Examples Of Poetry Research Articles

YAHYA b. HAKEM el-GAZÂL’IN ŞİİRLERİNDE İMGELEM

الملخّص تُعَدُّ قضية اللفظ والمعنى إحدى القضايا النّقديّة المهمّة في النّقد العربي القديم، إذ شغلت بال النّقاد زمنًا طويلًا، فمنهم من رأى أنّ المزيّة في الكلام عائدة إلى اللفظ، ومنهم من رأى أنّ المزيّة عائدة إلى المعنى، ومنهم من وجد أنّهما وجهان لعملة واحدة لا تنفصم عُراهما. وقد تفرّعت عن هذه القضيّة فنون بلاغية كثيرة، إذ لا يخلو فنّ بلاغي من النّظر إلى لفظه أو معناه أو لفظه ومعناه معًا، ومن أهم هذه الفنون فن تمثيل المعنى. وتمثيل المعنى يعني أن يُمثّل الأديب المعنى الذي يجول في خاطره في أقرب صورة محسوسة ليُوصِل المعنى إلى ذهن المتلقي ويجعله محسوسًا واقعيًّا أمامه، فيؤثّر فيه أبلغَ تأثير، ويبلغه الرسالة أشدَّ إبلاغ. ويسعى هذا البحث إلى عرض نماذج من شعر الشاعر الأندلسي يحيى بن حكم الغَزَال (156 - 250 هـ = 773 - 864 م)، تضمّنت هذا الفنّ من خلال أخذ نماذج من شعره ، وقد اشتهر شعره بالنقد الاجتماعي وامتاز بالنقد الاجتماعي الساخر، فاجتمع في شعره حسّ الدّعابة، وجمال التصوير، واللمحات الدّالة، واللُمَع الذّكية. وفي شعره مقطوعات وقصائد في الهجاء والغزل والمديح والوصف، لا يخلو أغلبها من النقد الاجتماعي الممزوج بالسّخرية تارة، والدّعابة تارة أخرى. ( [i] ) . ، وقد قسَّمنا هذه النماذج إلى نموذج النقد الاجتماعي، والنموذج الديني، والنموذج العاطفي، ونموذج الفلسفة الحياتية، ونموذج العلوم العقلية. بعد مقدمة تتحدث عن قضية اللفظ والمعنى، ثم الانتقال إلى الحديث عن التمثيل لغة واصطلاحًا، والتفريق بين التمثيل والتشبيه والمَثَل، ثم عرض نبذة موجزة عن حياة الشاعر، والانتقال إلى نماذج من شعره ورد فيها فنّ التمثيل، والتعليق عليها وبيان غاية التمثيل في كلّ منها، واختتام البحث بأبرز النتائج التي سعى البحث إلى إبرازها، من مثل: غاية التمثيل، وافتراقه عن التشبيه في التأوّل والخصوص ( [i] )- يُنظر: ابن دحية الكلبي (ت 633هـ): المطرب من أشعار أهل المغرب، تحقيق: إبراهيم الأبياري، وحامد عبد المجيد، وأحمد أحمد بدوي، راجعه: الدكتور طه حسين، دار العلم للجميع للطباعة والنشر والتوزيع، بيروت – لبنان، 1374 هـ - 1955م، ص133-150. وأبو الحسن المغربي (ت 685هـ): المغرب في حلى المغرب، تحقيق: شوقي ضيف، دار المعارف- القاهرة، ط3، 1955م، 2/57-58. وديوان يحيى بن حكم الغزال: جمع وشرح وتحقيق: محمد رضوان الداية، دار الفكر المعاصر، بيروت- لبنان، دار الفكر، دمشق- سورية، ط1، 1993م، مقدمة المحقق ص6-24. و الأعلام ، 8/143.

