Family Romance Research Articles

Roman History

As I write this, my wife and I are awaiting the imminent arrival of our first child. A natural tendency to find reassurance in research has led me to read a series of modern takes on fatherhood, which have proved of varying value. Imagine my delight, then, whenInfancy and Earliest Childhood in the Roman Worldarrived on my desk. What better source of information? Unsurprisingly,What to Expect When You're Expectingthis is not, though I have noted Soranus’ sage advice not to indulge pregnant women's cravings for charcoal or earth (Gyn.1.15.48; 50). What Maureen Carroll's major new work does offer is the first systematic study of the youngest Romans, those in their first year of life, a topic which – despite the raft of work on the Roman family and life course over the last few decades – still stands in need of a synthesis. As well as evidence-gathering, Carroll's work has a central thesis; that ‘the evidence from archaeology, funerary epigraphy, and material culture marshalled in this study dispels the long-held notion that the very youngest infants were insignificant beings without a social persona whose lives were treated with indifference’ (7). Instead, what Carroll paints is a picture of the first year of life marked by both regular milestones – ‘from the naming day at eight or nine days, the official registration of birth by the thirtieth day, the release from swaddling bands at forty to sixty days, and the beginning of teething at six months, to the achievement of the child's first birthday’ (12) – and ongoing and substantial parental investment.

Critical Response II.Difficulties with the Difficulty

Previous articleNext article No AccessCritical Response II. Difficulties with the DifficultyJonathan LearJonathan Lear Search for more articles by this author Jonathan Lear is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy and the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago, as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 46, Number 1Autumn 2019 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/705395 Views: 279Total views on this site © 2019 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Failed Family Romance and Community of Orphans －The focus of Simhun’s “Jiknyeoseong”(1934～1935)－

Failed Family Romance and Community of Orphans －The focus of Simhun’s “Jiknyeoseong”(1934～1935)－

Italian Mothers and Italian-Canadian Daughters: Using Language to Negotiate the Politics of Gender

This paper examines how migration redefines family narratives and dynamics. Through a parallel between the mother and the mother tongue, I unravel the emotional, linguistic, social, and ideological connotations of the mother–daughter relationship, which I define as a ‘condensed narrative about origin and identity’. This definition refers to the fact that the daughter’s biological, affective, linguistic, and socio-cultural identity grounds in the mother. The mother–daughter tie also has a gendered dimension, which opens up interesting gateways into the female condition. Taking this assumption as a starting point, I examine how migration, impacting on the mother–daughter relationship, can redefine gender roles and challenge models of femininity, which are culturally, socially, geographically, and linguistically embedded. I investigate this aspect from a linguistic perspective, through a reading of a corpus of narratives written by four Italian-Canadian writers. The movement from Italy to Canada enacts ‘the emergence of alternative family romances’ and draws new routes to femininity. This paper seeks to illustrate how, in the narratives I examine, these new routes are explored through linguistic means. The authors in my corpus use code-switching to highlight contrasting views of femininity and reposition themselves with respect to politics of gender.

Greek Influences on Roman Dowry Law

ABSTRACTClassical and Hellenistic Greek laws and dowry practices were generally more progressive and provided more protections for wives than early Roman marriage law and practice. Roman dowry law then witnessed a series of significant developments over the course of the republic, beginning with the time when the Romans were coming into increased contact with Greek culture. Changes in social attitudes towards the conditions for women in marriage, their ability to control their dowries, and their right to own property, seem to have been responsible for these transformations in Roman family law. As Romans became increasingly Hellenized, their dowry and marriage practices in general came to resemble patterns prevailing in the Greek world, perhaps as a result of individuals’ emulation of Greek laws and customs. The shift from the overall predominance of marriage in manu to marriage sine manu may therefore be explained partly by influences from the Greek world.

