Poetry Research Articles

The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism by Giada Guassardo

Reviewed by: The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism by Giada Guassardo Jane E. Everson The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism. By Giada Guassardo. (Biblioteca dell' 'Archivium Romanicum', ser. 1: Storia, Letteratura, Paleografia, 508) Florence: Olschki. 2021. viii+244 pp. €26. ISBN 978–8822–26731–3. This volume, which principally publishes the findings of the author's Oxford D.Phil. thesis, presents an impressively wide-ranging discussion. The title is apt, since although the core of each section of the monograph is constituted by Ariosto's vernacular lyric corpus, the emphasis throughout is on the setting of individual lyrics in a series of relevant contexts: literary—Italian vernacular poetry, especially Petrarch and the subsequent fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century developments; Latin lyric poetry, in particular of the Augustan period; the social and cultural milieux experienced by Ariosto; and the immediately contemporary and biographical factors, especially those related to the Ferrarese court. Thus alongside Ariosto's lyrics the volume quotes liberally from the lyrics of Bembo, Boiardo, Tebaldeo, Serafino Aquilano among contemporary poets, and from Ovid, Propertius, and Catullus for the Latin tradition. The volume is divided into three main sections, each of which is subdivided into a number of subsections which address discrete parts of the argument. A substantial Introduction (pp. 3–30) summarizes the complex situation regarding Ariosto's lyrics and the two main groups into which these fall: the 'canzoniere' for [End Page 261] poems selected by Ariosto with a view to constituting a coherent collection; and the 'rime extravaganti', for those not selected for this collection; the general features of the lyric corpus; and the range of influences to be examined in detail in the volume. The first chapter is then dedicated to Ariosto's Elegiac Self-Fashioning' (pp. 31–83). This is centred on an analysis of four of the capitoli from the 'canzoniere' for which the influence of classical Latin elegy is considered of particular note, while the element of self-fashioning is consistently set alongside the Satire for purposes of comparison and contrast. The subsections discuss 'the tradition of the parting between two lovers', 'love and warfare', 'a poem addressed to Ippolito', 'a mission to Florence', 'the journey to the Garfagnana', and the 'portrait of the lyric speaker as a lover'—and these subheadings aptly underline the historical, political, and biographical dimensions of the lyric poems, while the discussion brings out Ariosto's use of both classical and humanist Latin verse. The second chapter, entitled 'Ariosto, the Lyric Lover' (pp. 85–162), aims to analyse the complex and often ambivalent type, or better types, of lover relationship envisaged by the poet. The discussion here is at times quite dense, partly on account of the number of different approaches and influences considered, and the complex tradition and uncertain chronology of Ariosto's lyrics. The chapter considers 'Love encounters' discussed with reference to both Petrarchan and classical Latin parallels; 'fides and constancy', which engages appropriately with similar arguments in the Orlando furioso; 'the courtly–Petrarchan celebration of women' and 'the flight of the poet: cases of metapoetry'—two sections which deal especially with the relevance of the myths of Icarus and Phaethon for the Ferrarese court and its poets; 'between realism and myth'; and lastly a study of the final poem of the 'canzoniere'. There is undoubtedly a wealth of interesting and thought-provoking information in the sections of this chapter, but at times the desire to include numerous possible parallels and influences detracts from the focus on Ariosto's lyrics, and the force of the argument is lost. Chapter 3, devoted to 'The Portrayal of Women' (pp. 163–215), illustrates what for this reviewer is the chief weakness of the approach used, namely the almost inevitable overlap of material and argument between the three chapters. Chapter 2 already treated aspects of the portrayal of women in discussing the relationship issues, while here the lover and his views arising from his relationships recur. Poems already discussed in previous chapters are treated again, from slightly different perspectives, but it becomes nonetheless difficult to see the wood for the trees—as other texts, by Ariosto and others...

