present. Drawing connections with the discourse around immigration and the southern border and contemporary pandemics and epidemics, this article makes the case for reading the franchise in terms of racialized contagion and defensive biopolitics, a reading that highlights how the games and their television adaptation reflect urgent contemporary issues around race in America. 2026-01-12T04:15:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.18519 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.18519 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/18519/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24115 2026-01-09T04:20:00Z

Suspense and Reversal: The Curfew Law in The Seven Sages Suspense and Reversal: The Curfew Law in The Seven Sages Skinner, Jordan Kenneth This essay examines the medieval curfew law through its earliest literary appearance in the ‘Puteus’ fabliau, part of the Seven Sages of Rome frame narrative. Both tale and frame reveal how the curfew operated through twin mechanisms of suspense and reversal that functioned both as narrative techniques and juridical principles. The fabliau’s strategic repetitions and syntactic inversions formalize the law’s formal logic: the medieval curfew generated compliance through anticipatory suspense rather than through force alone, while its authority began in a single transformative moment when the curfew bell reversed legal status instantaneously from authorized to forbidden. The ‘Puteus’ tale exposes what legal archives omit—that the curfew transformed domestic space into obligatory domains of confinement, producing domestic order through nightly interdiction. The Seven Sages frame extends the curfew’s configuration across seven days, where storytelling becomes a technique of juridical deferral. Each day’s narrative concludes with the ritual closing of gates and windows, aligning the frame’s structure with the curfew’s temporal rhythm. 2026-01-09T04:20:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24115 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24115 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24115/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:10853 2026-01-07T01:45:00Z

Margins of Ecocriticism: The Annotated Library of Luis Oyarzún (1920–1972) Margins of Ecocriticism: The Annotated Library of Luis Oyarzún (1920–1972) Donoso, Arnaldo This article concerns the discovery of annotated volumes within the personal book collection of Chilean intellectual Luis Oyarzún (1920–1972). Beyond contextualizing the finding, it examines a corpus of Oyarzún’s handwritten annotations in botanical and environmental works through the lenses of literary theory, archival studies, and ecocriticism. The analysis argues that marginalia constitute a legitimate object of study for ecocritical and environmental humanities inquiry. The article posits that focused attention on peripheral textualities can expand the methodological scope of these fields, fostering deeper textual archaeologies of environmental thought and cultural discourse. 2026-01-07T01:45:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.10853 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.10853 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/10853/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25303 2026-01-05T07:30:00Z

Between Horror and Humor: Depicting Countries as Beasts in Early 20th-Century Russian Cartoons Between Horror and Humor: Depicting Countries as Beasts in Early 20th-Century Russian Cartoons Rezvukhina, Anna This study examines the interplay between the elements of funny and frightening in early 20th century Russian satirical magazines (1890–1905), focusing on zoomorphic caricatures that depict rival nations to the Russian Empire, namely the British Empire, China, and Japan. In these caricatures, rival countries are portrayed as predatory or monstrous animals—an embodiment of fear and otherness—before being ridiculed through visual tools, thereby neutralizing their threat to readers. Drawing on primary sources from journals such as Shut [The Jester], Budil’nik [The Alarm Clock], and Strekoza [The Dragonfly], this research identifies key techniques used to construct the zoomorphic image of a country as a beast. The process of animalization not only dehumanized the depicted nation but also reinforced narratives of enmity and alienation. The choice of beast reflected varying levels of hostility, emphasizing foreignness and danger. While horror elements intensified the perception of threat, caricatural tools—such as exaggeration and absurd juxtapositions—simultaneously trivialized the enemy, converting fear into ridicule. By analyzing these strategies, this study reveals the dual function of horror and humor in shaping public perception of foreign powers. It also contributes to understanding early 20th-century Russian visual propaganda, demonstrating how zoomorphic caricatures served as tools for ideological positioning. 2026-01-05T07:30:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25303 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25303 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25303/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:23780 2026-01-05T06:05:00Z

Towards a theory of ‘poet-voice’ Towards a theory of ‘poet-voice’ Steel, Conrad Why do people reading poetry aloud stereotypically sound so sad? The term 'poet-voice' has recently gained currency to describe this vocal style, which is often cited - correctly - as a key characteristic of the spread of performance poetry in the 21st century. But this article shows that the roots of this style go back much further, and that to understand the contemporary aesthetics of poet-voice it is necessary to situate them in a genealogy that begins three centuries ago. I combine recent empirical analysis with insights from behavioural psychology on the one hand and critical theory on the other, in order to examine the affective stance that poet-voice projects and the historical structure behind it. That stance, I argue, is fundamentally one of uncontrol, and has to be understood as giving voice to a determinate set of hopes and anxieties concerning the control systems by which our contemporary moment has been shaped. The formation of poet-voice in its current technologically-mediated version is then explored via two case studies: first, the transitional instance of a BBC radio broadcast made by Yeats in 1931, and second, a YouTube video by Kae Tempest from 2011, showing how specific concerns around mediation, affect, and control have given the long-repeated cadences of poet-voice a new lease of life in the contemporary moment. 2026-01-05T06:05:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.23780 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.23780 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/23780/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17684 2026-01-05T05:35:00Z

Women in Transit, Transient Women: Interpreting Ephemeral Materiality and Experience in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and The Glimpses of the Moon Women in Transit, Transient Women: Interpreting Ephemeral Materiality and Experience in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and The Glimpses of the Moon Ridge, Emily Edith Wharton shows a sustained preoccupation with the material and gendered dimensions of transience in her fiction. Following an initial discussion of the formative influence of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), this essay focuses on the characters of Lily Bart in The House of Mirth (1905) and Susy Lansing in The Glimpses of the Moon (1922). It argues that the packed cases of these female protagonists are posited as mobile archives of ephemeral experience, something I characterise as a type of non-domestic experience that foregrounds impermanent forms of attachment and is subject to social judgement and envy in turn. The various ephemeral objects that form part of the luggage of Lily and Susy stand in for more enduring forms of material investment. Yet their understanding of the implications of such objects differs greatly and has a bearing on narrative outcome for each character. As the essay argues, the respective fates of Lily and Susy depend on whether they conceptualise the condition of transience and accompanying material manifestations of ephemerality in terms of social marginalisation or dynamic opportunity. 2026-01-05T05:35:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 12 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17684 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17684 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17684/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24096 2025-12-23T04:45:00Z

