Tag
Multilingualism
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Helen DeWitt, Hand to Mouth
Is Helen DeWitt a genius? Readers familiar with the author’s fiction will not find this question out of line. Genius is a word that comes quickly to the lips of …
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One Thousand and One Retellings
Why do people still keep rereading, and retranslating, the Thousand and One Nights? Does its hold have to do with the stories’ strategic positioning between “East” and “West” …
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The Road to the Holy Mountain
Twenty years ago, I stumbled upon one of the most unusual places on earth. A young student of logic, I was attending a workshop in Thessaloniki with extra time to spare, and the teacher suggested that I go to Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain. He would organize a pilgrim’s pass since the peninsula was an…
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Translating the Untranslatable: An Interview with Barbara Cassin
Barbara Cassin is a French philosopher, translator, and theorist of translation. Trained as a philologist and philosopher specializing in ancient Greece, she is the director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. She is the author, editor, and translator of many books, and for more than a decade she…
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For World Literature
You could tell the story of literary study in the US as one long process of expansion. For hundreds of years only the Classics were considered worthy of serious academic attention, and strenuous objections followed the introduction of modern literature courses in the 19th century. While Latin and Greek “inculcate a certain manly and just…
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Virtual Roundtable on The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
First published in 1965, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is a reference volume for poetry enthusiasts and literary scholars alike. Last year, a significantly revised fourth edition appeared, covering 110 nations, regions, and languages, and with 250 new entries on subjects ranging from “boustrophedon” (bidirectional texts) to “hip-hop poetry” and “anthem, national.” Public…
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The City as Literary Field
Sujan Singh Park is a tiny neighborhood by Delhi standards—more of a large square than a full-fledged “colony,” as the upper-middle-class neighborhoods of South Delhi are called. But this one happens to be where the city’s linguistic, social, and architectural capitals meet. Madhu Jain, a chronicler of the Indian arts scene, describes Sujan Singh Park…
