Modern Readers Research Articles

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales

Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism

Denying Sameness, Making Race: Medieval Anti-Judaism

Sidney Greidanus. Preaching Christ from Leviticus

In 2016, Greidanus noted in the forward of his volume on Psalms it would be his last; all homeliticians should be grateful that unbeknownst to Greidanus, his work and contribution to the kingdom in the field of interpreting and preaching the OT was not yet complete. This volume on Leviticus now stands as the final volume in the illustrious writing career and ministry of Sydney Greidanus.The volume does not disappoint. After laying out reasons the Christian preacher should cover Leviticus, Greidanus launches into the work, functionally dividing it into two parts: (1) hermeneutical considerations and homiletical methodology needed to preach Leviticus effectively (pp. 1–33) and (2) pragmatic examples of homiletical preparation sampling all parts of Leviticus (pp. 34–270). The book concludes with lagniappe for the reader—three appendixes providing a simplified outline for moving from text to sermon (pp. 271–73), an expository sermon model (pp. 274–75), and three sermon manuscripts demonstrating the covered techniques of the work (pp. 276–302).As Greidanus begins, he notes the difficulties of preaching Leviticus. From there, he moves to the necessary reasons and helpful approaches for doing so. Ultimately, Greidanus argues the importance of Leviticus by demonstrating its relational purpose (pp. 7–8) and presents a hermeneutical approach that utilizes the “discontinuity and continuity” of Leviticus to demonstrate the Israelites’ need for it in order to have relationship with a holy God and the modern reader’s same need, which is fulfilled in Christ. He summarizes this approach in four dimensions: literary interpretation, historical interpretation, theocentric interpretation, and Christocentric interpretation (pp. 16–26). These dimensions become the foundation for the second section.The second section demonstrates this quadra-dimensional approach. Throughout each chosen pericope, Greidanus consistently applies the proposed principles and invites the reader to follow his train of thought easily. Unlike his work on Genesis, which seemed to gloss over challenging portions such as genealogies, this volume demonstrates a plausible and realistic approach for covering both easier and more difficult passages for a Christian preacher.Greidanus follows his approach consistently even as he demonstrates how to prepare and preach what many would consider the easiest passage to preach from Leviticus—Lev 16. Nonetheless, this passage contains a minefield for the Christian preacher of balancing the text’s meaning with its ultimate fulfilment in Jesus. This minefield Greidanus navigates expertly. From an OT studies perspective, Greidanus fairly handles the text for what it says, not obfuscating its meaning with outside passages. Yet from a biblical studies perspective, he clearly shows the text’s place in the history of redemption thread that finds its culmination in Jesus. All this produces a workable and user-friendly model for the Christian preacher.However, Greidanus not only addresses the “easier” texts. He also aptly demonstrates how a Christian preacher can and should scholarly and applicably handle a more challenging passage such as Lev 11. In this chapter, Greidanus shows several textual links to the creation narrative as well as other laws concerning sacrifice. Greidanus ultimately lets the literary and rhetorical devices reiterate the purpose of the passage—“Their very diet ought to remind them they are God’s holy people” (p. 139). It is this principle Greidanus builds on, delicately walking the razor’s balance of legalism and antinomianism.In a few places, detailed editing could have improved the clarity of volume. For instance, as Greidanus evaluates approaches to Leviticus, he critiques and discourages the reader from utilizing the threefold division of the law (pp. 5–6). Yet as he summarizes the steps for interpretation, he quotes Averbeck encouraging the interpreter to determine which type of law is used (p. 27).Nevertheless, the book’s overall goal of providing a helpful and applicable guide to preaching Leviticus succeeds; this volume deserves the shelf space for both preachers and biblical studies students alike. And as Greidanus’s final work, it stands as a jewel atop a shining and impactful career.

