Comparative Literature Commons^™

Demons Of Analogy: The Encounter Between Music And Language After Mallarme, Joshua Tasman Girardeau Reinier

Honors Papers

Why do we make analogies? The standard definition suggests “[a] comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification” (Oxford Languages); an analogy is when something borrows another vocabulary, another set of terms, or another paradigm, to facilitate a deeper understanding. But here, I argue that analogy is more than a didactic tool for making explanations more convenient: rather, analogy is the essential way that we understand ourselves in relation to others—for my purposes, how artists understand their own medium in relation to other mediums. Specifically, I use the concept of analogy to explore the encounter between …

On Cleopatra Vii: From Horace And Shakespeare To Self-Representation, Silja M. Hilton

Honors Theses

This thesis explores and analyzes Horace’s Ode 1.37 and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in context of their poetic and theatrical narratives, word choice, and grammatical structures in an effort to form a clearer image of Cleopatra VII. While each work is placed within its historical settings, I do not pursue their historical ‘truths.’ Rather, I draw from the authors’ literary conceptions about the Ruler, from Horace’s inpotens (“a woman lacking in self-control”) to fierce agency in deciding death (“deliberata morte ferocior”), to Shakespeare’s ‘othering’ of Cleopatra as tawny, gypsy, and whore, to his portrayals of her as Goddess …

Pensar El Límite: El Símbolo Indígena En Los Proyectos Políticos Cubanos De Principios Del Siglo Xix, Jorge L. Camacho

The Coastal Review

This article investigates the way in which Cuban literature reflected on indigenous people during the early half of the nineteenth century and uses the symbol of the Amerindians to demonstrate a moral disjuncture between them and the colonizer. In this article, I call attention to the way Cuban independentists and Spanish nationalists used this figure to support their views and thus created a split in the Cuban creole imagination. I start by pointing out that these appropriations started at the end of the 18th century when historian José Martín Félix de Arrate, and poets such as Miguel González and Manuel …

La “Border Culture” Del Personaje Mexicoamericano En El Sureste De Estados Unidos En Los Cuentos De Lorraine López Y Mijito Doesn’T Live Here Anymore De Jaime Martínez, Jaime Chavez

The Coastal Review

This paper explores the concepts of "Border Culture" and "Borderlands" by Gloria Anzaldúa in Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories, Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories, by Lorraine López and the novel Mijito Doesn’t Live Here Anymore by Jaime Martínez. The paper argues that the Mexican American character in the southeast of the United States lives in the "Borderlands" and practices a "Border Culture" because they don't follow the traditional stereotypical role of the Mexican American character within the literary canon of both the dominant culture and Chicana/o literature.

A Brief Response To Dr. Jeffrey H. Golland, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

I have read with much interest the letter of Dr. Jeffrey H. Golland describing for the Spring, 2022, issue of the CCR his experience as an undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University in the late 1950’s.

Steven Pinker. Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, And Progress. New York: Penguin Books, 2018., Ashok Kumar Malhotra

Comparative Civilizations Review

Steven Pinker’s monumental work, Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress is an impressive volume. He presents his position so vividly that the book reached the New York Times Bestseller List, and received enthusiastic reviews from diverse scholars and readers. Even Bill Gates regards it as: “My new favorite book of all time.”

The Blocks Of History: A Step-By-Step Model For The Evolution Of Civilizations, Shuai Wang

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Pattern Recognition algorithm in Artificial Intelligence has been applied to many fields and proven to be very effective when seeking out patterns that arise from huge amount of raw data. As world history has evolved, it has revealed the shift of hegemony from one civilization to another, for example, from the Spanish Empire to the Kingdom of France, from the Kingdom of France to the British Empire, and from the British Empire to the United States. As historians have shown, the relevant eras are the Spanish Golden Age, the Age of Enlightenment, Pax Britannica, and Pax Americana. Since the …

Thank You To Minna And Gordon Hewes: Friends Of The International Society For The Comparative Study Of Civilizations From The Ecumene, John Grayzel

Comparative Civilizations Review

The ISCSC is always extremely appreciative when it receives a special gift from those who support its intellectual and organizational endeavors. This certainly was the case when it recently received a generous bequest from the estate of Mrs. Minna Hewes, the most substantial financial donation in the history of this organization.

