Fundamental Text Research Articles

Rinascimento Mediterraneo. Triangolazioni, effetto-koinè e alternative, tra artisti di frontiera e protagonisti costieri

This paper means to shed light on how a whole artistic production labelled as ‘peripheral’ has so far escaped the scope of monographic writing.Phenomena and factors such as the Mediterranean melting pot and the diffusion of the Flemish-Iberian taste—as well as the arising in early 16th century Naples of an ‘off-branch’ Raphaelism—have, in time, been explored by panoramic studies. Starting from fundamental texts such as those by Bologna, Previtali and Leone de Castris, the paper arrives at the important catalogues by Natale and Borchert, and at the more recent writings of Martens and Naldi. We will see that the apt and fruitful perspective that gives full consideration to the Mediterranean circulation of ideas, stylistic features, and artists—and to some itinerant painters, in Elsig's writings—has yet not set off any conspicuous publishing of monographs (with very few exceptions). So that many of the subtler and interesting interpreters of Mediterranean Renaissance and Southern Renaissance are still uncovered by highly specialised studies and by right-to-the-point, up-to-date corpus reconstructions, which are left fragmentary and/or contradictory, with wavering and questionable attributions.Such kind of interpreters are Andrea Sabatini, or the Polidoresque Marco Cardisco and his neighbours, just to mention a few names. Or the valuable and significative production of Pietro and Michele Cavaro; or yet further in the past, the production of Antoine de Lohny, of the Master of the Bolea Altarpiece, of the Master of Castelsardo. They all deserve an earnest and renewed interest for their peculiar significance, as mediators and alternatives, even though many years have passed since the well-known essay on ‘centre and periphery’ by Castelnuovo and Ginzburg. But all the more today, during a lively scholarly season when many resources are rightly invested in projects like Mediterranean Studies, Connecting Art Histories, and Transregionale Studien.

The concept of Happiness in Ayurveda

The quest for happiness is something that has enthralled every human since time immemorial. Researchers belonging to different fields along with ancient spiritual scholars have strived to arrive at a pathway for happiness. But since happiness involves different dimensions of itself, the interpretations on happiness have also been varied and different. Ayurveda is a science that was designed to maintain the health of healthy people and to cure the maladies of the unhealthy people. Happiness is an important facet of health and hence is given an important place in Ayurveda. The Ancient Ayurvedic literature has explained the concept of happiness under various terminologies like Sukha, Harsha etc. In the present research work all the fundamental texts of Ayurveda were screened thoroughly in order to compile the information on concept of happiness in Ayurveda. This was used to draw various interpretations on the science of happiness. The present article is written in order to envisage this concept of happiness in Ayurveda. The article will try to throw light on the usefulness of happiness in health, role of happiness on Dosha, Dhatu Mala and other physiological processes. The article also aims to suggest ways to achieve happy life with the help of fundamental principles of Ayurveda.

The Ambiguity of the Sacred: Revisiting Roger Caillois’s L’Homme et le sacré

This article focuses on the ambiguity of the sacred and looks at Roger Caillois’s L’Homme et le sacré as a fundamental text for understanding the role of ambivalence in the dynamic relationship involving the duo sacred and profane. Due to the paucity of critical commentary in English on Caillois, the article first seeks to restore Callois’s insights to our critical vocabulary. It then evaluates his work’s analytical potential both substantively and historically, also in connection with the resurgence of Durkheimian studies. Finally, it argues that Caillois’s emphasis on the relationship between pure and impure is fundamental for rethinking the dualism of sacred and profane, more specifically the oppositional logic by which the profane excludes the sacred.

