Literary Comparison Research Articles

Women’s Empowerment in Local and Global Fiction: From Toba Beyond

This study explores women's empowerment in literature, focusing on the interplay between tradition and modernity across different cultural contexts. Employing comparative literary analysis, this research examines Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid and Mangalua by Idris Pasaribu. The methodology involves thematic and narrative analysis, where thematic analysis identifies key motifs related to empowerment, resistance, and gender roles, while narrative analysis examines how each character's story arc reflects broader societal norms. Through these analyses, the study highlights how each protagonist navigates societal expectations and challenges gender norms within traditional and modern frameworks. Findings indicate that both novels use women’s empowerment as a lens to critique and reshape cultural expectations, offering insights into gender roles across varied societies. The study concludes with recommendations for further research on cross-cultural gender narratives, acknowledges the limitations of focusing on only two novels, and suggests broader literary comparisons for future studies.

Empress Theodora of Byzantium Through the Lens of Ancient Female Archetypes

This paper evaluates the historical reception of Byzantine Empress Theodora through the lens of her contemporaries and societal expectations. As Theodora was empress of the Eastern Roman empire during the spread of Christianity, she must be seen through the lens of biblical themes as well as through Roman literature. A prevalent Roman example for ideal femininity is found in Lucretia: a noblewoman who toppled the Etruscan kings with her honor. After she was violated, Lucretia chose to expose the perpetrator and end her life rather than live sullied. With such mythos surrounding a woman who chose her honor over her life, it is no wonder Theodora was received with shock. Theodora spent her early years as an actress, meaning she earned much of her living through sex work. Another strong Roman literary comparison comes in the form of Medea. Medea represented the antithesis to feminine ideals because she had murdered her kin. More than anything, familial duties rested upon a wife or mother in a Roman household, and a woman like Theodora who was, inaccurately, rumored to have orchestrated the death of an illegitimate child. Although the rumor is false, it represented a fracture between Theodora and the expectations her society had for her. Finally, in her Christian contemporary, Mary Magdalene, Theodora was viewed as redeemed. Just as Mary did in the Gospel of Luke, Theodora went from "sinful woman" to queen and a dedicated wife. She embodied the story of redemption that is so often told in Christianity.

Comparative Analysis of the Treatment of the Alcestis-Stuff by Euripides and by Wilder

This is the starting point of the following analysis: Life and death belong indissolubly together, but nobody of us knows what is waiting for us when we will have died. According to Christian religion the dead shall resurrect again and start immediately into an eternal life full of happiness in an unknown atmosphere without any sorrows and any problems to overcome. The ancient writers, that lived before Jesus Christ, had at hand an underworld as the realm of that god that is responsible for death. In very rare and exceptional cases a very deserved dead is given the allowance to enter again into his former earthen life. This procedure of bringing a dead person back to life might be a kind of deal between deities and mankind in this way that another person had to die and then to live in the underworld instead of the doomed person. This stuff is a subject-matter of legends, fairy tales and finally of classical drama. The heroes of the drama are Admetus and Alcestis – a royal couple; Admetus is doomed to death and his wife Alcestis wants to die instead of her husband. This treatise is written by an author who is as well a lawyer as a philologist. The treatise uses modern methods of literary comparison, that the author did learn at the examples of ancient texts and modern texts at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Saarland (Germany). The comparison between the Euripides-version and the Wilder-version is not an end in itself, the comparison aims to show the given literary differences based on the history of the development of the Alcestis-stuff in the light of the fact that the ancient text is the source for the modern text. Thus it becomes once more clear that the texts of old Greek authors do live on in a figurative sense until modern times. Wilder himself is a modern American author who consciously sought connection to antiquity, also because he did go through very intensive university courses in archaeology. This connection to ancient Greek literature, of course, makes modern American literature very attractive for European readers and for readers from other areas of the world.

