Comparative Literature Commons^™

Book Review: Michel Danino. The Lost River: On The Trail Of The Sarasvati, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

When early civilizations were listed back at the beginning of the modern discipline that constitutes the comparative study of civilizations, one of the greatest of them all was yet essentially unknown. It was only about a century ago that information was brought forward on the possible existence of this most interesting, extensive, and influential Bronze Age civilization, the Indus River Valley Civilization.

Christopher Peet. Practicing Transcendence: Axial Age Spiritualities For A World In Crisis, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

This unusual and enlightening scholarly work by Christopher Peet draws our contemplative attention to what post-war German philosopher Karl Jaspers called "the Axial Age," a "span of several centuries from 800 to 200 BCE . . . constituting a dividing line or 'axis' between a long prehistory of human beings before and the emergence of a world history after."

Macgregor Knox And Williamson Murray, Eds. The Dynamics Of Military Revolution, 1300–2050, Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Carl von Clausewitz famously declared “War is but the continuation of politics by other means.” It could just as easily be declared that war is the continuation of civilization by other means, concerning how different societies and cultures fight can be reflective of their distinct characters as much as any other factor. The study of war from the civilizational perspective is not new; for example, former ISCSC presidents Pitirim Sorokin and Matthew Melko did their own studies related to the matter. Into this mix come MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray in their edited volume The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 …

Rachel M. Stein, Vengeful Citizens, Violent States. A Theory Of War And Revenge, Jamie Gonzalez

Comparative Civilizations Review

From the very outset, Western civilization postulated revenge as a significant cause of armed conflict. The Iliad’s storyline, the first extant literary text in our Western tradition, revolves around the concept of a Greek retaliatory military campaign against a foreign enemy. The Greeks sail to Priam’s city, intending to make the Trojans pay for the abduction of Helen. The first historiography work in the Western canon (Herodotus’ Histories) posits a framework of an eternal cycle of revenge between East and West. The “Father of History” structures the narrative at the beginning of his work as a cycle of abduction …

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Birthplace Of Saint Wulfthryth: An Unexamined Reference In Cambridge University Library Additional 2604, Jessica C. Brown

Quidditas

Cambridge University Library Additional 2604 is a fifteenth-century miscellany that is largely comprised of East Anglian and Kentish saints’ lives. It also includes a vita of Saint Edith-the patron saint of the convent at Wilton in Wessex. This vita names the birthplace of Edith’s mother, St. Wulfthryth, as ‘Lesing’ in Kent. I suggest that this unique reference may come from a desire to firmly connect Edith’s mother as well as Edith herself to a Kentish heritage.

Delno C. West Award Winner

Quidditas

The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the West Award for 2021

Catherine Loomis

Rochester Institute of Technology

Book Review: Christopher I. Beckwith. The Tibetan Empire In Central Asia, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia was brought into being by polyglot polymath philologist MacArthur Fellowship recipient and stupefyingly wide-ranging medieval Central Asian civilizations-ist scholar Christopher I. Beckwith as the "first detailed narrative history of the Tibetan Empire in Central Asia written in any language" (vii). By 1993, Princeton University Press had released a 4th printing/1st paperback edition (with a new afterword by Beckwith), suggesting a widening readership for what some might regard as a rarified subject.

Jennifer E. Sessions. By Sword And Plow: France And The Conquest Of Algeria, Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, And Jacob Tatsitsa. Kamerun! Une Guerre Cachée De La Françafrique (1948-1971), Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, And Jacob Tatsitsa. La Guerre Du Cameroun: L’Invention De La Françafrique 1948-1971, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

The legacy of the colonial period continues to weigh on France. Recently, President Emmanuel Macron called for the creation of a “Memories and Truth Commission” to lay to rest the lingering questions, bitterness, and controversies surrounding the French occupation of Algeria, the independence war, and the country’s accession to independence. Questions regarding the brutality of French colonial conquests and colonial rule in tropical Africa are also being raised. Immigration from Algeria and other formerly French territories is provoking controversy as is also the fact that France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Many French citizens, particularly those …

The Criterion (2020)

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Interlingual Morphology And Wakean Topology, Stephen Valeri

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

As an example of limit literature (literature that exhausts the entirety of what is possible in a given form), Finnegans Wake has been an inspiration for the theories of figures like Kristeva and Derrida to reveal the structural and linguistic operations of texts generally. In defamiliarizing the processes of word formation, the Wake compels us to attend to morphology’s structuring role in a work. My project focuses on Phillipe Sollers and Stephen Heath’s French translation of part of the concluding section of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to observe how the attempt to approximate Joyce’s interlingual morphology in translation contributes to …

