Literary Composition Research Articles

A subversão pela tradição de Isak Dinesen: animismo, bruxas e storytelling em “The Deluge at Norderney”

O presente artigo tem como objetivo investigar de que modo a autora Isak Dinesen (pseudônimo e personagem viva de Karen Blixen) utiliza certos recursos para invocar a memória das tradições pagãs europeias. Entre eles, há o animismo, em que a natureza, especialmente o mar, tem agência e intenção, interferindo com e manipulando o enredo - remetendo ao sistema ontológico animista, que caracteriza o modo de pensar do paganismo. Há também o emprego do storytelling, modo como os conhecimentos são transmitidos entre as gerações por essas populações, e a presença constante da figura da bruxa. Ao empregar esses elementos em sua escrita, Dinesen cria um tipo peculiar de modernismo que subverte as leis da composição literária clássica através da retomada de outro tipo de tradição, que há séculos questiona e resiste ao status quo.

Literary composition as a source of formation of the creative personality of a future director in the artistic process

Literary composition as a source of formation of the creative personality of a future director in the artistic process

Note from the Editor

Note from the Editor Sem Vermeersch, Editor-in-chief This issue includes six research articles, four on the history of pre-modern Korea, one on post-liberation south Korea, and one on transnational Korea. There is also one article that translates and contextualizes a source text, and three book notes. The first article, by King Kwong Wong, attempts to propose a solution to a problem that has long plagued scholars of the Mongol period in Korean history: What exactly was the status of the Goryeo kingdom within the Mongol Empire? The author focuses on the operation of the Branch Secretariat for the Eastern Campaign to show how the issue of sovereignty was fluid and contested: Though nominally an instrument of Mongol control over Goryeo, the Branch Secretariat also provided an avenue for Goryeo officials to enter the Yuan civil service administration. This gave Goryeo officials a voice at the Yuan court, and they could and did use this platform to defend Goryeo’s autonomy. The next article, by Michael C. E. Finch, takes us to the Imjin War. Thanks to the Swaemirok, a diary kept by O Huimun, we can discover how an ordinary scholar managed to keep his family together during this period of turmoil. The article focuses on O’s recourse to divination and his interactions with a divination official. This reveals O Huimun’s anxieties over family matters, notably the health of his daughter. It also sheds light on an elite scholar’s layered attitude towards divination and diviners. The third article also deals with the Joseon period. In it, Hyun Soon Park seeks to answer the question why the so-called state celebration examination (gyeonggwa) became so popular in late Joseon Korea. Besides the regular triennial examination, additional examinations were sometimes held to mark special occasions; usually they were tied to important court celebrations and rituals, the legitimacy of which was enhanced by the presence of many scholars. Examinations held after these ritual celebrations were an incentive to secure the scholars’ goodwill towards the court. Given their focus on literary composition, an interesting bifurcation developed, in which provincial scholars preferred the [End Page v] triennial celebration (which focused on rote memorization), while capital scholars predominantly participated in the state celebration examinations. In the third and final article on Joseon history, Kyusik Sim looks at a type of source that has received almost no exposure in Korean Studies: stone monuments that commemorate the construction of bridges. One of the reasons for their neglect is that they do not fit into any of the traditional categories of literary composition. However, as the author shows, this also gave the authors of such inscriptions leeway for experimentation. The author has unearthed a fascinating text by the exiled scholar Sim Yeolji for a bridge in Gijang County, near Busan. Although the text was never carved on stone, the author shows how it still left its mark on the community, and thus allows us to gauge how exiles contributed to and interacted with the local community. In “The ‘Bunce Plan’ and the Aborted Land Reform of 1946” Il-Young Jung presents his findings on an important precursor to land reform in post-liberation South Korea. Although the Bunce Plan, named after the State Department official Arthur C. Bunce who was dispatched to Korea in 1946, was never implemented, it nevertheless constituted an important blueprint for the reforms eventually implemented in 1948. The article reveals that it was not only opposition by Koreans that doomed the plan, but also opposition on the part of the USAMGIK military who were governing the southern part of the peninsula until 1948. In the final research article of this issue, Wonjung Min investigates how Chilean K-pop fans perceive their idols. Specifically, her research ascertains what ideal of masculinity the fans identify with. In contrast to the hegemonic ideal of masculinity dominant in mainstream Chilean culture, K-pop offers flexible, hybrid models of masculinity that fans like to identify with. Besides the regular articles this issue also contains a section on “materials in translation.” Hui Zou and Myengsoo Seo introduce and translate Seo Yugu’s Jangchwiwon, an essay about an imaginary garden. Famous as the author of...

