Search

In this unique book, Eisner investigates the wide breadth of editions of Dante Alighieri's I Vita nuova i , itself a highly unique book in which the medieval Italian poet intersperses previously written poems with prose commentary to create an overarching narrative. Toward the beginning of I Vita nuova i , Dante refers to the ' I libro de la mia memoria i ' ("book of my memory"), as if the contents of his memory are somehow written out like a "book". But a book like Eisner's should correct that lack of attention if it is to integrate Dante's original enterprise in composing I Vita nuova i with the variegated interpretations of it that have emerged through the centuries. [Extracted from the article]

The expression that professionals should be led by their moral or ethical compass is increasingly used by academics, policy makers, professionals, and educational institutes. Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS), for example, explicitly aim to educate their students to become professionals equipped with a moral compass. This moral or ethical compass is a metaphor of which people intuitively grasp its meaning, but our literature review also shows that various interpretations are possible. We found three clusters of proposed ethical compasses expressing its a) content, b) form, or c) use, which we present in this article. Thereafter, we evaluate which compass can meaningfully assist (young) professionals and, therefore, should be part of the aims and content of education provided by UAS. Based on this evaluation, we describe the possibilities and boundaries of UAS' contribution to the development of their students' ethical compass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the number of studies on literature in language education has increased in the past two decades, the subject is still in need of empirical research. This case study examines literary texts, their selection, frequency, and functions in Finnish general upper-secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education. The data was collected from 21 Finnish EFL teachers using a survey, and the content was thematically analyzed. In these contexts, literary texts had a marginal role. The texts were mostly twentieth-century poetry and novels. Selections by teachers were primarily based on the texts. Often students chose texts independently. Literature was mainly used to teach language, particularly reading skills, and secondarily as content. In light of EFL teaching, the results suggest a need for a conceptual expansion of literature, the wider use of literary texts with visual components, and the use of literary texts for developing students' intercultural competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Colloquia Humanistica is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, the author examines one of the most important issues in the spiritual maturation of Russian culture. Peter the Great brought Russia back to Europe as a military and political power. Yet, the great country needed to assimilate European culture. In this context, we could rightly call Karamzin a Russian European who laid the groundwork for the development of genuinely Russian culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay offers a close examination of Statius's Silvae 3.2, a propempticon for Maecius Celer. Using earlier Latin farewell poems as intellectual background, I illustrate the poet's originality. In particular I watch how he makes use of different genres, such as lyric and epic, and especially of the Aeneid, as he crafts a meditation on a series of curricula vitae that illuminate Celer's own voyage. Figures involved include Cleopatra and Alexander the Great as well as Virgil himself and his characters, Aeneas and Dido. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From classical antiquity to contemporary times, challenging situations of dilemmatic or paradoxical nature continue to fascinate both scholars and the casual reader. Although Western literature provides a fruitful source of philosophical discussion on the circumstances under which a morally competent agent faces incompatible moral requirements, Sinology has rarely accepted the idea of moral dilemmas in Chinese philosophy in general and Confucianism in particular. The present paper explores moral and morally motivated dilemmas in L iu Xiang's 劉向 Lienü Zhuan 列女傳 and the philosophical strategies employed for their resolution within the framework of the Confucian tradition, emphasizing similarities with Western traditions such as Greek tragedy or Thomistic philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of the Association of American Geographers is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper circles around difficult issues that concern the relationship between life and poetry, trying to create a new paradigm through their ultimate identification. Poetry of life might prove to be the oldest paradigm for both literature and human existence and a challenge for this millennium. As paradigmatic literary feasts from Homer’s Iliad to the love dinner in Pavić’s best-selling novel Dictionary of the Khazars show, representations of real life are not the only thing making a poetic creation ‘seem’ alive. A Homeric transgression from tragedy to the vital power of poetry, embodied in Achilles’ transformation from a hero into a poet, comes after politics and after poetics. It also appears to be necessary if we truly wish to eradicate old conflicts and prejudices that have haunted the Balkans, among other parts of the world, for too long. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorizes how ancient literature can be used to inspire contemporary psychological understanding. We articulate a critical presentism that reads ancient literature symbolically without losing sight of important differences of meaning over time. Although ancient literature may inspire understanding of our present-day concerns, historical text cannot be used to explain contemporary understandings without charges of naïve presentism. A hermeneutics of archetypes is used to theorize a way of using ancient literature that remains critical of presentist claims to knowledge. Without losing sight of important socio-historical differences, the story of The Bacchae is used to illustrate how literature from the past can engender psychological understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on legal literature work on siren songs, which are the enchanting music and voices meant for sailors. It discusses a felicitous translation of a poem made by George Chapman, English dramatist and translator, which is based on archetypal theme. It informs that Sameul Daniel, contemporary of William Shakespeare, also introduced an irensong which deals with the duet between sailor and legal temptress.

