Literary Topos Research Articles

«ИЗОБРАЖАЯ ЖЕРТВУ»: ПАФОС ОБЛИЧЕНИЯ И МУЧЕНИЧЕСТВА В СОЧИНЕНИЯХ ИВАНА ГРОЗНОГО И АНДРЕЯ КУРБСКОГО

The article explores changes in the use of the categories of victim and sacrifice in political literary artefacts in the second half of the 16th century: namely, the correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Andrey Kurbsky and Kurbsky’s History of the Grand Prince of Moscow. The study shows that the writers of this time used the literary topoi of victim in a fundamentally different way to earlier authors in medieval Russia. The article defines the main means of poetics and rhetoric in the works of Ivan the Terrible and Andrey Kurbsky. The methods for updating the topos of victim for both authors are similar. Each of them desacralizes a high Christian idea and uses it and a topos for subjective and, as a rule, ideological purposes. Such changes are possible due to the mixing of earthly (profane) and heavenly (sacred) logic when dealing with the categories of victim and sacrifice, which is typical for this time. If, for Kurbsky, the people killed by the tsar are new martyrs, then for Ivan the Terrible, they are justly punished traitors. The tsar believes that subjects should be ready to sacrifice their lives for him. Kurbsky does not deny the necessity of willingness to sacrifice, but he consistently proves that the tsar’s personality does not correspond to Christian ideas about the ideal monarch, so he convinces the reader of the possibility of confronting the tsar. At the same time, both authors characterize themselves as a person affected by the actions of the other and use the literary topoi of victim.

Ancient “Nomadology” – Knowledge of the Ancients About the Main Issues of Nomadic Studies

Introduction. Based on the study of the ancient literary tradition, the article analyzes the fundamental beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans about early nomads, the Scythians and the Sarmatians: origins of nomadism and nomads, their lifestyle, relations with settled neighbors, patterns of historical development of nomadic societies, etc. The interest of the Greeks and Romans in their contemporary nomads was largely explained by the fact that their lifestyles were very different. Methods. The author discusses the formation of the image of a nomad from Homer to Herodotus, emergence of its mandatory attributes that eventually became a literary topos. Analysis. The researcher points out the fact that it was Herodotus who gave a brief but comprehensive description of the Scythian nomadism in the fourth book of his Histories. Moreover, in his third narration about of the Scythians origins he actually described a phenomenon that was later called the steppe pulsation law. The paper also provides the analysis of the views of Aristotle toward the nature of nomadism and natural causes of nomadic lifestyle (Dionysius Periegetes). Based on the works of ancient authors, the author specifies several types of nomadism and stages of historical development of early nomads. It appears that the full cycle was completed only by the Scythians who created an early state. The author reveals its socioeconomic nature based on the exopolitary mode of production dominated by so-called remote (war, plunder, extortion of gifts) and tributary forms of exploitation of dependent settled populations. Results. The analysis of the ancient narrative tradition shows that ancient authors who were contemporary to the Scythians and the Sarmatians made a number of important observations in the field of nomadology that later served as a theoretical basis for this emerging discipline.

Narrare per esistere: la (in)visibilità della maternità nella letteratura italiana contemporanea

From the second half of the 20th century, the issue of women’s writing has been of considerable interest in literary studies, highlighting the need to know women as writers and as literary subjects, in order to understand female experience first-hand. This approach to written texts is based on two fundamental aspects of study: women as writers and the representation of women in the text. This has made it possible to examine how women are represented and what topics women writers prefer, for example, motherhood, a literary topos par excellence in Italian literature. Despite this, although motherhood is present in numerous works, the voices of actual mothers are largely absent: mothers and motherhood are in fact narrated from the point of view of daughters. In view of that, there are two main aims of this study: (1) to examine the possible reasons for the absence of the mother’s point of view and (2) to analyze some contemporary Italian literarature narrated by mothers themselves.

A Literary Topos of Abundance: Two Emesal Prayers to Enki

AbstractThis study analyses a literary topos concerning the abundance of natural phenomena, including fresh water, reed beds and fish. The standardised sequence listing such abundant natural features occurs in two previously unpublished tablets containing Emesal prayers concerning the god Enki, published in this article. The Old Babylonian tablet, of unknown provenance, attests to a unique composition. The tablet from Late Babylonian Ur, which is partially paralleled by a previously known manuscript, includes performative indications.

