The Labyrinth of the Spirits (2016) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is the 4th and last installment of the series The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Each of them an independent narrative held together by a space called the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books”, where… Read More ›
Month: July 2019
The Speculatus of Self: The Author and His Literary Persona in Paul Auster’s Ghosts
Following the publication of City of Glass in 1985, Ghosts was published in the following years, which is the second novel of Auster’s bestselling collection The New York Trilogy (1987). City of Glass emphasises on the theme of the crisis… Read More ›
This Week’s Features: The Lost Generation
Yesterday marked the 105th Anniversary of World War I, one of the most massive watersheds of geopolitical history in the 20th century. The Great War led to the downfall of the Central Powers and four great imperial dynasties. It resulted… Read More ›
The Fantastic Symmetries and Repetitions: The Conspiracy Theory of the Moon Landing in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
We all know about Apollo 11, the first spaceflight that landed on the Moon in human history. But was it really “one giant leap for mankind?” Or was it just a giant fraud that propagandised the greatness of America during… Read More ›
Cleansing the Trauma of the Lost Generation: Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway’s first published novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), set in the 1920s, is about the polyamorous affairs between a group of lost young souls. The aimless drifting actions of the characters in the Fiesta in Spain metaphorically echoes… Read More ›
The Matryoshka Doll of Dreams: The Adam of the Divinity and the Golem of Mankind in Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Circular Ruins”
Many postmodern writers convey the inadequacy of mankind’s imagination to the infinity of the universe with endless repetitions of sublime imageries. In Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones (1944), the imagery of an exitless labyrinth is often employed in his short stories… Read More ›
This Week’s Features: The Moon
50 years ago yesterday, Apollo 11, the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon returned to our planet. Growing up listening to the tales of Artemis and Chang’e, the Moon has been a land of fantasy for us since… Read More ›
Féerie in the Cinema: Pataphysics in Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon
Long before Apollo landed on the Moon in the 1960s, writers and filmmakers had already dreamt of making voyages to the mysterious planet. Inspired by Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Around the Moon (1870) and H.G…. Read More ›
Breaking Down the Tower of the Absolute Authorship: Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Metafictional narrative is one of the most significant features fusing the reality and the fictional world together in postmodern literature. The metanarrative of one of the most influential postmodern novels, Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (1979), plays… Read More ›
Constructing Human History through Intertextuality from Nothingness: The Falsehoods of Metanarrative in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
The lack of concrete evidence on the history of the Knights Templar makes them one of the most mysterious and controversial political and religious power in European history. Because of the blurred boundaries between historical facts and legends, the Knights… Read More ›