Comparative Literature Commons^™

Felix Holt: The Radical And The Gusset Of Cryptic Futurity, Rodney Stenning Edgecombe

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Most Victorian novels avail themselves of tidying codas in which the author projects the story into a future-turned-present and, counterpointed by wedding bells, maps out as close an approximation to the 'happily ever after' formula as the constraints of realism will allow. The locus classicus for this procedure occurs at the end of Martin Chuzzlewit:

And coming from a garden, Tom, bestrewn with flowers by children's hands, thy sister, little Ruth, as light of foot and heart as in old days, sits down beside thee. From the Present, and the Past, with which she is so tenderly entwined in all …

Conference Report: Annual George Eliot Conference: Middlemarch, Institute Of English Studies, 22 November 2014, A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Only by combining papers on Romola and Felix Holt. did the 2013 George Eliot Conference manage to attract a tolerably-sized audience; no such problems for the 2014 Conference on Middlemarch. This excellent event was oversubscribed and had to be moved to the biggest room in the Institute of English Studies at the University of London. Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck, London and Swansea) and Louise Lee (Roehampton) yet again organized everything, bringing together a group of speakers who made us think about widely differing issues to do with Eliot's occasional uncertainty, Eliot and Mrs. Gaskell, the sex lives of young nineteenth-century women, …

Review Of George Eliot And Money: Economics, Ethics And Literature, Dermot Coleman

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is an important book which fills a gap in George Eliot studies by exploring with impressive authority the novelist's handling of money and economics in her life and work, on the premise that, for her, the economic was an essential constituent of a 'comprehensive ethical understanding' (p. 8). The author is unusually well-qualified for an analysis of economic theory and practice, having co-founded a hedge fund in the late 1990s and retired from the business of investment management shortly before the financial crisis of 2008. He modestly disclaims any foreknowledge of that crisis but points out that his knowledge …

How Much Did Dorothea And Celia Know? Sexual Ignornace And Knowledge Among Unmarried Girls In Middlemarch, Marianne Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Readers, in my experience, often make an assumption that unmarried girls in nineteenth century novels know nothing about sex, and this seems to be particularly the case regarding Dorothea Brooke. Had she only known about sex, so the adage goes, she would never have made her disastrous marriage choice. In this article I would like to examine this assumption in closer detail, looking not just at Dorothea and Celia, but also Rosamond Vincy and Mary Garth. I do not necessarily want to turn the notion on its head - I am not going to claim these girls were closet readers …

Review Of Middlemarch: Critical Approaches To The Novel, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This book is a reprint of the 1967 edition published by the Athlone Press, one of '56 classic works of literary criticism' that Bloomsbury is reprinting from Athlone Press. This opportunity to revisit and reassess works that were highly regarded in their day should be welcomed and one hopes that the archives of other academic publishers may also be subject to similar treatment. It is not good for the health of literary criticism if significant studies of the past are not easily accessible to readers and critics in the present.

I remember reading this book fairly close to when it …

Japanese Branch Report- 2014, Eri Kobayashi

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 29 November 2014, at the 18th General Meeting of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan, three papers on George Eliot's novels were read in the morning session. In the afternoon, a symposium on Eliot's poems was held and in the evening session a keynote speech was given by Professor Minoru Kawakita.

Chaired by Professor Kimitaka Hara (Nihon University), the morning session saw our first speaker, Masako Ishii (Kyoto University), discussing The Mill on the Floss from the standpoint of the destiny of Maggie Tulliver, especially in relation to her conflict with the socially restrictive norms of a provincial town …

Mr. Booke's Thinking Organ, Kate Osborne

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A scene in Middlemarch's thirtieth chapter describes how the creative process can slip out of a writer's control.! A letter has arrived from Mr. Casaubon's estranged cousin, Will Ladislaw, asking whether Will may visit Casaubon and Dorothea at their home at Lowick. But Casaubon is gravely ill and Dorothea is so overwhelmed by her husband's illness and also by the thought of seeing Will that she cannot even read the letter. She asks her uncle, Mr. Brooke, to reply in her stead, 'to let Will know that Casaubon had been ill, and that his health would not allow the reception …

Middle Eastern-American Literature: A Contemporary Turn In Emerson Studies, Roger Sedarat

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Live From New York, It's The Translation Of Cultural Humor!, Megan Hosack

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Translating comedic material into another language presents challenges both in accurately representing specific words and idioms and in conveying social conventions and national temperament. As American television programs gain international popularity, there is a developing need for understanding these issues of translation.

