An allegory on the banks of the Nile and other hazards of intercultural literary comparison.

An allegory on the banks of the Nile and other hazards of intercultural literary comparison. Intercultural literary study has numerous hazards and may befundamentally impossible. Nobody, not even that French wizard, ReneEtiemble, really knows enough literatures, has enough ideas ofliterature. It would not be difficult to prepare a lengthy account ofone's false steps, errors, and mistakes; it is yet easier torecognize those of others. For all the dangers, however, the potentialgains are so great that, once the benefits are glimpsed, theintellectual risk becomes a necessity. Something will follow on both thehazards and benefits in this call for comparative study in the absenceof familiar "influence" or "literary relations." First, then, there are difficulties to identify. A problem veryquickly encountered in many guises, is often quite simply that ofterminology. It has been elegantly shown by Janet A. Walker (1988), whohas discussed the hazards in using the term "novel" tocharacterize extended literary narrative in prose. As is well known, thefirst truly great example of that kind of writing is not a novel but themonogatari by Murasaki Shikibu Murasaki Shikibu(m'räsä`kē shē'kēb`), c. , the Genji Monogatari (the Englishtranslators' Tale of Genji). To call that monogatari a novel(roman, Roman, etc.) may seem an ironic gesture of welcome to a canon ofgreat prose narratives. How would it be, then, to call Middlemarch and Ulysses monogatari,so using the historically prior term? Or should the term be Chinese,xiaoshuo shosetsu is Jese. for the characters). That "smalltalk" grew into narratives, often of 120 chapters like theHongloumeng (The Dream of the Red Chamber “The Story of the Stone” redirects here. For other uses, see The Story of the Stone (disambiguation).Dream of the Red Chamber (Traditional Chinese: 紅樓夢; Simplified Chinese: 红楼梦; pinyin: H��ngl��u m��ng), also known as ), and by a complex history,the Japanese application of "shosetsu" to the Western novelwas taken up by Chinese as "xiaoshuo." (Japanese also use oneof their syllabaries to discuss the "noberu" or"roman," which is not altogether what is meant by the"novel" or "roman" [Germ. "Roman"]). The search for innocent terms is no brief odyssey. if we canpersuade our deans to offer courses in non-Western literatures, wedeserve a moment's self-congratulation. On second thought we haveconfirmed the dean's understanding that we wish to teach anon-subject. It does not solve the problem of neutral terms to observethat our Japanese counterparts may be entreating their deans (actuallythe local professors' committee, kyojukai) to teach foreignliterature (gaikoku bungaku). What is foreign to them is, in Madrid, not"native" but normal, non-non-Spanish literature. The terminological issues have far more serious underlyingconceptual consequences. Some of us members of the InternationalComparative Literature Association have guilty consciences about pastimperialist impositions and conceive that a comparative study of"Metropolitan" and colonized ColonizedThis occurs when a microorganism is found on or in a person without causing a disease.Mentioned in: Isolation culture -- Orientalisms, as itmight be put -- would be revealing. Amiya Dev (Calcutta) brought us to aquick halt. As he put it, the central issues of imperialism cannot beunderstood adequately from the outside. They are, instead, matters ofaccounting for existing (Indian, for example) literary traditions, theirrupture by European invasion, and their renewal. That simple statementis so overwhelmingly convincing because it attempts to deal with thetotality of Indian experience. Even Amiya Dev's salutary sal��u��tar��yadj.Favorable to health; wholesome.salutaryhealthful.salutaryHealthy, beneficial advice in understanding does nottell all. (He does not claim that it does.) It reveals the central issuewithout allowing for less important issues that also have some claim.There were real outsiders in India as is well, albeit guiltily,represented by E. M. Forster's Passage to India, or even by the farbetter understanding of Kipling. The ruptured and renewed indiantradition and the raj-ing by the British are such different accountingsof "colonial" experience that they confront us less as twoversions of a portion of human experience than as two, distinguishableif not entirely distinct events. It will not do to dwell entirely on problems, but another exampleof difficulty may not be amiss Verb 1. be amiss - interpret in the wrong way; "Don't misinterpret my comments as criticism"; "She misconstrued my remarks"misapprehend, misconceive, misconstrue, misunderstand, misinterpret . The matter of literary naming has beenon my mind in recent years. Readers of Plato's Cratylus or ofrecent philosophical discussions by Saul Kripke Saul Aaron Kripke (born in November 13, 1940 in Bay Shore, New York) is an American philosopher and logician now emeritus from Princeton and teaches as distinguished professor of philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. and others will have alivelier conviction of problems and questions than of solutions andanswers. But there is also this: is consideration of fictional namesreally discussion of "nothing"?