Comparative Literature Commons^™

Domestic Cruelty: Saevitia And Separation In Medieval France, Kristi Diclemente

Quidditas

This article examines the role cruelty played in marriage separation cases in fourteenth-century Paris. Cruelty was an effective and relatively successful means for women to initiate separation litigation. The archdeacon’s court regularly cited saevitia as a reason for its decision to legally separate marriages. Marital cruelty, however was a complicated issue and what constituted cruelty was not defined within the text. Through an examination of the use of saevitia in the legal cases,in conjunction with contemporary exempla of abusive marriages, such as the vita of Godelieve of Gistel, the author finds that it was a complicated term representing a variety …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2015)

Quidditas

Alaina L. Bupp

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

“I Am I”: The Allegorical Bastard In Shakespeare’S King John, Alaina Bupp

Quidditas

Shakespeare’s King John provides readers with a particularly interesting, though relatively unexamined character: Philip Falconbridge, the bastard. This character exists somewhere between the allegorical forbears of medieval morality plays and the intensely interior specificity of the likes of Hamlet. Philip begins the play with a specific, though fictional, identity, but consciously decides to become allegorical. We can see this transformation at the intersection of text and context, of the words spoken by Philip as he becomes Bastard (the allegorical figure) and the First Folio’s construction of that transformation. Bastard employs particular rhetoric to firstly shed his old, specific identity and …

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.

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 …

Review Of Spanish New York Narratives 1898–1936: Modernization, Otherness And Nation, By David Miranda-Barreiro, Iker González-Allende

Spanish Language and Literature Papers

This book analyzes the representation of New York City in the Spanish narrative during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Miranda-Barreiro argues that New York emerges in this literature as a symbol of modernity, as an image of Otherness and a threat to Spanish values and society. The author connects this reaction with the crisis of Spanish national identity triggered by the end of the Empire in 1898, but he also points out that the Spanish case was not isolated, since European texts show similar anxieties about US modernization. One positive aspect of the book is the study …

Canon Formation And The Reception Of William Blake's And Dickinson's Poetry In Korea, Hyesook Son

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Canon Formation and the Reception of Blake's and Dickinson's Poetry in Korea" Hyesook Son examines a range of aspects with regard to the reception and scholarship of William Blake's and Emily Dickinson's poetry. Son demonstrates by what process these two poets have become canonized and what intellectual factors and ideologies have produced this canonization. The reception of Blake's and Dickinson's work has symptomatically displayed the characteristic Korean interpretive frames working through the last six decades and their limits and inherent possibilities. Today, Korean scholars are examining both their literary inheritance and reconstitute literary scholarship in general in …

Canonization And Ba Jin's (李堯棠) Work In Chinese And Us-American Scholarship, Miaomiao Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Canonization and Ba Jin's (李堯棠 1904-2005) Work in Chinese and US-American Scholarship" Miaomiao Wang discusses the reception of and scholarship on a major Chinese author. Wang explores similarities of and differences in studies on Ba's work in China and the U.S. and analyses the reasons for different viewpoints including research methods and reasons which motivates(d) Chinese and U.S. scholars to study Ba's work. Wang argues that her analysis will be beneficial for Chinese scholars in order to learn about the present situation of studies on Ba's work in US-American scholarship and thus effect a change—as limited this …

Review Article About Chinese Comparative Humanities Journals Published In 2013, Yuan Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Reception And Variations Of Classical Narratology In Chinese Scholarship, Biwu Shang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Reception and Variations of Classical Narratology in Chinese Scholarship" Biwu Shang discusses the field's impact starting in the 1970s to today. Shang's survey includes translations of Western frameworks including introductions published during three waves (the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s respectively). While Shang posits that Chinese narratology owes a debt to English-language Western scholarship, as it stands in the last decades this is counterbalanced with the development of Chinese narratology and Western scholarship started to show interest in Chinese scholarship: indeed, the more exchanges between Chinese scholarship and that of the West develop, the more beneficial the dialogue …

Introduction To New Work On Electronic Literature And Cyberculture, Maya Zalbidea, Mark C. Marino, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Towards A History Of Electronic Literature, Urszula Pawlicka

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Towards a History of Electronic Literature" Urszula Pawlicka investigates the development of theoretical frameworks of and for the study of electronic literature. Pawlicka's objective is show how electronic literature developed and posits that the field underwent to date three transitional phases including several sub-phases where certain aspects and perspectives overlapped. She argues that by distinguishing developments in different phases we can see that electronic literature moved from text to technotext, from text as decoding meaning to text as a process of information and information system, from an interpretation to experience, from visual perception to performativity, from close …

