Canonical Works Research Articles

Edward Herbert’s A Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil, and Karl Ludwig, Elector of the Palatinate

ABSTRACT A hitherto unnoted manuscript of A Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil (Kassel 2° Ms. philos. 12) puts beyond doubt that it is a canonical work of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. The Dialogue offers the most radical presentation of Herbert’s thoughts on religious pluralism, and the emendations in the Kassel manuscript show the original composition was even bolder than that found in other manuscripts and finally published in 1768. The provenance of the manuscript is also significant: it survived in the collection of Karl Ludwig I, Elector Palatine (1617–80), grandson of King James I. He nearly certainly obtained the manuscript during his extended stay in England in the 1640s, and it reflects his relationship with Herbert and a wide range of major (and often radical) English thinkers of the 1640s. Finally, his policy of religious toleration during his direct rule of the Palatinate is consistent with Herbert’s ideas.

An Appalled Ghost Guiding Readers Across Semiotic Fault Lines: The Contribution of Literature to the Appreciation of Legal Change

Abstract What are the conditions for meaning-making in intertextuality? The article explores what the relational dynamics of (legal) transtextuality can reveal about the semiotic hierarchies that govern them. The interest in these relational dynamics goes beyond the specific relations between texts captured by the hypo-/hyper-text relation. Rather, it embraces the inner conditions of meaning-making in transtextuality across multiple texts. Shifts in the underlying semiotic hierarchies can be tracked within each (legal) field, but the article turns to literature to explore the potential of intertextuality in exposing the transformative dynamics of various legal fields underneath the shifting semiotic hierarchies. Legal studies have variously investigated these shifting semiotic hierarchies, often resorting to the spectrum imposition/prestige (Sacco 1991) the article thus looks into the intertextuality of a literary text and what it can contribute to the analysis, beyond the spectrum. Egypt in the 19th century witnessed major legal transformations (Fahmy 2018; Hilāl 2011; Peters 2020). Just as major, however, were the transformations in legal discourse to accommodate a new vocabulary of ‘modern’ law, often drawing from Islamic law (Parolin 2016). The dynamic relations between alternative legal discourses and their semiotic hierarchies almost imperceptibly transformed over the course of the century, but by the end of the century these hierarchies were nearly entirely redrawn, and Islamic legal discourse had to be characterised or adjectivised as ‘Islamic’ (Parolin 2015). The article thus considers one of the canonical works of late 19th century Egyptian literature, Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī’s What ʿĪsá bin Hishām Told Us (1898–1901). In it, the author describes with irony the shock and tribulations of the ghost of a mid-19th century personality in his encounter with late 19th century Egypt. Al-Muwayliḥī’s is however a brilliant fictional device to stage al-Muwayliḥī’s own shock and the shock of late 19th century Egyptians at the transformations of the country in a few decades. His humourous account precisely begins with changes in law and its enforcement agencies. Not only does legal discourse often capture the enormity of these legal transformations, but also how other elements of legal semiotics witness to far-reaching transformations that cause the ghost much tribulation, on top of the shock.

Reimagining the Classics: Feminist Perspectives on Canonical Texts

This paper explores feminist perspectives on canonical texts, reimagining classical literature through the lens of gender, power, and voice. “Canonical works have traditionally reflected patriarchal norms, often marginalizing or silencing female characters. Feminist literary criticism challenges these interpretations, offering new ways to understand these texts by reclaiming the voices of women and exposing the gendered structures embedded within them. Through the examination of key themes such as the male gaze, intersectionality, and the subversion of patriarchal norms, this paper seeks to demonstrate how feminist reinterpretations transform the reader's understanding of classical works. Case studies of iconic texts highlight how female characters are redefined, shifting from passive figures to empowered agents of change. The paper also considers the intersection of race, class, and gender in feminist critiques and how modern adaptations and retellings of canonical texts continue to challenge traditional narratives. By critically engaging with feminist theory and literature, this paper argues that these reimagined readings not only provide a more inclusive understanding of classical texts but also reveal their contemporary relevance in addressing issues of gender equality, empowerment, and social justice. This study contributes to feminist literary scholarship by deepening the dialogue between classical literature and feminist thought.

