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SONG OF THE MASTER IDEA

Mark Wilson

in Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behaviour

This chapter investigates the implications of these conclusions with respect to rule-following and rigor's implementation. It begins with a survey of common philosophical tensions over these topics ... More

This chapter investigates the implications of these conclusions with respect to rule-following and rigor's implementation. It begins with a survey of common philosophical tensions over these topics and recommends a seasonal sensitivity with respect to the competing demands that syntax and ‘semantic picture’ place upon a usage. The historical travails of Oliver Heaviside's operational calculus provide a vivid illustration of how reasonable standards of rigor must adapt and shift over time.Less

Inaudible

Aviad Kleinberg

in The Sensual God: How the Senses Make the Almighty Senseless

Where the voice of God at Mount Sinai renders Maimonides speechless.

Magic

Christopher Prendergast

in Mirages and Mad Beliefs: Proust the Skeptic

This chapter examines the idea of literature as magic-making by focusing on Marcel Proust's use of the term “magic,” along with its cognates “enchantment” and “charm.” Proustian magic comes in all ... More

This chapter examines the idea of literature as magic-making by focusing on Marcel Proust's use of the term “magic,” along with its cognates “enchantment” and “charm.” Proustian magic comes in all shapes and sizes, but the preferred locales for conjuring the enchanted realm are dark or semidark, the domain of nightworld and shadowland. There are many such locales in the À la recherche du temps perdu, but the alchemist's place of darkness and silence par excellence is the “restful obscurity” of the bedroom, the world of sleep and dream, especially the liminal or threshold states of falling asleep and waking up, the midzone of the waking dream. The chapter also considers the ideological tenor of Proust's aesthetic, especially the posited relation in Le Temps retrouvé between art, truth, and epiphany.Less

Homeric Sublimity: Iliad Book 24

Bruce Heiden

in Homer's Cosmic Fabrication: Choice and Design in the Iliad

This chapter turns to the last book of the Iliad, whose analogies of theme and positioning relate it to books 1, 8, 9, 15, and 16. Apollo's speech to the Olympians in book 24 is situated in a ... More

This chapter turns to the last book of the Iliad, whose analogies of theme and positioning relate it to books 1, 8, 9, 15, and 16. Apollo's speech to the Olympians in book 24 is situated in a trajectory of thematic development reaching back to Chryses's prayer to Apollo in book 1 and including Patroklos's appeal to Achilles in book 16. Hera's reply to Apollo in book 24 is situated in a trajectory that includes Agamemnon's reply to Chryses in book 1, Achilles' replies to the embassy in book 9, and Hera's refusal to permit Zeus to save Sarpedon in book 16. Zeus's mediation in book 24 is situated in a trajectory that Nestor's attempted reconciliation in book 1 and Zeus's agreement with Hera in book 15. Concluding observations liken the effect of the thematic suggestions to that of an epiphany.Less

Joyce Unperformed

David Kurnick

in Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel

This chapter examines the collective spaces invoked in James Joyce's career-long obsession with dramatic form—from the epiphanies he wrote as a teenager through his 1918 play Exiles to the closet ... More

This chapter examines the collective spaces invoked in James Joyce's career-long obsession with dramatic form—from the epiphanies he wrote as a teenager through his 1918 play Exiles to the closet drama of the Nighttown (or “Circe”) episode of Ulysses. Joyce's experiments with theatrical form constitute a running commentary on his interest in the “depths” of the psyche. The different conceptions of theatrical space embedded in the idea of epiphany lend a dual valence to this keystone of Joycean aesthetics. If, on the one hand, epiphany imagines a humiliating theater of psychic exposure, on the other it gestures toward a perverse collective space where such exposures would lose their policing force. These isolating and collectivist impulses are both visible in Joyce's play Exiles, which follows Ibsenesque naturalism in its representation of psychic motivation but allows its characters to mount a notable collective resistance to the diagnostic imperative structuring their stage existence.Less

Bones of Contention

Mary Orr

in Flaubert's Tentation: Remapping Nineteenth-Century French Histories of Religion and Science

This final chapter reconsiders the famous set‐pieces of the ‘Sphinx and the Chimera’ and the ‘être la matière’ epiphany closing the text by close attention to real ‘monsters’ of Antoine's imagination ... More

