“From Postcolonial Literature to World Literature”

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-487
Author(s):  
Kuei-fen Chiu
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
Award Winning

Abstract Starting with an analysis of the award-winning literary documentary Le Moulin, this paper argues that the film’s reconstruction of Le Moulin Poetry Society in colonial Taiwan suggests world literature as an alternative framework for studying Taiwan literature within cross-cultural contexts. Taiwan literature has been predominantly studied as “postcolonial literature” vis-à-vis Japanese literature and, more recently, “Sinophone literature” in relation to mainland Chinese literature. Instead of deliberating on the subjugated position of Taiwan literature in relation to dominant literatures, the documentary film celebrates the avant-garde experimentation by Le Moulin Poetry Society and underscores the connection of Taiwan literature to world literature through the mediation of Japanese writers. Its employment of what can be called “performative historiography” to fulfill this task raises significant questions about the reinvention of literature, literary canonization, and literary historiography in a new age.

Translating the Translational: A Comparative Study of the Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese Translations of Xiaolu Guo's A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Flair Donglai Shi
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
English Language ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Chinese Student ◽  
Visual Design ◽  
Student Writing ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Translational Strategies

The untranslatability of this particular novel does not come from the ‘resistant singularity’ claimed by world literature scholars like Emily Apter, but has to do instead with its inherently translational nature as a novel about intercultural (mis-)communication. Comparative close readings of the three versions published in Britain, Taiwan, and mainland China focus on paratexts, intra-textual visual design, and specific translational strategies. Caught between the established traditions of diasporic Chinese literature and liuxuesheng wenxue (‘overseas Chinese student writing’), A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and its Chinese-language translations offer insights into the dialectic between ‘minor’ literature and ‘world’ literature, discussed here with a particular focus on the global hegemony of the English language.

Guilt, Nostalgia, and Victimhood: Korea in the Japanese Theatrical Imagination

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei
Keyword(s):  
Associate Editor ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Post War ◽  
Terayama Shuji

How has post-war Japanese theatre grappled with Japanese responsibility for its imperialistic/militaristic past in Asia, and for institutionalized discrimination against resident minorities? Using the tools of guilt, nostalgia, and the valorization of victimhood that are embedded in the idea of hōgan biiki (sympathy for the loser/victims), Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei here analyzes Japan's often contradictory, flip-flopping self-image as both victimizer and victim in relation to Korea and resident Koreans. Looking at both mainstream and alternative performances, her article suggests that despite attempts to discuss these issues openly, most theatre artists actually present images that soften or displace responsibility for the past. Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA, and was recently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universität, Berlin. An authority on post-war Japanese and cross-cultural performance, she is also a translator, director, and award-winning playwright. Her books include Unspeakable Acts: the Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan and the co-authored Theatre Histories: an Introduction. She has published numerous articles and presented papers and keynotes throughout the world. Professor Sorgenfrei is Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal and Editor of the Association for Asian Performance Newsletter.

Multisensory Modalities and Modernist Translation

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-306
Author(s):  
Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Sensory Integration ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
The Arts

Multisensory and cross-modal perception have been recognised as crucial for shaping modernist epistemology, aesthetics, and art. Illustrative examples of how it might be possible to test equivalences (or mutual translatability) between different sensual modalities can be found in theoretical pronouncements on the arts and in artistic production of both the avant-garde and high modernism. While encouraging multisensory, cross-modal, and multimodal artistic experiments, twentieth-century artists set forth a new language of sensory integration. This article addresses the problem of the literary representation of multisensory and cross-modal experience as a particular challenge for translation, which is not only a linguistic and cross-cultural operation but also cross-sensual, involving the gap between different culture-specific perceptual realities. The problem of sensory perception remains a vast underexplored terrain of modernist translation history and theory, and yet it is one with potentially far-reaching ramifications for both a cultural anthropology of translation and modernism's sensory anthropology. The framework of this study is informed by Douglas Robinson's somatics of translation and Clive Scott's perceptive phenomenology of translation, which help to put forth the notion of sensory equivalence as a pragmatic correspondence between the source and target texts, appealing to a range of somato-sensory (audial, visual, haptic, gestural, articulatory kinaesthetic, proprioceptive) modalities of reader response.

EPISTEMOLOGY OF TONE: AN OBITUARY FOR JULIEN JALÂL ED-DINE WEISS

Tempo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (281) ◽  
pp. 71-79
Author(s):  
Stefan Pohlit
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Just Intonation ◽  
Modal System ◽  
Helpful Tool ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Major Discrepancy

AbstractDuring the 1980s, Julien Jalâl Ed-Dine Weiss, founder of the Al-Kindi ensemble of Aleppo, invented a qānūn in just intonation with which he attempted to solve a major discrepancy between the theory and practice of maqām-scales. Weiss objected to the introduction of Western standards, observing that they distort the significance of interval ratios and prevent a comparative understanding of the modal system as a transnational phenomenon. In the twentieth century, the implementation of equal-semitone temperament emerged simultaneously with a notable invasion of sociological criteria into musical inquiry. The polarity observed between westernisation and tradition can be seen most visibly in the present search for identity amongst Middle- and Near-Eastern musicians, but this schismogenic process can also be observed in the history of the Western avant-garde, where microtonal explorations have been halted in favour of extra-musical conceptuality. While cross-cultural musicians are faced with a new climate of distrust, it seems most likely that the principles that draw us apart may originate in the very patterns of thought in which our notion of culture operates. Weiss's tuning system may serve as a helpful tool to foster a new and universal epistemology of tone, bridging and transcending the apparent contradictions between the two spheres.

