Piece Of Poetry Research Articles

Sound affects of poetry

This paper assumes that the literary work of art is a "stratified system of norms", and that the description of each stratum may require a different kind of logic. One of the main problems is the meaningful integration of these descriptions. A speech sound may be described on an acoustic, a phonetic and a phonemic level; normally, its acoustic description is irrelevant to its linguistic or poetic significance. However, in certain circumstances, the acoustic description may account for the emotional quality of the speech sound, may yield insight into the rhythmic structure of a poem (or just of a performance thereof), etc. Furthermore, pieces of poetry may be used to illustrate psychological theories about the aesthetic event; or psychological theories may be used to yield insight into the aesthetic nature of pieces of poetry. The paper focuses on the methodological issues involved in foregrounding the possible aesthetic significance of the transitions from one level of description to another. In doing this, it attempts to carefully navigate between two theoretical extremes: a reductionist view of literary theory according to which all the "special sciences " can be reduced to "more basic sciences" and, eventually, to physics; and the one formulated by Wellek and Warren (1956:135) as follows: "The psychology of the reader, however interesting in itself and useful for pedagogical purposes, will always remain outside the object of literary study [...] it must be unrelated either to the structure or the quality of a poem ". The middle course here proposed relies on "the principle of marginal control", that is, "the control exercised by the organizational principle of a higher level on the particulars forming its lower level" (Polânyi, 1967: 40). Paraphrasing Polânyi, the principles of literature may be said to govern the boundary conditions of a cognitive system—a set of conditions that is explicitly left undetermined by the laws of lower processes — physical, cognitive, and linguistic. If one knows more about these "lower" processes, one may get a better understanding of the principles of literature that govern those boundary conditions. It is claimed that in this way Cognitive Poetics is capable of discerning and explaining significant literary phenomena which present insurmountable difficulties to other approaches.

Collected Poems and Prose

Representing Pinter's own selection of his non-dramatic writings, this volume includes pieces of poetry and prose up to 1990 and ranges back to the earliest piece, The Kullus, which was written when he was 19 years old.

The Redemption of Yhwh: a Literary Critical Function of the Songs of Hannah and David

AbstractThe Songs of Hannah and David have been noted to function as hermeneutical frames for the book of Samuel, serving the purpose of guiding the reader's interpretation of the history of Israel presented in the rest of the book. This article, while agreeing with the framing principle, argues that these pieces of poetry serve the function of presenting a theologically orthodox picture of Yhwh, which attempts to offset the depiction of Yhwh found in the narrative sections of the book. The argument is developed by performing a character analysis of Yhwh, as suggested by the contours of the narrative. Specifically the article looks at two aspects of the narrative: the choices of leaders made by Yhwh and the speeches and actions of Yhwh. In addition, there is a focus on what the writer of the book of Samuel is telling the exiles in Babylon about their deity by presenting them with such stories in the structured arrangement of the final form of the book.

Reflections on reading Hamish Henderson's ‘Alias Macalias’

A week or so after the general election of April 1992 several hundred people encircled the Royal High School building in Edinburgh and sang Hamish Henderson's 'Freedom Come All Ye'. This was just one of a number of major events at which this song was sung in the immediate post-election period and for many the election changed it overnight from a respected piece of poetry into a symbol of the constitutional will of the community; it has remained so since. The key is that the words, and in particular the words 'So come all ye at hame wi freedom / Never heed whit the hoodies croak for doom' that flowed over and around that empty parliament building were not written for politicians but for people. At a time when most politicians and journalists were croaking for doom these words were apt and they have been apt ever since, not least when they symbolised the desire for democracy expressed by the crowd of 25,000 people who marched through Edinburgh on December 12, 1992, to be met in the Meadows by more indeterminate croaking from the platform as usual. But in this case the somewhat pathetic 'political' spectacle was given context by the presence and singing of Hamish Henderson himself. For this is what Hamish Henderson does: his words and actions give context, enable things to be seen in perspective. Or to put it another way, he has spent his life doing things which have helped others to discern more easily the cultural and political fault lines and strengths of their situation. Hence his pioneering translations of Gramsci, who understood the importance of seeing that what might seem to be common sense might equally be part of a giant con-trick serving the interests of a particular class. Hence also his writings on songs, folk, and literature collected in Al ias MacAlias . This book was warmly received on publication and it is one of a number of books published in the last few years (including Craig Bcvcridge

