Poetic Statement Research Articles

Galicyjski ateusz. Profetyzm, mistycyzm i romantyzm w twórczości Aleksandra (Leszka) Dunina – Borkowskiego

Using the example of Leszek Dunin Borkowski’s works, the author presents a form of a dialogue with a biblical source which was literary prophecy and mysticism. This philosophical basis converted poetic statement into a cultural discourse with traditional forms of religiousness. The outcome of this aesthetics led to the extension of the liberation ideas supporters’ circles as well as to promoting democratic ideas.

The ‘Poetic Syllogism’ Revisited

The term ‘poetic syllogism’ appears in the late antique Greek commentary and scholia literature. Arabic philosophers, however, are the first to explain how this kind of syllogism is constructed; al-Fārābī introduces one type and Avicenna adds two more. Each syllogism that follows one of these three types includes among its premises or its conclusion at least one figurative statement. The poetic syllogism plays a key role in Arabic ‘philosophical’ poetics, which contains an important theory of figurative language.—A treatise on Poetics by Ibn Ṭumlūs discusses the relationship between the three types. The present study closely analyses Ibn Ṭumlūs’s reasoning. Furthermore, it clarifies previously unexplained or misunderstood terms such as ‘poetic statement’, ‘poetic premise’ and ‘poetic definition’. It finally points to an example for a specific type of sophistical inference Aristotle introduces in his Sophistical Refutations which Avicenna and other Arabic philosophers cite as a poetic syllogism. Commentators, perhaps as early as late antiquity, could have taken this type of inference to be the poetic syllogism they failed to find in Aristotle’s Poetics.

Toward the “Whole Fragment”: A Reading of Lea Goldberg's <em>The Remains of Life</em>

This paper borrows the term "whole fragment" from American poet and scholar Ann Lauterbach and utilizes it in a consideration of Lea Goldberg's posthumously published poetry collection The Remains of Life . In contrast to the traditional fragment, which laments in its very presence a lost whole, the whole fragment acknowledges and foregrounds its incompleteness as essential and intrinsic to its own poetic essence and statement. Through close analysis of select poems, this paper argues that the whole fragment was a purposeful development away from closed form in Goldberg's poetics, a development already in evidence in With this Night but articulated more radically and fully in the poems of The Remains of Life . I argue that these final poems are among Goldberg's most accomplished in their very threshold nature, in their precarious negotiation and unflinching recognition of language's limits, represented in form as much as in content.

Whitman's Columbia: The Commemoration of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in "A Thought of Columbus"

From moment intent to host World's Columbian exposition of 1893 was announced in 1890, whole country was eagerly talking about it.1 The event was intended to reflect America's new-found promi- nence on world stage by celebrating four centuries of progress since Christopher discovered Americas, and hardly any publication lacked some mention of event. While exposition was being planned many readers of poems like passage to india, song of exposition, and prayer of Columbus thought that Walt Whitman should have been involved in some direct way. For instance, Illustrated American thought he would make an ideal representative for fair, publishing in 1891 an anonymous editorial criticizing exposition planners' request of a commemorative poem from Alfred Lord Tennyson. The editorial questions choice of Tennyson and argues instead for an American, ideally Whitman:But best of all would be an American poet. The children of new World, which Colum- bus revealed to Old, are best fitted to celebrate glories of new dispensation.Walt Whitman would be ideal choice. He is an American, a democrat in largest and best sense of word, a son of soil. He could give us a splendid chant, full of virility and breadth and wisdom. But have not yet reached ideal stage where can appreciate him at his true worth.2Later same year, George Horton of Chicago Herald requested in a letter that Whitman write an exclusive poem for his paper to com- memorate exposition. Horton indicates that he had approached several other prominent poets, but flatteringly adds that any list of con- temporary poets would be incomplete without Whitman. Appealing to Whitman's penchant for self-promotion, Horton promises that the West is anxious to hear from you on subject, and The Herald reaches West very widely (WWWC, 8:446). similarly, a souvenir collection of thoughts on and america published in 1892 to commemo- rate Exposition quotes Reverend Myron Reed, who insists, we shall remember Walt Whitman, if only for line, ? America! We build for you because you build for world.'3 Closer to home, Horace Traubel had tried numerous times to impel Whitman to write something for fair. Traubel reports on november 11, 1891, that a san francisco paper was warmly advocating W. as poet for Columbian Exposi- tion (WWWC, 9:138). Yet Whitman complained time and again that he was unable to write any more poems. it did not matter to him how many requests he received (WWWC, 9:126). Traubel records that on september 11, 1891,Whitman said to him, have had fully half a dozen applications for poems lately-poems for public occasions-to none of which have i even replied (WWWC, 8:499). putting matter firmly to rest, Whitman died seven months prior Exposition's dedication ceremonies, and he was never formally recognized by Exposition's planners and promoters. As a result, links between Whitman and Columbian Exposition have gone unexamined. However, reading last poem Whitman wrote, AThought of Columbus, within context of vast promotions that wed Columbian discovery to American progress since 1492 suggests that Whitman's final poetic statement was dedicated to spirit of fair. Read in this light, A Thought of Co- lumbus takes on a greater resonance.Whitman's abiding interest in American progress was well under- stood as America took stock of itself in twilight of nineteenth century, and it is clearly on such grounds that Whitman's contemporaries drew a connection between him and objectives of Columbian Exposition. indeed, Exposition would have been perfect vehicle for situating Whitman in central place in American letters to which he had aspired throughout his career. America had assumed a greater prominence on world stage by 1893, thus validating Whitman's faith in abundance of land, strength of democracy, and growth of what he termed Western character in A backward glance o'er Travel'd Roads. …

