The Global Novel: a literature podcast: Recent Episodes
Claire Hennessy
The Global Novel is a podcast that surveys the narratology of world literature and history of translation from antiquity to modernity with a critical lens and aims to make academic education in literature accessible to the world.
In Search of Lost Time (1913) by Marcel Proust remains one of the most profound and monumental novels of the 20th century, presenting us an intricate labyrinth of memory, time, and desire. With us are Professor Darci Gardner from Appalachian State University, whose expertise is in 19th and 20th-century French literature and she will shed light on the enigmatic Proustian syntax as a vehicle for story-telling and more. We also have Professor François Proulx from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and his expertise in French literature will enlighten us on aspects of desire and sexuality in this novel.
Suggested Readings:
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (vol.1 of In Search of Lost Time)
Proust and the Arts (2018) ed.Christie McDonald & François Proulx
D. Gardner, "Rereading as a Mechanism of Defamiliarization in Proust," Poetics Today (2016) 37 (1): 55–105.https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-3452619
F. Proulx, “Beyond the Epistemology of the Closet.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 48:3-4 (2020), 185-192.https://muse.jhu.edu/article/754608
F. Proulx, “Proust’s Drawings and the Secret of the ‘Solitary House.’” Modern Language Notes 133:4 (2018), 865-890.https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/707619
F. Proulx and H. Freed-Thall, eds. “Proust to Other Ends,” special issue of L’Esprit Créateur, 62:3 (Fall 2022), 164 pages.https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/48666
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, a professional conference platform for podcasting.
Music by Giorgio Di Campo from FreeSound Music:
http://freesoundmusic.eu
/ freemusicforyoutube
/ freesoundmusic
original video: (https://youtu.be/_vZT5AHSuPk?si=KMvmbbfOpqAaWeWK)
Comment and interact with our hosts
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the Show.
Official website
Tiktok
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Linkedin
W.H. Auden is the modernist poet who coined the term “the age of anxiety” and is noted for his stylistic and technical achievement. His work intellectually engaged with politics, morals, love and religion. With us today is our distinguished guest, Professor Nicholas Jenkins. Prof. Jenkins teaches English literature at Stanford University and will soon be the director of the Stanford Creative Writing Program. He is also the literary executor of the ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein, the creator of the Kindred Britain website, and the author of the critically acclaimed book The Island: War and Belonging in Auden's England, published by Harvard University Press.
Recommended Reading:
Selected Poems of W. H. Auden(1991)
The Island: War and Belonging in Auden's England (2024)This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, a professional conference platform for podcasting.
Music by Giorgio Di Campo from FreeSound Music:
http://freesoundmusic.eu
/ freemusicforyoutube
/ freesoundmusic
original video: (https://youtu.be/_vZT5AHSuPk?si=KMvmbbfOpqAaWeWK)
Comment and interact with our hosts
Support the Show.
Official website
Tiktok
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Linkedin
Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (1861) stands as a cornerstone of English literature, encapsulating Dickens' unparalleled talent to weave intricate plots with vivid characters against the backdrop of Victorian society. Our guest-speaker today is Prof. Joshua Gooch from D'Youville College in New York. Dr. Gooch's expertise is the intersections of work, power, and aesthetics in literature and film. He is the author of Dickensian Affects: Charles Dickens and Feelings of Precarity.
Recommended Readings:
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, a professional conference platform for podcasting.
Comment and interact with our hosts
Support the Show.
Official website
Tiktok
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Linkedin
Send us a Text Message.
Known for his masterful blend of realism and romanticism, Stendhal is one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century, and his works offer profound psychological insights and sharp social critiques. His unforgettable characters, such as Julien Sorel in Le Rouge et Le Noir, navigate themes of love, ambition, and identity that remain timeless and relevant. Today on the Global Novel podcast, we will dive into Stendhal's world and discover his novelistic artistry that continues to influence literature today. With me is the distinguished American literary theorist Dr. Peter Brooks. Dr. Brooks is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Yale University. His interdisciplinary research cuts across French and English literature, law, and psychoanalysis.
Recommended Reading:
Stendhal, Le Rouge et Le Noir
Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot
Peter Brooks, Seduced by the Story
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the Show.
Despite being rooted in 19th-century France, Honoré de Balzac's exploration of universal themes such as love, greed, and ambition makes his work still relevant today. Our guests are Dr. Melanie Conroy from the University of Memphis, who also authored Literary Geographies in Balzac and Proust (2021), and Dr. Julia Titus from Yale University, author of Dostoyevsky as a Translator of Balzac (2022).
Recommended Readings:
Eugénie Grandet
The Human Comedy This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the Show.
Today, we're unfurling the scrolls of one of the most provocative, scandalous, and riveting novels to ever emerge from China’s Ming dynasty: "Jin Ping Mei," or as it's tantalizingly translated, "The Plum in the Golden Vase." This novel is not just a story; it's a journey into the opulent, and often morally ambiguous, world of 16th-century China. We have the esteemed Dr. Junjie Luo, associate professor in East Asian Studies at Gettysburg College, joining us in the studio. Dr. Luo, with his vast knowledge of Chinese literature and culture, will help us unravel the complex narrative threads and uncover the hidden pearls within this golden vase of a novel.
Reading Recommendations:
Lanlingxiaoxiaosheng, The Plum in the Golden Vase, trans. David Roy
Junjie Luo (2014) Translating Jin.Ping.Mei: a preliminary comparison of The Golden Lotus and The Plum in the Golden Vase, Perspectives, 22:1, 56-74.
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Madame Bovary scandalized and fascinated nineteenth-century France upon its release, and is a groundbreaking exploration of desire, romantic disillusionment, and the mundane realities of rural life. Joining us are Professors Mary Donaldson-Evans who taught at University of Delaware, Jennifer Yee from Oxford University, Rachel Mesch from Boston University, and C.F.S. Creasy from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
Recommended Readings:
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary Creasy, C.F.S.. "Flaubert’s Alibi: The Impossible Ensemble of Madame Bovary," Novel. 2015. p363-380.
