Comparative Literature Commons^™

Reminiscing About Latin: Cases Of Life-Writing And The Classical Tradition, David Andrew Porter

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Reminiscing about Latin: Cases of Life-writing and the Classical Tradition," David Andrew Porter examines the life of Latin and life-writing in Latin while drawing on other languages. He argues that post-classical Latin writing is vital to many modern writers and offers a challenge to post-Romantic conceptions of literature. He explores how Latin literary traditions affect professional and accidental writers, from the Renaissance scholar Isaac Casaubon to the Jamaican poet Francis Williams, in order to draw attention to the humour, irony and conflict in such lived experiences and writing.

The Colonized Masculinity And Cultural Politics Of Seediq Bale, Chin-Ju Lin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “The Colonized Masculinity and Cultural Politics of Seediq Bale,” Chin-ju Lin discusses a Taiwanese blockbuster movie, a postcolonial historiography and a form of life-writing, which delineates the last Indigenous insurrection against Japanese colonialism. This article explores the cultural representations in Seediq Bale. Fighting back as a colonized man for pride and dignity is portrayed as means to restore their masculine identity. The headhunting tradition is remembered, romanticized, praised highly as heroic and even strengthened in an inaccurate way to promote individualistic masculinity and to forge a new national identity in postcolonial Taiwan. Nevertheless, the stereotypical …

Hardship And Healing Through The Lens Of Cultural Translation In Peter Hessler’S Travel Memoir River Town, Shang Wu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article “Hardship and Healing through the Lens of Cultural Translation in Peter Hessler’s Travel Memoir River Town” looks into the autobiographical dimension of Hessler’s account of his two-year stay as a Peace Corps teacher in Fuling, a remote town in southwestern China. Taking the two senses of cultural translation, one in anthropology and one in cultural studies, as two descriptive aspects, it illustrates the hardship Hessler confronted and his healing strategies. Faced with etiquette and language issues as well as the power relation between China and America and its consequent stereotypes in cross-cultural encounters, Hessler gazed back to …

The Voices Of Life And Death In Shakespeare’S Narrative Poems, Jonathan Locke Hart

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article “The Voices of Life and Death in Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems” uses Shakespeare’s dedications and Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece to discuss art and life, death and life, life-writing and death-writing. The relation between life and art, often framed in terms of mimesis, is fraught with difficulties, so that the connection between ethics and aesthetics is intricate. After briefly discussing the theoretical debate on mimesis, this article examines closely Shakespeare’s narrative poems, to discuss life and death as well as, to some extent, health, illness. The poems explore the themes of time, love, lust and death …

Albert Camus' Social, Cultural And Political Migrations, Benaouda Lebdai Pr

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Albert Camus’ social, cultural and political migrations,” Benaouda LEBDAI analyses Albert Camus’ posthumous autofiction The First man, a fascinating self-representation and self -telling. Found after his deadly car accident, the manuscript adds a tragic dimension to the disguised autobiography. This paper demonstrates Camus’ capacity to migrate from one world to another, looks into the reasons behind such attitudes and stresses the significance of an outstanding life account within the on-going debate between France and Algeria about his political stands during colonial Algeria. His vision of the indigenous people, the Algerians, and of the future of colonial Algeria, …

Shakespeare's Henry Vi And Depression, Cindy Chopoidalo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Depression”, Cindy Chopoidalo discusses Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays not only as his first significant explorations of the tragic consequences of war and the price of ambition, but also as his first major treatment of a character who, in both fiction and reality, suffered from what has sometimes been described as severe clinical depression and what would have been known in Shakespeare’s time as melancholy. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, as well as in his historical inspiration, we see an early counterpart of his later characters who have been linked to melancholy or depression, such …

Illness, Disability, And Ethical Life Writing, G Thomas Couser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Illness, Disability, and Ethical Life Writing,” G. Thomas Couser discusses illness and disability as related to ethical Life Writing. Since the issues came to his attention in the early 1990s, narratives of illness and disability have continued to proliferate in the US. And today, even as psychiatry moves away from narrative therapy toward drug therapy, narrative competence is being emphasized in the treatment of non-mental illness. Whether inside or outside the clinic, narratives of illness and disability can be in and of themselves restorative, if not healing. And yet, the production of such narratives is not without …

Introduction To Voices Of Life, Illness And Disabilities In Life Writing And Medical Narratives, I-Chun Wang, Jonathan Locke Hart

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Life writing is a narrative and discourse on the self from social, psychological and biographical perspectives. This special issue includes eleven essays addressing recurrent themes in life writing such as migration, medical narratives and cultural memories. Through voices of life, illness, suffering, disabilities and death, the authors not only question a traditional sense of self but also provoke further debates on human values and facets of identity formation.

