Non-canonical Texts Research Articles

MUSICOLOGICAL-CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC-AESTHETIC ANALYSIS OF THE GENRE PALETTE OF CHURCH CHANTS ON THE EXAMPLE OF CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL WORKS

A comprehensive musicological and cultural cross-section of the specifics of the use of spiritual genres of sacred music during church services is carried out; the problem of the presence of canonical liturgical texts in these spiritual chants is highlighted; The specifics of the existence of the studied genres of sacred music with secular, non-canonical texts on church themes in the Orthodox tradition are determined. A musical-theoretical, artistic-aesthetic and lexical-phonetic analysis of the genre spectrum of sacred music of Ukrainian Orthodoxy, which crystallized over the centuries in church practice and still exists in Orthodox worship, is made. Among the main genres: spiritual Cant, Psalm, Monody, Spiritual Song, church prayer of ancient Ukrainian everyday melody, Canon. It is noted that Orthodox music in symbiosis with oral folk art influenced the formation of the entire genre and style palette of national music, nurtured the aesthetic culture of our people, contributed to the awareness of national identity by means of musical art.

Anonymity, canonicity, and literary value

ABSTRACT This article investigates institutional forces that maintain the focus on canonical authors in Middle English studies, despite the ubiquity of anonymity in the Middle English corpus, and despite the extensive critique of the canon that the field has witnessed. It provides a snapshot of the current Middle English canon, surveys publication patterns in sample academic journals in the twenty-first century, examines the ways authorship serves (and anonymity does not) as a critical tool, and shows what anonymous texts might offer to the ongoing assessment of the literariness of Middle English texts. Analysis of the scholarship of two Middle English scholars over the first two decades of the current century demonstrates the challenges and opportunities in developing methods that discern the literariness of anonymous, non-canonical texts. Work in New Formalism and object studies offers possibilities for recognising the literariness of anonymous texts not traditionally considered in terms of their aesthetic or formal features.

Spreading the Work: Introducing Eighteenth-Century ‘Derivatives’ in the Classroom

AbstractThe article reflects the experience of teaching an interactive seminar on the topic of rewriting the history of eighteenth-century literature through non-canonical texts. As such, the article considers firstly how to introduce graduate students to the revisionist scholarly debate recasting eighteenth-century literature and secondly how to adapt it in a way that is more relatable to them as digital natives with their concomitant mediatic skills. Attempting a participative literary historiography where students put together a new body of literature based on ‘derivatives’ (excerpts, abridgments, unauthorized imitations, or continuations of originals found on online databases) calls for a systematizing frame. The article proposes to achieve this through the preparatory reading of a choice of canonical works that reflect the contemporary critical responses to the proliferation of print. Not only does this first step avoid the dispersion of participants’ findings, but it also helps participants toward an easier understanding of the Foucauldian dynamics of discourse and how they inform his key notion of the author function and, ultimately, of the literary canon. By the time participants turn to choosing a derivative text in the second half of the course, the article argues, they have a clearer sense of the revisionist importance of such an endeavour.

New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 2: A panel review

The canonical texts of the New Testament are well known and studied, but the variety and number of extant early Christian noncanonical texts, also known as New Testament Apocrypha, have not been as widely recognized. Thanks to the stellar work of numerous translators and the editorial work of Tony Burke, many more of these texts are now available with introductions in English translation through two volumes (soon to be three) of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. In the series of articles in this special section of Studies in Religion, three early Christian scholars (Ronald Charles, Sean Hannan and Mona Tokarek LaFosse) review the second volume of the series, published by Eerdmans in 2020, which is followed by a detailed response by Tony Burke. The reviews and response were originally presented at a joint session at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and Canadian Society of Patristic Studies/Association canadienne des études patristiques in May 2022. The reviews and response encourage scholars of religion to consider how these ancient texts might contribute to larger contemporary conversations around coloniality, diversity, pedagogy and storytelling, demonstrating the value of collaborative scholarship.

The zodiac: Renaissance of the astrological symbol in Eastern European wooden synagogues from the 17th and 18th centuries

The article presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the complex relationship between intangible elements of culture that led to the presentation of the zodiac in Jewish folk art and architecture. The zodiac appears to be one of the most common astrological symbols that are found in both ancient and contemporary synagogal art. Although it primarily originates from Chaldean and Babylonian astrology, and despite strong culture-based differences, the zodiac was used in a form of floor mosaics in ancient Jewish art as well as in ceiling paintings from wooden synagogues of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The article summarises an analysis of the ancient origin, meaning, and renaissance of the artistic application of the idea of the zodiac in the art and architecture of Eastern European vernacular wooden synagogues from the 17th and 18th centuries. The comparative research is made on the basis of an identification of related canonical and non-canonical texts, their interpretation, studies on the partially preserved ancient buildings, and the available photographic documentation of wooden synagogues and their reconstruction. Secondarily, the article contributes to a recognition of the main cultural factors influencing the development of Jewish art and architecture in this part of Europe.