The Book of the Twelve: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation ed. by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer and Jakob Wöhrle

Reviewed by: The Book of the Twelve: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation ed. by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer and Jakob Wöhrle Jason T. LeCureux lena-sofia tiemeyer and jakob wöhrle (eds.), The Book of the Twelve: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation (VTSup 184; Leiden: Brill, 2021). Pp. xx + 632. €132/$159. The purpose of this compilation is best summarized by the opening sentences of the preface, "In the last two decades, research on the Book of the Twelve (= BT) has shown that this corpus is not just a collection of Twelve prophetic books. It is rather a coherent work with a common history of formation and, based upon this, with an overall message and intention. The individual books of the Book of the Twelve are part of a larger whole in which they can be interpreted in a fruitful manner" (p. viii). To accomplish this goal, the book is organized in four main sections: General topics (four articles); Issues in Interpretation (twelve articles covering every book in the Book of the Twelve); Textual Transmission [End Page 528] and Reception History (eight articles); and Theology of the Book of the Twelve (six articles). Overall, this collection of essays offers a thorough reflection on the foundational issues involved in the scholarship of the Book of the Twelve. Its topics are focused but vary within sections, covering subjects from redactional and compositional issues, to thematic elements, and manuscript and textual transmission. The intention of the work is to act as a type of summary of the last twenty years of research on the Book of the Twelve, and in this it succeeds. Besides its various topics of discussion, the collection's strength lies in the breadth of the scholarship presented, from both Europe and North America. In fact, most of the scholars who have made significant contributions to the study of the Twelve over the last twenty years are represented here. Additionally, while the contributors are from across the globe, all the articles in this collection have been written in English. The first section ("General Topics") is the most important of the book, as the four articles there provide the overview of the redactional arguments for the formation and growth of the Book of the Twelve: Wöhrle, "The Book of the Four"; Tiemeyer, "The Haggai–Zechariah 1–8 Corpus"; James D. Nogalski, "The Completion of the Book of the Twelve"; and Tchavdar S. Hadjiev, "A Prophetic Anthology Rather than a Book of the Twelve." Wöhrle's article in particular, which opens the book, clearly lays out what has become a foundational argument for a unified Book of the Twelve, the so-called Book of the Four (Hosea, Amos, Micah, and the core of Zephaniah). Around this core were added Haggai/Zechariah 1–8, and the rest of the prophetic books, depending on various scholarly reconstructions, at various times. Both Tiemeyer's and Nogalski's subsequent articles further illustrate this argument. Special consideration, however, should be given to Hadjiev's article, the fourth in the section, which echoes the skeptical voice of Ehud Ben Zvi and other scholars who have argued that the Book of the Twelve is not an intentionally composed book, but rather something more akin to an "anthology" or collection of independent works. The article is thorough and convincing, offering a serious challenge to the main arguments (such as thematic connections and catchwords) around which this collection of essays is built, and the editors deserve credit for including it in the book. Hadjiev concludes, "The claim that the individual prophetic books cannot be properly understood on their own, and need always to be read in the light of the larger whole (i.e. the Twelve), must therefore be rejected. There is, of course, nothing to prevent a modern reader from interpreting the anthology as a unit and generating new meanings by placing the various prophetic scripts alongside each other in creative ways" (p. 103). Though Hadjiev's article represents a minority voice, this is a challenging piece that should be given more attention by future scholars of the Twelve. The next section deals with the individual prophets that compose the Twelve, and generally discusses redactional issues relating to the various...

