Stefan Tilg
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199576944
- eISBN:
- 9780191722486
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576944.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
No issue in scholarship on the ancient novel has been discussed as hotly as the origin of the Greek love novel, also known as the ‘ideal’ novel. The present book proposes a new solution to this old ...
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No issue in scholarship on the ancient novel has been discussed as hotly as the origin of the Greek love novel, also known as the ‘ideal’ novel. The present book proposes a new solution to this old problem. It argues that the genre had a personal inventor, Chariton of Aphrodisias, and that he wrote the first love novel, Narratives about Callirhoe, in the mid‐first century AD. This conclusion is drawn on the basis of two converging lines of argument, one from literary history, another from Chariton's poetics. A revisitation of the literary‐historical background provides the basis for further analysis: among other things, it considers Chariton's milieu at Aphrodisias (especially the local cult of Aphrodite), the dating of other early novels, and Chariton's potential authorship of the fragmentarily preserved novels Metiochus and Parthenope and Chione. Chariton's status as the inventor of the Greek love novel, suggested by the literary‐historical evidence, finds further support in his poetics. I argue that Narratives about Callirhoe is characterized by an unusual effort of self‐definition, which can be best explained as a consequence of coming to terms with a new form of writing. The book is rounded off by a study of the motif of Rumour in Chariton and its derivation from a surprising model, Virgil's Aeneid. This part also makes a significant contribution to the reception of Latin literature in the Greek world.Less
No issue in scholarship on the ancient novel has been discussed as hotly as the origin of the Greek love novel, also known as the ‘ideal’ novel. The present book proposes a new solution to this old problem. It argues that the genre had a personal inventor, Chariton of Aphrodisias, and that he wrote the first love novel, Narratives about Callirhoe, in the mid‐first century AD. This conclusion is drawn on the basis of two converging lines of argument, one from literary history, another from Chariton's poetics. A revisitation of the literary‐historical background provides the basis for further analysis: among other things, it considers Chariton's milieu at Aphrodisias (especially the local cult of Aphrodite), the dating of other early novels, and Chariton's potential authorship of the fragmentarily preserved novels Metiochus and Parthenope and Chione. Chariton's status as the inventor of the Greek love novel, suggested by the literary‐historical evidence, finds further support in his poetics. I argue that Narratives about Callirhoe is characterized by an unusual effort of self‐definition, which can be best explained as a consequence of coming to terms with a new form of writing. The book is rounded off by a study of the motif of Rumour in Chariton and its derivation from a surprising model, Virgil's Aeneid. This part also makes a significant contribution to the reception of Latin literature in the Greek world.
Carol A Newsom
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195396287
- eISBN:
- 9780199852420
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195396287.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of ...
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From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of the divine speeches, this book provides an intense encounter with the aesthetic resources of Hebrew verbal art. In this brilliant new study, the author illuminates the relation between the aesthetic forms of the book and the claims made by its various characters. Her innovative approach makes possible a new understanding of the unity of the book of Job; she rejects the dismantling of the book by historical criticism and the flattening of the text that characterizes certain final form readings.Less
From the simple and beautiful language of the prose tale, to the verbal fireworks of the dialogue between Job and his friends, to the haunting beauty of the poem on wisdom and the sublime poetics of the divine speeches, this book provides an intense encounter with the aesthetic resources of Hebrew verbal art. In this brilliant new study, the author illuminates the relation between the aesthetic forms of the book and the claims made by its various characters. Her innovative approach makes possible a new understanding of the unity of the book of Job; she rejects the dismantling of the book by historical criticism and the flattening of the text that characterizes certain final form readings.
Clive Scott
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159445
- eISBN:
- 9780191673634
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159445.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, European Literature
This book explores the expressive resources peculiar to French verse, first through formal discussion of its poetics and then through detailed readings of texts from the 17th century to the present. ...
