Art and Society

Navigating the Ontological Blur: A Stylistic Inquest into Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream

2026-07-03T06:22:54+00:00

This study presents a comprehensive stylistic analysis of Poe’s 1849 poem A Dream Within a Dream that surpasses traditional approaches to Poe analysis, which focus primarily on biographies and themes. The gap in the existing body of Poe’s work centers on how isolated linguistic elements of style have not been synthesized for a complete analysis of Poe’s work as a body of literature. To fill this void in the current literature on Poe, this study employs a strict three-tier analytical model that integrates Sense, Sound, and Structure into one cohesive analysis of the poem. At the level of sense, linguistic style elements, including figurative language, denotation/connotation, and sensory imagery, are examined to illustrate how the poem translates the abstract quality of transience into the tangible reality of the physical world. At the level of sound, prosodic features are examined to demonstrate how the poem’s sounds recreate for the reader the continuous ebb and flow of time while simultaneously inducing feelings of profound existential despair. At the structural level, irregular line lengths, variable stanza lengths, and extensive enjambment are examined to show how the poem’s structural characteristics mirror the instability of human perception. Overall, the integration of these three disparate linguistic tiers demonstrates how Poe’s intentional use of form creates an active representation that raises the question of an ontological blurring of the lines between reality and illusion. Finally, this analysis contextualizes Poe’s poetic language within an applied linguistics framework, demonstrating the structural relationship between aesthetic inquiry and the integrated form of an aesthetic object.

Research on the Unique Value of Wall Painting Art as a Non-Literal Carrier

2026-07-07T05:54:14+00:00

As an immersive visual art deeply embedded in urban and rural public spaces, wall painting art breaks through the limitations of text carriers of expression and takes intuitive visual symbols, scene immersive experience, and public interactive attributes as its core features, becoming a very dynamic contemporary non-textual culture and emotional carrier. This article takes wall painting art as the core research object, relying on cultural memory theory, non-verbal communication theory and spatial narrative theory to analyze its differentiated advantages compared with traditional text carriers, and deeply explore its role in individual emotional comfort, collective memory cohesion, regional context inheritance, and urban and rural space. Activate the unique value of the four dimensions, sort out the practical difficulties existing in the current wall painting creation and application, such as homogeneity, superficiality, lack of long-term operation and maintenance, and isolation from public needs, and propose optimized paths for localized creation, connotative expression, normalized operation and maintenance, and universal participation. The research aims to improve the theoretical system of non-literal cultural carriers and provide theoretical support and practical reference for the construction of urban and rural public culture, the living inheritance of nostalgic culture, and the innovative application of public art.

Visualizing Familial Order: Female Donor Images in Mogao Cave 156 at Dunhuang

2026-07-09T02:01:18+00:00

Mogao Cave 156 preserves a remarkable group of clearly identified female donor images, providing important evidence for understanding kinship, social identity, and visual culture in Dunhuang during the Guiyijun (Return-to-Allegiance Army) period. Previous studies have primarily examined Cave 156 through the perspectives of political history, Zhang Yichao’s military authority, donor identification, and patronage systems, while the role of female donor imagery in constructing lineage identity and family memory has received comparatively limited attention. Focusing on the female donors in Cave 156, this article investigates how inscriptions, cartouches, iconographic features, and spatial organization contributed to the formation of a lineage-oriented visual program within the Buddhist cave space. It argues that these female images functioned not merely as representations of individual patrons but as visual instruments through which the Zhang clan articulated kinship relations, political legitimacy, and collective memory. Their integration into the cave’s broader representational structure reveals that female donors occupied an active role in the construction of family identity, expanding beyond the subordinate visual positions often assigned to female donors in earlier grotto contexts. Through an analysis of female donor imagery, this study demonstrates that Cave 156 reflects the changing function of donor representation during the Guiyijun period, when Buddhist cave construction increasingly became a medium for expressing family order, lineage continuity, and social authority. The female donors of Cave 156 thus provide a significant perspective for examining the intersection of gender, family, and political identity in Dunhuang visual culture.