Beyond the Ancient Quarrel

Present Collection ◽

In Plato’s Republic Socrates spoke of an ‘ancient quarrel’ between literature and philosophy, which he offered to resolve by banning the poets from his ideal city. Few philosophers have taken Socrates at his word, and there has emerged a long tradition that has sought to value literature chiefly as a useful supplement to philosophical reasoning. The fiction of J. M. Coetzee makes a striking challenge to this tradition. While his writing has frequently engaged philosophical subjects in explicit ways, it has done so with an emphasis on the dissonance between literary expression and philosophical reasoning. And while Coetzee has often overtly engaged with academic literary theory, his fiction has done so in a way that has tended to disorient rather than affirm those same theories, wrong-footing the normal processes of literary interpretation. The present collection gathers together a range of thinkers from both philosophy and literary theory to reflect upon the challenge Coetzee has made to their respective disciplines, and to the disciplinary distinctions at stake in the ‘ancient quarrel’. Coetzee’s fiction is used to explore questions about the boundaries between literature, philosophy, and literary criticism; the relationship between literature, theology, and post-secularism; the particular ways in which literature engages reality; how literature interacts with the philosophies of language, action, subjectivity, and ethics; and the institutions that govern the distinctions between literature and philosophy. It will be of importance not only to readers of Coetzee, but to anyone interested in the ancient quarrel itself.

Introduction

The Solitary Sphere in the Age of Virgil ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197579046.003.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-44

Author(s):

Aaron J. Kachuck

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Roman Law ◽

Roman Religion ◽

Public And Private ◽

Ancient Society ◽

Roman Culture ◽

History Of ◽

The Individual ◽

This Introduction presents a study of Latin vocabulary for solitude as background for replacing bipartite divisions of Roman life (e.g., otium and negotium, “public” and “private”) with a tripartite model comprising public, private, and solitary spheres. It outlines this model’s applicability to Greek literature and philosophy, Roman religion, and Roman law, leading to a discussion of the Roman bedroom (cubiculum) and the solitary reading and writing to which it could be home. Reviewing the history of scholarship on Roman society, religion, and literature from antiquity through the present, it demonstrates how and why solitude has been written out of the study of Roman culture, and how the problem of solitude relates to the question of the individual in ancient society. Finally, it explores the relationship of literature to Rome’s solitary sphere in the age of Virgil, addressing problems of periodization, the relationship between literary criticism, philosophy, and literary production.

“Leda and the Swan”’s Revisions: A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis

International Journal of English Linguistics ◽

10.5539/ijel.v8n6p193 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (6) ◽

pp. 193

Author(s):

Hua Guo

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Reference Point ◽

Stylistic Analysis ◽

Cognitive Grammar ◽

Analysis Framework ◽

Literary Interpretation ◽

Point Model ◽

Linguistic Terms ◽

Linguistic Evidence ◽

Previous literary studies on the revision of “Leda and the Swan” by William B. Yeats are mainly concerned with its psychological, social and historical implications conveyed by the relationship between Leda and the swan, and seldom explain the realization of this relationship in linguistic terms and its reception by the readership. Stylistic studies can furnish linguistic evidence for literary interpretation. Building on previous literary criticism and stylistic analysis, this study takes the first stanza as an example and conducts a cognitive stylistic analysis of the poem’s three versions by means of Langacker’s reference point model and dynamic discourse analysis framework. The poet’s aspiration to achieve subtle balance in the relationship through syntactic and semantic alteration is thus better understood and the possibility of applying Langacker’s cognitive grammar to stylistic analysis of poetry is tentatively explored.

