I will address current issues about the status of gender studies in relation to comparative literature: issues regarding the very legitimacy of gender studies (in the context of the heated debates against "the ideology of gender") and issues regarding the specificity of a comparative approach within the field of gender studies.

We commonly evaluate translations in terms of their “accuracy” or “fidelity”; sometimes we allow a translator more or less “license,” that is, we release the translator from the obligation to be faithful to the original text and give him/her a degree of “freedom.” All these terms have an ethical connotation: that is, they are not just about the transfer of information or about linguistic structures, but rather express a sense that the translator has a moral duty to the author being translated and to the audience for the translation. In construing translation as a moral act, we define a community and pronounce rules that are supposed to be binding on members of the community; we even suggest rewards and punishments to follow from the act of translation (these may come in the form of good or bad reputation, or even in the form of lawsuits).

When and why do translators receive “license” (akin to “poetic license,” that is, freedom from the rules of grammar and truth)? It seems that when the distance to be traversed between the original text and the audience of the translation is at its greatest, the greatest degree of “freedom” is permitted— this “freedom” arises from necessity because a strict translation would make no sense. Or “freedom" may be conceded by default, because few among the audience can check the translator’s work, or care to. This condition applies to Ezra Pound’s _Cathay_ in the early decades of its reception. Another kind of “freedom” arises when the original is experimental and breaks the rules of the original language in a way that a translator may try to imitate in the language of the translation. Or sometimes a translator simply takes the freedom to alter the form or content of the original, as if claiming the status of independent artist. In this last case, the ethical vocabulary seems to fall away, for artists are notorious for following no rules but those they set down.

Writing as a technology brought major changes to literary creation throughout world antiquity. In China, one of the outcomes is the easy (and abundant) production of collections—collections of sayings, anecdotes, poems, divination records, and so forth. Coincidentally, many early literary productions appear compilatory, catalogic, even reiterative. From entire works of philosophy to chapter-length biographies, the basic texture of those writings can only be described as loosely woven, from materials that are thematically compatible but structurally detachable and discursively self-sufficient. This gave rise to a series of postulations that view early Chinese writings as “composite,” “modular,” and based on “textual repertories.” The act of true “authoring” is thus defined as everything that is not “compiling.” This paper seeks to destabilize that distinction. It shows how compiling is a way of authoring and how authoring is likewise an act of compiling. The two modes of writing constitute each other to the point that the most famous “authors” in Chinese antiquity—Confucius, Qu Yuan, Sima Qian—are all “authors” only by way of “compiling.” The technologies of writing, compiling, and later on archiving fostered an “aesthetics of fragmentation,” so to speak, that conditioned the development of authorship.

This article analyzes how the material and technological development in medieval China shaped the reading space and reading experience, which, in turn, influenced the ways in which authors present themselves in literature. Although dedication to reading has long been an esteemed quality among Chinese scholars, it was not until the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE) that reading began to be depicted as a pleasurable and leisurely pursuit. This transformation coincided with the introduction of new types of reading furniture, including reading pillows, bookstands, and book cupboards, which not only facilitated the act of reading but also expanded the reading space and reshaped the meaning of reading. These innovations not only facilitated the act of reading but also expanded the reading space and reshaped its cultural meaning, granting authors new opportunities for self-representation. Through an analysis of works by various authors—such as Li You (ca. 55–ca. 135), Xiao Yi (508–555), and Yang Jiong (650–ca. 694)—across a range of genres including inscriptions, rhapsodies, and verse, this study uncovers how these material artifacts are depicted and symbolized in literature. It demonstrates that reading furniture not only served but also carried symbolic meanings, which contributed to the presentation of the identity of individual author identities. In some instances, the reading furniture became an extension of the authors themselves. By foregrounding the interaction between the author’s self-presentation and material objects, this paper offers a nuanced understanding of how changes in the material culture of reading influenced literary depictions and perceptions of the reading experience, as well as the identities of the authors associated with it.

This paper focuses on the production and reproduction of Yu Xin’s (513—581) inscription on the Maijishan Buddhist caves to study how author-agent controls the presentation of texts, as allowed by technology, to realize what the text was intended for. The author-agent functions as a technician (one who uses technê) to convey the intended meanings by making use of text’s material form.

Yu Xin composed an inscription for a cave consigned by Li Yunxin, the Northern Zhou magistrate of the Maijishan area, in commemoration of Li’s deceased father. The text was transmitted to this day as part of Yu’s anthology but the original inscription was lost, most likely in earthquake. About one millennium later, in the Ming dynasty, the local magistrate Feng Weine (1513--1572) was compelled to reproduce Yu Xin’s text as a freestanding stele in the temple by the foot of Maijishan, in addition to carving on the cliffs some of his lyrical poems while visiting the caves. Reading the series of relevant texts and studying their material bearing, i.e., various forms of inscription, this case study intends to understand the role of the author within a more nuanced network of agents and things. On the one hand, the author (in this case, Yu Xin) uttered texts according to other people, social network and literary norm’s expectation and restriction; on the other hand, simply copying an old text onto another material form still was an intentional act of conveying the author’s message.

By comparing Yu Xin and Feng Weine’s acts of writing down exactly the same words in the same place, this paper argues that the author-agent does things with words not only by composing a text when inspired by the moment and event but also by determining which reproductive technology to present the text. It challenges the validity of classical Chinese theorization of poetry as a spontaneous verbal act in response to sincere feelings but reminds us of another stream of Chinese poetics that sees literary presentation as manifestion of hidden cosmological necessity (well illustrated by Liu Xie, for example) and writing as a way of conveying the knowledge of the sages (epistêmê, maybe?). Therefore, this paper will also be an attempt to demonstrate how authors’ acute awareness of the reproductive technology allows them to opt for a trans-individualistic mode of poetry.

In the 1930s, Lu Xun's literary thought entered the stage of self-reflection and self-transcendence. The tense relationship between literature and politics, as well as the "alienation" of the modern literary production system, led to the "squeeze" of the literary writing action of the intellectual class. In the face of such writing environment, Lu Xun awakened himself as "the author as producer". With an open subject attitude and continuous revolutionary spirit, he actively used the press system to transform the literary production technique for the intellectual class, innovated modern Chinese as the basic "literary productivity", explored a more suitable artistic medium for the public, trying to build an interactive literary production horizon for the intellectual class and the public and to rebuilt a cultural community on the basis of common modern experience. Lu Xun's producer consciousness reflects his reflection on the modernity of literature, transcends the aesthetic logic of modern subjective enlightenment, and contains his unique thinking of life philosophy.

The seminar explores what it means for literature to act as its own agent in modernity, to essentially have its own agency in modernity. Consequently, it freights techne as a drive that exceeds technology, and suggests literature to be more than a cultural instrument, more than a reflection of "lived experience." The question becomes then whether modernity has transformed literature into a peculiar phenomenon, one whose fulfillment is no longer found in an object. Can we speak of literature as a techne that no longer reveals itself in objects? Perhaps the question should be, has technology in a modern world produced a writing, a literary drive, that extends the aesthetic to encompass another kind of materiality, or perhaps no materiality at all. Sponsored by the ICLA Research Committee on Religion, Ethics, and Literature, the seminar invites presentations on • literature as an extra-material drive, • the literary as a phenomenological experience • technology as an expansion of literary codes • the written as cryptological object • the ethics of the literary in modernity • religion as a literary code • the transformation of religion, ethics, and literature in modernity • translation as a literary language

Life writing, as an obituary or memorial talk, overwrites people’s own biography and memoirs. Concerning public figures of note, it patronizes as it purports to memorialize people as a first draft of history for the consumption of the general public. The memorial talk or obituary fixes the subjects image in the public mind in a condensed and highly selective way isolating and individualizing the subject to an extreme degree. It oversimplifies and controls the image. Writers employ life writing to serve their own ends, and a life writing is always written by another person a friend or colleague, it is a bibliographical article. A person is being appropriated for the next generation who protects a memory by creating it. The paper investigates the well-known Orientalist Armin Vámbéry’s obituary by the very famous orientalist Ignac Goldziher positioning of the former in relation to Hungarology that was quintessential in arguing Jewish loyalties to Hungary. In this way Goldziher put forward the notion that they are both Hungarian who pursue Oriental Studies out of love for their home, Hungary. At the turn of the twentieth century the Orient was employed as a metaphor to underscore the unique identity of Hungarians, positioning them as both Eastern and Western, distinguishing them from other Europeans. This nationalist-driven discourse formed the backdrop for Hungarian Oriental Studies. Like their Hungarian counterparts, Jewish scholars sought to trace the history of the Magyars in Asia, and the mixing of various peoples in the Orient before the Magyars migrated to Europe. In doing so, Hungarian Jews aimed to present themselves as authentic Hungarians and what patter place than in obituaries and memorial talks.

This paper delves into the distinct yet interconnected themes of adventure and spirituality in travel narratives. It examines and explores how cultural, historical, and religious contexts influence the portrayal of travel experiences from the west and the east by examining Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard and Karna Shakya's Dolpo. The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the narrative styles, thematic elements, and cultural reflections in the west and the east. The methodology involves a qualitative analysis of the selected texts, focusing on recurring themes, narrative techniques, and cultural references. The study employs a comparative approach to draw meaningful conclusions about the similarities and differences between these two travel narratives. For this, I utilize Joseph Campbell's concept of the hero's journey to examine the protagonists' quests for self-discovery and transformation; Mircea Eliade's theory of the sacred and the profane to explore the spiritual dimensions of the journeys; and Edward Said's concept of Orientalism to analyze the portrayal and perception of Western and Eastern perspectives on travel and spirituality for the textual analysis and interpretation. Both narratives, however, share a common thread of self-discovery and personal growth through travel. This comparative analysis offers unique insights into their respective cultures and worldviews. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how travel writing can serve as a bridge between different cultures, fostering greater appreciation and empathy among readers.

