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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

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Aesthetics In Gao's Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee Dec 2012

Aesthetics In Gao's Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Aesthetics in Gao's Soul Mountain" Mabel Lee analyses Nobel Laureate 2000 Xingjian Gao's aesthetics. Transnational conglomerates today control the book industry from publishing house to bookshop and through aggressive market strategies they exert considerable influence on readers. Nonetheless, there are writers who refuse to capitulate to market demands and seek only to actualize their aesthetic ideas in the creation of literary texts. One such writer is Gao, author of the novel Soul Mountain. Lee posits that Gao's aesthetics is founded on the close interrogation of both Chinese and European models and practices and explores specific …


Nostalgia In Oral Histories Of Israeli Women, Yael Zilberman Dec 2012

Nostalgia In Oral Histories Of Israeli Women, Yael Zilberman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Nostalgia in Oral Histories of Israeli Women" Yael Zilberman explores the narration of nostalgia of elderly women about the city of Be'er Sheva. In their narration, the subjects of the study create textual and spatial practices which are engendered and create analogies between the city, their maturing/ed bodies, and by-gone youth. Further, the grief owing to the perceived condition of the city intensifies the idealized description of the city and the longing for its past. Zilberman's study brakes new ground in that the study of urban experience within folklore is a lesser explored field as the urban …


Landscape, Culture, And Education In Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Geert Vandermeersche, Ronald Soetaert Sep 2012

Landscape, Culture, And Education In Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Geert Vandermeersche, Ronald Soetaert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Landscape, Culture, and Education in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe" Geert Vandermeersche and Ronald Soetaert discuss Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as a narrative that translates nature and our dealings with it into a literary text. Vandeermeersche and Soetaert postulate that the novel can be read as a quintessential fable of humans' cultivation of nature and the creation of individuality, which, at the same time, provides its readers with strategies for describing processes such as education. Robinson Crusoe and its characters, metaphors, and scenarios function in the "auto-communication" of culture as an enduring equipment for living (Burke), a company …


The World Of The Landscape, Bart Verschaffel Sep 2012

The World Of The Landscape, Bart Verschaffel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The World of the Landscape" Bart Verschaffel analyzes the visual logic of the landscape genre in painting as it was developed from the sixteenth century onward. He argues that the structure of a minimal foreground, a middle ground cut off from the foreground, and a background that gives way to the distant, corresponds to a meditative attitude, proper to the nature of the image as such. The landscape is essentially a calm image. Second, Verschaffel puts forward that the middle ground in landscape images is not, as in history painting, a waiting room adjacent to the action …


History And Politics In Parthasarathy's Play Aurangzeb, Shubh Brat Sarkar Jun 2012

History And Politics In Parthasarathy's Play Aurangzeb, Shubh Brat Sarkar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "History and Politics in Parthasarathy's Play Aurangzeb" Shubh Brat Sarkar analyzes the use of history in a dramatic text, the underlying politics and ideology of a literary product, and the modes by which the materials are shaped through dramaturgy. The name Aurangzeb, the title of the play, has a strong presence in history textbooks and has perhaps become an integral part of a grand historical, "Indian" nationalist discourse. In the play multiple contradictions co-exist and find new projections in translations and theater adaptations in different historical contexts. Indira Parthasarthy's 1974 play is based on events leading …


Women's Worlds In The Novels Of Kandukuri And Gilman, Suneetha Rani Jun 2012

Women's Worlds In The Novels Of Kandukuri And Gilman, Suneetha Rani

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Women's Worlds in the Novels of Kandukuri and Gilman" Suneetha Rani discusses Veeresalingam Kandukuri's Satyaraja Poorvadesayatralu (Satyaraja's Travel to the Distant Lands) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland. While the novels were published in two different contexts — one in pre-independence India and the other in pre-World War I in the U.S., one in Telugu and the other in English, one by a man and the other by a woman — there is an interesting connecting thread that brings them together. Both were satires on the contemporary male chauvinistic world. While the Telugu novel pleads for a better …


