Search

The protein folding problem was, to paraphrase Churchill, 'A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. The riddle, in this context, was the folding code; what interactions at the amino acid level are driving the folding process? The mystery was the kinetic question (Levinthal's paradox); how does the folding process occur so quickly (typically in timescales ranging from μS to mS)? Finally, the enigma represents the computational problem of developing approaches to predict the final folded sate of a protein given only its amino acid sequence. Herein, I trace the path to solving this riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Chinese Journal of Slavic Studies is the property of De Gruyter 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.)

Critical thinking can be promoted through narratives, puzzles, and riddles. Literature has indicated a need to reactivate African narratives to preserve African legacies for future generations. This study argues that African riddles, puzzles, and narratives should be used in African-themed video games to promote critical thinking and awareness of African culture. It emphasizes the importance of African-centered puzzles as a culturally relevant pedagogy that fosters students' understanding of African cultural values. The study used a participatory culture framework to bring students together to develop an African-themed video game. The game, called Nolwazi, was investigated ethnographically to highlight critical aspects. The study presents the findings of the investigation and analysis. It concludes with a discussion of the importance of using African riddles, puzzles, and narratives in video games. Plain language summary: Critical thinking promoted through African Themed Video Games The study explores the utilization of the rich African narratives, puzzles and riddles as tools in teaching students through video games. This study focuses on video games developed by South African students and how the video games have helped to create cultural awareness and foster critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bucolic poet Martius Valerius used to be dated to the twelfth century, but has now been securely assigned to the sixth; articles on his work should therefore be published in journals not of medieval, but of classical philology. The present brief contribution proposes a new solution to the two riddles that Martius, following the example of Virgil, included at the end of his third eclogue. These solutions are then put into the context of the commentary tradition on Virgil's Bucolics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important countries for Turkish language, history, culture and literature is Iran. Qashqai people living in various regions of Iran are considered one of the most populous Turkish communities in the country. Qashqai Turkish, which is spoken by the Qashqai people and is a branch of the Oghuz language, is in danger of extinction today. The aim of this study is to examine and introduce the work called Kaşkay Bilmeceleri (Giriş-Metin-İnceleme-Dizin) [Qashqai Riddles (Introduction-Text-Review-Index)], which was introduced into Turkiye Turkish by Ahmet Çam (PhD), in terms of form and content, and to reveal its value in terms of Turcology. The language material of the 178-page work, presented under the main headings of Introduction, Text, Review and Index, consists of 376 riddles compiled from the Qashqai Turks at various dates. In the introduction section, the purpose, importance, limitations, etc. of the study are explained. Besides the titles, there is general information about Qashqai Turks and Qashqai Turkish. In the text section, the transcribed text of the Qashqai riddles and their versions translated into Türkiye Turkish are presented. In the review section, the content, formal features, figures of speech and the results of the study in Qashqai riddles are presented. In the index section, all words and word groups in the riddles were examined by the grammatical index method.

The article presents the first complete translation of Dmitry Chizhevsky’s unknown article (from German into Russian) about Esenin’s poem “Song About Bread” (1921), published in 1956 in Chizhevsky’s collection of scientific works. The scholar was the first, who started a deep research of the poem, thus emphasizing its special significance. He analyses the principal motifs of the verse: the “suffering,” martyrdom of bread (grain), and the poisoning of people by the venom accumulated in the bread from the cruelty of the torturers. The first motif refers to the traditions of Old Russian literature and medieval Polish and German poetry. The second one, although it has distant analogies in Slavic and Germanic folklore, is more likely an original creation of the poet, who was under deep impression by murder and torture in his own country. Chizhevsky analyses the “liturgical” symbolism of the poem, the peculiarity of its refraction in the spirit of medieval parodies, and the ambiguous riddles of the Old Believers. The scholar shows Esenin’s creative work in the frame of European spiritual culture. He reveals new sources and roots of Esenin’s imagination, making a significant contribution to understanding the philosophy and culture of the great poet.

