Comparative Literature Commons^™

The New Old Logic Of Ai: A Review Of Mark Coeckelbergh’S The Political Philosophy Of Ai And Calvin Lawrence’S Hidden In White Sight, Steven Wandler

Critical Humanities

The New Old Logic of AI: A Review of Mark Coeckelbergh’s The Political Philosophy of AI and Calvin Lawrence’s Hidden in White Sight by Steven Wandler, St. Catherine University

Humanities In The Time Of Chatgpt And Other Forms Of Ai, Puspa Damai, Barbara Postema

Critical Humanities

Humanities in the time of ChatGPT and other forms of AI

Treating Traum(A): Examples In The Tanakh That Mirror Events During The Life Of Bonhoeffer And Crimes Of The Ian Rankin Novel Knots And Crosses, Geraldine Mitchell

Journal of Franco-Irish Studies

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) contains a wealth of stories reflecting life in the ancient world including struggles and wars that prove(d) traumatic. It is shown time and again that history repeats itself, and the stories of the Bible reappear in the modern world, both real and (crime) fictional. In this paper, traumatic experiences associated with the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer as well as the fictional character DI John Rebus created by the crime writer Ian Rankin, are linked with similar incidents recorded in the Tanakh. The first novel in the Rebus series, Knots and Crosses, also forms the basis …

Through The Lens Of Trauma: Analyzing Narrative Voice In 'The Handmaid's Tale'", Bianca Ramos

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Despite not being solely about trauma, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale's (1985) is written through the voice of a traumatized narrator. Offred's narration in this novel is unreliable, shifting between past and present and sharing multiple possibilities of events. This narrative voice accentuates the uncertainty and tension within this story. Offred's unreliable narration reveals her inner psychological state. Through readings of medical-humanity and cognitive literary theory, this thesis examines how trauma alters Offred’s narrative voice in The Handmaid’s Tale. I argue that Offred’s narration is a trauma response to her oppressive environment and is motivated by an attempt to reclaim …

From Periphery To Center: Re-Presenting Black And Afro-Arab Characters In Contemporary Arabic Literature, Samer Ahmad Mayyas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Black Arabs and Afro-Arabs tend not to be centered in Arabic discourse, especially modern Arabic literature, and Black people of other ethnicities are marginalized, as if Black peoples and Afro-Arabs were not part of the history and present-day of the Arabic-speaking world. I explore in this dissertation project the representations and experiences of Black and Afro-Arabs in contemporary Arabic fictional narratives. I argue that the contemporary literary era sees a shift in re-presenting Black peoples and Afro-Arabs in the Arabic fictional discourse. By moving Black and Afro-Arab characters from periphery to center, contemporary Arab writers challenge and disrupt, in an …

Tess Of The D'Urbervilles -- A Pure Survivor An Analysis Of Thomas Hardy, Victorian Women, & Modern Media, Jesse C. Marin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Context is vital to understanding the circumstances and the society that produced Thomas Hardy’s novel. As such, I will be reviewing the era through canonically established authors, the literary trope that would condemn women and firmly entrench itself in England’s national identity, and political movements guided by the law of Victorian England. This will showcase the hurdles of basic women’s rights that would continue throughout the reign of Queen Victoria, as well as the dangers that would be faced in the public and domestic spheres, endangering a woman’s very life. When tied together W.T. Stead’s expose in the Pall Mall …

The Deer-Maid Motif In The Children Of Húrin, Kris Swank

Journal of Tolkien Research

The story of Túrin Turambar goes back to the end of the First World War, and Tolkien continued to work on it through the 1950s. Later versions repeatedly describe Túrin’s sister Niënor figuratively—as or like—a hunted deer, especially after her enchantment by the dragon Glaurung. Tolkien identified Sigurd the Volsung, Oedipus, and the Finnish Kullervo as sources for Túrin, however, the motif of a maiden enchanted as a deer does not derive from those sources. The Irish story of Oisín’s mother, Sadhbh or Saav, who was transformed into a fawn by an evil druid, shares several analogous …

Sam's Song In The Tower: The Significance Of 'Merry Finches' In J.R.R. Tolkien's _Lord Of The Rings_, Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

In The Lord of the Rings, Samwise Gamgee climbs the Tower of Cirith Ungol to try to rescue his master and friend, Frodo Baggins, who has been taken captive by Orcs. When Sam is near despair because he cannot find Frodo, Sam sings a song that makes reference to “merry finches.” What is the significance of this phrase in his lyrics? To answer this question, my essay first explores J.R.R. Tolkien’s ornithological knowledge, especially of finches in England, which is readily demonstrated from a letter he wrote to his son, Christopher Tolkien (July 7, 1944), about his observations of bullfinches …

Introduction To The Special Issue On Tolkien's Animals, Kris Swank

Journal of Tolkien Research

Introduction to the Special Issue on Tolkien's Animals

Reading Rent: Interracial Relationships And Racial Hierarchies, Susanna A. Perez-Field

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In examining the musical Rent by Jonathan Larson (1995) and its film adaptation by Chris Columbus (2005), most scholarly work and analyses have focused on the work’s identity as a queer text. I assert that elements of this musical have been overlooked for its depth of racial and class hierarchies. Utilizing sociological theory and interracial relationships, I will examine characters and musical numbers to explore diversity and class positioning.