Vagrancy in the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Vagrancy in the Victorian Age: Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

“Who Knows What We’d Make of It, If We Ever Got Our Hands on It?” The Bible and Margaret Atwood ed. by Rhiannon Graybill and Peter J. Sabo

Reviewed by: “Who Knows What We’d Make of It, If We Ever Got Our Hands on It?” The Bible and Margaret Atwood ed. by Rhiannon Graybill and Peter J. Sabo Shuli Barzilai Rhiannon Graybill and Peter J. Sabo, eds., “Who Knows What We’d Make of It, If We Ever Got Our Hands on It?” The Bible and Margaret Atwood. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2020. xiii + 421 pp. The reiterated “It” in the main title of this book is identified in the subtitle: The Bible. Among its varied functions in Atwood’s writings, the Bible may represent a dangerous object, to be kept under lock and key from unauthorized readers. The referents of the reiterated “We” in the book title are such forbidden (mostly female) readers. Thus in Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, rather than regarding the Bible as a sacred text to be communally shared and interpreted, the totalitarian rulers of Gilead recognize its potential to undermine their hegemony. The narrator Offred’s ironic question — “Who knows what we’d make of it, if we ever got our hands on it?” — underscores her subjugation in Gilead as a “handmaid,” a two-legged womb, who is not allowed to read and write, even while designating the insubordinate thoughts that the regime has not succeeded in quelling or eradicating. In contrast to the Bible oppressively interpreted and utilized in Handmaid’s Tale, the Bible encompasses many texts for Atwood. As Rhiannon Graybill and Peter Sabo observe at the outset of their introductory essay, “The work of Margaret Atwood is full of Bibles” (1). Her biblically literate reach extends not only to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament but also to non-canonical texts. Atwood got her hands on it/them, so to speak, from the beginning of her decades- long career. As the contributors to The Bible and Margaret Atwood fully demonstrate, Atwood’s Bibles, including apocalyptic literature, provide a continual source of inspiration, appearing in multiple explicit references and allusions throughout her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Moreover, biblical texts are made to do different types of narrative work and perform wide-ranging functions. Atwood draws upon the Bible for themes, motifs, (in)tangible objects, storylines, subtexts, and more. The essays collected here substantiate the extraordinary frequency and variability of her uses of the Bible. However, despite the critical discussion surrounding Atwood’s works as well as the media attention focused on her public persona, this significant aspect of her literary production has been largely under-examined and neglected to date. The Bible and Margaret Atwood identifies and fills a gap in the existing scholarship. In addition to the editors’ excellent “Introduction” and “Afterword,” the collection contains fifteen essays equally divided among five parts. Each part bears the name of an Atwoodian work or phrase: “Surfacing,” “In Other Worlds,” “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” “Scales and Tails,” and “Negotiating with the Dead.” [End Page 173] The three essays presented in Part One, “Surfacing,” exemplify the informative and often innovative analyses presented in this collection. The section opens with Hannah Strømmen’s overview, “‘Always a Potent Object’?: The Shifting Role of the Bible in Margaret Atwood’s Novels,” which persuasively shows that from The Edible Woman (1969) to The Testaments (2019) Atwood’s fiction has reflected a variety of attitudes and approaches to the Bible in the modern world. Along with the secularizing trends that characterize contemporary culture, her novels also present the Bible as a powerful and potent factor on disparate individual, sociopolitical, and ideological levels. Strømmen’s definitive summation is corroborated by many of the essays that follow: “As Atwood’s characters find themselves constrained by different scripts — sexist, classist, nationalist, religious — their fictional lives demonstrate the possibilities of resisting and rewriting these scripts, sometimes through a rewriting of scripture itself” (49). In “Margaret Atwood’s Survival as Prophetic Canadian Nation-Building,” Sara Parks and Anna Cwikla assess Atwood’s impact as an expressly Canadian writer. Her early critical work revealed or even discovered a national literary pattern: an obsession with survival both in the literal sense, given Canada’s vast harsh wilderness, and in the sense of self...

Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead: The Body in Mexican and Brazilian Speculative Fiction by Elizabeth M. Ginway

Reviewed by: Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead: The Body in Mexican and Brazilian Speculative Fiction by Elizabeth M. Ginway Kathryn Houston Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead: The Body in Mexican and Brazilian Speculative Fiction. By Elizabeth M. Ginway, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2020, p. 247, $34.95. In Cyborgs, Sexuality, and the Undead, M. Elizabeth Ginway reads speculative fiction from Mexico and Brazil in relation to relevant sociohistorical, political, and economic contexts of these two highly industrialized Latin American countries. In a reading of a host of notable speculative texts, the analysis spans over a century, from the late 1800s up to the present day. Ginway breathes new life into the theme of the body in literature by attending to the treatment of speculative bodies (cyborgs, zombies, vampires, etc.) in non-realist modes such as science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The introduction sets out to distinguish between Anglo and Hispanic speculative fiction and outlines how the body signifies in Mexican and Brazilian letters. First, she describes how gender and sexuality will be analyzed throughout the monograph, positioning that nontraditional sexualities stand as a "state between or beyond the genders" (2). She then reads the fictional body as metaphor for the nation-state in political and industrial flux, with zombies and vampires "embody[ing] the paradox of a present haunted by an embodied past" (2). The book opens with a chapter on "Gendered Cyborgs", which introduces Bolívar Echeverría's "baroque ethos"—a concept that acts as a theoretical tenet throughout the monograph—to explain how speculative fictions resist capitalism while still being a product of it. Ginway identifies different corporeal and mechanical representations of the female body and female cyborg, exploring the Latin American posthuman and "new ways of imagining the body politic" (69). Chapter Two, "The Baroque Ethos, Antropofagia, and Queer Sexualities," then broaches a century's worth of speculative fiction, analyzing noncanonical texts from both Mexico and Brazil. She engages with Echeverría's theory of codigofagia—survival strategies from the colonial period that "reformulated social and cultural hierarchies" (71)—which builds upon a reworking of the concept of antropofagia—the repurposing of "culture and tools of the colonizer in order to produce original art and expression" (13). Through these two concepts, Ginway argues that baroque and non-linear representations of queer bodies in works of speculative fiction re-imagine forms of gender that "craft new tales of nation and community" (106), thus resisting traditional divisions of gender, race, and sexuality. Shifting from machine and queer bodies to the undead, Chapter Three analyzes zombies as the "embodiment of fear and trauma," in imagined apocalyptic scenarios of the 21st century which "presage economic, political, or social chaos" (107). She returns to the "baroque ethos" to explain the virality of capitalism and how it infects both dominant and subaltern classes, applying Roberto Esposito's theories of immunity and the body [End Page 364] politic. In Chapter Four, Ginway contextualizes the history of vampire narratives, the genres of the gothic and the monstrous, and the figure of the vampire in the literature of Mexico and Brazil. She describes the defensive or immunological response towards foreign invaders in vampire literature, accounts for the challenges towards a patriarchal order, and identifies a new vampire figure who re-configures communities to "reverse colonization and resistance" (154). A point of contention may arise from the way in which queer bodies are positioned on par with "cyborgs" and "zombified and vampire bodies" (167). The latter mythical bodies are powerful metaphors for temporal and social periods of change, yet locating the queer body next to those of monsters and machines might be misunderstood as a conflation of these real and metaphorical bodies. Perhaps analogously, the topic of sexuality as it relates to gender studies is well developed, but the inclusion of more queer theory would have complemented Ginway's thorough and insightful readings of the body in Mexican and Brazilian speculative fiction. Finally, despite the care with which theoretical terms are explained, the text does not provide a clear definition of speculative fiction. Although Ginway initially defines speculative fiction as a more general category than science fiction, which "includes fantasy and horror" (1), any further...