We argue that the "Prominence Hierarchy" within linguistics can be subsumed under the "Construal Level Theory" within psychology and that a wide spectrum of grammatical phenomena, ranging from case assignment to number, definiteness, verbal agreement, voice, direct/inverse morphology, and syntactic word-order respond to Prominence Hierarchies (PH), or semantic scales. In fact, the field of prominence hierarchies, as expressed through the languages of the world, continues to be riddled with riddles. We identify a set of conundrums: (A) vantage point and animacy, (B) individuation and narrow reference phenomena, (C) fronting mechanisms, (D) abstraction, and (E) cultural variance and flexibility. We here propose an account for the existence of these hierarchies and their pervasive effects on grammar by relying on psychological Construal Level Theory (CLT). We suggest that both PH and CLT structure the external world according to proximity or distance from the "Me, Here and Now" (MHN) perspective. In language, MHN has the effect of structuring grammars; in cognition, it structures our lives, our preferences, and choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many parts of the developed and developing world, traditional children’s rhymes are under threat. The disappearance of these traditional rhymes could impact children’s phonological development (Di Liberto et al., 2023, Harper, 2011), awareness of their natural environment, and their appreciation (and later composition) of poetry by older speakers. While rhymes in literate societies are often documented and can thus can be retrieved, this is not the case for the Mahrah and other exclusively oral societies. In this paper, we examine traditional children’s rhymes in Mehri, an endangered Modern South Arabian language (MSAL), focusing on rhymes and riddles and the significance of their impending loss within al-Mahrah governorate in Yemen. We conclude by suggesting ways in which the Mehri community, in collaboration with native-speaker and non-native-speaker researchers, can revitalize this genre of poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the aim was to demonstrate the power of this literary work to inspire multiple re-readings, provoking creativity in both images and languages territories. More than just a product, Carroll invented a mode of production which can be used as a creative tool of contestation, twisting language and introducing riddles, puns and paradoxes. In the field of experimental cinema, two Latin American productions of Alice, made in 1976 under dictatorial regimes, were taken as examples of the use of nonsense to provoke the multiplication of senses. This was analyzed from the perspective of Deleuze's philosophy. Nonsense forces the invention of new openings, pushing us down paths that were once unthinkable, by inverting the obvious senses given by common sense. By playing with the senses, it is possible to promote the criticism of totalitarian regimes and enhance life in dark times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unstable dimension variability is an extreme form of non-hyperbolic behavior that causes a severe shadowing breakdown of chaotic trajectories. This phenomenon can occur in coupled chaotic systems possessing symmetries, leading to an invariant attractor with riddled basins of attraction. We consider the coupling of two Lorenz-like systems, which exhibits chaotic synchronized and anti-synchronized states, with their respective basins of attraction. We demonstrate that these basins are riddled, in the sense that they verify both the mathematical conditions for their existence, as well as the characteristic scaling laws indicating power-law dependence of parameters. Our simulations have shown that a biased random-walk model for the log-distances to the synchronized manifold can accurately predict the scaling exponents near blowout bifurcations in this high-dimensional coupled system. The behavior of the finite-time Lyapunov exponents in directions transversal to the invariant subspace has been used as numerical evidence of unstable dimension variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the riddle of Oedipus? This paper is an exploration of the philosophy involved in Sophocles' famous play Oedipus Tyrannus. The play involves a riddler who becomes king, a man who is famously good at understanding what others find obscure, and yet is unable to see it when he is confronted by an obvious set of uncomfortable truths about himself. As well as for Oedipus, the play poses a number of different riddles for us: in particular it is a study of responsibility and shame, and of deliberation and choice. Like any work of art, the play does not tell us what conclusions we should reach; but it does show us some questions that need asking, and indeed some riddles that we face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of Mark 7:15 are absent from sustained discussion in studies of Jesus's use of figurative language, despite its description as a παραβολή ("parable," 7:17). Studies typically label this text a "riddle," but this is generally undefined and its relationship to other figurative devices in language is mysterious. Accordingly, I discuss some modern categories of figurative language, like metaphor, riddle, and metaphorical riddle and consider how they are related to the topic of this article. I then analyze Mark 7:15 in the light of these discussions, concluding that the category of metaphorical riddle could be helpful in interpreting the Marcan text. In the context of the metaphorical riddle, Jesus, without providing a source domain, misleads the audience into thinking that the subject of 7:15b is something physical (probably excrement), when the true meaning relates to something abstract (sin). On this reading, Jesus's metaphorical riddle implies something like, "excrement is to the body as sin is to the heart." Regardless of one's interpretation, I argue that greater clarity regarding definitions and methods would be beneficial to this conversation, which can be ad hoc and idiosyncratic. In my view, the interpretation can be improved by utilizing approaches of modern literary criticism concerning figurative language, which offers relatively coherent and stable terms by which we might continue this discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnotheatre is an art-based methodology and a critical and world-making practice through reflexive affect endeavour. It joins a group of people to participate in a theatre production about their symbolic and material world. We will debate the effects of this methodology on making ethnography the punctum of socially engaged performance projects. How can we research combining ethnography's gesture with artistic methodologies to learn common sociocultural riddles or quandaries of marginal and hopefully transitory