scholarly journals Poetic grounds of epic formulae

Balcanica ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 51-78
Author(s):  
Lidija Delic
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Frame Semantics ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Hidden Knowledge ◽  
Local Traditions

The study of oral formulae in the twentieth century had several phases. After the initial - very stimulating and influential - research by M. Parry and A. B. Lord, who focused on the technique of composing the poem and the mnemotechnic function of formulae, the focus at first shifted to the concept of performance (J. M. Foley), and then to the mental text (L. Honko), which introduced into research horizons social, ideological, psychological and mental conditions of improvisation, interaction between the singer and the audience, collective and individual factors of memorising, cultural representation, and the like. Although all the abovementioned aspects undoubtedly determine the structure of a specific variant, it should be kept in mind that formulae transcend concrete improvisations and connect different epic zones, different local traditions and different times. The formula precedes verbal improvisation both chronologically and logically. Therefore - before explaining the repeating of formulae by the needs and nature of improvisation (composition-in-performance) or the generating of formulae in specific variants by textualisation of mental text - we must explain the existence of the formula in the first place. This paper seeks to point out the complex system of factors that determine the genesis of formulae. Formulae are regarded as cultural codes, which combine elements from different spheres (the conceptualization of space, time, colour and so on, elements of rituals, customary norms, historical experience, life realities, ethics, etc.). Therefore, their structure is described in terms of hidden knowledge, hidden complexity, frame semantics, the tip of the iceberg, compressed meanings. Meanings ?compressed? in the formulae are upgraded with new ?income? in every new/concrete realisation (i.e. poem) and this is the area where aesthetics rivals poetics.

Harold Monro, Poetry Anthologies and the Rhetoric of Textual Materiality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Collier
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Textual Politics

This chapter meditates upon the role of the poetry anthology and its claims on literary value at the turn of the twentieth century. By sorting the output of poets, the anthology might seem to stabilize literary value; but like all print artefacts in the period, the anthology was overproduced, and therefore could also be seen as positing multiple, competing canons. The anthology form was in flux in these years as well, with such familiar conventions as tables of contents and the grouping of poems by poet not having emerged as norms. In this context, the textual materiality of anthologies became a complex system for intervening in debates about value. The chapter revisits the most popular anthologies of the era—Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and the Oxford Book of English Verse—to sketch out the emerging codes of the anthology form. Poet and publisher Harold Monro, the chapter argues, pursued a more egalitarian textual politics than these popular anthologies, particularly his underappreciated 1929 anthology, Twentieth Century Poetry. The chapter reads the content and the metatexts of Twentieth Century Poetry as asserting a catholic vision of modern poetry as vital to everyday life.

Related to Relativity

2019 ◽  
pp. 265-284
Author(s):  
Steven J. Osterlind
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
General Relativity ◽  
Special Relativity ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Albert Einstein ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
Scientific Exploration ◽  
Richard Burton ◽  
Time Continuum

This chapter provides the context for the early twentieth-century events contributing to quantification. It was the golden age of scientific exploration, with explorers like David Livingstone, Sir Richard Burton, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, and intellectual pursuits, such as Hilbert’s set of unsolved problems in mathematics. However, most of the chapter is devoted to discussing the last major influencer of quantification: Albert Einstein. His life and accomplishments, including his theory of relativity, make up the final milestone on our road to quantification. The chapter describes his time in Bern, especially in 1905, when he published several famous papers, most particularly his law of special relativity, and later, in 1915, when he expanded it to his theory of general relativity. The chapter also provides a layperson’s description of the space–time continuum. Women of major scientific accomplishments are mentioned, including Madame Currie and the mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani.

Introduction

Ramus ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Boyle
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Critical Gap ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Critical Activity ◽  
Stephen Spender ◽  
Positive Force

But chiefly dear for his gift to understand Earth's intricate, ordered heart, and for a vision That saw beyond an imperial day the hand Of man no longer armed against his fellow But all for vine and cattle, fruit and fallow, Subduing with love's positive force the land.C. Day Lewis, The Georgics, ‘Dedicatory Stanzas to Stephen Spender’ (1940)A collection of critical essays on Virgil's Georgics needs no defence. A great, a magnificent poem, widely read, if not universally applauded, the Georgics has received far less critical attention than either the Eclogues or the Aeneid. Index in part of the apparently uncongenial nature of ‘didactic’ verse, the relative dearth of critical activity on the poem is particularly to be regretted in view of the Georgics' chronologically central position in Virgil's poetic career, its crucial role in the development of his style and thought. Indeed, given the peculiar and self-conscious unity of Virgil's poetic oeuvre, its complex system of evolving themes, images, structures, its bonding, meditated network of inter-poem reference, the critical neglect which the Georgics has received — there are brilliant, recent exceptions — seems less omission, more outrage. Even the Georgics' influence on later European poetry — one thinks, for example, of the Italian humanists, Politian and Alamanni, the eighteenth century English poets, especially Thomson and Cowper, and that remarkable twentieth century English georgic, The Land, by Virginia Sackville-West — while not of the magnitude of that of either the Eclogues or the Aeneid, ought to have elicited a more substantial investigation of the poem than has transpired. No boast, Wilkinson's claim that his 1969 book on the Georgics was the first to appear in English was sad affirmation of this major critical gap.

