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Language In Modern African Drama, Isaiah Ilo
Language In Modern African Drama, Isaiah Ilo
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper "Language in Modern African Drama" Isaiah Ilo proposes alternative criteria for language choice in modern African drama. The two most influential constructs on the language question are Fanon's essentialism that rejects Western languages as instruments of subjugation and Achebe's hybrid approach which entails subversion of the foreign languages by infusing them with African verbal characteristics. The constructs, which emphasise indigenised language and content, stem from the idea that consciousness of the colonial experience should determine language choice and usage in post-colonial African literary creativity. In building a case for a post-indiginist aesthetic, Ilo argues that present reality …
Globalization And Christopher Columbus In The Americas, Elise Bartosik-Vélez
Globalization And Christopher Columbus In The Americas, Elise Bartosik-Vélez
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In "Globalization and Christopher Columbus in the Americas," Elise Bartosik-Vélez considers the responses of scholars working in colonial and early modern studies to recent exponential increases in the transnationalization of capital and the resulting changes in the role of the nation-state. The case of Christopher Columbus and his appropriation by US-American nationalists during the early modern period is particularly instructive with regard to this discussion because Columbus exemplifies not only the drive to globalization of early modern European colonialism, but also the limits of nation-centric thinking in understanding the intersections and overlappings between empire and nation. Columbus in the Americas …
Media, Communication, And The Relevance Of Caragiale's Work Today, Cristian Stamatoiu
Media, Communication, And The Relevance Of Caragiale's Work Today, Cristian Stamatoiu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Cristian Stamatoiu discusses in his paper "Media, Communication, and the Relevance of Caragiale's Work Today" media structures in the corpus of Romanian writer and thinker Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912). Stamatoiu argues that in addition to the artistic sophistication of his work, Caragiale anticipated the impact of new media revolution and its forms as an imitation of "pathological situations" of public discourse and communication per se. Caragiale is, therefore, a writer of surprisingly up-to-date relevance today because, despite his air of the belle époque, in his grotesque farces and in his short stories we discover mental structures found in and characteristic …
Portrayal Of Mathematicians In Fictional Works, Daniel Dotson
Portrayal Of Mathematicians In Fictional Works, Daniel Dotson
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Portrayal of Mathematicians in Fictional Works," Daniel Dotson explores how people with mathematical abilities -- including mathematicians, mathematics teachers, mathematically-inclined youths, cryptographers, and more -- are portrayed in novels, films, television programs, and a play. A summary table of the characters gives a short description of each of them, the title of the work in which they appeared, and the format of the work. Characters were analyzed to see if they possessed any of ten personality traits: obsessive, having major mental health problems, withdrawn, brave, timid, socially inept, arrogant, uses math to escape reality, out of touch, …
His/Tory And Its Vicissitudes In Álvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies And Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Luz Angélica Kirschner
His/Tory And Its Vicissitudes In Álvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies And Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Luz Angélica Kirschner
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper "His/tory and Its Vicissitudes in Álvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale" Luz Angélica Kirschner argues that in Julia Álvarez's In the Time of the Bautterflies and in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, although with certain limitations and differences in their approaches, in a complementary way, their texts exemplify, as Joan Wallace Scott suggested, the need to consider gender "a useful category of historical analysis" to overturn the monological and well-organized version of official history that, in the process of history writing, has tended to obliterate "insignificant" narratives and voices. At the …
The Politics Of Recognition And Comparative Literature: New Works By Dale And Yu, Bol, Owen, And Peterson, Alexander C.Y. Huang