people? Ethnotheatre effectively elicits the vernacular metacommunicative repertoire veiled in inmates' hidden transcripts. We explore the framing and potentials of the performative interview in a case study of immobile confinement. Combining ethnographic gesture with artistic world-making practice, we better apprehend and understand the symbolic sites where people may speak out. The world emerges when you make someone heard. We will discuss this methodological tool with a case study about confinement immobility, applying ethnotheatre to understand better how inmates live and resist in their prison's "invisible" ruled world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims at identifying and interpreting the role that the horse plays in legends, stories, riddles, and sayings. More specifically, we extracted the material from the answers to question number 138 of the first survey issued by The Museum of the Romanian Language in 1922 (the first one in a collection of eight surveys): "What do people believe about the horse? What role does it play in carols, spells, and disenchantments?" The answers were provided by village intellectuals, mostly teachers and priests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miša Gams attended a dance performance, entitled A Place With a View (Prostor z razgledom) by Vita Osojnik. In her review she suggests that the performance, with its open hermeneutic structure of symbols, is like a riddle a viewer can interpret according to their knowledge and intuition. Respectively, she analyzes contrasts between dark and white, but primarily focuses on four natural elements (fire, water, earth, air), which she interprets as an insight into understanding the fluidity and changeability of all living things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wittgenstein's claims against private language and the existence of riddles have consolidated his reputation as a philosopher of the ordinary. This article makes a case for Wittgenstein as a thinker of enigma. His understudied remarks on riddles configure the ordinary and the transcendent in a novel and counterintuitive dynamic. This constitutes Wittgenstein's most significant contribution to the study of the ordinary: a demarcation between language as the domain of the ordinary and mystery as the realm of meaning. The intricate interrelationship of these realms animates Wittgenstein's abiding interest in the "limits" of knowledge and his pursuit of finely calibrated modes of analysis. The leitmotif of the riddle leads us through an exploration of Wittgenstein's mottled oeuvre and serves as an occasion to ponder the question of "the question" in philosophy (as a matter of discursive form) as well as philosophy's approach to "answers." Acts of reading and interpretation, associated etymologically with "riddling," are imbued with a special urgency in Wittgenstein's thought, which this article brings to bear on recent debates on surface reading and close reading. To scholars of the ordinary, this article offers a critical reappraisal of Wittgenstein's contribution, and to Wittgenstein scholars a (perhaps unfamiliar) moonlit Wittgenstein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders a graffitied riddle from Pompeii (CIL 4.1877). It argues that slavery is one possible dimension of the puzzle, and that acknowledging the existence of slavery in this text testifies to the potential of Pompeian graffiti as a source for overlooked social histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Old English riddles run the gamut in terms of emotional and rhetorical range, constituting a kind of micro-anthology within the wider anthology of the Exeter Book. They explore an assortment of stances, including not only of lament and celebration, but humiliation, anger, triumph, fear, and more. In doing so, they may channel the Psalms, as the emotional anthology which most dominated early medieval English culture. In his Expositio Psalmorum, Cassiodorus analysed the rhetoric of the Psalms in strongly emotional terms, and this chapter experiments with approaching the Riddles with an eye to his definitions of demonstrative, judicial, and deliberative oratory, each associated with different emotional dynamics. It closes with reflections on how Riddle 1 introduces the Exeter collection, contemplating how this text hints at the emotionally generative capacities of literature, as well as how it stages the tensions created by imbuing nonhuman speakers with psalmic voices. In playing with such a powerful literary model and set of emotional scripts, the Riddles foreground the ways in which literature can create new and surprising forms for emotional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to examine the position of carpet weaving in folk culture and literature. Its explicit findings indicate that in the folk culture, the philosophy of the emergence and nature of carpet weavers' beliefs and carpet weaving in Iran are expressed as follows: projective, defensive, aesthetic, and palliative. The analysis of rituals such as the "Mi bechkelessen Alasht" related to wool preparation for weaving shows the link between ancient Iranian rain rituals and religious beliefs in the carpet washers of Mashhad Ardahal. In folk literature, references to the most important carpet weaving regions in Iran are made in proverbs, discussing carpet maintenance and the hardships of carpet weavers, while economic aspects of carpets are discussed using specialized carpet terminology, creating various themes and reflecting some customs and traditions. The main themes of Iranian carpet weavers' songs include love, separation from the beloved, the sorrow of exile, the hardship of carpet weaving, describing the beauty of carpets, seeking help from Imam Reza (AS) at work, and wishing for the completion of carpet weaving and pilgrimage to Imam Reza (AS). In myths formed around the theme of carpets and weavings, and in the myth of Solomon's Carpet, one can find heroism with real characters defeating natural elements, and the carpet itself being a mythical element added to the myth by the public. In the myth of "Muffler and Solomon's Son," the element of coincidence leads to the discovery of how the harp is made. All of these instances demonstrate the undeniable significance of carpets in folk culture and literature; the public themselves have created these beliefs, proverbs, songs, and myths, reciting them and being the performers of carpet weaving rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt has been made to discuss some of the developments, in a personalized historical perspective, regarding a viable answer to the 'Flavor Riddle' through a minor addition to the Fritzsch's original proposal about texture zero mass matrices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Adab Al-Basrah 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.)

