Literary Composition Research Articles

Bridging the Hellespont: Method in Historical Jesus Research

‘역사적 예수’는 다른 언어와 문화, 그리고 종교적 환경에서 수십 년 후에 작성된 복음에 기록되어 있는 예수의 활동과 가르침, 그리고 죽음에 대한 다양한 층위의 묘사 이면에 자리하고 있어 파악하기 어렵다. 학자들은 복음의 본문과 언어, 그 자료와 문학적 구성, 예수가 태어나고 또 죽음을 맞이했던 유다 갈릴레아 지방의 세계에 대한 부분적인 정보를 토대로 보다 큰 그림을 재구성해야 한다. 예수의 하느님과의 탁월한 관계, 그의 가르침, 그리고 하느님의 구원 계획에서 그의 충격적인 죽음이 지니는 중요성에 대한 자신들의 확신을 표현하는 믿음을 지닌 사람들의 공동의 기억에 보존되어 있는 분은 언제나 바로 예수다. 예수에 대한 역사적인 발표는 그가 도전하였으며 단언했던 1세기의 유다 종교적 전통에 대한 차원을 결코 놓칠 수 없다.The “historical Jesus” remains an elusive figure behind the multi-layered depictions of his ministry, teaching, and death preserved in Gospels composed decades later in a different language, cultural and religious milieu. Every facet of the investigation requires scholars to reconstruct a larger picture from partial information about the text and language of the Gospels, their sources and literary composition, the world of Jewish Galilee and Judea in which Jesus lived and died. At every turn it is the Jesus preserved in the communal memory of believers who expressed their convictions about his unique relationship to God, his teaching, and the significance of his shocking death in God’s plan of salvation. An historical presentation of Jesus can never lose sight of the Jewish religious traditions of the first century that he both challenged and affirmed.

‘Circling the Circumference of Silence’: Ghosts and Modernism in Postwar Kawabata Yasunari

ABSTRACTKawabata Yasunari (1899–1972) held a deep interest in modern spiritualism and applied his knowledge of it to his literary process in diverse ways. Spiritualism was widely employed as metaphor and narrative methodology in twentieth-century literary modernism, and Kawabata stood out among his peers for his prolific use of it. It has typically been assumed that Kawabata distanced himself from modernism after World War II, enacting a complete return to ‘Japanese tradition’. Yet modernist and spiritualist connections can still be observed in his writing during that period. This paper looks at the connections between postwar Kawabata and contemporary modernism, focusing in particular on a close reading of the short story ‘Mugon‘ [Silence] (1953). The story is framed by an episode involving a haunted tunnel and depicts a series of events as a novelist visits an elderly writer who has fallen mute due to illness. Kawabata uses stream-of-consciousness narration to present radical ideas about literary composition and the relationship between language and reality and subverts common-wisdom understandings of language and literature. I conclude that the composition of ‘Mugon‘ demonstrates clear continuity between Kawabata’s pre- and postwar writings.

Modern poetik och litterär konstnärlig forskning ur ett danskt-svenskt perspektiv

Modern Poetics and Artistic Research in Literary Composition from a Swedish and Danish Perspective
 This article discusses how the first four Swedish dissertations in literary composition can be said to practice poetics. Poetics, understood as a modern, self-reflexive genre under the name of “author’s poetics,” has been subject to literary scientific research in Denmark that differs from comparable Swedish research, arguably due to the large number of Danish self-reflexive poetological works published since Paul La Cour’s Fragmenter af en dagbog (1948). The literary dissertations are situated on the border between composition and self-reflection in ways similar to the Danish authors’ poetics, but they are also closely connected to disciplinary poetics and traditional academic writing. The article therefore suggests that the literary dissertations can be said to create a new poetological spectrum, described as a disciplinary form of authors’ poetics.

