Classical Poetry Research Articles

Ælfric, Alliterative Linking, and the Idea of a Vernacular Verse Line

This article examines AElfric of Eynsham's use of alliteration within verse pairings and, more significantly, across line divisions, illustrating his technique of extra-linear alliteration within verse runs. This study touches on the Anglo-Saxon listeners' or readers' expectations for alliterative completion within the classical Old English verse line in order to demonstrate the truly unpredictable and exciting alliterative structure of the AElfrician line and its neighboring verses, paying special attention to AElfric's later non-hagiographic works Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo and Hexameron .

ПОЭТИКА СМЫСЛОВОЙ НЕОПРЕДЕЛЕННОСТИ

This article represents an attempt of justification for a new theoretical issue in the literature - poetics of the semantic uncertainty.The author shows the beginnings of semantic uncertainty in Russian classic poetry - in lyrics of Pushkin and Tyutchev and demonstrates different types of such poetics. The semantic uncertainty transfers anxieties, perplexity, hesitations, doubts and the search for the meaning of life.

Kosztolányi Dezső Kína-képe

Hungarian poet and writer Dezső Kosztolányi edited and translated the first anthology of Chinese classical poetry in the 20th century, entitled Chinese and Japanese Poems, which was published at the end of 1931. But his interest in Chinese culture can be traced back to much earlier, to the first decade of the 20th century. This article takes into consideration all of Kosztolányi’s prose writings, articles and translations related to China, Chinese poetry and also the sources of his knowledge about China, published in Hungarian and in english, German and French, such as the books of H. A. Giles, arthur Waley, richard Wilhelms, Paul Claudel and others. The paper also analyzes the role of anthologies of Chinese poetry in foreign languages that Kosztolányi consulted for his translations into Hungarian. in his writings, he depicted a somewhat idealistic picture of Chinese culture, and in spite of some occasional errors, he was successful in describing some important characteristics of Chinese life of the past, and his writings and translations have had a great influence in Hungary.

Nineteenth-Century Verse and Technology: Machines of Meter by Jason David Hall

Reviewed by: Nineteenth-Century Verse and Technology: Machines of Meter by Jason David Hall Gregory Tate (bio) Jason David Hall, Nineteenth-Century Verse and Technology: Machines of Meter. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, 288 pp. $99.99 cloth, $79.99 ebook. In Nineteenth-Century Verse and Technology, Jason David Hall does something which is, as far as I am aware, unprecedented: he sets out a materialist history of meter in nineteenth-century Britain, a history in which (to paraphrase his description of Victorian views on metrical education) "the modes of producing and reproducing prosodic knowledge" are as important as, if not more important than, "the prosodic subject matter itself" (p. 63). Although this book wears its theoretical commitments lightly, Hall's argument is firmly grounded in cultural materialism, as he asks how the production, circulation, and consumption of meter was transformed by the economic, social, and intellectual conditions of the nineteenth century's "machine culture" (p. 255). Hall squares this theoretical stance with his book's historicist method by turning not to Marxist literary critics but to Marx himself: nineteenth-century understandings of meter, he argues, were shaped by experiences of alienation and estrangement similar to those that Marx identified as the defining characteristics of industrial modernity. This is an ambitious argument, and Hall bases it on a broad definition of "machine culture"; for his purposes, the word "machine" "describes a technology in the sense of a systematic form of knowledge" that "facilitates and determines forms of data management" (p. 5). The machines of meter discussed in this book range from educational methods and psychological theories to systems of metrical notation and laboratory instruments designed to measure the physiological processes involved in reciting poetry. To a greater or lesser extent, Hall contends, each of these technologies emphasized the materiality of meter while also mediating and inhibiting readers' access to the semantic and emotional content of verse. For the most part, both his argument and his method are persuasive. They are not seen to their best advantage, though, in the book's first chapter, which examines meter's connections to several different nineteenth-century technologies—the railways, telegraphy, agricultural threshing machines, and mechanisms designed to mimic human speech—that have little in common. The chapter does important work, in the context of the book as a whole, by introducing Coventry Patmore's "new prosody," the influential nineteenth-century theory of verse that defined meter as "an abstract system of spacing marked by an immaterial yet mentally perceived beat" (p. 7). Patmore's [End Page 499] prosody acts as a counterexample to the mechanistic modes of producing meter discussed in this book, demonstrating the tension between idealism and materialism that, according to Hall, characterized nineteenth-century debates about meter. The first chapter's fragmented structure, though, obscures this argument; the book might have been better served by an introductory chapter focusing exclusively on Pat-more, or on the surprising similarities between his prosody and railway technologies, both of which, Hall points out, depended on and promoted the abstract standardization of time. The book's remaining chapters are admirably cohesive, each examining a specific technology or machine of meter. The second chapter, "Meter Manufactories," compares two different models of education: the "monitorial" system, developed in the early nineteenth century with the aim of offering an elementary education to large numbers of working-class children; and the teaching of Latin and Greek scansion and composition in Britain's public schools. The two models, Hall argues, were not as dissimilar as they seemed, because an education in classical meter involved the same kind of rote learning that underpinned the monitorial system. Nineteenth-century educational reformers, critical of the unvarying and mechanistic methods used in the teaching of classical verse, identified "the public school as a prison-like mill" or a factory of meter, and the repetitive tasks of its pupils as "a counterpart to estranging wage-labor as conducted in the 'cash-nexus'" (pp. 91–92). Chapter 3 discusses a concrete manifestation of this unexpected link between classical prosody and mechanized industrial work: John Clark's Eureka, an apparatus exhibited in London in 1845, which, on the pull of a lever, automatically generated a line of...

