Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

About Literary Systems And National Literatures, Elias J. Torres Feijó

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "About Literary Systems and National Literatures," Elias Torres J. Feijó offers a polysystemic analysis with examples from the Iberian Peninsula. He argues that a community's literature can be understood as a) the gathering of so-called literary activities, which take place in a social space or b) something that identifies certain characteristics of a part or the whole of the members in a given social space. For his analysis, Torres Feijó employs Itamar Even-Zohar's notion of polysystem because it allows us to interpret each system generated by members of a given community and its delimitation, differentiation, and integration …

The Ophelia Motif In The Work Of Iberian Galician Writers, María Do Cebreiro Rábade Villar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "About the Ophelia Motif in the Work of Iberian Galician Writers" María do Cebreiro Rábade Villar attempts to arrive at an idea of character through a comparative analysis of various artistic versions of William Shakespeare's Ophelia. Rábade Villar employs Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notions of transversality and devices of analytical enunciation in order to understand the feminine literary character. Rábade Villar's corpus of the Ophelia motif include Iberian Galician authors's work such as by Álvaro Cunqueiro, Xohana Torres, Chus Pato, and Marta Dacosta.

Advertising And Autobiographical Discourse, María Ángeles Rodríguez Fontela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Advertising and Autobiographical Discourse" María Ángeles Rodríguez Fontela sketches a poetics of advertising in autobiographic discourse working from a selection of narrative and autobiographical spots. Emphasized in her narratological study is the contraction of retrospective temporality, the domination of the proleptic construction of the "I," the ellipsis in the outcome, the iterative and archetypical character of the narrated episodes, the confidential tone of the narrative voice, and the mythical projection of the narrated story. Rodríguez Fontela analyzes in selected television advertisements the ironic, comic, and parodic effects which show the hybridization of genres and the rhetorical function …

The Image Of Ireland In Iberian Galicia In The Early Twentieth Century, Anne Maccarthy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Image of Ireland in Iberian Galicia in the Early Twentieth Century," Anne MacCarthy explores Galician intellectuals' relationship with Ireland in their attempt to create a Celtic imaginary for Galicia which would act as a cultural fortification in the face of centralizing forces of Castilian Spain. In periodicals prominent in the 1920s, Nós and A Nosa Terra, the wish to construct a separate identity for Galicia, apart from Spain, is often expressed and embodied in reference to Ireland. Whereas the interest in Ireland was increased by the struggle for independence in that country at the time, …

About Metapoetry And Performativity, Arturo Casas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "About Metapoetry and Performativity" Arturo Casas argues that with regard to metapoetic practices a change of perspective would be necessary. Casas postulates that the new perspective would centre more on the enunciative and performative aspects of metapoetry and that it would focus on the theoretical and poetological contribution of the metapoem, its criticism of language and text, and its convergence with those theoretical-critical practices based on the refutation of the traditional critical pact. Following Jenaro Talens's work, Casas argues that in poetry disorder orients itself in practice to unmask power and its inscriptions in language and that …

The Don Juan Myth In Iberian Galician Literature, Carmen Becerra Suárez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Don Juan Myth in Iberian Galician Literature" Carmen Becerra Suárez discusses the presence of the Don Juan myth as it has developed in Galicia. She presents a panorama of the ways in which Galician authors — studies independently of their belonging to the Galician or Spanish literary systems — have dealt with this myth. The aim is to study the presence of the myth in this culture and the causes giving rise to several versions: from the three possibilities of "Don Juanness" found in the work of Ramón María del Valle-Inclán up through a short story …

Galician Portuguese Medieval Poetry And The Iberian Interliterary System, Santiago Gutiérrez García

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Galician Portuguese Medieval Poetry and the Iberian Interliterary System" Santiago Gutiérrez García explores the notion that the possibility of carrying out a comparative study of Iberian literatures is determined by its interliterary system. Gutiérrez García postulates that the said interliterary system comprises a series of peripheral literatures which seek their self-affirmation through opposition to the hegemonic center, namely Castilian literature. He uses the example of Galician Portuguese medieval poetry and illustrates the problematic nature of his approach elaborating that despite the fact that this medieval poetic tradition is shared by both Galician and Portuguese literatures, as literary …