Spanish

Research regarding historical background and literary composition of biblical writings during the last decades has followed an independent path and has been done outside of theology. The methodologies used within the academic world and the results reached so far, pose challenges to theologians and clergymen regarding the identification of the actual achievements and limitations of such researches. Bearing this in mind, the article presents some considerations regarding the findings of those researches in order to outline some practical recommendations for biblical research and the teaching of theology. After reviewing the contributions of the most relevant researchers of "independent histories" of ancient Israel and those that could be labeled as the "third search" for historical Jesus, the emergence of some agreements is established, as well as the limitations of some methodological assumptions that, by accepting only what common human experience could prove, exclude some higher-order realities or present Jesus as a figure that cannot be either Christ or son of God. The conclusion is that a reasonable balanced should be encouraged. On the one hand, a healthy openness towards the possibility that some events have taken place that, because of their own nature, cannot be proved empirically. On the other, preventing to present as facts what are literal readings of the biblical writing.

‘But rather I wolde sey: here in thys worlde he chaunged hys lyff’: Malorian and Scholarly Retraction

‘But rather I wolde sey: here in thys worlde he chaunged hys lyff’: Malorian and Scholarly Retraction Karen Cherewatuk (bio) and Meg Roland (bio) Late in life or late in their work, medieval writers could resort to retraction to soften the more brazen or less certain aspects of their work. Within the capacious ‘grete boke’ of Le Morte Darthur, Thomas Malory suggests but then retracts certain ideas, such as the nature of love or loyalty. He also contests his sources, contradicts earlier plot lines, and presents characters who take unexpected actions or change sides. This special volume explores and even celebrates the retraction: within Malory’s text, in Arthurian scholarship over the last century, and in our own work as scholars. The best-known examples of authorial retraction come, of course, from Boccaccio and Chaucer, both of whom retracted the ‘worldly vanities’ of their respective works purportedly upon their death beds. Many of the scholars contributing to this volume have had long careers in Arthurian literature; the idea of retraction as reconsideration opened up the possibility of approaching our work with a bit of humility, fortunately not of the death-bed variety, but to harvest, as Chaucer wrote, ‘newe corne’ from ‘olde feldes’ and to create ‘out of olde bokes . . . newe science.’1 ‘“But rather I wolde sey”’ began as a roundtable of Malory scholars at the International Arthurian Congress, held in Wurzburg in 2017, and continued at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2018 (see photos, below). As conveners, we invited Arthurian scholars to take a second look at work they published, at critical modes that had framed scholarly debate, or at aspects of Le Morte Darthur itself that suggest retrospection or reconsideration, perhaps even an outright retraction. While a few scholars declined our invitation, quite a number of our colleagues were intrigued by the opportunity to rethink their thinking. Their open-mindedness and desire to keep learning is an impressive attribute of their approach to scholarship. Frankly honest and spirited discussions followed both panels and have led to this current collection of essays. [End Page 3] In Under Another Sky, classicist and journalist Charlotte Higgins elegantly writes about the substrata and interweaving of imperial Roman culture with Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and subsequent British culture. She quotes the early twentieth-century Romano-British scholar R.G. Collingsworth, who suggested that his writing on art was ‘the best example I can give to posterity of how to solve a much-debated problem in history, not by discovering fresh evidence, but by reconsidering questions of principle.’2 In this collection, scholars who have devoted much of their career to Malory studies adopt Collingsworth’s example by reconsidering questions of principle and engaging in a lively reconsideration of Arthurian work with fresh perspectives and seasoned scholarly practice. Michael Twomey notes in his essay in this volume that, ‘in a broader sense, one could say that all scholarship and criticism begin in retraction, in that every new contribution implicitly retracts what came before it, without ever removing it from the scholarly or critical record’ (11). Not surprisingly, many of the scholars in this collection turn to the concluding passages of Malory as the characters that have held our hopes ‘pass oute of thys worlde’ (827.16). In a way, Twomey’s contribution undergirds this entire collection. He explains the Augustinian notion of retraction as reconsidering or reexamining a work in contrast to the post-Chaucerian notion of withdrawing it. He further identifies retraction as the process by which Arthurian authors expanded the corpus: through ‘palinode,’ which involves a single author countering his/her own earlier view, as Chrétien does in Yvain; through ‘recreation,’ which is when an author creates a new narrative about existing characters, as did the Gawain-poet; through ‘adaptation’ which is an alteration of an existing narrative, as demonstrated by any of the post-Chrétien Grail continuations; or through ‘supplementation’ which is an addition to an existing narrative, as when Malory brings pillars and robbers onto the field after Arthur’s final battle. According to Twomey, the logic of those innovative forms of retractions lead to a ‘both/and’ view of literary composition which allows renewal...