The Sonnets: Including the Erotic Sonnets, the Crimean Sonnets, and Uncollected Sonnets [Sonety

The Sonnets: Including the Erotic Sonnets, the Crimean Sonnets, and Uncollected Sonnets [Sonety

Metaphors We Love By: The Shift from Animal to Fruit Metaphors in Classical Arabic Ghazal

ABSTRACT Classical Arabic poetry is replete with animal and fruit metaphors commonly used for endearment purposes. The comparative analysis of love metaphors in classical ghazal shows, however, a shift in the poetics of love from the use of animal metaphors in Badi poetry to the occurrence of fruit imagery in Bedouin ghazal. Based on a selection of classical Arabic love poetry, the paper traces the journey of love and sexuality to illustrate the conceptual change from the prevalence of the gazelle metaphor in Bedouin ghazal of pre- and early Islam times to the emergence of fruit metaphors in Badi poetry of the Abbasid era. Evidenced in poetry, the metaphorical shit mirrors a change in the portrayal of women, who cease to be conceived as wild preys, fearing and fleeing male hunters to become exotic ripe fruits, waiting for the male to pick. Seemingly fortuitous, the shift in love imagery is reminiscent of sociocultural changes that help redefine the poetics of love in classical Arabic literature and inform gender dynamics in medieval Arabia.

The Problematic Nature of Periodization and the Alleged Paradigm Shifts: Courtly Love Poetry (Minnesang), Petrarch’s Sonnets, Goethe’s Erotic Compositions, and Brecht’s Dreams of Love

This study raises the scepter regarding the heuristic value of literary periodization and hence also of the concept of the paradigm shift. Undoubtedly, throughout time, changes in the cultural epochs took place, and we can easily determine larger cultural, material, technical, political, and religious transformations Hence the genre of literary histories that inform us in a concise and authoritative manner about that phenomenon. By the same token, however, we might be forced to realize that many of those changes taking place from period to period affected more the form and the text-external references and less the idealistic concern by the individual poets. To illustrate this phenomenon, here I trace a long-term discourse on love from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century to identify a fundamental trope that resisted all paradigm shifts and proved to have a universal staying power beyond all measures. Although value systems and social-economic conditions underwent profound changes from the past to the present, the human dimension itself was apparently quite resistant to those transitions, as the topic of love confirms from the earliest time until today.

The Body in Arabic Love Poetry: The ʿUdhri Tradition, written by Jokha Alharthi

The Body in Arabic Love Poetry: The ʿUdhri Tradition, written by Jokha Alharthi

Robert Burns's Poetry During Critical Years in China

Robert Burns never came to China, never read about China, nor wrote about China. But he is known almost by every cultured person in China. It is the Chinese writers and translators who introduced him to China. His poems played different significant roles in different periods during critical years. His love poems helped him enter China; his patriotic poems encouraged Chinese youth to fight for the country's freedom and independence; his folk-song style set example for young Chinese poets to follow; his love for people won the heart of Chinese readers.

Midsummer

"Midsummer" is a love poem of sorts for my wife, whose family has lived for a long time in St. Mawes, a tiny seaside village on the southern coast of Cornwall, UK.

Least Expected

"Least Expected" is a love poem comparing the lovers to "a simile torn in half//just before its like," a meditation on disappointed expectations in context of an ended relationship. The poem compares the lovers to a "severed and perseverating pair" like lungs, meditating on loving as breathing and on the tension between likeness and difference in a relationship and in the nature of metaphor.

Characteristics and Beauty of Modern Poetry by Ibn Zaidun

This study aims to analyze the characteristics and beauty of modern poetry by Ibn Zaidun, who was one of the leading poets in modern times in Andalusia during the reign of the Umayyads. This research is a library research with a qualitative descriptive research method. The data and data sources are words or sentences that are included in the poetry section of Ibn Zaidun's work. In this study, we will discuss in detail the characteristics and beauty of Ibn Zaidun's poetry. The results of this study indicate that Ibn Zaidun is a poet who writes a lot about love poetry (al-Ghazal), even though this poem still contains sub-themes such as praise (al-Madh). Of the several themes of this poem, Walladah is the one who inspired the writing of Ibn Zaidun's poems. The form of the beauty of poetry that will be studied is in terms of theme, emotion ('athifah), imagination (khayāl), style of language and poetry of poetry which includes the science of balaghah, 'arudl, and qawafi. It is from these studies that the beauty of the language of Ibn Zaidun's poetry will be seen, so that we can find out the form of the beauty of the famous poetry at that time.

