Literary Prizes and Literary Criticism in Antiquity

2009 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wright
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Old Comedy ◽  
Literary Prizes ◽  
Integral Feature ◽  
The Way

This article explores the role of Athenian literary prizes in the development of ancient literary criticism. It examines the views of a range of critics (including Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, historians, biographers, lexicographers, commentators, and the self-critical poets of Old Comedy), and identifies several recurrent themes. The discussion reveals that ideas about what was good or bad in literature were not directly affected by the award of prizes; in fact the ancient critics display what is called an ““anti-prize”” mentality. The article argues that this ““anti-prize”” mentality is not, as is often thought, a product of intellectual developments in the fourth century BC. It is suggested that the devaluation of prizes is actually a contemporary, integral feature of prize-awarding culture in general. This article draws on recent approaches from cultural sociology to offer some conclusions about the way in which prizes function in popular and critical discourse.

scholarly journals Worn Shoes: Identity, Memory and Footwear

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Hockey ◽  
Rachel Dilley ◽  
Victoria Robinson ◽  
Alexandra Sherlock
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Personal Transformation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The North ◽  
The Way

This article raises questions about the role of footwear within contemporary processes of identity formation and presents ongoing research into perceptions, experiences and memories of shoes among men and women in the North of England. In a series of linked theoretical discussions it argues that a focus on women, fashion and shoe consumption as a feature of a modern, western ‘project of the self’ obscures a more revealing line of inquiry where footwear can be used to explore the way men and women live out their identities as fluid, embodied processes. In a bid to deepen theoretical understanding of such processes, it takes account of historical and contemporary representations of shoes as a symbolically efficacious vehicle for personal transformation, asking how the idea and experience of transformation informs everyday and life course experiences of transition, as individuals put on and take off particular pairs of shoes. In so doing, the article addresses the methodological and analytic challenges of accessing experience that is both fluid and embodied.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

scholarly journals Critica Literară Românească Din Perspectiva Metodelor De Analiză Autocolonială (1840-1939)

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
David Morariu
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
The Self ◽  
Economic Report ◽  
The West ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis study aims to analyze the Romanian critical discourses of the second half of the 19th century and especially of the first half of the 20th century, starting from the central concept of “self-colonization”, coined by Alexander Kiossev. The article opens with the conceptual delimiting of the phenomenon imposed by the Bulgarian theoretician and with the hypothesis that Romanian culture can be attributed to self-colonizing cultures. The demonstration of this hypothesis consists of three arguments. The critical discourses belonging to G. Ibrăileanu, E. Lovinescu and C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea highlight, firstly, some of the characteristics of this self-subordination relation. The way the first two emphasize the role of imitation, the necessity of adopting the foreign models and the way Gherea treats the dependence upon the West under an economic report, represent, briefly, the center of the first part of the demonstration. The second one brings to the fore Mihail Kogălniceanu and Titu Maiorescu’s profiles, their discourses being characterized by clumsiness and flaws so typical for a culture found in an early stage of its development. The last argument broadens the scope of the demonstration in the sense that the analysis focuses on social and economic delimiting. The purpose of this delimiting is to establish which are the areas that are more responsive to the manifestation of the self-colonizing phenomenon.

The idea of the self in the evolution of Hume’s account of the passions

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (S1) ◽  
pp. 171-182
Author(s):  
Jane McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
The Way

Terence Penelhum has written extensively about the role of the idea of the self in Hume's account of the emotional and moral life of persons. Penelhum fails to notice, however, a change that takes place in the way that the idea of the self functions in Hume's account of the passions as that account evolved after the Treatise. This paper charts part of that evolution, and reflects on its significance for Hume's moral psychology.

scholarly journals Disciplinary Power and the Role of the Subject at a Nineteenth-Century Danish Asylum

PhaenEx ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
BJØRN HAMRE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Psychiatric Practice ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Pastoral Power ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

This article reports on the ways in which psychiatric practice and power were constituted in a Danish asylum at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The point of departure will be a complaint by a former patient questioning the practice at the asylum in 1829. In an analysis of this narrative the study draws upon Foucauldian concepts like disciplinary power, confession, pastoral power and subjectivation. I will argue that the critique of the patient provides us with an example of the way that disciplinary power works in the case of an informal indictment of the methods and practice at an asylum. A key issue is whether the critique is not itself a part of the self-legitimation of disciplinary power.

