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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Testimonial Poetry In East European Post-Totalitarian Literature, Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva Mar 2001

Testimonial Poetry In East European Post-Totalitarian Literature, Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Testimonial Poetry in East European Post-Totalitarian Literature," Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva reexamines the belief that postmodern literature and deconstructive writing have parted literary and theoretical discourse from reality, thereby obstructing and annihilating our access to history. Lutzkanova-Vassileva exemplifies her prognosis in an inquiry into post-totalitarian and postmodern Bulgarian literature and its texts of poetry. Born in the turmoil of communism's debacle, the analysis is an attempt to illustrate that, contrary to denying reference, postmodernism solely rejects the reduction of reference to a world that is perceptible and cognitively masterable. Rethinking what many have seen as a self-referential literature, with …


Memory And The Quest For Family History In One Hundred Years Of Solitude And Song Of Solomon, Susana Vega-González Mar 2001

Memory And The Quest For Family History In One Hundred Years Of Solitude And Song Of Solomon, Susana Vega-González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Memory and the Quest for Family History in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Song of Solomon," Susana Vega-González explores similarities between the novels of García Márquez and Morrison with a special focus on the use of memory and imagination. Based on theoretical models, Vega-Gonzálezas proposes that fictional representations are a means of rewriting history, a particular aspect of literay discourse. The texts under scrutiny constitute true quest stories of characters who search for their family history along their own identity amidst the dangers of capitalism and its excessive desire for progress and class ascendance. The break …


Globalization And Conferencing Comparative Literature In Egypt And Slovenia, Babis Dermitzakis Mar 2001

Globalization And Conferencing Comparative Literature In Egypt And Slovenia, Babis Dermitzakis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia," Babis Dermitzakis discusses two recent conferences in the discipline of comparative literature. The former conference was held on the topic of literary criticism in Cairo and the latter on the genre of the romantic epic poem in Ljubljana. The implicit and explicit objective of both conferences was to discuss as well as to demonstrate a stand against globalization with specific reference to culture and literature. The conference participants as much as the organizers intended to show that cultures and countries peripheral to economic, political, and cultural centres -- …


Concepts Of World Literature, Comparative Literature, And A Proposal, Marián Gálik Dec 2000

Concepts Of World Literature, Comparative Literature, And A Proposal, Marián Gálik

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Concepts of World Literature, Comparative Literature, and a Proposal," Marián Gálik surveys the concept of world literature as it occurs within comparative literature based on Goethe's Weltliteratur. Given its recurrent yet problematic occurrence, he proposes a way in which comparatists can acknowledge and address the problems of the concept of a world literature. The concept is surveyed across various texts and studies and is mapped out in accordance with the ways in which it has been defined and discussed. The picture that emerges is the problem of national delimitations within the context of an international setting. Gálik …


Interliterariness As A Concept In Comparative Literature, Marián Gálik Dec 2000

Interliterariness As A Concept In Comparative Literature, Marián Gálik

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Interliterariness as a Concept in Comparative Literature," Marián Gálik observes that the concept of interliterariness has a relative short history and limited application owing to geo-political reasons. He traces the history of the concept and cites instances of its use within the Central European scholarship of comparative literature. Dionýz Durišin is identified as the most prominent exponent of the concept and Gálik then locates the question of interliterariness within the context of its potential applications. The concept of interliterariness is defended as both a guiding and unifying principle in so far as it is irreducible, relative, and …


Comparative Literature In India, Amiya Dev Dec 2000

Comparative Literature In India, Amiya Dev

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Such a characterization, he urges, either overlooks or obscures manifest interrelations and affinities. His article compares the unity and the diversity thesis, and identifies the relationship between Indian commonality and differences as the prime site of comparative …


Comparative Literature And The Ideology Of Metaphor, East And West, Karl S.Y. Kao Dec 2000

Comparative Literature And The Ideology Of Metaphor, East And West, Karl S.Y. Kao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West," Karl S.Y. Kao offers a comparative reading of the ideological function of metaphor within Eastern and Western thinking. Nietzsche is recognized as the earliest serious challenger to the concepts of meaning and truth within the West, whilst Derrida and de Man are discussed with respect to their conception that figurality is inherent within -- and integral to -- Western philosophical and literary discourse. Parallel to this conception of conceptuality is the Eastern view of language and literature. Kao notes that the Western opposition between logic and rhetoric …


