Comparative Literature Commons^™

Bibliography For Work In Holocaust Studies, Agata Anna Lisiak, Louise O. Vasvári, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Narrative Silences Between History And Memory In Schumann's Being Present: Growing Up In Hitler's Germany, Anne Rothe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Narrative Silences Between History and Memory in Schumann's Being Present: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany" Anne Rothe analyzes Willy Schumann's 1991 memoir as an instance of a growing sub-genre among autobiographical writing on the Third Reich and the Holocaust, the Hitler Youth Generation memoir. Written in English for US-American college students, the memoir constructs a reactionary counter-memory to Holocaust discourse in order to exculpate ordinary Germans like himself not only from any responsibility for but any association with nazi crimes. In order to do so, Schumann not only largely omits the Holocaust but recasts the perpetrator/victim dichotomy …

Emigrée Central European Jewish Women's Holocaust Life Writing, Louise O. Vasvári

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper "Emigrée Central European Jewish Women's Holocaust Life Writing," Louise O. Vasvári analyzes voices of women survivors from a gendered perspective in order to provide insights for both Holocaust studies and gender studies. Vasvári considers whether it can be claimed that there is a specifically female style of remembering and of testifying about these traumatic experiences. Vasvári's selection includes the writings of some two dozen Central European emigrée survivors, all native speakers of Hungarian, later writing and publishing in languages of their adopted countries. The first group of women consists of adult survivors who must bear witness in …

In Memoriam Milan V. Dimić (1933-2007), Gerald Gillespie

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

"Mad Laughter" In Federman's The Twofold Vibration, Menachem Feuer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "'Mad Laughter' in Federman's The Twofold Vibration" Menachem Feuer discusses one of the central questions in the debate over post-Holocaust representation with regard to comedy and laughter. Several authors and filmmakers including Mel Brooks, Lina Wertmüller, Roberto Benigni, Michael Chabon, or Jonathan Safran Foer employ comedy in work. Although the books and films of these authors and filmmakers certainly test the limits of representation through the use of comedy in post-Holocaust art, the use of "mad laughter" in the work of Raymond Federman to represent the Holocaust stands out as the most important exploration of post-Holocaust comedy …

Figurative Language In Delbo's Auschwitz Et Après, Elizabeth Scheiber

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Figurative Language in Delbo's Auschwitz et après" Elizabeth Scheiber exeamines the use of figurative language in Charlotte Delbo's trilogy Auschwitz et après. Aucun de nous ne reviendra and shows how metaphors and symbols in the texts not only establish a means of imagining the concentration camps, but also how they create a community between author and reader. In Delbo's work, the ironic symbol of the stretcher as a means of conveying corpses gives the reader insight into the author's psyche at roll call as she witnesses the grim sight of the indignity of death in the concentrationary …

Autobiography And Fiction In Semprún's Texts, Laia Quílez Esteve, Rosa-Àuria Munté Ramos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Autobiography and Fiction in Semprún's Texts" Laia Quílez Esteve and Rosa-Àuria Munté Ramos explore aspects of narration in Jorge Semprún's literary work with regard to his experience in the concentration camp. Quílez Esteve and Munté Ramos analyze auto-novelistic mechanisms Semprún employs and reflect on the various meanings of that use by Semprún. Semprún's biographical journey is characterized by a series of experiences which would determine the form and content of his writing. The perception and experience of exile permeates Semprún's pages, the fluctuation of identities which are masked or unmasked within them, or the dissolution of the …

Silence As Insubordination: Friday And Michael K’S Wordless Weapon, A Post-Colonial Approach Toj.M. Coetzee’S Foe And Life And Times Of Michael K, Cody C. Mullins

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

While most critics of J.M. Coetzee’s fiction focus on silence as a weapon of imperial oppressive forces to subjugate representations of the "other," this thesis argues that, on the contrary, characters representing the traditional colonially oppressed use their silence as a weapon to in turn oppress the representations of imperial power. Through close reading explication and the use of the post-colonial theories of both Homi Bhabha and Edward Said, I focus on the inverted oppression, the shifting of identity, and the role of authorial authority within the novels, Foe and Life & Times of Michael K. By engaging in this …

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2009)

Quidditas

Adele Lee

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Delno C. West Award (2009)

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Andrea Knox

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

“The Whole Is An Idle Dream:” The Early Modern And Post-Modern Quest For Cathay, Adele Lee

Quidditas

This article examines how the Renaissance English understood and responded to the land of Cathay. It argues that although Cathay is technically just another name for China it represented a separate conceptual realm in this period. In other words, Cathay must be considered as being, in many ways, a distinct discursive construct. Viewed as the ‘glittering prize’ of the East India Company, Cathay, which fuelled countless (doomed) attempts at discovery, possessed characteristics both Chinese and Tartar. Descriptions of it converged and diverged simultaneously with descriptions of China and Tartary. As well as being a culturally liminal entity, Cathay was also …

