Verbal Parallels Research Articles

Ugotavljanje avtorstva in materialnost zgodnjenovoveških dramskih besedil

The digitization of texts and the advent of big data analyses have transformed our understanding of authorship and collaboration in early modern drama. However, these advancements ought to be carefully contextualized within the material realities of early modern playwriting. The scarcity of surviving dramatic manuscripts underscores the significant role of agents like compositors, printers and editors, and the loss of the majority of plays from English commercial theatres casts doubt on the reliability of comparisons based on unique or common verbal parallels. The article focuses on drama from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, particularly the recently proposed collaboration between Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare on the Henry VI plays. Applying the IT concept of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), it highlights the impact of textual transmission intricacies on authorship attribution, emphasizing that even the most sophisticated attribution techniques are only as reliable as the (often unreliable) data they utilize.

New Judgements on the Artistry of Andreas: The Case of Christ III

Abstract The Old English poem Andreas has long been considered to be indebted both to the signed works of Cynewulf and to Beowulf. Recent studies have demonstrated Andreas’s debt to a number of other ‘Cynewulfian’ poems. This paper argues that the poet of Andreas likewise borrowed from Christ III (an earlier poem concerned with the Second Coming of Christ at Doomsday). The influence of the latter on the former is apparent on the basis of a large number of unique or almost unique verbal parallels listed in an appendix to this paper. The later poet does not just parrot his hypothesised source, but originally and artistically recasts his borrowings with various kinds of embellishment. The influence of Christ III on Andreas is also apparent on a thematic level. This paper demonstrates that the Andreas-poet was attracted to the twin themes of ignorance and judgement in Christ III, creating a miniature Doomsday narrative out of the conversion of the Mermedonians. In doing so, the Andreas-poet reveals himself as a sophisticated consumer of earlier poetry and an original artist, turning his Latin prose source into a novel, theologically imaginative narrative.

Relating the Gospels: Memory, Imitation, and the Farrer Hypothesis by Eric Eve

Reviewed by: Relating the Gospels: Memory, Imitation, and the Farrer Hypothesis by Eric Eve Daniel Glover eric eve, Relating the Gospels: Memory, Imitation, and the Farrer Hypothesis (LNTS 592; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021). Pp. viii + 247. $115. Eric Eve's Relating the Gospels is a new study on the Synoptic Problem, arguing in favor of the Farrer Hypothesis. E. proposes that offering attention to memory and the scribal and authorial practices of imitation in the ancient world help to demonstrate the plausibility of Luke's use of Matthew and Mark. He dialogues with recent advances in memory studies and scribal compositional practices to argue in seven chapters for the plausibility of Luke's use of Matthew. The first chapter introduces the book and specifies that E. has confined this study to "comparing the viability of the Farrer hypothesis with that of its principal competitor, the Two Document Hypothesis" (3). It is somewhat disappointing that the more recent Matthean [End Page 356] Posteriority Theory did not feature prominently in this book. While no book can do everything, even a surface level engagement with this recent literature in the footnotes would have been desirable. The next two chapters supply the book's method. In chap. 2, E. establishes different models of engagement with memory studies in relation to the Synoptic Problem and how these models can help support the assumption of Marcan priority. Most interesting here is the discussion of scribal composition. E. offers evidence that scribes had a profound capacity for memory and the memorization of texts. The literary elite valued not only rote memorization of lines of text for recitation but also creative memory, which allowed for an interaction with texts even amid their performance. The best scribes could recite passages from a given text that shared a theme, word, or character, rework passages around other and different themes, sometimes recite a narrative in reverse order, and all of these on demand. Those interested in composition would often practice the same sorts of recollecting techniques just described but in combination with other literary works in order to produce a new, creative retelling or reworking of those older sources. These sorts of practices of creative rewriting, therefore, challenge Alan Kirk's argument (Q in Matthew [LNTS 564; London: T&T Clark, 2016]) that the Gospel authors would have been restrained by the logical ordering of written materials. (E. helpfully complicates this argument by pointing out that whatever rearranging would be necessary on Luke's use of Matthew, would also be necessary on Matthew's use of Q.) To be sure, E. does not attribute to the Gospel authors the same level of ability as those elite scribes, but he takes for granted that they would have had access to some of these same practices. In chap. 3, E. places this vision of scribal practice into conversation with recent work on ancient paideia. E. suggests that, while progymnastic exercises of reordering and rearrangement cannot account for every instance of Luke's use of Matthew, they do help the reader to anticipate the types of changes Luke would have made to Matthew, especially once one considers Luke as engaging in typical scribal practices of creative memory. The next three chapters wade "into the weeds" as close, comparative, and exegetical studies of the double and triple tradition. In chap. 4, E. discusses and evaluates significant similarities between Matthew and Luke, especially in the sayings material, but also between the first few chapters of Matthew and Luke. E. himself lists eight thematic and verbal parallels that are difficult to explain without some sort of literary dependence. He finds much the same sort of information in their narratives of John the Baptist, the temptation, and the resurrection. Luke's scribal creativity manifests throughout his Gospel, but E. observes the significance of Luke's imitative rewriting of the narrative of Samuel's infancy narrative in the composition of Jesus's birth and early years. There we find an analogue for the kind of creative alterations to Luke's Septuagintal source that we may observe in Luke's Matthean source under the Farrer Hypothesis. Eve's last two chapters deal with problem passages in Luke, including...

