👤Author Name: David Damrosch & Cezar GheorgheAffiliation: Harvard University; University of BucharestContact: – 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Damrosch, David; Gheorghe, Cezar. “On World Literature with David Damrosch”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 184-190.Pages: 184-190Language: EnglishURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/12_D_Damrosch.pdf Abstract Bibliography

👤Author Name: Gina PUICĂAffiliation: „Ștefan cel Mare” din Suceava [University of Suceava], RomaniaContact: gina.puica@litere.usv.ro 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Puică, Gina. “La peur de rater en tant que Roumain, un mobile de sa réussite littéraire”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 115-124.Pages: 115-124Language: FrenchURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/7_Puică.pdf Abstract In this article, we attempt to analyse what seems to be a persistent obsession of Cioran’s over time: the fear of failing in life (and therefore also in his writing career) because of his Romanian origin. Cioran was convinced that Romanians were doomed to failure and that Romania embodied “the genius of failure”. To escape the fate reserved for writers from “small” countries and join the “World Republic of Letters” (Pascale Casanova), Cioran chose France as his country of residence, especially as he was fascinated by the country’s grandiose history. But despite having done everything to escape the “Romanian failure”, the “Romanian nothingness”, Cioran paradoxically remained attracted all his life by the philosophical and existential question of failure, and even seems to have despised his own success when success began to come. It is on these questions that our article will focus, drawing in particular on Cioran’s correspondence, a substantial selection of which has recently been published. Key-words: literary success, failure, assimilated…

👤Author Name: Shiqian ZHOUAffiliation: The University of Hong Kong, Hong KongContact: u3605552@connect.hku.hk 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Zhou, Shiqian, “Navigating Literary Controversies: A Rereading of Mo Yan’s Frog in the Global Literary Landscape”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 146-161.Pages: 146-161Language: EnglishURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/9_Zhou.pdf Abstract The essay examines the controversies surrounding Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize. Western critics argue that Mo Yan does not deserve the prize because of his ties with the Chinese Communist Party. The essay critiques the Western assumption that Chinese writers must openly express political opinions despite censorship. By using close reading analysis, the essay aims to understand how Mo Yan creates a fictional space to discuss sensitive topics by analysing his novel Frog. It suggests that Western ideals of democracy and freedom influence the assessment of Mo Yan’s authenticity, overlooking the Chinese political context that limits free expression. The essay argues for a more inclusive global literary sphere while emphasizing close reading over Franco Moretti’s distant reading. This approach reveals how Mo Yan’s Frog navigates censorship through literary devices and a narrative subtly criticizing state policies such as the Cultural Revolution and the one-child policy. Even within a restrictive environment, Mo Yan constructs an autonomous literary space in his fiction, as Pascale Casanova proposed, which allows him to…

👤Author Name: Muguraș CONSTANTINESCUAffiliation: „Ștefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, RomaniaContact: mugurasc@gmail.com 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Constantinescu, Muguraș. “Portrait d’un comparatiste : Yves Chevrel”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 162-173.Pages: 162-173Language: FreanchURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/10_Muguras.pdf Abstract Abstract (original):  This paper proposes a portrait of the French comparatist Yves Chevrel, Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne University in Paris. We will showcase his professional development, research career as well as his major works and achievements. The paper will particularly focus on comparative literature as envisioned by Chevrel, namely a concept broad enough to accommodate an acknowledgement of foreignness and of alterity, in general. Key-words: comparative literature, openness, interlinking, translation, comparative method Bibliography CHEVREL, Yves, « Les premières revues de littérature comparée (1877–1910) », Revue de littérature comparée, no. 380, 4/2021, pp. 397–403. https://www.cairn.info/ revue-de-litterature-comparee-2021-4–page-397.htm CHEVREL, Yves, « Entretien avec Muguras Constantinescu », Atelier de traduction, 2019, pp 17–29.  CHEVREL, Yves, « Présentation du séminaire », Actes du séminaire national Enseigner les oeuvres littéraires en traduction (Paris, le 23 et 24 octobre 2006), Paris, 2007, pp. 12–18 actes_oeuvres_en_traduction_109568, consultés le 20 mars 2024 CHEVREL, Yves, D’HULST, Lieven, LOMBEZ, Christine (dir.), Histoire des traductions en langue française ; XIXe siècle 1815–1914, Lagrasse, Verdier, 2012. FASSEL, Horst, « Acta comparationis litterarum universarum: prima revistă de literatură universală din lume », Philologica Jassyensia;…

