King Shahriyar and his brother King Shahzaman of India and China suspect their suffering to be unique in this world. Their wives have slept with other men, and this drives them to grief, to madness—Shahzaman skewers his wife and her lover. Shahriyar begins to take a new bride each night, only to have her killed the next morning. Parents grieve; the kingdom darkens. Eventually, Shahrazad, the vizier’s daughter, comes up with a plan. She offers herself as a bride, but holds Shahriyar’s...

In 1886, a twenty-six-year-old Anton Chekhov was publishing short stories, humor pieces, and articles at an astonishing rate, and was still a practicing physician. Yet as he honed his craft and continued to draw inspiration from the vivid characters in his own life, he found himself—to his surprise and occasional embarrassment—admired by a growing legion of fans, including Tolstoy himself. He had not yet succumbed to the ravages of tuberculosis. He was a lively, frank, and funny correspondent...

“Once upon a time: the comic strip was a poor, un- baptized, and unrecognized stepsister of caricature, which was the poor sister of the graphic arts, which were the poor sisters of the fine arts. If there was a fairy godmother at the birth of the sleeping beauty, the prince of public acclaim was slow in coming to wake her.” Such is the witty humor that sets in motion David Kunzle’s new monograph Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope 1847-1870. Today I have the honor again to...

Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Joining us today is critic and professor Bob Blaisdell who unravels the novel’s author Leo Tolstoy’s family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised Anna Karenina in his recent book titled Creating Anna Karenina. Recommended Reading: Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Kent and Berberova (2000) Bob...

Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. After I talked with Tierry Groensteen, whose work on comic theory was translated and introduced to the Anglophone world by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen, today I speak with these two translators who will share with us their experience and insights of translating theory. Recommended Reading: Ann Miller and Bart Beaty, The...

With us today is Thierry Groensteen, one of the leading French-speaking comics researchers and theorists, whose work has profound influence beyond that field. According to the English translators of System of Comics, Thierry Groensteen “is not only the most prolific scholar on the subject of comics, he is indisputably one of the best. ” The System of Comics is his chef d’oeuvre, his masterpiece, reaching even broader audience in the anglophone world and inspiring new investigations into the...

Loki is a god of mischief in Norse mythology. The character is originally refered to in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, among other sources in Scandinavian folklore. In Modern popular culture, Loki has been depicted in or is referred to in an array of media including Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as a villain who consistently comes into conflict with the superhero Thor, his adopted brother and archenemy. Today our returning...

Mulan is a legendary folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era of Chinese history, roughly from 4th to 6th century CE. The story of Mulan was originally told in Ballad of Mulan as a Yuefu (樂府) genre, in which Chinese poems were composed in a folk song style. Over the centuries, the story of Mulan has been reiterated, being performed on the stage, adapted for the screen, and rewritten as dramas for television and even animated films.  Joining us today is Dr. Shiamin Kwa,...

In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior. Today I speak with Dr. Shepherd Siegel, author of the recently published book titled Tricking Power into Performing Acts of Love, as Siegel’s work weaves together delightful stories of mischief from famous tricksters and rereads a buried historical...

Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源记) is a short prose fable written by China's best known poet during the six dynasties period, Tao Yuanming (陶渊明). Joining us today is Dr. Wendy Swartz, professor of Chinese literature at Rutgers to share her knowledge with us on the subject. Prof. Swartz is the author of Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting Paradigms of Historical Reception, and  another book Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China. Recommended...

A mysterious spy who wrote about the most captivatingly infamous intellectual of the time, Christopher Marlowe is among the most accomplished and enigmatic of the Elizabethan playwrights. Joining us today is Dr. Robert Sawyer, professor in the department of literature and language at East Tennessee State University. Professor Sawyer’s is the author of Shakespeare Between the World Wars, and Marlowe and Shakespeare: The Critical Rivalry. Recommended Reading: Doctor Faustus Additional...

Today is August 22nd, the birthday of one of the greatest American cartoonists George Herriman. In this episode, we will cast a critical lens on Krazy Kat’s aestheticism and defining techniques that distinguish itself  as a work of art. We suggest people to get the  primary text of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat’s collections, which can be accessed through the links included in the description of this episode. On top of that, we highly recommend McDonnell, O’Connell and De Havenon’s coedited...

In his 2018 google talk, Michael discusses his book, "Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White," winner of the 2017 Eisner Award for best comics-related book, and a finalist in both the National Book Critics Circle Awards for Biography and the PEN America/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.  Krazy was also selected as a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2016 and as one of Vanity Fair‘s “Must-Read Books of the Holiday Season." Tisserand’s previous books include THE KINGDOM OF...

