Hatice Karaman

In the preface to the English edition of The World Republic of Letters, Pascale Casanova focuses on the existence of a literary world/universe, which maintains a relative autonomy from the world and its political disparities and restrictions. This suggested ideal of a literary space is an attempt to posit world literature as an alternative chronotope in which literary production can survive and multiply transnationally. My paper will offer a reconsideration of this global literary space, read via a philosophical perspective, shaped by the famous discussion of the common and community as conducted by Giorgio Agamben, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, among others. Within the above theoretical frame, my attempt will be to reread Casanova’s contribution to World Literature as a desired community of literature(s), formed by the coming together of qualunque singularities which co-exist and co-belong without “any representable condition of belonging” (Agamben). Furthermore, the idea of qualunque (whatever) will constitute the starting point for the ethico-political reconsideration and reconceptualisation of the global literary space offered by Casanova, not only without borders but also without hierarchies.

Shakespearean tragedies have featured villains who inspired in-depth criticism, especially when paired with the themes of justice and revenge. King Richard III is one of the most famous cases in point. The present study will suggest a re-reading of the tragedy from an ethical perspective, with references to selected works of Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt. In this context, the villainy of Richard III will be reassessed , and his author's understanding of justice will be examined, in the light of the two different philosophical approaches; the focus will be placed on the exploration of Richard's relationship with the other(s) and with himself.

The source of horror is mostly correlated with the horror of the final encounter, death. As the form of ceasing to exist, death has troubled humankind since the very beginning of history. Therefore, the question of death is immediately associated with “to be or not to be”, the most gothic of all questions. Being and Non-being, with the abyss of death tormenting human for ages, hold a prominent space as the uncanniest aspect of human condition, best exemplified by Gothic writings. Those who lack a proper death and who cannot cease to exist (i.e. the vampires) have been the staple tropes of Gothic fiction, globally. By converting the Heideggerian “angst”, Emmanuel Levinas suggests that horror is the fear of not being able to escape from Being. The present study focuses on Ali Rıza Seyfioğlu’s Kazıklı Voyvoda, which in 2017 saw its English translation as Dracula in Istanbul. The first part discusses the representations of evil and good in relation with the Heideggerian uncanny; instrumental for this is an overview of Levinas’s suggestions about horror, death, and existence. The second part emphasizes the ethico-ontological reflections in Bram Stoker’s Dracula in comparison with the adapted Turkish novel. This comparison, thus, argues for the global human conundrum regarding the question of death and non-being as the most universal cause of horror, terror, and anxiety.

In The School of the Dead (1994), Hélène Cixous investigates the kinship between writing and death by recalling Montaigne's famous perspective of philosophy, which identifies philosophizing with dying. This paper suggests a reading of Peter Ackroyd's Lambs of London in the light of Cixous's approach, juxtaposed with her "friend" (φίλος) Jacques Derrida's contributions on memory, mourning and ethics as "learning to live from the ghosts". Accordingly, the novel will be explored as a literary topos of Mnemosyne, through which the author revives the admiration and longing for Shakespeare, by resurrecting the ghosts of William Ireland, Mary and Charles Lamb.

The lack of proper motherhood in Shakespeare's plays has been a point of attraction for many feminist critics actively engaged in emphasizing the patriarchal aspect of Shakespeare's plays. This paper aims to analyze motherhood and the lack of mother/mother-figure in

In the preface to the English edition of The World Republic of Letters, Pascale Casanova focuses on the existence of a literary world/universe, which maintains a relative autonomy from the world and its political disparities and restrictions. This suggested ideal of a literary space is an attempt to posit world literature as an alternative chronotope in which literary production can survive and multiply transnationally. My paper will offer a reconsideration of this global literary space, read via a philosophical perspective, shaped by the famous discussion of the common and community as conducted by Giorgio Agamben, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, among others. Within the above theoretical frame, my attempt will be to reread Casanova's contribution to World Literature as a desired community of literature(s), formed by the coming together of qualunque singularities which coexist and co-belong without "any representable condition of belonging" (Agamben). Furthermore, the idea of qualunque (whatever) will constitute the starting point for the ethico-political reconsideration and reconceptualisation of the global literary space offered by Casanova, not only without borders but also without hierarchies.

Shakespearean tragedies have featured villains who inspired in-depth criticism, especially when paired with the themes of justice and revenge. King Richard III is one of the most famous cases in point. The present study will suggest a re-reading of the tragedy from an ethical perspective, with references to selected works of Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt. In this context, the villainy of Richard III will be reassessed , and his author's understanding of justice will be examined, in the light of the two different philosophical approaches; the focus will be placed on the exploration of Richard's relationship with the other(s) and with himself.

The lack of proper motherhood in Shakespeare’s plays has been a point of attraction for many feminist critics actively engaged in emphasizing the patriarchal aspect of Shakespeare’s plays. This paper aims to analyze motherhood and the lack of mother/mother-figure in The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet and The
Taming of the Shrew through Luce Irigaray’s theory of gender and the work of other feminist critics. The issues of gender, father-daughter relations and the reflections of the absent mothers will be discussed. Male/Female Subjectivity will also be questioned, in view of Irigaray’s conceptualization of gender by relating it
to Subject.