Le bianwen (變文), forme singulière de la littérature populaire chinoise qui s'est épanouie sous la dynastie Tang, trouve son origine dans les manuscrits découverts en 1907 dans les grottes de Dunhuang. Ces textes, rédigés dans une version vulgarisée du chinois classique, constituent un corpus remarquable dont l'étude permet d'appréhender les modalités de transmission du bouddhisme en Chine médiévale. Selon André Lévy, ces textes s'apparentent aux « chantefables », caractérisées par une alternance rythmique entre vers et prose, dont la vocation première était la vulgarisation de la doctrine bouddhiste et sa diffusion auprès d'un public élargi. Cette transformation verbale s'accompagnait parfois d'une transposition générique du texte en représentation picturale, le bianxiang (變相), renforçant davantage la fonction narrative.

Dans ce contexte, l'œuvre de Lucien Bodard, ancien grand reporter et écrivain né en Chine, mérite une attention particulière. À l'âge de soixante ans, il publie sa première autofiction, Monsieur le consul, dans laquelle il recompose son enfance vécue comme « petit seigneur » au Sichuan. À travers une narration empreinte à la fois de satire et de nostalgie, il dépeint une époque marquée par le désordre, les intrigues, la violence et l'arrogance, où Seigneurs de la Guerre et colonisateurs occidentaux se disputaient la Chine. S'appropriant partiellement les codes du bianwen et du bianxiang, Bodard transforme et métamorphose des représentations issues des mythes et des canons bouddhiques pour les intégrer à son univers imaginaire, faisant ainsi émerger un orientalisme mystique qui, paradoxalement, met en lumière tout en le déconstruisant un colonialisme désormais condamné.

Notre analyse se concentrera sur l'étude de ces transformations et métamorphoses, ainsi que sur leur portée significative dans ce roman autobiographique.

In one of his last poems published shortly before his death at the age of 95, the poet Tuvia Ruebner (1924-2019) who escaped from Europe in 1941, contemplated not only what would remain of our knowledge and lived experience, but also what vessels, including digital means, will promise their survival. Written in both, or rather between German, his mother tongue, and Hebrew, the language of his land of immigration, his poetry embodies a lifelong journey between self and other, through which this ethical response (and responsibility) of bearing witness to the dead without, however, forgetting the living, is conveyed, articulated and challenged. As Jahan Ramazani notes in Poetry in a Global Age (2020) "Ideally, the circuit we travel by poem or vessel unmoors us, destabilizes our preconceptions, renews our sensory engagements, and opens us afresh to ourselves and the world." In this vein, I argue that Ruebner's poetic traveling destabilizes our preconceptions within a broader ongoing movement of which translingualism is just one, albeit prominent, aspect alongside the shifting between cultural sites, textual traditions and mediums such as music and the visual arts. For instance, Shahar Bram, who explored Ruebner's ekphrastic poetry, showed how various poems ("three Chinese drawings", "two Zen paintings", and "four Japanese woodcut prints"), represent the poet's perception of the otherness of Western culture as a part of his working-through of memory. Following his conclusions, this paper focuses on Ruebner's employment of the far-Eastern haiku in his late work published between 2017 and 2020. I hope to show that this series of German and Hebrew haikus, variants that embody distinct differences, demonstrates the poet's use of the foreign imagination as a "vessel" for his most intimate yet haunting recollections.

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s 1959 novel, The Magician of Lublin, tells the story of an enlightened Jewish magician who “returns” from secularity and modernity to tradition. This process has been widely discussed as a sign of the modern Jews’ ethical yearning for Jewish tradition. However, as the novel ends with a tempting letter from one of the magician’s mistresses, this epilogue invalidates the previous narrative of “returning” to Jewish tradition and brings antithetical possibility to the previous research. Under these circumstances, this article argues that this novel has a two-fold perspective of ethnicity and modernity. For the most part, as an American Jewish writer, Singer uses the magician’s returning to Jewish tradition to satisfy non-Jewish readers’ imagination of Jews in the post-Holocaust period. Meanwhile, as a Yiddish writer, Singer also uses specific Jewish ethical and religious customs that are not widely known among non-Jewish readers to allegorically express his secret worry about Yiddish literature after the Holocaust, during which most Yiddish-speaking Jews perished. From this two-fold perspective, this article argues that The Magician of Lublin shows the irreconcilable ethical position of a modern Jewish writer like Singer in the post-Holocaust period. 

On the one hand, the "nonhuman narrative theory" developed in the West recently has provided a new perspective and method for the study of Chinese narrative literature, and enriched the research content of Chinese narrative literature. On the other hand, Chinese narrative literature has also provided a rich textual foundation for the world nonhuman narrative study, which confirms the interpretive power and effectiveness of the nonhuman narrative theory. Under the special period, The Old Tales Retold also presents the unique nonhuman characteristics of its narration, that is, the Nuwa, the Moon Goddess and the Dead Corpse, etc. This article focuses on the analysis of the characteristics of the nonhuman narrative in The Old Tales Retold, and then reveals the ethical appeal and moral implications behind these genres of nonhuman narration.

Despite the ample documentation of the rapid rise of Protestant Christianity in Korea in the early twentieth century, it still bears explaining why, unlike in the case of China and Japan, Protestant Christianity came to establish itself in Korea’s mainstream culture as well as become a defining trait of the Korean cultural establishment in such an extraordinarily short amount of time. This paper addresses this large question that remains fundamental to understanding the cultural force of Christianity in Korean modernization—one unanswerable by way of quantitative analysis—by examining the most notable cultural product that secured the place of Protestant Christianity in modern Korean culture: the 1917 publication of the novel Mujong (The Heartless) by Yi Kwangsu. If there were any doubts that Christianity marked modernity in Korean culture, the publication of what is considered the first Korean novel permanently secured Christian artifacts as one of the strongest symbols of modernity in the Korean cultural imagination. Yet, as any particular aesthetic product turned into mainstream cultural practice also works to critique the very cultural use it generates, the novel Mujong is also a work of art that resists the cultural codifications it engenders. This paper analyzes Yi’s representation of Christian symbols as kitsch objects in the overall structure of irony of the novel to consider why figures of Christianity have been productive in South Korean literary production.

In_Cinnamon_Shops_, Polish author, Bruno Schulz presents a new narrative of Genesis in which the narrator's Father permutates the words in an ornithological compendium and realizes that he can and should create wholly new species. He proceeds to breed different species of birds together, taking over the top floor and attic of the house where he lives with his creations. He manipulates matter and produces a wholly new world. The son, Josef, declares Father's creative experiments to be heresies, beautiful transgressions. By the end of the book, the Father has advanced a theory of golems that he suggests represent the future of human existence. However, the book ends with his failure: Father witnesses the destruction of his creations. Surrounded by feathers, and carcasses, he howls at the heavens; his messianic creation is reduced to detritus at his feet.

In Schulz's subsequent, _Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass_, the son, Josef, abandons his Father's failed creations and moves into a letter phenomenology in which creation is produced solely through the permutation of the letters of the text. Using "The Book of Creation," Josef believes he has become a witness to the original Genesis. He has discovered the secret of Adam in Eden. However, this project underscores for him that he can either be sealed into the book, or he can abandon this world of letters and forfeit creation in order to live among people.

In other words, Schulz posits two forms of creation, one in which matter is manipulated to produce a golem, and the other, a literary creation in which letters are permutated until the reader slips into the text discovering another world entirely. This paper will explore these two different creations, to argue that Schulz not only sees Father's golems as failure but also rejects Josef's letter phenomenology because its heresy pushes Josef to abandon the human world.

Bibliography

Schulz, Bruno Cinnamon Streets

Schulz, Bruno Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass

Millet, Kitty Kabbalah and Literature

This paper explores the religious interpretation of Anton Chekhov's short story “The Student.” By analyzing the parallels between Ivan's spiritual transformation and the Gospel Passion narrative, the article reveals how Chekhov constructs a “story within a story” to combine the personal journey of the protagonist and Jesus' suffering and redemption in Russian Orthodox theology. The paper examines the intentional use of religious elements and the dual roles that Ivan plays as both a Christ-like figure and a Peter-like figure, raising questions about the reliability of Ivan’s epiphany and the broader implications for Russian history and its cyclical suffering. Through a close reading of the text, the paper argues that Chekhov's narrative strategy blurs the boundaries between storyteller and protagonist, inviting readers to question the nature of historical repetition, the inevitability of suffering, and the possibility of redemption.

