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Recent Articles in European Languages and Societies

Medieval Redemption For Modern Times: Representations Of Sacrifice In Perceval Le Gallois And The Fisher King, Tabitha Gerardot Valparaiso University

Medieval Redemption For Modern Times: Representations Of Sacrifice In Perceval Le Gallois And The Fisher King, Tabitha Gerardot

Celebration of Undergraduate Scholarship

Chretien de Troyes' medieval novel Perceval ou le Conte du graal tells the story of young Perceval's journey to knighthood and an understanding of selflessness and redemption. However, the tale was left unfinished, giving rise to numerous continuations, both medieval and modern. The film adaptations Perceval le Gallois, by French director Eric Rohmer, and The Fisher King, by Terry Gilliam, continue the rich tradition of Perceval with their own conclusions. While the films use different artistic styles and entirely different plots, they both solve the story with a tale of redemption. While Rohmer's adaptation is extremely faithful to ...


The Politics Of Film Adaptation In Zola’S La Bête Humaine, Reillie Acks Valparaiso University

The Politics Of Film Adaptation In Zola’S La Bête Humaine, Reillie Acks

Celebration of Undergraduate Scholarship

In 1890, Emile Zola published a book called La Bête Humaine. The novel is essentially a psychological thriller whose story features three very dynamic characters: a train station master Roubaud, his wife Séverine, and her lover Jacques Lantier. The conflict that ensues is one of murder and deceit – and the motivations of the characters are similarly unclear and compromised. Therefore, this story can potentially be interpreted in multiple ways, providing important political commentary for their receiving audiences. It follows that when a series of film adaptations re-created the story on screen, they did so in drastically different ways. Two particular ...


Intersections In Immanence: Spinoza, Deleuze, Negri, Abigail Lowe University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Intersections In Immanence: Spinoza, Deleuze, Negri, Abigail Lowe

Dissertations & Theses, Department of English

The connection between French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Italian political theorist Antonio Negri has drawn attention in academic publications over the last decade. For both thinkers, the philosophical concept of immanence is central to how both respectively conceptualize the world. However, in order to consider their work with regard to a metaphysical grounding, one may benefit from turning to each thinker’s engagement with Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza whose immanent ontology, or monism, was indeed his Ethics. This essay concentrates on drawing out an ontological distinction between the philosophical projects of Deleuze and Negri by way of a close ...


We Survived … At Last I Speak, Leon Malmed University of Nebraska - Lincoln

We Survived … At Last I Speak, Leon Malmed

Zea E-Books

This is Leon Malmed’s true story of his and his sister Rachel’s escape from the Holocaust in Occupied France. When their father and mother were arrested in 1942, their courageous and heroic French neighbors volunteered to watch their children until they returned. Leon’s parents were taken first to Drancy, then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and they never returned. Meanwhile their downstairs neighbors, Henri and Suzanne Ribouleau, gave the children a home and family and sheltered them through subsequent roundups, threats, air raids, and the war’s privations. The courage, sympathy, and dedication of the Ribouleaus and others stand in ...


Béla Bartók: The Father Of Ethnomusicology, David Taylor Nelson Cedarville University

Béla Bartók: The Father Of Ethnomusicology, David Taylor Nelson

Musical Offerings

Béla Bartók birthed the field of ethnomusicology as an academic discipline through his tireless pursuits of folk music, his exposition of the sound of the rural people, and his incorporation of folk-style into his own personal compositions. His work revealed to the world that folk music exists, is important, and stands as an independent academic discipline. I argue that Bartók’s efforts established the field of ethnomusicology because he was one of the first musicians to branch into the study of ethnic music by travelling to collect samples of music, by aurally recording and transcribing folk-tunes, by re-writing these songs ...


