”There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales” by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Se­lec­ted and Trans­lated by Keith Gessen and Anna Sum­mers “My stor­ies are a mir­ror. People see them­selves in them. If they see evil, it means they’re evil. If they see good, it means they’re good.” (Pet­rushevskaya qtd. in Guzeva 2018)  Mys­ter­i­ous, un­pre­dict­able, hal­lu­cin­at­ing, bru­tal, yet hon­est, em­pathic and pre­serving a pure and dir­ect style – Read on …

Symbolism in Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Selfish Giant”

Through­out time, myth­o­logy and folk­lore have served as in­spir­a­tion for lit­er­at­ure due to their them­atic com­plex­ity and rich­ness in char­ac­ters. There are vari­ous au­thors who have in­tro­duced myth­o­lo­gical ele­ments within their lit­er­ary works in or­der to point out the hid­den mean­ings and uni­ver­sal truths. Some of the most well-known char­ac­ters who are used to con­vey Read on …

Once Upon a Thyme

Don’t let the title mis­lead you, the present art­icle is not ded­ic­ated to how Sleep­ing Beauty dis­covered that lav­ender helped her sleep, nor is it en­tirely ded­ic­ated to thyme as a herb and its prop­er­ties, but it tracks down the pres­ence of vari­ous herbs show­ing how they crept up in lit­er­at­ure… Read on …