(1) In Comparative Poetics I sought, with limited response, to dealwith the issue in a last chapter on relativism relativismAny view that maintains that the truth or falsity of statements of a certain class depends on the person making the statement or upon his circumstances or society. Historically the most prevalent form of relativism has been See also ethical relativism. . From what has been saidof Orientalism and India, and from what is revealed by reflecting oncomparison and relativism, it is clear that they are intimately relatedmatters. What reasons are there for the lack of conceptual examinationof these issues? I know of nothing genuinely adequate on those subjectsby any of us. One feature of the matter can be understood by historians'lack of concern with the relativisms they presume. One can only assumethat they feel that the multitude of historical relativities to people,places, and times is somehow sanitized, made innocent by accounting forFrench - Russian, Turkish, or Chinese - history. Once it occurs tosomebody to consider feudalisms in tenth-century France and China, thehistorians' security evaporates. No topic such as feudalism feudalism(fy`dəlĭzəm), form of political and social organization typical of Western Europe from the dissolution of Charlemagne's empire to the rise of the absolute monarchies. alone provides adequate basis forcomparison, as I discovered when requested to arrange a session on EastAsian and European sexualities for the American Society forEighteenth-century Studies. There is a readily understood paradox thatwell-handled intercultural study can be far more revealing than itsintracultural counterparts, but that handling well is very difficult, asan example may show. Since it is so recently completed and therefore on my mind, Ishall offer as an example and as a sequel to the consideration oftheories of literature Comparative Poetics, a study of comparativepoetics in practice. it deals with "Naming Properties" or"Nominal Reference" in accounts of two journeys taken by pairsof travelers. In 1689 the haikai poet Matsuo Basho Matsuo Basho:see Basho. and a youngcompanion, Iwanami (later Kawai) Sora, set down their very differentaccounts of six months of travel, a journey designated as The NarrowRoad Through the Provinces (Oku No Hosomichi Oku no Hosomichi (Japanese: 奥の細道, meaning "Narrow road to/of the interior," but conventionally referred to as The Narrow Road to the Deep North) is a major work by the Japanese poet, Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). ) from Bash6's title.In 1773 Samuel Johnson and James Boswell spent a hundred days inEdinburgh and in travel to the Highlands and Hebrides, leavingdistinctly different accounts. Each account is one of a pair, and eachpair is involved in a rigorous, sometimes hazardous journey to remoteareas of island countries. These are formal grounds for comparison.Conceptual grounds are provided by naming, an inevitable necessity intravel records dealing with people, places, and times visited-all ofwhich must be named or "designated."(2) The importance of names to literature has long been obvious. Weexpect a list of the dramati spersonae with an English play, andsummaries of narratives are chiefly accounts featuring names ofcharacters acting in their named places and times. Lyrics that seem totreat as if anonymous their people, places, and times wager all on twooften shadowy entities: the person (or thing) most worthy of anapostrophe apostrophe, figure of speechapostrophe,figure of speech in which an absent person, a personified inanimate being, or an abstraction is addressed as though present. or address; and always to be sure, whether explicitly orimplicitly, that name above other human names, "I." Could that last be "error and upon me prov'd?"Basho and Sora seldom use any of the first-person nouns available tothem. in addition to his two surnames, Sora changed the secular Chinesecharacters for "Sora" to religious ones before setting forth.Basho is not so named by himself or by Sora, whose diary refers to himas he himself often did in these years, as "Okina," the OldMan, which is less a lament than a boast, a claim to status, the"Lao" of Lao Tse, the respectful "Lao Du" (J.Roto)for the great Tang poet memorably quoted by Bash6, Du Fu. On the otherhand, the Old Man does not deny that he is Basho, speaking obliquely(toward the beginning) of his Banana Plant Hut, his Basho An. In fact"Basho" signed himself in a good many ways and showed a markedinterest in place names. He and Sora give a sense of time in differing ways. Soratirelessly ticks off the months, days, and hours. Basho'stemporality tem��po��ral��i��ty?n. pl. tem��po��ral��i��ties1. The condition of being temporal or bounded in time.2. temporalities Temporal possessions, especially of the Church or clergy.Noun 1. is chiefly seasonal as recounted in his verse and prose.They specified years (when they did at all) by those of regnal reg��nal?adj.Being a specified year of a monarch's reign calculated from the date of accession: in her 12th regnal year. eras orby place in a sixty-year cycle combining the twelve signs of the Asianzodiac with the five elements five elements,n.pl