Comparative Literature Commons^™

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2010)

Quidditas

Kristin M.S. Bezio

The Allen D. Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association

“Hand Hand Shooke”: Compassionate Touch In George Chapman’S Hero And Leander, Patricia Davis Patrick

Quidditas

Chapman begins his continuation of Marlowe’s Hero and Leander by announcing that he intends to “censure the delights” which the lovers have enjoyed without the sanction of ceremony. However, the narrator does not maintain this attitude of stern judgment. As readers of Chapman’s Hero and Leander have often noticed, the narrator continuously shifts his tone, sometimes censuring the lovers and sometimes sympathizing with them. Chapman’s poem is thus as deeply concerned with the problem of appropriate compassion as it is with the containment of Eros. The narrator’s vacillation between censure and compassion can be fruitfully considered by examining early modern …

Banishing Ganymede At Whitehall: Jove’S “Loathsome Staines” And Fictions Of Britain In Thomas Carew’S Coelum Britannicum, Jessica Tvordi

Quidditas

Thomas Carew’s masque Coelum Britannicum, performed at Whitehall on Shrove Tuesday of 1634, deploys an image of conjugal perfection in order to codify a fiction of national union. Not only are Charles I and Henrietta Maria models of moral and political comportment powerful enough to reform the profligate court of Jove, their harmonious marriage also provides the inspiration for reconciliation between England, Scotland, and Ireland. In order to assert this fiction of unification, the masque invokes images of sexual transgression, symbolically enacts their removal, and equates the strength of Britain with the absence of the deviant monarch, James I. …

“Talk Of Marriage” In Northwest England: Continuity And Change In Matrimonial Litigation, 1560-1640, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

This article suggests that the matrimonial culture of northwest England from 1560 to 1640 was marked by a complex range of strategies, values, and processes that emphasized matrimony as a performative process. While present-tense language of consent created, in the words of sixteenth-century lawyer Henry Swinburne, the “Substance and indissoluble knot of Matrimony,” people in the northwest consistently identified other words, actions, and attitudes that also communicated matrimonial intent. Litigation from the diocese of Chester’s two consistory courts features considerable “talk of marriage” by litigants and deponents and reveals an enduring emphasis in the northwest on public performance of matrimonial …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Assia Djebar And The Algerian Woman: From Silence To Song, Mary Maher

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the work of Assia Djebar in terms of its context, content, and objectives. Djebar's writing is lyrical and captivating, yet its grounding in experience gives her words a quality of truth and wisdom. To fully understand the function of her work and the significance of its content, the context in which Djebar writes is momentous. Outlining a brief history of the Algerian woman's experience gives a practical understanding of the individual and collective struggles of Algerian women. The violent and unique participation of women in the Algerian War of Independence and their subsequent insignificance under the patriarchal …

Gothic Representations: History, Literature, And Film, Daniel Gould

All Student Theses and Dissertations

Gothic storytelling has come a long way since the publication of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto in 1764. This short novel created the standard motifs and tropes that will forever be associated with the genre-the destitute castle, the foreboding atmosphere, supernatural or inexplicable events, omens, prophecies, heroes, villains, and of course, a deteriorating world facilitated by the unconscious evils within hwnanity causing the complete destabilization of society.

This paper will examine the evolution of Gothic fiction and how it has been represented from its romantic heritage and Victorian upbringing to the American Gothic traditions of the nineteenth century and …

Review: Electric Salome, Loie Fuller's Performance Of Modernism, Tim Scholl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Revolution In Rhetoric: Recycling The Language Of Control Through Rhetorical Activism, Jerien Elizabeth Rausch

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The English language, with its infinite space and possibility, is and can be recycled to recreate authority of voice and representations of the past. Where once language was used for creating and maintaining colonial control, now, with its careful study and critical (re)applications through fictions written as alternative versions of colonial events, it can be a source of power for the reclamations of identity, culture, religion, history, story, context, and imagination. This study (re)examines an iconic exploration and colonial narrative to highlight the rhetoric used to capture and create Indigenous Peoples and places. Additionally, this study explores how works of …

Transfinite = 譯誌, 2009-2010 Publication Workshop, Department Of Translation, Lingnan University

Bilingual Publication Workshop 雙語出版工作坊

This bilingual magazine was created and produced by the 55 students in a course called Publication Workshop, which is offered by Lingnan’s Department of Translation. Dr. Roberta Raine, as the teacher for this course, his role as “Editor-in-Chief” has been to guide the students in learning hands-on, through practical experience what is involved in publishing a magazine. The students have been responsible for every step of the process: brainstorming ideas for articles, writing, translating, editing, finding photos and artwork, designing, proofreading, preparing the magazine for printing, and distribution.