«Сутра о восьми светоносных неба и земли» как источник по пантеону Тибета

Introduction. A Tibetan version of the apocryphal Sūtra of Eight Luminous of Heaven and Earth to have been included in Gzungs-′dus and Mdo-mangs collections of minor non-canonical texts is a ritual text containing lists of various supernatural beings of Tibetan religious system. Some of these cannot be found in Chinese or Indian traditions and obviously have Tibetan pre-Buddhist roots. This version of the Sūtra serves to neutralize supernatural beings mentioned in the text via reciting their names. It is also represented by an Oirat translation made by Jaya Paṇḍita Nam-mkha′ rgya-mtsho (1599–1662). Goals. The article aims to analyze lists of supernatural beings which supposedly have Tibetan origin and differ in Tibetan and Oirat versions. Two texts — the Tibetan version from Gzungs-′dus collection and the Oirat translation by Jaya Paṇḍita Nam-mkha′ rgya-mtsho — are used as main sources. A gter-ma text of incense (Tib. bsang) offering dedicated to this Sūtra and Chapter 31 of Vaidurya-dkar po containing materials on earth lords (Tib. sa-bdag) serve as complementary sources for comparative analysis. Results. The two abovementioned versions have differences in lists of nāgas, deities and earth lords belonging to pre-Buddhist religious system. It is proposed that Jaya Paṇḍita had used some other Tibetan text of the Sūtra (now extant) which differed from the version included in Gzungs-′dus. Correspondences between some names in the Oirat translation and the gter-ma text by Nyang-ral Nyi-ma ′od-zer (Eastern Tibet) make it possible to conclude that the extant Tibetan version used by Jaya Paṇḍita could have also been composed in the same region. All names from the additional list of earth lords’ names found only in the Tibetan version of the Sūtra and missing in Oirat text can be identified through Chapter 31 of Vaidurya-dkar po, therefore the paper proposes this composition authored by sde-srid Sangs-rgyas rgya-mtsho could have also been used by compilers after the mid-to-late 17th century during long editing processes experienced by the Tibetan text of the Sūtra.

In Defense of Heavenly Mother: Her Critical Importance for Mormon Culture and Theology

In Defense of Heavenly Mother: Her Critical Importance for Mormon Culture and Theology

Approximate Entropy in Canonical and Non-Canonical Fiction.

Computational textual aesthetics aims at studying observable differences between aesthetic categories of text. We use Approximate Entropy to measure the (un)predictability in two aesthetic text categories, i.e., canonical fiction (‘classics’) and non-canonical fiction (with lower prestige). Approximate Entropy is determined for series derived from sentence-length values and the distribution of part-of-speech-tags in windows of texts. For comparison, we also include a sample of non-fictional texts. Moreover, we use Shannon Entropy to estimate degrees of (un)predictability due to frequency distributions in the entire text. Our results show that the Approximate Entropy values can better differentiate canonical from non-canonical texts compared with Shannon Entropy, which is not true for the classification of fictional vs. expository prose. Canonical and non-canonical texts thus differ in sequential structure, while inter-genre differences are a matter of the overall distribution of local frequencies. We conclude that canonical fictional texts exhibit a higher degree of (sequential) unpredictability compared with non-canonical texts, corresponding to the popular assumption that they are more ‘demanding’ and ‘richer’. In using Approximate Entropy, we propose a new method for text classification in the context of computational textual aesthetics.

The Road Less Travelled: From Landways to Seaways in the Study of Theravāda Buddhism

Although Charles Hallisey’s seminal 1995 essay is primarily concerned with the ways European colonial scholars approached Theravāda Buddhism in majority Theravāda contexts, its emphasis on two key topics—the importance of ritual and the dynamics of the “local production of meaning”—laid the foundation for a range of recent studies that explore the history and contemporary developments of Theravāda Buddhist communities in the Malay Archipelago region. This article charts how the neglected topics Hallisey urged scholars to attend to have opened new pathways for the study of Theravāda minority communities. Drawing on recent studies of Theravāda Buddhist communities in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, I discuss how Theravāda Buddhists established institutions, participated in rituals, and relied on vernacular and non-canonical texts to preserve their sense of diasporic identity and ensure the survival of Buddhism as a minority religion.

Colonizing the Past: Mythmaking and Pre-Columbian Whites in Nineteenth-Century American Writing by Edward Watts

