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Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies

Notes On Contributors, Molly Lynde-Recchia Dec 2019

Notes On Contributors, Molly Lynde-Recchia

Transference

No abstract provided.


A Selection From The Chieko Poems By Takamura Kōtarō, Leanne Ogasawara Dec 2019

A Selection From The Chieko Poems By Takamura Kōtarō, Leanne Ogasawara

Transference

No abstract provided.


Four Poems From House Of Razor Blades By Linda Maria Baros, Kathryn Kimball Dec 2019

Four Poems From House Of Razor Blades By Linda Maria Baros, Kathryn Kimball

Transference

No abstract provided.


An Axe Falling On A Blind Statue By Mohamed Fouad, Nina Youkhanna Dec 2019

An Axe Falling On A Blind Statue By Mohamed Fouad, Nina Youkhanna

Transference

No abstract provided.


Three Poems From Flowing Toward Serenity By Tan Xiao, Xinlu Yan Dec 2019

Three Poems From Flowing Toward Serenity By Tan Xiao, Xinlu Yan

Transference

Tan Xiao is a Chinese poet whose poetry examines the relationships between an individual and his or her family, traditions, and society as a whole. The language he uses is deceptively simple, but the poignant observations and insights ensure that his poetry is relevant and relatable. This article includes three poems by Tan and accompanying commentary.


Five Poems From Born Into By Uwe Kolbe, Louise Stoehr Dec 2019

Five Poems From Born Into By Uwe Kolbe, Louise Stoehr

Transference

Uwe Kolbe is one of the major German poets of his generation. Both part of the dissident scene in East Germany and, at the same time, fiercely independent, he early on reworked literary tradition, detailed observation, and personal experience into poems that clearly express his own poetic vision in a distinct voice. Born October 17, 1957, in East Berlin, Kolbe was drawn to writing at a young age. He published his first volume of poetry, Hineingeboren (Born Into), in the former German Democratic Republic in 1980 and in 1982 in West Germany. “Hineingeboren” has become Kolbe’s signature poem …


Autumn By Jules Breton, Sharon Fish Mooney Dec 2019

Autumn By Jules Breton, Sharon Fish Mooney

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Translation of Autumn by Jules Breton with commentary.


Martial Vii.61 By Martial, George Held Dec 2019

Martial Vii.61 By Martial, George Held

Transference

No abstract provided.


Three Poems From The Blind Glassblower By Adam Fethi, Hager Ben Driss Dec 2019

Three Poems From The Blind Glassblower By Adam Fethi, Hager Ben Driss

Transference

No abstract provided.


The Love Letter Poetry Contest, Roselee Bundy Dec 2019

The Love Letter Poetry Contest, Roselee Bundy

Transference

This is a translation of eight sets of poems and responses (out of a total of twenty) from the The Love Letter Poetry Contest Held in the Imperial Court in 1102. It was held on the 2nd and 7th days of the intercalary 5th month of 1102 in the Japanese imperial court. For the event of the 2nd, men had sent to court women poems declaring their love, and the women responded with poems rebuffing them. For the event of the 7th, court women sent to the men poems complaining of the …


The Shoulders And The Burden By Abdellatif Laâbi, Allan Johnston, Guillemette C. Johnston Dec 2019

The Shoulders And The Burden By Abdellatif Laâbi, Allan Johnston, Guillemette C. Johnston

Transference

English translation of poem by Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi.


Four Prose Poems By Ramy Al-Asheq, Levi Thompson Dec 2019

Four Prose Poems By Ramy Al-Asheq, Levi Thompson

Transference

No abstract provided.


Liking Mozart By Chen Chia-Tai, Elaine Wong Dec 2019

Liking Mozart By Chen Chia-Tai, Elaine Wong

Transference

"Liking Mozart" is an English translation of a Chinese poem written by the Taiwanese poet Chen Chia-tai (1954- ).


Foreword, Molly Lynde-Recchia Dec 2019

Foreword, Molly Lynde-Recchia

Transference

No abstract provided.


Transference Vol. 7, Fall 2019 Dec 2019

Transference Vol. 7, Fall 2019

Transference

Complete issue with covers of Transference Vol. 7, Fall 2019


Bibliography On Suffering, Simon C. Estok Sep 2019

Bibliography On Suffering, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Domestic Trauma And Imperial Pessimism: The Crisis At Home In Charles Dickens’S Dombey And Son, Katherine E. Ostdiek Sep 2019

