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Modernism, Joyce, And Portuguese Literature, Carlos Ceia Mar 2006

Modernism, Joyce, And Portuguese Literature, Carlos Ceia

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Carlos Ceia, in his article, "Modernism, Joyce, and Portuguese Literature," discusses parallels between James Joyce's work and texts by modernist and contemporary Portuguese novelists such as Antunes, Brandão, Negreiros, Pessoa, Saramago, Sá-Carneiro, Silva Ramos, and Velho da Costa. In his analysis, Ceia focuses on the role of myth, the notion of the (anti-)hero, the solipsism of interior consciousness, narrative techniques, and linguistic experimentation. Ceia argues that while it is impossible to detect direct influence by Joyce on Portuguese writers, it is in the context of the parallel paradigms of modernism we are able to discover the Joycean impact on both …


An Introduction To The Work Of Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Laureate In Literature 2004, Andrea Bandhauer Mar 2005

An Introduction To The Work Of Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Laureate In Literature 2004, Andrea Bandhauer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "An Introduction to the Work of Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Laureate in Literature 2004," Andrea Bandhauer explores reactions of the press to the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek after she received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature. Bandhauer discusses how the extreme irritation following this announcement was frequently directed at the author's public persona rather than at her work. Against this background, Bandhauer explores the ambivalent relationship of the public towards a politically and socially engaged and outspoken public figure who in her literary work produces highly hermetical texts. As a writer, Jelinek is preoccupied with language and form …


The Arachne Myth In Oral And Written Literature, José Manuel Pedrosa Mar 2005

The Arachne Myth In Oral And Written Literature, José Manuel Pedrosa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "The Arachne Myth in Oral and Written Literature," José Manuel Pedrosa explores the folktale about a person who prides himself being the most intelligent individual and whom the gods punish with a metamorphosis into spider. Pedrosa discusses similar myths in existence in modern oral traditions and in literary works such as the Bible, Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Quran, and García Márquez's masterpiece Cien años de soledad. The universality of the myth is underlined by the existence of a folktale registered among the Bubi people of Equatorial Guinea. Not known about it until the twentieth century, the oral transmission …


Literary Cosmotopia And Nationalism In Ariel, Camilla Fojas Dec 2004

Literary Cosmotopia And Nationalism In Ariel, Camilla Fojas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Camilla Fojas, in her paper "Literary Cosmotopia and Nationalism in Ariel," argues that turn-of-the-century cosmopolitan literary texts encoded political interests and that they were concerned with the proper way of being cosmopolitan and national at the same time, of forging literary and diplomatic parity between national and international interests. Unfortunately, this search for balance was beset by rhetorical and ideological prejudices manifest in phobic language about the corrupting forces of cosmopolitan effeminacy on national character. The conflict of cosmopolitanism with nationalism was played out as a kind of war between the sexes, as a gendered battle for dominance. This tension …


Reading Ondaatje's Poetry, Eluned Summers-Bremner Sep 2004

Reading Ondaatje's Poetry, Eluned Summers-Bremner

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Eluned Summers-Bremner pursues in her paper "Reading Ondaatje's Poetry" a psychoanalytic reading of Ondaatje's poetry based on Lacan's thought, highlighting occasions where nature and culture meet. Focusing on the volumes Secular Love and The Man with Seven Toes, Summers-Bremner explores how nature's troubled regions are navigated through the structural estrangement of looking for a name. In Lacanian terms, a proper name signals the contradiction of one's belonging to a biological or other kind of family, whence one's name often arises, and being a user or respondent of language, which produces meaning through its infringement or exceeding of its users' intentions, …


Touching The Language Of Citizenship In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Sandeep Sanghera Sep 2004

Touching The Language Of Citizenship In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Sandeep Sanghera

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Sandeep Sanghera, in her paper "Touching the Language of Citizenship in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost" discusses questions which make Ondaatje's novel a text about postmodern identity: who is this woman Anil who lives mostly in the West, travels on a British passport, works for an international organization, and no longer has any real ties to her first home? In the paper, these questions are examined via the languages Anil adopts and abandons in the novel. Sanghera elaborates on the question of foreign-ness represented by the protagonist of the novel; however, this foreign-ness is examined in the particular context concerning the substance …


Oral History And The Writing Of The Other In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Winfried Siemerling Sep 2004

Oral History And The Writing Of The Other In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Winfried Siemerling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Winfried Siemerling argues in his paper "Oral History and the Writing of the Other in Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion" that the simulation of oral narratives in the novel imagines the conveyance of oral histories of immigrant experiences obscured by historiography. The narrative device of simulated orality -- the written text casts itself as the outcome of serial story-telling -- serves here to introduce erstwhile anonymous societal actors as makers of history, and emphasizes the collective production of story and history. Oral narratives emerge dreamlike like light out of darkness in this text; yet light, like writing, creates …


