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The Victorian Body, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The nineteenth century is extremely important for the study of embodiment because it is the period in which the modern body, as we currently understand it, was most thoroughly explored. This was the era when modern medical models of the body were developed and disseminated, when modern political relations to the body were instantiated, and when modern identities in relation to class, race, and gender were inscribed. While questions about the distinctions between personhood and the body were studied by the ancients, nineteenth-century developments in technology, economics, medicine, and science rendered such categories newly important for Britons who were the …

Frame, Preference, And Memory In Literary History Narration, Guoqiang Qiao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Frame, Preference, and Memory in Literary History Narration" Guoqiang Qiao analyzes the frame, preference and memory in literary historiography from a narratological and cognitive perspectives. He maintains that literary history is of multileveled narration that includes not only the perceptualized literary events, literary figures, and literary works, but also the conceptualized spirit of the time, national culture, and personal and collective memories. Qiao employs the basic concepts of frame, preference, and memory to suggest a cognitive approach to the narration of literary history. To illustrate the complex construction of literary historiography, he provides examples from Chinese literary …

Pantheism And Escapism In Abu Madi's 'Enigmas' And 'The Evening' From English Romanticism Perspectives, Yasser K. R. Aman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Pantheism and Escapism in Abu Madi's 'Enigmas' and 'The Evening' From English Romanticism Perspectives" Yasser K. R. Aman investigates and analyses the possibilities of pantheism's encirclement of escapism in Elia Abu Madi's two poems from English Romanticism perspective. The article compares Abu Madi's fluctuating attitude towards escapism and pantheism to William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour July 13, 1798," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," highlighting the affinities and differences. The …

Other-Languagedness In Stories By R.K. Narayan, Saadat Hassan Manto, And Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Biljana Djorić Francuski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Other-languagedness in Stories by R.K. Narayan, Saadat Hassan Manto, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala" Biljana Djorić Francuski examines, within a comparative framework, the concepts of otherness and other-languagedness as expressed in three short stories by authors from separate but interconnected cultures: an Indian English writer, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan; a Pakistani writer, Saadat Hassan Manto; and a writer of European origins who lived in and wrote about India, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The author analyzes, within the context of the (post)colonial discourse, the instances of misunderstanding resulting from binary oppositions between the interlocutors, due to their mutual otherness.

Disoriented Nationalist Discourse Of The Wenxuan Group Amidst Manchukuo’S Anti-Modern Chorus, Chao Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Disoriented Nationalist Discourse of the Wenxuan Group amidst Manchukuo's Anti-Modern Chorus" Chao Liu analyzes the proposal of "native-land literature" made by left-wing Chinese writers in occupied northeast China. As it turns out, inheriting the nationalist discourse of the May Fourth Movement and further radicalizing it via a "new romanticism," those writers over-emphasized the socio-political function of literary production and took native-land literature as the most effective tool for nationalist mobilization. Accordingly, they repelled modern civilization as it was associated with the colonists, relying instead on natural wilderness and primitive force and thus adopting subject matters as well …

Deromanticized Cosmopolitanism In Smith’S Swing Time And Chi’S 晚安玫瑰 (Goodnight, Rose), Songyun Zheng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Deromanticized Cosmopolitanism in Smith's Swing Time and Chi's 晚安玫瑰 (Goodnight, Rose)" Songyun Zheng proposes a theoretical framework of deromanticized cosmopolitanism to conduct a comparative reading of Zadie Smith's Swing Time, a transcontinental narrative of London, New York, and Africa, and Zijian Chi's Goodnight, Rose, about a Jewish émigré living in Harbin, China. Zheng reframes cosmopolitanism by recognizing its contradictory and multifaceted nature, and questions the assumed connection between cosmopolitanism and cross-boundary activities such as migration and interracial relationships. The two novels form a constellation of deromanticized cosmopolitanism with characters of transcultural backgrounds …

Perspectives On Science And Culture, Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, Ronald Soetaert

