Poetic Origins Research Articles

“Words Cluster like Chromosomes”: Marianne Moore and Poetic-Genetic Origination

In 1963, Marianne Moore tells an interviewer, “I never ‘plan’ a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.” Six decades earlier, when Moore first learned about chromosomes, the concept was relatively new. Her education at Bryn Mawr from 1905 to 1909 placed her at the forefront of the understanding of heredity for her time, among those who knew that embryos inherited chromosomes equally from each parent. As her early poetry placed embryonic origins in tension with religious, national, and poetic origins, she posed the embryo both as disruptive to Western origin stories—like the Christian story of the fall—and as generative for her poetics, offering a model for a poetics of iterative and continual origination. Heather Cass White has suggested that the future of Moore criticism depends on recognizing how two schools—“the scientific Moore” and “the Protestant Moore”—are ultimately united around “her pursuit of an aesthetically and ethically tenable ‘original’ poetics.” Moore’s attention to embryos suggests that she was also performing a study of origin itself.

ПОЕТИКА АЗЕРБАЙДЖАНСЬКИХ ЛЮБОВНИХ ДАСТАНІВ

The article aims to study the peculiarities of the content and structure of the love dastan genre as a product of the artistic thinking of the Azerbaijani people, to determine its poetic originality as well as the impact on the development of Azerbaijani literature and spiritual values of the next generations. The article traces the causes and origins of the similarities and differences between the ancient Turkic epic as a product of folk poetry and the subsequent medieval classical love epics created by Ashuga poets. In order to achieve the goal, historical-literary, cultural-historical, comparative, and hermeneutic research methods were used. Poetological originality of love dastans is conditioned by cultural-historical and literary aspects. On the one hand, love dastans contain the ancient culture of composing epics, which is characteristic of the Turks, and on the other hand, they combine features of the artistic outlook specific to medieval Sufism. Thus, the features of Turkic folklore and Sufi consciousness are synthesized in the Azerbaijani love dastans, which is reflected in the level of structure and content specificity of the love epic. In contrast to the works of the heroic epic, which often consisted of separate songs and legends united by a single plot line in a complete work (“Keroglu”, “Kitabi-Dede Gorgud”, etc.), the structure of love dastan tends to the structure of fairy tale genre, where the original plot is built into a universal structure. Love dastans are mainly characterized by a five-level structure, which includes the introductory part (ustadname) and the main one, where the following stages are distinguished: the wonderful birth of the hero, the stage of obtaining “buta”, the stage of overcoming obstacles, and the stage of winning in competitions. The specificity of the content of love dastans is determined by the dominance of the love theme, the understanding of the problems of morality, family values, cognition and mentoring, and a special type of hero – a young man with a pure heart, worthy of receiving a higher gift, which contributes to the spiritual growth of the character and success in achieving the goal (conquest of the beloved). It should be noted that unlike the heroic epic, which focuses on patriotic issues, social values, the main of which is devotion to the Motherland and its people, in love dastans the theme of individual love is understood in the context of the general national values of the Azerbaijani people. In this regard, love dastan as a work of folklore already has the features of an author’s literary work, marking the stage of transition from traditionalist to individual creative poetics.

Vaishnavism in Nammalvar’s Poem “Tiruviruttam”

