Jill Mann
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199217687
- eISBN:
- 9780191712371
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217687.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
The Conclusion re‐emphasizes the two major themes running through the works discussed. The first is the power of nature, which is sometimes connected with the idea of social hierarchy, and sometimes ...
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The Conclusion re‐emphasizes the two major themes running through the works discussed. The first is the power of nature, which is sometimes connected with the idea of social hierarchy, and sometimes with attitudes to sexuality. The second is the contrast between words and deeds (dicta and facta) or rhetoric and reality. Whereas fable is mistrustful of words, which are seen as a mere camouflage for the appetites that govern behaviour, in beast epic words run riot and the human ability to pour forth endless interpretations of reality is seen as a matter for comic celebration. A strain of self‐reflexivity also runs through these works: conscious of the tendency of words to mislead not only others but the speaker him/herself, writers must also be conscious that this is true of their own words as well. Hence the frequency of an ironic relation between writer and work in this tradition.Less
The Conclusion re‐emphasizes the two major themes running through the works discussed. The first is the power of nature, which is sometimes connected with the idea of social hierarchy, and sometimes with attitudes to sexuality. The second is the contrast between words and deeds (dicta and facta) or rhetoric and reality. Whereas fable is mistrustful of words, which are seen as a mere camouflage for the appetites that govern behaviour, in beast epic words run riot and the human ability to pour forth endless interpretations of reality is seen as a matter for comic celebration. A strain of self‐reflexivity also runs through these works: conscious of the tendency of words to mislead not only others but the speaker him/herself, writers must also be conscious that this is true of their own words as well. Hence the frequency of an ironic relation between writer and work in this tradition.
John T. Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157528
- eISBN:
- 9781400846474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157528.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter focuses on one of the fables collected and revised by the Roman grammarian Hyginus (d. AD 17) that proved to be particularly relevant among later poets and philosophers. The brief tale ...
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This chapter focuses on one of the fables collected and revised by the Roman grammarian Hyginus (d. AD 17) that proved to be particularly relevant among later poets and philosophers. The brief tale relates how Cura—a personification of “care,” “concern,” “anxiety,” or “trouble”—formed the first human being. Although many of the narrative's details may be found in other mythic anthropogonies from a variety of cultures and traditions, Hyginus's account is the only extant version that ascribes the creative role to an allegory of Care. The fable begins with creation ends with the designation of a name, with the determination of a species. The first phase concerns being, the second involves language. With this combination of ontology and semantics or nature and convention, we obtain not only an etiological explanation for one question (Why is the word for “human being” homo in Latin?) but also a philosophical anthropology that folds one question (What is mankind?) into another (What is mankind called?).Less
This chapter focuses on one of the fables collected and revised by the Roman grammarian Hyginus (d. AD 17) that proved to be particularly relevant among later poets and philosophers. The brief tale relates how Cura—a personification of “care,” “concern,” “anxiety,” or “trouble”—formed the first human being. Although many of the narrative's details may be found in other mythic anthropogonies from a variety of cultures and traditions, Hyginus's account is the only extant version that ascribes the creative role to an allegory of Care. The fable begins with creation ends with the designation of a name, with the determination of a species. The first phase concerns being, the second involves language. With this combination of ontology and semantics or nature and convention, we obtain not only an etiological explanation for one question (Why is the word for “human being” homo in Latin?) but also a philosophical anthropology that folds one question (What is mankind?) into another (What is mankind called?).
John T. Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157528
- eISBN:
- 9781400846474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157528.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter returns to the Hyginus fable with which this study began in order to specify further the semantic ramifications of Latin cura, and hence securitas. The Hyginus fable insists that care ...