“To Admire and Do Otherwise”: Hopkins’s Modified Translations of Shakespeare’s Casket Song

“To Admire and Do Otherwise”: Hopkins’s Modified Translations of Shakespeare’s Casket Song Elizabeth Howard (bio) Classical studies formed the core of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s curriculum at Oxford, and Hopkins and his peers spent a considerable amount of time translating from and composing in Greek and Latin. To demonstrate a command of verse for the Moderations examination in literae humaniores, for example, students translated English verse into Latin hexameters, elegiacs, and lyrics and into “Greek iambics, hexameters, comic verse, and anapests” (Ox. Ess., p. 76). Several graduates then went on to publish translations of Virgil or Livy, while those with particular skill navigating the classical languages displayed their knowledge by publishing English lyrics translated into Greek and Latin. The best of these also attempted to do so with Shakespearian verse.1 Hopkins himself was asked to translate “Sonnet 32” into Latin elegiacs for his Moderations examinations during the Michaelmas term of 1864 (PW, p. 467). Nevertheless, when Hopkins composed a string of translations of Shakespeare’s songs, including Greek and Latin variations of Portia’s “casket song” (“Tell me where is Fancy bred”) from The Merchant of Venice (3.2.63–72) two decades later in 1886, he was hardly completing an exam exercise. Although he was certainly grading plenty of classics exams at the time for the Royal University of Ireland, his own compositions display a facility with classical verse forms exceeding that of the pedagogical exercise.2 Not only did Hopkins use obscure and even inventive Latin and Attic forms, but he also significantly altered the forms of Shakespeare’s songs in more than one instance as he set them in the classical languages. Hopkins’s version of “Tell me where is Fancy bred” is a text in translation alive to the possibilities within Shakespearian verse for poetic play. Hopkins’s translations from English into Greek and Latin, therefore, serve as a sketch pad for some of his experiments in poetic form outside the confines of English prosody. Examining Hopkins’s adaptive translations as more than merely studies in metrics, this essay considers how Hopkins’s additional lines in his Latin verse underscore the ironic tragedy of love’s death [End Page 181] and how his Greek variant clarifies Shakespeare’s ambiguous voices in the song from The Merchant of Venice. In light of Annmarie Drury’s recent work on the relationship between Victorian poetic translation and experimentation, Hopkins’s texts prove an important case study. Rather than transferring an artistic artifact out of its native language and into English, Hopkins furthers the afterlife of Shakespearian songs by antiquating them.3 In so doing he gives attention to the intricacies of the narrative ambiguities within the songs themselves while bending English verse to classical forms.4 Hopkins’s Work in the Classics Even as an undergraduate, Hopkins showed more than an average proficiency in the classical languages. While at Balliol, he described to his mother his studies under many acclaimed classicists of the day. For example, in a letter dated April 1867, Hopkins complained about the two days of practice exams, set by his tutor Benjamin Jowett, that he found “most trying” (Corres., 1: 143).5 His efforts, at least for Jowett, were noticed; Hopkins’s first biographer, Gerald Lahey, S.J., describes Jowett’s referring to Hopkins as “the star of Balliol.”6 By the time he completed his degree in June 1867, Hopkins had achieved a “first” in Moderations and a “first” in literae humaniores in Greats. Hopkins’s knowledge of Greek and Latin made teaching an excellent possible career path. Despite his acute disappointment and exasperation with teaching students of various ages at the Oratory School in Birmingham, then in Roehampton and Stonyhurst, his name did come up for a double appointment in Dublin: as a classics professor at University College Dublin and a fellow of the Royal University of Ireland (RUI). While noting his “eccentricity,” both the English assistant to the Jesuits’ superior general and the English provincial of the Society of the Jesuits praised his “cleverness” and “training” in classics (DN, p. 233). Hopkins moved to Dublin in February 1884; he began examining for the RUI almost immediately, and he began...

A Preliminary Study on Chinese Poetries' Artistic Conception for Digital Visualization Application of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Although amount of digital archives on tangible cultural heritage has been built in past few years, intangible cultural heritage is still needed to be explored. To retain and propagate the cherished Chinese cultural heritage, such as classic poetry which reflect the life experience, characteristics of people, and features of the culture, is crucial to people of a nation. Cultural and creative design needs a variety of digital carriers to enhance industry production. New forms of visualized tools are more helpful for building an efficient product design model. Therefore, a new interpretation of the meaning of the intangible culture can discover the value and benefits of its industrial development. Literature review of this study focuses on the policies and trends of cultural and creative industries, the development of intangible cultural digital visualization applications, and product design models. Several research methods are applied to precede subsequent empirical research. Metaphor rhetoric textual analysis and Roland Barthes’ semiotics theory (two orders of signification) are used to analyze culture codes in order to transform as design elements. Empirical study on this digital visualized product design model takes Chinese poetry as an example. The cultural codes are extracted as artistic conception for 2-D visual digitization. Therefore, the purpose of this research project aims to construct a product design model in terms of the digital visualization on intangible cultural heritage. The exploration of intangible cultural codes is an innovative concept for designing the creative products. It can also integrate the digital technology with humanity over cultural product design, and provide a reference for the future development of cultural and creative industry.

The Life and the Classical Chinese Poetry World of Sonam(小南) Lee Il-woo(李一雨)

The Life and the Classical Chinese Poetry World of Sonam(小南) Lee Il-woo(李一雨)

Poetical Diction, Thinking, Reference value of Hanshi and Korean Classical Poetry Education

Poetical Diction, Thinking, Reference value of Hanshi and Korean Classical Poetry Education

A Study on Chinese Elementary School of Classical Poetry Education and its Relationship to the Chinese Language Education in Korea

The study aims to overcome the limitations of practical foreign language education and to seek various ways of teaching foreign language. So this study explored the possibility of Chinese language education system using chinese classical poems. Of course, several studies have already raised questions about the use of literary text in teaching foreign language, but most of them have been discussed in terms of Chinese cultural education. In the study explored how poetry was utilized in the Chinese elementary schools, and sought links to Korean language education. In Chinese elementary schools, it was found that the Chinese classical poem was being used not only for literary and artistic purposes but also for the purpose of language proficiency. In this regard, it confirmed that the Chinese classical poem can be used to improve Chinese language pronunciation education, Chinese language proficiency and mutual Chinese cultural understanding. It will not only make sense to realize the diversity of Chinese language education, but it will also serve as an opportunity to realize the realization of the importance of education in the foreign language education curriculum.

Pindar’s Dithyrambs and Their Hellenistic Reception

Abstract:The study explores Hellenistic readers’ reception of archaic and classical lyric poetry by using Pindar’s dithyrambs as a representative test case. The ‘horizons of expectations’ in the Hellenistic era, it is argued, were influenced not only by ancient lyric poetry

“Art is a Sincere Martyrdom”: Circumventing Censorship by Encryption in the Work of Alireza Espahbod

This paper focuses on various aspects of Alireza Espahbod’s style of painting that encrypt his work. The period considered is from the just after the Iranian revolution until the artist’s death in 2007: in these years censorship had become severe, resulting in banning prohibition on his work being exhibited. Apart from the striking symbols that recur throughout his work, it is noticeable that he favors certain visual metaphors for encryption of humanitarian and satirical meanings. The discussion also focuses on the ways in which sequences of his individual paintings create narratives, like scenes in a play or a film. Unlike some preceding modernists, Espahbod is firmly rooted in his Iranian cultural milieu, and is in a line of artists who have used surrealism, beginning with Sadegh Hedayat in the modern literary world. He also follows a much older tradition that goes back to classical poetry and miniature art, in which image and word coalesce and are interchangeable, and where literature and visual art reflect one another. He uses these older techniques to comment allusively on the dramatic events and conditions of his own time. It is argued that his work amounts to more than that of an artist who merely fought against censorship, as his art rises above it and responds to it with a positive message for his audience.

Thomas Hobbes u stihovima

Thomas Hobbes ostao je u povijesti filozofije zapamćen prvenstveno po svojoj osebujnoj teorijidržave izloženoj u njegovom kapitalnom djelu Levijatan. Manje je, međutim, poznato da jefilozof iz Malmesburyja bio zainteresiran i za književnost, da je izučavao klasičnu poeziju, ali dase i sam okušao u pisanju stihova. Cilj našega rada jest predstaviti upravo taj, malo poznati dionjegova opusa. Pritom najprije prikazujemo njegov rad na prijevodima klasične grčke literature,da bismo potom predstavili njegova originalna djela pisana stihovima. Koristeći povijesno–problemski pristup, i jednu i drugu vrstu radova osvjetljujemo iz konteksta njegova života iosobitih društvenih prilika vremena u kojem je živio i djelovao, ukazujući na vezu njegovihstihova s njegovom filozofskom mišlju, ondje gdje ta veza postoji. Analiza ovih radova, kao iokolnosti u kojima oni nastaju, upućuju na zaključak da njihov nastanak nije bio umjetničkimotiviran, već da je najčešće bio rezultat želje za usavršavanjem klasičnih jezika, kao i stvarrazonode.

Generating Poetry Title Based on Semantic Relevance with Convolutional Neural Network

Several approaches have been proposed to automatically generate Chinese classical poetry (CCP) in the past few years, but automatically generating the title of CCP is still a difficult problem. The difficulties are mainly reflected in two aspects. First, the words used in CCP are very different from modern Chinese words and there are no valid word segmentation tools. Second, the semantic relevance of characters in CCP not only exists in one sentence but also exists between the same positions of adjacent sentences, which is hard to grasp by the traditional text summarization models. In this paper, we propose an encoder-decoder model for generating the title of CCP. Our model encoder is a convolutional neural network (CNN) with two kinds of filters. To capture the commonly used words in one sentence, one kind of filters covers two characters horizontally at each step. The other covers two characters vertically at each step and can grasp the semantic relevance of characters between adjacent sentences. Experimental results show that our model is better than several other related models and can capture the semantic relevance of CCP more accurately.

Measuring and Mapping Intergeneric Allusion in Latin Poetry using Tesserae

Most intertextuality in classical poetry is unmarked, that is, it lacks objective signposts to make readers aware of the presence of references to existing texts. Intergeneric relationships can pose a particular problem as scholarship has long privileged intertextual relationships between works of the same genre. This paper treats the influence of Latin love elegy on Lucan’s epic poem, Bellum Civile, by looking at two features of unmarked intertextuality: frequency and distribution. I use the Tesserae project to generate a dataset of potential intertexts between Lucan’s epic and the elegies of Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid, which are then aggregrated and mapped in Lucan’s text. This study draws two conclusions: 1. measurement of intertextual frequency shows that the elegists contribute fewer intertexts than, for example, another epic poem (Virgil’s Aeneid), though far more than the scholarly record on elegiac influence in Lucan would suggest; and 2. mapping the distribution of intertexts confirms previous scholarship on the influence of elegy on the Bellum Civile by showing concentrations of matches, for example, in Pompey and Cornelia’s meeting before Pharsalus (5.722-815) or during the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra (10.53-106). By looking at both frequency and proportion, we can demonstrate systematically the generic enrichment of Lucan’s Bellum Civile with respect to Latin love elegy.