Memory, Identity, And Narration: A Book Review Of New Work By Assmann And Conrad And Tilmans, Vree, And Winter, Simona Mitroiu Purdue University

Memory, Identity, And Narration: A Book Review Of New Work By Assmann And Conrad And Tilmans, Vree, And Winter, Simona Mitroiu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


New Forms Of Contemporary Aesthetics: A Review Article Of New Works By Camerotti And Quaranta, Marina Mantini Purdue University

New Forms Of Contemporary Aesthetics: A Review Article Of New Works By Camerotti And Quaranta, Marina Mantini

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Intercultural Approaches To Cities And Spaces In Literature, Film, And New Media: A Review Of New Work By Manzanas And Benito And López-Varela And Neţ, Ana María Martín Castillejos Purdue University

Intercultural Approaches To Cities And Spaces In Literature, Film, And New Media: A Review Of New Work By Manzanas And Benito And López-Varela And Neţ, Ana María Martín Castillejos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Barthelme's "Paraguay," The Postmodern, And Neocolonialism, Daniel Chaskes Purdue University

Barthelme's "Paraguay," The Postmodern, And Neocolonialism, Daniel Chaskes

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Barthelme's 'Paraguay,' the Postmodern, and Neocolonialism," Daniel Chaskes explores the analytic opportunities afforded by conjoining globalizing critical approaches with a story by an author who has often been circumscribed by the postmodern rubric. Donald Barthelme's "Paraguay," written the summer after Nelson Rockefeller's fact-finding mission to South America in 1969, provides a chance to consider modes of anti-colonial critique in Barthelme's work. It also offers examples of a more self-reflective criticism aimed at the U.S. counterculture and the indeterminacies of postmodernism. Chaskes reads "Paraguay" with the aim of understanding Barthelme's hemispheric interest ...


Evoking A Memory Of The Future In Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, Doro Wiese Purdue University

Evoking A Memory Of The Future In Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, Doro Wiese

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated" Doro Wiese discusses Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. In the text a photograph plays a decisive role: the image of two young people drives the Jewish American Jonathan to visit the Ukraine. The photograph is presumably of Jonathan's grandfather Safran and a woman named Augustine who saved Safran's life during a nazi raid of his village: the photograph becomes an ekphrasis, a description of a visual work of art in another medium which transforms the generic characteristics of written and photographic representations. According ...


Victims Of The City In Novels Of Zola And Dostoevsky, Marta L. Wilkinson Purdue University

Victims Of The City In Novels Of Zola And Dostoevsky, Marta L. Wilkinson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Victims of the City in Novels of Zola and Dostoevsky" Marta Wilkinson argues that urbanity in its nineteenth-century setting functioned as the culpable agent in criminal behavior found in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and in several of Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels. Wilkinson an analysis of the novels based on Merlin Coverly's concept of psychogeography which supports the extension of the cityscape as an integral part of the novels' characters. Further, Wilkinson illustrates how in Zola's and Dostoevsky's novels the city reigns triumphant as characters fall victim to disease, drink, or are left with ...


Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee Purdue University

Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Contemporary US-American Satire and Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk)" J.C. Lee focuses on contemporary satire's potential (or lack thereof) for change, reform, or rebellion through an investigation of works by Harry Crews, Douglas Coupland, and Chuck Palahniuk, all of which target consumerism. The said writers employ satire not to initiate rebellion or cultural change, but to reflect the problematic role of institutions in modern life and, in turn, the potential, even hope, for personal growth. Lee's analysis of texts by Crews, Coupland, and Palahniuk is intended to question satire's potential as a form of ...


Evans's The Turducken And Chekhov's The Seagull, Brian R. Johnson Purdue University

Evans's The Turducken And Chekhov's The Seagull, Brian R. Johnson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Evans's The Turducken and Chekhov's The Seagull" Brian R. Johnson approaches The Turducken as a travesty of The Seagull, examining six iconic scenes from The Seagull, in order to explore the satirical effect of the altered scenes. In December of 2008, Bedlam Theatre of Minneapolis presented The Turducken, "a holiday dinner theater spectacular inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Seagull." Playwright Josef Evans takes Chekhov's 1895 work and turns the classic piece into a musical and farcical satire. The plot of The Turducken follows the plot of The Seagull, and some scenes in The ...


Nostalgia In Oral Histories Of Israeli Women, Yael Zilberman Purdue University

Nostalgia In Oral Histories Of Israeli Women, Yael Zilberman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Nostalgia in Oral Histories of Israeli Women" Yael Zilberman explores the narration of nostalgia of elderly women about the city of Be'er Sheva. In their narration, the subjects of the study create textual and spatial practices which are engendered and create analogies between the city, their maturing/ed bodies, and by-gone youth. Further, the grief owing to the perceived condition of the city intensifies the idealized description of the city and the longing for its past. Zilberman's study brakes new ground in that the study of urban experience within folklore is a lesser explored field ...