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This chapter returns to the Hyginus fable with which this study began in order to specify further the semantic ramifications of Latin cura, and hence securitas. The Hyginus fable insists that care should possess mankind—Cura eum possideat—which is to say that, if ever removed from care, humanity would be robbed of its humanity. Interestingly, the similar story of mankind's formation in the book of Genesis takes place in a garden, which would normally be a place requiring careful attention. The gardener is, indeed, the paradigmatic caretaker. Yet, in the Hebrew account, the first humans inhabit a garden where everything is already provided. This carefree existence may account for other reversals that the biblical story reveals in comparison with the Roman fable.Less
This chapter returns to the Hyginus fable with which this study began in order to specify further the semantic ramifications of Latin cura, and hence securitas. The Hyginus fable insists that care should possess mankind—Cura eum possideat—which is to say that, if ever removed from care, humanity would be robbed of its humanity. Interestingly, the similar story of mankind's formation in the book of Genesis takes place in a garden, which would normally be a place requiring careful attention. The gardener is, indeed, the paradigmatic caretaker. Yet, in the Hebrew account, the first humans inhabit a garden where everything is already provided. This carefree existence may account for other reversals that the biblical story reveals in comparison with the Roman fable.
TILL WAHNBAECK
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199269839
- eISBN:
- 9780191710056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199269839.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Economic History
This chapter presents the development of the European debate on luxury from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It notes that the debate regarding luxury did not ...
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This chapter presents the development of the European debate on luxury from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It notes that the debate regarding luxury did not end with Smith. It argues that there was continued interest in the question of luxury well into the third quarter of the 18th century. It explains that Smith's work in many ways marks the culmination of the 18th-century debate by addressing, and offering solutions to, its central concerns. It adds that Adam Smith's work is important to the understanding of the European luxury debate because he drew the views together.Less
This chapter presents the development of the European debate on luxury from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It notes that the debate regarding luxury did not end with Smith. It argues that there was continued interest in the question of luxury well into the third quarter of the 18th century. It explains that Smith's work in many ways marks the culmination of the 18th-century debate by addressing, and offering solutions to, its central concerns. It adds that Adam Smith's work is important to the understanding of the European luxury debate because he drew the views together.
Gordon Graham
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199265961
- eISBN:
- 9780191708756
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265961.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter explores the concept of literary narrative. It distinguishes between historical, fictional, and allegorical narratives, and applies these distinctions to Biblical and religious ...
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This chapter explores the concept of literary narrative. It distinguishes between historical, fictional, and allegorical narratives, and applies these distinctions to Biblical and religious literature. It distinguishes between realism and romanticism in fiction, and gives special attention to the earlier writings of James Joyce.Less
This chapter explores the concept of literary narrative. It distinguishes between historical, fictional, and allegorical narratives, and applies these distinctions to Biblical and religious literature. It distinguishes between realism and romanticism in fiction, and gives special attention to the earlier writings of James Joyce.
Paul Davis
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199297832
- eISBN:
- 9780191711572
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297832.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter reads the theory and practice of the greatest of the Augustan poetic translators — John Dryden — as a sustained inquiry into the pre-eminent cultural concern with which translation was ...
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This chapter reads the theory and practice of the greatest of the Augustan poetic translators — John Dryden — as a sustained inquiry into the pre-eminent cultural concern with which translation was metaphorically linked in contemporary discourse: the meanings of ‘liberty’. Dryden was no lover of liberty in his ‘original’ poems, yet he is generally regarded as the epitome of the free translator. Taking its cue from Samuel Johnson's judgement that Dryden ‘fixed the bounds of the translator's liberty’, the chapter explores this paradox. It argues that freedom and constraint are closely interlinked throughout Dryden's work as a translator; that from Sylvae (1685) onwards translating fed his fascination with states of boundedness; and that in the translations he produced after the ‘Glorious’ Revolution had narrowed the bounds of his liberty, particularly the Virgil (1697) and Fables (1700), Dryden subtly and severally revalued the traditional abusive figuration of the translator as a slave.Less
This chapter reads the theory and practice of the greatest of the Augustan poetic translators — John Dryden — as a sustained inquiry into the pre-eminent cultural concern with which translation was metaphorically linked in contemporary discourse: the meanings of ‘liberty’. Dryden was no lover of liberty in his ‘original’ poems, yet he is generally regarded as the epitome of the free translator. Taking its cue from Samuel Johnson's judgement that Dryden ‘fixed the bounds of the translator's liberty’, the chapter explores this paradox. It argues that freedom and constraint are closely interlinked throughout Dryden's work as a translator; that from Sylvae (1685) onwards translating fed his fascination with states of boundedness; and that in the translations he produced after the ‘Glorious’ Revolution had narrowed the bounds of his liberty, particularly the Virgil (1697) and Fables (1700), Dryden subtly and severally revalued the traditional abusive figuration of the translator as a slave.