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Edited by Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, and Ronald Soetaert, Perspectives on Science and Culture explores the intersection between scientific understanding and cultural representation from an interdisciplinary perspective. Contributors to the volume analyze representations of science and scientific discourse from the perspectives of rhetorical criticism, comparative cultural studies, narratology, educational studies, discourse analysis, naturalized epistemology, and the cognitive sciences. The main objective of the volume is to explore how particular cognitive predispositions and cultural representations both shape and distort the public debate about scientific controversies, the teaching and learning of science, and the development of science itself. The theoretical background of …

Perspectives On Science And Culture, Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, Ronald Soetaert

Purdue University Press Books

Edited by Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke, and Ronald Soetaert, Perspectives on Science and Culture explores the intersection between scientific understanding and cultural representation from an interdisciplinary perspective. Contributors to the volume analyze representations of science and scientific discourse from the perspectives of rhetorical criticism, comparative cultural studies, narratology, educational studies, discourse analysis, naturalized epistemology, and the cognitive sciences. The main objective of the volume is to explore how particular cognitive predispositions and cultural representations both shape and distort the public debate about scientific controversies, the teaching and learning of science, and the development of science itself. The theoretical background of …

Away From The End Of Motherhood: Sites Of Haunting In The Social Imaginary In Lemonade And The Handmaid's Tale, Julia Michele Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, specifically the episode "A Woman's Place," and Beyoncé's Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women's lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid's Tale's preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society.

Using bell hooks' film analysis, Avery Gordon's "haunting," and Luce Irigaray's "mimicry," I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. …

Frankenstein’S Migratory Subject : Under The Dome And Formosa Vs. Formosa, Chia-Ju Chang

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Political Phlebotomy: The Poetics And Politics Of Blood In Giambattista Marino’S La Strage Degliinnocenti, Evan Strouss

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

No abstract provided.

Adapting Intertextuality: The Case Of Nursery Rhyme Characters In Creating New Canons In Children’S Culture, Catalina Millán Scheiding

Faculty Works

The increasingly common use of English nursery rhymes intertextually has impacted upon their transfer into target cultures: entire nursery rhymes, fragments and characters are now found in translational situations. Most of these situations are adaptations of nursery rhymes into other media; and one of the most evident is the use of nursery rhyme characters found in a different context, frequently portrayed visually. Through a reception case study with Spanish students, this report intends to address issues about the relevance of intertextuality in translation, as well as the child’s assumptions in relation to discourse and visual input. Through a qualitative mixed-method …

Transnational Film Production And The Tourist Gaze : On Hou Hsiao-Hsien’S Café Lumière And Flight Of The Red Balloon, Shr-Tzung, Elliott Shie

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This article attempts to reexamine the multiple forms of displacement in and of the film to which the new historical era gave rise, and thereby critically engage with the questions of transnational capital flow, global tourism and spectatorship, and textual migration in the case of intertextuality.

The Pull Of Home: Revisiting Homi Bhabha And Stuart Hall Through Elefanten Im Garten And Au Pays, Varol Kahveci

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

In this study I argue that existing theoretical frameworks and approaches evade, efface, ignore and obscure the role of “home” and “roots” for diasporic identities. I contend that while the models of identity draw attention to “hybridity,” the material ontology of the migrant body cannot be reduced to a mere psychological phenomenon of “hybridity.” My critique of the effacement of “home” in the contemporary post-colonial and migration studies problematizes Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall by disputing the celebratory metaphorization of migrant subjects as fluid, uprooted, and deterritorialized. By revisiting certain terminologies, including “hybridity,” “liminality,” “in-betweenness,” “Third Space” from Bhabha’s The …

Horror Without End: Narratives Of Fear Under Modern Capitalism, Andrés Emil González