This final chapter reconsiders the famous set‐pieces of the ‘Sphinx and the Chimera’ and the ‘être la matière’ epiphany closing the text by close attention to real ‘monsters’ of Antoine's imagination now that the Devil and Hilarion have left him to his solitary human condition. By arguing that Antoine equates to a Cuvier pitched against Saint‐Hilaire (and his theories of teratology) in the famous ‘querelle des analogues’ of 1832, the chapter investigates for the first time how the two famous sections above and the ‘parade of the monsters’ mesh with Cuvier's wide‐ranging contributions to comparative anatomy and palaeontology. The chapter thus identifies and reconstructs ‘real’ imaginary monsters (fossils), and adds science intertexts—Humboldt's Cosmos for example—to Flaubert's famous library for the first time. Further contemporary scientist interlocutors aptly replace Saint‐Hilaire and Laplace as the final (reference) matter of the chapter, the contributions of the Pouchets to theories of spontaneous generation and micropalaeontology.Less

The Epiphany

Joe B. Hall, Marianne Walker, and Rick Bozich

in Coach Hall: My Life On and Off the Court

Relates the trouble Joe B., then six years old, and his brother get into for spending their days swimming in the ocean instead of going to school.

Gods in early Greek Historiography

Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine

in The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations

This chapter investigates the concept of ‘god’ in early historiography, particularly Herodotus, with reference to his contemporary intellectual environment. Though building on a large body of work, ... More

This chapter investigates the concept of ‘god’ in early historiography, particularly Herodotus, with reference to his contemporary intellectual environment. Though building on a large body of work, some quite recent, on ‘religion’ in Herodotus’, it seeks to go further by linking the concept of god or the divine to the concept of history at the most fundamental level, comparing and contrasting other genres and traditions. It considers forms of divine intervention, indirect (omens, miracles, dreams, oracles) and direct (epiphany). The case is made for Herodotus as a revolutionary in his thinking about gods, or at least participating fully in a contemporary revolution, as opposed to the usual picture of him as a rather conventional purveyor of religious commonplaces.Less

Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans

Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine

in The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations

Richard Buxton discuss five examples of narratives which relate in some way to divine metamorphosis, whether as animals or humans, for the purpose of presenting themselves to mortals. The narratives ... More

Richard Buxton discuss five examples of narratives which relate in some way to divine metamorphosis, whether as animals or humans, for the purpose of presenting themselves to mortals. The narratives studied are the following: Athena’s encounter with Telemachos in the Odyssey, Apollo in the Hymn to Apollo, Thetis’ relationship with Achilles, Dionysos in the Bacchae and Zeus’ serial metamorphoses in pursuit of his erotic ambitions. After drawing conclusions about each of these metamorphoses and epiphanies, Buxton concludes by considering what light this material might shed on the old problem of how far Greek religion was essentially anthropomorphic.Less

Getting in Contact: Concepts of Human—Divine Encounter in Classical Greek Art

Jan N. Bremmer and Andrew Erskine

in The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations

The paper treats the visualization of epiphany and theoxeny in ancient Greek art with particular reference to votive reliefs, such as those dedicated to Asklepios, Aphrodite, Herakles and the ... More

The paper treats the visualization of epiphany and theoxeny in ancient Greek art with particular reference to votive reliefs, such as those dedicated to Asklepios, Aphrodite, Herakles and the Dioskouroi. It discusses some images showing the direct encounter with the divine, most of them from the fifth and fourth century BC. It points out their significant characteristics and analyzes them, showing that different concepts of gods are reflected in different modes of epiphany.Less

Mucianus and a Touch of the Miraculous: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Roman Asia Minor

George Williamson

in Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods

This chapter examines the temple-visiting habits of C. Licinius Mucianus, a Roman governor in the age of Vespasian, and a writer of Republican history. It considers the functions and status of ... More

This chapter examines the temple-visiting habits of C. Licinius Mucianus, a Roman governor in the age of Vespasian, and a writer of Republican history. It considers the functions and status of votives on display in sanctuaries, and asks what sort of response was evoked by the viewer who belonged to a polytheistic world in which belief was not really an appropriate criterion of religiosity, or indeed made an explicit matter of choice. The chapter argues that Mucianus's response — despite his not being a pilgrim in the official state sense — was more than an aesthetic sense of wonder, but rather a different sort of belief in the efficacy and reality of divine epiphany, as demonstrated both through miraculous happenings at certain sanctuaries, and also by the votives on display in others.Less

