Comparative Literature Commons^™

Prostitutes, Temporary Wives, And Motrebs: A Comparative Study Of Sex Work In Iranian Film And Fiction From The Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911) To The Islamic Revolution (1979), Maryam Zehtabi Sabeti Moqaddam

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation titled “Prostitutes, Temporary Wives, and Motrebs: A Comparative Study of Sex Work in Iranian Film and Fiction from Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911) to the Islamic Revolution (1979)” brings together the web of images and narratives in sociocultural and historical texts and films that create and maintain the identity of sex workers as articles of mass consumption and sustain dominant practices and policies. By studying how these women, their body, and their sexuality are perceived, shown, and regulated in art and literature—which are ciphers of the society at large—my research exposes the tightly knit relationship between patriarchy, capitalism ...

Extensive And Intensive Iconography. Goethe’S Faust Outlined, Evanghelia Stead

Artl@s Bulletin

Drawing on a corpus of printed items between countries, compared first-hand, the article examines the mark left by Moritz Retzsch’s 26 outline etchings after Goethe’s Faust (1816) using the distinction between extensive and intensive iconography. In extensive iconography, copied or imitated images build a collective imagination, devaluing the original work, albeit contributing to the play’s aura. That view challenges Walter Benjamin’s influential essay on “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935). In intensive iconography, inventive artists, inspired by Retzsch, rework images, granting a particular scene genuine reinterpretation. How then should we value ...

الأسس الخلافية لتأويل مشكل شعر المعري بين البطليوسي وابن العربي, البشير التهالي

Dirassat

Title : The controversial foundations for interpreting the problem of al-Maari's poetry between Batalyawsi and Ibn al-Arabi

The poetry of Abu Al-Alaa Al-Maari is distinguished for its interactive and argumentative context. In addition, it is rich in interpretative capabilities. In addition, Al-Maari’s poetry has a brilliant interpretive potential that establishes the literary rule. Accordingly, it aims at analyzing the foundations of dispute between Abd Allāh Ibn Muḥammad al-Baṭalyawsī and Abu Bakr Ibn al-Arabi who were famous for interpreting poetic discourse. As far as Abu Al-'Ala al-Ma'ari is concerned; the reality of his poetry ...

التمثيل الصوتي للجعل الصرفي في بعض اللغات الأفرسية, عبد المجيد الزهير

Dirassat

Title : Phonological representation of morpheme realization in some Afro-asian languages

In this article, we will study the phonological representations of many Afro-Asian languages and present the hypothesis of the phonemic origin to analyze morphological realization and its development. It is worth mentioning that historical development of phonological systems recognizes different factors, which are not mere hypotheses. Some of these factors are internal and related to the ability of linguistic speakers, while others are external and adhere to the effect of social variables and the consequences of the interaction between languages. To better understand, this phenomenon we propose comparative differential analysis ...

روايات أگادير, أحمد التوفيق

Dirassat

Title : Tales from Agadir

The city of Agadir is situated in strategic area for the Makhzen and the Iberian expansionists alike. The fusion of local cultures with that of the merchants and the colonizers brought about diversity and solidarity of the social fabric. Such affluence and prosperity is invoked in the tales about Agadir as a city of both resistance and integration.

Númenor And The “Devouring Wave”: Literary, Historical, And Psychological Sources For Tolkien’S Self-Described “Atlantis Complex”, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

Invited talk delivered to the Hobbit Society at the Honors College of the University of New Mexico on February 10, 2016, expanded from a keynote address delivered at the Tolkien Conference of the University of Vermont on April 15, 2014.

Nationalist Allegories In The Post-Human Era, Siqi Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

As China’s expansion of influence now takes up the spotlight of the world stage, Chinese science fiction, a relatively little known genre, reaches a global audience. In 2015, Liu Cixin received the Hugo Award for Best Novel for his trilogy The Three-Body Problem, as the first Asian science fiction writer to receive the Hugo Award. A year later, Hao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing was awarded the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. The recent world-wide recognition of Chinese science fiction begins with English translation, U.S. publication and promotion. The New York Times cited The Three-Body Problem as having ...

