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Full-Text Articles in Comparative Literature

World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan Jun 2026

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 …


Milan Kundera As A Representative And A Theorist Of World Literature, Lucija Mandić Jun 2026

Milan Kundera As A Representative And A Theorist Of World Literature, Lucija Mandić

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article traces the evolution of Milan Kundera’s notion of world literature across his career, contextualizing his writings within major historical events, including the so-called liberalization of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, the post-1989 transition of the former Soviet bloc, and the turn of the millennium. Throughout the years, but particularly after his own immigration to France in 1975, Kundera consistently tied the notion of world literature with that of Central Europe to emerge with a conceptual framework that enabled him to position (semi-)peripheral European literatures within the Western canon. In his influential 2005 essay “Die Weltliteratur,” Kundera ultimately reframed the …


Against Pleonexia: Auerbach, World Literature, And The End Of History, Simon During Jun 2026

Against Pleonexia: Auerbach, World Literature, And The End Of History, Simon During

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Erich Auerbach’s essay on world literature, written in the early postwar period, has become central to our understanding of the field. This essay contextualizes Auerbach on world literature by approaching it through his larger project, which it thinks about in relation to scholars rarely considered in this context. These scholars are the French literary historians and critics Hippolyte Taine and Remy de Gourmont, and the German historical sociologist Alexander Rüstow. To place Auerbach at an intersection of these very different figures turns out to be illuminating. It both enlarges our sense of him and helps us better understand why he …


Small Nations, Big Debates: Empowering The Slovenes As A Subject Of World History In The Critical 1930s, Marko Juvan Jun 2026

Small Nations, Big Debates: Empowering The Slovenes As A Subject Of World History In The Critical 1930s, Marko Juvan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article looks at how Slovene intellectuals and writers in the 1930s attempted to redefine the role of a small nation within the world-system in the face of global economic crisis, authoritarianism, imperialism, and the threat of fascist expansion. Three central interventions are examined in detail: firstly, Josip Vidmar’s culturalist defense of Slovenia as a nation defined by its intellectual and artistic achievements, which is contrasted with Edvard Kardelj’s Marxist reinterpretation of the Slovene national question as part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle; secondly, Anton Ocvirk’s peripheral model of comparative literary history, which emphasizes the creative contribution of small literatures …


The Proletarian Moment In World Literature, Anna Björk Einarsdóttir Jun 2026

The Proletarian Moment In World Literature, Anna Björk Einarsdóttir

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

During the interwar period (1918–1939), an international literary movement emerged in relation to internationalist and socialist politics and political struggles. Writers around the world saw themselves as contributors to a new proletarian moment within the historical unfolding of world literature. This movement was international, and writers situated on the peripheries of both the capitalist core and the emerging socialist world looked toward revolutionary Russia and other centers of the socialist world. This paper focuses on three such authors, the American Richard Wright, the Argentinian Roberto Arlt, and the Icelander Halldór Laxness. During the interwar period, all three were involved in …


Zheng Zhenduo And The Problem Of Priority In World Literature, Daniel M. Dooghan Jun 2026

Zheng Zhenduo And The Problem Of Priority In World Literature, Daniel M. Dooghan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay investigates how Zheng Zhenduo (郑振铎 1898–1958) developed a theory of world literature in response to threats to China both politically from without and culturally from within. Centered on an analysis of his 1922 article “A View on the Unification of Literature” (Wenxue de tongyiguan 文學的統一觀), the essay argues that although Zheng believed like many of his contemporaries in the transformative effects of reading world literature in translation, that does not constitute the entirety of his theorization of world literature. Instead, he accepted the first-move advantage of other national literatures in defining both world literary standards and literature …


A World Without Literature? Tagore’S Words For His Times And Ours, Salmoli Choudhuri Jun 2026

A World Without Literature? Tagore’S Words For His Times And Ours, Salmoli Choudhuri

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In 1907, Rabindranath Tagore delivered a lecture on world literature to an audience in Calcutta, the then capital of British India. Amid powerful and intersecting forces—colonialism and nationalism, industrial modernity and mass poverty—Tagore’s position on literature was neither disengaged nor defensive, insofar as he related it to the human condition and the capacity for world-making. Far from staking a representational claim to world literature on behalf of Indian or Bengali literature, I argue in this article, Tagore reconceptualized the idea from its earlier canonical formulation by Goethe. He departed from dominant nineteenth-century philosophies that conceived the world as a spatial—and …