Race and the legacy of slavery in Yemen

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that racism in modern Yemen cannot be fully understood without considering the country’s long history of slavery. Focusing on two Black social groups known as Muhammashīn and ʿAbīd, I will show that contributions from historical slavery studies can deepen our understanding of their persistent marginalization. Sources from the medieval period prove that the association of blackness with slavery was already firmly established in the medieval period, largely due to a popular myth and the fact that most enslaved persons in medieval Yemen were of African origin. A love poem about a Black woman of slave ancestry will be analyzed in detail, as it reveals how racialized rhetoric was used to demarcate the borders of group identity, and how these borders nevertheless remained porous and contested. Finally, I offer a new interpretation of the status difference between the Muhammashīn and the ʿAbīd in contemporary Yemen, which has puzzled modern scholars.

The Amatory Hejnał (Bugle Call). An Old Polish Genre of a Morning Love Song

The article presents the genre of the Polish amatory hejnał, defined in C. Hernas’ Hejnał polski. Studium z historii poezji melicznej (1961). This original genre, as well as other Polish poems which could be classified as aubade, was not included in A.T. Hatto’s collection Eos: An Enquiry into the Theme of Lovers’ Meetings and Partings at Dawn in Poetry (1965). The author of this article, focusing much of her research on medieval and early modern morning love poems, enumerates the features of amatory hejnał, showing its literary sources, in particular the scheme taken from Ovid’s Amores i 13. Although the amatory hejnał derived from a parody of M. Rej’s religious hymn (drunken, rural, or a political variation, among others), it then combined the features of aubade, serenade and Latin elegy and entered the group of European songs of lovers meeting at dawn. The main authors discussed here are the 17th-century poets, Hieronim and Zbigniew Morsztyn.

THEMATIC APPROACH TO AZIM SUYUN’S POEMS

Azim Suyun was born on February 22, 1948 in the village of Nakurt, in the province of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. He is known for his works in the genres of story, drama, epic, poetry and translation in Uzbek Literature. In addition to his; he has many works written about poetry and poet. The poet is one of the important figures of Uzbek Literature in the Soviet and Independence Period. Azim Suyun did not remain indifferent to the problems of the age in which he lived, and dealt with the existing troubles and the events he personally witnessed in his works. At the same time, the poet drew attention to the unique beauties of the geography he lived in after mentioning the historical importance of the ancient cities of Uzbekistan. Between 1978 and 2020, Azim Suyun came to the forefront with his works written on many subjects such as love, nature, family, homeland, nation, independence, language, religion, goodness, philosophy, historical and literary figures, poets and poetry, criticism and so on. In the study, after the subjects that the poet mainly deals with in his poems are mentioned, his works are examined thematically. It covered classified under eight headings as “Poems About Homeland and Nation”, “Literary Personalities”, “Poems About Poet”, “Criticism Poems”, “Poems on Religious Subjects”, “Poems About Nature”, “Poems About Seasons” and “Love Poems”. In this study, it is aimed to introduce his works by emphasizing the aesthetic power and poetic features of the poet’s poems.

The Waste Land: Eliot’s Neo-Empire

Thomas Stearns Eliot's The Waste Land is a mysterious enigmatic text in both its form and content which still invites many critics and reviewers to an infinite range of interpretations finding in it a striking departure from nineteenth century poetry and raising the flag of modernism and postmodernism. Its appearance in 1922 started a critical debate among critics who found it hard to place both because of the poet's complex artistic strategies and because of the poem's kaleidoscopic orchestrated structure. From this perspective, the present paper is mainly concerned with the poem’s kaleidoscopic structure highlighting the text's intertextuality, heterogeneity and multiculturalism. It seeks to re-read and investigate the poem from the perspective of Edward Said's Postcolonial theory proving that the poem’s encyclopedic structure achieves for the poet a form of Neo-Colonialism where the poet’s intellectual domination replaces the territorial one. The study concludes by showing that The Waste Land is an early example of postmodernism where the text becomes the poet’s Neo-empire.