Educar en el mundo antiguo: El Pedagogo de Clemente de Alejandría y las reglas de urbanidad

Many ancient authors wrote about the concern of the elite for educational matters and recorded the most widely accepted rules on how to behave in society. First the Greeks and then Roman writers shed light on the concern about this type of norms, and how they related to the ideals of life peculiar to each of these eras. Among these authors, Clement, Bishop of Alexandria between the second and third centuries of our era, stands out. This influential Greek author wrote The Pedagogue, a fundamental text in the history of education in Antiquity. Based on a hermeneutical study of this work and its context, we set out to determine how it helped to restore the Classical standards of civility, and a related code of social behaviour that served to lay the foundations of Christian pedagogy. This analysis enables us to see how the clerics’ concern for social behaviour paved the way for an integrational type of formation that encompassed all the different aspects of the life of man. Based not only on their intellectual, physical and moral education, but also their emotional development, this paideutic model sought to regulate all manifestations of civilians’ daily behaviour, and their relationship with the society in which they were immersed.

Editorial. Giordano Bruno, un agitador de las conciencias libertarias

Editorial. Giordano Bruno, un agitador de las conciencias libertarias

Unelõiv ja Saarepiiga: Jüri Talveti kirjanduslik "Kalevipoeg" / The Rhisomes of „Kalevipoeg“: Literary Interpretation of the Estonian National Epic by Jüri Talvet

Teesid: Artikkel keskendub eepose „Kalevipoeg“ käsitlusele võrdleva kirjandusteaduse vaatepunktist. „Kalevipoja“ uurimine ilukirjandusliku teosena muutis paradigmaatiliselt rahvuseepose senist tõlgendust ja seda tänu Jüri Talveti käsitlustele „Kalevipojast“ kui suurest Euroopa eeposest, silmapaistavast maailmakirjanduse kunsteeposte seas. Eepose teksti ja poeetika kirjandusteaduslik uurimine on selgitanud, kuidas eepose tekst on üles ehitatud sisemistele, intratekstuaalsetele seostele, mis korduvad gradatsiooniliselt ja toetuvad teatud kindlatele tekstuaalsetele sõlmpunktidele, näiteks „Saarepiiga“, „uni“ jpt. Enam kui autentsed allikad, on „Kalevipoja“ kui kirjandusliku teksti puhul oluline eepose toimimine pidevalt uusi tekste ärgitava tüvitekstina. Eepose analüüs näitab, kuidas selliste seoste alusel tekivad uued kultuurilised ühikud, kauneid näiteid selliste motiivikordustele rajatud seosteahelate kohta leidub ka Jüri Talveti luules. The article focuses on the treatment of the epic The Kalevipoeg from the viewpoint of comparative literature. This approach is a continuation of the study of literary relations of the epic which, on the one hand is opposite to, but on the other hand continues the present folkloristic approach to The Kalevipoeg as a folklore-based epic, which is based on the comparative-historical method of studying folklore. F. R. Kreutzwald’s role in creating the national epic was enormous; the epic can be conceived as a fictional and intentional piece, emphasising the role of its author. Although different genres of genuine folklore can be recognised in the epic, works of fiction of European and world classics have also been used in its construction, and the text of the epic has itself become an intertextual foundation for new works of fiction. The paradigm of discussing the epic changed due to Jüri Talvet’s groundbreaking treatment of The Kalevipoeg as a great European epic and one of the most remarkable representatives of the genre of literary epic in world literature. Literary scholarship of the text and poetics of the epic has demonstrated how the text is constructed by gradational internal intertextual relations, based on certain textual nodal points such as, e.g., ’island maid’, ’stone’, ’sleep’, etc. For example, the figure of Island Maid is intertextually related to many earlier archetexts and fundamental texts and has, in its turn, inspired other fictional texts. The author intentionally allowed for ambiguous interpretation of the death of a young girl – the girl slipped into water, but was it an accident or a suicide? The Estonian heroic epic differs from other literary epics by a gradational motif of ’sleep’, occurring through the text; by using this motif, the author develops the heroic epic into a tragedy of fate. The hero is informed about his fatal guilt in sleep long before it occurred in real life. Jüri Talvet has discovered such rhizomes of relations in the text of The Kalevipoeg due to his studies of world literature, but he has also written about them in his poetry.

