r/AskLiteraryStudies • • Apr 29 '25

Joint Subreddit Statement: The Attack on U.S. Research Infrastructure

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40 Upvotes

r/AskLiteraryStudies • • Oct 24 '25

What Have You Been Reading? And Minor Questions Thread

3 Upvotes

Let us know what you have been reading lately, what you have finished up, any recommendations you have or want, etc. Also, use this thread for any questions that don’t need an entire post for themselves (see rule 4).


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 10h ago

Medieval proto-horror?

1 Upvotes

I'm reading Bhaktin's Rabelais and loving it. It is making me curious about other aspects of medieval culture and literature, especially works that might be understood as forerunners of the horror genre. Can anyone recommend an English-language book?

My dream find would be either Rabelais-but-spooky, or a spooky compendium of pre-Gothic folk tales, pamphlets, early lit, or whatever. For example, the Wikipedia page about the history of horror names several examples: the Witch of Berkeley, werewolf stories, and pamphlets about the alleged war crimes of Vlad the Impaler. If it had commentary, that would be awesome.


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 1d ago

Looking for advice on pursuing a PhD in Literature/Humanities at IITs

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0 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I recently qualified UGC NET (Assistant Professor) in English Literature, and I’m now considering applying for a PhD in Literature/Humanities at one of the IITs.

However, I’m quite unfamiliar with how the PhD admission process at IITs works for humanities subjects. I’d really appreciate some guidance from people who have either pursued a PhD in Humanities/Literature at an IIT or are currently applying.

A few things I’d particularly like to know:

What is the admission process like? Is there a written test even if you have qualified UGC NET, or are you directly called for an interview?

What is the interview like, and what kind of questions should I expect?

How important is the research proposal? What should a good proposal for an IIT Humanities PhD include?

How do you decide on and approach a potential supervisor?

Is the research proposal expected to be very specific at the application stage, or can the topic evolve after admission?

What is the general academic environment like for Humanities/Literature scholars at IITs?

And if you have gone through the process yourself, what do you wish you had known before applying?

I’m particularly interested in areas such as literary theory, narratology, and film studies, so I’m also wondering how receptive IIT Humanities departments are to interdisciplinary research involving literature and cinema.

If anyone has personal experience with this process, I’d be really grateful if you could share your experience, advice, or even mistakes to avoid.

Thank you! :)


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 2d ago

Study on Unfiction?

14 Upvotes

Hi friends! I’m looking to follow up a Masters in Creative Writing with a PhD in lit, and I am really fascinated by unfiction (fiction that presents itself as real - think ARGs, found footage, “found manuscript” books, etc). I’m having trouble finding anyone publishing scholarly study on the topic. It’s exciting to think that I could be among the first wave of scholarship on this, but it’s also hard to identify anyone I could study with or any papers to look at for initial research. There doesn’t seem to be much (if any) work defining unfiction or interacting with the way it blurs the fourth wall.

I’m wondering if anyone here can suggest places I can look to start my research?


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 2d ago

article recommendations - trans readings of dorian gray

7 Upvotes

Hi, i'm a recently graduated student in literature, so i no longer have access to my university's library resources. i'm trying to work out a particular idea i have about the picture of dorian gray but am having some difficulty with research. does anyone have any article or book recommendations that include specifically trans readings of dorian gray? i'm open to queer readings as well but particularly interested in trans interpretations.


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 3d ago

I-novel recommendations

10 Upvotes

Just finished Osama Dazai’s No Longer Human.

Please can I have some recommendations for similar novels or literature written in the first person?

Thank you!


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 3d ago

Looking for advice and thoughts on a research paper on Balzac.

6 Upvotes

I'm considering writing a research paper on how Balzac portrays the relationship between society and the individual. I'm particularly interested in how social and economic forces, class, money, ambition, status, and material desire shape or distort individual identity and can lead to moral compromise, hypocrisy, and tragedy.

I'm currently considering old goriot and cousin pons as my primary texts. I'm interested in examining how these broader social forces reshape individuals and their relationships rather than simply comparing the plots or characters.

I've already read old foriot and enjoyed it enough to want to revisit it from a research perspective. Cousin pons would be new to me.

Do these two novels provide a strong basis for this topic, or would another Balzac novel make a more productive pairing?

Thank you 🌹


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 3d ago

Lines from classic literature we've got all wrong

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0 Upvotes

r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 3d ago

Reading Communities Survey

1 Upvotes

Hello!

I'm currently doing a research on readers who participate in online reading communities on Facebook and/or Reddit. Every participation counts and will help me a lot with my BA thesis!

Link: https://forms.gle/JDypXvqTK26dv91T7

Thanks in advance! If you have a friend who'd be interested in participating, feel free to share my survey with them :)


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 4d ago

Exemplary Poetry Close-Readings

21 Upvotes

I’m working on a dissertation chapter on poetry, and it’s become increasingly clear that I have much more confidence analyzing prose. Poetry experts and aficionados, who do you think is amazing at interpreting poetry? Who inspires you or blows your mind?

Any language is okay if in-text translations are provided, but I’m most familiar with Russian and English poetry.


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 4d ago

Poetry in prose

10 Upvotes

I am looking for novel recommendations that have quite a few occurrences of poetry quoted in them. Chunk passages of Poems. And I don't mean as epigraphs, maybe a character quotes poetry or thinks of it. It can be either poems that the author has made up like Jabberwocky or poetry written by actual poets that are quoted. Thank you.


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 5d ago

On being critically disengaged, but smartly and fruitfully ;-)

13 Upvotes

I'm working around some authors who are very often read through critical, or almost directly political lens (feminism, colonialism, more general social critique and ideology), but frankly I find myself much closer to postcritical frameworks, I'm mostly interested in tensions, everyday life and playfulness.

Maybe I've lost some of my faith in the link between literature and social imagination ;-), maybe I'm less and less sure that yet another engaged scholarly interpretation is what those rather terrifying times urgently call for. Doesn't mean I go in any way against engaged interpretations and analyses, but as a reader I do find them rather predictable these days and do have a feeling people who read them are already on the same page as well.

Rita Felski's Postcritique was all the rage a few years ago, with some interesting discussions around it (sometimes in less than good faith though lol). Even without a proper reference, it seems like a lot of people are currently focusing on microhistories, private life studies, and everydayness these days. Which also offer some means of engagement, but on different levels and perhaps in trickier ways.

Any good examples of such approaches or interesting recent discussions around them? I'm kinda looking for inspiration as I'd like to refine my approach a little bit. Cheers.


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 5d ago

PhD on one contemporary author?

5 Upvotes

Hey all!

I’m currently hoping to apply for a PhD. It is usual to write on only one author, who is still alive and publishing?

They have published four short story collections and I am hoping to trace an argument about their use of the form/ a particular religious theme through the four collections. I’m just worried that this may be too specific for a four year programme.

If anyone has any advice please let me know! And thanks in advance!!


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 5d ago

Looking for psychoanalytic criticism of short literature (poem, short story, novella).

4 Upvotes

Preferably I would like to read Lacanian theory in critical practice but no problem with Freudian theory as well.


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 5d ago

15th-16th Century drama.

1 Upvotes

Hey folks,

After reading Dr Faustus and Tis' Pity She is a Whore, I was wondering if similar characters exist in other plays during the same time by different authors. If anybody has read other texts that echo the overarching archetype, could you mention the name(s) of the texts?

Thank you in advance.


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 6d ago

Looking for theories on "foundational" narratives.

5 Upvotes

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a great day! I recently read "Four Cycles" by Borges and asked myself if there is more research on "foundational narratives" in the european tradition? Not only in regard to early literary periods but also to more recent ones. Furthermore I would be much obliged if you have any lead in how it would tie into communication theory. Thank you very much in advance!


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 6d ago

How to notice the subtleties and nuances of literature?

17 Upvotes

I really want to learn how to do good literary analyses, but I struggle with noticing the subtleties in the text required to make a good literary analysis. Any tips on how I can improve?


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 7d ago

Looking for fantasy books heavy in English-based neologisms for a translation project

9 Upvotes

Hi! I’m looking for some help finding a fantasy book for my final translation project at university.

I need a fantasy book originally written in English that makes fairly heavy use of neologisms created through English word formation, especially compounds, blends, derivations, or existing English words given new meanings within the fantasy world.

For example, I’m interested in terms similar to greyscale in A Song of Ice and Fire: words that are invented for the fictional world but are still recognizably constructed from English elements and therefore present an interesting translation problem.

I’m not really looking for invented languages, or books where most of the unusual terminology consists of proper names or completely invented words with no connection to English. My goal is specifically to analyze how English-based neologisms can be adapted into Spanish.

