bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Akbarnama: Persian Chronicle in World Literature
Authors: Bhargava Meena
Published: December 2019

Akbarnama
forms a part of the network of texts and styles of the larger literary corpus of world literature and yet it departs from them to create its own place in the genre. The text gained from its translation into English and transcended national boundaries. It thus ceased to be related to narrow boundaries of local or national literature and was transformed into common property.
Akbarnama
as symbol of learning, knowledge, and culture entails a scrutiny not only in the context of world literature but also multilingual precolonial South Asia. An outcome of Mughal emperor Akbar's bibliophile court culture, it represents the power of Persian language that in early modern South Asia was the language of the royal and the elite as well as of the clerks, scribes, and those holding minor official positions. An official history of Akbar's reign, the text is a compilation of administrative, agrarian, and institutional aspects. It is written in a hagiographical style that represents a powerful dynastic ideology that glorified Akbar as an exemplar monarch who possessed extraordinary spiritual and political powers.
Bridge Essay: World Collecting: Patronage, Spoliation, and Forms of Government
Authors: Stahuljak Zrinka
Published: December 2019

Each medieval book collection – library for short – assembles a vision of the world. Two different ways of world collecting coexist in the Western central and late medieval period: patronage and spoliation. This chapter presents two case studies linking cultural regimes to political regimes. Without positing either as a paradigm, these case studies show how the library works simultaneously as world literature and power‐grab. Royal libraries create new worlds prospectively, through patronage of new texts, and retrospectively, by selecting, redacting, and rehearsing old ones. Royal libraries thus express culture as policy and agent of politics through patronage, to envision new worlds. Others also use spoliation – the pillaging and rearranging of existing texts – to own and manipulate culture as a symbol of military conquest and domination. This chapter argues that creating and controlling texts is a way of creating and controlling worlds.
Bridge Essay: European Religious Dissent and Conflict: Their Global Repercussions (1450–1770)
Authors: Deen Schildgen Brenda
Published: December 2019

As the unity of the western European Christian world disintegrated during the Reformation, authoritarian rule rose in company with the unrest and Europeans encountered the world, from Peru to China. First, the enlarged global network included the introduction of the African slave trade in the 1450s. Second, the royal crowns of Spain (1478) and Portugal (1536) persuaded the papacy that to suppress heresy and apostasy and maintain Catholic orthodoxy they needed state control of the Inquisition. Third, the lands these explorers, adventurers, missionaries, and soldiers encountered were not empty. They met intellectual challenges (in China and Japan particularly) and opposition, and warfare in the Americas, where soon European diseases ravaged the already subjugated native people. Voltaire's philosophical probing at one extreme of the eighteenth century's age of doubt and the exercise of the Inquisition at the other demonstrate the schizophrenic asymmetry, both blind faith and dissent, accompanied by political and religious absolutism.
Samuel Richardson:Pamelaand the Modern Individual
Authors: McMurran Mary Helen
Published: December 2019

Samuel Richardson'sPamelais considered one of the earliest novels of modern individualism. This chapter reexamines the argument that Richardson, echoing the theories of John Locke, instantiates a culturally and historically specific individuality. Pamela's character shares some general features with Locke's individual, but does not reflect his original and unprecedented theory of personal identity, not least because of Pamela's insistence on the integrity of body and soul, rather than on a continuous, self‐reflective consciousness. Richardson's fictionalized self is not necessarily unique to the British eighteenth century, but may be productively compared to other periods and literary traditions. One such case is the late seventeenth‐century revival ofHayy Bin Yaqzan, the medieval Islamic tale of self as soul.
Gothic Ghosts and Gothic Mirrors
Authors: Whatley John
Published: December 2019

When seen as a discursive mode coupled with genre elements, the Western Gothic aligns with the uncountable spectral appearances found in most world literatures. While the Western Gothic has insinuated itself into almost all genres and media (poetry, novels, plays, films, YouTube clips, graphic novels, blogs, TV series), its intertextual production aligns with other literary histories and cultural precursors. When set beside Lallu Lal's
Baitál Pachísí
, Pu Songling's
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio,
or Feng Menglong's
Stories Old and New
, intriguing similarities and differences can be seen. Horace Walpole's originating
The Castle of Otranto
, Radcliffe's
The Mysteries of Udolpho
, Hoffmann's “The Sandman,” Poe's “Ligeia,”
The Fall of the House of Usher
, and “The Visionary,” or Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
share a texture that is a weave of the supernatural and fantastic threaded with a distinct note of the discursive, the essayistic, and the experimental.
Bridge Essay: “O Brave Monster! Lead the Way”: Theatricality in Drama and Performance
Authors: Hamill Kyna , Litvin Margaret
Published: December 2019

