Comparative Literature Commons^™

Methodological Reflections On Investigating The Reception Of Fiction In Public Spaces, Katarina Eriksson Barajas

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Methodological Reflections on Investigating the Reception of Fiction in Public Spaces" Katarina Eriksson Barajas discusses how to find and approach research participants in public spaces. Eriksson Barajas's study is based on tenets of the empirical study of literature. Reader response and reception theories and discursive psychology are both employed in the analysis. This approach, called discursive reception studies, enables researchers to analyze the role of social interaction in the co-construction of the experience of, in this case, a film or a play. Eriksson Barajas discusses the following methodological issues: 1) how to gain access to "naturally" occurring …

Young Adults In Sweden On Reading Literary Fiction In Print And Electronic Media, Skans Kersti Nilsson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Young Adults in Sweden on Reading Literary Fiction in Print and Electronic Media" Skans Kersti Nilsson analyses 16-25 year old young adults' reflections on the reading of fiction in printed books versus electronic media. In Nilsson's study focus group interviews were conducted to gauge how conversations on the importance of reading literary fiction develop inside and outside the learning environment of school. The results suggest that young adults derive benefit from reading fiction and that they think this activity yields more benefits than reading fiction on electronic media or viewing filmed literature. Results also suggest that participants …

The Indirect Path To The Literary Canon Exemplified By Shelley's Frankenstein, David Fishelov

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Indirect Path to the Literary Canon Exemplified by Shelley's Frankenstein" David Fishelov examines the indirect path of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the literary canon. Fishelov offers a multi-dimensional model for describing the dynamic process of acquiring, maintaining, and changing canonical status. The model emphasizes the important role played by artistic dialogues and echoes that certain works initiate or inspire in other authors and artists in the form of allusion, homage, parody, and adaptation. The data introduced in the article suggest that the popular cinematic versions of Frankenstein probably not only played a mediating role but …

Toward An Empirically-Generated Typology Of Weblog Genres, Maciej Maryl, Krzysztof Niewiadomski, Maciej Kidawa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Toward an Empirically-generated Typology of Weblog Genres" Maciej Maryl, Krzysztof Niewiadomski, and Maciej Kidawa propose a typology of weblog genres based on empirical data, namely on the analysis of metadata and the study of blogs' content. In Study 1 they explore 287 categories used by Polish bloggers to classify their blogs. The analysis shows that most categories are topical, but some could be useful for genre analyses. In Study 2 they analyse "syntagma" combinations of 2-3 categories assigned to 88 252 blogs on one of the Polish blog platforms. Through quantitative analysis and clustering 3 main groups …

Bibliography Of Contextual (Systemic And Empirical) Approaches In The Study Of Literature And Culture, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Audience Response And From Film Adaptation To Reading Literature, Klaudia H.Y. Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Audience Response and from Film Adaptation to Reading Literature" Klaudia H.Y. Lee analyses results from 3000-plus interview conducted across university campuses in Hong Kong in order to investigate the roles of screen adaptations and their intertextual relationship for developing students' critical textual practice. Lee combines reader-response theory (Iser and Rosenblatt) with empirical data to explore students' actual encounters and experience with texts. While the data suggests an influence of screen adaptations on students' choice and motivation of reading, this interest can potentially be developed into a critical awareness of the various intertextual possibilities that exist in different …

Empirical Research And Practice-Oriented Physics For The Humanities And Sciences, István Berszán

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Empirical Research and Practice-oriented Physics for the Humanities and Sciences" István Berszán proposes an empirical approach for the humanities and sciences he designates as "practice-oriented physics." He bases his argumentation on Albert-László Barabási's network theory applied and question tenets of complexity, networks, and spaces. Further, Berszán elaborates on the affinity between the spaces of practical orientation and the spaciousness of parallel worlds as explicated in Brian Green's string theory. Berszán posits that because the universe as "symphony" of string oscillations leads to parallel rhythms of happenings and their different spaces of motion and argues that this kind …

