Contemplating COVID-19 through disease and death in three short stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Wort-case scenarios depicted in literary works may function to mourn and warn people about the real situation, such as the spread of COVID-19 that has altered worldwide life drastically. This study offers a reflection on the current pandemic time through a close reading of selected American classic literary works. The imagination of fear, isolation, and mask-wearing in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories is resonant with the new expressions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three short stories by Poe, i.e., ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, and ‘The Sphinx’ are chosen for examination using the thematic analysis method. Repeated reading of the short stories shows that parallels can be drawn between these stories and today’s phenomenon about anxiety, social restriction, and health protocols. What can be implied from the analysis are as follows: (1) Fear of the disease results in the characters’ added distress, (2) The characters’ aberrant behaviour as to overprotect themselves is exacerbated by the dreadful situation, and (3) Poe’s obsession with dread and death to shock the readers can be historically traced through his own inner predicaments, ill-health, and the 1832 Cholera contagion. In conclusion, the findings resonate with the COVID-19 epidemic’s upshots.

Little Women travelling to Scandinavia

The publishing history of an American classic in Sweden, Denmark and Norway illustrates how literature travels between countries and how translated books become integrated in the new national cultures. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) still figures on lists of the most cherished, translated and influential children’s books. Sweden can probably boast of the longest translation history of all, starting in 1871, the latest translation appearing in 2016. The Danish material more or less replicates the Swedish, whereas data mining of the stacks of Norway’s National Library demonstrates to what extent a national culture is affected by translated foreign literary impulses and the wealth of sources in which canonized authors may leave a mark. “Little Women travelling to Scandinavia” addresses why Alcott’s book did so well there, why it appealed to readers, and in what circumstances it was read.

CRITERIA OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE CONCEPTION OF THE STUDY OF RELIGION BY JOACHIM WACH

The article presents the reconstruction of the system of criteria by Joachim Wach's (1898-1955), created by him for definition of religious experience. The main source is the author's translation of fragments of English-language works of the German-American classic of religious studies, which have not been translated into Russian before. The main characteristics of religious experience are singled out. In the J. Wach's understanding, this experience is presented as an experience structured, emotionally-intellectual, ordering, situational, and integrating. The structurally functional content of the four formal J. Wach's criteria in their connection with the concept of “numinous” introduced by R. Otto is described and analyzed. The specifics of the definition of religion, represented in the religious approach of J. Wach are considered. The author of the article proposes a new formulation of the definition of religion based on the constructions of J. Wach, in which religion is understood as the experience of life in the confront of ultimate reality...

Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas: Scala d’Amore, Entelechy, and Antinomian Equilibrium in Native Son

Although many critics see Richard Wright’s Native Son as an American classic novel, it is by no means a master narrative that attempts to provide a mega solution to the problems of the black man in American society. Instead, Wright uses the novel to protest against the naturalistic conditions that emasculate a young black man, Bigger Thomas, in 1930s Chicago to commit two murders, one accidentally and the other by design, for which he is sentenced to die. In his poem, “A Dream Deferred,” Langston Hughes poses a mind-bogglingly critical question: “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?” Thomas, the disturbed protagonist in Wright’s Native Son, has an ambition of becoming a pilot, but fear effaces Thomas’s dream of a better future for him and his mother and presumably, defers his dream to a future date. However, his dream turns into a nightmare, and instead of a pilot, he becomes a cold-blooded murderer. The tension between hope and fear, optimism and pessimism in Thomas is a stark antinomy that should have provided the protagonist a liminal space within which to operate toward a successful resolution of his internal conflict. In this essay, I argue that Thomas’s hope could have propelled him to the pinnacle of success on the scala d’amore to achieve entelechy, but instead, he chooses the antithetical direction, due to his dearth confidence in the system, and that turns out to be tragic.

An American Classic in the Global Era

In April 1974, Admiral was absorbed into Rockwell International’s growing empire. The Vietnam War contractor was, according to the New York Times, on a “debt-financed acquisition binge that lasted almost a decade” as it spread its reach into aircraft, defense, aerospace, electronics, and appliances. Admiral, meanwhile, was still churning out televisions, radios, and home appliances at factories across the Midwest. Productive as it was, the little company couldn’t afford the massive capital outlays required to modernize, market, and survive in the increasingly brutal electronics and appliance businesses. Accustomed to the massive revenues and fat profits of big government contracts, Rockwell International trimmed employment at the plant, investing $25 million to automate the chest-freezer line. In 1975 Rockwell added a 60,000-square-foot microwave oven facility, and in 1978 it spent $12 million to retool the top-mount refrigerator line and erect the “Blue Goose,” a massive machine the length of a football field that spat out finished metal cabinets. In earlier times, investment meant more jobs. Under Rockwell’s rigorous ethic of scientific management, it usually meant fewer. Admiral accounted for about an eighth of Rockwell’s revenues. “We weren’t even peanuts to Rockwell,” Michael Patrick said. It was a new era for Appliance City. One afternoon in the mid-1970s, Dave Bevard was let out of work an hour and a half early. Production workers were instructed to gather in the vast parking lot across the street from the factory. Under a circus tent, a Rockwell representative and the Admiral plant manager told workers about the importance of the B-1 bomber to the nation’s defense, to Rockwell’s future, and, consequently, to Galesburg jobs. By this time Rockwell had production of the B-1 in over forty states, making itself the model practitioner of militaryindustrial growth. The plan was to use its nonmilitary production facilities in a lobbying campaign to maintain one of the most lucrative military contracts in history—around $10 billion at the time. Workers signed premade postcards for their congressman and went home early that day.