Critical Survey

This article conducts a detailed examination of Peter Kimani's Before the Rooster Crows (2002), highlighting its portrayal of Kenya's relentless quest for liberation, justice and dignity within the complex framework of postcolonial literature. The analysis delves into protagonist Muriuki's personal odyssey, which encompasses themes of love, identity and survival, as he navigates through the corruption permeating Kenya's elite and the challenges of national liberation. The narrative vividly captures the lasting impact of neocolonialism, exposes critical flaws in the judicial system and explores the resulting societal divisions. Furthermore, the article critically analyses the depiction of foreign aid as a powerful instrument of neocolonial dominance, alongside the responsive efforts of local media and the determined populace. Set against the expansive canvas of postcolonial literature, Kimani's novel is presented as a compelling story of resistance to both internal and external power structures.

This article explores some of the ways in which women writers represent conception, gestation, abortion and delivery, at times by imagining motherhood in terms of scarcity, war or defeat. Drawing upon on the work of philosophers like Hannah Arendt, Adriana Cavarero and Lisa Guenther as well as research into biology, obstetrics and dental science, I analyse how the writings of Isabella Whitney, Edith Wharton, Margery Kempe and Buchi Emecheta often supply strategies for survival and reproduction in terms of transforming the meaning of motherhood and occasionally refusing new life.

The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the artistic and stylistic characteristics of American feminist poetry, recognising the evolution of themes and voices. The leading method that was used for this purpose was comparative analysis. The works of such authors from different historical periods were chosen: Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), Maya Angelou (1928–2014) and Sandra Faulkner (twenty-first century). The analysis of the four discussed poems reveals both similarities and differences. Each poem has its distinct tone and style, ranging from introspective to confrontational and fragmented. These results have practical implications for studies in literature and literary criticism, as they provide a detailed and comparative analysis of the poetry of the three periods.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the topic of universal human values through the prism of artistic searches of Kazakhstan's poets of the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries. The scientific work was conducted using the methods of system analysis, cultural-historical analysis and hermeneutics. In the course of the research, the authors came to conclusions about the special place of Kazakhstan's national poetry in the country's axiological discourse. It has been revealed that national poetry is an artistically meaningful carrier of the moral and ethical categories of the Kazakh people. The programme of spiritual modernisation of Kazakhstan, ‘Rukhani Zhangyru’, is evidence of this. The theme of the axiological potential of citizens occupies far from the last place in this programme.

This study investigates the representation of violence and dictatorship in Yasmina Khadra's The Dictator's Last Night (2015), contextualised within the tumultuous period of the 2011 Libyan uprising. Employing a qualitative literary analysis methodology, the research explores how Khadra integrates historical events and figures, particularly Muammar al-Qaddafi, to construct a fictional narrative that reflects the complexities of authoritarian rule. The analysis encompasses close readings of the protagonist's development, narrative structure, and thematic elements of power and resistance. The purpose of this research is to elucidate the interplay between fiction and historical reality, examining how Khadra portrays the regime's violent strategies against both rebels and vulnerable populations, particularly women. By analysing the protagonist's internal monologues and retrospective reflections, this study aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the psychological dimensions of dictatorship and the societal ramifications of revolutionary violence, ultimately contributing to the discourse on authoritarian governance in contemporary literature

Efraim Sevela was a Russian Jewish émigré who lived in a variety of countries in the West, including Germany. His view of Germany was controversial, and did not fit the prevailing stereotypes. He recognised that post-WWII Germany acknowledged the Nazi atrocities, but felt that Germans had become atomised and still regarded those who were not German as inferior. At the same time, he implicitly praised Nazi Germans for their sense of ethnic solidarity, and even implied that Israeli Jews should follow the same template to ensure their survival.

Statistical analyses of Shakespeare's vocabulary have suggested that the order of the sonnets in the 1609 edition does not reflect their chronological order of composition, and that the ‘Dark Lady sonnets’ might be placed among the earliest, thus predating the ‘Fair Youth sonnets’. While sharing the hypothesis that the composition of the sonnets may have been discontinuous, I attempt to approach the question from a methodologically alternative viewpoint, namely text linguistics. In my view, the Sonnets reveal a structural unity which, far from being the result of a final artificial reordering, is likely to have shaped the author's writing process since its early stages. For instance, I argue that some of the ‘Dark Lady sonnets’ contain probable anaphoric references to the ‘friend’, thus disclosing their full meaning only if read in conjunction with the first section. Further evidence comes from a comparison of the Sonnets with Love's Labour's Lost, which is characterised by a similar thematic and structural relationship between the ‘fair’ and the ‘black’.

This research aims to determine the specifics of the reflection of the theme of the environment in Chinese mythology on the example of the myth of ‘Battling the Flood’. The study employs a dialectical approach, historical materialism, historical analysis, philosophical hermeneutics and the comparative method. The study examined the similarities between the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophy: it was determined that Eastern philosophy meets all the criteria of philosophical knowledge and even uses scientific approaches, but often describes their results in metaphorical terms. The ‘Battling the Flood’ myth itself was analysed and the following key features of its content were highlighted: the idea of the unity of man and nature, the ideal of human-centred philosophy and politics, and the idea of fighting chaos through scientific innovation.