Literary and Cultural Studies

Higher Education institutions face specific challenges preparing
graduates to live and work in transdisciplinary and transcultural
environments. It is imperative for these institutions to provide their
students with the skill sets that will give them the mobility and flexibility
to be able to operate efficiently in different cultural and professional
contexts. This position paper proposes that developing proficiency in
Cultural Literacy will allow graduates of Higher Education institutions
to transcend such cultural and disciplinary boundaries. In this paper
we define Cultural Literacy in Higher Education as a modus operandi
and a threshold concept, following Meyer and Land’s understanding
of the term. We also propose ‘Destabilisation’ and ‘Reflection’ as two
strategies for teaching Cultural Literacy, and examine three case
studies where these strategies were successfully embedded into
teaching and learning spaces.

Icon uplifts the object or person identified as the exemplar of a particular generation, a stylistic epoch, and a feeling about a particular set of social experiences. The icon being identified is something which all people can recognize but it is to be seen as a construction which can be seen to work in varying ways: first, as icons invested with historical significance; second, as secular icons or materials in the real world that through time accumulate to themselves a specific exemplary cultural status. On a different note, cultural icons also reflect the profoundly held aspirations as well as the concerns of receptive communities overtime. This study is to qualify theArch of the Centuries as the cultural icon of Thomasian tradition. This study will lean on the critical concepts expounded by Mike Parker and Wolfgang Iser.

Bir edebiyat araştırması ise diğer sosyal bilimsel araştırmaların geçerliliği denenmiş aşamalarını takip eder. Ancak bu türden bir araştırma edebiyatın doğası, araçları ve malzemesi itibariyle kendine özgü yöntemleri de olan bir süreçtir. Yaratıcı bir yazım ve sanatsal bir üretim olan edebi metne sosyal bilim metotlarını uygularken onları kendi spesifik amaçlarına uygun olarak yeniden düzenler. 19. yüzyıla ait Modernist ve 20. yüzyıla ait Postmodernist bilim paradigmalarına dayanan kuramlar eseri, onu yaratan yazarı ve her ikisini kuşatan sosyal ve tarihsel çevreyi ve nihayet okuru anlamak için seferber edilir. Bu amaçları gerçekleştirmek için edebiyat çalışmaları son elli yılda “edebiyat bilimi metodolojisi”nden söz edilebilecek bir birikime sahip olmuştur. Arşive dayalı dokümanter araştırmalar, özellikle edebiyat tarihi, biyografi, ve periyodik incelemelerinde; metinsel çözümlemeye dayalı incelemeler ise edebi eleştiride sıklıkla kullanılır.


ABSTRACT

A literary research follows the validated stages of other social scientific researches. However, this kind of research is a process that has its own methods in terms of the nature, tools and material of literature. While applying social science methods to the literary text, which is a creative writing and an artistic production, it rearranges them in accordance with their specific purposes. The work of theories based on 19th century Modernist and 20th century Postmodernist science paradigms is mobilized to understand the author that created it, and the social and historical environment surrounding both, and finally the reader. In order to achieve these goals, literary studies have gained a knowledge that can be mentioned in the "methodology of literature science" in the last fifty years. Archival-based documentary research, especially in the history of literature, biography, and periodic reviews; Studies based on textual analysis are frequently used in literary criticism.

Like other existing and growing beer or wine culture, lambanog drinking culture in the Philippines mirrors an enduring social tradition that Filipinos practice and is even acculturated by foreign visitors. Moreover, this communal practice resembles values that are vivid in textualities. This textual analysis recreates the exemplifications of practices and values of drinking lambanog of the two cultures portrayed-Filipino and American-in Alejandro Roces' We Filipinos are Mild Drinkers, a post-colonial Philippine short story. The close reading revealed lived practices such as using lambanog as a medical alternative and as a form of ritual and respect to nature, drinking with calamansi chaser dipped in salt, and as a coping mechanism for nostalgia. The story teaches the values of togetherness, friendship or 'pakikisama,' hospitability, manliness or 'macho,' and socio-cultural identity as universal characters that can be acquired with a single treasured liquid, lambanog. Roces' work of fiction has thus served as a text realizer for giving depth meaning of drinking lambanog as a cultural practice.

