Poetics: Prof. Gregory Jusdanis (Ohio State University)

Speaker(s): Prof. Gregory Jusdanis (Ohio State University)

Prof. Gregory Jusdanis (Ohio State University) will present a chapter from his manuscript, “From Cuzco to Constantinople. Understanding Otherwise” (PDF attached). Prof. Roland Greene (Stanford) will offer a response.
 
 
Here is what Prof. Jusdanis has to say about his chapter:
 
This is the second chapter of my recently-completed manuscript, “From Cuzco to Constantinople. Understanding Otherwise.”  I have reduced the chapter by more than half for the workshop.  The manuscript reflects on the possibility of setting side-by-side two seemingly incommensurable societies, Greece and Latin America.  Proposing the concept of “incongruous comparison,” it attempts to bring together Latin American and Greek texts with the intent of investigating wider issues such as empire, nationalism, travel, classical antiquity, and world literature.
In the Introduction I outline my theoretical approach and explain why I am juxtaposing Greece and Latin America.  Chapter One examines the destruction of imperial cities, Cuzco and Constantinople, by looking at The Royal Commentaries of the Incas by Garcilaso de la Vega el Inca and the Histories by the late Byzantine authors Kritovoulos and Laonikos Chalkokondyles.  Chapter Three investigates the tension between barbarism and civilization in the oeuvre of the Enlightenment scholar Adamantios Korais and the Argentinian activist, future president, and author of Facundo. Civilization and Barbarism.  The fourth chapter explores the concepts of world literature and translation by comparing the modernist manifestos of Yiorgos Theotokas and of the Brazilian poet and critic Oswald de Andrade.  In the Afterword I test my thesis and, using Flaubert’s  Bouvard and Pécuchet as my model, I read the Spanish/Quechua novel, Deep Rivers, by José María Arguedas, against a series of Greek novels, short stories and poems.    
 
 
Gregory Jusdanis, Distinguished Humanities Professor at Ohio State, is the author of The Poetics of Cavafy, Belated Modernity and Aesthetic Culture, The Necessary Nation, Fiction Agonistes. In Defense of Literature, and A Tremendous Thing. Friendship from the Iliad to the Internet.  He has just finished a book manuscript, “From Cuzco to Constantinople. Understanding Otherwise” and a biography of C. P. Cavafy (with Peter Jeffreys). His books have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, Spanish and Polish and his work has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, ACLS, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.  His new project concerns Louis Tikas and the Ludlow massacre, the worst case of anti-labor violence in American history.