Bemerkungen zum ‚argentinischen‘ Borges

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 332-350
Author(s):  
Joachim Küpper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThis essay focusses on two short stories pertaining to that part of the Borgesian œuvre, which has attracted less scholarly attention than his world-famous fantastic stories (La biblioteca de Babel, El inmortal, El Aleph). The ‘Argentinian’ stories – such as El muerto, or Tema del traidor y del héroe – impress readers with their laconic diction and cynicism. Ultimately, however, they may seem to be limited to a sort of nineteenth-century mimeticism. Considering these texts in detail, it turns out that the elements conveyed by the narrator insinuate different versions of the respective story—all of which are compatible with the ‘real’ events they refer to. Consequently, the author’s mimetic tales share a conceptual framework with his fantastic yarns – precisely one that is committed to the basic assumptions of skepticism. In what follows, the essay relates Borges’ twentieth-century version of this noetic edifice to its Ancient foundations, as well as to the first ‘wave’ of Skepticism in European Modernity (Descartes; Calderón). The last section addresses the aesthetic dimension of the Borgesian short stories: how does philosophy (and epistemology especially) relate to literary fiction – that is, to a textual genre, whose primary function appears to be entertainment, based on fantasizing? Resuming the discussion of Borges’ philosophical position, the essay concludes by quoting some remarks by David Hume, which seem to give expression to an attitude towards skepticism that is shared by the Argentinian author.

The Early American Qur'an: Islamic Scripture and US Canon

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Einboden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Ralph Waldo Emerson ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Early American Literature ◽  
Washington Irving ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Although considerable scholarly attention has been paid to US Orientalism in the nineteenth century, there remains no targeted study of the formative influence exercised by the Qur'an upon the canon of early American literature. The present paper surveys receptions, adaptations and translations of the Qur'an during the ‘American Renaissance’, identifying the Qur'anic echoes which permeate the seminal works of literary patriarchs such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe. Examining the literary and religious tensions raised by antebellum importations of Islamic scripture, the essay interrogates how the aesthetic contours of the Qur'an in particular serve both to attract and obstruct early US readings, mapping the diverse responses to the Muslim sacred generated by American Romantics and Transcendentalists.

Practices of Aesthetic Self-Cultivation: British Composer-Critics of the ‘Doomed Generation’

2013 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Collins
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Literary Circles

AbstractThe spectre of music as a transcendent artistic ideal figures prominently in the literary criticism of Victorian aestheticism, though the extent to which aestheticism of the movement actually influenced the thinking of British composers has received only marginal scholarly attention. By the first decades of the twentieth century, aestheticism had become decidedly unfashionable even in literary circles, so it is unsurprising that composers of the time would choose to distance themselves from its rhetoric. The prevalence of a certain type of metaphysical conception of the creative act of the artist and intuitive act of the critic, however, may suggest an important remnant of aesthetic influence. Drawing from new critical trends which themselves mirror those of aestheticism, this article posits a revised conception of aesthetic discourse as an activity of self-cultivation, and examines its role in shaping the lives of selected British composer-critics from the early part of the twentieth century. By casting the aesthetic ethos not as a doctrine but as a set of internal practices that inform the creation and subversion of doctrine, the article demonstrates how a ‘relational musicology’ can act as a tool for historical inquiry.

The iemoto System and the Avant-Gardes in the Japanese Artistic Field: Bourdieu's Field Theory in Comparative Perspective

2006 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-302
Author(s):  
Masaaki Morishita
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
Nineteenth Century France

The conceptual framework of ‘field’ proposed by Pierre Bourdieu and his model of the literary and artistic fields in nineteenth-century France are widely applied to studies of the development of the literary and artistic fields in other regions and the fields of other cultural practices. These researches, while showing similarities to Bourdieu's model, reveal the distinct forms of nomos which those different fields developed through localised contingencies. In other words, their findings highlight the cultural specificity of the cases on which Bourdieu's field theory is based. The main purpose of this paper is to argue that the field theory can be beneficially applied to cross-cultural cases provided that its culturally specific elements are clearly identified. For this purpose, I focus on one particular aspect associated with the nomos of Bourdieu's model – the orientation toward autonomy – to argue for its cultural specificity, which becomes clearer when it is compared to a distinct case of the artistic field in early-twentieth-century Japan. My case study shows that the Japanese artistic field did not develop the same form of autonomy as Bourdieu's model, but it also discloses the processes in which a certain form of nomos was shaped through the struggles between the artistic field and other fields.