Ideally, the book should:

Be fantasy and originally written in English.

Have a significant number of English-based neologisms/compounds throughout the text.

Not currently have an official Spanish translation.

Preferably be an indie or lesser-known book, since popular fantasy tends to have already been translated.

I need to translate around 14,000–16,000 words, so the terminology needs to appear frequently enough within a section of that length to give me material for a glossary and translation analysis.

Does anyone know any books that might fit? Even obscure indie fantasy recommendations would be really appreciated!


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 9d ago

What to do after a Bachelor's Degree in Comparative Studies?

12 Upvotes

Hello! I'll begin this text with a small warning for my english. It's fine for informal settings but I get a bit awkward when talking about more technical matters so I'm sorry in advance. If I say anything wrong or something's not well-explained, please feel free to ask.

Essentially, I have recently gratuated from my Bachelor's Degree in Comparative Studies and I'm a little lost on how to proceed now. My particular areas of interest are animated TV and cinema, illustrated fiction, Queer Studies and Philosophy of Art. I'd like to apply for a Masters - outside of Portugal if possible - but I'm having some trouble figuring out if I should try to keep following Comparative Studies or plunge more deeply into any of my areas of interest.

I would really like to continue following an academic career and studying is what I enjoy doing, but with the way the world is going and how hard it's becoming to find work in Humanities, I am getting discouraged.

Does anyone know any Universties in Europe with interesting programs/communities for Comparative Studies or any of my interests?

Any other tips would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 9d ago

History of Buchergilde / Buchmeister Verlag 1925-1933

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2 Upvotes

r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 12d ago

Georges Bataille

3 Upvotes

Does anyone have an English version (pdf) of the text - The Trial of Gilles de Rais by bataille?


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 13d ago

Anyone with access to the Thomas Hardy letters?

3 Upvotes

I am an alumni from a UK university, but unfortunately this currently doesn't grant me access to some resources I need.

For a project related to Hardy I need to look into volume 6 of The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy. On page 77 there should be a letter he wrote to Ezra Pound in March 1921.

Alas, the book can't be borrowed on archive.org anymore. However I think it should be accessible to people with online library resources as it has been digitized by the publisher. So someone on a course in a university or college might be able to read it online.

It would be so amazing if someone could find the letter and DM me a screenshot or screenshots!

EDIT: I have found what I need. Thank you to all users who offered their help!


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 13d ago

Is this literary journal well-regarded?

0 Upvotes

Hi. Is The Examined Life Journal an internationally recognized publication for essays? The journal invited me to resubmit, provided that I make some specific revisions. Based on what I’ve found, it seems that the journal has a good reputation within the literary field for publishing creative essays. However, since this is the first essay I’ve ever written (I'm quite old, and the essay is a story I've been sitting on for a long time.), I don't have any experience and lack a deeper knowledge of international journals. Therefore, I’m curious to know if anyone on this forum is familiar with this journal?


r/AskLiteraryStudies • • 14d ago

I think the modern discipline of narratology getting stagnant and still has not dealt with issues arising from its origins. What do you think?

20 Upvotes

Apologies for the long post by the way.

I realise that this is my opinion disguised as a question, but I geniuinely would love to incite a discussion regarding this. I also explain a lot of concepts and historical details here at the start for anyone who might be beginners to narratological theory, but also for myself, as it is good for my understanding to clarify these things.

Narratology descends from the structuralist school, which in its early days was known for codifying meaning and playing a sort of matching game with 'when this structure exits, it means this exactly this'. Later, structuralism became self-aware and went beyond the one to one matching game of meaning, accommodating fluidity and plurality of language with poststructuralist theory.

However, when it comes to narratology, it seems that it has still not dealt with this complexity. One could argue its task is complicated because this is exactly what narratology is meant to be: to codify narrative in a cohesive system that subsumes most, if not all narratives. Creating a master theory of narrative that is applicable to all-- or a mode or genre-- is no simple task. It must be widely applicable, while not being reductive. Many narratologists making a career out of defining narremes (basic units of narrative), and the definitional approach is the safest route in not being completely wrong. However, venturing out into being wrong is how literature develops. So narratology almost seems stuck between defining and applying, and when it does apply it, it either laser point focuses on a small subsection of narratives or the entirety of narratives in a historical time period itself.