Nammalvar, a Tamil poet who lived in IX-X centuries, is revered as one of the great mystics of India. His four poetic works are equated with the sacred hymns and are part of the ritual worship in the temples of South India. Artistic images of Nammalvar formed the basis of the philosophy of Vishishta-Advaita several centuries later. The poem “Thiruviruttam” is considered as his early work, where he combines the canons of ancient Tamil poetry and his devoted love for Vishnu-Tirumal. The study presents a religious and philosophical interpretation of the poem. The secret of the poem is its dualism: external beauty and sacred meaning. There is a spiritual meaning in symbols of Tamil poetry. Nammalvar takes canons of his predecessors, poets of the Sangam era. However, he fills one with new content. The author compares ancient Tamil poetry and the work of Nammalvar. The plot describes the love between God and the soul. The poet reveals several types of bhakti or devoted love. The description of bhakti subsequently formed the basis for the classification of souls in the philosophy of vishishta-advaita. Bhakti leads to the transition to Vaikuntha or the heaven city. Sri Vaishnavism teachers turned the description of relationship soul-Vishnu into a spiritual practice. The artistic images of Nammalvar are compared with Hindu concepts such as transcendence, darshan, divine grace and moksha. In South India “Thiruviruttam” is considered the Tamil Rig Veda. Poem is performed at home, in the temple, during festive processes. It helps to find the roots of Vaishnavism and understand its poetic origin.

Linguistic Inventiveness, Creativity, and Variation in Taufiq Rafat’s Poems: A Stylistic Study

The current study attempted to analyze the poetic style of Taufiq Rafat. The study focused on Rafat's poetic originality, uniqueness, and grammatical inconsistencies. The qualitative, analytical, and theoretical aspects of this research were analyzed as well. In order to properly and efficiently conduct the study, only a handful of Rafat's poems were selected for analysis and the concentration remained solely on lexical level. The investigation focused on few specific poems of Rafat including Village Girl, Classmate, A Middle-Class Drawing Room, and Once Upon a Time. Leech and Short (1981) models were used to comprehend Rafat's style and how expertly and artistically he handles language to accomplish his objectives and expectations. For academics interested in linguistic and stylistic analysis along with language element identification in any literary text, especially Rafat's poetry, this study is crucial. The study concluded that Rafat used relatively identical stylistic elements. Although, some similarity in the basic form of the poems resulted to deviations and innovations in a few verses while reflecting distinctive and diverse, different and unique meanings along with interpretations in each of his poems.

The influence of Lu You's "Nan Zheng complex" on his poetic style

Lu You's experience and emotions in Nanzheng joined the army, which had a far-reaching impact on the transformation and formation of his later poetic style, which can be called the "Nan Zheng complex" in his literary career. Starting from Lu You's poetic origin, this paper focuses on the analysis of the "Nan Zheng complex" as the key to promoting his poetic thought, and summarizes the specific connotation of this influence in combination with his literary creation.

Mapping Intergenerational Diné Beauty: Reading Hózhǫ́ in the Poetry of Tacey M. Atsitty

