Bridging Divides via Comparative Literature Créer des ponts par la littérature comparée: Introduction
2021; Canadian Comparative Literature Association; Volume: 48; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/crc.2021.0000
ISSN1913-9659
Autores Tópico(s)Translation Studies and Practices
ResumoBridging Divides via Comparative Literature Créer des ponts par la littérature comparéeIntroduction Doris Hambuch Japanese-German author Yoko Tawada’s crosslingual homonyms are excellent symbols for the kind of bridges this special issue is invested in. In Beyond the Mother Tongue, Yasemin Yildiz discusses a few particularly original examples (133–34), including the Japanese Ramen noodles associated with the German “Rahmen” (frame), or the French “vie” (life) in the German “Klavier” (piano). These examples lay bare the extraordinary potential for storytelling to establish bridges between cultures, genres, and contexts that may not be self-evident. Bridging Divides via Comparative Literature combines articles that offer the same kind of leaps between communities, their languages, forms of creative expression, and disciplines such as philosophy and media studies. With two exceptions, all of the articles are based on presentations given at the 2020 annual meeting of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association/Association Canadienne de Littérature Comparée. The meeting was intended as part of Congress 2020, to be hosted by the University of Western Ontario, but had to move online as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The Program Chair cannot thank enough those members of the executive whose encouragement to go forward with the virtual meeting laid the groundwork for this issue. Without their technical expertise, we would have missed out on the urgent intellectual exchange, and distraction from the unfolding crisis, that included the initial introductions of the research gathered here. The selected nine articles were peer-reviewed, revised, and extended from the original conference presentations, all of them revolving around the theme, “Bridging [End Page 5] Anglophone etymology traces the term bridge back to the Old English word brycg, and dictionaries offer the general definition of a structure carrying a pathway over a depression or obstacle, before listing more specific uses in the contexts of music, dentistry, billiards, and ship construction. It is not surprising that such a practical structure, at times bearing the signature of a famous architect, has inspired a considerable amount of art as well as criticism. In literature, famous stories about bridges include Zhang Ji’s (英譯唐詩) 楓橋夜泊 (Mooring by the Maple Bridge at Night), Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, Ivo Andrić’s Ha Дрини ћyприja (Bridge on the Drina), Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay, Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, and Ezzedine Choukri Fishere’s (Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge). Some of these stories revolve around existing bridges, at least to some extent; others use the concept of the bridge in more abstract ways. Paterson’s tale, for instance, employs it to realize its fantastic elements. Besides valleys and rivers, bridges may metaphorically cross eras and different realities. A German group of early twentieth-century expressionists chose the name Die Brücke to suggest connections across time. Maybe the best-known appropriation of the symbol in cultural studies is that of Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa in their feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981). Twenty years after the publication of Moraga and Anzadúa’s groundbreaking collection, which has seen four editions by four different presses, most recently the State University of New York Press in 2015, Anzaldúa wrote in the preface to the sequel This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation: Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement-an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s become a sort of “home.” (1) The discipline of Comparative Literature, for better or worse, continues to reinvent and redefine itself. Comparative Literature in Canada: Contemporary Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Publishing in Review (2020) is an excellent testimony to the process at hand. Comparatists are cursed and...
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