Comparative Literature Commons^™

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

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

Recipient of the Breck Award 2024

Jonathan Seyfried

Teaching Margaret Cavendish And Early Modern Women Writers: 1982 - 2013, James Fitzmaurice

Quidditas

I first came across Margaret Cavendish during the summer of 1982 in an innocuous trade collection of early modern women writers. Like many teachers of English, I made a habit of dropping into used book stores, and in such a place I found the collection. It contained a very few selections from Sociable Letters, in among the work of other women. Those few letters set me off on a new path of formal classroom teaching in person and online first at Northern Arizona University and later at the University of Sheffield. Those letters and other material from early modern …

Medieval Hypebeast: The Conspicuous Consumption Of Joan I Of Aragon, Jonathan Seyfried

Quidditas

Limited releases, celebrity culture, and insane profit margins: these features define the hypebeast phenomenon of the early twenty-first century. The rise and fall of this cycle of conspicuous consumption bears remarkable resemblance to the craze for French culture in the Crown of Aragon in the late fourteenth century. King Joan I, starting from the time of his youth as the Duke of Girona, funded several projects to import French culture. In 1380, Joan married Violante de Bar, niece of the French King Charles V and the Duc de Berry. Once Joan and Violante ascended to the throne, they co-created a …

Review: White Before Whiteness In The Late Middle Ages, Alani Hicks-Bartlett

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Teaching Boccaccio's Decameron And The Black Death Post Covid-19, Vanessa Dimaggio

Quidditas

Giovanni Boccaccio’s introduction to the Decameron depicts one of the most gruesome and vivid portraits of the effects of the Black Death in Florence to come out of medieval Italy. Until 2020, students’ understanding of the plague in medieval Florence was, at best, one of lurid interest in the gory details of a disease that killed nearly 1/3 of the population of Europe, an interest far removed from their reality. However, with the rise of the Covid-19 pandemic, students began to understand the difficulties medieval Florentines faced in a way that was all too familiar. This shift in students’ perspective …

Tolkien's 'Beloved' _Pearl_, Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

Abstract: This essay explores Tolkien’s life-long engagement with the fourteenth-century, Middle English, dream vision poem called Pearl. It examines the inspiration he took from the poem through reading, reciting, copying, editing, translating, and teaching it to undergraduate students at the University of Leeds and Merton College, Oxford University. Milestones in Tolkien’s work on Pearl include his edition of it, produced with E.V. Gordon and Ida Gordon for Oxford University Press (1953), and a metrical translation of it that he worked on from 1920s onwards, which was published with Allen & Unwin in London and Random House in New York …

Elwing And The Isle Of Seabirds: Tolkien's Towers And The Lais Of Marie De France, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

During the late 1920s-1930s, J.R.R. Tolkien was engaged in writing numerous poetic lays, many of which he never completed. At the same time, he was engaging in a series of revisions of his grand mythology of Middle-earth, the tales which were posthumously published as The Silmarillion. As he was working on these various projects simultaneously or serially, we should not be surprised to see repeated themes, motifs, and tropes. I argue that among these are several of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) folktale types, especially 432, a version of the Woman Imprisoned in the Tower (Rapunzel) trope termed The …

Introduction To The Special Issue On "J.R.R. Tolkien And Medieval Poets", Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

This is an “Introduction” by Dr. Jane Beal to the Special Issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research on the theme of “J.R.R. Tolkien and Medieval Poets” in honor of Richard C. West.

It begins with an overview of previous scholarly work on the intersections of medieval poetry with Tolkien’s literary corpus. It explains the process of creating this special issue, which is a festschrift in West’s honor, and it gives an overview of the contents of each of the seven academic articles included in it by contributors Dr. Anna Smol, Dr. Christopher Vaccaro, Dr. Kristine Larsen, Dr. Deidre Dawson, …

The Sudden Deluge: Parasite, Matthew 24:36-51, And Immanent Apocalyptic Imagery, Diana Abernethy

Journal of Religion & Film

Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 film Parasite shares significant imagery with the apocalyptic teachings in Matthew 24:36-51. Both feature oblivious carousers before a flood, sleeping homeowners, and domestic workers caught unaware by a returning homeowner. This article argues that this shared imagery gives Parasite an apocalyptic edge that intensifies the film’s warnings about potential consequences of extreme economic disparities in capitalism. This article develops this argument by (1) highlighting the apocalyptic features of Matthew 24:36-51; (2) describing the convergence of imagery between Parasite and Matthew 24:36-51; and (3) exploring how the film’s apocalyptic edge illuminates urgent and latent dangers of extreme …

On Province And Empire In My Ántonia And One Of Ours: Cather’S 1922 The Waste Land, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Willa Cather profoundly alters her attitude towards the American experiment, World War I, and the prospect of cultural pluralism in America between her 1918 My Antonia and her 1922 One of Ours. In doing so, she addresses the issue of what kind of culture America should have: a monistic one such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson advocated or a pluralistic one. In My Antonia, set during the period of Great Plains settlement but extending up into World War I, she presents an intact American cultural pluralism: non-English speaking European cultures continuing their positive practices absent the monarchic repression …

Ang Dalumat At Parikala Ng “Liwanag” At “Dilim” Sa Loob At Labas Ng Lente Ng Kamera (The Concepts And Paradoxes Of “Liwanag” And “Dilim” Within And Beyond The Camera Lens), Jay Jomar F. Quintos

