The Library of Congress Variant of “The Shield of Achilles”

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1761-1767
Author(s):  
W. H. Auden ◽  
Stephen E. Severn

As part of poetry magazine's annual poetry day, wealthy patrons of the arts gathered in chicago on 19 november 1960 for a private auction of books and manuscripts that benefited the Modern Poetry Association. Among the items available for bidding were handwritten fair copies of W. H. Auden's “The Shield of Achilles,” “Musée des Beaux Arts,” and “The Unknown Citizen,” all on 8½-by-11-inch sheets of unlined white typing paper, the poet's signature conspicuously appended to the bottom right corner of each page. Having been recognized earlier in the day as Poetry's “Poet of Honor,” Auden had written the copies for the charity event. Hyman J. Sobiloff, a successful industrialist and published poet, purchased the collection for one thousand dollars. In January 1961, he donated the pieces to the Library of Congress, where they remain to this day. At the time, the collection proved somewhat newsworthy: Poetry, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and Times-Herald, and the Library of Congress Information Bulletin all ran brief articles on the auction and donation. Since then, however, the documents have been essentially lost to history. Few, if any, other written records of them remain, Auden's biographers have ignored the manuscripts, and no critical analysis of their content has yet been published.

Author(s):  
Екатерина Сергеевна Попович

Введение. Рассматриваются лексические и семантические неологизмы в общественно-политических текстах, выделяются семантические подгруппы, в которых они функционируют. Представлена теоретическая и практическая значимость исследования. Цель статьи – проанализировать выявленные неологизмы в общественно-политических текстах, разделить их по группам и подгруппам, определить самые распространенные методы образования неологизмов в английском языке. Материал и методы. Материалом исследования послужили американские и британские журналы и информационные сайты: CNN, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, NBC News, Chicago Tribune, The Independent, Forbes, The Sun, Spectator, NY Post. Результаты и обсуждение. Определены актуальные типы неологизмов в современных общественно-политических текстах – лексические и семантические неологизмы. Лексические неологизмы – это совершенно новые слова, раннее не употреблявшиеся в языке. Семантические неологизмы – это слова, ранее существовавшие в языке, но приобретшие новые семы. Они служат различным стилистическим целям, их употребление зависит от функционального стиля речи и контекста. Анализ практических примеров отражает соотношение этих двух типов неологизмов. Самой частотной группой являются лексические неологизмы. Из 60 выявленных неологизмов 76,6 % (46 лексических единиц) относились к первой группе и лишь 23,4 % (14) – ко второй. В результате в сфере общественно-политических текстов выделено четыре семантические подгруппы, в которых чаще всего используются лексические неологизмы. Подгруппа «Политические отношения» включает в себя 16 неологизмов, «Общественные отношения» – 15, «Личная жизнь и быт человека» – 12, «Интернет и технологии» – всего 3 неологизма. Неологизмы второй группы – «Общественные отношения» – можно отнести к гендерным неологизмам, т. е. отражающим возросший в последние годы интерес к гендерологии, феминизму и равенству полов. Заключение. Лексические неологизмы преобладают над семантическими в общественно-политических текстах (76,6 и 23,4 % соответственно), однако семантические неологизмы доминируют в текстах общественно-политической тематики. Основным способом образования лексических неологизмов являются продуктивные словообразовательные модели (преффиксальный и суффикальный способы). Лексические неологизмы в проанализированных текстах можно условно разделить на четыре подгруппы: «Политические отношения», «Общественные отношения/экология», «Интернет и технологии», «Личная жизнь и быт человека». Чаще всего неологизмы употребляются в первой и второй подгруппах. Introduction. This article considers lexical and semantic neologisms in socio-political texts and their semantic subgroups. The theoretical and practical significance of the research is presented. The purpose of the article is to analyze neologisms in socio-political texts, divide them into groups and subgroups; define the most widespread methods of neologisms formation in English. Material and methods. The research material was taken from American and British magazines and information sites: CNN, The Guardian, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, NBC News, Chicago Tribune, The Independent, Forbes, the Sun, Spectator, NY Post. Results and discussion. The current types of neologisms in modern socio-political texts (lexical and semantic neologisms) are defined. Lexical neologisms are completely new words that were not used earlier in the language. Semantic neologisms are those words that previously existed in the language, but which have acquired new semes. They serve various stylistic purposes and their use depends on the functional style of speech and context. The analysis of practical examples reflects the relationship between these two types of neologisms. The most frequent group is lexical neologisms. Of the 60 identified neologisms, 76.6 % (46 lexical units) belonged to the first group and only 23.4% (14 lexical units) to the second. In the sphere of socio-political texts, 4 semantic subgroups are identified, in which lexical neologisms are most often used. The subgroup “Political relations” includes 16 neologisms, “Public relations” – 15, “Personal life and human life” – 12 neologisms, and the smallest number of neologisms found belongs to the group “Internet and technology” – only 3 analyzed neologisms. Neologisms of the second group can be attributed to gender neologisms, that is, reflecting the increased interest in gender studies, feminism and gender equality in recent years. Conclusion. Lexical neologisms predominate over semantic ones in socio-political texts (76.6 and 23.4 %, respectively), however, semantic neologisms predominate in socio-political texts. The main method of forming lexical neologisms is productive word-formation models (prefixal and suffixal methods). Lexical neologisms in the analyzed texts can be divided into 4 subgroups: “Political relations”, “Social relations/ ecology”, “Internet and technology”, “Personal life and everyday life of a person”. Most often, neologisms are used in the first and second subgroups.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Helsinger

