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Canadian Utopian and Dystopian Fiction

The article’s overview of Canadian utopian and dystopian literature offers a rich, evolving mirror of the nation’s cultural, political, and social history. From early satirical voyages critiquing corruption to earnest 19th-century visions of Canada as a land of renewal, the essay shows how the genre spans hopeful blueprints, biting parodies, and grim dystopias. Its range is striking: religious nationalism, technological optimism, feminist reimaginings, post-apocalyptic survival, cyberpunk, and, more recently, Afrofuturist and Indigenous futurist narratives that reclaim speculative forms to address colonization and identity. What makes this tradition valuable, the article posits, is its ability to weave local history into universal concerns—justice, survival, and human power dynamics—while continuously reinventing itself to match shifting anxieties and aspirations. Canadian utopian literature is thus figured as both archive and provocation: a body of work that entertains, unsettles, and compels reflection on possible futures.

Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture in the French Antilles

The article is interesting both in its specificity, and its erudite comparative power. It delves into the little known literary culture of the eighteenth-century French Antilles and shows how it developed as a vibrant (though tightly controlled) space that mirrored metropolitan France while adapting to colonial realities. From the first printing press in Saint-Domingue in 1723 to the explosion of bookshops and newspapers during the revolutionary era, booksellers operated at the intersection of commerce, censorship, and sociability. They stocked Enlightenment treatises, travel narratives, political tracts, dictionaries, and memoirs, while also circulating clandestine and licentious works. Bookshops doubled as reading rooms and even apothecaries or taverns, making reading a communal and social activity akin to Parisian salons. What makes this history compelling, the essay shows, is its range and contradictions: state oversight and underground trade, lofty Enlightenment ideals alongside erotic bestsellers, and colonial tastes that both reflected and reshaped metropolitan currents.

Intertextuality in Latin Poetry

This discussion of intertextuality in Latin poetry is remarkable in its breadth and depth: it traces a tradition stretching from ancient commentators like Servius to twenty-first-century digital analysis. Beginning with Virgil’s acknowledged debt to Homer, it explores a wide spectrum of allusive practices—lexical echoes, correction, window allusion, parody, homage, and creative translation—that reveal Roman poets’ mastery of, and dialogue with, their Greek and Latin predecessors. The discussion highlights both the methodological challenge of intentionalism and the productive focus on reception: what readers perceive and interpret. The historical survey shows how ideas of imitation shifted from admired craftsmanship to charges of decadence, before postmodern and comparative approaches restored its centrality. By combining philological detail, literary history, and digital innovation, the article demonstrates the richness of intertextual study and its power to illuminate Roman poetic creativity.

Twenty-Five Scholars on Twenty-Five Years of the Literary Encyclopedia

This month (September 2025) The Literary Encyclopedia celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary. To mark the occasion, we asked twenty-five scholars to reflect upon the publication. Some of these authors have a longstanding relationship with the LE, a few were even involved at the very beginning, while others have joined us more recently. What unites these voices is a deep appreciation for the publication, its ethics, and the vision of its founder, Robert Clark. Standing at more than 10,000 entries and over 20 million words, The Literary Encyclopedia represents the work of a global community of scholars, united in our belief in the value of literary studies and the deep importance of independent critical thinking.