Copyright (c) 2009 Purdue University All rights reserved. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Recent documents in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture en-us Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:42:39 PST 3600 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/comparativeliterature1998 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/comparativeliterature1998 Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:44:05 PST Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents in his Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. ISBN 90-420-0534-3 299 pages, bibliography, index) a framework of comparative literature based on a contextual (systemic and empirical) approach for the study of culture and literature. The framework is applied in audience studies, film and literature, literature and science, women's literature, translation studies, new media and scholarship in the humanities, and in the analyses of English, French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian, and English-Canadian modern, contemporary, and ethnic minority texts. The book's copyright has been released to Tötösy de Zepetnek by Rodopi in 2006. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibraryliteraryterms/dictionary http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibraryliteraryterms/dictionary Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:49:54 PDT Steven Totosy de Zepetnek http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/9 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/9 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:06:19 PDT Patrícia I. Vieira comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/8 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/8 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:06:17 PDT In her article "From Diaspora to Nomadic Identity in the Work of Lispector and Felinto" Paula Jordão analyzes Clarice Lispector's A Hora da Estrela (1977; The Hour of the Star, Trans. Giovanni Pontiero, 1992) and Marilene Felinto's As Mulheres de Tijucopapo (1982; The Women of Tijucopapo, trans. Irene Matthews, 1994). Despite being stylistically different, Lispector's A Hora da Estrela and Felinto's As Mulheres de Tijucopapo depict protagonists who share the same social and ethnic background and diasporic identity as women from the Northeast of Brazil. A closer look at the narrative trajectory of these two main characters shows us that they complement each other in the questioning and reformulation of their female identity. Although in a completely different way, they both defy a stereotyped female identity built upon patriarchal standards and put forth a nomadic identity in which memory, trauma, and gender play a central role. As "conscious pariahs," they are maybe the promise of the "New Brazilian Woman." Paula Jordão comparative literature http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/7 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/7 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:06:14 PDT In her paper, "Variations on the Brazilian Orpheus Theme," Marília Scaff Rocha Ribeiro discusses Vinícius de Moraes's play Orfeu da Conceição (1956) together with two of its filmic adaptations, namely Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus (1959) and Carlos Diegues's Orfeu (1999). Ribeiro's analysis is located in the context of the race debates of the second half of the twentieth century in Brazil. Ribeiro argues that the periodic resurfacing of a musician from the favelas as a special being who is able to chant and enchant speaks to the appeal both of popular music and of the thematic of race, issues that continue to be central to Brazilian culture today. The gap between the inception and the reception of these works illustrate the paradoxes and complexities of attempting to conciliate the classical myth of Orpheus and a more socially grounded representation of life in Brazilian favelas. Instead of going down to a mythical hell, the task of this Brazilian Orpheus would be to go up the hills, where the hell of contemporary life is -- transfigured from his Greek unified origins into a mestizo fragmentation -- a re-presentation of the spirit of tragedy in a contemporary context. Marília Scaff Rocha Ribeiro comparative cultural studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/6 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/6 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:06:10 PDT In his article "Rhetoric and Context in Saramago's Levantado do Chão" David Frier analyses the 1980 novel by Nobel in Literature 1998 José Saramago. The novel, as-of-yet not translated to English, Risen from the Ground, achieves its success as a key text of the Portuguese post-Revolutionary period in part through its resourceful rhetorical development of textual conventions and echoes derived from a wide range of high- and popular cultural contexts, ranging from the epic poetry of Camões's Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads) of 1578, through glamorized medieval battle-scenes to popular stories and beliefs and to the Fado music of Amália Rodrigues. In each case, the material cited or alluded to is adapted and revisited from new angles, satirized, or re-appropriated from the traditionally hegemonic culture of the privileged (with what are presented here as their false claims to be representing the real interests of the Portuguese nation), to suit instead the interests and perspectives of the peasant workers of the Alentejo region who form the principal focus of the core narrative of the novel. By exploiting these wide-ranging cultural resources, Saramago's novel widens its frame of reference to effectively claim the April Revolution as a natural continuation of centuries-old Portuguese cultural traditions, while