From the Evil Queen to the Saracen Princess: the Making of Heterosexual Love in the Roman de Cassidorus (Third French Prose Continuation of the Roman des Sept Sages de Rome) From the Evil Queen to the Saracen Princess: the Making of Heterosexual Love in the Roman de Cassidorus (Third French Prose Continuation of the Roman des Sept Sages de Rome) Foehr-Janssens, Yasmina In the narrative tradition of The Seven Sages of Rome, the stereotype of the powerful woman threatening a boy, as previously articulated in the biblical story of Joseph, is complemented by strong homosocial bonds among the numerous male characters. This narrative configuration establishes a gender pattern that seems hostile to any heterosexual love plot. As the French prose continuations of The Seven Sages emerge in the 13th century, they face a dual challenge: new characters must conform to the cycle’s characteristic misogamy, yet the heroes are simultaneously encouraged to marry, in keeping with the conventions of chivalric romance and the genealogical logic of the cycle. This paper examines the opening episode of the third continuation, the Roman de Cassidorus, in which the young emperor Cassidorus encounters his future wife, the princess Helcana. This narrative sequence evokes a range of popular motifs found in both chansons de geste and contemporary romances. Set in the Holy Land, the plot engages with issues of cultural and religious difference. The resolution of this love affair draws upon an apocryphal episode from the story of Joseph – the legend of the marriage between Joseph and Aseneth – which, like the Seven Sages tradition, possesses a distinctly translinguistic and transcultural dimension. This episode makes the construction of heterosexual love visible, and also the constructedness of courtly love. 2025-12-23T04:45:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24096 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24096 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24096/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24108 2025-12-23T04:15:00Z

Self-Injury and Truth in Hebrew and Latin Versions of the Seven Sages of Rome Self-Injury and Truth in Hebrew and Latin Versions of the Seven Sages of Rome Doherty-Harrison, Hope This article compares three medieval versions of the ‘Seven Sages of Rome’ narrative: the Latin Dolopathos (1184–1212) and Historia septem sapientum (1300–1342) and the Hebrew Mishle Sendebar (1100–1295). Highlighting the ways in which portrayals of the deceptive female figure at the centre of the story diverge between the three versions, the article especially examines their differing responses to her self-injury and suicidality. Arguing that self-injury implicates the far broader issues of law and textual authority, spoken communication, and the (mis)use of biblical language, the article demonstrates that the Mishle Sendebar depicts the king, sages and wider society choosing to forgive the prince’s accuser based on the Talmudic Golden Rule, whereas the Latin versions view only punishment by death as the acceptable outcome for her. The article suggests that the latter depictions are due to surrounding Christian contexts relating to supersessionism and the personified constructs of Ecclesia and Synagoga. 2025-12-23T04:15:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24108 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24108 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24108/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24109 2025-12-19T02:35:00Z

‘Jeust twa folk ken’: Adapting and Performing The Seven Sages of Scotland ‘Jeust twa folk ken’: Adapting and Performing The Seven Sages of Scotland Bonsall, Jane Elizabeth Black, Daisy This paper reflects upon the research and development of two performances of The Seven Sages of Scotland, based on the late medieval Scottish Buke of the Sevyne Sagis, to consider the process, impact, and outcome of creative adaptations of medieval material. These performances took place in the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh in July 2023, and in the Byre Theatre in St Andrews in September 2024. Each performer adapted a discrete portion of the text: either the frame story of the empress who falsely accuses her stepson of attempted rape, or the embedded tales of the storytelling contest that ensues to determine the prince’s guilt or innocence. The resulting performances utilised a range of narrative styles, Scots dialects, and interpretive strategies – all while encouraging reflection and critical assessment in the audience about questions of bias and hearsay. By thinking through critical adaptation theory and reflecting on the methodologies employed by Daisy Black’s storytelling workshops as part of the adaptive development process, this article explores how medieval narratives with misogynist, violent or discriminatory elements – like The Seven Sages – may be responsibly retold. Drawing upon audience response surveys and follow-up interviews with the performers, we then consider the impact of such adaptations upon general audiences, upon medievalists, and upon performance artists and storytellers. What performances like The Seven Sages of Scotland ultimately reveal is the important role creative-critical medievalism may play in both the public-facing aspect of medieval studies, as well as in our understanding of the affective nuances and contemporary resonances of medieval narratives. 2025-12-19T02:35:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24109 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24109 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24109/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24113 2025-12-09T05:15:00Z

Good trans kids and bad trans lovers as expressions of trans misogyny in the Seven Sages/Sindbad story matter and the Roman de Silence Good trans kids and bad trans lovers as expressions of trans misogyny in the Seven Sages/Sindbad story matter and the Roman de Silence Bildhauer, Bettina Pepe, Moss This article takes the theoretical framework of trans misogyny to two versions of the Seven Sages/Sindbad story matter – the Hebrew Mishle Sendebar and the Latin Historia septem sapientum– as well as to the French Seven Sages continuation Marques de Rome and to the Roman de Silence. These texts, which were all produced in the North-East of French-speaking lands between c. 1175 and 1350, contain two strikingly consistent character types: the trans lover and the trans kid. In this article, we suggest that violent trans misogynistic force is brought to bear on the figure of the trans lover, whose body is figured as a site of guilt. The trans kids, on the other hand, who are often but not exclusively trans masculine characters, evade lethal forms of punishment, and are typically infantilised in these same texts. These contrasting depictions are not only related to one another but also reinforce wider systems of misogyny. 2025-12-09T05:15:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24113 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24113 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24113/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24111 2025-12-05T05:25:00Z

The Forty Veziers as Part of the Global Narrative of The Seven Sages of Rome The Forty Veziers as Part of the Global Narrative of The Seven Sages of Rome Eming, Jutta Using the Ottoman Forty Viziers as a starting point, this article discusses the basic structure of the Seven Sages of Rome narrative and its extensive flexibility that has not yet been fully appreciated and explored. Research has been dominated by a distinction between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ versions, and differentiating between such versions has been the basic approach to the Seven Sages material. In this respect, the transmission of the Seven Sages needs to be re-evaluated from the ground up, specifically through its varieties. I consider this is an especially promising approach to the question as to how global literature might best be understood—not universal and identical, but entangled and variable. 2025-12-05T05:25:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24111 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24111 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24111/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:18059 2025-11-28T03:30:00Z