Frontoparietal network topology as a neural marker of musical perceptual abilities

Why are some individuals more musical than others? Neither cognitive testing nor classical localizationist neuroscience alone can provide a complete answer. Here, we test how the interplay of brain network organization and cognitive function delivers graded perceptual abilities in a distinctively human capacity. We analyze multimodal magnetic resonance imaging, cognitive, and behavioral data from 200+ participants, focusing on a canonical working memory network encompassing prefrontal and posterior parietal regions. Using graph theory, we examine structural and functional frontoparietal network organization in relation to assessments of musical aptitude and experience. Results reveal a positive correlation between perceptual abilities and the integration efficiency of key frontoparietal regions. The linkage between functional networks and musical abilities is mediated by working memory processes, whereas structural networks influence these abilities through sensory integration. Our work lays the foundation for future investigations into the neurobiological roots of individual differences in musicality.

Motherhood, Witchcraft, and the Refusal to Conform

Abstract: This essay reads an American literary history of motherhood, witchcraft, and resistant bodies through the lens of Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch (2021). Like Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons (2022), Nightbitch asks why mothers and other care workers might fantasize about escaping the social expectations placed upon mothers and maternal bodies. These novels, and the canonical works they point to, from "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" to Alice in Wonderland and The Marvelous Land of Oz , suggest that both Christian and capitalist systems identify mothers and care workers as witches because their labor in creating and maintaining bodies challenges a myth of dispassionate rationality.

Recovering the Written Traces of Hernando de Soto’s Voyage to La Florida

In 1539, Hernando de Soto arrived in Cuba expecting to colonize the North American territory for Spain within four years. Even though he did not leave a personal account, several survivors of this expedition wrote about this journey. In addition to the official accounts of Rodrigo Rangel and Luis Hernández de Biedma, there were other anonymous accounts told and penned by common men, which were later used in canonical works. This is the case of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s The Florida of the Inca (1605), which is based on a story that a Spanish cavalier related to the author, also corroborated by forgotten short accounts written by Juan Coles and Alonso de Carmona. Likewise, a Portuguese man, who accompanied de Soto, wrote Relaçam Verdadeira, published in 1557 in Portugal. Relaçam was translated into English in 1609 by the English writer Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616) under the title Virginia Richly Valued. This essay focuses on these collective testimonies, oral and written, that kept and shaped the story of failure in La Florida. I analyze how these intellectuals not only appropriated the previously dismissed memories of these common men, but also adapted them according to their imperialistic purposes.

Derroteros hipertextuales e intermediales entre el relato periodístico y la ficción cinematográfica: del crimen de Mazarrón a El extraño viaje

Journalism has always been a rich breeding ground for audiovisual stories, but throughout much of the history of Spanish cinema, recognition of the generic label that “based on real events” implies has not been common. Being aware of the difficulties that arise when approaching a canonical work of Spanish cinema such as El extraño viaje (Fernando Fernán-Gómez, 1964) from this perspective, the purpose of this research is to carry out a comparative study of the transfer that is produced from the narrative journalistic report of the Mazarrón crime (an event that occurred in January 1956) and the fictional account of its film adaptation. This comparative analysis assesses how this transfer occurs, what are the traces of the event from which it derives and what existing documentary references, if any, are recorded in the film credits. We will see how El extraño viaje stands as a paradigmatic example of invisibility and erasure of the factual criminal story from which it comes, forced, among other reasons, by some interferences of reality imposed by the Franco´s regime.

The dual nature of working memory deficits: methamphetamine abusers have more impaired social working memory capacity than canonical working memory capacity.

Social working memory (WM) temporarily retains and manipulates various aspects of social information. Extensive research has highlighted impaired social cognitive functions in individuals with substance addiction. However, the specific deficit in social WM within this population remains notably understudied. Bridging this gap, we investigated social WM capacity using biological motion (BM) stimuli in methamphetamine (MA) abusers compared to an inmate control group, alongside contrasting these findings with their canonical WM deficits. Across two studies, we recruited female MA abusers (N = 80) undergoing post-isolation rehabilitation within a mandatory confinement circumstance. To ensure a pertinent comparison, we recruited female inmates (N = 80) subjected to comparable confinement. Results show substantial BM WM impairment in MA abusers, yet non-BM WM remains mostly intact. These findings highlight a pronounced social WM deficit in MA abusers, surpassing their canonical WM deficit relative to inmate controls. This suggests a distinct dissociation between social and canonical WM processing.

