Comparatisms Compared: Stirring the Appetite
The review of: Comparative Literature in Europe: Challenges and Perspectives. Edited by Nikol Dziub and Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
More...We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The review of: Comparative Literature in Europe: Challenges and Perspectives. Edited by Nikol Dziub and Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
More...
The present article analyses the phenomenon of multilingualism in the novels of Gohar Markosjan-Käsper (1949–2015) and discusses her life and work in the socio-political context of the former Soviet Union (in relation to language and cultural politics). Markosjan-Käsper was an Armenian-born writer who spent most of her life in Estonia and wrote her books in Russian. Accordingly, her works originated in a contact zone of different languages and cultures. This article highlights her novels Helena and Penelopa as examples of transcultural writing and analyses the manifestations and functions of multilingualism in these works. The study shows that a number of topics and motifs that are present in German-language transcultural literature also appear in Markosjan-Käsper’s novels (for example cultural comparison, self-discovery in a foreign culture). The multilingualism can be seen in these novels both explicitly and implicitly: in addition to Russian, other languages such as Armenian, Estonian, English, and Latin are used, with numerous indirect references to these languages. Furthermore, various references to world-famous novels such as Ulysses by James Joyce and Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov are analysed.
More...
Yoko Tawada (1960) is for good reason one of the prime examples for contemporary German exophonic literature. She is a very successful writer in Japanese and in German and provides in her Germanophone writings an ethnography of the German worldview, as Wilhelm von Humboldt famously called languages, or of the German language-mindset. This article focuses on her 2010 poetry volume Abenteuer der deutschen Grammatik (‘Adventures of German Grammar’) to demonstrate how exophonia can allow us to develop an acute awareness of the ways in which language structures shape our patterns of thinking. Coming from a very differently organised language, Japanese, Tawada comments in playful ways on the implications of German, and compares it translinguistically with Japanese. Looking at German from an outside position enables her to be very creative and to make Germans discover their language with new eyes. Translingual writing, even though also present in a real mixing of languages in Tawada, appears here as a way to understand how much our ideas are shaped by our linguistic structures, and that there are alternative worldviews. It thus contributes greatly to a relativisation of one’s own perspective and helps to open up to difference and creativity.
More...
Writings strongly marked by the labour of memory (the appeal to memory being a genetic, internal principle of theirs), The Confessions of St. Augustine and the fictional autobiography Orbitor bring face to face two models of subjectivity at odds, the model of the birth of modern subjectivity and its postmodern decline. The mirroring of these models aims at mapping the interiority at the extremities of its history, in the point of origin and in the end, the Augustinian memory containing in germs the drama of modern subjectivity, while the Cărtărescian memory takes to the extreme this drama projecting itself in the field of postmodern relativism. Described under the sign of a radical cleavage (shattering, traumatic), the one between the abyss of human consciousness and the gaze of God (in Augustine), respectively the cleaved structure of the self projected as a double (in Mircea Cărtărescu), the interiors accessed by descending into the nebula of memory lead to opposite revelations, such as the Augustinian remembrance of God and the chimerical proliferation of the simulacrum. Metaphor central to both authors, the vast inner palaces of memory become the meeting place of the sacred in the conversion scenario, just as, at the other historical end of subjectivity, this place can only be the expression of nostalgia and emptiness. Conceived as an initiatory, ritualized path, the path to God or to the Self passes, for both authors, through the territory of memory, and its mapping is representative for the construction of specific models of interiority and identity. The double image of memory, at the end of antiquity and in postmodernism (therefore, at the end of modernity or neomodernity), is relevant for the path of Western subjectivity, of thinking about the subject’s relationship with the Self, activated through the process of recollection.
More...