Discovering Exodus: Content, Interpretation, Reception by Ralph K. Hawkins

Reviewed by: Discovering Exodus: Content, Interpretation, Reception by Ralph K. Hawkins Brian Joseph Meldrum ralph k. hawkins, Discovering Exodus: Content, Interpretation, Reception (Discovering Biblical Texts; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021). Pp xiii + 308. Paper $22. The Discovering Biblical Texts series seeks to provide "student-friendly introductions to the books of the Bible" (p. ii). Hawkins's contribution to the series comes as the product of his teaching introductory courses on Exodus. His book serves as an excellent introduction to Exodus and contains an extensive bibliography. It would be a useful resource in any course on the Pentateuch generally or Exodus specifically. I would group H.'s thirteen chapters into three sections: chaps. 1–3, which provide an overview of past Exodus scholarship and introduce current questions about the exodus account's historicity and dating; chaps. 4–10, which present descriptions of Moses as Israel's leader, Yhwh as Israel's God, the law and the covenant as Israel's foundation, and the [End Page 483] tabernacle as Yhwh's dwelling; and chaps. 11–13, which treat Exodus's impact throughout the OT, its echoes in the NT, and its reception in Western culture, art, film, music, and politics. For H., Exodus unfolds as a series of crises that Israel endures and Yhwh overcomes: Israel's enslavement, Moses's hesitancy, Pharaoh's stubbornness, and so on. Exodus's distinctive narrative features—Israel's foundation and Yhwh's self-revelation—make the text a compelling story even for modern readers. Exodus ultimately shares the OT vision that Yhwh dwelled first among the Israelites in hopes "that all people would eventually come to acknowledge the Lord as God" (p. 11). Hawkins reviews the Documentary Hypothesis and presents the scholarly movement from source to literary criticism. Employing the latter as his method, he deals with "the final form of the text, in the context of the whole canon of Scripture, in order to determine what its final author or authors wanted to tell its readers" (p. 20). Regarding historicity, H. suggests that, while a lack of extrabiblical attestation is usually the reason why scholars dismiss the Bible's exodus account, the persistence of the exodus tradition throughout the OT and the fact that Israel's foundational myth often presents the people in a way that is "anything but noble" (p. 38) are also significant. H. presents the thirteenth century b.c.e. as "the consensus date for those who hold that a historical exodus occurred" and considers that the enduring quality of the exodus traditions, "the basis on which the nation of Israel's existence was predicated," are the strongest evidence for the exodus's reality (p. 39). Hawkins devotes chap. 5 to Moses's multifaceted depiction. He is a prophet, shepherd, judge, priestly figure, military leader, sanctuary builder, and divine mediator. Chapter 6 has a similar function, but here H. concentrates on a single aspect of Yhwh's portrayal in Exodus: God's power. Sections that detail the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea demonstrate "the Lord's mastery over nature and, indeed, all of creation. They were nature weapons in the hand of nature's God" (p. 108). In his treatment of Exodus's legal material, H. argues that suzerain–vassal treaties from the ancient Near East provide the closest parallels to the covenant ratification ceremony and the legal corpus contained in Exodus. H. reviews the constituent parts of suzerain–vassal treaties from their preambles through closing historical reports (pp. 111–14), and he provides a helpful chart detailing where the various sections of the treaties appear from Exodus 20 through Leviticus 27 (p. 116). H. then details the ancient Near Eastern context of the Ten Commandments. When considering the scope of Israel's law, H. notes, "While some of its laws were similar to those of other cultures, others were entirely unique and distinguished Israel from all other people in the region" (p. 129). Chapters 9 and 10 are particularly interesting. In chap. 9, H. interprets the themes of sin, rebellion, restoration, and renewal throughout Exodus as an occasion of good news, or the "gospel" of Israel in Exodus. Through Yhwh's self-revelation of the divine attributes in...

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the Treatise on the Astrolabe

Little Lewis and Latin Folk in Chaucer's Prologue to the <i>Treatise on the Astrolabe</i>

Comparative Organic Reading in the Responsive Rhetoric of Plato’s Gorgias, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine

This study introduces a new methodology for reading Plato’s Gorgias (c. 380 BC), Aristotle’s Rhetoric (384–322 BC), and Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine (Books I–III, A.D. 396/7, Book IV, A.D. 426). Taking Gorgias as a mutual text, this study adopts a “comparative organic reading” to evaluate ways in which Aristotle and Augustine responded to Gorgias. Comparative organic reading is the assertion, by reader-centered progressive, formative, and hermeneutic selective reading action, that a textual understanding can be potentially created between Rhetoric and On Christian Doctrine, which are not directly compared. This argument can be justified by comparing the responsive rhetoric of these two texts, which implies that in Gorgias, Socrates was rather negative about rhetoric, while in Rhetoric and On Christian Doctrine, both Aristotle and Augustine, respectively, established a different opinion that seems to justify the development of rhetoric. The findings of this study reveal that “comparative organic reading” is a kind of reading pattern that meditates a text as a reader. Therefore, it seems legitimate to propose that the comparative methodology of modern readers’ reading of classical texts―that is, the way in which two texts are selectively chosen by the reader’s recognition of a common reaction to one text―is consistent with Roland Barthes’s notion of “The Death of the Author,” which is equivalent to what this article identifies as comparative epiphany. The aesthetics of comparative organic reading in triumphant moments of comparative epiphany present endless opportunities for comparative readers to share their findings with other readers.