Dostoevsky, Filaret, and The Principles of Christian Teaching

The influence of a fundamental text and its author on Dostoevsky has been neglected in Dostoevsky scholarship. The text in question is Metropolitan Filaret’s (secular name Vasily Drozdov) catechism, Haчaтки xpиcтиaнcкoгo учeния [Principles of Christian Teaching]. Filaret was a leading religious presence on Dostoevsky’s cultural horizon throughout his life and the catechism, along with the Russian version of the New Testament Filaret helped translate, goes to the heart of the central religious issues Dostoevsky integrated into his fiction. Dostoevsky’s remark about the stench of Filaret’s corpse included in the notes to the Brothers Karamazov suggests the writer’s crucial themes of faith and disbelief played out in Zossima’s death as well as the issues of miracles, mystery, and authority to which he invites his readers.

Historia universal y apocalipsis: un comentario sobre el estado del mundo en Franz Rosenzweig y Carl Schmitt

The main objective of this paper is to develope a commentary based on two fundamental texts that marked the reflections of the Universal History and the Apocalypse as a consequence of World War I and World War II. Franz Rosenzweig and Carl Schmitt were two authors who tried to understand the state of the World after the destruction that marked their time. Each one from his perspective and carrying with the history of his theological-political traditions, tried to re-think the historical conjuncture of his time from the problematic of the Earth and the Sea. This text will try to reflect on these paths that were intertwined.

Reliability of a Speaker and Recognition of a Listener: Bocheński and Nyāya on the Relation of Authority

In the Nyāyasūtra s (NS) , the fundamental text of the Nyāya tradition, testimony is defined as a statement of a reliable speaker ( āpta ). According to the NS, such a speaker should possess three qualities: competence, honesty and desire to speak. The content of a discourse, including the prescriptions, is also considered reliable due to the status of a given author and the person that communicated it. The Polish philosopher J.M. Bochenski similarly stresses the role of a speaker; he holds that an authoritative source (whose discourse is called testimony) should be competent and truthful. The conditions of trust and superiority also apply. According to Bochenski, being an authority entails a special relation—it has a subject, object and field. Notably, Bochenski develops his own typology of testimony by distinguishing between what he calls epistemic and deontic authority. He asks questions such as: Who can be the subject of an authoritative statement? Which features should the speaker possess? How is authority recognised? Is there a universal or an absolute authority? What is the field of authority? Moreover, which qualities should the listener possess? The Nyāya philosophers, both the ancient ones, like Akṣapāda Gautama, Vātsyāyana, Vācaspati Miśra, and the contemporary scholars of Nyāya, such as B. K. Matilal and J. Ganeri, were also concerned with these issues. The aim of this paper is to discuss the above points in a comparative manner. I will argue that both Bochenski’s and the Nyāya accounts share very similar perspectives and encounter analogous problems.

L’ecocritica in Italia: ambiente, letteratura, nuovi materialismi. A proposito dei volumi di S. Iovino, Ecocriticism and Italy: Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation (2016) e di N. Turi (a cura di), Ecosistemi letterari (2016)

In the last decade, ecocriticism has emerged and quickly spread as one of the most prominent methods of literary analysis. In this review article, a brief history of ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities is presented. Specifically, the article introduces the reader to the seminal and fundamental texts that constitute an essential ecocritical reading list. In addition, it presents the most important currents of the discipline and the state of Italian ecocriticism. In the second part, two recent volumes (Iovino 2016 and Turi 2016) are reviewed.

Debate on the Modernisation of the Constitutional Bill of Rights in Europe. General overview

How do or could European States envisage their constitutional catalogues of human rights today? This article addresses that question in the broader framework of a reflection on the contribution of the Constitution to the protection of human rights. It argues that the ageing of constitutional catalogues of human rights is not a fatality and that the people can always decide to update and revitalize its fundamental text through a democratic revision process - even though this may prove difficult. The analysis tackles the relevant legal aspects of the issue in an interdisciplinary perspective.