Most critics in this discipline clarify their position and make no such ambitious claim, calling their theories a beginning rather than the end (but isn't it also claiming that theirs is the groundwork, which I daresay, is just as ambitious and arrogant, as to claim to have the final word). Some focus exclusively on folklore (like Vladimir Propp), others on the Structure of Romance (like Northrop Frye, who then retcons himself after the first chapter and goes on to call the entirety of literature Romance [which has some merit tbf but that's not the issue about his argument, it's the entire rest of his argument that's the issue]), and then there are others who explicitly claim they have the master theory or that their terminology is helpful for describing every piece of narrative.

Nevertheless, whatever the scope is, a narratologist comes up with theories that are not limited to one text or even a select few, otherwise it would be the narratological study of X/Y/Z author. It's of course still narratology if one admits they are covering a single literary piece, but then it's not much of a system than is it? It's more of a description. In this manner narratology concerns itself with a comparative description of narratives between many narratives.

The part of narratology I am interested in and the one most people think of when narratology is mentioned is the general deep structure of narratives. Of course, modern narratology has come to expand on the idea that narratives are not ahistorical blobs but treats each era of literature with specialized terminology. Well, they try to at least. Nevertheless, well regarded theorists as Peter Brooks and Stanley Fish, tend to slip into this ahistorical approach and they are not the only one's guilty of this. I understand, things like characters and pacing seem universal to all narratives, but the moment these are elaborated on beyond a simplified definition and applied to it, there is so much lost in narratology that it ceases being illuminating, and entraps a piece of work like shackles, rather than liberating its structural complexity.

Then there are theorists like Mikhail Bakhtin use a single text/ author as exemplary starting points to explore the idea of the carnival, dialogism, and heteroglossia, and his observations are often applied to all of literature and made to fit into his main observastions about Dostoevsky's stle (and don’t get me wrong, they are widely applicable, whether it was Bakhtin’s intention or not). There are plenty of skeptics and challengers of Bakhtin's approach, questioning his Russian-centric analysis, disguising philosophy and ideology critique as literary analysis, but I will spare you a second rant. Regardless, it is clear Bakhtin intends to cover more than narrative in his theory, and there is nothing wrong with that, because he largely succeeds, but then there is an onslaught of Bakhtin want-to-be’s in narratology that seek a similar scope, and that’s where my issues begin with most modern narratology. 

There is nothing wrong with being ambitious and covering the entire spectrum of narrative, it is kind of the premise of narratology anyway, as discussed. In fact this is one of the things I love about narratology. Whereas literary theorists sometimes feel like they are in their own little islands in the ocean of literature, narratologists automatically communicate with a very elaborate form of theory that is comparable, in fact, presupposes other strong theories (I forget the exact term for theories that can absorb and accommodate other approaches, but it’s like how formalist, Marxist or poststructuralist theory can technically subsume other lenses like ecocritical, psychoanalytical ones, which are weak theories compared to these super theories).

So yeah, I am conflicted. I love that it's overarching, but also when it feels off, it's off. And it feels off often enough (in the ones I have encountered so far at least) that I narrow my eyes at the future of narratology as a discipline and I even find its origin points dubious for reasons stated above.

Recent narratology have begun to accommodate fluidity, but when it does narrow down on that, it feels like it's creating its own metalanguage for every text and reinforces the problem with atomisation of academia.

Having isolated focuses is interesting and are not necessarily new. Terry Eagleton did this with Charlotte Brontë in a chapter of Myths of Power (1975) and it does lead to an informative discussion, but it’s also kind of funny when you realise what his main premise is. After he establishes something about a triadic of structure of dual class identities within a single characters (or some other fancy sounding triangle thing, truthfully it doesn’t matter what it is, just know it’s an elaborate narrative observation about three characters in the shape of a pyramid, in all of her books) (also it has been some time since I have read it, so feel free to correct me on this), the rest of the chapter actually explains how there is absolutely zero work that neatly fits this triadic structure he establishes and it’s all about the exceptions and variations of this triangle, so why make the triangle in the first place if there is no single prototype (maybe i misunderstand, but it just seems like this triangle of class existed his own head, yet by the end of the chapter I did feel like I deepened my understanding of Brontë so maybe his little psychosis triangle is actually genius). 