La explosión verde neogranadina y Montebello paisaje y jardín en La otra raya del tigre

In this paper I took as an object of study the novel entitled La otra raya del tigre (1975) by Colombian writer Pedro Gomez Valderrama. This work, classified in the genre of Travel Literature, it is built up with the imaginaries from the Colonial Period, the characteristic narratives of travel journals from 18th and 19th centuries, classic literary topos, demystifying and naturalization of the wild (mountains, sea, caverns) promoted by The Enlightenment. In order to analyze the configuration of the places, I focused on two specific settings: Montebello and New Granada landscape. I used the notions of landscape and garden to study those settings, respectively. Analyzing these settings allows to comprehend the specific conditions of imaginary places and, besides, to notice the geographic dimension of the representation of a territory on literature (Geopoetis). Finally, I consider Montebello such as a locus amoenus. In the other hand, New Granada landscape is related to locus horridus. In La otra raya del tigre the aesthetics construction of landscape depends on three key procceses: contemplation, imagination and explorer’s journey.

Ibn Fadlan and a By-passed remark on an imaginary geographical Topos: some observations on the decreasing factual credibility regarding the caucasus area of the silk road

This article looks at some aspects of Ibn Fadlan’s journey to the steppe during the 10th Century to ostensibly establish friendly relations between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Volga Bulgars. He left a detailed account of his trip, which includes remarks on the mythical people of Gog and Magog, traditionally considered the eschatological enemies of the civilized world. Ibn Fadlan was somewhat incongruent regarding his portraits and opinions of the Slavic or Turkic people he found in the steppe. The main contribution of this article relates to Gog/Magog and modern conceptions of the “Silk Roads”, especially concerning their extension in the North paths and their permanence in the longue duree. In this respect, some modern theses regarding these issues must be tackled, most remarkably, that of Peter Frankopan and Barry Cunliffe. Other Arabic travels to the North are also examined in order to discuss cultural continuities and breaks between the steppe and the Mediterranean world. The main objective of this article is to show that Ibn Fadlan, in spite of his alleged accuracy, also shared, even if en passant, some of the literary topoi of his time and subsequent historians and geographers added to the mythical apocalyptic theme nearly forgotten currently, namely the boundaries of civilized world and Gog/Magog. This article concludes that Ibn Fadlan was probably the first Arabic historian to believe and thrive on the study of these people, whereas his successors overstated information about them, from the 13th Century on.

THE SCHEME OF POTIPHAR’S WIFE: FROM CLASSICAL TRADITION TO EUGENE O’NEILL.

The aim of the present paper is to introduce a literary topos called the scheme of Potiphar’s wife, its development in literary history and its recreation in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms (1924). Taking into consideration the three requirements established by Laguna Mariscal for a literary topos (content, literary form, and historical development), the evolution of this topos in The Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers, the biblical Book of Genesis, Homer’s Iliad, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Euripides’s Hippolytus, Seneca’s Phaedra and O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms is surveyed. It is argued that the story of Potiphar’s wife is part of a long-standing topos that has been developed through the literary history. The recreation of this topos in O’Neill’s play, as one permutation of this topos, while evoking several Classical sources, especially the Hippolytus by Euripides, is at the same time a creative adaptation, aimed to match the historical context of twentieth century America.

Norwidowska Roma antiqua w pełnej odsłonie

Magdalena Karamucka’s book Antyczny Rzym Norwida [Norwid’s Ancient Rome] is the first monographic study of the problem addressed in the title. Ancient Rome is presented in this valuable study from different perspectives: as a geographical, historical and cultural reality and as a literary topos. The starting point for the discussion is a chapter devoted to a Roman episode of Norwid’s biography and his Roman readings. Another subject of analysis are the poet’s political, religious and historiosophical reflections about Rome and his remarks on literature, art and Roman theatre. The main, comparative part is devoted to a meticulous analysis of reminiscences, quotations (paraphrases), titles, etc. taken from works of Roman authors (including Catullus, Horace, Juvenal, Ovid, Virgil), Norwid’s translational work and his Roman correspondence. However, Norwid’s Roma antiqua presented in the monograph is not frozen in a dead form. The author shows in an interesting and convincing way how this romanitas becomes a starting (or reference) point for the author of Quidam in his reflections on almost all aspects of his contemporary times.

Confrontation in Idyllia: The Country Estate as Moral Space in Russian Literature

The Latin phrase “Et in Arcadia ego” has been interpreted as referring both to the presence of man in an idyllic place and to the presence of death in that same space. The article applies this ambiguous treatment to the Russian country estate as a place of moral conflict in the novel Hard Times by V. A. Sleptsov and I. S. Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Their interpretation requires an understanding of both the setting of the estate within the natural environment and its socio-cultural status linked to the theme of social justice in Russian during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The article demonstrates that a crucial function of the Russian country estate as a literary topos is the creation of a moral space (moralis locus) within which profound existential questions are posed and discussed. The stage-like spatiality of the country estate — enclosed yet inproximity to the natural environment — provides an ideal setting not only for gathering the verbal antagonists but also for establishing their identity as a function of their attitude toward the presence of nature. This latter element —the presence of nature —in turn summons the question of the characters’ (and writers’) relationship to Romanticism in 19th-century literature. It was Romanticism which elevated the human perception of Nature’s transcendent harmony as a fundamental literary trope. At the same time, the immediate presence of nature as a productive, life-nourishing land situated the usad’ba in the midst of the intractable social problems of the peasantry and its economic plight, before and after the emancipation in 1861.

