“Above Me is the Heavens Diversity”： Intertext in the Lyrics by Ivan Elagin

The relevance of the study is dictated by the need to identify intertextual connections in the lyrics by I. Elagin as evidence of the dialogic nature of his poems, their close connection with the Russian and world literary tradition. The article reveals the problem of detecting intertextual sources in the poetry of the second wave of emigration due to its poor study at the level of poetics, a partial solution of which is proposed in this publication. The novelty of the research lies in the detection of allusions and quotations that have not previously attracted the attention of researchers studying the work by I. Elagin. The aim of the study is to determine the allusive background of the Elagin's lyrics, which is necessary for the poet to organize a cultural dialogue with the metropolis of the literature. Based on the goal, the research methods were determined: the analysis of intertextual relations based on a comparative and historical-literary approach. In the course of the study, conclusions were drawn about the presence of a number of new, previously unnoticed allusive sources of Elagin's lyrics, consonant with his outlook of the emigrant poet, and also revealed the dialogical nature of his work, which is distinguished by the tragic outlook of a man of the new “neon age” - a time that does not accept poetry. In addition, it was determined that his intertextual dialogue with classics and contemporaries reveals the polemic and ambiguousness of his attitude to the new industrial age and, at the same time, faith in the unlimited possibilities of the poetic word, due to the fact that for Elagin, as a poet who formed abroad, it was important to define his own poetic genealogy and his place among Russian poets. As a research perspective, it should be noted the possibility of further consideration of the complex of intertextual connections of the poet, demonstrating his desire to be included in the circle of the “big” literature of the metropolis, to declare the uninterrupted tradition of Russian poetry, but at the same time showing a new look at them from the position of a “non-Soviet” person aesthetic space. Keywords; Ivan Elagin, poetry of the second wave of Russian emigration, intertextual connections, poetry of Russian emigration, literary allusion, traditions of Russian literature

The Riddles of Mazeppa; or, More Questions than Answers: Watermarks and Cohabitations, April 1817–September 1818

Byron's Mazeppa is an unusual case in his writing career. He was generally a quick writer, but this poem – an important link between his earlier melodramatic tales and his later comic ones – was started in April 1817 and completed only in September 1818, nearly eighteen months later. This essay uses various forms of evidence, in particular literary allusion and the various paper stocks on which the poem was drafted, to suggest when and where the poem was ‘broken off’ before being finally completed. It also considers in the poem in the light of other works written during the period ( The Lament of Tasso, Manfred, Childe Harold IV, Beppo, and Don Juan) before considering its overall theme in contrast to Voltaire's History of Charles XII.

By Way of Introduction Back to the Future?

This chapter offers a succinct account of metalepsis in its modern (re-)conceptualization, largely following Genette, both to set the scene for the subsequent chapters and to interrogate the state of modern theorization from a classical perspective. While Genette’s intervention has arguably given the concept a more cohesive outlook than it ever had in its long (if now largely obliterated) history, might current debates have something to gain from revisiting earlier theorizations of metalepsis avant Genette? Rather than seeking to reconstruct a genealogy of the concept’s transformation from ancient rhetoric to contemporary criticism, this chapter offers a critical reappraisal of current thinking on narratological metalepsis by way of bringing back into the debate the voices of classical rhetoricians, critics, and grammarians who dealt with metalepsis in its earlier incarnations. The chapter examines how the logics, mechanics, structural principles, and effects attributed to metalepsis by scholars in antiquity and today compare. In particular, it asks what conceptual relationship exists between the trope ‘metalepsis’ (often discussed as a variant of metonymy), the narratological concept of metalepsis (which shares with metonymy a story of structuralist reinvention), and notions of metalepsis as literary allusion; and proposes that thinking of metalepsis in all three cases in terms of either a trope or a figure can not only help to safeguard the concept’s critical acumen, but also renders visible how theorizing metalepsis from a rigorously transhistorical perspective requires a built-in account of the variabilities that arise under the conditions of changing literary and cultural-historical contexts.

John Clare and the Language of Listening

This essay examines the representation of listening in a number of Clare's 1832 poems, paying attention to the language used, including prepositions, ideophones, verb forms, dialect and literary allusion. It considers how listening locates and is located in his poems and argues that in ‘The Fernowls Nest’ literary allusion is an especially appropriate language for describing the poem's strangely displaced sounds. It proposes that Clare's listening is alert and responsive to different aural perspectives, that it is compound and reflexive, and especially attuned to moments of aural ambiguity, when the boundary between self and other, subject and object becomes blurred. Such moments offer a mode of ethical relation to the natural world that resists the politics of representation John Barrell has associated with the eye in loco-descriptive poetry. 1 If the particularity and multiplicity of Clare's poems offer an alternative to the visual mode of control and possession associated with the prospect view, the distinctive forms of listening we find in his poems, and, in particular, his attunement to aural ambiguity, represent another kind of resistance to the aesthetic expression of human ownership and control over the natural world. Listening in Clare is thus a form of environmentalist poetics.