Intertextuality of selected Arabic and Western literary works

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the literary-cultural impact of Arabic literature on Western literature. This research focuses on three literary comparisons taken from works that belong to Arabic and Western literature by means of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the target textual data. The study chooses to address the following items: the Spanish play by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), La Doncella Teodor which has a similar Arabic version among the Arab tales of the Arabian Nights, the literary influence of the story of Zarqa al-Yamamah on Shakespeare’s play Macbeth and the literary mirroring of the Arabic story of Solomon and the Angel of Death onto Marquez’s novel Flee to Samarra by unveiling the aspects of the literary impact of each Arabic literary item. The study illustrates elements of intertextuality and functionality that close the gap between text and culture on each spectrum as well as between the Occident and the Orient by looking at the degree of similarity between these stories. This study contributes to offering insights into the literary intertextuality between Arabic literature and Western literature (Spanish and English) while also sheds light on the cross-cultural perceptions between the two forms of literature by examining the textual, cultural and psychological aspects of each extract compared with each other.

Naples Yellow Revisited: Insights into Trades and Use in 17th-Century Sicily from the Macro X-ray Fluorescence Scanning of Matthias Stomer’s ‘The Mocking of Christ’

In a recent non-destructive analytical campaign at Museo Civico, Castello Ursino, in Catania, Italy, several paintings in the permanent collection were investigated by MA-XRF scanning, with a special focus on Matthias Stomer’s production. On one depiction of the Mocking of Christ (ca. 1640) donated to the municipality of Catania by G.B. Finocchiaro in 1826, the analysis documented the use of Naples yellow. Sb with Pb was detected in yellow areas of the Mocking of Christ, but not in his work Tobias healing his father. This finding possibly suggested an early use of lead antimonate yellow in South Italy, although it is generally accepted that this pigment was introduced in painting in the eighteenth century. Further details on his technique and later conservation treatments are provided, as well as literary comparisons with the artistic production during the same period, in Sicily and elsewhere. A systematic study of Stomer’s works, for example examining paintings produced while he was in Naples or Rome, might determine whether this material choice depended on local availability. Overall, it would shed light on his technique, as well as on the history of Naples yellow in southern Italy and beyond, before this pigment became so popular in the eighteenth century.

INSIGHTS OF THE MARRIAGE IN QATARI LITERATURE: A READING OF THREE SHORT STORIES

Arabist scholars have started quite recently to pay attention towards the fascinating Gulf literary production. However, Qatari literature remains one of the most under investigated subjects, especially in Europe, despite its interesting aspects and remarkable development. Through the literary comparison of three short stories, namely al-Ḫuṭwa al-aḫīra (The Last Step) by Umm Akṯam, Ṣafā’ ar-rūḥ (The Purity of Soul) by Nāṣir Ṣāliḥ al-Faḍāla, and Ḥarām ʻalayk (Shame on You) by Muḥsin Fahd al-Hāǧirī, this article aims to provide a thematic analysis of some insights of the marriage in Qatar. Through the short stories we will be able to explore the relationship between men and women related to the social local issues affecting the community at the time of writing.

From Miṣbāḥ al-Umma to Iqāmat al-Shuhūd: An Historico-Literary Analysis of Muḥammad Riḍā Jadīd al-Islām’s Refutation of Judaism

Abstract The Iranian Jewish scholar Rabbi Mullā Āqā Bābā (d. 1849), who converted to Twelver Shiʿi Islam in 1822, is known to modern scholars solely through a posthumous lithograph version of his refutation of his former religion, which was published in 1875 under the dual title Manqūl al-Riḍāʾī and Iqāmat al-shuhūd fī radd al-Yahūd (“The sayings transmitted by Riḍāʾī” and “The stand of the witnesses to refute the Jews”). This article aims to shed new light on this book and its author(s) by studying two hitherto unstudied manuscripts of the work, which predate the lithograph version. It also seeks to highlight the role of later editors in transmitting Mullā Āqā Bābā’s writings to subsequent generations under different titles and in variant forms. Through a literary comparison of the manuscripts and the lithograph version, we try to distinguish the urtext from several layers of modifications made by later scribes and editors.