What is the point of describing a space to someone who already is – or has
been – in it?  Well, it seems that the Byzantine ekphrasis was an outstanding
means of communication because of its social role and its masterly achievements: its
combination of three distinct functions (narrative, aesthetic and exegetic) in a single
text worked to appeal to audiences and elusively transmit ideology or political discourse. I here follow this narratological approach and focus on ekphraseis of spaces in
order to argue that it is possible to look beyond their representational interpretations.

Affix in Hausa morphology has a long-standing tradition as it received a good deal of scholarly academic treatments from the early works of Hausa grammar. Morphologically, Hausa being one of those affixing languages, its traditional grammarians opined that the language, under such linguistic treatments, has two types of affixes – i.e. a prefix and a suffix. However, current studies in Hausa word-formation have revealed that there are additional types of affixes in the language. Sample data of the study have been drawn from corpora of Hausa morphological analysis. The study adopted Stewart’s (2016) ‘Morpheme-Based Theory’ (MBT) with a view to analyzing the data towards describing and/or typifying concatenation of Hausa affix. Although some Hausa morphologists held a debate over its types, the present investigation posits that the language in question has five types of affixes; and far from it there exists one typologically ‘unique’ affixal concatenation.
Keywords: affix, Hausa, morpheme, root/stem, morphology, base

In the present dissertation, we will be looking at the profile and identitary path of Bloom, the (non) hero of Uma Viagem à Índia, a twenty-first century counterepic text, written and published in 2010 by the portuguese author Gonçalo M. Tavares. This absolutely unique literary adventure establishes a peculiar connection between classica epic tradition, the heritage and spirit of the modern age and the vision of postmodernity. The aim of Tavares’s text is to draw the attention to the question of the lack of epic and heroic tradition in the twenty-first century, by questioning the very nature of the epic in contemporary age. This paper thus intends to analyse the transfiguration fo the epic in postmodernity in the context of Uma Viagem à Índia by drawing on a comparative analysis in which we will look at the parodic, parodical and subversive characteristics of some of the works that directly or indirectly establish a connection with Tavares’s work. From this analysis of the parodic appropriation of the epic in postmodernity, we will be lookng at man’s relationship with contemporary reality in light of the idea of the fall of metanarratives, privileging the analysys of the concepts of fall, chaos and emptiness, as well as the notions of individualism in postmodernity in the study of the character Bloom as the figure of the tourist, vagabond, fugitive and chased.

This Cambridge Companion serves as an authoritative guide to Augustine’s Confessions—a literary classic and one of the most important theological/philosophical works of Late Antiquity. Bringing together new essays by leading scholars, the volume first examines the composition of the text, including its structure, genre, and intended audience. Subsequent essays explore a range of themes and concepts, such as God, creation, sin, grace, happiness, and interiority, among others. The final section of the Companion deals with its historical relevance. It provides sample essays on the reception history of the Confessions. These essays demonstrate how each generation reads the Confessions in light of current questions and circumstances, and how the text continues to remain relevant and raise new questions.

Writings on the metropolis generally foreground illimitability, stressing thereby that the urban ultimately remains both illegible and unintelligible. Instead, the purpose of this interdisciplinary study is to demonstrate that mentality as a tool offers orientation in the urban realm. Nora Pleßke develops a model of urban mentality to be employed for cities worldwide. Against the background of the Spatial Turn, she identifies dominant urban-specific structures of London mentality in contemporary London novels, such as Monica Ali's »Brick Lane«, J.G. Ballard's »Millennium People«, Nick Hornby's »A Long Way Down«, and Ian McEwan's »Saturday«.