Anne Cotterill
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199261178
- eISBN:
- 9780191717598
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199261178.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book begins and ends with the intellectual and imaginative pleasures of narrative wandering. ‘To digress’ in early modern England carried a range of associations with authority and gender, from ...
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This book begins and ends with the intellectual and imaginative pleasures of narrative wandering. ‘To digress’ in early modern England carried a range of associations with authority and gender, from amplitude and escape to deviance and transgression. The book argues that writers classically trained in verbal contest used the liberty of digression to create a complex form of underground writing and self-definition in some of the richest non-dramatic texts of 17th-century England; such a pointed use of digressiveness in the period has not been recognized. Within these textual mazes writers captured the ambiguities of political occasion and patronage, while they anatomized enemies and mourned personal loss. The narrator of each text addresses a specter of speechlessness as well as loss of self through a figurative descent to an unstable underworld associated with a female or effeminate weakness. In fresh readings of Donne's Anniversaries, Marvell's Upon Appleton House, Sir Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus, Milton's Paradise Lost, Dryden's The Hind and the Panther and A Discourse of Satire, and Swift's A Tale of a Tub, the book draws attention to the expansiveness of many of the period's literary forms, such as country-house poem, literary anatomy, dedicatory epistle, beast fable, and epic. Turning current sensitivity toward the silenced voice in a new direction, the book argues that rhetorical amplitude might suggest anxieties about speech and silence for early modern men forced to be competitive yet circumspect to make their voices heard.Less
This book begins and ends with the intellectual and imaginative pleasures of narrative wandering. ‘To digress’ in early modern England carried a range of associations with authority and gender, from amplitude and escape to deviance and transgression. The book argues that writers classically trained in verbal contest used the liberty of digression to create a complex form of underground writing and self-definition in some of the richest non-dramatic texts of 17th-century England; such a pointed use of digressiveness in the period has not been recognized. Within these textual mazes writers captured the ambiguities of political occasion and patronage, while they anatomized enemies and mourned personal loss. The narrator of each text addresses a specter of speechlessness as well as loss of self through a figurative descent to an unstable underworld associated with a female or effeminate weakness. In fresh readings of Donne's Anniversaries, Marvell's Upon Appleton House, Sir Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus, Milton's Paradise Lost, Dryden's The Hind and the Panther and A Discourse of Satire, and Swift's A Tale of a Tub, the book draws attention to the expansiveness of many of the period's literary forms, such as country-house poem, literary anatomy, dedicatory epistle, beast fable, and epic. Turning current sensitivity toward the silenced voice in a new direction, the book argues that rhetorical amplitude might suggest anxieties about speech and silence for early modern men forced to be competitive yet circumspect to make their voices heard.
Catherine Osborne
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199282067
- eISBN:
- 9780191712944
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199282067.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
This chapter investigates the notion of sentimentality and the vice of excessive sentimental attachment. It reviews a number of fables from the classical tradition and from the stories of the desert ...
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This chapter investigates the notion of sentimentality and the vice of excessive sentimental attachment. It reviews a number of fables from the classical tradition and from the stories of the desert fathers, to explore the limits of realism and sentimentality and to consider what purpose is served by such fabulous tales in which the beasts are portrayed as more intelligent and morally superior to the human subjects. It suggests that the tales are designed to engineer a change in moral outlook on the part of the readers, and to open their eyes to the moral corruption of human society, and to present an image of heaven (an ideal society in which human corruption is absent).Less
This chapter investigates the notion of sentimentality and the vice of excessive sentimental attachment. It reviews a number of fables from the classical tradition and from the stories of the desert fathers, to explore the limits of realism and sentimentality and to consider what purpose is served by such fabulous tales in which the beasts are portrayed as more intelligent and morally superior to the human subjects. It suggests that the tales are designed to engineer a change in moral outlook on the part of the readers, and to open their eyes to the moral corruption of human society, and to present an image of heaven (an ideal society in which human corruption is absent).
