Philip Kitcher
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195321029
- eISBN:
- 9780199851317
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195321029.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
James Joyce's Ulysses, once regarded as obscure and obscene, is now viewed as a masterpiece of world literature. Yet Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, to which he devoted seventeen years, remains ...
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James Joyce's Ulysses, once regarded as obscure and obscene, is now viewed as a masterpiece of world literature. Yet Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, to which he devoted seventeen years, remains virtually unread. Its linguistic novelties, layered allusions, and experimental form can make it seem impenetrable. This book attempts to dissolve the darkness that surrounds the Wake and to display instead its mesmerizing play of light. The book offers an original, appealing interpretation of Joyce's novel while also suggesting an approach to the magnum opus. Focusing throughout on the book's central themes, the book proposes that Finnegans Wake has at its core an age-old philosophical question—“What makes a life worth living?”—that Joyce explores from the perspective of someone who feels that a long life is now at its end. Alert to echoes, the book progresses through the novel, adding texture to his portrait of an aging dreamer who seeks reassurance about the worth of what he has done and who he has been. The novel's complex dream language becomes meaningful when seen as a way for Joyce to investigate issues that are hard to face directly, common though they may be. At times the view is clouded, at times it's the music or sheer comedy that predominates, but one experiences in the retrospective momentum a brilliant clarity unlike anything else in literature. With a startlingly profound compassion and a distinctive brand of humanism, Joyce points us to the things that matter in our lives. His final novel, this book believes, is a call to life itself.Less
James Joyce's Ulysses, once regarded as obscure and obscene, is now viewed as a masterpiece of world literature. Yet Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, to which he devoted seventeen years, remains virtually unread. Its linguistic novelties, layered allusions, and experimental form can make it seem impenetrable. This book attempts to dissolve the darkness that surrounds the Wake and to display instead its mesmerizing play of light. The book offers an original, appealing interpretation of Joyce's novel while also suggesting an approach to the magnum opus. Focusing throughout on the book's central themes, the book proposes that Finnegans Wake has at its core an age-old philosophical question—“What makes a life worth living?”—that Joyce explores from the perspective of someone who feels that a long life is now at its end. Alert to echoes, the book progresses through the novel, adding texture to his portrait of an aging dreamer who seeks reassurance about the worth of what he has done and who he has been. The novel's complex dream language becomes meaningful when seen as a way for Joyce to investigate issues that are hard to face directly, common though they may be. At times the view is clouded, at times it's the music or sheer comedy that predominates, but one experiences in the retrospective momentum a brilliant clarity unlike anything else in literature. With a startlingly profound compassion and a distinctive brand of humanism, Joyce points us to the things that matter in our lives. His final novel, this book believes, is a call to life itself.
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199593569
- eISBN:
- 9780191739385
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199593569.003.0009
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Language Families
Every language has a way of saying how one knows what one is talking about, and what one thinks about what one knows. The ways in which the information source can be expressed vary. Evidentiality is ...
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Every language has a way of saying how one knows what one is talking about, and what one thinks about what one knows. The ways in which the information source can be expressed vary. Evidentiality is a grammatical marking of how we know something — whether we saw it happen, or heard it, or smelt it, or inferred what was happening based on logical assumption, or on a result we can see, or just were told about it. In perhaps a quarter of the world’s languages, marking a selection of information sources is a ‘must’. More than half of these are spoken in Amazonia and the adjacent areas of the Andes. Grammatical evidentiality — a rare bird in familiar Indo-European or Semitic languages — is a distinctive feature of Amazonian languages. They boast the richest array of evidentials in the world. The chapter discusses types of evidential systems in Amazonia. The most complex systems are found in Tucanoan and some Arawak languages of north-west Amazonia and also in Nambiquara languages of the Amazonian south. Evidentials may have complicated meanings, to do with authority and control. One can tell a lie using an evidential. Evidentials are highly diffusable in language contact, since they are associated with cultural practices of being precise in your information source. Once a language becomes obsolescent, evidentials are under threat. The use of evidentials changes as new cultural practices develop.Less
Every language has a way of saying how one knows what one is talking about, and what one thinks about what one knows. The ways in which the information source can be expressed vary. Evidentiality is a grammatical marking of how we know something — whether we saw it happen, or heard it, or smelt it, or inferred what was happening based on logical assumption, or on a result we can see, or just were told about it. In perhaps a quarter of the world’s languages, marking a selection of information sources is a ‘must’. More than half of these are spoken in Amazonia and the adjacent areas of the Andes. Grammatical evidentiality — a rare bird in familiar Indo-European or Semitic languages — is a distinctive feature of Amazonian languages. They boast the richest array of evidentials in the world. The chapter discusses types of evidential systems in Amazonia. The most complex systems are found in Tucanoan and some Arawak languages of north-west Amazonia and also in Nambiquara languages of the Amazonian south. Evidentials may have complicated meanings, to do with authority and control. One can tell a lie using an evidential. Evidentials are highly diffusable in language contact, since they are associated with cultural practices of being precise in your information source. Once a language becomes obsolescent, evidentials are under threat. The use of evidentials changes as new cultural practices develop.
Andrew Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198857938
- eISBN:
- 9780191890505
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198857938.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, World Literature
This chapter concentrates on the poems of the First Voronezh Notebook that chronicle exile, starting with the journey into the unknown and transitioning unevenly to the theme of habituation. Drawing ...
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This chapter concentrates on the poems of the First Voronezh Notebook that chronicle exile, starting with the journey into the unknown and transitioning unevenly to the theme of habituation. Drawing on folkloric tropes as well as cinematic devices, the poems represent a hope that the exile might escape through shape-shifting or heroic antics, as well as the fear of oblivion that he faces. One key anxiety and source of inspiration concerns the endlessness of the flat steppe extending from Voronezh, and the poet turns his mind to plotting the geography of exile in relation to the Kremlin, to metropolitan culture, to Voronezh itself, and ultimately to the vast space that threatens to engulf him. Counterpointing poems about human contact and socialization are lyrics that with ‘an eye sharper than steel’ scrutinize space for forms that can be moulded by the imagination.Less
This chapter concentrates on the poems of the First Voronezh Notebook that chronicle exile, starting with the journey into the unknown and transitioning unevenly to the theme of habituation. Drawing on folkloric tropes as well as cinematic devices, the poems represent a hope that the exile might escape through shape-shifting or heroic antics, as well as the fear of oblivion that he faces. One key anxiety and source of inspiration concerns the endlessness of the flat steppe extending from Voronezh, and the poet turns his mind to plotting the geography of exile in relation to the Kremlin, to metropolitan culture, to Voronezh itself, and ultimately to the vast space that threatens to engulf him. Counterpointing poems about human contact and socialization are lyrics that with ‘an eye sharper than steel’ scrutinize space for forms that can be moulded by the imagination.