Several American comedy television programs have gained popularity in Spain in recent years. Shows including The Big Bang Theory and The Simpsons have been translated into Spanish and dubbed by Spanish voice actors to air on television stations in Spain (Grandio). "Big Bang," the Spanish version of The Big Bang Theory has been on the air in Spain …

De Syon Exierit Lex Et Verbum Domini De Iherusalem’: An Exegetical Discourse (C. 400-C. 1200) That Informed Crusaders’ Views Of Jews, Todd P. Upton

Quidditas

This paper assesses how medieval Christian writers transformed encounters with Middle Eastern peoples such as the Jews into a complex theological discourse via the medium used by Pope Urban II in 1095 to launch the First Crusade, the Latin sermon. It argues that a hitherto unnoted homiletic tradition about Jews originated in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages based (1) on exegetical polemics that stretched back centuries in Christian theology, and (2) on a discernible chronicle and sermon tradition that depicted Jews in varying degrees of apologia based on a prophesied role as “witnesses” to the eschatological expectations of …

The Role Of Rumor And The Prodigal Son: Shakespeare’S Sources And Fathers And Sons In The Second Henriad, Steven Hrdlicka

Quidditas

This article challenges traditional, critical interpretations of Shakespeare’s character Prince Hal by examining changes Shakespeare makes to sources he used, in particular the anonymous play Famous Victories of Henry V. Shakespeare does not portray a “prodigal” Prince Hal character as has often been argued by critics, but instead carefully follows Holinshed’s observations that the prince was virtuous in youth and that rumors about the prince’s supposed prodigal behavior were spread by those who were in the service of Henry IV. These rumors were aimed to cause conflict between father and son. Shakespeare’s inclusion of these two important details found in …

The Trialectics Of Transnational Migrant Women’S Literature In The Writing Of Edwidge Danticat And Julia Alvarez, Jennifer Lynn Karash-Eastman

Theses and Dissertations

While a considerable critical field has developed around US Latino writing, due to the historical, cultural and sociolinguistic barriers between the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, critical investigations of these migrant literatures are often not bridged, but rather isolated into respective Haitian-American and Dominican-American designations. My comparative, critical framework defines the interactions between gender, culture and the diverse spatial coordinates from the island of Hispaniola, the Atlantic and the United States. The carefully differentiated objects of study that I articulate in each chapter offer a desirable interdisciplinary orientation inclusive of gender theory as well as cultural studies. …

Unacknowledged Victims: Love Between Women In The Narrative Of The Holocaust. An Analysis Of Memoirs, Novels, Film And Public Memorials, Isabel Meusen

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation combines cultural theory and gender theory with literary criticism to evaluate the treatment of lesbians during the Holocaust and in narratives about the Holocaust. Responding to the kissing-scene controversy of the Berlin memorial for the homosexual victims of the Holocaust I claim that lesbian women’s experience of suffering is downplayed and disappears under the umbrella term ‘homosexuals.’ Employing a critical historical conceptualization of “lesbian love,” I consider examples from Claudia Schoppmann’s Days of Masquerade and Verbotene Verhältnisse as well as the personal estate of political activist Hilde Radusch to trace the personal view lesbians have of themselves. Shifting …

Kierkegaard And Byron: Disability, Irony, And The Undead, Troy Wellington Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After enumerating the implicit and explicit references to Lord Byron in the corpus of Søren Kierkegaard, chapter 1, "Kierkegaard and Byron," provides a historical backdrop by surveying the influence of Byron and Byronism on the literary circles of Golden Age Copenhagen. Chapter 2, "Disability," theorizes that Kierkegaard later spurned Byron as a hedonistic "cripple" because of the metonymy between him and his (i.e., Kierkegaard's) enemy Peder Ludvig Møller. Møller was an editor at The Corsair, the disreputable satirical newspaper that mocked Kierkegaard's disability in a series of caricatures. As a poet, critic, and eroticist, Møller was eminently Byronic, and both …