The Politics Of Recognition And Comparative Literature: New Works By Dale And Yu, Bol, Owen, And Peterson, Alexander C.Y. Huang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Subverting Literary Allusions In Eliot And Özdamar, Walter Rankin
Subverting Literary Allusions In Eliot And Özdamar, Walter Rankin
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Subverting Literary Allusions in Eliot and Özdamar," Walter Rankin explores the opposing ways allusion can be used in the works of major and minority authors. While Eliot is a canonized author whose The Waste Land is characterized by allusions to Eastern and Western works supplemented with his own comprehensive endnotes, Özdamar is a Turkish-German author whose A Cleaning Woman's Career subjects Western literary and historical figures -- including Medea, Hamlet and Ophelia, Nathan the Wise, Julius Ceasar, an Hitler and Eva Braun -- to the interpretive powers of a Turkish cleaning woman working as a guest worker …
Gender Identities In The Contemporary Slovene Novel, Alojzija Zupan Sosic
Gender Identities In The Contemporary Slovene Novel, Alojzija Zupan Sosic
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article, "Gender Identities in the Contemporary Slovene Novel," Alojzija Zupan Sosic argues that perspectives of sexual identity have become prominent topics. Based on her library and publication research, Zupan Sosic proposes that in the period of 1990–2005 the Slovene novel is illuminated by a development of the personal or intimate story. In this development, changes of sexual identity evolve through the binary system of the heterosexual matrix whereby issues of sexual minorities remain. Important innovation in the Slovene novel include aspects connected to an identity formation determined by sexual identity where perhaps the most significant innovation is found …
Derrida's Deconstruction And The Rhetoric Of Proper Genres In Leonardo And Lessing, Shun-Liang Chao
Derrida's Deconstruction And The Rhetoric Of Proper Genres In Leonardo And Lessing, Shun-Liang Chao
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Derrida's Deconstruction and the Rhetoric of Proper Genres in Leonardo and Lessing," Shun-liang Chao draws on Derrida's discourse of logocentrism to illuminate the "exorbitant" threads of metaphysical thought in Leonardo's and Lessing's texts on the comparison of poetry and painting. Both Leonardo and Lessing seek to subordinate one of the two sister arts to the other by constructing, respectively, the first, fixed principle of the proper genre and by drawing rigid borders between what is proper and what is improper. Leonardo privileges painting over poetry owing to the power of visiblity; on the other hand, Lessing subordinates …
A Bakhtinian Perspective On Feminist Lesbian Crime Writing, Sarah Posman
A Bakhtinian Perspective On Feminist Lesbian Crime Writing, Sarah Posman
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "A Bakhtinian Perspective on Feminist Lesbian Crime Writing," Sarah Posman discusses how the Bakhtinian concepts "ethos" and "chronotope" add to the discussion of feminist lesbian crime writing. She sets out from a Bakhtinian typology of action stories and situates recent crime writing as a curious mixture of mission stories and transformation stories. Focusing on the innovative potential of feminist lesbian crime writing, Posman explores how such stories tackle the iconically masculine and heterosexual conventions of the detective story and manage to balance tradition and subversion successfully. Posman infuses her analysis with issues central to feminism and queer …
Contested (Post)Coloniality And Taiwan Culture: A Review Article Of New Work By Yip And Ching, Alexander C.Y. Huang
Contested (Post)Coloniality And Taiwan Culture: A Review Article Of New Work By Yip And Ching, Alexander C.Y. Huang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
A Survey Of Bosnian, Croatian, And Serbian Poetry In English Translation In The U.S. And Canada, Snezana Zabic, Paula Kamenish
A Survey Of Bosnian, Croatian, And Serbian Poetry In English Translation In The U.S. And Canada, Snezana Zabic, Paula Kamenish
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In their paper "A Survey of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Poetry in English Translation in the U.S. and Canada," Snezana Zabic and Paula Kamenish present a survey of book-length collections and anthologies of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian poetry in English translation published in the U.S. and in Canada. Zabic and Kamenish argue that it is necessary to determine which factors are advantegous for the survival of poetry originating in "minor" languages and transmitted to the United States and Canada. Zabic and Kamenish propose three elements that have ensured a marginal but persistent presence of South Slavic poetry in English in …
The Old Story Teller As A John The Baptist-Figure In Demille's Samson And Delilah, Anton Karl Kozlovic
