{"title":"Comic Democracies: From Ancient Athens to the American Republic by Angus Fletcher (review)","authors":"Robert C. Danisch","doi":"10.1353/CRC.2018.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/CRC.2018.0028","url":null,"abstract":"Modern democracy is a complex and contested idea. We can view it as a system of government that loosely describes most of the institutions of politics in the West, or we can view it as a way of life defined by the pursuit of freedom and equality. Both views may, in our moment, be under assault by various forms of demagoguery. We, in the West, seem to agree that whatever our view of democracy happens to be, its origins are in ancient Athens, and that the idea itself may need some revitalization in order to continue to meet the demands of our ever-changing sociopolitical landscape. Angus Fletcher’s Comic Democracies is both a look back at the historical origins of thinking about democracy and a set of suggestions for how we might best cultivate and improve our current democratic practices. This book begins with the contention that the origin of democracy is tied to the origin of comedy and that these ties require us to ask why the two developed together and what contemporary uses might be made of the connection between the two. To begin to develop a narrative that will answer those two questions, Fletcher makes a careful distinction between ancient and modern democracy that informs the argument of the book. He claims that modern democracy is “more principled” in its attempts to actively promote human rights and freedoms, while ancient democracy is “more pragmatic” in its attempts to alleviate hunger, poverty, and misery (3). In order, therefore, to promote modern democracy, we can borrow some of the ancient pragmatic techniques embodied in comedy to address some of the issues of our current predicament.","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"45 1","pages":"328 - 330"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/CRC.2018.0028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66938936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jacques Derrida and Chuang Tzu: Some Analogies in Their Deconstructionist Discourse on Language and Truth","authors":"J. Chen, Y. Ji","doi":"10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9_8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9_8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"19 1","pages":"125-136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"51372727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fred Cogswell’s Paradoxical Poetics of Suggestive Silence, Elaboration, and the Dao’s Nature and Rhythms","authors":"J. Chen, Y. Ji","doi":"10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9_3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9_3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"39 1","pages":"29-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"51373188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Malcolm Lowry and the Dao","authors":"J. Chen, Y. Ji","doi":"10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"30 1","pages":"7-28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/978-3-662-47959-9_2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"51373171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Birth of Utopia","authors":"Pei-Guang Zhang","doi":"10.1353/CRC.2014.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/CRC.2014.0033","url":null,"abstract":"Discusses St. Thomas More's account of the formation of Utopia in the work of the same name: \"The characterization of Utopus...serves as More’s answer to the...question [of] how a philosopher can become a king, though in language, rather than in reality.\"","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"41 1","pages":"304-312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/CRC.2014.0033","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66938879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Future Past of Literary Theory","authors":"A. Warmiński","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9780748681228.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748681228.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69536853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Implausible Worlds, Ingenuous Narrators, Ironic Authors: Towards a Revised Theory of Magic Realism","authors":"Marisa Bortolussi","doi":"10.7939/R31C1TJ0F","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7939/R31C1TJ0F","url":null,"abstract":"Implausible Worlds, Ingenuous Narrators, Ironic Authors: Towards a Revised Theory of Magic Realism","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71369334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Why we Need another Study of Magic Realism","authors":"Marisa Bortolussi","doi":"10.7939/R3N29P981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7939/R3N29P981","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56165,"journal":{"name":"CANADIAN REVIEW OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE-REVUE CANADIENNE DE LITTERATURE COMPAREE","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71370063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}