Donaldson-Evans, Mary. Madame Bovary at the Movies. Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Yee, Jennifer. "Making Madame Bovary's Wedding Cake." articleThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Gulliver’s Travels remains one of the finest satires in the English language, delighting in the mockery of everything from government to religion and —despite the passing of nearly three centuries-remaining just as fun, funny and relevant today.
Our guest-speakers are chief editors of the 2023 Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels Dr. Daniel Cook and Dr. Nicholas Seager. Daniel is an Associate Dean and Reader in English Literature at the University of Dundee whose teaching and research interests include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. Nick is Lecturer in English Literature at Keele University, UK. His research interests are Restoration and eighteenth-century literature.
Recommended Readings:
Johnathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Cambridge Companion to Gulliver's Travels (2023)This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
A Norwegian author and well-known worldwide for six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle and multiple prize winner, Karl Ove Knausgaard has been described as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations". With us today is our returning guest-speaker Dr. Bob Blaisdell. As I’ve introduced him on the show before, he is professor of English at the City University of New York’s Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. He is author of Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature's Most Enigmatic Heroine; and another book titled Chekhov Becomes Chekhov: The Emergence of a Literary Genius.
Recommended Readings:
My Struggle
Conversation With Karl Ove KnausgaardThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford love story, is the only novel by English essayist Max Beerbohm, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford published in 1911. The book largely employs a third-person narrator limited to the character of Zuleika then shifting to that of the Duke, then halfway through the novel suddenly becoming a first-person narrator who claims inspiration from the Greek Muse Clio, with her all-seeing narrative perspective provided by Zeus. This allows the narrator to also see the ghosts of notable historical visitors to Oxford, who are present but otherwise invisible to the human characters at certain times in the novel, adding an element of the supernatural. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Zuleika Dobson 59th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Robert Mighall in his Afterword to the New Centenary Edition of Zuleika (published by Collector's Library, in 2011), writes: "Zuleika is of the future that Beerbohm anticipates an all-too-familiar feature of the contemporary scene: the D-list talent afforded A-list media attention."
With us today is Dr. Margaret Stetz, the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware.
Recommended Reading:
Zuleika Dobson This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
New Grub Street is a novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s' London.The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its title refers to the London street, Grub Street, which in the 18th century became synonymous with hack literature; by Gissing's time, Grub Street itself no longer existed, though hack-writing certainly did. Its two central characters are a sharply contrasted pair of writers: Edwin Reardon, a novelist of some talent with limited commercial prospects, and Jasper Milvain, a young journalist, hard-working and capable of generosity, but cynical and only semi-scrupulous about writing and its purpose in the modern world.
With us today to discuss this wonderful novel are Doctors. Katy Mullin, Tom Ue and Richard Menke. Dr. Mullin is professor of modern literature and culture at University of Leeds. Her research explores connections between late-Victorian and Modernist fiction, and sexuality and popular culture. She’s the author of James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity and another book titled Working Girls: Fiction, Sexuality and Modernity.
Dr. Ue is Assistant Professor in English of the Long Nineteenth Century at Cape Breton University and Advising Editor of The Complete Letters of Henry James at University of Nebraska Press. He is the author of Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare. He also writes on George Gissing and Henry Ryecroft.
Dr. Menke is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Telegraphic Realism: Victorian Fiction and Other Information Systems and another book titled “Literature, Print Culture, and Media Technologies, 1880–1900: Many Inventions.”
Recommended Reading:
George Gissing, New Grub StreetThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In the book The Aesthetic Cold War, Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers. In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean—such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka —carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work. With us today is the book’s author Peter J. Kalliney. Dr. Kalliney is Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. His books include Cities of Affluence and Anger, Commonwealth of Letters, and Modernism in a Global Context.
Recommended Reading:
Peter J. Kalliney, The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature, 2022
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Taking Sigmund Freud's theories as a point of departure, Jean-Michel Rabaté's 2014 book The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis, explores the intriguing ties between psychoanalysis and literature. With me today is Professor. Jean-Michel Rabaté. He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Rabaté has authored and edited more than 40 books on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, philosophy, and writers like Beckett, Pound and Joyce. Since 2008, he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Recommended Reading:
Jean-Michel Rabaté, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis (2014)Recommended Merchandise:Freudian Sip Coffee Mug for Psychoanalysis geeks The Unemployed Philosophers Guild Freud After therapy Breath MintsThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
The famous English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare had during his lifetime produced 39 plays which are widely regarded as being among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world, translated into every major living language. In recent years, modern criticism has labeled some of these plays "problem plays" that elude easy categorisation, or perhaps purposely break generic conventions, and has introduced the term romances for what scholars believe to be his later comedies. What is so enigmatic about these later plays? Today, the distinguished American scholar and professor of English, Dr. Seth Lerer is going to walk us through the major transitions of Shakespeare's plays as well as how to appreciate the aestheticism demonstrated in his later plays.
Dr. Seth Lerer specializes in historical analyses of the English language, and in addition to critical analyses of the works of several authors, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities from 2009 to 2014. Dr. Lerer previously held the Avalon Foundation Professorship in Humanities at Stanford University and won the 2010 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for Children’s Literature: A Readers’ History from Aesop to Harry Potter.
Recommended Readings:
A Midsummer Night's Dream
HamletThe Tempest
Music Credit:
Artists: Dowland, Holborne, & Byrd. Album: Lifescapes Music in the Time of Shakespeare Song: The Fairie Rounde
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. It recounts the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature through an unorthodox scientific experiment. Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, some scholars have argued for it as the first true science-fiction story. The novel has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays. Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used, erroneously, to refer to the monster, rather than to his creator.
With me today is Dr. Glynis Ridley, Professor of English at the University of Louisville. Glynis received her Ph.D. from Trinity College, Oxford. She is best known as the author of Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, which was winner of the Institute of Historical Research Prize.
Recommended Reading:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818), ed. David Wootton
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
In a most unsettling dice gambling game that is to determine the fate of its two players, a man loses his brothers, himself, his wife, and his kingdom to the servitude of the monster incarnate, thus meeting the threshold of an ominous age where the good and the just fight the battle against the evil and unjust. Thank you for tuning in to the Global Novel. I’m Claire Hennessy. The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, and is often compared by Western scholars as important to world civilization as that of the Bible, the Quran, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or even the works of William Shakespeare.