Soap ("wants to keep his hands clean"), Barry "the Baptist" (drowns people in water), Doug "The Head" (a Jew who is 'not' a Jew), Boris, the "bullet-dodger". These are just some of the characters that come out of Guy Ritchie's earlier and wildly imaginative films-Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000). These characters, their names and the ways in which these same character types are subverted are a major source of humour in these films. The names are sometimes based on the character's physical and mental traits, sometimes based on their ethnicity or nationality and sometimes on their professions and more often than not based on their reputation.The portrayal of these characters also acts as a sharp critique on 'cultural stereotyping.'This paper deals with the whole idea of cultural stereotyping prevalent in society more specifically in the film industry while simultaneously exploring whether there is something called positive stereotyping or are all forms of stereotyping essentially negative.

Денди е значим персонаж за европейската литература от XIX и  XX век, но българските художествени интерпретации на този образ са твърде малко, макар неговата поява да поставя важни въпроси като тези за модерната идентичност и за естетизацията на всекидневието. Статията се фокусира върху три персонажа от българската литература, чието поведение наподобява това на денди. Те са: декадентът от книгата на Андрей Протич "Ева", контето от повестта на Димитър Шишманов "Хайлайф" и дилетантът от романа на Чавдар Мутафов "Дилетант".

"White trash" is a liminal figure that dramatizes the intersection of race and class. Contemporary British novelists like Irvine Welsh, Niall Griffiths and John King use this originally US-American stereotype to interrogate the racializing discourse of class in British society. Their novels are interdiscursive reflections of the figurations of race and class that still haunt the British cultural imaginary.

"British White Trash" is the first analysis to comprehensively examine the adaptation of the "white trash" stereotype in major British novels. The study thus contributes to a critical understanding of racism and classism, its cultural representations and its underlying social processes.

Ces quelques pages constituent un écho, plus ou moins lointain, de la conférence que j'ai eu l'honneur de prononcer le 2 octobre 2019 à Bielle, lors de l'atelier "Les cultures politiques dans la péninsule Ibérique et au Maghreb (viii e-xv e siècle). Écritures du pouvoir" ; elles reprennent des refléxions issues de mon dossier de candidature à l'Habilitation à diriger des Recherches qui n'avaient pas encore vu le jour et qui, je l'espère, ne sont pas totalement dépassées. 1 Arizaleta 2016. 2 Cf. Li livres dou trésor, II, 50, 3. López Estrada 1978. 3 On lira ici, en filigrane, ma position sur le "mester de clerecía", que j'ai exposée ailleurs. 4 Paul 1973, 10. 5 Guijarro González 2004. Écritures du pouvoir Éléments sous droit d'auteur-© Ausonius Éditions octobre 2019 Ces clercs castillans qui se sont construit au tournant des xii e et xiii e siècles une identité lettrée jouèrent un rôle intellectuel et social. Il nous sera par conséquent utile d'étudier, dans la mesure du possible, les réseaux culturels dans lesquels ces individus insérèrent leurs productions. L'objet textuel idéal pour entrer dans le monde clérical castillan lettré du 1200 est le Libro de Alexandre 6 , qui gagnerait à être interprété comme étant le produit d'une évolution scripturaire longue. L'Alexandre, écrin poétique mais aussi véhicule d'idéologie, doit être étudié conjointement avec d'autres textes, issus d'un milieu littéraire analogue 7. Après tout, les clercs lettrés qui travaillaient à la promotion du pouvoir monarchique castillan étaient nombreux, depuis 1180 ; pas si nombreux que ceux qui écrivirent pour Henri II Plantagenêt ou pour Philippe Auguste, mais assez pour qu'on en tienne compte.