Challenging Oedipus in changing families: Gender identifications and access to origins in same-sex parent families created through third-party reproduction

ABSTRACTSocio-cultural changes and advancements in assisted reproduction over the past 40 years have led to a rise in new family forms, including same-sex parent families formed through donor insemination or surrogacy, wherein the loving couple does not coincide with the generative couple and the parents do not embody sexual difference. Can we still understand the gender identification processes and the path of accessing one’s origins through the lens of the Oedipal complex? In keeping with the Freudian concepts of “psychosexuality,” “primal scene” and “family romance,” as well as the more recent developments in psychoanalysis, attachment theory and infant research, this article aims at revisiting the Oedipal “complex” as Oedipal “complexity,” which may apply irrespective of parents’ anatomical characteristics. However, this “complexity” does not renounce parents’ bodies and sexuality as important to children’s development. Maintaining the concept of third following the parental couple, and position within generations in the idea of Oedipal complexity, the authors suggest that a child’s development pathways will depend not only on the intersection of the child’s Oedipal and pre-Oedipal levels, but also on the parents’ early relational events and internalisation of their own parental figures, which are not necessarily pre-determined by their gender or sexual orientation.

The World Through Roman Eyes: Anthropological Approaches to Ancient Culture ed. by Maurizio Bettini and William Michael Short

Reviewed by: The World Through Roman Eyes: Anthropological Approaches to Ancient Culture ed. by Maurizio Bettini and William Michael Short Lora L. Holland Goldthwaite Maurizio Bettini and William Michael Short (eds.). The World Through Roman Eyes: Anthropological Approaches to Ancient Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv, 471. $150.00. ISBN 978-1-107-15761-3. Classics scholars and advanced students looking for new insights into the Roman world will find them in this rich volume of fifteen collected articles in English.1 [End Page 107] Laudable are its abundant documentation of sources on topics both familiar and novel, and a consistent methodology derived from the hermeneutical tools of the social sciences. One perspective that is missing is relevant feminist theory,2 and the focus on literary evidence means that useful material culture is often not considered. I will briefly address the contributions in order of appearance. "Comparison" and "Metaphors," by Bettini and Short respectively, address the theoretical underpinnings of the volume's methodology. Bettini argues for the need to examine both "universal traits" based on emic sources as well as cultural "oddities" based on etic observation; hence the volume's selection of themes and format. Short contributes a case study of alimentary language as a common cultural model of thinking and communicating in Latin rather than an élite metaphor. Pironti and Perfigli in "Polytheism" demonstrate convincingly how the Roman familia served as a model for the conception of "main" and "helper" gods (i.e., indigitamenta) that populated the Roman pantheon. Bettini's second contribution, "Myth," asserts that fabulae about the origins of Rome and its topography served also as their "verification and foundation." Prescendi's "Sacrifice" argues that the Roman formula do ut des was dependent more on belief in reciprocity than previous notions of perfunctory commercial transaction allowed. Cherubini's "Witches" is a fascinating analysis of the Roman conception of the strix and its continuity in Italian folklore. Especially useful is Lentano's "Kinship" discussion of cultural differences between agnates and cognates in the Roman family. Raccanelli and Beltrami's "Friendship and the Gift" delves deeply and expertly into Latin literature; but we miss incorporation of the amici memorialized in Latin epigraphy.3 Viglietti's excellent "Economy" addresses the notion of "scarcity" in the archaic and early Republican periods in Rome and its environs. In "Space," De Sanctis' take on Roman topography mirrors Bettini's "Myth" chapter, but goes beyond fabulae to a new analysis of the ritual foundation of the city. In "Animals," Franco presents an anthrozoological analysis of the cultural transference of Circe's tame beasts in Greek myth to caged wildness in Vergil's retelling in Aeneid 7. Hautala's "Plants" proposes a polythetic Greco-Roman methodology for classifying certain plants with reference to the divine body. Pucci's multi-faceted "Images" (written before the 2015 discovery of the Pylos Combat agate) [End Page 108] argues that Greek imagery is best understood as re-functionalized in its Roman context. Manetti's "Signs" examines in a wide range of texts how the Greek and Latin vocabularies of semiotics are paradigmatic of knowledge. The final chapter, "Riddles," is an enthralling study of "enigmatic discourse" focusing on the late Antique poet Symposius, and Ovidian oracles and dreams. Reader aids include an aggregated list of references, Greek and Latin word indices, and a general subject index. Even if one is not equally interested in all the subjects covered in this volume, it deserves to be read cover to cover for the overall picture of Roman culture it presents. Lora L. Holland Goldthwaite University of North Carolina at Asheville Footnotes 1. First published in Italian in 2014 as Con i Romani. Un'antropologia della cultura antica by Il Mulino Press in Bologna for €30,00 with the same introduction and articles, but in a slightly different order. The text-editing, bibliography, and translation of William Short's "Metaphors" article in the Italian original were done by Alessandro Buccheri, who is not acknowledged in this English version. William Short is thanked for translating the "Polytheism" article into English (71), but I could not find who was responsible for the remaining translations, or in fact any reference to the original publication...