Mahabbah Love Rabiah Al Adawiyah's Discourse (Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutic Study)

Da'wah is transcendental communication in doing good. Prophetic communication in da'wah communication shows that later a communicator or what is commonly called a preacher in da'wah communication will convey divine messages to the honeymooners/congregations or communicants. The three pillars as the characteristics of prophetic social science are amar ma'ruf (humanization), nahi munkar (liberation), and faith in Allah (transcendence). Hermeneutics has a foundation for understanding the birth of a text in a certain context or how a context gives rise to certain texts. In this study using qualitative methods with literature studies using paul ricoeur's hermeneutic analysis. The result of this research is that in Rabiah Al-Adawiyah's Mahabbah love poem, everyone's life will experience suffering. Rabiah's poem contains the prophetic values of amar ma'ruf (humanization), nahi munkar (liberation), and faith in Allah (transcendence). In the context of da'wah communication, Rabiah Al Adawiyah is a communicator. The source of communication that Rabiah took was from the upbringing she received. The communication messages conveyed by Rabiah aim for us to always worship and prioritize Allah. The da'wah medium used is the poetry delivered by Rabih in the book Mahabbah Cinta Rabiah Al Adawiyah, Jamaah or honey or communicants who receive the message are us, the readers of this book. The purpose of the activities carried out is to invite people like Rabiah who they are devoted to worship and really love Allah as their Lord. The feedback generated in this communication process is in a positive direction where no reader has expressed dissatisfaction with the writing in this book.

Хұсрау-Шырын» поэмасы және түркі халықтарының эпикалық мұрасы

In the article, we have linked the achievements of the Turkic civilization during the Islamic culture and the trends of Eastern classical literature. Analyzing oriental love psalms from the point of view of their origin and formation, researcher A.Kyraubayeva proves that the genre of love poems originated in our ancient literature in the XIII-XIII centuries and developed in the second half of the XIX-first half of the XX century. Despite the fact that among the oriental love psalms that became the main idea of the article, we received, first of all, Khosrow and Shirin, a number of works of that era were analyzed. After all, the deep depths of history that make up the epic heritage of the Turkic peoples are inextricably linked with everything. The main part of the article shows that Oriental love psalms, as a genre in which their style and plot development have developed, are a large branch of verbal art that existed until the beginning of the twentieth century. In the final part, we will summarize the results, relatively considering the similarities and foundations in the love poems of deep Kazakh history. The final part gives a clear definition of how close the connection between authenticity and folklore is, which has become the subject of world science research.

<i>Sixth Dalai Lama-Tsangyang Gyatso</i>: A Brief Look at His Love Stories and Love Poems

Sixth Dalai Lama-Tsangyang Gyatso is a full-length novel written by Gao Ping that vividly describes the short life of the great Tibetan poet and Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, and his poems. It sets against the political, military and religious background of Tibetan during the Qing Dynasty. This paper briefly analyses Tsangyang Gyatso’s love poems based on his love stories. The study finds that the words used in Tsangyang Gyatso’s love poems are plain, simple, natural and easy to understand, which has a highly empathetic effect to his readers and expresses the poet’s sincere feelings.