This article studies how the profound changes in theorizing human sexualities in the fin-de-siècle and early 20th century were used and re-used in the oeuvre of Estonian cultural moderniser Johannes Semper (18 92–1970). In his texts, two modern discourses of sexuality appear in highly telling ways: sexology and psychoanalysis, with which Semper mainly familiarises himself respectively through the works of Otto Weininger and Sigmund Freud. Taking a feminist standpoint to analyse the thoroughly male-centred sexuality discourses of the abovementioned thinkers, this article sets out to study how sexuality and gender are articulated in Semper’s oeuvre, both within a heteronormative and queer framework. Two literary texts are closely examined. The first, the short story collection Ellinor (1927), depicts the world entirely through the eyes of an emancipated woman who encounters a lesbian character – the first in Estonian literature. This encounter begins the discussion of various desires as the protagonist tries to explain her ‘femininity’ in contrast to the queer character Madame Liibeon’s ‘inversion’. The second, Semper’s novel Jealousy (1934), is used for comparison, as sexual Bildung and desires are mediated through the eyes of a male heterosexual protagonist.
More...
REVIEW OF: Olʹha Luchuk. Panteleіmon Kulish i Mykola Lukash: Perekhresni stezhky perekladachiv; Shekspirova drama “Troil i Kressyda” v konteksti ukrainsʹkoi kulʹtury [Panteleimon Kulish and Mykola Lukash: Translators Crossing Paths; Shakespeare’s Drama “Troilus and Cressida” in the Context of Ukrainian Culture]. Vydavnytstvo “Akta,” 2018. 556 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Appendices. Bibliography. Index.
More...
The author presents concrete examples of poetic images, motives, ideas of the two Slovak writers: Paľo Bohuš (1921-1997), a Slovak writer who belongs to the Slovak minority living in Voyvodina-Serbia and Ján Smrek (1920-1982), a Slovac poet living in Slovakia. There are some persuasive elements in their imagery of life and literary works (poetry), the most interesting values of the Slovak spirituality, literature and poetic sensitiveness.
More...
Autorul analizează prezenţa spaţiului central-european în literature polonă, oprindu-se cu precădere la doi autori: A. Stasiuk şi J. Stempowski, cu raportare nemijlocită la textele lui E. Cioran. Studiul are caracter comparat. În timp ce la Stempowski predomină istoria şi reflecţia istorică, la Stasiuk lipseşte dimensiunea istorică, viziunea sa având mai degrabă un caracter grotesc. Ca şi Cioran, cei doi scriitori polonezi surprind câteva trăsături ale identităţii centraleuropene: efemeritatea şi instablitatea, o anumită atitudine ironică faţă de viaţă şi o distanţă specifică faţă de timp. În cazul României, „imaginaţia înlocuieşte memoria”, formele nu prind contur, rămânând de multe ori în fază de proiect.
More...
The article considers the composition of cross-cultural processes, associated with the establishment of “French” novels of V. Vynnychenko on the background of the novel of the Enlightenment (Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau). The purpose of the article is to determine the leading aesthetic components and means of forming philosophical paradigms. The novelty and relevance of the study lies in the fact, that the focus is on the genesis and features of the philosophical and architecture of the “French” novels by Volodymyr Vynnychenko “Leprosy” and “Eternal Imperative” for the first time. Materials and methods. The article uses unique sources, in particular, V. Vynnychenko's diaries and texts of mentioned novels. The basic method, used in the article, is a comparative method, and it is also subject to the principles of anachronistic functional analysis, comparison of creative methods of the novel prose, written by the Ukrainian modernist Vynnychenko and French Enlightenment artists. Conclusions. The concept of philosophical nature of these modernist works is presented, which Vynnychenko clearly marks with a genre experiment, rooted in the philosophical prose of the Enlightenment (Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau). We are talking about the peculiarities of the philosophical manifestation in various forms: a philosophical tale, philosophical dialogue, philosophical novel, as well as the specifics of the realization of philosophical essence in the novel-dialogue, novel-controversy, novelapology. Particular attention is paid to such a genre experiment of Voltaire and Vynnychenko as a philosophical tale with such poetic features as allegory, parable, conventionality, exoticism. The critical optics of the research combines the historical and philosophical specifics of the Enlightenment, on which V. Vynnychenko's novels, the national identity of the writer and his biographical individuality are based.
