bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
“Southeast Fly the Peacocks”: An Elegy for Love from Early Medieval China
Authors: Hu Qiulei 
Published: December 2019

Abstract

“Southeast Fly the Peacocks” is one of the longest poems in premodern China, traditionally believed to be written in the Jian'an period (192–220
ce
). It tells the tragic love story of Jiao Zhongqing and Liu Lanzhi, a married couple forced to separate and remarry by their senior family members. At the center of the tragedy is the irreconcilable conflict between individual free will and Confucian family duty. The poem is the literary precedent and inspiration of many great love stories later in the Chinese tradition. The plot of romantic love being destroyed by society and family bears similarities to some classic works of European literature, yet the social and familial contexts surrounding the protagonists' struggle for love are situated uniquely in a Confucian society. The poem's remarkable and nuanced treatment of the tragedy of love and creation of several compelling characters deserve a distinguished place in the classics of world literature.
Bridge Essay: Vernacularization and World Literature: The Language of Women in the World of God
Authors: Eisner Martin 
Published: December 2019

AbstractGiven Dante's prominent place in discussions of vernacularization, this chapter reconsiders the substance of Dante's theories and their relationship to his poetic practice. It proposes an investigation of vernacularization that encompasses not only the choice to write in the vernacular but also the decision to transmit those works. Taking up Dante's definition of the vernacular as the language of women, it argues that while Dante can use the vernacular in the world of God, the interventions of other mediators (scribes, editors, commentators) are necessary for the work to survive across time and communicate to future generations.
The Qurʾan (Koran)
Authors: DeYoung Terri , Mian Ali Altaf 
Published: December 2019

AbstractThe Qurʾan plays a dynamic role in the ordinary lives of Muslims whose relationship to this text is mediated by architecture and art, performative rituals, and the textual tradition of exegesis ortafsīr. This chapter places the Qurʾan in its late antique Near Eastern context but also comments on the particular ways Muslims relate to and read the Qurʾan. In this chapter we guide readers through the Qurʾan's historical background, its structure, style, as well as its pedagogical settings, the text's literary aspects, and its basic themes and moral lessons.
Kabbalah as Literature: Theology, Narrative, and Lyric
Authors: Fishbane Eitan P. 
Published: December 2019

Abstract
This chapter argues that the study of Kabbalah, like other fields of Judaica before it, conveys the deeply integrated nature of mystical creativity and literary art. For while Kabbalah and philosophy have long been viewed as sister fields, balancing both commonalities and antinomies, we may now suggest that Kabbalah and Jewish literature are also intimately related, reflecting affinities in form and imagination – the one frequently revealing the depths and concerns of the other. The nuanced development of lyric, mythic, symbolic, fictional, autobiographical, and hagiographical forms in the history of Kabbalah locate this textual landscape in the broader panorama of literary artistry across cultural, geographical, and temporal divides – within the global human effort to render experience, imagination, and meaning through the many‐sided prism of literature. As with other global mystical discourses, kabbalistic creativity may be valuably approached as a mode of spiritual artistry, a textual evocation of the human yearning for the Divine. So considered, Jewish mystical literature is an aesthetics of theological reflection, the vibration of the numinous in the lyric imagination of humanity.
Longing for Love: The Romance of Layla and Majnun
Authors: Seyed‐Gohrab Asghar 
Published: December 2019

AbstractThe love story ofLayla and Majnun(Majnūn and Laylā) refers to a body of romantic literature in several languages in the Islamic world. The romance revolves around the character of Qays and his love for Layla. Their love relationship has been proverbial throughout the Islamic world since the second half of the seventh century. Islamic mystics made allegories of this story to refer to the immaterial beloved from an early time. Even today, their love is celebrated in various cultural domains, in pop songs and operas, plays, paintings, sculptures, tiles, poetry, novels, and films.
Allegory and “World” Formation inThe Journey to the West
Authors: Lam Ling Hon 
Published: December 2019

AbstractBefore measuring the standing ofThe Journey to the Westin world literature, one has to inquire what the “world” stands for in the sixteenth‐century Chinese novel. Ideologically, the novel seems to construct a closed system of a Daoist allegory, which renders a historical Buddhist monk's pilgrimage to fetch the holy scriptures from India into an imaginative journey across the inner landscape in pursuit of immortality – a landscape that is at once inside the body and cosmological. The closed system starts to crack once we see that the mapping of this micro‐ and macro‐cosmos is never coherent and consistent within the story itself and throughout the history of its interpretations. The otherwise self‐contained Chinese religious allegory thus opens up to the world of historical contingency.
Ibn Battuta: A Fourteenth‐Century Muslim Traveler of Worldly Desire and Heavenly Hope
Authors: Waines David 
Published: December 2019

Abstract

Ibn Battuta's travels would easily rival the established place of
The Arabian Nights
in world literature. The
Travels
are the author's fourteenth‐century account of 30 years of travel from Morocco to China and back, which include his numerous pilgrimages to Mecca, observations on the origins of the Ottoman Empire, and a sojourn in India which contains valuable first‐hand observations on medieval rule. The
Travels
are unique in medieval travel literature both as a literary lens on contemporary Muslim societies and Ibn Battuta's personal encounters with people of every rank and gender.
Digenis Akritis
and the Frontiers of Byzantium
Authors: Jeffreys Elizabeth 
Published: December 2019

Abstract

Written in Greek,
Digenis Akritis
is the only epic to survive from Byzantium, the medieval Roman empire in the eastern Mediterranean. Digenis is of “two races,” part Arab, part Byzantine: he is the child of an Arab emir who abducted and married the daughter of a Byzantine general and then integrated into the Byzantine society on the borders with Syria. After a precocious childhood learning the arts of war and hunting Digenis too abducted a bride; he built a castle on the banks of the Euphrates and kept the peace on the borders until his death. The story was probably constructed in the mid‐twelfth century in Constantinople from tales circulating on the Byzantine–Syrian frontier which referred back to the Arab–Byzantine wars of the ninth and tenth centuries and perhaps even to events of the second‐century
bce
Roman client kingdom of Commagene. The rediscovery in Greece of the manuscripts of
Digenis Akritis
in the nineteenth century led to the hero becoming a patriotic emblem.
Akbarnama: Persian Chronicle in World Literature
Authors: Bhargava Meena 
Published: December 2019

Abstract

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

Abstract
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: Colonial Encounters in the Worlding of Literature
Authors: Ekotto Frieda , Celis Abigail E. 
Published: December 2019

Abstract
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.
Walt Whitman “Over the Roofs of the World”
Authors: Rumeau Delphine 
Published: December 2019

AbstractLeaves 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

AbstractThis 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

Abstract

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

AbstractThe 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

Abstract

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

AbstractThis 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

AbstractCamus 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

AbstractPatrick 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

AbstractPramoedya 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

AbstractFederico 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

AbstractThe 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

AbstractThis 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

Abstract

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.”