A AUTORIA, O DISPOSITIVO E A ÉTICA: OS LIMITES DA (DES)SUBJETIVAÇÃO NA ESCRITA

RESUMO Este texto tem como objetivo oferecer uma releitura do conceito de autoria de Michel Foucault, definido e comentado a partir de três textos fundamentais: A Arqueologia do Saber, O que é um autor? e A Ordem do Discurso. A hipótese é de que a autoria pode ser lida como um dispositivo – o dispositivo da autoria ou autoral – e que, dessa perspectiva, pode ser problematizado a partir do conceito de resistência e da preocupação ética do chamado “último Foucault”. Para defender tal hipótese, recorre-se inicialmente à descrição do conceito do dispositivo e do conceito de autoria, na arqueogenealogia e segundo alguns comentadores. Depois, traça-se uma discussão entre o dispositivo da autoria e as possibilidades de resistência e de criação subjetiva, presentes em conceitos como epimeleia heautou, crítica ou dessubjetivação. Por fim, sugere-se que o dispositivo da autoria pode ser lido ainda foucaultianamente, desde que segundo a ordem de uma política e de uma luta agonística entre os viventes e os dispositivos.

Ijtihād, synthesis, modernity and renewal: al-Bayḍāwī’s "Anwār al-Tanzīl wa-Asrār al-Taʾwīl" in hermeneutical tradition

Among the major exegeses of the Qur’ān none has received more attention on the part of Muslim teachers and scholars as the tafsīr by the elusive Turco-Perso- Arab Shāfiʿī-Ashʿarī- Sufi savant of Shīrāz and Azerbaijan, Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685?/1286?), Anwār al-Tanzīl wa-Asrār al-Ta’wīl (The Lights of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation). It contains such a consummate analysis of the Quranic use of Arabic grammar and style that it is viewed as the foremost demonstration of the linguistic, rhetorical and semantic inimitability (iʿjāz) of the Qurʾān in Sunni literature. Its success crowns al-Bayḍāwī’s intent to pour out into his last work the quintessence of his skills and scholarly experience into the service of the Qur’ān. This paper shows some of the ways in which al-Bayḍāwī set the standard in the genre—just as he had done in other fields with his opera magna in legal theory, credal doctrine and sacred law—and was able, for seven centuries since his Tafsīr first came out, to revive and boost the relationship of the community of Islam with its most fundamental text.

Právní omezení v udělování svátosti smíření v v CCEO a CIC

The article deals with the historical development and current form of legal restrictions for confessors in the administration of the sacrament of penance in the Catholic Church, and specifically in relation to the indiction of the extraordinary jubilee of mercy (2015-2016) by Pope Francis. It summarizes the evolution of the canonical regulation in the Christian East and West, particularly with regard to (re)codification of canon law in the 20th century, and indicates the original version and Czech translation of fundamental texts which were only accessible with difficulties and little known. It emphasizes the clarification of the distinction reserved for sins because of their nature (ratione sui) and because of censures (ratione censurae). It analyzes, explains and evaluates upon this basis the extraordinary faculties granted to confessors in the Czech Republic decades ago. The author finally presents his personal reflections and suggestions for future legislation (de lege ferenda) and for Christian practice, with an emphasis on the social dimension of personal sins and on the reactions of the Church to them.

Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament: Literature, Theology, and the Moral of Stories

Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament: Literature, Theology, and the Moral of Stories

“Suspicor enim eam gentem a graecis originem duxisse”: Translating Utopia in Greek

ABSTRACT Although More's Utopia is a work for which classical Greek language and literature are central, it was not until 1970 that the work was translated into Greek. During the sixteenth century, Greek scholars bypassed the fundamental texts of Renaissance humanism, clinging instead to the classical Greek past. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Greek intellectuals also ignored Utopia, partly because the nature of their Westernizing agenda did not attract them to a work embedded within the tradition of Catholic Latinate cosmopolitanism. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the term utopia entered Greek intellectual life, “scientific socialism” had also made its first appearance in Greek political culture, possibly preempting the desire to translate a work that would now appear to constitute the source of an already obsolete canon of “utopian socialism.” Tellingly, the textual life of More's Utopia in Greek began during the military junta. Its first translation arguably deploys it as a text charged by the desire for egalitarian democracy while at the same time privileging its satirical and playful aspects, partially in order to avoid state censorship. Though there are important differences regarding the framing of More's text by the four extant translations in modern Greek, the overall tendency seems to be to receive Utopia as a fundamentally political text, a text capable of inspiring thought, and perhaps action, during dire and challenging times.