Sopher Mahir: Northwest Semitic Studies Presented to Stanislav Segert (review)

Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 84 Reviews perhaps at Kadesh, and that later redactors reflect this tradition by making her the sister of Moses and Aaron. This is an important topic and one which needed to be explored. Further, some of Bums' conclusions seem reasonable: that although neither priestess nor prophetess as such, Miriam was remembered in biblical tradition as a leader of the community during the wilderness period; and that she seems to have performed both cullic and prophetic functions in a day, perhaps, before these were institutionalized and separated into two different roles (p. 123). The same conclusions, however, could probably have been reached and amply argued in a briefer format. Eleanor B. Amico University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, WI 54901 SOPHER MAHIR: NORTHWEST SEMITIC STUDIES PRESENTED TO STANISLAV SEGERT. Edward M. Cook, ed. Maarav. Vols. 5 and 6. Pp. 384. Santa Monica, CA: Western Academic, 1990. Paper, $27.50. This double issue of Maarav honors Stanislav Segert, perhaps best known as the author of grammar books on Old Aramaic, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. As the title Sopher Mahir implies, however, and as the forty pages of bibliographic entries amply attest, Segert is much more than a mere textbook writer: he is a veritable sopher mahir, a copious scribe, with over 500 titles to date to his credit. This volume contains twenty-one studies written by his colleagues and students and reflects areas of particular interest to Segert. There are six articles on biblical topics, five on Aramaic, three each on Phoenician and Ugaritic, two on comparative Semitics, and two on computer projects. The latter articles are especially appropriate in a volume dedicated to one who was one of the pioneers in the use of computers for ancient Near Eastern research. What follows is a brief synopsis of each of the contributions arranged according to their main area of interest though, naturally, some overlapping is to be expected. Bible James R. Davila ("Qoheleth and Northern Hebrew," pp. 69-87) believes that the Phoenician and Aramaic flavor of the language of Qoheleth may Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 85 Reviews best be explained by C. H. Gordon's suggestion that the book was influenced by Northern Hebrew. Paul W. Gaebelein, Jr. ("Psalm 34 and Other Biblical Acrostics: Evidence from the Aleppo Codex," pp. 127-143) shows that the first eight verses of the acrostic Ps 34 are written in the Aleppo Codex differently than the remaining verses. This different textual arrangement suggests two different contextual sections and possibly a difference in the time of composition. Jonas C. Greenfield ("The 'Cluster' in Biblical Poetry," pp.159-168) discusses a rhetorical feature of biblical poetry in which the biblical author utilizes Ugaritic epithets and word pairs in a different fashion. For example , in Hos 13:12 the parallelism of s6n1rl/seprln6 is held to be a reflex of the Ugaritic phrase srrt spn "summit of Zaphon" even though the meaning of the two verbal forms in Hebrew is far removed from the Ugaritic phrase. Dennis Pardee ("Structure and Meaning in Hebrew Poetry: The Example of Psalm 23," pp. 239-280) analyzes Ps 23 from many different "parallelistic" points of view (repetitive, semantic, sequential, grammatical, and phonetic) to determine whether the psalm really constitutes a piece of poetry. Robert J. Ratner ("Jonah, The Runaway Servant," pp. 281-305) suggests that the author of the book of Jonah may have been guided by his knowledge of legal customs pertaining to runaway slaves. After reviewing the pertinent ancient Near Eastern legal materials pertaining to runaway slaves, Ratner elucidates the scene of Jonah and the sailors in the light of Jonah as a runaway. Helmer Ringgren ("Some Observations on the Text of the Psalms," pp. 307-309) presents new translations on five passages which will be incorporated into his new Swedish translation of the book of Psalms. The passages are Pss 1:5; 8:2-3; 10:10; 30:6; and 31:12. Aramaic Randall Buth ("'Edayin{1'ote-Anatomy of a Semitism in Jewish Greek," pp. 33-48) discusses the usage of the two Aramaic adverbs '~dayin and bedayin. Because Greek TeSTe functions exactly as the Aramaic adverbs do, a text like Matthew, which contains the word TeSTe...

