Search

The paper presents the travails of critics and the labour pain of creative writers, limitations of criticism and creative writings, Plato's views on the abuse of poetry, poetic inspiration, the emotional appeal of poetry, and function of poetry and its non-moral character. It places before the reader Aristotle's views on the origin and development of poetry, the nature of poetry, imitation, the objects of imitation, the manner of imitation, difference between poetry and history, the function of poetry, the emotional appeal of poetry and catharsis, critical objections against poetry and their solutions. It traces Renaissance and its impact, medieval literary theory, the origin of English criticism, an age of the seed time for the germination of literature of higher order, the development of English drama, the spirit of renaissance in the Elizabethan and Jacobean age, and the noteworthy contribution of the early neoclassicists. It highlights Ben Jonson's neoclassicism, the influence of the classical writers, the drawback in English literature and Jonson's wish. It brings out the praiseworthy contribution of the neoclassicists, their liberal approach to classicism, deviation from classicism, vacillation of criticism between a blind application of rules and judgment by sheer taste, focuses on reason as test of literary values, and the sure test of literary judgment which rests on surer foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to present before the readers the relative merits of epic and tragedy that are handed down the timeline and enable the readers to establish the superiority of epic over tragedy. In order to render justice to the objective aimed at, the paper traces and presents to the readers a critical survey of the variegated critical aspects of the critics such as Plato (427-347 BCE), Aristotle (384-322 BCE), John Dryden(1631-1700), Joseph Addison (1672-1719), and Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following pages, a brief, personal outline of the history of translation is sketched, so as to determine the whys and wherefores of the form/content dichotomy that seems to be plaguing translators and translation theorists incessantly. From the outset, in Classical times, sense rules supreme. In the late middle ages with the advent of Bible translation in Europe, the word - being the word of God - assumes new-found importance, especially as any deviation from it implies heresy. With Neo-Classicism and the Age of Enlightenment, the original tenets of antiquity unsurprisingly make their comeback, though somewhat short-lived this time. With the Romantics and post-Romantics, foreign lands and cultures gain ever greater interest, as indeed do their various forms of expressions. In contemporary Europe, over the last hundred years or so, with its preoccupation for markets and product diversification, the two schools of thought seem to co-habit quite comfortably, notwithstanding modern linguistic theory that renders form and content into indivisible components of language, thus making the dichotomy fatuous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses German philosopher Theodor Adorno and his 1960s essay "On the Classicism of Goethe's 'Iphigenie'." The author suggests that Adorno criticized German classicism and post-World War II literary criticism. Other topics include Adorno's essays "On the Crisis of Literary Criticism" and "On Tradition," Adorno's thoughts on the relevance of literature, the use of literary history in National Socialism, and scholars Emil Staiger and Arthur Henkel on author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The debate on the responsibility of the writer was, in France as in the USA, an attack against literary and artistic modernism. From Charles Maurras to Irving Babbit, the reaction against modernism presented itself as a defense of classicism and of tradition against romanticism. Far from being politically neutral, this attack identified romanticism with revolution and the destruction of the social order. The opposition between responsibility and freedom structured the debate from the end of the nineteenth century until World War II. The war entailed a loss of autonomy of the literary field which fostered, like during World War I, the imposition of national moralism. In both countries, a debate arose on the question of the responsibility of the writer, but it took a different form. Whereas the opposition between art for art’s sake and responsibility continued to structure it in the USA, the notion of responsibility was appropriated in France by the literary Resistance and redefined by Sartre at the Liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the view of Rene Descartes on French Classicism which humans regarded nonhuman animals as soulless creatures by God for their use, entertainment and consumption in the seventeenth-century in France. It notes that the early modern France was far from Cartesian views on nonhuman animals as it held beliefs over species boundaries between human and nonhuman animals. It addresses the manifestations of these apprehensions in philosophy, law and prescriptions concerning food.

This essay considers Rainer Maria Rilke's use of classicism as a response to the uncanny and fragmenting industrial city. While the twentieth-century revival of classicism has typically been seen as part of the reactionary "call to order," I argue that Rilke's work represents a radically different modernist classicism - one that celebrates the fluidity and contingency of urban life. While his early work evinces a flight from the chaos of the modern city to a lost antique wholeness, after his engagement with Rodin's disarticulated sculpture, Rilke radically reimagines classicism as the ideal form for a Baudelairean modernity defined by "the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient Greek cult of the body became the focus of a classical revival in France during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Classical civilisation, whose gravitational centre was perceived, during the 1880s, as the perfection of the body in a Mediterranean climate, was re-claimed in France as a French "golden age", an inheritance from Greek ancestors. This ethno-classicism which called for national regeneration through return to the "authentic" French self and its Mediterranean home, was combined with a Catholic revival under conditions of military defeat. The essay sets the work of Cézanne and Renoir in the context of the two revivals, classical and Catholic, and shows the ways in which their "classicism" gave Impressionism order and solidity and re-moulded the modern body into a strong, healthy, and, at the same time, pious body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Greek historian Herodotus' interest in the Samos Island. It notes that several scholars believe that his interest in Samos lies in the details of his biography. However, the author argues that any biolographical connection to the island only strengthens unstated reasons for going on long about Samos. It stresses that Samos is very special to Herodotus. Moreover, it explores the Samians erga in the layer 15th century context and the extent to which the Samian revolt has formed Herodotus' narrative. The author mentions that she will compare details of Herodotus narrative over other sources to evaluate what contribution Herodotus' version may established in the details of the Samian revolt.