👤Author Name: Chen HONGYUAffiliation: Tsinghua University, ChinaContact: hychen.ella@gmail.com 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Chen, Hongyu. “Rewriting Media and Literary Space in the Metropolis: Immigrant Writings in London across Centuries”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 125-145.Pages: 125-145Language: EnglishURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/8_Chen.pdf Abstract This article analyses how elements of mass media in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Guo Xiaolu’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007) reinforce and challenge London’s position as “literary capital” and also transform its language, value system, and hierarchy. This system of values absorbs people into a “monolingual paradigm” which reinforces the dominant position of the language. However, Selvon’s novel challenges the city mediascape, the standardized English language, and even English literary tradition. Fifty years later, although Guo Xiaolu fails to transform the position of English in the metropolis, she still adopts elements of mass media and uses formal innovations to challenge the hierarchy established by mass media and English literary traditions, pointing to the immigrants’ new life experience and relationship to the metropolis in the 21st century. Key-words: immigrant writing, mass media, metropolis, immigration experiences, English literature Bibliography APPADURAI, Arjun, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,  Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996. ASHCROFT, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial…

👤Author Name: Marjan MOHAMMADIAffiliation: Bilkent University, TurkeyContact: marjan.mohammadi@bilkent.edu.tr 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Mohammadi, Marjan. ‟Weltliteratur and the Figure of Author-Translator in The Adventures Of Hajji Baba ”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 81-99.Pages: 81-99Language: EnglishURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/23_Mohammadi2.pdf Abstract This paper focuses on the problem of “translatability” and the encounter of English as the medium of exchange with Persian in James J. Morier’s The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1824) and its sequel (1828). It approaches the question of translatability from two vantage points: First, it considers how the economic assumption of “equivalences”, where words and referents enter a relationship of commensurability, paradoxically creates a pseudo-discourse to uphold the validity of the travelogue as an “authentic” account of the “Orient” and a commodity that once rendered in English can circulate the book on a worldwide scale. Second, it considers the split in the figure of the narrator, the author-translator who swings between the axes of “assimilation” and “foreignization.” The hybrid positioning of the narrator in the intertext of a travelogue that oscillates between fiction and translation ultimately undermines the hallmark desire of capital, i.e., a total transfer of meaning (value) via the voice of an authentic teller to the extent that a self-same identity can neither be imagined for the narrated (the…

👤Author Name: Alina BAKOAffiliation: „Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, RomaniaContact: alina.bako@ulbsibiu.ro 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Bako, Alina. “Balkan World Literature: A Romanian Perspective”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 100-114.Pages: 100-114Language: EnglishURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/6_Bako.pdf Abstract David Damrosch discusses the relevance of what he calls Balkan world literature in a recent essay (2023) which includes two Romanian authors. The Balkan world literature paradigm serves to construct a discourse through which Romanian literature generates, in a global context, an added knowledge of the space from which it originates. The binder used by Damrosch is linked to the Balkan space, a source of inspiration for literature. The main thesis of the present essay, articulated as a complement to Damrosch’s method, is around a historical figure from the Eastern space who influenced Central literatures. We proceed to a twofold movement, from the centre – to the Oriental (the adoption of the model), but also from the periphery to the centre. We consider case studies which have as protagonist a historical character, Sultana Roxelana, and we will discuss the fiction of Mihail Sadoveanu and Marguerite Yourcenar to see if “Balkan world literature” model works from this perspective as well. Key-words: Balkan world literature, novel, historical figure, Marguerite Yourcenar, Mihail Sadoveanu, nereids Bibliography…