Shakespeare and Montaigne. Edited by Lars Engle, Patrick Gray, and William M. Hamlin

Lars Engle usefully explains (p. 38) that the sixteen chapters in this edited volume are divided into those which draw a comparison between Montaigne and Shakespeare and those which argue for an influence of the first on the second. Yet the beauty of this volume is that other understandings of its organization and purpose are also richly available. For instance, Colin Burrow’s careful preface raises an implicit question that is central to the volume’s overall concerns: is any syncrisis between the essayist and the playwright a matter of exact verbal parallels or of a conference, a conferring, a vibration through moments of empathy and silent, perhaps even accidental, affinity? Burrow’s deliberate unpicking of the notion of source as being inadequate to the task of what reading — let alone imitation — might mean in this debate is followed by N. Amos Rothschild’s contribution on the rhetoric of imitation, and then further refracted in Peter G. Platt’s ‘hovering and haunting’ (p. 242), in Richard Scholar’s delicate probing of Shakespeare’s and Montaigne’s rhetorical manner as well as matter, and in The Tempest’s ‘essay-like processes of thought’ analysed by Engle (p. 56). In a not dissimilar vein, Richard Hillman discusses the imitative generic patterns of tragedy and comedy. A second thematic strand studies how or whether Shakespeare and Montaigne can speak to our modernity: Anita Gilman Sherman interrogates selfhood, William McKenzie narcissism, and David Schalkwyk gender; in the book’s longest chapter (forty-seven pages), Patrick Gray proposes a dissenting view of liberalism. Likewise, there is a marked philosophical edge to a number of chapters — another thematic undercurrent. Maria Devlin McNair uses Bernard Williams’s notion of moral luck, Cassie M. Miura deploys Stanley Cavell, and Zorica Bečanović-Nikolić examines subjectivity through the writings of Paul Ricœur; Pyrrhonism occurs in chapters by Alison Calhoun, Richard Dillane, and William M. Hamlin, while Daniel Vitkus champions a neo-pagan reading of Antony and Cleopatra. Alongside this prismatic sense of the chapters, with each change of perspective bringing a new dimension of Shakespeare and Montaigne into view, the volume also reflexively enlarges on and assesses its own emphases through its abundant paratexts — a preface, two introductions, and two afterwords. They fulfil diverse functions. Hamlin offers a history of criticism about Shakespeare and Montaigne, whereas Engle views the pair in terms of thought-experiments. The afterwords, by contrast, tend to be contestatory. Thus, echoing Gray, George Hoffmann warns us not to take Montaigne straightforwardly as our liberal ancestor and, like Burrow, sees the self chiefly as a product of performance albeit now in a philosophical, sceptical mode. Meanwhile, Katharine Eisaman Maus points up some of the differences rather than the similarities between the playwright and the essayist. Curiously, none of the contributions considers whether oral transmission through report, news, or even word of mouth among circles of acquaintances might have played any part in Shakespeare’s encounter with the Essais. This reservation notwithstanding, the volume offers a wide-ranging yet coherent body of reflection and represents a distinguished and stimulating illustration of the key themes, ideas, and approaches in its field.