Reconsidering Karl Marx’S Concept Of World Literature, Kenneth Cheng Jun 2026

Reconsidering Karl Marx’S Concept Of World Literature, Kenneth Cheng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

It is widely assumed that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels regarded world literature as an epiphenomenal product of the capitalist world market, and therefore as a symptom of rather than potential cure to the crisis of modern society. However, this conflicts with the fact that they designated the Communist Manifesto itself as a world-literary production—the joint work of communists of various nationalities—and opposed it to the national limitations of German socialist literature. This article challenges existing interpretations by outlining how Marx and Engels incorporated the humanistic idealism of the Goethean Weltliteratur tradition into the theoretical framework of historical materialism. It …


World Literature: From Perpetual War To Perpetual Peace (And Back Again), Sándor Hites Jun 2026

World Literature: From Perpetual War To Perpetual Peace (And Back Again), Sándor Hites

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this article, I address the relationship between world literature theories and questions of peace and war. I argue that the genesis of the concept of world literature in the 1790s was informed by profound transformations, in political theory, of the issue of the relevance and meaning of war and peace and their public perception. Theorists such as Wieland, Novalis, Jean Paul, and Fichte offered their concepts in response to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, adjusting them to shifting frontlines and the change of military fortune. Goethe’s notion of Weltliteratur already reflected on the geopolitics of the post-Napoleonic age, …


Review: Misrecognitions: Plotting Capital In The Victorian Novel By Ben Parker, Suvij Sudershan Apr 2026

Review: Misrecognitions: Plotting Capital In The Victorian Novel By Ben Parker, Suvij Sudershan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Review: The Poetics Of Science: Marx’S Literary Style By Ludovico Silva, Thomas A. Laughlin Apr 2026

Review: The Poetics Of Science: Marx’S Literary Style By Ludovico Silva, Thomas A. Laughlin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Review: The Persistence Of Realism In Modernist Fiction By Paul Stasi, Chris Gortmaker Apr 2026

Review: The Persistence Of Realism In Modernist Fiction By Paul Stasi, Chris Gortmaker

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Cultural Negotiations In Revisionist Mythmaking: Comparative Reading Of Bahram Beyzaei And Mary Zimmerman, Sepehr Karimi Mr., Bahee Hadaegh Apr 2026

Cultural Negotiations In Revisionist Mythmaking: Comparative Reading Of Bahram Beyzaei And Mary Zimmerman, Sepehr Karimi Mr., Bahee Hadaegh

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

 Although more than fifty years have passed since feminist scholars pioneered revisionist mythmaking, drama remains underexplored in this field despite its unique potential for cultural and social reinterpretation. This study offers a comparative analysis of revisionist mythmaking in Iranian and American drama, specifically examining Bahram Beyzaei’s play, One Thousand and First Night alongside Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses as examples. This research aims to establish general principles for revisionist mythmaking within drama, spotlighting the complexities that emerge in transnational contexts. It explores how Beyzaei and Zimmerman negotiate cultural narratives and try to reshape traditional stories and reflect contemporary issues, emphasizing gender dynamics …


Between Revolutions: The Leftist Reception Of American Literature In Iran (1905-1979), Behnam Mirzababazadeh Fomeshi Apr 2026

Between Revolutions: The Leftist Reception Of American Literature In Iran (1905-1979), Behnam Mirzababazadeh Fomeshi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper examines the reception of American literature in Iran during the period between the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911) and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Divided into four distinct phases (1905–1922, 1922–1941, 1941–1953, and 1953–1979), this study explores how political and ideological dynamics shaped the interpretation and translation of American literary works. Central to this reception was its inherently political nature, driven by the dominance of leftist ideologies within Iran’s intellectual landscape. The influence of the Tūdih Party and other leftist movements profoundly impacted the ways American literature, particularly the works of Walt Whitman, was translated, interpreted, and disseminated. By …


Christian Motifs In Forough Farrokhzad’S Works: A Comparison With T.S. Eliot’S Poetry, Mona Monsefi Apr 2026

