Literary Borrowing Research Articles

Dialogised heteroglossia and the Japanese-Chinese mixed style of “Kaidōki”

This paper attempts to analyse the technique of assimilation of classical Chinese writing into the Japanese literary tradition of the early medieval period. The author’s main focus is one of the three styles used by Japanese authors of the time, namely the mixed Japanese-Chinese style (the so-called wakan konkō buntai). It was used in various prose genres, including travel diaries. Referring to the text of Kaidōki (Records of [a journey along] the seacoast road), a Japanese travel account from the early 13th century, the author shows on the selected source material how, in accordance with Bakhtin’s understanding of heteroglossia, a dialogue occurs on the level of Chinese and Japanese writing and how intertextual relations can influence the formation of the style of a literary work. As can be noted, the historical and literary borrowings from the Chinese tradition (the rich Sino-Japanese vocabulary and the prosaised poems originally composed in classical Chinese) enriched the semantic layer of the Japanese text. This was also reflected in the style of the work, which, despite its “crabbedness” and the fact that it was shaped by the experience of borrowed but also native polyphony, seems to be the optimal way to express it.

Нашествие Батыя: Вавилонский плен Русской земли

Starting from Nikolai Karamzin, the earliest reports preserved in the three oldest Rus’ chronicles were the basis for the reconstruction of the events of Batu’s invasion of Rus’. However, textual analysis shows a high level of literary borrowings in these chronicle texts, originating from the Byzantine historical writings and the Holy Scripture. As a result, the quality of these accounts as historical sources is undermined. The purpose of the article is to determine the functions of the identified quotations and paraphrases, the existence of links between their content and the data that is provided by parallel written sources and archaeological studies. As we found out, there seem to be some real details of the Mongol conquest behind these accounts in the chronicles, and the use of suitable excerpts from historical and sacred books was a method to describe this reality, which is based on the principles of the universal medieval ideas of the historical process inherited by Rus’ from Byzantium.

The Forms of Manifestation of Intertextuality and Their Role in Creating the Text World of “Omon Ra” by V.O. Pelevin

In the domestic culture of the beginning of the 21st century, the crisis of value attitudes of a modern person, whose consciousness is subject to manipulation, has aggravated. The phenomenon of manipulation of consciousness has its own history, but it gained particular strength in the 20th century, when the media, art, and advertising became the main conductors of power. At the beginning of the 21st century, the information and communication space becomes the main tool for manipulating human consciousness. The phenomenon of intertextuality has become widespread in works by V.O. Pelevin, one of the brightest representatives of Russian postmodernism, the author of Omon Ra, the novel that reveals a creative rethinking of the transformation of the cruel Soviet reality of the 1990s. In this article, the novel is interpreted through the identification of manifestation forms of intertextuality and the defining their role within the framework of a united artistic world of the text. The intertextuality of the novel is expressed by intertextual components: literary borrowings, imitations, overt and covert citations, allusions, reminiscences, poetic inclusions, irony. These intertextual elements represent the cultural layer of the novel text being interconnected with the storyline of the work. V.O. Pelevin managed to emphasize the main thing in his heros character the ability to doubt dogmas; to reveal the duality of the heros world, who goes through difficulties before deciding to free himself from the cruel system that destroys any I. Intertextuality the text of Omon Ra provokes a play of meanings and a plurality of interpretations, helps to achieve the creation of a multi-level text, which is made of the cultural and ideological layers of the Soviet era, which the author characterizes as a time of deliberate falsification of history and manipulation of human consciousness. The author constructs an artistic reality built at the intersection of the real and unreal, the real and illusory worlds.

To the Source Studies of the Byzantine Accounts of the Spiritual Centers in Palestine

The review of the sources includes the characteristics of such literary monuments as the texts of the Holy Scripture of the Septuagint, sermons, spiritual hymns, and hagiography. The main documental evidences are represented by the Notitia episcopatuum, Synodal acts, canons and decisions, Typika of monasteries, account of the churches, abbeys and nunneries in Christian East. In Christian Byzantium, Jerusalem became the main destination of pilgrims. Many monasteries were built by the monks from Georgia who lived in Palestine. In the countries neighbouring to Palestine there was active monastic building in Byzantine Syria, as well as in the area of ancient monastic formations, Egypt. Therefore, there appeared the picture of energetic monastic building in the Holy Land, which is accounted to by documents, such as various Notitia, as well as the statutes and the journals of pilgrims and travellers. Although not all the monasteries existed for long due to devastating raids of Bedouins, Muslims, and crusaders, many of them were renovated from the ashes to continue servicing to these days. From that time on, Byzantine geographical literature went outside purely literary borrowings from the classical heritage and the environment of theoretical-mathematical and astronomical treatises to the practice of actual travels and pilgrimages. Although the latter kept their importance in all the periods of Byzantine literature, from the Christian topography of Kosmas In- dikopleustes to the ethno-geographical excursions in the History of Nikephoros Grigoras.