Dwelling Poetically, Proceeding Orphically: The Platonic Tradition And The Heideggerian Humanism Of Ernesto Grassi, Geoffrey Alexander Leeves Bain

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Martin Heidegger exerted an immense influence over twentieth century thought by providing profound insights into the nature of Being as well as scathing social critiques, focused on the destructive force of late modern technological reductionism. As part of Heidegger’s project, he elaborated upon a sophisticated history of Being in which two great monsters of Platonism and Humanism are cast as Antichrist and False Prophet. Subsequently, however, his own student Ernesto Grassi argued that Renaissance Humanism was not a stepping stone towards subjectivism and technological thinking, but rather stood in conformity with the fundamental essence of Heidegger’s own project. This study …

Misreading The River: Heraclitean Hope In Postmodern Texts, Nancy Lee Roane

Honors Papers

Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, known for his theory of "constant flux," may be one of the most misunderstood and misquoted thinkers of Western philosophy. The way that the protagonist of Julio Cortazar’s Rayuela misreads Heraclitus serves as one example of this phenomenon wherein poorly-conceived postmodern inquiries that seek to weaken the idea of a Truth lead to a nihilistic apathy. Horacio Oliveira misunderstands Heraclitus’ doctrine of constant flux and uses this misreading to “logically” justify his sexist and elitist behavior towards others. This phenomenon crops up again in Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Fin de Partie through Hamm, a patriarch that …

Reconstructing Seville: Translating Eduardo Del Campo’S Capital Sur, Hannah Lynn Varadi

Honors Papers

In the semi-biographical Capital Sur (2011), Spanish journalist Eduardo del Campo draws on experimental narrative techniques to portray his home city of Seville as he saw it in the 1990’s: a barometer of Spain’s social and economic crises. Here I compare modern translation theories to my own partial translation of this novel into English, which I place in the context of the U.S. translation publishing industry. I also show how the historical and cultural context of Seville influence the text’s themes—including del Campo’s critique of the hegemonic ways that countries such as the United States tend to exoticize Spain’s culture.

Destination Hong Kong: Negotiating Locality In Hong Kong Novels 1945-1966, Xianmin Shen

Theses and Dissertations

Recent clashes between China and Hong Kong have attracted worldwide attention. Behind such clashes, I see anxieties over the Hong Kong identity. Based on Ackbar Abbas' theorization of the "politics of disappearance" in Hong Kong, this dissertation focuses on the postwar period in Hong Kong from 1945 to 1966. I argue going back to this historical era, which help us understand how Chineseness in Hong Kong influences people’s imagination of Hong Kong. Concentrating on four novels written between 1945 and 1966, this dissertation pays close attention to the ways in which the (re)interpretations of Chineseness in these Hong Kong novels …

Resurrectio Mortuorum: Plato’S Use Of Ἀνάγκη In The Dialogues, Joshua B. Gehling

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s Thesis, entitled “Resurrectio Mortuorum: Plato’s Use of Ἀνάγκη in the Dialogues,” features an extended consideration of Plato’s usage of the word ἀνάγκη as a dialogical response in the writings of Plato. Hopefully, it will highlight the uniqueness of this particular response in the context of many other affirmative responses used in the dialogues. The first section of the thesis (I) will lay out what I take to be Plato’s conception of his philosophical project and where ἀνάγκη fits into this picture. The texts there considered will be mainly “The Seventh Letter” and the Phaedrus. With this interpretive …

The Life Aquatic: Liquid Poetics And The Discourse Of Friendship In The Faerie Queene, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

From Michel de Montainge’s essay “Of Friendship” to Jacques Derrida’s rearticulation of the former in The Politics of Friendship, scholars both early modern and modern have sought ways to address the fluid co-mixture of bodies from which the discourse of friendship can and does emerge. More recently still, new materialist thinkers of ontology have begun to shift our attention to the ways both human and nonhuman bodies inter-animate in the making of political, interpersonal, and artistic life worlds. Together with these investigations, I argue that an aquacentric account of relation is necessary to think the subject of friendship …