fire, water, earth, wood, and metal; in Chinese medicine, each of these five components is used to organize phenomena for use in clinical applications. Each of the elements corresponds to a specific function (i.e. . There are a certain number of ways to accommodate diversity,whether with the Chaucerian recognition that "In sondry londessondry ben usages," whether with insistence on one's ownparochial customs, or whether with trials ending in Scotch verdicts.None of us disputes, in principle, that it is wiser to make claims thataccount for the evidence available, rather than deny existing evidenceto fit habitual claim. Acquiring knowledge of differences in namingpractices should assure augmented interest. And not just interest. Ourconfidence in our literary generalizations gains strength andplausibility as our evidence is drawn from wider ranges -- fromadditional languages, from numerous periods. Such taking is usually called comparative and, where the examplesare literary, comparative literature. On oath, I cannot swear that theruling passion of self-styled comparatists typically extends much beyondthe past two centuries, beyond the ample prose stretches of the novel,or to the terra incognita in��cog��ni��ta?adv. & adj.With one's identity disguised or concealed. Used of a woman.n.A woman or girl whose identity is disguised or concealed. that is not Europe and North America North America,third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. . Buttimes change, and even the learned profession with them. After many years' acquaintance with the InternationalComparative Literature Association, I know that there is genuine andgrowing "comparative" curiosity about the "usages"beyond the broad road and about what may be found by exploring otherroads, roads that lately seem less and less narrow. In fact there ismore than curiosity. There is genuine conviction that an increase insources makes a difference for the better, affording us greater securityin our judgments. That is altogether evident as a principle, but wherecan we turn for a logical account? In certain kinds of logic there exists a term or category that isbelieved to sustain or, in its absence to invalidate in��val��i��date?tr.v. in��val��i��dat��ed, in��val��i��dat��ing, in��val��i��datesTo make invalid; nullify.in��val , a comparisonbetween two other terms. This tertium comparationis Tertium comparationis (Latin = the third [part] of the comparison) is the quality that two things which are being compared have in common. It is the point of comparison which prompted the author of the comparison in question to liken someone or something to someone or holds value forcomparative literature solely as a reminder that comparisons, whatevertheir scope, hold or fail to hold depending on the extent of thelikeness of the integers and the congruence con��gru��ence?n.1. a. Agreement, harmony, conformity, or correspondence.b. An instance of this: "What an extraordinary congruence of genius and era" of categories compared.(3) To introduce as simple an example as possible, it is evident thatwhen people possess more than one name, full designation requires thatone be given before the other(s) and that usage varies between priorityto given names (e.g., most European languages) and priority given tosurnames (e.g., East Asian languages, Hungarian). Given that a"noun" and a "name" derive from Latin"nomen," one could seek a tertium comparationis in Romanusage. What one discovers, of course, is a usual combination ofpraenomen, nomen, and cognomen COGNOMEN. A Latin word, which signifies a family name. The praenomen among the Romans distinguished the person, the nomen, the gens, or all the kindred descended from a remote common stock through males, while the cognomen denoted the particular family. along with other possibilities. Notertius quis there. If we appeal to japanese literature for our tertium comparationis,we discover that both in heroic drama heroic draman.Restoration tragedy or tragicomedy composed in heroic couplets and generally characterized by exotic settings, bombastic rhetoric, and exaggerated characterization. and narrative clan or familynames, given names, titles of office, pen names This is a list of pen names used by notable people.Pen name Real name DetailsAapeli Simo Puupponen 20th century Finnish writer and chatty articlerMart��n Ad��n Rafael de la Fuente Benavides Peruvian poet (1907 - 1985)? George William Russell Irish poet (1867 - 1935) and other denominationsmay be given (or not be used), whereas royalty lacks family names. Thehero of The Tale of Genji is royally born but made a noble commoner ofthe Minamoto clan Minamoto (源,Minamoto or family (Genji). He is known to Japanese as"Hikaru Genji Hikaru Genji (光源氏, "The brilliant Genji") is the protagonist of The Tale of Genji. In the story, he is described as the most handsome man in the world and he attracts all women. ," which is a genuine name if not of a kind weare accustomed to.