More...
The main subject of the paper is Polish non-fictional literature after 1989, and especially-the voyage literature, descriptions of journeys. The author proposes to distinguish tree basic models of the voyage writings in the Polish XX century literature. First, artistic voyage to the sources of European culture (Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Józef Wittlin, Jan Parandowski, Zbigniew Herbert, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński). Second, reportage (Ksawery Pruszyński, Melchior Wańkowicz, Ryszard Kapuściński). Third, personal reflections and observations (Wacław Sieroszewski, Ferdynand Goetel Aleksander Janta-Połczyński, Jerzy Stempowski). All these models are syncretic and heterogenous, as they combine elements of autobiographies, essays, fiction. Does the Polish voyage literature and, in general, non-fictional literature written after 1989 continue above-mentioned models? Or breaks with them? What are the new elements introduced to the traditional generic patterns by the new generation of Polish writers? The essay is an attempt to answer these intriguing questions.
More...
The essay Malinowski’s „A Diary in the strict sense of the term” and Eliade’s “The Indian Journal”: a comparative study deals with a comparison of two journals, written by the famous Polish-British ethnographer and the Romanian philosopher of religion. The study covers mainly two domains: construction of both texts, and cultural identity of their authors. Malinowski’s and Eliade’s journals are heterogenous texts, they are scientific notes and spiritual confessions at the same time and use many literary devices and novelistic conventions. Both authors are cultural hybrids, they are not able to identify completely neither with the dominating, white and European community, nor with the groups dominated politically and culturally, respectively the Triobraind Islanders and the Hindu people. According to the author, this fact is due to their Central-European origin, because both Polish and Romanian nations are situated in-between the West and the East and experienced a long political and cultural domination.
More...
Настоящая статья представляет обзор русского и европейского символизма. Сравнение европейской и русской естетических моделей символизма полезно, потому что познаётся на конкретном материале суть разнообразных социокультурных кодов, порождающих различные способы отражения действительности. Методология рассмотрения многоаспектных и системных литературных явлений предполагает поиск доминантных схем, сближающих не только сходные, но и разнообразные явления. Идея, к которой приходит в заключении автор имеет в виду то обстоятельство, что существуют определённые принципы, объединяющие этих писателей, и что европейские символисты стали предтечами модернистских и постмодернистских экспериментов, обратившись к проблемам мифа и символа в искусстве, суггестии, игры звука и смысла и т.д.
More...
The article describes the question of the canon of the Polish literature in Russia on the basis of 20th century literature, widely represented in the world of „Cyrillic letters“. The author points out the main features of the literature and trying, at the same time, to answer a series of questions including the following ones: Is there a canon of the Polish literature in Russian culture? How can we define the canon in this given context? Who is an author of the canon? Is it a translator, a researcher, a publisher, a reader, or, maybe, a governmental or educational institution? Are there any good reasons to talk about the presence of several canons of Polish literature? How does a foreign canon look like in a light of the original one. How much does the canon depend on different beyond literary phenomena? And, finally, is an anthology of a foreign poetry, namely: Польские поэты XX века, an attempt to create its own canon?
More...