Les textes sur l’alimentation à l’époque tardive et à l’époque wisigothique (ive-vie siècles)

In this article, I propose to use the text of the Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana (see Dionisotti 1982, pp. 83-125), written, according to the editor, at the end of the 4th century, as evidence for the diet of a family of medium status in Gaul. The text demonstrates that the daily diet of a “middle class” Roman family was mainly vegetarian. We can observe the same continuity in the Visigothic period in Spain, according to the evidence of the slates written in Latin from the 6th-7th centuries, and other literary texts.

Family Empires, Roman and Christian by Susan M. (Elli) Elliott

Reviewed by: Family Empires, Roman and Christian by Susan M. (Elli) Elliott Zeba Crook susan m. (elli) elliott, Family Empires, Roman and Christian, vol. 1, Roman Family Empires: Household, Empire, Resistance (Salem, OR: Polebridge, 2018). Pp. xii + 337. Paper $27. It is commonly said that kinship was a key feature of ancient social experience and existence. Susan Elliott takes that claim one step further to show in an accessible way how the ancient Roman family and its values were all things to all people. They provided the emperor with a governing analogy for his empire; the emperor's policies shaped family values; and both those family values and their imperial instantiation were a common point of resistance. This book is divided into five parts: (1) a comparison of two family models—the Strict Father model, and the Nurturant Parent model, based on the work of linguist George Lakoff; (2) a summary of Roman Strict Father family structure, including the players and their stages; (3) an explanation of how this structure was co-opted by the Roman Empire; (4) an illustration of intellectual, ritual, and armed resistance to the Roman Empire; and, finally, (5) an analysis of Philemon. What sets this book apart from others on the ancient family is an interest in setting the discussion in the context of modern American political debates. George Lakoff is an American linguist who has argued that Democrats and Republicans are similar to each other in that they both operate with the notion of the nation-as-parent. In chap. 1, E. compares the Strict Father model and the Nurturant Parent model of the nation-as-parent. On the Strict Father model, the father embodies moral strength, and his role is to protect the family, enforce the rules, and prepare children for survival. The mother's role is to uphold the father's authority, and the children's role is to obey. On the Nurturant Parent model, the "parent" (not only the father) protects the family and clearly explains decisions, a form of [End Page 728] egalitarianism. There is no distinct role for mothers, and the goal of children is to live fulfilled and happy lives. On the Strict Father model, moral order is timeless and traditional, while on the Nurturant Parent model it is based in fairness and human interdependence. As a root metaphor for government, the job of a "strict father" government is to uphold the moral character of the nation and protect it from external threats. The job of the "nurturant parent" government is to promote equity, to foster a climate of respect, and to cooperate with (not dominate over) other nations. After a brief chapter on the study of ancient family, empire studies, and generally reading against the grain (chap. 2), the next eleven chapters run through the usual material in the usual way on Roman domestic architecture (chap. 3), family member roles (chap. 4), slavery (chap. 5), marriage, sex, and divorce (chap. 6), Augustus as paterfamilias (chap. 7), Augustan family legislation (chap. 8), and imperial cult (chap. 9). E. then turns to the topic of resistance to the Strict Father imperial model—armed resistance (chap. 10), intellectual resistance (surely not the best way of categorizing Essenes and Cynics; chap. 11), ritual resistance (a term I really do like for the mystery religions; chap. 12), and communal meals and voluntary associations (chap. 13). The final two chapters focus on Paul's letter to Philemon, chap. 14 running through the options for the occasion of the letter, and chap. 15 covering the letter commentary-style. E.'s reading of the letter is sensitive to ancient social context, and evocative in its narrative. In it, she surmises that Paul was encouraging the audience to live in an alternative way to the Strict Father family model of the empire. This book is interesting and readable, but it is unclear who its target audience is. In some ways, the book seems directed at a nonspecialist readership: the number of images and summary tables, the use of art to situate many of the ancient analyses, the terms that are explicitly defined for the reader (alphabetic footnotes in, oddly, just one of her chapters), the infuriating...