The Old Story Teller As A John The Baptist-Figure In Demille's Samson And Delilah, Anton Karl Kozlovic
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "The Old Story Teller as a John the Baptist-figure in DeMille's Samson and Delilah," Anton Karl Kozlovic argues that DeMille is a pop culture professional, an unsung auteur, and the father of the US-American biblical epic whose production and direction of Samson and Delilah (1949) is a masterful exercise in sacred subtext construction. In the public's eyes, Samson is a saintly hero, but scripturally speaking, he is notoriously bad as the last of the twelve judges overseeing the downward spiral of Israel's religio-political disintegration. DeMille, as Hollywood’s leading cinematic lay preacher, enhanced deliberately the sanctity of his …
A Comparative Analysis Of Website Expressions Of National Culture And Mediation, Paule Salerno-O'Shea
A Comparative Analysis Of Website Expressions Of National Culture And Mediation, Paule Salerno-O'Shea
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "A Comparative Analysis of Website Expressions of National Culture and Mediation," Paule Salerno-O'Shea identifies what the official websites of the National Ombudsman in Ireland and France reveal about mediation in those national cultures. The way both national mediators are portrayed indicates how mediation is represented at the national level: 1) these institutions were created by acts emanating from national representative assemblies; 2) the ombudspersons are nominated by representatives of the nation (in Ireland, the appointment is made by the president upon resolution passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas [Parliament] and in France by a presidential decree …
Affect, History, And Race And Ellison's Invisible Man, Alan Bourassa
Affect, History, And Race And Ellison's Invisible Man, Alan Bourassa
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Affect, History, and Race and Ellison's Invisible Man" Alan Bourassa explores the implications of the Deleuze and Guattarian concept of "affect" for a reading of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the novel's most problematic relationship -- that between race and history -- there is a third term that transforms the problematic. Invisible Man is simultaneously a conventional novel that establishes emotional individuality as the third term between history and race, and an "underground" novel that sets up "affect" as the third term. If Invisible Man is only about the emotional movements of the individual, race becomes merely …
Memories Of Communism In Central And East Europe: New Work By Janaszek-Ivaničková, Modrzejewski And Sznajderman, Rév, And Spiewak, Agata Anna Lisiak
Memories Of Communism In Central And East Europe: New Work By Janaszek-Ivaničková, Modrzejewski And Sznajderman, Rév, And Spiewak, Agata Anna Lisiak
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Literary Emergence As A Case Study Of Theory In Comparative Literature, César Domínguez
Literary Emergence As A Case Study Of Theory In Comparative Literature, César Domínguez
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Literary Emergence as a Case Study of Theory in Comparative Literature," César Domínguez constructs an interdisciplinary theoretical model which sheds new light on literary emergence, a phenomenon that defies literary, artistic, and cultural boundaries. Domínguez opens his discussion with a synthesis regarding the state of the question, paying particular attention to the contradictions provoked when an inventory of emerging literatures is attempted and goes on to develop a theoretical framework in which the dynamic processes which define emerging literature are seen relative to world literature. He understands world literature as a mega-system in which emergence finds itself …
Nabokov And World Literature, Charles Stanley Ross
Nabokov And World Literature, Charles Stanley Ross
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper "Nabokov and World Literature" Charles Stanley Ross thinks through the relationship between comparative literature and cultural studies by considering the absence of Nabokov's work in The Norton Anthology of World Literature. The problem seems to be that Nabokov's works are not susceptible to the kind of varying interpretations favored by the Norton's editors, although in practice, Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, for example, shows that even Nabokov's tightly controlled fiction can generate diverse responses. The more complex modes of reading that form the basis of David Damrosch's What is World Literature? are used to interrogate just …
The Literary Archaeologies Of Théophile Gautier, Sasha Colby
The Literary Archaeologies Of Théophile Gautier, Sasha Colby
