bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Simulation-Optimisation Approach to Stochastic Inventory Control with Perishability
Authors: Jackson Ilya
Published: December 2019

In order to tailor inventory control to urgent needs of grocery retail, the discrete-event simulation model with realistic perishability mechanics is proposed in the paper. The model is stochastic and operates with multiple products under constrained total inventory capacity. Besides, the model under consideration is distinguished by quantity discount, uncertain replenishment lags and lost sales. The paper presents both mathematical description and algorithmic implementation. An optimisation framework based on a genetic algorithm is also proposed for deriving an optimal control policy. The proposed approach contributes to the field of industrial engineering by providing a simple and flexible way to compute nearly-optimal inventory control parameters.
Earthworm population ecology; Guyana, S A
Authors: Persaud Reshma
Published: December 2019

Earthworms are regarded as the bio-indicators of soil quality and are perhaps the most significant regulators of soil structure and organic matter content in a variety of terrestrial soil ecosystems, paving the way for sustainable green agriculture and land rehabilitation. Due to the steady increase in industrialization and shifts in global climate, their population is now more susceptible to change/decline as a result of the strains placed on soil ecosystems by agriculture, mining and deforestation. This research aimed to and successfully established the composition of earthworm populations present in Guyana while exploring their relationship with the biogeographical regions and pedobiological components of their respective ecosystem. Earthworms and soil samples were collected from 15 sites per natural region after which they were taxonomically identified following methodological dissections which yielded 68 distinct species. Of the four natural regions, the earthworm population of Highland Region was found to be the most diverse, rich, even and dense. Earthworm abundance, epigeic abundance, endogeic abundance, anecic abundance and species richness among the four natural regions of Guyana, were all of statistical significant difference, likewise, earthworm abundance in the various climate and soil types along with disturbance were of statistical significant difference. It was found that epigeic earthworms were significantly affected by phosphorus (0.01), moisture (0.01) and calcium (0.02) while anecic earthworms were significantly affected by magnesium (0.04), and the degree at which these affect the various ecotype is different among natural regions. This study has proven with conviction that earthworm population structure varies depending on the biogeographical and pedobiological factors present within any respective terrestrial ecosystem.
Sustainable Urban Transport and the Level of Road Noise – a Case Study of the City of Bydgoszcz
Authors: Szopińska Kinga
Published: December 2019

Road transport in cities is one of the main sources of air and noise pollution, lowering the attractiveness of areas of sensitivity, influencing the quality of life and the ability to meet the basic needs of users. The reconstruction of the existing road network and introduction of a new, alternative type of transport can radically change the acoustic conditions occurring in a city. As a result of this, an assessment of the noise nuisance of a fragment of the city of Bydgoszcz – a city located in the northern part of Poland – which had undergone changes connected with transportation, was carried out in the work. The influence of a newly-built tram route “Bydgoszcz-Fordon” on the acoustic conditions occurring in its surroundings was assessed. The studies were carried out in two periods of time (2012 and 2019), corresponding to various spatial states of the terrain. The results confirm that the introduction of an alternative transport solution contributed to a decrease in the level of road traffic noise. This occurs as a result of improved road conditions on modernized road segments, the integration of transportation networks and a decrease in the share of individual road vehicle transport. It was also confirmed that a well-designed tram route can influence changes in transportation habits of users and have a positive effect on the attractiveness of residential areas. This is in line with the concept of sustainable urban transport.
A role for phagocytosis in inducing cell death during thymocyte negative selection
Authors: Kurd Nadia S , Lutes Lydia K , Yoon Jaewon , Chan Shiao Wei , Dzhagalov Ivan L , Hoover Ashley R , Robey Ellen A
Published: December 2019

Autoreactive thymocytes are eliminated during negative selection in the thymus, a process important for establishing self-tolerance. Thymic phagocytes serve to remove dead thymocytes, but whether they play additional roles during negative selection remains unclear. Here, using a murine thymic slice model in which thymocytes undergo negative selection in situ, we demonstrate that phagocytosis promotes negative selection, and provide evidence for the escape of autoreactive CD8 T cells to the periphery when phagocytosis in the thymus is impaired. We also show that negative selection is more efficient when the phagocyte also presents the negative selecting peptide. Our findings support a model for negative selection in which the death process initiated following strong TCR signaling is facilitated by phagocytosis. Thus, the phagocytic capability of cells that present self-peptides is a key determinant of thymocyte fate.
Development, calibration, and validation of a novel human ventricular myocyte model in health, disease, and drug block
Authors: Tomek Jakub , Bueno-Orovio Alfonso , Passini Elisa , Zhou Xin , Minchole Ana , Britton Oliver , Bartolucci Chiara , Severi Stefano , Shrier Alvin , Virag Laszlo , Varro Andras , Rodriguez Blanca
Published: December 2019

