Modern Literature Commons^™

Desire, Curiosity, And The Search For Truth In Proust, Moreno, And Bechdel, Santiago Parga Linares

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marcel Proust’s influence on twentieth century literature is broad and has been well documented. This dissertation attempts a comparative reading of À la recherche du temps perdu that places it in contrast with Colombian writer Marvel Moreno’s 1987 novel, En diciembre llegaban las brisas, and Alison Bechdel’s 2006 comic memoir, Fun Home. Starting from a Deleuzian reading of the Recherche, this dissertation proposes the notion of the “proustian truth seeker”, a thematic and stylistic phenomenon which can be traced in all three writers. The characteristics of the truth seeker can be used to understand the ways in …

Pirandello Proto-Modern: A New Reading Of L’Esclusa, Bradford Masoni

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Luigi Pirandello’s first novel, L’Esclusa, written in 1893, but not published in its definitive edition until 1927, straddles two literary worlds: that of the realistic style of the Italian veristi, and something new, a style and approach to narrative that anticipates the theory of writing Pirandello lays out in his long essay L’Umorismo, as well as the kinds of experimental writing that one associates with early-20^th-century modernism in general, and with Pirandello’s later work in particular. The novel’s living in both worlds, however, makes it an interesting and problematic text. First, it gives readers insight into …

Agency And Political Engagement In Gide And Barrault's Post-War Theatrical Adaptation Of Kafka's The Trial, Yevgenya Strakovsky

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Agency and Political Engagement in Gide and Barrault's Post-war Theatrical Adaptation of Kafka's The Trial" Yevgenya Strakovsky considers the political themes of André Gide and Jean-Louis Barrault's Le Procès (The Trial, 1947), the first theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka's Der Prozess (The Trial, 1914). Strakovsky demonstrates that Le Procès, written and staged in the immediate aftermath of World War II, levels a critique against the passive complicity of citizens in unjust persecution in both its script and its staging. The paper also considers the elements of Kafka's prose that lend themselves to …

Course Syllabus (Su17) Coli 331: “‘World-Traveling’: Alterity And Liminality In Spike Lee’S Do The Right Thing And Amiri Baraka’S Dutchman”, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

This semester, we’ll view Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing and Shirley Knight’s 1966 cinematic production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman through the critical lenses of Maria Lugones’ notions of ‘worlds’ and ‘world-traveling,’[1] which she develops in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions. Our task is to analyze a number of the problematics addressed in these visual works as discernible ‘world(s)’ of meaning and experience constituted by the libidinous investments, concrete practices, and ideological convictions of the human subjects who bear and circulate them.

[1] Maria Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition against Multiple Oppressions, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, …

Outlandish Outsourcing, Traci Grodner

Best Integrated Writing

Grodner Provides a review of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree that relates a personal anecdote about outsourcing to her academic analysis of the text. Grodner concludes that outsourcing has dire implications for both domestic and foreign workers.

An Excerpt From The Latin Ladies, Julia Gomez-Cambronero

Best Integrated Writing

In this excerpt, Gomez-Cambronero offers an editorial about the effect of U.S. involvement in Central America’s politics on the children of the region. It also contains Gomez-Cambronero’s essay on a poem by Rubén Darío.

Best Integrated Writing 2017 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

Mermaid Song: The Notebooks Of The Writing Woman, Gianna T. Ward-Vetrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is built on the model of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, that is, it is a feminist project of holistic integration that does not reject fracturing, ambiguity, or contradiction, but aims to attain a more complex and thus truer portrait of the woman writing. Lessing’s notebooks examine conflicts between communism and capitalism, racial conflict in Africa, conflict between men and women, and the conflict between the protagonist Anna Wulf’s identity as a woman and her identity as a writer, each of which she then attempts to integrate into the singular golden notebook of the title. I propose …

Chinese Wines And Foreign Urns: Making Objects Of Lyric, Ryan Matthew Hintzman

Student Work

A 2016-2017 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Ryan Matthew Hintzman (Silliman College '17) for his essay submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature, "Chinese Wines and Foreign Urns: Making Objects of Lyric.” (Edward Kamens, Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, advisor.)

Ryan Hintzman’s essay, Chinese Wines and Foreign Urns: Making Objects of Lyric is a work of awe-inspiring erudition, vision, and ambition. Ranging far and wide among traditional and more recent theories of the lyric and moving boldly from 8th century poems in Japanese to 19th and 20th century poems in English, Hintzman …

Tolkien, Eucatastrophe, And The Re-Creation Of Medieval Legend, Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

Using comparative literary analysis, this essay examines three case studies from J.R.R. Tolkien’s oeuvre, in which Tolkien practiced eucatastrophic rewriting: his folk-tale, “Sellic Spell,” in which he re-creates the Old English poem Beowulf; his poem, “Princess Mee,” in which he re-envisions aspects of the myth of Narcissus and the Middle English dream vision poem, Pearl; and the character of Éowyn from The Lord of the Rings, in which he re-imagines the fate of Brynhild, a shield-maiden and valkyrie from Norse legend. In each case, Tolkien rewrites the original so that sorrow is transformed into happiness in Tolkien’s …