The essay examines the different institutional levels at which a cultural turn is discussed in Germany today: Culture Studies (Kulturwissenschaften) can be used as a new term for the humanities or as the name of a new discipline, culture-orientated literary studies (or cultural poetics) can stand for a new and entirely reformed paradigm of literary studies or for nothing more (or less!) than a new set of questions and methods to supplement current critical practice. Secondly, the most influential schools of cultural poetics are presented and discussed (esp. discourse analysis, new historicism, cultural studies, and a German tradition of anthropological literary criticism). Finally, some important desiderata of the study of cultural poetics are named: a working definition of culture, a clarification of the role and position of literature within the cultural system, and operative solutions for practical problems of trans:-disciplinary studies and their application to literature.

In the dream theory and literature of the Enlightenment the supernatural dream was gradually replaced by the natural one – and therefore also the supernatural by the natural nightmare. This offered the new option of nightmares with psychological meanings, i.e. as the expression of the dreamer’s fears, doubts, guilt-complexes, etc. But it also opened up two completely new dimensions for the dream-type. Based upon Edmund Burke’s theory of the sublime, Gothic novels used the nightmare as a source of ›delightful horror‹. And in the new genre of the fantastic tale, Romanticists started to employ the nightmare to question the dreamers’ – and the readers’ – reality concept and/or moral convictions. In its analysis of dreams from the texts listed in the subtitle, the essay will illustrate these new functions of the nightmare and also try to outline some general characteristics of the dream-type, especially its poetics of suspense and its use of motifs from the cultural archive of our fears.

Partindo da leitura de três contos de H. P. Lovecraft – "Ar frio" (1926/1928), "Sonhos na Casa da Bruxa" (1932/1933) e "O assombro nas trevas" (1935/1936) – procurou-se tecer algumas considerações a respeito da representação do catolicismo na obra ficcional deste autor. Concluiu-se que a marca desta é, antes do mais, uma interessante ambiguidade.

Icon uplifts the object or person identified as the exemplar of a particular generation, a stylistic epoch, and a feeling about a particular set of social experiences. The icon being identified is something which all people can recognize but it is to be seen as a construction which can be seen to work in varying ways: first, as icons invested with historical significance; second, as secular icons or materials in the real world that through time accumulate to themselves a specific exemplary cultural status. On a different note, cultural icons also reflect the profoundly held aspirations as well as the concerns of receptive communities overtime. This study is to qualify theArch of the Centuries as the cultural icon of Thomasian tradition. This study will lean on the critical concepts expounded by Mike Parker and Wolfgang Iser.

The remains of Francesco Petrarch rested for centuries in the ark placed  in the small village of Arquà, next to the humble tombs of local people. Foreign travellers lingered in front of the ancient monument with awe and respect, as it became almost a must-see during the grand tour. Again in 1816, George Byron was impressed by the feeling of loneliness inspired by the place and by the sense of pride displayed by the inhabitants toward the great poet. The transformation of the graveyard into a forecourt corresponded with a new symbolical dimension assigned to the cult of Petrarch by the civic institutions and the emerging Italian nation from the mid-19th century onward. In 1843, the Paduan count Carlo Leoni promoted the renovation of the ark, but he was met with hostility and mistrust by the local notables. The restoration work, however, was  praised by the contemporary literary world and contrasted with the break-in committed in 1630 by the Dominican friar Tommaso Martinelli. The ark was later opened again in 1855, 1873 and 2003. The last inspection revealed more substantial pillaging from the past. This article focuses on the cultural and political context in which the opening of the ark took place and on the tensions that they caused inside the village that had hosted the remains of the great poet for centuries.