KLASİK FARS VE TÜRK ŞİİRİNDE ŞAHNÂME KARAKTERLERİ

Firdevsî’nin büyük eseri Şahnâme içerdiği bilgiler bakımından gerek tarih alanında gerekse edebiyat alanında araştırmacıların dikkatini çekmiş ve üzerinde birçok çalışma yapılmasına olanak sağlamıştır. Şahnâme hem Fars edebiyatında hem de Türk edebiyatında büyük ilgi görmüştür. Klasik Fars edebiyatında ve Klasik Türk edebiyatında Şahnâme’den esinlenerek eserler yazılmıştır. Kimi zamanda şairler şiirlerini yazarken Şahnâme’den faydalanmış ve Şahnâme’de geçen karakterleri edebi sanatlar bünyesinde kullanmışlardır. Şairler bazen memduhları için yazdığı kasidelerde memduhu yüceltmek için Şahnâme’de geçen büyük ve güçlü bir kahramana benzetmiştir. Klasik Fars ve Türk şiirinde şairler kimi zaman da memduhun düşmanını Şahnâme’de yer alan zalim bir karaktere benzetmişlerdir. Çalışmamızda hem Klasik Fars edebiyatında hem de Klasik Türk edebiyatında çoğunlukla kasidelerde yüzlerce örneği olan Şahnâme karakterlerine yer verilen bu tarz kullanımlardan ziyade her iki edebiyatta da gazellerde geçen farklı kullanımlar tespit edilerek beyit örnekleriyle dikkatlere sunulmuştur. Konunun genişliği göz önünde bulundurulduğundan her iki edebiyatta da örneği bulunan karakterlere yer verilmeye özen gösterilmiştir. Söz konusu örneklerle ilgili olarak her iki edebiyatta da beyitler dikkatle seçilmiş; Farsça beyitler Türkçeye çevrilmiş; beyitlerde geçen kahramanlarla ilgili bilgiler verildikten sonra gerekli açıklamalar düşülmüştür.

RECEPTION OF THE BOOK OF PSALMS IN M. OPITZ’S POETRY (THE PROBLEM OF BIBLICAL ARCHETEXTUALITY)

The problem of relationship between fiction and «axial» archetext of Christian culture and European literature, the Bible, is an important problem of contemporary literature. The Bible is not only a religious text, but also a literaty one. It includes outstanding examples of poetry and The Book of Psalms that is an anthology of ancient Hebrew religious and philosophical poetry clearly representing a dialogue between I and the Eternal Thou (in M. Buber’s terminology). The significance of the Bible has an especially high level for the development of German religious and philosophical poetry. In the article the author studies an archetextual role of The Book of Psalms in Martin Opitz’s (1597–1639) poetry using cultural and historical, comparative, hermeneutic methods and a method of textual holistic analysis. M. Opitz is the first of German poets, who turns to the genres of paraphrase of Psalm and spiritual song. M. Opitz starts with penitential Psalms for paraphrasing. He makes the concept of guilt and confession deeper and considers it a means of withdrawal from the spiritual crisis and prevention of a national tragedy. Following the logic and structure of Psalms, which also play the role of architexts, the German poet explains and complements them, correlates them with his time, going after the moral and didactical purpose above all. Futhermore, he is the first to use consistent accentualsyllabic verse introduced by him and song structures so that his paraphrases are remembered by people. Spiritual songs which contain numerous allusions on Psalms are characterized by shorter metre and simpler syntax. While the poetics of baroque prevails in the paraphrases of Psalms, the tendencies of classicism are more expressive in the spiritual songs. Paraphrases of Psalms and spiritual songs by M. Opitz connect personal and national ground, expression of suffering and hope for transformation of life during hard times for Germany viz. the epoch of Thirty Years’ Wars.

Shifting from STEM to STEAM - Reflecting on Academic Identity and Scholarship

This paper offers some backgrounding on the sometimes vexed area of ‘academic identities’ through descriptions and reflections of select moments in my career where my scholarly work was informed by my home discipline of Biology and extended into other discipline spaces, specifically the Arts. I offer examples of my work where the “A” in STEAM is evident including examples of poetry and visual art projects that have allowed for the communication of ideas without the constraints of scientific prose. I reflect on the importance (to me) of working across disciplines as fields of practice and of connecting with others like me within science (including students), and across and outside of science and so offering validation. These Science-Art moments have given me permission to be myself, to exhale.

