Exegesis Of Texts Research Articles

“Apuntes para el estudio del personaje medieval. I. Panorama de la reflexión poetológica”

Character, in contrast to the nuclear position it holds in the literary experience of reading, has not been the target of a deep critical reflection as the one seen for other literary elements. This situation seems the result of the traditional crossroads of extreme positions where its analysis has been located, that is, the conflicting approaches called mimetic (character as a textual representation of human beings) and immanent (character as a plain set of semes), that converge on the very same cancellation of its specificity. This cancellation is even more remarkable in the case of medieval character, because one often avoids its historical alterity by practising a retrospective reading of it from the parameters of modern character, that pushes it into the status of proto-character. The aim of this essay is to provide an approach to medieval poetological reflection on character as a means of recovering its historical thickness. To this end an overview is given where that poetological reflection is divided roughly into three parts: rhetoric, poetics, and methods of textual exegesis. A reversal of the Aristotelian hierarchy mŷthos/character will be seen thanks to this overview, this being reversal favored even by the Arabic transmission of the Aristoteles latinus, in the sense that the object of poetic imitatio is located in êthos, and not in práxis, by medieval poetology. Finally, the importance of this reversal is discussed in the light of their links with philosophia moralis, Augustinian transmission of Aristotelian thought, or a particular literary production, ignored by 12th and 13th centuries artes poetriae (Arthurian literature), which is, precisely, one of the main medieval contributions to the idea of the individual.

The Abuse of Religion and Ecology: the Visha Hindu Parishad and Tehri Dam

AbstractA number of commentators have suggested various cautions and caveats about assuming a positive relationship between Hinduism and the environment. The main points of contention are the limitations of textual exegesis; the environmentally damaging consequences of some Hindu beliefs and practices; and questions over whether any religion provides an adequate or appropriate basis from which to address contemporary environmental challenges. This paper explores a rather different and very problematic relationship that is being drawn, by some, between Hinduism and the environment. It focuses on the recent involvement of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) in protests against Tehri Dam. Neglecting the social and environmental problems that motivate other protestors, the VHP has sought to frame the dam as a communal issue—a threat by "outsiders"/Muslims to the holy river Ganges, and "therefore" to the Hindu religion, and "thus" the nation. The paper argues that, in the context of an increasingly aggressive Hindu nationalism, environmental issues and movements are by no means immune from the dangerous and divisive religious politics that are being played out in contemporary India.

The Epistolary Novel in Eighteenth-Century Russia by Maarten s> Fraanje (review)