Генезис архетипа трикстера в русской литературе

The article is devoted to demonstrating the genesis of the archetype of the trickster in Russian literature. The antihero, the sources of whose anti-behavior are traced in harlequinade and skmorokh buffoonery, is examined on the material of folklore and literary works from the 18th to the early 20th century. Anti-behavior in Russian culture symbolizes a rebellion unrefl exed in the folk environment against the norms of behavior and orderliness of life imposed by those in power. The archetype of the trickster, which has longtime traditions in world culture, was personifi ed in Russia as the skomorokh, then the jester Farnos, who in many ways adopted the skomorokh traditions. Among the populace Petrukha Fornos became one of the favorite comic jester heroes, having acquired special popularity as the result of crude color woodcuts from the 18th century. In the 19th century the image of Farnos was transformed into Petrushka, a puppet character of the theatricalized genre. With his assistance the simplistic satirical subjects lay at the foundation of the so-called Petrushka theater which, despite the unaltered plot, bore an improvisational-play character, pertaining to a number of “baculine” comedies, in the 19th century the image of Petrushka was so popular, that it surpassed the oral folk tradition and found its place in literary compositions. In the early 20th century the image of Petrushka the trickster became the source for numerous interpretations in modernist literature.

Street Songs: Writers and Urban Songs and Cries, 1800–1925 by Daniel Karlin

MLR, .,   of the connection between Edgar Allan Poe and information theory, or Justine S. Murison on Martin Van Buren’s relationship to party politics. Many of the essays refer to popular anthologies for undergraduates, especially e Norton Anthology of American Literature, which have cemented what Robert S. Levine calls ‘microperiods’ (pp. –). While most references to anthologies call attention to the elisions and artificial barriers these anthologies produce, Levine provides a compelling counterpoint, suggesting that the traditional divisions allow critics and their students to ‘illuminate important connections between authors and their historical moment’ (p. ). e collection is varied enough for one to imagine this statement in tension with Russ Castronovo’s argument, which avers that consideration of literature’s transmission across time and space is at least as important as examining its original context. I read Timelines of American Literature with great pleasure, for the essays not only abound in valuable insights but are also written in clear prose. While I share Levine’s sense that the book would not be useful for undergraduates—the disturbing of timelines seems to require a sense of extant timelines in the first place—the collection is invaluable for any academics who think self-consciously about their work in relation to history, politics, or economics. It avoids the Manichaeism of much writing on periodization and instead shows the persisting fertility of literary history. M S U J G Street Songs: Writers and Urban Songs and Cries, –. By D K. (Clarendon Lectures in English) Oxford: Oxford University Press. . xii+  pp. £. ISBN ––––. Daniel Karlin’s slim volume expands his  Clarendon lectures into an elegant discussion of the presence of street songs in nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury poetry and fiction. Karlin offers no general arguments (about the work of music in literature, for example, or the role of street songs in particular), but rather the evidence of a series of closely observed cases, in each of which a writer transforms an ‘appropriation’ to make it part of a literary work’s ‘symbolic’ or ‘artistic design’ (pp. , , ). is leaves plenty of room for what Karlin does best: inspired interpretation grounded in extensive research. In each chapter he unfolds the larger story of a particular song and its variants—where and when it was composed and performed, layers of meanings which have accrued—while attending to the changed contexts which surround it in the literary work. Interweaving these narratives enables him to bring out unsuspected dimensions of a poem or a novel. e book’s six main chapters proceed from William Wordsworth (the blind musician hailed as ‘An Orpheus! an Orpheus!’ in ‘e Power of Song’, which Karlin nicely juxtaposes with the very different view of street song as intolerable noise represented in William Hogarth’s print of e Enrag’d Musician). We then move through Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (the child singing ‘O bella libertà’  Reviews in the opening lines of Casa Guidi Windows, the snatches of stornelli that distract the painter in ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’), James Joyce (the one-legged sailor who wanders through Dublin in Ulysses, growling out lines from ‘e Death of Nelson’), Virginia Woolf (the unintelligible singing of an ancient woman, heard by both Peter Walsh and Rezia Smith outside Regent’s Park Tube Station in Mrs. Dalloway), to Marcel Proust (early morning Paris street cries driing up to the windows of the narrator in La Prisonière, volume  of A la recherche du temps perdu). roughout, Karlin pursues complicated strands of meaning borne by street songs or cries to show an author’s triumphant use of them in a different literary design. e volume concludes with a final chapter on Walt Whitman (a knife-grinder in ‘Sparkles from the Wheel’)—the sole American example and the only instance where sight rather than sound provides the design for a literary composition. Perhaps the best way to read this book is simply to take pleasure in what it provides. But if one did want to use the evidence of these seven case studies to think about larger questions, what would these be? I have already suggested one: how do writers translate song (or sound) into a written text? In some...