Beyond Tordesillas: New Approaches to Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies ed. by Robert Patrick Newcomb and Richard A. Gordon

Reviewed by: Beyond Tordesillas: New Approaches to Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies ed. by Robert Patrick Newcomb and Richard A. Gordon James R. Krause Newcomb, Robert Patrick, and Richard A. Gordon, editors. Beyond Tordesillas: New Approaches to Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies. The Ohio State UP, 2017. ISBN 978-0-81421-347-6. Robert Newcomb and Richard Gordon provide a fundamental anthology of essays in Beyond Tordesillas: New Approaches to Comparative Luso-Hispanic Studies. The title references the 1494 treaty, brokered by the Pope, that divided the known world between Spain and Portugal—a failed pursuit that precluded potential colonizing projects of other European powers and completely disregarded the autonomy of non-European cultures. The title also references a 1993 essay, “Abaixo Tordesilhas!” (“Down with Tordesillas”) by Jorge Schwartz, an Argentine-born scholar who spent his career at the University of São Paulo. In this essay, Schwartz argues for a Luso-Hispanic comparative model, one that specifically includes greater integration of Brazil. (It would have been apropos to have included a translation or bilingual version of this essay, since it seems to be a touchstone of so many other essays included in the volume.) Building upon and moving beyond related fields—such as Iberian, Inter-American, and Transoceanic or Transatlantic studies—Beyond Tordesillas presents a series of provocative essays that seek to establish theoretical and practical models for comparative Luso-Hispanic studies. Due to the shared linguistic, geographic, and historical similarities between Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking regions of the world, the justification of such an academic project may seem self-evident. Nevertheless, Newcomb and Gordon point out in the introduction that “the academic fields of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian studies . . . developed independently and generally remain isolated from one another, even in close institutional quarters” (2). The authors of [End Page 128] sixteen essays, organized into four sections, seek to address and rectify the historical, ideological, and disciplinary factors that created this disjunction. In Part One, “Luso-Hispanic Studies and Related Lines of Inquiry: A Series of Proposals,” Pedro Schacht Pereira, Héctor Hoyos, David William Foster, Tracy Devine Guzmán, and Pedro Meira Monteiro examine points of contact among Luso-Hispanic traditions, be they epistemological, linguistic, political, cultural, or historical. Each essay provides both a theoretical and practical model for Luso-Hispanic studies. Pereira and Hoyos both examine the institutional and disciplinary separation of Spanish and Portuguese while arguing for greater flexibility in considering more comparative approaches. Foster, a long-term adherent of more comparative models, argues that a fully contextualized study of queer Luso-Hispanic literature must take into consideration both “complex issues of sociocultural context and linguistic creation” and “the presence of hegemonic and heteronormative priorities and the degree to which a writer may develop a transgressive voice relative to them” (61). Devine Guzmán adopts a hemispheric approach in analyzing issues of Indianness and indigeneity in the work of three authors—D’Arcy McNickle (United States), José María Arguedas (Peru), and Darcy Ribeiro (Brazil). Finally, Pedro Meira Monteiro connects Brazilian essayist and historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda with Uruguayan writer-critic José Enrique Rodó and US Latin Americanist scholar Richard Morse. He argues that an effective way to “jump” Tordesillas is to examine the formulation of the North American “Other” by Brazilian and Spanish American writers as an antagonist force that is either attacked or imitated. In Part Two, “Written Fictional Narrative: Brazil and Spanish-Speaking Latin America,” Robert Moser, Earl E. Fitz, and Leila Lehnen present comparative Luso-Hispanic approaches to written fictional narrative. Moser analyses the revenant as a literary topos of ambiguity as well as the “converging and diverging means” in which Latin America “[relates] to its past” (95). Fitz, an early proponent of Luso-Hispanic and Inter-American studies, treads familiar territory in examining Machado de Assis, Jorge Luis Borges, and Clarice Lispector as innovators of Latin American new narratives. Finally, Leila Lehnen “examines the conjunction between urban space and the constitution/erosion of citizenship” in the fragmented narratives of Luiz Ruffato’s Inferno provisorio and Guillermo Saccomanno’s El pibe (120). Part Three, “Luso-Hispanic Poetry, Music, and Expressive Culture,” contains essays by Alfredo Bosi, Sarah Moody, Charles A. Perrone, and...