The article offers information on a literature work which describes the social and political values of humanistic inquiry. It reports that the literature work demonstrate several rhetorical oppositions in human values which include skill and development, techniques and art, and scientific methods and humanistic methods. It explores two potential repercussions of theses splits within law.

The article offers information regarding the crisis of a disciplinary knowledge in translational studies. The author focuses that this crisis adds to the resurrected historical praxis. In the cross link vision of translation and migration, it is considered to have notion of migration for creating sites of migrant translation and self-translation.

In Ulysses, there is a whole repertoire of linguistic inventiveness, creativity and play in the form of new words and odd constructions, which calls for our close reading. Lexical Inventiveness, as I argue, best characterizes Joyce's lexical revolution in which both creativity and playfulness of language are fully stressed. To have a better understanding of them, this chapter is to investigate special conversions, unusual compounds and comic word-play by means of classification and comparison. Our studies show: (1) Joyce's defamiliarized lexis is more motivated than arbitrary as he made the best use of the accepted lexical resources; (2) As for various word formations, we find that Joyce's verb conversion follows fairly well the word-formation rules, his compounds deviate a lot from the rules and his jumbled compounds are, in its true sense, what Bakhtin calls "linguistic carnivalization"; (3) Semantically, neologisms, though fleeting, are terse, lively, exciting, expressive, and above all true to life. (4) Perfect truth was perfect language." (French, 1982). The point with his linguistic inventiveness is to make full use of the visual and auditory textures of words, including their musical nature, and to increase the expressive power of literary language, and thus to achieve the special artistic effects of "defamiliarization" by increasing the difficulty of reading and lengthening their time of perception, and it is in grappling with linguistic deviation, creativity and indeterminateness that lie's much of the pleasure of reading Ulysses. So Joyce's linguistic inventiveness is part of his artistic ingenuity in fiction and calls for further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers poetry criticism of the works of African American poets Langston Hughes and Melvin B. Tolson. It examines the themes of archives and archiving in their works, focusing on the relationship between archives and the development of national identity through poetry. The author focuses on the political and historical significance of the poem "Prelude to Our Age: A Negro History Poem" by Hughes and the work "Libretto for the Republic of Liberia" by Tolson.

The author offers views on an article by Bachir Diagne on a discussion of 1968 as a point of crisis in African letters. The author explores the question of how to understand the mutual defiance and the difficult relationship between postcolonial literary studies and the history of colonization. The author also focuses on the novel "Le Devoir de violence," by Yambo Ouologuem, which Diagne used as an illustration of the crisis of African letters in 1968.

The article discusses the future of philology as well as the fate of soft science. It explores two epigraphs that center on the fortune of philology, which came from Edmund Husserl and Bertold Brecht. It highlights the essay of philological critic Edward Said entitled "The Return to Philology," which embodied many tendencies that are central to the true meaning of philology.