Dr. Brian Blackis a lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. His research interests include Indian religion and philosophy, comparative philosophy, the use of dialogue in Indian religious and philosophical texts, and Hindu and Buddhist ethics. He is the author of the book The Character of the Self in Ancient India: Priests, Kings, and Women in the Early Upaniṣads.
Recommended Reading:
The MahābhārataThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character – who is a castaway spending 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, and encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. It is generally seen as a contender for the first English novel. The work has been variously read as an allegory for the development of civilization; as a manifesto of economic individualism; and as an expression of European colonial desires.
Joining me today are Dr. Jakub Lipski, Dr. Glynis Ridley and Dr. Andreas Mueller.
Dr. Jakub Lipski is an associate professor of English at Kazimierz Wielki University in Poland. He is the author of In Quest of the Self: Masquerade and Travel in the Eighteenth-Century Novel and Painting the Novel: Pictorial Discourse in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction.
Dr. Glynis Ridley is the author of Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, which was winner of the Institute of Historical Research Prize. She is professor of English at the University of Louisville.
Dr. Andreas Mueller is professor and chair of English at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He is the author of A Critical Study of Daniel Defoe’s Verse and editor of Daniel Defoe’s Non-Fiction: Form, Function, Genre. He has published several essays on Defoe.
Recommended Readings:
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Glynis Ridley, Andreas Mueller eds. Robinson Crusoe After 300 Years (2021)
Jakub Lipski ed. Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade across Languages, Cultures, and Media (2020)
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Emily Apter’s Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability is a pivotal monograph in the study of comparative literature, published in 2014, ushering a significant turn in theorizing what is world literature and what it should be as a discipline in the US academia. Emily Apter is the major contributor to the recent debate about world literature theory. Sheis a Harvard graduate and her areas of expertise range from philosophizing in Languages, Political Theory, Translation theory, to continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, French and German literature. She is currently Professor of Comparative Literature and French at New York University.
Recommended Reading:
Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability, 2014
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Water Margin (水浒传) is one of the earliest Chinese novels written in vernacular Mandarin, and is attributed to Shi Nai'an(施耐庵).It is also translated as Outlaws of the Marsh or All Men Are Brothers. The story, which is set in the Northern Song dynasty (around 1120), tells of how a group of 108 outlaws gather at Liangshan (梁山)Marsh to rebel against the government. Later they are granted amnesty and enlisted by the government to resist the nomadic conquest of the Liao(辽) dynasty and other rebels. It is considered one of the masterpieces of early vernacular fiction and Chinese literature. It has introduced readers to many of the best-known characters in Chinese literature, such as Wu Song(武松), Lin Chong(林冲), Song Jiang(宋江) and Lu Zhishen(鲁智深) to name just a few. Water Margin also exerted a towering influence in the development of fiction elsewhere in East Asia, such as in Japanese literature.
With us today is Professor. Andrew Plaks. He is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber as well as The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel.
Recommended Reading:
Water MarginThe Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
In today’s episode of the Global Novel, Dr. Daniel Tutt will review Marxism’s key concept on alienation. He will also discuss the relationship between Marxism and literature.
Recommended Readings:
S.S. Solomon Prawer, Karl Marx and World literature
Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism
Raymond Williams, Marxism and literatureThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. Today I speak with philosopher Daniel Tutt on several basic notions of Marxism and literature. Daniel’s research focuses on psychoanalytic theory and Marxist thought. He is the author of Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family: The Crisis of Initiation. He is also Adjunct Professor of philosophy at George Washington University, Marymount University and Senior Research Fellow at the Global Center for Advanced Studies.
Recommended Reading:
Robert C. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader, second edition
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Support the show
Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. It is the most generative work of fiction of all time. There are literally thousands of works of fiction, theater, poetry, and music inspired, based on, or dealing in other ways with Cervantes’s novel. Don Quixote has been depicted by more artists than any other fictional character, which is part of the reason why he is the most easily recognized fictional character. A founding work of Western literature, Don Quixote is often labelled as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works ever written. It is also one of the most-translated books in the world and the best-selling novel of all time.
Guest-speakers:
Prof. Danial R. Schwarz from Cornell University
Prof. Howard Mancing from Purdue University
Recommended Readings:
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote Howard Mancing, Don Quixote: A Reference Guide —The Cervante Encyclopedia —Don Quixote Around The GlobeDaniel R. Schwarz ed. Reading the European Novel to 1900This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Aethiopica is a fascinating and complex work that tells the story of a young Ethiopian princess named Chariclea and her lover Theagenes, a Thessalian nobleman. The novel is filled with adventure, romance, and intrigue, and it has captured the imagination of readers for centuries. Written in the third or fourth century AD, Aethiopica is considered one of the earliest surviving examples of the ancient Greek novel. It is a product of a rich literary tradition that flourished in the Hellenistic and Roman periods and is known for its vivid storytelling, complex characters, and exploration of themes such as love, identity, and fate.
We will explore the world of Aethiopica, its historical and cultural context, and the literary techniques that make it such a compelling work. We will delve into the characters, their motivations, and the complex relationships that drive the plot. We will also examine the enduring legacy of Aethiopica and its influence on later works of literature.
Recommended Reading:
Heliodorus, Aethiopika
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Consider, even English literature was a late comer to the academy, therefore the novel, being a late comer to the late comer, did not made it to the curriculum in the English departments world wide by the 1950. In fact, even by the mid 1980, it was so marginal that taking any graduate seminar related with fiction would be considered as side-tracked. Now, major theorists of the novel such as Franco Moretti hailed this field of study as “a great anthropological force,” highlighting its close examination on humankind by redefining the sense of reality and the meaning of individual existence. As now, scholars of the world celebrate the novel’s plurality as the borders of literature are continuously, unpredictably expanded, in today’s episode of the Global Novel, we will concentrate on the rise of the novel, especially its philosophical underpinnings and its main characteristics that set it apart from its predecessors—the epic and prose fiction as well as other earlier novel forms from different cultures and traditions.