The Problem of Annals 15.44: On the Plinian Origin of Tacitus's Information on Christians

This article contends with the multitude of suggestions that have been raised recently as to the origin of Tacitus's information on Christians and Jesus, and concludes that, contrary to much popular opinion, the theory that Tacitus's information is a reliable independent witness is likely faulty. It first discusses previous theories that have been proposed, including the hypothesis that Tacitus was reliant on Josephus, official Roman documents, etc., and finds all suppositions for Tacitus being independent of Christian tradition to be specious and reliant on faulty arguments and a lack of convincing evidence. The article presents an alternative solution which is that Tacitus was reliant on the work of his friend Pliny the Younger, both his Letter 10.96 sent to Trajan and likely also discourses he had with him, noting that Tacitus relied on Pliny's works elsewhere and the close relationship the two had, even exchanging each other's works for review and criticism. A number of verbal parallels between Tacitus's work and Pliny's letter also points in this direction. As a result, Tacitus's information on Christians and Jesus likely stemmed from Pliny, who in turn gained it from interrogations of and hearsay from Christians. This has ramifications such as that Tacitus is then not a useful source for establishing the historicity of Jesus or the historicity of the Neronian persecution, as it looks as though he melded Christian tradition with the Great Fire of Rome, which Christians make no reference to for centuries.

Þrymskviða, Þrymlur, and Tord af Havsgaard—a Case of Early Antiquarianism?

<i>Þrymskviða</i>, <i>Þrymlur</i>, and <i>Tord af Havsgaard</i>—a Case of Early Antiquarianism?

Did Sir John Stanley write Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

The Gawain Poet was the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a fourteenth-century Arthurian romance, and perhaps the greatest poem ever written in Northern England. Its anonymous creator ranks with Marvell, Wordsworth, and the Brontës as amongst the North's supreme literary artists. The question naturally arises as to who he was. In 2004 the present writer gave an answer, publishing (in the US journal Arthuriana) an analysis of the poem and its associated works Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. He there proposed that the unknown poet was Sir John Stanley (c. 1350-1414), the evidence including dialect, topography, and verbal parallels between the four texts and Stanley's correspondence. What follows offers a revised survey of publications before and after 2004, examining whether they strengthen the case for Stanley as the Gawain Poet, weaken it, or demolish it completely.

