Literary Contexts

To study the tradition of Hellenistic myth and legend in the West is to study the development of principally figurative language in the literatures of its peoples; an appreciation of which figurative language cannot be fully realized without understanding the writers themselves and the historical and literary context in which they are writing. Hellenistic, or even Christian, myth and legend do not exist anywhere beyond the stories in which they appear, each of which only resonate in their own particular literary and historical context. This may seem obvious to a literary scholar but not so obvious to someone seeking for universal truths or archetypes in ancient legend. The search for universality in ancient legend which has dominated the study of myth in the last 100 years has unfortunately obscured and in many cases completely disregarded their linguistic foundations and importance in the historical development of human languages.In antiquity , the vocabulary of myth and legend served as figurative language for a large variety of human activities as well as toward the comprehension of the natural world for a population with an extremely limited set of words and phrases to describe such events and activities. Indeed, the tremendous flowering of the written records of what is known as Greek myth and legend in the Archaic age, the works of Hesiod, Pindar, Homer, indicate that the Aegean peoples were beginning to explore the complexities of human existence and their place on the earth not through the signs and symbols handed down to them by Akkadian and Babylonian cultures but through the products of a unique literary language.The Middle Ages inherited a number of methods of interpretation regarding Hellenistic myth from Antiquity. The myths and legends of antiquity were seen as (i) allegories of terrestrial elements and forces of Nature: Fire/Vulcan, Air/Juno, Sky/Juppiter, Water/Neptune, Earth/Terra, Underworld/Pluto; (ii) Cosmology, the names of the stars; (iii) moral etymology; their names reveal their morality; (iv) moral metaphorical; their descriptions and acts reveal their morality; (v) Euhemeristic, historical.

Ivan Dmitriev has virtually disappeared from memory, but in the late eighteenth century he was known as one of Russia’s foremost poets. What even fewer readers know is that Dmitriev’s most significant contribution to Russia’s literary heritage may have been his decision to make poetry the centre of his prose autobiography. In the literary and social context of the 1810s and 20s, this was a remarkable step because it showed Dmitriev’s conviction that poetry had an inherent value that earned it a place in the narrative formulation of one’s “life plot.” Dmitriev’s approach is even more remarkable when his autobiography is compared to the prose autobiography of Gavrila Derzhavin, the greatest poet of his time. Derzhavin’s autobiography ignores poetry almost completely, and usually refers to the author’s literary endeavours only when they intersect with the dominant thread of his political life. This article looks at the social and literary contexts in which these autobiographical texts were written, and then examines closely the style and substance of each text to explore the way each poet creates his own life story. This comparison shows that the great poet Derzhavin depicts himself almost exclusively as a statesman, and it is the long-forgotten Dmitriev who reveals a profound allegiance to poetry as the most important part of his life.

Since the book The Faith of Christ of Richard Hays appeared in 1983, the translation of πίστις Χριστοῦ has become a battlefield in recent Pauline Studies. The critical issue at stake is whether the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ should be translated as an objective genitive, i.e., faith in Christ, or as a subjective genitive, i.e., faith (faithfulness) of Christ.<BR> Most Korean Bibles, including the significant English Bibles, translate the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ as faith in Christ. However, many recent English Bibles (e.g., Jubilee, BRG, New Matthew, RG, Wycliffe Bible, NET, CEB, CJV, ISV, NTE, PT, and Voice Bible) translate it as either faith of Christ or faithfulness of Christ.<BR> Because it is generally recognized that this issue cannot be settled by grammatical and syntactical approaches in recent Pauline scholarship, this paper attempts a contextual and exegetical approach to the πίστις Χριστοῦ and ἐκ (διὰ) πίστεως constructions in Romans 3:21-31 to explore the meaning of the Pauline πίστις Χριστοῦ construction (Rom 3:22, 26; Gal 2:16[×2]; 3:22; Eph 3:12; Phi 3:9).<BR> The paper gives its particular attention to three questions:<BR> First, whether the πίστις Χριστοῦ construction, when it is employed with the δικα- terms, functions as an instrument to attain the righteousness of God or as an instrument to disclose the righteousness of God. Second, whether the πίστι- terms mean human faith in Christ or the faithfulness of Christ in its literary context. And third, whether ἐκ (διὰ) πίστεως construction functions as an abbreviation of πίστις Χριστοῦin its literary context.<BR> The paper finds, through a contextual and exegetical investigation of Romans 3:21-26, the following: First, the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ functions as the means to attain the righteousness of God, not to disclose it. Second, the πίστι- terms usually mean human faith in Christ in its literary context, not the faithfulness of Christ. And third, ἐκ (διὰ) πίστεως construction functions as an abbreviation of πίστις Χριστοῦ in its literary context.<BR> The paper therefore concludes that the Pauline πίστις Χριστοῦ should be translated as faith in Christ rather than as faithfulness of Christ.