Human-based modelling and simulations are becoming ubiquitous in biomedical science due to their ability to augment experimental and clinical investigations. Cardiac electrophysiology is one of the most advanced areas, with cardiac modelling and simulation being considered for virtual testing of pharmacological therapies and medical devices. Current models present inconsistencies with experimental data, which limit further progress. In this study, we present the design, development, calibration and independent validation of a human-based ventricular model (ToR-ORd) for simulations of electrophysiology and excitation-contraction coupling, from ionic to whole-organ dynamics, including the electrocardiogram. Validation based on substantial multiscale simulations supports the credibility of the ToR-ORd model under healthy and key disease conditions, as well as drug blockade. In addition, the process uncovers new theoretical insights into the biophysical properties of the L-type calcium current, which are critical for sodium and calcium dynamics. These insights enable the reformulation of L-type calcium current, as well as replacement of the hERG current model.
EphrinB2 regulates VEGFR2 during dendritogenesis and hippocampal circuitry development
Authors: Harde Eva , Nicholson LaShae , Furones Cuadrado Beatriz , Bissen Diane , Wigge Sylvia , Urban Severino , Segarra Marta , Ruiz de Almodóvar Carmen , Acker-Palmer Amparo
Published: December 2019

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is an angiogenic factor that play important roles in the nervous system, although it is still unclear which receptors transduce those signals in neurons. Here, we show that in the developing hippocampus VEGFR2 (also known as KDR or FLK1) is expressed specifically in the CA3 region and it is required for dendritic arborization and spine morphogenesis in hippocampal neurons. Mice lacking VEGFR2 in neurons (Nes-cre Kdrlox/-) show decreased dendritic arbors and spines as well as a reduction in long-term potentiation (LTP) at the associational-commissural – CA3 synapses. Mechanistically, VEGFR2 internalization is required for VEGF-induced spine maturation. In analogy to endothelial cells, ephrinB2 controls VEGFR2 internalization in neurons. VEGFR2-ephrinB2 compound mice (Nes-cre Kdrlox/+ Efnb2lox/+) show reduced dendritic branching, reduced spine head size and impaired LTP. Our results demonstrate the functional crosstalk of VEGFR2 and ephrinB2 in vivo to control dendritic arborization, spine morphogenesis and hippocampal circuitry development.
A multilayer circuit architecture for the generation of distinct locomotor behaviors in Drosophila
Authors: Zarin Aref Arzan , Mark Brandon , Cardona Albert , Litwin-Kumar Ashok , Doe Chris Q
Published: December 2019

Animals generate diverse motor behaviors, yet how the same motor neurons (MNs) generate two distinct or antagonistic behaviors remains an open question. Here, we characterize Drosophila larval muscle activity patterns and premotor/motor circuits to understand how they generate forward and backward locomotion. We show that all body wall MNs are activated during both behaviors, but a subset of MNs change recruitment timing for each behavior. We used TEM to reconstruct a full segment of all 60 MNs and 236 premotor neurons (PMNs), including differentially-recruited MNs. Analysis of this comprehensive connectome identified PMN-MN ‘labeled line’ connectivity; PMN-MN combinatorial connectivity; asymmetric neuronal morphology; and PMN-MN circuit motifs that could all contribute to generating distinct behaviors. We generated a recurrent network model that reproduced the observed behaviors, and used functional optogenetics to validate selected model predictions. This PMN-MN connectome will provide a foundation for analyzing the full suite of larval behaviors.
C-mannosylation supports folding and enhances stability of thrombospondin repeats
Authors: Shcherbakova Aleksandra , Preller Matthias , Taft Manuel H , Pujols Jordi , Ventura Salvador , Tiemann Birgit , Buettner Falk FR , Bakker Hans
Published: December 2019

Previous studies demonstrated importance of C-mannosylation for efficient protein secretion. To study its impact on protein folding and stability, we analyzed both C-mannosylated and non-C-mannosylated thrombospondin type 1 repeats (TSRs) of netrin receptor UNC-5. In absence of C-mannosylation, UNC-5 TSRs could only be obtained at low temperature and a significant proportion displayed incorrect intermolecular disulfide bridging, which was hardly observed when C-mannosylated. Glycosylated TSRs exhibited higher resistance to thermal and reductive denaturation processes, and the presence of C-mannoses promoted the oxidative folding of a reduced and denatured TSR in vitro. Molecular dynamics simulations supported the experimental studies and showed that C-mannoses can be involved in intramolecular hydrogen bonding and limit the flexibility of the TSR tryptophan-arginine ladder. We propose that in the endoplasmic reticulum folding process, C-mannoses orient the underlying tryptophan residues and facilitate the formation of the tryptophan-arginine ladder, thereby influencing the positioning of cysteines and disulfide bridging.
Efficacy of Two Mouth Rinses in Reducing Aerosol Bacterial Load during Ultrasonic Scaling
Authors: Anjum Angabeen , Hosein Mervyn , Butt Saima Akram , . Fakhuruddin , Fawad Bina , Abidi Fizza
Published: December 2019

Aims: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of two mouth washes namely Chlorhexidine 0.2% and 5% green tea mouth rinse when used as pre-procedural rinses in reducing the number of CFU in aerosol generated during ultrasonic scaling.

Study Design:  Quasi experimental study.