Self-Enactment of Late Medieval Chivalry: Performance and Self-Representation in Ulrich von Liechtenstein's Frauendienst

It has long been recognized that the world of courtly literature must be measured and evaluated by different criteria than those used for modern literary texts, the alterity of the Middle Ages requiring different lenses than those through which we view our own world (Jauss; Reinhard). Courtly love poetry and epics alike – Minnesang, for example, or Hartmann von Aue's Erec and Iwein – prove to be complex literary fora in which the protagonists act out concrete situations and the audience is invited to join a discussion about the individual positions taken by the heroes or characters (Schweikle). Whether Minnesang reflects the emotions of the singer or is an exclusively formalistic, rhetorical art representative of courtly culture remains a debated issue (Willms 59-88). Yet the poetic statements seem to deny the possibility of love's happy fulfilment, while the ladies, the more the knights woo them, accept or acknowledge all the less the poets' confessions of love (Kaplowitt 167-84). Consequently, some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that the intricate complexities of the entire corpus of Minnesang poetry – the dawn song (tageliet) excepted – might well have been the product of a psychological neurosis among the knightly class, the result of deepseated frustrations of male performers soundly rejected by all their ladies. Ulrich Miller has even identified Minnesang as the literary reflection of an ekklesiogene Kollektivneurose. That term he might have meant tongue-in-cheek, yet he was right in arguing that this phenomenon of courtly love poetry illustrated an element of public mentality or disposition common among all members of the court. Muller identifies these tensions as the result of Aufbruch and Emanzipation with regard to the traditional dogmas of the Christian Church (236), basing his theory on the observation that, while the medieval Church strictly opposed extramarital love and rigidly fought against the sinfulness of sexuality, secular society strove for an outlet of its inner desires and physical needs (see also Kay). As the famous example of Dante's Vita Nuova indicates, however, the primary purpose of courtly love poetry was not the realization of erotic desires.

Rimbaud et L'Algerie

Those familiar with Rimbaud's life know that Africa is his last adventure, once the phase of his poetic production has ended. In Rimbaud et l'Algérie, Hédi Abdel-Jaouad shows that Algeria has, in fact, been present in Rimbaud's work from the very beginning of his poetic career, playing an important role in the creation of his poetic principles and ideals. Rimbaud et l'Algérie focuses on Jugurtha, an early text Rimbaud wrote in Latin at the age of 14 for a competition organized by the Académie de Douai in 1869. Jugurtha made an impression on the jury, who awarded him the prize. Unlike Abdel-Jaouad, however, the jury did not notice the text's irony. Although these "vers de collège" have usually been dismissed, if not forgotten, by the majority of critics, Abdel-Jaouad holds them as a decisive political and poetic statement in Rimbaud's career as a writer.

