This essay examines the translations of the title of Dante’s magnum opus, the Commedia, as well as its canticle titles, across languages worldwide. This fills a gap in the secondary literature, which up until now has not examined this topic on a global scale. Rather than focusing on close textual analysis, this piece distantly reads the translation history of the title and canticle titles within different linguistic, cultural, historical and religious contexts. This essay thus shows how translators render specific concepts such as Commedia, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, often in non-Catholic and non-Christian societies. The results reveal how translations of the title (and canticle titles) are problematic, each in their own way. Translations of the title Commedia, for example, are difficult everywhere, because of the idiosyncratic usage of the term by Dante. Translations of the canticle title Purgatorio are problematic in non-Catholic societies in general, lacking such a religious concept. Meanwhile translations of the canticle titles Inferno and Paradiso are particularly challenging in non-monotheistic religious societies, which don’t have such eternal afterlives for individuals. In all these cases, though, this has not stopped translators from translating Dante’s text.
{"title":"Comparing Translations of Dante’s <i>Commedia</i>","authors":"Jacob Blakesley","doi":"10.3366/ccs.2023.0484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2023.0484","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines the translations of the title of Dante’s magnum opus, the Commedia, as well as its canticle titles, across languages worldwide. This fills a gap in the secondary literature, which up until now has not examined this topic on a global scale. Rather than focusing on close textual analysis, this piece distantly reads the translation history of the title and canticle titles within different linguistic, cultural, historical and religious contexts. This essay thus shows how translators render specific concepts such as Commedia, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, often in non-Catholic and non-Christian societies. The results reveal how translations of the title (and canticle titles) are problematic, each in their own way. Translations of the title Commedia, for example, are difficult everywhere, because of the idiosyncratic usage of the term by Dante. Translations of the canticle title Purgatorio are problematic in non-Catholic societies in general, lacking such a religious concept. Meanwhile translations of the canticle titles Inferno and Paradiso are particularly challenging in non-monotheistic religious societies, which don’t have such eternal afterlives for individuals. In all these cases, though, this has not stopped translators from translating Dante’s text.","PeriodicalId":42644,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Critical Studies","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Comparative Literature as a discipline seems caught between the macroscopic perspectives of World Literature and a fascination with the untranslatable and the incommensurable. This has made it difficult to elaborate methodologies for reading the local and the minor transnationally, which insist on linguistic and historical rigour but remain open to hermeneutical border-crossing. I reconstruct some aspects of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s engagement with Friulian, a language spoken in northeast Italy, focusing specifically on his poetry in Friulian and connected translation practices from sound to written work, between dialect to national language, and laterally across minoritized cultures. Foregrounding the extraordinary fertility of Pasolini’s explorations of language, history and politics as well as his biases and failed attempts, this essay proposes not a model to imitate but a repertoire of possible approaches to ‘minor comparativism’.
{"title":"Pasolini and Minor Comparativism: Transnationalizing Dialect Poetry","authors":"Rosa Mucignat","doi":"10.3366/ccs.2023.0483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2023.0483","url":null,"abstract":"Comparative Literature as a discipline seems caught between the macroscopic perspectives of World Literature and a fascination with the untranslatable and the incommensurable. This has made it difficult to elaborate methodologies for reading the local and the minor transnationally, which insist on linguistic and historical rigour but remain open to hermeneutical border-crossing. I reconstruct some aspects of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s engagement with Friulian, a language spoken in northeast Italy, focusing specifically on his poetry in Friulian and connected translation practices from sound to written work, between dialect to national language, and laterally across minoritized cultures. Foregrounding the extraordinary fertility of Pasolini’s explorations of language, history and politics as well as his biases and failed attempts, this essay proposes not a model to imitate but a repertoire of possible approaches to ‘minor comparativism’.","PeriodicalId":42644,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Critical Studies","volume":"88 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How might we now make sense of Comp Lit’s ‘literature’ half amid a contemporary mediascape in which literature no longer possesses the cultural centrality it once enjoyed? To probe this question, I turn to scholarly efforts from a century ago to make a case for reading literature within the university classroom by formulating ‘criticism’ as a field of study. I focus on the eminent Chinese writer Lao She 老舍 (1899–1966), who taught in both Chinese and British classrooms, and who unexpectedly sparked the introduction of ‘criticism’ in the Chinese academy through his translation of a little-known textbook for criticism by the American professor Elizabeth Nitchie (1889–1960). Drawing upon Lao She’s conviction in the critical capacity of literature, I argue that returning to ‘criticism’ – as Lao She articulates it in his pedagogical lectures and his profound yet overlooked short story ‘Filling a Prescription’ ( Zhuayao 抓药, 1934) – can help build a justification for the continued importance of teaching literature’s reading. Amid institutional pressures to ‘rebrand’ Comparative Literature, this article ultimately suggests that there may be reason yet for the discipline not to abandon its focus on literature too hastily.
