CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Travel, Culture, and Society: A Book Review Article of New Work by Andraş and Tötösy de Zepetnek, Wang, and Sun

Katerina Soumani — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:53:01 PDT

(Dis)quieting the Canon: A Book Review Article of New Work by Fishelov and Papadema, Damrosch, and D'haen

Marta Pacheco Pinto — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:53:00 PDT

Bellow's Letters and Biographies about Bellow: A Book Review Article of New Work by Atlas and Taylo

Gustavo Sánchez Canales — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:59 PDT

Free Indirect Discourse in Farsi Translations of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway

Zohreh Gharaei et al. — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:58 PDT

In their article "Free Indirect Discourse in Farsi Translations of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway" Zohreh Gharaei and Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi discuss the degree to which free indirect discourse is reproducible in Farsi translations of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Gharaei and Vahid Dastjerdi's analysis reveals that while it is possible to employ free indirect discourse in Farsi, the grammatical features of the technique represent the most problematic areas of translation to Farsi. Although some studies have attributed deviations from the style of the original writer to the structural differences between Farsi and English or domesticating strategies on the part of the translator, Gharaei and Vahid Dastjerdi reject such argumentation and establish the fact that imported narrative features have been in use in Farsi novels and that thus they cannot be considered alien to Farsi.

National Trauma and the 'Uncanny' in Hage's Novel De Niro's Game

Hany Ali Abdelfattah — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:56 PDT

In his article "National Trauma and the 'Uncanny' in Hage's Novel De Niro's Game" Hany Ali Abdelfattah attempts to decipher the "uncanny" in the character of George who has been haunted by the memories of Bassam, a Lebanese survivor of trauma. Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game crystallizes the national trauma of Lebanon and the massacre of Sabra and Shatila as it unfolds in the story of the friendship between George and Bassam. Abdelfattah employs the psychoanalytic method of analysis with a focus on Freudian concepts such as "repression," "belatedness," "effacement," "displacement," and "non-abreaction of experience" in order to trace the uncanny as narrated in the novel. He postulates that the Lebanese nation, just like the Lebanese individual, has been traumatized by the memory of the massacre of Palestinians in the camps of Sabra and Shatila.

The Wounded Healer as Cultural Archetype

Galia Benziman et al. — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:55 PDT

In their article "The Wounded Healer as Cultural Archetype" Galia Benziman, Ruth Kannai, and Ayesha Ahmad discuss the topos of the wounded healer, a concept of an archetypal dynamic coined by Jung to describe a phenomenon which may take place between analyst and analyzed. They examine representations of the archetype in diverse cultures and demonstrate how a reading of its various narratives may enrich our theoretical and practical understanding of the importance of empathy and mutuality in the healing process. The archetype of the wounded healer is valuable in acknowledging cultural diversity, as well as universal parallels between healing practices in African, Christian, Jewish, and Moslem versions of the archetype.

Trauma, Apocalypse, and Ethics in Israeli Theater

Zahava Caspi — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:54 PDT

In her article "Trauma, Apocalypse, and Ethics in Israeli Theater" Zahava Caspi traces the traumatic experience as a point of departure in apocalyptic plays in Israeli literature. Caspi argues that in Israeli apocalyptic plays a critical gap opens up between the fictional narrative that ends with destruction and the theatrical apparatus that creates a sense of continuity. The theatrical text delivers a message to the audience inviting them to increase their engagement with and accountability for continuity not merely during the theatrical event, but more significantly, once the performance is over. The play's moral imperative to provide a "positive" ending to the apocalyptic narrative in the world outside the auditorium thus counters the effect of its ending on the stage. Caspi postulates that it is the active involvement with the play by its audience what makes theater a more ethical medium than any other.

Nation in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers

Brent M. Smith-Casanueva — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:53 PDT

In his article "Nation in Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers" Brent M. Smith-Casanueva explores the commonalities between the antiwar narratives of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) and Clint Eastwood's film Flags of our Fathers (2006). Taking the position that narration of nation must be considered a site of hegemonic struggle, Smith-Casanueva argues that both texts employ a similar deconstructive logic to subvert the nationalist discourses and dominant war narratives of their respective nations and the national myths constructed through these narratives. In particular, both All Quiet on the Western Front and Flags of our Fathers destabilize narration of nation through challenging dominant war narratives' claim to a universality of national interests and the essentializing character of national myth, as well as through disrupting the linear temporality of narration of nation.

