Comparative literature, Literary theory

Although the first world, as seen through the lens of academia, seems to be prospering, and the third world has found its own place in the postcolonial intellectual order, the post-cold war world of semi-peripheries in East and Central Europe (ECE) has largely disappeared from the discourse of Comparative Literature. It sometimes appears as a convenient intellectual counterpoint or is included in postmodernist or postcolonial narratives; in both cases, however, it doesn’t convey regional specificity or allow local voices to speak. Both strategies – core and postcolonial – expropriate the semi-peripheral realm of second-world non-places.

„Es scheint, das eis hat sich bewegt“ schrieb Skácel im letzten Brief, kurz vor seinem Tod, an seinen alten Freund und Übersetzer Reiner Kunze. Er selber aber, sich die ergreifende Sprache des mährischen Volksmunds mit einem kühnen Bild zu eigen machend: „ging still sich hinter der Stille zu verbergen.“  Sein Leben markierten kurze Atempausen der Freiheit und das erschöpfende, mehr oder weniger unfreiwillige Indienstgenommensein durch zwei totalitäre Systeme. Die zeitbedingten Erschütterungen von Skácels sensiblem Geist in den Folgejahren, seine Verabschiedung jedweder Ideologie sollten seine Lyrik prägen, die ihre Verwurzelung in der mährischen Volksdichtung nicht aufgegeben, sondern in der Lyrik der Moderne in gültiger Weise bewahrt hat.
Was Skácel zur Wende und der politischen Entwicklung danach gemeint haben könnte, bleibt ungewiss. Sein Empfinden für soziale Gerechtigkeit blieb wach. Er schloss sich auch Dissidentenkreisen (etwa der Charta 77) nicht an und geizte im Privaten (im Briefwechsel etwa) nicht mit scharfen Worten auch an die Adresse manch eines Systemgegners. Reiner Kunze fasste den Sachverhalt lyrisch-lakonisch bereits früher: „Wie das grab für dich schweigt!“

Anläßlich des 25. Todestages von Jan Skácel (7. Feburar 1922-7. November 1989) und des 25. Jahrestages der Sanften Revolution in der Tschechoslowakei sowie der Preisverleihungen an Reiner Kunze (Preis des Landes Südmähren, Preis Gratias agit des tschechischen Außenministers, Hohenschönhausen-Preis und Franz Josef Strauss-Preis) und der Herausgabe der Kunze-Skácel-Monographie Internationalismus der Dichter. Einblicke in Reiner Kunzes und Jan Skácels literarische Wechselbeziehungen. Mit einigen Bezügen zur Weltliteratur von Roman Kopřiva (http://www.tudpress.de/ThelemXTC2013/product_info.php?products_id=1374, http://www.amazon.de/Internationalismus-Dichter-literarische-Wechselbeziehungen-Weltliteratur/dp/3942411903) . Lesung aus Skácels Lyrik im Original und Übertragungen von Reiner Kunze, Vortrag und Buchpräsentation von Roman Kopřiva.  Rezitation auf Tschechisch Ondřej Černý, Leiter des Tschechischen Zentrums München. Veranstalter: Stiftung Lyrik Kabinett München, Tschechisches Zentrum München, Ackermann-Gemeinde.

A study of the limits of multilingual literary expression in print culture. Beginning with the insight that multilingual literature defies simple translation, Brian Lennon examines the resistance multilingual literature offers to book publication. Looking closely at the limit of multilingual literary expression and the literary journalism, criticism, and scholarship that comments on multilingual work, In Babel’s Shadow presents a critical reflection on the fate of literature in a world gripped by the crisis of globalization.

While I. Wallerstein’s world-system theory (W-ST) is frequently referred to in literary studies (see: Moretti; Casanova; and Liu, Robbins & Tanoukhi) and cultural studies (King), A.G. Frank’s notion of world system (without hyphen) is not used in comparative literature. However, the two approaches are not competitive, but rather complementary. The article explores the applications of W(-)ST to comparative literature and studies.