Domestic Trauma And Imperial Pessimism: The Crisis At Home In Charles Dickens’S Dombey And Son, Katherine E. Ostdiek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Domestic Trauma and Imperial Pessimism: The Crisis At Home in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son,” Katherine Ostdiek discusses Dickens’s representation of violence, grief, and recovery within the Victorian home as a pre-Freudian example of trauma. This comparison not only demonstrates the importance of trauma studies in the nineteenth-century, but more importantly, it thematically focuses empathy for the traumatized on the home. In this novel, Dickens dismisses topics related to the financial and social crises of mid-century Britain in favor of domestic themes that emphasize an idealized structure of the Victorian family. Through her use of trauma theory and …


Suffering And Climate Change Narratives, Simon C. Estok Sep 2019

Suffering And Climate Change Narratives, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Suffering and Climate Change Narratives" Simon C. Estok begins with a brief survey of definitional issues involved with the term “suffering” and argues that there has been a relative lack of theoretical attention to suffering in climate change narratives, whether literary or within mainstream media. Estok shows that suffering, far from being singular, is a multivalent concept that is gendered, classed, raced, and, perhaps above all, pliable. It has social functions. One of the primary reasons for the failure of climate change narratives to effect real changes, Estok argues, is that they often carry the functions of …


The Punctum In History: Representing The M(Other)’S Death In Peter Handke’S A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Hivren Demir Atay Sep 2019

The Punctum In History: Representing The M(Other)’S Death In Peter Handke’S A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Hivren Demir Atay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article aims to discuss how Handke’s autobiographical narrative, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (1972), stages the writer’s literary project through a neutral account of his mother’s suicide. Telling the story of his mother, who witnessed the Second World War and the nazi regime, Handke narrates the traumatic history of an Austrian town along with his own suffering. Concentrating on his attempt at a distanced language and his questioning of history as an objective fact, the article suggests that Handke’s perception of death and mourning parallels his understanding of the acts of writing and reading. Drawing particularly on Barthes’s concept …


The Different Representation Of Suffering In The Two Versions Of The Vegetarian, Young-Hyun Lee Sep 2019

The Different Representation Of Suffering In The Two Versions Of The Vegetarian, Young-Hyun Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “The Different Representation of Suffering in the two versions of The Vegetarian” the author examines how different the representation of suffering in the original and translated versions of The Vegetarian and explores the reasons for this difference. The author in particular refers to representative episodes which the translator’s strategy distorts even the central concepts of suffering in the original work. Her translated version results in critical misrepresentation of suffering and violence in the original version.


Introduction To Suffering, Endurance, Understanding: New Discourses Within Philosophy And Literature, Douglas S. Berman Sep 2019

Introduction To Suffering, Endurance, Understanding: New Discourses Within Philosophy And Literature, Douglas S. Berman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Literature is generally seen as depicting the lives of human subjects through their unique narratives. And that, while its endpoint may be universal, it is typically grounded in the specificity of a human being (or, occasionally, an animal). Philosophy is tasked with providing the foundational cognitive tools to grasp the meaning of experience for the whole. In Hegelian terms, it unfolds the history of the concept. Yet, as George Steiner, Jacques Derrida, and other recent authors have shown, both philosophy – along with its agonistic cousin, religion -- evoke literary themes, rhetorics, and struggles. Over the past fifty years, Continental …


Urban Landscape In Mcewan's Narrative Representation Of Berlin, Barbara J. Puschmann-Nalenz Jul 2019

Urban Landscape In Mcewan's Narrative Representation Of Berlin, Barbara J. Puschmann-Nalenz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Urban Landscape in McEwan's Narrative Representation of Berlin," Barbara J. Puschmann-Nalenz discusses the image of Berlin created in Ian McEwanﹸs novel The Innocent (1990) and the chapter titled "Berlin" in Black Dogs (1992). It starts from the hypothetical statement that while British literary fiction set in Berlin is rare after 1970 the genres of spy and detective novel, where crime and violence take center stage, shape the image of the city in highbrow narratives as well. The perspectivization of the cityscape, including its monuments, through the protagonists fundamentally influences its image. In The Innocent the limited view …


Okonkwo’S Reincarnation: A Comparison Of Achebe’S Things Fall Apart And No Longer At Ease, Mary J. N. Okolie, Ginikachi C. Uzoma Jul 2019

Okonkwo’S Reincarnation: A Comparison Of Achebe’S Things Fall Apart And No Longer At Ease, Mary J. N. Okolie, Ginikachi C. Uzoma

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Abstract: The reincarnation myth is a global concept, founded basically in religion and tradition. It was especially vibrant in the ancient times in places like Egypt, Greece, and in continents like Asia and Africa, which possess varying understandings of the myth. In Igbo tradition, for example, it is believed that reincarnation occurs within a family. And that some of the marks of reincarnation are usually the possession of the birthmark or certain other physical features and the exhibition of character and behavioral traits of a deceased person by a living member of his/her immediate or extended family. Thus, reincarnation entails …