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article, "The Literary Archaeologies of Théophile Gautier," Sasha Colby considers the relationship between archaeology as an emerging nineteenth-century discipline and the history of modern poetics. By explicating Gautier's fiction and poetry within an archaeological context, Colby suggests the ways in which archaeology became not only an intriguing subject for late romantics and early modernists but also the ways in which archaeology conditioned an excavational mode of fictional and poetic practice. Incorporating history, Egyptology, psychology, and literary theory, Colby explores the impact of the archaeological enterprise on the nineteenth-century imagination through the work of one of its most influential …
The Reception And Translation Of Wordsworth In Japan, Waka Ishikura
The Reception And Translation Of Wordsworth In Japan, Waka Ishikura
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "The Reception and Translation of Wordsworth in Japan," Waka Ishikura explores the cultural dynamics involved in the understanding of Wordsworth in Japan since the late nineteenth century by examining the ways in which the Japanese encountered him in a broader historical context and the ways in which the development of language modernization in Japan affected the processes of reception and translation. Ishikura's investigation of the topic leads not only to an elucidation of the fate of the English poet in Japan but also to new insights into the ways in which literary or semiotic relations have influenced …
Interculturalism And New Russians In Berlin, Giacomo Bottà
Interculturalism And New Russians In Berlin, Giacomo Bottà
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Interculturalism and New Russians in Berlin" Giacomo Bottá discusses aspects of the community of Russian artists in contemporary (post-1989) Berlin. The Berlin-based Russendisko night has been held in Tel Aviv, Milan, or Frankfurt, where enthusiastic people danced to songs of obscure Russian bands. In 2004, a new CD compilation, Russensoul, was published and in 2005 Karaoke, the ninth novel by Russion-born and Berlin-based author Wladimir Kaminer appeared in book stores. Russian culture is experiencing global success curiously tied to Berlin. How could the German capital have channelled this interest? Is there a particular historical, social, geographical, or …
National Conflict And Narrative Possibility In Faulkner And Garro, Kristin E. Pitt
National Conflict And Narrative Possibility In Faulkner And Garro, Kristin E. Pitt
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper "National Conflict and Narrative Possibility in Faulkner and Garro" Kristin E. Pitt explores two twentieth-century narratives of the Americas set during and after civil war. Both William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Elena Garro's Los recuerdos del porvenir suggest that the historical narratives of the national community which have been celebrated by the U.S. South and Mexico have resulted in untenable contemporary social systems. Seizing the opportunity presented by national crisis, the central female characters of both novels attempt to rewrite the narratives of their imagined communities and reinscribe themselves within these revisions, doing so primarily by renegotiating …
Comparative Cultural Perspectives For The Study Of The Americas: New Work By Imbert And Mcclennen And Fitz, Irune Del Río Gabiola
Comparative Cultural Perspectives For The Study Of The Americas: New Work By Imbert And Mcclennen And Fitz, Irune Del Río Gabiola
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Taiwan, China, And Yang Mu's Alternative To National Narratives, Lisa L.M Wong
Taiwan, China, And Yang Mu's Alternative To National Narratives, Lisa L.M Wong
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "Taiwan, China, and Yang Mu's Alternative to National Narratives," Lisa L.M. Wong examines the ways Yang Mu's poetry acts as an echo and a dissent to the mainstream national narratives in Taiwan between the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this decade, identity discourse has developed from othering Westernism to preserve Chinese cultural-national integrity to espousing a native Taiwanese identity against the Chinese one. Each of Yang's poems in Wong's analysis is a field of contention, peopled by different subjects such as the colonizers, the native Taiwanese, the female, and the diasporant, who articulate contested stories of …
Modernism, Joyce, And Portuguese Literature, Carlos Ceia
Modernism, Joyce, And Portuguese Literature, Carlos Ceia