The Ifugaos seem to be the only people in the world who have developed peacemaking ideology in a typically aggressive genre of oral literature. The rich literature on epic traditions worldwide portrays a highly male-centered genre of song glorifying heroic values and warlike acts. Ifugao male epics represents aggressive ideology, which it shares with all the corresponding genres from India to Iceland. But what is specific of the Ifugao epic lore is that it contains two trends. The /hudhud/, female epic tradition of the Ifugaos, is a unique specimen of peacemaking, even pacifist ideology in epic form. This ideology has developed in the peak of headhunting period, i.e. it is genuine, not imposed by the influence of other cultures as, for instance, the motives of regret that appeared in Kalinga Ullalim under the influence of Christianization and American "order".

This essay traces the history, current state, and potential future of comparative literature. The great expansions have coincided with aspirations for international understanding. The term first emerged after the Napoleonic wars. The field soared in the late 19th century, became a discipline after the Second World War, and experienced its most vigorous growth (of departments and programs) in the U.S. during the Vietnam War.

Comparative literature has always worried its supporters as well as its skeptics. At the same time it has experienced a constant crisis within. In each episode it has responded by enlarging its purview and self-definition. Thus in the late 20th century it transcended the European literatures that had long been its bedrock to embrace East-West literary and cultural relations in ever-broader outward orbits, encompassing eventually first Edward Said's orientalism, then Homi Bhabha's deconstructivist postcolonialism, and finally Gayatri Spivak's eclecticism. The models that served during the extended pax americana seem poorly suited to terrorism, war, and globalization. Supranationalism cannot be lightly readjusted to fit transnationalism. But comparative literature can and will survive, so long as balances persist between theory and practice, so long as interdisciplinarity does not come at the cost of disciplinarity, and so long as the indivisible relationships uniting humanism, humanities, and humaneness are not forgotten. While comparative literature retains its emphases on language-training and critical skills, and while it satisfies desires of students to transcend boundaries culturally, interpretatively, and otherwise, it will not only always remain alive but even often thrive.

