Early Literary Research Articles

Early Japanese Literature from Kojiki to Kaifuso: Subject Matter and Compilation

This paper attempts to introduce the early Japanese literature, historically. In this attempt, it covers the early modes of writing Japanese literature, use of Chinese for writing Japanese literature/history, the creation of Kana script system and its subsequent usage by the later writers. The paper deals with the emergence of early canonical literary works such as ‘Kojiki’, ‘Nihonshouki’, ‘Fudoki’, and ‘Kaifuso’, their subject matter and modes of compilation. It also discusses the existing comparative literary research undertaken so far to provide an idea for further work in this area. And this paper excludes the canonical text, ‘Manyoshu’ as there are a plenty of scholarly works and a direct translation of Volume ten of Manyoshu already available in Tamil.

Estebanillo González - A New Perspective on the Last Pícaro

ABSTRACT Estebanillo González is the last Spanish picaresque novel, but its eponymous protagonist rarely features in the discussions on the genre in the way other male characters, Lazarillo, Guzmán or Pablos do. In this article, drawing on earlier literary criticism and historical research concerning religious diasporas in Early Modern Europe, I offer a new analysis of the protagonist’s possible converso origins. The protagonist’s attitude towards his alleged hidalguía questions the relevance of social status. In the second part of the article, I argue that behind the protagonist’s jokes and puns hides religious scepticism aimed in particular at Counter-Reformation techniques of casuistry. Both hidalguía and Catholic practices, fundamental aspects of Spanish society, are therefore undermined. Estebanillo, as the last picaro, offers his own original vision of the self in the world and as such should join the picaresque trio.

SHAKESPEARE’S MASTERY OF PLOT AND COMEDY IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

It is a well-known fact that William Shakespeare, just like many of his contemporaries, was influenced by earlier literary and non-literary sources while he was writing his plays. However, Shakespeare did not remain true to the sources by which he was inspired neither in terms of content nor form. Much Ado About Nothing, which he wrote by making use of the features of New Comedy genre that had emerged in the Ancient Greece, is undoubtedly an indicative of his mastery of plot and comedy. The playwright, while utilizing the genre of New Comedy, brought novelties to the play showing his genius and he knitted, so to speak, the plot structure in a conscientious manner. This study aims to analyse the mastery of Shakespeare in creating the plot structure and comedy, to show the features of the New Comedy he made use of and to investigate the elements which are purely Shakespearean in Much Ado About Nothing.

중국 문학인의 눈으로 본 3·1운동 ―연극 〈산하루(山河淚)〉를 중심으로

“Tears of Mountains and Rivers” is a drama with the theme of the March 1st Movement, which was created by Hou Yao, a student of Southeast University at that time. It is also the earliest literary and artistic work with the theme of the March 1st Movement. The purpose of the play is to “describe the spirit of the Korean independence movement, and make an outcry for the oppressed nations in the world, and give a sharp warning to the imperialist careerists.” After its publication, the script of “Tears of Mountains and Rivers” was welcomed by all walks of life in China, reprinted many times and staged publicly throughout the country, which played an important role in spreading the spirit of the Korean independence movement and call for the Chinese people to save the nation.

Museumizing Slavery: Living History in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

AbstractThis essay examines Colson Whitehead’s novel in relation to the museumizing of slavery that has gained momentum since the 1990s, focusing in particular on the Living History exhibition practice in which the Underground Railroad has played a vital part. Taking as my point of departure Whitehead’s signature move of building narrative worlds based on the logic of literalizing metaphor, I argue that his literal rendering of the Underground Railroad casts the novel as a grotesque tour of the US racial history. Structured as a train ride that transports readers to different historical sites, the novel at once stages and travesties the Living History practice of materializing the past in all its concrete particularity. I argue that Whitehead’s literalizing move also deviates from earlier literary efforts to stage a visceral, affective confrontation with the history of slavery. Responding to the heightened visibility rather than the absence of slavery from public memory, the novel casts into bold relief the historical frameworks (of American freedom stories and up-from-slavery narratives of racial advancement), pedagogical aims (of racial reconciliation and pluralist inclusion), and aesthetic strategies (of affective identification and cathartic confrontation) at play in current commemorations and exhibitions of slavery.

