Mimetic Aspect Research Articles

Dialogical Strategies, <i>Volgarizzamento</i>, and Ciceronian <i>Ethos</i> in Antonio Brucioli's <i>Dialogi Della Morale Filosofia</i>

In 1526, Antonio Brucioli (1487-1566) published a series of thirty dialogues that form a typical humanist compendium of moral and political wisdom in the vernacular. Scholars have considered these dialogues mainly from the perspective of Brucioli’s humanist and political allegiances, in particular with exiled Florentine humanists whose discussions in the Orti Oricellari the dialogues echo. However, textual reworkings in subsequent editions (1538 and 1544, in which this group constitutes the first volume, entitled Della morale filosofia, of a series that includes other volumes of dialogues on natural philosophy) warrant a reconsideration that complements intellectual history with literary and rhetorical analysis. This article revalorizes Brucioli’s Dialogi della morale filosofia by arguing that their literary and rhetorical strategies, such as the use of ancient dialogue models, the shifting choice and staging of interlocutors, the creation of Ciceronian ethos and decorum, and the mimetic aspects of the interaction of male and female voices not only evince a conscious application of early Cinquecento dialogue poetics, but also establish the author’s volgarizzamento of a compendium of classical and humanist wisdom as a uniquely Italian project aimed at an emulation and appropriation of moral philosophy by dialogical speaking at the level of a national cultural elite.

Presenting Minds in Graphic Narratives

The paper deals with the presentation of minds in the mixed media environment of graphic narratives, inspired by the notion of narrative experientiality as it is defined in recent narratology. Focusing specifically on three interrelated medium-specific issues, it examines the way graphic narratives can also be said to stimulate the viewer'sengagement with the minds of characters and narrators: the mimetic aspect of the graphic image; the problem of the narrative agent; and the interaction between visual focalization, verbal focalization and verbal narration. Graphic narratives pose a challenge to common narratological analytical categories concerning narratorial authority, enunciation and control in that they display diverse and shifting relationships between verbal narration and visual presentations. The analysis of the graphic means of thought and mind presentation aims to illuminate some of the challenges that narrative theory meets in its transmedial extension. The main examples include first-person autobiographical narratives as well as third-person historical fiction that uses various focalizers and "behaviorist" graphic narratives that are structured around dialogue and action.

The Unthucydidean Voice of Sallust

Since antiquity, Sallust has been said to have modeled his historiography after Thucydides. Focusing on the voice of the narrator, this article draws attention to an aspect that distinguishes Sallust from Thucydides and reminds us more of Herodotus. While Thucydides's narrative seems to unravel itself, Sallust makes his presence as narrator strongly felt by first-person interventions and expressions of uncertainty (I). Moreover, he integrates other voices at the extradiegetic level (II). These features of Sallust's voice give his account a strong mimetic aspect, underscore his reliability and engage the readers in the "act of reading."

Wordsworth and the Thought of Affection: “Michael,” “The Force of Prayer,” “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle”

This essay questions the recent New Historicist and historicist claims that Wordsworth’s poetry is reactionary from well before his alleged “decline” after 1807. We propose that a poem is not simply the linguistic reflection of either the ideological limitations of its author or his time. Through readings of three poems taken from the beginning and the end of the “great decade”—“Michael,” “The Force of Prayer” and the “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle”—we argue that Wordsworth’s poetry is neither a mimesis of his personal ideology nor of something called “Romanticism.” However, this is not to evacuate the poetry of its mimetic aspect. After Adorno, we argue that Wordsworth’s work is consistently occupied with thinking feeling—in particular, the feeling of affection or love. The thought of affection (the cognitive content of a particular kind of mimesis, as well as the affection vital to his thought) is at the center of Wordsworth’s art and is explicitly theorized in the poet’s 1801 letter to Charles James Fox. The radical locality of Wordsworth’s poems, their close attention to the texture of individual feelings (and the thoughts that make such feelings experience), render the kind of generalized description of his poetry found in historicist commentators unworkable. Wordsworth’s writing, we suggest, is a repeated attempt to marry thought and feeling as aesthetic experience.

