Reception Of Poets Research Articles

Reinterpretation of the Ideas of the Philosophy of Life in O.E. Mandelstam’s Works

It is proposed to consider the main lines of “philosophy of life’s” (F. Nietzsche, H. Bergson, O. Spengler) influence on the poetry and aesthetic theory of the greatest Silver Age poet Osip Mandelstam whose heritage is largely a continuation of Russian “poetry of thought” tradition. As known, the “philosophy of life” ideas formed Silver age culture intellectual background and were actively rethought which can also be traced in Mandelstam’s work, extent). The article sets a task, firstly, to consider “philosophy of life” as integral phenomenon, secondly, to propose conceptual solutions in the framework of which poet's heritage can be investigated as refracting “philosophy of life’s” ideas. This required, on the one hand, relying on existing research, on the other hand, polemicizing with them. Special attention is paid to Mandelstam’s temporal concept. It is shown to what extent it is conditioned by the concepts of the philosophy of life and in what extent by Silver Age philosophical context, namely, by poet's interest in contemporary Russian religious thought. Some “philosophy of life” concepts and constructions in the poet's reception are outlined (the oppositions Apollonian/Dionysian, Aryan/Judaic and the eternal return idea by F. Nietzsche; H. Bergson’s concept of time and memory; the prime symbol and morphology of culture concepts by of O. Spengler, whose influence on Mandelstam’s work has not been studied in this aspect). It is concluded that priority factor that determined poet's attention to “philosophy of life” is its attitude to comprehend time as a derivative of life processes among which the most important place is occupied by culture and cultural creativity.

Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras by Nancy Bradley Warren

Reviewed by: Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras by Nancy Bradley Warren Kathleen Forni Nancy Bradley Warren. Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. Pp. 228. $100.00 cloth; $45.00 paper. It will probably come as little surprise to most readers that Chaucer's ambiguity and malleability regarding orthodoxy and heterodoxy made him a useful figure in "religiopolitical conflicts" in his postmedieval reception. But while Chaucer's Lollard leanings and perceived proto-Protestantism have received abundant critical attention, his association with continental female spirituality in his own age and his role in premodern Catholic counter-tradition polemics have been less studied. Nancy Bradley Warren fills this lacuna in the poet's reception, situating Chaucerian invocation within efforts to "establish religious and national identities on both sides of the Atlantic" (13). Armed with meticulous research and careful close reading, Warren convinces that the political value of the Protestant Chaucer (which I and others have proposed) provides only a partial account of his postmedieval canonization. Using a "transnational and transperiod approach" (13), Warren suggests that Chaucer represented a masculine cultural authority who could "save the English Catholic past from feminization" (4). The pejorative feminine [End Page 457] here is associated with both mystical spiritualism and (surprisingly) vernacular religious texts. While Warren's narrative is not a corrective to those who link his postmedieval canonization to his perceived Wycliffite leanings, Chaucer occasionally emerges as "a figure who masculinizes and rationalizes the English Catholic Middle Ages" (99). Warren maintains that his female monastic pilgrims reveal Chaucer's "awareness of and interest in the emergence of Lollardy—the greatest English religious controversy of his lifetime—as well as his cognizance of the burgeoning visionary, mystical, and prophetic spirituality of Continental holy women" (9). Chapter 1, "Female Spirituality and Religious Controversy in The Canterbury Tales," revisits The Prioress's Prologue and Tale and The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale within the context of the Brigittine spirituality associated with St. Birgitta of Sweden (1349–73), whose revelations emphasize the power of the Virgin Mary and maternal intercession, as well as the efficacy of vernacular religious translation and female spiritual instruction. The Second Nun's Prologue not only emphasizes the power of Mary's virginal maternity but also posits the legitimacy of vernacular translation (the "mother tongue"). And St. Cecilia herself demonstrates that female "conseil" can lead to salvation; as such, the tale nicely "quits" the denigration of womanly counsel found in The Nun's Priest's Tale (which immediately precedes The Second Nun's Tale in the Ellesmere manuscript). Warren rereads The Prioress's Prologue as a reflection of the popular cult of the Virgin Mary in the fourteenth century, and highlights its "salvific power" of maternal suffering and the "the dynamics of Incarnation" (30), providing a layer of sophistication to what is sometimes seen as an infantilizing expostulation. Nonetheless, it is difficult to get around the notorious anti-Semitism of the tale; Warren concurs that the tale of the little "clergeon" lacks some "spiritual and intellectual sophistication," which is perhaps owing to "imperfect religious knowledge, imperfection that could be ameliorated by access to vernacular translations of religious texts" (36, 37). One might add, however, that St. Birgitta's Prophesies and Revelations itself is littered with denigrating references to the Jews—revealing a less salutary aspect of her spirituality, and an aspect of Marian devotion that continues to unsettle. Real nuns also read some Chaucer, or at least texts that mention Chaucer. Chapter 2, "Chaucer, the Chaucerian Tradition, and Female Monastic Readers," explores Chaucer's literary legacy as attested to by the manuscripts owned by several prominent English nunneries with [End Page 458] Lancastrian affiliations (Warren meticulously traces the family back-grounds and surprising political connections of the women in these monastic houses). The Brigittine nuns at Syon possessed a miscellany (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 416) that included—in addition to Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and several other texts on ethics, political advice, history, and philosophy—The Parliament of Fowls (or at least lines 1–142 of the poem, since the manuscript...