Mapping Intergenerational Diné BeautyReading Hózhǫ́ in the Poetry of Tacey M. Atsitty Michael P. Taylor (bio) and Elena Arana (bio) The songs and memories of our ancestors continue to reverberate in these contemporary stories and poems; they bridge worlds and restore beauty within all things. —Sherwin Bitsui, Foreword to The Diné Reader Esther Belin (Diné) begins her introduction to The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature with a concise but comprehensive timeline of Diné (Navajo) literary history: “Time immemorial, jiní. Time immemorial is where these stories transpired—carrying constellation chill and sparkle, drama and tragedy, hope and laughter” (Belin et al. 3). Belin’s declaration of Diné literary origins serves both as a testament to the endurance of Diné stories and as a recognition of Diné creation and Diné bizaad (the Navajo language) as the regenerative cultural, epistemological, and spiritual sources from which Diné literatures have continued to adapt through generations of removal, relocation, and return. Contemporary Diné writers often locate their work within a similar intergenerational timeline. When defining poetry, for example, Tacey M. Atsitty locates her poetic origins at Creation: “Poetry is language, and language is what was used to form this world” (“Just a Poet”). Because the creative and cultural processes of the Diné world and worldview have been so forcefully disrupted by settler colonial strategies of land appropriation, resource extraction, assimilation, and outright genocide, the perennial purpose of Diné literatures continues to be, as Sherwin Bitsui (Diné) explains, to “bridge worlds and restore beauty within all things” (Foreword xvi). [End Page 337] Put another way, Diné literatures seek, enact, and embody hózhǫ́ the fundamental aesthetic, philosophy, theoretical framework, spiritual practice, and sociopolitical statement of Diné literatures, particularly poetry.1 It is an understanding of hózhǫ́, for example, that reconciles Luci Tapahonso’s poetic juxtapositions of home and exile (Fast 191–95). As poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, Laura Tohe writes of the enduring, diverse, ever-adapting understanding and embodied practice of hózhǫ́: In Beauty it was begun.In Beauty it continues. In Beauty, In Beauty, In Beauty, In Beauty. (“In Dinétah” 104) Tohe’s poetic repetition of capitalized Beauty, or hózhǫ́, serves as a call to move beyond documenting and marveling at the particular craft of Diné poetics and to place hózhǫ́ at the center of all Diné-specific critical and literary inquiry.2 This article turns to Atsitty’s 2018 debut collection of poems, Rain Scald, to assert hózhǫ́ as an analytical and theoretical apparatus through which Diné poetry manifests its distinct cultural, rhetorical, and national sovereignty while, at the same time, informing the ways we read and engage distinct and shared literatures across all Indigenous nations.3 Near the beginning of Rain Scald, Atsitty offers a four-part poem entitled “Ach’íí’.”4 Each part of the poem delicately sutures the ostensibly contradictory realities of being Diné in the twenty-first century—suicide and survival, uranium-induced illness and communal care, Christian conversion and Diné ceremony—into a cohesive individual and collective identity. The poem concludes with memories of Atsitty’s father leaving home as a foster child in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Indian Student Placement Program:5 Dad says he remembers the first time he died,that long bus ride when they took him [End Page 338] to Utah for school. He had been memorizingland formations: an angel the size of his hand disappeared, and after that he was so emptyfrom crying and so full of rememberingrocks, he just fell asleep. (Atsitty, Rain Scald 7) Describing her father’s first removal from his home and homelands, Atsitty shares her father’s strategy for survival: the traditional practice of memorizing the land. Klara Kelley and Harris Francis (Diné) describe this practice of land memorization as cognitive mapmaking and wayfinding that is grounded in oral stories that have kept the Diné connected to Creation and to Diné Bikéyah (“People’s Sacred Lands,” or Navajo homelands) since the Diné first emerged into the current world (85–86). Atsitty poeticizes her father’s childhood removal from home and his land- and story-based mapping that would enable his...

"Mi Amado, las montañas... las ínsiüas extrañas". La aventura del amor del poeta san Juan de la Cruz en clave estético teológica

In the background of isolation lived during pandemics during the past two years, Literature has remained to many of us as a spiritual reservoir of voices and sceneries which have helped us to understand each other offering water to quench humanity. The aim of this article is to dwell on the symbolism of the "odd islands" which St. John of the Cross presents in two verses of his "Spiritual Chant": stanza 13 referring to the absent Beloved and in stanza 32, referring to the searched Beloved. For this purpose, I will firstly pose the poetic originality of this metaphor in the Renaissance context in which it was written, and then I will stand out the theological-aesthetical validity of the nuptial metaphorization of the human and divine unión. In the context of experienced isolation, I will introduce such islands as the new and unknown configuration paths of an open hope for humanity capable of receiving the divine gift of a full life.