In contemporary contexts, cats continue to inspire digital culture, fashion, and design, reinforcing their timeless appeal. From ancient Egyptian deities to modern artistic movements, cats have symbolized mysticism, resilience, and an intrinsic connection to the unseen. Writers, poets, and artists often draw from the cat’s elusive presence, using it to represent curiosity, self-sufficiency, and the balance between domesticity and wildness. This Article explores the enduring influence of cats as an inspiration, examining their symbolic significance and metaphoric impact on human creativity, aesthetics, and storytelling. The idiom ‘cats and dogs’ has been widely used in the English language, most commonly in the phrase ‘raining cats and dogs’. Though the origins of some cat expressions remain uncertain, the author touches upon various interesting aspects with theories linking it to Norse mythology, medieval drainage systems, and 17th-century literary usage. Beyond weather-related meanings, ‘cats and dogs’ has also symbolized oppositional relationships, as seen in the phrase ‘fight like cats and dogs’ ,which describes constant conflict or rivalry. Cat words like copy cat, cool cat, cat walk or idioms like cats and dogs, bail the cat, all cats are grey in the dark reflect broader cultural perceptions of the contrasting natures of cats and dogs—independent versus loyal, aloof versus affectionate. Over time, the expression has evolved in literature, media, and colloquial speech, demonstrating how animal imagery shapes language and metaphor.

Key Words: Cats, cats and dogs, cool cat, copy cat, cat walk, cat and language, cat and culture

In Rabi Singh’s Odia poem “Charamapatra”, the speaker issues an ultimatum to God, warning Him to either vacate his divine throne within twenty-four hours or face dire consequences of the speaker’s wrath. This apparently heretical act is prompted by the speaking self’s disenchantment with the institution of religion in ‘modern’ times as a response to suffering of others. Similarly, in Hindi poet Nagarjun’s “Anna-pachchisi ke dohe”, the speaker proclaims food-grains as the ultimate godly truth and other gods as vampires. These two poets writing in two modern Indian languages from 1930s onwards were part of a progressive literary movement called pragativaad that manifested simultaneously in both Odia and Hindi literatures. Their works responded to the dominant structures of feeling of their times characterized by the problems of modernity in a colonized and later newly independent country. In this context, the ethics of the literary was forged in the lyrical self’s resistance in response to and in solidarity with the suffering of others which the pragativaadis— ranging from Marxist-socialist to liberal-humanist in their political orientation—believed was a result of unequal (and hence, unethical) socio-political structures.

Using Jacques Rancière’s formulation of “regimes of the arts” and Sisir Kumar Das’s “prophane and metaphane”, in this paper I attempt to synchronically trace the shared repertoire of signification in the progressive literary movements across two languages and understand how they offer a phenomenology of suffering and resistance through poetry. I argue that poetry in this context becomes ‘heretic’ by offering, in Edward Said’s words, a “secular critique” of religiously held dogmas and dominant hierarchies. Through a comparative reading of the select poems of Rabi Singh, Sachi Routray, Nagarjun, and Kedarnath Agrawal, I will be looking at how this movement made a space of articulation of difference by offering us (in slight modification of Simone de Beauvoir’s) a “taste of another’s life’s” suffering by mediating their “lived experience” through poetry.

From the perspective of perpetrator trauma, this paper analyzes the traumatic representation, memory, and healing inflicted and experienced by Native Americans and white people as perpetrators and victims in Louise Erdrich’s novel Larose. Erdrich reproduces the historical entanglements and practical difficulties between Indians and whites in the form of traumatic narrative, and proposes a religious and ethical approach for healing the trauma. It reveals the absence of western justice system in humanistic care and the cultural significance of the Ojibwan sweat lodge ceremony.

In their 2019 speculative novel, Pet, author Akwaeke Emezi had portrayed a new world, seemingly perfect. A teenage Black trans girl, Jam, is at the centre of this adventure story. Jam accidentally releases a creature who was painted by her mother, Bitter.In the prequel of the series, Bitter, the mother is shown as a teenager herself. She is a child born from rape; thus, she is shunned for having monster blood, brought up in foster homes, bisexual, living in a home for gifted artists in a city that is troubled by oppression and reactionary violence.Bitter has the power to create blood art alive. After a friend of hers is wounded, enraged Bitter creates a massive blood art. The blood art, however, asserts itself to be an angel and gives the revolution the much-awaited inhuman violent push.What becomes important for scholars of arts, literatures and cultures while studying this young adult popular series is the idea of angels and monsters. Humans can become monsters; they can harm other people, nature, or even abuse children. But the angels are beings who can be summoned or created by art, yet biblically accurate.

The role of the creator has been preserved for God. God is an all-encompassing being with immense power, thus post-human. But what happens when a human makes an angel? Are those angels post-human in the same way human-made technology is? Can words that originated in the cultural strata from theology ever be secular enough to be grouped in the same bracket as a Roomba?

Speaking of Roomba, one of the most talked-about art installations from the same year features a cleaning machine, similar to what these angels want to do; this machine also wants to clean but creates a more bloody scenery. The industrial robot, who is programmed to make sure that a thick, deep crimson liquid is cleaned, is fixed within a specific area and is flexing and turning restlessly in Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's Can't Help Myself. The robot is housed in a translucent "cage," resembling a captured creature on display, as part of the international art exhibition "May You Live in Interesting Times," which Ralph Rugoff curated for the 2019 Venice Art Biennale. This art installation portrays the helplessness faced by the robot to do the one job it is programmed to do; rather, it smears everything, and the viewer almost feels bad in an eerie way, which supposes an anthropomorphic identity of the robot. The robot's gestures have a captivating human grace to enhance these feelings since the artists have "taught" it 32 human-like moves. Comparing these two art pieces, created by three artists from across the globe, one can maybe observe the translations of ideas regarding posthumanism. With the exceptional amount of ‘blood’ in both of these works, a sacrificial element related to birth can be read. With Emezi's own blood art and their ideas regarding religion and god-beings found in their other works, it becomes extremely intriguing to study such narratives with posthuman theories.

This paper discusses how the themes of human emotions and experiences—joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure—are addressed in literature, and explores how Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism can contribute to resolving the dilemmas often faced in these narratives. Buddhism and Hinduism, in particular, emphasize the ethical dimensions of human life, offering valuable tools for literary exploration.

Buddhism's focus on enlightenment, including the early Abhidhamma's concepts of mind (citta), mental factors (chetasika), matter (rupa), and nirvana (nibbana), helps explain human cognitive processes. In Mahayana Buddhism, themes like the true self in Zen Buddhism and the theories of Yogacara and Madhyamaka, along with Huayan Buddhism, can be incorporated into literary contexts.

In Hinduism, the notion of Brahman and Atman being one is central to understanding the essence of human life and its purpose. This can be reflected in literature as a deep exploration of inner conflicts and self-discovery.

Confucianism, on the other hand, emphasizes moral growth and the regulation of emotions through the principle of Zhongyong (the Doctrine of the Mean). The state before emotions arise is termed as 'Zhong,' and the harmony that follows is 'He.' These concepts can be applied to literature to portray the balance and moral development of characters.

This paper aims to explore the interconnections between literature and religion, particularly focusing on Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. It discusses how these religions influence literary themes and expressions and suggests ways in which they can be used to address internal conflicts and moral growth in literary works.

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath vividly portrays the Dust Bowl refugees’ plight during the Great Depression, sparking controversy and scholarly debate. Initially celebrated as proletarian resistance, later analyses reveal deeper mythic and symbolic layers, drawing parallels to the Exodus narrative. Beyond historical hardship, the novel delves into profound questions about human existence, survival, and ethics, remaining relevant today amidst global crises like COVID-19. Steinbeck’s writing career evolved from objective observation in his ‘Trilogy of Migrant Peasant Workers’ to impassioned advocacy, culminating in a neutral lens influenced by Edward Ricketts’s non-teleological approach. This allowed for a deeper understanding of the migrants’ struggles and the social injustices they faced, impacting the novel’s lasting influence.

The survival crisis was fundamentally a product of human actions, including early excessive land cultivation, westward expansion, agricultural capitalization, and the concentration of land ownership that displaced tenant farmers. Natural disasters played only a minor role, exacerbating this pre-existing vulnerability. Government inefficiency and people’s decline in religious faith fostered a society where hardship and moral decay flourished. The novel explores survival ethics through moral dilemmas faced by the migrants. While self-preservation often takes precedence in situations of scarcity of food and job competition that tests people’s ethical limits, even within families; selflessness and sacrifice, even among strangers, highlight the presence of compassion, mutual aid, and a deep commitment to dignity, demonstrating the multifaceted nature of human responses to adversity. The Joads’ journey reveals the complexities of balancing personal survival with ethical principles like kinship, community, and reciprocal kindness. Ultimately, Steinbeck proposes the enduring relevance of compassion, unity and self-transcendence as the keys to navigate challenging times, inspiring future generations to reflect on ethical living in a globalized world.

Departing from the conjecture that literature has an object-form materiality, i propose an ethical view of literature as human agency in relation to a plural world of other beings, real and imagined subjects. The sensible or aesthetic quality of literature comes from its activity of manifesting/presenting human existence as actively engaged agential voice(s) in a detotalised, plural universe. i draw upon repertoires of signification from devotional poetry “residual” in modern(ist) poetry and literary cultures in Indian languages, to propose that cultural “modernity” as a structure of feeling is identified in literature with the realisation of the radical democracy of language, questioning various forms of unequal power operations in engagement with difference. The distinction between the intentionality of the word as literature and the word as religious speech forms the context of presenting Experience as one’s located relation or continued engagement with concrete, manifest difference ie the agential presence of others. The ethical view of literature as plural and relational thus marks modernity in a literary culture as resistance to bigotry and fundamentalism typical to commodified religion regardless of the time, place and language in which it is written.