Στην παρούσα ανακοίνωση υποστηρίζεται ότι η δημιουργία του είδους του νεοελληνικού
χρονογραφήματος από το λόγιο Κωνσταντίνο Πωπ (1848) συνιστά μια ρηξικέλευθη
ειδολογική επινόηση που διεμβολίζει το λογοτεχνικό κανόνα της εποχής μέσα από ένα
σώμα 45 κειμένων δημοσιευμένων υπό τον επίτιτλο «Έργα και Ημέραι» (1848-1855) στο
δημοφιλές οικογενειακό περιοδικό Ευτέρπη. Η κατά τον Φώτο Πολίτη «επικίνδυνος
καινοτομία» του νεοελληνικού χρονογραφήματος έγκειται πρωτίστως στο ότι στην
περίπτωσή του η λογοτεχνική συγγραφική δράση κατασκευάζει ένα καινοφανές είδος του
οποίου οι αισθητικές συμβάσεις διαμορφώνονται εγγενώς από το νέο και ιδιάζον
πολυτροπικό περιβάλλον του (περιοδικού τότε) Τύπου.
Θεματικά, μορφικά και επικοινωνιακά το «ανυπάκουο» χρονογράφημα του Πωπ κλονίζει
με τον αιρετικό ειδολογικό κανόνα που εισάγει τις βεβαιότητες της λογοτεχνικής
παράδοσης. Προκλητικά ανένταχτο στη λογοτεχνική ταξινομία της εποχής του, με την
καλειδοσκοπική πρισματικότητα του (αναμυθοπλασμένου) επικαιρικού υλικού του και τη
μορφολογική του «αστασία», διαρρηγνύει πρωτοποριακά αλλά αθόρυβα με τον παιγνιώδη
χρονογραφηματικό τρόπο το ρομαντικό κέλυφος και τα στερεότυπα της σύγχρονής του
ελληνικής κοινωνίας μέσα από έναν αναδυόμενο πραγματοσκοπικό ορίζοντα. Με αυτές
τις αξονικές θεματομορφικές επιλογές, ο Πωπ αγκυρώνοντας ταυτόχρονα επικοινωνιακά
το αιρετικό του είδος σε ένα κοινό κοινωνικά παραγκωνισμένο, όπως είναι το τότε
γυναικείο κοινό, δημιουργεί νέες αναγνωστικές συνθήκες και νέο αναγνωστικό ορίζοντα.
Έτσι με την αισθητικών προδιαγραφών κειμενική κατασκευή του ο Πωπ διαρρηγνύει
ουσιαστικά διά του Τύπου τον κλοιό των κατεστημένων ειδών (διηγήματος-
μυθιστορήματος), των οποίων οι ειδολογικές συμβάσεις δεν του παρέχουν την ευελιξία
διαρκούς παρακολούθησης του κοινωνικού «αειμετάβολου» ορίζοντα της εποχής του,
μιας και η ρητή απώτερη πρόθεση του πρώτου έλληνα χρονογράφου είναι η καίρια
συμβολή του στην κριτική ανατομία της ελληνικής κοινωνίας και την επί της ουσίας
πρόοδό της. Αυτή δε η «άλλη», καλλιτεχνικής απόβλεψης, χρονογραφηματική θέαση του
κόσμου, ανατρεπτική των στερεοτυπικών αντιλήψεων, λειτουργεί αντιστικτικά προς τη
δεσπόζουσα πληροφοριακή στόχευση του γενέθλιου συγκείμενου του Τύπου.
Η γέννηση του χρονογραφήματος συνεπώς προκαλεί μια αισθητή ρωγμή στο λογοτεχνικό
κανόνα της απελεύθερης Ελλάδας του 19ου αιώνα εγκαινιάζοντας αυτό που θα
μπορούσαμε να ονομάσουμε “ποιητική του Τύπου”, την ποιητική δηλαδή των
εφημεριδογενών ειδών, η οποία διαφοροποιείται καινοτομικά από τις αισθητικές
συμβάσεις της λεγόμενης «νόμιμης» λογοτεχνίας. Κοντά δε στο αμφίσημο και
ακροβατικής ισορροπίας (κατά τον Νικόλαο Επισκοπόπουλο) χρονογράφημα, θα
εμφανιστεί στον ελληνικό Τύπο στη συνέχεια το «απολλώνειου» χαρακτήρα είδος της
επιφυλλίδας όπως και το «διονυσιακού» στίγματος είδος του ευθυμογραφήματος.

In an increasingly globalised and globalising world, „culture‟ appears as „an important determinant of subjectivity‟ and, consequently, of creative expression (Beautell 2000). With this in mind, Tötösy de Zepetnek (1999) prompted researchers to merge the comparative study of literature with that of cultural studies, embracing what he designated the new „comparative cultural studies‟ approach. If we are to accept Tötösy de Zepetnek‟s challenge, however, as I argue in this paper, it would be better to adopt a transcultural theoretical paradigm more apt to deal with the cultural complexities of the twenty-first century mobile age. Not only does „transculture/ality‟ – the combined notion of „transculture‟ (Epstein 1995, 2009) and „transculturality‟ (Welsch 1999, 2009) – appear to be endowed with the kind of dynamic non-linear nature and flexibility most needed in dealing with the fast- changing patterns and transformations in cultures and literatures, but it also seems to promote a new „borderless‟ comparative methodology. In doing so it marks an attempt to move away from nationalist stances and the insistence on the periphery–centre, colony– empire, ethnic–mainstream, pure–hybrid dichotomies with which comparative studies (especially within a postcolonial perspective) have been so far associated. It also offers the possibility of overcoming the nihilistic, self-defeating nature of anything „post-‟ to embrace instead the „visionary power‟ (Braidotti 2006), vitalist possibilities and new beginnings inherent in an approach that accepts the prefix proto- (starting from „protoglobal‟: Epstein 2004) when dealing with our contemporaneity.