Dancing In The Shadows: Ritual, Drama And The Performance Of Baptisms In The Digby Conversion Of St. Paul And Philip Massinger’S The Renegado., Matthew C. Hansen

Quidditas

The anonymous Digby Conversion of St. Paul aims at historical verisimilitude in order to distance the on-stage baptism the play contains from the rite as performed in early sixteenth-century English churches. Philip Massinger’s The Renegado (published 1624), presenting the conversion and baptism of a Muslim woman, employs specific details to establish the baptism performed on stage as a rite that, while efficacious within the contexts of the play, is markedly different in substantive performance than the form of baptism presented in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. Both plays frame the dramatically significant and sensitive performance of the religious rite …

The Convent As Cultural Conduit: Irish Matronage In Early Modern Spain, Andrea Knox

Quidditas

Irish catholic women religious who migrated to Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries established a strong tradition of schools, hospitals and charitable institutions. Education and learning were important to Irish communities, and were recognised within Spain. Irish nuns and their convents were not part of an enclosed tradition and outreach work was a central aim. Sponsorship links between women were part of a collective plan, and cultural matronage by and for women appears to have been very effective. Censorship by the Inquisition and tridentine orthodoxy was contested by women’s religious houses which resisted censorship of book collections and art …

Review Essay: “Will In Overplus” A Review Of Shakespeare Biographies, Stephannie S. Gearhart

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Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 135, ll.1-3

It seems to be a kind of Respect due to the Memory of Excellent Men,

specially of those whom their Wit and Learning have made Famous,

to deliver some Account of themselves, as well as their Works, to Posterity.

For this Reason, how fond do we see some People of discovering any little

Personal Story of the great Men of Antiquity, their Families, the common

Accidents of their Lives, and …

Full Issue

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No abstract provided.

Teaching The Black Death, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

John Alberth, ed. The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348- 1350: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. 200 pages. $14.95.

Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, ed. The Black Death. Problems in European Civilization. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. 206 pages. $37.99.

Using John Wilders To Teach Shakespeare’S Second Tetralogy, Edmund M. Taft

Quidditas

John Wilders. The Lost Garden: A View of Shakespeare’s English and Roman History Plays. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1978. 154 pp.

“O thoughts of men accurst!

Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.”

(2 Henry 4.1.3.107-108)

Ang Sining Ng Saling-Awit: Kasaysayan, Proseso, At Pagpapahalaga, Michael M. Coroza

Filipino Faculty Publications

Nakatuon ang maikling pag-aaral na ito sa kasaysayan, poetika, at praktika ng saling-awit (song translation) sa Filipinas. Itinatanghal dito kung paanong ang gawaing ito ay bahagi ng maunlad at malaganap na tradisyong pabigkas ng Filipinas mulang sinaunang panahon hanggang sa kasalukuyan. Saligan ng pagtalakay ang tanggap na katotohanan, lalo na sa pabigkas na tradisyon, na ang tula ay awit o awit ang tula. Sa proseso ng saling-awit, mababakas ang malikhain at subersibong pag-iisip ng mga Filipino, na hindi lamang kumokopya kundi nag-aangkop, higit sa lahat, ng banyagang kanta at kultura sa katutubong wika na pinagsasalinan. Sa gayon, ang nalilikhang salin, …

Note On Contributors- 2009 Special Issue

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Rosemary Ashton is Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London. She is the author of acclaimed critical biographies of George Eliot (1996) and G. H. Lewes (1991). Her many publications on George Eliot include The Mill on the Floss: A Natural History (1990), and editions of Middlemarch (Penguin, 1994) and Selected Writings of George Eliot (World's Classics, 1992). Her most recent book is 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London (2006).

Beryl Gray is co-editor of the Review, the author of George Eliot and Music and of numerous articles on the novelist, and she has …

J.W. Cross Defends G.H. Lewes, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Early in 1881, John Cross, widowed after only seven months of married life, set about the task of preparing a biography of his famous wife. He faced a number of challenges. The most daunting were the various sensitivities inherent in the life story of the woman best known as George Eliot. Two events were particularly confronting: Mary Ann Evans's loss of faith in the 1840s, and Marian Evans's decision in 1854 to live with George Henry Lewes although they could not marry. For Cross, in effect George Eliot's second husband, the treatment of Lewes and her relationship with him was …

Conference Report George Eliot's Beginnings: Scenes Of Clerical Life Celebrated, Juliette Atkinson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Over three dozen people from around the United Kingdom and beyond gathered on Saturday 1 November 2008 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication, in volume form, of George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life. Barbara Hardy warmly welcomed the audience and presented the day's alluring programme. The conference promised to be both a celebration of the three short stories that marked Mary Ann Evans's fictional debut and an exploration of the personal and artistic influences that prompted her to change direction at the age of thirty-seven

Echoing the words of Eliot's famous journal entry with the title 'How George …

' Indications That I Can Touch The Hearts Of My Fellow Men': Reading Scenes Of Clerical Life From A Kleinian Psychoanalytic Perspective, Toni Griffiths

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot tentatively reflected in her journal that she might be touching the hearts of her fellow men in Scenes aj Clerical Life. In this short paper, I explore with the aid of Kleinian psychoanalytical ideas what might be involved in such a touching of the heart and attempt in the process to indicate that, despite their evident flaws, the Scenes are powerful harbingers of the later and mature works.

