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Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies
Urhobo Folklore And Udje Aesthetics In Tanure Ojaide's In The House Of Words And Songs Of Myself, Mathias I. Orhero
Urhobo Folklore And Udje Aesthetics In Tanure Ojaide's In The House Of Words And Songs Of Myself, Mathias I. Orhero
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Urhobo Folklore and Udje Aesthetics in Ojaide's In the House of Words and Songs of Myself" Mathias Orhero argues that Ojaide's poetry incorporates Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje style. Using African New Criticism as its theoretical anchor, this paper reveals that Ojaide amply deploys Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje aesthetics in both the form and contents of his poetry and thus, he continues as a modern Urhobo Udje maestro of the hybrid tradition. This paper also brings Ojaide's recent collections to critical lenses, especially as masterpieces of his Urhobo folkloric and Udje adaptations. Orhero concludes by …
Memory And Identity-Focused Narratives In Tănase's 'Lived Book', Nicoleta D. Ifrim
Memory And Identity-Focused Narratives In Tănase's 'Lived Book', Nicoleta D. Ifrim
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Memory and identity-focused narratives in Tănase's 'lived book'" Nicoleta Ifrim analyses România mea (My Romania), Virgil Tănase's first book published after the fall of Ceausescu's regime, a collection of interviews in which personal history is fictionalized according to the narrative rules of a "spoken book." The text is representative for the Eastern intellectual travelling to the West, carrying out his own personal post-totalitarian traumas now mirrored in a self-oriented narrative.
The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş
The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "The Dramatization of Cultural Hybridity and the "In-Between" Turkey in Fazıl's Künye" Önder Çakırtaş addresses Turkey's historical context and exposes how political, social and cultural changes were expressed in Turkey's public sphere. Using Niyazi Berkes's theory of secularism as proceeding of modernism Çakırtaş discusses different examples of stylistic strategies of cultural hybridity in the playwright's historical-based play, Künye. He investigates how political changes in pre-Turkey times signify Turkey's national striving, and how the Ottoman-conservative past metamorphoses into Turkic-secular. The study juxtaposes the perceptions of 'introduction to Westernization' and 'departure from Islamic past' in a period …
The Cultural Translation Of Ginsberg's Howl In Turkey, Erik Mortenson
The Cultural Translation Of Ginsberg's Howl In Turkey, Erik Mortenson
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "The Cultural Translation of Ginsberg's Howl in Turkey" Erik Mortenson examines three Turkish translations of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl in order to explore the ways in which Ginsberg's poem becomes redeployed in new cultural contexts. Orhan Duru and Ferit Edgü's 1976 translation presents a more politicized Ginsberg that draws on his anti-establishment credentials as a social activist. This comes as little surprise, since in pre-1980 coup Turkey rebellion was thought in purely political terms of right verses left. Hakan Arslan's 1991 update provides a less political and more familiar Ginsberg, in keeping with a society that left …
Theories Of Opiate Addiction In The Early Works Of Burroughs And Trocchi, Richard English
Theories Of Opiate Addiction In The Early Works Of Burroughs And Trocchi, Richard English
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Theories of Opiate Addiction in the Early Works of Burroughs and Trocchi" Richard English discusses William S. Burroughs's and Alexander Trocchi's representations of opiate addiction with special reference to their early writings. English examines the concept of homo heroin that can be attributed to Burroughs and lists and expounds its qualities. Among these are: immorality, criminality, mono-objectuality, self- and other-indifference, and, most importantly, the radical physical transformation into a new species, which Burroughs extends in Naked Lunch. English shows how homo heroin relates to Trocchi's conception of a heroin addict, which serves to illustrate that homo …
Politics Of Feminist Revision In Di Prima's Loba, Polina Mackay
Politics Of Feminist Revision In Di Prima's Loba, Polina Mackay
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Politics of Feminist Revision in di Prima's Loba" Polina Mackay explores Diane di Prima's two-volume epic Loba (1998) and, through a comparison of di Prima to the work of Adrienne Rich, argues that Loba practices a politics of feminist revision. Further, Mackay examines the ways in which di Prima starts to move away from the recovery project of female voices in patriarchal culture, associated with late twentieth-century Feminism, towards a women's literature which need not be defined entirely through its resistance to patriarchal narratives of gender in men's literature. Here it focuses on di Prima's revisionist …
Beat Contenders (Micheline, Sanders, Kupferberg), A. Robert Lee
Beat Contenders (Micheline, Sanders, Kupferberg), A. Robert Lee
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Beat Contenders (Micheline, Sanders, Kupferberg)" A. Robert Lee asks if we are in danger of too fixed a Beat canonization. That is, do the Usual Suspects—Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, with Corso, Ferlinghetti, Cassady, and Snyder in the frame—assume too presiding a role? There is, for sure, rightly, increased recognition of Beat women writers and attention has been given to the Afro-Beat circuit and, indeed, to a wider multicultural roster to include Latino/a and Asian American authorship. Beat's international reach has won its place, from the United Kingdom and Continental Europe to Japan and Australia. Even so, other …
Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Circus As Idée Fixe And Hunger, Anna-Sophie Jürgens
Circus As Idée Fixe And Hunger, Anna-Sophie Jürgens