(4) What was sought for as a tertium comparationisturns out to be an augmentation - additional data that may or may not bemade usable as evidence. So much for the utility of a tertium comparationis. What, however,of the comparatist's supposed business, comparison? It is one ofour commonest mental acts, and yet it has been scarcely considered byphilosophers, psychologists, social scientists. in fact, the subject --the grounds, canons, methods of sound comparison -- has been almostentirely ignored by those who claim to practice comparative study. It isan intellectual scandal. And the scandal becomes absurdity when weobserve that much of what goes on in departments of comparativeliterature is not truly comparative at all, for the simple reason thatit involves no comparison. If, like a misery, an absurdity lovescompany, this one has it, since what is true of "comparative"study of literature holds as well for "comparative" study inthe social sciences.(5) It is necessary to rehearse some fundamentalmatters if the travel writings of Basho and Sora, of johnson and Boswellare to be shown to be justly compared. It seems that a major difficulty with comparison is that, althoughthe mental act is simple, even common or customary, it is also the casethat its general principles are difficult to develop and its practice iseasily got wrong. One readily understands that the two central features,the necessary elements of comparison are likeness and difference. Theseeming contradiction involved, surely, is a major cause of ourdifficulties. We know that the identical cannot be compared with itself,since it is itself. And we know that too great difference, insufficientlikeness, shades off to uselessly weak analogy, the far-fetched, andeven into logical solecism. There are also the familiar critical dangersof the vasty vast��y?adj. vast��i��er, vast��i��est ArchaicVast. deep and of the altitudinously trivial. This is abundantly clear to anybody interested in literarycomparison of the most difficult -- and rewarding -- kind, theintercultural. The virtues of method sought include clarity,distinguishability among kinds of comparison, availability of evidence,and hence justifiability or rejectability. The central feature has beenidentification of topics that allow for two or more exemplars. Becausethey exemplify a common topic, the exemplars possess an initial orpresumptive pre��sump��tive?adj.1. Providing a reasonable basis for belief or acceptance.2. Founded on probability or presumption.pre��sump sameness of status, ensuring (in principle, at least) thatthe comparison is principled, sound. Because the exemplars derive fromdiverse sources, the comparison yields differentiation within the boundsof that common topic or category. To put the matter somewhatdifferently, this method requires identification, as it were, of aspecies within which the exemplars bear a common relation to theirlarger category. There is difference because the exemplars are bydefinition not identical, and the differences are within bounds becausethe topic (species, category, etc.) governs the exemplars equally. This method has been tested by use with two subject categories:the emergence of poetic systems (Miner, "Genesis") and thepractice of making literary collections (Miner 17-62). The former is ofgreat importance to understanding theories of literature as well asdifferent features of literary theory. The latter is reassuringlysmaller in scale and also closely related for evidence to literaryhistory.(6) What is involved in the specifically intercultural features,and what further may be sought, can be suggested by identifying therelations of what I have been terming category to exemplar ex��em��plar?n.1. One that is worthy of imitation; a model. See Synonyms at ideal.2. One that is typical or representative; an example.3. An ideal that serves as a pattern; an archetype.4. , of exemplarto category, and of exemplar to exemplar. Over the centuries a stock comparison has been of more or lesscontemporary writers: dramatists like Shakespeare and Marlowe, lyricpoets like Du Fu and Bo Juyi, novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Wefeel security in the comparison because they are writing in the samekinds -- but also at least equally so because they are contemporarieswriting in the same languages, the same literary traditions, and thesame genres. An immediate, striking result of that kind of comparison is theinitial conviction of difference between contemporaries writing in thesame language. How different are Bo Juyi from Du Fu, Fujiwara Teika Fujiwara Teika(f`jē`wä`rä tā`kä), 1162–1241, Japanese poet and literary theorist of the early medieval period. fromMonk Saigyo, Shelley from Keats, Goethe from Schiller! But how differentin other terms things seem after a second step, a comparison of pairs ofthese pairs. Now we are struck by how different are the japanese fromthe Chinese, and the German from the English -- and struck, too, by howalike the two Chinese or the two in another pair seem.