Parody in Literature: A Culture-Determined View

The integration of the author into the cultural context is a two-faceted problem. In the post-information age, literary parody is regarded as a way of socio-cultural communication. The article features the congeniality of two chronologically distant works of science fiction against their contemporary context, namely Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia and Loss of Breath vs. Ray Bradbury’s Emissary and There Was an Old Woman. This pioneering research is an attempt to trace how the genre of science-fiction short story changed from the age of European Gothic to the era of mass literature, as well as to define the role of the cultural and social context of the New World in this process. The author reduced the short stories into two conditional pairs to demonstrate the hidden connections between the two sets. The methods of narrative analysis, literary comparison, and the theory of intertextuality revealed a multiple latent presence of other texts. In his Ligeia, E. A. Poe borrowed the genre conventions of the English Gothic novel while parodying the grandiloquent style of the French Romantic literature and the rhetoric of fear typical of the German Gothic style. R. Bradbury, in his turn, imitated the style and subject matter of Poe-esque extravaganzas while parodying the plot composition and artistic language employed by his older contemporary H. P. Lovecraft. Ultimately, the study revealed the evolutionary similarity of the two poetics of parody. In their early career, both Poe and Bradbury mocked the style of popular magazines. Later, both writers came to the parody of the literary classic and focused on high examples of parody art. Poe and Bradbury contributed to the development of the genre of parody in the XIX and XX centuries, respectively. The article marks the ten-year anniversary of Ray Bradbury's death.

The Art of Persuasion: A Sociocultural and Literary Comparison of Two Speeches of Reuben and Judah in Genesis, with Suggestions for Translating for Africans

Two speeches in the book of Genesis, one by Reuben and the other by Judah, are made to secure the release of Benjamin from their father Jacob in Canaan. The first speech fails while the second succeeds. The aim of this article is to identify the sociocultural and literary reasons behind these outcomes. It also aims to suggest ways of translating these texts into African languages and for African audiences that do justice to the realities in the texts. Careful analysis of the words and rhetorical features of the speeches is conducted in the light of other narratives of Jacob, his wives, concubines, and offspring in the Hebrew Bible. This analysis informs the conclusions of the paper: Judah succeeded where Reuben had failed because of his personal standing in the clan and because of his precise use of facts and the persuasive power of his speeches.

The Technique of Repetition in the Poems of Farhad Pirbal and Foroughi Forukhzad

This research is entitled "The Technique of Repetition in The Poems of Farhad Pirbal and Foroughi Forukhzad" by benefiting from the principles of the French school in the science of literature comparison, one of the most important elements of poetry is the poetry of both poets, the technique of repetition, as a prominent principle and embodiment of the structure of inner music in new poems in general and the poetry of both poets in particular. The comparison between the two poets seems to be due to the fact that, despite the fact that the poetry experiences of both poets are very similar in many ways, this is a valuable focus on the science of literary comparison, on the other hand. The repetition technique is seen as a prominent symbol of the poetic style of both poets in terms of belief, which we believe is a fully aware process and is worth considering by the French school. That is why, despite the repeated types of repetition by both poets, we have pointed to the similarity and co-ordination of the worldview of both poets, and we have proved to what extent pirbal's poetry experience has been influenced by The Worldview of Forough Farrokhzad.

Differences in knowledge expression in teaching Vietnamese literature for international students

The article focuses on eight differences in the process of academic interpretation of Vietnamese literature for international students as opposed to teaching Vietnamese students. The first is to explain the course outline in detail and with simple vocabulary, the second is to classify students into cultural areas and develop a strategy for softening lectures on culture, third is to quantify Vietnamese vocabulary (literary terms) in a lesson, fourth is to thoroughly apply cultural and literary comparisons in teaching and learning, fifth is to respect the initiative and creative spirit of international students, sixth is to apply the Kaizen philosophy to encourage students to understand the lesson, seventh is to provide detailed material for each lesson with selected references, and eighth is to pay special attention to linguistic and literary practices inside and outside the classroom. Those eight differences directly affect the teaching method and quality of teachers, as well as the learning efficiency and the participation of foreign students when studying Vietnam, its language, and its literature.

Current Weight Status of Sexually Assaulted Pediatric Female Patients in an Emergency Department Setting.