The Place Of The Sekasubhodaya In Sanskrit Literature And The Style Of Story Telling

A literature in Considered to be a mirror of the Society. Be it in Verse on in mixed it is remarkable seen that a social order or formation encompass historical, political, religious elements and by proper analysis or dissection some conclusion can be made. That is why the Scholars take the literature one of the fact finders.
 This book proves its gravity as it touches the materials of early Bengal literary and culture withfirmbeliefand undoubtedly preserves some old tradition and gossip about the Pala and Sena ruling in Bengal before the coming of theturks. A container of miscellaneousstories that were Current in the country reminds us some of the stories of“Vetalapancavimsati” and a few stories of some historical importance 'sekasubhodaya' celebrating the auspicious coming of a Muslim saint in a countrywhich did not know Islam, is a first literary record in Bengal that purpose to honourpir. The overall view of the book extends the essence ofhistoricity enshrouded by a few pseudo historical verses, some anecdotes, historical persons such as Laksmanasena, Umapatidhara, Govardhana Acharya, Halayudha Misra, Vijoysena, Rampala.

메타인지전략 기반 유아문학활동 개발이 예비유아교사의 메타인지, 교사효능감 및 사회적 문제해결력에 미치는 영향

메타인지전략 기반 유아문학활동 개발이 예비유아교사의 메타인지, 교사효능감 및 사회적 문제해결력에 미치는 영향

“To Transcribe Them in a Fair and Legible Hand”: Hartford Female Seminary's Handwritten Newspapers

ABSTRACT The School Gazette (1824–26) and The Levee Gazette (1828), handwritten newspapers produced by students at Hartford Female Seminary, comprise a previously overlooked archive of texts worthy of serious scholarly consideration. The wide-ranging content of the gazettes, coupled with their insights into nineteenth-century women's education and early American periodical culture, suggests their broad appeal to scholars in multiple literary and historical fields. The gazettes, this article argues, represent a distinctive form of early nineteenth-century American authorship and literary production through their mixture of personal, academic, and public literacies. This article also highlights the potential value of the digital humanities, both as a tool for conducting research on the gazettes and as a way to make them accessible to a wider range of scholars, educators, and students by creating digital editions of all eighteen issues of The School Gazette and The Levee Gazette.

The Earliest Literary Reference to Manchester Pudding?

The Earliest Literary Reference to Manchester Pudding?

A Study on the Elderly Problems in early 21stCentury Korean Literary Works

A Study on the Elderly Problems in early 21stCentury Korean Literary Works

Toward an Innovative Poetics: Wang Changling on Yi 意 And Literary Creation

Abstract This article reveals the coherent theory of literary creation hidden within the multivalence of the term yi in Wang Changling's (ca. 698–ca. 756) writings on poetry. A close and intertextual reading demonstrates how Wang deftly appropriates various Daoist and Daoist-inspired notions of yi 意 to illuminate different phases of literary creation. Comparisons with the term's adaptations by earlier literary and calligraphy critics further accentuate Wang's unique and innovative approach. Looking into a hitherto neglected Buddhist source, the author uncovers a Buddhicized yi-xiang-yan 意-象-言 (conception-image-word) paradigm, one that allows Wang to move beyond the theories of Lu Ji (261–303) and Liu Xie (ca. 465–ca. 522). Borrowing the Buddhist sense of yi and yishi 意識, Wang demonstrates the creative mind's receptivity to the richness and nuances of the world, followed by its dynamic transformation of what it has absorbed in quietude. The result is a much more detailed view of the different phases of the creative process—one that leads to a new appreciation of its poetic results.

Balancing the Perspective, a Look at Early Black American Literary Artistry

Balancing the Perspective, a Look at Early Black American Literary Artistry

Women of Paris, World Literature, and a Counter-Mythology of the Metropolis in Manuel Ugarte’s Early Literary Work

AbstractThis article examines the critique of the Latin American exile in Paris in the under-examined early literary work of Manuel Ugarte (1875–1951). Ugarte’s critique is contextualized here within the tradition of the French capital as a locus of production for the tradition of ‘world literature’ and as a point of convergence for the desiring subjects of modernity. Ugarte’s writing highlights the role of women and of aesthetic femininity to critique the social and aesthetic ambition, egotism, and disjunctive social experience of marginal subjects exiled in the metropolis. For theoretical support the article draws on the concepts of nomadism (Noyes) and empire (Hardt and Negri), on discussions of the Hispanic-American modernista tradition in Paris (Colombi, Pera, and Siskind), and on critical responses to Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters.ResumenEste artículo examina la crítica del exilio latinoamericano en París que surge en la poco estudiada obra literaria temprana de Manuel Ugarte (1875–1951). Contextualizada aquí dentro de la tradición de la capital francesa como punto de convergencia de los sujetos deseantes de la modernidad y como punto de producción de la tradición de la ‘literatura mundial’, la escritura de Ugarte destaca el papel de la mujer y de la feminidad estética para criticar la ambición social y estética, el egoísmo y la experiencia social disyuntiva de sujetos marginales exiliados en la metrópoli. Apoyo teórico se fundamenta en los conceptos de nomadismo (Noyes) e imperio (Hardt y Negri), de las discusiones de la tradición modernista hispanoamericana en París (Colombi, Pera y Siskind), y de las respuestas críticas a La República Mundial de las Letras (Casanova).