Following the Tracks of the Other

During improvisation polymorphic and diverse but simultaneously occurring mediatory processes are stimulated in a special way. The value of the concrete practice, of spontaneous impulses and ideas, cannot be underestimated, because experiencing, interpreting, and (re)constructing the external world lead to the transformation of the interpreting structures of the individual. Especially the competences how to nestle oneself in situations and processes as well as to express and perform (mimetic aspect), how to deal with extreme forms of emotional and cognitive states as well as with uncertainty (aesthetic aspect), and how to find, to hide, or to invent meaning (semiotic aspect) are encouraged by improvising musically. Herein lies the nonconformist power of improvisation and it is necessary to be aware of this whenever negotiating the societal acknowledgement of music therapy in the prevailing scientific (Western) culture. lf aesthetical knowledge and experience is due to be preserved and fostered in music therapy, an interdisciplinary theory of aesthetics would help to set up this small field in a societal discourse.

THE CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORY OF REALITY IN LITERARY RESEARCH

As a sign system, literature is not limited to the imaginative world only. Literature, however, is also a system which involves the author, the work, the reader, and the field of knowledge (society). Although the facts presented tend to be mental facts, it does not mean that facts in literature cannot be seen as data about the existing social reality. Referring to literature as a sign system, which stresses the mimetic and creative aspects, literature as a construction can be seen as the reflection of reality with two dimensions, subjective and objective. Therefore, the assumption that facts in literature are not the reflections of reality cannot be accepted. Based on the framework of semiotic thinking which emphasizes literature as a sign system, the social dimension could be applied in literary approaches, one of them is the constructivist theory of reality by Berger and Luckman. Through the constructivist theory of reality, literature can be analyzed as the reflections of subjective and objective realities. In other words, literary approach can be directed from literature as the product and its author.

Catharsis et réflexivité tragiques

In this paper, our attention is focused on both cathartic and self-reflective effects in Greek tragedy. Through some examples, especially from Sophocles' Philoctetes, and according to N. Loraux's findings in her recent book, La Voix endeuillée, and J. Irigoin's study of the internal structure of Greek tragedies, we are led to conclude that the emotional impact of gestures, words and images in a given play is closely linked to the individual perception of the theatre's mimetic aspects : in this case, self-reflexivity does not lead to autoparody, but instead reinforces the various and underlying meanings oîmuthos.

Constructing Identity in 1 Samuel 17

AbstractThe actual battle between David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 takes a mere three verses to narrate, thereby raising the question of why this chapter is fifty-eight verses long. By drawing on H. White's work on historiography and the mimetic aspects of historical narratives, and informed by M. Foucault's notions of discourses and discursive strategies, this essay considers how issues of identity construction are addressed in 1 Samuel 17. A suggestion is then made as to why the construction of identity would have been an important issue in exilic and postexilic Israel and how 1 Samuel 17 addresses that issue.

Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective.

Introduction: setting the scene. Part 1 Fiction and truth: the practice of storytelling truth-value and pretence content and characters reference and about aspects, points of view and objectivity relating internal/external and subjective/objective. Part 2 The limits of fictionality: metaphysics and fictions truth-making and world-making narrative and imagination. Part 3 Literature and truth: literary practice literature and fiction the theory of novelistic truth the propositional theory of literary truth metaphorical truth literature as philosophy the mimetic aspect of literature fiction, literature and value.