Fictionality And The Empirical Study Of Literature, Torsten Pettersson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Fictionality and the Empirical Study of Literature" Torsten Pettersson surveys three types of studies and argues for research which disentangles fictionality from other aspects of literariness. Pettersson conceptualizes the basic paradoxical phenomenon that made-up stories can influence readers' perceptions of the real world and presents an empirical study of the impact of fictionality based on a five-page narrative presented to two groups of young Swedish readers as an extract from an autobiography and a novel, respectively. A questionnaire elicited reactions to the narrative, as well as attitudes to fictionality and to literary reading in general. Results include …

Teaching Literature Through Online Discussion In Theory And Practice, Monica Manzolillo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Teaching Literature through Online Discussion in Theory and Practice" Monica Manzolillo focuses on the teaching of literature at the university through on-line discussion. Integrating discussion-based techniques with the predominant lecture mode is necessary because we need to modify students' merely receptive attitude, and help them develop the fundamental skills of reading, interpreting, and criticizing literary texts. Compared to live discussions, electronic communication has the advantage of providing a more relaxed atmosphere where social conventions are less important and this encourages positive interaction among students. Manzolillo illustrates the experimental use of the website Learning Literature http://www.learningliterature.it/ as support …

Paratexts In Travel Blogs, Travel Books' Hypertextuality, And Medial Format Usage, Stefano Calzati

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Paratexts in Travel Blogs, Travel Books' Hypertextuality, and Medial Format Usage" Stefano Calzati compares a number of contemporary travel books and travel blogs. Calzati's objective is to promote a bridging approach between the digital and the analogue that goes beyond their differences. He posits a critique socio-linguistics where online multimodal texts are analyzed by identifying layers of analysis. Against these compositional models, Calzati suggests a double move: on the one hand, he applies Gérard Genette's notion of "paratext" to travel blogs and on the other he extends the concept of "hypertextuality" to travel books. From his analyzis …

Uncanny Bodies In Sacred Settings: Creating The Divine In Rodney Smith's Photography, Rebecca Leigh Langham

Theses and Dissertations

The photographer Rodney Smith shows us images of real things and people, but real things and people that aren’t positioned in real ways and places people would actually be. Instead, he uses something very familiar to each of us–the human body–and consistently puts it in very unfamiliar situations. By using something so intimately familiar to each of us as the body in weird ways, he automatically jars our own experienced sensations. And this jarring of familiar sensations, this defamiliarization of something so familiar to us, is what typically results in what literary critics term the feeling of the uncanny. What …

“A Wretched Idealist”: Tragedy In “Love Must Not Be Forgotten”, Daijuan Gao

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Since its publication in 1979 and the ensuing controversy it evoked about the morality of an extramarital love affair (albeit platonic), Zhang Jie’s short story, “Love Must Not Be Forgotten” has continued to captivate readers and literary scholars. While the values of Zhang’s story, with its challenges to traditional ethics and its provocation of female consciousness, have been acknowledged by critics and commentators, examination of the aesthetics of the story’s tragic effect has thus far remained marginal. “Love” engendered pity and fear in readers, particularly during the time following the Cultural Revolution when the lives of Chinese people were firmly …

A Daring Voice: Confessional Poetry Of The 1970s From Argentina And The United States, Julia Eva Leverone

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Daring to confront difficult socio-political realities on the page, Argentine and United States poets writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s strove against systems of silence. Implementing direct and indirect poetics, each set of poets embodied, in differing and overlapping ways, elements of the confessionalist mode, at once relational and witnessing. Their poetry in collections from these particular years reflected the risk in their auto-positioning as subjects within their poems and with complex relationships with their audience, and in their usage of language, sometimes fragmented, protective, or urgent. They committed personal experience to the page, and in conveying their …