The proposed article is a consecutive attempt to subsume in the discussion for the dialog between balkan literatures. In regime of a dialog are posed two emblematic Balkan writers - Matwej Wulew and Panait Istrati. The article searches analogies between their artistic optics, biographic formants, similarity in their poetics. It searches the common between the toposes that reveal multicultural cities of Bourgas and Braila. The problems and the character systems of two authors describe the strains of local-regional-cosmopolitan. The local colour is distinguished like something exotic, and the crossroading inculturality - like meaning signs and codes. That's exactly the thing which make relative the borders between “yours and somebody else's”, “provincial-cosmopolitan” and indicates a tenacious tendency toward a balkanization and imitation of foreign artistic models. The selected works like “Uncle Angel”, “Kira Kiralina”, “Kodin” (Panait Istrati) and “At anchor”, “A guest from the sea”, “People by the coast”, “Iveresse de l'air”, “Citizens of the world” (Matwej Wulew) illustrate the mixing of folklore, modern mythologies, the popular city culture, the popular love song and so on. Modern writers, P. Istrati and M. Wulew design myths and archetypes, implanted in contemporary subjects and include themselves in a tendency of many european literatures in 20's and 30's of XX-th century. P. Istrati and M. Wulew are strongly impressed by the Levantinian East and the levantinian woman. In the artistic transforming of the character are imposed rooted notions and tough stereotypes but this character materializes the vitalism, hedonism, the love, the freedom. Cosmopolitans on adjustment and sensibility, P. Istrati and M. Wulew show the changed statute of the Balkan man and writer, loyal not to paternalistic homesickness but to the idea for a man like a free citizen of the world.
More...
Stendhal, Balzac şi Dickens, în prefeţele scrise după moda vremii de ei înşişi la operele proprii, au pledat pentru apropierea literaturii de actualitate. Aceeaşi pledoarie a desfăşurat în manifestele şcolii naturale criticul Vissarion Bielinski care vedea „meritul esenţial al artistului” în zugrăvirea vieţii sociale contemporane „în toată nuditatea ei” şi releva mutaţiile survenite în ierarhia speciilor literare.
More...
Sada manje mjesto, blizu Rijeke, na sjeveru Republike Hrvatske, na Jadranskom moru, smjestio se grad Senj. Nekada, velika luka, uskočka utvrda, sjedifte biskupa senjsko-modruških, sa samostanima kao rasadiftima kulture i pismenosti.
More...
Literatura porównawcza zarysowała się w Rumunii jako samodzielna dyscyplina w drugiej połowie XIX-go wieku, rozwinęła się zaś wraz z założeniem zakładu literatury porównawczej i powszechnej na Uniwersytecie w Bukareszcie oraz rozpocyęciem wydawania czasopisma Studii de literatură universală.
More...
La spécialisation joue, dans le folklore, un rôle de la plus grande importance et s'inscrit dans le rapport stéréotypie/originalité, qui reflète la marque d'une création populaire, son appartenance au fonds culturel oral. Tous les spécialistes ne s'accordent pas à reconnaître une spécialisation très stricte au sein des différentes catégories folkloriques.
More...
В XIX веке большое влияние на румынскую литературу оказала французская проза, а в XX веке румынские писатели проявили глубокий интерес к русской прозе, и в особенности к русским романам XIX века, первое появление которых в Европе, английский литературовед Джилберт Фелпс сравнивал с эффектом бомбы замедленного действаия.
More...
This article analyzes three children’s books which talk about the Holocaust (Joanna Rudniańska’s Kotka Brygidy [Brygida’s kitten], Grażyna Bąkiewicz’s Ta potworna wojna [That horrible war] with Artur Nowicki’s illustrations, and Agata Tuszyńska and Iwona Chmielewska’s Mama zawsze wraca [Mom always comes back]) as well as academic and journalistic works regarding this phenomenon. Holocaust children’s literature is often described as an educational medium that shapes young readers. Thus, it presents various values and constitutes a sphere of ideological tensions. Within this framework one can identify the abuses present in the works and discussed in the studies such as the characters’ moral ambiguity, use of comedy and the comic book form, or aestheticization and commercialization of books about the Holocaust. The article is to interpret the artistic phenomena and their reception by adult readers, who often adopt clearly subjective stances, expressing political and moral judgments on works for children and the images of the Holocaust presented there as well as the very act of writing for children about the Shoah.
More...