Place and Duration of Study: Department of Periodontology, Ziauddin college of Dentistry, Ziauddin University, Karachi, between January 2019 to August 2019.

Methodology: 70 subjects were recruited in this study (43 males, 27 females: age range 18-65 years with presence of minimum 20 permanent functional teeth, less than 5 mm mean probing depth and plaque and gingival score between 1-3.

Subjects were randomly divided into two groups, group 1 and group 2. Each group comprised of 35 patients. A split mouth design technique was used for collecting the aerosol samples on blood agar plates. For every patient, there was a control side and test side of mouth. Ultrasonic scaling was done on control side without pre procedural rinsing and vice versa. Group 1 used 0.2% Chlorhexidine while group 2 rinsed with 5% green tea mouthwash. The blood agar plates were then transported to Microbiology lab and incubated for counting the colony forming units (CFU).

Results: Significant reduction of CFU occurred with pre procedural rinsing with both mouthwashes as compared to non-rinsing before ultrasonic scaling and 0.2% Chlorhexidine found to be superior to 5% green tea in reducing bacterial load in aerosol samples

Conclusion: Pre procedural mouth rinsing with effective mouthwashes significantly reduces aerosol contamination and should be used before all dental procedures that results in formation of aerosols and splatters along with some other infection control protocol to minimize the risks of cross infection in clinical settings.
Aristotle's Virtue Ethics
Authors: Bowin John
Published: December 2019

Aristotle, though not the first Greek virtue ethicist, was the first to establish virtue ethics as a distinct philosophical discipline. His exposition of the subject in his
Nicomachean Ethics
set the terms of subsequent debate in the European and Arabic traditions by proposing a set of plausible assumptions from which virtue ethics should proceed. His conception of human wellbeing and virtue as well as his brand of ethical naturalism were influential from antiquity through the Middle Ages and continue to be influential today.
The Cultural Role of the
Yijing
(Classic of Changes) in
C
hina and Beyond
Authors: Smith Richard J.
Published: December 2019

The
Yijing
(Classic of Changes) is arguably the most important single work in the entire cultural history of imperial China (221
bce
–1912
ce
), and it continues to exert influence in the present–not only in China and East Asia but throughout the world. Today there are relatively few places on earth where one or another version of the
Yijing
cannot be found. What kind of a book is it, how was it read and used, how do we account for its remarkable cultural influence in China (and East Asia more generally), and how do we explain its global spread? The answers to these questions can be found by examining the way the
Yijing
evolved from a simple divination manual in the early Zhou dynasty (c. 1046
bce
–256
bce
) to a sophisticated philosophical tract in the Han (206
bce
–220
ce
). From that point onward, as a venerated Confucian “classic (
jing
),” the
Changes
had an enormous impact on nearly every realm of Chinese cultural life, from language, art, and literature to science and medicine. And as its exalted reputation in China grew, so did its appeal to other countries and cultures, including the West.
The Invisible World of the Rigveda
Authors: Smith Caley Charles
Published: December 2019

The Rigveda (also written R̥gveda) is one of the most influential religious texts in the history of the world, but is it world literature? This chapter examines what is really at stake when we translate the Rigveda, and how much we miss when we force the text to conform to our aesthetic world rather than its own. This chapter examines how the poets of the Rigveda conceive of literature, of the world, and of the relationship between the two, in an attempt to better understand what the creators of the Rigveda would consider a graceful translation.
Bridge Essay: Superhuman Humans: Heroes and Heroines
Authors: Miller D.A.
Published: December 2019

The epic hero and heroine are mortals (associated with gods but not divine – but still “larger than life”) who die, in fact look for death and the fame they crave. Their generation, birth, maturation, combats, foes, character, deeds, and death were first celebrated by warrior‐aristocracies but then became more widely known and appreciated – often with an added ethnic or linguistic boost (see e.g. Armenian, Norse, Georgian, medieval French or German, Finnish, and many other epic creations). They are some of the earliest and best examples of the human storytelling impulse, still wildly popular and widely accessible and always worth our attention.
The Making of a Chinese Critical System:
L
iu
X
ie's
Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons
(
Wenxin Diaolong
)
Authors: Cai Zong‐Qi , Zhang Xiaohui
Published: December 2019

Liu Xie's
Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons
(
Wenxin diaolong
) is often hailed as the most systematic work of literary criticism in premodern China – unrivaled both in its scope and in the richness of its insights. This chapter presents a critical introduction to Liu's comprehensive expositions on literature in this masterpiece. After a brief account of the macrocosmic specificity of Western and Chinese critical systems and the overall structure of the
Literary Mind
, it examines Liu's self‐conscious endeavor to construct a grand Chinese critical system as it traces Liu's thinking on the origins and nature of literature, genre classification, the creative and receptive processes, tradition and individual talent, rhetoric and compositional principles, as well as general literary history. The chapter ends with a survey on scholarship on the
Literary Mind
in East Asia and the English‐speaking world.
The Implied Listener: The
Jatakas
and Bardic World Literature
Authors: Shaw Sarah
Published: December 2019