Which Side Are You On? : Prosthetic Vaginas, Cross-Dressing Madonnas, And Queer Theology In Virgin Of The Flames And Narcopolis, Nasreen Hannah Khan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Chris Abani describes a scene where his main character Black and Sweet Girl, a transsexual dancer, have intercourse for the first time. Black hesitates as he begins to penetrate her anally because, “he couldn’t become her this way. He knew this thing, this intimacy he craved wasn’t about love, or even sex, but about filling himself.” (275). Black does not want sex, he wants, as Sweet Girl does, to transcend boundaries of gender and the physical dimensions of sex. Similarly Thayil’s narrator Dimple, a castrated biological male prostitute living as a woman, expounds on the nature of sex after a …

Kinky Criticism: Bdsm Principles Applied To Literature, Maria J. Dominguez

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis proposes a new school of literary analysis: Kinky Criticism. This critical theory will examine the presence in literature of themes related to BDSM, an acronym referring to bondage/discipline, domination/submission, and sadism/masochism. My purpose in examining this power exchange and sadomasochism in literature is threefold. Firstly, I aim to reveal the presence of kinky themes in not only a range of literary works, but also leave the reader aware of kink present in everyday human interactions. Secondly, through this application to literature, Kinky Criticism sheds new light on the techniques of characterization and adds complexity to the dynamics between …

Cartographies Of Transnational Desires: Bi-National Same-Sex Couples In Literature And Film, Alla Ivanchikova

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article examines the issue of transnationality from the point of view afforded by a particular perspective—a bi-national queer couple—as brought into relief by three recent cultural texts: Philip Gambone’s novel Beijing (2003), a film by Israeli director Michael Mayer, Out in the Dark (2012); and a film by Spanish director Julio Medem, Room in Rome (2010). Whereas in bi-national opposite-sex unions each partner can become a sponsor of his or her spouse for immigration purposes, bi-national queer couples, due to the fact that the majority of nation-states in today’s world do not have provisions for same-sex unions, regularly …

政商夾縫中的右傾文人 : 五、六○年代黃思騁文學活動研究 = A Right-Wing Writer Trapped In Politics And Business : A Study Of Huang Sicheng's Literary Activities In The 1950s And 1960s, Yuen Mei, Fanny Li

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

本文首先介紹黃思騁的生平，上半部以「香港中國筆會」及《當代文藝》等刊物為主，探討黃氏在其中的活動及角色，分析它們和「美援文化」的關係，管窺這些文學刊物和組織，如何使右傾文人在政治化的夾縫中得到開拓視野、實踐文學理想、推動文學發展的機會。下半部以女性形象為切入點，分析黃思騁「三毫子小說」的文本特點，以見嚴肅作家和通俗小說互為他者的現象，考察商業化的文學工業中作家主體的影響力。最後總結在五、六○年代的香港，黃思騁作為右傾文人和嚴肅小說家，其生存狀態有何特點，並帶來怎樣的結果。

Notes On Contributors = 客席編輯及作者簡介

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Madness In Southern China : Illness As Metaphor In Su Tong's The Tale Of The Siskins And "Madwoman On The Bridge", Shuk Man Leung

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

In Su Tong’s novels, the term madness is more than a medical term and it carries metaphorical meanings. In The Tale of the Siskins and “Madwoman on the Bridge,” Su Tong uses madness as a metaphor to challenge the dichotomy between normality and abnormality, and draws an analogy between mental hospitals and contemporary society. Unlike Yu Hua’s 余華 (1960-) novels, which intertwine sanguinary violence with madness, Su Tong depicts madness mainly to unveil the absurdity of the Mahogany Street. This paper analyses the use of patients’ illnesses in mental hospitals as metaphors in these two stories. In “Madwoman on the …

Disillusionment With Chinese Culture In The 1880s : Wang Tao's Three Classical Tales, Xiaoling Shi

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Leading scholars of modern Chinese literature have long discussed how the May Fourth became a hegemonic force and have sought to uncover the “burdens of May Fourth”; that is, those discourses eclipsed by the May Fourth intellectuals as they promoted the goal of openness and pluralism in the New Culture Movement. They have discovered Chinese modernity in the Late Qing writings as early as the mid-nineteenth century, decades before the May Fourth movement. Particularly, some scholars have argued that features of modernity might have stemmed from indigenous genres or classical language. My study of how the West is portrayed in …