Cy Twombly: A Rustle of Catullus1

Cy Twombly: A Rustle of Catullus1 Anne Carson (bio) in what follows I would like to try thinking into Cy Twombly through the poems of Catullus. Twombly admired, quoted, misquoted, and painted Catullus. Their two spirits seem to me somehow in tune. Both of them were inventors of a new style. Both were boys at heart, or pretending to be boys. Both were very fond of naming people and things. So, my talk is organized in eight paragraphs, one for each letter of Catullus’s name. Beginning with C. 1 C is for Cy and for Catullus, and for convention, which they both repudiated. Like Catullus, Twombly was an artist so impressed by the past that he wanted to make it over again. Who needs abstract expressionism when you can look at a head of Apollo from the fifth century bce? But no one can make the past over again, you have to make it new. Catullus in first-century-bce Rome belonged to a radical literary circle calling itself simply poetae novi, “the new poets,” who venerated the versification of the archaic Greeks. As the foremost new poet of his day, Catullus basically invented lyric poetry for the Romans. He studied and imitated the Greeks, transformed Greek meters for Latin phonetics and translated texts of Sappho and Callimachus into fresh Roman masterpieces. His main energy was rebellious. The sober surface of Roman poetry bored him. He broke that apart. Conventional pieties made him impatient. He defaced them. His verbal style juxtaposes crudeness on the level of graffiti with songs of love or sorrow as delicate as Sappho’s. He changed the diction of lyric verse, opening it to the everyday Latin of the Roman street, admitting words like lotum (“piss”) and defututa (“fucked to [End Page 1] bits”). He had a special arsenal of obscenity for his enemies and, like Twombly, he sprinkled his work with penises—there are many words for these. Overall, it was a question of how to change the velocity of words or paint, how to speed up the surface. Catullus died at thirty. 2 A is for Achilles, Adonis, Aeneas, Agamemnon, Aphrodite, Apollo, Anabasis. Twombly liked naming names and he liked making the letter A. His A’s are often done in red, very pointy, aggressive, possibly phallic or at least radiating intense emotion. Names are said to give the namer power over a bit of reality—as with Adam in the book of Genesis or Robinson Crusoe on his island or, for that matter, Catullus who uses names all over the place in his poems: either to call out, denounce, and ridicule an enemy (in the poems of invective) or to luxuriate in the details of desire (in the love poems). But I don’t think Twombly is interested in power like this. Instead, perhaps, he is finding his way toward what Walter Benjamin called “the pure language,” the original connection between names and things. Walter Benjamin imagines a state of paradise where no one has to struggle with the communicative significance of words. Things just are what they say and say what they are. For Twombly a list of names of the heroes of Troy evokes the whole phenomenon of that myth directly, as well as the mood of “sentimental despair” that emanates from it, which seems to have been one of Twombly’s favorite moods. A is also for the misspelled A in the 1978 painting series inspired by Homer’s epic poem on the fall of Troy, Fifty Days at Iliam. Twombly spoke alertly, if not indignantly, about this misspelling in an interview with David Sylvester: I spelt it ILIAM which is not correct, it’s ILIUM. But I wanted that, I wanted A for Achilles, I wanted the A there and no one ever wrote and told me I misspelt it. . . . No one cares. (Cy Twombly: Making Past Present, 222–3) I am here to attest that someone cares. However, I appreciate Twombly’s instinct to have the anger of Achilles interrupt or insult the name of Troy, as did Achilles himself want to penetrate and sack the [End Page 2] city. Ancient poets often represented city-sacking...

Crouching Woman

Crouching Woman Joan Larkin (bio) Camille Claudel, 1884 A double knot of flesh:nakedness as armor. Her taut arm grips her shoulder,shields her face. Ugly, beautiful––forget such words! A woman posing in a cold atelierplants her feet in stone dust,folds into herself, elbow pressed to knee, breasts drooping with gravity,thighs straining. Wills herselfto become stone. From a distance: a bouldertrembles on a rim of air . . . [End Page 64] Joan Larkin joan larkin has published five poetry collections, including Blue Hanuman and My Body: New and Selected Poems. She cotranslated Sor Juana’s Love Poems and coedited four anthologies, including Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time. She has been a lifelong teacher. Her honors include the Lambda, nea, and Shelley Memorial awards. Copyright © 2023 Joan Larkin ...

