Poetic Theory Research Articles

MATHEMATICS, MUSIC AND POETRY IN NATURE MAGAZINE AND IN THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SOFYA KOVALEVSKAYA AND J.J. SYLVESTER

The article examines the relationship between music, poetry and mathematics in the sonnet of mathematician J.J. Sylvester, dedicated to woman mathematician S.V. Kovalevskaya. The poetic theory of J.J. Sylvester and its reflection in the sonnet are considered. In addition, the history of acquaintance of S.V. Kovalevskaya and J.J. Sylvester is traced.

A Review of the Research on the Origin and Connotation of the Theory of "When There is Inequality, There is a Cry"

Han Yu is a very important figure in the history of Chinese literature and thought. Su Shi of the Song Dynasty once evaluated his contributions as "the rise of literature and the decline of eight generations, and the drowning of the righteous". His theory of 'When there is inequality, there is a cry' is one of the famous poetic theories in ancient China, which has always been highly valued. However, researchers have different opinions on it, and there are also significant differences. This article focuses on the origin and connotation of the theory, and provides a research review based on the research of modern scholars on the concept of "inequality leads to prosperity".

Эстетические свойства жанра классической китайской поэзии цы и духовно-нравственная основа их становления с точки зрения «красоты слабости как добродетели»

The article analyzes the aesthetic properties of the genre of classical Chinese poetry Сi and the spiritual-moral basis of their formation from the point of view of the concept “The beauty of weakness as virtue”, put forward by the famous specialist in the field of classical Chinese poetry Ye Jiaying. The relevance of the topic is determined by the fact that, although many classical Chinese Ci poems have been translated into Russian, there is little research on the aesthetic properties of the genre itself, especially from the point of view of modern Chinese poetic theory. The article uses methods of description, interpretation, historical-cultural and contextual analysis. The article aims is to explain the aesthetic properties and the reason for their formation from the point of view of the concept “The beauty of weakness as a virtue”. It is ahown that the aesthetic properties of the Ci lie in the presence of a deeply hidden, inexhaustible understatement in poetry. Formally, this is created by alternating long and short verses; at the semantic level, the understatement in poetry appeared as a result of the forced transformation of the inexpressible feelings and emotions of the poet, who was in a weak position, but at the same time showed the quality of endurance, restraint and commitment to something good. The influence of the ideas of Confucianism on the formation of the aesthetic properties of Ci poetry allows us to speak not only about its artistic-aesthetic, but also its spiritual-moral significance. Altogether, it allows us to give a decent assessment of the Ci genre, which for a long time was perceived as a genre less valuable than the Shi genre.

Aberrant Shakespeare: Ron Athey’s Excesses, Bataille’s Solar Anus, Becomings-Macbeth

l In this article we argue that Ron Athey’s performance Solar Anus is an aberrant adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in which the parodic world of abundant excess that the witches catalyze is redemptively captured and transformed through the playful, androgynous, and excessive performance of Athey, who fulfills the witches’ prophecy and continues to live on sovereignly as both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Athey is a Los Angeles-based performance artist who practices what is sometimes called “extreme performance,” exploring the limits of aesthetics and the capabilities of the human body to express both beauty and pain. His work Solar Anus draws on the works of Georges Bataille, especially his short essay-poem, Solar Anus, as well as Paul Molinier, a queer French painter and visual artist who worked on the fringes of the surrealist movement. We work through the combined sociopolitical theory, performance aesthetics, and research methodology of transversal poetics and engage especially with the theories and explorations of aesthetics and sovereignty by Georges Bataille and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in order to explore the ways in which Athey is capable of realizing the witches’ prophecy of sovereignty without being destroyed by the parodic world that they create and inhabit. Alongside the concepts of sovereignty, we examine how Bataille’s ideas of parody, sacrifice, and excess offer new ways of understanding the world of Macbeth and how excess and sovereignty both function within its porous borders.