Cultural and Historical Progression: The Psychology of Literary Allusions in Theodore Dreiser's The Financier (Trilogy of Desire)

The psychology of allusion is often multi-faceted as a reference to an artefact, which could be a character from a literary piece, the quoted words of a character, a place in the country or an event from history. The reference item should be familiar to the readers. The current research identifies literary allusion in The Financer (1912) and the characters referred to Ouida's Tricotrin (1869), Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr's A Bow of Orange Ribbon (1886), Edward Bulwer Lytton's Kenelm Chillingly (1874), and William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1603) which is explained with reference to the plot of Theodore Dreiser's Trilogy of Desire: The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947). The available literature review testified that a thorough evaluation of the allusions within the novel had not been accomplished to date, although these allusions link the literary pieces of the greatest minds in literature.

The Legacy of Don Quixote

Reading Amadis in Jacobean England was conditioned by two publishing events: the appearance of the first part of Cervantes’s Don Quixote in 1605, and Munday’s 1618–19 edition of the first four books of Amadis. The revived Jacobean currency of the romance, alongside its association with Ovid and Sidney’s Arcadia as ‘arts of the heart’, explains its appearance in plays by Jacobean and Caroline dramatists including Jonson, Dekker, Massinger, Beaumont, Shirley, Brome, and Davenant. The second half of the chapter examines Amadis as the palimpsest upon which Don Quixote was written and highlights the theme of ‘ravery’ that links Amadis and Don Quixote, drawing examples from the satirical modes in which this topic is played out. This chapter therefore opens up a rich seam of literary allusion and parody that has not previously been studied, as well as shedding new light on the mechanics of reading Don Quixote in England.

Gothic beetle: a comment on one of Pushkin’s allusions

The paper deals with the beetle as a minor character of the seventh chapter of the novel “Eugene Onegin” and a literary allusion. It is syntactically and rhythmically highlighted in the text of the stanza. V. V. Nabokov was the first to try to set the origin of the character from English literature. The closest meaning of the allusion was a reference to V. A. Zhukovsky, with his surname associated with the beetle by its etymology and the appearance of a “buzzing beetle” in his translation of T. Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” The landscape of the 15th stanza of the novel is represented within the genres of elegy, pastoral, and ballad. We expand the field of Pushkin’s allusion to the Gothic novels of A. Radcliffe and Gothic fiction in general. Mentioning the beetle launches a chain of reminiscences from Gothic novels during Tatiana’s walk and her visit to Onegin’s empty “castle.” The quotations from Shakespeare and Collins in Radcliffe’s novels are of great significance. Shakespeare’s beetle, a Hecate’s messenger, is involved in creating an atmosphere of night fears and mystery surrounding the scene in Onegin’s castle. A collection of Radcliffe’s novels in Pushkin’s library suggests the poet was somewhat familiar with the paratext of the novel “The Romance of the Forest”. Moreover, the beetle as a parody character for a ballad and a Gothic novel appeared in the unfinished poem “Vasily Khrabrov” by the poet’s uncle, V. L. Pushkin.

“I should have liked to be called Prince de Monbart”: On the Problem of Identifying the Reference

The article considers a series of possible allusions implied by the name of “prince de Montbard” in Captain Lebyadkin’s monolog in The Devils. The article analyzes the traditional reference to the allegedly historical figure of the buccaneer Monbars (or Montbars) presumably featured in several adventure novels. We point out that the buccaneer Montbars probably never existed; we consider the novel by Jean-Baptiste Picquenard traditionally cited as a work about the historical Montbars and several novels by Gustave Aimard (published in Russian translations by the time Dostoevsky started working on The Devils). In all those novels, the hero called Montbars is either unrelated to the alleged prototype or is given a fictional biography. The literary allusion to Montbars is important both as an assertion of Lebyadkin’s Romantic ambitions and as an indication of his social ambitions and his dissatisfaction with his own personality that he would like to replace with another’s, for which purpose he aptly selects a provisionally real Montbars. The article also considers a possible historical allusion to André de Montbard, one of the founders of the Order of the Temple. This allusion is connected to the accusations against the Knights Templar who had been charged with apostasy. The article also considers the meaning of the title “prince” and its political and religious connotations that go far beyond romantic adventure-seeking. The ultimate conclusion is that it is hardly possible and necessary to determine some singular and unequivocal literary or historical reference. The range of meanings implied by the name of “prince de Montbard” generally fits in the overall concept of The Devils as a novel about metaphysical imposture that includes the comical Captain Lebyadkin among potential impostors.

Revisiting Asian American Poetics

The most discussed and cited works of Asian American writing in literary studies include mainly novels, memoirs, short fiction, essays, and plays. To use Sau-ling Wong’s terms Necessity and Extravagance, the study of prose narrative has become a Necessity in the establishment of an Asian American literary canon, while poetry appears to occupy the status of the Extravagant—not excluded, but not as important or basic as prose. However, considering Asian American studies through the framework of not just poetry as a genre but also the poetic as a mode leads to some fresh understandings of canonical narratives, as well as criticism and theory. The power of poetry and the poetic do lie in their alignment with Extravagance, especially in their play with rules and expectations of language, convention, and form. Poems by Asian American writers point to the underside of play, the ways in which play can threaten minority subjects. At the same time the poems enact their own forms of play, through literary allusion and figurative language, for example. Asian American poetry and the Asian American poetic harness the energies of recreation and enjoyment to build and repurpose literary and discursive forms that articulate racial, ethnic, and gendered perils and promises.