The gender specifications of the emotional representation in a communication space

The purpose of the article is to describe the gender peculiarities of the objectification of emotions in the verbal and non-verbal aspects of the communicative behavior of female and male characters in a literary text. Of interest is the study of the features of the representation of emotions in the literary text, taking into account the factor of gender influence on the communicative behavior of a person and the choice of language means. Text fragments which most clearly described the emotional experiences and states of female and male characters were selected by a continuous sampling method from the modern literary compositions of the 20th - 21st centuries written in Russian by women and men. Features of emotion explication were analyzed taking into account gender identity in texts of literary prose. Gender preferences in the choice of language means of expressing emotions in speech were identified. The following research methods were used to achieve the objectives: a descriptive method involving analysis, comparison and classification of language facts; contextual analysis method. The practical significance of the work is the possibility of applying the main conclusions and results of the investigation in theoretical courses in linguistic studies of emotions and gender.

A corpus-based study of abbreviations in early English medical writing

The Early Middle English period witnessed the massive borrowing and adoption of the Latin system of abbreviations in England. Mediaeval writers appropriated those symbols that were directly transferable from Latin exemplars, especially suspensions and brevigraphs, while contractions and superior letters were incorporated somewhat later. The existing accounts of abbreviations in handwritten documents are fragmentary as they offer the picture of the literary compositions of the period, which have been traditionally taken as the source of evidence for handbooks on palaeography. In addition to this, most of these accounts are limited to the description of their use and typology in independent witnesses, being in many cases impossible to extrapolate the results beyond the practice of individual scribes. The present paper takes that step beyond individuality and pursues the study of abbreviations from a variationist perspective with the following objectives: a) to analyse the use and distribution of abbreviations in Late Middle English and Early Modern English (1350–1700), and b) to evaluate the relevance of these abbreviations across different text types of medical writing. The data used as source of evidence come from The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose, both the Late Middle English and the Early Modern English components (1350–1500 and 1500–1700, respectively).