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 527

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 527

A Theology of Justice in Exodus by Nathan Bills

Reviewed by: A Theology of Justice in Exodus by Nathan Bills Jaeyoung Jeon nathan bills, A Theology of Justice in Exodus (Siphrut 26; University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2020). Pp. xii + 311. $125. This book presents a synchronic reading of the Book of Exodus from the specific perspective of Yhwh's "creational justice." Nathan Bills synthesizes mostly literary and theological scholarly work and undertakes a thorough framing of Exodus with "justice" in connection with creation and pedagogy. In the first chapter, B. briefly reviews the concept of justice in the ancient Near East and Israel. He finds elements common in these two contexts, such as kindness for the poor and embodiment of creational order in the ancient concepts of justice. Chapter 2 presents a discussion on the introductory section of Exodus (chaps. 1–4). B. finds inner-biblical connections with Genesis while also characterizing the Egyptian oppression as "anticreational forces" that challenge Yhwh's creational order. In this framework, Israel's plight is a cosmic injustice, and thus the commissioning of Moses comes from Yhwh's concern not only for the patriarchal covenants but also for his justice. In a similar way in chap. 3, B. covers the story of the plagues (Exodus 5–15), presenting the narrative as recovering the creational justice by punishing Pharaoh and Egypt for their chaotic disruption of the creational order. Responding to the notion that the plagues were too severe and unbalanced, B. endeavors to defend Yhwh's punishments as "just." For instance, Pharaoh's heart was not always hardened by Yhwh; in most cases Pharaoh was responsible for the hardening. The killing of the Egyptian firstborns corresponds to Pharaoh's savagery to Yhwh's own firstborn, Israel. Presenting "cross-references" between the sea narrative (Exodus 14–15) and the creation account (Genesis 1), B. agrees with the view of the sea crossing as Yhwh's mythic victory over the primordial and cosmic chaos. In chap. 4, B. frames the wilderness and law giving at Sinai (Exodus 15–24) as an educative process through which Yhwh's justice is understood and implemented by the Israelites against the injustice of Egypt. All the wilderness episodes serve the purpose of "Yhwh's reordering of their habitus" (p. 207). B. also emphasizes Exod 19:4–6, the vocation of Israel as a priestly nation, as a realization of Yhwh's creational agenda for all humanity beyond the Abrahamic covenant. Recognizing that the law collection (Exodus 19–24) [End Page 109] parallels ancient Near Eastern law corpora, B. finds the uniqueness of Israelite law in its connection with the exodus narrative, giving a "distinct hermeneutical edge to Israel's ethic in God's creation" (p. 208). The final chapter is devoted to the construction of the tabernacle and the episode of the golden calf (Exodus 25–40). B. presents the former in sharp contrast to the labors of the Hebrews in Egypt: voluntary devotion versus corvée; life with Sabbath rest versus Egyptian industry without rest (Exod 5:5). Further, B. argues, the construction of the Tabernacle parallels creation through elements such as Yhwh's seven speeches (Exodus 25-31) and the seven-day creation, verbal parallels, and various thematic connections. The production of the golden calf (Exodus 32-34) is understood as a return to Egyptian ways and a reversion to the creational chaos comparable to the story of the Flood (Genesis 6-9). For this comparison B. provides a useful list of corresponding literary elements (pp. 230-31). The problem is resolved by Yhwh's mercy with justice. The ending of Exodus with Israel's worship service and the glory filling the tabernacle (Exodus 40) signifies, for B., an overcoming of chaos in the world and creational justice being put "on display for the world to see" (p. 254). The Book of Exodus has been a subject of significant debate in critical pentateuchal scholarship in the last few decades. B. examines alternative models of formation of the Pentateuch replacing the classical Documentary Hypothesis. He points out that no consensus has been achieved and that critics increasingly argue for both a tradition-historical gap and a literary gap between Genesis and Exodus, especially in pre-Priestly stages. B...

How Prophecy Works: A Study of the Semantic Field of נביא and a Close Reading of Jeremiah 1:4–19, 23:9–40 and 27:1–28:17

<i>How Prophecy Works: A Study of the Semantic Field of</i> נביא <i>and a Close Reading of Jeremiah 1:4–19, 23:9–40 and 27:1–28:17</i>

The Porter and the Jesuits: Macbeth and the Forgotten History of Equivocation☆

AbstractThis essay explores Shakespeare’s relationship to the intellectual history of equivocation in sixteenth and seventeenth‐century rhetoric and dialectic. It demonstrates that ‘equivocation’, far from denoting only a Jesuitical practice of deception, had a long and complex history intrinsically linked to theories of interpretation. Thus, the essay challenges the view that Macbeth’s apparent obsession with equivocation can be attributed exclusively to the Gunpowder Plot. The widely presumed influence of the conspirators’ trials on the play, based largely on verbal parallels with sermons, speeches and treatises, sidelines a fundamental sixteenth‐century discourse about epistemology. The essay offers a historicized understanding of equivocation to demonstrate that the concept had permeated early modern culture more deeply and earlier than usually acknowledged. It provides a comparative analysis of Shakespeare’s use of the word ‘equivocation’ in Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, Othello and Macbeth. Reading Macbeth alongside pre‐Gunpowder Plot plays (The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure), and the rhetorical and dialectical tradition, reveals a culture that was deeply disconcerted by what was perceived as the inherent instability of meaning. The essay argues that the theological‐political controversy about equivocation was a debate about language and interpretation in which Shakespeare’s characters had participated before 1605.

