The Canticle of the Creatures as Hypotext behind Dante’s Pater Noster

The article analyses Dante’s explanatory paraphrase and exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer, which opens the eleventh canto (v. 1–24) of Purgatory. The author reminds us that the prayer is the only one fully recited in the entire Comedy and this devotional practice is in line with the Franciscan prescription to recite it in the sixth hour of the Divine Office when Christ died on the cross. The prayer is reported by the poet on the first terrace of Purgatory, where the proud and vainglorious must learn the virtue of humility, and therefore it symbolizes the perfect reciprocity between man and Godhead. Dante collates and amplifies the two complementary Latin versions of the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6: 9–13 and Luke 11: 2–4. The two synoptic texts are supplemented by the Gospel of John, from which Dante takes the concept of celestial bread (manna) – the flesh and the blood of Christ – which nourishes, liberates and sanctifies Christians. Apart from the Bible, Dante also draws upon the Augustinian and Tomistic traditions. However, the main hypotext behind the prayer, which is neither cited nor acknowledged in any explicit form in the Comedy, is the Franciscan Laudes creaturarum (“Canticle of the Creatures”), also known as the Canticle of the Brother Sun. Written in vernacular by St. Francis himself, who is also the author of the Expositio in Pater noster, the Canticle was still recited and sung together with the Lord’s Prayer in the Franciscan communities in Dante’s time. Moreover, following the parallel readings popular nowadays in Dante studies, the author argues that Purgatorio 11 may be elucidated in the context of Paradiso 11, which is the Franciscan canto par excellence, and taken together they both offset cantos 10, 11, 12 of Inferno, which are based on the sin of pride (superbia). The denunciation of pride in and around canto 11 of Inferno alludes to humility – the remedy of such pride in Purgatory 11, which in turn prepares the reader for the encounter with St. Francis – the paragon of humility – in Paradiso 11. The author concludes that the Dantean paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer is no less than an elaborate exegesis and homage to Christ and His teachings, something which is encompassed in a nutshell in the Sermon on the Mount.

Pieturzīmes senajos latviešu tekstos

Early written Latvian texts are important sources not only for linguistics but also for culture and social studies. Latvian texts (and indeed Latvian culture as a whole) show consistent German influence. These texts were produced in a cross-cultural context of Catholicism and Protestantism and display elements from local folklore. The history of the Latvian written language dates to the 16th century and is largely linked to the Reformation of the Church. The earliest texts from the 16th century are various versions of translations of the Lord’s Prayer, as well as separate short records in the books of Riga trade associations. Since the 17th century, the scope of genres of written sources widens: lexicographical, legal, and other secular texts have been published. There are two significant aspects of these early Latvian texts. The first is that most of the texts were translations from German, Latin, and Polish, and there were very few original texts. The second aspect is that most of the translators were not native speakers of Latvian. First punctuation marks in Latvian appeared in the 16th century in translations from the German language. In 16th-century texts, the following punctuation marks – point, question mark, slash, double hyphen, colon, and parentheses – were used. Semicolons and exclamation marks were used in 17th-century writings. The following punctuation marks have entered the 18th century: a dash, dots, round quotation marks, a comma, and an apostrophe, but they had been used on a different basis than today. While reading various texts of the 16th and the 17th century, the author also looked at the punctuation marks used at this time – a point, a question mark, a slash, a colon, a semicolon, brackets, a double hyphen, and an exclamation mark. In this study, the use of punctuation marks of 11 texts of Early Written Latvian is analyzed, and a comparison of Early Latvian Texts and the Luther Bible is given. The descriptive method and the comparative method are used. At the end of the paper, the main conclusions are given.

THE SPEECH REPRESENTATION OF THE SAMOYEDS IN THE FIRST RUSSIAN POPULAR SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE ABOUT THE SAMOYEDS (1732)

Исследование посвящено рассмотрению стилистических особенностей подачи информации об одном из северных народов в первой печатной статье об этом народе, опубликованной в 1732 г. в научно-популярном академическом журнале «Примечания к Санкт-Петербургским ведомостям» (републикация [Малышев, 2014]) и рассчитанной на ознакомление читательской аудитории (преимущественно петербургской и московской) с образом жизни самоедов. Статья была подготовлена её автором на основании книги Николааса Витсена «Северная и Восточная Тартария» (Амстердам, 1692), однако определяющая роль отводится именно манере изложения пересказываемой книги. Материалы занимают четыре выпуска (16 страниц, части XXVIII–XXXI). Речевая репрезентация самоедов в статье происходит двояко: «извне» и «изнутри». Во-первых, статья выстроена по общей схеме, реализующей типичные шаги коммуникативного сценария этнографического информирования: 1) Сообщение ключевой номинации и этимологических сведений о ней; 2) Сообщение сведений о происхождении и составе народности; 3) Рассказ о взаимоотношениях с колонистами Русского Севера; 4) Описание религии и выявление её ключевых положений в жизни самоедов. Во-вторых, в конце статьи читатель видит часть языка, на котором говорят самоеды: приводятся примеры ключевых слов на архангелого-родском самодийском языке (71 слово и 16 коротких бытовых фраз), демонстрируются переводы молитвы «Отче наш» на три диалекта самодийского языка и счет от одного до десяти на этих же диалектах. Статья «О самоедах» не только рассказывала читателям о «чужом своём» народе, но и приобщала этот народ и занимаемую им территорию к другим народам и землям в составе российского государства. Тональность изложения формировала положительное восприятие самоедов как простого народа, живущего натуральным хозяйством, сохранившего черты первобытной культуры, но при этом добросердечного, отчасти наивного и дружелюбного. The article is devoted to the stylistic peculiarities of presenting information about one of the North-ern peoples in the first printed article about them, published in 1732 in the popular scientific academic magazine “Notes to the Saint-Petersburg Vedomosti” (republication [Malyshev, 2014]) and intended to acquaint the audience (mostly in St. Petersburg and Moscow) with the way of Samoyed's life. The article was prepared by its author on the basis of Nicolaes Witsen’s book “Noord en Oost Tartarye” (Amsterdam, 1692), but the defining role is precisely given to the stylistic manner of the recounted book presentation. The materials take four releases (16 pages, parts XXVIII–XXXI). In the article, the speech representation of Samoyeds is done doubly: “from the outside” and “from within”. First, the article is built according to the general scheme realizing typical steps of the ethnographic informing communicative scenario: 1) Contribution of the key nomination and etymological information about it; 2) Contribution of the nationality origin and structure; 3) Story about relationship with colonists of the Russian North; 4) Description of religion and its status in Samoyed’s life. Secondly, in the end of the article the reader can see a part of language which Samoyeds speak: some examples of keywords in Archangelsk Samoyed dialect (71 words and 16 short everyday phrases) are given, the translations of “Lord’s Prayer” prayer into three dialects of the Samoyed language (in Archangelsk, Turukhansk and Tafsk) and the counting from one to ten on the same dialects are shown. The article “About the Samoyeds” not only told the Russian readers about the “strange foreign” people, but also acquainted these people and the territory they lived on with other people and lands as a part of the Russian state. In this article, the tonality as a key factor plays a special role in forming the reader’s general perception of the Russian North nation’s original culture and formed the positive perception of Samoyeds as common people which are living subsistence economy, kept streaks of primitive culture, but at the same time goodhearted, partly naive and friendly.