Early Writing

Scarlett Baron

in ‘Strandentwining Cable’: Joyce, Flaubert, and Intertextuality

Chapter 1 identifies and analyzes traces of Flaubert in Joyce’s early writing – the critical essays written between 1899 and 1902; entries in the Paris and Pola ‘Commonplace Book’ that Joyce kept in ... More

Chapter 1 identifies and analyzes traces of Flaubert in Joyce’s early writing – the critical essays written between 1899 and 1902; entries in the Paris and Pola ‘Commonplace Book’ that Joyce kept in 1902–3 and then 1903–4; the short snippets of dramatic or narrative writing, collected between 1900 and 1903, to which he referred as ‘epiphanies’; and Stephen Hero. Contrary to W. B. Yeats’s assertion that Flaubert’s works were difficult to obtain in early twentieth-century Dublin, this chapter establishes that a number of Flaubert’s books were available to Joyce at the National Library of Ireland at that time, and, even more significantly, that Joyce purchased his own copies of both Madame Bovary and L’éducation sentimentale, in original French editions, as early as 1901. Even at this early stage, Flaubertian echoes adumbrate the importance of Joyce’s intertextual relationship to his French precursor in later works.Less

Ethos

Andrew Ford

in Aristotle as Poet: The Song for Hermias and Its Contexts

The song to Hermias now takes center stage again, this time using its literary background to highlight the multiple generic stances adopted by the speaker. The song’s opening verses are examined in ... More

The song to Hermias now takes center stage again, this time using its literary background to highlight the multiple generic stances adopted by the speaker. The song’s opening verses are examined in light of the rhetorical categories of ethos—the speaker’s character as projected by the poem—and pathos—the effects on the audience. A poem by Sappho and an Attic skolion are studied to show that Aristotle blended hymnic form with an old poetic game in which singers discoursed on what is “the finest thing” in life. This heritage suggests that the song’s ethos and pathos have much in common with contemporary protreptic literature. The traditional quality of such a poetic posture and the possibilities it offered for creative expansion and variation are brought out by comparing a very similar discourse on virtue in Sophocles’ Philoctetes.Less

The Liturgy of the Epiphany Season and the Epiphanies of Joyce

Florence L. Walzl

in Foundational Essays in James Joyce Studies

The chapter focuses on the importance of the word epiphany so frequently used by James Joyce in his short stories. The basic meaning of epiphany in Greek as έπιφάνεια is appearance or manifestation, ... More

The chapter focuses on the importance of the word epiphany so frequently used by James Joyce in his short stories. The basic meaning of epiphany in Greek as έπιφάνεια is appearance or manifestation, and this word is related to a verb meaning to display or show forth and in the passive and middle voice to shine forth. The cyclic pattern of seasons in the Church year and its planes of symbolic meanings and correspondences are the two prominent aspects of liturgy which appear to have affected Joyce's writing greatly. In Dubliners, the narratives resemble the liturgical epiphanies. The Epiphany sequence influenced Joyce's concept of the literary epiphany and as a result his short story technique. Joyce's use of God, Bible, and saint analogies (or inversions) in his characterizations are a result of his awareness of the liturgical types.Less

The Homeric Hymn to Hermes: Humour and Epiphany

Athanassios Vergados

in The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays

This chapter looks at the unique presentation of epiphany in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Consideration is first given to the function and qualities of epiphanies elsewhere in the Homeric Hymns and ... More

This chapter looks at the unique presentation of epiphany in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Consideration is first given to the function and qualities of epiphanies elsewhere in the Homeric Hymns and other early epic. It is then shown that the Hymn to Hermes, while not containing a conventional scene of epiphany, treats epiphany according to the mode of the god's presentation in early Greek literature. Hermes' epiphany is enacted in performance and effected in part through the humour of the poem.Less

The Seventh Homeric Hymn to Dionysus: An Epiphanic Sketch

Dominique Jaillard

in The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays

This chapter examines the epiphanic nature of the narrative of the seventh Homeric Hymn to Dionysus in relation to the other Hymns in the collection, taking into account distinctions of length, and ... More

This chapter examines the epiphanic nature of the narrative of the seventh Homeric Hymn to Dionysus in relation to the other Hymns in the collection, taking into account distinctions of length, and Dionysus' presentation elsewhere in Greek literature (including Euripides' Bacchae) and art. It is argued that the focalization of the seventh Hymn on the epiphany of Dionysus upon the ship of the Tyrsenian pirates is not simply the narration of a divine epiphany; rather one finds in the Hymn the epiphanic structuring of the narrative.Less