Abstract With its extensive international distribution and lengthy publishing history, some scholars consider Ernst Haeckel’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868) to have had a greater impact on the public’s reception of the theory of evolution than Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) (Oppenheimer, Jane M. 2016. Haeckel’s variations on Darwin. In Biological metaphor and cladistic classification , 123–136. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Richards, Robert J. 2008. The tragic sense of life: Ernst Haeckel and the struggle over evolutionary thought . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 223–224). The book was as provocative in its anti-clerical stance as it was in its scientific scope, claiming that evolution made “development” the “magical word” for solving all the riddles of our natural environment (Haeckel, Ernst. 1868a. Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte [Natural history of creation], 1st edn. Berlin: Georg Reimer: iv). This paper examines how Haeckel’s narrative strategies contributed to the book’s scandalous appeal and lasting reception. Its structural parallels to the biblical Genesis and its English translation – which omitted the fact that there was talk of a natural history of creation – suggest a deliberate blurring of theological and scientific registers, unsettling and attracting readers alike. On the one hand, the book garnered a wide following, especially among lay audiences and progressive cultural critics. On the other, it contributed to Haeckel’s marginalization in certain theological and scientific circles. Thus, analyzing Haeckel’s narrative reveals the careful balance required to deliberately “scandalize” narrative styles in order to make one’s case, whether in broader society or among specific readerships.

Abstract Scandals and the shocks they provoke have long shaped the cultural, political, and aesthetic imagination of the Western world. They expose and disrupt social norms, yet by doing so, they make those very norms visible and subject to renegotiation. This special issue, Narratives of Scandal and Shock: Transgression, Media, and Cultural Response, explores how scandalous narratives emerge, circulate, and transform across literary, historical, and medial contexts. Drawing on narrative theory, literary studies, and cultural history, the contribution examine how transgressive acts, authors, and texts incite public outrage and fascination, compelling societies to re-evaluate morality, authorship, and cultural identity. The issue investigates how scandal operates as both an aesthetic strategy and a social mechanism—arresting thought through shock, provoking affective engagement, and at times catalyzing change. Case studies range from classical and nineteenth-century controversies to contemporary debates surrounding #MeToo, autofiction, and transgressive literature, to name just a few examples. Together, these essays demonstrate that scandal and shock are not mere disruptions but productive forces in the ongoing negotiation of cultural values and artistic expression.

Abstract In 2017, the MeToo movement generated a shock of recognition and sparked high-profile media scandals when exposing both individual misconduct and systemic sexism. The movement also took on a literary form as many authors wrote about issues of sexual violence and engaged readers through innovative narrative strategies. In this paper, we investigate, specifically, the use of second-person narration as a narrative strategy in the MeToo novel The Rose Rule (original title: Rosenreglen , 2019) by Danish author Liv Nimand Duvå. We ask: How does the use of second-person narration demonstrate the haunted temporalities of survivor experiences, thus becoming a means of generating reader response and reflection? In doing so, we argue that the MeToo novel undoes linear temporalities and traditional narrative functions to probe the collective and previously silenced nature of systemic sexism. Drawing on narrative theory (e.g., Herman. 1994. Textual you and double deixis in Edna O’Brien’s A Pagan Place. Style 28(3). 378–410) and hauntology (Derrida. 2006. Specters of marx . New York & London: Routledge), we examine how the ghost stories of the MeToo movement inform us that what has been buried and silenced returns to haunt the present (Gordon. 2008. Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: xvi) and how Duvå, through the combination of two types of second-person narration (Meyer. 2024. Dufortællinger i dansk litteratur [second-person narratives in Danish literature]. Aarhus: Aarhus University dissertation), addresses the reader by stating not only MeToo, but asking YouToo ?