Background: The relationship between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and childhood obesity (CO) is unclear with studies reporting conflicting results in female populations. This study aims to assess the association between suspected CSA and current emergency department (ED) weight status when compared with trauma patients. Methods: This is a single-center retrospective case-control study that utilized pediatric ED data (2016-2018) from identified female patients (6-17 years old) with a chief complaint of sexual assault and trauma registry patients. Focus was on female patients for literary comparisons. Two weight measurements were calculated based on available height data: BMI-for-age and weight-for-age. Nonparametric testing and binary logistic regression were utilized. Results: There were 2044 study participants: 1454 (71.1%) cases and 590 (28.9%) controls. Cases were older, underrepresented minorities (URMs), and carried public insurance (all p-values <0.001). Using BMI-for-age, patients with a sexual assault complaint had a 67% increased odds for CO after adjusting for age, URM status, and insurance type [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.67 (95% confidence intervals [CIs] 1.07-2.62); p-value = 0.03], whereas the weight-for-age metric increased the aOR odds by 58% [aOR = 1.58 (95% CI 1.14-2.17); p-value = 0.01] when compared with pediatric trauma patients. Similar results were found in a sensitivity analysis using patients matched on age and URM. Conclusion: Our data demonstrated an association between suspected CSA and CO. More research is needed to identify the biopsychosocial implications for this relationship and the potential to augment clinical care.

De zwembroek van de apostel Petrus

The present article shows how in late antique literature Christianity and classical culture are intertwined like grapevines, by offering a literary comparison between Nonnus of Panopolis’ Paraphrase of the Gospel of John and his Dionysiaca. It gives an example of the way in which Nonnus’ spirit is present in both works, the former a biblical epic dictated by the rules of the paraphrase, the latter an exuberant free-flowing creative work on the pagan god Dionysus. After a brief sketch of the cultural context and the paraphrasing technique, I analyse Nonnus’ metaphors, relating them to the Gospel of John on the one hand and to the Dionysiaca on the other. I then demonstrate how Nonnus turns a simple remark about the apostle Peter jumping into the water (John 21:7-8) into a full-blown and vivid epic narration (Paraphrase 21.35-54). The swimming trunks of Peter show that the same writer’s blood pulses through both the Paraphrase and the Dionysiaca.

An Official of the Lower and Middle Levels of the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century: Scientific and Literary Comparison

An Official of the Lower and Middle Levels of the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century: Scientific and Literary Comparison

Homer and Euripides: Remarks on Mythological Innovation in the Scholia

This paper analyses two exegetical strategies adopted by ancient scholars to explain Euripides’ mythological innovations and variations with respect to Homer through a selection of scholia. The first approach considers Euripides a (mis-) reader of Homer. The dramatist regards an epic passage as the reference text, but fails to understand its wording correctly: therefore, he uncritically reproduces the model, even though inspired by a genuine impulse to emulate; this circumstance de facto equates the tragedian with a sort of exegete and represents his deviation from the epic text as the locus of an implicit (erroneous) interpretation. The second approach evaluates the work of Euripides, comparing it with the Homeric poems, by means and in the light of concepts of literary criticism. The tragedian creates a good or bad product depending on whether his innovation achieves a certain poetic result: an implausible or unrealistic description of a character is contested, whereas a strategy to enhance the emotional impact of the dramatic moment is recognised and perceived as a careful and conscious artistic operation, hence possibly praised. Keywords: ancient scholarship, exegetical activity, Greek scholia, literary comparison, literary criticism

Variations of a Story: A Narrative and Literary Comparison of Johann Peter Hebel’s Unexpected Meeting and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Mines of Falun

This article, through close textual analysis, compares the oral and literary dynamics of two narrative pieces: Johann Peter Hebel&amp;rsquo;s Unexpected Meeting (1811) and E.T.A. Hoffmann&amp;rsquo;s The Mines of Falun (1819). Against a background of their almost coterminous birth and death dates, respectively 1766-1826 and 1776-1822, and the close publication dates of these narratives, the line of argument explores the individual approaches of Hebel and Hoffmann as they flesh out the same story in completely different ways. It argues that both authors follow their own aesthetic principles, the former influenced by Enlightenment values and the latter mediating the preoccupations of German Romanticism.