The resurgence in the use of literature in language teaching has been accompanied by an increasing number of research articles in this area. Research (in a number of second languages) has looked at the type of interactions and the type of language that arise from classroom discussions about literature, as well as at the views of teachers and learners. Importantly, the reactions that learners have to incorporating literature in their language lessons are linked to the type of approach and type of task that are used in the classroom. The paper surveys the existing research, as well as evidence from practitioners about approaches that are used and the range of works and authors that are taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Jaegwon Kim's Supervenience Argument (SA) against nonreductive physicalism, concentrating on Kim's response to two of the most important objections against the SA: First, the Overdetermination Argument, according to which Kim has no convincing argument against the possibility that mental causation might be a case of genuine or systematic overdetermination; second, the Generalization Argument, according to which the SA would entail that causation at any level gives way to causation at the next lower level, thereby leading to an untenable all-encompassing epiphenomenalism. It is argued that as of yet, Kim has failed to develop a coherent overall position, since various moves he makes in response to these criticisms are strangely at odds with other parts of his philosophical position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Architecture of Mind is an ambitious and informative work, surveying an impressive range of empirical literature and arguing that the mind is massively modular. However, it suffers from two major theoretical flaws. First, Carruthers’ concept of a module is weak, so much so that it robs his thesis of massive modularity of any real substance. Second, his conception of how the mind’s modules evolved ignores the role of niche construction and cultural evolution to its detriment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the questions that were left unanswered in James Joyce's novel "Ulysses." Most of the questions that Joyce's novel left open concern the afterlife of fictional characters, such as whether the character of Jane Eyre can ever be happy. Other questions pertaining to the main characters of the novel which continue to irritate literal-minded readers include, whether the character of Stephen disappeared for good into the good night or did he return to take up a relationship with Bloom and, whether Leopold or Molly ever resume marital relations.

This essay explores the traumatic symptomatology of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the politics of literature by looking at some works of novelist Don DeLillo. In his essay after 9/11, DeLillo proposed to writers to "create the counternarrative" after he posits cyber-capital and terrorism as competing world narratives. The author examines this proposal by reading the novelist's works against the background of Maurice Blanchot's thesis that literary writing is itself, a terrorist

The author comments on the commentary of E. Talbot Donaldson in the issue of the journal. She was amazed about an opinion on the commentary which states that the edition is not feminist enough or implicitly sexist. She believes that the commentary presents special challenges for modern readers of earlier literary criticism. She also states that Donaldson is an accomplished classicist.

The article focuses on a collection of essays, Criticism, Politics, and Objectivity in the American Communication Journal (ACJ). The structure of this essay consists of two parts. First, the author briefly compares the themes advanced by the authors in Criticism, Politics, and Objectivity in ACJ 4.1 with the themes used by the authors in Rhetoric, Politics, and Critique in ACJ 4.3. Second, I specifically address the assumptive nature of politised criticism. In comparing the major thrust of ACJ 4.1 with that of ACJ 4.3, researcher Mark Huglen held that broadly speaking, the discussion is about criticism that is disinterested science versus strategic criticism for social reform. Simply put, this is wrong. What the authors of ACJ 4.1 collectively wrote concerning the practice of rhetorical criticism was a far cry from calling for disinterested science. The authors instead strove mightily to navigate those critical waters between the Scylla of scientific objectivity and the Charybdis of activist criticism.

