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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

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Articles 1141 - 1170 of 1324

Full-Text Articles in Comparative Literature

The Representation Of 'Race' In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Glen Lowry Jun 2004

The Representation Of 'Race' In Ondaatje's In The Skin Of A Lion, Glen Lowry

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Glen Lowry, in his paper "The Representation of 'Race' in Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion" bases his discussion on the observation that critics tend to view Ondaatje's writing in terms of a progression towards complex issues of "race" and post-coloniality. In contrast, Lowry argues that the matter of "race" forms an integral aspect of Ondaatje's oeuvre and Lowry proposes that In the Skin of a Lion is a key site in the development of Ondaatje's engagement with issues of "race" and the cultural politics of post-coloniality. Focusing on Ondaatje's depiction of Toronto in terms of its complex history …

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From Commonwealth To Postcolonial Literature, Edward O. Ako Jun 2004

From Commonwealth To Postcolonial Literature, Edward O. Ako

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper,"From Commonwealth to Postcolonial Literature," Edward O.Ako begins by establishing the link between Empire and English-language literature. Drawing on Elleke Boehmer, Gauri Viswanath, and Terry Eagleton, Ako discusses the ideological uses of literature and argues that the textual forms that emerged as "resistance" to imperial domination were referred to by a multiplicity of terms: Commonwealth Literature, New English Literature, Literature in English, Third World Literature, World Fiction, Minority Literature, Multicultural Literature, or Postcolonial Literature. Ako examines the merits and handicaps of each designation and explains why, in his view, the term "postcolonial" is the more appropriate notion and …

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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 …

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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 …

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Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood And East Asia's Macbeth, Yuwen Hsiung Mar 2004

Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood And East Asia's Macbeth, Yuwen Hsiung

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Yuwen Hsiung presents in her paper, "Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and East Asia's Macbeth," a comparative study between Kurosawa's film Throne of Blood and a contemporary Taiwanese play, Kingdom of Desire, both of which are adaptations of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Stepping from Eastern cultural background, both show similar orientation towards the original play, for instance the sizing down of the number of witches and the decreasing of Macbeth's heroic status. Gilles Deleuze's theory of movement image provides an insightful look into Kurosawa's filmology, which emphasizes the interrelatedness of every individual under the same condition. The idea of collectivity could be examined …

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Introduction To Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Charles Ross Mar 2004

Introduction To Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Charles Ross

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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Shakespeare And The Visualization Of Metaphor In Two Chinese Versions Of Macbeth, Alexander C.Y. Huang Mar 2004

Shakespeare And The Visualization Of Metaphor In Two Chinese Versions Of Macbeth, Alexander C.Y. Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Shakespeare and the Visualization of Metaphor in Two Chinese Versions of Macbeth," Alexander Huang proposes that, in addition to political uses, visualization is an important dimension of cultural translations of Shakespeare. In recent studies, Shakespeare's global presence has been investigated from various perspectives of critical inquiry, especially with postcolonial theories and in East-West literary relations. Instead of faulting cultural imperialism or foregrounding political statements in theatre, Huang explores the visual dimension of cultural translation found in Kingdom of Desire (a Beijing opera adaptation of Macbeth) and Story of the Bloody Hand (a Kunqu opera appropriation of the …

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Reality And Metaphor In Jane Howell's And Julie Taymor's Productions Of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Lucian Ghita Mar 2004

Reality And Metaphor In Jane Howell's And Julie Taymor's Productions Of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Lucian Ghita

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Reality and Metaphor in Jane Howell's and Julie Taymor's Productions of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus," Lucian Ghita looks at how Jane Howell's 1985 BBC production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Julie Taymor's film 1999 adaptation Titus re-fashion the image of Young Lucius. In Ghita's interpretation this happens by structuring the boy as the nexus of a cycle of violence that disturbs not only Andronicus's household, but also the moral and socio-political structures of ancient Rome. Ghita shows how the two directors politicize and ritualize their films by using cinematic techniques to distinguish, on the one hand, the real …

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Hamlet's "Globe" And The Self As Performer In England And Japan, Yu Shibuya Mar 2004