R. W. Maslen
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119913
- eISBN:
- 9780191671241
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119913.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book argues that English writers of prose fiction from the 1550s to the 1570s produced some of the most daringly innovative publications of the sixteenth century. Through close examination of a ...
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This book argues that English writers of prose fiction from the 1550s to the 1570s produced some of the most daringly innovative publications of the sixteenth century. Through close examination of a number of key texts, from William Baldwin's satirical fable Beware the Cat, to George Gascoigne's mock-romance The Adventures of Master F.J. and John Lyly's immensely popular Euphues books, he sets out to demonstrate the courage as well as the considerable skills which these undervalued authors brought to their work. They wrote at a time when the Elizabethan censorship system was growing increasingly rigorous in response to the perceived threat of infiltration from Catholic Europe, yet they chose to write books of a kind that was specifically associated with Catholic Italy and France. Their topics were the secrets, lies, and acts of petty treason which vitiated the private lives of the contemporary ruling classes, and their vigorous experiments with style and form marked out prose fiction for years to come as shifty and perilous literary territory. These writers presented themselves as masters of the arts of duplicity, talents which made them eminently suitable for employment as informers or spies, whether for the government or for its most deadly ideological opponents. Their sophisticated narratives of sexual intrigue had a profound effect on the development of the complex poetry and drama that sprung up towards the end of the century, as well as on the modern novel.Less
This book argues that English writers of prose fiction from the 1550s to the 1570s produced some of the most daringly innovative publications of the sixteenth century. Through close examination of a number of key texts, from William Baldwin's satirical fable Beware the Cat, to George Gascoigne's mock-romance The Adventures of Master F.J. and John Lyly's immensely popular Euphues books, he sets out to demonstrate the courage as well as the considerable skills which these undervalued authors brought to their work. They wrote at a time when the Elizabethan censorship system was growing increasingly rigorous in response to the perceived threat of infiltration from Catholic Europe, yet they chose to write books of a kind that was specifically associated with Catholic Italy and France. Their topics were the secrets, lies, and acts of petty treason which vitiated the private lives of the contemporary ruling classes, and their vigorous experiments with style and form marked out prose fiction for years to come as shifty and perilous literary territory. These writers presented themselves as masters of the arts of duplicity, talents which made them eminently suitable for employment as informers or spies, whether for the government or for its most deadly ideological opponents. Their sophisticated narratives of sexual intrigue had a profound effect on the development of the complex poetry and drama that sprung up towards the end of the century, as well as on the modern novel.
Mike Fortun
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520247505
- eISBN:
- 9780520942615
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520247505.003.0007
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
In the deCODE mass media stories, no one leveraged the saga effect better than Robert Kunzig in his December 1998 piece in Discover, “Blood of the Vikings.” The issue was on U.S. newsstands as the ...
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In the deCODE mass media stories, no one leveraged the saga effect better than Robert Kunzig in his December 1998 piece in Discover, “Blood of the Vikings.” The issue was on U.S. newsstands as the Althingi sped and slogged to its final vote on the Health Sector Database legislation. There is no question that deCODE Genetics, genomics, the 1990s, and Iceland are all subject to the laws of fable, even if such laws should turn out to be unruly, unwritten, or unreadable. Speculation is surely one element of the unruly laws of fable. It involutes a future into the present, complementing the mythic foldings of past into present, generating anticipation; the excitement, thrill, and risk of awaiting the arrival of what might, or might not, come. Ever slow on the uptake, the author learned about how fable crosses with history not from the deCODE events themselves, but from the fable of another expat who returned to Iceland at the same time as deCODE Genetics CEO Kári Stefánsson: Keiko the killer whale, a.k.a. Free Willy.Less
In the deCODE mass media stories, no one leveraged the saga effect better than Robert Kunzig in his December 1998 piece in Discover, “Blood of the Vikings.” The issue was on U.S. newsstands as the Althingi sped and slogged to its final vote on the Health Sector Database legislation. There is no question that deCODE Genetics, genomics, the 1990s, and Iceland are all subject to the laws of fable, even if such laws should turn out to be unruly, unwritten, or unreadable. Speculation is surely one element of the unruly laws of fable. It involutes a future into the present, complementing the mythic foldings of past into present, generating anticipation; the excitement, thrill, and risk of awaiting the arrival of what might, or might not, come. Ever slow on the uptake, the author learned about how fable crosses with history not from the deCODE events themselves, but from the fable of another expat who returned to Iceland at the same time as deCODE Genetics CEO Kári Stefánsson: Keiko the killer whale, a.k.a. Free Willy.
