CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Memory, Identity, and Narration: A Book Review of New Work by Assmann and Conrad and Tilmans, Vree, and Winter

Simona Mitroiu — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:39 PST

New Forms of Contemporary Aesthetics: A Review Article of New Works by Camerotti and Quaranta

Marina Mantini — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:35 PST

Intercultural Approaches to Cities and Spaces in Literature, Film, and New Media: A Review of New Work by Manzanas and Benito and López-Varela and Neţ

Ana María Martín Castillejos — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:32 PST

Barthelme's "Paraguay," the Postmodern, and Neocolonialism

Daniel Chaskes — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:30 PST

In his article "Barthelme's 'Paraguay,' the Postmodern, and Neocolonialism," Daniel Chaskes explores the analytic opportunities afforded by conjoining globalizing critical approaches with a story by an author who has often been circumscribed by the postmodern rubric. Donald Barthelme's "Paraguay," written the summer after Nelson Rockefeller's fact-finding mission to South America in 1969, provides a chance to consider modes of anti-colonial critique in Barthelme's work. It also offers examples of a more self-reflective criticism aimed at the U.S. counterculture and the indeterminacies of postmodernism. Chaskes reads "Paraguay" with the aim of understanding Barthelme's hemispheric interest and he investigates the multiple cultural touchstones Barthelme draws on in a text that suggests troubling parallels between the New Left, the avant-garde, and the neocolonial political project. "Paraguay" offers a uniquely postmodern take on social commentary in which the text's form enacts the very tendencies being scrutinized: habits of seeing non-U.S. peoples as subjectless and placeless.

Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated

Doro Wiese — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:28 PST

In her article "Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated" Doro Wiese discusses Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. In the text a photograph plays a decisive role: the image of two young people drives the Jewish American Jonathan to visit the Ukraine. The photograph is presumably of Jonathan's grandfather Safran and a woman named Augustine who saved Safran's life during a nazi raid of his village: the photograph becomes an ekphrasis, a description of a visual work of art in another medium which transforms the generic characteristics of written and photographic representations. According to Anselm Haverkamp, photographs are visual citations from history and about history: they show not only people and/or objects at a specific moment in time, but also point towards the irretrievability of that moment. Yet, when photography is transposed into another medium that performs the effects of a confrontation with the given-to-deathness of the people displayed, photography-in-ekphrasis might perform not only mourning over the irretrievability of the life that is lost, but the ethical necessity to resist the devaluation of life in the present.

Victims of the City in Novels of Zola and Dostoevsky

Marta L. Wilkinson — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:25 PST

In her article "Victims of the City in Novels of Zola and Dostoevsky" Marta Wilkinson argues that urbanity in its nineteenth-century setting functioned as the culpable agent in criminal behavior found in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and in several of Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels. Wilkinson an analysis of the novels based on Merlin Coverly's concept of psychogeography which supports the extension of the cityscape as an integral part of the novels' characters. Further, Wilkinson illustrates how in Zola's and Dostoevsky's novels the city reigns triumphant as characters fall victim to disease, drink, or are left with desperate choices: in Dostoevsky's novel suicide or banishment to Siberia and in Zola's novels the acceptance of inhuman life in the complicit city.

Contemporary US-American Satire and Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk)

J.C. Lee — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:21 PST

In her article "Contemporary US-American Satire and Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk)" J.C. Lee focuses on contemporary satire's potential (or lack thereof) for change, reform, or rebellion through an investigation of works by Harry Crews, Douglas Coupland, and Chuck Palahniuk, all of which target consumerism. The said writers employ satire not to initiate rebellion or cultural change, but to reflect the problematic role of institutions in modern life and, in turn, the potential, even hope, for personal growth. Lee's analysis of texts by Crews, Coupland, and Palahniuk is intended to question satire's potential as a form of cultural critique and institutional reform.

Evans's The Turducken and Chekhov's The Seagull

Brian R. Johnson — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:18 PST

In his article "Evans's The Turducken and Chekhov's The Seagull" Brian R. Johnson approaches The Turducken as a travesty of The Seagull, examining six iconic scenes from The Seagull, in order to explore the satirical effect of the altered scenes. In December of 2008, Bedlam Theatre of Minneapolis presented The Turducken, "a holiday dinner theater spectacular inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Seagull." Playwright Josef Evans takes Chekhov's 1895 work and turns the classic piece into a musical and farcical satire. The plot of The Turducken follows the plot of The Seagull, and some scenes in The Turducken are recognizable as scenes from Chekhov's play, albeit in a significantly altered form. The framing of The Seagull within The Turducken serves as meta-commentary on the misreception and misinterpretation of Chekhov in the United States and establishes a predominant line of satire within the piece. However, the greater part of the satire and humor in The Turducken stems from the liberal rewriting and reinterpretation of The Seagull.