This chapter describes the genre known as
jataka
(
jātaka
). It gives a brief historical account of the evolution of the Pali (Pāli) versions of these tales, discussing their content, literary style, and theme. Evolving over centuries, the
jataka
shows kinship to world bardic literatures in its dramatic immediacy, skilled deployment of repetition in verse and plots, and its heroic subject‐matter.
Jatakas
enact Buddhist doctrine, yet ensure that this is communicated to a listening audience through style as well as content; the audience and their needs helped to shape this genre as it evolved over a period of time. The demands of the audience, as much literary as religious or didactic, require Buddhist principle to be convincingly and dramatically embodied, not just discussed. The chapter suggests that these features ensure that the
jatakas
are both a literature in themselves, yet also exert an appeal that lies beyond their specifically Southern Buddhist context.
The Erotic “World” of theKamasutra
Authors: Ali Daud
Published: December 2019

TheKamasutra(Kāmasūtra) of Vatsyayana (Vātsyāyana Mallanāga) is a Sanskrit manual on the enjoyment of sexual pleasures. Composed in the first centuries of the Common Era, the treatise focuses on the sexual life of the urbane city dweller or courtier and his relations with different types of women. Despite being the first extant treatise of what came to be a distinct scientific tradition in later times that had deep connections with aesthetics, medicine, and politics, and that can tell us much about aesthetics, gender relations, and the material life of elites in early India, it has most often been glossed by modern European authors, from its first translation at the end of the ninetenth century by “enlightened Victorians,” as either a collection of exotic Oriental sexual habits or a humanist counterpoint to Christian notions of carnality.
Táin Bó Cúailnge: Ireland's Vernacular Epic
Authors: Le Blanc Julie A.
Published: December 2019

TheTáin Bó Cúailnge(Cattle‐Raid of Cooley) is one of Ireland's most important medieval texts, both at the time of its redaction and in the twenty‐first century. It draws from premedieval oral tradition and it may – though it is still a point of controversy – have been influenced by classical texts. Though it is not a vernacularized foreign text, such as theIrish Aeneid(Imtheachta Aeniasa), theTáin's story hints at the multifaceted international relationships held among redactors and scribes in the medieval period. This chapter provides a brief survey of scholarship on theTáinand offers insight into its continuing influence on modern Ireland and modern audiences around the world, particularly in the realm of children's literature.
The Poetry of
X
in
Q
iji: Patriotism and Its Discontents
Authors: Yang Zhiyi
Published: December 2019

The song lyrics of Xin Qiji (1140–1207), Southern Song dynasty poet, are often praised for their heroism and patriotism. I will introduce Xin Qiji the person, his historical context, and his innovative lyric poetry, examine the hues of proto‐nationalism that his poetry expresses, and analyze the conflicts among his lyric persona. I argue that the modern notion of “patriotism” defined as loyalty to the nation‐state has changed the narrative of literary history, leading further to the canonization of Xin's literary style in China's contemporary textbooks. The relation between biographical construction and literary criticism is thus problematized.
Marco Polo and the World Empire of Letters
Authors: Kinoshita Sharon
Published: December 2019

While the text commonly known as Marco Polo'sTravelsis often taken to typify a medieval European view of the non‐West, this chapter returns the work to its original title,The Description of the World(Le Devisement du monde), and moment of composition, the second half of the thirteenth century, to revisit the way it partakes of the interconnectedness of what Janet Abu‐Lughod described in 1989 as the premodern world system “before European hegemony.”
A Woman Flouts Expectations in the Literary World: The Case of
L
i
Q
ingzhao
Authors: Egan Ronald
Published: December 2019

Li Qingzhao (1084–c. 1155) is the most celebrated woman poet in Chinese literary history. Known best for her small but intense corpus of poems in the song lyric (
ci
) form, her way of writing about women and their emotional life points to new directions that had not been explored by the male writers of her day. Her songs about love and loneliness have traditionally been assumed to be outpourings of her affection for her husband, Zhao Mingcheng, who died in middle age. Li Qingzhao's subsequent brief remarriage proved to be deeply problematic for those who, in later centuries, clung to an idealized view of her first marriage. Controversy surrounding the historicity of her remarriage has consumed scholarship and interpretations of her works for the past 300 years. The advent of feminist approaches in recent decades has had the effect of defusing this controversy somewhat and redirecting attention to the literary excellences of her work. Those excellences have sufficed to keep her works read and admired by Chinese readers through the centuries. In later centuries, Li Qingzhao became an icon and an often‐cited precedent for women writers. She also deserves notice in global medieval history for having explored new directions in women's literary expression.
Bridge Essay: Empire: ARoman Masterwork
Authors: Anderson Sarah M.
Published: December 2019

This chapter introduces the new work done by the word and concept of “empire” in the twenty‐first century. Refracting old concerns in new ways and examining well‐known texts and objects by way of new methods, the work, study, and word of “empire” has expanded into many territories for both academics and public intellectuals.
The Popular Chinese Novel
Authors: Wan Margaret B.
Published: December 2019