This work is a review of the multi-authored monograph (prepared by the staff of the Samara Literary and Memorial Museum named after M. Gorky, Samara National Research University named after S.P. Korolev, Social and Humanitarian Institute (Department of Russian and Foreign Literature and Public Relations) «Russian Wealth» by N.G. Garin-Mykhaylovsky: biography – writing – “samara text” – literary context – perception», published in 2004 (сompiler Editor – M.A. Perepelkin, doctor of philological sciences, director of the Samara Literary and Memorial Museum named after M. Gorky, professor of Samara National Research University named after S.P. Korolev). The editors of the publication, memoirists, philological scientists have done a huge research work, supporting the remarkable Samara tradition in the field of literary local studies. N.G. Garin-Mykhailovsky cannot be classified as a «forgotten and secondary» writer, his works are in demand, and the amazing story «Tyoma’s Childhood» is not only popular, but also depicted in film. Nevertheless, the team that created the two-part monograph did a lot to remind about the features of the biography of the talented writer, tireless traveler, educator, whose works inspired such writers, separated by decades from each other, as A.I. Kuprin, N.N. Zlatovratskyi, K.M. Stanyukovich, M. Gorky, V.T. Shalamov, V.A. Chivykhin. The first part of the reviewed work contains memories of N.G. Garin-Mykhailovsky’s contemporaries (relatives, acquaintances) who reminded of the human charm of this unique person endowed with «an ardent fairy-tale fantasy». In the second part, the works performed in the field of textology and poetics proper are presented, which also contain valuable information about the connections of N.G. Garin-Mykhaylovsky with the writers who were directly related to Samara. We note that the articles of the monograph made significant additions to the «world of Garin-Mykhailovsky».

This chapter broadens the discussion of the parable of the unjust steward by examining its literary context. It considers two levels of literary context for the parable: the immediate literary context of Luke 15:1-32 and 16:14-31 and the broader literary context of the so-called travel narrative or central section of the Third Gospel (9:51). The chapter shows how these contextual levels affect the interpretation of the parable and enhance the understanding of it. The immediate literary context, Luke 15:1-32 and 16:14-31, clarifies the parable in the following ways: The parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 elucidates the meaning of the otherwise obscure exhortation in v. 9 of the parable; and the polemic context in which the parable occurs (cf. 15:1-2 and 16: 14) emphasizes the parable's teaching by setting it against the background of the Pharisees' faults, in particular, their greed.Keywords: Gospel; Luke 15:1-32; parable of the unjust steward; Pharisees

This wide-ranging collection is the first to set Robert Louis Stevenson in detailed social, political and literary contexts.The book takes account of both Stevenson's extraordinary thematic and generic diversity and his geographical range. The chapters explore his relation to late nineteenth-century publishing, psychology, travel, the colonial world, and the emergence of modernism in prose and poetry. Through the pivotal figure of Stevenson, the collection explores how literary publishing and cultural life changed across the second half of the nineteenth century. Stevenson emerges as a complex writer, author both of hugely popular boys' stories and of seminally important adult novels, as well as the literary figure who debated with Henry James the theory of fiction and the nature of realism.The collection shows how interest in the unconscious and changes in the conception of childhood demand that we re-evaluate our ideas of his writing. Individual essays by international experts trace Stevenson' literary contexts from Scotland to the South Pacific, and show him to be one of the key writers for understanding the growing sense of globalisation and cultural heterogeneity in the late nineteenth century.Key FeaturesSets Stevenson in his literary, scientific and political contextsCovers a broad range of Stevenson's fiction and non-fictionWritten by a team of international scholarsIncludes an authoritative introduction and select bibliography

