Modern Humanities Research Articles

ТАКСОНОМИЯ СМЕХОВОГО ДИСКУРСА В ЛИТЕРАТУРНОМ СОЗНАНИИ ЭПОХИ ВОЗРОЖДЕНИЯ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the comic Renaissance literature through the prism of individual works in order to identify the main comic functions. The Renaissance laughter culture formation is one of the urgent and underdeveloped problems of modern humanities adressed to the study of the Renaissance. The purpose of our work and the tasks dictated by it – in the context of the «laughter word» of the Renaissance to reveal the main comic functions in the literature of this period that were formed by a new worldview and new relationships amoung people. The stated goal determines the need to use hermenegutic (analysis of literary texts), typological (comparison of various comic functions), historical (solution of a literary problem in the context of a historical epoch) research methods. The “discovery of the world and man” that was characteristic of the Renaissance also took place in fiction. Renaissance realism turned it’s face to the everyday life of a person, and literature willingly accepted a new theme for itself including comedy. The article highlights various social functions of laughter that were used in Renaissance literature. Recreational laughter function is the original and oldest one. Laughter is evidence of pleasure, relaxation, rest. This laughter’s function is necessary for the normal functioning of not only an individual, but society as a whole. Such works as fables, schwankis, facies, “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais, “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, comedies by W. Shakespeare, their main task was entertaining first of all. Their laughter is a clear evidence of inner freedom and healthy vitality. Laughter is a social phenomenon, and therefore it must meet the well-known requirements of people livihg together. Therefore, one of the main of functions is social. Laughter should be a kind of social gesture; it frees society from mechanical rigidity. We single out this function in Luigi Pulci’s poem “Morgante”. Funny and serious, faith and disbelief, naivety and scientific coexist side by side in this work, defining its heroic-comic character. The ontological aspects of laugher are closely related to cognitive ones. The cognitive laughter function has a great importance in revealing social negative aspects, in bringing them to the point of absurdity and thereby revealing their inconsistency and the obligation to eliminate them. This laughter function is represented in Sebastian Brant`s poem “The Ship of Fools”, in Rotterdams satire “The Praise of Folly”, in F. Rabelais` novel “Gargantua and Pantagruel”. Laugh as an effective social sanction (the sanctioning function of laughter) is presented in Cervantes` novel. The main thing in Don Quixote is not so much a parody of chivalry as a realistic disclosure of new social conditions and worldview discoveries, which was a parody of a past life. At the end of the novel, realizing his madness, Don Quixote thereby frees himself from his comic. The novel takes on a pronounced tragic connotation. The title character recognizes his doom and ceases to be pathetic, he becomes a knight of the “sad image”, he dies not a pathetic madman, but a humble Christian. The various functions of laughter, presented in the Renaissance literature were an effective tool in the fight against the remnants of the Middle Ages and the establishment of a new worldview.

Anthropocene and the Gothic: An Interview with Justin Edwards


 Justin Edwards is a professor in the Division of Literature and Languages at the University of Stirling. Previously Chair of English at the University of Surrey and professor and head of English at Bangor University, he was elected by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge in 2005. Between 1995 and 2005, he taught at the University of Montreal and the University of Copenhagen, where he was appointed as an associate professor in 2002. He holds an Affiliate Professorship in U.S. Literature at the University of Copenhagen and in 2016-2017 he was a Fulbright scholar at Elon University, North Carolina. He is also a member of the Peer Review College for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and a Trustee of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). Justin’s contribution to the study of Gothic literature started with Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic, which examines the development of U.S. Gothic literature alongside 19th-century discourses of passing and racial ambiguity. In Gothic Canada: Reading the Spectre of a National Literature, he continued in the area by examining how collective stories about national identity and belonging tend to be haunted by artifice.

Contingency All the Way Up

Abstract This review-essay examines two books about the history of the modern humanities: Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon and Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today by Eric Adler. Both studies reconstruct genealogies of discourse and practice by which to understand the “crisis” of the humanities, yet they draw disparate lessons from these reconstructions. The review traces the two monographs’ competing accounts of the historical continuity of humanities practices and the moral dimension of humanistic inquiry. Together, Permanent Crisis and Battle of the Classics describe an antinomy that can be neither resolved nor ignored: the methodological norms of the modern university tend to subvert the humanities’ investment in meaning and value, but without that investment, humanistic study loses the motivations and purposes that define it.

Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics by Sofya Khagi

Reviewed by: Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics by Sofya Khagi Sarah Gear Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics. By Sofya Khagi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2021. xi+284 pp. $39.95; £36.50. ISBN 978-0-81014-302-9. In her detailed consideration of Victor Pelevin's literary output, from his short story 'Hermit and Six Toes' (1990) to his novel iPhuck 10 (2017), Sofya Khagi examines the techniques and theoretical preoccupations of a writer who 'likes to think' (p. 216). Khagi argues convincingly that Pelevin deserves scholarly attention. Whether one reads him in post-Soviet Russia, or in the contemporary West, Pelevin's damning observations about capitalism, consumerism, technology, and our resulting unfreedom are relevant to us all. Khagi's excellent Introduction shows how Pelevin's philosophical concerns and opinions about contemporary society are grounded in the theories of Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Herbert Marcuse, and Michel Foucault, which she discusses throughout this study. Her first two chapters analyse Pelevin's indictment, in his seminal Generation P (1999), of the consumerism unleashed in 1990s Russia. Chapter 1 situates the same novel alongside other dystopian fiction, drawing comparisons with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, and Evgenii Zamiatin's We, while Chapter 2 scrutinizes what Khagi terms Pelevin's 'language politics' (p. 49): deliberate disruption of Russian literary language in order to intensify his critique of modern society. Using the central protagonist Tatarskii's advertising slogans as key examples of such subversive linguistic techniques, Khagi makes the case that this experimental use of language embodies Pelevin's beliefs about the degradation of contemporary society. The remaining six chapters build on concerns raised in Generation P to cover related themes in a wide-ranging selection of Pelevin's later works. Empire V (2006), according to Khagi, is concerned with biopolitics and with humanity as a biomass commodity exploited by vampires; Helmet of Horror (2005) and Pineapple Water for the Beautiful Lady (2010) deal with Pelevin's concerns about dehumanization, while illustrating his eschatological views with biblical and apocalyptic imagery. In the last two novels, the most likely outcome is an 'apocalypse of entropy' (p. 121). Chapter 6 follows Pelevin's exploration and exhaustion of the trope of alternative history; tracing intertextual references to predecessors, such as Boris and Arkadii Strugatskii and Dostoevskii, occupies Chapter 7. Finally, Khagi considers Pelevin's multifaceted use of irony throughout his texts, applied as much to his authorial persona as to the world he depicts. It is through irony, she contends, that Pelevin successfully introduces a sliver of hope into his predominantly hope-less texts. More broadly, Khagi traces the arc of Pelevin's thematic development: from preoccupation with Soviet ideology to the new focus on 'global techno-consumerism' (p. 4) which replaces the former after the 1990s. She also notes that Pelevin's solipsism, as expressed in his earlier work, has more recently evolved into a wider ethical regard for others. She counters those critics who accuse him of producing repetitious novels by pointing out that Pelevin's work addresses contemporary society and politics. Therefore any thematic stagnation reflects the stagnation of reality, rather than, as some critics suggest, Pelevin's contempt for his readers. [End Page 314] Perhaps Khagi's most notable claim is for Pelevin as a modern-day Dostoevskii. By considering both writers' concerns about contemporary society, their anti-Western sentiment, their hedgehog-like preoccupation with one central idea, and their characters' quests for self-improvement, Khagi demonstrates strong and convincing parallels between Pelevin and Dostoevskii. This thorough and thought-provoking exposition of Pelevin's œuvre provides a rich resource for academic readings of his work. In keeping with Pelevin's Zeitgeist-y texts, Khagi poses vital and timely questions about the true nature of freedom in an increasingly unfree world. Sarah Gear University of Exeter Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Antisatire: In Defense of Women, against Francesco Buoninsegni by Arcangela Tarabotti

Reviewed by: Antisatire: In Defense of Women, against Francesco Buoninsegni by Arcangela Tarabotti Julie Robarts Antisatire: In Defense of Women, against Francesco Buoninsegni. By Arcangela Tarabotti. Ed. and trans. by Elissa B. Weaver. (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: he Toronto Series, 70; Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 564) Toronto: Iter Press; Tempe: Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 2020. xv+114pp. $42.95. ISBN 978-0-86698-622-9. Elissa B. Weaver's critical edition and translation of Arcangela Tarabotti's Antisatira makes this important seventeenth-century defence of women available in English for the first time. This edition presents the text as it appeared in the 1644 publication which combined both Tarabotti's Antisatira and the original satire to which it responds—Francesco Buoninsegni's Contro 'l lusso donnesco, Satira menippea (Against the Vanities of Women, a Menippean Satire). Weaver's translation and edition is based on her Italian critical edition of the same texts, published as Satira e Antisatira (Rome: Salerno, 1998). Buoninsegni had presented his semi-serious satirical discourse, consisting of prose and verse, in 1632 in Siena under the aegis of Ferdinando II de Medici. Tarabotti, in turn, recruited the patronage of Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, as the dedicatee of her book. Weaver's Introduction outlines Tarabotti's life and literary production. The literary contexts and reception of Buoninsegni's satire, and of Tarabotti's response, are also clearly laid out. here is a helpful summary of the main arguments of the Satire, and Tarabotti's point-by-point refutation, including analysis of the rhetorical techniques deployed by the authors according with the subgenre of the Menippean satire. Being true to the genre, Tarabotti's text is filled with digressions, and these return to the main themes of her life's work—the defence of women's rights to education and to exercise their free will in the choice of a life-path. Weaver writes: 'there is no doubt that she hoped through her writing to effect change, if only in the minds of men, and that she should be considered an early feminist thinker and activist' (p. 5). [End Page 302] Weaver's translation vividly renders Tarabotti's paradigm-shattering pronouncements and her frank style: 'As for those who denounce the members of my sex, I feel no obligation to trust not just Martial but neither Plato nor Aristotle, unless they first cease to be men' (p. 78). While the Antisatira was the second of Tarabotti's published works, it established her public reputation as an author, and is crucial to our understanding of the reception of her writing, as the work with the greatest number of surviving responses. In a subsequent work, Buoninsegni printed four lines of admiring acknowledgement in verse, and there were at least three other manuscript and print responses from male authors who sought to censure Tarabotti and refute or ridicule her arguments. Tarabotti's Antisatira was published by Francesco Valvasense, the preferred press of the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti, who in the following year published Lucrezia Marinella's final work, Essortationi alle donne (1645). While the Essortationi has been read as Marinella stepping back from the pro-women position shared by the two authors, the interest and editorial activity provoked by Tarabotti's Antisatira support a recent interpretation of Marinella's work as a virtuoso performance in literary dissimulation. (Amy Sinclair, 'Insinuatio in Lucrezia Marinella's Essortationi alle donne (1645): Exhorting Marital Harmony and Insinuating Feminist Critique', Renaissance Studies, 34 (2020), 444–46). Tarabotti's bluntly expressed feminism contrasts with Marinella's more artful approach. Weaver's notes trace the erudite web of literary authorities evoked by both Tarabotti and Buoninsegni. Eleven images break up the text, and illustrate the men's and women's fashions and hairstyles over which the authors were disputing. The critical apparatus, which includes a name and topic index, makes this an essential text for Anglophone scholars of early modern gender, and an ideal teaching text, even for students with little or no prior knowledge of Renaissance literature. Julie Robarts Australian National University Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Architectural Rhetoric in Shakespeare and Spenser by Jennifer C. Vaught

