The roles of women, animals, and nature in traditional Japanese and Western folk tales continue to be parallel to the roles of women, animals, and nature in modern Japanese and Western Culture. This is a result of the values and morals that are encapsulated within these folk tales.

The main purpose of this study is to examine and to evaluate the reception of Stefan Zweig and his works in Russia, as well as the perception of Russia by Stefan Zweig recorded in his recollections of his trip to Russia in 1928, when he took part in the festivities dedicated to the hundredth anniversary of Leo Tolstoy's birth. I will also analyze the meeting and the correspondence between Zweig and Gorky, as well as the correspondence between Zweig and Romain Rolland, in which the two of them shared their views on Soviet Russia. The study concurs that Zweig was one of the most popular and widely translated authors in the world. Russia, as well as the former Soviet Union, was and is part of that world. The main body of Zweig's works was translated into Russian. However, it was later revealed that Zweig's works were translated on a selective basis. His last and most outstanding non-fictional work, his autobiography Die Welt von Gestern, for instance, had never appeared as a whole in the Soviet Union. The struggle of the translator with the authorities in the former Soviet Union to get the book published will be also a topic for discussion.

This dissertation is a study of three short story cycles which are representative of the genre in the Americas: Miguel Street (1959) by V.S. Naipaul, Los Funerales de Mama Grande (1962) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Bloodline (1968) by Ernest Gaines. I analyze each of these cycles in depth concentrating on the structure, the order of the stories, and unifying elements such as characters, themes, internal symbolism, place, language and events, in order to demonstrate that these short story collections are indeed short story cycles. I examine these cycles in light of the two themes or factors out of which the modern cycle originates: desire for selfhood versus desire for community and desire for change versus desire to remain the same or even to go back. I believe that the modern short story cycle relates in some ways the dynamic duality of a desire or acceptation of individuality, selfhood, independence, versus the desire for a lost, denied, ideal (utopia) community. The cycle and more specifically the cycles from the South, Hispanic America and the Caribbean reflect the need for individuals to assert their selfhoods but also the need to challenge an imposed mass identity in order to form a new collective identity based on revived and revised inherited myths. The concept of change, evolution, transition in the community, is maybe not inherent to all short story cycles; however, I believe it is a key factor in cycles of the American South, Latin America and the Caribbean. These three regions have many common traits not only in literature, but also in their history, and especially in a reforging of their own national/regional identity. All three cycles focus on a transitional period in the history of their nation which is derived from the postcolonial experience.

My dissertation, under the direction of Dr Pius Ngandu Nkashama explores the spread of African rhetorical tropes in the Atlantic world. Building on Henry Louis Gates theory of Signifying, I use the West African God of fate Èsù and the West African cultural figure of the griot as cultural referents for the persistence of African tropes in the New World and their subsequent dissemination throughout the Atlantic world. Analyzing those two West African referents and their connections to New World cultures such as Afro-Brazilian capoeira angola, hip hop and African-American poetry, I attempt to demonstrate the centrality of the trope of Signifying in the Black Atlantic world through the analysis of related concepts and through close textual analysis. Strategic dissimulation, deception and double-entendre appear as fundamental strategic rhetorical tricks that are shared both by African and Afro-Diasporic populations. I present those rhetorical tricks as both part of an African cultural continuum and an incorporation and response to oppression and exploitation of African people worldwide. In the diverse forms I analyze, I am more specifically interested in the contact between orality and the culture of writing, in black intertextuality, in the circulation of Signifying in the Atlantic world, as well as the historical dimension of this trope in particular as it relates to myth formation. The introduction to this work explores the imperialist framework which has determined relations between Western nations and Africa for at least four hundred years, up until the present period. The in depth analysis of the mechanisms of imperialism and colonialism in the work of authors such as Edward Said, Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon constitutes the back bone of this introduction. The first chapter focuses on the West African figures of Èsù and the griot as cultural referents for the New World. I describe the place these figures occupy in their respective societies and isolate common features such as mediation, ambiguity, liminality as basis for the rest of my analysis. The second chapter is focused on the New World human manifestations of the West African principles described in chapter one. I describe first the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira angola, then focus on the African American verse tradition and finally describe hip hop culture, and rap in particular. The capoeirista, the African American poet and the rapper all appear as New World embodiment of the West African griot. The third and final chapter is dedicated to the analysis of poems and songs from our New World cultural forms. I focus more specifically on Henry Louis Gates concept of Signifying, in particular in the tension between orality and the culture of writing present within this trope. I also look at black intertextuality through Signifying revisions. Finally, I focus my analysis on myth formation in those different forms.