Reflection of in Narkh (Price) Pashto Rhymed Literature

Jirgas and talks grounded on the idea of (Power and Price) are the means by which the issues that arise among the Pashtuns are resolved. The article's goal is to pinpoint the Pashtuns' shared understanding of Narkh (price). It is a field study with a bibliographic focus, and the researcher employed both descriptive and analytical methods to achieve this goal. In any location or nation where there is a dearth of educated individuals, people would always resort to their civil laws in an attempt to resolve disputes or other issues. Among these rules and precepts, the majority of Pashtuns, particularly the tribes centered in Paktia, have a particular folk law known as Narkh (Price), which they frequently apply to resolve disputes. Narkh literally means "price" or "public law." Price, as it is known locally, refers to the customary choice made by the Merakchis (interviewers) to resolve a conflict between two or more individuals, families, villages, or tribes. Regarding societal concerns, there are many different kinds of prices: the cost of heat, the cost of cold, the cost of preparing halal food, the cost of murder, the cost of Quba, the cost of a woman, the cost of a woman on the run, the cost of theft, and the cost of walking off the road. Similarly, the price, or Jirga, has been referenced in literature, both written and oral, and it has served as the basis for poetic theory in this regard.

Figure and Ground in Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss”: A Cognitive Reading

“Bliss” is a masterpiece of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. This article aims to illustrate the prominence of figures and thematic ideas in “Bliss” and to explore its internal cognitive principles based on the figure-ground theory of cognitive poetics. In “Bliss”, the prominence of character, image and theme gives rise to the formation and reversal of “figure” and “ground” within the literary text. Through the conflict between different characters such as extramarital affair or triangle love, the focalization of various images like fire, moonlight and pear tree, and the alienation of narrative techniques and language expressions, for example, the third-person and psychological narratives, as well as the visual changes in color words, “Bliss” successfully achieves the prominence of literary figures, expresses the writer’s emotions and creative intentions, and deepens the connotations of the story’s themes. The prominence of “happy” and “unhappy” figures of the protagonist Bertha Young highlights the story’s grounds and themes: after years of happiness in marriage that may have turned into dreamy illusions, women must rely on their own strength to live independently, confidently, and strongly, correctly recognizing their identities in family, finding their positions in society, and living out brilliance and happiness in daily life.

The Impersonal Theory of Poetry in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” by TS Eliot

Eliot, an important poet, playwright, and literary critic of the nineteenth century in the United States, was the founder of Western modernism. He pioneered the modern poetic criticism. His practice of modernist poetry is the transition from traditionalist poetics to modernist poetics in the 20th century. His famous poetics theory declaration “Tradition and the Individual Talent” is an immortal classic in the field of poetics theory, in which he proposed the concept of “Traditional,” the theory of “Impersonal” poetry, “Objective Correlative,” and so on. All had a profound influence on the 20th-century poetry creation. This paper aims to analyze and discuss the important “Impersonal” theory from the three aspects of its connotation, the relationship between “Personality” and its intertextuality with New Criticism, so as to further understand Eliot’s poetic concepts.

Breaking down in fits and starts: navigating a good naturalisation of J. H. Prynne’s ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ (2004)

ABSTRACT This article analyses J. H. Prynne’s ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ (2004) in relation to his own poetic theories. By bringing together Prynne’s poetry and theory, I show how ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ encourages a special type of reading: increasingly close rereading. Sense is made at multiple levels: words, syllables, even letters come together to signify in unconventional ways. Turning to Veronica Forrest-Thomson’s theory of ‘good naturalisation’, I demonstrate how each type of closer reading integrates and elucidates previously obscure elements of the poem. At the level of words (where the familiar sense-making of intertext occurs) and at the level of syllables (where the less familiar sense-making of diachronic phonology occurs), my analysis fits in well between Prynne and Forrest-Thomson’s theories. But by reading even more closely, at the level of letters, I argue additionally that ‘Blue Slides at Rest’ evolves Prynne’s poetic theory.

“But his sense of justice turned him into a brigand and a murderer.” On Gunther Teubner’s “Self-subversive Justice: Contingency or Transcendence Formula of Law?”