Convergence and Divergence between the Arabic ʿUdhrî (Chaste) Love and Platonic Love: A Comparative Study

The study explores the Udhrî ghazal as a classical literary phenomenon in the Arabic poetry; and it seeks to correlate it with Plato’s theories of love in The Symposium. The issues the study raises are: history of the Udhrî love, factors leading to its emergence, impact of Islam on the Udhrî poets, and stages of the Udhrî narrative based on classical Arabic poetry and prose. The study controverts the claims associating the Udhrî ghazal with Islam due to the profound discrepancies between Islamic teachings and the practices and behaviors of the Udhrî poets. It as well reviews the theories of love Plato introduces in the Symposium for the purpose of estimating their manifestations in classical Arabic prose and impact on the Udhrî ghazal. The beginnings of Udhrî love go back to the pre-Islamic era during which poets, such as Antara Al-Absi, frequently combined the motif of chaste love with other related topics in their poems. Yet, the Udhrî ghazal flourishes in the Umayyad age during which poets tackled Udhrî love as an autonomous motif and subgenre. The study further questions the various possible factors, i.e. political, religious, environmental and social, modernists believe have led to the evolution of the Udhrî ghazal in the Islamic age and the Umayyad age.

Fragments, remembrance, beauty: breathing life into T’ang poetry through educational drama

This article explores the possibility of introducing classical Chinese poetry to primary-aged children in China through educational drama. Today young people in China generally regard classical poetry as cultural relic which is remote and irrelevant to their lives. Referring to writings of Chia-ying Yeh and Stephen Owen, I argue that the essence of classical poetry study is to evoke the reader’s literary imagination and emotional response to the poetic discourse. Drawing from reception theory, I suggest that drama as a pedagogy can connect with the aesthetic discourses and to help children engage with the text. This article presents theoretical explanations and practical descriptions on how the drama approaches are designed to provide children with the contextual references that allow them to relate to the poem at their personal levels of experience; and to help them feel, in an embodied form, the beauty of poetic language.

TURGUT UYAR IN DÜNYANIN EN GÜZEL ARABİSTANI NI ÇEVRE EĞİTİMİ BAĞLAMINDA OKUMAK

Turgut Uyar has some peculiar characteristics among “Ikinci Yeniciler”. Being in a perpetual change and development during his poetry history, Uyar produces different works in terms of poetic, thematic and technique along with holding some symmetries among themselves. Being a soldier need a nown and at the same time spending a large portion of his life in different regions of Anatolia add richness of rural life, Anatolian realism and traditional folk poetry to his poems. On the other hand, urbanite and middle-class people’s bohemian lives and depressions in terms of accumulation of modern poetry after quitting public service and coming to Istanbul become a second medium of Uyar’s poetry. Also, considering that the poet who doesn’t ignore the classical poetry tradition has a Divan, it can be said that he fuels with all the sources composing the poetry accumulation in Turkey and benefits from both folk and Divan poetry and modern western poetry. However especially in terms of pedagogics, Turgut Uyar’s poetry is hardly used in education reasoning that his poetry is modern, confined, experimental, abstract and even meaningless like all Ikinci Yeni poetry. Yet, this kind of poetry can be significantly helpful for students to gain high level achievements. Thusly; Turgut Uyar being in the first place Ikinci Yeni poet can be taken advantage of in philosophical discussions to develop students’ conceptual skills and interpretation power, colourise their imaginations and enrich their vocabulary. In addition to all these, Dunyanin En Guzel Arabistani composed of poems that Turgut Uyar ground out in the first period of his arrival to the city is an important work embodying a thematic integrity in its entirety. Here, focusing on the existential problems of urbanites, the poet makes way to his new poetry with his work composed of thirty six poems. Narrating the tragedy a highbrow of petit bourgeois on the basis of his individual story, Uyar produces a work which includes both clues about social, economic, political and cultural changes that Turkey suffered in 1950s and constitutes an important milestone in his poetic adventure. For sure, he also gives utterance to environmental awareness through city-rural or artificiality- spontaneity contrast - artificiality, alienation and environmental pollution being in the first place- and writes poems including important data in terms of environmental education. It makes good sense to evaluate the poetry book named Dunyanin En Guzel Arabistani within the scope of environmental education

