Dates on Literary Ostraca: A Case Study

Summary This paper presents an analysis of the dates found on ostraca containing the literary composition The Teaching of Khety, also known as The Satire of the Trades. Various aspects of these dates are discussed, for example the palaeography and the placement of the dates on the ostracon, for the purpose of outlining some scribal practices in ancient Egypt. From the dates themselves can be deduced that scribes conducted their literary activities all year round, both during the working week and at the weekend. Finally, the presumed educational context of the ostraca is discussed. The high percentage of dates on ostraca with Khety, in comparison to other literary compositions, suggests Khety was the most popular text used in the training of scribes.

The Text of the ABC of Aristotle in the ‘Winchester Anthology’

The Middle English ABC of Aristotle is an alliterative abecedary poem that survives in fifteen manuscript copies dating between the mid-fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The most eccentric copy, bearing the greatest number of unique textual variants, is in London, British Library, Additional 60577, a commonplace book and miscellany of verse and prose known today as the ‘Winchester Anthology’. The Winchester copy of the ABC of Aristotle is distinguished from all others by changes to vocabulary, idiom, and prosody. The result is a unique redaction, illustrating the kind of literary composition that could be expected to grow out of late medieval English grammar schools. The Winchester redaction also expresses a shift in prosodic allegiance. The traditional alliterative line is subtly reshaped into an accentual-syllabic form.

Contingency, Absurdity and Human Conflict in Sartre’s Philosophy

This article is centered on two of Sartre’s literary works: “Nausea” and “No Exit” along with his dialectical theory of the ‘Look’ in Being and Nothingness. I believe that these three texts represent not three distinct perspectives but rather different sets of approach to the same problem i.e. the phenomenon of human relationship. It is with this point in mind that I develop the following interrelated claims. First, even though Sartre intended to bring a new language and mode of articulation in his later works, the fundamental features of his philosophy remained the same. Thus, issues that are foundational to his early writing including the self/other relationship, the for-itself as project, the contingent reality of the world, the resistance of the in-itself/ materiality all figure high in his later writings as well. Second, as opposed to any social philosophy which accepts the possibility of a harmonious relation between human beings Sartre perceived the essence of human relations not as mitesein (‘being-with’), but rather as conflict. I submit that the source of Sartre’s problem lies in his very model of social relations given that his social ontology does not allow him to incorporate what Maurice Marleau-Ponty calls the "inter-world". This paper is also informed with the belief that although Sartre the intellectual and the creative artist are closely joined together, essentially, the novelist is much more assuring than the philosopher. Thus, even when he is not writing a literary composition proper he displays a unique talent of putting his philosophical ideas in artistic and dramatic terms. I use Sartre’s phenomenological description of the dialectic of the "look" (Le Regard) to demonstrate this point. The final section of the paper is devoted to a critical examination of Sartre’s philosophical positions developed in the works discussed above.

Scientific Narratives in Contemporary Egyptian Pocket Novel Series

Popular literature occupies a significant part of the publishing market in Egypt and has had quite a large group of admirers for many decades. It is noteworthy that, in this sector, the series of Egyptian pocket stories published by the Modern Arab Association occupy a special position. It should be noted that the authors of the stories are heavily inspired by the latest scientific discoveries in many fields. In their works, medical facts, advanced technologies and genetic engineering not only set the background for the adventures of the characters, but are often the key elements of the plot and literary composition, as shown in this article.

Julia Iribarne: del pensar al poetizar

Este Homenaje a Julia Iribarne nos ha dado la ocasión de recordar la doble dedicación de nuestra ilustre colega a la filosofía y a las letras. Mi función, en este Homenaje, será ocuparme de su breve pero valiosa labor literaria, dar cuenta de su significación y lugar dentro de su obra total. Me propongo hacer una presentación amplia de sus cinco obras de creación, y luego una aproximación fenomenológica a dos de ellas, elegidas en particular para este trabajo: el libro de cuentos Sueño de sombras, y la novela Por las calles de Dios en plena siesta. Señalo en esas obras su constitución literaria y dejo indicada la posibilidad y el comienzo de una hermenéutica en continuidad con preocupaciones filosóficas de Julia Iribarne como la intersubjetividad, la identidad personal, la relación poesía/filosofía, la presencia de lo sagrado.This Homage to Julia Iribarne has given us the opportunity to remember the twofold dedication of our distinguished colleague to philosophy and literature. Mi role in this Homage is to deal with her brief but valuable literary work, and to account for its significance and place within her whole production. My purpose is to offer first a general presentation of her five creative books, and then a phenomenological approach to two of them, which have been selected for this article: Sueño de sombras, a book of stories, and Por las calles de Dios en plena siesta, a novel. Regarding these books, their literary composition is shown and I suggest the possibility and beginning of a hermeneutics that would continue Julia Iribarne’s philosophical concerns such as intersubjectivity, personal identity, the relationship between poetry and philosophy, and the presence of the sacred.

Amos

This essay engages various interpretations of Amos. Amos has conventionally been regarded as a paradigmatic prophet in scholarly and popular imagination, but recent scholarship has raised new questions and proposed alternative approaches to the book. Literary analysis highlights its sophistication as a work of prophetic poetry and its destabilizing effects on readers. Historical-critical inquiries are marked by increasing skepticism about reconstructions of Amos’s biography and background, and redactional studies now emphasize the book’s development as a literary composition for Judahite audiences. Ideological critiques challenge the straightforward acceptance of the book’s claims about justice and its cultic polemics, even as that rhetoric continues to appeal to readers in diverse global contexts. Ecological approaches illuminate new ways that the book resonates with contemporary concerns about environmental exploitation and the value of the nonhuman world.