REVIEWS 94I attention than these two at present enjoy; but they will have recourse to the volume for essentialinformationtime and again. Oxford JENNIFER BAINES Fraanje,Maarten. 7The Epistolagy NovelinEighteenth-Centugy Russia.Vortrageund Abhandlungen zur Slavistik, 4I. Verlag Otto Sagner, Munich, 200I. I96 pp. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography.Index. Ci8.4I (paperback). ALTHOUGH this volume seemingly deals with a small back-water of Russian literature, the epistolary novel of the eighteenth century, Maarten Fraanje presents a plausible case for seriousre-examination of these precursorsof the 'Great Tradition' which was to begin about twenty years after Fraanjeends. Indeed, both explicitly and implicitly, the first major Russian novel, Evgenii Onegin, is clearlyinfluencedby the traditionwhich Fraanjehere 'rediscovers'. The book comprises detailed study of the seven epistolary novels which appeared in Russia between I 766 and I812, the date when, Fraanjesuggests, the culturalepoch of the eighteenth centurytrulyended. These novels are The Letters ofErnestandDoravra (I766) by Fedor Emin, the two novels by his son Nikolai Emin, Roza (I788) and An Ironyof Fate (I789), Mikhail Sushkov's Russian Werther (I 792) and NikolaiMurav'ev'sVsevolod andVeleslava (i 807), together with two anonymous works of the period. The study has a helpful bibliographyaswell as a summaryin Russian. These novels are certainlyobscure and are unavailablein full to the reader today (in any language), except in libraries.Yet Fraanjedoes a good job of persuading the reader that his study is worthwhile, both in the claims he makesin the 'Introduction'and 'Conclusion', aswell aswhat he revealsin the individual analyses. The 'Introduction' establishes very clearly what his approach will be. He seeks to relate these texts to a culturaland, above all, a social context. This leads him to what is in effect a somewhat unfashionable neo-Marxist position: 'I work from the assumption that the utterances of the character, the solution to the conflict, but also the specific use of the formal characteristicsof the genre, can be related to social strife' (p. 4). In essence, that is, his analysisis classbased, and it leads Fraanjeto all kindsof imaginative readings of the works, based on the concluding paragraph of the brief but challenging Introduction: 'In short, the [... .] novels [.. .] can be seen as an endeavourby some Russiansto give meaning to the conflictingforcesof desire and social realityand to solve thisconflictthrougha fictitiousconstruct'(p. 5). The book is full of fascinating insights. After three preliminary chapters 'The Rise of the Russian Novel', followed by discussions of the epistolary novel tradition, and the role of letter-writingin eighteenth-century Russia, Fraanje offers analyses of the seven novels. Each is enlivened by his sociocultural framework and detailed textual exegesis. For example, Fraanje persuasively argues that Fedor Emin's final novel switches direction in the course of its writing when 'Emin changed his ideas about the value of the novel's subject,romantic love, and about the genre of the novel itself' (p. 43). There are broader insightsinto the sociology of Russian lettersin the second 942 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 half of the eighteenthcentury,as well as into ideasaroundcreativityand originality intheperiodbeforeRomanticism. Fraanjealso deals extensivelythroughoutwith issuesof influence.The primary modelsforhiswriters wereRousseau's LaNouvelle Heloise andGoethe's Werther. The fact alonethat the formertext was a majorsourcefor Onegin makesFraanje's studyworthwhile. Theroleof Werther inRussian literature led to a scandalousevent: 'The most remarkable thing about "The Russian Werther" [... .] is thefactthatonlyweeksafterit waswrittenits i6-yearold author, Mikhail Sushkov,killed himself in much the same way as his protagonistdoes' (p.93). This work too was an importantprecursorfor Oneginand,evenmoreso,Pechorin, whilethelegacyoftheepistolary novel moregenerallyextendedwellintothenineteenthcentury,mostfamously, of course,inPoor Folk, acleardescendant ofErnest and Doravra. Thisbook,asis acknowledged, isbasedon theauthor'sPhD,andattimes this shows. Equally, it is often apparent in small ways that English is not the author'sfirstlanguage. Occasionally, though, this does lead to some unfortunate solecisms. The most strikingof these is his use of 'romanesque' for the Russian 'romanischeskii'on numerous occasions. It also seems odd to find transliterationwhere cyrilliccould be used. These small quibbles should not, however, detractfromthe book's overallachievement. There is much to learn in thisvolume and, although othersmight find the neo-Marxism irritating,or even quaintly old-fashioned in a post-modern world, this reader found the overall approach stimulatingand illuminating.It is to be hoped, indeed, that the workwill arouseinterestto suchan extent that some at...

The obligation toward the difficult whole: postmodernist long poems

Addressing subjects as wide-ranging as angelology, the court masque, pop art, caricature, the cult of the ruin, hip-hop, Spenser's Irish policy, and the aesthetics of silence, Brian pulls varied threads together to identify a repertoire of postmodernist elements characteristic of the long poems he examines. As critic Jed Rasula explains, McHale is wonderfully resourceful in changing the subject from chapter to chapter to fit the poems discussed, and while his approach adheres to the conventions of textual exegesis, the chapters really shine as orchestrations of issues. For instance, James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover works unexpectedly well in raising the subject of found poetry and procedural composition; Melvin Tolson's Harlem Gallery and Edward Dorn's Gunslinger are effectively paired to demonstrate the period flavor of pastiche; Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns and Armand Schwerner's The Tablets explode the modernist fixation with depth; John Ashbery's work is given a nuanced reading as proto-theory; Letter to an Imaginary Friend by Thomas McGrath provides a lucid backdrop to raise the question of political efficacy in approaching language poet Bruce Andrews; and Susan Howe's The Europe of Trusts is explored for its intertextual tapestry. shows how elements from these long poems overlap, interfere, pull in different directions, jar against, and even contradict each other; and he demonstrates how they also echo, amplify, and reinforce each other. They do not slot smoothly together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, but they do form (what else?) a difficult whole.