The ‘Naturalist’ Treatment of Film in The Specificity of the Aesthetic (Georg Lukács, 1963) and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1962; Caspar Wrede, 1970)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Aitken
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Georg Lukacs ◽  
Realism And Naturalism ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Critical Writings ◽  
Georg Lukács ◽  
Made In

The distinction between progressive ‘narration’ and reactionary ‘description’, that is, between realism and naturalism, is one that Georg Lukács often made in his critical writings on literature, and is encapsulated in his 1936 essay ‘Narrate or Describe?’. This distinction, appearing in such an uncompromising essay, has also provided critics with reason to dismiss Lukács’ position on naturalism, and also on modernism, given that Lukács argued elsewhere that twentieth-century modernism was a regressive outcome of the alienating tendencies found within nineteenth-century naturalism. However, this chapter argues that the ‘Narrate or Describe?’ essay was related to the context of the 1930s, and that Lukács’ position on naturalism and modernism began to change from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. A key work here was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Lukács then revised his understanding of naturalism, and this found expression in his The Specificity of the Aesthetic (the Aesthetic) (1963). This chapter explores the account of filmic naturalism in the Aesthetic, and then compare that with Lukács’ response to Solzhenitsyn’s work, before applying both to an analysis of the 1970 film One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

The Art of the People

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-86
Author(s):  
Jan-Melissa Schramm
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Evolutionary Design ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Mystery Plays ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Political Value

This chapter traces the rediscovery of the medieval mystery plays which had been suppressed at the Reformation. The texts were painstakingly recovered, edited, and published in the first half of the nineteenth century, by medieval scholars but also by radicals like William Hone who were keen to emphasize the political value of expanding the literary canon. At the start of the nineteenth century, then, vernacular devotional drama was largely unknown; by the 1850s, the genre had been accorded a place in an evolutionary design that privileged the achievements of Shakespeare, and by the early twentieth century, performance was finally countenanced, albeit under the watchful eye of the Lord Chamberlain. This is a narrative of recuperation but also of misunderstanding, as the mystery plays were also positioned as comic burlesque and farce in constructions of the literary canon which stressed the aesthetic and religious superiority of the Protestant present.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Glyn Morgan ◽  
C. Palmer-Patel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Alternate History ◽  
History Texts ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction provides a summary of the genre’s literary history from its earliest roots to the contemporary novel, presenting important examples of alternate history literature from nineteenth century French novels to early-twentieth century essays and more recent examples of science fiction short stories, novels, television and films. It provides definitions and distinctions for key terminology such as ‘nexus point’, ‘counterfactualism’, ‘secret history’ and ‘alternate future’, as well as an overview of important existing research, and explores the relationship between alternate history texts and their source historical narratives. After setting out the aims and aspirations of this collection of essays, the introduction concludes with a precis of the essays in the rest of the collection, underlining connections between them.

Ethnicity as a Hindrance for Understanding Ethiopian History: An Argument Against an Ethnic Late Nineteenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 101-131
Author(s):  
Brian J. Yates
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Federalism ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Abstract:Despite its present ethnic federalism, Ethiopian history has been marked by provincial or cultural identities, which twentieth century notions of identity have obscured. This essay gives three major reasons why ethnicity is not an effective lens to understand Ethiopia’s complex history. One, there is no agreement among either popular and academic writers on what ethnic identities in Ethiopia represents, either currently or historically. Two, a focus on ethnicity obscures the rationale behind the actions of the state and key actors during the nineteenth century. Three, an ethnic lens brings much needed scholarly attention away from key moments in the nineteenth century.

Why Look at Elephants?

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Rothfels
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Basic Assumptions

AbstractThrough analysis of the contending ways elephants have been imagined in a mid twentieth-century circus performance and in a mid nineteenth-century hunting narrative, this essay offers a critique of several basic assumptions behind John Berger's "Why Look at Animals?" The paper argues that studying how elephants have been described and used reveals particularly well the often quickly evolving nature of our understanding of animals and their significance in our lives, and concludes that our historical comprehension of the very terms of "animal" and "human" is often surprisingly complex.

scholarly journals L’Altrove e i suoi viaggi in Arrigo Boito novelliere

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilaria Crotti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Arrigo Boito ◽  
The Aesthetic

Ilaria Crotti’s essay analyzes the short stories by Arrigo Boito (L’Alfier nero, Iberia, La musica in piazza. Ritratti di giullari e menestrelli moderni, Il pugno chiuso, Il trapezio), published between 1867 and 1874, paying particular attention to the aesthetic debate of the Scapigliatura movement. The journey theme is also examined, in its various meanings, interpreted by observing plot’s construction and the innovative elaboration of character status in the second half of the nineteenth century.

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