The popular novel was one of the most widely available forms of reading material in China in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. This chapter defines “popular” in terms of accessibility (measured in numbers of editions) and surveys the thematic genres of the Chinese popular novel, including historical novels, military romances, scholar‐beauty romances, court case novels, tales of deities and eccentric monks, and martial arts novels. As the culmination of many older strands of oral storytelling and literature in China, these novels presented stories that were an integral part of the fabric of the culture. For these reasons, as well as the early availability of many of these works in translation outside China (in both Asia and Europe), popular Chinese novels deserve more attention as world literature.
Making it New in Tang Dynasty Poetry: Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu
Authors: Cartelli Mary Anne
Published: December 2019

Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu are considered the greatest poets of China's Tang dynasty (618–907). All three men lived during the period later known as the High Tang, coinciding with the cosmopolitan reign of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–756). Although they were more versatile writers than is generally acknowledged, in later years Wang Wei became known as the Poet‐Buddha, Li Bai as the Poet‐Immortal, and Du Fu as the Poet‐Sage, respectively symbolizing Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian approaches in their poems. Accordingly, Wang Wei was characterized as the contemplative, Li Bai as the visionary, and Du Fu as the social conscience of the age.
TheKebra Nagast: An Israelite–Christian Dynastic and National Epic?
Authors: Hendrickx Benjamin
Published: December 2019

TheKebra Nagastis an Ethiopian epic prose account, of which the final redaction in Ge'ez took place in the fourteenth century. This chapter attends to theKebra Nagast's contents, origin (language, legends, facts, manuscripts), chronology, and editions. It sketches the main themes, motifs, and interpretations as well as the epic character of the account and its influences upon past and contemporary politics, religion, and art. It focuses on the two main cycles in the epic, that of “Solomon–Sheba” and that of the “Two Kings” (or “Kaleb Cycle”), i.e. of the Roman and Ethiopian kings and their prominence in the epic. The chapter shows that theKebra Nagastis a national and dynastic epic, integrating Judaic traditions into a narrative that resonates throughout world literature.
Introduction to World Literature 1451 to 1770
Authors: Lupke Christopher
Published: December 2019

The early modern period from 1451 to 1770 represented some of the most fundamental changes in human events in world history. In Europe in 1451, one could be executed for suggesting that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and although the notion of the world as spherical had been known for centuries, a clear image of the entire globe only came into focus with the voyages and discoveries of Christopher Columbus and John and Sebastian Cabot, among others, around the turn of the sixteenth century. In China under the Ming, the empire was in constant conflict with Mongol and other forces. The South Asian subcontinent was mainly gripped by struggles involving the dominant Delhi Sultanate and the Vijayanagara Empire, south of the Krishna River. The 100 Years' War between France and England was finally grinding to a halt. In South America, outside the knowledge of European explorers, Machu Picchu was being erected by the great Incan rulers Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui and Tupac Inca Yupanqui. The seeds of globalism were sewn with exploration and navigation but conflicts between empires that sought regional domination were still the norm. By 1770, the Americas had endured well over 150 years of European occupation of various sorts, trade and communication were global, thanks to innovations in ship design and the use of the compass and gunpowder, talk of revolution and individual rights was in the air, and vernacular literature throughout the world abounded. In 300 years, humans went from entrenched regional identities, as vast as in some cases they were, to an awareness of tremendous differences and distances, even antipodal. Literature prior to the early modern period could be viewed as concentric levels of ecology known as biomes, to use Alexander Beecroft's nomenclature, of increasing size, but proximity, contiguity, and propinquity were still necessary. Literature by the eighteenth century was on the threshold of truly global connectivity where interaction no longer needed to be adjoining or incremental.
Rousseau and the Firmament of Modern Literature
Authors: Maguire Matthew W.
Published: December 2019

This chapter explores diverse dimensions of Rousseau's influence upon world literature. It surveys Rousseau's direct influence, and the appearance of Rousseau as an explicit point of reference in modern fiction and poetry. Above all, it brings to view the ways in which Rousseau's own literary and philosophical transformations inaugurate many of the abiding assumptions, preoccupations, modes of interpretation, and even metaphysical conclusions of modern literary fiction, including notions of nature, love, and authenticity. Above all, Rousseau's account of an infinite imagination has had a powerful, often a decisive influence on modern literary fiction. That this influence appears to have exhausted its creative possibilities – without any plausible alternative taking hold – suggests both the exceptional power and limits of Rousseau's literary and philosophical firmament.
Bridge Essay: Encyclopedism: Fire, Faith, and Future Learning
Authors: Rudy Seth
Published: December 2019

The history of encyclopedism entails far more than what readers now recognize as the encyclopedia. Beyond the wide array of compendia and reference works with which encyclopedism remains more closely associated, the pursuit of encyclopedic knowledge informed and was in turn informed by epic poems, travel narratives, utopian literature, and the rise and fall of empires. This chapter provides a brief survey and overview of encyclopedic texts, institutions, and ambitions from the ancient, medieval, and early modern world, beginning with the Library of Alexandria and ending with Diderot and D'Alembert's iconicEncyclopédie.
Bridge Essay: Fables and the Fantastic
Authors: Capoferro Riccardo
Published: December 2019

