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Articles 31 - 60 of 602

Full-Text Articles in Comparative Literature

Tell-Tale Landscapes And Mythical Chronotopes In Urban Designs For Twenty-First Century Paris, Bart Keunen, Sofie Verraest Sep 2012

Tell-Tale Landscapes And Mythical Chronotopes In Urban Designs For Twenty-First Century Paris, Bart Keunen, Sofie Verraest

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Tell-tale Landscapes and Mythical Chronotopes in Urban Designs for Twenty-first Century Paris" Bart Keunen and Sofie Verraest outline a methodology for the examination of narrative structures projected onto landscapes and exemplify it by analyzing four urbanist projects submitted for the international workshop for Greater Paris launched by President of France Nicholas Sarkozy in 2009. Keunen and Verraest focus on phantasmagorical urban spaces considered to be profane remnants of what Ernst Cassirer referred to as "mythical thought." Since the spatiotemporal structure of these phantasmagorical places is understood as fundamental to their affective appeal and seductiveness, they are treated …


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 …


The Avatar As A Methodological Tool For The Embodied Exploration Of Virtual Environments, Kris Pint Sep 2012

The Avatar As A Methodological Tool For The Embodied Exploration Of Virtual Environments, Kris Pint

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Avatar as a Methodological Tool for an Embodied Exploration of Virtual Environments" Kris Pint proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of environments which cannot be entered physically because they are fictional, inaccessible, or destroyed. As phenomenology has already emphasized, the analysis of space has to take into account the bodily involvement of the researcher. Pint introduces the notion of the avatar to compensate for the impossibility of actually accessing the aforementioned spaces. Borrowed from game design, the avatar allows us to include this bodily aspect in the exploration of virtual environments, without neglecting the specific …


The Instrumentality Of Gibson's Medium As An Alternative To Space, Raymond Lucas Sep 2012

The Instrumentality Of Gibson's Medium As An Alternative To Space, Raymond Lucas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Instrumentality of Gibson's Medium as an Alternative to Space" Raymond Lucas analyzes the alternative to space presented by James J. Gibson and the potential role of narrative in a more holistic process of design. The concept of space exerts a powerful influence on architecture, urban design, and other disciplines concerned with the environment. Many recent critiques have measured space against place, recognizing the deficit in memory and identification within space, but the problems with the concept are more deeply felt. Understanding the medium rather than space offers architects and theorists opportunities to examine the role of …


Urban Landscape And The Postsocialist City, Krzysztof Nawratek Sep 2012

Urban Landscape And The Postsocialist City, Krzysztof Nawratek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Urban Landscape and the Postsocialist City" Krzysztof Nawratek discusses contemporary capitalism as shaping the urban environment of Riga, a multiethnic and bilingual postsocialist, post-Soviet, and postindustrial city. When communism collapsed at the end of the twentieth century the majority of European socialist cities in central and East Europe adopted two ideas: 1) the idea of neoliberal deregulated management based on private, multi-agent ownership of land (and on land speculation) and the weakened role of the city council and 2) the "cultural turn" rejecting the industrial heritage of the socialist city and the ideology of the proletariat and …


Jenck's "Enigmatic Signifier" And Cathartic Narrative, Emmanuel Rubio Sep 2012

Jenck's "Enigmatic Signifier" And Cathartic Narrative, Emmanuel Rubio

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Jenck's 'Enigmatic Signifier' and Cathartic Narrative" Emmanuel Rubio takes Charles Jencks's definition of the "enigmatic signifier" as a point of departure. For Jencks, the post-modern "iconic building" should present a "redundancy of popular signs and metaphors" that allows for multiple interpretations. But these numerous metaphorical references could also be inserted in a less simultaneous network to construct a narrative sequence. As one of these sequences, the "cathartic narrative," which is particularly adapted to the troubled era of post-modernity, is defined as a narrative that brings back, in a symbolic way, memories and experiences of past suffering, before …


The Indian Diaspora And Reading Desai, Mukherjee, Gupta, And Lahiri, Amit Shankar Saha Jun 2012

The Indian Diaspora And Reading Desai, Mukherjee, Gupta, And Lahiri, Amit Shankar Saha

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Indian Diaspora and Reading Desai, Mukherjee, Gupta, and Lahiri" Amit Shankar Saha argues that displacement produces a point of encounter between the alien and authority. Saha analyses aspects of (im)migration in texts about the Indian diaspora: if the host society is intolerant then it is through reactionary self-fashioning that the (im)migrant asserts his/her ethnicity as a defensive mechanism to rescue self-respect. However, while the host society is welcoming, it does not guarantee ready assimilation because there is always the question of severing the (im)migrants ties with his/her home land. (Im)migrants start living in two worlds simultaneously …