Davis's Poetic Dialogue with Leiris's Autobiography

Jonathan Evans — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:52 PDT

In his article "Davis's Poetic Dialogue with Leiris's Autobiography" Jonathan Evans analyzes Lydia Davis's translation of the first two parts of Michel Leiris's autobiography, which shows an encounter between two writers. Davis has also written stories which reference Leiris and thus position him as a precursor. Evans proposes that Leiris is not only a source of influence for Davis, but that their texts can be read as a dialogue. Using a methodology that draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Evans shows how Leiris focuses on sound and graphological patterns in order to understand his own conscious and unconscious relationship with words. Davis, in her stories, forces the reader to question their own relationship to language and the symbolic order. Thus, Davis's translation of Leiris's autobiography becomes a graft on her work as it offers her a chance to explore writing in a way which would be uncharacteristic in her own work.

Aesthetics, Opera, and Alterity in Herzog's Work

Jacob-Ivan Eidt — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:50 PDT

In his article "Aesthetics, Opera, and Alterity in Herzog's Work" Jacob-Ivan Eidt analyses Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo. Eidt's analysis is executed in the context of opera, cinema, and aesthetics. Eidt argues that Herzog uses opera as a romantic motif with which he creates a self-critical process whereby elements of the Romantic vision are called into question thus providing a nuanced reading of the main character and the Indigenous world he encounters. This process, Eidt argues, produces a complex narrative of colonial alterity where colonial self-inscription upon an Other is ultimately doomed to failure.

Queer Love in Woolf's Orlando and Chu's Notes of a Desolate Man

Pei-Wen Clio Kao — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:49 PDT

In her article "Queer Love in Woolf's Orlando and Chu's Notes of a Desolate Man" Pei-Wen Clio Kao analyses Virginia Woolf and T'ien-Wen Chu's novels in the context of gender studies. Kao's reading of Orlando and Notes of a Desolate Man is an elaboration on homosexual sensibilities of both men and women based on the concept of écriture féminine in the context of patriarchy and the former's power of subversion and change. Kao's analysis results in the finding that while Woolf's Orlando is more attuned to the feminist discourse based on an extended Western project in its period and movement to destabilize patriarchal ideology, Chu's Desolate Man can be read as the positive force of self-examination and self-transformation empowered by feminist awareness and by concerns about (homo)sexual equality.

Homosexual Identity, Translation, and Prime-Stevenson's Imre and The Intersexes

Margaret S. Breen — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:47 PDT

In her article "Homosexual Identity, Translation, and Prime-Stevenson's Imre and The Intersexes" Margaret S. Breen examines the role of translation in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies. Breen's focus is Edward Prime-Stevenson, who, under the penname Xavier Mayne, wrote two works: a short novel, Imre: A Memorandum (1906), and a general history of homosexuality, The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem of Social Life (1908). Breen argues that Prime-Stevenson's texts are relevant to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discussions of (homo)sexuality because they point to the importance of translation in writings concerning sexual and gender identities and behavior, specifically in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender literature from the late nineteenth century forward.

Imperialist Nostalgia in Masters's To the Coral Strand

Fikret Mehmet Arargüc — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:46 PDT

In his article "Imperialist Nostalgia in Masters's To the Coral Strand" M. Fikret Arargüç discusses nostalgia as a resource of identity formation. Arargüç argues that imperialist nostalgia is no innocent emotional attachment to the past; rather, it is an adaptation to changed circumstances and its discursive practices (i.e., eulogizing) evade responsibility. In addition to practices to alleviate or absolve repressed guilt about the past, they often relate to discourses of power and regret that the past is no more. This type of nostalgia is another neo-imperialist form of exploitation by (ab)using or generating fluid, dynamic, and ever-evolving identities. Arargüç suggests that in his autobiographical To the Coral Strand Masters attempts to cope with loss of status and identity following the end of British rule of India.

The Role of the Intellectual in Contemporary Turkish Women's Narratives

Adile Aslan — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:44 PDT

In her article "The Role of the Intellectual in Contemporary Turkish Women's Narratives" Adile Aslan analyzes the figure of the woman intellectual in two of the most widely praised novels written in Turkish, Adalet Ağaoğlu's 1971 Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die) and Leyla Erbil's 1985 Karanlığın Günü (The Day of Darkness). Aslan discusses how the two authors represent in their texts intertwined personal histories with political history. The novels present, as well as surmount the obstacles that the current socio-historical conditions impose on people in general and intellectuals in particular and how these circumstances have a bearing on their private and public lives.

