Search

Theoretically, a poem can begin in any way. What does it mean that in practice, poems often begin in a particular way—that is, by returning to a fragment of some prior thing? We see this in the encore of John Milton's opening to Lycidas ('Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more'); differently, we see this in the widely used convention of the poetic epigraph (for instance, T. S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' begins with six lines from Dante's Inferno). While there is an established model for understanding the beginning as an act that invokes poetic precedent, this paper seeks to expose the beginning's logic of return to a broader sense of language that is beyond the remit of poetic tradition as such. With a focus on the epigraph, this paper thinks about the everyday existence of poems and about how this existence relates to ordinary language, asking, how do these different modes of language function together? How does ordinary language collude in the creation of poetry? In its enactment of the passage of language from one mode of existence to another, the beginning of a poem might offer some answers to these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between Hong Kong gangster films and the political climate of the city. It argues that these films serve as cultural icons and implicitly convey political messages, reflecting the socio-political sentiment of Hong Kongers during significant events. The article explores the use of spatiality in gangster films, highlighting how cinematic spaces embody political meanings and capture collective emotions. It discusses the evolution of gangster films, their reflection of the political and social climate, and the themes of violence, insecurity, and identity crisis portrayed in these films. The text also addresses the use of rooftops and rural spaces in Hong Kong cinema, as well as the censorship and future development of gangster films in mainland China. Overall, the article provides valuable insights into the political and cultural significance of Hong Kong gangster films. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the history and significance of the song "Home on the Range" in Kansas. It discusses the origins and evolution of the song, as well as its cultural and historical importance. The song gained popularity in the 1930s but was taken off the air due to a copyright infringement lawsuit. The authorship of the song is still debated, but evidence suggests that Dr. Brewster Higley and Dan Kelley collaborated on the song in the 1870s. The song became the state song of Kansas in 1947 and is beloved by Kansans for its emotional connection to the state. The article also discusses the controversy surrounding the selection of the song as the official state song and the investigation into its origins. The investigation concluded that the plaintiffs in the copyright infringement case had no basis for their claims to the song. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the history and impact of Indian Jesuits in Japan, focusing on their contributions to education and culture. Despite language and cultural barriers, the Indian Jesuits made significant contributions to Japanese society and were respected for their personal discipline, social work, and scholarship. The article also highlights the experiences of specific individuals, such as Gonsalo Garcia and Prof. Cyril Veliath, who both played important roles in bridging the gap between Indian and Japanese cultures. Prof. Veliath, in particular, emphasizes the importance of inter-religious dialogue and the shared values between Indian and Japanese cultures. [Extracted from the article]

The study discussed the analysis of expressive utterences found in the lyrics of the song "Love You Like a Love Song" by Selena Gomez and became one of the hits in the music world. This song is known not only for its catchy melody and rhythm, but also for its expressive lyrics full of emotional expressions. The purpose of this study is to examine whether there is a match between song lyrics and the expressive expressions conveyed. The research used descriptive qualitative, namely by analyzing the text and contextual approach to understand the meaning of song lyrics and their effect on listeners. The results of the analysis of expressive utterences in the lyrics show their suitability with the theme of the song and the communicative purpose of conveyed true love. The conclusion of the study is to provide an overview of how the lyrics of the song describe feelings of love expressively through the used of symbolic words and melodies that touch the heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