Nostalgia in Oral Histories of Israeli Women

Yael Zilberman — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:14 PST

In her article "Nostalgia in Oral Histories of Israeli Women" Yael Zilberman explores the narration of nostalgia of elderly women about the city of Be'er Sheva. In their narration, the subjects of the study create textual and spatial practices which are engendered and create analogies between the city, their maturing/ed bodies, and by-gone youth. Further, the grief owing to the perceived condition of the city intensifies the idealized description of the city and the longing for its past. Zilberman's study brakes new ground in that the study of urban experience within folklore is a lesser explored field as the urban environment is considered by many folklore scholars as a deterioration folklore in the country side. Since the 1980s, however, urban folklore has been gaining scholarly attention and women and more so elderly women represent one such group.

Egypt's Police State in the Work of Idris and Mahfouz

David F. DiMeo — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:07 PST

In his article "Egypt's Police State in the Work of Idris and Mahfouz" David F. DiMeo examines how two leading twentieth-century authors of politically committed fiction addressed an angry generation's confrontations with former members of the oppressive state police apparatus. Yusuf Idris's The Black Policeman (1962) and Najib Mahfouz's al-Karnak (1974) remain particularly relevant as today's Egyptian activists confront the vestiges of the former regime's security forces. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnival as a paradigm for analysis, DiMeo examines how both texts present sharp contrasts between hollow quests for public revenge through purges and a genuine overturning of political and social situations.

Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding

Ipshita Chanda — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:41:04 PST

In her article "Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding" Ipshita Chanda takes up specific cases of metaphor translation as a methodological exercise towards understanding intercultural exchange. Chanda's study is based on a semiotic and linguistic understanding of metaphor as a signifying and cognitive device. When a metaphor is translated from one linguistic-literary field into another, the process of translation itself yields some specific operational steps for studying inter- and cross-cultural relations. Here, translation is not proposed as a framework but as practical method: the translation of metaphor becomes an exercise in strategy for the pedagogy of the comparative approach. Grounding the literary fields of source and target languages in the comparative study of cultures in which metaphors originate and are made to mean, Chanda argues that the methods used for the study of relations between literary fields may be extended to the study of cultural contact and exchange.

Aesthetics in Gao's Soul Mountain

Mabel Lee — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:40:50 PST

In her article "Aesthetics in Gao's Soul Mountain" Mabel Lee analyses Nobel Laureate 2000 Xingjian Gao's aesthetics. Transnational conglomerates today control the book industry from publishing house to bookshop and through aggressive market strategies they exert considerable influence on readers. Nonetheless, there are writers who refuse to capitulate to market demands and seek only to actualize their aesthetic ideas in the creation of literary texts. One such writer is Gao, author of the novel Soul Mountain. Lee posits that Gao's aesthetics is founded on the close interrogation of both Chinese and European models and practices and explores specific aspects of Gao's aesthetics and how these are embedded in his novel Soul Mountain. In an Appendix the article includes lists of Gao's works in Chinese and English, as well as a list of studies on his oeuvre.

Bibliography of Work on Landscape and Its Narration

Sofie Verraest et al. — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:49 PST

The Erotic Conception of Ancient Greek Landscapes and the Heterotopia of the Symposium

Jo Heirman — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:48 PST

In his article "The Erotic Conception of Ancient Greek Landscapes and the Heterotopia of the Symposium" Jo Heirman discusses the conception of natural landscapes in ancient Greek lyric poetry from the seventh until the fifth century BC and its ideological background. Heirman analyzes lyric poems by Sappho, Ibycus, and Theognis in which landscapes of fields, gardens, and meadows are presented. Heirman's analysis reveals a recurrent erotic pattern in the conception of ancient Greek landscapes constructed as places which suggest various forms of eroticism ranging from lesbian desire to homosexuality. Further, Heirman discusses the preoccupation with eroticism by suggesting a connection with the "symposium," i.e., the performance of lyric poetry. Building on Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia, the erotic conception of the natural landscapes in lyric poems performed in the symposium is explained as the projection of eroticism that went beyond the urban norms of spaces outside of the city.

Narratives of Loss and Order and Imaging the Belgian Landscape 1900-1945

Bruno Notteboom et al. — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:47 PST

In their article "Narratives of Loss and Order and Imaging the Belgian Landscape 1900-1945" Bruno Notteboom and David Peleman analyze a number of publications on landscape, focusing on narratives constructed by means of landscape images published in Belgium. With the work of Jean Massart and Emile Vanderwelde as a point of departure, Notteboom and Peleman discuss popularizing publications in the fields of botany, agricultural education, and tourism, as well as an urban planning. They address the three realms of landscape narratives defined by Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton as story, context/intertext, and discourse. Notteboom and Peleman distinguish three recurrent operations or narrative techniques: framing, sequencing, and juxtaposing whereby their main argument is that in spite of their ideological differences the publications they discuss seek a way of dealing with processes of modernization and with the loss of a traditional way of living defined by a direct relation with the land.