Transgressive Typologies: Constructions of Gender and Power in Early Tang China by Rebecca Doran

Reviewed by: Transgressive Typologies: Constructions of Gender and Power in Early Tang China by Rebecca Doran Man Xu Transgressive Typologies: Constructions of Gender and Power in Early Tang China by Rebecca Doran. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. viii + 260. $39.95 cloth. Wu Zhao 武曌 (624–705) was the first and only female emperor in Chinese history. Her ascendance to the throne, schemes and strategies of legitimization, reorganization of government, and advocacy of the ideal of scholar officials have, since the eighth century, attracted historians' attention. While most scholarship on Wu Zhao focuses on the reconstruction of her life experience, Rebecca Doran's Transgressive Typologies stands out for its unique approach of exploring the retrospective construction and conceptualization of women's power in later historiography. Besides Wu Zhao, Doran investigates and compares the Tang and Song literary and historical accounts about several other [End Page 313] powerful women who played important roles in the political realm during the late seventh and early eighth centuries. Her provocative interdisciplinary research provides a new perspective for understanding women's history in medieval China. Character typology is widely available in historical narratives. What Transgressive Typologies articulates is the formation of negative gender typologies about women in powerful positions. The book is structured thematically while at the same time following chronological order. Chapter 1 traces the emergence of the archetypes of powerful women rulers to the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) and the following period of disunity (220–589). Based on the portrayals in official histories, Doran divides the pre-Tang women leaders into three categories: moral exemplars, transgressive leaders, and "middle cases" of "an ambivalent mixture of positive and negative typologies" (p. 30). Gender issues, such as motherhood and sexuality, play a crucial role in the historical representation and evaluation of these women. One distinct characteristic of the book is its exploration of the long-term changes and continuities in the records of women leaders. Doran claims in the introduction that she aims to "assess the ways in which portrayals of the Tang figures draw upon or depart from existing precedents" (p. 20). Readers may expect to see the evolution of certain tropes of powerful women in historical records ranging over a few centuries. However, in the ensuing chapters on the Tang's powerful women, Doran's references to the pre-Tang archetypes are occasional and fragmentary. Chapter 2 moves into the period when the power of Tang imperial women prevailed at the court. Wu Zhao's enthusiasm for literature led to "the dual political-literary function of high-ranking courtiers" (p. 69). The surviving poems and proses that are attributed to and written for Wu Zhao, according to Doran, reflect her "preferred self-conception" (p. 70) and suggest "imperial prerogative over nature and unity with the overarching cosmic design" (p. 82). The subsequent ruler Zhongzong 中宗 (656–710) inherited his mother's literary passion and commissioned plentiful courtly compositions at the banquets that he participated in. Doran points out that the "very existence and frequency" of these poems and proses "testify to the material, political, and cultural power" (p. 83) of the imperial women who were involved. Unlike the other chapters, chapter 2 draws exclusively on Doran's close reading of literary compositions. Doran should be applauded [End Page 314] for her beautiful translation of these poems and rhapsodies. But the way she presents, organizes, and interprets these writings may confuse readers. For example, at the beginning of the section "Natural Response and Courtly Power," Doran analyzes one rhapsody from Wu Zhao's time and states that, from Wu Zhao's time to Zhongzong's Jinglong 景龍 reign (707–710), there was a transfer of "the rhetoric of cosmic power from the imperial cosmos to the estate as micro-cosmos" (p. 83). Doran suggests that this transfer "represents an important development in the way in which power came to be conceptualized and extolled" (p. 83). She then resorts to a number of Jinglong poems to support her thesis. These poems' historical value should be understood in their specific historical contexts when Doran considers their authorship and readership. Unfortunately, this information is largely absent from Doran's analysis. The majority of these poems...

