Comparative Literature Commons^™

Those Who Weep: Tears, Eyes, And Blood In The Boussu Hours, Katharine Davidson Bekker

Quidditas

Simon Marmion and the Master of Antoine Rolin’s Boussu Hours (ca. 1490-95) is resplendent with imagery of suffering in its unusual marginal decorations. Holy effluvia—blood and tears—flow from golden pages covered in wounds and weeping eyes. These decorations, surrounding the Hours of the Passion, pictorially enact a theological notion of tears as wounding agents, and spiritually prompt the reader’s contrition. Notable wear on the “bloody” page indicates a pattern of tactile interaction between book and reader; this physical engagement with the marginals represents a quasi-liturgical manifestation of guilt and efforts made to abate it. The gestural touching of the page …

Me Veo A Mi Mismo Leyendo : Ricardo Piglia’S Aesthetic Education In Los Diarios De Emilio Renzi, D. Bret Leraul

Faculty Journal Articles

This article examines Ricardo Piglia’s relationship to the literary field as an aesthetic education that emerges from the encounter between his field-shaping poetics and its reflection among critics, or critical mimesis. Piglia’s field poetics are exemplified by the disjunctive “I” that narrates the diaries, the misattribution of their authorship to Piglia’s longtime alter ego Emilio Renzi, and a constant representation of acts of self-observation. The architecture of the diaristic subject is wedded to its institutional inscription; that is, the form of this subject is the communion of readers and writers in the autobiographical and autofictive genres. Similarly, material inscription not …

The Case For Hildeburg: Beowulf And Ethical Subjectivity, Wendolyn Weber

Quidditas

This essay argues for a reading of Beowulf, and the female peaceweaver figures therein, in contemporary philosophical terms of Levinasian ethical subjectivity. Such a reading illuminates the peaceweaver, often caught between action and passivity and viewed as a victim of death-driven masculinist heroic culture, as an exemplar rather of the radical destabilization experienced through ethical subjection and an important key to the complexities of the heroic ethos. It illustrates the enduring value of texts such as Beowulf to inform our understanding of often oversimplified concepts like that of the “warrior ethos” in contemporary culture.

Luigi Pulci’S Fifteenth-Century Verse Parody Of Moses: A Denunciation Of Marsilio Ficino’S Neoplatonic Christianity, Michael J. Maher

Quidditas

In early 1470s Florence, popular poet Luigi Pulci, author of the celebrated epic poem Morgante, wrote a sonnet of religious parody. In Poi ch’io parti’ da voi, Pulci satirizes biblical miracles, immediately earning himself the label of heretic, still attached to his name to this day. A close examination of Pulci’s sonnet, with specific attention given to his treatment of Moses, reveals Pulci’s motivation and the circumstances surrounding composition. Pulci’s scandalous sonnet was in fact an attempt at underscoring the maltreatment of biblical miracles in a first-century Greek text by the Romano-Jewish historian Jospehus. Renowned philosopher Marsilio Ficino, with …

Introduction – Whither The Spiritual? Rethinking Secularism’S Legacy In Post-Ottoman Art, Hannah Feldman, Kirsten Scheid

Regards

This dossier seeks to pinpoint hazards emerging on the globally redrawn map of art and culture. It was conceived to expose and navigate the mines laid when the ostensibly methodologically secular discourse of art history turns to art made outside Euro-American cultural centers – art often considered out of sync with Euro-American modernity.¹ As commonly approached, the pinnacle of that modernity corresponds roughly to what one of us has referred to as the “decades of decolonization,” in an effort to avoid reaffirming the Eurocentrism inherent in labeling the period as ‘post-war’...

The Textual Gutter: How Gene Luen Yang Redefines The Gutter In Boxers & Saints To Tell A Transnational Tale, David Lucas Jr

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This paper attempts to provide a new understanding of the gutter and how it is used to significant effect in Gene Luen Yang's, Boxers & Saints. This research draws upon the work of Scott McCloud to establish a framework for the theoretical applications of the gutter. Most prior research focuses on the gutter within the page. This article demonstrates how Yang pushes the concept of the gutter further by creating a new type of gutter that moves beyond the pages and across texts. Then the research attempts to demonstrate how the idea of the textual gutter heightens the transnational elements …

William Shakespeare’S All Is True, Lord Chamberlain’S “Truth,” And Civil Religion, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The first title for Shakespeare’s Henry VIII—All Is True—may reflect standard early modern usage signifying that all is an aspect of ‘troth’ or loyalty, all is common understanding, or all is received from a divine source. In the play, the Lord Chamberlain, Shakespeare’s only character so named, serves the Henrician monarchy’s “truth” by serving Henry’s religious and monarchic goals as the Jacobean Lord Chamberlain similarly served James I’s goals, assuring audiences of the integrity, truth, and legitimacy of the monarchy and its faith. The play shows the Lord Chamberlain working to strengthen the loyalty of Henry’s realm …