The Immanence of the Infinite: Hans Blumenberg and the Threshold to Modernity

Most scholars would agree that there is an epochal threshold between the world of the Middle Ages and the modern world. Agreement on the nature and dynamic structure of that threshold is harder to come by. Hans Blumenberg's original and compelling account of the transition from medieval to modern, given in his 1966 work The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, has received wide attention. Elizabeth Brient begins her own account of the transition with an extensive, critical assessment of central aspects of Blumenberg's work. She elucidates his dialogical method of historical explanation, then discusses the shortcomings of his defense of the legitimacy of modernity. The transition to the modern world is marked by the process of making infinite the finite medieval cosmos. Whereas focused on the spatial infinitization of the universe, Brient claims that the process must be understood intensively as well as extensively. In the now-infinite universe of the new science, the problem of finding a measure for man's self-assertive activity, and for human knowledge, comes to the fore. The second half of the book focuses on the way in which this difficulty is addressed with conceptual resources developed in the tradition of late medieval Neoplatonism, in particular in the speculative thought of Meister Eckart and Nicholas of Cusa. Specific attention is given to the way in which Cusanus' notion of the immanence of the infinite in the finite responds to the need for a regulative ideal for human knowing. This is the first book-length treatment of to appear in English and will be a most welcome resource for readers engaged by debates concerning the status of modernity. It will be of equal interest to students of Eckhart and Cusanus, and to those generally concerned with the transition between the medieval and the modern world. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Brient is Assistant Professor of philosophy at The University of Georgia. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: Blumenberg could not have wished for a more reverent critique of his achievements or a more exacting textual exegesis regarding the sources of their philosophical content, all written in a lucid style that is forthright in the defense of the depth of thought during the Middle Ages but also pleasing in its subtle irony with respect to Blumenberg's and the author's own metaphysical creed.- Walter F. Veit, Speculum Brient's analysis of Blumenberg's philosophy sheds significant light in the debate concerning modernity. . --Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, German Studies Review

Epidemiology and the study of religion

In recent decades epidemiologists have increasingly investigated the relationships between religion and health. Although not directed at religion in itself, these efforts are instructive for how religion might be insightfully studied. This essay will identify three problematic topics in contemporary religious studies and indicate how recent epidemiological research regarding religion contributes to their insightful treatment. One topic concerns the roles of social identity—e.g., gender, race and class—in the study of religion; a second concerns religious pluralism as a descriptive and evaluative concept; and the third involves the conceptual vagueness of much religious discourse. A final section of the paper will argue that the statistical approach of epidemiology and the interpretive practices of religious studies are methodologically distinct but not categorically different. Data analysis and textual exegesis are both hermeneutic undertakings sharing several problems and prospects.

Eckhart’s Imageless Image: Art Spirituality, and the Apophatic Way

The doctrine of Images is a pervasive, deep, and difficult area in Eckhart studies. In recent years, a number of articles and even books have been devoted to this aspect of the Meister's teaching. Among those accessible from the Eckhart Review are Loris Sturlese's important article from 1993 and Bruce Milem's prize-winning essay of two years ago. I also highly recommend the pertinent section of Bernard McGinn's fine new book, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart. (I have provided a short bibliography for those who are interested in pursuing the subject further.) Despite its difficulty and medieval tenor, there is nothing quaint or musty about Eckhart's concern with the notion of Image, and in particular the human person as Imago Dei the Image of God. This ancient Christian doctrine is still very much at the front of theological disputation as indicated in the Santa Clara lecture given last April by Mary Catherine Hilkert, 'Imago Dei: Does the Symbol Have a Future?'l In her excellent address, which is available as a reprint from Santa Clara University; she summarizes much of the theological debate surrounding the theme and offers constructive suggestions about rehabilitating it in an era in which feminist, liberation, and ecological demands require a reassessment of both the concept, the language in which it has been formulated, and its historical and current implications for spirituality and ethics.2 Hilkert does not cite Eckhart, nor does Eckhart address issues that are of special importance to Hilkert and many people toda~ such as human arrogance in regard to other species and the planet as a whole, gender disparity, and the oppressive inequity between rich nations and poor nations. Still, Eckhart's approach to the Image, and the Imago Dei in particular, offers insights that are surprisingly similar to many of Hilkert' s observations and, I think, contain a wealth of spiritual wisdom. Eckhart did not approach this subject in a vacuum, of course. He drew on resources of both the biblical and philosophical traditions of the past, as well as theological speculation. Since I do not have much to add byway of textual exegesis to what has been so admirably discussed by Bernard McGinn, Bruce

Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World. By John von Heyking. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. 278p. $37.50.

