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Literary Cosmotopia And Nationalism In Ariel, Camilla Fojas
Literary Cosmotopia And Nationalism In Ariel, Camilla Fojas
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Camilla Fojas, in her paper "Literary Cosmotopia and Nationalism in Ariel," argues that turn-of-the-century cosmopolitan literary texts encoded political interests and that they were concerned with the proper way of being cosmopolitan and national at the same time, of forging literary and diplomatic parity between national and international interests. Unfortunately, this search for balance was beset by rhetorical and ideological prejudices manifest in phobic language about the corrupting forces of cosmopolitan effeminacy on national character. The conflict of cosmopolitanism with nationalism was played out as a kind of war between the sexes, as a gendered battle for dominance. This tension …
Hellenism, Hebraism, And The Eugenics Of Culture In E.M. Forster's Howards End, Seth Jacobowitz
Hellenism, Hebraism, And The Eugenics Of Culture In E.M. Forster's Howards End, Seth Jacobowitz
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Seth Jacobowitz, in his paper "Hellenism, Hebraism, and the Eugenics of Culture in E.M. Forster's Howards End," explores how the culturalist principles of Hellenism and Hebraism theorized by Matthew Arnold as the basis of Englishness in Culture and Anarchy (1869) were incorporated into the text of E.M. Forster's Howards End (1910) to show the close institutional and conceptual linkages Forster shared with Arnold. Further, Jacobowitz seeks to bring Howards End into dialog with Forster's only major work of science fiction, The Machine Stops (1928), to address their mutual themes of eugenics, the racialization of class difference, and concerns over the …
Czech Literature, The King With The Horse's Ears, And Its Translations By Karel Havlícek Borovský And Milan Uhde, Michelle Woods
Czech Literature, The King With The Horse's Ears, And Its Translations By Karel Havlícek Borovský And Milan Uhde, Michelle Woods
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Michelle Woods, in her paper "Czech Literature, The King with the Horse's Ears, and Its Translations by Karel Havlícek Borovský and Milan Uhde," analyses the adaptation and "translation" of the Irish legend into the Czech language in Karel Havlícek Borovský's 1854 epic poem Král Lávra and in Milan Uhde's 1964 play Král Vávra. The translation of Irish language myths and legends into English functioned as way of constructing and disseminating the notion of a great literary and heroic past within the language of the colonizer but also in dissent to the constructions imposed by that language. Woods focuses on how …
Separatist Nationalism In Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants, Karsten H. Piep
Separatist Nationalism In Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants, Karsten H. Piep
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Karsten H. Piep, in his paper "Separatist Nationalism in Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants," argues that only recently rediscovered among American scholars and still awaiting much critical work, Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants offers an intriguing case study in the complex relationship between fictional representation and late eighteenth-century nation formation. Tracing briefly the novel's reception history, Piep locates The Emigrants within the socio-political context of eighteenth-century discourses on revolution, emancipation, and independence. Taking Benedict Anderson's study on the rise of nationalism as a point of reference, Piep argues that Imlay's novel offers an example of a perhaps uniquely American separatist nationalism that …
The New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, Jin Feng
The New Woman In Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, Jin Feng
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Jin Feng, in her paper "The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction," proposes that the representation of the "new woman" in Chinese fiction was paradoxically one of the ways in which male writers of the era explored, negotiated, and laid claim to their own emerging identity as "modern" intellectuals. Previous scholarship on fiction of the period probed occasionally the thematic implications of female characters in specific works but has not engaged in systematic study of the "new woman" as a figure through a discussion of the politics of the narrative form. Feng addresses aspects of audience in early-twentieth-century Chinese …
Reading Ondaatje's Poetry, Eluned Summers-Bremner
Reading Ondaatje's Poetry, Eluned Summers-Bremner
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Eluned Summers-Bremner pursues in her paper "Reading Ondaatje's Poetry" a psychoanalytic reading of Ondaatje's poetry based on Lacan's thought, highlighting occasions where nature and culture meet. Focusing on the volumes Secular Love and The Man with Seven Toes, Summers-Bremner explores how nature's troubled regions are navigated through the structural estrangement of looking for a name. In Lacanian terms, a proper name signals the contradiction of one's belonging to a biological or other kind of family, whence one's name often arises, and being a user or respondent of language, which produces meaning through its infringement or exceeding of its users' intentions, …
Representations Of Buddhism In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Marlene Goldman
Representations Of Buddhism In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Marlene Goldman
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Marlene Goldman suggests in her paper "Representations of Buddhism in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost" that at first glance Ondaatje appears to promote the idea of a Sri Lankan Buddhist faith as transcending history. Ondaatje introduces the subject of Buddhism early on in the novel, emphasizing initially the devastation wrought by imperial and colonial forces. Goldman, however, argues that subsequent references to Buddhism undermine the initial portrayal of a religion besieged by external imperialist forces. For example, at one point, the character Palipana refers to the assassination of his brother, Narada, a Buddhist monk. Narada was possibly the victim of a "political …
