Journal of Artistic Creation and Literary Research

Presence Decentered or Unfinalizable? Utibe Hanson's Unnoticed Presence of Things

Ndubuisi Martins Aniemeka — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0200

In this article, I interrogate the construction of presence in Utibe Hanson‘s award-winning debut collection, Unnoticed Presence of Things. This poetry volume impels a sort of scepticism about whether the notion of presence is materially unnoticed, politically rife, decentred, or interminable. Hence, I probe the context, image, text, and notions of the unnoticed presence inscribed in the volume, as Hanson seems to negate his noticed presence by the title, cover, and poems that make up his collection. A close reading of the poems drawn from the theoretical insights of Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, and Mikhail Bakhtin highlights the politics of presence and counters the logic of unnoticed presence linked to the unspecified or nothingness in Hanson‘s poetry. By engaging with deconstructive frames of Heidegger‘s subject and predication, Derrida‘s aporia and difference, and Bhaktin‘s unfinalizability, I produce a detailed decentring of presence and nothingness in relation to Hanson‘s poetic manifesto of unnoticed presence, recurring as the unspecified or nothingness, and variously constituted in the poems. This study, at some strategic points, identifies signs, deconstructs, and complicates the notion of nothingness as revealed in the poems. Following the deconstructive analysis of poems in this article, Hanson’s poetry appears to bear the dodgy phrase: unnoticed presence of things.

Facing the Wall of Babylon: A Contrastive Analysis of the Transfer of Biblical Allusions in Two Spanish Translations of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Antonio Escobar-Tortosa — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This paper investigates the translation of biblical quotations and intertextual allusions in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in two Spanish versions published in the early 1960s by Amando Lázaro Ros and Fernando Gutiérrez. Drawing on Mendoza’s framework of the reading intertext and Canetti’s distinction between explicit and implicit quotations, the study examines how fidelity to the 1960 Reina-Valera Bible is affected by translator ideology, literary competence, and contextual constraints such as Francoist censorship. Each analyzed fragment is evaluated in terms of the translators’ ability to preserve theological meaning, allegorical nuance, and narrative function. The findings indicate that Gutiérrez’s strong Judeo-Christian background facilitated more accurate and nuanced renderings of biblical allusions, while Ros, whose atheist stance and self-censorship conditioned his approach, frequently simplified or neutralized original references. These results reveal how ideological orientation and encyclopaedic competence intersect with translational choices, influencing not only textual fidelity but also the reception of religious and moral dimensions in the target culture. Furthermore, the study highlights the broader significance of intertextual and theological awareness in literary translation, suggesting that translator background plays a critical role in mediating cultural and religious content. By combining intertextual and translational analysis, this research contributes to Translation Studies and Stevenson scholarship, offering insights into the complex dynamics between source text, translator, and socio-historical context.

“We are all commodities at Yaxaktun”: Resisting Oppression Through the Latina “Multiplicitous Selfhood” in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Ane B. Ruiz-Lejarcegui — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This article seeks to analyse Silvia Moreno-García’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022) against the backdrop of posthumanism and Latina feminist philosophy, in order to show how the transgression of the human/animal dualism of Moreau’s hybrids, now embodied by his daughter Carlota, exceeds that explored in H.G. Wells’ original novel. Thus, this study demonstrates that Moreno-García’s historical re-contextualisation within the Caste War of Yucatán (1847-1901), far from simply retelling the story against a different, exotic background, provides an intersectional commentary on the sociocultural and political factors that enforce commodification. Carlota Moreau’s existence as part-jaguar and part-human—both white and Maya—converges various systems of domination: the reification of her body as a scientific project and the racial and patriarchal oppressions that surround it. Following Mariana Ortega’s concept of “multiplicitous selfhood,” this article analyses how the imagery of fragmentation and the politics of naming work in the novel to endorse liminality as a valid and legitimate state of being. Hence, diverging from Wells’ portrayal of hybridity as imperfect and incomplete, Moreno-García’s multiplicitous selves embrace, rather than shun, in-betweenness as a form of resisting from the margins.

The Haves and Have-nots in the Family: Intra-classism in Zoë Wicomb’s October

Laura Gutiérrez González — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Zoë Wicomb’s penultimate novel, October (2014), tells the story of fifty-two-year-old Mercia Murray, a woman who has lived in Scotland for twenty-five years. The novel mainly revolves around the concepts of homemaking, exile, return and (non)belonging. While in other Wicomb works the characters come from different families or backgrounds, most of October’s relationships are intra-familial, making class inequality the primary factor to distinguish the different characters. In this sense, Wicomb proves in October how the opportunities the characters are given throughout their lives can lead to almost opposite outcomes, even if they come from the same or a very similar background. Drawing on Bourdieu, Seekings and Wright’s theories on social class, this article aims to explore the classist attitudes displayed by the different characters, with particular focus on Mercia Murray. Postcolonial theorists such as Jacob Dlamini, Bhabha or Spivak – among others – will be used to support how Mercia’s classism contrasts the national preoccupation with race in post-Apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, it will be seen how class is an essential factor in the increase for upward mobility – a concept that has not been properly studied in postcolonial literature since it has been fundamentally focused on how race determines the individual position in society. Through the small sample of South African society Wicomb presents, this paper will focus on the concept of class, as it will also explore the inferiority complex and mimicry attitudes attached to less socio-economically developed individuals.

From a Female Gothic Heroine to a Postfeminist Gothic Villainess: The Ambivalent Characterization of the Young Female Protagonist in Ti West’s Pearl

Marta Miquel-Baldellou — Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200

American filmmaker Ti West has recently released a horror trilogy in which actress Mia Goth simultaneously plays the roles of Maxine, in the first and third parts of the trilogy, and of Pearl, in the first and second parts. After the release of the first film in the series, X (2022), and as a prequel to it, West’s second film Pearl (2022) focuses on the youth of its protagonist. Initially, the plot presents many of the conventions pertaining to the tradition of the female gothic, and particularly, to its first stage of development, in analogy with narratives that depict a young heroine who is threatened with confinement and struggles to escape labyrinthic passages and menacing landscapes in order to marry the man she loves and find her lost parent. Conversely, West’s film Pearl also displays illustrative traits of the postfeminist gothic, inasmuch as it involves a rupture with the tradition of the female gothic, since postfeminist gothic narratives encompass popular evocations of girl power, postmodern discussions of feminism, and political discourses of neoliberal individualism. This article aims to analyse the ambivalent character of Pearl in a contemporary cinematic narrative that blends features from the female gothic tradition and the postfeminist gothic, thus portraying Pearl as gender-compliant, but also, gender-subversive.

Review of Zhao, Chloé, director. Hamnet. Focus Features, 2025

Gema Jiménez-Palazón — Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Review of Berger, Edward, director. Conclave. Focus Features, 2024

Mohamed Amestas El Kammas — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The Year He Died

Jose Fabián Elizondo — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Writing as Breathing: Hope, Resistance and Poetry, An Interview with Donya Abu Sitta

María Martín Ortega, Marta Aguza Berral — Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200