I will explore Rent for themes of racial, gender, and sexual identities and how they are presented through the friendships and romantic relationships of the eight principal characters (alphabetically): Angel, Benny, …

How To Rewrite A Tagalog Novel Into An English Classic: Danton Remoto’S English Translation Of Lope K. Santos’S Banaag At Sikat, Chris Cañete Rodriguez Kelly

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

To appeal to a contemporary global readership, Danton Remoto in his English translation of Lope K. Santos’s Banaag at Sikat omits much of the original’s political passages. Such an approach to translation, however, hollows out elements of the original. Following the work of Annette Damayanti Lienau and Akshya Saxena, this essay understands colonial and vernacular languages as dialectically interdependent. It argues that Remoto’s abridgement of Banaag at Sikat is produced not by a refusal to translate the Tagalog of the original, but a refusal to translate the coconstitutive difference between English and Tagalog, which inheres precisely in the excessive political …

Nostalgic Reaction In Narratives Of Lost Memories In Negar Djavadi’S Désorientale, Zahra Vodjgani

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

A Metropolitan French Isolate In North America: The French Language In Saint-Pierre-Et-Miquelon, Marc Cormier

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

France Within Louisiana Law, Government, And Media, Nicolas Garon

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Le Québec Entre Le « Past-Self » Et Le « Possible-Self » Dans La Face Cachée De La Lune, Andisheh Ghaderi

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Tumultuous Devotions: Female Entrapment & Empowerment In The Lais Of Marie De France, Trent Dunkin

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Entre Ombre Et Lumière : L’Artifice Et La Réflexion Sociétale Dans La Princesse Maleine De Maeterlinck, Anoosheh Ghaderi

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cold Mountain Poems (CMPs), which have been neglected in the history of Chinese literature for ages, captured the attention of most Americans immediately after its being translated into America by the American poet Gary Snyder in 1950s, however. It is Snyder that reconfigured and recreated a sagacious Chinese Chan Buddhist poet Han-shan (literally, Cold Mountain), the acknowledged author of Cold Mountain Poems, in his translation for the postwar Americans in the midst of varied social problems and cultural identity crisis after World War II. Snyder eventually found in his translation of Cold Mountain Poems a back-to-nature remedy of …

Topological Tropology Of V.S. Naipaul’S Islamic Travelogues And Daniel Pipes’ Islamic History: Ahistorical Historicism, Md. Habibullah

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s (1932-2018) first Islamic travelogue Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) contains his experience of a visit from August 1979 to February 1980 to the four non-Arab Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Similarly, his last Islamic travelogue Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples (1998) has a description of another visit to the same countries for five-month in 1995. Concurrently, Daniel Pipes (1949-), an American historian, published his doctoral dissertation, Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), which represents Islamic culture as the first instigator of …

Westernization Or Localization? The (Mis)Reading Of “The Tragic” In Modern Chinese Literary Discourse, Tian Gu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper examines the features and causal factors in constructing an idea of the tragic in modern Chinese literary discourse. It attempts at revisiting and reproducing the realities of misreading and variation upon modern Chinese introduction of the term “tragedy” (beiju) at different socio-historical periods, and has observed the interplay between two trends, namely, Westernization and localization, through the negotiation of “the tragic” into modern Chinese literary practice. These two trends have been integrated by a political and pragmatic perspective, which dominates the formation of a modern Chinese literary discourse on “the tragic”. This perspective offers both possibility …

Children’S Gothic In The Chinese Context: The Untranslatability And Cross-Cultural Readability Of A Literary Genre, Chengcheng You

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

As an emerging literary subgenre in the twenty-first century, Children’s Gothic challenges and blends the norms of both children’s literature and Gothic literature, featuring child characters’ self-empowerment in the face of fears and dark impulses. The foreignness and strangeness that pertain to the genre haunt the border of its translatability. Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (1999­–2006), written under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, poses a chain of translational challenges due to its linguistic creativity, paratextual art, and mixed style of horror and dark humor intended for a child readership. To investigate the interplay between Children’s Gothic and its (un)translatability …

Translating Literary Ideology From Ancient Chinese Into Modern French: François Cheng’S Francophone Poetry In Double Chant (2000), Gabriel F. Y. Tsang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

François Cheng (1929- ), elected to the Académie Française in 2002, structurally introduced the lexicological, syntactic, and semiotic form of Tang poetry to the French academia via his academic works. In the late 1980s, François Cheng shifted his focus from academic writing to creative writing, both in French, winning the 1998 Prix Femina for his novel Le Dit de Tianyi (1998) and Prix Roger Caillois for his collection of poems Double chant (2000). Focusing on his less-discussed poetry, which reveals higher congruity of his understanding of Chinese literary classics with creative representation, this paper argues that, as an analyst of …