Ros Ballaster
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199234295
- eISBN:
- 9780191696657
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199234295.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
This book considers this concept: narrative moves. Stories migrate from one culture to another, over vast distances sometimes, but their path is often difficult to trace and obscured by time. This ...
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This book considers this concept: narrative moves. Stories migrate from one culture to another, over vast distances sometimes, but their path is often difficult to trace and obscured by time. This book looks at the traffic of narrative between Orient and Occident in the 18th century, and challenges the assumption that has dominated since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) that such traffic is always one-way. Eighteenth-century readers in the West came to draw their mental maps of oriental territories and distinctions between them from their experience of reading tales ‘from’ the Orient. In this proto-colonial period the English encounter with the East was largely mediated through the consumption of material goods such as silks, indigo, muslin, spices, or jewels, imported from the East, together with the more ‘moral’ traffic of narratives about the East, both imaginary and ethnographic. Through analyses of fictional representations (including travellers' accounts, letter narratives such as Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, and popular sequences of tales such as the Arabian Nights Entertainments) of four oriental territories (Persia, Turkey, China, and India), this book demonstrates the ways in which the East came to be understood as a source of story, a territory of fable and narrative.Less
This book considers this concept: narrative moves. Stories migrate from one culture to another, over vast distances sometimes, but their path is often difficult to trace and obscured by time. This book looks at the traffic of narrative between Orient and Occident in the 18th century, and challenges the assumption that has dominated since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) that such traffic is always one-way. Eighteenth-century readers in the West came to draw their mental maps of oriental territories and distinctions between them from their experience of reading tales ‘from’ the Orient. In this proto-colonial period the English encounter with the East was largely mediated through the consumption of material goods such as silks, indigo, muslin, spices, or jewels, imported from the East, together with the more ‘moral’ traffic of narratives about the East, both imaginary and ethnographic. Through analyses of fictional representations (including travellers' accounts, letter narratives such as Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, and popular sequences of tales such as the Arabian Nights Entertainments) of four oriental territories (Persia, Turkey, China, and India), this book demonstrates the ways in which the East came to be understood as a source of story, a territory of fable and narrative.
J.A. Burrow
- Published in print:
- 1984
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198111870
- eISBN:
- 9780191670657
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198111870.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter discusses in detail The Preaching of the Swallow, which is one of the animal fables in the uncompleted collection by Robert Henryson. Some of the features of the fable that are discussed ...
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This chapter discusses in detail The Preaching of the Swallow, which is one of the animal fables in the uncompleted collection by Robert Henryson. Some of the features of the fable that are discussed include present alliterations, parallelisms, and structural significance.Less
This chapter discusses in detail The Preaching of the Swallow, which is one of the animal fables in the uncompleted collection by Robert Henryson. Some of the features of the fable that are discussed include present alliterations, parallelisms, and structural significance.
Anne Cotterill
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199261178
- eISBN:
- 9780191717598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199261178.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the disguise and threat of the feminine in Dryden's long, bewildering beast fable, The Hind and the Panther (1687), which apparently defends James II's Edict of Toleration while ...