Bestiary of Pskov Chronicles Of XV–XVII Centuries: Images of People, Enemies, Wealth and Favorite Curses of Pskov Chroniclers

The article deals with the meanings and contexts of animal name mentions in the allegorical way in the text of Pskov chronicles and narratives. Allegorical mentions of domestic, wild, and exotic animals, as well as the use of epithets associated with animals are analyzed. The sources of literary borrowings referring to exotic and mythical animals such as asp, crocodile, camel, are investigated. The author concludes that chronicles and literary texts are not sufficiently informative to identify historical realities of everyday life associated with animals. At the same time, the sources provide rich ground for the study of expressive expressions in Pskov political rhetoric, historical and moral literature, and vividly characterize the worldview and figurative world of the inhabitants of the borderlands.

SERMONS, HOMILIARIES AND PLAINSONG FOR THE NIGHT OFFICE: THE CASE OF STEPHEN THE PROTOMARTYR

While the great majority of Franco-Roman plainsong features lyrics adapted from the Bible, a long recognised but little studied minority sets excerpts from patristic sermons and commentaries. The antiphons and responsories for the night office on the feast of St Stephen are a case study of such literary borrowing. The lyrics of these chants feature a wide range of verbal debts and reminiscences from sermons written or inspired by Augustine, the majority of which were transmitted in the seventh-century Roman homiliary and thus recited as lessons at matins. Together, the plainsong and lessons develop a distinctively Augustinian portrait of Stephen as a kind, compassionate advocate for his persecutors rather than as the hard-nosed rhetorician he is depicted to be in the Bible. They thus illuminate the working methods and theological priorities of Roman lyricists as they crafted verbal texts for sung delivery in the Divine Office.

Fun with Nitroglycerin: Piecing Together the “Exploding Boy” Plagiarism Controversy

Fun with Nitroglycerin: Piecing Together the “Exploding Boy” Plagiarism Controversy

Word as Bond in an Age of Division: John Eugenikos as Orator, Partisan, and Poet

This article undertakes a fresh examination of John Eugenikos (c. 1400–55), a leading intellectual, theologian, and polemicist in fifteenth-century Byzantium. Long known as a strident opponent of the union of the Orthodox and Latin churches and the emperors who supported it, Eugenikos emerges here as a more complex figure: an ambitious bureaucrat who blended pragmatism and idealism in politics and authorship as he pursued his interests across the Byzantine world, from the Morea to Constantinople and even Trebizond. His swift ascent from provincial notary to imperial panegyrist, his later career as an anti-union agitator, and his innovative exploitation of both highly visible and covert forms of literary borrowing, illustrate the enduring tensions between his opportunist and uncompromising instincts. Eugenikos’s idiosyncratic pursuit of influence in the fragmented political landscape of the fifteenth century—using expedient praise, literary experiment, and moral posturing—make him one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures of the empire’s final decades. A full critical edition and English translation of Eugenikos’s panegyric book epigram to John VIII are presented in the appendix.

De la mélancolie et son expression stylistique dans quelques Chansons spirituelles de Marguerite de Navarre

This article examines melancholia and its stylistic rendering in three of Marguerite de Navarre’s Chansons spirituelles that do not deal with bereavement, namely Songs 29, 45, and especially 34. The Queen uses various medical, philosophical, and literary sources to describe melancholy, although she never quotes Aristotle or humoral medicine. The same applies to literary borrowings from the Imitation of Christ, which enable her to give a willful Christian response to life’s sufferings. Most of all, Marguerite spiritualises love motifs used by Petrarch in his Canzoniere, especially the dolce pena concetto. This is achieved thanks to the interpenetration of Petrarch’s amorous vocabulary with the inner life discourse of her characters’ souls, tossed between euphoria and suffering, in their quest for divine love. This study also reviews Marguerite’s use of melancholia in La Coche, la Comédie des quatre femmes and l’Heptaméron, where it remains in the realm of worldly concerns and raises moral and ethical questions.

Проза В. Марта: некоторые литературные связи и контексты

The aim of the study is to determine the specificity of V. Mart’s urban text in the cultural and literary contexts of the first third of the XX century. The article identifies general trends and literary borrowings that formed the basis of the artistic world of works about Shanghai. The scientific originality of this article lies in the fact that for the first time in Russian literary criticism, literary connections and contexts that are significant for the creative work of V. Mart are identified, and the urban text in his heritage is studied. As a result, it is shown that the author created his works, focusing on O. Spengler’s philosophy and M. Gorky’s creative work. In addition, V. Mart’s prose has a typological similarity with the works of writers who returned from emigration to the USSR in the 1920s.