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This book explores the expressive resources peculiar to French verse, first through formal discussion of its poetics and then through detailed readings of texts from the 17th century to the present. At the same time, it offers a reassessment of the nature of the reading process itself, and makes a case for rescuing a sense of the complex modalities of language from the pressure to interpret. Reading is, above all, the experience of language, and of the self through language, and we should seek ways of preserving these kinds of experience, even though the conventions of critical discourse militate against them. Part Two presents a sequence of thirteen readings (including texts by La Fontaine, Chénier, Vigny, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Éluard, Césaire). These readings are grouped according to a set of underlying preoccupations — formal, acoustic, rhythmic, narratological, etc. — and each group is prefaced by an introductory discussion of the particular aspect highlighted.Less
This book explores the expressive resources peculiar to French verse, first through formal discussion of its poetics and then through detailed readings of texts from the 17th century to the present. At the same time, it offers a reassessment of the nature of the reading process itself, and makes a case for rescuing a sense of the complex modalities of language from the pressure to interpret. Reading is, above all, the experience of language, and of the self through language, and we should seek ways of preserving these kinds of experience, even though the conventions of critical discourse militate against them. Part Two presents a sequence of thirteen readings (including texts by La Fontaine, Chénier, Vigny, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Éluard, Césaire). These readings are grouped according to a set of underlying preoccupations — formal, acoustic, rhythmic, narratological, etc. — and each group is prefaced by an introductory discussion of the particular aspect highlighted.
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195304343
- eISBN:
- 9780199785063
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195304349.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This concluding chapter returns to theories of caste and to the manner in which Bhat culture and society may speak to such theories, by reflecting on the manner Bhats can be said to make their own ...
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This concluding chapter returns to theories of caste and to the manner in which Bhat culture and society may speak to such theories, by reflecting on the manner Bhats can be said to make their own history as opposed to simply inheriting a so-called traditional identity and profession. It points to continuities and differences between Bhats and other Indian Dalit (formerly Untouchable) communities. It engages the scholarship on Indian marginal and oppressed communities — loosely termed “Subaltern studies” — in order to ultimately argue for the Bhat-performers’ unique form of “poetic” consciousness and resistance.Less
This concluding chapter returns to theories of caste and to the manner in which Bhat culture and society may speak to such theories, by reflecting on the manner Bhats can be said to make their own history as opposed to simply inheriting a so-called traditional identity and profession. It points to continuities and differences between Bhats and other Indian Dalit (formerly Untouchable) communities. It engages the scholarship on Indian marginal and oppressed communities — loosely termed “Subaltern studies” — in order to ultimately argue for the Bhat-performers’ unique form of “poetic” consciousness and resistance.
Katharina Volk
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199245505
- eISBN:
- 9780191714986
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245505.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This book examines the genre of ancient didactic poetry, focusing in particular on the Latin authors Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, and Manilius. Greek and Latin literature abounds in didactic poetry — ...
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This book examines the genre of ancient didactic poetry, focusing in particular on the Latin authors Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, and Manilius. Greek and Latin literature abounds in didactic poetry — poems that undertake to teach a field of knowledge or practical skill — but already, the ancients found it difficult to gain a theoretical understanding of this genre, and modern readers often perceive didactic texts as dry and overly technical. The book proposes a new theoretical approach to this elusive poetic type, identifying the following four defining criteria for didactic poetry: poetic intent, teacher-student constellation, poetic self-consciousness, and poetic simultaneity. In addition to an historical survey of the genre from Hesiod to the Roman Republic, the work contains individual chapters with detailed interpretations of Lucretius' De rerum natura, Vergil's Georgics, Ovid's Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris, and Manilius' Astronomica. Throughout, special attention is paid to poetics; that is, the ways in which didactic texts explicitly present themselves as poetry and the ideas of poetry that they project. Though often regarded as ‘unpoetic’, didactic poems turn out to be especially rich in reflections on poetics and to comment self-consciously on their own status as both instructional and artistic texts.Less
This book examines the genre of ancient didactic poetry, focusing in particular on the Latin authors Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, and Manilius. Greek and Latin literature abounds in didactic poetry — poems that undertake to teach a field of knowledge or practical skill — but already, the ancients found it difficult to gain a theoretical understanding of this genre, and modern readers often perceive didactic texts as dry and overly technical. The book proposes a new theoretical approach to this elusive poetic type, identifying the following four defining criteria for didactic poetry: poetic intent, teacher-student constellation, poetic self-consciousness, and poetic simultaneity. In addition to an historical survey of the genre from Hesiod to the Roman Republic, the work contains individual chapters with detailed interpretations of Lucretius' De rerum natura, Vergil's Georgics, Ovid's Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris, and Manilius' Astronomica. Throughout, special attention is paid to poetics; that is, the ways in which didactic texts explicitly present themselves as poetry and the ideas of poetry that they project. Though often regarded as ‘unpoetic’, didactic poems turn out to be especially rich in reflections on poetics and to comment self-consciously on their own status as both instructional and artistic texts.