Christian Motifs In Forough Farrokhzad’S Works: A Comparison With T.S. Eliot’S Poetry, Mona Monsefi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Forough Farrokhzad’s (1934–1967) film The House is Black (1962) is a visual poem set in a leprosarium in Iran. Farrokhzad was a prominent modernist poet who merged poetry with contemporary art forms, primarily cinema. In this film, she employed a camera to express her poetic vision, highlighting her signature style that prioritizes unique imagery. This emphasis on visual and literary images is often intertwined with themes such as religion. Notably, Farrokhzad recomposed verses from the Old Testament, infusing them with her poetic language to enrich the film’s narrative. This article explores her unique, Western-influenced interpretation of Christian motifs in …


Vision And “Sur-Vision”: Intermediality And Alterity In The Frames Of Abbas Kiarostami, Marjan Mohammadi Apr 2026

Vision And “Sur-Vision”: Intermediality And Alterity In The Frames Of Abbas Kiarostami, Marjan Mohammadi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema, often compared to Italian neorealism, oscillates between documentation and fiction. Kiarostami’s worlds, replete with a complex network of incomplete and self-reflexive frames, create a new site for perception, reflection, and intervention. This paper studies the intermedial aspect of Kiarostami’s cinema in “The Koker Trilogy” (1987; 1992; 1994), Close-Up (1990), and “Taste of Cherry” (1997). It explores how these moving images are shaped by the specific context of Iranian cinema and how they turn to reshape it. First, it examines Kiarostami’s framing techniques, which expand Iranian cinema and its engagement with Western visual conventions. …


Memory And Identity: A Comparative Analysis Of “Iranian Cultural Identity” In Asghar Farhadi’S Adaptation Of Arthur Miller’S Death Of A Salesman, Raed Faridzadeh Apr 2026

Memory And Identity: A Comparative Analysis Of “Iranian Cultural Identity” In Asghar Farhadi’S Adaptation Of Arthur Miller’S Death Of A Salesman, Raed Faridzadeh

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Recent cultural studies examine the intersection of cultural identity and memory, often viewing culture as a symbolic sign system or "culture as text." Jan Assmann defines "cultural memory" as essential to shaping societal identity. Literature and film contribute to this process by transmitting and evolving cultural meanings, not only reflecting but also constructing knowledge and reality. Iranian cinema has become a powerful medium of cultural expression, particularly post-revolution. Filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami, Sohrab Shahid Sales, Dariush Mehrjui, and Asghar Farhadi explore the dynamic relationship between literature and film in shaping cultural memory. This article analyzes Asghar Farhadi’s adaptation of Death …


Willy Loman’S Desperate Affair Challenges The Iranian Censorship: Asghar Farhadi’S The Salesman, Adineh Khojastehpour Apr 2026

Willy Loman’S Desperate Affair Challenges The Iranian Censorship: Asghar Farhadi’S The Salesman, Adineh Khojastehpour

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This study examines resistance in cross-cultural adaptations, focusing on Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman (2016), an adaptation of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949). This research investigates how Farhadi's rewriting of Miller's play within post-revolutionary Iran engages in a dialogue with the Islamic Republic and its dominant discourses. It explores how this adaptation addresses Iran's social, cultural, and ideological complexities by reframing Miller's narrative of 1950s societal change and the failure of the American Dream within the context of post-revolutionary Iran. This analysis uses Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope to reveal how The Salesman uses Miller's unique concept of a …


Cineture: The Trans(Inter)Mediality And Socio-Cultural Mobility Between Iran And The Us, Naghmeh Esmaeilpour Apr 2026

Cineture: The Trans(Inter)Mediality And Socio-Cultural Mobility Between Iran And The Us, Naghmeh Esmaeilpour

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Literature and film have proven to be influential socio-cultural mediums, facilitating interactions and counteractions between nations where politics often fail to do so. Introducing cineture as a transmedial genre, this article is situated at the intersections of glocalized culture, and Iranian-American studies by considering literature and film as the contact zone between Iranians and Americans. Cineture, the combination of cinema and literature, refers to the circulation of cultures through its specification of film-text transmediation. The application of cineture demonstrates the combination and blending of literary and cinematic works leading to cross the “center and periphery dichotomy.” To study cineture …