bell hooks's Belonging: A Culture of Place (2009) and Honor6e Fanonne Jeffers's The Love Songs of W E. B. Du Bois (2021) exist at the intersection of southernness and Blackness, mapping the ways that the south can be a site of trauma and profound identification for the Black southerners who call it home. Both texts articulate the intense emotional experience that stems from returning to the south and offer alternative models for considering Black southern affects. These models challenge the white emotional paradigm--particularly its preoccupation with nostalgia--that dominates conversations about southern feelings. Situating these two texts within the current discourse surrounding monuments and memorials, this article highlights a non-linear engagement with history that prioritizes the felt aftermaths of slavery and the Jim Crow era in southern Black communities. In centering the complex, and often contradictory, affects that define the Black southern experience, both Belonging and The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois articulate the felt forms through which Black southerners return to both the physical region and history of the south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to decode medieval theology from the vantage point of ancient Chinese poetry, employing a cross-textual methodology that encourages a fusion of horizons. It highlights Saint Bernard's profound and influential theological exegesis of the "Song of Songs", particularly his comparison of the divine–human relationship to the conjugal bond. The present study posits that readers from Chinese culture can gain access to Saint Bernard's mystical theology through the sentiment of love, as portrayed in the Book of Odes (Shijing). Initially addressing love as a core human sentiment, this study progresses by juxtaposing the representations of love in the Book of Odes with those in the "Song of Songs". This comparative analysis culminates in an exploration of Saint Bernard's theological perspectives, illuminated through these analogous depictions of love. The results affirm that engaging with Saint Bernard's discourse on love via the Book of Odes is not only feasible but also instrumental in dispelling widespread misconceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass distribution of advertising and information via radio propelled capitalism into a new logic of accumulation, penetrating private spaces with the collection and distribution of commodified information. Archaeological, ethnographic, and archival evidence about the heterogenous ways radio has been deployed, received, resisted, and adopted reveals that our system of monopolized mass media and surveillance capitalism is not an inevitable extension of technological advancement. Rather it is a choice, accommodation, and contingency brokered by hegemonic forces and diverse publics. Examples of radio usage from throughout history, however, demonstrates that cracks in the capitalist disimagination machine have been present since the beginning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toni Morrison's fiction is replete with characters who carry nicknames, who rename themselves, or are renamed by others. Some misnamings carry the stories of histories of marginalization and oppression—as with the "drunken yankee" responsible for the naming of Macon Dead in Song of Solomon. Morrison's characters also rename themselves to resist the legacy of American slavery and institutionalized racism. What ties Morrison's namings, misnamings, and renamings together is the sense that there is no path to the recovery of true names for many African American people. The consequence is not powerlessness; rather, the "catachresis at the origin" that Gayatri Spivak refers to is intuited organically by many Morrison characters, who embrace misnaming and rename themselves as a mode of claiming self-ownership. Catachresis may begin as rhetorical violence imposed from without, but in Toni Morrison's fiction, it can end as an opportunity to assert power, autonomy, and a boundless creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this theoretical review, we examine how the roles of music in mate choice and social bonding are expressed in romantic relationships. Darwin's Descent of Man originally proposed the idea that musicality might have evolved as a sexually selected trait. This proposition, coupled with the portrayal of popular musicians as sex symbols and the prevalence of love-themed lyrics in music, suggests a possible link between music and attraction. However, recent scientific exploration of the evolutionary functions of music has predominantly focused on theories of social bonding and group signaling, with limited research addressing the sexual selection hypothesis. We identify two distinct types of music-making for these different functions: music for attraction, which would be virtuosic in nature to display physical and cognitive fitness to potential mates; and music for connection, which would facilitate synchrony between partners and likely engage the same reward mechanisms seen in the general synchronybonding effect, enhancing perceived interpersonal intimacy as a facet of love. Linking these two musical functions to social psychological theories of relationship development and the components of love, we present a model that outlines the potential roles of music in romantic relationships, from initial attraction to ongoing relationship maintenance. In addition to synthesizing the existing literature, our model serves as a roadmap for empirical research aimed at rigorously investigating the possible functions of music for romantic relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution provides a new edition of the Manchester Tammuz, a sequence of Emesal love songs concerning Inana and Dumuzi. The text offers many irregular spellings, some of which may be resolved by means of a fragmentary duplicate from Nippur. The relationship between the Manchester text and several other Old Babylonian Emesal liturgies that share characteristics of orthography, paleography, and layout is discussed briefly. A line-drawing of the object by Theophilus G. Pinches, published in 1904, is added to the end of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kesha's fifth and final album on Kemosabe Records, titled "Gag Order," reflects her ongoing legal battle with producer Dr. Luke. The album explores deeper emotional themes and includes religious imagery and references to spiritual figures. Kesha's songs address her trauma and the aftermath of her abuse, offering a complex view of the music industry, power dynamics, and the intersection of gender and capitalism. The album speaks of pain, exploitation, and hope, and could be used in educational settings to explore topics such as abuse, religion, and evil. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Acta Neophilologica is the property of Acta Neophilologica 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.)

This study investigates the translation of Palestinian folksongs in Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of White Horses. The study tackles the cultural references and norms embedded in each subcategory following a thematic categorization of Palestinian folksongs. The variant implications the folksongs communicate are also addressed in the light of Nancy Roberts' translation of the novel and Venuti’s discussion about foreignization and domestication. Finally, the research discusses the ways in which translation affects folksongs' artistic and national identity. The novel employed a wide range of songs of different functions and themes namely songs of wedding ceremonies, lamentation, songs of religious ceremonies and seasons, songs of collective work and agricultural seasons, children’s songs, and love songs. The study finds that the majority of the cultural references and norms embedded in folksongs are appropriated in the target text and culture by the means of domestication. Furthermore, the study shows that the identity of folksongs stems from Palestinian dialect and other stylistic features such as repetition, meter, and rhyme schemes. The study reveals that the target text's version of the folksongs lacks the majority of these identity markers due to the use of domestication. Finally, the study contends that domestication endangers the cultural and national messages meant to be communicated through the employment of folksongs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a list of medieval French love songs and their authors, ranging from the 12th to the 14th century. The songs are categorized as love songs, anti-love songs, or crusade songs, and include works by poets such as Blondel de Nesle, Châtelain de Couci, Gace Brulé, and Thibaut IV. The document also mentions additional literary works that reference or include these songs. [Extracted from the article]