這本雙語雜誌是由嶺南大學翻譯系修讀”出版工作坊”的55名學生精心編著的。在此過程中，Dr. Roberta Raine 作為任課老帥兼「主編」，引導學生在實踐中來學習。從擬稿、寫作、翻譯、編輯、後期美工設計、校對、印刷到最後的派發，學生們在每個步驟上都身體力行。

Cultural Studies Through Literary And Semiotic Approaches: A Review Article Of New Manuals By Walton And Thwaites, Davis, And Mules, Maya Zalbidea Paniagua

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Myth And History In The Poetry Of Osundare, Christopher Anyokwu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Myth and History in the Poetry of Osundare" Christopher Anyokwu examines the interrelation of myth and history from an African perspective. Anyokwu analyzes the poetry of one of Africa's most prolific and decorated contemporary poets, Niyi Osundare. Osundare is a third-generation Nigerian poet whose work is based on Yoruba oral tradition and informed by Marxist ideology. Osundare's poetry demonstrates the so-called "return-to-roots" neo-traditionalist ethos in modern African writing. Osundare's attitude to myth, ritual, and other African animist categories is intriguingly complex, ambivalent, and giving rise to charges of ideological irresolution and culturo-epistemic bifurcation. As a champion of …

The Metaphor Of Assimilation In Rabéarivelo's Poetry, Yasser Khamees Ragab Aman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Metaphor of Assimilation in Rabéarivelo's Poetry" Yasser Khamees Ragab Aman discusses the impact of the metaphor and the policy of assimilation in the poetry of Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo, who swings between a desired image of a superior France based on a mythically archetypal symbol of a patron and a reality which, as a matter of course, distorts the image of a good-natured colonizer. Aman traces the influence of French Symbolists such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and Laforgue on Rabéarivelo's poems and discusses to what extent these influences help make an assimilé of the poet. In Aman's interpretation …

Playwriting In Three Major Nigerian Languages, Isaiah Ilo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Playwriting in Three Major Nigerian Languages" Isaiah Ilo analyzes the frequency of playwriting in Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, the three major Nigerian languages, which together hold about a half of the country's estimated population of 140 million. Ilo uses a case study to contrast the importance of the languages, their evolution as literary languages, and their official status with a role in education. Ilo locates the significance of these factors next to an inventory of the plays and a listing of the writers to demonstrate the neglect of the mother tongue by experienced Nigerian dramatists. The study …

The Role Of The Unconscious In Culture: A Review Article Of New Work By Green And Bainbridge, Radstone, Rustin, And Yates, Xiana Sotelo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Social Dimensions Of Fiction: On The Rhetoric And Function Of Prefacing Novels In The Nineteenth-Century Canadas, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. The Social Dimensions of Fiction: On the Rhetoric and Function of Prefacing Novels in the Nineteenth-Century Canadas. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher (Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn), 1993. ISBN 3-528-07335-7 188 pages, bibliography, index. Data and analyses of nineteenth-century English- and French-Canadian prefaces to novels with theoretical and methodological frameworks for the study of rhetoric, the sociology of literature, audience research, and genre studies. Copyright of the book was released to Tötösy de Zepetnek by Westdeutscher Verlag in 2003.

Speech Act Disagreement Among Young Women In Iran, Vahid Parvaresh, Abbas Eslami Rasekh

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Speech Act Disagreement among Young Women in Iran" Vahid Parvaresh and Abbas Eslami Rasekh investigate the effects of solidarity and deference proposed by Ronald Scollon and Suzanne Scollon on the ways in which young women in Iran perform the speech act of disagreement in their own language and culture. Their data has been analyzed using Geoffrey Leech's classification of illocutionary functions which is based on the social goal of establishing and maintaining comity. Special care has also been exercised to take the respondents' points of view into consideration. Parvaresh and Rasekh suggest that in a non-Western Islamic …

Indirect Discourse In German, Russian, And English, Henry Whittlesey Schroeder

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Indirect Discourse in German, Russian, and English" Henry Whittlesey Schroeder analyzes the different tenses of indirect discourse in these three languages. Indirect discourse in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century adopts a different time in English, German and Russian. English indirect discourse reports in the preterit; German indirect discourse hovers in the subjunctive; Russian indirect discourse speaks in the present. The transposition of English indirect discourse allows the character's discourse to surface in a tense identical to the narration. Consequently, the character can corrupt the narration, undermining the narrator's narration and commentary on that narration. German indirect …