Early seventeenth‐century European plays fixate on the monstrous: the confusion of human and animal, the breaking of gender or class rules, the mixing of literary genres. Those same violations of propriety also mark the source of the theatrical, in the dreamlike blurring of illusion and reality. The monstrous can also be wondrous. The theatrical phenomenon is a hybrid of text and performance, a type of text that points beyond the merely textual. Beyond that, “theatrical reading” is a fruitful way to read not only overtly dramatic texts but also texts in many different genres of world literature. Examples from several textual and performance traditions demonstrate what is at stake when performers and audience alike allow themselves to be captured and transformed by theatrical performance – and how the literary traces or pretexts of theater allow us to read the steps of that transformation.
Story of the Western Wing: The Pinnacle ofZaju
Authors: West Stephen H.
Published: December 2019

At the end of the thirteenth century, the first fully formed ballad opera,zaju, began to emerge in North China. Stemming from a far different tradition than the dramatic tradition of the West that eventually produced Renaissance drama,zajureached its pinnacle in the fifteenth century. The play that has been the centerpiece of that tradition, theStory of the Western Wing, is the most famous love story in China, holding a place in Chinese minds similar to that ofRomeo and Julietin that of English speakers. The play has a long lineage before it, in the form of the classical tale and in “all‐keys‐and‐modes,” a form of Chinese narrative storytelling. Based on these sources, the drama itself is actually a long theatrical piece composed of five interwoven, but structurally separate ballad‐operas. As composed by the author, Wang Shifu, it exerted a powerful influence on later domestic novels, notably theDream of the Red Chamber. From its inception to modern times, its stories have been told and retold in a variety of forms of performance literature, poetry, and in visual representation. It continues to exist in a variety of forms, including popular television series. Textually, it also represents how plays moved from the stage to the page and created an enormous body of readership commentary. This play, like famous plays in all traditions and cultures, is an important part of human heritage, dealing with issues of family, marriage, sex, and love in ways that find parallels in drama, poetry, and narratives in other traditions.
Locating Zeami Motokiyo in the History of Noh
Authors: Pinnington Noel John
Published: December 2019

Since the discovery of his writings in the early twentieth century, Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443?) has been understood to be the great actor, thinker, and playwright who developed and established the Japanese art of Noh (nō) drama. The assumptions of early scholars, however, no longer hold, and more is known about Zeami's life and times than when this characterization arose. Zeami's role in the history of Noh is ripe for reassessment. This chapter surveys three aspects of Zeami's life and considers their impact on the tradition. It concludes that Zeami had less lasting influence on Noh than is generally thought, beyond the presence of his plays in the repertoire, but suggests that his value is not to be limited to Noh. His theories should be of considerable interest to actors generally, the scripts of his plays are at least as rewarding on the page as on the stage, and his writings represent an unprecedented window on the world of his time, the attitudes of élite society, and the artistic discourses in which he participated.
Indigeneity, Orality, and the New World from Montaigne to Lévi‐Strauss
Authors: Dobie Madeleine
Published: December 2019

European representations of Amerindians have predominantly been examined in light of the dynamics of colonial domination and cultural expropriation and from the more abstract vantage point of the discourse of the “noble savage.” This chapter takes a different perspective by focusing on texts that depict indigenous Americans as producers of literary culture. Approaching these representations as a prehistory of world literature, it highlights tensions between the geographical expansion of literary horizons and the reception of other traditions in light of the norms and standards of the Global North. By tracing how Montaigne's essay “On Cannibals” was cited and revised by later authors including Benjamin Franklin and Claude Lévi‐Strauss, it also illustrates continuities and historical differences in the representation of indigeneity.
Lust and Love in English Translation:Plum in the Golden VaseandThe Story of the Stone
Authors: Schonebaum Andrew
Published: December 2019

The two greatest, most complex, and among the longest premodern Chinese novels have been summarized and discussed far more frequently than they have been read, and it comes as no surprise that these masterpieces of world literature have been, until the last half of the twentieth century, reduced to a few simple ideas. This chapter details some of what makesPlum in the Golden VaseandThe Story of the Stoneso complex, some of what they have in common, and how they have been treated at the hands of English translators and reviewers. Paradoxically, perhaps, the ways in which these works have been summarized, and their reputations for being primarily about lust and love respectively, have been strikingly similar in the Chinese‐ and English‐speaking worlds.
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Authors: Burningham Bruce R.
Published: December 2019

This chapter examines the foundational impact of Cervantes'sDon Quixoteon world literature. It begins with a brief outline of Cervantes's early life, traces his struggles to build a literary career following his five years of captivity in Algiers, and notes his phenomenal change in authorial fortune late in life with the publication ofDon Quixotein 1605. The chapter then examines Cervantes's ground‐breaking novel as an early modern “bestseller” that has served for more than four centuries as a model for numerous literary, theatrical, and cinematic texts. Finally, it explores the ways in whichDon Quixote's interrelated modes of parody, idealism, and postmodernism (as both creative and interpretive frames) have tracked and informed not just the rise of the novel as a genre but also of modernity itself.
Bridge Essay: Colonial Encounters in the Worlding of Literature
Authors: Ekotto Frieda , Celis Abigail E.
Published: December 2019