This chapter provides a comparative definition of fables and the fantastic, focusing on their form and themes. While the study of fables, which appear in a great variety of cultures, is useful to highlight transcultural patterns, the study of the fantastic can prove particularly fruitful in a global perspective. The genres of the fantastic are characterized by the problematic coexistence of the natural and the preternatural. They emerged in early modern Europe, spread rapidly, and were appropriated by many cultures. The fantastic has been used, in particular, to stage anxieties raised by modernization. Postcolonial authors have collapsed the opposition between the fantastic and novelistic realism with a view to breaking the boundaries of European genres.
Jingu qiguan: Fantasizing the Absent in Ming Dynasty Vernacular Fiction
Authors: Xu Xiaowen
Published: December 2019

Marvelous Stories from Present and Past, orJingu qiguan, edited by Baoweng Laoren (The Jar‐Hugging Old Man) in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), includes 40 short vernacular stories selected from two previous collections. Its commercial success and lasting popularity preserve the best and the most popular vernacular stories from premodern China, and provide source texts for modern readers to study the changing social and cultural environment in the late Ming period. Its various translations also launched the journey of Chinese literature into many non‐Chinese speaking countries, including Japan, Korea, France, and Germany.
Chikamatsu Monzaemon: Historical Drama and Love Suicide Plays
Authors: Shimazaki Satoko
Published: December 2019

Chikamatsu Monzaemon was a playwright for the early modern puppet and kabuki theaters of Japan. His image has been subject to changing notions of the world and world canons in Japan. Though in the early modern period his historical plays were more frequently staged, he is remembered today for his love suicide plays, which are often compared to the works of Shakespeare and framed as possessing world literary value. In his period pieces, Chikamatsu rewrote materials from ancient myth, court narratives, and military chronicles, making figures and stories from the historical past newly relevant. In his domestic tragedies, he turned to petty merchants and other members of the lower class torn between social obligations and personal desires. Drawing on warrior culture, literary traditions of the court, and contemporary urban life, Chikamatsu elevated puppet theater into an art form that recreated the past and engaged with the urban present.
The 1001 Nightsas World Literature: Cultural Appropriation and Collaboration
Authors: Horta Paulo Lemos
Published: December 2019

The 1001 Nightshas often been seen as the epitome of world literature, circulating outside its culture of origin and gaining in translation; yet scholars are only now beginning to understand the precise status of the story collection in its original cultural contexts and the term of its production as world literature in European letters. According to received wisdom, the tales ofThe 1001 Nightswere not a significant part of Arabic literary production, and only though Antoine Galland's French translation did the collection enter world letters. The French and English translators ofThe 1001 Nights, famously admired Jorge Luis Borges, are often cited as the veritable authors of the story collection asWeltliteratur. Recent research, however, shows an original internationalization of the tales in their ninth‐century passage from Persian to Arabic. And it reveals that Galland's famous version has an overlooked co‐author, the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab.
Journey of Knowledge in Ibn Tufayl'sHayy Bin Yaqzan
Authors: Baroud Mahmoud Nayef
Published: December 2019

The abstract philosophical novel of Ibn Tufayl (Ibn Ṭufāyl),Hayy Bin Yaqzan(Ḥayy Bin Yaqẓān), is the historically first of a series of such reflections on the nature of human behavior and learning. For though by modern psychological standards, the intellectual development of Hayy as feral child is quite impossible, Ibn Tufayl's purpose is to offer a developmental trajectory of right thinking given the absence of contrived culture and society. Ibn Tufayl attempts to show that natural reason alone can engender ethics and knowledge of the universe that is in harmony with revelation, in this case the revealed scriptures of Islam. This chapter highlights the hero Hayy's journey of knowledge on which he depends only on his reason and contemplation to discover many truths about himself, the universe, and God.
Introduction to World Literature 1771 to 1919
Authors: Ekotto Frieda , Celis Abigail E.
Published: December 2019

This part of theCompanionpoints to some of the currents in philosophy, translation practice, and cross‐cultural anthropology that laid the stakes for literary production and circulation in the period roughly corresponding to the long nineteenth century. Setting these intellectual and aesthetic debates in the sociopolitical context of imperial expansion, slavery, and revolutions, we argue that the worlding of literature in the time period went hand in hand with an “Othering” of the world. The structuring dynamic of worlding‐through‐othering manifests itself in the intellectual paradigms we deploy today. Through the seven thematic “bridges” we describe in this chapter, we suggest that the contributors to thisparttake varying approaches to situate the authors they study in this dynamic, while also moving beyond it.
Richard Burton: Foreignizing Literature
Authors: Horta Paulo Lemos
Published: December 2019