RESUMEN: En vísperas de la conmemoración de la revuelta o guerra de las Germanías (1519-22) y la de las Comunidades (1520-22) en España, contamos con sólidos estudios históricos, pero con escaso análisis sobre su incidencia en el plano artístico, que tuvo lugar en un momento de cambios culturales y estilísticos. En este sentido, estudiamos uno de los palacios más importantes de ese tiempo, el de los Centelles, condes de Oliva, en la sede de sus estados, provincia de Valencia. A través del desciframiento de la inscripción del salón señorial, bien conocido por su decoración a la antigua, la obra muestra la conexión con el erasmismo y el Humanismo europeo, como la obra de Sebastian Brant, Erasmo de Róterdam y Juan Luis Vives. Este hecho contribuye a precisar la disposición de la desmembrada sala, a estrechar más su cronología y a establecer una hipótesis sobre la intención histórica y moralizante de lo representado, que asociamos a las Germanías PALABRAS CLAVE Renacimiento; humanismo; Germanías; Palacio de Oliva; inscripción ABSTRACT As we approach the commemoration of the Revolt of the Germanias (1519-22) and the Communities (1520-22) in Spain, we can find well-researched historical studies but very little analysis of the artistic impact of these events, which took place at a time of cultural and stylistic change. This article is a study of one of the most important palaces of the era, the palace of the Centelles family, the Counts of Oliva, in the province of Valencia. After deciphering the inscription in the great hall, well-known for its antique style decoration, this article reveals a connection with European Humanism and the literary production of Sebastian Brant, Erasmus, and Juan Luis Vives. This allows us to recreate more precisely the original arrangement of the hall, to narrow down the range of possible dates, and to establish a hypothesis regarding the image's historical and moralising intention, which is associated here with the Revolt of the Germanias.

The volume Literary Activism, edited by Amit Chaudhuri, assembles the papers presented by academics, novelists, poets, translators, and publishers at the eponymous symposium held in December 2014 in Calcutta. The authors outline three strands that constitute the field of literary activism: The critical observation and evaluation of the global literary market and its market activism, the role of universities and literary studies as well as the role of translators within this global literary market. The book provides a well-informed and critical overview of a relatively new field of research located at the intersections of sociology of literature, history of science, world literature, and translation studies.

Literary culture of the Greco-Roman Egypt does not apprehend itself only through literary papyri, but also through documentary papyri. This is especially true of the Late antique period which accentuated the taste for a pervasive and demonstrative culture, as shown by the use of sophisticated vocabulary, of quotations from authors, but also — more formally — by the presentation adopted by documents and their writing. This is also a tendency of recent papyrology to try to understand the phenomenon of literary culture in a comprehensive manner, not limited to the field of literary papyrology. This article takes stock of the work done in this perspective and draw some paths to follow in the future.

This book participates in the ongoing debate about the alleged “death of theory” and the current post-theoretical condition, arguing that the “finitude” of theoretical projects does not mean “end”, but rather contingency and transformation of thinking, beyond irreconcilable doctrines. Contributors from different cultural and scholarly backgrounds and based in three different continents propose new areas of investigation and interpretive possibilities, reopening dialogues with past and present discourses from a plurality of perspectives and locations. After a first section that reassesses the status and scopes of critique, theory, and literature, the book foregrounds new or neglected critical vocabulary, literary paradigms, and narrative patterns to reread texts at the intersection with other branches of the humanities—history, philosophy, religion, and pedagogy. It then explores geopolitical, cultural, and epistemological domains that have been historically and ideologically overdetermined (such as postsocialist, postcolonial, and cosmopolitan spaces), recodifying them as unstable sites of both conflicts and convergences. By acknowledging the spatio-temporal and cultural delimitations of any intellectual practice, the book creates awareness of our own partiality and incompleteness, but treats boundaries as zones of contact, exchange, and conceptual mobility that promote crossings and connections.