"A Piercing Virtue": Emily Dickinson in Margaret Drabble's The Waterfall

"A Piercing Virtue":Emily Dickinson in Margaret Drabble's The Waterfall Harriet F. Bergmann (bio) The sense of working within a tradition is part of what the woman writer must have to establish that sense of individuality and autonomy that is necessary to create art. If, as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar tell us, "the creative 'I AM' cannot be uttered if the 'I' knows not what it is" (17), then part of the way the "I" defines itself is through its identification with other, similar "I"s. Understanding women's influence on women, Elaine Showalter tells us, "shows how the female tradition can be a positive source of strength and solidarity as well as a negative source of powerlessness; it can generate its own experiences and symbols which are not simply the obverse of the male tradition" (11). The experiences and the symbols of women's literature have been shared by women authors across centuries. Emily Dickinson only listened in on this conversation among the women authors of her century; although she read George Eliot, the Brontës, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, they knew nothing of her. In the twentieth century, however, her importance is [End Page 181] thoroughly acknowledged. The narrative strategies embodied in the tiny plots of her poems, her thematic concerns of love, death, renunciation and redemption, and her control of language are examined, shared, and rewritten by Margaret Drabble in The Waterfall, a novel in which Dickinson seems almost as much incarnation as she is influence. Margaret Drabble's novels often seem to spin around themes clearly announced by their tides: The Needle's Eye is about the divestiture of riches; Realms of Gold is about the discovery of hidden treasure, personal and public. Allusive and literate, each Drabble text has as its donnée a previous text, a book of the Bible or a piece of poetry that it rewrites. The Waterfall takes its theme from a poem by Emily Dickinson that appears as its epigraph: Drowning is not so pitifulAs the attempt to rise.Three times, 'tis said, a sinking manComes up to face the skies,And then declines foreverTo that abhorred abode,Where hope and he part company—For he is grasped of God.The Maker's cordial visage,However good to see,Is shunned, we must admit it,Like an adversity. The poem speaks of the supposed three times that a drowning man attempts to save himself before going under and comments ironically that although we are supposed to want to go to God by dying, in fact we make every effort not to do so. The twentieth-century novel that follows this nineteenth-century epigraph is structured by water imagery and includes several important images of waterfalls, literal and figurative, but the Dickinson poem provides more than simply a clue to theme and image in the novel. It provides us with a way to understand the novel's heroine-narrator, who bears a striking similarity to the persona of Emily Dickinson's poetry. More important, it tells us much about the novel's mode of narration and about its language. Jane Gray, the heroine of The Waterfall, is self-consciously the author of her own text, and it is as an author that she refers to those she recognizes as predecessors. Like Charlotte Brontë, she tells us, she has created a lover made of prose, living in "a Brussels of the mind" (99); like George Eliot, she has created a heroine (who is also her self) who "had a cousin called Lucy, as I have, and like me she fell in love with her cousin's man" (84). She compares her status-conscious family to families in Jane Austen's novels, although Jane Gray deplores some of Austen's solutions—"What can it have been like," she demands, "in bed with Mr. Knightly?" (66) At the end of her novel, she contemplates having [End Page 182] her lover suffer permanent injury so that she can keep him "as Jane Eyre had her blinded Rochester" (80). The novelists she mentions have indeed created plots not unlike hers, but Jane, we find out, is a poet, and there is...

Cecropids in Eubulus (fr. 10) and Satyrus (A.P. 10.6)

Cecropids, grammatically masculine in one case and feminine in the other, occur in each of these pieces of poetry. I believe that the second passage can shed some light on the meaning of the term as it is used in the fragment from the Antiope of Eubulus. The question of the significance of the Cecropids in Eubulus has previously been discussed by E. K. Borthwick. A. B. Cook, noting the similarity of κερκώπη (a term designating a type of cicada) to the name of Cecrops and seeing their associations with dew as a link between the insects and the names (Herse, Pandrosus) of Cecrops' daughters, had posited a connection between the autochthonous Athenian family of Cecrops and the earth-born cicadas, those symbols of Athenian autochthony. Borthwick applied Cook's theory to the passage from Eubulus and concluded that when the poet mentions the Cecropids that feed on the breezes he is alluding to the musical cicadas, who were believed to subsist on dew and/or air. It was this latter feature of their diet, Borthwick proposed, that inspired the last line of the fragment.

