scholarly journals Who can stand before a holy God? Literary artistry and theological imagination in the Ark Narrative

Anafora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-181
Author(s):  
Marcel Macelaru
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Ancient Text ◽  
Literary Structure ◽  
Literary Methods ◽  
Theological Message ◽  
Ark Narrative ◽  
The Way

This article advocates for an interpretation of biblical stories that takes into account their nature and the way in which they are told. The argument begins with observing the predicament of the biblical interpreter in using contemporary historical and/or literary methods to interpret an ancient text expected to convey a theological message. It then offers a close reading of the Ark Narrative (1 Sam 4:1b–7:1) which exemplifies how theological conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the story alone once its literary structure and dramatic development are identified.

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

When Is a Religion Like a Weed?

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-18
Author(s):  
Nathan Rein
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Study ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
The Way

Caroline Schaffalitzky de Muckadell's 2014 article, "On Essentialism and Real Definitions of Religion," offers a comprehensive rationale for the use of real, essentialist definitions of religion in the field of religious studies. In this article, I examine her arguments and the proposed definition she supplies. I argue that a close reading of Schaffalitzky's piece, concentrating especially on the way she uses examples, helps to demonstrate that she and her anti-essentialist opponents view the field of religious studies in incommensurable ways. While Schaffalitzky views definitions as serving the analytical study of religion as an object, her opponents view definitions primarily rhetorically and seek to focus attention on the process of defining.

Imagery in the Book of Revelation

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-67
Author(s):  
Konrad Huber
Keyword(s):  
Reception History ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Imperial Cult ◽  
Emotional Effect ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Figurative Speech ◽  
Theological Message ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

The chapter first surveys different types of figurative speech in Revelation, including simile, metaphor, symbol, and narrative image. Second, it considers the way images are interrelated in the narrative world of the book. Third, it notes how the images draw associations from various backgrounds, including biblical and later Jewish sources, Greco-Roman myths, and the imperial cult, and how this enriches the understanding of the text. Fourth, the chapter looks at the rhetorical impact of the imagery on readers and stresses in particular its evocative, persuasive, and parenetic function together with its emotional effect. And fifth, it looks briefly at the way reception history shows how the imagery has engaged readers over time. Thus, illustrated by numerous examples, it becomes clear how essentially the imagery of the book of Revelation constitutes and determines its theological message.

The Justified Body: Hauerwas, Luther and the Christian Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Justin Nickel
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
The Way

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis (1545) and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification.

scholarly journals Ruin philosophy, poetic discourse and the collapse of meta-narratives in Aleksandr Kushner's poetry of the 1970s

Nordlit ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Schönle
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Poetic Discourse ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
The Face ◽  
Creative Forces ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

This article offers an analysis of the trope of ruin in the poetry of Aleksandr Kushner (born 1936), in particular through a close reading of two of his poems: “In a slippery graveyard, alone” and “Ruins”. The analysis of these poems is preceded by an overview of ruin philosophy from Burke and Diderot to Simmel and Benjamin, with particular emphasis on the way the trope of ruin contemplation stages a confrontation between the self and what transcends it (death, history, nature, etc.). This philosophical background serves as a heuristic tool to shed light on the poetry of Kushner. Through the trope of ruin, Kushner explores the legitimacy of poetic speech after the collapse of all meta-narratives. Kushner has no truck with Diderot's solipsism, nor with Hegel's bold narrative of progress, nor with Simmel's peaceful reconciliation with the creative forces of nature. Nor, really, does he intend to bear witness to history, the way Benjamin does in the faint anticipation of some miracle. Instead, Kushner posits the endurance of a community united not around a grand project, but around the idea of carrying on in the face of everything, muddling through despite the lack of hopes for a transformational future and making the most of fleeting moments of positivity that emerge out of the fundamental serendipity of history.

scholarly journals Dating Early Christian Papyri: Old and New Methods – Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-57
Author(s):  
Roberta Mazza
Keyword(s):  
Raman Spectroscopy ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Ancient Text ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Academic Publications ◽  
The Way

This article provides a methodological introduction to the issues and questions raised in the dossier: How can we attribute a date to ancient papyri when it is not indicated in the text? What methods have been employed so far for dating and how reliable are they? What kind of conscious and unconscious biases underpin the attribution of a date to Christian papyri in particular? Is scientific analysis a more reliable means than palaeography to establish the age of composition of an ancient text? After discussing some research performed on papyri from the Rylands collection, bearing early Christian texts, the author addresses some of the strengths and pitfalls of any of the methods currently available, ranging from palaeography to radiocarbon dating and Raman spectroscopy. In conclusion, it is argued that more clarity and transparency are needed in the way motivations for attributing a date to a fragment are provided in academic publications and that only a multidisciplinary approach can partially overcome the problems at stake.

On the transmodality of signs and their interpretants: Evidence from Peirce’s MS 599, Reason’s Rules

Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (228) ◽  
pp. 223-235
Author(s):  
Winfried Nöth
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
External Sign ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe paper begins with a survey of the state of the art in multimodal research, an international trend in applied semiotics, linguistics, and media studies, and goes on to compare its approach to verbal and nonverbal signs to Charles S. Peirce’s approach to signs and their classification. The author introduces the concept of transmodality to characterize the way in which Peirce’s classification of signs reflects the modes of multimodality research and argues that Peirce’s classification of the signs takes modes and modalities in two different respects into consideration, (1) from the perspective of the sign and (2) from the one of its interpretant. While current research in multimodality has its focus on the (external) sign in a communicative process, Peirce considers additionally the multimodality of the interpretants, i.e., the mental icons and indexical scenarios evoked in the interpreters’ minds. The paper illustrates and comments on the Peircean method of studying the multi and transmodality of signs in an analysis of Peirce’s close reading of Luke 19:30 in MS 599, Reason’s Rules, of c. 1902. As a sign, this text is “monomodal” insofar as it consists of printed words only. The study shows in which respects the interpretants of this text evince trans and multimodality.

Australian Gothic Soundscapes: The Proposition

2013 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johnny Milner
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
The Way

While recent studies demonstrate a significant increase in the level of interest in the soundtracks of Australian cinema, very little attention has focused on the way soundtracks can convey the ‘gothic’ within an outback-cinematic context. This article attempts to begin to address this issue by providing a close reading of the Australian gothic Western The Proposition – looking specifically to its sonic dimensions, namely the amalgam of score, dialogue and sound effects. The article argues that the film's soundtrack draws from a range of Australian literary and cinematic tropes, and draws specifically on the aural and epistemological gothic traits of Australia, the outback and its perception as unfamiliar space during the time of settlement. Following this discussion, the focus shifts to ways in which The Proposition's soundtrack foregrounds significations that offer new, and complex, articulations of a specifically ‘Australian gothic’.

Broken Light

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 346-355
Author(s):  
David Stentiford
Keyword(s):  
Test Site ◽  
The State ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Nevada Test Site ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Way

Lewis Baltz’s photographic portfolios Nevada (1977) and Near Reno (1986) anticipate the work Richard Misrach and Peter Goin each composed in the state of Nevada in the early 1990s: from shot-up junk, to the military theater of Bravo 20, to the Nevada Test Site, these image-makers represented topographies of violence in the desert. This essay offers a close reading of Baltz’s Nevada images to consider the way light and waste in the landscape are mobilized to register how sociohistorical discourses of the desert perhaps make such spaces vulnerable to urbanization and how these tropes encode the process in a language of violence.

scholarly journals A Magnificent Blond Beast: Exploring the Implications of Harlem Renaissance Writer Wallace Thurman as Ghostwriter of a Forgotten Celebrity Gossip Memoir

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-241
Author(s):  
Whit Frazier Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Langston Hughes ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Saturday Evening ◽  
Celebrity Gossip ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

In an early version of his article “Harlem Literati in the Twenties,” first published in the Saturday Evening Review in 1940, Langston Hughes offers the curious suggestion that Wallace Thurman was the ghostwriter of Men, Marriage and Me (erroneously written as Men, Women and Checks in Hughes’ article), the tell-all memoir ostensibly by the original blonde bombshell Peggy Hopkins Joyce. According to Hopkins’ biographer, however, Basil Woon, an English playwright and gossip columnist was supposed to have been the ghostwriter of this book. My paper will address this discrepancy by focusing on the lack of evidence supporting the Woon theory, and through an analysis using stylometry, close reading and an examination of historical documents, I will argue that Thurman is the more likely candidate as a ghostwriter for Hopkins’ memoirs, just as Hughes suggests. I will be looking specifically at the way the text, which is presented to the reader as a diary written by Hopkins from her early youth to the present day, satirizes the shallowness and excesses of the “roaring twenties.” I will argue that the text is clearly ironic and satirical in style and approach and not only satirizes celebrity, but also a society that unselfconsciously celebrates celebrity, much the way Thurman satirizes the excesses of the Harlem Renaissance in his novel Infants of the Spring. In conclusion, I will show how this book, which has been largely dismissed as celebrity gossip, is transformed into something highly literary by the way Thurman, as ghostwriter and editor, takes Hopkins’ life story and turns it into a satire of the excesses of an era.

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