Literary Status Research Articles

Catholic Faith and Easter Stories: Reflections on Hubert Richards

Is it possible for a Catholic to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ while at the same time classifying the resurrection narratives in the New Testament as examples of a special kind of fiction? Is faith in the resurrection compatible with treating the gospel accounts of an empty tomb and appearances of the risen Christ to his disciples as ‘stories’ ?With the recent publication of The First Easter Hubert Richards has presented Catholics with problems about the literary status of the resurrection narratives which cannot be ducked by theologians and preachers because for one thing the ready availability of the book means that many Catholics who have not been able to keep abreast of current biblical exegesis have suddenly been shocked into reconsidering how they should regard the gospel stories. It is depressing, but not surprising, to hear that some enquirers are being headed off with the information that Hubert Richards has resigned from the priesthood. His faith in God and in the resurrection shines through so manifestly in his writing that we need not linger over this futile manoeuvre.

Explaining Our Literary Understanding: A Response to Jay Schleusener and Stanley Fish

Previous articleNext article No AccessCritical ResponseExplaining Our Literary Understanding: A Response to Jay Schleusener and Stanley FishRalph W. RaderRalph W. Rader Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 1, Number 4Jun., 1975 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/447822 Views: 5Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1975 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:John Y. Lawrence Toward a Predictive Theory of Theme Types, Journal of Music Theory 64, no.11 (Apr 2020): 1–36.https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-8033408 James R. Kincaid Coherent Readers, Incoherent Texts, Critical Inquiry 3, no.44 (Oct 2015): 781–802.https://doi.org/10.1086/447918

The survival of microfungi in the nests of tree-sparrow (Passer montanus L.) in the nest-boxes over the winter season.

At the mycological examination of eleven nest-boxes of the Tree-Sparrow (Passer montanus L.) after the winter season a significant increase of the total number of fungi was ascertained in comparison with the investigation of the same boxes in the previous summer; especially the cellulolytic fungi increased (generaPenicillium, Scopulariopsis, Chrysosporium et al.) but also the potentially zoopathogenic (ascertainedAspergillus fumigatus, Candida albicans, Mucor pusillus et al.) and toxinogenic fungi (e.g.Asp. flavus); a moderate-statistically insignificant-decrease in the number of isolates and species of keratinolytic fungi took place (in spring foundArthroderma ciferrii, A. quadrifidum andAphanoascus fulvescens). In some fungi not only survival but also colonization of the substrate in the winter and early-spring period were proved. As main factors conditioning the survival of fungi in the nest-boxes over the winter were ascertained the composition of the substrate, its temperature and humidity. The limiting abiotic factor is before all the low temperature, inhibiting the development of nonpsychorphilic fungi. On the base of various changes of the physical and chemical conditions of the environment an attempt of explaining the dynamics of some ascertained fungi in accordance with literary statements is presented. The proved overwintering of some potentially pathogenic fungi in the microhabitat supplies to the studies of this kind an epidemiologic and epizootologic importance.

Melodrama and Totality in "Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes"

The plot of Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes has generally been viewed as something of a liability. Lanson saw it as an exemplary illustration of l'ecoeurante extravagance des intrigues que combine lourdement la fantaisie de Balzac,' and this has been a habitual response of criticism ever since (excessively slick, luridly sensational, undeniably extravagant are characteristic of the judgments offered by more recent critics). That the record should be virtually unanimous in its condemnation of the novel is, of course, readily understandable: the tissue of unexpected encounters, violent coincidences, abrupt reversals of fortune, multiple disguises which make up the plot of Splendeurs evidently suggest a cheap sensationalism and an exotic theatricality which speak of a fatal concession to the commercial, sub-literary mode of Eugene Sue (with whom Balzac was engaged in active rivalry during the 1840s). Yet it is arguable that the established critical consensus on the novel has missed a great deal. Such a suggestion should not however be taken as indicating that the customary description of the novel as melodramatic is somehow inappropriate or inadequate. The melodrama is central, and any attempt to develop a revaluation of the novel must start from the fact of that centrality; it dictates the essential terms on which the question of the exact literary status of Splendeurs must be decided. The case I wish to argue here, therefore, is not that the way to rescue Splendeurs from its damaging critical heritage is by asserting an artistic achievement located, as it were, outside Balzac's use of melodrama. On the contrary, what needs to be stressed is the wholeness of Splendeurs, its deep unity of vision and technique, involving above all a recognition that, in this novel, Balzac does work in and through the conventions of contemporary popular fiction, but that his achievement lies in the radical transformation of these conventions in the service of a serious and dignified artistic purpose. The focus of this transforming activity is in a particular type of relationship that Balzac, like Dickens (as we shall see, the meaningful comparison here is with Dickens and not with Sue), establishes between melodrama and This is not the place to enter into the semantic jungle that has grown up around the intensely problematic category of literary realism. Among the various approaches to this concept, there is however one, in relation to which the complex ramifications of the plot of Splendeurs prove to be of great significance. That approach, which has occupied a central and fruitful place in literary theory (and, in particular, in the work of Georg Lukacs and Raymond Williams) springs essentially