Between History and Ancestral Lore: A Literary Approach to the Sīra’s Narratives of Political Assassinations

Abstract The assassinations of the Prophet Muḥammad’s antagonists were, according to the sīra, the harsh measures he took toward the consolidation of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. These incidents’ narratives are often labeled in modern scholarship as “completely free of any tendentiousness.” This contention seems, however, to be grounded in the lack of full cognizance of the sources’ ulterior motives and of the extent of literary devices deployed in the traditional biography of the Prophet. The present study identifies the topoi appearing in the murder accounts of the Prophet’s political opponents that shed light on the extent of these stories’ dependence on each other and on the possibility of literary borrowing between them. This analysis shows that the use of literary tools in the sources are more widespread than what may appear at first sight. Our accounts exhibit striking resemblances with one another in both form and content, a point seriously undermining the trustworthiness of the sīra as a straightforward source for reconstructing the Prophet’s life.

Algunas nuevas sobre Alphonso Hordognez

En un artículo reciente, Gesiot (2019) ha mostrado cómo buena parte de la dedicatoria de la traducción italiana de Celestina es una adaptación, refundición y traducción de dos obras principales: el Decamerón y el Tirant lo Blanch. A las partes señaladas por el estudioso, indicamos algún pasaje más junto con unas consideraciones generales sobre lo que este descubrimiento significa con respecto al traductor de la obra maestra española.

Between Zoroastrian Mytho-History and Islamic Hagiography: Trajectories of Literary Exchange

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the Pahlavi “Story of Jōišt ī Friyān”, comparing it with three other tales, which span several hundred years and belong to several cultural traditions. By isolating structural and content-related features from the narrative core of these tales and setting them into relation with each other, the present author attempts to answer the following questions. Are there meaningful parallels between these four tales, which would suggest literary borrowing? And, if there are, would it be possible to identify one of them as the primary source of the others? The study is intended to contribute to our understanding of the process of literary exchange between Zoroastrians and Muslims in early Mediaeval Iran.

Margaret Atwood’s Visions and Revisions of "The Wizard of Oz"

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and Victor Fleming’s film The Wizard of Oz (1939) play an important intertextual role in Margaret Atwood’s critical and fictional writings. Atwood has often been inspired by both versions of this modern fairy tale and has drawn attention to the main issues it raises (e.g. the transformative power of words, gendered power relationships, the connection between illusion and reality, the perception of the artist as a magician, and different notions of home). She has creatively explored and exploited themes, settings, visual motifs, allegorical content and characters (Dorothy, her three companions, the Wizard and the witches, especially Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West), subversively adapting her literary borrowings with a parodic twist and satirical intent. Parts of Life Before Man (1979) may be interpreted as a rewrite of a story defined by Atwood as “the great American witchcraft classic”.

Reframing the Politics of Aesthetic Appropriation in the late-Nahḍah Novel: The Case of “Plagiarism” in Ibrāhīm al-Māzinī’s Ibrāhīm al-kātib

Abstract In his novel Ibrāhīm al-kātib (Ibrāhīm the Writer, 1931) the Egyptian poet, narrator, and humorist Ibrāhīm al-Māzinī borrowed several passages from his own translation—via English—of the Russian novel Sanin, by Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev, which he had published in 1922 under the title Sanīn aw Ibn al-ṭabī‘ah (Sanīn, or The Son of Nature). In this article, I analyze several personal authorial accounts, including the introduction to the first edition of the novel Ibrāhīm al-kātib (1931), in which the author develops the idea of creative writing and translation as a mechanical process of filling in the gaps of a “lost original.” Alongside literary allegations raised by critics against al-Māzinī soon after the publication of Ibrāhīm al-kātib, I recontextualize this issue of self-borrowing in the light of two parallel processes: the changing politics of intertextual practices that took place in Egypt during the first quarter of the twentieth century; and the rise of concepts as “Egyptianness” and “aṣālah” (cultural authenticity), key ideas to a national canon. Both Sanīn aw Ibn al-ṭabī‘ah and the (partially) re-written Ibrāhīm al-kātib, are the outcome of a process of adaptation, in which translation, intertextuality, literary borrowing and manipulation of the text constitute a common working practice and are not isolated incidents in the author/translator’s career.