Representations Of Buddhism In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Marlene Goldman Sep 2004

Representations Of Buddhism In Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, Marlene Goldman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Marlene Goldman suggests in her paper "Representations of Buddhism in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost" that at first glance Ondaatje appears to promote the idea of a Sri Lankan Buddhist faith as transcending history. Ondaatje introduces the subject of Buddhism early on in the novel, emphasizing initially the devastation wrought by imperial and colonial forces. Goldman, however, argues that subsequent references to Buddhism undermine the initial portrayal of a religion besieged by external imperialist forces. For example, at one point, the character Palipana refers to the assassination of his brother, Narada, a Buddhist monk. Narada was possibly the victim of a "political …


The Motif Of The Collector And History In Ondaatje's Work, Jon Saklofske Sep 2004

The Motif Of The Collector And History In Ondaatje's Work, Jon Saklofske

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Jon Saklofske, in his paper "The Motif of the Collector and History in Ondaatje's Work" recognizes that Ondaatje rescues Buddy Bolden from historical obscurity by elevating and complicating the musician's largely forgotten history with a self-conscious and largely fictional synthesis of memory and imagination. The liberties Ondaatje takes in Coming Through Slaughter with his subject to achieve this re-presentation and the ownership of the portrait that results exposes this type of authorial activity as a problematic appropriation. Saklofske suggests that to understand the implications of Ondaatje's activity it is useful to compare his efforts with Walter Benjamin's "collector" figure, who …


Ondaatje's The English Patient And Altered States Of Narrative, Beverley Curran Sep 2004

Ondaatje's The English Patient And Altered States Of Narrative, Beverley Curran

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Beverley Curran argues in her paper "Ondaatje's The English Patient and Altered States of Narrative" that Ondaatje reconfigures in his novel the "romantic" figure of the father/artist as a clandestine lover, a drug addict, or an eccentric translator, all figures with dependencies. In The English Patient, the father or artist's sense of source, continuity, or authority are translated into a narrative which rejects the perverse captivity demanded of the lover and the translator by fidelity or by the tenets of realistic representation. Using sex, drugs, and translation, Ondaatje deranges both time and space to reconfigure the role of the artist …


Monénembo's L'Aîné Des Orphelins And The Rwandan Genocide, Lisa Mcnee Jun 2004

Monénembo's L'Aîné Des Orphelins And The Rwandan Genocide, Lisa Mcnee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Monénembo's L'Aîné des orphelins and the Rwandan Genocide," Lisa McNee discusses Tierno Monénembo's L'Aîné des orphelins, a novel that offers a double discourse and a dual memory of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. McNee argues that L'Aîné des orphelins presents us with an extraordinary kind of fictional testimonial to genocide. Although Monénembo is not from Rwanda and did not participate in the tragedy, only someone who has paid the price of the clarity needed to distinguish between good and bad faith could have written a novel like L'Aîné des orphelins. Monénembo's characterization of …


Asian-American Literature And A Lacanian Reading Of Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey, Fu-Jen Chen Jun 2004

Asian-American Literature And A Lacanian Reading Of Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Asian-American Literature and a Lacanian Reading of Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey," Fu-jen Chen explores the protagonist's subjective progression into the post-Symbolic Real in Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey -- from subject as Demand, through subject as Desire, to subject as jouissance. Tripmaster Monkey records Ah Sing's transformation from a racial paranoiac at the beginning of the novel through a subject as demand to a subject as desire who is learning to target new desires via his engaging in real myth and staging real theater, and finally to a subject as jouissance -- one who is oriented to his …


Negotiating Boundaries In Divakaruni's The Mistress Of Spices And Naylor's Mama Day, Susana Vega-González Jun 2003

Negotiating Boundaries In Divakaruni's The Mistress Of Spices And Naylor's Mama Day, Susana Vega-González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Negotiating Boundaries in Divakaruni's The Mistress of Spices and Naylor's Mama Day," Susana Vega-González analyzes the intertextual connections between these two novels. In Vega-González's view, the texts discussed transcend their authors' different ethnic and ethno-cultural backgrounds and appeal to universalisms found in literature. Vega-González proposes that writing from a bi-cultural perspective, Indian American Chitra B. Divakaruni and African American Gloria Naylor share both content and stylistic features in their acclaimed novels. Their conscious effort to dissolve established boundaries as well as their ethno-cultural legacies leads these authors to a magic realistic approach, an apt means to reflect …