ПРАВОВОЕ ВОЗДЕЙСТВИЕ НА ДЕМОГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ ПРОЦЕССЫ В ДРЕВНЕЙШИХ ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВАХ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ РИМСКОГО БРАЧНО-СЕМЕЙНОГО ПРАВА)

ПРАВОВОЕ ВОЗДЕЙСТВИЕ НА ДЕМОГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ ПРОЦЕССЫ В ДРЕВНЕЙШИХ ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВАХ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ РИМСКОГО БРАЧНО-СЕМЕЙНОГО ПРАВА)

The Lure of Literature and Mysticism in Modern Jewish Thought

R&L 51.3-52.1 (Autumn 2019-Spring 2020) 243 THE LURE OF LITERATURE AND MYSTICISM IN MODERN JEWISH THOUGHT Cyril O’Regan Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion Sarah Hammerschlag Columbia University Press, 2016. xxvi + 243 pp. $105.00 hardcover. Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity Edited by Michael Fagenblat Indiana University Press, 2017. viii + 380 pp. $40.00 paperback. Sarah Hammerschlag has written an elegant and substantive book in which she dramatizes the relation between Levinas and Derrida concerning their different articulations of Judaism and their different choices when it comes to religion and literature respectively. While she shows herself fully aware how key Derridean constructs such as “dissemination,” “difference,” “supplement” and even “trace” exceed their critical negotiation with Levinas , nonetheless, she is convinced that one grasps something fundamental about Derrida by considering his work as involved in something of a family romance with that of Levinas, at once intimate and subversive, loyal and unfaithful. And contrariwise, charting especially those decisions by Derrida that seem to correct and supplement Levinas throws into relief fundamental decisions Levinas made about religion, literature, and the relation. The book of five chapters divides rather neatly onto two chapters each on Levinas and Derrida with a concluding chapter offering a critical evaluation in Religion & Literature 244 which there is a fundamental option for Derrida’s brand of Judaism and his insistence that no discourse, even or especially the discourse of religion, can avoid the slippage of the literary elements of all discourse. The two chapters on Levinas are, admittedly, somewhat different in kind. Chapter one speaks in general to the relation-difference between Derrida and Levinas from the point of view of their fixed positions, whereas chapter two is more archeological in that it moves from the point of view of a Levinas who during World War II and afterwards seemed to be open to the value of literature as a possible site of transcendence to a mature Levinas who decides against literature and unilaterally supports the value of religion which, for him, turns out to be synonymous with Judaism. Despite their differences, each of the chapters makes a valuable contribution towards understanding Levinas and what is at stake in the fundamental decisions he made. Chapter one lays out the basic thesis of Broken Tablets with force and eloquence. Without denigrating a relationship that she views as a relationship of extraordinary hospitality—especially from the side of Derrida—even at this early stage of her book Hammerschlag wants to emphasize the different decisions Levinas and Derrida make when it comes to their understanding of the capacity of phenomenology to unveil transcendence and their sense of the status of religion and/or Judaism. In the case of the former, Derrida’s significant departure from Levinas is demonstrated essentially in and by his deflationary or profane understanding of the “trace,” and in the case of the latter, by a more ambiguous and ambivalent relation to self-ascription as a Jew, which issues in his case in a self-description as a heretical or Marrano Jew, thus a Jew who by definition is contaminated by Christian elements, and in Derrida’s specific case contaminated also by elements from Islam (2-4). In addition, where the mature Levinas will have definitely come to derogate literature, or at least the specifically literary aspects of literature such as its metaphors and tropes, Derrida will come to elevate them as articulating all discourses, the discourses of religion and philosophy every bit as much as literature as such (11). Hammerschlag is judicious in her summary that semiosis in Derrida will undercut the attempt in any discourse to mean (34). In contrast, chapter two speaks to the arc of Levinas’s engagement with literature from his dalliance in the World War II years and after to the vehement denunciation of literature that predated the publication of his first masterpiece, Totality and Infinity (1961). Hammerschlag’s genetic analysis of Levinas’s attitude towards literature is very much in the service of her overall argument: the early openness to literature and the possibility that there are multiple discursive sites for transcendence represent in Levinas’s case the roads not travelled. These are precisely...

