A Brief Opening

The fields of comparative literature and American studies long have had a fraught relationship. Although both fields emerged almost contemporaneously in the American academy, flourished during the Cold War era with the support of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, and engaged in a reflexive approach to literary studies that addressed diverse topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, the relationship between these two fields, both pedagogically and intellectually, has been rife with anxiety about professional status and a conspicuous lack of interest in each others' disciplinary approaches. This disciplinary tension is evident, for example, in the 1975 Greene Report on Professional Standards to the American Comparative Literature Association, in which the authors of the report drew attention, with evident concern, to “the growth of interdisciplinary programs” such as American studies (30), considering them a factor in the dangerous trend in the academy where, according to the authors, “[i]n at least some colleges and universities[,] Comparative Literature seems to be purveyed in the style of a smorgasbord at bargain rates” (31). Although both fields have undergone major transformations since the mid-1970s, most importantly the rise of “high theory” and the growing interest in non-European literary traditions in comparative literature and the integration of ethnic literatures and the emergence of an anti-exceptionalist critical attitude in American studies, comparative literature and American studies continue to maintain strict disciplinary boundaries as demonstrated by the marginalization of American literature and culture in the field of comparative literature, and the persistence of a monolingual and exceptionalist approach to literature in the field of American studies.

After its heyday from the 1950s until the early 1970s, a crisis in the field of comparative literature was declared present by its practitioners during the 1980s. The effects of the perceived crisis were felt not only during conferences but also through brutal budget cuts and the downsizing of comparative literature departments across the world. In the decades that followed, various attempts to address the crisis were made by critics such as Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, Alexander Beecroft, among many others. As a result, methods and concepts such as “distant reading,” “evolutionary literary history,” “literary ecologies,” and “world republic of letters” easily became the theoretical and methodological bulwark of numerous comparative literature departments against the perceived effects of the crisis. Incidentally, in his seminal Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel, Resil Mojares deployed similar ideas and concepts, however, to different ends. This paper, then, is first an attempt to analyze Mojares’ deployment of the said concepts and methods vis-à-vis to that of Beecroft, Casanova, and Moretti’s. Finally, the paper also seeks to identify and elaborate on specific implications and possibilities made visible by Mojares’ methodological interventions in the field and practice of comparative literature in the Philippines.Keywords: Crisis, comparative literature, literary history, Mojares, methodological intervention, Philippines.Cite as: Mendoza III, A.A.G. (2018). Resil Mojares and the crisis of comparative literature in the Philippines. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 3(2), 80-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol3iss2pp80-91

I begin with the ongoing debate in the field of comparative literature as a point of departure for reflecting on the current state of Chinese literary and cultural studies. There are several reasons for doing this. First, by definition, comparative literature crosses many boundaries-linguistic, national, and cultural, to name only the most obvious ones-therefore, the transnational and transcultural thrust of comparative literature makes it a logical site for discussions on multiculturalism. Second, as a modern Western discipline, comparative literature has exerted a significant influence on Chinese literary studies for decades. Quite a few scholars in the latter field in North America and Europe are trained in comparative literature and play a major role in the introduction of contemporary theory and practice, including multiculturalism, to Chinese audiences. Finally, comparative literature distinguishes itself from other kinds of literary studies by its comparative