Trans-Atlantic Interrogation: Fabienne Pasquet’S La Deuxième Mort De Toussaint Louverture, Mariana F. Past

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Trans-Atlantic Interrogation: Fabienne Pasquet’s La deuxième mort de Toussaint Louverture,” Mariana Past situates the Haitian-Swiss novelist’s understudied narrative within the context of Caribbean letters and the Haitian literary tradition, then discusses the broader, intertextual implications of Toussaint Louverture’s “second” death for Haiti and the trans-Atlantic world. To what end does Pasquet deploy the aged ghost of a Haitian revolutionary icon being invoked by German Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist in the Fort de Joux castle-cum-prison within France’s remote, mountainous Jura region? What is at stake when the diasporic writer reincarnates a legendary German poet as ...

From Franz Kafka To Franz Kafka Award Winner, Yan Lianke: Biopolitics And The Human Dilemma Of Shenshizhuyi In Liven And Dream Of Ding Village, Melinda Pirazzoli

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

To date, many studies have exhaustively explained how and why Yan Lianke deals with both the intimate relationship between disease and biopolitics and the relationship between utopia and dystopia. These are certainly the most important themes in Liven (2004) and Dream of Ding Village (2006). However, biopolitical discourses cannot fully account for the complexity, depth and humanity of these novels, which in addition to exploring the complex and protean meaning of life also represent shenshizhuyi, an expression coined by Yan Lianke to describe his human dilemma in representing the complex relationship between shen 神 (soul, spirit, mind and myths) and ...

Speculative Epistemologies Of Resistance In Hombres De Maíz And Bandarshah, Haifa S. Alfaisal

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his two-part “The literary history of world-systems” Matthew Eatough utilizes world systems theory to examine literary studies. He makes use of Baucom’s “speculative epistemologies” to explore the connection between the global economy speculative financial instruments and the rise of the novel in 18th century. But Eatough is interested in tracing the history of literary studies and world systems theory. In this paper, I use speculative epistemologies to indicate ways of knowing that are speculated in fiction. My starting point is the decolonial critique of world system theory, which I use to formulate border reading; a reading strategy that ...

Hanay Geiogamah’S Body Indian And Foghorn As “Plays With A Purpose”, Danica Čerče

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Hanay Geiogamah’s Body Indian and Foghorn as ‘Plays with a Purpose,’” written against the backdrop of critical whiteness studies, Danica Čerče discusses how Geiogamah’s theatrical rhetoric intervenes in the assumptions about whiteness as a static, privilege-granting category and system of dominance. By focusing on various techniques and strategies mobilized to define and affirm Native Americans’ authentic rather than imposed identities, the article shows that humor is one of the prime textual devices in Geiogamah’s plays to renegotiate what Walter Mignolo calls “the racist structure of power.”

Politics Of Evasion And Tales Of Abjection: Postmodern Demythologization In Angela Carter And Ghazaleh Alizadeh, Narges Montakhabi Bakhtvar, Hoda Niknezhad-Ferdos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Angela Carter and Ghazaleh Alizadeh as the prophetesses of postmodern fairy tales in British and Persian literature re-narrativize these tales as a loophole from socio-political stagnation and cultural paralysis. Evading direct contact with the political jargons of their eras, they seek gender generativity via the fairy tale machine. Alizadeh finds refuge in modernizing Persian fairy tales. Carter chants her frustration at Thatcherism through gender subversion. Carter’s and Alizadeh’s revulsion at the politics of gender in their eras can be read via the duet between the abject and the chora in Kristeva’s thought. It is through the encounter ...

Strategies Of (In)Visibility And Resilience: Women Writers In A Digital Era, Miriam Borham-Puyal, Daniel Escandell-Montiel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Women’s presence in literary history has been particularly conditioned by their place in society and by the limited spheres in which their production was expected to appear (e.g. the sentimental novel, romances or children’s literature). In today’s digital, open and connected society, women continue to face visibility problems in the publishing industry and in the online spaces that grant presence and agency. Their role in cultural creations is still hindered by vertical powers that operate as main censors. This circumstance takes place even in a rhizomatic and decentralized virtual space, where dissident discourses have highlighted it ...