This project aims to explore African literatures through a comparative lens, highlighting dialogues between local traditions, postcolonial dynamics, and global perspectives. It investigates cross-influences among different regions of the continent as well as their interactions with other global literary traditions. By examining themes such as orality, memory, migration, and modernity, the program offers a platform to reflect on how African narratives contribute to reshaping global literary imaginaries. Special focus will be given to new narrative forms and the impact of digital technologies on contemporary African literatures.

This comparative study examines the characters of Meursault in Albert Camus's "The Stranger" and Mustafa Saeed in Tayeb Salih's "Season of Migration to the North," focusing on their shared dispassion and existential detachment. Both characters embody the outsider archetype, navigating complex social landscapes that reflect their alienation from societal norms. Meursault's emotional indifference, particularly in the face of his mother's death, positions him as a figure of absurdity, where his lack of conventional grief is met with societal condemnation. In contrast, Mustafa Saeed's dispassion emerges from his postcolonial identity struggle, as he oscillates between his Sudanese roots and Western influences, ultimately leading to a profound sense of disconnection from both cultures. The analysis reveals that while Meursault's detachment is rooted in existential philosophy, reflecting a rejection of societal values, Saeed's dispassion is intertwined with the complexities of colonial legacy and identity crisis. Both characters confront the absurdity of existence, yet their responses differ significantly; Meursault embraces his alienation, while Saeed's experience is marked by a yearning for belonging that remains unfulfilled. This qualitative research is based on content analysis, mainly of these two novels, adding to that related criticism of these two.

A certain degree of presence of literatures of Nigeria on the “global stage” is undeniable, but the concept of “literary peripheries” suggests a nuanced positioning within the broader literary landscape. The observation that any question concerning the genre of the novel in the context of Nigerian literature would evoke a plethora of issues, with the primary one being the position of a narrative in the ‘global’ context, opens up a rich and complex terrain for exploration. One of the impediments to a proper understanding of novels, emerging from Nigeria, is the existent historiography/s, concerning genre of novel. Traditional belief holds that the genre of novel ushered from “outside” (primarily from Europe). However, this adopted genre projects the “local” forms, comprising of oral traditions and ‘indigenous’ languages. The development of the novel as a literary form is a multifaceted process, influenced by various historical, cultural, and literary factors. The emergence of contemporary novels from Nigeria is typically understood in the context of the 20th and 21st centuries, with influences ranging from colonial experiences, post-colonial realities, cultural dynamics, and global literary inclinations. Women’s literary expression, through the written genres, like the novel, appeared as late as 1966 in Nigeria, through the publication of Efuru, a novel by Flora Nwapa. Though women were central figures in the oral traditions of different indigenous communities their literary expressions were ignored and criticized when the written genres gradually replaced the narratives of oral tradition. In fact, the first published woman writer from Nigeria, Flora Nwapa (1931-1993) experienced negative critical response and was relegated as a ‘minor’ writer. The concerned paper has indulged in a study to understand how important were the position of women in the oral traditions, across different communities in Nigeria. Besides this, the paper also focuses on how the narrative techniques of the genres of oral traditions, in the Ibo community, featured as residual elements in the novels of Nwapa, which endowed the writer a pertinent place in the interface between the ‘oral’ and the ‘writen’.

"The Masque of Africa" is Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul's travel book about his travels in Africa from 2009 to 2010 in Uganda and other African countries. From Uganda, the center of Africa, Naipaul passed through Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Gabon, and the southernmost part of Africa, South Africa. Naipaul, as a spectator, chronicled all the forms of powerful Kings, ordinary pawns, converts to foreign religions, followers of ancient African faiths. Compared with his previous travels to India and the Caribbean, Naipaul plays the role of listener and recorder, tracing the changes in the African continent in the process of globalization and the reasons for the changes.

In recent years, post-colonial studies have shown a tendency to extend to environmental criticism and ecocriticism. Since the initial rise of colonial ecocriticism in China after 2021, post-colonial ecocriticism studies have been in full swing. The important research object of post-colonial ecocriticism is the promotion and development of western colonial activities and its impact on the social ecology, cultural ecology and natural ecology of the colonies, which realizes the combination of post-colonialism and ecocriticism. In today's ecological problems to find their historical roots, in the colonial process to find the world ecological changes. This paper discusses the social and environmental injustices caused by the western colonial consciousness's intervention in the environment. The Masque of Africa has a profound postcolonial ecological thought connotation, showing its unique writing ideas. African Masque covers the geographical space and urban landscape of Nigeria, Ghana, Gabon and other regions in Africa, and its spatial writing vividly reflects the impact of post-colonialism on the urban space of African countries. Naipaul shows the traces left by colonialism in post-colonial areas. The essence of the colonists' economic expansion and the illusion of local development. Through reviewing the studies of Naipaul's works from the perspective of post-colonial ecocriticism, there is no in-depth analysis of The Masque of Africa from the perspective of post-colonial ecocriticism. Therefore, this paper will carefully and comprehensively analyze the relationship between man and nature in the post-colonial context of Naipaul's works, and explore the warning significance of the ecological crisis in modern society and the enlightenment of ecological development in this work through the analysis of specific ecological images, so as to reveal the unique theme of Naipaul's post-colonial ecological writing, so as to broaden the research horizon of Naipaul's works.

A9-7. Scriptural Reasoning and Comparative studies

In the context of the theme “Comparative Literature and Technology” of the twenty-fourth annual conference of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) from July 28 to August 1, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea, we propose a special panel entitled “Scriptural Reasoning and Comparative Literature”.

Scriptural reasoning (SR), an academic tool for people to engage in inter-faith dialogues by reading and reflecting on scriptures from all around the world, is gaining increasing significance in the contemporary era of digitalization and globalization. The importance of international communication cannot be overstated. Thus, more attention should be attached to SR since it plays a key role in cultural exchanges between different nations and regions. It also accords with the leading academic concept, “Global Humanities” which highlights interactions of humanities and arts and integration of knowledges among various disciplines through interdisciplinary methods and diverse cultural perspectives. The questions our session aims to explore include but are not limited to:

1.By analyzing the language, grammar, syntax, and meaning of scriptures from different religions, what interpretations can we arrive at that help shed new light on the classical texts?

2.How can we find the methodologies that are applicable to the inter-faith dialogues involved in scriptural reasoning? How should such methodologies be carried out in practice?

3.Inherent in the Abrahamic tradition, scriptural reasoning is usually thought to involve the studies of Jewish, Christian and Islamic scriptures. With the growing need to introduce diverse voices, how can we establish scriptural reasoning between China and the West?

In summary, centering around the above questions and beyond, this session will delve deeply into scriptures across faith boundaries and foster cultural dialogues across different religions and cultures.

In my research, I investigate how an emerging textual structure of configuring space and spatial movements in early modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean vernacular fiction grapples with established ethical frameworks from the perspective of relational literary history. I delve into the historical relationship between the textual practices of “mapping” space, especially how the “foreign” and the unknown are linguistically represented, and the material/technological practices of crafting cartography (proto-world maps) in which cultural selfhoods are both reinforced and challenged. By revealing the interconnectedness of textuality, visuality, and materiality, I examine how spatial movements conform to or contest normative ethicality and how specific imaginaries in fictional writings mobilize a new affective contour of spatiality.

How does East Asian early modern fiction as a genre destabilize the interiority of dominant cultural systems by “externalizing” and transferring “illegitimate” feelings into a geographical replica deemed as the other? In response, I reconsider how transgressive fantasy and desire are transcribed into space at the linguistic level. I illuminate how new territories of feminine subjectivity and what I call “spatialized queerness” are implied in early modern East Asian fiction, a genre that carves out a heterotopic domain of discourses in ambivalence with official morality and historiography. In addition, I address the shifting relationship between the “Sinitic Cosmopolis,” specifically the literary Sinitic as a shared written script, and vernacular languages in relation to literary cartography. How does re-examining the historicized conditions of early modern East Asian material and literary culture challenge the ways in which we habitually evaluate the center-periphery binaries?

I tackle texts such as the Qing Chinese fantasy fiction Flowers in the Mirror, the serialized Edo Japanese epic novel The Eight Dogs Chronicles, the Korean fiction Taewonji and its aftermath, as well as Water Margin and its multiple editions, sequels, and adaptations. By bringing these different yet interrelated narrative threads together, I hope to shed light on larger issues of how early modern East Asian subjects make sense of, come to terms with, and re-imagine the world beyond their familiar knowledge structure. Amidst the actual boundary-makings and invented images of space, I am inquisitive about how variegated acts of mapping topography and border-crossings complicate the gender dynamics and express both bodily and emotional “queerness” at work.

What kinds of agencies surface or become revised in the fictional narratives concerning border crossings, and what are their sociopolitical conditions or consequences? How is individual subjects’ cultural situatedness an ongoing negotiation in mobility? By bringing a “global” perspective into the analysis, I also reconsider the framework's inherent parameters while seeking new potentialities to interpret critical concepts in humanities.

Contemporary studies in sexuality have increasingly focused on social construction of identities and categories, emphasising the influence of gender, power and political-economic dimensions (Parker & Aggleton). While studies in Indian erotic literature do shed light on gender roles, literary motifs and artistic appreciation of erotic literature, they under examine the role of material culture, mainly cosmetics, in the process. Instead, cosmetics have been studied as a subject of everyday life, detached from the innate connection it shares with sexuality. In ancient Arab societies, for instance, the use of perfumes is intricately tied to the aspect of eroticism (Hirsch), also to be noticed in Rabbinic texts that deal with women’s use of cosmetics in ancient Judaism (Labovitz).

