Comparative Literature Commons^™

Review: Architectural Involutions: Writing, Staging, And Building Space, C. 1435–1650. Mimi Yiu., Kelly Stage

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Mimi Yiu’s Architectural Involutions is an expansive, impressive, and largely interdisciplinary study. Many recent books have touched on related topics—probably most relevantly Henry Turner’s The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts 1580–1630—but this one reads from architecture and space forward rather than seeks answers about the theater foremost. The book’s main focus is to theorize the “inward journey” made possible by modes of understanding, building, and reading space in early modern Europe, although England is central to much of the work’s concerns. As Yiu explains in her introduction, the book “suggests a method for spatial mapping …

The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The subversion of East and West in Orhan Pamuk's novel, The White Castle" Adile Aslan seeks to show how Orhan Pamuk plays with the theme of East versus West in his third novel The White Castle (1985), with the aim of de-essentializing both concepts. In 1928, Perso-Arabic script, in use for centuries as the main writing system in the Ottoman Empire, was replaced with Latin alphabet (accompanied by an intensive Turkification of the Ottoman language in the coming years) as a part of a larger modernization-Westernization project in the new nation state, a move which effectively …

On The Culturalization Of Ethnic Economy In China, Yi Liu, Jiayan Xiao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "On the Culturalization of Ethnic Economy in China" Liu Yiand Xiao Jia-Yan examine the cultural impact of autonomous minority regions on national economy. This study surveys the internal factors that include geography and history as well as external factor such as govermental policy. The findings suggest that cultural factors should be taken into greater consideration, as they are an important aspect in the inner motivation to push forward the economic development of ethnic areas at a faster pace. The paper argues that culture can afford the most efficient pathway for these ethnic areas in terms of economic …

Collective Memory In Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident As A Case Study, Idham Badruzaman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Collective Memory in Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study" Idham Badruzaman provides an example of how to build a peaceful Asian Community. The Foundation is establishing forms of bilateral cooperation at the educational level; mostly in universities and higher education institutions across the world. These programs are contributing to create cross-cultural ties within the Asian Community and across the world, surpassing national interests and boundaries, fostering inter-culturalism, and promoting tolerance amid differences. By focusing on the Nanjing Incident, the paper provides an example of how the building of collective memory can help reconciliation, showing …

Differences And Similarities In The Discourse Of Equality In Cross Cultural Academic Dialogues Europe-China, Xiana Sotelo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "Differences and Similarities in the Discourse of Equality in Cross Cultural Academic Dialogues Europe-China" Xiana Sotelo provides an overall summary of the historical, political and socioeconomic context of Chinese women and their understanding of equality. The paper also embraces commonalities and nodal points between Chinese and European gender academics. In particular, it highlights the realization that cross-cultural misunderstandings are not triggered by essential differences among us, but by the ignorance of our particularities and specific contexts. The willingness to be open to the diversity of each other´s realities, and to reject hegemonic discourses of sameness, paves the …

Portraits Of Jeju Haenyeo As Models Of Empowerment In The Korean Newspaper Maeilshinbo During Japanese Occupation, Seohyeon Lee, Soon-Ok Myong

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Portraits of Jeju Haenyeo as Models of Empowerment in the Korean Newspaper Maeilshinbo during Japanese Occupation" Seohyeon Lee and Soon-ok Myong analyze the life of Korean women divers, Jeju Haenyeo, portrayed in the news articles of the Maeilshinbo, the only Korean newspaper during Japanese occupation (1910-1945). In the past, the activities of Haenyeo have been considered the cultural product of Jeju Island. However, within a structure of female repression, Confucian feudalism and colonization, the Haenyeo can be seen as emancipatory pioneers and voluntary economic agents, displaying initiative and pro-activeness and protecting their rights and …

Bibliography For The One Asia Foundation And Its Cooperation And Peace-Making Project, Shi Yan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The One Asia Foundation And Its Cooperation And Peace-Making Project, Asunción Lópezvarela Azcárate

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Innovations In Self-Consciousness. Towards Oneness With The World, Soon-Ok Myong, Byong-Soon Chun

