Labor VIII

2021 ◽  
pp. 112-123
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Insertion Point

The tradition of Heracles’ Labor of the fire-breathing Mares of Diomede is reviewed, with attention to literary and iconographic sources, and the richest of the former supplied in quotation. The Labor’s complex literary tradition may be analyzed into three major variants: (1) Heracles (acting alone) throws one of Diomede’s grooms to the horses to distract them so that he can bridle them; Diomede rushes to retaliate (and is presumably killed). (2) Heracles and his men overpower Diomede’s grooms to make off with the horses; when Diomede and his Bistones pursue them, Heracles leaves the horses in the care of his beloved, Abderus, so as to join battle; he kills Diomede and repels the rest, but in the meantime Abderus loses control of horses and they drag him to death; Heracles founds Abdera beside his tomb. (3) More simply, Heracles (acting alone) throws Diomede himself to the horses to distract them while he bridles them. The horse-taming episode in Heracles’ cycle and in other quest-myths (those of Perseus and Bellerophon, and even the mythologized childhood of Alexander the Great) may refract a rite of passage. This Labor serves as the insertion point in his cycle for Heracles’ rescue of Alcestis from Death.

scholarly journals The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-121
Author(s):  
Michelle Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Cultural Setting ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Court Life ◽  
Classical Arabic

In The Poetics of Islamic Legitimacy, Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevycheffectively debunks the myth that the classical Arabic panegyric ode (qasidat al-madh) is merely a descriptive, prescriptive, or sycophanticpoetic genre by demonstrating its dynamic engagements with what sheterms “Arabo-Islamic court life.” The book builds on her previous work(e.g., The Mute Immortals Speak [Cornell University Press: 1993]), usingan approach that blends an understanding of myth, rite, and archetype inthe classical Arabic qasidah with historically grounded, contextualizedinterpretations of these poems. Her insightful, close readings of individualpoems are coupled with a detailed exploration of the classical Arabicqasidah’s social and ritual functions – from the pre-Islamic period,through its early days, and continuing through the Umayyad and`Abbasid periods.This book’s specific argument is that the panegyric ode “created,encoded, and promulgated a myth and ideology of legitimate Arabo-Islamic rule” (p. ix). She uses a range of contemporary sources, includinganecdotal material about poetry and poets, in her interpretations. Thisgrounds her detailed and specific literary analyses in a broader sociopolitical,historical, and cultural setting and invigorates her argumentsabout poetry’s role in relation to power and leadership.Each chapter treats one aspect of this overall argument and progresseschronologically, beginning with pre-Islamic Arabia and ending withAndalusia. Each chapter is highly structured and begins by setting a context.Stetkevych then explicates the paradigms and theories employed (e.g.,Van Gennep’s rite of passage and Mauss’ formulation of ritual exchange),before providing a translation of the poem(s) to be analyzed. Finally, sheanalyzes one or more poems, reading each section meticulously in relationto the previously outlined contexts, paradigms, and theories, as well as theArabic literary tradition. She also notes grammatical and linguistic pointsand the sociopolitical, historical and/or cultural elements affecting its composition.She concludes by linking each chapter to the larger idea that bindsthe book together – how the poems shore up or undermine the legitimacyof Arabo-Islamic leaders ...

Engin

2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226
Author(s):  
Jonathan Morton
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
French Language ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The main texts under consideration in this article are two French-language Alexander romances written in the second half of the twelfth century, discussed in relation to the Latin historical, romance, and naturalist traditions that form the backbone of the medieval tradition of Alexander the Great in medieval Europe, and in particular in relation to the literary tradition that starts with Pseudo-Callisthenes’s Greek Romance of Alexander. The aim is to show how Alexander was used not simply as an icon of secular or military power but also as an important figure for understanding the relationship between the imagination, technological invention, and discovery of new knowledge, which necessarily entails questions of prestige and power. Alexander’s ingenuity, which manifests both as verbal trickery and in the invention of new machines, is shown to be fundamental for a certain model of knowledge-acquisition that sees natural truths as hidden and in need of tools to be extracted. This ingenuity is shown, also, to be closely connected to the inventions of writers of romance, and the article suggests the specific importance of the Alexander material in the history of medieval romance literature.

“All in a Garden Green”: Shakespeare's Staging of Garden Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Green World

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.

The Pornographer and McGahern's Allusive Practice

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-297
Author(s):  
Tom Walker
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Present Value ◽  
The Past

Allusions to other texts abound in John McGahern's fiction. His works repeatedly, though diffidently, refer to literary tradition. Yet the nature of such allusiveness is still unclear. This article focuses on how allusion in The Pornographer (1979) is depicted as an intellectual and social practice, embodying particular attitudes towards the function of texts and the knowledge they represent. Moreover, the critique of the practice of allusion that the novel undertakes is shown to have broader significance in terms of McGahern's whole oeuvre and its evolving attempts to salvage something of present value from the literature of the past.

Reading Old Books

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mack
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽  
First Century ◽  
Creative Power ◽  
Urban Deprivation ◽  
A Minor ◽  
International Character

In literary and cultural studies, “tradition” is a word everyone uses but few address critically. In this book, the author offers a wide-ranging exploration of the creative power of literary tradition, from the middle ages to the twenty-first century, revealing in new ways how it helps writers and readers make new works and meanings. The book argues that the best way to understand tradition is by examining the moments when a writer takes up an old text and writes something new out of a dialogue with that text and the promptings of the present situation. The book examines Petrarch as a user, instigator, and victim of tradition. It shows how Chaucer became the first great English writer by translating and adapting a minor poem by Boccaccio. It investigates how Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser made new epic meanings by playing with assumptions, episodes, and phrases translated from their predecessors. It then analyzes how the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell drew on tradition to address the new problem of urban deprivation in Mary Barton. And, finally, it looks at how the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in his 2004 novel Wizard of the Crow, reflects on biblical, English literary, and African traditions. Drawing on key theorists, critics, historians, and sociologists, and stressing the international character of literary tradition, the book illuminates the not entirely free choices readers and writers make to create meaning in collaboration and competition with their models.

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