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) fashioned himself as the archetypical cosmopolite: linguistic genius, intrepid explorer, polymath translator. The pilgrim to Mecca, traveler to Salt Lake City, and explorer of the Mountains of the Moon in Central Africa was a countercultural hero, an outspoken critic of Victorian prudery and the civilizing pretensions of the British empire. Translation, he believed, was key to the cosmopolitan and the imperial enterprise; and his infamously foreignizing
The 1001 Nights
would appeal to authors from Joyce to Pamuk and Rushdie. This chapter charts the trajectory of a literary career that remains a touchstone for theorists of cosmopolitanism, world literature, and translation. It asks if the work can be disentangled from the life, Burton's cosmopolitanism from his prejudice.
Lin Shu and the Routes of World Literature
Authors: Hill Michael Gibbs
Published: December 2019

Lin Shu (1852–1924) and his collaborators served as an important conduit for world literature in early twentieth‐century China, rendering the work of authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas into Chinese for the first time. His ideas about the role of translated literature, as well as younger intellectuals' disavowal of his work, offer new lines of comparative research on translation in China and other parts of the world.
Six Records of a Life Adrift: A Unique Lyrical Memoir of Late Imperial China
Authors: Sanders Graham
Published: December 2019

Six Records of a Life Adriftis a Qing dynasty memoir written in classical Chinese by a clerk named Shen Fu (1763–?1825). It holds a unique place in the history of Chinese literature for its innovative form, lyrical narrative voice, and candid content, which deals with Shen Fu's marriage to Chen Yun, an outspoken woman with a strong sense of autonomy. Two of the records are missing, but the remaining four are each on a different emotional aspect of Shen Fu's past, and overlap temporally, thus building up a multilayered, affective account of his life, similar in structure to a classical Chinese poem. The book, first published in Shanghai in 1878, is an immensely rich resource for the study of everyday life in late imperial China, and has been published in over 100 editions in China. It has been translated into 14 languages.
Defying Borders: Anton Chekhov's Elusive Genius
Authors: Tabachnikova Olga
Published: December 2019

This chapter is occupied with the creative legacy of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) in the context of world literature, addressing the phenomenon of his continuing international acclaim. It thus discusses creative appropriation of Chekhov's oeuvre worldwide, drawing on the elusive nature of his authorial voice. Chekhov's popularity in a number of places, including Japan, China, Africa, and the English‐speaking world, is analyzed in the light of cultural constants.
The Other Woman: Mirza Hadi Rusva's
Umrao Jan Ada
and the Politics of Domesticity in Nineteenth‐Century India
Authors: Khan Maryam Wasif
Published: December 2019

Mirza Hadi Rusva's
Umrao Jan Ada
(
Umrāʿo Jān Adā
) (1899) has been read variously as Urdu's first novel or as an example of modern feminine autobiography. But the literary achievement of a work such as
Umrao Jan
is as much formal and aesthetic as it is historical. Challenging the then‐dominant perceptions of the nation and reformed Muslim piety in a post‐1857 India,
Umrao Jan
forces readers to rethink reformist edicts on morality, nationhood, and religion itself. In other words, Rusva uses the ostensibly marginalized figure of the courtesan to present Muslim life in north India as a series of contradictions that destabilize the dominant narratives of nationalism. In its time,
Umrao Jan
remained a bestseller despite its critique of the Muslim embrace of colonial modernity. Today, however, the work has been appropriated for various ends by the mainstream film and television industries of the modern nation‐states of India and Pakistan.
Splendors and Miseries of Modernity: Honoré de Balzac
Authors: Ginsburg Michal P.
Published: December 2019

In this chapter I argue that Balzac's contribution to world literature lies primarily in his description of the passage from premodern to modern society. Through a close reading of a few key texts, I discuss the representation of social mobility in his novels and of the ensuing shifts in understanding of power, wealth, language and representation, identity, poetry, and gender. I argue that in Balzac's works, celebration and critique of modernity – what I call, using his own terms, its “splendors and miseries” – should be seen, and read, as polemically co‐present.
Retrying Flaubert
Authors: Mills Kathryn Oliver
Published: December 2019

In this chapter, I will establish duality as the source of Flaubert's originality. I consider Flaubert's trial as well as the work of modern critics and novelists to observe that in some cases our view of Flaubert's posterity has been reductive. However, I use these negative examples to restore and put into relief the particular genius of Flaubert, and the full significance of his contribution to modern world literature. After close looks at the text and its context, the chapter concludes that literary irony – understood as “stable” as opposed to undermining in this instance – is the form best suited to represent the duality inherent both in a liminal period and in modernity.
Between Ideas and Practices: Bharatendu Harishchandra and Modern Hindi in Colonial India
Authors: Orsini Francesca
Published: December 2019

Hailed as the “father of modern Hindi” language and literature and one of the most brilliant and creative writers of colonial India, Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850–1885) cuts a more complex worldly figure. A modernizer who spent the last 15 years of his life tirelessly experimenting with print media, new literary genres, and modes of association, he was at the same time also a connoisseur of traditional poetry and music. An advocate and standardizer of modern Hindi, he nonetheless composed all his poetry in the earlier language of Brajbhasha and experimented with Urdu verse and macaronic English–Hindi satirical poems as well.
Machado de Assis: Beyond Brazilian Imperatives
Authors: Dixon Paul
Published: December 2019