Taras Shevchenko and Tatar Zabarzhada: creative interpretations of relationships (by the works literary Shevchenko studies)

The article is part of a systematic research project “Intimate and love discourses in the Ukrainian literary Shevchenko studies”; these issues have not yet been the study subject of works about Taras Shevchenko in various genres. A number of Shevchenko studies works state that this topic has been “sacrificed” for more than a century to show the social life of the Ukrainian genius, and this in turn led to a certain impoverishment and simplification of his image in general, and in biographical works in particular. The study notes the peculiarities of Shevchenko’s relationship with women during his exile and military service. It is noted that the history of the poet’s relationship with the Tatar girl Zabarzhada, about who extremely sparse documentary and memorable information has been preserved, its interpretations in the works of Shevchenko’s biography have a number of characteristic features inherent in this genre formation. The study particularly emphasizes the significant art role of artistic conjectures and fictions in the creation of the relationship between Shevchenko and Zabarzhada, and points to different levels of their artistic embodiment in different works. A certain evolution of the interpretation of the analyzed history in the epic works of the 1960s and 1990-2010, under the condition of lack of creative nonfreedom and liberty, is traced. The artistic embodiment of the history of Shevchenko and Zabarzhada in the novels of “Taras’s Ways” by O. Ivanenko, “And Dark Nights… And Maiden’s Caress” by A. Tsvid, in the dramatic story of “Angry God” by M. Bratan, and also for literary comparison, in the novel of “Akin Theresa” by Russian B. Vadetsky, are analyzed in more detail. The study contains information about the structural features of artistic and biographical texts – generic genre, chronotope, documentary phenomena.

Nonencounters ‘in the wake’: re-inscribing a Black Transpacific in Tanin no kao and La Muerte de Artemio Cruz

This article draws from Black critical theory and critical race studies to explore how the relationship between the wound, the body, and the role of trauma in literary text can be reposed as a relationship to racial inscription in two novels, Abe Kōbō’s Tanin no kao (The face of Another, 1964) and Carlos Fuentes’s La Muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz, 1962). In these terms, the article explores the function of injury in these literary texts as it relates to their representations, or fictionalizations, of Blackness. The article deploys a critical approach to transpacific literary comparison that does not draw from naturalized connections – termed a framework of ‘nonencounter’ – to discuss how the questions of race and Blackness in both novels re-inscribes the particular histories of colonialism and the transpacific entanglements of antiblackness that shaped dominant discourses on the national subject and cultural identity in Mexico and Japan. 1

Karate as a means of improving the physical condition of children

The article is devoted to the analysis of the use of karate in the system of physical education of middle school children. The research of leading specialists on the use of karate has been studied and areas that need new research and development of variable module "karate" in secondary education for adolescents have been identified. Objective of the study is to substantiate theoretically the use of karate in the system of physical education of schoolchildren to improve physical condition. Research methods include the analysis of data of scientific-methodical and scientific literature, official documents, idealization, abstraction, induction and deduction; methods of theoretical research (generalization of literary sources, synthesis, comparison and systematization of scientific sources, materials from the Internet resources). The results of the study: it has been found that one of the modern and effective means of improving the physical condition of children of different school ages are karate tools that require fundamental study, justification and adaptation to use in physical education for children of different school ages and genders. Conclusions: karate is a modern and progressive type of martial arts that meets the new criteria and requirements of the educational program of general secondary education and is an effective means of harmonious development of the child's personality. Unfortunately, the use of karate in physical education classes for middle school children has not been addressed by any domestic scientist, who pushes to find a scientific justification for the need and effectiveness of the use of karate in the school curriculum.

Multicultural Little Italy: A Literary Comparison of Canadian and US Urban Enclaves

Drawing on Paul Moses’ An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians (2015), this article explores the history and literary reflection of multicultural cities. Particularly, Louisa Ermelino’s novel The Sisters Mallone (2002) challenges accepted views of certain urban enclaves as ghettos. This assumption obscures cross-cultural relations and renders superficial the term multicultural as only a mosaic of discrete cultures living together. In this respect, a comparison to official multiculturalism in Canada discusses the complex nature of identity and belonging. A unique case study is Quebec, as is reflected in the position of the trilingual writer and the affiliation to world literature. This article is divided into two parts. Firstly, it analyzes a literary text that looks at US ethnic relations beyond conflict and segregation. The second part, using Italian/Canadian literary history, reflects on Canada as a multicultural country characterized by cultural diversity yet where cultural difference entails unequal power relationships such as regarding migrants and migrant literature.