With rhymes about the human fate. Philosophy in the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Litteraria Polonica ◽

10.18778/1505-9057.59.06 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 59 (4) ◽

pp. 101-114

Author(s):

Aleksandra Koman

Keyword(s):

Significant Part ◽

Figures Of Speech ◽

Literary Expression ◽

The World ◽

Giacomo Leopardi ◽

Giacomo Leopardi is one of those authors whose texts oscillate on the border between literature and philosophy. It is true that Leopardi does not use traditional forms of philosophical expression, but the fact is that most of the considerations of the Italian thinker are expressed by the simultaneous conduct of two discourses: literary and philosophical. Leopardi experimented almost every form of literary expression, but he went down in history mainly as a poet, who contained a significant part of his highest beliefs in poetry. The practice of philosophizing through poetry is nothing new in literature, and the various connections between literature and philosophy are almost ancient, but the ongoing discussions in the world of Italian critics about the relationship between Leopardi and philosophy suggest that the reflective lyrics of the famous poet from Recanati are an noteworthy case. This article is a reflection on the use of figures of speech in the process of explaining the worldview by Leopardi, with particular emphasis on metaphor, and on the overall impact of the poetic medium on the presentation and shaping of adopted ideology.

Veiled Theory: The Transmutation of Anthropology in T. S. Eliot's Critical Method

Paragraph ◽

10.3366/prg.2007.0007 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 77-94 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Adam Trexler

Keyword(s):

Critical Theory ◽

Literary Criticism ◽

Literary Theory ◽

Institutional Framework ◽

Philosophical Investigation ◽

Institutional History ◽

Human History ◽

Critical Practice ◽

The Absolute ◽

Historical Moment

While literary criticism is often seen as an unself-reflective forerunner to literary theory, this article argues that T.S. Eliot's theory of critical practice was a philosophically informed methodology of reading designed to create a disciplinary and institutional framework. To reconstruct this theory, it enriches theoretical methodology with intellectual and institutional history. Specifically, the article argues that Eliot's early critical theory depended on the paradigms of anthropology and occultism, developed during his philosophical investigation of anthropology and Leibniz. From this investigation, Eliot created an occult project that used spiritual monads as facts to progress toward the Absolute. The article goes on to argue that Eliot's methodology of reading was shaped by anthropology's and occultism's paradigms of non-academic, non-specialist reading societies that sought a super-historic position in human history through individual progress. The reconstruction of Eliot's intellectual and institutional framework for reading reveals a historical moment with sharp differences and surprising similarities to the present.

WRITER’S INDIVIDUALITY IN THE LITERARY INTERPRETATION OF SOCIAL AND MORAL PROBLEMS

International journal of word art ◽

10.26739/2181-9297-2020-6-7 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 51-56

Author(s):

Bakhodir Kholikov ◽

Keyword(s):

Comparative Method ◽

Literary Interpretation ◽

Moral Problems ◽

The Relationship ◽

Mario Puzo

The article examines the question of writer’s individuality in the literary interpretation of social and moral problems etective novels on the examples of works "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo and "Shaytanat" by Tahir Malik. The article focuses on the study of the relationship between the reality of a work and reality of life in the context of the period. The comparative method was used in the process of understanding the content of these works, created in different periods

Double Thoughts

10.1093/oso/9780198805281.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Andrew Dean

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Jacques Derrida ◽

Postcolonial Theory ◽

Cape Town ◽

Literary Texts ◽

Paul De Man ◽

De Man ◽

University Of Cape Town ◽

The University

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.

The foundations of literary rhetoric

10.1093/oso/9780199691821.003.0007 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Michel Meyer

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Reception Theory ◽

Literary Language ◽

Literary Interpretation ◽

Basic Law ◽

The Law

Chapter 7 deals with one of the most traditional aspects of rhetoric, namely literature. It describes a basic law of literary rhetoric which accounts for the increasing problematicity of literary language in novels, poetry, and drama. This chapter also explains the evolution of literary criticism. The fact that literature is less and less linear in its narratives, and is increasingly enigmatic (Joyce or Kafka) is accounted for by the law of auto-contextualization of the problematic in the fictional answers. This law encourages the reader to provide the meaning of the text, even when it is considered as impossible or equivocal and pluralistic. The four main schools of literary interpretation correspond to our four basic operators of rhetoric: Mimetic for =, Hermeneutics for ±, Reception Theory for + (the reader is the “plus” of the interpretation of the text), and Deconstruction for –.