Hamlet's "Globe" And The Self As Performer In England And Japan, Yu Shibuya

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Hamlet's 'Globe' and the Self as Performer in England and Japan," Yu Shibuya argues that Hamlet sees his life as a performance. Shibuya presents examples from Tsuneari Fukuda's Japanese translation to suggest that Fukuda makes choices that emphasize the theatrical side of Hamlet's character. If Hamlet perceives himself as an actor, then his definition of theater or an actor is ultimately a definition of himself. Shibuya uses the theme of self-definition to examine Kenneth Branagh's film version, especially the Mousetrap and the "O what a rogue and peasant slave" scenes. By analyzing Branagh's staging and directorial decisions …

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Shakespeare's Taming Of The Shrew And The Tradition Of Screwball Comedy, Mei Zhu Mar 2004

Shakespeare's Taming Of The Shrew And The Tradition Of Screwball Comedy, Mei Zhu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and the Tradition of Screwball Comedy," Mei Zhu argues that Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is controversial owing to the subtlety and complexity of the text as well as its subject matter. Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 film version seems to follow the narrative structure of the original play closely while its effect is different. Through a detailed analysis and comparison of Shakespeare's play and Zeffirelli's adaptation, Mei argues that Zeffirelli's Taming is based on the Hollywood genre of screwball comedy. Rooted in mid-1930s USA during the Great Depression, such films feature a comic …

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Silence And Sound In Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood, Lei Jin Mar 2004

Silence And Sound In Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood, Lei Jin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Lei Jin argues in her paper, "Silence and Sound in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood," that silence and sound are employed as vehicles to explore the major themes of Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, fate, ambition, and destruction. By examining closely a few dramatic moments of the film, Lei demonstrates that silence and the interaction between silence, natural sound, and Noh music enhance the effect of Kurosawa's visual images, enforce their symbolic messages, and intensify the characters' psychological conflicts. Although Asaji's introspective speech and most of the dialogue between Washizu and Asaji are eliminated, silence bespeaks Asaji's unfathomable evil. In turn, Washizu's …

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Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, And Shakespeare's The Tempest, Simone Caroti Mar 2004

Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, And Shakespeare's The Tempest, Simone Caroti

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, and Shakespeare's The Tempest," Simone Caroti illustrates the way in which Cyril Hume and Fred Wilcox's 1956 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet -- whose plot is inspired by Shakespeare's Tempest -- reconfigures in Shakespeare's play. Caroti begins by defining the genre of science fiction and explaining its attraction for modern audiences. Following Darko Suvin's notions of science fiction, Caroti highlights the theme of cognitive estrangement and shows how Forbidden Planet offers a cultural translation of this theme in The Tempest. The result of Caroti's analysis is to read Prospero and his magic in …

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Cultural Anxiety And The Female Body In Zeffirelli's Hamlet, Xianfeng Mou Mar 2004

Cultural Anxiety And The Female Body In Zeffirelli's Hamlet, Xianfeng Mou

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Xianfeng Mou analyzes in her paper, "Cultural Anxiety and the Female Body in Zeffirelli's Hamlet," the workings of power, both discursive and visual, behind Zeffirelli's handling of the Nunnery and Mousetrap scenes, focusing on feminist interpretations of the female body and female sexuality. Drawing on theories by Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva, Mou analyzes how Zeffirelli, using Hamlet as his spokesman, constructs his negative meanings about Gertrude's sexuality as rampant and aberrant and Ophelia's body as disloyal, insincere, and insignificant. Mou argues that Zeffirelli's discursive and visual constructions confer absolute power upon Hamlet and that this reflects Zeffirelli's …

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Underwater Women In Shakespeare Films, Charles Ross Mar 2004

Underwater Women In Shakespeare Films, Charles Ross

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Underwater Women in Shakespeare Films," Charles Ross looks at the film tradition of representing the social oppression of women by scenes submersion, a trope that has its literary roots in the classics, the French Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the novel. Ross argues that unlike classic directors such as Kurosawa, Kozintsev, and Polanski, modern filmmakers not only like to enhance the female body, but also to draw on this trope as a cinematic shorthand to symbolize the oppression of women by various forces. Hollywood films made in the 1990s often go overboard in their attempts to make …

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Method Acting And Pacino's Looking For Richard, Peirui Su Mar 2004

Method Acting And Pacino's Looking For Richard, Peirui Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Method Acting and Pacino's Looking for Richard," Peirui Su explores the influence of method acting on Al Pacino's decision to film Shakespeare's Richard III as an unconventional docudrama. She compares Pacino's film to Laurence Olivier's 1955 film of Richard III and Ian McKellen's 1995 modernized version to show how Pacino's documentary structure solves the problems raised by films that try either to recreate the Elizabethan world or to update Shakespeare, thereby introducing anachronisms. Su argues that Pacino engages US-American audiences by filming interviews and open rehearsals. Su concludes her paper by analyzing the well-known scene of Richard's …