Selected Bibliography For The Study Of Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen, Su-Lin Yu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Mindfulness And Heightened Consciousness In Phillip Zarrilli’S Psychophysical Approach To Acting, Tsu-Chung Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Mindfulness and Heightened Consciousness in Phillip Zarrilli’s Psychophysical Approach to Acting," Tsu-Chung Su intends to explore the significance of mindfulness and heightened consciousness in Zarrilli’s psychophysical approach to acting. Su first traces and discusses the Chinese and Indian sources, resources, and knowledge that have forged Zarrilli’s psychophysical acting techniques, theories, and approaches. Then, he critically examines and assesses the efficacy of Zarrilli’s approach which combines Western theatrical concepts and techniques with what he self-consciously borrows from Chinese qi and taijiquan, Indian ayurvedic medicine, Vedic philosophy, performing aesthetics, Hindu religion, kathakali, yoga, meditation, massage, and kalarippayattu …

Adopting The Unadoptable/Disabled Subject In The Posthuman Era, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Adopting the Unadoptable/Disabled Subject in the Posthuman Era,” Fu-Jen Chen first examines three memoirs that demonstrate prevalent features of today’s narratives by parents with adopted children of special needs and next offers a theoretical and ontological investigation of disability. He suggests that we have to change the way we relate to disability: to recognize it not as an external limitation but an internal as well as pre-existent division and to re-orient ourselves to the ontological truth that we are always already “disabled/otherized” especially in the posthuman era when the body is seen to exceed existing boundaries of …

A Sinful Reaction To Capitalist Ethics In No Quiero Quedarme Sola Y Vacía (2006), Celina Bortolotto

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “A Sinful Reaction to Capitalist Ethics in No quiero quedarme sola y vacía (2006)” Celina Bortolotto analyzes how Lozada’s characterization of the main character, La Loca, questions the ideals of free agency offered by consumerist capitalism and the urban gay male ideal under the promise of a liberating gay lifestyle in a social context defined by identity politics. The novel is a fictionalized autobiographical account of Puerto Rican author Angel Lozada’s misadventures in the early 2000s gay scene in New York. This essay plays with the punitive sense of the word “capital” in the seven capital sins …

Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Valerie Kennedy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs in The Reluctant Fundamentalist” Valerie Kennedy analyzes the interrelation of individual subjectivity and global capitalism and the conflict between two belief systems in Mohsin Hamid’s novel. These are, first, a neoliberal system that sees individuals as rationally self-interested, mobile, economic units, and, second, a system based on a humanist definition of individuals as defined by nation, family, and tradition. Changez, the novel’s protagonist, initially endorses the first, but later rejects it for the second, due to his growing awareness of the impact on Pakistan of American geopolitics after 9/11. The essay also examines …

The Rise Of The Neoliberal Chinese Female Subject In Go Lala Go, Su-Lin Yu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Built upon feminist critique of neoliberalism, this paper will examine a prominent medium through which neoliberal feminist ideology is disseminated: Go Lala Go. By analyzing the film, I will show how it co-opts the discourse of neoliberalism, and reworks it to construct neoliberal female subjects. First, I will explore what kind of role neoliberalism has enacted in the formation of an emergent type of female subject in China. Then, I will demonstrate how the contentious process of neoliberal feminism affects young career women’s identities. More than career guides promoting different techniques for making women more successful at their workplaces, …

Introduction To Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue addresses the broad and complex nexus among three topics: belief, subjectivity, and contemporary global capitalism. It explores the intersection of material practices, ideational dimensions, and the subjective dynamics of global capitalism. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue come from authors in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States. And the articles gathered in this issue are to explore a wide range of topics, varying from entrepreneurship and digital capitalism to neoliberalism and postfeminism; from fundamentalism and terrorism to Protestantism and contemporary homosexual identity; from body and ableism to mind and New Age …

Impacts Of Globalization: Educational Reforms Shifts The Public Into A Recurrent Devalued Socioeconomic Era For Minorities, Jacqulyn Washington

Master's Theses

This article delves into the breakdown of the impact globalization have on the success of minorities in urban centers. While expanding on the many factors that contribute to the success of minorities, it informs the reader how education, being a huge indicator of success, has been underserved to the poor and minorities. Lacking many resources, this blockage has been further strained through the local government, multinational corporations, educational reforms, and Translocal politics.

Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

Transference

Complete issue with covers of Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

Personal Geography, Floating Identities And Inter-Asian Migration In Stories By Migrant Workers In Taiwan, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Personal Geography, floating Identities and Inter-Asian Migration in Stories by Migrant Workers in Taiwan," I-Chun Wang discusses narratives by migrant workers with the purpose of looking into their personal geographies, their possibilities of integration, their floating identities and their dreams of settlement and possible success. This paper stresses the stories of migration show not only common human values, shared across cultures and creolization, but also sad stories of human-rights violations, injustices, discrimination, and even human trafficking. In these fictional stories or witness literature, cross-cultural conflicts, cultural in-betweenness and cultural hybridity are intertwined with the migrants’ ways to …

Guest Editor's Introduction, John Lowe

The Southern Quarterly

One of the consequences of situating the U. S. as part of the circumCaribbean is that it creates an opportunity to examine important subjects—such as slavery, agricultural production, trade patterns, immigration, diaspora, travel writing and tourism—through a more comprehensive lens. Numerous slave owners had plantations in both the lower South and on the islands. Maroon culture created by runaways were common across the circumCaribbean, be they in lowland swamps or mountain retreats. Runaways also found refuge with Native Americans, leading to intermarriage and cultural exchange. Transnational studies are beginning to clear away artificial barriers separating the peoples and cultures of …

Cathay, Ezra Pound

Poetry

Ezra Pound’s Cathay (1915) is a masterpiece of modernism, but also of world literature. The muscular precision of images that mark Pound’s translations helped established a modern style for American literature, at the same time creating a thirst for classical Chinese poetry in English. Yet Pound wrote it without knowing any Chinese, relying instead on word-for-word “cribs” left by the Orientalist Ernest Fenollosa, whose notebooks reveal a remarkable story of sustained cultural exchange.

This fully annotated critical edition focuses on Pound’s astonishing translations without forgetting that the original Chinese and Old English poems are masterpieces in their own right. By …

La Figuration De L'Écriture Dans Quelques Romans Africains Contemporains, Adama Togola

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The contemporary African novel offers an acute staging of writing, the image of the writer and a reflection on the issues of literature. Its metafictional and metatextual dimensions give rise to a poetics in which writing appears both as a practice and as a theory of fiction. This study, which focuses on novels of Sembène Ousmane, Alain Mabanckou, and Blaise N'Djehoya, addresses the issue of double fiction. It aims to show that the figure of the fictitious writer sometimes appears as a textual substitute, a form of possible objectification of the real novelist, whose novels tend to turn into a …

La Métaphore De L'Œuvre Impossible Dans Le Roman Africain Contemporain, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Many and varied, the figures of the book or the art are omnipresent in many literary works, and in various forms. They, sometimes, evoke the metaphor of the impossible work or the ambivalent status of the character writer in fiction. What are the functions of these figures in the narrative, and more particularly in the novel, and in the social discourse? In order to answer these questions, our study will focus on Henry Lopes' Le lys et le flamboyant, Alain Mabanckou's Verre Gasse, and Gilbert Gatore's Le passe devant soi, with occasional references to other novels to …

Métamorphoses De L'Écrivain Dans Le Roman Francophone Subsaharien, Christian Uwe

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In his very first novel - La vie et demie - the question was put forward: wherefrom shall Sony Labou Tansi write so as to be? With a stunning lucidity, the author observed the irreducible gap that separates him from (and yet links him to) his writing: "I who speak of the absurdity of the absurd [ ... ] wherefrom do you think I speak if not from the outside?" (1979: 9). Starting from that novel, this paper explores the way the figure of the author is revealed by the writing. To that end, it explores five takes on such …

Addressing Ash: Rituals Of Translation And Grief In Anne Carson’S Nox, Peper Langhout '18

Student Research

This project investigates the activities of translation and mourning as ritual acts in Anne Carson’s Nox, a multimedia poem including a translation and reception of Catullus’s poem 101. Carson, as a literary critic and poet, as well as a classicist and translator, uses multimodal strategies of addressing the tensions between social rituals of mourning and intimate grief by making translation an allegory for the grieving process. Through Nox, I inspect a number of interrelated tensions between emotional interior and expressed exterior as finely controlled in both form and content. By using a culturally embedded, referential elegiac form to put a …