An Insufficient Canon: The Popol Wuj, Book of Mormon, and Other Scriptures

An Insufficient Canon: The Popol Wuj, Book of Mormon, and Other Scriptures

Philosophical and Tragic Component of the Artistic Conception of Myroslav Skoryk’s Opera “Моses”

Relevance of the study. Myroslav Skorykʼs opera “Moses” is a landmark work in both the composer’s heritage and the modern Ukrainian musical theater. Inheriting the multilevel concept of the literary source of the libretto — the poem of the same name by Ivan Franko — the work causes interpretive discrepancies. In the I. Frankoʼs formulation the main theme of the work is connected with the tragedy of the personality, the leader and the biblical prophet Moses, who was called to lead the Jewish people out of Egyptian slavery. The analysis of the musical means of expressing the tragic constituent of the concept has not yet become the subject of a separate study, remaining in the shadow of the socio-political topics that are more relevant for the Ukrainian society. This determines the novelty and relevance of the study.
 Main objective of the study is to identify the signs of the musical embodiment of the philosophical and I. Francoʼs tragic plan of at the genre-dramatic and intonation-thematic levels of realization of the artistic concept of the M. Skorykʼs opera “Moses”.
 Methodology. The article uses the methods of system, genre-dramatic and intonationalsemantic analysis of musical work.
 Scientific novelty. For the first time the philosophical-tragic aspect of the concept of opera is specially considered, its priority is proved, the signs of intonational unity of the opera are revealed, the features of monotheism are indicated.
 Main results and findings of the study as well as a conclusion. The artistic concept of the opera “Moses” is read on the textual (reinterpreted b y I. Franco biblical history) and four contextual levels (allegories of Ukrainian history, religious and general philosophical, autobiographical). Disclosure of the multilevel concept is carried out by means of musical-intonational drama, built by M. Skoryk on the principle of hierarchically and logically organized spiritual-musical universe. By musical means the composer builds a system of biblical prototypes (Moses — Christ), correspondences (rebels Aviron and Dathan — evil spirits Azazel and Johavedda), symbols and subtexts (Poet and Moses in the opera as the Ivan Francoʼs alter ego) of poetic origin, spiritual and moral meanings.
 The intonational unity of the opera is based on the orchestral theme-epigraph from the Prologue. The main leitmotifs and characteristics of the actors are based on its modified elements. Careful elaboration of details, ingenuity of thematic work, appeal to baroque methods of revealing the sacred in the text are designed to express the concept of ontological unity of the world, genetically linked to the biblical worldview.
 The predominance of tragic signs on the plot (death of Moses and the rebels), dramaturgy (passion), intonation-thematic levels (catabasis, symbol of the cross) allows us to conclude about the philosophical tragedy of the genre of opera. In the aspect of revealing the tragedy of the personality M. Skoryk’s opera resonates with similar works by M. Mussorgsky, P. Tchaikovsky, D. Shostakovich, A. Schnittke, R. Shchedrin and others.
 The methodological paths outlined in this article allow us to further reveal new and new hidden meanings and subtexts of the opera.

EMMA ANDIIEVSKA’S (UN)REPEATABLE POETRY, OR TWO COMPARATIVE SKETCHES

Emma Andiievska’s poetic manner is quite experimental in modern literary milieu due to dense metaphoric imagology, daring alliteration, specific subject’s representation, cosmogonic transformation motive, etc., so it hardly correlates with European art styles (modernism and postmodernism in particular), albeit her early oeuvre (1950—1960) is being consequently considered as surrealistic one. It is also hard to outline stylistic and mental links between Emma Andiievska’s poetry and Ukrainian or European one since she has been moving in her art creativity strictly towards poetic originality. At the same time, the poetess’ works can’t be excluded from the world literary process — that is the reason for a comparative search. Some literary parallels have been found in Ukrainian (Bohdan Ihor Antonych) and American (Emily Dickinson) poetry. Both authors could influence Emma Andiievska’s poetic manner. There is a similar attitude to reality and own creativity in Emma’s Andiievska’s poetic oeuvre and Emily Dickinson’s one, caused by a desire for solitude and priority of the author’s subjectivity in the lyrical view. There are also some similar syntactic means in the poetics of both female authors. The poetic manner of Emma Andiievska’s works written in the 1950s—1960s also resembles Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s poetical style, represented in his collections “Salute to Life”, “Three Rings” and “The Green Gospel”. The two authors have a similar phenomenological focus of lyrical reflection, surrealistic metaphors, and acoustic mode of connecting words in an utterance. The childlike features of a worldview and oneiric elements of narrative in the literary works realize the surrealistic mode of writing attributable both to Bohdan Ihor Antonych and Emma Andiievska.

