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This article argues that African digital fiction must be considered in relation to both virtual and material networks of production and circulation in order to understand its 'place,' literally and figuratively, in the broader literary landscape. Although there is a tendency to conceive of the Internet as a 'placeless' and 'global' space that is disconnected from specific locations, an examination of current serialized fiction from southern Africa published on Facebook and blogs shows that these forms often have local, national, and regional zones of influence in addition to drawing broader African, diasporic, and global audiences. The form of the online diary, the most successful example of which to date is Mike Maphoto's Diary of a Zulu Girl, has proliferated throughout the region. This new, localized form--often written partially in African languages--connects cities throughout southern Africa and creates a network of real and virtual reading communities at various scales., How do we locate African digital literature? Can we categorize it using familiar terms--such as nation, continent, diaspora, the global, and the local--or does it call for new geographies? Many [...]

Salinger's path crossed Hemingway's in wartime Paris in August 1944 and on the road to Germany in September. Their momentous personal encounters were far more important to Salinger than Hemingway's literary influence. Salinger hero-worshipped Hemingway and regarded him as a confessional father figure. He saw the parallel between Hemingway's injury in World War I and his own war trauma. But there is only a thin record of Hemingway's direct comments on Salinger. Salinger's credulous biographers have always accepted his own self-enhancing viewpoint. KEY WORDS: World War II, trauma, hero, Casting a cold eye in 1962, Mary McCarthy identified the key elements of Hemingway's influence on The Catcher in the Rye (1953). Recalling Hemingway's patented 'built-in shit-detector,' she noted how [...]

At a pivotal moment early in his revolt against Rome, Quintus Sertorius, a key figure in Sallust's fragmentary Histories, is tempted by the opportunity to sail away to the 'Isles of the Blessed.' Sallust's few fragments on these islands, when compared to Plutarch's more detailed description, reveal how the Roman historian, by emphasizing their place in the literary tradition rather than in the geography of the known world, constructs a commentary on two 'histories': Sertorius' impossible position in his revolt against Rome, and the tragic political conditions of his own day. The echoes of Sertorius' illusory escape to a utopia in Horace's Epode 16, in stark contrast to Plutarch's rationalizing account, help bring to light both of these histories in Sallust's brief account of this episode., Quintus Sertorius has long been a polarizing figure of Roman history, as is demonstrated by the historiographical vicissitudes of his reputation over the centuries. At one extreme stands Theodor Mommsen, [...]

3. B. Yoma 2a-3b The tractate begins by juxtaposing two mishnayot. The first mishnah (m. Yoma 1:1) enjoins a period of separation upon the high priest for seven days before [...]

The emergence of full blown representation of same-sex sexual relationships in the Nigerian literary tradition, courtesy of Walking with Shadows (2005), demonstrates a unique expression of the universal human will hitherto unknown in the Nigerian literary tradition. In analysing Walking with Shadows, this article argues that the Darwinist tendency, the evolutionary character embodied in conventional Nigerian narratives, is undermined in a number of respects. Since no same-sex sexual partners are primed by evolution for reproduction of humankind, this sexual phenomenon, as demonstrated by the central character of this work, is thus not only monumentally anti-evolutionary, but also immensely anti-continuation of the human occupation of the earth through biological reproduction. The above tendency partly accounts for why the major same-sex character's kin and society cannot understand him. Walking with Shadows would be read against some conventional works in the tradition in order to show how the vital indices of identity and marked kinship lubricants indigenous to Africa and hence Darwinian, are upstaged, as it also adds an interesting literary dimension to Nigerian literature by varying the usual. Keywords: evolutionary character, Jude Dibia, Nigerian literature, Nigerian narratives, Walking with Shadows., About a hundred and fifty years after Charles Darwin declared that 'all organic beings are exposed to severe competition', a competition for life, no one has refuted him convincingly (Darwin [...]