World Literature: Faculty Books

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  Chinese Classics: The Commentarial Tradition

  Sabina Knight and Kidder Smith

  Chapter Abstract:

  Reading texts from the Chinese and Japanese canons, Knight and Smith engage the subtle interplay of classic texts and commentaries, ancient and modern. They find that no classic text is a stand-alone: each inner text has traditionally been read as a dialogue between originating author(s) and authoritative later readers. When we approach these texts, then, we find ourselves part of an explicit, venerable conversation. Knight and Smith focus on five examples: the Sunzi (Sun Tzu) Art of War, the Japanese Zen Master Ikkyū, the great Tang dynasty poet Li Bo (Li Po), the ancient divination text the Yijing (I Ching) or Classic of Change, and the perplexing philosopher Laozi (Lao Tzu), originator of Daoism (Taoism). Reading these texts is like marrying into a very large family, one whose members, allusions, rewritings, irregular knowing and jokes we may appreciate or tolerate to different degrees. No way to control this process!

  Book Abstract:

  This Is a Classic illuminates the overlooked networks that contribute to the making of literary classics through the voices of multiple translators, without whom writers would have a difficult time reaching a global audience. It presents the work of some of today's most accomplished literary translators who translate classics into English or who work closely with translation in the US context and magnifies translators' knowledge, skills, creativity, and relationships with the literary texts they translate, the authors whose works they translate, and the translations they make. The volume presents translators' expertise and insight on how classics get defined according to language pairs and contexts. It advocates for careful attention to the role of translation and translators in reading choices and practices, especially regarding literary classics.

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  Gendered Violence and Narrative Erasure: Women in Athol Fugard's Tsotsi and Gavin Hood's Tsotsi

  Katwiwa Mule

  This chapter focusses on Athol Fugard’s novel, Tsotsi, written around 1959 as a direct response to the forced removal and destruction of the predominantly black township of Sophiatown, and Gavin Hood’s 2005 adaptation of the novel into a successful, award-winning film which, as some critics have argued, intervenes, or perhaps more appropriately participates, in contentious public debates in post-1994 South Africa. I read both the novel and film as Bildungsroman. In both the novel and film, the subjectivity of women is erased, violence against them normalised, and rights-bearing black citizenship bestowed to men. Thus, the normative (and affirmative) ideologies of the genre to which both texts conform neither imagine women as rights-bearing citizens nor elevate the violation of women’s bodies into the realm of human rights.

  This book investigates how the intersection between gendered violence and human rights is depicted and engaged with in Africana literature and films. The rich and multifarious range of film and literature emanating from Africa and the diaspora provides a fascinating lens through which we can understand the complex consequences of gendered violence on the lives of women, children and minorities. Contributors to this volume examine the many ways in which gendered violence mirrors, expresses, projects and articulates the larger phenomenon of human rights violations in Africa and the African diaspora and how, in turn, the discourse of human rights informs the ways in which we articulate, interrogate, conceptualise and interpret gendered violence in literature and film. The book also shines a light on the linguistic contradictions and ambiguities in the articulation of gendered violence in private spaces and war. This book will be essential reading for scholars, critics, feminists, teachers and students seeking solid grounding in exploring gendered violence and human rights in theory and practice.

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  Letteratura cinese

  Sabina Knight

  Tells the story of Chinese literature from antiquity to the present, focusing on the key role literary culture has played in supporting social and political concerns. Embracing traditional Chinese understandings of literature as encompassing history and philosophy as well as poetry and poetics, storytelling, drama, and the novel, Sabina Knight discusses the philosophical foundations of literary culture as well as literature’s power to address historical trauma and cultivate moral and sensual passions. From ancient historical records through the modernization and globalization of Chinese literature, Knight underscores the close relationship between ethics and aesthetics, as well as the diversity of Chinese thought.

  Questa breve storia della letteratura cinese dall'antichità a oggi si concentra sul ruolo fondamentale svolto dalla cultura letteraria nella promozione delle istanze sociali e politiche. Facendo propria la tradizionale concezione cinese della letteratura, che abbraccia la storia e la filosofia, oltre alla poesia, la critica letteraria, la narrazione orale, il teatro e il romanzo, il volume riflette sui fondamenti filosofici e sulla capacità della letteratura di affrontare i traumi della storia e coltivare le passioni etiche. Spaziando dalle antiche testimonianze fino all'epoca della modernizzazione e poi della globalizzazione, l'autrice trae spunto da vividi esempi per illustrare il ruolo del mecenatismo delle élite cinesi, le modalità con le quali la letteratura ha servito gli interessi di specifici gruppi e le questioni della definizione del canone, della lingua, del nazionalismo e della comprensione interculturale. Il volume include i caratteri cinesi di nomi, titoli e parole chiave. L'edizione italiana è stata tradotta e curata da Federica Casalin, professore associato di Lingue e letterature della Cina e dell'Asia sud orientale a Roma Sapienza. Source: Publisher

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  Traditional Chinese Culture’s Designs on Humanity

  Liu Zaifu and Sabina Knight

  Chapter Abstract: What deep structures in the national character impeded China’s modernization? In this 1987 essay, Liu Zaifu extends May Fourth critiques to analyze complementary “designs on humanity” in Confucian and Daoist traditions. Whereas the Confucian ritual order suppresses individuality through coercive norms, the philosophies of Laozi, Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism teach the relinquishing of will and desires from within. Liu champions a thoroughgoing humanism to counter the ritual order’s deep-rooted master-slave disposition, egocentric focus on kinship, selfish departmentalism, and enslavement to status and “face.” For Liu, personal and national self-renewal depend on individual initiative and respect for human dignity and equality. Source: Author(s)

  Book Abstract: Liu Zaifu is a name that has already been ingrained within contemporary Chinese literary history. This landmark volume presents Anglophone readers with Liu's profound reflections on Chinese literature and culture at different times. The essays collected here demonstrate Liu's historical experience and trajectory as an exiled Chinese intellectual who persistently safeguards the individuality and the autonomy of literature, refusing to succumb to political manipulation. Liu's theory of literary subjectivity has opened ways for Chinese writers to thrive and innovate. His panoramic view not only unravels the intricate interplay between literature and politics but also firmly regards the transcendental value of literature as a significant ground to subvert revolutionary dogmatism and criticize Chinese modernity. Rather than drawing upon the existing paradigm, he reinvents his own unique theoretical conceptions in order to exile the borrowed "gods." Source: Publisher

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  Women's Spaces, Women's Visions: Politics, Poetics, and Resistance in African Women's Drama

  Katwiwa Mule

  For Aminata Sow Fall, writing is subversive because it poses questions that need answers - she also believes that the writer's role is not to moralise, but to raise questions to which the reader may react. This book explores her unique literary creations, examining her encounters between the real and the imaginary. Source: Publisher