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Innovations in Self-Consciousness. Towards Oneness with the World" Soon-ok Myong and Byong-soon Chun examine the limitations and vulnerabilities of modern civilization. Asia is a multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural territory of over 40 countries and more than 4.4 billion people, that is, almost half of the population of the world. The One Asia community seeks to question a world made up of strong egos that make up businesses, organization and nations, and embrace communal goals, helping Asia and the world to become 'one community.' Thus, the paper suggests ways of self-innovation through forms of transitional consciousness. Although the …

A Confucian Holistic World Order And China's Vision Of A Shared Future, Huiyong Wu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Confucian Holistic World Order and China's Vision of a Shared Future," Huiyong Wu traces the differences between the Western world and China, as well as their impact upon politics, economic relations and culture. In particular, Wu focuses on China's political ideal, based on Confucian moral ethics, which emphasizes inter-subjectivity over the individual subjectivity, and which holds a strong vision of communal respect among national citizens. This vision might be somehow in conflict with the Western tradition that places individual freedom above everything else. Through initiatives like "the Belt and Road" China is steadily developing and promoting …

Dayak Lundayeh: A Report From The Border, Luqman Hakim Zainuri

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Dayak Lundayeh: A Report from the Border" Luqman H. Zainuri explores the vulnerabilities and potential of national disintegration coming from indigenous communities in Indonesia. In particular, the paper focuses on one of the communities which has been largely ignored, the Dayak people, who have played an important role in the border between Indonesia and Malaysia in Borneo Island. The Dayak indigenous people which inhabit this highland plateau are known as the Lun Bawang, on the Malaysian side, and the Lun Dayeh (or Lundayeh) in the Indonesian side. Both groups are linguistically and culturally the same. This paper …

七月派翻译家研究, Qingyang Gui

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

中国现代文学流派“七月派”强调文学创作中的“主观战斗精神”和“精神奴役创伤”，因其在文学领域异质凸显，与代表主流文化的文艺思想不尽契合，导致了 1955年中华人民共和国的第一大“文字狱”。自20世纪80年代以来，胡风事件及胡风文艺思想重新进入学术研宄视野，成为史学界和文艺界的研宄热点，但迄今为止国内外关于七月派研宄的现状并不令人满意，正如周燕芬所指出的，“现在的研宄成果中，实在留下不少史料的空白或者因史料的不信、疑虑、矛盾而带来的所谓‘分寸’，所谓‘留有余地’，说到底，依然是研宄的一种不清楚和未完成状态”（周燕芬，2013:6)。而就七月派翻译家研宄而言，也存在诸多研宄缺口。本论文论题有三：1、七月派作为“新文学的骄傲”， 其领袖人物胡风的文艺理论特质何在？影响了怎样一个文学流派及翻译家群体？2、七月派翻译家以“启蒙现实主义”为译介出发点，形成了怎样的译介主张？3、从翻译政治学、描写翻译学理论、生存心态等视角探讨以胡风、满涛、 绿原、呂荧等为代表的七月派翻译家具有哪些群体特征？本论文得出以下结论: 七月派翻译群体是我国翻译史上不可忽视的群体，他们基于启蒙现实主义思想的译介主张是以为时代和战斗而翻译，为文学经典生成而翻译，为民族文学发展而翻译为主要特征的。而胡风“为时代、为战斗而翻译”的“武器”翻译论， 满涛“传达精义”的翻译观，绿原“整体效果”、翻译“异同”性、名著重译 “接力赛”等译论，呂荧“谐意谐音”的诗歌翻译理念等等，既是对七月派翻译主张的体现和深化，又是各自翻译实践的重要指导思想。本研宄原创性在于: 在追根溯源七月派的源流、定义及其影响的基础上，从活生生的研宄对象及历史语境出发，对胡风文艺理论影响七月派翻译主张形成的过程以及七月派翻译家的文化生态作出相对可靠的历史复原，让读者对该时期的翻译历史全貌具有更清晰的了解，这在近现代翻译史研宄上不啻为一个重要发现。