Such academic scholarship is yet to develop on India, possessing a rich erotic literary tradition where application of pastes with designs on bodies of both men and women served as acts of sexuality and tools of seduction. This paper addresses these gaps by examining the neglected relation between sexuality and material culture of cosmetics, specifically focusing on body pastes such as sandalwood, musk, henna, and camphor and their designs in the early Indian literary traditions of Sanskrit and Tamil.

By employing an interdisciplinary conceptual framework grounded in material culture studies and comparative analysis, this paper questions: What functions did cosmetics serve in erotic contexts in Early Indian Literature? What role did they play in construction of gender roles and sexuality? Through a vast corpus of early erotic and love poetry in Sanskrit and Tamil, this paper finds gendered and regional variations in application of the same pastes and designs between these literary traditions situated in acts of sexuality, where the very act of application became a tool of seduction. For instance, sandalwood paste on female bodies was eroticised in Sanskrit poetry while application of the same paste on male bodies by females became an act of seduction in Tamil poetry.

This paper contributes to the field of comparative literature by bridging the gap in scholarship between sexuality and material culture of cosmetics. It demonstrates that cosmetics’ usage showed considerable change across ancient India that was reflected directly in erotic literature, for it played an important role in sexuality. Secondly, the material culture of cosmetics corresponds directly with the culture of clothing that in turn, corresponds to the socio-religious norms of the changing society, signalling a complex relationship between material culture of clothing, sexuality, gender and social acceptability.

By situating cosmetics within the broader context of Indian erotic literature, these findings serve implications to fields of literature, gender and cultural studies, offering a deeper understanding of how material culture shapes and reflects cultural attitudes towards gender and sexuality.

This study offers a comparative analysis of enlightenment and nationalism in the poems of Shin, Chae-ho （申采浩), a Korean nationalist thinker, and Lu Xun （魯迅）, a foundational figure in modern Chinese literature. It aims to explore and compare the enlightenment and nationalist ideas of these intellectuals through the unique art form of poetry, a genre that—though not dominant in their work—holds significant ideological and literary value. This research examines how themes of enlightenment and nationalism emerge in their poetry, identifying both differences and commonalities in their perspectives. Additionally, it analyzes formal elements, such as rhyme, structure, imagery, and symbolism, to provide a holistic view of their poetic expressions. Through this comparative study, the research seeks to deepen understanding of the intellectual landscapes of Korea and China and offer new insights into modern Korea-China relations.

East/West comparison focused on genres, canons, and concepts of poetics has served to give comparative literature a place in Asian academia. But that model of comparison has its limits. Looking to the long history of writing on the Asian continent, do we not see definitions of "literature" that vary from the European standard, as well as modes of circulation not anticipated elsewhere? The models and logics of comparison offered by the literatures of East Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia not only expands the reach of the discipline but modifies accounts of national literary history that are current on the continent by emphasizing exchange and adaptation rather than offering nativist genealogies. For this panel, case studies of intra-Asian literary relationships, from the beginnings of writing to the present, are invited, with the particular aim of clarifying general dynamics of cultural growth.

In contemporary America, Chinese and African Americans are two significant minority groups with a closely intertwined history of racial power struggles. The memoir Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, a two-time National Book Award-winning African American author, vividly recreates the life of African Americans in the southern United States during the latter half of the twentieth century. By examining the elements of Chinese kung fu in the book, one can observe how Ward uses martial arts as a philosophy of life and cultural practice to shape Black identity, strengthen community ties, and promote social progress. Ward's work is not only a personal historical reflection but also a tribute to and exploration of how African Americans have harnessed the cultural power of kung fu in their struggle for freedom and equality.

Party document is not simply an ideology but also forms a discourse. The paper examines the debate within the Manchuria Branch of the Chinese Communist Party (MCP) over the nature of collective hamlet (集团部落) during the Japanese colonization of Manchuria. The collective hamlet was a colonial mechanism that controled landless Chinese peasants whose land had been expropriated by the colonial agencies. It describes how the Party was split around the question of the mobilization of the Chinese hamlet residents. What was crucial, as I argue, was the uneasy reconciliation of national revolution with the Party’s rigid borrowing and adaption of class struggle from orthodoxy Marxism represented by Comintern. In the early twentieth century, emphasis on the integration of the masses into anti-imperialist struggle was circulated globally against colonialism and capitalism. This left internationalism discourse, advocated by Comintern, bypassed the orthodoxy Marxist typology of revolutionary class in favor of nationalism nurtured in the local context to galvanize national revolutions against the capitalist world order. The ambiguity arisen created confusion for the MCP in designing its revolutionary strategy with respect to the mobilization of the expropriated Chinese residents, who were loosely tagged as lumpenproletariat and did not belong to orthodox Marxism’s classical interpretation of revolutionary agent. The Party managed to situate the spoiling of collective hamlets at the interstitial space between the sphere of economic social relations and that of the national imaginary. This study reexamines the ideological underpinnings of the Party’s documents compared with orthodoxy Marxism, calling for a nuanced understanding of the complicity between nation and capital that shored up the complicated forms of dominance in the colonized Manchuria.

Literary scholarship has long characterized Korea's colonial period (1910-1945) as an era of modernist literature heavily influenced by mainstream European literary traditions. However, this perspective overlooks significant evidence of transcolonial solidarity during this period. While Korean literary modernism undoubtedly engaged with German, French, Russian, and English literary traditions, this study highlights one of the less acknowledged but crucial influences: Indian literature. Beyond the well-documented impact of Tagore's poem, “The Lamp of the East,” on Korean writers of the time, this research examines the significant role of another Indian poet who was translated and widely read during this period: Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949).

Naidu’s poetry and political activism was widely known internationally during her time. Korea was no exception, and Naidu’s involvement with India’s independence movement as well as her role as a suffragist and feminist was reported in newspapers and discussed by writers in literary magazines. Naidu's influence on Korean modernist writers of the early 20th century demonstrates that the colonial period was not merely an era of blind Westernization. Rather, the patterns of literary study and emulation during this time reveal deliberate expressions of transcolonial solidarity. This framework can be extended to Korean writers' engagement with the Harlem Renaissance or the Irish Literary Revival, which should be understood not as instances of reception of the Western powers, but as manifestations of lateral interest between colonized peoples. Current scholarship often categorizes the study of Indian, Irish, and Black Renaissance literature under the broad umbrella of "English literature," effectively mislabeling these works and obscuring their original anti-colonial intentions. This research thus challenges such notions to reconsider how to categorize and understand colonial Korean writers' approach to global literatures.

This paper examines Naidu’s reception in literary magazines and newspapers of colonial Korea, analyzing how Korean writers engaged with both her poetry and political activism. Choi Young-sook’s travel writing and interview with Naidu and Gandhi (Samcheolli 1932), Lee Ha-Yoon’s survey of Naidu’s work (Dong-A Daily 1930), and Kim Eok’s translations of Naidu’s poetry (Kaebyeok 1922) are examples of cases which reveal how Korean intellectuals selectively translated and interpreted Naidu’s work to construct networks of anti-colonial solidarity. By examining these intra-Asian literary connections, this research contributes to a broader understanding of how colonized nations developed horizontal relationships through literary exchange.

The article begins by examining the passages related to Cao Xueqin to provide a sketch of his character in the Hong Kong novel The Drunkard by Liu Yichang. Subsequently, Cao Xueqin’s character in The Drunkard is compared with his image established by Hu Shi’s ‘The Dream of the Red Chamber: Search for Evidence’, a pioneering article in Chinese New Redology. This comparative examination aims to unveil the parallels and disparities between the two representations of Cao Xueqin. The relationship between the ‘two Cao Xueqins’ is then examined with reference to the concept of ‘old tales retold’, signifying the recontextualization of classical Chinese narratives in contemporary frameworks, thus endowing them with renewed significance. To provide a detailed elucidation of the ‘old tales retold’ concept, one of Liu Yichang’s Cao Xueqin-related short stories, ‘Chinese New Year’s Eve’, will be used as an illustrative example. The article then turns to clarifying the significance of the 'old tales retold' in the study of the comparative history of East Asian literature.

Chinese translators Wu Tao, Zhou Zuoren, and Shi Zhecun translated the Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz's short story "The Lighthouse Keeper" in 1907, 1909, and 1935, respectively. Notably, none of them translated from the original Polish text. This article explores the reasons behind these translators' choices to translate "The Lighthouse Keeper," their distinct translation characteristics, and how these translations reflect the early 20th-century Chinese literary community's acceptance and adaptation of foreign literature. This is significant in the context of empathy towards and solidarity with literature from small and weak nations, showcasing the complexity of cultural exchange among Asian literatures. Wu Tao's translation was derived from a Japanese version, specifically selected from the magazine Taiyō (The Sun). During the late Meiji period, the literary community responded to the government's calls for nationalism and praised national writers like Sienkiewicz. Therefore, it is not surprising that Wu Tao encountered Sienkiewicz's works in Taiyō. Simultaneously, Zhou Zuoren was studying in Japan, where he followed Japanese and western publications. Like other late Qing intellectuals, he was concerned with new ideas, particularly feeling empathy and solidarity with "small and weak nations." In 1909, Zhou and his brother Lu Xun published The Collected Works of Foreign Fiction, which included Zhou's translation of "The Lighthouse Keeper." His translation was based on Jeremiah Curtin's English version. Given Zhou's extensive reading, it is likely he encountered the Japanese translation in Taiyō, but he opted for the English version, disregarding the Japanese text. By the time Shi Zhecun translated "The Lighthouse Keeper," it was already the 1930s. The concern for small and weak nations had become a consensus among the educated class. At this point, Shi Zhecun translated a book called The Polish Short Story Collection, including "The Lighthouse Keeper." Wu Tao's translation was significantly influenced by the Japanese version, exhibiting traces of Sino-Japanese Daoist culture in its wording and sentence structure. Zhou's translation primarily employed a literal approach but adopted classical language. In contrast, Shi Zhecun responded to the call of the times by using accessible vernacular. Shi Zhecun's translation of Sienkiewicz's works began with "The Lighthouse Keeper," after which he continued to translate other works by the Polish author. Wu Tao's focus on Taiyō allowed him, without having studied in Japan, to be among the first to translate works that would later receive sustained attention in the Chinese literary translation community. As familiarity with small and weak nation literature grew, translators gradually obtained translated texts beyond the Japanese versions, slowly breaking free from Japan's influence. By the 1930s and 1940s, sustained attention to specific authors led to a rich output that had a more direct social impact.