Catalan And Galician Literatures In Iberian And European Contexts, Olivia Rodríguez González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Catalan and Galician Literatures in Iberian and European Contexts" Olivia Rodríguez González investigates the problematics of canon formation and proposes an approach within which the formation of a multi-system canon is possible. Reflections on the constitution of a European canon that would be the result of a proportional or market-driven combination of national literary canons leads to the conclusion that, with respect to the multicultural Spanish state, what will succeed in getting into the European canon will do so as a consequence of one of two processes. The first depends on what each literary system does to …

Literary Geography And Comparative Literature, César Domínguez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Geography and Comparative Literature" César Domínguez analyzes the relevance of political and linguistic frameworks for comparative literary historiography in the context of the European Union. Domínguez's discussion is based on the notion of geoculture whose theorization from Immanuel Wallerstein's perspective presents paradigms of interest to comparative literature. The idea of literary geography is conceived as a unit for analyzing diverse stages of the interliterary process. Thus, within the framework of the current renaissance of Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur, the phenomena of the literatures of (im)migration, exile, and literary diglossia represent challenges for the contextualization and …

Possibilities And Limits Of Comparative Literature Today, Darío Villanueva

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Possibilities and Limits of Comparative Literature Today," Darío Villanueva traces the itinerary of comparative literature over the last fifty years comparative literature in its various stages. The first of these confronted two options seen in a way as irreconcilable: the almost exclusive connexion with literary history or its identification with the theory of literature. Villanueva outlines the consolidation of the "new paradigm" which overcomes those contradictions, thanks to the methodological cooperation between comparative literature and the systemic theories of literature, and thanks, as well, to a return to philology as an adequate practice of reading. In addition, …

Comics And The Graphic Novel In Spain And Iberian Galicia, Antonio J. Gil González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comics and the Graphic Novel in Spain and Iberian Galicia," Antonio J. Gil González develops a comparative and interart analysis of graphic novels by examining the evolution of the genre on the Spanish peninsula in general and in Galicia in particular. Gil González builds his analysis on Roman Ingarden's concept of literature as not only traditional fiction, but also theater and cinema. Gil González presents his argumentation by identifying the peculiarities of the comic as a medium, starting with its historical beginnings, and discussing its principal formats and generic and thematic variants. Further, he discusses the principal …

Comparative Literature In Chinese And An Interview With Yue, Hui Zhang, Daiyun Yue

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Comparative Literature in Chinese and an Interview with Daiyun Yue" Hui Zhang and Daiyun Yue present a review of the discipline of comparative literature based on an interview with Yue (2010). Because Yue's work with comparative literature is intertwined with her personal journey, the interview sheds light on other Chinese scholars and their work who would not be known audiences outside China. The interview also touches on the academic and political reasons why the joint dualisms of "ancient/modern" and "Chinese/foreign" continue to be major structuring principles of the discipline in China, as well as how the development …

About Society: A Book Review Article Of Work On Roth And Kundera By Shostak And Ivanova, Gustavo Sánchez-Canales

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Eliot's The Waste Land And Surging Nationalisms, Pouneh Saeedi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Eliot's The Waste Land and Surging Nationalisms" Pouneh Saeedi analyzes T.S. Eliot's poem in the context of the impact of World War I and the emergence of nationalisms. In the midst of the ruins of both his personal life and Europe, Eliot expresses the loss of a universal understanding delineated in the fragmentation of language and a disassociation of sensibility. In The Waste Land, the West and the East — represented in their respective canonical texts — commingle and cohere to present an image of oneness that goes beyond oppositional binaries and leads the egotistical self …

Commodity And Waste As National Allegory In Recent South African And Post-Soviet Fiction, Alla Ivanchikova

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Commodity and Waste as National Allegory in Recent South African and Post-Soviet Fiction" Alla Ivanchikova analyzes the issue of commodity in its relation to identity. The article contains a reading of two novels: The Quiet Violence of Dreams by K. Sello Duiker and Dukhless. Povest o nenastoiaschem cheloveke (Douh-Less: The Tale of an Unreal Person) by Sergey Minaev. Rapid political changes, both in South Africa and the former Soviet Bloc were accompanied both by rapid changes in the practices of consumption and also by often inconsistent cultural efforts to establish the meaning of these practices. Ivanchikova …

