• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.9-29
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• 2022

Postcolonial critics have criticized Comparative Literature for exclusively studying literatures from the non-Western world through Western lenses. In other words, postcolonial criticism asserts that theorists and practitioners of comparative literature have traced the "assistance" of the classic "comparison and contrast" approach to an imperialist discourse, which sustains the superiority of Western cultures and economies. As a countermeasure to reading through the comparative lens, literary theories have offered a "juxtapositional model of comparison" that connects texts across cultures, places, and times. This paper examines practices of Comparative Literature in Vietnam, revealing how the engagement with decolonizing processes leads to a knowledge production that is paradoxically colonial. The paper also analyses implementations of this model in reading select Vietnamese works and highlights how conventional comparisons, largely based on historical influences and reception, maintain the colonial mapping of World Literature, centralizing Western, and more particularly, English Literature and in the process marginalizing the others. Therefore, the practice of juxtaposing Vietnamese literary works with canonical works of the World Literature will provoke dialogues and raise awareness of hitherto marginalized works to an international readership. In this process, the paper considers the contemporary interest of Comparative Literature practice in trans- national, trans-regional, trans-historical, and trans-cultural perspectives.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.245-264
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• 2015

In this paper, I suggest methodological ways of studying comparative literature regarding ongoing discussions of world and national literature. The role of comparative literature studies has widened in the contemporary era, in which nations have become rapidly entangled and the concept of the world as a unified entity is under question. In this regard, I critically review the traditional principles of the hospitality of cosmopolitanism and the exclusivity of the borders of national literatures. Further, I suggest that scholars adopt the concept by Sigmund Freud of "unfamiliar familiarity" as a methodological motive for studies of comparative literature. Based on this concept, scholars can further develop the unique methods of the discipline of comparative literary studies for teaching and research amidst the ongoing phenomenon of globalization. They can also use these methods to simultaneously contribute to solving the problem of "comparison without a unifying category of the world," as revealed by the results of deconstructional and postcolonial studies. Regarding community-based discussions of literature, I introduce the "bridge and door" metaphor, put forth by Georg Simmel, as a key concept in methodological consideration of translation and in comparative literary studies. In this paper, adopting the metaphor of the bridge and door as an intertextual and social model for comparative studies, I define the new role of comparative literary studies in literary transnationalism, which is particularly necessary when different languages and cultures overlap and become entangled. Regarding the rapidly changing contemporary world community, comparative literary studies, as an experimental discipline, is uniquely capable of examining this kind of community, which forms itself beyond and beneath individual nations.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.347-370
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• 2018

This paper proposes a new direction for Comparative Literature which has been deeply Eurocentric and even colonial ever since its birth. 'Comparison' in Comparative Literature has been in fact the ideological mechanism for containing, classifying, and eventually controlling all differences in the world. Literature has naturally served as a national institution of the West at epistemological and discursive level with hidden adjective "comparative". To re-conceptualize the discipline and practice of "Comparative Literature", we need to revolutionize methodology itself based on Wai Chee Dimock's idea of "Weak Theory", Foucault's "disappearance of author", and Clifford Geertz's "thick description". "Thick description" as a methodology of comparative literature re-establishes the discipline as a field of "weak theory", defusing the centrality of linguistic identity and re-making it as a "long network" of loose and missed connections. "Thick description" poses the publicness of nation-state within "confusion of tongues", problematizes the legitimacy of modern knowledge, and puts (the western) nationalism in question. With this idea as a starting point, we can re-imagine Comparative Literature anew as a field of ceaseless discourse of longer, weaker, and thicker networks of interpretation and re-interpretation of differences.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.29-46
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• 2017

Chinese literature once had its splendid era in the Tang and Song Dynasties culminating in Tang poetry and influencing the literatures of its neighboring countries. However, during the past centuries, it has largely been "marginalized" on the map of world literature. On the one hand, large numbers of foreign literary works, especially those from Western countries, have been translated into Chinese, exerting a huge influence on the formation of a sort of modern Chinese literary tradition. On the other hand, few contemporary Chinese literary works have been translated into the major foreign languages. With the help of the rise and flourishing of comparative literature, contemporary Chinese literature has been moving toward the world and had its own Nobel laureate. The author, after analyzing the reasons why Chinese literature has been "marginalized," argues that Chinese literature will develop steadily in the age of globalization. Globalization in China has undergone three steps: first, it has made China passively involved in this irresistible trend; second, the country has then quickly adapted itself to this trend; and third, China has started to play an increasingly leading role in the first decade of the present century. In this way, contemporary Chinese literature and comparative literature studies will steadily develop with the help of the "Belt and Road" initiative.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.25
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• pp.87-106
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• 2011

This article studies that Korean literature has been renewed to World literature-oriented in the history of Modern Korean literary criticism from early modern period to present for reflecting the slogan, "globalization of Korean Literature" as well as contextualizing the necessity, "new relationship between Korean literature and World literature". Some writers, such as Lee Gwangsoo a pioneer of Modern Korean literature and the group for foreign literature[haioei-munhak-pa] introducing World literature to Korea and Lim hwa a prominent critic of proletarian literary theory under Japanese Colonial period, have understood European literature as World literature Korean literature had to reach. Inevitably the hierarchical relation between Korean literature and European literature as World literature had been interiorized to them. Meanwhile Jo Dong-il and Paik Nak-chung who have been representative researchers of Korean literature had tried to broken down the hierarchical relation between Korean literature and European literature interiorized to Korean writers until the 1980s, with Korean literature could be accomplished to World literature meaning. Since the late 1990s Park Sung-chang and Park Sang-jin who are leading researchers of comparative literature in Korea these days, have emphasized the methodology of new comparative literature for 'universality of literature' between Korean literature and World literature, which have been the renewal way of Korean literature in today's age of globalization.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.159-183
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• 2014