Chinese Drama and Society by Teresa Chi-Ching Sun

Reviewed by: Chinese Drama and Society by Teresa Chi-Ching Sun Man He (bio) Teresa Chi-Ching Sun. Chinese Drama and Society. Lanham, NY: Hamilton Books, 2019. v, 105 pp. Softcover $32.99, isbn 978-0-7618-7131-6. “Why not modern Chinese drama?” Xiaomei Chen, in her seminal “Introduction” of Acting the Right Part: Political Theatre and Popular Drama in Contemporary [End Page 315] China, questioned the dearth of book-length studies in English on yangbanxi 样板戏 (revolutionary model theater), huaju 话剧 (spoken drama), and, in general, all forms of modern Chinese drama from its inception in the early twentieth century onward. Calling modern Chinese drama “a stepchild of an unhappy family romance,” Chen attributed this marginality to its uneasy position within a set of interlinked dualities—tradition and modernity, East and West, didacticism and aestheticism, locality and globalization, and so forth—as well as to the very interdisciplinary complexity that is embedded within the genre (Chen 2002, p. 18). Chen’s frank question—“why not?”—encapsulated all the confusions, curiosities, and hopes that a generation of Chinese drama practitioners, fans, and scholars collectively owned yet, sadly, did not articulate. This at-stake inquiry implied that it was not modern Chinese drama but the discourse, or lack thereof, which rendered Chinese drama’s peripheral position. I still remember the thrill I had when first reading Chen’s “Introduction.” My excitement was not merely for Chen. Rather, it was for the awareness of a generation of scholars’ intellectual endeavors, a revision of the problematic discourse, and more importantly, a foreseen blossoming of scholarly interest in (modern) Chinese drama. Such a thrill surges whenever I encounter a work that strives to unpack the myth and the misfortune that Chinese drama has endured in English scholarship. Appearing nearly two decades after Chen’s “Introduction,” Teresa Chi-Ching Sun’s Chinese Drama and Society continues to address the “why-not” concern Chen raised. Only Sun’s work is far more ambitious, perhaps too much so to offer a solid analysis. Covering more than seven hundred years in just over one hundred pages, Sun examines a variety of Chinese dramas, including Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) plays, vernacular dramas in late imperial China, Kun opera, Beijing opera, wenmingxi 文明戲 (civilized drama), and huaju. Situating “Chinese drama” in both the apertures and the bridges between “Chinese and Western civilizations” (p. 1), Sun aspires to scrutinize the survival, reformation, and ultimate revival of what she calls “classical drama” as well as identify the everlasting Chinese operatic traditions within the modern and contemporary drama cultures that evolved throughout the twentieth century. Among her discussions of Chinese drama in literary, theoretical, and historical senses, Sun predominantly depicts the historical trajectory of classical drama in the modern era via key political and social movements, including the Self-Strengthening Movement in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the 1911 Revolution, the May Fourth Movement (1919), WWII, and so forth. Notwithstanding the sketchy analyses, Sun’s scholarly undertaking of the reemergence of classical drama and theater traditions in the modern era is definitely worth noting. Indeed, it productively complicates the landscape and dynamic of modern Chinese drama culture. Were Chinese Drama and Society to engage more actively with studies on the “reinvention” of Beijing [End Page 316] opera (Goldstein 2007) and Yue opera (Jiang 2009), as well as the hybridity of wenmingxi in the 1910s (Liu 2013), it would have made a welcomed contribution to the field. Unfortunately, Chinese Drama and Society arrives twenty years later than its ideal timing. Given that almost all primary and secondary sources that the author engages were published before 2000,1 the work, unavoidably, shows signs of being outdated. As an academic, I could not help but develop mixed sentiments toward the work as a manuscript that has patiently waited over two decades for publication. While lamenting some of Sun’s problematic claims and ineffective arguments due to her exclusion of current scholarship, I am certainly intrigued to see that the scope, framework, and concerns Sun adopted to evaluate Chinese drama in the early 2000s remain relevant and at times inspiring today. When I closed Sun’s work, my thrill came back, though this time with a new...