An Intratextual Analysis of “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” By E. E. Cummings

The style is usually determined by way of language is used in a piece of writing. Language never runs yonder absorption of the supremacy of words. A word, thus, constitutes the basic unit of a language and contributes to the panache of writing in a composition. Words are meaning loaded blocks used to build on a writer's thoughts. A word is governed by a morphological makeup in itself and lies in close proximity and association with the other neighboring units as ‘lexico syntactic'. The style is language manipulated, and thus, literary language differs from ordinary language in various ways. However, literary language deviates from word to sentence level in a piece of literature without negatively affecting the meaning or flow of communication between the literary writer and his readers, which is the main focus of this paper. For this purpose, a poem: Anyone Lived in A Pretty How Town by a renowned American poet; E. E. Cummings, is selected and analyzed stylistically from word to text level. Cummings is acclaimed the most unconventional and ground-breaking poet of English literature. He is eminent for his abandoned, constant, and effective deviation from the established norms of syntax, lexis, punctuation, capitalization and graphic presentation. Obviously, very few poets have done such violence to language manipulation with such infallible poetic success. His poems relish different morphological makeups, syntactical combinations semantic organizations, pragmatic derivations and discourse patterns, but still these poems constitute good and effective literary compositions. However, discoursing literary tenets is not the concern of this study, rather it is focused on the linguistic applications of the language patterns being used with the help of textual analysis. This analysis is based on Geoffrey N. Leech's theory of linguistic deviation which follows a three-step model: realization, form and semantics. The first step, realization, covers phonology and graphology; which mean speech sound production and word formation respectively. The second step reckons grammar; a set of rules that govern the structure of a language in totality, and lexicon; the available word choice for any write up. However, the last step, semantics, ends up in denotative and cognitive meanings of a text. Phonological, graphological, morphological and syntactical devices are the main tackles of the study.

Reading Psalm 112 as a "Midrash" on Psalm 111

Psalms 111 and 112 are “twin” poems displaying similar characteristics such as the superscript הללו יה , an acrostic form, and shared vocabulary. Surprisingly, the shared characteristics are noted, but the poems often interpreted in isolation. Ps 111 is classified as a hymn or a song of thanksgiving and Ps 112 as a wisdom poem. The prominent presence of so-called “wisdom terminology” in Ps 112 plays a major role in its classification, while the presence of similar terminology in Ps 111 is ignored. The present study engages in an intertextual reading of the two poems. They are read as an intentional, artistic literary composition. Following Michael Fishbane’s notion of inner-biblical exegesis, I argue that Ps 112 is an intentional “midrash” on Ps 111, and that the pair should be read as a composition in the context of the late Torah-wisdom redaction of the Psalter in general and Book V of the Psalter in particular. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2019/v32n2a19