Cineture: Shared Narratives And Cultural Exchanges Between Iran And The Us (Introduction), Naghmeh Esmaeilpour Apr 2026

Cineture: Shared Narratives And Cultural Exchanges Between Iran And The Us (Introduction), Naghmeh Esmaeilpour

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Exploring The Relationship Between Man And Nature In A Postmodern Context:A Review Of Ecocriticism And Chinese Literature: Imaginary Landscapes And Real Living Spaces, Jiyong Geng, Jie Yang Jan 2026

Exploring The Relationship Between Man And Nature In A Postmodern Context:A Review Of Ecocriticism And Chinese Literature: Imaginary Landscapes And Real Living Spaces, Jiyong Geng, Jie Yang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Exploring Chinese Elements In J.D. Salinger’S Works: A Response To Mccarthyism In The Early Cold War Era, Yixin Lu Jan 2026

Exploring Chinese Elements In J.D. Salinger’S Works: A Response To Mccarthyism In The Early Cold War Era, Yixin Lu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Since the publication of “The Laughing Man” in 1949, various ideas about “China” have emerged in J. D. Salinger’s famously obscure works. This article aims to argue that Salinger’s incorporation of elements related to China and ancient Chinese philosophy in his works illustrates an artistic response to American anxieties during the McCarthy Era. The article uses “The Laughing Man” and “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” as case studies to demonstrate how Salinger’s engagement with “China,” including the concept of indiscrimination from Zen Buddhist ideas, as well as notions of naturalness and non-action from Taoist ideas, develops not only a mystical writing …


Cyborg Feminism And Toxic Colonialism In Chen Qiufan’S Waste Tide, Yuan Yuan Jan 2026

Cyborg Feminism And Toxic Colonialism In Chen Qiufan’S Waste Tide, Yuan Yuan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article probes into the interrelationships among cyborg technology, sexual violence, and toxic colonialism represented in the Chinese SF novel Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan. It applies methodologies in posthumanism and ecofeminism and situates the text in the Chinese as well as a global context. It intends to provide a non-Western perspective to understand cyborg feminism by associating the Chinese historical reality with trans-species thinking. It argues that the SF author Chen Qiufan is critical about the anthropogenic body modifications which may challenge the process of female resistance and resilience in the face of gender and colonial oppression. By doing …


Las Filipinas: The Persistence Of Spain In Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters, Blake Seana Locklin Jan 2026

Las Filipinas: The Persistence Of Spain In Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters, Blake Seana Locklin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay argues for the significance of the legacy of Spain in Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters. Critical analyses have explored many aspects of the novel's portrayal of relations between the Philippines and the United States, a more recent colonizer whose influence on politics and culture is prominent in Dogeaters. The effects of Spanish colonization are more subtle in the novel, but pervade its representation of characters, language, and society. While highlighting the fragmentation of individual and national identities, Dogeaters depicts a Philippines in which many social and political problems have roots in the Spanish colonial era. Building on the …


Derrida In Mesopotamia: On The Import Of The Cuneiform Inscriptions In Of Grammatology, Will Greenshields Jul 2025

Derrida In Mesopotamia: On The Import Of The Cuneiform Inscriptions In Of Grammatology, Will Greenshields

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cuneiform writing has a small but privileged position in Derrida’s Of Grammatology – providing the text with its first two epigraphs. By elucidating the source and import of these inscriptions and evaluating Derrida’s understanding of the cuneiform writing system in reference to more recent grammatological studies, this paper explains the significance of these references to the ancient Near East for Derrida’s arguments regarding the origins of Western metaphysics and logocentrism. In the first part, I analyze Derrida’s brief paragraph on cuneiform writing in Of Grammatology as evincing a “fundamental synaesthesia” of phonetic and non-phonetic elements that problematizes the phonocentric definition …


Inappropriate Attire: Fashion, Nationality, And Shame In Quicksand And Pachinko, Minyoung Park Jul 2025

Inappropriate Attire: Fashion, Nationality, And Shame In Quicksand And Pachinko, Minyoung Park