Colonial encounters were not only historical moments, but narrative ones: they provided the occasion for telling stories about “here” and “there,” “self” and “other.” These narratives participated in shaping the social, economic, and political relationships between imperial nations and the people they colonized. The effects of the literary narratives of the colonial encounter continue to be felt in the lived experience of people of color in white‐majority countries, and in the relationships between the Global North and the Global South more broadly. In addition to exploring the relationships and effects enabled by literary representations of colonial encounters, this chapter argues that the narratives and counter‐narratives of colonialism articulate different modes of reading world literatures and the worlds in literature.
Rudyard Kipling: From Lahore to the World
Authors: Damrosch David
Published: December 2019

Rudyard Kipling was perhaps the first truly global writer, widely read around the world while still in his mid‐twenties. This chapter traces his rapid evolution from a local Anglo‐Indian writer to a world writer, looking at the narrative and stylistic strategies he devised to bring distant readers into the world of his Indian fiction and poetry. Kipling's global perspective, blending cultural specificity and universality, gave him a unique purchase on the tensions and the possibilities inherent in the colonial encounters he portrayed from within.
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Inauguration of the Modern Indian Novel
Authors: Chaudhuri Rosinka
Published: December 2019

The nineteenth‐century Bengali novelist Bankimchandra Chatterjee was a contemporary of the great Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and indeed of Dickens. His work rivals theirs in richness and scope. After his first novel in English, he wrote 14 Bengali novels, major works of lasting significance, essays, criticism, reviews, prose, some poetry, and edited and produced the most important literary journal of the age. His poem,
Vande Mataram
, was chosen as the national song of India after independence. While he is acknowledged as a great proponent of nationalist feeling in Bengal and in India, his greatest accomplishments are his novels that brought contemporary society and experience into the reading experience of modern Bengalis, and through translation, indeed, to all Indians. His novels are full of drama and action, their language alive and sparkling for a modern Indian writing in the regional languages. His contribution to Indian literature has stood the test of time and he will continue to be read for a long time to come.
Narrative and Genre: LocatingTanciin Chinese Literature and World Literature
Authors: Guo Li
Published: December 2019

This chapter provides an introduction to the origin and stylistic features of the genre oftanci, an exploration of the themes of women‐authoredtanci, a study of gender and nationhood inZixuji(A tale of vacuity, 1883), and suggestions for future directions for study. The chapter investigates howtanciworks as chantefable narratives expand current studies on the rise of the novel in non‐Western vernacular traditions. Probing into representations of desire, disguises, and non‐normative gendered relations, I propose thattanciallows women's temporary freedom and their negotiations between obedience and resistance under confining environments. A case study illustrates thattanciworks portray women's enactment of nationalist passions and their political agency. The chapter concludes with discussions of further themes to study, including anonymous authorship as gendered and ideological responses, early modern women's homoeroticism, translation of early modern notions of the nation, andtanciworks' representations of racialized femininity and interracial marriages.
Walt Whitman “Over the Roofs of the World”
Authors: Rumeau Delphine
Published: December 2019

Leaves of Grass, Whitman's unique collection of poems, has been the object of numerous and varied responses, which contributed to establish a transatlantic poetic field. The “poets to come” that Whitman called for engaged in vivid dialogues and debates with him. The idea of a modern poetry, grounded on immediacy and the refusal of hierarchies, as well as the invention of free verse, were central to this dynamic reception, especially in Europe and the Americas. Moreover, Whitman was seen as the inventor of a continental poetry and was a major reference in hemispheric literary exchanges. His reception also triggered more polemical debates, especially about its sexual and political stakes. Whitman was celebrated as a gay poet and was considered a socialist or pre‐communist poet, especially in Britain, in the USSR, and in Latin America. Such polemical aspects were enhanced in the United States only after this intense international reception.
Émile Zola: The Pursuit of “Truth”
Authors: Nelson Brian
Published: December 2019

This chapter describes essential features of Zola's work and its importance in world literature: the roots of his “naturalist” aesthetic in contemporary science; the conception of his great cycle of 20 novels,Les Rougon‐Macquart; the quest for “truth” – integrity of representation – that lies at the heart of his work; the controversy that surrounded his first novel of working‐class life,L'Assommoir; the hyper‐realism of his descriptions; the metaphoric and mythologizing dimensions of his writing; the Darwinian implications of his mythopoeic vision; his commitment to the “public” role of the writer, enacted in spectacular fashion through his involvement in the Dreyfus affair; and his influence beyond France.
Bridge Essay: Inalienable: Human Rights and World Literature
Authors: Deggan Mark
Published: December 2019

Since the late eighteenth century, the discourse of human rights has offered an individualistic corrective to the social orders of elite governance. Simultaneously, powerful claims have been made for the role of literature in the development of liberalism and democracy, not least with respect to the European Age of Revolutions and, more broadly, the global upheavals of the nineteenth century. In order to illustrate the Western development of rights‐based outlooks, the chapter discusses Claire de Duras's postrevolutionary text,
Ourika
, a work exploring the ways in which societal values can lead to the invisibility even of its privileged members. Further, since much of the international discourse of rights focuses upon both imperialism and traditionalism, the chapter turns to Nguyễn Du's Vietnamese poetic epic,
The Tale of Kiều
(
The Tale of Kiều
), as a means of showing how literary interest in a struggling individual or people helps readers recognize the asymmetries of traditional social regimens.
Introduction to World Literature 1920 to the Early Twenty‐First Century
Authors: Mani B. Venkat
Published: December 2019