Eye Of The Beholder: How The Female And Male Gazes Perpetuate Anti-Catholicism And The Cult Of Domesticity In The Awful Disclosures Of Maria Monk And Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk, Olivia Silva

Scripps Senior Theses

Based on our own privileges and placement within the social hierarchy, we each view the world differently depending on how we identify. Oftentimes, this "gaze" is incorporated into media through narrative voices and characters to induce understandings as well as act as a form of political commentary. Readers and viewers, in turn, can gain different and more diverse perspectives through seeing the world through different eyes. This paper examines the role of gaze in the 19th century Anti-Catholic convent exposé The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. Monk's narrative surrounds a victimized Catholic nun and uses a gaze that is similar …

Grotesque, Bodily, And Hydrous: The Liminal Landscapes Of The Underworld In Homer, Virgil, And Dante, Sophia Zandi

Honors Papers

This paper traces the liminal hydro-geologies of the Underworld through the works of Homer, Virgil, and Dante with the intention of understanding the Western Underworld as an ecosemiosphere—a mythological place with a close reciprocity to a physical environment. I focus on the entrances and margins of the infernal realm, the places where myth and world merge most intensely. Located in the fluid interspace between the world and the Underworld, this project is fundamentally about permeable boundaries. Particularly because of the boundary-crossing nature of fluids, water guides this journey into the margins of the nether realm. The infernal realm is accessible …

Shakespeare’S Deviation From His Predecessors: Aligning "Romeo And Juliet" With Italian Renaissance Marriage Culture, Tara Lynn Hohn

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Using A Smart Phone To Learn Spanish: Does It Work And Will Students Use It?, Andrew J. Demil, Alysha Assaf, Ryan Cragun

The Coastal Review

Over time, mobile devices have penetrated the classroom, requiring new and beneficial ways to implement classroom instruction. Research suggests that Short Message Service (SMS) based instruction is an effective tool for acquiring second language (L2) vocabulary and idiom knowledge (Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu,). Additionally, studies have found that students believe that mobile learning (m-learning) is beneficial to acquiring a second language (Cavus & Ibrahim; Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu, 2008). This study examined whether m-learning can lead to Spanish vocabulary familiarity and if sentence comprehension outperforms reading definitions. Participants were 29 native English speakers studying Spanish as a second …

สัจนิยมมหัศจรรย์กับการนำเสนอความทรงจำบาดแผลในนวนิยายไทยร่วมสมัย, นภสร เสวกวัง

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

วิทยานิพนธ์ฉบับนี้มีจุดประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาการใช้ลักษณะสัจนิยมมหัศจรรย์ในการนำเสนอความทรงจำบาดแผลในนวนิยายไทยร่วมสมัยคัดสรร ได้แก่ โลกประหลาดในประวัติศาสตร์ความเศร้า ฉบับปรับปรุงใหม่ (2555) ของศิริวร แก้วกาญจน์ พุทธศักราชอัสดงกับทรงจำของทรงจำของแมวกุหลาบดำ (2559) ของวีรพร นิติประภา และวายัง อมฤต (2561) ของอนุสรณ์ ติปยานนท์ ผลการศึกษาพบว่า การใช้องค์ประกอบสัจนิยมควบคู่ไปกับความมหัศจรรย์ภายใต้ตรรกะชุดเดียวกันในการนำเสนอประเด็นความทรงจำบาดแผล ส่งผลให้ความทรงจำบาดแผลซึ่งเป็นอัตวิสัยหรือปรากฏการณ์เชิงนามธรรมในโลกของปัจเจก สามารถปรากฏและดำรงอยู่ในฐานะความจริงอีกรูปแบบหนึ่งทัดเทียมกับความจริงเชิงประจักษ์ พื้นที่สัจนิยมมหัศจรรย์ช่วยให้ความทรงจำบาดแผลที่ไม่สามารถเล่าได้อย่างเป็นเหตุเป็นผลไม่ถูกลดทอนลงไปเพียงภาพมายาส่วนบุคคล ทั้งยังเผยให้เห็นธรรมชาติที่สลับซับซ้อนและแปลกประหลาดของความทรงจำบาดแผล โดยไม่ตัดสินว่าเป็นเพียงความลวง เนื่องจากไม่สอดคล้องกับการนิยาม “ความจริง” แบบสัจนิยม นอกจากนี้ ลักษณะสัจนิยมมหัศจรรย์เผยให้เห็นว่า ความทรงจำบาดแผลเป็นความจริงอีกรูปแบบหนึ่งที่ส่งผลกระทบต่อผู้ประสบเหตุและผู้ที่เกี่ยวข้องอย่างล้ำลึกและยาวนาน จนไม่อาจลดทอนให้เป็นเพียงสภาวะทางอารมณ์ของปัจเจกที่ไม่มีผลต่อการทำความเข้าใจสังคมโดยรวม ลักษณะสัจนิยมมหัศจรรย์เน้นย้ำให้เห็นว่า ความทรงจำบาดแผลมีความสำคัญเท่า ๆ กับข้อมูลเชิงประจักษ์ในการทำความเข้าใจสิ่งที่เกิดขึ้นในอดีต อีกทั้งยังเป็นหลักฐานของความเลวร้ายที่ฉายให้เห็นผลกระทบที่ต่อเนื่องยาวนานของประวัติศาสตร์