This project analyzes representations and self-representations of Mestizas living in areas of the Deep South that lack a significant Latino presence. Incorporating a range of media, I take a comparative approach to Southern cultural narratives and propose a re-reading of these works through an examination of identity formation and cultural negotiation. By centering the Southern Mestiza, this dissertation advances concepts of intersectionality to address the role of region, as well as race and gender, in the representation and experiences of women often overlooked in Southern and U.S. Latino studies. The Introductory chapter summarizes the theoretical framework for the study, including feminist and postcolonial theories, Southern and Latina/o literary theories, and concepts of mestizaje and tropicalization that are vital to critical understandings of hybrid identities within U.S. cultural narratives. Chapter One is a comparative analysis of Kate Chopins The Awakening and Margaret A. Grahams Mercy Me. These novels explicate the processes of cultural negotiation for white Southern women defining themselves against Mestiza characters. Chapter Two analyzes constructions of Mestizas in Southern-set drama, film, and television and compares the various strategies of identity formation for white female protagonists in literature and popular culture. Chapter Three explores the role of the Mestiza in Cynthia Shearers transnational and multicultural South. The Celestial Jukebox provides a realistic view of the contemporary South and also critiques the marginalization of Mestizas in hegemonic cultural narratives. Chapter Four analyzes the revolutionary writings of two Southern Mestizas authors who are reclaiming a presence in the South: Lorraine López and Judith Ortiz Cofer. These authors model forms of cultural negotiation in writings that require readers to actively engage in the transformative process. The Conclusion articulates the process of interconnected cultural encounters demonstrated in the primary texts, and concludes by incorporating theories that embrace multiculturalism through personal consciousness-raising and a commitment to de-hierarchized communities.

We are still feeling the effects of the Second World War sixty-seven years after its conclusion. Much of post-war thinking has attempted to sort through the roots of the totalitarian ideology that developed in Europe and caused such massive destruction. Marxist and Frankfurt School critics have demonstrated that the roots of Fascism go deeper in the West than the twentieth century and are part and parcel of the Wests combination of technology and myth. Additionally, Post-Colonial critics have pointed out that the horrors of this war were also perpetrated throughout Europes colonial endeavors and have undertaken the task of deconstructing the ideology of European colonial powers. However, such criticism is both accurate and incomplete. Western civilization is not simply built upon ideology but also contains a long tradition of rational philosophy and self-criticism. In the West, Plato helped formulate an early poetics that was used in education to form and shape the soul and thus the community. In the twentieth century, the Germany philosopher Martin Heidegger modified Platos vision, showing how a people is formed through their culture and given their destiny. Plato and Heideggers poetics can be applied to the work of the Roman poet Virgil. Through his Aeneid, Virgil establishes a tradition of forming an exemplum of empire. In his exemplum of empire, Virgil presents a hero, prophecies that support the empire, and a sympathic but nonetheless demonized Other. Following Virgils lead, Dante Alighieri, Edmund Spenser, and Ezra Pound have sculpted their epics as imperial exempla. Each of these poets includes the Virgilian formula of a hero, prophecies, and an Other. At the same time, each poet develops a work that is not bound by imperialism but transcends its prejudice.

The main objective of this dissertation was to provide researchers interested in the history and evolution of "comparative literature" with a collection of references delineating the evolution of the concept and the development of academic departments dedicated to its study. The paper includes a first section describing the main issues contributing to the "identity crisis" with which studies and departments defining themselves as "comparative" were consistently confronted ever since the term was coined. The "preliminary concepts" section offers an overview of the elements that usually confer a "comparative" quality to a literary study, such as interdisciplinarity and multiculturalism, together with a few relevant definitions (in chronological order) describing the commonly accepted meaning of the term at a particular point in time. The next chapter, "chronological overview," continues the analysis with additional details, references and comments also in chronological order, dividing the matter in sub-chapters dedicated to as many historical periods, from the Antiquity until the mid-20th century. A separate section, offers a review of the most important institutions and publications contributing to the development of the comparative field. The last chapter is a sketch of the current status of the concept and of the institutions dedicated to its study. The research for the present dissertation focused primarily on facts and documents from the European and North American continents. Its main purpose is not to arbitrate the multitude of trends and opinions trying to associate the term with a singular meaning. It merely attempts to provide the reader with a systematic perspective of the subject matter.

