This volume investigates outstanding figures and configurations of literary and cultural multilingualism on a transcontinental and on a global scale. Its first focus is on the both subcontinental and transcontinental Indies, on the oxymoronic figure of East West India and on the stirring 'relations through words' in Luso-Afro-Indian, Anglo-Indian, and Indo-European areas. The second focus is on the cross-cultural configuration of East and West shaped by some striking Sino-European and Sino-American events in early modern and modern times. A third issue concerns the glocal and globoglot 'people of paper' in a contemporary Californian town, and, lastly, the all-embracing, all-devouring ouroboros and other multi-lingual ophidians. (Series: poethik polyglott, Vol. 4) [Subject: Linguistics, Multilingualism]

This volume, the third in a series of four on the general issue of Multilingualism in World Literature, is focused upon the relationship between Migrancy and Multilingualism, including its aquatic, terrestrian and globalizing imagery and ideology. The cover picture Wandering Tongues, an iconic translation of the book's title, evokes one of the paradigmatic figures of migrancy and multilingualism: the migrations of the early Mexican peoples and their somatic multi-lingualism as represented in their glyphic scripts and iconography. The volume comprises studies on the literary, linguistic and graphic representation of various kinds of migrancy in significant works of African, American, Asian and European literature, as well as a study on the literary archetype of human errancy, the Homeric Odyssey, mapped along its periplum and metamorphosis in world literature. Ping-hui Liao is Chuan Lyu Endowed Chair Professor and Head of Cultural Studies at the Literature Department of the University of California in San Diego (USA). K. Alfons Knauth is Professor of Romance Philology at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum (Germany). The introduction and five of the twelve chapters are in English; the rest are in German, French, Italian, and Spanish. (Series: poethik polyglott, Vol. 3) [Subject: Literature]

The fourth volume of the collected papers of the ICLA congress “The Many Languages of Comparative Literature” includes articles that study thematic and formal elements of literary texts. Although the question of prioritizing either the level of content or that of form has often provoked controversies, most contributions here treat them as internally connected. While theoretical considerations inform many of the readings, the main interest of most articles can be described as rhetorical (in the widest sense) – given that the ancient discipline of rhetoric did not only include the study of rhetorical figures and tropes such as metaphor, irony, or satire, but also that of topoi, which were originally viewed as the ‘places’ where certain arguments could be found, but later came to represent the arguments or intellectual themes themselves. Another feature shared by most of the articles is the tendency of ‘undeclared thematology’, which not only reflects the persistence of the charge of positivism, but also shows that most scholars prefer to locate themselves within more specific, often interdisciplinary fields of literary study. In this sense, this volume does not only prove the ongoing relevance of traditional fields such as rhetoric and thematology, but provides contributions to currently flourishing research areas, among them literary multilingualism, literature and emotions, and ecocriticism.

This volume forms a part of the Critical Discourses in South Asia series which deals with schools, movements, and discursive practices in major South Asian languages. It offers crucial insights into the making of Bengali or Bangla literature and its critical tradition across a century. The book brings together English translation of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions, and reinterpretations of primary concepts and categories in Bangla. It presents 32 key texts in literary and cultural studies from Bengal from the middle of the 19th to that of the 20th century, with most of them translated for the first time into English. These seminal essays are linked with socio-historical events and phenomena in the colonial and post-independence period in Bengal, including the background to the Language Movement in Bangladesh. They discuss themes such as integrative aesthetic visions, poetic and literary forms, modernism, imagination, power structures and social struggles, ideological values, cultural renovations, and humanism. Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Bangla literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Bengali/Bangla language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Bengali-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Bengal and conservation of languages and culture

Discusses Tagore's uniquely varied output across literature, music, art, philosophy, history, politics, education and public affairs.

This book redefines modern Indian literature from a cosmopolitan comparative perspective inclusive of literature in English from India and the diaspora, in native languages, and works by non-Indians. It shows how, since the mid-19th century, Indian literary modernity pursued the conjunction of the sensuous and ethical/spiritual that characterized its three traditions (Sanskritik, Persian, and folk culture) while the encounter, both receptive and oppositional, with “the West” vastly expanded the Indian literary sphere. Aesthetics and ethics are not antithetical in the Indian cultural space, but the quest for an exclusive Indian identity versus universalist approaches offsets concerns for social justice as well as enjoyable embodied communication. The literary constellation, in many languages, now formed in and around India can be better apprehended as a virtual Cosmopolis, a commonwealth of elaborate emotions. The versatile figure of Hanuman metaphorically flies across this Ocean of Stories to make us discover new worlds of experience.

This book covers the heterogeneity of Chilean literary production from the times of the Spanish conquest to the present. It shifts critical focus from national identity and issues to a more multifaceted transnational, hemispheric, and global approach. Its emphasis is on the paradigm transition from the purportedly homogeneous to the heterogeneous.