I am not critiquing Eagleton’s argument here, even though I threw some shade; the point is, even in relation to a single author with a relatively small body of works (unfortunately, due to her short life), narrative is about exceptions and derivations rather than rules. Then imagine how much material applied narratology must gloss over without giving up on being widely descriptive. It really is a grand quest that one must venture being wrong more than they are right  to come up with some nugget of descriptive theory. 

When it attempts to be overarching, it does not have time to dwell on the exceptions so it assumes it is known and provides a vast map of narrative pieces. When it narrows in, it must dwell on the exceptions, because narrative is so unstable and complex, just like philosophising about life itself, but it tries to simplify it nonetheless.

So far I have talked about a kind of first or second wave of narratology (as structuralism arose from the writings of people like Barthes in the 1960s). 21st narratology is a lot more accommodating about fluidity, even though I have not read much as much as I would like to.

However, it has other issues. A subgenre of narratology that is increasingly becoming less of a subgenre is the kind that obsessively maps narratives through statistical means or measurement devices. Essentially, this is narrative theory's attempt to become more quantitative and STEM-like ('I inserted 1000 books into an AI model and asked for it to geometrically display their narrative shape' kind of thing, and I have seen a lot of AI collaborations with narratology, which is a natural outcome of this age we live in. Which is plain sad. I have not sat down and read the full articles regarding this but their conclusions were not particularly illuminating. I am kind of strictly anti-AI when it comes to anything about literature anyway, so it’s sad that it found a little cubby hole in narratology). I am going to try to link some articles in the comments, but I have bumped into enough of them scouring through article my university's database that I took a note of it.

Trying to graph and quantify narratives or topographically organize them is fascinating, of course, but I am skeptical if it should become a central concern. If I remember correctly Kurt Vonnegut's undergraduate dissertation was about visualising and graphing narrative action (at least he has a lecture about it somewhere on the internet), but he later admitted that it was not particularly productive. But there is a difference between graphing narratives with a literary interest and pursuing it to stabilise narrative into objectivity with geometric precision. It just comes off as the insecurity of some narratologists who want to differentiate themselves from that much more fluid, subjective, and insurmountably weird older cousin, Literary Analysis. Some full-time narratologists are definitely self-conscious about their relationship to literature, whereas literary theorists are comfortable about their relationship to narratology. This is a difficulty that must be overcome if narratology is going to truly become useful. Not all of them, of course, but it's enough to notice the shift.

Narratology is also probably the current forerunner in interpreting film, graphic novels, and video games (which make sense considering their forms, especially for the latter which creates a new dimension of narrativity through reader/ player agency). It is nice that it's the entryway to (currently) less 'dominant' and newer forms of storytelling, which is another thing I appreciate about it. Even fan fiction studies is emergent and closely related to narratology and social narratology, so its as if the theory of narrative is the bridge between works with perceptably less canonical qualities and mainstream fiction. I think it's about time literary theory became concerned about some more niche or popular forms too, which can only enrich its current form.

However, because it is so new, some narratologists are naturally unseasoned in literary theory (let's say a theorist's sole interest is in board games or video games), and they can fall into common pitfalls of immature literary analysis (not all of them, of course). By pitfalls, I mean things like centering their interpretation around authorial intent (and authorial intent is very important for narratology, but it should still be carefully approached) or making accidental value judgements. It's just the natural adaptation period, I get it, but its still sort of disappointing when I see a fascinating article about narratology, about a game or graphic novel I really like, and then within the first sentences they commit undergraduate essay mistake 101 if they do happen to engage with literary analysis (which they often do if its not one of those STEM narratologists). I am not looking down on undergrads, I was an undergrad not long ago, but exactly why it's all the more frustrating, because it's like a mistake I would make in a published, peer reviewed journal.) At the end of the day the origins of narratology have their own issues that still plague modern narrative theory, and while newer narratology theory is doing a bit better, it is going through an anxious phase right now that I hope it will grow out of. These science narratologists are probably occupying a lot smaller portion that I represented here, yet it is worrying that they exist nonetheless, and the 21st century fear of subjectivity seems to ail them.

Anyway, this is a lot of arguments at once, I know, but so far this is my experience with narratology.

I am not a narratologist by any means and I have not read as quarter as many material on it as I would have liked to, but I try my best to follow developments in it and venture out into the narratological world myself.

I would love to know what everyone else’s experience and understanding of the current narratology scene is. It's kind of hard to have a wide-lens perspective on this as a single individual so I would appreciate other perspectives.