Throughout the centuries, the Rāʾiyyah (poem rhymed in rāʾ) has been the most celebrated poem of the warrior-prince ʾAbū Firās al-Ḥamdānī (320/932–357/968). A cousin of the Ḥamdānid emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawlah, ʾAbū Firās was captured by the Byzantines in 351/962 and languished in captivity for four years until the general exchange of prisoners in 355/966, all the while producing poetic pleas to Sayf al-Dawlah, directly or through others, to pay the ransom to secure his release. ʾAbū Firās’s poetic renown rests primarily on poems of this period, termed al-Rūmiyyāt (Byzantine poems), among them the Rāʾiyyah. This study offers a first expository reading of the Rāʾiyyah, and then a second interpretative re-reading, not according to the Romanticist evaluation based on the apparent emotional spontaneity and sincerity of its erotic prelude (nasīb) and boast (fakhr), but rather from a performative perspective that interprets the poem as a finely rhetorically crafted speech act, characterized by indirection and ambiguity and aimed at securing the prisoner’s ransom and release.

When two works of literature, especially a work of fiction and non-fiction, are analyzed and reveal interconnected ideologies, it is likely no coincidence but rather a partnership of philosophies functioning together to reveal a greater truth. Such is the union between Frantz Fanon's, The Wretched of the Earth and Tayeb Salih's, Season of Migration to the North: one gives an orderly account of information while the other gives a fictional account of what that information looks like in fruition. Both texts explore the effects of colonialism in creating the " native intellectual " , another role in connection to the struggle for independence for the individual and collectively for the people or " natives ". Interestingly, Salih's novel reflects the painful results of colonialism not only through the colonized intellectual's journey and the abuse of power through the bourgeois nationalist, but through the role reversal of Mustafa as the colonizer to a group of European women. Upon these topics, both texts aid one another to bring movement, characters the audience can become invested in, imagery they cannot turn away from and enlightenment about colonialism by bringing it to life. Mustafa Sa'eed, perhaps the most fascinating character within Salih's novel, plays a quintessential role in describing the colonized intellectual, mirroring Fanon's sentiment, but more importantly, Mustafa is the very near embodiment of the description of the colonizer and the system of colonization. Fanon described colonialism as a machine, incapable of thought or reason (23) and yet, these are nearly the exact words implemented to describe Mustafa by a fellow student who had fallen in love with him, " You're not a human being. […] You're a

Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is one of his most famous works alongside The Satanic Verses, Shame, and some other great works. Midnight’s Children, in particular, has garnered critical acclaim worldwide for its attempts of reclaiming history of India and claiming the nation itself using various symbols and metaphors (cf. Mannone, 2004; Abraham, 2010). One of the most important symbols and metaphors Rushdie employs in the novel is “the Perforated Sheet,” which is also the title for the opening chapter. The perforated sheet has, indeed, generated various interpretations by a large number of interested critics. One of the many interpretations critics offer (see Grace, 2004) reveals that the perforated sheet is a metaphor of veiling, carrying various meanings on how the rhetoric of veiling is used by Rushdie to comment on religious affairs, and, ultimately it is used as a political statement, commentary and a means of finding or asserting an identity. What seems to be missing from the discussion on the perforated sheet is the fact that the perforation can also be interpreted as a means of unveiling India. If Naseem Ghani’s body—the body that is unveiled through the perforated sheet by Doctor Aadam Aziz—is the metaphorical India, the perforation or the hole of the sheet is a “peep-hole,” a lens through which India can be seen, understood and loved. With a big question of how Rushdie identifies India with Naseem’s body and a perforation on a sheet, this paper attempts at revealing Rushdie’s representation of India and his efforts of claiming what constitutes “India.” A close reading of the text reveals that the fragmented body of Naseem, as unveiled through the perforation of the sheet, represents India as a fragmented nation, both literally and metaphorically. In addition, the perforation offers a way of looking at India, not as a wholesome unity, but in parts—in fragments. Just like Doctor Aziz who loves Naseem (and her body) in fragments but not in her wholesomeness, it is safe to say that loving the diversity of a nation is dissimilar to loving the nation as a unity. Furthermore, the perforated sheet unveils women’s position in the narration of the nation and in the nation itself. The way Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children unveils India and represents the nation through “imagined midnight’s children” can be read as Rushdie’s way of using the narrative to (re)claim his (imagined) India.