"Some subtleties o'th' isle": Shakespeare's Tempest and Montaigne's Apologie of Raymond Sebond

A remarkable fact about William Shakespeare's The Tempest is that characters do not always see or hear the same thing. But while this estrangement of knowledge thins out the boundaries between character and environment to recognizably great dramatic effect, the aporetic energies underlying that estrangement are not yet fully understood. This article explores their significance by examining the connections between The Tempest and Michel de Montaigne's An Apologie of Raymond Sebond (long suspected to be related). It proposes a new verbal parallel between the play and the essay but does not confine its argument to such a criterion. Rather, it is a case study in the Renaissance practice of imitation that works from a number of aspects—shared matrices of thought and feeling, similar metaphors, networks of texts—to reconstruct the presence of a locus classicus of Renaissance skepticism in Shakespeare's late play. Along the way, it triangulates these works with a discussion of King Lear and examines the presence of Vergil and the possible presence of Seneca. It argues that Shakespeare used Montaigne's essay to make his island epistemologically strange and that this sensitive use of a philosophical source is notable for being so deeply dramatically embedded.

Lyric Modes and Metaphor in The Wife’s Lament

ABSTRACT Decades of analysis of The Wife’s Lament based on a presumed, underlying narrative have produced interpretations that are contradictory and competing. As a lyric poem, The Wife’s Lament is more profitably approached through its non-narrative elements, especially metaphor and intertextuality. Two major metaphors control The Wife’s Lament: “Wife as exiled retainer”—currently uncontroversial—and “Wife as seer from beyond the grave.” The latter metaphor is supported by a verbal parallel from Old Frisian and by character analogues from the Poetic Edda.

Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement

Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement

Inner-biblical Quotations in Old Testament Narratives: Some Methodological Considerations (e.g., 1 Sam 15:2 and Deut 25:17-19)

ABSTRACT In the study of inner-biblical quotations in Old Testament narrative literature, much insight can be gleaned from the scholarly endeavour in the last twenty years of defining and interpreting allusions and quotations in the prophetic literature. Author-intended quotations from a precursor text should be distinguished from stock phrases and the use of recurrent identical phrases. Among the viable criteria for discerning the direction of dependence in quotations, it is relevant to mention unfamiliar language usage in one part of the parallel, dependence on context, and signs of interpretation for rhetorical purposes. These criteria are used to test the case of the parallel locutions in Deut 25:17-19 and 1 Sam 15:2-3. The article also stresses the need for a thorough study of repeated phraseology in the narrative literature. Keywords: Direction of Dependence, Formulaic Language, Method, Quotation, Verbal Parallels

‘A voice from over the Sea’: Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy, Peterloo, and the English Radical Press

Abstract Shelley’s poetic response to the Peterloo massacre, The Mask of Anarchy, was crucially informed by printed news sources relating to the momentous events in Manchester of 16 August 1819. Hitherto our knowledge of those sources has been confined to Leigh Hunt’s Examiner newspaper. This article re-examines the available evidence and argues that Shelley may well also have drawn on the accounts of Peterloo written by the radical journalist and freethinker, Richard Carlile. It traces the connections between Carlile and the Shelley circle in London during 1819 (including Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, William Godwin, and Thomas Jefferson Hogg), and identifies a number of suggestive verbal parallels between Shelley’s Mask and Carlile’s prose. But there were also important political differences between the two men; an appreciation of those differences throws new light on the Mask’s ambivalent attitude to the prospect of revolution, and Shelley’s strident advocacy of non-violent resistance to state-sponsored oppression.

Two “Mothers” in 5 Ezra 2:1-32

Abstract The early Christian apocryphon 5 Ezra (2 Esdras) 2:1-32 describes two distinct but unidentified “mothers.” The first (2:1-7) is desolate, forlorn, and consigned to “destruction”; the second (2:15-32) is encouraged, glorified, and triumphant. It is generally recognized that the first “mother” represents the city of Jerusalem, “Mother Jerusalem.” The identity of and literary/thematic inspiration(s) behind the second “mother,” however, are uncertain. The main thesis of this paper is that the “mother” in 2:15-32 represents the Christian church, “Mother Church.” The primary evidence for this identification is the remarkable thematic and verbal parallels between 5 Ezra’s descriptions of the “mother” and the characterizations of “Mother Church” in the writings of Cyprian. Furthermore, the writings of Zeno of Verona and Lactantius contain lists of Christian ecclesiastical “works of mercy” that are close to 5 Ezra 2:20-22. Our findings suggest that 5 Ezra is a post-250 Latin composition of North African origin.

