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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang Oct 2023

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cold Mountain Poems (CMPs), which have been neglected in the history of Chinese literature for ages, captured the attention of most Americans immediately after its being translated into America by the American poet Gary Snyder in 1950s, however. It is Snyder that reconfigured and recreated a sagacious Chinese Chan Buddhist poet Han-shan (literally, Cold Mountain), the acknowledged author of Cold Mountain Poems, in his translation for the postwar Americans in the midst of varied social problems and cultural identity crisis after World War II. Snyder eventually found in his translation of Cold Mountain Poems a back-to-nature remedy of …


Terada Torahiko, A Physicist And A Haikai Poet, Akira Komiya Feb 2023

Terada Torahiko, A Physicist And A Haikai Poet, Akira Komiya

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Terada Torahiko is known as a scientific essayist in Japan, but hardly anyone knows he was a haikai poet as well as a physicist. According to him, haikai poetry and physics are two different ways of conceiving Nature, both valid and perhaps complementary to each other. Seeing his research in physics looking for regularities in apparently irregular phenomena in everyday life, we may say his haiku haikai spirit is manifest there and that he was pioneering a new science such as the one developed later by Ilya Prigogine. His association of haiku haikai poetry and Freudian interpretations of dreams leads …


Orature: The Political Interpretation Of Performance Framework In Anthills Of The Savannah And Half Of A Yellow Sun, Jing Duan Feb 2023

Orature: The Political Interpretation Of Performance Framework In Anthills Of The Savannah And Half Of A Yellow Sun, Jing Duan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The focus of discussion in this paper lies in a perception that orature of African written literature is not innocent but a form of control. Operated through its performance framework, the concept of orature provides an angle to observe how African oral tradition penetrates written literature and cultivates an awareness of the political nature both of the material to be written and of the writing process itself. This paper explores the performance framework in two African novels — Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Through such key concepts as event, narrative and self-reflexivity …


Female Bonding And Marginality In Shang Wanyun’S Novella “Xialihe” (1978), Antonio Paoliello Jun 2022

Female Bonding And Marginality In Shang Wanyun’S Novella “Xialihe” (1978), Antonio Paoliello

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article explores the representation of homosociality between two marginalized female characters in “Xialihe” (夏麗赫) (1978), a novella by Sinophone Malaysian writer Shang Wanyun (商晚) (1952-1995). Although some scholars have suggested that the writer’s preoccupation with the intimate world of women started only in the 1980s, I argue that “Xialihe” already highlights issues such as female intimacy and women’s social marginalization. The text represents, therefore, a link between her earlier nativist production and her later more feminist approach. Additionally, I contend that, writing from a marginal position at the periphery of Malaysia’s national literary system and from a doubly-conservative environment …


Trauma, History, And Terror In The Poetry Of Yusef Komunyakaa And Sinan Antoon, Reema Binghadeer Jun 2022

Trauma, History, And Terror In The Poetry Of Yusef Komunyakaa And Sinan Antoon, Reema Binghadeer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her comparative study “Trauma, History, and Terror in the Poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa and Sinan Antoon,” Reema Binghadeer considers the work of the African American poet Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1941) and the (Arab) Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon (b. 1967) through the lens of trauma theory of some notable theorists including; Freud, Cathy Caruth, Jean Laplanche, Roger Luckhurst, and Shoshana Felman—have negotiated in this field. The article explores the literary manifestations of trauma in two distinct historical periods and geographical settings to show the specificities of each prototype and how the historical-cultural significance and textual meanings of trauma have intertwined …


Tituba, “Dark Eve” In The Origins Of The American Myth: The Subject Of History And Writing About Salem, Junghyun Hwang Feb 2022

Tituba, “Dark Eve” In The Origins Of The American Myth: The Subject Of History And Writing About Salem, Junghyun Hwang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Recasting the Salem witchcraft trials in light of Walter Benjamin’s theses on historiography, this paper revisits the question of history by examining ways in which Tituba is dis/con-figured as the subject of American history in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Both stories of persecution revolve around the figure of Tituba, a slave from the Caribbean to whom the beginning of the witch trials is attributed, as the nodal point of different modes of representing the Salem history. The telos in Miller’s drama coincides with the subject-formation of Proctor as the legitimate …


Socrates The Degenerate: Irony As Trope Of Decadence, Daniel R. Adler Feb 2022

Socrates The Degenerate: Irony As Trope Of Decadence, Daniel R. Adler

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Decadence is typically associated with a fall from, or an opposition to, ideals of civilization. Western Civilization traditionally traces its roots to the culture of Ancient Greece. While theorists of periodicity from Vico to Nietzsche and Deleuze, to Hayden White and other contemporary scholars, associate decadence with excess, artificiality and over-indulgence, they also recognize that decadence often incorporates pre-civilized, base or “Other” tendencies. Paradoxically, decadence as a degeneration of an original culture’s values can also rejuvenate that culture’s core values through mutation so that a new version of the original culture arises. In literature, degeneration has also been associated with …


Representation Of Terror And Terrorism In Two Arab Films: Paradise Now (2005) By Hany Abu-Assad And Horses Of God (2012) By Nabil Ayouch, Mustapha Hamil Oct 2021