The Blind Bow-Boy by Carl Van VechtenKirsten MacLeod

 Reviews in the opening lines of Casa Guidi Windows, the snatches of stornelli that distract the painter in ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’), James Joyce (the one-legged sailor who wanders through Dublin in Ulysses, growling out lines from ‘e Death of Nelson’), Virginia Woolf (the unintelligible singing of an ancient woman, heard by both Peter Walsh and Rezia Smith outside Regent’s Park Tube Station in Mrs. Dalloway), to Marcel Proust (early morning Paris street cries driing up to the windows of the narrator in La Prisonière, volume  of A la recherche du temps perdu). roughout, Karlin pursues complicated strands of meaning borne by street songs or cries to show an author’s triumphant use of them in a different literary design. e volume concludes with a final chapter on Walt Whitman (a knife-grinder in ‘Sparkles from the Wheel’)—the sole American example and the only instance where sight rather than sound provides the design for a literary composition. Perhaps the best way to read this book is simply to take pleasure in what it provides. But if one did want to use the evidence of these seven case studies to think about larger questions, what would these be? I have already suggested one: how do writers translate song (or sound) into a written text? In some chapters, Karlin attends to this question more than in others, where the role of song slips into that of the figure of the singer, on which he has written well elsewhere. Alternatively one might ask: can these studies tell us anything about the way people heard street songs and cries in the places and times covered—what they listened to but also what registered on their consciousness, how and why? One would need either to argue that these cases are particularly representative or to examine a lot more of them—including works by popular writers. But those are questions for other studies. is book concludes, with lovely structural circularity, where it began: with ‘the art of appropriation’ (p. ). Building on the work of his chapters, Karlin closes with a tribute to (at least some of) his writers: ‘Whitman—like Wordsworth, or Joyce, or Woolf, or Proust—can afford to be as generous as he is unscrupulous. Only the great artists pay such tribute to the treasure they plunder’ (p. ). U  C E H e Blind Bow-Boy. By C V V. Ed. by K ML. (MHRA Critical Texts) Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association. . xxviii+ pp. £.. ISBN ––––. In the past decade, many modernist texts have become available as they move out of copyright and into the public domain. In addition, letters and archival material, also previously underused and kept out of print, have been allowed to become accessible to scholars. As a result, once popular and influential works can now be re-examined and new understandings of oen read and taught novels can be constructed, in turn illuminating the importance of an entire network of long forgotten modernist writers and artists. Because American modernism is so deeply connected to American nationalism, the re-emergence of these understudied and in many cases MLR, .,   suppressed texts forces a reassessment of deeply held scholarly beliefs about not just modernism, but the idea of a national literature as a whole. Kirsten MacLeod’s new edition of Carl Van Vechten’s e Blind Bow-Boy () does exactly that with its extensive and well-researched apparatus thoroughly demonstrating the importance of this once well-known novel. e Blind Bow-Boy follows Harold Prewett, ‘a naïve young man who has led a sheltered life, and his initiation into a life of pleasure-seeking’ (p. xi). His father, who le him to be raised by a harsh aunt, summons him at eighteen years old, presumably to take up the mantle of his cloak and suit business. When Harold blurts out that he has no interest in the business, his father, instead of being upset, praises him and agrees to finance his next years exploring New York with ‘worldly man-about-town Paul Moody’ (p. xi). In a complicated twist of reverse psychology, he expects his son to be so fed up with corruption and...

Из комментариев к типологии видений в древнерусской агиографии (сюжет об избиении беса святым)

This article examines the plot of visions on the beating a demon by a saint is not typical for the original Old Russian writings. This plot is included in the typology proposed earlier. It represents one of the possible ways of organizing a vast, thematically diverse material of vi-sions. Most of the examples of our typology are plots in the composition of hagiographic nar-ratives of various types. The considered plot is one these cases. We have analyzed two examples of visions containing scenes of beating demons from literary compositions of different times. From the Byzantine Life of Andrew the Fool that one of the first in the 12th century in-troduced the Russian reader to this plot. Also from the Life of the Monk Epiphanius written at the end of the Old Russian tradition. Typologically similar features of visions are noted: the presence of a common structural scheme, participation in the formation of the event of two characters of the sacred and infernal worlds at once. The revealed specificity of the scene of beating demons is explained by tradition, the time of writings and their pragmatic orientation. Thus, an interesting, visual story on the beating the demon full of artistic details in the Byzan-tine Life characterizes the height of the spiritual feat of the saint. In the Life of Epiphany, a similar story reflects the worldview of an ascetic, also demonstrates the phenomenon of “lit-erary materialization of visions”. Examples of visions from the Lives of Andrew the Fool and the Monk Epiphanius demonstrate the evolution in the depiction of the scene of the beating demons in the literary process of medieval Russia, reflecting significant changes in the genre of visions in the transitional period of Russian literature.