John von Heyking's inquiry into Augustine's politics of “longing” is a provocative contribution to the growing genre of “Augustine redux” literature written to resonate with our fin de siècle sensibilities. These valuable pearl-diving expeditions bridge scholarship and literate conversation, careful textual exegesis and political advocacy. Not surprisingly, they also illustrate the challenges of writing for multiple audiences with mixed messages. This work enters an already crowded field of recent crossover texts with Peter Brown's Augustine of Hippo (2000), Gary Wills's Saint Augustine (1999), Hannah Arendt's Love and Saint Augustine (1996), and Jean Elshtain's Augustine and theLimits of Politics (1995). A further trip back in time to the Cold War and the politics of “realism” turns up Herbert Deane's The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (1963), another retrieval project written to persuade as well as inform. And this is just a very short list.

An Illustrated Dictionary of French Similes by Keith Foley (review)

MLR, 97.4, 2002 955 critics is second-rate, as Solecki would have us believe. Certainly not all of it had 'politicized culture to make it do the work of identity politics' (p. 24). Yet asking the question why contemporary Canadian critics have so frequently ignored the classics from previous generations is important, a sort of rescue waking call. Solecki is absolutely right when he insists that a tradition cannot be devalued, glossed over, simply because it was created by our ancestors who operated within a differentideological framework. A far more rewarding part of Solecki's study for the general reader, for those who will come to it because of their interest in the poet, is the second one. Here, with an infectious enthusiasm and admiration Solecki discusses the influences that shaped Purdy's life and his poetic genius. For the firsttime, to my knowledge, the reader can follow an intelligent and extensive discussion of how the poet's voice was forged and how it came into its own. Through close textual exegesis, Solecki documents the influences of Bliss Carman, Layton, and D. H. Lawrence on Purdy's initial stage of development, pointingout how these men helped open up Purdy's genius, rather than close it into a slavish gesture. Solecki's various explanations of Purdy's major poems in terms of literary traditions and conventions are particularly illuminating and will most certainly extend the reader's understanding and appreciation of one of Canada's most authentic and autochthonous poets. Libera Universita degli Studi, S. Pio V, Rome Branko Gorjup An LllustratedDictionary ofFrench Similes. By Keith Foley. Lewiston, NY, Queenston , Ont., and Lampeter: Mellen. 2000. vi + 335pp. $99.95. 'Comparaison n'est pas raison'; comparisons are odious. No, they are not. French treats similes and metaphors even-handedly, English divisively. Comparisons of any kind obviously seek to bridge gaps, and to provide mind-opening collocations (or, in the case of cliches, mind-numbing repetitions). Keith Foley's claim that his book, warts and all, is unique cannot seriously be gainsaid. He does not distinguish between inventive and shop-soiled similes, for he holds that 'even hackneyed similes may be considered as fossilized poetry'. Faced with the problem of what to include, then, Foley fruitfully adopts the ecumenical approach: standard comparisons are given alongside creative examples, which so often take off,trampoline-fashion, from stock items, subverting, recycling, or extending them. Thus he has cake and eats it, like a horse, or like four as French puts it. He occasionally provides notes on the more mystifying likenings (e.g. 'degringoler comme des capucins de cartes'). As he notes, many similes are puns (which Swift said get everywhere, like fleas), for instance, San Antonio's phrase for 'very drunk', 'beurre comme toute la Normandie', or the anonymous 'lacher quelqu'un comme un pet'. Some of San Antonio's prostheses are pleonastic (e.g. 'une question, plus epineuse qu'un cactus pas rase'), though of course the tack-on makes a joke of the whole business of paralleling. Others' inventions, like 'bander comme un Carme', for a monumental hard-on, set the imagination to work. The literary examples are mainly but not exclusively from the twentieth and nineteenth centuries. Longish illustrative quotations put the analogies in context. Among useful additions to similes strictly defined are adjectival phrases such as 'une taille de nymphe'. Foley is expert at unearthing English counterparts, while recognizing that these are not invariably true equivalents: for example, Colette's 'chambrer comme un Corton', for which he suggests 'to wind someone up like a watch'. He calls comparisons by opposites 'ironic similes' (such as 'gai comme un enterrement'). His excellent sense of humour works against the pedantry threatening the whole enterprise. The reader feels incited to join in the hunt. For San Antonio's 956 Reviews 'je me sens aussi a l'aise [. . .] qu'un scaphandrier sur un pur sang', I would supply the snappier Scouse 'as comfortable as a cow on a bike'. Foley rightly mocks Dylan Thomas and his probably hypocritical and apocryphal statement that 'comparing one thing with another is like comparing Milton to Stilton'. His dictionary is a splendidly researched, thought-out, and organized work of...