Reviewed by: Architectural Rhetoric in Shakespeare and Spenser by Jennifer C. Vaught Goran Stanivukovic Architectural Rhetoric in Shakespeare and Spenser. By Jennifer C. Vaught. (Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 24) Berlin: de Gruyter. 2019. xi+228 pp. €89.95. ISBN 978–1–5015–1793–8. The essence of this book lies in the word 'architectural' and in its different representations in the works of Shakespeare and Spenser. The book offers a thorough [End Page 280] and persuasive, comparative analysis of 'intertextual allusions' (p. 9) in the works of these two writers, evidenced in 'analogous characters, dwellings, and situations they imagine' rhetorically (p. 11). It makes a strong case for a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of textual and visual poetics in literature. The clear sense of architecture, however, contrasts with the fluid and flexible use of rhetoric. Jennifer C. Vaughtʼs approach to rhetoric is not applied to an extensively formulated theory and system, as it was developed and understood in the early modern intellectual sphere, but instead to language and discourse more broadly. There is a sense that rhetoric is used meta-rhetorically, not to explore how form, persuasion, and effective styles shape meaning, embody ideas, and affect the audience. Vaught sets out to 'examine the rhetoric of architecture throughout The Faerie Queene and in Shakespeareʼs history plays [. . .] [in] Troilus and Cressida, the Roman plays Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, the tragedies Macbeth and King Lear, and the romance The Tempest' (p. 1). This is a comprehensive corpus, and Vaught must be praised for engaging with such a large body of major plays within a coherent argument. For a book that puts emphasis on rhetoric, however, the absence of an in-depth analysis of rhetorical texts is glaring. The passing references to Peacham and Sidney only, and to Quintilian, suggest that rhetoric as itself materialist practice is not the thrust of the book. In her focused, tightly argued study, however, Vaught is excellent when she explores mnemonic and cognitive aspects of rhetoric and when she explains how memory produced effect by linking concrete architectural forms to specific ideas. Most of Vaughtʼs book comprises new readings of 'the world of things, from houses to hammers' (p. 9) as expressions of the body, especially of the permeable body. The solidity of architecture and 'things' and, in contrast, the permeability of the body, are brought together in excellent analyses of the mind-body dichotomy expressed in the language of architectural form and design. The book consists of six chapters, starting with a general discussion based on reading the motif of the permeable body in a literary corpus including The Faerie Queene (I and II) and 1–2 Henry 6, which establishes the methodological foundations for the book. The second chapter continues a discussion of the Henriad plays, but focusing on the expressive power of the language of rhetoric to embody political meaning. This chapter offers a thought-provoking analysis of the motif of the ruined castle in Richard II, a motif analogous to the kingʼs state of mind. From an analysis of exterior settings, the book moves to an exploration of interior spaces. The focus is on The Faerie Queene again, and on Britomartʼs embodiment and interiority in relation to the spatial interiority. The subject of Chapter 4 is the cityʼs ruins and walls, with Spenserʼs minor work 'Ruins of Rome' interpreted alongside a selection of Shakespeareʼs sonnets, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus. Especially original is the exploration of linguistic and thematic parallels of Books IV and V from The Faerie Queene alongside Antony and Cleopatra, focusing on 'built environment' imagined as the body and framing psychological and mental states such as grief and anxiety. The final chapter examines depictions of the body and mind 'as analogous to hellish and story surroundings', to decaying and crumbling buildings, [End Page 281] and to an 'entrapping labyrinth' (p. 125). There remains much in Vaughtʼs probing and lucidly argued book that deserves critical attention and that will give her study currency beyond the bounds of literary studies. Goran Stanivukovic Saint Maryʼs University Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Ordinary Masochisms: Agency and Desire in Victorian and Modernist Fiction by Jennifer Mitchell

Reviewed by: Ordinary Masochisms: Agency and Desire in Victorian and Modernist Fiction by Jennifer Mitchell Robin Hackett Ordinary Masochisms: Agency and Desire in Victorian and Modernist Fiction. By Jennifer Mitchell. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2020. x +215 pp. ISBN 978-0-8130-6667-7. In this monograph, Jennifer Mitchell seeks to reclaim masochism for empowerment as writers and activists in the long civil rights era have worked to reclaim other minoritized sexual orientations. Mitchell distinguishes masochism from victimhood, separates it from gender, and describes a tie between masochism and social survival. She builds from feminist critiques of masochism as one among many concepts through which sexual violence is normalized, and also from queer theorists' insights about self-shattering ecstasies. As a bonus, because of its coincidence with the covid-19 pandemic, Ordinary Masochisms also suggests an explanation for the rage that has been part of the public response to mask mandates. [End Page 293] Mitchell is careful to note that her subject is books and narrative techniques rather than bodies—a distinction enabling her to discuss the relationship between agency, pain, and pleasure, without increasing the vulnerability of victims of sexual violence. She is clear, as well, that she is talking about ordinary and mundane examples of abjection and deference rather than spectacular masochisms. Her argument extends elegantly to whips and chains, and to the upsurge in popular uses of the language of masochism, such as in Fifty Shades of Grey. But Mitchell makes her point with evidence of unremarkable masochisms in novels commonly read for pleasure—including works by Charlotte Brontë, D. H. Lawrence, Jean Rhys, and George Moore—that are filled with characters who pleasurably submit and suffer, and that also subject readers to long, convoluted, narrative deferrals and self-shattering reading experiences. Foundational work by Victorian sexologists, Mitchell shows, describes masochism as an exaggeration of normal female sexuality (as it describes sadism as an exaggeration of normal male sexuality). The pathological theory of masochism that persists into the present turns on this gendered view: masochistic desires are especially pathological when they are expressed by men, and largely unremarked when expressed by women. Masochisms described by Mitchell, alternately, are enjoyed by characters across the gender spectrum. Moreover, lovers shift readily back and forth between submission and mastery. Mitchell also speaks against the common pairing of masochism and sadism. Masochism is a matter of agency, not victimhood. Masochists run the scene, define the terms of their pleasure, and seduce willing partners into performances. No true sadist, whose pleasure derives from torturing an unwilling victim, would find satisfaction from a masochistic partner. Rather, the partner to a masochist is better understood as another masochist, deferential and submissive to a lover's desire. Finally, masochism has narrative correspondences that make literary analysis a particularly suitable way to understand and recuperate masochism. The agential interaction between masochists depends on narrative set-ups. Masochists control by telling, by asking, by describing. Moreover, long, twisting, Victorian plots and frustrating modernist refusals of narrative coherence compare to deferral rather than to pleasure, which compares, instead, to punctuation. In arguing for a tie between masochism and social survival, Mitchell suggests that if pleasured orientation to self-shattering, to near-endless deferrals, to abjection as means of achieving ecstasy, is specifically masochistic, it is also a source of social survival. This is the most provocative and enticing of Mitchell's claims if also the least compellingly elaborated. Finally, Mitchell's work helps explain the rage with which some have responded to mask mandates during the covid-19 pandemic. A mask on a face exposes more than it hides: vulnerability and abjection, as well as deference to public health. Mitchell's book clarifies the ways in which mask mandates require the public embrace of a masochism that, to date, has been pathologized in gendered terms, wrongly understood as victimhood, and anathema to masculinity. A recuperated [End Page 294] masochism that separates mask mandates from victimhood, and gender conventions, is welcome indeed. Robin Hackett University of New Hampshire Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Mandelstam's Worlds: Poetry, Politics, and Identity in a Revolutionary Age by Andrew Kahn

