Comparative Literature Commons^™

From Cultural Third-Worldism To The Literary World-System, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "From Cultural Third-Worldism to the Literary World-System" Jernej Habjan links the debate on Franco Moretti's distant reading to the debate on Fredric Jameson's "third world culture." In and around this debate, Aijaz Ahmad both critiqued close reading and rejected Jameson's "Third-Worldism." What Jameson's and Ahmad's interventions into literary theory meant at the end of the real-socialist alternative and what Moretti's meant at the end of the US-American alternative to real-socialism, a synoptic reading of all three interventions might help achieve at the end of what seemed the European alternative to the US-American alternative.

National Literatures As Intimate Expression And The Problem Of Teaching World Literatures, Kette Thomas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "National Literatures as Intimate Expression and the Problem of Teaching World Literatures" Kette Thomas analyzes the fundamental tension embedded in the discourse on teaching world literatures. Thomas focuses on models which contextualize the problem around the subject of allegiance either to the reader or the author rather than the commonly limited geographical, national, and politically defined complex. Focus on the reader or author is often made at the expense of the "other," but it is the tension and communication between them that offers possibilities for the development of the discipline of comparative literature (against Eurocentrism and the …

World Literatures In Secondary School Curricula In Iran, Massih Zekavat

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "World Literatures in Secondary School Curricula in Iran" Massih Zekavat argues that the inclusion and teaching of works of world literature is significant at the secondary school level because it introduces students to a dialogic and polyphonic world where difference is appreciated. Further, Zekavat posits that the pedagogical use of reading world literatures would be the case in particular in countries and cultures where essentialist and homogenizing objectives and practices of culture prevail. Zekavat's argumentation is based on the recent revival of Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur in the U.S. as a pedagogical tool and practice of reading …

Comparative Literature In Chinese: A Survey Of Books Published 2000-2013, Miaomiao Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Variation Theory And Comparative Literature: A Book Review Article About Cao's Work, Ning Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

On Some Worlds Of World Literature(S): A Book Review Article On Ďurišin's, Casanova's, And Damrosch's Work, Anton Pokrivčák

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Comparative Literature, (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Aesthetic Education, And The Humanities, Sonja Stojmenska-Elzeser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Comparative Literature, (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Aesthetic Education, and the Humanities" Sonja Stojmenska-Elzeser discusses comparative literature in the context of cultural studies and aesthetic education. Her starting point is the complexity of comparative literature as an academic discipline propelled by intellectual curiosity for what lies across the barriers which stand in the way of understanding and enjoying creative acts of all kinds everywhere and at all times. Literary and artistic investigations which focus on aesthetic values lead us towards general aesthetics, analyses which situate the arts and literature in context with little regard for aesthetic criteria take us …

European Comparative Literature As Humanism, Bernard Franco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "European Comparative Literature as Humanism" Bernard Franco presents an epistemological reflection on comparative literature in the context of the evolution of the relationships between different forms of knowledge. Franco argues that in the late nineteenth century the notion of the "humanities" replaced that of the "human sciences," but that we have recently returned to a humanist concept of knowledge linked to ethics. Franco focuses on the origins of this critical reflection about the nature of knowledge and on the debate in the Romantic period between rational and non-rational forms of knowledge. The idéologues (Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, …

Geomancing Dib's Transcultural Expression In Translation, Madeleine Campbell

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Geomancing Dib's Transcultural Expression in Translation" Madeleine Campbell analyses Mohammed Dib's treatment of symbols and mythologies from Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. Campbell contextualizes lexical, syntactic, and intertextual elements in Dib's texts with reference to Oriental schemas including the pre-Islamic Mu'allaqāt, The Conference of the Birds by Farīd ud-Dīn Attār and elements of Sufi symbolism. Further, Campbell examines how these elements serve to develop a liminal yet multilingual "reference system" within the framework of the French language. Dib's poetic aesthetic goes beyond surrealism in the intensity of its ontological enquiry and appears to go beyond Sufism in …

Literary Aspects In New Media Art Works, Narvika Bovcon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Literary Aspects in New Media Art Works" Narvika Bovcon discusses examples of new media literature in the works of new media artists Jaka Železnikar and Srečo Dragan. While Železnikar is primarily a net artist who authors new media poetry and online linguistic interventions, the literary segments in Dragan's work are based in conceptual art and video art and he uses them to initiate a happening. Bovcon argues that studies of new media literature — of those works which require a readerly perception — should take time and attempt to capture the general flavor of such works which …

Artaud, Barney, And The Total Work Of Art From Avant-Garde To The Posthuman, Matteo Colombi, Massimo Fusillo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Artaud, Barney, and the Total Work of Art from Avant-Garde to the Posthuman" Matteo Colombi and Massimo Fusillo discuss the aesthetics of Matthew Barney's video-performance art and the theater of Antonin Artaud. Colombi and Fusillo highlight the characteristics of the posthuman: the rejection of Western anthropocentrism and its subversion through hybridization with human, animal, and mechanical elements, the incorporation of Dionysian imagery of the body, and a commitment to the idea of the total work of art in its blending of different artistic mediums, and indeed, of art and life. Using examples from Artaud's writings on theater, …

