Allusive Language Research Articles

Poetry and History

Poetry and History Adena Tanenbaum Susan L. Einbinder . Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002, x + 219 pp. For some time, scholars have recognized the singular value of seliḥot and kinot [penitential poems and laments] composed in the wake of various persecutions for investigating the circumstances of those persecutions. . . . It is a known fact that truly historical works do not abound in the Hebrew literature of the Middle Ages and that a special importance therefore attaches to those piyyutim [liturgical poems] that convey to us details of events and deeds. Even if we do not intend merely to amass general facts and numbers, it is precisely the smallest details that are incomparably important: a line is joined with a line, and from the totality emerges a living and colorful picture of the deed as it was. Of course, one must know how to read such laments, for the poets occasionally garbed their descriptions in obscure expressions, full of riddles, or alluded to an important fact only through the use of a fitting verse from Scripture.1 With these prefatory remarks to his 1939 publication of "Laments on Persecutions in the Land of Israel, Africa, Spain, Ashkenaz, and France," Ḥayyim Schirmann highlighted a central conundrum in the study of Hebrew martyrological poetry. Commemorating events that are often otherwise inadequately documented, these poems have been mined for historical information. But the historian in search of hard evidence disregards the unique literary features of these texts at his or her peril: the stylized and heavily allusive language of these poems defies a literalist reading and demands a sensitivity not only to its scriptural underpinnings, but also to associated exegetical traditions. Schirmann himself, though a champion and connoisseur of medieval Hebrew poetry as literature, was not immune to the pull of historical reconstruction: I believe that the time has come to pay special attention to this literature, which possesses such a strikingly Jewish character . . . to penetrate [End Page 386] the interior world of the poets and to describe their creations from a literary standpoint. . . . But on this occasion I do not intend to stray from the beaten path: I have gathered and selected seliḥot not for their literary value, but for the historical facts that they contain.2 Accordingly, he prefaced each of his texts—many published for the first time from manuscript sources—with a summary of the "facts" he had excavated. Thus, "Adabberah betsar ruḥi," a poem commemorating the persecution and martyrdom of the Jews of Mainz in 1096, yields the following sort of information: The assailants come from various towns in the vicinity, armed with swords and arrows; the Jews consecrate a fast, pray morning and evening in the synagogue, petitioning their Creator to save them from the danger. The foes gather near the gate of the bishop's house, to which most of the community has fled, but the Jews display courage, and even their small children respond with one voice, Shema' Yisra'el. Young men attempt to ward off the attackers, but the enemy has the upper hand, and the Jews cannot hold their own. Those remaining inside the house continue their fast and supplications and watch the murder of their brethren. Then begins the mass suicide and slaughter, in which parents sacrifice their own children before killing themselves. The corpses of the martyrs are left in the streets, even after thieves have stripped them of their clothes.3 Remarkably, Schirmann fashioned a continuous narrative on the basis of thirty-four verses of penitential poetry. In this particular instance, the events he sought to reconstruct were not unfamiliar: three medieval Hebrew prose chronicles recount the gruesome massacres and celebrate the heroic martyrdom of the Rhineland Jewish communities, which in 1096 fell victim to crusader mobs on their way to the Holy Land.4 Schirmann's chosen format did not allow him to elaborate on the significance of the poem's intertextually resonant language and imagery or its uniquely Ashkenazic martyrological ideals, all of which might have been discussed in relation to the other poetic eulogies from the periods of the First and Second [End Page 387] Crusades...

Hooking in harbours: Dioscurides XIII Gow-Page

Klaus Alpers has recently recovered from the obscurity of Byzantine lexica the fragments of what appears to be a novel dating from c. A.D. 100, and notable to us, as it was for the Byzantine excerptor, for the elegant verbal borrowings from ancient comedy, always a favourite source of good Attic Greek for the atticists of imperial times. One of these glosses gives occasion to look again at fishing metaphors for erotic business, a subject discussed often enough by scholars, but still perhaps capable of revealing new nuances. These hunting and fishing metaphors are used as one would expect in many non-amatory contexts, but in both love poetry and its allied genres they occur throughout antiquity in such quantity that the metaphorical complexity reaches into very allusive language. Long ago Preston had already pointed out that ‘Figures from hunting, fowling and fishing as parallel to the arts of the meretrix, are very frequent, and are developed at unusual length.’ There was undoubtedly a realistic side to all of this metaphorical hunting. ‘The lover is a fish to be baked, as long he has juice in him’, says the bawd at Plautus, Asinaria 177, and one needs little imagination to realize what plays can be made on such a theme, and indeed were made at all levels throughout antiquity.

JOHN STREATER AND THE GRAND POLITICK INFORMER

The soldier, publisher, and pamphleteer John Streater is a comparatively neglected political writer of the 1650s, who represents the turning of the dispersed Levellers to classical republicanism. In the 1650s he is seen as a brave and uncompromising voice of opposition. In the autumn of 1653 he was prosecuted by Cromwell for publishing a work entitled The grand politick informer. This article rediscovers this publication, identifies it as Streater's first newsbook, and explores its implications for Streater's career and canon. In 1654 Streater wrote two series of newsbooks which criticized the Protectorate in an oblique fashion. The grand politick informer, a work of unbridled ferocity, shows that Streater learned to tame his voice after his 1653 prosecution and imprisonment, and to couch his antagonism to the government in the language of classical allusion.