The Introduction to this part of theCompanionhighlights some of the most tumultuous events of the last hundred years and their connections with literary and artistic production. The Introduction presents glimpses of the world in its multiplicity and plurality, registering dialogues and conflicts, connections and divisions, peaceful coexistence and violent annihilations that make the fabric of the world of the past hundred years. In addition, the Introduction discusses formal and genre‐based innovations in poetry, drama, and prose narrative as manifestations of the recurring need to imagine newness in the world. Through these innovations, which started in numerous locales and underwent global transformation, the Introduction outlines how authors and works in the last century pluralize the very term “world literature,” signaling the transition to “world literatures.” In bringing together the seven bridge themes that run throughthis part of theCompanion, this Introduction also discusses literary artifacts such as the novel – a genre most commonly associated with world literature or “global fiction” today – under the rubric “objects,” agencies of world literary circulation such as book fairs and prize committees under the rubric “institutions,” along with “readerships” that together constitute the world literary space.
Frantz Fanon: Knowing in the First Person
Authors: Boulbina Seloua Luste
Published: December 2019

Born in Martinique and living in Algeria during the struggle for independence, Frantz Fanon theorized decolonization as a process of revolution. In
Black Skin, White Masks
, he overturned the white gaze and spoke for himself, in his own terms. This experience enabled him to understand the stakes of Algeria's revolution both as a subjective (and psychological) terrain and as an objective (and political) terrain. In
The Wretched of the Earth
, Fanon not only brought to light the mechanisms of colonialism – which depend on a systematic racialization – but pointed to the roadblocks awaiting the decolonization process if conceptualized as mere independence. According to Fanon, black persons must liberate themselves from a racialization into nothingness and emancipate themselves from the Other's grip. In the same vein, the colonial territories needed to not only recover their liberty, but also uncover a genuine and full‐fledged political rationale.
The Writer's Passport: Vladimir Nabokov and World Literature
Authors: Manolescu Monica
Published: December 2019

This chapter studies Vladimir Nabokov's work in the context of world literature and examines his multiple belonging to several literary and cultural traditions, as well as his trilingualism (Russian, English, and French). It considers Nabokov's exile and his evolution from an émigré writer writing in Russian to a world‐famous writer writing in English, but who also contemplated a career as a French writer. It discusses in more detailMachen'ka(Mary),Dar(The Gift),Lolita, andAda.
Albert Camus: Still Challenging the Status Quo
Authors: Garfitt Toby
Published: December 2019

Camus is one of the most widely read authors in the world. Recent criticism has often seen him in terms of his quarrel with Sartre, or of his conflicted attitude to the Algerian War. Even though he was on the wrong side of history in that case, and his condemnation of injustice was uneven, his critical approach was exemplary, and remains so for the world of today. Contemporary Algerian writers have adopted him as one of their own, valuing his literariness as much as his worldly condemnation of political, religious, and intellectual terror. Deeply rooted in Algerian reality, Camus can be seen as a forerunner of transnationalism.
Patrick White: Creating “a Race Possessed with Understanding”
Authors: vanden Driesen Cynthia
Published: December 2019

Patrick White is Australia's only Nobel Prize‐winning novelist. He affirmed the central concern of his writing to be “the relationship between the blundering human being and God.” This concern having been born of an epiphanic experience, he felt obliged to communicate this to the world. He returned to his native Australia seeking a source of renewal after the carnage of World War II, which he felt had reduced Europe to the state of “an actual and spiritual graveyard.” Returning to writing with a new faith, he designed a literary strategy to counter the secular modern mindset that disdains the religious experience, invoking a “poetic” language and a network of images and symbols through which the experience of transcendence could be mediated to readers. His work resonated early with a world readership, though his countrymen were slower to respond. Today he remains an iconic figure on the literary landscape of Australia as well as the world.
Indonesian Dissidence and Modern Narrative Form: Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Authors: GoGwilt Christopher
Published: December 2019

Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Buru quartet is recognized as one of the world's classic narratives of decolonization. Simultaneously drawing from and unraveling the conventions of the European novel, the epic scope of its narrative is premised on a dissidence of both political and aesthetic form. The linguistic, literary, and political dissidence of Pramoedya's modern narrative style may be traced from the early work of the late 1940s, forged from the revolutionary‐nationalist experience of Indonesia's founding, to the late work smuggled out of Buru Island, where Pramoedya was incarcerated after 1965 by Suharto's New Order regime. Just as the fragmentary form of Pramoedya's early narratives persists in the later historical novels, so the historical scope of the Buru novels is implicit in the style of the early work. Both are shaped by the imperative to decolonize modern narrative form.
Federico García Lorca: Mediating Tradition and Modernity for a World Audience
Authors: Quance Roberta Ann
Published: December 2019