Metamodernism In Liksom’S Compartment No. 6, Kasimir Sandbacka

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Metamodernism in Liksom's Compartment no. 6" Kasimir Sandbacka examines Rosa Liksom's latest novel Compartment No. 6 (2011). Liksom is considered to be one of the most prominent Finnish postmodernists. However, Compartment No. 6 has been seen by critics as a shift or return towards modernism or even realism. Sandbacka concurs with this observation but maintains that this is an insufficient analysis of the change in Liksom's writing. He argues that the change is related to the transformation of the cultural dominant, namely postmodernism. In dialogue with Jameson's theory of postmodernism, Sandbacka discusses recent theories of post-postmodernism and …

Notes On Contributors

Transference

No abstract provided.

Foreword, David Kutzko

Transference

No abstract provided.

Transference Vol. 4, Fall 2016

Transference

No abstract provided.

Contributors

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Homeless In The World : War, Narrative, And Historical Consciousness In Eileen Chang, György Lukács, And Lev Tolstoy, Roy Bing Chan

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This paper explores how Lev Tolstoy’s work was discussed by both Marxist philosopher György Lukács and Chinese writer Eileen Chang during the global crisis of the 1930s and the Second World War. According to Lukács, Tolstoy’s fiction embodied the quintessence of realist narrative’s ability to capture the mass experience of history. For Chang, defending herself against charges of being a trivial and uncommitted pulp writer, Tolstoy’s work exemplified the value of a narrative process marked by the very serendipity and contingency mirrored in reality. All three writers struggled with a conception of a unified world both as a utopian ideal, …

The Composing, Editing, And Publication Of Willa Cather’S Obscure Destinies Stories, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In 1998, Willa Cather’s 1932 short story collection Obscure Destinies appeared as the fourth volume of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition (WCSE). As the editors would explain in an essay reflecting on the “The Issue of Authority in a Scholarly Edition,” Cather “habitually sought to exert her authority over the full process governing the preparation and presentation of her novels: from drafting and revising the text to shaping the physical appearance of the published books.” In line with that sense of Cather’s authority, the WCSE chose and continues to choose the first edition of each work as book form as …

The Role Of George Henry Lewes In George Eliot’S Career: A Reconsideration, Beverley Rilett

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This article examines the “protection” and “encouragement” George Henry Lewes provided to Eliot throughout her fiction-writing career. According to biographers, Lewes showed his selfless devotion to Eliot by encouraging her to begin and continue writing fiction; by fostering the mystery of her authorship; by managing her finances; by negotiating her publishing contracts; by managing her schedule; by hosting a salon to promote her books; and by staying close by her side for twenty-four years until death parted them. By reconsidering each element of Lewes’s devotion separately, Rilett challenges the prevailing construction of the Eliot–Lewes relationship as the ideal partnership of …

The Translated Identities Of Chinese Minority Writers : Sinophone Naxi Authors, Duncan Poupard

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This paper will show the interplay between language and identity in the writing of Sinophone Chinese minority writers, who write what can be envisioned as a form of postcolonial literature. It is postcolonial in the sense that they are transposing their native, subaltern culture into Chinese for a Han Chinese audience. The focus of the discussion is on Naxi minority writers such as Sha Li and Niu Gengqin who are writing their own racial identity in Chinese. They are essentially “translating” the cultural metatext of their home (Naxi) culture for a dominant-culture (Han) audience. It is argued that the use …

Yet More Cather-Knopf Correspondence, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Some years ago many of us were excited by the discovery of a cache of Willa Cather’s correspondence with publisher Alfred A. Knopf that had been in the hands of Peter Prescott, one of the succession of would-be biographers of Knopf. He died before he completed it. These letters are now held in the Barbara Dobkin Collection in New York City. Before these materials came to light, researchers, including the editors of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition, had relied on a strange and fragmentary “memoir” Knopf wrote of his relationship with Cather based on his correspondence files with her, and …

George Eliot In Romantic Biofiction, Beverley Rilett

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Dinitia Smith’s The Honeymoon is the first complete biofiction of the woman enduringly known by her masculine pen name, George Eliot. It tells the story of a precocious provincial English girl who challenges the conventions of her middleclass upbringing as she pursues a writing career in Victorian London, moves in with an alreadymarried man, becomes one of the greatest living British novelists, and then marries John Cross, a man twenty years her junior whom she’d long called “nephew.” Whether or not Eliot’s brief marriage to Cross constituted a “happy ending” depends on how you interpret the harrowing incident that took …

A Critical Review Of Japanese Scholarship On Modern Chinese Fiction And Translation Studies, César Guarde-Paz

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This paper introduces Western readers to Japanese scholarship on late Qing and early Republican fiction and translation. It begins with a historical background on the development of modern Chinese literature studies in Japan, covering research societies, publications, and scholars in the field. Next, it discusses questions related to new directions in the study of the May Fourth Movement. Then, it addresses groundbreaking studies on writers and translators outside the main stream of research, covering Lin Shu, Liu Tieyun, and Li Boyuan. Further discussion examines thematic studies, including detective novels and Japanese political fiction.