Inquiring into the role that paradox and double-binds play within the work of Alan W. Watts, this essay addresses a quintessential theme in Watts' philosophy: a twofold sense of ontological estrangement (i.e., from oneself and from the cosmos). Such paradoxical separation constitutes an ontological double-bind and is referred to herein as life's ultimate riddle. Based on an exegesis of 73 of Watts' books, articles, and secondary sources, this essay presents what is called Wattsian double-bind theory, which extends David Smith's (2010) triadic thesis of Watts' mature works featuring a three-fold conceptual structure: the field, the double-bind, and play. Following an overview of Wattsian ontology, this essay then aims to (a) identify Watts' double-bind framework informed by paradox, koans, double-binds, and their resolution via acceptance; (b) clarify the similarities and vast differences between Wattsian and classical Batesonian double-bind theories; and (c) reveal the interconnected elegance of the former, as it occurs in the themes of language, time, perception, identity, science, and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is an inherently human skill, and thus one of the goals of Artificial Intelligence. Specifically, linguistic computational creativity deals with the autonomous generation of linguistically-creative artefacts. Here, we present four types of text that can be tackled in this scope—poetry, humour, riddles, and headlines—and overview computational systems developed for their generation in Portuguese. Adopted approaches are described and illustrated with generated examples, and the key role of underlying computational linguistic resources is highlighted. The future of such systems is further discussed together with the exploration of neural approaches for text generation. While overviewing such systems, we hope to disseminate the area among the community of the computational processing of the Portuguese language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering that early modern poetic theory retains the classical genealogies and iconographies of lyric poetry as song to the accompaniment of a lyre, how can one account for lyrics which portray the poet's stringed instrument, frequently the lute, as antithetical to his or her poetic aspirations, as a recalcitrant tool that resists the poet's desires and thus engenders a lyric crisis? This article uses object-oriented ontology (OOO) to think through the lyric poet's relationship with the lute which, fractured between real object and its sensual qualities, withdraws its essential being from access yet involves the poet in a network of sensual and essentially aesthetic bonds with the instrument. By reading several early modern riddles, sonnets, and other lyrics about deviant lutes as encounters between human and nonhuman objects, the article traces the poetics of unlyric — a form of poetry that disentangles poiesis from musical subjectivity and harmony, articulating instead a vision of lyric as fraught negotiations between entities whose forces lie beyond the powers of human art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current notion of the Vrātyas aggressivity seems to be mainly based on certain Vedic texts that record a biased account of their history. It is usually assumed that relevant passages refer to the aggression displayed by the Vrātyas during verbal confrontations with their opponents in order to determine the correct stance on ritual matters. However, even outside the Vrātya context, competitive hospitality and violent verbal exchanges may be found in the sapiential sphere, often in the form of riddles--the so-called brahmodya. Among the sections in the Mahābhārata that demonstrate epic traces of competitiveness in the field of sacred knowledge, this paper will primarily examine the Aṣṭāvakrīya-Upākhyāna (MBh 3.132-134), which features the sole Mahābhārata reference to the term brahmodya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The riddle, a literary genre with ancient roots, persists in both oral and written tradition to this day. Its presence in Iranian literature can also be traced to ancient times. Matikan-e Yusht Faryan, among the earliest surviving examples of the riddle genre from ancient Iran, is believed to have been written in Middle Persian during the Sassanid period. This text narrates the intellectual clash between Yusht Faryan, a devout follower of the Zoroastrian faith, and Aht, a sorcerer, as they engage in a battle of wits through a series of riddles to test their knowledge. According to the narrative, Yusht Faryan resides in a city named "Frasn Wizaran" (The Riddle Solvers), safeguarded by Urmuzd, the Zoroastrian god, and aided by the Amesha Spentas. Aht, aspiring to take control of the city, declares his intent to pose 33 questions to the city's young people aged under 15 years, threatening death to those unable to answer. He executes 900 mubeds (religious men) and 9 girls from the Espitman clan when they fail to answer his first question. However, a 15-year-old boy named Yusht Faryan successfully answers all his questions, receiving assistance from Urmuzd and the Amesha Spentas when needed. Subsequently, Yusht Faryan poses three questions to Aht, who is unable to answer them and receives no help from Ahriman and the giants. Thus, Yusht Faryan emerges victorious in the riddle debate and kills Aht. This study examines the riddles in Matikan-e Yusht Faryan through Persian translation, categorizing them based on their thematic subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay titled "Did Omar Khayyam Secretively Author A Robaiyat Collection He Called "Book of Life"?: Solving the Manifold Riddles of His Robaiyat Attributability," is the fifth and last chapter of the book Khayyami Art: The Art of Poetic Secrecy for a Lasting Existence: Tracing the Robaiyat in Nowrooznameh, Isfahan's North Dome, and Other Poems of Omar Khayyam, and Solving the Riddle of His Robaiyat Attributability, which is the seventh volume of the twelve-book series Omar Khayyam's Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, authored by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi. In this chapter, Tamdgidi argues that the overall thesis of Omar Khayyam's Robaiyat as having been a secretive collection of quatrains organized in an intended logical order can explain and unriddle the manifold riddles of cohereability, integrability, reconcilability, decipherability, stylizability, concealability, documentability, and translatability contributing to the attributability riddle of the Robaiyat to him. He posits, and in the forthcoming volumes of this series will demonstrate, that the lost quatrains comprising the original collection of Robaiyat have become extant over the