Literary Heredity and Variation in Selected Facebook Poems of Veralyn Chinenye And Her Collaborative Authors

Facebook has become one of the mediums of creativity and criticism of works of art as a result of the nature of its blended writing. At the “completion” of a composition, Facebook poems maintain a certain degree of the static form, which is a characteristic of print literature. Facebook poetry coalesces the oral and print into a “new” form of poetry and extends the boundaries of oral and print literature. Using Bolter and Grusin concept of Remediation as a theoretical framework, this paper examines literary heredity and variation in selected Facebook poems of Veralyn Chinenye and her collaborative authors and participants. The paper further examines the characteristics and criticism of Facebook poetry and explicates the functionality of “Emoji”, “Comments”, “Share”, and intertextuality in the on-going creation and criticism of Facebook poetry that is different from the conventional perception and practice of literary creativity and criticism. Through the examples of poetry analysed in this paper, our findings show that digital literature is, to an extent, fluid and shares identical characteristics with oral literature in terms of artist and audience participation, occasion of performance

Reclaiming Their Youth

Reclaiming Their Youth Rosalie Calabrese (bio) Promise Sally Van Doren Louisiana State University Press www.lsupress.org/books/detail/promise 77 Pages; Print, $18.95 In Promise: Poems, Sally Van Doren's wittily biting, sometimes enigmatic, always intriguing third book of poems, she grapples with love and loss, promises remembered, and life's promise yet to be fulfilled. At one point I could almost hear Joni Mitchell singing "Both Sides Now." Simply labeled Parts 1, 2, and 3, these "chapters" provide an example of poetry as memoir, seen through a shattered mirror. Immediately following the book's dedication—"For Bert / Who kept time with his tail"—the poem "Or" introduces the process of renewal, beginning with "Every morning I let it all go / then it starts coming back," and ending with "and then I forget, and then I notice / that almost all the leaves are off the trees / and on the ground, save my three magnolias." There's a lot of anger, sadness, and regret in Part 1. In "Divided," for example, the speaker says, "I washed my heart and pinned it / on the clothesline in the basement." At certain times I was sure that the poems in this collection were about the dissolution of a marriage. At other times I wondered if it's about dealing with her husband's death. Either way, the loss can be unbearable. Reminiscent of a novel in which a marriage is pretty well done for, sex and sexuality are prevalent in many of these poems. Taken together, the message is quite clear: As stated in "Climbing Out of the Marvelous," "…We live / for sex or did you know that already?" But then, in "Me, Myself and I," she asks and responds, "Why did we need him to monitor / our atomic mons? We re- / newed ourselves without him." Lovely lines are found in unexpected places. In "Cahokia," for instance, "it's a muddy morning and the muck / sticks to our shoes…" is followed shortly by "our dreams climbing / up on the backs of the raindrops." "Expecting Modification" is the lead-in to a group of poems describing the aftermath of what I can only assume is the poet's divorce proceedings. The word "arraignment" in "Bradford Road, around the Back" and the ensuing reference to a court case is nicely juxtaposed with the couple, out on their back deck and entertained by the birds and the bees, becoming "accessories to sex on the picnic table." There is dark humor as well as raw anger in "For Love to Continue" and the poems that follow —poems about making and having babies. At the beginning of "Bound," which might easily be about an in-vitro pregnancy and birth, is one head-spinning group of lines: Whoever impeached my son, whoeverpunched my son, whoever collapsedon my son, breaking the brittlecartoon appliquéd to our front door—I forgive you. Your rash wheezing though,is no substitute for doing the breakfast dishes. "Reconciliation" cleverly attempts to describe a relationship that leaves the reader not so sure of its success. The poem's last stanza reads, "utilities go unpaid and / the furtive banker seeks / refuge in his calculator. / Time to settle the debt." This is borne out in the next poem, "At Least We're Over," which ends with "Such drama over / silver polish. Have / our grandmother's / eating utensils become / the instruments of our / last meal at her table?" For me, the cleverness in "Color Theory" is not the use of colors for description but the imagery that occurs in the second stanza: "We turned on the flashlight / last night and saw a legless curtain / scurry over a dilated eye." It's moments like these that make Promises a pleasure to read. "Pit Stop" combines fancy with fact: "I would pack clouds / in my briefcase;" "I forgot my landing gear;" "I developed a fear of telling stories / I could not finish." This is only one of several poems in Promises which include references to flying, fear, and the fear of flying. How could I not think of [End Page 23] Erica Jong's iconic novel and both women's desire to soar into the...

