Original Subjects explores the interweaving of the child-hero and the fortunes of a nation, as these are portrayed in a wide selection of novels and national narratives in the French and English traditions. Alryyes examines how these works deploy similar metaphors and signifying narratives in which a homeless child is central.  Taking up such disparate writers and novelists as Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Defoe, Richardson, Diderot, Scott, Stendhal, Balzac, and Disraeli, as well as Homer, St. Augustine, and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that the generational parent-child dynamic is key to understanding the structure of novels, the theory of the state, and the events of history.

Original Subjects: The Child, the Novel, and the Nation (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)

Literature & Fiction

Alryyes, [Mr.] Ala A.

History & Criticism

Department of Comparative Literature

This work examines the travel account of a German baroque author who journeyed in search of silk from Northern Germany, through Muscovy, to the court of Shah Safi in Isfahan.  Adam Olearius introduced Persian literature, history, and arts to the German-speaking public; his frank appraisal of Persian customs foreshadows the enlightened spirit of the eighteenth century (influencing Montesquieu's Persian Letters as well as Goethe's West-Eastern Divan) and prepares the way for German Romanticism's infatuation with Persian poetry.  Brancaforte focuses on the visual and discursive nexus uniting Olearius's text with the numerous engravings that supplement the book. The emphasis falls on contextualized readings of Olearius's decorative frontispieces and his new and improved map of Persia and the Caspian Sea, as expressions of early modern subjectivity.

Visions of Persia: Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)

Brancaforte, Elio

Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity, and the Classical Tradition (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature)

Hailed by Horace and Quintilian as the greatest of Greek lyric poets, Pindar has always enjoyed a privileged position in the so-called classical tradition of the West. Given the intense difficulty of the poetry, however, Pindaric interpretation has forever grappled with the perplexing dilemma that one of the most influential poets of antiquity should prove to be so dark.  In discussing both poets and scholars from a broad historical span, with special emphasis on the German legacy of genius, Soliciting Darkness investigates how Pindar's obscurity has been perceived and confronted, extorted and exploited. As such, this study addresses a variety of pressing issues, including the recovery and appropriation of classical texts, problems of translation, representations of lyric authenticity, and the possibility or impossibility of a continuous literary tradition. The poetics of obscurity that emerges here suggests that taking Pindar to be an incomprehensible poet may not simply be the result of an insufficient or false reading, but rather may serve as a wholly adequate judgment.

Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity, and the Classical Tradition (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)

Hamilton, John T.

If Heraclitus is one of our most ancient writers, Kafka seems especially modern. They share in a struggle between disclosure and obscurity that is perhaps as old as writing itself. In this lucid and engaging volume, David Schur takes us from philosophy to literature and back in a sustained examination of a fundamental philosophical metaphor: the way or path of method. Through close readings of texts by Heraclitus, Plato, Heidegger, Blanchot, and Kafka, he follows the development of a rhetorical commonplace into a distinctly Heraclitean paradox of method, concluding that Kafka's account of the way beyond mortal existence renews Heraclitus's emphasis on oblivion in the search for truth.

The Way of Oblivion: Heraclitus and Kafka (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)

Schur, David

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Books by Department of Comparative Literature

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Department of Comparative Literature publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Original Subjects: The Child, the Novel, and the Nation (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)

Visions of Persia: Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)

Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity, and the Classical Tradition (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)

The Way of Oblivion: Heraclitus and Kafka (HARVARD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE)