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James Joyce’s neologism “debths” (Finnegans Wake) that Susan Howe elects for the title of her 2017 volume of poetry points to at least three semantic coordinates of “obligation,” “trespass,” and “demise,” never—due to its implied transaction between the sound and the spelling—fully yielding to or being appropriated by any stable signification. In Debths, the end of life, writing, and, perhaps, literature are palpable, if overtly manifested, currents of poetic discourse. In my article, I advance the idea of recognizing this tripartite taxonomy as a variant of what Divya Victor calls “extremity.” Within this context, I demonstrate the emergence of a dialogic, intertextual, and appropriative subjectivity of the poet.

The sixth-century writer Liu Lingxian has been the subject of two drastically different appraisals: she is viewed either as a virtuous wife or negatively as a licentious poetess. While admirers of Liu's moral character often choose to focus on her writings associated with her marriage to Xu Fei (d. 524), especially the elegiac essay composed by Liu after her husband's death, her critics censure her for writing what they deem licentious poetry. Their autobiographical interpretations of Liu Lingxian's poetry underscore how gender functions as a category of literary criticism. Because Liu Lingxian's immoral image emerged in the late imperial period (1368-1911), this study explores the ways in which scholars of this era interpreted and manipulated Liu's writings to frame her for a debauched lifestyle. Moreover, as the collection Yutai xinyong (New songs from a jade terrace) comprehensively preserves the extant poetic oeuvre of Liu Lingxian, this study also examines the diverging representations of Liu Lingxian's poetry in the various editions of the Yutai xinyong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, a key poem in Caribbean literature, is a fluid text that exists in different versions, both published and unpublished. This fluidity is further complicated by the numerous translations of the Cahier. Not only do these translations multiply the possibilities of reading and interpretation, they are also based on different versions of the poem. This article proposes a study of the poem’s fluidity through its English-language translations, including an unpublished translation by Derek Walcott. The aim of this analysis is not only to identify the transformation of Césaire’s words due to the passage to another language and culture, but also and above all to show how an unpublished translation of this poem (in particular the incipit) has profoundly influenced the work of the Saint Lucian poet, in particular the incipit of his poem Omeros, thus contributing to an exceptional poetic encounter between two iconic authors of Caribbean literature.

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James Joyce's neologism "debths" (Finnegans Wake) that Susan Howe elects for the title of her 2017 volume of poetry points to at least three semantic coordinates of "obligation," "trespass," and "demise," never--due to its implied transaction between the sound and the spelling--fully yielding to or being appropriated by any stable signification. In Debths, the end of life, writing, and, perhaps, literature are palpable, if overtly manifested, currents of poetic discourse. In my article, I advance the idea of recognizing this tripartite taxonomy as a variant of what Divya Victor calls "extremity." Within this context, I demonstrate the emergence of a dialogic, intertextual, and appropriative subjectivity of the poet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas many of the so-called Jewish Pseudepigrapha still wait for a critical edition, the Life of Adam and Eve—or the Apocalypse of Moses, as the Greek version is captioned in some manuscripts—has received more than three critical editions in recent years. While the question which manuscript or version comes closest to the original form of the story is still under debate, this article argues that the manifold manuscript tradition opens a window into an ancient discussion on Satan's, Eve's, and Adam's role in the story of their expulsion from Paradise. I will concentrate my discussion on Eve's account of the story in GLAE 15–30 and LLAE 45–60. The three texts differ in their representation of gender roles in Eve's own account of the fall. None of these versions only exonerates or denigrates Eve, nor is one with the most emancipatory potential easily identified. All three texts, however, document a constant discussion on Eve's role in Paradise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents three recitation versions of two tales from the famous Vetālapañcaviṃśati (VP; the "Twenty-Five Tales of an Animated Corpse", a medieval Sanskrit anthology of riddle-tales) that made their way orally from South Asia to Europe. The original work is one of the rare Sanskrit texts to have been disseminated widely and over a long period of time. It is a work that has thrived in oral, manuscript and printed versions. The stories in question, recorded in Germany as retold by three Nepali prisoners of war during World War I, show how this pre-modern Indian textual tradition was received into modern vernaculars and recounted in modern settings. It documents the fluidity of texts as dependent on the reciter's, scribe's or publisher's own outlook, as well as on differing times and circumstances. In addition to the text's long history of transmission, colonialism and print capitalism were further factors that influenced the retelling of the VP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of textual fluidity, albeit most helpful to underline the existence of an important aspect of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible, does not enable us to assess its scope or its manifold manifestations. While it is often noted that some scribes were conservative and others were creative, this paper takes a passage in the Books of Kings as an illustration of the fact that the situation is still more complex than that. Even in the framework of the creative approach, various degrees of creativity should be distinguished. Similarly, in the framework of the conservative approach, inadvertant changes led to meaningful, creative rewriting. As a result, a variegated understanding to scribal activity is suggested. We should think in terms of a spectrum and go beyond the simple opposition between conservative and creative scribal approaches, to recognize that there were various shades of creative activity. Textual fluidity was itself a fluid phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that 1QpHab 2:5-10 and 1QpHab 9:3-7 are later additions to Pesher Habakkuk. As these are the only passages in Pesher Habakkuk which explicitly refer to "the latter days," I propose that these additions constitute an explicitly eschatological literary layer, which was presumably added to Pesher Habakkuk in the Herodian era. This literary development of Pesher Habakkuk demonstrates that the Pesharim are no static entities, but partake in a living and fluid interpretative tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textual criticism aids in answering historical and theological questions about the character and transmission of the Greek text of the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians has a number of textual variants but most of them can be taken as minor errors in transmission with little impact upon the meaning of the text. Neither those few examples of major textual variants reflect a particular theological tendency from the Scribes in the transmission of the text. They mainly reflect an attempt to clarify the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]