This essay intends to show why, at the end of 18th century, Shakespearean plays were so useful to the German romantic literary criticism, which was opposed to French classicism as a hegemonic regime of taste and rule of art. This cultural dispute must also be understood as a literary expression of social criticism against the German nobility's values and its regime of social distinction. From this cultural dispute arose a new conception of Shakespeare's works that is the object of my critical review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Daniel Deronda" by George Eliot is presented. The article explores the separation of morality from practices of exclusion characteristic of ideology in Eliot's work. The author suggests that Eliot arrives at her critique of ideology through anthropomorphistic theology and the impartiality of scientific observation. Other topics include critical realism, Weimar classicism, the author Benedictus de Spinoza, and point of view.

Presents comments on the nature and character of a classic based on the essay "What Is a Classic: A Lecture," in the book "Stranger Shores: Literary Essays," by J. M. Cotzee. Details of how Cotzee arrived at the problem of what is a classic; Analysis of the classical music by composer Johann Sebastian Bach; Reason for considering the Rich Young Man in the Gospel of Matthew as a classic scene.

The article presents information on writer and poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's works related to Greek history. In her letter to Alexander Pope from Adrianopole commenting on his newly published translation of Homer, she conflates fact and fiction and, moved not by the local peasants' reality but by the realism of Theocritus's descriptions. Montagu's Embassy Letters vacillate between classicism, obvious in the vindication of Theocritus's and Homer's timeless veracity, and exoticism, evident in her exaltation among the peasants and the ruins of Greece.

Presents an analysis of the classic tale Ulysses and the Sirens. Association between Odysseus and Christ; Recognition of Erasmus of Rotterdam as the most renowned and influential northern humanist; Arguments on the suppression of Ulysses in the Renaissance literature.

Focuses on the structure of conscription practiced by citizen-soldier in Athens in the classical times. Influence of conscription on the cultural and ideological practices of Hoptiles; Historical context of the conscription on the pursuit of Athenian democracy; Influence of conscription to the civic ideology and practice among Athenian.

The author analyzes the influence of 20th century English poet T. S. Eliot on Italian poet Eugenio Montale, citing Montale's translations of Eliot's poems and literary critic Mario Praz's relationship with Montale. Literary style, poetics, and classicism are discussed, and books such as "The Waste Land" and "Ariel Poems" by Eliot and "Ossi di seppia" by Montale are mentioned.

This article focuses on Voltaire's "Candide." It might be argued that Voltaire's aesthetics are those of French classicism, the antithesis of carnival. His writing is spare and didactic, his norms rationalist. Paradox reflects for him not the richness but the wrongness of the universe. The catalogue of evils is appalling, the tone bitter. The inspiration of "Candide," is essentially negative. In "Candide," optimism is a universal superlative. The narrative is equally comprehensive. Epic, romance, and the fabulous voyage are parodied. The journey takes in the Old World, the New World, and Utopian Eldorado. The Eldoradan order in commerce, religion, politics, and science is presented with approval. But this world is mediated by the naive reactions of the protagonists, and the amiable ironies of the narrator. The carnival of "Candide," is principally one of destruction. There is however tremendous and unremitting energy. This appears in the speed of events, the frequent use of the dramatic present tense, the violence of the assaults, the force of imagination in the writing.

Argues that author and literary theorist, Hans Jauss, has misunderstood Hans Georg Gadamer's views about classicity. Books on literary theory published by Jauss; Jauss' alignment of the evolution of his theoretical views with the fate of reform enthusiasm in West Germany from the late 60s to mid-70s; Jauss' criteria for literary quality; Jauss' oversimplification of Gadamer's complex elaboration of the nature of classicity and its function within historical consciousness.

The article provides an overview of the art deco movement in which the goal of the art deco designers is to combine ancient imagery, from classicism to the symbolic range of ancient Aztec and Egyptian art, with the futurist imagery of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. However, it is observed that this attempt at reconciliation has drawn the ire of critics in this age of trouble. Meanwhile, the polemics stimulated the adjustment in the rationalist primitivism that had influenced eighteenth-century thought.

The article presents author's views on the book "Zen and the Art of Mechanical Maintenance," by Robert Pirsig and argues on "the Metaphysics of Quality," term used by Pirsig in his book. Topics include Western dualism between classicism and romanticism, ethical interrogation by way of motorcycle maintenance and ZAMM as a philosophical fiction.