The Greenwich Meridian of Literature and the „Peripheries” of World Literature: Lu Xun’s Alternative Cartography

The article discusses Pascale Casanova’s mapping of world literature according to a division into center and peripheries, focusing on her idea of the Greenwich Meridian of literature as a spatial and temporal measure of the world’s literary production. The related idea of literary consecration of peripheral writers is explained. The possibility of an alternative cartography that emphasizes literary transfers via translations between peripheries is analyzed on the basis of the famous modern Chinese writer Lu Xun’s theoretical and translation output. His practice of translating peripheral writers, often carried out second-hand via German editions, potentially challenges popular contemporary mappings of literary space such as those developed by P. Casanova and F. Moretti.

Analiza kartografske projekcije karte Nova Lusitania

The map named Carta Geographica de Projecçaõ Espherica Orthogonal da Nova Lusitania ou America Portugueza e Estado do Brazil from 1798, together with its 1795 (?), 1797 and 1803 versions, is undoubtedly one of the cartographic monuments developed by Portuguese cartography from the late eighteenth century. Its organizer was the geographer, astronomer, and frigate captain Antonio Pires da Silva Pontes Leme, who relied on the work of 34 people, including astronomers, geographers, and engineers, who, although only mentioned in the 1798 version, contributed to the creation of all versions. All of them are similar in appearance, but differ in size, content, details, amount, and distribution of toponyms, which will be the subject of another paper. The greatest similarity, however, concerns the defined map projection. The objective of this paper is to analyse and present the possible hypotheses and conclusions about which map projection was adopted for all versions of Nova Lusitania, through the identification of characteristics that allowed to infer and prove the adopted projection. The applied methodology verified that in the bibliographic search, the information about the map structure is insufficient. An article presented by General Djalma Polli Coelho in October 1950 states that the projection suggested by its title, as orthogonal spherical, appeared to be the Sanson-Flamsteed equal-area projection. However, the expression Carta Geographica de Projecçaõ Espherica Orthogonal allows us to infer also the transverse orthographic projection. Through parameters defined for the two projections, it was possible to establish the comparative elements for a cartographic analysis, which would allow us to conclude and prove the structure adopted for the map, allowing to conclude if the adopted projection for the Nova Lusitania was an azimuthal orthographic equatorial projection, or a Sanson-Flamsteed, sinusoidal projection on the meridian 315°, defined west-east, (counterclockwise), from the El Hierro (Ferro) Island. This meridian is referenced approx. –62°39'46" off the Greenwich meridian.

Paris, « un lieu centre de tous les centres ». Est-ce toujours d’actualité ?

Paris, “The Centre of All Centres”. Is It Still the Case? In La République Mondiale des Lettres published in 1999 and 2008, Ms. Casanova wrote: “Paris is the Greenwich meridian for literature” for the 19th and 20th centuries. Writers and artists have come to the city in the past because it was extremely attractive for creative and economic reasons. But at the beginning of the 21st century, with the rise of the New Media for writing, publishing and diffusing, is it correct to say that Paris is still supreme? Is location more important than the time devoted to writing and reading? The claims on which Ms. Casanova builds her assertions are not supported by the facts of recent history and geography. She refers to “La belle santé économique et la liberté” in Paris but she forgot to mention why artists came from central Europe. It was just because the life was cheaper in Paris than in Berlin, as Walter Benjamin observed in 1926. She notes that Paris was the world centre for high fashion and that writers came together there to be inspired by the place and each other. But these things are no longer true: Paris is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world. Fashion in clothes is determined in many centres, with fashion weeks held in New York, Milan and China; aesthetics no longer depend on a single country. Literary creativity has spread across many continents and the internet and social media provide access to millions of people around the globe. Globalisation has unified the world, note Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Sylvain Tesson, and brought the standardization of cultures. There is also the matter of the dominant language today. The French language has not changed since Ms. Casanova was doing her research, but French writers now dream of being translated into English to reach the largest audience around the world. Publishers also favour English to make the most profit because literature and art are now worldwide commodities. Writers and researchers use the Internet, which connects them with documents, libraries and people all over the world. Newspapers such as Le Monde and Le Figaro in France provide literary reviews from around the world; for example, Histoire de la Traduction Littéraire en Europe Médiane, compiled by Antoine Chalvin, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov, Jean-Léon Muller and Katre Talviste, was written up in Cahiers Littéraires du Monde. What about the readership? If publishing and merchandizing are accelerating and globalizing because of how the Internet changes time and distance, the writer still has to follow the rhythm of the subject.

