Narcissus or Literary Illusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-63
Author(s):  
Gianpiero Rosati
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Image ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Latin Word

It was almost certainly Ovid who joined together the narratives of frustrated desire of Echo (in love with Narcissus) and Narcissus (in love with his own mirror image). This he did by exploiting the Latin word imago, which defines both the visual reflection and the acoustic one. The illusion produced by the reflection is the central theme in Ovid’s story, and it is also the principle on which the two stories are closely intertwined, replicating the theme of reflection in both structure and language, and offering a reading of reality as a space dominated by ambiguities and deceptions. Narcissus’ ‘tragicomedy of errors’ implies at the same time a discourse on the fictitious nature of all literary texts, but his figure is also an emblem of the poet bent over in admiration of his own virtuosity, and in particular of Ovid himself, who was said by Quintilian to have been ‘too in love with his own brilliance’.

What wasulpicum?

2000 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 230-237
Author(s):  
Margaret R. Mezzabotta
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ancient Medicine ◽  
Allium Ampeloprasum ◽  
Latin Word ◽  
Great Headed Garlic

The Latin wordulpicumis attested thirty-one times. The literary texts in which the term occurs range in date from the second century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. It denotes a plant used in antiquity both as a foodstuff and as an officinal substance in human and animal prescriptions, but discussions ofulpicumin the work of classical scholars show that there is no agreement about its identity. This lack of clarity consequently obfuscates the understanding of the passages in which reference is made to the plant. Furthermore, those students of ancient medicine, botany, and horticulture who depend on translations receive an inaccurate and even misleading impression of the original Latin sources. I propose to demonstrate the present unsatisfactory state both of translations of the term and of efforts by classical scholars to identify the plant, then to review the data supplied by the ancient sources. Following this, I shall suggest that what Latin writers referred to asulpicumis, in fact, the plant known to modern botanists asAllium ampeloprasumL., ‘great-headed garlic’. Finally, I shall investigate its function in the Roman diet and pharmacopeia.

scholarly journals Capitalism and Socialism: A Review of Kornai's Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenggang Xu
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

Understanding the nature of capitalism has been a central theme of economics. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the global financial crisis spurred the reemergence of the political economy as a new frontier and the revival of interest in the nature of capitalism. János Kornai's book Dynamism, Rivalry, and the Surplus Economy: Two Essays on the Nature of Capitalism fills an important intellectual gap in understanding the dynamic nature of capitalism by comparing it with its mirror image, socialism. To further develop the themes contained in the book, serious challenges are posed theoretically and empirically, as well as in subjects, such as hybrid capitalism. (JEL L32, P12, P14, P16, P26, P31)

scholarly journals Staging Poetic Balance: A New Introduction to and Translation of the Noh Play Hakurakuten

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-276
Author(s):  
LeRon James Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Historical Events

Abstract The introduction discusses the noh play Hakurakuten in relation to the earlier introduction to and translation of the play by Arthur Waley, the reading of the play by Leo Shingchi Yip, and the concepts of allusion and allusive space advanced by Joseph Pucci. Using Pucci’s concepts, I discuss the allusions to literary texts, cultural practices, and historical events and persons in Hakurakuten in a new manner as well as assess the aspects of the play both Waley and Yip overlook and how Waley and Yip’s readings fit into an allusive space reading of the play. The translation is based on the version of the play appearing in Itō Masayoshi’s annotated volume and incorporates as much as possible the information Itō gives. It contains a translation of the kyōgen interlude, which is important to appreciating the central theme of the play and was left out of the Waley translation. It also contains more footnotes than the earlier Waley translation, notes that point out matters such as puns in language and source material for lines.

scholarly journals Psychoanalytic Discourse of the 1920s-1930s Ukrainian Novellas

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
Natalia Maftyn
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
Psychoanalytic Discourse ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Plot Type ◽  
The Erotic