Recommended Readings:
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel
Georg Lukács, Theory of the Novel
Franco Moretti, The Novel Vol.1
—The Novel Vol.2
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
The Orphan of Zhao (趙氏孤兒) was the first classical Chinese play to be translated into any European language dating from 1731. It was also the first Chinese play to be adapted and re-enacted by the Royal Shakespeare company in 2012.
Prof. Patricia Sieber and Prof. Shih-pe Wang(汪詩珮) in our last episode have jointly revealed how the classical narrative form called zaju(雜劇) effectively enacts the moral dilemma of the protagonist Cheng Ying(程嬰) who sacrifices his own son in order to save his lord’s son. In this episode, they will discuss how the theme of familial revenge is placed in the context of Confucian morality and social hierarchical structure as well as the afterlife and the cross-cultural adaptations of the play into the 21st century.
Recommended reading:
The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known VersionsHow To Read Chinese Drama: A Guided AnthologyVideo clip of the Royal Shakespeare production’s The Orphan of ZhaoThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
The Orphan of Zhao(趙氏孤兒) is a famous play from the Chinese Yuan dynasty, in the 13th century generally attributed to the dramatist Ji Junxiang (紀君祥). The play is classified in the zaju (雜劇) genre of Chinese drama and revolves around the central theme of revenge and was the earliest Chinese play to be known and even translated in Europe.
Joining the show today are Dr. Patricia Sieber, associate professor of Chinese literature at Ohio State University and Dr. Shih-pe Wang(汪詩珮), Professor of Chinese literature at National Taiwan University.
Recommended reading:
The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays: The Earliest Known VersionsHow to Read Chinese Drama: A Guided AnthologyThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
La Princesse de Clèves is a French novel which was published anonymously in 1678. Many regarded the novel as the precursor to the modern psychological novel and a classic of world literature. Its author is generally attributed to Madame de La Fayette. The novel is unique for its highly realistic plot, introspective language that explored the characters' inner thoughts and emotions.
Joining the show today is Dr. Benjamin Fancy, author of the recently published essay titled ‘Fantôme de devoir’: La Princesse de Clèves’s Haunting Duty.
Recommended Readings:
Madame de La Fayette, Princesse de ClèvesThis podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Little Nemo in Slumberland is a comic strip created by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. It depicts Nemo having fantastic dreams that were interrupted by his awakening in the final panel. The strip is considered McCay's masterpiece for its experiments with the form of the comics page, its use of color and perspective, its timing and pacing, the size and shape of its panels, and its architectural and other details.
Joining the show today is Prof. Scott Bukatman, who is a cultural theorist and professor of film and media studies at Stanford University. His research explores how such popular media as film, comics, and animation mediate between new technologies and human perceptual and bodily experience. Among many of his works on these subjects, The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit, celebrates play, plasmatic possibility, and the life of images in cartoons, comics, and cinema.
Recommended Readings:
Winsor McCay, Little Nemo In Slumberland (1905-6)
Scott Bukatman, The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit (2012)
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
A cornerstone of world literature and a monument to the power of storytelling, the Arabian Nights has inspired countless authors, from Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe to James Joyce and A.S. Byatt. Now, in this lavishly designed and illustrated edition of The Annotated Arabian Nights, the acclaimed literary historian Paulo Lemos Horta and the woman poet and translator Yasmine Seale co-present a new selection of tales, featuring treasured original stories as well as later additions including “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and bringing the Nights out of Victorian antiquarianism into the twenty-first century. You are listening to the second half of the Arabian Nights and its 2021 translation.
Recommended Reading:
The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights (2021)
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights”
—“One Thousand and One Nights”
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
King Shahriyar and his brother King Shahzaman of India and China suspect their suffering to be unique in this world. Their wives have slept with other men, and this drives them to grief, to madness—Shahzaman skewers his wife and her lover. Shahriyar begins to take a new bride each night, only to have her killed the next morning. Parents grieve; the kingdom darkens. Eventually, Shahrazad, the vizier’s daughter, comes up with a plan. She offers herself as a bride, but holds Shahriyar’s attention, night after night, with stories that end on a cliffhanger. With every dawn, the king decides to let her live, burning to know what comes next. This goes on for one thousand and one nights, hence the name of the famous middle eastern folk tale collection. Here comes the good news: This 8-14 century compilation created in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age was recently re-translated in a new Norton edition by the British Syrian poet Yasmine Seale in 2021. Joining us today is its editor Dr. Paulo Lemos Horta, associate professor of literature at New York University Abu Dhabi. Professor Horta is also the author of Marvelous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights.
Recommended Reading:
The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights”
—“One Thousand and One Nights”
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
In 1886, a twenty-six-year-old Anton Chekhov was publishing short stories, humor pieces, and articles at an astonishing rate, and was still a practicing physician. Yet as he honed his craft and continued to draw inspiration from the vivid characters in his own life, he found himself—to his surprise and occasional embarrassment—admired by a growing legion of fans, including Tolstoy himself.
He had not yet succumbed to the ravages of tuberculosis. He was a lively, frank, and funny correspondent and a dedicated mentor. And as Bob Blaisdell discovers, his vivid articles, stories, and plays from this period—when read in conjunction with his correspondence—become a psychological and emotional diary.
From the literary scholar and acclaimed author of Creating Anna Karenina comes the new book this year Chekhov Becomes Chekhov: The Emergence of a Literary Genius , Bob Blaisdell astutely examines the psychological portraits of Chekhov’s distinct, carefully observed characters and how they reflect their creator during a period when there was little barrier between his imagination and his pen.
Recommended readings:
Bob Blaisdell, Chekhov Becomes Chekhov: The Emergence of A Literary Genius
Anton Chekhov, Complete Works of Anton Chekhov
This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
“Once upon a time: the comic strip was a poor, un- baptized, and unrecognized stepsister of caricature, which was the poor sister of the graphic arts, which were the poor sisters of the fine arts. If there was a fairy godmother at the birth of the sleeping beauty, the prince of public acclaim was slow in coming to wake her.” Such is the witty humor that sets in motion David Kunzle’s new monograph Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope 1847-1870. Today I have the honor again to speak with Dr. Kunzle, professor eméritus of art history at UCLA about his new book.