Honors Papers

Across the world, capitalist and neoliberal economic policies have trapped communities in chaotic cycles of boom and bust. bell hooks writes about this chaos of connected systems of economic and social domination, “this is what the worship of death looks like.” The aim of this project is to explore points of formal association between popular horror media, or narratives of fear, and the politically unconscious beliefs, dreams, and knowledges of subaltern classes that live and tell stories under a social order that demands either complicity or silence. These narratives of fear demonstrate how certain political discourses are, and have been, …

The Futures Of Comparative Literature Envisioned By Chinese Comparatists, Sheng Meng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Compara­tists" Sheng Meng and Yue Chen discuss the future of Comparative Literature from the perspective of Chinese comparatists. They argue that in response to the latest rhetoric around the crisis and death of Comparative Literature as a discipline, Chinese comparatists have fallen into four major repre­sentative groups. While the first one advocates restoring of international literary relations study of the French School, the second and the third camp see the future of the discipline lying in both the turn to translation and world literature respectively. However, the most ambitious …

Introduction To Against The “Death” Of The Discipline Of Comparative Literature, Shunqing Cao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Theoretical Basis And Framework Of Variation Theory, Shunqing Cao, Zhoukun Han

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "The Theoretical Basis and Framework of Variation Theory" Shunqing Cao and Zhoukun Han re-examine the conclusions on variation theory drawn from Cao's The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature. Drawing on the past three decades of Chinese comparatist practice, the proposal of variation theory in that book is a scientific endeavor from China. China's comparative literature has sustained a focus on comparison of literatures Eastern and Western. And Chinese scholars have long been aware of the heterogeneity of civilizations and the variability in literature exchanges. By demonstrating uses and potentials of variation theory, this thesis attempts to …

Terminology Translation And The "Rebirth" Of Comparative Literature In, Peina Zhuang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Terminology Translation and the 'Rebirth' of Comparative Literature in China" Peina Zhuang and Huan Pi discuss terminology translation during the rise of Comparative Literature in China. They argue that, while great headway has been made in Comparative Literature here, it is not free from the challenges inherent in terminology translation, an important part in inter-cultural dialogue. Analyzing the status quo in terminology translation from three aspects, namely, the lack of unity, standardization, and accuracy, they argue that more attention should be given to this aspect in the scholarship. In particular, they advocate more concrete empirical research, such …

Problem-Based Variations In Teaching Stephen Dobyns's 'Kansas' In China, Tao Zou

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Problem-based Variations in Teaching Stephen Dobyns's 'Kansas' in China" Tao Zou and Hong Zeng discuss the multiple variations in their experience of teaching foreign literature in China, with the teaching of Stephen Dobyns's short story "Kansas" as an example and the positive results of their approach. Variations in a broad sense occur with the differences in the choice of literary text, translation, interpretation, and canonization. All these variations can be used to reflect on and resolve major current issues in teaching foreign literature, and to stage cross-cultural communication and creativity through foreign literature pedagogy.

Could World Literature Be The Future Of Comparative Literature?, Jing Zhou

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Could World Literature be the Future of Comparative Literature?" Jing Zhou reviews the disciplinary history and current situation of comparative literature, and then considers the feasibility and validity of world literature as the future of the discipline in Euro-U.S. scholarship. She addresses the pros and cons of world literature raised by David Damrosch, and concludes that world literature at present is not ready to take the responsibility as the future of comparative literature be­cause of its persistent Euro-U.S. centrism. As an alternative to this perspective, she suggests the dis­cipline reconsider theories from peripheral or semi-peripheral areas.

