From ancient mythographies to contemporary reimaginings, from sacred narratives to modern disenchanted worlds, the present issue of Acta Iassyensia Comparationis, dedicated to myth and magic in literature, brings into focus a constellation of themes and approaches that testify to the enduring relevance of mythopoetic thinking. Creation and metamorphosis,
enchantment and demystification, sacred and profane love, rhetoric as manipulation and revelation, trauma and memory, identity and self-discovery – these are some of the key
coordinates explored by the contributors to this volume.

Revisited across a wide diachronic and cultural spectrum, myth appears both as a foundational narrative matrix and as a flexible interpretive tool. Classical antiquity is re-examined through new readings of The Golden Ass and its symbolic universe, as well as through the reinterpretation of Ovidian myths in early modern Spanish literature. At the same time, myth emerges as a dynamic structure in continuous transformation, reworked in modernist texts such as The Magic Mountain and extending into contemporary fiction, where works like The Graveyard Book reconfigure
archetypal patterns within hybrid narrative frameworks.

Magic, in turn, is not confined to the supernatural domain, but emerges as a broader epistemological and discursive category. As illustrated by Eastern narrative traditions,
language itself may function as a form of enchantment, capable of constructing, distorting, or restoring reality through persuasive or deceptive rhetoric. In this sense, storytelling
becomes both an instrument of power and a means of resistance, mediating between
illusion and truth, injustice and reparation.

From Greco-Roman culture to the Spanish Golden Age, from Middle Eastern narrative
traditions to European modernism and contemporary global literature, the present issue brings together perspectives from literary studies, philosophy, mythocriticism, and cultural
studies. The contributions converge in demonstrating that myth and magic, far from being relics of a pre-rational past, continue to shape literary imagination as privileged modes of engaging with the complexities of the human condition.