Reviewed by: Colonizing the Past: Mythmaking and Pre-Columbian Whites in Nineteenth-Century American Writing by Edward Watts Christen Mucher (bio) Keywords Settler colonialism, Primordialism, Indigenous peoples, Print culture Colonizing the Past: Mythmaking and Pre-Columbian Whites in Nineteenth-Century American Writing. By Edward Watts. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020. Pp. 292. Cloth, $75.00; paper, $37.50). Edward Watts’s Colonizing the Past is one of the first monographs to apply a settler-colonial analytic to the well-worn materials of early American myth-making. Spanning U.S. literary production from 1780 to 1915, the book is a dazzling survey of the literary construct of “primordialism”— that is, “white fantasies” of the pre-Columbian past that seek to provide U.S. citizens with a whitened ancient history by displacing Indigenous pasts (4, 76). Watts divides his work into five case studies of primordialism, each of which “diminish Indians”: the myths of Welsh Indians, Lost Tribes, Mound Builders, ancient Irish colonists, and the Vikings and Normans of the Norse Revival (7). His texts range from novels and newspaper articles to poetic epics, tracing the iconic primordial figures over the long century. In the tradition of classic American studies per Henry Nash Smith and Leo Marx, Watts places print culture within its specific historical context while also, in the style of Richard Slotkin, Annette Kolodny, John Carlos Rowe, and Amy Kaplan, attending to literary history as a vector of imperial violence.1 Colonizing the Past does not [End Page 491] merely assert that the narratives of “primordial whites” were connected to nation-building: It shows how they were central to it. Watts’s attempt to understand the tangle of racialization, white identity, and settler colonialism in nineteenth-century print culture is a clear, compelling, and original reading of familiar as well as non-canonical texts that “reveals the moral and racial precariousness of the settler nation” (46). While notable recent scholarship has focused on Watts’s broad subject, none has situated the production of ancient pasts in the paradigm of white supremacy and settler triumphalism as clearly and insistently as Watts has here.2 In the connections he draws between marginal texts and canonical writers, Watts also makes clear that the power of primordialism was not confined to the pens of “western” writers or removal apologists. Moreover, Watts’s deep knowledge of the print culture of the early republic and antebellum eras translates into a fascinating and useful guide to U.S. literary history. Watts’s first chapter provides a superb survey of writings on Welsh Indians, by which Watts also displays his unparalleled knowledge of the literary history of early America. Chapter 2 includes a particularly skilled reading of Lydia Sigourney’s 1822 poem Traits of the Aborigines in America and the culture of sentiment, intriguingly casting the New England writer’s anti-removal campaign as motivated not by the abhorrence of violence but rather by millennialism (75, 72). The third chapter is likewise noteworthy for its refreshing reevaluation of the “Mound Builder myth,” [End Page 492] which Watts frames in terms of the rise of industrialism and struggle over western and southern markets. Additionally, his analyses of colonialism and transatlantic folk and nationalist movements provide a thought-provoking reorientation for the immigration debates and anti-Catholic nativism of the mid-nineteenth century. Colonizing the Past is admirable in its forceful assessment of settler triumphalism—Watts boldly indicts, for example, the “genocidal print culture of Jacksonian America”—and for avoiding euphemism or under-statement (94). One of its most compelling, if subtle, arguments is that much of early nineteenth-century literary culture was engaged in developing “fiction[s] of absolution” to excuse white settlers from the theft and murder that enabled U.S. national settlement on Indigenous lands (46, 91, 128). Indeed, the book’s major contribution to the field is its clear-eyed attention to the operations of whiteness, and to the entanglement of racialization and settler colonialism. Moreover, it provides an accessible introduction to settler-colonial theory and delivers a compelling argument for the theory’s applicability to early American literature. The Atlantic orientation of the book, however, is a limitation that frequently led Watts to postcolonial...

German Women’s Life Writing and the Holocaust: Complicity and Gender in the Second World War by Elisabeth Krimmer