Pluralising globality: Afropolitanism as epistemic self-assertion in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah Pluralising globality: Afropolitanism as epistemic self-assertion in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah ũa Waya, Chalo In From Bomba to Hip-Hop (2000: 193), the Afro-Latino American writer Juan Flores discusses the nature of community—comunidad in the Spanish. He says that it is both a phenomenon existing in something akin to a state of nature and as the result of deliberate human interventions. The comun part of comunidad is the element that does not require human intervention. The unidad part is where various forces in society use their situatedness and power to negotiate the nature and shape of the community. Differently situated groups in society have different capacities to shape the nature of the community in which they are co-existing. Their place in a continuum ranging from epistemic and sociopolitical agents to mere states of affairs determines their discursive capacity to shape their world. In this article, I will argue that Afropolitanism should be seen as an attempt by African and Afrodescendant writers to stake a claim in the unidad processes and practices through which a becoming-one-again global oecumene is making and remaking itself. I will argue that Afropolitanism is a crucial effort at pluralising the ways of knowing, being and relating. Based on an analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013), I will show how African and Afrodescendant writers are playing an important role in dismantling colonial and postcolonial epistemic genealogies and their conceptions of globality. I will demonstrate Afropolitanism’s potential to challenge the epistemic, sociopolitical, economic and physical immobilisation of the African and Afrodescendant subjects—narratively and discursively bringing into view these stigmatised and silenced subjects. 2025-11-28T03:30:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.18059 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.18059 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/18059/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17945 2025-11-28T02:25:00Z

La querelle des mendiants dans les synodes provinciaux et diocésains du bas Moyen Âge. Approches préliminaires La querelle des mendiants dans les synodes provinciaux et diocésains du bas Moyen Âge. Approches préliminaires Woelki, Thomas La querelle des mendiants occupait une place importante en tant que matière récurrente dans les statuts synodaux du haut et du bas Moyen Âge publiés en série dans toute l’Europe1. Elle occupait les synodes de la fin du Moyen Âge dans toute l’Europe latine, de l’Écosse à la Sicile, de l’Espagne à la Suède. Les statuts synodaux ne peuvent toutefois guère être utilisés comme un sismographe qui indiquerait avec précision les régions et les périodes où la querelle des mendiants éclata de manière aiguë. Le caractère fondamentalement conservateur du genre, où les chemins tortueux de la réception peuvent mener loin des contextes concrets, est trop important. La plupart du temps, la querelle des mendiants n’était pas le but premier du synode, mais elle était mise à l’ordre du jour à cette occasion, surtout par le clergé paroissial. Elle a été régulièrement reprise dans les statuts des synodes provinciaux, mais plus rarement dans ceux diocésains. On observe en outre à plusieurs reprises que des évêques ont transmis les plaintes de leurs sujets à un synode provincial. Les statuts synodaux ne présentent pas un reflet de la réalité juridique locale, mais offrent des accès à des lignes de compromis consensuelles. Dans l’ensemble, les synodes semblent avoir été un forum de dialogue pacifique et de rétablissement de l’ordre plutôt qu’une caisse de résonance pour des attaques polémiques qui auraient alimenté davantage la querelle des mendiants. Au plus tard vers 1300, lorsque le conflit permanent entre les mendiants et le clergé séculier est devenu endémique, les synodes ont constitué un élément important de la résilience de l’Église. Les débordements locaux et les crises aiguës ont pu être gérés de cette manière. La synodalité était un élément essentiel du système immunitaire de l’Église. 2025-11-28T02:25:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17945 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17945 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17945/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25162 2025-11-28T01:40:00Z

Visual Rhetoric in Mediating Impartial Humor: Political Cartoons on the Russo-Ukrainian War Visual Rhetoric in Mediating Impartial Humor: Political Cartoons on the Russo-Ukrainian War Semotiuk, Orest This study investigates the intersection of visual rhetoric and impartial humor in political cartoons portraying the Russo-Ukrainian War. Drawing on foundational works on visual rhetoric, the paper situates political cartoons within the broader context of political discourse. The data set includes 16 political cartoons from Australia, the USA, Algeria, Morocco, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Greece, Taiwan, Qatar, Iran, Ukraine, and Russia. The paper examines how cartoonists employ visual rhetorical devices to craft impartial humor. The analysis is based on the corresponding parameters of political cartoons (goal-target, frame of reference-focus, and means-presentation) supplemented by two criteria: a) the author’s attitude toward the conflict parties and b) the author’s position towards the war and its consequences in general. Methodologically, it is supported by quantitative and qualitative content analysis using MAXQDA (2024). The author concludes that even if political cartoonists do not take a clear stance on the conflict parties, their work still reflects a vision of war as a global evil without borders. 2025-11-28T01:40:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25162 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25162 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25162/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25991 2025-11-24T05:30:00Z

Who ate the baby? ‘Canis’’ adaptation history visualized Who ate the baby? ‘Canis’’ adaptation history visualized Hölzlhammer, Lilli The Sanskrit tale of the hasty father who kills the one who tried to protect his baby travels through medieval languages and cultures. While the narrative stays the same, the killed character changes from mongoose to weasel to dog to wife. The question this creative response asks is how a visualization of these three versions can highlight the transformation of the killed character, and the misogyny in the 11th century Greek translation. The visualization of the character change in three commented comics starring a mongoose, a dog, and the wife each, is a more effective option of addressing the difference in these versions. This is especially the case for the wife character and the underlying misogyny that has never been questioned by any translator of the Greek text even today. 2025-11-24T05:30:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25991 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25991 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25991/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:24212 2025-11-12T03:40:00Z

Born-Digital Humor and Context Saturation: Using Generative AI to Preserve and Interpret Russo-Ukrainian War Memes Born-Digital Humor and Context Saturation: Using Generative AI to Preserve and Interpret Russo-Ukrainian War Memes Rakityanskaya, Anna Memes of the full-scale invasion phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War (2022-) are characterized by their abundance, varied focus on multiple aspects of the war, and high ephemerality due both to their physical container and their complex multimodality and intertextuality. Understanding the humor of memes is vital for preserving the memes’ integrity as communication units, because their meaning often cannot be gleaned from the explicit properties of the meme and emerges only through an understanding of the implicit message. This paper focuses on finding a solution for preserving the semantic integrity of memes in digital archiving by testing the application of generative AI in their interpretation. Using the framework of Suls’ (1972) incongruity resolution theory and Yus’s (2017, 2021) system of incongruity patterns, the study tests the ability of ChatGPT 4o to process the content of memes to produce metadata with an accurate explanation of their humor. The author introduces the concept of the meme context saturation spectrum as a tool for evaluating the correlation between a chatbot’s performance and the amount of contextual information embedded in a meme. The study also measures the chatbot’s success in processing both current and retrospective material. 2025-11-12T03:40:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.24212 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.24212 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/24212/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17634 2025-10-24T05:00:00Z