Proposals to Move the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1836–1944

In 1939, the British Admiralty agreed to move the Royal Observatory from Greenwich to a better site away from London. The removal was postponed due to the Second World War, and the observatory’s re-establishment at Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex in the 1940s and 1950s was further delayed by post-war economic difficulties. This paper examines several proposals to remove the observatory that were put forward over a period spanning slightly more than a century before 1939 and asks why none of these were taken up. I argue that the lateness of the move was due partly to astronomers’ fears that the observatory would lose its prestige if moved away from the famous Greenwich meridian and also to certain cultural aspects of professional astronomy in early twentieth-century Britain.

LEVANTAMENTO BIBLIOGRÁFICO DA UTILIZAÇÃO DE TRANSECTOS EM PESQUISAS DE CLIMA URBANO NO BRASIL E RECOMENDAÇÕES DE PADRONIZAÇÃO NOS PROCEDIMENTOS

O método do transecto móvel consiste em realizar as medições móveis em percursos a pé, em bicicleta ou veículos automotores coletando dados climáticos, no geral temperatura e umidade do ar, e é muito empregado no estudo da climatologia urbana para verificar diferenças entre os parâmetros climáticos em pontos de distintas ocupações do solo. O procedimento é muito difundido em função de sua aplicação relativamente simples e de baixo custo operacional do que a instalação de várias estações fixas para coleta dos dados. Almejando prover subsídios, técnicas e metodologias aos estudos de clima urbano e a padronização dos procedimentos para transectos móveis esse artigo tem como objetivo identificar diversos tipos de transectos já estudados/utilizados na literatura em pesquisas de clima urbano no Brasil entre 1990 a 2017 e realizar recomendações das melhores práticas. Os resultados apresentados tornam possível concluir o empirismo predominante nas metodologias, sendo heterogêneo a quantidade e distribuição dos dias de coleta, velocidade do veículo, horários e abrigos utilizados. Para garantir a padronização e qualidade dos dados coletados com a metodologia do transecto móvel tem-se as principais indicações de que: a velocidade deve variar entre 20 e 30 km/h quando realizada em veículos ou motocicletas, os horários às 00 h, 06h, 12 h e 18 h GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time); o tempo gasto entre a medida do ponto inicial e do ponto final do itinerário não ultrapasse uma hora; os sensores e abrigos devem estar instalados e ligados aproximadamente 10 minutos antes do horário de início. O emprego criterioso da metodologia do transecto móvel constitui uma ferramenta extraordinária nas questões de aprofundamento dos estudos da climatologia e criação de estratégicas de solução de problemas ligados ao planejamento urbano e ambiental.

Introduction

This introduction begins with a detailed overview of what has been called the ‘return to the story’ in contemporary French literature. This overview pays particular attention to how this ‘discourse of return’ defines the boundaries of an era (the contemporary), of a cultural or linguistic space (French), and of an aesthetic territory (the literary). Examining contentious postmodernist and declinological accounts of the contemporary, I then offer an overview of some of the ways that popular literary forms have been politicized or could be productively repoliticized in the period that we have called the contemporary. After a short discussion of Jean Echenoz’s The Greenwich Meridian (1979), which problematizes the borders of the conceptual constitution of the contemporary as a literary period, I discuss the methodology and corpus of Beyond Return, with a particular emphasis on how this book reads the politics of popular story forms. In addition to providing an overview of the chapters on Jean Rouaud, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jean Echenoz, and Antoine Volodine, this introduction thus makes a case for revising and rethinking the literary historical metaphor of return.