A Surplus of Fish: Language, Literature, and Cultural Ecologies in Ng Kim Chew’s Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-141
Author(s):  
Carlos Rojas

Abstract This essay uses an examination of intertwined thematics of fish and text in the fiction of the ethnically Malaysian Chinese author Ng Kim Chew in order to reflect on a broader set of ecological concerns, including issues relating to the natural ecology of the Southeast Asian regions depicted in Ng’s works, together with the overlapping literary ecosystems within which his works are embedded. In particular, the essay is concerned with the ways in which Ng’s fiction reflects on the relationship between the field of Southeast Asian Sinophone literature and the partially overlapping ecosystem of world literature.

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-507
Author(s):  
Song (Abel) Han ◽  
Yu (Heidi) Huang

Abstract This essay reexamines two Sinophone literary uchronias, i.e. Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) author Ng Kim Chew’s dystopian account of the People’s Republic of Nanyang, and Hong Kong writer Dung Kai-cheung’s fabrication of the history of a disappeared street in Hong Kong. As representative pieces of Sinophone literature, these two literary uchronias not only rewrite the authors’ local histories but also bring together a critical examination of the geo-political conditions in the Sinophone sphere. Reflecting on the spatialized and materialist models of world literature studies, this essay aims to investigate the Hong Kong-Mahua link in terms of their world-making power.


Public ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (61) ◽  
pp. 304-307
Author(s):  
Nina Bakan

Damascus-born artist, Jawa El Khash’s immersive installation, The Upper Side of the Sky (2020), combines virtual reality and Syria’s natural ecology to confront the physically devastating impacts of war. In response to ISIS’s 2015-16 occupation of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, El Khash evaluates the relationship between technology and the environment to explore the ability for virtual reality to rebuild destroyed landscapes and create sites for healing.


2017 ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
L.G. Nazarenko ◽  
◽  
N.S. Nestertsova ◽  

The relationship between the body weight of women at birth and the development in the future of gynecological diseases or deviations in the development of the reproductive system, development of oncological diseases and the timing of menopause have been analyzed. The results of clinical studies conducted at different times in different countries of the world, which cover the topic of this article, are presented. An overview of the world literature presented in the article, substantiates the relevance of conducting relevant research in the Ukrainian population. Key words: low birth weight, large-for-gestational-age fetus, gynecology disease.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Paula Pratt

This article tells the story, and analyzes the development, of a “staged metaphor” for the translation process, from its chance inception over ten years ago, to the more recent revision and staging of the script. In 2005, I was teaching world literature at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, while also researching the writing of Irish and North African women. I chose to focus on those women writing in Irish, Tachelhit, Arabic, or French, whose work had been translated into English. I was initially inspired by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill’s poem, “The Language Issue,” which compares the "sending forth" of her writing to a potential reader, to the story of Moses being discovered by Pharoah’s daughter. My ultimate goal was to produce a chamber theatre play, based on the Irish and North African texts, which would dramatize a metaphor for the translation process. This was an outgrowth of my doctoral work, in which I had drawn on oral interpretation theorists, who see the performance of literary texts as an accepted means of doing literary criticism. Accordingly, I also expanded the project to include the observations of translation theorists, and I incorporated these into the creation of the script for a chamber theatre performance. After directing a staging of the script in Morocco in 2007, I realized that I needed to add more choreographed movement, and to incorporate the character of Moses’s and Myriam’s mother into the metaphor. The addition of dance, and the foregrounding of the relationship between Myriam and her mother, draws unapologetically on female relationships. It is my conclusion that the revised metaphor, with the addition of these elements, is validated by Yves Bonnefoy’s and Henri Meschonnic's depictions of “translation as relationship with an author,” and that, the metaphor does indeed “provide . . . fresh insights.”


1980 ◽  
Vol 162 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-125
Author(s):  
Paul Smith

This article reviews some of the objections to the Advanced Placement Program in English, arguing that since that Program is the responsibility of school and college English teachers, it and the AP Examinations fairly accurately reflect and may sometimes influence the teaching of English composition and literature in the schools. It compares and contrasts the original test in Composition and Literature with the new test in Language and Composition, focusing on issues that arose in the development of the new test. It considers how some questions of both theoretical and practical consequence concerning the relationship between ordinary and literary language and between expository and critical writing are raised and tentatively answered by the Committee that develops the AP English Examinations and Course Descriptions.


Author(s):  
Abdul-Nabi Isstaif

This chapter presents a 1997 interview with Mustafa Badawi and includes sections relating to his early life and education until 1947 when he was sent to England to pursue further studies in English. Badawi first talks about the years of his early formation in the family, the neighbourhood and his various schools in Alexandria before discussing his cultural formation in the city. He reveals that he decided to specialise in English language in order to deepen his study of English literature so that he could see Arabic literature in the wider context of world literature. Badawi also describes his attitudes towards literature and criticism, which he says involved three essential questions: the relationship between literature and politics; the relationship between literature and morality; and the nature of language and its function in poetry, and consequently the relationship between poetry and science, or between poetry and thought or knowledge in general.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Halmi

The ageing Goethe was fascinated with Byron whom he called the greatest poetic talent. Though suspicious of Byron’s Philhellenism, Goethe found in Byron an openness to encounter non-English cultures, an attentiveness to national histories and in interest in the relationship of the individual to social life. Byron’s self-contextualising, self-historicising narrative poems constitute a parallel to Goethe’s own literary campaigns for cross-cultural engagement in the 1810s and 1820s and, despite Byron’s alienation from England, offer hope for the prospects of what Goethe was to call “world literature”.


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