The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies

I n its analysis of images, film theory since the 1970s has been deeply indebted to structuralist and Saussurean-derived linguistic models. Indeed, it would be difficult to overstate the depth and importance of this relationship. As Robert Stam has noted, Semiotics in general, and film semiotics in particular, must be seen.., as local manifestations of a more widespread linguistic turn.' To speak, for example, about a film, as many film analysts now do, irrespective of the critical methodology employed to generate the reading, is to index and emphasize this lineage. Like books, films are regarded as texts for reading by viewers or critics, with the concomitant implication that such reading activates similar processes of semiotic decoding. But does it? To what extent are linguistic models appropriate for an understanding of how images communicate? Film theory since the 1970s has tended to place great emphasis upon what is regarded as the arbitrary nature of the signifier-signified relationship, that is, upon the purely conventional and symbolic aspect of signs. What this focus has tended to displace is an appreciation of the iconic and mimetic aspect of certain categories of signs, namely pictorial signs, those most relevant to an understanding of the cinema. This stress upon the arbitrary nature of semiotic coding has had enormous consequences for the way film studies as a discipline has tended to frame questions about visual meaning and communication. Our purpose here is to examine some of these consequences and to see how well they square with the observable evidence about how viewers perceive and comprehend cinematic sequences. We will see that current film theory, tracing its lineage from Saussure, Althusser, and Lacan, has constructed accounts of the ways in which film transmits meaning that are, in certain important respects, counter to the observable skills, abilities, and reactions of real-world viewers. The viewer, as theorized in these accounts, differs substantially from his/her real-world counterpart. We shall emphasize some of these discrepancies in order to suggest a reorientation of theoretical focus. In short, a renewed attention to the iconic, mimetic nature of pictorial signs is warranted, so that our theories might become more sensitive to the unique, constitutive features of pictorial-as opposed to linguistic-modes of communication. (It is important to note that other currents exist in contemporary film theory. Pier Paolo Pasolini and Peter Wollen, for example, have offered analyses of cinematic signs that are inflected rather differently than the Saussurean-inspired accounts that this essay examines.2 More than 20 years ago, Wollen stressed the importance of paying attention to the iconic aspect of pictorial signs. Borrowing from Charles

Christophe, le texte, l'image et la chute des corps

The prehistory of comic strips is characterised by the working out of the relationship between text and image. This study of Christophe' s work shows how the authorial textual strategy ultimately tries to thwart the emergence of a semiosis specific to visual images by constantly mocking and j or pointing out the mimetic aspect of the visual «figure » (and of the cartoon « character »). But this strategy reveals what it is trying to deny — that the intelligibility of visual narrative is always already not a matter of mimesis but of semiosis.

Four Middle English Mystery Cycles: Textual, Contextual, and Critical Interpretations by Martin Stevens

REVIEWS the disorder created in the poem's world has also a positive effect: it becomes "the material for the creation offurther order, including the order of [the Gawain poet's] own art" (p. 190). In Purity, Spearing's application of concepts taken from modern social anthropology helps throw some new light on the poem's meaning. When applied by him to the tearing-of-the-pardon scene in Piers Plowman, modern literary theory proves to be less adequate. "The tearing of the pardon is an act that modern theory would call deconstructive, because it challenges the link between signifier and signified that constitutes the sign and thus makes possible what we habitually mean by meaning and under­ stand by understanding. . . . And the moment at which the sign itself is destroyed is the moment at which we glimpse a meaning beyond allegory and beyond language. Only that act ofdeconstruction makes possible the momentary release ofa meaning that escapes structure" (pp. 235-36). This is not the place to present and evaluate all the criticism trying to come to grips with this puzzling and deeply disturbing scene-Spearing does not do it either-yet one thing needs to be said: if what Spearing postulates were true, then the author ofthe C text was either no deconstructionist, or, and this seems to be more likely, he did not consider the tearing of the pardon the essential act of the pardon scene. In his preface Spearing proclaims that he has written a book intended not "primarily for scholars" (p. viii) but for a more general audience, though he hopes that his book contains things which will interest the former. I takethisas an invitation to practice thesamekindofeclecticism as the author who is always best when he produces a balanced close reading and makes judicious use ofmodern theory. For my part I enjoyed certain of the essays, even though I do not always share the author's views, but then unanimity of opinion would make literary criticism a very dull discipline. JOERG O. FICHTE Universitat Tiibingen MARTIN STEVENS. Four Middle English Mystery Cycles: Textual, Contex­ tual, and CriticalInterpretations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 1987. Pp. xv, 360. $44.00. FourMiddle English Mystery Cycles challenges our perception ofmedieval drama in general and our understanding of the Corpus Christi plays in 293 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER England in particular. Many studies of the last decade emphasize produc­ tion as an approach to the Corpus Christi plays. Stevens's book, however, asserts with considerable manuscript evidence and with carefully argued conclusions that the discontinuity between the very late dated manuscripts and records of performance makes such an analysis speculative at best. In the introduction, Stevens states that the cyclesdeserveto be read asself-standing andindividualworks ofliterature, that they must bestudiedin thecontextof themanuscriptsthat havetransmittedthem, and that the text must be seen as an entity separate from the cycle's performance history. [P. 3) While not every reader will agree with all of these very "literary" assump­ tions, the book, through its sympathetic and thoughtful treatment of the plays, provides analysis worthy ofconsideration by all students ofmedieval drama. The treatment ofthe York Corpus Christi play in chapter 1 is one ofthe highlights ofthebook, yet its approach goes beyond thenarrow limitsset in the introduction. Stevens characterizes the York cycle as "more nearly a communal experience than any other extant English cycle" (p. 17). In addition to reconstructing the social and economic contexts for a dramatic performance in York, he examines the York Register, which he concludes wasnever usedas a text in performance but asan "archival text" (p. 37). The mostsuccessful aspects ofthe chapter include its discussion ofthe regynalls and their relation to the York Register and the actual analysis of the cycle, which, according to the author, focuses on the "self-conscious concern of the York plays with the city itself" (p. 50). Seen in this context, the Skinners' pageant of Jesus's entry into Jerusalem is singled out as the microcosm ofthe entire cycle. Particularly illuminating is the discussion of the dramatic event and the mimetic aspect it shares with the Corpus Christi processional and the royal entry. Further emphasizing the processional character of the York cycle...