Christopher I. Beckwith. Empires Of The Silk Road: A History Of Central Eurasia From The Bronze Age To The Present Day. Princeton And Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011., Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

Empires of the Silk Road is an ambitious work that fulfills its stated ambitions, fully. Written with boldness and authority, it packs many punches and pulls few. Author Christopher I. Beckwith manages to cover ~5,000-years-worth of Central Eurasian history in this single volume; he sees those events differently than your common or garden-variety Central Eurasian historian/philologist and demonstrates patiently and precisely why he does so in a way that is rich and insightful. Beckwith’s work is both complex and concise. It is provocative and persuasive. It is frequently captivating, often surprising, occasionally perplexing, and sometimes slightly weird 1 (not that …

Ottomanism: A Transition From Byzantinism To Balkanism, Blagoj Conev Phd

Comparative Civilizations Review

Ottomanism as an ideology and way of life is nothing but a pale copy of Byzantinism. Ottomanism is the direct successor of the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire), which is the legal and sole successor to the only Roman Empire. But Ottomanism itself has not been sufficiently studied because much more attention has been paid to the way the Ottoman Empire was governed than to the identities that it sought to define as its own, which were in fact nothing more than a faint copy of Byzantinism before 1204.

Ottomanism can be defined as the imperial identity of the …

An Attempt To Arrive At The Meaning Of Civilization As The Third Millennium Dawns, Mojtaba Sadeghi Independent Scholar

Comparative Civilizations Review

Civilizations may be understood as phenomena subject to differing perspectives. This article views civilization from the perspective of Geography. A civilization is a “Geographical Space” that arises from complex interactions over time. The core of civilization from a geographical perspective is this: every civilization is a geographical space, but not every geographical space is necessarily a civilization. A civilization has a “cultured soul” and an “advanced body.” We may use this approach to understand, measure, critique, and emancipate civilization in the third millennium.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Is Music The Barometer Of Society? Exploring How Music Mirrored Society From The Ancient World, China To Central Europe In The 21st Century, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.” ― Confucius

“What music do you listen to?” Would this be a valid question to ask a presidential candidate or person looking for a high political office today? If mankind had followed the advice of Confucius, many disastrous episodes in history might have been prevented.

Music is one of the most wonderful achievements of mankind. As far back in history as we know, music has been part of man’s life. Whether it …

Mamikon Airapetian. World Civilizations And Economic Cycles: A Comparative Historical Analysis. Part 1. Concepts And Determinants Of World History. Moscow: Editorial Urss Publishers, 2020, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

The author of scholarly materials under review is a prominent Russian scholar, Doctor of Economics Prof. Mamikon S. Airapetian, the Leading Researcher of the Department of Macroeconomic Forecasting and Planning of the Financial University (FinU), Moscow, Russia.

In his book entitled World Civilizations and Economic Cycles: A Comparative Historical Analysis (Airapetian, 2020) Dr. Airapetian introduces an original, fundamental paradigm of global history. In order to substantiate and present his ideas, the author turns to a vast array of classical and contemporary scholarly sources as well as introduces a significant number of new concepts, such as, for example, the notions of …

Quevedo Y La Tupida Selva Europea Del Anacreón Castellano, Adrian Izquierdo

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Subtle Distinctions Of Memoir: Reclassifying Jeannette Wall’S The Glass Castle, Anna Cornelia Salvati

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I will begin by exploring the history of memoir, the rise of the “misery memoir,” and I intend to challenge the generalized use of the term. Though the cultural rise of trauma memoirs is real, the genre cannot be a blanket term for memoirs that discuss trauma. I have selected The Glass Castle as my evidence because although it includes disturbing details, Walls effortfully tries to reorient the reader’s focus. The term misery memoir is inadequate to describe The Glass Castle because it is not about misery. It obscures Walls’s message that in order to achieve self-acceptance …

Back Matter, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 24, 2022, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Contents, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Desperate, Exploited, And Abandoned: Laborers In "Life In The Iron-Mills" And Today, Danielle Durning

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Beasts And Bestiality, Deities And Deification: Boethius’ The Consolation Of Philosophy In Milton's Comus, Bret Van Den Brink

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Milton’S Cardinal Directions Symbolism In Paradise Lost, Micah Gill

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

"The Battle Trumpet Blown!": Whitman's Persian Imitations In Drum-Taps, Roger Sedarat

Publications and Research

While Walt Whitman’s thematic use of the Orient continues to receive critical attention based on his explicit foreign references, aside from observations of specific Persian signifiers in “A Persian Lesson,” his engagement with the poetry of Iran has remained especially speculative and therefore analogical, with studies like J. R. LeMaster and Sabahat Jahan’s Walt Whitman and the Persian Poets showing how his mystical relation to his own religious influences tends to resemble the Sufism of Rumi and Hafez. A new discovery emerging from an examination of his personal copy of William Alger’s The Poetry of the East along with his …

The City Of Nightmares: Occultism, Ecstasy, And The Literature Of Late-Victorian London, Sophie Labenski

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

While the relationship between Gothic motifs and anxieties about transgressive sexuality at the end of the 19th century is well understood, most of the scholarship written on this topic takes the idea of the supernatural for granted, or sees it as a way of establishing the links between monstrosity and sexuality. In this essay