Identifying and appreciating poetic metaphor

This article concerns subjects' appreciation of metaphors in poems. It reports the findings of two empirical studies on the role and effect of an intervening directed metaphor-identification task (compared and contrasted with the effect of verb-identification and read-again tasks) in the subsequent appreciation of poetic metaphor. These studies demonstrate that consciously identifying poetic metaphors enhances people's aesthetic appreciation of and emotional reaction to these phrases, contrary to the widespread intuition that picking apart texts to classify different tropes interferes with one's pleasure in reading metaphors. Any explanation of why metaphor identification enhances appreciation of and emotional reaction to poetic statements must be speculative, but one hypothesis worth pursuing is that actually recognizing a statement as a metaphor (as a linguistic type) alerts readers to the very possibility of rich cross-domain mappings, which immediately leads readers to seek out some of these rich metaphoric meanings. A further interesting finding from these studies is that metaphor identification appears to enhance both appreciation of poetic metaphors, and emotional reactions to them, to the same degree. This correlation in the data suggests that readers' judgements of aesthetic appreciation of metaphors may be shaped, at least to some significant degree, by their felt sense of embodied, emotional movement. Under this view, people's aesthetic appreciation of metaphor, and perhaps any other artwork, is not a purely intellectual act, but has its roots in recurring patterns of embodied action that may underlie many aspects of thought and language use.

'Thigging a fable fra a Frenchman': Allan Ramsay's Imitations of La Fontaine and La Motte

The subject of this study is a corpus of twenty-nine fables written in Scots and published in Edinburgh by Allan Ramsay between 1722 and 1730. Apart from a six-line fragment in one of his MS notebooks, they represent his total known output in this form. As they appeared at a time when the fable form was enjoying considerable popularity throughout Europe, and at an important stage in its development, one would expect them to be more familiar texts than they are.1 However, the complex bibliographical history of Ramsay's works, reflecting as it does his habit of 'gathering up' his stocks of printed sheets to compose heteroclite volumes, has meant that his contribution to the redefinition of the fable form has gone largely unnoticed owing to its physical dispersion, unhappily reproduced in the sole modern edition of his Works.2 In addition, most of his fables are translations or imitations, and the status of such literary objects has tended to be even humbler than that of the fable itself. Finally, being expressed in what Ramsay called 'Braid Scots',3 i.e. double-dutch as far as the mainstream of European criticism is concerned, his fables have been overshadowed by those written in 'major' languages such as English, French, and German. The purpose of this article is to show that these poems, perceived as a coherent poetic statement at the forefront of early eighteenth-century European literary exchange and reform, deserve more historical and critical attention than they have received.4 None of Ramsay's fables can have been composed after 1729, when the last of them appeared in print for the first time. It is unlikely that any were written before 1720, when Ramsay brought out several 'gather-up' volumes, none of which contain any fables, or even 1721, when he published a subscription edition of his Poems also devoid of fables. Examination of the main MS source, whose leaves are out of order and incomplete, reveals a cluster of six fable drafts on or around leaves containing pieces dated 1722, including one not printed until 1728.5 Further, eight of the thirteen fables in the 1722 collection are not (or are

What do we one the future? the construction of a better present

The debt-to-the-future issue is discussed taking into account that it is not simply a poetic or innocent statement but a present complex problem. An analytical approach through the issue of risk and uncertainty might allow us to delimit our reflection. At the same time, it might become the main axis in the reality we face today, since risk, reliability, and uncertainty appear as characteristic features of modern society. Participatory processes, as manifestations of post-normal science, are proposed as a way to cope with uncertainty.

Chaucer's Wife of Midas Reconsidered: Oppositions and Poetic Judgment in the Wife of Bath's Tale

By the sheer vitality of her personality and the defiant aggressivity of her temperament, Chaucer's Wife of Bath has recently attracted a variety of critical assessments that emphasize her capacity to conduct an original argument along the lines of a "gendered" vocabulary, as much as they make of her a significant emblem of social protest that typifes an individual, or subjective, reaction to social and literary convention. Other approaches suggest that the Wife has a point of view that merits a unique kind of critical attention, somewhat different from what can be attributed to Chaucer's other moral or social dissidents (male or female). However, in this article, I wish to return to a somewhat more traditional, if unresolved, critical problem, which addresses the nature of Chaucer's poetic attitude toward the quality of poetic statement sustained by one of his most brilliant personae.