Entangled Polemics? The Mendicant-Secular Controversy at the time of the Great Western Schism and beyond Entangled Polemics? The Mendicant-Secular Controversy at the time of the Great Western Schism and beyond Sère, Bénédicte At the heart of the debates surrounding the privileges of the mendicants lies a central controversy regarding the role of the papacy. From the mid-13th century onwards, the pope was not merely a participant in this controversy; as early scholarship by Yves Congar has demonstrated, his authority itself became a focal point of repeated contention. Arguments against the privileges of the friars were thus intertwined with debates about the papacy’s role. This contribution explores some of the dynamics involved in this complex process. It examines documents from the time of the Great Schism (1378–1417), tracing how arguments raised in the controversy over the friars became deeply embedded in the broader debates surrounding the Schism and papal authority. 2025-10-24T05:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17634 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17634 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17634/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:23416 2025-10-24T03:45:00Z

The Letter of the Law: Joyce, Martyrdom, and Wildean Litigation The Letter of the Law: Joyce, Martyrdom, and Wildean Litigation Lawrence, Casey Maria In James Joyce's Ulysses, both the ‘Cyclops’ episode and the parodic legal proceedings of ‘Circe’ treat sexual deviance as anti-Irish—a feminised foreign invader threatening the heterosexist, hypermasculine Irish Nationalism espoused by the Citizen. Oscar Wilde is a subtextual figure in the court of public opinion that convenes at Kiernan’s Pub and Leopold Bloom’s sexual harassment trial, hovering on the periphery of the collective consciousness that characterises both episodes. Due to his engagement with various legal cases and sex scandals (including Wilde's but also Roger Casement, Myles Joyce, and Charles Stewart Parnell), Joyce’s novel may act as an archive of a historical moment of change—a queer slippage between 1904 and 1922. The contrast between men like the Citizen, whose insularity perpetuates and eroticises Irish martyrdom, and men like Bloom, whose Otherness makes him a target of homophobia and racial bigotry, demonstrates the shifting cultural values of turn-of-the-century Ireland and looks outward toward its contemporary readers with a sly wink. 2025-10-24T03:45:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.23416 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.23416 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/23416/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:25841 2025-10-21T05:00:00Z

Editorial Freedom in Academic Publishing: On the First Decade of the Open Library of Humanities Editorial Freedom in Academic Publishing: On the First Decade of the Open Library of Humanities Harris-Birtill, Rose This editorial commemorates the tenth anniversary of diamond open access journal publisher the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) and its flagship journal, the Open Library of Humanities journal (OLHJ). Launched in 2015, the OLH serves as an innovative model for sustainable and equitably-funded scholarly publishing that now supports over 30 peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. Discussing the OLHJ’s rolling publication format as a key factor in its success, this article draws on the experiences of academic editors to emphasise the importance of retaining editorial agency throughout the journal publication process. Recognising increasing corporate pressure on editors to compromise their academic integrity in favour of increasing profits, the article reveals the growing trend of mass resignations of journal editors in recent years, highlighting the fundamental importance of editors’ ethical decisions in extending the global scholarly ecosystem for the common good. Building on the 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and its 20th anniversary recommendations, this article calls for a renewed commitment to its open access principles, urging the academic community to ‘think globally, act locally’. Applying Jonathan Lear’s concept of ‘radical hope’ as a powerful catalyst for the open access movement, the editorial frames collective action as a vital response to global crises in academic communities. It details vital practical steps that researchers, editors and educators can take to help advance the BOAI’s goals, concluding that such individual ethical choices and collective actions are crucial for the future of the open access movement. 2025-10-21T05:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.25841 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.25841 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/25841/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17161 2025-09-26T02:12:00Z

Ephemera and the Construction of First World War Life Writing Ephemera and the Construction of First World War Life Writing Foster, Ann-Marie In the years following the First World War, memoirs of combatants and those who experienced war in other roles proliferated the print market with their autobiographies. People made sense of their war experiences through writing, describing where and how they had experienced the conflict, making sense of the war’s place in their life narrative. This writing hinged on ephemera as a vehicle for expression – authors used this material to make sense of their narratives. When life writing about war is looked at through an ephemeral lens—how people related to ephemera, used it in their writing, and understood relatable moments in their life through it—it not only becomes clear just how frequently people imagined and explained the world around them using paper, but also how much paper influenced the everyday. The memoirs consulted for this research consist of approximately seventy pieces of life writing written and (mostly) published by British authors between 1915 and 2018 who had some experience of the First World War. In their life writing, the everyday was explained through common types of ephemera, from real items kept in personal archives to imagined imagery which helped explain the circumstances the authors found themselves in. Writers of memoirs used paper ephemera—whether described, imagined or actually reproduced—to engage their readers and connect with their wartime experiences. Far from being throwaway objects, ephemera structured and influenced life writing about war in ways that profoundly shaped how the British public encountered war narratives. 2025-09-26T02:12:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17161 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17161 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17161/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:19789 2025-09-19T02:00:00Z

Dogwhistles, Discrimination, Humour and the Law: Regulating Implicit Messaging Dogwhistles, Discrimination, Humour and the Law: Regulating Implicit Messaging Young, Jennifer This paper explores how implicit, discriminatory messages bypass sanctions in the United Kingdom and beyond, despite their potential for significant societal harm. Drawing on linguistic and humour research, it emphasises the role of humour used to conceal discriminatory expression and evade legal boundaries. The study extends understanding of how courts and, more recently, online platform moderators sometimes struggle to identify discrimination in humour, especially satire and irony. This has raised concerns about potential regulatory overreach as well as the risk that failing to address the issue could normalise hateful expression. Expanding laws to regulate implicit speech is problematic; it risks suppressing legitimate expression and stifling creativity. Nonetheless, implicit expressions used to promote social division or discrimination are equally problematic if left unchallenged. Therefore, tackling this issue requires a multi-faceted approach, combining education about the legal consequences of both offline and online expression, platform policies, and media literacy initiatives. These initiatives should help audiences better interpret implicit messages, complemented by legal literacy to encourage consideration of the legal implications of their speech. 2025-09-19T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.19789 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.19789 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/19789/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:23378 2025-09-09T08:22:00Z