past centuries, such that we can now reconstruct the original collection more or less as it had been originally meant to be organized as a ' book of life' by Omar Khayyam. We therefore confront basically a jigsaw puzzle of how to put back together the original collection in order to make sense of the masterpiece Khayyam had intended to leave as a keepsake magnum opus for his posterity. There has been an ocean of literature increasingly accumulated, especially over the last two centuries, sharing and exploring not only the Robaiyat attributed to Omar Khayyam, but also asking whether they can be attributed to him. As far as the challenge of identifying those Robaiyat attributable to him is concerned, we can spend volumes, beside studying the attributed quatrains themselves, exploring the material by others to learn about who said what when and where in terms of the views expressed in the debates and the methods proposed and used to solve the riddle, claimed to be successful or not. Before we can list and study the quatrains themselves, in other words, it may appear to make more sense to review prior attempts made by others to find a way of sifting the authentic quatrains from others. However, doing so will certainly end up repeating the repeated failing efforts in solving the riddle of Khayyam's Robaiyat attributability since over the last century and a half in particular, not only has it become increasingly apparent that no one has succeeded in finding a way of solving the riddle of Khayyam's Robaiyat attributability, but also even those who have claimed to have found better ways of doing so have fallen on hard grounds themselves, often prefacing or concluding their efforts by stating that they do not claim their proposed way of solving the riddle is anything final. The reason is that all past efforts in solving the riddle have tried, using a formal either/or logic reminiscent of the Newtonian billiard ball game analogy to go about solving Khayyam's Robaiyat attributability problem. That is, trying to find a precise way of determining whether an attributed quatrain is or is not Khayyam's, they think it is possible to juggle, more or less confidently, the attributable quatrains apart from others not attributable to him. However, as Tamdgidi argues in this chapter, there is simply no way of being able to solve the riddle of the Robaiyat attributability by way of applying such a logic, since the problem essentially is not and can never be solved as an empirical one. The reason is that there is no way of repairing and retracting the natural and historical calamities and events that over the centuries resulted in the destruction forever of some manuscript records remaining from Khayyam's time and thereafter. For this reason, no one can confidently claim that the so-called "old manuscripts" that have survived from past centuries are the only such sources that ever existed, and for the same reason there is no way of proving, or not, whether the later manuscripts were themselves not based on previous older manuscripts that no longer exist, but were legitimate sources for their compilations. To put it differently, there were no all-inclusive libraries or archives in earlier centuries that could have exhaustively stored all that was written or copied from manuscripts surviving Khayyam's time, and anyone claiming--in the absence of a manuscript directly written by Khayyam, one that has yet to be found--that their study of "old manuscripts" is a sound and reliable basis for offering either/or logical argumentations and conclusions regarding the riddle of Khayyam's Robaiyat attributability is only misleading himself (or herself ), and others. The riddle of the Robaiyat attributability can never be an empirical problem to solve, because it is essentially a fuzzy problem involving probabilities, requiring the application of fuzzy logical approaches based on both/and logical reasoning, unless in specific cases we find such solid basis for making precise conclusions. For this reason, the accumulated historical knowledge and tradition of numerous generations of scribes, readers, and commentators, suggesting that this or that quatrain belongs to Khayyam must be respected seriously and considered to be a helpful measure for making probability judgments. And it is for this reason also that relying on Omar Khayyam's other definitively attributable writings must play a central role in advancing research and offering reasonable judgments about the attributability of quatrains to the historical Omar Khayyam. The method introduced and applied in this series, framed in quantum sociological imagination, has aimed at advancing such an alternative approach to solving the riddles of Khayyam's life and works, because it finds it more helpful and reasonable to apply both/and logical reasoning to problems that are essentially fuzzy, rather than being empirical in nature. Moreover, by way of deconstructing and showing the unreasonableness of defective methods and argumentations, we can also achieve reasonable progress in eliminating false narratives that can never solve the riddle since they can be shown as being inherently selfcontradictory and deficient for the purpose of arriving at viable solutions to the riddle of Khayyam's Robaiyat attributability. In Tamdgidi's view, the riddle of attributability of the Robaiyat has essentially been a riddle of understanding them, not as individual quatrains here or there, but as parts of a wider collection. If Khayyam intended his collection to be a unitary tale of his life and evolving worldview, we should expect any discussion of the necessity of the collection's secretiveness to be discussed in the collection itself, not in his other publicly available and intended treatises. If we encounter a riddle of reconcilability (of the Robaiyat with other works of Khayyam) when studying the Robaiyat, we cannot expect to solve that riddle by just focusing on the Robaiyat themselves, and not seriously and systematically read and engage with Khayyam's other philosophical, theological, scientific, and literary works; in fact, read carefully, we may find that even in those public treaties he may have offered hints regarding what his poetic project could have been. We have learned much about this by studying carefully his Nowrooznameh, in fact, in the course of which we have been introduced to a whole series of discourses about art, metaphors, tropes, and secrecy that would make it possible to reconcile his public works with his private poetic creations more reasonably and meaningfully. Khayyam's Nowrooznameh serves, in Tamdgidi's view, as a mediating text that brings Khayyam's public and private (poetic) writings into interpretive contact with one another and should have been given much more