Significance of phonology in Al-Raienee: دلالة علم الصوت عند الرعيني

In the name of God, the most gracious the most merciful, and peace be upon his noble messenger, his good family, companions and followers to the Day of Judgment. This research highlights the personality of the great scholar Imam Al Rucayni, who was sailing in a world of the worlds of language by identifying us his personality. The problem for this study lies in the absence of many researchers capable of differentiating between the letters ḍād and ẓā’, and also between other confusing letters, and in the explanation of confusion of many researchers of Arabic in that respect. The objective of this study of the manuscript departs from the separation between the letters ẓa and ḍād because the beauty of speech rests in its eloquence. Through the publication and recension of the book it is possible to know the methodology of Rucayni as a respectable linguistic personality. The author is not only restricted to phonetic aspect and the points of the two letters but he also mentioned several linguistic aspects in grammar, morphology and linguistic. As for the evidence, he takes Qur’anic verses and Hadith to show his religious tendency, and by relying on the opinions of linguists and some examples of poetry to support his proposition of different topics on linguistics. At the end of the manuscript he mentioned general rules in differentiating between the letters ẓa and ḍād. This study assumes descriptive methodology that relies on linguistic and historical recension for the author’s writing where this author of the manuscript introduced words containing the letter ẓa in poetry so as to help the audience understand the words and memorise the poetic verses. This study arrives at some conclusions the most important of which are Arabic language is distinguished with the letter ḍād, and also with the number of the words containing the letters ẓa and ḍād, and the words with both letters. This study points to the need for researchers interested in Arabic to know the difference between the two letters and to do a constant exercise to know the difference between the two letters and to memorise the related words.

The ‘punches behind the punch’: poetry as Victim Impact Statement

Recent years have seen developments in the affective function and textual form of Victim Impact Statements (VIS). First introduced in South Australia with the legislative institution of a new Act – the Criminal Law (sentencing) bill – taking effect in January 1989, VIS have since been adopted by almost every Australian state and territory as material tendered before the court by prosecutors for the purposes of informing the judge of the degree and extent of any loss or damage to property or any physical or mental harm, suffered by a victim as a result of a crime. In this paper, I explore the creative form VISs can take by looking specifically at examples of poetry as VIS. Presenting victims’ accounts of emotional and physical suffering using the form of poetry tracks affective shifts in the cultural expression of emotion and the political forums in which such expressions emerge publicly. From the perspective of humanism, I argue the poetry found in VISs present dual functions, both affective and rational.

Любовная лирика Геворка Эмина в переводах Веры Звягинцевой

The peculiarities of the translations from the love poetry of the Armenian poet G. Emin made by V. Zvyagintseva are considered. It is noted that G. Emin is one of the brightest and most distinctive poets of Armenian literature of the 20 th century, whose poetry reflected the poet’s deep philosophical thinking. It is shown that with the end of the first half of the 20 th century the poetry by G. Emin attracted the attention of such famous Russian poets-translators as V. Zvyagintseva, I. Snegova, E. M. Dudin, D. Samoilov, Yu. Levitansky, L. Ozerov and others. It is noted that the lyrics by Gevorg Emin was translated by whole cycles. It is argued that the richness of the inner world of Emin, the stylistic features of his love lyrics are vividly transmitted in the translations of Vera Zvyagintseva, which are included in almost all collections of the poet. The analysis of translations from the love poetry of the Armenian poet by Zvyagintseva is presented. The author comes to the conclusion that these translations are great examples of poetry, made at the highest professional level; they convey the meaning and the stylistic richness of the original as close as possible; they are made in accordance with the requirements of the theory of art translation, which allowed Zvyagintseva to recreate the Armenian poet’s originality of creativity.