Corpi, Murakami, And Contemporary Hardboiled Fiction, Cathy Steblyk Jun 2003

Corpi, Murakami, And Contemporary Hardboiled Fiction, Cathy Steblyk

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Corpi, Murakami, and Contemporary Hardboiled Fiction," Cathy Steblyk discusses comparatively texts by contemporary detective fiction writers, one an ethnic-minority US-American and the other Japanese. Steblyk proposes that in detective fiction since the late 1980s, morally or ethically contestable sites of history have been given a postmortem by contemporary authors who are interested in restoring the lost parts of cultural histories. Detective fictions by feminist US-Chicana author Lucha Corpi and Japanese writer Murakami Haruki show how recent fiction from around the globe uses the hardboiled genre for the purposes of exploring past injustices and offering revisionist histories. The …


Nobel In Literature 2000 Gao Xingjian's Aesthetics Of Fleeing, Mabel Lee Mar 2003

Nobel In Literature 2000 Gao Xingjian's Aesthetics Of Fleeing, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Nobel in Literature 2000 Gao Xingjian's Aesthetics of Fleeing," Mabel Lee explores the aesthetic dimensions of Gao Xingjian's play Taowang (Fleeing 1990), and its significance in establishing the recurring motif of "fleeing" in Gao's later writings on literature. Lee argues that the intensely emotional times during which Gao wrote Fleeing were comparable to those seventy years earlier confronting May Fourth writers. Urging his compatriots not to be "bystanders," Lu Xun, the most influential of May Fourth writers, had chosen to allow his creative self to suicide, as shown in the prose-poems of Yecao (Wild Grass 1927). For …


Comparing Anew: A Review Article Of New Work By Kushner, Zhang, Halio And Siegel, And San Román, Nicoletta Pireddu Mar 2003

Comparing Anew: A Review Article Of New Work By Kushner, Zhang, Halio And Siegel, And San Román, Nicoletta Pireddu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


The Horlas: Maupassant's Mirror Of Self-Reflection, Edward J. Lusk, Marion Roeske Mar 2003

The Horlas: Maupassant's Mirror Of Self-Reflection, Edward J. Lusk, Marion Roeske

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their co-authored paper, "The Horlas: Maupassant's Mirror of Self-Reflection," Edward J. Lusk and Marion Roeske present a comparative analysis of three works of Maupassant: Lettre d'un fou, Le Horla of 1886, and Le Horla of 1887. The authors argue that these works form a trilogy by which Maupassant expresses his struggle to resolve the issues that seem to haunt him during the time that he pens the Horla trilogy. This introspective search is crafted around the failure of a mirror to provide a reflected image and the assessment of the likelihood that the strange events presented in the trilogy …


Liksom's Short Stories And The Ironies Of Contemporary Existence, Chris Pawling Dec 2002

Liksom's Short Stories And The Ironies Of Contemporary Existence, Chris Pawling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Liksom's Short Stories and the Ironies of Contemporary Existence," Chris Pawling examines Rosa Liksom's short stories in her volume One Night Stands. Pawling proposes that Liksom's texts can be understood as postmodern pastiches (Jameson) of different literary voices which in turn are couched in an "affect-less" prose that attempt to inhabit the mental universe of the narrator/protagonist without necessarily endorsing any aesthetic or ethical point of view. Liksom's fictional universe is populated by individuals who are alienated from the life of predictable routines and are searching for "action" in scenes of low life in late-night city bars. …


Poe Translated By Baudelaire: The Reconstruction Of An Identity, Anne Garrait-Bourrier Sep 2002

Poe Translated By Baudelaire: The Reconstruction Of An Identity, Anne Garrait-Bourrier

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Poe Translated by Baudelaire: The Reconstruction of an Identity," Anne Garrait-Bourrier argues that Poe and Baudelaire seem to have developed what could be described as a father-son or teacher-student relationship. Baudelaire devoted half of his life to the translation into his mother tongue of Edgar Allan Poe's tales and the other half to the creation of poetry which was inspired, to say the least, by the American writer. Garrait-Bourrier proposes that the influence Poe exerted is undeniable and particularly manifest in Les Fleurs du Mal, so akin to Poe's spirit of "spleen" and the systematic deconstruction of …


The Memoir And Representations Of The Self: New Books By Vlasopolos And Picard, Ralph Freedman Sep 2002

The Memoir And Representations Of The Self: New Books By Vlasopolos And Picard, Ralph Freedman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Investigative Spaces In The Poetry Of Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, And Henri Michaux, Hugo Azérad Sep 2002

Investigative Spaces In The Poetry Of Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, And Henri Michaux, Hugo Azérad

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Investigative Spaces in the Poetry of Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, and Henri Michaux," Hugo Azérad revisits the notion of poetic space and tries to re-examine it in a novel light. In so doing, Azérad re-adapts phenomenology, which tells us that space outreaches itself in the shape of an horizon of perception. But can we posit a space which would progressively do away with perceiver and perceived alike, a space which poetry (art?) can help establish? Azérad attempts to approach poetic space as if it were a utopian place of encounter, different from the physical or psychological dimensions …


The Latin American Innovative Novel Of The 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment, Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez Jun 2002