serious attention by scholars. Unfortunately, the latter has not been the case and the translation and the study of the book as included in this volume will hopefully make such an integrative study of all of Khayyam's work possible for future generations of Khayyami scholars. When we examine Khayyam's publicly available treatises, we always find that he begins them with a note on his authorship of them, even going into some details, at times, regarding the background and historical or biographical context that made the writing of the treatise necessary. If the Robaiyat also was conceived as a collection of poems, a book of life, that had a unitary organization, then we should even expect that he would start it with a note on his authorship with it. Considering the Robaiyat as having been a collection of interrelated and logically flowing quatrains would clearly make the attribution of its constituent quatrains to Khayyam much more feasible than the nearly impossible task of trying to prove the attributability of the quatrains on an individual basis, found in isolation across many old or newer manuscript. Therefore, the riddles of reconcilability (with other treatises), cohereability, and integrability (of inner organization and coherence of the collection itself ) would be better and more effectively solved by studying the Khayyami quatrains in relation to one another, and in relation to the wider treatises of Khayyam, without making any a priori prejudgments in advance about which quatrains are to be included or not. The criterion for choosing the quatrains, in other words, should not be based on external factors and presumptions about the manuscripts in which they were found, but on the hermeneutic study and understanding of what each quatrain tells us as part of a broader story of the wider quatrains. We can then eliminate inauthentic quatrains, not based on external factors, but based on how the quatrain fits in with others in the overall collection and how they all fit in the broader worldview of Khayyam as expressed and evident in his public treatises. We may even find that some Khayyami quatrains become a reliable basis for authenticating other Khayyami quatrains. Khayyam was not a duplicitous scholar who would have written anything in public in sharp contradiction with what he wrote in private. At best, given the conditions of his time and his own personal preferences for privacy or needed secrecy, he would have truncated his public text or expressed his thoughts in veil, or simply remained silent, but not expressed views in contradiction with his private thoughts and feelings. For this reason, we should consider the study of the Khayyami Robaiyat and his public treatises in tandem to offer us a fruitful path toward solving the riddle of understanding the Robaiyat as the flip side of solving the riddle of their attributability. Regarding the increase, sudden or not, of the number of quatrains being attributed to Khayyam ignores the possibility that increased interest in his poetry can lead to an increase in search of old personal, public, or university archives or libraries, leading to the discovery of quatrains that had not even been detected before and are as authentic as any previously found. Besides, those who regarded such increases in the number of quatrains with suspicion usually ignore the fact that indeed such increases slowed down and even stopped for a long while, while the fame and interest in Khayyam's poetry remained the same or even increased. If interest in Khayyam's quatrains is automatically an impetus for composing more or less Khayyami-sounding quatrains from scratch without being authentically his, they must explain why no more such quatrains are found in particular historical periods or since then, not considering the sporadic new quatrains that are still being found and judged to be by Khayyami scholars and experts as being possibly authentically Khayyam's. And amid the above we should also consider cases of some quatrains found to be actually questionable in terms of their attributability, but some scholars who prefer or like them due to their own views of what Khayyam was trying to say philosophically or theologically, they chose, purely as a matter of personal inclination, to include them among likely attributable ones, when there can be no sound basis for judging them as belonging to Khayyam. In the last section of this chapter, Tamdgidi draws on all of Khayyam's writings studied in the earlier books of this series, including the present volume, to present an interpretation of his Robaiyat as a secret poetry collection intended by him to serve as a way of bringing him a lasting spiritual existence in his this-worldly afterlife, that is, posthumously. A secretive approach to composing his Robaiyat poetry allowed Khayyam to fulfill various goals as follows: The primary purpose of composing his secretive poetry was to achieve lasting spiritual existence in a this-worldly afterlife, that is, posthumously. He was not composing the poems for a contemporary audience, even though early on some of his quatrains had been shared, leading him to realize how they could be misunderstood apart from the overall "book of life" he was composing for his posterity. That is why we do not find anything substantial among his contemporaries reporting him as having composed the Robaiyat. The secretive approach allowed him to survive his troubling times amid which many free-thinkers and scientists feared for their lives. Although this factor helped him to save his head, it was not a primary reason for its secretive nature, given the primary purpose the collection served as stated above. The secrecy allowed him to express his views as much as he wished to do so in a personal way, without a need for limiting himself to the extent he did in his public writings. But such public expression limitations were not done duplicitously, as if what he wrote privately in his Robaiyat were in contradictory contrast with his publicly expressed views. Even though Khayyam did not have to worry about expressing his views in his Robaiyat privately, the primary purpose for which he composed them, that is, for lasting posthumous spiritual existence, required that he compose them in such a way that future troubling times and differences of opinions others may have about his views would not prevent them from being read and spread across later generations. For this reason, the language of poetry, written in the pearly secretive style that he also adopts in his Nowrooznameh allowed him to say what he wished in veil, the essence of his views being wrapped in an outer shell of poetic narratives and metaphors that could be read and liked by many publicly, while their inner meanings could survive beneath the