scholarly journals Cinematic “Pas de Deux”: The Dialogue between Maya Deren's Experimental Filmmaking and Talley Beatty's Black Ballet Dancer in A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-403
Author(s):  
HANNAH DURKIN
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
Ballet Dancer ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Us ◽  
Artistic Vision ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Ballet Dancing

A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) is a collaborative enterprise between avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren and African American ballet dancer Talley Beatty. Study is significant in experimental film history – it was one of three films by Deren that shaped the emergence of the postwar avant-garde cinema movement in the US. The film represents a pioneering cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue between Beatty's ballet dancing and Deren's experimental cinematic technique. The film explores complex emotional experiences through a cinematic re-creation of Deren's understanding of ritual (which she borrowed from Katherine Dunham's Haitian experiences after spending many years documenting vodou) while allowing a leading black male dancer to display his artistry on-screen. I show that cultures and artistic forms widely dismissed as incompatible are rendered equivocal. Study adopts a stylized and rhythmic technique borrowed from dance in its attempt to establish cinema as “art,” and I foreground Beatty's contribution to the film, arguing that his technically complex movements situate him as joint author of its artistic vision. The essay also explores tensions between the artistic intentions of Deren, who sought to deprivilege the individual performer in favour of the filmic “ritual,” and Beatty, who sought to display his individual skills as a technically accomplished dancer.

scholarly journals ‘There Must Be a Poetry of Sound That None of Us Knows…’: Early British documentary film and the prefiguring of musique concrète

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-186
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Cox
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Coal Face ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Musique Concrete

Standard histories of electronic music tend to trace the lineage of musique concrète as lying mainly in the Futurists’ declarations of the 1910s, through Cage’s ‘emancipation’ of noise in the 1930s, to Schaeffer’s work and codifications of the late 1940s and early 1950s. This article challenges this narrative by drawing attention to the work of filmmakers in the 1930s that foreshadowed the sound experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and thus offers an alternative history of their background. The main focus of the article is on the innovations within documentary film and specifically the sonic explorations in early British documentary that prefigured musique concrète, an area ignored by electronic music studies. The theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the documentary movement’s members, particularly their leader John Grierson, will be compared with those of Pierre Schaeffer, and the important influence of Russian avant-garde filmmaking on the British (and musique concrète) will be addressed. Case studies will focus on the groundbreaking soundtracks of two films made by the General Post Office Film Unit that feature both practical and theoretical correspondences to Schaeffer: 6.30 Collection (1934) and Coal Face (1935). Parallels between the nature and use of technologies and how this affected creative outputs will also be discussed, as will the relationship of the British documentary movement’s practice and ideas to post-Schaefferian ‘anecdotal music’ and the work of Luc Ferrari.

Leo Tolstoy And Writers of World Literature Literary Reflections – Elchin Efendiyev

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 100-112
Author(s):  
Gulnara Hasanova
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Scientific Paper ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
National Science ◽  
International Comparative ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
Literary Experience

It is a study of literary interaction questions and the identification of mutual enrichment patterns that currently acquire particular significance. The concept of foreign literary experience becomes ever more profound and diverse and is realized by a creative rethinking (not imitation or adoption) of another literature’s achievements. This paper aims to identify the profound influence of world literature on Tolstoy and vice-versa: the influence his creative works had on European literature. The paper shows the need to study the originality of Tolstoy’s artistic legacy’s foreign reception and, therefore, complement the overall picture of perception and functioning of the writer’s creation in the foreign literary context and cultural environment. The study of this theme is very significant from the standpoint of modern globalization, dialogue between cultures. The novelty here lies in the fact that the question of how Tolstoy’s works have been received within the context of creative cross-cultural dialogue has not been given sufficient attention within international comparative studies. There is no systematizing and summarizing research in the national science about a writer’s perception and peculiarities of appraisal of writer’s works involving the Azerbaijani studies material, drawing parallels with the national literature. For this consideration of Tolstoy’s work, the conception of Azerbaijani prose writing is taken to represent a World literary context. The outstanding playwright Elchin Efendiyev had due regard for Tolstoy’s creative work and his particular creative perception of the world. This work’s theoretical purpose is to develop a scientific paper that will expand understanding of the reception of an outstanding writer’s creative work by a western creative consciousness and will present a picture of international cultural ties.

Chinese Language and Literature Reform in The Beginning of The 20th Century

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chanh Nguyen Thi Mai ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Language Reform ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The 19Th Century

It is difficult not to mention language reform when referring to Chinese literature modernization between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Language played a critical role in facilitating the escape of Chinese literature from Chinese medieval literary works in order to integrate into world literature. The language reform not only laid a foundation for modern literature but also contributed considerably to the grand social transformation of China in the early days of the 20th century. Chinese new-born literature was a literature created by spoken language; in Chinese terms, it was considered as a literature focusing on “dialectal speech” instead of “classical Chinese” used in the past. In international terms, it can be named as living language literature which was used to replace classic literary language in ancient books – a kind of dead language. This article will analyze how language reform impacted Chinese modern literature at the beginning of the 20th century.

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