Cagliari’s urban landscape: a commons?

Cities are the mirror of globalization; they reproduce and anticipate the same trends and contradictions from the inside. The controversial notion of urban landscape is here explored in connection with the commons paradigm, those resources which have been studied by Elinor Ostrom, Nobel prize for economic sciences in 2009 and Author of Governing the Commons, the fundamental text for the study of collective institutions and the governance processes of natural and artificial resources. In the text the landscape is excluded from the list of commons because these identify self-governed microsystems of local-territorial resources, that is to say, a set of practices and rules of access and fruition that are the exclusive pertinence of the users of local communities. The landscape is perhaps more similar to public goods, with one condition: that its fruition from a specific point of view does not impede the aesthetic, affective, patrimonial and identity appropriation of others, nor compromises its own existence. Nevertheless, apart from this, the “health” of urban landscape is given by the simultaneity and compresence of different spaces, as is shown by the “fight” against the commercialization of public spaces of the inhabitants of the Marina neighbourhood in Cagliari.

Al-Farghānī on the 48 Ptolemaic Constellations: A Newly Discovered Text in Hebrew Translation

The present study reports the discovery of a hitherto unknown account of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, probably by al-Farghānī, or at least from the first phase of the Arabic Ptolemaic astronomical tradition. A Hebrew translation of this account is embedded in the chapter on the fixed stars in Jacob Anatoli’s Hebrew translation (ca. 1230–1240) of al-Farghānī’s Elements, which this paper studies closely. This chapter is a fundamental text for understanding the Jewish interest in the fixed stars from the twelfth century onward. The Arabic text underlying Anatoli’s Hebrew translation was well known in the twelfth century, notably to Abraham Bar Ḥiyya and Abraham Ibn Ezra. Anatoli’s Hebrew translation of this chapter had a strong impact on subsequent Hebrew astronomy, beginning in the second half of the thirteenth century.

«El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote» (1605), satire ménippéenne (Prosas nuevas -V- : cartas, relaciones, «Lazarillos», «Guzmanes» y «Quijotes»)

Using categories such as “novel” or “parody of tale of chivalry” is such a common thing that we rarely consider the narrative tradition within which El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha fell. This article comes back to the jocoseria inspiration and those among Lucien’s fundamental texts which made it possible for Cervantes’s fiction to emerge. Without locking his 1605 text in the Menippean satire genre, Cervantes defines it as a Menippean book. Cervantes could not be satisfied with the adaptation by Mateo Aleman (Primera parte de Guzman de Alfarache) of the old Lucianesque formula (Historia verdadera, El sueno) nor of the short story (Segunda parte del Lazarillo, Crotalon). Envisaged from such a perspective of literary history, the Quijote becomes an alternative to the narrative proposition of Menippean prose.

TIME GAP IN THE FORMATION OF THE SUPERTEXTS OF A CULTURE BETWEEN ITS REPRESENTATIVES AND HOLDERS OF OTHER CULTURES (AS EXEMPLIFIED BY THE LONDON TEXT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE)

Taking the London text of the English literature as an example, the author of the present article points out the asynchronous formation of the fundamental texts of a particular culture by its representatives and the representatives of other cultures. This results in the latter sharing false stereotypes and myths about the source culture and causes translation difficulties. The article looks into the causes of such asynchronous conceptualization of the real world – in particular, translating written sources required for the formation of the literary canon and supertexts constructed on its basis takes time, and one cannot be sure that the translated sources will appear equally wide-spread in the target culture. The article also studies the ideal images of London peculiar to the London texts of nonEnglish literatures. However, the article does not postulate the non-conceivable nature of the supertexts of another culture, but rather points out certain difficulties in their reconstruction, which is achieved via stepby-step assimilation of foreign literary traditions and models. Along with this, the article dwells on the principal constituents of Englishness, which is viewed through the prism of London as the civilizationforming factor.