Japanese-English Translation: "Absolute-Contradictory Self-Identity"--Nishida Kitarō, Translated By Christopher Southward, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Complete draft translation of Nishida Kitarō’s “Absolute-contradictory Self-identity” (First published in Thought, No. 202, March, 1939, Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, Japan) [「絶対矛盾的自己同一」、千九百三十九年三月初発、『思想』、岩波書店、東京]. Introduction, conceptual apparatus/glossary, substantive line edits, corrections, revisions, and notes underway. Please contact translator before citing. All rights reserved, Christopher Southward (2018). Source, Aozora Bunko (a digital archive of Japanese-language works in the public domain): Current text: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000182/files/1755_53374.html; General: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/

Ecofeminism And Cultural Ecology: A Framework Of Connections And Intersections For Reading Margret Atwood’S “Habitation”, “The City Planners”, “Morning In The Burned House”, “February”, And “Night Poem”, Maha M. Munib Abdelmotaleb

English Language and Literature

Cultural ecology and Ecofeminism are two concepts that intersect with each other. Both concepts define and reinforce each other. It could be claimed that, Ecofeminism is one manifestation of cultural ecology since the former tackles issues about feminism’s relationship with nature including nature domination and the duality of nature which find their echoes in cultural ecology as well. The whole idea of the earth’s subjugation and male domination as well as the male/ female duality of nature in general find resonance in feminist resistance to patriarchal domination which develop under the umbrella of Ecofeminism to be part of the struggle …

Patriarchal Ecocide: An Ecofeminist Reading Of Rahul Varma's Bhopal And Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy Of The People, Rania M Rafik Khalil

English Language and Literature

Ecofeminism is a movement that sees a connection between the exploitation of the natural world and the subordination of women. This concept of ecology and feminism conceptualized by Simone de Beauvoir (1952) and later refined by Francoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 has greened artistic values across disciplines, it is however perceived to be found only sparsely in drama. Una Chaudhuri (1994) and Theresa J. May (2005) argue that theatre is both “immediate and communal” (May 85) with a wealth of productions that “awaken ecological sensibilities” (85) and contest “industrialisation’s animus against nature” (24). Within this context, Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of …

美國詩歌的中文編譯, 1934-1961, Zijiang Song

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

本項研究旨在勾畫從1934年至1961年間美國詩歌的中文編譯。本項研究計劃的研究對象是這段時期在中國和香港出版的四個美國詩歌中譯選本：施蟄存編譯的「現代美國文學專號•現代美國詩抄」(1934)；袁水拍編譯的《現代美國詩選》(1949)以及《新的歌一一現代美國詩選》(1953)；馬朗編譯的 「英美現代詩特輯•美國部份」(1956)；宋淇編譯的《美國詩選》(1961)。 施、袁、馬、宋等四位詩人既編且譯，由於身處不同的地緣和文化政治語境，對中文新詩的體認各不相同，意識形態各異，同時四個案例在文本、語境、贊助人、詩學、意識形態等層面各有不同卻有所關聯，因此本文運用安德雷•勒菲弗爾(André Lefevere)的改寫理論，並適當加以補充，分析四個改寫文本各自在編纂和翻譯上的改寫體現的詩學和意識形態，並且描述四個改寫文本投射出不同的美國詩歌的形象，又同時折射出改寫者各自理想的現代中文詩歌的形 象。現存相關的英美文學中譯史研究，由於過於側重資料整理及對政治語境的描述，而對相關譯者和譯本的沒有進行足夠的研讀與探究，也沒有分析美國詩歌中譯的選本，鮮有细讀譯本，更無顧及1949年後在香港發生的翻譯現象。本項研究填補這方面的研究空白，考察四個改寫文本產生的語境和過程，分析四位改寫者的詩學和意識形態，通過比較分析他們的編纂策略和翻譯實踐，勾畫四個改寫文本互相之間的關聯，提供跨越1949、涵蓋中港兩地的美國詩歌中文編譯。

Poetry In A Troubling Time: Analyzing Several Poems Inspired By The Troubles In Northern Ireland, Michael Mccarthy

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Most of the news about Northern Ireland for the past year has been about what effect Brexit will have on the North’s relationship with the Republic of Ireland. The discussion of eliminating the “soft-border,” and replacing it with a “hard- border,” which would see the reinstitution of checkpoints along the 500-kilometer border, continues to dominate international headlines. The EU has been attempting to allay concerns, and in March, President of the European Council Donald Tusk, traveled to Dublin and reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to avoiding a hard border and maintaining the peace process in the region (Stone, 2018). At the …

Eric H. Cline, 1177 B.C. - The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton University Press, 2015, Mariana Tepfenhart

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.