The Honey of Souls: Cassiodorus and the Interpretation of Psalms in the Early Medieval West by Derek A. Olsen

Reviewed by: The Honey of Souls: Cassiodorus and the Interpretation of Psalms in the Early Medieval West by Derek A. Olsen Frans van Liere The Honey of Souls: Cassiodorus and the Interpretation of Psalms in the Early Medieval West. By Derek A. Olsen. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press. 2017. Pp. xii, 313. $44.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8146-8414-6.) Few biblical commentaries in the Middle Ages were as influential as the sixth-century Explanation of the Psalms by Cassiodorus. Its author lived in an age in which educational and political institutions were being challenged at a rapid pace. Descended of an ancient noble Roman family, Cassiodorus served as statesman [End Page 562] under the Gothic kings of Italy, who had taken over from the last of the Roman emperors in the Western part of the empire. It is not clear what eventually prompted him to become a monk and transform his family estate, Vivarium, into a flourishing center of monastic learning. Unlike the asceticism of his contemporary, Benedict of Nursia, Cassiodorus' monastic vocation was found in the preservation of classical learning and the dedication to the Christian study of Scriptures. His love of the Book of Psalms may have played a major role in his conversion to the monastic life, Olsen speculates. Derek Olsen offers in this study much more than just a sketch of Cassiodorus' life and an analysis of his Psalms commentary. He gives a compelling introduction to the role and importance of the Psalms in the medieval Church. Not only were the Psalms the liturgical means to praise God; they were also regarded as a compendium to all of Scripture. Everything that was contained elsewhere in the entire Bible was referenced here in a spiritual manner. Psalms were the spiritual life-blood of early medieval Christians, and Olsen convincingly shows how their memorization and their liturgical use served as a way to overcome what he calls the "technological challenges" of the early Church: language, literacy, and the textual transmission of the Scriptures. Olsen's book details the influences on Cassiodorus' commentary: Origen, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and, most importantly, Hilary of Poitiers, and Augustine. In chapters eight and nine, Olsen takes the reader by the hand and offers some detailed samples of Cassiodorus' reading of the Psalms. But what makes this book a model approach to medieval exegesis is where Olsen takes us to the manuscripts (a ninth-century manuscript from Saint Gall, to be precise), to show how Cassiodorus' commentary techniques were embedded in the educational system of its own time. He devised an intricate system of marginal notes and signs to signify figures of speech and other allusions to the liberal arts, a system that would endure in the later medieval manuscript tradition. A chapter on the distribution and influence of the commentary concludes the book, and Olsen convincingly shows the key to the enduring success of the commentary: its adaptability to the demands of later centuries. Indeed, the reader of Olsen's book will be convinced that Cassiodorus' commentary has lost nothing of its relevance for today's Christian spiritual life, too. Olsen provides a very readable introduction to the whole world of early medieval spirituality and exegesis. The book is written in an extremely accessible yet never condescending language that clearly originates in classroom practice. If there is anything to criticize, it is a lack of references and footnotes, which have been kept to an absolute minimum. The bibliography is also rather sparse; suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter would have been welcome. These minor flaws aside, this book is a delight to scholar and layman alike. [End Page 563] Frans van Liere Calvin University Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press