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Circus as idée fixe and Hunger" Anna-Sophie Jürgens discusses circus fiction in which characters often display extreme, intense psychological traits. They are for example irascible, pyromaniac, sadistic, or megalomaniac. Particularly striking are protagonists with alternative psychological attitudes in fictional circus texts of the twentieth century such as Franz Kafka's hunger artist, Michael Raleigh's ringmaster Lewis Tully or Richard Schmitt's aerialist Garry, who can be seen as incubators of circus-related idées fixes. These literary circus characters develop fixations on circus that manifest themselves as a physical sensation of desiring circus like food, in other words: in circus …
The Ecological Posthuman In Lee's Tarboy And Tan And Ruhemann's The Lost Thing, Başak Ağın
The Ecological Posthuman In Lee's Tarboy And Tan And Ruhemann's The Lost Thing, Başak Ağın
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "The Ecological Posthuman in Lee's [BA1] Tarboy and Tan and Ruhemann's The Lost Thing" Başak Ağın analyzes the posthumanist and ecological elements in two animated short films, James Lee's Tarboy (2009) and Shaun Tan's and Andrew Ruhemann's The Lost Thing (2010). Ağın posits that the two animated short films display a disanthropocentric worldview through the enmeshed relations between humans, techno-sentient beings, and naturalcultural hybrid bodies. The intermingled fusions of these biotic and abiotic forms are inherently characterized by a sense of posthuman ecocriticism. Basing her arguments on the notions of agential realism and new materialisms, Ağın …
Narrative Ethics And Alterity In Adichie's Novel Americanah, Nora Berning
Narrative Ethics And Alterity In Adichie's Novel Americanah, Nora Berning
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Narrative Ethics and Alterity in Adichie's Novel Americanah" Nora Berning analyses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel through the lens of a narrative ethics of alterity. Focusing on the notion of alterity, Berning argues that a specific turn-of-the-century ethics emerges in contemporary fictions of migration in general and in intercultural novels in particular. An ethical genre in its own right, such twenty-first century fictions as Americanah generate a particular kind of ethical knowledge that revolves around questions of identity and alterity and around individual and collective perceptions of self and other. By addressing the interplay of "the ethics …
Ethics Of Counter Narrative In Delillo’S Falling Man, Qingji He
Ethics Of Counter Narrative In Delillo’S Falling Man, Qingji He
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Ethics of Counter-Narrative in DeLillo's Falling Man" Qingji He analyzes Don DeLillo's counter-narrative in his post-9/11 novel Falling Man. The objective is to show how ethical dimensions function fundamentally in formulating an appropriate counter-narrative and why DeLillo's counter-narrative echoes views expressed in his "In the Ruins of the Future." He argues that DeLillo's counter-narrative entails the necessity of ethical consciousness and responsibility. It is Giorgio Morandi's still life paintings instead of media representation that become pivotal in Lianne's transformative and redemptive process after the terrorist attack. Similarly, David Janiak's performance art and Richard Drew's picture …
Introduction To And Bibliography For The Study Of Alimentary Life Writing And Recipe Writing As War Literature, Louise O. Vasvari
Introduction To And Bibliography For The Study Of Alimentary Life Writing And Recipe Writing As War Literature, Louise O. Vasvari
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Introduction to and Bibliography for the Study of Alimentary Life Writing and Recipe Writing as War Literature" Louise O. Vasvári defines the concept of "alimentary life writing" and locates it in the broader multidisciplinary context of alimentary history, the history of everyday life, gender studies, trauma, and war and holocaust studies. She also underlines and exemplifies the cultural and gendered significance of alimentary life writing in particular in grounding personal and collective identity formation in the female immigrant and ethnic and multicultural writing. Vasvári also compares and contrasts such life writing to wartime food memoirs, as well …
E-Literature, New Media Art, And E-Literary Criticism, Janez Strehovec
E-Literature, New Media Art, And E-Literary Criticism, Janez Strehovec
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "E-Literature, New Media Art, and E-Literary Criticism" Janez Strehovec explores the commonalities between electronic literature and new media art. Rather than deploying the traditional conceptual apparatus of e-literary criticism directed first and foremost to the new media elements of e-literature, Strehovec takes into account approaches from current theories in the social sciences and humanities. In doing so, he draws upon examples of new media art as a practice in which the novel's social paradigms change the way of art-making and challenge the very function of art. Close-readings of some new media art projects including Bookchin's Mass Ornament …
Reception And Variations Of Classical Narratology In Chinese Scholarship, Biwu Shang
Reception And Variations Of Classical Narratology In Chinese Scholarship, Biwu Shang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Reception and Variations of Classical Narratology in Chinese Scholarship" Biwu Shang discusses the field's impact starting in the 1970s to today. Shang's survey includes translations of Western frameworks including introductions published during three waves (the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s respectively). While Shang posits that Chinese narratology owes a debt to English-language Western scholarship, as it stands in the last decades this is counterbalanced with the development of Chinese narratology and Western scholarship started to show interest in Chinese scholarship: indeed, the more exchanges between Chinese scholarship and that of the West develop, the more beneficial the dialogue …