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This chapter examines the disguise and threat of the feminine in Dryden's long, bewildering beast fable, The Hind and the Panther (1687), which apparently defends James II's Edict of Toleration while offering the public their long-awaited story of Dryden's conversion to Roman Catholicism. The laureate bursts every convention of fable and public relations to challenge readers hungry for blood with a confusing self-image. He invokes the feminine symbol of Eastern mystery and anti-Catholic propaganda — the Scarlet Whore of Babylon and Beast of the Apocalypse — to create protective mystification: against an ominous setting of violent menace he creates not one but two female voices, predator and prey, two beastly mother churches that eerily resemble each other, while the narrator intrudes digressive self-reflection. The lady beasts match wits and exchange dark prophetic fables late into the night to forestall the end of their encounter and the real physical violence threatening the King.Less
This chapter examines the disguise and threat of the feminine in Dryden's long, bewildering beast fable, The Hind and the Panther (1687), which apparently defends James II's Edict of Toleration while offering the public their long-awaited story of Dryden's conversion to Roman Catholicism. The laureate bursts every convention of fable and public relations to challenge readers hungry for blood with a confusing self-image. He invokes the feminine symbol of Eastern mystery and anti-Catholic propaganda — the Scarlet Whore of Babylon and Beast of the Apocalypse — to create protective mystification: against an ominous setting of violent menace he creates not one but two female voices, predator and prey, two beastly mother churches that eerily resemble each other, while the narrator intrudes digressive self-reflection. The lady beasts match wits and exchange dark prophetic fables late into the night to forestall the end of their encounter and the real physical violence threatening the King.
Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard, and Michael B. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226209135
- eISBN:
- 9780226209272
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226209272.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Absolute reading is a historical figure fashioned by Certeau to account for a way of reading that is ab-solved from the text in such a way that the reader is no longer in a passive relation to its ...
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Absolute reading is a historical figure fashioned by Certeau to account for a way of reading that is ab-solved from the text in such a way that the reader is no longer in a passive relation to its meaning. It is a practice qualified by the end of the sixteenth century as “spiritual reading.” The spirit is “what speaks” in or through the text, and which thus becomes the instituting “fable” of an unknown voice. Certeau gives a convincing testimony of this new, pragmatic “use” of the book: Teresa of Ávila is quoted as saying she would often open a book without needing to read it. Sometimes flowers would play the same role as the open book in helping her order her meditation. Certeau analyzes four aspects of this new relation to the book: “the positing of the beginning, the mutation of the book into a garden of affects, the fabrication of a speaking body thanks to a ‘mastication,’ the interruption that detaches from the text.” That is, the book represents a beginning of difference, a threshold of otherness; a field of affectivity (a tasting rather than a knowing); an interruption, or space for otherness to enter.Less
Absolute reading is a historical figure fashioned by Certeau to account for a way of reading that is ab-solved from the text in such a way that the reader is no longer in a passive relation to its meaning. It is a practice qualified by the end of the sixteenth century as “spiritual reading.” The spirit is “what speaks” in or through the text, and which thus becomes the instituting “fable” of an unknown voice. Certeau gives a convincing testimony of this new, pragmatic “use” of the book: Teresa of Ávila is quoted as saying she would often open a book without needing to read it. Sometimes flowers would play the same role as the open book in helping her order her meditation. Certeau analyzes four aspects of this new relation to the book: “the positing of the beginning, the mutation of the book into a garden of affects, the fabrication of a speaking body thanks to a ‘mastication,’ the interruption that detaches from the text.” That is, the book represents a beginning of difference, a threshold of otherness; a field of affectivity (a tasting rather than a knowing); an interruption, or space for otherness to enter.
Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard, and Michael B. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226209135
- eISBN:
- 9780226209272
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226209272.003.0012
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Setting out from two definitions of glossolalia, Certeau radicalizes that concept by contrast with statements of meaning. “Noises,” sounds themselves, detached from meaning, characterize glossolalia. ...
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Setting out from two definitions of glossolalia, Certeau radicalizes that concept by contrast with statements of meaning. “Noises,” sounds themselves, detached from meaning, characterize glossolalia. It is an “atopia” of language, outside the walls of language, a saying that is not a saying of anything. Is it the voice of the spirit? John of the Cross calls the spirit “el que habla,” that which speaks. Certeau distinguishes two glossolalic types: a primary type (religious) that moves from a not-being-able-to-say to a being-able-to-say via a being-able-not-to-say; and a secondary type (poetic, playful, sometimes pathological) that deconstructs articulate speech in favor of a sonorous freedom. The former type has a kinship with tears, a non-discursive expressivity; the latter with laughter. Pfister’s psychoanalytic and Saussure’s linguistic approach both take the bait of glossolalia: luring reason into its own mania of “making sense.” Glossolalia is origin and end, a before and an after discourse.Less
Setting out from two definitions of glossolalia, Certeau radicalizes that concept by contrast with statements of meaning. “Noises,” sounds themselves, detached from meaning, characterize glossolalia. It is an “atopia” of language, outside the walls of language, a saying that is not a saying of anything. Is it the voice of the spirit? John of the Cross calls the spirit “el que habla,” that which speaks. Certeau distinguishes two glossolalic types: a primary type (religious) that moves from a not-being-able-to-say to a being-able-to-say via a being-able-not-to-say; and a secondary type (poetic, playful, sometimes pathological) that deconstructs articulate speech in favor of a sonorous freedom. The former type has a kinship with tears, a non-discursive expressivity; the latter with laughter. Pfister’s psychoanalytic and Saussure’s linguistic approach both take the bait of glossolalia: luring reason into its own mania of “making sense.” Glossolalia is origin and end, a before and an after discourse.
