Hopes Woven in Smoke: Reimagining Virgil’s Aeneid in Irene Vallejo’s El silbido del arquero

This article investigates Irene Vallejo’s 2015 novel El silbido del arquero, a narrative in the Virgilian tradition mostly inspired by Book IV of the Aeneid. We show how Vallejo reinterprets Dido and Aeneas’s tragic love story by foregrounding minor characters, developing the setting, integrating popular subgenres and exploring communicative anxieties and gender issues. It is argued that patterns of dissatisfaction, self-delusion and disillusionment with human affairs ultimately collide with a message of hope voiced by the fictionalised Virgil.

The Monstrous Cosmos of Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein

In her 2019 novel Frankissstein: A Love Story, Jeanette Winterson weaves an intricate transtemporal and trans-spatial multiplicity, the coding of which is governed by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Through the double first-person narrative of Mary Shelley and her 21st-century reincarnation, Ry Shelley, Winterson approaches the literary phenomenon of Frankenstein in its entirety, seamlessly traversing and fusing the levels of the novel’s production, thematic and formal structuring, and reception. This paper argues that by employing the patchwork nature of Shelley’s monster as the principal metaphor for the creation of her own textual hybrid, Winterson upgrades the essentially Cartesian device of metafictional referencing into a bona fide world-building device that functions according to the governing principles of the post-Cartesian, i.e., postmodern, ontological order.

Alexander Ostrovsky’s play “Late Love”: from its conception to the implementation

The article examines the contents’ peculiarity of the play “Late Love” in accord with its author’s artistic intentions. For the first time hand-written materials (rough copies and the play’s draft) have been taken into account and brought into academic use; the chirographs make it possible to bring to light the main points of the play and its vital problems. Special attention is paid to still greater importance the author was lending to the love story while working at the play; it helps to reveal the meaning of the play’s title. It is noted that for the first time Alexander Ostrovsky had shown a highly moral heroine who committed crime for the sake of the man she loved. In this connection, a few opinions of some critics are cited who gave negative estimation to the play. Analysing the play’s artistic merits the authors of the article take notice of the fact that the action is concentrated in time and space. The Shablovs’ house where lawyers, a tradesman, a landlady, and a clerk make their appearance, reflects to a certain extent the social strata of the post-reformed Russia and the tendencies typical of that world. The study of the initial draft made it clear that Alexander Ostrovsky thought over at first the play’s “scenario”, the number of personages, determined their characters and their role in the action’s development. The dramatic action and the happy end draw the spectators to the conclusion that a human’s salvation from its moral ruin is love, personal ability to repent and to realise its responsibility for the people close to it and for the world as a whole.

"You": A Girl amidst Images and Sounds of Adult Violence in Joyce Carol Oates’s Rape: A Love Story

Teena Maguire and her child, Bethie, are brutally attacked and beaten by a mob of violent young men in a park at night. While the mother is gang raped and nearly killed, the daughter is both the witness and the victim of physical and psychological violence. Through its innovative second-person narration, Joyce Carol Oates’s novella Rape: A Love Story (2004) contributes to her sustained interest in family relationships, violence, crime and justice. However, rather than focusing on the victim of the rape, Oates writes a coming-of-age story that explores the daughter’s trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder and fight for survival, a struggle that coincides with the girl’s critical passage from childhood to adulthood. During the months after the assault, Bethie’s innocence is also repeatedly violated by the aggressors’ intrusion into her life and the hostility of the community in the town of Niagara Falls and its social institutions, such as police, school, media, healthcare and the judicial system. Unable to cling to girlhood or to find maternal protection, her forced witnessing of her mother’s gang rape compels Bethie to mature too early while experiencing her first love for a man.

Using Documentary Short Film for Health Impact: An Example for Supporting Family Caregivers

Storytelling through film is a powerful tool with potential to improve understanding, spark discussion, shape perceptions of health and illness, and influence related behavior. We developed a film discussion guide for the documentary short film Caregiver: A Love Story. The 24-minute film follows the experience of a man who leaves his job to become the primary caregiver of his 59 year-old wife, who opts out of non-beneficial chemotherapy, choosing instead to remain at home with hospice support. The 2-hour program was facilitated by an experienced social worker and offered on five different days/times using Zoom video (n=60 total attendees; 9-15/ session). At each session, we showed the film, discussed self-care and caregiver resources, and fielded a survey to assess satisfaction, format acceptability and session impact (response rates 67-100%/session). Attendees liked the session format (90%); found the film relevant to their situations (80%); intended to look for new professional resources (79%); were motivated to do something different(71%); learned something new (64%); and intended to ask for more help from family or friends (64%). Many commented that they preferred the video meeting format over in-person meetings. The film viewing and discussion format is acceptable and accessible to family caregivers who may otherwise not be able to attend given competing demands. This format also has potential to improve support access to resources. Extensions to this work are planned to tailor the film discussion guide for health care providers and students working with family caregivers across inpatient, outpatient and hospice settings.

The Winning Formula. Convenții și stereotipuri ale romanului haiducesc în Mina haiduceasa. Fata codrilor de George Baronzi

The article aims to identify some of the peculiarities of the XIXth century outlaw novel in relation to the conventions and the stereotypes of the adventure novel, focusing on George Baronzi’s novel, Mina the Outlaw. The Girl of the Forests, an agreeable novel in spite of several narrative clumsiness. The novelty comes from the fact that the novel proposes a female character in the role of the hero, somehow accumulating the conventions and some narrative invariants specific to the outlaw novel, but also to the sentimental novel, the plot having as a starting point a love story. The novel is, therefore, chracterized by a certain naivity specific to the subgenre and to the literary period to which it belongs, but the author cannot be blamed for the lack of a certain sense of suspense and proliferation of adventures, by moving from one conflict to another, by changing the setting of the action thus activating its narrative potential.