Cervantes And The World's Literatures: A Book Review Article On Hagedorn's Don Quixote Volumes, José Manuel Lucía Megías

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Trans-Actions : A Bilingual Student Magazine = 譯‧行者, 2013-2014 Bilingual Publication Workshop, Department Of Translation, Lingnan University

Bilingual Publication Workshop 雙語出版工作坊

This magazine, named Trans-actions, is the result of the collective efforts (actions) of the twenty-five students in the translation (Trans) course called Bilingual Publication Workshop. In the spirit of Lingnan's liberal arts educational ethos, this course is held in an experiential learning mode, whereby students learn a wide range of skills and abilities that help them become more well-rounded individuals.

《譯行者》是集翻譯課程「雙語出版工作坊」二十五位同學的汗水和努力於大成的作品。配合嶺南大學的博雅教育精神，同學邊做邊學，通過學習 不同範疇的知識，從而得到全面發展。

Franco-Maghrebi Rap And Benyoucef's Le Nom Du Père, Keith Moser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Franco-Maghrebi Rap and Benyoucef's Le Nom du père" Keith Moser discusses Messaoud Benyoucef's controversial play Le Nom du père and rap as a hybrid art form that has been (re)-appropriated by disenfranchised minorities from all corners of the planet. Exploited and ignored by those at the top of the social ladder, rappers express their anxiety concerning the present situation of inequality in contemporary consumer society. The rending melodies or portraits of human anguish created by rappers give testament to the fact that the interconnected processes of urbanization and globalization have not benefited everyone. In Le Nom …

Transnational Women's Writing: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Fu And Parker And Young, Karen Ferreira-Meyers

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Intertextuality In Kurosawa's Film Adaptation Of Dostoevsky's The Idiot, Saera Yoon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Intertextuality in Kurosawa's Film Adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot" Saera Yoon analyzes the role intertextuality plays in the adjustments Akira Kurosawa made when he translated the classic novel by Dostoevsky onto screen. Kurosawa's 白痴 (Hakuchi), a film adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot, has been the subject of mixed reviews. While some consider the film a successful adaptation that captures the spirit of the original, others criticize Hakuchi for its overly faithful rendition of the novel. What has been missing is an investigation of Kurosawa's filmic strategy. Yoon examines the transposition of a chronotope …

Male Same-Sex Desire In The Romances Of De Troyes, Basil A. Clark

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Male Same-Sex Desire in the Romances of de Troyes" Basil A. Clark extends René Girard's theory of mimetic desire to explore a homocentric subtext in Chrétien de Troyes's Erec and Enide, Lancelot or The Knight of the Cart, The Knight with the Lion or Yvain, and The Story of the Grail or Perceval. While male same-sex desire in these narratives is consistently latent, an argument for its presence is made through Girard's hermeneutic, which postulates that someone (the subject) desires someone or something (the object) not only for its own sake but because …

Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Is First, They Killed My Father a Cambodian testimonio" John T. Maddox discusses aspects of the testimonial. Dialoguing with leading Latin Americanists, Maddox argues that Cambodian writer Loung Ung's First, They Killed My Father (2000) challenges this uniqueness and opens studies on the testimonio to new possibilities for intellectual reflection and political activism. In Maddox's view, the continued use of the term testimonio would serve as a reference to this long-standing tradition of writing and thinking about political violence in Latin America. After a discussion of the debate of the definition and function of testimonio and …

Rewriting Canonical Love Stories From The Peripheries, Karen Ya-Chu Yang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Rewriting Canonical Love Stories from the Peripheries" Karen Ya-Chu Yang compares postcolonial and postmodern intertextuality in Taiwanese and the Caribbean texts. Hsien-Yung Pai's "Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream" (1966) and Tien-Hsin Chu's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1997) are two short stories which depict identity crises of first generation and second generation 外省人 (waishen gren, mainland immigrants). In these two texts disillusionment towards the center's romantic prospects is the lived reality for those compelled to accept their currently marginalized status and adopt hybrid flexibility as a practical survival strategy. In comparison, Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso …

Wilde And The Model Of Homosexuality In Mann's Tod In Venedig, James P. Wilper

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Wilde and the Model of Homosexuality in Mann's Der Tod in Venedig" James P. Wilper examines the influence of Oscar Wilde and the effeminate homosexual identity which cohered as a result of Wilde's trials for act of "gross indecency" in 1895, in Mann's classic homoerotic short novel. Drawing on Alan Sinfield's The Wilde Century (1994) and recent scholarship into the impact of Wilde on German-language writers, as well as German homosexual communities of the early twentieth century, Wilper explores Mann's ambivalent response to Wilde's homosexual legacy. Later in his career, Mann writes of Wilde with Nietzsche …