(7) Surely it isevident that the likeness of poets within a given pair when contrastedwith a pair from another literature derives from a genuine comparabilityconfirming, and confirmed by, the original grounds of comparison:contemporaries writing in like kinds in the same languages-literatures. Moreover, at this point one could pause and speculate, correctly Ibelieve, that it is possible to devise further stages of largercomparison with similar results. The Japanese poets who seem sodifferent from the Chinese when only those two East Asian literaturesare in question, become comparable -- more alike -- when compared withthe European poets. in fact, one can draw a kind of calculus of pairs,leading from the initial sense of difference between just two members,to a likeness of those members when an alternative pair is introduced --and so on in a series whose each step imparts likeness to"predecessors" who seem unlike when only they are involved: aslong as "the topic (species, category, etc.) governs the exemplarsequally." An illustrative column can do no harm, given the paucityof concern with these matters. a. Chinese lyric poets who arecontemporaries. b. Japanese as in a. c. Chinese and Japanese lyric poetsd. Chinese and French lyric poetry e. Historians who are contemporariesf. Political economists who are (then are not) contemporaries ... n.Left-handed girls who play violins ...The principle of alteration at a given point may vary slightly orgreatly, so affecting the relation with a predecessor, making comparisonmore or less feasible. It is obviously crucial that each shift involveawareness of both the shift itself and of its purposiveness in thechoice of successive examples. The awareness will warn that even such small moves -- and enlargedcomparisons all the more -- lose a degree of control or likeness thatrequires vigilance. The absence of contemporaneousness con��tem��po��ra��ne��ous?adj.Originating, existing, or happening during the same period of time: the contemporaneous reigns of two monarchs.See Synonyms at contemporary. between ourChinese and Japanese exemplars and the further lack of a language commonto them and the European examples are (to put it mildly) not to beoverlooked. But presuming such care and appropriate measures, we mayproceed with intercultural comparison. The same principles establish afoundation for two other kinds of comparison. Only one need bementioned, since it is the usual kind, the intracultural: German andFrench, Spanish and English, etc. It need only be mentioned, but withthe warning that application requires thought. For example, Renaissancelyricism lyr��i��cism?n.1. a. The character or quality of subjectivity and sensuality of expression, especially in the arts.b. The quality or state of being melodious; melodiousness.2. can scarcely involve contemporaneous events in Italy and inEngland: Petrarch lived in Chaucer's, not Wyatt's orSidney's era. Or again, it is sometimes suggested that there is a culture basedon the use of Chinese characters as a learned language. This is anattractive possibility when we recall, for example, the vast literaturein verse as well as prose composed in Chinese by people who had neverset foot in Cathay. And it gives hopes that Southeast Asian literaturesmay be joined to the family. But the very great difference between thelearned language and the vernaculars should signal caution. Those Asianvernacular languages do not have a common origin in the same linguisticfamily, as is the case with the European languages (with exceptions likeBasque) and the learned tongue, Latin.(8) Another kind of literary comparison that is usually not admittedto the holy halls of comparative literature has been mentioned inpassing. This kind is comparison within a single literature, and itsdismissal is for no good reason that I can discover. We all do it, andthe only serious issue must be the same as for the larger intraculturalkinds and for the intercultural varieties: that we do it in principled,disciplined fashion. The only reasonable caveats worth adding apply toall other kinds of literary comparison (and other study) as well. Itshould be interesting, but not merely fashionable. It should be of heftbut not weighty. Our subject is, however, intercultural comparison. It is notdifficult to suggest other subjects that could be examined profitablywith the method described. In fact, there may be topics of comparisonwithin a single language, between literatures in different languages ofthe same culture, and between cultures. An example will show as much.The topic or category is prefaces -- as to works, collections, oreditions. Studies of the emergence and use of prefaces would surelyreveal much about the social roles of authors and literatures. It isalso wholly likely that distinctions would need to be drawn: e.g.,between authorial and non-authorial prefaces; between those contemporarywith first publication and those added later, like Henry James'sfamous ones to the New York edition The New York Edition of Henry James' fiction was a 24-volume collection of the Anglo-American writer's novels, novellas and short stories, originally published in the U.S. and the UK in 1907-1909. ; between pretendedly or genuinelyauthorial or non-authorial; between dedicatory, with a patron as atleast nominal addressee (communications) addressee - One to whom something is addressed. E.g. "The To, CC, and BCC headers list the addressees of the e-mail message". Normally an addressee will eventually be a recipient, unless there is a failure at some point (an e-mail "bounces") or the message is ; and between other kinds. Properly policed andwell handled, this topic seems to me a potentially rich mine forunderstanding many features of literature