Table of Contents

Introduction: “Recoding the Past, Re-situating the “Post-”  (Nicoletta Pireddu, Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian, Georgetown University)

Part I    Theoretical Indisciplinarities

"Meta-Critiquing: Critique, Hermeneutics, Theory," (Ming Xie, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto) 

"Illegitimacy as Norm: On the Temporal Structure of Science and Theory” (Kirk Wetters, Professor and Chair of Germanic Literature, Yale University)

“The Scope of Literary Theory" (Patrick Colm Hogan, Professor, Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, U of Connecticut)

“The Empirical Turn of Literary Studies” (Alexandre Gefen, Directeur de recherche,  Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne nouvelle and CNRS)

"Unstable Literature" (Sébastien Doubinsky, novelist; Professor of French, Aarhus University, Denmark)


Part II  Unruly Rereadings

"Reading Aristocratically" (Peter Y. Paik, HK Research Professor of the Humanities at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea)

“The Function of Criticism in a ‘Post-Secular’ Age” (Vincent Pecora, Gordon B. Hinckley Presidential Endowed Chair in British Studies, University of Utah, Salt Lake City)

“Literary Ciceronianism and the Novel” (Sandra Gustafson, Professor of English and Political Sciences, University of Notre Dame)

“Taliban Poetry for Veterans. On Critical Pedagogy” (Robert Cowan, Acting Assistant Dean for Program Development, Assessment, & Review, Hunter College; Professor of English, The City University of New York).

Part III Critical Resettlements

“Space, Mobility and Materiality: Rethinking Notions of Geographic Coherence” (Diana Sorensen, Harvard University, Dean of Arts and Humanities, and James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures and of Comparative Literature)

“Postsocialism and the Afterlives of Revolution: Impossible Spaces of Dissent” (Neda Atanasoki, Associate Professor, Department of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Cruz; Erin McElroy, Graduate Program in Feminist Studies, UC Santa Cruz)

“Outsourcing Post-colonialism” (Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Professor of Linguistics and English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; Senior Professorial Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)

"Experimental Cosmopolitanism" (Didier Coste, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Université de Bordeaux Montaigne/ JNIAS-JNU, Delhi)

Türkiye ile Ukrayna’nın tarih boyunca tarihî, coğrafî ve kültürel yakınlıkları olmuştur. İki ülke arasındaki ilişkiler inişli çıkışlı bir seyir izlemesine rağmen genellikle olumlu yönde ilerlemiştir. Atatürk dönemi ve Post-Sovyet dönemi Türkiye ile Ukrayna arasındaki siyasî, ekonomik ve kültürel ilişkilerin en fazla ilerleme kat’ ettiği dönemdir. Son yıllarda Ukrayna’da açılan Türk kültür merkezleri de ilişkilerin gelişmesine katkı sağlamaktadır. Türk ve Ukraynalı şairlerin/yazarların eserlerinin yabancı dillere çevrilmesi, Türk filmlerinin Ukraynalılar tarafından izlenmesi, iş, eğitim ve turizm faaliyetleri iki milletin birbirini daha iyi anlamasına yol açmaktadır. İyi ilişkilere rağmen iki ülke arasında kültürel ve edebi ilişkilerin istenilen seviyede olduğu söylenemez. İlişkilerin geliştirilebilmesi için iki ülke arasında ortak projelerin yapılması gerekmektedir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Türkiye, Ukrayna, Edebiyat, Kültür ve Sanat

SUMMARY
Turkey and Ukraine have had historical, geographical and cultural proximity throughout history. Although relations between two countries follow a fluctuating course, it has generally proceeded in a positive direction. Ataturk era and Post-Soviet era are the periods in which political, economic and cultural relations between Turkey and Ukraine were advanced at most. In recent years, Turkish cultural centers opened in Ukraine also contribute to the development of relations. Masterpieces of Turkish and Ukrainian poets/writers being translated into foreign languages, Turkish films’ being watched by Ukrainian public, business, educational and tourist activities cause each nation to understand each other better. Despite the good relations, it is hard to say that cultural and literary relations between two countries are at the desired level. It is required to carry out joint projects for the development of relations between two countries.