性別化東方主義 : 女性沙漠羅曼史的重層東方想像 = Gendering Orientalism : Women's Desert Romance And The Multiplicity Of Oriental Imagination, Fang Mei Lin

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

本文以沙漠羅曼史為研究對象，企圖達成三項目的。首先是對《東方主義》一書的批評與反思，從該書處處提及的情色化東方想像為出發點，探討被薩依德所忽略之東方主義的性別意涵。其次，筆者將沙漠羅曼史置於女性旅遊書寫的脈絡下，指出女性作者比男性作者流露出較多對東方的正面評價以及對帝國主義的猶疑。第三，筆者比較翻譯羅曼史與台灣羅曼史二者的特色及其差異，指出西方羅曼史比台灣羅曼史更具有對帝國主義的反省與顛覆。而台灣小說經常將沙漠羅曼史與其他次類型混和。在這些女作家筆下，東西方二元對立雖然沒有完全消失，但沙漠羅曼史的東方想像富有重層性與曖昧性，一方面再生產了東方主義，同時也將其顛覆與轉化，成為女性旅遊與自我成長的契機。

Transculturating The Modern : Zhang Ruogu's Literary Life In 1930s Shanghai, Shuo Win Chen

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Zhang Ruogu 張若谷(1905-1967), now known primarily as an urban writer,2 began his literary career by translating and commenting on French literature in newspapers and journals and subsequently published several urban stories. He was also an active advocate of urban life and played an important role in the introduction of the ideas of the French-style café gathering and European cultural trends. Zhang Ruogu’s literary activities, his admiration of French literature and culture, and his works inspired by the French literary works that he admired or translated, are the focus of investigation of this paper. From Paris to Shanghai and from 19th-century …

Town-Talk And The Cause Célèbre Of Robert Browning’S The Ring And The Book, Amy R. Wong

Collected Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines Browning’s relentless preoccupation with generating such forms of “idle talk” in The Ring and the Book.³ For the most part, critics from the time of the poem’s initial publication to the present day have focused their energies on speakers directly involved in the case— Pompilia (on her deathbed), Guido, Caponsacchi—or the Pope, as he crafts his learned pronouncement^.4 Those who have devoted attention to the first three town talkers, including scholars such as Mary Rose Sullivan and William E. Buckler, give accounts that tend to individualize these personae in ways that obscure the significance of …

女俠形象的流變 : 以「女飛賊黃鶯」與「女黑俠木蘭花」及其影視改編為例 : 談四○到六○年代間偵探通俗文學從上海到香港發展的一些變化 = Transforming The Image Of Female Chivary : Popular Detective Fiction : From The 1940s To 1960s, From Shanghai To Hong Kong, In "Huang Ying, The Female Cat Burglar" Series And "The Dark Heroine Mulan Hua" Series, Yan, Vivien Wei

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

本文以偵探小說「女飛賊黃鶯」與「女黑俠木蘭花」系列及其影視改編為例談四○到六○年代間偵探小說從上海到香港發展的一些變化。「女飛賊黃鶯」為作家小平於四○年代在上海環球出版社出版的偵探雜誌《藍皮書》上連載，一九五〇年環球出版社南遷至香港後重新連載這一系列，十分暢銷，部分內容被翻拍成電影。黃鶯故事的流行促成了五六○年代一大批女俠小說及電影的產生，其中最為出名、自成體系的為倪匡六○年代以魏力為筆名創作出的「女黑俠木蘭花」系列。本文詳細敘述了這兩個系列的女俠小說產生及流通的來龍去脈，並通過這兩個例子試圖理清一些五六○年代香港通俗文學與四○年代的上海通俗文學之間的淵源，以及在不斷的影視改編中如何逐步本土化的過程。本文也對此類女俠故事為何會在五六○年代的香港流行原因作出分析，並試圖藉此探討五六○年代香港的市民心理及審美趣味。