Abstract Teubner’s article on self-subversive justice is an inspiring example of the way in which he tries to move forward Luhmann’s sociological endeavour of understanding law in terms of how it understands itself. Moving Luhmann’s autopoietic systems theory forward is something that Teubner significantly does in many of his writings. Here he contrasts various social and legal philosophical accounts with a potential sociological account of justice that utilises the contrasting versions of both Luhmann’s autopoietic systems theory and Derrida’s deconstruction theory. To appreciate how justice operates self-subversively is to appreciate how law cannot avoid striving to overcome itself, and how justice both in its many universal and alterity forms enables this. Teubner gets close to marrying not only Luhmann and Derrida, but also sociological theory and literary or poetic theory; also marrying judicial creativity with that of other creative arts. Law constantly looks to justice within its own practices, but at the same time beyond those practices and thereby challengingly confronting itself and its search for justice in doing so.

A Study on the Integrity of the Work in Wang Fuzhi’s Poetic Theory

A Study on the Integrity of the Work in Wang Fuzhi’s Poetic Theory

Study of the poetic language in the poetry of Ibn Hammad Al-Adawi according to Todorov’s poetic theory - Ashura poems as an example

Study of the poetic language in the poetry of Ibn Hammad Al-Adawi according to Todorov’s poetic theory - Ashura poems as an example

Unlyric: The Lute-Object in Early Modern English Poetry

ABSTRACT Considering that early modern poetic theory retains the classical genealogies and iconographies of lyric poetry as song to the accompaniment of a lyre, how can one account for lyrics which portray the poet’s stringed instrument, frequently the lute, as antithetical to his or her poetic aspirations, as a recalcitrant tool that resists the poet’s desires and thus engenders a lyric crisis? This article uses object-oriented ontology (OOO) to think through the lyric poet’s relationship with the lute which, fractured between real object and its sensual qualities, withdraws its essential being from access yet involves the poet in a network of sensual and essentially aesthetic bonds with the instrument. By reading several early modern riddles, sonnets, and other lyrics about deviant lutes as encounters between human and nonhuman objects, the article traces the poetics of unlyric — a form of poetry that disentangles poiesis from musical subjectivity and harmony, articulating instead a vision of lyric as fraught negotiations between entities whose forces lie beyond the powers of human art.

Poetic Theory and Practice in Early Modern Verse: Unwritten Arts ed. by Zenón Luis-Martínez (review)

Poetic Theory and Practice in Early Modern Verse: Unwritten Arts ed. by Zenón Luis-Martínez (review)

<葛驛雜詠>의 성격과 그 의의

“Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng (葛驛雜詠)” is a condensed piece of Sam-yŏn Kim Ch’anghŭp’s lifelong poetic practice, and can be seen as a representative work of Sam-yŏn’s literature and of the changes in Korean classical Chinese poetry in the 18th century. This study discusses the writing principle of the work and the method of composition in order to identify the core nature of “Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng.” “Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng” embraces various poetic materials, but a specific writing principle runs through it. In this article, I will refer to it as “investigation of things (格物窮理)” or “attaining knowledge through investigation of things (格物致知).” The writing principal of “Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng,” that is, “attaining knowledge through investigation of things,” as a literary deed is fundamentally based on a concept from Neo- Confucianism, but has a concrete implication in relation to Kim Ch’anghŭp’s theory on literature which is represented as “Ch’ŏn-ki (天機, secret of nature)” theory. In other words, this expression refers to “the act of discovering the heavenly principles embodied in Ch’ŏn-ki” or “the act of discovering the reasoning of the world by observing things and thinking about their rightness and wrongness, and their truth and false.” In accordance with this writing principle, the works of “Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng” can be divided into two categories: the expression of “the process or result of inquiry into the object of perception” and the illustration of “the subject of perception” as the premise that makes such an inquiry possible. The former is a direct result of the “investigation of things,” and the latter presents a “true poetic subject” who can practice the “investigation of things,” embodying the Ch’ŏn-ki of the subject.
 In the following sections, I examine the aspects of creation of these works within each type. First, the poems that correspond to the embodiment of the perceiving subject were created in two ways. One is a poem that describes the image of the true self, manifested in a way that emphasizes the idealized image of the self in harmony and unity. The other is retrospection and reflection through the direct utterance of the poetic self. A retrospective look at life is part of establishing a true self, and a reflective attitude seeks the truthfulness of the perceiving subject. This materialization of the perceiving subject is a way of revealing the subject’s Ch’ŏn-ki, which adds credibility and weight to the utterance in “Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng.” Next, I examine the types of works that show the process and results of perception or “investigation of things.” These works can be divided into three types: poems that explore reason through the observation of familiar objects, poems that discuss human history and the principles of the operation of the heavens and earth, and poems that criticize and denounce various problems in human affairs. The second type is closely associated with the world view of Yi (易) based on Sao Yong’s Image-numerology (象數學), and it is noteworthy that the barbarians’ domination of China was understood in terms of a “fateful” view of human history.
 Kim Ch’anghŭp’s entire poetic world can be viewed as the aesthetic practice of his own ideas, philosophy, and poetic theory, and “Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng” is the work in which he most actively and successfully combines his theory and practice. This is another important basis for placing Kal-yŏk Chap-yŏng” at the pinnacle of Sam-yŏn Kim Ch’anghŭp’s poetics.