Rebirth Of Comparative Literature In China From The Perspective Of Medio-Translatology, Wei Guo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Rebirth of Comparative Literature in China from the Perspective of Medio-translatology," Wei Guo discusses the "rebirth" of Comparative Literature in China from the development of medio-translatology. He argues that, though translation has received wide attention in Comparative Literature, both domestic and foreign, especially in today's globalized world, the proposition of medio-translatology and systematic investigation by Xie Tianzhen and other Chinese scholars constitute an important way forward for translation in Comparative Literature. It makes translation an independent branch in this discipline, which is conducive to ending the longstanding confusions in translation under medio-translatology and translation studies on the …

Reconsiderations On The Crises Of Comparative Literature Study, Jie Lu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Reconsiderations on the Crises of Comparative Literature Study" Jie Lu discusses the three crises in comparative literature and reaches the conclusion that the discipline's significant changes are due primarily to the three misunderstandings of "comparative literature," that are "narrowing," "overgeneralization," and "trivialization." Narrowing is the over-regulation of study object and horizon, and a narrow understanding of comparability. Overgeneralization exists in cultural studies' aggression to comparative literature and a compromising abandonment of comparative methodology. Finally, trivialization exists in shallow comparison between X and Y, monologue-like discourse researches, and a lack of dual awareness of "world literature" as both …

Another Argument On The "Crisis Said" Of Comparative Literature, Ping Du

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Another Argument on the 'Crisis Said' of Comparative Literature" Ping Du discusses "Crisis Said", the long-lasting topic since the birth of Comparative Literature. She argues that after every crisis comes an opportunity of a new development of Comparative Literature. Du claims that comparative literature is experiencing a rebirth in the Age of Multiculturalism. She, firstly, reviews the first wave of "Crisis Said", its solution and the progress of Comparative Literature, then she analyses the prevailing second wave of "Crisis Said" or even "Death Said", and finally points out that the way-out is not merely world literature but …

Reflections On The Crisis Of Comparative Literature In The Contemporary West, Zhoukun Han, Quan Wen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their Article "Reflections on the Crisis of Comparative Literature in the Contemporary West" Zhoukun Han and Wen Quan review the challenges met during the evolution of comparative literature as a discipline between the turn of nineteenth century and 1958. They maintain that comparative literature in the contemporary West is indeed experiencing a crisis, explicate the reasons for this. Apart from the pursuit of sameness inherent in conventional comparative studies and the position of western-centrism, the shift from literary comparison to cultural study has exacerbated the crisis. In view of this situation, some western scholars call for a return to …

The Significance Of The Variation Theory In Cross-Cultural Communication, Yi Wan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Significance of the Variation Theory in Cross-Cultural Communication" Yi Wan analyzes some problems that East-West Comparative Literature, as a discipline, has encountered and discusses the significance of the development of the Variation Theory, proposed by Shunqing Cao. The author aims to explore two important points of this new platform, namely, heterogeneity and variation, and compares this new perspective to the French School, which is based on "influences" and the American School which is based on "analogies." By investigating the variations of literary texts or theories during the course of cross-civilization communication from the perspectives of imagology …

Selected Bibliography For The Study Of The "Death" Of The Discipline Of Comparative Literature, Peina Zhuang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Notes On Contributors

Transference

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On Video Games As Art, Jeroen Bourgonjon, Geert Vandermeersche, Kris Rutten, Niels Quinten

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Perspectives on Video Games as Art" Jeroen Bourgonjon, Geert Vndermeer­sche, Kris Rutten and Niels Quinten engage in discussing whether or not video games can be considered a form of art. Although this question has already been discussed elaborately, the debate is guided by many differ­ent and often conflicting positions. The aim of this article is to revisit this debate by mapping out a range of perspectives on video games as art. The authors explore the relation between games and differ­ent definitions and functions of art, different motives of artists, and the potential impact of the arts. The …

Riddarasögur: Changing Medieval Norway With French Romance Literature, Elizabeth Tuggle

Honors Theses

In the realm of Arthuriana, numerous versions exist of the adventures of King Arthur and his knights. The genre of the riddarasögur – “the sagas of knights” – contains Norwegian versions of these tales along with Norwegian versions of other French literature such as Marie de France’s lais and fabliaux. In the 13th century, King Hákon Hákonarson commissioned the translation of the French tales into Norwegian for the purpose of civilizing Norwegian society in general and the royal court in particular. Given the fair treatment of women and of love in the riddarasögur, King Hákon’s project to civilize his court …