surface tales. So, the poetic language allowed him to pursue a secretive style of writing in plain sight, allowing for their public proliferation in later times. The Robaiyat collection was not meant to serve a public purpose during his own lifetime, but served the purpose of his own self-reflective spiritual purification, as such writing could provide him with an opportunity to establish an inner conversation between his own mind, heart, and sensibilities as well. Writing can be healing, and he used the opportunity to heal himself of the troubles and depressive conditions amid which he found himself personally and socially in his times. For this reason, it is important to consider the organization of such a collection as not having had a random order but as proceeding in such a way that would imply the evolution of his thoughts and feelings in the course of a lifetime. The poetic language expressed in the simplest way also had the advantage of reaching out outwardly to his audience across future generations, not just to their minds, but also to their the hearts and their sensibilities. This was important pedagogically as well as necessary to serve his primary purpose of assuring his lasting posthumous spiritual existence. What should we expect to be the structure of a Robaiyat collection Khayyam had composed secretively as a private account, in poetic form, of his "book of life"? Since it was considered by him to be a private, secretive work, we should expect it to be a substantively self-contained work of art. By that Tamdgidi means, a work that in itself would explain why it was being written, why it had to be treated as a secretive, private, work, and what its tropes and metaphors are supposed to mean and represent. Given it was meant to be a record of his life, it would not be organized alphabetically in any way, but would be thematically organized, the themes themselves following a logical reasoning progression, while their constituent quatrains would also be organized according to a logical order that would demonstrate an evolution of thinking, feelings, and sensibilities. The self-contained nature of the collection would imply that any of its tropes and metaphorical structures would be introduced and developed in the work itself, rather than relying on any external source or writing for their understanding, since the latter would betray the private and secretive premise of the collection. Given an initial inquiry Tamdgidi made, in Book 2, of this series, the collection would be comprised of 1000 quatrains, beginning with opening quatrains that offer a statement about its secretive authorship by Khayyam (as found in his public treatises as well), and with ending quatrains that would serve as signature statements for the overall collection. The collection will engage critically with the astrological imagination and in particular at once acknowledging and challenging its fatalistic interpretations, while involving a dialogical and conversational structure as also found in Khayyam's other Persian qasideh or ghazal as studied in the previous chapter. Given the deep interest Khayyam had in the topic of succession order amid his philosophy of existence and his creationist evolutionary worldview, we should expect significant engagement with such topics in the collection as well. Given the "book of life" nature of the collection, however, Khayyam's work would be both personally self-reflective while engaging with the themes having to do with the troubling times in which he lived, the cosmic order as imagined through his philosophical, theological, and astrological/astronomical imaginations, drawing on tropes and metaphors related to such themes. Engaging with topics of necessity and accident, fate and chance, foes and friends, prayer dialogues, touching on matters dealing with wealth and poverty, sorrow and happiness, living in the here and now, would also be expected, as will be concerns with passage of time, transient nature of existence, and concerns for matters of life and death. The above, therefore, have provided us with the necessary insights to solve the riddle of attributability of the Robaiyat in the forthcoming volumes of the series using a both/and logical method, when we will finally explore the Khayyami quatrains in order to solve the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of how they can all fit together into the whole constituting his intended "book of life." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter has ten sections: 1. Manuscript Studies; 2. Prose; 3. Beowulf ; 4. Other Secular Heroic Poems; 5. Biblical Poetry; 6. Riddles, Wisdom Poetry, and Other Shorter Poetry; 7. Lyric Poetry; 8. Verse Hagiography; 9. Reception. Sections 1 and 6 are by Rachel A. Burns; section 2 is by Niamh Kehoe; sections 3 and 4 are by Rafael J. Pascual; section 5 is by Emma Knowles, with contributions from Francis Leneghan; sections 7 and 8 are by Eleni Ponirakis; section 9 is by Simon Heller, with contributions from Rafael J. Pascual [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the article is to draw attention to Italian riddles of the Renaissance. This publishing and literary genre has been studied especially from ethnological or literary perspectives. What is completely lacking, however, are studies that deal with how this literature was produced, how it circulated and who printed it. These perspectives are highly relevant: they make us realise that such texts were not only produced by the likes of Cervantes, Bembo or Shakespeare, but that riddles were often written, performed and printed by men who are now forgotten, sometimes not fully literate and often not from elites. The intention here is to place these writings in a methodological and historiographical framework that may lead to more in-depth study in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Reflexão & Ação is the property of Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul 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.)

Copyright of Myrtia is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia 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.)

Although for a dozen decades or so, beginning the decline of the 19 th century when Jan Kochanowski's Dzieła wszystkie (Complete Works, 1884-1897) were published, numerous scholars have attempted to match the challenge posed by Gadka (Riddle), the verse until now remains unsolved. The words "ślepy bełt [blind bolt]" allow to question the suggested proposals put forward to this day and lead to the only proper understanding, namely a pit latrine hole into one eye of which the "blind bolt" hits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of ABHATH is the property of ABHATH 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.)