V. Khlebnikov’s “Bobaobi sang lips...” in Chinese reception

At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries in China, the understanding of the modernist trends of the Russian Silver Age deepened and expanded. The perception of futurism is subject to scientific and creative rethinking. The number of representatives of the Russian futurist movement who deserve the attention of Chinese specialists in translation, research, and critical activities is increasing. The reception of V. Khlebnikov’s work, taking into account the comprehension of futurist aesthetics and his poetic theory, determines the problems of modern Chinese studies of Russian futurism. The authors examine the theoretical and practical reception of V. Khlebnikov’s works in China, analyze the perception of V. Khlebnikov’s work by two Chinese specialists - Wang Zonghu (the main expert in the theory of abstruse language) and Zheng Tiwu (the main translator of the poet’s work in China). Identification of the degree of adequacy of the perception of the poet’s language experiments is carried out using the example of a comparative analysis of translations of the poem “Bobeobi lips sang…” into Chinese. The Chinese reader owes the discovery of V. Khlebnikov as the theorist and founder of Russian futurism to the skill of researchers and translators.

Thinking on Six Feet: The Joy of the Kannada Kuvalayānanda

Abstract Jāyagauḍa’s Kannaḍakuvalayānanda, the name may suggest, is another run-of-the-mill regional adaptation of Appayya Dīkṣita’s bestseller textbook of Sanskrit poetics—The Joy of the Night Lily (Kuvalayānanda). However, a close reading of Jāyagauḍa’s definitions and more importantly, his carefully curated examples, tells a different story. Jāyagauḍa’s text is by no means a slavish translation, nor is his aim to present a brandnew, local theory of poetic figures. Rather, the Kannaḍakuvalayānanda places recent ṣaṭpadi poetry at the center-stage of poetics and creatively shifts the valence of understanding figures from abstract theory to writerly and readerly practice, beginning with Appayya Dīkṣita’s own examples. The interaction of a “Sanskrit” poetic theory with a Kannada poetic memory here produces most unusual results. This experiment also draws our attention to a dazzlingly new (and as it turns out, very traditional) mode of doing literary criticism—in Sanskrit as well as in Kannada.

워즈워스의 「폐허가 된 오두막」과 영국 낭만주의

This paper explores how Wordsworth’s “The Ruined Cottage” embodies and directs the course that Romantic poetry will take, predating his poetic world, the meaning of his poetry, and the essence of poetic theory proclaimed in the Preface to his poetry collection, Lyrical Ballads. In doing so, this paper shall focus on the representation of nature and suffering, considering the dramatic frame as the focal point through which we can glimpse the transformation of Wordsworth’s thought. In “The Ruined Cottage” Wordsworth chooses an ordinary person, Margaret, as the subject matter for a tragic poem, and undertakes the work of mourning. This approach overturns or deviates from the dominant principles of Neo-classicism, allowing Wordsworth to implement his empathy for common people within the realms of literature and criticism. I shall argue that this choice represents novelty and poetic experimentation, serving as a revolutionary declaration about poetry, and impling a subdued form of political engagement. The attitude towards nature and humanity displayed by the wandering peddler and his meditative mind is similar to Wordsworth's perception of nature and humanity revealed through the ruined monastery in “Tintern Abbey”.

Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology among Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze

Abstract In the 1983 article “My Chances/Mes chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean Stereophonies,” Jacques Derrida gives philological questions massive philosophical significance by reading the long âgon between idealist and materialist philosophy through a philological crux in the text of Lucretius’s De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). Tracing philological debates that have surrounded Lucretius from the Renaissance onward, this article argues that Lucretius’s poetic theory of interlinked atomic and textual swerves and the philological history that has mediated them were important touchstones for both Derrida and the other major twentieth-century philosopher of difference, Gilles Deleuze. Additionally, the article argues that for both Derrida and Deleuze, the clinamen offers a theory not only of how atoms or alphabetical letters swerve or even split, but also of how a philosophical tradition such as materialism refuses to run in a straight, unitary line. This is a question of how to understand reception history: either as an unbroken tradition of faithful imitation and replication (a family genealogy, grouped under the name of the father, “Lucretius” for example), or else as something less patriarchal, less heteronormative, less faithful. Read this way, the swerve offers a rethinking of the methods of reception history itself.

Chan Gong’an and the “Flexible Method”: A Study on Xuedou Chongxian’s Classic Eulogies and Its Influence on Poetics

This paper argues that as poetics in the Song Dynasty developed, the thinking mode and methods of written expression in Chan Buddhism provided a theoretical reference and creative practical experience for the formation of poetic theories. This point is particularly evident in the formation of the “flexible method”, which was a key theory in poetics of the Song Dynasty. The theory comprises three layers of meaning: it advocates respecting forms, changing the meaning of those forms, and retaining the inherent grace of the forms through a natural and fluent syntax and rhetoric of “defamiliarization”. This theory was highly mature in the writing of Lv Benzhong of the Southern Song Dynasty. Xuedou Chongxian (980–1052), a sixth-generation Chan Buddhist at Xuedou Temple, made a vital contribution to its development, which is highlighted by studying the “Hundred Classic Eulogies”. Xuedou Chongxian initially constructed the connotation and system of the theory of the “flexible method” in both theoretical and practical aspects. His theory of poetics is rooted in the ways of thinking and cultivating of the Yunmen sect. He incorporated his dual identity as a senior monk of the Yunmen School and a poet. He inherited Guanxiu’s view of poetry and the Chan concept of Shitou Xiqian and Zhimen Guangzuo, which greatly impacted the literati of the Northern Song Dynasty and provided a conceptual basis for maturing and improving the “flexible method” theory. Therefore, Xuedou Chongxian’s value in the theoretical construction of the “flexible method” should not be ignored.

Poetics of Defamiliarisation in Craig Raine’s Selected Poems

Defamiliarisation is one of the techniques that has been studied by literary criticism; especially the Russian formalist one. It is the technique of alienating or making estrangement. This study attempts at investigating the three devices of defamiliarisation (deviation, foregrounding, and antithesis) in Craig Raine’s selected poems: “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home” “An Attempt at Jealousy” and “Heaven on Earth”. The selected poems represent Raine’s best poems and the prominent example exemplifying the use of defamiliarisation in his poetry. The study aims at uncovering the poetic and aesthetic function of the technique of defamiliarisation in Raine’s poems. The significance of this study lies in its focusing on the role of defamiliarisation in communicating themes of the three poems. It applies Jan Mukařovský’s formalist theory, Roman Jakobson’s theory of poetics and Roger Fowler's theory of literary discourse. It concludes that three techniques of defamiliarisation perform their poetic and aesthetic functions through their metrical structures, which are constructed over the structures of the linguistic expressions of the poetic lines.