Дарин Тенев

The paper presents a close reading of J. Joyce's short story "Araby" and attempts at defining the relationship between the notion of image as represented by the story and the fictionality at work in it. The analysis reveals the paradoxical intricacy of fiction and reality (the two no longer being opposed, but rather interwoven) in the very heart of the fictional image, which for its part tends constantly to disintegrate. In fact, through the image fictionality is disclosed as taking place in the rupture produced by the non-coincidence of reality with itself. Borrowing a concept of C.Malabou's, the author of the present paper names the aspect in the image that drives it toward incessant alteration, bringing it to the edge of explosion and disintegration, "plasticity". On the one hand, plasticity defines what could be called "transformation" of the image; on the other, it partakes in another characteristic feature of the image, namely its function to concord, to make other agencies of the subject, such as memory or perception, as well as the different aspects of the image itself (imagination, resemblance, and transformation) "conform" to it. Though advancing no more than a theoretical model, the paper's main (and for the most part unachievable) goal is to delineate the unique field of potentiality of the story through this model, while avoiding the danger of reducing it to the reader's own (mis)interpretation.

his paper develops a methodological framework to guide the efforts of a research team united by the task of investigating the reader in contemporary Bulgarian literature. For this purpose, we start from the receptive theory of Wolfgang Iser, but the authors develop, change and adapt this theory to the team's own goals. As a result, The Implicit Reader is seen as a textual program and normative instance in the texts, with which try to control and guide the behavior of their real readers. The categories of analysis with which this program can be approached and explored are grouped into three major groups: “repertoires”, “strategies” and “communicative competences”. They are further divided into finer operational sub-categories and tools, allowing shared methodologies of work between team members and comparability of research results.

The article analyses the theme of return and the figure of the circle in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” showing that through them the author describes both the play itself and the principle at work at the basis of law. The plot with the three caskets is interpreted as a form of self-modelling of the literary work, where the silver casket with its inscription (“Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves”) serves as an allegory of the compositional choices made in the comedy. The article also focuses on the question of the doubles, which is in contrast with the logic of return. In the study, two kinds of doubling are distinguished. On the one hand, doubling is interpreted in the sense of redoubling and splitting. On the other hand, it is understood as an element introducing non-coincidence and non-identity of the circle with itself.