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris in the early stages of their careers sought to turn modern poetry in new directions by reinterpreting both the body and the spirit of the arts practised in Europe and Britain before Raphael. Four things marked their encounter with the past. First, both went directly to primary sources. Second, they began by making their own translations, verbal or visual; the act of translating brought to consciousness the particularities of both past and present. Third, both moved from translation to pastiche and invention, finding new ways to use the past to create in the present the shock of the new. And finally, these activities were shared projects, fired by the exchange of work and ideas among a circle of family, friends, and fellow artists and poets.


Modern Italy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-214
Author(s):  
Francesca Billiani

This article is primarily concerned with interconnections between forms of impegno (political engagement) and aesthetic choices, as they were articulated in the literary and cultural journal Officina. In order to reassess the role of Officina within the Italian cultural and political debate of the day, this article considers two main narratives unfolding in the journal: the aesthetic rejection of Novecentismo, understood as the epitome of artistic autonomy, and the articulation of a form of Marxist impegno suitable for a neo-capitalist society and stemming from the class-based idea of the organic intellectual. Using published and unpublished correspondence, we argue that Officina had a pivotal role in producing a theoretical framework for the conceptualisation of a post-neorealist idea of Marxist critical analysis as well as of intellectual, aesthetic and political engagement.


2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 554-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes

Using both content and critical discourse analysis, this article traces the emergence of and changes in the ways feminism has been discursively constructed in 998 British and American news articles between 1968 and 1982 – which I define as the ‘height’ of the Second Feminist Wave, and 2008 – marking 40 years after feminism began gaining momentum in both nations. In analysing the British Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, and Guardian newspapers, as well as the American New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, I argue that not only has there been an erasure of feminist activism from these newspapers over time, but that discourses of feminism have become both de-politicized and de-radicalized since the 1960s, and can now largely be considered neoliberal in nature – a problematic construction for those seeking collective social change.


Spatium ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 92-99
Author(s):  
Jovana Tosic

Contemporary historical preservation practice includes olfactory preservation as an experimental method of architectural preservation. The implementation of manufactured scents in historic buildings raises important issues of authenticity. This paper focuses on three important issues in the relation between olfactory preservation and authenticity: the importance of phenomenology in memory evocation; the relative character of the authenticity concept; and the significance of social values in historic preservation. This requires a critical examination of charters, documents and theoretical interpretations which reflect a broader concept of authenticity. The paper discusses certain articles of the Venice Charter, the Nara Document on Authenticity, as well as the sense of smell in architectural experience through critical analysis of the theories of John Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, Roger Scruton and Juhani Pallasmaa and their concepts of authenticity. Authenticity issues are illustrated by the examples of olfactory preservation: olfactory reconstruction of Philip Johnson?s Glass House; interior restoration and olfactory reconstruction of the Arts Club in Mayfair, London; and the creation process of the perfume brand Arquiste, a meaningful example which relocates the olfactory reconstruction context. These critical analyses raise the question of scent in historic buildings as a value in itself.


PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-468
Author(s):  
George T. Wright ◽  
Edward Mendelson ◽  
Name withheld

It' surprising that Stephen E. Severn' article “The Library of Congress Variant of ‘The Shield of Achilles’” (124.5 [2009]: 1761-67), so earnestly devoted to explaining in detail a variant word in a handwritten copy of a poem, should misquote four lines about which there is no dispute. Auden' “unintelligible multitude” in “The Shield of Achilles” is here assembled on a “plane without feature, bare and brown” (1762). How could a million “eyes” and “boots in line” possibly fit, much less stand, on that brown plane–or in it? And why is it “bare”? The line, of course, should read (and does in all editions), “A plain without a feature….”


PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (2) ◽  
pp. 468-468
Author(s):  
Edward Mendelson

It' surprising that Stephen E. Severn' article “The Library of Congress Variant of ‘The Shield of Achilles’” (124.5 [2009]: 1761-67), so earnestly devoted to explaining in detail a variant word in a handwritten copy of a poem, should misquote four lines about which there is no dispute. Auden' “unintelligible multitude” in “The Shield of Achilles” is here assembled on a “plane without feature, bare and brown” (1762). How could a million “eyes” and “boots in line” possibly fit, much less stand, on that brown plane–or in it? And why is it “bare”? The line, of course, should read (and does in all editions), “A plain without a feature….”


Author(s):  
John Michael

This chapter focuses on Poe’s debts to Sappho and to Petrarch and the ways in which his lyrics and tales assume and transform these traditions. Poe emerges not only as modern but as a post-humanist, despite his debts to the humanist tradition in the arts. Despite his exploitation of traditional forms of prosody, Poe becomes an origin of modern poetry in his insistence that poetic effect depends upon the materiality rather than the meaning of language, the musical elements of the signifier, rather than the meaning or abstraction of the signified. In this way he negotiates a critical relationship with art and a popular relation with the literary marketplace.


PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 707-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy N. Davidson

There has never been a great age of science and technology without a corresponding flourishing of the arts and humanities. In any time or place of rapid technological advance, those creatures we would now call humanists—literary commentators, historians, philosophers, logicians, theologians, linguists, scholars of the arts, and all manner of writers, musicians, and artists—have also had a field day. Perhaps that generalization is actually a tautology. Great ages of science are great ages of the humanities because an age isn't a historical period but a construct, and constructs are the work of humanists. Throughout history, there have been many momentous scientific discoveries that simply drift into the culture, are adapted without any particular new social or philosophical arrangements. It is the humanistic articulation of the significance of scientific change that announces a new episteme, a world-altering, even metaphysical, transformation. While scientists and engineers are responsible for the discoveries and inventions, humanists consolidate those experimental findings, explain them, and aggregate their impact in such a way that we suddenly have not just the new but an epoch-defining paradigm shift. (E = mc is an equation; the concept of relativity is a defining intellectual model.) The humanistic turn of mind provides the historical perspective, interpretive skill, critical analysis, and narrative form required to articulate the significance of the scientific discoveries of an era, show how they change our sense of what it means to be human, and demarcate their continuity with or difference from existing ideologies.


1974 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Charlotte C. Watkins

“Modern Poetry” was the caption of Carlo Pellegrini's caricature illustrating Vanity Fair's article on Browning (“the best of our professors of modern poetry”), containing the first notice of The Inn Album, which was published on 19 November 1875. Viewed in retrospect, the caption seems particularly apt as an announcement of The Inn Album. In content, the poem was modern, contemporary to the point of topicality. The very selection of contemporary upper-middle-class life as a subject was an especially modern undertaking in the mid-seventies, within a twelve-month period that included both Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, the latter of which Lewes described as, like Middlemarch, “a story of English life but of our own day, and dealing for the most part in a higher sphere of Society.” The Inn Album found its material in contemporary manners, just as Browning's poems that had preceded it in the seventies had addressed themselves, in various ways, to other aspects of contemporary life. In addition, references in The Inn Album to contemporary styles in the arts call attention to the poem as a poem and relate it, also, to modern art.


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