Karl E. Weick
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199594566
- eISBN:
- 9780191595721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594566.003.0006
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Organization Studies
This chapter argues here for the poetics of process—the imaginative process of creating forms out of “airy nothing”. Managerial work, it further notes, is akin to the work of a poet. Process thinking ...
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This chapter argues here for the poetics of process—the imaginative process of creating forms out of “airy nothing”. Managerial work, it further notes, is akin to the work of a poet. Process thinking helps us pay attention to concrete details and the constitution of things. Through gerund forms of thinking we recover some of the process that generates nouns and gives us apparent stability. Nouns and verbs are best seen as co-evolving. Scholars who practice process theorizing accept reluctantly the ineffability underlying the stabilization of differences and reaffirm their commitment to draw attention to indications of nouns being unwound and set in motion as verbs, as well as verbs being wound into slower motion as nouns. The naming and the winding are the work of process theorizing just as they are the work of everyday life as organizing.Less
This chapter argues here for the poetics of process—the imaginative process of creating forms out of “airy nothing”. Managerial work, it further notes, is akin to the work of a poet. Process thinking helps us pay attention to concrete details and the constitution of things. Through gerund forms of thinking we recover some of the process that generates nouns and gives us apparent stability. Nouns and verbs are best seen as co-evolving. Scholars who practice process theorizing accept reluctantly the ineffability underlying the stabilization of differences and reaffirm their commitment to draw attention to indications of nouns being unwound and set in motion as verbs, as well as verbs being wound into slower motion as nouns. The naming and the winding are the work of process theorizing just as they are the work of everyday life as organizing.
Stefan Tilg
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199576944
- eISBN:
- 9780191722486
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576944.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Chapter four introduces the analysis of Chariton's poetics with an reconsideration of some remarkable characteristics singled out for one reason or another before: Chariton's general penchant for ...
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Chapter four introduces the analysis of Chariton's poetics with an reconsideration of some remarkable characteristics singled out for one reason or another before: Chariton's general penchant for authorial intrusions – indicating a concern with self‐definition; his allusion to Aristotle's Poetics at the beginning of the last book (8. 1. 4) – inaugurating the invention of the happy ending and a new poetics of tragicomedy; the guidance of his readers through theatrical devices – most useful in a new form of literature; a large number of quotations from Homer – implying an intention to become a new Homer in prose; the setting of the story in Miletus and the alleged origin of Callirhoe from Sybaris (e. g. 1. 12. 8) – potential allusions to preceding low‐life strains of prose fiction, the Milesiaca and the Sybaritica; finally, the negative image of Athens – which sets the new literary form apart from the old classical models, especially Thucydides who provided the historical frame in which the story is set.Less
Chapter four introduces the analysis of Chariton's poetics with an reconsideration of some remarkable characteristics singled out for one reason or another before: Chariton's general penchant for authorial intrusions – indicating a concern with self‐definition; his allusion to Aristotle's Poetics at the beginning of the last book (8. 1. 4) – inaugurating the invention of the happy ending and a new poetics of tragicomedy; the guidance of his readers through theatrical devices – most useful in a new form of literature; a large number of quotations from Homer – implying an intention to become a new Homer in prose; the setting of the story in Miletus and the alleged origin of Callirhoe from Sybaris (e. g. 1. 12. 8) – potential allusions to preceding low‐life strains of prose fiction, the Milesiaca and the Sybaritica; finally, the negative image of Athens – which sets the new literary form apart from the old classical models, especially Thucydides who provided the historical frame in which the story is set.
KATHARINA VOLK
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199245505
- eISBN:
- 9780191714986
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245505.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The conclusion summarizes the results of the discussion in the preceding chapters.
The conclusion summarizes the results of the discussion in the preceding chapters.
Michael C. Legaspi
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195394351
- eISBN:
- 9780199777211
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195394351.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter marks the importance of aesthetics in Michaelis’s recovery of a classical Israel. Building on the work of English critic Robert Lowth, Michaelis argued that the psalms and prophecies of ...