In-depth study of Brazil in Children and Young adult literature from the mid-18th century to the mid-20th century. The examined texts are French, German and English, from the end of the 19th century on we also some have Portuguese texts, mainly directly written for schools in Brazil. Even though nearly all genres of young adult literature are represented in the chosen segment, early 19th century texts rather focus on sentimental stories, later in the 19th century on adventure-stories. The fictional texts nevertheless are based on authentic travel literature and natural histories. French texts are sometimes sentimental stories about slavery or adventure stories. US-American texts, some of them dime novels, focus on the masculinity of the young US-Americans going to Brazil in search of adventure and personal development. In German texts the personal experience of young adults coming from the bourgeoisie or striving often to reconquer a lost place in good society is central. Later the German colonization in Southern Brazil becomes an important motive, however from a European perspective, even if some authors had lived in Brazil. There is only one German text written by a German living permanently in Brazil (Wolfgang Ammon, Hansel Glückspilz, Curitiba 1926). The Portuguese texts representing republican values of the recently created Republic (abdication of Emperor Pedro II in 1889, Republican constitution 1891) are part of a Republican project of writing morally adequate fictious and informative reading books for school children  and giving them basic information about their own country. Despite all prejudices some texts exhibit about foreign people, black, mestizo or indigenous population and the often prevailing idea of Brazil as uncivilized land (mainly the Amazonian region), all these texts are important for the Brazilian image abroad or among young Brazilians. Some books are also adressed to adult people, for instance some German novels in the 19th century, warning about the difficult situation German settlers had to face in Brazil.




Vorliegende in zwei Teilen nur online erschienene Arbeit versucht das Brasilienmotiv in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur von den Anfängen im 18. Jahrhundert bis circa 1920 (die deutschen  Bücher  bis  1945)  zu  untersuchen.  Dabei  werden  Texte  in  Deutsch,  Französisch,
Englisch ausgewählt, ab dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts liegen auch portugiesischsprachige Bücher  vor,  aus  Portugal  und  Brasilien,  überwiegend  für  den  Schulunterricht  vor  Ort geschrieben. Eine eigenständige Kinder- und Jugendliteratur gibt es in Brasilien erst mit dem Werk von Monteiro Lobato, das ab den 1920er Jahren entstand und kurz als Ausblick behandelt wird. In Brasilien selbst erschienen in dem Zeitraum nur ein deutschsprachiges Jugendbuch Hansel Glückspilz von Wolfgang Ammon, Curitiba 1926 und einige englische Jugendsachbücher. 

Die  Analyse  mündet  in  einen  komparatistischen  Versuch,  die  wesentlichen  Motive  und Erzählstränge zu gewichten und dabei  vor allem  die  Frage zu klären,  inwieweit die soziale Realität  des  Landes  verarbeitet  wird,  oder  nur  Stereotypen  vor  der  Folie  einer  skizzierten
couleur locale tradierte Motive der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur in brasilianischem Ambiente situiert haben. Es wird sich  im  Übrigen zeigen,  dass die zahlreichen Bücher  mit  Brasilienthema durchaus einen repräsentativen Querschnitt  der Entwicklung des Genres Kinder- und
Jugendbuch in dem Zeitraum darstellen. Natürlich sagen die Texte auch viel über das europäische  bzw.  us-amerikanische  Selbstbild  und  das  als  Erziehungsziel  propagierte  Ideal  einer gewünschten Entwicklung von Heranwachsenden aus.