Reviewed by: German Women’s Life Writing and the Holocaust: Complicity and Gender in the Second World War by Elisabeth Krimmer Julia K. Gruber Elisabeth Krimmer. German Women’s Life Writing and the Holocaust: Complicity and Gender in the Second World War. Cambridge UP, 2018. 292 pp. Cloth, $74.97. In this insightful literary and historical study about female complicity, Elisabeth Krimmer, a veteran when it comes to writing about World War II and about women, analyzes largely unknown women authors’ memoirs, diaries, docunovels, and autofiction. According to Krimmer, repetitions, formulaic expressions, rigid structures, omissions, denial, inconsistencies, non sequiturs, and contradictions, which she locates in an impressive number of mostly noncanonical texts written by army auxiliaries, nurses, refugees who participated in the German flight west from the Russian army, rape victims, and Holocaust survivors make up “the grammar of complicity” (3). Apart from introducing this novel linguistic concept, Krimmer also provides carefully crafted close readings and shows not only what motivated the authors to become active supporters of the National Socialist regime but also what eventually estranged some of them from it, and how Jewish concentration camp survivors’ life writing, such [End Page 117] as Ruth Klüger’s autobiography Weiter leben: Eine Jugend (1992; Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, 2001), offer “a powerful counterargument to the myth of German innocence” (225). Krimmer convincingly argues that World War II has traditionally been perceived as a male enterprise and that women’s different degrees of participation, as well as their suffering as rape victims and refugees, have been largely overlooked. On the one hand, Krimmer shows that— due to their gender— the behavior of a few, especially cruel female perpetrators, was considered more unnatural and therefore deserving of harsher verdicts than that of their male counterparts. On the other hand, due to the Nazis’ tendency to exclude women from leadership roles, women were more likely to take on the role of the bystander. Krimmer introduces an innovative perspective by pointing out a correlation between the relative lack of studies on bystanders and a corresponding lack of studies that focus on women’s participation and suffering in war and genocide. In the introduction she explores the relationship between gender and warfare, the concept of complicity, the roles of women in the National Socialist regime, and the genre of memoir. She touches on the topic of trauma and points out that instead of focusing on the much discussed “unspeakable experiences” of traumatized victims, we should realize that victims have not had difficulty giving words to their trauma, but rather it has been difficult for their audience to listen (16). The book consists of an introduction and a conclusion with five chapters in between. Every chapter also offers a conclusion, which is very helpful as Krimmer summarizes her main points before she transitions to the next chapter. One of the many noteworthy takeaways from the book is Krimmer’s discussion of representations of the “angels in white,” German army nurses and inmate nurses in concentration camps, in literary fiction. Krimmer’s analysis reveals that while army nurses had to learn to turn a blind eye to their war experiences, nurses who served in concentration camps had to “refocus their gaze and redefine the meaning of care” (19). In the conclusion, Krimmer mentions that while discussing with others her ideas about women’s complicity, she often encountered a reluctance to hold female bystanders accountable. Her study contributes to feminist theory by arguing that, by not recognizing how women actively supported the Nazi regime and by insisting instead on women’s status as victims during the war, the very feminism scholars seek to advocate is undermined (240). By adding her important study to the canon of literary [End Page 118] criticism of life writing by women on World War II and the Holocaust, Krimmer has done a superb job at linking collective memory and social solidarity. Elisabeth Krimmer shares that although her own parents had been too young to participate in World War II, she witnessed a form of “post-guilt” whenever she heard her father vocalize his justification and defense of Germany’s role in the war, while she observed that her mother remained...

Editors' Preface

Editors' Preface Patricia Anne Simpson and Birgit Tautz With the publication of volume 27, we would like to take the opportunity to address some innovations. In this volume, we introduce an array of new formats through which we pursue research on Goethe, his age, and the long eighteenth century and seek to encourage new modes of collaboration, including, perhaps, communication across several volumes. A range of articles that contribute to the rich and growing archive of scholarship on German eighteenth-century studies opens this issue. Helmut J. Schneider's article, based on a keynote address at the 2017 Atkins Goethe Conference, "Re-Orientations around Goethe," highlights the eighteenth-century genesis of the bourgeois subject's unitary experience of the natural world. With select readings of Goethean texts, Schneider explores the disjuncture that opens between the gaze and the corporeal. Moreover, Schneider's reading captures the destructive consequences of the emancipatory escape into nature for anthropocentric moments of modernity. The remaining articles, while devoted to discreet subjects, authors, and texts, invite fascinating cross-readings. Oliver Simons turns our attention to the representation of Werther's narrative pulse. Herder and Lessing also figure in the framework for this interpretation of metanarrative reflections on suicide and acts of ending; the essay extends the narratological focus of a special section in last year's volume (What is an Event?). The two following articles—a fascinating, opportune pairing—redirect our attention to Karl Philipp Moritz, through texts that engage with but go beyond the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde. Richard Apgar explores the fraught process of subject formation through an examination of Moritz's writing on the individual, "Erinnerungen aus den frühesten Jahren der Kindheit" (memories from the earliest years of childhood). This interrogation of impressions and mediated memories leads to fresh insights into the construction of the modern individual. Mattias Pirholt continues the focus on Moritz in his analysis of ethical and aesthetic principles encompassed by the concept of disinterested love in "Versuch einer Vereinigung aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften unter dem Begriff des in sich selbst Vollendeten." The remaining contributions in this first section take up a challenge that our subfield has latently faced, namely to engage overtly or covertly with issues of relevancy; together the articles show how modern Goethe and his contemporaries are in our dialogues on belonging and identities, cultural legacies, and interdisciplinary inquiry. Renata Schellenberg turns our attention to the uncanny correspondence between [End Page xi] Goethe's portrayal of refugee reception in Hermann und Dorothea, foregrounding parallels to contemporary discussions and politics of statelessness, citizenship, and national belonging. Issues of intersectional identities also appear in Renata Fuchs's contribution on Rahel Levin Varnhagen's epistolary and dialogical engagement with Goethe. Despite her centrality as salon host and vibrant intellectual, Levin Varnhagen's reception was challenged by her outsider status as a woman and as a Jew. Stefan Höppner's article on Goethe's personal library invites a reconsideration of the shift from legal inheritance to cultural heritage. Michael Saman interprets three Goethean texts as keen observations of human ritual that offer prefatory ethnographic studies that impact structuralist anthropology. Karin Wurst approaches the intellectual hub of Weimar through the lens of contemporary creativity theory. These interventions demonstrate the continued, if underestimated, relevance of eighteenth-century studies for the study of humanities in the present, as well as sustained and innovative engagement with the literature of the Goethezeit. This volume launches our first Forum, a section comprised of invited contributions on an important topic of debate in the profession. For the debut, we asked colleagues engaged in Digital Humanities research to consider the canon in comparison to "the great unread" (Margaret Cohen): a vast expanse of noncanonical texts. The contributions evince approaches that go beyond the established binary of scholarly methods vs. data sciences; they also explore Digital Humanities as a way of navigating the gendered fault lines of canon formation to expand on the process, more generally, of canonization vs. marginalization in literary studies. We hope that readers of the Goethe Yearbook will be inspired to take up some of the questions, perspectives, and challenges introduced here, and that they will suggest further forum topics for...