Volponi and Desired Exile

In one of his early poems Volponi, referring to the city of his birth, wrote: La nemica figura che mi resta,! l'immagine di Urbino/ che io non posso fuggire,/ la sua crudele festaj quieta tra Ie mie ire. II Questo lasciare/ se io avessi I' ardire/ di lasciare· Ie mie carel piaghe guarire.1 The abundant contradictions expressed in these verses (crudele festa, quieta ire, care piaghe) are suggestive of the psychological conflict that characterizes Volponi' s life and literature. Central to this poetic statement is the verb fuggire and the inability to flee from Urbino. But the obstacle to leaving is not external but rather internal. What is lacking is the courage to leave what is familiar and secure even when they are also painful. Flight is expressed less as a desire than as a duty dovrei lasciare. But why does the poet feel this obligation? The final stanza of the poem may contain an answer: Allora i giardini pensili/ piegano l'ombra ostile dei pini/ verso quel punto dell'orizzontej nuovo ogni sera,/ dove io non giungero mail libero dai miei cattivi pensieri,/ dalla sorte nemical che il mio amore castiga (107). It is the realm of the unexplored and the unexperienced that causes in the poet a feeling of unfulfillment. The constant and contradictory themes in Volponi' s early poetry, especially in the collection Le porte dell' Appennino, is on the one hand the affectionate description of the unchanging land with the repetition of its seasons, and on the other an admiration and almost envy of all that is migratory. In his 1948 introduction to II ramarro, Volponi' s first collection of published poetry, Carlo Bo declared, Certamente it gesto piu evidente della sua voce e determinato dalla forza, dalla liberal del suo atteggiamento.2 This freedom of expression was understandably admired and praised in as much as it was among the very first new poetic voices to make itself heard after so many years of the

Echoes of Novalis and Tieck in Büchner's Lenz

As a poetic statement on the mission and fate of an artist-figure, Lenz bears comparison with some of its Early Romantic predecessors. The similarities and differences revealed are illuminating as to Georg Buchner's post-Romantic view of the nature and function of the poet. In particular Novalis's Hymnen an die Nacht and Ludwig Tieck's Der Runenberg – works often compared in theme and imagery, and very likely linked by a relationship of influence and response' – are called to mind by both basics and details of Buchner's story. Like them, for example, Lenz involves the struggle of an artist-figure to convey a sense of beauties weighing against individuation and mortality. It also shares with them a variety of motifs and images: the topography of mountains and plains, or the motif of Wanderer and Hutte, for example, to depict the poet's progress to insight, or the references to crystalline and fluid to describe the harmony of all things that he senses. Finally, it echoes those accounts of the artist's emergence in a complex way: at times paralleling the ascent of the Romantic artist to insight, then diverging from that positive line to stress his problematic relationship to reality. Closer consideration of these comparisons and contrasts can follow two possible lines. It can initiate critical reflection on whether Buchner was influenced by these Early Romantic works or even intended his story to parody them.' It can also lead – whether or not influence or parodic intent can be established – to insights on how Buchner's story expresses his era's changing view of the artistic existence. I propose to follow these two approaches in turn to contribute suggestions about how Lenz reveals Buchner's revision of the Romantic ideal to be a

Shadows of Prophecy: Blake and Millenarian Ideology

William Hamilton Reid, a former Radical, complained in a pamphlet that in the I790os Sunday field preachers at various locations throughout London attracted not only deists and atheists who came to dispute with Christians, but also 'Mystics, Muggletonians, Millenarians and a variety of eccentric characters of different denominations'.' They reportedly conversed with the dead and with Angels and when the French Revolution began, these people became interested in revolutionary politics. Millenarian sects appear to have survived with surprising tenacity well into the nineteenth century, preserving a matrix of language and imagery by which they could imagine the new revolutionary times. Christopher Hill has pointed out that 'just as a surviving Protestant tradition contributed to the English Revolution ... so the Radicals of the English Revolution perhaps gave more to posterity than is immediately obvious.'2 These London sects were a notable part of Blake's milieu and probably a greater influence on his thought than is usually recognized. Although millenarianism has become a popular subject with historians and sociologists, millenarian interpretations of the French Revolution still raise a number of questions. E. P. Thompson is said to be currently at work on a book that intends to show the extent of Blake's affiliation with a plebeian subculture based on overliteralized biblicism infinitely more congenial to him than the discourse of the Dissenting philosophers. This article will study the manner in which Blake, like other millenarians of his day, transformed biblical hermeneutics into personal poetic statements with immediate applications to history. A few preliminary remarks on the Biblical background of such an ideology might prove useful to avoid empty generalizations on the zeitgeist. Strictly speaking, millenarianism refers to the belief in Christ's reign expected to last a thousand years after His Second Advent. At the end of this period an ultimate offensive of Evil will lead to the definitive triumph of God marked by the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgement, the creation of new heavens and a new earth. For centuries controversy raged about the exact

"This Old Theory Broach'd Anew": Darwinism and Whitman's Poetic Program

Emphasizes the scientific basis for much of Leaves of Grass by exploring how Whitman weaves the Darwinian theory of evolution into a religious, political, and poetic statement.