Keywords: Turkey, Ukraine, Literature, Culture and Art

Wenn uns der Gedanke, im Glashaus zu leben, zunächst brisant erscheint, so vornehmlich wegen seiner reflexartigen Assoziation mit Transparenz. Im kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskurs hängt dieser Kurzschluss eng mit Walter Benjamins Überlegungen zum Gegenstand zusammen. Der Beitrag nimmt deshalb Benjamins Ideen zum Anlass für einen Parcours durch die Diskurs- und Medienkulturgeschichte des – mal ideell, mal real bewohnten – Glashauses vom frühen 19. bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Um die funktionalen, ästhetischen und poetischen Veränderungen des Glashauses nachvollziehen zu können, werden drei Ausprägungen desselben beispielhaft diskutiert: das Gewächshaus, der Ausstellungsbau und das Wohnhaus. Verfolgt wird die Hypothese, dass Glashäuser ein Projekt der Moderne darstellen, und zwar insofern, als sie die Arbeit an den Grenzen zwischen jenen Dichotomien greifbar machen, die sich im Zuge des technisch-industriell bedingten Strukturwandels westlicher Gesellschaften abzeichnen. Der Verlauf der Grenze zwischen Natur und Kultur steht dabei ebenso zur Verhandlung wie etwa jene zwischen dem Eigenen und dem Fremden, Materialität und Diskursivität, Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit, Transzendenz und Immanenz. Für Durchgänge sorgt die Betrachtung des Glashauses auch in disziplinärem Sinne, da der Gegenstand vielfältige Passagen zwischen Literatur, Architektur und ihren Wissenschaften gleichermaßen eröffnet wie erfordert.

The essay examines the different institutional levels at which a cultural turn is discussed in Germany today: Culture Studies (Kulturwissenschaften) can be used as a new term for the humanities or as the name of a new discipline, culture-orientated literary studies (or cultural poetics) can stand for a new and entirely reformed paradigm of literary studies or for nothing more (or less!) than a new set of questions and methods to supplement current critical practice. Secondly, the most influential schools of cultural poetics are presented and discussed (esp. discourse analysis, new historicism, cultural studies, and a German tradition of anthropological literary criticism). Finally some important desiderata of the study of cultural poetics are named: a working definition of culture, a clarification of the role and position of literature within the cultural system, and operative solutions for practical problems of trans-disciplinary studies and their application to literature.

La proposta teorica, critica e  performativa di questo lavoro è la smobilitazione delle demarcazioni dei confini geo-politici ed artistici con pratiche di border critica thinking. Il concetto occidentale di mappa è smontato per delineare le geo-corpo-grafie  della creatività artistica e della mobilità transfrontaliera che decolonizzano la normatività critica, gli steccati disciplinari e la geo-politica del respingimento lungo le frontiere di qualsivoglia mappa-mondo-immaginario.

In his article "Imperialist Nostalgia in Masters's To the Coral Strand" M. Fikret Arargüç discusses nostalgia as a resource of identity formation. Arargüç argues that imperialist nostalgia is no innocent emotional attachment to the past; rather, it is an adaptation to changed circumstances and its discursive practices (i.e., eulogizing) evade responsibility. In addition to practices to alleviate or absolve repressed guilt about the past, they often relate to discourses of power and regret that the past is no more. This type of nostalgia is another neo-imperialist form of exploitation by (ab)using or generating fluid, dynamic, and ever-evolving identities. Arargüç suggests that in his autobiographical To the Coral Strand Masters attempts to cope with loss of status and identity following the end of British rule of India.

RESUMO O artigo discute alguns casos de ambiguidade em sentenças comparativas quando da presença nessas construções de expressões modais. A presença do modal parece fazer referência ao grau máximo ou ao grau mínimo do predicado. Apresentamos algumas propostas da literatura, particularmente Rullmann (1995), que opta por uma explicação sintática; e Marques (2003) e Méier (2002) que derivam a representação semântica assumindo uma negação na forma lógica. Mostramos que as três propostas carecem de motivação empírica independente e sugerimos que as duas leituras podem ser fruto da forma como a fonte de ordenação dos mundos é organizada no contexto em sua relação com a base modal.