On Literality in My Drawings

There are at least four aspects of my recent drawings that may be considered literal: (1) specific subject matter, (2) articulate image depiction, (3) application of letters, numbers, words and other symbols and (4) poems to accompany allegorically related drawings done as a series. Through the development of these characteristics I have come to recognize two distinct forms of literality: one factual (and specific) and the other literary (and symbolic). Realism is one aspect of literality that I have applied. Four years ago I was using polymer and solvent transfer techniques that produced highly detailed effects [1]. More recently I have begun to develop images in multiple 'stages' that range from the specifically stated to generalized schemas. These stages usually involve several altered versions of a given image, suggesting physical change (cf. Fig. 1). Such image sequences may be experienced as literal if viewed on the basis of their chronology of change (cf. Fig. 2). In 'Figural Movements' (cf. Fig. 1,) the drawn muscles and figure anatomies, although shown in differing scales, are conceptually tied by literal, known connections that they possess outside the drawing. I have used carefully modulated surfaces in order to produce specific, perceivable volumes that amplify the concrete nature of an image (cf. Fig. 1). Such depictions have been predominately imaginary in source, although often literal in effect. I have found that 'abstract' motifs may even acquire a literalness as a result of articulate execution (cf. the grid at top of Fig. 1). Schematically developed images can evoke literal, space-time qualities (cf. bottom of Fig. 1). I have often drawn or painted repeated parallel or broken lines to give an illusion of movement through time and space, as was done by Futurist artists (cf. Figs. 1 and 2). The spaces between these lines may be viewed as 'time modules' having inner sizes that symbolically correspond to time durations. The characteristics of the dividing lines (thickness, crispness, suggestiveness, etc.) effect the possibility for their activity as symbolic time intervals. About two years ago I became interested in some parallels between literary statements and literal,

A Rose for Behaviorism

Among the several classes of psychologists, behaviorists I would judge are least anxious to view their constructions in historical perspective. If it is good economics it is bad science; if it preserves the morale of a fledgling movement it falsifies the nature of the knowledge process. Neither constructs nor maggots are generated spontaneously, and while none would propose that the behaviorist is a sort of untutored pork butcher graduated to academia, the image, it must be confessed, does exude a certain charm. Nor is it unmitigatedly pejorative. Pork butchers too share in sense and sensitiviry. There is an esp-cially fine fellow of this calling in Garches, a small town just outside Paris, who with instinctive pre-Raphaelite flair decorates the pig rumps that hang from his stall with a boldly placed plastic rose. The purpose of this note is to add one small item to the reluctant history of behaviorism. It is a literary statement, published originally in 1920, by the sublime subjectivist Marcel Proust, of the reinforcing effect of reduction. The formulation appears in the first volume of Le CBtd de Guermantes (1954) , at a point in the narrative where Robert de has just effected one of his many final separations from Rachel his mistress. The relevant passage reads (my translation) : Saint-Loup suffered horribly from this falling out, but that description is too simple and falsifies the idea one ought to have of his pain. When he found himself alone, his only thought that of his mistress departed with the respect that she shown seeing him act so forcibly, the anxieties that he the first hours came to an end before the irreparable, and the cessation of an is a thing so sweet that the estrangement, once certain, took for him a little of the same sort of charm as a reconciliation would have had (D. 121) . .And again, arguing for the primacy of the emotion over the referent person, but in a work not appearing until 1925: Before that, when i t was still attached to her, we believed that our happiness depended on her being: it depended only on the termination of our anxiety (La Fugitive, 1954, p. 433). A writer is of his place and time. W e may as easily call correspondences between early literary and late scientific statements remembrances of things past as anticipations of those to come. In a discipline whose actual history is as old as man himself, the relative infrequence of self-conscious recollection is harshly restrictive. Proust holds not one but many roses for psychology, and in this he but epitomizes the situation of countless other artists. The science is not so far along in its development that it cannot be enhanced by these florations.

Periods in the Arts: Sketches and Speculations

most representative of English neoclassic critics.' The balance and decorum of the Discourses, their high respect for the lessons of the past, their eloquent rationality, their quest for a standard of taste founded on general nature, approach a perfect literary statement of the neoclassical ideal. Yet according to historians of art, is not a neoclassical artist. A recent study of English Neoclassical Art concedes him a few pages, on the grounds that, before his late attack on Batoni and Mengs, Reynolds had been capable on rare occasions of executing a work that comes close to the neoclassical idiom2; other books on neoclassicism treat him peripherally, or as an active antagonist. Embarrassing as it may seem, the artist regarded by literary men as the nonpareil of the neoclassic is regarded by men of art as nothing of the kind. The source of this contradiction lies not in Reynolds, but in a peculiar modern ambiguity: neoclassicism, used by literary historians and by art historians, refers to two periods which share little but a name. The literary movement, already in full flood during Ben Jonson's time, reached its high tide at the turn of the seventeenth century; the movement in art, almost a century later, with the triumphs of Adam, Flaxman, David, and Canova. In philosophy, in form, in style, the two periods differ as thoroughly as Diderot from Boileau, as Gluck from Purcell. Thus Reynolds, a late neoclassicist by literary standards, had ended his career by the time that the great age of neoclassicism in painting had well begun. Indeed, the neoclas-