La creacion de un discurso historiografico en el cuatrocientos castellano: Las siete edades del mundo de Pablo de Santa Maria

La creacion de un discurso historiografico en el cuatrocientos castellano: Las siete edades del mundo de Pablo de Santa Maria. By Juan Carlos Conde. Textos recuperados 18. Salamanca: U. of Salamanca, 1999. 491 pages. In the preface to his edition and study of Pablo de Santa Marfa's Las siete edades del mundo, Juan Carlos Conde draws his readers' attention with unnecessary humility to the honors his dissertation received, maua distincion and a prize from the Real Academia (12-3). To judge from this project derived from his dissertation, they were honors well deserved. His introductory material reveals a meticulousness that is essential to the successful completion of an edition neolachmanniano (Conde's terms [12]), or, more precisely, more Blecuensi (Me acojo a los presupuestos que Blecua expone en su Manual [185]). Besides the introductory study, he has provided a superabundance of information pertaining to the 21 extant witnesses (132-84) and a detailed justification of his stemma (184-230), evidence of what must have been an impressive dissertation. Conde persuasively defends his editorial methods, citing the difficulty of choosing a best manuscript from the poem's complicated textual history (251). Besides a carefully prepared text, he also provides a semi-paleographic transcription of a refundicion with copious glosses (from 1460) as well as a facsimile of the earliest surviving printed version (Rosembach 1516). Conde's explanatory notes to his edition are limited to variants and justifications of editorial decisions. He sends his readers to his introduction for textual exegesis (256). There he convincingly dates the poem 1416-18, when Santa Maria carried out important functions in the royal bureaucracy, most notably as Juan II's tutor; the poem may have been educational material for the young king, still under his mother's regency (22). Conde improves upon past studies by showing the poem's principal inspiration in the Tudense's Chronicon mundi and the Cronica de 1344, supplemented by other sources, such as biblical exegeses, Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum, the Alfonsine chronicle tradition, the Cronica de los tres reyes, Lopez de Ayala, etc. Though he confesses that his analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the poem adds nothing substantially new to earlier studies by Deyermond (109), Conde points out the significance of Santa Maria's emphasis on the Visigothic kings' legendary betrothal to Amazon queens, given the poem's composition during Catherine of Lancaster's regency (117). In Conde's introduction, I would have appreciated discussion of the implications of a converso's cultivation of post-Biblical historiography when the practice was insignificant in the medieval Jewish tradition. …