Teil 1 behandelt die theoretischen Grundlagen der Studie und die Analye der Werke, in Teil 2 (in derselben Datei) finden sich inhaltliche Zusammenfassungen der wichtigsten behandelten Werke und ihrer Hauptmotive.  Eigene Kapitel sind der Geschichte Brasiliens und der Illustrationsgeschichte der Bücher gewidmet.

The book contains two theoretical chapters (one about contemporary comparative studies and the other one about the intertextual approach in comparative literature) and four other chapters which apply the intertextual-comparative method to such authors as: Michel de Montaigne, Thornton Wilder, Terence,  Christa Wolf, Eugene Ionesco and Marin Sorescu.
The book is written in Romanian.

This paper organizes traditional and modern literary standards and values into objective assessment matrices to establish frameworks for examining contemporary masterpiece poetry within the contexts of the changing roles of literary consumers as well as those of arbiters of literary taste.

TABLE :
* Préface de Daniel-Henri Pageaux (p. 7)
* Avant-propos (p. 11)
* Introduction (p. 13)
Parcours historique et extension géo-critique de ces appellations
De l’intérêt de distinguer entre réalisme magique et réalisme merveilleux
I. THÉORIES (p. 35)
* La théorie esthétique du Magischer Realismus de Franz Roh (1925) (p. 37)
* L'impasse théorique des manifestes culturels d'Alejo Carpentier sur le real maravilloso (1948-75) (p. 43)
* Le "réalisme merveilleux" selon Jacques S. Alexis et Irlemar Chiampi (p. 71)
1. Le Réalisme Merveilleux des Haïtiens (1956) (p. 71)
2. Le realismo maravilloso (1983) (p. 82)
* Le "réalisme magique" redéfini en tant que mode narratif par Amaryll Chanady (1985) (p. 87)
* Redéfinition d'un "réalisme merveilleux" distinct du réalisme magique chanadien (Scheel 1991) (p. 101)
II. POÉTIQUES (p. 121)
* Le réalisme magique de Marcel Aymé à Gabriel García Márquez (p. 123)
* La "première manière" de Giono ou le réalisme merveilleux (p. p. 149)
* Trois réalistes-merveilleux antillais : Alejo Carpentier, Jacques S. Alexis et Jean-Louis Baghio’o (p. 163)
* Le réalisme merveilleux dans Le Hameau de William Faulkner (p. p. 205)
Bibliographie chronologique par domaine littéraire (p. 225)
Table (p. 255-56)

This thesis is a thematic analysis of two major themes in the poetry of Sylvia Plath: Death and rebirth. The idea is to look at selected poems by Plath without taking into account biographical data. The thesis investigates death as perfection, the act of dying and the performative aspect of rebirth. It also takes a closer look at the meaning of the color red and the movement upwards (the ascent) and the silence that proceeds them both.

La literatura de Castelnuovo muestra una extraordinaria
capacidad para repensar lo que Rancière
llama la «división de lo sensible» poniendo en
cuestionamiento la distribución de posiciones a
través de una serie de estrategias narrativas que se
revelan eficaces. Ellas plasman configuraciones de
la experiencia que dan lugar a nuevos modos del
sentir y construyen subjetividades que exhiben la
cara oculta de la modernidad; descubren los detritus
de la gran ciudad, el horror de los procesos
de modernización. Mi interés se orienta a ubicar
los retazos de estéticas que, entrelazándose en los
textos, materializan dicho cuestionamiento. En
Tinieblas, por ejemplo, el naturalismo teratológico
se potencia con ciertas líneas del folletín. El
uso que hace Castelnuovo del género es muy particular
porque si bien representa situaciones típicas
y se apropia de protagonistas claves, no aparece
el sistema de significados que configuran el
género. Los cuentos de Tinieblas no ocultan una
realidad segunda velada ni pretenden ninguna
búsqueda moral. Las fuerzas éticas han quedado
vacantes y los sujetos permanecen como vestigios
de la escoria vomitada por el capitalismo.