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This chapter marks the importance of aesthetics in Michaelis’s recovery of a classical Israel. Building on the work of English critic Robert Lowth, Michaelis argued that the psalms and prophecies of the Old Testament could be fruitfully analyzed as “biblical poetry” or “ancient Israelite poetry,” apart from their theological or religious value. Lowth, the inventor of Hebrew parallelism, and Michaelis were important figures in the eighteenth-century turn toward a primitive yet sublime poetics of feeling. As this chapter shows, though, “biblical poetry” was not a discovery but an invention. This new concept allowed scholars to operate independently of scriptural frameworks for understanding the Bible, namely, the canons by which religious communities organize their Bibles. Those grouped as “prophets,” for example, could just as well be classed with “poets” found in all parts of the Bible, thus transforming them from foretellers of Christ into poets of personal passion.Less
This chapter marks the importance of aesthetics in Michaelis’s recovery of a classical Israel. Building on the work of English critic Robert Lowth, Michaelis argued that the psalms and prophecies of the Old Testament could be fruitfully analyzed as “biblical poetry” or “ancient Israelite poetry,” apart from their theological or religious value. Lowth, the inventor of Hebrew parallelism, and Michaelis were important figures in the eighteenth-century turn toward a primitive yet sublime poetics of feeling. As this chapter shows, though, “biblical poetry” was not a discovery but an invention. This new concept allowed scholars to operate independently of scriptural frameworks for understanding the Bible, namely, the canons by which religious communities organize their Bibles. Those grouped as “prophets,” for example, could just as well be classed with “poets” found in all parts of the Bible, thus transforming them from foretellers of Christ into poets of personal passion.
Daniel Dubuisson and Andrew Meehan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195394337
- eISBN:
- 9780199777358
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195394337.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Many critical studies have been devoted to the controversial ideas developed by Mircea Eliade in his works. This chapter will not repeat them. Instead, it focuses on the easily recognizable poetic ...
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Many critical studies have been devoted to the controversial ideas developed by Mircea Eliade in his works. This chapter will not repeat them. Instead, it focuses on the easily recognizable poetic processes used by Eliade, which are inseparable from the pernicious ideology they transmit. In the first place, they define a certain style, identifiable by its grandiloquence and specific lexicon. This style is always closely linked to a series of topics (the “myth,” the homo religiosus, etc.) and topoi (a catalog of general arguments and common ideas). From these, the text develops its own schemata of mimesis and of semiosis. Together they establish the coherence of the Eliadean text. This coherence is the condition sine qua non of Eliade’s ambition to set out his own system of metaphysics.Less
Many critical studies have been devoted to the controversial ideas developed by Mircea Eliade in his works. This chapter will not repeat them. Instead, it focuses on the easily recognizable poetic processes used by Eliade, which are inseparable from the pernicious ideology they transmit. In the first place, they define a certain style, identifiable by its grandiloquence and specific lexicon. This style is always closely linked to a series of topics (the “myth,” the homo religiosus, etc.) and topoi (a catalog of general arguments and common ideas). From these, the text develops its own schemata of mimesis and of semiosis. Together they establish the coherence of the Eliadean text. This coherence is the condition sine qua non of Eliade’s ambition to set out his own system of metaphysics.
Ceri Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199547845
- eISBN:
- 9780191720901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547845.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Barbara Lewalski exhaustively traced the biblical sources and Protestant emblem and sermon analogues in metaphysical verse, concluding that Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan were Protestant, English poets ...
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Barbara Lewalski exhaustively traced the biblical sources and Protestant emblem and sermon analogues in metaphysical verse, concluding that Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan were Protestant, English poets of the Word (against Louis Martz's claim that they came from a Catholic, or at least continental, heritage). She gives a picture of poets attaining the godly word after heroic efforts. If you start with the godly word, however, you can see the poets making efforts to wiggle off into rhetoric, to rephrase acts and laws in so many more comfortable words. This accounts for the surprising fact that poets from very different devotional and doctrinal backgrounds use the same tropes when dealing with a similar problem with the conscience.Less
Barbara Lewalski exhaustively traced the biblical sources and Protestant emblem and sermon analogues in metaphysical verse, concluding that Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan were Protestant, English poets of the Word (against Louis Martz's claim that they came from a Catholic, or at least continental, heritage). She gives a picture of poets attaining the godly word after heroic efforts. If you start with the godly word, however, you can see the poets making efforts to wiggle off into rhetoric, to rephrase acts and laws in so many more comfortable words. This accounts for the surprising fact that poets from very different devotional and doctrinal backgrounds use the same tropes when dealing with a similar problem with the conscience.
Peter Stockwell
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625819
- eISBN:
- 9780748651511
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625819.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics
This book represents the latest advances in cognitive poetics. It builds feeling and embodied experience on to the insights into meaningfulness that the cognitive approach to literature has achieved ...