also enriching the substance of the text with a variety of voices, as opposed to the traditionally monologic practice of those Marxist-inspired texts of the classical neo-realist period under the dictatorship. David Frier comparative literature http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/5 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/5 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:06:07 PDT In his article "Guimarães Rosa's 'São Marcos' and Race and Class" Paulo da-Luz-Moreira analyzes a pivotal short story in João Guimarães Rosa's oeuvre. Published in Sagarana, Guimarães Rosa's first short fiction collection, "São Marcos" has an extremely complex structure in its juxtaposition of layers of idiosyncratic and careful ethnographic and literary erudition, making the story a challenge to critics and readers alike. Guimarães Rosa worked exhaustively on this unique piece that touches with disconcerting openness on issues of strained racial and class relations in Brazil and expounds on the power of language and on the delicate point upon which one's identity, beliefs, and social class hinge. da-Luz-Moreira argues that "São Marcos" is a seminal text that suggests a potential social contract based on respect and humility in Guimarães Rosa's description of Brazilian society and where the characters represent protagonists in most of his fiction -- jagunços, cowhands, posseiros, agregados, ex-slaves, gypsies, beggars, vagrants, children, prostitutes, and other marginal figures -- whom Guimarães Rosa never demonized or idealized, but observed and described lovingly. Paulo da-Luz-Moreira comparative literature http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/4 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/4 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:06:04 PDT In his article "The Geopolitics of Amazônia in Souza's Fiction" Thomas O. Beebee examines the ways in which the historical fiction of Brazilian author Márcio Souza (1946-) confronts prevailing notions of Brazilianness conceived as the unity of citizens within a fixed territorial space. Souza undermines this notion by frequently using non-Brazilians as protagonists of his novels that have as their theme the struggle over control of territory "within" Brazil. Beebee reviews the role played by the concept of national territorial control in theories of nationalism and the modern state, including in the Brazilian school of geopolitics developed by Eduardo Backheuser and Golbery do Couto e Silva. National territorial control has been an issue in Brazilian history owing to the country's expansionist tendencies. Beebee examines a range of Souza's fiction -- from the early Galvez, Imperador do Acre (1976) through the popular Mad Maria (1986) to the Grão-Pará tetralogy (1997-2008) -- that challenges the foundations of Brazilian geopolitics by detailing how the country's Amazon region has been both a colony of the southern and northeastern regions of the country and a free zone for international capitalism and capitalists. Thomas O. Beebee comparative literature http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/3 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/3 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:06:01 PDT In her article "Truth as Ideology in A Revolução de Maio" Patrícia I. Vieira analyses the different understandings of propaganda at work in the Portuguese New State. According to the leader of the regime, António de Oliveira Salazar, truth is self-evident and the role of propaganda is merely to convey truthful information to the citizens. Conversely, António Ferro, the first president of the government's National Secretary of Propaganda, suggested that truth is pliable and sees it as the task of propagandistic artworks to shape reality and to define the public's understanding of what is true and false. These contrasting views on the function of propaganda clash in the film A Revolução de Maio (1937) (The May Revolution), directed by António Lopes Ribeiro and produced by the National Secretary of Propaganda to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the revolution that led to the creation of the New State (Estado Novo). The friction produced by the juxtaposition of these divergent approaches to art and propaganda in the film allows us to identify some of the fissures in the ideological edifice of the regime. Patrícia I. Vieira film studies http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/2 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol11/iss3/2 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 04:05:57 PDT In his article "Aesthetics and Ideology in Queirós's A Cidade e as Serras" Pedro Serra contributes to the study of Eça de Queirós's post-naturalist fiction, offering an in-depth view of traces of utopian socialism -- a major ideological influence in Queirós's intellectual generation -- in the aesthetic fabric of A Cidade e as Serras (1901) (The City and the Mountains). According to Serra, who reads this novel in light of Oliveira Martins's socialist idearium, Queirós's post-naturalistic writing exposes a complex network of late nineteenth-century cultural predicaments: the collapse of liberalism and realism paves the way to an ideological and aesthetical poetics of the novel that incorporates a paternalist socialism incarnated by Jacinto, the protagonist of the narrative. Serra suggests that Queirós's late poetics of the novel imply the anesthetization of "ethnic" determinations, a process that results from the Portuguese resistance to the nightmarish avatars of Modernity -- emblematically represented by Paris, a dystopian metropolis -- and that is represented in what Serra calls theatrum anthropologicum, a set of figures that determine the meaning of being Portuguese. Pedro Serra comparative literature