Selected Bibliography Of Michael Ondaatje's Texts And Studies About Michael Ondaatje's Texts, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek
Selected Bibliography Of Michael Ondaatje's Texts And Studies About Michael Ondaatje's Texts, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
The Motif Of The Collector And History In Ondaatje's Work, Jon Saklofske
The Motif Of The Collector And History In Ondaatje's Work, Jon Saklofske
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Jon Saklofske, in his paper "The Motif of the Collector and History in Ondaatje's Work" recognizes that Ondaatje rescues Buddy Bolden from historical obscurity by elevating and complicating the musician's largely forgotten history with a self-conscious and largely fictional synthesis of memory and imagination. The liberties Ondaatje takes in Coming Through Slaughter with his subject to achieve this re-presentation and the ownership of the portrait that results exposes this type of authorial activity as a problematic appropriation. Saklofske suggests that to understand the implications of Ondaatje's activity it is useful to compare his efforts with Walter Benjamin's "collector" figure, who …
Touching The Language Of Citizenship In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Sandeep Sanghera
Touching The Language Of Citizenship In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Sandeep Sanghera
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Sandeep Sanghera, in her paper "Touching the Language of Citizenship in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost" discusses questions which make Ondaatje's novel a text about postmodern identity: who is this woman Anil who lives mostly in the West, travels on a British passport, works for an international organization, and no longer has any real ties to her first home? In the paper, these questions are examined via the languages Anil adopts and abandons in the novel. Sanghera elaborates on the question of foreign-ness represented by the protagonist of the novel; however, this foreign-ness is examined in the particular context concerning the substance …
Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Michael Ondaatje's Writing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek
Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Michael Ondaatje's Writing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Exploring Transnational Identities In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Victoria Cook
Exploring Transnational Identities In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Victoria Cook
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Victoria Cook, in "Exploring Transnational Identities in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost," addresses issues of identity raised in the narrative of Michael Ondaatje's novel Anil's Ghost. Cook's paper is a close analysis of Ondaatje's novel, paying particular attention to the way in which Ondaatje examines identity as both a "construct" and a "process." The approach used is one that draws on postcolonial theory and takes a "transnational" perspective. Cook argues that Ondaatje's text moves beyond the concept of a postcolonial literature of "resistance" into an area that requires a theory of process rather than product. Transnationalism is shown here to be just …
Oral History And The Writing Of The Other In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Winfried Siemerling
Oral History And The Writing Of The Other In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Winfried Siemerling
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Winfried Siemerling argues in his paper "Oral History and the Writing of the Other in Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion" that the simulation of oral narratives in the novel imagines the conveyance of oral histories of immigrant experiences obscured by historiography. The narrative device of simulated orality -- the written text casts itself as the outcome of serial story-telling -- serves here to introduce erstwhile anonymous societal actors as makers of history, and emphasizes the collective production of story and history. Oral narratives emerge dreamlike like light out of darkness in this text; yet light, like writing, creates …
Ondaatje's The English Patient And Rewriting History, Stephanie M. Hilger
Ondaatje's The English Patient And Rewriting History, Stephanie M. Hilger
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Stephanie M. Hilger, in her paper "Ondaatje's The English Patient and Rewriting History," situates the novel within the long-standing Western tradition of writing about the cultural "Other," from Herodotus to Michel de Montaigne to Rudyard Kipling. Michel de Certeau's notion of history serves as a reference point for the analysis of Ondaatje's presentation of the "English" patient's story as well as of twentieth-century history. Hilger argues that the protagonist's physical mutilation is a metonymic representation of post-World War II and postcolonial consciousness. In the same way that the characters in the novel attempt to understand the mystery that is the …
Ondaatje's The English Patient And Altered States Of Narrative, Beverley Curran
Ondaatje's The English Patient And Altered States Of Narrative, Beverley Curran
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Beverley Curran argues in her paper "Ondaatje's The English Patient and Altered States of Narrative" that Ondaatje reconfigures in his novel the "romantic" figure of the father/artist as a clandestine lover, a drug addict, or an eccentric translator, all figures with dependencies. In The English Patient, the father or artist's sense of source, continuity, or authority are translated into a narrative which rejects the perverse captivity demanded of the lover and the translator by fidelity or by the tenets of realistic representation. Using sex, drugs, and translation, Ondaatje deranges both time and space to reconfigure the role of the artist …