:Antiquity and Its Interpreters

Introduction Part I. Inhabiting History: 1. Historical self-definition 1.1 Imitation James Ackerman 1.2 P. Petrarch and the broken city David Galbraith 1.3 Acquiring a classical past: historical appropriation in Renaissance Venice Patricia Fortini Brown 1.4 Ordering history and style: Georgio Vasari on the art of history Philip Sohm 2. Historical continuities 2.1 Renaissance and real estate: the medieval afterlife of the Temple of Diana in Nimes Sheila Bonde 2.2 Imaginary architecture and antiquity: the fountain of Venus in Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Martine Furno II 2.3 Antiquity consumed: transformations at San Marco, Venice Marina Belozerskaya and Kenneth Lapatin Part II. Cultural Pursued: 3. The heritage of Zeuxis: painting, rhetoric and history Leonard Barkan 3.1 Mind's passion: conjugating rationality and sensuality in neo-platonic interpretations of Italian Renaissance art Julia Branna Perlman 3.2 The transformation of ancient landscape through the ideology of Christian reform Nicola Courtright 4. The (re)emergence of the aesthetic 4.1 Ut poesis architectura: Gherardo Spini and Italian archietectural criticism circa 1570 Alina Payne 4.2 Viewing the art of Michelangelo: visual metaphor in the art critical tradition of the Renaissance Rebekah Smick 4.3 The body and antiquity in Alberti's art theoretical writings Gerhard Wolf 4.4 Patterns of transumption in Renaissance architectural theory Christof Thoenes Part III. Culture Produced: 5. Textual exegesis 5.1 Pliny's laocoon? Michael Koortbojian 5.2 Symmetry and eurythmy: classical theory in architecture from Vitruvius to Bernini to the present day Tod Marder 6. Appropriation contexts: decor, Furor Bacchicus, Convivium Phyllis Pray Bober 6.1 Si come dice Vetruvio: images of antiquity in early Renaissance theory of architecture Richard Betts Part IV. Coda: 7. Antiquity and the Renaissance from the outside 7.1 Remaking antiquity in eighteenth-century Seville Catherine Wilkinson Zerner 7.2 Winckelmann and Warburg: contrasting attitutudes toward the instrumental authority of ancient art Richard Brilliant 7.3 Figural speculations Michael Ann Holly 7.4 Writing history, viewing art: the question of the humanist's eye Carl Goldstein.

Civil Service Reform and the Political Culture of Governmentality: Massachusetts 1952-1981

Civil service reform has usually been viewed in one of two ways: as the triumph of integrity over greed, or as the triumph of elitism over party democracy. This paper takes a third path and interprets reform as an exemplar of what Michel Foucault called governmentality, a practice of governance under which society promotes certain practices of individuality which in turn promote specific practices of sociality, for instance professionalism and expertise. The paper contrasts this form of governance with that of sovereignty and then uses textual exegesis to tease out the meanings of key terms–“responsibility,” “democracy,” “sophistication”–in the reform literature of the times. By linking reform to suburban-managerial political culture, and suburban culture to governmentality, one gains a heightened perspective on the ambiguous relation between governance andfreedom as well as the possibilities for a democratic ethos in public administration.

Scholia Melancholia: General hysteresis in literary studies

Summary “Scholia Melancholia” considers the phenomenon of temporal and cognitive delay in the human sciences in general and in literary studies in particular. It explores examples of this phenomenon in a variety of contexts, ranging from the imperatives of textual exegesis to the psycho‐institutional consequences of literary interpretation. The article concludes with a brief assessment of the nature of literary‐intellectual self‐fashioning.

Henry James's Thwarted Love (review)

Wendy Graham's study of repression, sublimation, gender confusion, and what one critic called "cerebral lechery" (27) in four of Henry James's novels is an outstanding contribution to two growing areas of James studies: the increasingly sophisticated body of work devoted to the representation of sexuality in James's life and work, informed by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and queer theory, and recent studies, such as those by Ross Posnock and Mark Seltzer, which situate James "within the context of crossdisciplinary conversations about modernity and market culture" (6). A "hybrid study" (2) consisting of biography, cultural history, and textual exegesis, Henry James's Thwarted Love rigorously contextualizes James's fictional treatment of sexual ambiguity and his personal history in relation to the various discourses that shaped late-Victorian gender roles and identities: mental hygiene, energy conservation, sexology, psychiatry, and cultural anthropology. Graham's extensive analysis of primary sources from these discourses provides a broad and convincing context and allows her to uncover threads of cultural meaning in the fiction that would otherwise remain invisible to contemporary readers.

The Politics of Expertise in Latin America: Antecedents and Actualities

ABSTRACT All public activities are in some broad measure political, and all require certain specialised skills, which may be termed “expertise”. But over time and space the realm of the specifically “political” may either expand or contract. Equally, what counts as expertise, and how much autonomy it will be granted, also varies over time and space. Horsemanship, literacy, oratory, textual exegesis, and an understanding of global financial derivatives have each been regarded as the hallmark of the modern expert in one setting or another. The relationship between the “generalist” politician and the “specialist” expert is one of the most ancient and recurring themes in political science. Effective and durable rule requires the enlistment of a range of competences, yet government is not reducible to technique. How then are the rulers to be guided by their advisers without being usurped by them?