Study of educational way of classic poetry and songs in liberal arts class in university

이 연구는 2014년부터 필자의 문학관련 교양수업을 수강한 학생들과의 강의, 발표, 토론 등을 토대로 진행되었다. 고전의 의미는 그 자체로도 의미가 있지만 그것을 이해해 가는 교육의 과정이라고 생각한다. 우리의 교육현실은 ‘고전이니까 좋은 것이고 그러니 그냥 읽어라.’라고 말하는 경우가 많다. 각 대학들은 ‘필독서’를 만들고 학생들에게 읽기를 강요한다. 하지만 왜 고전이 되었고 왜 읽어야 하는지에 대한 해답은 가르쳐 주지 않는다. 물론 대학은 그 과정을 배우는 곳이기에 해답을 알려줄 필요는 없다. 하지만 왜 읽어야 하는지를 알려주면 좀 더 쉽게 고전에 접근할 가능성이 높다. 이 연구는 필자 스스로의 반성에 의해 시작되었고 연구가 계속 진행되는 과정 속에 처음으로 진행된 것이다. 그래서 미흡한 점도 많고 앞으로 해야 할 일도 많다. 이 연구를 시작으로 고전문학을 학생들에 좀 더 쉽고 재미있게 접근시키기 위해 좀 더 애정과 관심을 가지고 노력할 것이다. 최소한 필자에게 배운 학생들은 ‘고전문학’이 지루하고 재미없고 현대에는 필요가 없는 분야가 아니라 재미있고 보편적 정서를 담고 있으며 현대에 반드시 필요한 분야라고 말하는 날이 오기를 바란다. 시조는 그 시대의 가장 인기 있는 노래였다. 현재 아이돌 노래와 같다고 할 수 있는데 김상용의 ‘사랑 거짓말이’를 가곡창으로 들어보면 13분이라는 긴 시간 불리기에 3분이 넘지 않는 노래에 익숙한 현재 학생들에게는 지루하고 어렵고 재미없는 것이 당연하다. 하지만 영화 OST ‘사랑 거짓말이’는 현대 음악에 맞춰 편곡을 했기에 학생들이 거부감 없이 듣고 과거의 음악이 이렇게 훌륭한 음악으로 바뀔 수 있는 것에 놀라는 것을 직접 목격하였다. ‘사랑’이라는 보편성은 조선시대 ‘시조’나 현대 아이돌 ‘노래’나 그 방식의 차이가 있을 뿐 똑같다고 할 수 있다. 조선시대의 ‘시조’를 학생들에게 주입식으로 가르친다면 앞으로 ‘시조’는 시험에나 나오는 장르가 될 가능성이 높다. 이제라도 새로운 방식의 연구와 학생들 의견을 수렴해 현대적 변용이 잘 된 작품을 선별해 원작품과 현대변용작품을 비교하는 식으로 수업이 진행된다면 고전시가의 경우 학생들의 흥미를 유발하고 그 생명성을 연장할 수 있을 것이다.

Directions for Planning and Practice for Korean Classical Poetry as Popular Cultural Contents

Directions for Planning and Practice for Korean Classical Poetry as Popular Cultural Contents

The Kujujī Poets: Families, Poetry and Forms of Patronage in Azerbaijan and beyond (Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)

Abstract Tracing the extended Kujujī family unit, originally from Western Azerbaijan, through the fourteenth up to the seventeenth century, I am especially interested in the interplay between members of the Kujujī family, their professional background, and the poetry they composed. Poetry is interpreted as a mode of transmission, understanding panegyric and mystical forms of poetry as a means to shape and reinforce family identities in reciprocal relationships – in our case the relationship between the local Sufi-notable family network of the Kujujīs with the respective ruling families of the Jalayirids and Safavids. The article explores their poetry, the poets as actors of transmission and the links that are created between distant members of the “imagined” family of the Kujujīs as expressed in literary anthologies (taẕkiras). Moving beyond traditional perceptions of one-on-one, client-patron relations in the production of court poetry and emphasizing the role of families creates a long-term perspective and re-evaluates classical Persian poetry as intra-generational cultural bond.