Zur Rezeption Wolf Biermanns in den beiden deutschen Staaten

The author presents negative aspects of cultural politics in East and West Germany on the example of the biography and reception of the Wolf Biermann's works. The first two parts of the article include examples of several sophisticated methods which served as means of repression towards the writer in East Germany. Among other methods there were: prevention from being published and from giving live perfomances, suppression of travelling abroad, correspondence confiscation, vexation of his family and friends with interference in private and intimatest spheres of life, continuous eavesdropping and control, trials of intimidation and the expulsion from East Germany in 1976. The suppressions were continued „succesfully“ also after 1976, during his stay in the West. A part of those „operational activities“ against the poet and his work is documented in „Stasi“ archives, which were made accessible to him 1993 (the documentation about his person includes over 40 000 pages). The last part of the article describes the history of the poet's reception in West Germany either before his expulsion from East Germany or later. The mechanism of the censorship worked there quite differently but it is possible to proove on selected examples, that for instance big, recognized publishers were afraid to publish the damned and oppressed by the East German regime artists.

Hagaras an Archetype Matriarch: A Comparative Study of Ostriker’s “The Opinion of Hagar”and Kahf’s “Hagar in the Valley”

This paper marks out the archetype figure of Hagar, one of the most revisited examples of motherhood in the corpus of Islamic and Jewish studies. The researcher shows that both Alicia Ostriker, Jewish-American poet and critic (born 1938), and Mohja Kahf, an Arab-American poet (born 1967), attempt feminist readings of Hagar’s story. The study tackles Hagar in Ostriker’s poem “The Opinion of Hagar” and Kahf’s “Hagar in the Valley”. Both poets retell their traditional Jewish and Muslim narratives and depend heavily on scriptures and religious heritage. Through Hagar’s story, they both reflect on contemporary cultural issues; discrimination against women and the hardships faced by immigrants are two main issues that Ostriker and Kahf see in the story of Hagar. Yet each poet has a different focus and different manners based on adaptation and appropriation of the original story. The reinterpretation of Hagar’s narrative depended on the poets’ religious sources, as well as on each poet's reception of the narrative. The two poems of ‘Hagar’ are considered a recovery for the female voices that have played a significant role in the development of women’s religious history in the United States of America. With intertextuality, the two poets situate the narrative of Hagar as an archetypal and mythical figure for all women and as a key text in interfaith dialogue between Judaism and Islam

Songs of ourselves: the uses of poetry in America

In the years between 1880 and 1950, Americans recited poetry at family gatherings, school assemblies, church services, camp outings, and civic affairs. As they did so, they invested poems - and the figure of the poet - with the beliefs, values, and emotions that they experienced in those settings. Reciting a poem together with others joined the individual to the community in a special and memorable way. In a strikingly original and rich portrait of the uses of verse in America, Joan Shelley Rubin shows how the sites and practices of reciting poetry influenced readers' lives and helped them to find meaning in a poet's words. Emphasising the cultural circumstances that influenced the production and reception of poets and poetry in this country, Rubin recovers the experiences of ordinary people reading poems in public places. We see the recent immigrant seeking acceptance, the schoolchild eager to be integrated into the class, the mourner sharing grief at a funeral, the grandparent trying to bridge the generation gap - all instances of readers remaking texts to meet social and personal needs. Preserving the moral, romantic, and sentimental legacies of the 19th Century, the act of reading poems offered cultural continuity, spiritual comfort, and pleasure. Songs of Ourselves is a unique history of literary texts as lived experience. By blurring the boundaries between high and popular poetry as well as between modern and traditional, it creates a fuller, more democratic way of studying our poetic language and ourselves.