Early Ecologies: Distance Reading Popular Scientific Journals In Turn-Of-The-Century Sweden, Erin Modersitzki, Dr. Christopher Oscarson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The understanding of art and literature depends on an ability to contextualize it within the discourses from which it emerges. This project combined two important new strands of literary research to flesh out the context in which the idea of ecology emerged in Sweden: digital humanities and ecocriticism. We used digital tools to complement traditional literary approaches, broadening our understanding of even non-literary texts by suggesting patterns and constellations of ideas that elude any individual reader attempting to read and analyze hundreds of thousands of pages of text. Proving the viability of these “distant reading” tools through test cases like …

“More Human Than Human”: Lacan’S Mirror Stage Theory And Posthumanism In Philip K. Dick’S Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Richelle V. Finn

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is examined using French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory. In the novel, humans have built androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans except that they lack a sense of empathy, or so the humans believe. The Voigt-Kampff Machine is a polygraph-like device used to determine if a subject shows signs of empathy in order to confirm if one is an android or a human. Yet, should empathy be the defining quality of determining humanity?

In his article "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the …

“Home Sweet Home”: Displacement And Belonging In Post-1960s Diasporic Chinese Literature, Melody Yunzi Li

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Situated at the intersection of Sinophone and Diaspora Studies and focusing on the rhetoric of “home,” my dissertation explores the ways in which Chinese immigrant Sinophone writers and Anglophone writers in the U.S. construct “imaginative homes” in response to the absence of their physical homes. Through detailed analysis of works by Yu Lihua (Again the Palm Trees, 1967), Yan Geling (The Criminal Lu Yanshi, 2011; A Woman’s Epic, 2006), Pai Hsien-yung (Taipei People, 1971), Shi Yu (New York Lover, 2004), Chen Qian (Listen to the Caged Bird Sing, 2010), Rong Rong (Notes of a Couple, 2004) and Ha Jin (A …

Cathartic Concentration: Meditation And Altered States In Apuleius' Metamorphoses, Benjamin L. John

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In this thesis, I offer my reading of Apuleius’ novel, the Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass. Modern scholars are divided on whether we should read the novel as a genuine expression of religio-philosophical sentiment or a satire of religious devotion. My goal is to show that these are not mutually exclusive readings, but two positions from which to consider the idea of spiritual transcendence.

The first chapter explores the way that Apuleius uses light imagery to characterize the religious experience of the novel’s protagonist, Lucius, by analyzing similar phenomena in contemporary and modern descriptions of altered states of …

Open Ears, Open Mind, Open Heart: Active Listening, Mia Nguyen

Service-Learning | Student Scholarship

Active listening is the act of listening with all senses– the body, the mind, and the soul. It means empathizing with another person and finding that place within ourselves where we can listen beyond our initial judgements and personal feelings. It is listening beyond words and allowing our souls to understand, connect, and accept one another. Active listening sparks internal purity eliminating all types of judgement and allowing us to truly take in what another person has to offer. It is “an experience of language as a bodily felt process” in which we have a felt understanding rather than a …

A Psychoanalytic Reading Of Haruki Murakami’S “The Little Green Monster,” “All God’S Children Can Dance,” And “Tv People”, Sara Ferreira

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Forgotten Fairies: Traditional English Folklore In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Alexandra Larkin

The Criterion

While the fairies shown in the play would have been known by Shakespeare’s audience, there was a clear difference between the fairies of traditional folklore and the fairies that Shakespeare describes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In traditional English folklore, fairies were “made” for, and by, the middle and lower classes; their stories were most believed and the most encounters were experienced by these people. Fairies in folklore were alternatingly deadly and wildly helpful, giving humans who stumbled upon them presents or death. In the play, Shakespeare departs from more traditional depictions of fairies and instead characterizes these magical creatures …

Something In Nothing: A Discussion Of Madness And Wisdom In King Lear, Leela Mennillo

The Criterion

This essay argues against Shakespeare critic David Kastan’s nihilistic reading of King Lear. While I agree that nothingness lies at the heart of the tragedy, I maintain that the recurring theme of nothing does not depict a world devoid of meaning. Rather, Shakespeare suggests that the recognition of the abyss is necessary in the quest for higher meaning. I approach this debate through various philosophical lenses, presenting a reading that equates wisdom and nothingness. Cordelia’s recognition of the limitations of human knowledge first introduces this idea. I detect elements of the divine nature of nothingness in the seemingly nonsensical speeches …