Paula da Cunha Corrêa
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199285686
- eISBN:
- 9780191713958
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285686.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter considers fragments (174 and 177 IEG) belonging to one of the most important and well-known epodes of Archilochus (172-81), in which ‘The Fable of the Fox and the Eagle’ is narrated. ...
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This chapter considers fragments (174 and 177 IEG) belonging to one of the most important and well-known epodes of Archilochus (172-81), in which ‘The Fable of the Fox and the Eagle’ is narrated. They are extracts from a larger study in which all fragments of Archilochus that contain fables and animal metaphors will be examined, with an emphasis on the particular ethos of each animal.Less
This chapter considers fragments (174 and 177 IEG) belonging to one of the most important and well-known epodes of Archilochus (172-81), in which ‘The Fable of the Fox and the Eagle’ is narrated. They are extracts from a larger study in which all fragments of Archilochus that contain fables and animal metaphors will be examined, with an emphasis on the particular ethos of each animal.
Ros Ballaster
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199234295
- eISBN:
- 9780191696657
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199234295.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter argues that fictions claiming to derive from and about India repeatedly trope India as a dream, but not always in the positive sense of a space to be possessed by the imagination. ...
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This chapter argues that fictions claiming to derive from and about India repeatedly trope India as a dream, but not always in the positive sense of a space to be possessed by the imagination. Equally, the dream can be a kind of consoling or duplicitous fiction. India generates illusions and illusionists; the fakirs and Brahmans of ethnographic report are represented as master tricksters while Islam is, as in the case of Ottoman and Persian accounts, denounced as a gross imposture. The chapter addresses three principal areas of fiction that relate to India: John Dryden's theatrical representation of the court of Aurangzeb; collections of oriental tales relating to India by Thomas–Simon Gueullette, James Ridley, and Alexander Dow; and ‘translations’ derived from the 3rd-century Sanskrit collection of animal and human fables, known to 17th-century Europe as the Fables of Pilpay.Less
This chapter argues that fictions claiming to derive from and about India repeatedly trope India as a dream, but not always in the positive sense of a space to be possessed by the imagination. Equally, the dream can be a kind of consoling or duplicitous fiction. India generates illusions and illusionists; the fakirs and Brahmans of ethnographic report are represented as master tricksters while Islam is, as in the case of Ottoman and Persian accounts, denounced as a gross imposture. The chapter addresses three principal areas of fiction that relate to India: John Dryden's theatrical representation of the court of Aurangzeb; collections of oriental tales relating to India by Thomas–Simon Gueullette, James Ridley, and Alexander Dow; and ‘translations’ derived from the 3rd-century Sanskrit collection of animal and human fables, known to 17th-century Europe as the Fables of Pilpay.
Brian Vickers
- Published in print:
- 1989
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117919
- eISBN:
- 9780191671128
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117919.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The attraction of rhetoric as an instrument of persuasion and instruction was recognized by its sister arts, music and painting. This chapter follows the ways in which theorists of both these arts ...