Woman Poets of the Nineteenth Century, and: Swinburne, and: Arthur Hugh Clough (review)

Reviewed by: Woman Poets of the Nineteenth Century, and: Swinburne, and: Arthur Hugh Clough Anna Barton (bio) Emma Mason , Woman Poets of the Nineteenth Century (London: Northcote House, 2006), xi + 148 pages, paperback, £12.99 (ISBN 0 7463 1001 3); Catherine Maxwell , Swinburne (London: Northcote House, 2006), xiv + 144 pages, paperback, £12.99 (ISBN 0 7463 0969 4); John Schad , Arthur Hugh Clough (London: Northcote House, 2006), xiii + 105 pages, paperback, £12.99 (ISBN 07463 1166 4). Writers and Their Work, the series of critical introductions to authors and poets, published by Northcote House and the British Council has a well-deserved reputation for its concise, accurate evaluations of individual authors (a rare commodity in the current academic publishing market, where trends tend against single author studies) that have an eye to current critical tastes; and for this reason it provides a valuable starting point for the reappraisal of the literary landscape of a particular period. Three nineteenth-century titles recently added to the series are Arthur Hugh Clough by John Schad, Swinburne by Catherine Maxwell and Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century by Emma Mason. Of these three, [End Page 326] only Emma Mason's study of Felicia Hemans, Dora Greenwell and Adelaide Anne Proctor introduces authors to the series for the first time. Isobel Armstrong (up until very recently the general editor of the series) is the author of the original introduction to Clough (London: Northcote House, 1962) and Swinburne was the subject of an earlier edition by Ian Fletcher (London: Northcote House, 1973). In the cases of Clough and Swinburne, some significant differences between the first and second editions indicate that over the past three decades each writer has become a more established member of the canon. While the earlier editions attempt to make the case in favour of Clough and Swinburne, arguing for their inclusion in the canon and defending them against accusations of eccentricity, Schad and Maxwell are much more confident in their subjects. Maxwell does not attempt to excuse Swinburne's peculiarity; instead she excuses, or at least explains, his neglect during the first half of the twentieth century as part of a useful summary of the poet's reception history, which begins with his reputation as a poet's poet during his lifetime and ends with his return to prominence in recent decades through studies that have focused on representations of gender in his work as well as his poetic style. Throughout her book, it is Maxwell's project to broaden the possibilities of Swinburne studies and she succeeds in this through a chronological survey of Swinburne's major works that uses relevant contextual material to frame suggestive close readings of particular poems. The Swinburne that emerges is a less marginal, more modern Victorian: a writer whose work merits renewed attention. The publication of Jerome McGann and Charles Sligh's 2004 edition of Swinburne's Major Poems and Selected Prose (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004) has made his writing (particularly his prose, which Maxwell identifies as having been largely neglected in the past) newly accessible to students of Victorian literature and Maxwell's introduction, which itself includes the previously unpublished poem, 'Parsiphae', makes a valuable companion to this collection. John Schad's study of Clough begins with Swinburne's assertion that Clough was a 'bad poet'(1). References to Armstrong's earlier edition within the work suggest that Schad is not so much reappraising Clough as continuing his study of the poet from where Armstrong left off. For a straightforward introduction to Clough it would perhaps be better to read the earlier edition before coming to Schad's study, which is the least conventional of the books under review. Armstrong's study identifies thinking, or the intellectual consciousness, as a focus of Clough's work. This is Schad's starting point. Clough, Schad states, is a bad poet because of his own poor opinion of poetry: his belief that 'words … are [End Page 327] merely the rubbish that is left over from the main event that is thinking' (1). Schad organizes his study around Clough's thoughts: thoughts of God, thoughts of history and thoughts of...

Apollinaire and the International Avant-Garde (review)