Problems With Perceptual And Cognitive Idiosyncrasies In Li Wenjun’S Translation Of The Benjy Section Of Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury, Aaron L. Moore

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Problems with Perceptual and Cognitive Idiosyncrasies in Li Wenjun’s Translation of the Benjy Section of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury,” Aaron Lee Moore conducts a close explication of a 2014 English-Chinese edition of part of The Sound and the Fury. Li Wenjun’s translation of the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury is certainly admirable in its graceful rendering of Faulkner’s complex, idiosyncratic prose style into accessible Chinese—and particularly laudable in its meticulous tracking of the a-chronological sequence of Benjy’s stream of consciousness narrative. However, problems arise in the ...

“No Roses, White Nor Red, Glow Here”: The Motif Of The Garden In Two Proserpine Poems By A. Swinburne And D. Greenwell, Cristina Salcedo González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this article, I discuss Algernon Swinburne’s and Dora Greenwell’s engagement with the myth of Proserpine through an analysis of the motif of the garden, which takes central stage in both accounts. The examination will illustrate how the authors’ outlined images of the garden challenge the dominant representation of the motif within Western literary tradition, offering a re-interpretation of the myth as social commentary.

Deconstructing Feminine And Feminist Fantastic Through The Study Of Living Dolls, Raquel Velázquez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her "Deconstructing Feminine and Feminine Fantastic through the Study of Living Dolls," Raquel Velázquez analyzes the treatment of one idiosyncratic image within the fantastic genre, and one that also has a special impact on the configuration of the feminine: the doll. On the one hand, she examines the evolution of this fantastic motif in order to determine whether it involves a transformation of how the feminine fantastic is represented. On the other hand, she establishes some correlations between the image of the fantastic doll, and the development of processes such as the dollification of women or the humanization of ...

The Inappropriate/D Fantastic: A Proposal Beyond Feminism, Teresa López-Pellisa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Teresa López-Pellisa’s article “The Inappropriate/d Fantastic: A Proposal Beyond Feminism” discusses a type of narration that goes beyond the feminist fantastic. These are fantastic texts permeated not only by a feminist discourse, but by intersectionality, transfeminism, ecofeminism, cyberfeminism, post-humanism, xenofeminism and/or necropolitics as well. Borrowing the term inappropriate/d others from Donna Haraway (The Promises of Monsters), who in turn takes it from the feminist theorist Trinh Minh-ha, we can analyze those fantastic stories that call into question the categories of gender, class, race and sexuality established by Western enlightened humanism. These types of non-mimetic narrations have ...

A Geocritical Perspective On The Female Fantastic: Rethinking The Domestic, Patricia García

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Patricia García’s article, “A Geocritical Perspective on the Female Fantastic: Rethinking the Domestic” approaches the question of the “female fantastic” from a spatial angle. Proponents of the female fantastic (for example E. Moers, S. Gilbert and S. Gubar and A. Richter) often coincide in a leitmotif that characterises this tradition: the haunted house. This leads to a great deal of studies centred on how female authors employ domestic spaces as a means to give voice to the lives of women invisibilised by patriarchy and, through the irruption of the supernatural, as a way to subvert domestic ideology. Whereas these ...

Female Fantastic In Anthologies: Gendering The Genre And Its Discourse, Anna Boccuti

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In the last decades, the fantastic literature written by women has been the subject of various studies, which, from different standpoints, have tried to investigate the characteristics of the female fantastic. In this essay, after a critical review of the most prominent theories about the so-called feminine fantastic and female writing, I will focus on the narrative strategies of the female fantastic. Through the close reading of the anthologies Tra due specchi. 18 racconti di scrittrici latinoamericane, and Insólitas. Narradoras de lo fantástico en Latinoamérica y España, I’ll try to draw a cartography of the Hispanic Fantastic short stories ...

Transgression, Essentialism And Literary System: An Approach To The Viability Of The Female Fantastic, Alfons Gregori

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The main aims of this article are firstly to find out whether the concept of “fantastic female” is a contradictory and ambiguous construct, and secondly to challenge the feasibility of applying it to literary studies. The matter of the existence of the “female fantastic” refers to the theoretical approaches made to undertake a double-edged task in the 1970s and 1980s: the conceptualization of a dual scheme establishing a female aesthetic opposed to the dominant patriarchy on the one hand, and on the other, the promotion of non-mimetic narrative modes as formulas for transgressing the patriarchal system. However, the crystallization of ...