ОСПОРАВАЊЕ НОСТАЛГИЈЕ:ДЕЗИЛУЗИЈА ЗАВИЧАЈАУ ПЕНТАЛОГИЈИМИРКА ДЕМИЋА

Mirko Demić’s war pentalogy provides a complex and nuanced view of nostalgia as part of the epistemological world. The exile’s sorrow for a lost country is shown through the instability of the émigré’s post-war identity, the traumas caused by the 1990s wars on the territory of former Yugoslavia and the essential impossibility of a return. An unstable self contains emotional cracks that arise from the lack of homeland, the (self)naming of the refugee and his (self-)marginalization, reaching a climax in the narrator’s silence. The devastating effect of war is evident in the meticulously depicted entropy of a warrior’s psyche, a re-examination of desertion, a sense of superfluousness in the mad military carnival. A special narrative obsession with (Balkan) borders places the protagonists of Demić’s stories and novels in borderline situations. The national boundaries, the cross-border “walls”, essentially hinder the return of the expatriate, and his longing for the things he left behind intensifies.The wounded self attempts to achieve a measure of psychological equilibrium by opening the question of forgetting. Another important point is the narrator’s need to overcome the victim experience and his witnessing of violence, and to deal with nostalgia by rationalizing it, by suppressing the binary opposition of the place one longs for and the place one inhabits. The writer finds the means to abolish the stasis of homeland loss: in creating a superborder, a superstructure, a mythical parergon, a parable of Odysseus’s homecoming and a temporal escapism. In it, the literary topos of his homeland, Petrova Gora, is positioned in an ancient historical framework, suitable for the interpretation of agon, both within man and between warring nations.

Refugee Reception in Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea

Refugee Reception in Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea Renata Schellenberg Goethe published Hermann und Dorothea in 1797. Described by Wilhelm von Humboldt as a work that was "zugleich so rein und idealisch," (simultaneously so pure and ideal)1 the poem was popular and well-received by contemporary readers, eliciting wide-ranging support from critics who praised Goethe's portrayal of a distinctive German bourgeoisie and its staid response to the historical turmoil of the French Revolution. Modern literary scholarship has largely continued to focus on the interaction between the two main characters of Hermann and Dorothea, elaborating on the symbolism and repercussions of their relationship, while differentiating between the seemingly contrastive concepts of Bürgertum and Weltbürgertum (citizenship and world citizenship)2 that the characters purportedly espouse.3 This article takes these analyses one step further by investigating the poem's overall response to the political crisis underway and by pointedly examining the depiction of refugees within the context of this late eighteenth-century narrative, considering their migratory status and purpose, while also evaluating the wide-ranging and sometimes fraught concept of citizenship. In doing so, it draws on contemporary discussions pertaining to topics of identity, national belonging, and state responsibility vis-à-vis refugees within political borders, thereby positioning Hermann und Dorothea as a narrative that articulates some of the challenges that occur in today's increasingly mobile and transnational world. This article thus involves interrogating the processes of group identity formation and individuation at work within the text. Goethe had engaged with the subject matter of exile in previous literary works, most obviously in Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787) and Unterhaltungen Deutscher Ausgewanderten (1795; Conversations of German Refugees). In both of these works, he explored the theme of enforced absence from a homeland, elucidating the behavior and mindset of the exiled individual as an essential part of the narrative. In Hermann und Dorothea he continues with similar themes of loss and departure, while also accentuating the conditions of historical violence that propel people to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. That said, Hermann und Dorothea is arguably also very different from the aforementioned works in its own particular focus on exile, as it concentrates on the arrival and reception of refugees in their new community, highlighting some of the challenges refugees face in their new surroundings and in the immediate aftermath of the exilic journey. Integration [End Page 83] and acceptance are therefore key themes of the poem, as is the portrayal of refugees as a homogenized, group identity. Despite its recognized canonical status, Hermann und Dorothea remains difficult to categorize in singular and decisive literary terms. Due to its stereotypical portrayal of local characters and a seemingly idyllic Germanic village setting, some critics have characterized Hermann und Dorothea as an early example of Heimatliteratur, a genre popular in the nineteenth century. As Elizabeth Boa explains, Goethe's epic has clear affinities with the Heimat genre insofar as it embodies a universal type of appeal that engages different levels of society, while offering a distinct portrayal of "Germanness" within the narrative.4 Boa elaborates at length on the appropriateness of using the Heimat concept for Hermann und Dorothea, noting the advantages it has had for Goethe's epic by identifying it as a recurrent and predictable literary topos in times of political upheaval.5 Other literary critics have focused more explicitly on other aspects of the poem such as the use of Homeric hexameters, querying the reason and efficacy of their usage. Georg Kaiser, for example, believes that the classical meter is a conscious ploy on Goethe's part, a means with which to legitimize the regional context of the epic, contributing thus to the "Direktheit der Mitteilung" (immediacy of the message), and enhancing thereby its overall stature and poetic potency.6 Charlton Payne has also commented on the use of hexameters in the poem, lauding it and writing that it "offers a commentary on the political form of democratic representation," and he examines the "insertion of human beings into the epic and their representation within its narrative structure and symbols."7 These discussions point to a deliberate tangling of literary traditions, possibly as part of Goethe...