Reviewed by: Mandelstam's Worlds: Poetry, Politics, and Identity in a Revolutionary Age by Andrew Kahn Alexandra K. Harrington Mandelstam's Worlds: Poetry, Politics, and Identity in a Revolutionary Age. By Andrew Kahn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020. xix+672 pp. £85. ISBN 978-0-29-885793-8. Andrew Kahn's achievement in this substantial study is to provide a robust counter to the prevailing view of Mandelstam as a poet outcast and victim who was ambivalent about politics, who felt sidelined after the late 1920s, and who consequently retreated into increasingly self-referential poetic practice. This image of Mandelstam was largely shaped, as Kahn observes, by the dual forces of canonizing life-writing on the one hand, and influential scholarship focused on the intertextual aspects of the poetry on the other. By adopting an interpretative approach aimed at the multiple contexts—political, scientific, biographical, philosophical, emotional, and so on—that informed the poet's thought, Kahn successfully demonstrates both Mandelstam's intensive engagement with the specifics of the political realities of his age and the extent to which forms of visualization played a crucial and pervasive role in his poetics. Individual chapters typically centre on detailed readings of key poems. By bringing text into sustained dialogue with context, and including close examinations of Mandelstam's journalistic output from the 1920s, Kahn produces effective, revisionist readings. His discussion of the 'Slate Ode', which sees it as a challenge to Marxist political thought on consciousness, is a case in point. Another example is his exploration of 'Verses on Russian Poetry' as a response to contemporary debates about aesthetics and the canon. In a thoughtful reading of the ambiguous and contentious 'Ode to Stalin', Kahn mediates between polarized interpretations of it as an expression either of frightened defeat or of ironic defiance. Onto the conventions of the ode, he argues, is 'imposed the superstructure of Stalin's own carefully controlled image-making machine' so that (in ways that respond to the legacy of Derzhavin) the poem pays tribute to Stalin's power while serving ultimately as a 'commemoration of the poet rather than the leader' (p. 565). Inevitably, given the sheer range of poems treated, some readings are more comprehensively persuasive than others. Mandelstam's lyric 'Impressionism', as Kahn notes, is not precisely ekphrastic, aiming rather 'to give an impression of Impressionism' (p. 326), in the form of the viewer's (and an imagined interlocutor's) [End Page 315] impressionistic response. It is therefore unclear, to this reader at least, why Kahn reads the indistinct 'veils' mentioned in the poem as food coverings: Mandelstam's cooking metaphor arises from play on maslo (oil paint/butter), but nonetheless this interpretation seems something of a stretch. Unsurprisingly for a scholarly undertaking on this scale, some minor errors and slips occur. For instance, the title of Clare Cavanagh's study of Mandelstam is truncated in a note (p. 2), 'patent' should presumably read 'patient' (p. 86), and Emma Gershtein is quoted (p. 222) without any note or reference in the bibliography. Citations from Iurii Tynianov (p. 233) and Lidiia Ginzburg (p. 348) also lack references. The title of the poem 'Distant landmarks of a train of carts' is rendered alternatively as 'Distant landmarks of a convoy' in the main text (p. 528). Jan Plamper appears as John Plamper (p. 555). Mandelstam's widow and memoirist, herself a remarkable writer, as Kahn observes, is often referred to as 'Mrs Mandelstam' (pp. 247, 263, and elsewhere). Some expected references to scholarship are absent—there is a larger body of research on Mandelstam and cinema, for instance, than is explicitly acknowledged. Mandelstam is a challenging poet, and this is consequently a densely argued, wide-ranging volume. Overall, Kahn's extensive study undoubtedly provides a significant and welcome contribution to our understanding of Mandelstam's post-Acmeist poetry and its development. Alexandra K. Harrington Durham University Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics by Rocío G. Sumillera