Translation In Distraction : On Eileen Chang’S “Chinese Translation: A Vehicle Of Cultural Influence”, Christopher Lee

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This essay focuses on a previously obscure and only recently republished English text held at USC that offers an unparalleled window into Chang’s engagement with translation. The untitled manuscript, typed with handwritten additions and corrections, is contained in a folder marked “Untitled article or speech” and appears to be the script of an oral presentation in which Chang surveys the development of translation in China from the late-Qing period, through the 1911 revolution, the May Fourth period, the war with Japan, the 1949 revolution and the Cultural Revolution. Her speech emphasizes how translation functioned as an index to China’s fraught …

The Migrant Voice : The Politics Of Writing Home Between The Sinophone And Anglophone Worlds, Kenny K. K. Ng

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This paper addresses the politics of language, identity, and diasporic Chinese writing in old and emerging Chinese migrant literature. I opt for the idea of a “migrant subject” as brought up by Ha Jin to underscore a diverse verbal strategy and mobile literary creativity: that of the migrant writer who initiates linguistic and literary perversions to actively intervene in the cultural politics of both the host country and the motherland. The article proceeds to recuperate the diasporic narratives of Sinophone authors Bai Xianyong and Nie Hualing as two earlier examples of migrant writers before Ha, which exemplified the Cold War …

The Rise And Fall (And Rise Again) Of Vernacular Happiness, Haiyan Lee

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This article delineates the vicissitudes of vernacular happiness in China across the crucial transitions of the early 20^th century. Traditionally, vernacular happiness was symbolized by a triune of gods, fu-lu-shou, standing for progeny, wealth, and longevity. Happiness was thus a matter of good fortune, ardently prayed for rather than programmatically pursued. The ruling elite patronized this folk cult of happiness through a discourse of virtue and benevolence, but were themselves inclined to pursue more transcendent goals (Dao, de) and refined pleasures (lequ).

To the May Fourth generation, the traditional social order was founded …

Old Tales, Untold : Lu Xun Against World Literature, Daniel M. Dooghan

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

World literature has smiled on Lu Xun 魯迅. He stands, if not as the foremost, then as a major representative of modern Chinese literature in anthologies. Though anthologies are not the ultimate arbiters of literary worldliness, they are influential discursive sites because of their accessibility and classroom utility. To wit, he is a common figure on university syllabi in world literature surveys. Professionally, scholarship on Lu Xun’s work reaches far beyond disciplinary Chinese studies. His works have been translated and retranslated many times in less than a century. All this is perhaps fitting considering his extraordinary services rendered to world …

Burroughs's Postcolonial Visions In The Yage Letters, Melanie Keomany

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Burroughs's Postcolonial Visions in The Yage Letters" Melanie Keomany discusses the contents of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg's The Yage Letters which could be dismissed as openly bigoted and racist. Keomany posits that the text reveals valuable connections between the colonial expansion of the eighteenth century and 1950s USA and Latin America. By re-shaping Burroughs's lived experiences in the Amazon into a text where the narrator William Lee mimics sardonically and parodically the colonial scientific explorer, The Yage Letters provides valuable insight into the complex postcolonial context of the mid-twentieth century.

The Impact Of Burroughs's Naked Lunch On Chester's The Exquisite Corpse, Jaap Van Der Bent

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Impact of Burroughs's Naked Lunch on Chester's The Exquisite Corpse" Jaap van der Bent posits that although Alfred Chester was critical of most Beat writing, in Tangier in the early 1960s he associated not only with Paul Bowles, but also with William S. Burroughs. Van der Bent argues that The Exquisite Corpse, the experimental novel Chester wrote in Tangier, shows the influence of the city's geography and especially the content and form of Burroughs's Naked Lunch.

Burroughs As A Political Writer?, Alexander Greiffenstern

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Burroughs as a Political Writer?" Alexander Greiffenstern discusses political elements in William S. Burroughs's work. Greiffenstern looks at Burroughs's text "The Coming of the Purple Better One" written for Esquire about the Democratic National Convention in Chicago 1968. By writing a surprisingly personal text, Burroughs might have captured something about the significance of the convention that many later historical accounts miss. In the end, Burroughs leaves the critical reader no other choice than to attempt a historical and political analysis.

Politics Of Feminist Revision In Di Prima's Loba, Polina Mackay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Politics of Feminist Revision in di Prima's Loba" Polina Mackay explores Diane di Prima's two-volume epic Loba (1998) and, through a comparison of di Prima to the work of Adrienne Rich, argues that Loba practices a politics of feminist revision. Further, Mackay examines the ways in which di Prima starts to move away from the recovery project of female voices in patriarchal culture, associated with late twentieth-century Feminism, towards a women's literature which need not be defined entirely through its resistance to patriarchal narratives of gender in men's literature. Here it focuses on di Prima's revisionist …