Adam Krims, ed., with commentary by Henry Klumpenhouwer. Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1998. 311 pp. ISBN 90-5701-321-5 (paperback)

Adam Krims, ed., with commentary by Henry Klumpenhouwer. Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1998. 311 pp. ISBN 90-5701-321-5 (paperback). Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 20, numéro 2, 2000, p. 1-155) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The Frankfurt School and the problem of social rationality in Thorstein Veblen

The Frankfurt School attacked Veblen ’ s claims regarding machine-induced rationality in industrial societ y. Their criticisms stemmed in part from the fact that Veblen failed to present his ideas systematically in a formal treatise on either economics or sociolog y, and because he did not use concepts or jargon familiar to the critical theorists. This article thus aims at: (1) demonstrating through textual exegesis the meaning of social rationality in the corpus of Veblen ’ s writing, especiall y The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904); (2) elucidating the problems that arose in the Frankfurt School ’ s critique of Veblen because he used nomenclature and conceptualizations unfamiliar to Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer; (3) reiterating Veblen ’ s thesis on the impact of ‘transfer effects’ on workers interacting with the machine process; and (4) outlining the failure of the Frankfurt School adequately to examine his claims in the American political environment in which they were made.

All the Presidents' Words: The Bully Pulpit and the Creation of the Virtual Presidency (review)

Book Reviews 287 their antagonism as a public debate of the most powerful kind. This section of the book is the most likely to appeal to rhetorical scholars. For instance, Shesol provides a fine account of the clear public break between the two men in 1967, an analysis infused with a rhetorical sensibility. In November of that year, Robert Kennedy appeared on Face the Nation and argued for the first time that Johnson had departed from John Kennedy's course. In a "literal sense," Shesol notes, that was simply not true. But how could Johnson "debate the 'Kennedy course' in Vietnam with a fleshand -blood Kennedy"? (388-89). He could not do so: "Bobby had lunged for Johnson's weak spot, his claim to the Kennedy legacy" (388). LBJ could not win that fight in the eyes of the nation. Robert Kennedy's literal embodiment of his argumentative claim rendered Johnson's textual exegesis of JFK's discourse superfluous. Shesol possesses a sensitivity toward rhetorical concerns rare among contemporary political writers. Taken together, these two books reveal not so much an original interpretation as a new sensibility regarding Robert Kennedy and his times. The seemingly inexhaustible stock of primary materials that keep turning up, combined with an increasing regard for the complexity and difficulty of political action, make for a clear appreciation of the entanglements that circumscribed the senator's freedom of action. He was forever carving out a place for himself amidst the demands and egos of his presidents. Perhaps that is why he finally decided that he needed to become president himself. John M. Murphy University of Georgia All the Presidents' Words: The Bully Pulpit and the Creation of the Virtual Presidency. By Carol Gelderman. New York: Walker and Company, 1997; pp. xv + 221. $23.00. Carol Gelderman, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of New Orleans, could have called her new book Speaking in the Shadow of FDR. All the Presidents' Words promises, and delivers, a systematic and intriguing investigation of the relationships among public speaking, legislative policymaking, speechwriting, and image-brokering in the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and each of his twentieth-century successors. This persuasive, entertaining and well written account will be of great interest and value to readers who study rhetoric and politics in general, and the contemporary American presidency in particular. Gelderman begins with a premise that warms a rhetorician's heart: words matter , especially presidential words, and immersion in the process of selecting the right words is intrinsically related to creating wise policy. She holds that "speeches are the core of the modern presidency" (9). Furthermore, "no one can lead without first establishing direction. And there is no better way to determine direction than to be forced to marshal information into understandable and focused accounts, which is 288 Rhetoric & Public Affairs what writing does" (ix). Persuasive ability, she argues, has become intricately related to presidential leadership, and chief executives are at their most presidential when they assume the role of national teacher, prodding the citizenry to focus on shared values, goals, and ideals. Gelderman provides a fascinating account of the rhetorical evolution of the twentieth century presidency, opening with a prologue on the "bully pulpit" of Theodore Roosevelt and the activist presidency of Woodrow Wilson. She shows that both men, pioneers in methods of leading by persuasion, were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the contemporary presidency. But as effective and exciting as their early public persuasion may have been, Gelderman notes, in the ensuing decades the presidential prerogative of "going to the public" has gotten out of hand. Not all of the arguments that inform Gelderman's work will be news to the readers of this journal. For example, she claims that more recent presidents have been speaking more and saying less, with the result that persuasive guidance has been replaced by political pulsetaking, rendering the presidency less dignified and governance less effective than in days of yore. But the story behind this fall from grace is a rich one, replete with representative anecdotes from each presidency, and Gelderman is a talented storyteller. She amasses evidence from a wide variety of disciplines , using primary and secondary sources from the presidential...

