Comparative Literature Commons^™

Scénographier La Mémoire : Le Costume Théâtral Comme Archive Vivante. Retour Sur L’Exposition « Tisser Le Temps », Mohammed Amin Boudrika

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This article examines the role of theatre costume in constructing and transmitting the memory of the performing arts, drawing on the exhibition Tisser le Temps: Histoire et Création du Costume Théâtral Marocain (Weaving Time: History and Creation of Moroccan Theatre Costume), presented in 2024 as part of the National Theatre Festival of Tetouan. Given the ephemeral nature of theatrical performance, costume emerges as a material trace capable of preserving the memory of the production, of the actor's body and of the creative process. In this sense, it can be regarded as a genuine "living archive". The article also analyses the …

Archiver Le Théâtre Algérien : Itinéraire D’Un Chercheur, Ahmed Cheniki

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Undertaking research on theatre in Algeria, the Arab world or sub-Saharan Africa is by no means an easy task; it is closer to an obstacle course. It is far from the simple "intellectual adventure" it is so often imagined to be. It is a gruelling experience, patiently built up over time: the outcome of a long and delicate process, a lengthy journey made up of rewarding moments, to be sure, and genuine discoveries, but also of trial and error, self-questioning, refusals, closed doors and, at times, decisive encounters.

Résumé
Entreprendre une recherche sur le théâtre en Algérie, dans le monde …

Interview – رحلة في أرشيفات المسرح العربي مقابلة مع أ.د سيد علي إسماعيل, Ons Trabelsi

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This interview looks back on the career of theatre researcher and historian Sayed Ali Ismail and on his distinctive journey through the forgotten and marginalised documents of Arab theatre. The historian highlights the importance of archives in building a reinterpretation of the history of the performing arts in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt.

ملخّص
تتناول هذه المقابلة المسيرة المهنية للباحث والمؤرخ المسرحي سيد علي إسماعيل، بالإضافة إلى رحلته الفريدة مع الوثائق المنسية والمهمشة في مجال المسرح العربي. ويؤكد الباحث على أهمية الأرشيفات في إعادة قراءة تاريخ الفنون المسرحية في العالم العربي، ولاسيما في مصر

كلمات مفتاحية
الأرشيف، التوثيق، التاريخ، …

Palestinian Theatre Studies: The Emergence Of A Field, Noor Shihadeh

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This article analyses the emergence of Palestinian theatre studies, a field of research bound to the modern history of Palestine and to the settler colonial violence that marks it. This violence strikes people, their cultural production and the very possibility of preserving it, shaping in turn how scholarship circulates and where it can be conducted. Studies on Palestinian theatre have nonetheless appeared since the 1960s. The article examines them through a multilingual literature review (Arabic, English, French, Italian, Hebrew) and identifies three main lines of research: a historical-documentary approach, a socio-political and anthropological approach, and a body of studies devoted …

Héritages, Mémoires Et Transmissions Dans « Augures (LaʿAllā Wa ʿAsā) » De Chrystèle Khodr, Najla Nakhlé-Cerruti

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This article examines how Augures (Laʿallā wa ʿasā), a play created by Chrystèle Khodr in 2021 in Beirut and then presented in France, constructs an alternative historiography of the Lebanese civil war through theatre and its history. While the history of theatrical practice during this period remains largely unwritten in Lebanese historiography, the play draws on the intertwined memories of two iconic actresses, Hanane Hajj Ali and Randa Asmar had never converged before this production. Drawing on textual analysis, observation of the performance, and secondary sources, the article shows how Augures turns the stage into a space where history is …

L’Archive, Enjeu Et Miroir De La Structuration Du Mouvement Théâtral Indépendant En Égypte, Pauline Donizeau

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This article examines the link between the archives of the independent theatre movement in Egypt and the movement’s difficult journey towards structuring itself, from its formation in the late 1980s to the present day. For the artists involved in this movement, who create outside the structures and funding of official institutions, the archives represent a major challenge in political, economic and aesthetic terms.