Aristotle's use of the term 'eironeia' in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) appears to be inconsistent: first, he attributes the attitude termed 'eironeia' to the great-souled man (megalopsychos), who is defined by his virtuousness, then he classifies 'eironeia' as one of the two vices which are central to his account of the virtue of truthfulness. Modern attempts to explain and to solve the "riddle of the great-souled eiron" have not been satisfying. This paper argues that the riddle results from Aristotle trying to reconcile aristocratic values with democratic reality. In the process, some insight will be gained on the concept of the megalopsychos in general, on Aristotle's notion of the virtue of truthfulness and on his depiction of Socrates. Finally, it is argued that Aristotle's use of the notion of 'eironeia' in the NE bears some resemblance to the use of the notion of 'irony' in modern political theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an in-depth analysis of "Against a Wen", a poetic charm from twelfth-century England that personifies, banishes, and annihilates a skin blemish. The study begins with a brief overview of the text's linguistic features and then proceeds to discuss the charm in distinct sections. Each of these concentrates on the contextualisation of a specific passage. The article assembles analogues from previous research and also offers several novel parallels from a diverse range of incantations, Scandinavian sources, medieval medical texts, and the Old and New Testament. Combining these parallels not only helps clarify obscure passages in "Against a Wen" but also sheds additional light on the composition's background. Specifically, unveiling the charm's intertextual connections allows pointing out that "Against a Wen" incorporates riddling and bilingual wordplay, as well as biblical allusions. These findings challenge the long-held perception of the composition as vernacular and provide insight into the literary devices and healing strategies found in early medieval verse charms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, comprises c. 2000 species whose evolutionary relationships at the tribal level have proven difficult to resolve, hindering our ability to understand their origin and diversification.We designed a specific probe kit for Scrophulariaceae, targeting 849 nuclear loci and obtaining plastid regions as by‐products. We sampled c. 87% of the genera described in the family and use the nuclear dataset to estimate evolutionary relationships, timing of diversification, and biogeographic patterns.Ten tribes, including two new tribes, Androyeae and Camptolomeae, are supported, and the phylogenetic positions of Androya, Camptoloma, and Phygelius are unveiled. Our study reveals a major diversification at c. 60 million yr ago in some Gondwanan landmasses, where two different lineages diversified, one of which gave rise to nearly 81% of extant species. A Southern African origin is estimated for most modern‐day tribes, with two exceptions, the American Leucophylleae, and the mainly Australian Myoporeae. The rapid mid‐Eocene diversification is aligned with geographic expansion within southern Africa in most tribes, followed by range expansion to tropical Africa and multiple dispersals out of Africa.Our robust phylogeny provides a framework for future studies aimed at understanding the role of macroevolutionary patterns and processes that generated Scrophulariaceae diversity. This article is part of the Special Collection 'Global plant diversity and distribution'. See https://www.newphytologist.org/global-plant-diversity for more details. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to explore the local literature found in Upper Ngan, Compostela, Compostela Valley. The researcher searched, recorded, collected, translated, and analyzed stories, legends, poems, riddles and songs in the area. Likewise, this study aimed to describe the culture of the residents as reflected in their literary pieces particularly their beliefs and practices. Using the ethnographic qualitative research design, in-depth-interviews were conducted to the older residents who had resided for more than 10 years in the area. This study discovered seven stories; which were Kasal (Wedding story), Istorya sa kahoyng acacia (Story about the acacia tree), Ang anino (The shadow), Ang ulit (The greedy), Ang amigas (The ant), Ang traydor (The Traitor), Ang babae sa kalsada sa Spur-1 (The lady on the road). Seven legends were also explored, and these were Ang alamat sa lubi (The legend of the coconut), Ang alamat sa uk-uk (The legend of the cockroach), Alamat sa pulang lupa (The legend of pulang lupa), Alamat sa Bango (The legend of Bango), Alamat sa Quarry (The legend of Quarry), Alamat sa Tambuyong (The legend of Tambuyong), Alamat sa Tinago (The legend of Tinago). Six poems were generated; Sapa nga mala (The Dried River), Sa bukid sa Olibo (In the Mount of Olive), May gamayng balay didto sa bungtod (The little house on the hill), Ang kawayan (The bamboo), Ang baktin na matambok (The fat piglet), Ang nanaghoy (The whistle blower). Nine riddles were found, these were: Halayan (Riddle about the clothesline), Pugaran (Riddle about the chicken's nest), Buwan (Riddle about the moon), Lamparilya (Riddle about the lamp), Langit ug Yuta (Riddle about the heaven and earth), Sungkaan, (Riddle about the sungkaan), Ballpen, (Riddle about the ballpen), Lusa (Riddle about the small tick), W (Riddle about the W). And lastly, the study generated five songs; Taga-quarry si Coco (Coco is from Quarry), Ang batang buotan (The good child), Usa ka panimalay (One house), Yahushua, and Mamingaw na dalan (The quite road). Based of the findings, the generated local literature reflected the way of living, faith, social interaction and occupation of the people in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lexicographica is the property of De Gruyter 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.)