Federico García Lorca's work has one foot in tradition and the other in modernity, bridging the rural and the urban but also deriving a peculiar force from contradictions between the two. This in‐between status may very well be what brought Lorca and, through him, Spanish literature out of the periphery of Europe and on to a world stage. In his first mature work, Lorca interprets ancient traditions (flamenco and folksong), but he does so with a difference, using avant‐garde technique or linking desire to a foregone frustration. The balladeer figure in theGypsy Songbookmediates between an ancient community of gypsies and their “civilized” opponents. InPoet in New York, the poet seeks to mediate the loss of religious faith and the crisis of values triggered by the Great Depression. Lorca's theater starts with modernity's refusal of prescriptions for desire and a commitment to a politics of individual freedom.
August Strindberg's Exilic Modernity
Authors: Szalczer Eszter
Published: December 2019

The chapter discusses Swedish author August Strindberg as a distinctly modern writer and one of the seminal figures of the first wave of modern drama. Following a brief overview of Strindberg's experimental and heterogeneous literary output and the positioning of his work on the scene of contemporaneous cultural and literary discourses, the chapter charts Strindberg's most influential contributions as a dramatist, using examples that had a profound impact on the future development of modern drama. The discussion traces the process of internalization of drama in Strindberg's works, from his unique brand of psychological naturalism through his proto‐expressionistic dream plays to his late Chamber Plays. Strindberg's global impact and multidisciplinary legacy are also assessed.
How Bertolt Brecht Managed to Forge a Defamiliarized World Theater
Authors: Luckhurst Mary
Published: December 2019

This chapter argues that Brecht's global influence on the development of political theaters has been complex and diverse but that nuanced reception is hampered by limited translation, an exoticization of Asian countries, and an over‐focus on certain theoretical essays in the West. Free adaptation of plays timed at particular political moments in specific communities has been vitally important for dissemination, and left‐wing writers, directors, dramaturgs, and actors continue to be very important in spreading Brecht's work. Intercultural Brecht projects have increased the artistic exchange of knowledge in the mainstream but work in local non‐English‐speaking communities continues to be under‐researched.
Wole Soyinka: Art, Politics, and the (
A
frican) World
Authors: Eggan Taylor A.
Published: December 2019

I begin this chapter by revisiting the debates about authenticity that surrounded the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka's reception in the 1960s. These debates centered on Soyinka's unwillingness to merge his politics with his art, and they flared up following his public rejection of Negritude. Whereas many African writers and critics felt that Soyinka's rejection revealed his European sympathies, I emphasize the philosophical grounds of his rejection. I proceed by arguing that Soyinka's concept of “the African world” radically revises Negritude's logic and provides an alternative framework for African self‐apprehension. By the mid‐1970s, this alternative framework had become central to Soyinka's theoretical and literary output. I underscore this centrality through brief readings of two works:
Myth, Literature and the African World
and
Death and the King's Horseman
. I conclude with an alternative mode of reckoning Soyinka's status in World Literature that derives from the writer's notion of “the African world.”
“A Humanitarian is Always a Hypocrite”: George Orwell, Englishness, and Empires
Authors: Clarke Ben
Published: December 2019

George Orwell was a paradigmatically English author whose work was shaped by a variety of other literatures and histories, and whose texts achieved a worldwide audience. His work insistently locates England within global systems, in particular an international capitalism structured by imperialism, exposing the fluidity of English identity. This critical method, with its movement between the local and global, parallels the structure of politics; political practice is always specific, but can be understood in terms of abstract categories. The chapter argues that it has been possible to use Orwell's work in multiple places and struggles in part because of its movement between general and particular. His Englishness facilitates rather than restricts his international circulation. It argues that Orwell's work and its reception suggest that world literature is not a descriptive term designating texts that avoid marks of their origin but a project that explores relations and exchanges between situated works.
We Who Have Been Killed on Dark Paths: Faiz Ahmad Faiz's Internationalism and World Literature
Authors: Kirk Gwendolyn S.
Published: December 2019

This chapter provides a brief overview of the life and work of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz (Faiẓ Aḥmad Faiẓ), emphasizing his relationship to world literature and connections across the Global South during the mid‐twentieth‐century heyday of anti‐ and postcolonial movements worldwide. Particularly, it focuses on his contributions to transregionalism and transnationalism in literature and his aesthetic and humanistic legacy. Given recent debates about Eurocentrism in the disciplines of comparative literature, world literature, and area studies, I propose that Faiz offers a global literary connectedness that does not necessarily privilege the academic Anglosphere, or its particular epistemic and hermeneutic traditions. His influence on cinema and music and his massive popularity in South Asia and the diaspora destabilizes a text‐bound understanding of literary flows or nationalist categorizations of Urdu poetry. Ultimately, Faiz's legacies offer an understanding of the creative possibilities inherent in and emergent from the circulation and reception of literature.
Toni Morrison's Fiction: “Worlding” the Novel
Authors: Roynon Tessa
Published: December 2019