Reviewed by: Voices of Exile in Contemporary Canadian Francophone Literature Joseph Pivato F. Elizabeth Dahab . Voices of Exile in Contemporary Canadian Francophone Literature. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2009. 229 pp. Bibliography. Index. $60.00 hc. In 2002 Elizabeth Dahab published Voices in the Desert: An Anthology of Arabic-Canadian Women Writers (Guernica), a text now used in many courses in Canadian literature, comparative literature, and women's studies. This first collection of work by Canadian women of Arabic descent includes texts published in French, English, and Arabic, and thus epitomizes Deleuze and Guattari's ideal of minor literatures and deterritorialization. She has followed this seminal anthology with the first study anywhere of Arabic Canadian writers, Voices of Exile. It examines the works of several first-generation Canadian authors born in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, or the Maghreb. There is a striking lack of scholarship on authors of Arabic descent in North America, and Dahab's volume fills this lacuna with an in-depth critical study of selected writers and texts. We should note that she prefers the term Arabic as an adjective rather than Arab. Dahab begins her critical study of Arabic Canadian writers with a detailed (43-page) introduction that examines important topics: Quebec as locus of literatures of exile, other minority literatures in Canada, a profile of the Arabic community in Quebec, language choice of writers, literary themes, and the literary theory of exile. In addition to extensive notes, this chapter includes a list of twenty-nine selected Arabic Canadian writers, their genres, locations, and literary prizes. The rest of the book has one chapter each devoted to five senior authors: Saad Elikhadem, Naim Kattan, Abla Farhoud, Wajdi Mouawad, and Hédi Bouraoui. Beginning with the introductory chapter and continuing through the book, she provides a solid theoretical basis for cultural and literary analysis of Arabic Canadian literature, using these representative francophone authors. Saad Elikhaden is "among those Egyptian Canadian mediators (such as Alonzo and Naaman) who played a significant role in the transmission and diffusion of their own and other writer's products through the literary reviews and publishing houses they founded" (46). Dahab's chapter on Elikhaden examines four of his major works in English—Wings of Lead (1971/1994), The Plague (1989), Trilogy of the Flying Egyptian (1990-1992), and One Night in Cairo (2001)—as complex experimental novels which capture political and cultural values, as well as the despair of the exile. The best-known Canadian writer in this study is Naim Kattan, remembered for his twenty-four years as an administrator in the Canada Council promoting the development of Canadian literature. For this public service work and for his thirty-four books, Kattan has been honoured with many awards from both Quebec and English Canada. Dahab's chapter on Kattan focuses on his early novel, Adieu Babylone (1975), then later works, L'Anniversaire (2000) and Le Gardien de mon frère (2003), followed by some short story collections. Some of these books have been translated into English. [End Page 213] The only woman who has a chapter devoted to her is Abla Farhoud, who was born in Lebanon and is best known for her plays. Dahab identifies her as "the first Arabic Canadian writer to have dramatized the communal experience of exile, and, more specifically, the horrors of the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990)" (99). Farhoud also stands unique in that she uses no fewer that six registers of language in her writings: Québécois slang, standard French, colloquial French, English, colloquial Lebanese-Arabic, and classical Arabic. She is the first to have infused her writing with transliterated Arabic phrases in her plays, Les Filles du 5-10-15 cents (1986) and Jeux de patience (1997), and her novels, Le Bonheur a la queue glissante (1998) and Le Fou d'Omar (2005). The other famous author in Dahab's study is Wajdi Mouawad, known for his many plays and international stage productions. Born in Lebanon, he later graduated from Ecole Nationale de Théatre du Canada, then founded and directed a number of theatre companies in Quebec and in France. His published plays include Littoral (1999), Incendies (2003), and Forêts (2006...

You and Me:Relational Ontologies in Canadian Comparative Literature Lindsay R. Parker The momentum of this commentary comes from Julia M. Wright’s recent work “Professionalism, Citizenship, and the Problem of University Governance” as published in MLA’s Profession and my own interests in decolonizing professions in the university and the university as an historically situated institution. Amidst our current crises, we are all as professionals, professors, and part of the community of scholars worried about our roles in programs, departments, and disciplines because they are so intimately tied up with feelings of identity, trust, and obligation, or as Mary Douglas writes, “feelings of loyalty and sacredness” (1). Much comes together in these worries. Not to mention, we have spent a long time getting ‘here.’ And wherever ‘here’ is for Comparative Literature in Canada, ‘here’ is less a space than a series of relations. My own relations, of course, run through comparative literature, and wherever it might be, I know to whom I relate through it. Insofar as Comparative Literature in Canada ostensibly provides a framework for critical and collaborative labour, it is also a crucial space for decolonization and the indigenization of university curricula and modes of research production. Decolonizing curricula and indigenizing research methods do not elide existing paradigms. They, rather, provide comparatists with a necessary adjustment to research practice: that of reframing (Smith 153). And yet, in order to be able to reframe, we must also be able to collaborate. The problem is, the idea of reframing that we may use as professionals in the classroom or as researchers is more effectively put to work administratively to reframe the discipline rather than our thoughts. Rather than reframing our specialized knowledge, we are instead reframed in our labour communicating it-the lifelines of our departments are being subordinated to the administrative and bureaucratic procedures of institutional power. With the budgetary cutting block so well-populated, how do we press home our relevance to today’s [End Page 187] globalized, indeed glocalized, world? Seen one way, comparison is a world matter, and it would seem that world matters are ‘area’ matters. Seen another, comparative organizations become world organizations, and by proxy area organizations. We begin in messy collaboration and end in tidy division. A reliance on area studies can prove detrimental to the radical retooling necessary for critically collaborative work. The epistemological construct of area studies is deeply in bed with the movement and directional flow of transnational (and translational) capital, but we don’t want to know this, and we are too worried about the job market (in Canada?) to speak of it, that is, if we even see beyond our place in it. Shades of Said and spectres of Spivak abound. Comparison entails speaking truth to hegemonic power (or at least it should), and comparison should be innovative and always a function of resistance. Comparative Literature in Canada should yield a productive power by virtue of being unafraid. But to remain daring requires a continuous self-examination of what it means to compare and to collaborate, or in other words, to bring down imposed binaries and, if we dare say it, the division between ‘areas.’ It is opening oneself unto others. But speaking of areas, we need a space-not the place of power, but places to sit, work, teach, and actually exist: a department unfolded. We run the risk of retreating into our area and worshipping the idols of our territory, but comparison by its nature interrogates and opens collaborations between difference, which defers the stable meanings that make such self-concealment possible. But those are disciplinary matters, or we may say they are styles of knowledge. Or we might better say they are neither-they are administrative matters, matters of professional work. Wright argues that the “gap between bureaucratic operations, in which faculty members safeguard academic standards and processes, and professionalism, in which they are subordinated to an employment structure, is ideological” (n.pag). That is to say, budget allocations ideologically fold programs and purposes as “things” not intimate relations, social enterprises, or radical decolonizations. This is most certainly disciplinary concealment without the collaborative praxis of comparison. Said another way, we may wish to see...