This essay offers a timely exploration of abjection, hatred, and the transformative potential of forgiveness, using the gripping narratives of Han Kang’s Human Acts and Julia Kristeva’s philosophical work Hatred and Forgiveness. In an era marked by political division, collective trauma, and a heightened awareness of social injustices, the concepts of hate and forgiveness take on renewed significance. This essay will not only bridge literature and psychoanalytic theory but will also invite critical reflection on how these themes resonate with contemporary efforts for healing and reconciliation.

The presentation begins with Kristeva’s theoretical framework of abjection—a state where boundaries between self and other are blurred, leading to feelings of revulsion and alienation. Central to this is her analysis of the maternal body and the pre-Oedipal phase, where the “abject” first emerges. In the modern context, these insights reveal how trauma disrupts identity, sparking visceral responses that often defy rationality.

Building on this foundation, the essay then analyses Human Acts, where abjection vividly manifests amid the violence and dehumanisation of the Gwangju Uprising. Through poignant examples, including graphic portrayals of bodies and characters’ intense, physical reactions to trauma, we will examine how Han Kang employs abjection to depict trauma as an embodied experience—a reality faced by many in today’s turbulent world. In Kang’s text, blood, bodily fluids, and corpses become symbols of suppressed memories that haunt individuals and collective identities alike, illustrating Kristeva’s notion of the “abject” as a visceral confrontation with the limits of human endurance.

From this place of abjection, the essay traces an evolution to hatred, drawing on Kristeva’s theory and Han Kang’s literary insights. Trauma in Human Acts breeds rage and resentment, spurring characters towards revenge and despair. We will draw comparisons between the unnamed prisoner in Human Acts and Pierre, a patient in Kristeva’s Hatred and Forgiveness, exploring how each grapples with hatred born of traumatic violations. These stories reveal how abjection can fester into hatred, and in turn, how unchecked hatred may fracture communities and hinder personal healing—a compelling message for today’s world.

Finally, the essay will examine Kristeva’s notion of forgiveness. Beyond a simple ethical imperative, Kristeva envisions forgiveness as a challenging, transformative path, demanding deep self-reflection and confronting the complexities of shared humanity. We will explore whether Kang’s characters, shaped by violence and grief, can embark on such a journey. By analysing the roles of art, language, and memory in Human Acts, the essay highlights ways trauma might be confronted and re-integrated, both individually and collectively. Ultimately it aims to provoke a discussion on trauma and healing, moving beyond binaries of victim and perpetrator.

The emerging field of Sino-Japanese studies has, in recent decades, shed light on literary exchanges between China and Japan, long shaped by the tradition of “brushtalk”. However, at the turn of the 20th century, intra-Asian intellectual exchanges intensified in multiple directions, fostering greater mobility for women. This paper follows the trajectory of Sino-Japanese studies by examining the writings of Chinese women who traveled to Japan and Japanese women who visited China between 1900 and 1940, as their diverse works reveal a renewal of the poetic travel tradition between the two countries.

In the early 20th century, many Chinese women traveled to Japan for education before returning home to disseminate Japanese feminist ideas, engaging in poetic and feminist journals. This collective feminine experience of travel to Japan is notably reflected in the works of Qiu Jin, whose shi, ci, and tanci, such as "Jingwei shi", urge Chinese women to cross the Eastern Sea. Conversely, numerous Japanese women traveled to China, renewing the Chinese tradition of guji poetic itinerary while discovering Chinese women’s lives. Akiko Yosano’s work thus evolves from a poetic writing of her first crossing of China, in "Natsu yori aki e" (1914), to a blend of prose and poetry in both Chinese and Japanese in "Manmō yūki" (1928), which depicts her travel in Manchuria. This prose-poetry alternation is also found in Hayashi Fumiko’s travelogues from the 1930s, such as "Furansu iki" (1933) and "Hokugan butai" (1939). While Yosano and Hayashi’s writings reflect the growing influence of nationalism on Japanese women writers—mirroring the rise of anti-Japanese sentiment in China—this paper will also consider dissenting voices offering counter-narratives. Alongside her diary-like account of her life in Japan, "Guimao lüxing ji" (1903), Shan Shili translated Japanese educational manuals advocating the Meiji-era ideal of “good wives and wise mothers”, which contrasted with contemporary feminist circles. Similarly, amid rising anti-Japanese sentiment in the 1930s, Lu Yin’s "Dongjing Xiaopin" (1930–1931) offers a strikingly different perspective during her stay in Tokyo, portraying Japanese women’s kindness and generosity. She also contrasts Japanese feminism with the country’s rigid social structure, which remains an obstacle to women’s emancipation.

This paper aims to provide a nuanced overview of the collective and individual voices of women navigating between China and Japan during a period of both intensified exchanges and escalating conflicts. What roles do women play in shaping representations of China and Japan, and how do they contribute to the circulation of texts and ideas between the Chinese and Japanese shores? Finally, how does crossing the Eastern Sea, allowing Chinese and Japanese women to observe a feminine Other, influence their writing?

Buddhist texts and scriptures, as part of the grand corpus of Buddhist literatures, were circulated ab initio in India through oral means, which later influenced the translation and dissemination of Buddhist literatures in China as well. Group recitation of Buddhist texts in ancient India was an essential part of textual transmission by the bhāṇakas [lit., “speakers” (McGovern 2019: 450); professional reciters] (Allon 2021: 1), who were responsible for maintaining and circulating the canons, which were edited and redacted (Skilling 2017: 276–277) by the saṃgītikāras [editors/compilers] (Galasek 2016: 204). Unlike the modern author-reader relationship, where the author and the reader are usually not present simultaneously in the same spatial or temporal context, the Indian reciter and the audience encountered each other vis-à-vis within a circulation field, which was more of an “intra-textual realm” (Galasek, ibid.: 56) that substituted for an “actual oral performance” (Anālayo 2020: 2720).

This method of oral performance later influenced the circulation of Buddhist texts in China in every aspect—from the initial stages of translating and interpreting Buddhist literatures, where reciters first needed to orally convey the content [Chi. 口出; 口傳], to the sinicization of Buddhist canons by appealing to indigenous audiences through the oral expounding of scriptures [講經] and adapting Buddhist literatures into forms of oral performance, such as chanting stories [唱導] and transforming texts [變文] into stage dramas, like the story of how Maudgalyāyana saved his mother. This oral tradition was not confined to China but also impacted other East Asian countries, such as Japan, where many Buddhist stories were propagated and preserved in setsuwa [説話] compilations, such as the Anthology of Tales Old and New [今昔物語集].

This study attempts to focus on the trans-regional and trans-spatial function of oral presenters across Asia and to examine how Buddhist literatures were transmitted and disseminated diachronically and synchronically through oral expounding.

Bibliography

1. Allon, Mark W. (2021). The Composition and Transmission of Early Buddhist Texts with Specific Reference to Sutras. Bochum: projektverlag.

2. Anālayo [Bhikkhu] (2020). “Early Buddhist Oral Transmission and the Problem of Accurate Source Monitoring”, Mindfulness, 11(12), pp. 2715–2724.

3. Galasek, Bruno (2016). On Presenting Characters and the Representation of Persons A Narratological Study of Characters in Narrative Suttas of the Majjhima Nikāya. Dissertation. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.

4. Mcgovern, Nathan (2019). “Protestant Presuppositions and the Study of the Early Buddhist Oral Tradition”, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 42, pp. 449-491.

5. Skilling, Peter (2017). “The Many Lives of Texts: the Pañcatraya and the Māyājāla Sūtras”, in Dhammadinnā (ed.) Research on the Madhyama-āgama. Taipei: Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation, pp. 269–326.

“sar-zamīn-e-hind par aqvām-e-ālam ke 'firāq' / qāfile baste gaye hindustāñ bantā gayā”

—Firaq Gorakhpuri

In this paper, I attempt to undertake a comparative reading of the lyric poetry written as part of the “Romantic” and “Progressive” literary movements in two modern Indian languages (MILs), Odia and Hindi, during the 1920s-1950s. It will be a historiographic study of the Chhayavaad-Sabuja Kavita and Pragativaad movements within the conceptual framework of plurality by tracing the formation and use of certain repertoires of signification through reception, interliterariness and intertextuality in the creation of the texts. Taking cue from Amiya Dev’s idea that Indian literature is not “a fixed or determinate entity but as an ongoing and interliterary process” and Ipshita Chanda’s assertion MIL literatures are “individual entities formed from a plural base and part of a plural system”, I attempt to write a history of these literary movements to understand how plurality informs the poetics of the entity called Indian literature.