Book in the literary discourse of the German Enlightenment

The books’ role in the German Enlightenment discourse explores the intersection of different but complementary disciplines: bibliology, philosophy of culture and «text linguistics», as well as the history of literature that expands the possibilities of studying cultural and public communication. A text (magazine, book) is interpreted as a mechanism that controls the process of learning and understanding. To illustrate the study theoretical foundations, the author considers the historical practice of the literary era in Germany in 1770-1790. The struggle of «cilturtregers» to renew German culture moved from the political sphere to journalism and literature. The author concludes that the book (both scientific and artistic) and reading became a factor of social communication. The struggle for the renewal of German culture, its national identity preservation due to a number of historical reasons hindering the development of the country moved from the political sphere to the journalism and literature field. It was closely connected with the whole complex of the European Enlightenment ideas. The book - both scientific (philosophical work, art treatise) and artistic one (literary and journalistic composition, dramatic creation, etc.) became an indispensable tool of the nation aesthetic education. In such circumstances, a book obtains the significance of not only the «source of knowledge» but a kind of «catechism» to struggle for national culture. Thus, considering a book text as a phenomenon of the German culture of the Enlightenment century with ideological and aesthetic significance, it should be especially notes that such a «text» (a book of scientific, philosophical, moralistic or artistic content) is addressed both to a specific reader, a representative of some class, and to a «collective reader». The German novel (it is the genre of «trivial» literature that is considered directly) is a product of the era. The dialogue «author - reader» (or a complicated triad «author - publisher - reader») was the basis of the nation estetic education. Reading became a fact (and a factor) of social communication. The German book has been transformed from an expensive and exclusive «source of knowledge» targeted for scientists, connoisseurs of «beauty» to a catechism (available for the ordinary reader) of the national struggle to preserve the German culture self-existence and to acquaint the nation to the treasures of the world classical «ancient» and modern literature.

The Lulal širgida Composition CBS 12590 (HAV 5, pl. 7, VIII)

Abstract This article offers an edition of the tablet CBS 12590 (HAV 5, pl. 7, VIII), which contains a Sumerian širgida-hymn to the god Lulal dating to the Old Babylonian period. An introduction discussing Lulal provides an overview of this little-known god’s personal characteristics, divine roles, and local cult, especially as they are represented in literary and liturgical compositions (with further evidence provided by god lists and litanies, royal inscriptions, lexical lists, and administrative documents). A particularly striking feature of the composition is the number of rather specific potential intertextual references to the imagery of other gods including Ninurta (and the composition Ninurta’s Exploits), Ninĝirsu, and Utu, and possibly even the mortal king Šulgi.

A Study on the Narrative Formation of Value Problem: Focusing on the Narrative <Jo-shin> and <Nambaeg-wol-iseong>

교육이 인간성 함양을 지향한다는 점에서 윤리교육과 문학교육의 목표가 일치하 는 부분이 있으나, 그러한 목표를 실천하기 위한 각 교과의 교육 내용은 서로 다르게 마련될 수 있다는 논의를 전개하였다. 이에 ‘윤리’나 ‘도덕’과는 구별되는 ‘가치’라는 용어를 세우고, 가치교육을 위한 문학교육의 내용 마련을 위해 문학에 드러난 가치 문제 형상화의 방식을 살펴보았다. 여러 문학적 구성물 가운데 특히 설화 문학은 서사적 구조의 선명함 및 언중에 의해 오랫동안 반복적으로 구연되어 온 바, 삶 가운데 닥칠 수 있는 첨예한 문제들을 형상화하고 지혜롭게 해결해 나가는 방식을 잘 보여준다고 보았다. 이에 삼국유사 수록 설화 <조신>과 <남백월이성>을 대상으로 살펴본 결과, 두 작품은 가치 문제의 제시 과정에서는 현실 가치와 욕망 가치를 대립적으로 제시하는 방식을 보이고 있었다. 대안가치의 탐색 과정에서는 서사적 장치를 통해 서사가 내세운 가치들을 입체적으로 구현하고 있었다. 마지막으로 가치의 최종적 선택 과정에서는 앞서 제시한 대립적 가치 문제에 대해 창의적인 판단을 제시하는 방식을 취하고 있었다. 이와 같은 설화 문학의 가치 문제 형상화 방식을 활용할 때, 문학교육과 윤리교육의 교집합에 대해 유의미한 논의가 보다 풍성하게 이루어질 것으로 기대한다.The goal of ethics education and literacy education is consistent in that it aims to cultivate humanity. However, the contents of each curriculum can be different from each other in order to practice such a goal. The term ‘value’ was set up and the method of figuring out the value problem revealed in the literature was examined in order to prepare literary education contents for value education. Among various literary compositions, especially narrative literature, it shows the way of expressing the brilliant problems that can be encountered in life because of the clarity of the narrative structure and the personality that has been passed on to words. As a result of examining the narratives <Jo-shin> and <Nambaeg-wol-iseong>, both works showed a way of presenting the values of reality and desire in a confrontational way in the process of presenting the problem of value. In the process of searching for alternative values, the narratives embody the three criminal values through narrative devices. Finally, in the process of final selection of value, it was taking a way to present creative judgment. I would expect that meaningful discussions will be made about the intersection of literary education and ethics education when utilizing the value formative method of such folktales.