Representation Of Terror And Terrorism In Two Arab Films: Paradise Now (2005) By Hany Abu-Assad And Horses Of God (2012) By Nabil Ayouch, Mustapha Hamil

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Middle Eastern violence and terrorism are not novel subjects in world cinema, especially American cinema. The Arab or Muslim other in these films is always presented as someone who epitomises a culture of violence, directed mostly against innocent civilians. Against the backdrop of Hollywood’s stereotypical representation of Middle-Easterners as advocate of indiscriminate terror and terrorism, Arab filmmakers have turned in recent years to the representation of terror and religious extremism. Paradise Now (Abu Assad 2005) and Horses of God (Ayouch 2012) address the controversial issue of suicide bombing with the same motivation: to examine the choice of suicide bombing within …


Looking Back, Or Re-Visioning: Contemporary American Jewish Poets On “Lot’S Wife”, Anat Koplowitz-Breier Oct 2021

Looking Back, Or Re-Visioning: Contemporary American Jewish Poets On “Lot’S Wife”, Anat Koplowitz-Breier

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Although mentioned only twice in Genesis (19:17, 26), Lot’s wife has been a topic of much discussion amongst both traditional and modern commentators and exegetes. The traditional midrashim seek to explain why she chose to disregard the instructions she was given and the nature of her punishment. In doing so, they follow two principal directions, representing her a) negatively as a wicked sinner, a Sodomite who acted as such even before disobeying the divine decree not to look backwards—thus linking her disobedience with her intrinsic character (e.g., curious, greedy, inhospitable, faithless); or b) positively as a loving mother and daughter. …


Nationalist Allegories In The Post-Human Era, Siqi Zhang Mar 2021

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 helped popularize Chinese …


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 Mar 2021

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) …


Politics Of Evasion And Tales Of Abjection: Postmodern Demythologization In Angela Carter And Ghazaleh Alizadeh, Narges Montakhabi Bakhtvar, Hoda Niknezhad-Ferdos Mar 2021

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 with the external …


“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 Mar 2021

“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 Mar 2021

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 Mar 2021

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 Mar 2021

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 studies …


Female Fantastic In Anthologies: Gendering The Genre And Its Discourse, Anna Boccuti Mar 2021

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 …


Transgression, Essentialism And Literary System: An Approach To The Viability Of The Female Fantastic, Alfons Gregori Mar 2021

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 …


China Question Of Us-American Imagism, Qingben Li Dec 2020

China Question Of Us-American Imagism, Qingben Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper investigates first the influences of ancient Chinese culture on Ezra Pound, and then Pound’s influence on the New Culture Movement of modern China (1917). It is a kind of circular journey of literary texts and theories from ancient China to the West and then back to China. This journey, or “circle model,” involves textual appropriation, variation, transformation and misunderstanding in every stage.


Why I Write In Yiddish, Karen Alkalay-Gut Apr 2020

Why I Write In Yiddish, Karen Alkalay-Gut

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


“The Poem Is What Lies Between A Between”: Mahmoud Darwish And The Prosody Of Displacement, Ayelet Even-Nur Apr 2020

“The Poem Is What Lies Between A Between”: Mahmoud Darwish And The Prosody Of Displacement, Ayelet Even-Nur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish grew up in Israel as an internal refugee living under Israeli military rule, legally classified as a “present-absentee alien.” This article focuses on his 1995 volume of poetry, Limādhā tarakta al-ḥiṣān waḥīdan? (Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?), to study the manner in which Darwish’s cultivation of the musical and aural aspects of poetry serves as a means of poetically attending to the effects of dispossession and displacement. Through a discussion of the poems in the collection’s fourth section, Ghurfa l’il kalām maʿ al-nafs (A Room to Talk to Oneself …


Queering Identity Politics In Shimon Adaf’S Aviva-No, Yael Segalovitz Apr 2020

Queering Identity Politics In Shimon Adaf’S Aviva-No, Yael Segalovitz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article offers a queer reading of Shimon Adaf’s volume of poetry, Aviva-No (2009), analyzing it in conjunction with his recent collection of essays on identity formation, Ani aherim (I am others) (2018). Adaf’s oeuvre has been primarily studied through the lens of ethnicity and race. This article demonstrates that gender plays a key role in his body of work. Aviva-No, which is a lamentation for the poet’s sister, destabilizes the boundaries between the mourning brother and the absent sister. This ontological deconstruction stimulates in Aviva-No a broader undoing of gender as an embodied identity. The volume is replete …


"A Generation Of Wonderful Jews Will Grow From The Land": The Desire For Nativeness In Hebrew Israeli Poetry, Hamutal Tsamir Apr 2020

"A Generation Of Wonderful Jews Will Grow From The Land": The Desire For Nativeness In Hebrew Israeli Poetry, Hamutal Tsamir