Using Sisir Kumar Das’s tools of prophane/early assimilation and metaphane/later assimilation, one can see literary movements with similar sensibilities across MILs during the 20th century. I propose the category of ‘supra-linguistic assemblages’ to read these movements (modifying Claudio Guillen’s “supranational assemblages”) which are informed not only by Indian poetic systems derived from Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali and Prakrit but also from European ones like the German and English literary traditions and West-Asian poetic systems especially the Perso-Arabic poetic systems which have come here through reception and contact. For this case study, I will be looking at the works of two poets each from both of the languages—Sumitranandan Pant, Nagarjun, Mayadhar Mansingh and Rabi Singh—with a focus on the period of transition between the two movements to historically locate and understand how the processes of intra-systemic and inter-systemic contacts manifested in the literary creation in these languages. The broader aim of this paper is to make a case for how a plural literary history accommodating many languages can and should be written for literatures produced in multi-lingual/cultural societies like India.

Hideo Levy’s literature offers a compelling lens to reexamine comparative literature from an East Asian perspective. Born in the United States and partly raised in Taiwan, Levy writes in Japanese yet continually engages with multiple locales—Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China—revealing the fluid nature of identity in modern societies. His narratives challenge the long-standing assumption that language, people, and nation naturally cohere, proposing instead that any notion of “home” is shaped by dynamic, overlapping histories.

This research focuses on Levy’s I-novel form, which combines personal experiences with broader regional realities. In many of his works, protagonists navigate the complexities of mainland China’s rapid modernization, grappling with the disparities between official languages (like Mandarin) and local dialects. Through encounters in underdeveloped regions like villages in Henan Province, Levy foregrounds those excluded from dominant national narratives—echoing his childhood memories in Taiwan, where American diplomats, mainland Chinese communities, and local Taiwanese cultures coexist uneasily. By portraying these diverse, often marginalized voices, Levy underscores how political and economic paradigms can silently marginalize people who do not “fit” prevailing notions of progress.

The study explores how Levy’s border-crossing narratives introduce new possibilities for comparative literary discourse, particularly from the standpoint of East Asia’s intricate colonial and postcolonial histories. By situating Levy alongside writers like Abe Kobo and Oe Kenzaburo, we see how Japan’s trajectory of modernity—shaped by war, empire, and the formation of a national literature—can be re-envisioned through interlinked yet distinct cultural identities in East Asia. Levy’s updates to the I-novel question the idea of a singular, unified “Japanese literature” and illuminate how personal subjectivity connects with the histories of people in Taiwan, mainland China, and beyond.

Ultimately, Levy’s works invite us to think about comparative literature in a way that embraces movement, translation, and partial belonging. His approach—inherited from and yet expanding upon the creative legacies of Abe and Oe—troubles the boundary between self and Other, pushing us to reconsider modern literary formations through the lens of shared yet variegated East Asian experiences. In doing so, Levy’s fiction points to alternative routes for comparative literature that foreground regional multiplicities, personal histories, and new forms of collective imagination.

Chinese script word 世界 as the world are commonly used in east Asian languages（it is pronounced 'shìjiè' in Chinese, 'sekai' in Japanese and 'se:ge' in Korean）. This is originally a Chinese translation of Buddhist term loka-dhātu, a key word of Buddhist worldview, in which our human world is localized as one India-centered continent on the sea outside Mt Sumeru as the axis of one of a billion universes.

My presentation will trace a brief history of this borrowed word (世界 sekai) in early and premodern Japanese literary texts.

The oldest extant historiographies of the early eighth century Japan described the emergence and completion of the world reigned by the grandson of the sun goddess succeeded by his descendant emperors without using the word 'sekai'. However, the usage of the term 'sekai' in the prose narratives of the early tenth century Japan enabled them to relativize the established image of the imperial entire world. And the presence of that Buddhist term as the world in the historical treatise on Japanese emperor’s rule in the mid fourteenth century reflected the reformation of Japanese’s worldview to recognize virtual Asian area from Persia to Japan as one world. Moreover, after Western missionaries came to East Asia with their knowledge about and the map of the global world in the late sixteenth century, we witness the process of bleaching out the Buddhist sense from the word 'sekai.'

Following the history of adoption of this Buddhist term into Japanese literary texts in early and premodern times as a case study, we will have an opportunity to rethink how the image of modern Asia was constructed.

Western and Tibetan Tibetologists have taken up the subject of literary genres and the definition of literature in the Tibetan context. To a much lesser extent, it was of interest to Mongolists. In the case of “Mongolian literature,” we deal with literature written in Mongolian and Tibetan, as well as literature translated from Tibetan and, to a lesser degree, from Chinese to Mongolian. For several centuries, Tibetan literature exerted a strong influence on Mongolian Buddhist literature. In the nineteenth century, the influence of Chinese literature intensified, especially in Inner Mongolia. Given the intricate and complicated history of neighboring Mongols, Tibetans, and Chinese, many topics in the field of literary studies require comparative studies, without which it is impossible to understand issues such as the understanding of literature, even in the context of, e.g., defining it in relation to oral tradition.

I want to make a small contribution to filling the gap in this literary study by discussing the example of one story about Molon Toyin descending into hell to save his mother in the context of Mongolian and Buddhist literature. The story was well-known in China, Tibet, and Mongolia. It was translated and circulated in various narratives. Some gained popularity and circulated through written communication, sometimes combining verbal, visual, and probably even performative expressions. Western and Mongolian scholars variously defined the story of Molon Toyin, e.g., as a story of peregrination through hells or a story of Indian origin. Depending on its version or even particular text, the copiest, translators, or maybe even its authors defined it as a sutra, biography, or, e.g., an illustrated tale. I want to place this one story in its various versions in Mongolian and Buddhist literature through a comparative approach considering various literary traditions and how literary studies approached them.

The full history of rhetoric in Asia—understood in the traditional sense as the art of oral persuasion—remains largely untold. This project seeks to illuminate overlooked aspects of this history, offering a fresh perspective on the concept of “literature” through the lens of the Chinese character wen (文). By examining the initial introduction of Western rhetoric to Warring States (Sengoku) Japan and late imperial China (late Ming to early Qing), as well as its reintroduction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I aim to trace its interactions with the intellectual, literary, and cultural forces that shaped China’s rhetorical tradition as we understand it today.

To do so, I adopt a Benjaminian constellation of key historical encounters: the Mohists of the pre-Qin period and their late imperial reappropriation, the Jesuits’ rhetorical engagements in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century China and Japan, and the rhetorical discourse of the Meiji period, particularly its influence on Chinese intellectuals studying in Japan at the time. By focusing on these pivotal moments, I explore the complex exchanges between Eastern and Western traditions, revealing the deep interconnections between rhetoric and the literary and cultural history of the region. Ultimately, this paper challenges the prevailing scholarly view that rhetoric played only a marginal role in the literary developments of the East.

The theme of "romantic adventures" in Eastern and Western literature is not merely a depiction of male-female relationships but serves as a crucial reflection of the moral and ethical values of each society. Comparing Yang So-yu from The Cloud Dream of the Nine and Don Juan from The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, this study examines how Confucian and Christian ethical frameworks define and evaluate romantic adventures.

In Confucian society, a man’s romantic relationships are closely linked to social success and familial honor. Yang So-yu’s relationships with multiple women are justified within the Confucian value system, portraying him as an "Achiever" who fulfills societal expectations through his success in government service and family prosperity. His multiple romantic engagements do not tarnish his image but rather enhance his status as a successful individual.

Conversely, in the Christian ethical framework, sexual desires are viewed as part of original sin, necessitating self-restraint. Don Juan’s relentless pursuit of women represents a direct challenge to moral and religious order. Unlike Yang So-yu, Don Juan is not socially accepted but condemned as a "Challenger" who defies ethical norms. His fate—being cast into hell—demonstrates the Christian perspective that unrestrained desires lead to divine punishment.

By comparing these two characters, this study highlights how different cultural and philosophical values shape the literary treatment of romantic adventures. While Eastern literature legitimizes such affairs as a means of achieving success, Western narratives depict them as moral transgressions warranting divine retribution. This contrast underscores literature’s role as a cultural product deeply intertwined with ethical and philosophical values. Future research may explore how these traditional perspectives on romantic ethics have evolved in contemporary literature and film, reflecting shifting moral landscapes in modern society.

The body can serve as a medium for self-expression, a subject shaped by power dynamics, an object open to influence and stimulation, and a space where cultural, religious, and political practices and conflicts intersect. This article examines the body as a contested site of racial, ethnic, gendered, and sexual conflicts in Ali Bader’s The Infidel Woman (2016) and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005). Through a comparative analysis, the study highlights how both novels, despite their distinct cultural contexts, depict the body’s vulnerability and resilience within oppressive structures. By investigating how certain bodies are centralized, marginalized, or fragmented culturally, the research explores literature’s ability to illuminate shared struggles and diverse forms of resistance. The selected novels present characters whose bodies bear the weight of cultural expectations and societal prejudices, demonstrating how intersecting identities shape individual experiences of oppression and resilience. The Infidel Woman portrays its protagonist’s identity as an “infidel” under intense cultural and religious scrutiny, situating her body at the center of conflicts over gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. Similarly, On Beauty explores the experiences of Black and biracial characters in Western academia, where their bodies symbolize cultural “otherness” in predominantly white spaces. Both narratives interrogate how societal norms shape bodily autonomy and self-expression. This study employs postcolonial feminism and Valerie Bryson’s Feminist Political Theory as its theoretical framework to analyze thematic and narrative strategies employed in the novels. Ultimately, the article argues that literature remains instrumental in fostering critical discourse on gender, race, and identity, encouraging a deeper understanding of how intersecting oppressions shape the lived experiences of marginalized individuals across different cultures.

Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob is an avant-garde, counter-historical novel that challenges traditional narrative forms. Drawing on the 18th-century Polish mystic Jacob Frank, the novel uses an omniscient narrator to explore Jacob's messianic journey across the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, his conversions to Islam, Catholicism, and Judaism, and his fluctuating wealth and status. Tokarczuk employs fragmented narrative, textual collage, and shifting perspectives, crafting the novel as a "constellation novel" where readers actively piece together Jacob's character, transcending conventional narrative boundaries.

In 2024, Polish director Krzysztof Garbaczewski, inspired by Tokarczuk's work, created an intermedia theatrical performance as part of the Digital Storytelling Program at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and CultureHub. Collaborating with artists from nine countries, Garbaczewski blended online theater, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and audience participation to simulate the process of meaning-making that readers experience with the novel. Garbaczewski's approach entailed extending the concept of the "writerly text" present in the original novel, employing multimedia interaction and immersive theatrical techniques to transcend the boundaries of individual media. This approach enabled the text to take on a more open and dynamic form, transforming the audience from passive recipients into active participants. Secondly, the material and symbolic bodies of the actors underwent a process of increasing complexity and polysemy within the context of this media interaction. The fluid bodily representations of the actors reflected the process by which readers imagine and construct the protagonist's image while reading the novel. Finally, as a counter-historical work, The Books of Jacob removes the limitations imposed by time, space, and narrative perspective on the concept of historical authenticity, inviting readers to reconstruct history for themselves. Garbaczewski's intermedia theatrical work utilizes participatory multimedia formats that provide audiences with multiple perspectives and remediate authenticity, constantly reconstructing and re-examining individual experiences of reality.

Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob and Garbaczewski's intermedia theatrical work collectively present a novel narrative practice that not only blurs the boundaries between history and fiction but also redefines the relationship between the text and the audience. Through intermedia interaction, the audience enters a dynamic, multi-dimensional narrative world, where they actively engage in a critical reflection on history and reality. This participatory experience fosters a more liberated and open artistic engagement, challenging traditional modes of storytelling and the passive reception of narrative content.

In the context of globalization, issues of cultural identity have become increasingly prominent. As a canonical text exploring cultural alienation, Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come! and its intermedial narrative strategies provide significant insights into contemporary cultural identity crises. While existing scholarship has predominantly focused on the play's thematic concerns and character portrayal, systematic research on its intermedial narrative strategies remains limited, particularly regarding the functionality and significance of musical elements as crucial narrative devices. This study pioneers an integrated theoretical framework combining intersemiotic translation, intermediality, and multimodal semiotics to construct a multidimensional analytical model, aiming to reveal the unique value of intermedial narrative in expressing cultural identity crisis.

The analysis centers on three musical elements: first, examining the intersemiotic translation of the popular song "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" to reveal how media transformation reflects the protagonist's cultural alienation; second, investigating the intermedial tension between Irish folk songs and dramatic narrative to analyze how cultural dialogue deepens the thematic concerns; and finally, interpreting the symbolic implications of Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor through a multimodal semiotic lens.

The research demonstrates that Friel, through his sophisticated intermedial musical narrative, constructs a multi-layered semiotic space that not only manifests individual identity crisis during cultural transformation but also reveals the profound contradictions between modernity and tradition. This innovative narrative strategy not only enriches intermedial narrative theory but also provides a new methodological perspective for examining cultural identity issues in the context of globalization.

Woman, Demon, Human (1987), widely regarded as the first feminist film in Chinese cinema history, emerges as a pioneering exploration of female subjectivity through the integration of Hebei Bangzi, a traditional Chinese opera, and modern cinematic language. This intermediality not only enriches the film's narrative but also creates a distinctive emotional context that interrogates gender norms and reimagines the possibilities of artistic expression. By merging the theatrical traditions of Hebei Bangzi with the visual and narrative forms of film, the work bridges past and present, tradition and modernity, while reflecting on the sociocultural transformations of its historical moment.

Central to the film is the protagonist, Qiu Yun, who chooses to perform the male character of Zhong Kui, an ugly ghost/god judge from Chinese folklore. Zhong Kui’s story, particularly the Zhong Kui Marrying off His Sister, has evolved through its cross-media transmission—from folk tales to popular literature, and Chinese opera—where the character of Zhong Kui’s sister, Zhong Hua, also undergoes significant transformations. Zhong Hua’s depiction moves from traditional feminine subservience to a complex, emotionally resonant figure, embodying broader changes in gender representation across media. Qiu Yun’s transgender performance in the film, a surrealistic combination of Zhong Kui and Zhong Hua, becomes a site of implicit defiance against societal expectations, symbolizing her rejection of conventional gender roles and her journey toward empowerment.

Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s Mulan-type dilemma, which critiques the necessity of women to adopt male roles to gain agency, this paper examines Qiu Yun’s portrayal of Zhong Kui as a variation on this paradigm. Unlike traditional narratives of female heroism, which require the erasure of femininity, Qiu Yun does not merely imitate masculinity but reclaims and redefines it within the context of her artistry. The absence of her debt-ridden husband and the turbulence of the historical period create an interwoven backdrop that highlights the systemic barriers women face in asserting their identities. Despite these challenges, Qiu Yun transcends the restrictions imposed by her historical and cultural context, ultimately stepping onto the international stage to deliver her unique interpretation of Zhong Kui.

This paper investigates how the intermediality of Hebei Bangzi and film serves as a transformative medium for reflecting on female subjectivity, gender identity, and societal transformation. It also explores how the evolution of Zhong Kui’s narrative, particularly through the figure of Zhong Hua, aligns with the film’s expressions, providing a broader lens for understanding the tensions between tradition, modernity, and the reconstruction of gender in Chinese cinema.

The story of a husband who returns home in disguise after a long absence, strings his distinctive bow, punishes his wife’s suitors, and reunites with his family is a tale-type widely represented in folk and literary traditions worldwide. This tale-type is best known through its earliest recorded version, the Odyssey, an epic poem that is attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. Comparative analysis of the stories about the homecoming husband and research on the historical and cultural background of these stories suggests that an original tale, the so-called prototype, could have been transmitted from its place of origin to other parts of the world, giving birth to the many regional versions, such as Central Asia’s Alpomish, The Epic of King Gesar found in Tibet, Mongolia, and other parts of Inner Asia, Japan’s Yuriwaka Daijin, and many other stories.

The study presented in this paper is part of the broader research on the above-mentioned tale-type known in folklore studies as The Homecoming Husband. This paper examines the development and evolution of the Korean versions of the Homecoming Husband across time, space, and media, focusing on The Song of Chunhyang, one of Korea’s best-known love stories, mostly known today as a song of the pansori repertory. It further explores the possible connection between the prototype of The Song of Chunhyang and similar stories found in other regions of Asia.

Indeed It is very difficult to discuss the archetype (origin, basis) of literature, but I think sticking to the archetype research is the most important thing in comparative literature. When discussing the archetype research of East-West literature, we think of the archetype of Asian literature and ancient Greece, which is the basis of Western literature. Although we are accustomed to the dichotomous thinking, Persian literature as the archetype, which connects the East with the West, has been forgotten in our minds.

In this paper, I bring out the concept of archetype, whose meaning is containing the origin in the transmitting stages. The realm of literature in Persia is extensively composed of Iran, Asia Minor (Turkey of present), Pakistan, Central Asia, western region in China, and from the ancient era, these countries have had history and culture in common. The ancient literature must be understood from the ancient point of view, not the present.

We commonly remind the ancient Asian civilization of the China and India. We do not remember Persian civilization which had affected China and Indian civilization. The flow of literature is not different from the that of civilization. On the one hand, Persian literature have transmitted to the domains of India, Tibet, South eastern literature, and on the other hand, have spreaded over the China, Korea, and Japan, by means of western region in China. The Korean traditional literature, the Zen's poem, had derived from the these genealogy. Along with the archetype of Asian literature, the relation with ancient Greek literature will be revealed. Its literature had been affected by Aryan culture including Mithraic and Zoroastrian literature.

In searching for the archetype of literature, the most important thing is the flow and genealogy of literature related to the comparative literature. The others might think that the literary works itself is more important than the literary flow and genealogy. The imitation and transmission in literature is one of the important aspects in ancient era. The great literary works in the Ancient and Medieval era have had a great influence on the works in the other literary realm, and the first works gradually have been changed and transmitted. Nevertheless until now on the literary works has been focused on its contents and language's classification, not the literary flow and genealogy.

The literary works in the ancient era is laid on the foundation of the Religious Thought. Supposedly a scholar do not recognize the flow and genealogy of literature along with that of religion. If he knew Sufi literature within the Islamic Sufism, he would not analyze it correctly. Accordingly to know the flow and genealogy of Sufism is the first thing to do. For Sufism has the history of 3000 years of the Aryans holding Pantheism.