북한 과학환상문학에 나타난 가족서사와 미국이라는 ‘무서운 아비’

북한 과학환상문학에 나타난 가족서사와 미국이라는 ‘무서운 아비’

From the “Victorian Revival” to Cultural Cannibalism: Neo-Victorian Project’s Literary Dimension

Neo-Victorian fiction’s ambiguous relationship with the cultural heritage of the XIX century has been problematized by literary scholars in a range of vivid and controversially connotated metaphorical models, i.e. those of the revival, resurrection, family romance, ventriloquism, spiritualist seance, collecting antiquities, colonization, adaptive reuse, cannibalism etc. Switching to the further generalization level, one can reattribute one of those possible models of the Victorian metanarrative’s reception by a Postmodern consciousness to either of the two of the most influential concepts of the Postmodern historiosophy: that of the fetishization of the history by Jean Baudrillard and that of the cannibalization of the history by Fredric Jamieson. A set of transitive metaphorical models linking the two opposites has been also identified, i.e. those of «historical fake» and «legitimate devouring».By building up a diachronic sequence of the above-listed metaphorical models emerging within the Neo-Victorian critical discourse, the shift from reestablishing the living tradition to its posthumous memorialization becomes quite evident, thus signaling about the Victorian heritage’s current cultural status. The analysis of means and tools of the Victorian cultural code’s manifestation within the framework of such subgenres as the Neo-Victorian biofiction and post-colonial fiction explicates the political influence upon the reception of Neo-Victorianism as a cultural phenomenon, thus moving the imaginary fetishism vs consumption borderline from the high/low culture opposition to the liberal/conservative dichotomy.

Legal Consequences of the Prohibition on Widows’ Remarriage in Roman Law

In the archaic period violations of the prohibition relating to mourning was regarded as a nefas and hence subject to penalisation under religious law. A widow guilty of an infringement was required to make an expiatory sacrifce known as a piaculum, viz. a bovis feta. This religious and customary practice underwent a series of transformations and eventually became a law (ius). In the pre-classical period the prohibition on the remarriage of widows in the period of mourning was perceived primarily as subject to penalties laid down by civil law. This was due to the question of the paternity of any offspring such a widow might bear in the tempus lugendi. The edictum perpetuum names the persons who were liable to infamy if they committed a breach of the prohibition on the remarriage of a widow within the period of mourning for her deceased husband. Such persons could neither engage in postulare pro aliis nor act as a procurator or cognitor. One of the consequences of a sentence of praetorian infamy was the convicted person’s forfeiture of the right to appoint his or her plenipotentiaries for legal proceedings.The classical period brought fundamental changes in the law on remarriage. Nonetheless, even though Augustus encouraged citizens to remarry, yet his legal provisions left widows a certain period of time following the loss of their husband in which they could refrain from remarrying. The reason behind this legal arrangement was not so much mourning as such; it was rather a question of Augustus wanting to show his respect for univirae (women who had been married only once). Augustus kept in force the provisions that gave a bad reputation to people who violated the prohibition of widows’ remarriage. The significance and effectiveness of these regulations made them a subject for jurists’ commentary, on account of the need to avoid situations where the paternity of children born to widows was uncertain. The prohibition on the remarriage of widows also shows that the creators of these regulations wanted marriage to be contracted primarily for the purpose of procreation, which would ensure the continuation of Roman families, especially as regards the perpetuation of their sacra, nomina, and pecunia.

From Villa Diodati to Villa Gabrielli: A Manuscript Appendix to Fantasmagoriana

The role played by Fantasmagoriana in the genesis of Frankenstein and The Vampyre has largely prevented the full critical appreciation of this work in its original context of production, i.e. the French market of supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century, paving the way to the so-called frenetique vogue. By analysing a manuscript appendix to Fantasmagoriana, drafted between the mid-1820s and the mid-1830s and bound within a copy formerly belonging to the Roman family Gabrielli-Bonaparte, this article reinstates Fantasmagoriana within the environment of Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic culture and its renewed interest in the supernatural. Whereas English-speaking criticism has normally approached Fantasmagoriana through Tales of the Dead, i.e. Sarah Utterson’s Gothicizing and partial translation of 1813, an analysis of Fantasmagoriana from the point of view of its original readership will enable us to rethink the specificities of the French Gothic beyond Anglo-centric perspectives.

