“The Essays” by Montaigne: Postmodernist Interpretation

The article is devoted to the analysis of Montaigne?s book “The Essays” from the point of view of postmodernist criticism. The work is conceived as an experimental eclectic and mosaic formation, full of paradoxes, which creates the multiplicity of its interpretations in terms of different practices, including postmodernist practices. The features of the author’s self-identification are analysed through the postmodernist paradigm. The originality of the essayistic method of understanding reality through the philosopher?s own beliefs is investigated. The intertextual nature of his essays, based on individual authorial commentary on citation material, reinterpretation, and reevaluation of the past experiences, through which the author creates his image, are analysed. The ironic nature of Montaigne?s works, his methods of playing with the reader are analyzed separately. It is generalized that the author?s ironic position in the book “The Essays” is an indicator of the freedom of his personal thinking and a catalyst for readers to develop their own attitude to everything he contemplates. The comprehension of the compositional organization of the book “The Essays” from the point of view of rhizomatism is suggested. It is concluded that by combining tradition and experiment, Montaigne demonstrates the limitations of both classical tradition and postmodern aesthetics.

General Introduction to Environmental Humanities in India The Ecocritical Discourse in Hindu Literature

The article offers a general overview of the ecological debate and Environmental Humanities in India. After an introduction on the legacy of Gandhian ecological thought and contemporary literature, the essay focuses on the most discussed themes of the Indian classical tradition, with particular references to sacred texts (Vedas, Puranas, the epics). The sum of this knowledge is placed on the recursive perspective of Indian time: as yugas change, new structures of social life arise, reformulating society and its environment in a more holistic and sustainable way. This would be possible without ever denying the responsibility we all have in maintaining that personal empathy towards the environment that is reflected in Indian classical texts.

Prologue

The prologue issues a challenge to all interested in the Classics to address the questions ‘Why does Classics matter now?’ and ‘What should it hope to contribute to the vital issues of our present?’ by exploring how the Classics have always been embroiled in anthropological conversations about our place in relation to others. The aim of the book they frame, they assert, is to highlight—ultimately in positive terms—the contingency of the Classics’ most profound (and often disastrous) conceptual heritage to us. The historical story of the place of the Classical tradition and Classics in anthropology, it claims, enlivens us to the real contribution the Classics might make now beyond the history of Classical reception and enjoins direct engagement with the question of why we need Classics now. This book’s story of the history of anthropology, it argues, tells us this: we need to do it in order to think beyond it.

Sicily, the Classical Tradition and Interpretative Possibilities in John Barclay’s Argenis

This article explores reasons for the choice of Sicily as the main backdrop for John Barclay’s 1621 Neo-Latin novel Argenis. It suggests that the selection of Sicily is driven in part by the interpretative possibilities raised by this location, in particular, those fuelled by controversies regarding the rational and mythic which were attached to the island. It focusses on the rationalizing and mythic approaches associated with Sicily in the classical and post-classical tradition in the areas of volcanic activity and the discovery of gigantic bones. By means of a close reading of the episode in which King Meleander entertains Radirobanes in camp, followed by a wider discussion of the flaws of Meleander and Radirobanes and the theme of interpretation in the novel, it explores how Barclay exploits such approaches to showcase the failures of these leaders. It also dismisses the idea that the Argenis has a controlling divine framework which would run counter to the novel’s interest in the potentiality of interpretation.

Virgo-Death: from The Little Show-Booth by Alexander Blok to The Mistress of Death and The Lover of Death by Boris Akunin

The image of Death, embodied in the image of a beautiful maiden, is considered in the article through the analysis of references in the novel diptych by B. Akunin The Mistress of Death and The Lover of Death (the Erast Fandorin series) to one of the most important primary sources, the drama by A. Blok The Little Show-Booth. The study shows that Akunin's method of deformation was replaced by a postmodern deconstruction with a splitting into two images, of Columbine and of Maiden-Death, each of which is dominated by one of the hypostases of the heroine of The Little Show-Booth. These transformations appeal in their development to the opposition in Akunin’s novels of two points of view on fate, dialectically interacting, which correlate with the adventurous exposition and with the inevitability of personal destiny idea, oriented towards the “classical” tradition. The result of the analysis is a new formula of the genre of Akunin's novels, since their poetics goes out of the ordinary framework of criminal literature, as a transgressive phenomenon in the field of mass literature, as postmodern novel, in which the uncertain intertextuality accentuates, align with plot details, the problem of heroes’ self-identity.