Comparative Literature In China, Xiaoyi Zhou, Q. S. Tong Dec 2000

Comparative Literature In China, Xiaoyi Zhou, Q. S. Tong

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their co-authored article, "Comparative Literature in China," Xiaoyi Zhou and Q.S. Tong present a brief intellectual and institutional history of the discipline. According to Zhou and Tong, main features of the history of comparative literature in China include the fact that as an academic discipline and a mode of intellectual inquiry imported to China from the West in the early twentieth century, the discpline has always been a priori strategically political and the proposition that the development of comparative literature in China is closely related to the formation of China’s literary modernity includes the parallel issue of national identity. …


Comparative Literature As Textual Anthropology, Antony Tatlow Dec 2000

Comparative Literature As Textual Anthropology, Antony Tatlow

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comparative Literature as Textual Anthropology," Antony Tatlow proposes textual anthropology as a critic's approach in the comparative study of literature. If anthropology is "behavioural hermeneutics" (Clifford Geertz) with the implication of self-reflexivity, the anthropologist will be disposed to fashion in the object of attention what is neglected and that can therefore be described as the unconscious of his/her own culture. In an application of his framework, Tatlow relates totemic and utopian thought through the use of animal signs. In his article, Tatlow shows how cultural demands both fashion the ethnographer-critic and select the perspectives he/she must transcend. …


Comparative Literature In The United States, Manuela Mourão Dec 2000

Comparative Literature In The United States, Manuela Mourão

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Comparative Literature in the United States," Manuela Mourão offers a historical overview of the debates about comparative literature as a discipline, from the early years of its institutionalization in the United States until the present. Mourão summarizes the most pointed -- and anxious -- interventions of prominent scholars in the field and she discusses the permanent sense of crisis that has typically been part of the discipline. Further, Mourão links the permanent anxiety of the discipline with the prescriptive tendencies that have continued to endure until the present. She then looks at the debates that followed the …


Comparative Literature In Slovenia, Kristof Jacek Kozak Dec 2000

Comparative Literature In Slovenia, Kristof Jacek Kozak

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comparative Literature in Slovenia," Kristof Jacek Kozak provides a historical overview of the practice of theory in the discipline of comparative literature in Slovenia. Despite its small size and relative low profile, Slovenia is taken as an exemplar within comparative literature scholarship. Kozak observes that the development of comparative literature in Slovenia may be characterized by an attempt to both arbitrate and mediate between distinct poles. On the one hand, Slovenian scholarship has felt the need to secure or determine itself in accordance with its own interests and concerns. On the other hand, it has recognized the …


The Goethean Concept Of World Literature And Comparative Literature, Hendrik Birus Dec 2000

The Goethean Concept Of World Literature And Comparative Literature, Hendrik Birus

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "The Goethean Concept of World Literature and Comparative Literature," Hendrik Birus presents a new reading and understanding of Goethe's famous dictum: "National literature does not mean much at present, it is time for the era of world literature and everybody must endeavour to accelerate this epoch" (Eckermann 198, 31 January 1827). According to Birus, this dictum is not to be taken at face value today and argues that Goethe's concept of world literature ought to be understood in the sense that today it is not the replacement of national literatures by world literature we encounter; rather, it …


The Advantages Of Critical And Systematic Literary Taxonomies: A Review Article Of New Work By Cerquiglini, Juvan, And Zima, Kristof Jacek Kozak Dec 2000

The Advantages Of Critical And Systematic Literary Taxonomies: A Review Article Of New Work By Cerquiglini, Juvan, And Zima, Kristof Jacek Kozak

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Is Comparative Literature Ready For The Twenty-First Century?, Eva Kushner Dec 2000

Is Comparative Literature Ready For The Twenty-First Century?, Eva Kushner

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Is Comparative Literature Ready for the Twenty-First Century?" Eva Kushner observes that throughout its history, comparative literature has internalized as part of its own objectives and directives a major challenge: The need to renew its problematics and curriculums in response to the inherent diversity of literature within culture. She emphasizes that the vitality of the discipline depends on an authentic pluralism capable of resisting the dominance of unanalyzed hierarchies and universals. Acknowledging that the entire history of world literature remains the potential material of comparative literature studies, Kushner favours an "open system" approach. The concept of an …


A Comparative Post-Colonial Approach To Hedayat's The Blind Owl, Yasamine C. Coulter Sep 2000

A Comparative Post-Colonial Approach To Hedayat's The Blind Owl, Yasamine C. Coulter