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This book represents the latest advances in cognitive poetics. It builds feeling and embodied experience on to the insights into meaningfulness that the cognitive approach to literature has achieved in recent years. Taking key familiar concepts such as characterisation, tone, empathy, and identification, the book aims to describe the natural experience of literary reading in a thorough and principled way. It draws on stylistics, psycholinguistics, critical theory and neurology to explore the nature of reading verbal art. The aim is a new cognitive aesthetics of literature for its readers.Less
This book represents the latest advances in cognitive poetics. It builds feeling and embodied experience on to the insights into meaningfulness that the cognitive approach to literature has achieved in recent years. Taking key familiar concepts such as characterisation, tone, empathy, and identification, the book aims to describe the natural experience of literary reading in a thorough and principled way. It draws on stylistics, psycholinguistics, critical theory and neurology to explore the nature of reading verbal art. The aim is a new cognitive aesthetics of literature for its readers.
William L Randall and A. Elizabeth McKim
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195306873
- eISBN:
- 9780199894062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195306873.003.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This chapter prepares for an exploration of the poetics of aging by introducing a narrative approach to gerontology, one that focuses on the inside of aging, or biographical aging, instead of its ...
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This chapter prepares for an exploration of the poetics of aging by introducing a narrative approach to gerontology, one that focuses on the inside of aging, or biographical aging, instead of its outside, i.e., biological aging. Discussed as well is the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of the metaphor of life-as-story, recognized increasingly across numerous disciplines as a paradigm for understanding human experience. The chapter also considers how postmodern theories of text and textualization apply to the notion of lifestory, and the consequences of such theories for concepts of personal identity. In particular, it introduces the idea that reading life, like reading literature, is an intricate, interpretive activity — one we are engaged in anyway, if largely unconsciously, all of the time. By better understanding the dynamics of this process, however, we can undertake it more deliberately, in the process developing a reflective and indeed ironic stance toward our lives which this book calls literary self-literacy.Less
This chapter prepares for an exploration of the poetics of aging by introducing a narrative approach to gerontology, one that focuses on the inside of aging, or biographical aging, instead of its outside, i.e., biological aging. Discussed as well is the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of the metaphor of life-as-story, recognized increasingly across numerous disciplines as a paradigm for understanding human experience. The chapter also considers how postmodern theories of text and textualization apply to the notion of lifestory, and the consequences of such theories for concepts of personal identity. In particular, it introduces the idea that reading life, like reading literature, is an intricate, interpretive activity — one we are engaged in anyway, if largely unconsciously, all of the time. By better understanding the dynamics of this process, however, we can undertake it more deliberately, in the process developing a reflective and indeed ironic stance toward our lives which this book calls literary self-literacy.
Jessica Waldoff
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195151978
- eISBN:
- 9780199870387
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151978.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
Since its beginnings, opera has depended on recognition as a central aspect of both plot and theme. Recognition — or anagnôrisis, Aristotle's term in the Poetics — is a moment of new awareness that ...
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Since its beginnings, opera has depended on recognition as a central aspect of both plot and theme. Recognition — or anagnôrisis, Aristotle's term in the Poetics — is a moment of new awareness that brings about a crucial reversal in the action. Employing both literary and musical analysis, and drawing on critical thought from Aristotle to Terence Cave, this book explores the ways in which the themes of Mozart's operas — clemency, constancy, forgiveness, and other ideals cherished by late 18th-century culture — depend for their dramatization on recognition. Several of the operas culminate in a moment of climactic recognition, many involve the use of disguise, and all include scenes in which characters make significant realizations of identity, feeling, or purpose. Many turn explicitly on themes of knowledge, themes that possess a special resonance in an age that named itself the Enlightenment. A critical understanding of recognition in Mozart's operas reveals the late 18th-century culture of sensibility as an influential but uneasy presence in the age of enlightenment. At the same time, it opens up new ways of thinking about questions of cultural identity, conventions of ending, and the representation of cultural values in these works. Theoretical chapters are devoted to the concepts of recognition and plot; analytical chapters are devoted to Die Zauberflöte, La finta giardiniera, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and La clemenza di Tito. Idomeneo, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro, and other works of Mozart and his contemporaries are also considered.Less
Since its beginnings, opera has depended on recognition as a central aspect of both plot and theme. Recognition — or anagnôrisis, Aristotle's term in the Poetics — is a moment of new awareness that brings about a crucial reversal in the action. Employing both literary and musical analysis, and drawing on critical thought from Aristotle to Terence Cave, this book explores the ways in which the themes of Mozart's operas — clemency, constancy, forgiveness, and other ideals cherished by late 18th-century culture — depend for their dramatization on recognition. Several of the operas culminate in a moment of climactic recognition, many involve the use of disguise, and all include scenes in which characters make significant realizations of identity, feeling, or purpose. Many turn explicitly on themes of knowledge, themes that possess a special resonance in an age that named itself the Enlightenment. A critical understanding of recognition in Mozart's operas reveals the late 18th-century culture of sensibility as an influential but uneasy presence in the age of enlightenment. At the same time, it opens up new ways of thinking about questions of cultural identity, conventions of ending, and the representation of cultural values in these works. Theoretical chapters are devoted to the concepts of recognition and plot; analytical chapters are devoted to Die Zauberflöte, La finta giardiniera, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and La clemenza di Tito. Idomeneo, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro, and other works of Mozart and his contemporaries are also considered.
Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199863020
- eISBN:
- 9780199932900
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199863020.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This book offers a cultural biography of a south Indian poet—Srinatha, who lived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the area of today’s Andhra Pradesh and who composed in Telugu, one of the ...
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This book offers a cultural biography of a south Indian poet—Srinatha, who lived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the area of today’s Andhra Pradesh and who composed in Telugu, one of the great classical languages of India with a literary tradition of a thousand years. Srinatha is arguably the most creative figure in the entire history of Telugu literature and one of the great voices in South Asian literature generally. He revolutionized the nature of literary composition in Telugu and, in effect, invented the classic format of the sustained, well-integrated, thematically coherent Telugu book. He bridged the gap between oral and written composition in Telugu by creating a “second-order” orality; and he combined in highly creative ways the classical Sanskrit world of erudition and poetic precedent with an entirely local, Telugu reality. A figure larger than life, he is emblematic of a moment of profound cultural change and experimentation in south India, and he lives on in a rich tradition of stories and poetic imitations (discussed at length in the final chapter of the book). Defining himself as an “emperor of poets,” he in effect generated a notion of Andhra as a cultural zone as well as a model for the large-scale political empire of Vijayanagara that came into being in the fifteenth century.Less
This book offers a cultural biography of a south Indian poet—Srinatha, who lived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the area of today’s Andhra Pradesh and who composed in Telugu, one of the great classical languages of India with a literary tradition of a thousand years. Srinatha is arguably the most creative figure in the entire history of Telugu literature and one of the great voices in South Asian literature generally. He revolutionized the nature of literary composition in Telugu and, in effect, invented the classic format of the sustained, well-integrated, thematically coherent Telugu book. He bridged the gap between oral and written composition in Telugu by creating a “second-order” orality; and he combined in highly creative ways the classical Sanskrit world of erudition and poetic precedent with an entirely local, Telugu reality. A figure larger than life, he is emblematic of a moment of profound cultural change and experimentation in south India, and he lives on in a rich tradition of stories and poetic imitations (discussed at length in the final chapter of the book). Defining himself as an “emperor of poets,” he in effect generated a notion of Andhra as a cultural zone as well as a model for the large-scale political empire of Vijayanagara that came into being in the fifteenth century.
Michael Golston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231164306
- eISBN:
- 9780231538633
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231164306.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Through a survey of American poetry and poetics from the end of World War II to the present, Michael Golston traces the proliferation of these experiments to a growing fascination with allegory in ...