Периодические издания калмыцкой эмиграции (на примере журнала «Мана зäнгә» 1946–1947 годов)

The paper examines Mana Zänge (Kalm. Мана зäнгe, 1946–1947) journal and analyzes publishing activities of émigré Kalmyks. Goals. The work provides a general analysis of Kalmyk émigré publishing efforts in the late 1940s. Materials and Methods. The study focuses on journal articles and literary compositions published by Mana Zänge, describes the latter in detail, analyzes materials available, and draws conclusions. Special attention is paid to minor Kalmyk-language texts, which was due to that the periodical was primarily engaged in political journalism and related latest European news and events. In this context, news reviews of Russian arts and literary works by Russian Cossack writers would hold a special place in the journal’s narrative. Conclusions. Mana Zänge proved efficient enough in supporting social activities of émigré Kalmyks in Western Europe, developing democratic ideas and ethnic social thought. Moreover, the publication served as a meeting point for the whole of Kalmyk expatriate community vastly scattered across different European countries. So, émigré Kalmyks stayed aware of all political and cultural events that were taking place not only in Europe but also in Kalmykia and Russia at large. Though it must be said superficially invisible ties to Motherland and indirect participation in all meaningful events had been part of their lives virtually since the earliest days abroad.

Is the Testament of Qahat Part of the Visions of Amram? Material and Literary Considerations of 4Q542 and 4Q547

Abstract The contents of 4Q542 and 4Q547 have been treated in previous scholarship as representing two, independent Jewish literary compositions dating to the Hellenistic period, the Testament of Qahat and the Visions of Amram. However, paleographic, scribal, and other manuscript features strongly suggest that 4Q542 and 4Q547 are, in fact, parts of one and the same scroll. Consequently, in this article I reconsider the relationship of the contents of 4Q542/547. It may be that two independent works were copied on the same scroll, as we find elsewhere among the Qumran manuscripts (e.g., 4Q203–204). Another possibility is that what scholars have considered to be an independent composition in the Testament of Qahat is actually a sub-section of the Visions of Amram. The latter option gains strong support from a contextual assessment of other Aramaic writings found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially the Isaac section of the Aramaic Levi Document.

Narratives of authority: the earliest Old English law-code prefaces

ABSTRACT This study examines the introductions to the earliest surviving English law codes: those of Æthelberht (d. 616), Hlothere and Eadric (d. 685 & ?686) and Wihtred (d. 725) of Kent, and Ine (d. 726) and Alfred (d. 899) of Wessex. It argues that these texts address in thoughtful and imaginative ways significant questions of legal and royal authority, legislative legitimation, and the place of newly-written law within its legal tradition. Despite two centuries of apparent legislative silence between the short prefaces of the early kings and the lengthy preface to the domboc of King Alfred, the rhetorical projects of these texts are linked by a number shared concerns – and particularly by their historiographical approach to the development of legal authority. Though the early legal prefaces have rarely been at the centre of jurisprudential or literary critical interest, their development of legal authority via the potency of literary composition represents an important aspect of a broader literary and legal culture in early England.

Educational Reforms and Sacralisation of Power in the First Empire (1804-1815). The Case of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy

Abstract: This work aims to highlight how, even in this particular territory closely linked to Paris and of which Napoleon was the sovereign, education became the object of significant reforms promoted by the political authorities. On one hand, these reforms intended to ensure a radical acceleration of the secularisation process of school education begun in Lombardy in the second half of the XVIIIth century, in turn fuel to the objectives that intended to add the basis of the principles of welfare also in this political domain. On the other hand, they aspired to root in the students adhesion to Bonaparte. As will be discussed later, this objective was pursued by encouraging students and teachers to engage themselves in writing encomiastic, flattering literary compositions, sometimes inspired by the most renowned literary works, which had to contribute to building the glorification of the monarch in the new political framework and which found a particular manifestation on the occasion of the birth of his male heir, the King of Rome, in 1811.

Answering Yes/No Questions in Biblical Hebrew Dialogue

Abstract The question-response interchange in biblical dialogue is of great linguistic as well as literary interest. In order to successfully serve purposes such as characterization and plot development, question-response interactions in a literary composition must authentically reflect the linguistic forms and conversational practices characterizing natural spoken language. The present study analyzes the linguistic characteristics and patterns of use of responses to questions in Biblical Hebrew dialogue. Its findings show that the semantics and syntax of answers to yes/no questions are closely related to the affiliation or misaffiliation of the answer with the question’s accompanying assumptions, expectations, and agendas. These associations between semantic/syntactic types and social cooperativeness, which closely resemble those found in modern spoken conversation, contribute to the authenticity of the style of biblical dialogue, and enable the question-response interaction to function effectively on the literary level.