Póliza: A Bilingual Anthology Of Postmodern Peninsular Spanish Women Poets, Jacqueline Osborn

Honors Projects

Within this project I endeavor to translate a series of poems from seven postmodern female Spanish poets, exploring the challenges and idiosyncrasies of not only the migration between languages, but those specifically between Spanish and English as well as those particular to poetry translation. Of course, there are inherent limits to this process. Regarding the differences between English and Spanish, such difficulties as the presence of naturally reflexive verbs, neutral pronouns, more efficient nominalization of adjectives, and the greater presence of the subjunctive tense in Spanish arise. Respecting the problem of poetry, the structure, rhythm, and even the tone of …

前言 = Foreword, Kuo Wei Chen, Yan, Vivien Wei

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

在近兩個世紀中，亞洲與西方不論在文學或文化層面，均有著超乎以往複雜且多元的交流，而在各種跨國、跨語際的翻譯與傳播現象中，大眾文學與文化（popular literature╱culture）可以說是最能表現出此間互動的複雜性。不論是從科學主義出發最終賦予高度人文主義關懷的「推理╱偵探╱犯罪」（mystery╱detec­tive╱crime），透過架空世界摹想當下與未來現實的「科╱奇幻」（SF╱fantasy），或是東西方冷戰架構下異軍突起的「間諜」（spy），抑或是反映現代人集體潛意識的「恐怖」（horror）、「驚悚」（thriller）「懸疑」（suspense），無一不是十九世紀開始在西方誕生茁壯，隨著現代性的跨國散佈，透過不同的途徑與介面，傳播到東亞各國。

越境出走 : 費蒙一九五○年代犯罪╱間諜小說中的香港 = Crossing Borders : The Hong Kong In Fei Meng's Crime/Spy Fiction From The 1950s, Kuo Wei Chen

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Sinophone Studies And Beyond : An Interview With Shu-Mei Shih, Te Hsing Shan

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

一九五○年代香港文藝副刊連載小說研究 : 以《香港時報》副刊為對象 = Serial Stories In Hong Kong's Newspaper Literary Supplements In The 1950s : A Case Study On The Literary Supplement Of Hong Kong Times, Win Wei Shiu, Na Yen

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

香港通俗小說出版，通常先在報刊、雜誌上發表後，再集結成冊發行，包括引領三毫子小說出版的「環球出版社」，皆是依此模式進行。因此，以通俗小說作為研究對象，除了已經出版成冊的書籍之外，副刊上的連載小說也是相當重要的路徑。目前香港副刊小說研究，多關注小說中的「香港意識」以及對都市形態的描寫，主題不以通俗小說與其創作班底為主，重點非連載小說與出版之間的關連，研究對象也集中在《新生晚報》與《文匯報》。然而，連載小說是香港各個報紙副刊共有的刊登形式，以《香港時報》副刊為例，從一九四九年開始，每日至少刊出兩篇連載小說，甚至佔了副刊一半以上的版面。過去對《香港時報》副刊的研究，主要以劉以鬯主編「淺水灣」時期為對象，強調他透過副刊引進西方文藝思潮，以及鼓勵台灣、香港二地的現代主義創作。然而，劉以鬯主編《香港時報‧淺水灣》的時間不長，實際統計《香港時報》副刊的作品，通俗作品也較嚴肅文學多得多，卻始終不是研究者關懷的重點，甚是可惜。

因此，本研究將透過統計五○年代《香港時報》副刊的連載小說，觀察其上連載作品有哪些類型？創作班底是哪一群人？連載後出版的狀況如何？未來還有哪一些研究的可能性？

The Lost Geopoetic Horizon Of Li Jieren : The Crisis Of Writing Chengdu In Revolutionary China. By Kenny Kwok-Kwan Ng, Kristin Stapleton

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.