Ccr Style Guide For Submitted Manuscripts

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Jack Weatherford. Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World, Ashok Kumar Malhotra

Comparative Civilizations Review

Jack Weatherford’s book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is divided into three segments. Part one tells the story of Genghis Khan’s birth in 1162, his rise to power on the steppe, and the influence of the steppe in shaping his mindset. Growing up in this wilderness helped fashion the personality which led him to consolidate many warring tribes into a single Mongolian country by 1206. Furthermore, unifying these diverse ethnic groups into a Mongolian nation provided Genghis Khan an excellent model which he replicated in the rest of the world. Part two is devoted to the …

Michael Scott. Ancient Worlds: A Global History Of Antiquity, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

Michael Scott, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick in England, who has written prolifically on Ancient Greece and the Greco-Roman world, has broadened his scope in writing the book under review to include consideration of the ancient histories of selected societies in the Near East, India, Central Asia, and China. Scott is motivated by the thought that, scholars, particularly in the West, have been provincial, treating the designation, ancient worlds or ancient history, as if Greece, Rome, and the peripheral areas with which they interacted constituted the sum total of the ancient world. Or, if …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Sustainable Civilization: Informatization Strategy, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The article proposes strategic aspirations for the development of sustainable civilization, which are based on organizing the Geoinformatics Steering System, which will monitor civilizations based on established indexes measuring the state of civilization. This monitoring must have a uniform system on many levels of human organization, from the enterprise (company) to regions, countries, continents and the world. The condition for this organization is the creation of the World Civilization Organization because the current efforts of people and countries are chaotic.

The Pahlavis And The Other Side Of The Coins, Ardavan Khoshnood

Comparative Civilizations Review

It was with great interest that I read “Political Power of Iranian Hierocracies” by János Jany published in Comparative Civilizations Review (83, 2020: 67-102). Writing about Iranian history is not an easy task because historical points of view have been highly politicized. Such is particularly the case when discussing the Pahlavi dynasty, particularly its founder, Reza Shah Pahlavi, and his successor, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. It is therefore of major importance to be transparent and, when feasible, to present the varying views and schools of thought which may exist with respect to the Pahlavi dynasty (Khoshnood, 2019).

Book Review: David J. Rosner. Catastrophe And Philosophy, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

In Chinese, the word “catastrophe” is composed of two characters: 危机 The first character represents danger and the second is the symbol for opportunity, suggesting as my son so aptly put it, “We should never let a ‘good’ disaster go to waste.” In much the same light, philosopher David Rosner’s sensible and probing anthology, Catastrophe and Philosophy, directs us to observe that, “catastrophes are catastrophes not only because they bring widespread death and destruction in their wake, but also because they fundamentally challenge the basic ‘sense making’ feature of the human mind and our need for a meaningful world.” …

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Leonid Grinin. Macrohistory And Globalization, Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin is once quoted as saying, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” There should be a parallel statement about how some books state extraordinarily little in multiple pages, but others speak volumes in mere sentences. A good example of the latter would be Macrohistory and Globalization by another Russian: Leonid Grinin.

Do All Roads Lead To Rome? Exploring The Underlying Logics Of Similar Policies And Practices Of Recruiting Barbarian Soldiers In Roman And Early Chinese Empires, Pengfei Su

Comparative Civilizations Review

There are many similarities between various aspects of the Roman and early Chinese empires, which have been the focus of much academic discussion. A wide range of comparative studies have been carried out and resulted in the publication of numerous research papers. Scholars have been using different approaches focusing upon different areas to address this very broad comparative topic. Detailed analyses were made to compare the two empires in respect to their coinage and monetary systems, state revenue and expenditures, elite formation and social class advancement, and executive decision-making processes, just to mention a few. In a broader context, the …

The Human Search For A Sense Of Wholeness, Ross R. Maxwell

Comparative Civilizations Review

How can we characterize a civilization? From an economic point of view, a civilization consists of a system of interacting fulltime interdependent specialized occupations. From a cultural point of view, on the other hand, a civilization consists of what Ben Nelson, the late president of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (1971-1977), called a civilizational complex, a structure that developed from the blending of multiple cultures.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.