Image of Women in Islam: Maqāsid Approach for Correct Interpretation

The current study attempted to outline the necessity of using the purposes method (al-manhaj al-maqāṣidi) to understand the correct meaning of Islamic religious texts, particularly those related to the image of women, by analysing a set of Prophetic Hadiths in the canonical works of al-Bukhari and Muslim. When the purposes method is not utilized, these texts are typically understood as hostile towards women, leading many to question their validity. The current study employed the analytical and critical methods derived from holistically viewing the religious texts. The study argued that the purposes method should be used by gathering all the texts relevant to a particular topic, deriving specific purposes from general ones, linking branch issues to their origins, and assessing other contextual and situational evidences to create a correct understanding of religious texts that avoids explanations and violates the general principles of Shariah. Moreover, the study also argued that the purposes methodology stands as a pivotal element in grasping the essence of an Islamic text, rooted in the overarching principles of the law, and is utilized to interpret and guide fragmented texts. It also serves as a subset of the principle of elucidating ambiguous issues and reverting the secondary matters to their original bases. Once validated, the objectives of the law serve as a benchmark for adjudicating any unresolved matter not explicitly addressed in the examination.

The Great Thoughts on Human Beings by Karl Marx

Marxist philosophy does not prioritize the question of human beings in connection to the theory of capital and surplus value, the materialist dialectic and the socio-economic formation, or the proletarian class and socialism. The primary objective of Marxism does not pertain to the inquiry into the nature of human beings. However, Marx's ideas regarding human beings, mostly introduced during his early years, remain significant enough to be included in the body of human thought as a considerable doctrine. They hold great importance in the field of human sciences and in the pursuit of human freedom. As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx's birth, we will examine and assess the significant ideas that Marx had about human beings that are relevant to the current era: 1) Human beings are inherently human entities; 2) The natural world represents the intangible manifestation of human beings; 3) Human beings are distinct individuals, encompassing their actions and material circumstances; 4) The fundamental nature of human beings is derived from the amalgamation of social interactions; 5) The unrestricted growth of each individual is a prerequisite for the unrestricted growth of all individuals. These concepts are actually of immense magnitude. Presently, these ideas continue to serve as the fundamental principles of numerous human disciplines. These beliefs serve as the foundational worldview and methodological principles for numerous social theories in reality. The presentation of Marx's ideas on human beings, as shown in several published works, frequently varies. In light of the aforementioned five primary components, our objective is to faithfully adhere to the canonical works of Marx, refraining from incorporating any further insights beyond his original statements. This approach aims to provide an accurate depiction of Marx's own perspective on the nature of humanity.

Rewriting the Narrative of Modernisms

Abstract: After Modernism is a collection of essays that in multiple ways intends to decentralize the concept of modernism. The volume includes analyses of art and literature as well as history and philosophy. Through close readings and viewings, the authors re-imagine and re-position how modernity is constructed and conceptualized, with the result that modernity must be understood as modernities , and modernism as modernisms . The titular concept of after is used as "both repetition and difference, both homage and critique," which means that canonical works, such as Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway are read with both love and scepticism, and placed next to analyses of works that has previously been ignored—mostly the work of female Black or indigenous artists. The result is a multifaceted and fragmented volume, where the format mirrors the central argument: that there can be no single modernism, placed in a single space or time, but always multiple and moving modernisms.

Ouch: Pain, Heard and Referred

The communication of pain has been figured, in both the canonical work of Elaine Scarry and in biomedical discourse, as bringing pain up from bodily depths to a surface where it is visibly manifest to others. This study of acute physical pain in three popular American narrative texts and their film adaptations suggests that the oculocentrism of such accounts has elided the significant role of sound, both verbal and nonverbal, in the expression and witnessing of physical pain. Instances of what was classified in the nineteenth century as sensation literature, these three texts produce direct sensory effects. Scott Smith’s The Ruins (2006) is a horror novel, William Goldman’s Marathon Man (1974) a thriller, and Aron Ralston’s Between a Rock and a Hard Place (2004) (film: 127 Hours) an adventure-survival memoir. Reading pain in each of three triple texts—book, film, and the screenplay transmitting pain from one to the other—opens up a new archive of pain texts that promise sensation rather than relief, offering a new perspective on the imaginative—and paradoxically ameliorative—creativity brought into being by the notorious recalcitrance of pain. This essay argues for attention to the protolinguistic pain language of groans and screams; for a poetics of “ouch.”

