scholarly journals Between Poets and Philologists

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Fabio Fortes

Well known in the grammatical tradition as the formulator of the first treatise about the construction or syntax of the Greek language, Apollonius Dyscolus (2nd c. AD) devotes his Περὶ συντάχεως to a thorough examination of the Greek language, focusing mainly on its logical organization. However, the extensive reading of Apollonius’ work under this key has contributed to the overshadowing of the ‘philological’ dimension of this treatise perceived in the numerous analyses of constructions derived from poetic use, as well as in the quotations and allusions to poets and philologists within his work. Considering that the justification by Apollonius in his prologue was the “understanding of the writers and poets”, we ask ourselves: what role do poets and prose writers play in this study? We intend to show that Apollonius, despite never abandoning entirely the logic framework of his syntactic theory, puts in evidence a close reading of the Alexandrian philological tradition, both in the examples, quotations and allusions of poets and philologists, and in the procedure of analysis of Homer passages.


1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
W. Keith Percival

Summary Antonio de Nebrija (1444?–1522) inherited his syntactic theory from a grammatical tradition which had developed in Italy in the High Middle Ages more or less independently of the speculative tradition of northern Europe. The distinctive features of this system are the following: (1) The main verb in a sentence governs not only the oblique cases of the complements but also the nominative case of the subject. (2) Verbs are subclassified depending on the morphological cases of their nominal complements. Nebrija must have assimilated this system as a student in Italy in the 1460s.



1985 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-387
Author(s):  
José Miguel Hernández Terrés

Summary The aim of the present article is to clarify certain aspects pertaining to the interpretation of the grammatical theory of Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas. In particular, an attempt is made to explain the occurrence in his syntactic theory of certain elements of classical rhetoric: those referring to what is known as figured syntax. In the Minerva, the presence of constructional figures (ellipsis, zeugma, pleonasm, syllepsis and hyperbaton) signifies a drastic and rational reduction in respect to what was commonly to be found in the grammatical tradition de las Brozas inherited. The reduction is justified given his predominantly syntactic conception of grammar, one which leads him to consider only grammatical alterations of a propositional nature, viewed as deviations which must be explained by grammar. On the other hand, the very inclusion of such rhetorical figures in the sphere of grammar is justified for de las Brozas because, it is claimed, they are normal speech phenomena, not just confined to the art of rhetoric.





2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thalis N. Papadakis ◽  
Evdokia Lagakou ◽  
Christina Terlidou ◽  
Dimitra Vekiari ◽  
Ioannis K. Tsegos


CounterText ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-238
Author(s):  
Nicholas Birns

This piece explores the fiction of John Kinsella, describing how it both complements and differs from his poetry, and how it speaks to the various aspect of his literary and artistic identity, After delineating several characteristic traits of Kinsella's fictional oeuvre, and providing a close reading of one of Kinsella's Graphology poems to give a sense of his current lyrical praxis, the balance of the essay is devoted to a close analysis of Hotel Impossible, the Kinsella novella included in this issue of CounterText. In Hotel Impossible Kinsella examines the assets and liabilities of cosmopolitanism through the metaphor of the all-inclusive hotel that envelops humanity in its breadth but also constrains through its repressive, generalising conformity. Through the peregrinations of the anti-protagonist Pilgrim, as he works out his relationships with Sister and the Watchmaker, we see how relationships interact with contemporary institutions of power. In a style at once challenging and accessible, Kinsella presents a fractured mirror of our own reality.



2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-474
Author(s):  
Beatrice Monaco

This paper explores some key texts of Virginia Woolf in the context of Deleuzian concepts. Using a close reading style, it shows how the prose poetry in Mrs Dalloway engages a complex interplay of repetition and difference, resulting in a remarkably similar model of the three syntheses of time as Deleuze understands them. It subsequently explores Woolf's technical processes in a key passage from To the Lighthouse, showing how the prose-poetic technique systematically undoes the structures of logical fact and rationality inscribed in both language and everyday speech to an extremely precise level.