Africa And India In The Novels Of Dai And Emecheta, Debarshi Prasad Nath, Juri Dutta Jun 2012

Africa And India In The Novels Of Dai And Emecheta, Debarshi Prasad Nath, Juri Dutta

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Africa and India in the Novels of Dai and Emecheta" Debarshi Prasad Nath and Juri Dutta discusses the work of two writers belonging to different continents, India and Nigeria. Interestingly, the novels of the two writers Dutta is analyzing — Lummer Dai and Buchi Emecheta —never heard of each other. Both novels are based on the custom of bride price, both writers speak out against the stifling rigidity of traditional customs, and uphold aspects of modernity in languages other than their native tongues. At the same time, both writers affirm the sanctity of the traditional institutions and …


Introduction To New Work In Comparative Indian Literatures And Cultures, Mohan G. Ramanan, Tutun Mukherjee Jun 2012

Introduction To New Work In Comparative Indian Literatures And Cultures, Mohan G. Ramanan, Tutun Mukherjee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Duality Of Illusion And Reality In Desai's In Custody, Narinder K. Sharma Jun 2012

Duality Of Illusion And Reality In Desai's In Custody, Narinder K. Sharma

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Duality of Illusion and Reality in Desai's In Custody," Narinder K. Sharma analyses Anita Desai's internal confrontation of choices. In the novel, Desai's narration offers various options at every step and the author suggests that it becomes difficult to decide what actually should be done. The attempt is to personalize impersonal time and space thereby brings it into the domain of conflicting choices signifying an existential desire to manifest freedom. Going a step further, it can be deciphered that the individual desires to make an ideal choice to experience "authenticity"; however, the desire of making an …


World Literature And The Case Of Joyce, Rao, And Borges, Bhavya Tiwari Jun 2012

World Literature And The Case Of Joyce, Rao, And Borges, Bhavya Tiwari

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "World Literature and the Case of Joyce, Rao, and Borges" Bhavya Tiwari discusses the work of James Joyce and poses the question why Joyce is considered an important figure in Latin America and South Asia. Have Indian languages (e.g., Bengali and Hindi) responded differently to Joycean aesthetics? If yes, can there be political reasons behind this difference? Joyce's own position in Europe as a modernist aesthetician complicates his reception in the "periphery," India and Latin America. Hence, Tiwari queries as to what happens when Joyce's texts are received on two different continents. In this context, Tiwari discusses …


Shakespeare Reception In India And The Netherlands Until The Early Twentieth Century, Vikram Singh Thakur Jun 2012

Shakespeare Reception In India And The Netherlands Until The Early Twentieth Century, Vikram Singh Thakur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Shakespeare Reception in India and The Netherlands until the Early Twentieth Century" Vikram Singh Thakur locates Shakespeare in two different cultural contexts by looking at its reception in The Netherlands and India. His analysis is based on the fact that Shakespeare was a foreign playwright to both cultures yet both have gradually assimilated his works into their respective cultures and made him, probably, the most performed foreign playwright since the 1870s. Thakur aims at understanding how the reception of a work in different cultures is mediated by various social, cultural, historical, and ideological sieves through which the …


Homosexual Identity, Translation, And Prime-Stevenson's Imre And The Intersexes, Margaret S. Breen Mar 2012

Homosexual Identity, Translation, And Prime-Stevenson's Imre And The Intersexes, Margaret S. Breen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Homosexual Identity, Translation, and Prime-Stevenson's Imre and The Intersexes" Margaret S. Breen examines the role of translation in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies. Breen's focus is Edward Prime-Stevenson, who, under the penname Xavier Mayne, wrote two works: a short novel, Imre: A Memorandum (1906), and a general history of homosexuality, The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem of Social Life (1908). Breen argues that Prime-Stevenson's texts are relevant to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discussions of (homo)sexuality because they point to the importance of translation in writings concerning sexual and gender identities and …