👤Author Name: Sergio Das NEVESAffiliation: Institute for the Study of Traditional Literature (IELT), School of Social and Human Sciences of the NOVA University of Lisbon, PortugalContact: sergioneves@campus.ul.pt 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Das Neves, Sérgio. ‟The Literatures of the World in Herberto Helder”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 68-80.Pages: 68-80Language: EnglishURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/4_das_Neves.pdf Abstract The essay reflects on the translations crafted by the Portuguese poet Herberto Helder, exploring potential relations and reconfigurations of the Goethean concept of Weltliteratur. The study will primarily focus on the preface of the book O bebedor nocturno, the poet’s first book devoted to translating texts from various times, spaces, and cultures into Portuguese. The poet, unfamiliar with the original languages of these texts, modifies his mother tongue in order to translate the essence of the poem, in a gesture of love towards it. By examining his creation of a poetic language through translation and his somewhat unsystematized idea of translation, we aim to contrast the image of the polyglot translator with that of the poet translator, akin to a circus acrobat. In this way, we advance that Helder’s approach to altering poems enhances the Goethean concept, extracting vitality from the ancestral literatures of the world. Thus, he reveals the unity of everything, erasing…

👤Author Name: Dan SHAOAffiliation: : Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, JapanContact: danaeshao@tufs.ac.jp 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Shao, Dan. ‟Cultural Transfer and the Re-representation of Reality: Barn Burning in Faulkner, Murakami, and Lee Chang-dong’s Film”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 25-49.Pages: 25-49Language: EnglishURL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/2_Shao.pdf Abstract This paper examines the cultural transpositions and shifts in symbolic meaning of the “barn burning” motif through William Faulkner’s Barn Burning (1939), Haruki Murakami’s Barn Burning (1983), and Lee Chang-dong’s film adaptation Burning (버닝, 2018). Through a comparative analysis, the study delves into the socio-economic underpinnings and contextual metamorphoses that transform the barn from a productive manorial setting of the American South to an emblem of urban marginalization in Murakami’s work, culminating in a signifier of agricultural decline in Lee’s narrative. Interweaving the theoretical framework of world literature, this paper spotlights the divergent realities these texts embody and propagate. It investigates how the notion of “reality” is translated and recontextualized across cultural borders, and how meanings are variously appropriated and reimagined in the realm of world literature. The intertextual study thus emphasizes the complexities in the transmission of symbolic cultural assets, shedding light on the varied interpretations and implications of the barn burning motif as it transcends and evolves through time and space. Key-words: Cultural Transpositions, Barn Burning, William Faulkner, Haruki…

👤Author Name: Sylvia GARCIA-PALUROAffiliation: University of Houston, USAContact: sgarcia3@uh.edu 📄Article Citation Recommendation: Garcia-Paluro, Sylvia. ‟Proximity and Dis/placement. Interrogating Space in Roza Tumba Quema by Claudia Hernández and Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina García”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 50-67.Pages: 50-76Language: EnglishURL: https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/3_Garcia-Paluro.pdf Abstract Recent Latin American history (I refer approximately to the period between 1950 and 1990) has had a significant influence on the literature produced by writers in Latin America and abroad since 1950. Even books published within the last fifteen years show a preoccupation with this historical period, such as Claudia Hernández’s Roza tumba quema (published in Spanish in 2017 and in English in 2020 [Slash and Burn]), which makes the Salvadoran Civil War its central event. Books published by Latinx writers in the United States show similar concerns, though they must also contend with the role diaspora has played in shaping how these events are understood or processed. What role, then, do proximity and placement (or displacement) play in shaping the relationship of writers to a history that still impacts Latin American politics and U.S. immigration policy? This paper aims to address this question by comparing the two post-war novels, Roza tumba quema and Dreaming in Cuban, a diasporic novel by Cristina García, and their relationship to space….