A Review of Shahriar's Persian Divan Words

The main objective of this study is to review the vocabulary reservoir of Shahriar's Divan linguistically. He has spent a lot of time on creating literary style. His works still maintain its artistic effects. His literary speech still interests every reader to be curious about the history of the evolution of literary form of Persian language. As this is the first study that has been done in the field of the vocabulary reservoir of Shahriar's Persian Divan, Persian Philology categories have been fully presented, the verbal and semantic characteristics of Persian vocabulary reservoir are reflected. Throughout the divan, synonyms have a distinctive feature. Other categories of words such as antonyms, kinds of figures of speech, allusions, simile, metaphor, bilingualism are of important subjects. Selection of the appropriate rhymes is evident in Divan. Shahriar's Divan has also been reviewed linguistically by studying its meaningful examples of poetry. In this study, the volumes published in 2006 have been used. Selecting proper rhymes is evident in Divan. Using antonyms creates various positions and occasions in stylistics.

The Violations of Empathy

This article questions the assumption that empathy is a positive, politically beneficial emotion through two examples of poetry about deaths with sensitive political dimensions. I begin by returning to the origins of ‘empathy’ in English, as written about by Vernon Lee in the earlytwentieth-century, to show how far the word has drifted from Lee’s sense of it as an embodied aesthetic response to an artwork. Rob Halpern’s book of poems Common Room refuses imaginative empathy with its subject, a dead Guantanamo Bay detainee, and yet, I show, surprisingly aligns with Lee’s sense of empathy through the author’s erotic and imaginative response to the man’s autopsy report. What results in this revivification of Lee’s empathy is a violation of the religious beliefs of the detainee. In contrast, Andrea Brady’s poem ‘Song for Florida 2’ takes up a more contemporary sense of empathy in its focus upon the killing of the unarmed teen Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012. Brady’s poem presents several possibilities for empathising with Martin’s mother - by imagining being her, or imagining similarly losing a son - but eventually draws back from this as a limit. Empathy here risks erasing the specificity of the racialized context which led to Martin’s unjust death. The white poet’s son cannot ‘replace’, even imaginatively, the black mother’s son without effacing the difference which saw Martin targeted in the first place. Brady’s poem, I argue, marks how empathy can violate through supplanting the grief and political context for that grief of the person to whom empathy is extended. What is needed instead of empathy is a commitment to political change.

Consorts of the Caliphs: Women and the Court of Baghdad By Ibn al-Sāʿī, edited by Shawkat M. Toorawa, translated by the Editors of the Library of Arabic Literature; introduced by Julia Bray, foreword by Marina Warner

This is a meticulously edited translation of a thirteenth-century work by Ibn al-Sāʿī, librarian and chronicler of ʿAbbasid society. It is a collaborative effort, involving many layers of consultation, following the principles outlined by Shawkat M. Toorawa in his preface and in his ‘Note on the Translation’. It is an excellent example of what can be achieved by collaboration rather than by one individual scholar working on his or her own. The book contains an Arabic text with the English translation on the facing page. With this layout non-Arabic speakers can enjoy the stories, while Arabic speakers can easily judge the translation. Each entry consists of an anecdote about or a description of a woman who was important at the court in Baghdad, from the golden age of Hārūn al-Rashīd to Ibn al-Sāʿī’s own time and the rule of the last ʿAbbasid Caliph, al-Mustaʿṣim. Women of the earlier period are usually cultured and refined poets, who are also slaves, and the anecdotes often relate how the women bested various male poets in capping lines of poetry, thereby winning favour. The later women are more often praised for their pious deeds, for building bridges and libraries, and for their charitable gifts. Dipping into these disconnected, short anecdotes—some are just a brief paragraph, others last several pages and contain many examples of poetry—the reader is immersed in an unfamiliar world in which beautiful, witty and talented slaves are bought and sold and yet are highly esteemed, often with slaves and a retinue of their own.

The importance of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy for an enlisted aviator in the USAF (2000–2004) flying in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom

This special issue of Journal of Poetry Therapy focuses on the use of poetry and other forms of expressive writing to explore the transformative experiences of military veterans, and so in this article I discuss how the use of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy positively influenced my life while I was serving in the United States Air Force (USAF) from 2000 through 2004. This article briefly reviews my reasons for enlisting and discusses the importance that poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy had for me during four different phases of my military history: (i) Basic Military Training, (ii) Aircraft Qualification, Combat Survival, and Water Survival Training, (iii) serving in the post 9/11 operations Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and (iv) the period after fulfilling my time of service for the USAF. In discussing each phase, I explain the unique challenges that I encountered, how I used poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy to successfully overcome these challenges, point out relevant examples of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy that were particularly influential, and include pictures of my experiences throughout.

