Alexander The Great, Prester John, Strabo Of Amasia, And Wonders Of The East,
2012
National Sun Yat-sen University
Alexander The Great, Prester John, Strabo Of Amasia, And Wonders Of The East, I-Chun Wang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Alexander the Great, Prester John, Strabo of Amasia, and Wonders of the East" I-Chun Wang analyses the wonders referred to the realm of Prester John and the imagination of India as exemplified in the pseudo-letter of Alexander the Great. The pseudo letters attributed to Prester John and Alexander demonstrate imagination and identity construction. Throughout history, terra incognita suggested a longing to discover new lands and utopia. Cathay, India, Timbuktu, and El Dorado have drawn the imagination of Westerners in different periods are represented in legends, folktales, literary texts, and travel and pseudo-travel texts. Including the said pseudo-letters, …
On Naipaul's Cultural Positions In The Middle Passage,
2012
Kansai University
On Naipaul's Cultural Positions In The Middle Passage, Shizen Ozawa
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "On Naipaul's Cultural Positions in The Middle Passage" Shizen Ozawa discusses V.S. Naipaul's first travel writing. An account of his "returning" journey to the five Caribbean "colonial societies," The Middle Passage constitutes a major turning point in Naipaul's long literary career. Whereas his earlier novels depict his homeland of Trinidad ironically, although with a certain warmth and sympathy, from The Middle Passage on the world depicted both in his fictions and non-fictions turns bleaker. Correspondingly, his authorial persona changes from that of a West Indian writer to a controversial chronicler of chaotic postcolonial conditions. Ozawa analyses …
Introduction To New Work About The Journey And Its Portrayals,
2012
National Sun Yat-sen University
Introduction To New Work About The Journey And Its Portrayals, I-Chun Wang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
China As The Other In Odoric's Itinerarium,
2012
National Taiwan Normal University
China As The Other In Odoric's Itinerarium, Dinu Luca
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "China as the Other in Odoric's Itinerarium" Dinu Luca discusses the various ways in which the otherness of China is approached and integrated in the fourteenth-century travel text associated with Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone. Luca explores the multiple ways in which the text can be examined in relation to Odoric, his travels, and his text. Luca takes vision as a unifying trope and explores the meanings it acquires (sight, concept, projection) as Odoric abandons the familiar space of wonder and confronts the otherness of China. Several well-known episodes are discussed and one particular exchange (known …
Cannibalism, Ecocriticism, And Portraying The Journey,
2012
Sungkyunkwan University
Cannibalism, Ecocriticism, And Portraying The Journey, Simon C. Estok
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Cannibalism, Ecocriticism, and Portraying the Journey" Simon C. Estok discusses the ways early modern preoccupation with cannibalism is at once rooted in and reflective of an ecophobic environmental ethics. Looking both at descriptions of metaphoric and literal cannibalism, Estok shows that imagining cannibalism was central to the travel narrative and to its investments in writing the center and the periphery, the human and the nonhuman, the acceptable and the repugnant — binaries which reveal ethical positions, not only toward people, but, more broadly, toward the natural environment. Estok argues that it is relevant to discuss the discourse …
Evans's And Cheevers's Quaker Missionary Travels,
2012
National Pingtung University of Education
Evans's And Cheevers's Quaker Missionary Travels, Hui-Chu Yu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Evans's and Cheevers's Quaker Missionary Travels" Hui-chu Yu investigates Katharine Evans's and Sarah Cheevers's account of their experiences as Quaker missionaries in Malta between 1658-1662. For Evans and Cheevers traveling was a mission ordained by god and thus their journey is less a trip for the gratification of exploration than spiritual and physical trials. With a purpose to spread Quaker texts, Evans and Cheevers traveled to different lands such as Ireland and Malta. Although they perceived the hostility toward their belief, they still claimed to be god's handmaids with an aim to preach their religious belief. Their …
Gulliver, Travel, And Empire,
2012
Yale University
Gulliver, Travel, And Empire, Claude Rawson
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Gulliver, Travel, and Empire" Claude Rawson analyzes Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels as a central document of European intellectual history. Rawson focuses on the relationship between ethnicity and human identity and asks what constitutes humanity and how individual groups qualify (or not) for human status. Posing teasingly as a "parody" of travel books, it is both a series of voyages and an ethnically widening arc of moral exploration as Book Four at once expresses an ambivalent perception of the Irish under English rule and extends to what Swift/Gulliver calls "all Savage Nations" and ultimately takes in what Swift …