Egypt's Police State In The Work Of Idris And Mahfouz, David F. DiMeo Purdue University

Egypt's Police State In The Work Of Idris And Mahfouz, David F. Dimeo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Egypt's Police State in the Work of Idris and Mahfouz" David F. DiMeo examines how two leading twentieth-century authors of politically committed fiction addressed an angry generation's confrontations with former members of the oppressive state police apparatus. Yusuf Idris's The Black Policeman (1962) and Najib Mahfouz's al-Karnak (1974) remain particularly relevant as today's Egyptian activists confront the vestiges of the former regime's security forces. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnival as a paradigm for analysis, DiMeo examines how both texts present sharp contrasts between hollow quests for public revenge ...


Metaphor Translation As A Tool Of Intercultural Understanding, Ipshita Chanda Purdue University

Metaphor Translation As A Tool Of Intercultural Understanding, Ipshita Chanda

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding" Ipshita Chanda takes up specific cases of metaphor translation as a methodological exercise towards understanding intercultural exchange. Chanda's study is based on a semiotic and linguistic understanding of metaphor as a signifying and cognitive device. When a metaphor is translated from one linguistic-literary field into another, the process of translation itself yields some specific operational steps for studying inter- and cross-cultural relations. Here, translation is not proposed as a framework but as practical method: the translation of metaphor becomes an exercise in strategy for the pedagogy of ...


Aesthetics In Gao's Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee Purdue University

Aesthetics In Gao's Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Aesthetics in Gao's Soul Mountain" Mabel Lee analyses Nobel Laureate 2000 Xingjian Gao's aesthetics. Transnational conglomerates today control the book industry from publishing house to bookshop and through aggressive market strategies they exert considerable influence on readers. Nonetheless, there are writers who refuse to capitulate to market demands and seek only to actualize their aesthetic ideas in the creation of literary texts. One such writer is Gao, author of the novel Soul Mountain. Lee posits that Gao's aesthetics is founded on the close interrogation of both Chinese and European models and practices and explores ...


Babette's Feast And The Goodness Of God, Thomas J. Curry University of Nebraska Omaha

Babette's Feast And The Goodness Of God, Thomas J. Curry

Journal of Religion & Film

This article attempts to answer the preeminent question Babette’s Feast invites viewers to consider: Why does Babette choose to expend everything she has to make her feast? Of the critical studies made of the film, few have considered analytically crucial the catastrophic backstory of Babette, the violence of which is implied and offscreen. Appreciation of the singularity of Babette’s own personhood and the darker aspects of her experience, and not only how she might act as a figure of Christ, are key to understanding the motivating force behind her meal and its transformative effect: That through the feast ...


The Legacy Of The Baby Boomers Or The French Social System? Issues Of Equality And Brain Drain, Marie-Claire Patron Bond University

The Legacy Of The Baby Boomers Or The French Social System? Issues Of Equality And Brain Drain, Marie-Claire Patron

Humanities & Social Sciences papers

This book aims to identify key factors influencing the increasing brain drain of French early and mid-career graduates primarily to Anglo-Saxon countries in order to avoid the inexorable outcome of their tertiary studies: precarious employment conditions relegating them to the status of intellectual underclass in France. This qualitative ethnographic study investigated the experiences of 38 French nationals and expatriates aged between 21 and 48 to provide a voice to the increasing number of students and graduates who despair at the thought of witnessing their years of study culminate in a perennial cycle of training, unemployment, internship. What distinguishes the French ...


From The Enlightenment To Genocide: The Evolution And Devolution Of Romanian Nationalism, Shawn E. Wooster Grand Valley State University

From The Enlightenment To Genocide: The Evolution And Devolution Of Romanian Nationalism, Shawn E. Wooster

Shawn E Wooster Mr.

Romanian nationalism, developed during the first phase of modernization, was significantly influenced by Enlightenment philosophy and by its corollary, Enlightened Despotism. Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson's theories of nationalism's origins are pertinent explaining Romanian nationalism, but are too narrow to consider Romania's unique geographical and cultural conditions. Romania's uniqueness facilitated the creation of "Romanianness,"or ethic consciousness, in eighteenth-century, preindustrial Transylvania without a well-established elite, and it continued to evolve without state-sponsored educational policies. Ethnic consciousness eventually transformed into the racism and genocidal nationalism of World War Two, thus straying from typologies expounded by Gellner and ...