{"title":"Comp Lit’s Other Half: In Defense of Literature, with Lao She","authors":"Adhira Mangalagiri","doi":"10.3366/ccs.2023.0486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2023.0486","url":null,"abstract":"How might we now make sense of Comp Lit’s ‘literature’ half amid a contemporary mediascape in which literature no longer possesses the cultural centrality it once enjoyed? To probe this question, I turn to scholarly efforts from a century ago to make a case for reading literature within the university classroom by formulating ‘criticism’ as a field of study. I focus on the eminent Chinese writer Lao She 老舍 (1899–1966), who taught in both Chinese and British classrooms, and who unexpectedly sparked the introduction of ‘criticism’ in the Chinese academy through his translation of a little-known textbook for criticism by the American professor Elizabeth Nitchie (1889–1960). Drawing upon Lao She’s conviction in the critical capacity of literature, I argue that returning to ‘criticism’ – as Lao She articulates it in his pedagogical lectures and his profound yet overlooked short story ‘Filling a Prescription’ ( Zhuayao 抓药, 1934) – can help build a justification for the continued importance of teaching literature’s reading. Amid institutional pressures to ‘rebrand’ Comparative Literature, this article ultimately suggests that there may be reason yet for the discipline not to abandon its focus on literature too hastily.","PeriodicalId":42644,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Critical Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dominique Jullien, <i>Borges, Buddhism and World Literature: A Morphology of Renunciation Tales</i>","authors":"Rory O'Bryen","doi":"10.3366/ccs.2023.0487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2023.0487","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42644,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Critical Studies","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With several notable exceptions, comparative literature scholarship has not fully addressed the relationships between literature and global challenges and crises. In our era of multiple intensifying pandemics, not to mention often anaemic humanities enrolments (paradoxical, given robust interest in the arts both within and outside academia), it is crucial that comparative literature go more global: engaging more deeply with a broader array of texts, pathways and processes than ever before with a focus on providing insights into global challenges and crises as well as possibilities for amelioration on a vast scale. This article focuses on three novels: He Jiahong’s Chinese-language Hanging Devils: Hong Jun Investigates (1994) from China; Oh Jung-hee’s Korean-language The Bird (1996) from Korea; and Bina Shah’s English-language Before She Sleeps (2018) from Pakistan. These narratives highlight intersections in different parts of Asia among gender inequities/gender-based violence and corruption in criminal justice, intergenerational trauma and environmental catastrophe, respectively. To be sure, scholarship on literature is unlikely to provide immediate remedies. Yet, by helping readers better understand how literature engages with global challenges, scholarship on literature, including the field of comparative literature, can contribute to increasing motivations and the ability to take the essential leap to become champions for change.