POETS AND POETRY IN LATER GREEK COMEDY

2013 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 603-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wright
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Greek Comedy ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
New Comedy

The comic dramatists of the fifth centuryb.c.were notable for their preoccupation with poetics – that is, their frequent references to their own poetry and that of others, their overt interest in the Athenian dramatic festivals and their adjudication, their penchant for parody and pastiche, and their habit of self-conscious reflection on the nature of good and bad poetry. I have already explored these matters at some length, in my study of the relationship between comedy and literary criticism in the period before Plato and Aristotle. This article continues the story into the fourth century and beyond, examining the presence and function of poetical and literary-critical discourse in what is normally called ‘middle’ and ‘new’ comedy.

Foes

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-70
Author(s):  
Andrew Dean
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
South African ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Literary Archive ◽  
The University

This chapter examines the work of South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, drawing throughout from his archive at the Harry Ransom Center (housed at the University of Texas at Austin). The chapter begins by tracing Coetzee’s long-standing scepticism about whether literary criticism can access the significant knowledge of literature. The author voices his scepticism through different critical idioms. The chapter then continues to examine three of Coetzee’s books in particular—Dusklands, Foe, and Elizabeth Costello. Whereas Coetzee in his earliest fiction sought to integrate critical debates as he understood them, his later work seeks to disorient schematic literary critical discourse. The chapter demonstrates how in these later works Coetzee’s writing intervenes in specific ways into the literary culture in which he was enmeshed, and how these fictions think through the demands made on writers to contribute to political struggles and forms of flourishing. The chapter concludes with an account of how the self-reflexivity of Coetzee’s literary archive itself may be read, asking whether it may be considered another incursion into the author’s reception and the procedures of contemporary criticism more generally.

scholarly journals Practical Role of Philosophy in Sport: Case of Philosophical Consultation

2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Lukáš Mareš
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe process of philosophical questioning has the power to form not only our way of thinking, but also the way we live. Both my sporting and academic career have made me think about the importance of asking good questions and undergoing the process of answering them. I decided to create a profession of philosophical consultation in sport which works with athletes and coaches of various ages. Consultants and athletes (clients) engage in a dialogue about important and interesting questions/topics in client’s life. This dialogical process is called philosophical consultation. It focuses on critical evaluation and development of client’s thinking, self-cognition, and attitudes/worldviews. Philosophical consultation helps athletes and coaches to look for their identity and achieve better self-awareness. It can be argued that consultation offers what Patočka calls the “care of the soul” (epimeleia peri tês psychês) or what Foucault calls the “care of the self” (epimeleia heautou), which are based on Socrates’ kind of philosophizing. It helps to achieve ancient ideals of kalokagathia and gnôthi seauton. The potential of using philosophy in sport hasn’t been fully discovered. Philosophical consultation is presented as a process of self-cognition and inner development. It has the potential to influence the care for well-being of athletes and coaches.I aim to explore the practical role of philosophy in sport. I will present possible connections between philosophy and sport and the historical predecessors of the concept of philosophical consultancy in sport. As well, we will discuss what philosophical consultancy is, how philosophical consultant works, and finally what are the challenges in bringing philosophical consultation into sport. Methods that are used in this interdisciplinary article are critical textual analysis, description, and interpretation of data.

scholarly journals “Why Should i not State my opinion, right or Wrong?” Considerations for Literary Criticism in the Letters of Pliny the Younger

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Ágnes Darab
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
Pliny The Younger ◽  
Literary Techniques ◽  
The Way

SummaryLiterary self is an essential component of Pliny’s self-representation. Pliny’s literary self-portrait is shaped the way he wants it to be by a diverse set of literary techniques utilized in the letters. My paper explores the questions formulated in the letters that thematize the selection and composition of text, and the answers given to them (not necessarily in the form of assertive sentences). This interpretation is not independent from the self-representative character of the letters, yet, it exceeds it on the premise that another dimension may be opened to the understanding of the letters, which points towards the development of the literary and artistic taste of the first century, and its directions.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

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