Recommended Reading:
David Kunzle, Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope (2021)This podcast is sponsored by Riverside, the most efficient platform for video recording and editing for podcasters.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Joining us today is critic and professor Bob Blaisdell who unravels the novel’s author Leo Tolstoy’s family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised Anna Karenina in his recent book titled Creating Anna Karenina.
Recommended Reading:
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Kent and Berberova (2000)
Bob Blaisdell, Creating Anna Karenina (2021)
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. After I talked with Tierry Groensteen, whose work on comic theory was translated and introduced to the Anglophone world by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen, today I speak with these two translators who will share with us their experience and insights of translating theory.
Recommended Reading:
Ann Miller and Bart Beaty, The French Comics Theory Reader (2014)
Support the show
Thierry Groensteen is one of the leading French-speaking comics researchers and theorists, whose work has profound influence beyond that field. According to the English translators of System of Comics, Thierry Groensteen is not only the most prolific scholar on the subject of comics, he is indisputably one of the best. The System of Comics is his chef d’oeuvre, his masterpiece, finally available to readers in this English edition, reaching even broader audience in the anglophone world and inspiring new investigations into the field of comics.
Recommended Reading:
Tierry Groensteen, System of Comics (1999)
Support the show
Thanks for tuning in to the Global Novel. I’m Claire Hennessy.
Loki is a god of mischief in Norse mythology. The character is originally referred to in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; among other sources in Scandinavian folklore. In Modern popular culture, Loki has been depicted in or is referred to in an array of media including Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as a villain who consistently comes into conflict with the superhero Thor, his adopted brother and archenemy. Today our returning guest-speaker Dr. Shepherd Siegel will share with us his recent essay on Loki.
Recommended Reading:
Shepherd Siegel, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Trickster, Taika, Loki, Thor"
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Mulan is a legendary folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era of Chinese history, roughly from 4th to 6th century CE. The story of Mulan was originally told in Ballad of Mulan as a Yuefu (樂府) genre, in which Chinese poems were composed in a folk song style. Over the centuries, the story of Mulan has been reiterated, being performed on the stage, adapted for the screen, and rewritten as dramas for television and even animated films.
Joining us today is Dr. Shiamin Kwa, associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures and comparative literature at Bryn Mawr College. Among her expertise ranging from graphic narratives to Chinese literature, She is best known for her book with Wilt Idema titled Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend.
Recommended Reading:
Shiamin Kwa, Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend Primary Text: The Ballad of Mulan by anonymous
(English translations are included in Shiamin Kwa's Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend)
The original text:
木蘭詩
唧唧復唧唧，木蘭當戶織。不聞機杼聲，惟聞女嘆息。
問女何所思，問女何所憶。女亦無所思，女亦無所憶。
昨夜見軍帖，可汗大點兵。軍書十二卷，捲捲有爺名。
阿爺無大兒，木蘭無長兄。願為市鞍馬，從此替爺徵。
東市買駿馬，西市買鞍韉，南市買轡頭，北市買長鞭。
旦辭爺娘去，暮宿黃河邊。不聞爺娘喚女聲，但聞黃河流水鳴濺濺。
旦辭黃河去，暮至黑山頭。不聞爺娘喚女聲，但聞燕山胡騎鳴啾啾。
萬里赴戎機，關山度若飛。朔氣傳金柝，寒光照鐵衣。
將軍百戰死，壯士十年歸。
歸來見天子，天子坐明堂。策勳十二轉，賞賜百千強。
可汗問所欲，木蘭不用尚書郎，願馳千里足，送兒還故鄉。
爺娘聞女來，出郭相扶將；阿姊聞妹來，當戶理紅妝；
小弟聞姊來，磨刀霍霍向豬羊。
開我東閣門，坐我西閣床。脫我戰時袍，著我舊時裳。
當窗理雲鬢，對鏡帖花黃。出門看伙伴，伙伴皆驚惶。
同行十二年，不知木蘭是女郎。
雄兔腳撲朔，雌兔眼迷離；雙兔傍地走，安能辨我是雄雌？
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a tricksteris a character in a story who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior. Today I speak with Dr. Shepard Siegel, author of the recently published book titled Tricking Power into Performing Acts of Love, as Siegel’s work weaves together delightful stories of mischief from famous tricksters and rereads a buried historical current of people who use creativity and play to challenge authority and envision new possibilities—through music, comedy, writing, visual arts and politics.
Recommended reading:
Shepard Siegel, Tricking Power into Performing Acts of LoveLearn more about Dr. Siegel's works athttp://shepardsiegel.com
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Peach Blossom Spring is a short prose fable written by China's best known poet during the six dynasties period, Tao Yuanming. Joining us today is Dr. Wendy Swartz, professor of Chinese literature at Rutgers to share her knowledge with us on the subject. Prof. Swartz is the author of Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting Paradigms of Historical Reception, and another book Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China.
Recommended Reading:
Earl Trotter, Tao Yuanming: Selected Poetry & Prose(primary text)Wendy Swartz,Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting Paradigms of Historical Reception (secondary text)
—Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China (secondary text)
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Today is August 22nd, the birthday of one of the greatest American cartoonists George Herriman. In this episode, we will cast a critical lens on Krazy Kat’s aestheticism and defining techniques that distinguish itself as a work of art. We suggest people to get the primary text of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat’s collections, which can be accessed through the links included in the description of this episode. On top of that, we highly recommend McDonnell, O’Connell and De Havenon’s coedited book (MOD for future reference)— Their book is titled Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman, which serves as our secondary text.
Recommended Readings:
The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918 (primary text)
The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921 (primary text)
The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1922-1924 (primary text)Krazy & Ignatz 1931-1932: "A Kat a'Lilt with Song" (Primary text)Krazy Kat: The Complete Color Sundays 1935-1944 (primary text)
Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman (secondary text)
Michael Tisserand, George Herriman, A Life In Black And White *(secondary text)
Further Reading:*Google Talk on Krazy Kat with Michael Tisserand
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Michael discusses his book, "Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White," winner of the 2017 Eisner Award for best comics-related book, and a finalist in both the National Book Critics Circle Awards for Biography and the PEN America/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Krazy was also selected as a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2016 and as one of Vanity Fair‘s “Must-Read Books of the Holiday Season."