Le Germanie Segrete e il loro mito

This article deals with the debate on “Secret Germany” between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. I define "Secret Germany" first of all as a literary topos. It is in fact at the origin an eminently literary phenomenon, that develops within a literary culture, the German one and that within this same culture is mobilized as a critical tool. This binary formula was soon however invested with meanings that went beyond the purely fictional and even aesthetic dimension, and aspired to a broader validity, both in the historical, social and political fields, as well as in the German culture and Weltanschauung. In this article I will try to define the conceptual boundaries of what I have called the "negative theology" of Secret Germany, using the methodological guide of Jesi and retracing some of the stages of its development: from Paul de Lagarde, to Ernst Kantorowicz, to Gaston Choisy.

Between the tropes and pragmatics: the rhetorical aspect of Rozmowa polaka z litwinem

This paper presents rhetorical aspects of a sixteenth century Lithuanian polemical treatise “Rozmowa polaka z litwinem” (“Pasikalbėjimas lenko su lietuviu”). This anonymous work is often labeled as “humanist”. Even though many scholars analyse its contents and emphasize references to the Classical Antiquity, formal aspects and their pragmatic implications remain unevaluated. Scholars have mainly focused on the issue of it authorship and quoted it illustrating cultural and political sixteenth century changes in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The main aim of this article is to reveal rhetorical tropes and figures employed by the author of the treatise and discuss the possible motivation of their selection. “Rozmowa” responds to, “Quincunx”, written in 1564 by a Polish polemist Stanisław Orzechowski (1513–1566). It is a part of a prolonged polemic between the later and Lithuanian Chancellor, Palatine of Vilnius Mikalojus Radvila “The Black”. The details and the course of their dispute is reconstructed by Orzechowski himself in the letter to Piotr Miscovius, which also is titled “Apologia pro Quincunce”. He refers to the “Rozmowa” without mentioning its title or particular author. Historiography attributes it to the Vilnius mayor (wójt) Augustyn Rotundus (c. 1520–1582). Both Orzechowski and Rotundus studied abroad and had spent some time in Italy. Not only curricula of their studies of artes liberales were influenced by Classical Antiquity, they also undoubtedly got familiar with humanist culture of the contemporary Europe.“Rozmowa” consists of two main parts, which are separated by a verse. The treatise is written in a form of a dialogue, and allows to portray a vivid discussion and multiple points of view. The first part of “Rozmowa” focuses on the questions of the political theory, whereas the second one is dedicated to the history of Lithuania, its dynasty and the issue of the Polish-Lithuanian Union. While the first part is polemical, the second one has epideictic character. The author employs personification, paradiastole and antithesis. The latter two allow changing the normative contents of political concepts, and irony highlights the absurdities in the Polish political practices. The Lithuanian, one of the characters, uses deprecation and interpellation, addresses the absent participants of a dialogue (e. g. Orzechowski himself). The author quotes Ancient authors, Scripture, Church Fathers and contemporary thinkers (e. g. Machiavelli and Erasmus), whose ideas provide him with literary topoi. Merged with the rhetorical techniques, they constitute the political arguments of the treatise and allows the author to express one’s political ideas.

How to Build Cathedrals. Cildo Meireles: A Sensory Geography of Brazil

Taking Cildo Meireles’s installation, Mission/Missions – How to build cathedrals, as a starting point, this article will discuss artistic procedures in the artist’s work and their enunciations in social structures, taking land as an artistic and literary topos. Within Cildo Meireles’s Mission/Missions – How to build cathedrals (1987), there are points of intersection between artistic, philosophical, and literary forms of knowledge that ceaselessly and reflexively give rise to new questions. In this work, a sensory and schematic knowledge arranges the pillars of economy, the sacred, and animality around an architecture that is elaborated using coins, communion wafers, and animal bones. In Mission/Missions, Cildo Meireles creates a space at once geographical and historical that exposes the internal fractures of Western civilisation in its expansion on the South American continent. Working from this installation, we will revisit the artist’s previous works to find material and conceptual elements that have been decisive for the realisation of Mission/Missions. Reading the installation through the materiality of previous works helps to orient us conceptually in an intertextual network that the very installation summons through the space created by Cildo Meireles.

