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This essay argues that the oath-taking scenes in "The Quarter-Deck" chapter of Moby-Dick were inspired by Jacques-Louis David's Neoclassical history painting Oath of the Horatii (1784). These scenes, in which Ahab symbolically binds first the three mates and then the three harpooneers to his quest to hunt the white whale, form two of the book's most striking vignettes, vignettes that strongly resemble Oath of the Horatii , a painting Melville would have seen on his 1849 visit to the Louvre. While scholarship has done much to explore Melville's engagement with romanticism in visual art, Melville's use of Oath of the Horatii indicates his engagement with an alternate aesthetic mode, which I discuss as the "aesthetic of the distinct." The aesthetic of the distinct emphasizes a clear, precise, and vivid representation of the sensory world and bespeaks a philosophically realist trust in objective, earth-bound factuality and our ability to reliably glean information from this material reality. Thus, Melville's interest in the aesthetic of the distinct, signaled by his use of Oath of the Horatii as a source in "The Quarter-Deck," evidences the appeal that realist philosophy held for him and provides an aesthetic angle to recent arguments for his realist proclivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that in Malory's Le Morte Darthur, the formal oaths taken before trial by combat are essential for making those trials decisive. Arthur's failure to regulate the oath-taking process before these trials, however, makes them ineffective at producing a clear verdict and ultimately contributes to the fall of Camelot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the northern Gawain romances as Anglo-Scottish border literature responding to government centralization in the late fourteenth century. Revisiting the peculiar vows made by Baldwin in The Avowing of Arthur, it contends that the uniqueness of Baldwin's oaths to those of Arthur, Gawain, and Kay embody disparities felt by marchers towards the ruling center of England. Reading the Avowing through the lens of biopolitics, this essay claims that Baldwin's seeming aloofness to Arthur's machinations constitutes not a conscious resistance to Arthur's authority, such as we see in the other northern Gawain romances, but a negligence towards sovereign power figured in what Giorgio Agamben calls a "profane life." Through Baldwin's profaning, the Avowing imagines a life at the border that is removed from the punishing weight of sovereign power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is Shakespeare's Irish captain, MacMorris, so full of angry oaths? Why does the valiant Fluellen profanely swear ‘By Cheshu’? To address these questions is to be led through early modern accounts of swearing into the binding language of Henry V, with its dramatic potential not just to secure through speech acts but to mislead, evade and threaten. This article puts the play's preoccupation with oaths into context, both in relation to such plays as Edward III and Richard II and more largely in connection with sixteenth-century attitudes to gages, pledges, ransom and earnest. It pursues binding words not just through the main, historical action but through the King Henry and Williams plot, and the related comic sequence that leads to Fluellen beating Pistol. Overarching the discussion is a reappraisal of the play's relationship with the Elizabethan wars in Ireland. Analogues of MacMorris are found in Sir Henry Sidney's Memoir and the State Papers, while Sir Francis Bacon's observations about the oaths and vows of princes are used to illuminate the unresolved outcome of the play's high-political drama. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses fictional accounts of the July 14, 1790 Festival of Federation in France, including "Julie philosophe," "La Boussole nationale, and "L'Isle des philosophes" and also discusses "Candide," by Voltaire, Catholicism and Freemasonry. The author uses the accounts to demonstrate how literature can help readers to better understand history. The literary histories of the three books is presented and the author describes the events on the Festival of Federation as it was celebrated in Paris, France.