Reviewed by: Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics by Rocío G. Sumillera Catherine Bates Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics. By Rocío G. Sumillera. Cambridge: Legenda. 2019. x+159 pp. £75. ISBN 978–1–781883–20–4. Keeping good company with the current surge of interest in Renaissance poetics, this meticulously researched and useful book shows how the concept of 'invention' undergoes a critical development during the early modern period. Through a series of carefully marshalled arguments and extensively illustrated examples, Rocío Sumillera convincingly demonstrates that the 'conceptual richness' (pp. 2, 125) of Renaissance inventio results from its intermediary position between classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, on the one hand, and Romanticism, on the other. While referring widely to Italian, French, and Spanish sources, Sumillera focuses specifically on sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England to trace the evolution of this critical concept, as it shifts from being a functional term in classical logic and rhetoric to assuming much wider connotations of artistic originality and creativity. Key to this development is the change from invention as a form of finding (from in +venire, literally 'to come upon') to invention as a form of devising, making, or creating. To explore how and when this change takes place, Sumillera considers inventionʼs relation to imitation and imagination, respectively. With their origins in Plato and Aristotle, theories of imitation have always struggled with the question of ideality—whether the object imitated or the imitation itself might be in some way exemplary—and this problem comes to the fore when the object being imitated is another author. While there is little dignity in slavish copying, imitatio assumes an altogether more 'inventive form' (p. 49) when—differentiated as aemulatio—it aims to alter, personalize, and surpass the original. As for theories of the imagination—although originating in the quite different discipline of natural philosophy and associated there with questions of perception and cognition—the 'image-making faculty' was similarly understood to work with both 'what had already been experienced' and 'new realities never even perceived' (p. 111): in other words, to be capable of producing something potentially better and new. The idea that a human artist might create something out of nothing—surpassing not only literary forebears but nature herself in 'making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew', as Philip Sidney puts it in the Defence of Poesy—was alien to the Greeks; for the polytheistic societies of antiquity saw the gods or Muses as sources of inspiration rather than as the single, ideal, creator God of Christianity in whom the human artist might find the ultimate model, 'the heavenly Maker of that maker' (Sidney, again). It was in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, interestingly enough—when scholastic Christianity was at the [End Page 278] height of its reach and power—that the notion of inventio first entered the field of poetics: through the poetic treatises of men such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf and John of Garland, and through the medieval artes poetriae that taught the principles of composition and interpretation (that is, the writing and reading of literary texts). By the same token, however, in exercising a creative power more properly deemed divine, the human artist ran the risk of presumption if not of sacrilege and blasphemy, which is why such creativity also roused strong opposition (especially among the Calvinists, with their emphasis on human depravity): an anti-poetic sentiment that was to feature particularly strongly in the English Reformation. All in all, this is a detailed yet wide-ranging scholarly book that will serve students and scholars equally well. Although its focus is English Renaissance poetics, the breadth of reference to European sources gives this study a notable ballast and breadth. Sumillera is particularly adept at the selection and presentation of primary quotations, finding the perfect examples—and plenty of them—to illustrate her argument. This makes the book a great resource, as well as a pleasure to read. Catherine Bates University of Warwick Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Вероятность получения Индией статуса основного союзника США вне НАТО

Introduction. Allied relations between India and United States were based during Barack Obama administration and were further developed with Donald Trump coming to power. The interplay that has intensified between states in recent years can contribute to the creation of a new geopolitical space – the Indo-Pacific region. Trade in arms and military equipment is the catalyst for cooperation and the major non-NATO ally status can create all favorable conditions for thus cooperation. United States and India rapprochement, caused, in particular, by geopolitical situation in the Asia-Pacific and the change of power in United States, has led to the emergence of discussions in the American political society about assigning India major non-NATO ally status. Seventeen states in various regions of the world already own this status. The methodological basis of the study was made up of the basic research principles of modern humanities: general scientific methods of cognition, comparison, complex analysis and synthesis. Analysis. The legal framework for cooperation between India and the United States in the military-technical area is formed by agreements on technology transfer, organization of joint development and production of weapons: Defense Cooperation Framework Agreement (2005), Arms and Military Technologies Trade Initiative (2012), Updated framework agreement (2015), Memorandum on material and technical exchange (2016), etc. On the basis of these agreements, a number of projects were successfully implemented. Despite the successes achieved in the development of military-technical cooperation, interaction is complicated by the difference in procedural approaches. As one of the ways to remove bureaucratic barriers, inconsistency in the transfer of technology, joint development and production of weapons systems was considered “major non-NATO ally status”. It could become an alternative to the allied security treaty and an addition to the previously concluded agreements. The proposal to grant India major non-NATO ally status was first received from congressmen led by Republican Joe Wilson. Authors recommended to expand bilateral defense and security cooperation to advance U.S. interests in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific region. Despite their efforts, bill did not receive enough votes. In 2019, similar bills were introduced to grant India as MNNA, which have not been implemented yet. Results. There are agreements that have already been implemented in bilateral cooperation. However, the challenge of building the Indo-Pacific region requires the use of all the tools that U.S. has in its arsenal. One of these tools is status. This study has shown that in the foreseeable future India is unlikely to join major non-NATO allies group because its policy has no place for American interests.