This thesis aims to explore another possibility of comparative literature in the light of translation. Comparative literature has been criticized for its Eurocentrism to attempt to assimilate all differences from other cultures and national literatures into the frame of the Western. On the other hand, it has been haunted by the anxiety of "unhomliness", which means it doesn't have a stable and definable terrain as an independent disciplinary. However, it can offer the possibility to overcome its limitation and thematize in- betweenness of diverse terrains due to its fluid and ambiguous position and identity of discipline. When it deals with the issue of in-betweenness, 'the Untranslatable' can be an helpful apparatus to analyze comparative literature through translation theories. Along with the recent change in the study of comparative literature under the influence of transnationalism and hybridization, the role of translation which has been disregarded for a long time is being reevaluated. Translation functions to transfer literary works beyond boundaries of languages, whereas it visualizes incommensurable differences through the failure of finding ultimate equivalences between languages and arriving at one single meaning. The existence of the untranslatable suggests that the attempt to totalize differences is unfeasible, thereby makes comparison unending. Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown can be an appropriate instance that the untranslatable was used as a literary technique to show unreducible alterity of non-Western language and culture.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.233-247
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• 2014

Cultural Studies is characterized by being opposed to (elite) literary studies not only because it points to popular or non-elite literature which is usually not dealt with by elite literary scholars or comparatists, but also because it severely challenges the established literary canon and even tries to subvert this elite-oriented canon. In addition, Cultural Studies complements literary studies in that it contributes a great deal to the reconstruction of new literary canon by expanding the narrow domain of (elite) literature and its studies. What was not touched upon by traditional literary scholars is now studied by Cultural Studies scholars. In this sense, we should realize that it is not the field of Cultural Studies that occupies the domain of literary studies, but rather, it has expanded its traditional domain and added some new cultural elements. This article will illustrate how the interdisciplinary writings of some of the representative Anglo-American literary scholars have paved the way for effective dialogues between literary studies and Cultural Studies. I argue that the practice of Cultural Studies in China will not only contribute to global Cultural Studies in general, but also carry on equal dialogue with its Western and international counterparts. My purpose is to deal with the challenge of Cultural Studies to comparative literature studies in general before mapping the new orientations of Cultural Studies in $21^{th}$ century China.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.517-538
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• 2009

This study explores the possibility of finding intersections of commonness and differences between Mahasweta Devi's short stories, "The Hunt" and "Douloti the Bountiful" and Angela Carter's "Flesh and the Mirror" and "Master" in Fireworks. At appearance, Carter as a writer of Great Britains and Devi as a writer of India in postcolonial period do not seem to share any commonness. This study, however, tried to find "common differences," to quote Chandra Mohanty's terminology, as a basis of solidarity possible between these two different feminist writers. Another concept appropriated in this process of comparing Carter and Devi is Gayatri Spivak's 'planetary comparative literature,' which contends the necessity of critical regional studies and the study of Asian Literature in the study of English literature. Devi and Carter, despite their historical, geopolitical and racial differences, share commonness in depicting Asian or colonized women not only as the oppressed others but also as the subjects who show potential for resistance and independence. Carter portrays Japanese women as the colonized and oppressed others of Japanese society, even though Japan did not have any colonial history. Devi finds in the postcolonial Indian women both the oppressed in the interstice of colonial/postcolonial/patriarchal Indian history and the potential for resistance. Despite some limitation in her understanding of Asia, Carter shows her insight to accept Asia as a true origin of her self-knowledge and performativity of her woman's role. Despite their differences, these two writers use Freud's 'unheimlich' from the feminist point of view, in general. Devi's depiction of the heroine's dead body at the end of the story implicates the possibility of resistance through women's 'uncanny' bodies. Carter converts Freudian and negative connotation of woman's body into positive and comfortable 'home' as a starting point of her self knowledge.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-46
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• 1995

In the literature study by the comparative method was carried out on the book of an Introduction to oriental medicine, which was published in China, recently. The results were as follows: The contents of the book was divided by Introduction, Um-Yang-O-Hang(陰陽五行), Qi-Hyul-Chinec(氣血津液), Jang-Bu(臟腑學說), Meridian(經絡), Etiology, Diagnosis, and treatment. This study did not treat the Ancient Chineses character hard to understnad, methodlolgy of traditional literature, and comparison to the western medicine.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.52-58
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• 1991

Review of literature on the symptoms of sweat. According to comparative studies of oriental and occidental medical literature on the symptoms of sweat, following results were obtained. 1. oriental medicine 1) time: ja han (自汗), do han (盜汗) 2) body : du han (頭汗), su jog han (手足汗), sim han (心汗), eum ban (陰汗) pyun hang (偏汗) 3) kan (肝) : hwang han (黃汗), sim(心) : sin han (心汗), hyul han(血汗), bee (脾) : sig hu han (腎虛汗) sin(腎) : eum han (陰汗) By the study of the oriental medical literature, sweat were concerned with physiological function and pathological transformation of the body, 2. occidental medicine 1) NO sweat of the whole body 2) NO sweat of the part 3) much sweat of the whole body, 4) much sweat of the part. By the study of the western medical literature, sweats were tiny reaction of the· nerve and the mind.