Unveiling the Sculpture within the Marble Block: Erasure Poetry as Poetic Sculpturing – How to read Alex Ben-Ari's Mayim Mayim Unveiling the Sculpture within the Marble Block: Erasure Poetry as Poetic Sculpturing – How to read Alex Ben-Ari's Mayim Mayim Nitzan, Ido This article examines the boundaries of poetry as a textual form by exploring its intersections with visual arts, conceptual writing, and experimental poetics. Focusing on the techniques of Concrete poetry, Ready-made poetry, and Erasure poetry, it outlines their development and application in general and in modern Hebrew literature. These forms challenge conventional notions of poetic authorship, textuality, and interpretation by transforming existing texts through graphical deviation, parodic displacement, and erasure. The discussion culminates in analyzing Alex Ben-Ari’s Mayim Mayim [Water Water, 2020], a unique case in which the poet erases and refashions his previously published poems. Ben-Ari creates a new poetic layer that functions simultaneously as self-parody and a new creation by blackening most of the words in his first book, Yamim Smuyim [Hidden Days, 2008]. Engaging with theoretical and artistic perspectives, the article examines how Erasure poetry redefines poetic creation as an ongoing process of revision and transformation. Ultimately, Erasure poetry is presented not merely as a subversive poetic act but as a form of poetic sculpturing, revealing the poem hidden within the original text, just as a sculptor carves a figure from the ready-made marble block. 2025-09-09T08:22:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.23378 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.23378 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/23378/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:23973 2025-09-09T06:49:00Z

Soviet Bodies in Transition: Sex and Stereotypes in the Visual Satire of Late Perestroika Soviet Bodies in Transition: Sex and Stereotypes in the Visual Satire of Late Perestroika Yeremieieva, Kateryna This article examines how late Soviet visual satire—particularly cartoons and caricatures—functioned as a vehicle for expressing and reinforcing gender stereotypes, with a specific focus on sexuality. The relative loosening of censorship under Perestroika permitted an increased presence of sexual humour in Soviet media. However, rather than indicating genuine liberalisation, this humour often reaffirmed patriarchal frameworks. In magazines such as Krokodil and Perets’, the female body frequently appears as a hypersexualised figure, commodified and rendered interchangeable with consumer goods. These representations did not critique dominant gender ideologies; instead, they naturalised them through visual codes of desire, scarcity, and submission. Employing an iconological approach, this article analyses how this visual rhetoric encoded broader cultural anxieties about gender, sex, and social change. Soviet cartoons simultaneously reflected and shaped discourse on sexuality, portraying it as both emancipatory and destabilising. Through an analysis of official satire, unofficial humour, and visual culture, this article explores how visual satire contributed to the evolution of gender discourses in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods. 2025-09-09T06:49:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.23973 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.23973 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/23973/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:23243 2025-09-09T02:30:00Z

'Die Hard Level: Romanian' – Self-irony and Humour in English-Language Memes about Romanians 'Die Hard Level: Romanian' – Self-irony and Humour in English-Language Memes about Romanians Grosu-Rădulescu, Lucia-Mihaela This article tackles the issue of Romanian national identity and stereotypes, drawing on the most recent research on digital forms of communication, more specifically, memes. The paper addresses the following research question: How do English-language memes about Romanians simultaneously reinforce and undermine national stereotypes through self-irony and visual humour? Post-communist Romanian national identity has been discussed in political and social arenas and academic circles for over 30 years (after the 1989 Revolution). Romanian national identity remains shaped by the legacy of its communist past while simultaneously embracing a European, Westernized orientation, whether examined in scholarly debates or within the context of establishing (new) roots in a democratic environment. This ‘transitional’ position may also be traced in the digital space. The present article focuses on analysing memes linked to stereotypes about Romanians to yield fresh interpretations of how self-irony and humour either strengthen or undermine perceptions of Romanian national identity and values. The discussion will tap into theories of memetic communication (see Kien 2019), visual rhetoric (see Foss 2005), and media rhetoric (see Mateus 2021). A noteworthy aspect of the analysis is the linguistic one, since all selected memes have been circulating with English texts, ensuring a broader audience and, hence, a better chance of going viral. To thoroughly conduct the analysis, this study will draw upon various theories surrounding the virality of digital multimodal texts and explore their profound implications in perpetuating stereotypes on a global scale. 2025-09-09T02:30:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.23243 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.23243 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/23243/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:20347 2025-08-20T06:35:00Z

Popping Culture: Spoken Word and Nostalgia Popping Culture: Spoken Word and Nostalgia McGowan, Jack This article explores the prominent use of popular culture as a thematic concern in contemporary spoken word performance, in particular the ways in which initially nostalgic representations of popular culture can be used to establish community and to interrogate historic cultural production. Using Svetlana Boym’s typological distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia, I unpack the ways in which cultural production such as books, films, and television shows are presented in spoken word performances. Through case studies of four performances, I review techniques that build a sense of community through a shared awareness and appreciation of popular culture. I also examine ways in which these case studies reflect on the contemporary relevance of historic popular culture and re-evaluate it through a more contemporary lens to unpack its problematic values and undercurrents. In conclusion, I reflect on the ways in which the formal and affective dimensions of spoken word performance position it as a particularly effective medium for the representation and evaluation of popular culture, thus substantiating its frequency as a theme in contemporary performance poetry. 2025-08-20T06:35:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.20347 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.20347 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/20347/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17984 2025-07-07T01:51:00Z

Customary Law and Customary Practice: Changkija’s Criticism of the ‘Customary’ in Relation to Gendered Experiences Customary Law and Customary Practice: Changkija’s Criticism of the ‘Customary’ in Relation to Gendered Experiences Chüzho, Nove Monalisa Changkija interrogates two significant aspects of the ‘customary’; as law grounded in jurisprudence/justiciability in the court and as practice grounded in tradition/tribal belief systems. Within the Naga context in which she writes and speaks, these aspects of ‘customary’ structure both the village and worldview. This article explores the political functions of the ‘customary,’ which regulate the life and living of women, and often subjects them to various forms of disenfranchisement and discrimination. The regulation of the state/village is androcentric and justified through what is, or is not, considered ‘customary,’ restricting women both at the levels of decision-making and political participation. Changkija views such injustices as political, reflecting systemic gender discrimination and violence in society, and personal, as a woman victimized by these laws and practices which are ‘customary.’ Such blurring of a strict distinction between the ‘political’ and ‘personal’ in Changkija’s criticism is discussed through feminist approaches in the investigation of Naga laws and practices. Employing a feminist approach to politics, this article argues that, by drawing attention to the political function of custom, Changkija contributes to theorizing the diverse forces that constitute and shape politics and political participation. It further argues that the difference between customary law and practice is determinable in Changkija’s writing, and comprises multiple sites of women’s victimization, which Changkija gives the name ‘customary victimization.’ I argue that these aspects of the ‘customary’ produce both gender constructions and gendered experiences, which are central to Changkija’s criticism. 2025-07-07T01:51:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 2 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17984 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17984 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17984/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:18314 2025-06-25T02:58:00Z