Redesigning the survey course: A focus on music, historically excluded identities, and the canon

AbstractSo‐called survey courses have been a persistent but contested genre in world languages, especially in regard to “the canon,” an unstable concept that has historically determined the textual choices of such surveys. This article presents a case study for redesigning the survey course genre in line with theory to diversify, decolonize, and decanonize the curriculum. It discusses a number of steps concerning the theoretical background, textual improvements, approaches to assignments, classroom atmosphere, and general pedagogy. It reflects on questions of positionality, institutional support, and workload. Focusing on music and short texts, the survey course described here questions the common practices and core values of German studies, music history, and musicology, and takes a critical stance toward privilege and power. In this context, the course counters tokenization, juxtaposes non‐canonical and canonical works, and focuses on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility work, as well as universal instructional design principles and social justice education. Thus, the survey becomes a new genre—one that still offers students the breadth of cultural production but relies on a particular set of prerequisites determined by factors such as the space, time, and accessibility of a course, as well as the identity markers of instructor and students.

Marvell as Miltonist

Marvell’s commendations of Milton prove him a perceptive critic of the Latin prose and the epic verse. Not merely summarizing the content or intoning conventional praise, he invents a structural or architectonic mode of reading, articulates a subjective and emotional reader-response, connects Milton and the sublime for the first time, and evokes ancient models particularly significant for Milton. The 1654 letter comparing Milton’s Defensio Secunda to Trajan’s Column, turning and simultaneously rising to a higher “Scale,” endorses Milton’s own claim that it is a canonical work of epic stature. Marvell’s architectural imagery, expanded from Milton’s own Areopagitica, applies also to Cromwell’s use of dissidents as cross-bracing, “Fastening the Contignation which they thwart.” The commendatory poem to the 1674 edition of Paradise Lost again incorporates what seems at first to “thwart” the whole project. Here the significant intertext is De Rerum Natura by the notorious “atheist” Lucretius – the “strong” but dangerous poet who had already done what Marvell fears Milton might do: “ruin the sacred Truths.” Lucretian allusion expands to define the emotional and aesthetic impact of Paradise Lost, anticipating the “terror without danger” at the core of Burke’s Sublime. (The key-word “sublime” becomes the end-rhyme of Marvell’s penultimate line.) Lucretius, awestruck by his philosophical mentor Epicurus ,is “seized by divina voluptas and horror”; Marvell, yielding to the contradictory “gravity and ease” of Milton’s poetry but also asserting his own aesthetic, exclaims that “at once delight and horror on us seize.”

The Séance of Reading: Uncanny Designs in Modernist Writing, Thomas J. Cousineau

‟The Séance of Reading: Uncanny Designs in Modernist Writing” (2023), a book arising out of Thomas J. Cousineau’s long and fruitful teaching experience and his extensive engagements in Romanian academia as a Fulbright scholar, entices readers to appreciate key canonical works spanning American and European literature through the lens of the Romanian ballad ‟The Legend of Master Manole” and Mircea Eliade’s view of mythical creation by sacrifice. The aesthetic myth of master-builder Manole lends magnitude and resonance to nine modernist texts set in harmonious juxtaposition for the purpose of revealing and restoring the sacrificed textual elements within. Most valuably, the author makes the reader register the intricate relationship between the sacrificed protagonist and the architectural body of the literary monuments discussed throughout his book, which successfully brings together different literary genres, capitalizing on the scenario of death and ontological rebirth.

To Know Every Part: Theorizing Craft Narratives Via Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone

Published nearly thirty years ago, Fae Myenne Ng’s debut novel, Bone, has become a canonical work of Asian American literature for its domestic portrayal of a multi-generational Chinese American family. This article demonstrates how fiction offers a means to theorize contemporary craft. As the daughter of a seamstress, Ng utilizes her own intimate knowledge of industrial and domestic sewing to develop the emotions and intergenerational memories of characters in the novel. In doing so, Bone locates crafting subjects, their work and the handmade objects themselves within a legacy of Chinese exclusion and the ongoing racialized and gendered labor exploitation of Chinese immigrants. In this context, the fictional narrative pushes craft theorists and practitioners alike to instigate essential questions about what registers as craft and the role of narrative in this process. In particular, I focus on a persistent binary of handmade and mass-produced that shapes many dominant narratives of craft. By attending to this binary, we may analyze how dominant narratives actively make use of and reconfigure social constructs like gender and race to elicit certain perceptions (wittingly or unwittingly) about craft, craftspeople, their labors, and the value placed upon them.