The Slave Trade In The Work Of Fox, Johnson, And Spielberg,
2012
National University of Kaohsiung
The Slave Trade In The Work Of Fox, Johnson, And Spielberg, Ya-Huei Lin
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "The Slave Trade in the Work of Fox, Johnson, and Spielberg" Ya-huei Lin analyzes Paula Fox's The Slave Dancer (1973), Charles R. Johnson's The Middle Passage (1990), and Amistad, the 1997 film directed by Steven Spielberg based on the true event of 1841. Lin's examination of these three texts is an attempt to clarify the event's narration in the context of Walter Benjamin's historical materialism. Further, Lin explores what Louis Althusser proposes in "A Letter on Art" as to how the texts at hand make one see the ideology from which they are located. The authors' …
Forgács's Film And Installation Dunai Exodus (Danube Exodus),
2012
Eötvös Loránd University
Forgács's Film And Installation Dunai Exodus (Danube Exodus), Zsófia Bán
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Forgács's Film and Installation Dunai exodus (Danube Exodus)" Zsófia Bán analyzes film maker and video artist Péter Forgács's film The Danube Exodus (1998) and compares it with the installation Dunai exodus. A folyó beszédes áramlatai (Rippling: Currents of the River) (2002). Combined with additional materials, the two works are based on footage by ship captain Nándor Andrásovits documenting two successive journeys of forced displacement aboard his vessel, the Queen Elizabeth. Bán's analysis includes the 1939 event of the Jewish exodus from Slovakia to the Black Sea with the eventual goal of reaching Palestine followed by …
Horizontality And Impossibility In Kafka's Parabolic Quests,
2012
Chinese Culture University & National Taiwan Normal University
Horizontality And Impossibility In Kafka's Parabolic Quests, Frank W. Stevenson
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Horizontality and Impossibility in Kafka's Parabolic Quests" Frank W. Stevenson explores a horizontal-parabolic interpretation of several Kafka narratives. The key idea is that the meaning/truth of a parable is being thrown-beside-itself "on the horizontal": thus it is impossible not only to vertically reach any higher meaning/truth but even to "cross-over" to a truth which has now been horizontally "displaced." Noting that Derrida's and Agamben's reading of "Before the Law" — the narrator cannot "enter into the Law" because the latter "prescribes nothing," is nothing but an "opening" — not only excludes any vertical-hierarchical dimension but even any …
Makine's Postmodern Writing About Exile, Memory, And Connection,
2012
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Makine's Postmodern Writing About Exile, Memory, And Connection, Mary Theis
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Makine's Postmodern Writing about Exile, Memory, and Connection" Mary Theis explores the implications of some of the many literary epiphanous moments that Andreï Makine shares with his readers in his neo-Romantic metaphysical literary quest to transcend lyrically the limitations imposed by our human condition. The analysis of this theme in Makin's literary career features several of his most important novels, his one play, and his subsequent meta-utopian reflections in Alternaissance, written under the pen name Gabriel Osmonde.
Miłosz's Quest For Affirmation And His Reflections On Us-American Culture,
2012
Soochow University
Miłosz's Quest For Affirmation And His Reflections On Us-American Culture, Joel J. Janicki
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Miłosz's Quest for Affirmation and His Reflections on US-American Culture" Joel J. Janicki discusses Czeslaw Miłosz's writings in exile devoted to his home in California. Miłosz, a Polish Lithuanian poet, essayist, and historian of literature, after experiencing five years of the nazi regime in Warsaw and six years of Stalinized rule in post-World War II Poland, threw himself "into the abyss" of exile. Miłosz's writings and translations have served as a bridge between the Polish and Anglo-Saxon cultures seldom encountered on such a scale. At the same time, his ability to look at a distance, his sensitivity …
Reimagining "Tense And Tender Ties" In García's Monkey Hunting,
2012
Miami University of Ohio
Reimagining "Tense And Tender Ties" In García's Monkey Hunting, Yu-Fang Cho
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Reimagining 'Tense and Tender Ties' in Garcia's Monkey Hunting" Yu-Fang Cho analyses Cristina García's re-narration of transnational histories of the multi-racial, multi-generational Chinese Cuban family in Monkey Hunting (2003) as a critical project that recasts developmental immigrant narratives primarily set in the United States as part of the emerging cultural archive of global migrations. Drawing on recent scholarship on comparative racialization, especially Ann Laura Stoler's formulation of "tense and tender ties" as a method, Cho examines how García's family saga unsettles the temporal and spatial logics of Euro-American modernity through the deployment of cyclical narrative structure …
Travel And Empire In Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good,
2012
Tamkang University
Travel And Empire In Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, Yi-Chin Shih