This timely volume takes stock of the discipline of comparative literature and its theory and practice from a Canadian perspective. It engages with the most pressing critical issues at the intersection of comparative literature and other areas of inquiry in the context of scholarship, pedagogy and academic publishing: bilingualism and multilingualism, Indigeneity, multiple canons (literary and other), the relationship between print culture and other media, the development of information studies, concerted efforts in digitization, and the future of the production and dissemination of knowledge. The authors offer an analysis of the current state of Canadian comparative literature, with a dual focus on the issues of multilingualism in Canada’s sociopolitical and cultural context and Canada’s geographical location within the Americas. It also discusses ways in which contemporary technology is influencing the way that Canadian literature is taught, produced, and disseminated, and how this affects its readings.

Appendix 5 Texts Taught in English and Comparative Literature Courses on the Literatures of Canada in 2007–08 (Sorted by Author)

Appendix 2 Texts Taught in English and Comparative Literature Courses on the Literatures of Canada in 1997–98 (Ranked by Frequency)

REVIEWS 707 perhaps, she displays an infectious enthusiasm for her subject. The biblio graphy is comprehensive and there are extensive quotations from secondary sources. Quotations fromRussian critics are given firstinEnglish translation and then in the original. The author is a little over-conscientious in this respect and thebook isoccasionally rather too reminiscent of a doctoral thesis. In one place, for instance, (p. 42) Simon Dixon's perfectiy sound, but unexcep tional, observations about the importance of the Decembrist Revolt are perhaps given undue weight, whilst in at least one other place (p. 31) the reader isat three removes (in this case Smith ? Schweikart ? Fish) from the body ofwork under discussion. The proof-reading of thisvolume could have been better. There are at least thirty-seven typographical errors, and a number of names are wrongly spelled: Adolphe, Bayley, Beranger (who does not appear in the index under any spelling), Breton, Boccaccio, Diderot, Fennell, Ginzburg, Holderlin, Loseff, Propertius and Schopenhauer. The name of Pushkin's nemesis is spelled Benckendorff and Benkendorff on the same page (p. 209) and is given two apparently unrelated entries in the index. Petr Viazemskii suffers much the same fate.A couple of dates ? those ofMaiakovskii's death and theBattle of Poltava ? are one year out (pp. 224, 318). However, in the final analysis, these are minor irritants and Rodopi are to be congratulated on continuing, through this excellent series, to flythe flag forRussian literature.To use one of the author's favourite adjectives, this is an 'insightful'book, written, to use twomore Smith favourites, both 'convincingly' and 'compellingly'. Maidenhead Michael Pursglove Whitehead, Claire. The Fantastic inFrance and Russia in the NineteenthCentury: In Pursuit of Hesitation. Studies in Comparative Literature, io. Legenda, Oxford, 2006. x + 170pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?45.00: $69.00. This recent volume from the Legenda imprintmaintains the high standards of production and academic excellence in the field of comparative literature that readers have come to expect from the marque. A study in the genre of the fantastic, cleaving to the terrain mapped out in Tzvetan Todorov's classic investigation of the subject, Introduction a la litterature fantastique (Paris, 1970),The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century sets out to test and confirm the earlier author's definition of the genre while supplementing his theoretical framework with furtherparameters. The approach taken is to subject eight representative fictional texts of the nineteenth century, four French and four Russian, to close stylistic and linguistic scrutiny. Each chapter consists of a pairing of twoworks chosen for theirmarked similarities in construction. In this respect, Claire Whitehead's treatment is reminiscent of the one employed with such distinction by L. Michael O'Toole in Structure, Styleand Interpretation in theRussian Short Story (New Haven, CT and London, 1982), a work not referenced in the extensive six-and-a-half page bibliography. Yet, whereas O'Toole confined himself to the Russian short story, Whitehead examines longer works of fiction in the course of her analysis and the selection is 708 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 comparative. The methodology, however, likeO'Toole's, remains resolutely Neo-Formalist: art as technique, ninety years after Shklovskii formulated his axiom. Such an approach is both a strengthand a limitation. It is a strength in that in enables Whitehead to focus her attention exclu sively on those narrative strategies and literarydevices available to an author who draws upon the full range of the expressive capacity of either the French or the Russian language to invest the textwith