ЛИТЕРАТУРНЫЙ ОПЫТ УРАЛЬСКОГО ЗАБОЙЩИКА И ЛЕСНИКА И. А. ГАГАРИНА: ШКОЛЬНОЕ ЧТЕНИЕ В ПРАКТИКЕ СОЧИНИТЕЛЬСТВА

The article analyses the manuscript of the Ural cutter and forester Ivan Gagarin “Selected memories from my life” written by him in the late 1940s. The writing practice of a non-professional writer is analyzed in the context of the history and culture of the metallurgical Ural district, drawing on folklore, literary material, and materials on the education development of Orenburg Governorate. As a result, the manuscript, although it contains memoirs of a biographical nature, is defined as a collection of stories that tell the readers about the craft tricks of a forester, an avid hunter, and fisherman. The author of the article found some overlaps between Ivan Gagarin’s writings and professional literature narrations, and these allow us to describe the techniques of incorporating literary material into the text. In his prose, the borrowings (such as descriptive phrases, and lines of well-known poetry) are incorporated into the structure of sentences and assume appropriate grammatical forms. For poetic endings of the calendar sketches, Ivan Gagarin changed the poems of Nikolai Nekrasov, Alexey Plescheev, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Mikhail Chehov. The edits are as follows: the author eliminated the patterns that were alien to him and included those of his everyday life; he rearranged the verses in the sequence he needed, and added his own descriptive material. Ivan Gagarin does not mean to destroy his poetic origins. As an illiterate composer looking for opportunities to express his thought accurately, he did not count on the success of his own poetry, represented in the text of the manuscript by the genre form folk rhymes.

Локальности Урала в поэзии Екатерины Симоновой

In the Urals’ modern poetry, Ekaterina Simonova is one of the most powerful and interesting poets with a distinctly own voice. The article deals with Simonova’s poetic geography, limited to the Ural region. Simonova came out of the so called «Nizhny Tagil poetry school», Yevgeny Turenko was her and other Tagil poets’ teacher. Since 2013, she has been living in Ekaterinburg, but Nizhny Tagil retains its central importance in her poetry as a city of childhood and youth, a city of poetic origins, a place of memory, and empirically, a city where her parents live and where she visits regularly, so in poetry it also acts as a city-road. Simonova’s poems are close to docu-poetry and resemble oral narratives that naturally gather into free verse. She writes plot poems about space and place, in which a special story is attached to each locus, taken from life, not necessarily personal, often from the life of her family. As a commentary and addition to Simonova’s poems, the article cites her posts from the social network – akin to diary entries, among them the story of «grandmother Matrena» stands out, who once lived in the village of Visimo-Utkinsky, founded by Akinfiy Demidov. The small history of the family is closely connected in this narrative with the big history of the country, in which, of course, Ekaterina Simonova herself is involved.

Postures of Dying: Eliot, Seneca and the Elizabethans

Abstract This article analyses the substantial intertextual relations between Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’, Seneca’s tragedies, and Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, particularly in the depictions of dying speeches. It demonstrates, too, that ‘Gerontion’ is a prominent example of how Eliot’s poetry anticipates the issues explored in his critical prose—in this case, notably ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ and ‘Seneca in Elizabethan Translation’. Further, the article relates the use of what Eliot called ‘saturated’ images in early modern drama and his own poetry with his theories of poetic creation and originality. In so doing, it argues that, contrary to the accepted critical narrative, the famous description of a ‘profound kinship’ with an unnamed ‘dead author’ that Eliot describes in ‘Reflections on Contemporary Poetry’, may not primarily and exclusively refer to Jules Laforgue.