Book Review| January 01 2005 New Light on Luke: Its Purpose, Sources and Literary Context New Light on Luke: Its Purpose, Sources and Literary ContextShellard, Barbara Philip F. Esler Philip F. Esler Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Bulletin for Biblical Research (2005) 15 (1): 143–145. https://doi.org/10.2307/26422769 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Philip F. Esler; New Light on Luke: Its Purpose, Sources and Literary Context. Bulletin for Biblical Research 1 January 2005; 15 (1): 143–145. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/26422769 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressBulletin for Biblical Research Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2005 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2005The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviewed by: Romans 7 and Christian Identity: A Study of the 'I' in Its Literary Context by Will N. Timmins Christian A. Eberhart will n. timmins, Romans 7 and Christian Identity: A Study of the 'I' in Its Literary Context (SNTSMS 170; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Pp. xiv + 238. $99.99. This monograph is a revised version of the Ph.D. thesis of Will N. Timmins, submitted to the University of Cambridge in 2014, supervised by Peter Head. Exploring the "I" in Romans 7—and thus literally only one letter (at least in the English alphabet)—the volume could be considered as having too narrow a focus. But that is not the case. Timmins rightly demonstrates that chap. 7, specifically 7:7-25, is a key to the entirety of the theological concept presented in Romans. Likewise, a correct understanding of Paul's "I" passage unlocks the meaning of this particular chapter. Thus, by extension, a study of the riddle of the "I" (ἐγώ in Greek) is important for understanding the heart of Paul's theology in its mature stages. The book is organized in seven chapters. After an introduction (chap. 1) featuring a concise summary of recent research on the topic, T. dedicates chap. 2 to a discussion of the hypothesis of Stanley K. Stowers (referencing various publications by Stowers, among them: "Romans 7.7–25 as a Speech-in-Character [Προσωποποιία]," in Paul in His Hellenistic Context, ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994] 180–202; A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994] 264–84) that Romans 7 is an example of the classical rhetorical device of prosopopoeia (speech-in-character). Deeming this argument unconvincing, T. proceeds in chap. 3 with an exploration of the context of the "I" in Romans. He investigates the singularity and solidarity of ambiguous first-person singular speech in Rom 3:7, suggesting that Paul takes on the persona of an exclusive individual boasting self-assurance so as to provide his audience in Rome with a negative model. Thus "the 'I' of 3:7 subtly prepares for the Adamic, confessing 'I' of Rom 7" (p. 201). Romans 6:12-19 also belongs to the context of the "I" in Romans 7; in chap. 4, therefore, T. scrutinizes Paul's argument about the believer's predicament between life in the mortal body and a new existence through participation in the life and resurrection of Christ. The fact that the new life of the believer does not translate into an intrinsic anthropological reality is also the subject of the central question of this book in its main section, which discusses the "I" and Adamic solidarity (Rom 7:7-13) and the "I" and the Christian existence (7:14–25). So in chap. 5, T. suggests that Paul employs a paradigmatic "I" to present his personal apology regarding the law, ultimately aiming at drawing the audience "into a recognition of their own Adamic solidarity" (p. 136). This means that, according to T., Paul does not assign the "I" to an imaginary interlocutor with whom he enters into dialogue for argumentative purposes, as argued by many scholars, but presents his own voice. In that case, the paragraph in 7:7-13 would feature no fictive use of the "I" and no diatribal exchange. Paul's next paragraph (7:14-25), discussed in chap. 6, goes on to describe the inner conflict of the "I," who remains under the power of sin as an anthropological condition despite having experienced salvation in Christ. Humans need the newness of the Spirit for fruitful service of God, but even the Spirit cannot change the fact that human bodies are weak and oriented toward death. Chapter 7 contains a summary of T.'s argument and shows how it corroborates Paul's vision of the Christian life. It covers the areas of life of faith, life of hope, and life of love. The book also features an appendix [End Page 559] illustrating the occurrences of first-person singular pronouns in Romans, an index of ancient sources, and an index of subjects and authors. Romans 7 and Christian Identity is to be commended for tackling the...