Ronsard et la fabrique des 'Poëmes' by François Rouget

Reviewed by: Ronsard et la fabrique des 'Poëmes' by François Rouget Alice Roullière Ronsard et la fabrique des 'Poëmes'. By François Rouget. (Cahiers d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 166) Geneva: Droz. 2020. 362 pp. SwF 45. ISBN 978-2-60006059-2. In this monograph, François Rouget rethinks the distinction between 'homogeneous collections', 'mixed collections', and 'recueils d'attente' that have hitherto been used to describe Ronsard's balancing act between multiple re-editions of his Œuvres and stand-alone collections. Within this careful design, the Poëmes hold an unusual place: this title designates a section in five books of the Œuvres, first published in 1560, to which the collection of the Sixième et Septième livres des Poëmes (1569) is considered a later add-on. In 1569, Ronsard transforms what was a section of his 'Complete Works' into an independent collection, thus retroactively formalizing the genre. As Rouget shows in his study, the choice of compiling such a variety of poems hindered Ronsardian scholarship from tackling the section as a whole, or offering a serious definition of the Ronsardian 'poëme' since Krystyna Anktowiak's attempt to look at its formal features('A propos de la défintion du "poëme" chez Ronsard', in Ronsard en son IVe centenaire, vol. I, ed by Yvonne Bellenger and others (Geneva: Droz, 1988), pp. 47–52). Rouget's aim is paradoxically vaguer and more precise, uniting a study of the atmosphere of the 'poëme' with a careful rehistoricization of the genre. This erudite study, at the intersection of psycho-poetics, genetic, and the history of the book, follows up on the question of the definition of the 'poëme' raised by Rouget in his previous work (Ronsard et le livre II (Geneva: Droz, 2012)). The structure of this study defends a narrative in which the specificity [End Page 299] of the Poëmes claimed by Ronsard is revealed to be the result of the poet's wish to collect in one book all his previous poems placed under the sign of varietas. Thus, although the Poëmes are the centripetal focus of this study, Rouget discusses a range of Ronsardian 'minor' collections: in Chapters 2 and 3, the Livret des folastries (1553), Bocage (1554), Meslanges (1555-59), in Chapter 4 the Recueil des nouvelles poësies (1564), Elegies, mascarades et Bergerie (1565) before turning to the Poëmes (1560–69) in Chapters 5 and 6. The 'poëme' is placed within the broader aesthetic of the miscellany and Poliziano's silva underpinned by the concepts of varietas, 'poésie naturelle' and concordia discors. Rouget does not claim radical scholarly originality, but rather shows how the Poëmes correspond to a dynamic equilibrium within Ronsard's works, embodying a Horatian mediocritas or 'style moyen' which aspires to find balance while reclaiming an irretractable lacuna: 'Cette carence, nous croyons qu'elle est l'expression d'une imperfection assumée par Ronsard, et qu'elle souligne l'inachèvement du livre conçu comme une œuvre ouverte, régi par le principe d'inchoativité' (p. 25). Throughout the volume, the conceptual metaphor of the garden is used, building on the understanding of the 'poëme' as natural object, to clarify the long meanderings of Ronsard's corrections, and the deceptive impression of chaos. Rouget generously walks the reader step by step through the volume, describing the content of the collections and choosing selected extracts that are delightful to read. This fluid prose is peppered with creative analogies and distinctions (for example, between hybridity and heterogeneity) but unfortunately they are rarely fully explored. Moreover, the breadth of Rouget's scope makes his approach somewhat generalizing and the phrasing regrettably imprecise: emotions, for example, are approached in a loosely psycho-historic way but are rarely connected to the field of the history of emotions. Despite these minor issues, Rouget's study fills an important gap in Ronsardian scholarship by powerfully retracing the origins of the collection through the problematic and hybrid genre that is the French sixteenth-century 'poëme'. Alice Roullière Wadham College, Oxford Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

The Wings of Atalanta: Essays Written along the Color Line by Mark Richardson

Reviewed by: The Wings of Atalanta: Essays Written along the Color Line by Mark Richardson Alice Mikal Craven The Wings of Atalanta: Essays Written along the Color Line. By Mark Richardson. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2019. x+329 pp. $59; £45. ISBN 978-157113-239-0. 'Imaginary Graveyards with real people buried inside them.' (p. 237) Mark Richardson's monograph is a rich read organized around the premiss that 'America is an imaginary place with real people living in it', as Richardson quotes from Marianne Moore in his opening line of the book. The above quotation, which concludes his penultimate chapter on Richard Wright, echoes and reinforces the importance of his initial opening. Richardson develops his book as an exploration of why the slavery and legacies of America should explain the perpetuity of white supremacist attitudes. He indeed examines white supremacy as an attitude and explores both historical-political contexts and the metaphors and style of select authors in order to lay out his argument. Richardson probes how the superiority of the white race is implied, from slavery to the Reconstruction through to the present day, in the evolution of American capitalism and has also strongly determined definitions of American identity and selfhood, whether black or white. The table of contents suggests a somewhat random collection of authors: ones the reader would expect to see included in a book about the colour line, such as W. E. B. Dubois and Richard Wright, along with more unexpected figures such as Jack Kerouac and Stephen Crane. The ingenuity of the book is that Richardson weaves these chapters together through his constant recourse to the myth of Atalanta. He concerns himself throughout with the extent to which these authors allow Atalanta to fly or show how her wings have been clipped. In so weaving, he makes each of the chapters relevant to the others in a sustained argument about how white supremacy has been constructed and used in building myths about what it means to be American. The book is both timely and timeless. Scholars of any of these individual authors can benefit from the rigorous historical and contextual research Richardson has done on the authors. Scholars more concentrated on literary analysis equally profit from his close analysis of the styles and metaphors of each author. The value of weaving these authors together is that it allows the reader to understand the crucial nature of the colour line to American culture. Of central importance in this aspect of Richardson's argument is the question of the divide between the soul and the body and the other divides that ensue, including the creation of a black-white divide that ensures in its principle the perpetuation of the supremacy of white Americans. Richardson's book is well researched and engaging. It is also infused with evocations of contemporary America (Trump America and earlier, with references to the [End Page 295] Kennedy and Reagan administrations) in relation to the incredibly rich connections he makes between the time periods and authors with whom he engages. He evokes the naive reader and incites through his book a more engaged readership. He invites us to read or reread these authors in a timely fashion. Richardson argues ultimately that we as readers need open minds about both the inevitability and the pain of the colour line. American legacies are the imaginary graveyards with real people buried inside them, just as the works of the authors Richardson analyses are the graves in which we must more rigorously dig in order to understand the structure of the American Dream. Alice Mikal Craven American University of Paris Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Development of education and science in the historical industry in the conditions of transformations

The development of the historical field is an important aspect of modern European education and science. The study of the transformations of this important part of the modern humanities, comparison with the Ukrainian and Eastern European realities is a goal of our article. The work is based on the analysis of modern specialized literature and the use of scientific research methods: analysis and synthesis, induction, and deduction. The comparative method shows the peculiarities of the development of the historical branch in the EU countries (in particular, in Latvia). In modern historical education, the principles of consolidation prevail. European historical science is characterized by the importance of international conferences that promote consolidation. Ukrainian historical science has its successes and problems, it can also be compared with European, in particular Latvian (although Latvia was also part of the USSR).