Elizabeth Daryush and the Company She Keeps

In 1974, John Matthias reviewed a selection of new publications for Poetry, including Selected Poems by Elizabeth Daryush from Verses I–VI (1972). The volume gathered all the poems Daryush wished to preserve of her six collections published in the 1930s. Even taking this belatedness into account, however, Matthias was struck by how out of joint with the time these poems seemed. Alongside the other poets in the review, which included work by Edwin Morgan and Barbara Guest, Daryush stood out as an anachronism, ‘looking rather like someone who has suddenly stepped out of the wrong century to find herself at the wrong party wearing the wrong clothes’: ‘There she stands in her brocades speaking her o’er and ’twixts and ’tweens in her very proper accent’, like ‘somebody’s ancient aunt or somebody’s grannie.’1 Daryush would never have stood for the word ‘grannie’, but Matthias’s facetiousness highlights the difficulties modern readers are likely to have with her work. Her career as a poet spanned a period of intense political conflict and radical social change, but her poems only ever register these contexts obliquely, seemingly out of step with the dominant tendencies in Anglo-American poetry at any given moment. Her first three volumes appeared in 1912 and 1916, though she later suppressed them, and her final book of new poems was published in 1971. She published six books of poetry with Oxford University Press in the 1930s, which seem not to have attracted much notice from a reading public grappling with the rise of fascism, class consciousness, and anthologies like John Lehmann’s New Writing. Yvor Winters edited a Selected Poems in 1948, which garnered a few reviews in literary magazines in America, but looked like it belonged to a previous era when read alongside the Pisan Cantos, Dylan Thomas, or Robert Lowell. It’s likely too that her association with the Winters circle in America and The Movement in the UK influenced the lukewarm, slightly puzzled, reception that greeted Verses: Seventh Book, and the Selected and Collected Poems in the 1970s, all published by the newly established Carcanet Press. Daryush was never a dedicated follower of fashion, but that’s one of the reasons why her poetry amply repays the time we spend with it.

Les Noces de philologie et de Guillaume Budé: un humaniste et son œuvre à la Renaissance. Études réunies par Christine Bénévent, Romain Menini et Luigi-Alberto Sanchi

The Renaissance humanist Guillaume Budé (1468 n.s. –1540) holds an important though uncomfortable place in contemporary French culture. Immediately evoking for many two of the fundamental institutions of the humanities in France today — the Collection Budé (the French equivalent of the Loeb Classical Library) and the Collège de France (in front of which his statue has stood since 1882) — the name Budé also evokes a vague spectre of monstrous erudition, looming out at us from the mists of early modernity. The greatest Budé scholar of the twentieth century, Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie, formulated the bold paradox that this famous name remains that of an unknown (cited p. 7). Such obscurity seems the inevitable fate of an author whose prolific corpus was extremely influential and almost exclusively in Latin; on the map of French letters, therefore, ‘Budé’ remains for many a massy yet unapproachable terra incognita. Keenly aware of this complex inheritance, and eager to provide access to this important author, the contributors to the present volume elucidate the historical Budé through the analysis and exposition of his social context (Part One), methods (Part Two), major works (Part Three), and early modern reception (Part Four). The result is an invaluable work for early modernists interested in this multifaceted humanist. Budé is here viewed from all angles: as a courtier to François Ier; a pioneer in the fields of Renaissance jurisprudence and textual criticism; and as the author of highly original contributions to early modern Christian thought. The keyword for Budé’s significance to us today, and around which the twenty-seven contributions to this collection constantly circle, is of course ‘philology’, a word which simultaneously expresses the focus of Budé’s works and the intellectual method or approach which he pioneered. The name Budé evokes philology in a way very similar to the intimate relationship between Montaigne and the essay, standing for a form of simultaneous writing and reading inextricably intertwined, at the same time highly personal and yet also profoundly influential. Understood therefore as an ‘art de lire’ (p. 9) rather than a scholarly discipline, Budéan philologia is marked by a tension between the reader in the present and the text as a message from the past. This approach promotes reading as a never-ending negotiation between past and present, characterized by ongoing attempts to accommodate the ancient text in the world of the present and the modern reader in that of the past. The intended goal of such reading — for Budé at least — was the eventual transformation of the present through its encounter with the past. Whether or not we still believe in the transformative potential of ancient texts, we remain today just as challenged by the fundamental problem of how to read texts unavoidably tinted by their status as historical artefacts. This volume meets that challenge in a suitably Budéan manner. It delivers an intimate, multifaceted portrait of Budé squarely within his historical moment; moreover, it offers a path to finally integrating the neo-Latin humanist within a longer narrative of French culture.