MLR, .,   right arm following an automobile accident outside of Billings. Aer two months in hospital and another half year before he was able to gain reasonable mobility in his writing arm, Hemingway slowly restarted work on Death in the Aernoon, travelling to Spain in  to continue writing and to gather photographs for the book—all the while relishing being there during the civil unrest leading to the downfall of the Spanish monarchy. As he regained his momentum, we see the word-driven Hemingway, willing to learn to write with his le hand if necessary, the writer dedicated to his cra and opposed to selling out his personal life to an increasingly inquisitive public and intrusive media. Earlier he had written: ‘My only pride is of a certain artistic and financial integrity—in all other ways in life I have made an ass of myself’ (p. ). Yet this volume also shows a Hemingway truly concerned about the lives of his friends, even absent ones such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, immersed in his wife’s mentalhealth crisis, and others going through rough patches. e author asks Waldo Pierce to help a mutual friend who is down-and-out in Paris: ‘See that Guy Fangel doesn’t starve or have to hit the Seine will you? [. . .]. Any money you can ever loan him tell me and I will repay you’ (p. ). Hemingway as the public figure with a feuding personality will emerge in the s, but at the turn of the decade his letters reveal a great deal of warmth, generosity, vitality, and simple humanity. Much of the credit for the success of the Hemingway Letters Project goes to the general editor, Sandra Spanier of Pennsylvania State University. She and Miriam B. Mandel have edited this volume along with associate editors J. Gerald Kennedy, Rena Sanderson, and Albert J. DeFazio III. eir work is impeccable, from the punctilious transcription rules to cross- and multiple-editing, scrupulously researched footnotes, and scholarly appurtenances including a roster of correspondents, a calendar of letters, an index of recipients, a meticulous and thorough general index, as well as seven maps and thirty-two illustrations. Scott Donaldson’s Introduction to Volume  demonstrates this eminent biographer’s critical insight and exhibits a mastery of style equal to his subject. L H U W B Ted Hughes in Context. Ed. by T G. (Literature in Context) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . xxvii+ pp. £. ISBN ––– –. How to present Ted Hughes in context? Like many of the major writers covered by the Literature in Context series, he produced work that was thematically, generically , and intertextually various. But his work is also exceptional in being the product of a total immersion in world literatures and cultures. In the popular imagination, Hughes is arguably most famous as the husband of Sylvia Plath, as the author of a handful of poems about animals, or (for younger readers) as the writer behind e Iron Man. In fact, Hughes’s contribution to twentieth-century culture is far more considerable and diverse. e work he produced over five decades amounts to much more than many writers are able to summon in their lifetime. In his Introduction to  Reviews Ted Hughes in Context, Terry Gifford writes that ‘No single scholar could know all that Hughes knew or even have read all that Hughes had read during his sixty-eight years’ (p. xv). e task of contextualizing him, then, is a somewhat daunting one. But Gifford himself, a leading authority on Hughes, is best placed to take on this task, and the contributions he has gathered do an excellent job of assembling a jigsaw of Hughesian contexts. Ted Hughes in Context represents a vital resource for two main reasons. e first is its usefulness: the volume comprises thirty-six short essays (generally around ten pages each in length), covering a wide range of topics and written with clarity by contributors including junior and senior scholars, archivists, and Hughes obsessives. Individual sections and chapters have been given plain, unfussy titles: ‘Literary Contexts’, ‘Biographical Contexts’, ‘Hughes and Religion’, ‘Hughes and War’. Students and scholars of Hughes’s work, therefore, now have an obvious first port of call, whether they require...

Genesis 9:18–29 is a story of Noah’s failure that culminates in his unjust curse of Canaan. This chapter develops this thesis by rejecting the presumption of Canaanite guilt, interpreting Noah’s curse in its literary context, emphasizing intertextuality, and remaining open to irony. Although the passage includes a great deal of ambiguity, the literary context suggests scrutinizing Noah’s actions in relation to Adam’s failure (rather than magnifying the gravity of Ham’s failure), questioning Noah’s knowledge as part of a theme in Genesis 1–11, and contrasting God’s response to wrongdoing to Noah’s response. In the end, Noah’s failure, including the curse, is an ironic recurrence of the Eden story that substantiates God’s claim about the wickedness of human hearts after the flood (Gen 8:21).

One of the most important theological concepts in the Old Testament is the concept of “the fear of God.” Leaders of various theological traditions in ancient Israel, such as wise men, priests and prophets taught and emphasized the God-fearing life to the people of Israel (Prov 1:7; Psa 31:19; Mal 3:16). The Hebrew verb ידא (yare’), which is the basic verb for the concept of the fear of God, contains diverse meanings according to the social and literary contexts in which the verb is used. However, Korean translations of this verb convey rather limited meanings by using mostly the words “fear” and “stand in awe.” The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to find out various meanings of ידא according to the social and literary contexts in which the verb is used. Secondly, it is to propose some of the basic principles with which one can translate the verb ידא in the Hebrew Old Testament into the Korean language. Finally, it is to propose a better Korean translation of arye ‶ for the specific verses in which the verb is used in the Old Testament. By accomplishing these purposes, the writer of this paper hopes to offer not only practical understandings of the concept of the fear of God for Korean Christians, but also better Korean Bible translations of the verb ידא. Some of the basic principles with which one can translate the verb ידא into the Korean language are as follows: 1) When the verb ידא is used in the context of God’s divine appearance or in the context of God’s judgment and wrath caused by people’s sin and rebellion, it can be translated as “fear.” 2) When the verb ידא is used in the context in which the object becomes people, it can be translated as “respect” or “honor.” 3) When the verb ידא is used in the normal context other than in principle 1), it can be translated as “stand in awe.” 4) When the verb ידא is used in the context of worship and sacrifices, it can be translated as “worship.” 5) When the verb ידא is used in relation to the words, commands, laws and statutes of God, it can be translated as “obey.” In the beginning section of this paper, the writer offers a diagram in which the different translations of the verb ידא between New Korean Revised Version and Revised New Korean Standard Version are shown. At the final section of the conclusion, the writer proposes a better translation of the verb ידא after a close study of the social and literary contexts of each verses in which the verb is used.