How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks by Irina Reyfman

Reviewed by: How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks by Irina Reyfman Kathleen Scollins Irina Reyfman, How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016. ix + 237 pp. ISBN 978-0-299-30830-8. Irina Reyfman's How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks is more illuminating, lucid, and lively—even entertaining—than a detailed study of the Russian state service, and its complex interrelationship with issues of authorship, has any right to be. Reyfman's work situates over a century of Russian writers, from Sumarokov to Fet, within a context unfamiliar to most twenty-first-century readers: the service hierarchy, governed by the Table of Ranks. For two centuries, from its establishment under Peter I in 1722 until the revolution of 1917, the Table of Ranks organized the three spheres of state service (civil, military, and court) into fourteen classes. During that time, most literature in Russia was produced by members of the nobility who, until 1762, were legally required to serve the state; even after the abolition of compulsory service, most nobles continued to participate, in order to derive the social and financial status conferred by rank. Noble writers were not exempt from the system of state service—indeed, the competition between state and literary careers delayed the professionalization of letters in the Russian context until the 1830s, which in turn discouraged writers from abandoning the service in pursuit of their authorial ambitions. As a result, Russian authors of the 18th and 19th centuries developed a range of strategies—corresponding to their various means, circumstances, and temperaments—for balancing their obligations to state and muse. Reyfman's work chronicles the endeavors of Russian writers to reconcile these two identities, addressing such questions as: how did service affect their self-image as writers, and how did their writing affect their position within the state hierarchy? How did they combine their public careers and literary activities, and how did this double life manifest in their literary works? Her study examines the lives and literary output of over twenty authors, focusing particular attention on Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. Her method is to reconstruct the service biography of each author before turning attention to his literary works, in order to analyze the representation of service, rank, and status. Reyfman records the attitudes and output of these writers, beginning in the mid-eighteenth century with Sumarokov, considered by some to be Russia's first professional writer, and ending in the late-nineteenth century, by which time authors were largely free to fashion their identities and fictions independent of state service. Even then, however, the Table of Ranks continued to exert a powerful force over the lives and works of those writers who did serve. As Reyfman [End Page 229] writes, "it begins with Sumarokov's anxiety over his service rank and ends with Fet's almost insane obsession with it" (187). As the importance of a service career diminished over the course of the nineteenth century, the relationship between state obligations and literary aspirations evolved, along with textual representations of state service. Descriptions of service in literary works reflected the insecurities of individual writers as well as a more general progression: while eighteenth-century authors largely ignored the topic in their works, by the early decades of the following century writers were engaging with it enthusiastically and personally, developing it into an indispensable literary theme by mid-century: "from a fact of life state service changed into a topic of biographical significance and then into a literary topos" (17). Writers' efforts to negotiate the imperatives of their service career and literary ambitions were complicated by such phenomena as the patronage system, limited readership, and a cultural aversion to the notion of writing for profit. Reyfman provides a broad and thorough introduction to the development of the literary profession, with literacy rates, educational reforms, and the growth and commercialization of the book market emerging as major themes. Her study builds on the earlier work of scholars like William Mills Todd III and Yuri Lotman, marking a valuable contribution to the growing body of scholarship on...

Warsztat pisarski Jana Długosza w świetle Żywotu św. Stanisława

Jan Długosz’s literary skills. The case of Life of St. StanislausThe purpose of the study is to describe Jan Długosz (1415–1480) as a writer and hagiographer on the basis of his Life of St. Stanislaus (1460s, BHL 7839). In the first part of the article author presents a rhetorical division of the analysed source: (1) literary topoi contained in the prologue, (2) hagiographic topoi (with comparative examples derived from lives written by Jerome, Sulpicius Severus, and the Golden Legend), (3) argumentative parts throughout the whole Life (genus inartificiale probationum; genus artificiale probationum: loci a persona, loci a re, exempla, signa; congeries, incrementum, comparatio, ratiocinatio), as well as (4) two epilogues. Then author describes theory of three styles applied in the Life and shows figurae verborum, figurae sententiarum and rhetorical devices used in it. Next, the narrative technique is described. Długosz used in the Life many metaliterary phrases, e.g. to focus his reader-audience on presented events or to underline his own opinion on the presented subject. He also played with oratio obliqua and oratio recta while describing how Bishop Stanislaus rebuked King Boleslaus. In this part it is also shown in what manner Długosz prepared speeches in oratio recta on the basis of statements contained in the Vita maior by Wincenty of Kielce/Kielcza (13th c.). Subsequently, the author presents rhetorical periods and prose rhythm (cursus) applied in the Life. The second part of the study is devoted to the investigation to what extent Długosz wrote the Life independently from the Vita maior. Author shows that Długosz in his work presented information already described by Wincenty, but in the Life he put them in other places to build tension of the quarrel between the bishop and the king. In his conclusion the author states that Długosz’s literary skills were on a high level. Despite the fact that the Life observes the rules set by a literary convention of medieval hagiography. Długosz remained individual: (1) contrary to the hagiographic tradition, he placed in the Life four documents in extenso, (2) he also unconventionally put there seven dates, (3) moreover, in his hagiographic work he mentioned political issues motivated by historical arguments. These points are also reasons for the author’s argument that Długosz wrote all his various works employing the same principles.