In Memoriam Peter Edgerly Firchow (1937-2008), Gerald Gillespie

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Space In Cardinal's Au Pays De Mes Racines And Goytisolo's Coto Vedado, Laura Dennis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Space in Cardinal's Au Pays de mes racines and Goytisolo's Coto vedado" Laura Dennis discusses the ways in which two memoirs of the late twentieth century treat exile and diverse spaces as part of a quest for a place in which to live fully and freely. Juan Goytisolo's Coto vedado and Marie Cardinal's Au Pays de mes racines constitute particularly rich treatments of space and exile and the ways in which these intersect with questions of culture, gender, and power. Dennis uses Henri Lefebvre's theories of abstract and differential space together with Gillian Rose's feminist study of …

Adams's Quest For The Unity Of Knowledge, Karl Shaddox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Adams's Quest for the Unity of Knowledge," Karl Shaddox discusses Henry Adams's lesser known work, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, as a continuation of the historian's attempt at unifying knowledge in The Education. Whereas unification in The Education was proposed by historicizing force, whether religious or molecular, Adams's effort in The Degradation employed a scientistic approach to history. Using Josiah Gibb's research on the equilibrium of heterogeneous substances, Adams felt he had provided a natural explanation of social and historical change — and thus the elemental connection between matter and mind. Critical opinion has not been receptive to …

Innovation And Multimedia In The Poetry Of Cummings And Mayakovsky, Svetlana Nikitina

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Innovation and Multimedia in the Poetry of cummings and Mayakovsky" Svetlana Nikitina discusses how e.e. cummings and Vladimir Mayakovsky foreshadowed the digital revolution of today in their multimedia experiments in poetry. Although they spoke different languages and lived in different societies, the two modernist poets display similarities in their modernist aesthetics. Both are artists as well as poets who blur the line between the two forms of art. Their synesthesia inoculates them against postmodern disintegration of meaning or form. Although cummings is a staunch individualist, and Mayakovsky the tribune of the collective, they both rebel against traditional …

Review: The Wilderking Trilogy, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: Declaration Of Independence, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Review: We The People: The Story Of Our Constitution, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

All Children's Book Reviews

Character Themes: Citizenship, Responsibility

Review: The King Raven Trilogy, Janice A. Delong, Rachel Schwedt

All Children's Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Provinializing World Literature: Tristram Shandy And Midnight's Children As Precursors To Current Postcolonial Critical Theory, Rachel Jordan

All Theses

Postcolonial critical theory is currently experiencing a period of upheaval. It is becoming increasing clear that the field's concentration on geopolitical bifurcation has provided an incomplete paradigm for critical literary analysis. The current approach incorrectly separates literature (and the analysis thereof), into that of former colonies and that of former colonial powers, with each having distinct critical methodologies that are considered appropriate. I argue that Dipesh Chakrabarty's method of provincializing, or the constant accumulation of new and divergent viewpoints to shape analysis through an iterative process, is a promising, but not new, critical paradigm.
Chakrabarty's contribution to postcolonial studies is …

Russian Magical Realism And Pelevin As Its Exponent, Alexandra Berlina

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Russian Magical Realism and Pelevin as Its Exponent" Alexandra Berlina seeks to enrich magical realism studies as a field of comparative literature and culture by showing that, although largely ignored in scholarship, such a thing as Russian magical realism exists and provides an interesting field for analysis. First, Berlina provides an overview of relevant scholarly works on the genre, tracing mentions (as well as striking omissions) of Russian influence, followed by a discussion of the few publications which deal with Russian magical realism, concentrating on Erika Haber's The Myth of the Non-Russian. Berlina then discusses Viktor Pelevin …

Necropolitics And Contemporary Hungarian Literature And Cinema, Ryan Michael Kehoe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Necropolitics and Contemporary Hungarian Literature and Cinema" Ryan Michael discusses aspects of the concept of necropower (Mbembe) applied to contemporary Hungarian literature and cinema. Kehoe argues that his analysis provides models of postcolonial "aesthetic acts" that disrupt, destabilize, and ultimately subvert the global regimes to which Achille Mbembe refers. Accordingly, Hungary's status as a postcolony is discussed within the context of Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek's and David Chioni Moore's contention that the parameters of postcolonial cultural analysis need to be expanded to account for Central and East Europe's transition out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Further, …

A Talk Show In Hungary And The Question Of "Proper Distance", Lajos Császi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Talk Show in Hungary and the Question of 'proper distance'" Lajos Császi discusses the phenomenon of the talk show in its specific post-communist Hungarian context. During the past few years, Hungarian commercial television programs have been the target of frequent ideological attacks. At the same time, they have become increasingly popular among audiences. In my study I focus on the "Mónika" talk show, one of the most popular programs. Analyzing this new media phenomenon, I attempt to combine the political-economic and the socio-cultural perspectives of tabloid media, which are often opposed to each other. I ask …