Travel, Culture, And Society: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Andraş And Tötösy De Zepetnek, Wang, And Sun, Katerina Soumani Mar 2012

Travel, Culture, And Society: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Andraş And Tötösy De Zepetnek, Wang, And Sun, Katerina Soumani

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Davis's Poetic Dialogue With Leiris's Autobiography, Jonathan Evans Mar 2012

Davis's Poetic Dialogue With Leiris's Autobiography, Jonathan Evans

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Davis's Poetic Dialogue with Leiris's Autobiography" Jonathan Evans analyzes Lydia Davis's translation of the first two parts of Michel Leiris's autobiography, which shows an encounter between two writers. Davis has also written stories which reference Leiris and thus position him as a precursor. Evans proposes that Leiris is not only a source of influence for Davis, but that their texts can be read as a dialogue. Using a methodology that draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Evans shows how Leiris focuses on sound and graphological patterns in order to understand his own conscious and unconscious relationship with words. Davis, …


The Notion Of Life In The Work Of Agamben, Carlo Salzani Mar 2012

The Notion Of Life In The Work Of Agamben, Carlo Salzani

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Notion of Life in the Work of Agamben" Carlo Salzani analyzes the notion of "nudity" Giorgio Agamben's understanding of Western culture. Beginning with a reading of the essay "Nudity," in which Agamben proposes an archaeological investigation of the theological apparatus of the concept, Salzani analyzes the pivotal trope in Agamben's Homo Sacer project, "bare" or "naked life," that is, the nudity of life in the grip of sovereign power. Nudity and the nudity of life are construed as a "limit-concept" in a double movement of simultaneous positing and negation or in a positing that grants at …


Free Indirect Discourse In Farsi Translations Of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Zohreh Gharaei, Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi Mar 2012

Free Indirect Discourse In Farsi Translations Of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Zohreh Gharaei, Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Free Indirect Discourse in Farsi Translations of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway" Zohreh Gharaei and Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi discuss the degree to which free indirect discourse is reproducible in Farsi translations of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Gharaei and Vahid Dastjerdi's analysis reveals that while it is possible to employ free indirect discourse in Farsi, the grammatical features of the technique represent the most problematic areas of translation to Farsi. Although some studies have attributed deviations from the style of the original writer to the structural differences between Farsi and English or domesticating strategies on the part of …


The Spatial Turn In Literary Historiography, Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza Dec 2011

The Spatial Turn In Literary Historiography, Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Spatial Turn in Literary Historiography," Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza examines the spatialization of literary history in recent years. He evaluates the resurgence of interest in literary geography and argues that the geographic dimension is not the only aspect of the predominant spatiality in new literary histories. Further, Cabo Aseguinolaza postulates that although the emphasis on spatiality marks many current literary histories, all literary histories imply spatial elements of different character and scope and that these options constitute an essential part of the performative capacity of history writing. In particular, Cabo Aseguinolaza discusses categories proposed by Henri Lefebvre …


National Theaters On The Iberian Peninsula, Anxo Abuín González Dec 2011

National Theaters On The Iberian Peninsula, Anxo Abuín González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "National Theaters on the Iberian Peninsula," Anxo Abuín González discusses the rise of national theaters understood as processes of national planning, starting with certain common systemic parameters developed and implemented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While the context Abuín González's analysis is located in is Spain's centralized literary system, his focus is on the interliterary and systemic relationship between Galician and Portuguese theater, with some references to Catalan theater.