that can be defined inrelation to authors, publishers, and readers. The study of the uses of prefaces may be genuinely comparative andyet still not satisfy all our interests. A conspicuous example of thelimits of what I have been proposing is the all too likely use ofindividual poems, plays, or novels merely as examples rather than asproper ends of study in themselves. We have not allowed for examination,analysis, practical criticism, reading -- whatever term one prefers.This is a possible cost of comparison. On the other hand, withoutextensive comparative study, the analysis of individual poems isimpoverished by lack of that understanding which comes only withknowledge of the possible alternative conceptions. It is necessary, therefore, to make sure that our comparativeprocedures are well founded. To achieve the necessary range ofalternatives, we can begin with the assured logic of comparison, whichhas been presented here as conception of meaningful categories, withexamples rightly comparative, because the exemplars are of equal statusin relation to the category. A further step then becomes possible. That is, furtherunderstanding can be gained by identifying ways of making categories andexemplars reciprocal. The category can be made an exemplar and theexemplar a category. To put matters positively, the new approach isbased on entities that are reciprocal, at least in the sense that eachmay be a "category" and each an "exemplar" of theother. To revert to our hypothetical example of the relation of prefacesto works, that category may have as exemplars concepts of authorship. Asa further step, concepts of authorship may be taken as the category andprefaces as the exemplars. In the study of naming practices envisioned here, travel accountsprovide the exemplars of the category of naming. As the Pull studyshould show, naming is a very large and very meaningful category. Butonce that step has been taken, it becomes possible also to use travelaccounts as the category and naming practices as the exemplars. Toderive any literary meaningfulness requires a disciplined ground ofcomparison. The ground chosen here is travel literature, within whichnaming is especially prominent. To put this differently, naming practices and travel writings areequally feasible as topics and as examples, and this reciprocity ensuresdisciplined comparison. This dual approach requires not only logicalcare but also attention to the details of the accounts used. Thatfurther step therefore entails discussion, examination, or so-calledformalist for��mal��ism?n.1. Rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized forms, as in religion or art.2. An instance of rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized forms.3. study of the individual travel accounts in a way not feasiblewhen either naming practice or travel writing alone is fixed as thecategory (or exemplars) without conceptual reciprocity. It will not be amiss at this point to recall The Pilgrim'sProgress Pilgrim’s ProgressBunyan’s allegory of life. [Br. Lit.: Eagle, 458]See : Journey , since John Bunyan is such a master of literary names and suchan attender to ways of going wrong or not far enough -- as well as meansof arriving where one wishes to. One way of going forth might be todefine the examples of travel writings as those featuring two mentraveling mostly as a pair. The choices of Johnson and Boswell to setbeside Basho and Sora in each case join an older with a younger man andauthors with different ideas of the kind of thing most important to berecorded. There are other Japanese and European accounts of traveling pairs,e.g., Jippensha Ikku's Hizakurige (Shank's Mare, or Footing Itfrom Edo to Kyoto) and Cervantes' Don Quijote. I do not denyaltogether the possibility of using them or other possible examples. Butit does appear to me that a first attempt along these lines should havemore of Bunyan's discipline than do his Pliable or Ignorance. Thestories by Jippensha and Cervantes do not fully fit with either theJapanese or English examples chosen. For one thing, both Don Quijote andHizakurige are dominantly fictional, whereas our accounts are dominantlyfactual. More importantly, those others going in pairs, whether theKnight of the Sorrowful sor��row��ful?adj.Affected with, marked by, causing, or expressing sorrow. See Synonyms at sad.sorrow��ful��ly adv. Countenance or Sancho Panza Sancho Panza is a character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1602. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote, and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos , whether Yajirobe orKitahachi, are not merely fictional creations, but characters, notauthors like Basho and Sora, Johnson and Boswell. With such mismatchingsthe very method might be put at hazard. Those caveats and injunctions apply to any choice one might make,not simply to travel accounts. Travel does, however, have specialvirtues for a study concerned with naming. Since it is by definition akind of movement through a spatial sequence, names of places emerge as anatural topic. Since spatial movement is not instantaneous, times mustbe designated "from time to time" at least. In the hands of agifted author, even the daily entries of a rigorously preserved journalform can seem aesthetically necessary and inevitable. The most important names of all, those of people, appear equallynaturally in travel literature. Anticipation or recollection can summon,by some name, to a traveler's present thought a person absent orfrom another time. There may be a crucial tension in travel journals anddiaries between the overwhelming presence of the seldom self-nameddiarist di��a��rist?n.A person who keeps a diary.diaristNouna person who writes a diary that is subsequently publishedNoun 1. and the often briefly known, but more or less necessarily named,persons met. Of course what is possible is by definition not necessary. Current philosophical discussions of naming show, however, theexceedingly small profit of conceptions other than realistic ones aboutthe world, about the namers and the named, and about the intentionality intentionalityProperty of being directed toward an object. Intentionality is exhibited in various mental phenomena. Thus, if a person experiences an emotion toward an object, he has an intentional attitude toward it. and referentiality of naming. There are differences between factual andfictional accounts. But since all extended factual writing has fictionalelements, and since all fiction is founded on fact, the differences areessentially those of degree. (See Ricoeur 3, 99-274 and Miner, "TheFact of Fiction" 13-21.) To put it another way, naming practicesprovide grounds for principled comparison, with differences relative tothe namers in their time and culture. This last sentence returns us tomy initial worry over the nature and implications of the two relatedmatters of comparison and relativism. The nature, the importance, andindeed the difficulty of those matters should be clarified by thelengthy formulation of the issues in terms of the pairs of accounts oftwo journeys. Something more must be said, however, and the saying can best becharacterized by an allegory of an allegory -- an illumination that hasmeant more and more to me as time has passed. Some years ago, Dore J.Levy (Comparative Literature and Chinese at Brown University) wasstudying Renaissance allegory for comparison with that in the lengthyMing prose narratives. Somewhat like jesting jest?n.1. A playful or amusing act; a prank. See Synonyms at joke.2. A frolicsome or frivolous mood: spoken in jest.3. An object of ridicule; a laughingstock.4. Pilate, I asked her if shehad heard of Mrs. Malaprop's exclamation over "an allegory onthe banks of the Nile." She said she had not. But two or three dayslater she stopped me on campus to inform me, "There are noallegories in Egypt, only chronicles on the banks of the Nile." Howwitty! And how right. For all I know, Egyptian chronicles and allegoriesmay be related. Why, then, are those chroniclers, our historians so littleconcerned by the radical problems of relativism as posed by history? Inaddition to reasons already mentioned, historians (but not onlyhistorians) seldom observe that what we term history designates two verydifferent things. One refers to events occurrent among people situatedin places and times: history as event, as it may be called. The otherrefers to various accounts of those events: history as account (Miner1987B). Accounts of events in the waning days of the Roman republic havebeen given us by many modern students of Roman history as well as byShakespeare in Julius Caesar Julius Caesar:see Caesar, Julius. and Anthony and Cleopatra. Each account isdoubly relative -- both to the original events and to the culturalconcepts of the author of an account. We can add Lucan's Pharsaliain Latin and in Thomas May's translation, with his once highlyesteemed completion. We can compare the various accounts. We shall bewell advised to consider our own acts of comparison as themselves eventsand accounts of events. The prospect becomes dizzying if we are notcareful of our distinctions. There are many other accounts of many otherevents of civil turmoil -- in Chinese and Japanese literature, forexample. And so different from Western conceptions are the East Asianconceptions of the factualities of those literary works dealing withhistorical events, that our abilities to engage in interculturalcomparison are only less taxing than decisions about the relativismsinvolved.(9) The death of interest in those allegories of reading that soexercised Paul de Man's patient inquiry seems to mark the end of akind of innocence, a pastoral time. Whether, as students of literatureor as students of history, we can achieve an epic triumph ofunderstanding is something I am inclined to doubt. But as one of thestudents of intercultural comparison, I am convinced that hard georgics GeorgicsRoman Vergil’s poetic statement set in context of agriculture. [Rom. Lit.: Benét, 389]See : Farming are our lot, our hope, and no small ambition. The possible rewards amplyrepay dealing with the problems. And of course the first step isrecognition that the problems exist. "There are no allegories inEgypt." NOTES(1) So Donellan 1977. Some philosophers consider solely proper nouns,some solely singular nouns. Others, including Donnelan, go farther in farther inOf or relating to an option contract with an earlier expiration date than a contract that is currently owned or being considered. philosophically realist terms. Realism leads him to exclude as abaffling baf��fle?tr.v. baf��fled, baf��fling, baf��fles1. To frustrate or check (a person) as by confusing or perplexing; stymie.2. To impede the force or movement of.n.1. "nothing" a fictional name like Snow White: it hasthe characteristics of what Kripke terms rigid reference, but it refers(in Donnelan's view) to "nothing." One had thought thatproblem was solved by Aristotle on names, Poetics 9.