This chapter argues that Toni Morrison's aesthetic and her narrative technique are as transnational as her subject matter. Focusing on four novels –
Tar Baby, Paradise, A Mercy
, and
Home
– it demonstrates that her work actively and consciously takes apart the very concept of a “national literature.” Using the theories of Benedict Anderson in
Imagined Communities
(1983), James Snead's 1990 essay, “European Pedigrees, African Contaminations,” and Homi Bhabha's 1992 essay, “The World and the Home,” it suggests that Morrison's oeuvre is determinedly both pre‐ and postnational. Her work embodies the kind of world novel, or in Bhabha's terms, “worlded novel,” which it simultaneously advocates. Morrison subverts and transcends the concepts of “the national” and “nationalism” by several means: through non‐realist narrative technique; through allusions to prenational and “impure” cultures and traditions; through a committed spirituality; and through a counter‐Enlightenment conception of time.
Euripidean Tragedy: Between Myth and Individuation
Authors: Gregory Justina
Published: December 2019

The tragedies of the fifth‐century Athenian playwright Euripides do not qualify as “world literature” by virtue of their characterization, which (as is true of Greek tragedy as a genre) tends toward stylization rather than individuation. They do qualify by virtue of their enduring status, adaptability to multiple contexts, and international circulation. In the playwright's lifetime Euripidean tragedy was admired in the Greek‐speaking world beyond Athens; even the attacks on it should be recognized as a form of homage. By the century after his death Euripidean tragedy was influencing other genres, and it has remained canonical ever since, even as its reach has become global. The literary qualities of Euripidean tragedy and its afterlife in translations and adaptations both explain and presage its continuing renown.
Love and Reason in the Ghazal
Authors: Korangy Alireza
Published: December 2019

The acuity of the ghazal as embodied in the dynamics of love and reason and played out by the trifurcate of lover, beloved, and the celestial sphere ensured its endurance as the crown jewel of Islamic poetry in much of the Islamic world. Twelfth‐century Persian poets introduce the philosophical aspects of this dynamic into their poetry and very specifically into the ghazal: all ensuing linguistic adaptations follow suit. This chapter examines the love–reason relationship in the twelfth‐century Persian‐speaking world, offering first a brief glimpse into ghazal's origins and some of ghazal's defining characteristics.
Oropos
Authors: Kolotourou Katerina
Published: December 2019

The ancient city of Oropos, which may be identified with Homeric Graia (
Il
. 2, 498), lies at the border between Attica and Boiotia, on the mainland side of the Southern Euboean Gulf, opposite Eretria. Its territory, the coastal plain of Oropia with its major port at the mouth of river Asopus, extended between Attica and Tanagra (Paus. 1.34) and was easily accessed from eastern Boiotia.
Chalkous
Authors: Kroll John H.
Published: December 2019

The Greek word for a bronze coin, used most commonly for the ubiquitous small coin (diam. ca. 10–13 mm) worth one‐eighth of an Attic silver obol (or one‐twelfth of the heavier Aiginetan obol). Larger bronze coins, for example two‐ and four‐chalkous pieces, were multiples of this basic unit.
Chiliarchos
Authors: Muccioli Federicomaria
Published: December 2019

Thechiliarchoswas the chief of the royal bodyguard in the Achaemenid empire. Alexander the Great revived the title for Hephaestion and later it was used by some diadochi, with some changes (sources do not agree about it). The office ofchiliarchoswas also used with military and financial functions in the Hellenistic period.
Hipparchos (Hipparchus), son of Charmos
Authors: Berti Monica
Published: December 2019

Hipparchos son of Charmos was a relative of the tyrant Peisistratos and in 488/7
bce
became the first victim of ostracism.
Hipparchos (Hipparchus), son of Peisistratos
Authors: Lavelle Brian M.
Published: December 2019

Hipparchos may have ruled Athens jointly with Hippias after Peisistratos’ death in 528/27
bce
, but many sources imply his primacy. Most memorable was his slaying by the “tyrannicides” at the Panathenaia of 514
bce
, the basis for a vigorous denial of his tyrannical authority by Thucydides.
Hippias, son of Peisistratos
Authors: Lavelle Brian M.
Published: December 2019

While Hippias may have ruled Athens together with Hipparchos from 528/27
bce
, he was certainly sole tyrant at his brother's death in 514
bce
. He governed until 511/10
bce
when the Peisistratids were expelled from Athens. Present at Marathon in 490
bce
, he was officially execrated thereafter for leaguing with the Persians to reestablish his tyranny.
Kritias (Critias)
Authors: Németh György
Published: December 2019

Kritias (ca. 460–403
bce
) was a politician and writer in Athens, a student of Socrates, and the uncle of Plato (Xen.
Mem
. 1.12–17). As one of the leaders of the Thirty Tyrants, he overthrew the democracy (404
bce
) and subsequently was killed in the battle of Mounichia (403) as a defender of the oligarchy.
Nikias, Peace of
Authors: Roisman Joseph
Published: December 2019