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Through a survey of American poetry and poetics from the end of World War II to the present, Michael Golston traces the proliferation of these experiments to a growing fascination with allegory in philosophy, linguistics, critical theory, and aesthetics, introducing new strategies for reading American poetry while embedding its formal innovations within the history of intellectual thought. Beginning with Walter Benjamin’s explicit understanding of Surrealism as an allegorical art, Golston defines a distinct engagement with allegory among philosophers, theorists, and critics from 1950 to today. Reading Fredric Jameson, Angus Fletcher, Roland Barthes, and Craig Owens, and working with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Pierce, Golston develops a theory of allegory he then applies to the poems of Louis Zukofsky and Lorine Niedecker, who, he argues, wrote in response to the Surrealists; the poems of John Ashbery and Clark Coolidge, who incorporated formal aspects of filmmaking and photography into their work; the groundbreaking configurations of P. Inman, Lyn Hejinian, Myung Mi Kim, and the Language poets; Susan Howe’s “Pierce-Arrow,” which he submits to semiotic analysis; and the innovations of Craig Dworkin and the conceptualists. Revitalizing what many consider to be a staid rhetorical trope, Golston positions allegory as a creative catalyst behind American poetry’s postwar avant-garde achievements.Less
Through a survey of American poetry and poetics from the end of World War II to the present, Michael Golston traces the proliferation of these experiments to a growing fascination with allegory in philosophy, linguistics, critical theory, and aesthetics, introducing new strategies for reading American poetry while embedding its formal innovations within the history of intellectual thought. Beginning with Walter Benjamin’s explicit understanding of Surrealism as an allegorical art, Golston defines a distinct engagement with allegory among philosophers, theorists, and critics from 1950 to today. Reading Fredric Jameson, Angus Fletcher, Roland Barthes, and Craig Owens, and working with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Pierce, Golston develops a theory of allegory he then applies to the poems of Louis Zukofsky and Lorine Niedecker, who, he argues, wrote in response to the Surrealists; the poems of John Ashbery and Clark Coolidge, who incorporated formal aspects of filmmaking and photography into their work; the groundbreaking configurations of P. Inman, Lyn Hejinian, Myung Mi Kim, and the Language poets; Susan Howe’s “Pierce-Arrow,” which he submits to semiotic analysis; and the innovations of Craig Dworkin and the conceptualists. Revitalizing what many consider to be a staid rhetorical trope, Golston positions allegory as a creative catalyst behind American poetry’s postwar avant-garde achievements.
Bruce Heiden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195341072
- eISBN:
- 9780199867066
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341072.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Although scholars routinely state that the Iliad is an “oral poem,” it has circulated as a text stabilized in writing since near the time of its composition. Thus, the Iliad undoubtedly has features ...
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Although scholars routinely state that the Iliad is an “oral poem,” it has circulated as a text stabilized in writing since near the time of its composition. Thus, the Iliad undoubtedly has features that render it satisfactory to readers and reading. But the question of what these features might be has been difficult for Homeric scholarship to address within the research paradigm of “oral poetics.” This book delineates a new approach aimed at evaluating what the Iliad furnishes to readers. Its program conceptualizes the act of reading as a repertoire of cognitive functions a reader might deploy in collaboration with the poem's signs. By positing certain functions hypothetically and applying them to the poem, its experiments uncover the kind and degree of suitable “reading material” the poem provides. These analyses reveal that the trajectory of events in the Iliad manifests the central agency of one character, Zeus, and that the transmitted articulation of the epic into “books” conforms to distinct narrative subtrajectories. The analyses also show that the sequence of “books” functions as a design that cues attention to the major crises in the story, as well as to themes that develop its significance. The transmitted arrangement therefore furnishes an implicit cognitive map that both eases comprehension of the storyline and indicates pathways of interpretation.Less
Although scholars routinely state that the Iliad is an “oral poem,” it has circulated as a text stabilized in writing since near the time of its composition. Thus, the Iliad undoubtedly has features that render it satisfactory to readers and reading. But the question of what these features might be has been difficult for Homeric scholarship to address within the research paradigm of “oral poetics.” This book delineates a new approach aimed at evaluating what the Iliad furnishes to readers. Its program conceptualizes the act of reading as a repertoire of cognitive functions a reader might deploy in collaboration with the poem's signs. By positing certain functions hypothetically and applying them to the poem, its experiments uncover the kind and degree of suitable “reading material” the poem provides. These analyses reveal that the trajectory of events in the Iliad manifests the central agency of one character, Zeus, and that the transmitted articulation of the epic into “books” conforms to distinct narrative subtrajectories. The analyses also show that the sequence of “books” functions as a design that cues attention to the major crises in the story, as well as to themes that develop its significance. The transmitted arrangement therefore furnishes an implicit cognitive map that both eases comprehension of the storyline and indicates pathways of interpretation.
Lital Levy
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691162485
- eISBN:
- 9781400852574
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691162485.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter turns to the Hebrew poetics of Palestinian Arab writers. It presents a close reading of poetry by Anton Shammas and his contemporaries Salman Masalha and Na'im 'Araidi. It argues that ...