The article highlights the impact of Freud’s ideas on the Ukrainian prose between the Two World Wars. The analysis of the works by V. Pidmohylnyi and I. Cherniava shows that in literary texts, the erotic-death paradigm is one of the ‘modernist’ algorithms for plot development; in the novellas, this paradigm affects the process of conflict modeling and conflict development. It is rightly believed that V. Pidmohylnyi’s dominant literary interest was the ‘helplessness of human morality before the temptations of crime’. In the novella analyzed in this study, Pidmohylnyi adopts the perspective of the ontogenesis of the human soul at the age of puberty. I. Cherniava explores the theme of subconscious ‘temptation of crime’ a wicked and thoughtless children’s game is sure to unleash. The two stories have many features in common: they are thematically close; in both of them, the plot is based on the Freudian ideas; stylistically, they are realist-oriented works with certain elements of naturalism. The novellas belong to the same type of structurally modified literary works, in which the action is no more important than the resultant psychic changes in the characters. In both novellas, the plot is built around stable structural-behavioural patterns of human culture (in Vania, it is the initiation trial pattern; in The Execution, the perverse play pattern, the game of a trial transformed into a crime). Both works have rather specific expositions, which fulfill the function of ‘Vorgeschichte’ – they tell a reader about certain psychic inclinations of the characters and present the projection of the central theme. In both novellas, the plot type, which determines the development of action, is outlined in the prehistory. Structurally, the two novellas are based on parallelism of events. As to their style, both works bear the features of naturalism

scholarly journals Bridging the gap among social classes in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-191
Author(s):  
Abdou Sene
Keyword(s):  
Lower Class ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Accounts

The Biafra War has been the subject of many historical accounts and literary texts. Among the novels produced about the Biafra War is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) where the author recounts not only the events leading to the war but also those during and just after the conflict. Though the events of the Biafra War constitute the central theme in Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie also deals with the relationships among social classes in this novel. One may wonder why the author shows that some upper-class people are keen on their difference, their ‘superiority’, and, on the other hand, people of the upper and middle classes are human and respectful towards lower-class persons. What is the purpose of the writer in drawing this parallel? From a socialist and humanist perspective, this article deals with “bridging the gap among social classes in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.” Based on sociology, psychology, socialism, and humanism, the paper will first deal with the criticism of the Nigerian upper class and then with Adichie’s advocacy for a socialist and humanist society.

Mirror-image stimulation.

1968 ◽  
Vol 70 (6, Pt.1) ◽  
pp. 782-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon G. Gallup
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Image

How are object shape axes defined? Evidence from mirror-image confusions.

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thitaporn Chaisilprungraung ◽  
Joseph German ◽  
Michael McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Image ◽  
Object Shape

Ale na razie tu cisza” – fotografie sprzed katastrofy w wybranych zapisach literackich (Stefan Chwin, Ryszard Kapuściński, Wisława Szymborska)

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Magdalena Strąk
Keyword(s):  
Time Perspective ◽  
Terrorist Attack ◽  
First World War ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

The work aims to show a peculiar perspective of looking at photographs taken on the eve of the broadly understood disaster, which is specified in a slightly different way in each of the literary texts (Stefan Chwin’s autobiographical novel Krótka historia pewnego żartu [The brief history of a certain joke], a poem by Ryszard Kapuściński Na wystawie „Fotografia chłopów polskich do 1944 r.” [At an exhibition “The Polish peasants in photographs to 1944”] and Wisława Szymborska’s Fotografia z 11 września [Photograph from September 11]) – as death in a concentration camp, a general concept of the First World War or a terrorist attack. Upcoming tragic events – of which the photographed people are not yet aware – become for the subsequent recipient an inseparable element of reality contained in the frame. For the later observers, privileged with time perspective, the characters captured in the photograph are already victims of the catastrophe, which in reality was not yet recorded by the camera. It is a work about coexistence of the past and future in the field of photography.

Does Literature Matter Today? Thoughts of the Outside

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Shaobo Xie
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The World

The paper celebrates the publication of Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents as a significant event in the age of neoliberalism. It argues that, in spite of the different premises and the resulting interpretative procedures respectively championed by the two co-authors, both of them anchor their readings of literary texts in a concept of literature that is diametrically opposed to neoliberal rationality, and both impassionedly safeguard human values and experiences that resist the technologisation and marketisation of the humanities and aesthetic education. While Ghosh's readings of literature offer lightning flashes of thought from the outside of the Western tradition, signalling a new culture of reading as well as a new manner of appreciation of the other, Miller dedicatedly speaks and thinks against the hegemony of neoliberal reason, opening our eyes to the kind of change our teaching or reading of literature can trigger in the world, and the role aesthetic education should and can play at a time when the humanities are considered ‘a lost cause’.

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