Feasures of Fandorin’s Quasi-biography: Postmodern Experiment

More than two decades ago, the newest Russian writer B. Akunin began a series of multi-genre novels, the main character of which was Erast Petrovich Fandorin, who quickly made a detective career, has become famous not only in Russia, but far beyond its borders. Firstly appeared in the fiction novel «Azazel», Fandorin later quickly began to acquire the features of a real historical personality that affects the course of historical events. Fandorin’s quasi-biography was supplemented by works whose heroes were his ancestors and descendants. One of these novels is «F. M.», the annexes and additions to which testify to the author’s postmodern experiment, which, leaving only the margin of the explanation necessary for understanding the plot, introduced marginal noncanonical texts and genres (short story, essay, fragment), thereby deciding to expand and clarify its meaning. Literary additions, such as the mini-glossary of drug jargon, or the Zen koan, are included to the literary text. Fragments, essays, short stories, different additions and clarifications, visions and dreams, at first glance, destroy the integrity of the novel of the writer, but in fact expand its narrative capabilities, extend the temporal and spatial characteristics, significantly enrich the main storylines, illuminate the motivation of the heroes , show them in an unusual perspective.

Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds. A Cognitive Historical Analysis

Minding Animals in the Old and New Worlds. A Cognitive Historical Analysis

GEORGIAN-ARABIC PALIMPSEST FROM DAGESTAN
 (BRIEF REPORT)

Abstract. Georgian-Dagestan relations in the early Middle Ages were distinguished by their diversity. At the same time, they included both close political ties and cultural contacts, which became even closer up until the XIV century. This aspect was mainly reflected in the influence of medieval Georgia on the spread of Christianity, Georgian literature and language in Highland Dagestan (Avaria). One aspect of this cultural influence can be considered the spread of book culture and, in particular, Georgian manuscripts. Until recently, the message from Georgian sources was not confirmed in the form of identifying specific Georgian manuscripts, except for the detection of individual sheets. During the study in the Foundation of Oriental Manuscripts of the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography, we discovered a manuscript - the Georgian-Arab Palimpsest. This article provides a brief report - an analysis of this manuscript. The study of the Arabic text showed that we are dealing with a Sufi composition at the turn of the X-XI centuries, written in eastern Iran and rewritten no later than the XVII century in the mountainous Dagestan. Unfortunately, the colophon and the title page of the manuscript have not been preserved and we do not have specific information about the place and date of correspondence of the Arabic text. When writing the Georgian text, Asomtavruli font was used, which already speaks of the antiquity of the manuscript. Analysis of the content suggests that the Georgian text consists of non-canonical texts of the Gospels of Mark and Luke. The grammatical features of the text, namely the use of the so-called Khanmet verbs suggests that the text reflects the language situation before the disappearance of the Khanmet forms. That is, the text could be written exclusively from the second half of the VII century until the VIII century, i.e. before erasing the Khanmet forms of verbs.