A BRIEF REVIEW ABOUT BIOMETRICS SYSTEMS IN MODERN CONTEXT

Authentication systems employ various access mechanisms for the data validation process. Nowadays there are many proposals focused on solving the traditional problems that exist to validate the records of installations in public or private places. With the appearance of COVID-19, the use of technology has intensified to avoid contact with physical devices and achieve successful access. This article shows a compilation of work dedicated to methods and techniques for access to facilities by reading modern biometric systems.

"Not a leader, nor an original thinker". A portrait of the Russian Jewish journalist Mikhail Berkhin (Benediktov)

Mikhail Berkhin (Benediktov) was one of the famous Russian and Russian-Jewish journalists, and a Zionist leader, and a loyal supporter of V. Jabotinsky. His life, activity, and literary production ​​have, however, not actually been studied. Without any exaggeration, we can say that Berkhin, as a person and the author of a rather voluminous journalistic heritage in different languages ​​(Russian, English, Hebrew, Yiddish), is little known to the modern reader. Experts have not yet tried to fully discover his depths or describe him neither from the point of view of his private biography, nor as a historical phenomenon. This article is, in fact, the first attempt of this kind to give a relatively complete overview of the currently known biographical material of Berkhin and his ideological and creative heritage.

Lost Column of Reed M. N. Weep

Congratulations to the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, which has reached the golden age when it can join AARP! This used to stand for the American Association of Retired Persons, but now it is just the noise you make to let someone know you are in need of the Heimlich Maneuver. But I digress. I, Alumno Sinllanto, have been invited to participate in the celebration of this auspicious milestone as the chief, and indeed only, student of one of the Bulletin’s most influential contributors, Reed M. N. Weep. In columns published between 1997 and 2011, Professor Weep exposed the craven lies that we tell ourselves in the academic study of religion, and he told a few jokes. With his mysterious disappearance in 2011, a unique voice was silenced. In fact, a grand total of two readers have told me that his column was the first thing they turned to in the Bulletin, which was 100 per cent of that periodical’s subscriber base at the time. Those readers, if they are still alive themselves, will be happy to learn that Professor Weep’s voice actually has not quite been silenced. As a graduate assistant at a large mid-western university, along with the menial and demeaning tasks I was usually assigned, I was given the high honor by the department chair of organizing the papers in Professor Weep’s office after he had absconded. I believe his exact words were “Get rid of this worthless crap.” Little did he know that in the “worthless crap” I would find a valuable gem, a never before published column by the man himself. Professor Weep told me that, when he was in graduate school, a musicology student discovered a previously unknown piano concerto by Franz Liszt, which was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “Those of us who claimed in our dissertations to have found something new,” the story concluded, “were toast.” Now, I, Alumno Sinllanto, find myself in the same enviable position as that musicologist: You grad students can eat your hearts out. Below the column is reproduced in its entirety, unchanged except for normalizing the spelling for the modern reader.