Tisserand’s previous books include THE KINGDOM OF ZYDECO, an exploration of Louisiana music that received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for music writing, and the Hurricane Katrina memoir SUGARCANE ACADEMY. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. When not writing, he coaches scholastic chess and is a member of The Laissez Boys, a Mardi Gras parading organization.
More information about Tisserand and his work can be found at www.MichaelTisserand.com
Moderated by Camille Gennaio.
Support the show
A mysterious spy who wrote about the most captivatingly infamous intellectual of the time, Christopher Marlowe is among the most accomplished and enigmatic of the Elizabethan playwrights. Joining us today is Dr. Robert Sawyer, professor in the department of literature and language at East Tennessee State University. Professor Sawyer’s is the author of Shakespeare Between the World Wars, and Marlowe and Shakespeare: The Critical Rivalry.Recommended Reading:
Doctor Faustus
Additional Readings:
A play is best learned when watched, you can find out the Review on Shakespeare's Globe's Doctor Faustus or go to a theater with a friend.
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Paradise Lost is an epic poem by the 17th-century English poet John Milton, published in 1667. In its most creative fashion, it supplemented the biblical story of the origin and the Fall of Man, and imaginatively explains how and why Adam and Eve are tempted by the fallen angel Satan and thereby their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is considered to be Milton's masterpiece, solidifying his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of all time. Joining us today is Dr. David Loewenstein, Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of English and the Humanities, at Penn State University.
Recommended Reading:
Paradise LostFeedspot ranking of top 60 best podcast in literature can be found at http://blog.feedspot.com/literature_podcasts/
The global novel Facebook community http://facebook.com/theglobalnovelezine
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
The word “Inferno” is the Italian for Hell, an imaginary creation by the 14th-century poet Dante. The Inferno is the first part of the Divine Comedy, followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. As one of the most therapeutic books of the world, it is about a hero’s journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is “the realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".Since its publication, over 129 translators have shared their creative attempts in translating the work, and more frequently these attempts were translations into English.
With us today is Prof. Marco Sonzogni from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand who will talk about how different versions of translation highlight the thematic tension of Inferno.
Recommended Readings:
Dante, InfernoMarco Sonzogni,To Hell and Back: An Anthology of Dante's Inferno In English Translation —— Quantum of Dante
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic to compare "the effect of education(παιδεία) and the lack of it on our nature". It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, narrated by the latter.
In the allegory "The Cave," Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses, while the objects under the sun represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through reason. Three higher levels exist: the natural sciences; mathematics, geometry, and deductive logic; and the theory of forms.
Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not the direct source of the images seen. A philosopher aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life.
Recommended reading:
Plato, Republic Book VI-X
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
Are ghost stories real? And why do people write and read ghost stories in early medieval China? Prof. Robert Ford Campany, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair of Humanities, from department of East Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University will shed light on a distinctive Chinese narrative genre called "zhiguai"(志怪) or Chinese strange writings. Prof. Campany is among the first group of scholars to systematically trace, study and theorize this Chinese narrative genre.
Recommended readings (paid links):
Robert Ford Campany, A Garden of Marvels: Tales of Wonder from Early Medieval China, University of Hawaii Press, 2015. (primary text)
Robert Ford Campany, Signs from the Unseen Realm: Buddhist Miracle Tales from Early Medieval China, University of Hawaii Press, 2012.
Robert Ford Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong's Traditions of Divine Transcendents, University of California Press, 2002.
Robert Ford Campany, Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China, State University of New York Press, 1996.
Judith T. Zeitlin, "xiaoshuo" in Franco Marretti ed. The Novel, Vol.1
For aficionados of Classical Chinese language:
中國古代志怪小說選一
中國古代志怪小說選二
This episode is able to be delivered to you in high quality because of Prof. Campany's generous donation
Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support the show
In this episode of The Global Novel podcast, Dr. David Kunzle (UCLA) will uncover the unknown history of how a once frowned-upon visual story-telling genre, called "picture-stories," legendarily made its way into the hands of one of the greatest literary figures of world literature Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and since then, won the hearts of the entire world. By tracing comic strips’ unique lineage in Rodolphe Töpffer, father of comic strips, Dr. Kunzle will shed light on Töpffer’s visual story-telling rhetoric as well as its endless potential as a medium.
Recommended Readings (paid links):
David Kunzle, ed & trans. Rodolphe Töpffer The Complete Comic StripDavid Kunzle,Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer.David Kunzle, Rebirth of the English Comic Strip, A Kleidoscope, 1847-1870. Rodolphe Töpffer, "Essay on Physiognomy" (1845) in Enter: The Comics. ed & trans. by E. Wiese.
Support the show
The Tale of Genji (or Genji Monogatari) is a classic work of Japanese literature written in the early 11th century by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu. The work recounts the fictional life of Hikaru Genji, or "Radiant Prince", who is the son of an ancient Japanese emperor (known to readers as Emperor Kiritsubo) and a low-ranking concubine called Kiritsubo Consort. Due to the intense political conflicts at the court and out of protection for his son, the emperor removes Genji from the line of succession, demoting him to a commoner by giving him the surname Minamoto, so that he pursue a career as an imperial officer. The tale concentrates on Genji's romantic life and describes the customs of the aristocratic society of the time. With us today is Prof. Edward Kamens, Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Prof. Kamens will share his expertise on the history of the work’s translations as well as how other modes of interpretation shape our understanding of the work.
Reading List (paid links):
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Edward Kamens, "Flares in the Garden,Darkness in the Heart: Exteriority, Interiority, and the Role of Poems in The Tale of Genji," in Studies in Modern Japanese Literature: Essays and Translations in Honor of Edwin McClellan
For aficionados interested in Japanese versions:
Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei
Shin Nihon koten bungaku zenshu
Support the show
What is world literature? How do we define its scope and nature? This episode will cast a critical lens at the current theories, methods and debates on world literature, which moves in and between countries and cultures. By investigating canonical works of leading theorists, we will get a sense of how institution shapes its discourse around the field. In doing so, we will develop aesthetic, ethical and pedagogical reflections towards a more constructive sense of “world literature."