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The attraction of rhetoric as an instrument of persuasion and instruction was recognized by its sister arts, music and painting. This chapter follows the ways in which theorists of both these arts took over from the rhetorical treatises such concepts as the duties of the orator (to move, to delight, to instruct), the importance of the fable (historia) as an imitation of life — the main principle in both music and painting — and even the tropes and figures. Some of these essentially verbal devices can be transposed to an art not based on language, but only up to a certain point. Both composers and painters found the general teachings of rhetoric more useful than its details.Less
The attraction of rhetoric as an instrument of persuasion and instruction was recognized by its sister arts, music and painting. This chapter follows the ways in which theorists of both these arts took over from the rhetorical treatises such concepts as the duties of the orator (to move, to delight, to instruct), the importance of the fable (historia) as an imitation of life — the main principle in both music and painting — and even the tropes and figures. Some of these essentially verbal devices can be transposed to an art not based on language, but only up to a certain point. Both composers and painters found the general teachings of rhetoric more useful than its details.
R. W. Maslen
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119913
- eISBN:
- 9780191671241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119913.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The second chapter considers the impact on Elizabethan fiction of the story-collections of William Painter, Geoffrey Fenton, and the little-known fabulists who worked alongside them. By the 1560s, ...
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The second chapter considers the impact on Elizabethan fiction of the story-collections of William Painter, Geoffrey Fenton, and the little-known fabulists who worked alongside them. By the 1560s, the animal fable was a relatively domesticated genre: classical precedent and a long fabular tradition in English had effectively drawn its teeth. Continental prose fiction, on the other hand, was wild. Its early translators handled it as if it were an expensive and highly dangerous exotic beast which needed to be kept at bay with every editorial control at their disposal. The 1560s brought two major shipments: William Painter's The Palace of Pleasure, which appeared in two volumes in 1566 and 1567, and Geoffrey Fenton's menagerie of Franco–Italian romantic thrillers, the Tragicall Discourses of 1567.Less
The second chapter considers the impact on Elizabethan fiction of the story-collections of William Painter, Geoffrey Fenton, and the little-known fabulists who worked alongside them. By the 1560s, the animal fable was a relatively domesticated genre: classical precedent and a long fabular tradition in English had effectively drawn its teeth. Continental prose fiction, on the other hand, was wild. Its early translators handled it as if it were an expensive and highly dangerous exotic beast which needed to be kept at bay with every editorial control at their disposal. The 1560s brought two major shipments: William Painter's The Palace of Pleasure, which appeared in two volumes in 1566 and 1567, and Geoffrey Fenton's menagerie of Franco–Italian romantic thrillers, the Tragicall Discourses of 1567.
Jill Mann
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199217687
- eISBN:
- 9780191712371
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217687.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
What do stories about animals have to tell us about human beings? This book analyses the shrewd perceptions about human life—and especially human language—that emerge from narratives in which the ...
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What do stories about animals have to tell us about human beings? This book analyses the shrewd perceptions about human life—and especially human language—that emerge from narratives in which the main figures are ‘talking animals’. Its guiding question is not ‘what’ but ‘how’ animals mean. Drawing a clear distinction between beast fable and beast epic, it examines the complex variations of these forms that are to be found in the literature of medieval Britain, in English, French, Latin, and Scots (modern English translations are provided for all quotations). The analytical method of the book combines theoretical and literary‐critical discussion with a constant awareness of the historical development of the tradition. The works selected for study are the fables of Marie de France, the Speculum stultorum of Nigel of Longchamp, the Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale, Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls and the tales of the Squire, Manciple and Nun's Priest, the Reynardian tale of The Vox and the Wolf, and the Moral Fabillis of Robert Henryson.Less
What do stories about animals have to tell us about human beings? This book analyses the shrewd perceptions about human life—and especially human language—that emerge from narratives in which the main figures are ‘talking animals’. Its guiding question is not ‘what’ but ‘how’ animals mean. Drawing a clear distinction between beast fable and beast epic, it examines the complex variations of these forms that are to be found in the literature of medieval Britain, in English, French, Latin, and Scots (modern English translations are provided for all quotations). The analytical method of the book combines theoretical and literary‐critical discussion with a constant awareness of the historical development of the tradition. The works selected for study are the fables of Marie de France, the Speculum stultorum of Nigel of Longchamp, the Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale, Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls and the tales of the Squire, Manciple and Nun's Priest, the Reynardian tale of The Vox and the Wolf, and the Moral Fabillis of Robert Henryson.