Résumé
L’article s’intéresse au lien entre les archives du mouvement théâtral indépendant en Égypte et sa difficile structuration, depuis sa formation à la fin des années 1980 jusqu’à maintenant. Pour les artistes de ce mouvement, qui créent …

نقد معاوية نور لمسرح أحمد شوقي (1929-1932): قراءة في أرشيف مجهول, Essam Abu Elgasim Abdel Wahid

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Critiques of Ahmad Shawqi’s drama formed a prominent feature of the Sudanese critic Muawiya Muhammad Nur’s theatrical scholarship. Among the six articles he dedicated to analyzing theatrical works, Nur authored three pivotal essays on Shawqi’s theater published during the "Prince of Poets" life- time. The significance of these articles today lies in the fact that they remained "unknown" and absent from foundational references, leading to the omission of Nur’s contributions from studies documenting Arabic theatrical criticism in the pre-Mohamed Mandour era. This study serves as a call to re-read the history of Arabic theatrical criticism through a more precise and …

Introduction, Marianne Noujaim, Ons Trabelsi

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L’histoire du théâtre arabe est une histoire traversée par des silences, des lacunes, et des discontinuités qui relèvent autant des conditions de préservation des spectacles que des modalités de la mise en place d’une historiographie rigoureuse. D’aucuns infèrent de ces lacunes la carence de production des arts du spectacle dans le monde arabe. Dans la préface de son ouvrage Al-Masraḥ al-munawwaʿ, Tawfīq Al- Ḥakīm (1966) déplorait ainsi le fait que « notre création théâtrale contemporaine surgît ainsi de rien ou de presque rien, de quelques rares expériences […], œuvrant par-delà un abîme vertigineux que les efforts fournis au fil …

Regarding World(S): A Review Of Elisha Cohn’S Milieu: A Creaturely Theory Of The Contemporary Novel (2025) And Daniel Wright’S The Grounds Of The Novel (2024), Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Some of the most influential pronouncements on world literature have been made by the kind of authors who are most likely to emerge as representatives of world literature once we agree on a definition, including Goethe, the young Marx, Tagore, Gorky, Hesse, Kundera, and the distinguished signatories of the manifesto for a world-literature in French. Breaking out of this vicious circle by referring to the authority of pure theorists of world literature is not the solution, as this would only pull us into a new vicious circle where most of these theorists would mostly remind us of the names that …

A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Working with Fredric Jameson’s influential discussions of utopia and world literature, the essay suggests that the prospect of utopia is frightening and also possibly boring insofar as it threatens to drain away the already waning possibility of experience in a postmodern, globalized world. In this world, resentment of the present seems to go hand in hand with a nostalgia for a fictitious past, underscoring the difficulty of conceptualizing new social, cultural, and economic arrangements. Viewing world literature as a possible source of a new utopian thought, a utopia unlimited to its contemporary dystopian guises, the essay retraces Jameson’s pronouncements on …

An Arc Stretched Between East And West: World (Or Universal?) Literature In Maxim Gorky’S Publishing Utopias, Francesca Lazzarin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The Vsemirnaia Literatura publishing house was founded in Petrograd by Maxim Gorky less than a year after the October Revolution. Aligned with the objectives of the new regime, its mission was to translate and publish a substantial body of European and Asian poetry and prose, thereby contributing to the broad cultural education of the emerging Soviet generations. These ambitions clearly reflect a key element of Gorky’s conception of culture as well: for Gorky, culture in its broadest sense (encompassing literature, art, music, and science) had the potential to unite humanity under the ideals of peace and harmony. Within this new …

Introduction: World Literature As World Crisis, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Yamin Hu, The Contemporary Construction Of The Chinese Form Of Marxist Literary Criticism , Paul R. Patton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Worldbuilding, Brent Ryan Bellamy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Substantialism, David Janzen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Style, Clint Burnham

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Spectrality, Marlon Lieber

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Secularization, Jake Orbison

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Rhetoric, Fintan Calpin

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Representation, Douglas Spielman

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Real, Colleen Lye, Rumur Dowling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Praxis, Tobias Dias

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Nature, Christina Chalmers

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Metonymy, Rob Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Metabolism, Christian P. Haines

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Mediation, Josh Robinson

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Language, Richard Godden

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Labor, Thomas Waller

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'

Inversion, Tavid Mulder, Matthew Gannon

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Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'