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, Minyoung Park examines how fashion in Quicksand by Nella Larsen and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee functions not simply as a visual strategy for passing but as a site where the wearers’ conflicting feelings—shame, desire, and defiance—emerge and persist. Rather than evaluating the success or failure of passing, the article shifts focus to the process of dressing—selecting, maintaining, and reflecting on clothing—through which identity is negotiated and feelings are embodied. The protagonists, Helga and Sunja, often dismissed as failures, are reconsidered as figures whose attention to their inappropriate or excessive fashion reveals their emotional labor and strenuous …


"El Corregidor" At The Crossroads: Desire, Law, And Coloniality In Martel's Zama, Leisa Kauffmann Jul 2025

"El Corregidor" At The Crossroads: Desire, Law, And Coloniality In Martel's Zama, Leisa Kauffmann

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "'El Corregidor at the Crossroads: Desire, Law and Coloniality in Martel's Zama" Leisa Kauffmann discusses Lucrecia Martel's filmic adaptation of Antonio DiBenedetto's 1952 novel, Zama. Highlighting the director's emphasis on the psychoanalytic (as opposed to the existentialist) dimensions of the novel, the essay follows the titular characater's unravelling and shows how Martel's film allegorizes colonial(ist) subjectivity. In Kauffmann's essay, various psychoanalytic theories (such as the work of Bhabha, Fanon, and Žižek), and critiques centering the notion of race in the Lacanian tradition are applied. In addition, differences between the novel and film, particularly regarding Zama's mutilation and …


Race And Nation In Three Canonic Texts Of Puerto Rican Literature: Luis Palés Matos’S Tom-Tom Of Kinky Hair And Black Things, José Luis González’S La Llegada, And Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’S Cortijo’S Wake, Luis R. Galanes Jul 2025

Race And Nation In Three Canonic Texts Of Puerto Rican Literature: Luis Palés Matos’S Tom-Tom Of Kinky Hair And Black Things, José Luis González’S La Llegada, And Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’S Cortijo’S Wake, Luis R. Galanes

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this essay we propose a critical reading of three politically-charged canonic texts of Puerto Rican literature that uphold and vindicate an African heritage for Puerto Rican culture, highlighting their role in moving discussions about blackness at the center stage of debates about national identity and culture, and assessing their contribution to the emergence and development of an Afro-Puerto Rican identity and literature. These texts are: Luis Palés Matos’s Tom-Tom of Kinky Hair and Black Things, José Luis González’s La llegada; and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’s Cortijo’s Wake. Moreover, a debate about the racial background of the authors …


Dispositions And Dispossessions: Interwar Left-Wing Literary Writing In Vienna And Zagreb, Ivana Perica Jul 2025

Dispositions And Dispossessions: Interwar Left-Wing Literary Writing In Vienna And Zagreb, Ivana Perica

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article Dispositions and Dispossessions: Interwar Left-wing Literary Writing in Vienna and Zagreb, Ivana Perica examines how political fiction in Vienna and Zagreb during the interwar period reflected competing narratives of emancipation and liberation. She argues that while both cities engaged with left-wing political thought, their literary scenes diverged significantly due to differing socio-political contexts. The article juxtaposes the Austro-Marxist cultural project of Red Vienna, which sought to reconcile class divisions through socialist cultural policies, with the more fragmented leftist movements in Zagreb, where political fiction often expressed disillusionment with the failure of revolutionary change. Through a …


Haunting Pasts, Cancelled Futures: Polish And Argentinian Experiences Of Postdependency, Ewa Kobyłecka-Piwońska Jul 2025

Haunting Pasts, Cancelled Futures: Polish And Argentinian Experiences Of Postdependency, Ewa Kobyłecka-Piwońska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The aim of this article is to compare Polish and Argentinian experience of democratic transitions of the 1980s and 1990s. Establishing new political and economic orders in both countries did not entail a change in their citizens’ post-dependent mentality. In the first part of the paper, a connection is drawn between Polish and Argentinian collective memories in line with the methodology of transcultural memory studies (Erll, Rothberg). The post-dependent condition is articulated twofold: through the remembrance of the disappearance (of the Jews, the victims of the Argentina’s state terrorism, the indigenous peoples), and through the confusion in grasping the sense …