The notion of delayed generational punishment, or ancestral fault, has a long history in Greek literature. The identification of its earliest attestations in the Archaic period is contested, especially its presence in Homeric poetry. This paper aims to show that delayed generational punishment does indeed appear in Homer, where it is, however, confined to one context: the great oath of exôleia of Iliad 3.298-301 and 4.155-65. The institutional and ritual context of the generational oath is essential to understanding this earliest Greek attestation of ancestral fault, and making sense of the idea's larger significance for narrative perspective, divine justice, and temporal order in the Homeric epic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Posing the unusual question of what Shakespeare's speech might be in relation to the texts that go under the name "William Shakespeare," this essay puts to the question a number of assumptions in literary theory about character, subjectivity, genre, the place of the author in a literary text, and language as a system and its relation to performative speech acts. Considering the prevalence of oaths in Shakespeare's texts, the first part argues that the perfomative requirements of this speech act demand a minimal conception of literary character as an entity that can perform a speech act and sustain its ethical consequences. For oaths (and related speech acts) to be intelligible in a literary text, the subjectivity performing them has to maintain a constant identity, and cannot be in flux or divided against itself. Concluding that none of the oaths performed by Shakespeare's characters is an instance of Shakespeare's speech, the second part of the essay addresses the speech (especially oaths) of Shakespeare's sonnets. Here matters are more complex, for the conclusions reached earlier, about the nature of the performative and its relation to a stable identity and the speech of the author, are undermined in surprising ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article under the traditions of blood brotherhood and oath taking in ancient Turks has been put forward in a historical perspective. The scope of the work comprises the emergence of these traditions and their continuity within the present Turkish cultural environment. They live in the present-day Turkish society with little innovation. A chronological method of scrutiny has been followed by using the archeological findings and written historical documents. Types of taking an oath such as blood brotherhood, reconciliation or calling down curses have been examined. The practice of blood brotherhood goes back to the Scythians. The initial examples of the oath of reconciliation were seen among the Asian Huns. Calling down curses on the other hand were seen in more recent times. There are at least two persons in the practice of blood brotherhood while in the practice of curse there is only one person who calls down curses upon himself/herself. Those blood brotherhood or reconciliation practices that took place between tribes or states used to be performed as gorgeous ceremonies in which only the representatives of the parties had participated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are some expressions, such as "for the sake of God", "o,n my child", "I swear that .…", "I vow that.…", "from three to nine", etc., which we frequently use in our daily lives either intentionally or unintentionally. Besides using these expressions unconsciously, we sometimes use modified forms of Arabic and Persian originated words like "yemin", "kasam", "sukend" as well as the word "ant" in the Turkish world. We encounter the samples of swear not only in our daily lives hut also in our written documents: We face with the samples of this type in Dede Korkut Stories, folk stories and tales. a) By means of notch (Dede Korkut Stories) b) In the form of swearing (Dede Korkut Stories) c) Under sword (Dede Korkut Stories, Bamsi Beyrek, etc.) d) Placing a sword in between (Dede Korkut Stories, Epic of Manas, Story of Şah lemail, Story of Kirmanşah, and texts of tales) - In this paper, the types of swear written above have been expounded through examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of oaths in the play "Helen," by Euripides. "Helen," accordingly, is a play exploring the tension between illusion and reality in a very sophisticated and complex way. The author argued that oaths have been included in the play to further light on Helen's chastity as well as Menelaus' good-naturedness. He relates that, in the play, Helen delivers two oaths; one is to commit suicide if the rumors of her husband's death are true, and second, in which she invokes the head of Menelaus as sanctifying power. Menelaus, on the other hand, has his certain oath that casts him in a more positive light as a character.

Examines how vows or promises are entangled with the violence that characterizes William Shakespeare's play "Titus Andronicus." Ways in which the play's major characters are implicated in a linguistic system that seems to exceed the character who speaks, or fails to speak; Integration of promissory language and violence; Problematic nature of oaths and vows in the play.

Focuses on the intent and context of oath swearing in the poem, `The Friar's Tale.' Oath swearing as a sign of authority in medieval England; Intersection of hierarchy and coalition; Analysis on the characters the summoner, demon and Mabeley; Arguments on the book as a theological narrative.

In this article, the author identifies the source of philosopher David Hume's reference to Greek playwright Euripides in his work "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" as a passage from Euripides' tragedy "Iphigenia in Tauris." Focus is given to the passage's discussion of dishonesty and, more specifically, oath-breaking.