Poetiken des Traumas. Mit Analysen zu Ingeborg Bachmanns Malina, Monika Marons Stille Zeile Sechs und Terézia Moras Alle Tage by Annette Vieth

Reviews 263 history of German-language journalism in this period, of which Kisch is a significant representative. Such is the contextual detail provided, the chapters will likewise offer much to both military and cultural historians with an interest in Pola, a fascinating, liminal location with a long and rich history (it is mentioned in Dante’s Inferno, as Kisch himself notes). Historical photographs and maps are included in the sections dealing with the Austrian air force, submarine fleet and the Marinekasino in Pola. Robeck is able to probe the veracity of Kisch’s claimed experiences, crossreferencing the details he provides with the known historical data. And the readings of the texts themselves employ the methods of the literary historian effectively. Robeck unpicks Kisch’s narrative strategies, and his use of metaphor and cultural references, to provide convincing interpretations. She points, for example, to the use of the submarine exercise as a study in military psychology (a ‘Tauchgang [...] in die Seele des modernen Kriegers’ (p. 100)). She reads the superficially trivial, Feuilleton-like article about the ‘night life’ of Pola in symbolic terms, suggesting that the portrayal of the ‘in militärischer Konvention und beschämender Gleichgültigkeit erstarrte Offizierskorps in Pola’ (p. 128) feeds into a cynical reckoning with the doomed monarchy as a whole. This compact volume thus offers much, yet is also, arguably, incomplete, for it does not cover the other articles filed by Kisch from Pola in the same detail (there were six in total, all published in Bohemia). It is not without its formal peculiarities, which include the aforementioned lengthy ‘Exkursus’ in a smaller font, which surely could have been included in the main text, and a number of excessively lengthy, digressive footnotes. Despite these reservations this will certainly become essential reading for scholars of Kisch and there is plenty to recommend it. Jon Hughes Royal Holloway University of London Poetiken des Traumas. Mit Analysen zu Ingeborg Bachmanns Malina, Monika Marons Stille Zeile Sechs und Terézia Moras Alle Tage. By Annette Vieth. Interkulturelle Moderne, 8. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2018. 563 pp. €49.80. ISBN 978–3-8260–6588–0. In recent years, trauma has become a key concept in cultural and literature studies. Combining individual with sociocultural history, trauma challenges literatureasnarrativemedium,questioningwhetherdeepemotionaldisturbance can be represented at all. Despite its popularity, the main influence on the philological discourse on trauma is still classical psychoanalysis, for example Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Annette Vieth’s study seeks to develop a literary point of view which is also aware of current developments in clinical psychology and argues that poetics of trauma are an underlying structural principle of a great variety of novels and hence paradigmatic for modern literature. Pursuing an interdisciplinary approach, Vieth discusses trauma in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina (1971), Monika Maron’s Stille Zeile Sechs (1991) Reviews 264 and Terézia Mora’s Alle Tage (2004). Her aim is to gain a broader understanding of trauma as literary topos, especially regarding narrative strategies used to speak about the ostensibly unspeakable, while providing new insights into the sociocultural function of literature. Poetiken des Traumas gives an extensive overview of the discourse on trauma as well as recent developments in psychology and psychoanalysis, covering aspects such as trauma and memory, trauma as result of sexual (child) abuse, individual versus collective trauma and gender implications of traumatic experience (pp. 54–96). In a second step, Vieth introduces literary reflections on trauma and language by Jean Améry, Imre Kertész and Ruth Klüger (pp. 96–126). Finding poststructuralist uses of the concept too vague and metaphorical, she orientates her understanding of trauma towards clinical definitions. Her methodological approach is hermeneutic and ‘empathiegeleitet[]’ (p. 112). The three main chapters each discuss one of the novels mentioned above. Since Vieth emphasizes the importance of the authors’ biographies for understanding their literary takes on trauma, these chapters offer extensive information on their lives as well as the literary and sociocultural contexts for their works. Her choice of texts by Bachmann, Maron and Mora enables Vieth to cover three main sources of both collective and individual trauma in the twentieth century (at least from a European point of view): the...

