Comparative Literature Commons^™

“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 …

Marilynne Robinson’S Housekeeping Read Through The Conceptual Prism Of “Tethers”, Sarah Street

The Criterion

Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Housekeeping, follows her central protagonist, Ruth, her sister Lucille, and her aunt Sylvie as they work to establish their place up against a greater surround. This paper attempts to read the novel through the conceptual prism of the word “tethers.” I argue that the characters' relationships with the surround shifts as they work through their trauma and grapple with the notion of impermanence by reconciling with both those things that tether them, those tethers that do not exist or have been released, and the tethers from which they want to break free. Ultimately I argue that …

Gawain, Women, And The Hunts: How The Body Influences Human-Animal Relationships In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Meghan Gavis

The Criterion

In the narrative poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, women and animals appear, on the surface, to function in a quintessential medieval sense — as physical objects to bolster Sir Gawain’s chivalric image. However, the dynamics between women, animals, and Gawain in this text challenge the human hierarchy presented by other medieval standards. By reading the ritualized hunts as devolving in honorable attention to the animal body and mapping their language onto the Lady’s temptations in Gawain’s bedroom, a feminine reclamation of the body appears. Though Gawain undercuts the Lady and Morgan by reducing them to physical presences, …

18th Century Theater And The Legitimacy Of The Lower Classes, Nina Masin-Moyer

The Criterion

18th century theater developed alongside the expanding role of the lower and middle classes. George Lillo’s working-class tragedy The London Merchant and John Gay’s comedic satire The Beggar’s Opera exemplify how both drama and comedy can bring awareness and legitimacy to the struggles of working-class people. The London Merchant uses cultural references and religious language to elevate the struggles of its titular merchant’s apprentice whereas The Beggar’s Opera uses language of honor and nobility to draw parallels between the criminal underground and high society, both in service of using the medium of theater to acknowledge the middle and lower classes’ …

Shakespeare’S Staging And The Self In The Sonnets, Xiani Zhu

The Criterion

This essay examines the theatricality of Shakespeare’s young man sonnets and how he uses the “stage” as a shortcut to deliver abstract ideas such as the concept of beauty, time, and love that are otherwise difficult to express. On a micro level, he frames each individual sonnet as a stage, where each specific setting and scenario allows dramatic tension to arise between the characters on stage, and from there, abstract ideas and emotions are naturally presented without being directly stated. On a macro level, the entire young-man sonnet sub-sequence — being in love with a beautiful young man — itself …

“His Own Was Ampler:” Dickinson And Whitman’S Sunset Poetry, Devyn Forcina

The Criterion

Although they are utterly dissimilar poets, Dickinson and Whitman made sunsets frequent subjects of their work. Dickinsonian sunset poetry attempts to imitate the natural phenomena and evokes tension and competition. A kind of closure is forced upon her unwilling speaker, who struggles against the inevitable ending of the day. In contrast, Whitmanian sunset poetry sings and celebrates the finale of the setting sun and delights in the cyclical nature of time. While Dickinson acknowledges the temporary quality of a single sunset, Whitman rejoices in their immortal occurrence. Both poets preserve the imagery of sunsets as photographers would, while imbuing them …

Letting The Cat Out Of The Wall: Irrepressible Perversity In Poe, Kelly Gallagher

The Criterion

This paper examines several short stories by Edgar Allan Poe that feature the motif of immurement, the practice of imprisoning a victim within walls. Poe uses immurement in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to suggest psychological suppression as the narrators physically hide their victims while simultaneously hiding their own self-destructive natures, which he refers to as “perversity.” His stories “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Cask of Amontillado” convey that attempting to suppress one’s capacity for self-destruction only guarantees self-destruction. Poe’s motif of immurement demonstrates how human beings tend to ignore their inherent perversity, but his stories …

Injustice In Childhood: Jane Eyre And The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, Christian Barkman

The Criterion

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, are autobiographical novels narrated by the fictional Jane Eyre and the real Frederick Douglass. Both stories evoke an outpouring of pity for their respective narrator: Jane, for the unmerited abuses dealt against her by family and school administrators, but most of all Douglass, who reserves the greater portion of lament on account of his dreadful persecution under the evil of slavery. The environments Jane and Douglass inhabit throughout their childhood inflict an immense burden on their physical body and psyche. This essay specially examines the …

Women, Writing, And Storytelling In Medieval England And The Canterbury Tales, Sadie O'Conor

The Criterion

For a woman to succeed in an academic sphere, it is never enough for her to be clever-- she must be brilliant. “The Second Nun’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales explores the metaphorical brilliance (in sexual purity, intelligence, and faith) of St. Cecilia. The tale is also a mechanism for the Second Nun to advocate for her own vocation of “holy work,” for the sake of the learned religious women who preserved such writings. The themes of her tale are quite different from those espoused by the Wife of Bath, but the Wife also argues to have her voice …

Cien Botellas En Una Pared And Blanco Nocturno: The Feminization And Queering Of Representations Of Violence In Latin American Novels Of The 21st Century, Mariana Romo-Carmona

Publications and Research

A look at two novels at the turn of the 21st Century that emerge in clear counterpoint to the Boom, recognizing the violence inherent in national historical realities, and shattering the marginalization of writers subordinated by gender, class, or race. Portela and Piglia portray the heritage of violence in their characters, and the tension of their subjectivities in dialog with a historical understanding of the nation, both in their inimitable, unique, and ebullient narrative style.

A Critique Of Frederick Nietzsche's Philosophy On Law, God, And Morality, Rebekah Vaughn

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Friedrich Nietzsche is the last of the modern philosophers. His philosophy has influenced fields such as literature, psychology, and ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy on ethics is primarily what will be covered. Nietzsche wishes to sever the connection between western civilization and God. He sees that people may no longer believe in God, but they still follow Christian morality. Nietzsche argues for a new morality, one humanity will create themselves. His famous line “God is dead” is an expression of what humanity needs to do with God. Nietzsche then argues the Overman will take over humanity, leading towards a world with a …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

Friendship In The Confucian Tradition, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

An overview of how friendship has been represented and assessed in the Confucian tradition, and particularly in classical Confucian texts such as the Analects and the Mencius. Themes covered include the relationship between the family and friendship, the ambivalence towards friendship in imperial China, and the connection between friendship and the Confucian ideal of personal cultivation. The chapter finishes by exploring novel conceptions of friendship and human relatedness suggested by the Confucian tradition.

Literature, Pandemic, And The Insufficiency Of Survival: Boccaccio’S Decameron And Emily St. John Mandel’S Station Eleven, Anthony P. Russell

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

The question of literature’s utility in relation to the “real world” has been asked since at least the time of Plato. This essay examines an extreme instance of this problem by investigating two works, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (1349-1353) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2016), that argue for the value of art in the midst of catastrophe. Boccaccio’s collection of 100 tales, written in the context of the Black Plague, and Mandel’s post-apocalyptic novel about a world devastated by a killer flu, overlap and diverge in instructive ways in making their cases for the important role of literature in …

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 …