Genres and Forms in the Minor Prophets

This essay explores the category of genre, the verbal conventions that signal what kind of messages are being sent and received. The prophetic books of the Bible are a distinctive genre. They are characterized by a dipolar rhetorical strategy, reinterpreting revelatory messages addressed by prophets to their audiences in the past as the basis for the writers’ own revelatory messages addressed to their present and future readers. In prophetic books, genres function on two levels simultaneously. The oracular raw material on which the text is based takes various conventional forms of prophetic speech, and the literary composition into which it has been refashioned takes one of several conventional forms of prophetic books. In the Minor Prophets three types of prophetic books are represented—typological books, narrative books, and massa books—each of which utilizes various basic forms of prophetic speech. Jonah is sui generis.

Messages, Texts, and Rhetorical Detachment in Contemporary Mahri Poetry

Despite its geographical and linguistic proximity to the Arabic language, the Mahri (or Mehri) language (ISO 639-3: gdq) of Eastern Yemen and Western Oman has remained a non-written language into the present era. While older generations of Mahri speakers never considered the prospect of a written idiom for their language, recent years have witnessed efforts to compose and circulate texts in the Mahri language. These circumstances have yielded a poetic praxis that traverses the domains of orality and literacy; they also enable us to identify lexical and syntactic characteristics that betoken where in the shifting terrain of oral and literary composition a poetic work occurs. I will examine the appearance of one such lexical and structural motif – the dispatched messenger – in a recently composed collection of Mahri language poetry, The Dīwān of Ḥājj Dākōn (2011). Embarking from the notion of textual autonomy developed by Chafe, Olson, and Tannen, I argue that the sudden appearance of the messenger motif in Ḥājj Dākōn’s poetic collection is a by-product of his adoption of a written practice. In this way, we can establish that a stance of rhetorical detachment is a hallmark feature of an emergent written practice, even at its earliest stages.

Two outstanding literary phenomena of the Chinese literature at the end of the 20th century

Song thực ra, nếu không có cái định mệnh như thế thì đã không có lịch sử văn học đích thực. Việc đặt vấn đề nghiên cứu một cách khách quan những đóng góp của các hiện tượng văn xuôi nổi bật cuối thế kỉ XX đối với sự phát triển của văn học đương đại Trung Quốc là điều hết sức cần thiết. The emergence of some literary phenomena in Chinese literature at the end of the 20th century was the last hit to the collapse of the literature order that had been established since several centuries ago after the founding of new China (1949). This emergence is considered equivalent to the establishment of an innovative literary concept, bringing literary composition and delivery closer to the nature of the literature. Nowadays, upon discussing the Chinese literary phenomenon at the end of the 20th century, it is inevitable to connect it with the life-long career of an aging generation of writers. To unearth the contribution of this generation is somehow similar to an archeologist’s work and also comparable to the critical observation of a turning point in the literary history. Elements that those literary phenomena used to strive to overthrow in order to replace them with new concepts have been eradicated or outdated, which seems to be the “fate” of any “pioneering” movement. However, that fate is inevitable during the course of literary history. Therefore, it is deemed vital to conduct an objective research on the contributions of the outstanding literary phenomena at the end of the 20th century to the development of modern Chinese literature.

Nandhi Kalambagam’s Agam Songs and its Rhetoric

As a result of the proliferation of Short literary composition genres (Prabandas), various catalog texts (Paattiyal) arose as a continuation of the tradition of finding literature and giving grammar explanations therefor. Panniru Paatiyal, Venpaa Paatiyal, Chidambara Paatiyal, Navaneetha Paatiyal, Prabandha Deepika, Ilakkana vilakkam, Thonnuul vilakkam etc. and even some grammar books that deal with five grammar forms (Ainthilakkanam) are involved in this grammatical endeavor and have given grammar to different numbers of Short Literary Compositions. These numerical differences record the development of the literature as a result of the passage of time. This number extends from 54 to 360. This genre of 96 Short Literary Works can be attributed to the fact that the number system operating in the set tradition is also applied to Short Literary Works and to be a permanent one. The name of the literary genre, Kalambakam, is given in various ways by dividing its name. There are various reasons for the mix of 18 types of elements (15-21), the proliferation of many types of compositions, and the mixing of Agappaadalkal (Agam songs). This can be explained by the fact that the name is derived from a variety of hybrids rather than one character. Nandikkalambakam, the first and foremost of the Kalambaka literatures, was sung with the third Nandi Varman of the Pallava dynasty as the Leader of the song. 25 years Nandi ruled from (847-872) with Kanchi as his capital, the Pallava dynasty and the wars fought to expand the territory of many Nandikalambaka songs. Although there are some differences in the view of Nandivarman's reign, it is accepted by scholars that he belonged to the ninth century and that Nandi Kalambakam, who led him to the song, and the ninth century. Even though this literature is in our school and college curriculum, its literary style beauty and glossary competency are unknown to the so called scholars too. So this article tries to explain the above said features of the Nandhi Kalambakam.