Dramatic Form: The Example Of Godot

IN THE THEATER'S CANNIBALISTIC HABITOF making its own image part of the matter of a play there are certain interesting implications regarding the mechanics of form. Robert Nelson has argued that the play-within- a-play reveals the dramatist's controlling conception of the theater, and it is possible it seems to see in an inner form a personal gestalt that the outer form need not reveal. But formally there is something more involved. For if an art form can use the fact and nature of its own being for part of its statement, what is implied is that in the form itself there exists potential statement. This seems self-evident. But the implication is that theater, like painting, can divest itself of its outer form. For if the theater can make of its mimetic aspect a vehicle, in Wimsatt's sense, then theoretically at least it can make of it the dominant vehicle. What we normally think of as the mechanics of a play can become not only the dominant but the essential mode of statement. It is this I feel that accounts both for the importance and the uniqueness of Waiting for Godot.

Mimetic aspects of ascites.

This paper is a report of 100 patients with ascites undiagnosed by the usual diagnostic procedures but definitively diagnosed by peritoneoscopy. The causes of ascites in these patients were, in order of frequency, cirrhosis (34), metastatic malignancy (24), tuberculous peritonitis (23), hepatoma (13), pancreatitis (4), myxedema (1), and constrictive pericarditis (1). Helpful clinical hints are provided for the differential diagnosis of these conditions. The best laboratory test in the diagnosis of ascites is the study of the ascitic fluid. Cirrhosis and constrictive pericarditis had fluids containing less than 3.0 gm of protein per 100 ml, indicating a transudate. Carcinomatosis, hepatoma, tuberculous peritonitis, and pancreatitis had fluids containing more than 3.0 gm of protein per 100 ml, indicating an exudate. A scheme is presented which should help in the differential diagnosis of most cases of ascites.

Mimetic aspects of small intestinal diverticulosis. A report of four cases.

Introduction Of the various diverticula arising in the gastrointestinal tract, those occurring in the jejunum have seldom stimulated great clinical interest. Typically asymptomatic, jejunal diverticula give rise only rarely to nonspecific complications such as perforation and hemorrhage. However, as is now established, jejunal diverticula have the unique potentiality of simulating certain clinical syndromes. The association of such diverticula with megaloblastic anemia and malabsorption has enlarged the differential diagnosis and the clinical management of these conditions. Since 1949, twenty-five cases of jejunal diverticulosis, megaloblastic anemia, and/or intestinal malabsorption have been reported, * reflecting both the infrequency and the increasing recognition of the syndrome. 4-21 Jejunal diverticulosis, invariably present, has frequently been associated with other intestinal diverticula. Of these cases the predominant finding was anemia or defective absorption of Vitamin B 12 in 9, steatorrhea in 3, and combinations of these abnormalities in the remainder. The bone marrow was megaloblastic in 16 of

The Mimetic Aspect of the Mocker's Song

The Mimetic Aspect of the Mocker's Song