Teaching Labeling Theory: Four Experiences in Illness Attribution

Several classroom techniques have been used in medical sociology courses to demonstrate the attribution of mental illness as a labelling of deviance, offering insights into labelling theory process. (1) Poetry ofa Schizophrenic: On the first day of class students were asked to demonstrate their expertise in detecting mental pathology before taking a course on that topic. Students were given a sheet of paper with three pieces of poetry and told to detect the one written by a schizophrenic. Although all three were written by the same poet (one of three major poets), most students discover the verse reflecting mental pathology. (2) Case Study: Students received a case study describing a wife suspicious of her husband's possible extramarital affair with another woman. Whether or not the husband is actually having an affair cannot be determined from the case study presentation. Half the students received case studies that included the statement except for a brief stay in a mental hospital 10 years ago, Louise had always been in good health. The others do not contain this statement. The influence of a deviant status (former mental patient) is demonstrated in the students' differing assessments of Louise's behavior and belief.

Notes on the Relationship of Music and Dance in India

making, and the art of music before he learnt the art of the dance; he added that rhythm (tila) was basic to them all. This story is significant from the point of view of the Indian arts, since it points towards the inter-relationship of the arts not on the level of the aesthetic experience alone, but also that of technique. The aim of the Indian artists, in the field of literature (Sahitya), sculpture (Silpa), painting (Chitrakala), music (Sahgita) and dance (Nritya), has been the evocation of a state of mind (often termed sentiment'-Rasa). The smallest units of space, colour, sound, movement have been recognized in India for their emotive content and their related Rasa, Sthiyi Bh~va (permanent states) and Sanchiri Bhiva (transitory states). The aesthetic theory of the ancients was only a codification of a principle already in practice and the artist very consciously and deliberately employed this complex technique in his art. In Indian dance and Indian music, the continuity of this practice has been preserved, as it has not been in the other arts in India. If we analyze the constituents of the Indian, particularly of South Indian, dance, we discover that the Indian dance combines, in one art form, the techniques of several other art forms. It takes a piece of poetry, which has its particular Rasa, Sthayi Bhiva, etc. and this piece of poetry, narrative or lyric, is set to music in a particular Raga (melody) and a particular Tdla (metrical cycle): the tala and the more particularly the raga also has its particular rasa, sthiyi bh~va, etc.: Each note of the melody and each word of the poem have to synchronize with each other and with the single aim of evoking a particular emotive state (the rasa). The dancer pursues the same aim in her interpretation of this poetry and this riga through movement. The poses she strikes are sculpturesque, not only because she holds a stance in a given point of time, but also because through a succession of these she realizes the moods and attributes of gods and goddesses, as laid down in iconography. Her treatment of space is similar to the sculptor's and each single unit of movement of the human form is significant in so far as it is related to the ultimate objective of evoking the particular emotive state (Rasa). There are thus points of contact between the Indian arts where two arts become one and indistinguishable. The sculptor captures a movement in static form and the dancer gives movement to the static form; indeed it is often said that the Indian dance is a continuous stringing together of many static poses. Music organizes sound to create a particular aesthetic state; dance does the same through the human form. To this end, the dancer makes use of the achievements of sculpture, literature and music. The relationship of Indian music with Indian dance has to be viewed and analyzed in this context. We know that the superstructure of musical composition is built by Svares (notes in an octave) which are charged with

The So-Called Hymn of the Pearl

The most famous piece of poetry in syriac literature is the of the pearl. The hymn can be found in the syriac version of the apocryphal acts of Thomas edited by W. Wright in the original syriac version 1. A greek translation of the hymn is available in the greek version of these acts edited by Lipsius and Bonnet 2. Finally a summary of the hymn in greek is found in Nicetas of Thessalonica 3. The hymn was very often edited separately. In these cases many conjectures were made in the syriac text 4. As the hymn is easily available it is not necessary to reproduce the text of this hymn again.