Rethinking the Materiality of Biblical Texts: From Source, Tradition and Redaction to a Scroll Approach

Abstract This article shows how attention to the dynamics surrounding production and revision of ancient Near Eastern scrolls can help scholars develop better models for the development and early use of the Bible. Though pioneers pursing such a scroll approach were confined to limited data in the Bible and rabbinic literature, we now have a wealth of data on scrolls from Egypt, Levantine sites like Deir ʿAlla, and Qumran. After discussing the use of scrolls for ancient literary compositions, the article illustrates how this information can reframe and inform analysis of the Pentateuch’s formation.

Reading kephalaia: The Composition of Evagrius Ponticus’ Ad monachos Reconsidered

Abstract How Evagrius Ponticus (d. 399) composed his highly influential treatises of short and succinct chapters (kepahalaia) is bewildering and has been discussed by many scholars. In this essay the literary composition of Evagrius’ To monks in monasteries and communities, or Ad monachos, a typical text of short chapters, is examined from a literary perspective by relating the text to literary conventions, common in late antique literature and in rhetorical handbooks and exercises (progymnasmata). It is demonstrated how the teaching develops gradually in accordance with a pattern for a so-called amplified argument (epicheireme) codified in Pseudo-Hermogenes Progymnasmata. By this arrangement of the teaching, the reader is offered, not just a random taste of various aspects of the monastic life, but a set of specific conclusions to implement or to be aware of practically in the life as monk; conclusions that are perceptible not at just a cursory glance, but at a careful and repeated reading.

New Light on the Sumerian Literary LetterAbaindasa to Sulge

AbstractThe first part of this article offers a structural analysis of the literary letter of petitionAbaindasa to Sulge, one of the most unstable OB literary compositions that has posed considerable problems to scholars in the past. Both the difficult reconstruction of the text and questions as to its connection to other Sumerian literary letters will be analyzed. A close examination of the sources and identification of intertextual relations will help our understanding of its textual reconstruction and its place among different subgroups of Sumerian literary letters. The second part of the article will be dedicated to the edition of a previously unpublished duplicate of this letter in theMusée d’art et d’histoire,Geneva, supplemented by a comparison to another tablet with a Sumerian literary letter in the same museum, which might have been written by the same scribe.

Textual Criticism and Its Impact on the Study of Israel’s Religion and Hebrew Grammar

Abstract Textual criticism is a necessary first step when studying a biblical text. However, textual issues go beyond isolated readings and reach the literary composition of the book, Hebrew grammar, theology or history. The books of Kings / Kingdoms offer many examples where textual variants solve difficulties or shed light on other venues of study. In the present article, we study the name Molek / Molok / Milkom, the presence of the proleptic pronoun in some verses of Kings, and the names with suffix -ay from a textual point of view.

Between Artifice and Manifestation: Literary Composition in the Prologue of the Kaiserchronik and Other Early Vernacular Prologues

Between Artifice and Manifestation: Literary Composition in the Prologue of the Kaiserchronik and Other Early Vernacular Prologues

O Além da Retórica em Vanitas, 51 avenue d’Iéna de Almeida Faria

O conto Vanitas, 51 avenue d’Iéna, publicado em 2007 pela Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, inspirou a Paula Rego o magistral tríptico “Vanitas”. Almeida Faria, reproduzindo a voz de Edgar Poe, que empresta ao pintor Mário Botas, proporciona-nos um encontro com o fantasma do opulento colecionador, cujas memórias estéticas preenchem a conversação entre os dois interlocutores. Tratar-se-á de um jogo retórico denunciando a ilusão ligada a qualquer composição literária, a começar pelo próprio texto, ou, ao invés, de uma profissão de fé na eternidade das obras de arte, mesmo as literárias? Esta relação entre a literatura e a pintura é uma das chaves da obra de Almeida Faria, mas permanece sempre tensa e ambígua, marcada por uma certa subordinação – irónica? – da primeira face à segunda. É que a literatura, arte das palavras, não pode, na sua necessária discursividade, rivalizar com a instantaneidade intuitiva da fruição estética que os quadros oferecem. Mas não permanece o escritor definitivamente mestre do jogo?