The Realist Impulse and the Future of Postcoloniality

This essay describes a trend in contemporary Third World writing characterized by a “realist impulse.” The realist impulse is a transition in representational mode, style, and/or medium that entails a new textual engagement with the contemporary world, evident in gestures such as stories set in the present rather than the past, the trimming of modernist, metaphorical, and metafictional language for a more stripped-down and less ostensibly self-conscious aesthetics, and/or the claiming of a new political urgency in both nonfiction and fictional writing alike. This impulse is evident in a range of new literary and cultural productions since around 2000 in India and across the Third World and marks the contemporary moment by registering the inadequacy of earlier literary trends in deliberate ways. This essay seeks to illuminate the contours of the realist impulse through readings of two contemporary novelists: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria) and Chetan Bhagat (India). Despite coming from different countries and political positions, both authors break open existing paradigms in postcolonial literature and represent a new imagining of the potential relationship between center and periphery outside those paradigms.

The Armature of the American Novel: The Antebellum Sketch and Tale in Literary History

This essay calls attention to the genre of the sketch, which played a critical role in the early nineteenth-century US literary market. Later when developments in printing technology made it easier to publish longer works, Hawthorne, Melville, and Stowe used the sketch as the basis for hugely important mid-century novels.

Aesthetics, Feeling, and Form in Early American Literary Studies

Aesthetics, Feeling, and Form in Early American Literary Studies

“Wolf’s Justice”: The Iliadic Doloneia and the Semiotics of Wolves

This article treats representations of the wolf in the Greek archaic and early classical literary and visual sources (with glances forward to later accounts). Using a close reading of the Iliadic Doloneia as a point of departure, it argues that wolves in myth, fable, and other modes of discourse, as well as in the early artistic tradition, regularly serve as a means of signaling the loss of distinctions that occurs when friend turns into foe and an erstwhile philos or “second self” betrays one of his kind. Prominent in the discussion are two further issues: the generic confusion or oscillation that characterizes so many textual and artistic versions of the tale, as well as the loss of distinction between two roles that normative representations more regularly contrast, those of warrior and hunter, martial victim and animal prey. Within the Doloneia, warfare proves indistinguishable from the hunt.

Proust's market, war, and meterology, or how to negotiate the unpredictable

There is no science of economics, no science of military strategy, no science of meteorology that will allow anyone to predict the crash of the stock market, the tragic unfolding of wars or the occuring of a natural disaster. For Proust, who in August 1909 had claimed to have both started and finished a long novel, with its neat Time Lost–Time Regained structure, the intervention of the war five years later, which exacerbated the volatility of the stock market, and acted with the raw unpredictability of natural disasters, called into question his earlier literary strategy, forcing him to compose and deviate from his original plan and welcome the “saving inexhaustibility of surprise” (Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Weather in Proust. Durham, NC and London: Duke UP, 2011).

Antisemitism and Israel in British Jewish fiction: perspectives on Clive Sinclair’s Blood Libels (1985) and Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question (2010)

Recently Howard Jacobson’s Booker Prize winning novel The Finkler Question (2010) and Peter Kosminsky’s controversial TV mini-series The Promise (2011) have forcefully re-introduced the issue of Israel to British Jewish cultural creativity. Both need to be understood not only in the context of contemporary British Jewish cultural creativity but also of the earlier literary engagement with Israel in British Jewish fiction. Focusing in particular on Clive Sinclair’s Blood Libels (1985) and Jacobson’s novel, this article traces notions of Israel in British Jewish fiction since its establishment in 1948 to the present day.

The Schoolgirl trills of Zuzanna Gincburżanka

The article is devoted to the youthful lyrics of Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917–1944), a Polish poet of Jewish descent and a victim of the Holocaust. She was brought up in Rivnne in Volyn, in the atmopshere of social, moral and artistic changes in the 1920 s. The young poet touched upon various aspects of modernity in her earliest literary works written for the secondary-school magazine „Echo School”. Her work is a defense of the youthful lyric as a form adequately expressing emotions and identity. It is also a defense of biography, an important source of literary creation and a context of reading.