There are many disagreements among the three main paradigms of the nationalism literature. Yet most modernists, ethno-symbolists and constructivists agree that elites play a key role in inventing and re-inventing nations. Notwithstanding this insight, none of these schools of thought has generated a compelling answer to the question of why the inventors of a certain nation build, out of an infinite number of possibilities, a particular nationness. Analysing the case of twentieth century Irish identity, this article seeks to shed light on this question by inquiring into the process through which elites come to imagine the nation that they seek to build. I argue that epistemic understandings of the world delineate which kinds of national identity are conceivable for, and plausible to, nation-building elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have traditionally interpreted Hipponax fragment 128 (West) as an epic parody designed to belittle the grand pretensions and gluttonous habits of his enemy. I suggest, however, that this traditional reading ultimately falls short because of two unexamined assumptions: (1) that the meter and diction of the fragment are exclusively meant to recall epic narrative and not any other early hexametrical genre, and (2) that the descriptive epithets in lines 2 and 3 are the ad hoc comic creations of the poet and simply refer to the table manners of a glutton or a parasite. I argue instead that this fragment in several ways reflects the language, the meter and the performative goal of hexametrical chants or incantations designed to expel harmful famine demons or to escort human scapegoats from the city. I also suggest that the vivid and somewhat comic descriptions of the enemy in fragment 128 probably do not aim at his personal eating disorders, but rather they are drawn from two interrelated and generic features of archaic Greek thought: a tradition of describing famine-demons as insatiable eaters, and a popular theme in Greek invective which demonizes political enemies as rapacious pests who threaten to gobble up the commonwealth of the city and who therefore must be expelled from the community, precisely like a famine-demon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars interested in iconicity in language and/or literature have concerned themselves with the following questions. Is it valid to define iconicity based on a sign's being similar in quality to its object or referent? Is iconicity arbitrary or motivated? What iconic aspects are manifested in language structure or language change? How does iconicity on various linguistic levels contribute to the aesthetics of literature? Instead of continuing these extensively discussed issues, this study investigates how iconicity embodies or transmits what we may call--at least in terms of its effect -- powerful verbal energy or verbal force. Arguing for iconicity as transmitting verbal energy, the present article concentrates on three particular issues: (1) accumulative homology (i.e., structural or semantic likeness permeating various linguistic levels); (2) iconicity as a metalanguage; (3) iconicity catalysing the release of energy through a "fusion of words and world". For purposes of illustration, this paper uses examples from Wordsworth's The Prelude and from Zen discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the common view, this paper suggests that the Hippocratic oath does not directly refer to the controversial subjects of euthanasia and abortion. We interpret the oath in the context of establishing trust in medicine through departure from Pantagruelism. Pantagruelism is coined after Rabelais' classic novel Gargantua and Pantagruel. His satire about a wonder herb, Pantagruelion, is actually a sophisticated model of anti-medicine in which absence of independent moral values and of properly conducted research fashion a flagrant over-medicalization of human problems. Ultimately this undermines the therapeutic core of medicine itself. We contend that PAS is a case of such over-medicalization and that its institution creates medicophobia. This article does not express an opinion about euthanasia in general. Rather, we claim that physicians should learn from the oath and from Rabelais that they should keep their practice to medical care and not to exploit their expertise and social privileges for the sake of ulterior motives, even when their patients desire those goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at reexamining the origins and character of economic sociology by comparison with rational choice within the history of economic and social ideas, particularly neoclassical economic and classical sociological theory. Some suggestions for a rational choice approach to economic sociology are particularly curious in that they tend to conflate the distinct characters and origins of these two disciplines throughout this history and have in turn provided an impetus for this reexamination. Modern rational choice theorists display a predilection for reducing economic (and, all) sociology into an economic approach to human behavior, with many economic sociologists evincing some degree of lenience or benevolence vis-à-vis such tendencies. Both tendencies do not seem justified in light of the different nature and origin of economic sociology and rational choice in the history of social and economic ideas. Since the current literature lacks coherent attempts at specifying the nature and historical roots of economic sociology versus those of rational choice, the article contributes toward filling in this hole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that hermeneutic fictionalism is not a valid strategy in ontology. Problematic consequences of any application of hermeneutic fictionalism; Belief that a hermeneutic fictionalist analysis is untenable.

Discusses Ann Radcliffe's Gothic writing in comparison to some of Joseph Wright's paintings. How the rhetorical core of Radcliffe's narratives has a profile that resembles money-based transactions; Interaction of the public sphere with the home as evidenced in her novel 'The Mysteries of Udolpho'; Characteristics of a first reading of Radcliffe's work compared with a second reading.