On “Violent Expressionism” and Prose with Prostheses

Referring to Andrei Platonov’s The Foundation Pit and Happy Moscow, the author considers these two works through the prism of 1920s and 1930s literature and maintains that they display features of expressionism in the way they represent corporality. The writer’s words about the “wonderful and violent” world are a motivating factor in the aspects of his poetics connected with the term “violent expressionism”. First, this applies to the theme of prosthetics considered both by Platonov’s contemporaries (K. Fedin, L. Leonov) and writers of later periods (B. Polevoy, V. Shalamov, A. Zinovyev). Comparative analysis helps the article’s author to prove that representations of bodies with prostheses form a powerful literary topos that transforms social, political, and ideological material and is capable of symbolising the uniqueness or/and fragility of the human body and the vagueness of its borders. Analysing the correlation between prostheses and teratology, representations of disability and the tradition of deformity, realist (social realist) and expressionist concepts, the author concludes that “prose with prostheses” helps us to perceive Russian literature in a new way.

Sophocles: Oedipus the King ed. by P. J. Finglass

Reviewed by: Sophocles: Oedipus the King ed. by P. J. Finglass Francis Dunn P. J. Finglass (ed.). Sophocles: Oedipus the King. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv, 708. $170.00. ISBN 978-1-108-41951-2. Patrick Finglass, who has previously edited Sophocles’ Electra and Ajax in this series, now gives us an excellent edition of Oedipus the King. An introduction discusses briefly the play’s date (placing it likely in the 430s, with the 440s and 420s also plausible) and production and staging. A longer discussion of myth and originality surveys earlier treatments of the myth, noting the effect of Sophoclean innovations, such as the plague, Oedipus’ journey to Delphi, and the prospect of his exile at the end. In place of an overview of the play, we have a section, “What Kind of a Play is This?” on some of its features, such as the prologue as suppliant-drama, the theme of recognition, and the plot motif of the foundling; an implicit thesis is Apollo’s control of events, impelling an innocent Oedipus toward his ruin. Finally, Finglass offers a brief and masterful overview of the text’s transmission from Aristotle to Lloyd-Jones and Wilson. Finglass prints a text of OT that hews fairly close to that of Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, but is slightly more conservative. His preface reports 56 substantive differences from the OCT (i.e., excluding orthography), 13 with major implications for interpretation; in most of these cases, Finglass prints the received text. Among the remainder, most worthy of note is a careful combination of previous emendations restoring sense at the crux in 892–893/4. Evident in the apparatus, and detailed more fully in the commentary, is an exhaustive study of attributions. In countless places Finglass either finds an earlier source for a given emendation or corrects the attribution in the OCT; furthermore, the commentary frequently specifies the date and venue of an emendation. The commentary has a slightly unusual format, taking as lemmas not words or phrases but short passages, typically 1 to 4 lines each, followed by a translation. The notes together thus include a complete Greek text and English translation. A disadvantage is that it can be hard to find comment on a given word or phrase in the long discussion of a passage. The commentary concerns itself above all with textual issues, giving a full account of variants in the manuscript tradition, as well as a careful accounting of relevant emendations. The usage of particles is thoroughly parsed, and syntactical and lexical points are elucidated with extensive lists of parallels. Dramatic and thematic issues are generally addressed in the introduction to a section; for example, the introduction to the fourth episode shows how the entrance of the Herdsman repeats and varies details of the earlier entrance of the messenger from Corinth, and the first episode is prefaced with a discussion of Greek religious and civic sanctions against murderers. There is relatively little attention to that elusive “Sophoclean” diction. In general, Finglass is more attentive to the surface of language than its broader context. For example, the first stasimon begins with a striking image in which the Delphian rock (Δελφὶς . . . πέτρα) speaks out against the criminal, who will be hunted down by Apollo. Here Finglass notes, “For ‘rocky Delphi’ cf. . . .” with a series of parallels confirming the literary topos. But more than a topos, the bold language reflects the striking topography of Delphi, as Jebb indicates in a lengthy note on the rocky terrain. And the context is cultural as well as topographic. Herodotus famously reports how the sanctuary at Delphi warded off the Persians as rocks hurled themselves down on the invaders (8.36–39); Sophocles [End Page 228] paints a similar picture in which the Delphian rock takes action against the offender. Elsewhere, the messenger’s speech describing the death of Jocasta and the blinding of Oedipus is marked at the beginning, as Finglass notes, by anaphora, and toward the end by alliteration. Yet these and other effects serve a larger purpose in creating an imagined offstage scene, as Jebb understood in describing the domestic architecture through which the frenzied Oedipus ran, from...