Through the looking glass of history: mathematicians in the land of poetry

Motivated by a comment made by mathematician and poet Cai Tianxin, we delved into the history of mathematics in search of creative mathematicians who were also poets. This article is the result of our investigation. It provides a substantial list of mathematicians who wrote poetry, from antiquity to the middle of the twentieth century, along with brief descriptions of their mathematical and poetic accomplishments, and resources for further information. The survey is followed by several examples of poetry written by mathematicians. In the second section of the article, we touch lightly on the similarities and differences between creativity in mathematics and poetry.

Complexities of Cognition in Poetic Art: Matthew Arnold's 'The Last Word'

As researchers in cognitive studies increasingly turn toward the fine arts and literature as a means of exploring the cognitive complexities of human thought, questions arise as to what exactly cognitive science can offer literary expertise, and how literary expertise might illuminate the workings of the human mind. Much theoretical and methodological work has already been accomplished in addressing these questions, and it is not my intention in this essay to cover the same ground. Rather, by looking at one example of poetry, Matthew Arnold's The Last Word, I aim to show the importance of understanding the cognitive complexities of poetic art for exploring both the nature of human minding and the nature of poetic expression.

The Example of Poetry

That literary scholarship is experiencing an "ethical turn" has become something of a commonplace, and seminal to this "turn" is the use of literary works as examples in moral-philosophical arguments. So far, however, ethical criticism has dealt almost exclusively with narrative texts—little work has been done on poetry. I argue that considering poetry in this context not only expands the corpus of exemplary works but also reveals methodological caveats applicable to ethical critics of poetry and fiction alike. Poetic examples raise new doubts about the moral authority of literature—doubts elided in the narrative-based discussions that currently prevail.

„Ach, hätte Gott dies alles noch erleben dürfen …“ Praktische Theologie, Ironie und Poesie

Abstract Oh, if only GodWould Have Been Allowed to Experience this .: Practical Theology, Irony and Poetry. Starting from an example of poetry, a critique of the religious activities in Lourdes, the author sets out to show that also practical theology is part of an endeavour to make the church business flourish (poiesis). However, it also can - like poetry - be involved in the task of speaking with irony, trying out variations and not simply heralding the supposed return of religion. The God-is-dead-theology is a reminder of this. An example from system Christian counseling shows how something like slam poetry can also be an element of Christian practice itself. Poiesis and irony both depend on each other.

