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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Nusrat Fatima, LUO Yimin
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2026.09.002
College of International Studies, Southwest University, Chongqing, China
Building on spatial approaches to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this article proposes elastic topology as a literary framework for examining how comic structures accommodate transformation while preserving relational continuity. Adapting topological concepts for literary analysis, the study develops a four-part model comprising elastic space, invariant, agent of deformation, and elastic recovery. Close reading shows that the forest enables reversible relational deformation, the changeling functions as a relational invariant, Puck mediates deformation, and the ending produces a renewed rather than restored equilibrium. By reconceptualizing Shakespearean comedy as a resilient system of continuous deformation rather than a simple movement from disorder to restored order, this study offers a potentially transferable vocabulary for examining spatial organisation, comic structure, and relational continuity in Shakespearean drama.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare, literary topology, spatial criticism, comic structure, Puck, changeling boy, heterotopia
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, September 2026, Vol. 16, No. 9, 721-730
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