Storytelling As A Way Of Translation: The Rendition Of Taoism In Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe Of Heaven, Xiulu Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) is an immensely popular author of numerous science fictions and fantasy classics. A number of critics have noticed the influence of Taoism on Le Guin’s writing.critical insights offered by Translation Studies and Walter Benjamin’s comments on storytelling and translation, this paper argues that storytelling and translation are similar discursive practices that aim at the exchange of experiences, creating knowledge, and shaping culture. Taking Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven (1971) as a case study, this paper delves into how her storytelling serves as a unique form of translation, bridging the thought of ancient Chinese Taoist …

Ecopoetry As Method: Reading Gary Snyder As A Cultural Mediator Between China And The World, Winnie L M Yee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Ecocriticism is a field that is inherently cross-cultural, and poetry is an art form that creates bonds across cultural communities. This paper focuses on Gary Snyder, a prominent poet in his own right, who is famous for his translation of the works by Chinese poet Han Shan. His attraction to Chinese classical poetry and Eastern civilization offers an alternative to the Western developmental paradigm, and the ecopoetry he espouses is pertinent to today’s environmental debates. His references to nature do not function merely as reminders that nature should be respected but as an impetus to reflect on the coexistence of …

Playing With Time: Writing History In Neo-Zionist Hebrew Literature, Huiruo Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The term neo-Zionism can be used to group ideologically much of contemporary Hebrew literature. However, since neo-Zionism shares similar critical tools with post-Zionism, while also sharing a common political vision with Zionism, it has been difficult to find the definitive signifiers of neo-Zionist writing. This paper offers a way to determine the nuanced ideological inclination of Hebrew literature: the presentation of time. First, this paper recognizes the metamorphosis of time in Israeli literary history that reflects the writers’ historical view of the Zionist agenda. Zionist Hebrew literature was engaged in re-establishing Jewish historical time by emphasizing the relationship between time …

The Animal In The Wild In Hwang Sun-Mi’S The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly, Sarah Yoon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Hwang Sun-mi’s The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly has become a contemporary classic children’s story in Korea since its original publication in 2000. Since then, the story has been translated and redesigned with new illustrations in almost thirty different countries (Y. Kim). The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly centers on a hen that raises a duckling as her “baby,” with the story drawing upon a rich reservoir of cultural associations between humans and nature in East Asian traditions. In this story, the hen leaves the human-dominated barnyard, based on profit, exploitation, and competition, for a reconnection with moral …

Translating Diversity From Ralph Ellison To Kenzaburō Ōe, Raphaël Lambert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, it endeavors to understand the vagaries of the notion of diversity as it travels from one national and political context to the next; and second, it shows how two major fiction writers and essayists have used that notion in their work and to what ends. The first part focuses on the work of Ralph Ellison, who put diversity at the heart of his reflection on what a truly democratic American society should be. Kenzaburō Ōe initially borrowed the notion of diversity from Ellison himself, but as the second part demonstrates, Ōe did …

Decolonizing French: Afrophonics In Ken Bugul’S Aller Et Retour (2013), Hapsatou Wane

The Coastal Review

This article explores the innovative language strategies employed by Senegalese writer Ken Bugul in her novel Aller et retour to construct a dynamic and interconnected linguistic landscape that challenges fixed language boundaries. Ken Bugul's "langue fabriquée" combines elements of French, Wolof, and English, reflecting a transglocal dimension that embodies the essence of afrophonics—a poetics of resistance that empowers local cultures in a globalized context. Through a detailed analysis of Ken Bugul's linguistic choices, including the use of quotation marks, footnotes, and arbitrary transcription, the study reveals how she creates a language that defies categorization and decolonizes French without resorting to …

Figures Of Radical Absence: Blanks And Voids In Theory, Literature, And The Arts, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

Although post-structuralism highlighted the importance of what is offstage, lost, forgotten, hidden or discarded, silent or silenced, the poetics and politics of absence (much like its ethics and aesthetics) have rarely been discussed across media and disciplines. This book proposes the concept of ‘radical absence’ to describe a certain tradition of resistance to ontology, predication, and representation, contesting their reliance on a metaphysics of presence. Apophatic speech, empty signifiers, and figural voids are some of the figures through which radical absence becomes apparent with unprecedented intensity in twentieth-century theory, literature, film, and the arts. Phantasmatic and outrageous, such figures play …

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination Of The Eternal Now” 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月） (July 1931) §1 Of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft Of 2 Jan 19); Translated By Christopher Southward; Revision And Expansion Underway, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination of the Eternal Now” (July 1931) 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月）

§1 of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft of 2 Jan 2019)

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward; Revision and Expansion Underway, October 2023