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold Clinton Machann (bio) Over the past two years I have reported on recent articles by James Walter Caufield in which he discusses Arnold’s “touchstone method”— whereby intuition and concrete examples of poetry are more important than theoretical abstractions—and analyzes hostile critical assessments of Arnold’s “anti-systematic empiricism.” Now Caufield has published a monograph in which he deals with these and other aspects of Arnold’s critical reputation. As I keep reminding readers of this annual essay, scholarly monographs on Matthew Arnold have not been numerous in recent years, though Arnold is still generally considered to be an eminent poet and the preeminent critic of the British Victorian period. In Overcoming Matthew Arnold: Ethics in Culture and Criticism (Ashgate, 2012), Caufield opens the way for a re-examination of Arnold’s contributions to literary criticism, and in the process he deals with the crucial issue of Arnold’s development from poet to critic. His survey of misunderstandings and “caricatures” of Arnold emphasizes the past three decades in which his reputation has declined and prepares the way for a new method of interpreting Arnold’s work, but he traces the dominant views of Arnold among his contemporary Victorians and then interwar critics such as T. S. Eliot, before moving forward to the critics associated with the British New Left, and, finally, more recent theorists associated with postcolonialism and cultural studies. Caufield’s emphasis on the philosophy of pessimism and the key concepts of “conduct” and “renouncement” in Arnold’s work helps the reader to better understand important issues related to intuition, [End Page 324] subjectivity, “human nature,” and moral judgment, and he expresses a new appreciation for Arnold’s religious essays, largely ignored by critics today. Caufield’s coverage of recent “caricatures” of Arnold —especially in Chapter 2, “The Buried Life: Cultural Politics and the Renunciation of Arnold,” and Chapter 4, “Culture Hates Hatred: Critical Anti-Humanism and the Fate of Arnold”—could have been extended. He does a good job in covering some important critics, such as the “postcolonial” Edward Said, but though he emphasizes the culture versus politics debate, some varieties of recent postmodernism and “cultural studies” are not adequately addressed. At any rate, in spite of his awareness that the book will be controversial, his rhetoric is primarily focused not on a negative correction of prior misreadings of Arnold but rather on a positive opening up of new readings that emphasize an appreciation for Arnold’s ethical and philosophical positions in his prose. The organization of the book is a bit unusual. Some readers may think that the author is too repetitive, restating his thesis about Arnold’s renunciation and philosophical pessimism, again and again. However, given the fact that his work really does point to a new direction in Arnold studies, this kind of repetition makes sense. His thesis is that “pessimistic renouncement is the key to Arnold’s entire oeuvre, both poetry and prose” (p. 200). This claim runs counter to the common generalization that Arnold is a pessimist in his poetry but much more optimistic as he turns to prose. Caufield is careful not to offer a reductive argument, acknowledging Arnold’s flexibility and openness to new ideas, but his careful readings of Arnold’s prose through the years support his claims and help to explain the sometimes strongly negative reactions invoked in readers who reject Arnold’s thought. Of course he draws on the work of some previous critics, extending, for example, the insights of Alan Grob who in A Longing Like Despair (2002) focused on philosophical pessimism in Arnold’s poetry, and those of earlier Arnold scholars like James C. Livingston, who analyzed the orthodox Christian attributes of “Arnoldian necrosis” in Matthew Arnold and Christianity: His Religious Prose Writings (1986). In a general way, he is also following up on the work of critics since the mid-twentieth century who at least acknowledged the significance of Arnold’s religious writings: this would include Basil Willey, William Robbins, A. O. J. Cockshut, David J. DeLaura, Douglas Bush, Ruth apRoberts, Maurice Cowling, and Joe Phelan. Perhaps the most interesting critical influence reflected in Caufield’s work, however, is that of Stephan...

Insights from an E-Dialogue of Practitioners on Arts in Transformative Learning

This article shares contributions from a moderated e-forum in 2007 that explored the transformative potential of arts in learning and social change. It draws on examples of poetry, creative writing, and experiences of innovative practice shared through these conversations by adult educators in contexts as diverse as Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. The paper provides a conceptual frame to explore tensions in transformative learning between the mytho-poetic and the critical-rational, and between the individual and the collective. Using this frame, it connects the experiences shared by the e-forum participants to the literature. The paper reflects on how educators have used artistic and creative expression in their work and discusses how they have navigated the tensions presented in the earlier conceptual frame. It concludes by identifying four conditions that seem critical if arts and creativity are to play a role in transformative learning: authenticity, resonance, reflection, and freedom.

The use of poetry in the construction of meaning in cognitive behavioural psychotherapy and mental health studies

PurposeThis paper is a shared endeavour between client (Caroline) and therapist (Anne) which aims to examine the use of poetry in the construction of meaning in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy (CBP).Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a narrative account of the early stages of therapy and the role poetry played in developing an effective therapeutic relationship and in shaping the CBP formulation, which guides treatment. The text is illustrated with examples of poetry and song lyrics that have been used to construct meaning in the therapy and the authors' own reflections on this process. The paper begins with a brief outline of the theoretical principles of CBP and then moves on to discuss the use of metaphor as part of the therapy and its role in the development of a productive therapeutic relationship.FindingsThe paper provides a reflective narrative from the perspective of client and therapist and invites the reader to consider making links between the science of evidence based practice and the artistry necessary and inherent to the practice of CBP.Originality/valueThe interacting cognitive subsystems model (Teasdale and Barnard, 1993) from cognitive science is introduced as a theoretical rationale to provide an account of the efficacy and effectiveness of poetry in this context. This is the first time an evidence based theory from cognitive science has been used as the basis for an account of the utility of poetry in constructing meaning in CBP.