A realistic reading as a feminist tool: The Prodigal Son as a case study

The parables of Jesus have historically been attributed with a plethora of interpretations. The first hearers of the parables of Jesus had native (emic) knowledge of the social realities embedded in the parables told by Jesus, that is, cultural scripts present in the parables that might not be apparent to modern readers. Because of this, the modern reader of a parable might not be aware of all the different cultural scripts in a given parable, especially if these scripts are not specifically mentioned or explained by the gospel narrators. Using the parable of the Prodigal Son as an example, this study argues that there are voices in the parable most probably heard by its first hearers that modern hearers might not be aware of. These ‘muted’ voices not heard by modern readers of the parables often include the voices of women and other minority figures. In this study, a case is made for the possible value that a ‘realistic reading’ of familial parables could bring to the interpretation of the parables.Contribution: It is suggested that this reading can contribute to feminist biblical scholarship’s deconstruction and reconstruction of gender paradigms of Christian theology if the voices of women are ‘exhumed’ from or ‘unhidden’ within, patriarchal and androcentric texts.

Update of the translation of George Orwell`s book “1984”. The Media coverag

George Orwell's novel “1984” has an established status as an emblem in the pantheon of literary anti-utopias. Modern readers can significantly associate the issues addressed in the book with current social phenomena. However, the project of adapting the translation of the novel to modern young readers is becoming a field of discussion. An emblematic example is the translation of Borislav Stefanov, published in 2021 as part of the “Project 48” campaign initiated by the online media “Az Cheta”. This paper includes a comparative analysis of part of the first chapter of the translations of Borislav Stefanov and Lydia Bozhilova (published in 1989) and presents the media coverage after the publication.

Women Inheritance as a Paradigm of the Intersection between Modernity and Tradition in Francis Imbuga’s Aminata

This paper explores women inheritance as a cultural paradigm of the intersection between modernity and tradition in Francis Imbuga’s Aminata. It pinpoints such intersection through the lens of post-colonialism. The Kenyan native tradition is influenced by the British imperial modernity. Therefore, it demonstrates the cultural dichotomy between modernity and traditions because the natives reject any foreign interference in their cultural affairs, which is not sufficiently tackled in previous studies. The native characters’ opposition to women inheritance will be scrutinized to unravel Imbuga’s depiction of the natives’ rejection of the colonizers’ modernity. The interpretation of tradition is going to be pursued as a derisory response to the postcolonial persecutory culture regarding women inheritance in the aboriginal Kenyan society. By opposing the postcolonial modernity, the native Kenyans could preserve their ancestors’ cultural traditions i.e., their cultural identity is empowered by hindering women inheritance. The play approaches common themes regarding modernity and tradition; and it deals with the Kenyan aboriginal nations that were formed according to British cultural imperialism. As such, Imbuga offers a new literary insight on the drastic cultural changes in Kenyan in the ensuing years of post-colonialism. The study unravels his perception of the natives’ rejection of the postcolonial modernity in order to accentuate the supremacy of the native traditions over the foreign culture. Thus, the significance of the study lies in its original reading of modernity and tradition and how they enhance the Kenyan natives’ reaction to the emergence of women inheritance in their society.

Осип Маковей: громадський діяч, публіцист, пропаґатор української культури кінця ХІХ – початку ХХ ст.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the public, political, publishing and literary critical activity of Osyp Makovey. The legacy of one of the organizers of the cultural and literary life in Galicia, Bukovyna and the Upper Dnieper Ukraine (Naddniprianshchyna), his relationships with the contemporaries – Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, Olha Kobylianska are under study. The author of the article analyses Makovey’s work as the editor of Literary and Scientific Bulletin (Literaturno-Naukovyi Visnyk), Bukovyna newspaper as well as monographic researches dedicated to Yuriy Fedkovych and Panteleimon Kulish. The relevance of the studied topic stems from the modern reader’s attention to the public and political as well as cultural life of Galicia, Bukovyna and the Upper Dnieper Ukraine of the late 19th – early 20th c. Applied research methods: biographical, historiographical, textological, generalization method. Conclusions: Osyp Makovey is one of the leading representatives of the public and political as well as cultural life of Galicia, Bukovyna and the Upper Dnieper Ukraine of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. With his publishing and literary critical articles about the classics of the Ukrainian literature, he contributed to the Europeanization of the Ukrainian literature, affirmation of the democratic principles in the public, political and cultural life of Ukrainians of that epoch.