The Peace of Nikias concluded the first ten years of fighting in the Peloponnesian War (431–421
bce
). It takes its name from the Athenian politician Nikias, who was one of the leading advocates of peace with Sparta.
Idios logos
Authors: Blouin Katherine
Published: December 2019

The
Idios logos
or “special account” was one of the departments of the Ptolemaic and Roman administration of Egypt.
Zenon Archive
Authors: Clarysse Willy
Published: December 2019

Shortly before World War I, about two thousand papyri were found in or near Philadelpheia on the northeastern border of the Fayyum oasis.
Kleomenes III of Sparta (Cleomenes III)
Authors: Kralli Ioanna
Published: December 2019

Asde factosole ruler of Sparta between ca. 235 and 222bce, the Agiad Kleomenes III carried out a program of radical social and political changes that shook profoundly the political establishment and temporarily succeeded in the political and military resurrection of Sparta at the expense of the Achaian League. Kleomenes was eventually defeated by the Hellenic Alliance of the Macedonian king Antigonos III Doson but the path was now open to the later reforms of Nabis.
Maecenas, Gaius
Authors: Harrison Stephen J.
Published: December 2019

Gaius Maecenas (ca. 70–8bce) was one of Augustus' closest supporters.
Gortyn
Authors: Francis Jane
Published: December 2019

Gortyn, in south‐central Crete, was settled in the end of the Bronze Age and later became the administrative capital of Crete in the Roman era. It was the site of important temples in the Orientalizing period and the Gortyn Law Code inscription in the Classical era. Roman Gortyn saw the construction of sanctuaries, entertainment venues, baths, and water systems. In the late‐Roman era, Gortyn was the location of Christian martyrdom, and after the 365ceearthquake, the city moved to the east and west; six Christian basilicas and a domestic area have been identified. The earthquake of 670cedestroyed the city.
Hierakonpolis
Authors: Friedman Renée , McNamara Liam
Published: December 2019

Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen and modern Kom el Ahmar) is a major site of the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic Period, where on‐going excavations are revealing archaeological evidence for the evolution of social complexity and urban society, as well as the practices and manifestations of early royal power, including the maintenance of a menagerie of wild animals. Votive objects, such as the Narmer Palette, and monumental structures, like the enclosure of King Khasekhemwy, attest to the site's intimate relationship to kingship and a spiritual significance which it retained throughout ancient Egyptian history. In the Dynastic period, decorated tombs of periods poorly represented at other sites (Second Intermediate Period, early 18th Dynasty and late 20th Dynasty) provide rare insights into private religion and cult practices. Nubian presence, shown by cemeteries of C‐Group and Pan Grave cultures, illuminate the cultural diversity in this southern region of Upper Egypt.
Aedituus
Authors: Holland Goldthwaite Lora L.
Published: December 2019

Anaedituus/aeditua(older formaeditumnus, alsoaeditimusandaeiditumus) is an official caretaker or guardian for a building (aedes) that houses a deity, that is, anaedes sacraor temple.
Cult clothing, Greek
Authors: Gawlinski Laura
Published: December 2019

The Greeks did not have specialized costumes intentionally created for exclusive use during cultic activity, but clothing did play important roles in ancient Greek religion. Clothing and accessories could differentiate cultic functionaries from participants, visually communicate social and cultic standing, and underscore the importance of ritual propriety. Dress was part of the lived religious experience of a worshipper, and textiles and other dress objects became a part of ritual action when dedicated to a deity.
Kataphraktoi
Authors: Whately Conor
Published: December 2019

The
kataphraktoi
(Latin
cataphracti
; later, sometimes
catafractarii
) were fully armored cavalrymen and horses serving in the Roman armed forces, though they are also found among various Iranian armies, from the Seleucids to the Sasanians.
Pertinax (Publius Helvius Pertinax Augustus)
Authors: Imrie Alex
Published: December 2019

Publius Helvius Pertinax (126–193ce) was Roman emperor in the early months of 193, following the murder of Commodus. While feted by the senatorial order, he struggled to win the loyalty of other political constituencies within the Roman state. After a reign of only eighty‐seven days, he was assassinated in the imperial palace by soldiers of the praetorian guard.
Aesculapius
Authors: Oberhelman Steven M.
Published: December 2019

Aesculapius is the Roman name for the Greek healing god Asklepios. After three years of plague, in 293
bce
the Sibylline Books were consulted; it was determined that the plague would cease only when Asklepios was brought from Epidauros. Aesculapius’ cult, which centered on healing, primarily through dreams, was both public and private in Rome. It was not as important in other Italian cities, where local gods retained the power to heal, although in other parts of the Western Roman Empire Aesculapius’ cult became popular.
Antiochos of Athens
Authors: Greenbaum Dorian Gieseler
Published: December 2019

Antiochos of Athens (
fl
. second century
ce
?) wrote important astrological treatises, now lost, which were summarized and excerpted by later writers.
Paulus of Alexandria
Authors: Greenbaum Dorian Gieseler
Published: December 2019