Anachronismen als Widerparte des Historisierens

„Always historicize!“ – the methodological imperative of modern humanities – has recently been countered by its opposite „Always anachronize!“. The first section of this articles argues for an expanded understanding of historicization that includes its counterparts, inter alia anachronism. The second section analyses the example of a (covert) fictional representation of history published in 2015, Angela Steidele’s Rosenstengel. Ostensibly an edition of newfound sources, it takes the interplay of historicization and anachronism particularly far and thus presents it to the reader to see through. Finally, the article discusses the rehabilitation of anachronism that is currently advancing both in artistic representations of history and in theory. How does historicization change when anachronism is no longer seen and treated as the greatest danger, coming from outside, but as an inherent, potentially productive component?

Music in the Head: the Figure of Ludwig van Beethoven as an Acoustic System in Gert Jonke’s “Gentle Rage or the Ear Engineer”

Relevance of the study. Intermedial studies are an important part of modern humanities requiring literary and music studies to reprofile and set new objectives. Literary studies occupy a principal place in developing theoretical frameworks and categories of intermediality, which, as relevant papers show, are widely used by music studies. Interdisciplinary studies are particularly promising in this respect as they not only promote a more profound look into problematic musical and literary complexes but also contribute to the self-establishment of both disciplines under new media conditions. Artistic literature serves as material for discovering musical and literary connections while relying on music studies achievements. The creativity of the Austrian writer Gert Jonke (1946–2009), in particular, offers narrative strategies and inter-artistic concepts through which the writer ensures the auditory dimension of a work of literature.
 Research novelty lies in the specification of music and literary connections as a textual performance focusing on the embodiment of music.
 Research objective is to identify the main trends in contemporary musical and literary intermedial studies and, within this framework, conduct an analysis of the theatre sonata Gentle Rage or the Ear Engineer (“Sanftwut oder Der Orenmaschinist”, 1990) by Gert Jonke, stressing upon the concept of the body as an intermedium.
 Research methodology consists of a description of the underlying principles of mediality applied to the analysis of Gert Jonke’s drama.
 Results and conclusions. During the 2020 Ludwig van Beethoven anniversary year, Gert Jonke’s theatre sonata Gentle Rage or the Ear Engineer became a particularly important element of remembering-understanding the artist’s creativity. The works of the Austrian writer are notable for their particular sonority. One of the central motives is that of a head which is associated with the stage where thoughts and sounds unfold practically at the same time. The presence of sounds belongs to the sphere of contrived — it exists in the head (consequently, on stage). From an intermedial perspective, the theatre sonata Gentle Rage or the Ear Engineer (according to Beethoven’s intentions of ideal performance) emerges as a concert in which the sounds are transmitted with the help of digital piano at the moments when the monologs of the protagonist change dialogues. The sounds of sonata rendered by the electronic instruments translate the imagined music in Beethoven’s head to acoustic material, while the dramatic text is simultaneously interpreting the play with its own means. The abstract sonata conceived in mind transforms into an actual acoustic image during its staging, embodied in and through the figure of Beethoven. It is apparent that Gert Jonke considers the auditory experience of recipients and appeals to it using specific moods, harmonies, dissonances, and tempo markings. The central concept of the body as an intermedium relies on musicological musings about the effect of deafness on Beethoven’s late creativity. It is closely connected to certain aspects of interpretation of his late works (absolute music, the opposition of light and darkness).

АБАЙ ПОЭЗИЯСЫНДАҒЫ «МӘҢГІЛІК БЕЙНЕНІ» ТЕЗАУРУСТЫҚ ТАЛДАУ

The article considers the «eternal image» in Abay’s poetry by the method of thesaurus analysis, based on the comparative method. Thesaurus analysis is especially important in the system of linguistic analysis. Although the terms “dictionary” and “thesaurus” are similar, the fact that the thesaurus has a wider range of meanings is confirmed by the findings of the researchers. It is known that the thesaurus analysis method is of particular importance in modern humanities. From this perspective, the features of thesaurus analysis in literary studies are systematized and the issue of “eternal image” is raised within the framework of this concept. There are special characteristics of “eternal images” such as capacity, high spiritual value, polyvalence, and wide dissemination, and in analyzing Abay’s poem “Yeskendir” (Alexander) attention is paid to these features. Comparative analysis is done on the plots of Yeskendir in eastern and western literature. In Abay’s poetry Alexander is a model of an eternal image, and in presenting his nature the poet’s position is shown. The content of the article also includes the fact that the story of Alexander the Great in the Holy Quran formed the basis of folklore and literary works and the personification of this “eternal image” in the historical and literary tradition. The analysis of the main character in the poems of Ferdowsi, Nizami, Zhami, Navoi and in the “Novel about Alexander” popular in Europe is presented and concluded. Although Yeskendir’s historical campaigns around the world eventually went into the depths of history, his glorious life continued in folklore and literature. The famous hero’s “literary campaign” to oriental literature was considered in the space of the eastern classical poets and Abay’s works. The analysis reveals that the plot lines, dating back to folklore heritage and sacred books, were reproduced in the works of great poets in a unique way. The scholars, who claim that the historical Alexander the Great and the legend hero Yeskendir Zulkarnaiyn are two different people in history, cannot provide any concrete evidence to support this point of view. The plots about Yeskendir that became the basis for the works of great artists unite these “two” Alexanders as one person. Considering that one of the main characteristics of eternal images is polyvalence, it was concluded that Yeskendir can be recognized as a composite image of a warrior and a victorious commander, who ruled the country. The contradictory nature of the “eternal image” in Abay’s poem “Yeskendir” and the reproduction of the legendary plot by the great poet in a new perspective is shown on the basis of thesaurus analysis.

NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION

Abstract 
 Background. The problem of national identity became relevant in connection with the development of an independent, sovereign Ukrainian state. The verbalized concept of «identity» is understood in broad historical and geopolitical contexts, projecting conclusions on public policy, socio-economic situation, national and cultural processes in society. The linguo-cognitive meaning of the term «national identity2, used in scientific and literary texts, needs to be studied.
 Purpose. To analyze the lexical semantics of the word identity in the modern Ukrainian literary language, to identify features of its interpretation in lexicographic sources, to trace the functioning of the phrase national identity in scientific texts and to outline the specifics of verbalization of «identity», «mentality» in the literary text.
 Methods. The study uses a method of comparative analysis of dictionary interpretations of register words identical, identity to substantiate the stylistic marker book (word) in modern Ukrainian literary language, as well as contextual – interpretive method for structuring the meaning of the term national identity, identifying features of verbalization in scientific and literary texts.
 Results. The verbalized term «identity» common in the modern humanities, in particular its semantic structure, needs to be clarified in the context of terminological meaning in relation to the representatives of the nation, national culture, i.e. national identity. Dictionaries of foreign words published at different times, explanatory dictionaries of the modern Ukrainian language do not fix the terminological meaning of the lexical item identity, semantically related to the concept of «nation». A characteristic feature of identity involves a logical process of conferring, comparing of objects, phenomena, concepts and identifying a common feature – the same, identical content, as evidenced by the phrases given in dictionaries. In contrast to the illustrations recorded in lexicographical sources, the phrase national identity actualized in modern literary language indicates a higher degree of abstraction: the feature represents the synthesis of common (indicating common features inherent in a certain nation) and different (seme of opposition to other nations with their identical features). Modern scientific texts in the humanities expand the combination of words identical, identity that form new phrases, acquiring a new terminological meaning in the system of concepts of history, philosophy, political science, sociology, culturology, linguistics.
 Synonymization of the words nation, ethnos in modern scientific and journalistic discourse has led to the parallel use of the phrases national identity and ethnic identity that identify the meaning of the lexical items nation, ethnos. Studiers often include the following concepts in the differential features of national identity: territory, religion, language. However, their assessment and identification role in relation to the integrity of the Ukrainian nation is defined differently. In discussions about the modern Ukrainian nation, the concepts of national (state), ethnic, historical, territorial, linguistic, cultural identity are distinguished. The concept of national identity is related to the linguo-pragmatic meaning of the term mentality, interpreted differently in scientific and literary contexts. The Ukrainian literary language has historically formed a word-forming series that combines words with the component SELF: self-consciousness, self-identification, identity, self-sufficiency, self-discovery, self-realization, self-affirmation, self-understanding, self-realization, self-correction, self-preservation, self-determination, self-humiliation, self-identity. The logical and psychological meaning of these nominations is correlated with the terms national identity, mentality.
 Discussion. The formation of an independent state has actualized the theme of national identity in the context of modern globalization. Linguistic analysis (lexical-semantic, linguo-cognitive) is supplemented by a contextual interpretation of the content of the terminological concept of «national identity». In scientific (historical, culturological, ethnological) texts the interpretation of varieties of identity with the focus on the concepts of «national» and «ethnic» identity is traced. The conclusion about the historical variability of the category of national identity is made. The authors of modern historical studies connect the phenomenon of national identity with the creation of the modern Ukrainian nation. 
 Comparison of scientific and artistic interpretation of the concept of national identity opens the prospect of studying the types of identities and linguo-cognitive structuring of each of them.

O potrzebie biografii i problemie biografii

About the Need of BiographyThe author quotes an opinion that in the recent time Ukrainian historical discourse has deeply changed. The previous monopoly of Marxist language has been suppressed and replaced by discourses of modern humanities. Although this transformation is apparent, some Ukrainian critics are worried that it might be only a superficial adaptation to a modern paradigm of historical science: Ukrainian scholars have conformed to this Western standard of scientific discourse, but in reality they do not treat popular terms as actually working tools for analyzing their own historical problems. In the author’s opinion there are some deficient terms among ones so frequently used by Ukrainian historians, such as “identity” or “biography”. A new approach to the issue of biography, especially to the writing of biographies of those national activists whose life was affected by cross-cultural influence, is a crucial need of Ukrainian historiography.

The Image of the Homeland in the Lyrics of the Poet of Northeastern China Mu Mutian (Based on the Poems from the Collection Drifting Heart)

The relevance of the study is determined by the interest of modern humanities in the processes of the formation of ethnic and national consciousness in China in the first half of the 20th century, which determine the images of perception of a foreign culture and self-perception. The novelty lies in the appeal to the half-forgotten work by Mu Mutian, practically unknown to the Russian-speaking reader. The problem lies in the definition of the connotative meanings of the image of the homeland in the works by Mu Mutian, reflecting the fusion of archetypal ethnic ideas and new attitudes of national consciousness. Research methodology is based on the lexical and semantic analysis of the poet’s literary texts, which represent different connotations of the image of the homeland. The research methods we applied involved biographical, cultural-historical and structural-semantic ones. The authors also turned to the comparative analysis of the translation and the original of the poems studied. The authors came to the conclusion that the image of the homeland in the poems included in the collection Drifting Heart by Mu Mutian is often manifested allegorically. The name Drifting Heart fully reflects not only the emotional state of the emigre poet during the period of writing poems but also the processes of the formation of the basic frames of the national consciousness of the Chinese after the Xinhai Revolution during the civil war. Despite the fact that Mu Mutian’s artistic perception of the world during the period of exile is closely connected with the Japanese aesthetic principle of mononoaware, aestheticizing sadness, and is also inseparable from the symbolist craving for “decline”, the poet fuses the “Chinese” vision of these principles and projects them onto ideas about his native places, the homeland of his ancestors under the rule of Japan, declares faith in the revival of China as a single state.

Prospects of Humanitarian Education: From Subject to System Rationality

The article examines the current issues of reducing the multi-vector nature of modern humanities education while maintaining the key models of educational practice. The article deals with the evolution of Russian humanities education in connection with the internal and external logic of development associated with the transformation of geopolitical conditions. The existing and possible trajectories of changes in humanities education are analyzed. A comparative analysis of non-classical and post-nonclassical humanities education is carried out, and their specific parameters are determined. New approaches to the constitution of basic models of humanitarianism are justified. The research is based on the philosophical and scientific paradigm approach. Situations of autonomous and additional coexistence of educational paradigms are modelled.