Comparative Literature Commons^™

The Dartmouth Brut: Conservation, Authenticity, Dissemination, Deborah Howe, Michelle R. Warren

Dartmouth Scholarship

This essay describes the conservation process of the Dartmouth Brut manuscript: Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library, MS 003183. The format alternates between the observations and descriptions of the conservator, Deborah Howe, and those of medievalists Michelle Warren. The essay includes photos of Deborah's process in making a fragile fifteenth-century manuscript useable in the twenty-first century.

The Pilgrim’S Intuitive Cognition In Pèlerinage De La Vie Humaine, David Strong

Quidditas

This article maintains that the Pilgrim in Guillaume de Deguileville’s allegorical dream vision, Pèlerinage de la vie humaine, acquires a previously unrecognized importance through his cognitive abilities. Each personified figure’s significance depends not upon a general introduction, but the Pilgrim’s ability to identify those traits unique to their person. This mode of intellection mirrors the late Scholastic epistemology of intuitive cognition as championed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. This theory allows the Pilgrim to grasp a particular object’s certitude without relying upon universals. Since this philosophy extols intellectual surety, it serves as a framework for interpreting the …

Visual Representations Of Prester John And His Kingdom, Michael E. Brooks

Quidditas

The mythical figure of the priest-king known to late medieval and early modern Europeans as Prester John fascinated literate Europeans for many centuries. Historians have weighed in on textual depictions of the legendary figure, but visual interpretations by European artists of the physical appearance of this eastern potentate have not been examined in any significant depth. These portrayals primarily took the form of map and book illustrations, and this essay examines the evolving visual representations that European artists developed of Prester John. In general, there was a gradual evolution over time in European artistic depictions of the legendary Prester John, …

Public Shaming: Milton And The English People, Courtney O. Carlisle

Quidditas

“Public Shaming: Milton and the English People” discusses the role of shame and its performance in John Milton’s First and Second Defence of the People of England. As Milton attempts to shame Salmasius and More, he focuses on bodies and their relationship to shame. For Milton, shame should be morally productive—it is meant to produce a sense of self-consciousness and an appropriate moral awareness. Milton argues that Salmasius and More are shameless and therefore not self-conscious or morally aware. Involved with shame and self-consciousness is a profound awareness of one’s body and its relationship to others and to the environment. …

The End Of An Era: John E. Wills Jr’S 1688: A Global History As A Capstone, Nikolas O. Hoel

Quidditas

When designing a course, an appropriate question is how to end it. What great primary or secondary source will send students off into the larger academic world, outside the immediate class at hand with a better understanding of the period they had just been studying? The quandary is important in every medieval or early modern course; for example, does one end the medieval survey with Dante or Petrarch, or even Erasmus? The necessity for a capstone is no less great in classes that are entitled “England to 1688,” which populate many university course catalogues today. Many monographs and articles have …

Resolving Exeter Book Riddles 74 And 33: Stormy Allomorphs Of Water, Thomas Klein, William F. Klein, David Delehanty

Quidditas

The following article argues that the idea of the allomorph is a productive way to view two “transformation” riddles from the Old English collection of riddles in the Exeter Book. In the view of the authors, Riddles 74 and 33 should both be solved generally as “water,” and specifically as “in the form of a thunderstorm.” Both riddles dramatize the multiple forms that water may take, and meditate on the divinely-ordained grandeur of the storm and the particular paradox of a thing being both immensely violent and necessary for life on earth. Understanding how these riddles play out these truths …

Was Frederick Barbarossa The First Holy Roman Emperor?, Thomas Renna

Quidditas

Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90) was the first German emperor—later to be called the Holy Roman Emperor—who gave considerable attention to the three terms of the imperial title. His own registers and contemporary chronicles reveal frequent references to the three components of both his title and the Holy Roman Empire. I argue that Barbarossa was the first to attempt to integrate them into the German traditions of the empire, in particular the method of electing the king of the Romans, the historical ties with Charlemagne, and the concept of the empire as an amalgam of smaller principalities. He was the first to …

John Bale’S Kynge Johan As English Nationalist Propaganda, G. D. George

Quidditas

John Bale is generally associated with the English Reformation rather than the Tudor government. It may be that Bale’s well-know protestant polemics tend to overshadow his place in Thomas Cromwell’s propaganda machine, and that Bale’s Kynge Johan is more a propaganda piece for the Tudor monarchy than it is just another of his Protestant dramas..