Personal Collections of Texts from the Second Half of the 19th Century along with Their Historical Context

The subject of the article comprises Lithuanian collections of texts from the second half of the 19th century, compiled by individuals of peasant origins and preserved at the Lithuanian Folklore Archives. The research involves over 40 of such collections, in which part or majority of the inscriptions consist of poetic pieces: personal poetic compositions or folksongs chiefly selected from printed sources of the time. The analysis in the article focuses on the contents of these texts, describing various components of their repertoire, attempting at establishing and identifying the sources, from which the individual texts could have originated. Analysis of these collections takes into account the social and cultural context in Lithuania of the 19th century, chiefly defined by the imperial policy of the tsarist Russia, essentially aiming at strengthening the loyalty of the Lithuanian population to the official government, and the movement of national revival, striving to enhance the Lithuanian national self-consciousness. The author assumes the main motive behind the compilation of the personal collections of texts to be the issue of problematic availability of the Lithuanian press, partly caused by the four decades-long ban of printing in Latin alphabet, which had fatal harmful consequences to the development of the Lithuanian national culture. The author of the article concludes that majority of the collections in question probably comprised texts published by the illegal Lithuanian press of the time: newspapers, calendars, books of religious literature or popular fiction, folklore publications, or manuscripts by other people. However, the possibility of some texts finding their way into these collections directly from oral tradition is also valid. Analysis of the poetic repertoire of the personal collections enables asserting that their compilers / owners equally appreciated rather diverse written pieces – both literary compositions (mainly individual poetry) and folksongs. Such stratification of individual poetry and traditional songs derived from the interest in Lithuanian folklore, which was particularly characteristic to the culture of the national revival, and from the fact that in publications of the second half of the 19th century both individual poems and folksongs appeared as poetic compositions of the same nature.According to the scarce personal data occurring in the manuscripts and mostly representing provenance, the author of the article attempts drawing a broad-brush portrait of the compiler of the textual collection. This must have been a rather young male of peasant origins, who has graduated from primary school (either illegal or official one) and attended gymnasium or seminary; literate in Lithuanian, Polish and Russian; open to the ideas of the national revival and interested in the available written sources of religious or secular kind.The manuscripts compiled for individual purposes discussed in this article emerge as an important source for the analysis of relationship between individual creativity and writing in general with folklore. The Lithuanian collections of texts from the second half of the 19th century have captured a moment in the confluence of written and oral tradition, which rather than being identified with merging of these cultural systems should be perceived as a certain stage of adapting individual literary creativity to the folklore communication. We should regard these compilations of textual materials as belonging to the written culture rather than folklore as oral tradition.The author also investigates the issue of traditionalism, of historical continuity in relation to these collections of texts picked out and copied from miscellaneous sources. The Lithuanian personal collections of texts from the second half of the 19th century functioning in the peasant society should be related to the earlier traditional collections of texts in Latin, Polish, and old Slavonic languages from the 17th – beginning of the 19th century Lithuania. The Lithuanian data thus becomes part of the wider European historical and cultural context. Personal collections of texts as a rather peculiar genre relate to the commonplace books thriving in the Renaissance period, which served in the humanist educational system as means for disciplined reading. The article presents a retrospective survey of subsequent changes in content and form experienced by these extract books / collections of texts on their way from the academic discourse to the private everyday sphere.