‘Carrying the Thing On’: Bob Cobbing and Translingual Sound Poetry Performance in the UK and Chile ‘Carrying the Thing On’: Bob Cobbing and Translingual Sound Poetry Performance in the UK and Chile Skoulding, Zoë Interpreting sound poetry as a practice that draws on and generates translingual creativity, this article interrogates the British poet Bob Cobbing’s approaches to sound and performance, the collaborative pedagogies he developed through Writers Forum from the 1950s onwards, and the ways in which these have subsequently enabled the emergence of poetic practices and communities connecting the UK and Chile. The translingual aspects of Cobbing’s own practice, formed in the context of post-war neo-avant-garde internationalism, created new possibilities for Chilean poets working in London and performing poetry in English as a second language in the early years of the twenty-first century. These included Martín Gubbins, who went back to Santiago to develop Foro de Escritores, a Chilean version of Writers Forum, and the Chilean-UK artist collective montenegrofisher, for whom the interface between the visual and sounded aspects of performance became a means of extending community ecologically, voicing presences of minoritized languages and advocating for non-human others. I will show how the connectivity offered by sound poetry responds to its translingual history and enables dialogues across cultures, and how the recent adaptation of these longstanding relationships to new digital and international contexts reveals the enduring influence of Cobbing and his collaborators. A focus on performance highlights the internationalism of the British Poetry Revival and its significance for subsequent generations of poets working in English as a second language. 2025-06-25T02:58:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.18314 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.18314 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/18314/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:19713 2025-06-04T03:48:00Z

Staging Intermediality and Queerness in Jasmine Gardosi’s Dancing to Music You Hate Staging Intermediality and Queerness in Jasmine Gardosi’s Dancing to Music You Hate Banerji, Shefali In this article, I investigate the employment of formal fluidity and cross-arts experimentation in spoken word theatre using Irina O. Rajewsky’s (2005) framework of intermediality along with the concept of ‘transgenre’ to study the performance of transqueer narratives on stage. To this end, I examine the show Dancing to Music You Hate by the former Birmingham Poet Laureate (2022–24) Jasmine Gardosi, using a combination of archival video of the show’s premiere at Warwick Arts Centre in October 2021 and my own critical observations of the live performance at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in January 2023 as the focus of my analysis. My research is framed by two central questions: 1) How does Jasmine Gardosi’s employment of an intermedial genre-fluid artistic strategy communicate the themes of queerness and gender fluidity? and 2) How does Gardosi stage, perform and express this queering of artistic boundaries to make it visible and audible in their performance? I demonstrate the ways in which Gardosi’s genre-bending show incorporates a mix of beatboxing, poetry and collaboration with a music band live on stage to facilitate meaning making. By utilising Stephen Greer’s (2012) theory of queer performance and concepts of transgenre put forward by Jay Prosser (1998) and Trish Salah (2021), I analyse the poet’s deployment of transgeneric queering strategies in both the poetic text as well as the performance. Finally, I argue that the anxieties of the closet and ‘outness’ extant in earlier parts of the performance and the concluding celebration of gender euphoria significantly inform transqueer expression in Dancing to Music You Hate. 2025-06-04T03:48:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.19713 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.19713 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/19713/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:19044 2025-06-04T02:53:00Z

‘All your disembodied little heads floating on a screen’: Liveness During the Pandemic in Mel Bradley’s Ms Noir’s Seven Deadly Sins (2020)  ‘All your disembodied little heads floating on a screen’: Liveness During the Pandemic in Mel Bradley’s Ms Noir’s Seven Deadly Sins (2020)  Palzer, Claire The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK and Ireland in 2020 and the subsequent lockdowns caused a radical rupture in the world of live performances. Both theatre and poetry performance events moved online in various formats. One of the central issues that pandemic performance faced was the issue of liveness as audiences and performers could not be in the same space. Drawing on conceptualisations of liveness from theatre and performance studies, as well as the burgeoning field of pandemic performance research, my research asks how poet-performers responded to the lack of traditional liveness in their performances. This article explores the response to the circumstances of the pandemic by examining a digital performance situated at the intersection of poetry performance and theatre, namely Northern Irish spoken word artist Mel Bradley’s show Ms Noir’s Seven Deadly Sins (2020). I investigate how this show adapted to the circumstances of digital performance using livestreamed and prerecorded material, thereby destabilising boundaries between live and mediatised performance and expanding possibilities for creating a sense of liveness in the digital sphere. Moreover, I argue that the unstable co-presence between performers and spectators enhances the themes of punishment, disconnection, and voyeurism that pervade the show, and resonates with the pandemic context in which it was performed. 2025-06-04T02:53:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.19044 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.19044 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/19044/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:23434 2025-05-28T06:35:00Z

Intersecting Practices and Traditions in Poetry Performance: Interviews with Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Anthony Joseph and Marsha Prescod Intersecting Practices and Traditions in Poetry Performance: Interviews with Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Anthony Joseph and Marsha Prescod Thomas, Helen In these interviews, the contemporary poets, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Anthony Joseph and Marsha Prescod, reflect upon their performance practice. They discuss the ways in which their innovative poetry performance and spoken word styles intersect and engage with literary and cultural traditions and art forms such as music, story-telling, carnival, the visual arts, history and politics. 2025-05-28T06:35:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.23434 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.23434 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/23434/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:18449 2025-05-22T04:40:00Z

Re-visioning the Archive: Cecilia Vicuña’s Permanent Impermanence Re-visioning the Archive: Cecilia Vicuña’s Permanent Impermanence Gander, Catherine This essay examines ‘permanent impermanence’ as a key aesthetic to the work of Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña. It traces Vicuña’s persistent making, unmaking, and remaking of what she has termed her arte precario from the 1960s to the present to consider her practice of re-versioning as a form of radical archivism, informed by socialist, Indigenous practices of community and care. Underpinning the essay are two animating concepts: metaphor, brought back to its root meaning of carrying over; and collectivity, understood through Cristina Rivera Garza’s work as the bringing together of objects, bodies, and communities in opposition to capitalist individualism. The essay explores how Vicuña builds an alternative narrativization of history by accreting a disappearing, reappearing, collective archive of work in which ephemerality and vulnerability insist as powerful forces. It argues for the aesthetics of permanent impermanence as a theory of how art (whether literary, visual, or performance art, and importantly, as the fluid transfiguration and mediation between these forms) can both respond to and re-vision a world increasingly patterned by the throwaway culture of late capitalism, and by the ongoing histories of colonial, imperial violence. 2025-05-22T04:40:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.18449 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.18449 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/18449/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:16916 2025-05-21T02:10:00Z