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "A Comparative Post-Colonial Approach to Hedayat's The Blind Owl," Yasamine C. Coulter discusses post-colonial theories of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Jalal ale Ahmad, and relates them to the major themes of Hedayat's novel. For the most part, the fact that the text's narrator is disillusioned with his country's traditional way of life makes him an outsider within his own society. However, he fails to find peace in his other, chosen, mode of being and this implies that he is unable to fully identify with Western traditions, either. It is at this point of the text that …


Is It Time To Return To The Author? Between Omniscient Narrator And Interior Monologue, José Saramago Sep 2000

Is It Time To Return To The Author? Between Omniscient Narrator And Interior Monologue, José Saramago

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Nobel laureate of 1998 José Saramago, in his essay "Is It Time to Return to the Author? Between Omniscient Narrator and Interior Monologue" (trans. from the Portuguese and French by Roumiana Deltcheva), presents a short yet passionate treatise in defense of the "author" both as an individual and as a writer. For Saramago, the literary text as such exists because of the author, his or her thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, which in turn are reflections of the author's external environment and inner world. Saramago goes further to suggest that the reader's attraction to the literary narrative goes beyond the mere …


Naipaul's A Bend In The River And Neo-Colonialism As A Comparative Context, Haidar Eid Sep 2000

Naipaul's A Bend In The River And Neo-Colonialism As A Comparative Context, Haidar Eid

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Naipaul's A Bend in the River and Neo-colonialism as a Comparative Context," Haidar Eid discusses the dialectical interplay between the political import and aesthetic qualities in Naipaul's novel. It contests Naipaul's conclusion that "Third World" peoples are not genuine and authentic human beings, like Westerners. Further, Naipaul's implication that political and social disorder is the unavoidable product of contemporary liberation movements, and that Africans are nothing and with no place in the world, are challenged and deconstructed. The independence of Third World countries, according to Naipaul, eliminates the last hope of resistance to ignorance, as well as …


Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian And His Novel Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee Sep 2000

Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian And His Novel Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian and his Novel Soul Mountain," Mabel Lee introduces Gao Xingjian, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature of 2000. Lee is the translator of several of Gao's works from the Chinese into English, including the Nobel's main text of reference, Soul Mountain (first published in Chinese in 1990). Lee's article combines descriptions of Gao's biographical background and its relevance to his work and writing with a brief analysis of literary aspects of Gao's work based on tenets of the comparative literary and cultural studies approach. As is evident in Gao's texts, …


The Culture Of Using Animals In Literature And The Case Of José Emilio Pacheco, Randy Malamud Jun 2000

The Culture Of Using Animals In Literature And The Case Of José Emilio Pacheco, Randy Malamud

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "The Culture of Using Animals in Literature and the Case of José Emilio Pacheco," Randy Malamud argues that the animal poetry of Mexican writer José Emilio Pacheco, compiled in his 1985 collection Album de zoología (trans. 1993 by Margaret Sayers Peden as An Ark for the Next Millennium) embodies a vast literary account of a range of animals. This book represents one of the most extensive treatments of animals by any modern poet, and one of the most sensitive and ambitious attempts to craft a discourse that facilitates an approach to animals on their own terms -- …


Sightseeing In Paris With Baudelaire And Breton, Benton Jay Komins Mar 2000

Sightseeing In Paris With Baudelaire And Breton, Benton Jay Komins

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Sightseeing in Paris with Baudelaire and Breton," Benton Jay Komins discusses the tensions between Charles Baudelaire's acts of modern appropriation and André Breton's imaginative seizing of the démodé. While Breton roams the Parisian cityscape with the same aspect of creative gazing as Charles Baudelaire's nineteenth-century dandy, the objects and experiences that he privileges are different from the dandy's fashionable marvels. In texts such as Nadja passé artifacts captivate Breton. Between Baudelaire's revelling in the elegant modern possibilities of dandysme and Breton's imaginative seizing of démodé objects, something significant has occurred: Twentieth-century urbanites like Breton no longer celebrate …


Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, And Postmodern Nostalgia In (Con)Texts Of Return, Patricia D. Fox Dec 1999

Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, And Postmodern Nostalgia In (Con)Texts Of Return, Patricia D. Fox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Patricia D. Fox discusses in her article, "Fiction, Biography, Autobiography, and Postmodern Nostalgia in (Con)Texts of Return," the meditations, in novel and essay, of variously positioned writers and protagonists as each contemplates return to a never glimpsed or long-lost geographical and cultural center. Attempting to decipher the grounding in place and time, by heritage or tradition, Fox's analysis juxtaposes selected texts: Hungarian Rhapsodies: Essays on Ethnicity, Identity and Culture (Richard Teleky, 1997); Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa (Keith B. Richburg, 1998); Dreaming in Cuban: A Novel (Cristina García, 1992); The Hundred Secret Senses (Amy Tan, 1995); Next …


Popular And Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View, Peter Swirski Dec 1999

Popular And Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View, Peter Swirski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Popular and Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View," Peter Swirski discusses the role and status of popular fiction in contemporary culture. Starting with the basic question, "Who needs popular fiction?," he surveys select sociological evidence and prevailing aesthetic arguments in order to take stock of the ways in which highbrow literature and popular fiction relate to each other. He begins with statistical and socio-economic data which casts a different lights on many myths prevailing in scholarship as well as in general social and cultural discourse, such as the death of the novel, the alleged decline of the reading …


A Comparative Approach To European Folk Poetry And The Erotic Wedding Motif, Louise O. Vasvari Dec 1999

A Comparative Approach To European Folk Poetry And The Erotic Wedding Motif, Louise O. Vasvari

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "A Comparative Approach to European Folk Poetry and the Erotic Wedding Motif," Louise O. Vasvari posits that while the corpus of folk poetry in any one area of Europe always differs from neighboring traditions, of greater interest is the existence of a large amount of related material across the continent. Nevertheless, while research in folk poetry has been rich in field collecting and cataloguing, there exists little in-depth comparative study of folk poetry. Doubtless, this is owing in part to the fact that the great majority of the texts are accessible only in the original language or …


Literature, "In-House" Writers, And Processes Of Success In Publishing, Frank De Glas Dec 1999

Literature, "In-House" Writers, And Processes Of Success In Publishing, Frank De Glas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Frank de Glas discusses in his article, "Literature, 'In-House' Writers, and Processes of Success in Publishing," the fact that too many studies of twentieth-century publishing practices concentrate on individual case studies while neglecting more general patterns and that too little use is made of theoretical concepts developed in the sociology of cultural production. He argues that one of the contributing elements in the economic and artistic success of a publishing house is the bringing together of a productive group of "in-house authors." To build up and to maintain such a group, publishers steadily launch new authors who they hope will …


The New Comparative Literature: A Review Article Of Work By Bassnett, Bernheimer, Chevrel, And Tötösy, Joseph Pivato Dec 1999

The New Comparative Literature: A Review Article Of Work By Bassnett, Bernheimer, Chevrel, And Tötösy, Joseph Pivato

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


New Ways In Comparative Literature: A Review Article Of New Work By Tötösy And Tötösy, Dimic, And Sywenky, Ernst Grabovszki Sep 1999

New Ways In Comparative Literature: A Review Article Of New Work By Tötösy And Tötösy, Dimic, And Sywenky, Ernst Grabovszki

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Review Of Didier Souiller And Wladimir Troubetzkoy's Littérature Comparée, Thomas Pavel Sep 1999

Review Of Didier Souiller And Wladimir Troubetzkoy's Littérature Comparée, Thomas Pavel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Identity Politics In Atwood, Kogawa, And Wolf, Jean Wilson Sep 1999

Identity Politics In Atwood, Kogawa, And Wolf, Jean Wilson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Jean Wilson's article, "Identity Politics in Atwood, Kogawa, and Wolf," is a comparative study of three texts published in the early 1980s: Atwood's "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother," Kogawa's Obasan, and Wolf's Cassandra. Identity politics figure prominently in all three literary works, whose common poetic project is one of demythologization and of enabling at the same time the emergence of a new, liberating articulation, a language perhaps "never heard before." These writings interrogate the construction of identities in a patriarchal culture and contribute to a more complex understanding of identity formation. All three works, albeit in different …


Familial Autobiography And The World: A Review Article Of Work By Kenzaburo Oe, Manuel Yang Sep 1999

Familial Autobiography And The World: A Review Article Of Work By Kenzaburo Oe, Manuel Yang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Comparative Literature In Spain Today: A Review Article Of New Work By Romero, Vega And Carbonell, And Guillén, Pablo Zambrano Jun 1999

Comparative Literature In Spain Today: A Review Article Of New Work By Romero, Vega And Carbonell, And Guillén, Pablo Zambrano

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.