Book Review: Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Ed. Making Civilizations: The World Before 600, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Studying ancient civilizations is not a precise enterprise, and many statements are approximations, subject to validation or dispute. Several key concepts describe the flow and progress of collective human development. Individuals, families, clans, and tribes precede formation of civilization, which provides the foundation for states. Governments are managerial organizations of more complex societies, providing concentrated focus on defense, currency and infrastructure. Civilizations improve life security as urbanization, innovation, and division of labor increase, requiring more complex and powerful governing institutions.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Two Modes Of Cyclicality In The Ancient World, Yanming An

Comparative Civilizations Review

The cyclical view of time and history appears in two modes represented respectively by the Indo-Hellenic and the Chinese tradition. The former contains a conception of Mahayuga or Great Year, which signifies the periodic destruction and reconstruction in the cosmos and human world. In addition, it analogizes human affairs to the celestial cycle and therefore generalizes the mode of cyclical movements in both the cosmos and the human world as “uniform rotation.” In contrast, the Chinese tradition incorporates Heaven and human into a unity, containing no conception of periodic interruption in the movement of Heaven-human unity. At the same, it …

Book Review: Mokhtar Mokhtefi. I Was A French Muslim: Memories Of An Algerian Freedom Fighter; Benjamin Stora. Les Clés Retrouvées: Une Enfance Juive À Constantine, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

If one were to choose two words to characterize the books under review, they would be ambiguity and nostalgia. Both are personal reflections of how the final years of Frenchruled Algeria affected the authors.

Mokhtar Mokhtefi (1935-2015) was an Algerian Muslim freedom fighter who, in 1956, having completed high school at the Lycée Aumale in Constantine, enlisted in the National Liberation Army (ALN) of Algeria. We follow his story from early childhood in Berroughaia, a small town south of Algiers, to his re-entry into Algeria from Tunisia in July 1962, just as Algeria achieved independence.

Benjamin Stora (1950- ) …

Book Review: Zheng Wang. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory In Chinese Politics And Foreign Relations, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

“Never Forget National Humiliation!”? Really? Yes. This is Zheng Wang’s very interesting study of the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party’s massive re-education campaign. It was created in the years following the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 when post-Mao CCP hard-liners approved a military response to civilian protesters that would crush China’s emerging pro-democracy movement.

Hope And Pessimism In ‘Classical’ 20th Century Civilizational Theory, David J. Rosner

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper will involve an analysis of the relation between optimism, pessimism, and realism in 20th century classical civilizational theory, through the perspective offered specifically in Ernst Bloch’s magnum opus The Principle of Hope. Bloch, a German Jew and unorthodox Marxist, wrote The Principle of Hope during 1938–1947 in exile fleeing the Nazi holocaust. Today, humanity in its entirety now faces another set of crises — pandemic, overpopulation, climate change, political impasse, economic inequality, social unrest, growing lawlessness and nuclear threat. One can easily be tempted to give up on the future of our increasingly fragile and endangered world. …

Nationalism In The Context Of Globalization, Mariana Tepfenhart, M.A.

Comparative Civilizations Review

To understand the connection and consequences between nationalism and globalism, I will start with a basic definition of nationalism. According to Websters Dictionary, nations that are focused on national, not international goals, are nationalistic. A nation comprises the same language, customs, and traditions.

Some scholars have argued that nationalism has historical roots. People have been bonded by ethnicity and politics from ancient times. Others consider nationalism as a modern phenomenon due to industrialization, democratization, and modern technology. Jonathan Hearn1 from the University of Edinburgh has argued that some states are more homogeneous than others and they have strong senses of …

Pointers From Sociology: Looking At Trevor Noah’S Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

The book is a study of a basic change in social stratification. It is also a study of poverty in South Africa. Plus, it is a study of the changing nature of community and society in that land.

We know that almost every society organizes inequality by ranking categories of people in a hierarchy. Four important principles of social stratification are:

• Social stratification is inclusive of all, not a reflection of individual differences, and shapes our lives.

• Social stratification carries over from generation to generation.

• Social stratification is universal but variable.

• Social stratification involves both inequality and beliefs about the …

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End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Psychology Of Fascism: Wilhelm Reich Et Al, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

There are innumerable definitions and explanations of fascism in the literature of the social and behavioral sciences. This paper only explicates one: the concept of a fascist personality. It focuses on the early work by scholars in this area, beginning with the writings of the 20th century psychiatrist and student of Sigmund Freud, Austrian and American intellectual, Dr. Wilhelm Reich.

In the short story/essay that follows this article, allusion is made by the author — the late writer and United Nations staff member Shawna V. Tropp — to the circle which grew up around Wilhelm Reich. This was a significant …

Small Claims, Shawna V. Tropp

Comparative Civilizations Review

Had Laura Davidov not been a heavy woman in her late fifties, she would have thought that she had made a conquest. A golden young man appeared to have been following her through the Musée Rodin for over an hour; his eyes were turquoise, and he was quite old enough to be her son. There was also something disturbingly familiar about him. She therefore beamed her most maternal smile upon him and took a hesitant step in his direction.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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