I have elsewhere detailed my argument that a literary text will evoke a strong emotional response in the reader in those cases where the powerful and contradictory sensations of the …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 23 November 2008- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I have attended several birthday luncheons over the years and I am very pleased and honoured to have been invited this year to propose the toast. The fact that this is a birthday celebration has prompted me to wonder how George Eliot herself was wont to celebrate her own birthday, and from the evidence of the letters and the journals the answer to my wondering question seems to be that she was not inclined to celebrate it at all. Indeed, she was barely inclined even to acknowledge it. There is a revealing early letter to Maria Lewis, written she claims …

Review Of George Eliot. Novelist, Lover, Wife, Brenda Maddox

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The distorted cover-image of George Eliot with a strange pen and a very small writing book. and the mind-reading at the beginning which tells us that one glance at the newborn Mary Ann, already possessed of a 'large drooping nose, long chin, prominent jaw', told her parents that 'she would find it hard to fulfil a girl's primary task - to find a husband, she would have to make her own way in life' , are not ingratiating, and there are signs that Brenda Maddox is not exactly inward with the novels, but she has done something no other scholar …

A New George Eliot Holograph Letter, Jonathan Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The letter reproduced above was written by George Eliot, then Mary Ann Evans, to Martha lackson and has been made available to The George Eliot Review by its present owner, Matthew Wilson, who inherited it from his mother, Shirley Wilson, who worked in publishing. Amongst her collection of autographs, letters and rare books were letters originally in the possession of the collector Henry Cunliffe, including this one. Large extracts from it were first printed in The Bookman, 3 (January 1893), and reprinted by Gordon Haight in the Yale edition of the George Eliot Letters, 1954 (I, 188-9)

Martha (or Patty) …

How George Eliot Came To Write Fiction, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We are celebrating one hundred and fifty years since the publication in volume form of George Eliot's first work of fiction, Scenes of Clerical Life, three stories printed first in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine between January and November 1857, and then in two volumes in January 1858. I will tell the story of how George Eliot came to write fiction by moving backwards from the Scenes themselves, via George Eliot's journal entry of 6 December 1857, 'How I Came to Write Fiction', to her literary criticism in the Westminster Review in the earlier 1850s, and finally to two letters, of 1849 …

Orphic Variations In Scenes Of Clerical Life, Kenichi Kurata

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is from Orfeo's climactic aria, Che faro senza Euridice, in Gluck's opera, Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). That the tune may sound too graceful to suit the desperate words can be explained by Orfeo's awareness of the means he has ready to hand of being reunited with Eurydice: he can cross the river Styx again by killing himself. At the moment of this declaration, contrary to the original myth, personified Love intervenes and Orfeo recovers Eurydice for the second time.

What I would like to suggest in the following paper is that this myth of Orpheus' descent to the underworld …

Review Of Eliot's Middlemarch: Reader's Guide, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This new 'Reader's Guide' successfully complements two preceding works that were written for the same purpose of providing information and interpretation for readers of Middlemarch in a compact form: those by Karen Chase for Cambridge University Press's 'Landmarks of World Literature' series, and by T. R. Wright for Harvester Weatsheaf, both published in 1991. The book is closer to Chase's in terms of the order and structure of the argument. After giving a brief biography of George Eliot and introducing the historical contexts of the novel in the first chapter (Contexts'), Billington goes on to provide close readings of passages …

The Thirty-Seventh George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2008- George Eliot's Dorothea? 'That Fair Bright Useful Woman': Mrs. Nassau Senior In George Eliot's Life And Writing, Sybil Oldfield

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Who was Jeanie Senior before Octavia Hill introduced her to George Eliot in October 1866? Born Jeanie Hughes in 1828, the cherished daughter and only sister of seven brothers, she had started life as a happier Maggie Tulliver - keenly alive, with a questioning intelligence and an intense capacity for feeling. She could bum with indignation as well as overflow with impulsive generosity. Tall, golden haired and blue-eyed, she was also an exceptionally gifted musician with a marvellous singing voice, so it would have seemed that born into an affectionate, lively, well-to-do Squire's family, she had been allotted almost too …

Margaret Wolfit (1929-2008), Lucy Amis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My Mum, Margaret Wolfit (Amis) passed away on 20th September. I wanted to write to reassure everyone that she didn't suffer for long and that 2008 was a decent year in many ways. As you may know, she'd been treated for breast cancer thirteen years ago and came through well for over twelve years, but in August 2007 was re-diagnosed, this time affecting her chest. At the time (August 2007) she had some fluid drained from her lungs and was more or less fine within about forty-eight hours - indeed she was performing only a few days later. The doctors …