The traditional narrator and the ‘I heard’ formulas in Old English poetry

In the process of literary interpretation no critic can afford to overlook the rôle of the poetic narrator. While poetic and narrative statements (as it is commonly argued) designate their meaning largely in accordance with the conventions of language and literary discourse, linguistic criteria alone cannot determine the attitude of the speaker towards what he says; and this attitude constitutes a crucial element in the meaning of the statement as a speech act or utterance. Indeed, as users of language, all of us habitually include considerations of speaker intentions in our standard operations of interpreting as well as producing discourse. Can the speaker be trusted? Does he speak ironically or sincerely? Is he trying to achieve some aim in relation to the hearer other than that which his act of communication ostensibly purports? Entailed in any act of communication, this dimension of interplay between speaker and statement is inevitably involved in literary discourse as well, since obviously we do not always take literary statements at face value. One of the primary tasks confronting the literary critic, then, in Old English poetry or any other body of work, lies in determining the character of the narrator and the parameters of his functioning.

The Professionalization of 'Intellectuals'

I will focus my remarks on the professionalization of literary criticism and I'll start off by making use of the analogy that Frank Lentricchia has drawn between the practice of the latter and the practice of medicine. Noting Michel Foucault's observation to the effect that 'medical statements cannot come from anybody' and his question concerning rights and qualifications ('Who, among the totality of speaking individuals, is accorded the right to use this sort of language? Who is qualified to do so?'), Lentricchia asks the question 'who is qualified, for that matter, to make poetic statements, or statements that will fulfil the conditions of literary criticism?' But surely I hope someone will object—there can be no question of anyone's being accorded the right to do literary criticism? And as far as qualifications are concerned, it is surely a mistake to think that they are in any way guaranteed by academic degrees. It may be necessary to use a terminology of rights and qualifications in order to regulate the practice of medicine, but it is perverse to try to apply it to literary criticism. Over and above the limitations and opportunities provided by the number of words available and the kind of audience being addressed, what will determine whether or not it is good literary criticism will be the presence or absence of such qualities as intelligence, knowledge, and sensitivity to language.

Forging the Past: The Language of Historical Truth in Middle Ages

IN THE HIERARCHY OF VALUES by which most historians live, truth stands higher than fiction, and prose higher than verse. Indeed, two are commonly linked, for prose, as a language of fact, is thought to tommunicate more accurately than poetry those truths about human experience which it is task of history to recount. This assumed affinity between history and prose, with its implicit assertion of truth-value of prose in historical discourse, so unexceptional to us, nonetheless runs counter to fundamental poetic and rhetorical traditions of ancient world. To Aristotle, for example, writing in Poetics, the distinction between historian and poet lies not in one writing prose and other (you might, says Aristotle, put work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history), but rather that history describes thing that has been, while poetry is concerned with what might be.1 Similarly, for Quintillian, history was genre most akin to poetry, since dignity of its subject matter made it most deserving of stylistic elaboration. 2 In embellishment of his topic, ancient historian was allowed, indeed encouraged, to use poetical language, employ unusual words, surprise with verbal paradoxes, and delight with complicated figures of speech and unexpected patterns of phrases.3 What distinguished history for ancients was not its level of discourse, whether high or low, versified or prosaic, nor even its truth-since poetic statements, according to Aristotle, being universal in nature where those of history were merely singular, were by nature more

The Textualization of Oedipus in Vittorio Alfieri

THE TEXTUALIZATION OF OEDIPUS IN VITTORIO ALFIERI JULIANA SCHIESARI Vittorio Alfieri's tragedy Antigone is not simply a work of art com- i.e., pleting the teleologica! process of gente fulfillment, the tragedy, but rather a poetic statement of the author's own personal anarchistic temperament. The origins of such a temperament can he discerned through a psychological interpretation of Alfieri's Vita, keeping in mind, however, that the autobiography tained in too, when considered as a gente presents an instance of wtiting unique for the degree of ambiguity con- its purported sincerity. Nevertheless, the inter-relationship of author, text and reader creates certain dynamics which are the focus of this paper. Antigone deals with universal and analysis of the various ethical problems, and a historical Antigones would reveal that each author con- in ceived his work in relation to the social, politicai and moral problems which concerned him during the time at which he lived. If one glances the differences between Sophocles' character Antigone and Alfieri's, is one struck by the ideologica! considerations principal play. The argument in Sophocles' which differentiate each work is the question of laws. That which appears to be an act of lawless rebellion by the Sophoclean Antigone proves in the end to be guided by a superior law to which she gives unswerving allegience. She is inspired, not by a passionate hatred for Creon but by an impassioned desire to obey the laws which