Homosexual Panic and Necropolitics in The Picture of Dorian Gray and ‘A Painful Case’ Homosexual Panic and Necropolitics in The Picture of Dorian Gray and ‘A Painful Case’ Galindo-González, Mónica This article provides a comparison between James Joyce and Oscar Wilde’s characters in matters of homosexual panic and gender inequality, bringing the analysis to the grounds of necropolitics. Coined by Achille Mbembe, the term ‘necropolitics’ refers to how certain lives are deemed expendable within neoliberal systems. This article argues that in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the legal and social oppression of queer people and gender minorities rendered queer people and women vulnerable to the slow death of social annihilation. The criminalization of homosexuality went hand in hand with homosexual panic, a manipulative and necropolitical mechanism which drove queer people to construct and maintain heteronormative appearances. Oscar Wilde’s trials triggered homosexual panic that resulted in tightening social control and isolative measures, largely targeting homosexual and bisexual men. Basil Hallward’s murder and the suicides of Dorian Gray’s lovers in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and James Duffy’s isolation in Joyce’s ‘A Painful Case’ are manifestations of the effects of the homosexual panic that forces Joyce and Wilde’s queer characters to live in a ‘living dead’ status unless they comply with an oppressive system. This social control and puritanism also affected women, limiting the roles they could occupy in society, the workplace, and the home. Therefore, this article also analyses the suicides of Emily Sinico and Sibyl Vane, demonstrating how gendered necropolitics impacted their deaths beyond mere tragic love stories. 2025-05-21T02:10:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.16916 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.16916 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/16916/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:20266 2025-04-14T07:44:00Z

Remembering the Angevins: Introduction and Commentary Remembering the Angevins: Introduction and Commentary Paul, Nicholas L The Angevin dynasty were the rulers of a medieval European empire. Although their control of their cross-channel domains were relatively short lived (1154–1204), they occupy a central place in the modern imaginary of the Middle Ages. This introductory essay to the collection Remembering the Angevins explores how the administrative and legal reforms, building projects, and literary culture fostered by the Angevins created a robust framework of cultural memory, one that carried their legacy into the modern era. Since the Reformation, the Angevin world has acted as a backdrop or screen onto which modern fantasies and anxieties have been projected. The essays in this volume explore the intellectual, social, and political contexts in which modern Angevin representations were forged. They show how representations of historical Angevin figures and the larger ‘Plantagenet Cinematic Universe’ or ‘Robin Hood Times’ (as contributors refer to the settings of the films) can be effectively read, critiqued, and taught. The link that is demonstrated by the contributors between Angevin memory and contemporary politics raises the issue of American attachment to the story of Magna Carta, enshrined within American political identity in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, but likely to occupy a more uncertain place if unchecked executive power is allowed to take hold. 2025-04-14T07:44:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.20266 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.20266 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/20266/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:16931 2025-02-18T06:40:00Z

Plesaunt was his absolucioun? Friars and Light Penances in English History and Literature Plesaunt was his absolucioun? Friars and Light Penances in English History and Literature Campbell, William H. Friars in late-medieval English literature are often figures of hypocrisy. One theme, most familiar from Chaucer, is the friar who hears confessions of the laity and assigns light penances for serious sins with the expectation that the penitent will donate generously to the friar or his order in return. This image is common enough that it has been taken to represent historical reality. This article interrogates that assumption by tracing the origins of the accusation, in the English context, in both historical and literary sources. The question of what is meant by ‘light penances’ is differentiated into several distinct definitions, each of which is traced diachronically. Repeatedly we find that the evidence is remarkably thin, and that even where there are reasons to suspect the friars of behaving in this way by one of the possible definitions, there is strong evidence that secular (parish) clergy were doing so as well. The article argues that the fully-developed version of the accusation only emerged in the 1350s with Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh, an opponent of the friars and a member of a small circle of severe moral critics among the senior clergy. FitzRalph drew together multiple strands of existing anti-fraternal critiques and an agenda shaped by his Irish context, launching a propaganda campaign that influenced English bishops and writers. After FitzRalph’s campaign, these accusations reflect confirmation bias rather than accuracy on the part of observers and cannot be trusted by historians. 2025-02-18T06:40:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.16931 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.16931 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/16931/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:18710 2025-02-18T02:00:00Z

Cultural Heritage Data for Research – An Introduction Cultural Heritage Data for Research – An Introduction Dressen, Angela This article is an introduction to the collected essay volume ‘Cultural Heritage Data for Research – Opening Museum Collections, Project Data and Digital Images for Research, Query and Discovery’, published in vol. 10.2, 2024 and vol. 11.1, 2025 of the Open Library of Humanities Journal (see https://olh.openlibhums.org/issue/905/info/). The introduction highlights some methods of approaching humanities data, and sheds light on current trends. In particular, it focusses on museum data as research data for Art History and Cultural Heritage Studies and describes new ways of data querying. 2025-02-18T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.18710 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.18710 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/18710/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17997 2025-02-14T05:00:00Z

Against Political Literature: What's Next? Against Political Literature: What's Next? Peyroles, Aurore This article aims to critically examine a certain definition of political literature deployed in the French literary field, which considers it only, or overwhelmingly, under the prism of the ‘distribution of the sensible’ theorised by Jacques Rancière. With the aim of defending literature on the grounds of its social utility, many writers and critics assign it a duty of representativeness: the political role of literature is to make the invisible visible, in a language as transparent as possible. The article draws on a whole range of contemporary French literature that challenges this assignment and looks differently at the relationship between literature and politics, inviting to make literature politically rather than political literature. Examining in particular some of Nathalie Quintane’s and Sandra Lucbert’s texts, we shall see what this shift implies, both literarily and politically. The rejection of a literature functioning as a multiplier of visibility and accomplishing a social duty in no way implies the mourning of a political action proper to literature—but it does place it on the side of radical formal invention. What prospects does this redefinition open up? 2025-02-14T05:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17997 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17997 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17997/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17593 2025-02-12T04:22:00Z