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article examines the ways in which the desire for nativeness is constructed in Israeli Hebrew poetry through several historical episodes: H. N. Bialik’s poem 1896 poem “In the Field”; the poets as pioneers/immigrants in the 1920s, in contrast to the “nativist” poet Esther Raab; and the “nativist” poets of the 1950s (Statehood Generation), focusing on Moshe Dor. The desire to be native—to belong to the land in a way that is natural, self-evident, and therefore absolute and unquestionable— is one of the constitutive desires of nationalism in general, and of Zionism in particular. In Bialik’s poem, written during the …


Rethinking The Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, And Space In The Cinematic Storytelling Of Arrival And The Shape Of Water, Edward Chamberlain Feb 2020

Rethinking The Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, And Space In The Cinematic Storytelling Of Arrival And The Shape Of Water, Edward Chamberlain

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Through comparing the Hollywood films Arrival and The Shape of Water, this article explicates the films’ similar portrayals of gender, social collaboration, and monstrosity. Although the mainstream media in the United States has linked the idea of the monstrous to larger global forces, the two films suggest that “the monster” exists much closer to home. Hence, this article makes the case that monstrosity occurs in a variety of formulations such as the actions of national authorities like governmental officials that oppress and endanger a myriad of American citizens as well as newcomers. Further, this article makes the case that …


Monstrous Accumulation: Topographies Of Fear In An Era Of Globalization, Robert T. Tally Jr. Feb 2020

Monstrous Accumulation: Topographies Of Fear In An Era Of Globalization, Robert T. Tally Jr.

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The predominance of the horror genre, broadly conceived, in recent years attests to the profound sense of anxiety and dread permeating late capitalist societies. As the processes and effects of globalization become more viscerally experienced, they are also often rendered invisible or unknowable, and individuals and groups find themselves subject to an immense array of forces beyond their control. The contemporary scene is crowded with monsters, from alien invaders to the zombie apocalypse, set against the backdrop of darkly fantastic landscapes and dystopian visions. Drawing upon a variety of Marxist cultural theory, Robert T. Tally Jr. explores the topographies of …


Introduction To The Monstrous Global: The Effects Of Globalization On Cultures, Ju Young Jin, Jae Roe Feb 2020

Introduction To The Monstrous Global: The Effects Of Globalization On Cultures, Ju Young Jin, Jae Roe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue on “The Monstrous Global: The Effects of Globalization on Cultures” explores representations of the monstrous effects and products of globalization. The monstrous (as in The Monstrous Feminine by Barbara Creed) in this sense alludes to the ways in which local or national displays of fear and anxiety about the Other are embedded in struggles and tensions of global scale; the inability to cognitively map the effect of such global forces on local/national problems produces monstrous representations of the global. Global forces such as neoliberalism and reactionary nationalism, technology, climate change, migration and displacement lead to accelerating instability …


A Deconstructive Reading Of Taoist Influenced Chinese And American Poetry, Hong Zeng Feb 2020

A Deconstructive Reading Of Taoist Influenced Chinese And American Poetry, Hong Zeng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “A Deconstructive Reading of Taoist Influenced Chinese and American Poetry” Hong Zeng attempts to deconstruct the logos status of "Nature" in Chinese natural philosophy and explore the tragic potentiality of such philosophy and poetry under its influence. It also analyzes its aesthetic strategies used to overcome historical tragedy, and how such tragic potentiality in classical Chinese philosophy and poetry break out into the imagery of death and fragmentation in modern Chinese and American poetry under its influence, including poetry by such poets as Hai Zi, Gu Cheng, Robert Bly and Wallace Stevens, and how it sometimes leads …


Writing, Rewriting, And Miswriting: Eileen Chang’S Late Style Against The Grain, Lina Qu Feb 2020

Writing, Rewriting, And Miswriting: Eileen Chang’S Late Style Against The Grain, Lina Qu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “Writing, Rewriting, and Miswriting: Eileen Chang’s Late Style Against the Grain,” Lina Qu reconstructs Eileen Chang as a Saidian late figure and formulates the poetics and politics of lateness immanent in her late self-writing. Drawing from Said’s theorization, Qu argues that Chang’s late style emerges and matures in rewriting her memories into numerous autobiographical accounts. The exposé of her dysfunctional family and turbulent life metonymically constitutes a counter narrative that disenchants Chinese modernity. In contrast to the dominant modalities of evolution and revolution, her involutionary discourse embodies a Deleuzian paradigm of artistic creativity and historical development. Qu …


Becoming As Suffering: A Genealogy Of Female Suffering In Chinese Myth And Literature, Peina Zhuang, Jiazhao Lin Sep 2019

Becoming As Suffering: A Genealogy Of Female Suffering In Chinese Myth And Literature, Peina Zhuang, Jiazhao Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article “Suffering as Becoming: A Genealogy of Female Suffering in Chinese Myth and Literature,” Peina Zhuang and Jiazhao Lin undertake a comparative study of three Chinese mythical and literary novels: the Chinese myths of Chang’eh, Ding Ling’s Miss Sophie’s (1928), and Bi Feiyu’s novel The Moon Opera (1999). They focus on the point that the characterization of all three women (or female personae) is centered on their common act of taking some sort of medicine. However, they also historicize and politicize these three texts, setting them respectively in the contexts of the establishment of patriarchy in the Han …


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 …