Post-Nationalism And The Cinematic Apparatus In Minghella's Adaptation Of Ondaatje's The English Patient, Hsuan Hsu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Hsuan Hsu, in his paper "Post-Nationalism and the Cinematic Apparatus in Minghella's Adaptation of Ondaatje's The English Patient," discusses Anthony Minghella's cinematic version of Ondaatje's novel. In Hsu's view, Minghella and Ondaatje (Ondaatje collaborated on the film script) emphasize in the film the visual and social implications of mapmaking in order to align imperialism with the cinematic apparatus. While the film explores the workings of visual power, it also explores their adulteration by unmapped forces of desire: Almásy's and Katherine's adulterous relationship transgresses marital and national constraints, but also reinscribes them when Almásy desires to possess her body and Katherine …
Benjamin, Agamben, And The Paradox Of Translation, Paolo Bartoloni
Benjamin, Agamben, And The Paradox Of Translation, Paolo Bartoloni
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Benjamin, Agamben, and the Paradox of Translation," Paolo Bartoloni offers a theoretical discourse on translation that goes beyond the traditional precincts of linguistics and literary theory as well as the disciplines of cultural studies and postcolonial theory. Bartoloni argues that more recently, the discourse on translation has begun to incorporate epistemological concerns, dealing not only with language but also with subjectivity and ethics. At the root of this theoretical articulation of translation are the essays "The Task of the Translator" ("Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers") by Walter Benjamin and other reflections on translation by Martin Heidegger, especially in …
The Representation Of 'Race' In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Glen Lowry
The Representation Of 'Race' In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Glen Lowry
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Glen Lowry, in his paper "The Representation of 'Race' in Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion" bases his discussion on the observation that critics tend to view Ondaatje's writing in terms of a progression towards complex issues of "race" and post-coloniality. In contrast, Lowry argues that the matter of "race" forms an integral aspect of Ondaatje's oeuvre and Lowry proposes that In the Skin of a Lion is a key site in the development of Ondaatje's engagement with issues of "race" and the cultural politics of post-coloniality. Focusing on Ondaatje's depiction of Toronto in terms of its complex history …
Haruki Murakami And The Ethics Of Translation, Will Slocombe
Haruki Murakami And The Ethics Of Translation, Will Slocombe
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Haruki Murakami and the Ethics of Translation," Will Slocombe argues that despite the fact that Murakami has gained world-wide popularity recently, there has been little critical attention to his works outside of the comparatively narrow area of Japanese studies. Slocombe proposes that Murakami is too important an author to be limited in this way because of his definition of "translation." For Murakami, translation delineates an operative ethics between Self and Other, a dialogue that is not only between different languages and cultures, but also between the private and political spheres, and between different individuals. Slocombe discusses Murakami's …
Asian-American Literature And A Lacanian Reading Of Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey, Fu-Jen Chen
Asian-American Literature And A Lacanian Reading Of Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey, Fu-Jen Chen
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Asian-American Literature and a Lacanian Reading of Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey," Fu-jen Chen explores the protagonist's subjective progression into the post-Symbolic Real in Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey -- from subject as Demand, through subject as Desire, to subject as jouissance. Tripmaster Monkey records Ah Sing's transformation from a racial paranoiac at the beginning of the novel through a subject as demand to a subject as desire who is learning to target new desires via his engaging in real myth and staging real theater, and finally to a subject as jouissance -- one who is oriented to his …
Monénembo's L'Aîné Des Orphelins And The Rwandan Genocide, Lisa Mcnee
Monénembo's L'Aîné Des Orphelins And The Rwandan Genocide, Lisa Mcnee
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "Monénembo's L'Aîné des orphelins and the Rwandan Genocide," Lisa McNee discusses Tierno Monénembo's L'Aîné des orphelins, a novel that offers a double discourse and a dual memory of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. McNee argues that L'Aîné des orphelins presents us with an extraordinary kind of fictional testimonial to genocide. Although Monénembo is not from Rwanda and did not participate in the tragedy, only someone who has paid the price of the clarity needed to distinguish between good and bad faith could have written a novel like L'Aîné des orphelins. Monénembo's characterization of …
From Commonwealth To Postcolonial Literature, Edward O. Ako
From Commonwealth To Postcolonial Literature, Edward O. Ako
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper,"From Commonwealth to Postcolonial Literature," Edward O.Ako begins by establishing the link between Empire and English-language literature. Drawing on Elleke Boehmer, Gauri Viswanath, and Terry Eagleton, Ako discusses the ideological uses of literature and argues that the textual forms that emerged as "resistance" to imperial domination were referred to by a multiplicity of terms: Commonwealth Literature, New English Literature, Literature in English, Third World Literature, World Fiction, Minority Literature, Multicultural Literature, or Postcolonial Literature. Ako examines the merits and handicaps of each designation and explains why, in his view, the term "postcolonial" is the more appropriate notion and …
