Disrupting recent fashionable debates on secularism, this book raises the stakes on how we understand the space of the secular, independent of its battle with the religious, as a space of radical democratic politics that refuse to be theologized.
From the award-winning translators: the complete prose narratives of the most acclaimed Russian writer of the Romantic era and one of the world's greatest storytellers. The father of Russian literature, Pushkin is beloved not only for his poetry but also for his brilliant stories, which range from dramatic tales of love, obsession, and betrayal to dark fables and sparkling comic masterpieces, from satirical epistolary tales and romantic adventures in the manner of Sir Walter Scott to imaginative historical fiction and the haunting dreamworld of "The Queen of Spades." The five short stories of The Late Tales of Ivan Petrovich Belkin are lightly humorous and yet reveal astonishing human depths, and his short novel, The Captain's Daughter, has been called the most perfect book in Russian literature.
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.
Key essays on comparative literature from the eighteenth century to today As comparative literature reshapes itself in today's globalizing age, it is essential for students and teachers to look deeply into the discipline's history and its present possibilities. The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature is a wide-ranging anthology of classic essays and important recent statements on the mission and methods of comparative literary studies. This pioneering collection brings together thirty-two pieces, from foundational statements by Herder, Madame de Staël, and Nietzsche to work by a range of the most influential comparatists writing today, including Lawrence Venuti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Franco Moretti. Gathered here are manifestos and counterarguments, essays in definition, and debates on method by scholars and critics from the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, giving a unique overview of comparative study in the words of some of its most important practitioners. With selections extending from the beginning of comparative study through the years of intensive theoretical inquiry and on to contemporary discussions of the world's literatures, The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature helps readers navigate a rapidly evolving discipline in a dramatically changing world.
This timely volume takes stock of the discipline of comparative literature and its theory and practice from a Canadian perspective. It engages with the most pressing critical issues at the intersection of comparative literature and other areas of inquiry in the context of scholarship, pedagogy and academic publishing: bilingualism and multilingualism, Indigeneity, multiple canons (literary and other), the relationship between print culture and other media, the development of information studies, concerted efforts in digitization, and the future of the production and dissemination of knowledge. The authors offer an analysis of the current state of Canadian comparative literature, with a dual focus on the issues of multilingualism in Canada’s sociopolitical and cultural context and Canada’s geographical location within the Americas. It also discusses ways in which contemporary technology is influencing the way that Canadian literature is taught, produced, and disseminated, and how this affects its readings.
Yu's essays juxtapose Chinese and Western texts - Cratylus next to Xunzi,for example - and discuss their relationship to language and subjects, such as liberal Greek education against general education in China. He compares a specific Western text and religion to a specific Chinese text and religion. He considers the Divina Commedia in the context of Catholic theology alongside The Journey to the West as it relates to Chinese syncretism, united by the theme of pilgrimage. Yet Yu's focus isn't entirely tied to the classics. He also considers the struggle for human rights in China and how this topic relates to ancient Chinese social thought and modern notions of rights in the West.
This book serves several purposes, all very much needed in today's embattled situation of the humanities and the study of literature. First, in Chapter One, the author proposes that the discipline of Comparative Literature is a most advantageous approach for the study of literature and culture as it is a priori a discipline of cross-disciplinarity and of international dimensions. After a "Manifesto" for a New Comparative Literature, he proceeds to offer several related theoretical frameworks as a composite method for the study of literature and culture he designates and explicates as the "systemic and empirical approach." Following the introduction of the proposed New Comparative Literature, the author applies his method to a wide variety of literary and cultural areas of inquiry such as "Literature and Cultural Participation" where he discusses several aspects of reading and readership (Chapter Two), "Comparative Literature as/and Interdisciplinarity" (Chapter Three) where he deals with theory and application for film and literature and medicine and literature, "Cultures, Peripheralities, and Comparative Literature" (Chapter Four) where he proposes a theoretical designation he terms "inbetween peripherality" for the study of East Central European literatures and cultures as well as ethnic minority writing, "Women's Literature and Men Writing about Women"(Chapter Five) where he analyses texts written by women and texts about women written by men in the theoretical context of Ethical Constructivism, "The Study of Translation and Comparative Literature" (Chapter Six) where after a theoretical introduction he presents a new version of Anton Popovic's dictionary for literary translation as a taxonomy for the study of translation, and "The Study of Literature and the Electronic Age" (Chapter Seven), where he discusses the impact of new technologies on the study of literature and culture. The analyses in their various applications of the proposed New Comparative Literature involve modern and contemporary authors and their works such as Dorothy Richardson, Margit Kaffka, Mircea Cartarescu, Robert Musil, Alfred Döblin, Hermann Hesse, Péter Esterházy, Dezsö Kosztolányi, Michael Ondaatje, Endre Kukorelly, Else Seel, and others.
Since its beginning, Comparative Literature has been characterized as a discipline in crisis. But its shifting boundaries are its strength, allowing for collaboration and growth and illuminating a path forward. In Comparative Literature for the New Century a diverse group of scholars argue for a distinct North American approach to literary studies that includes the promotion of different languages. Chapters by senior scholars such as George Elliott Clarke, E.D. Blodgett, and Sneja Gunew are placed in dialogue with those by younger scholars, including Dominique Hétu, Maria Cristina Seccia, and Ndeye Fatou Ba. The writers, many of whom are multilingual, discuss problems with translation, identity and belonging, the modern epic, the role of tradition, minority writing, Francophone and Anglophone novels in Africa, and politics in literature. Engaging with theory, history, media studies, psychology, translation studies, post-colonial studies, and gender studies, chapters exemplify how the knowledge and tools offered by Comparative Literature can be applied in reading, exploring, and understanding not only literary productions but also the world at large. Presenting some of the most current work being carried out by academics and scholars actively engaged in the field in Canada and abroad, Comparative Literature for the New Century promotes the value of Comparative Literature as an interdisciplinary study and assesses future directions it might take. Contributors include George Elliott Clarke (University of Toronto), Dominique Hétu (Alberta & Montreal), Monique Tschofen (Ryerson), Jolene Armstrong (Athabasca), E.D. Blodgett (Alberta), Ndeye Fatou Ba (Ryerson), Maria Cristina Seccia (Hull), Sneja Gunew (UBC), Deborah Saidero (Udine), Elizabeth Dahab (CSULB), Gaetano Rando (Wollongong), Anna Pia De Luca (Udine), Mark A. McCutcheon (Athabasca), Giulia De Gasperi (PEI), and Joseph Pivato (Athabasca).