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Race And Othello On Film, Laura Reitz-Wilson Mar 2004

Race And Othello On Film, Laura Reitz-Wilson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Race and Othello on Film," Laura Reitz-Wilson discusses Shakespeare's treatment of race in Othello and compares it to what Hollywood as a producer of culture has done. Reitz-Wilson looks at nine different film versions and analyzes their approaches to Othello's race and character. She parses the historical and textual evidence for racism in Shakespeare's and concludes that it exists and should not be overlooked. Othello's otherness is, in fact, directly connected to his blackness, but Hollywood has rarely captured the tenuous line Shakespeare creates between barbarian and civilized Venetian. Her analysis of the film versions of Othello …

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Bibliography For The Study Of Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Lucian Ghita Mar 2004

Bibliography For The Study Of Shakespeare On Film In Asia And Hollywood, Lucian Ghita

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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Selected Bibliography Of Work About And Of Edward Said's Texts, Clare Callaghan Dec 2003

Selected Bibliography Of Work About And Of Edward Said's Texts, Clare Callaghan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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From Plato To Derrida And Theories Of Play, Simona Livescu Dec 2003

From Plato To Derrida And Theories Of Play, Simona Livescu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "From Plato to Derrida and Theories of Play," Simona Livescu proposes a reevaluation of the concept of play. By examining various critical interpretations of this term from Greek antiquity to modern structuralists and poststructuralist theories, Livescu analyzes the common denominator in philosophical, cultural, and religious facets of the play. In her discussion, Livescu emphasizes the ultimate importance of the ludic presence in every fundamental human action. Among the conclusions of the paper, Livescu suggests that play exists as an essence of consciousness and that it is, actually, a way of being, not only a way of knowing. …

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On Edward Said, Scholar And Public Intellectual, F. Elizabeth Dahab Dec 2003

On Edward Said, Scholar And Public Intellectual, F. Elizabeth Dahab

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "On Edward Said, Scholar and Public Intellectual," F. Elizabeth Dahab pays tribute to Edward Said, 1935-2003. Dahab discusses selected aspects of Said's trajectories as a scholar and Palestinian-American activist including aspects of Said's numerous activities and work as a musician, an ardent political polemicist, a music critic, a Columbia University professor of comparative literature, a humanist, President of the Modern Language Association of America, and an exiled Palestinian as evident in the vast corpus of this eminent scholar's publications over the course of almost four decades (twenty-four books and hundreds of articles and interviews). Said's work elicited …

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Cultures Of Populism And The Political Right In Central Europe, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, Andrea Petö Dec 2003

Cultures Of Populism And The Political Right In Central Europe, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, Andrea Petö

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their paper, "Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe," Patricia Chiantera-Stutte and Andrea Petö analyze the common points and differences in which imagined and mythologized histories are serving as a mobilizing force for extreme-right movements in three Central European countries, in Austria, Hungary, and Italy. The authors discuss how populist and right-wing political parties in these countries construct their conceptions of an alternative identity for the European Union. Further, the authors analyze the politico-territorial myths constructed by the three populist right-wing parties, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Northern League in Italy, and the Party of …

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Dorian Gray, Tom Ripley, And The Queer Closet, Jonathan Alexander, Deborah Meem Dec 2003

Dorian Gray, Tom Ripley, And The Queer Closet, Jonathan Alexander, Deborah Meem

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their paper, "Dorian Gray, Tom Ripley, and the Queer Closet," Jonathan Alexander and Deborah Meem present and portray an imaginary conversation among an impossible but intriguing group of writers, critics, and fictional characters. These individuals speak in their own (published) voices, which are moderated by the author-facilitators and shaped into an extended rumination on art, the Doppelgänger, queerness, and literary influence. Through their dialogue, the actors reveal a tradition of the queer novel, running in this case from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray to Patricia Highsmith's five Tom Ripley books, whereby the closet functions simultaneously as refuge …

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Postcolonial African Consciousness And The Poetry Of Agostinho Neto, Irene Marques Dec 2003

Postcolonial African Consciousness And The Poetry Of Agostinho Neto, Irene Marques