Delno C. West Award Winner (2014)

Quidditas

David Strong

The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Nancy Huston's Danse Noire, Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

¡No Contaban Con Mi Astucia! México: Parodia, Nación Y Sujeto En La Serie Televisiva De El Chapulín Colorado, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

¡No contaban con mi astucia! México: parodia, nación y sujeto en la serie televisiva de ‘El Chapulín Colorado’ (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2014) es un estudio revolucionario del impacto y la efectividad residual de la literatura del Siglo de Oro y el periodo colonial en la producción audiovisual de Latinoamérica en el siglo veinte. El trabajo de Roberto Gómez Bolaños (creador de El Chapulín Colorado) se transmite hoy en día tanto en el formato original como en series animadas en varios canales de USA. El público norte americano y la academia están presenciando la consolidación de los estudios audiovisuales …

On World Literatures, Comparative Literature, And (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Ning Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "On World Literatures, Comparative Literature, and (Comparative) Cultural Studies" Ning Wang argues that cultural studies is characterized by being opposed to (elite) literary studies not only because it points to popular or non-elite literature, but also because it challenges the discipline of comparative literature. On the other hand, (comparative) cultural studies complements literary studies in that it contributes a great deal to the reconstruction of a sort of new comparative literature. Wang illustrates how some of the representative Anglo-American comparatists are now doing cultural criticism while still engaging in comparative literature and they paved the way for …

Interdisciplinary Studies And Comparative Literature In China And The West, Aaron Lee Moore

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Interdisciplinary Studies and Comparative Literature in China and the West" Aaron Lee Moore addresses the arguments on the part of Chinese and Western scholars against and for the full inclusion of interdisciplinary studies within the discipline of comparative literature. Interdisciplinary studies, in general, have been resisted in Chinese scholarship as it once was in the U.S. and other Western countries. Moore discusses the major Chinese arguments for and against interdisciplinary studies in general and interdisciplinary studies within comparative literature. Moore's main argument is that the study of literature by necessity must always cross disciplinary boundaries and the …

Western And Oriental Worlds Of Literature And Modern Greek Literature, Maro Kalantzopoulou

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Western and Oriental Worlds of Literature and Modern Greek Literature" Maro Kalantzopoulou explores the extent to which modern Greek literature can be seen as linked to Western and Oriental literary cultures. She discusses examples of literary phenomena featuring Western influences, as well as works which are linked in different ways to Southeastern Europe in general, the Ottoman world, and Oriental literary cultures. Kalantzopoulou's claim is that scholarship tends to associate modern Greek literature with Western literary cultures and dismisses non-Western contributions and influences. Kalantzopoulou suggests that by acknowledging the historical situatedness of such assumptions and by examining …

Introduction To New Work About World Literatures, Graciela Boruszko, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Interculturality And World Literary System(S), Jola Škulj

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Interculturality and World Literary System(s)" Jola Škulj proposes a new framework for studying planetary exchanges of literatures, one that subverts the systemic distinction between centers and peripheries. She advocates a model that can yield the analytical conceptualization and hermeneutic understanding of literary phenomena and their historical reality in the complexity of semiotic traces, in actual distinctiveness of formal and textual deposits, and in interconnections of poetological impacts. She argues that literary facts seen in such intricate networks of mutual intertextual phenomenology and reaccentuations attest to their character of permanent mobility, evident instability, and constant inventive reformulation of …

Positive Uncertainty And The Ethos Of Comparative Literature, Brigitte Le Juez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Positive Uncertainty and the Ethos of Comparative Literature" Brigitte Le Juez examines the continuous difficulty comparatists have with the lack of definition of the discipline and explores possible new avenues for tackling the problem. Le Juez argues that "uncertainty" recognized as a tenet of comparative literature should not be unheeded, but embraced in order to shift the focus from the idea that comparative objects and methods are the defining elements of the discipline and envisage them as the aims and results of an ethos. Le Juez posits that when "indiscipline" and "serendipity" are added to the notion …

World Literature(S) And Comparative Literature: A Book Review Article Of Books Published In English And German 2011-2013, Elke Sturm-Trigonakis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Introduction To New Work In Comparative Literature In Europe, Lucia Boldrini, Marina Grishakova, Matthew Reynolds

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Multilingual Literature, Translation, And Crnjanski's Роман О Лондону (A Novel About London), Biljana Djorić Francuski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Multilingual Literature, Translation, and Crnjanski's Роман о Лондону (A Novel about London)" Biljana Djorić Francuski discusses aspects of the translation of multilingual texts. Although xenisms (words in foreign languages) can often be translated and yet preserved as a part of code mixing, it is difficult to transpose what are known as nonce loans. A further obstacle arises when the author of the multilingual text is such an artist of subtle allusion that the dominant language is pervaded with words and phrases transferred from other languages so that they gain meanings which differ from the expected ones. Djorić …