Intertextuality in Daniel Kehlmann’s Novel Tyll

Intertextuality in Daniel Kehlmann’s Novel Tyll Marc J. Schweissinger Abstract This article examines intertextuality in the novel Tyll, by Daniel Kehlmann, from 2017. The Name Tyll refers to the old medieval figure Till Eulenspiegel. Eulenspiegel, a real-life character became popular through folk songs of the 15th and 16th centuries in Germany, but Kehlmann creates a historical novel, placing his Tyll in the Thirty Years‟ War (1618–1648), a war tormenting central Europe. Kehlmann employs literary borrowings from the original rough farce and Charles De Coster‟s world-famous version of the 19th century, The Legend of Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak. But while De Coster presented his Till as a freedom fighter for the Protestant Netherlands against Catholic Spanish oppression, Kehlmann pictures an entirely different character. Moreover, in contrast to the rough farce, Kehlmann equips his Tyll with an individual biography. Tyll, suffering from childhood trauma, runs away from home and becomes a travelling artist. Caught up by the whirlwind of the Thirty Years‟ War, unprotected by law, Tyll turns from an able trickster similar to the character from the popular folk song into a fool for the so-called Winter King of Bohemia, Frederick V. Kehlmann creates an intertextual riddle, shifting back and forward in time, deliberately full of flaws and conceptual loopholes. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v7n1a16

Daemonic, Mesmeric, Parasitic: Dickens and Evelyn Waugh

Abstract It has long been recognized that there is a close relationship between the works of Charles Dickens and Evelyn Waugh, the most important English comic novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively. This essay argues that this relationship should be seen not as a matter of literary borrowings by Waugh, nor in terms of loose analogies between their works, nor as an essentially Oedipal conflict. Their writings, I argue, act as both parasite and host to each other. Waugh's writing is parasitic on Dickens's, burrowing into it for names, allusions, and narrative tropes. Through their incorporation into Waugh's host texts, these in turn act as parasites that embed their own disturbing trajectories and associations within their new fictional homes. Waugh's relationship to Dickens, a figure who is called in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold “the most daemonic of the masters,” is seen most powerfully in the forces of compulsive repetition, haunting and mesmerism that irrigate both that novel and A Handful of Dust. Such forces comprise, derange and invade many of Waugh's texts and their shaping aesthetic and affective stances, and are particularly seen in moments of death, madness, and wild laughter.

The Sociology of Forms

Caroline Levine's Forms is a study of form as much as a sociology of forms—a tracking of the many ways that they relate to one another or are conjoined in creative works. While offering an extended meditation on the formal categories of whole, rhythm, hierarchy, and network as they are manifest in such works, the book organizes this meditation under the separate category of collision. Other terms are substituted for it—overlap, encounter, interaction—but the metaphoric intent remains the same. If the book seeks to sharpen our understanding of four major forms as universal elements of texts and social experience, its other interest is in honing our awareness of the complex ways these forms collide within and through narrative. his interest spurs Levine to look to sociological theory for examples of how to think about this complexity, a tradition that dates back at least to the time when György Lukács was writing under the influence of Georg Simmel, around 1910. Here I will show how her conversation with sociology follows yet another familiar path: the literary critic's borrowing of conclusions or concepts from sociologists while eschewing the methods and theoretical models through which these conclusions or concepts are arrived at and understood. In particular, I consider the consequences of drawing on sociological thinking to make general claims about complex relations while excluding some of the methods by which generalizability is established and problematized in the social sciences. This exclusion marks a fundamental disciplinary divide that sociologically inclined literary critics continue, sometimes out of habit, sometimes out of perceived necessity, to preserve.

‘Without Lies or Deception’: Oracular Claims to Truth in the Epistle to Titus

The claim to communicate the divine ‘without lies or deception’ appears both in the Epistle to Titus and in contemporaneous debates about the truth value of oracles, but not because of any direct literary borrowings from an original source. The Epistle to Titus exemplifies a trend in the second century that created from oracular one-liners a literary discourse about divination, which defended traditional religious knowledge against the rise of unauthorised agents. Shared responses to contemporary phenomena best explain the parallels – and, for example, the quotation of a pagan oracle in the letter, ‘All Cretans are liars’ (Titus 1.12).

The Decay of Sighing: Cesare Pavese’sLavorare Stanca

This essay locates a poetics of fatigue in Lavorare stanca, the first collection of verse published by Cesare Pavese. This poetics entails several related shifts: from emotion to affect, from effusiveness to reserve, and from expansiveness to a limitation that is at once literary and geographic. Critics have long emphasized Pavese’s cosmopolitan literary borrowings and noted in particular his engagements with the literature of the United States, engagements that are often seen to have enabled a break with previous Italian poetic forms. Without denying these engagements, “The Decay of Sighing” argues that Lavorare stanca continues the Italian lyric tradition that it also alters from within. The essay thus redefines Pavese’s procedure as a matter of staying in stagnation, of accepting rather than denying or taking willful distance from lyric’s exhaustion and the nation’s.