Reading list (paid links):
Introduction chapters of the following books:
The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature: From the European Enlightenment to the Global Present. 2009.
David Damrosch, What is World Literature? 2003.
Emily Apter, Against World Literature 2013.
Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters. 2004.
Christopher Predergast, Debating World Literature, 2004.
Editors at N+1, "World-lite: What is Global Literature" (free link)
Support the show
In this episode, we invited our honored guest who has her Ph.D. in folklore from UCLA and is here to share with us her upcoming graphic novel titled Postapocademia. In this interview, Sandra Mizumoto Posey is going to talk about her graphic novel which is an outline of her analysis of and vision towards the current academic crisis.
Resource mentioned in the interview:
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/02/kumbaya-history-of-an-old-song/
http://sandraposey.net
Support the show (http://patreon.com/theglobalnovel)
Recommended Reading:
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics(1993), paid link
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media(republished version, 2008), paid link
Wassily Kandinsky, "On the Problem of Form"(1922 essay), free link
Quoted audio excerpts are from the below sources:
Scott McCloud's interview at Radcliff Institute, free link
Disney Plus's Marvel Series "Behind the Mask" trailers, retrievable on Youtube
Commentators in the Marvel audio clip:
Henry Jenkins, Media Scholar at USC
John Jennings, Professor of Media Studies, UCR
Sana Amanat, VP of Content and Character Development, Marvel
Support the show
In this episode, we will focus on how the concept of justice is further expounded by the Platonian Socrates from Book II to V. If Book I covers a few definitions of justice, Book II-V can be summarized as Plato's highlight on a set of key properties of justice. A key property of justice is the moderation of our desires in the soul. Plato categorizes our desires into two: one is primal, governed by appetite and sex, the other spiritual and rational, governed by our need to win honor and pursue wisdom. This constitutes the main idea of Plato's famous theory on the tripartite soul.
Recommended Readings (paid links):
Hans Beck, Ed. A Companion to Ancient Greek Government (2013)
Book II-V, Plato's Republic
Support the show
In this episode, we will rehistoricize the evolution of the Graphic Novel. The major differences in defining a comics from a graphic novel truly go beyond the backdrops of its academic contentions, commercial behaviors, its self-consciousness of possessing a unique aestheticism, as well as the self-awareness of its own geopolitical position to the global comics market across different languages and cultures; but rather, in attempting to define such a visual story-telling genre, we will truly find ourselves an amazing adventure with its breath-taking evolution.
Recommended Reading (paid link):
The Graphic Novel: An Introduction (Cambridge Introductions to Literature (Paperback)) Illustrated Edition
Support the show
In this season, we will explore a medium that has been forming since the beginning of our civilization and yet received little attention by scholars, literary and art critics, as well as philosophers. We will zoom in on the graphic novel and its twentieth century trajectory in the following genres such as comic strips, picture stories, wordless novels, collage, graphic histories, comix journalism, manga, as well as memoires that manifest a distinctive way of story-telling from fiction and cinematic pictures.
Recommended Reading (paid links):
Scott McCloud, Chapter 1 from Understanding Comics (1994)
Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey, Chapter 1 from The Graphic Novel: An Introduction (2014)
Commentators in the Marvel audio clips:
Joe Quesada, EVP and Creative Director, Marvel
Brian Bendis, comic book writer and artist
Christopher Priest, comic book writer and artist
David Walker, comic book writer and artist, filmmaker and educator, Marvel
Roy Thomas, comic book writer and editor
Henry Jenkins, Media Scholar at USC
John Jennings, Professor of Media Studies, UCR
Sana Amanat, VP of Content and Character Development, Marvel
Support the show
A Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as a founder of Western Philosophy, Socrates is also known as the first moral philosopher of ethical tradition of thought.
In this episode, we are going to unpack the main dialogical contentions of Book I, which is of justice. During the process, we will discuss the narrative form of this philosophical genre called the Socratic irony, as we zoom in on how such a narratological device is able to convey and develop Socrate’s philosophical thoughts in the most powerful fashion.
Reading list (paid links)
Plato’s Republic
Feng Youlan’s A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (English version)
Feng Youlan's A Short History of Chinese philosophy (Chinese version)
Feng Youlan’s A Short History of Chinese philosophy (bilingual edition with kindle)
Support the show
In this episode, we will discuss the story of Jesus narrated in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. We will focus on the nature of the narrative, and especially, how the story is told, and what its narratological premise is based upon, one that intriguingly retells one of the most significant historical moments in our civilization. This episode is guest-lectured by FRONTLINE PBS: From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians (free link). Our research approach and discussion perspectives coincide with those of the documentary, which are largely historical and archeological. The purpose and significance of adopting such approaches are, to quote Bart D. Ehrman, author of the book Jesus, Interrupted (paid link), that “whether you are a believer, fundamentalist, evengelical, moderate, liberal or a nonbeliever, coming to understand what the biblical narative actually is and is not, is one of the most important intellectual endeavors that anyone in our society can embark upon.”
Commentators in the PBS documentary are :
Michael White, Professor at University of Texas, Austin
Holland L Hendrix, President., Inion Theological Seminary
Eric M. Meyers, Professor at Duke University
Allan Callaham, Associate Professor at Harvard Divinity School,
John Dominic Crossan, Professor at Depaul University
Paula Fredriksen, Professor at Boston University
Wayne A Meeks, Professor at Yale University
Harold D. Attridge, Professor at Yale Divinity School
Elaine Pagels, Professor at Princeton University
Support the show
In this episode, we will discuss the story of Jesus narrated in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. We will focus on the nature of the narrative, and especially, how the story is told, and what its narratological premise is based upon, one that intriguingly retells one of the most significant historical moments in our civilization. This episode is guest-lectured by FRONTLINE PBS: From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians (free link). Our research approach and discussion perspectives coincide with those of the documentary, which are largely historical and archeological. The purpose and significance of adopting such approaches are, to quote Bart D. Ehrman, author of the book Jesus, Interrupted (paid link), that “whether you are a believer, fundamentalist, evengelical, moderate, liberal or a nonbeliever, coming to understand what the biblical narative actually is and is not, is one of the most important intellectual endeavors that anyone in our society can embark upon.”