 Paradise Lost is an epic poem by the 17th-century English poet John Milton, published in 1667. In its most creative fashion, it supplemented the biblical story of the origin and the Fall of Man, and imaginatively explains how and why Adam and Eve are tempted by the fallen angel Satan and thereby their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is considered to be Milton's masterpiece, solidifying his reputation as one of the greatest English poets of all time. Joining us today is Dr. David...

The word “Inferno”  is the Italian for Hell, an imaginary creation by the 14th-century poet Dante. The Inferno is the first part of the Divine Comedy, followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. One of the most therapeutic books of the world, it is about a hero’s journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is “the realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to...

The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic  to compare "the effect of education(παιδεία) and the lack of it on our nature". It is written as a dialogue between Plato's brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, narrated by the latter.  Along with my interpretation of the cave, what you will hear is the original text read by Dr. Jim Nielson, former faculty member in arts and humanities at University of British...

Are ghost stories real? And why do people write and read ghost stories in early medieval China? Prof. Robert Ford Campany, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair of Humanities, from department of East Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University will shed light on a distinctive Chinese narrative genre called "zhiguai"(志怪) or Chinese strange writings. Prof. Campany is among the first group of scholars to systematically trace, study and theorize this Chinese narrative genre. Recommended readings: Robert...

In this episode of The Global Novel podcast, Dr. David Kunzle (UCLA) will uncover the unknown history of how a once frowned-upon visual story-telling genre, called "picture-stories," legendarily made its way into the hands of one of the greatest literary figures of world literature Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and since then, won the hearts of the entire world. By tracing comic strips’ unique lineage in Rodolphe Töpffer, father of comic strips, Dr. Kunzle will shed light on Töpffer’s visual...

The Tale of Genji (or Genji Monogatari) is a classic work of Japanese literature written in the early 11th century by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu. The work recounts the fictional life of Hikaru Genji, or "Radiant Prince", who is the son of an ancient Japanese emperor (known to readers as Emperor Kiritsubo) and a low-ranking concubine called Kiritsubo Consort. Due to the intense political conflicts at the court and out of protection for his son,  the emperor removes...

What is world literature? How do we define its scope and nature? This episode will cast a critical lens at the current theories, methods and debates on world literature, which moves in and between countries and cultures. By investigating canonical works of leading theorists, we will get a sense of how institution shapes its discourse around the field. In doing so, we will develop aesthetic, ethical and pedagogical reflections towards a more constructive sense of “world literature."  Reading...

In this episode, we will read long Jing Ke's assassination of the first emperor of Qin, which is a classic of Chinese literature. We will first get to known the Qin history with Burton Watson's helpful introduction. After reading the plot, we will approach the significant critique on the plot offered by Andrew H. Plaks. Recommended Readings: Burton Waston, trans. Records of The Grand Historian for aficionados in classical Chinese: Shiji(史記) Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies: The...

Many may still remember the 2002 martial art film directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Jet Li. The name is Hero  and it is based on the historical event of Jing Ke’s assassination attempt on the first emperor of China, King of Qin in 227 BC.  The original story is explicitly detailed in the Records of The Grand Historian, also known by its Chinese name Shiji(史記). A monumental history of ancient China and the world, it was completed around 94 BC by the Western Han Dynasty official Sima Qian...

In this episode, we invited our honored guest who has her Ph.D. in folklore from UCLA and is here to share with us her upcoming graphic novel titled Postapocademia. In this interview, Sandra Mizumoto Posey is going to talk about her graphic novel which is an outline of her analysis of and vision towards the current academic crisis. Resource mentioned in the interview: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/02/kumbaya-history-of-an-old-song/ http://sandraposey.net Support the show...

Recommended Reading: Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (1993), paid link Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media (republished version, 2008), paid link Wassily Kandinsky, "On the Problem of Form" (1922 essay), free link Quoted audio excerpts are from the below sources: Scott McCloud's interview at Radcliff Institute, free link Disney Plus's Marvel Series "Behind the Mask" trailers, retrievable on Youtube Support the...

In this episode, we will focus on how the concept of justice is further expounded by the Platonian Socrates from Book II to V. If Book I covers a few definitions of justice, Book II-V can be summarized as Plato's highlight on a set of key properties of justice. A key property of justice is the moderation of our desires in the soul. Plato categorizes our desires into two: one is primal, governed by appetite and sex, the other spiritual and rational, governed by our need to win honor and pursue...