Galician Portuguese Medieval Poetry And The Iberian Interliterary System, Santiago Gutiérrez García Dec 2011

Galician Portuguese Medieval Poetry And The Iberian Interliterary System, Santiago Gutiérrez García

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Galician Portuguese Medieval Poetry and the Iberian Interliterary System" Santiago Gutiérrez García explores the notion that the possibility of carrying out a comparative study of Iberian literatures is determined by its interliterary system. Gutiérrez García postulates that the said interliterary system comprises a series of peripheral literatures which seek their self-affirmation through opposition to the hegemonic center, namely Castilian literature. He uses the example of Galician Portuguese medieval poetry and illustrates the problematic nature of his approach elaborating that despite the fact that this medieval poetic tradition is shared by both Galician and Portuguese literatures, as literary …


Comics And The Graphic Novel In Spain And Iberian Galicia, Antonio J. Gil González Dec 2011

Comics And The Graphic Novel In Spain And Iberian Galicia, Antonio J. Gil González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Comics and the Graphic Novel in Spain and Iberian Galicia," Antonio J. Gil González develops a comparative and interart analysis of graphic novels by examining the evolution of the genre on the Spanish peninsula in general and in Galicia in particular. Gil González builds his analysis on Roman Ingarden's concept of literature as not only traditional fiction, but also theater and cinema. Gil González presents his argumentation by identifying the peculiarities of the comic as a medium, starting with its historical beginnings, and discussing its principal formats and generic and thematic variants. Further, he discusses the principal …


Narration And Identity In Iberian Galician Literature, Dolores Vilavedra Dec 2011

Narration And Identity In Iberian Galician Literature, Dolores Vilavedra

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Narration and Identity in Iberian Galician Literature" Dolores Vilavedra discusses the contribution made by Galician narratives to the process of codifying models of a supposedly Galician identity. She shows how the development of literary narration has not always been gradual and that it has undergone stages of stagnation. Further, Vilavedra discusses how the narrative genre itself has gradually altered the prime objectives of its own development according to the apparent need to impose certain paradigms. She proposes that this process is closely linked, on the one hand to the process of language standardization and, on the other, …


The Ophelia Motif In The Work Of Iberian Galician Writers, María Do Cebreiro Rábade Villar Dec 2011

The Ophelia Motif In The Work Of Iberian Galician Writers, María Do Cebreiro Rábade Villar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "About the Ophelia Motif in the Work of Iberian Galician Writers" María do Cebreiro Rábade Villar attempts to arrive at an idea of character through a comparative analysis of various artistic versions of William Shakespeare's Ophelia. Rábade Villar employs Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notions of transversality and devices of analytical enunciation in order to understand the feminine literary character. Rábade Villar's corpus of the Ophelia motif include Iberian Galician authors's work such as by Álvaro Cunqueiro, Xohana Torres, Chus Pato, and Marta Dacosta.


About Metapoetry And Performativity, Arturo Casas Dec 2011

About Metapoetry And Performativity, Arturo Casas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "About Metapoetry and Performativity" Arturo Casas argues that with regard to metapoetic practices a change of perspective would be necessary. Casas postulates that the new perspective would centre more on the enunciative and performative aspects of metapoetry and that it would focus on the theoretical and poetological contribution of the metapoem, its criticism of language and text, and its convergence with those theoretical-critical practices based on the refutation of the traditional critical pact. Following Jenaro Talens's work, Casas argues that in poetry disorder orients itself in practice to unmask power and its inscriptions in language and that …


Possibilities And Limits Of Comparative Literature Today, Darío Villanueva Dec 2011

Possibilities And Limits Of Comparative Literature Today, Darío Villanueva

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Possibilities and Limits of Comparative Literature Today," Darío Villanueva traces the itinerary of comparative literature over the last fifty years comparative literature in its various stages. The first of these confronted two options seen in a way as irreconcilable: the almost exclusive connexion with literary history or its identification with the theory of literature. Villanueva outlines the consolidation of the "new paradigm" which overcomes those contradictions, thanks to the methodological cooperation between comparative literature and the systemic theories of literature, and thanks, as well, to a return to philology as an adequate practice of reading. In addition, …