Recommended Readings:
The Gospel of Mathew, The New Testament (free link)Commentators in the PBS documentary are :
Michael White, Professor at University of Texas, Austin
Holland L Hendrix, President., Inion Theological Seminary
Eric M. Meyers, Professor at Duke University
Allan Callaham, Associate Professor at Harvard Divinity School,
John Dominic Crossan, Professor at Depaul University
Paula Fredriksen, Professor at Boston University
Wayne A Meeks, Professor at Yale University
Harold D. Attridge, Professor at Yale Divinity School
Elaine Pagels, Professor at Princeton University
Support the show
In this episode, we will read long Jing Ke's assassination of the first emperor of Qin, which is a classic of Chinese literature. We will first get to known the Qin history with Burton Watson's helpful introduction. After reading the plot, we will approach the significant critique on the plot offered by Andrew H. Plaks.
Recommended Readings (paid links):
Burton Waston, trans. Records of The Grand Historian
Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History For aficionados of modern Chinese: 中国叙事学(Chinese Narratology) , 浦安迪(Andrew H. Plaks) 著，北京大学出版社，1996年
for aficionados of classical Chinese:Shiji(史記)This episode owes its special thanks to Dr. Andrew H. Plaks at Princeton University who granted his permission to translate his work into English.
Support the show
Many may still remember the 2002 martial art film directed by Zhang Yimou and starring by Jet Li. The name is Hero(paid link) and it is based on the historical event of Jing Ke’s assassination attempt on the first emperor of China, King of Qin in 227 BC.
The original story is explicitly detailed in the Records of The Grand Historian, also known by its Chinese name Shiji(史記)(paid link). A monumental history of ancient China and the world, it was completed around 94 BC by the Western Han Dynasty official Sima Qian after having been started by his father, Sima Tan, Grand Astrologer to the imperial court.
In this episode, we will explore the historical as well as literary values of the Records of the Grand Historian, which is a foundational text in Eastern civilization.
Readings (paid links):
Burton Waston, trans. Records of The Grand Historian
for aficionados in classical Chinese:Shiji(史記)Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History
Support the show
Narcissus was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia who was known for his beauty. According to Tzetzes, he rejected all romantic advances, eventually falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his life. After he died, in his place sprouted a flower bearing his name.
This episode explores how aspects of psychoanalysis, in particular, gender, sexuality, visual pleasure, as well as self and other, are represented.
Recommended Reading:
Ovid, Metamorphoses (paid link)
This episode is dedicated to Dr. Vincent Farenga, Professor of Classics at University of Southern California. Most of this episode derives from his undergraduate class “Masterminds and Masterpieces” taught as comparative literature 101 in 2019 fall semester when I was his teaching assistant. Among my two decades of scholarship in languages and literatures, Prof. Farenga’s class, a survey of canonical classics, has always remained one of the most motivating and enlightening ones.
Support the show
In the episode we will explore one of the earliest narratives that attempt at capturing the essence of wisdom, freedom and happiness. It was 375 BC when Plato was writing the Republic, the same time when Zhuangzi wrote his eponymous work in the warring states of China. This episode will explore how Zhuangzi’s philosophical narratives convey its ethical and political meanings and how intellectuals played their roles in the pre-modern societies of the east.
Recommended readings (paid links):
The Complete Works of Zhuangzi
Chapter 10 “The Third Phase of Taoism: Chuang Tzu” in Fung Yu-lan's Chinese Philosophy
Support the show
In this episode, we will theorize "chuan" as a unique narrative genre in world literature and unpack its ontological untranslatability by first getting to know the historical background surrounding its completion, which will help us better understand why the narrative tradition of China is so different than that of the West. Due to the historical nature of the genre, We will also discuss the relationship between history and fiction by situating this dichotomy in Aristotle's poetics. Finally, we will hear about what Chinese scholars think of Tso Chuan's literary status in Chinese narrative tradition as well as how it has been understood for the West.
Recommended book:
The Tso Chuan(paid link) translated by Burton Watson
Audio clips regarding the background of Warring States period of China is from BBC radio In Our Times, with guest speakers Dr. Chris Cullen, Director of the Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University; Dr. Vivienne Lo, lecturer at the Wellcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine; Carol Michaelson, Assistant Keeper of Chinese Art in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum.
Support the show
The Aeneid (paid link) is a palimpsest. A palimpsest is a manuscript or piece of writing material (in ancient times, usually, a parchment) on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. Why did Virgil adopt such a narrative technique of rewriting the story of Homer's Troy and Odysseus? How does the Aeneid inherit Homer's narratology and anticipate Dante's Inferno? How do we understand and apply modern perspectives of feminism, post-colonialism, and the latin connotation of "cupīdō," meaning desire, greediness, appetite, love, as well as desire of material gain in the context of The Aeneid? This episode is guest-lectured by TED ED's educational program on "why should you read Virgil's Aneid?"(Mark Robinson) and BBC's program IN OUR TIMES:"The Aeneid." (free links)
Support the show
what ethical (more than "don't sleep with your mom or kill your dad") implications can we get from Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus? We will bridge Sophocles' Theban Plays with heated debate over the ethical issue regarding "recognition" in the works of Aristotle and Hegel.
Suggested Readings (paid links):
Theban PlaysAristotle, PoeticsMyth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece
The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles: Philosophical PerspectivesOedipus: Myth and Complex, A Review of Psychoanalytic Theory
Support the show
What's the difference between oral and written form of story-telling? Why Homer tells stories in a way that sets the canon for Western literature? We will walk through The Illiad and The Odyssey together to find the answers.
Suggested Readings (paid links):
The Illiad The Odyssey
Troy[movie]
The Odyssey[movie]
Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method
Support the show