the sense of hesitation so crucial to the establishment of the fantastic.Whitehead contends pointedly in the Introduction that 'Todorov's investigation of the triggersfor hesitation in the fantastic is incomplete because he shows greater interest in the events than in the devices used to present them' (p. 4). The subsequent tracking down of narrative and syntactical devices occupies four chapters. Chapter one analyses the language of Pushkin's Queen ofSpades (1834) and Gautier's Spirite (1865) in order to establish how the effectsof believability and hesitation are embedded in the respective Russian and French texts.Both theseworks are examples of third-person narrative or, asWhitehead (followingGenette) prefers to call it, a heterodiegetic narrative voice. Chapter two...

Teesid: Artikkel käsitleb maailmakirjanduse mõiste mahu ja sisu muutumist alates selle esilekerkimisest 19. sajandi algupoolel kuni tänapäeva käsitlusviisideni ja dilemmadeni, mille ees seisab võrdlev kirjandusteadus – distsipliin, mis peab maailmakirjandust oma uurimisobjektiks. Juttu tuleb ka väikese kirjanduse spetsiifilisest suhestumisest maailmakirjandusega ning maailmakirjanduse uurimisest ja õpetamisest Tartu ülikoolis alates selle rajamisest 1632 kuni eriala institutsionaliseerumiseni taasiseseisvunud Eestis – maailmakirjanduse õppetoolina. In the current era of globalization when the borders of national literature have become exceedingly vulnerable, cultural identities more and more hybrid and the term world literature is applied to global translations into English, a comparative literary scholar might ask a question: would it be possible to perceive of a literary world analogously to the world of music? Would it be possible that as Bach does not need to be interpreted within the context of German music or Pärt within the context of Estonian music, works of literature relate to each other within the global field of literature and are no longer related to their linguistic and cultural contexts? In order to come to a „bigger picture“, to achieve a more extensive level of generalization, might it be possible to give up the linguistic, historical and cultural contextualization of works of literature? What would a small literature win or lose in such situation? In the present article the concept of world literature and its’ historical conditions – as an object of comparative literary studies – will be explained using the example of Estonian literature. In order to do so, an overview of the history of comparative literary studies at the University of Tartu will be provided. At the University of Tartu, the study of comparative literature was initiated much earlier than systematic study of Estonian literature or its’ appearance on the horizon of world literature. Thereby the ’home’ (or ’homelessness’) of the history of comparative literature history and its re-positionings in different time periods will be analyzed. Having roots in the studies of rhetoric and poetics in the Academia Gustaviana founded in 1632, comparative literary history in the German-language Kayserliche Universität zu Dorpat (re-established in 1802) was initially a topic for professors of classical philology, while shortly after moving under the lectureship of German language and then, during the period of Russification, to the department of Russian language and literature. Beginning in 1904, comparative literature was affiliated with the chairs of Latvian and Estonian, where it developed as a modern disciple in the Estonian-language University of Tartu at the time of Professor Gustav Suits in the 1920s. The Soviet period formally maintained the position of world literature in relation to the Estonian literary canon under the label of ’foreign literature’, but the notion of foreign literature narrowed, being limited to those works of the established literary canon of the West that were considered ’progressive’ by the Marxist ideology. ’Foreign literature’, in particular its relationship with Estonian literature was under ideological pressure to the extent that it was more rational to deal with it as a closed phenomenon boiling in its own juices. At the same time Russian literature was pushed to the fore. Its influence and role in the development of Estonian literature had to be emphasized. However, it was precisely Russian philology where Tartu literary studies was given an impulse that gave an impetus to several disciples in Tartu as well as elsewhere, while also creating a completely new field – semiotics. The theory of periphery as an area, where semiotic processes accelerate and the creative and dialogical function of borders developed in Tartu by Juri Lotman, explains a great deal about the history of Comparative Literature in Tartu: the peripheral location of Tartu, its changing identity turns out to be the crossroad and meeting point of diverse cultures. This has facilitated comparative approach to cultures and view comparison as the only possible methodology of literary studies. At the periphery the perception of borders sharpens, and this exactly is the field of Comparative Literature.