Conscience's De Leeuw Van Vlaanderen (The Lion Of Flanders) And Its Adaptation To Film By Claus, Gertjan Willems
Conscience's De Leeuw Van Vlaanderen (The Lion Of Flanders) And Its Adaptation To Film By Claus, Gertjan Willems
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Conscience's De Leeuw van Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders) and Its Adaptation to Film by Claus" Gertjan Willems discusses Hugo Claus's 1984 filmic adaptation of Hendrik Conscience's 1838 historical novel, a landmark in the history of the Flemish Movement. Willems's analysis is executed by means of a textual film analysis and archival research. Willems pays special attention to the Flemish-Dutch coproduction's complex relations with the national question. Despite various difficulties concerning Flemish nationalist sensitivities of the project, the producers wanted the film to be as faithful as possible to Conscience's novel. This resulted in an …
Time, Photography, And Optical Technology In Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Tetyana Lyaskovets
Time, Photography, And Optical Technology In Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Tetyana Lyaskovets
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Time, Photography, and Optical Technology in Nabokov's Speak, Memory" Tetyana Lyaskovets discusses how Vladimir Nabokov narrates time in his autobiography by invoking photography and optical instruments. Photography and optical technology function in Speak, Memory as metaphors and probe the limits of chronological time. Nabokov portrays time as personal and reversible time that collapses the past and the present and allows one to glimpse the future. Because this temporal collapse is not possible physically but, as Nabokov believes, can be achieved through one's will, he engages optical technologies which provide a spatial form for his project to …
Queering Masturbation In Lorde's Life And Writing, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng
Queering Masturbation In Lorde's Life And Writing, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Queering Masturbation in Lorde's Life and Writing" Eric Sipyinyu Njeng discusses masturbation in Audre Lorde's life and works to signal an important aspect of her oeuvre often neglected in scholarship. Lorde stands out among prominent queer queens by demonstrating theory corporeally thereby going beyond mere theory and positing her body as a space of complex sexual passions. When Judith Butler speaks of gender as performative rather than embodied, Lorde theorizes and foregrounds this in her works and self and celebrates a sexual matrix that ranges from heterosexuality to homosexuality to auto-sexuality. Lorde places masturbation between the binary …
Literary Adaptations Of James In Roth's, Ozick's, And Franzen's Work, John Carlos Rowe
Literary Adaptations Of James In Roth's, Ozick's, And Franzen's Work, John Carlos Rowe
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Literary Adaptations of James in Roth's, Ozick's, and Franzen's Work" John Carlos Rowe posits that Henry James continues to exert a powerful influence on contemporary writers. Given the dramatic social, economic, and political changes from modern to postmodern eras, his continuing influence requires explanation. Rowe considers three US-American novelists—Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Jonathan Franzen—who are influenced by James and presents an interpretation of James's continuing impact. Despite James's reputation as a cosmopolitan modern who influenced global literature in significant ways, US-American writers attempt to "Americanize" him. Their effort expresses the problem of contemporary US-American literary practice …
Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox
Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Is First, They Killed My Father a Cambodian testimonio" John T. Maddox discusses aspects of the testimonial. Dialoguing with leading Latin Americanists, Maddox argues that Cambodian writer Loung Ung's First, They Killed My Father (2000) challenges this uniqueness and opens studies on the testimonio to new possibilities for intellectual reflection and political activism. In Maddox's view, the continued use of the term testimonio would serve as a reference to this long-standing tradition of writing and thinking about political violence in Latin America. After a discussion of the debate of the definition and function of testimonio and …
Achebe's Work, Postcoloniality, And Human Rights, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng
Achebe's Work, Postcoloniality, And Human Rights, Eric Sipyinyu Njeng
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Achebe's Work, Postcoloniality, and Human Rights" Eric Sipyinyu Njeng argues that Chinua Achebe exposes failings in the fabric of African society and engages with violations of human rights. Achebe is careful not to hurt the pride of Africans who in the Zeitgeist of the nationalist ferment of the 1950s were wary of European powers. Achebe does not "write back" to the empire: he writes the empire in and he lays bare the weaknesses in African culture grounded in the father-son-grandson trajectory he narrates. Achebe presents what may be termed a cultural dialectics: the thesis (flawed African customs …
The Egyptian Enlightenment And Mann, Freud, And Freund, Rebecca C. Dolgoy
The Egyptian Enlightenment And Mann, Freud, And Freund, Rebecca C. Dolgoy
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "The Egyptian Enlightenment and Mann, Freud, and Freund" Rebecca C. Dolgoy discusses various ways in which ancient Egypt is used in three works from the 1930s: Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, and Karl Freund's film The Mummy. By showing the similarities and differences in how these works use Egypt, Dolgoy develops the concept that memory is the way in which the past is used. Dolgoy follows the structure of a cinematic shot casting: The Mummy as the long shot which both sets up the general Egyptomania characteristic of …
Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee
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 cultural critique and institutional …