US-American New Women in Italy 1853-1870

Sirpa A. Salenius — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:43 PDT

In her article "US-American New Women in Italy 1853-1870" Sirpa A. Salenius discusses the Italian experience of sculptors such as Harriet Hosmer and Edmonia Lewis, who were independent, career-oriented women studying and working in Rome in the mid-nineteenth century. They were among the most representative New Woman figures who started to challenge US-American society's male-dominant norm and gender-imposed limitations, while reinventing an identity for themselves. Other progressive women, who observed them in Italy, were impressed and influenced by the example of their lives and work. For instance, the influence of Frances Willard's visit to Italy became visible after her return to the U.S. where she became a distinguished lecturer, writer, and social reformer who dedicated her life to furthering women's rights within the temperance movement. The Italian experience changed the lives of many women who, in turn, influenced other women in the United States of the period.

The Notion of Life in the Work of Agamben

Carlo Salzani — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:52:40 PDT

In his article "The Notion of Life in the Work of Agamben" Carlo Salzani analyzes the notion of "nudity" Giorgio Agamben's understanding of Western culture. Beginning with a reading of the essay "Nudity," in which Agamben proposes an archaeological investigation of the theological apparatus of the concept, Salzani analyzes the pivotal trope in Agamben's Homo Sacer project, "bare" or "naked life," that is, the nudity of life in the grip of sovereign power. Nudity and the nudity of life are construed as a "limit-concept" in a double movement of simultaneous positing and negation or in a positing that grants at the same time the inappropriability of its object. Salzani highlights how much this "liminality" owes to a tradition that borders the aesthetics and ranges from Kant's "sublime" to Heidegger's Ereignis via Benjamin's "expressionless-ness." In Agamben's thought this risks to resemble a "mystical intuition," as he argues in his first book, The Man Without Content, about Kant's aesthetic judgment.

Comics and the Graphic Novel in Spain and Iberian Galicia

Antonio J. Gil González — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:56:14 PDT

In his article, "Comics and the Graphic Novel in Spain and Iberian Galicia," Antonio J. Gil González develops a comparative and interart analysis of graphic novels by examining the evolution of the genre on the Spanish peninsula in general and in Galicia in particular. Gil González builds his analysis on Roman Ingarden's concept of literature as not only traditional fiction, but also theater and cinema. Gil González presents his argumentation by identifying the peculiarities of the comic as a medium, starting with its historical beginnings, and discussing its principal formats and generic and thematic variants. Further, he discusses the principal semiological and narratological variables in comicographic language using the arguments of Román Gubern. Gil González's discussion is based on the importation of the genre from Anglophone North America and from Europe (i.e., France, Germany, Belgium, etc.).

The Image of Ireland in Iberian Galicia in the Early Twentieth Century

Anne MacCarthy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:56:13 PDT

In her article "The Image of Ireland in Iberian Galicia in the Early Twentieth Century," Anne MacCarthy explores Galician intellectuals' relationship with Ireland in their attempt to create a Celtic imaginary for Galicia which would act as a cultural fortification in the face of centralizing forces of Castilian Spain. In periodicals prominent in the 1920s, Nós and A Nosa Terra, the wish to construct a separate identity for Galicia, apart from Spain, is often expressed and embodied in reference to Ireland. Whereas the interest in Ireland was increased by the struggle for independence in that country at the time, the basis for the similarities found between the two cultures was mythical and imaginary.

Catalan and Galician Literatures in Iberian and European Contexts

Olivia Rodríguez González — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:56:12 PDT

In her article "Catalan and Galician Literatures in Iberian and European Contexts" Olivia Rodríguez González investigates the problematics of canon formation and proposes an approach within which the formation of a multi-system canon is possible. Reflections on the constitution of a European canon that would be the result of a proportional or market-driven combination of national literary canons leads to the conclusion that, with respect to the multicultural Spanish state, what will succeed in getting into the European canon will do so as a consequence of one of two processes. The first depends on what each literary system does to project itself to the outside world. The second refers to any planning that may be implemented by the Spanish (i.e., Iberian) interliterary system as an indirect route for projecting each of the peninsular literatures: Castilian, Basque, Catalan, Galician, and even Portuguese literature.

Possibilities and Limits of Comparative Literature Today

Darío Villanueva — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:56:01 PDT

In his article "Possibilities and Limits of Comparative Literature Today," Darío Villanueva traces the itinerary of comparative literature over the last fifty years comparative literature in its various stages. The first of these confronted two options seen in a way as irreconcilable: the almost exclusive connexion with literary history or its identification with the theory of literature. Villanueva outlines the consolidation of the "new paradigm" which overcomes those contradictions, thanks to the methodological cooperation between comparative literature and the systemic theories of literature, and thanks, as well, to a return to philology as an adequate practice of reading. In addition, Villanueva's discussion represents an answer to the prevalence of cultural studies, a field of scholarship that had registered success world wide but less so in comparative literature save a few instances.