(2) What follows adapts a portion of the second section of the firstchapter of the new study, to be published by the University of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. Press.(3) Aristotle's "Categories," especially the fifth, inhis Logic may assist an understanding of what is involved. See Aristotle6-11.(4) "Hikaru" is a verb meaning "to shine:"radiance is Genji's charisma. The author herself, Murasaki Shikibu,derives her "Murasaki" from her principal heroine and her"Shikibu" from some male relative with an appointment in theBureau of Rites. We have no idea what her given name was, but she camefrom a lesser branch of the Fujiwara family Fujiwara familyDynastic family that dominated Japanese court government in the 9th–12th centuries. The family maintained a close relationship to the imperial family by marrying its daughters to emperors so that their grandsons and nephews became emperors. and would have been known atcourt as To Shikibu ("To" being the Sinified reading of thecharacter for "Fuji," as "Gen" is for"Minamoto").(5) See Zelditch. What follows here is a recension re��cen��sion?n.1. A critical revision of a text incorporating the most plausible elements found in varying sources.2. A text so revised. of earlierdiscussions -- Miner "Comparative Poetics" and ComparativePoetics, ch 1.(6) See Miner "Genesis" and 1985. My dissatisfaction withsome social postulations in the latter has been one motivation toconsider further methodological possibilities.(7) Of course, I am considering these examples as in their originallanguages. Translation into, say, English will obscure much that isfundamental to the originals. It may seem a paradox, therefore, that Iat least have found adequate English the difficult thing to manage intranslation.(8) What is shared (with certain subtractions) by those using Chinesegraphs is meaning. Sound is altogether another matter, and even Chinesespeakers from different parts of that populous country cannot understandeach other's speech. The government has decreed a northern dialect("Mandarin") as the national standard, but the southerndialects with their more numerous tones are closer by far than theofficial language to the pronunciation and "rhymes" of Tangand Song poetry. One may contrast India with fifteen languages specifiedas official in the constitution.(9) As has been mentioned, the last chapter of Comparative Poeticsdeals with problems of relativism. In recasting that discussion, I wouldnow begin by stressing that only intercultural evidence providesadequate wholeness for the choices that are made by the principles of"justice" and "charity" posited there, and wouldstate explicitly that the need to choose implies something we havealmost totally ignored: a literary ethics. WORKS CITEDAristotle. A New Aristotle Reader. Ed. J. L. Ackerill. Princeton:Princeton UP, 1981.Donellan, Keith. "Speaking of Nothing." Naming, Necessity,and Natural Kinds. Ed Stephen P. Schwartz. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.Miner, Earl. "The Genesis and Development of PoeticSystems." Critical Inquiry, 5 (1978-79): 339-51, 533-68._____. "The Collective and the Individual: Literary Practice andIts Social Implications." Principles of Classical JapaneseLiterature. Ed. Earl Miner Earl Miner (1926 - April 17, 2004) was a professor at Princeton University, and a noted scholar of Japanese literature and especially Japanese poetry[1]; he was also active in early English literature (for instance, his New York Times . Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985._____. "Comparative Poetics: Some Theoretical and MethodologicalTopics for Comparative Literature." Poetics Today. 8 (1987):123-40._____. "Milton and the Histories." Politics of Discourse.Ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker Steven Nathan Zwicker (born June 4 1943) is an American literary scholar and the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. . Berkeley: U of California P,1987. Pp. 181-203._____. Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay on Theories ofLiterature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990._____. "The Fact of Fiction, The Fiction of Fact," Dedalus.2 (1992): 13-21. Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Tran. KathleenMcLaughlin and David Pellauer. 3 vols. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984-88.Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Pantheon, 1978.Walker, Janet A. "On the Applicability of the Term `Novel'to Modem Non-Western Lengthy Fictions." Yearbook of Comparative andGeneral Literature 37 (1988): 47-68.Zelditch, Morris. "Intelligible Comparisons." ComparativeMethods in Sociology. Ed. Ivan Vallier, Berkeley: U of California P,1971. 267-307.