I turn to the work of Arthur Machen in order to recontextualize the supernatural aspects of the late-Victorian Gothic literature in regard to the forms of credulity that inform the occult. While texts like Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde …

Out Of The Gutter, Into The Gram: A Comical Message And A Digital Medium, Tala Majzoub

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

By analyzing three different comics on Instagram by the Lebanese political cartoonist, the Art of Boo, this essay argues that comics generate political meaning through emulating the medium of Instagram on the one hand, and by inviting the audience to become active participants on the other. Although a lot has been written about digital activism and political cartoons in the Arab world, little has been theorized about what makes this form of political artistic expression and dissent powerful on digital platforms. By drawing on Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, this essay demonstrates that the medium of comics operates as a …

Tracing Moravian Manufacture, Material Objects And Religious Mission: Transatlantic Textile Journeys, Katherine Faull

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

No abstract provided.

การแปลภาษาเก่าสมัยรัชกาลที่ ๕ ในบทสนทนาจากนวนิยายเรื่อง ทวิภพ ของทมยันตีเป็นภาษาอังกฤษ, พนิดา ออตโตสัน

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

สารนิพนธ์ชิ้นนี้เป็นงานวิจัยเพื่อการแปลภาษาเก่าที่พบในบทสนทนาจากวรรณกรรมเรื่อง ทวิภพ ให้เป็นภาษาเก่าในภาษาอังกฤษโดยใช้วิธีศึกษาค้นคว้าข้อมูลเพื่อหาวิธีระบุภาษาเก่าในตัวบทต้นฉบับ และศึกษาภาษาเก่าในภาษาปลายทางโดยการศึกษาภาษาเก่าจากวรรณกรรมของเจน ออสเตนและชาร์ลอต บรอนเต้ เพื่อเทียบเคียงภาษาแบบ time-matched archaization, hyper-archaization และ updated-archaization นอกจากนี้ยังวิเคราะห์วัจนลีลาและความสัมพันธ์ของตัวละครในเรื่อง ทวิภพ เพื่อที่จะสามารถเลือกวัจนลีลาในการแปลให้เหมาะสมกับความสัมพันธ์ของตัวละคร การศึกษาภาษาเก่าในภาษาอังกฤษจากวรรณกรรมที่เลือกเน้นศึกษาภาษาที่ใช้ในบทสนทนาเป็นหลักโดยการสุ่มบทสนทนาเพื่อระบุความโดดเด่นของภาษาในด้านของความเก่าของภาษาเพื่อนำมาปรับใช้ในการแปล ทฤษฎีและแนวทางการแปลที่นำมาใช้ในการวิจัยเพื่อการแปลนี้ประกอบไปด้วยทฤษฎี Dynamic Equivalence ของ Eugene A. Nida ทฤษฎี Skopos ของ Hans J. Vermeer และ Scene and Frame Semantics ของ Charles J. Fillmore และใช้กลยุทธ์การแก้ไขปัญหาการแปลข้ามวัฒนธรรมที่เสนอไว้โดย Antony Pym, Mona Baker และ Peter Newmark จากการศึกษาพบว่าภาษาเก่าแบ่งออกได้เป็น 3 ระดับ และการแปลภาษาเก่ามีกลยุทธ์ทั้งหมด 6 ระดับ ดังนั้นในการแปลภาษาเก่าจะต้องคำนึงถึงความสอดคล้องกันในแง่ของระดับความเก่าของภาษานอกเหนือจากการใช้จากทฤษฎีและแนวทางต่าง ๆ ที่ยกมาไว้ในสารนิพนธ์เล่มนี้

“Usefulness Without Use," Or, The Power Of The Virtual: Lu Xun On The Vital Efficacy Of Literature, Wenjin Cui

Faculty Publications

This article explores Lu Xun’s distinct view of the vital efficacy of literature, as

captured in his well-known conception of literature’s “usefulness without use.”

Starting with the highly idealistic vision of his youthful years, which posits an

unmediated flow of power from the free play of poetry to the direct action of politics,

I follow Lu Xun on the strenuous and crisis-ridden path he took in coming to terms

with the uselessness of literature vis-à-vis the power of politics, until he finally

reaffirmed the vital power of literature by pitching the self-transcending virtual

impetus of literature against the conservative actual …

Harry Redner. Beyond Civilization: Society, Culture And The Individual In The Age Of Globalization. Routledge, 2014., Mariana Tepfenhart

Comparative Civilizations Review

Harry Redner was a reader at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a visiting professor at Yale University, University of California-Berkeley and Harvard University. His book has three parts: An Overview of History, The Present Predicament of History, and The Future Prospects of Civilization.

The book addresses two major issues affecting our society today. One of them is globalization and its effect on civilization. The topic is analyzed not only from a cultural perspective but also from a political and cognitive standpoint. The second issue is technology and its place in a global society. Redner argues Western civilization’s development of …