The Future of Fundamental Physics

Daedalus ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 141 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
Nima Arkani-Hamed
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Short Distance ◽  
Quantum Fluctuations ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Space Time ◽  
First Century ◽  
Fundamental Physics ◽  
Theoretical Structure ◽  
Radical Ideas

Fundamental physics began the twentieth century with the twin revolutions of relativity and quantum mechanics, and much of the second half of the century was devoted to the construction of a theoretical structure unifying these radical ideas. But this foundation has also led us to a number of paradoxes in our understanding of nature. Attempts to make sense of quantum mechanics and gravity at the smallest distance scales lead inexorably to the conclusion that space-time is an approximate notion that must emerge from more primitive building blocks. Furthermore, violent short-distance quantum fluctuations in the vacuum seem to make the existence of a macroscopic world wildly implausible, and yet we live comfortably in a huge universe. What, if anything, tames these fluctuations? Why is there a macroscopic universe? These are two of the central theoretical challenges of fundamental physics in the twenty-first century. In this essay, I describe the circle of ideas surrounding these questions, as well as some of the theoretical and experimental fronts on which they are being attacked.

Playing the Cerebral Savage: Notes on Writing German History before the Linguistic Turn

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 343-359
Author(s):  
Rudy J. Koshar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political History ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
German History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Formal Properties

I want to begin by suggesting that to speak of a linguistic turn in the writing of modern German history is premature. It may be true that intellectual history on both sides of the Atlantic has taken “the” linguistic turn, in the sense that, more than ever before, much current research involves “a focused concern on the ways meaning is constituted in and through language.” The formal properties, degree of sophistication, and utility for historians of these studies vary greatly. They encompass by now almost classical poststructuralist perspectives, methodologically more conservative discussions of cultural representation, and the influential works of Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock. Yet history writing on twentieth-century Germany, considered broadly, stands very much before rather than after a linguistic turn, if there will be a turn at all. Scholars of modern German cultural, social, or political history who engage current debates on language and rhetoric in truly innovative ways are the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, considerations of a linguistic turn in modern German history take place at a time when some historians criticize poststructuralist thought more forcefully than ever before.4 This makes for an interesting confluence of tensions, especially when one considers that disciplines such as literary criticism and anthropology have turned anew to the study of history.

Representation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Disch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
The Relationship

The concept of representation may be second only to gender in its centrality to mid-twentieth-century feminist theory and practice. This chapter provides an overview of feminist explorations of the relationship between political representation and aesthetic/semiotic/cultural representation. It analyzes three approaches, comparing feminist discussions of “Vamps” (cultural representation), with “Visibility” (historical representation) and “Voice” (political representation) to emphasize the interdisciplinarity of feminist explorations of representation. Running through all three sections are concerns about the interplay between how representations picture women and who speaks for them, and how acts of representation work to constitute that for which they purport merely to stand.

DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS AND THE “RUSSIAN CASE”: THE IMPACT OF RUSSIA’S REALITIES AND THINKERS IN THE MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY DEBATE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
EZEQUIEL ADAMOVSKY
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

The aim of this article is to explore whether there is a relevant impact of the Russian case and of Russian economic thought on the twentieth-century Western debate on economic development. It is argued that things Russian continued to have an impact on this notion, similar to the one we have found for the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Russia’s historical experience provided an important standpoint from which to think and rethink the meaning of economic development. As in the previous centuries, Russia’s paradoxical presence—between Europe and Asia, backward but also modern, an “apprentice” who now claimed the position of a teacher—helped to spark new thinking. The resistance of some of her intellectuals and policy makers to accept the certainties of the mainstream of the economic science contributed to raise doubts regarding the validity of Western conceptual frameworks.

The Lens of Gravity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Nolte
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
General Relativity ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Solar Eclipse ◽  
History Of Physics ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
General Theory Of Relativity ◽  
History Of

This chapter describes how gravity provided the backdrop for one of the most important paradigm shifts in the history of physics. Prior to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, trajectories were paths described by geometry. After the theory of general relativity, trajectories are paths caused by geometry. This chapter explains how Einstein arrived at his theory of gravity, relying on the space-time geometry of Hermann Minkowski, whose work he had originally harshly criticized. The confirmation of Einstein’s theory was one of the dramatic high points in twentieth-century history of physics when Arthur Eddington journeyed to an island off the coast of Africa to observe stellar deflections during a solar eclipse. If Galileo was the first rock star of physics, then Einstein was the first worldwide rock star of science.

Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and Newton

2019 ◽  
pp. 803-815
Author(s):  
Andrew Janiak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Space Time ◽  
First Line ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Time And Motion ◽  
René Descartes

Isaac Newton had a vexed relationship with his most important immediate predecessor in mathematics and philosophy, René Descartes. He was typically loath to admit the importance of Cartesian ideas for the development of his own thinking in mathematics and natural philosophy. For this reason, generations of students and scholars relying on Newton’s published work had little inkling of Descartes’s significance. This unfortunate fact was compounded by the tendency of philosophers to focus on the Meditations or the Regulae in their scholarship, for it was Descartes’s Principles above all that influenced Newton’s thinking as a young man. With the discovery of a previously unpublished manuscript amongst Newton’s papers by two famous historians of science in the middle of the twentieth century, everything changed. The manuscript, now known as De Gravitatione after its first line, illustrates the astonishing care with which Newton read the Principles, focusing his critical acumen on Descartes’s understanding of space, time, and motion. These criticisms of Descartes, in turn, shine light on otherwise opaque passages in Newton’s most significant published discussion of space, time, and motion, the Scholium in Principia mathematica. Indeed, the very title of the latter work represents both an homage to, and a swipe at, Descartes’s work: Newton would offer mathematical principles of natural philosophy to replace Descartes’s qualitative account. It is not a stretch to say that Newton saw further because he stood on Descartes’s shoulders, even if he wouldn’t admit it publicly.

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