IN CELEBRATION OF ELOQUENCE Speaking for the Chief: Okyeame and the Politics of Akan Royal Oratory. By KWESI YANKAH. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Pp. 194. £32.50 (ISBN 0-253-36801-4); £14.99, paperback (ISBN 0-253-20946-3).

Anyone lucky enough to attend an Akan royal ritual is struck by the central role played by one or more, usually old, men who carry long staves with elaborate, often golden, finials. They, rather than the ruler, seem to do all the talking. The king's voice is often virtually a whisper (bokoo) and even when audible is intentionally rushed and even hesitant. People address the king through an individual okyeame just as the king speaks indirectly through an okyeame. They do not simply pass on messages; and this is very much more than oration through intermediaries. They speak eloquently; and the most revered akyeame use a striking poetic, allusive language of proverb and metaphor in which routine and contemporary discussion becomes universal and timeless.

The Origin of Ammianus

The only explicit indication in the text of Ammianus Marcellinus as to the historian's origin comes in the famous epilogue to the Res Gestae, that he had written ‘as once a soldier, and a Greek’ (‘ut miles quondam et Graecus’; 31.16.9), supported by various passages in which he refers to the Greek language as his own. The evidence that, through the length and breadth of the Greek-speaking world, we should look to Syrian Antioch for his place of origin, is provided by the orator of that city, Libanius, in a letter (Ep. 1063) written late in 392 ‘to Marcellinus’. The purpose of this article is to set out explicitly the arguments for the identification of Libanius' correspondent as Ammianus Marcellinus in the light of the recent challenges to the accepted view offered by G. W. Bowersock, C. W. Fornara, and T. D. Barnes. Since the discussion requires that the letter be considered in detail, it is given here, in Foerster's Teubner text followed by a translation of Libanius' often very allusive language

Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion

Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion

Coleridge, Wordsworth and the Language of Allusion

In this study of two creative minds, Lucy Newlyn offers a new version of the Coleridge-Wordsworth interaction during its most crucial years: 1797-1807. Rejecting all those accounts (including the poets' own) which have sought to construe difference as compatibility, Newlyn argues that it is only on the surface that each poet appears the other's ideal audience. Below the surface, there were radical differences, of a theoretical and imaginative kind, which led to misunderstanding. It is the central argument of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion that such 'misunderstanding' was creative and, for both poets, a means of self-definition. The key to this interpretation is in the poets' private language: they were not only 'men speaking to men', but poets speaking to poets, and it is in their use of literary allusion that their tacit opposition emerges. Indeed, by examining the range of strategies open to any writer using private allusion, Newlyn's study reveals this mode to be potentially the most aggressive of literary forms.

Romantic Relationships

Journal Article Romantic Relationships Get access Coleridge, Wordsworth and the Language of Allusion. BY LUCY NEWLYN. Oxford. £22.50.Coleridge's Imagination: Essays in memory of Pete Laver. EDITED BY RICHARD GRAVIL, LUCY NEWLYN and NICHOLAS ROE. Cambridge. £25.00.Coleridge and the Self: Romantic Egotism. BY STEPHEN BYGRAVE. Macmillan. £29.50. Ralph Pite Ralph Pite Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar English: Journal of the English Association, Volume 36, Issue 156, Autumn 1987, Pages 277–286, https://doi.org/10.1093/english/36.156.277 Published: 01 October 1987

Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion. Lucy Newlyn.

<i>Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion</i>. Lucy Newlyn.

Theocritean Criticism and the Interpretation of the Fourth Idyll

If the critical re-evaluation of classical authors in recent years has brought nothing else, it has given us a humbling awareness of how difficult it is to arrive at a fully satisfactory reading of ancient pastoral poetry. The poet of the Eclogues, seen less and less as merely a painter of dreamy landscapes or a contriver of political allegories, has emerged increasingly as a self-conscious artist whose conventional, but highly symbolic and allusive language embraces questions of man's relation to art and imagination, to passion and work, to the potential for order and violence in his own being. Is it valid to look at Theocritus in similar terms? Is there more in the Idylls than keenly etched portraits of shepherds among verdant hills singing of love in dulcet hexameters and in an atmosphere of easeful sensuousness? Or should we merely enjoy the surface felicities and depart sated and content, like Horace's well-fed guest? The rhythms and resonances of Theocritus will continue to give pleasure as long as Greek is read. Yet recent work in both ancient and later pastoral suggests that the Idylls will sustain and reward a critical reading which looks beneath this charming surface.

The Gospel of Philip and Clement of Alexandria

AbstractIt is the purpose* of this article to study in more detail than has been done the parallelism between saying 23 of the Gospel of Philip (Codex III Nag Hammadi, 104,26-105,19) and three passages from Clement of Alexandria's Pedagogue (1,38,1-3 ; 43,2-3 ; 2,19,3-20,1). This parallelism remained unnoticed in the two main existing commentaries on Ev.Phil., the one by R. M. Wilson (1962), and the other by J. E. Ménard (1967).1 We shall first deal at some length with Ev.Phil. 23, and pay special attention to what it has to say on the resurrection and the Eucharist, drawing parallels with other sayings of this Gospel, and also with the writings of theologians of the Great Church. We shall then turn to the relevant passages from Clement's Pedagogue, and try to take away some obstacles which have hindered the understanding of Clement's allusive language in these passages. Finally, we shall make some remarks on the "demarcation-lines" that are usually drawn between the various kinds of theology in the second and third century.

Metaphors and Allusive Language in Greek Lyric Poetry

Metaphors and Allusive Language in Greek Lyric Poetry