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Postcolonial African Consciousness and the Poetry of Agostinho Neto," Irene Marques introduces the magic words of a great poet with the question: can poetry carry enough sorrow, enough strength, enough fire, enough love, enough wisdom, enough care, and enough horror to penetrate the hearts and the souls of the oppressed and the oppressors so that both will desperately want to escape their sinister labels? For Marques, this question represents an old quandary and one that many of us wish could be answered with a simple yes. Marques analyses Neto's poetry in the context of littérature engagé: if …

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Comparative Literature Versus Comparative Cultural Studies, Tomo Virk Dec 2003

Comparative Literature Versus Comparative Cultural Studies, Tomo Virk

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies," Tomo Virk discusses debates of the role, essence, and the future of comparative literature as it has developed since the 1995 publication of the Bernheimer Report. Virk explores the situation of the discipline in its North American context: "contextualists" argue for the abandoning of comparative literature understood as the study of literature with theoretical investigations of literariness while the "non-contextualists" underscore the study of the linguistic structure(s) of the text. Virk supports comparative literature understood as the traditional concentration of the discipline with focus on the specificities of literary questions while …

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New Orleans And Its Influence On The Work Of Lillian Hellman, Charlotte Headrick Sep 2003

New Orleans And Its Influence On The Work Of Lillian Hellman, Charlotte Headrick

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "New Orleans and Its Influence on the Work of Lillian Hellman," Charlotte Headrick explores playwright Lillian Hellman's life and work. Headrick proposes that Hellman was indelibly shaped by her years in the city of New Orleans. In her early childhood, Hellman would spend half a year in New York and half a year in New Orleans, home to her parents. Despite this seemingly schizophrenic upbringing, she considered herself a Southerner to the end of her days and, in fact, defined herself less by her Jewishness than by her "Southernness." Hellman's plays and memoirs are peppered with references …

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Selected Bibliography Of Work In Cultural Studies And Us-American Popular Culture, Marta Guirao, Benton Jay Komins Sep 2003

Selected Bibliography Of Work In Cultural Studies And Us-American Popular Culture, Marta Guirao, Benton Jay Komins

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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Holy Fools, Secular Saints, And Illiterate Saviors In American Literature And Popular Culture, Dana Heller Sep 2003

Holy Fools, Secular Saints, And Illiterate Saviors In American Literature And Popular Culture, Dana Heller

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture," Dana Heller identifies and analyzes characteristics of the holy fool figure in American literature and culture. Heller defines the holy fool, or divine idiot, as a figure central to U.S. myths of nation. One encounters such figures in American literature as well as in American folklore, popular culture, and mass media. In American culture, the Divine Idiot is a hybrid form which grows out of the crossings of numerous literary and historical currents, both secular and non-secular. This unwieldy hybridity -- the fact that …

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An Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Popular Culture, Benton Jay Komins Sep 2003

An Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Popular Culture, Benton Jay Komins

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

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Qu(E)Erying Comic Book Culture And Representations Of Sexuality In Wonder Woman, Brian Mitchell Peters Sep 2003

Qu(E)Erying Comic Book Culture And Representations Of Sexuality In Wonder Woman, Brian Mitchell Peters

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Qu(e)erying Comic Book Culture and Representations of Sexuality in Wonder Woman," Brian Mitchell Peters proposes that youth culture is responsible for an arbitrary yet highly structured appropriation of what we can call high-contemporary culture. Hence, notions of pop-culture take from the past and use the present to create a highly fluid now, capable of transcending its present moment in a stereotypical fifteen minutes of fame. Part of twentieth-century pop-culture phenomena is the evolution of the comic book. The comic, in its habitual split of binaries, creates a space where young people have tapped consistently into queer themes. …

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Heidegger, The Erotics Of Ontology, And The Mass-Market Romance, Deborah Lutz Sep 2003

Heidegger, The Erotics Of Ontology, And The Mass-Market Romance, Deborah Lutz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Heidegger, the Erotics of Ontology, and the Mass-Market Romance," Deborah Lutz explores a particular formula of mass-market romance -- the dangerous lover or "sweet savage" one -- as an allegory for Heidegger's theories of nearness and being-toward-an-end in Being and Time. The postponements, secrets, and failed presence of the final immanence of love in these narratives allegorize the flight and entanglement of Dasein in the everyday. The romance's narrative movement as always in relationship with its end -- the full presence of love -- and its structure of being always ahead of itself, mirrors the narrativity of …

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