In Babel's Shadow: Multilingual literatures, Monolingual States

Some literatures, like Canadian literature, may be considered minor because Canada is not a major power. But in reality, Canadian literature and other literatures, large or small, are part of a cultural history that is not merely local or even national, but international. The territories of culture and literature in literal or metaphorical terms shift over time. Using a comparative method, this article examines texts—such as The Saga of Eric the Red and works by Columbus, Verrazzano, Jeannette C. Armstrong, Marie Annharte Baker and Carrie Best—to demonstrate the shifting boundaries of time and space and to explore the connections between cultures and literatures in Canada, Europe and the Atlantic and international worlds as part of a longstanding globalization. The article demonstrates that the hybridity resulting from cross-cultural contact and colonization typically blurs the distinction between center and periphery, revealing the historical fluidity of the political boundaries on which the concepts of national and world literatures are based. In doing so, it focuses on how North America, particularly Canada, and the historical process of its discovery, settlement, and colonization have connected this region to other parts of the world.

Scottish emigration to North America is certainly one of the most relevant events in Scottish history. In Canada, Scottish immigrants and their descendants have contributed widely to the formation of Canadian society and culture. In the literary field, writers of Scottish origin as Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence have attained recognition for their work, and certain elements of the Scottish heritage are seen without difficulty in their work. The significance of Scotland is even more deeply felt in the stories of Alistair MacLeod, whose original Cape Breton tales examine the lives of displaced Scots who have frequently had to face difficulty and hardship in their new environment. Family history, oral tradition, nostalgia, clan loyalty, and the connection between Scotland and Nova Scotia have an influence in the lives of most of MacLeod’s characters. This contribution is aimed to establish the ways in which Scotland is shown in Canadian literature written by authors of Scottish descent. Its objective is firstly to broadly discuss the idea of Scotland in Canadian literature, and then, more concretely, to examine the importance of Scotland and Scottish heritage in the stories of Alistair MacLeod. His revealing stories come across more as an oral narrative than as a written one. The oral tradition is an important aspect of the Scottish Gaelic community which MacLeod’s family belongs to, and this fact shows the role of this heritage in his work. Keywords: Scottish emigration, Scottish tradition, Canadian literature of Scottish origin, Alistair MacLeod short stories, Cape Breton, etc.

The refutation and the obliteration of the modernist era in Canadian literature by Robert Kroetsch and reasserted by Glen Wilmott makes it imperative to look at highly experimental literary works in the first half of the 20th century in Canada. The purpose of this paper, thus is to make a case for the inclusion Irene Bird’s Waste Heritage in the repertoire of modernist works in North America. The various criticism of Canadian literature as not having a modernist era needs to be debunked. The false assertion that Canadian literature moved straight from the Victorian era to a postmodernist face is probably due to the difficulty of defining what modernism is. The evolution and the expansion of the term modernism makes it imperative for one to reappraise the creative works of Irene Bird (Waste Heritage) and Sheila Watson (Double Hook) as modernist. An attempt to include Waste Heritage in the new modernist discourse of global literature by looking at the experimental way by which Baird used documentary modernism. The sustainability of a growing modern society vis-à-vis modernism, and the resistance of capitalism in Baird’s narrative would be used to make a case for Baird’s modernism.

<i>Jacob Edmond</i> A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature<i>A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature</i>. Jacob Edmond. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. Pp. xv+272.