Linguistic entrapment: Interlanguage, bivernacularity, and life across tongues

What does it feel like to be multilingual author who is never ‘at home’ in any one language? To address this question, this essay puts theoretical writings by contemporary trans activist Alexandre Baril and queer cultural critic Jose Esteban Munoz in conversation with literary compositions by bilingual (English/French) medieval poets John Gower and Charles d’Orleans. Albeit disparate in time and space, these writers explore tenuous attachments between language and the body, and recurring tropes of being ‘wrong-bodied’ (trapped in the ‘wrong’ body) demonstrate how profoundly social minorities evade identification with any one dominant linguistic identity (medieval or modern). Contemporary trans and queer theory and the poetry of multilingual medieval authors powerfully challenge rigid conceptions of embodied difference such as binary distinctions of male and female or the idea of discrete ‘Anglophone’ and ‘Francophone’ identities. Comparative close reading of medieval literature and contemporary theory suggests wide potential for nonbinary social positioning.

《文心雕龍》所隱涵二重“文心”的結構及其功能

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.&#x0D; 劉勰將自己的著作命名爲《文心雕龍》，很自覺地使用“文心”與“雕龍”兩個關鍵詞，表述全書的文學理論體系。什麽是“文心”？劉勰只簡單説是“爲文之用心”，也就是創作文章所運用的“心”；然而，這一“文心”實質的内涵是什麽？包含哪些要素？諸多要素之間，以什麽邏輯關係形成整體的“結構”？這一“結構”有何相應的“功能”？這是“文心雕龍學”必須解答的基本論題；然而，關於這一論題，學界至今只做了粗略、表淺的論説。本論文針對《文心雕龍》全書的相關文本，經由精密的分析，有效地揭明其中隱含的二重“文心”，並分别詮釋這二重“文心”各自具有什麽實質内涵？各自包含哪些要素？諸多要素之間，以什麽邏輯關係形成整體的“結構”？而這一“結構”有何相應的“功能”？&#x0D; When entitling his Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons), Liu Xie consciously employed the two key terms wenxin and diaolong to recapitulate the theoretical framework of the book. But, what is wenxin? Liu Xie only explains it as “the creative mind for literary composition.” Several questions have remained unanswered. They include: what is the actual content of wenxin? What elements are included? With what logic and relationship are these elements connected to make a comprehensive “structure”? To what functions does this “structure” correspond? These are unavoidable questions in the scholarship of wenxin diaolong. However, these questions have not been amply answered and only dealt with in a rough and shallow manner. The present essay focuses on related contexts in the Wenxin diaolong and shall analyze and interpret the content, essential elements, and logical structure of the double “literary mind,” attempting to discover its holistic structure and its corresponding features.

“Prayers from Him Who Is Unable to Make Offerings”: The Cult of Bēlet-ṣēri at Late Babylonian Uruk

AbstractAfter 484BC, several deities were (re)introduced into the pantheon of Uruk—most importantly the city’s new patron deity, the sky god Anu, but also the netherworld goddess Bēlet-ṣēri (“Lady of the Steppe”). In this article, I investigate the possible reasons behind the introduction of Bēlet-ṣēri’s cult at Uruk and the role ascribed to her by local worshipers. Using literary compositions, ritual texts, and legal documents, I trace the historical development of Bēlet-ṣēri’s divine characteristics, reconstruct her daily worship at Uruk, and examine the socioeconomic status of Urukean individuals bearing a “Bēlet-ṣēri-name.” I conclude that Bēlet-ṣēri was especially popular among non-elite citizens, probably because she could intercede with the queen of the netherworld, Ereškigal, for the lives of her followers and their families.

The Shadow of Patronage: Lewis Stephens and ‘The Ecclesiastical Climbers’

AbstractDrawing extensively on hitherto unexplored manuscript sources, this article outlines, first, the functioning of patronage within the eighteenth‐century church, with particular reference to the formation of Lewis Stephens's clerical identity. This provides a foundation for, second, the interrogation of Stephens's satirical compositions, and especially the depiction of his former patron Archbishop Lancelot Blackburne. Finally, the relationship between Stephens's contributions to public religious discourse, clerical conduct and private literary compositions and those of other leading satirists and writers of the period is analysed in order to illuminate the interplay between the roles of clergyman and writer in Walpolean Britain.