Jenck's "Enigmatic Signifier" and Cathartic Narrative

Emmanuel Rubio — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:46 PST

In his article "Jenck's 'Enigmatic Signifier' and Cathartic Narrative" Emmanuel Rubio takes Charles Jencks's definition of the "enigmatic signifier" as a point of departure. For Jencks, the post-modern "iconic building" should present a "redundancy of popular signs and metaphors" that allows for multiple interpretations. But these numerous metaphorical references could also be inserted in a less simultaneous network to construct a narrative sequence. As one of these sequences, the "cathartic narrative," which is particularly adapted to the troubled era of post-modernity, is defined as a narrative that brings back, in a symbolic way, memories and experiences of past suffering, before it gets through the ordeals of the community and gives actual relief. The Selfridges department store in Birmingham analyzed by Jencks offers a good example of this process. By reading the story of Birmingham's difficult modernization through its architecture, the "cathartic narrative" is able to propose another pattern for modern and postmodern monumentality.

Urban Landscape and the Postsocialist City

Krzysztof Nawratek — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:45 PST

In his article "Urban Landscape and the Postsocialist City" Krzysztof Nawratek discusses contemporary capitalism as shaping the urban environment of Riga, a multiethnic and bilingual postsocialist, post-Soviet, and postindustrial city. When communism collapsed at the end of the twentieth century the majority of European socialist cities in central and East Europe adopted two ideas: 1) the idea of neoliberal deregulated management based on private, multi-agent ownership of land (and on land speculation) and the weakened role of the city council and 2) the "cultural turn" rejecting the industrial heritage of the socialist city and the ideology of the proletariat and instead focusing on a postindustrial service-based economy of tourism and cultural production aiming to (re)create society with a strong middle class. These two notions are significant changes of paradigm — from material production to immaterial production — and Nawratek argues that both of these notions caused crises in postsocialist countries such as Latvia.

Landscape, Culture, and Education in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

Geert Vandermeersche et al. — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:44 PST

In their article "Landscape, Culture, and Education in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe" Geert Vandermeersche and Ronald Soetaert discuss Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as a narrative that translates nature and our dealings with it into a literary text. Vandeermeersche and Soetaert postulate that the novel can be read as a quintessential fable of humans' cultivation of nature and the creation of individuality, which, at the same time, provides its readers with strategies for describing processes such as education. Robinson Crusoe and its characters, metaphors, and scenarios function in the "auto-communication" of culture as an enduring equipment for living (Burke), a company readers keep (Booth), and a cognitive tool in modern Western culture.

English Architectural Landscapes and Metonymy in Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child

Bart Eeckhout — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:43 PST

In his article "English Architectural Landscapes and Metonymy in Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child" Bart Eeckhout analyzes Alan Hollinghurst's novel in light of Hollinghurst's interest in architectural representation. Eeckhout analyzes the novel's principal scenario of architectural change in the course of the twentieth century and postulates that Hollinghurst employs unconventional genre codes and queers the social realist novel, the family saga, and the country house novel. Eeckhout analyzes The Stranger's Child as a comedy of metonymies which impresses upon its readers the structural necessity of diverse perspectives, labyrinthine metonymical constructions, and the dynamics of place. Further, Eeckhout argues that Hollinghurst dramatizes for his readers how desire impels narratives, landscapes, and human interactions alike in ways which afford only passing moments of aesthetic enchantment and provisional insights along the way.

Towards an Urban Narrative Layers Approach to Decipher the Language of City Films

François Penz — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 07:22:42 PST

In his article "Towards an Urban Narrative Layers Approach to Decipher the Language of City Films" François Penz investigates how film narratives may provide us with the perceptual tools to grasp complex urban phenomena. He posits that, in order to elicit the mechanisms that make up the projected image of city films, new analytical tools need to be devised. Penz demonstrates that the cinematic image is composed of a succession of narrative layers and suggests that the eye of the unsuspecting film spectator encounters a succession of narrative layers recomposed seamlessly into a single movie image on the screen. Penz identifies four narrative layers: the story and history of the buildings, the narratives and points of view of the city planning process, the tales and personal stories embodied by the passers-by, and the narrative intentions of the film itself. Penz uses his own movie-making experiments to test the narrative layers hypothesis concentrating on observational cinema.