Comparative Literature Commons^™

Radical Botany: Plants And Speculative Fiction [Table Of Contents], Natania Meeker, Antónia Szabari

Literature

No abstract provided.

The Disposition Of Nature: Environmental Crisis And World Literature [Table Of Contents], Jennifer Wenzel

Literature

How do literature and other cultural forms shape how we imagine the planet, for better or worse? In this rich, original, and long awaited book, Jennifer Wenzel tackles the formal innovations, rhetorical appeals, and sociological imbrications of world literature that might help us confront unevenly distributed environmental crises, including global warming.

The Disposition of Nature argues that assumptions about what nature is are at stake in conflicts over how it is inhabited or used. Both environmental discourse and world literature scholarship tend to confuse parts and wholes. Working with writing and film from Africa, South Asia, and beyond, Wenzel …

Feeling It: Toward Style As Culturally Structured Intuition, Keith Rhodes

Department of English: Faculty Publications

I have been moved to write a serious article about teaching style not because I have great and earth-shaking method to impart, but in some sense because I do not, even after years of study—including the small bit of empirical research at the core of this article. Style, as it turns out, remains as difficult, complex, and ultimately intuitive as most of the rest of writing. I hope, ultimately, to encourage writing teachers to focus more attention on style, basing approaches on what we already know rather than waiting and hoping for some flawless system to materialize. Indeed, by the …

The Player Character's Journey: The Hero's Journey In Moldvay's Dungeons & Dragons, Robert Leopold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the archetypes, motifs, and stages of the Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as they are found in the Moldvay revision of the rules to Basic Dungeons & Dragons, that emerge from playing the game using the seven adventure modules printed for these rules. Using narratological concepts, the definition of what makes narrative is expanded to include the narrative that emerges by playing story-based roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. These narratives, based on the seven adventure modules, are the analyzed using Campbell's monomyth as an interpretive tool, showing that these types of narratives are up to …

Introduction To “Religions In Shakespeare’S Writings, David V. Urban

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

American And Iraqi Prose Fiction Of The Iraq War: Traumas Of The Self, Traumas Of The Nation, Ghyath Manhel Alkinani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

War is so omnipresent in our contemporary world that the story of war is too important to be left to fiction writers to frame and give meaning for. This dissertation provides an analysis of two dominant patterns in contemporary Iraqi and American prose fictional representations of the Iraq War: the individualistic trauma hero narrative and the nationalistic, collective narrative. I argue that the trauma hero myth that dominates American representations of the Iraq War psychologizes and de-politicizes war experience alienating the victim of trauma by decontextualizing their experience and negating the Other. On the other hand, the sweeping nationalistic narrative …

Galápagos: Imaginarios Y Evolución Textual En Las Islas Encantadas, Esteban Mayorga

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Este libro intenta mostrar la representación textual de las islas Galápagos desde su descubrimiento hasta nuestros días. El argumento principal sugiere que la descripción de este espacio crucial para la modernidad, dada la retórica de los escritores de viajes y ficción, transforma el área insular para concebir formas alternativas del proyecto de construcción nacional en América Latina. Como resultado de las empresas coloniales, excursiones científicas, crónicas periodísticas o expediciones, la escritura de viaje de las Galápagos condiciona la formación del estado y su imaginario nacional. Esto ocurre por el capital simbólico que posee archipiélago y por el deseo de los …

The Missing Archive Of Loss, Zeina G. Halabi

Regards

The article examines the power of visual archives and the implication of their absence on the work of mourning. It explores the photographic work of the Iranian artist Azadeh Akhlaghui, who retroactively assigned visual identities to the unrecorded death of prominent Iranian figures. The scenes of death, reconstructed in highly staged photographs, operate as the guardians of collective memory insofar as they enable the work of mourning – a process of reckoning with loss that ultimately frees the collectivity from enduring melancholia.

Résumé

L'article examine le pouvoir de l’archive visuelle et les implications de son absence sur le travail de …

Introduction, La Rédaction De « Regards »

Regards

Dans ce deuxième numéro de la nouvelle formule, Regards se penche sur la question du portrait et de l’autoportrait, qui occupent une place prépondérante dans l’histoire de l’art. La peinture et la littérature, tout autant que le théâtre, le cinéma et les arts visuels, ont tous été tentés de saisir, avec leurs caractéristiques respectives, les traits d’une personne, connue ou anonyme, tandis qu’écrivains et artistes se sont, à un moment ou à un autre, focalisés sur la représentation de soi.

Changing Body And Society: A Speculative Examination Of Portraiture In Choucair’S Non-Representational Corpus, Kirsten Scheid

Regards

What ways do portraits relate people to aesthetic practices and social configurations when representational and individualizing assumptions that ensue from figurative art cannot be assumed? If social being is not given, an art act might be seen to affect primarily an artist’s relation to the possibility of subjectivity. The idea that the audience of an artwork includes the artist herself raises questions about her self-understanding and social being.
Building on my ethnographic research, I conduct a speculative examination of portraiture in relation to the career of Saloua Raouda Choucair towards founding a local art history. To conduct my review, I …

Portraits De Téléspectateurs Turcs : Enquêter Au Coeur Du Quotidien, Nese Öztemir