Reading Góngora's habla de negros in a Literary Attack Poem

Abstract This article interprets and contextualizes Góngora's 1609 burlesque, black-talk sonnet “A la Jerusalén conquistada que compuso Lope de Vega.” A translation into English illuminates the poem's sense: a black reader critiques Lope's epic and alludes to an African epic superior to the Jerusalén. After clarifying Góngora's words, I argue that his implied reader recognizes black talk as an invitation to laughter at and derision of black Africans. The study then focuses specifically on black oppression related to literary composition and shows how Góngora's sonnet affirms exclusivity for white male authors. To this end, I establish parallels between Góngora's sonnet and writing by and about Juan Latino, the sixteenth-century black author of epic poetry in Latin who challenged white authorial exclusivity and became a frequently invoked exception to the rule as well as a target for racist stereotyping.

“One Has To Be So Terribly Religious To Be An Artist”: Divine Inspiration and theophilia in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi

Abstract:This paper deals with the close link between divine epiphany and artistic inspiration in the life and work of one of the most renowned rhetoricians of the second century AD, Aelius Aristides. The argument in a nutshell is that when Aristides lays emphasis on the divinely ordained character of the Hieroi Logoi, in particular, and his literary and rhetorical composition, in general, he taps into a rich battery of traditional theophilic ideas and narratives (oral and written alike). These narratives accounted for the interaction of divine literary patrons and matrons with privileged members of the intellectual elite to provide thematic or stylistic guidance to their artistic enterprises. Thus, Aristides makes wider claims about his own status of theophilia (lit. ‘the state of being dear to the gods’), a status that was much-praised and much-prized in the Graeco-Roman world, and one that functioned as a status-elevating mechanism in the eyes of both his contemporaries and posterity. Furthermore and on a different level, he also utilizes his theophilic aspirations to elevate his prose-hymns (a genre he invented) to the higher and already established level of encomiastic poetry, which Greeks regarded for centuries as fit for the ears of the gods.

Bolesław Prus w przypisach i przypiskach. Studium przypadku

Based of the examples drawn from selected compositions by Boleslaw Prus, the article demonstrates a variety of problems related to preparing explanations concerning the works of the 19th century writer. Among them, there are various types and levels of details in footnotes, adjusted to the needs of a contemporary reader, or the matter of marking and rectifying the author’s mistakes (the state of knowledge at that time, deformations of quotations, anachronisms). It is also discovering non-obvious relations between the element of the world being explained and the plot, as well as marking traces of the writer’s private world preserved in a literary composition (such as recurring ideas and motifs, biographical elements, references to own or others’ texts: readings, creative notes etc.). While preparing an edition of a text by Prus (in case of both journalistic writing and belles-lettres), an editor faces the necessity to define the hierarchy of values, to make a difficult choice between informing about the reality of a given period and emphasizing the creator’s specific experiences, marking the border in using the information taken from the writer’s biography, between objective and subjective information. He or she also has to beat the temptation to overload the text with footnotes, supplementing or explaining each sentence – in order not to fall into the “paranoia of footnotes”.

Die arithmetische Feinstruktur im Traktat De oratione des Evagrios Pontikos

Abstract In the introduction to his tractate De oratione Evagrios Pontikos speaks of figures that are “triangles”, “squares”, and even “spheres”. These remarks are less cryptic if one regards the numerical systems used in late antiquity. However, they may hint at a hidden structure within De oratione. Selecting all chapters whose numbers are “triangles”, or “squares” respectively, etc., we find chains of sayings which follow certain themes woven into the “fabric” of the tractate. This discovery reveals again Evagrios as the master of literary composition.