Интуиция магического в теории: “Медленное чтение” М.О. Гершензона

M.O. Gershenzon theorized that poetry is a magic action which appeals directly to “the primal myth”. The primal myth in the poetic word is opposed to metaphorical meaning in its rhetorical sense (as A.A. Potebnja described it). A poet sees an invisible world and really believes in the existence of ghosts (Gershenzon stated this in The Poet’s Vision, Pushkin’s Wisdom, Gulfstream, etc.). The magic poetic word of antiquity is no longer accessible to the understanding of the modern reader. Therefore, Gershenzon thought, a scholar / exegete must have congenial intuition in order to reveal the word from under layers of obliterated metaphors. It is ironic that for many decades this view was realized as a metaphorical style of thinking, almost destroying itself. But the theoretical ideas connected with this view went unnoticed (unlike the theory of Russian formalists, who also relied on Potebnja’s ideas about the genesis of metaphor). Gershenzon’s theoretical intuition is based on transference of the properties of the studied subject (the primal myth in a poet’s word) into research itself (attempts to reveal the poetic word’s “spell” through slow reading), making the magic a constructive element of the theory.

QUEER (A)EDI-(M)OLOGY: ON CALLIMACHUS’ AETIA PROLOGUE

In the prologue of Callimachus’ Aetia, every single word opens up a wide, virtually boundless spectrum of suggestions, intimations, and evocations. In this paper, I heed Callimachus’ formal intricacies, joining the decoding game that has vexed and entertained ancient and modern readers by homing in on the para-etymological potentialities of the verb ἀείδω (‘I sing’). I wish to explore the possibility that, in this architext of Callimachean programmatics, ‘singing’ may amount to a sort of aesthetic satisfaction in self-deprivation, with formal elements mobilizing a spiral of eating and non-eating. This exploration offers the opportunity to think about Callimachean ‘singing’ as a challenge to conventional notions of human subjectivity and to the very idea of poetic immortality, expressing something like the wish of a poète maudit not for monumental permanence, but for a looping insistence. We may then see Callimachean aesthetics as less rarefied, aristocratic, and decorous than it is usually made out to be. In the recalcitrance, the unruly looping of poetic form, we may glimpse an aesthetic sense that is more subversive, shaped by temporal stuckness, a rejection of fulfillment, and a hunger that rejects the lack that is satisfaction. I first locate the possibility of an alternative para-etymologizing of ἀείδω within the prologue's discourse of corporeality, in its precarious opposition of thinness and fatness. I then search the epigram dedicated to Heraclitus and the Hymn to Demeter for traces of the restless aesthetics inherent in this para-etymologizing, which I will ultimately connect with queer temporality. The Callimachean hymn invites us to see the poetic persona of the Aetia's proem in a new light—as a counterpart of the starving binge eater Erysichthon, Demeter's enemy, who is barely distinguishable from the goddess herself.

Unveiling Nature

This article examines the multifaceted approach to the translation of medicine as it appears in the works of Liu Zhi, a seventeenth-century Chinese-Muslim translator from Arabic and Persian into Chinese. Through empire-wide journeys to recover manuscripts, the building of an archive of Arabo-Persian knowledge on the natural world, and the application of various methods to produce coherence, authority, and compatibility with local epistemes, Liu assembled translations that presented early modern Chinese readers with new insights into the structure and operation of the human body. Liu Zhi’s translations provide a rare glimpse into a cross-Asian circulation of knowledge on the human body and add a philological dimension to the premodern knowing of the body.

Los cautivos de Argel

Los cautivos de Argel