Medieval Cosmopolitanism And The Saracen-Christian Ethos, Marla Segol
Medieval Cosmopolitanism And The Saracen-Christian Ethos, Marla Segol
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "Medieval Cosmopolitanism and the Saracen-Christian Ethos," Marla Segol argues that in Floire et Blancheflor and Aucassin et Nicolette, two medieval Occitanian romances, the writers work actively to incorporate Islamic culture and its accomplishments into a hybrid communal identity. The hybrid elements of this identity are demonstrated in two ways: first, through the portrayal of mixed couples and second, through depiction of a biculturally constituted landscape and culture. Intercultural relations between the characters are dramatized through the structures of religious conversion. Each romance features a mixed couple, with one member Christian and the other, formerly Muslim but converted …
Shakespeare And The Visualization Of Metaphor In Two Chinese Versions Of Macbeth, Alexander C.Y. Huang
Shakespeare And The Visualization Of Metaphor In Two Chinese Versions Of Macbeth, Alexander C.Y. Huang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Shakespeare and the Visualization of Metaphor in Two Chinese Versions of Macbeth," Alexander Huang proposes that, in addition to political uses, visualization is an important dimension of cultural translations of Shakespeare. In recent studies, Shakespeare's global presence has been investigated from various perspectives of critical inquiry, especially with postcolonial theories and in East-West literary relations. Instead of faulting cultural imperialism or foregrounding political statements in theatre, Huang explores the visual dimension of cultural translation found in Kingdom of Desire (a Beijing opera adaptation of Macbeth) and Story of the Bloody Hand (a Kunqu opera appropriation of the …
Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, And Shakespeare's The Tempest, Simone Caroti
Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, And Shakespeare's The Tempest, Simone Caroti
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, and Shakespeare's The Tempest," Simone Caroti illustrates the way in which Cyril Hume and Fred Wilcox's 1956 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet -- whose plot is inspired by Shakespeare's Tempest -- reconfigures in Shakespeare's play. Caroti begins by defining the genre of science fiction and explaining its attraction for modern audiences. Following Darko Suvin's notions of science fiction, Caroti highlights the theme of cognitive estrangement and shows how Forbidden Planet offers a cultural translation of this theme in The Tempest. The result of Caroti's analysis is to read Prospero and his magic in …
Shakespeare's Taming Of The Shrew And The Tradition Of Screwball Comedy, Mei Zhu
Shakespeare's Taming Of The Shrew And The Tradition Of Screwball Comedy, Mei Zhu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her paper, "Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and the Tradition of Screwball Comedy," Mei Zhu argues that Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is controversial owing to the subtlety and complexity of the text as well as its subject matter. Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 film version seems to follow the narrative structure of the original play closely while its effect is different. Through a detailed analysis and comparison of Shakespeare's play and Zeffirelli's adaptation, Mei argues that Zeffirelli's Taming is based on the Hollywood genre of screwball comedy. Rooted in mid-1930s USA during the Great Depression, such films feature a comic …
Hamlet's "Globe" And The Self As Performer In England And Japan, Yu Shibuya
Hamlet's "Globe" And The Self As Performer In England And Japan, Yu Shibuya
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his paper, "Hamlet's 'Globe' and the Self as Performer in England and Japan," Yu Shibuya argues that Hamlet sees his life as a performance. Shibuya presents examples from Tsuneari Fukuda's Japanese translation to suggest that Fukuda makes choices that emphasize the theatrical side of Hamlet's character. If Hamlet perceives himself as an actor, then his definition of theater or an actor is ultimately a definition of himself. Shibuya uses the theme of self-definition to examine Kenneth Branagh's film version, especially the Mousetrap and the "O what a rogue and peasant slave" scenes. By analyzing Branagh's staging and directorial decisions …
Bibliography For The Study Of Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Lucian Ghita
Bibliography For The Study Of Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Lucian Ghita
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Silence And Sound In Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood, Lei Jin
Silence And Sound In Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood, Lei Jin
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Lei Jin argues in her paper, "Silence and Sound in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood," that silence and sound are employed as vehicles to explore the major themes of Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, fate, ambition, and destruction. By examining closely a few dramatic moments of the film, Lei demonstrates that silence and the interaction between silence, natural sound, and Noh music enhance the effect of Kurosawa's visual images, enforce their symbolic messages, and intensify the characters' psychological conflicts. Although Asaji's introspective speech and most of the dialogue between Washizu and Asaji are eliminated, silence bespeaks Asaji's unfathomable evil. In turn, Washizu's …
Introduction To Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Charles Ross
Introduction To Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Charles Ross
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.