Faculty Presenter
Spencer Lee-Lenfield| Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
Title | Translating Free Indirect Speech into Korean—or Not
In Korean literature, free indirect speech has appeared not as a problem of narrative theory, but rather of translation studies. Translating from languages such as French or English raises questions: Does Korean allow free indirect speech? If so, what does it look like; if not, what does it do instead? I suspect the balance of reasons suggests Korean doesn’t, and can’t, produce free indirect speech, at least strictly defined. But Korean shows great flexibility with other devices for blurring narration, thought, and dialogue, including free direct speech. Weighing whether free indirect speech isn’t even possible in some languages throws into question whether it’s fair to portray it as a high point in the history of narrative fiction’s psychological powers—and what other narrative techniques might deserve attention alongside it.
Graduate Student Respondent:
Jaeyeon Jeon | Graduate Student in Comparative Literature
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Graduate Student Presenter
Ivy Deng | PhD Student in Comparative Literature
Title | The Imperial Affect of Infrastructure: China, Egypt, Dams
The Chinese Revolution of 1949 and the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 marked the triumph of nationalist movements in both China and Egypt. Against the backdrop of the global post-war hydropower craze, dam-building emerged as a major way through which post-revolutionary China and Egypt articulated their sovereignty. By focusing on the literary and artistic productions about the Three Gorges Dam in China and the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, this presentation argues that both countries mobilize their respective imperial debris, materially and symbolically, to realize a utopian vision of national-civilizational revival in the post-independence era.
Faculty Respondent:
David Der-Wei Wang | Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature and of Comparative Literature
Event open to all | Refreshments will be served
Founded as a graduate program in 1904 and joining with the undergraduate Literature Concentration in 2007, Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature operates at the crossroads of multilingualism, literary study, and media history.
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