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Travel and Empire in Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good" Yi-chin Shih analyzes Our Country's Good from the perspective of travel in order to explore the exercise of empire and the practice of resistance. Considered as one of the luminaries in British theater, Timberlake Wertenbaker (1951-) has produced several successful works, especially Our Country's Good (1988), which won her a Laurence Olivier Award for the Best Play and solidified her reputation as an important playwright in world theater. Our Country's Good is based on real historical facts about the First Fleet's transportation of criminals from England to Australia …
Power And Representation In Anglo-American Travel Blogs And Travel Books About China,
2012
University of Leeds
Power And Representation In Anglo-American Travel Blogs And Travel Books About China, Stefano Calzati
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Power and Representation in Anglo-American Travel Blogs and Travel Books about China" Stefano Calzati presents a comparative analysis between two travel books and two travel blogs written by Anglo-American travellers about China. The assumption is that travel books and travel blogs, being two differently mediated forms of travel writing, share some similarities: they are "autodiegetic narratives" and they bear a (cross)cultural potential. Through a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis I investigate how Anglo-American travel writers represent themselves and Chinese people as to what extent the definition of travel writing is medially affected; 2) to what extent the cross-cultural …
Negra D'America Remond And Her Journeys,
2012
Firenze
Negra D'America Remond And Her Journeys, Sirpa A. Salenius
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "negra d'America Remond and Her Journeys" Sirpa A. Salenius analyzes Sarah P. Remond's travels to Europe. Remond, an African American born free in Salem, Massachusetts in 1826 into an abolitionist family, was a successful lecturer on abolitionism in the United States before traveling to England in 1859. During her anti-slavery lecture tour there, she also became involved in promoting women's rights thus enlarging the scope of her social and political agenda to embrace both racial and gender oppression. Subsequently, she studied in London, graduating as a nurse from London University College before moving to Italy where …
Metropolitan (Im)Migrants In The "Lettered City",
2012
Bergen Community College
Metropolitan (Im)Migrants In The "Lettered City", Stacey Balkan
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Metropolitan (Im)migrants in the 'Lettered City'" Stacey Balkan employs Ángel Rama's discussion of audience as a means of analyzing a Latin American diaspora that exists beyond the "rational periphery" of the state. Herein, the term diaspora is redefined as a translocal phenomenon wherein the metropolitan (im)migrant moves from rural margin to urban center. Normative definitions of exile — persons displaced from autonomous nation-states — are likewise scrutinized in the context of what the Rama terms a post-contemporary "city of letters." This post-contemporary city is the subject of what Mabel Moraña refers to as a "subaltern boom" — …
Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk),
2012
University of Rhode Island
Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Contemporary US-American Satire and Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk)" J.C. Lee focuses on contemporary satire's potential (or lack thereof) for change, reform, or rebellion through an investigation of works by Harry Crews, Douglas Coupland, and Chuck Palahniuk, all of which target consumerism. The said writers employ satire not to initiate rebellion or cultural change, but to reflect the problematic role of institutions in modern life and, in turn, the potential, even hope, for personal growth. Lee's analysis of texts by Crews, Coupland, and Palahniuk is intended to question satire's potential as a form of cultural critique and institutional …
Evans's The Turducken And Chekhov's The Seagull,
2012
Swarthmore College
Evans's The Turducken And Chekhov's The Seagull, Brian R. Johnson
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Evans's The Turducken and Chekhov's The Seagull" Brian R. Johnson approaches The Turducken as a travesty of The Seagull, examining six iconic scenes from The Seagull, in order to explore the satirical effect of the altered scenes. In December of 2008, Bedlam Theatre of Minneapolis presented The Turducken, "a holiday dinner theater spectacular inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Seagull." Playwright Josef Evans takes Chekhov's 1895 work and turns the classic piece into a musical and farcical satire. The plot of The Turducken follows the plot of The Seagull, and some scenes …
Intercultural Approaches To Cities And Spaces In Literature, Film, And New Media: A Review Of New Work By Manzanas And Benito And López-Varela And Neţ,
2012
Polytechnic University Madrid
Intercultural Approaches To Cities And Spaces In Literature, Film, And New Media: A Review Of New Work By Manzanas And Benito And López-Varela And Neţ, Ana María Martín Castillejos
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