E-Literature, New Media Art, And E-Literary Criticism, Janez Strehovec

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "E-Literature, New Media Art, and E-Literary Criticism" Janez Strehovec explores the commonalities between electronic literature and new media art. Rather than deploying the traditional conceptual apparatus of e-literary criticism directed first and foremost to the new media elements of e-literature, Strehovec takes into account approaches from current theories in the social sciences and humanities. In doing so, he draws upon examples of new media art as a practice in which the novel's social paradigms change the way of art-making and challenge the very function of art. Close-readings of some new media art projects including Bookchin's Mass Ornament …

Towards Digital Art In Information Society, Montse Arbelo, Joseba Franco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Towards Digital Art in Information Society" Montse Arbelo and Joseba Franco propose the development of the platform of a Network of Experimental Centers be formed by small groups of people who are qualified and who seek optimal operational effectiveness and who dedicate their resources to the production of digital content and we offer artechmedia <http://www.artechmedia.org> as a base point of departure. Such an international network in a collaborative structure based on national networks would make possible to coordinate existing resources to develop social networks, generate and promote content, engage in forums of discussion and creativity workshops, and …

New Challenges For The Archiving Of Digital Writing, Heiko Zimmermann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "New Challenges for the Archiving of Digital Writing" Heiko Zimmermann discusses the challenges of the preservation of digital texts. In addition to the problems already at the focus of attention of digital archivists, there are elements in digital literature which need to be taken into consideration when trying to archive them. Zimmermann analyses two works of digital literature, the collaborative writing project A Million Penguins (2006-2007) and Renée Tuner's She… (2008) and shows how the ontology of these texts is bound to elements of performance, to direct social interaction of writers and readers to the uniquely subjective …

The Meaning And Relevance Of Video Game Literacy, Jeroen Bourgonjon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Meaning and Relevance of Video Game Literacy" Jeroen Bourgonjon argues that video gaming deserves scholarly attention as a social practice and a site for meaning-making and learning. Based on an overview of contemporary trends in literacy and cultural studies, he argues that video games cannot be approached like traditional text forms. He contends that video games serve as an important frame of reference for young people and call for informed decision making in the context of culture, education, and policy. Bourgonjon provides an integrated perspective on video game literacy by employing theoretical insights about their distinctive …

Gender Identity Construction Through Talk About Video Games, Sara M. Cole

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender Identity Construction through Talk about Video Games" Sara Cole discusses the construction of gender identity in terms of experiences of digital media and interactive play. Digital literacy expresses, shares, and reaffirms gendered self-identification through experiences of video game play with narratives that either confirm or deny stereotypical biases. In-depth interviews were used to explore the effects of play practices on conceptions of masculinity and personal identity in males who grew up in the 1980s by focusing on a linguistic analysis of the pragmatics of their shared thoughts on play, fantasy, use of digital media, and violence. …

How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(Con)Figures Race And Gender, Beatriz Revelles-Benavente

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(con)figures Race and Gender" Beatriz Revelles-Benavente explores Morrison's Facebook page and comments on it. In 2010, Morrison opened a Facebook page where she received a large amount of comments and created debates and Revelles-Benavente analyses how these comments navigate questions of race and gender. Based on theoretical considerations about issues of race and gender in cyberculture and applied to the narratives posted on Morrison's Facebook page, Revelles-Benavente argues that the problematics of race and gender are relational and the question needs to be centered on the object of study as the relation …

Electronic Literature And The Effects Of Cyberspace On The Body, Maya Zalbidea, Xiana Sotelo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Electronic Literature and the Effects of Cyberspace on the Body" Maya Zalbidea and Xiana Sotelo discuss how new technologies are facilitating the emancipation of subjugated subjects aimed at transforming unequal social relations through an intersectional and performative approach. This perspective is discussed through the exploration of the so-called intersectional approach described by Berger and Guidroz, Haraway's situated knowledges, and Butler's performative agency based on transgressions. Framed within the posthuman, post-biological deconstruction of social and cultural hierarchies, Zalbidea and Sotelo argue for the value of a conjuncture between postcolonial post-modern/post-structuralist literature and the field of feminist cultural studies. …

The Racial Formation Of Chatbots, Mark C. Marino

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Racial Formation of Chatbots" Mark C. Marino introduces electronic literature known as chatbot or conversation agent. These programs are all around us from automated help centers to smartphones (e.g., Siri). These conversation agents are often represented as text or disembodied voices. However, when programmers give them a body or the representation of a body (partial or full), other aspects of their identity become more apparent—particularly their racial or ethnic identity. Marino explores the ways racial identity is constructed through the embodied performance of chatbots and what that indicates for human identity construction on the internet.