Naicasakha

The hymn RV. iii, 53, is of an obscure and difficult nature. Oldenberg sees in it only an incongruous jumble of disconnected stanzas and refuses to adopt the theories of either Hillebrandt or Geldner concerning it. The former scholar looked upon it as a collection of yājyānuvākyāḥ belonging to the horse-sacrifice; but it really seems difficult to subscribe to such an explanation. The late Professor Geldner again always maintained that the hymn represented a uniform composition which had been taken out from the complete family saga of the Viśvāmitras. In one passage he calls it an āyuṣmatāṃ kathā; and, as then at any rate he was a staunch supporter of the ākhyāna-theory of Oldenberg, he probably found littledifficulty in looking upon it as being the metrical part of a composition, the prose frame of which was wanting and could only be supplied from Sāyaṇa and other commentator literature. The present writer long ago tried to explain why he cannot accept the ākhyāna-theory. But in spite of that it seems to him that Geldner was probably, in the main, right in looking upon the hymn as one connected piece of poetry, though details partly remain very obscure.

Ajamila-Moksa-Prabandha Of Narayana Bhatta

The Campū-prabandha Ajāmila-mōksa is a little literary work belonging to Travancore. In publishing it I am relying on a Malayalam manuscript written on cadjan leaves, which I obtained from Mr. Tāzhaman Sankarar Tantri of Chenganur in the Travancore State. A piece of poetry interspersed with prose is called a Campū-prabandha, or Prabandha, in the Kērala country.

Science in Elementary Schools 1

NOTHING could be more unsatisfactory than the present position of the knowledge and teaching of science in our elementary schools. Notwithstanding all the advantages that have been offered to pupil-teachers for the study of science, as a body they appear to be in a most deplorable state in this respect. Though success in the examinations of the Science and Art Department are now taken into account in placing the students of the training colleges for their teaching certificates, and average school boys when they have been fairly taught are quite competent for these examinations, yet very few of the teachers have availed themselves of this privilege, and it does not appear that the training colleges have helped them in this respect. Very little, indeed, can be expected while the ordinary pupil-teacher is described, as he is in Mr. Cakeley's report on the working of the Training Colleges, as deficient in many elementary branches, notably mathematics. It is satisfactory, however, to notice that the quality of the candidates for admission to the Training Colleges is improving, and that these institutions are growing in teaching capacity and in popularity. The reports of the examiners for admission are not, with regard to the subject in hand, pleasant reading. One cannot expect good answering in science from candidates who are quite unable to paraphrase an ordinary piece of poetry, or to explain a common English expression. Accordingly we find that in Euclid, algebra, and mensuration, though a few papers were especially meritorious, the vast majority of the answers were very inferior. Few, if any, attempted the easy riders in Euclid, and the examiner remarks that he fears that the pupil-teachers receive but little assistance from those who superintend their work. It is not easy to say whether this poor teaching or defective early training is at the root of the evil. It is worthy of remark that the metropolitan candidates, in their answers to the questions on Euclid, far surpass their provincial competitors. Many amazing blunders are quite common in the algebra papers, such as subtracting the terms of the numerator from those of the denominator, and completely ignoring the signs, and it is stated that the pupil-teachers at Chester at the end of their apprenticeship were unable to work a simple sum in algebra or to write out an easy proposition Mr. Fitch has a very able report on the Training Colleges for schoolmistresses, and from him it is plain that the same defects exist among the female as among the male pupil-teachers. At the admission examination the work in the arithmetic is satisfactory in point of accuracy, but it displays want of method, failure to appreciate the meaning of the question asked, and ignorance of principles. Thus very few of the candidates were able to give an intelligent explanation of simple arithmetical processes, such as subtraction or division. With them, as with the male pupil-teachers, book-work and memory are wholly relied on, and little attention is paid to the intelligent application of principles. “Scarcely three per cent, are able to do much more in the teaching of arithmetic than work sums more or less correctly on the black-board.”

Art. XIII.—Observations on the various Texts and Translations of the so-called “Song of Meysūn”; an Inquiry into Meysūn's claim to its Authorship; and an Appendix on Arabic Transliteration and Pronunciation

Dr. Carlyle's book, “Specimens of Arabic Poetry,” may be somewhat scarce, and Captain, now Sir R., Burton's “Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah” gives only an English version, without the Arabic text, of the little piece of poetry attributed to Meysūn, the mother of the second Damascus Caliph of the house of ‘Umeyya, Yezīd son of Mu'āwiya son of’ Ebū-Sufyān Ṣakhr son of Ḥarb, etc.