Image of Poetic Origin and Co-occurrence Relation of “Xiaoxiao(蕭蕭)”

Image of Poetic Origin and Co-occurrence Relation of “Xiaoxiao(蕭蕭)”

The Missional Singing of the Psalms in Islamic Contexts

For fourteen centuries scriptural engagement between Islam and Christianity has focused on the Torah and the Injil (the NT). Common to both traditions, however, is the Zabur, or Psalms. This common text, which has largely been overlooked in Christian-Muslim relations, has recently begun to move interactions from polemic to peaceful. This article explores three similarities between the Psalms and the Qur’an: revelation (prophetic and poetic origin), recitation (oral practice and transmission), and ritual (liturgical and canonical prayers). As Muslims and Christians reimagine scriptural engagement on the common ground of the Psalms, peacebuilding can significantly advance in the twenty-first century.

Primordial Poetry: Herder’s Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache and the Poetics of Lying

Johann Gottfried Herder’s Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache (1772) connects the idea of genesis with the myth of the poetic origin of language. Scholars have reflected extensively upon Herder’s introduction of anthropological and multi-causal perspectives on language, but largely dismissed the many literary allusions as indicators of its ethical preconditions. Herder substitutes the concept of “origin” with literary aesthetics by using the ancient canon of literature and art. The affective relationship between screaming and speaking is exemplified with the help of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, and Lessing’s Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (1766). Through the lens of these texts Herder shows the dichotomy of truth and lie, but inherently challenges his own thoughts on authenticity, purity, and sincerity as foundations of moral progress.

From “Incentive Furie” to “Incentives to Efficiency,” or the Movement of “Incentive” in Neoclassical Thought

ABSTRACTIncentives, economists remind us, are foundational to any economy: They include strategies to induce consumers to purchase products, motivate employees to work harder, or invite businesses to new localities. This textbook term, however, has not always been yoked to economic activity per se. This essay traces the history of the term “incentive” in two phases, first, from its origin in the Latin term “incentivum,” referring to “the thing that sets the tune,” and second, from its uptake and concretization by neoclassical economic thought through Jeremy Bentham, Alfred Marshall, and Paul Samuelson. In neoclassical economics, incentives “set the tune” of behavior by compelling rational economic action through the postulates of methodological individualism, equilibration, and utility-maximization. The terminological shift of “incentive” from its poetic origins into economic thought entails that “incentives” become an objective, univocal “thing” that embeds an argument about the dangers of actions that contravene market logics.

From “Incentive Furie” to “Incentives to Efficiency,” or the Movement of “Incentive” in Neoclassical Thought

ABSTRACTIncentives, economists remind us, are foundational to any economy: They include strategies to induce consumers to purchase products, motivate employees to work harder, or invite businesses to new localities. This textbook term, however, has not always been yoked to economic activity per se. This essay traces the history of the term “incentive” in two phases, first, from its origin in the Latin term “incentivum,” referring to “the thing that sets the tune,” and second, from its uptake and concretization by neoclassical economic thought through Jeremy Bentham, Alfred Marshall, and Paul Samuelson. In neoclassical economics, incentives “set the tune” of behavior by compelling rational economic action through the postulates of methodological individualism, equilibration, and utility-maximization. The terminological shift of “incentive” from its poetic origins into economic thought entails that “incentives” become an objective, univocal “thing” that embeds an argument about the dangers of actions that contravene market logics.

