Articles

Naikan TAO
Ezra Pound's Comparative Poetics
Abstract: In his paper, "Ezra Pound's Comparative Poetics," Naikan Tao concentrates on Pound's theories regarding comparison and examines the significance of his comparative studies to the formulation of his poetics, an aspect that has not been sufficiently investigated. On the basis of Pound's work, Tao observes that the conception of comparison Pound shaped through his comparative studies is the internal principle that governs the presentation of details and particulars, the method Pound advocated as a reader-oriented approach to truth and as an efficient, self-reliant means to avoid others' generalization and discursive presentation. Pound's view of comparison as an epistemological norm -- "acquisition and transmission of knowledge" -- is fundamental to the formulation of his poetics, especially his ideogrammic method. This accounts for the ultimate law that controls the fragmentation in The Cantos. As Pound's view of comparison as a stimulus to invention underlies his cosmopolitan endeavor to establish universal criteria, so does his view of comparison as an epistemological mode underpin his poetics. This examination thus clarifies to a certain degree the importance of Pound's pioneer comparativism to his poetics.

Colin B. GRANT
Language, Vagueness, and Social Communication
Abstract: In his paper, "Language, Vagueness, and Social Communication," Colin B. Grant adopts an interdisciplinary approach to an interrelated complex of language, communication, and society. Grant operates with a modified concept of vagueness as a pragmatic property and attempts to establish a link between pragmatic vagueness and contingency in communication. This communicative contingency takes the form of improbabilities (entropy). Grant observes that the challenge lies in modelling communication as porous networks which nonetheless enable society to function. In this sense, contingency in communication must not be confused with arbitrariness just as cognitive closure cannot be confused with solipsism. This line of argumentation allows us to question and reassess conservative notions of dialogue or intersubjectivity in order to reveal the precariousness of social interaction processes. Cognitive autonomy, contingency in communication, and fictionality are then interrelated in an examination of the highly complex fictionalizations which enable these processes to take place.

Ayako MIZUO
(Post)Feminism, Transnationalism, The Maternal Body, and Michèle Roberts
Abstract: In her paper "(Post)Feminism, Transnationalism, The Maternal Body, and Michèle Roberts," Ayako Mizuo argues that the question and problematics of feminism have diversified over the last few decades. Diverse and competing voices have been, nonetheless, incorporated into the paradigm of an equality and difference sexual dichotomy. Further, recent discussions about feminism suggest the problematization of gender differences. Consequently, exponents of postfeminism are compelled to ask what comes next? Mizuo urges that the issue of the tangibility of the body acquires a particular relevance within this context and that thus the ultimate question is how the site of the maternal body may be negotiated. Michèle Roberts is identified as one of the key British women authors writing (on) the body. Roberts's novel Fair Exchange is said to illustrate the problem of the future of feminism by tracing its historical origins and prospects. In focusing on the question of representations of the maternal body through maternal metaphors, Mizuo discusses the ways in which Roberts negotiates the site of the maternal body beyond the boundaries of time and nation and towards the global and transnational.

Gary LEISING
Aimé Césaire and Gestures toward the Universal
Abstract: In his paper, "Aimé Césaire and Gestures toward the Universal," Gary Leising argues that Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land presents a speaker struggling with his own identity, torn between a double consciousness of his black African heritage and his French-European education. This dichotomy appears in the poem in terms of his perceptions of his ancestry as well as in symbols of the masculine and feminine in the surrounding landscape. For the speaker, the African appears as the "real" around him, while the European is an "absent presence," and he confronts the two at the poem's climax, when he encounters a comically stereotypical African-Caribbean man on a streetcar. As the poem moves from the climax toward conclusion, the speaker, it seems, reaches for something more universal than either the black or white races. This universal is cast in terms of paradox as the poem spins toward the concluding word, which is etymologically a paradoxical statement of eternity and limitlessness. In the end, the speaker has returned, but he finds that his journey is only at a starting point.

Jason SNART
Disorder and Entropy in Pynchon's "Entropy" and Lefebvre's The Production of Space
Abstract: In his paper, "Disorder and Entropy in Pynchon's 'Entropy' and Lefebvre's The Production of Space," Jason Snart examines Thomas Pynchon's short story "Entropy" for the ways in which it deals with the kinds of disorder(s) associated with entropy as a thermodynamic and informational concept. Those concepts are installed as a framework within which to consider cultural studies work like Henri Lefebvre's thought in his The Production of Space and Ludwig von Bertalanffy's general systems theory and themodynamics: disorder is rendered not as confusion, but rather as a state of potential energy and productivity and Lefebvre's and Bertalanffy's concepts serve to show how disorder can inform critical work.

Benton Jay KOMINS
Western Culture and the Ambiguous Legacies of the Pig
Abstract: In his paper, "Western Culture and the Ambiguous Legacies of the Pig," Benton Jay Komins provides a cultural lineage of the pig by the example and reading of Piggies by the Beatles. Komins observes that Piggies enacts the possibilities of the ubiquitous pig in Western culture by juxtaposing swinish antics with interpretations of limitation and heartbreak thereby forcing listeners to blur the distinctions between struggle, unrequited love, and boorishness. Komins continues his discussion by locating this juxtaposition within the Western pantheon of real, metaphorical, and imaginary animals, where the pig is noted to have obsessively endured. Komins argues that through the depictions and representations of the pig, we are able to gain particular insight into Judeo-Christian ambiguities, fixations, and inconsistencies. Komins's observations about the pig in Western culture serve to define and to delineate a boundary between the civilized and the uncivilized, the refined and the unrefined. This real or imagined border is further mapped out in the paper via a consideration of Orwell's Animal Farm, Carter's Nights at the Circus, and Henson's Miss Piggy.

Book Review Articles

Angeline O'NEILL
Comparatist Postcolonial Studies: A Review Article of Books by
Coundouriotis, Matthews Green, Yeager, and Gould, Vautier, and Canadian Literature

Richard A. CARDWELL
A Postmodern Look at Modernism: A Review Article of Books by
Pera and López on Modernista Writers in Hispanic Literature

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