Abstract Little Red and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that taps into many different dimensions of older women’s existence, exploring characters who are often bereft or in search of a more meaningful expression of their identity. Divided by physical and non-physical frontiers, gerontological challenges persist as much as the desire to live in spite of internal and external changes. The stories are shaped by mortality and by the subjective and imaginary discourses of culture, with the issues of autonomy, agency, intimacy and well-being remaining at their core. Little Red and Other Stories provides us with a multidirectional perspective on the aging process. It offers stories that see characters move towards a greater experience of agency and relational freedom. The internal interrogations and external interpellations present in the narratives are reinforced by the author’s use of metatextuality, bearing in mind her expertise in folk literature and mythology. She deliberately places her characters in unusual circumstances in order to convince her reader that if crossing of the real/fantastic worlds is possible, it is also possible to cross, or challenge, age definitions. If transgressions are possible on the page, we, too, have the capacity to create our own life-narratives and be agentic in our older age, a time conventionally seen as stagnant, limited and dominated by decline. Indeed, older people, mostly women in Ní Dhuibhne, have an extraordinary capacity to translate their experience into wisdom and possess the necessary stamina to rewrite their stories.

Abstract Subjected to what has been called a ‘global mobility regime’, refugees will often find that their destination countries have a limited number of pre-cut identities ready for them and allow them little leeway beyond these. In this paper, we will discuss representations of refugees in European popular culture following the so-called 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. We will analyse the narratives in these representations, and how these negotiate both what refugees are and should be, as well as what Europe, and more specifically the EU, is and should be. Through pathos, humour and shock, these works – two pop songs, a concert film, a comic and a cartoon – do not only convey narratives about the plight of refugees, but also work through how Europe experienced the 2015 crisis, and the ensuing, often conflicting, attitudes towards irregular migration that were expressed in European public discourse. We will discuss how this experience can be conceptualised as a ‘boundary experience’ that creates a before and after, as well as the possibility of new forms of identity – a possibility that may be ultimately rejected. As they take up the topic of irregular migration, we find producers of popular culture looking for words, sounds and images to express and address these attitudes, and to remember – or forget – the 2015 refugee crisis.

Abstract During the global Covid-19 pandemic, the practice of extensively washing one’s hands with soap and water became ubiquitous worldwide. In this contribution, I look at how cultural references to soap have been productive in producing social identities in South Africa. By utilizing Nira Yuval-Davis’s (2006) distinction between belonging and the politics of belonging, I trace how stories and narratives featuring soap that circulate in the South African cultural archive refer to specific cultural templates or social imaginaries. These stories and narratives perform different functions: they signify categories of social belonging, enable social subjects to identify with specific subject locations, and are utilized to both confirm and patrol the borders of these categories of belonging in acts that may be described as the “politics of belonging.”

Abstract The last three decades have seen a flourishing of theoretical discussions about the concept of literary authorship. This article is an attempt to scrutinise and engage with this thriving scene. Through a systematic review of conceptions of authorship in modern literary theories, I will outline historical shifts, disentangle current debates, and identify a range of approaches, with the aim of informing future studies of this concept. This article is divided into three parts. The first part offers a brief history of ideas of authorship in modern literary theories (ca. 1900 to the present). I trouble the narrative of the ‘death and resurrection of the author’ by showing that the concept of authorship has remained a constant concern, and by highlighting continuities between different theories. The second part identifies three main issues about the concept – agency/creativity, intention/authority, and self-presentation/self-construction. I illustrate how each of them has been addressed in recent discussions, focusing mainly on the last three decades, and point to potential directions for future research within each strand of debate. Finally, I provide a non-exhaustive typology of methodological approaches to the study of authorship. I will conclude with a brief consideration of the value of this concept for literary criticism.

Abstract Against the backdrop of sudden shifts in global political and historical climate, our century has witnessed a convergence of turns in humanities, including the nonhuman turn and the historical turn. Ian McEwan’s latest novella,The Cockroach, is a just work along this line. Through the use of unnatural narratives within realistic context, McEwan presents readers with a world that is both strange and recognisable. By examining the unnatural narrative strategies, including the deployment of nonhuman character and omniscient narrator, McEwan expresses concerns for the future of humanity and fear for social and cultural parochialism, populism and anti-cosmopolitanism.