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This chapter turns to the Hebrew poetics of Palestinian Arab writers. It presents a close reading of poetry by Anton Shammas and his contemporaries Salman Masalha and Na'im 'Araidi. It argues that their poetry offers us a different window onto the question of Hebrew writing in a Palestinian hand. It reads their Hebrew verse as a poetics formed between languages, cultures, and national traditions, replacing the hermeneutics of antithesis (Palestinian or Israeli? Israeli or Jewish?) with one of “in-betweenness.” Furthermore, the chapter moves away from debating the identitarian definition of Hebrew to explore the nuanced relationship of Palestinian writers with Hebrew's cultural heritage and with the traditional Jewish modes of reading and interpretation embedded therein. Through an analysis of allusion and metalinguistic discourse in Palestinian Hebrew poetry, it illustrates the intertextual practice called “Palestinian midrash.”Less
This chapter turns to the Hebrew poetics of Palestinian Arab writers. It presents a close reading of poetry by Anton Shammas and his contemporaries Salman Masalha and Na'im 'Araidi. It argues that their poetry offers us a different window onto the question of Hebrew writing in a Palestinian hand. It reads their Hebrew verse as a poetics formed between languages, cultures, and national traditions, replacing the hermeneutics of antithesis (Palestinian or Israeli? Israeli or Jewish?) with one of “in-betweenness.” Furthermore, the chapter moves away from debating the identitarian definition of Hebrew to explore the nuanced relationship of Palestinian writers with Hebrew's cultural heritage and with the traditional Jewish modes of reading and interpretation embedded therein. Through an analysis of allusion and metalinguistic discourse in Palestinian Hebrew poetry, it illustrates the intertextual practice called “Palestinian midrash.”
Stefan Tilg
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199576944
- eISBN:
- 9780191722486
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576944.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The introduction defines the Greek love novel, or ‘ideal’ novel, and considers its relation to other strains of Graeco‐Roman prose fiction. It reviews the history and the current relevance of ...
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The introduction defines the Greek love novel, or ‘ideal’ novel, and considers its relation to other strains of Graeco‐Roman prose fiction. It reviews the history and the current relevance of enquiries into the origins of the Greek love novel and suggests a generic model based on individual emulations and variations as an alternative to the predominant idea of an abstract novelistic matrix. A description of the methodological approach of the book is provided, which consists of the combination of arguments from literary history on the one hand and from Chariton's poetics, implied in his metaliterary self‐references, on the other. A preview of the course of the investigation gives readers an idea of the main points to follow and helps them navigate through the following chapters.Less
The introduction defines the Greek love novel, or ‘ideal’ novel, and considers its relation to other strains of Graeco‐Roman prose fiction. It reviews the history and the current relevance of enquiries into the origins of the Greek love novel and suggests a generic model based on individual emulations and variations as an alternative to the predominant idea of an abstract novelistic matrix. A description of the methodological approach of the book is provided, which consists of the combination of arguments from literary history on the one hand and from Chariton's poetics, implied in his metaliterary self‐references, on the other. A preview of the course of the investigation gives readers an idea of the main points to follow and helps them navigate through the following chapters.
Bruce Heiden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195341072
- eISBN:
- 9780199867066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341072.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter introduces the goals and methods of the book. The book's aim is to present a series of investigations aimed at illuminating the design of the Iliad and its significance for readers, ...
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This chapter introduces the goals and methods of the book. The book's aim is to present a series of investigations aimed at illuminating the design of the Iliad and its significance for readers, interpreters, and scholars. The project frames the activity of literary reading as an inchoate repertoire of adaptable cognitive functions that readers deploy provisionally in conjunction with textual indications. The research postulates hypothetical reading functions and deploys them experimentally to evaluate whether and how the poem's indications converge with them. The functions investigated are “common sense” practices that are pertinent to the intelligibility of the Iliad as a story, e.g., character-agents, actions, and the goal of deriving edification. Systematic application of the model discloses substantial convergence between the poem and the postulated reading functions. These convergences suggest that the epic's composition implemented a technical plan to assist comprehension: the poem's design furnishes orientation to the story's direction and themes.Less
This chapter introduces the goals and methods of the book. The book's aim is to present a series of investigations aimed at illuminating the design of the Iliad and its significance for readers, interpreters, and scholars. The project frames the activity of literary reading as an inchoate repertoire of adaptable cognitive functions that readers deploy provisionally in conjunction with textual indications. The research postulates hypothetical reading functions and deploys them experimentally to evaluate whether and how the poem's indications converge with them. The functions investigated are “common sense” practices that are pertinent to the intelligibility of the Iliad as a story, e.g., character-agents, actions, and the goal of deriving edification. Systematic application of the model discloses substantial convergence between the poem and the postulated reading functions. These convergences suggest that the epic's composition implemented a technical plan to assist comprehension: the poem's design furnishes orientation to the story's direction and themes.