World Literature without Goethe: On Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Labour Camp Memoirs The Mute’s Soliloquy

This essay offers a critical reevaluation of the concept “world literature” based on a reading of a series of deliberations in Pramoedya penal colony memoirs The Mute’s Soliloquy (Indonesian 1995 and 1997/English version 1999), in particular concerning German literature and history. In order to work with literature in a global context, one needs to do justice to the material conditions under which literature originates and is being read; it also needs to be acknowledged that “literature” is a modern Western invention that has no precise equivalent in many other cultures. The essay argues against a Herderian-Goethean view of “world literature” as an accumulation of the qualitative accomplishments and values of a specific cultural community. It also problematizes the category of “understanding other cultures” in the reception of a text. Instead, it argues that “literature” can travel in many different directions and take on a variety of functions. Pramoedya’s deliberations emphasize the importance of literature as memory work, with the understanding that the memories and real-life experiences contained in literature can differ widely, depending on the circumstances of a text’s reception. Only if we recognize the specific temporal and spatial circumstances under which texts emerge and are read, in particular also non-canonical texts, can we start to think about the object perceived as “literature” as not only fostering a sense of difference, but also as having the potential to reflect on what humanity has in common.

The World's Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria by Michael Peppard

Reviewed by: The World's Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria by Michael Peppard Joan Branham Michael Peppard The World's Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016 Pp. xi + 320. $50.00. Dura-Europos—arguably the most important archaeological discovery in the twentieth century for the history of art in early Judaism and Christianity—forever changed scholarly views on how these two communities formulated their identities in the third century. The spectacular preservation of the site on the outskirts of the Roman empire presented scholars with exciting "firsts." The synagogue displays the first known Biblical narrative cycle within a sophisticated visual [End Page 340] system, forcing scholars to rewrite the history of Jewish art, its influences, and its relationship to aniconic traditions. The baptistery, the oldest securely datable church, offers a tantalizing glimpse into the ritual space of pre-Constantinian Christianity and some of the first New Testament artistic representations. Now, nearly a century after its unearthing, Michael Peppard boldly compels us to reexamine long-established interpretations of texts and images and view the baptistery with fresh eyes. Peppard draws methodologically on a number of scholars, including Jas; Elsner, Robert Nelson, Robin Jensen, and Dominic Serra, stating his goal is "to provide new possibilities for visual exegesis by opening up the treasury of textual resources from early Christianity and attending to ritual contexts" (34). The book—well written, like a thriller in pursuit of decoding visual symbols—sets out to 1) examine non-canonical texts, recently attributed patristic texts, and neglected artistic comparanda in relation to the site, 2) shift the focus of Syrian baptism from water to oil—both real and represented—as a ritual substance of anointing, sealing, stamping, marking, and messianic light, and 3) privilege ritual action as the primary context for interpreting the baptistery's artistic program, thereby reconstructing the experiential perspective of the participant in the space. For example, we follow in the footsteps of the neophyte Isseos—attested to in an inscription—as he makes his way through actual thresholds, processions, and spaces accompanied by represented thresholds, processions, and spaces. Peppard's insistence on the embeddedness of the baptistery's paintings in their ritual setting leads him to employ the dual categories of optic and haptic, proposed by Annabel Wharton, as ways of experiencing images. Peppard argues that the upper register of images—healing of the paralytic, walking on water—function optically, as a single visual sign of a text or historical moment. But the lower portion functions haptically, the meaning derived in the inherent physicality of the images. Indeed, the lower figures in procession are noticeably near life size, placed directly at the viewer's level, and move toward the baptismal font in the same direction as the participant. The figures mirror, echo, and reinforce the actions of the initiates. Peppard points out that a woman named Hera even carved her name in the wall beside the head of one of the processing women, perhaps identifying haptically with the figure. While helpful, the optic/haptic approach raises questions, such as the role of gender in the relationship of painted figures to participants. Peppard argues that the soldiers and military population of this town would have resonated with the armed David and Goliath scene as they entered the baptistery. How then does the same military population or our neophyte Isseos relate to the painted procession of women? Likewise, how does Hera relate to the military scene of David? Peppard addresses gender questions by turning to the important work of Elizabeth Clark and others for analyses of early Christian texts that describe initiates, both male and female, in non sex-specific terms, both as married to Christ (139). Such literary figurations are key to what Peppard calls the "heart of the book"—unlocking the meaning of the enigmatic procession of veiled women. Usually interpreted as women at Jesus's empty tomb, Peppard identifies the wall painting as an altogether different subject: the Parable of the Wise and Foolish [End Page 341] Virgins/Brides of Christ. Although there are no other contemporary images of this parable, Peppard writes that it was "a...