The Work of Metaphor: Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Circles" and Conceptual Metaphor Theory

The Work of Metaphor:Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Circles" and Conceptual Metaphor Theory David Greenham (bio) Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1844 metaphor, "Language is fossil poetry,"1 implies a loss: fossils are dead, whereas poetic language was once alive. In the journal article from which this metaphor emerged, Emerson wrote, "language is made up of images or poetic tropes which now in their familiar secondary use have quite ceased to remind us of their poetic origin."2 Language, he suggests, consists of "poetic tropes" transferred from some lost origin. As such, language is fundamentally metaphorical. It is remarkable, then, that no one has yet offered a systematic study of how Emerson uses metaphor. This essay will engage with Emerson's "Circles" (1841) using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), attempting to remedy that lack and also to inaugurate a reassessment of the work that metaphor accomplishes in Emerson's writing and thinking. The critical tradition has not ignored metaphor in Emerson; even so, this specific figurative trope has not been central to the interpretive canon. Jonathan Bishop's 1964 Emerson on the Soul addresses the issue briefly, making some significant points. For example, Bishop recognizes that, in bringing two different aspects of experience into a unity, Emerson's metaphors enable a moment of "intellectual [End Page 402] discovery." Bishop also notes metaphor's instability and observes that the "consummation of every metaphor … should be a new opportunity for radical doubt that immediately commences a search for alternative terms." He concludes that metaphor restlessly moves forward in Emerson's prose. However, he regards it as just one aspect of Emerson's literary language, alongside rhythm and tone.3 Julie Ellison's 1984 Emerson's Romantic Style also explores the subject. For Ellison, as for Bishop, the point of Emersonian metaphor is "constant change" and "perpetual transition." Ellison also sees this instability as a point of style, but more particularly as an effort to avoid "literary influence" by using old words in new ways. Ultimately, Emerson's use of metaphor becomes a process of flux, where "everything can stand for everything else" and "where all is symbolic, all symbols are arbitrary."4 That metaphors are not—indeed, cannot be—arbitrary is something I will demonstrate in what follows. Laura Dassow Walls' 2003 book, Emerson's Life in Science, argues that, despite the density of his metaphorical language, "Emerson himself fought against the metaphoricity of language. What he sought was not linguistic play, but truth, the single reality beyond language." Metaphor, Walls maintains, points beyond itself, to something nonlinguistic. Drawing on I. A. Richards' distinction between a metaphor's tenor and vehicle, Walls contends that, for Emerson, metaphors are "merely the vehicle"; the tenor, or "true knowledge," lies elsewhere.5 According to Walls, this belief caused Emerson to turn to science in an attempt to "get beyond the mere succession of apposite metaphors." In other words, metaphor is something Emerson merely passed through on the way to science.6 Bishop, Ellison, and Walls recognize metaphor as an important aspect of Emerson's literary technique and intellectual development, but not, as I will argue here, something that is fundamental to his thought. [End Page 403] A recent work by David LaRocca, Emerson's English Traits and the Natural History of Metaphor (2013), forms an exception to this partial treatment of metaphor. LaRocca explicitly picks up where Walls leaves off. For LaRocca, rather than passing through metaphor to science, science itself—as "natural history"—becomes the metaphor to understand Emerson: "natural history [is] the primary metaphor that underwrites most, if not all, of his work…. [It] is then not just an area of inquiry but the very condition for thinking."7 LaRocca's deliberately paratactic and idiosyncratic work is fascinating. He offers glimpses into Emerson's practice but does not provide a methodology for understanding Emerson's metaphors or make a case for the applicability of his ideas beyond Emerson's English Traits. Even so, by recognizing Emerson's metaphor use as a "condition for thinking," and therefore at the root of his thought, LaRocca approaches my entry point. LaRocca's use of small capitals for natural history is also important, implying that he uses the term...

Hardiesse de Hardy, ou l’incertaine certitude

This article aims at defining Hardy’s position on Materialism and Idealism as it informs the relation to realism in his novels, and more generally his poetic approach to novel writing. We try to situate Hardy’s appraisal of the opposition between science and literature. The development of intermediary notions, such as “crisis” and “imaginative reason”, his conception of the close links existing between “classicism” end “uncertainty” as well as the positive resources of scepticism eventually define Hardy’s poetic originality and ethical audacity.