The main aim of this dissertation is to show how the discourse of the psychoanalytical other--femininity, death, madness, disorder, and impiety--overlaps with colonial discourse in some plays from Shakespearean and Greek-Roman tragedy, and what difference or similarity there is between the two ages. The hypothesis is that foreigners are allegories of the psychoanalytical other. For this purpose, the research tries to grasp the concept of the other, from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis, and to analyze the core of colonial discourse on the basis of the concept of the psychoanalytical other. The starting point of the dissertation is that the other is related to the "uncanny other" within ourselves, which is "the hidden face of our identity," arising from the dialectic between desire and anxiety. The dissertation puts emphasis on the fact that colonial imagination relates the imagination of the colonial other to that of the "uncanny other" within. In relation to Greek tragedy, the psychological tendency is called "basic tendency" by Frank Snowden, which develops into "power relations" in Shakespeare's plays, where the psychological other becomes the object of politics--that is, the politicization of the other. For instance, the color black is psychologically related to death in some of Hellenistic tragedy, which is as natural as even Africans equate blackness with evil. But since the Mediaeval Ages, the black-evil equation was established as a frame of politics of a theatre-state. However, the dissertation doesn't ignore the possibility that Shakespeare debunks the colonial imagination of the Renaissance Europeans.

This dissertation examines Emmanuel Levinass Talmudic readings and the hermeneutics employed to translate the Talmud into modern language. Levinas claims to be translating Hebrew into Greek by rendering into a universal, philosophical language (Greek) the ethical structure of subjectivity (Hebrew) within the Talmud. Since they investigate the structure of subjectivity, extensive use of his philosophical works and the influential works of others are used to analyze his Talmudic readings. Chapter One places Levinass project against the background of the Talmud, Judaic tradition, and projects like Rudolf Bultmanns New Testament readings and Thorleif Bomans comparative study of Greek and Hebrew. A brief abstract of Levinass philosophy emphasizing his understanding of the hermeneutics of subjectivity is given. Chapters Two and Three examine Husserl and Heideggers formative influences, especially their hermeneutics of everyday experience, wherein Levinas locates the essential flaw of Western philosophy, which begins with an already constituted subjectivity. Although all three view the structure of hermeneutics as essentially discursive, Levinas insists that the subject is not the source for these discursive structures, or even for its own subjectivity. Rather, that source, where any philosophical understanding must start, is the Other. Levinas sees exhortations against things like sorcery and temptation as the Talmuds mode of resisting and restraining subjectivitys natural tendency to seek out its own freedom and power. Western philosophy, however, actually tends to either start from this condition or work toward it. Chapter Four discusses the idea of infinity according to Levinas and Descartes, and its role in founding consciousness. In this respect, infinity coincides with the idea of God . Chapter five looks at ethics and its relation to the structure of subjectivity. Levinas reads the Talmud in light of the ethical situation confronting the subject in the encounter with the Other. The Other actually establishes subjectivity and its discursive hermeneutical structures, so subjectivity begins and continues as an ethical response. The Conclusion looks at the idea of messianic politics, showing how Levinas describes the structure of subjectivity as a unique chosenness, revealing its discursive hermeneutical structures to be orientating the subject to future ethical responses.

Both Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda wanted to create epic works that would distinguish American literature from the literary traditions of Europe, works that would grow organically from the native landscapes and peoples of the Americas. Part of their projects included creating works that would act as political sourcebooks for their cultures. Whitman wanted to foster a democratic culture in the United States through writing a grand poetic work, while Neruda wanted to create a communist culture in Latin America through an epic work. Soon into the project Whitman realized that the traditional epic was not a suitable form for his task, so in attempting to construct a new form, he created the lyric-epic in his Leaves of Grass. Since Neruda believed that Whitman was the first authentic literary voice of the Americas and that the lyric-epic was a native form, he used Leaves of Grass as a paradigm when writing his Canto general. In separate discussions of each work, this study examines the politics of both writers and why they wanted to write political sourcebooks; their use of camaraderie/fraternity to tie readers together for democratic or communist governments; their rewriting of history as redemption and as the progression of democracy or communism; and lastly, their endeavors to teach readers to read as democrats or communists. Ultimately, the study argues that Neruda and Whitman were the foundations and the peaks of their literary traditions and that studying Whitman's and Neruda's lyric-epics reveals a common form for poetic epic attempts in the Americas after Whitman; moreover, it argues that even while Neruda used Leaves of Grass as a paradigm, he wrote a work of equal standing to it in Canto general.