The mission of SS. Cyril and Methodios and its aftermath in Central Europe

The achievement of SS. Cyril and Methodios may be summarized as follows: in 863 the Byzantine emperor sent to the Prince of Moravia, at the latter’s request, a mission led by the brother saints to develop the evangelization of his lands, since Frankish missionaries were becoming politically more and more personae non gratae in Moravia. By the time that the surviving brother Methodios died in 885, as archbishop and papal legate in Moravia, the principle of the mission had not only been maintained in the face of constant opposition but also accepted, if only partially and grudgingly, elsewhere. This principle was that any people, especially neophyte, must be allowed to praise God in its own language: only through one’s native tongue can one fully understand the promises of baptism, the liturgy, and the Holy Scriptures. During those twenty years a form of the Slav language was elevated to literary status and recorded in a specially designed alphabet, and many clerks had been trained in it. From Moravia its use spread first to those lands which came under Moravian rule in the 870s and 880s—Bohemia, Pannonia, and (very probably) south Poland. On Methodios’s death the Frankish clergy regained the upper hand in Moravia and dispersed the saints’ colleagues and disciples, who then found support for their ministry in yet other Slav lands, namely Croatian Dalmatia and Bulgaria.

Pushkin’s Political Weltanschauung

The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of Pushkin's political views as reflected in his creative works, correspondence, and diary. Pushkin's place in Russian literature is assured, and volumes have been written to reinforce his literary status. His political quality, however, has yet to be fully discussed. While his impact on Russian literature has been far-reaching, his influence on Russian political thought during the nineteenth century was practically nil. Indeed, only very few of his contemporaries recognized his political talent. His friend, Prince P. A. Vyazemsky, however, grasped the significance of the poet's political insight and characterized him as a liberal-conservative, although realizing that such an abstract label was inadequate.1 Some attempts have been made to discover the spiritual side of Pushkin's genius, notably by Merezhkovsky, Gershenzon, S. L. Frank, P. V. Annenkov, and V. Tomashevsky.2 None of these, however, have succeeded in assessing his importance as a political thinker. It is both strange and tragic that Russian scholars dealing with the history of the development of socio-political ideas have ignored his contribution in this area.

The Heeded Voice: studies in the Literary Status of the Anglican Sermon, 1830–1900. By E. D. Mackerness. Pp. xvi + 158. Cambridge: Heffer, 1959. 21s.

The Heeded Voice: studies in the Literary Status of the Anglican Sermon, 1830–1900. By E. D. Mackerness. Pp. xvi + 158. Cambridge: Heffer, 1959. 21s.

The Literary Status of the English Popular Ballad

CHOLARS have generally been inclined to view the English popular ballad not as an aesthetic object but as a relic of an early and primitive state of society, in which the literary process was governed more by instinct than by convention. They have implicitly denied the existence of a purely literary problem, and their speculations about the ballad matrix have had the effect of discouraging criticism of any but an appreciative sort. Yet excellencies appropriate to learned literature have been incidentally claimed for the ballad, and, in contrast to other forms of popular art (e.g., lyrical folk song, folk tale, broadside), it has received extensive notice in anthologies and literary histories. This is not to argue that it deserves less but only to remark the impropriety of assuming value for what, beyond an occasional explication, has escaped close critical scrutiny. The ballad doubtless owes its relative immunity from value judgments to the naturalistic explanation of its origin. Most of the older scholars probably felt that standards derived from literature of the main cultural stream were largely inapplicable to songs which, in the best opinion, came ultimately from the illiterate throng. For some time now, the theory of communal composition has been in the discard, but discussions of the ballad continue to be colored by romantic attitudes toward the ill-defined folk and their creative activity. In important respects the ballad has not been wrenched free of the context in which the eighteenth century placed it by reason of an unconscionably narrow view of literary form. It is my opinion that literature even of the humblest order is completely accessible to criticism and that, accordingly, the ballad, whatever its degree of sophistication, is susceptible to systematic analysis. With the object of clarifying the literary status of

The Literary Status of Mark Twain, 1877-1890

Research Article| October 01 1920 The Literary Status of Mark Twain, 1877-1890 H. Houston Peckham H. Houston Peckham Purdue University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1920) 19 (4): 332–340. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-19-4-332 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation H. Houston Peckham; The Literary Status of Mark Twain, 1877-1890. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 October 1920; 19 (4): 332–340. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-19-4-332 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsSouth Atlantic Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1920 by Duke University Press1920 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.