Despite the variability of music across cultures, some types of human songs share acoustic characteristics. For example, dance songs tend to be loud and rhythmic, and lullabies tend to be quiet and melodious. Human perceptual sensitivity to the behavioral contexts of songs, based on these musical features, suggests that basic properties of music are mutually intelligible, independent of linguistic or cultural content. Whether these effects reflect universal interpretations of vocal music, however, is unclear because prior studies focus almost exclusively on English-speaking participants, a group that is not representative of humans. Here, we report shared intuitions concerning the behavioral contexts of unfamiliar songs produced in unfamiliar languages, in participants living in Internet-connected industrialized societies (n = 5,516 native speakers of 28 languages) or smaller-scale societies with limited access to global media (n = 116 native speakers of three non-English languages). Participants listened to songs randomly selected from a representative sample of human vocal music, originally used in four behavioral contexts, and rated the degree to which they believed the song was used for each context. Listeners in both industrialized and smaller-scale societies inferred the contexts of dance songs, lullabies, and healing songs, but not love songs. Within and across cohorts, inferences were mutually consistent. Further, increased linguistic or geographical proximity between listeners and singers only minimally increased the accuracy of the inferences. These results demonstrate that the behavioral contexts of three common forms of music are mutually intelligible cross-culturally and imply that musical diversity, shaped by cultural evolution, is nonetheless grounded in some universal perceptual phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Surra Man Raa is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

This article is an ecocritical study of three of T. S. Eliot's most notable works: "The Waste Land", "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and "The Hollow Men". The poems are analyzed in detail and in relation with one another to highlight Eliot's understanding of man's relationship with nature through an elemental, ecomythical, and ecoreligious study. The article pursues a pattern in Eliot's writing of a Man-Nature relationship as it focuses on the ways in which nature interacts with and influences man's life, emotions, and faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the classical Arabic sources ‘Ulayya bt. al-Mahdī b. al-Mansūr was a female poet and musician who lived during the Abbasid period. Not much information has survived about ‘Ulayya, who belonged to the Abbasid dynasty. However, some details of her life can be found in classical sources and some of her poems have survived thanks to these works. ‘Ulayya was the daughter of the Abbasid Caliph Mahdī-Billāh, and the half-sister of his successor, Hārūn al-Rashīd. It is said that Hārūn al-Rashīd was particularly interested in her education and encouraged his sister. ‘Ulayya bt. al-Mahdī was an artist known in Arabic literature mostly for her love poems and the songs she composed for them. In classical sources, it was claimed that ‘Ulayya was a very talented artist and even managed to surpass her brother Ibrāhīm b. al-Mahdī, who was a musician like her. ‘Ulayya bt. al-Mahdī’s importance stems from the fact that she was a woman who dealt with poetic themes usually associated with male poets, such as love and wine. The methodology adopted in this study aims to prove the theories on ‘Ulayya’s love poems through her verses. In the first chapter of this article on ‘Ulayya’s life, we have generally relied on the narrations of classical sources, but we have pointed out some contradictions in these works. The ancient literary historians who introduced ‘Ulayya to us claim that she was an extremely pious woman. However, an examination of her love poetry reveals that she composed love poems for people to whom she was not married. This contradicts the portrayed lifestyle of ‘Ulayya, who was supposed to be a very pious woman. ‘Ulayya once stated that her poems were essentially absurd words. This suggests that these poems were composed with literary concerns and did not reflect reality. However, there is also evidence to suggest that these love poems may be related to reality to a certain extent. For example, upon learning that ‘Ulayya was having an affair with palace attendants, Hārūn al-Rashīd forbade his sister from seeing them. Later, to alleviate ‘Ulayya’s sorrow over this prohibition, he presented her with the attendant she liked. In her poems, ‘Ulayya sometimes expresses her thoughts on the phenomenon of love. She thinks that love is essentially an irrational act, argues that love requires monogamy, glorifies unattainable loves, and believes that love is unsolvable. This article aims to reveal the life and love poetry of this extraordinary female poet in classical Arabic literature. It is believed that the examination of ‘Ulayya’s poetic productivity and the introduction of her poetry to the modern world will enable a better understanding of the traces left by the ancient Arab woman in the history of literature. In this context, ‘Ulayya in particular is an ideal example because of the subjects she dealt with in her poetry. A scholarly study of ‘Ulayya’s poetic legacy is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the feminine aspect of classical Arabic poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]