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is a major figure of the nineteenth century, but anticipates many trends of more current literary production. Although he practiced all the major genres, his reputation now resides primarily in his short stories and novels. His writing is replete with allusions to the classics of world literature. He enjoys a small but devoted international readership, including numerous writers who have expressed their appreciation for Machado. While for the last few decades Brazilian critics have tended to concentrate on Machado's sometimes ambiguous engagement with national issues, he was never confined by nationalism and important analysts outside Brazil have helped established his more universal perspectives.
Ahmad Shawqi: At the Threshold of World Literature
Authors: Noorani Yaseen
Published: December 2019

The Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi (1868–1932) was long regarded as the greatest modern Arabic poet by many critics and in the popular imagination. Shawqi sought to draw on the prestige of the Arabic poetic tradition to fashion from it a national literature that could take its place among other national literatures. He composed poems for the Egyptian and Arabic public sphere that addressed issues of national identity as well as political and social topics. These poems were published in newspapers on a regular basis and attained great popularity. Yet writers and critics of the younger generation who adopted European ideals of the literary and world literature regarded Shawqi's work as anathema to an authentic national literature. In this conflict we see the effects of the ideal of world literature on the formation of national literatures as well as the limitations of this concept.
W.E.B. Du Bois, World Literature, and the Problem of Method
Authors: Clarke Ainsworth
Published: December 2019

Despite W.E.B. Du Bois's role in helping contemporary scholars rethink the terms of diasporic subjectivities and the manner in which the relation between disparate identities can be conceptualized, he nonetheless remains a peripheral figure in the current resurgence of interest in the notion of world literature. Du Bois's work appears principally concerned with the racial regime of Jim Crow in the United States and thus seemingly placed at odds with the question of the global that animates world literature. Yet, this view discounts the methodological challenge that Du Bois and the present rethinking of world literature foreground. This chapter argues that world literature and the work of W.E.B. Du Bois are each compelled by a methodological problematic and that it is on this point that Du Bois and world literature intersect.
Mahmoud Darwish: A Plurality of Voices for Invoking the Other
Authors: Milich Stephan
Published: December 2019

Mahmoud Darwish (Maḥmūd Darwīsh) has been one of the most prominent poets of the Arab world. Celebrated as the poetic voice of “Palestinian resistance,” he renewed his poetic vision and lyrical language time and again, transforming poetry into a means of transcending oppression and negation. Highlighting three of his masterpieces from different periods of his rich oeuvre, the chapter traces Darwish's changing visions of identity, otherness, and exile. On his trajectory from a monolithic conception of identity to a cohabitation of various forms of being in the world, Darwish's poetry creates a hospitable space for a dialogue between the other – the enemy, guest, or stranger – and the self, introducing postcolonial concerns into world literature. The chapter concludes with a note on Darwish's creation of a true humanism, emanating from a postexilic consciousness, in which the colonial condition is transcended and the human essence liberated.
Salman Rushdie and the World Picture of Islam
Authors: Ganguly Debjani
Published: December 2019

This chapter analyzes Salman Rushdie's agonistic relationship with Islam as theology and as a geopolitical ideal. It explores Rushdie's lifelong engagement with Islam as a world‐making power, and the limits and possibilities of reading his works theologically. The chapter argues that the magic realist mode that Rushdie deploys in novels such as
The Satanic Verses, Midnight's Children, The Moor's Last Sigh
,
Shalimar the Clown
, and
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty‐Eight Nights
generates a novelistic vision of Islam that simultaneously aspires to a secularization of this embattled religious faith and a return to its philosophical and cultural riches in the late medieval era. It is generative, the chapter avers, to read the
Satanic Verses
controversy less as a clash between a medieval morality and an enlightened aesthetic than as a fissure between two modes of the aesthetic, one that has the theological as its horizon, and the other a modernist secularism.
Kazuo Ishiguro's Thinking Novels
Authors: Holmes Chris
Published: December 2019

This chapter analyzes Kazuo Ishiguro's attraction to genres of speculative fiction according to a theory of world literature that relies upon epistemological limits. My contention is that this shift in his novelistic project can be understood as a career‐spanning interest in the dynamic between constraint and freedom that generic conceits force upon us in any conceptualization the world. The genre conventions of
The Buried Giant
and
Never Let Me Go
signify not unbounded fantasy, but indeed the opposite: a writer hemming his style and characters into worlds in which structures necessary for understanding have been reduced to the barest elements by which meaning might be produced. Such constraints flag a parallel concern about the way the novel can and should be read as it concerns knowledge gleaned about the world. Thinking according to the novel's limits is in this way the beginning of meaning‐making, rather than the end.
Franz Kafka: Modernism, Modernity, Myth, and Religion
Authors: Engel Manfred
Published: December 2019

This chapter outlines those features of Kafka's work which mark his specific contribution to modernist narration. Section 1 describes his prototypical narrative model as a combination of fantastic writing, parabolic narration, and internal focalization. Section 2 discusses three social models that he uses for his critique of modernity. Section 3 considers Kafka's modernist use of myth as a placeholder for a lost religious dimension of life.