Un courant d’Est venu à l’Ouest via l’adaptateur scénique Virgil Tănase

The article An Eastern current coming to the West, through Virgil Tănase’s stage adaptations addresses the influences of two literary and theatrical cultures from the East (Romania and Russia) on the work of Virgil Tănase as a stage adapter in France. By scrutinizing the way in which the great Russian authors from the 19th century to the present day through the Soviet era establish themselves as a frame of reference for Tănase’s work as a stage adapter and by addressing the way in which this comes to fruition, within the stage adaptations created in France by the Franco-Romanian writer (often performed abroad too), a dreamlike aesthetic born in Romania in the 1960s, the study will show that Virgil Tănase, also known as a translator, managed to create a scenic poetics in which the words are at the service of the melody just as the scenography is at the service of the theatrical metaphor. By highlighting the ontological scope of the character and especially the actor, the stage adaptations developed by Tănase from canonical works of Eastern and Western literature finally converge towards a common goal, representative of his writer’s gesture: all aim to awaken in spectators their freedom to think and create, to revive each person’s faith in the fulfilment of their vocation, like the Proustian narrator of the novel In Search of Lost Time. Keywords: adaptation for stage, theatrical metaphor, aesthetic onirism, Eastern Block, translation, Virgil Tănase, Dostoïevski, Proust.

Trashing the Tables: The Critical Legal Studies Symposium of the Stanford Law Review, Then and Now

When the critical legal studies (CLS) movement emerged in the United States, many in the legal community were shocked by the movement’s radical calls to remake legal education. But the movement also presented bold criticisms of quantitative legal scholarship and calculation in law that have proven remarkably prophetic. This article resuscitates the CLS movement’s concerns over “scientific law” in one of the movement’s most canonical works: the Critical Legal Studies Symposium issue of the Stanford Law Review in 1984. Along the way, this article explores the scope and limits of CLS admonitions regarding quantitative research and legal problem solving for the present day.

Minor characters, genre, and relationality: Antigone’s sister in contemporary literature

This essay investigates the distinction between major and minor characters by analysing the contemporary literary reception of a minor figure from one of the most canonical works in world literature: Ismene, Antigone’s sister in Sophocles’s Antigone. While Sophocles’s tragedy continues to elicit a startling number of rewritings and adaptations, the last two decades have seen a remarkable increase in rewritings which bring the heroine’s sister Ismene, a minor character in the original play, to the forefront. This multilingual, multi-generic, world literary corpus engages with Ismene’s relationship to heroism and sacrifice, moving away from tragedy and instead turning to a variety of genres: monologues, short stories, non-tragic plays, comedies, as well as hybrid forms that incorporate intermedial references. While much has been written about postcolonial and feminist rewritings of canonical Western texts, very little has been said about the attachments which secondary figures might elicit in peripheral literatures and minor authors. This focus, as this essay will show, helps refine notions of agency, solidarity, and connectivity in theories of the minor. The analysis presented here underscores the aesthetic, generic, and political implications of the revisionary representation of minor figures by contrasting Jeremy Menekseoglu’s theatrical rewriting Ismene (US, 2004) and Lot Vekemans’s monologue Zus van (Sister of, The Netherlands, 2005) as two distinct modes of engaging with Ismene as a paradigmatic minor figure. Pursuing the genre-theoretical and political questions raised by what Jeremy Rosen has termed “minor-character elaborations”, this essay identifies the practice of rewriting as a key literary strategy to decentre the major position of certain figures and genres in world literature. In dialogue with Rosen’s theoretical work, I argue for an aesthetic, enunciative, stylistic understanding of genre, which is best able to raise both the question of the minor character and that of minor-character elaborations within debates surrounding the minor.

The Checkpoint of History: Testimony and Intertextuality in the Documentary Literature of the Korean War, 1960s–1970s

Abstract Korean War literature has historically encompassed a wide range of ideologically disparate texts. If canonical works of literary fiction have critically interrogated the violence of war and division, the civil war itself has continued to generate institutionalized cultural production purporting to document the crimes of the other side. Working against the categorical separation of these two traditions, this article explores their mutual and intertextual constitution. The sponsorship and commercialization of North Korean defector memoirs (kwisunja sugi) in 1960s South Korea, the article shows, influenced the development of two other popular genres of Korean War literature that alternately reinforced and undermined statist anticommunism. First, the novelist Yi Pyŏngju (1921–1992) employed kwisunja sugi as historical records in his works of the 1960s and 1970s, even as he demonstrated an awareness of the historicity and duplicity of Cold War testimony. Second, while autobiographical essays (ch’ehŏm sugi) submitted to the amateur nonfiction contest (1965–80) of the monthly Sin tonga mimicked kwisunja sugi, charting their authors’ immersion in and escape from the scene of communist violence, these texts also applied this structure to subaltern life in the militarized, capitalist South, reaffirming subversive understandings of the Korean Civil War as a reciprocal system.