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 …


Gender Anxiety And Contemporary Indian Popular Fiction, Elen Turner Jun 2012

Gender Anxiety And Contemporary Indian Popular Fiction, Elen Turner

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender Anxiety and Contemporary Indian Popular Fiction" Elen Turner discusses two examples of Indian "popular literature" which reflect contemporary Indian middle-class anxieties surrounding globalization and social change. The recent proliferation of foreign business process outsourcing companies in India has changed the financial and lifestyle opportunities available to young, urban Indians. While sociological and ethnographic studies have found that workers embrace what they perceive to be westernized lifestyles, the novels under discussion present a more nuanced picture. Chetan Bhagat's One Night at the Call Centre (2005) and Shruti Saxena's Stilettos in the Boardroom (2010) demonstrate that young workers …


Elements Of Hinduism In Chandra’S Red Earth And Pouring Rain, Corinne M. Ehrfurth Jun 2012

Elements Of Hinduism In Chandra’S Red Earth And Pouring Rain, Corinne M. Ehrfurth

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Elements of Hinduism in Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain" Corinne M. Ehrfurth explores how Hindu tenets in the Bhagavad-gītā continue to provide a didactic framework that inspires contemporary Indian literature. Ehrfurth highlights the similarities between characters, consumed with doubt and seeking understanding, in the ancient Indian text and Vikram Chandra's novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain where protagonists represent the diversity and complexity of Hinduism to a global audience. In examining how the novel's protagonists handle dilemmas, Ehrfurth presents Chandra's novel as illuminating how healthy and destructive actions affect one's ability of achieving the peaceful …


Ancient Hindu Society And Eliot's Ideal Christian Society, Anita Bhela Jun 2012

Ancient Hindu Society And Eliot's Ideal Christian Society, Anita Bhela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Ancient Hindu Society and Eliot's Ideal Christian Society" Anita Bhela examines the influence of Hindu thought and Hindu philosophy on T.S. Eliot's critical writings. In The Idea of a Christian Society Eliot gives a hypothetical account of an ideal society that would contribute towards the well-being of all its members, while in Notes towards the Definition of Culture he enumerates the essential conditions needed for the growth and survival of culture. Bhela argues that religion and culture were inseparably interrelated in Eliot's mind. She then traces similarities in the concepts of family, culture, and religion as expressed …


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 …


Redefinitions Of India And Individuality In Adiga's The White Tiger, Kathleen Waller Jun 2012

Redefinitions Of India And Individuality In Adiga's The White Tiger, Kathleen Waller

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Redefinitions of India and Individuality in Adiga's The White Tiger" Kathleen Waller discusses Indian individualism as being supported by a democratic and secular society, but also stymied by traditions and socioeconomic realities which keep most of its people living in poverty. In The White Tiger, Adiga challenges Indian culture to create a society in which individuals are truly free. Waller argues that the relevance of Adiga's novel is that it is social structure and practices of hierarchy keep many people in the lower classes of Indian society and that this state of affairs is counter …


The Idea Of England In Eighteenth-Century Indian Travel Writing, Amrita Satapathy Jun 2012

The Idea Of England In Eighteenth-Century Indian Travel Writing, Amrita Satapathy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Idea of England in Eighteenth-century Indian Travel Writing" Amrita Satapathy discusses how Dean Mahomed's 1794 The Travels of Dean Mahomed maps out territories of the mind of the colonizer and the colonized, how the narrative redefines contours of two diverse communities and cultures, and determines forms of cultural representations. Mahomed's Travels presented for the first time the idea of England from an Indian immigrant's point of view and altered the prejudiced outlook of early Western travel writings about the East. Mahomed's narrative opened an alternative vista for the wide-eyed Easterner of the world of the West …


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 …


Queer Love In Woolf's Orlando And Chu's Notes Of A Desolate Man, Pei-Wen Clio Kao Mar 2012

Queer Love In Woolf's Orlando And Chu's Notes Of A Desolate Man, Pei-Wen Clio Kao

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Queer Love in Woolf's Orlando and Chu's Notes of a Desolate Man" Pei-Wen Clio Kao analyses Virginia Woolf and T'ien-Wen Chu's novels in the context of gender studies. Kao's reading of Orlando and Notes of a Desolate Man is an elaboration on homosexual sensibilities of both men and women based on the concept of écriture féminine in the context of patriarchy and the former's power of subversion and change. Kao's analysis results in the finding that while Woolf's Orlando is more attuned to the feminist discourse based on an extended Western project in its period and …