Das Paradies der Totalität: Gesamtheitstendenzen, Nominalismus und die (Anti-)Logik der Abstraktion in Hilberts Programm und dem Dadaismus Das Paradies der Totalität: Gesamtheitstendenzen, Nominalismus und die (Anti-)Logik der Abstraktion in Hilberts Programm und dem Dadaismus Hedley, Tom Aufbauend auf den jüngsten Entwicklungen in der Forschung zu disziplinübergreifenden Modernismen im frühen 20. Jahrhundert positioniert dieser Artikel die zentralen Maximen des totalisierenden Gesamtkunstwerks als eine mögliche Grundlage für eine vergleichende Analyse des deutschen Dadaismus und der modernen Mathematik. Der Artikel plädiert für die Notwendigkeit, über explizite thematische Diskussionen der Mathematik in der Literatur der Moderne hinauszugehen, und identifiziert zunächst eine Berücksichtigung von Fragen zur möglichen Gesamtheit und Totalität in der modernen Mathematik – hier verkörpert durch David Hilberts formalistisches‚ Programm‛ der frühen 1900er Jahre –, als eine robustere strukturelle Parallele zu einer Strömung der Avantgarde-Kultur, die mit dem Gesamtkunstwerk verbunden ist. Dieses gemeinsame Anliegen der Totalisierung wird dann zum Ausgangspunkt für die Untersuchung der Übereinstimmung der Methoden, die in beiden Bereichen eingesetzt werden, um diesem utopischen Ziel einer absoluten, autonomen und einheitlichen Praxis zu dienen. Insbesondere mit Blick auf Ernst Cassirers Studien zu Logik und Abstraktion in Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910) wird argumentiert, dass die axiomatischen, nominalistischen Methoden der mathematischen Moderne in der antilogischen, antisystematischen Welle des Dadaismus der späten 1910er und frühen 1920er Jahre einen unwahrscheinlichen Verbündeten finden. Kurz gesagt, der deutsche Dadaismus und die moderne Mathematik ähneln sich in ihren programmatischen Ambitionen und in den Werkzeugen, die zur Umsetzung dieser Ambitionen eingesetzt werden. Es ist daher zu hoffen, dass diese lokalisierte, disziplinübergreifende Untersuchung am Ende Licht auf mögliche Wege zu einem mathematisch umfassenderen Verständnis der Moderne und der Avantgarde-Kultur im weiteren Sinne wirft. 2025-02-12T04:22:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17593 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17593 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17593/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:16575 2025-02-11T01:40:00Z

Medieval and Early Modern European, African and Asian ivories seen through the Data Lens Medieval and Early Modern European, African and Asian ivories seen through the Data Lens Dressen, Angela Ivories of different natures are one of the oldest materials of artistic expression, and they have been used widely through space and time. The purpose of this article is twofold: on the one hand, to offer a data driven analysis of Medieval and Early Modern ivories in Europe, Africa and Asia (ca. 1000 to 1600); on the other hand, to offer a critical perspective on the proposed query method itself. Nine museums with 2123 objects have been chosen for this analysis, based on the availability of a query endpoint. The proposed method has clear advantages and disadvantages. To the advantages belong the possibility of researching through several museum holdings at the same time (once the dataset is modelled), to query museum object data on view and on deposit all together, to be potentially able to provide insights into a given category from a very broad perspective, but also to search for unusual objects. To the disadvantages belong the fact that data is changeable, and that the selection of the museums is driven by the availability of a query structure. Therefore, the choice of the museums is also problematic, if one wants to address an international comparison. Furthermore, each museum offered data only in specific fields, which adds complexity to an overall query. 2025-02-11T01:40:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.16575 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.16575 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/16575/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:16767 2025-02-04T07:05:00Z

Universalism and Locality in Sally Rooney’s Digital Ireland Universalism and Locality in Sally Rooney’s Digital Ireland McAteer, Michael Text messages and emails permeate the novels of contemporary Irish author Sally Rooney, shaping the ways in which characters relate to one another while also reflecting the globalization of Irish society through the medium of digitalization. In light of the socialist political positions that some of her principal characters adopt, this article examines digital communication in Conversations with Friends and Normal People with reference to certain concepts of Marx. I address online modes of communication in both novels in terms of Marx’s understanding of relations between workers and machines in the industrial era, Christian Fuchs’ re-articulation of his ideas for the age of digital capitalism, and the critique of empty universalism that Marx directs against the modern liberal-democratic political state. I examine Rooney’s narration of tensions between rural/small-town and urban life in Ireland as part of the online environment through which she addresses these issues. Observing the significance of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls (1960) to her first two novels, I stress how important local Irish attachments are to Rooney’s fiction, both as a means of resisting empty universalism and as testimony to human exploitation in the present age of digital capitalism. 2025-02-04T07:05:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.16767 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.16767 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/16767/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:17354 2025-01-29T02:30:00Z

Out of Africa: Nat Nakasa's Exit Paperwork Out of Africa: Nat Nakasa's Exit Paperwork Van Dijck, Cedric This article explores the literary imagination that emerged around the paperwork of the South African apartheid state, especially the bureaucratic ephemera—such as dompasses, passports, passport applications and exit permits—that limited the free movement of black individuals. It turns to the case of the South African journalist Nat Nakasa (1937-65). In a first step, I argue that, in Nakasa’s writings, apartheid’s bureaucratic papers are viewed as material curiosities in order to critique the ironic gap between their artificial nature and the hold they had over individual, predominantly black lives. Then I examine how, after Nakasa’s death in exile, the little magazine he had founded, the Classic, dedicated a memorial issue to the journalist, republishing his writings on, as well as preserving his own engagements with, the state’s bureaucratic ephemera. Its ephemeral nature made the little magazine a fitting counter-archive of apartheid. As I go on to argue, the Classic registered in its fragile material form a sense of the regime’s bureaucratic violence—becoming, in turn, a material curiosity from the mid-apartheid years—and yet it persisted against these odds, and was kept and archived. Such a reading aims to throw the political affordances of the magazine’s ephemerality into relief. 2025-01-29T02:30:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.17354 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.17354 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/17354/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1

oai:olh:id:16523 2025-01-20T08:22:00Z

Appreciation of Black Humour Memes in the Context of the Russo-Ukrainian War Appreciation of Black Humour Memes in the Context of the Russo-Ukrainian War A'Beckett, Ludmilla This study examines three black humour memes and their reception on social media during the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It seeks to identify the conditions that facilitate or impede the appreciation of jokes about the enemy’s death. Conceptual integration theory and Bandura’s social cognitive theory of moral agency provide the methodological framework for analysing the memes, and the responses to them. The findings offer an explanatory model for understanding when aggressive jokes are well-received or rejected. Successful humour transactions often involve humourists providing cues that encourage viewers to deactivate empathy towards the joke’s target. These cues may include euphemistic labelling, dehumanisation, or shared conventions about the consequences of the humour. Such triggers align with Bandura’s patterns of moral disengagement. The interaction between these triggers and the background knowledge of the audience can either lead to the appreciation of the humour or a conflict of values that results in the joke being dismissed. Humour is generally well-received when both the humourists and the audience agree on the need to undermine the power of the target and believe in the delivery of retribution for perceived wrongs. Conversely, if the target is perceived as valiant or vulnerable, the humour is often rejected as offensive or in poor taste. 2025-01-20T08:22:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/article 11 1 Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/olh.16523 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.16523 https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/16523/ 2056-6700 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 1 page%3D2