Fernández And Cinematic Propaganda In The U.S. And Mexico, Renae L. Mitchell

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Fernández and Cinematic Propaganda in the U.S. and Mexico" Renae L. Mitchell discusses the competing ideologies on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. As one of the foremost filmmakers of the Mexican Golden Age of cinema, Emilio Fernández established what would is recognized as "Mexicanness" by means of Indigenous characters in his films, most apparent in the film María Candelaria. RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures, as the principal purveyor of US-American propagandist cinema, led Hollywood into the cinematic market of Mexico revealing its intentions by means of the RKO film The Falcon in Mexico. Fernández sought to …

Autoethnography And Garcia's Dreaming In Cuban, Samantha L. Mcauliffe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Authoethnography and Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban" Samantha L. McAuliffe positions Cristina Garcia's novel as a text of self-discovery and cultural reconciliation. McAuliffe examines multilingualism and hybridity in Dreaming in Cuban and postulates that the novel represents what Marie Louise Pratt calls the "contact zone" where cultures meet and clash. As autoethnography, Dreaming in Cuban allows an insider view of what being Cuban American really means. The reader is able to experience the conflict those with a hybrid identity experience through the eyes of one in the midst of that conflict. Further, McAuliffe suggests in her analysis …

Dante's Linguistic Detail In Shelley's Triumph Of Life, Anita O'Connell

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Dante's Linguistic Detail in Shelley's Triumph of Life" Anita O'Connell analyzes Shelley's attention to detail in Dante's poetic style and presents a close textual analysis of the ways Shelley draws on the beauty of Dante's texts. When Dante's Divine Comedy re-emerged into the public sphere in Britain through Henry Cary's 1814 translation, his reputation was as a stern, dark, Medieval poet and readers and writers alike shared a love of the perceived gothicism particularly of The Inferno. Shelley, however, differed from this general view of Dante: despite the grotesque descriptions in his Triumph of Life …

Intermediality, Translation, Comparative Literature, And World Literature, Erin Schlumpf

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Intermediality, Translation, Comparative Literature, and World Literature" Erin Schlumpf postulates that the study of literature today is best performed in a framework of comparative literature and world literature including intermediality particularly in the case of translated texts. Schlumpf contends that working in comparative and world literature today demands a reexamination of translation and the teaching of works in translation. Following her theoretical postulates, Schlumpf analyzes two films, Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise (1966) and Xiaolu Guo's She, a Chinese (Zhongguo guniang) (2009).

(Inter)Mediality And The Study Of Literature, Werner Wolf

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "(Inter)mediality and the Study of Literature" Werner Wolf elaborates on the "intermedial turn" and asks whether this turn ought to be welcomed. Wolf begins with a discussion about the definitions of "medium" and "intermediality" and the impact these concepts and practices exert on scholarly, as well as student competence. He argues that despite of the fact that literary studies ought not simply turn into media or cultural studies, mediality and intermediality have become relevant issues for both teaching and the study of literature especially in the fields of comparative literature and (comparative) cultural studies. Following his postulate …

On Reading Grace's Potiki, Eva Rask Knudsen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "On Reading Grace's Potiki" Eva Rask Knudsen takes as her point of departure the critical impasse of postcolonial analyses of Indigenous literatures and the claim made by some (Indigenous) commentators that non-Indigenous scholars and critics often re-colonize the texts they deem to be "postcolonial" because — in their theoretical concern with issues of marginalization and resistance — they overlook (and so overwrite) the specific indigenous knowledges and ontologies that the literatures draw on. Through an analysis of the 1986 novel Potiki by Māori writer Patricia Grace, Rsak Knudsen looks in other directions than those catalogued by …

Collaborative Authorship And Indigenous Literatures, Albert Braz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Collaborative Authorship and Indigenous Literatures" Albert Braz discusses the duality of the writer. As suggested by Roland Barthes in his "The Death of the Author," the distinction between writer and author — the first being the historical person behind the text and the second a figure in the text — the duality of the author remains a paradigm of contemporary critical analysis. Braz argues that this new emphasis is not germane when it comes to Indigenous literatures, a field in which one often cannot determine who are the material producers of texts and/or their writers. Braz postulates …