2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Srajana Kaikini

This paper undertakes an intersectional reading of visual art through theories of literary interpretation in Sanskrit poetics in close reading with Deleuze's notions of sensation. The concept of Dhvani – the Indian theory of suggestion which can be translated as resonance, as explored in the Rasa – Dhvani aesthetics offers key insights into understanding the mode in which sensation as discussed by Deleuze operates throughout his reflections on Francis Bacon's and Cézanne's works. The paper constructs a comparative framework to review modern and classical art history, mainly in the medium of painting, through an understanding of the concept of Dhvani, and charts a course of reinterpreting and examining possible points of concurrence and departure with respect to the Deleuzian logic of sensation and his notions of time-image and perception. The author thereby aims to move art interpretation's paradigm towards a non-linguistic sensory paradigm of experience. The focus of the paper is to break the moulds of normative theory-making which guide ideal conditions of ‘understanding art’ and look into alternative modes of experiencing the ‘vocabulary’ of art through trans-disciplinary intersections, in this case the disciplines being those of visual art, literature and phenomenology.



Author(s):  
Tyler Tritten
Keyword(s):  

This chapter provides a close reading of Schelling’s early commentary on Plato’s Timaeus and then contrasts this reading with Neoplatonism’s, particularly Proclus’, understanding of this same text. While Neoplatonism views being according to a hierarchy of degradation or descent, with matter at the bottom, Schelling affirms that being potentiates itself into higher and greater degrees of order such that matter is not the last but the first. He is able to do this, however, only by rejecting the Platonic notion of participation. For Schelling, the participating acquires an independence from the participated so that an effect can be greater than its cause and, moreover, the effect exerts a retroactive after effect on the cause. The identity of a cause or antecedent is only constituted in and through its consequents. If matter is said to process from the One, then matter, in turn, is the consequent condition of the identity of the One as one rather than as many.



2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Jean E. Conacher

Youth literature within the German Democratic Republic (GDR) officially enjoyed equal status with adult literature, with authors often writing for both audiences. Such parity of esteem pre-supposed that youth literature would also adopt the cultural–political frameworks designed to nurture the establishment of socialism on German soil. In their quest to forge a legitimate national literature capable of transforming the population, politicians and writers drew repeatedly upon the cultural heritage of Weimar classicism and the Bildungsroman, Humboldtian educational traditions and Soviet-inspired models of socialist realism. Adopting a script theory approach inspired by Jean Matter Mandler, this article explores how directive cultural policies lead to the emergence of multiple scripts which inform the nature and narrative of individual works. Three broad ideological scripts within GDR youth literature are identified which underpin four distinct narrative scripts employed by individual writers to support, challenge and ultimately subvert the primacy of the Bildungsroman genre. A close reading of works by Strittmatter, Pludra, Görlich, Tetzner and Saalmann reveals further how conceptual blending with classical and fairy-tale scripts is exploited to legitimise and at times mask critique of transformation and education inside and outside the classroom and to offer young protagonists a voice often denied their readers.



2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Kilcoyne

This essay posits a challenge to the continued reading of The Great Hunger (1942) as a realist depiction of the Irish small-farming class in the nineteen forties. The widespread critical acceptance of the poem as a socio-historical ‘documentary’ both relies upon and propagates an outmoded notion of authenticity based upon the implicit fallacy that Kavanagh's body of work designates a quintessence of Irishness in contradistinction to his Revivalist predecessors. In 1959 Kavanagh referred to this delusion as constituting his ‘dispensation’, for indeed it did provide a poetic niche for the young poet. Kavanagh's acknowledgement of this dispensation came with his rejection of all prescriptive literary symbols. While this iconoclasm is widely recognised in his later career, the relevance of The Great Hunger to this question continues to be overlooked. In fact, this poem contains his strongest dialectic upon the use of symbols – such as the peasant farmer – in designating an authentic national literature. The close reading of The Great Hunger offered here explores the poem's central deconstruction of ruralism and authenticity. The final ‘apocalypse of clay’ is the poem's collapse under the stress of its own deconstructed symbolism; the final scream sounds the death knell to Kavanagh's adherence to his authentic dispensation.



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