"Il Y A De La Plèbe": Figurations Of The Minor Between Complicity And Dissent, Maria Muhle Jun 2019

"Il Y A De La Plèbe": Figurations Of The Minor Between Complicity And Dissent, Maria Muhle

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this article I discuss the logic of “complicity” and “dissent” that, under current forms of ultra-neoliberal capitalism, is no longer (if it has ever been) one of opposition but rather corresponds to a logic of unrealized potentials, or “as ifs” that “manage” dissent and complicity in conjunction, and erase the dividing line between them, or their value as separate concepts. I examine the genealogy of this opposition and its dilution as a symptom of our contemporary political reality. Michel Foucault presented a paradigmatic view of this genealogy in his analysis of power and the taxonomic separation of three regimes …


Political Violence And Race: A Critique Of Hannah Arendt, Chad Kautzer Jun 2019

Political Violence And Race: A Critique Of Hannah Arendt, Chad Kautzer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) is a seminal work in the study of political violence. It famously draws a distinction between power and violence and argues that the latter must be excluded from the political sphere. Although this may make Arendt’s text an appealing resource for critiques of rising political violence today, I argue that we should resist this temptation. In this article, I identify how the divisions and exclusions within her theory enable her to explicitly disavow violence on one level, while implicitly relying on a constitutive and racialized form of violence on another. In particular, Arendt leaves legal …


The Ambivalence Of Black Rage, Vincent Lloyd Jun 2019

The Ambivalence Of Black Rage, Vincent Lloyd

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Activists associated with the Black Lives Matter movement embrace anger. Owning their rage sets these activists in opposition to an older generation of black leaders, invested in respectability, who narrate anger as an emotion to be overcome. Younger activists worry about complicity with the status quo – with white supremacy – of these older activists, yet embracing anger is no surefire way of avoiding complicity with the status quo. This essay investigates the ambivalence of black anger, drawing on philosophy and feminist theory while also locating the current eruption of black anger in an ambivalent history of black political affect. …


Complicity, Dissent, And The Palestinian Intellectual, Sa'ed Atshan Jun 2019

Complicity, Dissent, And The Palestinian Intellectual, Sa'ed Atshan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this article, I draw on the major works of two Palestinian intellectuals—Edward Said and Hanan Ashrawi—and I compare the experiences of Palestinian intellectuals living in the United States with those living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. The writings of these two exemplary figures shape the conceptual underpinnings of my exploration of the way Palestinian academics navigate questions of complicity with the different hegemonic political systems that govern their lives. I argue that Said and Ashrawi model a steadfast refusal to be complicit in the state-led repression around them at the same time as they engage in …


Subject, Subjugation, And Subjectivity, Raef Zreik Jun 2019

Subject, Subjugation, And Subjectivity, Raef Zreik

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper analyzes the ways in which complicity and dissent feed and subvert one another, or the ways in which the subjugated self becomes a political subject. The formative event of Palestinian collective identity is the loss of home and homeland in the aftermath of the Nakba of 1948. “The Catastrophe” divided the Palestinian community to two: Those who remained within the borders of the Israeli state and became Israeli citizens, and the Palestinian refugees, who came to establish the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and led an armed struggle. While examining the two narratives, I also explore two communal modes …


Family Affairs: Complicity, Betrayal, And The Family In Hisham Matar's In The Country Of Men And Nadine Gordimer's My Son's Story, Lital Levy Jun 2019

Family Affairs: Complicity, Betrayal, And The Family In Hisham Matar's In The Country Of Men And Nadine Gordimer's My Son's Story, Lital Levy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay undertakes a comparative reading of the dynamics of complicity and resistance in two contemporary Anglophone novels, Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story (1990) and Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men (2006). My analysis pursues three main lines of inquiry: the ostensible public/ private and political/ personal divides; loyalty and betrayal in the family; and the ambiguous status of the child as a witness and a political subject. I argue that in their respective portrayals of the protagonists’ struggles against South African apartheid and authoritarian rule in Libya, both authors use the device of the child narrator to expose …


Facing The Ruler, Facing The Village: On The Roads To Complicity Following Mengzi And Benda, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite Jun 2019

Facing The Ruler, Facing The Village: On The Roads To Complicity Following Mengzi And Benda, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, “Facing the Ruler, Facing the Village,” Zvi Ben-Dor Benite seeks to broaden the boundaries of the discussion about complicity by taking it away from late 20th-century and contemporary debates about it. At the same time, he wishes to highlight the many faces that the problem of complicity could have in different historical moments. Following Czesław Miłosz, this article understands that there are many roads to complicity that have been articulated in different ways across time and space. This article is, therefore, an integrated meditation on complicity bringing together two radically distant approaches to the question. Reading the …