Paul’s body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12 in literary contextThe purpose of this article is to place and describe Paul’s use of the body metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12 in its literary context. By way of introduction, the importance of a proper understanding of Paul’s use of the body metaphor is indicated. The first part of the article deals with the origin and use of the body metaphor in ancient times, thereby establishing the literary context within which Paul used the metaphor. Greek, Roman and Jewish usage is described. In the second part of the article the focus moves to Paul’s use of the metaphor within its literary context. It is concluded that the body metaphor was well-known to Greek, Roman and Jewish readers, and was thus ideally suited to Paul’s unique communication of the relationship between Christ and his church.

Any lover of Gower should begin with a confession. Mine is that, no medievalist, I confess my not being competent to sub stantiate—from the larger linguistic and literary context—those verbal felicities which I believe that I apprehend in Gower. Saying this may be suicidal of me, but I prefer to think of it as a cry for help. The crucial question, at any rate, is no different for those who are indeed scholars of fourteenth—century poetry.

The subject of this article is the perception of creativity and personality of M. Gorky by A. Platonov. The methodological basis of the work is the motivic analysis of the texts of both authors, produced against the background of the study of the historical and literary context. The methodological basis of the work is the motivic analysis of the texts of both authors, carried out against the background of the study of the historical and literary context. The study is based on Platonov’s later articles “The First Date with A. M. Gorky” and “Pushkin and Gorky”, as well as his lyrical and philosophical poems in prose, created in the early 1920s. As analysis has shown, this corpus of early works clearly echoes Gorky’s early poem “The Man”. In it, the main motive, as in Platonov’s poems, is the motive of thought. However, creatively developing the main provisions of Gorky’s poem, Platonov does not blindly follow the unilinear logic of the pretext, but comprehends it in his characteristic manner of multi-vector movement of thought.

The article deals with Old Armenian despan 'messenger, envoy', its Old Georgian correspondence diaspani, their Iranian background and further loan correspondences in Syriac and Arabic. After showing the research history, a new modified Iranian etymology is proposed. Being ultimately based on Old Iranian *dvi-aspāna- 'having two horses', all the loans are shown to be taken over either from its well documented Parthian successor biaspān ( &gt; Syriac) or from its undocumented Middle Persian successor *diaspān ( &gt; Armenian, Georgian, and Arabic from Armenian). This implies a new reading of the Parthian form in its Parthian and Middle Persian literary contexts. In a further step the meanings of most of the records of the loans are investigated in their literary contexts by quoting and interpreting these contexts considering the social status of the messenger, the question whether horses are used by him, and whether he is remarkably fast on his way, as all these semantic aspects are involved in the etymology. Whereas the meanings 'messenger' or 'envoy with a high social status' are clearly dominating in the Parthian and Armenian records, the use of horses are mentioned only occasionally, and what is even less involved is fastness. In Old Georgian, however, the semantic range of the meanings is clearly wider. We also find the meanings 'messenger' or 'envoy with a high social status', but especially the usage of horses is more often expressed, leading to the finding that in some cases diaspani may simply designate the horse of the envoy and not the riding person, and in one case it even seems to designate the litter or the chariot in which the envoy is travelling. For this in Armenian the related loan despak is used, which is also known from Syriac and Talmudic Aramaic, but is not known from Georgian. There is only one Middle Iranian record that has survived, viz. Parthian biaspak in Middle Persian context. The Syriac loan stems from Parthian, whereas the Armenian and Aramaic records are based on the again undocumented Middle Persian *diaspak. Concerning the meaning, mainly the question is discussed whether a litter or a chariot is meant in the literary contexts, which are also given and interpreted. Finally, a similar New Persian form is added. Although it is already known from Firdausi's Šāhnāme, it nevertheless has to be considered a new creation in late Middle or early New Persian time, not going back to the aforementioned Middle or even Old Iranian forms.