Frederick Douglas Kelly Jr. (1934–2022)

Frederick Douglas Kelly Jr. (1934–2022) Wendy Pfeffer Douglas Kelly, the University of Wisconsin's Julian Harris Professor of Medieval French Emeritus, died on the morning of March 21, 2022 at the age of 87. In an email, Keith Busby described his late colleague as "one of the great medieval scholars of his generation." Kelly's research was devoted particularly to the topics of rhetoric and romance narrative of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Underlying all of his work is the notion that vernacular poetics were grounded in the Latin arts of poetry. Busby's encomium continued, "He was a great scholar and teacher and the best of men." Douglas received his BA, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Southern California (1956), his MA (1959) and Ph.D. (1962) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Once in Madison, he never left—he taught French, Italian, medieval Occitan, and Medieval Studies there for forty-three years, leaving teaching as professor emeritus. In an email, Julia Nephew, a former student, called Douglas "an inspiring and empathetic mentor." In a different email, Suzanne Hagedorn spoke of Douglas's "unfailingly gracious presence, his insightful comments on conference papers, his erudition and kindness." Among his many honors, we can list: Fellow of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin; Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America; and senior fellow for the Netherland Institute for Advanced Study. Douglas was a recipient of two significant University of Wisconsin recognitions: the Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and the Hilldale Award for the Humanities. The French branch of the Société internationale arthurienne awarded him its Prix Excalibur in 1995. Over the course of his career, Douglas received extramural grant funding from Phi Beta Kappa, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I knew him as a welcoming, warm, and humble individual, open to ideas from all sides, ever inquisitive. My last interaction with Douglas was in 2019, at Kalamazoo, where he regretted simply [End Page 277] that he was perhaps getting too old to participate as actively in the congress as he would have liked. Though Douglas was better known as an Old French scholar, Occitan literature did not escape his purview. He was a long-standing member of the Société Guilhem IX. He discussed Flamenca in his important book Medieval Imagination; considered Flamenca and Jaufre in "Exaggeration, Abrupt Conversion, and the Uses of Description"; included Raimon Vidal de Besalù in The Arts of Poetry and Prose; and examined fourteenth-century lyric poets At de Mons and Raimon de Cornet in "The Late Medieval Art of Poetry" and again in "Translatio Poetriae." He was also the man responsible for Occitan as an area editor for Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies. It is a sad day when a great scholar and a genuinely warm human being leaves our company. He will be missed. Wendy Pfeffer University of Louisville University of Pennsylvania OCCITAN-RELATED WORKS CITED Kelly, Douglas. The Arts of Poetry and Prose. Typologie des sources du Moyen Âge occidental 59. Turnhout: Brepols, 1991. Google Scholar ———. "Exaggeration, Abrupt Conversion, and the Uses of Description in Jaufre and Flamenca." In Studia occitanica in memoriam Paul Remy. Edited by Hans-Erich Keller et al. 2 vols. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987. 2: 107–119. Google Scholar ———. "The Late Medieval Art of Poetry: The Evidence from At de Mons and Raimon de Cornet." In Études de langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts. Edited by Dominique Billy and Ann Buckley. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. 681–692. Google Scholar ———. Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Courtly Love. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Google Scholar ———. "Translatio Poetriae: Occitan Apprenticeship from the Latin Classroom to the Vernacular Court." In Le Poetriae del medioevo latino: Modelli, fortuna, commenti. Edited by Gian Carlo Alessio and Domenico Losappio. Filologie medievali e moderne 15. Venice: Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2018. 91–128. Google Scholar Copyright © 2023 Société Guilhem IX ...

INTERŽANROVSKA PROHODNOST VARIJANATA USMENE LIRSKE PESME: NA PRIMERU PESAMA „PRANjE BEZ VODE I BEZ SAPUNAˮ I „NAJBOLjE MJESTO ZA SELOˮ

The paper examines the process of de-ritualisation of variants of two lyric oral poems, which were not classified as ritual in Serbian oral poetry collections of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. The aim of the paper is to show how the poems changed from ritual to love and erotic ones, and to identify their intergenre characteristics. The analysis has shown that although the two variants differ according to the presence of love and erotic motifs, they have certain common features of genre restructuring. On the basis of the fertility cult, manifested in traditional spring and summer rites, variants of poems would lose their ritual context and become susceptible to introducing love motifs and changing traditional poetic images whose meanings would be interpreted in the new context. Dif- ferent layers of variants, no matter how old they were, become complementary through aestheticization. Therefore, in both poems, there is no discordance in the middle verses as would be expected in the initial phase of de-ritualisation, which is the indication of an advanced stage of the transition of variants into the genre of love poetry.