Voices In Australia's Aboriginal And Canada's First Nations Literatures, Kim Scott, Eden Robinson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Kim Scott suggests in his text "I Come from Here" by means of "yarning" that the authority of Indigenous people and language is primary to an authentic "sense of place." Scott uses an accumulative, episodic, and personal narrative style to argue that the return "to," and consolidation of cultural material "in," a "community of descendants of the informants" must be founded upon principles of community development. Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people by sharing of ancestral material with ever widening, concentric circles is how this process results in respect and partnership that empowers community life.

Eden Robinson explores in her …

Indigenous Literature And Comparability, Katherine Durnin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Indigenous Literature and Comparability" Katherine Durnin discusses some of the barriers to the comparative study of Indigenous literature alongside non-Indigenous literature. These barriers include the Eurocentrism of traditional comparative literature, certain aspects of postcolonial theory and, above, all the assumption that Indigenous and Western epistemologies belong to separate and incommensurable worlds. Durnin examines some recent theoretical and critical approaches that offer ways to bridge the two worlds and make comparative literature an ethical space of mutual respect and understanding.

Towards Transnational Native American Literary Studies, Hsinya Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Towards Transnational Native American Literary Studies" Hsinya Huang discusses how Native American literature can be adapted, translated, articulated, and interpreted in a transnational/trans-Pacific context, using the recently emerging Native American scholarship in Taiwan as a point of departure. Through collaboration across institutional lines, exploration of the community production of local knowledge, and our obligation and desire to participate meaningfully as intellectuals in the international initiatives in Native Studies, can we conceive of an expansive indigenous region across the Pacific? How can indigeneity be both rooted in and routed through particular places and articulated? Through envisioning an expanding …

Bibliography Of Scholarship On Indigenous Literatures And Cultures, Angeline O'Neill, Albert Braz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Politics Of Indigeneity In Fogarty's Poetry, Sean Gorman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Politics of Indigeneity in Fogarty's Poetry" Sean Gorman discusses Indigenous themes and issues with regards to the poetry of Murri writer Lionel Fogarty. As Fogarty is seen as a poet who writes complex prose, his material challenges non-Indigenous readerships by subverting Standard English and conventional reading practices. Gorman suggests strategies by which to engage with Fogarty's material and, employing the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, namely heteroglossia and dialogism, to arrive at a better understanding of the rich and complex nature of Fogarty's work. Gorman executes his analysis in relation to the political debates that have arisen since …

Textual Fantasies And Culturality In Native American Fiction: A Review Article Of New Books By Treuer And Justice, Angeline O'Neill

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Aboriginal Australian And Canadian First Nations Children's Literature, Angeline O'Neill

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Aboriginal Australian and Canadian First Nations Children's Literature" Angeline O'Neill discusses Canadian First Nations and Australian Aboriginal children's picture books and their appeal to a dual readership. Inuit traditional storyteller and writer Michael Kusugak, Nyoongar traditional storyteller and writer Lorna Little, and Wunambal elder Daisy Utemorrah are cases in point. Each appeals to Indigenous and non-Indigenous, child and adult readerships, thus challenging two assumptions in Western scholarship on literature that 1) the picture book genre is necessarily the domain of children and 2) that traditional Indigenous stories are, similarly, best suited to children. O'Neill considers the ways …

Two Traumas One Aesthetic In Walsh's Operación Masacre And Kaufman's The Laramie Project, Henry James Morello

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Two Traumas One Aesthetic in Walsh's Operación Masacre and Kaufman's The Laramie Project" Henry James Morello analyzes the stylistic similarities of Walsh's and Kaufman's texts. Walsh's 1957 testimonio Operación masacre was written as a response to the politically motivated violence perpetrated by the military government after the overthrow of Juan Perón, specifically the kidnapping and murder of a group of men thought to be Peronist sympathizers. In 1998 Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project created The Laramie Project, a play about the reactions of the people of Laramie to the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, …