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Carlos Ceia, in his article, "Modernism, Joyce, and Portuguese Literature," discusses parallels between James Joyce's work and texts by modernist and contemporary Portuguese novelists such as Antunes, Brandão, Negreiros, Pessoa, Saramago, Sá-Carneiro, Silva Ramos, and Velho da Costa. In his analysis, Ceia focuses on the role of myth, the notion of the (anti-)hero, the solipsism of interior consciousness, narrative techniques, and linguistic experimentation. Ceia argues that while it is impossible to detect direct influence by Joyce on Portuguese writers, it is in the context of the parallel paradigms of modernism we are able to discover the Joycean impact on both …
Laying The Foundation For A New Work On The Pseudo-Virgilian Culex, Lisa St. Louis
Laying The Foundation For A New Work On The Pseudo-Virgilian Culex, Lisa St. Louis
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper "Laying the Foundation for a New Work on the Pseudo-Virgilian Culex," Lisa St. Louis discusses work undertaken on a prolegomenon to a new edition of the pseudo-Virgilian poem Culex. Fifty manuscripts are selected according to criteria such as ownership, geographical area or membership in a group defined by previous scholars. The catalogue of manuscripts is carefully structured in order to include all information needed to locate a given manuscript and trace its history. Manuscripts are collated in detail and their variant readings are entered into Adain software which is designed to determine the relationship between manuscripts. The …
Us-American Comparative Literature And The Study Of East-Central European Culture And Literature, Letitia Guran
Us-American Comparative Literature And The Study Of East-Central European Culture And Literature, Letitia Guran
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "US-American Comparative Literature and the Study of East-Central European Culture and Literature," Letitia Guran begins with a short overview of the state of the discipline of comparative literature based on the ACLA Report 2003 (ACLA: American Comparative Literature Assiociation) by Haun Saussy and its responses in order to focus on a recent comparative project of large dimensions, the ICLA: International Comparative Literature Association project History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, organized and its volumes edited by Marcel Cornis Pope and John Neubauer. The thesis of Guran's paper is that there are many alternatives to the …
Queer Theory And Discourses Of Desire, Louise O. Vasvári
Queer Theory And Discourses Of Desire, Louise O. Vasvári
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper "Queer Theory and Discourses of Desire," Louise O. Vasvári proposes that the multiplicity of ways that language constructs -- or silences -- the socially constructed expression of erotic desire is a necessary complement to the study of gendered and of sexual identity. Vasvári contributes to queer theory and its subfield, queer linguistics, with the term "queer" understood as more inclusive and less male-oriented than "gay" where queer theory seeks to read between and outside the lines of the dominant heteronormative discourses that studies how mainstream reproductive heterosexuality comes to be (re)produced through cultural narratives as self-evident, obligatory, …
Chaos Theory, Hypertext, And Reading Borges And Moulthrop, Perla Sassón-Henry
Chaos Theory, Hypertext, And Reading Borges And Moulthrop, Perla Sassón-Henry
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper "Chaos Theory, Hypertext, and Reading Borges and Moulthrop," Perla Sassón-Henry presents a multidisciplinary perspective to the study of Jorge Luis Borges's and Stuart Moulthrop's works. Sassón-Henry argues that there exists a tripartite relationship among Borges's texts, Moulthrop's Victory Garden, and chaos theory. The dialogue among these texts via chaos theory, bifurcation theory, and noise is what separates this analysis from former studies. Sassón-Henry concludes that by underscoring the reciprocal interconnectedness among Borges's stories, Victory Garden, scientific theory, and new media technology we also acknowledge the intricate connections among print literature, digital literature, and science, and thus move …
English Football And Its Hong Kong Television Audience, Victor Fan
English Football And Its Hong Kong Television Audience, Victor Fan
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper "English Football and Its Hong Kong Television Audience," Victor Fan applies Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's thought in their Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure to map the relationship between the English Premier League of football (soccer) and its Hong Kong television audience/spectatorship. Fan first introduces the background of the English Premier League in relation to its increasing subjugation under Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite consumerist economy. He then examines how the Premier League as televised image transforms the game to hyperreality. Fan argues that these are conditions under which the subaltern would appropriate the hyper-sign as an individuated mental …