The Role Of The Intellectual In Contemporary Turkish Women's Narratives, Adile Aslan Mar 2012

The Role Of The Intellectual In Contemporary Turkish Women's Narratives, Adile Aslan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Role of the Intellectual in Contemporary Turkish Women's Narratives" Adile Aslan analyzes the figure of the woman intellectual in two of the most widely praised novels written in Turkish, Adalet Ağaoğlu's 1971 Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die) and Leyla Erbil's 1985 Karanlığın Günü (The Day of Darkness). Aslan discusses how the two authors represent in their texts intertwined personal histories with political history. The novels present, as well as surmount the obstacles that the current socio-historical conditions impose on people in general and intellectuals in particular and how these circumstances have a bearing on their …


Nation In Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front And Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers, Brent M. Smith-Casanueva Mar 2012

Nation In Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front And Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers, Brent M. Smith-Casanueva

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Nation in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers" Brent M. Smith-Casanueva explores the commonalities between the antiwar narratives of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) and Clint Eastwood's film Flags of our Fathers (2006). Taking the position that narration of nation must be considered a site of hegemonic struggle, Smith-Casanueva argues that both texts employ a similar deconstructive logic to subvert the nationalist discourses and dominant war narratives of their respective nations and the national myths constructed through these narratives. In particular, both All …


Imperialist Nostalgia In Masters's To The Coral Strand, Fikret Mehmet Arargüc Mar 2012

Imperialist Nostalgia In Masters's To The Coral Strand, Fikret Mehmet Arargüc

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Imperialist Nostalgia in Masters's To the Coral Strand" M. Fikret Arargüç discusses nostalgia as a resource of identity formation. Arargüç argues that imperialist nostalgia is no innocent emotional attachment to the past; rather, it is an adaptation to changed circumstances and its discursive practices (i.e., eulogizing) evade responsibility. In addition to practices to alleviate or absolve repressed guilt about the past, they often relate to discourses of power and regret that the past is no more. This type of nostalgia is another neo-imperialist form of exploitation by (ab)using or generating fluid, dynamic, and ever-evolving identities. Arargüç …


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 …


Bellow's Letters And Biographies About Bellow: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Atlas And Taylo, Gustavo Sánchez-Canales Mar 2012

Bellow's Letters And Biographies About Bellow: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Atlas And Taylo, Gustavo Sánchez-Canales

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Trauma, Apocalypse, And Ethics In Israeli Theater, Zahava Caspi Mar 2012

Trauma, Apocalypse, And Ethics In Israeli Theater, Zahava Caspi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Trauma, Apocalypse, and Ethics in Israeli Theater" Zahava Caspi traces the traumatic experience as a point of departure in apocalyptic plays in Israeli literature. Caspi argues that in Israeli apocalyptic plays a critical gap opens up between the fictional narrative that ends with destruction and the theatrical apparatus that creates a sense of continuity. The theatrical text delivers a message to the audience inviting them to increase their engagement with and accountability for continuity not merely during the theatrical event, but more significantly, once the performance is over. The play's moral imperative to provide a "positive" ending …


Aesthetics, Opera, And Alterity In Herzog's Work, Jacob-Ivan Eidt Mar 2012

Aesthetics, Opera, And Alterity In Herzog's Work, Jacob-Ivan Eidt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Aesthetics, Opera, and Alterity in Herzog's Work" Jacob-Ivan Eidt analyses Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo. Eidt's analysis is executed in the context of opera, cinema, and aesthetics. Eidt argues that Herzog uses opera as a romantic motif with which he creates a self-critical process whereby elements of the Romantic vision are called into question thus providing a nuanced reading of the main character and the Indigenous world he encounters. This process, Eidt argues, produces a complex narrative of colonial alterity where colonial self-inscription upon an Other is ultimately doomed to failure.


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 Wounded Healer As Cultural Archetype, Galia Benziman, Ruth Kannai, Ayesha Ahmad Mar 2012

The Wounded Healer As Cultural Archetype, Galia Benziman, Ruth Kannai, Ayesha Ahmad

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "The Wounded Healer as Cultural Archetype" Galia Benziman, Ruth Kannai, and Ayesha Ahmad discuss the topos of the wounded healer, a concept of an archetypal dynamic coined by Jung to describe a phenomenon which may take place between analyst and analyzed. They examine representations of the archetype in diverse cultures and demonstrate how a reading of its various narratives may enrich our theoretical and practical understanding of the importance of empathy and mutuality in the healing process. The archetype of the wounded healer is valuable in acknowledging cultural diversity, as well as universal parallels between healing practices …