The fourth centuryceastrologer Paulus of Alexandria wrote anIntroduction to Astrology(Eisagogika) in 378. We know little about Paulus’ life apart from his provenance and the dedication of his book to his son Kronamon.
Technology, Egyptian
Authors: Nicholson Paul T.
Published: December 2019

The Egyptians were masters in the understanding of their environment, and knew how to extract from that environment those materials that had the properties they required to produce particular artefacts. Among their most notable products are the pyramids but also papyrus, glass, and faience.
Beer, Greek and Roman world
Authors: Sider David
Published: December 2019

Beer took second place to wine in Greece and Rome, being drunk more by foreigners, and thus useful for marking social distinctions.
Tsountas, Christos (1857–1934)
Authors: Nikolaidou Marianna
Published: December 2019

An eminent Greek archaeologist and academic, Christos Tsountas has been justly recognized as the father of Greek prehistory. His groundbreaking work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century led to the discovery and systematic research of three major Aegean civilizations: Mycenaean, Cycladic, and Thessalian Neolithic. He served as Ephor of Antiquities, fellow of the Athens Archaeological Society and the Academy of Athens, and professor of archaeology at the Universities of Athens and Thessaloniki.
FFF‐VMAT for SBRT of lung lesions: Improves dose coverage at tumor‐lung interface compared to flattened beams
Authors: Pokhrel Damodar , Halfman Matthew , Sanford Lana
Published: December 2019

Purpose

To quantify the differences in dosimetry as a function of ipsilateral lung density and treatment delivery parameters for stereotactic, single dose of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) lung stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) delivered with 6X flattening filter free (6X‐FFF) beams compared to traditional flattened 6X (6X‐FF) beams.

Materials/methods

Thirteen consecutive early stage I–II non‐small‐cell‐lung cancer (NSCLC) patients were treated with highly conformal noncoplanar VMAT SBRT plans (3–6 partial arcs) using 6X‐FFF beam and advanced Acuros‐based dose calculations to a prescription dose of 30 Gy in one fraction to the tumor margin. These clinical cases included relatively smaller tumor (island tumors) sizes (2.0–4.2 cm diameters) and varying average ipsilateral lung densities between 0.14 g/cc and 0.34 g/cc. Treatment plans were reoptimized with 6X‐FF beams for identical beam/arc geometries and planning objectives. For same target coverage, the organs‐at‐risk (OAR) dose metrics as a function of ipsilateral lung density were compared between 6X‐FFF and 6X‐FF plans. Moreover, monitor units (MU), beam modulation factor (MF) and beam‐on time (BOT) were evaluated.

Results

Both plans met the RTOG‐0915 protocol compliance. The ipsilateral lung density and the tumor location heavily influenced the treatment plans with 6X‐FFF and 6X‐FF beams, showing differences up to 12% for the gradient indices. For similar target coverage, 6X‐FFF beams showed better target conformity, lower intermediate dose‐spillage, and lower dose to the OAR. Additionally, BOT was reduced by a factor of 2.3 with 6X‐FFF beams compared to 6X‐FF beams.

Conclusion

While prescribing dose to the tumor periphery, 6X‐FFF VMAT plans for stereotactic single‐dose lung SBRT provided similar target coverage with better dose conformity, superior intermediate dose‐spillage (improved dose coverage at tumor interface), and improved OAR sparing compared to traditional 6X‐FF beams and significantly reduced treatment time. The ipsilateral lung density and tumor location considerably affected dose distributions requiring special attention for clinical SBRT plan optimization on a per‐patient basis. Clinical follow up of these patients for tumor local‐control rate and treatment‐related toxicities is in progress.
Compounding Meta‐Atoms into Metamolecules with Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Techniques
Authors: Liu Zhaocheng , Zhu Dayu , Lee Kyu‐Tae , Kim Andrew S. , Raju Lakshmi , Cai Wenshan
Published: December 2019

Molecules composed of atoms exhibit properties not inherent to their constituent atoms. Similarly, metamolecules consisting of multiple meta‐atoms possess emerging features that the meta‐atoms themselves do not possess. Metasurfaces composed of metamolecules with spatially variant building blocks, such as gradient metasurfaces, are drawing substantial attention due to their unconventional controllability of the amplitude, phase, and frequency of light. However, the intricate mechanisms and the large degrees of freedom of the multielement systems impede an effective strategy for the design and optimization of metamolecules. Here, a hybrid artificial‐intelligence‐based framework consolidating compositional pattern‐producing networks and cooperative coevolution to resolve the inverse design of metamolecules in metasurfaces is proposed. The framework breaks the design of the metamolecules into separate designs of meta‐atoms, and independently solves the smaller design tasks of the meta‐atoms through deep learning and evolutionary algorithms. The proposed framework is leveraged to design metallic metamolecules for arbitrary manipulation of the polarization and wavefront of light. Moreover, the efficacy and reliability of the design strategy are confirmed through experimental validations. This framework reveals a promising candidate approach to expedite the design of large‐scale metasurfaces in a labor‐saving, systematic manner.