Plath’s DADDY as a Break-up Letter

Sylvia Plath’s best-known lyric is steeped in the psychology of the Freudian family romance. The poet herself invoked the “Electra complex” of her speaker in a much-quoted BBC interview (Plath 196)...

Per una nuova lettura di Adone XX 250-376

This essay proposes a close reading of Canto XX of Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone, focusing in particular on lines 250-376 in ottava rima. Here the author depicts a quintain, or Saracen joust, a test of skill in which knights must strike a pivoting wooden dummy. The episode is distinctly encomiastic in nature, for the contestants include members of the most important Roman families, as well as Pope Gregory XV’s nephew, Sergio Carafa and the Piedmontese princes. The article shows how Marino surprisingly goes to great lengths in his praise to depict the precise workings of such tournaments, which were a key feature of courtly festivities. The realism that pervades the quintain scene in Adone, both in terms of its specific terminology and its description of tournament rules, is not ascribable to the epic canon, but instead reflects the heightened awareness of courtly events that marked the early 17th century. It can thus be inferred that the weight that Marino gives to the ‘upper’ realm of the panegyric and the ‘lower’ domain of courtly festivities is much more balanced than once believed.

2000년대 이후 한국문학에 나타난 가족로망스의 변화 양상 연구

이 논문은 2000년대 이후 한국문학에 나타난 가족로망스의 변화 양상을 규명하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 서구의 가족로망스의 경우 기본적으로 아버지로부터의 탈주와 귀환을 통한 가족 시스템으로의 편입을 주된 플롯으로 삼는다. 이는 아이의 무의식적 욕망의 세계로부터 아버지로 상징되는 초자아적 규범의 세계로의 진입에 대한 서사로 나타난다. 반면 한국문학의 경우 이와 구분되는 특성을 보인다. 예컨대 식민지 시대에는 고아와 서자들이, 해방공간과 4·19를 전후한 시기에는 형제애로 구성된 가족로망스가 두드러진다. 이러한 양상은 2000년대 이후 한국문학에서 더욱 강하게 나타난다. 이 논문에서는 이를 크게 세 가지로 나누어 살펴보았다. 첫째, 가부장에 대한 살해 충동이 빈번하게 나타난다. 황병승, 김사과 등의 작품에서는 부친살해욕구가 매우 강하게 나타나는데, 이는 가부장에 대한 거부는 물론 나아가 기존의 예술적 규범에 대한 거부로 해석될 수 있다. 둘째, 아버지와 아들이 아닌 어머니와 딸의 관계로 이어지는 모계적 가족에 대한 형상화가 나타난다. 김선우, 김애란 등의 작품에서 이러한 경향이 두드러지는데, 이는 기존의 가부장적 가족 시스템에서 배제된 존재들의 목소리를 복원시킨다는 점에서 중요한 성과로 볼 수 있다. 셋째, 기존의 가족 형태로 환원되지 않는 대안적 가족 형태에 대한 모색이 나타난다. 하종오, 손홍규, 최진영 등의 작품에서는 혈연에 기반을 두지 않은 특이한 가족 형태가 나타나는데, 이는 신자유주의적 사회재편 속에서 새롭게 나타난 소수자들의 연대의 틀로서의 가족 개념에 대한 모색이라는 점에서 중요한 현상으로 평가할 수 있다. 이와 같이 한국문학은 서구의 고전적 가족로망스와는 다른 독특한 가족로망스의 양상을 풍부히 보이고 있다. 특히 2000년대 이후 한국문학에 나타난 가족로망스의 양상은 가부장적 시스템의 폭력성을 비판하며, 가부장제에 의해 억압된 구성원들의 목소리를 복원하고, 나아가 대안적인 가족 형태를 탐구하고 있다는 점에서 그 중요성이 크다고 할 수 있을 것이다.