Literary Geography And Comparative Literature, César Domínguez Dec 2011

Literary Geography And Comparative Literature, César Domínguez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Geography and Comparative Literature" César Domínguez analyzes the relevance of political and linguistic frameworks for comparative literary historiography in the context of the European Union. Domínguez's discussion is based on the notion of geoculture whose theorization from Immanuel Wallerstein's perspective presents paradigms of interest to comparative literature. The idea of literary geography is conceived as a unit for analyzing diverse stages of the interliterary process. Thus, within the framework of the current renaissance of Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur, the phenomena of the literatures of (im)migration, exile, and literary diglossia represent challenges for the contextualization and …


About Literary Systems And National Literatures, Elias J. Torres Feijó Dec 2011

About Literary Systems And National Literatures, Elias J. Torres Feijó

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "About Literary Systems and National Literatures," Elias Torres J. Feijó offers a polysystemic analysis with examples from the Iberian Peninsula. He argues that a community's literature can be understood as a) the gathering of so-called literary activities, which take place in a social space or b) something that identifies certain characteristics of a part or the whole of the members in a given social space. For his analysis, Torres Feijó employs Itamar Even-Zohar's notion of polysystem because it allows us to interpret each system generated by members of a given community and its delimitation, differentiation, and integration …


Advertising And Autobiographical Discourse, María Ángeles Rodríguez Fontela Dec 2011

Advertising And Autobiographical Discourse, María Ángeles Rodríguez Fontela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Advertising and Autobiographical Discourse" María Ángeles Rodríguez Fontela sketches a poetics of advertising in autobiographic discourse working from a selection of narrative and autobiographical spots. Emphasized in her narratological study is the contraction of retrospective temporality, the domination of the proleptic construction of the "I," the ellipsis in the outcome, the iterative and archetypical character of the narrated episodes, the confidential tone of the narrative voice, and the mythical projection of the narrated story. Rodríguez Fontela analyzes in selected television advertisements the ironic, comic, and parodic effects which show the hybridization of genres and the rhetorical function …


Catalan And Galician Literatures In Iberian And European Contexts, Olivia Rodríguez González Dec 2011

Catalan And Galician Literatures In Iberian And European Contexts, Olivia Rodríguez González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Catalan and Galician Literatures in Iberian and European Contexts" Olivia Rodríguez González investigates the problematics of canon formation and proposes an approach within which the formation of a multi-system canon is possible. Reflections on the constitution of a European canon that would be the result of a proportional or market-driven combination of national literary canons leads to the conclusion that, with respect to the multicultural Spanish state, what will succeed in getting into the European canon will do so as a consequence of one of two processes. The first depends on what each literary system does to …


Inanimate Speech From Lovecraft To Žižek, Apple Z. Igrek Dec 2011

Inanimate Speech From Lovecraft To Žižek, Apple Z. Igrek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Inanimate Speech from Lovecraft to Žižek" Apple Z. Igrek explores an influential line of reasoning associated with our contemporary loss of the Real. The argument describes how the contingencies and nuances of social life have been reduced to an operational, friction-free, and homogeneous realm of signs. Slavoj Žižek contends that our inherently traumatic relationship with the Other is being foreclosed and replaced by an omnipresent technological screen of virtual communication. The danger of this shift, identified as the "digital break," is that it facilitates an extraordinary form of divine violence which strikes back at the social system …


Eliot's The Waste Land And Surging Nationalisms, Pouneh Saeedi Dec 2011

Eliot's The Waste Land And Surging Nationalisms, Pouneh Saeedi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Eliot's The Waste Land and Surging Nationalisms" Pouneh Saeedi analyzes T.S. Eliot's poem in the context of the impact of World War I and the emergence of nationalisms. In the midst of the ruins of both his personal life and Europe, Eliot expresses the loss of a universal understanding delineated in the fragmentation of language and a disassociation of sensibility. In The Waste Land, the West and the East — represented in their respective canonical texts — commingle and cohere to present an image of oneness that goes beyond oppositional binaries and leads the egotistical self …