The Tent of Meeting and the Women’s Mirrors in 1 Sam 2:22 and Exod 38:8

Textus ◽

10.1163/2589255x-02901007 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

pp. 168-192

Author(s):

Domenico Lo Sardo

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Textual Criticism ◽

Critical Approach ◽

Critical Problem ◽

Abstract This article evaluates the relationship between the texts of 1 Sam 2:22 and Exod 38:8 using a methodology that proceeds from textual criticism to literary criticism. According to a traditional text-critical approach of the available textual witnesses (MT, LXX, 4QSama), the short reading of 1 Sam 2:22 found in LXXB 4QSama is preferable to that of MT. By contrast, using a literary critical approach, this article proposes that MT-Exod 38:8 depends on MT-1 Sam 2:22 and not vice versa. MT-1 Sam 2:22 has greater affinity with Num 4:23 and 8:24 regarding the terminology used for the women’s ‘cultic service’ at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 1 Sam 2:22b ought to be regarded as a post-P addition made after the text of the LXX had been translated from the Hebrew. For Exod 38:8 and related texts, we examine the role of the Vetus Latina in resolving this text-critical problem.

Dancing with Myriam: Creating and Staging a New Metaphor for the Process of Translation

TranscUlturAl A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies ◽

10.21992/t9q62m ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 71

Author(s):

Paula Pratt

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

World Literature ◽

African Women ◽

Literary Texts ◽

North African ◽

Translation Process ◽

Oral Interpretation ◽

Doctoral Work ◽

As Relationship ◽

This article tells the story, and analyzes the development, of a “staged metaphor” for the translation process, from its chance inception over ten years ago, to the more recent revision and staging of the script. In 2005, I was teaching world literature at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, while also researching the writing of Irish and North African women. I chose to focus on those women writing in Irish, Tachelhit, Arabic, or French, whose work had been translated into English. I was initially inspired by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill’s poem, “The Language Issue,” which compares the "sending forth" of her writing to a potential reader, to the story of Moses being discovered by Pharoah’s daughter. My ultimate goal was to produce a chamber theatre play, based on the Irish and North African texts, which would dramatize a metaphor for the translation process. This was an outgrowth of my doctoral work, in which I had drawn on oral interpretation theorists, who see the performance of literary texts as an accepted means of doing literary criticism. Accordingly, I also expanded the project to include the observations of translation theorists, and I incorporated these into the creation of the script for a chamber theatre performance. After directing a staging of the script in Morocco in 2007, I realized that I needed to add more choreographed movement, and to incorporate the character of Moses’s and Myriam’s mother into the metaphor. The addition of dance, and the foregrounding of the relationship between Myriam and her mother, draws unapologetically on female relationships. It is my conclusion that the revised metaphor, with the addition of these elements, is validated by Yves Bonnefoy’s and Henri Meschonnic's depictions of “translation as relationship with an author,” and that, the metaphor does indeed “provide . . . fresh insights.”

The Irony of a Handshake of Friendship with the West: A Reflection on Oyono’s HouseBoy and The Oldman and the Medal

English Linguistics Research ◽

10.5430/elr.v7n1p52 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 52

Author(s):

Dr Kalu, Kalu Obasi

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

The West ◽

Good Relationship ◽

Degree Of Acceptance ◽

Symbolic Image ◽

The Relationship ◽

White Teeth

The African proverb that ‘a set of white teeth does not indicate a pure heart’ aptly illustrates the relationship that exists between the Africa and the West. Colonization which is the image of friendship with the White man turns out to be a curse rather than a blessing. The Africans in their brotherhood temperament happily offers a handshake with the White man with the hope fostering a good relationship only to discover that the kind gesture is tampered with bad omen by his guest. The advancement of the White man was a happy thing to the Africans who assumed it to usher in good relationship between the West and the Africans. But it rather turned out to be a curse. Though belaboured in literary criticism, this paper attempts to look at the irony of the handshake as a symbolic image, exposing the White man’s wicked impressions as against the good intentions of the Africans. To do this Oyono’s Houseboy and The Old Man and the Medal are used for this study. The paper examines the degree of acceptance by the Africans and the humane acceptance of the White man and his eventual exploitative attitude toward the same people who happily accepted them. The White man’s use of violence to oppress, subjugate and assault his hosts. The paper explores the ridiculing nature of colonialism and providing the insight to view the psychology of both the White man and his African host. Allusion is also made of other texts that express the same themes.