Synopsis: A Theory of Symbolic Representation

Synopsis: A Theory of Symbolic Representation David Allen Black (bio) Erratum A new theory: why It is not without trepidation that I sketch out a new theory. 1 A new theory—by which I mean a new way of talking about old things, a new set of verbal tools with which to gain purchase on familiar practices—may well be the last thing we need. Moreover, theorizing goes against the present tide of recombination—which, indeed, turns out to be reticence under a different name. Somewhere along the line, the valuable insight that our thought is relative and contingent gave way to a preoccupation with saying so, and with “applying” the theories of others to our own questions. What might have been scholarship—even scholarship which acknowledges its roots—becomes instead a falsely modest ventriloquism, served willy-nilly upon the dead. What I offer here grows out of the study of narrative theory and semiotics; however, it is neither one nor the other. It is a theory of symbolic representation, which means that it operates at the same logical level as narrative theory and semiotics. I do not mean this pre-emptively. Rather—and on the contrary—I mean it in the spirit of an explicit repudiation of the scarcity mentality which so tightly grips academic thought (e.g., if psychoanalytic criticism is “right”, textual exegesis must be “wrong”, etc.). We need a new theory, because we need a way of talking about what actually happens in practice without committing ourselves, in our theory, to what we perceive as the mistakes of that practice. In brief, the relevant difference between usage and theory in matters of symbolic representation is this: theory (correctly, in my opinion) suspects the notion of immanent meaning, while usage completely and unswervingly accepts it. In other words, we live in a world where we speak referentially, and where the mechanics of reference are by and large accepted at face value. Moreover—and importantly—this applies across the board. I know many theorists who repudiate the idea of immanent meaning, but who discuss their own lives anecdotally in exactly the same manner [End Page 423] as non-theorists. In fact, we often seem to pepper our casual conversation with witticisms derived from, yet ultimately at the expense of, our insights into the relativity of discourse and the arbitrariness of speech. But the point is not to engage in a game of theoretical “Simon Says,” where anyone caught espousing belief in an essential connectedness between the utterance and its referent is “out.” Rather, the point is to find a way out of the impasse—an impasse which offers us too few choices. It is all very well to banish immanent meaning in theory; but when the theorist’s back is turned, discourse and referent find each other again. If theory exerts a centripedal influence, the opposite is true of usage; and instead of further stratifying everything (including people) on the criterion of sophistication, we need a way to get at everything. A new theory of symbolic representation must enable us to speak, without acquiescence but equally without censure, of what actually happens; to acknowledge the metaphysical behavior of events, without embracing the underlying metaphysics; and to exhibit flexibility with respect to the matter of truth value, neither doing away with the idea that discourses may point to the truth, nor suggesting either that every truth can be pointed to or that every discourse points to one. Versions and referents: a visualization My interest in theorizing about these matters grows out of a fascination with a particular phenomenon, namely that of the version. Versions are a relatively high-level construct; that is, they are complex, not atomic. But they display the most important and recalcitrant aspects of referentiality; and we traffic in them. We also traffic in isolated words, but my concern here, ultimately, is with abundance, and with the textual emanence which purports to contain, and yet not completely to be, the referent with extent in space and time. Nothing, it seems to me, is as important in this regard, and as deserving of continued reflection, as the axiom that there can be such a thing as more...

Review: New Testament Textual Criticism, Exegesis, and Early Church History: A Discussion of Methods, the Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research

Review: New Testament Textual Criticism, Exegesis, and Early Church History: A Discussion of Methods, the Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research