The evolution of comparative literature has been revealing, for more than a century, a sinuous process of self-definition: as of the beginning of the 20 th century, it has been emerging like a diverse set of research, with studies covering "international literary relations", from a historical perspective in line with the established tradition of founders and eventually building a comparative poetics, whose necessity and legitimacy are nowadays acknowledged. As far as its specific field is a "tertium comparationis, that does not belong to any of the studied texts" – or, we may add, to none of the domains to which it is associated in an interdisciplinary way – but "maintains relations with each of these", general and comparative literature is being mistaken for a "methodological utopia" (Pageaux 2000: 35). This (also) involves a relatively unrestrictive delimitation of the object and working methods (Wellek 1965: 282-295; Étiemble 1963), with all the positive connotations or the opposite ones associated with this state of fact. At the "crossroads of certain sets", each with its particularities, comparative literature beneficially feeds on these very "interferences", "meetings, exchanges" (Pageaux 2000: 34 – 35) between literatures and between domains of study. However, its very flexibility – available for constant assimilation and adaptation – determines the problem of a rigorous comparatist "methodology", founded on a coherent theory (Greimas & Courtès 1979: 49), to remain yet unsolved. The contributions of Étiemble (1958; 1963), Munteano (1967) or Marino (1988; 1998), among others, built around the concepts of "invariant" and literary "constant" have thus shaped, as of the middle of the 20 th century, a completely up-to-date research programme – yet unfinished – able to associate literary and intercultural studies, comparative literature and (inter)cultural anthropology. Resurfacing, at about the same time, the "intersemiotic" relations between literature and arts, Jakobson (1963) foreshadowed, in turn, today’s multi- and intermedial studies, even the latter’s crossing with the wide domain of comparative literature, as it is now globally understood: like an eminently interdisciplinary and – how else if not – intercultural domain. As a form of reverse ekphrasis, a piece of music or a dance may re(-)present a literary text. This paper proposes an analysis on the measure in which the semio-narrative categories and the Greimasian actantial model are relevant for the understanding of choreographic discourse as reverse ekphrasis. In particular, the study considers choreographies inspired by literary (pre)texts or pre-established narrative frames. In dance, gestural statements can be narratively semantized, caught – and thus clarified – within a story and within a constitutive aesthetics of ambiguity.

This essay is an extension of my other, "The Legend of the Learned Man's Android," in that I query whether the posthumous attribution of robot-making to living persons just stops in the nineteenth-century, or emerges in different ways in the twentieth. The story attaches, it seems, to individuals who are prominent enough to have acquired cult status, like Descartes. The legend fractures, though, and emerges differently with famous men like Stephen Hawking (who appeared on a Star Trek episode as a holograph of himself). Why have the Learned Man and his robot disappeared?

This paper, while locating Ezeulu's tragic experience within the framework of Aristotelian conception of tragedy, argues that Ezeulu's descent from heroism to madness in Arrow of God hinges less on his stubbornness and failure to recognize that no man can defeat his kinsmen and their gods in one fight but more on the tragic injustice arising from the crack in his armour. Approaching the work as a tragedy, the paper examines Ezeulu's heroic capabilities embodied in his truthfulness, fearlessness, and firmness, all of which are juxtaposed with the tragic trials that culminate in his lunacy. The final realisation that the deity which he has served with great devotion at personal peril has connived with the same people whose burden of guilt he has borne on his wide back for many years, to humiliate him is the height of tragic injustice. It is this sense of utter solitude and the apparent meaninglessness of his immense powers that drive him mad. This paper suggests that given the greatness of soul and the unbending devotion with which he has approached his priestly vocation, his mutilation and the terror which finally tears him apart becomes apalling. The paper concludes that Ezeulu, constrained by the movement of necessity, speaks and acts in the language of the gods. He is compelled to be the arrow; to shoot the arrow and to catch the arrow in his own wide chest. If Ezeulu learns this fact at the final moment of his mutilation, then his destruction becomes at once defeat and victory, submission and transcendence.