Parasitaster or The Fawn by John Marston, and: The Shoemaker’s Holiday by Thomas Dekker, and: Eastward Ho by George Chapman, Ben Jonson, John Marston

Reviews 87 among world audiences and among literati like Joyce, Freud, and Shaw, Haugen illuminates the cause for such lasting effect in the previous chapter, tying together the essential elements of his linguistic model: “By remaining uncommitted, he [Ibsen] could capitalize on his divided self, enabling him to take the topics of the times, project them on the stage, give them an underlying significance, and make a poetic statement that could reach the hearts of women and men, and not only in his own time” (p. 108). Nicely indexed, Haugen’s book combines eight attractive pages of black and white photographs relative to Ibsen’s life and work with appendices chronicling Ibsen’s life and summarizing Ibsen’s com­ pleted plays (excluding the 1851 N o rm a ). The specific bibliography, while moderate, does list available English translations and major critical contributions. And despite the impression that Haugen’s rather compre­ hensive approach to so many topics of Ibsen study seems to reduce the book to broad observations and limit his own obviously expert assess­ ments with a heavy reliance on other critics, such an overview is useful. One area neglected for the most part, however, is that concerning specific influences on Ibsen, though perhaps not directly related to audience response as Haugen defines it, but certainly important for understanding Ibsen’s symbols and rhetorical techniques. Generally speaking, the real strength of Einar Haugen’s book, a by-product of his teaching, is reflected in its instructive aim: to encourage Ibsen scholars and novices alike to search out the message in “Ibsen’s drama” by providing an essentially clear and clearly essential framework for evaluating what Ibsen and Ibsen critics have to say, “author to audience.” SAMUEL G. McLELLAN U n iversity o f T exas at A u stin John Marston. P arasitaster o r T h e F aw n. Ed. David A. Blostein. The Revels Plays. Manchester and Baltimore: Manchester Univ. Press and Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978. Pp. xii + 244. $16.50. Thomas Dekker. T h e Shoem aker's H o lid a y. Ed. R. L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells. The Revels Plays. Manchester Univ. Press and Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979. Pp. xiv + 227. $17.00. George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston. E astw a rd H o. Ed. R. W. Van Fossen. The Revels Plays. Manchester Univ. Press and Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979. Pp. xviii + 238. $17.00. Most volumes in the Revels Plays series provide an index to annota­ tions with asterisks identifying notes where information is given that is not in the O x fo rd E nglish D iction ary—usually an earlier date for a word or a new meaning. Typically there are from twenty to forty such notes for each play, and the reader is reminded both that playwrights of Shakespeare’s age were on the cutting edge of a movement that enor­ mously increased English vocabulary and that our knowledge of the his­ tory of the language continues to expand. According to Gustav Cross, 88 Comparative Drama John Marston “is cited by the O E D oftener than any of the other writers at work at the turn of the Sixteenth Century except Shakespeare for the first recorded use of long-established words in a new sense” (“Some Notes on the Vocabulary of John Marston,” N o tes an d Q ueries, 199 [1954], 425); and in a series of articles Cross proceeded to list hundreds of Marstonisms m issed by the O E D . Now David A. Blostein in his Revels edition of Marston’s Parasitaster or The F aw n (written and performed 1604-5) lists 108 “words whose sense or usage [in the play] antedates the earliest example” in the O E D . Some were pointed out by Cross, but some are new. For example, the word criticism (IV.i.271) is “apparently the first appearance of the word in the language” (first recorded in the O E D in 1607), and C iceronian in the sense “worthy of Cicero in style” (III.i.279) anticipates the first O E D example of 1661 by two generations and a civil war...

Beethoven and Einthoven—More Than a Rhyme

Every sickness is a musical problem, wrote the 19th-century romantic poet Novalis, every cure a musical solution.1Such a poetic statement does not lend itself to easy comprehension. It would have been better understood in centuries past, when the metaphors of the body as a harp and its functions as a part of cosmic harmony were meaningful, when Hippocrates conceived health as harmony of the four humors, and when, according to Francis Bacon in hisAdvancement of Learning(1606): The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, because the office of medicine is to tune this curious harp of man's body and to reduce it to harmony. Stopping short of identifying therapy with music, we must acknowledge a strong historical link between the two. In many primitive societies music has been, and continues to be, an integral part of the ritual of exorcism that is intended