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Sinisiyasat ng sanaysay na ito ang dalumat at parikala na nakapaloob sa “liwanag” at “dilim” sa imahinasyong pangkultura sa Pilipinas. Sa ganang ito, tinutukoy ko ang iba’t ibang balon ng sanggunian tulad ng epiko, pasyon, materyal na pangrebolusyon, at pelikulang katatakutan upang matunton kung papaano nabago ang kayarian ng mga elemento ng “liwanag” at “dilim.” Susuriin ko ang anim na episodyo mula sa serye ng pelikulang katatakutang Shake, Rattle, and Roll na tahasang naghahayag ng “liwanag” at “dilim” sa paraan nito ng pag-iilaw at pagsasalaysay. Sa ganitong konteksto ng pagsusuri maaaring makita ang mariing artikulasyon at pag-unawa sa kung minsa’y …

Fallen Kingdoms And Ancient Monoliths: The Influence Of Atlantis And Egypt In Tolkien’S Númenor, Charlotte J. Brockway

Journal of Tolkien Research

In light of the recent publication of The Fall of Númenor, my essay aims to focus on Tolkien’s, somewhat underappreciated, influences on Gondor; particularly Ancient Egypt. This essay looks at Plato's Timaeus and Critias, Ignatius Donnelly's theories, and examines the Atlantean and Egyptian motifs in Tolkien’s version of Westernesse, in particular, the remnants of Atlantean civilization survived by Egyptian colonists which mirror the Realms of Exile (Gondor and Arnor).

Fairy Tales In Service Of Political Projects: “Hansel And Gretel” In Changing Political Regimes, Polona Tratnik

Marvels & Tales

The production of fairy tales depends on political interests. The tales’ regimes of production and anticipated reception condition their inscribed ideological inclinations and erasures. I examine how Kinder- und Hausmärchen by the brothers Grimm contributed to nation-building and, focusing on “Hansel and Gretel,” how the changing regimes of production required omissions in the translations of the Grimms’ tales into Slovenian. I argue that the sui generis appropriation of the tale titled “Janko and Metka” by the writer France Bevk helped build a socialist nation. Finally, the article comments on some issues in capitalist regimes of fairy-tale production.

“A Fear Of Anything Large And Alive, And Not Easily Tamed Or Destroyed”: Kaiju In The Lord Of The Rings, Kristine Larsen

Journal of Tolkien Research

The publication of The Lord of the Rings (1954-5) coincided with the start of the so-called kaiju movement in popular culture, featuring giant, sentient, and destructive creatures. Famously originating with Godzilla (1954), kaiju films have persistently cornered a portion of the popular culture market over the past 70 years; therefore, the genre would be presumed to play a role in audience expectations for the depictions of such creatures in the Jackson adaptations of the novels. In light of the June 2024 limited run of remastered versions of Jackson’s LOTR film trilogy, I analyze four of his interpretations of …

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew Editor-In-Chief

Comparative Civilizations Review

Although the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations was formally launched in 1961 via a scholarly conference convened in Salzburg, Austria, which brought together many of the world’s leading experts on the subject under the sponsorship of the Austrian government and UNESCO, regular annual meetings for those interested in comparative civilizations have been held subsequently by the society variously in North America, South America, Asia or Europe almost every year since that time.

Former Iscsc President Wayne Bledsoe: An Appreciation, Michael Palencia-Roth

Comparative Civilizations Review

About three weeks before Wayne Bledsoe died on the 2nd of June 2024, at 83, my wife Elaine and I commented to each other that we simply had to get in touch with him and Deb again, for too much time had passed since we had seen each other. We did not know that he was ill, and so the news of his death surprised and distressed us.

Cognosis And The Evolution Of Civilization, Ken Baskin

Comparative Civilizations Review

From the time when the complex states such as Egypt or Sumer emerged roughly 5,000 years ago, the civilizations they represent have generally become more populous, more socially varied, wealthier, and more technologically advanced. As a result, the innovations they produced would begin to change the conditions in which they existed, and their cultures have had to evolve to adapt to this ongoing change. For instance, the cultures of Bronze Age Egypt and the Iron Age Han Dynasty had to be quite different, even though both were agricultural societies. And, of course, the Electronic Age cultures of the United States …

Is Donald Trump A Modern-Day Catiline?, Jamie González-Ocaña

Comparative Civilizations Review

Could the story of a failed Roman politician who organized a plot to seize the Roman republic in 63 BCE be a metaphor for Donald Trump’s political persona — his initial presidential run against the establishment, his rhetorical effort to overthrow the status quo and the natural order of things in national politics, the love affair Trump has always had with the struggling working-class voters (with the “forgotten” Americans), his constant testing the Constitutional limits of our republican system of government? Could both figures be symptoms of times when a republic is in crisis and reminders of the perils that …

Niccolò Longobardo And The Early Modern Encounter Of Europe With China, Yu Liu

Comparative Civilizations Review

Writing in 1962 about the founding fathers of the early modern Jesuit China mission, Jesuit historian George H. Dunne famously called them the generation of giants “who, breaking with the dominant spirit of their times and recalling a distant past, restored the concept of cultural adaptation to a central position in the world mission of Christianity.”