{"title":"Comparison and Gender Injustice in Worlds of Pandemics","authors":"Karen Thornber","doi":"10.3366/ccs.2023.0480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2023.0480","url":null,"abstract":"With several notable exceptions, comparative literature scholarship has not fully addressed the relationships between literature and global challenges and crises. In our era of multiple intensifying pandemics, not to mention often anaemic humanities enrolments (paradoxical, given robust interest in the arts both within and outside academia), it is crucial that comparative literature go more global: engaging more deeply with a broader array of texts, pathways and processes than ever before with a focus on providing insights into global challenges and crises as well as possibilities for amelioration on a vast scale. This article focuses on three novels: He Jiahong’s Chinese-language Hanging Devils: Hong Jun Investigates (1994) from China; Oh Jung-hee’s Korean-language The Bird (1996) from Korea; and Bina Shah’s English-language Before She Sleeps (2018) from Pakistan. These narratives highlight intersections in different parts of Asia among gender inequities/gender-based violence and corruption in criminal justice, intergenerational trauma and environmental catastrophe, respectively. To be sure, scholarship on literature is unlikely to provide immediate remedies. Yet, by helping readers better understand how literature engages with global challenges, scholarship on literature, including the field of comparative literature, can contribute to increasing motivations and the ability to take the essential leap to become champions for change.","PeriodicalId":42644,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Critical Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper argues for a shift in disciplinary identity from ‘comparative literature’ into ‘comparative media literacies’. The shift is necessitated by the fact that within a few decades, every student and practitioner of literature will be a digital native who negotiates culture from the perspective of the digital mind. In the digital mind informational availability replaces inquiry, reality is a montage from a variety of media, and the past no longer matters. Print literature is now a residual medium, just as oral literature becomes residual with the advent of writing. Comparatists should identify the essential elements of literature (which most likely does not include that it be written down in letters), see where these inhabit other media, and teach literature as an intermedial phenomenon. The essay uses Clive Scott's intermedial translations as an analogy for comparative scholarship, and provides examples of how literature travels between media.
{"title":"Comparative Media Literacies","authors":"Thomas O. Beebee","doi":"10.3366/ccs.2023.0479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2023.0479","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues for a shift in disciplinary identity from ‘comparative literature’ into ‘comparative media literacies’. The shift is necessitated by the fact that within a few decades, every student and practitioner of literature will be a digital native who negotiates culture from the perspective of the digital mind. In the digital mind informational availability replaces inquiry, reality is a montage from a variety of media, and the past no longer matters. Print literature is now a residual medium, just as oral literature becomes residual with the advent of writing. Comparatists should identify the essential elements of literature (which most likely does not include that it be written down in letters), see where these inhabit other media, and teach literature as an intermedial phenomenon. The essay uses Clive Scott's intermedial translations as an analogy for comparative scholarship, and provides examples of how literature travels between media.","PeriodicalId":42644,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Critical Studies","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136160823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper proposes a comparative approach theoretically and methodologically based in the sociology of literature, and more specifically on field theory, which takes into account circulation and transfers, as well as international power relations between centers and peripheries. As developed in the first section, this approach combines Bourdieu's field theory, Casanova's analysis of the world republic of letters, Even-Zohar's polysystem theory, Moretti's quantitative methods, and the author's own work on the circulation of literary texts and forms. Exemplified by case studies borrowed from the existing literature (including the author's research), the methodological framework developed in the following sections addresses authorities (publishers, prizes, festivals) and writer's strategies.
{"title":"Structural Comparison, Transfers and Unequal Power Relations: Field Theory as a Conceptual and Methodological Tool","authors":"Gisèle Sapiro","doi":"10.3366/ccs.2023.0482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2023.0482","url":null,"abstract":"This paper proposes a comparative approach theoretically and methodologically based in the sociology of literature, and more specifically on field theory, which takes into account circulation and transfers, as well as international power relations between centers and peripheries. As developed in the first section, this approach combines Bourdieu's field theory, Casanova's analysis of the world republic of letters, Even-Zohar's polysystem theory, Moretti's quantitative methods, and the author's own work on the circulation of literary texts and forms. Exemplified by case studies borrowed from the existing literature (including the author's research), the methodological framework developed in the following sections addresses authorities (publishers, prizes, festivals) and writer's strategies.","PeriodicalId":42644,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Critical Studies","volume":"208 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136093233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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