Regards

Dans le cas de la recherche en SIC, le portrait s’avère être une méthode adaptée pour pénétrer dans le contexte « naturel » de réception et ainsi rendre compte de ce qui se passe « autour de » la télévision. En ce sens, la pratique télévisuelle en Turquie constitue un levier intéressant pour étudier la façon dont l’organisation genrée du monde domestique travaille les rituels de réception. Comme le résume Pasquier (1999 : 233), regarder la télévision, c’est vivre une expérience organisée et socialement normée.
En s’appuyant sur les portraits individuels, travaillés dans le cadre d’entretiens semi-directifs menés dans deux …

Chouchou, Figure Gravée Dans La Mémoire Collective Du Théâtre Libanais, Rawan Kachmar

Regards

Chouchou is the nickname of Lebanese artist Hassan Alâ’ed-dine (1939-1975). Hassan founded the Lebanese National Theatre (1965-1975), the first daily theatre in Lebanon. This theatre produced, during a ten-year period, twenty-six comedic plays in which Chouchou played the main character. Who is Chouchou, though, and how did he turn into a star in the eyes of the Lebanese general public of theatre? Chouchou — with his strong Beiruti accent, a vortex of extravagant movements, a sensitive soul with a fragile heart, a conman with his distinct moustache — appropriated his own unique physical and speech mannerisms, which rendered him a …

جان شمعون وتاريخ لبنان المعلّق, Hady Zaccak

Regards

Jean Chamoun is one of the main Lebanese documentary filmmakers. After taking part in the Palestinian Political Cinema in the seventies, he documented, with his wife, the Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, the main events of the Lebanese War, the resistance in South Lebanon in the eighties until the liberation of the South from Israeli occupation in 2000, and the 2006 war. In his work, Chamoun focused on the human being in his daily life and continuous struggle for dignity under the strain of history. His social and political documentaries, as well as his sole fiction drama – extremely popular but …

العروض الفنية المعاصرة – التجهيز والأداء الفني تأثير التراث والمجتمع والسياسة, Hana Kaaki

Regards

A review of contemporary artistic practices in Lebanon in relation to tradition, the socio-cultural context of production, and politics.

Beyrouth Vagabond, Pascale Feghali

Regards

Starting from the filmed narrative of three characters — Abou Youssef, a homeless person found during the day at the Sanayeh public garden; a security person in charge of a crumbling building in the Grand Hotels’ sector; and Fatmeh, who squats in an abandoned property in the same sector — this article introduces us into the heartland of Beirut through the eyes of tramps and vagabonds. It is made up of narratives and counter-narratives built on elements of reality but that, in fact, speak of another dimension of reality where truth is no longer an issue. The stories are set …

Apocalypse Lakardowo: Ecocritical Analysis In The Film Lakardowo Mencari Keadilan, Aulia Maulida, Abdul Basid

International Review of Humanities Studies

Human-nature interaction today enters a worrying stage. Film as a literary work begins to record this interaction. The film Lakardowo Mencari Keadilan to be one of them. This research uses the content analysis method with an ecocritical approach. This film is a research primary data source supported by various related references. The analysis emphasizes the study of environmental literature which focuses on apocalyptic reading with pastoral views that surround it through Creswell spiral analysis methods: data management, reading, and note-taking, classification and interpretation, then data visualization. In this research, Lakardowo's environment in the film Lakardowo Mencari Keadilan reflects the impact …

The Hobbit, Media Audiences, And The Question Of Genre, Lars Schmeink

Journal of Tolkien Research

The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien is one of Britain’s, if not one of the world’s, most beloved children’s books, whereas his The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) is today considered the keystone text of the modern fantasy genre. Similarly Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has become the defining fantasy film, setting new standards for fantasy to become a mainstream cinematic genre. Based on data collected by the largest audience study to date, the World Hobbit Project, this article argues that the success of Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy is thus linked to its …

Godfrey Of Viterbo’S Pantheon And John Gower’S Confessio Amantis: The Story Of Apollonius Retold, Thari L. Zweers

Accessus

Even though Gower identifies Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon in the first two lines of the "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" in Book VIII of the Confessio Amantis as the main source for his retelling of this tale, the connection between these two works has long been mostly ignored, and even denied. This essay aims to remedy this oversight by showcasing how Gower went beyond merely mentioning the Pantheon and used Godfrey's version of the tale as a thematic and stylistic model for his account of this incestuous tale of desire. Gower takes his cue from Godfrey in imbuing the titillating …

Le Grotesque: Balbutiements Et Modernites. De La Creation D'Une Categorie Esthetique A Son Renouvellement Dans Le Theatre Du Vingtieme Siecle, Agnes Dengreville

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In an attempt to comprehend the notion of Grotesque, this study examines the evolution of one of the most polymorphic, elusive and evolving aesthetic categories in Art and Literature at two moments of its history: its emergence as a critical term in the Arts; and its crucial reappearance in modern age. Indeed, those eras continue to prove challenging. The study of the early stages recieve considerable attention in this critique. Yet, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this is the lack of critical consensus on key points such as: What is the Grotesque; When did it appear or …

La Naissance De L’Autofiction Silencieuse Dans Le Cinéma D’Elia Suleiman : « Hommage Par Assassinat » (1992), Sandra Fatté

Regards

This article questions the link between the aesthetics of silence shaped by Suleiman and his quest for identity. Through the analysis of the second short film by this Palestinian director, Homage by Assassination (1992), we underline this aesthetic and its stakes. In this film, Elia Suleiman incarnates ES, the silent character who appears for the first time on screen; he will be present in his three subsequent feature films. The story takes place one night during the Gulf War in a New York apartment where ES investigates the notion of identity. We introduce the notion of silent autofiction before analysing …