INTERTEXTUALITY AND MEMORY IN EARLY CHINESE WRITINGS: A CASE STUDY FROMHUAINANZI

AbstractThis article aims to illustrate the usefulness of analytical approaches to early Chinese writings which center on effects of textual memory. Due to a dearth of contemporaneous descriptions, concrete practices of oral transmission, dictation, performance, and interpretation in Early China largely lie beyond the ken of present-day scholarship. But recurrence of linguistic-stylistic elements testifies to the presence of these elements in an author's memory. Memory should thus, in principle, provide a comparatively accessible perspective on textual production. To demonstrate this point, the article investigates verbal parallels to a passage fromHuainanzi淮南子 15, “Bing lüe” 兵略 (An Overview of the Military). The internal and distributional patterns as well as the qualitative properties of textual overlaps with other extant writings suggest a composition process that involved a particular type of textual memory. Parallels are fuzzy and patchy; they rarely exceed one or two clauses; they display an irregular distribution across intertexts; the similarities between them cut across linguistic and stylistic categories and recombine in unpredictable constellations. This bundle of characteristics suggests not so much systematic exploitation of trained mnemonic capacities to reproduce long stretches of text verbatim, but instead, a reliance on the aptness of linguistic-stylistic elements of various kinds to spring to mind piecemeal in particular thematic contexts. These specificities are captured well by Boris Gasparov's notion of “communicative fragments.” To invoke an Aristotelian distinction, the resulting effects are close to those of unsupervised remembering rather than the deliberate, goal-directed cognitive activity of recollecting. Looking beyond the present study, it is hoped that future investigations of intertextuality will combine aspects of close reading—as in this article—and methods of digitally enhanced distant reading. This will likely help to elucidate distinct habits of text production and to devise more refined textual typologies, which might eventually feed into more nuanced literary, historical, and philosophical interpretations.

Sejanus, Measure for Measure, and Rats Bane

SEJANUS was likely first performed by the King’s Men at Court in the winter of 1603 and at the Globe early in 1604.1Measure for Measure was probably first performed at the Globe in the summer of 1604 and at Court the day after Christmas that same year.2 The general scholarly consensus is that Shakespeare played the part of the Emperor Tiberius in Jonson’s play.3 If this is the case then not only would Shakespeare have known the text of Sejanus, he would have been learning and performing it as he was writing Measure for Measure. That said, comparatively little attention has been paid to possible connections between the two plays. In his First Arden edition of Measure for Measure, H. C. Hart pointed out some parallels between the scene in Act Four where Angelo and Escalus discuss the letters that have distracted Angelo, and a scene in the last act of Sejanus where Cotta and Latiaris discuss the letters that precipitate the downfall of the titular character.4 Drawing on Hart’s work, Brian Gibbon’s Cambridge edition observes the same thematic parallel and suggests an additional small verbal parallel between III.i. of Sejanus and V.i. of Measure for Measure.5

Exploring Verbal Relations between Arden of Faversham and John Lyly’s Endymion

Several scholars, utilizing traditional reading-based methods, have highlighted intertextual links between the anonymous domestic tragedy Arden of Faversham (1590) and John Lyly’s comedy Endymion, The Man in the Moon (1588). The authorship of Arden of Faversham is fiercely contested: Brian Vickers and the present writer have argued for Thomas Kyd’s sole authorship, whereas MacDonald P. Jackson and his New Oxford Shakespeare colleagues have contended for Shakespeare’s part authorship. This article draws upon electronic corpora in order to highlight matching utterances between the Kentish tragedy and Lyly’s comedy, and suggests that the quantity of rare and/or unique verbal parallels with Endymion is indicative of a single author’s acquisitive practices. The article proceeds to explore these matches in context in order to broaden our understanding of the relations between these plays, and the composition of Arden of Faversham as a whole.