The Latin American Innovative Novel Of The 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment, Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "The Latin American Innovative Novel of the 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment," Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez examines four early twentieth-century novels from four different Latin American countries. Coonrod Martínez pays particular attention to their innovation and rebellious breaking with tradition in the attempt to create new narrative. The paper includes comparisons of Arqueles Vela, Roberto Arlt, Martín Adán, and Pablo Palacio, and their novels of the 1920s, with works by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams, Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra Pound. In the paper, Coonrod Martínez also compares these early novels to celebrated novels of the …


The Villain At The Center: Infrapolitical Borges, Alberto Moreiras Jun 2002

The Villain At The Center: Infrapolitical Borges, Alberto Moreiras

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "The Villain at the Center: Infrapolitical Borges," Alberto Moreiras revisits the Argentinian ideology of "emancipation of the fatherland" on the basis of a re-reading of Jorge Luis Borges's short-story "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero." Moreiras begins by referring to Paul de Man's comment that Borges's essays were like PMLA essays. Moreiras suggests that, concerning essays, the more deceptive the more honest and less devious they are; and, therefore, the less devious the more devious. He then considers this notion as he surveys recent work on "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" by Josefina Ludmer, …


Anxieties Of Impotence: Cuban Americas In New York City, Christina Marie Tourino Jun 2002

Anxieties Of Impotence: Cuban Americas In New York City, Christina Marie Tourino

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Anxieties of Impotence: Cuban Americas in New York City, " Christina Marie Tourino seeks a basis for comparison between Latin American literatures and Latino literatures of the United States. Such groups have rarely been compared in the past because they are considered part of the same literary "family." However, Tourino argues that owing to the flows of capital driven by global pressures, literatures between and among Latin Americans and Latinos hail from such culturally heterogeneous sites and are made over by so many relocations that they do call for comparative projects. Instead of comparing texts across national …


Latin American And Comparative Literature, Roberto González Echevarría Jun 2002

Latin American And Comparative Literature, Roberto González Echevarría

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Latin American and Comparative Literature," Roberto González Echevarría asks whether comparative literature, a literary discipline dedicated to the proposition that linguistic boundaries must be transcended, can overcome the "cultural arrogance" of the "Eurocentrism" that he believes pervades it currently. González Echevarría argues that if it is to endure, comparative literature will have to undergo "a truly pitiless redefinition," one that effectively displaces "the hegemonic powers of nineteenth-century Europe" and that Latin American literature, by the nature of its historical development on the margins of these "hegemonic" texts and traditions, could -- and should -- play a central …


First Peoples Of The Americas And Their Literature, Gordon Brotherston, Lúcia De Sá Jun 2002

First Peoples Of The Americas And Their Literature, Gordon Brotherston, Lúcia De Sá

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their paper, "First Peoples of the Americas and Their Literature," Gordon Brotherston and Lúcia de Sá turn their attention to the indigenous literature of the Americas. They point out that concerted attempts to edit, translate, and publish the main examples or "classics" of Native American literature began little more than a century ago. Since that time, more than a dozen major cosmogonies have appeared, some of them in editions, which seriously attempt to trace back to pre-Cortesian antecedents. Outlining key classics and the ways that these texts have been disseminated, Brotherston and Sá elaborate on how this rich tradition …


Spanish American And Brazilian Literature In Inter-American Perspective: The Comparative Approach, Earl E. Fitz Jun 2002

Spanish American And Brazilian Literature In Inter-American Perspective: The Comparative Approach, Earl E. Fitz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Querying Komparatistik: Recent Books By Corbineau-Hoffmann, Konstantinovic, And O'Sullivan, Wendy C. Nielsen Mar 2002

Querying Komparatistik: Recent Books By Corbineau-Hoffmann, Konstantinovic, And O'Sullivan, Wendy C. Nielsen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Comparative Literature As A Messenger Of Diversity: New Books By Cassola, Durisin And Gnisci, And Kushner And Pageaux, Nicoletta Pireddu Mar 2002

Comparative Literature As A Messenger Of Diversity: New Books By Cassola, Durisin And Gnisci, And Kushner And Pageaux, Nicoletta Pireddu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Ezra Pound's Comparative Poetics, Naikan Tao Dec 2001

Ezra Pound's Comparative Poetics, Naikan Tao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Ezra Pound's Comparative Poetics," Naikan Tao concentrates on Pound's theories regarding comparison and examines the significance of his comparative studies to the formulation of his poetics, an aspect that has not been sufficiently investigated. On the basis of Pound's work, Tao observes that the conception of comparison Pound shaped through his comparative studies is the internal principle that governs the presentation of details and particulars, the method Pound advocated as a reader-oriented approach to truth and as an efficient, self-reliant means to avoid others' generalization and discursive presentation. Pound's view of comparison as an epistemological norm -- …