??? COHPAnATIST BOOK NOTES WILLARD BOHN. Apollinaire and the International Avant-Garde. Albany : SUNY Press, 1997. xi + 369 pp. Apollinaire and the International Avant-Garde builds a comprehensive literary history (seven chapters following the introduction) ofApollinaire's reception and influence in the Western world during the early twentieth century. Examining his impact on a worldwide network ofwriters, artists, and critics, Willard Botin reveals his central role as patron saint ofthe avant-garde, cultural innovator, and literary and cultural arbiter ofhis generation. Focused on the major European and American nations, the book discusses in rough chronological order Apollinaire's connections with the British avant-garde, extends the investigation to North America, returns to Europe to chart the poet's presence in the German-speaking world, and then details Apollinaire's Hispanic reception from Catalonia and Spain to Argentina , Uruguay, and Mexico. Framing this avant-garde Odyssey are interesting discussions about the specifics ofvarious movements—Cubism, Simultanism, Dada, Surrealism, Ultraism, Creationism, and the Contemporary School, among others. According to Bohn, Apollinaire's reputation began to grow with F. S. Flint's August 1912 article on contemporary French poetry in The Poetry Review. With Les Peintres cubistes in 1913 he became known as a serious art critic while publication ofAlcools in the same year established him as a serious poet. As a result, in England and elsewhere, Apollinaire was quickly embraced as an aesthetician of the new, revolutionary art, with Richard Aldington and Ezra Pound as key intermediaries in Great Britain. Relying on compelling evidence, Bohn reveals that although both Aldington and Pound started by emulating Apollinaire (the first issue ofBlast, for instance, was inspired by L 'Antitraditionfuturiste), they ultimately dissociated themselves from him: Aldington called Apollinaire "the first French apostle ofSteinism" (27) while Pound refused even to mention his name in the 1930s. In North America, as Bohn shows in the third chapter, Apollinaire was virtually unknown before 1913, and this neglect continued even afterAlcools. In 1914 and 1915 the situation was partially rectified by Marius de Zayas, an artist and critic ofMexican origin, who after being introduced to Apollinaire in Paris succeeded in establishing better relations upon returning to New York. De Zayas's high regard for Apollinaire's visual poetry led him to associate the latter's poetry with Picasso's paintings, a connection that was developed further by William Huntington Wright, especially in Modern Painting: Its Tendency andMeaning, and by Henry McBride, another influential American art critic and defender of modern aesthetics, who published "Apollinaire's Cubistic Authority" in the New York Herald. Given Apollinaire's more complicated relationship with Germany, where he spent his first idyllic Wanderjahr as a French tutor in the Rhineland and where he abandoned his given name for a nom de plume, the fourth chapter offers a detailed and intellectuallysatisfyingdiscussion ofthepoet's significantpresenceamong the German Expressionists in the pre- and post-war period. Far from merely listing the names ofthose connected with Apollinaire or his work, Bohn provides compelling information on the poet's reception in Germany, from his publications in DerSturm to the German praise ofthe avant-garde that elevated him to a cult figure. VcH. 23 (1999): 187 BOOK NOTES In a vivid and interesting tapestry, Bonn's last four chapters interweave Apollinaire 's reception in Old and New World Spanish-speaking cultures. Especially engaging are the subchapters on Guillermo de Torre's discussions ofApollinaire's iconoclasm, audacity, and revolutionary aesthetics (most notably in Literaturas europeas de vanguardia, with its focus on Cubism and Ultraism), as well as his final homage in "Epiceyo a Apollinaire" ("Elegy for Apollinaire"). Also striking are the sections on Bartolomé Galindez, the editor ofthe short-lived literary review Los Raros who connected Apollinaire with the latest discoveries in art and literature , on Ildefonso Perreda Valdes, one of the editors of Los Nuevos (The New Breed), who used Apollinaire's "Les Cloches" to establish thejournal's avant-garde credentials, and on the representatives ofla nueva sensibilidad ("the new sensibility "). Ofspecial interest here is Bonn's discussion ofBorges whose return from his sojourn in Spain marked the genesis ofUltraism in Argentina and whose enthusiasm and reservations about Apollinaire as poet and critic are fully analyzed. The information in this thoroughly...

Yeats's Political Identities: Selected Essays

There are as many versions of W. B. Yeats as there are readers of his work: he is the poet of totalitarian force for some, the cultural nationalist and agent of decolonization for others; he is the elegist of the Anglo-Irish, yet also the witness of transcendental vision. In Yeats's Political Identities Jonathan Allison collects some of the most trenchant essays of the last three decades on what Yeats's politics were and how important they are for reading his work. The volume's fifteen essays on Yeats--some original, some previously published--are culled from sources on both sides of the Atlantic. Opening with an introductory reflection on the poet's reception, Allison then turns to Conor Cruise O'Brien's influential 1965 article on Yeats's authoritarian leanings. The essays that follow cover a wide range of related topics, including Yeats's relationships to fascism, nationalism, colonialism, and the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. The closing section of the book comprises a group of essays that respond to earlier meditations on the political resonance of the poet's work. Finally, an annotated bibliography provides brief commentary on other work on the politics of Yeats's writing. The title of the collection speaks to the complexity of this important figure, and warns against adopting too simplistic a view of his career and significance. It hopes to suggest the diversity of critical opinion on Yeats's politics currently in circulation, as well as the divergent political identities the poet embraced during his lifetime. Inevitably with such an anthology, many of these essays speak to each other, or argue against each other, across theoretical, political, and intellectualdivides. Contributors include Hazard Adams, George Bornstein, Ronald Bush, Elizabeth Cullingford, Seamus Deane, Roy Foster, Maurice Harmon, Seamus Heaney, Marjorie Howes, Richard Kearney, Declan Kiberd, David Krause, David Lloyd, Edna Longley, and Augustine Martin. This book will have particular appeal for students of Yeats and his world, but it will also interest students of Irish literature, history, and culture and of modernism more generally. Those who study the aesthetics of reception and the relationship between literature and politics will also find it useful. Jonathan Allison is Associate Professor of English, University of Kentucky.